De inspiratione sacrae Scripturae: theologica disquisitio

That the receiving of knowledge of the things to be written is indeed among the prerequisites to inspiration, but is not yet formally included in it. And that this receiving takes place in two ways. Either through divine communication according to one or another of the many modes which St. Thomas assigns where he treats of prophecy, if the things are far removed from the writer's knowledge. Or through natural means with divine assistance, for instance through the hagiographer's own industry in seeking documents, consulting historical sources, and comparing all things that contribute to the acquisition of human knowledge, if it is otherwise.

I. — It is very well known that there are many things in the Scriptures which the hagiographers could not have known except through prophetic revelation. Now prophetic revelation concerns those things which are far from our knowledge; of these there is a threefold degree, says St. Thomas 2-2, Q. 171, a. 3: « One is of those things which are far from the knowledge of this man, whether according to sense or according to intellect, but not from the knowledge of all men. As a man knows by sense those things which are present to him according to place, which nevertheless another does not know by human sense, as being absent from him. And thus Elisha prophetically knew what his disciple Gehazi had done in his absence, as is had 4 Kings V. And similarly the thoughts of one heart are prophetically manifested to another, as is said 1 Cor. XIV, and in this way also those things which one knows demonstratively can be prophetically revealed to another. The second degree, however, is of those things which universally exceed the knowledge of all men, not because they are not knowable in themselves, but because of the defect of human knowledge, as with the mysteries of the Trinity, which was revealed by the Seraphim saying: Holy, Holy, Holy, etc., as is had Isai. VI. The last degree, however, is of those things which are far from the knowledge of all men, because they are not knowable in themselves, such as future contingents whose truth is not determined. And because that which is universal and in itself is prior to that which is particular and through another, therefore the revelation of future events belongs most properly to prophecy, whence also the name of prophecy seems to be taken ». Now it is established that the prophetic revelation of which we now speak is by no means restricted to things of the last degree, but extends generally to all those things whose knowledge came to the hagiographers by a supernatural way, whether they were of future contingents, or of heavenly mysteries, or finally of those things which, although not in themselves surpassing the human intellect, were nevertheless, from whatever cause, neither naturally known nor knowable to those same sacred writers.

In this prophetic revelation, moreover, St. Thomas distinguishes two things in general as implanted by God: first, the species for representing intelligible truths; second, the light strengthening the intellective power to attain them with right judgment. And as to the first, he says that there is a likeness between divine revelation and human teaching, but not as to the second, because a man represents certain things to his disciple through the signs of speech, but cannot inwardly strengthen the intellect to judge rightly and infallibly of the things presented¹. Moreover, as regards the very representation of things which is made through species, the likeness of human teaching is greatly deficient and imperfect. For a human teacher does not cause intelligible species in the mind of the disciple, except by proposing to him certain exterior signs of the intelligible intentions which the disciple's intellect receives from those signs and stores up within itself². But God does this in many other ways, and those far more excellent. For things are represented to the mind of the prophet, sometimes indeed by means of the exterior sense, as when Daniel saw the writing on the wall. More frequently, however, either through imaginary forms divinely formed and not received through the sense, as when John saw in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks one like to the Son of man, and he fell at his feet as though dead; or through species previously received from the senses, but divinely ordered otherwise according to their congruity to the truth to be revealed (for from a different ordering of the same letters different understandings are received), as when Jeremiah saw a cauldron boiling from the face of the north; or finally through species immediately and directly impressed on the mind itself, as is clear in the case of those who received infused knowledge or wisdom³. And on this account the Apostle says that God formerly spoke in the prophets in many parts and in many ways.

But of those various modes by which prophetic knowledge is acquired, this is not the place now to discourse. In the meantime you will observe this one thing, that although the principles of this knowledge are rightly said to be infused by God, namely the interior light strengthening the intellect, or also the species representative of the things to be revealed (although those are not always from divine infusion, as was just said, but sometimes there is from God only a new ordering or disposition of pre-existing species), nevertheless you will nowhere say that the act of knowledge itself is infused. For the cognitive act is a certain vital operation, essentially arising from within and elicited, to which it is absolutely repugnant to be implanted from without. Whence it follows that prophetic knowledge itself also still keeps the manner of the knower. And I say the manner of the knower also on the part of the thing known, as is general whenever knowledge is perfected by this, that the thing known is intelligibly conceived and expressed by the knower. And this observation will help not a little in the course of this analysis of ours, as will afterwards appear in its place.

II. — But not all things consigned in the books of Scripture are of that class of things which the preceding category comprehends. For very many are found which the sacred writers knew either from their inmost consciousness, as is clear from their own thoughts and their own affections repeatedly manifested and expressed by them; or which they retained in their memory, as is evident from the events in which they themselves took part, and of which they were eyewitnesses; or finally which they could attain by common and human means, as may be seen with regard to the facts which were contained in the sources of history.

Now not only is there no necessity of asserting that the knowledge of these things came to them by a way other than the common and ordinary one, but there is also a positive reason for denying it, and that an apodictic and plainly peremptory one, since the hagiographers themselves attest the customary mode of information, either expressly or in practice, concerning themselves. — Expressly indeed, as when the author of 2 Mach. II-24 asserts that he is abridging in one volume the things which had been comprehended by Jason of Cyrene in five books, or when Luke declares in the beginning of his volume, saying: As they have handed down to us who from the beginning were themselves eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word. From which Jerome rightly infers in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers: « He therefore wrote the Gospel as he had heard it, but he composed the Acts of the Apostles as he himself had seen them ». — In practice also, as when the sacred historians everywhere indicate the sources from which they drew their knowledge of events, as is frequent in the four books of Kings, and in the two of Paralipomenon. For 1 Par. XXIX-29, the history of David is thus concluded: But the deeds of king David, the former and the latest, are written in the book of Samuel the seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the volume of Gad the seer. Likewise a little above, XXVII-24, mention occurs of the annals of king David. And 2 Reg. I-19, the sacred author says that he took over the elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan from the book of the just. And in 3 and 4 Kings, there is a continuous citation of the book of the words of the days of Solomon, of the annals of the kings of Judah, and the annals of the kings of Israel⁴. And therefore no place of doubting is left in this matter.

Observe, however, how it was deliberately said in the thesis: through natural means with divine assistance, namely so that it may already be intimated that every error had to be guarded against in this information, as preliminary to inspiration. And the reason is that God does not inspire things to be written except from the ground of truth. If you doubt this, I will refer you to the things to be said below where the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture is treated. In the meantime, however, I think that there can be presupposed without temerity that which the notion of God, the Best and Greatest—or rather the notion almost innate in the minds of men—carries, and which no advance of critical science will ever be able to efface. Therefore, lest he who is destined by God as the instrument of writing a divine book receive his information from spurious and corrupt sources, common sense also now requires this more than sufficiently. For although the receiving of knowledge of the things to be written does not yet belong formally to inspiration, it still stands in relation to it as material and presupposed. And I declare both at once.

III. — I say therefore that the aforesaid receiving of knowledge is not intrinsically enclosed in inspiration. For first, all Scripture is divinely inspired, and everywhere in the same way; since inspiration is of one kind, and is not divided as a genus into subalternate species. Whence the prophetic books are not more inspired than the historical books; nor are those parts less inspired which treat of things not in themselves impervious to human reason, than the parts where those mysteries hidden in God are proposed, which, unless divinely revealed, could not become known at all. But if the receiving of knowledge concerning the things to be written entered intrinsically into the notion of inspiration, one of two things would remain to be said: either that the knowledge of all and each of the things contained in Scripture ought to have come to the hagiographers from God through the same way of revelation, or certainly that in some parts of Scripture inspiration would have been only diminished and maimed and, as it were, halved. Both of which, as is established from the premises, is entirely inadmissible.

Moreover, inspiration begins where dictation begins; indeed, inspiration and dictation in the present matter are plainly one and the same in reality. But the information concerning the things to be written can indeed be the matter of dictation, but cannot pertain to dictation itself. For dictation has its beginning, progress and end with the beginning, progress and end of the composition of the book; and the information stands in relation to that composition as a heap of materials to the construction of a building. As therefore the bringing of stones and cement and wood is one thing, and the construction itself another: so also the receiving of knowledge of the things to be written is one thing, and the instrumental motion by which the hagiographer is moved to compose and write the book is another.

Finally, one who is inspired as such is related to the inspirer as an instrument to a principal cause. But in the mere receiving of knowledge no one is reckoned the instrument of him from whom he receives. Therefore again, that same receiving of knowledge, even if it be from God revealing, is still outside the proper and intrinsic notion of inspiration. And thus the same conclusion always returns.

Nevertheless, however it be received, whether from God revealing or from a natural source, that knowledge must always be presupposed as a necessary condition. And this indeed has already been largely explained, when the matter of verbal dictation was being dealt with as having no place in Sacred Scripture. But it will become clearer and clearer in the following proposition, where the very formality of inspiration now comes to be explained.