3-inspiration - rayan lobo,sj

8/18/2019 3-Inspiration - Rayan Lobo,SJ

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3. Inspiration – Rayan Lobo, SJ Page 1

3. Inspiration

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The Church considers the Bible with its two testaments as ‘word of God’ and so as an

infallible norm.

Bible

The word ‘bible’ comes from the Latin word ‘Biblia’ or from Greek word ‘Biblos’ and it means

‘BOOKS’ (in the plural ‘ta biblia’ is singular i.e. book)

The word ‘Bible’ is indicative of two things:

o That it is 1) the book , 2) the book of books 3) the great book

o The plural form suggests that it is a LIBRARY OF BOOKS

Composition:

In OT – 46

In NT – 27 Totally 73 books.

Testament

The very word ‘testament’ come from the Latin ‘Testamentum’, which was chosen to translate the

Biblical Idea of ‘Covenant’.

The ‘ADJECTIVES’ Old and New indicate the TIME of composition of the book

What unites OT and NT is the promise and the fulfilment of JesusWord of God

How does bilbebecome the word of God?

Firstly, how does bible becomes the ‘word of God’? it is the word of God, because it is of

APOSTOLIC ORIGIN and it has to it 3 key elements . i.e. a. revealed b. inspired c. inerrant

REVEALED : As ‘divine revelation’ it is word of God in the words of humans.

INSPIRED: the Latin word ‘inspiro’ means to breathe into’ or ‘blow into’. So

inspiration means that God breathes into human minds the ideas to be written down.

Therefore, subjects, humans are called ‘inspired’ and these humans choose words,

idioms, of the time to verbalize those ideas.

So 2 CONSEQENCES OF INSPIRATION are

o The bible become the word of God


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o It become the source and NORMATIVE for Christian Theology and spiritual

growth

There are 3 NT texts which tell us that the OT texts are important.

o 2 Tim 3, 16-17: ‘all scripture is inspired by God; and is useful for teaching, for

reproof for correction, and for training in righteousness.

o 2 Pet 1, 19-21 ‘…so prophecy and scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation …. Because

no prophecy ever came by human will, but MEN AND WOMEN MOVED BY THE HOLY

SPIRIT SPOKE FROM GOD.

o 2 Pet 3, 15-16 this refers to the Pauline corpus as being on par with the Jewish scriptures.

‘Word of God’, refers not only to words but also the deeds – it refers to Dabar Yahweh – mighty

acts of God.

In OT through the mighty acts of God, he liberated the people from Egypt/slavery.

Infalliable Norm = It is normative.

Bible can be looked at from 2 different angles.

a. Dogmatic perspective : What does the community say about the bible.it is teh faith

perspective.

b.

Literary Historical perspective ; we read the biblliterature.e like any otherLooking at the bible from the dogmatic / faith perspective we say Bible is normative

2. Yet as literature, the bible is subject to the norms of literary form and redaction

criticism, which govern the interpretation of any literature (ND 236)

Pope Pius XII allowed and in Divine Afflanto Spiritu(1943) - OT

Pope Paul VI allowed in Santa Mater Eccelsia - NT

Method: Techniques

Historical Critical Method is a scientific way of reading any literatureCriticism are techniques used to interpret literature

1. Textual – to explore and find authentic text.

2. Redaction how scripture is collected and edited tradition.

3. Literary – explores relationship bet the sources. ex. JEDP or MT, Mk, Lk, Jn


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4. Form – how text developed during oral tradition.

Form = units. Text developed in units.

3 things to remember about oral tradition –

Resurrection

Need of the community

Biblical language historical – we go back in time – through time we go back to

see which is the original.

3. And so it is subject to the limitations of human authorship and transmission.

Thus the bible is the ‘word of God’ in the words of humans.

Collected and edited – so scripture is subject to the limitation of the human authorship and

transmission.

Here we bring both dogmatic and scientific dimensions together. It is a word of god in the words of

Humans.

Experience o God can be genuine where as its expression might be deficient.

It’s infalliable norm because God is teh author.

Vat II says – ‘ Human author is teh true author. Therefore words of men.

So Vat I &II create a dilemma. how do we come out of this dilemma?

We explain this through 3 theories.

a.

Dictatiton theory : God dictated and human wrote. Problem with the dictation theory is

errors (historical and scientific). Ex: book of Joshua.

b. Instrumental theory – man is chosen as the instrument. Therefore mist ake can be

explained. Problems -allusive authorship. Here one peron is not writing. Scripture – has

community is the author as its collected and edited tradition.

c. Ecclesia Charism Theory of Karl Rahner

He said ‘God calls into being the Church as an eschatological community of salvation by

a special act of God’s will. Therefore, God is its author. [eschatological= definitive/ onceand for all; special act= not merely transcendental]

God will the church as a historical community, and therefore, wills the apostolic Church

as NORMATIVE. [i.e. like a baby which has the constitutive elements of a future adult]


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God will the NT as the constitutive element of the Apostolic Church.( i.e. the apostolic

church becomes the normative through the scriptures)

God wills the OT as the pre-history of the CHRIST EVENT. (in other words the OT is

the living context of Jesus’ experience)

Inerrancy

Since there is human contribution in the writings of the Bible, there may be limitations of the

knowledge (Ex. Errors with regard to history, geography, science….). BUT THERE IS NO

ERROR WITH REGARD TO THE SALVIFIC TRUTH IN THE BIBLE. This is affirmed in the

‘Dei Verbum’ and also in ‘providentissimus Deus’.

Being aware of the historical and scientific errors, we say “ Bible contains truths

concerning salvation without error.

Therefore in this soteriologial sense – there is no error- with regard to the salvific truth.

That is with regard to the faith and morls ( DV II).

4. Internal and external pressures led the church to establish and fix the canon in a

process that covered about four centuries.

A. Internal pressures:

Jewish Christians were thrown out of the Synagogue and had lost their identity. Hence they felt the

need to establish a charter which would restore their identity.

B. External pressure:

There was flooding of all sorts of literature; apocryphal, Gnostic literature etc. So the church chose

to close the canon. They took four centuries because they had to arrive at a consensus between east

and the wet. (The OT Canon was accepted much more easily than the NT).

The western church had problems with ‘letter to the Hebrew’, because the authorship of

Paul was under question.

The Eastern Church questioned the books of revelation because the ‘Chiliasts’ heresy

seemed to be based on it.

In general to safeguard the identity of the community they had to come out with the canon.


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Principles for fixing the canon were:

Apostolic origin

Wide liturgical use in the different local churches

Whether the book has as its core the ‘Paschal mystery of Christ’

Canon

Literally meant a ‘reed’ and hence later, metaphorically a ‘measuring rod’. And finally it came to

be meaning a ‘norm’ or also simply a list.

When applies to sacred scripture it means either, a rule or norm for right believing of and right

living or a list of inspired books.

5. Being the constitution and the character of the church, the canon may not be

tampered with by way of additions or excisions (ND 210, 211, 212, 213)

Constitution is one that gives identity.

Moment of birth gives identity. Identity comes at the moment of birth.

Christianity took birth during apostolic church.

It is this apostolic church which is expressed in the form of a scripture gives an identity.

Therefore scripture becomes constitution. It cannot be tampered.

If we do that then the identity changes.

Council of Trent :

ND 210 – Written book and unwritten traditions as coming from the mouth of Christ. OR being

inspired by the HS and preserved in the continuous succession in the CR.

ND 211 – Canon of Scripture

List of OT books

ND 212 – List of NT books

ND 213 - If anyone doesn’t accept these books in their entirety with all their parts as they are

being read in the catholic church and are contained in the ancient Latin vulgate editions, as

sacred and canonical and knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions – anathema

Sit.


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6.

Since other religious too have their scriptures, we need to inquire into their nature

and function.

The answer to the question depends on your understanding of inspiration.

Inspiration – the quality of the book that makes the book inspired – expression of the faith ofthe apostolic community. It’s domestic definition.

If inspiration is understood in a ‘broad sense’ i.e. Sacred Scripture as containing God’s self

revelation, then ‘all’ scriptures are inspired. So the Sacred Scripture of other faiths are the

attempts of their communities to articulate their experience of God.

3-inspiration - rayan lobo,sj

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