Inspiration, in Christian theology, is the influence of God on the writers of the Scriptures, which makes these Scriptures the Word of God. The word 'inspiration' is derived from the Vulgate translation (omnis scriptura divinitus inspirata) of 2 Tim. iii. 16, which in the revised English translation runs: 'Every Scripture inspired of God is profitable,' &c. The Greek word theopneustos, rendered 'inspired,' does not occur in classical Greek, and it might as fairly be rendered 'breathing the divine spirit,' as 'given by the divine spirit.' Belief in inspiration is not confined to Jews and Christians; all religions that are based on a divine revelation by means of sacred scriptures assume and affirm inspiration for that revelation. Orthodox Hindus regard the Vedas as of superhuman origin, and absolutely infallible. The Parsees hold that the Zend-Avesta was revealed to Zarathustra by the personification of the divine will which created the world. And the orthodox Moslem sees in the Koran an earthly copy of the original heavenly text revealed to Mohammed in his trances by the angel of revelation; though various Moslem sectaries, as the Motazilites, treat it with free rationalism.
No doctrine of inspiration is formulated either in the Old Testament or the New. But it may be said that the Jews generally have held a 'high' doctrine of inspiration; and the earliest Christian authors apply to Old and New Testaments the doctrine developed by Philo and the
Alexandrian Jews as to the Old Testament—that the writers were in an ecstatic condition or trance as interpreters of God's will, and as such were unconscious of what they spoke. Origen and later authors denied this mantic theory; though Irenæus and Augustine compare the writers of Scripture to the hands which wrote what Christ dictated. There was no definite church doctrine before the Reformation; the Reformers did not discuss fully the nature of inspiration, though the Reformation had emphasised the uniqueness and authority of the Scriptures. It was Calovius (q.v.) who laid down the theory that soon came to be regarded as the orthodox Protestant theory—that nothing exists in the Scriptures which was not divinely suggested and inspired. His followers made the writers dependent on the Spirit for their very words, their choice of expressions and grammatical forms being also divinely perfect. Buxtorf found the Hebrew vowel points inspired, and the Swiss Formula Consensus Helvetica (see CONFESSIONS OF FAITH) extended inspiration to the punctuation.
The tendency of all schools of modern Protestant theology has been to pass wholly away from this mode of thought. Without at present regarding those who find in the Jewish and early Christian literature at most inspiring rather than inspired books, we find the extreme antithesis to the Calovian position in the view of those who, accepting divine revelation in the Old and New Testaments, find revelation and inspiration in all that makes the nature and will of God known to us—in the laws of nature as well as in the literature of devotion; and having regard to the fact that the Christian dispensation is a higher form of truth than the Jewish, hold that there is more of divine inspiration in such Christian books as the Imitatio Christi and the Pilgrim's Progress than in Esther or most part of the Old Testament. Between these extremes are to be found the dogmatic positions of all those who still cling to the Bible as the unique revelation of God in Christ. The differences of spirit are wide, and the divergencies in statement innumerable. But they may be referred to a few main types.
Many hold the doctrine of plenary, as opposed to partial, inspiration—practically the view called by its enemies rather than by its supporters verbal inspiration. Thus Dr Charles Hodge teaches that 'all the books of Scripture are equally inspired. All alike are infallible in what they teach. Inspiration extends to all the contents of all these several books. It is not confined to moral and religious truths, but extends to the statement of facts whether scientific, historical, or geographical.' The object of revelation is to communicate knowledge, whereas that of inspiration is to secure infallibility in teaching. Dr A. A. Hodge holds that some received revelations who were not inspired to communicate them, as Abraham; that sometimes the writer was used by the Holy Spirit as an instrument in making a record of what conveyed to him no intelligible sense (1 Peter, i. 10-12); some, as Balaam, being unregenerate, were inspired though destitute of spiritual illumination. Of those who abide by this view some are more careful than others to protest against a mechanical doctrine, holding that they can allow fully for the individuality and special gifts of the various writers of Scripture; all errors are consistently denied, and discrepancies are explained away as trivial and merely apparent (see GOSPELS). The standard is the Scripture in the original tongues, the text being established by criticism. The canonicity of the existing books should on this theory be proved, but is sometimes practically assumed.
In opposition to this view it is sometimes affirmed that inspiration rendered the writers infallible in teaching religious and moral truth, though they might err as to historical and scientific facts; or that inspiration was but a pre-eminent degree of that spiritual illumination which in a less degree is common to all Christians; or that, while Christ's personal teachings were infallible, the apostles and others were inspired in a less degree. Schleiermacher taught that the authority of the scriptural writers was proportionate to the closeness of their relation to Jesus Christ. Many, protesting against all 'mechanical theories and procrustean formulæ,' hold, with Archdeacon Farrar (in the Clerical Symposium cited below): 'The Bible is the book which contains the records of God's dealings with a chosen race, and through them with mankind. Above all, it is the book which contains the gospel of his Son and the lessons of salvation. It is not all of the same value. It is not all written on the same level. It contains some things which were permitted because of the hardness of men's hearts. . . . Much of it is written from the imperfect moral and spiritual standard of times of ignorance, at which God winked. You will find recorded in it without comment or disapproval some opinions and some actions even of good men which were not commendable. You will find attributed to God's command conduct which for us would be heinously criminal. Nevertheless, this book is a sacred book, for the sum total and general drift of its teaching is loftier and diviner than any you will find in the world. Both by its own loftiest utterances and by the Christian conscience which it has trained, and by the final standard of the gospel, it furnishes you with ample means whereby to judge what things are right and wrong. . . . The Bible is no homogeneous whole. It consists of sixty-six different books, the work of at least forty writers, written in different languages and dialects, and separate from each other by hundreds of years. It is not a book, but a library or a literature.' Or, as Horton puts it: 'We call our Bible inspired, because by reading it and studying it we find our way to God, we find his will for us, and find how we can conform ourselves to his will.' It is not more necessary that every word of the Bible should be infallible than that Peter and other apostolic men should never in their teaching have made mistakes, and this we know was not so.
In the Roman Catholic Church some theologians have asserted verbal inspiration; but this has never been the doctrine of the church. Distinguishing between inspiration and the assistance of the Holy Ghost, which would merely, as in the case of general councils, protect from error, the church recognises two factors in an inspired book—the natural powers of the writers on the one hand and the impulse and direction of the Holy Ghost on the other. But the church, which is the guardian of the canon and the interpreter of Scripture, has never defined where the one ceases and the other begins. Catholics have maintained the existence of trifling errors in Scripture; and Cardinal Newman sees no serious difficulty in admitting that there are 'obiter dicta' in Scripture which are not inspired.
See the article BIBLE in this work, as also APOLOGETICS, EXEGESIS, ACCOMMODATION, DIVINATION, AUGURIES, GOSPEL; the article by Cremer in Herzog, the supplementary article in Schaff's Religious Encyclopedia, and that in Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary; the relevant parts of the works of Hodge, Oosterzee, Dorner, Pfeiderer; Hagenbach's History of Doctrines; and works on inspiration by Wordsworth (1861), Gausen (Eng. trans. 1851), Lee (1854), Elliott (1877), Brown (1880), Given (1881), R. F. Horton (1888), Cardinal Newman in the Nineteenth Century of February 1884; Inspiration: a Clerical Symposium, by the representatives of various views (1884); A. B. Bruce, The Kingdom of God (1889); C. Gore in Lux Mundi (1890); Sanday's Bampton Lecture on Inspiration (1894); and the innumerable works on the subject referred to in the books named.