Hostname: page-component-669899f699-g7b4s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-29T11:20:57.778Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reading Symbols, and Writing words. A Model for Biblical Inspiration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Robert J. Hill
Robert J. Hill*
Affiliation:
St. Charles', 1 Kelvinside Gardens, Glasgow, G20 6BG
*
E‐mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Biblical Inspiration has long been considered an important concept for Catholic theology, but the difficulties experienced in trying to give an adequate and convincing explanation of how divine and the human authors could collaborate in producing Biblical texts has discouraged many writers from pursuing the topic. Some have considered that the difficulties are so great that the task of exploring a theology of Inspiration is too great to make the effort worthwhile.

This article, in attempting to sketch a model for Biblical Inspiration, begins by trying to identify exactly what is required for the theology of Inspiration, and then discarding what is not; it also sets out to distinguish clearly between Revelation and Inspiration, while recognising that the two are closely related, and using a model of symbolic mediation for Revelation. The article goes on to propose a model of Inspiration which satisfies not only the demands of contemporary Biblical scholarship and philosophical hermeneutics, but also the requirements of the doctrine of Inspiration as found in the Magisterial documents of the Catholic Church.

Keywords

InspirationRevelationscripturehermeneuticsmagisterium
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 89 , Issue 1019 , January 2008 , pp. 22 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The author 2007. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Collins, R. F., ‘Inspiration’, 65:28–31, pp. 1027f., in Brown, R.E., Fitzmyer, J. A., Murphy, R. E., (General Editors) The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1997), pp. 1023–1033Google Scholar.

2 C.f. Dei Verbum, article 13; Pontifical Biblical Commission's Instruction ‘Interpreting the Bible in The Church’, 1993, in Houlden, J. L., Interpreting the Bible in the Church, III.D.2.c, (London: SCM, 1995), pp. 78fGoogle Scholar.

3 Chadwick, H., (translator), St. Augustine. Confessions, Book 12:36, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 266Google Scholar.

4 Vawter, B., Inspiration, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1972), p. 22Google Scholar.

5 C.f. Robinson, R. B., Catholic Exegesis since Divino Afflante Spiritu. Hermeneutical Implications, (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars' Press, 1988), pp. 21–23Google Scholar.

6 Vawter, B., Inspiration, p. 102.

7 MacKenzie, R.A.F., ‘Some Problems in the Field of Inspiration. The Presidential Address at the 20th Annual Meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, Massachusetts, 4 September, 1957’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol. 20, (1958), pp. 1–8Google Scholar.

8 Hoffmann, T. A., ‘Inspiration, Normativeness, canonicity, and the Unique Sacred Character of the Bible’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Volume 44, (1982), pp. 447–469Google Scholar.

9 Dulles, A., Models of Revelation, (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1983), pp. 131–154Google Scholar.

10 Fawcett, T., The Symbolic Language of Religion. An Introductory Study, (London: SCM, 1970), pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

11 Van Beeck, F. J., ‘Divine Revelation: Intervention or Self‐Communication?’, Theological Studies, Volume 52 (1991), pp. 199–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Dei Verbum art. 12.

13 Fawcett, pp. 101–102.

14 Ricoeur, P., Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, (Texas: The Texas Christian University Press, 1976), p. 43Google Scholar.

15 Schneiders, S. M., ‘Faith, Hermeneutics and the Literal Sense’, Theological Studies, Volume 39 (1978), p. 719–736CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Houlden, J. L., The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, p. 52.

17 Brueggemann, W., ‘Biblical Theology Appropriately Post‐Modern’, p. 5, in Biblical Theology Bulletin, Vol. 27, No. 1, Spring (1997), pp. 4–9.Google Scholar

18 Brueggemann, W., ed. Miller, P. D., The Psalms and the Life of Faith, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), pp. 10–15Google Scholar.

19 Brueggemann, W. Hopeful Imagination. Prophetic Voices in Exile, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

20 Polanyi, M., The Tacit Dimension, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), pp 29–52Google Scholar.