(c) The theory in question, holding as it does that natural insight is the only source of religious truth, involves a self-contradiction;—if the theory be true, then one man is inspired to utter what a second is inspired to pronounce false. The Vedas, the Koran and the Bible cannot be inspired to contradict each other.
The Vedas permit thieving, and the Koran teaches salvation by works; these cannot be inspired and the Bible also. Paul cannot be inspired to write his epistles, and Swedenborg also inspired to reject them. The Bible does not admit that pagan teachings have the same divine endorsement with its own. Among the Spartans to steal was [pg 204]praiseworthy; only to be caught stealing was criminal. On the religious consciousness with regard to the personality of God, the divine goodness, the future life, the utility of prayer, in all of which Miss Cobbe, Mr. Greg and Mr. Parker disagree with each other, see Bruce, Apologetics, 143, 144. With Matheson we may grant that the leading idea of inspiration is “the growth of the divine through the capacities of the human,”while yet we deny that inspiration confines itself to this subjective enlightenment of the human faculties, and also we exclude from the divine working all those perverse and erroneous utterances which are the results of human sin.
(d) It makes moral and religious truth to be a purely subjective thing—a matter of private opinion—having no objective reality independently of men's opinions regarding it.
On this system truth is what men “trow”; things are what men “think”—words representing only the subjective. “Better the Greek ἀλήθεια = ‘the unconcealed’(objective truth)”—Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 182. If there be no absolute truth, Lessing's “search for truth” is the only thing left to us. But who will search, if there is no truth to be found? Even a wise cat will not eternally chase its own tail. The exercise within certain limits is doubtless useful, but the cat gives it up so soon as it becomes convinced that the tail cannot be caught. Sir Richard Burton became a Roman Catholic, a Brahmin, and a Mohammedan, successively, apparently holding with Hamlet that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”This same scepticism as to the existence of objective truth appears in the sayings: “Your religion is good for you, and mine for me”; “One man is born an Augustinian, and another a Pelagian.” See Dix, Pantheism, Introd., 12. Richter: “It is not the goal, but the course, that makes us happy.”
(e) It logically involves the denial of a personal God who is truth and reveals truth, and so makes man to be the highest intelligence in the universe. This is to explain inspiration by denying its existence; since, if there be no personal God, inspiration is but a figure of speech for a purely natural fact.
The animus of this theory is denial of the supernatural. Like the denial of miracles, it can be maintained only upon grounds of atheism or pantheism. The view in question, as Hutton in his Essays remarks, would permit us to say that the word of the Lord came to Gibbon, amid the ruins of the Coliseum, saying: “Go, write the history of the Decline and Fall!” But, replies Hutton: Such a view is pantheistic. Inspiration is the voice of a living friend, in distinction from the voice of a dead friend, i. e., the influence of his memory. The inward impulse of genius, Shakespeare's for example, is not properly denominated inspiration. See Row, Bampton Lectures for 1877:428-474; Rogers, Eclipse of Faith, 73 sq. and 283 sq.; Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 443-469, 481-490. The view of Martineau, Seat of Authority, 302, is substantially this. See criticism of Martineau, by Rainy, in Critical Rev., 1:5-20.
2. The Illumination Theory.
This regards inspiration as merely an intensifying and elevating of the religious perceptions of the Christian, the same in kind, though greater in degree, with the illumination of every believer by the Holy Spirit. It holds, not that the Bible is, but that it contains, the word of God, and that not the writings, but only the writers, were inspired. The illumination given by the Holy Spirit, however, puts the inspired writer only in full possession of his normal powers, but does not communicate objective truth beyond his ability to discover or understand.
This theory naturally connects itself with Arminian views of mere coöperation with God. It differs from the Intuition-theory by containing several distinctively Christian elements: (1) the influence of a personal God; (2) an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit; (3) the Christological character of the Scriptures, putting into form a revelation of which Christ is the centre (Rev. 19:10). But while it grants that the Scripture [pg 205]writers were “moved by the Holy Spirit” (φερόμενοι—2 Pet. 1:21), it ignores the complementary fact that the Scripture itself is “inspired of God” (θεόπνευστος—2 Tim. 3:16). Luther's view resembles this; see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 236, 237. Schleiermacher, with the more orthodox Neander, Tholuck and Cremer, holds it; see Essays by Tholuck, in Herzog, Encyclopädie, and in Noyes, Theological Essays; Cremer, Lexicon N.T., θεόπνευστος, and in Herzog and Hauck, Realencyc., 9:183-203. In France, Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 90, remarks: “Prophetic inspiration is piety raised to the second power”—it differs from the piety of common men only in intensity and energy. See also Godet, in Revue Chrétienne, Jan. 1878.