The Christological Dimension of Biblical Inspiration according to Gospel Testimonies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/BPTh.2023.019Keywords
revelation, inspiration, Christological dimension, GospelsAbstract
The Gospels prove their divine origin by presenting Jesus and His work of revelation as taking place among His eyewitnesses: the apostles and disciples. They also inform us that the apostles’ and disciples’ inspiration to proclaim the divine revelation received from Jesus comes from Jesus Himself—the Messiah and Son of God. The mystery of Christ’s inspiring his followers is explained in two aspects. The first aspect concerns forming the apostles and disciples—in a personal relationship—to accept and understand the words and deeds revealed to them that ultimately come from the Father. This personal relationship with the Messiah and Son of God, experienced in a living and informed faith in his Person, is the most profound factor in this “inspiration,” making the Lord’s apostles and disciples capable of communicating, in speech and in writing, the message of Jesus Christ, which is in fact “the Word of God” and “the Word from God.” In the synoptic Gospels, a personal relationship with Jesus takes the form of a bond between the student and the Teacher in which the most important thing is faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God (see Mark 1:1; John 20:31). One’s relationship with Jesus can be immediate (Gospel of John) or mediated (Gospel of Luke). The immediate relationship, fundamental in communicating “the Word from God,” appears in a particularly strongly articulated and rich way in the Gospel of John, where the author, along with other disciples, contemplates the glory of the only-begotten Son who comes from the Father (John 1:14 – plural: “we have seen”) and is thus an eyewitness to Jesus’s teachings and to the events of His life from the very beginning to the end (John 19:35; 21:24). The second aspect of Jesus’s inspiration concerns preparing the apostles (“the Twelve”) and other disciples to proclaim the words revealed to them “from God” to the world. Having believed in the divine sonship of Jesus, the apostles and disciples bear witness to his work of revealing “the words of God” because they are supported by Him: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word” (John 17:17–20). It is through this “sanctification in truth” that the apostle bears witness to “the words of God” as someone who has been inspired, in the first place, by Jesus Himself, the Son of God, in whom he and his community of disciples (plural in John 1:14) have believed, and who has ultimately been instructed by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth (John 15:26–27; 20:22).
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