noun
definition
A sudden rush of creative impulse or inspiration, often attributed to divine influence.
Examples of afflatus in a Sentence
St Paul himself knew when he was speaking by the Spirit, and when he was not; and we too can recognize to some extent when the afflatus comes upon him.
As no one could curse Jesus except under the influence of a devilish afflatus, so none could say "Jesus is Lord" except he was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
It does not, of course, follow that everyone who had shared in the divine afflatus of prophetic enthusiasm gave forth oracles; but the prophets as a class stood nearer than other men to the mysterious workings of Yahweh, and it was in their circle that revelation seemed to have its natural home.
Whatever happened to passion and vision and the divine afflatus in poetry?
He depicts her quick changes of colour, her dishevelled hair, her panting breast, her apparent increase of stature as the god draws nigh and fills her with his divine afflatus.
In natural soothsaying this frenzy is the necessary physical accompaniment of an afflatus which, though it seems supernatural to a rude people, is really akin to poetic inspiration.
In the conversation with Nicodemus we seem to overhear a protest against the growing tendency of the last years of the 1st century to substitute formal sacraments for the free afflatus of the spirit, and to "crib, cabin and confine" the gift of prophecy.
The poetic afflatus, here, works not so much in accordance with fancy, as with quick viscera.
The continual, slow and laborious progress from the one to the other is that which really constitutes history, and man becomes civilized by rendering himself the conscious and independent possessor of all that in poetical wisdom remained impersonal, unconscious, that came, as it were, from without by divine afflatus.
So far was the afflatus of the Spirit from being conditioned by the rite, that in Acts x.
With the prophets it is quite otherwise; they appear not individually but in bands; their prophesying is a united exercise accompanied by music, and seemingly dance-music; it is marked by strong excitement, which sometimes acts contagiously, and may be so powerful that he who is seized by it is unable to stand, 2 and, though this condition is regarded as produced by a divine afflatus, it is matter of ironical comment when a prominent man like Saul is found to be thus affected.
More than this hardly lies in the expression "a divine spirit" (a'r5K min), which is used not only of the prophetic afflatus but of the evil frenzy that afflicted Saul's later days.
The recognized modes of communicating the afflatus, power or numen to a person or thing to be consecrated are many, and only a few can be enumerated.