The Manner of Biblical Inspiration

Second Timothy 3:16 makes plain that Scripture is breathed out by God such that it is the very Word of God even though it comes to us through human authors. Thus, we can speak of the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture. Not only are the ideas of Scripture inspired by God, but so are the very words themselves, down to the letter (verbal), and every word or all the words of Scripture are inspired (plenary). Jesus assumes this concept in Matthew 5:18, where he says that “not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” “Iota” is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, and “dot” is the tiny extension or flourish on Hebrew letters that allows us to distinguish two letters that otherwise look identical. If these tiny parts of the words of Scripture cannot pass away, they must be inspired by God as much as the words, sentences, paragraphs, and ideas of Scripture are inspired.

This leads us to consider the manner of biblical inspiration. How did God inspire the biblical authors to give us His words? The Apostle Peter tells us that the prophets, the authors of Scripture, “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). As we consider the phenomena of the biblical books, we soon discover that we cannot conceive of this “carrying along” as a mechanical process, as though the Lord would set aside the individuality of each human author. For example, even though Moses and Isaiah describe the same God and affirm the same truths, their literary styles and emphases are different. Mark and John both give us the true story of Jesus, but Mark is oriented more toward the actions of Jesus while John is oriented more toward our Lord’s discourses. We can feel the tenderness of John as we read his epistles and can discern the intellectual rigor of Paul when we read his writings.

Inspiration was not like programming a robot with no personality. God worked organically, allowing each author to give us God’s words in his own words. Dr. R.C. Sproul writes in Scripture Alone: “Through divine inspiration, God made it possible for his truth to be communicated in an inspired way, making use of the backgrounds, personalities, and literary styles of these various writers. The human writers were not machines and ought not to be conceived of as being without personality. What is overcome or overridden by inspiration is not human personality, style, or literary structure, but human tendencies to distortion, falsehood, and error.”