Inspiration

Breathed out by God

Paul tells Timothy where Scripture comes from.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness

2 Timothy 3:16

"God-breathed" translates a single Greek word, theopneustos (θεόπνευστος). The Latin Bible rendered it with a form of inspirare, and from there we get "inspiration". What God breathed out, Paul says, is the Scripture itself, the written text, not only the writers' thoughts. Peter looks at the same work from the writers' side: "men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21). Matthew Henry draws the conclusion: "The Holy Ghost inspired holy men to speak and write" Matthew Henry.

How did the writers write? Wesley, glossing ‘moved’ in that verse, says: "Literally, carried. They were purely passive therein" Wesley. Yet Luke tells us he wrote "having carefully investigated everything from the beginning" (Luke 1:3), and Paul breaks off a letter to ask for "the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas" (2 Timothy 4:13). So most theologians hold the two together: the Spirit carried the writers along without erasing their languages, personalities and research. A mechanical or dictation theory, in which the writers were mere secretaries, is rejected by nearly all evangelicals today.

The church's confession

Jesus said that "the Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), and from the beginning the church received Scripture as given by the Spirit. After listing the books of both Testaments, the Westminster Confession (1646) says:

All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.

Westminster Confession 1.2

Evangelical theology often calls this verbal plenary inspiration: inspiration reaches to the words (verbal) and to every part (plenary). Herman Bavinck described it as organic, the Spirit using the writers' whole personalities and gifts Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Inspiration is distinct from illumination, the Spirit's opening of readers' minds, though Wesley joins them: the Spirit "not only once inspired those who wrote it, but continually inspires, supernaturally assists, those that read it with earnest prayer" Wesley.

Where Christians differ

The Catholic Church also teaches that all the books of Scripture were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and have God as their author, while the human writers, using their own powers, were true authors Dei Verbum. The Orthodox churches likewise receive Scripture as inspired by the Spirit and read it within Holy Tradition.

In the modern period many liberal theologians understood inspiration as the writers' heightened religious insight, so that Scripture differed from other great religious writing in degree rather than in kind. Karl Barth held that the Bible is a human witness to revelation, which becomes the word of God as God speaks through it Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Evangelicals confess that Scripture already is the word of God, whatever its readers make of it. What inspiration implies for Scripture's truthfulness is stated in different ways even among evangelicals; see inerrancy. See also the lesson The inspiration and authority of Scripture.