The Role of the Holy Spirit in the Inspiration and Illumination of Sacred Scripture
(Spiritu Sancto inspirante conscripti)
Anyone who attempts to strictly define the Holy Spirit’s activity faces a tremendous challenge. It is impossible for mere man to fully comprehend God’s activity in the world because he is limited in his understanding. Nevertheless, Scripture does give us some idea of how the Spirit has worked in the past.
What Is Inspiration?
Biblical inspiration may be defined as God's superintending of the human authors so that, using their own individual personalities (and even their writing styles); they composed and recorded without error His revelation to man in the words of the original autographs. Inspiration means that "the Holy Spirit of God superintended the human writers in the production of Scripture so that what they wrote was precisely what God wanted written." When you break the doctrine of inspiration down to its essential elements, there are six key factors:
• Divine origin and causality;
• Human agency;
• Written verbally (in words);
• Plenary (all of Scripture is inspired, not just parts of it);
• Only the "Autographs" (the original documents penned by the biblical authors) are inspired;
• Because Scripture is inspired, it is inerrant.
Vatican II’s Dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation gives the clear vision on it “Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.(1) In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him (2) they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, (3) they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted. (4)”
The Inspiration of Scripture
When we refer to the inspired nature of Scripture we don’t mean the same thing as a non-Christian when he or she might talk about an inspired performance in a play, or a bright idea. The word ‘inspiration’ comes from 2Timothy 3:16 and is best translated as ‘God-breathed'. 2Peter 1:20-21 states that the Holy Spirit spoke through people in the past in a unique way, but how? Three explanations have been put forward:
1. Dictation. Some have accused Christians who accept inspiration of believing that God dictated the Scriptures. By this they don’t mean that men acted like secretaries taking notes as God spoke, but rather that they became like a typewriter while God - totally overriding their minds and personalities - hit the right keys. This theory has been consistently rejected over the centuries and no respected theologian or church leader has ever held it.
2. Accommodation. This is the opposite extreme to the dictation theory. It states that God spoke through man, but in the process human sin and weakness became involved. The Bible is therefore flawed in parts and we must therefore pick out those parts which are from God. This theory stands in direct contradiction to Paul’s statement in 2 Tim. 3:16 and is therefore rejected by Christians.
3. Supervision. This theory, which is accepted by the majority of Christians today, takes into account the mystery involved in the process of inspiration. God has spoken to us in many different ways (Heb. 1:1-2). Sometimes he has appeared to people and asked them to write down a message, e.g. Isa. 8:1-2; Hab. 2:2; Rev. 1:19; 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14. Twice the Lord himself wrote on stone tablets (Exod. 32:15-17; 34:1). The people whom he used he often prepared in a special way (Jer. 1:3; Isa. 49:1; Gal. 1:15), but the fact that they were sometimes his enemies did not prevent God from speaking through them (Num. 23-24; John 11:49-50). The process was clearly very intimate, because when Luke started his research for Theophilus he did so not because he knew that he was writing new Scripture, but simply because it seemed like the right thing for him to do (Luke 1:3). The Spirit used the personalities of the people he chose to write His thoughts in their words.
The Holy Spirit is the Agent of Inspiration
Second Peter 1:21 tells us that "prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." The word moved in this verse literally means to be "borne along" or "carried along." Even though human beings were used in the process of writing down God's Word, they were all literally "borne along" by the Holy Spirit.
The human wills of the authors were not the originators or the carriers of God's message. God did not permit the will of sinful man to divert, misdirect, or erroneously record His message. God moved and the prophet mouthed these truths; God revealed and man recorded His word.
Interestingly, the Greek word for "moved" in 2 Peter 1:21 is the same word found in Acts 27:15-17.
The experienced sailors could not navigate the ship because the wind was so strong. The ship was being driven, directed, and carried about by the wind. This is similar to the Spirit's driving, directing, and carrying the human authors of the Bible as He wished. The word is a strong one, indicating the Spirit's complete superintendence of the human authors. Yet, just as the sailors were active on the ship (though the wind, not the sailors, controlled the ship's movement), so the human authors were active in writing as the Spirit directed.
Inspiration in the Old Testament
The Old Testament recognizes that it is the Holy Spirit who speaks through its writers (2 Samuel 23:2-3). Indeed, many Old Testament passages quoted in the New Testament are said to have the Holy Spirit as their author, even though a human prophet actually spoke the words in the Old Testament (Mark 12:36; Acts 1:16; 28:25; Hebrews 3:7; 10:15-16).
Old Testament Designation/New Testament Designation
The psalmist said (Psalm 95:7)/The Holy Spirit said (Hebrews 3:7)
The psalmist said (Psalm 45:6)/God said (Hebrews 1:8)
The psalmist said (Psalm 102:25,27)/God said (Hebrews 1:10-12)
Isaiah said (Isaiah 7:14)/The Lord spoke by the prophet (Matthew 1:22-23)
Hosea said (Hosea 11:1)/The Lord spoke by the prophet (Matthew 2:1).
Eliphaz's words (Job 5:13)/God's Word (1 Corinthians 3:19)
MORE EXAMPLES:
• Acts 1:16 is a highly significant verse in this regard, for we read: "Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spoke before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus".
• Likewise, we read in Acts 4:24-25: "And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is: Who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things?".
• And again, we read in Acts 28:25: "When they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spoke the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers".
The Holy Spirit and Illumination
The death of John the Apostle brought to an end the period of Biblical inspiration. No new has been given since that day, despite that claims of Mohammed, Joseph Smith and many others. Today as we read the Scriptures we depend upon the Holy Spirit to illuminate them for us. This process is as dynamic as inspiration and as difficult to define. The Spirit uses our personalities and backgrounds to help us to apply the Word of God given thousands of years ago to our everyday lives now. The Spirit helps us as we read the Scriptures to close the gap between us and the original writers and overcome the effects of sin in our thinking processes.
The most dangerous error to avoid comes in the form of the claims made by certain preachers to receive "revelation knowledge" - direct information from the Holy Spirit that is, in effect, treated as the Word of God. Such revelations in the past have included the statement that their are nine people in the Trinity and that Jesus did not pay for the sin of mankind on the cross. There is one very important principle that must be clearly understood. There are some who believe that you don’t need to do any work for yourself to determine what a difficult text might mean. They simply read it and pray and then tell you that the text MUST mean so-and-so - because the Holy Spirit told them! Some go even further, despising any knowledge that comes through study and championing instead what they call "Revelation Knowledge." The main reason for this appears to be to cut the ground from under those who would oppose their teaching on the basis of sound biblical exegesis. Anyone who challenges their interpretation is not challenging their ideas, but Jesus Christ Himself.
This is extremely dangerous because it means that their opinion is not open to being tested. I think that in some cases the problem comes from a misunderstanding of the ‘word of knowledge’ (1 Cor. 12:8). To such a person I would say that spiritual gifts or words from the Spirit must be tested by the Word of God. If you rely on an impression on its own to tell you what the Bible means, then you are putting that impression above the Bible, and you can’t test it using the Bible. There must be an objective way of testing whether a particular interpretation is correct, because subjective feelings or impressions can be mistaken. So, if anyone tries to persuade you that a text means something on the basis of a ‘word’ and cannot back it up with a logical scriptural argument, then you are free to ignore what that person is saying.
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