Christians believe the Bible is inspired. We intuitively presume that means that God was involved in producing Scripture. But how exactly did that happen?
In my experience, explanations of inspiration can get pretty strange. I regularly had students in Bible college think of inspiration as some sort of episode where the Holy Spirit took control of the human author. I’ve heard pastors and Bible teachers talk about God controlling the hand, fingers, and even the mind of the writer. That sounds more like an episode of The X-Files or Fringe than biblical theology.
What do I mean? The prophet Isaiah wasn’t busy making breakfast one morning when he was suddenly cast by the Spirit of God into a mindless, catatonic state. The words of the book that bears his name weren’t downloaded into his brain. His body didn’t stiffen as though possessed, save for one arm, that unbeknownst to him was busy filling a scroll with words from God. Isaiah wouldn’t have later marveled at the result, eager to find out what he’d just written while zombified. This is the sort of portrayal one encounters in occult literature or descriptions of what psychics call automatic writing. The Bible describes nothing like this. Inspiration wasn’t a paranormal event.
We know inspiration didn’t work this way from the Bible itself. True, the Bible does say that its content is “God-breathed,” but that’s just a statement about its ultimate source. The Bible bears the marks of human thought, skill, and decision on every page.
According to Scripture, Scripture is both divine and human (2 Peter 1:16–21). The authors didn’t write independently of God’s influence and providence, but they did indeed write what we have in the Bible. The biblical writers at times tell us directly that they had a purpose or agenda for what they did (John 20:30–31; 1 Cor. 4:14; 2 Cor. 13:10). Even when God commanded something to be written down, Scripture doesn’t describe the person commanded as losing control of their minds and becoming unthinking robots (Ex. 17:14; Num. 5:23; Deut. 31:19, 30).
We therefore shouldn’t expect that God had to whisper the words of the Bible into the ear of the writer. The inspiration of Scripture was the culmination of a long process involving many dedicated hands. The biblical writers—named or not—were God’s instruments because he providentially prepared and used them in the task. God didn’t need mind control. They did the job, God guided the result, and we are the beneficiaries.