The Inspiration of the Holy
Spirit

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Question
What is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit?
Answer
The inspiration of the Holy Spirit is, in the broad sense, the Spirit guiding the human authors to write precisely what God wanted to communicate in words. So, the theological term is "confluency," that is, you have both the human and yet the divine. And of course that varies; sometimes it's very obvious — the divine — other times the human seems very obvious, even with grammar that's not quite right and other things like that. And yet, very exactly, God is using that human author, superintending that human author to write in the words of the original manuscript exactly what God wanted to communicate. And so you have 2 Timothy 3:16 that God inspired, or that the word of God is God-breathed, it's breathed out, "theopneustos." And yet, it is authoritative, it is absolute, it is verbal, it is again this confluency, and it is without error. We can trust it in every way. And so, it is sufficient to judge everything else, whether creeds, whether the magisterium and church tradition, all else — finally comes back to the Bible itself. Does it align rightly with the word of God?

Answer by Dr. J. Scott Horrell