Christ and his disciples were committed to the idea that the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of Scripture. Even so, those who profess the Christian faith have tended to understand the nature of inspiration in different ways.

First, some people believe in what we’ll call a “romantic” view of inspiration. According to this view, the Holy Spirit inspired biblical writers in the same way that secular poets or musicians might be moved to write their own works. In their view, Scripture isn’t God’s infallible truth, but only the personal reflections and opinions of the human authors.

Second, other Christians believe in what we might call “mechanical” inspiration. According to this outlook, biblical writers were relatively passive as they wrote Scripture. The Spirit of God essentially dictated the Bible and human writers recorded what he said.

Third, most evangelical Christians affirm that the Spirit’s work of inspiration was “organic.” According to this view, the Holy Spirit moved human authors to write and supervised and directed their words. As a result, the words of Scripture are the words of God. At the same time, the Holy Spirit used the personalities, experiences, outlooks, and intentions of human authors as he supervised their writing. So, the words of Scripture are also very much the words of its human authors. This third view best reflects the Scriptures’ own testimony about the nature of inspiration.

For instance, listen to the way Peter described the organic nature of inspiration in 2 Peter 3:15: "Our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.” On the one hand, he said that, “Paul wrote.” So, Peter affirmed Paul’s involvement in his epistles. But on the other hand, Peter didn’t just attribute these epistles to Paul. Instead, he noted that Paul wrote, “with the wisdom that God gave him.” Paul’s letters represented God’s wisdom because of the guidance of Holy Spirit.

On a number of occasions, biblical authors openly and directly acknowledged the Holy Spirit’s inspiration as they dealt with the Scriptures. Without denying the role of human writers, they recognized that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate author of Scripture.

For instance, in Acts 4:25, Peter and John led the church in an affirmation of Psalm 2, saying: You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David.

God had the Scriptures composed by means of human authors; he revealed himself through the gifts and abilities of different human beings. Without a doubt, the Holy Spirit could have eliminated any influence or presence of human writers in Scripture. He could have revealed every passage so that we could never tell that one portion was written by one man and another portion by another. But he didn’t. In his infinite wisdom, he chose to involve and work through the ideas, motives and personalities of human authors. So, part of depending on the Holy Spirit in our interpretation of Scripture is honoring the way he organically inspired Scripture, and trusting the human authors he inspired. So, if we’re going to interpret the Bible in the way he intends us to, we have to understand that the Scriptures were written by different people, and that they reflect the diversity of that human authorship.