Inspiration of the Bible: False View 1 - The Mechanical Dictation

This first false view of inspiration says the writers of the Scripture were simply playing the role of secretaries. They are only allowed to write what is told to them, absent of their own personality, and vocabularies. Is this belief, the author is simply a passive writer, correct? What do we find in the Bible?

We do find, in the Bible, places where God does directly instruct the writer to write exactly what He says (Revelation 2:1, 8 and Jeremiah 26:2). In these cases, yes, the authors (in the context mentioned, it would be John and Jeremiah), did write exactly. But for majority of the Scripture, we do not find this.

Instead, we find, in the writing, the personality, the history, and the understanding of the writer themselves (Galatians 1:6; 3:1; Philippians 1:3-4, 8). Several writers in the Scripture use different language that is not found elsewhere (in Matthew, the phrase "kingdom of heaven" is used 32 times and no other book of the Bible has that phrase). This can repeated over and over. In these instances, we do find the author is not just merely having the Scripture dictated to them.

When we come to the Scriptures, it is important to remember that the writing are found, not in some vacuum of meaning, but the context, both historical and contextual, is found in the life and situations of the writers themselves. Therefore, to miss the key of understanding that writing will cause a missing of the meaning in which God is wanting to speak to everyone today. Equally binding then, the meaning of what is said has applications by which it can and should affect us. Those are the applications which draw us deeper into God's Word, not only in what it tells us, but the practical outflow of those instructions.