The Holy Spirit: Inspiration for the Bible

When we say that the Bible is inspired, we mean that the Holy Spirit is the true author. He is not the complete word-for-word dictator; he leaves room for personal style. There is no error in any way in any part of the original text, because God cannot make any errors or mistakes, but this does not apply to any translation. Inspiration cannot be proven by internal features; the only reason we believe that the Bible is inspired is because the Church teaches it.

The Holy Spirit is not a dictator of the text. This dictation would make the writer a mere “human robot;” rather, he leaves room for personal style while protecting the writer and us from error. An example of this is shown by contrasting the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. They both tell the same story, but in markedly different ways. Matthew wrote his gospel for the Jews, so he concentrated his writings on showing the ways that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophesies about the Messiah. Saint Mark wrote his gospel for the Romans, who believed that the only reason to worship someone or something is because it is very powerful. Mark’s chief purpose was to show that Jesus was all powerful. This cooperation of the human and the divine is the essence of divine inspiration.

The fact that the Bible is free from error does not apply to any translations, only to the original text. Those who copied original texts occasionally made mistakes; these changes are not inspired and may contain error. These mistakes are all very minor ones as shown by the Dead Sea scrolls. The Church, through the Holy Spirit, has protected the Bible from major errors

The original text is free from error in all its parts not just in matters of faith and morals. In his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Pope Leo XIII says that “The system of those who limit divine inspiration to matters of faith and morals cannot be tolerated.” In the same encyclical, he states that

God, the creator and ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures – and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archeology which can really contradict the scriptures. If apparent contradiction be met with, every effort should be made to remove it. Judicious theologians and commentators should be consulted as to what is the true or most probable meaning of the passage in discussion, and the hostile arguments should be carefully weighed. Even if the difficulty is not after all cleared up and the discrepancy seems to remain, the contest must not be abandoned; truth cannot contradict truth, and we may be made sure that some mistake has been made either in the interpretation of the sacred words, or in the polemical discussion itself; and if no such mistake has been detected, we must suspend judgment for the time being.

This clearly shows that the Bible can have no error in any way, aside from human error in translation and interpretation. No translation can capture the full meaning of the language in which the book was originally written; all have error to some extent.

Inspiration is not proven by inside characteristics like beauty or moral instruction; there is no one characteristic that can define the entire Bible. The book of Deuteronomy cannot be called beautiful. The Psalms cannot be called historical. Something outside the source (the Church) must be used to prove what is in the source. Inspiration is proven only by the fact that the Church teaches that it is the Word of God.

Most Christians say that they believe that the Bible is inspired, but what does this mean? The Holy Spirit gives the content, but the inspired writers can have personal style in expressing it. Only the original texts are free from error, and they are free from error in all matters, not just in matters of faith and morals. The Bible is inspired only because it is the word of God