Dr Paul Allen

Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God .” [Matt 22:29] The doctrine of biblical inspiration means that God breathed his own words through the consciousness of human writers. Men and women (such as Deborah, Hannah, and Mary) were moved by God the Holy Spirit so that the words they spoke or sung were the Word of God himself. Inspiration does not mean that God dictated the Bible to its human authors (except for those sections when God spoke directly to the writers, and they took down what he said, as is the case with much of Exodus and Leviticus ). Nor does the doctrine of inspiration mean that the human authors became mere automata while God made their hands move as he wished. In fact, quite the reverse is the case. Just as we experience an increased self-awareness in God’s presence and a blossoming of our talents as we encounter him, so the distinctive personalities of the human author's came to life as they wrote. Theol