Q.
Did God write the Bible?
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Using a diverse mix of people from a wide variety of backgrounds over a
long period of time seems to be more God’s style.
The quick, simple, homogenous way we long for is extremely inconsis-
tent with most honest issues of faith. God’s obsession with using “people” is
fairly apparent, so it makes sense to me that the story would be told through
them. And it would leave us with holes that only faith, as described in
Hebrews 11, could fi ll.Joshua Toulouse
A.
We are told in the Bible that all scripture is from God. It is usu-
ally translated as “inspired” by God, but the literal translation is
“breathed” or “spirited” by God. However you translate the word,
it doesn’t say that God wrote the Bible.
Still, it is clear that we are to believe that God had an active role in the
creation of the Bible. So even if God didn’t literally write the Bible, the ques-
tion is still valid: Why was it written by so many people over thousands
of years?
While the Bible is bound for us in the modern era as one book, each of the
writings in their original context was written for specifi c reasons and to meet
specifi c needs. They were chosen as canonical scripture because they were
seen to serve more than their original function. The writings spoke to believers
in other contexts and in other times and continued to be used liturgically in
worship or for teaching. But fi rst and foremost, they served a particular need
that would not have been met if the Bible had been handed down complete
from heaven, written by God.
While these writings were meant for a specifi c time in a particular situ-
ation, the active participation of God, through breath/spirit/inspiration, has
made them applicable to the religious community beyond that specifi c time or
those particular situations.Jim L. Robinson
A.
I know of no credible person or source that would say God “wrote”
the Bible. A much more common description of the origin of scrip-
ture focuses on the word “inspired.” A common understanding of
inspiration might be characterized as an angel perching on Paul’s shoulder
dictating directly into Paul’s ear the words of his epistle to the Philippians.
Some understandings basically remove all traces of human infl uence or par-
ticipation in the writing of scripture.
I believe the Bible is divinely inspired. I do not defi ne inspired as “ver-
bally, one-word-at-a-time dictated.” In my understanding, God inspires