Here God announces Himself as the writer of "the Law and the Commandments," although we receive them in the handwriting of Moses. Is Moses a mere amanuensis, writing under dictation? No. He is the intelligent, free instrument, writing under the direct inspiration of God. In this sense God is the true author or writer of the Sacred Scriptures, making His action plain to the sense and understanding of His children through the medium of a man whom He inspires to execute His work.
How does this inspiration act on the writer who ostensibly executes the divine work? We answer: _God moves the will of the writer, and illumines his intellect, pointing out to him at the same time the subject-matter which he is to write down, and preserving him from error in the completion of his committed task_.
Looking attentively at this definition of Scriptural inspiration, a number of questions arise at once in our minds. God moves the will, enlightens the mind, and points out the subject-matter which the inspired writer commits to paper. Is the writer under the influence of the divine impulsion so possessed by the inspired virtue that he acts without any freedom, either as regards the manner of his expression or the use of previously acquired knowledge concerning the subject of which he writes?
I answer: No. God moves the will of the writer; He does not annihilate it or absorb it, unless in the sense that He brings it, by a certain illumination of the intellect, to a conformity with His own. Hence the manner and method of expression retain the traces of the individuality of the writer, that is to say, of his views and feelings as determined by the ordinary habits of life and the range of his previous knowledge. The idea of the divine authorship of the Sacred Scriptures by no means requires that the truths which God willed to be contained therein could not or should not have been otherwise known to the inspired writers: "Their use of study, their investigation of documents, their interrogation of witnesses and other evidence, and their excuses for rusticity of style and poverty of language show this only, that they were not inanimate, but living, intelligent, and rational instruments--that they were men, and not machines.... They were employed in a manner which corresponded to, and which became the nature, the mode, and the conditions of their being. Previous knowledge of certain truths by men can be no reason why God should not conceive and will such truths to be communicated by means of Scripture to His Church.... Hence the idea of inspiration does not exclude human industry, study, the use of documents and witnesses, and other aids in order to the conceiving of such truths, so long as it includes a supernatural operation and direction of God, which effects that the mind of the inspired writer should _conceive_ all those truths, and those only which God would have him communicate."[1] And herein lies the difference between inspiration and revelation, the latter being the manifestation of something previously unknown to the writer.