Literary Assistants

Suppose I give my secretary a message and ask her to put it into writing. She chooses the sentences, arranges the paragraphs and uses her own vocabulary. The document is written by her hand, but the message is mine.

Now consider something more serious. If God inspired a prophet, but another person recorded the prophet's message, whose words are we reading?
Does that affect our confidence in Scripture?

Jeremiah 36:17-18 gives us an example. Jeremiah received messages from God, but Baruch wrote them on a scroll as Jeremiah dictated them. Baruch did not invent the prophecies. He recorded the message entrusted to Jeremiah.
In Romans 16:22, Tertius identifies himself as the person who wrote Paul's letter. Paul supplied the message; Tertius served as his literary assistant.

Then why does Tertius say, “I wrote this epistle”? Doesn't that make him an author too?

It makes him the writer, but we must distinguish the physical act of writing from responsibility for the message. A secretary can write a letter without becoming the person whose message it conveys.

Paul's references in Colossians 4:18 and 2 Thessalonians 3:17 are significant. He adds a greeting in his own handwriting, authenticating the letters and reassuring readers that they genuinely represent him.

But if Tertius chose the words and constructed the sentences, how do we know he accurately represented Paul's thoughts? How much of what we call Scripture actually came from the prophet?

That is a legitimate question. We should not pretend that the human process was always mechanical.
Jeremiah dictated to Baruch. Luke describes careful investigation before writing his Gospel (Luke 1:1–4). Paul sometimes wrote personally and sometimes used assistance.

The use of an assistant does not invalidate inspiration. It shows that inspiration did not require every prophet to perform every part of the writing process personally.

But doesn't this create another problem? If an assistant influenced vocabulary, grammar and style, could he also have influenced the meaning? At what point does human contribution become human distortion?

We must distinguish between influencing expression and altering the message. A secretary might choose a particular phrase or sentence construction while faithfully communicating the author's intended meaning. That does not give him permission to replace the message with his own ideas.

Second Peter 1:21 reminds us that prophecy did not originate in human will. Men spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. The human instrument was involved, but the message had a divine source.

What about the differences between Paul's letters? And why does 2 Peter sound different from 1 Peter? Some commentators suggest that secretarial assistance could explain these differences. Isn't that speculation?

It is a possibility, not an established fact. Scripture does not tell us exactly who assisted Peter or how much influence an assistant may have had. We must not turn a reasonable explanation into biblical certainty.

However, differences in vocabulary and style do not automatically prove differences in inspiration. Different writers, circumstances and literary assistants can produce different forms of expression without changing the divine message.

I want to push this further. We often hear, “The thoughts are inspired, not the words.” But words communicate thoughts. If the words are unreliable, how can the thoughts be trusted?

That statement needs careful handling. It must never suggest that the actual words of Scripture are unimportant or that God had no concern for how His message was expressed.
Inspiration should not be reduced to mechanical dictation, as though God supplied every word while the writer merely acted as a recording device.

God communicated through real people, with their personalities, abilities and literary methods.
The words matter because they convey the message. But the authority of Scripture does not depend on every writer having identical vocabulary, grammar or literary style.

So God could use Baruch without making him a prophet, and Paul could use Tertius without surrendering his authority over the letter?

Exactly. We must recognize both the human instrument and the divine source. Neither should be denied.
Two errors must be avoided. One insists that inspiration requires word-for-word dictation. The other reduces Scripture to human religious opinion simply because human beings participated in its production.
Neither position adequately explains the biblical evidence.

If we insist that every inspired message must have been written personally by a prophet, or that every biblical book must display the same literary style, we may be defending our assumptions rather than understanding Scripture.
God did not need to eliminate human participation to preserve His message. He worked through it.

The real question is not whether human beings contributed to the writing of Scripture. They plainly did. It is whether we trust that God was able to communicate His truth through them.

Human hands wrote the Scriptures. But the message was not theirs to invent.