As I shared in the last issue of this article, the phrase God, the author of Scripture, became a standard part of theological vocabulary.

The same cannot be said for its usage in the documents of the Church. Leo IX, Innocent III and the Second Council of Lyons refer to God as the author of the NT and of the OT, but always in the sense of the originator of the two economies of salvation, a point clearly implied in the Greek text of Lyons, in which the relevant word is archegon (founder or establisher). Although the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent juxtapose a reference to God as the author of the OT and the NT with references to the books of the two Testaments, nevertheless their texts would seem to use “author” in reference to God’s work as founder of the two economies, rather than to make a direct statement of his being the literary cause of the biblical books. It is not until Vatican I that we find a clear statement about God as the author of the books of the NT and of the OT. After Vatican I, the phraseology “God the author of the books of Scripture” is used repeatedly in ecclesiastical documents.

It should be noted that these various Councils were only held in the West and did not include the Christian Churches of the East. These thoughts about God as the author of Scripture are seen in a different way in the East.

Although God is the author of Sacred Scripture, it is also true that human beings made their own genuine contribution to the production of the sacred books, a point firmly stated by Pius XII when he remarked that the human writers employ their faculties and powers in the composition of Sacred Scripture. It must be admitted, however, that the emphasis on the human authorship of Scripture is a modern one; earlier theological reflection was limited almost exclusively to the primary and more important fact of the divine ori-gin of Scripture.

That a human factor stands at the origin of Scripture has never been doubted. This is apparent from the desire to attribute, wherever possible, individual sacred books to specific men. The role assigned to the human factor, however, is the question that must be investigated. What was God’s role in the formulation of the NT?

This is the question that we must grapple with. Many say that the humans involved were only scribes.

I wonder what my readers think.