The blast of God

“Degrees of inspiration! The older theologians, thank God; did not know them—nor own them. Why should they? As well discuss degrees in Deity, in Predestination, in Providence, as talk about degrees in that of which Augustine says: ‘Whatsoever He willed that we should read either of His doings or sayings, that He commissioned His agents to write, as if their hands had been His own hands.’

“‘God breathed’ sweeps the whole ground. God comes down as a blast on the pipes of an organ,—in voice like a whirlwind, or in still whispers like Aeolian tones, and saying the word, He seizes the hand, and makes that hand in His own the pen of a most ready writer.

“Pasa Graphe Theopneustos! ‘All Sacred Writing’” More exactly, ‘every sacred writing’—every mark on the parchment is ‘God-breathed.’ So says St. Paul

“Pasa Graphe Theopneustos! The sacred assertion is not of the instruments, but of the Author; not of the agents, but of the Product. It is the sole and sovereign vindication of what has been left on the page when Inspiration gets through. ‘What is written,’ says Jesus, ‘how readest thou?’ Men can only read what is written.”

George Sayles Bishop, The Doctrines of Grace, and Kindred Themes, pp. 33-34.