004. If the Holy Spirit is the author of the words of Scripture, how do we account for varia...

If the Holy Spirit is the author of the words of Scripture, how do we account for variations in style and diction? That, for example, Paul always uses Pauline language, and John Johannean language, and so on?

Even if we could not account at all for this fact, it would have little weight against the explicit statements of God’s Word. Any one who is humble enough and wise enough to recognize that there are a great many things which we cannot account for at all which could be easily accounted for if we knew a little more, is never staggered by an apparent difficulty of this kind. But in point of fact it is easy enough to account for these variations. The simple explanation is this: the Holy Spirit is wise enough and has facility enough in the use of language in revealing truth to and through any individual to use words, phrases and forms of expression which are in that person’s vocabulary and forms of thought to which that person is accustomed, and in every way to make use of that person’s peculiar individuality. It is one of the many marks of the divine wisdom of this book that the same divine truth is expressed with absolute accuracy in such widely varying forms of expression.