Why call a book people wrote “the Word of God”?

🔥The question: “If it's the Word of God, shouldn't God have written it out directly, all at once?”

🛡️The Church's answer: We do not believe it merely because the Bible writes of itself, “I am the Word of God.” Israel and the early Church communities read these writings in worship and handed them on, and they received them as canonical because they believed God had guided the human authors by the Holy Spirit to communicate the truth of salvation. That long communal reception, and the use Jesus and the apostles made of Scripture, can actually be examined in history; but inspiration by the Holy Spirit is not itself a conclusion proven by experiment — it is a confession of the Church's faith. Inspiration is not dictation, so the authors' abilities, cultures, and literary expression were used just as they were. That is why we do not set God and the human author in competition, but call both of them true authors.

🧐If they press further: “If people wrote it, isn't it just a human book?” — Much as Jesus is true God and true man, we can think of the Word of God as having come to us in true human language, though the comparison is not exact. The human features are not defects that cancel inspiration; they are the way God chose.

✨In one sentence: “The Bible isn't a dictation book that fell out of the sky. It's a set of books of salvation that God gave through many true human authors.”