Dr. Donald Barnhouse on the Organic Inspiration of Scripture

I came across this passage in Dr. Barnhouse's The Invisible War which I found insightful in describing the doctrine of Verbal-Plenary inspiration to those who are unfamiliar. He writes:

"It is objected by some that the marks of human personality upon the writings of the various human authors indicate that the Bible is a human book. We would answer this with an analogy. The angel who announced to Mary that she would become the mother of the Messiah, heard the Virgin ask, "How shall this be, seeing that I know not a man?" The answer came: "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). So the baby was born. He was the second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God. But He was not a Chinese baby, nor a Negro baby, nor a Nordic Aryan; He was a Jewish baby. The greatest glory of Israel was this: "of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever" (Romans 9:5).

Just as the Holy Spirit came upon the womb of Mary, so He came upon the brain of a Moses, a David, an Isaiah, a Paul, a John, and the rest of the writers of the divine library. The power of the Highest overshadowed them, therefore that holy thing which was born of their minds is called the Holy Bible, the Word of God. The writings of Luke will, of course, have the vocabulary of Luke, and the works of Paul will bear the stamp of Paul's mind. However, this is only in the same manner that the Lord Jesus Christ might have had eyes like His mother's, or hair that was the same color and texture as hers. He did not inherit her sins, because the Holy Spirit had come upon her. If we ask how this could be, the answer is that God says so. And the writings of the men of the Book did not inherit the errors of their carnal minds, because the writings were conceived by the Holy Spirit and born out of their personalities without partaking of their fallen nature. If we ask how this could be, again the answer is that God says so." (Barnhouse, The Invisible War Pg. 6)

This analogy, while not claiming to give a comprehensive vision of how the Spirit works in inspiration, is helpful in giving us a tangible example that we can relate to. Inspiration is analogous to the incarnation. Just as Jesus took a human nature onto His divine nature, so the Holy Spirit can use finite men in the writing of God's inerrant Word. There is no necessary problem with either of those truths, although our minds cannot completely comprehend either mystery.