‘The acts of authorship which lie behind Scripture are functions of God’s communication of Himself. So the author is patient – that is, one who has been granted divine revelation and one who has been given grace to contemplate that revelation, to be instructed by divine wisdom, and to be commissioned to testify to and therefore extend divine revelation. Again, Augustine:
‘That God made the world we can believe from no one more safely than from God Himself. But where have we heard Him? No where more distinctly than Holy Scriptures, where His prophets said, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’. Was the prophet present when God made the heavens and the earth? No, but the wisdom of God by whom all things were made was there, and wisdom insinuates itself into holy souls and makes them into friends of God and His prophets, and noiselessly informs them of all His works.’ (Augustine, ‘City of God’, quoted by John Webster)
