Around the year 95, Pope Clement of Rome had complained in his letter to the Corinthians: "You are pale on the sacred Scriptures, true, Dukes of the Holy Spirit" (1, 45). This is the first mention of the Scriptures as coming from the Holy Spirit in the Church. But this term "Dukes of the Holy Spirit" was a bit vague and there was much to be done to better define this doctrine.
Some theologians over the centuries have tried to describe this as an act of inspiration that would have given God dictated to men. In this vision, the human author is a passive instrument that has absolutely nothing to do with the composition of the text. We can give the example of a painter who paints a painting where the brush and only be influenced by the painter. This vision has never been condemned by the Church, but it was abandoned by most theologians since the late 19th century. One reason being some passages such as 1 Corinthians 1, 14-16, where you can see the memory of Saint Paul himself back gradually, which is difficult to reconcile with an omniscient God. The passage in question:
I thank to have baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized in my name. Oh yes! I even called the family of Stephen. For the rest I do not know have called someone else.the 16th century, Sixtus of Siena tried to explain the inspiration, saying that the Scriptures were a human undertaking that the authority of the Church would eventually recognized as sacred. This view has the merit of explaining passages like that of Saint Paul mentioned above, but we could not then say that the Scriptures have the Holy Spirit as the author. The Council of Vatican I condemned this vision that can not be compatible with Christian doctrine.
During the last century, the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture has much clearer. Here is what the Church teaches in its Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation in Vatican II (1965):
The divinely revealed realities which, in Holy Scripture, are contained and provided in writing, were recorded under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, entire books of the Old and New Testaments, with all their parts, the Holy Mother Church, the apostolic faith, holds them as sacred and canonical because, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as author and were sent to the Church as such. But to compose the sacred books, God chose men he employed (themselves using their faculties and their own forces) so that, acting in Himself and through them, they transmit in writing in real perpetrators, and all this only that he himself wanted. So, since all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be held as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, it follows that we must confess that the books of Scripture teaching firmly, faithfully and without error that truth which God for our salvation, wished to be recorded in the sacred writings. Therefore "all Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Tim 3, 16).Before this definition, it must be said that the issue had been addressed by various encyclicals as Divino Afflante Spiritu of Pius XII (1943) and Spiritus Paraclitus of Benedict XV (1920, not available in French) that I recommend you read if you have a little time.
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