The dictation theory is the mistaken view that the words of Scripture were mechanically dictated by God to the human authors, who functioned merely as passive scribes or stenographers, their own minds, personalities, and styles wholly suppressed or bypassed in the process. On this view inspiration is conceived after the manner of an executive dictating a letter to a secretary: the Spirit supplies every word, and the human writer contributes nothing but the motion of his hand. While the dictation theory rightly insists that the very words of Scripture are from God—and in this it is far nearer the truth than theories that deny verbal inspiration—it errs by erasing the genuine human authorship that Scripture everywhere displays. The Bible itself testifies against it: Luke states that he investigated everything carefully and wrote an orderly account; Paul reasons, pleads, and pours out his own temperament; David sings from the depths of his own anguish and joy; the books bear the unmistakable and distinct fingerprints of their writers’ vocabularies, styles, and circumstances. A pure dictation could not produce such diversity. The Reformed and orthodox tradition therefore rejects mechanical dictation in favor of organic or concursive inspiration, in which the Spirit worked through the whole person of each writer rather than around him—securing the very words, yet through, not against, the freely engaged human author. It should be noted that “dictation” was sometimes used loosely by older writers (and a few texts were in fact dictated, as Jeremiah to Baruch) without intending the mechanical theory; the error lies in making mechanical dictation the universal mode of inspiration.