The internal form of Scripture.
The internal form of Scripture.
Some establish the internal form52 of Scripture as 
or 
, “divine inspiration,” in respect of which it is called 
[“God-breathed” or “divinely inspired”] (2 Tim. 3:16). However, because 
applies rather to the efficient cause,53 indeed, because holy men of God spoke and wrote 
, “led and driven, having been divinely inspired” (2 Pet. 1:21), therefore we say that the internal form of Scripture is Scripture’s divine authority and majesty itself, which draws its origin from the immediate inbreathing of the Holy Spirit (the proper, adequate,54 efficient cause) and from the things He explains sublimely (likewise, the proper, adequate material). By this internal form, Scripture is what it is: holy, divine, canonical, credible in itself [
], trustworthy [
]. Through this same form, one can also distinguish it from all other writings, secular as well as sacred, ecclesiastical as well as apocryphal. Augustine, Contra Faust., bk. 9, c. 5: “[Scripture] is distinguished from the books of later authors by the excellence of the canonical authority of the Old and New Testament, which, confirmed as it was in apostolic times by successions of bishops and the spread of churches, was established as on a lofty throne, which every faithful and devout mind serves, etc. In the works of later writers that are contained in countless books but are by no means equal to that canonical excellence of the Holy Scriptures, the same truth is also found in each and every one of them, yet their authority is far different.” Those do not go off into a different direction from this position who establish the sense or meaning of the divine Word expressed in writing in Scripture as its internal form, because Scripture obtains its divine majesty and authority from the fact that it reveals to us the divine will and the mysteries of our salvation from the divine inspiration of the prophets and apostles.