Commonly known as the dual authorship of Scripture, this doctrine is most clearly taught in Peter’s second epistle, where the apostle describes the writing of Scripture as the process in which “men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:21b). According to Peter, human prophets spoke or wrote the Scriptures, but as they did so, they were superintended by the Holy Spirit in such a way that their very words were from God Himself.
This same understanding of dual authorship is also seen in the Gospel of Matthew, specifically where the apostle introduces quotations from the OT in Matthew 1:22 and 2:15, describing them as “what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.” In this description, Matthew uses two prepositional phrases to modify the verb “was spoken.” According to Matthew 1:22 and 2:15, these OT prophecies were spoken “by [hupo] the Lord,” and they were spoken “through [dia] the prophet.” Both prepositions in these verses (hupo and dia) are used to indicate the personal means by which the action of the verb is accomplished, often referred to as agency. There is, however, a subtle but significant distinction between the use of these two prepositions, and this distinction makes a helpful contribution to our understanding of the dual authorship of Scripture.
