Question:

I have a question regarding 2 Peter 1:21 "For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will , but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."

Does Peter mean that prophecy is from God and no one is to try to interpret it?

Answer:

This verse (along with 2 Timothy 3:16) is one of the classic proof texts for the divine origin of Scripture.  What Peter is describing here is the process of Scriptural inspiration.  In 2 Timothy 3:16, you get the statement that all Scripture comes from God:  "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."  Your Bible and mine comes directly from God Himself.  God literally "breathed-out" the words of Scripture.  The question that arises is how does this mesh together with the fact that the Bible was written by human beings?  If the Bible is God-breathed, then why does Romans starts off with "this is a letter from Paul to the Romans?"  The passage from 2 Peter tells you how inspiration works.

I believe in what is called the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture.  All this means is that I believe every word in the Bible came directly from God.  God didn't give concepts to the human authors and let them run with it.  It wasn't like God told Paul to write about love and out came 1 Corinthians 13.  I also don't believe that God dictated to the human authors.  God didn't say to Paul, "OK, Paul, we're going to write about love, take this down."  2 Peter 1:21 says that the human authors didn't write their own thoughts when writing Scripture.  The human authors were moved, or filled, with the Holy Spirit to write Scripture.  God superintended in the lives of the human authors so that the words and thoughts were the authors and at the same time the exact words God wanted communicated.  I believe Paul wrote more than 13 letters, yet the 13 letters in the Bible were the ones God specifically wanted Paul to write.  If you notice, Paul writes differently than Peter and John.  All the writers of Scripture have different points of emphasis and different writing styles, yet the Bible meshes together as a coherent whole; and that is because the same Holy Spirit moved in each author.

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