Many people are genuinely uncomfortable with Holy Spirit language, but that is what Peter, Hebrews, Paul, and Jude affirm. The distinctive messages that come from God are by the Spirit through the prophets in the previous days, and through the Son by the Spirit in these last days.

The question raises a few questions of its own, for instance, what criteria are being used (or are thought to have been used) by the early church to recognize and identify (not codify, confirm, or assent) the Holy Spirit-inspired writings of the NT? Was there a checklist-like system where if someone besides an Apostle wrote, it was immediately rejected as being uninspired/not from the Lord? That might make some of our understanding of the Book of Hebrews very much “up in the air”. It becomes a bit of a cyclical argument “Hebrews must have been written by an Apostle because only writings of the Apostle’s were recognized as inspired”. So the Apostolic origin theory is a bit heavy to lean on.

We also know there must be some more criteria to recognize the scriptures as inspired beyond merely written compositions from Apostolic writers. Paul cites a few additional writings (particularly to the Corinthian church) that show not everything penned by the Apostles was inspired as some of those correspondence letters have not been preserved by God or recognized by the church as inspired.

So, we come to Jude and James and we go….did they HAVE to have been under Apostolic oversight in the personal sense (as an editor, amanuensis, or final publisher)? My answer, and I believe I stand on firm historical and systematic ground to say “No”.

In another similar vein, would we say that Jude and James came under Apostolic oversight in the general sense of the content of their teaching/message/written letters comported with (was in copacetic relationship to) the Apostle’s teaching? YES. Nothing in the scriptures is contradictory in such a way as to erode, take away from, or diminish the truth, or authority of God.

Holy Spirit Document

In this second sense, we can avoid any pitfalls of merely human ideas of Apostolic succession or divine speaking in every utterance or writing from the Apostles (which we humans are often prone to do in the building up and making of spiritual heroes into idols).

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