How Catholics Should Read the Bible

"Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ" (St. Jerome).

"In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe, who is the refulgence of his glory, the very imprint of his being, and who sustains all things by his mighty word. When he had accomplished purification from sins, he took his seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high, as far superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs" (Heb 1:1-4).

Lectio Divina

Slow, thoughtful, prayerful, imaginative reading of the Bible.

Enter the Scriptures

Ignatian meditation: Place yourself in the scene.

Think with the Church

• "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church," Pontifical Biblical Commission, March 18, 1994, with a Preface by Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI): "In their work of interpretation, Catholic exegetes must never forget that what they are interpreting is the word of God. Their common task is not finished when they have simply determined sources, defined forms or explained literary procedures. They arrive at the true goal of their work only when they have explained the meaning of the biblical text as God’s word for today" (III, C, 1).

Stay within the bounds of dogma

The Creeds of the Church tell us how to interpret the Scriptures. Consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church for more details. These are just a few of the boundaries set by the Magisterium:

• The doctrine of Original Sin implies that all humans are descended from a single pair whom we call Adam and Eve. In biology, this is called "monogenism" as opposed to the idea of polygenism, which holds that human beings are descended from many original pairs and have no one couple as their common ancestor.
• Authenticity of the Old Covenant (Abraham, Moses, David, prophets, Temple).
• Immaculate Conception of Mary in her mother's womb through the ordinary act of marriage (celebrated on December 8).
• Virginal Conception of Jesus in Mary's womb by the power of the Holy Spirit (celebrated on March 25).
• Perpetual Virginity of Mary.
• Divinity of Jesus: Trinity and Incarnation.
• Death and resurrection of Jesus.
• The foundation of the sacraments:
  • Eucharist: transubstantiation.
  • Marriage: no divorce.
  • Reconciliation: power to forgive sin.
• The infallibility of the Church.
• Jesus will come in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Interpret the Old Testament in the light of the New

Re-definition of terms

To be a Christian is to take the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus into glory as THE key to understanding what God was accomplishing in the Old Covenant. On the basis of what Jesus did, everything that came before Him looks entirely different from the way it did to those who did not know about His saving action. The words are the same but the meanings are dramatically different.

Term	Old Covenant	New Covenant
Christ	A human being anointed with oil.	God, the Son, Incarnate as true man, anointed with the Holy Spirit.
King	Human being with a harem and children.	God, the Son, Incarnate as true man.
Kingdom	Geographic territory; external to us.	Spiritual relationship.
Enemy	Human beings.	Sin and death.
Victory	Achieved by wounding and killing human beings.	Achieved by accepting death on the Cross.
Temple	Built of rock in one location in one Holy Land.	Built of "living stones" and accessible everywhere.
Sacrifice	Killing and burning animals.	Joining Jesus in renewing His self-offering to the Father.
Sin	"Missing the mark." Remedied by animal sacrifice.	"Alienation from God." Cannot be remedied by the actions of sinners.

Primacy of Tradition

Both the Scriptures of the Old Covenant (a.k.a. the Old Testament) and the Scriptures of the New Covenant (a.k.a. the New Testament) developed over the course of time out of a living tradition.

In neither case did the development of written expressions of the faith of the People of God annihilate the existence of the faith community. The Scriptures came out of a pre-existing community, were recognized as inspired by that community, and were interpreted and used used by that community to sustain the community.

Development of the Old Covenant

God did not give Abraham, our father in faith Rom 4:16-17), the books of the Old Testament and command him to read, interpret, and obey the Scriptures. He gave Abraham a covenant, a committed personal relationship.

The children of Abraham inherited God's covenant blessings and promises in unwritten form for many generations. We don't know exactly when the first Scriptures of the Old Covenant were written. It seems likely to me that the assembling of the Old Testament library began with Moses during the Exodus, which would be four or five hundred years after Abraham's covenant with God. The Psalms probably began to develop around that same time with hymns of petition, praise, and thanksgiving related to the Exodus and conquest of the land God had promised to Abraham centuries before.

Once the Kingdom of Israel was established under David (circa 1010-970 BC) and the Temple was built under Solomon (circa 970-930 BC), there were ample human, financial, and technical resources available to compose, edit, and copy the scrolls that we Christians now call "the Old Testament" (TNK or LXX to the Jews).

Development of the New Covenant

When Jesus ascended into Heaven, He left a Body, not a "book."

The Church--and her Scriptures--developed from the hearts and minds of the Body of Christ as they handed on to the next generation what had been handed on to them (1 Cor 15:3-4).

Tradition came first and never died out, even though some aspects of it were faithfully expressed in the Scriptures that emerged from the life of the Body. Putting some aspects of the faith into writing never killed the Body of Christ. At no time in history has it been necessary to re-create the living Body of Christ from the disembodied Word of God. Paul speaks of preachers carrying the Word of Christ to the world, not a "book."

How can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring (the) good news!" But not everyone has heeded the good news; for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what was heard from us?" Thus faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. But I ask, did they not hear? Certainly they did; for "Their voice has gone forth to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world." (Rom 10:14-18)

Divino Afflante Spiritu

Divino Afflante Spiritu (On Promoting Biblical Studies)--Pope Pius XII, 1943.

Vatican II

"Dei Verbum: Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation" (1965).

§7	The Church's job is to transmit the gospel to all peoples through all times and places. Two fields of expertise: saving truth [faith] and moral discipline [morals]. The Holy Spirit inspired the writing of scripture; the Catholic Church does NOT endorse the theory that God dictated every word of the Scriptures; that is a Protestant theory about the "infallibility" of the Bible. "God graciously arranged that the things he had once revealed for the salvation of all peoples should remain in their entirety, throughout the ages, and be transmitted to all generations. Therefore, Christ the Lord, in whom the entire revelation of the most high God is summed up (cf. 2 Cor. 1:20; 3:16-4, 6) commanded the apostles to preach the Gospel . . . This Gospel was to be the source of all saving truth and moral discipline." But in order to keep the Gospel forever whole and alive within the Church, the Apostles left bishops as their successors, "handing over" to them "the authority to teach in their own place." This sacred tradition, therefore, and Sacred Scripture of both the Old and New Testaments are like a mirror in which the pilgrim Church on earth looks at God, from whom she has received everything, until she is brought finally to see Him as He is, face to face (see 1 John 3:2). Characteristic Catholic position: Tradition and Scripture together give us the vision of GOD by which decisions are made. The Scriptures are part of Tradition.
§8	Tradition makes progress under the guidance of the Holy Spirit by growth of insight. Tradition gives us the canon (official list) of Scriptures and determines the meaning of Scripture. And so the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved by an unending succession of preachers until the end of time. Therefore the Apostles, handing on what they themselves had received, warn the faithful to hold fast to the traditions which they have learned either by word of mouth or by letter (see 2 Thess. 2:15), and to fight in defense of the faith handed on once and for all (see Jude 1:3) Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith of the peoples of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes.
§9	Tradition and Scripture have one source (GOD-revealing-GOD) and are "in some fashion . . . one thing." Certainty does NOT come from "Scripture alone" (Luther's slogan: sola Scriptura). "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. . . . the Church does not draw her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Hence, both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal feelings of devotion and reverence."
§10	Only the teaching authority of the Church (the Magisterium) can determine the correct interpretation of what God wants to reveal to the whole Church. "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church." The Church can only teach what it has been taught by GOD. NOTE WELL: Infallibility is a doctrine about GOD's power, not about human power.
§11	God is the author of all of the OT & NT. The human authors "made full use of their powers and faculties" while writing, so that they are also "true authors" of the books. Therefore, ". . . the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures." This means, I think, that there are no theological errors in the Sacred Texts. To put it another way, there are no errors about the truths necessary for salvation.
§12	We need to understand human forms of writing to understand the human and divine meanings in the sacred texts. NEVERTHELESS, the final interpretation of the text must fit into the context of "the whole of Scripture, taking into account the Tradition of the entire Church and the analogy of faith. . . "

Notes on Dei Verbum

Catechism of the Catholic Church

• "The Transmission of Divine Revelation" (§74-100).
• "Sacred Scripture" (§101-141).

Verbum Domini

Verbum Domini--2010 Apostolic Exhortation by Bendedict XVI.

"Here we can point to a fundamental criterion of biblical hermeneutics: the primary setting for scriptural interpretation is the life of the Church. This is not to uphold the ecclesial context as an extrinsic rule to which exegetes must submit, but rather is something demanded by the very nature of the Scriptures and the way they gradually came into being" (§27).

"It is the faith of the Church that recognizes in the Bible the word of God; as Saint Augustine memorably put it: "I would not believe the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church led me to do so" (§27).

"Since Scripture must be interpreted in the same Spirit in which it was written, the Dogmatic Constitution indicates three fundamental criteria for an appreciation of the divine dimension of the Bible:

1) the text must be interpreted with attention to the unity of the whole of Scripture; nowadays this is called canonical exegesis;

2) account is be taken of the living Tradition of the whole Church; and, finally,

3) respect must be shown for the analogy of faith" (§34).

"In a word, while acknowledging the validity and necessity, as well as the limits, of the historical-critical method, we learn from the Fathers that exegesis "is truly faithful to the proper intention of biblical texts when it goes not only to the heart of their formulation to find the reality of faith there expressed, but also seeks to link this reality to the experience of faith in our present world." Only against this horizon can we recognize that the word of God is living and addressed to each of us in the here and now of our lives. In this sense, the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s definition of the spiritual sense, as understood by Christian faith, remains fully valid: it is “the meaning expressed by the biblical texts when read, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, in the context of the paschal mystery of Christ and of the new life which flows from it. This context truly exists. In it the New Testament recognizes the fulfillment of the Scriptures. It is therefore quite acceptable to re-read the Scriptures in the light of this new context, which is that of life in the Spirit” (§37).

Notes for "Verbum Domini"

Studying the Scriptures

One of the categories on this wiki is "Scripture Studies." These are notes I have made for myself to get ready for or else to follow up on questions asked on the show.

• The Canon (official list of books) of the Bible
• A criticism of Martin Luther's theory of Sola scriptura.
• "Bible" in the Bible
• Transliteration

Four senses of Scripture

CCC, §118:

Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria,
Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.

The letter speaks of deeds; allegory about the faith;
The moral about our actions; anagogy about our destiny.

Some favorite verses

• "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (Jn 1:1-4).

Some favorite characters

Person(s)	Status
Adam and Eve	Biologically and theologically necessary. The Church teaches that all human beings are descended from an original pair who also plunged all of us into Original Sin (monogenism).
Nephilim	Biologically and theologically impossible. Angels have no power to impregnate human beings.
Noah	Legendary. We are not obliged to believe the details of the Noah story at the literal level. The meaning of the story is that sin cannot be eradicated by killing sinners; sin survived the flood.
Jonah and the Big Fish	Theological fiction. The whole point of the book is given in the last verse; it is not about miraculous fish but about how we should think about our enemies.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob	Essentially historical and not inherently implausible; theologically significant. Our faith comes from Abraham's covenant with God.
Moses	Historical. There is hyperbole in the account of the Exodus, but Moses left an indelible mark on the people of Israel. The best archeological evidence of the reality of Moses is the nature of Torah.

Resources

• Bible translations
• Online Scripture resources
• Tools for Scripture Study

Links

• "A Biblical Defense of Catholicism"