In our last Year of Faith reflection, we touched on the revelation of Jesus Christ entrusted
to us in Sacred Scripture. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)
explains that in “order to reveal himself to men, in the condescension of his
goodness God speaks to them in human words…” (101). Scripture is a gift to men
and women, for otherwise we would not understand what God so mercifully wants
to tell us.
The Church venerates Sacred Scripture as one utterance, one
Word from God the Father who speaks lovingly to His children. Although this one
Word was written by human authors, all parts of the Old and New Testaments are
believed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit:
"God chose men and while employed by
Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in
them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything
and only those things which He wanted" (Dei Verbum, 11).
Now the Christian Church does not take all parts of the
Scripture word for word, but understands that, “Christianity is the religion of
the ‘Word,’ of God, a word which is ‘not a written and mute word, but the Word
which is incarnate and living’” (CCC, 108):
The Bible is not meant to convey
precise historical information or scientific findings to us. Moreover, the
authors were children of their time. They shared the cultural ideas of the
world around them and often were also dominated by its errors. Nevertheless,
everything that man must know about God and the way of his salvation is found
with infallible certainty in Sacred Scripture (YOUCAT, 15).
This is why the faithful must look to the Holy Spirit, the
interpreter of Scripture, and recognize that there are literal and spiritual
senses to what we read. We must pay attention to what the sacred author’s
intention is, first being “attentive ‘to the content and unity of the whole
Scripture’” (CCC, 112). Second, the Scriptures should be read within the
Tradition of the Church, within “the faith that gave rise to them” (YOUCAT, 16).
Third, pay attention to the “analogy of faith,” or the “coherence of the truths
of faith among themselves” (CCC, 112-114).
