CATHOLICS AND THE BIBLE
The Bible is the
Inspired Word of God.
As was mentioned earlier in this little work,
you need to pray every day and take time to talk with God. As was also
said earlier, one of the best ways to talk with God is by reading the
Bible and praying the Scriptures. The Catholic Church has always
encouraged all Christians to read and pray Scripture and even made this
recommendation at the Second Vatican Council, one of the strongest and
most solemn methods of teaching that the Church can use.
But this brings up an important question about
the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Bible. It can seem
that the Bible is not very important to Catholics since your average
Catholic doesn’t seem to know the Bible very well. Because of this,
some people think that the Catholic Church does not view the Bible as
necessary to know God’s plan of salvation.
Without question, Catholics believe that Sacred
Scripture, i.e. the Holy Bible, is the inspired word of God, and that
through it, God accurately communicates the truth about himself and his
loving plan of salvation which he intends all humanity to come to know.
Since God, who is Truth Himself, is the primary author of Scripture,
what he intended to communicate is true with certainty. The Bible is
certainly necessary for knowing God and his plan of salvation for
Catholics.
Even though the Bible is the infallible Word of
God, this does not mean that there is no human dimension to Scripture.
God, in communicating his Word to humankind, made use of human beings
who spoke in human language. God chose to use human authors and their
own speech and manner of expression just as much as He chose the message
to be conveyed in these human terms. This means that the message he
wanted to communicate would be conditioned by the human elements he
used. But the whole package of Scripture, divine and human elements
together, is a faithful representation of God’s Word, since even the
human elements were chosen in order to covey what God intends.
As necessary and trustworthy as the Bible is,
this does not mean that grasping the correct meaning of every passage is
an easy or straight-forward thing. In order to understand Scripture, you
need to know both how a particular part of Scripture fits into the
overall plan of salvation of mankind, as well as what the human author
meant by the words, forms of expression, and literary style he uses. But
this does not take away from the Scripture being inspired and
trustworthy, since even these words, forms of expressions and literary
styles were also chosen by God to communicate his intended meaning.
This does mean, however, that one needs help in
understanding God’s Word. This help can come from scholars of the
ancient languages, customs and social institutions of the times and
places in which the books of the Bible were written. But most especially
this help comes from God himself, in an equally dependable and common
manner, namely through His Church.
Sola Scriptura -
Is the Bible Alone the sole and complete source for the Christian faith?
One of the main points of disagreement between
Catholic and non-Catholic (Protestant) Christians is over whether the
Bible alone (Sola Scriptura) is complete and sufficient in itself
to guide us in faith. Some Protestants believe that everything necessary
for salvation and living the Christian life is taught clearly enough
in the Bible for every believer to find and understand it there. Some
Protestant Christians argue that while the church, other believers and
pastors, are aids to following Christ and living fully the Christian
life, nothing and no one besides the Bible is necessary for salvation.
The Bible alone is all one needs to know how to follow Christ.
We Catholics, on the other hand, believe that
Sacred Tradition, as preserved in the Teaching Authority (Magisterium)
of the bishops in union with the pope, together with the authority of
Sacred Scripture, determine what Christians do and should believe.
Those who favor the idea of Sola Scriptura
most often cite 2 Tim 3: 16-17. "All scripture is inspired
by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped
for every good work" (Revised Standard Version). This
passage seems to say that Scripture is all one needs to belong to God,
and some other translations clearly reflect this interpretation
("It gives the man who belongs to God everything he needs to work
well for Him" (New Life Version)).
Unfortunately, this text does not really
support the idea that Scripture alone makes every Christian complete in
his or her faith. First, the context of the passage clearly indicates
that what Paul means by "the man of God" is a minister of the
Church, not the average Christian. He is addressing one who has the
ministry of evangelist (ch. 4, v. 5). Second, the Scriptures Paul is
referring to are the ones Timothy has known from infancy (v. 15), so
they could not include what we call the New Testament, but only the
Jewish Scriptures. Clearly, the Old Testament, by itself, is not
sufficient for a Christian to come to salvation in Christ. Next, the
Greek word that is translated as "complete" or
"competent" is artios which simply means
"suitable" or "fit."
This passage clearly does say that the
minister of God needs to know the Scriptures, and that such knowledge
contributes to his competence. But it does not say that the
Scriptures alone are completely sufficient for the minister’s
fitness for his ministry. Instead, Paul commands Timothy to also remain
faithful to what Paul himself taught him (v. 14). The context clearly
shows that St. Paul himself believes that Scripture is not a sufficient
guide all by itself for the Christian life.
Moreover, other passages of Scripture seem to
attribute completeness for the Christian life to things other than
Scripture. For instance, James 1:4 says "And let
perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect (teleioi) and
complete (holoklepoi), lacking in nothing." Perseverence,
here in James 1, seems to make the Christian just as complete and
perfect as Scripture is said to do in 2 Tim 3, but teleioi and
holoklepoi are much stronger Greek words than artios.
Perseverence would then seem to be more important than knowledge of
Scriptures.
There are other passages, too, that indicate
that things other than Scripture make Christians perfect: good works (Titus
3:8), purity from idle and profane talk ( 2 Tim 2:16-21), and
prayer (Col. 4:12). Most Christians will admit that perseverence,
good works, purity and prayer are all necessary for salvation, but that
none of them alone are sufficient. So, while Scripture is good and
necessary to know and serve God, 2 Tim 3:16-17 does not say that
Scripture alone is sufficient for salvation. (For a further
discussion of these points, please visit www.scripturecatholic.com.)
The theory of Sola Scriptura is not
taught in Scripture, but is instead a tradition of man (originating in
the 16th century with Martin Luther). Scripture does not
claim to be a complete and sufficient source of those things necessary
for salvation. Instead, it indicates that the very composition of
Scripture itself derived from the Tradition given to the Apostles and
handed on to their successors. Moreover, Scripture itself commands the
adherence to this earlier Apostolic Tradition, that this Tradition has
been preserved in a visible, historical Church. Finally, Scripture also
declares that its interpretation is neither easy, nor is it up to an
individual.
Apostolic Tradition is the
Source of Scripture
The central theme of the Gospels is that the
life and teaching of Jesus is the rule of faith.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of
the age (Mt 28:19-20; emphasis added).
The Gospels themselves, however, tell us that
they are not a complete account of all Jesus taught and commanded.
"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples
that are not written in this book" (Jn 20: 30).
It is this disciple who testifies to these
things and has written them, we know that his testimony is true. There
are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be
described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain
the books that would be written (Jn 21:25-25).
Jesus embodied in His life and words the saving
Gospel, the Good News that God had come to save us from our sins. This
Gospel was first preached by Jesus, and then by His Apostles with His
authority. "Whoever listens to you, listens to me" (Lk 10:16).
A trustworthy and sure record of this Gospel was later written down, but
as John tells us, a complete and total record of the Gospel of Jesus’
life could never be written down. Jesus’ life, though, is preserved in
the community of disciples, the Church, he calls to himself.
"Remain in me, as I remain in you" (Jn 15:4). He gave the
Church the word He received (Jn 17:14), and this is the word which the
church preaches so the world may believe (Jn 17:20).
So, when St. Paul tells the Christians what
they should take as their rule of faith, he points to the preaching he
left them, the Tradition of the Gospel he handed on to them.
Now I am reminding you brothers, of the
gospel I preached to you, which you indeed received and in which you
are also being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you,
unless you believed in vain. For I handed on to you as of first
importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised
on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. . . .Therefore,
whether it be I or they, so we preach and so you believed. (1 Cor.
15: 1-4, 11)
He even calls both what was preached orally and
what was written the "Traditions" that they are to hold on to.
"Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions
that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of
ours" (2 Thess. 2: 15).
Furthermore, just as Jesus gave to the Apostles
the Good News He wanted preached, so they handed it on to their
successors, the bishops and pastors they appointed, so that the
transmission of this Tradition should continue.
You have learned, from many who can witness
to it, the doctrine which I hand down; give it into the keeping of men
you can trust, men who will know how to teach it to others besides
themselves. (2 Tim. 2: 2)
Jesus Christ himself authorized the Church He
founded on His Apostles to preach and preserve the Good News of
salvation. The Apostles handed on this Gospel in their preaching and
care for Christ’s flock as a Sacred Tradition, and this was the sole
rule of faith and the Christian life before there was any Christian
Scriptures. This is why St. Paul says that the Church, not any set of
writings, is the "pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim
3:15).
Sacred Scripture and
Tradition in the Church
The Good News which Jesus and, by his
authority, the Apostles preached before his death on the cross is the
same word of God which the Apostles gave to the trustworthy men who
succeeded them as bishops and pastors. This Gospel of Jesus Christ was
first preserved and handed on as Sacred Tradition, and eventually came
to be written, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as the books
and letters of the New Testament.
Just as there would be no Scripture without the
Sacred Tradition which historically preceded it, so Sacred Tradition,
functioning in the Church, defines, guarantees and preserves the
authentic Scriptures.
Hence there exists a close connection and
communication between sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture. For both
of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way
merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For sacred Scripture
is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the
inspiration of the divine Spirit.
To the successors of the apostles, sacred
Tradition hands on in its full purity God’s word, which was
entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.
Thus, by the light of the Spirit of truth, these successors can in
their preaching preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and
make it more widely known.
Consequently it is not from sacred Scripture
alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has
been revealed. Therefore both sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture
are to be accepted and venerated with the same devotion and reverence.
(Vatican II, Dei Verbum)
Teaching Authority of the
Church Determined which Books Belong in the Bible
As necessary and inspired, trustworthy and
enriching, as the Bible is, the Bible, in and of itself, is not complete
and sufficient to stand alone apart from the authority Jesus gave to his
Church. The Bible is not a single book, but a collection of different
works of literature. Included in it are a total of 73 texts: 46 in the
Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament.
There are, however, many works of literature,
both Jewish and Christian, written at the same times and with similar
themes, which have not been included. For instance, the Third Book of
Esdras was written around 300 BC at about the same time as the
Biblical Book of Ezra, and the Didache (The Teaching of
the Twelve) and the Letter of Barnabas were written around 70
AD, the same time as the Gospel of Mark. Each of these texts have
been considered inspired by different communities of Christians at
different times.
So, how have Christians been able to tell which
texts are inspired? Clearly, it just doesn’t happen that each
Christian puts together a Bible for himself or herself, and that each of
these Bibles just happen to contain all the same books. Do the
publishers of Bibles look to some text of Scripture to tell them what
belongs in the Bible? No, they and all Christians, Protestant and
Catholic, are following some tradition which their church has given them
about what the Bible is and which books it should contain. The real
question is which tradition is authoritative.
The Bible alone and by itself does not indicate
which books should be included in it; there is no inspired Table of
Contents for the Bible. (This is further evidence that the Bible alone
does not contain everything necessary for salvation. Knowing which books
are inspired is certainly necessary to understand and accept God plan of
salvation, but this knowledge is not in the Bible.) Instead, the books
in the Bible are the ones which the Church, acting through various
councils and popes, has determined to be inspired.
Why do Catholic Bibles
have more books than Protestant ones?
In the early Church, the question of which
books were inspired, and which were not, didn’t seem as urgent as it
has become since then. It was not until the Council of Rome (under Pope
Damasus I) in 382 AD, and the Councils of Hippo (393) and III Carthage
(397) that the exact number and names of the books which would be
considered inspired was agreed upon. Since then, all Christians,
Protestant and Catholic, accept the set of 27 New Testament books which
these councils recognized as inspired.
But when the pope and these councils of bishops
determined the make-up of the Old Testament, they also recognized as
inspired the Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures called the
Septuagint. (Its name derives from the Greek word for 70 since it was
said to have been translated by 70 scholars in 70 days.) This Greek Old
Testament was the most common in the Mediterranean world and was the one
which all Christians had been using up until that time.
This version of the Old Testament is composed
of Greek versions of the 39 books of the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis,
Exodus, Psalms, Isaiah, etc.) but also includes
seven other books for which there were no Hebrew copies at the time: 1
& 2 Maccabees, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Wisdom,
Baruch, Tobit, and Judith, and parts of two others,
Daniel and Esther. (Hebrew versions of some of these texts
(Sirach and Tobit) were discovered between 1947 to 1956
among the Dead Sea Scrolls; this discovery undercuts the rationale which
had been given for not considering them inspired.)
The fact that there were not Hebrew versions of
these books at the time made some, especially the Jewish authorities in
the first century AD, question their authenticity. In reaction to the
growth of the Christian believers as a separate group within Judaism,
the Jewish authorities (at their own Council of Javneh (or Jamnia), in
the year 90 AD,) adopted the 39 books of the Old Testament written in
Hebrew as their official Scriptures (partly because the Greek works
referred to a future resurrection of the dead (e.g. 2 Maccabees
12: 43).) But for Christians, from the first centuries until the 16th
century, the only version of the Bible that was considered inspired
contained all 73 books, including all those found only in the
Septuagint.
Martin Luther decided in the 1500's to exclude
the seven Greek books from the Bible and accept only the Hebrew Old
Testament. He also excluded the New Testament books of Hebrews, James
and Revelations, but later Protestants put these three back in.
To correct this new tradition of Luther’s,
the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (1545-1564) finally and
authoritatively defined the Bible as containing all 73 books identified
by the Councils of Rome, Carthage III and Hippo in the 4th
century.
Besides being recognized as inspired by the
Church (even though this is what really matters), the fact that
Christians have always considered the Greek Old Testament to be inspired
is reflected even in the undisputed books of the New Testament. Most of
time, when the human authors of the New Testament quote the Old
Testament, they cite the Greek version which also contains the disputed
books. Here are just a few examples:
For this reason, when (Christ) came into the
world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a
body you prepared for me; holocausts and sin offerings you took no
delight in. Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll, Behold,
I come to do your will, O God.’" (Heb 10.5-6)
This passage quotes the Greek version of Ps
40.6-8. "A body you prepared for me" is not in the Hebrew
version of Ps 40, but only in the Septuagint version.
Again, a passage that is often quoted to show
that Christians should not rely on tradition is Mark 7:7,
"this people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far
from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human
precepts." In this passage, Jesus himself is quoting the Septuagint
version of Isaiah 29:13; "they honor me with their
lips"and "in vain do they worship me" is not in the
Hebrew version of Isaiah, but only in the Greek.
Some other examples of New Testament authors
quoting the Greek version of the Old Testament: Rom 1:19-26
refers to Wis 12: 23- 13:1; Lk 1.52 refers to Sir
10.14; Mt 6:12 refers to Sir 28.12. (For a detailed study
of the use of the Septuagint in the New Testament see the study of R.
Grant Jones at
http://www.geocities.com/r_grant_jones/Rick/Septuagint/spindex.htm.
According to Jones, fully two-thirds of the references in the New
Testament are to the Greek (not the Hebrew) version of the Old
Testament.)
Tradition Interprets
the Meaning of Scripture
Scripture itself tells us that it is neither
easy nor a personal matter to decide what God intends to communicate in
the words of Scripture.
In them (the letters of St. Paul) there are
some things hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort
to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures.
Therefore, beloved, since you are forewarned, be on your guard not to
be led into the error of the unprincipled and to fall from your own
stability. (2 Pet 3:16-17)
Know this first of all, that there is no
prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation (2 Pet
1: 20).
Instead, Jesus promises to send the Spirit to
remain in the Church to help them understand and apply the truth of the
Gospel He left to them.
I have much more to tell you, but you cannot
bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you
to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he
hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. (Jn.
16: 12-13)
The successors of the Apostles, the bishops in
union with Peter’s successor, the pope, primarily have the ministry of
determining the authentic and authoritative meaning for Scripture in
accordance with Sacred Tradition. The authority is also exercised
through different offices of the Church, and in our own time has been
clearly presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
It is not surprising, therefore, that those
Christians who claim their own authority to interpret scripture
privately have varying interpretations of key passages. One where the
Catholic Church believes Jesus was speaking plainly and literally
(though of a Sacramental reality) is when he calls himself the Bread of
Life.
[Jesus said,] ". . . I am the living
bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live
forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of
the world." The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
"How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?" Jesus said to
them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will
raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is
true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me
and I in him. . . ." (Jn 6: 51-56)
Another is where Jesus gives the Apostles the
authority and power to forgive sins.
He breathed on them said to them,
"Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven
them, and whose sins you retain are retained" (Jn
20:22-23).
In these two passages, Jesus is telling his
disciples that he gives himself to them in the Sacrament of Holy
Eucharist and forgives sins through the Sacrament of Reconciliation
(Confession), and that his Apostles have the authority to hand on these
Sacraments in the Church he has founded. Not surprisingly, Christians
who believe Jesus did not institute these Sacraments or found this kind
of Church have a different interpretation of these Scriptures. But the
very fact that there are different interpretations (and hundreds of
different Christian denominations) at least shows that Scripture is not
so clear that the every ordinary believer is able to completely
understand core teachings of Jesus unaided.
If every Christian were able to get by himself
alone everything God meant for us to understand in Scripture, there
would not be the many, many differing interpretations among genuine and
sincere Christians, nor would Peter have been right to warn the readers
of his letter against the danger of personal (mis)interpretation.
Happily, Jesus has not left us unaided. He has given us the aid of the
Holy Spirit present in the Catholic Church to understand Scripture
correctly, just as this Holy Spirit was present to inspire the writing
of Scripture, and to recognize which texts were inspired.