From the Mouth of God
by Pat Gohn in Faith on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 6:00 AM
“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” Saint Jerome, an eminent Scripture translator, penned those words in the 4th century. They still apply.
Pastors, priests, and spiritual directors recommend regular bible reading and study for spiritual growth.
The bottom line becomes how can we interpret what we read in Sacred Scripture correctly?
The Church’s guidelines are found in The Catechism of the Catholic Church, as set forth at Vatican II in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation.
CCC 109 and 110:
In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.
In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current.
Scripture scholars call this finding the literal sense of the text. It is the basic starting point for discovering its meaning. It answers the question: “What did the author intend?” We don’t read our own conclusions or modern world-view into the ancient text. We seek the author’s intention, and consider the writing genre, and the context of his time.
Scripture is God’s inspired words in human language. Therefore it must be interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written. To do that, Vatican II gives three criteria for interpreting Scripture, (see CCC 112-114):
1. Be especially attentive “to the content and unity of the whole Scripture”. Individual verses and chapters and even whole books of the Bible must be considered as part of a whole, not in isolation. The authors of the books have written verses and chapters in context with one another, and, sometimes, even in context with other books. For example, Matthew’s Gospel frequently references the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). Often Old Testament prophets knew the history of the patriarchs. Learning the overall narrative of the history of salvation is helpful to our study.
If you considered the Bible, by analogy, to be a human body rather than a library of books, “content and unity” becomes obvious.
We don’t arbitrarily interrupt the unity of the body, or separate the parts of the body or its organs from the human person. That might lead to a gross deformity or possibly the death of the person. In the same way, when reading the Bible, we must cherish and respect the content and unity of all its parts.
Our analogy might stretch so far as to say that if the heart of the Bible is Christ, his heartbeat pulsates his lifeblood to all of its parts.
2. Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church”. The Church Fathers taught that Sacred Scripture is written in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records. The Church contains the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives it the spiritual interpretation of Scripture.
Catholic apologist Mark Shea uses an analogy I’d like to borrow. Shea writes that you determine what family pictures go into your photo albums since they are your family archive. The same holds true for the “family” that is the Catholic Church. The Church that has determined which books are inspired and belong in the canon of the bible. Family “stories and snap shots” of the bible are richer when seen within the entire legacy.
3. Be attentive to the analogy of faith. The “analogy of faith” is the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation… an interconnectedness of various truths. For example, the formulas of the Apostles or Nicene Creeds are a “list” of all we believe. There is a cohesive quality: the beliefs hold together around the central mystery of the Trinity.
Living in twenty-first century, Catholics take for granted the presence of the Magisterium and it’s authority to teach all that is held in Sacred Tradition. But, before it all got written down for posterity, the Church relied on oral tradition of the analogy of faith.
The analogy of faith was based on the beliefs of the early church with the unique quality of having been handed-on from the apostles. Interpretation of scripture must be faithful to the apostolic witness, for the authority of the Lord resided in the oral message of the first Apostles.
The Holy Spirit is the ultimate interpreter of Scripture. We would do well to ask for the Spirit’s guidance whenever we open the Bible.
Some bible studies are listed below.
Want to read more?
CCC 120:
It was by the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books. This complete list is called the canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if we count Jeremiah and Lamentations as one) and 27 for the New.
—Pat Gohn is a wife & mother celebrating 27 years of Catholic family life. Her Catholic writing, podcasting, and ministry life are found at PatGohn.com.
Resources:
- Other articles in this series
- Read the Catechism online
- Catechism of the Catholic Church
- Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture
- Catholic Bible Study
- Understanding the Scriptures
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