Reading the Bible as God's Word
Jerome Kodell, O.S.B
People often get quite different messages from reading the same book. One will find a novel uplifting, another will find it depressing. To one, a book is funny; to another, dull. We might think that it should not be this way with the Bible, the word of God. But we know that it is. Every day there are arguments over the meaning of particular passages in the Bible. Often these differences lead to the splitting of congregations and the formation of new Christian communities. Surely these differences and divisions do not come from God. The trouble is not in the transmitter but in the receivers. Not everyone is hearing God's true word in what is being read.
How can I be sure that what I find in the Bible is the word of God and not some mere human word, perhaps the echo of my own thoughts? The key word here is "authority." There needs to be someone who can interpret the Bible with authority. Many people believe that the Bible interprets itself, but it does not. We bring our own preconceptions and prejudices to the text. Individual interpretation leads to the divisions mentioned above. An authentic interpreter is needed, and this, for the Catholic, is the community of believers, the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, through its leaders.
Private Bible Reading
This does not mean that I cannot read the Bible privately. Personal reading of the Bible for spiritual growth is not the same as private interpretation of the doctrine of the Bible. Though the Church warns against private doctrinal interpretation, personal use of Scripture is encouraged. The doctrinal truth of divine revelation is not for me as an individual believer to determine; but God's personal message to me is mine to hear and understand.
Though there are aids in hearing God's word, no one else can listen to God for me. Today the Church continues to protect the doctrinal interpretation of Scripture as a matter beyond the decision of individual readers, but at the same time the Church, in the strongest language, encourages the personal, private reading and study of the sacred texts. If the inspired word is read in a spirit of faith and prayer, within the context of the Church's guidance, the Holy Spirit will protect from error and lead the reader to God's true message for his or her life.
But there has to be authoritative guidance. Who has the authority to decide the proper doctrinal interpretation of the Bible? Catholics maintain that this was given by Jesus to his followers as a group - not as individuals - under their proper leaders, and that the authority to decide what is the saving truth and what is the norm of Christian living revealed by the Bible is vested in the Church with its appointed leaders.
The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously, and explaining it faithfully by divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit; it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed. (Vatican II, Constitution on Divine Revelation, no. 10)
Fundamentalism
Today we hear a lot about the dangers of fundamentalism or literalism in interpreting the Bible. What is the debate all about? The term "fundamentalism" grew out of a renewal movement in American Protestantism early in this century. The leaders stressed five "fundamentals" of Christian faith: the literal inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth, the atoning sacrifice of the Cross, the physical resurrection of Christ and his return at the Last Judgment. The Catholic Church has no problem with the five "fundamentals" as important tenets of the faith when properly explained. But there is a problem in reducing Christianity to these tenets while omitting any reference to the Trinity, the Church, and the sacraments.
In more recent times, fundamentalism has been associated with a particular understanding of the "fundamental" regarding the literal inerrancy of the Bible. As defined by the fundamentalists, this means that every sentence of the Bible has an obvious sense that is the true meaning intended by God. The text can be taken at face value as it appears to me at this moment, without reference to other teachings on the same point, to the context, or to the particular language usages that could affect its meaning. A person who does this will say this is a search for the "literal" or "fundamental" meaning of the text. But attention to the letter or to the surface meaning without attention to the rules of interpretation is "literalist" or superficial rather than "literal. " This approach is dangerous because it puts one at the mercy of imagination. A literalist, for example, might respond to a report of "raining pitchforks" with iron umbrellas, or be horrified to hear that someone had "laughed her head off."
A literalist interpreter has no objective norms for guidance and therefore tends to read into the text whatever meaning is understandable at the time, whether or not it is appropriate to the author or to the book. A person once told me that Jesus was nailed to a tree, not to a cross, because 1 Peter 2:24 says that he bore our sins "in his body on the tree" (in the King James, the Revised Standard, and some other versions). But this reading ignores the fact that many passages in the Gospels and other New Testament writings state clearly that Jesus was nailed to a cross, and it is unaware that the Greek word translated as "tree" is xulon, "wood," which may refer either to a cross or to a tree. Any mistake is possible in this kind of interpretation where no external authority or literary norms are recognized; then the hidden authority and norm is one's own imagination, ingenuity, or system of preferences.
The Church's Book
The Bible was not given to individual believers one by one but to the body of believers, the Church, as a source of truth and life. The Church existed before the Bible; the word of God was living and active in the Christian community in many ways before it became available in written form. Protestants sometimes express the feeling that Catholics are limited in their freedom because they belong to a Church that proclaims and defines the doctrines to be believed. But this promotes the greatest freedom in the true sense. The Church has been given the task of discerning for its people the path of life, under the Spirit's guidance and inspiration. Knowing the divinely appointed boundaries of belief gives more rather than less freedom to a Christian. Real freedom is the possibility of living according to God's truth.
The disciples of Jesus heard God's word before there was a New Testament. Saints Peter and Paul probably never read a Gospel, and they had access to very few of the documents we presently revere as normative texts. The New Testament was produced by the Church under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Therefore the Bible is the Church's book. The Church wrote it, and the Church interprets it through the ages under the guidance of the same Holy Spirit who helped her write it in the first place. The understanding of God's word is handed down in the Church from generation to generation. This is what is meant by traditions handing on of the deep awareness of God's truth revealed to the apostles and teachers. It is the ongoing interpretation of the revelation given to the Church in the apostolic age.
This tradition which comes from the apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts, through the intimate understanding of spiritual things they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For, as the centuries succeed one an- other, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her. (Constitution on Divine Revelation, no. 8)
This approach to the Bible explains how the Church can proclaim doctrines that are not mentioned explicitly in Scripture, such as the Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption or the doctrine of purgatory. Church teaching is derived from God's word to the Church especially as expressed in the inspired writings. But the Church is not limited to the exact expression of the truth as it appears in the Bible. The Church does not depend on the Bible alone for what it believes; otherwise, during fifty or more years before the New Testament was written, Christians would have had nothing to believe. The Church will never teach anything contradictory to the Scriptures, but it may draw out implications that are not superficially evident. The Holy Spirit's continuing inspiration of the Church occasionally leads to a conclusion that is not explicitly stated in Scripture.
God's Word in Human Words
A basic conviction in Catholic interpretation (which may sound self-evident but is not accepted by all Christians) is that the Bible is and remains, even though blessed by God's inspiration, a human word produced by human effort. The humanness of the biblical authors was not bypassed when God guided them to produce the Scriptures. The best methods available to understand any human writings must be applied to the biblical text.
Each individual writing must be treated with respect for what it is. A gospel is not a psalm, a parable is not a history, a religious statement is not a biological statement (Nicodemus had trouble with this-see John 3:4). The language of the author, the context of his times, and the pressures of the age in which he wrote may bear on the meaning of the text. Words and sentences in the Bible, as in other human writings, are not free-floating; they have a context. Without attention to the context, a Bible reader could believe that "there is no God" (Ps 14:1).
The bishops of Vatican Council II stressed that it is not only ideas and doctrines we seek in the inspired Scriptures, but God himself: "He is present in his word, since it is he himself who speaks when the holy Scriptures are read in the Church" (Constitution on the Liturgy, no. 7). The words "in the Church" do not mean inside the church building. Reading the Scriptures in the Church is reading them in faith and in continuity with the belief and teaching of the Church throughout the centuries and now. Biblical words, like any others, may be taken out of context; without the control of faith and proper teaching authority, what we read in the Bible may not be the word of God at all. Then the Bible may become the source of clashes, divisions, and false doctrine. But when the word is read in faith "in the Church," Jesus Christ is present in his word with saving power and solid truth.
REV. JEROME KODELL, O.S.B., is formation director and teacher of Scripture at New Subiaco Abbey, Subiaco, Arkansas. Other folders in this series by Father Kodell include.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE BIBLE
HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO BE
THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF GOD'S WORD
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