Well, your friend is both right and wrong. It sounds like your pal supports a fundamentalist approach to our scriptures which declares verbal inerrancy, infallibility, and literal truth of the Bible in every detail. In this the words of the Bible are believed to be plain and simple: their meaning is self-evident and does not need to be interpreted. All that is required is that it be read in faith, with prayer for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Now, if we take this to mean that anyone asking for an accurate interpretation will be given one without any research necessary, then the multiplicity of interpretations, even among fundamentalists themselves, should give people a gnawing sense that the Holy Spirit is not doing its job very effectively.
We run into all sorts of problems when we read the Bible literally, that is, without trying to interpret its meaning. Noted Catholic Scripture scholar Fr. Eugene Laverdiere once said “Fundamentalism is not a particular interpretation of the Bible, but rather the lack of any interpretation.”
As Catholics understand the bible as more of a library than a single book and we do not adhere to the literal truth of all the books in our sacred library, because not all were written to be understood that way. Just as in any library, we find several different genres of writing, so too in the bible.
The church states that the Bible is "humankind's experience of God" written down. We recognize that there was a long, complex process from the original inspiration to the written words found in the Bible today and if we are going to discover the meaning of our ancient sacred texts we need to be as informed as possible of their context, literary form, and the author’s historical situation, style of writing and original intention.
The church states that:
Revelation is first and foremost God revealing God’s self in human history, and Jesus is the high point of this revelation of God to human beings.
Only secondarily is revelation to be understood as the written expression of and witness to God's revealing of God’s self.
In other words, our faith is in a living God not slavish adherence to words on a page.
So, in short, we DO believe scripture to be the "inspired" and “inerrant” revelation of God to which human beings have given expression and witnessed to in words. Scripture is not apart from tradition but rather a privileged moment WITHIN our tradition, for truly it is the Church which gave us the Bible, and not the Bible which gave us the Church.
The bible may indeed hold all truths, but not everything in the bible is “literally true” in our modern understanding of the word.
If this topic interests you, please consider yourself invited to attend (and maybe even bring your protestant pals!) a little class I’m giving on:
Our Catholic Approach and Understanding of Sacred Scripture
Monday, March 4th at 7PM in Bethany.
All are invited. It is free, as is childcare. Hope to see you there!
Send your Crazy Catholic Question to Lisa Brown at dre@ctredeemer.org or read past columns at www.crazycatholicquestions.blogspot.com
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