The Teaching of the Church on the Bible: General Introduction

The Bible developed within the People of God under the Covenant made through Moses and the Covenant made in Jesus, the Christ. Without the People of God, there would be no Bible. The Spirit of God worked in, through and with the People to bring about the writings, to preserve them and to have them recognized by the People as sacred and inspired. The Bible, therefore, is the work of both the Holy Spirit and of the People of God.

It should not be surprising that the People of God today, that is, the Church, has a responsibility towards the Bible. The Church is responsible to God and to mankind for making the Word of God known and for giving guidance on how it should be properly interpreted.

In general the guidance that the Church gives for the proper interpretation of the Bible is both very reasonable and very "spiritual". The Church holds that God gave people intelligence to be used; God did not give us the gift of reason only to have us abandon it when we approach his Word. At the same time the Church recognizes that the Bible is the Word of God, and is therefore to be treated with a reverence and devotion that is not given to other books. The Spirit of God speaks to our spirit through his Word. While reason must always be used, the Church knows that the Bible expresses the mystery of God in his relationship to his creation and reason alone cannot grasp everything that is in the Word of God found in the Bible. The Word of God is meant to reach to the core of our being; it is meant to touch our lives.

To put it simply, we can say that the Church's approach is this: in interpreting and understanding the Bible we are to use our heads, our hearts and our feet.

We must use our heads to study, because the Bible is an old book, written in ancient languages (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek), reflecting cultures which are not easily familiar to us. We must have scholars who do research in every aspect of the languages, cultures, ways of writing and the history in which the Bible came to be. We also need scholars to help us remember what other scholars and great interpreters have said in the past. We need to remember also how the Church in her teaching, in her life, has interpreted the Bible in the past. We need to use our heads for studying what the Bible meant when it was written centuries ago, and for remembering how others interpreted the Bible before us. The scholars pass on the results of their work and the Church uses their research to help it in the task of giving guidance on how the Bible should be interpreted.

We are reminded by the Church that study alone is not enough. We need to use our hearts in prayer and contemplation. The first prayer is the liturgy. The Word of God is proclaimed in the liturgy, especially the Eucharist where the People of God have assembled to worship. The liturgy itself helps us interpret the Word of God. In addition to liturgical prayer, the personal contemplation and reflective prayer of all believers deepens the understanding of the Word of God. It is because the Bible addresses itself to the centre of our being that prayer, liturgical and personal, is needed for us to hear and understand it properly.

Finally, we must add that much in the Bible will remain closed, unless we "do" the Word of God. Blessed are we if we both hear the Word of God and do it. It is by doing that we experience what love means, what forgiveness means, what faith means, to mention a few examples. This is why some of the greatest interpreters of the Bible were the saints, whose lives were a commentary on the Word of God. The saints, many of whom knew little about Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic, interpreted the Scriptures in the way they walked through life, living the Word of God. The simplest, humblest saint, such as Theresa of Lisieux, was a fine interpreter of many aspects of the Word of God. St. Francis of Assisi threw light on other aspects of the Word of God. Taken together the multitude of saints interpret the Word of God by example. Their understanding came from "doing the Word". It follows that the saints who were also scholars, such as St. Jerome, are very important to us. Many things are only understood by walking in the way of the Lord; we must use our feet, as well as our heads and hearts.

In summary, the guidance of the Church on how the Bible is to be understood respects human reason by recognizing the role of study and research, and it respects the divine purpose of the Word of God by recognizing that prayer and action are also needed for a proper understanding.