Catechism Corner | How Catholics Read the Bible

Christianity is the religion of the person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, to whom the words in the church's book (the Bible) bear witness. The Bible, the book that was both created the church and was created by the church, is a privileged witness to God's dealing with the people of God in both the Old and the New Testaments.

The Catholic approach to the Bible may be characterized as a both/and, rather than an either/or. This became more obvious after the Second Vatican Council. The Council published a great and moving document called "Dei Verbum," "The Word of God." It is a magisterial overview of how the church looks at the Bible. Over thirty years later, in 1993, the Pontifical Biblical Commission produced a similarly helpful document entitled "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church."

Let me point out just three highlights of these two important documents.

First of all, "Dei Verbum" looks at the Bible as an instance of God's personal self-revelation to us. That's important: God communicates himself, or Godself, not only through what we call "salvation history" as recorded in the Bible (that is, the way that God relates to humanity) but in the Bible itself.

Second, both documents look carefully at the relationship between Scripture and tradition, which is long been a source of unfortunate controversy between Catholics and Protestants. In the Catholic Church we consider tradition to be guided by the Holy Spirit, and so Vatican II emphasized the close relationship between Scripture and tradition, describing them beautifully as both "flowing from the same divine wellspring."

What may surprise a lot of people is the third highlight: the church recommends the use of the methods and approaches of professional biblical studies. The Pontificial Biblical Commission's document commends what is usually called the "historical-critical method" as "the indispensable method for scientific study of the meaning of ancient texts," and also encourages our attempts to understand the different literary methods that are used in the texts.

Back to the both/and rather than the either/or. The Catholic approach to Scripture insists on both the divine origin of the Bible and the necessary contribution of the people composed the books of the Bible at a certain time, in a certain place and for certain community. It urges us, in a word, to understand the Bible better as, to use one of the phrases are run through the 1993 document, "the word of God in human language."

The Bible is one of the primary ways that I encounter God. We focus mainly on Jesus, the person to whom We've dedicated our life. Through reflection on and study of the Bible we try to better understand who Jesus was, or rather, since we believe him to be risen, is. Also, we try to understand the history of his people, the Jews. But mainly we look to the Bible to meditate on what Jesus said and did during his ministry. How he lived. How he cared for people. And what we are meant to do as his disciples.

None of this is meant in any way to diminish the importance of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures or the Torah, depending on your preferred nomenclature. God's Covenant with the Jewish people is still, obviously, in effect. As the Second Vatican Council reminded us over and over again.

But for us, as a Christian, we view the Bible primarily as a way of getting to know Jesus and his people the Jews, in both the Old and New Testaments.

Fr. Antonius David Tristianto, O.Carm.