Review of Introduction to Scripture

Revelation

God reveals himself and made known the mystery of his will to us through Christ. He graduelly teaches man, stage by stage to make men capable of receiving the divine revelation about Him and of loving. This Revelation is to culminate in the person and mission of the Incarnate World, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Stages Of Revelation

Natural Revelation

In the beginning God makes himself known by providing man with constant evidence of him­self in created realities.  From the beginning, He man­ifested himself to our first parents and clothed them with resplendent grace and jus­tice. After the fall, God buoyed them up with the hope of salva­tion, by promising redemp­tion. and He has never ceased to care for the human race.

Divine Revelation (Supernatural)

The Covenant with Noah after the flood expresses the principle of the divine economy toward the “nations”. He divided them into nations with dif­ferent languages with intention to limit the pride of fallen humanity. This covenant remains in force during the times of the Gentiles, until the universal proclamation of the Gospel.

God chooses Abraham, changes his name to Abra­ham, and promised to make him “the father of many of nations”.

God forms his people Israel. After the patriarchs, God formed Israel as his people by freeing them from slavery in Egypt. He established with them the covenant of Mount Sinai and, through Moses, gave them his law so that they would recognize him and serve him as the one living and true God, and that they would look for the Savior.  Through the prophets, God forms his people in the hope of salvation, in the expectation of a new and everlast­ing Covenant intended for all, to be written on their hearts.

God has said everything in his Word. In Jesus Christ God has said everything; there will be no other word than this one.

There will be no further Public Revelation after Jesus and the Apostles. Even if Revelation is al­ready complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.

1,2,3,4 of Revelation

1. There is only ONE Word of God that is Jesus Christ.
2. TWO Modes of transmission:

Christ commanded the apostles to preach the Gos­pel.  This Gospel was to be the source of all saving truth and moral discipline.

In the apostolic preaching… The Gospel was handed on in two ways: “orally” by the apostles by their spoken words, by examples, by institu­tions they established, and “in writing” in the Bi­ble.

. . . Continued in apostolic succession – In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left bishops as their successors, and gave them their own posi­tion of teach­ing authority. This living transmis­sion, ac­complished in the Holy Spirit, and is pre­served in a continuous line of succession until the end of time. This living transmis­sion is called Tra­dition.

Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, there­fore, have one common source… Both are flow­ing out from the same divine well-spring, God. They make present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ.

… two distinct modes of transmission:

• Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit.
• [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entire­ty the Word of God which has been en­trusted to the apostles and their suces­sors by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. The Church, to whom the trans-mission and interpreta­-tion of Revela­tion is entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scrip­tures alone. Both Scrip­ture and Tradition must be ac­cepted and honored with equal senti­ments of de­votion and reverence.”

Apostolic Tradition and ecclesial tradi­tions. The first generation of Christians did not yet have a written New Testament, and the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living Tradition. Tradition is to be distin­guished from the various theological, disciplinary, liturgical or devotional traditions, born in the local churches over time. These traditions can be changed, but Sacred Tra­dition cannot.

3. THREE Criteria – The Church indi­cates 3 cri­teria for interpreting Scrip­ture:

• Be especially attentive “to the content and unity of the whole Scripture”
• Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church”.
• 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.

4. FOUR Senses of Scripture

Scripture has two authors: God is the main author. The human writers are the instru­mental authors.

The Church distinguishes various senses in which Scripture may be interpreted.

The literal sense is the meaning intended by the human author and conveyed by the words of Scripture.

The spiritual sense depends on the text, but see them as a signs of a deeper meaning.  This can be divided into:

• allegorical sense where one event fore-shad­ows another.
• moral sense lead us to act justly.
• anagogical sense helps view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance

In short: The Letter speaks of deeds; Alle­gory to faith; The Moral how to act; Ana­gogy our destiny (Augustine of Dacia). Fi­nally, every­-thing that re­lates to the inter­preting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which ex­er­cises the divinely conferred commis­sion and ministry of watching over and in­terpreting the Word of God.” (DV 12,3)

The Interpretation of The Heritage of Faith

1. The heritage of faith entrusted to the whole of the Church. The apostles en­trusted the “Sacred deposit” of the faith, contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradi­tion, to the whole of the Church.
2. The Magisterium of the Church. The task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the Pope. This is called The Magisterium of the Church. It is servant of The Word of God. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. The faithful has the duty to obey the Magisterium as Jesus commanded: He who hears you, hears me” (Lk 10:16).
3. The dogmas of the faith. When the Church’s Magisterium solemny defines essential truths as dogmas, all the faithful must believe. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate our spiritual life and make it secure. The mutual con­nections between dogmas, and their coherence, can be found in the whole of the Revelation of the mystery of Christ..
4. The supernatural sense of faith. All the faith­ful share in understanding and hand­ing on re­vealed truth. They have received the Holy Spirit, who instructs them and guides them into all truth. The whole body of the faithful… cannot err in mat­ters of belief when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal con­sent in matters of faith and morals.
5. Growth in understanding faith. With the help of the Holy Spirit, the understanding of the reali­ties and the words of the herit­age of faith is able to grow in the life of the Church. Due to its super­natural sense of faith, the People of God as a whole never ceases to welcome, to penetrate more deeply and to live more fully from the gift of di­vine Revelation.

Sacred Scripture

1. Christ, The Unique Word of Sacred Scrip­ture. God reveals to us in human words through Scared Scripture, as the Word of the eter­nal Fa­ther took on Himself the flesh of human like us to talk to us. For this rea­son, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord’s Body. Sacred Scripture is the spiritual food of the Church and all Christians.  God talks to us through Scripture.
2. Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scrip­ture. God is the author of Sacred Scripture because God inspired the human authors of the sacred books, they are also the authors of the Bible. All that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit. We must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation” (DV 11). Christiani­ty is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living.” ( Lk 24: 45).
3. The Holy Spirit, Interpreter of Sacred Scripture. Because human are also authors of Sa­cred Scripture, to discover the sacred authors’ in­tention, we 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.  Since “Sacred Scripture is inspired, it must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written” (DV 12,3).
4. The Canon of Scripture – By the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writ­ings are to be included in the list of the sacred books. This list is called the Canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament and 27 for the New Testament.

The Old Testament (121-123) is an indispen­sa­ble part of Sacred Scripture. Even though it con­tains matters imperfect and provisional, but it aims at Christ. “It is a treasure of wis­dom, prayers, and a hidden presentation of the mystery of our salva­tion” ( DV 15)..  The New Testament does not void the Old, but perfects it by the teaching of Christ.

The New Testament (124-127) is centralized on Christ and his Church’s beginnings under the Spirit’s guidance.

The Gospels are the heart of all the Scriptures “be­cause they are our principal source for the life and teaching of the Incarnate Word, our Savior.”.

The Gospels’ formation is divided into three stages:

• The life and teaching of Jesus.
• The oral tradition or teaching of the apostles and the first disciples.
• The written Gospels when the evangelists se­lected certain of the many elements which had been handed on and adapted them to meet the need of specific groups.

The unity of the Old and New Testa­ments. God’s works of the Old Covenant pre­figurations of what he accomplished in the fullness of time in the person of his Incarnate Son. Therefore we must read the Old Testa­ment in the light of Christ crucified and risen. The New Testament also has to be read in the light of the Old. As an old saying put it, “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.”  What God did in the Old Testament is the inter­me­diate stages of salvation.

Scripture in The Life of The Church.

The Word of God is the force and power that “can serve the Church as her support and vig­or, and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life”( DV 21).  Hence “ac­cess to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful” (DV 22).  The Church “force­fully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful. . . to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the di­vine Scriptures. “Igno­rance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (St. Jerome) (DV 25).