Sacred Scripture
The Bible is not only a book about God. The Church receives it as God’s own word, spoken in human words.
Catholics believe that God is the author of Sacred Scripture, and that he acted through human authors who wrote as true authors, with their own languages, styles, and circumstances. This is what the Church means by inspiration. The Second Vatican Council set out this teaching in 1965 in its constitution on divine revelation, Dei Verbum.
Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, put the stakes plainly: ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.
Scripture and Tradition
The Gospel was preached before it was written. The Church therefore receives God’s word in two closely joined forms: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, the living transmission of the apostles’ teaching. The task of interpreting that word authentically belongs to the teaching office of the Church, the Magisterium, which serves the word of God and is not above it.
The senses of Scripture
The Catechism (CCC 115–117) describes two senses in which a passage can be read.
- The literal sense: what the words mean, as intended by the author and discovered by careful study.
- The spiritual sense, which builds on the literal: the allegorical sense (how events point to Christ), the moral sense (how we should live), and the anagogical sense (how they point to eternal life).
Praying with the Bible
Scripture is read most fully in the liturgy, where Christ himself speaks when the word is proclaimed. It is also meant to be prayed personally. The old monastic practice of lectio divina has four simple movements.
- Read a short passage slowly.
- Meditate: stay with a word or phrase that draws you.
- Pray: speak to God about what you have read.
- Contemplate: rest quietly in his presence.
Further reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican); Books of the Bible (USCCB).