The Church keeps for her children the treasure she originally gave them

Catholics are often accused of arguing in a "vicious circle," proving the Bible by the Church and the Church by the Bible. We must be careful to avoid this by explaining:

(a) That we put the Church before the Bible because the Church existed first and wrote and compiled the Bible. The authority of the Bible depends on that of the Church.

(b) When we use the Bible to prove the Church, we use it not as an inspired volume, but merely as a historical document.

From the Gospels as historical documents we learn that Christ founded a Church, but the authority of the Gospels as inspired writings rests on the word of the Church.

We can define the Bible as "a collection of writings which the Church of God has solemnly recognized as inspired" (Catholic Encyclopedia). What is the non-Catholic's definition?

St. Paul says, indeed: "All Scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17). But he gives no list of Scriptures nor any method for discerning which they are.

Internal evidence is not enough

(a) Because the Scriptures themselves assert that they are incomplete, and send us to the Church. "Many other signs also did Jesus…which are not written" (John 20:30). "Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest?"…"How can I, unless some man show me" (Acts 8:30-31).

(b) It is impossible to get unanimity of impression in different ages and countries. Books appeal to one date and country, not to another: e.g. the Epistle of Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, and several gospels at first thought inspired, were rejected by the Church. On the other hand, the books of Kings, Chronicles, and Ecclesiastes are disputed by modern critics as not containing "heavenly matter," yet are accepted by the Church as:

(c) Part of the organic whole for the Bible is an organic whole, and many parts lose their meaning if severed. Each age and nation and temperament, by their interpretation, would (and in Protestantism do) practically make a different Bible, when, leaving ancient authority, they test each part by their subjective feelings.

(d) No internal evidence could prove inspiration, because inspiration is essentially a supernatural fact. It is objective, not subjective. It is simply that God said this thing in this way. It may not appeal to me personally - parts of it may not be meant especially for me - but God wished to say it for some person or time.

(e) Therefore, the inspiration can only be known upon some authority sent from God: the only possible competent authority would be either Christ or his apostles or the successors of the apostles - that is to say, Christ's Church.

(f) All Christians appeal in fact to some authority behind the Bible (e.g. Luther claimed to alter the canon of Scripture, and Lutherans accepted this on his authority).

The Church made the Bible

Christ nowhere told men to go to a book to learn his doctrine. He himself wrote nothing down. But he did say to Peter, "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church" (Matt. 16:18), and to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Go ye teaching therefore all nations" (Matt. 18:19). "He that heareth you, heareth me, he that despiseth you, despiseth me, he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me" (Luke 10:16).

The apostles went forth and taught according to Christ's command: They ordained others to succeed them. Much of his teaching they handed down in their tradition only - that "divinely protected living memory of the Church." Much they committed to writing and collected together by degrees.

Though collections of sacred writings, varying in extent, existed in the various local churches of Christendom, the canon or official list of Scripture was only compiled by the Church toward the end of the fourth century - at Hippo in 393, Carthage 397, whence it was sent to Rome for confirmation in 419. The Bible may be called the note-book of the Church, and she has always claimed to be the guardian, exponent, and interpreter of it.

The early Fathers - the disciples of Christ's disciples - take this view: We find it in the writings that remain to us of the Fathers in each succeeding century - a few instances may be quoted:

St. Irenaeus of Lyons (140-202; a disciple of St. Polycarp who was a disciple of St. John the Evangelist: "Paul says that 'God hath set in the Church first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers.' Where then the gifts of God have been set, there we must learn the truth from them with whom is the succession from the apostles…. For these guard our faith, both that which is toward God who made all things and that which is toward the Son of God ... and they expound the Scriptures to us without peril, neither blaspheming God, nor dishonoring the patriarchs, nor despising the prophets" (Iren. iv. 26,5).

Tertullian (160-220?): "They who affirm that the truth is with them must say that the corruptions in the Scriptures and the falsities in the expositions of them have been rather introduced by us. To the Scriptures, therefore, we must not appeal ... For the order of things would require that this question should be first proposed: 'To whom belongeth the very faith; whose are the Scriptures; by whom, and through whom, and when; and to whom was that rule delivered whereby men became Christians?' For wherever both the true Christian rule and faith shall be shown to be, there will be the true Scriptures and the true expositions and all the true Christian traditions" (De Praescrip. 19).

"If these things be such that the truth be adjudged to belong to us [viz.] as many as walk according to this rule, which the churches have handed down from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God, the reasonableness of our proposition is manifest, which determines that heretics are not to be allowed to enter upon an appeal to the Scriptures. For if they be heretics they cannot be Christians [and] can have no claim to Christian writings" (De Praescrip. 19,37).

And again. "Who shall understand the marrow of Scripture better than the school of Christ itself, whom the Lord adopted as his disciples to be taught all things and set as masters over us to teach us all things?" (ibid. 37; Scorp. 12).

St. Augustine (354-430): "For myself, I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me thereto" (Contra Ep. Fund. 5).

St. Vincent of Lerins (434): "Here, perhaps, some will inquire: 'Since the canon of the Scriptures is perfect and more than suffices to itself for all things what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church's mind?'" And he answers: "Because on account of its depth, all do not take the Scripture according to one and the same sense, but this man and that man interpret it severally in their own fashion, so that as many men so many opinions may seem deducible from it. For Novatian understands it one way, Sabellius after this sort, Donatus after that, in a different sense, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, in another Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, in another Jovinian, Pelagius, Caelestius, in another, last of all Nestorius. Therefore, it is exceedingly necessary, because of such great deviations of so varying an error, that the line of prophetic and apostolic interpretation should be guided by the rule of ecclesiastical and Catholic sense" (Commonitor. 2).

Private judgment = chaos

As then, so today, private judgment leads to wild chaos in interpretation. But further, the rejection of the Bible has come directly from the claim of heretics to make it the sole rule of faith. The Bible is often obscure - a daily rule of faith and action must be clear - hence arose impatience of delays and obscurities.

Two schools came from Protestantism:

(a) Believers in an almost wooden theory of verbal inspiration making no allowance for the human instrument (e.g. various translations, slight discrepancies in different accounts of the same scene, texts from the Old Testament quoted with slight verbal inaccuracies in the New Testament, etc.).

(b) Believers in absolutely unchecked freedom of criticism, neglecting the divine inspiration.

The Church insists on both the divine and human. "In interpreting the Bible scientifically, its twofold character must always be kept in view: It is a divine book, insofar as it has God for its author; it is a human book, insofar as it is written by men for men. In its human character the Bible is subject to the same rules of interpretation as profane books, but in its divine character it is given into the custody of the Church to be kept and explained, so that it needs special rules of hermeneutics" (Catholic Encyclopedia V:696).

Again, the eternal Church can demand from her children, to whom she has given so rich a treasure, a patience which these little systems of a day could never claim. (It is well to remember, as G. K. Chesterton puts it, that our age is only an age; we are too apt to look on it as the day of judgment).

The Church the sole interpreter

Vatican Council [I] thus defines it: "These books are held by the Church as sacred and canonical, not as having been composed by merely human labor and afterwards approved by her authority, nor merely because they contain revelation without error, but because, written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author and have been transmitted to the Church as such."

She maintains also the sovereignty of truth in every sphere "All truth is orthodox." Truths cannot be contradictory. But time and patience are sometimes needed to bring home their full bearing and mutual harmony.

(a) We must remember that the Church is often asked to accept as truth theories which are only imperfectly worked out or are full of errors. She rightly insists on waiting until the chaff and wheat have been sifted. She will not accept hypotheses as proved facts.

(b) For a Christian face to face with a Bible passage the question "Is it true?" does not arise, for God wrote it, and he cannot lie. The question in every instance is only, "What does it mean, what did the biblical author, inspired by God, wish to convey and teach?" Now to ascertain this the guidance of the Church is essential, and time and patience are often needed.

(c) Leo XIII's encyclical on Scripture (Providentissimus Deus) tells us that it is not the aim of the inspired writers to teach us science or history: "[The Holy Ghost] who spoke by them did not intend to teach men these things, things in no way profitable to salvation. Hence they described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language or in terms which were commonly used at the time and which, in many instances, are in daily use to this day even by the most eminent men of science. Ordinary speech primarily and properly describes what comes under the senses, and somewhat in the same way the sacred writers (as the Angelic Doctor reminds us) 'went by what visibly appeared' or put down what God, speaking to men, signified in a way men could understand and were accustomed to."

It is the office of the Church's theologians and Scripture students to ascertain how far statements in the Bible apparently scientific are bound up with those sacred truths which the writer is inspired to deliver and in what sense they are to be understood. Until any question arises we accept these statements in their simple meaning. When question arises we await the Church's interpretation. Thus the troubles about the Copernican system struck a severe blow to Protestant dependence on the Bible, but have not affected Catholic belief. Galileo's condemnation was a mere incident, which had no permanent result on Catholic belief in inspiration, because Catholics had the Church behind the Bible and knew that, whether quickly or slowly, she would give them an interpretation and explanation.

Thus, finally, while outside the Church excessive dependence on the unsupported letter of Scripture has led to such a reaction that people are giving up the Bible altogether, the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, keeps for her children the treasure she originally gave them.

-- By the Catholic Evidence Guild; excerpted from Catholics and the Bible