How Catholics Read and Study the Bible

Let’s suspend disbelief in God for a moment.

To understand a Catholic studying the Bible, that disbelief in God must be suspended. We believe in God, even when we struggle or question. Our belief in God gives us reason to hope. Disbelief is not seen as enlightenment, but a serious internal struggle. I do not believe God is ever disproved; I believe he is replaced.

Replaced by what? Self is the first guess; then there are millions of other things which seek to fill crevices of the heart only God fully can. Each person grapples with the question of God, but in the Christian’s case, he or she can clearly point to a period in history when God revealed himself to man. Except in mythology, that had never happened before, and has not happened since. The Resurrection is a historical fact which cannot be ignored; as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Deus Caritas Est, “being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a definite direction.”

The Bible, therefore, is to be read as God’s dialogue with his people. In the Old Testament, he tells stories to explain divine mysteries, gives the history of his chosen people, shares poetry and, having not yet visibly revealed himself to the world, gave big signs to show his glory. In the Gospels, Jesus Christ is proclaimed and revered as the Word of God made incarnate- he is the Savior, who is persecuted, beaten, crucified, dies and rises from the dead (as he is both fully human and fully divine, consubstantial with the Father). At Pentecost, the third branch of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, descends on the apostles and puts a sacred fire in their minds, tongues and hearts to enable them to have the courage and ability to go out and preach the Good News, which prompts the letters of the New Testament.

Salvation history, starting in the OT, was not a clean or straight path, as God prepared his people for the coming of the Christ. Rabbi Lord Sacks, for example, has written on biblical sanctions of slavery, and thus explained an easy target for criticism- God was leading his people out of accepted barbarism and into civilization; “In Israel’s holiness code we first encounter the hope of an eventual end to cruelty” (David P. Goldman, First Things).

It cannot be skimmed over that the moral code we take for granted in the year 2011 (in this case, respect and the need to defend inherent human personhood and dignity) was not an absolute 200 years ago, let alone over 4,000. That being said, these commandments are still being disobeyed and misinterpreted. God commanded us not to kill one another, for example, but testing on embryonic stem cells is permissible, human and sex trafficking is still happening, and abortion is legal — have we actually, then, made it out of the desert?

Blessed John Henry Newman, a convert to Catholicism, wrote a wonderful essay called “On the Inspiration of Scripture.” In it, he lengthily says,

What but that narrative itself is the supernatural teaching, in order to which inspiration is given? What is the whole history, traced out in Scripture from Genesis to Esdras and thence on to the end of the Acts of the Apostles, but a manifestation of Divine Providence, on the one hand interpretative, on a large scale and with analogical applications, of universal history, and on the other preparatory, typical and predictive, of the Evangelical Dispensation? Its pages breathe of providence and grace, of our Lord, and of His work and teaching, from beginning to end. It views facts in those relations in which neither ancients, such as the Greek and Latin classical historians, nor moderns, such as Niebuhr, Grote, Ewald, or Michelet, can view them. In this point of view it has God for its author, even though the finger of God traced no words but the Decalogue. Such is the claim of Bible history in its substantial fullness [sic] to be accepted de fide as true. In this point of view, Scripture is inspired, not only in faith and morals, but in all its parts which bear on faith, including matters of fact.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote in a letter, “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’—though it contains… some samples or glimpses of final victory.” The Catholic approach to Bible study is to look at the entire Bible as a whole: a library of books which hold a different weight and meaning. The Gospels carry more weight than the NT letters, and the OT books provide the context for the NT, as Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, and creates a new covenant between us and God. His work did not end there—this is why Catholics adhere to a living, apostolic Tradition and orthodox faithfulness to Sacred Scripture. The two are inseparable; one cannot be upheld without the other.

Reading the Bible is similar to a line Victor Hugo wrote in Les Miserables: “The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are love, or rather, love in spite of ourselves.” We humans were created out of Love by Love, who is God. The Bible tells us we were created not by chance, but by the will of God, so that we can participate in his plan. Christ is the center of that plan; the cross on which he died reminds us that “there is no true love without suffering, there is no gift of life without pain” (Pope Benedict XVI).

“We all know, when we look at the cross, how Jesus loved us. When we look at the Eucharist we know how much He loves us now.” --Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

The Bible is not a faddish book or propaganda for peace, love and anything goes as long as you accept Jesus Christ as your own personal savior. This is why it is essential to read the Bible within its own contexts, and not merely a reference guide or rule book. For believers, the Bible is the word of God, which, as Pope Benedict wrote in Verbum Domini, “makes us change our concept of realism: the realist if one who recognizes in the word of God the foundation of all things.”

The Bible cannot truly be read without belief in a higher power, because it was written down as a testimony to God’s work in this world. We may argue with God as Job did, but in the end, we should humbly and meekly echo Job: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be hindered. I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know. I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you. Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:2-6).

The Bible is a book of faith and morals; it does touch on other subject matters as well, because the world is interconnected. Overlapping is bound to happen, but one would not go into a science book to explain what a soul is anymore than one should go to Genesis to explain how God made the world. As Pope Benedict XVI put it, if a big bang caused the world, then God caused the big bang. While God has given much to his people in terms of dogma, there is also much God has left unexplained, so that we may use our God-given reason and free will to discern what is right and wrong, what is God’s will and what is an adverse force we may overcome with the help of God’s grace and mercy.

“To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one’s sufferings, in undeserved sufferings,” wrote Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace. The Bible cannot be read in man’s mindset, but God’s. When the reader approaches the Bible with his own ruler as the litmus test, he misses insights into life and his own soul. God loves us the way we are, but he also calls us to a higher standard of living. He calls us to be saints and to have life with him in Paradise.

As someone who has a hard time with prayer, I am especially grateful for lectio devina, which is Sacred Scripture read and meditated upon so that it becomes prayer (CCC 1177). G.K. Chesterton rightly advised that religion become less of a theory and more of a love affair. Through the Bible, we personally encounter the Word, who was made flesh in Jesus Christ and it changes us in our hearts, as it did to the the Samaritan woman at the well and billions of people after her, as we realize how intimately God knows our hearts and loves us still. Pope Benedict explained the basic steps of such prayer in Verbum Domini:

It opens with the reading (lectio) of a text, which leads to a desire to understand its true content: what does the biblical text say in itself?… Next comes meditation (meditatio), which asks: what does the biblical text say to us?… Following this comes prayer (oratio), which asks the question: what do we say to the Lord in response to his Word?… Finally, lectio devina concludes with contemplation (contempatio), during which we take up, as a gift from God, his own way of seeing and judging reality, and ask ourselves what conversation of mind, heart, and life is the Lord asking of us?

We study the Bible so that our interactions with God can be with him, and not our interpretations of him. The Word of God is treated as person; by reading and studying the Bible, we are getting to know God better and deepening our relationship with the One who created us, who knew us before we were even formed in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5).

That is the type of relationship God seeks with each of us: it is not parasitic, where we take and take while God continually gives; not facultative, because God is not just a good part of life, but a necessity; nor commensalism, because neither God or humanity can remain unaffected by the other; but symbiotic—a beneficial, mutual and long-term partnership. The Bible is not the only way to God, but it was divinely inspired by him so that he can speak to us, through us. If pain is God’s megaphone to a deaf world, as C.S. Lewis wrote, then the Bible must be our telescope towards eternity.

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J.R. Baldwin

J.R. Baldwin

J.R. Baldwin is the Editor-in-chief at Ignitum Today. A former statehouse reporter, she teaches history for a classical school and writes for The Imaginative Conservative. She blogs at The Corner With A View, and tweets from @thejulieview. A Midwesterner by birth, she lives out East with her husband and bebes.

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7 thoughts on “How Catholics Read and Study the Bible”

  1. Great stuff, Julie (as always)! If every Catholic and every Protestant interlocuter would read Verbum Domini, the misconceptions that say “Catholics don’t read the Bible” or “Catholics misunderstand Scripture” would be blown away. Your post is the perfect popularization of the Benedict’s exhortation though–wonderful!

    For anyone wishing to go deeper into the Catholic interpretation of the Bible, I would also recommend Mark Shea’s, .

  2. Interesting essay, especially in its defense of situational ethics and moral relativism. While the essay excoriates the destruction of genetic snot AKA ‘stem cells’ as being an offense against absolute morals, it defends slavery as being ‘situational’. I’m sure the millions of HUMAN BEINGS who died in slavery would have felt SO much better knowing a blob of protoplasm had more rights than they did. And, while the Church is hysterical at ‘assisted suicide’, it says NOTHING about the slow motion assisted suicide of smoking, which claims over 400,000 HUMAN LIVES each year. Probably because it’s big business.

    There is no consistency to Christian morals. None. Anyone who can ‘contextualize’ slavery while absolutizing a blob of brainless genetic material has nothing to offer.

  3. Bob, I have no clue where you read a defense of situational ethics and moral relativism in this essay. Furthermore, the Catholic Church does not defend slavery at all! From the Catechism, 2414: “The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason – selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian – lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord.”

    Suicide and smoking are not comparable. Smoking tobacco may cause many deaths, but people do not smoke to intentionally kill themselves or the people around them. Suicide, on the other hand, is intentional. The Catechism says in 2280-2282, “Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of. Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God. If suicide is committed with the intention of setting an example, especially to the young, it also takes on the gravity of scandal. Voluntary co-operation in suicide is contrary to the moral law.”

    I would do more research into the subject before calling embryonic stem cells “a blob of genetic material” too. Also, did you enjoy my commentary on the Bible as well?

  4. “There is no consistency to Christian morals. None. Anyone who can ‘contextualize’ slavery while absolutizing a blob of brainless genetic material has nothing to offer.”

    Bob,

    I’m very confident that the poor of many societies today would prefer the lifestyle of a “slave” in various eras of history. In fact, in many ways, the poor today are slaves of the state. Even more, I am absolutely certain that you have a certain preference for how your “brainless genetical material” was treated some years ago in and around the date of your conception. Unless of course you are going to offer us, now, all your cells for the good of science. If you do, I say, “bravo” for following your principles.

    Utilitarianism always works out best for those with voices…not so much for those without. The short end of the stick is always held by the voiceless.

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