1

Week 14 Consuming the WordThe Power of the Word the Authority of Scripture - Part 2

Last week Scott ended his video session by declaring that God by uniting Himself with our littleness, allowed us to partake in God’s greatness. Somebody tell me what Scott was saying there? Mike starts this week with a very interesting question. He asked Scott what the similarities and differences of his veneration of

the Word of God were as a Calvinist and now as a Evangelical Catholic. The similarities included a high value of sacred scripture and deepening understanding of God stooping in order to enter into our lowliness. The big differences began with Scott’s embrace of sola scriptura as a protestant, seeing the Bible as the sole authority of the Church and the only source of the

Word of God. Over time Scott began to see just how unscriptural sola scriptura actually is, and how the Bible continually points beyond itself to other sources of the Word of God and authority.

2 Thessalonians 2:15 (RSV2CE) 15 So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.

So here it is clear St. Paul is putting the living traditions on equal par with the written Word. It is important to understand the source that the living traditions were coming from, and that sounce is the original apostles. Over time those living traditions were past on to the successors of the original 12, and then to the next successors, on and on, bishop to bishop, down through the ages to this very day. Eventually the Church formed the written Word of God, penned by inspired authors empowered by the Holy Spirit. That inspiration of the Holy Spirit also allowed the bishops of future generations to be able to correctly interpret all of those written books and letters infallibly to their generation…and so on and so on.

I shared the same frustration that Scott did among protestant denominations. There were literally hundreds and thousands of different interpretations of the

2

Bible creating church splits that go on today. Scott found out, as Jackie and I did, that well over a billion Catholics, covering the span of 2000 years were able to teach and preach a very consistent understanding of the Bible, as well as a unchanging morality, powerful and clear creeds, and ever developing theological revelation. I love Scott’s analogy of sola scriptura as a physical map, and the magisterium teaching the tenets of our Catholic faith as a very accurate GPS program from heaven. At this point Scott complains about the limits of a half hour show that does not allow the time to see how much the Catechism of the Catholic Church deals with sacred scripture. But we are not as limited as Scott this morning.

Article 3Sacred Scripture

I. Christ—The Unique Word of Sacred Scripture

101 In order to reveal himself to men, in the condescension of his goodness God speaks to them in human words: “Indeed the words of God, expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like men.”63

102 Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely:64 (65, 2763; 426–429)

You recall that one and the same Word of God extends throughout Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers, since he who was in the beginning God with God has no need of separate syllables; for he is not subject to time.65

363 DV 13.

464 Cf. Heb 1:1–3.

565 St. Augustine, En. in Ps. 103, 4, 1: PL 37, 1378; cf. Ps 104; Jn 1:1.

3

103 For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord’s Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God’s Word and Christ’s Body.66 (1100, 1184; 1378)

104 In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, “but as what it really is, the word of God.”67 “In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them.”68

II. Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture

105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”69

“For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”70

106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.”71

107 The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit,

666 Cf. DV 21.

767 1 Thess 2:13; cf. DV 24.

868 DV 21.

969 DV 11.

070 DV 11; cf. Jn 20:31; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:19–21; 3:15–16.

171 DV 11.

4

we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”72 (702)

108 Still, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living.”73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, “open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures.”74

Like many of us, Scott loves the Bible, but struggled with all the things going on in the Old Testament. He was more at home with the New Testament, till he began to read the Fathers of the Church and understand the progression going on from the Old Covenant to the New and Eternal Covenant. Scott quotes St. Maximos in the way he understood the relationship between the Old and New Testament.

Some background on this saint should help. St. Maximus in the 7th century found himself in the middle of the Monothelite heresy, declaring that Jesus did have two natures, but only one will. They taught that Christ had both a human nature and a divine nature, but not both a human will and a divine will…just one divine will. The Church taught Jesus had both a human will and a divine will. Maximus was a great teacher and scholar, he left the monastery to fight this heresy spreading like wild fire in the east. For his strong resistance to the heresy his tongue was cut out and his right hand cut off.

St. Maximus the Confessor also wrote this: The sacred Scripture, taken as a whole, is like a human being . . .

272 DV 11.

373 St. Bernard, S. missus est hom. 4, 11: PL 183, 86.

474 Cf. Lk 24:45.

5

The sacred Scripture, taken as a whole, is like a human being. The Old Testament is the body and the New is the soul, the meaning it contains, the spirit. From another viewpoint we can say that the entire sacred Scripture, Old and New Testament, has two aspects: the historical content which corresponds to the body, and the deep meaning, the goal at which the mind should aim, which corresponds to the soul. If we think of human beings, we see they are mortal in their visible properties but immortal in their invisible qualities.So with Scripture. It contains the letter, the visible text, which is transitory. But it also contains the spirit hidden beneath the letter, and this is never extinguished and this ought to be the object of our contemplation. Think of human beings again. If they want to be perfect, they master their passions and mortify the flesh. So with Scripture. If it is heard in a spiritual way, it trims the text, like circumcision.

— St. Maximos the Confessor

http://www.orthodoxchurchquotes.com/2013/08/07/st-maximos-the-confessor-the-sacred-scripture-taken-as-a-whole-is-like-a-human-being/

Scott goes on to say that the same thing happens for us in our Liturgy of the Mass. The Holy Spirit is present in the readings to take us from the body of the Old Testament to the true meaning or the soul of sacred scripture in the New Testament…ending in the good news of the Gospel for that particular Mass.

Scott also talks about how St. Augustine saw the relationship of the Old and the New Testaments. But let me end this class with my understanding of the progression of our salvation story from the fall of man and the beginning of the first blood covenant with God, to the last and eternal New Covenant. Our family story from creation in Genesis

6

to the last chapter of the Book of Revelations. We all need to be able to tell this story.

Right after the fall of man, by the way God saw it coming, man was separated from God and for the first time fear and shame became a major part of Adam and Eve’s life as they ran from the sound of God’s voice in the Garden of Eden. They covered their nakedness with leaves and tried to hide from God…important note right here…that never works. The same voice they welcomed the day before and Adam walked and talked with in the cool of evening, now terrified them. God had to start all over with Adam and Eve, I have described this difficult time as going all the way back to Sesame Street. Today children we are going to celebrate the

letter “G”, “G” stands for God who you no longer know. God’s plan from the very beginning was not to start all over, the master potter could have squished this two defective lumps of clay and formed brand new ones, but He didn’t. God didn’t make “all new things”, instead He made “all

things new”. God came after man as mankind ran and hid themselves from his voice after they sinned. From this point God begins to initiate a series of six blood covenants: the first with Adam and Eve, the Adamic covenant, followed by Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and ending with the New Covenant ratified by the blood of God’s only Son on a cruel Roman cross.

In each successive blood covenant you see fallen man rediscovering their creator, not just as Almighty God, but gradually and painstaking slowly, as God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Genesis is preschool, the covenants with Noah and Abraham, kindergarten and elementary school, setting down some important rules to protect for our own good. Then came the Law through the covenant with Moses, strict rules as man was learning to take the wheel and drive with God right their with them, as they learned to trust their Father, and Father trusting them…even with punishments that came only out of love, to bring us to full maturity. Then the young shepherd boy David facing the giant and taking him down in the Name of Father, who would grow up to have a heart only toward God, still making serious errors in judgement, but loving His Father like no man

7

had done before. So much had been learned about the loving God…but our Father wasn’t done.

John 3:16–17 (RSV2CE) 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Our salvation story was now in full bloom, the rose bud began to unfold in the Garden of Eden, but now with the empty tomb, the rose has opened wide in all its stunning beauty and the aroma of that incredible flower spreads all over the world. The good news of the Gospel takes death, hell, and the grave down just like David took down Goliath. The perfect Son has come to empower each of us through the Holy Spirit, so all of us could become sons and daughters of our loving Father. This is the whole Bible and the story of our salvation in just a few minutes.

And all of this is by the grace of God. Scott ended this way, God doesn’t love us because we are good, we are good because God loved us.