Roseanne T. Sullivan

From a paper for the class in the "Old Testament" for the San Jose Institute for Leadership in Ministry

For a class introducing the Bible to people who are inquiring about the Catholic faith, Roseanne Sullivan, 11/02/02

Loving Father,

We have come together tonight to grow together in faith and in love for You and for one another.
We praise and thank You for the Bible, which shows us Your great love for us Your children.
Thank you for Your gift of the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Holy Writings in the Bible.
Thank you for how You continue to guide us by the Holy Writings and the Holy Traditions of the Church.
May Your Holy Spirit guide us tonight as we seek to deepen our understanding about how the Catholic Church uses the Bible. We ask this through Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

Tonight I am going to illustrate several different ways that we as Catholics use the Bible. [Pass out Bibles.]

Quick Intro or Refresher on the Bible

The Bible is a book. Right? Right and wrong. The Bible is a book but it is also a collection of books. For Catholics, the Bible is made up of 73 books: 46 books in what we call the Old Testament, and 27 books in what we call the New Testament

At this point, for a reason that I hope will be clear in a minute, a skit that Bill Cosby recorded as a young comic in the mid 60s comes to my mind. The skit was about how God told Noah to build an ark.

God: NOAH!!

Noah: Who is that?

God: It's the Lord, Noah

Noah: Right ... Where are ya? What do ya want? I've been good.

God: I want you to build an ark.

Noah: Right ... What's an ark?

God: Get some wood and build it 300 cubits by 80 cubits by 40 cubits.

Noah: Right . . ..What's a cubit?

If Bill Cosby was here, he might be thinking along with some of you, "New Testament? Old Testament?! What's a testament?"

And when I said, "Another word for testament is 'covenant." I'm thinking Cosby might have said, "Right!" and then pause and say, "What's a covenant?"

A covenant is a binding promise. God has a committed relationship with His people. God's covenant people in the Old Testament were the Jews, and after Christ, God's covenant was extended to the whole world. The Bible can be seen as the written account of God's commitment to us. It is a testament because it testifies to God's commitment.

The Bible often tells us that the relationship that God has to us is like a marriage, and that God is jealous, He wants to keep our love for Himself. He doesn't want to lose our affection. And He cannot stand to see us worship other gods. See the First Commandment! [Deuteronomy, Chapter 5:6-10. Also Exodus 20:2.]

Think about this: How did we learn what the First Commandment is? Because it is written in the Bible.

How should we Catholics respond to God's intense parental love for us? We need to get to know Him and understand how He cares for us. The more we read and think about the Bible and make it part of our faith journey, the more we come to know God and what he has done for us.

We call the Bible the Scriptures, which is another word for writings. We believe these Scriptures are the inspired Word of God, which is why we sometimes call them Holy Scriptures.

The Purpose of Scriptures

Here is what one of the books of the New Testament says about the purpose of the Scriptures. [Read from the second letter of St. Paul to Timothy 2 Timothy 3: 16 and 17]: "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work."

Refutation is one of the words used in that quote. To refute someone's argument is to prove it is wrong. Let's look further at this passage, because knowing the circumstances under which it was written can help us to refute a common objection to what Catholics believe.

Should We Rely on Scripture Alone?

The Catholic Church obtains its teachings from two sources: the Bible and the Traditions of the Church.

A term that is sometimes used for these two sources combined is "the repository of faith."

As far as Catholics are concerned, Sacred Scriptures and Sacred Traditions, are one thing taken together: God's revelation to His people. They a re transmitted to us by the Magesterium, which is the teaching authority of the Church.

Here is what an important Church document from the Second Vatican council (Vatican II) says about Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture.

This document is one of the official documents of the Vatican II council that was held in the 1960s. Its formal title is Dogmatic Constitution On Divine Revelation. Another title is Dei Verbum, which means "Word of God." A Dogmatic Constitution is a variant of an Apostolic Constitution, both of which are documents "of the highest authority, issued by the Pope, or by a Church Council with the Pope's approval."

Some Christians believe and preach that the Scriptures should be the only source for teachings about faith. Sola scriptura means "Scripture alone." The term sola scriptura is used by some Protestants who reject any teachings of the Catholic Church that cannot be found in the Bible.

We Catholics believe that the teachings of our faith, which we call doctrine, have been correctly handed down to us not only through the Scriptures but through the traditions that have been preserved by the Catholic Church since the time of the Apostles. Maybe you have had the experience of debating with a Christian who challenges what the Catholic Church teaches about something by saying, "Where is it written in Scripture?" That person probably was trained in a Protestant church that teaches "sola scriptura."

One big flaw in the argument for sola scriptura is that the early Church didn't have the New Testament written down for quite some time. Some scholars think that St. Paul's letters were the first parts of the New Testament to be written down. So it's interesting to realize that when we saw the term "the Scriptures" in the 2nd letter to Timothy, in the passage that we read a little while ago, St. Paul must have been referring only to the Old Testament, because none of the books that we know of as the New Testament were in existence yet. What the early Church had as reference to find about God's revelation were the Old Testament and the traditions. The accounts of what Jesus said and did were passed around by word of mouth. Eyewitnesses told others what they had seen and heard. These reports are the basis of the "traditions." The early Church members couldn't base their faith on Scripture alone, because the New Testament did not yet exist!

Back Again to What Our Scriptures Say About the Old Testament Scriptures

Let's go back again to 2 Timothy, Chapter 3, lines 16 and 17 to see more about how all Scripture is useful to us. "For teaching," the meaning of that is obvious. "For refutation," proving false arguments to be wrong." "For training in righteousness," means "for training in goodness."

Now, many people translate "righteousness." as undeserved pridefulness. It's true that some people are self-righteous, but the person who gets trained by the Bible isn't getting trained in self-righteousness, he or she gets trained in being good. This passage closes saying that men and women of God, that means all of us, should use the Scriptures to be prepared, to be equipped for every good work.

Did anyone ever hear this saying: "The Bible is God's little instruction book"? This passage from the letter to the disciple Timothy is essentially saying the same thing.

Let's look at how Jesus Himself used the Bible. The Catholic Study Bible's introduction to the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy on page 137 says, "The Savior quoted passages of Deuteronomy in overcoming the threefold temptation of Satan in the desert (...) and in explaining to the lawyer the first and greatest commandments." The story of The Temptation of Jesus is given in the gospel of St. Matthew Chapter 4. The temptation occurred at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry.

About 40 days earlier, Jesus had been baptized. The Spirit of God had descended in the form of a dove, and "a voice came from the heavens, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." [Read verses 1 through 4.]

In the first temptation, the devil appealed to Jesus' hunger (which must have been great after 40 days of fasting), and said, "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread." Jesus replied with words from Deuteronomy 8:3, "It is written: 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.'".

[Read verses 5 through 7.] In the second temptation, the devil appealed to Jesus' hunger to be accepted by the people He came to save. The devil tried to get Jesus to throw Himself down from the parapet of the temple. And the devil had the nerve to quote Scripture! "For it is written," the devil said, echoing Jesus' words, "He will command his angels concerning you' and 'with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'" [Ps91,11a.12.] Leaping from the temple and being rescued by angels in front of the crowds below would have been a great shortcut to winning lots of disciples, maybe even including the chief priests and Pharisees who were against Him. But Jesus didn't fall for that temptation either. He refuted the devil's passage with another passage from Dt. 12:18, "Again it is written 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."

[Read verses 8 through 11.] In the last temptation, the devil tried to see if the humanness of Jesus could be enticed by the chance to have power over all the kingdoms of the world "in all their glory." All Jesus had to do was bow down and worship him.But Jesus once again used words from Deuteronomy (6:13) "At this, Jesus said to him, 'Get away, Satan! It is written: "The Lord, your God, shall you worship, and him alone shall you serve."

If we refer back to what the 2nd Letter to Timothy says, we see that Jesus was equipped with the passages in Deuteronomy to defeat the lies and temptations of the devil. He also used the Scriptures to refute the misinterpretation of Scripture that the devil threw His way.

Interim Summary

How have we seen the Bible used for so far? We have already used the Bible in several of the ways that are common in the Catholic Church.

-- We went through a passage line by line and tried to learn from it by reading it closely.

-- We saw how Jesus Himself used Scripture and also gave us an example of how we might be able to use Scripture to fight temptation and to refute errors.

-- We went looking into the Old Testament to more-completely understand something in the New Testament.

-- Not mentioned yet, but something you would see if you read further in the document Dei Verbum quoted earlier, is that the Church quotes from the Scriptures when she explains her teachings. [Hand out Dei Verbum].

Deuteronomy: The Book that Jesus Quoted

Deuteronomy is the fifth book of what the Jews call the Torah (the teachings). The Torah is also called the Pentateuch (which is Greek for "Five Books").

The first book of the Torah is Genesis, which tells about creation, and about how the Jews were chosen by God, starting with our father in faith, Abraham. It tells about how Abraham had a son called Isaac, and how Isaac had a son called Jacob, and how it came about that Jacob's name was changed to Israel. Genesis is the story of our ancestors in faith. Genesis goes on to tell how it came about that Israel and his children and his children's families all went to live in Egypt in a time of famine.

The second book of the Torah, Exodus starts after the Jews had lived a long time in Egypt and after they had been enslaved. Exodus describes how the Jews were delivered from slavery in Egypt by Moses. Does everyone here know who Moses was? Rent the video Prince of Egypt and you'll get a slightly skewed but very entertaining view of the story of Moses that is told in Exodus. Exodus means leaving, and the book is mostly concerned with how Moses led the people out of slavery in Egypt.

[Pass out diagram of where Deuteronomy sits at the end of the Torah and the beginning of what are called the Historical Books.]

Deuteronomy is at the end of the Pentateuch, after two more books called Leviticus and Numbers. The events related in Deuteronomy occur at the end of 40 years of wanderings in the desert just before the Jews are about to invade the Promised Land. The book of Deuteronomy has traditionally been believed to be written by Moses himself, with some chapters in the end that describe Moses' death, which have been traditionally believed to be by Moses' follower Joshuah.

The book is in the form of a long sermon by Moses, who summarizes the events of Exodus and recaps the Ten Commandments that were given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. Moses must stay on the other side of the Jordan River while the Chosen People march into the Promised Land without him. As Moses' last address to the people he has led out of Egypt, Deuteronomy contains many blessings and many warnings. Deuteronomy shows God's covenant as being conditional. God offers His people have a choice. If they are faithful to God and are just in their relationships with one another, and care for the weak in their society, then they will "live long and prosper" in the land they are about to enter. If they worship other gods or act unjustly to others even if they worship the true God, their enemies will triumph over them, and they will lose their land.

Who Wrote Deutoronomy?

Many modern Bible critics don't believe in the traditional authorship by Moses. In the second half of the 19th century, Protestant Bible critics began an analysis of the Biblical texts partly in an attempt to resolve what they saw as contradictions and repetitions. Using various techniques, the critics came to believe there were multiple authors of the books of the Torah. And at some point, some if not all Catholic Bible critics came to accept these theories too.

The critics theorize that Deuteronomy was written in the 7th century before Christ by some unknown authors (the D sources) "as a kind of commentary on the meaning of the Pentateuch and as a summary of its message." [Boadt p. 193]. According to these theories, the book was written long after the time of Moses with the purpose of warning and comforting the Jews during a time when their kingdom was falling apart under attacks by Assyrians. "Looking back from the troubled times of the last kings of Judah, it offered hope to a discouraged seventh century Israel, a new chance to obey the covenant and a lesson that God's punishment was not final. For these reasons, it stresses the divine word that never fails." You might be able to help me here, because I really don't understand what this quote means: The Catholic Study Bible says "One reason why the authors put the book into the form of a farewell speech of Moses in the desert is that it makes the warning come from a time when they had no land yet, and hints that this may happen again if the people do not heed his words [RG 112]." How do they know the reasons of unknown writers 2700 years ago?

Another Choice?

As a moderately-informed lay person, I believe that Catholics have the option of accepting or rejecting what the modern critics are saying. After all, even the textbook from which I took several of the quotes says "not only Jesus, but other well known Jewish authors . . . take for granted that Moses authored the five books of the Pentateuch [Boadt p. 92]." If Jesus, my Savior and my God believed that Moses was the author, what was true for Jesus has to be true for me. And the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum has what seem to me to be strong statements about the historicity of the Bible. Later documents from the Pontifical Bible Commission seem to depart from the Dogmatic Constitution, but they do not have the same authority.

Studying these critical analyses and tracing the clues that lead the critics to believe in multiple authors energizes some people and makes them more interested in the Bible, while it has the opposite effect for others. You have a choice here too.

Whether or not we believe that Deuteronomy was written by Moses or by unknown authors in the 7th century BC, doesn't matter as much as what the words say to us.

We Catholic Christians are the inheritors of the covenant from the Jews. If we are not faithful to God and if we do not practice justice in our personal and public lives, will God will take away our land? Do you think that the events of 9/11 could have anything to do with our faithfulness? Are we really ready to live out the commandment that we must love God with our whole hearts and serve Him alone? Are we worshipping anyone or anything but Him? Do we really believe that humankind lives not only on bread but on every word that comes from the mouth of God? What would that mean in real terms? If we believed any of these things, how might they change how we live?

Just a brief mention of a few other ways Catholics use the Bible

-- At Mass: a section of each Mass is called the Liturgy of the Word. During the Liturgy of the Word, we have readings from the Old and New Testaments. And many of the prayers in the Mass are taken from the Bible.

-- During the Rosary: The Our Father is a prayer taken straight from the Bible, taught to us by Jesus to teach us how we should pray. The Hail Mary too has direct quotes from the Bible. And when we pray the mysteries of the Rosary we contemplate the events of Jesus' life as described in the Bible.

-- Lectio Divina: In personal reading of the Bible we use the words as a means to enter conversation with God, in the following sequence:

   -- Reading a Scripture passage,

   -- Meditating upon the passage,

   -- Listening to God,

   -- Pondering what we read and heard.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, You have loved Your children with an everlasting love. You gave us Your Scriptures to teach us about Your love. Continue to draw us to You through Your revelation in the Scriptures, in the traditions, and in the teaching authority of the Church. Write Your law on our hearts, so that we will live long and prosper in the land. Amen.

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Last Updated: December 21, 2003