Catholic Understanding of the Bible
(Annual Foundations of Faith Series)
All high school students throughout the diocese recently had a day off from school so that their teachers could attend the annual “Foundations of Faith” seminar. While the students were sleeping in and hanging out what were their teachers learning?

This year’s topic was on the bible and our Catholic faith. It was presented by Professor Russell Reno of Creighton University. In his lectures he addressed the question, “What is the Bible? How do Catholics interpret it?

The first lecture gave a run down of the historical development of the bible from the Jewish texts we find in our Old Testament and the various phases of translations of both the Old and New Testaments from stories passed on through oral tradition into written versions starting in Hebrew and Aramaic into the Greek Septuagint, followed by the Latin Vulgate, and now numerous translations into modern languages.

In the next lectures Professor Reno explained why within the bible we have multiple versions of the same story, some of which apparently contradict one another. He pointed out that the different versions would originate from different authors who come from different traditions emphasizing different things. The bible is a collection of these many stories by many authors from different points of view and communities.

Reno also selected some of the difficult texts of the bible and explained how they might be interpreted to have meaning to our Catholic faith. One such text was Psalm 137. This psalm is about the capture and exile of the Hebrew people by the Babylonians. The last part of the psalm calls for a fearsome vengeance against the Babylonians: “Happy are those who seize your infants and dash them against the rocks”. This clearly conflicts with our Catholic faith of forgiveness. So how should a Catholic deal with and interpret such a passage? This comes down to the difference between literal and spiritual interpretation. As Catholics we do not interpret the bible literally. The church fathers (early Christian leaders) recognized these difficult passages and they understood them as Saint Augustine stated, “They should be interpreted in a way that transforms them to render love of God and neighbor”. How might a catholic deal with this psalm? One way to interpret the psalm would be to interpret it as our personal experience of exile from God through sin and asking God to dash of our sinfulness upon the rocks, to free us from our spiritual exile. As Reno on put it “Christ is the touchstone to interpreting the bible.

Professor Reno also pointed out that our Catholic faith is not limited only to bible interpretation like some fundamentalist Christian faiths. For Catholics the bible is not simply a “ Google map” that shows the way. We believe that God uses human instruments to convey truths. As Catholics we have the teachings of the church along with the bible.

In the end our faith is really a mosaic that brings many pieces from a number of sources together to form our Christian faith.