In his December 22nd bulletin message, Father Ken provided the summary below for those who didn't have the opportunity to attend the first three sessions:
The three sessions of our Bible study, “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, are over. For those of you who were able to participate, this column will be a review. If you couldn’t make the sessions, this will be new. I offer the following summary for everyone’s benefit.
To begin with, the word “Bible” simply means “book” (translated from the Greek word “biblos”). However, this is a misnomer because the Bible is really a collection of books, that is, writings by different authors from different cultures over a period of two and a half millennia. But we believe that all the books have this in common: they are all the inspired Word of God and are without error in what they reveal about God’s plan for our salvation. This last statement is extremely important for us to understand the Bible correctly. As Catholics, we don’t believe that the Bible is without error as a science book or an historical document. For example, we don’t, as some other Christians do, believe that the Book of Genesis was written to describe literally how the world was created and how long God took to create it. A moment’s reflection on the text itself shows how hard this is to defend. For instance, to insist that God created the universe in six 24-hour, solar days is impossible. In Genesis, God did not create the sun until the fourth day, so there was no sun from which the earth could mark 24 hours from sunset to sunrise. Plus, with scientific discoveries and data from things such as archaeological digs, carbon-14 dating and dinosaur bones, it is impossible to insist that human beings with intelligence and freedom to choose right from wrong suddenly appeared, along with the rest of creation, only 6,000 years ago.
When confronted with these discoveries, the Catholic Church reflected on the truth that, because God gave us both the laws of science and His revealed Word in the Scriptures, then there can be no contradiction between the truths of science and the truths of faith. Any apparent contradiction must mean that we are misunderstanding something. That’s one of the reasons why the work of Scripture scholars is so important. When such “contradictions” surfaced, the Church tasked scholars to research the Bible using academic disciplines such as cultural anthropology, literary criticism and the analysis of historical data. This led to a more accurate understanding of the truths God has revealed in Scripture. For example, such research helped us understand that the Hebrew culture at the time the creation stories in Genesis were written was not the least bit interested in explaining how the world was created from a scientific or historical standpoint. They believed that these stories which they handed on and added to through word-of-mouth for generations and eventually wrote down were divinely inspired explanations of how God created everything from nothing to give of Himself; how the human race is the crown of creation because we are made in God’s image and are stewards of the earth; how decay, death and evil came into a totally good and harmonious universe; and, through God’s mercy, how He gave us a hard but reliable path to walk with Him back to the Paradise we lost.
I have thus far discussed the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis. At the very end of Chapter 11, we meet Abram (Abraham) and begin to read about real historical people and events. Still, the rest of the Bible is not necessarily flawless as a science or history book. Again, it is without error in what it reveals about God’s plan for our salvation as it is accurately interpreted by the living community of faith and the teaching Catholic Church to which He has entrusted His Word for all generations.
The rest of the Old Testament (two-thirds) of the Bible is the part of the greatest story ever told which gets us ready for the appearance of its most important and pivotal character: Jesus Christ, God made man and Savior of the World. The stories of Abraham and his offspring, of Moses and the Israelites released from the bonds of slavery and led to the Promised Land; of the rise and fall of David’s kingdom which would be preserved and through which the Messiah would come; the lives and writings of the prophets who foretold His coming all this set the table for the main course and Jesus’ coming. The New Testament tells us of His life, work, passion, death and resurrection; His founding the Church and His continued life and teaching through it; and His coming again in glory. All this is “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, a story with no end in eternity.
In Father's bulletin message on Sunday, January 12, he discusses "The Case for the Bible as The Word of God":
Many Christians affirm that something is the ‘God’s honest’ truth because it’s in the Bible, and the Bible is God’s Word. Then, when someone asks how we know that the Bible is God’s Word, their answer is ‘The Bible tells us so’. This is known as a ‘circular argument’, meaning that something points back to itself to validate a point which it makes. This is like someone saying, ‘You can believe me because I am telling you the truth’. ‘Well, how can we know that?’ we ask. ‘Because I said it, and I never tell a lie’, the person responds. Well, how do we know? The person may indeed be telling the truth, but we need more, just as we need more than ‘The Bible tells us that it is the Word of God’. For example, if we made inquiries into the character of the one who claimed to be honest, and could find nothing but affirmation, then we would have confidence in that person’s claim. So, let’s inquire about the claim that the Bible is the Word of God.
In the first place, the Bible really says that the scriptures (not the Bible) are the Word of God. For example, Paul wrote in his second letter to Timothy, ‘All scripture is inspired by God’ (2 Timothy 3:16). It’s important to remember that Paul is referring to what we call the Old Testament, which is what the Jewish people and early Christians believed was the revealed Word of God. Today, we consider Paul’s letters to be the revealed Word of God, but it would be a stretch to imagine that Paul believed that his letters were instantly scripture as inerrant as the books of Genesis, Exodus or the Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
In fact, Paul’s letters were not ‘officially’ declared to be sacred scripture and part of the Bible until the Catholic Church defined clearly what the books of the Old and New Testaments were in the late fourth century. However, to say that the Bible is God’s revealed Word simply because the Church says so is another circular argument. We need more, and we have it, and that more is Jesus, the lynchpin which holds all the claims together.
First, there’s been no one like Jesus in the history of the world. No one put this better than James Allen Francis in his prose poem ‘One Solitary Life’ (1926):
He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never set foot in a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He never wrote a book, or held an office. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. While he was still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends deserted him. He was turned over to his enemies, and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for the only property he had --- a coat. When he died, he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave.
Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever sailed, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as this ‘One Solitary Life’.
Why does this poem ring so true, and why did Jesus’ life have such an impact? Because he claimed to be the Divine Son of God, and he is (John 10:30). He said that he would rise from the dead, and he did (John 2:19). He told the apostles, the first priests and bishops, that he would send them the Holy Spirit and lead them to all truth (John 6:13). He appointed Peter the first Pope and gave him and the Church the authority to make binding decisions (Matthew 16:17-19).
No founder or figure of any other major world religion claimed to be divine --- not Abraham, Moses, Buddha or Mohammed. None of then ever rose from the dead. Only Jesus did, the one who lived that One Solitary Life. As an observant Jew and rabbi, he believed and taught that the Old Testament is God’s Word (John 10:35), and as the keystone of the Church, he promised to lead his people to know what his revealed Word would be in the New Testament, as it did through the first four centuries after his life, death and resurrection.
And that is the case (my case, at least) for the Bible being the revealed Word of God.