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Chapter 3. Proclaim the Gospel to Every Creature • 27
human authors, acting in and through them. Thus, God ensured that the
authors taught, without error, those truths necessary for our salvation.
Inspiration
is the word used for the divine assistance given to the human
authors of the books of Sacred Scripture. This means that guided by the
Holy Spirit, the human authors made full use of their talents and abili-
ties while, at the same time, writing what God intended. There are many
in modern society who find incredible the belief that Scripture contains
the inspired word of God and so reject the Bible as a collection of stories
and myths. There are others who profess belief in the Triune God and
are even identified as “Scripture scholars”who work to “demythologize”
the Scriptures, that is, they remove or explain away the miraculous as
well as references to God’s revealing words and actions. It is important
to understand in the face of such challenges to Scripture that it is not
simply the work of human authors as some critics allege, but truly the
Word and work of God.
INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE
When interpreting Scripture, we should be attentive to what God wanted
to reveal through the authors for our salvation. We need to see Scripture
as a unified whole with Jesus Christ at the center. We must also read
Scripture within the living Tradition of the whole Church, so that we may
come to grasp a true interpretation of the Scriptures. The task of giving
an authoritative interpretation of the Word of God has been entrusted to
the Magisterium. Last, we need to remember and recognize that there is a
coherence of the truths of faith within Scripture (cf. CCC, nos. 112-114).
The Church recognizes two senses of Scripture, the literal and the
spiritual. In probing the literal meaning of the texts, it is necessary to
determine their literary form, such as history, hymns, wisdom sayings,
poetry, parable, or other forms of figurative language. “The
literal sense
is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by
exegesis [the process scholars use to determine the meaning of the text],
following the rules of sound interpretation: ‘All other senses of Sacred
Scripture are based on the literal’” (CCC, no. 116, citing St. Thomas
Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae
I, 1, 10).