Divine Revelation and Our Assent

"If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it's not the gospel you believe, but yourself"
~ St. Augustine

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A question has been posed to me of late, that has (as often happens) caused me to dive into deeper waters in search of an adequate response: 

What are the relationships between Scripture, the Church, and our faith in Jesus Christ? In particular, how do Catholics read the Bible, why do they accept the Pope/bishops/Magisterium, and why is Catholic worship not centered on the Word of God (ie, the Bible)? 

While I am continuing to formulate my own understanding of these questions, I thought these questions to be good ones for all of us - believers in the entirety of Catholicism or not - to consider. For it cuts to the very heart of what it means to be Catholic, to actually embrace and assent to the Catholic Church and what it means in the fullest sense to belong to her. 

The crucial point to remember is that the dogmas and doctrines of the Church are not mere entities that jumble together, like Lego blocks stacked in one shape or the other with various connections depending on the person's own belief of how they fit. No, the Church has always held that there is ONE Truth, and that is the Person of Jesus Christ. All Divine Revelation is indeed solely Him, expressed in various ways but primarily in the twin pillars of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Thus we as Catholics do not believe in one doctrine of papal authority and one doctrine of scriptural inerrancy - combining them however we might think they should mix. It is rather that our Catholic faith is of one piece: we accept all of it and hold all of the Church's teachings simultaneously, through our one faith in Jesus Christ and our assent to all which flows out of that stream of faith.


This is the ongoing struggle of Protestantism, which split from Catholicism with desires to hold only one or a few of the truths of faith, but ignoring or rejecting others - and so the process of splintering and splitting and kicking out pastors and creating new churches goes on and on and on... until at last you end up with the Unitarians that are united only in their belief that they are called Unitarians. The very first split determines the ultimate result: each person being their own "pope" and their own preacher and teacher, subject to no one and no religious authority but themselves, holding only a vague notion that "God speaks to me Himself" (except there is no justification for this belief in Scripture... those who heard God directly always received ratification of this from His ecclesial authorities, and under normal conditions the will and actions of God, and Jesus Himself in the Gospels, were mediated through His priests and those He commissioned as prophets, apostles, and bishops! What grounds do we have to think we are otherwise?). This is not the fullness of faith that Christ instituted in the gathering and sending of His apostles and disciples. Thus, it is the very fact that Catholic theology is a "seamless garment" encompassing so many seemingly diverse beliefs and practices that has caused so many people to reconsider the seemingly outrageous claims the Church makes in light of the wholeness of faith she professes... and then assent to them.


Thus to answer in a brief way the questions posed above: 

1) We do more than read the Bible, we truly "read" the Bible in everything that we do as Catholics, from our liturgical expression of our faith to our personal prayer to our spontaneous prayer to our understanding of the very purpose of life. 

2) We accept the Pope/bishops/Magisterium because a) Jesus entered the world within the context of the Jewish tradition and this fundamental ecclesial framework did not change in the early church, b) the early church, clearly led by Peter and the apostolic tradition, gave us the oral tradition which became the Sacred Scriptures compiled into what we know as the Bible, under God's authority, and c) the Bible itself speaks of the need to be interpreted and taught in accordance with the tradition. 

3) Catholic worship is completely, totally and utterly centered on the Word of God because it is completely centered on the Person of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice to the Father by which the gates of heaven are opened to us... We do not simply go to a place and read aloud Scripture (though we do that too, and not just in two or three readings, but throughout all the responses and prayers of the liturgy) or listen to someone speak to the power of God in their lives (though we often hear that too in our homilies), or do certain actions that are only symbols of our individual beliefs (though many of our actions are symbolic, we do them believing that they are more than symbols - they actually effect what they symbolize). The whole purpose of Catholic worship is to come together to be united in actual participation WITH the sole Word of God, in His Scripture and in His Person, as connected to Him as the head is connected to the body, as He worships the Father according to the Father's will. Wow.

As always, I caution the reader that I am merely a lay person who has tried to work through the issues of faith in Jesus Christ, have come to accept the Catholic Church, and have long considered what she teaches. To the best of my understanding I write, but what I have written is still very inadequate in conveying this understanding... and of course I am only trying to explain authority, not be an authority! However, being a part of the universal Church means that I am not in this alone, thank heavens. =) Here are two online resources I've found recently, dealing with Scripture, the Church and the Magisterium (the ecclesial authorities that we grant our assent to) that I hope may be of more usefulness to you than my own feeble words:


1) Dei Verbum ("On the Word of God", from the Second Vatican Council) is the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, expressing in particular the Catholic belief in the place and role of Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church and in each Christian.

In particular, read it while keeping this part in mind: 

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develop in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. (5) For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.

2) "On the Inspiration of Scripture" by Cardinal Newman, written in 1884 and dealing with the primary issues of Scriptural inerrancy and papal infallibility, and the overall question of authority and dogmatic belief within the Church.

Of which he begins his main discussion by stating:

I answer that there are two such dogmas; one relates to the authority of Scripture, the other to its interpretation. As to the authority of Scripture, we hold it to be, in all matters of faith and morals, divinely inspired throughout; as to its interpretation, we hold that the Church is, in faith and morals, the one infallible expounder of that inspired text.

Just beautiful - Newman wrote this around the time of the First Vatican Council, and so many of his arguments and trains of thought show influence from both the thinking of those great fathers of the Church and the teachings of the Council of Trent a few centuries earlier (1500s).

Want more? Try getting copies of:

* Transformed by Grace: Scripture, Sacraments and the Sonship of Christ 
* The Word, Church and Sacraments in Protestantism and Catholicism
* The Sources of Catholic Dogma

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