![]() ![]() ![]() The phrase "heart of Christ" can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known his heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure. Different as the books which compose it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God's plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover. Be especially attentive "to the content and unity of the whole Scripture". The Second Vatican Council indicates three criteria for interpreting Scripture in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it. ![]() "Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written." 77 ![]() "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression." 76ġ11 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. 75ġ10 In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words. THE HOLY SPIRIT, INTERPRETER OF SCRIPTUREġ09 In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. 73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open minds to understand the Scriptures." 74 "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures." 72ġ08 Still, the Christian faith is not a "religion of the book." Christianity is the religion of the "Word" of God, a word which is "not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living". "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more." 71ġ07 The inspired books teach the truth. "For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself." 70ġ06 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. "The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit." 69 INSPIRATION AND TRUTH OF SACRED SCRIPTUREġ05 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. 67 "In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them." 68 66ġ04 In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, "but as what it really is, the word of God". She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body. 65ġ03 For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body. CHRIST - THE UNIQUE WORD OF SACRED SCRIPTUREġ01 In order to reveal himself to men, in the condescension of his goodness God speaks to them in human words: "Indeed the words of God, expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like men." 63ġ02 Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely: 64 You recall that one and the same Word of God extends throughout Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers, since he who was in the beginning God with God has no need of separate syllables for he is not subject to time. Catechism of the Catholic Church - PART 1 SECTION 1 CHAPTER 2 ARTICLE 3 CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ![]()
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