I. WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
Bible = biblos (GK), meaning “book”.
It is the Book of Books, a library of sorts containing all that God wants us to know about Him.
The BIBLE is the inexhaustible word in which God appears, God speaks, God acts. God’s Presence pervades the book and in it God reveals all that He is and permits us to know.
The BIBLE is everything we need to know about God because God makes Himself known to us.
In the BIBLE humanity also views itself; God presents all human potentiality and all human frailty.
II. HOW DID THE BIBLE COME TO BE?
St. Thomas Aquinas: “The Holy Spirit is the principle author of the Scriptures; men were His instruments.”
The Holy Spirit animated the supernatural impulse moving sacred writers to write and help them in their composition in such ways that they could conceive exactly and report faithfully and express without error all that God commanded them to write and nothing else.
God did not dictate His Word in a succession of mediums in trances. Even paintings that depict an angel whispering in an evangelist’s ear the text he is in the process of writing, although admissible in a symbolic sense, runs the risk of giving a false idea of inspiration.
In order to bring the Bible into existence, the Holy Spirit used men as His instruments. Each of them retained their personality, distinctive characteristics, talents, geniuses, habits of thoughts and stylistic abilities. God did not destroy or infringe the faculties of those whose function it was to put His message into words.
God enthused / excited / inspired the sacred writers to write. They did not conjure the idea to do it not do they add any of their own comments.
There are innumerable passages in Scripture showing the irresistible affect of the Holy Spirit on those possessed by Him. For example, the Spirit “pounces” on Samuel and enters him. The prophet cannot escape the task he is inspired to perform. So it is with the writers of God’s Word.
Amos and so many other prophets exclaim: “If the Lord speaks, who shall resist?”
Last Sunday, Jeremiah: “it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.”
The Church authoritatively declared what is authentic e.g. the books contained within the Book
III. WHAT IS TRUE IN THE BIBLE?
Everything! All of God’s Word is true.
God cannot be deceived. God cannot deceive us. His word ALWAYS is truth. If GOD moves an author to write His name, He cannot allow Him to teach falsity.
The charism of inspiration (above) is accompanied by the privilege of inerrancy. The Church as taught this from the beginning.
Scripture teaches the truth. The Bible is the word of God and God is truth. Every part of Scripture enjoys the privilege of inerrancy e.g. not limited to certain parts of the Scriptures e.g. only moral parts of dogmatic parts
It also is forbidden to hold there can be errors of fact in the perspective adopted by the sacred writer.
NEXT WEEK (Tue) September 8 8PM “Little Flower Live” – How Do We Rightly Read and Understand God’s Word?
