The Protestant Reformers said that the Bible is the only source of the truths of faith, and that to understand its message you only have to read the words of the text. This is what is called the Protestant theory of sola scriptura, or in Spanish “the Bible alone. ” According to this theory, no non-biblical authority can impose an interpretation, and no extra-biblical institution – for example the Church – has been established by Jesus Christ to serve as an arbitrator in case of conflicts of interpretation.
As good heirs of the Reformers, the fundamentalist sects work on the basis of this theory, and do not miss the opportunity to bring out its principle, which on the other hand would seem to be their most effective weapon, something that they accept as the indisputable foundation of their views.
However, there is nothing more difficult in dialogue with fundamentalists than wanting to make them demonstrate why they believe in the principle that the Bible alone, separated from any other source of authority, is sufficient in matters of faith. The question boils down to knowing what reason a fundamentalist has for believing that the Bible is an inspired book, since it is obvious that it can be taken as a rule of faith only in the event that its inspiration, and therefore its inerrancy, can be proven.
Of course, this is an issue that does not concern most Christians much, and certainly few have ever given it any attention. In general, the Bible is believed because it is the book accepted by all Christians, whose authority is not disputed; We still live in times when Christian principles influence the culture and environment in which most people live.
A lukewarm Christian who would not give even the slightest credibility to the Qur’an would think twice before speaking ill of the Bible, since it enjoys a certain prestige, even if he cannot explain it or understand it very much. It could be said that this person accepts the Bible as inspired – whatever his understanding of inspiration – for cultural reasons, reasons that, without a doubt, are of little or no value, since for the same reasons the Qur’an should be considered inspired in countries of Muslim culture.
“For me it is reason enough”
The same can be said to those who maintain that the family in which one came into the world always had the Bible as an inspired book, and “for me that is enough. ” It would be a good reason only for those who cannot do serious work of reflection, and we should never despise a simple faith, sustained on rather weak foundations. But be that as it may, mere family or local custom cannot be established as the basis for believing in the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture.
Some sectarians say that the Bible is an inspired book because “it is a book that inspires. ” But the word inspiration is precisely what we want to prove, and let us keep in mind that there are many very ancient religious writings that are certainly more “inspired” or “emotive” than many texts, even entire books, of the Old Testament. It is no disrespect to claim that certain parts of the sacred writings are as dry as military statistics would be;and some parts of the Bible (Old Testament) are just that, military statistics!
Therefore, let us conclude that it is not enough to believe in the Holy Scripture for cultural reasons or custom, nor for its emotional texts or its spiritual beauty: there are other books, some completely secular, that surpass many passages of Scripture in poetic beauty.
What does the Bible say about itself?
And what can we say about what the Bible itself teaches about its inspiration?Let us note that there are very few passages where the Bible itself teaches its inspiration, even indirectly, and the majority of the books of the Old and New Testament say absolutely nothing about its inspiration. In fact, no author of the books of the New Testament claims to be writing under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, except Saint John when writing the Apocalypse.
Furthermore, in the supposed case that each book of the Bible began with the phrase: ” This book is inspired by God”, such a phrase would prove nothing: the Qur’an claims to be inspired, the Book of Mormon, several books of some Eastern religions. Furthermore, the books of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and Ellen G. White, founder of Seventh-day Adventism, declare themselves inspired. It can be concluded, with a fair amount of common sense, that the fact that a writing is attributed qualities of divine inspiration does not mean that it is so.
When these arguments fail, many fundamentalists go back and tell us that “the Holy Spirit tells me clearly that the Bible is inspired”, a rather subjective notion, to say the least, very similar to that other one, so common among sectarians, that “the Holy Spirit guides them to interpret the Scriptures. ” And so, the anonymous author of the article ” How Can I Understand the Bible,” a pamphlet distributed by the evangelical organization ” Radio Bible Class” lists twelve rules for studying the Bible. The first is ” Seek the help of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was given to illuminate the Scriptures and make them come alive for you when you study them: let Him guide you. ”
If with this rule it is understood that any person who asks God for guidance in interpreting the Bible will receive that guidance from above – and in this sense most fundamentalists understand it – then the multiplicity of contrary and contradictory interpretations, even among the Fundamentalists themselves, would give the worrying sensation that the Holy Spirit has not been doing its job well…
Not with syllogisms
Many fundamentalists do not directly say that the Holy Spirit spoke to them, assuring them that the Bible is an inspired book. At least they don’t talk that way. Rather, it happens like this: when reading the Bible the Spirit “convinces” them that it is the Word of God, they receive a certain inner sensation that it is a divine word, and that’s it.
Any way you look at it, the fundamentalist position does not stand up to serious reasoning. There are few fundamentalists who initially approach the Bible as a “neutral” book, and after reading it recognize it as such, following logical reasoning. In fact, fundamentalists begin by assuming the fact of inspiration, just as they take other doctrines of their sects without reasoning about them, and then they find parts of the Holy Scripture that seem to substantiate inspiration, thus falling into a vicious circle, confirming with the Bible what they believe in advance.
The person who wants to seriously reflect on the subject will be disappointed with the fundamentalist position of biblical inspiration, realizing that he does not have a solid basis to maintain that theory. The Catholic position is the only one that, in the end, can provide an intellectually satisfactory answer.
The Catholic way of reasoning to demonstrate that the Bible is inspired is the following: in a first step we consider the Bible like any other historical book, without presuming that it is inspired. Studying the biblical text with the instruments of modern science we come to the conclusion that it is a reliable work, of great historical precision, whose precision far exceeds that of any other historical text.
A precise text
Sir Frederic Kenyon, in The Story of the Bible, notes the following: ” For all works of classical antiquity we are forced to turn to manuscripts written long after the original. The author who leads the way in this sense is Virgil, even though the oldest manuscript of him that we possess was written 350 years after his death. For all other classical works, the interval between the date of the original writing and that of the oldest surviving manuscript of it is much greater: for Livy it is about500 years, for Horace 900, for most of Plato’s works it is 1300, for Euripides 1600. ” Still, no one seriously questions the fact that we possess faithful copies of the works of these authors.
Not only do we possess biblical manuscripts closer to the originals than those of classical antiquity, but we possess a much greater number than those. Some of these manuscripts are entire books, others are fragments, others just a few words, but all of them together add up to thousands of manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac and other languages. All this means that we have a rigorously faithful text, and we can work with it with complete confidence.
Historically considered
In a second moment we direct our attention to what the Bible, considered only as a historical book, teaches us, particularly in the New Testament and the Gospels. We examine the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Using what the Gospels transmit to us, what we read in other extra-biblical writings of the first centuries and what our own nature teaches us – and what we can know about God through the light of reason – we conclude that Jesus was either what he said he was – God – or he was crazy.(We know that there could not have been just a good man who was not God, because no good man claims to be God if he is not.)
We can also exclude that he was a madman, not only because of what he said and taught – no madman ever spoke as he did, although neither did a sane man ever speak like that… -, but because of what his followers did after his death. A fraud (the supposedly empty tomb) is understandable, but no one gives their life for a fraud, at least for one that has no prospect of profit. In conclusion, we must affirm that Jesus truly rose from the dead, and therefore was God, as he claimed, and did what he promised he would do.
Another thing that he said he would do is found his Church, and both from the Bible (still taken as a simple historical book, not as a book inspired by God) and from other ancient historical sources we know that Christ established a Church with the notes that we see today in the Catholic Church: papacy, hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, authority to teach and as a consequence of the latter, infallibility. The Church of Christ must enjoy infallibility of teaching if it was to fulfill that for which Christ founded it.
We have taken purely historical matter and have concluded that there is a Church, the Catholic Church, protected by the Holy Spirit so that it can teach until the end of time without error. Let us then go to the last part of the argument.
That Church tells us that the Bible is inspired, and we can trust its teaching because it is an authoritative, infallible teaching. Only after we have been taught by an authority properly constituted by God to transmit to us the truths necessary for our faith, such as the inspiration of the Bible, only then can we use the Scriptures as an inspired book.
A spiral argument
It should be noted that our argument does not fall into a vicious circle: we are not basing the inspiration of the Bible on the infallibility of the Church and the infallibility of the Church on the inspired word of the Bible; That would be precisely a vicious circle. What we have done is called a spiral argument: on the one hand we have argued about the reliability of the Bible as a purely historical text; From there we know that Jesus founded an infallible Church, and only then we take the word of that infallible Church that teaches us that the word that the Bible transmits to us is an inspired word, the Word of God. It is not a closed circle, since the final conclusion (the Bible is the Word of God) is not the statement from which we start (the Bible is a historically reliable book), and this initial statement is not based at all on the final conclusion. What we have shown is that, if we exclude the Church, we do not have sufficient reasons to affirm that the Bible is the Word of God.
Of course, what we have just discussed is not exactly the reasoning that people usually make when approaching the Bible, but it is the only reasonable way to do it, when it comes to asking ourselves why we believe in the Bible. All other reasoning is insufficient; Maybe there are arguments that are closer to people from a psychological point of view, but they are strictly unconvincing arguments. In mathematics we accept “by faith” (not in the theological sense of the term, of course) that two plus two equals four. It is a truth that seems obvious and satisfactory to us without too many arguments, but anyone who wants to study mathematics teaching will have to study an entire semester trying to prove these “obvious” truths.
Inadequate reasons
The point here is this: fundamentalists are quite right in believing that the Bible is a book inspired by God, but their reasons for believing this are inadequate, insufficient, since acceptance of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures can be satisfactorily based only on an authority established by God to assure us of this, and that authority is the Church.
And precisely here we come to a more serious problem: it may seem to some that as long as I believe in the Bible as the Word of God it matters little why I believe it: the important thing is that I accept the Bible as the Word of God. But why a person believes the Bible substantially affects how he or she interprets the Bible. The Catholic believer believes in the Bible because the Church teaches him so, and that same Church has the authority to interpret the inspired text. Fundamentalists, for their part, believe in the Bible – although based on unconvincing arguments – but have no other authority to interpret the biblical text except their own points of view.
Cardinal Newman expressed it in 1884 in the following way: “Certainly, if the biblical revelations and teachings of the sacred text are addressed to us in a personal and practical way, the formal presence in our midst of an authoritative judge and expositor of those revelations and teachings becomes imperative. It is antecedently irrational to suppose that a book so complex, so unsystematic, in parts so obscure, the fruit of so many different minds, places and times, should have been given to us from above without an interpretive authority, since we cannot expect it to interpret itself. The fact that it is an inspired book assures us of the truth of its content, not of its interpretation. How can the simple reader distinguish what is didactic from what is historical, what is fact from what is vision, what is allegorical from what is literal, what is an idiomatic device and what is grammatical, what is formally stated from what occurs in passing, which obligations always bind and which bind only in certain circumstances? The last three centuries have sadly shown that in many countries private interpretation of Scripture has prevailed. The gift of the divine inspiration of Scripture requires, as an obligatory complement, the gift of the infallibility of its interpretation.”
The advantages of Catholic reasoning are twofold: first, inspiration is strictly demonstrated, not just “felt.” Second, the main fact behind this reasoning – the existence of an infallible, teaching Church – leads us as if by hand to give an answer to the question of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:31): How do we know which interpretations of the text are correct? The same Church that authenticates the Bible, that establishes its inspiration, is the authority established by Jesus Christ to interpret his Word.
Source: Catholic Answers
