Dei Verbum Chapter III
paragraph 11
Have you ever been in a situation to give someone advice and
in the middle of it came up with some brilliant insight after which you
thought, “Where the get out did THAT come from?” Maybe it was what God wanted that person to
hear and you were the instrument.
In a somewhat similar way (only much more dramatically so)
we affirm that, although humans put hand to pen and paper and went through the
action of doing the actual writing, it was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
that caused to be written what was written as Scripture. Not so much that they were simply enlightened
but that the Holy Spirit flowed through them and on to the paper so to speak
far beyond simply being a muse.
Therefore we emphatically state that the author of the Scriptures was ultimately
God Who caused to be written what is needed, no more and no less.
As such we recognize the entire canon of Scripture which was
brought together (ironically for Protestants) by the Catholic Church using
Sacred Tradition. There was no single
canon of the Old Testament at the time of Jesus. The Christian Old Testament canon came to
form in the fourth century and the New Testament canon after that. It remains unchanged in the Catholic Church
to this day though 500 years ago certain books were removed from the Old
Testament by Martin Luther for Protestant Catholics. It should also be noted that he wished to
remove some of the New Testament books also (such as James) but was persuaded
against such action.
Interestingly there are some things in your Bible that are
NOT considered inspired. Some of the
more obvious ones are the verse numbers and such. There are other things, however, that are
less obvious. For example, the titles of
the books are not necessarily inspired.
Who the authors are of the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles is not
inspired and in some circles debated. In
another twist of irony, it is Catholic Tradition that states the actual authors
of the Gospels to be Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
To be steeped in history is to cease being Protestant.
1 comment:
Protestant Catholics? Am I missing something here?
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