The Church and the Bible

The Church, as we have just seen, is the only Divinely constituted teacher of Revelation.

Now, the Scripture is the great depository of the Word of God. Therefore, the Church is the divinely appointed Custodian and Interpreter of the Bible. For, her office of infallible Guide were superfluous if each individual could interpret the Bible for himself.

That God never intended the Bible to be the Christian's rule of faith, independently of the living authority of the Church, will be the subject of this chapter.

No nation ever had a greater veneration for the Bible than the Jewish people. The Holy Scripture was their pride and their glory. It was their national song in time of peace; it was their meditation and solace in time of tribulation and exile. And yet the Jews never dreamed of settling their religious controversies by a private appeal to the Word of God.

Whenever any religious dispute arose among the people, it was decided by the High Priest and the Sanhedrim, which was a council consisting of seventy-two civil and ecclesiastical judges. The sentence of the High Priest and of his associate judges was to be obeyed under penalty of death. “If thou perceive,” says
the Book of Deuteronomy, “that there be among you a hard and doubtful matter in judgment, … thou shalt come to the Priests of the Levitical race and to the judge, … and they shall show thee the truth of the judgment…. And thou shalt follow their sentence;““… you must not turn aside to the right or to the left. But anyone who presumes to disobey the priest appointed to minister there to the Lord your God, or the judge, that person shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.”¹³⁵

From this clear command, you see that God does not refer the Jews to the written law for resolving their disputes, but rather to the living authority of the ecclesiastical tribunal, which He had explicitly established for that purpose.

Hence, the priests were required to be thoroughly acquainted with the Sacred Scripture, because they were the guardians of God’s law, and its authorised interpreters to the people. “For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.”¹³⁶

Indeed, very few among the children of Israel, apart from the priests, possessed the Divine Books. The holy manuscripts were rare and precious. So what provision did God make to ensure that all the people might have the opportunity to hear the Scriptures? Did He command the sacred text to be widely reproduced? No. Instead, He ordered the priests and Levites to be dispersed among the various tribes, that they might always be available to instruct the people in the knowledge of the law.

The Jews were even forbidden to read certain parts of Scripture until they had reached the age of thirty.

Does our Saviour reverse this order when He comes to earth? Does He exhort the Jews to become their own guides in reading the Scriptures? Certainly not. Instead, He instructs them to obey their established teachers, regardless of the scandal caused by the teachers’ private conduct. “Then Jesus said to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat.’”

“All things therefore whatsoever they tell you to do, do and observe.”¹³⁷

It is true that our Lord said on one occasion: “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.”¹³⁸ This passage is often quoted triumphantly as an argument in favour of private interpretation. But it proves nothing of the kind. Many learned commentators, both ancient and modern, render the verb in the indicative mood: “You search the Scriptures.” At any rate, our Saviour is here referring only to the Old Testament, as the New Testament had not yet been written.

He addresses not the multitude, but the Pharisees, who were the teachers of the law, and reproaches them for not recognising His Divinity. “You have,” He says, “the Scriptures in your hands; why then do you not acknowledge Me as the Messiah, since they bear witness that I am the Son of God?” He refers them to the Scriptures as one proof of His Divinity, not as a source from which they were to derive all knowledge concerning the truths of revelation.

Moreover, He did not rest the proof of His Divinity solely upon the testimony of Scripture. He demonstrated it:

First — By the testimony of John the Baptist (John 5:33), who had said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (cf. John 1:34).

Second — By the miracles which He performed (John 5:36).

Third — By the testimony of the Father (John 5:37), when He said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (cf. Matthew 3:16; Luke 9:35).

Fourth — By the Scriptures of the Old Testament; as if to say, “If you are unwilling to receive these three proofs, though they are most compelling, at least you cannot reject the testimony of the Scriptures, in which you take such pride.”

Finally, in this very passage, our Lord is explaining the sense of Holy Writ; therefore, its true meaning is not left to the private interpretation of every chance reader. It is, consequently, a grave perversion of the sacred text to invoke these words in support of the private interpretation of the Scriptures.

But when our Redeemer abolished the Old Law and established His Church, did He intend that His Gospel should be disseminated through the circulation of the Bible, or by the living voice of His disciples? This is a vital question. I answer most emphatically that it was by preaching alone that He intended to convert the nations, and by preaching alone they were converted. No nation has ever been converted by the efforts of Bible Associations.

Jesus Himself never wrote a line of Scripture. He never once commanded His Apostles to write a word,¹³⁹ or even to circulate the Scriptures already in existence. When He sends them on their apostolic mission, He says: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”¹⁴⁰ “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”¹⁴¹ “Whoever listens to you listens to me.”¹⁴² And we find the Apostles acting in strict accordance with these instructions.

Of the twelve Apostles, the seventy-two disciples, and the early followers of our Lord, only eight have left us any of their sacred writings. The Gospels and Epistles were addressed to particular persons or specific churches. They were composed in response to certain needs or emergencies—just as Bishops today issue Pastoral Letters to correct abuses that may arise in the Church, or to provide guidance for the faithful.

The Apostles are never recorded as having distributed even a single volume of Holy Scripture. Rather, “they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them.”¹⁴³

Thus we see that in both the Old and the New Dispensation, the people were to be guided by a living authority, and not by their private interpretation of the Scriptures.

Indeed, until the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, it was entirely unheard of—from the beginning of the world—that people should be governed by the dead letter of the law, whether in civil or ecclesiastical matters. How are your civil affairs regulated in this State, for instance? Certainly not according to your personal interpretation of the laws of Virginia, but in accordance with decisions rendered by the constituted judges of the State.

Now, what the civil code is to the citizen, the Scripture is to the Christian. The Word of God, like civil law, must have an authorised interpreter, whose judgment we are bound to accept.

We often hear the familiar phrase: “The Bible, and the Bible only, must be your guide.” Why, then, do you incur the needless expense of building fine churches and Sabbath-schools? What is the purpose of preaching sermons and catechising the young, if the Bible at home is a sufficient guide for your people? The fact is, you reverend gentlemen contradict in practice what you so vehemently assert in theory. Do not tell me that the Bible is all-sufficient; or, if you truly believe it is self-sufficient, cease your instructions. Stand not between the people and the Scriptures.

I shall now address myself, in a friendly spirit, to a non-Catholic, and proceed to show that he cannot consistently accept the silent Book of Scripture as his sufficient guide.

A copy of the sacred volume is handed to you by your minister, who says: “Take this book; you will find it all-sufficient for your salvation.” But here a serious difficulty presents itself at the very outset of your investigation. What assurance have you that the book he gives you is the inspired Word of God? For not every part of the Bible carries with it intrinsic proof of inspiration. It may, for all you know, contain more than the Word of God—or it may not contain all of it.

We must not suppose that the Bible was always, as it is now, a compact book, bound in a neat form. For several centuries, it existed in scattered fragments, spread across different parts of Christendom.

Meanwhile, many spurious books, falsely bearing the name of Scripture, were circulated among the faithful. There was, for instance, the so-called Gospel of St Peter; there was also a Gospel attributed to St James, and another to St Matthias.

The Catholic Church, in the plenitude of her authority, at the Third Council of Carthage (A.D. 397), separated the chaff from the wheat, declaring which books were Canonical and which were apocryphal. Even to this day, the various Christian sects do not agree among themselves regarding which books are to be accepted as genuine. Some Christians on the European continent have rejected the Gospels of St Mark and St Luke, on the grounds that these Evangelists were not themselves among the Apostles. Martin Luther even referred to the Epistle of St James as a “letter of straw.”

But even after you are assured that the Bible contains the Word of God, and nothing but the Word of God, how can you be certain that the translation is faithful? The Books of Scripture were originally written in Hebrew and Greek, and you possess only a translation. Before you can affirm that the translation is accurate, you would need to study both Hebrew and Greek, and then compare the translation with the original text. How few are truly capable of such a vast undertaking!

In truth, when you accept the Bible as the Word of God, you are relying upon the authority of the Catholic Church, who was the sole Guardian of the Scriptures for fifteen hundred years.

Even after having satisfied yourself that the translation is accurate, the Scriptures still cannot serve as a complete Rule of Faith or as a full guide to salvation without an authorised, living interpreter.

A competent guide—the kind our Lord intended for us—must possess three characteristics:

It must be within the reach of everyone;
It must be clear and intelligible;
It must be able to provide answers to all questions relating to faith and morals.

First — A complete guide to salvation must be within the reach of every inquirer after truth; for God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”¹⁴⁴ Therefore, He must have made available to all the means of arriving at that truth.

Now, it is evident that the Scriptures could not, at any period, have been accessible to everyone.

They were certainly not accessible to the early Christians, since not all of them were written until long after the foundation of Christianity. The Christian religion was established in the year 33. St Matthew's Gospel, the earliest portion of the New Testament, did not appear until eight years later. St Luke wrote his Gospel when the Church was already about twenty years old, and St John’s Gospel was not completed until near the end of the first century.

For many years after the Gospels and Epistles were written, their knowledge was confined to the individual churches to which they had been addressed. It was not until the close of the fourth century that the Church assembled her Canon of Scripture and declared the Bible, as we now possess it, to be the authentic and complete Word of God.

And this—this was the golden age of Christianity! The holiest Christians lived, died, and were received into heaven before the most important parts of the Scriptures were ever written. What, then, would have become of them if the Bible alone had been their guide?

Furthermore, the art of printing was not invented until the fifteenth century (1440). From the fourth to the fifteenth century, it was utterly impossible to supply each individual with a copy of the Scriptures. During that entire period, Bibles had to be copied by hand. Only a few hundred copies existed throughout Christendom, and these were held exclusively by the clergy and the learned.

As was once said with irony: “According to the Protestant system, the art of printing would have been much more necessary to the Apostles than the gift of tongues.”

It was well for Luther that he did not come into the world until a century after the immortal invention of Gutenberg. Had he been born a hundred years earlier, his proposal to direct two hundred and fifty million people to read the Bible would have been met with derisive laughter, and would almost certainly have resulted in his removal from the pulpit of Wittenberg to a hospital for the insane.¹⁴⁵

And even today, despite the advantages of steam printing presses, and despite the extensive reach of Bible Societies in this country and in England—organisations supported at immense cost—it still requires tremendous effort to supply every missionary region with Bibles translated into the respective languages of the peoples and tribes for whom they are intended.

But even if the Bible had always been materially accessible to everyone, how many millions in every era and every nation, including our own age of so-called enlightenment, remain effectively inaccessible to it—simply because they cannot read the Word of God? The doctrine of private interpretation would thus render salvation not only difficult, but in many cases impossible.

Second — A competent religious guide must be clear and intelligible to all, so that everyone may fully comprehend the true meaning of its teachings. Is the Bible such a book? Far from it. It is filled with obscurities and difficulties, not only for the unlearned but even for the educated.

St Peter himself tells us that in the Epistles of St Paul, there are “some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.”¹⁴⁶ He further warns, “No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.”¹⁴⁷

We read in the Acts of the Apostles that a certain man was riding in his chariot, reading the Book of Isaiah. When asked by St Philip whether he understood the meaning of the prophecy, he replied: “How can I, unless someone guides me?”¹⁴⁸—thus admitting, with humble sincerity, that he did not presume to interpret the Scriptures on his own.

The Fathers of the Church, though many of them devoted their entire lives to the study of Sacred Scripture, are unanimous in declaring the Bible to be a book full of profound and difficult passages. Yet in our own times we find pedants—armed with nothing more than a superficial acquaintance with Biblical texts—who declare there to be no obscurities whatsoever in the Word of God, and who presumptuously attempt to expound it from Genesis to Revelation. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Does not the very conduct of the Reformers themselves conclusively expose the absurdity of private interpretation? As soon as they cast off the authority of the Church and elevated their private judgement as the ultimate standard, they found themselves unable to agree even on the meaning of a single key passage. The Bible, in their hands, became a second Babel.

Just as the sons of Noah, in their pride, attempted to ascend to heaven by building the tower of Babel—only to end in the confusion and division of tongues—so too, the children of the Reformation, in their pride, sought to guide souls to heaven by private interpretation of Scripture, and their efforts led to confusion and the multiplication of sects.

Let me provide one example among thousands. The Gospel words, “This is my body,” were understood in only one sense before the Reformation. But the so-called reformers of the sixteenth century gave no fewer than eighty different interpretations of those four simple words—and since that time, the number has increased to over a hundred.

No one will deny that in our time, a vast multitude of sects exists, multiplying with every passing year. And no one will deny¹⁴⁹ that this proliferation of creeds is a scandal, and a serious stumbling block to the conversion of heathen nations.

No one can deny that these divisions within the Christian family are directly traceable to the assumption of the right of private judgement. Every newly emerged divine, armed with a superficial education, imagines himself to have received a heavenly calling to inaugurate a new religion. He is eager to secure his place in posterity by attaching his name to a newly formed sect. And yet, every one of these architects of modern creeds appeals to the unchanging Bible in defence of their ever-changing doctrines.

Thus, one group of Christians claims from the Bible that there is but one Person in God, while others claim from the very same source that a Trinity of Persons is a fundamental article of Divine Revelation. One asserts, with Bible in hand, that Jesus Christ is not God; another appeals to the same Scriptures to affirm His Divinity. One denomination declares, on the authority of Scripture, that infant baptism is not necessary for salvation, while others maintain that it is.

Some Christians, citing the Bible, insist that there are no sacraments; others say there are only two. Some deny that Scripture teaches the eternity of punishment, while others defend that doctrine as clearly Biblical. And do not preachers appear daily in the pulpit, announcing—on the authority of the Book of Revelation—the precise year and day of the world’s end? When their predictions inevitably fail, they simply postpone the destruction to another time, undeterred by their previous errors.

Only recently, several hundred Mormon women submitted a petition to the government at Washington, protesting against any interference with their abominable polygamy, and they insisted that their cherished institution is supported by the Word of God.

Such is the inevitable fruit of private interpretation.

Our civil government does not function by private judgement, but by the authority of its constituted officials. No rational person would allow our laws to be interpreted—or war to be declared—by sensationalist journals or by private individuals.

Why not apply the same principle to the interpretation of the Bible and the government of the Church?

Would it not be extremely hazardous to undertake a long voyage aboard a ship where the officers and crew are fiercely divided over how to interpret the compass and steer their course? How much more perilous is it to entrust your eternal journey to captains who are themselves in conflict! When the destination is heaven, nothing short of an infallible authority should suffice.

On so vital a matter as the salvation of your soul, there ought to be no contradiction, no uncertainty, no conjecture. There must be someone at the helm, whose voice, even amid the fiercest spiritual storms, offers clear and unwavering assurance: all is well.

Third — A rule of faith, or a competent guide to heaven, must be able to instruct in all truths necessary for salvation. Now, the Scriptures alone do not contain all the truths which a Christian is bound to believe, nor do they explicitly enjoin all the duties that he is obliged to practise.

Not to speak of other instances—consider this: is not every Christian obliged to sanctify Sunday and to abstain on that day from unnecessary servile work? Is not this observance among the most recognised and solemn of our Christian duties?

Yet you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorising the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures insist on the religious observance of Saturday—a day which we do not sanctify.

The Catholic Church rightly teaches that our Lord and His Apostles enjoined certain duties of religion which were not recorded by the inspired writers.¹⁵⁰ For example, most Christians pray to the Holy Spirit, a practice which is nowhere explicitly found in the Bible.

We must, therefore, conclude that the Scriptures alone cannot be a sufficient guide and rule of faith, because:

They cannot, at all times, be within the reach of every inquirer;
They are not, of themselves, clear and intelligible even on matters of the highest importance;
They do not contain all the truths necessary for salvation.

God forbid that any of my readers should be tempted to conclude, from what I have said, that the Catholic Church is opposed to the reading of the Scriptures, or that she is the enemy of the Bible. The Catholic Church, the enemy of the Bible? Good God! What monstrous ingratitude—what base calumny lies in such an assertion!

As well might one accuse the Blessed Virgin Mary of trying to crush the Infant Saviour at her breast, as accuse the Church, our Mother, of attempting to extinguish the Word of God. As well might you charge a patriotic statesman with trying to destroy the constitution of his country while he strives to protect it from being mutilated by unprincipled demagogues.

For fifteen centuries, the Church was the sole guardian and depository of the Bible. If she truly feared that sacred Book, who could have stopped her during all that time from tearing it into shreds and scattering it to the winds? She could have cast it into the sea, like an unnatural mother casting away her child—and who would have been the wiser?

What has become of the millions of once-celebrated books written in ages past? They have nearly all perished. And yet, amid the wreck of ancient literature, the Bible stands almost alone, like the Pyramids of Egypt amid the surrounding wastes. That venerable Volume has survived the wars, the revolutions, and the barbaric invasions of fifteen centuries.

Who rescued it from destruction? The Catholic Church.

Without her fostering care, the New Testament would likely be as little known today as *“the Book of the Days of the Kings of Israel.”*¹⁵¹

Little do we imagine, in our age of steam printing, how much labour it cost the Catholic Church to preserve and perpetuate the Sacred Scriptures. Learned monks, now maligned in their graves by thoughtless men, devoted their lives to copying by hand the Holy Bible. When one monk died at his post, another would take his place—watching like a faithful sentinel over the treasure of God’s Word.

Let me present a few plain facts to illustrate the great pains the Church has taken to preserve the Scriptures.

The Canon of the Bible, as we have seen, was framed in the fourth century. In that same century, Pope Damasus ordered that a new and complete translation of the Scriptures be made into the Latin language, which at the time was the living tongue not only of Rome and Italy, but of the entire civilised world.

If the Popes were truly afraid of letting the Bible see the light of day, then this was a most peculiar method of showing it.

The monumental task of preparing this new edition of the Scriptures was entrusted to St Jerome, the most learned Hebrew scholar of his age. This translation was then disseminated throughout Christendom and came to be known as the Vulgate, or popular edition.

In the sixth and seventh centuries, the modern languages of Europe began to emerge, like so many shoots from the Latin root. The Scriptures, too, soon found expression in these new tongues.

The Venerable Bede, who lived in England in the eighth century, and whose name continues to be held in high regard, translated the Sacred Scriptures into Saxon, the language of England at that time. He died while dictating the final verses of the Gospel of St John.¹

In a funeral discourse delivered in 1394, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, praised Queen Anne, the consort of Richard II, for her diligence in reading the Four Gospels. The Head of the Church of England could not condemn in others what he openly commended in the Queen.

Sir Thomas More affirms that, even before the days of Wycliffe, there existed an English version of the Scriptures, which was “well and reverently read by good and godly people with devotion and soberness.”¹⁵²

If partial restrictions were later placed upon the circulation of the Bible in England during the fifteenth century, these were not due to opposition to the Scriptures themselves, but were a response to the actions of Wycliffe and his followers. They not only issued a new translation embedded with their doctrinal innovations, but also sought to interpret the sacred text in ways foreign to the interpretation handed down through tradition.

While striving to disseminate the Word of God, it is both the duty and the right of the Church—as the guardian of the Faith—to ensure that the faithful are not misled by erroneous or corrupted editions.

Printing was invented in the fifteenth century, and it was nearly a century later that the Reformation began. It is often triumphantly asserted—and, astonishingly, some may still be uninformed enough to believe it—that the first edition of the Bible published after the invention of printing was the edition produced by Martin Luther.

The truth is quite different. Before Luther ever put pen to paper, no fewer than fifty-six editions of the Scriptures had already been published on the European continent—to say nothing of editions printed in Great Britain. Among these pre-Lutheran editions were:

Twenty-one in German,
One in Spanish,
Four in French,
Twenty-one in Italian,
Five in Flemish, and
Four in Bohemian.

Coming down to our own times, if you open an English Catholic Bible, you will find in the preface a letter from Pope Pius VI, in which he strongly encourages the devout reading of the Holy Scriptures. A papal letter carries the highest authority in the Church.

You will also find, in the preface to Haydock’s Bible, letters from the Bishops of the United States, in which they express their sincere hope that this splendid edition would enjoy wide circulation among their flocks.

These facts ought, I think, to convince every candid mind that the Catholic Church, far from being opposed to the reading of the Scriptures, does all she can to encourage their devout perusal.

A gentleman from North Carolina once told me that the first time he entered a Catholic bookstore, he was astonished to see upon the shelves an impressive array of Bibles for sale. Until that moment, he had believed the baseless accusation that Catholics were forbidden to read the Scriptures. He has since embraced the Catholic faith.

Perhaps I may be permitted here to record a personal experience gathered over the course of my long academic formation. I speak not because my case is exceptional, but rather because it serves to illustrate the consistent system employed in Catholic seminaries and colleges throughout the world with regard to the Holy Scriptures.

During our course in the Humanities, we listened daily to the reading of the Bible. When we advanced to higher studies in Philosophy and Theology, the study of Sacred Scripture formed a central and important part of our curriculum.

In addition, we read a chapter of the New Testament every day—not seated, not casually standing, but on our knees, and then reverently kissed the inspired page. At every meal, we listened to a reading from the Bible, and we always carried with us a personal copy of the New Testament.

The students became so thoroughly familiar with the sacred volume that many of them, upon hearing just a few verses, could instantly identify the book and chapter from which they were being read.

The only fear we were ever taught concerning the Scriptures was the fear of reading them without reverence and humility.

And after ordination, every Catholic priest is bound in conscience to devote at least one hour daily to the reading of the Word of God. I am not aware that clergy of other denominations are bound by a comparable obligation.

What is good for the clergy must be good also for the laity.

Be assured that if you become a Catholic, you will never be forbidden to read the Bible. It is our earnest and heartfelt desire that every word of the Gospel may be imprinted upon your memory and engraved upon your heart.

Reference:¹³⁵ Deuteronomy 17:8ff (NRSV-CE)
¹³⁶ Malachi 2:7 (NRSV-CE)

¹³⁷ Matthew 23:2–3 (NRSV-CE)
¹³⁸ John 5:39 (NRSV-CE)

¹³⁹ Except when He directed St. John to write the Apocalypse, i. 11.
¹⁴⁰ Matthew 28:19 (NRSV-CE)
¹⁴¹ Mark 16:15 (NRSV-CE)
¹⁴² Luke 10:16 (NRSV-CE)
¹⁴³ Mark 16:20 (NRSV-CE)

¹⁴⁴ 1 Timothy 2:4 (NRSV-CE)

¹⁴⁵ Martinet, Religion in Society, Vol. II, ch. 10
¹⁴⁶ 2 Peter 3:16 (NRSV-CE)
¹⁴⁷ 2 Peter 1:20 (NRSV-CE)

¹⁴⁸ Acts 8:31 (NRSV-CE)
¹⁴⁹ Except, perhaps, Rev. H. W. Beecher, who opined that God is glorified by the variety of sects.

¹⁵¹ 1 Kings 14:19 (NRSV-CE)

¹ See Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede's account of his final days.

¹⁵² Dialogue, Book III, ch. 14.