Christ With Us in the Scriptures

It occurred to the editors of Ibo that there was one basic question, so fundamental to the Christian life, that it demanded to be explored for greater profit of both ourselves and our faithful readers. Quite simply, the question was this: What are the ways Christ promised to be with us? “That’s so obvious!” the reader might cry. Perhaps. But it is nonetheless an important question. Unless we know the primary ways of encountering the living God in the bracing reality of our lives, the faith risks becoming an abstraction at best, an ideology at worst. There are four privileged ways we know of in which Christ manifests himself to his people in the here-and-now. Four writers are exploring these in a series of four short articles. The first is here, the second is here, the third is here. This is the fourth and final one.

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

(Image: redletterchristians.org)

Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. –St. Jerome

Every time we hear a reading from the Bible at mass, the lector concludes by saying, “The Word of the Lord,” and we respond, “Thanks be to God.” In this simple exchange, we acknowledge the centrality of the written texts of our faith in our experience of God. For although the Bible is a product of many human authors living in many concrete times and cultures, it is not merely a human book: we believe that in it, God reveals himself to his people. As taught by the Second Vatican Council, all parts of the Bible “have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself” (Dei Verbum, §11).

Thus, the Word of God as recorded in Sacred Scripture is one of the privileged ways that the Lord Jesus is with us. To explore this further, I would like to consider two traditional approaches to interpreting the text of the Bible. The first is as the Book of Scripture, complementary to the Book of Nature that is studied by the natural sciences. The second is the distinction between the literal and spiritual senses that coexist in the sacred writings.

Reading the Bible Literally … The Right Way

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Photo: Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty

So by false Learning is good Sense defac'd. – Pope

A couple of years ago when I was passing through Cincinnati, I made a visit to the nearby Creation Science Museum. It was an utterly fascinating experience. In this slick, state-of-the-art facility, one learns how God created the world six thousand years ago, making all the kinds of animals (including dinosaurs) on the sixth day. Then, one follows the exhibits chronologically through the first few chapters of Genesis. Videos, shiny displays and animatronic characters greet one along the way―including my favourite, a very life-like Methuselah, who asked each visitor, “Can you guess how old I am?”, and laughed jovially when his age was underestimated. Noah’s ark is given particular attention, from the details of its construction to how all the animals were fed en route. There is even speculation on how the door was sealed before the rain started, with a tentative conclusion that God probably did so by a direct miracle.

It is places like Creation Science Museum that we normally think of when we hear the phrase “taking the Bible literally”. However, many today would probably be surprised to learn that these contemporary, fundamentalist interpretations of Sacred Scripture are actually not literal readings of the Bible. The literal sense of scripture is something quite different, and has an ancient, venerable tradition in Christian theology.