Bible Interpretation

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Skipssong

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Hi,

I’ve just recently made my first contribution to the Forum using the New Member thread. I and still am amazed at the response and support I received - Thank You.

Now for the first tricky (for me) question in my re-education.

I work in the IT industry and one of the main failures in this industry (and many other industries I’m sure) is the human inability to accurately interpret specifications and requirements. It’s more or less a given that if it can be interpreted 5 ways it will be; the only correct interpretation being what the author intended and the only way of knowing the correct interpretation is a line by line, word by word walk through with the author.

Now please let me apply this to the Bible. If we accept, and we must, that the Bible is the word of God (i.e. God is the author) how can any man on earth be absolutely sure that their interpretation is correct and that all others are wrong. It seems to me that to be absoluetly sure we would need to truly understand God in all His wonderment; even Isaiah was forced to turn his face away from that.

I suppose that their is a possibility that when He shows us his true self when we are risen agian with Him we will get a better idea. But what chance do any of us have of truly understanding what God meant for us until then.

I’m not challenging anyone here. I’m just trying to find my way home and this time I want to understand the road that I’m on.

Mike
 
This is why Jesus gave us the Church, and its Magisterium in particular, to properly interpret the scriptures and has guaranteed that the Magisterium of the Church cannot teach in error on faith and morals.

Thus we take the framework of interpretation from the Church and apply it when we read scriptures to understand better how to interpret each passage and to delve into the depths of scriptural wisdom.
 
Your question is an excellent one. The correct interpretation of Scripture is very important, and Scripture discusses the interpretation of Scripture.

There are some fairly certain guides we can use. “You will know a tree by its fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit anymore than a bad tree can bear good fruit” Ultimately, the fruit is what defines the tree.

If your understanding of Scripture leads you to produce good fruit, you can be confident that your understanding is correct.

What is good fruit?

Do you help those around you who have immediate and real temporal needs? Do you practice honesty? Do you practice forgiveness? Your answers to these and similar questions should give you a clear idea of whether or not you are on the right path.

Peace

-Jim
 
The Biblle, while inerrant, does not “teach” anything. Because it can’t say to you, “this is what I meant.” But Christ established the Church to remain faithful to the truth He entrusted to it. So if someone, reading the Bible should say, “It means X,” the Church has the authority to say, “wait a minute. That’s not what was handed down to us. So it doesn’t mean X. It means Y. That is what we received and what we have always believed.”
 
exactly right. Look at the Tax Code, if everybody could read it and interpret it, we would have no need for accountants and tax lawyers, and your tax return would fit on a postcard.
 
skip;

You ask:
“how can any man on earth be absolutely sure that their interpretation is correct and that all others are wrong.”
No man can know with absolute certainty that their interpretation is correct and all others are wrong. However, Christ as husband and head of the church has promised to guide it to the end of time, and has guaranteed that He will not allow it to bind false doctrine on the faithful:

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” Mt 16:19

Any individual in the church, including the pope himself, can be mistaken in their interpretations of scripture. But no false interpretation will be allowed to be bound on the church.
 
I wish I had found you people years ago. Thank you so much for your thoughts. Please allow me to stretch this a little further.

Trogiah - you say:

*What is good fruit?

Do you help those around you who have immediate and real temporal needs? Do you practice honesty? Do you practice forgiveness? Your answers to these and similar questions should give you a clear idea of whether or not you are on the right path.*

Does this mean that there are no good Fudamentalists?

SteveT - your point:

Any individual in the church, including the pope himself, can be mistaken in their interpretations of scripture. But no false interpretation will be allowed to be bound on the church.

How do we know this? Proving a negative is always difficult.

Thanks again,

Mike
 
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Skipssong:
Hi,

I’ve just recently made my first contribution to the Forum using the New Member thread. I and still am amazed at the response and support I received - Thank You.

Now for the first tricky (for me) question in my re-education.

I work in the IT industry and one of the main failures in this industry (and many other industries I’m sure) is the human inability to accurately interpret specifications and requirements. It’s more or less a given that if it can be interpreted 5 ways it will be; the only correct interpretation being what the author intended and the only way of knowing the correct interpretation is a line by line, word by word walk through with the author.

Now please let me apply this to the Bible. If we accept, and we must, that the Bible is the word of God (i.e. God is the author) how can any man on earth be absolutely sure that their interpretation is correct and that all others are wrong. It seems to me that to be absoluetly sure we would need to truly understand God in all His wonderment; even Isaiah was forced to turn his face away from that.

I suppose that their is a possibility that when He shows us his true self when we are risen agian with Him we will get a better idea. But what chance do any of us have of truly understanding what God meant for us until then.

I’m not challenging anyone here. I’m just trying to find my way home and this time I want to understand the road that I’m on.

Mike
Click to expand...
Looking at your question again, and looking at the other responses to it - none of which seemed to give much encouragement for reading the Bible - I thought I would try again.

Your wording of the question seems to indicate that within any particular scripture verse, a face to face encounter with the Almighty would surely occur if the verse were accurately understood. The failure to have that encounter ( and most of us would likely fall short for any particular verse ) might also discourage a person from reading much Scripture.

A person shouldn’t expect the full revelation of God in any one particular verse. (Although there may be a few that would bring us close in some contexts.)

The message needs to be looked at as a whole if it is to be understood. A person may opt to not seek intellectual understanding of the Scripture message. Simply following the commandments of God and the Church will lead a person to Life.

However, if a person seeks intellectual understanding, (and isn’t that part of the greatest commandment, loving God …with all our mind…) than study of the Scriptures must be undertaken.

This study can undertaken with the assumption that greater understanding of Scripture can be achieved. Even if this understanding falls short of perfection, It will certainly be better than the understanding of one who doesn’t read it at all.

The Sermon on the Mount is an excellent section to study. The wealth of understanding of human nature that can be found there enlightens our understanding of the commandments and why we should follow them. This enlightenment will make us better followers of the commandments.

I am starting to ramble so let me finish by saying that attempts to understand Scripture are well worth making. They will not lead anyone away from the church. (although pride and ignorance might) They will very likely make a person stronger in their faith.

They will help a person understand the road home.

peace

-Jim
 
After the Lord rose from the dead he promised the apostles that the ‘Holy Spirit would lead them in all truth.’ Many of these same apostles were responsible for writing the New Testament, and as we find in the New Testament the apostles passed on their authority by the laying on of hands (apostolic succession). It is within this apostolic succession that we find the sure teaching and interpretation of the scriptures. not that any one priest or bishop has his own assurance of personal interpretation of the scriptures, but the pope in union with the bishops have been in entrusted by christ with the ‘end’ authority of interpretation. One must take into account that the magisterium is not free to disregaurd previous official Church interpretation of scripture. To put it bluntly in the form of a hypothetical; the magisterium has no authority to re-interpret scripture to as not teaching the reality of the trinity.:yup:
 
Is there any indication in the bible or church teaching that suggests what might happen the the prayers that are said for the soul of one in purgatory, if the soul is now already in Heaven? Thank you for any insight to this question.
T.A.Stobie:
This is why Jesus gave us the Church, and its Magisterium in particular, to properly interpret the scriptures and has guaranteed that the Magisterium of the Church cannot teach in error on faith and morals.

Thus we take the framework of interpretation from the Church and apply it when we read scriptures to understand better how to interpret each passage and to delve into the depths of scriptural wisdom.
Click to expand...
 
IN BRIEF

96 What Christ entrusted to the apostles, they in turn handed on by their preaching and writing, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to all generations, until Christ returns in glory.

97 “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God” (DV 10) in which, as in a mirror, the pilgrim Church contemplates God, the source of all her riches.

98 “The Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes” (DV 8 § 1).

99 Thanks to its supernatural sense of faith, the People of God as a whole never ceases to welcome, to penetrate more deeply and to live more fully from the gift of divine Revelation.

100 The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him.

scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a2.htm

wo distinct modes of transmission

81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."42

"And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching."43

82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence."44

CCC 74 to 133 would be well worth reading.

scborromeo.org/ccc/ccc_toc.htm
 
Mike:

How do we know this? Mt 16:19 promises it. See also Eph 5:

23] For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
24] As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
25] Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
26] that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
27] that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
28] Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29] For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church,
30] because we are members of his body.
31] “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
32] This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church"

Can anyone read that and still believe Christ would abandon His church to heresy?
 
I believe that this will be my last post for a while for I fear I am in danger of alienating myself.

SteveT - Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I agree with you these words are hard to argue with. Or is it simply that your interpretation, which I personally agree with, is hard to argue with. Either way we appear to be back with interpretation.

JGC - The Catechism. Based on the Bible but the word of man based on man’s interpretation. And it must be the word of man because it tells me that it benefits from " such a remarkable number of suggested improvements".

Improvements on the word of man I accept but not on the Word of God.

I fear my journey home could be longer than I had hoped but I am very very grateful for the time all of you have taken in responding to my initial question.

Time to pray hard I think.

Thank you all very much
 
For what its worth I found this piece in another thread immensly useful to the point that I feel it answers my question. I can’t tell you how much better I feel. Thank you all so much for your support.

rheims2000 wrote:

*That is why you are commanded not to read and interpret the bible for yourselves. First, you should start your bible reading in Second Peter where he commands that you are not to read the Epistles of St. Paul and interpret it by yourselves, lest you misinterpret the difficult text and fall into heresy.

In light of this statement, you then need to find who has the authority to interpret the text, so that you do not have one billion different people translating it a billion different ways.

It is pretty vain in my view for us to claim that, although the bible is thousands of years old, written in ancient Greek and Hebrew, and translated into the vernacular by hundreds of different people in hundreds of different ways, that we think we know what it means.

The pillar and bullwork of the truth is what according to the scriptures?*
 
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Skipssong:
For what its worth I found this piece in another thread immensly useful to the point that I feel it answers my question. I can’t tell you how much better I feel. Thank you all so much for your support.

rheims2000 wrote:

That is why you are commanded not to read and interpret the bible for yourselves. . . .
Click to expand...
But do not from this get the idea that you shouldn’t be reading your Bible! The ancient monastic practice of Lectio Divina – a way of praying in the Scriptures is a wonderful way of enriching your relationship with the Lord. But just keep in mind that when you have questions about Scripture, the Church has already got a good answer for you. So you’ll know to go to the Church, our Mother for guidance.
 
The Holy Spirit assures correct interpretation through The Holy See and his Councils. IHS Daryl
 
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