I just began attending my first ever group bible study at my (Edited) parish. There is gospel reading and discussion. After a couple of sessions I am getting the feeling that some members of the group are gravitating toward a more protestant understanding of the role the Bible plays in our Catholic tradition. Am I reading too much into this, or is there potential danger of our Bible study groups becoming crypto-evangelicals? If so, is this a problem?
Possibly. However, it can be avoided if we realize that for Catholics, the Church existed before Scripture, and that the Church wrote Scripture. The People of God come first, and then from the People of God, comes Scripture. (I say People of God because the idea applies to the Old Testament as well.) Scripture was written by, to, and for the already existing Church, the ecclesia.
It seems that for most Protestants, they start with Scripture (that is, they simply assume Scripture), and from Scripture, derive their church. Church is secondary to Scripture. For the Catholic, it is the other way around. We assume Church, which is primary, and from Church derive Scripture. We can see that is the way it happened historically (which has already been pointed out in this thread). For Catholics, Jesus established His Church, taught the apostles, and the apostles in turn taught the people. In doing so, the apostles and evangelists also did some writing. These writings, which we call the New Testament, were later brought together by the Church and determined by the Church to have been inspired, and then included in the canon, or measure, of Scripture.
Notice that the Church was around for decades, centuries, teaching and evangelizing, without an integrated body of Scripture to derive doctrine from. That’s because the Church had its doctrine already, not just from Scripture, but from the direct teachings of the apostles! (See Galatians 1-8,9)
Another way to think of it is by way of context. As we know, verses of the Bible should be read in context. The surrounding verses affect the meaning of any individual verse. Taken out of context, a verse may be misunderstood. It is the same with Scripture as a whole. Scripture itself has a context. And when taken out of context, Scripture can be misunderstood. Of course we know that the context of Scripture is the Church, and when Scripture is read out of the context of Church, Scripture is misunderstood. That is evidenced by the thousands of denominations that have arisen by taking Scripture away from where it belongs, out of its context.
Taking the idea of context further, by looking at history, we see that Scripture was not meant to be read, but heard. It was an aural experience. And a collective one. Individuals did not have scrolls of Scripture, nor most likely could they read them anyway. So, to know scripture, believers had to gather together (once a week) to have scripture read to them, in the church, or in the synagogue. They
heard the word of God. Their context was hearing it amongst the rest of the congregation, as a group. (Not like reading a Gideon bible in the loneliness of a motel room!)
You can see how the God-given, God-intended, way is so different from the Protestant view of the role of Scripture.
With these ideas in mind, perhaps the danger of lapsing into a non-Catholic view of how Scripture is to be used can be avoided.
