Do We Reduce the Word of God to Mere Text?

[H_I_Missionary]

I want to pose this question because I am concerned that in engaging our culture with the Gospel, we reduce Scripture to text and then, through a scientific skepticism, engage in it as if we engage a dead letter? I know this isn’t our intent, but what are ways which we treat Scripture this way, rather than treating it, or better, letting Jesus, the Word, treat us? Please discuss. I have a few ideas regarding Lectio Divina and the Church Fathers’ view of Scripture, but I want to hear what you think. Let the dialogue begin!

 

[Aelred_Minor]

I recently came across something written by Thomas Merton (in one of his more scholarly moods) that seemed plausible to me. Essentially it was that beginning with some of the Church Fathers and continuing through the Middle Ages there was a tendency to confuse typology with allegory and to set the letter against the spirit of Scripture as if they were irreconcilable enemies of each other. Beginning with the Counter-Reformation the common mistake has been in the opposite direction, insisting on the immediate literal sense any give book of the Bible to the exclusion of anything else. In truth we need to take the senses of Scripture together in their natural unity.

 

[aemcpa]

I want to pose this question because I am concerned that in engaging our culture with the Gospel, we reduce Scripture to text and then, through a scientific skepticism, engage in it as if we engage a dead letter? I know this isn’t our intent, but what are ways which we treat Scripture this way, rather than treating it, or better, letting Jesus, the Word, treat us? Please discuss. I have a few ideas regarding Lectio Divina and the Church Fathers’ view of Scripture, but I want to hear what you think. Let the dialogue begin!

vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html