Evidence for the Divine Inspiration of the Bible?

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The Bible cannot stand alone as has been correctly stated.

As Fr William Most writes in Free From All Error, Prow Books 1985:
There was a man called Jesus who claimed to be a messenger sent from God and he commissioned a group to teach and promised God‘s protection for that teaching in the Church which He founded on Peter. Jesus appealed to His miracles as proof of His mission and teaching, even proving that he could forgive sins. Since God cannot provide such power to support falsehood, Jesus’ claims are true.

This Church, Christ’s Church, produced the New Testament, and then assured us that these documents and the OT are inspired – really have God as their author.

The books that actually are the inspired Word of God was decided by Pope Damasus at a Council of Rome in 382, confirmed at the Councils of Hippo, 393, Carthage III 397, Carthage !V in 419 and canonised at the Council of Trent (1545-1563).
 
Holly3278 said:
The Catholic Bible. You know, the one with 73 books in it. 😉
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Thank you for your response.

You said the Catholic Bible is the inspired Word of God, so that means that the Protestant Bible,which I believe has 66 books, isn’t the Word of God; I am asking why?

Also, which english translation of the Bible do Catholics prefer to read from?
 
SonofAdam said:
Thank you for your response.

You said the Catholic Bible is the inspired Word of God, so that means that the Protestant Bible, isn’t the Word of God. I am asking why?

Also, which translation of the Bible do Catholics prefer to read from?
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The Protestant Bible is only partially the word of God. Keep in mind that the Word of God is Jesus. The word of God, is the Bible.

The translation that of the Bible that Catholics prefer to read from varies amongst Catholics. Some Catholics prefer the New American Bible. Others prefer the Douay-Rheims Bible. And still others prefer the Revised Standard Version. There are other Catholic Bibles out there as well such as the New Revised Standard Version and the New Jerusalem Bible.
 
Holly3278 said:
The Protestant Bible is only partially the word of God. Keep in mind that the Word of God is Jesus. The word of God, is the Bible.

The translation that of the Bible that Catholics prefer to read from varies amongst Catholics. Some Catholics prefer the New American Bible. Others prefer the Douay-Rheims Bible. And still others prefer the Revised Standard Version. There are other Catholic Bibles out there as well such as the New Revised Standard Version and the New Jerusalem Bible.
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I apologize, I should rephrase my first question. Why is the Catholic Bible considered the whole of God’s Word while the Protestant’s Bible considered ‘partially’ complete? What is the reason behind the Catholics having 7 extra books in their Bible compared to the Protestants?
 
SonofAdam said:
I apologize, I should rephrase my first question. Why is the Catholic Bible considered the whole of God’s Word while the Protestant’s Bible considered ‘partially’ complete? What is the reason behind the Catholics having 7 extra books in their Bible compared to the Protestants?
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The Catholic Bible is considered to be the whole of God’s word because it is complete with the 7 “extra” books in it. Those books, however, are not extras. They were there to begin with. The Protestants removed them during the Protestant “Reformation”.
 
Cashue said:
Only the Catholic bible. You should never read the others they are wrong.
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There’s nothing wrong with reading non-Catholic Bibles. However, one should always keep in mind that those Bibles are non-Catholic Bibles and that they do not contain the fullness of the Truth.
 
SonofAdam said:
I apologize, I should rephrase my first question. Why is the Catholic Bible considered the whole of God’s Word while the Protestant’s Bible considered ‘partially’ complete? What is the reason behind the Catholics having 7 extra books in their Bible compared to the Protestants?
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The Catholic Church assembled the Bible canon in it’s present form (OT and NT) around 400 AD. It included 73 books. This canon was approved and reafirmed several times by Church councils, all BEFORE, the reformation. The 66 book canon was assembled, not by a church council, but by, primarily, one man - Martin Luther. And also please note that if Martin Luther had had his way entirely, there would be no James, Jude, Hebrews or Revelations, in the NT either.
Could you just imagine the Fundementalist Churches without Revelations???

Anyway the list below should hep you see that the 73 book canon is both ancient and consistant.

Bible Canon Councils Approving

From: catholicapologetics.org/ap031100.htm
**Council of Rome (382) **
Local church council under the authority of Pope Damasus, (366-384) gave a complete list of canonical books of the OT and NT which is identical with the list later approved by the Council of Trent.
**Council of Hippo (393) **
Local North African Church council in union with and under the authority of the Bishop of Rome approved a list of OT and NT canon (same as later approved by the Council of Trent)
**Council of Carthage (397) **
Local North African Church council in union with and under the authority of the Bishop of Rome approved a list of OT and NT canon (same as later approved by the Council of Trent)
**Pope Innocent I, Bishop of Rome, 401-417 (405) **
Responded to a request by Exuperius, Bishop of Toulouse, with a list of canonical books of Scripture; this list was the same as later approved by the Council of Trent.
**Council of Carthage (419) **
Local North African Church council in union with and under the authority of the Bishop of Rome approved a list of OT and NT canon (same as later approved by the Council of Trent)
The Council of Nicea (787)
The Council of Nicea II in 787 ratified the same canon as authoritative for the Eastern Churches.
**Council of Florence, an ecumenical council (1441) **
Complete list of OT and NT canon was drawn up; this list later adopted by the Fathers of the Council of Trent

From: secondexodus.com/html/catholicdefinitions/bible.htm
The Council of Nicea II in 787 ratified the same canon as authoritative for the Eastern Churches.

Peace
James
 
Many of today’s atheists will argue that because you cannot prove every word, dot, fact in the Bible it can’t be true. The same logic applies to the divine inspiration of the Bible. In the end it comes down to faith, you either believe that the Bible is true or not.

The other question is whether the Bible is literally true or not. If it was divinely true, then why would God not make it literally true as well? Please explain the Catholic perpective on this!
 
spirit2534
If it was divinely true, then why would God not make it literally true as well? Please explain the Catholic perspective on this!
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Christ’s Church teaches Christ’s truths, She doesn’t have a “perspective” (a mere position or view) on dogma and doctrine.

See rtforum.org/lt/lt59.html: [Fr Brian Harrison refers to The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (*Dei Verbum) of Vatican II, 1963-5].
“The true sense of Dei Verbum, 11, then, is not that the guarantee of inerrancy covers those propositions which a biblical author affirms (or teaches) as opposed to those which he merely “states,” i.e., with less force or deliberation, but still as an expression of his own judgment. Rather, it covers those propositions he affirms (or teaches) as opposed to those which he merely “uses materially,” i.e., those in which what appears on paper, taken in isolation, or in its most superficially literal sense, does not express his own judgment in any way.

”These “materially used” (but not formally affirmed) propositions in Scripture would appear to be of three main kinds. First (and most obviously), there are those which the human author does not himself utter but attributes to someone else, in which case divine inspiration guarantees only the truthful **reporting **of such propositions, not the truth of the propositions themselves. Secondly, this category would include individual propositions used by the author as part of a parable or other imaginative literary composition, in which the formally affirmed teachings it sets out to convey emerge only from the story as a whole. Finally, there are propositions in which not every word is meant to be understood in the most immediate literal sense, since the author may be “using” hyperbole, metaphor, or other literary devices, even within a passage or book which is substantially ‘straight’ history or didactic teaching rather than fiction of some sort.

”In short, what is essentially guaranteed to be true by virtue of divine inspiration, according to the sentence of Dei Verbum, 11, we are considering, is not the isolated propositions taken in their ‘surface’ meaning and without regard to their historical and literary context, but rather (as the next article of Dei Verbum puts it) “that meaning which the sacred writers really intended, and which God, by their words, wanted to make known.” 55 The discernment of that divine and human meaning is what the Church understands by a proper ‘literal’ interpretation of the text - which is not to be confused with a ‘literalist’ interpretation.”

Note
55. “… quid hagiographi reapse significare intenderint et eorum verbis manifestare Deo placuerit” (Dei Verbum, 12). In Abbott (ed.), op. cit., this sentence is rendered as though it had another "quid" between “et” and “eorum”: the Council is made to say that interpreters should carefully investigate “what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words” (p. 120). This is inaccurate, for it makes a distinction between what God says in a given passage and what the human author says in it. That, plainly, could be used to undermine what the previous article (§11) has taught so clearly, namely, that God affirms everything which is affirmed by the human author. God may indeed at times say more than the human author intended (the so-called ‘fuller sense,’ sensus plenior, of Scripture, as well as its various spiritual senses), but certainly not less.
 
spirit2534 said:
The other question is whether the Bible is literally true or not. If it was divinely true, then why would God not make it literally true as well? Please explain the Catholic perpective on this!
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Simple answer -
Because an infinite, all powerful, omnipotent God used finite, weak, and very intellectually limited humans to do the writing under his direction.
God did not “dictate” the Bible he “inspired” those who wrote the Bible. Big difference.

Our almighty father, just as temporal fathers, knew he had to try to instill great truths and understandings in a way that small children (that is us) could understand. So he did this by “inspiring”, through the gospel writers, great truths in simple stories using terms that we (his small children) could understand.
So - For instnace - While God knew that the universe actually took billions of years to get to it’s curent state, and that the earth revolves around the sun and that he “developed” man, and all life, as part of developing the universe, He also knew that man of two or five or ten thousand years ago was not capable of incorporating such “truths”. So what did he do? He taught us these truths in a few simple sentences. He made epochs and eras days. He condensed millions/billions of “years” of “development” (evolution) into “And God said Let there be…”.
God did this in the same way that a father would tell a small child that thunder is “two clouds bumping into each other”. A false statement? Not entirely. Clouds move about “bumping into each other”, lightning is generated, and the result of the lightning is Thunder. Of course even this “longer” explanation is not entirely accurate for there is much more at work, but the original, short answer contains truth AND is sufficient for the small child.

Thus God, from the beginning taught His very small children, using our own, small language, in terms simple enough for us to understand. Jesus did the same thing by teaching great truths about Love and about the Kingdom through the use of “parables”.
Like Father - Like Son.

Peace
James
 
I believe that it is His Word because, as some said, it has been written by many authors dozen of years separated from each other and the Bible does not contradict itself.

But what made me completely sure was the book of Daniel and Revelation, but especially Revelation, since 80% of Daniel happened and more than 60% of Revelation as well. So, I believe it because the prophecies have been fulfilled.
 
=SonofAdam;6307181]Thank you for your response.
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You said the Catholic Bible is the inspired Word of God, so that means that the Protestant Bible,which I believe has 66 books, isn’t the Word of God; I am asking why?
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Also, which english translation of the Bible do Catholics prefer to read from?
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***Factually the Protestant Bible books that confrom to the Catholic Bible are indeed the “Inspired Word of God.” It is the INCOMPLETE WORD by deletion of the seven removed books and by virtue of he fact that many changes to the orginal text were made to accomidate and support there “know more and know better” [than God Himself] religious beleifs and understanding.

That remains the “elephant in the closet.” Which verses were changed cannot be known without a side by side comparison with a good Catholic Bible like the Douay-Rheims*.

Therefore one must always question are they getting the “true” teachings inspired by God whenever they use a non-Catholic version of the Bible?

Similarly, all translations and proper understanding of what the bible is actually saying must logically conform to Catholic Understanding, as the CC is how the Bible came into existence and the NT was actually completely written for the CC, by men that we know today to be Catholics. Further the CC was the only Christian Church when the Bible was completely written by the end of the First Century, therefore we know it was writen to and for in a precise and complete manner; Catholics. Which is why the CC alone has the authority, ability and Wisdom of [guided by] God to properly translate it.**

I use the RSV daly and often refer back to the Douay-Rheims. The “New American Version” is the one used in Catholic Mass.
 
patg said:
I have looked. Do you have any?
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Maybe I do. I’ll let you be the judge. To begin, please let me ask you this: If an omniscient God wanted to guide the writing of a volume of books, and He wanted to leave evidence within the pages of those books that He was the guide, what evidence do you think He would leave for you and I to discover? Wouldn’t He provide some information that only an all-knowing God would know and that no mere human being could possibly know?
 
**In Reply to SonofAdam. Like PJM said the most accurate translation of the Bible is the Latin Vulgate Bible that was translated by St Jerome form Hebrew into Latin but it loses something in the translation from Latin into English. The most accurate recent translation would be the ‘The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition’. The translation was just recently completed and is considered the most accurate translation available because it is directly from Hebrew into English.

Most Protestants use the King James Version of the Bible which took the Catholic Bible and omitted several books as requested by King James. Even Thomas Jefferson rewrote the bible omitting all the miracles performed by Jesus.

The most complete compilation of truths can be found in the Catholic Translations mentioned above.

As far as evidence of Divine inspiration, Jesus who we know was the son of God because he died and rose from the dead, said that the bible was the word of God when he quoted scripture. Even the Devil quoted scripture when he tempted Jesus in the desert**
 
spockrates said:
Wouldn’t He provide some information that only an all-knowing God would know and that no mere human being could possibly know?
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I believe so. Anyone claiming that their book is from God should have clear evidences that it is from Him. If this was not the case, then their wouldn’t be any difference between a Christian saying ‘my book is from God’ and a Mormon saying ‘my book is from God’ and they both teach conflicting beliefs. Another point is that if a book is truely from God should it have any mistakes in it; even 1? I don’t believe so.
 
As post #22 shows, Jesus of Nazareth did not write anything – He founded His Church on Simon Peter with primacy and infallibility. His followers wrote the New Testament and His Church infallibly declared which writings in both the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God, and no others. These writings are without error.
 
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