Sacred Scripture and the Modern Catholic Part 5

5. Faith of Our Fathers: Analogy of Faith

"So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us" (2 Thes. 2:15).

A final interpretive principle allows us to experience the breadth and length and height and depth of the fullness of the Roman Catholic Faith. This principle is called the analogy of faith, and is described in the : "Read the Scripture within 'the living Tradition of the whole Church.' According to a saying of the Fathers, sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church's heart..." (, no. 113). The analogy of faith is based on the fact that "sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church" (, no. 10). This deposit of faith is given by God and entrusted to the Church, "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15). The analogy of faith is the secret weapon of the Catholic Church. If we as Catholics were to realize in our lives the analogy of faith, we would become suitable laborers in the work of authentic Christian unity.

The unity among Christians willed by God can be attained only by the adherence of all to the content of revealed faith in its entirety. In matters of faith, compromise is a contradiction with God who is Truth (Pope John Paul II, , no. 18).

It was the discovery of this interpretative principle which led me back to the Roman Catholic Church. Although the Bible is the very Word of God given in the words of men, there is still room for human error and misinterpretation. In the book of Acts, the deacon Philip comes across an Ethiopian eunuch who is reading a passage from the sacred Scriptures, and Philip asks him, "Do you understand what you are reading?" and the eunuch replies, "Well, how could I unless someone guides me?" (cf. Acts S:30-31). There are more than 25,000 different Christian denominations, each claiming the Bible as their rule of faith. So without someone to guide us, we would be unable to discern the authentic meaning of the sacred page. St. Jerome illustrates this point, stating: "What I have learned I did not teach myself-a wretchedly presumptuous teacher!-but I learned it from illustrious men in the Church" (, no. 36).

Many sincere Christians disagree on biblical interpretation. For example, should our Lord be taken literally when He says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you" (Jn. 6:53)? Imagine how much insight we could gain if we could speak with St. John himself and ask him what he understood our Lord to mean. Well, this is exactly what the Fathers of the Church were able to do. St. Ignatius of Antioch was a disciple of St. John, and St. Ignatius is not silent on the subject. He writes in his letter to the church of Antioch, "They [the heterodox] do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior, Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins in which the Father in His goodness raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes."

When I discovered the analogy of faith, I realized that I was no longer left to my own devices and subject to my own limitations in trying to discover the fullness of faith. Rather, I was able to enter into a "dialogue" with other faithful followers of Jesus Christ. And I also had the wise and anointed leadership of the Magisterium, the servant and teacher of God's word. For the Catholic, the riches of the Bible are open completely. We have the very word of God, in Tradition and in Scripture, as preserved and proclaimed by the Teaching Church. This means that Catholics among all Christians should be the most biblical.

Some people are concerned that by reading the Bible we may fall away from the Church. But what I have seen is quite the opposite. Catholics who read the Bible within the Church help others to come into the Church. Catholics who are ignorant of Scripture are easily drawn away to a "Bible church," which rightly focuses on the importance of the Word of God, but does so outside of its God- given context, the family of God, the Church.

TWO WAYS TO START

There are many styles and methods of studying the sacred Scriptures. The most basic is an inductive Bible study: to go to the very words of Scripture and allow them to teach you. As a Catholic, this must be done in light of the five principles of interpretation already mentioned. These principles allow us to read the Bible with freedom and confidence, knowing that if we encounter something that we do not understand or that seems to contradict the Church, we will humbly defer and allow the Church to guide us into the right interpretation. The Gospels may be the most fruitful subject for this inductive approach. In them, we are confronted by the very words and person of Jesus Christ, who invites us to repent and believe, and challenges us to live, not for the sake of this world, but for the sake of the world to come.

Seemingly, every passage of Scripture is an invitation to have our lives transformed by God. St. Paul writes, "I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom. 12:1-2).

Another type of study is a deductive study, in which we allow a topic or a teaching to lead us into the Scriptures to show us its foundation and its biblical principles. Perhaps the most useful guide for a deductive study is the . The is filled with scriptural references, so much so that one modern theologian accused it of citing the Bible in a "fundamentalist way" (E. A. Johnson, "Jesus Christ in the Catechism," , p. 208, 3/3/92).

Taken from www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/SSMODCAT.TXT