Holy Scripture

"All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching…​"

‘Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.’

‘Thus the canon of Israel’s Scripture is for the church a sheer given. As the apostles are an underivable condition of the existence of the church, so Israel’s book is an underivable condition for the existence of the apostolate. It is perhaps not strictly correct even to say that the church “received” Israel’s Scripture, since this Scripture was antecedently constitutive for the apostles’ relation to their Lord and so for the existence of the church. Indeed, the question is not whether the church has this canon but whether this canon acknowledges the church[.]’

‘Now, receiving more than the temple, and more than Solomon, that is the advent of the Son of God, we have not been taught another God besides the Framer and Maker of all, who has been pointed out to us from the beginning; nor another Christ, the Son of God, besides Him who was foretold by the prophets.’

‘If any one, therefore, reads the Scriptures with attention, he will find in them an account of Christ…​.For Christ is the treasure which was hid in the field, that is, in this world…​.but the treasure hid in the Scriptures is Christ, since He was pointed out by means of types and parables.’

‘…​we [i.e., Christians and Jews] agree that the books [of Scripture] were written by the Spirit of God…​’

In these [books] alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these.

‘Do heretics also appeal to Scripture? They do indeed, and with a vengeance; for you may see them scamper through every single book of Holy Scripture—through the books of Moses, the books of Kings, the Psalms, the Epistles, the Gospels, the Prophets. Whether among their own people, or among strangers, in private or in public, in speaking or in writing, at convivial meetings, or in the streets, hardly ever do they bring forward anything of their own which they do not endeavor to shelter under words of Scripture.’

‘Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.’

‘The Scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were heard…​.’

‘The highest proof of Scripture derives in general from the fact that God in person speaks in it.’

‘Let this point therefore stand: that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self­‐authenticated; hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning. And the certainty it deserves with us, it attains by the testimony of the Spirit.’

‘The authority of the Scriptures…​depends on their origin. Just because they are from God, they must be authentic and divine.’

The biblical authors wrote by means of ‘immediate inspiration and the internal impulse of the Holy Spirit.’

‘For since nothing false can be an object of faith, how could the Scriptures be held as authentic and reckoned divine if liable to contradictions and corruptions? Nor can it be said that these corruptions are only in smaller things which do not affect the foundation of faith. For if once the authenticity of the Scriptures is taken away (which would result even from the incurable corruption of one passage), how could our faith rest on what remains? And if corruption is admitted in those of lesser importance, why not in others of greater?’

‘To extricate ourselves from such confusion and to free our minds from theological prejudices and the blind acceptance of human fictions as God’s teaching, we need to analyse and discuss the true method of interpreting Scripture…​The universal rule then for interpreting Scripture is to claim nothing as a biblical doctrine that we have not derived, by the closest possible scrutiny, from its own [i.e., the Bible’s] history…​.[T]his method requires no other light than that of natural reason.’

‘The infallibility and divine authority of the Scriptures are due to the fact that they are the word of God; and they are the word of God because they were given by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.’

Thus, he goes on: ‘On this subject the common doctrine of the Church is, and ever has been, that inspiration was an influence of the Holy Spirit on the minds of certain select men, which rendered them the organs of God for the infallible communication of his mind and will. They were in such as sense the organs of God, that what they said God said.’

‘The whole Bible was written under such an influence as preserved its human authors from all error, and makes it for the Church the infallible rule of faith and practice.’

‘It is not the right human thoughts about God which form the content of the Bible, but the right divine thoughts about men. The Bible tells us not how we should talk with God but what he says to us; not how we find the way to him, but how he has sought and found the way to us; not the right relation in which we must place ourselves to him, but the covenant which he has made with all who are Abraham’s spiritual children and which he has sealed once and for all in Jesus Christ. It is this which is within the Bible. The word of God is within the Bible.’

‘The problem …​ is not the affirmation that the biblical texts have a ‘natural history’, but the denial that texts with a ‘natural history’ may function within the communicative divine economy, and that such a function is ontologically definitive of the text.’

‘Talk of the biblical texts as Holy Scripture thus indicates a two-fold conviction about their place in divine revelation. First, because they are sanctified, the texts are not simply ‘natural’ entities, to be defined and interpreted exhaustively as such. They are fields of the Spirit’s activity in the publication of the knowledge of God. Second, because sanctification does not diminish creatureliness, the texts’ place in the divine economy does not entail their withdrawal from the realm of human processes. It is as—not despite—the creaturely realities that they are that they serve God.’