1 post tagged “scripture”
Tonight was the final class of the first term of the first year of my Formation for Ministry training. The class has been interesting - "Foundations in Scripture" - but the text has been challenging - not intellectually but more emotionally I believe.
The book is a "How To" for Catholics reading/interpreting scripture. Now if you, like me, were born and bred in the Catholic Church, particularly in the U.S. you will have had little to no time invested in personal study of the Holy Bible (that would be 'nuther whole discussion!). What little we might have been exposed to tends to leave us with a rather fixed focus on scripture and that focus would be described primarily as "historical". That is, most of us come away from reading the Bible with one of two senses - that it is a fantastic tale but must be historical or that it is a fantastic tale and we don't quite know what to make of it. I tended more toward the former than the latter.
Cont'd 10:43PM - As I was saying - I tended to think of scripture, no matter how outrageous the text might seem, as historical writing (historical fact if you will). Now, after a few years of more informed study I've learned that just ain't so! In my head I can admit that this makes sense to me, but at the same time I have difficulty letting go of my "the bible tells me so" kind of thinking. The text for our course (see above) is extremely interesting and much more informative than other texts I've read on this subject. But I saw the tendency in our class to see this as THE answer to reading the bible when in fact I see this as only PART of the answer.
Cont'd 10:00AM 11/15 - So, in the end what I took away from the class was a new understanding of reading the bible in the context of the time and place of the writing, the intended audience, and (this is toughest of all) the literary style in which the writing is done including poetry, narrative, song, parable, allegory, myth (not as in mythological).
This is where the difficulties arise -- our American Catholic culture tends to view scripture in a more literal sense - for example when I read St. Luke's account of Jesus' birth, well, I believe it happened that way - star, Magi, manger, and all! Do I believe it includes a lot of detail? Of course not, but still I don't find difficulty with the birth narrative being an historical account of "what happened". In this class we learned that most of what we read in the bible is intended to convey a message and was written in a style common to the time and that would be understood in its real meaning by the audience to whom it was written. Again, as an example - the birth narrative in Luke is portrayed as not historical at all, in fact, it may never actually happened as related in Luke (remember - Luke's gospel is the only one that includes the birth narrative). Instead, what the author of our text tells us is that the author was intending to convey a message about Jesus and that message was that Jesus is divine. In order to do this the birth narrative alludes to the Old Testament references to the Messiah (firstborn, swaddling clothes) and refers to Him lying in a manger - a manger being the place where food for the flock was placed; Jesus, lay in a manger as food for His flock.
Of course the author cautions that one must tread carefully when speaking about this contextual reading of the bible with the uninitiated as it might well shock them completely out of their scriptural shoes. For some this might well be a solid shake to the foundation of their faith if they truly see the bible as a "here's how it all came down" kind of book. For most Catholics though I'd bet the foundations of their faith don't rely so much on scripture as on the other two components - the Magisterium and Tradition.
Nevertheless, I found it to be a very interesting and informative class and I look forward to more of the Formation classes.
The book is a "How To" for Catholics reading/interpreting scripture. Now if you, like me, were born and bred in the Catholic Church, particularly in the U.S. you will have had little to no time invested in personal study of the Holy Bible (that would be 'nuther whole discussion!). What little we might have been exposed to tends to leave us with a rather fixed focus on scripture and that focus would be described primarily as "historical". That is, most of us come away from reading the Bible with one of two senses - that it is a fantastic tale but must be historical or that it is a fantastic tale and we don't quite know what to make of it. I tended more toward the former than the latter.
Cont'd 10:43PM - As I was saying - I tended to think of scripture, no matter how outrageous the text might seem, as historical writing (historical fact if you will). Now, after a few years of more informed study I've learned that just ain't so! In my head I can admit that this makes sense to me, but at the same time I have difficulty letting go of my "the bible tells me so" kind of thinking. The text for our course (see above) is extremely interesting and much more informative than other texts I've read on this subject. But I saw the tendency in our class to see this as THE answer to reading the bible when in fact I see this as only PART of the answer.
Cont'd 10:00AM 11/15 - So, in the end what I took away from the class was a new understanding of reading the bible in the context of the time and place of the writing, the intended audience, and (this is toughest of all) the literary style in which the writing is done including poetry, narrative, song, parable, allegory, myth (not as in mythological).
This is where the difficulties arise -- our American Catholic culture tends to view scripture in a more literal sense - for example when I read St. Luke's account of Jesus' birth, well, I believe it happened that way - star, Magi, manger, and all! Do I believe it includes a lot of detail? Of course not, but still I don't find difficulty with the birth narrative being an historical account of "what happened". In this class we learned that most of what we read in the bible is intended to convey a message and was written in a style common to the time and that would be understood in its real meaning by the audience to whom it was written. Again, as an example - the birth narrative in Luke is portrayed as not historical at all, in fact, it may never actually happened as related in Luke (remember - Luke's gospel is the only one that includes the birth narrative). Instead, what the author of our text tells us is that the author was intending to convey a message about Jesus and that message was that Jesus is divine. In order to do this the birth narrative alludes to the Old Testament references to the Messiah (firstborn, swaddling clothes) and refers to Him lying in a manger - a manger being the place where food for the flock was placed; Jesus, lay in a manger as food for His flock.
Of course the author cautions that one must tread carefully when speaking about this contextual reading of the bible with the uninitiated as it might well shock them completely out of their scriptural shoes. For some this might well be a solid shake to the foundation of their faith if they truly see the bible as a "here's how it all came down" kind of book. For most Catholics though I'd bet the foundations of their faith don't rely so much on scripture as on the other two components - the Magisterium and Tradition.
Nevertheless, I found it to be a very interesting and informative class and I look forward to more of the Formation classes.
