In this episode, I continue a multipart series in which I adapt some of the lesson plans I used as I taught the Catholic faith for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we try to understand how Scripture was created from oral traditions. We engage in an exercise where we write some Scripture of our own.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 90 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

Whenever I talk about religion, I always include this disclaimer that I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

This episode is based on the first class I ever taught for the RCIA program, so it was someone I taught at least 30 times. I spent weeks developing a lesson, practicing it, reworking it, and sweating over the details. I felt like I had to amass at least twice as much information as I put into the lesson in case someone asked a question. I didn’t want to be ill-prepared. After about 8 years or so, in which I adapted and adjusted the material, I had a lecture that worked every time. I had revised it into a really well-thought-out outline that I could deliver without any further preparation. Just print out copies of the handouts and my notes, and I was off and running.

As my repertoire of topics grew, I went through the same process. Sweat blood over the initial development, revise over the course of 4-8 years, and then deliver the same well-tested material thereafter.

First, a bit of housekeeping that I should have included in the last episode. All of the Scripture quotes I’m using are from a translation known as the New American Standard Bible or NASB. Although not strictly a Catholic edition, it is the translation approved for use in US Catholic churches for all of our liturgy. I provided links to all of the passages from the NASB provided on the website of the US Council of Catholic Bishops. There is also a Wikipedia article talking about the origins and updates to the NASB.

Moving along… Typically, we would begin the evening with an opening prayer, and while I don’t intend to do so in all of the lessons I present here, I have an opening prayer I usually use on the first evening that I would like to share with you. It set the tone for what I was trying to achieve with my teaching and what our entire program was trying to achieve with our participants who were considering this spiritual journey with us. I also used this prayer in a program I presented called “Catholics Returning Home,” which was designed to help people who had left the church for whatever reason to consider returning and becoming active again.

It is called “The Prayer of Thomas Merton.”

Thomas Merton lived from 1915 to 1968. He was a Catholic Trappist monk from the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky. He studied at Cambridge and Columbia. He is known as a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion. He wrote more than 70 books on spirituality, social justice, and pacifism.

Let us pray, [The Prayer of Thomas Merton]

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Amen.

The title of this lesson is “Revelation and the Bible.”

This is the first of four lessons in a row that I taught about Scripture. The overarching theme of these lessons is that our God is a God who speaks. We know what we know about God because it has been revealed to us throughout the ages. We talked earlier about the various ways that people come to know God, such as through nature, their upbringing, personal spiritual experiences, and so on.

What do I mean by revelation?

I would ask the class, “Tell me everything you know about my friend from Arizona.” Well, you know that they are from Arizona. You don’t know if they are male or female. You don’t know how I met them. You can speculate it’s an old college buddy. Maybe it’s a former girlfriend. Perhaps it’s someone with a disability like mine. Unless I reveal it to you, you can speculate, but you wouldn’t know.

What we know about God, we know because He has revealed things to us in a variety of ways. God speaks to us.

In Scripture, we are told that God spoke directly with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:9. In Exodus 3:4, we read that God spoke directly to Moses. In 1 Kings 19:11-18, we read how God spoke to the prophet Elijah. We will discuss the role of a prophet in more detail in a future lesson. And finally, in the letter to the Hebrews 1:1-3, it says, “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe.”

God has revealed mysteries. Eph 1:8-10 says, “In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.”

So, Scripture outlines for us various ways that God has spoken to us. But in order to understand Scripture properly, we need to understand who wrote it and how it was written.

As we explained in the last lesson, while God is the ultimate authority behind Scripture, it is mostly the product of human authorship written over the course of about 1000 years in a variety of places around the Middle East. It was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The sacred authors came from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, and they had a variety of audiences in mind when they wrote what they wrote.

Except for perhaps the letters of the New Testament, called epistles, all of Scripture began with oral traditions. People would sit around campfires and tell stories. Some of it was in the form of, “My God is better than your God.” They would recount the history of their culture and how God had guided them throughout that history. They would tell stories of battles won because God was on their side. They would talk of times when they were unfaithful and turned away from God and were forced to suffer the consequences of their misdeeds.

Eventually, as these stories grew in importance to the people, someone would write them down. Keep in mind that in ancient times, most people could not read or write. You had to hire scribes to write for you. I like to think of computer programmers and IT specialists as modern-day scribes who understand the mysterious ways to keep records in formats that only they can read.

I would then invite the class to engage in an exercise where they would attempt to write Scripture of their own. This was an exercise I experienced in my first RCIA program as a participant. It was led by Father Conrad Cambron, but I think he got the idea out of a book.

I would explain to the class, “We are going to write our own Gospels. Use the blank side of the handout I gave you this evening and write down about 8-10 or so things you know about Jesus. Assume I just landed from Mars and asked you, ‘What can you tell me about this guy Jesus?’ Take about 10 minutes to do that. Just random sentences.”

As I explained before, the participants were sitting at cafeteria tables with about 5-6 people per table. I would then say, “Have everyone at your table read off the list of things that they wrote. Then appoint one person from your table to be your official scribe. With the help of the entire group, the scribe should create some sort of narrative based on the things that each of you wrote. Try to include at least one thing from each person at your table. Put them in whatever order makes sense to you. Some people will duplicate items, of course. After all, we are all talking about the same guy. Put it in whatever order makes sense to you. Take about 10 minutes to do that. You should come up with something that’s maybe 12-15 sentences long.”

When they were finished, I would ask the scribe from each table to stand up and read the gospel that was produced by their table. I would say, “Who is the scribe from this table? Stand up and tell us your name.” A woman would stand and say, “I’m Susie Smith.”

I would reply, “Ladies and gentlemen, we will now have a reading from the Gospel According to Susie.”

Invariably, the scribe would always say, “It’s not my gospel. I just wrote it for my table.”

To which I would reply, “That’s the point. Your name is on it. But it is a product of your community. You may have contributed something of yourself, but it’s not just you. It’s the work of the collected traditions of your people. It’s a world of their experiences of who Jesus is.”

Here is an example of two typical Gospels I might have heard. I made these up, but this is the type of thing I would get.

“Jesus was the son of God. He was born in Bethlehem to the Virgin Mary. He was visited by shepherds and wise men. When he was 12, he was lost in the temple, but his parents found him conversing with the elders, who were impressed by him. He began his public ministry at age 30 by calling 12 people who were apostles to follow him. For three years, he preached a message of forgiveness and repentance and talked about the kingdom of God. He was betrayed by one of the apostles, Judas, who handed him over to be tried and sentenced by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. He was tortured and crucified and died. Three days later, he rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles several times before he ascended to heaven, where he sits at the right hand of the Father. He will return in the end times.”

The class would applaud. Another table might write something like this…

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Gospel according to Steve. Jesus is my Lord and Savior who sacrificed himself for the sins of the world. He is the son of God, and he is God as well, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He became human and taught us that God is love and we should love one another. He healed the sick. He raised the dead man named Lazarus. He gathered with his apostles the night he was arrested and celebrated the Last Supper with them when he offered bread and wine, he said, ‘This is my body. This is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.’ He was crucified, died, and rose from the dead three days later. He sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us and remind us of all that he taught. He has prepared a place for us in heaven.”

Then I would ask questions. Susie, did your Jesus heal sick people, raise a dead man, and have a Last Supper with his apostles? She would respond, “Yes, but we just didn’t have time to put in all those details.” Then I would ask Steve, “Was your Jesus born in Bethlehem and visited by shepherds and wise men? Was he betrayed by Judas? Is he coming back in the end times?” To which Steve would reply similarly, “Yes, but like Susie, we couldn’t tell everything in all that detail. We had to pick and choose what our people said.”

I would ask them each, “Is there anything in the other Gospels you heard here that you disagree with?” They would always say no.

I explained… Note that there is an overlap in the essential items. Jesus is God. He taught. He died for us. He rose 3 days later. But the differences don’t make any of it less true. Along the way, we could have had details that didn’t line up 100%. You might have put things in a different order. You put emphasis on different things. One of our Gospels focused on what Jesus did. But the other one focused on what it meant. Jesus is a personal savior.

While this isn’t exactly how the Gospels were written, it’s pretty close. The stories written in the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the result of the experience of early Christians. In an upcoming lesson, we will take a more detailed look at each of these gospels and how they compare to one another. We will learn something about the communities that generated the scriptures and the intended audience for which they were written.

I want to talk about two views of Scripture. This discussion is based upon a lecture seriesl by my colleague from St. Monica Parish, Jim Welter.

On the one hand, we have what we will call “The Descending View.” God handed down His word. Human authors wrote exactly what God wanted written. In essence, “Divine dictation.”

On the other hand, we have “The Ascending View.” The community of believers experienced God in their lives and created oral traditions about His works in the world and their relationship with God. These oral traditions were then assembled into the written word by human authors. In effect the community offers up the Scriptures they wrote saying to God in prayer: This is what you revealed to me that I will hand down for generations. Although it is the work of human authors, it is still the revealed word of God protected from error by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is word of God. God is the author but there is also human authorship too. However, the Bible is not the result of Divine dictation. In 1 Thes 2:13 we read, “And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.”

Scripture is divinely inspired, written at God’s will, at his inspiration. We read in 2 Peter 1:19-21, “Moreover, we possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable. You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God.”

We can rely on scripture. According to 2 Tim 3:14-17, “But you, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it, and that from infancy you have known (the) sacred scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

It’s time to depart a bit from the “official positions” and acknowledge the fact that we are using Scripture to say that we should use Scripture. It’s reliable because it tells us it’s reliable. This is obviously highly circular reasoning. In this instance, I’m not trying to “prove Scripture is true.” I’m merely explaining how Christian apologists defend their dogmatic beliefs about Scripture.

I also have to refer back to Scripture scholar Dan McClellan, whom I introduced you to last time. He points out that when these passages talk about “Scripture,” they’re not talking about the entire Bible as we know it today. Much of the New Testament had not yet been written when the Epistles were written. And even if they were written and widely distributed and known, they had not yet reached the level of importance of “Scripture” that we assign to them today. So, when he says “all Scripture is inspired by God,” he is probably just talking about the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, as we call it. Even then, scholars debate when the official list of writings that make up the Old Testament today was officially approved

Back to the official dogma…

Given all the caveats we have made about Scripture, is the Bible true? It may sound like we are engaging in doublespeak or parsing words in a manipulative manner, but we need to talk about the difference between “truth” and “facts.”

Factually, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of mistakes in the Bible. It is not scientifically accurate. It is not historically accurate. But it contains deeper truth about who God is, what his plan is for us, and how we can develop a relationship with him.

The word “inspiration” means “breathing into” or “life-giving,” In the same way that God blew into the nostrils of Adam and brought him to life. It comes from the same root as respiration, which means to breathe in and out.

Inspiration is the activity by which the Holy Spirit influences a person to act, think, speak, or write, according to God’s will and plan. Inspiration does not preclude the free will, experience, or disposition of the one inspired. It is not equivalent to divine dictation. When Catholics say the Bible is “inspired,” it means what the Bible says about God is reliably true. However, other historical facts or details may have been adapted or created to fit the purpose of the story.

We also need to discuss the ancient concept of authorship and how it is vastly different from what we think of today. To say that someone is the author of the work means that it was written under their authority. For example, it appears that parts of the Gospel of John were written by one of his disciples rather than by John himself, but was written under the authority of John.

Also, because Scripture is based upon oral tradition, the source of that tradition comes from the community and not from any single individual, as we saw in our Scripture writing exercise earlier.

The goal is to try to understand the original intent of the author in the context of their culture and their intended audience. To do that, we need to rely on Scripture scholars who can analyze various samples of ancient texts. The scholars have a deep understanding of ancient languages and can interpret the meaning for us so that we can appreciate the true message and not get hung up on factual errors or inconsistencies.

In the next episode, I will talk more about how scripture scholars use historical critical analysis to help us understand the deeper truth to be found in Scripture. This is still a continuation of my first lesson on Scripture.

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