Interpreting the Word of God (The Bible)

INTERPRETING THE WORD OF GOD (The Bible)

Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB

            The Bible is and should be understood as a book of books. It is not one single book but a collection of different writings by all God’s people over a period of time through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is interesting to see the different approaches to the scriptures from the Catholic and Protestant perspective. A Protestant would want to see the Bible as a book written literally in a way that God wanted it to be. Hence, for such a person, every word in the Bible has to be understood in its literal sense. This is not the case, however, for the Catholic. The Holy Scripture is not to be understood as a science or mathematic textbook nor some kind of fairy tale story or a romantic or a thrilling novel of fiction since it was never meant to be that way. The Bible is itself, as mentioned before, a fruit of tradition and that is why the approach towards it has to be different.

            We need to hear God speak to us through scripture and that is why it is called “The Word of God.” Hearing God speak in Scripture is both a human operation, involving intelligence and attention and a spiritual one, involving adhesion to God. The intellect has its role to play, since the Scriptures are productive of man, of a language and a culture. To know what a particular author or book is trying to say, we have to know how people wrote and spoke at that time. But there is still a greater need of recapturing the faith of the author and his public, of listening to him in the secrecy of our room since God is the one who is speaking and awaiting a personal reply through him i.e. the author of that particular book in the Bible. In addition, we must hear him in the midst of his people, in his Church, for the Bible is, first of all, God’s word addressed to His people. To put it in one phrase, interpreting the Bible is about “reading in between the lines.” 

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