Nearly all Christian, of whatever church, acknowledge the authority and truth of the teachings of the first four "great councils" (also called "ecumenical" or worldwide councils) of early Christianity. This is because these Councils clarified (and, for some, defined) what the Christian scriptures taught and what the early church believed about God ( Read more... )

II. The relation of Scripture to the living magisterium, and of the living magisterium to Scripture.
This relation is the same as that between the Gospel and the Apostolic preaching. Christ made use of the Bible, He appealed to it as to an irrefragable authority, He explained and interpreted it and furnished the key to it, with it he shed light on ( Read more... )

I. Divine Traditions not contained in Holy Scripture; institution of the living magisterium; its prerogatives.
Luther's attacks on the Church were at first directed only against doctrinal details, but the very authority of the Church was involved in the dispute, and this soon became evident to both sides. However the controversy continued for many ( Read more... )

The word "tradition" (Greek paradosis in the ecclesiastical sense; which is the only one in which it is used here; refers sometimes to the thing (doctrine, account, or custom) transmitted from one generation to another sometimes to the organ or mode of the transmission (kerigma ekklisiastikon, predicatio ecclesiastica). In the first sense it is an ( Read more... )

A. At the Beginning of the Reformation
(1) As a necessary consequence of their attitude towards the Bible, which they had taken as their only rule of Faith, the Protestants were led at the very outset to go beyond the ideas of a merely passive inspiration, which was commonly received in the first half of the sixteenth century. Not only did they ( Read more... )

The question now is not whether all the Biblical books are inspired in every part, even in the fragments called deuterocanonical: this point, which concerns the integrity of the Canon, has been solved by the Council of Tent. but are we bound to admit that, in the books or parts of books which are canonical, there is absolutely nothing, either as ( Read more... )

A. Method to be followed
(1) To determine the nature of Biblical inspiration the theologian has at his disposal a three fold source of information: the data of tradition, the concept of inspiration, and the concrete state of the inspired text. If he wishes to obtain acceptable results he will take into account all of these elements of solution. ( Read more... )

I'll treat the subject under the four heads:

I. Belief in Inspired books;
II. Nature of Inspiration;
III. Extent of Inspiration;
IV. Protestant Views on the Inspiration of the Bible.

( Belief in inspired books )

The history of exegesis shows its first beginnings, its growth, its decay, and its restoration. It points out the methods which may be safely recommended, and warns against those which rather corrupt than explain the Sacred Scriptures. In general, we may distinguish between Jewish and Christian exegesis.

( Jewish and Christian exegesis )

The genuine teaching of Sacred Scripture is useful to all, but few have the time necessary to investigate it. It is for this reason that Scripture students express their results in writing so as to share their light with as many as possible. Sixtus Senensis enumerates twenty-four various forms in which such Scriptural explanations may be expressed ( Read more... )