Vatican II has been a watershed for the Catholic Church. One major element is the return to the sources, and in particular to the Bible. It would be no exaggeration to say that before Vatican II the Catholic Church had no theology of the Word. But now, as a theology of the Word is beginning to develop, there is an increasing recognition of the centrality of the Word of God for Catholic life.
The seeds planted by the Second Vatican Council are beginning to show their fruit. Here it is important to identify the seeds, and to understand their importance for the future renewal of the Church. The last chapter outlined the contribution of the Constitution on the Liturgy concerning the Bible. The Liturgy of the Word is an integral element in Catholic liturgy. More of the Bible is to be read at Mass, both on Sundays and on weekdays. The homily is to relate the Scriptures to contemporary life. The Bible provides the basis and the meaning for the sacramental signs. The formal theological teaching on the Bible was to follow in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei verbum.


After the debate on the liturgy in the Council’s first session, two days were given to a draft document on ‘The Sources of Revelation’ (De fontibus revelationis). It was soon clear that the majority of the bishops were unhappy with any teaching presenting the Bible and Tradition as two separate sources of divine revelation. Such a formulation, that had characterized the manuals of theology in use before the Council, removes Tradition from the controlling role of Scripture and obscures the personal character of revelation that finds its full expression in the person of Jesus. A new approach was needed. The new document that resulted was entitled ‘On Divine Revelation’ (Dei verbum) and was centred on the concept of ‘The Word of God’.
The Council’s schematic teaching on the Word of God is rich, but not easy to grasp. On the one hand, the bishops seek to be faithful to the Catholic tradition which has always recognized an element of duality in the roles of Scripture and Tradition. The two cannot be reduced to one. The Church has been a living community of faith from the Day of Pentecost, preaching the message of Jesus and enacting his commands before the New Testament came to be written and to be recognized as canonical Scripture. But, on the other hand, the recognition of the Canon of Sacred Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, makes the Bible a privileged source, a unique written witness to divine revelation. So the bishops sought to emphasize the unity and coherence of the whole, to ensure that Scripture and Tradition are understood in their relationship to each other.
Thus, in the teaching of the Council and, later, of the Catechism, the Word of God is expressed both in Scripture and in Tradition. ‘Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit. And Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit’ (DV, para. 9). Here it is clear that ‘Tradition’ means not just what was done and believed in previous generations, but the whole reality of the Church (teaching, witness, worship, mission) as it was founded by the Lord and enlivened by the Holy Spirit.
The Church is not founded on the Bible, but on the apostles and their witness to Jesus. However, the Bible is the privileged expression of this witness, because it is the witness inspired by the Holy Spirit. That is to say, the Scriptures contain what God wanted to be put in writing for the sake of the Church. As Dei verbum later states: ‘since they are inspired by God and committed to writing once and for all time, they present God’s Word in an unalterable form, and they make the voice of the Holy Spirit sound again and again in the words of the prophets and apostles’ (para. 21).
In this Catholic vision, Scripture and Tradition belong together. ‘Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church’ (DV, para. 10). They cannot be separated. It is impossible to have Scripture without Tradition: first, because the formation of the Scriptures happened as part of the development of the Church, i.e., as part of Tradition; second, because we cannot receive Scripture without receiving an interpretation of the Scriptures (e.g., the whole heritage of the Creeds), and that is part of Tradition. However, it is also impossible to have Tradition without the Scriptures. The Tradition, which is both what is transmitted and the process of transmission, hands on what is in the Scriptures. Even those doctrines of the Church that may be regarded as not demonstrable from the Bible are impossible to understand without the Scriptures.
But while the Council manifests this effort at ‘balancing’, by distinguishing Scripture and Tradition and then holding them together in unity, there is another trend visible in the Council documents. This trend is to exalt Scripture to a higher place, and to insist on its unique irreplaceable role in the Church and in her life. Here we can recognize that the Holy Spirit is highlighting the Scriptures as a key element in the renewal of the Church. Instead of Scripture just being there somewhere in the midst of Tradition, Scripture is being raised up within the Church. ‘In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, ‘but as what it really is, the word of God’’ (CCC, para. 104).
This special place of the Scriptures, now recognized in a new way, has many practical implications. First, ‘Access to sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful’ (DV, para. 22). Second, the Scriptures provide food for every Christian, so the Church ‘strives to reach day by day a more profound understanding of the sacred Scriptures, in order to provide her children with food from the divine words’ (DV, para. 23). Third, all theological study has to be rooted in the Scriptures. ‘Therefore, the ‘study of the sacred page’ should be the very soul of sacred theology’ (DV, para. 24).
These principles are foundational for the renewal of the Church. No longer is Bible-reading just to be the hallmark of the Protestant Christian. No longer can we separate the food of the Eucharist from the food of the Word, the table of ‘God’s Word’ from the table of ‘Christ’s Body’.
No longer can Scripture be a Cinderella subject in Catholic studies. No longer can we have a theology that makes occasional references to the Scriptures to back up an exposition that is really drawn from other sources.
This article is extracted from Church Forward, published by Alive Publishing by Monsignor Peter Hocken.