Question:
The purpose of this email is to kindly request that you send me material on the proofs a Catholic can provide regarding the divine inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures. How does a Catholic prove it? Thank you very much! And may God continue to bless you. Fraternally yours in Jesus Christ and the Ever-Virgin Mary.
Answer:
The Catholic proofs are as follows:
1. Through the persuasion of the Jews, confirmed by Christ and the Apostles.
The Jews contemporary to Jesus Christ firmly believed, with solid conviction, that their Scriptures, that is, all the books, at least the protocanonical ones of the Old Testament, were inspired with such inspiration that God was their principal author.
Now then: Christ and the Apostles never reproved this persuasion, but rather approved it in a positive manner.
Therefore, Christ and the Apostles held all the books of the Old Testament, at least the protocanonical ones, to be inspired.
2. Through internal biblical testimonies.
There are texts that speak of the inspired value of Scripture: 2 Tim 3:16 (“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness”); 2 Pet 1:20-21 (“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”).
3. Through the testimony of the Fathers.
The Church Fathers attest to the ancient and universal belief of the Church in the divine origin of the Bible through a special action of God called inspiration; that is, we have a constant, universal, and unanimous tradition from the first centuries of the Church in favor of the fact of inspiration.
For the Fathers, both the books of the Old and New Testaments are ‘words of God’ (Didache and Origen); ‘spoken or dictated by the same Holy Spirit’ (Saint Justin); ‘They are letters from God to men, transmitted by the hagiographers’ (Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostom). Clement of Alexandria says: ‘The Lord Himself speaks through Isaiah, through Elijah, through the mouth of the prophets.’
“What is Scripture, but a letter from Almighty God to His creature?” (Saint Gregory the Great).
Cyril of Alexandria: “All of Scripture is one book, spoken by the one Holy Spirit.”
4. Through Ecclesiastical Documents.
These are the Symbols, Acts of Faith, and Councils, which proclaim God as the principal author of the Old and New Testaments.
The Council of Florence expressly affirms that the author of the Old and New Testaments is one and the same God, since the saints (prophets and hagiographers) of both Testaments spoke by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, whose books the Roman Church receives and venerates (D. 706).
The Councils of Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II define that the books of the established canon are inspired and have God as their author… (D. 783 and 1787). The biblical encyclicals also speak to us of God as the principal author of the Bible.
Evidently, from the arguments presented, the fundamental argument for determining the inspiration of the sacred books is the authority of the Church. Internal arguments are not sufficient by themselves. Therefore, only the authority of the Church can infallibly determine which books are inspired. In fact, the Church Fathers, in the question concerning the canon of the Sacred Books, resorted from the beginning to the tradition of the Apostles and the Church. And so we have St. Irenaeus who said that Scripture had to be learned from the Church, for only she has received it from the tradition transmitted by the Apostles. St. Cyril of Jerusalem: ‘Learn from the Church which are the books of the Old Testament and which of the New.’ St. Augustine stated: ‘I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.’
In this way, the true problem of apologetics is to determine how the Church demonstrates that it is the Church truly founded by Jesus Christ and endowed with the powers to determine the canon of the inspired books. It does this through miracle and prophecy. That is the subject of the apologetic treatise on the Church.
Fr. Miguel A. Fuentes, IVE
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