How Catholics Read the Bible
God is the Bible's author and so are its human writers. How the Church reads Scripture: in the Spirit, as one whole, in its literal and spiritual senses.
Awaiting review A priest has not yet reviewed this article. Read it alongside the Catechism paragraphs it cites, and take questions to your parish.
Catholics are sometimes thought not to read the Bible. In fact the Church reads more of it aloud than most people realise: over three years of Sundays, a large part of the Gospels and much of the rest of Scripture is proclaimed at Mass, and the psalms are prayed every day in the Liturgy of the Hours. The Church also has a clear way of reading it, worked out over twenty centuries. This page sets out that way in plain terms, and suggests where to begin.
Two authors at once
The Church teaches that God is the author of Sacred Scripture. Its books were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which is why the Church holds them as sacred and canonical (CCC 105; Dei Verbum 11).
But the human writers were not secretaries taking dictation. God chose real men, and made use of their own powers and abilities, so that they wrote as true authors everything he wanted written, and no more (CCC 106). Mark writes like Mark, Paul like Paul, and the psalmist like a poet. Because God is the author, Scripture teaches without error the truth he wished to be recorded for the sake of our salvation (CCC 107).
The Catechism adds a striking point: Christianity is not a "religion of the book" (CCC 108). Its centre is not a text but a person, the Word of God made flesh, living and speaking to us. The Bible is how we come to know him.
Paying attention to how it was written
To understand what God says, we must first understand what the human authors meant. That means asking about their time and culture, and about the kind of writing in front of us (CCC 109–110). The Bible is a library: law, history, poetry, prophecy, proverbs, parables, letters, and the vivid visions of apocalyptic writing. A psalm is not read like a law code, nor Revelation like a census. Truth is expressed differently in each, and reading a passage well starts with knowing which kind it is.
Reading in the Spirit in which it was written
Since Scripture was written in the Holy Spirit, it must be read in that same Spirit (CCC 111). The Church names three guides for doing so (CCC 112–114):
- Read the whole. Scripture is one book because God's plan is one, and Christ is its centre. A verse is read in the light of all the others.
- Read within the living Tradition of the whole Church. Scripture is written first in the Church's heart, before it is written on parchment. The Church's memory of how it has always read a text matters.
- Read by the analogy of faith. The truths of faith hang together. No passage is set against the rest of what God has revealed.
The literal and the spiritual senses
An old Christian tradition speaks of the senses of Scripture (CCC 115–119). The first is the literal sense: what the words actually say, discovered by careful reading and study. All the others rest on it (CCC 116). Literal here does not mean "literalist": the literal sense of a parable is the point of the parable, not a claim that the story happened.
The spiritual senses come from the fact that the realities Scripture describes can themselves be signs (CCC 117):
- Allegorical: how events point to Christ. The crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 14) is a sign of Christ's victory, and of Baptism (CCC 117; cf. 1 Corinthians 10:1–2).
- Moral: how the text guides us to act justly.
- Anagogical (from the Greek for "leading upward"): how earthly realities point to our final home. The Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.
A medieval rhyme summed it up, which might be rendered: the letter teaches what happened; allegory, what to believe; the moral sense, what to do; anagogy, where we are going (CCC 118). Scholars study the text, and the Church's judgement is the final word on interpretation (CCC 119).
One story in two Testaments
The Old Testament is not a preface to be skipped. It is the word of God and keeps its own lasting value (CCC 121–123). Christians read it in the light of Christ, and read Christ in its light. This is called typology: seeing in the persons and events of the Old Covenant figures of what God would do in Christ, as St Paul does with Adam (Romans 5:14) (CCC 128–130). St Augustine put it neatly: the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is made plain in the New (CCC 129).
How to begin
- Start with a Gospel. Mark is the shortest and can be read in one evening. Luke is gentle and full of mercy. Read it straight through, like a story, because it is one.
- Use a Catholic edition with notes. It will include all the books of the Catholic canon, and the notes help with history and context.
- Read a little, often. A chapter a day is better than a heroic weekend.
- Read the Sunday readings ahead of Mass, so you hear them twice.
- Read prayerfully. Lectio divina, slow, prayerful reading, is the Church's ancient way of letting the text become conversation with God.
St Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, said that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ (CCC 133). The reverse is also true: to read them is to come to know him.
Going deeper
- The canon of Scripture: which books are in the Bible, and why.
- Scripture and Tradition: how the word of God is handed on.
- Lectio divina: praying with a passage of Scripture.
- Read next in the Catechism: CCC 101–141.