A Complete Catechism of the Catholic Religion/Introduction
A SHORT HISTORY OF REVEALED RELIGION.
INTRODUCTION
The word revelation signifies an unveiling or manifestation of something hidden by a veil. As the Council of the Vatican teaches, God, the beginning and end of all things, may be certainly known by the natural light of human reason, by means of created things. But it pleased His wisdom and bounty to reveal Himself and the eternal decrees of His will to mankind by another and supernatural way, by speaking, in times past, through His prophets, and last of all by His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
We owe it to this divine teaching that among things divine such truths as of themselves are not beyond human reason can, even in the present condition of mankind, be known by every one with ease, with certainty, and with no admixture of error.
Besides, God has revealed truths which regard the supernatural end to which He has destined man.
This divine revelation is " contained in the written books and unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles themselves, from the dictation of the Holy Spirit, transmitted as it were, from hand to hand, have come down even to us." (Counc. of the Vatican. — Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, II.)
The books containing this revelation are called the Bible. The Bible consists of two parts, the Old and the New Testament. The Old Testament contains the revelations made in the beginning to man, and those which God made subsequently through the Patriarchs and the prophets of Israel before the coming of Christ. The New Testament, written by the Apostles and Evangelists, records the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, the foundation of His Church and the early events of her history.
Frequently the true sense of the Scriptures is obscure. Sometimes the words are to be taken in their exact litreral meaning; at other times they are figurative. The sacred writers, as Pope Leo XIII. has said,[1] put down what God, speaking to men, signified in the way that men could understand and were accustomed to.
The Church alone, guided by the Holy Ghost, can infallibly declare what is the true sense of the sacred text. In comparatively few cases has the Church declared whether the words are to be taken literally or in a figurative sense. She has never, for instance, taught that the six days of creation mean days of twenty-four hours each; nor has she determined the age of the world, or the date at which man was created. On the other hand, she has always clearly insisted on the great truths taught in the history of the creation, related in the Bible, which are the unity, the eternity, the goodness, and the omnipotence of God; His creation of all things out of nothing; the spirituality and the immortality of the human soul; the fall of man; the wickedness of sin: the transmission of the effects of original sin from our first parents to all their descendants; the character of marriage as a union for life between one man and one woman; and the necessity of a Divine Saviour for all the human race. Whenever the Church is silent regarding the meaning of a text or passage of the Bible, no private person, however learned he may be, has the right to pronounce with authority upon what is the meaning of God's words in that particular case.
The Council of the Vatican declares " that in matters of faith and morals, appertaining to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the true sense of Holy Scripture which our holy Mother Church hath held and holds, to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scripture: and, therefore, that it is permitted to no one to interpret the Sacred Scripture contrary to this sense or likewise contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers." (Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, 11.)
Between the Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Church on the one side, and science on the other, there never can be any real contradiction; for God, who is the Author both of Faith and reason, cannot contradict Himself. And as Leo XIII. says,[2] " There can never, indeed, be any real discrepancy between the theologian and the physical scientist as long as each confines himself within his own lines, and both are careful, as St. Augustine warns us ' not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known.' "