As a Catholic, of course I agree with CC to a certain a degree. Yes, the Catholic Church presided over the Scriptures and they were compiled according to her authority, but by no means would I stop there.
Drew's post was very interesting in this regard:
Drew wrote:
I will offer this opinion. I am beginning to get the sense that there is a sophistication and inter-connectedness to the Scriptures that I suspect "we" have yet to discover. I think we take too much of an "atomistic" view - we dive in on certain snippets and yet ignore the bigger picture.
When I consider some of the arguments of the theologian NT Wright (I am a big fan of his, as some will no doubt have discovered, perhaps to their annoyance), it seems rather amazing how God, in fact, has kept His covenant promises. I know that I need to fill out this argument, but it seems that how God has kept His covenant is so "brilliant, yet unpredictable" that this stuff could not have been cooked up without divine inspiration.
To perhaps deploy a forced analogy, I suggest that there is almost an "irreducible complexity" to the Scriptural story. In other words, it seems impossible that all the themes and events would integrate so well together if the Scriptures were not the product of a single mind.
I also think there are some compelling connections between how the "physical world" seems to operate and certain scriptural teachings that suggest divine origin of the latter.
Quite simply, it is the subliminity of the "salvation drama" which convinces me, recorded in Scripture and expounded by the Church, which together convince me of the inspiration of them both. I do not simply look to the Church and then to the Scriptures, but I think I look to them both at the same time, see them as mutual witnesses to one another.
I think it might well be the cohesiveness of the Christian religion as a whole. Typology is particularly fascinating, because we see a steady process from Abraham to Christ where God gradually draws humanity to himself, culminating in his very becoming as a human being. Through typology, it is evident that Christ was there all along; the ram in the bushes on Moriah, the Passover Feast, the Temple Cult: Sacred History is really the anticipation and then fulfimment of the Incarnation. As Drew pointed out, it fits too well.
In short, the "salvation drama" witnessed by the Living Church and the Living Word is a continuous and historical dialectic between God and man of which we can see a continual progression in intimacy between man corporately (man is one Adam, therefore one in Abraham, one in Israel, finally one in Christ, one in His Body the Church) and God. Gradually we draw nearer to one another, God to man, God always initiating, until God is in man and man is in God, until there is an exchange of natures. God becomes man and offers man a share in His Self.
Now I accept the above to be true for various personal reasons and reasons beyond my own self. Obviously, without the living testimony of the Church, the Liturgy, the Magesterium, the dogmas, the Scriptures, the common Christian at the soup kitchen, Salvation History would not be known, and therefore, never presented to me to accept or refuse.
: I'm just wondering.
