15. The inspired books teach the truth.

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 15

AVE MARIA SERIES “ So that all may be one…” Jn 17:21

How can Scripture be “truth” if not everything in it is right?

The Bible is not meant to convey precise historical information or scientific findings to us.  Moreover, the authors were children of their time.  They shared the cultural ideas of the world around them and often were also dominated by the errors of the world.  Nevertheless, everything that man must know about God and the way of his salvation is found with infallible certainty in Sacred Scripture.  \

Jacob wrestling with an angel.  – Genesis  32:25-29, compare Hosea 12:3.  ….. 15

BIBLE  (Latin: biblia=scrolls, books) is what Jews and Christians call a collection of Sacred Scriptures that came into being over a period of approximately 1500 years (from Moses to St. John the Evangelist) and is for them the charter of their faith.  The Christian Bible is considerably more extensive than the Jewish Bible, because besides the Jewish Scriptures it also contains the Catholic four Gospels, the letters of St. Paul, and other writings of the early Church.

 [CCC ¶106-107, 109]

INSPIRATION AND TRUTH OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more."⁷¹

71. Dei Verbum 11

107 The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."⁷²

72. Dei Verbum 11.

109 In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words."⁷³

73. Refer to Dei Verbum 12, subsection 1.

Illustration: 

OT  Jacob angel Archangel wrestling