The Bible in Our Lives Today

Abstract

In this article, Bergant exposes the influence of Vatican Council II on the place of the Bible in the lives of ordinary Catholics, by comparing their experiences and the state of biblical scholarship prior to the Council, at the present time, and suggesting questions that remain for the future. She deftly weaves her way through the various positions of earlier Church councils and magisterial teachings that strictly limited who could interpret the sacred scriptures and how that must be done. Vatican II issued a document that attested to a notable change in the Catholic Church’s method of biblical interpretation. Dei Verbum (The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation; 1965) is considered one of the most significant documents of the council. It instructs Catholic interpreters to employ the critical methods that had engaged Protestant scholars for centuries, but which had been previously banned in Catholic scholarship. While those changes spearheaded a revitalizing of the Bible in the church, serious questions remain unresolved, including biblical translations, the intersection of the biblical message and contemporary concerns (integrity of creation), interfaith respect and acceptance.