When we look at the words of scripture, it can be very easy to misinterpret the original intent of the authors. How easy? Let's look at a simple four-word sentence:
I never said that.
Very simple, right? Very easy to understand?
Wait just a minute. Let's look at how confusing a simple sentence can be.
What if we shift the emphasis:
I never said that. Maybe you said it. Maybe I agreed with you. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I thought it. Or not.
I never said that. This is probably the plainest phrase. Then again, maybe I'll say it in a minute. Maybe I believe it. Or not.
I never said that. But maybe I wrote it. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe I thought it. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe I believe it. Or not.
I never said that. At least, not in those exact words. Maybe I said something very similar that carries the same meaning, but I never said exactly that phrase or used those words. Or maybe I never said anything like it and I don't agree with it at all. Or not.
Four words. Examined carefully, they say absolutely nothing. Of course, if we can speak to the author of those words, we can find out what he meant. If we can't speak to the author, we can talk to others who knew him, or wrote about him. We can place the remark in context. We can learn the culture that produced him, and the location of his home, and his racial characteristics, to learn how he might have thought. Putting the pieces together, we can get a pretty good idea of what he meant.
Or we can look to an authority, perhaps a biographer or a historian, to help us to understand what he truly meant. The written word alone, without context and background and emphasis, is useless.
And yet some say we can take a single phrase from the bible and understand it without any outside help. Or we can listen to someone no more qualified than ourselves to interpret written phrases that are thousands of years old, translated multiple times, taken from a different historical background and culture. Some say we can depend on the Holy Spirit to guide us to full understanding, even though we have no idea what those words meant when they were written thousands of years ago. And some say that we can accept those interpretations as inspired even when the same words provoke thousands of different meanings, depending on the faith background of the reader. They say we can figure out books written two thousand or more years ago, even though we can't figure out the writings of Chaucer and Shakespeare, and they were written in our own language only a few centuries ago!
Or we can look to an authority (perhaps a better term is "Magisterium") which encompasses not only the written word of scripture, but the studies and writings of thousands of the greatest minds the world has ever produced (perhaps a better term is "Tradition").
Sacred Scripture, interpreted through the lens of Sacred Tradition, by the authority of the Magisterium, produces a single, clear vision.
Truth.
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