Contextualism: How The Bible Is The Inspired Word Of God

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To begin with, what does it mean when someone says that the Bible is the inspired word of God? It means quite a few things. While god did not directly write the Bible, he certainly had a hand in its creation. To be blunt, God divinely influences the human authors of the Scriptures in a way that they wrote the very Word of God. The Bible is written by people who are inspired by God to write the scriptures. He does not directly control what they write, but he nudges them in the correct direction with his divine influence. He is not controlling them, but inspiring. God inspired people to write the very words of himself. Also, in what sense does the Church teach that the Bible is without error? The Church has a few different points of view on …show more content…

The Catholic Church officially teachers the "Contextualist" approach. This means that unlike the fundamentalists, they do not follow the Bible word for word exactly. They do not believe that God told the authors of the Bible what to write exactly, but rather that he inspired the general idea of the Bible. It is understood that there will be a few small errors in the stories of the Bible, but the overall basis of each story is true. This greatly helps us find the Truths that God wants us to know. For one, we understand that to understand the bible we must look at the big picture, not every small detail. Also, that we do not need to follow it word for word. We would be severely restricted in many things, but god understands that things have changed. Society is different, and so are our interpretations of ther Bible. The Catholic Church has Magesterium, who interprets the Bible's stories and teachings for us. They decide how it should be interpreted and followed. Biblical Inerrancy (as formulated in "Chicago Satement on Biblical Inerrancy"), is a doctrine that claims that the Bible ís without error or fault in all its teaching". This is considered a fundamentalist way of interpreting the Bible. The Catholic Church is officially Contextualist, and does not take the bible word for word. Instead, they interpret it accordingly with the help of the

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