The major theme in the sacred theology is God. The subject matter of the sacred Christian faith thus not only defines how God is known to us through the reflections of various things He made but also the manner in which He is known and revealed Himself to the Christian community. Through faith, human beings participate in God’s knowledge as well as his providential plan (Andrew, 2010). Therefore, faith is the start of eternal life, the foretaste of the idea that shall bless people in the future life. The Sacred Scripture, commonly known as Bible by Christians, is a holy book written by human authors through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Christians have used the Sacred Scripture as a reference to the word of the Lord. Also, through the Sacred Scripture, Christian regularly gets spiritual nourishment and strength since the phrase is not just human words but as a reality, the words of God ( Andrew, 2010). The Sacred texts provide the interface where the Father who resides in heaven comes to meet his beloved children and speaks with them. The Sacred Scripture forms a sacred deposit about the word of the Lord and is committed to the church. The church holds a special position in the Christianity faith (Black et al., 2015). It is the office of the church, which is exclusively entrusted with the duty of authentically construing as well as interpreting the exact words of the Lord as indicated in the Sacred Scripture. In essence, the church should not be comprehended as an office that is above the word and teachings of the Lord. However, it must be recognized that the church serves the word of God and teaches what has been written and mandated to do as enshrined in the sacred books(Black et al., 2015). The church should also devoutly listen to the words of the Lord, guard it scrupulously, as well as explain it faithfully in agreement with the divine commission and assistance of the Holy Spirit that it gets from the pledge of faith. Thus, this paper seeks to discuss the Sacred Scripture and Christian theology.
The Old and New Testament
The principal purpose of the plan of the Old Testament was to prepare humanity for the coming of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of everyone. The messianic kingdom would announce His coming by prophecy (see 1 Peter 1:10; John 5:39; Luke 24:44) and to show its connotation through numerous types (1 Cor. 10:12). The sacred books in the old covenant are helpful to humans since they reveal the knowledge of God and the numerous ways in which the Lord is merciful and just. Some of these books are incomplete and temporary, but they depict to us the right heavenly pedagogy. Christians must receive these books with reverence. God, who is the inspirer of both covenants, wisely arranged that the New Testament is hidden in the Old Testament, and the old covenant manifests in the new. The writings in the old covenant are hugely inspirational to the Christian faith and should be comprehended to help in the daily life of Christians. The books presented in the New Testament stand as the divine and eternal witness to the realities.
Similarly, the word of the Lord, which is the strength of salvation of all believers (Rom. 1: 16), sets forth and displays its power in a more brilliant manner in the New Testament. The New Testament has four Gospel books, epistles of St. Paul, as well as numerous apostolic writings, which are written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The two Testaments form a Sacred Scripture that is essential to the Christian faithful.
Divine Interpretation and Inspiration of the Sacred Scripture
Importantly, it is right to acknowledge that God is the writer of the Sacred Scripture. The exquisitely exposed realities contained and presented in the Sacred Book, have been authored under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (Farkasfalvy, 2010). God, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, inspired the human writers of the sacred texts. To write the Sacred Scripture, God selected some men who made complete use of their powers and faculties to producing the holy book that reflected the whole thought of Him. The entire Sacred Scripture teaches Christians truth(Black et al., 2015). Thus, all that the inspired writers of the sacred authors should be considered holy, and Christians should acknowledge that the texts in the Scripture faithfully, firmly, and without any error impart truth, which God wanted to see disclosed in the sacred books for the salvation of people. Moreover, the Christian faith is never a religion of the Sacred Scripture but a religion of the Word of God. This word should not just be written and remain mute words but should be the word, which is living and incarnate (Farkasfalvy, 2010). Thus, if the Bible is not to stay and termed a dead letter, Jesus Christ, the external word of the living God, through the Holy Spirit, must disclose to Christian’s minds to comprehend the word of God in the Scripture (Geoffrey, 2008).
Similarly, the church makes huge claims regarding the Bible, and Christians’ acceptance of the claims is vital especially when they are capable of reading and applying what has been written in the Scripture to their daily lives. The manner in which the Christians read the Sacred Scripture, in turn, shall establish what they learn from the sacred pages. In fact, according to St. Paul, ‘every Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). Thus, the word “inspired” in this context could be interpreted to mean that every word in the Bible is God-breathed. The words were not only written by the authors but also received huge inspiration from God to complete the sacred books. Above all, it is clear that God is the principal writer of the Scripture (Geoffrey, 2008).
The norm of the Scripture inerrancy follows the code of the divine authorship rationally. Moreover, God can never lie and cannot make errors. Thus, it is vital to trust instrumental authors guided by the Holy Spirit who wrote all that. This infers that the biblical inerrancy is a huge mystery even wider in scope than the infallibility promises that the Church shall often teach the truth about morals and faith. The mantle of inerrancy covers morals and faith, but it also expands to further assert that every fact and event of the salvation history is correctly documented in the Bible. Inerrancy is the promise that the deeds and words of the Lord found in the sacred books are unified, right, and appropriate with a single voice(Maddix et al., 2012). The promise of inerrancy thus does not infer that the Sacred Scripture is a comprehensive encyclopedia of ideas and information encompassing all fields of study(Maddix et al., 2012). The Sacred Scripture is not, for instance, a book in the experimental sciences, and must not be regarded as one. When the biblical writers relate proofs of the natural order, we can be confident they are talking in a virtuously phenomenological and descriptive manner, based on the way things seemed to their senses (Maddix et al., 2012).
In the Sacred Scriptures, the holiness and truth of the Lord often stay intact, and the wonderful condescension of eternal wisdom is vividly demonstrated. The Bible is an accurate representation of the words of the Lord(Black et al., 2015).
The Sacred Scripture among Christians
The word of the Lord is the Bible, and Jesus Christ is the word of God. The close correlation between the Lord’s written words and His eternal word is deliberate and forms the custom of Christianity since the very first generation (Otten, 2013). Every Sacred Scripture is a single book, which is Jesus Christ since all divine Bible talks about Christ. Furthermore, Jesus Christ fulfills every Holy Bible. Nonetheless, this should be inferred that the Bible is divine in a similar manner as Jesus Christ is divine. Instead, the two are divinely inspired and thus are distinct in the world of literature just as the Incarnation of the eternal Word becomes exceptional in the history of humans. In many essential ways, the inspired words of the Lord resemble the incarnate words. Christ is the word of the Lord incarnate(Black et al., 2015). Christ, in his humanity, resembles Christians in almost everything, except for sin. Thus, as a work of man inspired by God, the Sacred Scripture is like any book, apart from having no error. Christians cannot thus, conceive one without another: Jesus without the Sacred Scripture, or the Sacred Scripture without Jesus. Moreover, since Jesus Christ is the subject of every Bible, it is right to claim that ignorance of the Sacred Scripture is ignorance of Jesus Christ (Otten, 2013). When Christians approach the Scripture, then, they approach Jesus Christ, the word of the Lord and this must be done in a prayerful manner (Black et al., 2015).
The implicit of this doctrine is that God desire to make Himself well-known in this world as well as get into loving relations will all men, women, and children He created. Thus, in the Christian faith, God provided the Bible not only to motivate or inform us but more importantly, to save this higher role and inspire all pages of the Scripture, indeed all word of God. The name of the Lord is, therefore, fatherly, personal, and saving since, it talks straightly to humans and must not be different from its content. Nevertheless, the word of the Lord is once the cause, objects, as well as, support for faith. The Bible and the Church’s doctrine teachings are tightly held to a point where they become inseparable. The dogma is nothing but just the construal of the Scripture.
The church has often revered the divine Bible just as it has adored the body of Christ. In the divine worship, the Church regularly receives and provides to faithful Christians the bread of life from not only the table of the Lord’s words but also the body of Christ (Thiselton, 2011). Like Christianity itself, the Sacred Scripture should regulate and nourish the preaching of the church(Black et al., 2015). In the Sacred Scripture, the heavenly Father meets His children with immense love and talks with them and the power and force of God’s words are so firm that it supports the church. These words are impeccably pertinent to the Bible. For instance, Hebrew 4:12, states that the words of the Lord are active and living. Also, Acts 20:32 states that the word of the Lord has the power to build and give heritage among those who are sanctified.
Easy access to the Sacred Scripture must be granted to every Christian faithful, and that underlines the key reason why the church agreed from the beginning to see the translation of the Old Testament. Furthermore, since the word of the Lord must be accessible to all Christian faithful, the church under her authority and concern has the obligate duty to see an appropriate and accurate translation of the Sacred Scriptures into various languages from the first texts of the Bible. Christians should be able to use Biblical resources that are approved by the church since this helps to establish the accuracy of the translation(Black et al., 2015). In fact, in the contemporary world, many translations of the Bible have been done, and some have been accused of washing away the original meaning of the Sacred Scriptures. The Bible shall lose its meaning with the increasing number of vague translations if the church does not take charge of the entire process (Meeks, 2010).
Through the study and reading of the Sacred Scripture, The Word of the Lord may spread fast and also be glorified as depicted in 2 Thess. 3:1 and the power of revelation, delegated to the Church, may abundantly fulfill the hearts of the Christian faithful. In the same manner, in which the life of the Church becomes stronger through many Eucharistic mystery celebrations, Christians may hope that a new spur for life results from the improving reverence of the word of the Lord that lasts forever (Meeks, 2010).
Conclusion
In conclusion, this discussion meets the thesis of the paper that focused on the Sacred Scripture and Christian theology. It can be seen that sacred theology is primarily based on the written words of the Lord in the Sacred Scripture as its permanent and primary foundation. By examining based on faith and all truth stored in the mystery of Jesus Christ, divinity is largely strengthened and continuously revitalized by the word of the Lord. This is essential since the Sacred Scripture encompasses the actual word of the Lord inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Sacred Scripture has enormous significance in Christian faithful lives, and such must be followed genuinely. The Bible is an accurate representation of the Lord’s words, and the church has the authority to lead in the proclamation of the words of God to anyone. Moreover, the Sacred Scripture has both human and divine authors; Christians are needed to master diverse kinds of reading and contents that are familiar to help them in spiritual nourishment. It is also essential to first read the Bible based on its literal sense in the same manner we read other human books and this is vital because it gives the opportunities to discover the connotation of various expressions and words used in the Sacred Scriptures. The church requires us to read effectively the sacred books in this manner to confirm that we comprehend what the original authors were grappling to demonstrate to Lord’s people.
References
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Black, C. C., & Fowl, S. E. (2015).Reading scripture with the saints.Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press.
Farkasfalvy, D. (2010). Inspiration &interpretation : A theological introduction to Sacred Scripture.New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Geoffrey. T. (2008).Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s Bible: How the New Testament Shapes Christian Dogmatics. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Maddix, Mark A., & Thompson, Richard P. (2012). Scripture as formation: The role of scripture in Christian formation.(Report). Christian Education Journal,vol. 9(1), S-79(15).
Meeks.W.A. (2010). Book Review: Sacred Scripture, the Mother of Christian Theology: Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, Vol. 46(3), pp.302-304.
Otten, Willemien. (2013). On ‘Sacred Attunement,’ Its meaning and consequences: A meditation of Christian theology.The Journal of Religion, vol. 93(4), 478.
Thiselton, Anthony C. (2011). Wisdom in the Jewish and Christian scriptures: Wisdom in the new testament. Theology, vol. 114(4), 260-268.