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Understanding Bible requires faith, intelligence, pope says
11-06-2009
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Discovering the truth contained in the Bible about God and about each human person requires attentive reading and scholarship as well as a constant willingness to change one's life, Pope Benedict XVI said.
"God gave us the Scriptures to teach us," the pope said June 10 at his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square.
Reviewing the teaching of John Scotus Erigena, a ninth-century Irish theologian and philosopher, Pope Benedict said Erigena insisted on the fact that the only way to understand the Bible fully was with an approach that relied on intelligence and prayer at the same time and that the final result was not understanding, but contemplation.
An expert on the writings of the early Christian theologians of the East, Erigena said the purpose of the Bible is to help the human person "remember that which was impressed on his heart at the moment he was created in the image and likeness of God," an understanding of God later clouded over by original sin, the pope said.
"The words of the Holy Scriptures purify our reason, which is somewhat blind, and help us remember that which we bear in our hearts as images of God," Pope Benedict said.
For Erigena, the pope said, a Christian has "the obligation to continue to seek the truth until one reaches an experience of silent adoration of God."
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/briefs/cns/20090610.htm
