Ratzinger = Brilliant

Current Doctrinal Relevance of the CCC

This dynamic vision of the Bible in the context of the lived and continuing history of the People of God leads also to a further important insight about the essence of Christianity: "the Christian faith is not a 'religion of the book'", the Catechism states concisely (n. 108). This is an extremely important affirmation. The faith does not refer simply to a book, which as such would be the sole and final appeal for the believer. At the centre of the Christian faith there is not a book, but a person — Jesus Christ, who is Himself the living Word of God and who is handed on, so to speak, in the words of Scripture, which in turn can only be rightly understood in life with Him, in the living relation with Him. And since Christ built and builds up the Church, the People of God, as His living organism, His "body", essential to the relation with him is participation in the pilgrim people, who are the true and proper human author and owner of the Bible, as has been said. If the living Christ is the true and proper standard of the interpretation of the Bible, this means that we rightly understand this book only in the communal, believing, synchronic and diachronic understanding of the whole Church. Outside of this vital context, the Bible is only a more or less heterogeneous literary collection, not the signpost of a journey for our lives. Scripture and tradition cannot be separated. The great theologian of Tübingen, Johann Adam Möhler, illustrated this necessary connection in an unparalleled way in his classic work "Die Einheit in der Kirche" (Unity in the Church), whose study I cannot recommend highly enough. The Catechism emphasizes this connection, which includes the interpretive authority of the Church, as the second Letter of Peter specifically states: "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation ..." (II Pt 1,20).