We began this session by talking about
the Bible as the revealed Word of God. The Bible itself is unique from other religious texts in that is shows God communicating Himself to humanity. As Catholics, we say the Scriptures are divinely inspired and the word "inspiration" literally means "God-breathed."
There are 73 books in the Bible with 46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. The Old Testament is divided into four parts: Pentateuch, Historical Books, Wisdom Literature, and the Prophets. The New Testmanet is divided into five parts: The Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline Epistles (letters of Paul), the Catholic Epistles (letters of other Apostles), and the Book of Revelation.
The early Church had four criteria for determing if a book should be included in the canon (or list) of Sacred Scripture. These four criteria were Orthodox (right doctrine), Unviersal (used throughout the Christian world), Liturgical (read in the Liturgy of the Church), and Apostolic (or coming from the Apostles or their direct disciples).
In the 1500s, Martin Luther decided to remove seven books of the Bible and reduced the Protestant Old Testament to 39 books (instead of the original 46).
We then talked about the
Story of Salvation or Salvation History. Salvation History is the plan of God from the very beginning of the world to reconcile the human family to Himself. Salvation History has three major parts: Creation, the Fall, and Redemption.
Creation was the free choice of God to create the world and humanity. God created out of love. The Fall was when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and chose themselves over God. This lead to a gap, a debt, between God and humanity that needed to be repaired. Humanity, however, could not overcome this gap or repay this debt because it was of infinite value. God had a plan for redemption. This plan began immediately after the Fall with Adam and Eve (one, holy couple). From Adam and Eve, God revealed more to Noah and his family aboard the ark. God then chose a tribe, the tribe of Abraham, to be His people. In Moses God chose the whole nation of Israel and in King David God chose the kingdom of Israel. Finally, in the fullness of time, everything was fulfilled in Jesus Christ and His Church, the Catholic Church. Jesus was able to repay humanity's debt to God through a perfect act of obedience (dying on the Cross) and of infinite value (as He was God Incarnate).