1What is the Bible and how should it be interpreted?
The Bible is the written Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, safeguarded, and transmitted by the Catholic Church. Divine inspiration does not mean mechanical dictation but the mysterious cooperation of divine and human authors, producing texts free from error in all they affirm (2 Tim 3:16; Dei Verbum 11).
The canon of Scripture—seventy-three books—was discerned and fixed by the Church at the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) and reaffirmed by the Council of Trent (1546). The same Church that preserved these writings possesses the exclusive authority to interpret them authentically. To claim the Bible apart from the Church is to detach it from the authority that declared it inspired.
Interpretation must proceed within the living Tradition, under the Magisterium's guidance. Scripture cannot be reduced to private opinion or linguistic analysis alone. The same Spirit who inspired it interprets it through the Church. Protestantism's experiment in private interpretation has produced endless division precisely because it abandoned that principle. Scripture and Church are inseparable—one divine revelation expressed through two forms: written word and living tradition.