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32 • Part I. The Creed: The Faith Professed
• Divine Revelation is transmitted through Apostolic Tradition and
Sacred Scripture, which flow from the same divine wellspring and
work together in unity toward the same goal.
• “The Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and
transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she
believes” (DV, no. 8, §1). This is what is meant by the term
Tradition
.
• Because of the divine gift of faith, God’s People as a whole never
ceases to receive and reflect on the gift of Divine Revelation.
• The teaching office of the Church, the Magisterium—that is, the
pope and the bishops in communion with him—has the task of
authoritatively interpreting the Word of God, contained in Sacred
Scripture and transmitted by Sacred Tradition.
• Sacred Scripture is inspired by God and truly contains the Word of
God. This action of God is referred to as
Inspiration
.
• God is the author of Sacred Scripture, inspiring the human authors,
acting in and through them. Thus God ensured that the authors
taught divine and saving truth without error.
• The Catholic Church accepts and venerates as inspired the forty-six
books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New
Testament. The unity of the Old and New Testaments flows from the
revealed unity of God’s loving plan to save us.
• Our response to God’s Revelation is faith, by which we surrender
our whole selves to him.
MEDITATION
Go Gladly to the Sacred Text Itself: From the
Second Vatican Council on the Bible
[We] forcefully and specifically exhort all the Christian faith-
ful . . . to learn the “surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ” (Phil
3:8) by frequent reading of the divine scriptures. “Ignorance of
the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (St. Jerome). Therefore, let
them go gladly to the sacred text itself, whether in the sacred lit-
urgy, which is full of the divine words, or in devout reading, or in
such suitable exercises and various other helps which, with the