Donald Senior, C.P., is President of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, the largest Roman Catholic graduate school of ministry in the United States, where he is also a member of the faculty as Professor of New Testament. Born in Philadelphia in 1940, he is a member of the Passionist Congregation and was ordained a priest in 1967. He received his doctorate in New Testament studies from the University of Louvain in Belgium in 1972. Fr. Senior is a frequent lecturer and speaker throughout the United States and abroad, and serves on numerous boards and commissions, including the Board of Directors of William H. Sadlier, Inc. He has published extensively on biblical topics, with numerous books and articles for both scholarly and popular audiences. In 2001, Pope John Paul II appointed him as a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and he was reappointed in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI.

A teacher in a college course on a particular book of the Bible or a biblical scholar trying to analyze a challenging biblical passage will necessarily and legitimately focus only on one small section of the entire Scriptures and a limited number of parallels. A course on the Gospel of Matthew, for example, might consider the Sermon the Mount of chapters 5-7 and explore it in the context of Matthews overall Gospel narrative or maybe compare it with the "Sermon on the Plain" in Lukes Gospel. A scholar working on the literary form of the creation story in Genesis might well compare it with literature from other Middle Eastern civilizations contemporary with this passage.

These approaches are fully legitimate when one is focusing on the specific meaning or history or literary form of a particular passage. However, when a preacher or a religious teacher or a Bible study group or an individual reader wants to draw out what a biblical passage might mean for my life as a person of faith or to understand the value of the Bible on a particular moral issue, then another principle of interpretation comes into playnamely the need to interpret the meaning of any particular passage of the Bible in the light of the whole of the Scriptures.

From the point of view of the Church, the Bible is not simply a collection of individual books, ranging from Genesis to the Book of Revelation. Over time, the Church decided on a "canon" of Scripture. The word "canon" derives from a Greek word which means the "measurement" or "rule" or "standard" by which something is judged. In relation to the Bible it means that the Church ultimately decided that these books (32 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament) formed its official canon, that is to say, the normative collection of books that in their totality form the Churchs sacred Scriptures inspired by the Spirit.

The process by which the early Church selected the various books of the canon took time and the reasons for a particular selection were not always clear. Of decisive importance was the fact that these biblical books were accepted by the faith community and used in the Churchs liturgy and teaching. Virtually at the same time in the early centuries of the Church, the Jewish community was also affirming which books it considered to be inspired and part of its canon. There are a few books that Catholics claim for the Old Testament that the Jewish community (and most Protestant communities) does not, such as Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, and 1 & 2 Maccabees. Catholics and Protestants fully agree on the 27 books included in the New Testament canon. And there was never any real debate among Jews or Christians about the major books of the Bible, and those books that are disputed are recognized by all as sacred and to be revered, if not reaching the status of inspired Scripture.

The important point for interpretation, however, is that it is the totality of the Scriptures that one has to keep in mind in drawing significant conclusions about the moral authority of the Bible. Often a single passage can stands on its own, such as the two-fold love command taught by Jesus in Matthew 22:24-40 ("You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."). Yet how are we to weigh the Old Testament instructions about total destruction of ones enemy in the context of the wars of conquest in the Book of Joshua? Or what would we say is the Bibles teaching on slaverywhen there are few passages that seem to directly disapprove of this practice?

In these instances it is important that we keep in mind the whole of Scripture, recognizing, for example, the Bibles teaching on the sacredness of human life and its embrace of human freedomteachings found throughout the Bible in various expressions which should also inform our judgment about what the Bible ultimately has to say about violence or slavery. Keeping in mind the totality of the Scriptures helps offset the tendency many people to have to justify a particular moral or social stance on the basis of a single verse (often taken out of context). Thus someone wanting to downplay the urgency of social justice for the poor might quote Jesus famous saying, "The poor you will always have with you" (Matthew 26:11). But, in fact, justice for the poor is a strong biblical injunction throughout the Old and New Testaments.

This emphasis on interpreting a specific biblical passage in the light of the whole of Scripture is sometimes referred to as a "canonical" approach. The Church embraces the whole of the Scriptures as an expression of its faith and moral teaching, not just the message of a particular passage or individual book of the Bible. Here again is the need for the wisdom and good sense of the faith community in drawing out the meaning of the Bible for our lives. There are well-intentioned Christian groups, for example, who incorporate handling poisonous snakes as part of their worship based on the text in Mark 16:18 ("They will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them&"). Such a passage should not be made a norm of faith but be understood in the wider context of the Bible.

The Bible, as we have noted, spans many centuries and includes many different literary forms. While inspired it is also a thoroughly human book and some biblical passages will express the limited scientific and moral perspectives of their time. Within the Bible itself one can see later traditions modify and advance previous perspectives.

Thus the need for thoughtful interpretation of the Bible and the awareness that Christian life is not guided by any single passage or individual biblical book but by the Word of God that comes to us in the totality of our Sacred Scriptures and in the wise counsel of the Christian community.