United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

24 • Part I. The Creed: The Faith Professed

THE BIBLE

Graced by the Holy Spirit, the Apostles did what Jesus commanded them. They did this orally, in writing, by the heroic sanctity of their lives, and by ensuring that there would be successors for this mission. The first communication of the Gospel was by preaching and witness. The Apostles proclaimed Jesus, his Kingdom, and the graces of salvation. They called for the obedience of faith (hearing and obeying God’s Word), The canon of the Bible, which is a term that refers to the books the Bible contains, was fixed within the first centuries of the Church. These books that make up both the Old and New Testaments were identified by the Church as having been divinely inspired. At times, people challenged the divinely inspired character of some of the books in the Bible. In 1546, the Council of Trent declared that all the books in both the Old and New Testament were inspired in their entirety. This declaration was subsequently confirmed by both the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) and the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Those books whose divinely inspired character was challenged appear in non-Catholic Bibles identified as either the “Deuterocanonical Books” or the “Apocrypha.” The Church accepts and venerates the Bible as inspired. The Bible is composed of the forty-six books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. Together these books make up the Scriptures. The unity of the Old and New Testaments flows from the revealed unity of God’s loving plan to save us. The books of the Old Testament include the Pentateuch, histori cal books, the books of the Prophets, and the Wisdom books. The New Testament contains the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and letters from St. Paul and other Apostles and con cludes with the Book of Revelation.