Scripture is to be read and obeyed.
Thou shalt not steal is not that complicated and needs no *interpretation*.
Neither does Thou shalt not murder, covet, commit adultery, make images and bow down to them, etc.
That is, unless someone is trying to weasel around and justify disobeying them.
Then Scripture needs to be *interpreted* to make it say something it doesn’t say, to find a loophole.
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>> “Then Scripture needs to be *interpreted* to make it say something it doesn’t say, to find a loophole.” <<
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Precisely.
Let us say that Protestants interpret Scripture. They do this by considering Scripture itself, and coming up with ideas about what it means. (And let me say here, I know some super-incredible Protestants who love the Lord, and I in no way want to bash anyone, because how could I do that, knowing some of these terrific Protestant Christians? So please, if I write anything badly, please don’t take it in a bad way, because I don’t know much about how Protestants operate, so I might make a mistake.)
Here (http://www.baptisthistory.org/pamphlets/baptism.htm) in an article about baptism and the Baptists, it says, “Leaders like John Smyth, Thomas Helwys, and John Murton among the General Baptists in England **searched the New Testament and arrived at conclusions** about the true nature of the church,” so they seem to have considered what it says in the Bible and come to a determination of the meaning, which is what I am assuming Protestants mean when they talk about interpreting the Bible.
So now, let’s consider a Greek word which can be translated as either “repent” or “do penance.” I once looked this up in a Catholic Bible and in several Protestant bibles, and in the Catholic bible, every instance was translated “do penance,” and in the Protestant bibles, it was always translated “repent.”
The definition of “penance” is “voluntary self-punishment inflicts as an outward expression of repentance for having done wrong.” (This is from the first Google search response, which shows up on the list of links). The definition of “repent” from the same source is to “feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one’s wrongdoing or sin.” Merriam-Webster has “to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one’s life.”
So you see that how the Catholics translate this Greek word and how the Protestants translate it differs and that this has had a great effect on the teachings of the two groups.
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Now let’s look at the history of the early Church and Scripture, as an **explanation** of what the Catholic Church teaches:
When considering the history of the early Church, we see that “Scripture” as we know it did not exist. When Christ referred to Scripture, He was referring to the Old Testament. At the beginning of the early Church, there were no “Christian” writings at all.
Everything that new Christians learned in those early times was the information transmitted from Christ through the Apostles, and then to their disciples. There were no writings to interpret—the information was what Christ had taught the Apostles.
As Christian leaders began to write (or be transcripted), certain individual documents were accepted as very important or inspired (the Gospels and the letters of St Paul), but there are records of texts later excluded from the canon of Scripture being accepted, and of course we know that the eventual Canon includes works which were neither a Gospel nor a letter of St Paul.
How were these various works evaluated? By their adherence to the teachings Christ had left with the Apostles and which had been handed down by the Apostles.
History shows us that the development of doctrine and of the teachings of Christianity in the early years did not proceed in the way these things happen now among Protestants. The early Christians did not search through a book to figure out what the Christian teachings were or should be, to discover, for example, the nature, effect, and proper procedure for baptism, because the writings to do that with did not yet exist.
What came first were the teachings. First the Apostles taught, then gradually some information was written down. There was a foundation of teaching which existed and which was transmitted to those who wanted to convert which existed before any “NT” writings at all.
Thus, the understanding of the word now translated as either “do penance” or “repent” (for example) in the early Church was based, **not** on the Bible, but on the teachings of Christ themselves. The early Christians understood the meaning of this word because an Apostle or the disciple of an Apostle explained it to them if they understood it in the wrong sense., and later, because the early Christians continued to pass on the teachings of Christ, we understood that what Christ wanted was more than repentance; He wanted penance from us as well.
Thus we can see that the Catholic Church does not interpret Scripture in the way that Protestants do. Instead, we have an understanding of Scripture based on the teachings which Christ gave to the Apostles, and which have been handed down to us, protected by the Holy Spirit. We understand what is meant by the ambiguous Greek word for do penance/repent, because of our teachings.
And so…. long, long ago you and others asked for a list of Scripture readings which had been “interpreted” by the Church. I hope that this little tome of mine explains why our list is so short.