The door at the top of the stairs

A Reflection for Wednesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Find today’s readings here.

In Chapter Three of “Dei Verbum,” the “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation” promulgated at the last session of the Second Vatican Council, the council fathers staked a strong position on the inerrancy of Scripture:

Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind” (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Greek text).

In other words, the Bible is not the divine autograph dropped down out of heaven that fundamentalist theologians might argue for, but it is also not an unreliable artifact whose contents can be divided into what is true or useful and what is false or without purpose. When it comes to the books of Scripture, we believe that in some sense “they have God as their author,” and so we accept them, warts and all.

That isn’t always the easiest task in a world where a hermeneutic of suspicion holds sway over so much, particularly if one cannot reach the “second naïvete” of belief and devotion that should come after the use of historical-critical methods and allow us to embrace a genuine faith. Some passages of the Bible repeat others, albeit with small changes in text and meaning; some people in the Bible—including Jesus—seem to misquote other parts of the text; and some parts of the Bible seem, quite frankly, to be bonkers. I remember how refreshing it was as a younger man to become acquainted with the writings of the great Scripture scholar Raymond Brown, S.S., whose faith was undeniable but whose willingness to call a spade a spade was also quite evident.

Today’s first reading from Revelation fell for me on initial reading into the category of bonkers. What are we to make of this vision of heaven, one that sounds more like it came from the pen of Timothy Leary than from St. John of Patmos? 

Obviously much of the symbolic value of different aspects of the passage are lost or obscured to us, whether we are Scripture scholars or not. And obviously there is a poetic element at play that if taken literally could mislead—no one believes God has seven spirits, for example. But there has to be something of the good news here nonetheless. Where is it, though?

The actual images and symbols present in this vision of heaven—obviously created for and imagined by another age—are less important for me than the phrase that starts off the passage: “I, John, had a vision of an open door to heaven.” Of course what John saw when he entered heaven was otherworldly in every aspect, because it was literally not of this world. Of course it looks and sounds bonkers to me: It’s not my vision. Even our own sacramental practices in the church might strike a non-Catholic as inscrutable. Ever wonder what an Easter Vigil looks like to a nonbeliever? I am also not sure my own vision of what heaven looks like wouldn’t sound completely bonkers to the person sitting next to me, much less a fellow believer 20 centuries later. 

But what is important is that door. John is welcomed to come through it by a voice he has heard before. That door tells him and us there is something more to come, that there is a reality far different from ours. And so much of our lives—our prayer, our worship and ritual participation in the church, our celebration of Christ’s Incarnation and the Resurrection and of Pentecost—are linked to that same idea, that there is not an unbreachable chasm between us and the divine. 

It’s an open door, too.

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