The Bible is Catholic Week 1In this first week, The Bible is Catholic considers the relationship between the word of God in the Bible and the Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ. It explores the inextricable connection between the Bible and the Body of Christ, by reference to the Body of Christ as Temple, the Body of Christ as Eucharist, and the Body of Christ as the Church of which Jesus Christ is the head (Eph 1:18-23; Col 1:15-20). It goes on to examine a major contrast between the Catholic understanding of the Christian’s real, substantial participation in the life of God, with the modern intellectual habit of spiritualising, psychologising and disembodying things. It considers how these two ways of thinking effect the way we understand the word of God in the Eucharist, the Church and in the Bible. Do with think of the Eucharist as Christ’s body and blood which we eat and drink, or as a psychological prompt to remember? Do we think of the Church through the biblical concept of covenant (as a visible, hierarchical, authoritative, institutional communion), or in the modern sense of an invisible, spiritual association? Do we think of the Bible as a real and true participation in the words of God and in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:3-4), or as merely a psychological tool? The talk discusses how the Bible does not find its fullness of meaning in the word of God per se but in the word of God “tabernacled” among us (John 1:14). It discusses the Church as “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15-16) and thus the pillar and ground of the Bible. And it is in the Church that the Bible has its substantial meaning, a meaning you can literally eat and drink.