Scripture's role in my conversion to Catholicism

Something to clarify about my last post…I began by stating my change to Catholicism started, for better or worse, through feeling. My intention was to go on to explain how thought, study and prayer merged with that over time and led me to combined conclusion that I felt God was calling me to this, but it was also a feeling I was able to back up objectively from what I had learned over the last couple of years. A major part of what I learned has to do with my view of sacred scripture. I’ve always studied the Bible but I’m understanding it in a way I never did before. One of my biggest flaws in younger years was to play the “proof-text” game, where I had studied just enough to accumulate a little knowledge, but, as is common to youth, became arrogant about what I knew and would find little passages here and there in the Bible I could use to support my arguments. There are multiple problems with that view of scripture; I learned someone with an opposing view could often enough play the same game with their own proof-texts and we’d reach a stalemate. Scripture is not meant to be used as a tool to help us win verbal arguments about theological discussion, nor is it always to be taken a passage at a time. I have increasingly learned scripture has to be taken as a whole – it is one work, written by multiple authors over multiple centuries, and yet miraculously connected with all the historical events telling the same story. The important thing here is that there is no such thing as a simple narrative in scripture. Of course all the old testament is a narrative of the history of mankind and the nation of Israel, but it is also much more – every event, down to the tiniest details, all point to the events that unfolded in the new testament and the coming of the new covenant. The OT points to the NT; the NT reflects the OT. Some examples are more obvious, like the institution of the Passover where the slaves spread the blood of a lamb over their households to be saved from death (and as an aside, when considering the Catholic view that the communion meal actually becomes the body and blood of Christ, remember that after spreading the lamb’s blood on their doorposts in Egypt, they were specifically instructed to consume the lamb). Other examples might not be so obvious; consider how in Genesis, it mentions that a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. This could be considered an awkward text since Adam and Eve had no father and mother in the same way we do, but it points more to Christ, leaving behind his Father when he resigned his divinity to become human, and his mother Mary at his young death, to ultimately be united to his bride, the church. In some cases of finding parallels like this, it can be easy to ask, “am I reading way too much into this?” That’s a fair question but my point here is simply to express that my understanding of scripture has changed dramatically as I see so much of the old testament coming to life in a way I never understood before. The book of Esther, I used to think, was a charming story of a woman of courage. Now I look at it also as a foreshadowing of Mary’s place in the Kingdom – certainly not the king but an advocate for the people that has the King’s ear. I’m not gonna break into the Mary or Eucharist or any other debates in this post. I just thought it was important to communicate my understanding of the scripture because so much of my conversion to Catholicism is founded on this understanding. The Roman Catholic church’s doctrines and traditions are rooted in viewing scripture in this way and their arguments make more sense than any other church’s arguments I’ve ever heard. Even the boring stuff in Leviticus that goes on and on with rules that seem pointless now make so much more sense. The scripture as a whole is truly a work of divine art.