All Divine Revelations?
COULD God’s spirit, which inspired the Holy Bible, also be responsible for other books that some consider to be holy? (2 Timothy 3:16) This question was raised by an Italian Jesuit journal (La Civiltà Cattolica), published “under the supervision of the [Vatican] Secretariat of State” and thus considered authoritative in Catholic circles.
“God, by means of the action of Holy Spirit, scattered the seed of the Word even in some holy books of a non-Jewish and non-Christian tradition,” said the Jesuit journal. For the Jesuits, “holy” books, such as the Zoroastrian Avesta or the Confucian Four Books, were written “not without some particular influence of Holy Spirit, and therefore, in some measure they contain a ‘divine revelation.’”
However, the article makes a clarification. “Not all that such holy books contain is the word of God,” it states, adding that those who wrote these books may have “suffered the influence of a polytheistic environment or the philosophical context” in which they lived and acted. According to Marco Politi, Vatican affairs correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, this stand “opens previously unthinkable possibilities in relations between the Catholic Church and the great historical religions,” returning to the spirit of various interconfessional prayer meetings like that in Assisi in 1986, vigorously promoted by John Paul II.
Jehovah is not a God of disorder and confusion. (1 Corinthians 14:33) So we cannot rightly conclude that his holy spirit, or active force, would inspire even a portion of any books that are not in full harmony with his Word, the Bible. Rather than encouraging ecumenical approaches between different “religious traditions,” the Christian apostle Paul wrote that there is “one hope . . . , one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”—Ephesians 4:4, 5.
That “one hope” hinges upon putting faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible appropriately states: “There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is not another name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must get saved.” (Acts 4:12) No other “holy book” presents Jesus as the central figure in the outworking of God’s purposes. Only if we accept the Bible as the Word of God can it teach us about Jehovah God’s loving provision for salvation.—John 17:3; 1 Thessalonians 2:13.