The Sources of Revelation

 

Divine Faith

by Monsignor C. Van Noort, S.T.D.

 

Translated and Revised by

 

John J. GASTELOT, S.S., S.T.D., S.S.L.

 

WILLIAM R. Murphy, s.s., S.T.D.

 

  

 

MERCIER PRESS LIMITED

CORK

1961

The present volume is a translation of the 5th edition of Msgr. Van Noort’s Tractatus De Fontibus Revelationis and De Fide Divina, edited by J. P. Verhaar. Because of the extensive revision made by the translators, the English translation may be called the 6th edition of Msgr. Van Noort’s dogmatic treatise.

 

Nihil Obstat: C. HABRY DUKEHART, S.S.

Censor Deputatus

 

Imprimatur: John F. Dearden, D.D. Archbishop of Detroit

 

December 21, 1960

 

The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal and moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the nihil obstat and imprimatur agree with the opinions expressed.

 

Copyright 1961 by The ] Press

 

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-14816

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

 

Preface

 

The term “dialogue” crops up today more and more frequently. It emerges before the reading public in publications as diverse as Theological Studies, Time, Harper’s, or the New Yorker. While this book was never intended by its author as a contribution to the dialogue between estranged Christians, it does deal with matters that lie at the heart of that estrangement. It deals with Scripture, Tradition, Faith. While it is doubtless fruitful for divergent Chris­tian sects to exchange viewpoints on specific topics such as “Church and State,” or “birth-control,” or “Ecumenism,” it is obviously more important to understand the broad, fundamental principles which ultimately control the specific answers divergent Christian sects offer for specific problems.

Scripture, Tradition, Faith—these three topics form the subject matter of the present volume, and conclude the section of theology called Fundamental. Because fundamental theology pours the con­crete foundations on which the whole vast edifice of theology will be erected, the topics herein treated are discussed, not for their own sake, but with an eye always on what is to come, the final building with all its specialized corridors.

Because of this aim, fundamental theology treats Scripture, Tradition, and the act of faith from a strictly theological viewpoint and with a theological methodology. It would be a mistake, there­fore, to look for a treatment of specialized questions of Scripture or, at least, to look for them in any great detail. Biblical science is a vast field of its own, with its own methodology. Here the reader is given a general treatment of the entire field of Scripture from a theological point of view. Similarly, it would be a mistake to look, in the section on Tradition, for questions that find their proper place in specialized fields like Patrology, or Christian Archaeology. Finally, it would be a mistake to look in the section on Faith to find answers about specific doctrines of faith, which are taken up in various branches of dogmatic theology. This book discusses, instead, broad principles covering a proper theological orientation toward Scripture, Tradition, and Faith. The treatment is theolog­ical. It seeks to find out what revelation, the Church’s teaching, and sound theological reasoning have to disclose to us about the sources of revelation, looked at precisely as sources, and the act of faith looked at precisely as the act by which we personally lay hold of the truths contained in the sources of revelation. The present treatise, besides being theological in its methodology, is also pri­marily theological in its aim. It not only appeals to the Church’s magisterium and the data of Scripture and Tradition as proofs of its theses; it is also geared to building a theological ouUook in the mind of beginning students of divinity. It is not uncommon to find theological students in their second or third years still using a purely philosophical, or purely apologetic, or purely biblical ap­proach to specific branches of theology. If such students have never learned in fundamental theology the place of the Church’s teach­ing authority, the force of tradition, the meaning of the analogy of faith, etc., they may remain frankly skeptical of some theological theses simply because they cannot demonstrate the point exclu­sively by the use of their reasoning, or find it limpidly expressed in equivalent terms in their own copy of the New Testament.

As in previous volumes we have supplied an outline for each article in the text, new bibliographies, and a Scriptural, author, and general index. Apart from these purely mechanical aids, we have written one entire new chapter: Faith and Reason. We have pruned the remainder of the original text of some points that seemed no longer useful, rearranged and enlarged some sections, and incorporated both in the text and in the notes much new matter that was totally absent from the original. In so doing we have tried to alter as little as possible the author’s original frame­work and substance because it still seemed to us to be basically sound. The places where emendations have been made are too numerous to be specifically singled out, but a more than casual glance at the text and notes on the treatment of “inerrancy” or “theological notes,” for example, will suffice to indicate the general tenor of revisions made in other places.

What we have deliberately omitted in our work of revision has cost us as much thought as what we have included, In the field of Scripture, for example, developments during the last forty years have been so extensive that one could not possibly hope to incor­porate matters which are best treated in the field of Scripture itself. But we do hope we have given sufficient indication in notes

and references of where such specific treatment may be found. Again, for example, in the treatise on Faith while we are quite aware of how much speculation and writing has taken place about the role of grace in the act of faith and new insights provided by modern psychology, we have not deemed it necessary to devote a special chapter to this subject. This for two reasons. In Van Noort’s treatment of theology, all that pertains to faith as a grace is dis­cussed in its proper place in the treatise on Grace and the Infused Virtues. Here the act of faith is viewed in isolation the better to examine its rational justification, its peculiar properties, and its function as the means by which we lay hold of revealed truth. Consequently, and rightly, faith is here studied from the viewpoint of its intelligibility as a human act rather than as the product of God’s grace, or as a part of practical apologetics on how to attract men to faith. Similarly, we have resisted the temptation to deal with the mystical side of faith because such a treatment belongs not to dogmatic, but to ascetical and mystical theology.

For the rest, we do not believe that everything new in theolog­ical speculation should be introduced into a textbook merely be­cause it is new. There are plenty of periodicals in which the latest conjectures of the latest theologians can always find publication. In taking such a viewpoint we do not feel we are being unduly conservative; we have tried throughout to keep in mind the needs of beginning theologians who should, we feel, have served up to them only such theology as is solidly established and clearly articu­lated. Their teachers can always direct them to do research into new approaches to ancient problems.

We should like to express our gratitude to the staff of the New­man Press for painstaking and important work on the manuscript.

 

JOHN J. CASTELOT, S.S.

 

WILLIAM R. Murphy, S.S.

 

October 7, 1960

Feast of the Holy Rosary

 

List of Abbreviations

 

AAS                         Acta Apostolicae Sedis

ACW                        Ancient Christian Writers

AER                         American Ecclesiastical Review

Bibl                           Biblica

CBQ                         Catholic Biblical Quarterly

CCHS                       A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture

Coil. Lac                   Collectio Lacensis

CTSA                       Catholic Theological Society of America— Proceedings

DAFC                       Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique DB              Denziger-Bannwart-Umberg, Enchiridion

Symbolorum

DBS                         Dictionnaire de la Bible. Supplément (Pirot­Robert)

DBV                         Dictionnaire de la Bible (Vigouroux) and Supplément (Pirot-Robert)

DTC                         Dictionnaire de théologie catholique

EO                            Echos d’Orient

HE                            Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica

KL                           Kleist-Lilly, The New Testament

LZ                            Lebreton-Zeiller, The History of the Primitive Church

NRT                                 Nouvelle revue théologique

RBibl                        Revue Biblique

RSS                          Rome and the Study of Sacred Scripture

S.Th                         St. Thomas, Summa theologica

TCT                         The Church Teaches

TD                            Theology Digest

TS                            Theological Studies

VD                           Verbum Domini

ZfKTh                      Zeitschrift fur Katholische Theologie

 

 

 

Contents *

 

                                                                                                                                                            Page
PREFACE                                                                                                         V

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS                                                                         IX

 

 

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

 

The Sources of Revelation

INTRODUCTION                                                                                                        1
I.   SACRED SCRIPTURE                                                                                                       11
     Article I. The Canon of Sacred Scripture                               15
     Article II. The Existence of Inspiration                                  28
     Article III. The Nature and Effects of Inspiration                                                53
     Article IV. The Use of Sacred Scripture                                 98

II.  SACRED TRADITION                                                                       135
     Article I. The Existence of Sacred Tradition . .                                   .            .         145
     Article II. The Preservation of Sacred Tradition .                      .            .         157
     Article III. Some Specific Documents of Tradition        .            .         167

 

Divine Faith

 

INTRODUCTION: The NOTION and Divison of Faith .                                                 181
I.   The Object of Divine Faith                                                                  193
     Article I. The Formal Object of Divine Faith . .                                                      196
     Article II. The Material Object of Divine Faith .                                                 203
     Article III. The Subject Matter of Divine-Catholic     Faith   219

 

* A detailed outline is found at the beginning of each article.

Article IV. Increase of the Subject Matter of Catholic

       Faith or “Dogmatic Progress”                                           231
       Article V. Theological Truths                                               260
       Article VI. Theological Censures                                         280

II. The Act of Divine Faith                                                        293
  Article I. The Subjective Principles which Produce the
    Act of Faith                                                                         296

      Article II. Preparation for the Act of Faith .                                                                310
      Article III. The Analysis of the Act of Faith .                                                              335
      Article IV. The Properties of Faith                                      350

Article V. Who Has Faith? and Is Faith Necessary? . . 369

APPENDIX: Faith AND REASON                                                           385
Scriptural INDEX                                                                     403
INDEX OF PROPER Names                                                     406
General Index                                                                         413

 

General Bibliography

 

Scripture

ARBEZ, E. P.-WEISENGOFF, J. P. Unpublished notes. Catholic Uni­versity of America, 1953.

Auzou, G. La Parole de Dieu. Paris, 1956.

Bainvel, J. De Scriptura Sacra. Paris, 1910.

BALESTRI, J. Biblicae introductionis generalis elementa. Rome, 1932.

BARTON, J. M. T. “The Holy Ghost,” The Teaching of the Catholic Church, New York, 1949.

BEA, A. De ins piratione et inerrantia Sacrae Scripturae. Rome, 1947.

“Inspiration et inérrance,” DBS, IV, Paris, 1949.

BENEDICr XV. Spiritus Paraclitus, Rome, 1920.

BENOIT, P. “Note complévmentaire sur l’inspiration,” RBibl, 63 (1956), 416.

BrLLOT, L. De inspiratione. Rome, 1903.

BROWN, R. E. The Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture. Baltimore, 1955.

CHAUVIN, A. L’inspiration, Paris, 1897.

COPPENS, J. Les harmonies des deux testaments. Tournai-Paris, 1949.

CREHAN, J. J. “The Inspiration and Inerrancy of Holy Scripture,” CCHS, 34ff.

Crets, C. J. De divina bibliae inspiratione. Louvain, 1886.

Dausch, P. Die Schriftsinspiration, eine biblisch-geschichtliche Studie. Freiburg, 1891.

FEL. De evangelii inspiratione. Paris, 1906.

FORESTELL, J. T. “The Limitation of Inerrancy,” CBQ, 20 (1958),

1—8.

FULLER, R. C. “The Interpretation of Holy Scripture,” CCHS, 39b ff. HOLZHEY, K. Die Inspiration in die Anschaüung des Mittelalters.

München, 1895.

HOPFL-CUT. Introductionis in sacros utriusque testamenti libros compendium. Rome, 1940.

HUGON, E. La causalité instrumentale dans l’ordre surnaturel. Paris, 1924.

JOHNsTON, L. “Old Testament Morality,” CBQ, 20 (1958), 9—18.

LEO XIII. Providentissimus Deus. Rome, 1893.

Lusseau-COLLOMB, Manuel d’études bibliques, vol. I. Paris, 1936.

MACKENZIE, R. A. F. “Some Problems in the Field of Inspiration,” GBQ, 20 (1958).

MCKENZIE, J. L. The Two Edged Sword. Milwaukee, 1956.

MERK, A. Institutiones biblicae. Rome, 1937.

Murphy, R. “The Teachings of Providentissimus Deus,” CBQ, 5 (1943), 125.

NICOLAU, M. Sacrae theologiae summa. Vol. I. Madrid, 1952. PESCH, Chr., Zur neusten Geschichte der katolischen Inspirations­lehre. (“Theologisehe Zeitfragen,” 3e Folge), 1902.

De inspiratione Sacrae Scripturae. Freiburg i. Br., 1906. Pius XII. Divino afflante Spiritu. Rome, 1943.

POPE, H. The Catholic Student’s “Aids” to the Study of the Bible. New York, 1926.

RAHNER, K. “Über die Schriftsinspiration,” ZkTh, 78 (1956), 137. ROBERT-TRICOT, Guide to the Bible. 2 vols. Translated under direc­tion of E. P. Arbez and M. McGuire. Toumai, 1951.

Initiation biblique. 3rd ed. Paris, 1954.

RUWET, J. Institutiones biblicae. Vol. I. Rome, 1937.

SCHMID, FR. De inspirationis bibliorum vi et ratione. Brixen, 1885.

SCHROEDER, F. Père Lagrange and Biblical Inspiration. Washing­ton, 1954.

SIMON-PRADO, Praelectiones biblicae. Vol. I. Torino-Madrid, 1938.

TROMP, S. De Sacrae Scripturae inspiratione. Rome, 1945.

VAWTER, B. A Path Through Genesis. New York, 1956.

VosTE, J. M. De divina inspiratione et veritate Sacrae Scripturae. Rome, 1932.

WIKENHAUSER, A. Einleitung in das neue Testament. Freiburg i. Br., 1953.

ZANECCHIA, D. Divina inspiratio ad mentem sancti Thomae. Rome, 1889.

“Scriptor sacer sub divina inspiratione, responsio ad p.

Van Kasteren,” Studien, 34, 581.

Zarb, S. M. De historia canonis utriusque testamenti. Rome, 1934.

 

 

Tradition

BAINVEL, J. V. De magisterio vivo et traditione. Paris, 1905.

BELLARMINE. De Verbo Dei.

BILLOT, L. De sacra traditione contra novam haeresim evolutiornsmi. Rome, 1904.

BOUYER, L. The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism. Westminster, Md., 1956.

BURKE, E. “The Scientific Teaching of Theology in the Seminary,”

 

CTSA Proceedings, New York, 1949.

CANO, M. De Locis tiwologicis.

DANIELOU, J. “Ecriture et Tradition dans la dialogue entre les chrétiens séparés,” La documentation catholique, LIV (1957), 283 ff.

DEJAIFVE, C. “Bible, Tradition, Magistère dans la théologie cathol­ique,” NRT, 78 (1956), 135—151; see TD, 6 (1958), 67ff.

DE San, L. Tract atus de divina Traditione et Scriptura. Bruges, 1903.

DI BARTOLO, S. Nuova esposizione dei criteri teologici. 2nd ed. Rome, 1904.

DIECKMANN, H. De ecclesia. Freiburg i. Br., 1925.

DIEKAMP, F. Theologiae dogmaticae manuale. Tournai, 1949.

FRANZELIN, J. B. Tractatus de divina Traditions et Scriptura. 3rd ed., Rome, 1882.

GEISELMANN, J. “Das Missverständnis über das Verhältnis von Scrift und Tradition und seine Überwindung in der kathol­ischen Theologie,” Una Sancta, 2 (1956), 131—150; see TD, 6 (1958), 73ff.

LERCHER, L. Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae. Innsbruck, 1951.

PARENTE, P. Theologia fundamentals. Rome, 1950.

SALAVERRI, I. Sacrae theologiae summa. vol. I. Madrid, 1952.

SCHRADER, C. De theologico testium fonte deque edito fidei testi­monio seu traditions commentarius. Paris, 1878.

SMITH, C. (ed.) The Teaching of the Catholic Church. New York, 1949.

TANQUEREY, A. Synopsis theologiae dogmaticae. Paris, 1949—1950. WINKLER, M. Der Traditionsbegriff bis Tertullian. Munich, 1897.

 

Introduction

 

The Sources of Revelation

I. Our Lord Designed the Church’s Teaching in Each Generation as a Norm of Faith for the People of That Generation

 

II.    The Doctrine of Christ Comes to the Church of Each Generation from Preceding Generations by Way of Tradition

 

III.  The Term Tradition May Be Understood:

1. As the doctrine transmitted;

2. As the transmission of the doctrine;

3. In both senses.

 

IV.  Active Tradition Is Divided Into:

1. Constitutive tradition;

2. Preservative tradition.

 

V.   Two Views on the Rule of Faith:

1.  Protestants look to Scripture as the unique rule of faith for all.

2.   Catholics acknowledge two rules of faith:

a. Proximate: the teaching of the Church;

b. Remote: Scripture and tradition.

 

VI. Division of the Treatise

 

Introduction

 

 

I.   Christ Made the Church’s Teaching the Norm of Faith

The two preceding treatises, The True Religion and Christ’s Church, established this general conclusion: Christ, the Ambassador of God, brought the truth from heaven to earth and established the Catholic Church as an indestructible and infallible institution which would preserve and teach His doctrine until the end of time. It follows from this that the teaching of the Church in each genera­tion was designed by Christ Himself as the norm of faith for the people of that generation. Note the qualification, in each genera­tion. Christ had no intention—indeed, it is physically impossible— that people of the twentieth century should receive instruction in the faith directly from the preaching of the Church of, say, the second or tenth century. Just as our forefathers learned what they were to believe from the Church of their own day, so we are obliged by the law of Christ to turn to the Church as it now exists. By the Church, of course, we mean the teaching Church, that is, the Roman Catholic episcopate, which is a continuation of the Petro-apostolic College and shares by rightful title both the com­mand and the promise of our Lord:

 

 

“Go, therefore, and initiate all nations in discipleship: baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commandments I have given you. And mark: I am with you at all times as long as the world will last.”—Matt. 28:19-20.

 

 

II.  Where Does the Church Get Its Doctrine?

Now since no one can give what he does not himself possess, the question arises: where do the supreme pontiff and the bishops of today get the doctrine of Christ which they are to preach to us and to all the peoples of the earth? Since it is obvious on the one hand that they never personally heard Christ Himself or the apos­tles teaching through the Holy Spirit, and equally obvious on the

other hand that they do not get the doctrine of Christ by way of fresh, direct revelation, then the only possible answer is that this doctrine comes to them from preceding generations by way of tradition.

 

III.   Various Meanings of the Term Tradition

The term tradition may be understood in a variety of ways. Objectively it signifies the doctrine which has come down to us from antiquity. Actively, it indicates the act or series of acts by which that doctrine has been handed on. Used in its full connota­tion, it can mean both the doctrine which has been handed down and also the process of handing down that doctrine.

When we say that the teaching Church of today possesses the doctrine of Christ as a result of tradition, we use the latter term in the active sense, to indicate the process by which the original deposit of faith has come down to the present age from the ones who first revealed it, Christ and the apostles.

 

IV.  Constitutive Tradition vs. Preservative Tradition

It is moreover necessary to distinguish between two sets of acts in this process. There are the acts by which the body of doctrine is definitively formed. These make up what is called (active) con­stitutive tradition. And there are also the acts by which this body of doctrine, once definitively established, is handed on to later gen­erations by those who first receive it. This is called (active) pre­servative tradition.

Constitutive tradition could be conceived, at least theoretically, in three different ways. It could be conceived as being consigned to writing in its totality under God’s special influence and care. Or one could take the view that the sum total of God’s teaching came to us without any of it having been consigned to writing under divine influence. Finally, it could be considered as having been promulgated partly by the direct viva voce preaching of the heralds of revelation and partly written down under divine inspiration.

Preservative tradition is theoretically susceptible of a similarly diverse interpretation. This latter, however, need not necessarily parallel that of constitutive tradition. For even if one grants the fact that a body of doctrine was established either wholly or in

part by oral preaching alone, it does not necessarily follow that those who heard it, directly or indirectly, did not put it into writing. Surely it is not antecedently impossible that a doctrine, preached orally by the heralds of revelation, be subsequently given written form by men on their own initiative, or even that many men do this at different times, in different localities, and in different styles.

Tradition, then, in the broad sense in which it has been used up to this point, embraces both written and unwritten, or oral, tradition.

 

V.  Protestant vs. Catholic View of Constitutive Tradition

With this as background, we can proceed to examine the Protes­tant view of the origin of constitutive tradition. They assume that the whole of Christ’s teaching, insofar as it was to be preserved for posterity, was written down under divine inspiration, and so they revere Sacred Scripture as the only source of revelation. It is for them the unique storehouse to which one must go to get the heavenly doctrine or the message of God. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, contends that the doctrine of salvation was not given to the Church in Scripture exclusively, and that it was not all written down under divine inspiration. And so it recognizes, in addition to written tradition, oral tradition also; and this latter it has come to call simply Tradition, in a restricted sense. As the Vatican Council put it: “According to the belief of the universal Church, supernatural revelation is contained in books written [under divine inspiration] and in unwritten [uninspired] tradi­tions.”’ It acknowledges, then, two sources of revelation: the in­spired Scriptures and divine-apostolic Tradition. Tradition is to be understood here in its full connotation as that doctrine originally placed in the deposit of faith by way of oral preaching and faith­fully preserved for us (prescinding from the question of how that preservation was effected ) . *

 

We must not, however, imagine Scripture and Tradition to be like two distinct reservoirs receiving the waters of divine truth from distinct and separate springs. There is in a sense but one source of revealed truth, viz. divine Tradition, by which is meant the body of revealed truth handed down from the Apostles through the ages and contained in the doctrine, teaching and practice of the Catholic Church. Yet since a large and important part of that revelation was committed to writing both before and after the time of Christ the Church is accustomed to speak of two sources of revelation, oral Tradition and Scripture. The peculiar character and importance of Scripture

The above remarks bring to mind another, no less basic, error of Protestants concerning the rule of faith. Since they do not recognize the age-old teaching office of the Church as having been divinely established and endowed with divine authority, they hold that Sacred Scripture, as the sole source of revelation, is at the same time the unique rule of faith, the only authentic norm in accordance with which the faith of Christians is regulated, and in accordance with which every single Christian, as directly as pos­sible, is to define the material object of his faith. Note the quali­fication: authentic rule or norm. They do not deny that people generally get their faith from the instructions of their parents or from their ministers’ sermons. In fact, they even draw up formulae or “confessions” of faith; but they insist that neither the preaching of their ministers, no matter how solemn and unanimous, nor the confessions of the “church” suffice all by themselves to give full certitude. Everyone has the right and even the duty to determine, to the best of his ability, whether and to what extent the confession of the church corresponds to the data of Scripture. This, of course, leaves the individual free to reject the confession of the “church”; indeed he must, once he has decided that this confession does not reflect the real meaning of Scripture. Obviously, in the Protestant view, public preaching and the Church’s solemn confession are not

worth much more than parental or private catechetical instruction

are in the Catholic view. Generally speaking, in the case of children and uneducated people, the presumption will be that the confes­sion of their sect is true to Scripture. As long as this presumption holds good, and the opportunity for personal research is wanting, they are safe in following it—but that is all. A confession can bind in this provisory fashion because and to the extent that it is presumed to agree with the written word of God. It has, however, no intrinsic and absolute authority because there exists no divine guarantee that it does so agree.

 

—the written part of this divine Tradition—derives solely from the fact that it is the inspired word of God, .

The two streams of oral Tradition and Scripture happily mix, for in the living magisterium of the Church these are living waters springing together unto life everlasting. It is the Church, the holder of Tradition, that gives life to the dead letter of Scripture. Experience shows that it is only in the life of the Church, the Bride of Christ, that Scripture, divinely inspired as it is, becomes ‘living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword’ (Heb. 4:12).—CCHS, le.

Different by far is the teaching of the Catholic Church. It holds, of course, that our faith must of necessity correspond to the word of Cod as found in the sources of revelation. It holds, furthermore, that Scripture (together with Tradition) is a true and infallible rule of faith. But at the same time it insists that there exists yet another rule of faith which is equally infallible, namely, the preaching of the Church’s teaching office or magisterium. Because this teaching office, by reason of the aid given it by the Holy Spirit, enjoys infallibility when proclaiming Christian doc­tine, it carries with it its own guarantee and binds everyone abso­lutely, all by itself. Consequently no one can have an objectively valid reason for departing from its teaching, any more than one can reasonably depart from the true teaching of Scripture.

Moreover, if Christ willed that there be two rules of faith, there must exist some order between them. The divinely estab­lished order is as follows. The Church’s preaching is for the faithful the proximate, direct rule of faith, while Scripture and Tradition, on which the Church’s preaching is based, constitute the remote or indirect rule of faith.

The Church’s preaching is the proximate rule of faith because all the faithful as such, be they uneducated or learned, can safely and directly determine the material object of their belief on the basis of that preaching and indeed they must. For precisely as believers, i.e., as far as regulating their belief is concerned, they can never be obliged to do research in Scripture and Tradition. For by granting the Church the gift of infallibility, God has seen to it that its preaching will never waver from the data of Scripture and Tradition in even the slightest detail.

Scripture and Tradition make up the remote rule of faith because they regulate directly, not the belief of the faithful, but the preaching of their teachers. Although the reading of Sacred Scripture and the study of Tradition can be very useful for others than those who fulfill an authoritative teaching office, and even though these pursuits may be even necessary for other purposes (besides that of regulating faith), it was not Cod’s intention in inspiring the Scriptures that each individual should seek his faith therein. No, but He did establish the teaching office of the Church to safeguard and explain them faithfully under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, any Christian who studies Scripture and Tradition and thinks he has found therein a doctrine really and

truly contrary to the teaching of the Church, must unhesitatingly give the latter the nod over his own personal opinion. This is not to say that the Church’s word carries more weight than the word of God. What it does mean is this, that God Himself has assured us that if any meaning given to a passage of Scripture disagrees with Catholic dogma, it cannot be the true meaning of that pas­sage, cannot be the word of God.

These observations on the preaching of the infallible Church as the rule of our faith are a mere summary of all that could be said, and deliberately so, for most of this matter has already been covered in the treatise on Christ’s Church.2 They will become clearer shortly, when we take up the question of understanding and explaining Scripture and Tradition. They have been mentioned here only in the interests of a fuller understanding of Catholic truth and Protestant error.

Attention can now be focused on the subject of the sources of revelation. We acknowledge on the authority of the Church the existence of two sources and the principal points which must be held with regard to their nature and use. Where could one possibly go with more confidence for information about the vessels contain­ing the treasure of divine revelation than to her to whom Cod has entrusted the preservation and stewardship of that treasure? There is no room for doubt that the Church’s infallibility, which has been proven elsewhere, extends in a special way to questions concerning the sources from which Christian teaching is drawn. It will be our task to explain the teaching of the Church on this matter, to give an orderly presentation thereof, and to set forth the various argu­ments which prove it.

 

VI.  Various Titles Used to Describe This Treatise

The present treatise, which, as said above, is divided into two chapters, one on Sacred Scripture and the other on Sacred Tradi­tion, is entitled by some authors: “The Word of Cod.” The differ­ence amounts to little more than this: they indicate by their title merely what is contained in the sources of revelation, and we indicate both what is contained in those sources and the sources themselves. Still others use the title, “The Rule of Faith,” and this is quite acceptable if the treatise considers, in addition to Scripture and Tradition, the preaching of the Church. Otherwise it would be a bit inexact. For although Scripture and Tradition, inasmuch

as they remotely regulate our belief, can be called the rule of faith, still it seems more advisable to restrict that term to the Church’s preaching. The fact is that we apply the term “rule” or norm to the instrument which is used to regulate or measure something directly. We meet, finally, the title, Theological Sources (Loci Theologici). The storehouses or deposits whence any science draws its arguments have been called since Aristotle’s day the loci (to poi, lit., places) of that science. Now since theology must take its arguments ultimately from Scripture and Tradition, those two storehouses, which are sources of revelation and of belief for the Church and for each of its members, can quite properly be styled the loci of the science of Theology.

It is true that several theologians, following the lead of Melehior Cano, list ten loci or sources. But they get this number by adding to the strictly basic sources those called derived,8 and by adding to the strictly theological sources those called common.⁴

 

 

Notes

1.   DR 1787. See I. Salaverri, op. cit., pp. 780 if; A. Tanquerey, op cit., I,

710 ff.; George D. Smith, op. cit., I, 27 if.

2.   See the articles on the institution of the hierarchy (chap. II, art. 1 and

2) and especially on infallibility (chap. III, art. 1), with its sequel on the rule of faith (no. 100).

3.   Sources which are proper (i.e., used in the science of theology alone) but derived are: the agreement of the universal Church, councils, supreme pontiffs, the fathers, and theologians. They are called derived, not because the authority of the Church and of its magisterium is borrowed from Scripture, but because the doctrine which they set forth is derived from Scripture and Tradition.

4.   Common sources (used also by sciences other than theology) are: the light of reason, philosophers, historians—all of which are really only one: the power of natural reason.

 

 

Special Bibliography

BERTHIER, J. J. De locis theologicis. Turin, 1888.

BOUYER, L. The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism. Translated by A. V. Littledale. Westminster, 1956.

CANO, M. De locis theologicis.

COTTER, A. C. Theologia fundamentalis. Weston, 1947.

DE SAN, L. Tract atus de divina Traditione et Scriptura. Binges, 1903.

Di BARTOLO, S. Nuova esposizione dei criteri teologici. Rome, 1904.

DIECKMANN, H. De ecclesia. Freiburg i. Br., 1925.

DIEKAMP, F. Theologiae dogmaticae manuale. Tournai, 1949.

FRANZELIN, J. B. Tractatus de divina Traditione et Scriptura. Rome, 1882.

LAMBREGHT, H. De locis theologicis. Ghent, 1890.

LERCHER, L. Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae. Innsbruck, 1951.

PARENTE, P. Theologia fundamentals. Rome, 1950.

ST. ROBERT BELARMINE,      De verbo Dei.

SALAVERRI, I. Sacrae theologiae summa. I, Madrid, 1952.

SMITH, C. (ed.). The Teaching of the Catholic Church. New York, 1949.

TANQUEREY, A. Synopsis theologiae dogmaticae. Paris, 1949-1950.

 

CHAPTER I

 

Sacred Scripture

 

 

I.     Definition

 

II.   Inspiration and Canonicity

 

III.  Division of the Chapter

 

Article I

THE CANON OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

 

 

 

I.     Definition: Etymological and Real

 

II.   Distinction between Proto- and Deuterocanonical Books

 

III. The Alexandrian, Palestinian, and Tridentine Canons

 

IV. PROPOSITION. The Canon of Trent Is a Faithful Expression of the Mind of the Early Church

Proof:  1. For the books of the Old Testament:

a. Unanimity of fathers in first three centuries;

b. Appearance of scattered doubts in middle of fourth century;

c. Constant unanimity of common doctrine of universal Church.

2. For the books of the New Testament:

a. Obscure beginnings and reasons for same;

b. Testimony of earliest documents.

 

V. Insufficiency of Historical Arguments. Only the Authority of the Infallible Church Fully Guarantees the Complete Catalogue of Sacred Books

 

CHAPTER I

 

Sacred Scripture

 

 

I. Brief Definitions of “Sacred Scripture,” “Inspiration,”

“Canonicity”

Sacred Scripture (the Holy Bible) can be defined in the words of the Vatican Council as the collection of books which, “written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, have God as their Author and, as such, have been handed down to the Church itself’ (DB 1787).

If a book is to be considered part of Sacred Scripture, it must fulfill two simultaneous conditions, inspiration and canOnicity. First it must have been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it must be inspired; and it must have been handed down to the Church precisely as an inspired writing. Since the testimony of the Church regarding the books which she receives as inspired rests chiefly on the fact that she has acknowledged such books and has listed them in her official catalogue or canon, the second requisite condition is, quite briefly, that a book be canonical, i.e., listed in the Church’s official canon.

It goes without saying that the Church’s acceptance of a book does not affect the nature of that book. It contributes nothing to its intrinsic worth and dignity.’ One might wonder, for instance, whether an inspired book which has not been entrusted to the Church—should any such book exist—would be considered Sacred Scripture. To answer this, a distinction must be made. If “Sacred Scripture” be understood simply as a book of divine origin and so in itself of divine authority, and nothing else, such a book would of course be Sacred Scripture. But if the term be taken to indicate a book of divine origin which is in addition a source of Christian revelation, on which are based the Church’s preaching and the Catholic faith, then one would have to give a negative answer. As it is, the Church and Catholic theology use the term “Sacred Scripture” exclusively in this latter sense. And this is only right, for they treat Sacred Scripture and use it precisely as a source of

revelation. Obviously the Church could not base its preaching on a book as inspired unless it had learned of its inspiration from Christ or the apostles.

Since factually there exists no inspired book which is not at the same time canonical, the terms “inspired” and “canonical” are often used interchangeably. Still, the ideas behind the two terms are really distinct, though there is a certain overlapping, for canonicity supposes and includes inspiration.

 

II.    Why Canonicity Is Discussed Prior to Inspiration

Since inspiration ontologically comes before canonicity, many theologians take up first the question of inspiration, and then that of canonicity. The opposite order is preferable. The term “can­onicity” primarily and expressly tells us that such and such a book is accepted by the Church as sacred, as an authentic source of revelation, but does not state distinctly the basic reason for this acceptance, i.e., inspiration. Inasmuch as acceptance by the Church is an external and public act, it is more easily discernible and demonstrable than inspiration. Moreover, once one has established the fact of the Church’s acceptance, he has a very valid, even if indirect, proof for inspiration.

 

Ill.   Division of this Chapter

We shall consequently proceed in the following fashion. In Article i we shall speak of the canon of Sacred Scripture and seek to determine whether the Church has always accepted the books which it now puts forth as Scripture. If she has, then it is quite credible that Christ and the apostles took the same view of them. In Article II we shall see whether these books are rightly called inspired. In Article III we shall take up the nature of inspiration and its effects; finally, in Article IV, we shall summarize the factors involved in the use of Sacred Scripture.

 

Article 1

 

THE CANON OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

 

 

 

I.  Meaning of Canon and Canonical

Canon, from the Greek, kanon (kane, kanna: reed), was for the Creeks an instrument used by artisans to bring stones or planks into alignment, either to cut them or to put them together. The Latin equivalent is mensura, measure, norm. It was used meta­phorically to indicate anything which served as a norm of belief or of action: ho kanòn tês aletheías tês písteõs (the canon of truth, of belief; the Creed); ecclesiastical canons or rules. We speak today of the canons of good taste, of literary criticism, etc. It is in this sense that the fathers, especially the Latins, quite frequently referred to the books of Sacred Scripture as canonical, because they serve as a rule or norm of faith and morality. And in this sense, too, they sometimes called the actual collection of sacred books the Canon.

The Creeks used the word kanón also with the meaning of list or catalogue, and it is especially in this sense that the word was applied, from about the fourth century on, to the matter under present consideration. The canon of Scripture, then, was the list of those books which the Church received as divine and read publicly as such in its assemblies. Canonical books were books which had been put on the Church’s official list. This meaning continued to predominate as time went on, but not to the exclusion of the other one mentioned above, for by the very fact that certain books appeared in the Church’s list, they were acknowledged as the rule of faith.

The opposite of the canonical books were the apocrypha (apókruphos: hidden), i.e., those books which could not be read in the Church’s public assemblies because the Church excluded them from its list of sacred books. This is without doubt the orig­inal and universal meaning of the term, for in many cases it is used practically as a synonym for pseudepigraphical, and even for heretical.2

II.    Distinction Between Proto-and Deuterocanonical Books

The canonical books are usually divided into protocanonical and deuterocanonical. Protocanonical books are those about whose divine origin the Church of God never entertained the slightest doubt, about whose inspiration all were always in agreement:

homologoúmenoi: agreed upon. Deuterocanonical is the term ap­plied to those books about whose inspiration some individual fathers or churches sometimes felt some hesitation, books whose authority was sometimes denied: antilegómenoi: spoken against, opposed; amphiball6menoi, tossed around.

A word of caution is in order here. The terms proto- and deutero­canonical,3 invented by Sixtus of Sienna, must not be taken to mean that the Church at one time drew up a definitive list of all the sacred books (proto canonical) to the positive exclusion of any and all others, and then later did an about-face and took others (deuterocanonical) into an expanded and revised canon. It was never the Church as such that had doubts about these latter books, but only some individuals or groups at different times and in different places.

The deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament are: Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees; to these must be added the following parts of protocanonical books:

Esther 10:4—16:24; Daniel 3:24—90; 13 and 14.

The deuterocanonical books of the New Testament are: He­brews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, Apocalypse; to these must be added the following parts of protocanonical books: Mark 16:9-20; Luke 22:43—44; John 7:53—8:11.

 

Ill.   The Alexandrian, Palestinian, and Tridentine Canons

There are three canons of Sacred Scripture deserving of special mention: the Alexandrian, the Palestinian, and the Tridentine.

a. The Alexandrian Canon indicates that collection of all the books of the Old Testament contained in the Greek translation called the Septuagint, which appeared in Alexandria during the III century B.C. This collection was completed in the first cen­tury before Christ, and included all the deuterocanonical books and passages, and not as an appendix at the end of the volume, but intermingled with the protocanonical books. We may conclude from this that the Jews of that era, at least those in the Diaspora—

and Alexandria was perhaps their chief center—acknowledged as divine not only the proto- but the deuterocanonical books as well. There is, however, no way of knowing what criteria they used to determine the inspiration of these books.

b. The Palestinian Canon. This term indicates a collection of the protocanonical books of the Old Testament, divided into the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, a division retained in modern Hebrew Bibles. There is one thing certain about this collection, and that is that the Palestinian rabbis, towards the end of the first or the beginning of the second century, looked upon it as contain­ing completely all the divine Scriptures. However, we are altogether in the dark as to who made the collection, when it was made, and the criteria which governed its compilation. There is, above all, room for doubt that the Palestinian Jews, even at the time of Christ and before, rejected the deuterocanonical books. Quite a few scholars, among them van Kasteren,4 positively deny that they did, and think it more probable that even the Palestinians at one time considered as sacred at least several of the deuterocanonical books. In their view, the so-called Palestinian canon is later than that of Alexandria and is the spawn of Pharisaic particularism.

In the light of all the facts bearing on this matter, it cannot be maintained that there was a time when there were two rival canons in Judaism, i.e., two different canons clearly settled by authority or tradition, and that later the narrower Palestinian canon pre­vailed and crowded out the broader Alexandrian canon. Frbm this it follows also that the expression “Alexandrian canon,” although employed quite widely, is not correct. There can be no question here of a canon in the proper sense, i.e., of a collection with definite contents clearly settled by a recognized authority or tradition. What we have is the fact of more or less definite differences between the contents of the Hebrew Bible and those of the Sep­tuagint. For convenience sake we may use the expression to call attention to the fact of these differences, but not to imply the existence of a real canon different from the Palestinian.

But what may we infer from that difference? Or rather, how can we account for that difference without supposing two rival, different canons of Scripture in Judaism? We may legitimately take as our starting point that the precise limits of the “Writings” had not as yet been definitely fixed before the Christian era. That being so, the Palestinian Jews will not have had any firm conviction

on the point. If the limits of the canon are to be conceived as fluid, it should occasion no surprise if some books would be more or less tentatively received by some and not received by others. It appears that in Egypt several books (varying in number) may have been taken more or less definitely into the Bible without arousing the opposition of Palestinian Judaism. Palestinian Jews, narrower and more conservative in the matter of Scripture as in other matters than were the Alexandrian Jews, had their faces to the past and saw in the closed past the norm and rule of their religious life. They gradually came to hold that prophecy and, with it, the writing of Sacred Books had ceased some time after the exile. The Greek-speaking Jews, on the other hand, were more willing to admit the possibility of new manifestations of the Divine Spirit. Hence for them the canon of Scripture would not be something settled and closed once for all, and they could admit the possibility of some additional books being given a place in the canon. They could even receive some such books more or less definitely, but without any final, formal judgment which would close the question of the canon irrevocably. Then, later on, when Palestinian Judaism, which served as the norm for the Diaspora in essential matters, fixed the Jewish canon, this Palestinian canon could be accepted without any feeling that it meant a reversal of judgment with regard to the deuterocanonical books on the part of the Jews who had enter­tained more liberal views on the subject.

The Jews of succeeding ages, including those of our own day, follow the Palestinian canon, which they usually attribute to Esdras. This attribution, historically untenable, is behind the term, “Canon of Esdras.”

The Reformers were by no means unanimous on the question of what sacred books were to be accepted. All modern Protestants (Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans) agree at least in considering the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament as “apocryphal.” Lutherans usually append them to their bibles as “useful,” but not so the others, at least not as a general practice.

As for the deuterocanonical books of the New Testament, Cal­vinists and Anglicans accept all of them. Lutherans relegate Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Apocalypse to an appendix in their New Testaments, accepting the rest as canonical.⁵

c. The Tridentine Canon is that published by the Council of Trent and confirmed by the Vatican Council. It contains all the

books of both Testaments. We must therefore show that the Coun­cil of Trent was justified in drawing up its canon, i.e., that it accepted only those books which the Church had revered as Scrip­ture from earliest times. However, this matter is rather the province of Biblical Introduction, and we shall accordingly give just a broad outline of the proof, leaving a full treatment to the science to which it belongs.⁶

 

IV.  PROPOSITION: The Canon of Trent Is a Faithful Expression of the Mind of the Early Church

After having listed the individual books of both Testaments, the Council of Trent continues:

 

If anyone, however, should not accept the said books, entire with all their parts, as they were wont to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate edition . . . let him be anathema.—DB 784.

 

It was the Council’s intention to safeguard the authority of Scripture in the Church, i.e., in the form in which it had cus­tomarily been read for so long a time in the universal Church and especially in the Latin Church, The meaning of the phrase “with all its parts” will be discussed later together with the question of the authority of the Vulgate.

 

Proof:

1.  For the books of the Old Testament.

a. It can be definitely established from the writings of the fathers—and Protestants themselves admit this—that the universal Church in the first three centuries used as Sacred Scripture, both in public and in private, all the books of the Old Testament listed by Trent,7 and without making any distinction between the books now called proto- and deuterocanonical.

If one looks in the writings of the fathers themselves for the reason behind their accepting these books indiscriminately as sacred and divine, he will find one constant answer. It is the fact that they are “in every day use, public, common, received” in the Church, that this is the public tradition of the Church, that “the churches of God in each succeeding age have so handed them down to us.”⁸ It was, then, their firm conviction that the Church

had received all those books from its founders, Christ and the apostles.9

Even though we cannot demonstrate that our Lord or the apostles canonized all the books of the Old Testament by a solemn and specific pronouncement, the conviction of the primitive Church is proved by its very universality and finds strong support in the books of the New Testament. For the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament most frequently according to the Sep­tuagint, and they cite deuterocanonical books in the same fashion as protocanonical.

b. We must admit that around the middle of the fourth century a certain hesitancy about the deuterocanonical books began to appear in the writings of some of the fathers. This was true at first of some Eastern fathers and later of some Western fathers who had contact with the East. St. Athanasius,10 St. Cyril of Jeru­salem,” and a few others take a more or less unfavorable view of them and assign them a position somewhere between canonical and apocryphal, In the West, SS. Hilary and Rufinus adopt this same attitude. St. Jerome goes even further. He sometimes calls them simply “apocryphal” and seems at times to deny them any authority at all.’²

But all this wavering was unable to shake the age-old convic­tion or to weaken its force. For (1) the churches went right on almost universally using the deuterocanonical books just as they had always done. (2) Many lists of sacred books were drawn up which contained deuterocanonical books along with the others: the Roman Canon of 382 during the pontificate of Damasus; that of St. Augustine;13 those of the Councils of Hippo in 393, of Carthage in 397 and 416; that of Innocent I in 405, and that of St. Gelasius in 495. (3) The very fathers named above—and not even Jerome can be completely excluded—quite frequently use the deutero­canonical books as Scripture, or as sacred. By so doing they show that the distinction between “second place” (anagignöskómenoi, ecclesiastical) and “canonical” books did not have in their minds that absolute sense which at first blush it seems to have. Or it shows at least that for all practical purposes they subordinated their own private hesitations to the public practice of the Church.14

It is hardly necessary to remark that the hesitancy or disagree­ment of the aforementioned fathers influenced the opinions of many later writers. However, all doubt vanished in the East in the twelfth

century. And if in the West some few medieval scholars embraced the view of Jerome in somewhat mitigated form, the far more com­mon doctrine, corroborated by the universal practice of the Church, always stood firm for the ancient tradition. This latter the Council of Florence openly espoused in the Decree for the Jacobites, and finally the Council of Trent made it official by solemn definition.

2. For the books of the New Testament.

a. The beginnings of the New Testament are fairly obscure, but this is not surprising in the light of the following considerations. When the first churches were founded by the apostles and their aides, no New Testament book was yet in existence, and the religion of Christ had already spread far and wide throughout the various districts of the world when the books came out one by one during the years 50 to 100. They were written in different places and as occasion demanded. They were not addressed by their authors directly to the universal Church, but rather to a particular church or, at most to just a few; often enough, in fact, to some one person. In this way the several books came to individual churches together with a guarantee of their authenticity, without the other churches being immediately aware of what had happened. And there is no need to suppose that the receipt of the missive was reported to all the churches; at least there is no need to suppose that this was done in any hurry. For although the churches, as circumstances permitted, had contact with each other, it is not hard to understand how, in those early days when the voices of the apostles were still ringing in everyone’s ears, not too much attention would be paid to writings. This would be true especially of those writings which in scope and content were of relatively minor im­portance, or were concerned primarily with strictly local affairs.

On the supposition, then, that none of the apostles gave explicit approval to all the books of the New Testament in globo—some­thing not at all necessary, and not in fact demonstrable—the situa­tion could have shaped up somewhat as follows. After the apostles had died, authentic guarantee of individual sacred books would be available here and there in the Church before those books had as yet been gathered into one corpus, in fact, before any particular church was aware of the complete list of all the books. It is historically certain that a complete l5 collection did not yet exist at that time, and it may be assumed as a probable hypothesis that no complete list was anywhere to be found. If this really is the true

picture, then we can easily understand (1) that in the ensuing years the canon of the New Testament could be determined only by carefully collecting and studying the traditions of individual churches. History witnesses to the fact that the fathers actually did employ this method. (2) That this research was not always easy, especially in view of conditions obtaining at that time, and so could have given rise to legitimate doubts and even to erroneous notions regarding at least some of the writings. (3) Finally, that a sound and definitive judgment about all the books together came to rather slow maturity and took deep root in all the churches still more slowly.

b.   Testimony of the earliest documents.16

(1) Towards the end of the first century (80—100) there were in existence two collections, one of the Four Gospels, the other of thirteen Pauline Epistles (i.e., all except Hebrews). These were read publicly in almost all the churches together with the writings of the Old Testament. To these were added everywhere certain other books, now more, now less, about which the churches were not in such general accord.

(2) From various documents dealing especially with the history of the Gnostics we gather that about 140 and thereafter all the Greek and Latin churches17 agreed on accepting on an equal foot­ing all the books later listed by Trent, except for Hebrews, James, and 2 Peter. Opinion was divided on the latter just as it was on some other books (Didachë, Epistle of Barnabas, etc.).

Towards the end of the second century (170—220) the same agreement shows up more clearly, At the same time it can be shown from the controversy with the Montanists, who through their prophets were spouting a new revelation, that the Church was fully convinced that the age of (public) revelation and of prophecy did not extend beyond the Apostolic Era, and that consequently no book could be admitted as an authoritative source of revelation which the Apostolic Age had not bequeathed for public reading.

The Epistle to the Hebrews was accepted from earliest times by the church at Alexandria as one of the Pauline epistles. Then after it was defended by Origen—who attributed its actual com­position to one of Paul’s disciples—it spread throughout the whole East. In the West it was not used in public reading before the fourth century. However, SS. Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus were acquainted with it and thought highly of it.

The Epistle of James was always accepted in the East by the Greeks. The Latins soon got to know it, but it is missing from the Muratorian Fragment’⁸ and does not seem to have been used in the churches of Gaul and Africa.

2 Peter was known to SS. Justin Martyr and Hippolytus and perhaps also to St. Irenaeus; Clement of Alexandria wrote a com­mentary on it, and Origen accepted it as Sacred Scripture.

(3) In the first half of the third century, Origen, having studied the traditions of the churches, called the Gospels, Acts, 13 epistles of Paul, 1 Peter, 1 John, and Apocalypse homologoúmena. He personally accepted as Sacred Scripture the rest of the books which appear now in the canon of Trent (and a few others also), but at the same time he acknowledged that they were not received by all.’⁹

During the same century the Apocalypse came under attack. The reasons for the opposition were varied and usually tendentious. It began at Rome with Cajus, a priest, who met with little success. Later the controversy flared up at Alexandria (St. Dionysius, d. 265) and at Antioch (St. Lucian, d. 312), and spread like wildfire throughout the East. In addition, Christians at Antioch, influenced by contact with the Syrians, began to omit some of the Catholic epistles.

(4) In the fourth century (around 325), Eusebius of Caesarea distinguished three classes of books: homologoúmena (agreed upon, accepted) —Gospels, 14 Pauline epistles, Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John; antilegómena (disputed), which seemed to him acceptable

—James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John; nótha (spurious), which should be excluded from the list of the Scriptures.20 As for the Apocalypse, he is not sure whether it should be put in the first or third class. Weighty testimonies of antiquity urged the former classification, but he personally leaned rather to the latter.

In 367 St. Athanasius called all and only the books of the later canon of Trent kanonizómenoi (canonized, canonical), and distin­guished them from the apókruphoi (apocryphal) and even from the anagignöskómenoi.21

From this time on the doubts and disagreements still remaining in the Eastern churches gradually faded until in the sixth century they had practically vanished.

In the Latin Church, disagreement about Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, and Jude continued to the middle of the fourth

century. However, the Roman Synod of 382, under Pope Damasus, in its “List of Scriptures of the New and Eternal Testament, which the Holy and Catholic Church receives,” enumerated all and only those books later listed by Trent. At this synod were present not only SS. Jerome and Ambrose, but also quite a few Eastern bishops. The canon of Damasus was adopted by St. Augustine, the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397 and 416), St. Innocent I (405), St. Gelasius (495), etc. We may say, then, that the question of the canon of the New Testament had been definitively settled, though not defined, in the West by the beginning of the fifth century.

 

V.   Church’s Authority the Only Absolute Proof for a Complete List of Sacred Books

 

It is not hard to conclude from the foregoing data that the presence of by far the majority of the books in the Tridentine canon can be justified with certitude by merely historical arguments. But it would be going too far to make the same claim for all the books, especially those of the New Testament. Let us grant, then, that it is only the authority of the infallible Church which fully guarantees the complete catalogue of sacred books. It should occasion no surprise, in view of the fact that our knowledge of early history is relatively incomplete, if we cannot fully appreciate the reasons which led the fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries to give a definitive place in the canon to books about which there had formerly been some dispute. The subsequent universal and con­stant agreement of the whole Church, viewed in the light of theological principles, fully convinces the theologian that those fathers did not stray from the truth when they formed their judgment. The situation of Protestants is far worse, for since they refuse to admit that Christ established an infallible teaching au­thority, they have to rely on historical arguments alone to justify their complete canon. No wonder Gore admitted that it was be­coming daily more difficult to maintain faith in the Scriptures without faith in the Church.²²

 

 

Notes

1.   See J. Balestri, op. cit., pp. 281—82; CCHS, llb—c. A comparison may help to make this matter clearer. When the Church canonizes someone, it does not thereby make him a saint. It merely gives official recognition to the already

existing fact of his saintliness. Similarly, when the Church canonizes a book, it does not thereby make the book inspired. Rather, it recognizes officially the inspired character of the book. In other words, inspiration is intrinsic to the book while canonicity is extrinsic.

2.   See Vacant-Mangenot, DTC s.v. Apocryphes; Robert-Tricot, Guide to the Bible, I, 61 if.; CCHS, ^92a ff.

3.   It is well to keep in mind the difference in terminology used by Catholic and non-Catholic authors in this matter:

                   Catholic                                                 Non-Catholic
                   Protocanonical                                       Canonical
                   Deuterocanonical                                   Apocryphal
                   Apocryphal                                            Pseudepigraphic

 

4.   See Die Studien, 45, 414; 49, 379; RBibl, (1896), 408 and 575; DTC, II, 1569; J. Balestri, op. cit., p. 286; Höpfl-Gut, op. cit., I, 153.

5.   The credal books of the Lutherans contain no list of the sacred books. A list adopted by modem Protestants appears in the Belgian Confession, articles 4—6. The Greek schismatics accept just as we do all the deutero­canonical books; but the Russians for the past two centuries have considered apocryphal the deuterocanonical books and passages of the Old Testament. See RBibl (1901), 267; EO (1907), 129ff.

6.   See Comely, Introductio generalis in sacram Scripturam and Com­pendium introductionis (5th ed., 1905); Chauvin, Leçons d’introduction générale (1897); Gigot, General Introduction to the Holy Scriptures (New York, 1906); Belser, Einleitung in das neue Testament (2nd ed., Freiburg, 1906); W. Barry, The Tradition of Scripture (1906); T. Zahn, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons and Grundriss der Geschichte des neutestament­lichen Kanons (1904); DBV and DTC s.v. Canon des saintes Rcritures; Batif­fol, RBibl (1903), 10 and 226; Guide to the Bible, op. cit., p. 28 if.; A. Wikenhauser, Einleitung in das neue Testament (Freiburg i. Br., 1953), p. 14 if.; CCHS, 11a if.; M. J. Lagrange, Histoire ancienne du Canon du Nouveau Testament (Paris, 1933); Höpfl-Gut, op. cit., p. 128 if.; E. Jacquier, Le Nouveau Testament dans l’église chrétienne, I (Paris, 1911); M. Nicolau, Sacrae Theologiae Summa, I (Madrid, 1952), 983 if.; Robert-Feulliet, Intro­duction à la Bible, I (Toumai, 1959), 31—54.

7.   Some, however, are of the opinion that the words of St. Cyril of Jeru­salem (Catecheses 4. 33 if.) show conclusively that the Church of Jerusalem did not make public use of the deuterocanonical books.

8.   Origen, Commentarium in Matthaeum, Sermo 46.

9.   It is true that some writers of this period accepted also some of the Old Testament apocrypha (Henoch, Assumption of Moses, Assumption of Isaias), but actually very few shared this error. It was much more common for the churches to reject such books, knowing as they did that they were not “handed down.”

10. Festal letters 39

11. Catecheses 4. 33—36.

12. For instance, in his Prologus galeatus and Praefatio in Danielem.

13. De doctrina christiana ii. 8. 13.

14. All agree that St. Jerome, captivated by a love for what he called “Hebraic truth,” to which he owed a great deal in his emendation of the text, accorded an exaggerated authority to rabbinic tradition on the question of the canon. And it is worth remembering that this same Jerome, in his search among the earlier fathers for authorities to back up his rejection of the deuterocanonical books, appealed neither to St. Athanasius nor to St. Cyril. See Studien, 60, 239—52.

15. Note the qualification, complete. 2 Pet. 3:16, for example, hints at a collection of some of the Pauline epistles.

16. See especially Zahn, Grundriss, p. 15 if.; A. Wikenhauser, op. cit., p. 16 if.; CCHS, 16—17.

17. This agreement existed if, as seems likely, 2 and 8 John were cus­tomarily added to and included with his first epistle, which was universally accepted. Note: “all the Greek and Latin churches”; the Syrian church of Edessa in the second century seems to have recognized only the four Gospels, Acts, 12 Pauline epistles (omitting Hebrews and Philemon), and nothing else. The Peschitto (the Syriac Vulgate) still left out 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John, and Apocalypse. However, it has been established that St. Ephraem (d. 373) knew and acknowledged at least some of these books.

18. The earliest list that has come down to us, though it need be by no means the earliest written, is the Muratorian Fragment (c. 200) discovered by Muratori in the Ambrosian Library, Milan, in 1740. It contains a catalogue of books which were recognized as authoritative at Rome at the end of the 2nd cent., viz. the four Gospels, the Epistles of St. Paul (except Heb), two Epistles of Jn, Jude, Apoc.—CCHS, 17g.

19. He gives a list of all the books of the New Testament in his Homilla VII in Josue 2.

20. See HE 3. 25.

21. Festal letters 39.

22. Lux mundi (London, 1891), p. 283.

 

 

Special Bibliography

BALESTRI, J. Biblicae introductionis generalis elementa. Rome, 1932. p. 283 ff.

Höpfl-Gut. Introductionis in sacros utriusque testamenti libros compendium. I (Rome, 1940), 128 ff.

Lusseau-Collo;m. Manuel d’études bibliques. I (Paris, 1936), 266 ff.

NICOLAU, M. Sacrae theologiae summa. I (Madrid, 1952), 983 ff.

ROBERT-FEUILLET. Introduction la Bible. I (Tournai, 1959), 31—54.

ROBERT-TRICOT (ed.). Guide to the Bible. Translated under the direction of E. P. Arbez and M. R. P. McGuire. I (Tournai, 1951), 28 ff.

Initiation biblique (3rd ed.). Paris, 1954.

RUWET, J. Institutiones biblicae. I (Rome, 1937), 97 ff.

SIMON-PRADO. Praelectiones bib licae. I (Torino-Madrid, 1938), 57ff.

WIENHAUSER, A. Einleitung in das neue Testament. Freiburg i. Br., 1953. p. 14 ff.

Zarb, S. M. De historia canonis utriusque testamenti. Rome, 1934.

 

Article II

 

THE EXISTENCE OF INSPIRATION

 

I.     The Criteria of Inspiration

 

1. Inadequate criteria:

a.  Holy sentiments engendered by book;

b.  Truth and sublimity of doctrine, etc.;

c.   Direct testimony of the Holy Spirit to reader;

d.  Testimony of hagiographer.

2. One adequate criterion: divine testimony.

 

II. PROPOSITION. All the Books of the Tridentine Canon Are Inspired

 

Proof:    1. Scriptural arguments:

a. General: from modus agendi of Christ and the apostles;

b. Particular: 2 Tim. 3:15—16; 2 Pet. 1:19-21; 3:15—16.

2.    Testimony of the fathers.

Corollary:          The argument from tradition is not weakened by the fact that we sometimes find the writings of the fathers and the decrees of the Councils at­tributed to the inspiration and even to the dicta­tion of the Holy Spirit.

3.    Indirect proof based on canonicity.

Corollary:          Apostolic origin as a criterion of inspiration.

Scholion:  The extension of inspiration to all parts of Scripture.

Corollary:          Essentially and accidentally dogmatic passages.

 

 

 

Article II

 

THE EXISTENCE OF INSPIRATION

 

 

 

We have seen which books the Church reveres as Sacred Scrip-ture, which books it has accepted from earliest times as sacred and canonical. Now we must ask on what grounds it placed them in the canon. The Vatican Council has given the answer:

 

But the Church holds these books as sacred and canonical, not because, having been put together by human industry alone, they were then approved by its authority; nor because they contain revelation without error; but because, having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and as such, they have been handed down to the Church itself.’

 

Therefore for a book to be considered sacred and canonical, it must be inspired, i.e., written under a divine influence of such a nature that God can and must be acclaimed the Author of that book.

We must find out, then, whether the existence of such an in­fluence can be the object of a valid proof. But first we must set the stage by determining the grounds, i.e., the criterion or criteria which can serve as basis for the proof.

 

I.   The Criteria of Inspiration

1. Protestants in general claim that Scripture is its own guaran­tee of inspiration (autópistos).

(a)     Some, especially Lutherans, taught that the inspiration of any book could be detected on the basis of its peculiar divine flavor, i.e., on the basis of the holy feelings it engenders in the souls of its readers. (b) Others proposed as criteria of inspiration charac­teristics intrinsic to the book itself, like the truth and sublimity of its doctrine, the fulfillment of prophecies recorded therein, or the candor of its style. (c) Calvinists claim that the Holy Spirit gives

direct testimony to the soul of any reader who has faith. The Holy Spirit who of old inspired the sacred writers to write these words continues from day to day to give individual readers the inspired assurance that what he is reading is the word of God.2

It goes without saying that the first and second sets of criteria are inadequate for a sure proof of inspiration. As for the direct testimony given to individual believers by the Holy Spirit—that is a gratuitous and false assumption.³

2. Once auto pistía is ruled out, then it follows that the inspira­tion of Scripture must be proved by testimony of some sort or other. Would the merely human testimony of the sacred writer himself suffice, i.e., the testimony of that man who wrote the sacred book under the influence of the Holy Spirit? Obviously no one other than the sacred writer could possibly observe the fact of divine inspiration. It must be granted that the merely human testi­mony of the author—even if we possessed such testimony, which we do not—would not suffice to give full certitude. Quite clearly the danger of hallucination is too great in a matter like this for people to place absolute trust in the affirmation of an individual that he had been inspired to write, even if that individual be quite sincere and holy.4

The only remaining criterion is divine testimony, testimony given by an authorized herald of revelation and handed on to us in proper fashion.5 Now such testimony could have been handed down either in some book of Scripture itself or in other trustworthy documents. Since evidence for the inspiration of at least several books is actually taken from other books of the Bible, it is most important to point out in advance that in this question we use the books of the Bible not as inspired, but as humanly trustworthy historical records only. It would be begging the question in the worst way to seek in Scripture as an inspired document a proof for its inspiration. But there is nothing to prevent one from arguing in the following fashion:

The books of the New Testament are historically trustworthy and so they contain a faithful record of the teaching of Christ and the apostles, whom we know to have been spokesmen for God.

But these books tell us, e.g., that Christ and St. Paul taught that certain books were inspired.

Therefore the inspiration of these books rests on divine testi­

mony given by an authoritative spokesman and promulgated in a trustworthy document.

It is one thing to say that the inspiration of Scripture can, in the final analysis, be validly proved on the basis of divine testimony, and quite another to determine the precise character of this testi­mony, i.e., to determine whether it was always given explicitly or sometimes contained only implicitly in some other statement. We shall say a bit more on this point later. Moreover, it would be ask­ing too much to demand that the ancient documents on which we base our belief in inspiration should also declare openly that this truth rests on divine tradition. As long as we can show that belief in inspiration was general in the Church from earliest times, we have every right to conclude that it formed part of the legacy of truth left by Christ and the apostles.

II. PROPOSITION. All the Books of the Tridentine Canon

 

Are Inspired

 

This is a dogma of faith, as we know from the Vatican Council:

 

If anyone shall not accept the entire books of Sacred Scripture with all their divisions, just as the sacred Synod of Trent has enumerated them (see n. 783 f.), as canonical and sacred, or denies that they have been inspired by God: let him be anathema.6

 

The proof may be lined up somewhat as follows. We shall first give the scriptural arguments, which prove the inspiration of several, though not of all, the books. To these we shall add the nonscriptural arguments, namely, the statements of the early fathers which, if they are general and unqualified, prove the inspiration of all those books included by them under the heading of Scripture.⁷ But if they are qualified and specific, i.e., if they refer directly to only certain particular books, they can still be used as an indirect proof for all the books included in the concept of Scripture, for there can be no doubt that the fathers put all the books of Scripture on the same plane. Finally, we shall corroborate our conclusion and at the same time round out our treatment with an appeal to the indirect argument based on canonicity.

I.  Scriptural arguments

 

1.  For the books of the Old Testament.

It is abundantly clear from the New Testament and from other, extra-biblical sources, that at the time of Christ the Jews attrib­uted absolute authority to the books they called Scripture, because they believed them to have been inspired by God. But Christ and the apostles gave positive approval to this belief of the Jews, as regards both the absolute authority of Scripture and the basic reason on which this authority rested, namely, divine inspiration. The conclusion is clear.⁵

The Major can be proved in short order by citing the testimony of Josephus, who testifies to the conviction of the Palestinian Jews, and of Philo, who records that of the Hellenistic Jews. Josephus says that the sacred books of the Jews are “rightly believed to be divine” because composed “only by prophets” (men acting under divine inspiration).9 Philo calls the Scriptures “outstanding oracles which issued from the mouth of the prophets.”10

Minor. Christ and the apostles gave the fullest recognition to the absolute authority of Scripture. Christ: “I assure you emphati­cally: before heaven and earth pass away, not a single letter or one small detail will be expunged from the Law—no, not until all is accomplished.”11 “These events are the fulfillment of what I pre­dicted to you when I was still with you, namely, that anything ever written concerning me, whether in the Law of Moses, or in the prophets, or in the Psalms, must needs be fulfilled”—Luke 24:44-45. “Scripture cannot be annulled”—John 10:34. St. Peter: “Broth­ers, it was necessary that the passage of Scripture . . . be realized”

—Acts 1:16. St. Paul argues from the fact that Scripture mentions the promise made to the “seed” of Abraham: It does not say, “And to his descendants,” as if referring to many, but only to one.12

Our Lord and the apostles deduce the all-embracing authority of Scripture from the facts that in the Scripture it is God who speaks and that the sacred authors speak in the Holy Spirit, etc. In other words, they deduce it from the fact of inspiration. As proof of this we have the manner in which they quote Scripture and the express declaration of St. Paul.

a.       Their manner of quoting Scripture. Christ: “In what sense, then,” he asked them, “does David, prompted by the Holy Spirit, call him ‘Lord,’ when he says: ‘The Lord said to my Lord?”13 St.

Peter:  “Brothers, it was necessary that the passage of Scripture in which the Holy Spirit by the mouth of David spoke prophetically of Judas be realized.”14 St. Paul: “We have been called to the apostolate and set apart to proclaim the Good News now made known by Cod, as he had promised it of old through his prophets in Holy Writ”—Rom. 1:2. “And the Scriptures, foreseeing that God would sanctify the Gentiles by faith, announced to Abraham be­forehand, ‘In you shall all nations be blessed’ “—Gal. 3:8. Here Scripture is used as a synonym for God Himself, its Author.

These passages, of course, prove the inspiration of only a few texts, but in view of the fact that the same authority is attributed to Scripture as a whole, and since very many different citations are introduced by the same formulas, “it is written,” “Scripture says,” etc., we are justified in concluding that the basic reason for this authority is the same for all the passages cited, namely, divine inspiration.

b. The express declaration of St. Paul, The Apostle wrote to Timothy, who had been born in Asia Minor of a Gentile father and a Jewish mother:

 

From your infancy you have known the Sacred Writings. They can instruct you for salvation through the faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproving, for correcting, for instructing in holi­ness.—2 Tim. 3:15—16.

 

The crucial words are, in the original Greek: pâsa graphs thed­pneustos kai öphélimos pròs didaskalían. .

It makes little difference whether the term pâsa graphé be taken collectively for all Scripture or distributively: any Scripture.” In either case it signifies the whole collection which Timothy had known from childhood on as “the Sacred Writings.”

Nor does it make much difference whether, with the Vulgate, one takes the word theópneustos in apposition to pâsa graphé, or, with the original text, as the predicate. In either case, it is clear that this theopneustía (divine inspiration) applies to all Scripture and is actually the basis of the latter’s usefulness and authority.

The word the6pneustos (theós, God; pnéö, to breathe) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament or in the Septuagint. It is found occasionally in the works of profane authors to indicate the

action of the gods on men.’⁶ And so the term graphé theópneustos can siguify nothing other than a writing composed under the inspiration or at the instigation of God.” Must this influence be understood as one of such intensity that the Scripture which is its result is truly the word of God and that God is its Author? The word theópneustos certainly admits this meaning, and a compara­tive study of the passages cited above (no. 35) demands it. Fur­thermore, the real siguificance of the term theópneustos can be clarified from 2 Peter 1:19-21, where the author says of “prophecy” or “prophecy of Scripture” that it is not the product of a human intellect or will, but that “men with a message from God spoke as they were moved to do so by the Holy Spirit” [allà hypò pneúmatos hagíou pherómenoi elálësan hágioi theoû ant hrö poi]. The Holy Spirit so activated, led, moved men that the “prophecy of Scripture” was not so much their work as His, relatively speaking.18

 

Corollary

 

Which books of the Old Testament are proven to be inspired by the foregoing arguments? At least all the protocanonical books, for it can hardly be doubted that the “sacred letters” which the Hellenist Timothy knew from childhood were those of the Septua­gint translation, which contained also the deuterocanonical books.19

2. For certain books of the New Testament.

a.  In 2 Peter we read:

 

And regard the long-suffering delay of our Lord’s coming as a means of salvation. Paul, our dear brother, wrote the same things to you according to the wisdom granted him, just as he did in all his letters when speaking of these matters. In his letters there are some passages hard to understand. The unlearned and unsteady twist the meaning of these to their own destruction, as they do also the other Scriptures.20

 

Evidently St. Peter put some of the Pauline epistles on a par with “the other Scriptures,” and so he implicitly affirms that they were written under inspiration.

It is impossible to determine with certitude what “all those epistles” were which St. Peter had in mind.” The very vague manner of expression, “all his letters” seems to hint at something rather general. Do not Peter’s words seem to have proceeded from

the following conviction, that all the letters which our dearest brother Paul has composed in the exercise of his apostolic office are to be put on a par with “the other Scriptures” and consequently are to be considered as inspired? If this be true, then one would have a hard time finding a reason to prove that St. Peter reached this conclusion about Paul alone and not about the rest of the apostles when they wrote in pursuance of their official function. And so, if I am not mistaken, this passage of Peter’s epistle at least suggests the inspiration of all the apostolic writings.

A word of caution is necessary, however. The apostolic origin of 2 Peter cannot be proven with certainty on merely historical grounds. Consequently, he who must rely on historical data alone cannot allege the aforementioned testimony strictly as Petrine. But supplementing the witness of history we have the firm convic­tion of the primitive Church.

A probable argument for the inspiration of the Gospel of Luke is frequently drawn from these words of St. Paul: “As the Scripture says, ‘Do not muzzle the ox when it treads out the grain,’ and ‘The laborer is entitled to his support.’ “—1 Tim. 5:18. The words “the laborer is entitled, etc.” are found in this form nowhere in Scripture outside of Luke 10:7. But in view of the fact that the words, “You shall not muzzle,” are ‘taken from Deuteronomy (25:

4), we may suspect that the rest of the passage, “the laborer is entitled,” is a free interpretation of a passage in the same general context of Deuteronomy (24:14-15).

 

II. Non-scriptural arguments

St. Clement of Rome: “You have looked deep into the sacred writings, which tell the truth and proceed from the Holy Spiit.”22 These words must be understood as referring primarily to the Old Testament, but not exclusively. For St. Clement not only cites many New Testament passages but in addition says explicitly of St. Paul: “He was truly inspired [pneumatik6s] when he wrote

to you.”23

St. Polycarp speaks of the “Scriptures” in which the Philippians were versed and immediately thereafter cites a Pauline passage, introducing the citation with the words, “So I only say what has been said in the following texts.”24 Evidently he put St. Paul’s letters on the same plane as the “Scriptures,” the inspiration of which as a whole he certainly acknowledged. The same is true of

the epistle attributed to Barnabas, wherein St. Matthew’s Gospel is quoted, and again with the introductory formula, “As it is

written.” (4:14).

St. Justin Martyr (or perhaps another writer of the same period) says of the Old Testament authors that their knowledge of exalted and divine affairs came from no human source, “but from that Gift [the Holy Spirit] which came down upon holy men of that era.” Consequently, they had to submit themselves whole­heartedly to the divine influence of the Spirit of God, in order that the divine plectrum itself, coming down from heaven and using holy men as an instrument, like a harp or lyre, might reveal to us the knowledge of divine and heavenly matters. And that is why they are always in common accord, even though “it was at different times and in different places that they passed on to us their heavenly doctrine.”” Elsewhere St. Justin openly acknowl­edges the inspiration of the prophets and then indicates that the “commentaries of the apostles” (the Gospels) are considered by Christians as practically in the same class with the “writings of the

prophets.”26

Athenagoras says of Moses, Isaias, Jeremias, and others:

 

 

Moses, Isaias, Jeremias, and the rest of the prophets, who, when the Divine Spirit moved them, spoke out what they were in travail with, their own reason falling into abeyance and the Spirit making use of them as a flutist might play upon his flute.27

 

 

St. Irenaeus: “The Scriptures are perfection itself, in that they are the words of the Word of God and of His Spirit.28 Of the apostles he says: “They first preached” the Gospel, “and later, in accord with the divine will, they set it down for us in writing that it might serve as the pillar and foundation of our faith.”” We learn the precise meaning of the phrase, “in accord with the divine will,” in another passage, which reads: “The Holy Spirit foresaw that men would distort the truth and so took measures to foil their deceit by saying through Matthew, ‘This is the record of Christ’s life.’"

St. Theophilus of Antioch, in the course of rejecting an error about the Word of God, says: “And the Holy Scriptures teach us this, as do all the men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit

[pántes hoi pneumatophóroi], one of whom, John, says, ‘When time began, the Word was there.”’31 The utterances of the prophets and the Gospels are found to be in agreement for the simple reason that they all spoke under the inspiration of the one Spirit of God”; he then goes on to cite some Pauline passages as the “word of God” (theîos lógos).32

Clement of Alexandria: “I could allege for you numberless scriptural passages, of which not even one pen-stroke will fail of fulfillment, for the Mouth of the Lord, the Holy Spirit, has pro­nounced them.”33 “He who believes in the divine Scriptures has an unshakeable proof, the very voice of God who gave them

to us.”34

St. Hippolytus: “Let us understand the holy Scriptures in the sense in which God intended to teach us therein.35

Tertullian: “The Apostle [Paul] was moved by the same Spirit who is responsible for all the Scriptures, right back to the very book of Genesis.”36 If you think that we care nothing for the welfare of the emperors, read the words of God, our [sacred] literature. . . . Pray, it says, for kings and princes” (1 Tim. 2:2).37 Elsewhere he asserts that the Church of Rome has the same regard for both the Old and the New Testaments: “It combines the Law and the Prophets with the Gospels and apostolic letters and draws thence its faith.”38

St. Cyprian: “It was necessary, my dearest son, that I accede to your spiritual desire, which begged with most insistent urging for the divine teaching wherewith the Lord has deigned to teach and instruct us by the holy Scriptures.³⁹

Origen:

 

The just and good God Himself, the Father of our Lord Jesvs Christ, gave the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospels. That there was not one Spirit in the men of the old dispensation and another in those who were inspired after the coming of Christ is most clearly taught throughout the churches.40

We shall say that we both [Jews and Christians] agree that the books [of the Old Testament] were written by the Spirit of God, but that we part company with the Jews when it comes to the interpretation of those books.41

 

Eusebius of Caesarea quotes an early author who attacked the Artemonians (anti-Trinitarians of the beginning of the third cen­

tury) “because they boldly impugued the Scriptures. . . . Either they do not believe that the Sacred Scriptures were dictated by the Holy Spirit, in which case they are infidels, or else they consider themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and in that case they are

just diabolically insane.”42

St. Cyril of Jerusalem: “These things we learn from the divinely inspired Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.” Shortly there­after he says that the Holy Scriptures were “dictated by the Holy Spiit.”43

St. Athanasius mentions “divine Scriptures which we have for our salvation.” He regrets that some mix apocryphal works in with “divinely inspired Scriptures,” and concludes: “Let us be content to be taught by divinely inspired Scriptures, the books of which we have listed above.”44

St. Basil:

 

 

Do not neglect to read especially the New Testament, because often harm can come from reading the Old. Not that harmful things have been written therein; it is rather that the souls of those who suffer harm are weak to begin with. For all food is fit for nourishment, but it can hurt those who are sick. And so all Scripture is divinely inspired and useful and there is nothing evil therein.45

 

St. John Chrysostom:

 

In the beginning God spoke to men directly, .. . but because they later became unworthy of familiarity with Him, . . . He sent letters to them as to a people afar off. It was indeed God who wrote these letters, but Moses was His postman.46

For there is in the sacred letters neither a syllable nor a pen-stroke in whose depths there is not a rich treasure. . . . For if in worldly transactions documents often depend on one syllable for much of their importance, this is even more true of the divine Scriptures, written as they were by the Holy Spiit.47

 

St. Ambrose, in commenting on the words of Luke 1: 1: Many an attempt has been made before now, etc., wrote:

 

 

Matthew did not just try, or Mark, or John, or Luke. No, the

Spirit of God furnished them with a wealth of words and

material, and they carried through without any effort the task they had undertaken.48

There are many who say that our sacred writers did not write artistically. We offer no objection to this statement, for it was not in accord with art that they wrote but with the grace which surpasses all art: they wrote what the Spirit gave them to write.49

 

St. Jerome:

 

I have corrected some things in the Latin translation of the Gospels, not because I thought anything needed correction in the words of the Lord or that anything was not divinely in-spired, but because I wanted to correct the mistakes of the Latin manuscripts in the light of the Greek.50

 

St. Augustine:

 

Letters have reached us from that city whence we wander [heaven]. These letters are the Scriptures, which urge us to lead good lives.51

He [the Son of God], having spoken first through the prophets and then personally, and still later through the apostles—to the extent He deemed sufficient—also produced the Scripture which is called canonical, and it possesses the highest possible authority.52

Now even though they [the evangelists] wrote what He indi­cated and ordered, it must by no means be said that He Himself did not write, since in fact it was a case of His members’ putting into operation what they had learned at the dictation of the Head. Whatever He wanted us to read about His deeds and words, He ordered to be written by them as His own hands.53

 

Theodoretus directed this observation against those who claimed that not all the psalms had been written by David:

 

I have no positive statement to make on this subject. It makes

little difference to me whether he wrote all of them or whether others wrote some of them, since in any case they were all composed under the inspiration of the Spirit of God.54

 

St. Gregory the Great:

 

Who the human author of these words [the book of Job] was

is a more than empty question, since we firmly believe that the Holy Spirit is the Author of the book. He wrote those things who dictated them for writing.... When, then, we understand the matter, and are convinced that the Holy Spirit was its author, in asking questions about the author, what else do we do than, when reading a letter, make inquiries about the pen?

The writers of Holy Scripture, then, since they are moved by the influence of the Holy Spirit, give witness to themselves therein as to other persons. Thus the Holy Spirit spoke of Moses by the mouth of Moses; the Holy Spirit spoke of John through John. Paul, too, intimates that he did not speak from the dictates of his own mind when he says, “Do you seek a proof that Christ speaks through me?”55

 

Corollary

The argument from tradition is not weakened by the fact that we sometimes find the writings of the fathers and the decrees of the Councils attributed to the inspiration and even to the dictation of the Holy Spirit.⁵⁶ For as long as one takes into account, as is only fair, the complete teaching of the fathers and its practical applica­tion, it will be easy to see that they did not attribute to the Holy Spirit the canonical books and other writings of purely human origin in exactly the same sense. Take St. Augustine as an example. After having said that St. Jerome wrote “not only under the inspira­tion but even at the dictation of the Holy Spirit,” he adds in no uncertain terms: “I confess to your charity that I have learned to give to only those books of Scripture which are called canonical such reverence and honor as to believe most sincerely that none of their authors could have made a mistake when he wrote.”57

An indirect proof for the inspiration of all the books of both Testaments is based on canonicity.

The question of receiving a book into the canon always in­volved, in the minds of the fathers, the question of the inspiration of that book. It was not just a matter of whether a certain book was simply useful or pious, but whether it should be added to the list of those books about whose inspiration all were in agreement.

We know, it is true, that the immediate and explicit point of the discussion was sometimes something else, in particular the apos­tolic origin of a book; but the fundamental issue of the discussion, or of the doubt, was always whether this book was to be classed with the inspired books, both on the score of absolute authority

and also on that of the intrinsic reason for that authority, namely, inspiration. We say “also on the score of the intrinsic reason for its authority” because (a) the fathers never give the slightest hint that the ultimate basis of dignity and authority varies for the several books of Scripture. Besides, (b) their reverence for the inspired Scriptures was so great that they would under no consideration put on the same plane with them any ancient book, no matter how true or useful, which they believed had been composed by ex­clusively human efforts.

Consequently, (1) from the fact that by far the majority of the books were universally accepted without any hesitation or dispute, it follows that their inspiration was always acknowledged by all.

(2) From the fact that the fathers were morally unanimous in accepting the rest of the books, at least from the beginning of the fifth century, it follows that the inspiration of these latter was acknowledged at least from that time on as universally as that of the books in the first class.

It will be noted that here, too, we can apply what was said at the end of the preceding article: if one prescinds from the authority of the infallible Church, it is possible to prove with certainty from historical documents alone the inspiration of by far the greater part of the books, but not of all of them. The fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries must certainly have considered adequate the arguments which led them to pass definitive judgment on the inspiration of the deuterocanonical hooks, but these arguments have been preserved for us only in part. They are evaluated—to the extent that they have come down to us—by biblical scholars, whose business it is to study the teaching of the fathers on indi­vidual books.

 

Corollary

 

In the controversies centering around the acceptance of the deuterocanonical books of the New Testament, especially Apoca­lypse and Hebrews, the express and immediate issue was generally whether a book could be traced back to one of the apostles. If its apostolic authorship could be ascertained, the book was listed among the Scriptures; if not, it was considered apocryphal. And so the question arises: was the charism of the apostolate consid­ered by the fathers as the criterion of inspiration, and if so, should we so consider it? The exact point at issue is not whether we can

determine the inspiration of a given book apart from divine testi­mony, but rather whether such testimony is already implicitly contained in the apostolic origin of a book, namely: in the fact that a book was composed by an apostle as such, i.e., in the exercise of his apostolic office.

The negative opinion is the more common one. However, several authors give an affirmative answer: Lamy, Reithmayr, Ubaldi, Cellerier, Székely, Schanz,58 Joüon,59 and their opinion deserves a fair hearing.

They grant that the apostolate considered in itself does not in-elude the gift of biblical inspiration. Most of the members of the apostolic college contributed nothing to the body of Scripture and still they were genuine apostles. They lacked none of the preroga­tives which belong essentially to the apostolate. Nor is it ante­cedently impossible that an apostle should, in the exercise of his office, write something, and do so without being inspired. The hypothetical case of an apostle’s speaking or writing on matters of faith or morals without the gift of infallibility would be quite another matter, because this gift is bound up essentially with the apostolate as such.

It is, however, the view of the aforementioned authors that in actual fact the gift of inspiration was extrinsically connected with the apostolate, and that, as a result, the apostles were in fact always inspired whenever they wrote anything in the exercise of their apostolic office. It is their opinion, too, that the early Church was aware of this extrinsic but nonetheless real connection and that we have a reflection of this awareness to a certain extent in 2 Peter 3:15—16. If one does not admit the existence and awareness of such a connection, it is difficult to explain satisfactorily the line of argument followed by the fathers.60 Furthermore, not one of the early fathers seems to have known of explicit testimonies for the inspiration of individual books of the New Testament.

It is, besides, a well-known fact that unusual gifts of the Holy Spirit were bestowed not only upon the apostles, but also upon many of their immediate fellow-workers—even though in varying degrees. Consequently it should occasion no surprise if the gift of inspiration, too, was granted to certain apostolic men, like Mark and Luke. But since the apostles alone made up the foundation of the Church,61 the books of their non-apostolic colleagues had to be recommended to the Church as inspired by one of the apostles,

in one way or another. Their books would then have an indirectly apostolic origin. That would explain why from earliest times Mark’s Gospel was linked with Peter and Luke’s with Paul, and why some fathers even speak of the express approval given these books by one or other of the apostles.62

 

Scholion. The extension of inspiration to all parts of Scripture.

 

In the seventeenth63 and especially towards the end of the nineteenth century,64 some writers advanced the opinion that the doctrine of inspiration should be qualified somewhat. They sug­gested that the divine influence did not affect all genuine scriptural passages indiscriminately, but was limited to those passages which, in the light of the purpose of the Scriptures, should be called primary. These authors were not altogether unanimous in their views, but if one sets aside minor points of disagreement,65 one finds that they were in general accord on the following basic points. They taught that the sacred writers enjoyed God’s help when they wrote on subjects touching religion, faith, and morals, matters directly and necessarily in line with the purpose intended by God. When, however, the hagiographers dealt with other ques­tions, like history, geography, chronology, physical sciences—in a word, profane or merely accessory questions—they did so not with the positive aid of the Holy Spirit, but merely with His permission. The proponents of this restricted view of inspiration acted from the best of motives. They were most anxious to find a way to safeguard Catholic doctrine and at the same time to feel free to admit that some real errors existed in the secondary, non-essential parts of the sacred books. They were well aware of the fact, as we shall point out at length directly, that if the influence of inspiration is such as to make God the real Author of the written word, it necessarily rules out all error.

Leo XIII stated emphatically that no such limitation of inspira­tion could be admitted on any grounds whatsoever:

 

But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. As to the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties (arising from the profane sciences) do not hesitate to concede that divine inspira­tion regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond,

because (as they wrongly think) in the question of the truth or falsehood of a passage we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it—this system cannot be tolerated.66

 

Of course, the supreme pontiff was thoroughly justified in taking this stand. Not to mention many things which might take us far afield, such a limitation contradicts Catholic tradition. The fathers, with at least morally universal unanimity, clearly affirm the inspira­tion of all of Scripture, and consequently exclude any real error from all of Scripture, precisely because they believe it to have been composed throughout under divine inspiration: “for they were unanimous in laying it down that those writings, in their entirety and in all their parts were equally from the afflatus of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred writers, could not set down anything but what was true.”67

The members of the so-called “Liberal School” appealed princi­pally to the following argument. They insisted that inspiration does not extend beyond its purpose, and that its purpose is to teach religion, nothing else.

It must be granted that the special purpose of Scripture is to teach men those abstract and practical truths which will guide them to external life.” From this one may rightly conclude that only those matters pertaining by their nature to religion (in which matter, however, are included many historical facts which have an intrinsic tie-up with doctrinal truths) are inspired for their own sake and as a result of God’s primary intention. But it does not follow that other subjects which by their very nature are not at all or, at most, very remotely related to religion are excluded from the influence of inspiration. For they could have been inspired in line with a secondary intention, i.e., for the sake of the other subjects, namely, with a view to expressing religious truths more effectively and fittingly. Catholic tradition asserts that this was in fact the way things happened, and one does not have to look very far to find excellent reasons for God’s having willed to proceed in this fashion.

It is of utmost importance for the authority of Scripture that everything contained therein be acknowledged as inspired. Al­though in some cases one can tell at a glance what is of religious import and what is not, it is not always easy to determine the limits. That is why if everything were not inspired, the opinion of

readers and exegetes would often be uncertain, arguments based on Scripture would be capriciously set aside on the pretext of non-inspiration, etc. If the authority of Scripture was to be incontro­vertible it was necessary either to extend inspiration to every single statement or to exclude profane subjects from Scripture altogether. But this latter course would have been extremely in-convenient. Clearly (a) very many things, which appear at first blush to be exclusively historical, play an indirect but very im­portant role in religious instruction, in that they show us how divine Providence prepared for and established the Kingdom of Cod, directed human affairs, etc., or describe the lives of holy men to serve as an example for us, and of wicked men to serve as a warning. Obviously narratives of this sort could not very well have been composed without constant reference to numberless details like chronology, topography, genealogy, custom, all of them thor­oughly secular, but without which the book would be quite dull and so less suited to the fulfillment of its high purpose. (b) It is of no little importance to the defense of truth that the books which record that truth possess a historical authority which can be proved by internal as well as external criteria. And it is precisely the references to secular matters which furnish us with such criteria, for the most part. (c) God’s gentle Providence decreed that Scrip­ture be composed in such a way that its books would be not only divine, but at the same time truly human.69 Accordingly, He ac­commodated His inspiration to the circumstances of those men whom He chose to be His instruments in the composition of the Sacred Books and also to those of the people to whom the Books were directly addressed. It is quite significant that the actual writ­ing corresponded to external occasions, and that a literary form was chosen which would fit precise circumstances. At times the histori­cal form was called for, at others the didactic, the poetic, the epistolary, etc. This providential arrangement demanded as a consequence that the Holy Spirit inspire the sacred writers to make use of all those elements of composition which men who adopt such and such a literary form customarily employ. Among these elements would be greetings at the ends of letters, personal details concern­ing material needs,70 and other things of this type.

The doctrine just set forth does not at all contradict the famous remark of St. Augustine: “The Holy spirit who spoke through them [the sacred writers] had no intention of teaching

men those matters [the structure of the heavens, etc.], matters in no wise profitable to salvation.”71 So far was Augustine from ex­cluding profane subjects from the realm of inspiration that he explicitly included them within that realm. One must read the remark just quoted in its context. But since it is not the purpose of Scripture to teach astronomy, etc., he understood well that the sacred authors could have used the ordinary, inexact manner of speaking when they described such things. From this he concluded that in such matters the literal sense of Scripture was not to be insisted upon against well founded opinions of natural science.

 

Corollary

It should be clear from the preceding in what sense and with what justification we distinguish in Holy Scripture passages in-spired directly and for their own sake and passages inspired accidentally or for the sake of something else. The former are sometimes called essentially dogmatic, the former accidentally dogmatic.72

 

 

Notes

1.   Constitution De Me catholica, chap. 2 (DB 1787).

2.   Calvin held that Sacred Scripture “is autópistos [its own guarantee of inspiration], and that there is no need to bolster it with proofs and arguments. The certitude with which it deserves to be accepted by us is based on the testimony of the Holy Spirit”—Institutes of the Christian Religion, i. 7. 5. See also the Belgian Confession, article 5. Note the ambiguity of the assertion:

Scripture is its own guarantee (autópistos). All grant that Scripture gets its own intrinsic authority not from the Church or from tradition, but from itself, i.e., from the single fact that it is inspired by God. But the question is whether the divine authority of Scripture is made known to us with certitude by the mere reading of Scripture. It is this latter auto pistía that Catholics deny, not the former.

3.   If we allowed the criterion suggested by the Lutherans, any stirring book would be inspired. And how about all those passages in the Bible which are conducive to anything but spiritual exaltation? The subjective character of the Calvinist criterion—which is, to begin with, a completely gratuitous assumption—renders it quite worthless as a norm for discerning the inspira­tion of any book. The testimony of the hagiographer is an inadequate criterion firstly, because of the very real danger of hallucination involved. Any well-meaning person might feel himself inspired to write a book in God’s name. But how could he be sure; how could we be sure? And secondly, the fact is that no hagiographer has ever told us that he wrote under inspiration.

Jeremias comes close when he tells us that God commanded him to rewrite his book after the king had ruthlessly destroyed the first edition. But the mere command to write is far from being inspiration, which is a divine influence affecting the whole process of writing a sacred book.

4.   We have said that the merely human testimony of a hagiographer is not enough; for if a hagiographer, whose divine mission was already estab­lished on other grounds, testified to his own inspiration, that testimony would not be merely human. We have, however, no such testimony.

5.   This is only to be expected, given the fact that inspiration is a super­natural phenomenon. The supernatural cannot be ascertained at all, let alone with sureness, by merely natural means. Our knowledge of even the fact of inspiration must come to us by way of revelation in some guise or other.

The only testimony that abstracts from subjectivism and is truly infallible, universal (i.e., having application to all the inspired books) and at the disposal of all is that of God, which is made known to us through the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Apart from the insufficiency of all other criteria, it should be clear that the fact of inspiration is a dogma of the Faith and that a dogma of the Faith is not to be believed on merely human testi­mony. Therefore the fact of inspiration is to be believed upon the authority of God alone.—J.M.T. Barton, “The Holy Ghost,” The Teaching of the Catho­lie Church, 1 (New York, 1949), 170.

6.   Loc. cit., canon 2, 4 (DB 1809).

7.   Note: “which those fathers included under the heading of Scripture.” It is of course clear that when weighing the testimony of those fathers who doubted the canonicity of certain books, the reasons for their hesitation must be taken into account.

8.   This argument may be presented more completely and perhaps more tellingly as follows:

Using the sacred books merely as historical documents worthy of credence, and prescinding altogether from their inspired character, we can construct an argument which will take us at least part way:

In the time of Christ, Jewish tradition recognized a collection of books as possessing divine authority because they were of divine origin.

But Christ and the apostles approved this tradition.

Therefore Christ and the apostles approved a collection of books as being of divine origin and authority.

However, one must go further in order to prove inspiration as a fact. All the above syllogism tells us is that certain men accepted certain books as sacred and inspired. To this conclusion one might answer, salva reverentia:

“So Christ and the apostles approved a collection of books as sacred. So what? What does their approbation mean?” Consequently, using the books still as authoritative historical sources, nothing more, we must prove, as is done in Apologetics, the divine mission and subsequent infallibility of Christ and of His apostles. This puts some teeth into the conclusion. Such a proof is called by theologians a quasi-dogmatic historical argument.

What is to be said, finally, of the sufficiency of this argument? What does it prove? The fact of inspiration, nothing more. It will not prove specifically, for instance, the actual inspiration of the New Testament or of several books

of the Old Testament, In the final analysis, one must have recourse to Tra­dition and to the divinely established authority of the Church’s magisterium.

9.   Contra Apionem 1. 7—8.

10. De mutatione nominum, cited by Franzelin, De traditione et scriptura (3rd ed.), p. 324. Indeed Philo thought that even the Septuagint translation was done under inspiration “as if some invisible power dictated to each [translator the proper words]”—De vita Moysis, cited by Franzelin, loc. cit.

11. Matt. 5:18. The term Law is often used to refer to the whole Old Testament.

12. Gal. 8:16; see Heb. 12:26—28, where a very important truth is deduced from the phrase “yet once again” (Agg. 2:7).

13. Matt. 22:43; see Ps. 109. What the phrase to speak in the Spirit means can be illustrated by the following words of David: “The spirit of the Lord hath spoken by me, and his word by my ton gue”—2 Kings 23:2.

14. Acts 1 : 16. The first believers gave expression to the same belief when they prayed: “Sovereign Master, . . . who did say by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father, David, your servant: ‘Why did the Gentiles

rage             —Acts 4:25.

15. Note that in the New Testament the term Scripture is often used of an individual passage or sentence of Scripture; see Matt. 15:28; John 13:18; 19:36—37; Acts 1:16; 8:35.

16. See Pesch, Praelectiones dogmaticae, I, no. 607.

17. Futile attempts have been made to interpret theópneustos in an active sense: “breathing forth God.” The form itself is definitely passive, and, with a few—and uncertain—exceptions, all the words of this type into the compo­sition of which theós enters as an element have a passive meaning. Thus theodidaktos, “taught by God”; theokinetos, “moved by God”; theopemptos, “sent by God”; theokletos, “called by Cod”; theodotos, “given by God,” etc. See Bea, De inspiratione et inerrantia Sacrae Scripturae (Rome, 1947), p. 3; Hopfi-Gut, op. cit., p. 36.

18. This text is cited only to illustrate the meaning of the word theó­pneustos, for a) it is not certain that there is a question here of hogiographers as such, since it is not improbable that the words are used of prophets in the strict sense, either speaking or writing; and b) the apostolic origin of this epistle finds no clear proof in any definite testimony of the Church.

19. See above, no. 15.

20. 2 Pet. 3:15—16. It is not quite clear whether the correct reading is en pásais taîs epistolaîs or pásais epistolaîs.

21. It is most natural to see here a reference to all the Pauline epistles in the Church’s possession at that time. And in fact the more common opinion among Catholics is that 2 Peter was written shortly before the author’s death in 66 or 67, and hence after the composition of all the Pauline epistles with the single exception of 2 Timothy.

22. Epistula 1 ad Corinthios 45; ACW translation.

23. Loc. cit., 47; ACW translation.

24. Epistula ad Philippenses 12.

25. Cohortatio ad Graecos 8; see also 10. On the subject of this work, Dr. Quasten writes as follows:

In his attitude toward Greek philosophy, the author of the Cohortatio

differs markedly from St. Justin. If only for this reason the work cannot be ascribed to the latter. But besides, it is much superior in style and uses a distinctive vocabulary. All this together is enough to prove the treatise non-authentic. The Cohortatio most probably originated in the third century, has thirty-eight chapters and is the longest of the writings falsely attributed to St. Justin.—QP I, 205.

26.  Apologia i. 86 and 37.

27. Legatio pro Christianis 9.

28. Adversus haereses ii. 28, 2.

29. Loc. cit., 8. 1.

30.  Loc. cit., iii. 16, 2.

31. Ad Autolycum 2. 22.

32.  Loc. cit., 3. 12 and 14.

38. Protrepticus 9.

34. Stromata 2.2.

35.  Contra Noetum 9; see also 11.

36. De oratione 22.

37. Apologia 31.

38. De praescriptione 86.

89. Introduction to Testimonia ad Quirinum.

40.  De principiis, Preface 4; see also 8 and 4. 1 and 6.

41. Contra Celsum 5. 60.

42.  HE 5. 28.

43. Catecheses 4. 33 and 84.

44.  Festal letters 39; see above, no. 26.

45. Epistula 42 ad Chilonem 8.

46. Homilia 2 in Cenesim 2.

47. Homilia 21 in Genesim 1.

48. Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 1. 1.

49. Epistula 8 ad Justum 1.

50. Epistula 27 ad Marcellam 1.

51. In Ps. 90 enarratio 2.1.

52.  The City of God 11. 3; see Confessions vii. 21, 27.

53. De consensu evangelistarum i. 85, 54.

54. Praefatio in Psalmos.

55.  Moralia 1, Preface 2—S.

56. See Tertullian, De cultu feminarum 1. 3; Augustine, Epistula 82 ad Tilieronymum 2; Leo the Great, Epistula 145, 1.

57. Loc. cit., 3.

58. Apologie des Christentums, 11(2nd ed.), 608 if.

59.  Études, 98 (1904), 80.

60.  Did not St. Augustine state explicitly about some apocryphal works:

“If these were their [the apostles’] works, they would have been received by the Church of God?”—Contra adversarium legis et pro phetarum i. 20, 39.

61.  See Ephes. 2:20.

62.  See Tertullian, Contra Marcionem 4. 5, and see also 4. 2; Eusebius, HE 2. 15; 8. 24; St. Jerome, De viris illustribus 8. Here is Joüon’s view of the matter:

Every time an apostle writes as an apostle, he is inspired. It is not neces­

sary that he do the writing himself. Mark and Luke are personally inspired, but their charism is objectively conditional. God’s having conferred scrip­tural inspiration on them and our knowledge of that inspiration rest on the two following conditions: they have reproduced the teaching of the apostles, and it is these latter who are our guarantee of the reliability of that reproduction. The inspiration of the apostles was known in their apostolic character, that of Mark and Luke in their derived apostolicity.— Loc. cit., 90.

At the bottom of this suggestion there seems to lurk a confusion between the charism of infallibility and that of inspiration. The end of the latter is not precisely to teach, but to record teaching, as Lagrange very helpfully points out. Inspiration does entail infallibility, but not vice versa. See Balestri, op. cit., p. 418 if.; J. M. T. Barton, loc. cit.; S. Tromp, De Sacrae Scripturae inspiratione (Rome, 1945), p. 26 if.; F. Schroeder, Père Lagrange and Biblical Inspiration (Washington, 1954); J.-M. Vosté, De divina inspiratione et veritate Sacrae Scripturae (Rome, 1932), p. 23 if.

Another suggestion has been put forward which attempts a different answer. . . . It is urged that, since the Apostles were sent to teach in the name of Christ and were his ambassadors, whatever they taught was to be received as the word of Christ, . . . But why limit their teaching to the spoken word? Were they not just as much the ambassadors of Christ when they wrote as when they spoke? In this way, whatever was written by an Apostle was inspired and, on this understanding, was accepted by the faithful. The writings of Mark and Luke were received because they were considered as coming from Peter and Paul respectively. But, we may ask, is it right to make the transient charisma or gift of inspiration coextensive with the permanent office of apostleship, or to elevate Mark and Luke virtually to the status of Apostles? In fact, it is possible to commit an Apostle’s teaching to writing faithfully and yet not be inspired in the true sense of the word.—CCHS, 18c.

See also David M. Stanley, “The Concept of Biblical Inspiration,” CTSA, 13 (1958), pp. 65—95.

63. Holden; and later, Chrismann.

64. Lenormant, Rohling, Cardinal Newman, di Bartolo, d’Hulst, Semeria

—several of whom subsequently corrected their doctrine.

65. Among minor differences may be mentioned the fact that some of them (di Bartolo, d’Hulst) kept the term inspiration for all of Scripture, but dis­tinguished various degrees of inspiration so as not to admit for merely profane subject matter thot influence which would make God tho real author of pas­sages dealing therewith. Actually, this theory of “mitigated inspiration” is a denial of that inspiration which the Church teaches and hence differs from the theory of “limited inspiration” in name only.

66. Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, RSS, p. 23 f.

67. Lac. cit., p. 25; see Corluy, Science catholique (1893), p. 481; Fonck, Der Kampf um die Wahrheit der heiligen Schrift, p. 21; Peseb, De ins pira­tione Sacrae Scripturae (Freihurg i. Br., 1906), p. 440 if.; J. Balestri, op. cit., p. 429 if.; J. M. T. Barton, op. cit., p. 176; CCHS, 37d; DBS, IV, 497 if.

68. See Rom. 15:4; 2 Tim. 3:15—17.

69. The Greeks had a word for this, too. They called it synkatábasis, the wonderful condescension which God reveals in all His dealings with earth­bound creatures. If He chooses to communicate with them, it will have to be

in their inadequate language. If He chooses to employ men as instruments of this communication, He owes it to Himself to respect the freedom of will which He has given them, their usual manner of expression, their psychological and cultural equipment. Characteristically, He will do them no violence, but will effect His purpose gently, albeit efficaciously.

With the sole qualification of Teacher of Divine Science, she (the Wisdom of God) came, and established her chair by the side of other chairs; in the public places and crossroads she gathered together all the passers-by with­out any distinction, and to them she set forth her teaching; she marked out her own definite position, and outside that position she spoke the language of the people, as all great teachers of the human race have done. And if to man, who is all his life but a little child, she spoke in childish terms, and spelled out to him the mysteries of heaven, we really cannot blame her for his own stammering and inconsequence, her whose teaching is so justly pure and lofty. Our own iguorance should be blamed.—P. Lacome, Quelques considérations exégétiques sur le premier chopitre de la Genèse (1891), quoted by Lagrange, Historical Criticism and the Old Testament (London, 1906), pp. 106—7; see F. Schroeder, op. cit., p. 31.

See also J. L. McKenzie, The Two Edged Sword; B. Vawter, A Path Through

Genesis; CCHS, 36j; J. P. Weisengoif, “Inerrancy of the Old Testament in

Religious Matters,” CBQ, 17 (1955), pp. 128—37.

70. See, for example, 1 Tim. 5:23; 2 Tim. 4:13; Philem. 22.

71. De Genesi ad litteram ii. 9, 20.

72. In this matter we should not forget Peters’ appropriate reminder (Unsere Bibel, p. 53) that, while we admit the inspiration of every part of the Bible, no matter how small, still each item is not inspired, as it were, for itself independently, but as part of a larger unit. The view that considers each verse by itself or in the light of its immediate context only is what Peters calls the atomistic attitude, as contrasted with the modern attitude which rather considers the book as a whole and tries to appreciate the minor parts in their relation to the whole.

 

 

Special Bibliography

 

ARBEZ, E. P.—WEISENGOFF, J. P. Unpublished notes, Catholic Uni­versity of America, 1953.

BAINVEL, J. De Scriptura Sacra. Paris, 1910.

BALESTRI, J. Biblicae introductionis generalis elementa. Rome, 1932.

BARTON, J. M. T. “The Holy Ghost,” The Teaching of the Catholic Church. New York, 1949.

BEA, A. De inspiratione et inerrantia Sacrae Scripturae. Rome, 1947.

“Inspiration et inérrance,” DBS IV. Paris, 1949.

BENEDICT XV. Spiritus Paraclitus. Rome, 1920.

BILLOT, L. De ins piratione. Rome, 1903.

CHAUVIN, A. L’inspiration. Paris, 1897.

CREHAN, J. H. “The Inspiration and Inerrancy of Holy Scripture,” CCHS 34 ff.

CRETS, G. J. De divina biblioe inspiratione. Louvain, 1886.

DAUSCH, P. Die Schriftinspiration, eine biblisch-geschichtliche Studie. Freiburg, 1891.

FEI. De evangelii ins piratione. Paris, 1906.

HOLZHEY, K. Die Inspiration in die Anschauung des Mittelalters. Miinchen, 1895.

HÖPFL-GUT. Introductionis in sacros utriusque testamenti libros compendium. Rome, 1940.

HUGON, E. La causalité instrumentale dans l’ordre surnaturel. Paris, 1924.

LEO XIII. Providentissimus Deus. Rome, 1893.

LEVIE, J. La Bible, parole humaine et message de Dieu. Paris­Louvain, 1958.

LUSSEAU-COLLOMB. Manuel d’e’tudes bibliques. Paris, 1936.

MCKENZIE, J. L. The Two Edged Sword. Milwaukee, 1956.

MERK, A. Institutiones biblicae. Rome, 1937.

PESCH, Chr. Zur neusten Geschichte der katholischen Inspira­tionslehre. (“Theologisehe Zeitfragen,” 3e Folge) 1902.

De inspiratione Sacrae Scripturae. Freiburg i. Br., 1906. Pius XII. Divino afflante Spiritu. Rome, 1943.

POPE, H. The Catholic Student’s “Aids” to the Study of the Bible. New York, 1926.

ROBERT-FEUILLET. Introduction à la Bible. Tournai, 1959.

ROBERT-TRICOT. Guide to the Bible. Translated under the direction of E. P. Arbez and M. R. P. McGuire. Westminster, 1951.

Initiation bib lique (3rd ed.). Paris, 1954.

SCHMID, FR. De inspirationis bibliorum vi et ratione. Brixen, 1885. SCHROEDER, F. Père Lagrange and Biblical Inspiration. Washington,

1954.

SIMON-PRADO. Praelectiones biblicae. Turin, 1938.

STANLEY, D. “The Concept of Biblical Inspiration,” CTSA, 1958.

TROMP, S. De Sacrae Scripturae ins piratione. Rome, 1945.

VAwTER, B. A Path Through Genesis. New York, 1956.

Vosm, J. -M. De divina inspiratione et veritate Sacrae Scripturae. Rome, 1932.

ZANECCHIA, D. Divina inspiratio ad mentem sancti Thomae. Rome, 1899.

“Scriptor sacer sub divina inspiratione, responsio ad p. Van Kasteren,” Studien, 34, 581.

 

Article Ill

 

THE NATURE AND EFFECTS OF INSPIRATION

 

 

 

I. God Is the Principal Cause or Author of Scripture; Man Is Its Instrumental Cause or Author

1.  Activity of the principal cause as applied to inspiration.

2.  Activity of the instrumental cause:

a.  Truly human: rational and free;

b.  Suited to individual temperament, education, and other special characteristics.

3.  The effect is to be attributed in its entirety to both causes

—but from different points of view.

 

II. Analysis of Leo XIII’s Definition of Inspiration:

 

1.  Inspiration is a supernatural charism influencing the whole writing process.

2.  Influence on author’s

a.  intellect: different from revelation;

b.  will: direct, internal, efficacious;

c.  executive faculties.

Corollary: Did the sacred writers realize they were inspired?

 

III. Verbal Inspiration

 

IV. First Conclusion: Everything Contained in a Genuine Passage of Scripture Is the Word of God

 

V. Second Conclusion: Everything Contained in a Genuine Passage of Scripture Is Infallibly True

Scholion: Inspiration and critical authenticity.

 

Article III

 

THE NATURE AND EFFECTS OF INSPIRATION

 

 

 

I.   God the Primary Author of Scripture; Man the Secondary Author

 

Once the fact of inspiration is admitted, it follows necessarily that the books of Holy Scripture have two authors. They were writ­ten by men whom we call hagiographers (sacred writers); but they are still the “word of God,” and so have God or—by appropriation

—the Holy Spirit as their Author. The texts cited in the preceding article stated clearly the mutual relationship of the two causes: the Holy Spirit impelled or moved the hagiographer, spoke through the mouth of the hagiographer; the latter spoke in the Spirit, by the Spirit, etc. God then was the cause of Scripture but He used men’s services to produce this effect. He was its principal cause or author, while the hagiographer was its instrumental cause or author. St. Thomas: “The principal author of Holy Scripture was the Holy Spirit, and man was the instrumental author.”1 Leo XIII advanced the same explanation, teaching that “the Holy Spirit employed men as his instruments.”2 Another way of expressing the same idea is to call God the primary, and man the secondary author.

If this explanation is the right one, then what is known of the relationship of principal and instrumental causes to each other and to their effect can contribute a great deal to our understanding— to some extent at least—of the nature of inspiration and to our formulation of precisely what it is.*

 

 It should be remarked that while the fact of inspiration is a dogma of the faith, the theological explanation of the nature and workings of inspira­tion is not. It is a human attempt to explain a supernatural phenomenon and, as such, is bound to fall somewhat short of the mark. But the explanation in current vogue, that based on the theory of instrumental causality, has been in possession for centuries now, and it is the most adequate in view of what we know of inspiration from the sources of revelation themselves. It should be noted in addition that the theology of inspiration is, to a great extent, still in the making, although great strides have been taken since the publication of the Providentissimus Deus. Before that, relatively little was done on the sub-

1.  It is of the nature of a principal cause to put an instrument to work. St. Thomas: “An instrumental cause acts by virtue of the motion which it receives from the principal cause.”3 It follows as an immediate consequence that they were wrong who so understood scriptural inspiration as to disallow any real action of God, the principal Cause, or of the human author, or to restrict it to just some parts of Scripture. The following opinions must accordingly be rejected.

a.  The opinion of Haneberg (1850), who taught that a book written by purely human effort could become Scripture if it was subsequently approved by the Church and included in the canon. The Vatican Council had this opinion in mind when it proclaimed that “the Church holds these (books) as sacred and canonical not because, once composed by purely human endeavor, they were then approved by her authority . . . but, etc.”4

b.  The opinion usually connected with the names of Lessius and Duhamel (1587): “Any book (2 Maccabees may be an ex­ample) written by purely human effort without the help of the Holy Spirit becomes Scripture if the Holy Spirit subsequently testifies that the book contains nothing false.”5 These two opinions (a. and b.) are sometimes dignified by the name subsequent inspiration, a clear contradiction in terms.

c.  The opinion of Jahn (1814), who retained the term “inspira­tion” because it was in common use but expressed his dissatisfac­tion with it. To his way of thinking, inspiration should be conceived as a merely negative assistance which neither inspired nor taught anything, but merely kept errors from creeping into the Book. This is known as negative inspiration. The Vatican Council seems to have had this erroneous notion in view when it proclaimed: “The Church considers these (books) sacred . . . not just because they contain revelation without error, but because, etc.”6

d.  The opinion of Bonfrère (1625), according to whom the requirements for inspiration are adequately met if God in some vague, general way moves a man to write such and such an ac­count, hovers over him constantly, always ready to step in should the need arise, and finally does positively intervene as often as His co-author would otherwise have made a mistake of some sort.7 This

 

ject. St. Thomas laid the foundations in STh, II-II q. 173/74, but only in principle, as be was treating prophetic, not biblical, inspiration. (See D. M. Stanley, op. cit.)

is called concomitant inspiration, and precisely because it is merely concomitant it is not inspiraton at all.

2.  By its very nature, an instrumental cause has a double activity, instrumental and proper, and it performs the instrumental action only through the exercise of that activity which is proper to itself. St. Thomas:

 

An instrument has a double activity. One is instrumental, and in accordance with this it acts not by virtue of any power proper to itself, but by virtue of a power transmitted to it by the principal agent. The other is proper to the instrument itself, belonging to it by its own special nature. An axe can split wood precisely because it is an axe, and sharp in the bargain, but it can construct a bed only to the extent that it is used as an instrument for that purpose by an artisan. On the other hand, it performs this instrumental action only through the exercise of its own proper activity, for only by cutting the wood does it contribute to the fashioning of the bed.8

 

Now in the matter under discussion, God decided to use a man as an instrument in writing the word of God—an instrumental activity exceeding man’s natural powers. How did the human au­thor contribute to the accomplishment of this design? What was, under God’s influence, the activity proper to the human author himself?

a.  It seems reasonable to suppose that the hagiographers ac­complished their divine task by performing some action befitting their nature, an action which was not merely mechanical, hut really human, i.e., rational and free. It would hardly be consonant with God’s normal mode of action for Him to do violence to His crea­tures. And He would if He used men as merely mechanical tools, making use of just their hands and fingers, so that they would copy down the divine message “with their minds in complete disorder, like people in deliium.”9 On the contrary, it is thoroughly in accord with God’s gentle providence for Him to make use of a man by adapting to His purpose truly human functions so that, in the case at hand, a sacred writer, under God’s active influence, would grasp intelligently the message to be written10 and then with perfect freedom would proceed to give it written expression. Nor should one be too quick to object that, when God efficaciously moves a man to do something, there is no room left for truly human activity.

For the principle laid down by St. Thomas applies to this process as well as to any other of like nature:

 

The motion imparted by the prime mover does not meet a uniform reception in all things moved thereby, but each receives it in its own special way. Consequently, it is by no means antecedently impossible that God should be the cause of an act of free will.11

 

Now if we consult the Scriptures themselves, we find that as a matter of fact the sacred writers did not contribute to the writing of the word of God merely by lending God a helping hand, but by putting at His service their minds and wills. The author of 2 Maccabees writes: “And all such things as have been comprised in five books by Jason of Cyrene, we have attempted to abridge in one book . . . we have taken in hand no easy task, yea rather a business full of watching and sweat”—2:24—27, At the end of the book he remarks, in addition, that the imperfect and inadequate presenta­tion of the subject matter is to be attributed to his lack of talent:

“Which if I have done well, and as it becometh the history, it is what 1 desired: but if not so perfectly, it must be pardoned me”— 15:39. St. Luke, too, affirms that he set about writing his Gospel of his own free will after he had done careful research on the whole subject of Christ’s life and work: “Many an attempt has been made before now to present the drama of events that have come to a climax among us, . . . 1, too, after accurately tracing the whole movement to its origin, have decided to write a consecutive account for your excellency.”—1: 1—3.

b. It seems quite reasonable to suppose also that the human authors accomplished the task God had assigned them by perform­ing actions proper to themselves, and in a manner befitting their individual temperament, education, and other special character­istics. If they did actually work in this fashion, then the genius, temperament, and background of each one of them will shine through the pages of the inspired book, just as the technique of an artist reveals itself in the picture he has drawn. It is possible to tell just from looking at the picture whether the artist used crayon or charcoal, a sharp or a dull pencil.

The facts justify this supposition. St. Jerome: “Isaias’ fluent style reveals him as a man of urbane eloquence ... Jeremias’ style is a

bit on the rustic side. And such simplicity of speech is due to his having been born where he was.”12 St. Irenaeus remarks that St. Paul often transposed the usual word order “because of the speed with which he wrote and because of the urgency of the Spirit within him.”13 St. Augustine has this to say about the evange­lists: “It is clear that, while they all treated the same subject matter, each of them presented it as he remembered it, as it oc­curred to his mind.”14 St. John Chrysostom, too, explains the ap­parent discrepancies in the Gospel accounts from the fact that the evangelists did not collaborate on the project, but wrote at different times and in different places.15 In fact, all exegetes rely on the purpose and the milieu of the sacred writers to explain, for ex­ample, why they omit such and such an event or why they relate it in this or that fashion. None of them even dreams of solving such questions by appealing directly to the intention of the principal Author or to the fact of inspiration. Catholic authors use much the same general scientific approach to the Synoptic Question as do rationalists.16

And so, even though we may not fully comprehend this mys­terious process, still we must recognize the fact that the human authors, under the active influence of the Spirit, performed a genuinely human, personal, individual action, with respect to style and literary form, and to the subject matter of their books. The time-consuming and painful labor mentioned by the author of 2 Maccabees was expended not only in searching for the right words, but also in selecting from his sources of information just the material which would contribute to his purpose.

It follows that the analogies used by the fathers limp rather noticeably, when they describe the sacred writers as the “pens” or the “secretaries” of the Holy Spirit. To a certain extent they were pens and “secretaries,” because in the actual work of composition they wrote nothing but what God moved them to write; but they were for all of that intelligent and free “pens," and they were not the type of secretary who listens to and transcribes the boss’s letters with machine-like, but hardly human, precision.

As has just been remarked, the human authors, in the actual writing of the Sacred Books, wrote nothing but what God moved them to write. It is not at all necessary that all the work of these authors, including that work which contributed even remotely to the final production, should have come under the divine influence.

The book which I am now writing will be in large measure the end product of study and research done years ago when 1 wasn’t even thinking of writing a book. Still, those studies do not enter im­mediately into the actual composition of my book. Presuming, then, that the sacred authors, in giving written expression to the word of God, used knowledge and experience acquired in the past, it is still not necessary to extend the influence of the grace of inspiration to those more or less remote preparations. Using an instrument is one thing; getting it ready is another. The preparation of the hagiographer for functioning as a fit instrument of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with inspiration as such, whether that preparation be natural or supernatural.

3. What part of the effect, i.e., of the finished product, is to be attributed to the principal cause, and what part to the instru­mental? St. Thomas gives the answer: “The same effect is to be attributed in its entirety to the instrument and in its entirety also to the principal agent”;” but from different points of view.

Some distinguish in an inspired book the formal part (the essential contents) and the material part (literary form, sentence structure, style, choice of words), attributing at least apparently the former to the Holy Spirit alone and the latter to the hagiogra­pher alone (under negative divine assistance). In view of the principle of St. Thomas just cited, those who make such a distinc­tion do not seem to have a very correct notion of just what inspira­tion is. An inspired book belongs totally to God and totally to the bagiographer, for the hagiographer contributed nothing to it apart from the influence of the Holy Spirit.’⁸ But since it is generally admitted that an effect is to be attributed purely and simply to its principal cause and only indirectly to the instrument used in its production, one is justified in calling God alone the Author of Scripture without further qualification.

It does not follow from the foregoing remarks that the ob­scurities, stylistic imperfections, barbarisms, etc., which can be found in Scripture, are to be attributed to the Holy Spirit. All of these things spring from a lack of perfect clarity in understanding the subject matter, from a lack of perfect order and elegance in arranging and expressing that matter. Since, then, they are not effects but defects, they can be attributed only to a fallible and defective source, and can consequently be traced to the hagiogra­pher alone as their cause. Defects of this sort do not at all thwart

the purpose of Scripture, the instruction of the faithful; hence the divine influence does not necessarily prevent them.

It would be quite unrealistic to deny that God could have chosen as His instrument a man of only average talent, endowed with relatively meager literary capabilities. God certainly could have chosen such a man and could have left his intellectual imper­fections just as they were without taking steps to correct them. There would be nothing in the whole process unworthy of the God who, as a matter of fact, usually selects the weak things of the world to confound the strong. And if God really did pick out writers who had not too much to recommend them, and if He left them free to do a truly human, personal job, then the aforemen­tioned imperfections were bound to follow. If Menuhin misplaced his Stradivarius and had to give a concert with a run-of-the-mill fiddle, one could hardly expect to hear a flawless performance.

However, while it is quite true that the imperfections of which we have been speaking are not traceable to God as their cause, it would not be quite correct to say that they found their way into His written word apart from His will. For since He freely selected less than perfect instruments and left them less than perfect, the defects in the finished product are indirectly traceable to His permissive will, inasmuch as He directly willed and caused the good to which they came attached.19

The obscurities and other imperfections presently under dis­cussion are not to be put in the same class as errors in the strict sense. It is not a case of six of one and a half-dozen of another. Whatever is taught or really affirmed in Scripture is affirmed by God. But in all honesty one must admit that if God uses human mouthpieces, He can, without impugning His perfection, deliver a message which will be somewhat lacking in clarity, completeness, and elegance of presentation. On the other hand, the very idea of His teaching a false doctrine is unqualifiedly and absolutely repug­nant, involving as it does an intrinsic contradiction. It would mean that God deceived us, lied to us, for in His case the assertion of something untrue would necessarily be a deliberate lie.

 

 

II.  Analysis of Leo XIII’s Definition of Inspiration

 

The foregoing considerations should make it easier to under­stand the description of inspiration given by Leo XIII in the

Providentissimus Deus: Inspiration is that supernatural action of God on the hagiographers in accordance with which “He so moved and impelled them to write—He so assisted them when writing— that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally ex­pressed in apt words and with infallible truth.”20

“The action of God on the hagiographers”: this phrase is found equivalently in the words of Leo XIII: “For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write, etc.” This action, this positive influence, considered from the point of view of its principle, i.e., from the point of view of God, does not differ in any real way from the divine essence and is common to all three Persons alike, but it is usually appropriated to the Holy Spirit. In this discussion it is considered in itself, as it is received by the hagiographer and as it affects him.21 As such it is a “power or an impression which has God as its source,”22 existing incompletely and transiently in the hagiographer: a gratia gratis data, a charism, belonging to the general category of prophecy.

“Supernatural”: surpassing the needs or exigencies of a created nature. Although it may be compared to that influence which God as the first Cause exercises on all the actions of secondary causes, it must be clearly distinguished therefrom. For God, as a result of the influence involved in inspiration, is not the universal cause of the effect, the written book, but its particular cause (not, of course, as its unique or total cause, but as its partial, its principal cause).

“He so moved and impelled them to write—He so assisted them when writing.” These words indicate an influence which both precedes and accompanies the action of the hagiographer as such, that is, the action of consigning to writing the word of God. This twofold influence is included in the notion of inspiration.

that the things which He ordered, and those only, etc.”

This phrase states clearly what God’s twofold influence caused in the hagiographers, namely that all those things which God ordered, and only those things, they rightly understood, then willed faith­fully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth.

Prescinding from the work of preparation, which can vary widely from author to author, the following three elements belong intrinsically to the actual composition of any book: that the author have an intellectual grasp of the matter to be treated, that he have

the will to write it down, and finally that he give it written expres­sion, either personally or with the help of a secretary. Keeping in mind all that has been said about the personal activity of the hagiographer, if God is to be the real principal author of the book, it is essential that the instrumental author fulfill the aforesaid three requirements under divine influence. This is why Leo XIII adds this remark to his description of inspiration: “Otherwise, it could not be said that He was the Author of the entire Scripture.”

that . . . they, first, rightly understood.” Here is the influ­ence of Cod on the cognitive faculty; this influence is usually called the illumination of the intellect.

For the human mind actually to grasp the matter to be written down, two requirements must be fulfilled: (1) that the author have acquired or be now acquiring a knowledge of it; this is called technically the grasp of the matter (acceptio rerum); (2) that his mind form the following judgment: “This matter is to be put into writing”; this is known technically as the judgment concerning the matter grasped (judicium de acceptis). For God to be the prin­cipal Author of Scripture, it is not necessary that the hagiographer learn the things about which he is to write in a supernatural manner. He could have learned them by the exercise of his own mental faculties, by perceiving them with his senses, or through the testimony of others, provided that Cod enlightened his mind to make the following judgment: “These matters are to be consigned to writing.” In other words, his reception of the subject matter need not be supernatural; it is enough that the judgment he passes on that matter be supernatural—whatever the source of his knowl­edge may have been. Consequently, as far as the human mind is concerned, inspiration in itself requires no more than that the hagiographer’s intellect, after perhaps extensive and varied re­search on a natural level, be raised and aided by divine light to judge that such and such things should be expressed in writing.23 It was by virtue of such a temporary, not permanent, elevation that God became the principal cause of these judgments and the hagiographer’s mind the instrumental cause only.

It is our opinion that the hagiographers, aided by this divine light, passed judgment not only on the subject matter itself, but, in addition, on its arrangement and ordering, on the literary form they were to use, the style and words they would employ. If this be granted, then it seems necessary to hold that the divine light,

while affecting primarily the intellect, had some influence on the other cognitive faculties as well, at least indirectly, as aids to the intellect. Such faculties would be, for example, the imagination and memory.

It is obvious that the practical judgment, “This material is to be written down and is to be expressed in this fashion and in these words,” includes, or, if you prefer, presupposes a theoretical judg­ment bearing both on the truth of the matter to be asserted and on the aptness of the terms to be used in the assertion. It is impossible for the divinely aided mind to judge that the matter at hand is to be written and is to be couched in such and such terms without at the same time understanding it correctly, i.e., in accordance with truth, and aptly, i.e., with proper formulation.

It was affirmed above that inspiration in itself does not connote a supernatural acquisition of the matter. Sometimes, though, when there were things to be written which surpassed the hagiographer’s natural intellectual powers, then a supernatural acquisition of the matter in question accompanied inspiration. It could likewise hap­pen that the help of divine light sometimes directed even the hagiographer’s preliminary research on points which he could have come to know quite naturally. But neither the former nor the latter belongs to the very nature of inspiration; in actual fact, such assistance preceded inspiration itself, chronologically and ontologically—or at least ontologically.

It should now be clear how any supernatural knowledge which is involved in inspiration is to be distinguished from revelation. Revelation (in the strict sense) makes known to a man a truth which is altogether unknown or inadequately known, and for this reason it necessarily connotes both a supernatural acquisition of the matter and a supernatural judgment thereof. Inspiration as such does not cause knowledge of new truths, it does not increase extensively the hagiographer’s theoretical knowledge. Its formal effect is the practical judgment that this truth already known— whether naturally or through a revelation at least logically prior to inspiration—is to be written down. Still, it is not quite clear whether one should say that this supernatural practical judgment implicitly contains a similarly supernatural theoretical judgment concerning the truth of the matter or that rather it corroborates in a divine way a theoretical judgment already formed by the hagi­ographer. Nonetheless, insofar as the influence of inspiration affects

the intellect, it can be called revelation in the wide sense, i.e., to the extent that we understand by the term “revelation” any divinely caused knowledge. For surely the practical judgment, as it has just been described, would fall in this class. But when all is said and done, it would be much better to keep the two terms, revela­tion and inspiration, sharply separate. They are too easily confused in the minds of many, and this confusion has been the fruitful source of untold misconceptions and needless difficulties.

“That . . . they . . . willed faithfully to write dawn.” This is God’s action on the will. By it God, who produces all effects efficaciously yet gently, brings it about that the hagiographer wills to write whatever the divine light has shown him must be written, and wills to write it in that fashion in which he has judged it should be written.

This is, furthermore, a physical influence which affects the voli­tional faculty directly. If God moved the will only morally, i.e., by proposing some attractive incentive, then not God but the hagi­ographer would be the real principal cause of the will act.

The will to write partly precedes and partly follows the intel­lectual grasp of the matter to be written. First comes the general intention, so to speak, of composing this book. Moved by this inten­tion, the author starts thinking about and lining up the things he will write, and finally decides to write down the individual elements as he has conceived them in his mind, In the case of a sacred writer, not only the final act of the will, which is really not single but multiple, but also that first decision which definitively started the whole chain of mind and will acts, is to be attributed to the influence of God. The fact that some hagiographers undertook the task of writing at the urging and pleas of interested parties alters the situation not a bit. This moral influence of men on the hagi­ographer’s will by no means excludes the physical influence of God. Since He left His instruments free to act in a truly human and personal way, it is altogether in keeping with the notion of inspira­tion that the individual hagiographer, under the action of God, should make a decision to write which would fit his own disposi­tion and the circumstances in which he lived. Some hagiographers thus decided to write after personal deliberation, while others were prompted by the pleas or advice of those about them.

“That . . . they . . . expressed in apt words and with infallible truth.” Here is the divine influence on the external execution of the

work, on the actual transfer of the matter from the mind of the author to a book by writing—or by dictation to a secretary. This transfer directly involves the executive faculties, the hands, the eyes, perhaps the mouth. For this external work of writing to proceed from God as principal cause, there is no need that He act directly on the executive faculties. By the very fact that these faculties are put into operation at the command of the divinely supported will and under the direction of the divinely enlightened intellect, they really do perform their function as the end result of a divine impulse and as directed by God. It seems superfluous to require a special divine “assistance” for the execution of the work really distinct from the enlightening of the mind and the moving of the will, which latter phenomena would not only pre­cede but also accompany the act of writing. If anyone wants to call the divine influence preceding the external expression “inspira­tion” and the influence accompanying that expression “assistance,” thus distinguishing in biblical inspiration, inspiration in the strict sense and assistance—understood as a positive help, a real influ­ence—then he is merely quibbling about terminology.

 

Corollary

 

Did the sacred writers realize they were inspired? A natural question. It is certain that such a realization is not strictly de­manded by the nature of inspiration. In view of the fact that the divine action itself surpasses sense and even intellectual perception, and since the hagiographers were moved by God to perform an action that was genuinely human, they could have found out only through revelation that they were being inspired. Whether in fact they were always conscious of their situation is not so clear. If it is true, as intimated above, that the primitive Church knew that all writings composed by the apostles in fulfillment of apostolic functions were inspired, then it is all the more to be supposed that the apostles themselves were aware of their personal inspiration. Theologians, with the exception of some recent writers, usually hold as more probable the view that the hagiographers were conscious of the divine influence, on the grounds that this seems more fitting for an intelligent instrument. Others infer from 2 Maccabees 2:20—33; 15:38—40; Luke 1:1—3, that at least these authors were unaware of their inspiration. It would be hard to prove either opinion.24

Ill. The Problem of Verbal Inspiration

 

The solution of the question of verbal inspiration is based on the foregoing considerations.

It is possible to distinguish in any book the formal part, the contents or message, and the material part, the words and literary structure. Those who acknowledge the inspired character of all Scripture necessarily hold that inspiration affects at least all of the formal part, that all the affirmations or judgments contained therein proceed from inspiration.²’ This is called real inspiration.26 But not all are in agreement on the material part. How does inspiration affect the very words used by the author—or does it at all? This is the problem of verbal inspiration.27

Real inspiration alone. During the last century there was a strong opinion that the literary form, style, and choice of words were all to be attributed not to God, but to the hagiographer as their principal cause. In this view, God would have, by a negative assistance, guarded against inept expressions and would sometimes have furnished the words themselves, whenever this was required for the accurate formulation of an inspired assertion.28

There can be no question of the admissibility of this opinion on dogmatic grounds, for real inspiration together with the assist­ance just described suffices to justify calling God the Author of all Scripture. Its proponents infer from this that verbal inspiration is a gratuitous assumption. Furthermore, they support their stand by pointing to passages in which the hagiographers are described as working in a perfectly natural way.29 They appeal also to the fact that their opinion offers an explanation for the diversity of styles and for the literary imperfections we have mentioned.30

Verbal inspiration (in addition to real) can be understood in two ways. The term is sometimes used to mean that God dictated every single word, almost like a professor dictating notes, leaving to the writer just the mechanical work of writing. At other times it is used to mean that the same divine influence on the intellect and the will which caused the hagiographer to form a mental judgment of the matter to be written and to will to write it down caused him at the same time to conceive and to will to write that matter in this precise literary form. This influence left to the human authors a genuinely personal activity with regard both to the thoughts which were to be given written expression and, all the more, to the literary form and the specific words they were to use.

Verbal inspiration in the former sense, once proposed by many Protestants31 and by some Catholics, is clearly untenable and is now universally rejected. But taken in the latter sense it seems much more probable, and at the present it is finding more and more adherents. That is why we consistently presumed its truth in the foregoing exposition.

This opinion (a) fulfills more adequately the definition of the Vatican Council that the books of our Bible are sacred “because, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God for their author.” It ties in quite nicely, too, with Leo XIII’s asser­tion that “the Holy Spirit employed men as instruments.”32 (b) It corresponds better with the traditional view of inspiration. Al­though the fathers did not treat this question specifically, most of their remarks are of such a nature that they could hardly be squared with the theory of real inspiration alone—were it the true one. (c) It is more reasonable. Obviously, unless God sus­pended the laws of psychology, He could not have inspired all the judgments to be expressed without by that very action influencing the choice of words by which those judgments were to be expressed. Finally, (d) it offers a satisfactory explanation for all those char­acteristics of Scripture to which its opponents usually appeal: the great diversity of style, literary defects, different ways in which the same fact is related or the same speech is recorded, the human toil expended by the writers, etc.

The main objections are: (1) The fathers often state that it is not the words of Scripture which count but the meaning they convey. Of course! In our opinion, too (that of verbal inspiration), the words are merely vehicles of thought, and inspiration affects them not for their own sake, but for the sake of the thought they express. (2) If even the words are inspired, then it is only the original autograph which is inspired, and translations of it cannot be called the “word of God” and “Scripture” in the full sense. In answer, it should be pointed out that the words of a translation differ from those of the original only materially, not formally. The meaning they convey remains the same, and so a translation is still unqualifiedly the word of God and Scripture, although not in the same absolute sense as the original text. Is not a sentence of Chrysostom’s, translated into Latin, still called the word of Chrysostom, purely and simply? Translations of the original Scrip­hires are quite accurately described as being “mediately inspired.”

IV.  All Genuine Scripture Is the Word of God

 

The first conclusion to follow from the correct notion of inspira­tion is that everything contained in a genuine passage of Scripture is the word of Cod. This conclusion is rather obvious. God is the author of all Scripture and whatever is written in any book is the work of its author. Furthermore, this conclusion, that what is con­tained in Scripture is the word of God, is stated in the sources of revelation at least as explicitly as is the true notion of inspiration, according to which God is the principal author of Scripture. This furnishes a ready and telling answer against those who try so to water down the formula, “God is the author of Scripture” that they succeed only in perverting it.

Now just as any human author can report in his book the words of others, cite letters, or copy historical narratives from other sources without approving or corroborating them, so too could God through His hagiographers. Just as any ordinary author can tell his readers what he once thought on such and such a subject and what he now thinks without asserting that his opinion is necessarily the right one, so, too, God could have the hagiographer describe what he—not as God’s instrument, precisely, but as a private individual

—felt, thought, feared, etc. That is why all theologians distinguish in Scripture passages which are the words of God extrinsically or only by reason of their having been written under inspiration,” and those which are the words of God intrinsically, in themselves, or by reason of their content. The latter would be those passages which express the meaning of God Himself. It is evident that those state­ments which are the word of God only extrinsically do not enjoy divine authority, except to the extent that they are approved by Him.

It is, however, quite difficult to determine in individual cases just which passages of Scripture are the word of God intrinsically, or which enjoy divine authority by only scriptural approval. Here are some general criteria:34

a. Everything which the hagiographer as such (i.e., as God’s instrument or—what amounts to the same thing—formally as the co-author of this book) really affirms and teaches is the word of God intrinsically.35 But whenever the sacred author reports what he as a private individual felt or said or at present feels or says, we have an intrinsically human word. Examples of the latter would

SACRED SCRIPTURE

 

be prayers, curses,36 doubts,37 expressions of confidence, of love, of sorrow, advice,38 greetings, etc.

b. Anything recorded in Scripture as said by Cod, by Christ, by angels, or by men actually39 pet-forming a divinely imposed task (prophets and apostles in the exercise of their office) or speak­ing under genuine divine inspiration, is intrinsically the word of God.

c. Those statements enjoy divine authority which are recorded in Scripture as uttered by men but approved by God; approbation by the hagiographer as such is equivalent to divine approval.⁴⁰ However, general approval of extended discourses does not neces­sarily include individual statements not contributing to the central theme of such a discourse.

Whether the feelings, emotions, and words of the hagiographer himself as a man (see a. above), by the very fact that they are written under a divine influence, are also approved by God, must be determined from the circumstances. It is, of course, clear that the personal sentiments to which, for example, the psalmists gave expression under inspiration, are accordingly approved (unless the contrary is clear in a particular instance)’ since God’s obvious in­tention in having them recorded was to give people a model and to stir up in them similar sentiments.

For the rest, it should be noted that although God cannot approve anything morally wrong, He could inspire men to record things not quite perfect, and could approve the same, especially in the Old Dispensation, when religious knowledge and standards of morality were as yet quite a bit below the perfection of the Christian Dispensation.41

d. When the aforementioned approval is lacking, divine author­ity cannot be claimed for scriptural statements made by men who were not inspired, pious and holy though they may have been. Nor is the assertion that So-and-so was full of the Holy Spirit in itself a sufficient guarantee that each and every utterance of his is to be considered inspired.42

 

V.  All Genuine Scripture Is Infallibly True

 

The second conclusion to follow from the correct notion of inspiration is that everything contained in a genuine passage of Scripture is infallibly true. Obviously this assertion applies only to what is intrinsically the word of God or is approved by God, and

to the extent that it is so approved. But as applied thereto, th4 assertion is so certain that one could not deny it without falling int( error on a matter of faith. To make a long story short, here an the words of Leo XIII, an authoritative statement of the Catholii position:

 

But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrov inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture or to admi that the sacred writer has erred. .

For all the books which the Church receives as sacred anc canonical are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts at the dictation of the Holy Spirit; and so far is it from bein~ possible that- any error can coexist with inspiration, that inspira tion not only is essentially incompatible with error, but exclude~ and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossibli that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which i~ not true. . . . Hence, because the Holy Spirit employed men a~ his instruments, we cannot, therefore, say that it was thes inspired instruments, who, perchance, have fallen into error and not the primary author. . . . It follows [from the correci notion of inspiration, which the fathers have consistently rati· fled] that those who maintain that an error is possible in an~ genuine passage of the sacred writings either pervert the Cath olic notion of inspiration or make God the author of such error And so emphatically were all the Fathers and Doctors agreec~ that the divine writings, as left by the hagiographers, are fret from all error, that they labored earnestly, with no less skili than reverence, to reconcile with each other those numerous pas­sages whi.ch seem at variance-the very passages which in great measure have been taken up by the “higher criticism”; for they were unanimous in laying it down that those writings, in their entirety and in all their parts were equally from the afflatus of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred writers, could not set down anything but what was true. The words of St. Augustine to St. Jerome may sum up what they taught:

“On my own part 1 confess to your charity that it is only to those books of Scripture which are now called canonical that 1 have learned to pay such honor and reverence as to believe most firmly that none of their writers has fallen into any error. And if in these books 1 meet anything which seems contrary to truth, 1 shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that 1 myself do not understand.””

to the extent that it is so approved. But as applied thereto, the assertion is so certain that one could not deny it without falling into error on a matter of faith. To make a long story short, here are the words of Leo XIII, an authoritative statement of the Catholic position:43

 

But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. .

For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit; and so far is it from being possible that any error can coexist with inspiration, that inspira­tion not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. . . . Hence, because the Holy Spirit employed men as his instruments, we cannot, therefore, say that it was these inspired instruments, who, perchance, have fallen into error, and not the primary author. . . . It follows [from the correct notion of inspiration, which the fathers have consistently rati­fied] that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings either pervert the Cath­olic notion of inspiration or make God the author of such error. And so emphatically were all the Fathers and Doctors agreed that the divine writings, as left by the hagiographers, are free from all error, that they labored earnestly, with no less skill than reverence, to reconcile with each other those numerous pas­sages which seem at variance—the very passages which in great measure have been taken up by the “higher criticism”; for they were unanimous in laying it down that those writings, in their entirety and in all their parts were equally from the afflatus of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred writers, could not set down anything but what was true. The words of St. Augustine to St. Jerome may sum up what they taught:

“On my own part I confess to your charity that it is only to those books of Scripture which are now called canonical that I have learned to pay such honor and reverence as to believe most firmly that none of their writers has fallen into any error. And if in these books I meet anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand.”44

The following remarks are aimed at a correct understanding of the Catholic teaching on the inerrancy of Scripture and at point­ing out the way for the solution of difficulties arising from that teaching.

Error in the strict sense, formal error, can be found only in an expressed judgment, and is present whenever an author affirms something of a subject which is not verified in that subject, or denies something which is verified therein. Now no author ever expresses a real judgment or really affirms anything, except when and to the extent that he intends to affirm it. Obviously the inten­tion we have in mind here is not merely internal, but an intention which the actual words, against the background of the context and other circumstances surrounding their composition, reveal.45

Now God is the author of Scripture through the medium of a human author who formed a correct mental concept of, willed to write down faithfully, and expressed fittingly and with infallible truth, all those things and only those things which God ordered. Consequently, whenever there is question of a hagiographer’s act­ing precisely as such, and his literal meaning alone is being sought,46 we can confidently say that Cod willed to affirm or to teach through Scripture all those things and only those things which His secondary author really intended to affirm in the passage under study—no more, no less.47

Now to determine what the secondary author did in fact intend to teach, it is first of all necessary to establish what literary form he used. It is evident that statements which would be false in a scientific treatise or in a strictly historical work could not be labeled as errors if the author intended to use everyday language, to write a poetic description, to compose a parable, midrash,48 or apocalypse, to write an idealized history, to record a popular tradition, or to quote a source which may not be reliable in detail, etc.

While it is the Church’s right to pass final judgment on every­thing touching faith and morals, the determination of the literary form falls within the province of the art of literary criticism, the principles of which are too involved to be treated here. However, great care must be taken to avoid two extremes. First of all, no book or part of a book which is written in the historical form is to be hastily labeled nonhistorical or historical in the loose sense only, just because the text presents some problems. Secondly, no

literary form which is acceptable in itself is to be excluded from Sacred Scripture without further ado just because it does not square with our present moral standards or is in our opinion not quite seemly. When God took on men to write as His instruments, He took them just as they were and adjusted His influence to their mentality and customs. When He chose a man of the Near East in, say, the fifth or second century B.C., He had him write in the manner in which Near Easterners of the time normally wrote. What we may think today about that manner of writing is quite beside the point.

God’s purpose in inspiring was not to communicate to men the sum total of all possible truth, but to teach religion. Matters which are not in themselves religious are inspired only for the sake of getting a religious truth across more effectively. It was conse­quently not at all necessary for the hagiographers to be divinely instructed about non-religious subjects like physics, history, litera­ture, upon which they touched in the course of their writing. They could have entertained ideas on these subjects as imperfect and even as erroneous as were those of their contemporaries, provided that they refrained from making a formal erroneous assertion about them in the sacred text.

1. Without doing any harm to the inerrancy of Scripture, the sacred writers could have used all kinds of metaphors, of which the oriental genius is so fond, and nothing stood in the way of their sometimes using mythological beings as part of their imagery.” Can a writer be convicted of believing in myths just because he describes a sot as having sacrificed a bit too generously to Bacchus? They could likewise have used hyperbole, even of the more exten­sive type.50 Is a writer guilty of lying or deceit when he says of a secret indiscreetly bruited about through a few villages: “Now the whole world knows it!”?

2. Without the least detriment to the inerrancy of Scripture, the sacred writers could have described natural phenomena accord­ing to their external appearances and according to the usual man­ner of speaking based on those appearances.51 Thus they said, for example, that the sun rose, moved around the earth,52 that the earth always stood firm;53 they spoke of the moon as if it were larger than all of the stars;54 they described the sky sometimes as a tent stretched over the earth,” sometimes as a solid roof above which the waters were collected ready to fall during the rainy sea-

son when “God opens the floodgates of heaven.”56 It makes no difference whether the hagiographers recognized these forms of expression as inaccurate and poetical or not. Whatever may have been their own private opinions about the real nature or workings of these things, they certainly did not intend to teach anything about them, but rather used common or poetical terms and descrip­tions as vehicles for the expression of the truths which were the real object of their assertions.

3. In much the same way, when the hagiographers treated secular subjects, they could use expressions based on the erroneous opinions of their day. For although it is apparent from these expres­sions that the sacred writers shared the errors common to the age in which they lived, it does not at all follow that they affirmed these errors in Scripture. If one will only take the trouble to discover the sacred author’s intention, he will find that the expres­sion which smacks of error is in reality only the vehicle for the assertion of a truth. It is rather apparent from the description of Genesis 1:3—18 that the author of the creation account considered the sequence of day and night a phenomenon independent of the sun. Nevertheless, what he affirms in these verses is simply this, that all things, light, the sequence of day and night, the sun, etc., owe their existence to God. Several modern exegetes explain Jude 14—15 in somewhat the same manner. It would be difficult to deny that the Apostle used the apocryphal Book of Henoch57 in writing these verses. It seems perfectly justifiable to conclude that he shared the esteem which his contemporaries held for this book and that he may even have considered it authentic. But strictly speaking, St. Jude teaches nothing in this passage but the follow­ing, that the same threat of divine judgment hangs over false teachers as was frequently expressed in the Book of Henoch and attributed therein to this patriarch whom all know as the “seventh after Adam.” The very epithet, “seventh after Adam,” may well have been taken from the apocryphal work.58 But one should not be too quick to assert that the word eprophéteusen (he prophesied) necessarily indicates genuine prophecy; does not St. Paul himself quote a secular author, calling him a “prophet” in the bargain?59

With all due reverence for inerrancy, a hagiographer no less than a secular author could pose as someone else, so long as he used such a literary fiction for an honorable purpose and not to trick his readers, and so long as he used it in such a way that his

readers would not necessarily be duped. On these grounds, recent exegetes hold that while the authors of Wisdom and Ecclesiastes wrote in the name of Solomon, they were in reality anonymous authors of a later age.60

It is quite certain that the sacred writers did not always approve the contents of the documents they reproduced or explicitly cited in their works. The author of 2 Maccabees relates the death of Antiochus Epiphanes61 in such a way as to make it clear that the letter of the Palestinian Jews cited by him 62 is to be taken with a grain of salt on this point. The following rule may be safely laid down: a hagiographer gives no guarantee for the documents and speeches which he quotes quite unqualifiedly (with no sign of disapproval) but explicitly, except when and to the extent that he approves them, either formally or equivalently.

It must be granted that there are in Scripture also tacit or implicit citations; in other words, that the hagiographers at times take excerpts from sources or reproduce secular sources without giving any indication of the fact. And one would not be wrong in suggesting that contemporary readers could often have spotted such borrowings much more easily than we can now. It must be acknowledged that the sacred writers could, from time to time, cite implicitly the works of secular authors without giving blanket approval to every statement in the citation.63 But the presumption will be that they did not cite them in this fashion. That is why the Pontifical Biblical Commission was justified in declaring that one should not appeal to implicit citations in order to solve difficulties involving scriptural inerrancy unless

 

it can be proved by solid arguments, first, that the sacred writer really does cite another’s sayings or writings; and secondly, that he does not intend, in so doing, to approve them or make them his own, in such a way that he be rightly considered not to speak in his own name.⁶⁴

 

It should be noted in addition that while apodictic arguments are required for a really certain conclusion, genuinely probable indica­tions may be enough to establish a prudent doubt. In any event, one would certainly exceed all bounds who admitted non-approved citations in the Old Testament so frequently as to undermine thereby the very fabric of sacred history.

Some Catholic authors claim (a) that some books of the Bible which are to all external appearances historical or prophetic are really so either not at all or only in their broad framework (Job, Judith, Tobias, Jonas, Esther, Daniel) ;65 (b) that the first part of Genesis, at least up to the story of Abraham, contains popular traditions, only the substance of which the sacred author intended to approve as true;66 (c) that in some places, like the book of Judges, we have idealized history, i.e., historical facts, to be sure, but rather freely narrated and artificially arranged, with a view to establishing a definite thesis; (d) that in general the Old Testa­ment was little concerned with strict accuracy in matters of secondary importance and in accessory circumstances, and that in fact it sometimes intended to do hardly anything but report events as they were found in annals and in other sources whose complete veracity it was impossible to check.67 Finally, (e) some add that even in the New Testament certain historical narratives, at least in matters of detail, betray their dependence on sources or various traditions which the individual sacred authors used, and that the evangelists did not always intend to stamp with the seal of their authority every last detail of events narrated.

Prudent discretion is called for in passing judgment on such opinions, which some defend with great assurance and others bit­terly assail. The words of Bainvel are worth recalling:

 

Although by means of and subsequent to the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi many obscurities were cleared up and the thoughts of many hearts laid bare, it remains true that, even among outstanding Catholics, several points are not yet quite clear. The difficulty, however, seems to lie in the applica­tion of the principles rather than in the principles themselves, in strictly scientific questions of criticism and exegesis rather than in formally theological questions. This difficulty is enhanced by the suspicions of those who, with little knowledge of critical and exegetical matters, start screaming that theological princi­ples are in jeopardy every time a new explanation is suggested, and by the rashness of those who, if a proposal is made by well­informed experts, immediately begin, unlike the experts, to doubt the principles themselves.68

 

It is to be noted, first of all, that there is a great difference between the opinions of Catholics and the claims of Modernists

and rationalists on the same subject. Thus, for instance, Lagrange, in setting forth his view of the first chapters of Genesis, teaches that it is possible to distinguish essential and nonessential elements, the doctrine taught and the literary dress in which the doctrine is presented. Actual facts form the basis of that doctrine, but these facts are described in figurative language.69

 

The first chapter of Genesis affirms and teaches real facts, and it teaches them in the strict sense of the term. This first page of Scripture, then, contains a series of affirmations about real facts, and, as far as the facts are concerned, everything is to be under­stood quite literally. They are not an allegory, much less a myth born of the author’s imagination, . . . but as for a work of six days’ duration, this is in our opinion evident allegory.70

 

In the narrative of the first sin, the substance of that narrative is in perfect harmony with the Catholic dogma of original sin, but some details of the story may be interpreted rather freely, since they have no necessary connection with this doctrine and serve merely as a vehicle for its expression.

 

Rationalists . . . deny that there is any such thing as revelation or inspiration or Holy Scripture at all; they see, instead, only the forgeries and the falsehoods of men; they set down the Scripture narratives as stupid fables and lying stories: the prophecies and the oracles of God are to them either predictions made up after the event or forecasts formed by the light of nature; the miracles and the wonders of God’s power are not what they are said to be, but the startling effects of natural law, or else mere tricks and myths.71

 

Thus Loisy was of the opinion that when Christian exegetes in­terpreted Sacred Scripture, and especially the Old Testament, they always added something to the strictly literal meaning, and that, as a result, in determining the meaning of the sacred author himself one should ignore traditional commentaries, since these latter incorporated ideas which were the result of centuries of elabora­tion. This opinion rests on a fundamental error, namely, that some­thing can be historically true but dogmatically false, and vice versa.72

As a help to the easier avoidance of Modernist errors in the

matter at hand, the following statements condemned by the decree Lamentabili should be very carefully noted:

 

3. “It can be gathered from ecclesiastical judgments and cen­sures passed against free and more learned exegesis, that the faith proposed by the Church contradicts history, and that Catholic dogmas cannot in fact be reconciled with the truer origins of the Christian religion.” (DB 2003).

12. “If the exegete wishes to apply himself advantageously to biblical studies, he should rid himself especially of any pre­conceived notion of the supernatural origin of Sacred Scripture, and should interpret it just as he would other merely human documents.” (DB 2012).

14. “In many narratives the Evangelists recounted not so much what was true, as what they thought would be more profitable for the reader, even though false” (DB 2014).

23. “Opposition can and actually does exist between facts which are narrated in Sacred Scripture, and the dogmas of the Church based on them, so that a critic can reject as false, facts which the Church holds as most certain” (DB 2023).

24. “An exegete is not to be censured who constructs premises from which it follows that dogmas are historically false or dubious, provided he does not directly deny the dogmas them­selves” (DB 2024).

61. “It can be stated absolutely that no chapter of Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse, contains doctrine entirely identical with that which the Church teaches on the same subject, and that, as a result, no chapter of Scrip­ture has the same meaning for the critic as for the theologian”

(DB 2061).

 

All agree that both allegory and parable are of frequent occur­rence in the Bible and that, through its minutely accurate descrip­tion of background details, a parable sometimes uses the historical form so convincingly that it seems to be real history (e.g., the parable of Dives and Lazarus). May not allegory and parable be so extended as to cover a whole book of the Bible? Considering what has been said about the use of literary forms customary among authors of antiquity, there can be good reason to wonder whether a certain narrative is to be understood as strict history, as the words in their obvious sense seem to indicate, or whether in fact the hagiographer, with some special purpose in mind, is only

making use of stories whose historical worth he does not guarantee. It is certainly not antecedently impossible for a sacred author to use for his own purposes popular stories, just as he uses everyday forms of speech, metaphors, anthropomorphisms, and the like. It is one thing to use such material as the vehicle for the expression of a truth, and quite another to affirm that the material itself jibes with reality.73

Opinions such as the above cannot be effectively and com­pletely refuted in every instance by an appeal to a contrary theo­logical or patristic tradition. In order to prove something on the basis of the way tradition has understood it, one must establish the existence of an at least morally universal agreement and the fact that it is a matter having to do with faith and morals.74 Even granting such unanimous agreement, it is no easy matter to show that the new opinions in every case of concrete application touch upon matters of faith and morals. It is not enough to say that the fathers did not defend the inerrancy of Scripture in this fashion, for where merely literary questions are involved, the necessary requirements of faith are fulfilled if the inerrancy of Scripture is safeguarded. That it be safeguarded in this or that manner makes no essential difference.

On the other hand, and still with an eye on the demands made by the faith, new opinions labor under this serious difficulty, namely, that they must overthrow the legitimate presumption based on the external literary form of the books, on the obvious sense of those books, and on the traditional view of them. Hence they may not be prudently espoused unless they are backed up by good, solid arguments. In matters like these one must be wary of sweeping generalizations which may rest on very shaky founda­tions. However, in the past half and especially in the past quarter century, Catholic exegetes have come to believe that the good, solid arguments not formerly available are now at hand. An increasingly thorough knowledge of the literary forms of the ancient Near East has been made possible by the discovery of the literatures of those times and places, and, especially under the urging of Pius XII in the Divino afflante Spiritu, Catholic scholars have pushed their investigation of the sacred text with vigor, intel­ligence, and abundant fruit.75 Their patiently worked out views on the composition of the Pentateuch, of Deutero-Isaias, on the liter-

ary forms of Jonas, Tobias, Judith, Daniel, etc., are a real boon to the correct understanding of the word of God, even if they may appear at first blush almost heterodox to those who have not fol­lowed recent developments in the field. The solid conclusions reached by Catholic scholars have had at least the tacit approval of the Biblical Commission. And on the occasion of the publication of the new Enchiridion Biblicum in 1955, a quasi-official clarifica­tion of the status of the Commission’s decrees was given by its Secretary and Under-Secretary in the Benediktinische Monatschrift and the Antonianum respectively. For a splendid discussion of this clarification, see the aforementioned article of E. F. Siegman.76 Particularly noteworthy are these paragraphs of Father Siegman’s article:

 

The distinction which Fathers Miller and Kleinhans make be­tween decisions that are in some way connected with truths of faith and morals and those that treat questions of literary and textual criticism is perfectly natural. As Dom Dupont observes, questions of authorship, date of composition, and integrity no longer have the crucial importance attached to them fifty years ago. Today it is clearly seen that these questions are independ­ent of the inspiration and inerrancy of the text. Fortunately, emphasis has shifted to more positive preoccupations, particu­larly the fuller study of the text itself. Time that a few decades ago was spent in class on introductory problems. . . can now be utilized in reading and explaining the text.

We should not be so naive as to look for a wholesale abandon­ment by Catholics of the positions enunciated in the Decisions of the Biblical Commission, as a result of the latest statements of the Secretary and Under-Secretary of the Commission. If conservatism in biblical scholarship means clinging doggedly to traditional positions, however convincing the contrary evidence, it can be only stagnation. If, however, conservatism means a reluctance to foresake these positions until the evidence is in, until the atmosphere is sufficiently cleared so that the scholar can see the cogency of the contrary position, then it represents a wholesome current that promotes progress in truth. This is the conservatism which the Church’s magisterium expects of us. Dom Dupont closes his analysis with an observation that all Catholic scholars will second: “Let us hope that by their serious and conscientious labor Catholic exegetes will justify the con­fidence which the Church’s magisterium has placed in them.⁷⁷

The following sentence of Leo XIII’s in the Providentissimus Deus was the occasion of much subsequent wrangling: “The prin­ciples here laid down will apply to cognate sciences, and especially to history.”78 Some understood the Holy Father to mean that, just as the hagiographers followed external appearances in describing natural phenomena, so too, in historical matters, they often fol­lowed current opinions and used available sources without bother­ing to ascertain their objective truth. On this basis they wanted the “principle of the Broad School” to be considered as canonized by Leo XIII. They were, however, mistaken. The words, “the prin­ciples here laid down,” do not refer specifically to the phrase which mentions the outward appearance of natural phenomena. They refer rather in a general way to the suggestions made about diffi­culties arising from the physical sciences. It is these suggestions which are said to be applicable to related fields, and, of course, not in the same way to each and every one of

One simply cannot maintain that the physical sciences and history are essentially the same. If an author is not writing a strictly scientific treatise—and the authors of Scripture certainly were not—then in speaking of natural phenomena he may justi­fiably be presumed to be using ordinary, rather loose, terminology such as is based on the outward appearance of things. And it makes no difference whether or not he knows that the outward appear­ance does not correspond to reality. However, if an author relates certain facts in a book whose ultimate aim is religious instruction, but which is at the same time historical, he is certainly presumed to be intent upon reporting objective reality. This one point may be conceded: a sacred writer whose concern in writing hooks which are really and surely historical is primarily edification and only secondarily historical truth, may quite conceivably have treated historical facts a bit more nonchalantly than an out-and-out his­toriographer would, or he may have simply recorded certain secondary details as he found them in his sources without meaning to vouch for their reality. This may be granted more readily in the case of the hagiographer, but that is all. For in order to assert with confidence or to regard as probable that such a procedure was actually followed in any given case, one needs solid arguments or at least some genuinely impressive indications. True, some claim that the “law of history” in the early days was simply to relate facts just as they stood in the sources or in popular opinion, keeping to

oneself one’s personal judgment as to their objective truth. But this cannot be satisfactorily proved, and it does not seem to square with the frank credulity of the ancients. It is, of course, a well-known fact that St. Jerome wrote some things which would give no little support to the claim under discussion if, in the mind of the great Doctor, they had the universal scope which, taken all by themselves, they seem to have.⁸⁰ But St. Jerome’s teaching, in­tegrally considered, and his constant care to safeguard the objective truth of Scripture even in accessory details certainly do not favor this new school of thought.81 For the rest, in a question like this, which has not yet been clearly answered, a certain fluctuation of opinion should occasion little surprise.82

Quite reasonably, then, the Pontifical Biblical Commission has decreed that books which are generally accepted as historical are to be presumed historical in the strict sense and objectively true until:

 

it can be proved by solid arguments that the sacred writer did not intend to give a true and strict history, but proposed rather to set forth, under the guise and form of history, a parable or an allegory or some meaning distinct from the strictly literal or historical signification of the words.83

 

It would seem advisable to view sweeping generalizations with respectful caution and to judge new opinions in the light of their applicability to individual cases, i.e., to see how they work out when applied to individual books of Scripture or to individual pas­sages. This is a task belonging properly to the domain of Scripture scholars. One cannot deny that really solid arguments are often at hand;84 but in many cases those alleged amount to little more than probable indications, and at times they amount hardly even to that. The experts who are sincerely trying to advance Catholic scholar­ship in the field of criticism should continue their patient efforts to construct arguments which will support, if at all possible, their respective theories. Meanwhile, both they and professional theo­logians should refrain from passing judgments which are too absolute and general.

Since the magisterium of the Church is the supreme guide in such matters, it may be well to give here the decree of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (June 30, 1909) on the historical character of the first three chapters of Genesis.

1. False Exegesis.—Whether the various exegetical systems, which have been elaborated and defended by the aid of a science falsely so called, for the purpose of excluding the literal historical sense of the first three chapters of Genesis, are based upon solid arguments.

Answer:  In the negative.

 

2. Historical Character of the Three C ha pters.—Wheter we may, in spite of the character and historic form of the book of Genesis, of the close connection of the first three chapters with one another and with those which follow, of the manifold testimony of the Scriptures both of the Old and the New Testament, of the almost unanimous opinion of the Fathers, and of the traditional view which—transmitted also by the Jewish people—has always been held by the Church, teach that the three aforesaid chapters do not contain the narrative of things which actually happened, a narrative which corresponds to ob­jective reality and historic truth; and whether we may teach that these chapters contain fables derived from mythologies and cosmologies belonging to older nations, but purified of all

polytheistic error and accomodated to monotheistic teaching by the sacred author or that they contain allegories and symbols destitute of any foundation in objective reality but presented under the garb of history for the purpose of inculcating religious and philosophical truth; or, finally, that they contain legends partly historical and partly fictitious, freely handled for the instruction and edification of souls.

Answer:  In the negative.

 

3. Historical Character of Certain Parts.—Whether, in particu­lar we may call in question the literal and historical meaning where there is question of facts narrated in these chapters which touch the fundamental teachings of the Christian religion, as for example, the creation of man, the formation of the first woman from man, the unity of the human race, the original happiness of our first parents in a state of justice, integrity, and immortality, the divine command laid upon man to prove his obedience, the transgression of that divine command at the instigation of the devil under the form of a serpent, the fall of our first parents from their primitive state of innocence, and the promise of a future Redeemer.

Answer:  In the negative.

 

4. Interpretation.—Whether, in interpreting those passages of

these chapters which the Fathers and Doctors have interpreted

in divers ways without leaving us anything definite or certain, anyone may, subject to the decision of the Church and following the analogy of faith, follow and defend that opinion at which he has prudently arrived.

Answer:   In the affirmative.

 

5. Literal Sense.—Whether all and each of the parts, namely the single words and phrases, in these chapters must always and of necessity be interpreted in a literal sense, so that it is never lawful to deviate from it, even when expressions are manifestly used figuratively, that is, metaphorically or anthropomorphi­cally, and when reason forbids us to hold, or necessity impels us to depart from, the literal sense.

Answer:    In the negative.

 

6. Allegory and Prophecy.—Whether, granting always the literal and historical sense, the allegorical and prophetical interpreta­tion of certain passages of these chapters—an interpretation justified by the example of the Fathers and the Church—may be prudently and usefully applied.

Answer: In the affirmative.

 

7.  Scientific Expression.—Whether, since it was not the inten­tion of the sacred author, when writing the first chapter of Genesis, to teach us in a scientific manner the innermost nature of visible things, and to present the complete order of creation but rather to furnish his people with a popular account, such as the common parlance of that age allowed, one, namely, adapted to the senses and to man’s intelligence, we are strictly and always bound, when interpreting these chapters to seek for scientific exactitude of expression.

Answer: In the negative.

 

8.  Yom.—Whether the word Yom (day), which is used in the first chapter of Genesis to describe and distinguish the six days, may be taken in its strict sense as the natural day, or in a less strict sense as signifying a certain space of time; and whether free discussion of this question is permitted to interpreters.

· Answer: In the affirmative.85

 

It is the task of biblical exegetes to explain in detail the force and meaning of this decree. One thing should be pointed out here,

and that is that not all the questions to which the first three chap­ters of Genesis give rise were solved by the decree just quoted; many points are still under discussion. Moreover, not everything which is not explicitly ruled out is thereby permitted, nor is every­thing which is not explicitly permitted thereby proscribed.86

 

Scholion. Inspiration and critical authenticity.

 

It is one thing to ask whether a book is inspired and another to ask whether it was written throughout by that author to whom it is usually ascribed. The fact of inspiration alone does not of itself solve the question of the identity and date of the hagiographer or the question of the process of composition. Was the book written throughout by one man or did several collaborate in its production; was it perhaps given its initial form by one man and then expanded by another, or is its present form, the inspired character of which we believe on faith, the work of a later editor, etc.?

The dogma of inspiration, however, can indirectly solve the question of human authorship, or can at least influence that solution.

1. When an inspired author definitely affirms that he or some­one else wrote this or that book, his testimony must be accepted as infallibly true, by virtue of inspiration. But mark well the words, “definitely—not just apparently—affirms”; for (a) it is not impos­sible that the sacred writer was using the literary device of pseudo­nymity (the book of Wisdom, for example) ;88 (b) in the matter of quotations it may be that the hagiographer was quoting a work under the name currently attached to it without intending to pass judgment on the question of real authorship. Thus, for example, St. Paul’s words, “So Isaias says”—Rom. 10:16 and 20, and the equivalent expression of John 12:38 are, all by themselves, not enough to solve the question of deutero- or trito-Isaias;89 nor can one conclude with certainty from our Lord’s words alone90 that the whole Pentateuch as we now have it was written by Moses personally.91

2. When an Old Testament text is clearly alleged in the New Testament as a real prophecy, say, of the future Messias, it would be contrary to the doctrine of inspiration to say that this text was not written until after the event prophesied, or that it was not written at the time to which Scripture undeniably assigns it.92

3.  Since the inspiration of all the sacred books and of all their

genuine texts is a revealed truth, and since the era of public or Christian revelation does not extend beyond the Apostolic Age, it follows that the doctrine of inspiration itself forbids the attribution of a book or passage of the New Testament to an author who did not live in the Apostolic Age. That is why the decree Lamentabili condemned the following propositions:

 

13.  “The evangelists themselves and the Christians of the second and third generation arranged the Gospel parables artificially and thus furnished grounds for the meager success of the mes­sage of Christ among the Jews”—DB 2013. 15.

15. “Up to the time of the defining and establishment of the canon, the Gospels were augmented continually by additions and emendations; hence, there remains in them only a slight and uncertain trace of the teaching of Christ.”—DB 2015.

 

Note well the phrase employed above: the doctrine of inspira­tion forbids the attribution of any part of the New Testament to an author “who did not live in the Apostolic Age”; it is a deliber­ately elastic phrase. For it does not seem quite clear whether we can absolutely rule out the hypothesis of a canonical book or pas­sage having been written after all the Apostles had died. Granting the truth of the proposition discussed above93 concerning apostolic origin, or even mediately apostolic origin (in the sense explained), as the criterion of inspiration—do the principles of faith render it absolutely impossible for the Church to have received some book or passage from a charismatic who survived the apostles, but of whose charism of prophecy it had learned previously from the apostles themselves? Since we are in the dark on the precise way in which the divine guarantee of the inspiration of the New Testa­ment books reached the Church, it would seem prudent to refrain from any apodictic judgment in such a matter.94

Outside of the cases mentioned under 1, 2, and 3, the doctrine of inspiration does not affect the question of the identity of the human authors of Scripture.

A short postscript: Since no divine (oral) tradition can be established for this question of who the human authors of the sacred books were, the following rule seems reasonable. The ques­tion of the identity, etc., of the human authors is in itself a his­torical one and affects theology and the ecclesiastical magisterium only to the extent that it necessarily involves the truthfulness or

inspiration of a book.95 But it would be not at all impertinent to suggest at this juncture that a tradition, even if only historical, as long as it is rightfully worthy of serious consideration, is not to be scuttled just because of the quibbling of a few critics.

 

 

 

Notes

1.   Questiones quodlibetales, 7, a. 14, ad 5.

2.   Providentissimus Deus, RSS, p. 24.

3.   S.Th., III, q. 62, a. 1.

4.   Constitution De fide Catholica, chap. 2. Bishop Haneberg of Spires corrected his opinion after the Vatican Council in the fourth edition of his work, Geschichte der Off enbarung (1876).

5.   A bitter controversy over these and other theses raged during the years

1587—88 between the University and the Jesuits of Louvain. Lessius and Duhamel did not admit the parenthetical remark about 2 Maccabees as their own. In addition, Lessius toned down the meaning of his thesis somewhat in a letter to the Archbishop of Malines. See Dauseb, loc. cit., p. 146; Pesch, op. cit., p. 279 if.; S. Pagano, “Some Aspects of the Debate on Inspiration in the Louvain Controversy,” CBQ, 14 (1952), 356 if.; ibid., 15 (1953), 46 if.; CCHS, 36c.

6.   Loc. cit.

7.   See Dauseb, loc. cit., p. 153.

8.   S.Th., III, q. 62, a. 1, ad 2.

9.   See ibid., II, q. 173, a. 3, ad 4.

10. The understanding of the matter to be recorded should not be stretched to mean complete comprehension of that matter. All that is required for intelligent authorship is a grasp of the literal meaning of the words in any given context. It should be enough to recall that the intellect of the principal Author is infinite and that of the instrumental author finite. There can be no question of equal comprehension here. St. Thomas accordingly refers to a prophet as an instrumentum deficiens, a defective or imperfect instrument relative to the principal Cause. When Isaias, for example, wrote: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, etc.” he understood the literal meaning of those words as he wrote them, but not necessarily all the sublime and subtle details of the Incarnation.

11. De mob 3, a. 2 (corpus), and ad 4.

12. Praefatio in Isaiam and in Jeremiam.

13. Adversus haereses III. 7. 2.

14. De consensu evangebistarum II. 12, 27.

15. Homilia I in Matthaeum 2.

16. The Synoptic Problem is basically a literary question. In brief, it arises from the strange combination of resemblances and differences in the first three Gospels (the Synoptics). There is no other group of works in literature with just the same kind of mixture of differences and resemblances. It is this mix-ture which constitutes the problem. If the three Gospels were completely

different from one another—on the literary level, of course—or if they were all perfectly parallel, there would be no such problem. The differences and similarities—the latter amounting often to verbatim identity—show up in the matter selected for treatment by the authors, in the order followed, in the form of language. The question to which scriptural scholars are still seeking a fully satisfactory answer is: what precisely is the interrelationship among the three? When they are alike, who depends on whom? When they differ, what is the source of the divergence? The literature on this problem is mountainous. See B. C. Butler, “The Synoptic Problem,” CCHS, 760 ff.; idem, The Originality of St. Matthew (New York, 1951), and the critique of this work in CBQ, 15 (1953), 388—92; C. Ricciotti, The Life of Christ, translated by

A. Zizzamia (Milwaukee, 1949), pp. 126—34; F. J. McCool, “Revival of Synoptic Source-Criticism,” TS, 17 (1956), 459—93.

17. De mab 3, a. 2 (corpus).

18. This statement must be qualified. While the intention—and conse­quently the meaning—of the principal and instrumental authors are cotermi­nous as far as the literal sense is concerned, the same cannot be said with regard to the typical sense. This latter is a sense peculiar to Sacred Scripture, a sense over and above the literal, a sense intended by the principal Author alone. When the human author described the incident of the brazen serpent in the desert or the institution of the Pasch, he was fully aware of the literal sense of what he was writing, and intended that meaning. But only the divine Author knew that these things were to be understood in a typical sense also, as very real foreshadowings of Christ’s saving death on the Cross and of the Eucharist respectively. The explanation of inspiration based on instrumental causality breaks down to a certain extent at this point. See CCHS, 35g.

19. Here is another striking example of the divine condescension. See above, art. II, n. 69.

20. RSS, p. 24.

21. Inspiration is frequently divided as follows:

Active inspiration: with reference to God’s activity;

            Passive         “               ·         “ “                                        to the human author’s receptivity;

            Terminative “ .               “ “                                        to the result—the inspired book.

22. St. Thomas, Commentarium in I Corinthios 14:32, lectio 6. From another point of view, inspiration may be predicated of Sacred Scripture terminotively to indicate that the Sacred Books, as a result of the aforesaid influence, have God as their author.

23. St. Luke actually resolved to write his Gospel after accurately tracing the whole movement to its origin.—Luke 1:3. That is why St. Jerome remarks:

“Therefore he wrote the Gospel on the basis of research, but he composed the Acts of the Apostles on the basis of what he had seen with his own eyes”— De viris illustribus 7.

24. To judge from the data at hand, none of the sacred writers seems ever to have realized that God was using him as an instrument. Here again we must distinguish clearly between the awareness of a divine command to write and the awareness of writing under divine inspiration. Some sacred authors were evidently aware of such a command, but there is no evidence that any one of them was conscious of the fact that he was actually writing

under the grace of inspiration. One cannot feel grace, and such an awareness would have to be the result of a special revelation, a revelation of which we have no record. See Guide to the Bible, op. cit., p. 16.

25. By all judgments is meant not any and every assertion having the logical form of a judgment, but those propositions or series of propositions by means of which the hagiographer expresses a real judgment. One who composes a parable, for example, puts many judgments into writing, as far as logical form is concerned, but it may well be that throughout this whole series of propositions he expresses only one or two real judgments.

26. The term “real” is used here in its basic etymological meaning. The Latin word res means thing, object, matter, content, and the adjective formed from it, reabis, would in this context signify “pertaining to the content of a writing” as against verbalis, “pertaining to the words which serve as the vehicle for that content.” Real inspiration then, would mean inspiration as affecting the res, the subject matter, the content, the message, the doctrine; verbal inspiration would refer to the divine action as influencing the very words used to express that message.

27. See Guide to the Bible, op. cit., p. 14; Höpfl-Gut, op. cit., p. 69 if.; E. Hugon, op. cit., p. 51 if.; C. Lattey, “Two Points of Biblical Introduction,” CBQ, 7 (1945), 201 if.; Pesch, op. cit., p. 459 if.; DBS, IV, 517 if.

28. It is clear that in this opinion the distinction between inspiration and negative assistance is not a mere matter of terminology, for it removes the material part of the book from the divine influence, i.e., from inspiration.

29. See especially 2 Macc. 2:24—27; 15:39.

30. See above, nos. 64 and 67.

31. The Swiss (Protestant) formula consensus (1675) held that even the vowel points and accents of the Hebrew text were inspired and that no bar­barisms of language could occur in biblical Greek or Hebrew. See CCHS, 36d. This sets something of a record for extremism and lack of historical realism, since the vowel points and accents were elaborated by the so-called “Masoretic scholars” during the period from the sixth to the ninth century AD. This formula was subsequently abrogated (1725). See Pesch, op. cit., pp. 212—13.

32. Providentissimus Deus, RSS, p. 24.

33. Examples are the words of the wicked in Wis. 2:6 if.; the Roman rescript in 1 Macc. 8:23 if.; the letters of the Jews in 2 Macc. 1:1—2, 19; the psalmist’s expression of repentance in Ps. 50; the presentiment or surmise of St. Paul in Acts 20:25; the latter’s expression of humility in 1 Tim. 1:15:

to save sinners. Of these 1 am at the head of the list.”

34. See, for example, F. Schmid, De inspiratione, p. 117; Pesch, op. cit., p. 444.

35. This rules out completely the opinion proposed by F. Girard (Annales de phibosophie chrétienne 1905) and W. McDonald (Irish Ecclesiastical Rec­ord 1905, 343), who distinguished in at least many passages of Scripture between the hagiographer’s meaning and God’s meaning, holding the latter, of course, to be infallibly true but granting that the former is sometimes wrong. The example of Caiphas (John 11:51) proves nothing. Caiphas was neither a prophet (STh II-II q. 173, a. 2 and 4) nor a hagiographer: he was

not taken over by God as an instrument to speak to the Church. God brought it about that Caiphas expressed his wicked sentence in those precise terms which, taken all by themselves and apart from the context, express also an idea of God’s, an idea quite different from the one in the high priest’s mind. But no one would have been aware of this divine arrangement if the Holy Spirit had not revealed it through the evangelist.

36. On the imprecations voiced in certain psalms (e.g., 108), see STh II-II 25, a. 6, ad 3 and 83, a. 8, ad 1. Furthermore, the literary form must be taken into account, for it would be ridiculous to interpret the ardent expres­sions of a lyric poem by the standards governing prose. Even inspired “poets have always enjoyed a like license to use rather bold speech.”

37. See, for example, 1 Cor. 1:16.

38. See, for example, 1 Cor. 7:12; 1 Tim. 5:23.

39. Note the expression “actually performing,” which is not verified of the prophet Nathan, for example, in 2 Kings 7:3.

40. An example is 2 Macc. 12:46.

41. See F. Schroeder, op. cit.; J. P. Weisengoff, “Inerrancy of the Old Testament in Religious Matters,” CBQ, 17 (1955), 128 ff.; L. Johnston, “Old Testament Morality,” CBQ, 20 (1958), 19-25.

42. See, for example, Acts 7:16 and 55.

43. Providentissimus Deus, RSS, pp. 23—25.

44. Epistula 82 ad Hieronyum 3; see also 5. See De San, Tractatus de sacra Traditione et Scriptura, p. 280.

45. It follows that ignorance of these circumstances, to which later readers can easily fall victim, sometimes makes it impossible to pass sure judgment on the author’s intention.

46. Note: “whenever there is question of a hagiographer’s acting precisely as such,” for whenever a hagiographer acts at the same time in the capacity of prophet, it can happen that he understands the literal meaning of his prophecy only inadequately—in fact, quite inadequately. “A prophet’s mind is a defective instrument when compared with the principal agent; even genuine prophets do not understand everything which the Holy Spirit intends to con­vey through their visions or words or even their deeds”—STh II-II 173, a. 4. Similarly, the hagiographers did not always fully grasp the meaning of the words of God, of Christ, of angels, which they recorded. (b) “Whenever his literal meaning alone is being sought”; it can happen that God intends to con­vey, in addition to the literal sense, a mediate or typical sense- (which we shall see subsequently)—altogether unknown to the hagiographer. Further­more, (c) it may readily be granted that the sacred writers did not always understand clearly the individual elements of a complex truth which they affirmed; it is enough that they understood the whole truth in general.

47. St. Augustine: “In reading Sacred Scripture they desire nothing other than to discover the thoughts and the intention of those by whom it was written and thereby to discern the will of God, in accordance with which we believe these men to have spoken”—De doctrina christiana ii. 5. 6.

48. A midrash is a biblical narrative developed with great freedom to inculcate a moral truth. It resembles our historical novel.—CGHS, 32h.

49. See, for example, Job 3:8; Isa. 13:21; Jer. 50:39; Judith 16:8.

50. See, for example, Acts 2:5.

51.  See Providentissimus Deus, RSS, p. 22.

52. See, for example, Jos. 10:12—13; EccI. 1:5—6; Ps. 18:6—7.

53. Ecel. 1:4; Ps. 92:2; 103:5.

54. Gen. 1:16.

55. Ps. 103:2; Isa. 40:22.

56. Gen. 1:6; 7:11; 8:2; Ps. 148:4; Job 37:18. In somewhat the same way, not precisely the hagiographer, but the divinely appointed lawgiver, following external appearances, forbade the eating of the hare, because it “indeed chews the cud but does not have hoof s”—Lev. 11:6; Deut. 14:7; in fact the hare does something which looks very much like rumination, and the distinc­tion of clean and unclean animals was made on the basis of an obvious and apparent criterion—not a scientific one. Kaulen: “The relative truth lies in the fact that the notion of ‘ruminant’ is taken not in the physiological sense, but rather that the legislators were thinking of animals which, without eating, moved their jaws”—Katholik (1868), 1. 19. Hence Maisonneuve was justified in remarking: “There is no more error in this manner of speaking than there is in the language of bishops who, in their Lenten regulations, classify oysters as fish”—Duihle de Saint-Projet, Apobogétique scientifique (1903), p. 464.

57. In fact the words “the Lord came, etc.” turn up with almost literal identity in the Ethiopian Henoch 1:9. Still, some exegetes suspect that this present reading of the book of Henoch was taken from the Epistle of Jude rather than vice versa. In their view, the apostle did not use the apocryphal book, but took over an old oral tradition. See A. Charue, “Les épitres catho­liqucs,” SB (Paris, 1946), XII, 565 if.; R. Leconte, “Les épitres catholiques,” SBJ (Paris, 1953); CCHS, 960a if.

58. Henoch 60:8.

59. Tit. 1:12.

60. See RBibl (1900), p. 375; ThQ (Tubingen, 1900), p. 22; also Kaulen: “The book of Wisdom is an address to the rulers of the earth put into the mouth of King Solomon. . . . It cannot have originated with Solomon”— Einleitung (4th ed.), nos. 326—27. “Unless this text as we have it is to be regarded as a reworking of the original in post-exilic style [a supposition which, in the judgment of others, does not suffice to safeguard Solomonic authorship], then Ecclesiastes, like the book of Wisdom, was ascribed to King Solomon as the most likely champion of the sentiments expressed therein”

—bc. cit., no. 318. See CCHS, 388 b—c; R. Pautrel, “L’Ecclésiaste,” SBJ (Paris, 1953).

61. 2 Macc. 9; see 1 Macc. 6.

62. 2 Macc. 1:10 if.

63. There is an example, it seems, in 2 Kings 24:9 compared with 1 Par. 21:5; and perhaps another in Luke 3:36.

64. Decree of Feb. 13, 1905; see RSS, p. 115; RBibl (1905), p. 161.

65. Actually, in the opinion of Fr. Lagrange and others, the book of Daniel is not prophetic in the usual sense, but is rather an apocalypse, in which an unknown author of the age of Antiochus Epiphanes plays the part of Daniel and describes in the style of prophetic visions events which for the

most part have already taken place, but in such a way that he quite frequently gives a truly prophetic picture of the earthly kingdom of the Messias and of his eschatological kingdom as well. See RBibl (1904), p. 494; CCHS, 494g if.

66. Some take practically the same view of Samson’s prodigious feats.

67. The author of 2 Maccabees would clearly indicate such a restricted intention, according to some scholars, in 2: 29—S 1. If this were true, the words of this editor would indicate at the same time that “writers of history” usually wrote with another intention in mind, at least at that time. However, the true sense of the Greek text seems to be the following: “I leave a full description and discussion of the individual facts to the author; I myself am intent on conciseness.”

68. De Scriptura Sacra, p. 145. The following words of our Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, are quite to the point:

Let all the other sons of the Church bear in mind that the efforts of these resolute laborers in the vineyard of the Lord should be judged not only with equity and justice, but also with the greatest charity; all moreover should abhor that intemperate zeal which imagines that whatever is new should for that very reason be opposed or suspected. Let them bear in mind above all that in the rules and laws promulgated by the Church there is question of doctrine concerning faith and morals; and that in the im­mense matter contained in the Sacred Books—legislative, historical, sapiental and prophetical—there are but a few texts whose sense has been defined by the authority of the Church, nor are those more numerous about which the teaching of the Holy Fathers is unanimous. There remain there­fore many things, and of the greatest importance, in the discussion and exposition of which the skill and genius of Catholic commentators may and ought to be freely exercised, so that each may contribute his part to the advantage of all, to the continued progress of the sacred doctrine and to the defense and honor of the Church.—Divino afflante Spiritu, RSS, pp. 101—2.

See also the letter of the Biblical. Commission to Cardinal Suhard, Jan. 16, 1948, RSS, p. 148 if.

69. RBibl (1897), p. 367 if.

70.  Ibid. (1896), p. 393 if. See Pius XII, Divino afflante Spiritu, RSS, p. 97 if.; Letter of the Biblical Commission to Cardinal Suhard, RSS, p. 150:

The question of the literary forms of the first eleven Chapters of Genesis is far more obscure and complex. These literary forms correspond to none of our classical categories and cannot be judged in the light of Greco­Latin or modem literary styles. One can, therefore, neither deny nor affirm their historicity, taken as a whole, without unduly attributing to them the canons of a literary style within which it is impossible to to classify them. If one agrees not to recoguize in these chapters history in the classical and modem sense, one must, however, admit that the actual scientific data do not allow of giving all the problems they set a positive solution. The first duty here incumbent upon scientific exegesis consists before all in the attentive study of all the literary, scientific, historical, cultural and religious problems connected with these chapters; one should then examine closely the literary processes of the early Oriental peoples, their psychology, their way of expressing themsleves and their very notion of historical truth; in a word, one should collate without

prejudice all the subject-matter of the paleontological and historical, epigraphic and literary sciences. Only then can we hope to look more clearly into the true nature of certain narratives in the first Chapters of Genesis.

See also B. Vawter, op. cit.; J. L. McKenzie, op. cit.; RAF. MacKenzie, “Before Abraham Was . . . ," CBQ, 15 (1953), 181 if.

71.  Providentissimus Deus, RSS, p. 10.

72. See Pesch, op. cit., p. 363.

73. See Bainvel, op. cit., p. 152; Lesêtre, RpA, X, 678 if: “Certain people seem sometimes to forget that it would be quite as disrespectful to an inspired author to make an historian of him in spite of himself as to treat as a parable what he intended as real history”; similarly Van Hoonacker, Les dauze petits prophètes, p. 324.

74. Most of these questions are merely of the literary order, and both the Divino afflante Spiritu and the letter to Cardinal Suhard allow the Catholic exegete a great deal of latitude in their investigation. See E. F. Siegman, “The Decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission,” CBQ, 18 (1956), 23 if.;

J. Coppens, the illustrious Louvain professor, states the matter very clearly and directly:

The difficulties which arise from the authority of the Church and of the Fathers over the Holy Scriptures are normally the result of misunder­standing. The Protestant or independent thinker whom we have in mind does not know, or does not sufficiently consider, the Catholic doctrine in the matter. The authority of the Fathers is rigorously circumscribed by the principles of fundamental theology. It is invoked only in cases, less numerous than our opponents imagine, where there is question of the Deposit of Faith and where the Fathers speak unanimously as witnesses of the Faith, proposing an interpretation in the name of the Church and formally on the plane of divine faith. . . . As for the Magisterium, the supreme ecclesiastical teaching authority, when it claims its right and authority to give a definitive interpretation of the sense of the Holy Scriptures, here too, according to the terms of the Vatican Council, it does so on the plane of faith and in the provinces of morals and Chris­tian dogma.—The Old Testament and the Critics, translated by E. A. Ryan and E. W. Tribbe (Paterson, 1942), pp. 142—43.

75. The Encyclical contains the following siguificant passage:

Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting any light derived from recent research, endeavor to determine the peculiar character and circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived, the sources written or oral to which he had recourse and the forms of ex­pression he employed.

Thus can he better understand who was the inspired author, and what he wishes to express by his writings. There is no one indeed but knows that the supreme rule of interpretation is to discover and define what the writer intended to express, . . . What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine

what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use.

For the ancient peoples of the East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms or kinds of speech which we use today; but rather those used by the men of their times and countries. What those exactly were the commentator cannot determine as it were in advance, but only after a careful examination of the ancient literature of the East. The investigation, carried out, on this point, during the past forty or fifty years with greater care and diligence than ever before, has more clearly shown what forms of expression were used in those far off times, whether in poetic description or in the formulation of laws and rules of life or in recording the facts and events of history.—RSS, pp. 96—7.

76. Among the remarks of Fathers Miller and Kleinhans are the following:

Inasmuch as it is a collection of documents which show how Sacred Scripture has always been the primary source and foundation of the truths of Catholic faith and of their progress and development, the Enchiridion renders great service first of all to the history of dogmas. It reflects clearly, moreover, the fierce battle that the Church at all times has had to fight, though with varying degrees of intensity, to maintain the purity and truth of the Word of God. Especially in this respect the decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission have great significance. However, as long as these decrees propose views which are neither immediately nor mediately connected with truths of faith and morals, it goes without saying that the scholar may pursue his research with complete freedom and may utilize the results of his research, provided always that he defers to the teaching authority of the Church.

Today we can hardly picture to ourselves the position of Catholic scholars at the turn of the century, or the dangers that threatened Catholic teach­ing on Scripture and its inspiration on the part of liberal and rationalistic criticism, which like a torrent tried to sweep away the sacred barriers of tradition. At present, the battle is considerably less fierce; not a few controversies have been peacefully settled and many problems emerge in an entirely new light, so that it is easy enough for us to smile at the narrowness and constraint which prevailed fifty years ago.

Finally, the Enchiridion has notable apologetic value, because it bears witness to the Church’s untiing vigilance and her perennial solicitude for the Scriptures. She is alert to defend their sacred character and to watch over their correct interpretation. Encycicals like “Providentissimus Deus” and “Divino Afflante Spiitu” show how she exerts herself to promote in every way possible the solid and fruitful study of Scripture. These En­cyclicals present with admirable clarity the basic principles of Catholic interpretation which hold for all times and effectively close the door to subjective and arbitrary expositions. Thus they point out the way to an interpretation and use of Scripture calculated to nourish the life of souls and of the Church as well as to utilize fully the gains made by modern research.—Siegman, loc. cit.

77. Ibid., pp. 26 and 29; see also the letter to the Italian Hierarchy under date of Aug. 20, 1941, RSS, p. 129 if.

78. RSS, p. 23.

79. Benedict XV was quick to point out in the Spiritus Paraclitus the error of the so-called “Broad School” and the impossibility of appealing to Leo XIII in support of its untenable position:

Those, too, who hold that the historical portions of Scripture do not rest on the absolute truth of the facts but merely upon what they are pleased to term their relative truth, namely, what people then commonly thought, are . . . out of harmony with the Church’s teaching, which is endorsed by the testimony of Jerome and other Fathers. Yet they are not afraid to deduce such views from the words of Leo XIII on the ground that he allowed that the principles he had laid down touching the things of nature could be applied to historical things as well. Hence they maintain that precisely as the sacred writers spoke of physical things according to appearance, so, too, while ignorant of the facts, they narrated them in accordance with general opinion or even on baseless evidence: neither do they tell us the sources whence they derived their knowledge, nor do they make other peoples’ narrative their own. Such views are clearly false, and constitute a calumny on our predecessor. After all, what analogy is there between physics and history? For whereas physics are concerned with “sensible appearances” and must consequently square with phenomena, history on the contrary, must square with facts, since history is the written account of events as they actually occurred. If we were to accept such views, how could we maintain the truth insisted on throughout Leo XIII’s Encyclical—viz, that the sacred narrative is absolutely free from error? And if Leo XIII does say that we can apply to history and cognate sub­jects the same principles which hold good for science, he yet does not lay this down as a universal law, but simply says that we can apply a like line of argument when refuting the fallacies of adversaries and defending the historical truth of Scripture from their assaults.—RSS, pp. 52—3 [italics ours].

80. For example, In Jeremiom 28:10, with reference to Amasias, the notorious false prophet, who is called by Scripture simply a “prophet”: “As if many things were not said in Sacred Scripture according to the opinion current at the time the facts were recorded, and not according to the objective reality of the matter!” Adversus Helvidium 4: “So much so that even the evangelists, expressing public opinion, which is a valid rule of history, called [St. Joseph] the father of our Savior.” Elsewhere the holy Doctor, taking the view that Herod only pretended sadness, remarks in commenting on the words, “the king was greatly disturbed”—Matt. 14:9: “It is customary in Scripture for the narrator to record the common opinion currently in vogue in his time. So in this instance Herod is said to have been sad because those who were dining with him got that impression. This expert dissembler, this instigator of murder put on a long face, but all the time there was joy in his heart”—Com­mentarium in Matthaeum.

81. See Delattre, Critérium de la nouvelle exégèse biblique, chap. 2 and

8; Pesch, op. cit., p. 532 if.

82. See N. Peters, Theologische Revue (1910), 334.

83. Reply of June 23, 1905. See RBibl (1905) 821 and note 76 above.

84. Read, for example, Vetter’s discussion of the book of Tobias in Theobgische Quartalschift (Tubingen, 1904—5); see Revue du clergé français, Nov. 1, 1908 and 1909, p. 720.

85. RSS, pp. 120—22.

86. See above, no. 92.

87. Therefore, as far as inspiration is concerned, there is nothing to prevent one from accepting the opinion defended by, among others, Happel:

“The sacred books of the Old Testament have an inner history. The sacred text underwent many various preliminary alterations and modifications before it finally assumed a fixed norm. This history is not the result of accidental corruption or unauthorized interpolation, but rather the work of authorized, prophetically gifted instruments”—Biblische Studien (1901), 27. See C. Stuhlmueller, “The Influence of Oral Tradition upon Exegesis,” CBQ, 20 (1958), 299-4326.

88. Wisd. 7:1 if.; 9:8 if.

89. Note: the question of deutero- or trito-Isaias is not settled on these grounds alone. But on June 28, 1908 the Pontifical Biblical Commission issued a decree on the character and the author of the book of Isaias:

3.   Character of the Prophetic Office.—Whether it may be admitted that the prophets not only as correctors of human wickedness and heralds of the divine Word for the good of their hearers, but also as foretellers of future events, must always have addressed themselves to a present and contemporary and not to a future audience, so that they could be clearly understood by them; and that therefore, the second part of the book of Isaias (chapter 40—66), in which the prophet addresses and consoles not the Jews contemporary with Isaias, but, as one living among them, those mourning in the exile of Babylon, cannot have for its author Isaias himself then long dead, but must be attributed to some unknown prophet living among the exiles.

Answer: In the negative.

4.   Unity of authorship.—Whether the philological argument, one derived from the language and the style, and employed to impugn the identity of the author of the book of Isaias, is to be considered weighty enough to compel a man of judgment, versed in the principles of criticism and well acquainted with Hebrew, to acknowledge in the same book a plurality of authors.

Answer: In the negative.

5.   Cumulative Arguments against Unity—Whether there are solid argu­ments, even when taken cumulatively, to prove that the book of Isaias is to be attributed not to Isaias alone, but to two or even more authors.

Answer: In the negative.—RSS, pp. 119—20. But as Auvray and Steinmann observe:

A decision of the Biblical Commission of Rome, under date of June 28, 1908, considered the arguments advanced against the attribution to Isaias of the whole book which bears his name insufficient to modify the tra­ditional teaching. This was a prudent measure which, however, did not close the door to further research. This latter has increased the weight of the reasons brought forward against authenticity. And so more and more Catholic authors are coming to esteem as very probable that the Book of Consolation is the work of a disciple of Isaias who lived during the time of the exile.—"Isaie,” SBJ (Paris, 1951).

It should be noted that the Commission was understandably concerned about the grounds on which critics rejected Isaian authorship of chap. 40—66. They denied the possibility of supernatural prophecy, and hence deemed it antecedently impossible that a prophet living in the eighth century B.C. could

have described in such accurate detail conditions of the sixth century. It goes without saying that modern Catholic views on the authorship of these chap­ters are based on quite diiferent, more objective, and more truly scientific premises.

90.  Mark 10:3—5; Luke 24:44; John 5:39—47.

91.  See the decree of the Biblical Commission, June 27, 1906, stating that the arguments brought against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch were not sufficient to permit one to abandon the traditional view. See ESS pp. 116— 17; RBibl (1906), 349. For recent Catholic views on the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, see CCHS, 1351 ff., and especially R. de Vaux, “La Genèse,” SBJ (Paris, 1953), pp. 9-21.

What we have said above about the assertions of the New Testament are likewise applicable to conciliar decrees, etc. The Council of Trent (Session IV; see also, the Councils of Hippo and Carthage and the letter of Innocent I in DB 92 and 96) lists several of the sacred books under the names of the authors commonly assigned them. However, it was not the intention of the fathers to pass definitive judgment on the identity of the secondary authors, but only to issue “a list of the Sacred books, so that no doubt may arise in anyone’s mind as to which are the books that are accepted by this Synod”

—DB 783.

92.  In the decree quoted above on the character and author of the book of Isaias, a negative reply was given to the following question:

Whether it may be taught that the prophecies which are read in the hook of Isaias, and here and there in the Scriptures, are not real prophecies, but either narratives composed subsequent to the event, or, if it must be acknowledged that something was foretold before the event, that the prophet foretold the same, not from a supernatural revelation of God who foreknows the future, but by conjecturing through a happy sagacity and acuteness of natural intelligence from things that had already happened.

—RSS, pp. 118-19.

93.  See above, no. 53.

94, In the draft prepared for the Vatican Council on the hooks of Sacred Scripture, we read: “because they were written as a result of the prompting of the Holy Spirit, they have God for their author, and as such they were entrusted to the Church by the apostles.” But since some of the fathers sug­gested a modification, the “Deputatio de fide” agreed “that those words ‘by the apostles’ be omitted; not of course that the words ‘and as such they were entrusted to the Church’ give a sense different from ‘entrusted to the Church by the apostles.’ For in order for the Church to he able to propose as an obligatory object of faith that such and such a book is inspired, not only must the truth be certain; it must be revealed as well. But that it be revealed it must be found in the Church’s deposit, and for it to be found therein, it must have been placed therein by Christ, by the apostles, etc. Still, that the words may be not too restrictive, the Deputatin suggests that the phrase run, ‘and as such they were entrusted to it’ the Church”—Coll Lac VII, 72 and 142. See Stanley, op. cit.

95.  See RBibl (1900), 30; Civiltà Cattolica (1903), 1, 397; Von Hum­melaner, Ezegetisches, p. 99; Billot, De inspiratione, p. 65.

Special Bibliography

 

In addition to the works listed in the preceding article, see

the following:

Auzou, G. La Parole de Dieu. Paris, 1956.

BENOIT, P. “Note complémentaire sur l’inspiration,” RBibl, 63 (1956), 416.

FORESTELL, J. T. “The Limitation of Inerrancy,” CBQ, 20 (1958),

9—18.

JOHNSTON, L. “Old Testament Morality,” ibid., 19-25.

MACKENZIE, R. A. F. “Some Problems in the Field of Inspiration,” ibid., 1—8.

Murphy, R. “The Teachings of Providentissimus Deus,” CBQ, 5 (1943), 125.

RAHNER, K. “Über die Schriftsinspiration,” ZkTh, 78 (1956), 137.

Article IV

 

THE USE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

 

 

 

1.   The SENSES OF SCRIPTURE

 

 

I.     Meaning and Division:

1.  Literal and typical.

2. Consequent and accommodated.

 

II.   The Multiple Literal Sense

 

III.  Proof for the Existence of the Typical Sense:

 

1. From the New Testament.

 

2. From the fathers.

 

2. THE INTERPRETATION AND READING OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

 

Preliminary Considerations:

a.   Protestant and Catholic views on the clarity of Scripture.

b. The right of the Church to give authoritative inter­pretations.

c.   Scope and characteristics of an authoritative inter­pretation.

 

I. Scripture Is Not So Crystal Clear that It Can Be the Proximate Rule of Faith for Each and Every One of the Faithful

 

Proof:     1. From Sacred Scripture.

2.  From established facts.

 

II.   The Authoritative Interpretation of Sacred Scripture Is Within the Competence of the Church’s Magisterium

 

Proof:     1. From the institution of a perpetual and infallible teaching office.

2. From the fathers.

Objections.

Scholion. Dogmatic rules for the interpretation of Scripture.

 

III.    Principles Governing the Private Reading of Sacred Scripture

 

3.  The AUTHENTICITY OF THE VULGATE

 

 

I.     The Work of St. Jerome

 

II.   The Decrees of Trent

 

III.  Detailed Study of These Decrees

 

IV.  The Substantial Fidelity of the Vul gate to the Original

 

V.   Corollaries