The Challenge to Bible Inerrancy: Combating Biblical Scepticism
The Old Testament rings with the words “Thus saith the Lord” and the New Testament tells us that the word of God is “the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit” (Eph 6:17). It observes: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts...” (Heb 4:12).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes Holy Mother Church “has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord’s Body” and that “in Sacred Scripture the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength” (CCC para 103-104). St. Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin in 410 AD was said to have translated the word on his knees, producing the magnificent Latin Vulgate, the only Bible the Church has ever declared “free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals."
The footnotes, which are not inspired in a Bible, can give the impression that the Bible has contradictions and errors of history and even, morality. For example, contrary to the Tradition of the Church, in the introduction to the NAB, the translators endorse the popular theory of Julius Wellhausen, a 19th century liberal German Protestant, which claims that the Pentateuch is not a coherent narrative, but rather the product of redaction and editing, which did not take its final form until the sixth century B.C., whereas the traditional teaching that Moses authored the Pentateuch is dismissed in favor of a hypothesis that posits four principle sources, namely, Yahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomic (D) and Priestly (P). The popular J, E, D and P theory is considered outdated by many scholars today, both Protestant and Catholic (see for example The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch by Umberto Cassuto; The Redaction of Genesis by Gary A. Rendsburg; or Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis: A Case for Literary Unity (1985) by P.J. Wiseman).
This theory of the progressive development of texts from diverse sources separated in time was developed about the same time as the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, the net effect of the so-called Documentary hypothesis or JEDP is to make contradictions and cast doubt on statements, such as, “the Lord said to Moses.” The reverence of the Early Church Fathers for Holy Scripture is too often discounted or forgotten, as many now embrace the rationalist view of German Protestant scholars like Wellhausen (a historian), who never hid his animus for Catholicism.
Wellhausen’s theory illustrates the undue influence of historicism, as he tends to date the four sources of the Pentateuch by where they fit into his historical scheme rather than on scientific criteria. (Source: "What is Biblical Criticism—and Should we Trust It?" By Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B., page 14, This Rock, April 2005) This theory, which some believe inimical to Christian Orthodoxy, becomes primary in their hermeneutics.
Similarly the some Bible translators embrace a multi-source theory for the Gospel of Matthew, using Q (a hypothetical list of Jesus' sayings), Mk (meaning it came from Mark's gospel) and M (from Matthew's gospel) for the sources, with the same bottom line, thus they claim, Scripture is not a coherent whole written by eyewitnesses and therefore not reliable as history. In chapter 9, footnote 9-8, the NAB claims that Matthew’s description of the awe of the crowd witnessing God giving “men” (i.e., Jesus) the authority to forgive sins suggests, “the power of the Christian community to forgive sins in Jesus’ name.” What impact does this interpretation have on the Catholic sacrament of Reconciliation? Is the Christian community synonymous with the priesthood or are they implying that the authors (i.e. Q, Mk or M) put words into Jesus mouth? Numerous footnotes allege that Matthew borrowed from Mark, even though the testimony of the Church Fathers was that Matthew, an eyewitness and one of the original twelve, wrote the first gospel (in Hebrew or Aramaic), not Mark. The conclusion from the footnote cited above is based on form criticism (internal evidence), not historical evidence, which contradicts it. This seems to lessen the value of Matthew’s testimony because it is borrowed. Stick with the Church Fathers!
More pernicious still is the suggestion in footnote 16: 21-23 from Matthew 16, that Jesus’ predictions of His passion and death cannot “as they stand, go back to Jesus himself.” They don’t say why not, but imply that this was a later redaction and that the gospels are not really that accurate in recounting what Jesus said. They are only willing to grant that he probably foresaw “his mission would entail suffering and perhaps death.” Again, nothing based on fact and pernicious at best.
In Matthew 21, footnote 21:7, they claim Matthew misinterpreted Isaiah's prophecy about the Messiah, even though several popes have labeled this criticism as “absolutely wrong and forbidden.” Some scholars deny Jesus prediction of the second destruction of the Jerusalem temple (occurring in 70 A.D.) could have taken place even though it was also predicted by Micah 3: 12 and Jeremiah 7: 8-15; 9: 10-11; 26: 6, 18 and even by Jesus bar Ananias (Josephus, Bell 6.300ff).
How about celebrated Catholic scholars, surely they don’t engage in these sorts of anti-“Catholic” interpretation, do they? Fr. Raymond Brown, now deceased and one of the most respected of all Catholic Bible scholars of the twentieth century is an example. Msr. George A. Kelly, himself a noted Biblical scholar, tells how he and every other priest in New York was provided a copy of Fr. Brown’s book, Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections by Cardinal Cooke. Before he read it himself, a Catholic journalist came to Msgr. Kelly and reported that his faith was shaken by the book because Fr. Brown had confessed he could not prove from historical sources that:
that Christ instituted the priesthood or episcopacy as such; that those who presided at the Eucharist were really priests; that a separate priesthood began with Christ; that the early Christians looked upon the Eucharist as a sacrifice; that presbyter-bishops are traceable in any way to the Apostles; that Peter in his lifetime would be looked upon as the Bishop of Rome; that bishops were successors of the Apostles, even though Vatican II had made the same claims. ("A Wayward Turn in Biblical Theory" by Msr. George A. Kelly can be read on the internet at http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Dossier/Jan-Feb00/Article5.html)
Of course, Fr. Brown believed in what the Church taught, but claimed he had to compartmentalize his faith in one part of his brain to keep it separate from his historical-critical findings. Protestant scholars like Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann attempted a similar distinction early in the twentieth century when they attempted to distinguish between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith." The so-called "Jesus Seminar" begun in 1985 by R. Funk and J. D. Crossan plowed this same path. Professor Scott Hahn considers this approach “a modern version of the double-truth theory advocated by the thirteenth-century Averroist philosophers.”
Averroists like Siger of Brabant argued that what is true in philosophy, for example, may not be true in religion and vice versa. It is worth noting that Muslim apologists are apparently fond of citing Fr. Brown precisely because his views give them a wedge with which to deny the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, which Fr. Brown accepted. More importantly, as Hahn observes, historical criticism has not found consensus on a single passage of Scripture since it began two centuries ago. Nonetheless, it can be a valid and valuable tool if used in accord with the principles given by the Magisterium, especially in Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on Divine Revelation.
It was about a dozen years after this before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, subsequently Pope Benedict XVI, but then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office) with Fr. Brown present, “delivered the most trenchant critique of the erring philosophical and theological presuppositions which lay behind the historical-critical method since the early days of the Pontifical Biblical Institute founded by Pope Leo XIII.” The Cardinal called for a “criticism of the criticism” and for exposing its “appearance of quasi-clinical-scientific certainty.”
He argued that the historical-critical method, while a valid tool, was far from purely objective, historical or scientific and said that the search for the “historical Jesus” had “‘led only to the multiplication of contradictory theories and hypothesis’ based on the prejudice of unbelief, he shows how ‘a veritable fence’ was placed around the Scriptures, blocking all but the ‘initiated’ new exegetes from its sacred precincts.” At its core, exegesis and hermeneutics, had given way to fashionable exegetical schools incorporating everyone from Marx to feminist exegesis with the inevitable abandonment of the Church Fathers and the production of a revisionist Christology and Ecclesiology, undermining the faith. He especially criticized the notion that “what is simple must be original,” which is contradicted by the complex weave of history itself and yet was uncritically accepted. The end result was to reduce Jesus to “Judaic” eschatological prophet or rabbi based upon political prejudices, not “scientific” research.
Not only has dissent plagued Biblical studies and commentators attributed errors to inspired authors and what the Church has always called history been designated as “myths, midrash and pious narrative” but there is a penchant to deny anything miraculous or prophetic as if this was somehow beyond God. This latter tendency is a by-product of rationalism, which in its extreme forms rejects supernatural truths. Germany was the hub of rationalistic Biblical studies and men like the previously mentioned Wellhausen (who was a historian not a theologian) were prominent in this community. Today’s scholars have too often adopted old rationalist errors. What has the Church taught about the Bible and particularly the gospels? Pope Leo XIII in his 1893 encyclical, On the Study of Holy Scripture (Providentissimus deus) denounced rationalists who claimed that the gospels were not the work of the apostles and called them “true children and inheritors of older heretics,” noting:
It is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Sacred 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 Ghost; 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. This is the ancient and unchanging Faith of the Church... It follows 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.
When you read commentaries that claim that the multiplication of the loaves was really only Jesus inspiring his listeners to share food they were hoarding rather than a true miracle, you know you are seeing rationalist errors that have been frequently censured by the Magisterium. It is important to know that the Church teaches that there are no errors in the Bible (assuming their are no errors in the manuscript(s) from which the text is drawn and the translation) and this inerrancy is not restricted to passages pertaining to doctrine and morality only as we have seen from Pope Leo XIII, who points out that this was “solemnly defined” by the Councils of Florence (1441), Trent (1545-1563) and the First Vatican Council (1869-1870).
Some have claimed that although Popes Pius X and Pope Benedict XV had reinforced Leo’s encyclical, that Pope Pius XII changed Leo XIII’s teaching on Bible inerrancy because he encouraged scholars to study literary forms in his 1943 encyclical, Promotion of Biblical Studies (Divino Afflante Spiritu), but he specifically urged all to adhere to Leo XIII “religiously” and wrote:
“It is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Sacred Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred” In his encyclical Some False Opinions Which Threaten to Undermine Catholic Doctrine (Humani Generis), he condemned the proposition that "[I]mmunity from error extends only to those parts of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters." The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed this teaching noting:
"The Books of the Old and New Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts, as enumerated in the Decree of the same Council (Trent) and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be received as Sacred and Canonical. And the Church holds them as Sacred and Canonical not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her Authority; nor only because they contain revelation without errors, but because, having been written under the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their Author."
Still the those who opposed this teaching found a crack in the door for their position when they quoted Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation or Dei Verbum, which was quoted by the 1990 New Jerome Bible Commentary, co-authored by among others, the late Fr. Brown, as follows:
On inerrancy Vatican II made an important qualification as our italics indicate: ‘The Books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching, firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.' However, they failed to quote the first part of that sentence which puts the last part in context:
Therefore since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching, firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.
The New Jerome Bible Commentary then proceeds to argue against what it failed to cite claiming that “pre-voting debates show an awareness of errors in the Bible.” The results of the “pre-voting,” however, are not what counts, but rather the Council’s decision which is binding. Some would also try to distinguish between "saving truths" and "profane truths," so as to imply that the latter are not covered by this description of inerrant Scripture. The profane truth, referring to philosophic or scientific truth derives from Greco-Roman thinking. The "saving truths" are the Biblical type of truth which is essentially religious and theological. But the Judaeo-Christian concept of truth has to do with the revelation of the mystery of the divine persons is the truth the Second Vatican Council referred to as "saving truth." Since so-called "profane truth" is always connected to or even subsumed by the "saving truth" there is no reason to pit the two concepts against one another. Dei Verbum does not limit inspiration to only some passages in Scripture.
In 1964 the Pontifical Biblical Council issued "The Historicity of the Gospels" (Sancta Mater Ecclesia), which also is critical of the rationalists under the title “Erroneous Premises”:
Some proponents of this method, motivated by rationalistic prejudices, refuse to recognize the existence of a supernatural order. They deny the intervention of a personal God in the world by means of Revelation in the strict sense, and reject the possibility or actual occurrences of a miracles and prophecies, regarding faith as indifferent to, or even incompatible with historical truth. Some deny, a priori, as it were, the authority of the Apostles as witnesses of Christ. Belittling their office and their influence in the primitive community, these people exaggerate the creative power of the community itself. All these opinions are not only contrary to Catholic doctrine, but also devoid of scholarly foundation and inconsistent with the sound principles of the historical method.
It reminds us that the “Gospels were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who preserved the authors from every error” and that after our Lord rose from the dead they were “filled with all gifts and had perfect knowledge” As Dei Verbum 19 states, "The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explaining some things in view of the situation of their churches and preserving the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus." The Church reminds seminary teachers that they should “give primary consideration to the presentation of theological doctrine, so that Sacred Scripture “may become the pure and perpetual fountainhead for the spiritual life of every future priest” (Sancta Mater Ecclesia, p. 9.).
Of course, there is still a basic need to search out the intention of the sacred writer and to distinguish the kind of literature being employed (e.g., poetry, history, parable, gospel, etc.) with attention to the characteristic styles of speaking, narrating and communication that prevailed at the time of the sacred writer. We should recognize that as St. Augustine noted, the Holy Spirit who spoke through the sacred writers, "'did not intend to teach men these things - that is the essential nature of the things of the universe - things in no way profitable to salvation'; which principle 'will apply to cognate sciences, and especially to history . . .'" (Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, 3).
The principle of totality and the Christocentric nature of history are reflected in The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) when it states that: "since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith" (paragraph 12). We have to appreciate the unity of Scripture in order to appreciate the truth that is being conveyed in any specific passage.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes Holy Mother Church “has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord’s Body” and that “in Sacred Scripture the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength” (CCC para 103-104). St. Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin in 410 AD was said to have translated the word on his knees, producing the magnificent Latin Vulgate, the only Bible the Church has ever declared “free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals."
The footnotes, which are not inspired in a Bible, can give the impression that the Bible has contradictions and errors of history and even, morality. For example, contrary to the Tradition of the Church, in the introduction to the NAB, the translators endorse the popular theory of Julius Wellhausen, a 19th century liberal German Protestant, which claims that the Pentateuch is not a coherent narrative, but rather the product of redaction and editing, which did not take its final form until the sixth century B.C., whereas the traditional teaching that Moses authored the Pentateuch is dismissed in favor of a hypothesis that posits four principle sources, namely, Yahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomic (D) and Priestly (P). The popular J, E, D and P theory is considered outdated by many scholars today, both Protestant and Catholic (see for example The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch by Umberto Cassuto; The Redaction of Genesis by Gary A. Rendsburg; or Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis: A Case for Literary Unity (1985) by P.J. Wiseman).
This theory of the progressive development of texts from diverse sources separated in time was developed about the same time as the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, the net effect of the so-called Documentary hypothesis or JEDP is to make contradictions and cast doubt on statements, such as, “the Lord said to Moses.” The reverence of the Early Church Fathers for Holy Scripture is too often discounted or forgotten, as many now embrace the rationalist view of German Protestant scholars like Wellhausen (a historian), who never hid his animus for Catholicism.
Wellhausen’s theory illustrates the undue influence of historicism, as he tends to date the four sources of the Pentateuch by where they fit into his historical scheme rather than on scientific criteria. (Source: "What is Biblical Criticism—and Should we Trust It?" By Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B., page 14, This Rock, April 2005) This theory, which some believe inimical to Christian Orthodoxy, becomes primary in their hermeneutics.
Similarly the some Bible translators embrace a multi-source theory for the Gospel of Matthew, using Q (a hypothetical list of Jesus' sayings), Mk (meaning it came from Mark's gospel) and M (from Matthew's gospel) for the sources, with the same bottom line, thus they claim, Scripture is not a coherent whole written by eyewitnesses and therefore not reliable as history. In chapter 9, footnote 9-8, the NAB claims that Matthew’s description of the awe of the crowd witnessing God giving “men” (i.e., Jesus) the authority to forgive sins suggests, “the power of the Christian community to forgive sins in Jesus’ name.” What impact does this interpretation have on the Catholic sacrament of Reconciliation? Is the Christian community synonymous with the priesthood or are they implying that the authors (i.e. Q, Mk or M) put words into Jesus mouth? Numerous footnotes allege that Matthew borrowed from Mark, even though the testimony of the Church Fathers was that Matthew, an eyewitness and one of the original twelve, wrote the first gospel (in Hebrew or Aramaic), not Mark. The conclusion from the footnote cited above is based on form criticism (internal evidence), not historical evidence, which contradicts it. This seems to lessen the value of Matthew’s testimony because it is borrowed. Stick with the Church Fathers!
More pernicious still is the suggestion in footnote 16: 21-23 from Matthew 16, that Jesus’ predictions of His passion and death cannot “as they stand, go back to Jesus himself.” They don’t say why not, but imply that this was a later redaction and that the gospels are not really that accurate in recounting what Jesus said. They are only willing to grant that he probably foresaw “his mission would entail suffering and perhaps death.” Again, nothing based on fact and pernicious at best.
In Matthew 21, footnote 21:7, they claim Matthew misinterpreted Isaiah's prophecy about the Messiah, even though several popes have labeled this criticism as “absolutely wrong and forbidden.” Some scholars deny Jesus prediction of the second destruction of the Jerusalem temple (occurring in 70 A.D.) could have taken place even though it was also predicted by Micah 3: 12 and Jeremiah 7: 8-15; 9: 10-11; 26: 6, 18 and even by Jesus bar Ananias (Josephus, Bell 6.300ff).
How about celebrated Catholic scholars, surely they don’t engage in these sorts of anti-“Catholic” interpretation, do they? Fr. Raymond Brown, now deceased and one of the most respected of all Catholic Bible scholars of the twentieth century is an example. Msr. George A. Kelly, himself a noted Biblical scholar, tells how he and every other priest in New York was provided a copy of Fr. Brown’s book, Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections by Cardinal Cooke. Before he read it himself, a Catholic journalist came to Msgr. Kelly and reported that his faith was shaken by the book because Fr. Brown had confessed he could not prove from historical sources that:
that Christ instituted the priesthood or episcopacy as such; that those who presided at the Eucharist were really priests; that a separate priesthood began with Christ; that the early Christians looked upon the Eucharist as a sacrifice; that presbyter-bishops are traceable in any way to the Apostles; that Peter in his lifetime would be looked upon as the Bishop of Rome; that bishops were successors of the Apostles, even though Vatican II had made the same claims. ("A Wayward Turn in Biblical Theory" by Msr. George A. Kelly can be read on the internet at http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Dossier/Jan-Feb00/Article5.html)
Of course, Fr. Brown believed in what the Church taught, but claimed he had to compartmentalize his faith in one part of his brain to keep it separate from his historical-critical findings. Protestant scholars like Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann attempted a similar distinction early in the twentieth century when they attempted to distinguish between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith." The so-called "Jesus Seminar" begun in 1985 by R. Funk and J. D. Crossan plowed this same path. Professor Scott Hahn considers this approach “a modern version of the double-truth theory advocated by the thirteenth-century Averroist philosophers.”
Averroists like Siger of Brabant argued that what is true in philosophy, for example, may not be true in religion and vice versa. It is worth noting that Muslim apologists are apparently fond of citing Fr. Brown precisely because his views give them a wedge with which to deny the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, which Fr. Brown accepted. More importantly, as Hahn observes, historical criticism has not found consensus on a single passage of Scripture since it began two centuries ago. Nonetheless, it can be a valid and valuable tool if used in accord with the principles given by the Magisterium, especially in Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on Divine Revelation.
It was about a dozen years after this before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, subsequently Pope Benedict XVI, but then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office) with Fr. Brown present, “delivered the most trenchant critique of the erring philosophical and theological presuppositions which lay behind the historical-critical method since the early days of the Pontifical Biblical Institute founded by Pope Leo XIII.” The Cardinal called for a “criticism of the criticism” and for exposing its “appearance of quasi-clinical-scientific certainty.”
He argued that the historical-critical method, while a valid tool, was far from purely objective, historical or scientific and said that the search for the “historical Jesus” had “‘led only to the multiplication of contradictory theories and hypothesis’ based on the prejudice of unbelief, he shows how ‘a veritable fence’ was placed around the Scriptures, blocking all but the ‘initiated’ new exegetes from its sacred precincts.” At its core, exegesis and hermeneutics, had given way to fashionable exegetical schools incorporating everyone from Marx to feminist exegesis with the inevitable abandonment of the Church Fathers and the production of a revisionist Christology and Ecclesiology, undermining the faith. He especially criticized the notion that “what is simple must be original,” which is contradicted by the complex weave of history itself and yet was uncritically accepted. The end result was to reduce Jesus to “Judaic” eschatological prophet or rabbi based upon political prejudices, not “scientific” research.
Not only has dissent plagued Biblical studies and commentators attributed errors to inspired authors and what the Church has always called history been designated as “myths, midrash and pious narrative” but there is a penchant to deny anything miraculous or prophetic as if this was somehow beyond God. This latter tendency is a by-product of rationalism, which in its extreme forms rejects supernatural truths. Germany was the hub of rationalistic Biblical studies and men like the previously mentioned Wellhausen (who was a historian not a theologian) were prominent in this community. Today’s scholars have too often adopted old rationalist errors. What has the Church taught about the Bible and particularly the gospels? Pope Leo XIII in his 1893 encyclical, On the Study of Holy Scripture (Providentissimus deus) denounced rationalists who claimed that the gospels were not the work of the apostles and called them “true children and inheritors of older heretics,” noting:
It is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Sacred 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 Ghost; 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. This is the ancient and unchanging Faith of the Church... It follows 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.
When you read commentaries that claim that the multiplication of the loaves was really only Jesus inspiring his listeners to share food they were hoarding rather than a true miracle, you know you are seeing rationalist errors that have been frequently censured by the Magisterium. It is important to know that the Church teaches that there are no errors in the Bible (assuming their are no errors in the manuscript(s) from which the text is drawn and the translation) and this inerrancy is not restricted to passages pertaining to doctrine and morality only as we have seen from Pope Leo XIII, who points out that this was “solemnly defined” by the Councils of Florence (1441), Trent (1545-1563) and the First Vatican Council (1869-1870).
Some have claimed that although Popes Pius X and Pope Benedict XV had reinforced Leo’s encyclical, that Pope Pius XII changed Leo XIII’s teaching on Bible inerrancy because he encouraged scholars to study literary forms in his 1943 encyclical, Promotion of Biblical Studies (Divino Afflante Spiritu), but he specifically urged all to adhere to Leo XIII “religiously” and wrote:
“It is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Sacred Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred” In his encyclical Some False Opinions Which Threaten to Undermine Catholic Doctrine (Humani Generis), he condemned the proposition that "[I]mmunity from error extends only to those parts of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters." The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed this teaching noting:
"The Books of the Old and New Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts, as enumerated in the Decree of the same Council (Trent) and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be received as Sacred and Canonical. And the Church holds them as Sacred and Canonical not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her Authority; nor only because they contain revelation without errors, but because, having been written under the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their Author."
Still the those who opposed this teaching found a crack in the door for their position when they quoted Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation or Dei Verbum, which was quoted by the 1990 New Jerome Bible Commentary, co-authored by among others, the late Fr. Brown, as follows:
On inerrancy Vatican II made an important qualification as our italics indicate: ‘The Books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching, firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.' However, they failed to quote the first part of that sentence which puts the last part in context:
Therefore since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching, firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.
The New Jerome Bible Commentary then proceeds to argue against what it failed to cite claiming that “pre-voting debates show an awareness of errors in the Bible.” The results of the “pre-voting,” however, are not what counts, but rather the Council’s decision which is binding. Some would also try to distinguish between "saving truths" and "profane truths," so as to imply that the latter are not covered by this description of inerrant Scripture. The profane truth, referring to philosophic or scientific truth derives from Greco-Roman thinking. The "saving truths" are the Biblical type of truth which is essentially religious and theological. But the Judaeo-Christian concept of truth has to do with the revelation of the mystery of the divine persons is the truth the Second Vatican Council referred to as "saving truth." Since so-called "profane truth" is always connected to or even subsumed by the "saving truth" there is no reason to pit the two concepts against one another. Dei Verbum does not limit inspiration to only some passages in Scripture.
In 1964 the Pontifical Biblical Council issued "The Historicity of the Gospels" (Sancta Mater Ecclesia), which also is critical of the rationalists under the title “Erroneous Premises”:
Some proponents of this method, motivated by rationalistic prejudices, refuse to recognize the existence of a supernatural order. They deny the intervention of a personal God in the world by means of Revelation in the strict sense, and reject the possibility or actual occurrences of a miracles and prophecies, regarding faith as indifferent to, or even incompatible with historical truth. Some deny, a priori, as it were, the authority of the Apostles as witnesses of Christ. Belittling their office and their influence in the primitive community, these people exaggerate the creative power of the community itself. All these opinions are not only contrary to Catholic doctrine, but also devoid of scholarly foundation and inconsistent with the sound principles of the historical method.
It reminds us that the “Gospels were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who preserved the authors from every error” and that after our Lord rose from the dead they were “filled with all gifts and had perfect knowledge” As Dei Verbum 19 states, "The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explaining some things in view of the situation of their churches and preserving the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus." The Church reminds seminary teachers that they should “give primary consideration to the presentation of theological doctrine, so that Sacred Scripture “may become the pure and perpetual fountainhead for the spiritual life of every future priest” (Sancta Mater Ecclesia, p. 9.).
Of course, there is still a basic need to search out the intention of the sacred writer and to distinguish the kind of literature being employed (e.g., poetry, history, parable, gospel, etc.) with attention to the characteristic styles of speaking, narrating and communication that prevailed at the time of the sacred writer. We should recognize that as St. Augustine noted, the Holy Spirit who spoke through the sacred writers, "'did not intend to teach men these things - that is the essential nature of the things of the universe - things in no way profitable to salvation'; which principle 'will apply to cognate sciences, and especially to history . . .'" (Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, 3).
The principle of totality and the Christocentric nature of history are reflected in The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) when it states that: "since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith" (paragraph 12). We have to appreciate the unity of Scripture in order to appreciate the truth that is being conveyed in any specific passage.
