As a Catholic who wants to think with the Church, I have to answer "no." That is not to say that I read the Bible as a fundamentalist. I most certainly do not! So how do I approach the Bible as a Catholic? Well, stay with me for a bit; and I will do my best to explain.
At Vatican II, in its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation,
Dei Verbum in Latin, the Catholic
Church reiterated its ancient conviction that Scripture, as God’s written word,
could not be at odds with reality, could not deceive:
Since,
therefore, all that the inspired authors, or sacred writers, affirm should be
affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Sacred Scripture,
firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake
of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures. Thus, “all
Scripture is inspired by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be
complete, equipped for every good work (2 Tim.3:16)” (DV,11).
Although not employed by Dei Verbum, the term “inerrancy” came
into vogue in the nineteenth century to denote Scripture’s freedom from error.
In discussions of Dei Verbum’s teaching on inerrancy, the
portion I have italicized is the common citation. As we can see though, this
omits the first clause of a very dense, complex sentence, “Since, therefore, all that the inspired authors, or sacred writers, affirm should be affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we
must acknowledge…” The same thought is continued by 2 Timothy 3:16, “all Scripture is inspired by God.”
Because all of Scripture was produced under the action of the Holy Spirit, for
the sake of our salvation, it must be acknowledged as teaching the truth
“firmly, faithfully and without error.” The Church is not subscribing to
fundamentalism, taking every word at face-value; but it is saying that once we
take account of literary genres and figurative language, whatever Scripture
does in fact affirm is without error.
Admittedly, there are many gifted
Catholic scripture scholars and churchmen who do not present Dei Verbum in the manner I have. Rather
than a reaffirmation of the Church’s historic faith in the inerrancy of Scripture,
they see it positing a limitation. The widely used New Jerome Biblical Commentary, in its article “Church Pronouncements,”
says:
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”
(3:11)…Thus, it is proper to take the clause as specifying: Scriptural teaching
is truth without error to the extent that it conforms to the salvific purpose
of God. Decisions about that purpose involves an a posteriori approach in the
church, paying attention to literary forms and historical conditions.”
Robert
Gnuse, associate professor of Old Testament at Loyola University in New Orleans,
in his work The Authority of the Bible,
devoted less than half a page to the issue, concluding that the Church has
clearly rejected a position of “total inerrancy”:
Several revisions during the Second Vatican Council
between 1962 and 1964 transformed [Dei
Verbum] from a narrow statement to a more open definition, which could
admit the truth of salvation was without error while the written words need not
be…The final statement read, “…we must profess of the books of Scripture that
they teach with certainty, with fidelity and without error the truth which God
wanted recorded in the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.”
Thus, the Roman Catholic Church has rejected several views
in the last two centuries: subsequent approval by the Church or the Spirit, negative
assistance by the Spirit, verbal dictation, inspiration of ideas, inspiration
of faith and morals, and total inerrancy.
Avery Dulles, now Avery Cardinal Dulles, writing in 1980,
surveyed the landscape as follows:
The
Council makes the rather ambiguous statement that “the books of Scripture”
teach “firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted to put
into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation” (DV 11). While some
commentators interpret this sentence as excluding all error from the Bible, it
may be read as asserting that, while there may be erroneous statements here or
there, they are corrected elsewhere or do not affect the meaning of the whole.
Further, the Council’s statement might seem to allow for errors in matters
without importance for our salvation…In Roman Catholicism, many prominent
theologians still assert inerrancy, but only in a very qualified manner.
Norbert Lohfink, for example, has maintained that the unity of the Bible
demands that each individual statement be interpreted in terms of the whole, so
that it no longer bears the meaning which it would have if read in isolation.
Thus an erroneous statement in one or another of the books of Scripture does
not compromise the inerrancy of the Bible. Other Catholic theologians, as we
have seen, insist only on the “salvific truth” of Scripture, and are willing to
admit scientific and historical errors. Oswald Loretz,
on the other hand, holds that the Bible is true in the Hebrew sense of being
reliable and faithful, but not in the Greek scientific sense, which would
demand conformity between statements and the facts they refer to.
The “salvific truth” of
Scripture, often spoken of as matters of faith and morals, seems to place the
same truth restrictions on Scripture that have been recognized in papal infallibility.
Fr. Raymond Brown, however, sees an even more extensive limit to inerrancy:
In
the last hundred years we have moved from an understanding wherein inspiration
guaranteed that the Bible was totally inerrant to an understanding wherein
inerrancy is limited to the Bible’s teaching of “that truth which God wanted
put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.” In this long
journey of thought the concept of inerrancy was not rejected but was seriously
modified to fit the evidence of biblical criticism which showed that the Bible
was not inerrant in questions of science, of history, and even of time-conditioned religious beliefs.
Brown’s statement serves as an
example of the slippery slope we begin down when limiting the inerrancy, and I
would say, as a result, the authority of Scripture. As Augustine of Hippo wrote
so many centuries ago, “…if we once admit in that supreme monument of
authority, [the Scriptures], even one polite lie, no shred of those books will
remain. Whenever anyone finds anything therein that is difficult to practice or
hard to believe, he will refer to this most pernicious precedent and explain it
as the idea or practice of a lying author.” We can see the fruit of setting such a limit
to Scripture’s teaching being borne out today in debates among the faithful of
the Catholic and a host of other Christian communities: Is Jesus truly the only
way to the Father (John 14:6; Acts 4:12), or is that simply time-conditioned
religious language, the profession of a small sect trying to establish its
identity against its parent Judaism and pagan mystery rites? Shouldn’t we
Christians living in a pluralistic society recognize other faiths as equally
valid, and equally valuable, paths to God? Many Christians today question
whether homosexual acts are truly a violation of God’s design for humanity (Romans
1:24-27); or again, is that simply the time-conditioned belief of an earlier,
less tolerant age? Before I go too far a field let me stop and ask: Did Vatican
II really open this Pandora’s box?
Much more accomplished
theologians than myself maintain that it did not, that what we are dealing with
is a false interpretation of Dei Verbum.
We will proceed to look at a number of reasons for reaching such a conclusion.
The first of which, as we have already seen, is context.
After all, isn’t one of the cardinal
rules of exegesis to look at a statement within its immediate context? Cutting
off the first half of a sentence is an odd way to do that. Notice how different
the sense is when it is included, “Since,
therefore, all that the inspired authors, or sacred writers, affirm should be
affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Sacred
Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God,
for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures.”
Obviously I am working from an
English translation of the text. Did the original Latin text convey a different
meaning? Augustin Cardinal Bea, co-chair of the commission responsible for Dei Verbum did not see one. He wrote:
…the
phrasing we now have does not admit of any such interpretation [limiting
inerrancy], because the idea of salvation is not directly linked with the noun
“truth” but with the verbal expression “wanted put into the sacred writings;”
in other words, the phrase in which the text speaks of salvation explains God’s
purpose in causing the Scriptures to be written, and not the nature of the
truth enshrined therein.
It is wise to take Cardinal Bea
as our teacher here.
He was in a singular position to speak on the text of Dei Verbum. Not only was he co-chair, but he had also served as
Director of the Pontifical Biblical Institute for nineteen years prior to the
Council. As such, his reputation concerning Scripture was not that of a
hardened conservative. He was widely regarded as the principal architect behind
the “magna carta” of Catholic biblical studies, Pope Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu.
Bea saw no limit being set to
inerrancy in Dei Verbum’s statement.
Recognizing the difficulty that had arisen among some interpreters, he explained
the development of the statement in earlier versions:
An
earler schema (the third in succession) said that the sacred books teach “truth
without error”. The following schema, the fourth, inspired by the words of St.
Augustine, added the adjective “saving,” so that the text asserted that the
Scriptures taught “firmly, faithfully, wholly and without error the saving
truth.” In the voting which followed one hundred and eighty-four council
fathers asked for the word “saving” to be removed, because they feared it might
lead to misunderstandings, as if the inerrancy of Scripture referred only to
matters of faith and morality, whereas there might be error in the treatment of
other matters. The Holy Father [Paul VI], to a certain extent sharing this
anxiety, decided to ask the Commission to consider whether it would not be
better to omit the adjective, as it might lead to some misunderstanding. After
a long and wearisome debate, with much discussion and several ballots, the
present text was accepted, the adjective “saving” being omitted: “the truth
which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.”
…even
at the stage of the discussion, when the Conciliar Theological Commission put
forward the term “the saving truth,” it explained that by this expression it
did not mean to restrict inerrancy to matters of faith and morals. In order to
show that this had not been its intention, it explained that the text spoke of
“truth” in the singular, not of “truths,” as if it had wished to discriminate
between those which are necessary for salvation and others which are not.
Moreover, in spite of this prudent explanation the word “saving” was finally
eliminated from the text and replaced with another expression, in order to
prevent any possibility of implying that the inerrancy was restricted.
…all
those (and in the first place the Pope himself) who had been anxious to prevent
the possible misunderstanding that might have arisen from the expression “the
saving truth” have instead accepted the present form, which means they consider
that this does not present the same danger of misunderstanding.
The
Pope and the council fathers were obviously mistaken. Providentially, however,
the Conciliar Theological Commisson attached a footnote to the statement on
inerrancy, referencing portions of two recent papal encyclicals on Scripture,
Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus(1893)
and Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943).
This footnote, which none of the “limited inerrancy “theologians and exegetes I
have read make mention of, should end all debate on the matter. Dei Verbum is to be understood as consistent
with previous magisterial teaching:
Yes, the “official,” and ancient,
faith of the Catholic Church is that Scripture is, in the words of Dei Verbum, “without error.”
But do not make the mistake of
concluding that we Catholics are to read the Bible as fundamentalists
either. With great wisdom, Dei Verbum, turns immediately from these
truths to matters of interpretation. Knowing by faith that Scripture is free
from error doesn’t erase difficulties in the text, apparent contradictions,
etc. Faith does not magically bridge the miles and centuries between us and the
biblical writers. These texts, “inspired by God and committed to writing once
and for all time,”
forever tie us to our ancestors in the ancient Middle East. We need to:
…carefully
search out the meaning which the sacred author really had in mind, that meaning
which God had thought well to manifest through the medium of their
words…attention must be paid to literary forms for the fact is that truth is
differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing,
in prophetical and poetical texts,” and in other forms of literary expression.
Hence the exegete must look for that meaning which the sacred writer, in a
determined situation and given the circumstances of his time and culture,
intended to express and did in fact express, through the medium of a contemporary
literary form...due attention must be paid both to the customary and
characteristic patterns of perception, speech and narrative which prevailed at
the age of the sacred writer, and to conventions which the people of his time
followed in their dealings with one another (DV, 12).
We need to make an important
distinction: we do not want to be literalist, but we do want to arrive at what
has traditionally been called Scripture’s literal
sense. Dei Verbum speaks to us of the
literal sense; it is “the meaning which the sacred authors really had in mind,
that meaning which God thought well to manifest” through the literary forms and
devices (and yes, even figurative language) we find in Scripture. To arrive at
this meaning the Church, while recognizing its limits, endorses the use of the
historical-critical method.
The historical-critical method uses scientific criteria to establish the
original form of the text, sources used in its composition, its literary genre,
and modifications the text likely underwent before reaching its final, fixed
form.
Scripture contains a variety of
literary forms (genres) and devices; and these have to be taken into account if
we are to understand what the sacred writers, what God, wanted to express and
teach us. Examples of these forms are: historical narrative (Ex.14:21- 22,29);
historical myth, or the communication of historical truth via the use of symbols (Genesis 1-11); poetry and hymns (Psalm 137:7-9); prophecy
(Malachi, Amos); apocalyptic (Isaiah 13:10; Matt.24:29; Book of Revelation);
pastoral instruction (Titus, 1&2 Timothy); and edifying fiction (Tobit, Judith).
An example of a literary device would be anthropomorphisms, ascribing human
characteristics to the Lord (Dt.11:12; Ex.13:3).
Recognizing this great variety of
expression rules out fundamentalism, taking each word literally, at face-value.
That is not the way we moderns express ourselves either; our daily speech is
peppered with idioms and our television filled with everything from news
reports and documentaries to soap operas. Knowing the form of expression is
absolutely essential to knowing what its producers want us to take from it.
Does Scripture contain errors? –
NO, NOT WHEN INTERPRETED CORRECTLY.
Dulles, Avery, “Scripture: Recent Protestant
and Catholic Views” in Theology Today
37:1 (1980): 7-26, p.20.
