By JOSEF FROULA
(Editor’s Note: Professor Josef Froula has taught dogmatic theology at Holy Apostles College and Seminary since 2003. He holds a master’s in humanities, a master’s in dogmatic theology, and is pursuing a doctorate in education.)
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November 18, 2015 marks the golden jubilee of the promulgation of Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. This momentous document of the Second Vatican Council sought to clarify the nature and scope of divine Revelation by answering the following questions. How does God manifest Himself to us? How do we participate in His life and knowledge? Can we really trust the words of Scripture?
With so much dissent and disagreement among Catholics of our day, it seems at times that our beliefs about God and how we relate to Him are thorny issues that present difficulties beyond resolution. Dei Verbum, however, offers consoling words to the contrary. If we submit our hearts and minds to the teaching Church, it becomes clear that “God, the first principle and last end of all things” can “be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty, and without the contamination of error” (Dei Verbum, n. 6).
Twenty years ago as a young graduate student in theology, I enrolled in a course on the Second Vatican Council. One of the many strong points of this class was that we read and discussed all sixteen documents, focusing on the texts themselves rather than on summaries or the interpretations of others. This experience was an eye-opener for me. Time and again, the teaching of the council leapt off the page to dispel my misconceptions which were based on what I had heard was in Vatican II. Dei Verbum was no exception: It is a common opinion among Catholic theologians that this document allows for error or falsehood throughout the books of the Bible.
Dei Verbum, however, upholds the clear and constant teaching of the Church that Sacred Scripture is absolutely immune from error. Because God’s Word is free from all falsehood, everything asserted in the Bible is true. How ironic it is that the very passage in the Second Vatican Council that upholds the traditional teaching of the Church on inerrancy is the one cited by those who claim that the teaching has changed. Over the past fifty years, hardly a single text from Vatican II has received more attention than this one:
“Since, therefore, all that the inspired authors, or sacred writers, affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of 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” (Dei Verbum, n. 11).
This passage reiterates the teaching of the Popes of the past century by declaring that because everything affirmed by the inspired human author is also affirmed by the Holy Spirit, it necessarily follows that everything affirmed by the human author is true. This teaching of Vatican II is straightforward enough: When God speaks to us, He speaks the truth “without error.” Since the rise of the rationalistic use of historical-critical exegesis in the 19th century, however, the growing trend among Catholic Scripture scholars is to hold that there are many false assertions in Scripture, and thus that the Bible teaches us the truth with error.
The most common argument that Dei Verbum n. 11 allows for errors in the Bible concerns the words “for the sake of our salvation” (nostrae salutis causa). Those who hold that there are false assertions in Scripture argue that these words limit inerrancy to those passages that are for the sake of our salvation as opposed to the passages that are not. There are three problems with this reading of Dei Verbum.
First, all of the passages in Scripture are for the sake of our salvation. There is a strong tradition in the Church, bequeathed to us by the Fathers, to find the greatest significance even in the smallest details. In every verse of Scripture, God speaks to us about things that are pertinent to our relationship with Him. Because every passage contains what God willed specifically to reveal to us, none of God’s word should be dismissed as irrelevant to our salvation.
Second, the phrase “for the sake of our salvation” does not limit or qualify the kind of truth that God teaches us in Scripture. Grammatically, both in the original Latin and in the official English translation cited above, “for the sake of our salvation” does not modify the word “truth.” Rather, it is an adverbial phrase modifying the verb “wished” (or “willed” — voluit in Latin): acting for the sake of our salvation, God willed to confide to the Scriptures the truth without any error.
Third, this reading also contradicts the clear teaching of previous Popes on inerrancy. To interpret this document correctly and to appreciate the fullness of the truth that it teaches, it is important to read it in its doctrinal context.
The date chosen for the promulgation of Dei Verbum shows its continuity with the encyclical Providentissimus Deus, which was issued exactly 72 years earlier, on November 18, 1893. In this landmark document, Pope Leo XIII says, “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” (PD, n. 20).
The Holy Father’s especially strong language is worth noting: saying that the human authors of Scripture have erred is “forbidden.” With equally strong language, Leo XIII makes it clear that the Church’s teaching on inerrancy has been solemnly defined: “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, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican” (PD, n. 20).
By saying that the Church’s teaching precluding “any error” in Scripture is “the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church” and has been “solemnly defined,” the Pope leaves no room for doubt. He is not simply stating his personal opinion. He is defining a dogma of the Magisterium which is necessarily unchanging. To make clear that Dei Verbum is reiterating this same dogma, n. 11 refers to these passages in Providentissimus Deus.
Both Dei Verbum and Providentissimus Deus clarify the reason why Scripture is incompatible with false assertions. God is the primary author of the Bible. This means that although He inspires human authors who make full use of their faculties of reason and will, God is more responsible for what is asserted than the human author is. Every truth of Scripture, then, is God’s truth first and foremost. Likewise, if there were any falsehood in Scripture, this falsehood would necessarily be God’s falsehood first and foremost. God would be more responsible for the falsehood than the human author would be.
But it is impossible that God be the author of falsehood. The reason for this is that God is the “Supreme Truth.” He is Truth itself. Truth is God’s very being. Truth is what God is. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible that falsehood come from Him; it is incompatible with the being of God.
Lest there be any doubt on this point, Pope Leo XIII says, “Hence, because the Holy Ghost 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” (PD, n. 20).
Any error that one would attempt to attribute to the human author, then, must be God’s error even more so. Further, the Church makes clear that the human authors wrote all of what God intended and only what He intended. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more” (CCC, n. 106).
But what about the apparent historical or scientific errors in the Bible? For example, the Book of Genesis says that God created the world in six days, which appears to be a scientific error. This, however, is not an assertion that the world was created in six twenty-four hour periods. The word “day” is being used metaphorically here, not literally. The doctrine of inerrancy, then, is not fundamentalism. It refers to the meaning of each assertion. In determining this meaning, all the linguistic devices being used, as well as the genre that each book is written in, must be taken into account. Thus, Scripture is free from all errors, including scientific and historical ones.
Emphasizing this point, Pope St. Pius X teaches that saying, “In the Sacred Books there are many passages referring to science or history where manifest errors are to be found…is equivalent to attributing to God Himself the lie of utility or officious lie” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, n. 36). In other words, to say that there are errors of science and history in Scripture is to call God a liar.
It is likewise impossible that there be any contradictions or irreconcilable passages in the Bible. For if one assertion flatly contradicted another, one of them would have to be false. Pope Benedict XV confirms this in his encyclical, Spiritus Paraclitus, where he says, “you cannot find things or statements which are contradictory” and consequently, “when Scripture seems to be in conflict with itself both passages are true despite their diversity” (SP, II.3). In the verses where there appear to be discrepancies, the Church requests of theologians that they make use of all the tools of exegesis to harmonize them.
The Church’s teaching on inerrancy, then, is a fundamental and guiding principle for the Scripture scholar. In this regard, St. Augustine is our model. In his work, The Harmony of Gospels, he takes up the parallel accounts in the four Gospels and shows that, rather than work against each other, different reports of the same event complement and illumine one another.
The Church’s teaching on absolute inerrancy inspires in us a profound sense of trust in the power and love of God. By means of human instruments, our Father supplies for us all that we need to know, love, and serve Him. He could have conveyed His truth to us directly, limiting His Revelation to the theater of the individual soul. Rather, He chose to speak to us through the writings of human beings who reflected the contingencies of time and place, using a variety of genres and literary figures. The Holy Scriptures, which are the Word of God, are also the word of man. They are at once fully divine and fully human.
This unity of the divine and human in Revelation mirrors the unity of the divine and human in Christ Himself. Christ, though human, cannot sin because He is also divine. In the same way, the sacred texts of Scripture, though human, cannot convey falsehood because they are fully divine, having God as their primary author. Both Christ and His written word, because they are a union of the divine and human, manifest the will of God that we be united forever with Him in Heaven.
And both make clear that He will not save us without our cooperation. Our Lord imparts to us the honor and obligation to serve as causes of our own salvation and the salvation of others. Like the human authors of Scripture, we are called to live and spread the Word of God with confidence and trust in His truth.
Although the mode that we use to spread the Word of God may reflect and be adapted to our circumstances, the truth of this Word is eternal and unchanging. The Word of God, which is the Truth of Christ Himself, remains the same yesterday, today, and forever.
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