The Unity and Interpretation of Sacred Scripture
An Essay on the Catholic Theological Tradition
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he Catholic today is often asked how he or she can continue to view the Bible as the inspired word of God in light of so many impressive works of modern scholarship that seek to demonstrate such things as that the Sacred Scriptures were not all written by those whose names they bear. Those who appeal to such biblical scholarship, which purports to penetrate the inner meaning of the text by identifying authorial intent and sitz im leben, argue that certain texts (especially those of the Old Testament) were assembled over a period of time—some were changed, others enlarged, and still others are supposed by many to have been combined and recombined through several redactions. In short, that the 66 chapters of Isaiah all bear the name of that prophet cannot be held as the guarantor of their unity, authority, or place among the writings that the Catholic Church has held as sacred since the first century. And yet it was never the names by which the books were known that constituted the mark of their authenticity for the apostles and their early successors, the Church’s ancient bishops, priests, and theologians of the first, second, third, and fourth centuries. Always, one finds the ancients proclaiming a verse from Sacred Scripture, “as the Holy Spirit declared.”[1] Thus there is a theological basis, upon which the Catholic Church declares for the diverse collection of Sacred Scripture a fundamental unity of meaning, and this basis is none other than the Incarnation of God the Son, who took flesh and was born as man upon the earth to offer Himself on behalf of the world for its salvation, He whom the Church has ever held to be “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”[2]
The historical development of Sacred Scripture is not simply the development of human thought regarding God (for much of humanity’s rumination on the divine has not found its way into Sacred Scripture). No, this is not Man’s imaginative reflection on God. Rather, it is the progress of God’s self-revelation to Man. Therefore, just as God’s self-revelation achieved its fulfillment and completion in the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery, the Sacred Scriptures find their completion in the New Testament.[3] As salvation (eternal and sanctified personal communion with God) comes through the works not of fleshly man but of the Word-made-flesh,[4] so the Sacred Scriptures express not the word of mere men but the Word of the Lord. The inscribed word (Sacred Scripture) cannot be understood unless received and interpreted in and through the incarnate Word[5] (Jesus Christ).[6]
Scripture is a unity. Therefore, to attempt to fully understand the truth that the Holy Spirit intended to convey within the Old Testament apart from the rest of the Bible would be to set one’s efforts toward understanding the giving of law apart from the one who came to fulfill it, “[f]or the law was given by Moses: grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”[7] As Christ said: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”[8] The Law of the Old Covenant given to the ancient people of Israel was the work of God, so in it the fullness of Truth will glimmer even in isolation. Nevertheless, if Sinai (the mountain of the Ten Commandments[9]) could be completely and truly interpreted apart from Calvary (the mountain of the crucifixion[10]), then Jesus, the incarnate Son of God and Son of Man, would never have delivered Himself into the hands of the Gentiles.[11] Theological exegesis of a certain Biblical text is flawed when it treats as inconsequential any text thought to be of later provenance, as if God’s later words did not illuminate His earlier. Fruitful penetration of the Old Testament’s meaning cannot be achieved in its fullness if such interpretation is attempted while ignoring God’s word in the New Testament. Thus theologically the Scriptures must be treated as a unity having one divine author,[12] and their eternal divine meaning cannot be properly understood except in light of what we know through Christ.
As God Himself is perfect unity, the Catholic tradition receives the Sacred Scriptures as having a true and fundamental unity, for they are the written word of God.[13] Furthermore, as the written word of God, spoken with His one voice, they are inerrant.[14] What role is held, then, by the human authors of the Scriptures, and what is the nature of Scriptural inspiration?
As God’s revelation was received by the sacred authors, the Holy Spirit was present throughout; as St. Peter wrote: “[Y]ou must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, / because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”[15] As the canon of Sacred Scripture solidified from oral tradition into written text, every phrase preserved was shaped to figure forth the meaning that God desired.[16] Therefore, Sacred Scripture is inspired on two counts:
First, the authors were inspired in that they were guided to proclaim what they did.[17] They cannot be considered as random-word generators or type-bins from which God selected a precise wording; however, God did select the precise meaning that was to be proclaimed[18] by the pen of the sacred authors according to their own skill and literary acumen.[19]
Second, the text is inspired[20] in that, as it was brought to final form through the period of its development, the Holy Spirit was ever working to refine that text by molding and augmenting its content to bring forth the fullness of divine meaning.[21] Thus, because the scope of the received Scriptures is conceivably beyond that known to any single sacred author or audience of that author’s time, the complete divinely-intended significance of the text may be deeper than that which we surmise to have been initially understood even by those to whom the word was originally delivered (although we cannot presume to know the limits of the sacred authors’ inspired understanding).[22] Christ said: “ ‘These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ / Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, / and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, / and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’ ”[23] Thus also St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians concerning those who, both in ancient times and in the present, were unable to perceive the Old Testament’s actual testimony to the New: “But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. / Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; / but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed.”[24] The received sacred text is not at its heart merely the result of the jostling and overlapping efforts of many authors—it is one fabric of many divinely spun and woven threads, conceived of by the Holy Spirit as its principal author and expressed by the particular devices and allocutions of the human authors.[25]
We may illustrate this dynamic with the concept of a play by one author, each of whose acts were attended by a different invited essayist. Each essayist was tasked with providing to his reading audience a summary of the act that he viewed; having returned to his home, he set down an account of the act that he had witnessed, perhaps offering a bit of interpretation as well. The original divine playwright Himself was also at hand, guiding faithfully these essayists while they wrote their accounts. As this record was gathered in oral or written form, the playwright (who was apparently rather concerned that His work not be misrepresented) ensured that the final published volume of essays was purged of any imperfections so that the narratives would convey with exactitude the substance of the play.
Let us explain the metaphor: The collection of essays is, of course, the Bible itself. The essayists are the human sacred authors, the play is the history of revelation (or “salvation history” as it is theologically termed), and the divine playwright is God. Here we see the two dimensions of scriptural inspiration: the authors are inspired in that the Holy Spirit—like the divine playwright now in the role of copy editor—has preserved the essayists’ texts from error so that nothing contrary to the meaning and content of the play is written. The sacred text is also inspired: the content of the inspired essays, now compiled in one volume, presents to us in its unity the design of the entire play.[26]
We may understand now why the Church holds it to be so important to accurately ascertain the meaning intended by the human sacred authors:[27] How are we to properly interpret the divine author’s play if we do not properly understand what His invited (and inspired) essayists meant to write concerning what they witnessed? However, we also understand why the Church holds that the entire meaning of revelation (the divine play) is not exhausted by the apparent intention of the sacred authors (the essayists): it may be that certain of the play’s symbols, meanings, and character arcs are only properly understood when interpreted in the light of a confluence of scenes to which no single essayist was privy. Moreover, the knowledge and guidance given to a single essayist may not have allowed him to fully penetrate the meaning even of the act to which he was assigned—that is, there may be symbolism and meaning in that act that, although apparently unnoticed by the essayist, we may notice in his account, guided as we are in the Church by the playwright (the Holy Spirit). [28] The sacred authors were inspired and preserved from error, but given sufficient understanding only to set down what God wished to have set down; no more and no less.[29] There is in all cases both a literal and a spiritual meaning[30] of Sacred Scripture; both senses are intended by God and both must be understood through the Church’s Magisterial teaching and ancient tradition.[31]
Thus, when Christ hung upon the cross, did the Roman soldiers refrain from breaking His legs in fulfillment of what was mysteriously foretold by the Mosaic law’s instruction concerning the Passover lamb: “break none of his bones.”[32] Thus also do we see the full meaning of book of Wisdom’s record of the crowd’s jeers against the righteous man: “ ‘[I]f the righteous man is God’s Son, He will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. / … / Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.’ / Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them, / and they did not know the secret purposes of God…”[33]
The Fathers, those ancient Catholic saints and exegetes whose handing-on of the apostolic teaching and whose Spirit-filled insight is the foundation of Catholic theology,[34] to be sure, understood that—to the Jews before the time of Christ—the prophecy may have spoken of the Messiah or even of an event already past. Yet the Holy Spirit did not assemble the Scriptures solely to give us a vague history lesson. Thus in the Catholic tradition,[35] the one who was foretold to be condemned to a “shameful death,” but who would thus fulfill the “secret purposes of God” was the Messiah: He was none other than Christ Himself, God incarnate, who died by the hand of the Gentiles in the most shameful death of that time, crucifixion, and who rose again on the third day, that all may rise, “for God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of His own eternity”[36] so that they might be wrong who said “no one has been known to return from Hades…”[37]
But what of the pre-history of the sacred texts? For it may be entirely true that the book of Genesis echoes ancient pre-Judaic polytheistic Canaanite mythology when it records: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image…’ ”.[38] However, the Catholic tradition does not venerate the Scriptures because it believes them to be mere rummage bins of pagan antiquity. Rather, whatever the ancient Jewish people took up from pagan texts was guided by God so that, through the centuries, purified sentences of truth might be re-fashioned from what had once been words corrupted unto falsehood.[39] When God said “Let us make,” the ancient Fathers saw that He had inspired this use of words to indicate, in a way hidden to the Jews before the Messiah,[40] in the book that tells of truths “in the beginning,” that the one God is Trinity.[41]
Still, perhaps, the perplexed reader may wonder: surely the human authors knew nothing of these matters; is not the Bible an unfolding revelation in which each successive stage has its proper place and ought not to be artificially interpreted so as to signify aught that the very people to whom the revelation was given would not have grasped? Let us clear things up a bit. Recall that both the authors and the text of Sacred Scriptures are inspired. A few corollaries:
First, the Sacred Scriptures were indeed assembled through an unfolding revelation of God to Man.
Second, however, the revelation was not delivered solely to the people of the time in which it was first spoken by the prophet, or first written down, or finally codified in the form that we have of it today. Not merely the record of God’s revelation, the Sacred Scriptures are God’s revelation, delivered to be preserved for all peoples and all times with a meaning that excludes revisionism by being unchanging, and eludes full description by being inexhaustible.[42]
Third, therefore, while the human sacred authors comprehended as much as was necessary to permit them to set down the text,[43] the Holy Spirit’s intentions were not limited by what we may surmise to be the bounds of the original audience’s understanding.[44] As Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman remarks, “whereas the argument of the critical commentator is that the sacred text need not mean more than the letter, those who adopt a deeper view of it maintain…that we have no warrant for putting a limit to the sense of words which are not human but divine.”[45]
Moreover, as we here speak not of the development of human thought but of God’s revelation, the Catholic tradition warns us: who are we to say that Isaiah[46] or David[47] were given to understand nothing of an Incarnation when they spoke of the Messiah? We cannot credit ourselves with such surety as to say that the ancient inspired writers may not have had some experiential grasp of the Trinity in their encounter with the God who was Triune “before all ages.”[48] (God, after all, did not suddenly become a Trinity when humanity explicitly understood Him to be so; Scripture speaks of realities, not only of states of human knowledge).[49] Setting aside, however, questions concerning the divinely-assisted perspicacity of the ancient human authors, when we read the Scriptures we seek to discern the divine intention which unifies the Scriptures at all levels. This, finally, is why the Scriptures must be interpreted through Christ and in the Church. His was not merely the chronologically-final revelation, but the fulfillment of revelation.[50] Revelation was neither replaced nor corrected but completed and brought to fruition by the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery. Through the Incarnation, then, we may see the depth of the Scriptures.
Our interpretation must be in conformity with the Holy Spirit who shaped that text.[51] For this we must turn to the living teaching authority of the Church which, as custodian of the tradition handed on from the apostles[52] and the “pillar and bulwark of the truth,”[53] is guided “into all truth”[54] by this Spirit.[55] This is not merely “what hindsight may fancy to see in the text,” but indeed what God intended. Certain critical methods which seek exclusively the history of the text can tell much but, as Catholic tradition has ever held, the eternal “secret purposes of God” were revealed to the whole world by the Incarnation. These truths are understood, safeguarded, and unfolded by His Church.[56] The Church tradition’s understanding of Scriptural testimony cannot be invalidated by source criticism any more than the divine playwright’s intentions could be invalidated by a critic reading the account of one act in isolation from the others.
Thus the Sacred Scriptures are both a closed and an open book. They are a closed book for, as God’s revelation was complete with the death of the last apostle,[57] so too is the written Scripture complete only with the close of its last book, the Apocalypse of St. John. There is no new revelation; all is contained in the apostolic deposit, written and unwritten,[58] which has been transmitted faithfully through the succession of bishops ordained by the apostles[59] following the ancient dictum: “Remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have set.”[60] Yet the Sacred Scriptures are an open book, for in (and only in) Christ, through His Mystical Body which is the Church, we may fully comprehend this divine unity. Here the fullness of the already-given revelation is offered to each man and woman ever more deeply in their lives, as the Second Vatican Council’s document Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation reaffirmed: “[T]he Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel rings out in the Church—and through her in the world—leads believers to the full truth” so that “the Word of Christ dwell[s] in them in all its richness.”[61]
For the Catholic tradition received from the apostles, Sacred Scripture’s diverse development testifies to its transcendent unity, found in the living Christ through His Mystical Body, the Church. Sacred Scripture is to be studied and lived for growth in wisdom, sanctity, and communion with God. Thus St. Paul writes: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness / that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”[62] The understanding of Sacred Scripture that we have here presented is not the novelty of some recent synod (for Catholic synods do not invent new “truths”). Nor is it some fancy theological footwork undertaken by a coterie of modern commentators. It is the law of faith and the rule of the Church, held since her beginning.[63] In the unity of the Church, in the unity of Christ, and here alone is to be found the unity of the Truth contained in the one written Word of God that has been scribed, assembled, and then interpreted under the infallible direction of the Holy Spirit. Such is the Catholic faith: haec autem scripta sunt ut credatis.[64]
In the course of discussion concerning this matter with both Catholics and non-Catholics, a number of potential misunderstandings have come to light. This section will attempt to demonstrate how they fun afoul of the teaching described earlier, and how they might be corrected to reflect the age-old belief of the Church, “that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.”[65]
There are in the Sacred Scriptures certain passages—particularly those in which God’s wrath or judgment are aroused and His vengeance or cleansing fire is rained upon the earth—which seem ill-matched with equally awe-inspiring but ever-so-more reassuring phrases of the New Testament such as the famous “God is love.”[66] Would it not be more reasonable, some propose, in light of the cooperation between the divine and human authors, that occasionally these two authors were at odds, that perhaps the influence of other religions tainted the ancient Hebrew writings? Such is the view which motivates metaphors such as that likening the Sacred Scriptures to a river with occasionally-competing currents but a general trajectory leading to the truth that we know revealed through Jesus Christ. Yet this is not correct. There is but one theological current intrinsic to Sacred Scripture, and it manifests itself in various ways throughout the history of salvation. Passages cannot be pitted as antagonists but must be understood in light of each other. That one theological current manifest in the text is God’s will to call His people to repentance and salvation through His Son, for “Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified.”[67]
In order that we may understand the flaw of the river metaphor, we must grasp its consequences for Sacred Scripture’s inspiration: In opposition to the Church’s constant tradition and definitive teaching,[68] the notion of contrary currents would have us believe that not every statement of Sacred Scripture introduced by “thus says the Lord” is in fact expressive of the word of God.[69] This fits neither with the understanding of Scripture ever held by the Church nor with the explication thereof that we have given above.[70] (This does not mean that the theological content of every passage thus introduced may be understood properly in isolation, but we will address this point later).
But would not this metaphor of the river, admitting as it does some theological currents in the Sacred Scriptures contrary to the divine will, show forth the “veil” of which St. Paul speaks over the ancients’ understanding? Not so. The veil is over the audience’s eyes, not those of the human sacred authors nor, certainly, those of God who is the text’s author. While it is often true that there may be competing theological currents in the audience’s grasp of the Sacred Scriptures, these competing currents are not intrinsic to the divinely-ordained meaning of the Scriptures themselves, inspired texts set forth by inspired authors. An interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures contrary to the authentic law of God is not simply a “different interpretation” or an interpretation “plausible for the historical context of the Ancient Near East,” but it is an interpretation that is incorrect where the inspired meaning is concerned, even if it is a plausible misunderstanding.[71] The inspiration of even those difficult passages, therefore, may not be contested. How are we to resolve this?
Recall that the Scriptures both recount revelation and are revelation. To deny this imposes an artificial veil on the text that impedes our understanding of it. As we have said, the text must be taken as a whole so that difficult passages are illuminated by others; all must be interpreted in the light of Christ and in light of the Father “who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”[72] All that He does in the Sacred Scriptures is done in service of this unchanging will, and this is how we must understand even the violent historical aspect of these passages.[73] The Holy Spirit intends for us to draw spiritual nourishment from the Sacred Scriptures; therefore we must first apply these difficult and often-violent passages to the spiritual warfare of our own lives in our internal battles against sin and temptation.
However, the metaphor of the river still has its value when applied properly: The progress of the chosen people through salvation History is the river. Recall that Sacred Scripture is not only the history of revelation to man but is revelation to man. It recounts history but its entire account is revelatory in nature. Therefore it bears witness to eddies—errors on the part of the Israelites, such as in the account of their mistaken decision to worship the golden calf in order to give adoration to the Lord despite His instruction that worship was to be without images or symbols God Himself[74]—but these are marked out clearly as errors by the inspired text; where Sacred Scripture treats of the mind of God, it does not misrepresent Him. This brings us to our next question.
An error opposite to the idea of competing currents is that which would claim that every passage of Scripture is self-interpreting and exhaustively expresses the mind of God such that it suffices to quote a single line of un-interpreted Scripture for the resolution of any question. By such thinking we would have to accept the unsettling portions of the Old Testament as speaking not of God’s dealings with a people yet unformed but of God’s intentions for us here and now. We should have to wonder why the Church does not encourage stoning and we should most likely end up having a great deal of difficulty in trying to understand how the God of the Old Testament can be the same as the God of the New. Such was the difficulty of Marcion in the second century of the Church, and he decided that the God of the old was not the God of the new, a decision which led to a host of other problems which it is not our task to discuss here. The more common modern solution, to decide that not all passages of Sacred Scripture were inspired, brings us back to the error discussed previously—that of competing theological currents, some divine, others not.
The Catholic Church has ever held that all portions of Sacred Scripture are equally the inspired word of God.[75] However, it is also true that no single passage is complete in itself. Each part of the Sacred Scriptures is an expression wholly from the mind of God but, in isolation, does not express the whole of the mind of God.[76] Thus the Second Vatican Council can state that “the books of the Old Testament, in accordance with the state of mankind before the time of salvation established by Christ, reveal to all men the knowledge of God and of man and the ways in which God, just and merciful, deals with men. These books, though they also contain some things which are incomplete and temporary, nevertheless show us true divine pedagogy.”[77] We may not discard any passage of either testament, because each passage is a facet of the whole, and each is equally the declaration of God. The Old Testament is theologically incomplete and (especially in its penitential and juridical mandates) provisional only insofar as it does not represent either the knowledge or practice of the fullness of life according to divine revelation as it is completed for us within the New Testament and given to us through the Church. It must be understood and completed through Christ, interpreted by the Church.
In this Church, therefore, we must continue to probe and study the Sacred Scriptures with a deepening appreciation of their richness and divinity. Solely in the Church can we come to the true understanding of the divine revelation, for solely to the Church has this revelation been now fully given, that in the Church it may be embraced by all men.
Those seeking a deeper understanding of the Church’s perennial teaching concerning the nature of Sacred Scripture are encouraged to read the Second Vatican Council’s document Dei Verbum, which summarizes and expounds the ancient tradition in excellent form. Dei Verbum is accessible under the “Vatican II” heading at the following address:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/
The Encyclical Letters referenced in this text are available at:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/
Interested readers seeking still further discussion of the various implications of scriptural inspiration according to the Catholic tradition might enjoy John Henry Cardinal Newman’s essay on the subject “On the Inspiration of Scripture” (from The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 15, No. 84, Feb. 1884) at the following address:
http://www.newmanreader.org/works/miscellaneous/Scripture.html
In all things recall that, though the Church develops her teachings to respond more precisely to the questions of the day, the essence of her doctrine is not new; these documents state, with the authority of the Church, what has been believed—as St. Vincent of Lérins famously wrote in the fifth century—“always, everywhere, and by everyone.”
[1] St. Paul and St. John prayed: “Sovereign Lord, who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, / who by the mouth of our father David, thy servant, didst say by the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 4:24-25) Pope St. Clement I (A.D. 96) wrote: “You have studied the Holy Scriptures, which are true and inspired by the Holy Spirit. You know that nothing contrary to justice or truth has been written in them.” (Epistle to the Corinthians 45) Pope St. Gregory the Great (ca. A.D. 600) wrote: “Most superfluous it is to inquire who wrote these things—we loyally believe the Holy Ghost to be the Author of the book. He wrote it who dictated it for writing; He wrote it who inspired its execution.” (Praef. in Job n. 2; qtd. in Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 20)
[2] Titus 2:13.
[3] John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”
[4] John 14:6: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.’”
[5] John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God.”
[6] Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 13: “For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men.” Cf. Hebrews 1:1-3: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; / but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. / He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature, upholding the universe by His word of power. When He had made purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…”
[7] John 1:17.
[8] Matthew 5:17.
[9] Exodus 24:16, 31:18: “The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and on the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud… / And He gave to Moses, when He had made an end of speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.”
[10] John 19:17: “So they took Jesus, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called ‘the Place of a Skull’, which is called in Hebrew Gol’gotha.” From the Latin word for “Skull” we have our English name “Calvary.”
[11] Matthew 20:18-19: “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death; / then they will hand Him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day He will be raised.”
[12] It is theologically evident that the Sacred Scriptures must be understood in unity. St. Theophilus of Antioch (ca. A.D. 180) wrote: “Confirmatory utterances are found both with the prophets and in the Gospels, because they all spoke inspired by one Spirit of God.” (To Autolycus 3)
Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 14-16 esp. 16: “God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New. …[T]he books of the Old Testament with all their parts…acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New Testament (see Matt. 5:17; Luke 24:27; Rom. 16:25-26; II Cor. 14:16) and in turn shed light on it and explain it.”
[13] As the written word of God, the Sacred Scriptures must be understood to have a fundamental unity. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11: “For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; II Tim. 3:16; II Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.”
[14] The Sacred Scriptures are inerrant concerning that of which they make pronouncement. St. Irenæus of Lyons (A.D. 198) wrote: “[We may be] most properly assured that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit.” (Against the Heresies ii, 28). Cf. Pope St. Clement I, A.D. 96, Epistle to the Corinthians 45)
We do not here treat specifically concerning the nature of the Scriptural inspiration in matters of historical or scientific fact. However, we offer a word of caution: it is common in some quarters to encounter the assertion that Dei Verbum 11, by stating that God committed to words those things he wished us to know “for the sake of our salvation,” implies that biblical inerrancy extends only to matters of salvation, or ‘faith and morals.’ This is not the case; rather Dei Verbum wished to state that the purpose of the Holy Bible is for our salvation; this is a guide to the mindset with which the reading of the Sacred Scriptures should be approached, not an attempt to limit its inerrancy, for the paragraph goes on to say that whatever is asserted by the Sacred Scriptures must be held to be asserted by God Himself. Thus, according to the constant tradition of the Church, Holy Scripture is protected from error not only in faith and morals but also in profane matters, however in a subtle way (cf. Conc. Vat. I, Sess. iii, Cap. 2; Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11; Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 20ff.; Pope Benedict XV, Spiritus Paraclitus 15ff. especially 19; Pope Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu 1, Humani Generis 22).
Critically, the infallibility of the Sacred Scriptures extends only to those assertions which the sacred authors (and therefore God Himself) manifestly and directly intend to make. Statements such as “the sun rose in the sky” are therefore not to be interpreted as exacting and scientific propositions: “[T]hey did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time…” (Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 18)
Moreover, one must interpret the sacred authors’ intentions according to their literary genre: “To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to ‘literary forms.’ For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture.” (Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 12)
Still, such attention to literary forms must not be used to dismiss the manifestly-intended significance of any passage: “[We must not] misuse [these] principles—which are only sound, if kept within due bounds—in order to [attempt to] overturn the fundamental truth of the Bible and thus destroy Catholic teaching handed down by the Fathers. …[We may not seek to] set aside what is the mind and judgment of the Church, and take too ready a refuge in such notions as ‘implicit quotations’ or ‘pseudo-historical narratives,’ or in ‘kinds of literature’ in the Bible [if] such…cannot be reconciled with the entire and perfect truth of God's word…” (Pope Benedict XV, Spiritus Paraclitus 26)
Nor do we here exclude the deep meaning of the text’s assertions (especially in prophecies of the messiah) that may have escaped the original audience (and therefore cannot be considered terribly “manifest” or “direct”). This meaning too is infallible, but it is opened to us only by Christ through the Church.
For further commentary on this matter see the aforementioned documents and 19th-century British theologian John Henry Cardinal Newman’s paper “On the Inspiration of Scripture”, cited at the end of this essay.
[15] II Peter 1:20-21.
[16] The Holy Spirit guided the development of the Sacred Scriptures so that their every phrase would figure forth the meaning desired by God. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11: “[E]verything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture …[teach]solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings…”
[17] The authors are inspired in that they were guided to proclaim what they did. Conc. Trident., Sess. iv: “ab ipsis Apostolis, Spiritu Sancto dictante” in Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures: “[T]his truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating…” Cf. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11: “Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit…”
[18] We do not know whether or not the sacred authors were conscious of being inspired. Whether or not the sacred authors themselves were conscious of their inspiration is a matter concerning which there is no clear tradition. Certainly they were conscious of inspiration when they proclaimed “Thus saith the Lord,” but such consciousness might not extend to every bit of their participation in the formation of Sacred Scripture, even though that inspiration was present throughout. See Newman “On the Inspiration of Scripture” 21.
[19] God determined the precise meaning to be expressed by the industry of the sacred authors. II Peter 1:21; Conc. Vat. I, Sess. iii, Cap. 2. Cf. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11: “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while He employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though He acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever He wanted written, and no more.”
[20] The text is inspired and conveys the divine meaning through the entirety of its final form. Conc. Vat. I, Sess. iii, Cap. 2, Can. 2:4: “si quis libros integros &c. divinitus inspiratos esse negaverit, anathema sit.” “If anyone shall not accept the entire books of Sacred Scriptures…or denies that they have been inspired by God: let him be anathema.” Cf. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11.
[21] The message of revelation was preserved by the Holy Spirit and refined in its clarity as the Sacred Scriptures were assembled into their final form. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 7, 14-16 cf. Hebrews 1:1-3. While still the prefect of the Holy See’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the oft-maligned body responsible for the safeguarding of Catholic doctrine), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, commented: “[T]his process of continual surpassing…relativizes the individual [human] authors… [A] more profound transcendence is at work: in this process of surpassing, of purification, of growth, the inspiring Spirit is at work, who in the word guides the facts and events and in the events and facts newly inspires the word.” (“Current Doctrinal Relevance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” Address, October 10, 1992)
[22] The supposed limit of the original audience’s understanding does not limit the divinely-intended meaning of the text which is often manifest when the text is read in the Sacred Scriptures as a whole. This consequent follows from the tradition that the Old Testament foretells the New Testament in a hidden way. (Conc. Vat. II, De Verbum 16) We have a warrant for this double interpretation from Sacred Scripture itself. From among many such accounts we offer this, where St. Paul expounds to us the hidden meaning wrought by God in the ancient life of Abraham, Sarah his wife, and Hagar the slavewoman, an allegory which speaks of slavery to sin and of freedom to be found in Christ: “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. / But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise. / Now this is an allegory…” (Galatians 4:22ff) Cf. II Corinthians 3:14-16 concerning the “veil” remaining over the minds of those who did not see the Messiah proclaimed in the Old Testament. Our Lord Himself “opened” the disciples minds to realize how the Scriptures spoke of Him: “And He said to them, ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! / Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?’ / And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” (Luke 24:25-27) See also Newman, “On the Inspiration of Scripture” 20. Cf. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 14-16; Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 13.
[23] Luke 24:44-47.
[24] II Corinthians 3:14-16.
[25] The Sacred Scriptures are one fabric whose author is the Holy Spirit and whose expression is through the devices of the inspired human authors. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11: “[S]ince everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings…”
[26] The Sacred Scriptures as a whole present to us the fullness of the divinely-intended revelation. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 12: “[S]ince Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, …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.”
[27] It is crucially important to ascertain the meaning intended by the human authors. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 12: “However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.” Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 116.
[28] See footnote 22.
[29] The sacred authors were given sufficient understanding to set down what God required. Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 20: “[B]y supernatural power, He [(the Holy Ghost)] so moved and impelled them to write…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…Such has always been the persuasion of the Fathers.”
[30] Catechism of the Catholic Church 111-119.
[31] Catechism of the Catholic Church 111-113.
[32] Exodus 12:46: “In one house shall it be eaten; you shall not carry forth any of the flesh outside the house; and you shall not break a bone of it.” Cf. John 19:33-36: “[W]hen they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. / But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. / He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth—that you also may believe. / For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled, ‘Not a bone of him shall be broken.’”
[33] Wisdom 2:18, 20-22a.
[34] While we need not consider the Fathers to have exhaustively interpreted Holy Writ (cf. Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 15), the authoritative status of their unanimous witness has been forever recognized in Church tradition and was confirmed by the first Council of the Vatican: “[I]n things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church… [I]t is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.” (Conc. Vat. I, Sess. iii Cap. 2, Sess. iv, cf. Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 14).
[35] See for instance St. Augustine of Hippo, A.D. 400, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean 44.
[36] Wisdom 2:23 cf. Genesis 1:26.
[37] Wisdom 2:1.
[38] Genesis 1:26.
[39] The Holy Spirit guided the human sacred authors to take up those phrases and elements from other ancient texts which would serve God’s purposes by their use in the inspired text of Sacred Scripture. Pius XII, Humani Generis 38-39: “If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents. Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures must in no way be considered on a par with myths or other such things, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for truth and simplicity which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent…”
[40] Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 15-16. Cf. II Corinthians 3:14-16.
[41] Tertullian (ca. A.D. 200) wrote: “If the number of the Trinity also offends you, as if it were not connected in the simple Unity, I ask you how it is possible for a Being who is merely and absolutely One and Singular, to speak in plural phrase, saying, ‘Let us make man in our own image, and after our own likeness;’ whereas He ought to have said, ‘Let me make man in my own image, and after my own likeness,’ as being a unique and singular Being? In the following passage, however, ‘Behold the man is become as one of us,’ He is either deceiving or amusing us in speaking plurally, if He is One only and singular. Or was it to the angels that He spoke, as the Jews interpret the passage, because these also acknowledge not the Son? Or was it because He was at once the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, that He spoke to Himself in plural terms, making Himself plural on that very account? Nay, it was because He had already His Son close at His side, as a second Person, His own Word, and a third Person also, the Spirit in the Word, that He purposely adopted the plural phrase…” (Against Marcion v, 12) Cf. St. Justin Martyr, A.D. 150, Dialogue with Trypho 62; St. Irenæus of Lyons, A.D. 198, Against the Heresies iv, 20; St. Ambrose of Milan, A.D. 389, Hexameron 6, 7, 40.
Again, we emphasize that the Fathers can each be errant: That the interpretation given by Tertullian, St. Justin, St. Irenæus, and St. Ambrose is worthy of consideration is clear; that it is infallible is by no means asserted.
[42] The meaning of the bible is unchanging and it is a revelation for all times and peoples, not circumscribed by its historical origin. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 6: “Through divine revelation, God chose to show forth and communicate Himself and the eternal decisions of His will regarding the salvation of men. That is to say, He chose to share with them those divine treasures which totally transcend the understanding of the human mind.”
[43] The sacred authors were given sufficient understanding to set down what God required. (Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 20). See footnote 29. Cf. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11: “[T]hough He acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever He wanted written, and no more.”
[44] See footnote 22.
[45] Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine 106.
[46] Isaiah 42:3 cf. Matthew 12:18.
[47] Psalm 110:1, 4 cf. Matthew 22:41-45; Hebrews 7:17, 20-22.
[48] “[He was] begotten before all ages” says the ancient Nicæan creed, speaking of God the Son. This creed is recited during the liturgy every Sunday as the faithful affirm their belief in the truths of the faith prior to partaking of Christ Himself in the Eucharist.
[49] Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 6-7.
[50] Matthew 5:17.
[51] Our interpretation must be inconformity with the Holy Spirit who shaped the text. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 12: “…Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written…” Pope Benedict XVI, prior to his election to the Holy See, noted: “One who…lives in the faith…[,] in his interpreting, must take into account the ultimate reality which he knows is working” in Sacred Scripture.” (“Current Doctrinal Relevance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” Address, October 10, 1992) See most especially the Catechism of the Catholic Church 111-119.
[52] In the ancient Canon, the central consecratory prayer of the Roman liturgy, the Eucharist is offered for the Pope, the Bishops, the Priests, and “for all who hold and teach the catholic faith that comes to us from the apostles.”
[53] I Timothy 3:15. For, as St. Vincent of Lérins wrote in A.D. 434: “[O]wing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. …Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.” (The Notebook 5)
[54] John 16:13.
[55] As Origen (A.D. 220) wrote in his On the Fundamental Doctrines: “Then, finally, [the Church’s apostolical teaching is] that the Scriptures were written by the Spirit of God, and have a meaning, not such only as is apparent at first sight, but also another, which escapes the notice of most. For those (words) which are written are the forms of certain mysteries, and the images of divine things.” (1, Preface, 8)
This meaning is known assuredly only through the Church, which the Holy Spirit guards from error: “[T]here are many who think they hold the opinions of Christ, and yet some of these think differently from their predecessors, yet as the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved, that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.” (1, Preface, 2)
[56] Pope Benedict XVI, prior to his election to the pontificate, commented in an interview: “Every Catholic must have the courage to believe that his faith (in communion with that of the Church) surpasses every ‘new magisterium’ of the experts, of the intellectuals… The rule of faith, yesterday as today, is not based on the discoveries (be they true or hypothetical) of biblical sources and layers but on the Bible just as it is, as it has been read in the Church since the time of the Fathers until now. It is precisely the fidelity to this reading of the Bible that has given us the saints, who were often uneducated and, at any rate, frequently knew nothing about exegetical contexts. Yet they were the ones who understood it best.” (See The Ratzinger Report, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, translated by Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985, 71-72, 73-76)
[57] Revelation was complete with the death of the last apostle. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 4: “[W]e now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 73.
[58] The Apostolic teaching was handed down in both written Scripture and unwritten oral Tradition. See II Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6; Philemon 4:9; I Corinthians 11:2; I Peter 1:25.
[59] The Apostolic teaching is transmitted through the succession of Bishops who have preserved the Scripture and tradition. Pope St. Clement I (A.D. 96) wrote: “Through countryside and city [the apostles] preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier… Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry…” (Epistle to the Corinthians 42:4-5, 44:1-3) See also footnote 55.
[60] Proverbs 22:28.
[61] Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 8; cf. Colossians 3:16.
[62] II Timothy 3:16-17.
[63] The full and unerringly authentic interpretation of Holy Scripture is found only within the Catholic Church. St. Irenæus of Lyons, Against the Heresies iv, 26, 5; Cf. St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata vii, 16; Origen of Alexandria On the Fundamental Doctrines iv, 8 and In Leviticus homily 4, 8; Tertullian of Carthage On the Demurrer Against Heretics 15ff; St. Hilary Pict. in Matthew 13, I. (Cf. Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 16)
St. Irenæus warned against separating oneself from the Church, custodian of the Truth. Those who separate themselves lose this Truth. This is not merely an educational, but a spiritual principle: “Alienated thus from the truth, they do deservedly wallow in all error, tossed to and fro by it, thinking differently in regard to the same things at different times, and never attaining to a well-grounded knowledge, being more anxious to be sophists of words than disciples of the truth. For they have not been founded upon the one rock, but upon the sand, which has in itself a multitude of stones.” (Against the Heresies iii, 24, 2) “For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God, there the Church and every grace. The Spirit, however, is Truth.” (Against the Heresies iii, 24, 1)
[64] Vulgate, John 20:31, “These things are written that you may believe.”
[65] Luke 1:4.
[66] I John 4:16b.
[67] Romans 10:4.
[68] See most especially Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11.
[69] Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 21: “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.”
[70] If we are to claim that contrary theological currents exist in Sacred Scripture, then we invalidate the Second Vatican Council’s statement that “since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore ‘all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind’.” (Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11). We must attend to the intention of the sacred authors (Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 12; Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 15), an intention clarified for us by historical criticism, and we must combine this insight with the theological interpretation that can be gained from reading the Scriptures as a whole ‘from the within heart of the Church,’ to understand the intention of the Holy Spirit.
[71] Pius XII, Humani Generis 22: “They…wrongly speak of a ‘human sense’ of the Scriptures, beneath which a divine sense, which they say is the only infallible meaning, lies hidden. In interpreting Scripture, they will take no account of the analogy of faith and the Tradition of the Church. Thus they judge the doctrine of the Fathers and of the Teaching Church by the norm of Holy Scripture, interpreted by the purely human reason of exegetes, instead of explaining Holy Scripture according to the mind of the Church which Christ our Lord has appointed guardian and interpreter of the whole deposit of divinely revealed truth.”
[72] I Timothy 2:3b-4: To offer prayers for others “is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, / who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
[73] We must first declare that the teaching of the Church insists on the inspired character of the Scriptures; whatever theological discussion we offer here is of secondary importance: we hope to offer some understanding as to why such things as these may appear therein, for “certain things in the Scriptures were seeming hard, while they were obscure; when explained, they have been softened.” (St. Augustine, ca. A.D. 415, Commentary on the Psalms 55.22) X We do not, by talk of God’s “will for the salvation of men,” mean to say that a vague salvific intent is all that matters in the Sacred Scriptures. Rather, we mean that, given what we know of God, it would be improper to interpret the account of His destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as indicative of difficulties in controlling His temper. Whatever He does in these accounts, He does to elicit repentance and salvation from as many as might be saved, for from the beginning “it is in mercy, I am persuaded, that God inflicts punishment.” (St. Gregory of Nanzianzus, ca. A.D. 380, Oration 45.8) As the Sacred Scriptures testify: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11) There are few atheists in fox-holes and I imagine that, should God actually choose such a course, there would be few unrepentant souls under a rain of fire they knew to be divine. X The terrifying manner in which one’s earthly life might end will seem of little ill consequence to oneself if one is led thereby to repentance and therefore, through a renewed relationship with God, to a more enjoyable manner of existence for eternity: St. Thomas writes (ST II-2, Q. 108, Art. 4, Ans.): “Punishment may be considered as a medicine…preserving from future sin, or conducing to some good… [A] medicine…[may be] harmful in lesser things that it may be helpful in things of greater consequence. …[S]piritual goods are of the greatest consequence, while temporal goods are least important…” X God alone can make such decisions: St. Thomas also writes (ST II-2, Q. 108, Art. 4, Rep. 2): “[H]uman judgment cannot be conformed to God’s hidden judgments, whereby He punishes certain persons in temporal matters [even] without any fault of theirs, since man is unable to grasp the reasons of these judgments so as to know what is expedient for each individual.” God, when necessary, “delivers the afflicted by their affliction, and opens their ear by adversity…” (Job 36:15), but it is not appropriate for man to determine when such “medicinal” hardship is called for. This provides some insight concerning the theological import of these passages, but further discussion remains beyond our scope, for here we seek to elucidate the Church’s teaching concerning the nature of Scriptural inspiration. For further details, please see the section following this and the documents referenced at the end of this paper.
[74] Exodus 32:4.
[75] Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11: “…[T]he books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself…”
[76] Here we mean to say that it is “wholly from the mind of God” in the sense not that God selected the precise wording, but rather that God selected the precise meaning, and this meaning was infallibly conveyed by the inspired work of the authors and the inspired text of the Sacred Scriptures as finally assembled and received by the Church.
God determined the precise meaning to be expressed by the industry of the sacred authors. II Peter 1:21; Conc. Vat. I, Sess. iii, Cap. 2. Cf. Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 11: “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while He employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though He acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever He wanted written, and no more.” See footnotes 17, 19, 20 beginning on page 5.
[77] Conc. Vat. II, Dei Verbum 15. The notion of “things incomplete and temporary” has led some to assert that the Old Testament contains theological error. This, as we have explained, is not the position of the Catholic tradition. Rather, the Old Testament itself does not present a complete theological vision, and its laws are temporary, but its theological truths understood through Christ are eternal. Hence they are “true divine pedagogy.”