De locis theologicis

WHERE ARE SET OUT THE ARGUMENTS OF THOSE WHO THOUGHT THAT THE SACRED AUTHORS IN THE CANONICAL BOOKS DID NOT ALWAYS SPEAK BY THE DIVINE SPIRIT

Fourth controversy. Let this be the fourth question that follows: whether the sacred authors in the canonical books sometimes speak with a human spirit, without divine and supernatural revelation. For there have been certain churchmen, as Jerome attests in his prooemium on the Epistle to Philemon, who believed that the sacred authors did not always have the Spirit speaking within them. First argument. For, they say, human weakness could not have sustained the same tenor of the Holy Spirit through such a long course of discourse; nor is it fitting that, without cause, we bring the majesty of the Holy Spirit down to the natural and obvious needs of this little body. They bring forward examples of this from secunda ad Timotheum epistola: “The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when you come, bring with you”; and, “Luke alone is with me”; and, “I left Trophimus sick”; and other such things, which are found throughout Paul's letters, written in a human way. The sacred writers therefore did not always have the Holy Spirit abiding in them and speaking through them. For this was peculiar to the Lord Christ, as it says in Ioan., chapter 1: “Upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon him,” and so on. The same point is confirmed especially by this argument: just as God does not fail to provide what is necessary, so he does not provide what is superfluous, as Aristotle demonstrated. Supernatural revelation was not necessary for things known by the natural light. Therefore, the sacred writers spoke about things they had seen and touched with their hands not by an infused divine light, but as human beings. Second argument. Further, in priori ad Corinthios epistola the Apostle states about certain matters that they are commandments of the Lord. “I command,” he says, “not I, but the Lord.” But immediately he adds, “To the rest I say, not the Lord.” If Paul wrote everything by an inward revelation of the Holy Spirit, he certainly would not say, “I say, not the Lord,” since counsels given by God's revelation are the Lord's, just as the words spoken by the prophets through revelation were God's words. A prophet would not have said, “This I say, not the Lord.” This argument is confirmed not lightly but, I do not know whether most gravely, by Basil in lib. 5 Contra Eunomium, capite penultimo, in these words: “Whatever the Spirit speaks are the words of God; and for this reason all Scripture, inspired by God, is useful, since the Spirit has spoken it. For this truly shows that the Spirit is not a creature, since every rational creature speaks the things that are God's, as when Paul says, ‘Concerning virgins I have no commandment, but I give counsel, as one who has obtained mercy; but to those who are joined in marriage I command, not I, but the Lord.’ And the prophet says, ‘O Lord, I shall speak judgments to you. Why do the ungodly prosper?’ And again, ‘Woe is me, mother, why did you give birth to me?’ Sometimes he says, ‘Thus says the Lord.’ And sometimes Moses says, ‘I am weak of voice and slow of tongue.’ At another time that same Moses says, ‘Thus says the Lord: Send my people out, that they may sacrifice to me.’ But the Spirit does not speak in this way. For he does not sometimes speak his own words and sometimes the things that are God's—for that is what a creature does—but all the Spirit's words are the words of God.” So far Basil. Origen too, in Homil. 16 in Numeros, says: “The speech that is written in Jonah and did not happen seems to have been uttered by Jonah rather than by God. For not everything that is spoken through a prophet must be received as if spoken by God. God spoke many things through Moses, but Moses also commanded some things on his own authority. The Lord clearly distinguishes these in the Gospels when he says about

“Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses permitted you to put away your wives; but it was not so from the beginning,” and so on. Paul also shows this in his letters when he says of some matters, “The Lord says this, not I”; and of others, “This I say, not the Lord”; and again of others, “I have no command of the Lord, but I give counsel”; and again, “What I say, I do not say according to God.” In the same way, in the other prophets the Lord spoke certain things and not the prophet, and other things the prophet spoke and not the Lord. So far Origen, who also embraced the same opinion in the prooemium of his commentaries on John. Ambrose too, in book 8 on Luc., ch. 60, explaining “Because of the hardness of your hearts,” and so on, says: “This passage shows that the things written on account of human weakness were not written by God. Hence the Apostle says, ‘I declare—not I, but the Lord—that a wife should not leave her husband’; and later, ‘To the rest,’ he says, ‘I say, not the Lord: If anyone,’” and so on. Here the Apostle denied that it was a divine law for a marriage of any kind to be dissolved. So much for Ambrose. Since Basil, Ambrose, and Origen, most distinguished men, not only held this opinion but also confirmed it with testimonies from Sacred Scripture, there will be nothing absurd if we too assert that not everything the sacred authors wrote was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Third argument. Add that in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians the Apostle says he felt regret that he had distressed them by the rebuke in his first letter. A person can regret something once written only if, when writing it, he believed he had made a mistake. Paul therefore did not think that everything he wrote to the Corinthians was written by the divine Spirit. Add again that in this same later letter he says, “Whatever anyone dares to say—I speak foolishly—I dare too. They are ministers of Christ (I speak as less wise); I am more so.” But it is blasphemous to assert that the words of the Holy Spirit were spoken foolishly. Paul therefore spoke there in the spirit of a human being. Add also that in the same letter, after the Apostle had said that he had labored more than all the others, he immediately corrected himself and showed that he had spoken rather incautiously: “Not I,” he says, “but the grace of God with me.” Fourth argument. Further, if everything the apostles prescribed came from divine authority and revelation, then Paul's command that a bishop be the husband of one wife would certainly be divine, not human. It would follow that the Supreme Pontiff could not dispense from it. For, as Augustine says to Januarius, no one would dare to change what Christ had prescribed. Yet the Supreme Pontiff has at times allowed someone who had been married twice to become a bishop, with the approval of the whole world. Not all the apostles' decrees, then, were prescribed with the Holy Spirit as their author. Fifth argument. Moreover, Matthew suffered a lapse of memory: he put Jeremiah for Zechariah; and Mark did likewise, asserting that what is written in Malachi is written in Isaiah. He also says that the Lord was crucified at the third hour, although he was judged by Pilate at about the sixth hour, as Ioan. 19 says. It follows from this that the Holy Spirit was not always present to the Evangelists as they wrote everything. Sixth argument. Further, in chapter 3 of his Gospel Luke says that Cainan was the son of Arphaxad and that Salech was the son of Cainan. Yet Gen. 11 makes clear that Salech was not the grandson of Arphaxad but his son, with no intervening generation between them. One generation is therefore superfluous in Christ's genealogy, and thus was not inserted by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Seventh argument. Finally, in Act. 7 Luke reports many things that could not have been reported under inspiration. The first is that Joseph summoned all his kindred, seventy-five persons. But Gen. 46 and Exod. 1 rightly count only seventy persons. Nor can it be said that Stephen included Joseph's children who were born later, and by anticipation or prolepsis said that there were seventy-five together with the others. Joseph could not have summoned those people. Yet Luke says that Joseph summoned seventy-five persons. More serious is what is added next: that Jacob and the patriarchs were transferred to Shechem, whereas Josephus, Antiquitatum II, book 2, ch. 8, says that Joseph's brothers were buried at Hebron. On this point one should believe that Luke wrote only what had been handed down by the ancestors and was commonly held. Besides, Luke plainly says here that the patriarchs were buried in the tomb that Abraham bought. But it is certain that Abraham bought a tomb in Hebron, Gen. 23. A third point is much more difficult: Luke again adds that Abraham bought the tomb from the sons of Emor, the sons of Shechem. Jacob, as Gen. 33 says, bought a part of a field from the sons of Emor; but Abraham bought a double cave not from the sons of Emor, but from Ephron son of Sohac, as Gen. 23 clearly relates. What is more, Luke says that Emor was the son of Shechem, whereas Gen. 33 says the opposite, that Emor was Shechem's father, not his son. It therefore seems vain to assert that nothing in the sacred books was written except by the inspiration of the same Spirit. But on the other hand, if anything in the canonical books had been written or reported in a human manner and spirit, it would seem that nothing would prevent a lie from being in them. If we acknowledge any error in Sacred Scripture, who will believe that the Holy Spirit is its author?