De inspiratione sacrae Scripturae: theologica disquisitio

Next it must be said concerning the things that follow upon inspiration. And first concerning the spiritual sense of Sacred Scripture. Second concerning its intention, terminated of itself upon matters of faith and morals. Third concerning its absolute inerrancy. Fourth concerning the conventions, usages, and literary forms which its nature does not allow. Fifth concerning the subordination of criticism to tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium in all scriptural exegesis.

« But all these things happened to them in figure ». I Cor. X-II.

The first property of Sacred Scripture, then, is that it has a certain sense which can exist in no other book composed by human industry, and which is called spiritual or mystical, because, lying hidden beneath the letter as the spirit within the body, it is wrapped in a great mystery. And its quiddity must first be briefly set forth.

« The author of Sacred Scripture is God, in whose power it lies to adapt not only words to signify, which a man can also do, but also the things themselves. And therefore, whereas in all sciences words signify, this science has this proper feature, that the things signified by the words also signify something. That first signification, then, by which words signify things, pertains to the first sense, which is the historical or literal sense. But that signification by which the things signified by the words in turn signify other things is called the spiritual sense, which is founded upon the literal sense and presupposes it ». Thus St. Thomas in the First Part, Q. 1, a. 10. There he first lays down the general principle, then draws out the conclusion flowing from the general principle, and thirdly explains the proper notion of the spiritual sense as divided off from the literal.

I. — But from the general principle a doubt at once arises, since it does not appear so at first sight how it is true that man cannot adapt things to signify. For poets and orators and all those to whom allegories are permitted constantly employ things for the purpose of signification. Nor only in word but also in deed, as, for example, the histories narrate of that ancient worthy who, when he had asked to be admitted into a certain company of silent men, and a vessel full of water to the brim had been set before him, and he had been answered that the number of the academicians was already complete, did not on that account desist from his undertaking. But plucking a rose petal, he carefully laid it on the surface of the water, and with such dexterity that the vessel did not overflow, elegantly expressing in this way that as in the full vessel there had still been room for a little rose petal, so too in the full academy there was room for a tiny little man. In a word, then, it is all over with symbolism, all over with metaphors and allegories, if the principle be once admitted that it belongs to God alone to adapt things to signify something.

But it is to be considered that words here are not only words properly so called, but also all those things which are either artificially composed or imaginatively feigned for the purpose of signifying, so namely that under the very form by which they signify they are ordered to nothing else; as appears in the aforementioned rose petal placed on the surface of the water, or in the feigned similitudes by which the poetic art is wont to present the truth of things. Accordingly, things here means only those which pursue their course under God's providence; which are not disposed to the end of signifying by any adventitious artifice, but are understood to have their connatural form wholly in themselves, independently of any further relation or purpose of representation. Think, for example, of the people of Israel captive in Egypt, led out of captivity by Moses in signs and wonders, passing through the Red Sea, walking forty years in the desert, eating bread sent from heaven, drinking water that miraculously flowed from the rock, and at last, after countless vicissitudes, reaching the promised land. There certainly there is nothing of artificial composition, but the pure and simple unfolding of a historical event; and if a certain figurative signification is in it, it will be in it not after the manner of a word, but after the manner of a thing¹.

In this way, then, it appears evidently that it belongs to God alone to adapt things to signify something. For since God alone is the orderer of all events through His infallible providence, and alone has the events themselves subject to His disposal as the letters of the alphabet are subject to the arrangement of the printer, He alone can also so temper and moderate their course at times as to place in them, in relation to other things, the relation of sign to thing signified and of figure to thing figured. And for this reason St. Thomas infers most rightly, Quodl. 7, a. 16: « For just as man can employ certain words or feigned similitudes to signify something, so God employs the very course of things subject to His providence for the signification of certain things ». No room for doubt, then, is left concerning the general principle.

II. — There follows now the conclusion of the principle. And first indeed, that in the other writings of human origin no other signification is to be sought besides that which is in the words, if nevertheless you take words in that adequate sense which was declared above, according to which all the figures of speech or feigned similitudes that men are wont to employ for the purpose of signification are included under words. It follows secondly, that in the divine writings, besides the signification that underlies the words, another signification can also be present, given to the things signified by the words. And I say only that it can be present, because from an a priori principle nothing more may be concluded. But that in fact this is so is most certainly gathered, both from the express assertions of the Scriptures themselves and from the concordant testimony of the whole of tradition.

And indeed, in Gal. IV-22, the Apostle says: It is written that Abraham had two sons... These things are said by way of allegory. For these are the two testaments. And note here that there are two kinds of allegory. One is the common allegory, namely in words, which Sacred Scripture also uses, as appears in the parables of Christ, in Nathan's parable to David, 2 Reg. XII, and very often elsewhere. The other is the allegory in things, which agrees with the former only by analogy and is proper to Sacred Scripture alone: inasmuch as a history is narrated that is true according to the immediate sense of the words, but in the thing narrated a certain more hidden signification of another thing lies concealed. And this is the allegory of which the Apostle speaks now, because that history of the two sons of Abraham truly happened as it is narrated, but the event had a further signification of another thing, namely of the two testaments, the old and the new. — Again, 1 Cor. X, 1-14, when he had first recalled the things that happened to the ancient Israelites in the desert, he concluded saying: But these things were done in figure for us. And below: But all these things happened to them in figure. As if he had said: Whatever I have recalled as having happened to those ancients were types, figures, or certain fore-announcing tablets of the things that were to be in the Church of Christ. And therefore Augustine, l. 22 c. Faust. c. 24: « I say, he says, that not only the tongue of those men but even their life was prophetic, and that whole kingdom of the Hebrew people was a kind of great prophet, because it was the prophet of a kind of great thing ».

Tradition's authority in this matter is so conspicuous that you would not know what to choose above all amid such abundance and such richness. Thus Hilary says, in Psalm. 134, n. 1: « According to the Apostle, the things that are in the law are a shadow of things to come. The things that were done in it are allegorumena; they are not to be heard negligently, because under the faith of bodily deeds they were established as an example of spiritual works ». — Thus Jerome says, Prolog. in Isaiam: « After the truth of the history, all things are to be taken spiritually. And so Judaea and Jerusalem, Babylon and the Philistines, Moab and Damascus... are to be understood, so that we seek all things in the sense; and in all these things, as a wise architect, the Apostle Paul lays the foundation, which is none other than Christ Jesus ». — Thus Gregory of Nazianzus says, l. 2 Carm. VII ad Nemesium: « There is also among us a twofold sense of divine Scripture, the one inward and spiritual, the other outward. Each sense is of a wonderful structure. The one is perceived by few, the other by many ». — Thus Cyril says, Glaphyr. in Genes. l. 6, n. 1: « In various and manifold ways Sacred Scripture foretells the types of salvation through Christ... For just as the masters of the art of painting, laying the various figures of colors on with shadows, bring them to a more pleasant appearance and confer much grace and beauty on the picture, so too God subtly fore-shows the beauty of the mystery (of the incarnation) by very many types, so that those who understand, using them as it were in figures, and as it were as preludes or preparatory exercises, may become candidates of sacred learning more ready to receive the truth... Furthermore, let anyone see Jacob, as it were in shadows, signifying what I have said; and whatever things have been written about him, and whatever will seem more obscure in the history, we shall explain ». — Thus Augustine says, l. 22 c. Faust. c. 24: « As regards those indeed who there (in the Hebrew people) were instructed in heart in the wisdom of God, not only in the things they did; but as regards the rest and at the same time all the men of that people, in the things that were done divinely in them or concerning them, the prophecy of the coming Christ and Church is to be searched out ». — Thus Ambrose says, l. 1 de Abraham c. 4: « The things that Abraham did so as to receive offspring from the handmaid were done in figure, and are said according to allegory. Allegory is when one thing is done and another is figured. As the Apostle himself also teaches..., showing that two peoples flow from Abraham's generation: the one of the Jews, which serves the syllables of the law, because it seems to have been born of the handmaid unto servitude; the other of the Christians, which has received the freedom of heavenly grace unto the remission of sins ». — Thus Chrysostom says, Hom. in illud Pauli: Nolo vos ignorare, n. 3-4: « That he may show (the apostle) that the knowledge of the old Law together with the New is great, and that those things were the figure of these, and a shadow of things to come... See the knowledge of the figure together with the truth, and the excellence of the truth above the type. For the type ought not to be altogether alien from the truth, otherwise it would not be a type. Nor again is it right for the type to be equated with the truth... Therefore do not require the whole from me in the old (testament), but if you have received some small and obscure riddles, think that you have been well dealt with ». — Thus Cassiodorus says, praef. in Psalt. c. 1: « Prophecy is a divine inspiration which pronounces the outcomes of things, either through the deeds or through the words of certain men, with immovable truth... But the gifts of that grace were bestowed in many ways. But to embrace a few out of many: it was wrought through the actions of men, as was Noah's ark, and Abraham's sacrifice, and the crossing of the Red Sea; also through the birth of the twins Esau and Jacob, who bore the sacraments of things to come ». — Thus Gregory says, l. 1 in Ezech. Hom. 9, n. 29: « The book of sacred eloquence is written within by allegory, without by history. Within by the spiritual understanding, without however by the simple sense of the letter, suited to those still weak ». — And these things, related from the doctrine of the Fathers by way of sample, will suffice.

III. — These things being now premised, we may receive the true notion of the sense, both literal and spiritual.

That first signification, then, by which words signify things, pertains to the first sense, which is the historical or literal sense. — But note here again that the terms are to be taken formally, according to the distinction made above between words and things, as we now speak of words and things. And so to the literal sense belong plainly also all those things that are said in the Scriptures through simple figures of speech or verbal allegories. For verbal figures or allegories by no means terminate signification as things do, because they are not enclosed within the course of historical events, but are employed only as an artificial instrument of signifying. Hence, if you adhere to the traditional interpretation of the Song of Songs, you will conclude that the Song is altogether literally about Christ and the Church. And the reason is that, according to the traditional and most firmly grounded understanding of this book, there is no historical event there, for instance the marriage of Solomon to the daughter of Pharaoh (3 Reg. III-1), that is narrated historically; no real fact of human loves immediately reported through words, to which fact nevertheless a further signification of the spiritual union of Christ and the Church would be attached. But it is a poetic allegory, and therefore purely verbal, in which under the form of a nuptial drama the sentiments of the heavenly bridegroom toward the faithful soul, and of the faithful soul toward the heavenly bridegroom Christ, are directly expressed². « Solomon, divinely inspired, sang the praises of Christ and the Church, the grace of sacred love, and the sacraments of the eternal marriage; and at the same time he expressed the longing of the holy soul, and, exulting in spirit, composed a nuptial song in a pleasant eulogy, yet a figured one. For he too, like Moses, veiled his face, perhaps no less radiant in this matter, because at that time no one, or but rarely one, was able to behold that glory with unveiled face. Therefore, in view of its excellence, I think that this nuptial song was fore-signified by a title of this kind, so that it is deservedly called singularly the Song of Songs, just as He also to whom it is sung is singularly called: King of kings and Lord of lords »³. — And these are the things that occurred as carefully to be noted concerning the literal sense. Now the things that pertain to the spiritual sense can no longer be of any difficulty.

But that signification by which the things signified by words in turn signify other things is called the spiritual sense, which is founded upon the literal sense and presupposes it. — In this you will observe a beautiful analogy between the written word of God and the sacraments of the New Law. For in the sacraments of the New Law, besides the signification of the outward rite, which is called the sacrament only, there is attended the signification of the thing immediately signified by the outward rite, which is wont to be called the thing and the sacrament. And so it is also in the present case. For those things signified by the words which in turn signify other things stand in some way as the thing and the sacrament. And according as by their typical signification they are referred either to Christ and the Church, or to the rule of the Christian life, or to the mysteries of future glory, they bring a threefold division of the spiritual sense, into allegorical, tropological, and anagogical. « For as the Apostle says to the Hebrews, VII, the old law is a figure of the new law, and the new law itself, as Dionysius says in the book On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, is a figure of future glory. In the new law too, the things that were done in the head (Christ) are signs of the things we ought to do. According, then, as the things of the old law signify the things of the new law, there is the allegorical sense. But according as the things done in Christ, or in the things that signify Christ, are signs of the things we ought to do, there is the moral sense. And as they signify the things that are in eternal glory, there is the anagogical sense »⁴.

The most proper place of spiritual interpretation, then, is the Old Testament, which is known to have been wholly typical, as Augustine shows with a splendid example in the whole twelfth book against Faustus, beginning from the beginning in which God created heaven and earth, and leading the series of prophetic events down to the times of the return of the people of Israel from the Babylonian captivity. Yet I have said that the most proper place of spiritual interpretation is the Old Testament, not the only one. For certainly the Gospels, while they narrate the deeds of Christ before the completion of His passion, by which the old testament was abrogated and the new dedicated—the Apostle saying: for a testament is confirmed in the dead, otherwise it has not yet force while he who made it lives—the Gospels, I say, agree in some respect with the books of the ancient law, and therefore receive not only a tropological or anagogical sense but even an allegorical one⁵. But from the completed passion onward, the difference is this, that the things that belong to the new testament ought no longer to be prefigured typically. Nevertheless a place is still left for the anagogical or tropological sense. For the anagogical indeed, according as the things that pertain to future beatitude were figured for us in the circumstances of Christ's resurrection and appearances. But for the tropological, according as in Christ's passage from mortal to immortal life a sensible example was given to which our moral life is to be conformed, according to that word of Rom. VI-9: Christ rising from the dead dies now no more... For in that he died to sin, he died once; but in that he lives, he lives to God. So do you also reckon that you are indeed dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But what St. Thomas says in the passage cited above, in the reply to the first objection, that an argument can be drawn from the literal sense alone, is not on account of its greater intrinsic authority, but because the spiritual sense cannot become known except through those passages in which the truth, elsewhere lying hidden under the allegories of things, is literally stated; and therefore the force of the argument is always reduced to the literal sense.

Moreover, although the spiritual sense is of very little service for demonstrating dogmas, it is of the greatest value for confirming them; for the harmony of so many figures, by which the things of the new testament are so vividly delineated and expressed, is no slight argument for confirming the faith, which we can use even against unbelievers. Whence Augustine, l. 12 c. Faust. c. 7: « From those things that are wrapped in figures, if certain of them are set out as it were woven together under one view, they so join their voices in the testimony of Christ that the deafness of even the dullest man must blush ».

It remains to draw certain conclusions from that Catholic doctrine of the spiritual sense of Sacred Scripture against the broad school of biblical scholars.

Let the first conclusion be that the truth declared thus far in this chapter can in no way be reconciled with the mythical character which those innovators generally attribute to the Old Testament. Hence even if this monstrous opinion of theirs did not conflict with other heads, so many and so great, it would already have to be exploded on this ground alone, that it removes from the midst that sense proper to Scripture alone, which our forefathers, the authentic witnesses of the apostolic tradition, acknowledged in it with unanimous consent. For if the spiritual sense is nothing other than the signification by which the things signified by words in turn signify other things, it must necessarily be founded upon a true and real history. And if the signification of parables or verbal allegories does not go beyond the mode of the literal sense, as was shown above, much less, I think, does the signification of those childish productions of popular imagination which are called myths. Finally, that divine element which shines forth as a sign in the spiritual sense is placed precisely in this, that God alone, as being alone able to dispose and order the events of the world as a scribe orders and disposes the letters to be written on a page, can also signify something, not now through vocal signs or feigned similitudes, but through the very real course of things subject to His providence. And therefore the Fathers unanimously maintain the historical truth as the sole and necessary foundation of the spiritual sense. « After the truth of the history all things are to be taken spiritually », says Jerome, Prolog. in Isaiam. And Gregory, l. 1 Moral. n. 56: « Let him who raises his mind to spiritual understanding not depart from the veneration of the history ». And Hilary, in Psalm. 123, n. 5: « The faith of the history is not endangered if we judge that the things have their reality, and a signification connected with them from without ». And among the other erroneous things that Epiphanius, Jerome, and others note in Origen, this too is found, that he is always an allegorical interpreter, fleeing the truth of the history: « That he so allegorizes paradise as to take away the truth of the history; understanding angels in place of the trees, heavenly powers in place of the rivers, and subverting the whole extent of paradise by tropological interpretation... Depart from the heresy of Origen, and from all heresies, most beloved » ¹.

Let the second conclusion also be that, if the spiritual sense, all of it, has its foundation in history, then conversely it not rarely strengthens and safeguards the belief in the true history, inasmuch as it supplies the key for understanding the reason of certain circumstances which otherwise would seem either fictitious, or idle, or less worthy of the commendation of a divinely inspired narrative. And Augustine pursues this at length in many words, l. 12 c. Faustum, c. 39: « If Ishmael and Isaac, born as men, signify the two testaments, what is to be believed of so many facts which were done with no natural use, no necessity of business? ... For the sake of the word, I ask, if a woman had to be made as a help for the man, did any necessity compel this too, or any utility persuade it, that she should be made from the side of the sleeping man? If for the sake of escaping the flood there was need to build an ark, what need was there of its measurements, either that they should be made just so, or even that they should be commemorated in writings to propagate religion to posterity? If on account of restoring the race animals had to be shut in, what need was there of that precise number, seven of the clean, two of the unclean? That an entrance to the ark should be made, necessity surely compelled; but that it should be made in the side, or even be commended to memory in writing, what compelled? Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son; he was so commanded in order that his obedience, proved by such a test, might become known to posterity; more fittingly the son carried the wood, so that the aged father should not carry it; he was not afterwards permitted to strike his son, lest he should strike himself with the most grievous bereavement: would Abraham have been less approved even if it had been brought about with no bloodshed? Or if the sacrifice now had to be completed, did it contribute any increase to the victim that that ram should appear caught by its horns in the bramble? Thus when all things are considered, and superfluous things are found as it were woven in with necessary ones, they admonish the human mind first that something is signified, and then to ask what they signify. And so even the Jews themselves, who are unwilling that Christ should be seen to have been fore-announced by such figures of things, not only of things said but also of things done, are compelled to learn from us what those things signify. Unless they grant that they signify something, they do not defend the books of divine authority from the shame of inept fables ».

Let the last conclusion, finally, be that, since the spiritual senses contribute so much to the splendor of the Catholic faith, there are many historical narratives in the Scriptures which, though they might seem on other grounds altogether indifferent and of no profit, are nevertheless, by reason of the aforesaid senses, to be said to belong altogether to those matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, from wresting which to their own opinions all human criticism has long since been ordered by the decree of the Council of Trent to abstain. But concerning these very things, thus called matters of faith and morals, it is right, because of the gravity of the question, that special consideration be given. To this end, then, the following chapter will look.

« All Scripture divinely inspired is useful for teaching, for reproving, for correcting, for instructing in righteousness ». 2 Tim. III-16.

« To coerce petulant minds, the (sacrosanct Synod) decrees: that no one, relying on his own prudence, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, wresting Sacred Scripture to his own senses, against that sense which the Holy Mother Church has held and holds, whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures, or even against the unanimous consent of the Fathers, shall dare to interpret that same Scripture, even if such interpretations were never at any time to be published ». Thus the Council of Trent in that well-known decree on the edition and use of the sacred books. From its tenor it is at once deduced that not all and each of the things contained in the sacred books can be called matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine. Otherwise that specification would be redundant, which, unless it had a limiting or restrictive sense, would be added altogether in vain and superfluously. But it is of the utmost importance that it be rightly understood what comes there under the name of matters of faith and morals. And for this very purpose, first of all, by way of preamble, certain principles delivered elsewhere are to be recalled, where the material object of faith was treated¹.

The material object of faith can be taken in two ways. In one way indeed merely materially, for that which in fact falls under divine revelation, prescinding from the particular end toward which the intention of the one revealing is borne. And thus, to the object of faith indiscriminately and under the same title belong all things whatsoever that are proposed in divinely inspired Scripture (according as and in the respect in which they are proposed, as was said elsewhere), because to all and each of them there is in fact equally applied the formal motive of faith, which is the authority of God speaking. You will not, then, take in this sense the distinction between things that are or are not of faith and morals, as though there were some things in Scripture about which faith ought to be, and others about which it ought not to be, but it would remain free to each one, at his own judgment and pleasure, to believe or disbelieve them. For most certainly, supposing now an inspiration extending itself to all and each of the parts of Scripture, a position of this kind would sound nothing less than open impiety. Unless perhaps someone be so foolish as to say that God is worthy of faith when He reveals the Trinity of persons, and no longer is so when He testifies to any fact whatever belonging to the order of human affairs; which be far from us altogether. Under this consideration, therefore, there neither is nor can be any distinction, difference, or degree, throughout the whole extent of the scope of divine revelation or inspiration, because it is no less an infidelity to disbelieve the least point whose revelation is established than to disbelieve even a primary article among the principal ones.

But now there comes another consideration of the material object, in which account is now had of the intention directing divine revelation or inspiration. For God in revealing stands as in human affairs a teacher to his disciples, and indeed a teacher of some particular discipline. For just as among us one teaches geology, another physics, another mathematics, another medicine, and each one so always conducts himself that whatever is taught by him is taught in relation to the principal object of the science of which he is the doctor and teacher: so too it happens in the revelation of God. Whence it immediately follows that since the things revealed by God are determined to a certain special order of truths, while nevertheless not all and each obtain an equal degree in the aforesaid order, there will now surely be room for certain distinctions in those things that constitute the material object of faith. And although these distinctions do not tend, nor can they tend, to this, that some things be said to be of greater credibility than others, they yet contribute very much to understanding why and how not all things revealed are equally necessary for us to know; and especially why, and for what cause, an infallible means either of preservation or of authentic interpretation ought not to have been provided by God with regard to all things.

It is therefore to be known that the primary object of faith, which they call that of attribution, is God Himself as supernatural end, because under divine revelation and theological faith other things do not fall « except according as they have some order to God, namely as through certain effects of the divinity man is helped to tend toward divine fruition »¹. — This certainly the Apostle teaches us, Heb XI-1, when he says: Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for. For in whatever way substance is taken there, whether with St. Thomas for that which is the first beginning in us of future beatitude, and the first foundation², or with others for that which even now bestows on the things to be hoped for a certain subsistence in our mind³, it is always true that faith is principally concerned with the object of that beatitude which we ought to hope for; which object is nothing other than God Himself, to be possessed in intuitive vision. — And the same conclusion will also come from those things that are added a little below: He who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder to those who seek Him. For there the Apostle intends that in which the whole doctrine of faith is recapitulated and, as it were, abridged in a compendium. Whence the theologians also by common consent consequently teach that these two things are to be explicitly known and believed by all, even by a necessity of means. But now, what does that mean, that He is, and that He is a rewarder to those who seek Him? Namely, that He is, surely as standing beneath His own revelation, since the discourse is of the necessity of believing; and thereby, that He is under that aspect under which He is proposed to men as an end transcending the order of nature—that order, I say, in which His invisible things are known only through the things that are made and in them. Wherefore it is immediately added: And that He is a rewarder to those who seek Him. A rewarder, namely, of that reward which alone is everywhere announced in the writings of the new testament, and which is the reward of the aforesaid eternal life. If, then, the whole object of faith, taken as a whole, is contained and as it were hinged, both in the divine being as it is an end exceeding nature, and in providence as it extends itself to all things that are dispensed and disposed by God in time for the salvation of men, all things there surely converge upon God the supernatural end, who is therefore most rightly set down as the object of attribution. — And this same thing is excellently confirmed from the fact that we see Scripture, which is a certain repository of revealed truth, begin with the genesis of the world and end in the apocalypse of eternity, comprehending between these two extremes the whole way of the human race in its order to God. For the beginning is in the word of God bringing the universe out of nothing, (Genes. I). The end is in the word of God recalling man to Himself in heavenly glory, (Apocal. XXI-XXII). Finally, the middle part is placed in the formation of morals, and also in the historical as well as dogmatic presentation of the mystery of the incarnation of Christ the Lord, who is at once the way and the term, the term to which one must come and the way by which one comes to the term.

These things being now premised, you will understand without difficulty which are those things that are marked in the Scriptures by the special name of matters of faith and morals. For they are those which were divinely inspired by direct intention, account being had of the scope that God revealing or inspiring set before Himself. I mean all those things that in any way contribute to the knowledge, whether speculative or affective, of the end, and also of the means conducing to the end, for instance the precepts, counsels, sacraments, and finally the whole economy of the kingdom of Christ the Redeemer, from its first preparation immediately after the fall of our first parents, down to its perfect constitution in the Church of the new testament. And although among these there still occurs a distinction between those things that are of the substance of the doctrine and those that are only of its complement, as being ordered only to a more thorough knowledge of the truths of salvation (from which indeed multiple degrees of necessity arise as regards proposition, preaching, knowledge, and explicit faith in the things to be believed), all nevertheless come without any contradiction into the order of those things which the Council of Trent says pertain to the edification of Christian doctrine.

But besides these, there are found in the Scriptures certain things which are asserted to have been inspired not by direct intention, but purely by concomitance, on account of a merely material connection with the rest. I mean those adjuncts which, of themselves altogether indifferent to the doctrine of faith, nevertheless had to coalesce into one body of sacred history, because without them that sacred history could not be written out, at least in a human and connatural way⁴. Think of the many chronological, physical, geographical, genealogical circumstances recorded in the books of the old testament. That Adam according to the Vulgate lived nine hundred and thirty years, Seth nine hundred and twelve, Enos nine hundred and five. That the name of one of the rivers of paradise was Phison, of the other Gehon. That Cain begot Enoch, Enoch Irad, Irad Maviael, etc. Likewise, that Paul left his cloak at Troas, that the Christians came to meet him as he arrived at Rome at the Appian Forum and the Three Taverns, and six hundred other things of this kind. And most certainly, without discussion and as it were a priori, it is established that such things are of a kind that no one is obliged to learn them, and thereby to believe them explicitly. Nay, it is established that there was no necessity that the error of copyists or translators should be prevented by a special assistance of God in the versions or in any transcriptions whatever of the original Scriptures, since an infallible preservation of these was by no means a matter of interest for the utility of the faithful. From this it is also well explained how in the codices or versions of Scripture that we now have in our hands things of different authority can be distinguished, without its being permitted to extend this distinction to the originals themselves, as they came forth from the hagiographers. Finally it is established that in the aforesaid things there is not required the authentic interpretation or proposition of the Church, and that these same things are for this reason contradistinguished in the Council of Trent from matters of faith and morals, as above, in which it is lawful for no one to interpret Scripture against that sense which the holy mother Church has held and holds, or even against the unanimous consent of the Fathers. For although, under the tenor by which they came down from God's inspiration, they are to be called matters of faith, they are not however matters of faith contributing to the edification of Christian doctrine⁵. From this special condition of theirs there finally follows what has just been said: that there was no need, either of a peculiar providence that they should be preserved incorrupt in the editions of Scripture, or of an authentic magisterium that they should be proposed to the knowledge and explicit faith of Christians.

And the distinction indeed between those things which, by an abbreviated formula, are or are not called matters of faith and morals, in the sense we have stated has hitherto been understood, expounded, and handed down by theologians.

But now the interpretation of the new school of critics is another. And first indeed some once thought that those things which come under the name of matters of faith and morals in the Scriptures are so to be understood as if they were contrasted with certain other things which in no way and in no sense pertain to the object of faith. And because they saw from another quarter that the object of faith extends as widely as divine revelation extends, they consequently judged that the integral inspiration of Scripture must be denied, asserting also that only the dogmatic texts are from the Holy Spirit. Which error has already been sufficiently refuted in what precedes, and is expressly condemned in the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, in which we are taught that the opinion of those who say that inspiration pertains to matters of faith and morals, and to nothing besides, is not to be tolerated; since according to the ancient and constant faith of the Church, all and entire books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, with all their parts, have been written with the Holy Spirit dictating.

But the correction of this error scarcely brought the desired fruit, because our exegetes retained another error, from which by a different path they now arrive at the same consequences, as far as exegesis is concerned. And that other error consists in this, that they restrict matters of faith and morals altogether to the sole substance of dogmas, and as it were to a dry skeleton. For they take up the repertory of the solemn definitions of the Church (for they generally seem not to hold the ordinary magisterium as a sufficient rule); then they extract the propositions which are noted there as of faith, and if any things in the Scriptures correspond to those very propositions thus nakedly taken, and precisely in the measure in which they correspond, neither more nor less, they say that these are matters of faith and morals, and nothing besides. You would say something similar to the dry bones of Ezechiel's vision, before the Lord put sinews upon them, and made flesh grow, and stretched skin over them, and breathed spirit into them. Furthermore, whatever things in the sacred books illustrate, expound, and clarify the aforesaid dogmas; whatever examples of the lives of the saints are given; whatever historical facts commend the providence of God, the economy of salvation, and the succession of religion: all these, I say, are summarily placed outside the category of things in which alone we are bound by the rule of traditional interpretation. And because nothing now in the business of interpretation constrains either the consensus of the Fathers or the magisterium of the Church, behold for you a new exegesis, full of myths, fables, and fictions hitherto unheard of, which they wish to be admissible, nay even to be admitted, without any note of heterodoxy¹.

Now, that this understanding of theirs regarding matters of faith and morals is erroneous in every way is demonstrated by a manifold argument.

I. — The first argument is taken from the very words of Trent, which do not at all allow the restricted interpretation of the critics. The Council says: things of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine. But surely the abstract substance of dogmas alone does not pertain to the edification of Christian doctrine. For also for the building of a house there pertain not only the stones of which the principal walls consist, nor only the beams which sustain the structure, nor only the bare framework, which is without doubt of itself insufficient for the use of dwelling. For the building of the human body too there is required not only the joining of the skeleton, and therefore, when Ezechiel was led out in the spirit of the Lord and set down in the midst of the field which was full of bones, so that, as he prophesied, those dry bones might come to life, first indeed the bones came to the bones, each one to its joint; second, sinews and flesh came up over them; third, skin was stretched over them from above; fourth, the spirit came and breathed upon those slain, and they lived and stood upon their feet. And something similar is also the case in the building of Christian doctrine, so that nothing more absurd can be devised than the reduction of the matters of faith and morals in the sacred Scriptures to that skeleton, or rather ghostly and altogether disemboweled form of doctrine which the new exegetes thrust upon us.

But to take a special example from the first eleven chapters of Genesis, I say that what they affirm is intolerable, since they wish us to be taught nothing else in them except that God created the world and man, that He is a just and merciful provider, that all others were propagated from one man and one woman, and that the human race fell in its head Adam, and then received the promise of reparation. Will the six days of creation, therefore, and that seventh day on which God rested from all His works, pertain nothing to the edification of Christian doctrine?

But the contrary is taught by God Himself in the promulgation of the Decalogue, Exod. XX-11. The contrary is taught by the Apostle, Heb. IV, where he discusses the rest which is promised to us in the future life. The contrary too is taught by the holy Fathers and Doctors, whether when they expound so sublimely the proper reason of God's rest and of the sanctification of the seventh day²; or when they show the harmonious concord between the work of God the creator and the work of Christ the redeemer, who, from the fact that man was created on the sixth day, also on the sixth day of the week fulfilled the mystery of human restoration, while on the sabbath, resting in the tomb, He awaited the outcome of the resurrection which was to come on the eighth day³; or finally when they recount the mysteries by which the Lord's day is consecrated among us⁴. For whatever that may be in which one must determinately place the analogy of those days of Genesis with the days of our week, at least this is settled and fixed among all, that some analogy exists, and is not taken from a myth or fable, and in every hypothesis provides a solid and objective foundation for the documents which are drawn from it. How then will these things not pertain to matters of faith and morals? ⁵.

Will you see nothing either pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine in the formation of man's body from the slime of the earth, in which the dignity of your origin is so efficaciously vindicated against the ravings of the Darwinists? ⁶. Nothing in Eve drawn from the side of Adam and produced from his rib, whatever the Apostle may say in Eph. V-32 about the great sacrament in Christ and the Church? ⁷.

Further, does the history of the temptation contribute nothing to the edification of Christian doctrine, and the very order of the transgression which begins in the woman, then through the suggestion of the woman as mediatrix is urged upon the man, and finally in the man infects the whole race? Nothing, I say, to the understanding of the economy of our redemption, which the whole Christian tradition has recognized as diametrically opposed to the order of the fall, so that in it the new Eve answers to the old Eve, and the new Adam to the old Adam, and whatever the devil had machinated for our perdition is, by a certain divine and stupendous recirculation, turned back against himself? ⁸.

Is the history of Cain and Abel also a matter of indifference, where so notable a figure of Christ and the deicidal people shines forth? Will that tremendous scourge of the flood be a mere literary ornament, which, by the testimony of the Lord Himself, Matth. XXIV-37, and also of Peter, 2 epist. III-6, preceded as a manifestation of the universal judgment? Does Noah, drunk and naked in his tent, not illustrate the truth of faith, in whom the reproach of Christ crucified is discerned; Ham mocking, or the Jew announcing his ignominy with derision; and finally Shem and Japheth, that is, the firstfruits of circumcision and the fullness of the Gentiles, approaching their father with piety and faces turned away, as if detesting the crime of the parricides?

These things therefore from the first eleven chapters of Genesis have been summarily reviewed for the sake of a brief specimen, so that you may know how abnormal is the interpretation of the critics regarding the matters of faith and morals mentioned by Trent, as if, namely, those matters imported nothing more than the things which have a place in the creeds of faith or in catalogues of precepts. But from such an interpretation, besides many other things, the very words not vainly added by the Council should have deterred them: pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine.

II. — The second argument can be taken from the authority of Scripture. For wherever there are documents for teaching, for reproving, for arguing, for instructing in justice, as is said in 2 Tim. III-16, there too are matters of faith and morals suited to the edification of Christian doctrine. But Scripture itself, explaining and interpreting itself, expressly assumes the material of teaching, arguing, reproving, and instructing from the bare and simple history of the Old Testament, precisely insofar as it is history. If you doubt this, read the fourth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, where the Apostle teaches that justification does not come from the works of the law, but from faith in God, which was reputed to Abraham unto justice before circumcision was given to him; and that the same Abraham, established by the justice of faith, is the father of all believers, when he believed the seed promised to him by God, although both he and his wife Sarah had passed the years suitable for generating. Read the ninth and eleventh chapters, where again history, Genes. XVIII-XXV and 3 Reg. XVIII-XIX, is assumed into the argument. Likewise the fourth chapter of the epistle to the Galatians. Likewise the second and fifth chapters of the epistle of James. Likewise 1 Petr. II, 5-15. Read especially that splendid pericope of the epistle to the Hebrews, where the Apostle magnificently commends faith from the acts of the fathers from the beginning of the world down to David and the prophets, and recounts how great things they accomplished and suffered through faith, and yet did not receive the full reward: « By faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice... By faith Enoch... By faith Noah... By faith he who is called Abraham... By faith also Isaac blessed things to come... By faith Jacob when dying... By faith Joseph... By faith Moses... And what shall I say further? For time will fail me while I recount of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. Who through faith conquered kingdoms, wrought justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, extinguished the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, recovered from infirmity, became strong in battle, turned to flight the camps of foreigners, received their dead by resurrection. But others were stretched out, not accepting deliverance, that they might find a better resurrection; others indeed experienced mockeries and scourges, moreover also chains and prisons. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they died by the slaughter of the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, needy, distressed, afflicted. Of whom the world was not worthy; wandering in solitudes, in mountains and caves and in the caverns of the earth. And all these, approved by the testimony of faith, did not receive the promise, God providing something better for us, that they should not be consummated without us. And therefore let us also, having so great a cloud of witnesses imposed on us, laying aside every weight and the sin that surrounds us, run through patience to the contest proposed to us ». Read further the last four chapters of the book of Wisdom, and also Ecclesiasticus, XLIV-L, where there is the same instruction of faith and morals, except that the Apostle extends the documents of history further, even to the Maccabees, and to those heroic martyrdoms which in the second book, VI-VII, are commended to eternal memory.

These things surely, even alone, would be enough to explode that singular and unheard-of invention of the critics, when, namely, in the narration of facts they see nothing else beyond a certain literary form, which, since by its own nature it is of no value, and of itself pertains nothing to matters of faith and morals, is left to their free and fantastic exegesis, even against the evident and unanimous sense of all tradition. And it is again wonderful if men, for whom the only approved locus of argumentation is now positive history, could have come to this excess as to say that facts as such are outside the order of things by which God instructs us in Scripture, by which He corrects, by which He argues, by which He strengthens our faith, reinforces hope, and inflames the mind to every good work! or that the fruit of discipline is the same, whether those things are truly historical, or rather imaginary and fabulous!

But now, if the sacred history of the Old Testament is to be said altogether to pertain to the edification of Christian doctrine, how much more does that of the Gospel. For Christ is He who began to do and to teach, and He showed us the way of salvation not so much through theoretical precepts as through the examples of a most divine life. « Those tending to beatitude must be disposed according to virtue. But we are provoked to virtue both by words and by examples. Now the examples and words of someone induce to virtue the more efficaciously, the firmer the opinion of his goodness is held. But about no mere man could an infallible opinion of goodness be held, because even the most holy men are found to have failed in some things. Hence it was necessary for man, in order that he might be strengthened in virtue, that he should receive from God made man the doctrine and examples of virtue. For which reason the Lord Himself says: I have given you an example, that as I have done, so you also should do »⁹. See therefore whether you do not twist Sacred Scripture, in matters of faith and morals, against that sense which holy mother the Church has held and holds, and likewise against the unanimous consensus of the Fathers, to your own senses, if perchance you reduce the facts which are set forth in the fourth Gospel to some ideal form or other, which would be a wrapper for certain theories, however much received from God by revelation, and, as the critics say, a literary vestment.

III. — Finally, let the third argument be taken from the order which Scripture has in the economy of religion. For in truth, if we ought, as it pleases the adversaries, to take the matters of faith and morals in the Scriptures, it would immediately follow that the Scriptures themselves are altogether superfluous in this economy, and stand as a superfluous accessory, which God forbid.

And the consequence is proved, because to what purpose, I ask, is that huge volume of Scripture, if it instructs our faith only as regards the sole substance of dogmas, whose proposition could easily be contained within the limits of a very brief creed or catechism? It was indeed most fitting that Scripture should be inspired by God, to be a help to the ecclesiastical magisterium, as a means of conserving the revealed truths, and a special source from which doctrine is drawn¹⁰ in the preaching of faith. Not that the naked dogmatic truth itself could not have been absolutely conserved through tradition alone, from mouth to mouth, but because for a more connatural mode of conservation it was fitting that, at least for the greater part of the dogmas, there should be joined to oral tradition the fixed instrument of inspired Scripture as well. Nevertheless, besides the fact that under this respect only a qualified necessity is considered, insofar, namely, as that can be called necessary through which one arrives better and more conveniently at the end, it is evidently clear that if you suppose the intention of Scripture to be terminated at the sole skeleton of dogmas, there will never be found that just proportion of means to end which must necessarily be present in the works of the wisdom of God. And in this sense Bellarmine most rightly said, l. 4 de verbo Dei, c. 12: « The principal end of Scripture is not that it be the rule of faith, but that by various documents, examples, and exhortations, now by terrifying, now by instructing, now by threatening, now by consoling, it may help us in this pilgrimage. Hence it is that Scripture is not one continuous work, such as the rule of faith ought to be, but it contains various works, histories, sermons, prophecies, songs, epistles, etc. Which end Paul expressed, Rom. XV-4: For whatever things were written, were written for our instruction, that through the patience and consolation of the Scriptures we may have hope. And 2 Petr. I-13: But I think it just, as long as I am in this tabernacle¹¹, to stir you up in admonition. And III-1: Behold, most beloved, I write this second epistle to you, in which I stir up your sincere mind in admonition, etc. »

Since these things are so, therefore, it must be said that there were two principal reasons for the inspiration of Scripture. — The first was that not only abstract dogmas or dry articles of faith were to be manifested to us by God, but also all those things which contribute to their illustration, such as prophecies, histories, figures, examples, and innumerable other things of that kind, from which there comes to Christian doctrine its own grace and ornament. For this doctrine, without the manifold facts that illustrate it, without the splendor of the ancient prophecies and figures, without knowledge of the circumstances in which the mysteries of our redemption were accomplished, without knowledge of the ways of the city of God from the beginning of the world, would not be, as is fitting, accommodated to men. Therefore the instrument of Scripture was altogether required, since, setting aside a useless miracle, it would have been impossible that, amid such great variety of facts and circumstances, oral tradition alone should not in many ways fail, as will immediately appear to anyone considering. — There was also another reason of necessity, that the Church might have divine admonitions, consolations, promises, and suggestions, not only through intermediate reporters and heralds, but also as it were received immediately from the mouth of God Himself. Indeed, between the word of God written and handed down there is finally this difference, that the word handed down stands as a report of a friend's words made to us through others, while the written word is like a private letter written by the friend's own hand, in which every discerning person will recognize without doubt a much greater power to move. Hence Gregory, l. 4 epist. 31: « But what is Sacred Scripture, if not a certain letter of almighty God to His creature? » And Augustine, Serm, 2 in Psalm. 90, n. 1, and also Enarr. in Psalm. 149, n. 5: « The true Sion and the true Jerusalem is eternal in the heavens, which is our mother. She herself has begotten us, she herself is the church of the saints, she herself nourishes us, in part a pilgrim, in great part remaining in heaven... There are also the angels, our fellow citizens. But because we are pilgrims, we labor; they however in the city await our coming. And from that city whence we are pilgrims, letters have come to us; they are the Scriptures which exhort us to live well... Letters have come to us from our homeland, and these we recite to you ».

If therefore that is the principal reason of Scripture which we have stated, if moreover it could never even be doubted that its intention is always terminated at matters of faith and morals, it is surely consequent that we should seek the aforesaid matters of faith and morals not in abstractions alone, but also in the histories, examples, types, admonitions, and other things of that kind mentioned above, of which the Bible consists for the most part. Thus too, and not otherwise, will there truly belong to the same Scripture that property, flowing from the essence of an inspired book, which the Apostle declares when he says: All Scripture divinely inspired is useful for teaching, for arguing, for reproving, for instructing in justice.

« But God is true ».

Rom. III-4.

That the absolute inerrancy of Sacred Scripture is a most firm dogma of the Catholic religion, no prudent person would deny. For although in this matter no solemn and explicit definition of any council or pontiff can be adduced, precisely because in past times the necessity of such a definition did not arise, the universal and perpetual preaching of the Church is sufficiently clear, and the innate sense of all the faithful corresponds to it in all things. For what Christian, hearing the testimonies of the Fathers on this matter, will not immediately recognize in them one of the principles that are, as it were, foundations in our faith? Augustine says, epist. 82, n. 3: « To those books alone of the Scriptures which are already called canonical I have learned to show this fear and honor, so as to believe most firmly that no author of them erred in writing anything... But I read others in such a way that, however much they may excel in holiness and doctrine, I do not on that account think a thing true because they themselves thought so, but because they were able to persuade me, either through those canonical authors or by a probable reason, that it does not depart from the truth. Nor do I think, my brother, that you feel otherwise. Absolutely, I say, I do not think that you wish your books to be read as those of the Prophets or Apostles are read, concerning whose writings it is impious to doubt that they are free from all error ». Jerome says, epist. 105, n. 5: « If perverse men find in the Gospels and the Prophets something they may strive to censure, do you wonder if in your books... certain things appear to deviate from the straight line? ». Gregory of Nazianzus says, Orat. 2, n. 105¹: « For let us not imagine that these things were committed rashly to the records of (sacred) letters, and that it is some empty mass of things and words composed to delight the minds of the hearers... Let fables and the gentiles, indeed, play with these things—men little concerned for the truth, who by the allurement of words pour, as it were, certain illusions into ears and minds. But we, who extend the Spirit's care even to the slightest stroke and line, will never concede—for it is not lawful—that even the least actions were rashly written down and elaborated by those who handed them down to memory, and preserved in memory up to these times ». St. Thomas says, Quodl. 12, a. 26 ad 1um: « Nevertheless this must be held, that whatever is contained in Sacred Scripture is true. Otherwise, whoever should think contrary to this would be a heretic ». And in 1a Part. Q. 68, a. 1, where he begins to treat of the work of the six days, he first lays down two cautions to be observed: « First, indeed, that the truth of Scripture be held unshaken. Second, since divine Scripture can be expounded in many ways, that no one adhere so precisely to any one exposition that, if by some sure reasoning it is established that what someone believed to be the sense of Scripture is false, he should nonetheless presume to assert it, lest Scripture be derided by unbelievers on this account, and lest the way of believing be closed to them ». Hence Melchior Cano most rightly observes at the beginning of his work On the Theological Loci: « We call sacred and canonical books those which the sacred authors set down, with the Holy Spirit dictating. Those, therefore, which are established to be such, we shall believe without doubt to be most certain and most true. For unless you have faithfully laid this foundation, that city of God will fall, whose foundations are in the holy mountains, and in the Scriptures of the princes who were in her. Of these Scriptures the author is not man, but God ».

Wherefore all who have admitted errors in the Scriptures have been branded as heretics. In this heresy were formerly the Anomoeans, as Epiphanius testifies, Haeres. 76 at the end: « And when they begin to be pressed by the force of arguments and to be hard put to it, they flee and leap out: “And these things,” they say, “the apostle said as a man” ». Likewise the Manichaeans, if you believe Augustine, book 2 against the adversary of the law and the prophets, c. 2: « He contrived all this so that, if at any time something should be brought forward from an apostolic epistle, where the law and the prophets bear witness to the gospel, he might say that the apostle said this, not to the wise and perfect, but to the Jews, having spoken as a Jew, etc. ». Likewise Erasmus, of whom Bellarmine, book 1 On the Word of God, c. 6: « In our age, he says, Erasmus has renewed the same heresy², since in his annotations on the 2nd and 27th chapters of Matthew he wrote not obscurely that we need not fear that the authority of all Scripture will collapse if some slight error is detected in it, especially since Augustine concedes that the evangelists slipped in memory, and it seems that this cannot be denied in any way ». But this ancient heresy was connected in the minds of its authors, at least by an intimate link, with the denial of a divine dictation extending itself to each and every part of Scripture. For they had not hitherto dreamed that any error, of whatever order it might be, could proceed from the revelation of God. To our own age alone was reserved that new advance of its own kind: I mean the incredible opinion of certain biblical scholars, who have held that scientific or historical errors are admissible in the Scriptures, even in conjunction with divine inspiration. For they imagine an inspiration which they call economic, contrasting the doctrine that God intends to teach us with the modes under which He teaches and proposes it. And as for the doctrine that is the object of the inspiring God's intention, they readily confess that it is not and cannot be anything but truth, although that truth is always contained within the order of faith and morals, in that undoubtedly most restricted sense of which mention was made in the preceding chapter.

But in their view nothing prevents the form under which the dogmatic truth dictated by God was to be consigned to the sacred writings from having been filled with those errors, scientific or historical, with which men's minds were preoccupied in keeping with the diversity of times and places—the minds, that is, of the men through whom those writings were composed and to whom, as to their proximate and immediate readers, the sacred Scriptures were directed. Moreover they add that no harm is to be feared on this account, because Scripture is coordinated to the Church, which has been established as its infallible interpreter³.

These things being so, then, we must first consider for what causes our biblical scholars have come to this opinion, which so openly conflicts with the Christian sense—not to say the common sense. Second, by what arguments they endeavor to support it as best they can. Third, how this untenable opinion was expressly condemned by the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus.

And indeed, one would have thought it more certain, even a priori, that men still glorying in the Catholic name had subscribed to the theory just stated not without the gravest reasons—indeed, only when compelled by ineluctable evidence. For although many are now found to whom applies exactly what is written of the Athenians, Act. XVII-21: Now all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning among them had leisure for nothing else but either to tell or to hear something new, yet novelty itself can by no means have an unlimited power of attracting minds, especially when one reaches those limits where the poet's saying has its place: Whatever you show me thus, incredulous, I loathe. Here, then, the mere allurement of novelty could not have intervened; weightier reasons must undoubtedly have been in play, which we must consider before we proceed further.

First, then, they note that Scripture openly errs in the astronomical matter, as regards the system of the world. For it presents to us the sun as moving around the earth, and the earth as immovable. It says that the stars are luminaries made for man's use, of which the two greatest of all are the sun and the moon. It teaches also that God founded the earth upon the waters, and stretched out the heavens above like a tent. But all these things, as is now known to all, contradict flatly the truth of science¹. — But if you reply timidly that Scripture speaks in the very way in which all modern astronomers still speak, whenever they are not obliged to use technical circumlocutions²; that the earth is said by Ecclesiastes to stand forever, not absolutely, but in opposition to the perpetual succession of generations following one another in turn³; that the sun and the moon are most truly called by Moses the greater luminary and the lesser luminary in relation to us; finally, that the sacred writers used in hymns and canticles and psalms the same expressions that poets everywhere use to this day, without ever affording from themselves the least suspicion of error or ignorance in physical matters: if, I say, you timidly oppose the simple and obvious answers that we all learned from childhood, you must know that those answers no longer hold. It remains, therefore, that you hold without scruple that there are in the Bible many statements that stand in contradictory opposition to scientific truth, although the errors just mentioned are not yet found except in what are obiter dicta. But here is something more serious.

Second, then, they proclaim the necessity of adhering to the conclusions that modern science has made definitive. Now the conclusions are of such a kind that most of the narratives consigned in the books of the Old Testament must altogether be held as historically false⁴. You will perhaps object that those definitive conclusions of science are definitive only in the imagination of those who assert them, or in the benevolent credulity of their disciples. You will also adduce certain examples in confirmation. For instance, the example of those definitive conclusions of the eighteenth-century encyclopedists as to the fabulous character of the accounts of Abraham and of Joseph with the kings of Egypt, which at the very beginning of the nineteenth century the discovery and interpretation of the hieroglyphs showed to be anything but definitive. Likewise the example of the conclusion, equally definitive, and immediately antiquated after the discovery of the tablets at El-Amarna, by which, scarcely twenty years ago, they decreed that the art of writing among the Israelite people had been invented only three or four centuries after Moses and Joshua⁵. You will observe further that it happens daily that even thoroughgoing rationalists explode their own definitive conclusions against biblical facts, and destroy them with the most solid arguments⁶. No, sir! For the science of the rationalists is valid when it fights against the Bible, but when it confirms the Bible it is no longer valid, because then it by no means supplies a sufficient pledge of independence and, as it were, surety.

Third, the learned exegetes do not doubt that a prodigious antiquity must be attributed to the world and to the human race. And since, according to Scripture, the appearance of man upon earth is relatively recent, it remains for us to concede that biblical history, as history, is false, and by no means consistent with the facts⁷. — You reply again that there are perhaps many things that would seem more than enough to enervate the force of this argument. The codices do not agree among themselves as to the reckoning of the years, so that in this part the errors of copyists or transcribers can and must legitimately be presumed. Nothing forces us to take the series of the patriarchs, whether before or after the flood, as a series of men succeeding one another immediately, with no intermediate links suppressed. Above all, the principle from which they proceed is false, since they suppose that man raised himself from a shapeless and wholly savage state to the state of civilization by a very slow and continuous progress, whereas the Scriptures expressly testify—and indeed in a matter pertaining to faith and morals, according to the biblical scholars themselves—that man came forth perfect from the hands of his Creator: so that, clearly, civilization is not to be thought of as terminating a movement of emergence from barbarism, but rather barbarism, wherever it is found, as placed at the term of an inverse movement, namely of corruption and degeneration. Finally, no more trust is to be placed in the calculations of learned masters in estimating the antiquity of humanity than was to be placed, for example, in the judgments of experts concerning the authenticity of the tiara of King Saitaphernes. For if experts sometimes err so shamefully as to take things fabricated by contemporary artisans for monuments of the most remote times, how far will palaeontologists wander in a matter that lies much more open to arbitrary estimations, and is involved in far greater obscurities, and contains, for modern man, causes of error multiplied almost to infinity!⁸. — Notwithstanding all this, you will still have firmly to believe that such is the biblical chronology that it contradicts historical truth in all things, and that from this head also the absolute inerrancy of Scripture is not sustained.

Fourth, they observe certain notable concordances of the scriptural narratives with the fables of the nations. And these concordances the study of the Semitic languages, the discovery of cuneiform inscriptions, and the continuous investigations of Orientalists make more evident every day. Although the matter was not of such weight, since classical letters, both Greek and Latin, had long since abundantly sufficed for the same observation. For who, for example, would not notice in Aeschylus' tragedy Prometheus vinctus a shadowing forth of all that is related by Moses concerning the temptation and fall of man in the earthly paradise, and also of the promised seed of the woman that shall crush the serpent's head? especially since of this future savior Mercury says at the end: Do not expect an end of such misery, O Prometheus, before another of the gods shall appear as the successor of your labors, and shall will to descend to the gloomy Orcus and to the murky depth of Tartarus⁹. Who would not recognize the biblical giants, and the later building of the tower of Babel, in the following verses of Ovid: They say the giants aspired to the heavenly kingdom, and piled up mountains heaped to the stars. Then the almighty Father, hurling his thunderbolt, shattered Olympus and cast down Pelion upon subject Ossa? Who also, reading in the first book of the Metamorphoses of the same Ovid how chaos was unfolded, and how in the beginning the elements were each arranged in their own places; how the heaven was adorned with stars, the earth with living things, and man, last of all, was created; how finally the golden age was first sown, to which then succeeded the silver age, then the bronze, then the iron, until, war having been declared against the gods by the giants, Jupiter resolved to destroy the world by a flood, with Deucalion alone saved and received on mount Parnassus, where carried with the companion of his bed in a small raft, he clung there: who, I say, has not noted an evident parallelism with the first eleven chapters of Genesis? Who will not think Adam expressed in Saturn devouring his children, or Noah in Janus having a double face, the one aged, with which he looks back upon the old world destroyed by the waters of the flood, the other youthful, with which he casts joyful eyes upon the new world about to be born from him? The same narratives, then, are found both in Moses and in the ancient poets of the nations. But if these are false inventions in the Greek or Egyptian or Babylonian mythologies, will they at last be truth in the Bible? It remains, therefore, to say that God, in inspiring the sacred writers, accommodated Himself to the common mentality of ancient men, inasmuch as, in view of the end He intended, namely the teaching of divine and moral truths, He indeed employed false legends that were everywhere admitted, but purified them from every dogmatic stain; nay rather, He made them the vehicle of a most sublime and most lofty religious doctrine¹⁰. — You will perhaps wonder at such a conclusion, because you are still held by the outworn prejudices of the old apologetics. For you thought that the very fables of the nations, in that in which they agree, undoubtedly show a certain substratum of historical truth, albeit adulterated with many fantastic and absurd chimeras. For in any order of things whatsoever, a cause proportioned to the effect is to be sought. But if the imagination of peoples is rightly assigned to explain the dissimilar varieties, it would be only irrationally posited as the principle of common and universal traditions, of the kind that those are concerning a certain original age of innocence and felicity, concerning the tempting serpent, concerning the fall of the human race into the present state of misery and tribulation, concerning the promised restorer, concerning the impiety of the giants, concerning the catastrophe of the flood, and so on. Hence, then, you deduced that if any narrative of these things should chance to be found, shining above all the rest as the sun above the darkness, a narrative pure, simple, limpid, sublime, and consonant with right reason, it would undoubtedly have to be regarded as receiving from the others testimony of absolute truth, so far from being dragged into the partnership of a common falsification. You deduced especially that even the mere suspicion of a derivation of so sublime a book from the corrupt fountains of fables would have to be removed, since the pure scarcely arises from the impure, and even in natural things clear water is not wont to flow from a muddy spring, whereas on the contrary it happens most frequently that from a most pure spring the stream flowing first, afterwards in its course, is defiled or corrupted by the admixture of many heterogeneous elements; wherefore, if one had necessarily to acknowledge that the one was derived from the other, the derivation of the fable from Scripture would seem far, far more probable than that of Scripture from the fable. This, I say, you deduced according to the rules of the ancient wisdom. But since in those rules some defect of logic or other has been discovered, we must now really conclude that Scripture is indeed immune from every stain as regards the dogma of religion, but is in the same condition as the pagan mythologies as regards the rest.

Fifth, they enumerate the antilogies found in the Scriptures. Of Antiochus, for example, it is related in 2. Mach. I-13 that he was killed by the priests in the temple of Nana; and further on, IX-28, it is said that, fleeing from Persepolis while he was meditating to destroy the Jews utterly, struck by God with the greatest pains of the bowels, with worms swarming from his body amid an intolerable stench, he died a natural death. Likewise, Genes. XI-12, Sale is called the son of Arphaxad, and Luc. III-36, the son of Cainan, of whom, if you except the version of the Seventy, no trace is found. Again, 1 Reg. XVII-55¹¹, Saul asks Abner of what stock David, who was going out against Goliath, was sprung, although David could not then have been unknown to Saul, since he had already before that become Saul's own armor-bearer and table-companion, 1 Reg. XVI-21. Further, in the census of the people that David had ordered to be made toward the end of his reign, there are numbered 2 Reg. XXIV-9 eight hundred thousand valiant men of Israel, and of Judah five hundred thousand; but 1 Par. XXI-5 there are numbered a thousand thousand and a hundred thousand of Israel, and of Judah four hundred and seventy thousand. Likewise in the Gospels very many discrepancies are noted, both as regards the infancy of the Savior, and as regards the deeds of His public life, and finally as regards the circumstances of the passion, and especially of the appearances after the resurrection. But to these and other difficulties of the same kind, on the supposition of the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, satisfactory answers have nowhere been given¹². — To these things, however, it might perhaps be replied that this assertion about the insufficiency of the answers seems to have been brought forward rather rashly; that it has not hitherto been so judged among Catholics, and that whatever is newly affirmed without any proof against the common estimation of prudent men is rightly and deservedly regarded as a purely subjective appraisal. That man shows himself too harsh who still finds the evangelical antilogies irreducible after the manifold and highly reasonable solutions given by our commentators, and to whom that radical solution, by which errors would have to be admitted in divinely inspired books, would now appear preferable to conciliation procedures so probable as those proposed up to now¹³. With regard to the Old Testament, account must first be taken of the present state of the codices in names and numbers, lest you transfer to the original Scriptures difficulties that take their origin from the versions or copies alone¹⁴. With regard to Antiochus also, there is no great need to be solicitous, both because it is highly uncertain whether the same Antiochus is spoken of in each place¹⁵, and because, granted that it is Antiochus Epiphanes who is meant in the letter found reported at the beginning of the book, solid explanations are still not lacking¹⁶. In short, there is so much subjectivity in estimating matters of this kind that a writer of no small repute from the rationalist school finds a positive document of historical truth in that very questioning of Saul, 1 Reg. XVII-55¹⁷, which the encyclopedists adduced in demonstration of an open contradiction¹⁸. — These and other similar things you would reply to the argument that our exegetes draw from the biblical antilogies. But again, the case is closed, because such is the critical evidence in this part that it admits of no other demonstration of a matter already judged¹⁹.

It remains, however, that the critics show this position of theirs, concerning the manifold errors of the Bible in matters as much scientific as historical, to be reconcilable with the dogma of inspiration. And here is the work, here the toil. Are there, then, certain weighty considerations by which the possibility of a reconciliation may be—I do not say now persuaded, but even from afar insinuated?

And how could they be, if every saying of Scripture is a saying of God, if God is the first Truth, if it is altogether impossible and contradictory that something false be said by the first Truth? Certainly St. Thomas, asking whether the faith which is taught by the divine Scripture handed down by the Holy Spirit can be subject to falsity, answers: « Nothing can fall under faith except insofar as it stands under the first Truth, under which no falsity can stand, just as neither non-being under being, nor evil under goodness » ¹. In which indeed, I think, he enunciates a mere principle of pure reason as well, which can never be eluded by any subterfuge, as long as there stands in men's minds the concept of subsistent and absolute Truth, which is God most great and most good. Hence, when among certain theologians of a more decadent age there occurs the question agitated far and wide, whether God, either by Himself or through another, either by ordinary or by absolute power, can deceive or lie, against so vain a disputation the intimate sense protests, and each one judges in his own mind that it is to be ascribed to a notable progress that such idle problems no longer have a place in the schools of today. But God is true, says the Apostle, Rom. III-4. And Christ the Lord, John XVII-17: Thy word is truth. And above: The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive... the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father... But when that Spirit of truth shall have come. Finally 1 John II-21: Every lie is not of the truth.

Nor is any escape to be found in what they feign as economic inspiration, distinguishing between what God intended to teach men and what He employed as a means to propose the doctrine of religion. For a conception of this kind, if it tends to the point that a possible fallacy in the means to the aforesaid end is asserted, destroys first the holiness, and then the wisdom, of God. — It destroys holiness, because to say what is false in order to teach what is true is the same as to do evil in order to procure good. But this is most certainly intrinsically evil. Otherwise, says the Apostle in Rom. III-8, why am I also still judged as a sinner? And not, as we are blasphemed, and as some say that we say, let us do evil that good may come; whose damnation is just. And the reason is too well known to need explanation, namely because a legitimate end does not make the means legitimate, and therefore the intention of teaching the truth has nowhere taken away from false testimony the deformity of a lie. One of two things, therefore: Either Scripture is not inspired in all its parts, but as regards the uninspired parts God conducted Himself merely permissively. Or, if—as the present state of the question has it—all things were written with God dictating, the distinction between what God dictated and that for which, or for the sake of which, He dictated is altogether irrelevant to the proposed aim of placing in safety the supreme truthfulness and infinite holiness of God. — But if holiness is destroyed, will wisdom be saved, whose part it is to order just and proportionate means to the end? But how, I ask, will those books obtain my faith concerning heavenly and supramundane things, if as regards the things that lie under my knowledge they are found to be lying? Bede rightly somewhere reproves those Pharisees who, tempting Christ, sought from Him a sign from heaven: « But you, he says, who calumniate the things you see with your eyes, hold in your hand, and perceive by their use, what will you do with the things that have come from heaven? You will surely answer that the magicians in Egypt also worked many signs from heaven ». Why, then, should there not be someone similarly reproving Scripture in this manner: But you, who are found not even in the things placed under me to agree with the truth, why do you command faith concerning the things that are above me? Are you deceitful in the least things, and truthful in the greatest? Deceiving me where I am able to detect the error, and teaching me infallibly where I am no longer able? I know indeed that the new biblical scholars will say to these things that the detection of errors in the Bible was reserved only for later ages of scientific progress, and that the Bible is neither more nor less than what it had to be in order to be understood by its first readers². But since, as is their custom, they bring absolutely no proof of this assertion of theirs, the opinion of Augustine will perhaps seem to you preferable: « Once there has been admitted, in so great a height of authority, any officious lie, no particle of those books will remain which, as it shall seem to each one either difficult for morals or incredible for faith, may not by that same most pernicious rule be referred to the design and office of a lying author »³.

Hence you now see in what place that parity is to be put which they repeatedly insinuate between the Church and Scripture—as if, namely, from the fact that the Church is not infallible except in matters of faith and morals, the same were also to be concluded about Scripture. — In which indeed it must first of all be observed that Scripture is compared with the Church only most ineptly. For it is as if, instead of comparing the Aeneid with the Iliad and Virgil with Homer, you compared Homer with the Aeneid and Virgil with the Iliad. Therefore, while the comparison is instituted in the present matter, one must compare Scripture with the definitions of the Church, and the Church herself with God, the author of the Scriptures. But when the terms of comparison are arranged in this way, to whom will that parity not seem absurd? I mean a parity between the infallibility of the Church and the infallibility of God? For the latter is absolute and by essence. But the former is only participated through the gratuitous charism of assistance, and for this very reason it does not have an unlimited sphere, but is altogether determined to those limits which the will and wisdom of the assisting God have fixed beforehand. — What if you now observe, secondly, that the infallibility of Scripture, restricted to matters of faith and morals alone, would place Scripture itself far below the definitions of the Church? For if you judge rightly about the infallibility of the Church, you must confess that this infallibility always and necessarily accompanies the exercise of the supreme magisterium, in such a way, namely, that no inquiry is needed about whether certain conditions have been observed or not, but from this alone that something is proposed by that supreme magisterium to be believed, it must by that very fact be accepted as conformable to truth and marked with the character of inerrancy. Nor does the limitation of infallibility to a certain determinate order of things stand in the way at all, because no small part of it consists precisely in this, that the magisterium endowed with such and so great a charism can never, in the very act of defining, run beyond the field of its own proper object. And hence at last it is brought about that in ecclesiastical definitions one need not separate the precious from the vile, and the true from the false, but there is in them a most pure and most sincere truth. But Scripture in fact runs beyond the order of things that are called matters of faith and morals. Hence if its inerrancy were restricted to those matters, it would contain falsity mixed with truth, and indeed such falsity as would be born, as has been shown above, to destroy its entire authority from the foundations.

Nor finally is any account to be taken of the consideration which they are accustomed to bring forward in order to persuade us that the inconveniences that would otherwise arise from biblical errors are avoided and corrected by the fact that the Church, the teacher of truth and infallible interpreter, has been provided for us. For this is the deus ex machina which they reserve and hold in readiness for every desperate case. They destroy one after another all the demonstrations of dogmas that are deduced from a source both scriptural and traditional, and when you ask where at last the foundation of dogmatic truth is to be sought, behold for you the infallibility of the Church. They go off into any recklessness whatever, tearing up the very first bases of faith to the ruin and scandal of many, and when it is asked of them that they give an account of such great license, they answer that the progress of science demands it, that nothing can be obtained unless something is put at risk, and that besides there is present the infallible Church which is able, if errors occur, to repress them all. Just as if boys should bring fire to the four corners of a house, and when asked with what intention they did it, should answer: because there are watchmen appointed in the city to extinguish fires⁴. The same, then, will now also be the final answer as regards the Bible: that biblical errors which were accommodated to the childish mentality of ancient men are no longer in the same condition as regards us; yet nothing troublesome follows from them, because there is present the infallible Church which will separate the precious from the vile, and will go before us as a pillar of light to every discovery of purified truth ⁵.

But lest this disputation go on too long, it will now be enough to note two things. — It must be noted first that the infallible Church is not to be thought of as one to whom the Holy Spirit assists through new revelations. « For neither, says the Vatican Council, was the Holy Spirit promised to the successors of Peter in order that, by His revealing, they might make known a new doctrine, but in order that, by His assisting, they might holily guard and faithfully expound the revelation handed down through the apostles, or the deposit of faith ». Wherefore, since in the apostolic deposit there is by no means found contained the principle of a mixture of truth with error in the canonical books, and much less the criterion by which in those same books the pure may be discerned from the impure, it immediately appears how, with new revelation excluded, no place remains for an infallible judgment in relation to the selection which the new exegetes dream of. — It must be noted especially, secondly, that it is highly accidental in the present matter whether or not the inconveniences that will follow from biblical errors could be avoided, because the supreme and indeclinable question always returns: Can the inspiration of Him who is the supreme, absolute, and subsistent Truth extend itself even to error ⁶.