De inspiratione sacrae Scripturae: theologica disquisitio

« 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.