De inspiratione sacrae Scripturae: theologica disquisitio

These conclusions can conveniently be reduced to three heads, according as inspiration is considered either in comparison with revelation, or absolutely in itself, or finally in relation to its effect, that is, to the Scripture of which God is the author. And each point is to be set forth in order, with as much brevity as possible.

First conclusion: That, taking revelation in the sense consecrated by ecclesiastical usage, as the positive speech of God to us, every inspiration of Scripture is revelation, but not conversely. And that some revelation precedes inspiration, some follows it, and some also is bound to it by no order at all.

Revelation, according to the etymology of the word, is nothing other than a removal of a veil, a kind of manifestation of a truth that had previously been veiled and unknown. Whoever, then, clings to the etymological sense alone will be obliged to restrict revelation to those things only which, lying outside the range of human knowledge, could not become known otherwise than through a supernatural illumination from God. Nor, surely, did Johann Jahn know any other revelation, when he concluded that inspiration consists formally in God's assistance alone, directed to the prevention of errors; led, no doubt, by this reasoning: that inspiration in its formal notion does not include the reception of new knowledge concerning things previously unknown; therefore it is simply and adequately divided off from revelation; therefore it asserts nothing positive on God's part; therefore it must be placed in something negative, that is, in the mere prevention of error—so, namely, that books composed by human industry can be Sacred Scripture, provided only that the approval of the Church be added, by which this very freedom from error is authentically declared¹.

But the flaw in the argument lies chiefly in this: that while, on the one hand, a positive influx of God is supposed to exist in revelation alone, revelation itself is then circumscribed and narrowed within the limits taken from the etymology of the name, whereas it is a general principle that the thing from which a name is taken to signify is one thing, and the thing which it is taken to signify is another. The same kind of fallacy, therefore, is involved as if someone, reflecting that substance is so called from subsisting beneath accidents, should conclude that the name of substance cannot in any way apply to God, in whom beyond doubt there are no accidents. But you will carefully observe that things are wont to be named by us according as they exist in our apprehension. And because among us substance, that is, being in itself and through itself, is first and principally apprehended as standing beneath the phenomena or properties perceived by sense, hence the name of substance was imposed from this source; yet it is still properly said of those things in which those sensible properties neither are nor can be. And something similar happens in the present case. For a name had to be found to signify that supernatural and positive speech by which God, the Best and Greatest, assuming as it were the bearing of a teacher, instructed the human race concerning all things that are in any way ordered to the salvation of eternal life. And because in these the chief place is held by super-rational truths which, being on every side covered by an impenetrable veil, elude the natural keenness of our intellect, therefore from this removal of a veil that whole speech was named, of which the Apostle says: God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days has spoken to us by his Son. But you would surely be wrong to confound the reason for the imposition of the name with its actual signification, as though no truths that do not of themselves transcend the grasp of reason fell under revelation, or as though it belonged to its essence always to bring new knowledge, especially to the very organ of transmission—knowledge, I say, that was in no way whatever previously possessed by him or could have been possessed. Certainly that is not the notion of revelation that the Vatican Council supplies to us, since throughout its whole extent it distinguishes those things which are not of themselves inaccessible to human reason from those which altogether surpass the understanding of the human mind². Likewise, when it places the formal object of faith in the authority of God revealing, and immediately adds that all those things are to be believed with divine faith which are contained in the written word of God³, in which there are very many things, for example, that are purely historical and knowable from elsewhere by human testimony, as is most evidently clear. So, then, revelation is not to be restricted to the limits which the etymology of the word would seem to set beforehand, but just as everything said by God is and is called revealed, so revelation itself is undoubtedly to be taken for every positive speech of God to us.

Hence it now follows manifestly that every inspiration of Scripture is revelation, because it is the dictation of a book, and the dictation of a book is beyond doubt the utterance of the things that are written in the book. Whence Cyril of Jerusalem, as above⁴, catech. 16, n. 2: « The Holy Spirit Himself uttered the Scriptures ». But the proposition does not convert. For not conversely is every revelation the inspiration of Scripture, since God can speak to men, and in fact has spoken in ways other than by dictating Scripture. And the like is found among men, who sometimes speak in writing and sometimes with the living voice, sometimes through themselves and sometimes through others as through organs or instruments. So too God has sometimes spoken by dictating things to be written, sometimes by dictating words to be uttered by mouth, sometimes by impressing on minds the species or signs of truths to be revealed, through those manifold modes that were already indicated when prophetic knowledge was being treated.

Let it be beyond doubt, then, that there is some revelation distinct from the inspiration of Scripture, and that it is manifold. For there is a certain revelation which has no dependence on the written word of God, but proceeds by a parallel way, as is clear in the case of the unwritten traditions which, received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or handed down by the apostles themselves, with the Holy Spirit dictating, as it were from hand to hand, have come down even to us⁵. But there is another revelation which is so distinguished from inspiration formally taken that it is nevertheless referred to it as preceding or following it. And indeed the necessity of antecedent revelation has been sufficiently explained above, § 1, inasmuch as the reception of knowledge concerning the things to be written is presupposed to inspiration. Since, therefore, there are many things in the Scriptures that could not become known to the hagiographers except by the way of revelation, these had to be revealed prior by nature to being inspired. But the rest were revealed only in the same respect in which they were inspired. But these things are clear from what has been premised, nor does anything occur that must now be added. But concerning consequent revelation there has so far been nothing.

By consequent revelation, however, I mean that by which the inspiration of the book itself is revealed by God. For it is not enough that a canonical book have been written with the Holy Spirit dictating, but it is also necessary that this very fact become known to us; known, I say, not by any reasoning or manner whatever, but as the dogmas of faith must become known, among which number the canon of Scripture is beyond doubt reckoned, as regards all and each of the books contained in it. Furthermore, even if someone were to say (which is by no means to be conceded) that it is necessary for the hagiographer to have a consciousness of his own inspiration ⁶, still the testimony proceeding from such a consciousness could not found anything but human faith, which does not suffice for the present matter. We must therefore come to a revelation from God. Moreover, this revelation from God is not included in inspiration itself, since there exists no book of Scripture that bears testimony concerning itself as divinely inspired. Nay, even if it did add such testimony, it would not yet have been enough, at least as regards all the books of both the Old and the New Testament without distinction, because it would always have needed to be authenticated by the ministry of those who are established by God as the promulgators of the whole of revealed doctrine, such as, in our regard, after Christ the Lord, were the apostles alone. In every way, then, a revelation consequent upon inspiration must necessarily be admitted, and thereby the truth of the first conclusion appears more and more, namely: that revelation extends more widely than inspiration, inasmuch as inspiration is but one particular mode of that speech by which God deigned to reveal Himself and the eternal decrees of His will to the human race.

And on these matters enough has been said thus far. There follows now another conclusion concerning inspiration, not now taken comparatively, but absolutely and in itself.

Second conclusion: That inspiration extends to the words as much as to the concepts. And that⁷ the vivisection which certain writers introduce proceeds from their false supposition that inspiration is to be understood after the manner of an infusion or immission of preformed concepts or words. But it no longer has any place, once inspiration has been taken as a motion by which the intellect of the hagiographer is instrumentally moved to compose the whole context in the concrete, and not with regard to abstract thoughts alone, but inseparably also with regard to the words that express them.

Indeed, that distinction between concepts and words, introduced here and there by certain theologians in order to remove verbal dictation from Sacred Scripture, has always seemed unnatural and violent. « Inspiration can be considered and can pertain.. either to the individual thoughts and truths of a book, and their order, or also to the individual words, and their composition or phrasing and style.... « I maintain first: God does not seem to have specially inspired the sacred writers as regards even the individual words and the phrasing ». So the Würzburg theologians, de principiis c. 1, a. 3, and most moderns with them.

But if one considers rightly, he will see that the connection between thoughts and phrasing is so great that the same and equal cause would seem to be at work on both sides. For it is one of two things: either you consider the words as regards the substance of the sense, or you consider them as regards the mere modality of expression. If the first, then there will be no less reason for attributing words to divine inspiration than concepts, since the intention of the one inspiring is most certainly borne upon the words according to the substance of the sense—nay, it terminates first and principally upon them as such. If the second, then conversely there will be no greater reason for attributing concepts to divine inspiration than words, because since the modality of expression answers in all things to the modality of conception, if you refer the modality of style to the hagiographer and not to God inspiring, by the same right you will have to refer the modality of the concepts to that same cause as well. Hence from first to last, things that are inseparable seem to be separated; and in this matter a certain rationalist aptly observed that a kind of vivisection is introduced there which the nature of the thing does not allow ⁸.

But this way of speaking seems to have a kinship with that opinion which, recoiling utterly from every premotion on God's part, holds that prevenient grace consists formally in the very acts, undeliberate acts, of the intellect and will. As though, namely, those acts were placed by God in the soul in the way in which habits are infused into it or species impressed, whereas it belongs to the essential notion of acts, especially vital acts, to arise from within, and therefore they can have no other proximate and elicitive principle besides the powers of the soul, whether bare, or furnished with habits, or applied to acting by a flowing motion⁹. But whatever the case, the same conception is now transferred from the subject of the helps of divine grace to the inspiration of Scripture, which those authors imagine can be understood in no other way than after the manner of an infusion and, as it were, an immission of preformed concepts or words. And since they saw that the hypothesis of an immission of words had to be excluded, as not accounting for the differences of style, and as making the inspiration of concepts useless and reducing the hagiographers themselves to the condition of mere amanuenses, they therefore finally said that bare concepts were infused, which were then clothed in the garment of words by the industry of the sacred writers themselves, under God's assistance. This opinion indeed is burdened with all the incongruities hinted at thus far; besides that, if what has been set out were true, the sacred writers would not have been true instruments of God, except perhaps in the material writing. Moreover, as regards the thoughts themselves they would have been merely passive, but as regards the words, active with the activity of a principal cause. And yet neither in the first respect, nor in the second, nor in both together, is the true notion of an instrument preserved.

But now, if you lay aside that superstitious and altogether irrational horror of premotion, if you do not fancy concepts as dropped down from heaven and stored in the mind as pictures are stored in a picture gallery, if finally you consider that the minds of the hagiographers were living instruments of God for the whole and entire composition of Scripture, then there will be no need to dissect things that nature has joined so intimately in our case, ideas and words, the manner of speaking and the manner of conceiving, nor finally will it be necessary to refer ideas to God and words to man, thereby destroying in the thing itself all true and proper instrumentality of man. But you will understand without difficulty that the whole is from God as premoving man, and the whole also from man as moved by God, as will appear still more clearly from the explanation of the conclusion that follows.

Third conclusion : That the sacred books are wholly from God and wholly from man, just as a work of art is wholly from the instrument and wholly from the artisan : inasmuch, namely, as there is no part distinct in reality from another part which is owed to the proper power of the instrument apart from the influx of the principal cause, or to the influx of the principal cause apart from the proper activity of the instrument, but there are only distinct formalities which must be referred to one or the other cause as to their proper principle.

This conclusion is nothing other than the application to a particular case of the general condition of works that are produced through instruments. For however far you run through all the kinds of such works, everywhere you will see the causality of the instrument so subordinated to the causality of the principal agent that one cannot assign in the effect parts distinct in reality which ought or can be ascribed to either cause separately. As in material writing, for example, the whole is from the pen and the whole from the writer, and so with the rest. Nevertheless in this very effect, really undivided, different formalities appear, which are referred, as received, either to the proper power of the instrument, or to its power as merely instrumental—and so, in the last analysis, to the power of the principal agent. Think again of material writing, first indeed as it consists of certain lines traced in ink, then as it consists of the same lines written down in a certain order. Of these, the first is referred to the proper power of the pen, the second to the motion derived from the writer, although it is of course impossible that by a real division the lines should be placed on the one side and the artistic arrangement of those same lines on the other. And this is so because the principal cause and the instrumental cause do not stand as concurrent but as subordinate. Whence it comes about that the whole effect issues indivisibly from the power of the instrument as moved and elevated by the principal agent.

Apply this now to Sacred Scripture, since the unanimous testimony of the whole of Tradition has taught us that the canonical books truly have their origin from God as from a principal author, and from the hagiographers as from instrumental authors. The whole, therefore, is from God in them, both as regards the thoughts and as regards the words expressing the thoughts; the whole is also from man¹⁰, both as regards the latter and as regards the former; yet from man only as from a living pen which God used. Hence there too one finds two distinct formalities, according as Scripture is considered first as consisting of thoughts formed and expressed in a human way, and then as consisting of those same thoughts so formed and expressed that by the force of their origin they are truly the speech of God directed to us. These two stand in proportion as the ink lines on the one hand and the artistic distribution of them into characters and letters on the other stood a moment ago. And since these things are sufficiently clear in themselves, there is no need to dwell on them further. But because it is one thing that in the sacred books the whole be from man, and another that the whole be so much from man as if it were not from God, attend now to this other conclusion, which I explain at once.

Fourth conclusion : That it is false that the books of Scripture are as human as if they were not divine. False too that the hagiographers were neither more nor less the authors of the canonical books than profane writers are the authors of their own. False, finally, that the sense of those same books is no less proper to the biblical writer than the sense of the Iliad is to Homer, or that of the orations against Verres to Cicero.

These are the assertions of the critics; from which they then deduce many absurdities in view of the goal they have, of equating Scripture with the other books composed by human industry, and of subjecting it to the judgment seat of what they call higher criticism. But these things import nothing less than the pure and mere negation of inspiration. For in truth, that book which is owed to man only as to God's instrument is not as human as that other book which traces its origin to man as to a principal author too. Unless perhaps you contend that a book I wrote at another's dictation is as much mine as one I composed by my own strength and my own wit. Accordingly, if the canonical books are as human as if they were not divine, it follows openly that they are not divine precisely insofar as they were composed and written by God as principal cause and by man only as instrumental; which in other words is the same as saying that those books are not divinely inspired.

See, then, how in this designation of books as divine an equivocation may perhaps lie hidden. For as was said at the outset, it could be understood in two ways that some writing is sacred or divine Scripture. First, insofar as it was inspired by God. Second, insofar as it were a writing first composed in a human way, which God had then made His own, in the same way that a draft of a bull drawn up by a theologian afterwards becomes the writing of the Pontiff, by reason of the papal subscription and publication. And if indeed the canonical books were books of God in this way, then you would most truly say that they are as human as if they were not divine. For then they would have been taken up to be the word of God such as human origin had made them. Then their human authors would not on that account have been any the less authors, from the fact that it had pleased God to subscribe to the writings and to canonize what they said. Then the sense of God Himself would in that case be neither more nor less the proper sense of the human writer. Then finally there would be some force in that comparison with the incarnate Word which they press, whose humanity is circumscribed by precisely the same essential terms as if it had not been united to a divine hypostasis. But this is not the ground of the divinity of our books, as was observed above on the occasion of Bonfrère's opinion. For the books of Scripture are called and are divine not insofar as, having been composed by human industry beforehand, they afterwards received the supervening formality of divine authority, but insofar as they were produced by the Holy Spirit inspiring, and so by reason of their origin and by the force of their origin.

Hence first, by the force of their origin they are not only immune from every defect which the speech of God does not admit, but they also positively excel in what follows upon the dictation of God Himself: certitude, infallibility, and authority.

Hence second, far from the sense of the divine books being as proper to the biblical writers as the sense of the Iliad is to Homer, or of the Aeneid to Virgil, it is rather so proper to God that it can extend itself to more things than were in the knowledge or the intention of the hagiographers. « It is to be noted, says St. Thomas, 2-2, Q. 173, a. 4, that because the mind of the prophet is a deficient instrument (in respect of the principal agent, that is, of the Holy Spirit), even true prophets do not know all that the Holy Spirit intends in their visions, or words, or even deeds ».

Hence finally third, within that breadth which the diverse condition and character of human instruments delimited, the very utterance of our Scriptures has something proper and, as it were, majestic, by which those sacred Books are wondrously distinguished from all other literature ever found in the world. « The mode of speaking in which holy Scripture is composed—how accessible to all, though penetrable by very few! The things it contains openly it speaks to the heart like a familiar friend, without guile, of the unlearned and of the learned alike. But the things it hides in mysteries it does not raise up by any proud eloquence, which a slow and unlearned mind would not dare to approach, like a poor man to a rich. But it invites all with humble speech, feeding them with things manifest and exercising them also with hidden truth, having in things open what it has in things hidden. But lest things open be despised, those same things are again desired when hidden; desired, they are in some way renewed; renewed, they are sweetly imparted. By these things, wholesomely, both evil minds are corrected, and small ones nourished, and great ones delighted. That mind is an enemy of this teaching which either through error does not know it to be most wholesome, or through sickness hates the medicine »¹¹.

Fifth and last conclusion: That for the notion of an inspired book it indeed makes no difference who the instrumental writer was. And that nonetheless it is most falsely inferred: therefore, generally speaking, questions about the persons of the biblical writers belong to higher criticism, as though circumscribed within its own and reserved field.

Indeed, it is most true what Gregory observes in the passage cited above, in the preface to the Moralia, ch. 1, saying: « Who wrote these things (the book of Job) is very superfluously asked, since nevertheless the author of the book is faithfully believed to be the Holy Spirit... If, having received letters from some great man, we read the words, but asked with what pen they had been written, it would surely be ridiculous to know the author of the letters and to understand the sense, but to investigate with what pen the words of those letters were impressed. » And the sense is that if at any time the writer of some book of Scripture is unknown, or is commended only by doubtful and uncertain documents, nothing troublesome follows. Hence it happens that one need not then entangle oneself in curious questions which are found neither to pertain to the divine authority of the book nor to contribute anything to its understanding. Furthermore, it flows most openly from the premises that the person of the hagiographer—what or what sort he was—plainly is accidental in relation to the effect of inspiration, and thereby is altogether indifferent in relation to the dogma by which all and each of the books listed in the Tridentine index are to be believed sacred and canonical.

Nevertheless, it is one thing altogether that questions about the biblical writers do not touch the peculiar dogma of inspiration formally as such; but another thing that, generally speaking, they have nothing to do with sacred doctrine, and are therefore to be placed in the proper and reserved field of the science of criticism. For this certainly not only does not follow from what has been declared above, but could not even be maintained without a most grave error.

In the first place, these questions are sometimes intimately connected with the dogma by which we are taught that the deposit of Catholic revelation was closed in the apostles and sealed with a final seal. For in this deposit the whole and entire canon of Scripture is without doubt contained, and therefore, if it is true in faith that nothing could be added to that deposit after the apostles, it is also necessary that through the apostles themselves, or some one of them, all and each of the canonical books were commended to the Church. But this could not have been the case if they had existed later than the apostolic age. Whoever, therefore, led by the decrees of higher criticism, attributes the redaction of even one book—say the fourth Gospel—to a writer or writers of the second or third century, will err most gravely in the doctrine of faith, nay more, will utter a proposition that is connected by a necessary link with a heretical proposition. Therefore not every question about the pen that the Holy Spirit used in writing the sacred books is among those questions that are left to the free operation of critics.

Moreover, it sometimes happens that the sacred writer names himself in the inspired text itself, as may be seen in most of the apostolic epistles, and also in the Gospel and Apocalypse of John. For the fourth Gospel is concluded with these words: This is that disciple who bears witness of these things, and wrote these things. Namely the disciple of whom it had been said a little above: Whom Jesus loved, who also reclined at the supper upon his breast. And who, I ask, will that disciple-writer be, whom Jesus loved and who reclined at the supper upon his breast, if not John the apostle? Or will the critics perhaps say that the evangelical words admit another interpretation? Or that there is there a postil added later to the inspired text, the Holy Spirit not dictating? But leaving aside other arguments for now, I ask for a moment whose decision it is concerning texts inspired or not inspired. Perhaps of higher criticism, or of Tradition and the Church? And lest in the present matter they seek an escape on the part of texts which are or are not about matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine (a distinction which the critical school does not rightly grasp, as will be seen below), I observe for now only that that text is so far from being indifferent to matters of faith, that the principal reason for modern rationalists to deny the authenticity of the Gospel published under the name of the Apostle John is precisely this: namely, they wish to persuade people that the dogma of the Word who was in the beginning with God, and who was made flesh and dwelt among us, is of Neoplatonic origin, and arose in the second or third century from the casual evolution or adaptation of the Christian idea to the philosophies of the Alexandrians then prevailing. Imbued with whose opinions, a certain author of a new school did not fear in a very recent work to assert the following heresies crudely: The theory of the incarnate Word was invented when the Gospel was preached not only to proselytes of Judaism, but also to gentiles who had received a Hellenic education¹². And again: The Hellenization of Christianity through faith in the incarnate Word was caused by the state of intellectual culture of the first gentile converts¹³. And still more openly: From the spontaneous effort of faith toward its own definition, the Greek interpretation of Christian messianism came progressively to light, insofar as Christ, Son of God and of man, the predestined Savior, was transformed into the Word made flesh, the revealer of God in the human race, and this by the adaptation of the Christian idea to the metaphysics of Plato and Philo¹⁴. And again: The Orthodox Fathers were not conscious of the mutual debt received from Hellenic wisdom, and therefore they condemn Plato, Philo, and Origen more or less, although according to the truth of history, the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation are Greek doctrines emanating from the fountain of the philosophers¹⁵. You will say perhaps that these heresies do not have a necessary connection with the personality of the redactor of the fourth Gospel, whether he be the Apostle John or not. And that I confess to you. Nevertheless, neither do they have any further place, once John is asserted as author. Hence I say ad hominem that the text mentioned above, this is that disciple who... wrote these things, is not among those which you would adjudge to criticism on the pretext that they have nothing to do with matters of faith. See therefore again how questions about the biblical writers are not, generally speaking, a reserved right of criticism, as if connected by no bond with sacred doctrine.

But since the matter is one that to many today seems left to each one's free appraisal, and as it were of no consequence in relation to faith, let it be allowed to discuss it more thoroughly, transferring the question specifically to the author of the Pentateuch.

Confirmation of the preceding conclusion, from the solution of the question: Whether it can be said without grave error in a matter of faith that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses.

I. — Indeed, that Moses did not write the Pentateuch is an opinion which, from its first origin down to our own times, all Catholic writers and apologists have with one voice exploded as most contrary to religion, and as invented on purpose by unbelievers—whether atheists, deists, or rationalists—to overthrow the foundations of the Christian faith, and have refuted with the greatest zeal.

« That Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, Jews and Christians alike have always held as established, by the unanimous consent of so many centuries, as Huet demonstrates. But since Spinoza, Hobbes, « Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and other unbelievers, in order to undermine the authority and authenticity of Sacred Scripture at once on the threshold, obstinately deny that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, Huet has providently refuted their cavils, Dem. Evang., prop. 4, c. 14; Calmet, Praef. in Genesim; Goldhagen, Introd. in S. Script. prop. 2, sect. 1, and others. We shall do the same, beginning with Voltaire's ravings, etc. »¹⁶ — « The opinion of Jews and Christians has always been unanimous, that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch. The first of all openly to attack this constant tradition were Hobbes and Spinoza, from whose opinion Isaac La Peyrère does not depart much. The difficulties invented by those writers Voltaire most studiously collected and amplified, and adorned with that elegance and facility of style in which he was second to none: Traité de la tolérance, Philosophie de l' histoire, Dictionnaire philosophique, Questions sur l' Encyclopédie, la Bible expliquée, etc. A singular opinion, akin to the one soon to be reported, was embraced by Richard Simon, in his Historia critica V. T. »¹⁷ — « That Moses wrote the five books, I trust I have proved so fully in the earlier part of this work of ours that no further demonstration seems necessary. But because Hobbes in his work entitled Leviathan, La Peyrère in his Systema praeadamiticum, and Benedict Spinoza in his Tractatus theologico-politicus deny that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, for that reason I must turn to this argument again, that it may be treated most copiously. »¹⁸ — « That the work of the Pentateuch is to be assigned to Moses as its author would, after so many brilliant studies written on the same subject, be demonstrated by us at present altogether in vain. After a long possession, surely, of more than 3000 years, no litigant is admitted against Moses unless he has produced documents of his right not merely free from doubt and ambiguity, but plainly evident and perspicuous. But the arguments which are brought forward by more recent unbelievers are very far indeed from perspicuity. »¹⁹ — « As many as have written about Jewish affairs, whether Jews, Christians, or pagans, have never raised any doubt about the antiquity and authority of the Pentateuch until Spinoza, Hobbes, La Peyrère, and certain most vain heretics of old. Following in their footsteps, the theists, in order to overthrow the Christian religion by every path, number Moses among fictitious personages, and the Mosaic law among fabricated little tales. »²⁰

And it would surely be long and tedious to produce so many other testimonies from which it is most openly established that this was, from the times when philosophism arose, for two and a half centuries, the fixed and constant position of Catholic apologetics against rationalistic impiety: that Moses is certainly the author of the books which are circulated under his name, and that this pertains altogether to the cause of defending religion.

To be sure, it now seems otherwise to learned men who glory in the Catholic name, in whose books and periodicals the contrary position is found. But this must be carefully noted, that all their lucubrations in this part too are nothing but a reproduction of the opinions and conclusions which, in the middle of the nineteenth century, after the principal promoters of rationalistic criticism in Germany, Ernest Renan published, whether concerning the author of the Pentateuch²¹, or concerning the manner or process of historical redaction in the Pentateuch²². Hence it happens that in them we hear not so much Catholics as the rationalists themselves, who, by some singular lot, or by what stupendous fortune, obtained in those Catholics, as it were, a certain instrument of repetition and organ of publicity. There is therefore no reason why account should be taken of them at present. For neither will a new edition of rationalistic wisdom, wherever found and by whomsoever illustrated and adorned, be able to prevent it from being simply and without restriction true that the opinion which holds Moses to be the most certain author of the Pentateuch is an opinion which among the writers of the Church has been universally and constantly held as intimately connected with the cause of faith and the defense of revelation. Nor indeed undeservedly, as will immediately appear.

II. — For it must now be further considered that something can pertain to the doctrine of faith in two ways. Either because it is contained in the object of faith itself, which, revealed to us by God, has been sufficiently proposed by the Church. Or because, even if perhaps it exists outside the amplitude of revelation, it is nevertheless so connected and coherent with the object of faith that it is required for its custody, defense, proposal, explanation, and credibility—in that way, namely, which is usually explained when treating of the secondary object of the ecclesiastical magisterium.

Let us therefore for the meantime allow that the authenticity of the Pentateuch, as it is referred to Moses as author, was not revealed by God, and hence does not pertain in the first way to the doctrine of faith. Will a proposition denying that authenticity therefore not be worthy of the gravest censure? But attend, I ask, to the fact that that authenticity contributes most greatly to the credibility of faith, and to such an extent indeed that if it is once either denied or brought into doubt, by that very fact there are taken away, in great part, the external arguments of revelation disposed by God so that the obedience of our faith might be consonant with reason; which arguments, as Vatican Council, Session 3, ch. 3, testifies, are chiefly miracles and prophecies.

And indeed, if the Pentateuch is not the genuine work of that author under whose name it has hitherto been universally received, first of all all historical value is taken away from it. For it could not with any verisimilitude be ascribed to a contemporary author who had been an eyewitness of the things narrated in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and who could have been instructed from a sure tradition of the ancestors about the facts recorded in Genesis. Nay, it is against this very point that unbelievers rush in their assault on Moses as author, so that they may freely reduce the contents of the Pentateuch to legends, or myths, or productions of popular imagination; and in this too they have the Catholics mentioned above as footmen and faithful disciples. Behold, then, the history of the people of God is truncated at the head. The ancient miracles now count for nothing. The succession of religion, at least as it is considered in the preambles of faith, becomes uncertain. The harmony of the two Testaments wavers in the air. That wondrous evolution and continuity of prophecy from Adam to Moses, and from Moses to Christ, is cut off—the prophecy in which Christ Himself was announced through successive oracles, through concordant oracles, through oracles always more precise as the fullness of time drew ever nearer. In sum, there is removed from the midst that great sign of credibility of which Augustine speaks in his letter to Volusian: « Who would not be moved to believe by that very order of events from the beginning, and by that connection of times which makes the past give faith concerning the present, confirming the earlier by the later and the ancient by the more recent? One man is chosen from the people of the Chaldeans, endowed with most faithful piety, to whom divine promises are disclosed, to be fulfilled in the last times after so long a series of centuries, and in whose seed all nations are foretold to receive blessing.... From him a most numerous people is propagated, multiplied in Egypt.... From the servitude of Egypt a mighty people is led out, and, the impious nations being driven out, led into and established in the land of promise, and even exalted into a kingdom. Then.... scourged by various disasters and consoled by prosperities, it is led even to the incarnation and manifestation of Christ. That Christ, the Son of God, God about to come in the flesh, to die, to rise again, to ascend into heaven, by His most prevailing name to have peoples dedicated to Himself among all nations, and in Him remission of sins and eternal salvation to be for believers—all the promises of that nation, all the prophecies, priesthoods, sacrifices, the temple, and absolutely all the sacraments sounded forth. Christ also came. In His birth, life, words, deeds, sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension, all the heralds of the prophets are fulfilled.... What mind, then, eager for eternity and moved by the brevity of the present life, will contend against the light and summit of this divine authority? » Excellent indeed, O Augustine, provided that the facts you adduce stand historically. But now, since the Pentateuch, as being of uncertain origin and uncertain author, has no human credit, this construction is found to be artificial and imaginary, lacking a base, and the first foundation sustaining the mass of the building.

But now the argument grows, because if the Pentateuch is not authentic, how are the later prophecies still authentic—say those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and others? For I do not think stronger reasons can be brought for these than for that one. And if the arguments of the critics against Moses are valid, others of the same value, or to speak more truly, of the same levity, will be valid against the rest²³. And the consequence is easily confirmed by the facts themselves, because we already have a proto-Isaiah and a deutero-Isaiah. We also have a pseudo-Daniel. We shall soon have a pseudo-Jeremiah, a pseudo-Micah, and so on, and nothing will remain but a certain torn compilation of prophecies, of which no one will know whence they arose, by whom they were published, to what epoch they are to be referred, etc.

Add that our forebears always understood that God permitted the fall of the Jews and preserved this people by so great a miracle in its dispersion among the nations for this reason, that the same people might exist as a witness to the authenticity of the prophecies, one beyond every exception. « All the nations, says Augustine, Serm. 374, n. 2, subdued by the Romans, passed into the laws of the Romans. This nation was both conquered and remained in its law, as far as pertains to the worship of God; it kept its ancestral customs and rite... For what reason, if not for the testimony of the truth? The Jews are scattered everywhere, carrying the codices in which Christ is preached, and is presented as he was foretold, so that even a pagan can be shown. I produce the codex, I read the prophet, I show that the prophecy has been fulfilled. The pagan doubts whether perhaps I myself have fabricated this. My enemy has this codex, long ago commended to him by his ancestors. From it I convict both. The Jew, because I have known that it was prophesied and fulfilled. The pagan, because I did not fabricate this ».

But if the testimony of the Jews fails as regards the Mosaic books, will it finally be of any weight as regards the others? Again, therefore, those clear, easy, obvious signs, accommodated to everyone's understanding, which God Himself disposed in His providence, are shaken, so that we are at last sent back to those most false and most vain reasons of credibility, utterly destructive of true theological faith, which the new inventors of the system of immanence proclaim.

Thus therefore it now appears that the authenticity of the Pentateuch, as it is referred to Moses as author, is most especially among those things which must remain fixed and unshaken in the preambles of faith, lest faith itself be first brought into jeopardy, until, as though deprived of its bulwarks, it finally passes into complete ruin.

III. — But what under one consideration belongs to the preambles of faith can under another consideration belong to the object of faith. Just as the resurrection of Christ, as knowable by historical demonstration, holds a certain principal place among the signs of credibility which are preambles to faith. And as asserted in the creed and in the divinely inspired Scriptures, it must be and is believed by divine faith.

Furthermore, as regards the Pentateuch, Moses seems quite openly to be indicated as its author in the inspired text itself. Let it be allowed to take the declaration from a critic who cannot be suspected by adversaries. « As for the arguments drawn from the Pentateuch itself which prove Moses its author, near the end of the work (Deut. XXXI, 9-26), Moses testifies in express words that this whole book was written by himself from beginning to end, handed over to the chiefs of the people and the priests, so that it might be kept in the sanctuary of the sacred tabernacle beside the ark of the covenant, and be read before the whole people every seventh year, in the days of the feast of tabernacles. And in the work itself, here and there, Moses says that now individual laws, now narratives of events were recorded by himself in this book. Thus Exod. XVII-14, the ambushes which the Amalekites set for the Hebrews wearied by the journey, the battle that followed, and the decree of their future destruction, Moses says that he wrote down in a book at the divine command—a book undoubtedly begun, and in which he had already written many things, as is gathered from the fact that he wrote with the article..., whereby he indicates that he is speaking of a certain and sufficiently well-known book. After the Israelites had made a covenant with Jehovah at Mount Sinai, and had received the laws from Moses, Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah in the book of the covenant which he read before the whole people, Exod. XXIV-4-7. When many other precepts had later been added to these, Moses was again commanded to commit them to writing, Exod. XXXIV-27. Further, Numer. XXXIII, 1-2, Moses is said to have written down, by Jehovah's command, the departures and journeys of the Israelites as they are read there. The book of Numbers is closed, xxxvi-13, with these words: These are the commandments and judgments which the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses to the children of Israel in the plains of Moab beyond the Jordan opposite Jericho. Finally, in Deuteronomy, which contains the ἀνανεώσεως, explanations and supplements of the laws handed down in the three preceding books, Moses in his exhortations to the people repeatedly mentions this law (xvii, 18-19; xxxi, 9-11), and the book of this law (xxviii-61; xxix, 9-26). Especially notable is the passage xxviii-61, where, in the speech in which Moses threatens the Israelites, if they do not obey the divine precepts, with the loss of all good things, these words are found among others: Moreover, the Lord will bring upon you all the diseases and plagues which are not written in the volume of this law, until he consumes you. From which it follows that Moses handed over to the people this book in which those threats were written down, and therefore that he himself committed his speeches to writing. » ²⁴

In the New Testament too there are innumerable passages in which the books of the Pentateuch are ascribed to Moses by Christ and the apostles. They say, indeed, that Christ and the apostles cited these books under the name and title under which they were circulating, intending to affirm nothing about their true author. And there is no leisure to discuss such an assertion in its generality. I say only for now that there are texts which evidently exclude such an interpretation. Thus, when in John V-45 Christ says to the Jews: Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you hope, is he speaking of some unknown author who had obtained the name of Moses among the common people, or not rather of that true Moses whom the Synagogue truly had as legislator, instructor, and founder? I think the answer cannot be doubtful. Moreover, of that true Moses Christ adds: If you believed Moses, you would perhaps believe even me; for he wrote of me.

Likewise, when it is said in 2 Cor. III, 13-15: And not as Moses put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel might not look upon his face, which is done away... But even unto this day, when Moses is read, a veil is placed over their heart: of which Moses is it speaking in the second place? Is it not of the same one of whom it spoke in the first? where without doubt the discourse is of the very legislator of the Jews, who in Exod. xxxiv, coming down from the mountain, spoke to the people with veiled face. Or perhaps above the true Moses is brought forward, but below only the supposed Moses? But now, if that same true and not supposed Moses, by the testimony of Scripture, is read even unto this day, therefore, by the testimony of the same Scripture, he is the author of the books which are attributed to him²⁵.

Let these things then be said so that it may appear that although, for the formal notion of inspired Scripture as such, it does not matter who was the instrumental author, yet it would be most falsely inferred in a general thesis that the attribution of the sacred books to these or those writers is of no interest to the doctrine of faith, but always belongs to those questions which are left to the free appetite of critics. And thus the disputation on the very notion of inspiration will be concluded. There follows now the other part of this our inquiry: concerning the things that follow upon inspiration.

« Renan had the courage to say it openly; thus at least it will be known what to think, and the progress of the elaboration of the new religion will not be hindered by deceptive equivocations. Fr. Cereseto does not like half-measures; he poses the sharp dilemma: Faith or apostasy! As a disinterested witness, we confine ourselves to setting forth the substantial thought of the learned polemicist ». J. Halévy.