De inspiratione sacrae Scripturae: theologica disquisitio

« 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.