De inspiratione sacrae Scripturae: theologica disquisitio

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.