De inspiratione sacrae Scripturae: theologica disquisitio

Hence Leo XIII in the encyclical Providentissimus Deus: « It is to be lamented that there are many who search out and bring forward the monuments of antiquity, the customs and institutions of nations, and the testimonies of similar matters, with great labors indeed, but more often with this design, that they may detect the stain of error in the sacred books, and thereby weaken and make totter their authority on every side. And some do this with too hostile a mind, and not with judgment sufficiently fair. For they trust profane books and records of ancient memory as if no suspicion¹ even of error could attach to them, while to the books of Sacred Scripture, on the mere supposed appearance of error, and that not well examined, they refuse even equal credit. It can indeed happen that certain things have fallen out less correctly through copyists in transcribing the codices; but this is to be judged considerately, and not easily admitted, unless it has been duly demonstrated in particular places. It can also happen that the genuine sense of some passage remains uncertain, for the unraveling of which the best rules of interpretation will contribute much.

But it would be altogether impious either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Sacred Scripture, or to concede that the sacred author himself has erred. Nor indeed is their reasoning to be tolerated, who extricate themselves from these difficulties by not doubting to grant this: that divine inspiration pertains to matters of faith and morals, and to nothing beyond, because they falsely think that, when the truth of sentences is at issue, it is not so much to be inquired what God has said, as rather to be weighed for what cause He said it. For all and entire books... have been written with the Holy Spirit dictating. So far indeed is any error from being able to underlie divine inspiration, that it of itself not only excludes all error, but excludes and rejects it as necessarily as it is necessary that God, the supreme Truth, be the author of no error at all. « This is the ancient and constant faith of the Church ».

Convinced therefore by these arguments and authorities, most biblical scholars, at least in words, have withdrawn from the inconsiderate concession of errors in the Scriptures. But now they have devised new ways of speaking which, as far as the matter is concerned, fall back into the same thing. Of these it now comes to be said in the chapter that follows.