De inspiratione sacrae Scripturae: theologica disquisitio

But if, as regards particular texts taken one by one, we are bound by the rule declared by Trent, much more so as regards those general principles of interpretation which are universally received in the Catholic Church, and which supply the key of understanding against the depravers of the gospel.

Take an example from the question so often agitated in recent times concerning the parousia or last advent of Christ. The critics ask whether the eschatological discourses which are reported at length in Matthew, from those words of chapter 24: Watch therefore, because you do not know at what hour your Lord will come, etc., and are summarily resumed both in Mark (XIII.33, seq.) and in Luke (XXI-34. seq.), were directed or not to those who were present. And they think they hold us in a horned dilemma. For if we say that the exhortations to watch, to pray, to prepare oneself for the unforeseen parousia of the Son of man, looked not to those present who were hearing, but only to men of a future time: then indeed, besides that this seems beyond all belief, the categorical declaration of Christ Himself positively confronts us to the contrary, who thus concluded in Mark: But what I say to you, I say to all: watch. If, however, we answer that those exhortations were directed also to the disciples standing by, considered in their own person: then it follows that in the mind of Christ and in His opinion, these were still to be alive when the parousia came and the supreme calamity of the whole world. Otherwise, if He had contemplated these men as, against that last hour, already long since lying in their tombs, how would He have commended vigilance to them, lest the lord coming find them weighed down with surfeiting, drunkenness, and the cares of this life? How would He have compared them to servants to whom the lord, going abroad, gave power over his work, commanding the porter to watch, because it is uncertain when the lord will return, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning? For can this be the condition of the dead in their monuments?

But the dilemma which seems insoluble to the critics seems insoluble to them for this reason, that they either do not know, or despise, or reject a principle of interpretation universally received in the Church, and on other grounds confirmed by the most solid and unshakable arguments: namely, that Scripture is wont to refer to the last and universal judgment whatever pertains to the retributions of rewards and punishments of the future life, and, in order to the sentence on which eternity depends, to personify all men indifferently—who, by whatever difference of time, have been, are, or will be—in those whom the consummation of the world will find alive. And the reason is indeed too easy to need a long declaration. For it is contained in that which we all learned in the catechism: that each man is to be judged, when Christ comes to judge the whole world, such as he here and now is when he dies; and accordingly, if the discourse is about vigilance and careful preparation at all times, the condition of all is precisely the same, as if for all and each the interval separating the day of death from that day of the last advent of Christ were removed¹.

And this is a certain example of the general principle of Catholic interpretation, which supplies the key of understanding for many passages of the New Testament, for instance for the admonitions which frequently occur in the apostolic epistles: The time is short; it remains that those also who have wives be as though they had none. Let your modesty be known to all men; for the Lord is near. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is passed, and the day is at hand, etc. etc. Deprived of this key, the critics deprave these passages as also the other Scriptures, and little is wanting but that they persuade us that the inspired authors were so persuaded of the instant consummation of the world that they taught that one ought no longer to plough, to sow, to sail, to buy, to sell, to beget, to administer; that parents ought not to lay up treasure for their children (2 Cor. XII-14); that a woman cannot be saved through the bearing of children (2 Tim. V-14); that one must not pray for kings and for all who are in high station, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life, as is good and acceptable before our Savior God (1 Tim. II-2). Finally, little is wanting but that they flatly deny what history and the sacred text together emulously testify: namely, that the apostles gave all those precepts which looked to the establishment and renewal of human society, so far from insinuating that the last catastrophe was at the doors.

We must therefore adhere to the general principles of Catholic interpretation, because where this is neglected, not only is the attainment impossible of that true sense of Scripture which the Church has held and holds, but the fall is also easy into a sense contradictorily opposed to it, nay even entirely destructive of the authority of the sacred books, which are now shamelessly traduced as full of falsehoods and errors. And examples could be multiplied, of which an interminable series would be supplied by the things that in recent times, with so much levity of arguments and so great scandal to the faithful, have been brought forward by the Broad School. But these would far exceed the limits set for the present little work.