Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica

The older Protestants loudly proclaimed the inerrancy of Scripture; the more recent ones, however, since the end of the eighteenth century, as almost all of them are imbued with biblical rationalism, think that errors are found here and there in the sacred books, both with regard to natural things and with regard to religious things.¹ Finally, at the end of the nineteenth century, some Catholics as well restricted the inerrancy of Scripture to religious matters (the truths of faith and morals), admitting errors in the "profane" parts of the sacred books. Such was the view of those learned men who narrowed real inspiration, such as Rohling and Lenormant,² and in general of the adherents of the "broad school," such as Salvatore di Bartolo, d'Hulst,³ and others.

On the contrary, however, it must be held altogether that all the utterances of Scripture are true for the very reason that they were written by the hagiographers.

We are here discussing the original Scriptures; the copies and the versions, however, only insofar as they agree with the originals. For no one denies that glosses and faults have crept into the copies and versions, which, since they are not inspired, are not true of themselves either. If, therefore, the aforementioned theologians maintained only this — that in the sacred codices existing even today the things pertaining to faith and morals enjoy inerrancy, whereas into the other parts, inspired per accidens, errors could have crept in the course of time, the substance of the narrative remaining intact — they would not be open to censure. They wrongly maintain, however, that errors were set down in Scripture by the hand of the hagiographers and, consequently, with God Himself inspiring. For:

1. Christ and the apostles affirm that all things that are "written" are true for the very reason that they are written. "The Scripture cannot be broken."⁴ "It is necessary that the Scripture be fulfilled."⁵ "All things must needs be fulfilled, which are written."⁶ "One jot or one tittle shall not pass from the law."⁷ These and other words of Christ and the apostles attribute unblemished truth to scriptural passages for the very reason that they are scriptural passages. But all the passages of the sacred books belong to the inspired Scripture. Therefore all the passages or utterances of Scripture, as much the greatest as the least, as much the religious as the profane, share the same unblemished truth.

2. The Fathers and the scholastics teach the inerrancy of Scripture with a consensus so full that it is scarcely necessary to adduce a few of their testimonies. St. Hippolytus: "Let us learn that in nothing does Scripture deceive us."⁸ Eusebius of Caesarea: "I judge it an audacious and rash deed if anyone dares to affirm that the divine Scripture is deceived."⁹ St. Basil: "But if the Lord is faithful in all His words ... it is a manifest falling away from the faith and a sin of pride if anyone rejects any of the things that are written."¹⁰ St. Augustine: "To those books of the Scriptures alone, which are called canonical, have I learned to pay this fear and honor, that I most firmly believe that none of their authors erred in writing anything. And if in those letters I come upon anything that seems contrary to the truth, I will not doubt that either the codex is faulty, or the translator has not grasped what was said, or that I myself have not understood at all."¹¹ St. Thomas makes this celebrated saying his own¹² and adds: "This must be held, that whatever is contained in Sacred Scripture is true; otherwise, whoever thought otherwise would be a heretic."¹³ St. Bonaventure: "In it [Scripture] nothing is to be despised as useless, nothing rejected as false, nothing repudiated as iniquitous, for the reason that the Holy Spirit, its most perfect author, could say nothing false, nothing superfluous, nothing defective."¹⁴

3. The supreme pontiffs in past centuries, to be sure, defended the inerrancy of Scripture by no explicit definition, because the necessity of such a definition never arose. For by the universal preaching of the Church and with all the faithful assenting, the infallible truth of the whole of Sacred Scripture has always been sanctioned. Finally, in our own age, when the contrary opinion was first put forward by certain Catholics, Leo XIII explicitly condemned it by issuing for this purpose the encyclical letter "Providentissimus Deus." There, among other things, these things are declared: "It would be wholly unlawful either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Scripture, or to concede that the sacred author Himself erred ... And so far is it from the case that any error can be subject to divine inspiration, that it of itself not only excludes error, but excludes and rejects it as necessarily as it is necessary that God, the highest truth, be the author of no error whatsoever ... Hence it follows that those who think that something false can be contained in the authentic places of the sacred books certainly either pervert the Catholic notion of divine inspiration or make God Himself the author of error."¹⁵ And since the modernists nevertheless insisted that "very many things in the sacred books are affected by error in scientific or historical matters," Pius X expressly affirmed that "this is the same as attributing to God Himself a lie of utility or of convenience."¹⁶ Wherefore the same pontiff reprobated the proposition: "Divine inspiration does not so extend to the whole of Sacred Scripture that it shields all and each of its parts from all error."¹⁷

Therefore to deny the absolute inerrancy of Sacred Scripture, if it is not heresy, is most certainly a proposition next to heresy and a most grave theological error.