Tractatus de divina traditione et Scriptura

The books of Scripture are inspired in such wise that God is the author of the books.

« Since books can be called divine for not one but several reasons, from Catholic doctrine preserved both in the apostolic writings and in perpetual Tradition the Scriptures must be believed divine in this sense, that they are books of God and God is the author of the books through His supernatural action upon the human writers, which by ecclesiastical usage derived from the Scriptures themselves is called inspiration. »

I. A book can be called divine a) by reason of its matter, in that it contains doctrine divinely revealed whether to the writer himself or to others, although the writing of that doctrine proceeded from merely human labor and industry. A book can b) be called divine by reason of the manner of writing under supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit merely forestalling error infallibly, at least in those things that pertain to the principal scope of the book, although for the rest the writing is so from the human mind, will, and labor that the man himself writing must be deemed the principal author of the book in his own order. c) A book is divine in the stricter sense by reason of a writing which is efficiently from God through man, upon whom He operates for writing and in the writing in such wise that God Himself must be deemed the principal author of the book in the proper sense of this word. This supernatural and extraordinary operation of God is called inspiration.

We say in the thesis that, according to Catholic doctrine, the Scriptures must be believed divine not only in the first and second way but also in the third, which includes the two prior ones.

Assuredly this sentence, God is the author of the books of Holy Scripture, has been proposed and declared by the Church in solemn judgments. In the Council of Florence the decree for the Jacobites (cf. Pallavic. Hist. of the Council of Trent, bk. VI, ch. 11, n. 15) runs thus. « It most firmly believes, professes, and preaches (the most holy Roman Church) that the one true God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, is the creator of all things visible and invisible.... It professes one and the same God the author of the Old and the New Testament, that is of the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel, since by the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit the holy men of either Testament spoke, whose books it receives and venerates, which are contained under the following titles (all the canonical books are enumerated). This definition the Council of Trent repeats in sess. IV. « All the books both of the Old and of the New Testament, since one God is the author of either.... (the holy synod) receives and venerates.... But if anyone shall not receive the books themselves entire with all their parts, as they are customarily read in the Catholic Church and are contained in the old Latin Vulgate edition, as sacred and canonical.... let him be anathema. » If to anyone it should seem ambiguous in what sense God is here called the author of either Testament, let him attend to the context and compare the Florentine decree, which the Tridentine Fathers followed in their definition, as is established from the history of the Council (Pallavic. l. c.). In the context the clause, « since of either Testament one God is the author, » contains the reason why the books of either Testament are received by the Council as sacred and canonical. But this can only be the reason for receiving the books insofar as God is either directly called the author of the books of either Testament, or is called the author of all the institutions of either Testament in general and therein inclusively also of the books. In one or the other sense, therefore, God is declared by the Council the author of the books. But in the Council of Florence, to whose norm the Tridentine decree was conformed, the phrase « God is the author of either Testament, » is expressly declared in this sense, that He is understood as the author of the books of either Testament; for the annexed explanation, « i.e. the author of the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel, » admits no other sense, which is indeed evident especially from the second term, where God is called the « author of the Prophets, » and from the manner in which He is said to be author in the last clause: « since by the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit the holy men of either Testament spoke, whose books (the Church) receives. » By the word spoke, taken from 2. Pet. I. 21, since speech uttered by mouth or by writing can be understood, that written speech is signified by the Council is plain from the context. The same faith (with the appellations of the classes of books slightly changed) is contained in the symbol of Catholic profession proposed to the Greeks and offered in the Second Council of Lyons by Michael their Emperor in the thirteenth century; a twin profession in the eleventh century was sent by Leo IX to Peter Bishop of Antioch (Hard. vol. VI, pt. I, p. 954); in the fourth century, in the Fourth Council of Carthage (or rather in the ancient collection of canons), the profession prescribed for Bishops to be consecrated (Hard. I, p. 978), which even now is uttered by Bishops in their consecration. The formula in all these documents is: « I believe (we believe) also that of the New and the Old Testament, of the Law and the Prophets and the Apostles, there is one author, God and almighty Lord. » More briefly but in the same sense it is said in the profession prescribed by Innocent III for those returning from the Waldensian heresy: « we believe the Lord to be one and the same author of the New and the Old Testament. » Now this doctrine of faith has been defined explicitly and in express words by the ecumenical Vatican Council. « But those (books of the Old and New Testament entire with all their parts) the Church holds as sacred and canonical.... for this reason, that having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit they have God as author, and as such have been handed down to the Church » Constit. Dei Filius ch. 2.

The formula, therefore, God is the author of the books of Holy Scripture, is dogmatic for expressing the manner in which Scripture must be held divine.

II. Now in the second question, how this doctrine of faith is contained in revelation, we say first that this is the doctrine of Christ Himself and of the Apostles, as exhibited in the evangelical and apostolic writings. We adduce a threefold argument from these writings: from the confirmation, often repeated by Christ and by the Apostles, of the faith of the Jews on this head; from the manner of citing the Scriptures; from express declaration.

1°. If what was adduced from Josephus and Philo in the preceding thesis n. II be weighed, it will be evident that this was the common faith and profession of the Jewish people at the time of Christ and the Apostles: that the writers of the sacred books were in their writing under a divine supernatural action in such wise that not only the doctrine and the things written must be deemed divinely proposed, but the writing itself of those things must be ascribed principally to the operation of God acting in man and through man. Both Josephus and Philo testify from the most certain faith of their people, whether settled in Palestine or among other peoples, that the sacred books are held as written by prophets through inspiration. But the notion of this inspiration for writing was this: that not only did the prophets receive doctrine divinely, which they then wrote down by their own effort, but the writing itself was through divine inspiration. This is evidently clear a) from the fact that they call the very action of writing prophecy — to write is to prophesy: the LXX interpreters in rendering the sacred letters, says Philo, « as if seized by the deity prophesied. » b) It is clear from the manner in which they say the writing was done, « as if by another invisibly dictating. » c) It is clear from the fact that they ascribe things formally as written, and thus the books themselves, efficiently to the divine operation; for they say the written texts themselves are « oracles uttered by prophetic mouth¹ ». Nay d) while they derive the supreme authority of the books from the fact that they were written by prophets, by that very fact they understand the writing itself to be by the prophets formally insofar as they are prophets. But the notion of a prophet both is and was among the Jews that of a man acting, speaking, or writing not in his own name and by his own natural powers, but in the person of God and by a supernatural divine impulse. « The prophets are interpreters of God, who uses them as organs for the manifestation of what He wills, » says Philo, On Monarchy I, p. 820; « the prophet brings forth nothing of his own, but everything alien by another dictating inwardly, » id., Who Is Heir of Divine Things, p. 517; « the prophet is an interpreter, with God inwardly dictating what must be said, » id., On Penance and Rewards, p. 918. cf. Exod. VII. 1 with IV. 16.

In declarations of this kind there must indeed be distinguished what pertains to the very essence of the charism under which the books are said to be written, which is the charism of prophecy, and there must be distinguished the special and accidental modes of the charism, which can be various and can be absent with the essence of the thing intact. To the essence it certainly pertains that prophetic speech or (for the matter in hand) prophetic writing be from a supernatural instinct of God in such wise that the book, by force of the very charism under which it was written, contain the written word of God, and thus that God through the man inspired by Him for writing be the author of the book. In this way, therefore, the Jews at the time of Christ and the Apostles believed the books of Scripture divine, in that they believed them written under divine inspiration and under the charism of prophecy². But Christ and the Apostles most luminously confirmed the faith of the Jews concerning the sanctity and authority of Scripture, as we showed in the preceding thesis n. III. This same doctrine, therefore, is that of Christ Himself and of the Apostles.

2°. Christ and the Apostles by the very manner of citing the Scriptures teach that the texts they adduce have God as author, formally insofar as they are written. For a) God is set as author of Scripture in the nominative, man as instrument in the oblique case.

« The Scripture (τὴν γραφὴν ταυτην) must be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David » Acts I. 16; « Lord, who by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David Thy servant hast said: why have the Gentiles raged, » etc., ibid. IV. 23; « God promised (the Gospel) before through the prophets in the holy Scriptures » Rom. I. 2; « God appoints (defines) a day in David, saying, » etc., Heb. IV. 7; « God says, the Holy Spirit says, the Holy Spirit bears witness to us » Heb. I. 6 ff.; III. 7; X. 15, cf. VIII. 8; « (God) said in a certain place » Heb. IV. 4. What is in Mark XII. 26 — « have you not read in the book of Moses, at the bush (Exod. III. 6), how God said to him, saying: I am the God of Abraham, » etc. — is declared in Matthew to have been said by God to the very Jews to whom Christ was speaking. But these words were not said to those Jews except insofar as they are written; therefore God said these words, insofar as they are written; they are the written word of God: « have you not read what was said by God saying to you, I am the God of Abraham, » etc., Matt. XXII. 31. b) In inverted order but in the same sense it is declared that the human writer in the Holy Spirit said the written texts themselves. « How does David in the Spirit call (in the present tense, which cannot be understood except of words formally as written) Him Lord, saying: the Lord said to my Lord, » etc., Matt. XXII. 43; Mark XII. 36. That the sense is the same in this inverted form as when God is set in the nominative is of itself clear, and appears from the last hymn of David, where he declares what to speak in the Spirit, to say in the Holy Spirit, means for him: « The Spirit of the Lord, » he says, « spoke by me, and His word was through my tongue » 2. Kings XXIII. 2. Finally c) Scripture simply is put for God Himself speaking, which cannot be unless insofar as God is the author of Scripture and speaks through Scripture. « Foreseeing, Scripture (προϊδυσα δε ἡ γραφη) foretold to Abraham » Gal. III. 8. By these formulas of citation, therefore, the texts of Scripture, formally insofar as they are consigned in Scripture, are ascribed by Christ and by the Apostles to God as author. But what holds for the divinity of the several parts of Scripture holds also for all the books and for the collection of books to which belongs the excellence designated by the proper name Scripture, Holy Scripture (th. I). Therefore from the doctrine of Christ and the Apostles it is deduced that God is the author of the books of Scripture.

3°. The same is established from express apostolic doctrine. The chief passage is 2. Tim. III. 16. « All Scripture divinely inspired » πασα γραφη θεοπνευστος.

The word θεοπνευστος occurs nowhere else, neither in the New Testament nor in the LXX interpreters; but the reality itself and the description of the reality occur. From passages of this kind, therefore, we shall determine the general notion. The prophet is called a « spiritual man » (ανθρωπος πνευματοφορος אִישׁ הָרוּחַ) Hos. IX. 7. ³ a man of the Spirit, i.e. a man who has the Spirit and is held and moved by the Spirit. The end and effect of this action of the Holy Spirit upon man is often described. « The Spirit of God rushes, leaps upon the prophets »; He « clothes » them, to this end, that they announce to the people the will of God, the counsels of God. Hence the prophet is said to be as it were « the mouth of the Lord, » through whom namely God as mover speaks through His moved instrument: « thou shalt be as My mouth » Jer. XV. 19; cf. Exod. IV. 16. To the prophets God says: « My words in thy mouth » Jer. I. 9; V. 14; cf. Is. VI. 7; and what the prophets speak, « the mouth of the Lord hath spoken » Is. LVIII. 14, and elsewhere. Consequently what they speak in virtue of the Holy Spirit is said to be and is not the word of man but the « word of the Lord » Num. XXIV. 2; 1. Kings X. 6, 10; 2. Kings XXIII. 2; Mich. III. 8; Zach. VII. 12; 2. Esd. IX. 30. In this proper sense, therefore, the prophets are everywhere said to speak « in the Spirit of God, » i.e. through the Spirit of God as efficient cause. Most clearly, in 2. Pet. I. 21, to speak by human will is opposed to the speech which the holy men of God utter inspired, or singularly moved and actuated (φερομενοι) by the Holy Spirit; the exclusion of the former and the affirmation of the latter constitutes the proper character of inspiration in man, and terminatively effects prophecy. « For prophecy came (ἠνέχθη) not at any time by the will of man, but the holy men of God spoke inspired (ὑπο πνευματος ἁγιου φερομενοι) by the Holy Spirit. »

From these things it sufficiently appears that inspiration actively is the very supernatural action of God upon man by which He raises, advances, and moves him to manifest or utter what God wills; passively it is the very state of the man so affected; finally the word itself which the inspired man utters, whether by symbolic action or by speech or by writing, is and is called inspired terminatively, insofar as it is the effect of the divine operation and of active inspiration. Consequently when Scripture itself is called inspired, inspiration or the action of God must be understood terminatively as the efficient cause of Scripture, and Scripture as the effect of God inspiring.

With this notion of inspiration now demonstrated⁴, Paul the Apostle teaching that Scripture is inspired must necessarily be understood of the supernatural operation of God for effecting Scripture itself, or of inspiration considered terminatively. The Apostle therefore teaches that Scripture is the work and effect of the supernatural divine action upon inspired men, and hence that God through men inspired by Him is the efficient cause and author of Scripture.

As for the truth of what we have said, it matters little whether in Paul's words the term divinely inspired (θεοπνευστος) is taken as the predicate, as most probably in the Greek text⁵, or as an adjunct to the subject declaring its property, as in the Vulgate version: « all Scripture divinely inspired is profitable for teaching, » etc. For in either way the property which is already implicitly comprehended in the very name Scripture is explicitly affirmed of that same Scripture by adjective or by predicate, namely that it is inspired.

For the present matter it likewise matters little whether the subject « all Scripture » is taken collectively for the whole of Scripture, or distributively, as the Greek phrase πασα γραφη without the article persuades, for every writing to which the name Scripture belongs as proper and as a name of excellence (cf. th. I). For in the former way the whole collection immediately, and hence all things comprehended in the collection, would be said to be inspired; in the other way inspiration (namely to be inspired terminatively) is immediately affirmed of all and each which have the name of excellence Scripture; but this name, as is established from thesis I, is proper not only to the entire collection but also to the parts and even to the single texts pertaining to that collection. ⁶ Read the distinguished Fr. Patrizi's Commentation on the Divine Scriptures, §. V.

III. The doctrine concerning this inspiration of the Scriptures, that God must be believed the author of the sacred books, has been proposed and declared in manifold ways in the perpetual and universal ecclesiastical preaching of Christian antiquity. From the very use and manner in which appeal has always and by all been made to the Scriptures it could easily be demonstrated to have been from the apostolic age a dogma beyond controversy, not only that the word of God is contained in the Scriptures, but also that the word, formally as written, is from God as author. Here, however, we shall propose only the express doctrine, because it is both luminous and most strongly fortified against all exceptions. We shall exhibit the unanimous doctrine of Christian antiquity in such wise that not only the reality itself of the inspiration of Scripture be demonstrated by the authority of universal agreement, whether it be, but also from the ecclesiastical preaching itself all the elements be proposed for the distinct notion of the inspiration of the books, as far as we can attain it, what it is. Whence in what follows, where we shall at last deduce the final conclusion concerning the notion of inspiration, we shall appeal to this premised doctrine both of Scripture itself and of the Fathers. We reduce the whole explication of the Fathers to these heads.

1°. The Scriptures were written through the Holy Spirit, through the operation of the Holy Spirit; therefore they are letters of God, the letter of God to men. Among the heads of doctrine which are in manifest ecclesiastical preaching, Origen sets « that through the Holy Spirit the Scriptures were written » preface On Principles, n. 8, cf. n. 4. Jews and Christians confess the Bible « to be written by the Holy Spirit » id., Against Celsus V, n. 60. « The divine Scriptures, as written by the Holy Spirit, contain a great hidden treasure » Chrysost., On Genesis, hom. 21, n. 1. It matters not what man wrote the several psalms, « since it is manifest that all were written through the operation of the divine Spirit » ἐκ τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ πνεύματος ἐνεργείας, Theodoret, preface to the Pss. In all the books of the Scriptures there is a perfect agreement, « because in their writers there was the same Holy Spirit » Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus, bk. III, n. 12; bk. II, n. 9; Athanasius, preface to the Pss., nn. 2, 9, 10; and because « not without reason, when they wrote these things, did so many and so great peoples believe God to have spoken to them or through them » Aug., City of God XVIII, ch. 41, n. 1. Among the errors of Theodore of Mopsuestia recensed and condemned in the V synod this also is: that the books of Solomon « were written not through prophetic grace but through the grace of prudence, which is evidently other than the former »; that Theodore reprobated the book of Job « against its writer, that is the Holy Spirit, saying that pagan wisdom wrote this book »; that « the book of the Canticle of Canticles must not be praised as having prophetic dictation for the goods of the Church » Council V, Act IV, nn. 63, 66, 68, 71, Hard. III, pp. 86 ff.

Universally the Scriptures are « the letter of almighty God to His creature » Aug., Serm. II on Ps. 90, n. 1; Enarr. on Ps. 149, n. 5; Gregory the Great, bk. IV, ep. 31 to Theodore. « God as it were sent letters to those far absent; these letters indeed God gave, Moses bore » (God the author of the letter, Moses the carrier) Chrysost., On Genesis, hom. II, n. 2.

2°. The Scriptures were spoken by God. Assuredly « the Scriptures are the truthful sayings of the Holy Spirit » Clement of Rome, ep. I to the Cor., n. 45; « the Scriptures were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit » Iren., bk. II, ch. 38, n. 2; « they are unbelievers who deny that the Scriptures were spoken by the Holy Spirit » the Anonymous (held to be Hippolytus) against the Artemonites, in Euseb., H. E., bk. V, ch. 28; « God Himself willed to teach through the Holy Scriptures » Hippolytus, against Noetus, n. 9; « meanwhile the Gospel and the Apostle shall be praised as divine oracles⁷ » Theonas of Alexandria (Routh, Sacred Remains, vol. III, p. 443).

3°. God founded, gave the Scriptures. « The voice of God, who gave the Scriptures, is received as certain demonstration » Clement of Alexandria, Stromata II, p. 362; « God, having first spoken through the prophets, then through Himself, afterwards through the Apostles, also founded Scripture, which is called canonical, of the highest authority » Augustine, City of God XI, ch. 3; cf. XVIII, ch. 41. In the prologue of Pope Gelasius to his decree « on books to be received or not to be received, » as it stands in the Lucca codex, the Pontiff says: « for discussing or understanding the Scriptures, which in the New or Old Testament published by many (accepimus [we have received], or novimus [we know], or some other word has fallen out), it befits us to keep that apostolic saying: prophecies, he says, despise not, but prove all things; that we may more fully believe them to have been founded by the operation of God » (Mansi, Supplement to the Councils, vol. I, p. 357).

4°. The operation and perfect veracity of the Holy Spirit is extended to all even the least parts of Scripture. « We who extend the perfect exactness of the Spirit even to a chance apex and line⁸ do not concede, for it is not lawful, that even the least things were set down by the writers rashly » Gregory Nazianzen, or. II (On His Flight), n. 105, vol. I, p. 60. Similar things are found in Origen, On Principles, bk. IV, n. 7; Jerome, ep. 27, al. 102, n. 1, to Marcellus; preface to the comment. on Philemon, vol. VII, p. 742; Augustine, ep. 82, al. 19, to Jerome, nn. 3–7; Chrysostom, On Genesis, hom. 15, n. 1; hom. 42, n. 2, etc.

5°. Comparatively the writing is ascribed to the Holy Spirit, and denied to be human. « The converse of Christ in the flesh demonstrated that the Law and the Prophets were written by heavenly grace, and that the writings believed to be the words of God are not the writings of men » Orig., On Principles, bk. IV, n. 6. ⁹ Our authors « wrote not according to art, but according to grace, which is above all art; for they wrote what the Spirit gave them to speak » Ambrose, ep. 8 to Justus, n. 1. « Human reason did not discover these letters, but heavenly virtue infused them into holy men » Cassiodorus, On the Institution of Divine Letters, ch. 13, 14.

6°. This must be understood in this way, that God is the principal author of the books, while men are the instruments of God for the writing of the books. The sacred writers had no need of artifice of speech, « but only to exhibit themselves pure to the operation of the divine Spirit, so that the very divine plectrum, coming down from heaven and employing holy men as it were as the instrument of harp or lyre, might reveal to us the knowledge of divine and heavenly things » Justin, Exhort. to the Greeks, n. 8; Athenagoras, Legation for the Christians, n. 9; cf. Hippolytus, against Noetus, nn. 11, 12. « While we hold the Holy Spirit as author, when we seek the (human) writer (of the sacred books), what else do we do than, reading the letter, inquire about the pen? » Gregory the Great, preface to Job, nn. 2, 3 (cf. above, Theodoret).

7°. This special conjunction of men with God inspiring for writing is declared from the analogous conjunction in the supernatural order of the members of Christ with Christ the head, and through it is illustrated the doctrine how God is the principal author of the books, while men are the instruments of God for writing. For the Prophets and Apostles were also formally for writing the books and in the writing members of Christ the head. « Therefore when they wrote what He showed and said, it must by no means be said that He wrote it not, since His members wrought what, with the head dictating, they learned. For whatever He willed us to read concerning His deeds and sayings, He commanded to be written by them as by His own hands. Whosoever shall have understood this fellowship of unity will not otherwise receive what he shall have read in the Gospel as narrated by the disciples of Christ than as if he beheld the very hand of God, which He bore in His own body, writing » Augustine, On the Agreement of the Evangelists, bk. I, n. 54.

The Fathers whose luminous doctrine and testification we have adduced are from diverse Churches, from every age from the first to the seventh century. From centuries I–III: Clement of Rome, Justin M., Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, the Anonymous of Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Theonas. From centuries IV–VII: Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, Theodoret, the FF. of the V Council, Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great. The agreement is moreover declared and confirmed through the symbols of faith and the solemn judgments which we cited in n. I.

You see, however, that in this perpetual and universal ecclesiastical preaching nothing else is contained but the declaration and explication of the doctrine of Christ and the Apostles which we demonstrated to be expressed in the evangelical and apostolic writings: that the Scriptures are efficiently the books of God, and that God is the author of the books of Scripture. The universal agreement of the apostolic succession therefore demonstrates that what we have said is the true sense of the evangelical and apostolic doctrine.