Hi, Lori —
What is being taught in this class
is really not Catholic teaching,
or the Catholic view on Scripture.
Based on the limited description
you had the opportunity to offer,
it would be unwise for me to draw
hasty conclusions about what is being
asserted in your class. Nevertheless,
I can offer some potentially useful
insights from the teaching of the
Church, and refer you to Church documents
that treat the topic more thoroughly.
First, we must exclude from Scripture
any attribution of error.
Pope Pius XII writes in his great encyclical
on Biblical Scholarship, "Divino Afflante Spiritu",
commenting on Leo XIII's great
encyclical on Biblical Scholarship "Providentissimus Deus", the following:
Divino
Afflante Spiritu
3. The first and greatest care
of Leo XIII was to set forth the
teaching on the truth of the Sacred
Books and to defend it from attack.
Hence with grave words did he
proclaim that there is no error
whatsoever if the sacred writer,
speaking of things of the physical
order "went by what sensibly
appeared" as the Angelic
Doctor says, [5] speaking either "in
figurative language, or in terms
which were commonly used at the
time, and which in many instances
are in daily use at this day,
even among the most eminent men
of science." For "the
sacred writers, or to speak more
accurately — the words are
St. Augustine's — [6] the
Holy Spirit, Who spoke by them,
did not intend to teach men these
things — that is the essential
nature of the things of the universe
— things in no way
profitable to salvation";
which principle "will apply
to cognate sciences, and especially
to history," [7] that is,
by refuting, "in a somewhat
similar way the fallacies of the
adversaries and defending the
historical truth of Sacred Scripture
from their attacks." [8]
Nor is the sacred writer to be
taxed with error, if "copyists
have made mistakes in the text
of the Bible," or, "if
the real meaning of a passage
remains ambiguous." Finally
it is absolutely wrong and forbidden "either
to narrow inspiration to certain
passages of Holy Scripture, or
to admit that the sacred writer
has erred," since divine
inspiration "not only is
essentially incompatible with
error but excludes and rejects
it as absolutely and necessarily
as it is impossible that God Himself,
the supreme Truth, can utter that
which is not true. This is the
ancient and constant faith of
the Church." [9]
4. This teaching, which Our Predecessor
Leo XIII set forth with such solemnity,
We also proclaim with Our authority
and We urge all to adhere to it
religiously.
(Divino Afflante Spiritu, Pope Pius XII, 1943, #3, 4.) |
Leo XIII [New Advent][Wikipedia] had some harsh words to
say about those who suggest the Gospels
are full of fabricated stories:
But first it must be clearly understood
whom we have to oppose and contend
against, and what are their tactics
and their arms. In earlier times
the contest was chiefly with those
who, relying on private judgment
and repudiating the divine traditions
and teaching office of the Church,
held the Scriptures to be the
one source of revelation and the
final appeal in matters of Faith.
Now, we have to meet the Rationalists,
true children and inheritors of
the older heretics , who, trusting
in their turn to their own way
of thinking, have rejected even
the scraps and remnants of Christian
belief which had been handed down
to them. They deny that there
is any such thing as revelation
or inspiration, or Holy Scripture
at all; they see, instead, only
the forgeries and the falsehoods
of men; they set down the Scripture
narratives as stupid fables and
lying stories: the prophecies
and the oracles of God are to
them either predictions made up
after the event or forecasts formed
by the light of nature; the miracles
and the wonders of God's power
are not what they are said to
be, but the startling effects
of natural law, or else mere tricks
and myths; and the Apostolic Gospels
and writings are not the work
of the Apostles at all. These
detestable errors, whereby they
think they destroy the truth of
the divine Books, are obtruded
on the world as the peremptory
pronouncements of a certain newly-invented "free
science;" a science, however,
which is so far from final that
they are perpetually modifying
and supplementing it. And there
are some of them who, notwithstanding
their impious opinions and utterances
about God, and Christ, the Gospels
and the rest of Holy Scripture,
would fain be considered both
theologians and Christians and
men of the Gospel, and who attempt
to disguise by such honorable
names their rashness and their
pride. To them we must add not
a few professors of other sciences
who approve their views and give
them assistance, and are urged
to attack the Bible by a similar
intolerance of revelation.
(Providentissimus Deus, On the Study of Holy Scripture, #10) |
A good document to read about how
the Church understands the Gospels
is the document
"The
Historicity of Gospels" issued
by the Pontifical Biblical Commission
(PBC) in 1964.
You might also find interesting an
interview with the head of the
PBC on the topic of interpretation
of Scripture. Another document that discusses
more general principles about
Biblical interpretation, issued
in 1994 by the PBC, is called, "The
Interpretation of the Bible in
the Church".
If you are taking a class on Scripture,
I would highly recommend this work,
which both praises modern methods
of study while warning against certain
tendencies to introduce unwarranted
doubts about the text.
I hope this information helps. I
wish I could better summarize it
for you, since it is a lot of data,
but you sound like you are very interested
in studying the Scriptures and the
Catholic approach to Biblical scholarship. Rather than imparting my own
opinions and interpretations of Biblical
scholarship on you, I will let you
read what the Church has said and
draw your own conclusions.
Yours in Christ,
Eric Ewanco
|