Well!
The post below on possible sources in the Pentateuch really triggered an avalanche of comments regarding the subject of inerrancy.
Rather than do a reader roundup on this, lemme address the subject in a more general way and see if that helps folks out.
First, the teaching of the Church is and always has been that the Scriptures are free of error.
This has to be understood with some nuance, however, as there are things in Scripture that could be taken in a sense that is erroneous. That does not make them errors. It means that the understanding being ascribed to them is erroneous.
For example, when Jesus teaches a parable and says that there was a man who rented our a vineyard and, when it was time to collect his share of the crop, he sent them servants who got beaten, stoned, and killed, and who later sent his son, on whom they fixed murderous designs–it would be erroneous to assume that there was such a man who did all these things. Jesus is asserting something in the parable, but what he is asserting is the deeper spiritual truth that the parable is meant to teach. He is not asserting the literal existence of such a man.
Thus we need to attend to what Vatican II said about the matter in Dei Verbum 11:
Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation [SOURCE].
Some have tried to argue that the clause "for the sake of our salvation" narrows the scope of inerrancy to just truths connected in a more or less direct manner with salvation. This won’t work, however, because the passage affirms that "everything asserted by the inspired authors
or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit." The only way this could be maintained while simultaneously maintaining that biblical inerrancy is restricted to soteriological truths would be if the only things the sacred authors assert are soteriological truths.
That hypothesis would clearly be false.
It is clear that Scripture does assert things, including matters of history, that are not soteriological. For example, Scripture clearly asserts that Peter was the brother of Andrew in some accepted first century meaning of the word "brother." It teaches the same for James and John, the sons of Zebedee. These matters are historical (at least from our perspective), not soteriological.
Consequently, Scripture contains assertions of a non-soteriological nature, including assertions about history, and such assertions are therefore assertions of the Holy Spirit and therefore without error.
The “for the sake of our salvation” clause thus refers to the purpose for which God put his truth into Scripture, not to a restriction on the scope of God’s truth.
The tricky part is figuring out what is an assertion and what isn’t. Scripture is a complex and rich text that uses many different means of conveying God’s truth. Since some of these involve ancient modes of writing and speech that are not used in 21st century English literature, it isn’t always clear to us what precisely is being asserted. Indeed, Scripture acknowledges that it isn’t always clear, as when St. Peter notes that St. Paul’s writings contain many things that are hard to understand (2 Pet. 3:16).
This difficulty in figuring out what is being asserted by the sacred author has thus been with us since the beginning. It is a principal cause of theological disagreements among Christians, and it is a sign that God wishes us to (a) use the intellects he gave us to try to figure out what he was saying to us and (b) since "no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of private interpretation" (2 Pet. 1:20) to also exercise the theological virtue of faith in relation to the Church, "the pillar and ground of truth" (1 Tim. 3:15) to help us when our own intellects fail.
Above I used the example of a parable of Jesus to show the difference between what the sacred author is asserting and how this could be misunderstood by misinterpreting the sense in which the particulars of the passage are to be taken (i.e., as a literal story of an actual historical event). I picked this because it is an obvious example.
Most of the time, the difficulty is not so obvious. The historical books of the Old and New Testament contain real history, but it is not history written the way we would write history today. It obeys the rules of ancient historical writing, which are significantly different (e.g., you don’t have to footnote everything you claim).
Because we do not today have a full understanding of the rules by which the ancients wrote history (and the rules varied from culture to culture and from time to time), it can be difficult figuring out what is being asserted in the proper sense and what is not being so asserted.
When we encounter something that is not being asserted, we cannot charge the sacred author with error because only assertions can be erroneous. If I’m not asserting that something is true then I am not making a claim that can be in error. The most that could be said is that what I said would be erroneous if taken as an assertion of fact.
Thus if I talk about the sun rising in the morning, and someone fails to note that I am using phenomenological language (the language of appearances), he might say that what I said was false, but he would be wrong. I was not asserting that the sun literally rises in relation to a stationary earth. That is not the sense in which I meant my words to be understood, and so that is not what I was asserting. I would be wrong if I had meant that, but I didn’t mean that. Therefore, my assertion was not false.
When we approach Scripture, we must be sensitive to the fact that there are many things in it that may strike us as being assertions that, to the ancient audience, would not have been so understood. If we run across something that seems false or seems to contradict some other passage, we know that what Scripture says is not wrong. We simply have not correctly identified what is being asserted in one or both passages.
UPDATE: HERE, TOO.
Jimmy,
Thanks for your interesting comments.
It’s important not be “rationalistic” about what a biblical author is intending. For example, as you point out just because we see historical writing as strictly chronological, doesn’t mean that the evangelists did. The problem is when writers dismiss the accuracy of the Scriptures by claiming that the writers didn’t intend to be accurate en toto. Mainstream Catholics and protestants feel free to reject many of the Gospel miracles for this reason. In 1981, Robert Gundry was “asked to leave” the Evangelical Theological Society because in his commentary on Matthew he asserted that the infancy narratives were not historically accurate. He argued that they were “midrash” and the original readers would realize that they did not intend to teach history. Likewise, most commentators claim that Paul didn’t write the Pastorals and psydonomity in the ancient world was common. Yet the early church rejected works asribed to Paul (Acts of Paul and Thecla, for example) because they were not written by Paul.
Although Vatican II can be read as teaching a moderate view of innerancy (although probably not “Chicago style”) I think it’s clear that the contemporary reading of Vatican II is against it. The books of people who explicitly reject a traditional reading of Vatican II (such Brown, Fitzmyer, etc.) receive the imprimatur. Brown’s statement “[t]he human author of Job made an error in denying an afterlife” was deemed permissible.
Even when the PBC uses the term “innerancy” it doesn’t mean what is traditionally meant by it.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/PBCINTER.HTM
The PBC statement only cites liberals (Fuchs, Ebeling, Bultman, Childs). Consider what is says about feminism:
“Feminist exegesis has brought many benefits.”
“Feminine sensitivity helps to unmask and correct certain commonly accepted interpretations which were tendentious and sought to justify the male domination of women.”
On the other hand, fundamentalism is evil and its believers simpletons:
“Its relying upon a non-critical reading of certain texts of the Bible serves to reinforce political ideas and social attitudes that are marked by prejudices—racism, for example—quite contrary to the Christian Gospel.”
“The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life. It can deceive these people . . . fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide.”
The PBC may not be part of the magesterium, but I think this document shows that Ratzinger’s sympathies do not lie with more conservative catholic bible scholars.
Steve, I’m sensing a considerable amount of antagonism on your part when it comes to this issue.
While you point to some things on the contemporary Catholic scene that are indeed problems (e.g., the pervasive uncritical acceptance of higher critical ideas among Catholic biblial scholars), you are pursuing these in a fashion suggestive of an underlying animus on your part.
In the above post, for example, you handle a non-authoritative PBC document in a manifestly unfair way. The document takes an approach to different schools of interpretation such that it praises part of what each does while also warning against dangers the approach presents.
In the above post, you cite only the positive things it says about the feminist approach and omit all the negative things it says. You do the reverse for the Fundamentalist approach in an attempt to show that the document is more liberal than it is.
You then use this selective quotation of the document to make a broadside against Card. Ratzinger, who is a theologian rather than a biblical scholar and who thus will tend to show some degree of deference to the biblical scholars on the PBC when they are writing about biblical hermeneutics.
The fundamental fact about the PBC document is that it is a *lengthy* committee document, and committee documents (especially lengthy ones) are the products of many hands. As a result, you cannot take isolated statements from such a document as representing the views of any particular committee member, even the chairman.
Your broadside against Card. Ratzinger is thus out of place.
Cool it. ‘Kay?
Jimmy, as one of those who was commenting on the post below on JEDP, I just wanted to say that I agree with your very balanced post here – I think you’ve got the principles quite right.
Jimmy,
Fair enough, it’s your blog so I won’t post on this subject.
For the record, I don’t deny that the PBC document has some kind things to say about fundamentalism, and some unkind things about feminism. My point is simply that the PBC gets much more “worked up” over fundamentalism than feminism. As a “fundamentalist” I don’t think this is fair.
Good post, Jimmy.
Jason: It’s nice that you like the post. But you need to reflect further on the implications of the point for things like how to deal with the Pentateuch passages we were discussing, since you seem to persist in thinking that applying the point in practice leads to “modernism.”
Jimmy:
Steve Jackson’s actually made many good points. I think they should be addressed. For example:
“In 1981, Robert Gundry was ‘asked to leave’ the Evangelical Theological Society because in his commentary on Matthew he asserted that the infancy narratives were not historically accurate. He argued that they were ‘midrash’ and the original readers would realize that they did not intend to teach history. Likewise, most commentators claim that Paul didn’t write the Pastorals and psydonomity in the ancient world was common.”
These are the exact same claims made by Church-approved Bible commentaries like the Jerome Commentary. What is to stop an orthodox Catholic from saying that the infancy narratives are just midrash, and that this does not negate inerrancy because the intended audiences would have understood them as such? Ditto with pseudonymity.
Ditto too with those who claim that many sayings of Jesus from the Gospels were not really made by him; that many of the so-called “words” of Jesus were placed in his mouth by the Christian community, in retrospect. Again, 99.9% of Catholic scholars will tell you that this does not negate inerrancy since this was an accepted convention of the times.
And on and on . . .
Kevin,
I see no conflict between what Jimmy wrote and what I said in the previous thread.
What I deny is that some of the passages you cited are “non-assertions”. I think it is absurd to claim that they are.
But, we don’t have to rehash it all again…
>>>” you seem to persist in thinking that applying the point in practice leads to ‘modernism.'”
Yes, I will readily admit that the historical-critical method is very prone to modernism, if not handled correctly. It’s like fire. It can do a lot of God, but in destructive hands, it will do a lot of bad.
I found this older post by googling catholic inerrancy. If anyone is interested in this topic I am discussing the possibility of inerrancy in light of the passage “rabbits do indeed chew the cud” taken from Leviticus. I think this shows the Second Vatican qualification is necessary and appropriate.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=304295