Recovering the Bible

Hmmm...

"The world Synod of Bishops on the Bible should help reignite "passion for the word of God in the church," said Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, secretary-general of the synod.

…The archbishop said the responses show a widespread desire to recover the interest and enthusiasm for studying and praying with the Bible that marked the years immediately after the Second Vatican Council.

..."However, the responses indicate there have been gaps in the knowledge of the Bible, partiality in its interpretation (and) omissions in the area of the biblical apostolate," he said. "Our hope is that the synod assembly will help recover the passion for the word of God in the church."

…In his presentation at the December conference, Archbishop Eterovic said special attention should be paid to improving translations of the Bible, guaranteeing that they are accurate and that the faithful are furnished with commentaries that help them understand the passages the way the church understands them.

He said many of the bishops' responses to the outline focused particularly on the need to help Catholics understand the way the church has understood the Bible with the help of its tradition and what it has taught over time."

-Catholic News

I wonder if an official bible commentary would limit Catholioc e-pologist's interpretations? I also wonder how easy it will be to meld "what has been taught over time" and the now-fashionable "development of doctrine".

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

"Tradition, without Holy Scripture, Old or New, sufficed for years, and could still suffice. But Holy Scripture has never sufficed by itself; it always stood in need of Tradition. For it is only by Tradition that we learn that Holy Scripture is an inspired book. It is only Tradition that can give with authority and certainty the right meaning of Holy Scripture. Without Tradition the Holy Scripture may be made to speak in many discordant ways, thus destroying its authority altogether. "

-Catholic Belief

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

"But the Bible is more than a human book; it is a divine book having God for its author. God produced it by giving the supernatural charisma of inspiration to certain writers, and willed their inspired writings to belong to the deposit of truth which is the teaching Church's spiritual patrimony, to be administered by her for the religious enlightenment and eternal salvation of souls. The Church is, therefore, the supreme interpreter of the sacred volumes.

-A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, 1951 (pg 9)
with imprimatur and acknowledgment of Pope Pius XII

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

"It is the teaching of the Church that the Old Testament Scriptures were transferred to her ownership by Christ himself in view of her position as the new 'Israel of God' and the heir of the Old Testment promises; and that the New Testament Scriptures being written within the Church by some of its members for the benefit of all (or more precisely, within the society of Catholic Church by Catholics and for Catholics), are likewise her exclusive property, of which she is the absolute Owner, Guardian, Trustee and Interpreter."

-A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, 1951 (pg 8)
with imprimatur and acknowledgment of Pope Pius XII

Catholic Quotes on The Bible

"A competent religious guide must be clear and intelligible to all, so that everyone may fully understand the true meaning of the instructions it contains. Is the Bible a book intelligible to all? Far from it; it is full of obscurities and difficulties not only for the illiterate, but even for the learned...The Fathers of the Church, though many of them spent their whole lives in the study of the Scriptures, are unanimous in pronouncing the Bible a book full of knotty difficulties." -The Faith of Our Fathers

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

"Through Luther, although Calvin seems to have been the first to announce Monobiblicism clearly, the Bible became the arm of the Protestant revolt. A dumb and difficult book was substituted for the living voice of the Church, in order that each one should be be able to make for himself the religion which suited his feelings."

-A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, 1951 (pg 11)
with imprimatur and acknowledgment of Pope Pius XII

Catholic Authority: Superior to Scripture

"It is the Church, the holder of Tradition, that gives life to the dead letter of Scripture. Experience shows that it is only in the life of the Church, the Bride of Christ, that Scripture, divinely inspired as it is, becomes 'living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword' (Heb 4:12)"

"In regard to these truth [faith and morals] the authority of Tradition and of the Bible is equal...Nevertheless, as we shall see later, the Church is superior to the Bible in the sense that she is the Living Voice of Christ, and therefore the sole infallible interpreter of the inspired Word, whenever an authoritative interpretation is required."

-A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, 1951 (pg 2)
with imprimatur and acknowledgment of Pope Pius XII

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

"Then there is Sacred Scripture, which is read every Sunday at Mass. It presents a good opportunity to apply these teachings from the Old and New Testaments to our daily lives, which in turn will help us to get to heaven. For many Catholics it is the only time during the week that they will hear the Word of God." -Father John Carl Lombardi

Catholic Authority: Trumping Scripture

More from A Full Catechism of the Catholic Religion:

"What then must the Catholic Christian generally believe?

He must believe all that God has revealed and the Catholic Church proposes to his belief, whether it be contained in Holy Scripture or not."

"Is the Infallibility of the- Pope the same as the Infallibility of the Church?

Yes, precisely. The Pope is the Supreme Pastor and Teacher, whose voice all the faithful, clergy and laity, 'lambs and sheep,' are commanded by Christ to hear and to follow. If he could teach error ex cathedra, the Church would then follow him into error, and would thereby fail; and so the promises of Christ would be falsified, which is impossible."


"Application: In matters of faith never trust your own judgment, but always humbly submit to the decisions of Holy Church; for when you believe what the Church teaches, you believe the Word of God."

Catholic Quotes on The Bible

"As Catholics were responsible for writing the New Testament (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit), the Catholic Church doesn't "interpret" the Bible. We explain it. Protestants can only "interpret", because they are not the author (guided by the Holy Spirit), and therefore, can only guess at the possible meaning of a chapter, passage or phrase, just as anyone can only guess at any author's intentions in any other book. As the author, the Catholic Church is the only proper authority to consult in matters pertaining to the Bible."

- Catholic Truth

Augustine and Councils: One Testimony

“The explicit testimonies to the canon of the Old Testament in the catalogues of Christian councils and Christian fathers of the first four centuries have now been examined. And it has been found that, with the exception of three catalogues at the close of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, all the remainder, with slight and unimportant variations, unanimously and unambiguously sustain the Protestant canon. And the other three emanate from one region, and were issued under one influence; so that they are virtually one testimony, and this demanding an explanation which brings it, too, into harmony with the united testimony of the rest of the catalogues. There was a strict canon, limited to books inspired of God, which is witnessed to from all parts of the Church during these early ages, and is identical with the canon of Jews and with that of Protestants. But the term canon was also used in a more lax and wider sense by Augustin and the councils in his region, who embraced in it not only the inspired word, but in addition certain books which had gained a measure of sanctity in their eyes from their connection with the Greek and Latin Bible, and from their having been admitted to be read in the churches on account of their devotional character and the noble examples of martyrdom which they recorded. These supplementary volumes, however, were not put upon a level with the canon strictly so-called in point of authority. They were to be read and heard soberly in the exercise of Christian discretion, and with this caution they were commended to Christian people.”

William Henry Green(1898)
General Introduction to the Old Testament

Catholic Quotes on The Bible

"We must, therefore, conclude that the Scriptures alone cannot be a sufficient guide and rule of faith because they cannot, at any time, be within the reach of every inquirer; because they are not of themselves clear and intelligible even in matters of the highest importance, and because they do not contain all the truths necessary for salvation." -The Faith of Our Fathers

Augustine Canon Distinction

Roman Catholic apologists maintain that the canon of Scripture was decided on during the Councils of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) even though it wasn’t until the Council of Trent (1546 AD) that an infallible, binding decision was made for the Roman Catholic Church. The uncertainty over the exact canon of Scripture between the time of Hippo/Carthage and Trent goes against the assertion that the biblical canon, although not infallibly defined, was a consistent teaching in the Church that was only reaffirmed by Trent.

As the quote from Cardinal Cajetan shows, there appears to have been a dual-nature to the use of the word “canonical”. Cajetan maintains a difference between books which are to be used in confirming matters of faith and those which are simply to be read for edification. He goes on to say that understanding this distinction will help one to better understand the position of Augustine and the Council of Carthage.

In support of this idea we can look to Augustine’s own words with regards to the canon:

“Now, in regard to the canonical Scriptures, he must follow the judgment of the greater number of catholic churches; and among these, of course, a high place must be given to such as have been thought worthy to be the seat of an apostle and to receive epistles. Accordingly, among the canonical Scriptures he will judge according to the following standard: to prefer those that are received by all the catholic churches to those which some do not receive. Among those, again, which are not received by all, he will prefer such as have the sanction of the greater number and those of greater authority, to such as are held by the smaller number and those of less authority. If, however, he shall find that some books are held by the greater number of churches, and others by the churches of greater authority (though this is not a very likely thing to happen), I think that in such a case the authority on the two sides is to be looked upon as equal.

Now the whole canon of Scripture on which we say this judgment is to be exercised, is contained in the following books…”
-Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Ch. 8

It is interesting to note that prior to giving his list of canonical books, Augustine outlines how one should decide which books are canonical. There are three main issues here.

First, it does not seem that Augustine was establishing what IS canonical since he is providing a method to determine canonicity to the reader. Second, it appears there was not a consensus of canonicity at the time of Augustine’s writing since he is providing a method for determination of such. And third, after advising the reader how to determine canonicity, Augustine goes on to describe “the whole canon of Scripture on which we say this judgment is to be exercised” (which is the canon lists of Hippo/Carthage) meaning that the canon list of those Councils is still up for discussion.

Taking the quotes of Cardinal Cajetan and Augustine together, it appears that the canon lists of the early councils led by Augustine were establishing a list of Scriptures from which the canonical Scriptures could be determined based on the consensus of Church usage (using the method outlined by Augustine). Effectively, Augustine and the Councils had narrowed the list of potentially canonical books without strictly defining the exact nature of the biblical canon. This would explain why discussion and doubts about the canonical books continued from the time of Augustine until the time of Trent.

Cardinal Cajetan on the Biblical Canon

Cardinal Cajetan was a contemporary of Luther and held with high regard in the Roman Catholic Church.

"The papal legate, Cajetan, and Luther met face to face for the first time at Augsburg on 11 October. Cajetan (b. 1470) was "one of the most remarkable figures woven into the history of the Reformation on the Roman side . . . a man of erudition and blameless life" (Weizacker); he was a doctor of philosophy before he was twenty-one, at this early age filling chairs with distinction in both sciences at some of the leading universities; in humanistic studies he was so well versed as to enter the dialectic arena against Pico della Mirandola when only twenty-four. Surely no better qualified man could be detailed to adjust the theological difficulties."
-Catholic Encyclopedia

Writing prior to the canon decision at the Council of Trent, Cajetan wrote:

"Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage."
-Cardinal Cajetan (16th century)

Cajetan recognized that though the deuterocanonicals may be called canonical, they were not recognized as canonical in the same sense as the other Old Testament books.

Augustine on Scripture

"The faith will totter if the authority of the Holy Scripture loses its hold on men. We must surrender ourselves to the authority of Holy Scripture, for it can neither mislead nor be misled"

-Augustine of Hippo

Catholic Quotes on The Bible

"By pinning private judgment to the Bible the Reformers started a book religion, i.e. a religion of which, theoretically, law of faith and conduct is contained in a written document without method, without authority, without an authorized interpreter. The collection of books called "the Bible" is not a methodical code of faith and morals; if it be separated from the stream of tradition which asserts its Divine inspiration, it has no special authority, and, in the hands of private interpreters, its meaning is easily twisted to suit every private mind."
-Catholic Encyclopedia

Catholic Scholars on the Trent Canon

Here is another excerpt from the Jerome Biblical Commentary on the canon decision at Trent. This touches on the inconsistency of using "historical church usage" as a method for determining the canon at Trent.

Even at Trent, however, the Council Fathers did not specifically attempt to press the detail of Church usage back beyond the period of Jerome, for the used the Vulgate as the norm for Church usage, condemning “anyone who does not accept these books in their entirety, with all their parts, according to the text usually read in the Catholic Church and as they are in the ancient Latin Vulgate”. There are many difficulties here that demand investigation. First, in the period before the Vulgate there was no consistent Church usage, as we have seen. Ironically, Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, was very clear in his preference for the same short canon that Trent rejected in the name of the Vulgate. The Vulgate was introduced into the West over many protests (including that of Augustine) asserting that Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew was an innovation against the Church’s usage of translating form the LXX. Second, from Jerome's time on, the Vulgate has not been a perfect witness of Church usage, for it was several centuries before the Vulgate won acceptance in the Church. And even then, the Vulgate was a norm only in the Western church usage. Although Trent was an ecumenical council, the constituency of the Fathers was Western; and perhaps insufficient attention was given to the usage of the Eastern Churches. Third, if Church usage was the norm for selecting the books of the canon, then several books that had been used in the Church were omitted. For instance, 1 Esdras was used by the Fathers more than was canonical Ezr/Neh, and the requiem liturgy cites 2 Esdras. Copies of the Vulgate often contained 1-2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh – books not accepted at Trent. (pg 523-524)

More on the Esdras confusion in the future.

Catholic Scholars on the Canon

Here are some excerpts from the Jerome Biblical Commentary, a book produced by the contributions of a large group of Catholic scholars as outlined in the editor's preface:

"The question of the Catholic interpretation of the Bible constantly reappears. It seemed to the editors that the best way to expose the misunderstanding implicit in this question was to produce a commentary written entirely by Catholics. This would allow readers off all persuasions to see a representative group of Catholic scholars at work – not the isolated and allegedly liberal mavericks, but some fifty contributors teaching in the Catholic colleges and seminaries in the United States, Canada, and abroad."

The Jerome Biblical Commentary
Brown, Fitzmyer, and Murphy
Imprimatur: Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, Archbishop of Baltimore

In the section entitled Canonicity, the issues surrounding the acceptance of the deuterocanonicals into the canon is discussed:

"Doubts about the deuterocanonical books keep recurring in the history of the Church among those who are aware of the Jewish canon. Those who prefer the shorter canon or express some doubt about the full canonical status of the deuterocanonicals include Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, Epiphanius, Rufinus, Gregory the Great, John Damascene, Hugh of St. Victor, Nicholas of Lyra, and Cardinal Cajetan.

As mentioned earlier, the Council of Trent accepted definitively the deuterocanonicals, and it did so directly in opposition to the Protestant preference for the Jewish canon. Although as Catholics we accept the statement of the Council as binding in faith, it is wise for us to know some of the difficulties that surround this statement. Even on the eve of the Council the Catholic view was not absolutely unified, as the mention of Cajetan in the preceding paragraph clearly indicates. Catholic editions of the Bible published in Germany and in France in 1527 and 1530 contained only the protocanonical books. The Fathers of the Council knew of the 4th century African councils that had accepted the deuterocanonical books, and they knew the position taken at Florence; but at the time of Trent, there were insufficient historical tools to reconstruct the real picture of the canon in the 1st century." (pg 523)

As with the New Catholic Encyclopedia, the authors of The Jerome Biblical Commentary outline some of the uncertainty that existed within the Catholic Church throughout history with regards to the OT canon. They have also provided us with additional names to add to the list in the previous post: Gregory Nazianzen (4th), Hugh of St. Victor (12th) and Cardinal Cajetan (16th).

We will look at more excerpts from this book in the next post.

Canon Discussion: Terms and Definitions

I realized my posts on the canon use a lot of terms that people who are not familiar with the topic may find confusing. Below are some excerpts from Wikipedia to help define things – follow the link to Wiki for a full explanation.

Canon
-A biblical canon is a list of Biblical books which establishes the set of books which are considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular Jewish or Christian community. (Protestants and Catholics disagree on the biblical canon).

Deuterocanonical Books
-The Deuterocanonical books of the Bible are books considered by the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Christianity to be canonical parts of the Christian Old Testament but are not present in the Hebrew Bible, which is often described as protocanonical….Protestant Christians usually do not classify any texts as "deuterocanonical"; they either omit them from the Bible, or include them in a section designated Apocrypha. (these books are the difference between the Catholic and Protestant bibles).

Council of Trent
-The Council of Trent is the Nineteenth Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church. It was convened three times between December 13, 1545 and December 4, 1563 in the city of Trent (modern Trento, Alto Adige) as a response to the theological and ecclesiological challenges of the Protestant Reformation. It is considered one of the most important councils in the history of the Catholic Church, clearly specifying Catholic doctrines on salvation, the sacraments, and the Biblical canon.

Ecumenical Council
-An Ecumenical Council (also sometimes Oecumenical Council) or general council is a meeting of the bishops of the whole Church convened to discuss and settle matters of Church doctrine and practice. (only the decrees of an ecumenical council are infallible and binding)

Vulgate
-The Vulgate is an early 5th century version of the Bible in Latin which is largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations. The Vulgate was a substantial improvement over these earlier translations. Its Old Testament is the first Latin version translated directly from the Hebrew Tanakh rather than from the Greek Septuagint. It became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.

Septuagint (LXX)
-The Septuagint, or simply "LXX", is the name commonly given in the West to the Koine Greek version of the Old Testament, translated in stages between the 3rd to 1st century BC in Alexandria. (The Septuagint was used by early Christians and contained the deuterocanonicals)

Masoretic Text (MT)
-The Masoretic Text (MT) is the Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh). It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation for both public reading and private study. The MT is also widely used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles, and in recent decades also for Catholic Bibles.

Apocrypha
-The biblical apocrypha includes texts written in the Jewish and Christian religious traditions that either: 1) were accepted into the biblical canon by some, but not all, Christian faiths, or 2) whose canonicity or lack thereof is not yet certain, or are frequently printed in Bibles despite their non-canonical status.


I will add to this list as needed.

The Canon: Historical Uncertainty

I had noticed a quote online from the New Catholic Encyclopedia on the canon that read a bit differently than the online Encyclopedia so I checked things out at the library. Here is what the print version of the Catholic Encyclopedia says about the Old Testament Canon:

“St. Jerome (340-420AD) distinguished between “canonical books” and “ecclesiastical books”. The latter, he judged, were circulated by the Church as good “spiritual reading” but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture. St. Augustine, however, did not recognize this distinction. He accepted all the books in the LXX as of equal value, noting that those designated as apocryphal by Jerome were of either unknown or obscure origin. Augustine’s point of view prevailed and the deuterocanonical books remained in the Vulgate, the Latin version that received official standing at the Council of Trent.

The situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries, although the the tendency to accept the disputed books was becoming all the time more general. In spite of this trend some, e.g. John Damascene, Gregory the Great, Walafrid, Nicholas of Lyra and Tostado, continued to doubt the canoncity of the deuterocanonical books…The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the OT canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent.”

New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967
Imprimatur: Patrick A. O’Boyle, D.D.
Archbishop of Washington, August 5, 1966

Again, the Catholic Encyclopedia seems to give a more balanced view of the development of the canon than most Catholic apologists/e-pologists. Up until the time of Trent there was clearly some uncertainty about which OT books were canonical.

If we compare this quotation from the printed Catholic Encyclopedia to the quotation from the online Catholic Encyclopedia, we find a growing list of Catholic theologians who had doubts about the canonicity of the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books.

Online Catholic Encyclopedia:

“In this period [4th-5th century] the position of the deuterocanonical literature is no longer as secure as in the primitive age…Following the precedent of Origen and the Alexandrian tradition, the saintly doctor [Athanasius] recognized no other formal canon of the Old Testament than the Hebrew one; but also, faithful to the same tradition, he practically admitted the deutero books to a Scriptural dignity, as is evident from his general usage. At Jerusalem there was a renascence, perhaps a survival, of Jewish ideas, the tendency there being distinctly unfavourable to the deuteros. St. Cyril of that see, while vindicating for the Church the right to fix the Canon, places them among the apocrypha and forbids all books to be read privately which are not read in the churches…St. Epiphanius shows hesitation about the rank of the deuteros; he esteemed them, but they had not the same place as the Hebrew books in his regard. The historian Eusebius attests the widespread doubts in his time; he classes them as antilegomena, or disputed writings, and, like Athanasius, places them in a class intermediate between the books received by all and the apocrypha….

The influence of Origen's and Athanasius's restricted canon naturally spread to the West. St. Hilary of Poitiers and Rufinus followed their footsteps, excluding the deuteros from canonical rank in theory, but admitting them in practice. The latter styles them "ecclesiastical" books, but in authority unequal to the other Scriptures. St. Jerome cast his weighty suffrage on the side unfavourable to the disputed books…“

Catholic Fathers/Theologians who doubted the deuterocanonical books later canonized by Trent (century): Origen (3rd), Athanasius (4th), Eusebius (4th), Jerome (4th), Epiphanius (4th), Hilary of Poitiers (4th), John Damascene (8th), Gregory the Great (6th), Walafrid (9th), Nicholas of Lyra (14th) and Tostado (15th)…more to come.