Did Vatican II Reverse the Teaching on Inerrancy of Scripture?

[BeyondDoubt]

I don’t think it matters from a theological perspective, whether the story of Noah’s ark happened as described.

It matters surely at the God given intellectual level.

Whether it happened or not, we know that God had messages for us which we can learn from the story.

The message appears to be - do what I want or I will kill you all - I’m sure I’m not the only Catholic who ever had a problem with this story and similar ones in the OT.

I don’t think you can go wrong by assuming it is historical,

Except intellectually I can not accept it. I can’t accept the story of millions of pairs of animals travelling from all parts of globe. I can’t accept that man never saw a rainbow before the flood. I can’t accept a God of love would also be a mass murderer.

as long as you are only using it to learn about God, and not trying to learn about science and history through it.

What we learn about God from this story is not very nice at all.

It is physically impossible for the story of Noah to be literally true… that leaves subjective… then anything goes.

It would appear historically that the Church has moved the goalposts over the centuries from a literal interpretation to a subjective interpretation and lately are loath to actually nail any colours to the mast.

What is a average Joe Catholic supposed to do? make up his own minds? Really?

That would be a novel Catholic position.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

It matters surely at the God given intellectual level.

The message appears to be - do what I want or I will kill you all - I’m sure I’m not the only Catholic who ever had a problem with this story and similar ones in the OT.

Well, I personally take the message from it that God destroys the evil and saves those who are good. I think that message comes from the story whether you take it literally or not. But also it has the message that God will never again destroy all of humanity.

It would appear historically that the Church has moved the goalposts over the centuries from a literal interpretation to a subjective interpretation and lately are loath to actually nail any colours to the mast.

I know that if you compare the biblical version of the flood story to the Epic of Gilgamesh, you can see how our God is more merciful and just than the other ‘gods’ from that time. He warned Noah and saved him. I’m not sure if the change from seeing it literally vs. figuratively has changed the message… I would think not.

Personally I’ve always been comforted that God will destroy the wicked and save the just, I’m afraid of wicked people. I’m just another joe whose been trying to figure this out for many years though, hopefully someone with a theology education will help you out.

 

[BeyondDoubt]

Personally I’ve always been comforted that God will destroy the wicked and save the just

I don’t think this is current Catholic teaching either, it certainly wasn’t what Pope John Paul II preached anyhow - he was all for Universal Redemption.

I personally hope he was right, but it flys in the face of past Church teaching.

It’s certainly confusing being an ‘older’ Catholic today.

It appears Catholics can believe what they like these days - which is no bad thing when it comes to scripture and especially the Old Testament.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Good evening SpiritMeadow,

I’ve read this document.

In the section you had referred me to, it states, “Fundamentalism also places undue stress upon the inerrancy of certain details in the biblical texts.” Do you agree that there is a difference between criticizing the placement of undue stress on something and criticizing the thing itself?

Yes I do. Perhaps it might be useful, assuming you agree that fundamentalism is a flawed approach, if you stated what you see as the difference between fundamentalism in sciptural analysis and inerrency.

Again, it it difficult to interact with a document that does not cite sources. We do not know what “certain details” the PBC has in mind here and what “undue stress” on these details looks like. I doubt that they have works such as Augustine’s Harmony of the Gospels in mind. His is a literal approach, but I am assuming it escapes their criticism of being "naively literalist" and remains a Catholic one.

I’m not so sure about Augustine. I believe some here have quoted him as saying that any literal reading of genesis for instance was very superficial at best. I believe Aquinas also warned of excessive literalism. Again, its hard to know if we are talking about the same thing. We certainly to be sure do not look at Genesis as literal. A review of both Benedicts “In the Beginning…” and JPII’s Theology of the body suggests they both understand the various literary threads in Genesis, understand there are two accounts by two different authors etc. They surely do not, for that reason agree that Moses was the author.

You have mentioned interpretations and corrupted manuscripts. These issues are connected to inerrancy, but they do not affect the object of the dogma itself.

I would think it would given that we can have no real idea of what exactly would be inerrent. We have no originals and we know that we do not have copies that we can trust, only better copies than other copies.

If a copyist error is detected in any given manuscript, then that error needs to be eliminated through textual criticism in order to arrive at the inerrant text being referred to by the dogma. We do not physically have this text in its absolute purity. I would say, however, that what we do have is very close. It is by faith that we believe this original text was composed with God as its author and is therefore free from all error.

That is not easy to do, and often come down to a educated judgment. Often we can only employ certain rules of the road in deciding what version is the “correct” one. One rule is the: the harder the reading, the more likely it is to be original. But this is offset when other rules also apply. I am not sure how close we are. I’m not a scriptural scholar. What some of them say, is really split…some thing we can never achieve a clear copy of anything, others think we can come close, but are not there yet. Again, I have no need to believe in any “dictated” form to support my faith. I view the text as helping me to understand how THEY thought about God based on their experiences of God. I believe those truths are by definition true.

If someone wrongly interprets scripture, the dogma of inerrancy does not extend to that wrong interpretation. Only the text itself is free from all error. The teaching is summarized by Augustine in this way:

Undoubtedly true, that dogma does not extend to wrongful interpretations. That is why I believe we continue to strive to learn as much as we can about what the original writers wrote and what they intended to write. As we develop more and better techniques for doing this we come closer to defining the 'correct" interpretation. Though I would also argue that in some ways there are may interpretations and should be. Scripture is living and speaks to all ages.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

I don’t think this is current Catholic teaching either, it certainly wasn’t what Pope John Paul II preached anyhow - he was all for Universal Redemption.

I personally hope he was right, but it flys in the face of past Church teaching.

It’s certainly confusing being an ‘older’ Catholic today.

It appears Catholics can believe what they like these days - which is no bad thing when it comes to scripture and especially the Old Testament.

Well, I should clarify. I pray for ‘the wicked’ to convert. Or at least I try to… sometimes it’s hard to pray for people I don’t like, but I realize I’m required to. But if they convert, they aren’t wicked anymore.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

The two bold points . . . Error means that there is a mistake. When an author deliberately changes a detail to achieve a specific purpose and the purpose is achieved, he has not committed an error. In literature this is known as an amendment. The author has amended the details to for the sake of clarity and convenience. It would be an error if there were no awareness of the change.

I will accept your definition. However, why do you conclude that changes were made for clarity and convenience? Changes were made by scribes for a variety of reasons, not all of them “good”. They were changed to correct an obvious error in someone else’s copying, to correct a perceived mistake (which can be as likely wrong as right), to correct a perceived theological error, and sometimes to combat heresies that were going on in the community. Many of these are not corrections at all, but changes to better reflect what the scribe believed at that time rather than what the original writer meant. Have I misunderstood you?

Jewish and Christian exegetes believe that the original writers of scriptures deliberately amended and used other literary tools. The changes in details or facts were not errors; they served the purpose of the writing and the writing achieved its purpose.

I’m not understanding you here. I assume all change in text serves a purpose, good bad or indifferent. How does that make it not error if it incorrectly changes the meaning set by the original writer? Are we simply calling error something else to avoid saying error? If so, we are merely dissembling and deserve appropriate criticism.

If I may use an analogy, a woman goes into surgery for a hysterectomy to remove a cancerous uterus. The surgeon knows that the woman will no longer bear children. Sterilization is a result of the surgery, but it is not an error of judgment or knowledge on the part of the surgeon. The surgery achieves its purpose. It removes the cancer. There is no “oops!”

I understand your analogy, but again, subjectively, we have not made an error, but objectively one has occurred, the text is no longer what it was, it no longer means what it meant.

When a biblical writer amends a story for a particular purpose, either through use of metaphor, allegory, allusion, poetic devices, phrases and expressions common to the time and place in which he writes, he knows exactly what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. The Holy Spirit is guiding his craft.

But that begs the question. Was not the original writer guided to speak the truth? So what need the amendment? And additionally, we are talking about not new interpretations placed in the texts by scribes, but new verses or alterations to change the meaning of the text. This has occured.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

There can be no error. If I may use the term, this is literary surgery. There is a side-effect; you may have Jesus delivering a sermon on a mount in one gospel and a sermon on the plain in another gospel. However, the purpose was served well. In fact, Jesus never delivered the sermon in the first place, as is the case of the Beatitudes. They were collections of Jesus’ sayings. The writers are performing “literary surgery” by weaving these sayings into a single sermon when it is likely that they were teachings that came from various conversations, sermons and other discourses used by Jesus. There is no error, because there is complete awareness of what one is doing and why one is doing it. This was an acceptable form of writing at the time when they produced these manuscripts. We have to approach them with the mindset of the first-century reader, not our 21st century mindset.

We are talking about 2 entirely different things. I see your point about the plain vs mount, but I have always said this. The theological truth is what is important here, not the actually location of where Jesus spoke, or whether he spoke these words in a connected series as stated. I have no problem with this kind of thing, and agree it is not error necessarily at all.

As to the second point, to conflate is to combine. You have to combine the gospels to understand the Christ-Event. The individual gospels do not stand alone and the intent of the writers was that they supported what the first Christians believed. Each of the gospels has pieces of the beliefs of the early Church, according to the target audience. The Synoptic Gospels are closer to each other because they use a very similar method of delivering the Good News, which are narratives.

Perhaps we are talking at cross purposes. We enjoy 4 gospels, differernt in many respects, similar in some. What I am alluding to is that we cannot attempt to gather all the “facts” from all 4 and get a picture of fact as to an event in time. They are not meant for that. Especially given what we know about how the gospels were formed. Mark’s gospel we believe was used by Matthew and Luke who took it and changed it to conform to their own purposes, adding and subtracting additional material they had available to them.

When you take the four gospels together, you get a complete picture of the Christ-Event. Jesus is the Son of God, the God-Man, whom Yahweh had promised to Israel and who broke into human history at the incarnation and who always existed outside of history; through whom all of history comes into existence and receives life.

This is pretty intense. Without the “conflating”, to use your term, we would miss this.

I really don’t think we are in disagreement. I agree that we get a fuller picture of Christ by reading all three, but I don’t think we can conflate each event wherein each speaks of the same thing, and get a “fuller picture” They included and excluded material for particular reasons, so the picture of any event arrived at in this way may distort the picture rather than bring it into focus.

Bible historians have been using this methodology for approximately a century.

The have been using the historical critical method and other methodologies used in literary criticism. If we are talking about the same things, then I don’t really think we are in disagreement, we are just, probably me, not stating it the most correct way. I’ll attempt to do better.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

BRAVO . . . VERY WELL SAID

:clapping:

Well apparently its me…I’ve been saying the same exact thing. Apparently not at all well. Thanks tome.

 

[TOME]

SpiritMeadow,
Your welcome and I have to admit that as long as I have been involved in this forum you have consistantly written the same often much better.

But this makes me wonder, it we were living in an earlier century and as we were being lead to our pyres to be burned as heretics (of coarse, for the good of our souls) could I have mounted one last defense and say, “It was this women the forum put here with me, she gave me the words so I wrote them - Is it hot here or is it just me”?

 

[JReducation]

If I may add something to this discussion which I hope will be helpful, during my own theological formation the Church has taken two striking approaches to scripture, both valid.

On the one hand, she has always held that the scriptures are without error, regardless of the number of rewrites and scribes, who added what or omitted whatever detail, even with missing pieces of original documents. The Church can take this position so calmly, because it has the guarantee of Jesus Christ that the Gates of Hell will not prevail against her.

If we look at the sequence of events, before there was a Bible, there was a community of believers that we call the Church. It was this community that gave us the Bible. This community decided what they wanted to put into writing in the NT. The early Church omitted pre-Christian writings that were not revelation and those that were, they bound into the OT. If we accept that the Church cannot commit an error in matters of faith, then we also accept that scriptures, as the Church gathered them and compiled them into one book called the Bible is free of error. Why? Because the scriptures are the story of this community that is error-free in matters of faith and morals. It can sin, but it cannot teach error, big difference.

On the other hand, the Catholic Church, more than any other Christian tradition, with maybe the Lutherans right alongside, subscribes to the idea that the scriptures are a legitimate area of study for academics. This means that academics at universities and other institutes of higher learning are free to study the history of the scriptures, the mechanisms that the writers used, the goals of the writers, their original message, styles, genre, language and so forth. Academics are also free to use sciences such as archaeology, physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, history, political science, literary criticism and many other disciplines to study the scripture. The Church even encourages Catholic scholars to engage with non-Catholic scholars in dissecting the scriptures, because it makes the conclusions more legitimate if you have two converse views arriving at the same conclusion.

As to the findings of these scholars, the Church has no problem with us believing these findings as long as we remember that whatever happened way back then is God’s revelation of himself and that we arrive at a deeper understanding of what God has revealed. That’s the purpose of all this research.

The term deeper understanding means that we have only scratched the surface in our understanding of God. He has revealed himself through the Church, tradition and finally scripture, in that order, but we’re far from understanding everything that he wants us to understand about him and our relationship with him. Thus far, everything that we know about God, through the Church is 100% accurate. However, there is more. It’s like peeling an onion. Each layer of the onion is real and can be taken to the bank, but there is yet another layer waiting to be understood.

As to the different stories in the Bible, do not forget that the books fall into different genres. For example, the Pentateuch is the original Torah or Law. In it we find the story of Adam, Noah, Abraham and Moses. All of these stories were written to communicate God’s law. They were not journals nor were their authors interested in journaling. They received the Law from God and they were interested in communicating the law and the consequences for its transgression and the rewards for our fidelity. When you read them, the intellectual exercise should be to answer the question, “What is the law of God?” We will find that in understanding the law we also understand the law-giver. For example, if you look at the 10 Commandments, observe that the first three are about God. The other seven are about interpersonal relations (justice, charity, honesty, responsibility, fidelity, sacredness of life). As we examine these laws we realize that the law-giver is more preoccupied with our welfare than his. The Law reveals a loving Law-Giver.

We could go on to each section, but that would take away from this thread. There is a scripture thread which may be of some help.

God bless!

 

[TOME]

JR,
I hope you will not get discourage by a lack of positive response to you post and sometime outright hostility because there are those of the same mind set who need discussions such as you propose and insights you offer. At times you may even experience disagreements from someone like myself but these will always be in the spirit of diologue in the best sense of the socratic method of learning.

I think you and I and if I may so bold as to add SpiritMeadow should use as our motto in this forum something Pope Benedict XVI wrote about the Infancy Narratives but I think applies to what should be the starting point of our study of Scripture, paraphrasing him, they proclaim a mystery not explain it.

Perhaps during you time here so far you have experienced something I have experienced when reflecting on a reply, namely the vast richness one experiences in scripture when one is seeking its message rather than trying to prove its validity.

 

[JReducation]

JR,
I hope you will not get discourage by a lack of positive response to you post and sometime outright hostility because there are those of the same mind set who need discussions such as you propose and insights you offer. At times you may even experience disagreements from someone like myself but these will always be in the spirit of diologue in the best sense of the socratic method of learning.

I think you and I and if I may so bold as to add SpiritMeadow should use as our motto in this forum something Pope Benedict XVI wrote about the Infancy Narratives but I think applies to what should be the starting point of our study of Scripture, paraphrasing him, they proclaim a mystery not explain it.

Perhaps during you time here so far you have experienced something I have experienced when reflecting on a reply, namely the vast richness one experiences in scripture when one is seeking its message rather than trying to prove its validity.

While I have a problem with people being hostile to anyone, not just me, because hostility is a violation of charity, I have no problems with people’s responses to my posts at all.

Thus far, I have received nothing but positive feedback or interesting questions. I can’t say that I have felt under attack in this thread.

I will admit that my approach to scripture on this thread is more academic than contemplative, because that’s what I was trained to do and how I was trained to discuss scripture. But as far as I’m concernend, that’s an individual approach.

During my periods of prayer and meditation, I don’t stop to think about what was said in ancient Greek or ancient Hebrew or what genre a particular passage or book falls into. Like everyone else, I read the scriptures and look for God’s will for my life. At those points, I reflect on the mystery and the message of the text. I don’t make it an academic exercise.

On the other hand, when in a group that is discussing a topic such as that of this thread, “Did Vatican II reverse the teaching of inerrancy of scripture?” I take another approach. This question is an academic question. The question is not inviting us to reflect and contemplate the scriptures. It’s asking for an academic response, what did Vatican II say and is it different from what was said before. To respond to this question I use academic information, if you will.

What I have found on CAF is that many people, mostly Catholics, do not want academic responses to their academic questions. I find that more difficult to deal with, because it’s not easy to give a faith response to an academic question. Sometimes it’s possible and sometimes it’s not. On those occasions when it’s not possible, it is frustrating. I don’t find it frustrating because the person is being frustrating, but because the way that the question is worded does not lend itself to a very spiritual response.

I’ll give you an an example. If someone wants to know about Noah’s ark and why God comes across as a murderous fiend or how it was possible for all of the animals of the world to gather into one boat in one place, that’s an academic question. Maybe the author of the question is looking for a spiritual response to the question to help his or her faith, but the question is worded in academic language. My response is going to be academic. If, on the other hand, the author asked what is the meaning of Noah’s ark? There I can come back with a more spiritual response, one that the mystics would give.

I’m not sure if I understood your post correctly. Therefore, I’m not sure if I responded correctly. If I made a mistake, please help me understand what you meant. I’m responding as I understood your post.

Nonetheless, I’m not offended by anyone’s response on this thread. I have been on other threads in CAF and have wondered why they were allowed to remain open. But that’s a discussion for another day. LOL

God bless

 

[Neil_Anthony]

While I have a problem with people being hostile to anyone, not just me, because hostility is a violation of charity, I have no problems with people’s responses to my posts at all.

Thank you very much for your answers, JReducation. Now I feel confident that I understand (to the extent that I need to) what the church teaches about scripture interpretation.

 

[RobbyS]

St. Luke does not assert that a census took place all over the Roman Empire before the death of Herod but that a decision emanated from Augusts that regular census to be made. Whether they were carried out in general, or not, was no concern of St. Luke’s.

Today’s biblical scholars believe that it was not Luke’s intention to assert that a census took place all over the Roman Empire, but that Augustus decided to order the regular census. Whether that census was carried out or not, Luke didn’t seem to have the full details nor was he particularly concerned about it, as it had nothing to do with his mission.

newadvent.org/cathen/09420a.htm#III

This being the case, there is no error in Luke. He is simply using the information that he receives from his sources, which are the Apostles and other eye-witnesses, as it is given to him. He is not overly concerned with explaining the details of who ruled what and who held what positions at the same time.

I have always kept in mind that we don’t always know what Luke meant. The information we have of that period is not as certain as the history books make it out to be. Much of it is surmise that has been canonized as fact by modern historians.

IAC. more important than any supposed error in the information about the census is the claim that Luke was ignorant of the “fact” that Jesus was born in Nazareth, and that the census was simply a devise to get him to Bethlehem. Of course, Matthew says nothing about a journey from Nazareth and if we read him alone, we gather that Joseph and Mary are not from Nazareth but choose to go there after the escape from Herod.

It all relates to that question raised by the search for the "historical " Jesus, which dismisses as fictional both birth stories, and asserts that Jesus was simply a provincial with no connection with Judea, until his final journey there. John, of course, puts him in the capital several times, and Luke’s story of the finding of him in the temple suggests that his family made pilgrimages to the city regularly. Then hen there is the story of Mary’s visit with St. Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea. The protogospel of St. James, makes Mary’s family inhabitants of Jerusalem. Could it not be that Jesus had family in Jerusalem? Could not Martha, Mary and Lazarus have been cousins? Given that we know so little about the life of Jesus before his mission in Galilee, could it not be that any errors in the Gospels were simply errors of omission where neither writer bothered to tell us more than was needed to make some point about Jesus. I have read too many reports in newspapers of events I have attended and found so many omissions that I knew the reporter was standing at a place very different from where I was standing and focused on an aspect of it that I did not see.

IAC, I do not accept the consensus of scholars that Luke was writing from the year 85 or so. The traditional dating of it in the year 60 makes perfect sense, given the terse ending of Acts. And I do not rule out that Matthew may have indeed been the first gospel, at least in some form.

 

[BeyondDoubt]

The Church didn’t reverse the teaching on inerrancy of Scripture at Vatican II.

They merely reworded it.

Surrounded it with enough obfuscation to dig themselves out of any future holes they might find themselves in when people start pressing any scientific or historic points.

Older Catholics who lived at the time and knew the Church pre-Vatican II have the longsight to see what went on.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

SpiritMeadow,
Your welcome and I have to admit that as long as I have been involved in this forum you have consistantly written the same often much better.

But this makes me wonder, it we were living in an earlier century and as we were being lead to our pyres to be burned as heretics (of coarse, for the good of our souls) could I have mounted one last defense and say, “It was this women the forum put here with me, she gave me the words so I wrote them - Is it hot here or is it just me”?

LOL Tome, thanks, I’m now the cause of sin entering the world but again it seems. Seriously though, I’ve spent the morning reviewing book reviews of Bart Ehrman’s “Misquoting Jesus.” and surprise surprise, he goes from goat to hero depending on whether the writer is an evangelical christian or not. So it’s just not here. But what I think we have is the predictable breakdown between those who adher to the scripture was dictated and to those who believe they were inspired as to spiritual truths.

I personally believe that the theological truths that God wanted known were inerrent, but I believe the authors where real authors who had their own agenda and their own failings in historical knowledge like most of us. Oddly, it appears, such knowledge makes me more sure of the reality of Jesus as Lord rather than less sure. The incredible gifted abilities and the skill and true genius employed to encorporate their belief about Jesus into a coherent apologetic is awe inspiring to me. It makes me even more sure that there was something to this Jesus I read about, else why the extraordinary care taken to sculpt a gospel so carefully to a particular audience. These are not mere off the cuff listing of the accomplishments and quirks of a powerful man, but the excruciatingly detailed and artistic contructs of men who had virtually had their socks knocked off by this extraordinary prophet/messiah/lord/God.

But then, unlike Erhman, I didn’t start out a fundamentalist. To find that the texts are less than perfect was not nearly so jarring to me as they were to him. He claims to be a “happy agostic” now. I didn’t convert to Catholicism until I had received verbal assurances from priests and had read similar statements in books that the Church taught no such literalistic doctrine. That is the sad result of fundamentalism to me, that when it blows up, and it must to any true searcher, I believe, it tends to drive such persons away from God completely. That I find sad.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

On the one hand, she has always held that the scriptures are without error, regardless of the number of rewrites and scribes, who added what or omitted whatever detail, even with missing pieces of original documents. The Church can take this position so calmly, because it has the guarantee of Jesus Christ that the Gates of Hell will not prevail against her.

Are you saying that regardless of the copying over and over, the words are still without error? or are you saying that the general theological teaching is without error? the second I can ascribe to.

If we look at the sequence of events, before there was a Bible, there was a community of believers that we call the Church. It was this community that gave us the Bible. This community decided what they wanted to put into writing in the NT. The early Church omitted pre-Christian writings that were not revelation and those that were, they bound into the OT. If we accept that the Church cannot commit an error in matters of faith, then we also accept that scriptures, as the Church gathered them and compiled them into one book called the Bible is free of error. Why? Because the scriptures are the story of this community that is error-free in matters of faith and morals. It can sin, but it cannot teach error, big difference.

I would disagree in part. All of what we term the NT was written not in anticipation of being collected in a book form. They were written individually. There is not a lot of evidence that suggests for instance that Mark wrote anticipating his work would be disseminated outside his community to which it had been very much tailored. Additionally, Paul certainly did not anticipate it would seem that his letters would be declared as “scripture”. You seem to be reducing things to faith and morals…and I don’t disagree with that much either. What came to be scripture was the story of the group of Jesus followers that gained the upper hand, and I would certainly not disagree that they had the correct views, but some of the textual matters were altered to address heresy or perceived heresy during their time. As to theologtical truths, I too believe they did so without error.

On the other hand, the Catholic Church, more than any other Christian tradition, with maybe the Lutherans right alongside, subscribes to the idea that the scriptures are a legitimate area of study for academics. The Church even encourages Catholic scholars to engage with non-Catholic scholars in dissecting the scriptures, because it makes the conclusions more legitimate if you have two converse views arriving at the same conclusion.

I don’t know as you can prove that having Catholic scholars engage with non-Catholic scholars makes conclusions “legitimate” and again, I are hard pressed to see why we allow biblical scholarship as you describe if we have error free texts, as you claim.

As to the findings of these scholars, the Church has no problem with us believing these findings as long as we remember that whatever happened way back then is God’s revelation of himself and that we arrive at a deeper understanding of what God has revealed. That’s the purpose of all this research.

If we can believe anything we want about scholarly findings about scripture, then you have yielded on your claim of inerrency I would argue. I see scripture as revealing God’s revelation in its theological statements, not necessily in its factual allegations.
Again, I tend to think a lot of this is just knee jerk reaction to the words, error, mistake, inerrency, etc as meaning the bible is just a book. That is not at all true, IMO.

Thus far, everything that we know about God, through the Church is 100% accurate. However, there is more. It’s like peeling an onion. Each layer of the onion is real and can be taken to the bank, but there is yet another layer waiting to be understood.

Im not inclined to say that everything we know about God through the Church is 100% true. Augustine said whatever we think God is, is what God is not. We are not capable through human language, I would contend, in defining God but by reflection, and poorly even then.

Mostly I think we are stuck in a semantical ditch…lol…I rather think we aren’t really disagreeing in activity, rather we are stuck with bad wording.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

The Church didn’t reverse the teaching on inerrancy of Scripture at Vatican II.

They merely reworded it.

Surrounded it with enough obfuscation to dig themselves out of any future holes they might find themselves in when people start pressing any scientific or historic points.

Older Catholics who lived at the time and knew the Church pre-Vatican II have the longsight to see what went on.

I think you are quite right here. It has become my continuing opinon that on many issues, not all of course, the Church is being a bit vague. Since it is apparently impossible to admit being wrong, I think they now like to leave the door ajar on issues that can be spoken to by continuing new methods of empirical investigation. They seem to be dancing on the issue of evolution or especially ID since its just unclear how this might play out. I think its a rather smart move for the Church actually, and of interest to a tiny percent of us who actually keep on things Vatican. For most Catholics, they are blithely unaware of these issues at all.

 

[Pete_Holter]

I guess I’m the “fundie” of the group.

May God bless you all! May God bless you all!!! May He continue to enrich our understanding of the Scriptures, may He continue to enlighten and enliven us by His Holy Spirit, guiding us into all truth. May our hearts be encouraged, knit together in love, and may we “reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2-3).

I wish I had more time to interact.

Love,
Pete

 

[JReducation]

IAC. more important than any supposed error in the information about the census is the claim that Luke was ignorant of the “fact” that Jesus was born in Nazareth, and that the census was simply a devise to get him to Bethlehem.

we gather that Joseph and Mary are not from Nazareth but choose to go there after the escape from Herod.

**Could it not be that Jesus had family in Jerusalem? **

**IAC, I do not accept the consensus of scholars that Luke was writing from the year 85 or so. ** The traditional dating of it in the year 60 makes perfect sense, given the terse ending of Acts. And I do not rule out that Matthew may have indeed been the first gospel, at least in some form.

What Catholic biblical scholars believe about the census and Jesus’ birth is that Luke may simply be combining Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem with his vague recollection of a census under Quirinius (see Acts 5; 37) to underling the significance of the birth for the entire Roman world. Salvation and peace come to the empire through the child born in Bethlehem.

As to Jesus being born in Nazareth, it would be out of the question, since it was prophesized that the Messiah would be born in the land of Bethlehem of Judea. To assign Bethlehem as Jesus place of birth when in fact it was Nazareth would have been a fraud. Luke relies heavily on Mark and the Q tradition, both of which came from the first generation church. It seems that the first generation church knew that Jesus had been born in Bethlehem. In non biblical writings of that era we have references to Joseph and Mary being of the House of David. David was from Bethlehem (Mi 5; 2).

Luke is very historical in his style of writing. In Lk 1; 36 he specifically refers to Mary as being from Nazareth and betrothed to a man named Joseph. Therefore, Joseph too must have been from Nazareth. Being a Jew myself, I can attest to the fact that our people of that period never married outside their clan. They were often distant relatives as cities were small. It would make sense that they did travel to Bethlehem and found themselves there when Mary gives birth. Lk makes it a point to restate it in 2; 4. He wants the reader to take careful note that Jesus fulfills the prophecy, he was called a Nazarene vs. he was a Nazarene by birth. By birth he is Jewish, not a Galilean. Nazareth is in Galilee, not in Judea. Luke points out that Jesus is both the Son of David and the promised Messiah who will be called a Nazarene.

Also, Joseph and Mary travel to Egypt between the birth of Jesus and his second birthday. This would make sense as Bethlehem is on the West Bank from which many caravans traveled across the Sinai into Egypt. Nazareth is much further north, closer to Lebanon and Jordan. It would have made sense to travel toward Damascus and disappear in the large city, had they been in Nazareth at the time of Jesus’ birth.

It is most unlikely that Jesus had family in Jerusalem, because the Jews living in Jerusalem at the time were very affluent. The early Christian tradition places Jesus among the working classes. Remember that he is also called the son of the carpenter. Also, there was and is to this day, animosity between the Jews of Northern Israel and those of Southern Israel. They are from two different bloodlines. Had Jesus had family in Jerusalem, his mother would have buried him in one of their tombs. But the Synoptic Gospels are clear that he was buried in the tomb of a stranger. Mt. 27; 57 refers to Joseph of Arimathea as a rich man. All three Synoptic writers mention that he is a member of the council. In none of the gospels is there any mention of Jesus or his family having political connections.

As to the writing of Mt’s gospel, it cannot take place before 70 AD, probably closer to 80 AD or later. From what we know about Lk from the early fathers, he was a second-generation Christian, a Syrian from Antioch. He was writing for non Palestinian Christians. Non-Palestinian Christians became a larger community during the second generation of the early Church. He also substitutes Greek names for Aramaic and Hebrew names used by Mk. There is a more modern quality to his writing than that of Mk. In addition, in Lk1; 1-3 he makes reference to writings that came before his and to the fact that he has received this message from someone older than he. In Lk 13; 35, 19; 43-44, 21;20, and 23; 28-31 Luke alludes to the destruction of Jerusalem. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. By the time that Lk writes his gospel, he knows of the destruction of the temple.