PBC to Meet on Biblical Inerrancy

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What if Pope Benedict issued a document saying the following:
“Divine inspiration extends to every part of the Bible without the slightest exception, and that no error can occur in the inspired text…”
Would the matter not be settled?

But Pope Benedict did issue a document with those exact words. So why is this still treated as an open question?
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Because we don’t know what the term “error” means, or when to apply it and the pope’s words are of no help.

Does he mean “no error can occur in the truth of what is being revealed to us for our salvation in the inspired text…”, did he mean we are bound to a literalistic reading of every word, or does he mean something in between? This is not the absolute statement you are implying it is.

The pope’s statement is too general to be used as a broad bush for all interpretation. It doesn’t deal with the very real points of fictional vs literal vs literalistic or how fiction, legend, myth, and poetry are valid vehicles for revelation. There is more to *DV *than the partial statement you wish wasn’t there - there are several paragraphs concerning how the truth is not always taught literally and how we are to read and interpret according to the knowledge and customs of the time (which are very likely to be in error).
 
Here is one thing I would like to see explained: Clearly the NAB notes are compatible with the Catholic teaching on the inerrancy of the Bible, as they have a nihil obstat and imprimatur, not to mention that they are posted on the Vatican website. I personally have a hard time reconciling this, and I would like to see the inerrancy teaching clarified as to why they are compatible, and find out exactly just how far are Catholics allowed to deviate from the plain understanding of the Biblical texts.
 
Just_Lurking said:
Here is one thing I would like to see explained: Clearly the NAB notes are compatible with the Catholic teaching on the inerrancy of the Bible, as they have a nihil obstat and imprimatur, not to mention that they are posted on the Vatican website. I personally have a hard time reconciling this, and I would like to see the inerrancy teaching clarified as to why they are compatible, and find out exactly just how far are Catholics allowed to deviate from the plain understanding of the Biblical texts.
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The nihil obstat and imprimatur are often granted when they should not be.
 
Ron_Conte said:
The nihil obstat and imprimatur are often granted when they should not be.
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The imprimatur can be revoked if it is found to be given in error. The NAB is the bible used in American services so I would think the comments have been scrutinized. This is not some backwater book. I think it’s unlikely that we will see that imprimatur revoked.
 
I can understand why people who have a hard time reconciling certain apparent errors in the scripture would be praying that the church will not rule this difficulty means they are out of communion with the church.

But I can not see why people who apparently find no difficulty in the texts want the church to throw the others out so vehemently. Certainly if the text at issue deals with something pertaining to our salvation I can see stands must be taken. But why do we want to declare people heretics over the possibility of error regarding minutia? (and I hope people familiar with this topic will understand that some of the arguments are indeed dealing with minutia.)

It’s not like the PBC is going to say that those who believe in extreme inerrancy are heretics.
 
Several Popes have taught definitively on the subject, and have stated their teaching in terms that clearly indicate a required belief. The PBC has no authority to overrule those past teachings. The opinion that Scripture contains errors on any subject has already been condemned. So why do so many persons still hold to this opinion?

“…they put forward again the opinion, already often condemned, which asserts that immunity from error extends only to those parts of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters.” (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, n. 22).

“But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred… This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican.” (Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, n. 20).

When, subsequently, some Catholic writers, in spite of this solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the “entire books with all their parts” as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever, ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely to matters of faith and morals, and to regard other matters, whether in the domain of physical science or history, as “obiter dicta” and - as they contended - in no wise connected with faith, Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus, published on November 18 in the year 1893, justly and rightly condemned these errors and safe-guarded the studies of the Divine Books by most wise precepts and rules. (Pope Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, n. 1)

There are few other teachings that have been taught more definitively, or that are more fundamental to the Catholic Faith.
 
There are pastoral issues on both sides of the debate. On the one side, you have people who have believed in the Bible literally all their life, and are now being told by Catholic biblical scholars, with the approval of the Catholic Church, that much of what they believed in isn’t true. These people sometimes have a crisis of faith, wonder why they should believe in any part of the Bible anymore, and can end up leaving the Church.

On the other side, you run the risk of having people not being able to accept the Catholic Church in the first place because they cannot believe in Noah’s ark or Herod’s slaughter or some other such thing that has been deemed to be mandatory due to the dogma of biblical inerrancy. The PBC definitely has a delicate balancing act to perform when it deals with this issue.
 
Just_Lurking said:
There are pastoral issues on both sides of the debate. On the one side, you have people who have believed in the Bible literally all their life, and are now being told by Catholic biblical scholars, with the approval of the Catholic Church, that much of what they believed in isn’t true. These people sometimes have a crisis of faith, wonder why they should believe in any part of the Bible anymore, and can end up leaving the Church.
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The church doesn’t do this though. It never tells anyone that something in the bible isn’t true. Yes it allows people to believe that perhaps Noah didn’t really load all the animals on the ark. However the church never said one would be a heretic if they believed Noah in fact loaded all the animals on the ark. The church leaves the matter open. I do not hope and pray that the church would call people who believe the literal story of Noah heretics. I’m not sure what motivates others to hope the church closes the door on those who wonder about difficulties that have nothing to do with salvation.
Just_Lurking said:
On the other side, you run the risk of having people not being able to accept the Catholic Church in the first place because they cannot believe in Noah’s ark or Herod’s slaughter or some other such thing that has been deemed to be mandatory due to the dogma of biblical inerrancy. The PBC definitely has a delicate balancing act to perform when it deals with this issue.
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I think the answer is easy. Don’t close either group out of the church. Continue to say what Vatican 2 and the Catechism say: Scripture is inerrant in what it says for the sake of our salvation. If people accept that I don’t see why we would need to declare them heretics regardless of how they come down on other issues.
 
Ron_Conte said:
The opinion that Scripture contains errors on any subject has already been condemned.
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Yes, and no.

The quotes you offer seem to support both sides of the issue, no?

Leo XIII seems to say that, but Pius XII does not. Pius XII acknowledges Leo’s teaching (as you note by citing the first para of Divino Afflante Spiritu) but to really understand Church teaching (and Pius XII’s) one has to continue reading beyond the first paragraph.

As the Church currently teaches and has been noted by others in this thread, e.g. CCC 107:
The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.
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I don’t see that as contradicting previous Church teaching, though I recognize some might. I do see it as saying clearly that Scripture is inerrant regarding “that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.” That might be a problem for some, if the Bible does not necessarily contain biological, geological, archaeological etc. truths, but I don’t think it is and it doesn’t seem to be for the Church.
 
Ron_Conte said:
There are few other teachings that have been taught more definitively, or that are more fundamental to the Catholic Faith.
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I guess we will agree to disagree on this. It may depend on what you you think is being taught. If you are saying it has always been required that all catholics believe every individual phrase of scripture is true - and not just part of a larger truth - I would say there are few that have been taught less definitively or that are less fundemental to Catholic Faith.
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:

I think there is an ambiguity in this topic 😦 - is the total inerrancy of those chapters​

  • within the text, in what is said
  • “beyond” the text - at a meta-textual level - in what they are used for saying
It’s not the texts that claim inerrancy; nor do they say anything about how they are to be put together in such a way as to yield a result which allows them to be described as inerrant. Inerrancy is a theological construction for derscribing how they are related - it is not an analysis of what they mean. The notion of inerrancy is like a “fence round the Torah”, not something required by what is in the Torah. AFAICS.

Does the Church mean:
  • what the texts say, is totally inerrant - or
  • what the Church understands them to mean by what they say, is totally inerrant ?
If they are not asserting what the Church thinks they are asserting, the time may come when what the text is understood to mean changes - indeed, it’s happened already:
  • an inerrant Bible that inerrantly asserts as a fact that the really-existing man Methuselah attained the age of 969 years
and
  • an inerrant Bible that is understood not to be asserting that Methuselah & his age are really existent, but serve a completely different purpose in the Bible
can both be totally inerrant - but the content of the belief in total inerrancy is different, because the sense the text bears is taken to be different. Only the result - that is, the assertion of the total inerrancy of the Bible - is the same.

Furthermore - how can it be said of a text that makes no assertion, that it is, or is not, in error ? Error presupposes a judgement by the intellect - a mistaken one. It presupposes that something not the case, has been judged to be the case in the very sense in which it is not. So, what of those parts of the Bible in which no such judgement is made ? How do categories such as error, & the absence of it, apply to them ? Or - does the dogma of inerrancy apply only to those parts of the Bible in which such judgements are made & such categories applied ? :confused: It would be most interesting to know…
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You raise some interesting questions. From the studying I’ve done of the authoritative papal documents on the subject and the early Church fathers, it seems the Church’s approach is to view the Scriptures as inerrant pertaining to what the sacred author intended to communicate. The correct understanding of that intended message would be inerrant. The Church has also laid out safeguards as to how we can come to that understanding. Here is a relevant text below from Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical pertaining to the interpretation of Scripture. Also Pope Benedict’s address to the PBC, which Pete linked to earlier on this thread, also lays out the Church’s approach as well.

Pope Leo XIII, On the Study of Holy Scripture, Providentissimus Deus
His teaching, and that of other Holy Fathers, is taken up by the Council of the Vatican, which, in renewing the decree of Trent declares its “mind” to be this - that “in things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church, whose place it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; and therefore that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.”…
Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church….
Wherefore the expositor should make it his duty to follow their footsteps with all reverence, and to use their labours with intelligent appreciation.
15. But he must not on that account consider that it is forbidden, when just cause exists, to push inquiry and exposition beyond what the Fathers have done; provided he carefully observes the rule so wisely laid down by St. Augustine-not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires;(40) a rule to which it is the more necessary to adhere strictly in these times, when the thirst for novelty and unrestrained freedom of thought make the danger of error most real and proximate. vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18111893_providentissimus-deus_en.html
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:

Defining Biblical inerrancy could be a massive headache; especially if the text is to be inerrant. :eek: Hence my suggestion about the possibility that inerrancy might be meta-textual, and not textual. How can one speak of an inerrant book, if the content of the book is not inerrant ? But to be inerrant, there has to be a something of which the quality of inerrancy can be predicated: doctrines about the Bible need a Bible for them to be about. And if entities within the Bible - ancient Patriarchs, events, places, & so on, are judged at one time to be real, & later, not to be real, the meaning of the “bearer” of inerrancy (in this case, the Bible or part or parts of it) has changed: so the thing of which inerrancy is predicated changes; so the meaning of inerrancy changes in its turn. So - what is the locus, or the “bearer”, of inerrancy ? Of what exactly is it predicated, by the Church which desires this doctrine to be believed ? The Church ought to be able to know what it means by its own teaching. Or not ? But if not - why not :confused: ?​

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So far as I understand your post I agree with it. Let’s assume the standard definition of truth: A claim/statement is “true” if and only if it accords with reality.

So, we have a text from the Old Testament that we do not think literally happened. That is let’s say that even though the text says Noah placed 2 of every sort of animal on the ark we don’t really think he did this. That is the statement that he did this does not accord with reality. In reality it didn’t happen. Let’s further, assume that the author is not intending to us to believe this. He is using that story to point us to another truth. Is there error?

We can’t say everyone who writes fiction is teaching falsehood. Otherwise Jesus with his parables was teaching falsehoods.

But if are only concerned with safeguarding the main message as being true – and not all the particulars – then what?
 
Here is a slightly different translation of the Pope’s address.

Your brother in the LORD,
Pete
 
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