The Meaning of Biblical Inerrancy

[murraymuzz]

Hi everyone,

The other day I was having a discussion with my parish priest about biblical inerrancy, he told me that this is not the Catholic belief and that we only believe the bible is inerrant on matters of faith and morals, however I’m having a hard time understanding this when I read Trent and Vatican I; for instance Trent says this:

The sacred and holy, œcumenical and general Synod of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the same three legates of the Apostolic See presiding therein,—keeping this always in view, that, errors being removed, the purity itself of the Gospel be preserved in the Church; which [Gospel], before promised through the prophets in the holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth, and then commanded to be preached by His apostles to every creature, as the fountain both of every saving truth, and discipline of morals; and perceiving that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the apostles themselves,o the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand; [the synod] following the examples of the orthodox fathers, receives and venerates with equal affection of piety, and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament,—seeing that one God is the author of both, as also the said traditions, as well those appertaining to faith as to morals, as having been dictated, either by Christ’s own word of mouth, or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved by a continuous succession in the Catholic Church.

Buckley, T. A. 1851. The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (17–18). Geroge Routledge and Co.: London

And Vatican I re-iterates this as so:

Further, this supernatural revelation, according to the universal belief of the Church, declared by the sacred Synod of Trent, is contained in the written books and unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of CHRIST Himself, or by the Apostles themselves, from the dictation of the Holy Spirit, transmitted, as it were, from hand to hand, have come down even to us.* And these books of the Old and New Testaments are to be received as sacred and canonical in their integrity, with all their parts, as they are enumerated in the decree of the said Council, and are contained in the ancient Latin edition of the Vulgate. These the Church holds to be sacred and canonical; not because, having been carefully composed by mere human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; not because they contain revelation, with no admixture of error; but because, having been written by the inspiration of the HOLY GHOST, they have GOD for their author, and have been delivered as such to the Church itself.
And as the things which, in order to curb rebellious spirits, the holy Synod of Trent decreed for the good of souls concerning the interpretation of divine Scripture have been wrongly explained by some, We, renewing the said decree, declare this to be its meaning: that, in matters of faith and morals, appertaining to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the true sense of Holy Scripture which our holy Mother Church hath held and holds, to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures; and, therefore, that it is permitted to no one to interpret the Sacred Scripture contrary to this sense or likewise contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.

McNabb, V. 1907. The Decrees of the Vatican Council (20–21). Benziger Brothers: New York

And also some snippets from VII:

[The Church] holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him2 they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.4
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.

Catholic Church. 2011. Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Dei Verbum. In Vatican II Documents. Libreria Editrice Vaticana: Vatican City

So I am having trouble understanding that if God is the Author, then the bible should be free from all factual error? And so is it proper to understand that only the original copies of the sacred writings can be considered inerrant and that later copies are prone to errors as copyists are not inspired writers, so we have to do the best we can now to find the inspired parts of the text?

 

[John_Hiner]

I am afraid your priest is wrong. I suspect he is mistakenly condensing some relatively subtle points into a blunt one and comming up with an error. Your logic is sound. God is the Author, therefore Scripture is inerramt in each and every part. All more subtle reading must begin from there.
JRH

 

[jonathan_hili]

I agree, the Bible is certainly inerrant in matters concerning faith and morals, but this statement has been understood in its context. This statement is derived from what was taught in Dei Verbum during Vatican II, namely:

…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 (5) for the sake of salvation.

(DV, 11)

Now, some people take this and interpret it to mean “faith and morals” because these are the truths we need “for the sake of salvation”; after all, we don’t need to know whether King Herod really killed the innocents for the sake of our salvation, do we?

However, this view misinterprets what the Church Fathers were teaching. If you look at the entire document, you will notice that they reference previous papal teachings (such as the encyclicals Providentissimus Deus by Leo XIII and Divino Afflante Spiritu by Pius XII) and the First Vatican Council (Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith). If you go back to these documents, you can see for yourself that they teach that all of Scripture is inerrant, not just passages dealing with faith and morals. Thus it would seem strange and contradictory if the Fathers of Vatican II were teaching the opposite of the very documents they cite!

For instance - and I quote this passage at length because it is very direct and makes good points about proper interpretation -:

It is true, no doubt, that copyists have made mistakes in the text of the Bible; this question, when it arises, should be carefully considered on its merits, and the fact not too easily admitted, but only in those passages where the proof is clear. It may also happen that the sense of a passage remains ambiguous, and in this case good hermeneutical methods will greatly assist in clearing up the obscurity. 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. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it-this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and 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.

(PD, 20)

Therefore, with proper biblical exegesis and an understanding of the literary and historical context, we can be assured that all of Scripture is not only true but God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16).

 

[RPRPsych]

I agree, the Bible is certainly inerrant in matters concerning faith and morals, but this statement has been understood in its context. This statement is derived from what was taught in Dei Verbum during Vatican II, namely:

(DV, 11)

Now, some people take this and interpret it to mean “faith and morals” because these are the truths we need “for the sake of salvation”; after all, we don’t need to know whether King Herod really killed the innocents for the sake of our salvation, do we?

However, this view misinterprets what the Church Fathers were teaching. If you look at the entire document, you will notice that they reference previous papal teachings (such as the encyclicals Providentissimus Deus by Leo XIII and Divino Afflante Spiritu by Pius XII) and the First Vatican Council (Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith). If you go back to these documents, you can see for yourself that they teach that all of Scripture is inerrant, not just passages dealing with faith and morals. Thus it would seem strange and contradictory if the Fathers of Vatican II were teaching the opposite of the very documents they cite!

For instance - and I quote this passage at length because it is very direct and makes good points about proper interpretation -:

(PD, 20)

Therefore, with proper biblical exegesis and an understanding of the literary and historical context, we can be assured that all of Scripture is not only true but God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16).

Excellent post, I couldn’t have said it better!

While some Catholic scholars in recent years have been rather “speculative” in their interpretations (particularly of the Old Testament and its relation to secular history), the Church’s stance is exactly what is mentioned above. A good place to study this further would be a good Catholic Bible commentary, such as the Catholic Scripture Study Bible or the Ignatius Study Bible. Works like these distinguish carefully between scholarly theory and Church tradition, and help the confused reader to make sense of the Catholic concept of infallibility.

 

[murraymuzz]

So to try and summarize the thought, the bible is inerrant also in matters not pertaining to faith and morals? However we always need to be careful of copyist mistakes when studying the Bible?

An example that I was given to show that the bible can only be inerrant in faith and morals was Mark 7:31 which claims Jesus went from Tyre through Sidon to get to the Decapolis, and it was pointed out that this route is silly, and is an obvious mistake. However after a quick google search it seems that other variants of Greek manuscripts do not contain this apparent error.

So can we say that the original manuscripts of the new testament were perfect in their historical accounts and even perfect in the least relevant details such as the one above which really has no relevance to anything important? Or is that not what is meant by inerrancy?

And finally if the above statement is true and the original manuscripts are totally free from any error whatsoever, and we know that our copies of the bible today contain errors, then if someone points out an error that we cant explain using the regular means (e.g. such as looking at context) is the most honest answer to give, it must be a copy error?

 

[jonathan_hili]

Yes, but we have to be cautious. The Church rarely pronounces on specific interpretations of scriptural passages and leaves much freedom with regards to exegesis.

Lower textual criticism has practically resolved the problem of the original text so that we can say with more or less confidence that the text of the New Testament we have today is as close to the original text as we will get. However, we don’t have the autographs, and we also need to bear in mind how, for instance, the Gospels were written: by the hand of the evangelist, or by a scribe, or by several scribes, etc.? These could explain some of the errors too.

Also, I’d caution against being too sure about how to interpret geographical, historical or cultural aspects of Scripture. Often the sacred author is deliberately doing something that seems odd or mistaken to make a point. For instance, in John 3, the evangelist writes that Jesus was going down to Galilee from Jerusalem and so had to go through Samaria. This is technically (geographically) incorrect. But John is not making a point about geography here: Jesus had to go through Samaria for a different reason, a theological one.

 

[QNDNNDQDCE]

I agree, the Bible is certainly inerrant in matters concerning faith and morals, but this statement has been understood in its context. This statement is derived from what was taught in Dei Verbum during Vatican II, namely:

“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.”
(DV, 11)

Now, some people take this and interpret it to mean “faith and morals” because these are the truths we need “for the sake of salvation”; after all, we don’t need to know whether King Herod really killed the innocents for the sake of our salvation, do we?

In addition to the timeless teaching of the Church on the inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures, I think Dei Verbum should be by itself clear enough on this point. Part of the confusion perhaps stems from the English translation. The sentence in Latin is

Cum ergo omne id, quod auctores inspirati seu hagiographi asserunt, retineri debeat assertum a Spiritu Sancto, inde Scripturae libri veritatem, quam Deus nostrae salutis causa Litteris Sacris consignari voluit, firmiter, fideliter et sine errore docere profitendi sunt.

The problem is that the English translation can be interpreted as saying that the books of Scripture teach only that truth which “pertains to faith and morals” without error. There are three choices made by the translators which are misleading and unnecessary.

(1) The Latin is speaking of “Scripturae libri vertitatem,” the truth of the books of Scripture. Now veritatem (truth) is the subject of the verb docere (to teach). On the other hand, the English grammar has been restructured so the “the books of Scripture” are the subject of “teaching” and truth is the object of the verb. In this way, the two noun phrases have been both grammatically separated and also physically separated by an intervening eleven words. However, it is clear in the Latin that DV is saying not just that Scripture teaches truth (in addition to lies and falsehoods), but that Scripture is true in its entirety. Teaching without error is a property of Scripture in its entirety and not only of “that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation” as if this is a subset of Scripture and there is another subset of Scripture to which the declaration does not apply.

(2) What the English renders “that truth which” is in Latin, “vertitatem, quam.” The English introduces an adjective, “that,” which is nowhere present in the original text, as if it is to distinguish “that truth” from this truth or some other truth. Latin has no articles either so noun phrase is just “truth” by itself. Nevertheless, it is clear from the context that the intention is “the truth.”

(3) There is a comma in the Latin text that has been removed from the English translation. It appears to me that this comma was inserted to indicate that the relative clause is expounding on the truth of the books of Scripture (i.e. that it is from God for our salvation). The removal of the comma in the English lends the appearance of support to the false interpretation that the phrase is distinguishing “that truth,” the truth pertaining to faith and morals, from the historical truth or whatever other kinds of truth reside in Scripture.

In light of these objections, a more accurate translation might read

“Thus, since everything which the inspired authors or holy writers have asserted must be held as asserted by the Holy Spirit, we therefore declare that the truth of the books of Scripture, which for the cause of our salvation God willed to be committed to the Sacred Letters, teaches firmly, faithfully and without error.”