What is the dogma/doctrine/teaching of the Church on the inspiration of Scripture?

[japhy]

The statements also ignore the very real ability of authors to teach error free truth using total fiction and that God certainly has the right to inspire such writing. Are fictional stories which never happened free from all error? One can assume that they can be. The birth stories of Jesus are mostly fiction and yet they teach a great deal of truth about who the author thought Jesus was.

In 1964, a document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission said the Gospels are historically reliable. They are not fictional accounts, nor are they written as such. Whence comes the opinion that “the birth stories of Jesus are mostly fiction”? Does this mean that Mary wasn’t a virgin, that Joseph was actually the father, that they never fled from Herod, were never visited by shepherds or astrologers, etc. Was the Baptism account fiction too? How about the miracles? Maybe the Passion and crucifixion? How about the “resurrection” (as if such a thing were actually possible)?

What is the “truth” taught beneath all the fiction? How do we determine just what of the fictional account is meant for embellishment and what is meant to “teach … truth about who the author thought Jesus was”? And just that phrase, “who the author thought Jesus was”, not “truth about who Jesus was”. If I believe Thomas Jefferson was a great painter, and I write a fictional account of him in which his great skills at painting are clearly evident, that doesn’t change the fact that what I believe about Jefferson isn’t worth bunk if it isn’t actually true. It matters for nothing if Luke thought he knew the truth about Jesus if what he thought wasn’t actually the truth.

Does this mean that who we think Jesus is, is actually just the product of four (and that’s a conservative estimate!) men from the first century? We have no divinely assured identity for Jesus?

 

[patg]

In 1964, a document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission said the Gospels are historically reliable.

Actually it says they have a historical core BUT that the words and deeds of Jesus are not first, second, or third hand accounts. It states that the authors quite freely reworded the sayings and rearranged the stories to meet the needs of their audiences and the themes of their stories.

They are not fictional accounts, nor are they written as such.

They are clearly not historicall either.

Whence comes the opinion that “the birth stories of Jesus are mostly fiction”?

The literary form of the birth stories is commonly known among ancient literary scholars as a “Birth Narrative”, which was known to be mostly fiction. Almost exactly the same stories were written about Alexander the Great and many other such figures.

Does this mean that Mary wasn’t a virgin,

It only means that such a statement is a matter of faith. Do you believe that Alexander’s mother was a virgin?

that Joseph was actually the father, that they never fled from Herod, were never visited by shepherds or astrologers, etc.

All matters of faith…and the church does not require any specific belief about almost all the parts of these stories. There is no dogma of bright star over Bethlehem,

Was the Baptism account fiction too? How about the miracles? Maybe the Passion and crucifixion? How about the “resurrection” (as if such a thing were actually possible)?

Again it all comes down to faith.

What is the “truth” taught beneath all the fiction? How do we determine just what of the fictional account is meant for embellishment and what is meant to “teach … truth about who the author thought Jesus was”? And just that phrase, “who the author thought Jesus was”, not “truth about who Jesus was”. If I believe Thomas Jefferson was a great painter, and I write a fictional account of him in which his great skills at painting are clearly evident, that doesn’t change the fact that what I believe about Jefferson isn’t worth bunk if it isn’t actually true. It matters for nothing if Luke thought he knew the truth about Jesus if what he thought wasn’t **actually the truth. **Does this mean that who we think Jesus is, is actually just the product of four (and that’s a conservative estimate!) men from the first century? We have no divinely assured identity for Jesus?

That’s why we have bible scholars (and faith).

 

[Pug]

Right. And, because inspired, ergo inerrant. But the “working document” says that the inerrancy is limited: “inerrancy applies only to ‘that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation’”. In other words, the authors of Scripture could have erred in things not “relevant” to salvation. That is not what the Church has taught.

If one allows “inerrancy” to be special term, reserved only to some things, then this does not mean that other things are asserting or could assert error. It only means that they do not get the fancy term applied to them. Maybe they get a term like “does not assert error” or something. I don’t know. I sure hope the things that the sacred writers affirm in the bible get at least that term. Otherwise it seems at first glance to make nonesense of the idea that “everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit…”

I do not know what to make of that working document quote.

I wonder if that clause “for the sake of salvation” was a diplomatic phrase that is deliberately hanging there, ambiguously modifying an unspecified part of the original sentence in DV. It seems like the working document is trying to use a quote from DV, and that phrase comes with the quote. Maybe in DV the “for the sake of salvation” says why God put anything at all into scripture. But that does not seem to be how it is understood by the working document. There it has the flavor of marking out a smaller subset of a larger set. I would not say that, though, if they omitted the introductory remark, “with regards to what might be inspired in … Sacred Scripture”.

Just a personal remark, I think that a bunch of hooey in the bible on random topics would be relevant to salvation. It could lead many to reject whatever God does have to say on the topic of salvation.

 

[japhy]

I wonder if that clause “for the sake of salvation” was a diplomatic phrase that is deliberately hanging there, ambiguously modifying an unspecified part of the original sentence in DV. It seems like the working document is trying to use a quote from DV, and that phrase comes with the quote. Maybe in DV the “for the sake of salvation” says why God put anything at all into scripture.

That’s how I’ve understood it.

 

[Pug]

That’s how I’ve understood it.

I’ve always wanted to understand it that way, but it seems to me that the clause is deliberately placed to allow one to interpret it two ways. I used to figure I was alone in finding it ambiguous, but I just read a blog entry by Jimmy Akin (though the blog entry is about two years old) that seems to support that I am right that there is a story behind the phrase. I assume Akin could support what he says about that if it were a formal paper, and not a blog.

I will give an excerpt here but he says more at the link. It is buried in his response to a concern about something from the CCCC.

Basically, there was a huge, behind-the-scenes fight at Vatican II about inerrancy. The traditional Catholic teaching–which prior popes had said was infallible–is that Scripture has unrestricted inerrancy. That is to say, any time Scripture makes a factual assertion then, properly understood, it’s guaranteed to be true.

But after the rise of biblical criticism in the last couple of hundred years, and the increased skepticism that accompanied it, there were some at the council that disputed the unrestricted inerrancy of Scripture, and they were able to get a formulation into a draft of Dei Verbum that seemed to restrict the scope of biblical inerrancy.

Link to Akin’s Blog