…the Evangelists, in passing on the words and deeds of our Saviour, explained these now in one context, now in another, depending on (their) usefulness to the readers. Consequently, let the exegete seek out the meaning intended by the Evangelist in narrating a saying or a deed in a certain way or in placing it in a certain context. For the truth of the story is not at all affected by the fact that the Evangelists relate the words and deeds of the Lord in a different order, and express his sayings not literally but differently, while preserving (their) sense.
Here the PBC is discussing the “Order of Treatment”, and they have cited Augustine who says that “we are not at liberty either to suppose or to say that any one of the evangelists has stated what is false” and “we should also understand that it is not so much in mere words,
as rather truth in the facts themselves, that is to be sought and embraced; for as to writers who do not employ precisely the same modes of statement, if they only do not present discrepancies with respect to the facts and the sentiments themselves, we accept them as holding the same position in veracity” (Harm. Gosp. Bk 2, Ch. 12, 28). The PBC had just stated that the Gospel authors had not always reported the words of Jesus, “literally, but in a variety of ways, while retaining the same meaning.” From this we understand that as we come upon sayings of Jesus, such as “Blessed are the poor” in Luke, and “Blessed are the poor in spirit” in Matthew, there can be discussion concerning whether Jesus precisely said either the one or the other – in the case where we take these words as relating the same historical saying – or whether He said both on separate occasions. But what cannot be denied is that Jesus actually spoke words that carry the same meaning as what was written by both authors. This is what the PBC means by “preserving (their) sense” or “retaining the same meaning”. If these two statements, the one by Luke and the other by Matthew, are meant to convey the meaning of a single saying of our Lord, one can see that the richness of Jesus’ words was better preserved and more fully captured in two complimentary ways: Matthew emphasizing a particular depth of meaning with explicitness, Luke emphasizing the breadth with implicitness.
I don’t think that it is an exercise faithful to what the Church teaches to extrapolate from the assertion of a nonliteral recording of Jesus’ words to the assertion that an entire segment of Jesus’ life is therefore reducible to teaching a general transcendental, historical truth, while including elements both factual and imaginative. The PBC seems to have weighed against this when condemning a book wherein the author tries to introduce “a type of literature consisting of popular traditions mingling falsehood with truth” and thereby, “at least implicitly, denies the dogma of biblical inspiration and inerrancy” (1934). Dei Verbum proclaims that “Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1)” (19). With the historical character, or better, historicity, of the Gospels being asserted, it does not seem that exegetes are at liberty to pick and choose which events being narrated are factually true and which are not.
I am sorry for those for whom the following quote is a repeat from me, but “To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you” (Phil 3:1). For “The Christian faith has its specificity, primarily in that it refers to historical events, or better to a coherent history, which actually took place as history. In this sense, the question about the fact, the reality of the event, is essential to it, and must make room for the historical method. But these historical events have meaning for the faith only because it is certain that in them God Himself acted in a specific way and the events contain something which surpasses simple historical facticity, something which comes from elsewhere and gives them meaning for all times and for all people.
This surpassing element must not be separated from the facts, it is not a meaning which is subsequently added to them from without, but rather it is present in the event itself, and yet it transcends the purely factual aspect” (
Current Doctrinal Relevance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2002).
The LORD bless you and keep you!
