This is Part 4 of an ongoing series. Please see the first three installments here (1: Teaching), here (2: Raising Questions), and here (3: Raising Questions Dei Verbum Did Not).
The questions raised by the text of
Dei Verbum itself ought to be the simplest to answer, since the questions
arise from data in the document, but this does not mean the answers will be
simple.
1)
Apostolic
Origin of The Gospels: With respect to DV
18 (“The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that
the four Gospels are of apostolic origin”) and DV 19 (“Holy Mother
Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that
the four Gospels just named” have a “historical character {which} the Church
unhesitatingly asserts” ) one must be careful not to interpret these claims to
the maximal level: the Gospels as we have them were written directly by Apostles; and
the Gospels give us straightforward historical accounts without development in understanding,
through reflection, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, liturgy, or literary tropes. We should not,
however, make the more grievous mistake of rejecting these statements out of hand. What biblical scholars do not know about the actual authorship of the Gospels amounts
to a lot.
Since Vatican II the understanding of the
role of oral tradition by biblical scholars in guiding communities’ written
tradition and a more amorphous sense of authorship than we would claim in modernity (and
post-modernity) allow us to posit the nascent role of the apostles in shaping
and forming the tradition without actually being authors in the final sense. The
bottom line is that we do not know the sources of all of the oral tradition, or
the layers of the oral and written tradition, but it does not beggar the
imagination to think that the Twelve whom Jesus chose, and other close
disciples, had a hand in shaping the tradition at various stages of its
promulgation. Someone had to make the initial translation from Aramaic into
Greek – a fact often forgotten when discussing the Gospels – and some bilingual
disciple (or disciples) must have taken on this role. Recall, even the tradition
itself attributes authorship to two men who were not amongst the Twelve, Mark
and Luke, and so it is reasonable to suggest that the tradition went through a
number of stages before being written and that the final shape of any one
Gospel is not attributable only to one person. Determining how many stages the
Gospels went through, oral and written, to reach the final written document
might be an impossible task, but it is a task that bears repeated attempts.
In any case, the claim of “historical
character” must be treated with the same caution. Careful readers will see variations, some
small, and some great, amongst the Four Gospels. Philosophical foundations will
cause some biblical scholars to reject parts of the Gospels, such as miracle
accounts and Jesus’ resurrection, as a
priori ahistorical events, but this is not done on the basis of history but
a particular notion of reality in which God may not intrude or does not exist.
Christians are not bound by this kind of pseudo-history. This does not mean,
however, that we can render a verdict that the Gospels are, therefore,
straightforward historical documents; what it does do is allow into the court of
history as evidence all of the Gospel material. Cross-examination takes place
in careful study of the Gospels, first century Judaism, the Greco-Roman world,
and all of the cultural and religious data we can muster. In addition,
philological and other literary data must be taken in as evidence where
warranted. And such examination could find some of the Gospel material
developed after the Easter event or in light of the Church’s tradition and the
experience of the early Christians, or even perhaps by the hand of the
redactor(s). This does not mean the Gospels are ahistorical, only that they are
more complex than straightforward historical documents – because they are
ancient; because they consider a unique man; because they make strange claims
about this unique man; and because there are four accounts which must be
reconciled. The Gospels do have a “historical character,” but this is a nuanced
statement.
2)
Development in Understanding: One of the most dissected statements is DV 8:“This tradition which comes from
the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there
is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been
handed down. This happens through the contemplation
and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see
Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities
which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received
through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries
succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of
divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.”
There are two aspects in formulating a
response to DV 8: the notions of
“development” and “growth in the understanding" must be defined;” and the roles
played by “believers” who contemplate and study these things and the Episcopate
in determining what counts as genuine development and growth in understanding
must be defined. DV foresees a role
for the laity, I would argue both ordinary believers and experts, through “a
penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience.” At this point, however, many laity see their
role as superfluous to the task of the Church and how it reads Scripture, both
for ordinary believers, including students, and experts in their given fields.
The relationship is seen as a one way street in which the Church authoritatively
pronounces on Scripture and the laity receives it. The manner in which the
Church listens to the laity is currently seen most profoundly, and
unfortunately, in its condemnations of theologians. The Church has authority
and theologians must listen, but the relationship must be brought to balance.When does the Church publicly praise theologians for their penetrating insights, advances in understanding, and expert guidance? The laity must listen, but a laity which is not heard is a laity that cannot aid in development and growth of understanding.
The model given for the laity is Mary, which DV references twice (Luke 2:19, 51), who
heard the voice of God and listened to something new in her midst. If the laity
are given this same task, as DV 8 states then the means by which something new could develop, such
as growth in understanding, could take place through a genuine hearing of the laity.
For many students whom I have taught what they hear through their study takes us back to the New
Testament: a focus on the simplicity of the early Church and its teachings
which they do not find in the Church today. That is, development partly
consists of going back to the sources to hear the words of God anew. Beyond
that there is a constant and ongoing process, too fast for some and too slow
for others, of hearing God’s voice saying something new in our midst.
3)
“Inerrancy”: The dispute regarding the interpretation
of DV 11 (“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”) is
longstanding. Does it mean that the Bible contains spiritual truths which are
“without error” or does it mean that the Bible is in all respects,
scientifically, historically, theologically, "without error"? The claim that the
Bible contains “no errors” is simply not able to be maintained and students and
other readers of the Scripture simply will not accept this, if it means that
all things stated in the Bible must be accepted as true, because they know it is
not true. What is essential is an ability to interpret the Bible carefully in
its own historical, cultural, and literary context and this is where DV in speaking about literary genre
opened the door for unraveling this statement.
Biblical interpretation must focus on the
context for individual books, historically, culturally, and literarily, and
individual passages within these books; one must also know the ancient
languages and carefully study the individual words for meaning. One must also,
at the higher levels of study, pay attention to the texts themselves, the
textual variants in the original languages and the other ancient versions and
the use of the Scripture by the Church fathers. The human dimension, that is,
the human authorship of which DV speaks,
must be accorded the same attention as the claim of divine authorship in assessing DV 8.
At that point, one may ask, as Alexander
Pruss does, what is being asserted by the divine author in this sentence (or
passage) because
“not
everything in a sentence is asserted.” Biblical interpretation strives for
the literal meaning of a text, but not literalism; by literalism I mean the
position that everything asserted in the biblical text is true or everything in
a biblical passage is equally significant. What is needed today is a focus on
“Antioch” (the primacy of the literal sense) combined with a focus on
“Alexandria” (the affirmation of the full scope and unity of divine
revelation). While the ancient Alexandrians, and the ancient Church as a whole, needed the allegorical sense as a
means to maintain the unity of Scripture due to a lack of a sense of history,
of change and development as necessary aspects of human life and of the
diversity of human life and experience, we do not have the same need. We are
able, since the rise of historical consciousness, to understand change and
development, diversity and unity, and to maintain the unity of Scripture as God
operating amongst people at different points in human history.
The focus since the rise of the
historical consciousness has been on the literal sense. But in turning away
from the allegorical and the spiritual senses more generally, we have turned
away from transcendence in biblical studies. This is the barrenness which
people find in much biblical studies, even though it is technically excellent
and essential and sometimes unfairly maligned. “The most pressing exigence in
biblical hermeneutics today is for a critical synthesis of Antioch and
Alexandria, i.e., for the projecting of horizons at once fully differentiated
by a historical consciousness and fully open to the transcendent mystery of
salvation” (Ben F. Meyer,
CRINTS, 33).
The lack of
this synthesis is the reason people are turning to a sort of undifferentiated
Alexandrian interpretation today, or to fundamentalist readings of the Bible:
strictly Antiochean readings do not meet spiritual needs for most. But they
will find Alexandrian readings alone a difficult place to sojourn as the reality of the Bible cannot be
fulfilled in simplistic readings. We cannot just turn to the past, we need to
turn to new spiritual readings of the Bible today and discern how it is speaking authentically to
those in need throughout the world. In this sense, we have to take Pope
Benedict XVI’s words, noted earlier in
Part 2, from
Verbum Domini 19 where he writes,
4) Historicity: DV 12 acknowledges that the biblical writings are not simply
historical documents (“For truth is set forth and expressed differently in
texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of
discourse”), but the practical implication of this assertion is not explored. In
fact, 1) above is a subset in many ways of this claim. First, students must be introduced
to the literary genres in the Bible and to understand the historical contexts
in which they were first written. Second, and concurrently, students need to be
presented with the incarnational nature of Scripture, that it was written by
human beings who were bound by their own time and place, just as we are. These
might be considered “limitations” in a negative sense, bound by history and the
limited capacities and resources of the human writers, but also as a “limitation”
by and through which God takes account of human beings in their concrete
reality, which also places a burden on us to make sense of these texts
concretely for our own time and place. Third, students must be introduced to
the fact that not everything from the past was intended as historical, at least
not as we understand that meaning today, and we need in light of literary genre
to determine which texts ought to be read symbolically or figuratively.
This is also a difficult process,
precisely because Christianity is incarnational. Since Christianity rests on
the reality of Jesus’ birth, death and
resurrection, it is essential that these events be historical, though the
manner in which they are described may not fully be historical (e.g., I am thinking
particularly of the Infancy Narratives. Yet,
this process must be engaged in consistently at the concrete level of
particular passages, people, events and determining what such study implies for certain doctrines
and we must not shy away from the hard questions.
5)
Wide
Readership: The Catholic Liturgy is peppered with Scripture, but DV 22 (“Easy access to Sacred Scripture
should be provided for all the Christian faithful”) will not be realized until
the faithful realize it and meditate on it. This ought to be done in various
ways, such as through lectio divina and other
sorts of prayerful reading, but also in critical Bible study which is not a “walk
through the Bible” type approach in which all the events are made to fit
together like pieces in a divine puzzle or in which someone holds the key that
unlocks all of the doors previously closed to you. Bible study, at the
university level naturally, but also at a parish level, needs to account for
the serious questions that the faithful have and not suppose that the issues
discussed in critical academic study are beyond understanding. This will only
take place through intentional practice so that the truth of DV 21 can be realized: the only way the
Scriptures will be venerated just as the Church “venerates the body of the
Lord” will be to make available to the faithful serious study of the Bible even
beyond the liturgy.
6)
The Soul
of Sacred Theology: In Catholic
theological circles, there must be a consistent effort to see that
DV 24
(“For the Sacred Scriptures contain the word
of God and since they are inspired really are the word of God; and so the study
of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred theology”) is realized in
every theological sub-discipline. Biblical scholars must make new findings and
research available to all theologians, but theologians in other disciplines
must constantly keep the word of God at the forefront of their own research.
The reality is that most theologians have more than a cursory acquaintance with
Scripture, and many have been trained extremely well in it, but it is easy in
any sub-discipline to be drowned in the minutiae of one’s own field and lose
touch with the Bible. Biblical theologians, by consistently maintaining contact
with theologians in other sub-disciplines, will not only introduce moral and
systematic theologians, for instance, to new study in the biblical fields, but
will keep themselves apprised of how research
in other theological fields – or in psychology, physics, history or sociology -
might impinge on their own research,
i.e., how research into mass conversion in the 20
th century might
aid us in understanding the growth of the early Church.
Next entry will deal with tentative answers to issues raised by reading
Dei Verbum, but not raised in
Dei Verbum itself.
John W. Martens
Follow me on Twitter
@Biblejunkies
