Of special concern was the fact that Vatican II's Dei Verbum has a passage on the subject that is ambiguous at best. As Akin points out:
... the bottom line is that it is not as clear as it should be and is basically a compromise text worked out at the council between parties on different sides of the debate. (The behind-the-scenes history of it is quite interesting; it’s recorded in then Father Joseph Ratzinger’s contribution to the Vorgrimler commentaries on Vatican II, but these are very hard to come by).A reader comments in an email: "I have that commentary. Ratzinger's comments are interesting and hopeful. Vorgrimler seems hopelessly ... liberal. In fact, I think Ratzinger only has two commentaries in the five volume set, and they are by far and away the best stuff in it. Everything else makes you realize again why academic or overly critical modern theology is routinely banal if not toxic."
Related articles by Fr. Brian W. Harrison, O.S., S.T.D.
- "Letter on Dei Verbum, Biblical Inerrancy, and the Synod of Bishops" (St. Louis Catholic, before the fact in 2008)
- "Synod Omits Heterodox Statement on Inerrancy: CDF to Decide" (Catholicism.org, October 28, 2008)
- "Synod Working Document Revives Biblical Inerrancy Controversy" (for The Wanderer, April 22, 2010).
- "The Truth and Salvific Purpose of Sacred Scripture According to Dei Verbum, Article 11" (Living Tradition, July 1995)
- "On Rewriting the Bible: Catholic Biblical Studies in the '60s" (Christian Order, March 2002).
- "Does Vatican Council II Allow for Errors in Sacred Scripture?" (Living Tradition, Marcy-May 2010).
- "The Morning of Jesus' Resurrection in the Light of Biblical Inerrancy" (Living Tradition, September 2003)
- "Pope Paul VI and the Truth of Sacred Scripture" (Living Tradition, January 1997)
- "Contradictions in Scripture?" (Living Tradition, May 1996)
18 comments:
Great link: "On Rewriting the Bible..." Thank you.
The most modern of Catholic Commentary on Scripture that I dare read is Dom Orchard's, 1953, "A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture."
But when it comes to Our Holy Father, I think we have cause for concern. I bought his first volume of " Jesus of Nazareth," and I ain't too bright but what I read in it made me uneasy. It seems so disconnected from the content of the Commentaries of Haydock and Cornelius a Lapide and Catena Aurea.
I haven't read his latest offering and I won't; not after reading this review
At least what he has to say in his books are not part of The Magisterium
http://www.culturewars.com/2011/JON2.html
Why all the links to Fr. Harrison's writings?
Of course the Pope's Jesus books are calculated to drive inerrantists crazy.
I am not etc.
You are correct that Benedict is off base scripturally to a strange degree. Read section 42 of his Verbum Domini where he brushes aside the massacres of the OT as wrong and as explainable from historical context. He's dead wrong. The main ones were ordered by God... or the Church should remove the entire 12th chapter of Wisdom from the canon because that chapter explains why God ordered the dooms or bans of certain tribes in Canaan.
Then in section 42 of Verbum Domini, Benedict also states that the prophets "vigourously challenged....every
kind of...violence....whether collective or individual."
He doesn't know his Old Testament. Elijah slit the throats
of 450 false prophets at Kishon; Samuel "hewed Agag in
pieces before the Lord in Gilgal"; and Elisha cursed boys for dissing his role as prophet (not dissing him personally as Aquinas explained) and bears killed 42 of them.
John Paul and Benedict have both used the word "cruel" of the death penalty which God gave over 30 times in the Bible....did God give something "cruel"? And no Catholic paid writer will say boo about that gaff by both men because jobs are hard to find. Neither John Paul nor Benedict had/have an healthy sense of what inspiration means. Wifely obedience is in the NT 6 times and it is absent in the catechism and in Vat. II. Our leadership is more of the world and of Europe than of the Bible in these two areas of violence and wifely obedience. But no one will say boo. That's why your post surprised me in its honesty on Benedict. Honesty is not allowed.
Why all the links to Fr. Harrison's writings?
So you can conveniently hop over to his writings and read what he wrote.
"... the Pope's Jesus books are calculated to drive inerrantists crazy."
Nonsense. I doubt that anything like that thought crossed the Holy Father's mind.
The Sungenis critique of the Pope's Jesus book, was an eye-opener, though. Thanks to "Not Spartacus" and his great photo of himself for that!
I think Sungenis is missing a piece of the puzzle which is dealt with in the story of Joseph in Genesis.....who is a prophecy of Christ. Like Christ, Joseph is mugged by his brothers and handed over to the gentiles who put him in jail after false accusation from which jail he then leaves and ascends to the right hand of pharoah and is put in charge of all the granaries and he thus feeds a starving world with grain. Christ is mugged by his brothers the Jews, handed over to the gentiles, falsely accused...but killed....descends into the prison of hell from which He rises to the right hand of the Father and also feeds the starving with grain....Himself in the Eucharist. The parishes are the grainaries. Sungenis must look at that prophecy...and what comes next: Joseph's brothers go to Egypt and meet with this brother they have wronged but he disguises himself so that they do not know it is him they are negotiating with.
Likewise the Jews right now talk with Christ implicitly when they talk to God but Christ is disguised to them....hence Romans and it's point that the fullness of the gentiles must enter first ( and during that time, Christ will remain disguised to the Jews). Benedict may be closer to the prophecy than Sungenis.
Is the legitimate use of the death penalty a form of "violence"? Is God's exercising of His right to punish sinners through His prophets a form of "violence"? I'm not sure that it is, nor that Pope Benedict thinks so. Could it be that Pope Benedict, of all people, is really as abysmally ignorant of the Old Testament as Bill Bannon claims he is? Also important to remember that Verbum Domini 42 gives general principles, but never cites any specific examples of immoral massacres in the Old Testament. Not every slaughter in the Old Testament was directly ordered by God, and anyway under the Gospel the ministration of death is abolished. The letter kills, the spirit gives life.
Bill Bannon also has misleadingly misquoted Verbum Domini 42. It does not say the prophets "vigourously challenged....every
kind of...violence....whether collective or individual." It says, "In the Old Testament, the preaching of the prophets vigorously challenged every kind of injustice and violence, whether collective or individual, and thus became God’s way of training his people in preparation for the Gospel." If one looks at the overall preaching of the prophets, one can see that statement is true.
Jordanes551
You write:
"Not every slaughter in the Old Testament was directly ordered by God, and anyway under the Gospel the ministration of death is abolished. The letter kills, the spirit gives life."
Hmmm. That last sentence of yours has zero to do with violence...good or bad....look up its context in the epistles. You used a Pauline quote on the two covenants' interior effect to comment on exterior violence. It's about the spiritual interior only.
Your first sentence's ending is absurd: " under the Gospel
the ministration of death is abolished.". Under the gospel,
God kills Herod through an angel in Acts 12 and kills Ananias and Sapphira through Peter's verbal participation in Acts 5. Then God reaffirms the death penalty He gave the Gentiles and Jews for murder in Genesis 9:5-6 by inspiring Paul to write Romans 13:3-4 which remains severe even in the NAB with it's synecdoche of the word "sword" which is there to minister to God's wrath.
Your giving the long version of Benedict's prophets quote did nothing subtractive to my shortened version with elipses.....Benedict was thinking of the prophets of the exile period who were in no position to extol violence and he was oblivious to the violent actions of the early prophets.
Benedict has twice let his office send letters calling the death penalty "cruel" (Christmas 2009 and a Tennessee intervention) and God repeatedly gave the death penalty in scripture in the first Person imperative. That my friend is cafeteria Biblicalism.....scriptural relativism from a man who constantly berates the world for moral relativism. He's a sinner like us and he is infallible only when he uses that charism of infallibility and most Popes don't ever use it.
That last sentence of yours has zero to do with violence...good or bad....look up its context in the epistles.
I'm well aware of its context, and I did not say it had anything to do with "violence." It does, however, have to do with death and killing. You might possibly be aware of the fact that God does a LOT of direct and indirect killing of sinners in the Old Testament, but not that much in the New Testament.
You used a Pauline quote on the two covenants' interior effect to comment on exterior violence. It's about the spiritual interior only.
Wrong again. It's about both the exterior AND interior effects. It's about the spiritual, interior effect in light of typological meaning of the exterior effect of the old covenant. In addition, St. Paul's words are in reference to the letter of the Old Covenant, the Law of Moses. The letter he is talking about is the letter of the Torah, not the letter of the Gospel. So your words about "a Pauline quote on the TWO covenants' interior effect" are especially inapt.
Your first sentence's ending is absurd: " under the Gospel the ministration of death is abolished.". Under the gospel, God kills Herod through an angel in Acts 12 and kills Ananias and Sapphira through Peter's verbal participation in Acts 5.
So you call an inspired, infallible statement of St. Paul "absurd"? You are saying that Herod, Ananias, and Sapphira were killed by God for repenting and believing in the Gospel? And it's your contention that their deaths were expressly and specifically called for by a New Covenant civil ordinance or judgment issued by Jesus or the Apostles in the same manner that Moses issued such ordinances and judgments? That's an . . . interesting interpretation of holy writ. No, those killings were not "under the Gospel," nor do they prove that St. Paul was wrong to say that the administration of death has been abolished.
Then God reaffirms the death penalty He gave the Gentiles and Jews for murder in Genesis 9:5-6 by inspiring Paul to write Romans 13:3-4 which remains severe even in the NAB with it's synecdoche of the word "sword" which is there to minister to God's wrath.
That's all well and good -- and yet the fact remains that the Holy Spirit spoke through St. Paul to the Corinthians that Moses' administration of death has been abolished. This is, for example, why the Church sends missionaries to convert pagans, rather than armies to slaughter them as God commanded Joshua to do. It's also why the Church excommunicates the incorrigible rather than pronouncing a sentence of death against them and having them stoned to death. (This is distinct from the question of the moral use of the death penalty by civil authorities, which the Church has always affirmed is licit and proper, regardless of the current opinions favoring its abolition.)
Your giving the long version of Benedict's prophets quote did nothing subtractive to my shortened version with elipses.
For one thing, you added elipses where there were none. You also left out the very important words "In the Old Testament, the preaching of," and omitted the remainder of the sentence, thus presenting an incomplete and misleading account of what the Pope said.
Benedict was thinking of the prophets of the exile period who were in no position to extol violence and he was oblivious to the violent actions of the early prophets.
Riiiiiight. Yes, I'm sure he's never ever heard of Elijah and Elisha . . . . And while you may speculate about the reasons the latter prophets were more clear about condemning violence than the earlier prophets, neverthelss we need not guess about the unfolding of God's revelation under the Old Covenant, which does show the progression and trends that Pope Benedict sketched in his remarks.
For someone who is far from infallible in his grasp of the meaning of biblical texts, you'd probably want to be a little less sure that you've caught the Pope in errors of doctrinal or scripture interpretation.
You are saying that Herod, Ananias, and Sapphira were killed by God for repenting and believing in the Gospel? And it's your contention that their deaths were expressly and specifically called for by a New Covenant civil ordinance or judgment issued by Jesus or the Apostles in the same manner that Moses issued such ordinances
No they were killed during the Church and Gospel times for the same reason Achan was killed in the OT...sacrilege. They were killed for sacrilege within the NT just as the descendants of Jeconiah were killed by God for sacrilege in the OT.
'Then God reaffirms the death penalty He gave the Gentiles and Jews for murder in Genesis 9:5-6 by inspiring Paul to write Romans 13:3-4 which remains severe even in the NAB with it's synecdoche of the word "sword" which is there to minister to God's wrath.' That's all well and good -- and yet the fact remains that the Holy Spirit spoke through St. Paul to the Corinthians that Moses' administration of death has been abolished.
Yes but the ministration of death was the death penalties for personal sin for the Jews only....Gn.9:5-6, the death penalty for not sin but crime, is addressed to
Jews, Shem... and Gentiles, Ham and Japheth. Four separate kinds of death in the OT: death penalties for personal sin (Moses' administration of death)/ death penalty for murder Gn9:5-6 for non Jews and Jews/ massacres ordered by God to end the Canaanites who He had punished lightly prior... see Wisdom12// and lastly death for sacrilege whether Jew or non Jew.
This is, for example, why the Church sends missionaries to convert pagans, rather than armies to slaughter them as God commanded Joshua to do.
Just realize...the slaughter was not part of the written law of Moses but a verbal individual order by God who had previously punished the Canaanites ..."punishing them bit by bit that they might have space for repentance".... they ignored that light punishment and continued cannabilism, child sacrifice and idolatry. Only then did God order their death.
Jordanes you are in color/ I'm in bold
'That last sentence of yours has zero to do with violence...good or bad....look up its context in the epistles.'
I'm well aware of its context, and I did not say it had anything to do with "violence." It does, however, have to do with death and killing. You might possibly be aware of the fact that God does a LOT of direct and indirect killing of sinners in the Old Testament, but not that much in the New Testament.
That's partly because the OT covers 2 millenia and the epistles cover decades.
What was different in the OT was the death penalties for Jews only for personal sin. That killing ended with Christ bringing sanctifying grace (Jn 1:17). Prior to sanctifying grace, the Jews needed great fear to avoid adultery e.g but since "the law brought nothing to perfection", the law needed death penalties to motivate people faced with the law but only having actual graces. After sanctifying grace and after Christ's victory and partial binding of the devil, men in general (due to the binding) did not need the threat of death to avoid adultery, bestiality etc. What stayed the same in the OT and the NT was God killing for sacrilege in two instances ( Acts 5 and 12) whereas the OT due to time span covered had about 10 or more such instances of death for sacrilege...Uzzah for touching the ark, the 72 descendants of Jeconiah for not greeting the ark, Dathan and Abiram and families for revolt against Moses are swallowed by the earth ( Ananias and Sapphira alone...not their families...simply fall to the earth dead for having lied to the Holy Spirit), Achan and family for the theft of silver and gold dedicated to God, the sons of Eli, the high priest, for eating the wrong and choice sacrificial offerings etc.
'Your first sentence's ending is absurd: " under the Gospel the ministration of death is abolished.". Under the gospel, God kills Herod through an angel in Acts 12 and kills Ananias and Sapphira through Peter's verbal participation in Acts 5.
So you call an inspired, infallible statement of St. Paul "absurd"?
No I called your use of those words in your...your context of the massacres..absurd...because the Canaanites were massacred by individual order of God and were not under Jewish law...the ministration of death...but had offended natural law.
Sungenis' critique is indeed long overdue. He deserves a lot of credit for saying it out loud, because anyone who does so becomes a lightning rod for the whatever-the-current-line-is-I'm-for-it crowd. A lot of the best known lay pontificators put butter on their bread in this way, from George Weigel at the high end to bottom feeders who operate their own blogs to preserve their most unworthy thoughts on electric paper.
Lest my last remark be misconstrued, let it be noted that none of it was aimed at our generous host, for whom this blog is a labor of love, and certainly not a means to a more profitable end.
Goes without saying, Ralph. Thanks.
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