Chapter III — The Apostolic Deposit of Revelation

The doctrine concerning the Sources of Revelation was formally defined by the Council of Trent (sess. iv) and the Vatican Council (sess. iii, c. 2). At Trent the principal object was to assert, against the early Protestants, the equal value of Oral and Written Tradition. As regards Holy Scripture, whose controversial importance the Protestants rather overrated than otherwise, the Council had only to define its extent and fix upon an authentic text. But the Vatican Council had to assert the divine character of Scripture, which was not contested at the time of the earlier Council.

§ 14. Holy Scripture the Written Word of God

I. The “Sacred and Canonical Books” — the definitive collection of the authentic documents of Revelation preserved and promulgated by the Church — have been considered, by writers tinged with rationalistic Protestantism, as documents of Revelation merely because the Church has acknowledged them to be historically trustworthy records of revealed truth. This, however, is by no means Catholic doctrine. The books of Holy Scripture are sacred and canonical because they are the Written Word of God, having God for their Author, the human writers to whom they are ascribed being merely the instruments of the Holy Ghost, Who enlightened their minds, moved their wills, and, to a certain extent, directed them as an author directs his secretary.

1. The Council of Trent declared that the whole of the books of the Old and New Testaments, with all their parts, are to be held sacred and canonical. The Vatican Council adds: “the Church doth hold these [books] for sacred and canonical, not because, after being composed by merely human industry, they were then approved by her authority; nor simply because they contain Revelation without any error; but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and as such have been handed down to the Church.” Even before Trent, the Council of Florence had said: “the Holy Roman Church professeth that one and the same God is the author of the Old and the New Testaments, because the holy men of both Testaments spoke under the inspiration of the same Holy Ghost” (Decretum pro Jacobitis). Trent, similarly, takes the divine origin of Scripture for granted when it says: “the Holy Synod receiveth and venerateth with like devotion and reverence all the books both of the Old and New Testament, since the one God is the author of both.”
2. This same doctrine is taught in Scripture itself. Christ and His Apostles, when quoting the Old Testament, clearly imply that God is its author: “the scripture must needs be fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost spoke before by the mouth of David” (Acts 1:16); “David himself saith in the Holy Ghost” (Mark 12:36; Matt. 22:43). Sometimes, instead of “the Scripture saith,” we find simply “God saith,” though it is the sacred writer who is speaking (cf. Hebrews, passim). St. Paul declares directly that all Scripture is “breathed by God” (theopneustos, 2 Tim. 3:16); St. Peter likewise speaks of the Prophets as instruments in the hands of the Holy Ghost: “no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation. For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time: but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:20–21). This last text applies primarily to prophecy strictly so called — the foretelling of things to come — but extends also to the whole of a prophet’s teaching, since he speaks in the name of, and under the influence of, God (cf. 1 Kings 10:6; Mich. 3:8).
3. The Fathers, from the earliest days, taught the divine authorship of Scripture. (a) “The Divine Scriptures,” “the Divine Oracles,” “the Scriptures of God” are the usual phrases by which they expressed their belief in Inspiration: “the Apostle, moved by that Spirit by whom the whole of Scripture was composed” (Tertullian, De Oratione, 22). St. Augustine writes: “God, having first spoken by the Prophets, then by Himself, and afterwards by the Apostles, composed also the Scripture which is styled canonical” (De Civitate Dei, XI, 3). Origen says that “the Scriptures were written by the Holy Ghost” (preface to De Principiis, nn. 4, 8); and Theodoret, in his preface on the Psalms, says it matters little who was the human author of the Psalms, since we know they were written under the active influence of the Holy Ghost. The Fifth General Council accordingly calls the Holy Ghost, purely and simply, the author of Holy Writ, and says of Theodore of Mopsuestia that he rejects the Book of Job “in his rage against its author, the Holy Ghost.” The Fathers often call the Bible “an epistle from God”: “what is Scripture but a sort of letter from Almighty God to his creature? … the Lord of Heaven hath sent thee his letters for thy life’s sake… study therefore, I pray thee, and meditate daily upon the words of thy Creator” (St. Gregory the Great, Ep. IV, 31). The Scriptures, further, are words spoken by God: “study the Scriptures, the true words of the Holy Ghost” (St. Clement of Rome, 1 Cor., 45); “the Scriptures were spoken by the Word and his Spirit” (St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, II, 28); “not without reason have so many, and such great, peoples believed that when [the sacred writers] were writing these books, God spoke to them, or through them” (St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XVIII, 41). (b) The Fathers also describe the relation between the divine Author of Scripture and the human writer — the latter as a secretary, hand, or pen employed by God. St. Augustine writes of the Evangelists as members of Christ’s own body, writing at their Head’s direction, “so that when they wrote what he manifested and spoke, we must by no means say that it was not he who wrote… any one who rightly understands this union… will receive the Gospel narrative as though he saw the hand of the Lord writing” (De Consensu Evangelistarum, I, 35). St. Gregory the Great writes similarly: “it is quite useless to inquire who wrote this, since the Holy Ghost is rightly believed to be the author of the book… when we receive a letter from some great man, and know from whom it comes and what it means, it is folly for us to ask what pen he wrote it with” (In Job, preface); and St. Justin compares the human writer to a lyre played upon by God through the action of the Holy Ghost (Cohortatio ad Graecos, 8). (c) From this dependence of the human writer on the Holy Ghost, the Fathers infer the absolute truth and wisdom of every, even the minutest, detail of Scripture. St. Gregory Nazianzen writes: “we who extend the perfect truthfulness of the Holy Ghost to the smallest lines and letters do not, and dare not, grant that even the smallest things are asserted by the writers without a meaning” (Orat., II, 105); and St. Augustine, in a particularly notable passage, writes to St. Jerome that he has learnt to pay to the canonical books alone this reverence — to believe most firmly that no author of them made any mistake, and, should he meet with anything in them that seems opposed to the truth, not to doubt but that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has missed what was said, or his own understanding is at fault (Ep. ad Hieron., 82, n. 3).

II. The Catholic Church expressly teaches that God is the author of Holy Scripture in a properly physical sense. For God to be the author of Scripture in this sense — for Scripture to be, truly, the Word of God as issuing from Him — it is not enough that the Sacred Books were written under the merely negative influence and external assistance of God, preventing error from creeping in; divine authorship implies a positive, interior influence on the writer, expressed by the dogmatic term Inspiration. Although a merely negative assistance, preserving from error — such as is granted to the Teaching Apostolate — is not sufficient for the physical authorship of Scripture, neither, on the other hand, is a positive, word-for-word dictation required. The sacred writers themselves make no mention of any such dictation; indeed, they expressly state that they made use of their own industry, and the diversity of style among the different writers is plainly opposed to it. Of course, where something previously unknown to the writer must be set down, God must in some way speak to him; but Inspiration, in itself, is best defined as “the action of God upon a human writer, whereby God moves and enables the writer to serve as an instrument for communicating, in writing, the Divine thoughts.” Inspiration arises, in the first instance, from God’s intention to express certain truths in writing through human instrumentality; to carry out this intention, God moves the writer’s will to set down these truths, suggesting them to his mind and assisting him to their right understanding and faithful expression. Some theologians have reduced this assistance to a mere surveillance or watching-over of the writer, but the Fathers’ constant stress on the writers’ instrumental character in relation to God, and the scriptural phrase “borne along by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:21), plainly stand against so weak an account (cf. St. Thomas, II-II, q. 174, a. 2). The diversity of style among the different books is explained by the general law that when God employs natural instruments for a supernatural purpose, He does not destroy their natural powers but adapts them to His own end.

III. 1. Though the Bible is not mere history or mere literature, it has to do with history, and is literature in the highest sense of the word; it has a human element as well as a divine one, and how far the books are human and how far divine is the great problem of scriptural study. The two elements are united somewhat after the fashion of soul and body: just as the soul is present in every part of the body, so the action of the Holy Ghost is present in every part of Scripture. The Schoolmen went further, observing that though the soul is whole and entire in every part of the body, it does not exercise all its powers equally in every part — some powers being exercised in some parts, other powers in others. We must not, accordingly, restrict Inspiration to certain portions of Scripture only¹ — though at the same time the action of the Holy Ghost need not be understood as identical throughout.

2. When we say God is the Author of the Sacred Books, we must not take this in the same sense in which Milton is the author of Paradise Lost, which would exclude any human authorship whatever; the formula was originally directed against the Manichaeans, who held that the Evil Spirit was the author of the Old Testament.

3. The Church has never decided the question of the human authorship of any particular book. There may be a strong received opinion — that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, say, or that the whole Book of Isaiah was written by the prophet of that name — but no formal definition has ever been given on such points.

4. We cannot admit that the sacred author himself has been guilty of error.² He may, however, make use of a story, not necessarily strict history, in order to teach some dogmatic principle or point some moral lesson; and he must, further, adapt himself to the circumstances of those he addresses, since otherwise he would fail to be understood. As St. Jerome writes: “many things are said in the Holy Scriptures according to the opinion of that time to which the events referred belong, and not according to the actual truth of the matter.”³ St. Thomas writes similarly that “Moses, condescending to a rough people, followed what appeared to the senses.”⁴

5. On the Catholic canon of Scripture, see Franzelin, De Scriptura, sect. ii; Loisy, Histoire du Canon de l’Ancien Testament and Histoire du Canon du Nouveau Testament.⁵

§ 15. Holy Scripture as a Source of Theological Knowledge

I. Holy Scripture, being the work of God Himself, far surpasses in value and excellence any merely human account of Revelation. The Old Testament is inspired by the same Holy Ghost “who spake by the Prophets” as the New; both are of equal excellence, and together form one general source of theological knowledge. The Old Testament is not a mere history of Revelation — it contains, on many points of Faith and morals, a fuller exposition than the New; it is, as it were, the body of which the New Testament is the soul, the two pervading and completing each other.

II. There are two fundamentally distinct senses in Holy Scripture: the Literal, conveyed directly by the words, and the Spiritual (also called Typical), conveyed by the things the words themselves express. The Literal Sense is that intended by the human writer, conveyed by the letter of the text; the Spiritual Sense has its foundation in the all-embracing knowledge of the Holy Ghost who inspired the writer. Sentences, and even single words, written under divine direction have, in some circumstances, a significance beyond what they would convey were they of merely human origin — an historical fact, an institution, a precept, may stand isolated in the mind of the human writer, while in the mind of God it is related to other facts and truths, as a type, a confirmation, or an illustration. These relations are the basis of Scripture’s Spiritual Sense; we derive our knowledge of them from the things expressed by the words, and from the words themselves — mediate for us, though immediate to the Holy Ghost.

From these distinct senses it follows that a given text is capable of several interpretations, though all must be grounded in the Literal Sense; a text may bear several spiritual or mediate meanings, but usually only one Literal Sense. Many applications of the Sacred Text commonly adopted by the Church belong to this Mediate Sense — foreseen by the Holy Ghost, though in purely human writings such applications would appear to be distortions: familiar examples are the passages Prov. 8 and Ecclus. 24, as applied to the Blessed Virgin.

A demonstrative argument for some revealed doctrine can be drawn from any sense demonstrably intended by the Holy Ghost, whether Literal, logically inferred from the Literal, or purely Spiritual. The Literal Sense affords the most obvious proof, though where the language is figurative, the meaning of the figure must first be established before an argument can be drawn from it; the Inferential Sense equals the Literal in demonstrative force, though it ranks below it in dignity, since it is only intended, not directly expressed, by the Holy Ghost. The Spiritual Sense likewise offers a cogent argument, provided the relation between type and antitype is either directly stated in the Literal Sense or contained in it as an evident consequence; indirectly, the Spiritual Sense acquires demonstrative force from explanations given in Scripture itself, or handed down by Apostolic Tradition — such explanations are often insufficient to fix the Spiritual Sense with complete certainty, giving only probabilities, though a number of them together sometimes form a strong cumulative argument (cf. Wiseman, Essays: Miracles of the New Testament, drawing arguments for several Catholic doctrines from the typical signification of various miracles).

The principal object of Holy Scripture is to give us certain knowledge of Revelation; but the Church’s constant practice has made it serve a further purpose entirely consonant with the first. In the book of nature we have a faithful, though imperfect, image of God’s Wisdom; in the Inspired Books that imperfection is remedied, and a fuller representation is set before us, destined to kindle in our minds a manifold knowledge of the supernatural world. This further purpose is served by that sense and interpretation of Holy Writ whereby we gather from the Sacred Text pious considerations and suggestions — not necessarily intended by the Holy Ghost in the precise form they take in a given reader’s mind, yet not wholly arbitrary either.

III. The careful study and comparison of different passages of Holy Scripture throws great light on the Church’s dogmatic teaching, and, conversely, a sound knowledge of that teaching gives deeper insight into the Written Word: theological exegesis far surpasses mere philological criticism, and reaches conclusions beyond the latter’s grasp. Scripture, for instance, tells us that God has a Son, and that this Son is the Word, the Image, the Mirror, the Wisdom of His Father; the combination and comparison of these expressions greatly helps our understanding of the eternal generation of the Son — and, conversely, theological knowledge of generation is itself the only sound basis for an accurate interpretation of these very expressions.