LECTURE : DEI VERBUM

1. INTRODUCTION

Three influences:

• New attitude to tradition: evolving/dynamic process.

• Application of critical historical methods to the interpretation of scripture. Human factors emphasized in scripture.

• Biblical movement. New attitude to scripture in large areas of the Catholic world.

1. REVELATION

God has revealed himself to humanity. How?

1. • Natural revelation. God is “saying” something to us through creation. Rm1:19-20 . we need to look at creation and reflect on it rationally and logically in order to discover the God who reveals there. First Vatican Council “Constitution on the Catholic Faith”( Dei Filius) .Reaction to Fideist: reason was useless to help us come to know the Creator and Rationalist: reason alone can apprehend all there is to know about God.

Why do we all not see God in creation and reason?

Pius X11 Humani Generis Because of sin, prejudice, blindness or weakness, the human mind may not recognize the Creator when contemplating creation. BUT

Christians have believed that God has more to “say” to humanity than just through the created universe.

1. • Supernatural or special revelation is this more ( Direct communication from God ) . cf. Incarnation, Trinity.

1. SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION.

There emerged a view that God’s revelation was contained in

scripture, but besides that, there were other beliefs, not contained in

scripture, based on what Jesus said and did, that were passed on.

Tradition came to be applied to unwritten beliefs and practices of

the Church that were believed to originate in what Jesus said and did

and that are not recorded in Scripture.

1. • Two Source Theory of Revelation .There were two pieces of the puzzle- Scripture and Tradition that needed to go together to form one whole ( Council of Trent ) .This was not the only view about tradition.

   • Classical view of Thomas Aquinas. All of God’s revelation was recorded in Scripture. While many things were recorded explicitly ,some things were only recorded implicitly,.the role of tradition was to provide a correct interpretation of scripture: to make what was implicit as equally explicit as other parts.

   • Protestant view. Sola scriptura. Revelation was recorded only in the scriptures and the practices and beliefs of the Church must be evaluated in the light of what is found in scripture. There is no second source of revelation.

Misunderstanding of Trent.

• In the years after Trent many theologians, both Catholic and Protestant believed that Trent had endorsed the two-source theory of revelation.

In the decree partly in Scripture and partly in Tradition ( with partly crossed out ) can be interpreted as completely in written scripture and completely in unwritten tradition.

Thus, this interpretation, rather than seeing scripture and tradition as two parts making up one whole ( as in the two-source theory ) one could see them as two forms of one theory.

Trent wanted to say that to understand Scripture one needed Tradition.

At this time Tradition was seen as a static reality. The Church merely has the responsibility of handing on from one generation to the next in an unchanging way what had been revealed. BUT

According to Dei Verbum tradition is more- it is also a passing on. DV recovered the sense that tradition involved not just the content of revelation but the process of handing it on. Rather than a static process it was a dynamic process [ it was the handing on of the experience of God in the Christian community ]. The responsibility of tradition is to understand revelation in new ways that address and respond to new situations.

DV 8 “ There is growth in insight into the realities and words that have been passed on”. So the transmission of the Gospel from one generation to the next is part of what Vatican 11 meant by tradition. Thus DV is against the two- source theory.

However, tradition is broader than unwritten tradition. Scripture is included as part of tradition.

According to DV 9 Tradition comprises the written scriptures and unwritten tradition.

“Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal”.

DV 10 “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church”.

Scripture is the normative form of that tradition: other forms of tradition are assessed in comparison with their conformity to the written scriptures: nothing may be part of tradition which is contrary to it.

The discernment of the canon of scripture is a form of tradition. DV 8

“By means of the same tradition the full canon of the sacred books is known to the Church and the holy Scriptures themselves are more thoroughly understood and constantly actualized in the Church”.

Role of the Magisterium.

DV 10 “ The one deposit of revelation, made up of Scripture and tradition has been entrusted to the whole Church”. The whole church draws her life from it. The second part of the paragraph role which exclusively belongs to the magisterium – the authentic interpreter of the deposit of faith. Note the magisterium is not above the word of God but serves the Word of God. “Yet this magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant”( DV 10).The magisterium scrupulously guards the Word of God, losing nothing of it, deleting nothing from it and adding nothing to it.

The Church must declare the authentic meaning of the Word of God, explaining and casting light on everything that is obscure.

Scripture+Treadition+ Magisterium ate inseparable. DV 10 “It is clear, therefore, that in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others”. We need all three.

What is Tradition?

We saw that Scripture is a product of tradition and needs to be interpreted in the context of that living tradition.

• Fathers/Councils/ Creeds/ Church Order

The Christian religion is in a process of formation in the NT. The

Church needed a period of time to elapse before she could analyze and reflect more deeply on the mystery of Christ. Patristic thought is concerned with fundamentals and is the first level of deep reflection. Ratzinger argued that the “moment of the Fathers” was an essential moment in the receiving of the word of God by the Church.

The Councils ( ecumenical councils ) established the form that orthodoxy would take. By the middle of the 3^rd. century the formulae of the faith had developed in all the main churches based upon a Trinitarian formula.

The creeds offer an overview of the entire Christian Gospel and thus set the agenda for all theology. No theology which does not do justice to the entire Church is sufficient for the life of the Christian community.

This period saw the emergence of the Church as an episcopally ordered communion of local churches centered on the local bishop and the bishop of Rome.

• Liturgy

The best guide to what the church believes is what the church says when she prays[ the law of praying is the law of believing ]. In the liturgy we see the Church’s self-understanding unfold before our eyes – the liturgy is the poetry of the church. The liturgy expresses what we might call the “inside of the act of faith”.

• Art

Christian art sheds much light on what was believed and done by the first generation, those closest to the apostles.

1. INSPIRATION

“At the same time, we must be most careful to remember that the interpretation of scriptural prophecy is never a matter for the individual. Why? Because no prophecy ever came from man’s initiative. When men spoke for God it was the Holy Spirit that moved them” ( 2Peter 1: 20-21 ).

The composition of scripture has something in it that is human and something divine. Two theories:

• Ecstatic or hypnotic theory cf. Philo, Origen.

• Verbal dictation. God communicates the language of scripture to the human author giving him the words that are suited to writer’s individuality. The author’s task is to be as receptive as possible to what God is doing.

Leo X111 Providentissimus Deus ( 1893) . Unless God in some way influences the minds, will and writing ability of the human authors, then there is little point in calling him the author of scripture at all.

DV 11 “… [the] sacred and canonical books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts [are]… written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit… they have God as their author… To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their powers and faculties so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.

1. Thus divine composition must mean divine influence over the minds of biblical writers

2. But biblical writers remained people of their own time and place.

Problems

• Source criticism: some biblical books have more than one author.

• Form criticism: wants to consider the oral stage before set down in writing.

• Redaction criticism: looked at the pattern superimposed by the final editor.

So inspiration is corporate and social as well as individual. Israel-Church is the bearer of inspiration ( MacKenzie ) – corporate chain of inspiration. Inspiration is ultimately the charism of the divine society.

THIS MEANS THAT THE MEANING OF THE REVEALED WORD MUST BE MADE WITHIN THE TRADITION OF THE CHURCH AND NOT OUTSIDE IT.

Additionally, there is a difference between the limited intention of the author and the fullness of the divine intention. No finite consciousness could comprehend the total mystery of salvation. There is a supernatural meaning which the church unfolds at the end of time ( sensus plenior ).

1. INERRANCY

Newman “Inspiration and its Relation to Revelation” stated that it was unworthy of “divine greatness” that God should assume the office of an historian or geographer “except as secular matters bear directly upon revealed truth”. Inerrancy then touches only on what is material to the purposes of scripture.

• Providentissimus Deus ( Leo X111 ) cited Augustine whose Literary Commentary on Genesis declared that God’s Spirit Had not spoken through humanity in order to teach the laws of physics, or biology, since they had no relevance to the order of salvation.

• Divino Afflante Spiritu ( Pius X11 ) . In order to use a book as the author intended we must identify the literary form of the book in question as it enables us to determine the kind of truth that is to found in that biblical book.

Thus:

• Investigation of the literary forms will help one to judge the meaning of the text.

• The intention of the biblical author by reference to the literary form must be judged in terms of its relevance to human salvation.

DV 11: “The books of Scripture TEACH, FREELY, FORCEFULLY AND WITHOUT ERROR, the truth that God willed to be put down in the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation”.

Remember Galileo’s dictum: the Scriptures teach us how to get to heaven, not how the heavens go” ( an echo of St. Augustine ). The inerrant truth of the scriptures is inerrant saving truth ( inerrancy has relevance only to human salvation ).

However, Scripture’s inerrancy does not mean that the bible is inerrant only in matters of faith and morals. The basic outline of the empirical history of Israel, the life and death of Jesus, the empty tomb, together with the founding of the church are salvifically relevant truth.

1. CONCLUSION.

In conclusion then we can say that Dei Verbum returned to a more biblical, more personalist, more historical understanding of revelation as opposed to the highly conceptual approach of Vatican 1. Revelation comprises both word and deed, is not static but dynamic, and communicates not conceptual truths but God Himself and His will.” Father Rodney Moss (I asked permission to post this on my website.)