Verbum Domini covers a large number of topics, but what are the major themes of this document? Broadly, I would say that there are four:

1) The life-changing reality of the “Word of God”
One of the most common misconceptions about Christianity is that is a “religion of the book”, i.e. that the Bible is the basis for our entire religion. The Catholic Church has always denied this, and does so explicitly in this document:

While in the Church we greatly venerate the sacred Scriptures, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book”: Christianity is the ‘religion of the word of God’, not of ‘a written and mute word, but of the incarnate and living Word’ (VD 7, quoting St. Bernard of Clairvaux).

The “Word of God” cannot be limited to simply Sacred Scripture, as it encompasses far more than that. Verbum Domini breaks it into three separate – but interrelated – realities:

• Jesus Christ: First and foremost, the Word of God is the eternal Son of God who became incarnate as Jesus Christ
• Word preached by the Apostles, i.e. the Church’s living Tradition
• Sacred Scripture

This is not just an obscure theological point, but is foundational for everything the Church teaches in regard to a proper understanding of the Scriptures. We must understand that the Word we follow is Jesus Christ, and we are drawn to him by both Tradition and Scripture. Trying to isolate only one part of the multifaceted Word – like “sola scriptura” does – ends up ultimately deforming the Word and making it more susceptible to misinterpretation.

2) Scripture should lead us to an encounter with Christ
Anyone who is familiar with Pope Benedict’s pontificate knows the emphasis he has placed on “encountering Jesus Christ”. He has emphasized again and again that an encounter with Christ is the central mystery of the Christian faith – everything, literally everything, revolves around it. As Benedict wrote in Deus Caritas Est, “being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a definitive direction” (DCE 1, quoted in VD 11).

Verbum Domini reiterates this emphasis and notes the importance of Scripture in instigating and deepening our encounter with our Lord. As the beginning of the document explains, we believe in a God who speaks a Word, and we are responsible to respond to that Word in our own lives. Scripture is a primary way to hear that Word spoken by God.

3) Scripture must be read and interpreted within the context of the Church
The key difference between Catholic and Protestant Scripture interpretation is that Catholics are insistent that the Bible can only be truly understood within the context of the living Church. The Bible was written within the Church, for the Church and was compiled by the Church, so trying to understand it outside the Church is simply infeasible. The same Spirit which inspired the Sacred writers and guided the Church to gather together those writings into one “Bible” also directs the Church in her interpretation of the Scriptures.

This is true beyond just the obvious “biblical interpretation cannot contradict Church teaching”. Another example that Verbum Domini emphasizes is the importance of the liturgy for interpreting Scripture. Many of the New Testament documents were originally written to be read within a liturgical setting (for example, Paul addressed most of his letters to “the church in…”, thus assuming that they would be read when the local church gathered, i.e. in the liturgy). As Verbum Domini notes, the liturgy is the “privileged” setting for reading the Bible. It is not just one of many settings, but should be the primary place where Scriptural interpretation takes place. This goes against most modern thought, which believes the only place to interpret the Bible is either in an academic ivory tower or in the confines of one’s own home. Like everything related to the Faith, the Church understands that Scriptural interpretation is a communal affair.

4) Scripture should inform and be foundational to all aspects of the Church’s ministry
The entire third section of this document goes into some detail of the importance of Scripture permeating every aspect of the Church’s work. This begins with evangelization, which is the preaching of the Word. I loved this description of evangelization that Verbum Domini offers:

“It is not a matter of preaching a word of consolation, but rather a word which disrupts, which calls to conversion and which opens the way to an encounter with the one through whom a new humanity flows” (VD 93).

Evangelization is not teaching the Faith or explaining the Faith or defending the Faith – it is preaching the Word and allowing that Word to lead the other to an encounter with Him who is the Word. How can the Word be preached without recourse to the written Word of God? Thus, Scripture forms a foundation for all evangelical work of the Church.

In my next post, I’ll list a few of my favorite quotes from Verbum Domini.

See also:

• An early Christmas gift from Pope Benedict XVI
• Verbum Domini and the challenge of Catholic Scripture interpretation
• Overview of Verbum Domini

I’ve finished Verbum Domini, the new papal document on Sacred Scripture, and it is quite impressive. There were no surprises in it for those who are familiar with the Church’s teaching on Scripture, but it ably reiterated and explained the proper way a Catholic must approach the Bible.

One thing to note is that this is NOT an encyclical, but a “post-synodal apostolic exhortation”. Why does that matter? Because an encyclical will usually be almost exclusively theological and leave practical applications to other forums. But this exhortation, which was written as a response to the 2008 Synod of Bishops on the Word of God, tackles both theological issues as well as practical applications of those issues. This is one reason the text is so long (over 40,000 words, or about equivalent to a 150-page book).

The document is divided into three major sections, along with an introduction and conclusion:

Part I: Verbum Dei
The first section lays the theological foundations of the Church’s understanding of the Word of God. It stresses the multiple meanings of “Word of God” (which I’ll detail in another post) and emphasizes that Scripture can only be properly understood in the context of the living Church. If you are intimidated about reading this long document, I would recommend just reading this first section – it is beautifully written and gives a great explanation of the overall context in which the Church approaches the Bible.

Part II: Verbum in Ecclesia
The second part of Verbum Domini details how Scripture is to be read, interpreted and prayed in the life of the Church. It emphasizes the role of the liturgy for a proper interpretation of the Scriptures, something that is sorely forgotten in our post-Reformation era. Most Christians think that the Bible is something to be primarily read alone in one’s home, but the Church has always emphasized that the “privileged” setting for reading and interpreting the Scriptures is in the context of the worshiping Church, i.e. the liturgy. And Scripture should infuse every liturgical action, not just the Mass.

Also in this part is a wonderful explanation of lectio divina (sections 86-87). “Divine reading” is considered the proper way in which a Christian should approach the biblical text when doing personal study and reflection of the Scriptures, and it would be great if more Christians – whether priests, scholars or laypeople – used this ancient method when reading the Bible.

Part III: Verbum Mundo
The final part of Verbum Domini applies everything discussed above to the “real world”, i.e. how can our interaction with the Sacred Scriptures further the Church’s mission to the world? The document applies this to every conceivable arena, from evangelization to supporting the poor to interreligious dialogue. While much in this section is worthwhile, I would also say that some of it reads like a committee bullet point document which wants to make sure it addresses every member’s pet project (a consequence of being a response to a worldwide Synod of bishops, no doubt). But the overall emphasis of this part is evangelization: one must be in constant contact with the Word of God in order to preach and proclaim that Word to the world.

In my next post, I’ll review the major themes of Verbum Domini.

See also:

• An early Christmas gift from Pope Benedict XVI
• Verbum Domini and the challenge of Catholic Scripture interpretation

I’m reading through Verbum Domini now and it is a serious challenge not to race through it. For a Scripture geek like me, this is a real page-turner. But I’m pacing myself so that I can really digest what is in this document (although I’m sure I’ll read it multiple times anyway). Yesterday I mentioned that it would be helpful to read other Papal documents on Scripture from the past century in order to better understand Verbum Domini. I think it would also be very helpful to understand the context in which all these documents were written; i.e. the current debates and challenges within the world of biblical interpretation that these documents address. I’ll give a high-level overview here.

There are two major, and opposing, currents in modern biblical interpretation (“modern” meaning the past 200 years or so). They are historical-criticism and fundamentalism.

Historical-criticism is the dominant method of biblical interpretation in the academic world. Historical-critics look at the Bible as simply a human document and study it as such. They want to answer questions such as: “Who wrote this?” “When was it written?” “What is the history of its development?” “How was the text handed on through the centuries?” They are not concerned with topics such as inspiration or inerrancy, nor do they look at how one’s life might be impacted by reading the Bible. To historical-critics, biblical interpretation is a purely scientific affair that attempts to uncover the origins of the biblical text. Anything beyond that is seen as superfluous. In the academic world, whether Protestant or Catholic or secular, this is almost the only biblical interpretation that exists.

Fundamentalism is a reaction to historical-criticism that became widespread in the early 20th century and is most commonly found among conservative Protestants. It is the viewpoint that takes every word completely literally and at face-value. For example, a fundamentalist will count the years noted in Genesis and then determine how old the earth is. Fundamentalism grew because many faithful Christians believed that the historical-critical method denied the divine authorship of the Bible and they wanted to recover that.

Unfortunately, the world of biblical interpretation has become very political and advocates of these two methodologies keep each other at a distance. Anyone in the academic world who suggests divine authorship of the biblical text is immediately branded a “fundamentalist” (the worst insult in modern academia) and any Christian who suggests that perhaps certain biblical texts are not to be read as a newspaper account is labeled by fundamentalists as a godless heathen.

But which method does the Church consider the proper method of biblical interpretation? Neither…and both. While it is willing to take whatever is true and useful in both these methods, the Church does not embrace either one wholeheartedly. Many of the methods used in the historical-critical method are accepted as helpful, but the Church does not believe that the divine Word of God is only a human text that can be examined under a microscope to fully understand it (just like putting a Eucharistic host under a microscope would not reveal its reality either). And although the Church embraces the divine authorship of the Bible and does not believe it is just a human document, but it does not embrace fundamentalism as a proper method for understanding the Scriptures’ true meaning.

Proper Catholic biblical interpretation has two main pillars it bases itself on. The first is the belief that the Bible must be read in the context in which it was written, i.e. within the Church. If a historical-critic rejects the Virgin Birth because it is not “historical”, then a Catholic can be sure that this critic’s interpretation is invalid, because the same Spirit that inspired the writing of the Bible led the Church to accept this doctrine as true. Likewise, if a fundamentalist believes the earth is only 6,000 years old and thinks that rejecting that belief is “contrary to the Bible”, then a Catholic can be sure that the fundamentalist is going beyond the text, since the Church has made clear that the age of the earth is a scientific, not theological, question.

The second pillar of proper Catholic biblical interpretation is the concept of multiple “senses” of Scripture. Just as there are two authors of every biblical book – the human and the divine – so there can be two or more possible meanings of a Scriptural passage: the literal and the spiritual (often the spiritual is broken into three levels, but I’ll keep it simple for this analysis). The literal meaning is what the human author intended by the passage. Note carefully that this is not the same as the “literalism” of the fundamentalist. The human author might have intended a passage to be poetic and not a historical account. He might have intended to be making a theological point and not been reporting on events as a newspaper reporter. The literal meaning is always the first meaning of a text and it allows us to know exactly what the original author was trying to say to his original audience.

The second meaning of Scripture is the spiritual. Since the Bible has a divine author, it can have multiple layers of meaning behind each passage. For example, a Psalm which talks about the destruction of my enemies could remind us of our fight against our enemies of pride, vanity and selfishness. This might not have been what the original human author was thinking about when he wrote the Psalm, but it is a legitimate meaning, nonetheless. But the spiritual “sense” of Scripture does not give one permission to go off into flights of fancy; again, biblical interpretation – including the spiritual “sense” – must be done within the context of the Church. So if you think a bible passage’s spiritual meaning gives you permission to leave your parish and start your own church, then you have sadly misinterpreted the Bible.

This is the challenge of Catholic Scripture interpretation today: navigate the Scylla of historical-criticism and the Charybdis of fundamentalism. Verbum Domini is another notable effort by the Church’s magisterium to chart the proper course for Catholics reading the Scriptures, whether they be scholars or laypeople. Let us pray that all those who read and interpret the Bible will follow the wise counsel of the Church in this matter.

For further reading:

• Catholic Scripture Interpretation: Resting on Fundamentals, Resisting Fundamentalism
• Interpreting the Holy Bible: How the “Senses” of Scripture Provide the Foundation for a Proper Interpretive Stance

Pope Benedict has just issued a major document on Sacred Scripture titled Verbum Domini (The Word of the Lord) – the full text can be downloaded here. This document is the result of the 2008 Synod of Bishops dedicated to the Word of God.

This is huge news. Over the past century or so, there have been three major documents released by Popes on Scripture; they include:

Providentissimus Deus (Pope Leo XIII – 1893)
Spiritus Paraclitus (Pope Benedict XV – 1920)
Divino Afflante Spiritu (Pope Pius XII – 1943)

So you can see that these type of documents don’t come around every day – and there hasn’t been one in almost 70 years. For a Scripture geek like me, this is like an early Christmas.

These three documents, along with the Vatican II constitution Dei Verbum, are essential for understanding how Catholics interpret Scripture. Before reading Verbum Domini, I would recommend a paper I wrote back in the 90′s titled Catholic Scripture Interpretation: Resting on Fundamentals, Resisting Fundamentalism, which looks at some of these past documents to understand how the Church approaches Scripture. I’m sure that Verbum Domini will build upon these documents, so an understanding of them will be helpful for understanding the new document.

Thanks Pope Benedict XVI!

Today is the feast of the greatest Latin Scripture scholar of all time – St. Jerome.

Jerome is most famous for his Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate. This translation became the norm in Western Christianity for more than a millennium, and its impact was far-reaching. One area, however where it had an (unintended) impact is in the debate over the filioque (“and [from] the Son”), that addition to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed which has caused such division in the Church.

When translating John 15:26 (“When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me”), Jerome used the Latin verb procedere to translate the Greek word εκπορευεται (“proceeds from”). This decision is not a bad one, as both mean “proceed” or “come forth from”. However, by the time of Jerome, this Greek word had come to take on a particular meaning in Greek theology – a meaning that was not there originally. It was used to designate the Holy Spirit’s unique mode of proceeding as opposed to the begetting of the Son in the Godhead. But the Latin term had no such meaning in the West; it could be used interchangeably for both processions.

For example, in John 8:42 (“Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and am here; I did not come on my own, but he sent me”) Jerome again uses the Latin verb procedere, yet the Greek term used is εξηλθον, which means “come forth”, but by Jerome’s time was not identical to εκπορευεται. So in the Latin, both the Son’s procession and the Spirit’s procession used the same broad term – procedere – but the Greeks used different terms for them. Both East and West agreed that both processions could not be identical, so in the West there developed an understanding that the Spirit’s procession was “from the Father and the Son“, a development that did not take hold in the East, which saw the begetting of the Son and the generation of the Spirit as distinct even though both were “from the Father.”

It is important to note that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Jerome’s translation; the fact is that the languages are just different and any translation sometimes has to use the best word available even if it is not an exact match. Furthermore, the Greek language, like every language, had developed, so the term εκπορευεται came to have a precise theological meaning in the East which it did not have at the time of the New Testament. Even without Jerome’s translation decisions the debate over the filioque might have erupted, but the human constraints of language surely played their part in this divisive phrase.

St. Jerome, pray for us!

Scientists have proven a bonafide miracle: Moses and the Israelites happened to be on the shores of the Red Sea at exactly the moment when a wind gust came by to separate the Sea so that they could pass:

In a computer model, Drews was able to simulate what might have happened at the Red Sea just before Moses started a journey that lasted for 40 years. After modeling a body of water that resembled the waters trapping Moses and the Israelites, Drews enforced the laws of physics and applied a wind stress to the water body.

“What I did was use a wind, sort of the strongest wind that I thought … a mixed group of adults and children could walk straight into,” Drews says. This amounts to about a 63 mph wind — a medium-strength tropical storm, as measured by the scale the National Hurricane Center uses.

But this is different from other tropical storms that occur frequently around the world.

“The wind blows on the water, and it stacks it up at the other end. The opposite component of wind set-down is called storm surge,” Drews says. He proposes that there was a bend in the body of water pointing east, and as the water shifted, it separated at the point of the bend, leaving a gap there.

I love these naturalistic explanations – they are so much more far-fetched than an actual miracle from God. It is getting to the point that materialistic scientists need much greater faith than believers.

Today is the feast of my favorite Evangelist and tax-collector, St. Matthew. Contrary to most modern biblical scholars – but consistent with the overwhelming tradition of the Church – I believe that Matthew’s was the first Gospel written, and it has always been my favorite Gospel. I particularly love the story of his conversion, told in stark terms but rich in meaning. As I wrote in Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew:

Matthew’s story of his own conversion is perhaps the most personal account found in the four Gospels (Mt 9:9-13). In typical Gospel fashion, the narrative is short and modest, yet it reveals a profound self-understanding and a deep dependence upon Jesus.

The story really begins when the Evangelist, after recounting the core of Jesus’ preaching in the Sermon on the Mount, begins to detail the other pillar of Jesus’ public ministry: healing the sick, the lame, and the possessed. Beginning in Chapter 8 and culminating in the story of the paralytic in 9:1-8, Matthew describes the healing of a leper, the cure of a centurion’s servant, the restoration of Peter’s mother-in-law, and the exorcism of two demoniacs. The disease of the person or method used by Jesus does not matter — the result is the same: instant healing…

Immediately after the story of the paralytic, Matthew recounts his own calling. This context is important: he has established Jesus as a true healer of body and soul to lay the groundwork for his own transformation.

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. And as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” — Mt 9:9-13

Here, Matthew is defending his apostolic call against those who might question a tax collector as one of Christ’s closest collaborators. As a tax collector, Matthew has the most despised of jobs: he not only had to interact with “unclean” peoples, but he also worked for the hated Romans. And if Matthew was like most tax collectors of his time, he collected taxes above the Roman rate in order to line his own pockets. On the Jewish social scale, he was no better than a prostitute — yet Jesus personally called him to be one of his inner circle of followers.

The beauty of this conversion story lies in Matthew’s recognition of his own state — he knows he is a “sinner,” yet he rejoices that his sinfulness has brought forth the great mercy of Christ. Furthermore, he is telling his readers that all who would follow Christ must first recognize their own sinfulness. Christ is not interested in the “righteous” — he wants to call sinners to his table and bring them to salvation.

St. Matthew, pray for us sinners!

Ever since I started studying the Bible seriously I have noticed a curious fact: in the New Testament, it is very rare that Jesus is explicitly referred to as “God” (Greek theos). In fact, there are only two cases in the whole of the New Testament that Jesus is unquestionably called God (John 1:1; 20:28), although there are a small number of other passages in which the author is probably using the term God to refer to Jesus (John 1:18, Romans 9:5, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8, 2 Peter 1:1), although each of these other instances are questioned in some quarters.

What is particularly interesting is that just a few years after the writing of the New Testament books we find other Christians who have no such hesitation. St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was a disciple of John the Apostle and died in the early 2nd century, shows no reserve is calling Jesus God: “For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived in the womb by Mary” (Ignatius Letter to the Ephesians 18:2); “love towards Jesus Christ our God” (Ignatius Letter to the Romans Preface); “I give glory to Jesus Christ the God who bestowed such wisdom upon you” (Ignatius Letter to the Smyrnaeans 1:1).

So why do the New Testament writers hesitate, or even refuse, to call Jesus God if they believed him to be divine?

Some, of course, would say that the N.T. authors did not, in fact, believe Jesus to be divine. But that ignores the overwhelming evidence of the N.T. writings. Even if Jesus were never called God in the N.T. it is still clear that the first Christians believed him to be divine. His authority to change the Law (Matthew 5) and to forgive sins (Matthew 9:1-3), as well as his exaltation as Lord of the Universe (Philippians 2:9-11, Colossians 1:15-20) are just a few examples showing that the N.T. authors believed him to be equal to God. So, again, why didn’t they just go around explicitly calling him God as later Christians would do?

The answer lies in the strictly monotheistic Jewish atmosphere in which the first Christians lived and breathed and the competing worldview of the ruling Roman Empire. To a first century Jew, there was only one God and that was the God of Israel. To apply the term God to another being would be to reject the strongest pillar of Judaism: monotheism. To the first century Roman pagan, on the other hand, there were many gods and applying the term theos to someone caused no more concern than calling him powerful or a ruler. So the first century Jewish Christians (and remember, all the first Christians were Jewish) had a dilemma: they understood and accepted that Jesus possessed divine attributes, yet they also held steadfast to Jewish monotheism, so how could they express this without being perceived as Roman polytheists? If they just blithely called Jesus God, most Jews (and pagans) would believe they were inventing yet another god in the pantheon of pagan gods – or they would have believed that the Christian equated Jesus with God the Father. In many ways, the revelation of the Trinity was the greatest linguistic challenge man ever faced.

So the New Testament authors closely guarded their use of the title God for Jesus, and used many other ways to express his divinity. No one reading the N.T. books in the first century would have questioned that their authors believed Jesus to be divine, but at the same time they would have also been clear that these authors did not believe Jesus to be the same person as God the Father. By being circumspect in their language, they were able to protect both their monotheistic beliefs as well as their conviction that Jesus was God.

Eventually, as Christianity grew it became more confident in its distinctive beliefs regarding the Godhead in contrast to both Judaism and paganism and so was able to more freely assign the title God to Jesus outright, as we see in the writing of St. Ignatius of Antioch. The belief didn’t change, but the language used to express it did develop.

For further reading: Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus by Murray J. Harris

Imagine a world in which Matthew was writing his Gospel as a blog:

Crazy Week!

Hey, everyone, sorry about not posting for the past week – things have been CRAZY lately! I know I promised to post some tips on how to save on your taxes, but so much has happened in the past week that I really need to tell you about!

You remember last week when I was excited about Jesus being gloriously welcomed into Jerusalem? I mentioned then that I thought for sure our leaders would back him now, and the Messianic Age would kick off. Well, things didn’t go quite as I thought they would (sometimes I guess it would be best to reflect a little more before blogging!). As you have probably all heard by now, just a few days after his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus was arrested by the Jewish guard and handed over to the Roman authorities.

I know that there have been rumors that one of us apostles turned him in, and I’m sad to confirm that Jesus was indeed betrayed by Judas Iscariot (who always seemed a bit shifty, if you ask me). After a show trial, the Romans had Jesus crucified. I was unable to be there in person for the crucifixion (I had some other things I had to do at the time), but those who were there tell me that it was very tragic. I’ll be honest, I was crushed by his death. I thought for sure that Jesus was the Christ we were all waiting for (click here for some of my proofs for his Messianic credentials).

But then we heard a strange story from Mary Magdalene. I know some of my readers in the past have questioned her association with us, but Jesus trusted her completely. Anyway, she claims that she has seen the Lord! That’s right, she claims that he is not really dead, but is risen! I don’t know what to think, but all of his closest followers are supposed to go up to Galilee, where he says he will appear to us.

Crossing my fingers….

Update: Fellow blogger John has written that he and Peter went to the tomb and it was empty! The burial clothes were there, but no body!

Comments (7):

Zedekiah: I can’t believe you actually believe Mary Magdalene. She obviously is delusional (just look at her history) and you are a sap to take her seriously.

Abinadab: Good point Zedekiah. But what I can’t believe is that anyone would take a former tax-collector seriously. What a joke.

Luke: Great post! I’m going to link to you on my own blog!

Azel: This is ridiculous – no one takes this Jesus of Nazareth seriously; I mean, really, from Nazareth? Everyone knows that the Messiah will come from Bethlehem. You guys are all tools.

Hazael: This is clearly a hoax. I notice how you were conveniently not at his crucifixion, and how the only witness you have for his “resurrection” is a woman with a questionable history. I’ll take you seriously when you show a little more proof.

Ahaziah: I don’t really care about this Jesus fellow; what really matters is that we overthrow the oppressive Roman rulers. Everyone should know better than to listen to a guy who used to work for the Romans. Shame on you.

Saul of Tarsus: Jesus is a heretic and anyone who follows him has left the true Faith of God Almighty. Mark my words, there will be consequences for these actions…

Well, considering the name “Peter” means “rock,” I’m thinkin’ he is.

But Michael Barber, professor of theology at John Paul the Great Catholic University has decided to spend some time – and blog-posts – studying the issue in a little more depth. Here is Part I.

Check it out!

Quick question: have you ever met anyone who likes The New American Bible? Me neither.

The NAB, which is the official translation used during Mass in the United States, first entered this world, like me, in 1970. Also like me, it is starting to show its age. Unlike the King James or the Douay-Rheims, the NAB is unable to escape from its origins and reading it is like opening a time capsule and entering 1970 all over again. Because of this, Cistercian monk Br. Stephen makes a great suggestion: let’s retire the NAB:

The NAB, with its self-consciously contemporary prose of 1970, lacks the necessary timelessness to succeed as religious prose, possessing neither consciously sacral language that takes the reader out of the present moment nor the sort of unobtrusive good writing that allows the word of God to speak across time. With age, the idiom of the NAB has become a period piece, carrying us back two full generations to the blunt ugliness of the aesthetics of socialist realism and other ideas about language and literature that failed to win a lasting cultural berth. Today, its awkward phrasing may remind the reader not so much of the small, still voice of God as of the staccato earnestness of James T. Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise. In attempting to be current, the translators left us with something that was already becoming dated by the time their work was in print.

Continue reading…

And lest anyone think that the NAB is somehow the only English version approved for liturgical use, note that in many English-speaking countries the translation used for the liturgy is the Jerusalem Bible (my personal favorite), and the Douay-Rheims is still used for the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, even in this country. So we already have approved English translations to choose from.

Along with Br. Stephen, it is my prayer that the NAB is retired before I am.

Whenever there is a debate between Christians today about some theological point, one question is sure to be fired off: “Where in the Bible is that?” Whether the topic is infant baptism, purgatory, justification by faith alone or the assumption of Mary, Scriptural support is demanded for one’s views. And for good reason; after all, the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and therefore, if a belief is found in the Bible, then surely it is true.

However, there is a false presupposition lurking behind this question, one that is commonly held by Christians today. It is the presupposition that the Bible is the source of Christian doctrine, that the Bible contains all the teachings of the Christian Faith and its purpose is to be a catechism of sorts for our teachings and beliefs. Although many Catholics have this presupposition, it is foundational to Protestantism. If you read just about any book from your local Family Bookstore (a chain of Protestant Christian bookstores), the language used in them is soaked with this presupposition: “The Bible teaches…”, “The Bible says…”, “we see from the Bible that…”.

However, this presupposition is not only false, it is illogical and contrary to history. Let us look at Salvation History for a minute and see how our Faith was passed on to us:

1. After the Fall, God raised up a nation (Israel) to be His people. He sent them prophets, kings and priests to teach them about the ways of God.
2. At the fullness of time, God sent His Son. This Son – Jesus Christ – preached, did mighty works, and suffered, died and rose again for our salvation.
3. The followers of Christ, especially the apostles, went around preaching the Gospel – which consisted of the teachings, works and passion of Christ – to the known world.
4. Some of these followers wrote down this Gospel in letters, histories and “gospels.”
5. The successors to the apostles – the bishops – continued to preach the Gospel handed on to them, guarding and protecting it from error.

We can see from this short recounting that the content of our Faith – the “Gospel” – was passed on to future generations by two methods: (oral) preaching (a.k.a. Tradition) and writings (a.k.a. Scripture). Then the college of bishops – the “Magisterium”, or teaching office of the Church – continued to preach that Gospel through time, making sure that it was not deformed or altered. But it is important to know the order of priority: the Gospel is the content of the Faith, and oral preaching and writings are the methods in which they are passed on.

(An aside: an objection might be raised that the way we know about Salvation History is through the Bible, so the Bible is “before” the Gospel. However, at this point, we are looking at the Bible as strictly a history book, not an inspired text. One would not think that a book about Socrates is the source of his life and teachings; instead, it simply recounts what we know about him.)

So if we want to know the source of the content of our Faith, we must look to the Gospel, which includes the life of ancient Israel and is fulfilled completely in the person of Jesus Christ and his life, teachings, works and passion.

This idea that there is one pre-existing Gospel and then two methods in which we receive that Gospel has been the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church since its earliest days. In the second century, St. Irenaeus, bishop of Gaul, wrote Against Heresies, which defended the Catholic Faith against the various false teachings of his day. It is a somewhat difficult work, but if you have a moment, take some time to read Book III from the Preface through Chapter 3. In that famous section, Irenaeus lays out his defense of how he knows the heretics are wrong and he is right. His logic is as follows:

1. The Gospel was given to the Church through the apostles (Preface-Chapter 1).
2. The Gospel was passed on to us through Scripture and Tradition, and the heretics contradict both of these pillars (Chapter 2).
3. The Gospel, passed on to us through Scripture and Tradition, is defended and protected by the successors to the apostles, the bishops (Chapter 3).
4. Therefore, if we follow the bishops, especially the bishop of Rome, then we can be assured that we are orthodox (Chapter 3).

And the Church today follows this same divine logic. In Dei Verbum, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, the Church beautifully and clearly articulates the relationship between the Gospel (also called “Revelation”), Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium. Sections 1-6 discuss Revelation being given from God, and then section 7-9 note the two ways in which that Revelation is handed on to us, and finally section 10 notes the role of the Magisterium in guarding and teaching that deposit of faith.

None of this means, of course, that any part of the Gospel will contradict Scripture, Tradition or the teaching of the Magisterium. The “glue,” so to speak, which holds all these parts together in one unified whole is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the originator of the content of the Gospel, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the guide of Tradition, and the protector from error of the Magisterium. Man would not be able to keep a consistent teaching for even a few decades under his own power, but with the Holy Spirit involved, the Church is able to pass on the authentic and saving Gospel to all generations.

So when someone asks, “where in the Bible does it say…”, you can know that if the Catholic Church teaches it, it is part of the saving Gospel, which precedes the Bible and is the source of its content.

It is a common myth that Protestants are better at Bible studies than Catholics. I say “myth” because that view only takes into account the past twenty or so years. The truth is that the Catholic Church has been studying the Bible for almost 2,000 years now and has developed many great ways for its members to swim deeply in the Sacred Page. Marcel LeJeune over at Aggie Catholics has a great post which reviews some of those methods:

10 Ways to Study and Pray With The Bible

Check it out!

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one of the most influential Scripture scholars who ever lived: Rudolf Bultmann. Bultmann’s impact on the theological world cannot be underestimated; if you pick up just about any scholarly work on Scripture or Christology written in the past fifty years, there is a very good chance that Bultmann’s name will be mentioned.

Bultmann’s greatest influence was in advocating for a complete split between history and faith (see my post yesterday about this subject). He advocated “demythologizing” the New Testament by stripping it of any supernatural content, thus discovering the true history behind it. Actually, he claimed that the Gospels were not even historical documents, but merely the proclamation of the message of the early Christian community. Even though not all the specifics of Bultmann’s teachings are accepted in modern scholarship, his underlying presuppositions and assumptions still rule the world of Scripture scholarship and Christology.

One of the primary purposes of Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth series is to combat the work of Bultmann and his followers; in fact, the pope directly addresses Bultmann and his arguments numerous times in the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth. Pope Benedict recognizes that true faith and history are not in opposition, but instead that the Christian faith is founded on real historical events. Another critic of Bultmann’s false separation has been Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. I was humbled when Fr. Benedict considered my book Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew, which uses modern scholarship but is not a scholarly work, as one small contribution in combating the false presuppositions and conclusions of Bultmann. Fr. Benedict writes in the Foreword:

Beginning with the pope himself, the effort to present the faithful with an adequate picture of Christ is well underway. It is an effort well supported by Eric Sammons. I hope that in years to come, he will follow this book up with later volumes on the other evangelists. I also hope that we will see more and more books like this, intelligent and erudite, yet accessible, on our Divine Savior and his life and personality. It is time to reject and reverse the influence of writers like Rudolf Bultmann, who dismantled the picture of Christ, leaving us only with remnants. In the place of such destruction we now have books like Who Is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew — books that rebuild or, rather, reveal anew the true picture of Christ.

We must always remember that our Christian Faith is not founded on myths in some pre-historic past, but on the historical and reliable witness of the first followers of Christ.

This sounds a bit like the old standard, “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” But of course the answer to many people today is no longer the obvious one: the apostle Matthew.

I have studied the issue of the authorship of the New Testament books for over a decade now, and my own thoughts on the matter have varied over the years. When I was an Evangelical Christian, I unthinkingly accepted the traditional authorship of all the NT books – Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew, Paul wrote the epistles which bear his name, etc. However, a few years after becoming Catholic and studying the issue more in-depth, I began to accept the scholarly consensus: that many NT books, including all of the Gospels except perhaps Luke, were not written by the traditionally-accepted author. After resting on that opinion for a few years, I then revisited the debate and the more I studied the issue, the less confident I grew in the “established” scholarship. So much of it, on further analysis, was based on false presuppositions and wild assumptions. Then, when I was writing my book Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew (available for pre-order now!), the issue came up again, as I had to decide if I was going to assume that the apostle Matthew was the author of this Gospel or not.

Ultimately, I have stuck to my final conclusion: I find that there is no reason not to accept the apostle Matthew as the author of the Gospel of Matthew. I don’t hold this as 100% scientifically provable, but no scholarly argument convinces me otherwise. In fact, I find many of the hypotheses posited for non-Matthean authorship to require a great deal more faith than just recognizing the apostle as the author. Furthermore, most of the arguments advanced in favor of authorship by a “Matthean community” (which never seems to include Matthew himself) rests on extreme speculation which has no empirical evidence.

I do believe it is quite possible that the Gospel as we have it today is not in every word exactly like the one that Matthew himself wrote. In fact, it is an ancient tradition that Matthew wrote his Gospel originally in “Hebrew” (most likely Aramaic) and then it was later translated into Greek. This process of translation, as well as the process of copying and distribution, might very well have edited the product which Matthew wrote. But, on a whole, the Gospel reflects the writing of Matthew himself (an aside: I also reject the Mark-Q two-source hypothesis and believe that Matthew was the first Gospel written, but I won’t get into that here).

But how important is authorship? As Catholics, we believe that the NT books are inspired by God and canonical because the Church led by the Holy Spirit has declared them to be so. And this belief is not founded on authorship. In other words, if Matthew didn’t write the Gospel that bears his name, it would still be an inspired writing and part of the New Testament. So authorship is not essential to the value of the text. However, most advocates of rejecting the traditional attributions of authorship also subscribe to many problematic presuppositions. For example, many of them reject that the words attributed to Jesus were actually said by Christ himself. Instead, they were inventions of the later Christian community. Obviously, if a first-hand witness like Matthew actually wrote his Gospel, these assumptions are much harder to sustain. But if the Gospel was instead written solely by a later Christian community, such a position becomes much more tenable, and can then lead to the denial of many Christian beliefs.

Therefore, I have seen no strong reason to reject the traditional consensus of the Church that the apostle Matthew is the author of the Gospel which bears his name. I do think the process in which this Gospel was produced was not as simple as Matthew merely writing exactly the Gospel we have today, but at the same time, the title “author” is a legitimate one for the former tax-collector.