The Church formally teaches that the Sacred Scriptures are absolutely without error. This teaching is not arrived at inductively--namely, that a careful study of the entire Bible has revealed no discrepancies or difficulties--but follows from the fact that God is the ultimate Author of the Bible and falsehood is incompatible with Truth Itself. As taught by the Second Vatican Council:107 The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach the truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."[72]
Furthermore, popes of the twentieth century explicitly condemned the false position that inerrancy only applies to God and not to the human author. One example of this condemnation may be found in "Spiritus Paraclitus" of Pope Benedict XV:
17. Then, after giving the definitions of the Councils of Florence and Trent, confirmed by the Council of the Vatican, Pope Leo continues:
Consequently it is not to the point to suggest that the Holy Spirit used men as His instruments for writing, and that therefore, while no error is referable to the primary Author, it may well be due to the inspired authors themselves. For by supernatural power the Holy Spirit so stirred them and moved them to write, so assisted them as they wrote, that their minds could rightly conceive only those and all those things which He himself bade them conceive; only such things could they faithfully commit to writing and aptly express with unerring truth; else God would not be the Author of the entirety of Sacred Scripture.(42)
18. But although these words of our predecessor leave no room for doubt or dispute, it grieves us to find that not only men outside, but even children of the Catholic Church--nay, what is a peculiar sorrow to us, even clerics and professors of sacred learning--who in their own conceit either openly repudiate or at least attack in secret the Church's teaching on this point.
We warmly commend, of course, those who, with the assistance of critical methods, seek to discover new ways of explaining the difficulties in Holy Scripture, whether for their own guidance or to help others. But we remind them that they will only come to miserable grief if they neglect our predecessor's injunctions and overstep the limits set by the Fathers.
19. Yet no one can pretend that certain recent writers really adhere to these limitations. For while conceding that inspiration extends to every phrase--and, indeed, to every single word of Scripture--yet, by endeavoring to distinguish between what they style the primary or religious and the secondary or profane element in the Bible, they claim that the effect of inspiration-- namely, absolute truth and immunity from error --are to be restricted to that primary or religious element. Their notion is that only what concerns religion is intended and taught by God in Scripture, and that all the rest--things concerning "profane knowledge," the garments in which Divine truth is presented--God merely permits, and even leaves to the individual author's greater or less knowledge. Small wonder, then, that in their view a considerable number of things occur in the Bible touching physical science, history and the like, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress in science!
20. Some even maintain that these views do not conflict with what our predecessor laid down since--so they claim--he said that the sacred writers spoke in accordance with the external-- and thus deceptive--appearance of things in nature. But the Pontiff's own words show that this is a rash and false deduction. For sound philosophy teaches that the senses can never be deceived as regards their own proper and immediate object. Therefore, from the merely external appearance of things--of which, of course, we have always to take account as Leo Xlll, following in the footsteps of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, most wisely remarks--we can never conclude that there is any error in Sacred Scripture.
21. Moreover, our predecessor, sweeping aside all such distinctions between what these critics are pleased to call primary and secondary elements, says in no ambiguous fashion that "those who fancy that when it is a question of the truth of certain expressions we have not got to consider so much what God said as why He said it," are very far indeed from the truth. He also teaches that Divine inspiration extends to every part of the Bible without the slightest exception, and that no error can occur in the inspired text: "It would be wholly impious to limit inspiration to certain portions only of Scripture or to concede that the sacred authors themselves could have erred."(43)
22. Those, too, who hold that the historical portions of Scripture do not rest on the absolute truth of the facts but merely upon what they are pleased to term their relative truth, namely, what people then commonly thought, are--no less than are the aforementioned critics--out of harmony with the Church's teaching, which is endorsed by the testimony of Jerome and other Fathers. Yet they are not afraid to deduce such views from the words of Leo Xlll on the ground that he allowed that the principles he had laid down touching the things of nature could be applied to historical things as well. Hence they maintain that precisely as the sacred writers spoke of physical things according to appearance, so, too, while ignorant of the facts, they narrated them in accordance with general opinion or even on baseless evidence; neither do they tell us the sources whence they derived their knowledge, nor do they make other peoples' narrative their own. Such views are clearly false, and constitute a calumny on our predecessor. After all, what analogy is there between physics and history? For whereas physics is concerned with "sensible appearances" and must consequently square with phenomena, history on the contrary, must square with the facts, since history is the written account of events as they actually occurred. If we were to accept such views, how could we maintain the truth insisted on throughout Leo Xlll's Encyclical --viz. that the sacred narrative is absolutely free from error?
In light of several definitive papal statements precluding any error and the summary statement of Vatican II, we must hold the inerrancy (free from all error) of Sacred Scripture as a formal teaching of the Church. For those who are interested in reading the entire texts of three popes who have explicitly taught the absolute inerrancy of Sacred Scripture, I urge you to read the following:
“Providentissimus Deus” by Pope Leo XIII (http://listserv.american.edu/catholic/church/papal/leo.xiii/providen.asc)
“Spiritus Paraclitus” by Pope Benedict XV (http://listserv.american.edu/catholic/church/papal/benedict.xv/b15spiri.txt)
“Divino Afflante Spiritu” by Pope Pius XII (http://www.newadvent.org/docs/pi12da.htm)
Even as we affirm inerrancy, however, it is important to recognize that the truth of the content of divine revelation depends upon certain consideration, such as the intention of the author and the literary genre of the text--the type of writing it is. Hence, inerrancy does not preclude the use of allegory or parable or metaphor or poetry or any number of expressions of thought which are not intended to be understood as literal truth, but truth nonetheless. It then falls to the scholar or Christian reader in general to recognize such literary features in the text, so that we do not approach a text in a manner not intended, with wrong expectations. The Church is open to elements other than literal with regards to the first eleven chapters of Genesis, while still insisting upon inerrancy; at the same time, to my knowledge the Church has never forbidden a literal approach to Genesis. While it might seem unlikely to us, the Church is careful not to overstep what God has revealed, both with regards to the Word itself and our approach to the Word. Let me emphasize: do not confuse the relationship between literary genre and inerrancy. The Scriptures are absolutely INERRANT and yet we can and do admit, as I certainly always have in this forum, the presence of a variety of types (genres) of writing in the Bible ©
There are many parts of Scripture that appear contradictory to us or otherwise elude our understanding as to resolving seeming inconsistencies, but that is due to our limited view and not error on the part of the Word of God. As to the census issue, there are solutions proposed. We must affirm that Jesus was born in the time of King Herod, as that is explicit in the text of St. Matthew, but the matter of the timing of the census is what is at issue. Some suggest that this census St. Luke had in mind is not the more major census that historians are aware of. God bless.
Father Echert
