XIX.
THE USE AND THE ABUSE OF THE BIBLE.
"Revelation and a Church are practically identical. Revelation and Scripture are not."[[1]] Though revelation is necessary to guide the human mind, prone to error, and to sustain the human will, weak by reason of an hereditary fall, we have seen that the Bible is but one channel of that revelation, and that a complementary, secondary one. It neither contains all revealed truth, nor can the truth which it contains be clearly and completely understood without the guidance of an intelligent interpretation. A teacher of any science or art may give a book into the hands of his pupils to serve as a text, as a reminder of his precepts, as a compend of his methods and practice; but no book, no matter how perfectly written, will make us dispense with the teacher. The education, in any direction, which rests upon the sole use of books is essentially defective and misleading.
This is eminently true of the Bible as a text or guide in the acquisition of the highest of arts, the profoundest of sciences, which leads us to the recognition of absolute truth, with an ever-increasing apprehension, because its scope is immeasurable, eternal.
The teacher of revelation, in its first and most important signification, is Christ. He is the central historical figure, announced to man immediately after his fall in Paradise foreshadowed by the prophets in the Jewish Church, and completing His mission in the Christian Church. As the Holy Ghost animated the prophets to foretell Him, and the priests of the synagogue to announce Him in the Old Law, so the Holy Ghost animates the Church to continue His work in the New Law. As books were written by the prophets of old to perpetuate the remembrance of what Jehovah had spoken through them to His people regarding the coming of the Messias, so books were written by the Apostles and disciples of the New Law to perpetuate the remembrance of what that Messias had said and done, and of what He wished us to do. But as the old written Law was not to be a substitute for the commission of teaching and guiding the people through the Jewish Synagogue, so neither was the new written Law intended to be a substitute for the commission of teaching and guiding those who seek salvation through Christ. The Bible alone, as we have already seen, cannot satisfy us in such a way as to supply the full reason for our faith in Christ's teaching. For this we have a Church to whom Christ, as God, gave a direct commission, without adding a book, or an express command to write a book.
But a book was written, written under the guidance of the divine Spirit, who had been promised to the Church whenever it would speak, whether by word of mouth or by epistle and written gospel. And that book, though not containing all truth, contains truth only. Therefore it is useful, as St. Paul says, II. Tim. iii. 16: "All Scripture inspired of God is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work." The use, then, of the Bible is to teach, to instruct in justice, primarily; to make man perfect, furnished to every good work. Mark the twofold term: to teach and to instruct; both teaching and instruction to serve the one end—to make a perfect man, "furnished to every good work."
That the principal purpose and scope of Scripture is to teach the truths of religion has been demonstrated in a former chapter. I have here only to add that, as an instrument of Apologetics, and in discussion with Protestants who admit the divinity of Christ and the inspired character of the Sacred Scriptures, reference to the teachings of the Bible plays a very important part. Whether we are defending our faith against misrepresentation, or desirous of convincing other sincere and open minds of the justness of the claims which the Catholic Church makes as the only true representative of Christ's divine mission to teach the nations, the Bible is a safe and commonly recognized meeting-ground for a fair discussion of the subject.
Even when we have to speak of religion with practical infidels, who read the Bible, or have some knowledge of its contents, that book will serve us as a powerful weapon of defence and persuasion. Few intelligent men or women of to-day, especially if they are earnest, and have a real regard for virtue and truth, though they may consider them as mere gifts of the natural order, fail to recognize that Christianity is a power for good, and that Christ, its Author, is and ever will be the great teacher of mankind, in whose true following man becomes better, nobler, and happier. To illustrate this fact, we may be permitted to quote at some length from an article by Baron Von Hügel in a recent number of the Dublin Review (April, 1895). Speaking of Christ, he cites from various writers, as follows:
Thus "Ernest Rénan, sceptical even to his own scepticism, addresses him and says: 'A thousand times more living, a thousand times more loved, since thy death than during thy passage upon earth, thou wilt become the corner-stone of humanity, to such a point, that to blot out thy name out of the world would be in very truth to shake its very foundations.'[[2]] John Stuart Mill, who tells us of himself: 'I never lost faith, for I never had it,' proclaims at the end of his long life's labors: 'Whatever else may be taken from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more unlike all his predecessors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is no use to say that Christ in the Gospels is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. For who among his disciples or their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee, as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasy were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source.'[[3]] Even so purely Deistic a critic as Abraham Kuenen declares: 'The international religion which we call Christianity was founded, not by the Apostle Paul, but by Jesus of Nazareth, that Jesus whose person and whose teaching are sketched in the Synoptic Gospels with the closest approximation of truth.' 'The need of Christianity is as keen as ever. It is not for less but for more Christianity that the age cries out. Even those many who do not identify Christianity with the ecclesiastical form in which they themselves profess it, and who have no confidence that the world will necessarily conform to them—even these may be at peace. The universalism of Christianity is the sheet-anchor of their hope. A history of eighteen centuries bears mighty witness to it; and the contents of its evidence and the high significance they possess are brought into the clearest light by the comparison with other religions. We have good courage then.'[[4]] So advanced a critic and sensitively loyal a Jew as Mr. Claud Montefiore tells us: 'Some of the sayings ascribed to Jesus have sunk too deep into the human heart, or shall I say into the spiritual consciousness of civilized mankind, to make it probable that any religion which ignores or omits them will exercise a considerable influence outside its own borders. It may be that those who dream of a prophetic Judaism, which shall be as spiritual as the religion of Jesus, and even more universal than the religion of Paul, are the victims of a delusion.'[[5]] So largely naturalistic a critic as Julius Wellhausen writes of our Lord's teaching and person: 'The miraculous is impossible with man, but with God it is possible. Jesus has not only assured us of this, but he has proved it in his own person. He had indeed lost his life and saved it, he could do as he would. He had escaped the bonds of human kind and the sufferings of self-seeking nature. There is in him no trace of that eagerness for action which seeks for peace in the restlessness of its own activity. The completely super-worldly standpoint in which Jesus finds strength and love to devote himself to the world has nothing extravagant about it. He is the first to know himself, not simply in moments of emotion, but in completest restfulness, the child of God; before him no one so felt or so described himself.' 'Jesus not only prophesies the kingdom of God, but brings it out of its transcendence on to earth; he plants at least its germ. The new times already begin with him: the blind see, the deaf hear, the dead arise. Everywhere he found spaciousness for his soul, nowhere was he cramped by the little, much as he put forward the value of the great; this we should do, and not leave that undone. He was more than a prophet; in him the word had become flesh. The historic overweightedness, to which the Jews were succumbing, does not even touch him. A unit arises in the dreary mass, a man from among the rubbish which the dwarfs, the rabbis, had heaped up. He upsets the accidental, the caricature, the dead, and collects the eternally valid, the human divine, in the focus of His individuality. "Ecce homo," a divine wonder in this time and this environment.'"
Such being the view of religiously disposed persons outside of the Catholic Church regarding the New Testament teaching of Christ, it would seem easy at first sight to convince them of the Catholic doctrine by reference to the words of Christ and the Gospels, which contain explicit, if not complete testimony in behalf of the Catholic teaching. There is one difficulty in the way of this, and that is that Protestants themselves distrust the meaning of the New Testament words except in so far as it expresses their own feelings. The principle of private interpretation necessarily leads to this one-sided view. A hundred persons appeal to the one Book as an infallible expression of God's will and truth. Now, some of these infallible expressions manifestly contradict one another as Protestants interpret them. Yet the consequences of such contradictions are vital, and involve eternal life or death. Take the doctrine of baptism by water as essential to salvation, according to the reading of some Protestants; yet the Quaker, no less sincere than his Baptist neighbor, and claiming a special inward light, consciously neglects baptism, holding that the teaching of the New Testament is only meant in a spiritual sense. Equally awful in their consequences are the two contrary doctrines regarding the Eucharistic presence of Christ as declared in the New Testament, one believer drawing the conclusion that he must adore God under the veil of bread, the other equally convinced from the same Scriptures that such a view is sheer idolatry, and that there is nothing divine under the appearance of bread. This appeal to private judgment makes most Protestants sceptical if you attempt to prove to them Catholic doctrine from the New Testament; and unless you can first convince them that the Church has a greater claim to declare the sense of the Bible than any private individual, they will consider their opinion of its meaning and purpose just as good as yours.
But it is different if you appeal to the Old Testament for a confirmation of Catholic doctrine. And I would strongly urge this method for various reasons. Every Protestant will admit that the Old Testament is not only inspired and divine in its origin, but that in its historic expression, even the deutero-canonical portion, contains the application of its meaning and purpose. In other words, that God not merely gave the Israelites a law, but also shows us how He meant them to interpret that law in their lives—domestic, social, and religious. Here, therefore, we have little need, or even opportunity, for private interpretation as to God's meaning. That meaning becomes clear from the action of His people.
At the same time it is also clear and generally admitted that the Old Testament is a foreshadowing of the New Law, hence that the doctrines and practices of the Christian Church have their counterpart in the Old Law. Protestants readily agree to this, in proof of which fact I may be allowed to quote Prof. Robertson Smith:
"Christianity can never separate itself from its historical basis, or the religion of Israel; the revelation of God in Christ cannot be divorced from the earlier revelation on which our Lord built. Indeed, the history of Israel, when rightly studied, is the most real and vivid of all histories; and the proofs of God's working among His people of old may still be made, what they were in time past, one of the strongest evidences of Christianity."[[6]]
Dr. A. B. Bruce in his Apologetics, 1892, p. 325, says: "The Bible, instead of being a dead rule, to be used mechanically, with equal value set on all its parts, is rather a living organism, which, like the butterfly, passes through various transformations before arriving at its highest and final form. We should find Christ in the Old Testament as we find the butterfly in the caterpillar."[[7]]
Hence if you can show to the average intelligent Protestant that a doctrine or practice distinctively of the Catholic Church prevailed in the Jewish Church, you have established an a priori argument for its reasonableness. This applies particularly to such doctrines and practices as Protestants condemn or censure in the Catholic Church from a mere habit of not finding them in their own churches, or from some prejudice nourished by bigotry of early teachers, or by the popular literature of the anti-Catholic type. I only mention such topics as Indulgences, Confession, the Infallibility of the Pope, Celibacy of the clergy and religious, and such like. Now all these things existed in the Old Law, not so completely developed as in the Christian Church, but sufficiently pronounced to establish a motive of credibility for their existence in the Church of Christ. Thus we have the reasonableness of the practice of Confession plainly indicated in the Mosaic times: "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Say to the children of Israel, when a man or woman shall have committed any of all the sins that men are wont to commit, and by negligence shall have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and offended, they shall confess their sin, and shall restore the principal itself, and the fifth part over and above, to him against whom they have sinned" (Num. v. 6-7; also 13-14). The Infallibility of the Pope finds its perfect counterpart in the oracular responses given by the Jewish high-priest when he wore the Urim and Thummim in his breastplate, which covers the precise ground of Papal decisions regarding faith and morals, the breastplate being called "the rational of judgment, doctrine, and truth" (See Exod. xxviii. 30; Levit. viii. 8; Num. xxvii. 21; Deut. xxxiii. 8, etc.).
As to the practice of virginity, we know that it existed among the Jews, as an exceptional condition; but as such it had the sanction of God. Thus the Prophet Jeremias receives the command of virginity from Jehovah directly: "And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Thou shalt not take thee a wife; neither shalt thou have sons and daughters in this place" (Jer. xvi. 2).
Thus practical arguments, of which I can here only indicate a few, may be found for each and all of the usages of the Catholic Church. And any censure of the latter will cast its reflection upon the Jewish dispensation, of which God was Himself the Author and Guardian. For if God sanctioned ceremonies in worship, and infallibility in the high-priest, and virginity in the Prophet whom He selects for a special mission, and confession, with penance and the obligation of restitution, why should Protestants think it so strange to find us practise the same things which have the seal of divine approbation!
Thus they may be inclined more readily to accept the more explicit arguments in favor of Catholic doctrine and discipline as given in the New Testament, which is but the fulfilment of the types suggested in the Old Law.
It is hardly necessary for me to point out in this connection the advantages of being able to disabuse Protestants of the impression that Catholics do not honor the Bible as the word of God. Those who, as Protestants, do not recognize any other source of divine revelation than the written word are, of course, obliged to occupy themselves wholly and entirely with its study, whilst Catholics look upon that same written word, not with less reverence, but with less consciousness of having to rely upon it as the only symbol and exponent of their faith. If we refuse on general principles to have the Bible read to our Catholic children in a public school from a Protestant translation, it is simply because the admission of such a practice implies an admission of a Protestant principle, and might leave a wrong impression upon our children as to the value of the true version of their religion. The Protestant translation of the Bible contains a great deal of truth, but some errors which we cannot admit in our teaching. To give it to our children in the schools is something like planting a Southern flag upon some public institution of the United States. Some may say it is better than none, because it begets patriotism, and as there is no difference in the two flags except the slight one of a few stars and stripes, most people might never notice it. But we know that if they did notice it, it would create considerable disturbance, because it implies something of disloyalty to "Old Glory."
For a like reason Catholics often refuse to kiss the Protestant Bible in court. They prefer simply to affirm. And in this they are perfectly right, although to attest one's willingness to tell the truth on such occasions is not supposed to be a trial of one's faith, and hence it does not involve anything of a denial of Catholic truth.
But I must pass on to one or two illustrations to show in what fields the Bible is not to be used. For though it furnishes most apt means for imparting a knowledge and inciting to the further study of history, languages, the principles of government and ethics, together with the development of a graceful and withal vigorous style of English writing, yet there are limits to its use in some directions. Thus the Bible cannot be considered as replacing the exact sciences. We are quite safe always in affirming that the Bible never contradicts science; that where it does not incidentally confirm the results of scientific research it abstracts from the teaching of science. Its language relating to physical facts is popular, not scientific. There is no reason to think that the inspired writers received any communication from heaven as to the inward workings of nature. They had simply the knowledge of their age, and described things accordingly. Leo XIII. in his recent Encyclical on the study of the Sacred Scriptures strongly reiterates this doctrine, advanced by many Doctors of the Church, namely, that the sacred writers had no intention of initiating us into the secrets of nature or to teach us the inward constitution of the visible world. Hence their language about "the firmament," and how "the sun stood still," as we still say "the sun rises."[[8]]
If, then, we are confronted with some statement by scientists affirming that there is a scientific inaccuracy in the Bible, we have no remark to make but that the Bible was not meant to be a text-book of exact science. If it is urged that there are contradictions between the Bible and science, then the case demands attention. We know that truth cannot contradict itself; but we know that we may err in apprehending it, and that science may err in its assumptions of fact. Hence in the matter of Biblical Apology, when dealing with science, it is of the first importance that we render an exact account to ourselves of what science affirms and of what the Sacred Scripture affirms. It is important to note here the distinction which P. Brucker points out; namely, what science affirms, not what scientists affirm. "The latter often mingle conjecture, more or less probable, with the definitely ascertained results of scientific experiment; they often accept as facts certain observations and plausible conclusions which are not always deduced from legitimate premises nor in a strictly logical method." The human mind is always prone to accept the plausible for the true, the appearance of things for their substance, the general for the universal, the part for the whole, or the probable for the proved. This is demonstrated by the history of scientific hypotheses in nearly every department of human knowledge.
In the next place, we must be quite sure to ascertain what the Sacred Scriptures affirm. Apologists place themselves in a needlessly responsible position when, in the difficult task of determining a doubtful reading of the Sacred Text, they assume an interpretation which may be gainsaid by scientific proof. The teaching of St. Augustine and St. Thomas on this subject is that we are not to interpret in any particular sense any part of Sacred Scripture which admits of a different interpretation. And here Leo XIII. in his Encyclical gives us an important point to consider when he says that the defenders of the Sacred Scriptures must not consider that they are obliged to defend each single opinion of isolated Fathers of the Church.[[9]] There is a difference between a prudent conservatism and a timid and slavish repetition of time-honored views. Also between an intelligent advance of well-founded, though new views, and an excessive temerity, which rashly replaces the tradition of ages by the suggestions of new science.
"Hence any attempt to prove that the statements of the Bible imply in every case exact conformity with the latest results of scientific research is a needless and, under circumstances, a dangerous experiment; for although there are instances where (as in chap. i. of Genesis) the Bible statements anticipate the exactest results of scientific investigation by many centuries, yet it is not and need not be so in all instances.
"Yet whilst we may not consider Moses as anticipating the investigations of a Newton, a Laplace, or a Cuvier, there are cases where the natural purpose and context of the sacred writers develop an exact harmony with the facts of science of which former ages had no right conception. Such are the creation by successive stages, the unity of species, and origin of the human race, etc. But these facts are not proposed as scientific revelations."
In all important questions as to the agreement of the Bible with the results of scientific research we may have recourse with perfect confidence to the living teaching of the Church; where she gives no decision there we are at liberty to speculate, provided the results of our speculation do not conflict with explicit and implied doctrines of truth, that is to say, they must be in harmony with the general analogy of faith.
There is one other topic which I would touch upon in speaking of the use and abuse of the Bible; it is a view which the late Oliver Wendell Holmes is supposed to have advocated. The author of "The Professor at the Breakfast Table" believed that it would be advantageous if the Bible were, as he terms it, depolarized, that is to say, if the translations or versions made from the originals were put in such form as to appeal to the imagination and feelings of the present generation by substituting modern terminology and figures of speech for the old time-honored words of Scriptural comparisons. The aim would be, as I understand it, to do for the written word of God what the Salvation Army leaders are attempting to do for nineteenth century Christianity in general.
In answer to this suggestion it may be said that the attempt has been made in various ways, and seemingly always without result for the better. As we have versions of St. Paul's Epistles in Ciceronian Latin, so we have had travesties of the Gospels intended to popularize the moral maxims they contain. If it is question of making the Bible accessible to the people for the purpose of getting them to read it, devices of this kind may succeed to a degree with those who look for novelty. As to its essential form, the Bible is popular,—appeals to all minds and conditions. This is proved by the experience of centuries, in every clime and among all races.
Those parts which do not directly appeal to a popular sentiment are of a nature to forbid depolarization as above suggested, since in changing them they would necessarily lose their identity, the inherent proofs of their origin, and their underlying mystic and spiritual meaning. So far as they were written, the truths contained in the Bible were to serve all time. To change their form is to tamper with the spirit of a divine language, which, although it comes to us in human sounds, variable according to nationality and time and place, still has an unction, a breath of heaven accompanying it which would vanish as the perfume vanishes from the transplanted flower. There are some truths, some ideas and feelings, which cannot be expressed in popular fashion without losing their essential qualities. One might urge the same reasons in behalf of painting the old Greek statues, because the common people would find it possible to admire them if gaudy coloring helped their imagination to interpret the action of the figures in marble. Some things in the Bible were not written for all, and appeal only to refined and spiritual minds. Others can be easily understood and assimilated, and there are preachers commissioned to make attractive and intelligible that which of itself does not appeal to the rude. There is such a thing as accommodating the words of the Sacred Scripture for the purpose of impressing a truth by analogy, and of the use of this method we have beautiful illustrations in the writings of the Fathers and in the Offices of the Breviary. But the sense by accommodation, as it is called by writers on hermeneutics, does not take liberties with the Sacred Text itself in the manner suggested by the advocates of depolarization. For the rest there is a difference, there always will be a difference, between the qualities that call upon the senses and attract, perhaps, the larger circle of admirers, and that choicer spirit which reaches the soul. You cannot substitute one for the other; their domain is widely apart, though they may use the same instrument.
One tunes his facile lyre to please the ear,
And win the buzzing plaudits of the town;
The other sings his soul out to the stars,
And the deep hearts of men.
You cannot depolarize, without destroying, Dante, or Milton, or any of our great poets; no more can you depolarize the great masterpiece of the Bible. Let us take it as we receive it under the guardianship of the Church. Its apparent imperfections are like the surroundings and exterior of its Founder: a scandal to the Greek, a stumbling-block to the Jew, because they could not realize that a God was hidden in the imperfect guise of poor flesh.
What we consider imperfections to be remedied in the Bible were recognized by the Apostles, and by the chief of them, St. Peter, who writes, II. Pet. iii. 16: "Our dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, has written to you; as also in all his Epistles; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." Here was room for depolarization, yet St. Peter did not take it in hand, neither should we desire scholars of perhaps greater knowledge but less wisdom to do so.
[[1]] Humphrey, "The Sacred Scriptures," l.c.
[[2]] "Vie de Jésus," 1864, p. 426.
[[3]] "Three Essays on Religion," 1874, p. 258.
[[4]] "Hibbert Lectures," 1882, pp. 196, 197.
[[5]] Ibid., 1892, p. 551.
[[6]] "The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," 1892, p. 11.
[[7]] See Dublin Review, article cited above.
[[8]] See Humphrey, "The Sacred Scriptures;" also "Questions Actuelles d'-Ecriture Sainte," by Brucker, S. J.
[[9]] See Appendix.