St. Peter Canisius Apostolate

The authorship of the Bible is intimately connected to the doctrine of divine inspiration. Here’s what the Church says about divine inspiration:

Holy Mother Church accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, 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. (Dei Verbum, no. 11)

Several points need to be made.

First, what do we mean by author? Let’s make a fine distinction between the ideas of author and writer. An author is someone who can speak with authority. A writer is someone who puts words on paper. Most of the time, authors are writers, and writers are authors. David McCullough is both the author (i.e., authority) and writer of 1776; he did the research, the thinking, and the writing. But this is not always the case. Lance Armstrong, for example, is the author of his autobiography, but he did not write it; Sally Jenkins did. And Sally Jenkins is not the author of Armstrong’s story, he is. From this viewpoint, author is greater than writer.

Second, how is God the author of the Bible? Through the Holy Spirit, as Vatican II teaches, he guided the human authors to write “whatever he wanted written, and no more.” So God is the transcendent author, or authority, behind every passage of Scripture. But God did not write the Bible.

Third, Vatican II also teaches us that the human writers were “true authors.” What does this mean? For one thing, it means that God did not dictate his words to them, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim. God made full use of their talents and abilities; they wrote from their own background and understanding. Matthew understood the gospel in his own way, which is different from John’s way. Their words are truly theirs; when we read Matthew, we are really reading what Matthew thought. But at the same time, everything Matthew wrote was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and, therefore, both he and God are the authors of his Gospel.

Fourth, lest anyone desire to separate the divine parts of the Bible from the human parts, Vatican II makes it clear this is impossible. Note the last line: the human authors “consigned to write whatever he wanted written, and no more.” We cannot say that after writing everything God wanted, Paul then went on to add his own ideas. Rather, Paul wrote everything God wanted — and only what God wanted. Every phrase in the Bible comes from God’s mind as well as a human’s.

Whenever we sit down to read, the first question we ask about a book is this one: “What kind of book is it?” The answer (novel, history, true crime) determines how we read it and what we expect from it. We don’t read a crime novel the way we read true crime, and we don’t expect the same kind of accuracy in a historical novel that we do in a biography.

The same is true of the Bible. If we approach it merely as a historical text, as some scholars do, we’ll read it one way; but if we approach it as the inspired word of God, we’ll read it in another way.

The Church sees the Bible as the inspired word of God. As Vatican II states:

Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles, holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted” (Dei Verbum, no. 11)

In this paragraph, the Second Vatican Council wished to make a number of points. (1) The Church holds all the books of the Old Testament and New Testament to be written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. (2) Because the books of the Old Testament and New Testament were inspired, we may rightly say that God is the author of the Bible. (3) Though the writers of the books of the Bible were inspired, they had full use of their powers and abilities, which means that all of their human learning (or lack thereof) is contained in the Bible. (4) Even though the human authors had full use of their faculties, they wrote everything the Holy Spirit wanted and only those things the Spirit wanted; therefore, every book, every chapter, every phrase, every word was inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Now that we know something about the authors — yes, it is correct to speak in the plural — of the Bible, we can now ask a second question: What is the Bible about?

Simply put, the Bible is about how the Triune God acted in history to offer salvation to the human race. This was the primary subject the human authors had before them as they penned the various books of the Bible. They were not interested in detailing the origins of the universe, nor were they interested in preserving precise historical data (as we would define it) about wars and kings. Their goal was simple: To proclaim God’s saving work.

So, then, what kind of book is the Bible? It’s a book, from the first verse of Genesis to the last verse of Revelation, which tells us how God offered salvation to the human race.

How should we read it? With devout attention, because the story of salvation is our story. For example, when we read how God saved the Hebrews from Egypt and led them across the Red Sea and through the wilderness to the promised land, we should see how God has saved us from the slavery of sin through baptism and leads us through the spiritual wilderness of worldly life toward heaven.

What should we expect from reading it? A deeper knowledge of Jesus Christ, for as St. Jerome said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

And finally, where should one begin one’s reading of Scripture? First, I’d recommend you begin with the Gospel of Mark; it’s the shortest Gospel, and after reading it a few times you’ll have a good grasp of the life of Christ and a solid foundation for reading the longer and more complicated Gospels. Second, I recommend you to read through the Psalms. The Psalms are prayers to God inspired by God himself, and they examine all parts of life from a transcendent viewpoint: They teach us how pray and how to see life from a biblical perspective. Third, you’ll want to read the New Testament, and always with a special focus on the Gospels. Finally, you’ll want to work your way through the Old Testament.

Catholics believe the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ really present under the appearance of bread and wine. This belief is called the doctrine of transubstantiation. You won’t find the word “transubstantiation” in the Bible, nor will you find it in the writings of the early Church Fathers. It is a medieval neologism invented around the 11th century to explain what happens when the words of consecration (This is my body…This is my blood) are spoken. The Church used it at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) when she defined her belief of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist vis-à-vis various Protestant understandings.

Martin Luther believed in the Real Presence but taught the doctrine of consubstantiation: The bread and wine coexist with the body and blood of Christ. John Calvin taught that the bread and wine does not change, but that through the symbolism of the bread and wine the soul is truly nourished by Christ. Huldrych Zwingli denies all forms of supernatural meaning to the Eucharist: It is merely a memorial of the Last Supper; Christ is neither present (as Luther taught), nor does the Eucharist provide spiritual nourishment (as Calvin taught). All of these ideas err insofar as they maintain that the bread and wine do not change. At the Council of Trent, the Church, in teaching the doctrine of transubstantiation, asserted the opposite: The bread and wine do indeed change into the body and blood of Christ.

The word “transubstantiation” is composed of two Latin words. Trans is the easier of the two words; it’s a preposition that means “across, over.” Substantia is literally translated as “substance” and means a thing’s nature or essence; for example, the nature, or essence, or substance (whichever word you like) of a man is humanness. A very literal meaning of transubstantiation, then, is “cross-substantiation,” or the crossing over of one substance to another substance. As the foundation of the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist, it means that the substance of the bread and the wine changes into the substance of the body and blood of Christ. It is no longer bread and wine, but Christ really present under the appearance of bread and wine.

There’s another way to think of it. Though our bodies change radically from childhood to old age, we remain the same. In other words, though our appearance changes over the years, our substance — that very reality we identify without our selves — remains the same. With the Eucharist, just the opposite happens. The appearance of the bread and wine do not change, but the substance of the bread and wine does indeed change into the substance of Jesus Christ. ¹

Of course, this is a matter of faith. We all know from receiving Communion that the Eucharistic species taste and smell like bread and wine, and if you were to put a consecrated Host under a microscope it would still have the chemical makeup of bread. It’s not surprising then that people of all ages have found this teaching a difficult one. Even in Jesus day, men found believing in the Eucharist difficult. Many of his followers voiced their objections and left him because of his radical words, and Jesus let them go, saying nothing to assuage the meaning of his words (cf. John 6.52-71).

Indeed, Peter himself would have left if it had not been for his great faith in Jesus: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life?” This, too, should be our response when tempted to doubt the doctrine of transubstantiation. We must have faith in Jesus and the Church he established. We must put aside what our senses tell us and believe that when the priest elevates the Host he is elevating Christ himself, and upon seeing our Eucharistic Lord, we should always make an act of faith and proclaim with doubting Thomas, “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20.28).

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Mortimer Adler’s Truth in Religion treats a difficult topic. Our scientific worldview has taught us that material and/or experimental proof is the only valid test for truth, and our pluralism tells us that we must be tolerant of other’s views. Since religious truth is improvable by scientific methods, and since the plurality of religions makes it difficult to hold that one religion might possesses the fullness of truth, how can we speak of truth in religion?

Religious Pluralism

First, Adler discusses plurality. He distinguishes between matters of taste and matters of truth. Matters of taste would include food, clothing, entertainment, political views, etc.; insofar as none of these contains any truth, they are all subject to matters of taste and therefore a plurality of these things is both good and necessary. Matters of truth would include all scientific, historical, philosophical, and religious truth, and they exclude the possibility of plurality.

To understand this distinction, we need to understand that Adler is speaking of logical truth. In On Interpretation, Aristotle distinguishes between contradictory statements and contrary statements. The statement “God exists” is contradictory to the statement “God does not exist,” and therefore one statement is true and the other is false, for God either exists or does not; there is no middle ground.

Contrary statements have more leeway. “Christianity is true” and “Islam is true” are contrary; both statements cannot be true because Christianity and Islam contain doctrines that are incompatible with one another. Yet, both Christianity and Islam may be false and another religion — Judaism, for example — may be true. So whereas contradictory statements necessitate that only one statement is true and the other is false, contrary statements allows that one statement may be true, but also that both statements may be false. Thus, when Adler speaks of matters of truth, he means matters of logical truth.

Insofar as religions contain matters of truth (doctrines) and not just matters of taste (forms of prayer), religions are subject to the logic of truth. Since plurality is possible only in matters of taste, we cannot accept religious pluralism so long as religions hold to matters of truth. Just as we exclude pluralism from the domains of science, history, and philosophy, we must exclude pluralism from the domain of religion. We cannot accept with intellectual honesty the possibility of religious pluralism.

A side note: Not all religions contain explicit doctrinal or creedal statements; some religions contain only ethical codes. Adler contends, however, that all ethical codes assume a doctrinal framework. Take, for example, the Golden Rule. We find it in creedal religions as well as non-creedal religions. Even without an explicit creedal statement, this simple and universal ethical code implies a creedal framework: (a) that human beings are distinct from animals, (b) that human beings are the same, (c) that there is a universal good for all human beings, and (d) that we can know what this universal good. If ethical statements contain implicit doctrinal assumptions, even religions without doctrinal statements are subject to the laws of logical truth and, therefore, are either true or false.

Religious Truth

Some will say religious truth is impossible because we cannot prove religious creeds by scientific experiment. Adler points out that we prove neither historical nor philosophical truth by scientific experiment; the different sciences have different means at arriving at truth. If this is the case with science, history, and philosophy, it is also the case with religion.

Yet, religion is different insofar as religious claims are beyond what human can know through reason alone. Almost all religions claim their doctrines were revealed by superhuman means. In the Catholic faith, we call this Divine Revelation. Though a philosopher can prove philosophically that we can trust our senses or that God exists, no creedal religion can prove its creedal statements. But just because a religion cannot prove its creedal statements does not mean religions are not subject to the laws of logical truth. “Jesus Christ is God” and “Jesus Christ is not God” are contradictory statements. Though we cannot prove which statement is true and which is false, that does not mean that one is true and the other is false, for Jesus Christ cannot be both God and not-God.

Still, there is a matter of practical difficulty: if we cannot prove which creedal statement is true, what are we to do with the man claims to religious truth? How is one who is devoted to the truth to navigate through the world’s many religions? Don’t we have little hope in knowing truth if we have no help deciding which religion is true.

To answer this difficult problem, Adler appeals to a medieval debate. Averroes (d. 1198) was an Islamic philosopher who said that there are two distinct kinds of truths, the truths of religion and the truths of science and philosophy; he said this in an attempt to reconcile the contradictions between his Aristotelianism and his Islamic religion, and by saying it caused a firestorm within medieval Islamic communities. In the 13th century, this debate carried from the Middle East to Christian Europe, and St. Thomas Aquinas found himself in the middle of it. St. Thomas’s answer was simple: just as God is one, truth is one; just as God is a unity, truth is a unity; therefore, we cannot separate scientific truth from philosophical truth from religious truth. If a scientific, philosophical, or religious claim contracts a claim made by the other two fields, we have made an error in thought, the contradiction is in appearance only.

Thus, the principle of the unity of truth is the way to begin answering the question, Which religion is true? If creedal statements (either explicit or implicit) contradict what we know with certainty from science, history, or philosophy, we know those religious statements are false.

Thus, any religion that make creedal statements must be willing to subject these statements to the unity of truth. The creedal statements cannot contract known fact. The upshot of this, which Adler only hints at, is that if any religion can pass the test of the unity of truth, that religion will bring coherence to what we know through science, history, and philosophy. The religion will do for the intellect what it does for the soul-bring healing and wholeness.

Conclusion

Adler’s point in Truth in Religion is not to declare which religion is true. His point is to establish the philosophical foundations needed in order to begin answering the question. However, Adler is willing to take one step in this direction. Insofar as they all reject the philosophical truth that one God exists, and insofar as they reject the unity of truth (in other words, they maintain an implicit Averroism), Adler claims all Far Eastern religions are false. He is left with the three great Western monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — and he leaves it at that.

Truth in Religion is not an easy book. The subject matter is both difficult as well as personal. To think logically and philosophically about any topic is hard, but when the topic is as personal as religion, the book takes on special problems. Readers who have Averroistic tendencies — readers who want to keep religious truths separate from scientific, historical, and philosophical truths — will have tremendous problems with Adler’s book. Those, however, who believe in the Thomistic principle of the unity of truth will find that Adler’s book is a profound reflection on the philosophical foundations of religious truth as well as an excellent book concerning the philosophical foundations of apologetics.

Highly recommended.

Angelo Cardinal Scola writes in the Fall 2006 issue of Communio about the surprising topic of Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love):

The interventions of the Magisterium of the Church do not in fact correspond either to pre-established programs or to the particular sensitivities of their authors. They always arise at the Spirit’s prompting from a consideration of the concrete need of the Christian people. They emerge because an opportunity is perceived to offer an aid to the evaluation of crucial aspects of human experience (stealing a term from the language of calculus, we might speak of “fundamentals”) whose meaning has become confused or even sometimes completely lost or twisted.

What makes this comment so interesting is the author’s deep faith that the teaching authority of the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit. Whatever the Church says at a particular time, she says because the Holy Spirit has prompted her to say it.

We must, of course, not confuse the Spirit’s influence on the Magisterium with the teaching of biblical inspiration. By biblical inspiration, the Church means that the Holy Spirit had complete control over the writing of the biblical texts; that everything and only those things the Spirit wanted contained in a text are in the text — nothing more, and nothing less. This extra-ordinary form of inspiration is limited to the Bible alone.

But if we believe that the Church is truly the Body of Christ, and that Christ truly gave the Church teaching authority the power to persevere complete and without error the fullness of his teaching; and if we believe that Christ is solicitious about his Church, desiring to lead her to the heights of holiness in order that she can bring all people to the heavenly Father — if we believe all of this, it is only natural that we should believe that the Church does not speak without first being moved by the Holy Spirit, the one who knows what the Church needs at every moment in her history. We should, therefore, approach every papal encyclical with great eagerness, for its themes are those that the Triune God wishes us to ponder.

From In Conversation with God, Volume 3, Seventh Week, Monday:

In our apostolate, we should be aware that often the great hindrance to many souls accepting the Faith, recognizing their vocation, or leading a consistent Christian life, is provided by personal sins unrepented of, disordered affections, and a lack of correspondence with divine grace. Man, influenced by his prejudices or stirred up by his passions or bad will, is not only able to deny the evidence of external signs plain to be seen before his very eyes, but can also resist and reject the high inspirations God infuses into his soul. If one is without the desire to believe and to do the will of God in everything, whatever the cost, one will simply not accept even what is glaringly evident. Thus, the person who lives shut up in his own egoism, who doesn’t seek the good but only his comfort and pleasure, will have a difficult time believing or understanding a noble ideal. And, in the case of a person who has already taken the step of giving himself to God, he will find within himself a growing resistance to the specific demands of his vocation.

There are three things that hinder us in our spiritual life:

1. Unrepentant sins.
2. Disordered affections.
3. A lack of correspondence with divine grace.

The first, unrepentant sin, is pretty easy to define: One is not sorry for one’s actions. The second, disordered affections, simply means that we have bad desires — for food, for money, for sex, for comfort, for material things, and so forth. The third, a lack of correspondence with divine grace, means that we are not docile to God’s will. By way of summary, we could call these three things sinful actions, sinful desires, and sinful negligence.

The more I read and study — not to mention my own attempts to live the Christian life in a better way — the more convinced I am that the what people most need to hear nowadays is that intimacy with God is impossible without living a mortified life. One must die to one’s sinful action, sinful desires, and sinful negligence.

Here are excerpts from a treatise by St. Cyprian on the Our Father. About this treatise, Pope Benedict XVI said: “I particularly like his book on the ‘Our Father’ which has helped me to understand and pray better the ‘Lord’s Prayer.’ Cyprian teaches us that precisely in the Our Father, Christians are offered the right way of praying.” You can find the entire treatise here.

Our Father, who art in heaven

He who preaches peace and unity did not want us to pray by ourselves in private or for ourselves alone. We do not say My Father, who art in heaven, nor Give me this day my daily bread. It is not for himself alone that each person asks to be forgiven, not to be led into temptation or to be delivered from evil. Rather, we pray in public as a community, and not for one individual but for all. For all the people of God are one. [...].

We are new men; we have been reborn and restored to God by his grace. We have already begun to be his sons and we can say Father. John reminds us of this: He came to his own home, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he grave the power to become children of God. Profess your belief that you are sons of God by giving thanks. Call upon God who is your Father in heaven.

Hallowed by your name

It is not that we think to make God holy by our prayers; rather we are asking God that his name be made holy in us. Indeed, how could God be made holy, he who is the source of holiness? Still, because he himself said: Be holy, for I am holy, we pray and beseech him that we who have been hallowed in baptism may persevere in what we have begun. And we pray for this every day, for we have need of daily sanctification; sinning every day, we cleanse our faults again by constant sanctification.

Thy kingdom come

We pray that God’s kingdom will become present for us in the same way that we ask for his name to be hallowed among us. For when does God not reign, when could there be in him a beginning of what always was and what will never cease to be? What we pray for is that the kingdom promised to us by God will come, the kingdom won by Christ’s blood and passion. Then we who formerly were slaves in this world will reign from now on under the dominion of Christ, in accordance with his promise: Come, O blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which was prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven

We pray not that God should do his will, but that we may carry out his will. How could anyone prevent the Lord from doing what he wills? But in our prayers we ask that God’s will be done in us, because the devil throws up obstacles to prevent our mind and our conduct from obeying God in all things. So if his will is to be done in us we have need of his will, that is, his help and protection. No one can be strong by his own strength or secure save by God’s mercy and forgiveness. Even the Lord, to show the weakness of the human nature which he bore, said: Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, and then, by way of giving example to his disciples that they should do God’s will and not their own, he added: Nevertheless, not as I will but as you will.

Give us this day our daily bread.

We who live in Christ and receive his Eucharist, the food of salvation, ask for this bread to be given us every day. Otherwise we may be forced to abstain from this communion because of some serious sin. In this way, we shall be separated from the body of Christ, as his taught us in the words: I am the bread of life which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats my bread will live for ever and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. Christ is saying, then, that anyone who eats his bread will live forever. Clearly they possess life who approach his body and share in the Eucharistic communion. For this reason we should be apprehensive and pray that no one has to abstain from this communion, lest he be separated from the body of Christ and be far from salvation. Christ has warned of this: If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood you will have no life in you. We pray for our daily bread, Christ, to be given to us. With his help, we who live and abide in him will never be separated from his body and his grace.

Forgive us our trespasses…

Christ clearly laid down an additional rule to bind us by a certain contractual condition: we ask that our debts be forgiven insofar as we forgive our own debtors. Thus we are made aware that we cannot obtain what we ask regarding our own trespasses unless we do the same for those who trespass against us. This is why he says elsewhere: The measure you give will be the measure you get. And the servant who, after his master forgives all his debt, refuses to forgive his fellow servant is thrown into prison. Because he refused to be kind to his fellow servant, he lost the favor his master had given him.

Lead us not into temptation

These words show us that the adversary can do nothing against us except what God has previously permitted. Therefore, all our fear, and devotion, and obedience may be turned towards God, since in our temptations nothing is permitted to evil unless power is given from Him. This is proved by divine Scripture, which says, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem, and besieged it; and the Lord delivered it into his hand. But power is given to evil against us according to our sins, as it is written, Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to those who make a prey of Him? Did not the Lord, against whom they sinned, and would not walk in His ways, nor hear His law? And He has brought upon them the anger of His wrath. And again, when Solomon sinned, and departed from the Lord’s commandments and ways, it is recorded, And the Lord stirred up Satan against Solomon himself.

But deliver us from evil

After all these things, in the conclusion of the prayer comes a brief clause, which shortly and comprehensively sums up all our petitions and our prayers. For we conclude by saying, But deliver us from evil, comprehending all adverse things which the enemy attempts against us in this world, from which there may be a faithful and sure protection if God deliver us, if He afford His help to us who pray for and implore it. And when we say, Deliver us from evil, there remains nothing further which ought to be asked. When we have once asked for God’s protection against evil, and have obtained it, then against everything which the devil and the world work against us we stand secure and safe. For what fear is there in this life, to the man whose guardian in this life is God?