Chapters of Bible Study Part 6

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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d was Himself the Author and Guardian. For if G.o.d sanctioned ceremonies in wors.h.i.+p, 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 rest.i.tution, 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 G.o.d. 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 inst.i.tution 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 pa.s.s on to one or two ill.u.s.trations 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.sumptions 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 p.r.o.ne 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 a.s.sume 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 repet.i.tion 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 circ.u.mstances, a dangerous experiment; for although there are instances where (as in chap. i. of Genesis) the Bible statements antic.i.p.ate 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 a.n.a.logy 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 subst.i.tuting 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 G.o.d 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 ident.i.ty, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 a.s.similated, 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 a.n.a.logy, and of the use of this method we have beautiful ill.u.s.trations 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 subst.i.tute 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 guardians.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 Jesus," 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.

XX.

THE VULGATE AND THE REVISED PROTESTANT VERSION OF THE BIBLE.

In inst.i.tuting here a comparison between the two approved and typical English Versions of the Bible as in use among Catholics and Protestants respectively, I have no intention to be aggressive or polemic. As from the first we have taken what may be called the common-sense point of view in judging the Bible as an historical work, which verifies its claims to be regarded as an organ communicating to us divine knowledge, so we proceed to make a brief suggestive examination of two English Bibles: one found in the homes of Catholics, the other in those of our Protestant friends and neighbors, many of whom believe with all sincerity that among the various doubts and difficulties of life they can consult no truer guide than that sacred volume.

Taking the two volumes as a whole, and considering only their general contents, there is but little difference between them. I compared them in a former chapter to the two American flags of North and South: viewed in themselves, these are both of the same origin, copied from the same pattern, and emblems, both, of American independence. Though they differ only in some detail that might escape the superficial observer, they nevertheless represent very widely different principles, for which the men of the South as of the North were willing to stake their lives. They might meet in friendly intercourse in all the walks of daily life, but if you ask a Union soldier to carry the Southern flag, he will say: No; for though it looks very much like my own, there is a difference, and that difference const.i.tutes a vital principle with me.

Catholics have to make much the same answer when told that they might accept the Protestant Bible in their public relations with those who do not recognize the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has the old Bible, as it came down the ages, complete and without changes. She has no reason to discard it, and she has good reason not to accept another Bible, though its English be sweeter and its periods fall upon the ear like the soft cadences of Southern army songs. We cannot sing from its tuneful pages, because it represents the principle of opposition to its original source and parent-stock, and no union can be effected except by the elimination of that principle.

Catholics claim that their Bible, in point of fidelity to the original--and this is the _essential_ point when we speak of a translation of such a book--Catholics claim that their Bible, in point of fidelity to the original, is as superior to the Protestant English Bible of King James as it is, we admit, inferior in its English. "The translators of the Catholic Version considered it a lesser offence to violate some rules of grammar than to risk the sense of G.o.d's word for the sake of a fine period."[1]

What proof have we for such a claim? I answer that we have the strongest proof in the world which we could have on such a subject outside of a divine revelation, namely, the admission on the part of the guardians and translators themselves of the Protestant Bible. Now, when I say guardians and translators of the Protestant Bible, I do not mean merely the testimony of a few great authorities in the past or present who may have expressed their opinion as to the faults and defects of the latest English Protestant translation. That would not be fair. But I mean that the history itself of Protestant translations made since the days of King James, not to go back any farther, is a standing argument of the severest kind:

First, _against_ the correctness of the _Protestant_ English Versions; and,

Secondly, _for_ the correctness of the _Catholic_ English Version.

For if we compare the first Protestant English Version (which departed considerably from the received Catholic text of the Vulgate) with all the succeeding revisions made at various times by the English Protestants, we find that they have steadily returned towards the old Catholic Version. This is not only an improvement as an approach to the Catholic teaching, but it is also a confession, however reluctantly made, of past errors on the part of former Protestant translators.

At the time of their separation from the Catholic Church the reformers, so-called, had to give reasons for their defection. They found fault with one doctrine or another in the old Catholic Church, such as the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, the jurisdiction of bishops, the Holy Sacrifice, celibacy, confession, etc. To justify the rejection of these doctrines they must appeal to some authority: if not to the Pontiff, then to the king, or to the Bible, or to both simultaneously.

But though the king might favor their novelties of doctrine inasmuch as they relieved his conscience of the reproach of disobedience to the Pontiff, who knew but one law of morals for the prince and the peasant, the Bible as. .h.i.therto read was against them. Now, Luther had given distracted Germany an example of what might be done in the way of whittling down the supernatural, and eliminating some of the irksome duties imposed by the old Church. He had made a new translation of the Bible, threw out pa.s.sages, nay, whole books,[2] which did not meet his views, and added here and there a little word which did admirable service by setting him right with a world that for the most part could neither read Hebrew nor Latin nor Greek, and trusted him for a learned translator.

In similar fas.h.i.+on an English translation had already been attempted by Wiclif about 1380, and almost simultaneously by Nicolas of Hereford.

There existed in England at the time of Luther an edition of the Scriptures called the "great Bible." It was Catholic up to its fourth edition, that of 1541. Then, as is generally supposed, it was revised by the Elizabethan bishops in 1508, and in 1611, after a more lengthened revision, it appeared as a King James "Authorized Version."

Since then various revisions and corrections of this Bible have been printed, each succeeding one eliminating some of the previous errors.

Mr. Thomas Ward has made up an interesting book called "Errata--the truth of the English translations of the Bible examined," or "a treatise showing some of the errors that are found in the English translation of the Sacred Scriptures used by Protestants against such points of religious doctrine as are the subject of controversy between them and the members of the Catholic Church." Dr. Ward's book embraces a comparison between the Catholic English translation and the various Protestant versions up to the year 1683, for since then no changes were made in the English Protestant Bible called the authorized version until 1871, when the work of a new revision, published between 1881-85, was undertaken, which is not included in Dr. Ward's "Errata."

Why was this last revision made? Was not the King James version of 1611, for the most part, beautiful English? As to the rest, was it not for every Protestant an absolute, infallible rule of faith? The language was good, the truth still better; what need, then, was there to revise?

The revisers of 1881 tell us that the language of the old English version could be improved, and that they meant to improve it. The older translators, they say, "seem to have been guided by the feeling that their version would secure for the words they used a lasting place in the language; ... but it cannot be doubted that the studied avoidance of uniformity in the rendering of the same words, even when occurring in the same context, is one of the blemishes in their work."

But are the changes of language or expression all that the reviewers of this infallible text-book aim at? No. Listen to what Dr. Ellicott in the Preface to the Pastoral Epistles says:

"It is vain to cheat our souls with the thought that these errors are either insignificant or imaginary. There _are_ errors, there _are_ inaccuracies, there _are_ misconceptions, there _are_ obscurities, not, indeed, so many in number or so grave in character as some of the forward spirits of our day would persuade us; but there _are_ misrepresentations of the language of the Holy Ghost; and that man who, after being in any degree satisfied of this, permits himself to bow to the counsels of a timid or popular obstructiveness, or who, intellectually unable to test the truth of these allegations, nevertheless permits himself to denounce or deny them, will, if they be true, most surely at the dread day of final account have to sustain the tremendous charge of having dealt deceitfully with the inviolable Word of G.o.d."[3]

So this book, the infallible voice of G.o.d revealing His ways, this sole rule of faith for millions of Englishmen, and by which millions had lived and sworn and died during more than two centuries, had to be revised, not only as to the form, but in the matter also. Two committees were formed, about fifty of the members being from England, thirty from America--Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, etc.