Let the Bible be “entrusted” to the faithful

In his speech to members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Pope Francis said “the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures cannot be only an individual scientific effort, but must always confront itself with, be inserted within and authenticated by the living tradition of the Church”

The speech given by Francis to members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission this morning followed faithfully in the footsteps of his predecessor Benedict XVI teaching. Members of the Commission – scholars and theologians from all over the world gathered under the leadership of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mgr. Gerhard Müller - concluded a period of reflection on the theme: the inspiration and truth of the Bible. Benedict XVI had drawn attention to this during the 2008 Synod on Sacred Scripture.

The bottom line question revolves around the role of modern disciplines and scientific techniques – textual analysis, palaeographical analysis of texts, archaeological and historical discoveries, philological work on sources and so on – in the Church's interpretation of the Bible. The path outlined by Ratzinger, whilst not underestimating the value of scientific findings, reaffirmed the fact that one cannot truly “understand” the Bible and its texts unless it is through the eyes of faith, in the light of the Church's thousand-year-old history, whilst always taking into account the organic relationship between each of the Bible's books and the Bible as a whole and the message Christians find in it.

Francis clearly echoes this line of thought: “The interpretation of the Holy Scriptures cannot be only an individual scientific effort, but must always confront itself with, be inserted within and authenticated by the living tradition of the Church. This norm is essential to specify the correct relationship between exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” Francis said during today's audience.

Francis believes the Second Vatican Council reiterated with “great clarity” that there is an unbreakable unity between Scripture and Tradition, as both come from the same source... and are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.”

This is why, according to the Pope, every subjective interpretation is insufficient “as simply limited to an analysis incapable of embracing the global meaning that has constituted the Tradition of the entire People of God.” “The interpretation of the Holy Scriptures cannot be only an individual scientific effort, but must always confront itself with, be inserted within and authenticated by the living tradition of the Church. This norm is essential to specify the correct relationship between exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” Francis added.

At the same time, the Pope guarded against a literal reading of the sacred text, recalling that the Bible “the testimony in written form of God's Word” whereas the “Word of God precedes and exceeds the Bible.” Hence the Christian faith has at its centre not just a book “but a history of salvation and especially a Person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh.”

The Primacy of Peter of Gregory is not the same primacy of Peter of Rome today. It is a very different worldview.

Klaus Schatz [Jesuit Father theologian, professor of church history at the St. George’s Philosophical and Theological School in Frankfurt] on Priesthood, Canon, and the Development of Doctrine in his work, “Papal Primacy”:

. if we ask in addition whether the primitive church was aware, after Peter’s death, that his authority had passed to the next bishop of Rome, or in other words that the head of the community at Rome was now the successor of Peter, the Church’s rock and hence the subject of the promise in Matthew 16:18-19, the question, put in those terms, must certainly be given a negative answer.

"If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no." (pages 1-3)

Before the second half of the second century there was in Rome no monarchical episcopacy for the circles mutually bound in fellowship. Peter Lampe's extensive work, "From Paul to Valentinus," chapter 41, pages 397

The New Testament contains no explicit record of a transmission of Peter's leadership; nor is the transmission of apostolic authority in general very clear. Furthermore, the Petrine texts were subjected to differing interpretations as early as the time of the Church Fathers. - http://www.prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/arcic/doc/e_arcic_authority2.html

The late Catholic priest and major Biblical scholar Raymond Brown (twice appointed to Pontifical Biblical Commission) states,

“The claims of various sees to descend from particular members of the Twelve are highly dubious. It is interesting that the most serious of these is the claim of the bishops of Rome to descend from Peter, the one member of the Twelve who was almost a missionary apostle in the Pauline sense – a confirmation of our contention that whatever succession there was from apostleship to episcopate, it was primarily in reference to the Puauline tyupe of apostleship, not that of the Twelve.” (“Priest and Bishop, Biblical Reflections,” Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur, 1970, pg 72.)

The Catholic historian Paul Johnson (educated at the Jesuit independent school Stonyhurst College, and at Magdalen College, Oxford, author of over 40 books and a conservative popular historian,) writes in his 1976 work, “History of Christianity” :

Eusebius presents the lists as evidence that orthodoxy had a continuous tradition from the earliest times in all the great Episcopal sees and that all the heretical movements were subsequent aberrations from the mainline of Christianity.

Looking behind the lists, however, a different picture emerges. In Edessa, on the edge of the Syrian desert, the proofs of the early establishment of Christianity were forgeries, almost certainly manufactured under Bishop Kune, the first orthodox Bishop.

In Egypt, Orthodoxy was not established until the time of Bishop Demetrius, 189-231, who set up a number of other sees and manufactured a genealogical tree for his own bishopric of Alexandria, which traces the foundation through ten mythical predecessors back to Mark, and so to Peter and Jesus.

Even in Antioch, where both Peter and Paul had been active, there seems to have been confusion until the end of the second century. Antioch completely lost their list; “When Eusebius’s chief source for his Episcopal lists, Julius Africanus, tried to compile one for Antioch, he found only six names to cover the same period of time as twelve in Rome and ten in Alexandria. http://reformation500.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/historical-literature-on-the-earliest-papacy/

Eusebius, while invaluable, also only sincerely believed and recorded as fact (Church History I.13) the “Legend of Abgar,” a story of a correspondence between the Lord and the local potentate at Edessa. Relative to this, Lightfoot writes of him, “A far more serious drawback to his value as a historian is the loose and uncritical spirit in which he sometimes deals with his materials. This shows itself in diverse ways. He is not always to be trusted in his discrimination of genuine and spurious documents.”

Roger Collins ((M.A., D. Litt., F.R.Hist.S., F.S.A. Scot., English medievalist at Edinburgh), writing of the Symmachan forgeries”, describes these “pro-Roman” “enhancements” to history:

So too would the spurious historical texts written anonymously or ascribed to earlier authors that are known collectively as the Symmachan forgeries. This was the first occasion on which the Roman church had revisited its own history, in particular the third and fourth centuries, in search of precedents. That these were largely invented does not negate the significance of the process...

Some of the periods in question, such as the pontificates of Sylvester and Liberius (352-366), were already being seen more through the prism of legend than that of history, and in the Middle Ages texts were often forged because their authors were convinced of the truth of what they contained. Their faked documents provided tangible evidence of what was already believed true...

“It is no coincidence that the first systematic works of papal history appear at the very time the Roman church’s past was being reinvented for polemical purposes.” (Collins, “Keepers of the Keys of Heaven,” pp 80-82).

Also from Johnson,

With Cyprian, then, the freedom preached by Paul and based on the power of Christian truth was removed from the ordinary members of the Church, it was retained only by the bishops, through whom the Holy Spirit still worked, who were collectively delegated to represent the totality of Church members. They were given wide powers of discretion, subject always to the traditional and attested truth of the Church and the scriptures. They were rulers, operating and interpreting a law. With Bishop Cyprian, the analogy with secular government came to seem very close. But of course it lacked one element: the ‘emperor figure’ or supreme priest…

There is no evidence that Rome exploited this text [Mt. 16:18] to assert its primacy before about 250 – and then, interestingly enough, in conflict with the aggressive episcopalian Cyprian – but what is clear is that in the second half of the second century, and no doubt in response to Marcion’s Pauline heresy – the first heresy Rome itself had experienced – Paul was eliminated from any connection with the Rome episcopate and the office was firmly attached to Peter alone…

The Church survived, and steadily penetrated all ranks of society over a huge area, by avoiding or absorbing extremes, by compromise, by developing an urbane temperament and erecting secular-type structures to preserve its unity and conduct its business. There was in consequence a loss of spirituality or, as Paul would have put it, of freedom… (A History of Christianity, by Paul Johnson, see pp. 51- 61, 63. [transcribed using OCR software])

Ratzinger asserted, Even stated, we are fairly certain today that, while the Fathers were not Roman Catholics as the thirteenth or nineteenth century world would have understood the term, they were, nonetheless, ‘Catholic,’ (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, Theolgische Prinzipienlehre ]San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987], p. 141.)

“St Paul only had hope; who are you to have such certainty?”

Saint Paul had assurance; who are you to go against the word of God?

Me? Your verses refer to those whom God has chosen. It does not call out anyone in particular for certain. Paul speaks at great length throughout his Epistles about faith and hope.

1 Corinthians: 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

No certainty there. Faith. Hope. Love. So I ask again, how does GPH have certainty, while calling on the name of Paul, yet Paul does not have certainty?

“The Catholic Church began there, true.”

Indeed, too bad the Roman church isn’t the Catholic church. It just has Romanists in it, who don’t even hold the same beliefs as “Popes” like Gregory, or Bishops like Augustine, and many others, whom they claim as forebears.

Piffle. Those who talk about the "Roman" church or "Romanists" and so on say a lot of mush like this that really doesn't mean anything. Augustine contributed much, but at one point in his life, he drifted into heresy. I don't hold those heretical beliefs, if that's what you mean.

And to which Gregory (Gregorius) are you referring? There were 16. If you are referring to Gregory the Great, are you alluding to the creation of the Pre Tridentine Mass? If so, does that mean that with my fondness of the Tridentine Mass, you would claim that I don't hold the same beliefs as him?

And the top of the morning to ye!!!!

I have not been posting overly much of late. Time and circumstance have been pressing on me.

God has no grandchildren. Only children. Every true believer is related directly to Him. Baptized by the Spirit into His Body, included as part of His Bride, included in the universal communion of the saints, immediately.

However, one must realize that if one does not enter into the relationship with God fully, or for selfish purposes, or walks away from it, then one effectively divorces God. St Paul is very clear on this - it is a lifetime commitment, not a one shot deal.

The believer who comes to Christ in a jungle or desert, who comes to entrust himself to Christ for salvation today, is part of His Church, though he is the first generation. Every true believer is the first generation. Where two or more are gathered for prayer and worship, His Body, His Bride, His Church is there. As such it ALL begins with HIM. It ALL ends with HIM. It’s ALL for His glory. EVERY church that is comprised of true believers was begins at the same time in history - directly attached to HIM.

Now, you're qualifying things. True believers? How many churches are comprised entirely of true believers? When you wander the mall and see a church of Joe in one of the storefronts, and look inside and see what? What's in there? The preacher has what credentials? What theological training? What ensures that he (don't get me started on female preachers) holds Christian beliefs?

Nuthin'.

Having said all that, it is great to see you :-)

You are most kind; thank you. I miss posting to the extent that I formerly did; perhaps I have contributed at least something.

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