Teaching Dei Verbum, however, also reveals ways in which the document was, as some have said of
Vatican II in general, “too early,” in that significant issues and questions
remained untouched. Many, but not all, of these issues in biblical studies have
still not been addressed in a systematic manner by the Church, but some were
actually hinted at in other documents of Vatican II and not integrated into Dei Verbum. These are issues which when
teaching the Bible today demand some attention not just for biblical scholars
but for current students.
1) The Jewish People: DV, 15
states, “The principal purpose to which the plan of the old covenant was
directed was to prepare for the coming of Christ, the redeemer of all and of
the messianic kingdom, to announce this coming by prophecy (see Luke 24:44;
John 5:39; 1 Peter 1:10), and to indicate its meaning through various types
(see 1 Cor. 10:12).” I think the passage regarding the OT should have taken more
account of the continuing role of the Hebrew Bible/Tanak for the Jewish people
and the continuing place and role of the Jewish people in God’s salvific plan.
As this issue was covered in Nostra Aetate 4 in some depth, some of
the reflections found in NA should
have found its way into DV, in expanded
form, such as these comments which follow:
Nevertheless, God holds the Jews most
dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or
of the calls He issues-such is the witness of the Apostle.(11) In company with
the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God
alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and
"serve him shoulder to shoulder" (Soph. 3:9).(12)
Since the spiritual patrimony common
to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and
recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all,
of biblical and theological studies as well as of fraternal dialogues.
It is the case, frankly, that
Jewish and Christian dialogue at the academic level has taken root and been
incredibly fruitful since Vatican II, although much of this was already taking
place in light of reflection by biblical scholars on WWII and the holocaust.
The knowledge of Judaism at the time of Jesus has grown amongst Christian
biblical scholars and numerous Jewish scholars of early Christianity and the
New Testament have made their mark on the study of Christianity. It should have
been reiterated in DV, though, particularly
by examining Paul’s words in Romans 9-11, which are footnoted four times in NA, but
not once in DV. This passage should have been discussed and examined at some point
in DV IV, 14-16;
In addition, the claim made in NA 4 regarding the Christian response to
the Jews should also have made its way into DV:
Although the Church is the new people
of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if
this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in
catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach
anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of
Christ.
Furthermore, in her rejection of every
persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares
with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual
love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against
Jews at any time and by anyone.
This sort of statement, as a starting
point, should have been placed in the discussion of the OT and Judaism in Dei Verbum. This would have meant that
everyone studying the Scriptures would have come face to face with the need for
Christians to understand not just the historic role of Judaism in the Church,
but the continuing place of the Jewish people in God’s covenant. It would take
almost 40 years for the Pontifical Biblical Commission to
produce the document The
Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in The Christian Bible, which is not to
suggest this was too late, but it could have been, in shorter form naturally,
much earlier.
2) The History and Development of the Church (Ekklesia): Dei Verbum does not make much note of
the reality of historical development. The word historical appears twice - in DV 12 where it simply notes that truth
is expressed differently in historical, poetic and other sorts of texts and in
19 in which it states that the Church maintains the “historical character” of the Gospels. There should have been some
discussion of historicity especially in connection with development in the
Church. This was on the minds of the Council fathers as Gaudium
et Spes discusses the development of the Church (GS 54, “historical studies make it much easier to see things in
their mutable and evolutionary aspects”); this should have been covered as
well, in DV II, 7-10, preferably 8, in which it states, “this
tradition which comes from the Apostles develop in the Church with the help of
the Holy Spirit.” This development and the historical reality of change could
have been made abundantly clear by discussing the growth and development of the
Church structure, which many students understand as having been established at
one point in history and not having developed over centuries; some discussion
of the Church itself, beyond the apostles, and the growth and development of
the structures of the Church, emerging from both Judaism and early Christianity
itself, including of course the New Testament, would have been welcome. The
1993 PBC document The Interpretation
of the Bible in the Church covered historical critical method well, but
not its application to Church structures.
3) The Impact of the Science on the Study of the Bible: Gaudium
et Spes 62 states, “The recent studies and findings of science, history
and philosophy raise new questions which effect life and which demand new
theological investigations. Furthermore, theologians, within the requirements
and methods proper to theology, are invited to seek continually for more
suitable ways of communicating doctrine to the men of their times; for the
deposit of Faith or the truths are one thing and the manner in which they are
enunciated, in the same meaning and understanding, is another.” A similar comment
in DV, perhaps in Chapters I, II or
VI would have been very productive in opening up discussions of creation and
evolution, especially as it relates to the creation itself, the creation of
human beings with respect to evolution, the first human pair and the doctrine
of original sin, and the way in which the Bible makes assertions in the
language of its day as does science
in the language of our day.
Instead, we remain in the tentative
stages of determining this relationship (the following two paragraphs are taken from my piece Adam and Eve: Real People?). In the
Letter
Of His Holiness John Paul II To Reverend George V. Coyne, S.J. Director Of The
Vatican Observatory (1988), John Paul II acknowledged that we were
still in a feeling out period between science and theology. His comments though
looked positively to the flowering of this relationship:
Apart from the general claim
that we cannot ignore the relationship between science and theology,
significantly he stated that “theology will have to call on the findings
of science to one degree or another as it pursues its primary concern for the
human person, the reaches of freedom, the possibilities of Christian community,
the nature of belief and the intelligibility of nature and history.” This is a
task that will be perpetually unfinished in some ways, as both science and
theology are perpetually unfinished, but it seems that clarity is still needed
in determining the basic implications of what even a theistic understanding of
evolution implies for human origins. This is quite apart from the literary
study of Genesis, which has clearly outlined the complex nature of these myths
of human origins, their relationship to and dependence upon other ancient Near
Eastern accounts of human origins and the theological not historical nature of
these accounts. As John Paul II asked,
These are all excellent questions,
but though GS raised the issue at the
time of Vatican II, these same questions did not find their way into DV which have left these questions less
settled than many Catholic biblical scholars might have thought. For those of
us who have thought the answers of human origins in Catholic theology were more
clearly in line with the findings of evolutionary theory, there seems to be
more ambiguity still to explore.
4) Types of Biblical Interpretation Suitable for the Church: Although
the 1993 Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document, The
Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, noted above, added much to
our understanding of methods acceptable for interpretation, DV would have benefited from some additions to Chapter III, 11-13
specifically dealing with what it means to say that “everything asserted by the
inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy
Spirit” (DV, 11). Does this indicate
that everything written in the Bible is “asserted” by the Holy Spirit? Since
the “truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously
historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter
must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and
actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary
forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture” (DV, 12). Some direct word that not every
text of the Bible is intended to reflect historical and scientific reality
would have been helpful in teaching students beyond the mention that there are
literary genres within the biblical corpus. While this would open up other
questions regarding the historical contextuality and factual nature of statements in the Bible, it would also have been able to orient these
discussions to the theological truth of particular passages and the Bible as a
whole.
As well, though this has been
covered to some extent in The
Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, the relationship between
historical methods and the traditional methods of biblical interpretation in
the Church from antiquity to modernity, such as allegorical, typological and anagogical,
was not explored at all in Dei Verbum.
Only DV 15 regarding the OT even
mentioned the word “types:” “The principal purpose to which the plan of the old
covenant was directed was to prepare for the coming of Christ, the redeemer of
all and of the messianic kingdom, to announce this coming by prophecy (see Luke
24:44; John 5:39; 1 Peter 1:10), and to indicate its meaning through various
types (see 1 Cor. 10:12).” Since that
time, the Catechism of the Catholic
Church 115-119
has noted the spiritual senses and then cited DV 12 in CCC 119 to say
that, "It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules,
towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred
Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer
judgement. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of
interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church
which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over
and interpreting the Word of God.”
But really no guidelines have been given
for how historical study is to relate to the spiritual senses. This remains a
lacuna in biblical studies: how are historical studies, which I call the style
of Antioch, to relate to spiritual senses, which I call Alexandrian (both styles named
after the ancient interpretive styles associated with these ancient Churches)? It is one
thing to take account of ancient and medieval use of allegory, but are current
scholars also intended to engage in such studies as more than archaeological,
albeit significant archaeological, work? Is historical critical work sufficient for research?
5) The Role of Women in the Church: Gaudium
et Spes 55 reads in part, “from day to day, in every group or nation,
there is an increase in the number of men and women who are conscious that they
themselves are the authors and the artisans of the culture of their community.
Throughout the whole world there is a mounting increase in the sense of
autonomy as well as of responsibility. This is of paramount importance for the
spiritual and moral maturity of the human race.” Gaudium
et Spes 54 reads, “the circumstances of the life of modern man have
been so profoundly changed in their social and cultural aspects, that we can
speak of a new age of human history.(1) New ways are open, therefore, for the
perfection and the further extension of culture. These ways have been prepared
by the enormous growth of natural, human and social sciences, by technical
progress, and advances in developing and organizing means whereby men can
communicate with one another.”
The role of women in the Bible and
the developing Church were not considered at Vatican II and this is a gaping
lacuna now for students of the Bible. Students of the Bible in the five decades
since the opening of the council have started to study the structures of human
life in the ancient Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds in a way that might never
have been imagined back then, gaining understanding of the hierarchical nature
of such life, the role of women in marriage, the age of women (or girls) at
marriage and the function of women in both broader social life and the life of
the emerging Church. As such understanding has been gained, it is hard not to
see these structures as socially constructed roles in many respects; yet, it is
these socially constructed roles which influenced passages on women in the NT
which are then said to have eternal value. Sorting out what is a culturally
bound tradition from that which has eternal value for the Church is an ongoing
enterprise of biblical scholarship. Nothing of this issue, however, was noted
directly in DV.
6) The Family: Directly related to the role of women and the passages
just cited from Gaudium
et Spes 54-55 is the understanding that the family as represented in
the OT and NT and in the developing Church was mutable and part of a
hierarchical familial structure common in the Ancient Near East and the
Greco-Roman world. As we understand more the family structure in the ancient
world we understand the roles played by husbands, wives and children in the
family and it makes certain biblical passages regarding family clearer, but
also more challenging. The fact that slaves could not legally be married or
have legally accepted families, or control of their own bodies, that women
remained under the power of the pater
familias or husband, that children attained the age of majority, especially
girls, at a much younger age, subverts our accepted understanding of family and clarifies the differences between today’s
sense of family. The stable nature which we assign to the nuclear family was
not necessarily evident in the ancient world, at least not for the vast
majority of people.
I have raised two sorts of issues or questions: those which
are explicit in Dei Verbum (Part 2); and those questions which have arisen due
to new research on the biblical texts but might have been hinted at by other Vatican
II documents, directly or indirectly (Part 3). The question now is: how should we answer
these two sorts of questions?These will be coming up in the next posts.
John W. Martens
Follow me on Twitter @Biblejunkies
Thanks for a most interesting and helpful series.
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Thanks Chris! I expect two more "parts." I hope to get them done before I stand in front of a class this semester!
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