In a previous post, I reviewed some recently expressed opinions about the importance of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican known as Vatican II.  In this post, I will examine one of the documents produced by the council called Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation – Dei Verbum.  This document captures the revised approach adopted by the Catholic Church in the 1960’s for the purpose of understanding God’s will through the reading of Scripture.  In the discussion below, quotations from Dei Verbum are italicized.

From its very beginning, the document puts Christ, rather than Scripture itself, at the center of any attempt to understand God’s will.  In Section 2, it says:

In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph. 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4). Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col. 1;15, 1 Tim. 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex. 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar. 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself.

Clearly, the emphasis is on John 1 in which Christ is called the Word and is described as the light that shines in the darkness of the world.  Through Christ, a relationship of love and friendship is established between God and humans.  Indeed, in John 15:14-15, Jesus says to his disciples:

“You are my friends if you do what I command.  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

This relationship should be contrasted with the suzerain-to-vassal relationship implied in the covenant made on Mount Sinai through Moses.  There is an effort here to give an impression of continuity between New and Old Testament by including Exodus 33:11 as a reference.  However, the friendship implied by this verse is only between God and Moses while the rest of the Israelites are described as terrified by God’s presence (Exodus 19:12-24, 20:18-21).

While the Bible presents both Moses and Jesus as mediators, the document gives a special place to Jesus:  

By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation. (Matt. 11:27; John 1:14 and 17; 14:6; 17:1-3; 2 Cor 3:16 and 4, 6; Eph. 1, 3-14)

Clearly, it is assumed that the fullness of revelation was not available until Christ came.  Significant mistakes can be made when conclusions are drawn from incomplete revelation on matters of theology and ethics, and those who have the fullness of revelation available are held to a higher degree of accountability when they choose to promote such mistaken conclusions.

In Section 3, the biblical storyline is put in perspective:

Through the patriarchs, and after them through Moses and the prophets, He taught this people to acknowledge Himself the one living and true God, provident father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by Him, and in this manner prepared the way for the Gospel down through the centuries.

In other words, the events and lessons found in the Old Testament are very important: they gave the Israelites some familiarity with “the one living and true God,” but were preparation for the full revelation that comes with the Gospel.

In Section 4, more specifics are provided regarding the role played by Christ in God’s self-revelation:

Then, after speaking in many and varied ways through the prophets, “now at last in these days God has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 1:1-2). For He sent His Son, the eternal Word, who enlightens all men, so that He might dwell among men and tell them of the innermost being of God (see John 1:1-18). Jesus Christ, therefore, the Word made flesh, was sent as “a man to men.” He “speaks the words of God” (John 3;34), and completes the work of salvation which His Father gave Him to do (see John 5:36; John 17:4). To see Jesus is to see His Father (John 14:9).

This statement, of course, implies that divine revelation received through the mouth of Jesus is more authoritative than revelation received through the Old Testament prophets.  That is why Jesus’ words are often shown in red characters in the Bible.  Ironically, conservative Christians often accuse “red-letter-Christians” of misreading the Bible.  But clearly, the books of Hebrews and John provide solid justification for being a red-letter-Christian.

There is a reminder in Section 6 that revelation is progressive.  It improves in time through new insights and reaches its perfected form with Christ:

“For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth.”

The permanent and final nature of divine revelation through Jesus is also emphasized:

The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (see 1 Tim. 6:14 and Tit. 2:13).

In Matthew 24:35, Jesus says “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Conservative Christians tend to assume that “my words” in this statement is a reference to the entire Bible.  In the above statement, the council makes it clear that Jesus is talking about the new covenant defined by his Gospel, which is permanent and final.  Of course, the implication is that the old covenant was not permanent, even though Calvinists claim it is.

Regarding the scope of applicability of divine revelation, evangelicals declared the following in their 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy:

“WE DENY  that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science.”

In other words, the Bible is God’s inerrant word and knowledge from history and science cannot be used to question any of its assertions.  Catholic scholars who contributed to Dei Verbum, on the other hand, must have learned from the mistakes of the Church in the days of Galileo and others who strove to advance human knowledge through scientific study.  The first chapter of the document is concluded with the following statement (Section 6):

As a sacred synod has affirmed, God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty from created reality by the light of human reason (see Rom. 1:20); but teaches that it is through His revelation that those religious truths which are by their nature accessible to human reason can be known by all men with ease, with solid certitude and with no trace of error, even in this present state of the human race.

This statement – along with statements found in other Vatican II documents – affirms that science has a legitimate role to play in the pursuit of knowledge, potentially leading to the discovery of truths that are out of the scope of divine revelation.  Religious truths, on the other hand, fall into two categories: truths that can be comprehended by the human mind and those that cannot.  Revelation is not relevant to the latter, but provides reliable knowledge on the former.  There is no doubt that the terms “solid certitude” and “no trace of error,” as used here, can only apply to revelation that has been perfected by Christ as indicated earlier.  In other words, the idea of inerrancy is only assumed to apply to religious truths that are accessible to human reason and are sanctioned by Christ.

Accordingly, the Gospel of Christ is the primary source of knowledge on matters related to salvation and ethics.  The Old Testament played a role in the process because the prophets announced the coming of the Gospel in the future.  But the knowledge itself was transmitted through the apostles.  This is seen in Section 7:

Therefore Christ the Lord in whom the full revelation of the supreme God is brought to completion (see 2 Cor. 1:20; 3:13; 4:6), commissioned the Apostles to preach to all men that Gospel which is the source of all saving truth and moral teaching, (Matt. 28:19-20, and Mark 16:15) and to impart to them heavenly gifts. This Gospel had been promised in former times through the prophets, and Christ Himself had fulfilled it and promulgated it with His lips. This commission was faithfully fulfilled by the Apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did, or what they had learned through the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The commission was fulfilled, too, by those Apostles and apostolic men who under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit committed the message of salvation to writing.

There is, of course, the matter of preserving the teaching of the apostles and continually applying it to a changing world.  As seen in Sections 8 and 9, Vatican II reasserts the belief that the bishops are the legitimate successors of the apostles, and have “the authority to teach in their own place,” thereby developing a “sacred tradition” with help from the Holy Spirit.  As explained in Section 9, this sacred tradition complements Sacred Scripture and its authority must be accepted by the Church:

Hence there exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.

The process described in this statement is an ideal one: Ideally, there should be consistency between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture.  However, history shows that sacred tradition has sometimes led to beliefs and actions that are at odds with the teaching of Christ and his apostles.  It is no secret that Protestantism was a rejection of some accepted practices in the Roman Catholic Church.  The Reformation declared that the divine will was known through Scripture only and stood against various aspects of the teaching of the Church.  Also, if antisemitism was accepted in the old Church, as I discussed in my previous post, then by rejecting it, Vatican II corrected a major evil endorsed by the guardians of sacred tradition.  In other words, Sacred Scripture has not always been interpreted adequately.

In Section 10, it is stated that interpretation of Sacred Scripture is entrusted to “the living teaching office of the Church.”  Fortunately, it is recognized that this teaching office “is not above the word of God, but serves it.”  The focus is then redirected, in Chapters III, IV and V to Sacred Scripture.  Indeed, in Section 11 (Chapter III), the following is stated:

For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), 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.

It should be noted that “sacred and canonical” does not imply inerrancy.  As seen earlier, not all revelation in the Bible can be considered perfected by Christ, and inerrancy only applies to religious truths that can be understood by the human mind and are part of perfected revelation.  Accordingly, the following is added here:

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind” (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Greek text).

In other words, inerrancy applies to matters of salvation and ethics.  In contrast, evangelical scholars use 2 Timothy 3:16-17 as proof that the entire Bible is inerrant and authoritative on all matters found in it.  Vatican II obviously has a different view.  Furthermore, it recognizes that interpretation is an endeavor that must be undertaken with great care by trained exegetes who continually work toward a “better explanation,” thereby helping the Church become more mature.

In Chapter IV (Section 14), the preparatory role of the Old Testament is described.  In the books of the Old Testament, God introduces himself to his people and his people introduce him to other nations:

In carefully planning and preparing the salvation of the whole human race the God of infinite love, by a special dispensation, chose for Himself a people to whom He would entrust His promises. First He entered into a covenant with Abraham (see Gen. 15:18) and, through Moses, with the people of Israel (see Ex. 24:8). To this people which He had acquired for Himself, He so manifested Himself through words and deeds as the one true and living God that Israel came to know by experience the ways of God with men. Then too, when God Himself spoke to them through the mouth of the prophets, Israel daily gained a deeper and clearer understanding of His ways and made them more widely known among the nations (see Ps. 21:29; 95:1-3; Is. 2:1-5; Jer. 3:17). The plan of salvation foretold by the sacred authors, recounted and explained by them, is found as the true word of God in the books of the Old Testament: these books, therefore, written under divine inspiration, remain permanently valuable. “For all that was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom. 15:4).

The first sentence in the above statement illustrates the dilemma associated with incomplete revelation.  The Old Testament, on its own, does not reveal a God of infinite love.  Such a description of God can only be applied retroactively to events in the Old Testament.  Furthermore, the notion of a chosen people led, in the Old Testament, to an antagonistic relationship between Jews and Gentiles that was inconsistent with the goal of salvation of the whole human race.  However, the Old Testament must be given credit for pointing, through the work of the prophets, to a future era of reconciliation, thereby providing preparation for the coming of the Messiah.

The preparatory work done by the Old Testament is therefore considered extremely valuable and worthy of respect even though, as previously discussed, it is the source of incomplete revelation.  This is more explicitly stated in Section 15:

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). Now the books of the Old Testament, in accordance with the state of mankind before the time of salvation established by Christ, reveal to all men the knowledge of God and of man and the ways in which God, just and merciful, deals with men. These books, though they also contain some things which are incomplete and temporary, nevertheless show us true divine pedagogy. These same books, then, give expression to a lively sense of God, contain a store of sublime teachings about God, sound wisdom about human life, and a wonderful treasury of prayers, and in them the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way. Christians should receive them with reverence.

This, in essence, means religious truths found in the Old Testament should be accepted as long as they are consistent with the Gospel of Christ.  The superiority of New Testament teaching, which is visible from the beginning of the document, is again proclaimed in Chapter V.  Indeed, the following statement is found in Section 17:

The word of God, which is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe (see Rom. 1:16), is set forth and shows its power in a most excellent way in the writings of the New Testament. For when the fullness of time arrived (see Gal. 4:4), the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us in His fullness of graces and truth (see John 1:14). Christ established the kingdom of God on earth, manifested His Father and Himself by deeds and words, and completed His work by His death, resurrection and glorious Ascension and by the sending of the Holy Spirit. Having been lifted up from the earth, He draws all men to Himself (see John 12:32, Greek text), He who alone has the words of eternal life (see John 6:68). This mystery had not been manifested to other generations as it was now revealed to His holy Apostles and prophets in the Holy Spirit (see Eph. 3:4-6, Greek text), so that they might preach the Gospel, stir up faith in Jesus, Christ and Lord, and gather together the Church. Now the writings of the New Testament stand as a perpetual and divine witness to these realities.

Today, conservative Christians refuse to accept the notion that New Testament teaching is superior to Old Testament teaching because of their assumption of inerrancy of the whole Bible.  In my view, this notion is built into the Christian Bible and cannot be circumvented.  The conservative reading of the Bible leads, in extreme cases, to antichristian behavior as demonstrated by Christian nationalists today.

In fact, Christendom has violated New Testament teaching in many respects throughout history, and this includes the issue of antisemitism.  Therefore today, Jews and some well-meaning Christians raise the issue of supersessionism, suggesting that Christians should shy away from claiming the superiority of New Testament teaching in order to show sensitivity to the plight of the Jews and respect for Judaism.  I strongly condemn antisemitism but I do not think I should tweak my reading of Scripture in order to show solidarity with Jewish people.  I simply must accept them as human beings who are loved by God just as I think I am.  That is what I get out of the New Testament.  I am also in agreement with Old Testament prophets who believed the Messiah would bring a new, better covenant.  It is a simple matter: Judaism does not accept Jesus as the Messiah, but I do.  It is not my job to resolve that disagreement.  But I also do not count myself among those Christians who believe Jews are going to hell, and I believe a dialogue with other faiths is a good idea.

Ironically Vatican II, unlike the old Church, unambiguously recognized the superiority of the Gospel and that happens to be consistent with its condemnation of antisemitism.  As Pope Francis has said, a true follower of Christ cannot be antisemitic.  As I discussed in an earlier post, the pope, who embraces Vatican II, has been a friend of Jewish people in their fight against antisemitism even though he does not hesitate to preach from New Testament texts that proclaim the superiority of the Gospel.

But even in the New Testament, one must recognize a difference in authority between parts that relate the words and deeds of Jesus and parts that transmit the teaching of the apostles.  As stated in Section 18 of Dei Verbum,

It is common knowledge that among all the Scriptures, even those of the New Testament, the Gospels have a special preeminence, and rightly so, for they are the principal witness for the life and teaching of the incarnate Word, our savior.