St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr

Like St. Polycarp, Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, was a disciple of St. John the Apostle. His letters are precious documents for our Faith. He was sent in chains to Rome and, when condemned to the wild beasts, exclaimed: "I am the wheat of Christ: may I be ground by the fangs of wild beasts and become bread agreeable to my Lord!" He died in 110.

In my class on the Pentateuch this morning we were given a few exerpts from Pope Pius XII's (pictured) 1950 Encyclical Letter Humani Generis (Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine) touching upon the theory of evolution. His concern regarding said theory in this letter is to state the Church's insistence upon the direct creation of man's soul by God (even if the body evolved, the soul did not) and Her condemnation of polygenism (the notion that we are not all descended from the same original parents). Never having read the letter in full, I set out to do so this afternoon. In the course of which reading, however, my attention was diverted to the topic of Biblical interpretation. Pius XII mentions the Church's teaching on the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture and refers to Pope Leo XIII's 1893 Encyclical Providentissimus Deus (On the Study of Holy Scripture), Pope Benedict XV's 1920 Encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus (On St. Jerome), and Pius XII's own 1943 Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (On Promoting Biblical Studies). Having now read through these also, I offer for your edification a short collection of statements taken from Providentissimus Deus (the later letters confirm and repeat Leo's teaching) regarding the inspiration and inerrancy of the sacred writings.

"For the Sacred Scripture is not like other books. Dictated by the Holy Ghost, it contains things of the deepest importance, which in many instances are most difficult and obscure" (PD, 5).

"But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred... For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true" (PD, 20).

"It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error" (PD, 21).

It is interesting to note the use of the word "dictation" in speaking of inspiration; it is a word very much shunned today by Biblical scholars of all shades, although Benedict XV also quotes St. Jerome's use of this word. Intrigued by this I looked to the Council of Trent and found there also the same word:

"The sacred and holy, ecumenical, and general Synod of Trent, - lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the same three legates of the Apostolic Sec presiding therein, - keeping this always in view, that, errors being removed, the purity itself of the Gospel be preserved in the Church; which (Gospel), before promised through the prophets in the holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth, and then commanded to be preached by His Apostles to every creature, as the fountain of all, both saving truth, and moral discipline; and seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating [Spiritu Sancto dictante], have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand..." (Council of Trent, Session IV, Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures, 1546).