St. Jerome, born in Dalmatia, educated at Rome, was soon led into the gravest disorders. Inspired by heaven, he was converted and became one of the greatest Doctors of the Latin Church, especially famous for his translation into Latin (the Vulgate) of the Holy Scriptures. He retired into a monastery at Bethlehem and died in 420.
Pope Benedict XV's 1920 Encyclical Letter Spiritus Paraclitus (On St. Jerome) is well worth the read. It strikes me that the relationship between God's authorship and the human author's parallels the relationship between grace and free will in general. Just as a human will is more and more free the more it is moved by grace, so the human author of Scripture is even more truly the author of his words when they are dictated by the Holy Ghost. We have no need, I think, to shy away from using the word "dictation" in regards to the inspiration of the Bible. See, e.g., the following from the above mentioned encyclical:
8... You will not find a page in his writings which does not show clearly that he, in common with the whole Catholic Church, firmly and consistently held that the Sacred Books - written as they were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit - have God for their Author, and as such were delivered to the Church. Thus he asserts that the Books of the Bible were composed at the inspiration, or suggestion, or even at the dictation of the Holy Spirit; even that they were written and edited by Him. Yet he never questions but that the individual authors of these Books worked in full freedom under the Divine afflatus, each of them in accordance with his individual nature and character...
3 comments:
Hey! Is that Maria praying on Bob Sungenis' home page?
http://www.catholicintl.com/index.htm
St. Jerome came up today in our Dead Theologians discussion of the first letter of Clement to the Corinthians. It was suggested that St. Jerome provided intellectual support for the view that those books in the Septuagint that were not in the original Hebrew OT should not be considered inspired. Too bad his moral example wasn't equally as persuasive to the "Reformers".
True he had reservations about including them in the canon, but interestingly enough he himself in other writings quotes from them not infrequently in support of doctrine, and refers to them as sacred scriptures.
Best of all, though, is that Hebrew originals have now been found for portions of them, thus completely undercutting all rationale for their rejection and at least throwing the rejection of the rest into grave doubt.
Post a Comment