This is an archive of past discussions about Vulgate. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I have restored the phrase below: "The Vulgate (/ˈvʌlɡeɪt,-ɡət/) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Biblethat became the Catholic Church's officially promulgatedLatin version of the Bible during the 16th century. The statement is certainly true; and establishes the signficance of this version from the Council of Trent onwards. As I understand the objection to the phrase; it is being asserted that the Vulgate had become the authoritative Latin version much earlier. A case can certainly be made that the 13th Century Paris Bibles were an 'official' standard; at least in the decrees of the University of Paris, if not in any official staement of the Church of Rome. But, before the 13th century, it is much less clear that the Vulgate had any recognised status; as editions where one or more books follow the Old Latin version remained not uncommon. e.g. Codex GigasTomHennell (talk) 17:18, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Focusing on the "official status" tells only part of the story. Prior to the Council of Trent there was no official version because no one felt it was necessary to make the distinction. The bible based on Jerome's translation gradually became widely adapted by Roman Catholics. The true notability of the Vulgate bible is captured further down in the article: "For over a thousand years (c. AD 400–1530), the Vulgate was the definitive edition of the most influential text in Western European society. Indeed, for most Western Christians, it was the only version of the Bible ever encountered."Glendoremus (talk) 19:32, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Good observation; there are parts of the article that fail to reflect current scholarship; excellent if you can suggest improvemed wording. Certainly up to the era of Bede, scholars were well aware that the Latin Bible existed in both 'old' and 'new' versions; so the comment youi quote should likely be rephrased to 'around five hundred years'. Even so, what was to emerge in the mid 16th Century as the official 'Vulgate version' is not consistently found in its entirety much before the 13th century. TomHennell (talk) 22:32, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I have restored Roger Gryson's assessment; removed presumably in error. "Roger Gryson, in the preface to 4th edition of the Stuttgart Vulgate (1994), asserts that the Clementine edition "frequently deviates from the manuscript tradition for literary or doctrinal reasons, and offers only a faint reflection of the original Vulgate, as read in the pandecta of the first millennium."[1] "
Several editors have been putting a lot of work into editing the sections of this article relating to the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate and Vulgata Sixtina. This is very welcome; but maybe some of this would be more appropriate to the separate articles for those particular editions? It may be a good idea to consider which of the recent edits would be better relocated to those articles. This article itself is about the bundle of Latin translations assembled following Jerome's initiative in the 4th/5th centuries; whose text is currently securely established in the Stuttgart Vulgate edition (which in turn depends on the key critical editions of Oxford and Rome for the New and Old Testaments respectively). If a reader sees 'Vulgate' cited in any critical study of scripture; it is this text that is intended to be understood; and the opinions of these editors are primary for the purpose of this article. The Clementine and Sistine editions are part of the story of this text, but in modern textual scholarship (as Gryson explicitly states) are a dead end. This must be clearly apparent in the article. One issue being that other texts 'Nova Vulgata' and 'Clementine Vulgate' are still circulating as being Vulgate texts, even though they are not now properly the Vulgate as presented in the definitive, Stuttgart edition; which is the one you can buy in the shops; and the one that a wide range of churches (including the Catholic Church) recognise as authoritative. TomHennell (talk) 08:53, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
I have trouble seeing the crux of your message, is it that some parts of the section should be removed? If so, which ones do you suggest should be removed? Veverve (talk) 22:09, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
I am happy to wait for other editors to make their own choices; but essentially we have three articles Vulgate, Sixto-Clementine Vulgate and Vulgata Sixtina (plus another for Nova Vulgata). This article should be primarily about the ancient Latin version edited in the Stuttgart edition. The detailed histories of the other 'Vulgates' are properly to be provided in their dedicated articles, not here. TomHennell (talk) 10:58, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
I am not sure that this section merits inclusion, and certainly not at the head of the article. In my view it misrepresents the encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu; specifically this section; "Wherefore this authority of the Vulgate in matters of doctrine by no means prevents - nay rather today it almost demands - either the corroboration and confirmation of this same doctrine by the original texts or the having recourse on any and every occasion to the aid of these same texts, by which the correct meaning of the Sacred Letters is everywhere daily made more clear and evident." So the authority claimed for the Vulgate text in the encyclical is not self-standing; but must always be referred back to corroboration (or by implication refutation) from study of the source text in the original tongues. It would follow from this that it would not be proper to claim inerrant status for the Clementine Vulgate (as this departs radically from the original text in numerous readings); and this would appear the intention of the encyclical in its explicit reference to the work to restore the Vulgate Old Testament text being undertaken in the Roman edition then underway - and by silent implication also affirming the counterpart restored Oxford Vulgate New Testament then nearing completion through the labours of Anglican scholars.
Quite how the encyclical envisages a future 'authoritative' Vulgate text is left unclear; but possibly something more like the Nova Vulgata, starting from the Oxford and Rome restorations, but then adjusting them to accord with the Nestle-Aland text, where the Vulgate translator (whoever that may have been) differed from the Greek critical text. But the Nova Vulgata is not the Vulgate in the sense of this article. So perhaps better placed in that article than this? TomHennell (talk) 00:00, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
I believe this section should be transformed into a broader section covering the opinion(s) of the Catholic Church concerning the Vulgate. Veverve (talk) 19:55, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
"While constantly defending the inerrancy of the Sacred Scriptures as such, the Church has never claimed unalterable perfection for her own officially approved Latin edition of the Scriptures, and has sought to improve that version several times. It is not to be excluded, and indeed, it is to be expected, that such work continue in the future."
I take this as establishing Catholic teaching as being (at least as stated now); that the inspired Scriptures are inerrant "in matters of faith and doctrine"; but that no Latin version of the Scriptures, including the Vulgate, can be regarded as inspired or inerrant in itself; only in so far as it accords with the inspired readings in the original tongues. "..the original text which, having been written by the inspired author himself, has more authority and greater weight than any even the very best translation, whether ancient or modern"(Divino afflante Spiritu). Nevertheless the Catholic Church has officially approved a succession of Latin versions as both 'authoritative' (meaning that they are proper for use in teaching and theological debate within those churches that follow the Latin rite); and 'typical' (meaning that their texts are appropriate for printing in liturgical manuals and lectionaries for those churches that worship in Latin). For several centuries, the version that was authoritative and typical was the Clementine Vulgate; but since 1979 it has been the Nova Vulgata. But neither the Clementine or Nova Vulgata versions are held to be inerrant against the original tongues, and never have been.
Happy to insert a version of the above back into the article, and cited to the Congregation of Divine Worship, once other editors offered their own contributions. TomHennell (talk) 11:58, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
Tom, please consider the following points
Token of Good Faith: I will undo your deletion and ask you not to delete the section again, as a token of good faith. It is impolite and possibly rude to completely delete some one else's section, which is mostly made up of authoritative and well substantiated quotes. If you wish to continue to delete the section it will simply be an indication to me that you are not interested in a good faith, reasoned discussion. I am willing to have a discussion in this talk page, and to revise wording if appropriate. --Calicem (talk) 01:12, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
You quote the following from a 2001 CDF response to a dubium:
"While constantly defending the inerrancy of the Sacred Scriptures as such, the Church has never claimed unalterable perfection for her own officially approved Latin edition of the Scriptures" (CDF, 2001).
Unalterable perfection: Neither the Pope, nor anything in the section is claiming unalterable perfection (by the way, the CDF is a dicastery inside the Vatican that works for the Pope). This is where you are not paying close attention to the fact that the quote states that the inerrancy is in matters of faith and morals: No one is claiming Unalterable perfection. If this was the case it would be totally unreasonable to correct and edit new versions of the Vulgate as it has been done in history.
The document from the CDF is concerning a specific question from a Bishop about how to do biblical translations and the use of the Nova Vulgata in those translations. This section is not about how to do translations, but simply and specifically about the inerrancy of the Vulgate.
You say in your post:
"So the authority claimed for the Vulgate text in the encyclical is not self-standing; but must always be referred back to corroboration (or by implication refutation) from study of the source text in the original tongues."
Original languages not questioned: No one is excluding the use or questioning the original languages. If you notice, the words "original languages" or "original tongues" is nowhere to be found in the section. This is because the section is about the inerrancy of the Vulgate, and not about the inerrancy of the original texts. Nonetheless, this does not exclude the orignal texts (see false dichotomy below). To make it clear that the original languages are not excluded, I can add the following sentence: "This inerrancy of the Vulgate in matters of faith an morals in no way excludes, but rather presumes that the original text in the original languages is inerrant.". If you want to discuss inerrancy of the original texts, that is a topic for a separate wikipedia entry. This section is specifically about the inerrancy of the Vulgate.
textual inerrancy is different from inerrancy in matters of faith and morals:
An example may help to see the distinction between textual inerrancy and inerrancy in matters of faith and morals. Suppose David writes to James: "I live in a blue house". James later says to Anna: "David wrote: 'I dwell in a blue house'". What James said to Anna has inerrancy of meaning, but not textual inerrancy: David did not use the word 'dwell'. Inerrancy in matters of faith and morals is inerrancy of meaning in matters of faith and morals, this is very different from textual inerrancy.
Most of the miscoceptions seem to come from the fact that you seem to be confusing textual inerrancy with inerrancy in matters of faith an morals, since your argument is somehow that the original language ```must``` be read. Neither the Pope, nor anything I wrote in the section claims textual inerrancy. The Vulgate is not claimed to be inerrant in matters of textual criticism. In fact I went out of my way to show that this is the case in two ways.
I included this part in the quotation of the Pope: "authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons" --Pope Pius XII. I think you understand that the word "critical" refers to textual criticism. This is academic language in biblical scholarship, as I am sure you are aware of. If I was trying to misrepresent the Pope's document I would have simply skipped that part of the quote; but I included specifically to be very clear about the fact that inerrancy in matters of textual criticism was not part of what the Pope was saying. For this reason there is no contradiction with using the original texts.
As if this was not enough, I clearly added: «It is important to understand that the inerrancy is with respect to faith and morals, as it says in the above quote: "free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals"; but not in a philological sense». I added this text to make it very clear that this inerrancy was not referring to textual inerrancy but to inerrancy in faith and morals. The content in terms of faith and morals of the original text is never contradicted by the content in the Vulgate. This is precisely what inerrancy in matters of faith an morals mean. The original text may contain additional meanings, different grammatical structures, different philological implications; but the statement of the Pope is not about textual inerrancy (he explicitly says that, and I quoted it in the section as I mentioned above).
always: You say "must always be referred back". The quote from the Pope which you yourself cited doesn't say the word "always", rather it says "almost demands". I do wholeheartedly agree with you that consulting the original sources (for those that can do it), is obviously the best thing to do (we'll leave aside the discussion that not everyone agrees on what the original sources are). Remember that not many today speak hebrew or greek; would God leave his people --for many centuries-- with a faulty bible in matters of faith and morals simply because they didn't know hebrew or greek? This helps to understand the basis for inerrancy in matters of faith and morals: the salvation of the people, even the simple people that don't know hebrew or greek.
False dichotomy: Somehow I think your misunderstanding is linked to a common error which occurs today. It is the error of thinking there is only an either/or solution, when in fact there is a third option. You seem to think that if the Vulgate is inerrant, then the original tongues are somehow less important or not needed. The reality is the opposite: the inerrancy of the Vulgate in matters of faith and morals (and not necessarily in matters of textual criticism) points to the fact that its sources in the original languages are inerrant! The statement of inerrancy in matters of faith and morals does not come from the fact that it is a perfect textual translation, but from the fact that God would not allow his people to use a bible for so many centuries when their salvation (faith and morals) was in jeopardy. This is why the Pope says, in the quote I included in the section: "but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries" -- Pope Pius XII.
I still continue to think that this section should be shortened and renamed into something like "Opinion of the Catholic Church on the Vulgate" Veverve (talk) 16:10, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
Many thanks for your detailed contribution Calicem. I removed the orignal section because editors were repeatedly hacking bits off it; and it was clear that no consensus had been established as to what it should say - or indeed where it ought to be placed.
In respect of your particular suggestions:
The statement in the deleted text that the Council of Trent declared the Vulgate as free from error in faith and morals is not supported by any references; and is plainly wrong. Nowhere in relevant sections of the Council decrees is there any reference to 'error' or 'inerrancy'. Nor indeed is there any implication that the Vulgate is to be considered as 'inspired'. In so far as the Council declared the Vulgate to be 'authentic'; that was explicitly time-limited - hence, 'of the editions currently in circulation'; and also culturally conditional - as referring only to the Latin church. No one can validly quote the decrees of Trent to support the authority of the Clementine Vulgate text (as that edition was not then in circulation); nor to propose that the Vulgate should be set as of equivalent (or superior) status to editions of the original text, or applied outside of the churches of the Latin rite.
Your comments on "inerrancy in faith and morals" appear to be inconsistent with the first section of Divino Afflante Spiritu, where the teachings of John Henry Newman on biblical inspiration, inerrancy and 'obiter dicta' are rejected. You can't distinguish inspired scripture into 'inerrant' and 'non-inerrant' statements. You can (and should according to Divino Afflante Spiritu) distinguish the ancient literary form in which the inspired author chose to express his words; so if a Scriptural narrative presents a Tale, it should not be treated as inerrant History.
Your proposal that the inerrancy in faith and morals of an uninspired version can be established independently from the inspired text through continual use of that version in the liturgy of the church, falls down in specific instances. The clearest of these being the Johannine Comma. Current Catholic teaching states that this is not inspired scripture, and indeed not part of the Vulgate (and hence absent from the Nova Vulgata); having been intruded into the medieval Vulgate tradition from Spanish Vetus Latina texts to which it had been added under the influence of Priscillianism. But the Johannine Comma was in the Clementine Vulgate; and was read in the lectionary. We cannot argue that 'God would not allow' a defective text on a central doctrine of faith to have been used in worship for several centuries; as this clearly happened in this case. For Divino Afflante Spiritu modern critical scholarship is indeed doing God's work when it corrects deviations from the inspired text in long-accepted readings. "Let all the other sons of the Church bear in mind that the efforts of these resolute labourers in the vineyard of the Lord should be judged not only with equity and justice, but also with the greatest charity; all moreover should abhor that intemperate zeal which imagines that whatever is new should for that very reason be opposed or suspected"
I am not sure whether you are familiar with the Pontifical Biblical Commission letter of 20 August 1941, whose arguments are substantially repeated in Divino Afflante Spiritu? The text can be found in translation in 'The Scripture Documents: an Anthology of Official Catholic Teachings' (2002) edited by Fitzmeyer and Bechard. I suggest that we should cite that for this section. The letter spells out in greater detail the definitions of 'juridical' and 'critical' authenticity in Biblical versions, that are then taken up in Divino Afflante Spiritu. That letter shows that you were correct in suspecting that the term 'critical' authenticity in these documents (the letter and Divino Afflante Spiritu) does indeed refer specifically to textual criticism; defined as the scientific study of ancient texts and versions. The point that the Pontifical Bibilical Commission was making was that 'critical' authenticity (established by scientific inquiry into the original text) over time supersedes 'juridical' authenticity (established by extended use within the Church).
"The Council of Trent declared the Vulgate to be the 'authentic' text in the juridical meaning of that word, that is that it has a probative force in 'matters of faith and morals"; but by no means excluded the possibility of divergences from the original text and from ancient versions"
Taking the letter and Divino Afflante Spiritu together, four points of Catholic teaching are clear (to me at least):
* that only the original scriptural texts in the languages of divine revelation (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic) can be inspired by the Holy Spirit; and so only these texts are inerrant in themselves. Inspired scriptures are divine and human without error, in the same way as the incarnate Word was divine and human without sin. No version in a secondary language - Latin, English, Cherokee - can be an inspired text in itself, as all versions are entirely human.
* that nevertheless, the economy of salvation requires that the faithful who cannot read or understand texts in the languages of divine revelation should still be able to access inerrant scriptural teaching in reliable versions - but these uninspired versions are only inerrant in so far as they faithfully render what the inspired texts say.
* that, in the context of the Latin church in the 16th century, scholarly understanding in the West of the languages of divine revelation was insufficient to ensure that any Latin version then in circulation had 'critical' authority; and so the Council of Trent wisely proposed that the old Vulgate version then had 'juridical' authority sufficient for the needs of the faithful of those days.
* that scientific and scholarly developments in the later 19th and earlier 20th centuries were such that, by the 1940s, versions in Latin and vernacular languages could now have full 'critical' authenticity. Consequently it was now proper for translations to be made into vernacular tongues directly from the languages of divine revelation; and the authority of these versions would supersede that of the old Vulgate (especially in the severely defective Clementine edition). The Oxford/Roman editions of the Vulgate should be considered to have 'critical' authenticity, albeit that they could not have 'juridical' authenticity (as never having been regularly used within the liturgy of the Church).
I realise that these propositions may not correspond with those you have set out. But the Pontifical Biblical Commission were very specific; that the proposition that the Clementine Vulgate text should be considered inerrant in itself represented a 'false theory concerning the authenticity of the Vulgate', and in so far as a commentator asserted that the Clementine Vulgate text did not require correction to the Greek and Hebrew original texts (and disparaged any need to investigate the literal intended meanings of the inspired authors in these languages), then these views were potentially heretical (i.e. Marcionist) and put on the Index. TomHennell (talk) 16:32, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
Dear Tom, thank you very much for your post. Can you please post verbatim the text of the pontifical biblical comission that you mentioned (if you have a reference to an official vatican book or document online it would be good)? I do agree with your comment about the Council of Trent not declaring inerrancy explicitly, I will edit that part out. Thanks for your contribution to make things clearer and more precise. I have a reply to your comments, but can't write it right now, I will write as soon as I can. Calicem (talk) 04:03, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
the full text can be found on Google preview; though you have to search around in different browsers for all of it. Try:
The letter is in response to an inflammatory pseudonymous pamphlet in the name 'Dain Cohenel'; framed as a confidential letter to the Pope, but copied to all bishops and archbishops in Italy. The pamphlet's author was Dolindo Ruotolo; which the Pontifical Biblical Commission must have suspected, but affected ignorance.
The letter criticised the author for gross discourtesy; but then refuted his accusations in four sections of argument:
1. The primacy of the literal meaning of inspired scripture. Dain Cohenel argued for a 'meditative' approach to scriptural understanding, in which spiritual meanings are to be found in the authoritative Latin text with the aid of the fathers and of Church tradition. The Pontifical Biblical Commission accused this of being dangerously subjective; inspired scripture always had an inspired human author, and so the literal meaning as understood by that author (and his audience) should always be primary. Spiritual and 'typical' meanings could only be read into the text as constrained by the literal meaning.
2. The Clementine Vulgate and the Council of Trent. Dain Cohenel had argued that the 'authenticity' asserted for the Vulgate edition by the Council of Trent, extended forwards to guarantee the authenticity of the Clementine text, complete in all its parts; even against the text in the original languages. So original language editions should only be consulted where the Vulgate text (or traditional Church understanding of it) was unclear. The Pontifical Biblical Commission accused him of setting an uninspired version as equal or superior to the inspired original text on the basis of the decrees of Trent. This is plainly wrong, no Church tradition, even a general council, can treat a scriptural passage as inspired, if it was not to be found in the original inspired text. From Trent we can only say that the Clementine text is authentic in a 'juridical' sense.
3. Textual Criticism. Dain Cohenel had accused Catholic Biblical authorities, especially the Pontifical Biblical Institute, of proposing that the findings of biblical textual criticism, which in many cases were substantially or entirely the work on non-Catholics, should supersede the text of scripture as validated by centuries of use within the Church. The Pontifical Biblical Commission replied that this was indeed exactly how Catholic biblical study ought now to proceed; both in terms of establishing a critical text in the original languages, and in revising the Vulgate Latin text purely on the basis of the oldest and best Latin manuscripts - even if this relied heavily on non-Catholic critical scholarship. They picked out the Comma Johanneum as an example of this; maintaining that the issue of whether this was inspired scripture or not (which was then officially 'open' in Catholic scholarly debate) could only be determined by critical methods, and not through appeal to Church traditions. The tricky (though unstated) issue here being that the critical Vulgate text in the Epistles of John was found in the editio minor of the Oxford edition.
4. Oriental Languages. Dain Cohenel had asserted that the recent academic study of 'Oriental' Languages - understood here as Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Syriac and Coptic - was substantially a fraud against the faithful; and that no value could be taken from it in understanding or correcting the Vulgate Latin text of the Old Testament in particular. The Pontifical Biblical Commission resolutely defended the findings of specialists in these tongues; and argued that the insights from these studies were of vital importance to reconstruct the literal meaning of many Hebrew Bible passages, where the Masoretic text was corrupt or unclear.
Issues in these four sections reappear in the central section of Divino Afflante Spiritu, but in the reverse order; and much bulked out with Vatican verbiage.
TomHennell (talk) 10:44, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
Dear Tom,
Thank you again for your comments. I can see you are a man that loves and seeks the truth, so it is a joy to discuss this matter with you using proper reasoning and dialogue. I won't be able to write everything right now, but I will comment on some of your points.
Johannine Comma: This actually supports inerrancy in matters of faith and morals. In your comment, you claim that the so called Johannine Comma is a clear example of an error in the Vulgate, since it was removed in the Nova Vulgata. Let's first have a look at the text:
Clementine Vulgate, 1 Jn 5:7-8: "[7] Quoniam tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in cælo: Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt. [8] Et tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in terra : spiritus, et aqua, et sanguis : et hi tres unum sunt."
Nova Vulgata, 1 Jn 5:7-8: "[7] Quia tres sunt, qui testificantur: [8] Spiritus et aqua et sanguis; et hi tres in unum sunt."
You point out correctly, that the Nova Vulgata does not include the text which says that 'there are three who give witness in heaven: The Father, and the Word, and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one'. This is quite true (I presume you can read latin).
What you fail to see is that this may be an error in textual criticism, but not in matters of faith and morals. Again, no one is claiming textual inerrancy, only inerrancy in matters of faith and morals. The reason why there is no error in matters of faith and morals is that it is certainly a teaching of the Faith that 1) the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit give testimony that Jesus is the Son of God and 2) the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit are one (this is a basic tenet of Faith, namely the Most Holy Trinity). As you can see there is no error in matters of faith and morals: the elimination of the text in the Nova Vulgata simply indicates that current textual critical studies don't think that this particular sequence of words was present in the earliest manuscripts at that location. However, the truth they expound in matters of faith is certainly still valid, and will always be valid.
You say "modern critical scholarship is indeed doing God's work". I agree with this, in so far as the work is done properly, and for the most part I think that modern critical textual scholarship has done a great contribution. Again, no one is opposing the study of the original texts, everyone is encouraging it, including the Pope in Divino Afflante Spiritu!! There is no opposition between the inerrancy of the Vulgate in matters of faith and morals and the need to study the original texts. The reason is that textual inerrancy is not being claimed, and so it will always behoove us to study the original texts in so far as we have access to them.
Inspiration and inerrancy: You bring out the topic of inspiration. This is really outside the scope of the section, the section is just about a very simple statement from Pope Pius XII: that the Vulgate is "free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals" (exact quote from Divino Afflante). There is absolutely no opposition to study the original texts. Nonetheless, I will address the argument of inspiration because I think you honestly love the truth.
You are making the presumption that inerrancy requires inspiration, since you seem to make the point that an uninspired text can't be inerrant. This is not true, in two ways:
a) Some reasonable statements are inerrant but don't need inspiration -- for example: "Tom Hennell is alive". Certainly this is an inerrant statement because surely a dead person can't write. This example is about inerrancy in general, but we are talking about inerrancy in matters of faith and morals:
b) A person can make inerrant statements in matters of faith and morals without being an inspired biblical author: If Tom Hennell says: "Jesus is God" -- that statement by Tom Hennell is certainly inerrant in matters of faith and morals. This is possible despite the fact that Tom Hennell is not an inspired biblical author. As a side note (distant tangent from our topic), Tom Hennell is able to say this because he has been given an infused gift: the Virtue of Faith.
Conclusion: It is possible to make inerrant statements even for someone that is not an inspired biblical author.
I still have some more to write, but don't have time right now, I will continue later. Thank you for your contribution here. Calicem (talk) 07:02, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
Calicem; there is a very good summary of the development of Catholic theories of scriptural inerrancy since the 16th century in the 'Cambridge History of the Bible Vol III' (that is the old series published in 1972). Your should find it interesting. A Google preview is here:
I am afraid your proposed distinction between 'inerrancy in faith and morals' and 'textual inerrancy' is not supported for scripture in modern Catholic teaching. This theory can be found in Henry Holden, and then developed in detail by John Henry Newman; but was explicitly rejected in Divino Afflante Spiritu. The teachings of the Church are inerrant in faith and morals; but the teachings of Jesus are inerrant through and through. So, if the Church advises me that it will be sunny tomorrow, I should still pack my umbrella; but if Jesus advises that it will be sunny tomorrow, I won't. Or so Catholic teaching states. But that prompts the question; is scripture inerrant in faith and morals, or inerrant through and through? The question being more difficult, as extensive sections in the central books of the Bible - specifically the Gospels and the Book of Exodus - present narratives of people and events, rather than explicit teaching of faith and morals. But clearly, Catholic teaching cannot propose that the inspired scriptural accounts of the Exodus, Nativity and Crucifixion are not inerrant through and through. Holden and Newman sought to find a form of 'limited' inerrancy for scripture; but their ideas have been declared unacceptable. The Catholic doctrine of scriptural inerrancy is that of 'inerrancy through and through' (in the words of Divino Afflante Spiritu, "freedom from any error whatsoever"); so, if a version (as with the Vulgate) faithfully represents the content of scripture from the original inspired text, then the text of that version is inerrant through and through. This principle was reinforced in Divino Afflante Spiritu as the doctrine of inspiration became assimilated to that of incarnation. The inerrancy of the inspired Word, and the inerrancy of the incarnate Word are one and the same. What is nevertheless claimed in Divino Afflante Spiritu is that textual criticism and philology can allow us to determine the literary form of text intended by the inspired author;' and that this frequently allows apparent contradictions and inconsistencies in sacred scripture to be resolved. No examples are given; but they may well have had such texts as 1 Samuel, chapters 16-18 in mind. Textual criticism can distinguish in those chapters of the Hebrew Bible ; a court history of the young David as a courtier and trained warrior, and a much later folktale about David as a shepherd boy who kills the superhuman giant, Goliath. The later addition to the Hebrew text is still inspired scripture, and so 'inerrant through and through' ; but, as a folktale, not such as to create genuine contradictions with a court history; even though the two stories would be wholly incompatible as reported events.
I suspect you may have been misled by the reference in Divino Afflante Spiritu to the authenticity of the Vulgate as being 'juridical'. That formulation indicates (as the letter of the Pontifical Biblical Commission clarifies) that the Vulgate (where it is faithful to the original inspired text) may be quoted in support of the teachings of the Church in sermons and disputations; and that this "special authority" for "legitimate use in the Churches" (as for such teachings of the Church) would be inerrant in faith and morals. But the Vulgate itself is not stated, in Divino Afflante Spiritu, to be 'inerrant in faith and morals' (albeit that this is clearer from the Latin, than it is in English translation). Where it is faithful to the original inspired text, the Vulgate with all its parts is stated to be free from any error whatsoever; where it is not faithful, it is not inerrant at all.
On your specific points:
I am not claiming the Johannine Comma as an 'error in the Vulgate' as it is not in the Vulgate. It is in the Clementine text; but Divino Afflante Spiritu and the letter both go out of their way to avoid acknowledging the Clementine text as still a valid text of the Vulgate. Both documents jump logically from a supposed commission from Trent to the Popes to provide the church with a corrected Vulgate text, to the establishment in 1907 of a Papal Commission for the Revision and Correction of the Vulgate. As far as Divino Afflante Spiritu is concerned, the commission from Trent has yet to be fulfilled. So the Johannine Comma, even though it presents a good and clear summary of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, has been demonstrated through textual criticism not to have been in the original text; and so is not inspired scripture and cannot be 'inerrant' in any sense whatever. Which is a serious problem for some flavours of Protestant Fundamentalism; as it means that there is no clear statement of the Holy Trinity in inspired scripture; only through the formulations of the Church (as in the Nicene Creed). Churches that are 'catholic' (in the widest sense) do not have a problem with this; but those that are rigid in applying 'sola scriptura' as a principle, are in difficulties.
In respect of Divino Afflante Spiritu, for scripture, inspiration and inerrancy are one and the same; "For as the substantial Word of God became like to men in all things, "except sin," so the words of God, expressed in human language, are made like to human speech in every respect, except error." It is because the inerrancy of scripture derives from inspiration and not from the teachings of the Church, that scripture, in Catholic teaching, is inerrant through and through. Only inspired authors can pen inerrant scriptural texts; and then only in the languages of Divine revelation. Divino Afflante Spiritu is about inspiration (hence the title). As only the work of inspired authors in the original text can be inspired scripture, so the encyclical clarifies in its first section that certain Catholic speculations that have sought to blur the distinction between teachings of the Church (inerrant in faith and morals), and the Word of scripture (free from any error whatsoever) are to be rejected. TomHennell (talk) 12:09, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
Inerrancy of the Vulgate
The Vulgate has been authoritatively declared as free from error in faith and morals by the Catholic Church. This was done originally in the Council of Trent, and then clearly stated again, in the 20th century, by Pope Pius XII in Divino Afflante Spiritu:
Hence this special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching [...]"[2]
— Pope Pius XII
It is important to understand that the inerrancy is with respect to faith and morals, as it says in the above quote: "free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals"; but not in a philological sense: the meaning denoted by the words is free from error in faith and morals, but the particular arrangement of letters or words may be different:
[...] and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical.[2]
— Pope Pius XII
Therefore, the Catholic Church has produced revised editions of the Vulgate, such as the Clementine edition of the Vulgate, or the Nova Vulgata: not contradicting the previous meaning in terms of faith and morals, but enhancing it or developing it.
References
^Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem. Robert Weber, Roger Gryson (eds.) (4 ed.). Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. 1994. pp. XXXVII. ISBN978-3-438-05303-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
I will be removing everything which is not sourced
I will be removing everything which is not supported by a source right now, because this article is quite a mess and since there is almost no one working on it, it is likely to stay this way for a longtime. If someone disagrees, please tell me. Veverve (talk) 16:56, 13 December 2020 (UTC) It is now done, you can check all changes here. Veverve (talk) 18:29, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV)
In 2009 a modern translation of the Vulgate was competed and put into Public Domain by an independent translator, Ronald L. Conte Jr. I wonder is there or should there be a mention of this here? Thanks.
@Jaqian: I do not see why there should be a mention of it, unless it is notable and relevant. At best, it can be put in the external links section. Veverve (talk) 12:55, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
