Scripture, Tradition and the Nature of Faith: Vatican I, Chapters 2-3

Orientation #

He is continuing through the text begun last time: “now in part three he goes to the two sources of what, revelation” (prev. lecture: the chapter on revelation). He ends: “We better stop for today… we’ll start there at the bottom of page 10.” The text-matching system suggested Summa Contra Gentiles IV; the transcript itself is a reading of Vatican I’s constitution on revelation, chapters 2–3, and the transcript is followed here.

The class, in order #

1. The two sources of revelation (“contained in written books and sacred scripture”) #

Point: supernatural revelation, per Trent as renewed by Vatican I, is contained in Scripture and in unwritten traditions received from Christ’s lips or by the dictation of the Holy Spirit and passed “as it were from hand to hand.” So not everything revealed comes through Scripture. He notes this is “picked up in Vatican II.”

2. Scripture: the canon and the Vulgate (“free of doctrinal error”) #

Point: the complete books of the Old and New Testament, with all their parts as listed by Trent and found in the Old Latin Vulgate, are sacred and canonical.

• Vulgate “free of error” (he attributes this to Pius XII) means free of doctrinal error, shown by the Fathers’ and Doctors’ use of it: no one was led into heresy by the translation. It does not mean every rendering is the best possible.
• Example: reading St Paul that morning, Greek philadelphia (one word: adelphos brother, philos love) rendered in Latin as “the charity of brotherhood”: same meaning, two words. One of his editions has Latin and Greek facing.

3. Why the Church holds them canonical (“they have God as their author”) #

Point: not because the Church approved books composed by unaided human skill, nor merely because they contain revelation without error, but because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit they have God as author. The Holy Spirit is chief author; human authors are instruments, which does not deny something of the instrument (some wrote in Hebrew, some in Greek).

4. Who judges the true sense of Scripture (“the true one, which Holy Mother Church”) #

Point: renewing Trent’s decree against rash speculation: in faith and morals the true sense is the one the Church held and holds; no one may interpret against it or against the unanimous consent of the Fathers. Aside: he doubts contemporary scriptural scholars all follow this.

5. The four canons on revelation, and a digression on mistakes (“how apt the human mind is”) #

Canon 1: God can be known with certainty from created things by natural reason: now an article of faith. It does not mean this is easy or that most reach it. Canon 2: it is neither impossible nor inexpedient that men be taught about God and his worship by revelation, and this applies even to naturally knowable truths, because so few would know them, after a long time, with much error. Avoid the heresy of denying natural knowledge, yet not be ignorant of how difficult it is.

• Augustine, De Trinitate: those with “an immature and perverse love of reason.” Perverse = not loving reason for its right end; immature = thinking reason is free to judge all things, unaware of the aids it needs because it is so apt to err.
• His sabbatical on mistakes and their causes: once laid out, you see how easily we fall into them. Joke: the psychiatrist who, after studying mental ailments, finds everyone “right on the edge.”
• Logic-class example: four students at the board with the four forms of if-then speech (two syllogisms, two not); those with valid forms think them invalid and vice versa: four spontaneous mistakes.
• The four senses of “before”: students told they will confuse them, then asked “which is better, to breathe or to philosophize?”, answer “to breathe,” because breathing is before in the second sense, concluding it is before in the fourth: mixing second and fourth. Even after “now we see it,” someone errs on the final exam. Canon 3: it is anathema to say man cannot be divinely elevated above the natural but must reach all truth and goodness by continual development: again the “immature and perverse love of reason,” reason as self-sufficient. Canon 4: anathema on not receiving the canonical books with all their parts as Trent listed them; he supposes Trent listed them because Luther and others excluded books or denied their inspiration. Transition: the revelation chapter is on God’s side; the next chapter is on our side, faith.

6. Why we are obliged to faith (“to whom do you belong, really?”) #

Point: two reasons: we depend totally on God as Creator and Lord, and created reason is wholly subject to uncreated truth; so we owe God revealing full submission of intellect and will.

• Adoro te devote, latens deitas… tibi se cor meum totum subicit, quia te contemplans totum deficit: “heart” there includes both reason and will; God exceeds both, so both must be subordinated.
• Argument from what we know: (1) if he writes a book he holds the copyright, it belongs to him; (2) yet what he wrote is partly from teachers and partly what everyone knows, so not wholly his; (3) with God it is everything; so we belong more to God than the book to him. Student: the state also tells you what to do with your body (drugs, etc.). He: mind and will belong to you in some sense, more to God; “a startling discovery.” He belongs somewhat to his wife, children somewhat to parents, but more to God.
• Marx admits that if someone else is the source of my being I depend completely on him, so he says man made himself by transforming the world: “at least he has that clarity.” Sartre: atheistic not by proving God does not exist but because it makes no difference to us: which seems to him pride.

7. The definition of faith (“the substance of things hoped for”) #

Point: faith, the beginning of human salvation, is a supernatural virtue (a quality, of the species habit or disposition) by which, with grace inspiring and assisting, we believe what God has revealed to be true, not because we see its intrinsic truth by natural reason, but on the authority of God who can neither deceive nor be deceived: unlike a human teacher, who can do both.

• “Beginning”: nothing is more necessary; to lose faith is in a way worse than losing hope or charity, since imperfect faith can be without them but they cannot be without it: “if you lose faith, you lose everything.”
• Hebrews definition (the same text Thomas uses): he checks English Bibles on it. “Evidence of what is not seen” is almost a contradiction; “assurance” for substance is not exact: substance is more a foundation. “The apostle” = Paul by antonomasia. Latin argumentum renders Greek elenchos, striking because elenchos means refutation (Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations); here it means the conviction by which one assents to what is not seen, not an argument.
• What is hoped for is the beatific vision, eternal life. Thomas divides the articles of faith by Christ’s divinity and humanity, quoting John 17 (“eternal life is to know you and him whom you have sent”): six on the humanity (incarnation, death, descent to hell, resurrection, ascension, second coming) and six or seven on the divinity, “a couple ways of doing it.”
• Two revelations: the partial one corresponding to faith (not face to face) is the foundation of the vision to come.
• “Hoped for” refers to the will: the will, moved by grace, moves reason to assent; the virtue in reason helps it follow the will, and makes assent “more sweet.” Assent is free, hence meritorious; reason is not forced.

8. The reasonable service of faith (“suited to the understanding of all”) #

Point: God joins external signs to the internal aids of the Spirit so that faith is in harmony with reason: grace elevates, does not oppose nature; “super doesn’t mean contra.”

• Signs: miracles and prophecies; miracles show omnipotence, prophecies (future contingents) infinite knowledge; the most certain signs, suited to all because sensible, since the basic road is from sense into reason.
• Hilary of Poitiers, a Greek philosopher, struck by “I am who am” in Moses: a motive of credibility for the philosopher, not for everyman.
• Presence of signs in Moses, the prophets, Christ, the apostles: end of Mark (“the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by signs”); Peter’s epistle (“the prophetic word made more sure… a lamp in a dark place”), which “our author” [the editor of his text] did not identify.
• So faith is not caecus assensus, a blind assent, yet is free. Internal aids: in reason (faith as habitus disposing it to follow the will) and in the will (grace). External: miracles and fulfilled prophecies.
• Yet exterior signs are not sufficient: no one accepts the gospel savingly without the inspiration (more in the will) and illumination (more in reason) of the Spirit, who gives all “facility” in believing. Fr Boulay’s example from Newman: things hard to believe before his conversion became easy after.
• Faith even when not working through charity (unformed faith) is a gift of God and its act belongs to the order of salvation, a true obedience one could have refused.

9. What is to be believed (“ordinary and universal magisterium”) #

Point: all in Scripture and Tradition proposed by the Church as revealed, whether by solemn judgment (ex cathedra, as the Immaculate Conception under Pius IX, the Assumption under Pius XII, with their “shipwreck of faith” clauses) or by her ordinary and universal magisterium, what the Church has continuously taught: “often neglected nowadays,” a distinction “some people don’t want to make.”

10. Student question on charity; the three virtues; will and reason (“the will is more proportioned to God”) #

Student asks about “even though it may not work through charity.” He: unformed faith is a gift of God and supernatural, but faith formed by charity is more perfect (Paul: charity believes all, hopes all). Luther went astray by not seeing the distinction; the faith that saves is formed by charity. Thomas: “to believe in God” is to tend by faith to God, i.e. formed faith.

• Of the three theological virtues charity is greatest (Paul); he answers that hope is greater than faith. Thomas: by faith we know the end (necessary because the end surpasses reason), by hope we tend to it, by charity we are united to it: better to tend than to know, better still to be united.
• Thérèse of Lisieux at the end of her life: “I don’t know what more I can have in heaven… our union is already complete”; he cannot imagine Augustine, for whom the vision is the whole reward, saying it (a male-female contrast). Charity remains in the next life; faith and hope are replaced by vision.
• Argument (with Aristotle, and von Balthasar approved): (1) the good is in things, truth in the mind; (2) so the will loves God as he is in himself, while reason by faith does not yet attain him as he is; (3) so the will is more proportioned to God than reason, and that is one reason God moves reason through the will in this life.
• Augustine and the boy putting the ocean in a hole: you cannot get the ocean into yourself, but you can jump into it; love goes into the thing loved (“I left my heart in San Francisco”; “where your treasure is, there your heart shall be”).
• “The very important thing… people don’t like to point out”: Hebrews, without faith it is impossible to please God; no justification without it, no eternal life without persevering in it. Augustine’s line used by Thomas at the start of the Summa: theology is a science by which faith is engendered, nourished, strengthened, defended: theology is subordinate to faith, for its sake.

His words #

• unwritten traditions; passed “as it were from hand to hand”
• free of error (of the Vulgate); free of doctrinal error
• philadelphia; adelphos, philos
• instruments (the human authors); chief author (the Holy Spirit)
• immature and perverse love of reason (Augustine)
• the four forms of if-then speech [ed.: hypothetical syllogisms]; the four senses of before
• Adoro te devote, latens deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas; tibi se cor meum totum subicit, quia te contemplans totum deficit
• supernatural virtue; quality, habit or disposition
• the apostle; by antonomasia
• substance = foundation; argumentum = elenchos = conviction (not refutation, not argument)
• two revelations (partial, by faith; face to face, in vision)
• caecus assensus, blind assent (transcribed “ascensus”)
• habitus; internal aids vs external signs; inspiration (will) vs illumination (reason)
• facility in believing
• unformed faith vs faith formed by charity
• solemn judgment / ex cathedra vs ordinary and universal magisterium
• to believe in God = to tend by faith to God
• super does not mean contra

Texts #

Read in class

• Vatican I, constitution on revelation, ch. 2 (sources, canon, inspiration, interpretation), canons 1–4, ch. 3 on faith (obligation, definition, reasonable service, what is to be believed, necessity of faith) (inferred: Dei Filius)
• Hebrews 11:1 (substance of things hoped for; elenchos of things not seen)
• Hebrews 11:6 (without faith impossible to please God)
• Mark 16, end (the Lord confirmed the message by signs)
• 2 Peter (the prophetic word made more sure)
• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote, stanza 1 Mentioned
• Council of Trent, decree on the canon and on interpretation of Scripture
• Vatican II (takes up the two sources)
• Pius XII on the Vulgate; Pius XII (Assumption); Pius IX (Immaculate Conception)
• Augustine, De Trinitate (immature and perverse love of reason); Augustine on vision as whole reward; Augustine and the boy at the seashore
• Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations (elenchos)
• John 17 (eternal life is to know you…)
• Thomas Aquinas on division of the articles of faith; on believing God / believing in God; on the three theological virtues; Summa, beginning, Augustine quote on theology (inferred: ST I q.1)
• Exodus 3, “I am who am” (Hilary of Poitiers)
• St Paul, charity believes all, hopes all; charity greatest of the three
• Marx; Sartre; Newman (via Fr Boulay); Thérèse of Lisieux; von Balthasar

His questions #

• Is everything we believe by supernatural revelation in Scripture? No; some is passed down by tradition.
• What does “the Vulgate is free of error” mean? Free of doctrinal error, not that every rendering is the best possible.
• Who is the chief author of Scripture? The Holy Spirit; the human authors are instruments.
• Which is better, to breathe or to philosophize (his old exam trap)? Students say breathe, confusing the second and fourth senses of before.
• To whom do you really belong? More to God than to yourself, your wife or your parents; the copyright analogy.
• Why is faith called the beginning of salvation? Nothing is more necessary; hope and charity cannot be without it.
• What does the Latin argumentum translate, and what does it mean here? Greek elenchos; the conviction by which one assents to what is not seen.
• Why does God add external signs to the internal aids of the Spirit? So faith is in accord with reason; signs are sensible, suited to all.
• Is unformed faith a gift of God? (student) Yes, and supernatural; but faith formed by charity is more perfect, and is the faith that saves.
• Which is greater, hope or faith? Hope: by faith we know the end, by hope we tend to it, by charity we are united to it.
• Why does God move reason through the will in the act of faith? Because the will is more proportioned to God: it reaches him as he is in himself, reason by faith does not yet.