Editor’s Note: This article continues the series of straightforward responses to frequently-encountered questions and objections concerning the Catholic Faith. The questions and answers are adapted from Professor Felix Otten, O.P. and C.F. Pauwels, O.P.’s The Most Frequently Encountered Difficulties, published originally in Dutch in 1939.
Not only Catholics but also believing Protestants and Orthodox regard Holy Scripture as God’s word, written under God’s supernatural inspiration. From this they draw the conclusion that everything that is written in the Holy Scriptures is infallibly true, because under the inspiration of the true God no error can be written down. On the other hand, they also understand the Bible as a gift from God. Therefore, Catholics deny from the outset that revelation could conflict with the data and results of real science. The Bible can of course deviate from unfinished and imperfect science, from sham knowledge such as preliminary assumptions, premature conclusions, and unproven claims.
However, in order to be able to judge whether there really is a difference between the teachings of Holy Scripture and the results of science, one must of course first be sure that one knows the true meaning of the Bible and the correct meaning of it. And for that, one must first know what the sacred writer intended to say.
The writers who compiled the Holy Scriptures under the inspiration of God were not dead but living instruments of God; they knew that and what they wrote, and they wrote for a purpose. And so the Holy Scriptures are only infallibly true in the sense in which the authors intended to speak.
A simple example, of course, is when they use imagery and mention God’s eyes and hands. They do not mean to teach that God has eyes and hands in a literal sense; and so that expression is infallibly true only in the way that imagery is true. Nowadays, it is claimed that people have found scientific and historical errors and inaccuracies in Holy Scripture. For example, some claim the Bible is mistaken about the origin of the world in six days. So the question is: what was the intention of the sacred writers regarding science and history? After all, only then can we decide what they wanted to learn about it.
Now we cannot explain here in a few words how we can find out the correct intention of the sacred writers on this matter. That question is quite complicated and entire books have been written about it. We can say that the Bible is a religious book written for a religious and not for a scientific purpose. And if we then read in Holy Scripture, for example, that certain animal species are classified among the ruminant animals, or if we find there mentioned how many thousands of soldiers a king of Assyria goes to war with, we can safely say that the writers conform to then-current beliefs in citing those particulars. They did not wish to lead the readers’ attention through secondary matters. And if they do not intend to teach anything about nature or about the past, then they are not speaking infallible truth about it.
This attention to the intentions of the sacred writers is the general principle by which, in most cases, the question of apparent contradictions between Scripture and science can be resolved. Incidentally, one must of course study each case individually. Scripture and science in most cases can be reconciled.
The reason why Catholics adopt Holy Tradition in addition to Holy Scripture is this: they do not believe that all the truths revealed to us by God are recorded in the Bible. Then there must be another means by which we can know revelation, another source from which we can draw. That is then Holy Tradition.
The Holy Scriptures are not at all in the nature of a book that wants to convey all truths completely. This is most evident in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul only writes his letters in response to difficulties that arose in the churches he founded. He does not give a complete treatise anywhere. None of the Evangelists wrote a full life of Christ.
And the facts prove the opposite. Some truths of faith, also accepted by Protestants, are not mentioned in the Bible. Nowhere does the Holy Scriptures speak, for example, about observing Sunday as the day of the Lord instead of the Sabbath. Nothing is said anywhere about the baptism of small children, and so forth. And so Catholics assume that not all revealed truths were written under God’s inspiration, but that some were communicated orally and only later recorded in uninspired ecclesiastical literature.
The quoted text does not argue at all against the existence of Holy Tradition. John seeks the conscious words at the end of the Book of Revelation to testify that this prophecy was to be communicated unchanged to the seven churches of Asia. He forbids adding anything to be added to it, as if it were part of his writings. And in the next verse he also forbids omitting anything from the Book of Revelation. So his words refer only to his own book. Therefore, he also threatens with the plagues recorded in that book.
The Bible is God’s word, and nothing may be added to it. Yet Catholics have done so: the Catholic Bible contains several books which are missing from the Protestant editions. And so the Catholics equate apocryphal books with God’s word.
The fact is, a Catholic edition of the Bible says more than a Protestant one. In the latter, several books, which are to be found in the former, are completely missing, e.g., the Book of Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Sirach. And from other books, e.g., Daniel and Esther, important fragments are missing.
Now there is only one inspiration of God and one Holy Scripture; and they cannot differ for Catholics and Protestants. However, since God did not give us the complete Bible all at once, complete in one tome, there may be disagreement as to whether a particular book is “canonical,” that is, should be on the canon or list of inspired books, and so must be included in the Bible. And we are dealing with that disagreement here.
The books about which that disagreement exists were indeed written under God’s inspiration, but in the early centuries (and as far as the Old Testament books are concerned, also among the Jews) some questioned this inspiration. However, the greater majority of Christians did not hesitate to include those books until the reformers rejected them. In view of that disagreement in the early centuries, Catholics call these books “deuterocanonical”; but that name means nothing with respect to them being inspired.
The Protestants call these books “apocryphal” or unreal. That does not mean that they deny those books any value. The Synod of Dordt prescribed that they should be included as an appendix in the Bible. Catholics also speak of apocryphal books, but by that they meant quite different ones which are also rejected by the Protestants such as the so-called Gospel of Peter.