One of the ancient beliefs of the Church is that the Bible is inerrant. That means, as St. Augustine (d. 430) put it, the Bible is “completely free from error” (Letter 82, Chap. 1, #3).
However, in 2005 the bishops of England and Wales said:
It is important to note th[e]… teaching of the Second Vatican Council… [so] we should not expect total accuracy from the Bible. (The Gift of Scripture, p. 18)
If Vatican II has said something which means that the Bible is no longer accurate, then it raises a question. Should people consider the Bible to still be inerrant?
1. Providentissimus Deus
To understand the Church’s doctrine of inerrancy, it is helpful to look at Pope Leo XIII’s 1893 Encyclical, Providentissimus Deus (PD). In that document, the doctrine of inerrancy is explained in what can be thought of as four principles.
Principle 1: a divinely inspired text must be inerrant. This is because God’s inspiration cannot err. Accidental errors are not possible because God is all-knowing (Hebrews 4:13). Deliberate errors are not possible because God cannot lie (Titus 1:2). So, there cannot be errors in a divinely inspired text.
Principle 2: the Bible is fully inerrant. This is because God has inspired the WHOLE Biblical text, so the WHOLE text must be inerrant. As Pope Leo XIII put it:
It is absolutely wrong… to narrow inspiration to certain parts… of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred… [or to claim that] divine inspiration regards [just] the things of faith and morals. (PD, 20)
Principle 3: there are different types of literal and non-literal (inerrant) truth. We can see that the Bible includes non-literal forms of language, such as poetry and metaphors. It even includes comments which look literal, but which are actually just stating human perspectives, such as the idea that the sun rotates around the earth (Ecclesiastes 1:5). This means that although the whole content of the Bible is inerrant, it is inerrant in a range of different ways (PD, 18).
Principle 4: inerrancy applies to what God intended to teach, because, as Pope Leo XIII put it:
[God]… did not intend to teach… things in no way profitable unto salvation. (PD, 18)
The principle of intentionality is important, but Leo XIII insisted that it must not be abused and misused as a way of justifying errors in the Bible. Otherwise, people could claim that God was justified in lying in the Bible, in order to achieve a greater good. As Leo XIII put it:
[They are wrong to think that] … in a question of the… falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it. (PD, 20)
Overall, these four principles within Providentissimus Deus give a doctrine of inerrancy which is as follows:
The Bible is inerrant because God inspired it.
The Bible is fully inerrant
However, there are different types of (inerrant) truth in the Bible
And the Bible (inerrantly) teaches what God intended it to teach.
This summary may look relatively clear on the surface, but it raises some puzzling questions. For example, how are principles about a text supposed to be integrated with a principle about intentionality?
To some extent, the history of twentieth-century (Catholic) thinking about inerrancy can be understood as a series of different ways of trying to answer that question.
2. Early Twentieth Century
During the early parts of the twentieth century one of the most oft-challenged aspects of inerrancy was the idea of the full inerrancy of the Bible.
When Pope Pius X confronted Modernism in 1907, partial inerrancy was a key issue. The modernists were saying that:
… in the Sacred Books there are many passages referring to science or history where manifest errors are to be found. (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 36)
In 1920, Pope Benedict XV wrote the encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus (SP). It focused upon a slightly different version of partial inerrancy, which he summed up as follows:
They claim that …immunity from error is to be restricted… Their notion is that only what concerns religion is intended and taught by God in Scripture, and that all the rest… concerning “profane knowledge,” [are] the garments in which Divine truth is presented [and which] God merely permits. (SP, 19)
This comment shows the problems which began to arise when exegetes tried to apply Leo XIII’s principle of intentionality, especially when it was applied to the historical claims in the Bible. Benedict XV rejected their approach:
Those… who hold that the historical portions of Scripture do not rest on the absolute truth of the facts… are… out of harmony with the Church’s teaching… If we were to accept such views, how could we maintain the truth insisted on throughout Leo XIII’s Encyclical – viz. that the sacred narrative is absolutely free from error? (SP, 22)
Benedict XV ends with a good question. But the formulation of the question embeds the assumption that an inerrant text must always be accurate in a literally true sense. But why must that be the case, if there are different types of truth in the Bible?
3. Divino Afflante Spiritu
In 1943 Pope Pius XII marked the fiftieth anniversary of Providentissimus Deus by publishing Divino Afflante Spiritu (DAS). That encyclical reiterates all four of what we can think of as Pope Leo XIII’s principles:
Principle 1: a divinely inspired text must be inerrant. Pius XII said:
It is absolutely wrong and forbidden… to admit that the sacred writer has erred… [This is because] it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and constant faith of the Church. (DAS, 3)
Principle 2: the Bible is fully inerrant. Pius XII said
Divine authority is claimed for the “entire books with all their parts”… to secure freedom from any error whatsoever. (DAS, 1)
Principle 3: there are different types of literal and non-literal (inerrant) truth. This point is particularly well developed in the encyclical. Pius XII explicitly said that exegetes need to understand the different “literary genres” and “modes of expression” in the Bible. Otherwise, they risk misunderstanding what the Bible is (inerrantly) teaching (DAS, 38).
Principle 4: The encyclical also repeats the importance of divine intentionality in determining the understanding of inerrancy. But Pius XII added a significant additional clarification:
[God]… did not intend to teach… things in no way profitable to salvation, which principle will apply to cognate sciences and especially to history. (DAS, 3)
By saying that intentionality applies “especially to history,” Pius XII is subtly amending Benedict XV’s view. Pius XII is careful to reaffirm that Biblical history is inerrant (because the Bible is “fully inerrant”) but he adds the insight that God isn’t necessarily intending to teach each piece of (apparent) Biblical history, as history. This means that some of the (apparent) history in the Bible may be there for purposes other than transmitting history.
4. Vatican II
Vatican II addressed the issues of inerrancy in Dei Verbum (DV). That document went through multiple drafts, with significant amounts of discussion throughout the duration of the Council. The final version of the document substantially reiterates what we can think of as Leo XIII’s four main principles:
Principle 1: a divinely inspired text must be inerrant. Vatican II stated:
Since everything asserted by the inspired authors… must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit… it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching… without error. (DV, 11)
Principle 2: the Bible is fully inerrant. Although Vatican II does indeed say that the Bible is “without error” (DV, 11), there is some controversy about whether that means “fully inerrant” or just “partially inerrant.” We will return to that issue below.
Principle 3: there are different types of literal and non-literal (inerrant) truth. Vatican II was particularly clear on this point. It stated:
Truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. (DV, 12)
Principle 4: inerrancy applies to what God intended to teach. Vatican II made a clear reference to the importance of God’s intentionality. It stated:
The books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. (DV, 11)
However, this intentionality clause has occasioned some controversy. Some commentators have claimed that Vatican II is changing the doctrine of full inerrancy into a doctrine of partial inerrancy. They say that the Council is asserting that it is ONLY what God has revealed for the sake of salvation that is inerrant, therefore the rest of the Bible is not inerrant. And so the Bible itself is no longer fully inerrant. (See “For the Sake of Our Salvation.”)
There are two reasons which make this an implausible interpretation of Vatican II.
Firstly, one of the draft versions of the final document was rejected precisely because it could be read as implying partial inerrancy. It would not make sense if the final version was promulgating the very idea which caused a preceding draft to be rejected. (See “Vatican II and the Inerrancy of the Bible.”)
Secondly, there was an official commentary which explained the meaning of the text to the bishops who were voting on it. That commentary stated:
[The text]… does not imply any material limitation on the truth of Scripture. (“Does Vatican II Allow for Errors in Sacred Scripture?”)
This means that the bishops voted for the text of Dei Verbum believing that it proclaimed full inerrancy.
What this all means is that the most plausible interpretation of Vatican II is that it was simply reiterating the traditional four principles of inerrancy, which we can see in Leo XIII’s teaching.
5. Post Vatican II
There are three incidents which have occurred after Vatican II which also suggest that the Church has not changed its teaching with regard to the principle of the full inerrancy of Scripture.
Firstly, in 1998 a profession of Faith was published. The commentary attached to the profession cites an interpretation of Vatican II which it states as teaching that:
The[re]… [is an] absence of error in the inspired sacred texts. (Commentary, 11)
Secondly, in 2008, at the 12th Synod of Bishops, a draft document gave the following summary of Dei Verbum:
Although all parts of Sacred Scripture are divinely inspired, inerrancy applies only to “that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation” (DV 11). (Instrumentum Laboris, 15c)
The inclusion of the word “only” means that this statement is asserting that Vatican II taught partial inerrancy, as it states that inerrancy only applies to parts of the Bible. When the bishops discussed that use of the word “only,” they rejected it and they reaffirmed the Church’s traditional teaching of full inerrancy. (See “Synod Decides… Not to Approve Restricted Inerrancy Doctrine.”)
Thirdly, in 2014 the Pontifical Biblical Commission published The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture. That document notes that the Church (still) teaches the full inerrancy of the Bible, but it also notes that the different styles in the Bible mean that there is no reason to think that an (inerrant) Biblical teaching must always be scientific or historically accurate (see p. 70).
6. Conclusion
When we compare Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus with Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, what we see is essentially the same doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. Both documents are affirming these four principles:
The Bible is inerrant because God inspired it.
The Bible is fully inerrant
However, there are different types of (inerrant) truth in the Bible
And the Bible (inerrantly) teaches what God intended it to teach.
Although Leo XIII and Vatican II taught the same principles, this does not mean that those principles have always been interpreted in exactly the same way. There is a subtle tension running through the principles, which allows for a range of different nuances and emphases. For example, we saw above that Pope Pius XII applied the principles in a slightly different way than Pope Benedict XV did.
What this all means is Vatican II has not changed the doctrine of inerrancy. But the already existing tensions within the four principles of inerrancy may well mean that modern theologians stress different aspects and implications of the doctrine, than were stressed previously.
9 thoughts on “Is the Bible Still Inerrant?”
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What is so much more significant than ‘inerrant’ is that other than the Gospels the bible is incoherent. If you were to feed every statement on the bible made over the last two millennia into an AI device, it would not compute. A house divided …”. Other than the Gospels, here’s a book that was largely written by a religious sect that does not believe the outcome of those who re-completed the ending. The impact interpretation had on such a tome reflects our Savior’s revelation that He came to bring a sword (shared error) and for all the billions printed, the effect has been monumental division. The bottom line is that the bible has failed its mission due to human errors.
Yes, the incoherence of the bible is a viewpoint which has been argued over the centuries. But the standard Christian reply has been that it is only incoherent if you try to separate it from a tradition of authoritative interpretation. So, the issues tend to reduce to a slightly different argument about which set of (philosophical) presuppositions should be brought to the reading of Scripture. Pope John Paul II had some interesting thoughts on that issue in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio.
You did your best but one sees that there has been a lot of dancing around going on. It is clear enough that the Church has been wrong but is trying to wiggle out of having to admit it. John Paul II’s apology as to Galileo was the closest it’s come to it. Not only the factual history is full of errors (contradictions in the Gospels have been long noted) but some of the teaching is error (we no longer follow some of Paul’s instructions). One can say the Bible should be understood “in the light of then-current conditions” but that gives the whole game away. Once you admit that, nothing is any more important than anything else and everything is up for sale.
On the other hand one can escape from the other side. The Church is not “sola scriptura”. Lots of stuff that is true is not in the Bible. In the first verse of his Gospel Luke tells us that there were already “many” Gospels in existence before he even began research on his own. Except for Mark (and maybe Matthew) they’ve all been lost. What did they say? Probably they were significantly different than Luke — otherwise he wouldn’t feel the need to set the record “straight”.
You’ve trotted out all of these flawed arguments before, CC, and ignored their refutations, so I will restrict myself here to a single correction here.
Luke explicitly states that, in contrast to other narratives, he sets out to write an “orderly account.” The emphasis is not on “setting the record straight”–it’s on a chronological structure and order of events (in contrast to Matthew and Mark, whose structures are thematic).
Your fantasy of a “lost” Gospel that somehow contradicts what the Church, under persecution, fiercely clung to from the beginning, remains just that–a vain fantasy, more firmly rooted in The DaVinci Code than in reality.
If you really think the Bible is inerrant, you must believe Luke when he says there were already “many” narratives (well-ordered or not) in existence. One senses dissatisfaction with them when he says that he has “had a grasp of things from the beginning” (verse 3).
It’s not disputed that there are lost writings, some of them substantial. I invite you to check out the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops discussion of the Gospel According to Matthew.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/0
The Bishops point out that Matthew (and Mark and Luke) relied heavily on a lost “Q Document”, which must have been in writing, because there is such close word-for-word agreement. They also say that there was another written source for material that is unique to Matthew. This is just one example.
Yes, there are definitely different nuances and emphases in the way that different generations have interpreted the bible. Leo XIII was at pains to stress that it should not be interpreted to create false conflicts with Science. Pius XII made similar comments about avoiding false conflicts with historians. Ultimately, It is one thing to ‘understand’ a theory of biblical inerrancy (above), but it is a very different matter to try and apply it to the specific instances of Scriptural texts…
On the matter of Luke, yes there may have been prior documents or sets-of-notes before the gospels (such as Q). Some scholars think that the style of the apocryphal gospel of Thomas may illustrate how such notes could have looked, as it is mainly a set of sayings. If that is so (and that is a big if), then what is distinctive about the gospels we have, is that they try to put early notes-of-sayings back into their original contexts to provide a fuller narrative of events. However, it is always worth remembering that almost every theory about the origins of the gospels is subject to considerable disagreement.