Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Protestants would like us to believe that nothing in the Holy Scriptures is difficult to understand. They advocate what they call “the open Bible,” i.e., “the Bible without note of comment,” as no assistance is needed, even in the most obscure passages.[1]
According to the World Christian Encyclopedia,[2] there are over 33,000 Christian denominations worldwide; each claiming that they rely on the Holy Spirit to guide them in their understanding of Holy Scripture. If that is what the Holy Spirit intended, why does he not provide the same understanding to all?
Protestants and others that look to the Holy Scriptures contend that every man, even the foolish and perverse (for they make no distinctions), should read the Bible for himself and expound it for himself. Thus, the Rev. Edward Bickersteth sums up this premise in his introduction to A Scripture Help:[3]
“Although much has been wisely and usefully done to illustrate the Bible by commentaries, yet it is evidently of great importance, that it should not be chiefly studied through the medium of uninspired authors. There is a majestic authority, an unaffected and beautiful simplicity and plainness in the word of God, which speaks more powerfully to the heart, than the most labored expositions. On this account, the writer has been anxious to excite his readers to study constantly, with fervent prayer, the Sacred Volume itself, (without continually going to other works. to guide them in reading it) and thus to take their religious sentiments from the fountain head.
“The writer from his heart he embraces the great Protestant principle, that the Bible, in all things necessary to salvation, is clear as the noonday, and that the writer from his heart embraces the great protestant principle, that it is every man’s duty and privilege to read the Bible for himself: and the important truth expressed in the sixth’ article of the Church’ of England that “Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any that it should be believe as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessity to’ salvation.” … “That man’s human or worldly wisdom or science, is not needful to the understanding of Scripture; but the revelation of the Holy Spirit, who inspires the true meaning with them that with humility and diligence do search therefore.” … “The Bible is in many respects its own interpreter. It contains in itself the key which will open its treasures” (preface pp. 6-7).
Now, if such a system means anything, it means that the inspired pages are so plain, so simple, so straightforward and their contents so lucidly expressed in all their parts that every man may grasp their meaning without any serious risk of going astray. Is this indeed the case? Most decidedly not. Such a view is indefensible, mischievous and false. It is contrary (1) to common sense. It is contrary (2) to the explicit teaching of Scripture itself, and it is (3) absolutely disproved by history and experience. We will deal with these three statements in order.
First, then, it is contrary to common sense. The very history and form of the Bible prove this. There are, in the first place, the peculiarities and special idioms and Hebrewisms of the original language, which are difficult enough to deal with in themselves, but which are made much more difficult when approached in their English dress. There are, in the second place, difficulties arising from discrepancies, apparent contradictions, and inconsistencies, and from certain practices which would easily mislead the casual reader, such as that of sometimes giving different names to the same individual, or to the same place; for instance, the father-in-law of Moses is called in one place Jethro (Exod. 3) and in another place Hobab (Judges iv. 11), while the Lake of Gennesaret is called the “Sea of Galilee,” the ” Dead Sea,” the ” Salt Sea,” the ” Sea of the Plain,” and the ” Sea of Tiberias “. Then the expressions, the forms of speech, and the references and allusions to be met with in the Bible belong to ages, countries and nationalities totally different to our own; further, most of the manners and customs therein described have passed away; allusions are made to habits and practices familiar enough to the actual contemporaries of the writers, and which then, indeed, threw light upon the text and illuminated it, but which now no longer exist. Other difficulties arise from the very sublimity and grandeur of the theme, and from the mysteriousness of many of the doctrines, especially such as are taught in the New Testament, which the carnal-minded and the earthly and worldly-minded can scarcely bring themselves to accept according to the obvious sense of the words, but strive rather to explain away: such, for example, as the promise Christ made to give us ” His Flesh to eat,” which seems to their feeble faith too wonderful to be accepted literally, or else, like the doctrine of eternal torment, not perhaps too wonderful, but rather to their minds too awful and cruel! Private persons will not always take upon themselves the responsibility of interpreting literally words expressive of such doctrines, and need an infallible guide to make assurance doubly sure. St. Vincent of Lerins (A.D. 450) observes, very pertinently:
“Some, perhaps, may ask what need is there to join to Holy Scripture the authority of ecclesiastical interpretation “. He answers:
” The reason is this — that the Scripture being of itself so deep and profound, all men do not understand it in one and the same sense, but divers men diversely; this man and that man, this way and that way, expound and interpret the sayings thereof, so that, to one’s thinking, so many men, so many opinions also may be gathered out of it . . . and therefore it is most necessary, because of the vagaries of errors so various, that the line of expounding the prophets and apostles be drawn according to the rule of the ecclesiastical and Catholic sense” (Commmitorium, ch. 2). If this great saint so expressed himself in the fifth century, what would he have said were he writing in the twentieth, when sects have so multiplied?
For these and for many other reasons, the Bible cannot be said to be a book of easy interpretation, such as every enterprising cobbler, blacksmith or common laborer can consult satisfactorily and expound with results advantageous either to himself or to anybody else.
Secondly, to say that the correct interpretation of the Bible is easy and within the competence of all men, even of the unlearned and the unwise, is to contradict the explicit teaching of the Holy Book itself. St. Peter lays down two very important principles in this connection, in the second of his inspired epistles. The first principle is this, that, ” No prophecy of Scripture is made by private interpretation,” that is to say, the various passages are to be understood, not according to each individual’s judgment or imagination or caprice, but according to the mind of the Church. The Prince of the Apostles not merely states the principle, but he likewise adds the reason in the following profound words: “For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time; but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21). From this we gather that no one is fully capable and competent to interpret the word of God except he have the Spirit of God. And here St. Peter merely affirms implicitly what St. Paul affirms explicitly, viz.: “The sensual man perceives not the things that are of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:14). How, then, can he perceive the true meaning of the Scriptures, which most certainly are ” of the Spirit of God,” more especially in view of what the same Apostle assures us when he says that the inspired writers ” speak the wisdom of God in mystery, a wisdom which is hidden” (1 Cor. 2:7), and therefore not readily accessible to all? In regard to the second principle, St. Peter puts the case still more forcibly and explicitly. When referring to the Epistles of St. Paul he writes that in them “are certain things hard to be understood, and which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. You, therefore, knowing these things beforehand, take heed, lest you be led aside by the error of the unwise,” etc. (2 Pet. 3:17). In the above words three facts of deep significance are revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. The first is that the writings of St. Paul contain statements hard to be under stood. The second is that the other parts of the Bible likewise contain difficult and obscure passages; and the third revealed fact is that the unlearned and the unstable not merely fail to discover the true import of the passages they read, but that they attach false meanings to them, and force them from their true sense, with the most disastrous consequence to themselves. They ” wrest,” that is to say, they twist and turn and torture and force meanings out of texts which these texts by no means contain. They have the audacity, for instance, to affirm that “This is My Body” means “This is not My Body,” but only a figure or a memorial of it. Or, again, when reading the words: “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven” they declare the meaning really to be: ” Whose sins YOU shall forgive, they are not forgiven, by you, at all; but if you preach the Gospel, those who hear you and believe in the Lord will gain forgiveness— merely by their faith in Christ,” and so forth. Did such private interpretation carry with it mere error, folly and falsehood, and nothing further, we might contemplate the vast multitude of ignorant but self-satisfied and self-appointed expositors of the Bible with a greater sense of composure; but St. Peter categorically declares that it leads to sin and to eternal damnation. “Destruction” is the word actually used. Let me then ask the gentle reader, as a reasonable being, is it or is it not a fact that “the unlearned wrest the Scripture to their own destruction”? And if it be a fact — as St. Peter affirms — is or is not the Catholic Church abundantly justified when (wishing to save men from such a peril) she positively forbids them to fix upon the text their own gloss, in contradiction to her express teaching? Surely the Church of God has the right to try and protect her children from attempting their own spiritual destruction!
If we turn to the Acts of the Apostles, we shall find that even men of position and culture needed help and direction when studying the sacred text. Thus, the eunuch of the Queen of Ethiopia, when reading the words of the prophet Isaias, on his journey home, admitted his inability to grasp the sense of what he read, unless someone would be kind enough to undertake to explain it to him. After reading out certain passages he turned to Philip and said: “I beseech thee, of whom doth the prophet speak, is it of himself or of some other man?” (Acts 8) The eunuch was himself unable to decide. He was left in suspense. In the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel we meet with a still more remarkable example of the difficulty of correctly applying the inspired text, and of recognizing the great truths to which it points. The two Apostles who met Jesus on their way to Emmaus were quite unable to trace step by step the fulfilment of the Scripture in the events that had so recently occurred. So that our Lord was obliged to interpret the passages for them. “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things that were concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27). Then they plucked up courage, and their hearts burnt within them, as “He opened to them the Scriptures ” (24:32). Before this they were evidently like a sealed book.
The difficulty of correctly interpreting the Bible is proved by the frequent mistakes of the Apostles in respect to the words of their Divine Master. These obscurities are so numberless throughout the sacred volume that St. Augustine, who was as acute, profound and learned a divine as ever took the Bible in hand, says of it: “There are more things in Scripture of which I am ignorant, than with which I am acquainted.” Would to God that those Bible Christians, who have none of St. Augustine’s great learning, had at least some tinge of his modesty and humility!
But that which both common sense and the explicit words of the Bible declare has been made abundantly manifest by a sad and deplorable experience, extending over many centuries.
No one can follow the quarrels and wrangles that have arisen, outside the pale of the Catholic Church, as to the precise meaning and force of certain words and sentences; no one can reflect upon the emphatic manner in which opposite schools have claimed opposite meanings for the same expressions, without realizing the pressing need of an authoritative interpreter. When we seek for the origin of the innumerable heresies that have sprung up from the earliest ages of the Church, and more especially since the time in which the invention of printing placed Bibles in everybody’s hands, we shall find they are almost all due to the stubborn determination on the part of proud and headstrong discontents to put their own personal interpretation upon the oracles of God. Even so far back as the time of St. Augustine men had already begun to “wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction” and, it may surely be added, to the destruction of thousands of their followers as well. Commenting on St. John (Tract 18) St. Augustine writes: “Non aliunde natae sunt Haereses, nisi dum Scripturae bonae intelliguntur non bene”; i.e., “Heresies have no other origin than the Bible misinterpreted and misunderstood”. Look out on the world around, or, if you prefer it, confine your examination even to England alone, and count the number of different sects and religious denominations that have sprung up, and then you will see some of the results of allowing unauthorized persons to exercise and to follow their own private judgment in the matter of Scriptural exegesis. Once such a principle is introduced, one will find, as an inevitable consequence, that the inspired word of God is dragged in, to prove every doctrine or religious view that can be thought of or invented, however far-fetched, extravagant, absurd and untrue.
Protestants, especially of the more rabid type, are very angry that we should even suggest the possibility of the Bible leading any one astray. They talk as though we were attacking the veracity of God Himself. Thus, Mr. W. Walsh, of the Protestant Alliance, after denouncing such teaching with his usual extravagant and heated rhetoric, concludes with the observation: “One would suppose that the Bible were a kind of mad dog, which can only be let abroad freely when it is wearing a Papal muzzle V How ever, when we are called upon to choose between St. Peter, who warns us most seriously that there are dangers and great dangers, and Mr. Walsh, who implies that there are none, our task is not a very difficult one. We know whom to trust.
Consider further such texts as: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church” (Matt. 16:18); or, “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven” (Matt. 16:19); or, “Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven” (John 3:5); or, “If any man be sick among you, let him bring in the priests of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil,” etc. (James 5:14); or, “The meat that I shall give you is My Flesh” (John 6:52). Consider, I repeat, any one of these and similar texts, and then call to mind the sea of controversy to which they have given rise, and the storms of conflicting views and opinions which have raged and still rage around them. If the meaning of Scripture be really so excessively clear, so self-evident, so luminous, and so obvious to the meanest capacity, and so thoroughly within reach of even the unlettered and the uninstructed, how in the name of common sense does it arise that there is no unity, no harmony of belief, no uniformity of doctrine— nothing, in a word, but confusion? How comes it that men divide and quarrel? How are we to explain that of a dozen men who exercise their private judgment on the Divine oracle of infallible truth no two are agreed; but that they all flatly and strenuously oppose one another? Facts are stubborn things. And no more certain, no more palpable fact was ever written on the face of history than that the Scriptures, when left to be interpreted by different individuals according to their own personal judgment and shallow reasoning, lead not to unity, but to disunity; not to order and harmony of religious faith, but to disorder, chaos and spiritual ruin. The warning of St. Peter, except within the true Church of God, has fallen on deaf ears. The difficulties in Holy Writ, to which he so solemnly called attention, well-nigh two thousand years ago, have been practically denied. Every man has been assured that he may safely expound the inspired text for himself. Not even a guiding voice or a word of warning, not even a notice-board or a finger post, in the form of a footnote, at the obscurer and more doubtful passages, is to be tolerated! The Catholic Church alone is sensible of her duty. Only she ventures to control and to safeguard the casual reader. The Protestant principle is “the open Bible”. Her gift to her children is “the Bible, without note or comment”. She acts as a mother who should put the sharp-edged sword, so useful in the hands of the experienced warrior, into the untutored hands of an infant, with which to wound itself. The glittering blade of God’s word, “sharp and piercing as a two-edged sword” she hands over to the keeping of the child, before he has either strength or know ledge enough to wield it. As a consequence, instead of using it against his enemies, or in his own defense, he but too often turns the weapon against himself, and injures himself beyond recovery. The lesson that history and experience have repeated with such fearful eloquence, and at such a terrible cost to souls, was taught by St. Peter; yes, taught indeed clearly enough, but not learnt; not taken to heart; not seriously and honestly applied, except indeed by those who have always hearkened to him, and by such as still listen and obey him, speaking today to the world by the lips of his successor.
The true children of the Catholic Church alone have learnt to distrust their own fallible judgment and to wait for and rest upon the verdict of that divinely constituted Judge who, St. Paul tells us, is ” the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Hence, they in deed have held together, and still, in spite of their gigantic number, form one solid, compact and united whole — a single flock, under a single shepherd; but other religions have become hopelessly and endlessly divided.
Let us pass to another consideration. The Bible contains the teaching of Christ, the laws by which we are to govern our conduct, the counsels of perfection, and so forth. It may, in fact, be considered as our guide and the law-book of our spiritual life. Now, this being the case, we may well ask — if a special human authority be needed to interpret the laws of man, which no one will deny, surely a special divinely constituted authority is needed, and, let me say, very much more needed, to interpret the laws of God? In every civilized state, in every kingdom, empire and republic throughout the world we in variably find two things. We find, in the first place, a code of laws and traditions, and prescriptions and obligations imposed by the State, and, in the second place, we find a lawfully constituted tribunal, whose particular duty it is to administer these laws, to explain their meaning, to see that they are properly applied, and to enforce their enactments. Who ever lived in a country where each citizen was presented with a book of its laws, and was then left to understand them after his own fashion? Who ever heard of any great nation, or indeed of any tribe or society whatsoever, with the slightest pretension to civilization, publishing a digest of its laws, and then laying down the principle that every man should interpret them for himself? In secular affairs men are sometimes considerably shrewder than in spiritual affairs. “the children of this world,” says the Holy Spirit, “are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” They are perfectly well aware that if there be a political constitution, there must be an authority to see that it is faithfully adhered to; and that if there be a code of laws, there must be a body of learned judges, and barristers and lawyers to administer the law, and to decide all important cases that are brought before them. The courts are constantly sitting. Barristers are continually disputing and arguing, and the judges are, week by week and day by day, giving their decisions, and passing sentence. Though each litigant in a case may believe himself to be in the right, and though each would gladly follow his own private judgment, he is simply not allowed — no, not in matters of this world. It is only in the supernatural order, and in a false creed founded by man, that such an utterly ridiculous and unworkable system is tolerated, or could survive a week.
In the natural and civil order private judgment is forced to yield to the public and official judgment of the properly constituted authority. The individual cannot expound the law of the land for himself. He is compelled, whether he like it or no, to make his view conform to the view of the presiding judge. He has to accept his ruling, however strongly and passionately he may object to it. The Supreme Court of Law in England, or the United States, actually decides all such questions authoritatively and finally. Neither honors, titles, wealth, learning nor fame can influence its decisions; no posse of armed men stand by to protect the officials in the discharge of their duty: yet this court is continually settling questions involving the most intensely vital and personal interests of thousands of men, and interpreting the laws for the whole community. To what condition would the State be reduced if every man were permitted to form his own opinion as to the force and value of every legal phrase in the law book, and if no tribunal existed to settle disputes as they arose? There would be no order, no peace-nothing but confusion. The condition of the State would soon become as confused and as chaotic as the condition of the Anglican Church at the present day. And can anything worse be conceived?
If an authoritative interpreter be needed in the case of the civil law, which by comparison is simple and intelligible enough, surely such an authority is immeasurably more requisite in the case of the Divine law, with its high code of morals, its sublime doctrines, its deep mysteries, its incomprehensible dogmas, and its essentially supernatural and superhuman character. This, then, is what we claim for the Catholic Church: viz., a right to decide finally and for ever all questions involving the correct meaning and the exact force and value of the text of that Book which her Divine Founder has committed to her keeping. She does for the law of God what the Judge does for the law of man, with this difference, however, that her decision is not only final but infallible. Christ promised that the Holy Spirit should remain with the Church for ever. But it is this same Holy Spirit who, in the first instance, inspired the Sacred Scriptures; therefore, when the Church interprets a disputed passage, it is the Holy Spirit Himself who is in reality explaining His own meaning; and in appealing to the Church we are appealing to the very Author of the Book; or, if not absolutely to this Divine Author, then at all events to one who most certainly and literally has the spirit and the mind of the Author. And observe, we have God’s own assurance that ” The things that are of God, no man knows, but the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:14). How then can every man be his own instructor and his own guide through all the intricacies and labyrinths of Holy Scripture?
[1] Adapted from Vaughan John S., Msgr. Concerning the Holy Bible; Its Use and Abuse. London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd. 1922, pp. 55-75. (Public domain).
[2] World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World A.D. 1900–2000 (WCE), by David B. Barrett, 3rd edition, 2019 by Oxford University Press.
[3] Bickersteth, Edward, (1786-1850), A Scripture Help, Eighth edition, London: J. Seeley, 1821.