'Nouvelle' Exegesis: A Neo-Conservative Interpretation of Biblical Inerrancy

'Nouvelle' Exegesis: A Neo-Conservative Interpretation of Biblical Inerrancy

The Problem.  Some neo-conservative Catholic biblical scholars (nouvelle theologie exegetes), such as Andrew Minto from Franciscan University of Steubenville, are using the techniques of ressourcement to re-interpret the dogma of the inerrancy of Scripture.  

As is well known, they are interested in a 'dynamic orthodoxy', an orthodoxy that affirms (at least verbally) the traditional dogmatic formulae of our faith, but one according to which the understanding of those formulae is--according to their post-conciliar rhetoric--'continuously being renewed' (i.e., evolving), or 'understood anew in every age' (i.e., reinterpreted), in order to 'meet the demands of the times' (i.e., accomodate modern trends of thought).  In plain English, they accept the traditional words of our dogmas, but reject their traditional meaning.

So what is their novel interpretation of inerrancy?  They now take that dogma as meaning, not that the Bible is free from all falsehood (or false statements), but merely that it is free from intentional deceit.  To do this, they re-interpret the meaning of 'error', to include only intentional, false affirmations and to exclude unintentional errors.  In other words, they narrow down the meaning of “error” to “deceit,” such that “inerrancy” means “lack of deceit” and not “absence of false affirmations.”  They then conclude that the Bible can contain false statements--not only historical and 'scientific' falsehoods, but even moral and doctrinal falsehoods--but that this does not take away its inerrancy because those false statements are not 'errors' in the sense of deceitful statements.  They are unintentional falsehoods.  This novel interpretation ultimately allows them to cede to the peer-pressure of (faithless) historical-critical scholars who have supposedly found hundreds or even thousands of errors in Scripture--without thereby becoming heretics (at least in their minds).  And, what is perhaps most insulting: as is so typical of the ressourcement movement, these scholars even cite the teachings of the Magisterium and of the Church Fathers, in particular St. Augustine, in their favor.

The Truth of the Matter.  This is a grossly heterodox interpretation of the dogma of inerrancy.  This interpretation contradicts, not only the consensus of Fathers and approved Theologians (which of itself is authoritative) and the explicit teaching of the Magisterium, but also sound reasoning. 

In particular, it is a gross misinterpretation of the Church Fathers and of the Magisterium to say that they believed in the ‘inerrancy’ of Scripture only in the sense of lack of deceit, but not in the sense of an absence of false affirmations. Indeed, the Fathers of the Church argued that there are no errors in Scripture because God cannot be deceitful, but they also believed that Scripture lacked any false affirmations. In fact, given of the nature of God, the divine attribute of God's veracity, inerrancy follows necessarily from lack of deceit. 

For St. Augustine, for instance, there is no possibility of any error in Scripture (in particular a merely unintentional error), because he, like all the Fathers, were aware that the Scriptures have an all-knowing God as their primary author, and thus any error on the part of the human author (whether intentional or unintentional) would entail deceit on the part of God. In other words, there is nothing unintentional in Scripture, because God willed all of it. St. Augustine clearly understands the inerrancy of Scripture as meaning that there is nothing contrary to truth in Scripture. Hence, to claim that St. Augustine admits there are errors in Scripture is to misunderstand his words. 

He writes to St. Jerome: 

“On my own part I confess to your charity that it is only to those books of Scripture which are now called canonical that I have learned to pay such honor and reverence as to believe most firmly that none of their writers has fallen into any error. And if in these books I meet anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand...” (Epistle 82.1: ‘Et crebrius alibi’). 

But this is not the teaching of St. Augustine alone. Pope Leo XIII (Providentissimus Deus 21) says that these “words of St. Augustine to St. Jerome may sum up what [the Fathers] taught.”  

Indeed, let us learn from the Church what exactly the mind of the Fathers on this matter is. Pope Leo (ibid.; DS 1952 [3293]) continues:

“And so emphatically were all the Fathers and Doctors agreed that the divine writings, as left by the hagiographers, are free from all error, that they labored earnestly, with no less skill than reverence, to reconcile with each other those numerous passages which seem at variance—the very passages which in great measure have been taken up by the "higher criticism;" for they were unanimous in laying it down, that those writings, in their entirety and in all their parts were equally from the inspiration of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred writers, could not set down anything but what was true.” (Emphasis added.)

Recommendations.  For an excellent site dedicated to defending the dogma (and the traditional understanding) of the inerrancy of Scripture, visit the Saint Jerome Biblical Guild.   You will find there lots of nice resources and reading suggestions.  Also Salvatore J. Ciresi, the guild's founder and director, publishes a periodical newsletter which you can receive via email for free.

Another great site for learning sound biblical teaching is the Roman Theological Forum.  It provides many articles regarding theological and polemical issues.  Although I cannot recommend all the articles, the articles on biblical matters are quite good.


    

Quaeritur: What are the Techniques of Neo-Modernism and the Nouvelle Theologie?

Quaeritur: What are the Techniques of Neo-Modernism and the Nouvelle Theologie?

Quaeritur: [In your previous post on the nouvelle theologie], you have named 'resourcement' as an inherently dangerous neo-modernist strategy.  Would you elucidate more such strategies we might encounter equally capable of confounding our understanding and leading us away from the Church?

Respondeo: Yes, ressourcement is a technique that is used (most often) to "raze the bastions," i.e., to destroy the positive foundations of the traditional interpretation of the faith.  But we must distinguish between positive theology and ressourcement.  

Positive Theology vs. Ressourcement Theology.  Positive theology is a perfectly legitimate method mastered by the Fathers of the Church and perfected by the Scholastics throughout the centuries which consists in studying the sources of theology, first in their own native literary context, and then collating them topically, so they may be ultimately used in support for a given thesis. (Nouvelle theologie practitioners often criticize the Scholastics because, supposedly, the Scholastics used the sources merely to formulate "proofs from authority"; but these self-professed lovers of historical theology don't bother to realize that Scholastic proofs were merely the end-result of a much more elaborate study of sources that involved intensive literary courses, the resulting commentaries, along with its sophisticated divisiones textus, consequent florilegia, etc., etc. It was a whole culture of historical and literary awareness of classical sources that modern scholars can only envy and not imitate.) St Thomas was a master in this technique, as is evident, not only from his employment of the fruits of positive theology in the Summa or his disputed questions (for example, whenever he cites Scripture, St Augustine, Aristotle, etc. in support of a thesis), but especially as it is evident from his commentaries on Scripture, Aristotle, and other thinkers, and in particular from his impressive biblical patrology, the Catena aurea. It is important for theologians especially to use this technique, for their conclusions must ultimately be based on the sources of Revelation. And the Scholastics were very aware of this. St Thomas speaks of this theological task explicitly in Summa theologiae I.1.8 ad 2.

Ressourcement, however, goes beyond a mere proof from authority; if it were, it would be nothing new.  Rather, it is a collective attempt by neo-modernist theologians--who are experts in the history of dogma and theology--to replace the traditional understanding of the faith by selectively citing (or re-interpreting) obscure sources and texts to their advantage, in such a way that discredits the traditional understanding of the faith it is  expressed by the overwhelming consensus of Fathers of the Church, of the Doctors of the Church, the approved theologians, the Councils, the Popes, catechisms, and faithful throughout the ages.  Essentially this is the old informal fallacy of special pleading, except glorified by a triumphalistic title that means essentially 'returning to the sources'.  The word is supposed to give us warm-and-fuzzy feelings, the sense of finally understanding the faith the way it was originally meant to be understood, after over a millenium of not getting it, and half a millenium of that horrible old 'Tridentine' religion. 
  
Other Methods.  Now, ressourcement is their chief method, but they employ other techniques as well, most of which are logical corollaries of ressourcement. These methods are applied not only to dogma, but to every area of the Church: Philosophy, Apologetics, Ecclesiology, Fundamental Theology, Morals, Scripture, Liturgy, Canon Law, Homiletics, etc. It is a new theology that is supposed to 'renew' the entire life of the Church, which is now considered to be in its 'Springtime' and in a 'new Pentecost'.  Among these corollaries are (A) the new 'historical' theology, (B) the rejection of Scholasticism, (C) the introduction of false modern philosophies, and (D) the exclusion from their thought of all scientific order.

(A) The new 'historical' theology logically follows from resourcement and its neo-modernist epistemology: if truth is the correspondence of the intellect with our modern way of life (adaequatio intellectus et vitae), rather than with reality, then theology is not the science of God's reality as it is contained in revelation; rather, is no more than a narrative of the different ways in which theological minds have corresponded to the lifestyles of the different times in which they have lived. The value of the great Fathers, Doctors, and Theologias of the Church boils down to the fact they expressed the faith to their contemporaries 'using the categories of their own times'.

(B) The abandonment of Scholasticism also logically follows from this and is simply its negative counterpart. We are to 'return to the Fathers', which really does not mean imitating the Fathers (that would be too traditional) but rather attaining a historical consciousness of patristic thought. But this historical consciousness excludes the supposedly anti-historical (and 'boring'!) mode of reasoning employed in the Scholastic method. Therefore, a good practitioner of the nouvelle theologie must 'return to the Fathers' and bypass Scholasticism altogether. Accordingly, Thomistic philosophy and theology are no longer pursued as sciences that concern God and reality taking inspiration and guidance from the thought of St Thomas, but as a historical narrative of what St Thomas said and believed.

(C) As logical consequence, the role that Thomistic philosophy traditionally played in the Church is neutralized, and in its place, new, vague, existentialist philosophies such as phenomenology and personalism are introduced in order 'justify' neo-modernism (although in really it is impossible to give epistemic justification to a self-referentially inconsistent theory--I shall explain in a later post why both modernism and neo-modernism are self-referentially inconsistent).

(D) The exclusion of scientific order from their thought follows from their existentialist philosophy and is a common denominator they have with their predecessors, the modernists. Here we can quote Pope St Pius X's Pascendi (paragraph 4): 

But since the Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) employ a very clever artifice, namely, to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in reality firm and steadfast, it will be of advantage, Venerable Brethren, to bring their teachings together here into one group, and to point out the connexion between them, and thus to pass to an examination of the sources of the errors, and to prescribe remedies for averting the evil.

There are lots of other techniques that are used by particular neo-modernists, but these are at least the most commonly used by the movement. Ultimately, however, all of these methods are only means that are subservient to the end of aggiornamento: destroying tradition and establishing a new interpretation of the Catholic faith. They will employ any other method that helps them achieve this end. Resourcement happens to be their favorite (because it is so clever, deceptive, and effective), but it not the only one.

Further Reading.  All of this is already outlined in Ven. Pope Pius XII's Humani generis, and discussed with technical precision in the two Garrigou-Lagrange previously cited:

Where is the New Theology Leading Us?

The Structure of the Encyclical Humani Generis.

An revealing book on the Nouvelle Theologie has been published recently, Nouvelle Thologie - New Theology: Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II.  It is written by Jurgen Mettepenningen, a liberal who celebrates the triumph of modernism through the Nouvelle Theology.  Here is the product description from amazon.com:

This title provides an introduction to the most influential movement in Catholic theology in the 20th century which prepared the ground for the Second Vatican Council. La nouvelle theologie - New Theology - was the name of one of the most dynamic and fascinating movements within Catholic theology in the 20th century. Although first condemned by Pope Pius XII. in 1946 and later in his encyclical Humani generis in 1950, it became influential in the preparation of the Second Vatican Council. The movement was instigated by French Dominican Yves Congar with his Dominican confreres Marie-Dominique Chenu and Louis Charlier and linked with the Dominican academy at Le Saulchouir (Tournai), but soon taken over by Jesuits of the same generation of theologians: Henri de Lubac, Jean Danielou, Henri Bouillard and Yves de Montcheuil. They laid strong emphasis on the supernatural, the further implementation of historical method within theology, the ressourcement (back to Scripture, liturgy and Fathers), and the connection between life, faith and theology. Many of them were participating as periti in the Second Vatican Council, which finally accepted the striving of the new theology. Hence, the original perception of the New Theology as novitas would become an auctoritas in the field of Catholic theology. On the basis of research of archives and literature Jurgen Mettepenningen shows in his book the different theological positions of both Dominican and Jesuit protagonists, the development of their ideas in close relationship with the theological view and the sanctions of the Roman Catholic Church, and the great importance of the generation of the discussed Dominican and Jesuit theologians and their New Theology. He proves that the protagonists of both the first and the second phase of the nouvelle theologie constituted together the generation of theologians necessary to implement the striving of the modernist era within the Church at the time of Vatican II.

Modernism vs. Neo-Modernism: What is the Difference?

Modernism vs. Neo-Modernism: What is the Difference?

The overarching principle of post-conciliar theology is not modernism, properly speaking. Let us get our terms straight.

Modernism is the idea that there are no eternal truths, that truth is the correspondence of the mind with one's lifestyle (adaequatio intellectus et vitae), and that, therefore, old dogmas must be abandoned and new beliefs must arise that meet 'the needs of modern man'. This is a radical denial of the traditional and common sense notion of truth: the correspondence of the mind with reality (adaequatio intellectus et rei), which is the basis of the immutability of Catholic dogma.

No, the post-conciliar theological principle is neo-modernism, and the theology that is based on it is known as the nouvelle theologie.  It is the idea that old dogmas or beliefs must be retained, yet not the traditional 'formulas': dogmas must be expressed and interpreted in a new way in every age so as to meet the 'needs of modern man'.  This is still a denial of the traditional and common sense notion of truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei (insofar as it is still an attempt to make the terminology that expresses the faith correspond with our modern lifestyle) and consequently of the immutability of Catholic dogma, yet it is not as radical as modernism.  It is more subtle and much more deceptive than modernism because it claims that the faith must be retained; it is only the 'formulas' of faith that must be abandoned--they use the term 'formula' to distinguish the supposedly mutable words of our creeds, dogmas, etc. from their admittedly immutable meanings.  Therefore, neo-modernism can effectively slip under the radar of most pre-conciliar condemnations (except Humani generis, which condemns it directly) insofar as its practitioners claim that their new and unintelligible theological terminology really expresses the same faith of all times.  In other words, neo-modernism is supposed to be 'dynamic orthodoxy': supposedly orthodox in meaning, yet always changing in expression to adapt to modern life (cf. Franciscan University of Steubenville's mission statement).  

Take extra ecclesiam nulla salus as a clear example of a dogma that has received a brutal neo-modernist re-interpretation: they claim that the old 'formula' that "there is no salvation outside the Church" must be abandoned; rather it is more meaningful to modern man to say that salvation is not in, but through, the Church;  people who are not in the Church may still be saved through the Church; thus, to them the dogma that "there is no salvation outside the Church" means that there is salvation outside the Church.  Hence see Ven. Pope Pius XII condemning those "reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation." (Humani generis 27).

Yet this mentality of reinterpreting everything anew in order to 'meet the needs of the times' is generally tends to be found in different degrees among different post-conciliar sources:  

It tends to be  (1) rampant in men like De Lubac, Von Balthasar, Congar, etc.: it is the ultimate goal of their writings, teachings, and activities as churchmen.   To achieve this end, they employ the technique of 'resourcement', the neo-modernist strategy of fishing for the few dubious, questionable, or idiosyncratic teachings of some Fathers of the Church and other authoritative writers, and gather them into a massive, heterodox theological argument against the traditional understanding of the faith (which they like to relativize by giving it names such as "Counter-Reformation" Theology, "Tridentine" Theology, or "Scholastic" Theology, instead of just admitting that it is Catholic Theology plain and simple).  This technique accomplishes three things that go hand-in-hand: (a) offers a refutation of traditional Catholicism, (b) defends an interpretation that meets the needs of modern times, and (c) gives it a semblance of being traditional, because it appears to be based in the Fathers et al.  This type of argument is used, for example, by Von Balthasar in his nearly heretical book, Dare We Hope that All Men be Saved? to 'prove', not that Hell does not exist (that is a dogma), but that it is empty.  But this technique and its neo-modernistic underpinnings is not only practiced in almost all of these men's writings; it is also defended in theory by many of them, particularly in Von Balthasar's daring little book, Razing the Bastions, where he demonstrates that "Tridentine" theology must be rejected in our times because it is 'boring'.

It also tends to be (2) present in a more moderate way in the non-binding statements by post-conciliar popes, since they themselves were deeply involved in the developing of the nouvelle theologie.  Just to give one of a million possible examples, see Pope Benedict's evolutionistic re-interpretation of the Resurrection of Our Lord.  Nothing here obviously contradicts  the dogma of the Resurrection (it may be interpreted as a simple analogy, even if a bad one, and nothing more), but it is a novelty that can be easily understood as claiming that the Resurrection is part of the natural development of nature (thus giving credence to some of the nouvelle theologie's pet doctrines, such as De Lubac's heterodox notion of the supernatural and De Chardin's pantheistic evolutionism).   This happens almost on a daily basis in what comes out of the Vatican, not to mention what comes from local bishops.

And finally, neo-modernism tends to be present (3) mostly implicitly or behind-the-scenes in the Council, the Catechism, etc., even though it seldom comes out more explicitly.  Things are done at this level under the pretext of 'aggiornamento', a euphemism for neo-modernism.  That is usually all the justification provided since at this authoritative level, there is no need to justify things theologically.  Hence, Vatican II and the Catechism are not outright neo-modernistic.  Rather, they (like most of post-conciliar doctrine) tend in that direction and/or are inspired by that mentality.  In other words, most of the time these documents do not explicitly teach neo-modernist errors (the kind of errors you hear explicitly from neo-modernist theologians and priests). Rather, they are full of dangerous ambiguities: statements that in a technical sense could be interpreted as being in harmony with the traditional faith, but that, in their natural, non-forced, interpretation are heterodox.  One clear example of this is Dignitatis humanae, par. 2; entire monographs have been written in order to prove that, despite appearances, this document does not contradict previous teaching.  Maybe in fact it ultimately does not, but it is obvious that the prima facie meaning does; otherwise there would be no need to write so many volumes to prove it.

It must be noted that these are general tendencies, and that in some documents (cf. Gaudium et Spes) and every now and then in papal and episcopal statements neo-modernist principles rears come out more explicitly.    

For a more detailed philosophical and theological critique of neo-modernism, and how it is nothing but a re-hashing of modernism, see Garrigou-Lagrange's Where is the New Theology Leading Us? and his The Structure of the Encyclical Humani Generis.