Augustine had a pretty robust concept of inerrancy (even if he didn’t use the word), and that understanding was inherited by a lot of later authors (e.g., Aquinas). Though as Robert notes, that inerrancy was tied closely to the idea of the Church’s authority (he only believes in the inerrancy of scripture on the basis of the the Church’s authoritative teaching that scripture is inspired, thus he refuses to accept any reading of scripture that contradicts the church; because in proving the church wrong from scripture, one would also destroy the basis for his acceptance of scripture itself).
But, Augustine’s understanding of inerrancy was somewhat more nuanced than modern fundamelists’: for Augustine, the bible could not assert error, but Augustine didn’t think you could know what the bible asserted by just reading the individual sentences in their plain sense.
If you want to see his theory at work, look at his literal commentary on genesis. He could be very liberal about interpreting the “literal” meaning of passages. But he could also be pretty fundamentalist. E.g., on the firmament, he says he doesn’t know what the firmament refers to, but still he says there must be some “firmament” (whatever that means) because scripture says so.
Just so.
But there is an important connection between Augustine’s willingness to read the bible non-literally and his commitment to inerrancy.
It is in part because he believes scripture is inerrant that he is willing to entertain such non-literal interpretations. He wants to save the absolute truth of scripture at all costs; if that means changing it’s plain meaning, so be it.
Thus, “Scripture seems to say x; I know that x isn’t true; well, then, scripture must not really mean x when it says “x”.”
He’s really interesting because on the one hand he can be really super non literal; e.g, his rule of charity in interpreting scripture: the true meaning of scripture is that which the author intended; the divine author who inspired scripture intended to build up charity among us; therefore any interpretation of scripture that serves to build up charity is correct.
But on the other hand, he can be extremely literalist and downright fundamentalist, as for example in his harmonization of the four accounts of the empty tomb: he gives a fundamentalist mashing of them all together to construct an implausible narrative that none of the gospels actually reports, and he does this because he thinks it would be impious to admit that any of them made any mistake.
A subject of endless fascination since it involves how our thinking differs from ancient thought.
The idea of taking the scriptures literally is not new. What is new is ONLY taking them literally. The vast majority of Christians in all ages have thought that the cosmos was created relatively recently, and that Adam and Eve were historical human beings. However for the ancients there was more to it than that.
When we moderns ask for an explanation we tend to expect a description of physical processes. When pre-scientific peoples asked for an explanation they would have expected to be told a story. For them reality was a story. This way of thinking really only survives in our approach to literature and religion. We moderns think of a metaphor as a literary construct rather than as an aspect of reality.
One major characteristic of a story is that it can be interpreted. And interpreted on multiple levels. There is of course the concrete level of what actually happened in the story. But there is also the level of symbol and the relationship of part to part and whole to part. A story can also be allegorized. As odd as it sounds, for the ancients “reality” could be both the thing itself and also what the thing might represent.
A terrific example is from Paul. His discussion of the First and Second Adam in Romans. Many folks read this passage and ask whether it should be taken literally or figuratively. Well, “yes”. Paul clearly believes that Adam was a literal human being just as he believes Jesus was a real human being. His entire argument falls apart if he did not. But Adam is also a “type” of Christ. The relationship between Adam and Jesus and consequently, us, takes place on both a literal and a symbolical level. It is not ‘either/or’ but ‘both/and’. The symbolical level is just as real as the literal level.
The modern fundamentalist takes it all only literally. They reduce it to “did it actually happen?” To them, unwilling children of the Enlightenment, a metaphor is not real. There is another side though. I’ve heard modern “liberal” Christinas make the claim that nobody ever took the scriptures literally until the modern times. Equally false.
Augustine is attempting to reconcile his religious beliefs with the current Greek scientific knowledge of his day. As a literate intellectual he admonishes his fellow believers not to be hayseeds. He can allegorize the creation because his way of thinking allows him to do so. On the other hand a modern creationist presented with fossils and genetics has nowhere to go but out.
“One major characteristic of a story is that it can be interpreted. And interpreted on multiple levels. There is of course the concrete level of what actually happened in the story. But there is also the level of symbol and the relationship of part to part and whole to part. A story can also be allegorized. As odd as it sounds, for the ancients “reality” could be both the thing itself and also what the thing might represent.”
Right, that’s where the “spiritual senses” of scripture come from. But the logic of taking those senses seriously was (at least in the later developed thought of say Aquinas) that God was actually in control of the literal event, and so he could use literal events as symbols. See ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
It is a little bit like Kabbalistic numerology–if you think both that God literally inspired scripture (and I mean literal literally–letter by letter), and that God invented the Hebrew language, then it isn’t insane to look for meaning in the incidentals of the language; So too if you think God has perfect providential control over the events of history, it is reasonable to think he might use historical things and events as signs of other things.
Robert, “To what extent did Augustine reason in this fashion because he was aware of the importance of a canon of scripture being subject to church authorities?”
I suspect that is major factor in his thinking, but I’m not sure he actually says.
The passage I have in mind is Against the Fundamental Letter of Manichaeus, c. 5:
“Therefore I ask, who is this Manichæus? You will reply, An apostle of Christ. I do not believe it. Now you are at a loss what to say or do; for you promised to give knowledge of the truth, and here you are forcing me to believe what I have no knowledge of. Perhaps you will read the gospel to me, and will attempt to find there a testimony to Manichæus. But should you meet with a person not yet believing the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not believe? For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So when those on whose authority I have consented to believe in the gospel tell me not to believe in Manichæus, how can I but consent? Take your choice. If you say, Believe the Catholics: their advice to me is to put no faith in you; so that, believing them, I am precluded from believing you — If you say, Do not believe the Catholics: you cannot fairly use the gospel in bringing me to faith in Manichæus; for it was at the command of the Catholics that I believed the gospel;— Again, if you say, You were right in believing the Catholics when they praised the gospel, but wrong in believing their vituperation of Manichæus: do you think me such a fool as to believe or not to believe as you like or dislike, without any reason? It is therefore fairer and safer by far for me, having in one instance put faith in the Catholics, not to go over to you, till, instead of bidding me believe, you make me understand something in the clearest and most open manner. To convince me, then, you must put aside the gospel. If you keep to the gospel, I will keep to those who commanded me to believe the gospel; and, in obedience to them, I will not believe you at all. But if haply you should succeed in finding in the gospel an incontrovertible testimony to the apostleship of Manichæus, you will weaken my regard for the authority of the Catholics who bid me not to believe you; and the effect of that will be, that I shall no longer be able to believe the gospel either, for it was through the Catholics that I got my faith in it; and so, whatever you bring from the gospel will no longer have any weight with me. Wherefore, if no clear proof of the apostleship of Manichæus is found in the gospel, I will believe the Catholics rather than you. But if you read thence some passage clearly in favor of Manichæus, I will believe neither them nor you: not them, for they lied to me about you; nor you, for you quote to me that Scripture which I had believed on the authority of those liars.”
I can’t imagine any reputable counter-reformation, Catholic theologian making such an argument in those terms. If I’m mistaken and there was some noteworthy counter-reformation author making such an argument, I’d certainly be interested to see it.
In the 16th century, we are still a way off from John Mill (though not *that* far), but even in the 16th century there was an awareness of textual problems (to be fair, some awareness of textual problems goes back to the beginning of Scripture scholarship–Origin, Jerome, Augustine, were all aware of faulty manuscripts). Some were variants within the Vulgate textual tradition (occasioning the Clementine Vulgate), but there was also unease around the discrepancies found between the Greek and Latin text traditions. So it isn’t inconceivable that there were Catholics using the fact of textual problems to attack the Protestant notion of sola scriptura. “Look, there are a variety of texts; without ecclesiastical authority, how can you know which text to base your faith on?”
And certainly there would have been counter-reformation authors insisting on the insufficiency of Scripture alone for orthodoxy. The argument wouldn’t have been Scripture teaches error, but that human interpreters are fallible in our interpretation of Scripture (unless guided by the Church and Tradition).
Sola Scriptura has always seemed self-contradictory simply because its hard to imagine conditions under which we could ever rely on the scriptures only. And even if you read the ancient languages you’re still relying on the idea of the “preferred” text, a compilation of all the best guesses of generations of scholars (with no idea of their individual religious convictions of course).
Am I the only one who found the idea that there is no actual Bible in existence, that it is in fact an artificial creation, utterly flabbergasting? Scholars take this for granted; when I asked Prof Ehrman about it he seemed a bit mystified by the objection.
I think a lot of believers imagine there is a hermetically sealed vault somewhere – perhaps a mile under the Vatican – where the proto-manuscript is safeguarded, and all the various translations derive from that pristine original. But if you were really going to house the Bible in one spot you would need a huge warehouse with tens of thousands of shelves, each dedicated to scraps of codices and scrolls and papyri. In a very real sense what we call the “Bible” doesn’t exist.
And it gets to the larger question of authority. Whom do you trust? The old nobly democritizing idea of the individual believer interpreting the scriptures by his own lights comes a cropper by fracturing into sects innumberable. If it’s “true” then why can’t people agree on what it means? And when scholars agree on what it means then why is it usually so different than what many Christians seem to think it means? I’m not objecting to the scholarly enterprise. Just pointing out that it seems to rather undermine the idea of a textual revelation.
“This, of course, greatly irritated some of my peers, but some of the older monks would actually smile or laugh and agree whole-heartedly!”
I though you had been a Franciscan. At any rate, I’m endlessly baffled by the social dynamics within religious orders. The divisions and things they choose to fight over, but also the loyalties that seem to transcend every substantive difference other than being conferrers.
I’m amused, Stephen, because everything you just listed is standard Catholic, anti-protestant, apologetic fare.
I was a lapsed protestant before I was an atheist. Paradoxically it helped that I was raised in a particularly crazy limb of the Body of Christ. It was so absolute and so resolute in its unwillingness to accommodate the outside world that it was inevitable that at some point I would be forced to make a choice.
Who better to understand the liabilities of a system of belief than one raised in it? Which is why I leave the critiques of Catholicism to you and Robert.
I’m new here, and I’m a Christian. I’m not here to fight, I’m here to think.
As I read it, this thread is about where the idea came from that the Bible was written by God and protected by God. Some people here connect that mostly with modern fundamentalism and Protestant views of the Bible.
That makes sense to me. But maybe we should slow down a bit?
There is a difference between saying “the Bible is true” and saying “we must read every sentence in the most literal way.” Those are not exactly the same thing.Augustine already seems to had a very strong (or High) view of Scripture. But he did not always read it in a flat, literal way.
Next to asking “where this idea came from”, one might ask also “how it changed over time”.
Did modern inerrancy invent something new? Or did it take an older idea and use it in a new way?
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