PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCR IPTURE DECLARED THAT:
“For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican. “
This was essentially the Protestant teaching as well. But things changed in the 1900’s
The Protestant “Chicago Statement� declared that:
“Article X We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy.
That was a safe claim since autographic copies of scripture no longer existed.
But the CatholicChurch at Vatican II came up with still a better explanation.
“ Paragraph #11: “Since, therefore, all that the…sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures.�
In short, if there is an error, than the matter must not be necessary for our salvation!
New Jerome Biblical Commentary, coauthored by the late Raymond Brown and Thomas Aquinas Collins:
..."Scriptural teaching is truth without error to the extent that it conforms to the salvific purposes of God."
Elsewhere, Brown writes,
It is falsely claimed that there has been no change towards the Bible in Catholic Church thought because Pius XII and Vatican II paid homage to documents issued by Leo XIII, Pius X and Benedict XV and therefore clearly meant to reinforce the teaching of their predecessors. What really was going on was an attempt gracefully to retain what was salvageable from the past and to move in a new direction with as little friction as possible."
In sum, if you find an error in scripture, then that passage was not necessary for our salvation!
What a great solution!!!
