Is the Bible the Inerrant Word of God?

How wrong is the view that every word is the "breath of God" for us now, without any further understanding of the human, literary and historical element of the Bible? We could take at least seven topics to demonstrate that believing in the Bible text led to teaching maintained for many hundreds of years that we now consider wrong.

We will take one example of the teaching of Scripture and how our views change, and indeed how they must change. This example illustrates an important Catholic principle, first written about by Cardinal Newman, i.e., the development of doctrine. (There are many examples that demonstrate how viewing the Bible as inerrant and infallible has warped the Christian faith for both leaders and laity.)

Let's begin with slavery and how we view it today. (This discussion is taken from John T. Noonan, Federal Judge, distinguished Catholic scholar, several books, former Notre Dame Law Faculty. You will notice some legal training in his writing. It is found in Initiative Report, Catholic Common Ground Initiative, June 2005, vol 9: #2, p. 4.) He begins with a question.

Question. Is it morally lawful for one human being to hold another human being as a slave--as a piece of property, a chattel deprived of the right to determine his own vocation, to choose his own dwelling, to select his own food, to provide for his own children, and even to have his own name; but, rather, required to obey the orders of an owner who can make each of these decisions binding on this human piece of property, an owner who can mortgage him, lease him, transmit him by will or inheritance, and sell him to anyone the owner chooses?

Modem Catholics, modern Christians, most modern people would answer this absurd question, "No, it is not morally lawful." A Catholic theologian would add, "Such conduct was condemned in 1965 by the Second Vatican council/ Pope John Paul has termed such conduct intrinsically evil Because it is intrinsically evil it cannot be engaged in as morally lawful conduct by any person.

That answer was not the answer given by Hebrew Scripture, which announced the right of the Hebrews to enslave the occupants of the Promised Land. It was not the answer given by S1. Paul who told slaves to obey their masters. It was not the answer given by the popes, who owned slaves, bought slaves, and transferred them as papal property. It was not the answer of S1. Thomas Aquinas, who taught that by nature human beings were free, but that human slavery was a useful addition to the natural law. It was not the answer given by a series of fifteenth century popes who authorized Portuguese conquerors to enslave Africans and Spanish conquerors to enslave Indians. It was not the answer given by Rome to the missionaries who evangelized Asia and who were instructed that the slavery they encountered was morally acceptable. Search high and low in Denzinger, that authoritative collection of magisterial teachings, no Catholic theologian looking before 1965 could have discovered in this teaching that slaveholding, as such, was a sin, that it was indeed intrinsically evil.

Christian authority, Christian peoples for nineteen hundred years believed slavery, based on biblical teaching to be acceptable. Churches actually owned slaves. Bishop Carroll, pioneer Catholic bishop in this country owned slaves. The entire Christian community has changed its view, on a number of issues, even those dealing with sexual mores.

For these changes to have happened, we had to be free to criticize what the Bible said, to understand it differently for our times. Scholars and theologians had to be free to correct the fallible but mistaken teaching based on the Bible. (I can take another seven subjects to illustrate the narrowness of Inerrancy.)

How could this development in doctrine have occurred unless scholars and theologians were free to correct the fallible but mistaken teaching of the magisterium (official teaching)?

Adapted by Paschal Baute, July 20,2005
Copyrighted, 2005, Initiative Report, www.nplc.org. National Pastoral Life Center, , NY