BROWN,
Raymond
The Critical
Meaning of the Bible
Paulist Press,
INTRODUCTION
The author
purports to challenge Christians ‑Catholics and non-Catholics‑ to rethink
certain traditional beliefs on the basis of the findings of modern critical
scholarship. Throughout the book such doctrines as revelation and inspiration,
the knowledge of Jesus Christ and his institution of the sacraments, and
apostolic succession in the early Church are put under close scrutiny. The main
vehicle for this scrutiny is a rigorous text comparison between NT passages,
and the underlying theory that many texts in the Gospels and Epistles do not
express historical fact, but are additions and interpolations of a
"post-resurrectional" theology in the early Christian Church. This
insight is what he calls the critical meaning of the Bible, and he is confident
that it will greatly invigorate the Church and cause a healthy renewal as it
enters the new millennium.
A very evident
second purpose of the book is to defend himself and others against what he
calls rightist or ultra-conservative attacks, which he claims are based on a
static and rigid view of Revelation and the Bible. He and his followers are
more "centrist", that is, they accept Church dogmas, but are also
open to re-formulations of these teachings based on modern scientific research
and scholarly findings.
CONTENT
After a brief
preface, where he describes the progress of biblical criticism in the
consciousness of the Catholic Church over the previous eighty years (1900-1980),
and his hopes for it in the future, he addresses his first topic ‑namely,
the human time-conditioned aspect of the biblical word. (He entitles the
chapter, accordingly, the Human Word of the Almighty God). The tone of
the chapter, and indeed of the entire book, is that of intense questioning
mixed with irony at times; for this reason it is hard to describe a specific
content to his thought, or know what he is really affirming at times. It
appears however that his concept of inspiration and revelation has quite a
limited role for what God actually says or does; at times he seems to limit
God's communication to a kind of non-verbal impulse, which the human author
then tries to verbalise. For instance, on page 11, quoting from a Jewish Rabbi,
he doubts whether God would have communicated any words to Moses or the people.
He does not mention the texts, which claim that He actually wrote on the stone
tablets (Exodus 34,1) and spoke audibly in the revealing of his Name (Exodus
3,14). There is a similar questioning about whether Christ ever said many of
the words ascribed to him, for instance, at the end of Matthew's Gospel where
he tells the disciples to "go to all nations"(Mt.28, 19). This
according to Brown was probably a paraphrase added later, when the Church had
actually expanded throughout the
He also looks at
the issue of inerrancy, questioning past understandings of it in the Church. He
states that there is not enough attention to the human errors in Scripture, and
to the tensions between certain texts that criticism has discovered. For
instance he cites a passage from Job (Job 14,13-22) where the author appears to
be denying the existence of the after-life, which of course is affirmed in
later books of the Bible. According to Brown, "the human author made an
error in denying the afterlife. But the meaning of Job as a biblical book goes
beyond what the author intended, for Job became a biblical book not when it was
written but when it was joined to other books as part of the Bible"
(pp.19-20). This statement is confusing on two accounts: it denies the
inerrancy of an inspired writer, and it implies that the book of Job was not
inspired until it became part of a collection later. It could well be that the
author of Job did not have a clear view of the afterlife, but this does not
mean that his statement is wrong. God the Principal Author of Scripture
guarantees the truthfulness of each statement, but one must understand the
words according to the mind and judgement of the human author as well.
In another part
of the chapter he seems to misunderstand what Leo XIII and Benedict XV really
meant when they defended the Bible's inerrancy in matters of science and
history, or when they try to put the sacred texts within the framework of
revelation with its related truths. He does not mention the importance of
determining the author's intentions and the proper literary form involved,
along with considering the influence of God the Principal Author who cannot
deceive or make a mistake. As a result, he is careless and superficial when he
uses the term "historical error" in speaking of the books of the Bible.
Though at the
end of the chapter he does admit that he has not given equal time to the divine
authorship of Scripture, he does not clarify that Scripture really comes from
both a divine and a human source -in such a way that God is the principal
author, and man is his instrument. Perhaps he feels that after years of
stressing the divine authorship in biblical studies, he must stress the human,
time-conditioned aspect. This could be true and beneficial, but if one forgets
the divine influence in speaking about a biblical text, one no longer has the
sacred text, but only a human one.
Chapter II,
entitled what the Biblical Word meant and what it means, explores the
relationship between the meaning of the human author in Scripture, and what it
means for the Church throughout the centuries and today. He does not go so far
as to say that there could be a contradiction between these two meanings, but
he points out many points of tension and apparent conflict.
At times these
tensions can be quite disconcerting (which is his purpose). For example, he
questions whether the Church's view of the cultic priesthood, which stems from
Christ the High Priest, was really in the mind of the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews. This is of course a question that can only be answered in
eternity, but the way he phrases the question makes the harmony of Scripture
and the analogy of faith difficult to see: "In associating the Christian
form of the Levitical priesthood with the priesthood according to the order of
Melchisedek, the Church has clearly gone beyond the NT and, indeed, in a
direction that might have made some of its authors unhappy" (p.36). Apart
from other considerations, it is hard to see what good such a statement can do
for people's understanding and love for the priesthood. In order to highlight
the difference between what a passage meant to the human author, and what the
later Church came to understand, he even goes so far as to say that to his
knowledge the Church has never defined the literal meaning of a single passage
of Scripture (p.41). Unless he is using the term literal meaning in a very
personal and restricted sense, this is not a true statement. One thinks
immediately of John 3,5 and
To show further
contrasts between what the human author meant in a passage, and what it means
to the Church, he openly questions whether Christ actually had knowledge of the
Church and the sacraments (page 40). He allows that the Church's teaching on
the seven sacraments, the Eucharistic sacrifice, and priestly ordination are
"valid interpretations" of Scripture, but they are not necessarily
what the human authors meant when they wrote certain texts. This kind of
contrast sets up a tension, which he would consider good, but he does nothing
to resolve it. What does inspiration signify if the sacred writer did not
really know what he was writing about, or if God could allow such a diversity
between what He wills to express in a text, what his Church will say later
about it, and what the human author really means? Perhaps there is a kind of sensus
plenior at work here, but if so, Brown does nothing to express it.
Regarding the human knowledge of Christ, it would have been prudent, at least,
to mention the possibility of a scientia infusa in Christ, or the
scientia beata, which are well known considerations in
traditional Catholic Christology. Brown seems to be considering only Christ's
acquired experiential knowledge in his critique of certain texts.
In one
particular statement he shows the influence of the Jesus of History vs. Jesus
of Faith dichotomy, begun in 19th century rationalistic criticism. On page 38
he states that very few events of Christ's life are tied to specific doctrines.
In listing these events, he fails to mention the resurrection, the miracles, and
the specific establishment of a Church with a clear line of authority. If these
are not included as real events in Christ's life, a great deal of Church
teachings would be undermined; they are not simply products of a later faith
community's perceptions, but true physical events with supernatural
consequences.
In Chapter III,
entitled Scholars against the Church, Fact or Fiction?, he makes some
valid points against the useless and harmful name-calling by rightists and leftists,
and he cautions that there needs to be more discernment between what is defined
dogma and what is theological opinion. His statement that the Pope and the
Bishops are both Ecclesia docens and Ecclesia discens is well
taken (pp.47-48). The ancillary and service-oriented role of Catholic
theologians is hardly mentioned, however, along with the fact that the
theologian should use the Magisterium as a valuable guide in his work, and to
work always within the analogy of the faith and the deposit of revelation. For
him the Magisterium is more of a final word or judgement, but not an integral
working tool for the exegete. We have seen cases in today's world where theologians
will publish their books or leak their findings to the press, without the
properly relating them to other truths of the Church; this causes a lot of
confusion among the faithful.
Chapter IV is
entitled: Why does Biblical Scholarship move the Church so slowly? The
first part is a kind of complaint about the slowness of many in the Church to
accept the historical-critical claims about the Bible and the life of Christ.
For instance on page 69-71 he laments that many introductions to the New
Testament still do not question the authenticity of the four gospels, the
Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, along with Collosians and
Ephesians. He connects this concern with his own view of the writing of the New
Testament---namely that we know little about what Jesus really said or did, and
that we must reject what he calls "Blueprint Ecclesiology", whereby
Jesus would have given precise instructions to this disciples about the mission
to all nations, about the command to baptize, and the forgiveness of sins (John
20,23). Most of the gospels, in his view, were written as a result of distinct
developments and needs of communities in the first century. The Church worked
through these things, and her authors later developed words of Jesus about the
sacraments, the forgiveness of sins, and the mission to the Gentiles. He sees
no harm to this theory, since he states that all the NT books are inspired, and
the Holy Spirit was guiding her all along.
Though it has
been downplayed in recent Magisterial documents, the question of authorship of
the gospels remains important. I say downplayed because it no longer seems
necessary to affirm that the Gospels were actually written in their current
form by Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Dei Verbum refers in
general to "the apostolic origin" of the Gospels (n.18), which leaves
the door open to consider that others could have written the final version,
which is what many modern scholars claim, Brown included. But it is important
to affirm some kind of apostolic origin to the Gospels, or else the deeds and
sayings of Jesus can never truly be known, and the manner in which we were
redeemed. If we cannot believe in the historical credibility of the gospels as
the result of eyewitness testimony, we would be believing a fabrication
of a faith community fifty years after Christ lived, and not what the Savior
truly said or did. It is very significant, I think, that one of the biggest
heretics of the early Church, Marcion, denied the apostolic authenticity of
three gospels in order to promote his ideas. The early Christians, especially
fathers of the Church like St. Irenaeus, were very sensitive about which
gospels or epistles could be traced, or not, to the apostles. This was actually
one of the main elements in the early Church for declaring a book canonical, as
opposed to the apocryphal books (like the Gospel of Thomas, or James) which
could show no such apostolic origin.
In the second
part of the chapter he continues to bring up doubts about whether Christ ever
talked about the Church or called Peter the head of the Church (pp.74-75).
According to the author, this naming of Peter would have been a "post-resurrectional
statement retrojected into the ministry". In a similar vein, on page 79 he
also speaks of the way that the authors of Matthew and Luke would have tried to
correct Mark's negative view of Mary with their own additions and refocusing of
her life. According to Brown, Mark by inference includes Mary among those
objecting to Jesus in Mark 3,21.
I find it
particularly interesting that Brown does not seem to use the great reality of
the Church's unwritten Tradition in any of his discussions. According to the Dei
Verbum, there are two great sources of revelation, Scripture and Tradition,
and both are necessary to receive the complete Word of God (cf.n.9). In a sense
Brown is using a Sola Scriptura approach for many of these issues, such as the
establishment of the Church and the sacraments, devotion to Mary, and apostolic
succession. It is no surprise that he continually comes up with a dissenting
look at the texts. It is true that the New Testament is silent on many Church
doctrines, but this does not mean that such truths did not exist, or they were
not practiced by the early Christians. Except for Clement and Ignatius which he
cites for critical reason, he gives no attention to the Fathers of the Church
and their ideas , and yet they were all excellent scholars and much closer to
the original sources than modern scholars are.
At the end of
the Chapter he makes a valid point...namely that the Church should not hide
from new scientific discoveries, and that real theological progress is made by
incorporating new results. But he neglects to add that these new results or
findings should connect harmoniously with what has always been believed, even
though the formulation might need to be reworded. It is unfortunate that in
this book at least Brown gives the impression of doubting or asking questions
only -like a child playing at the edge of a precipice- but not really pointing
in any positive direction for doctrinal or spiritual progress. In many ways
this is the difficulty with many biblical writers today.
In Chapters V
through VIII he applies the premises that he has introduced in the first four
chapters. In Chapter V he wants to aid Christians rethink many basic tenets.
These include the doctrine of creation, the Magisterium, and Christ's knowledge
of the future and the Church that he supposedly founds. He strongly contrasts
the rightist view with the centrist view of these matters, and comes down
clearly in favour of the centrist view. On page 92 he states: "The
rightist view allows little freedom to restructure and little adaptability to
new demands. The centrist view, while recognizing that history and past
decisions limit options so that all changes are not possible, has a much freer
estimate of how the Church can adjust in function and form to new circumstances."
Though the centrist approach is certainly made to appear more attractive, we
need to be wary of a kind of evolutionary view of Church doctrine which could
undermine the objective truth of Christ's life and his founding of the Church. It
is true that the Holy Spirit continually assisted the authors of the New
Testament, but it was more an assistance of selecting, preserving, and
explaining -in the words of the Dei Verbum (n.19)-, not a kind of
group discovery or individual fabrication of a truth, no matter how well
intentioned.
Chapter VI is a
specific re-thinking to the Priesthood in the NT. He makes some valid points
about the three kinds of priesthood presented in the NT -that of Christ the
High Priest, that of all the faithful, that of the ordained (he uses the term cultic)
priesthood. His observation on the priesthood of all the faithful is valuable
and connects well with the insights of the Magisterium of Vatican II (he does
not mention this, unfortunately), but his treatment of the ordained priesthood
once again lacks the guidance and insights of the unwritten Tradition of the
Church. Pages 105-106 also betray a rather limited view of priesthood; though
he eloquently highlights the service aspect, he neglects the deep sacramental
meaning of the ordained priesthood and its dignity.
In Chapter VII
he praises the developments of ecumenism over the previous twenty years, and
mentions several conferences in which he has participated. He praises the
Church's self-examination and reform in Vatican II, and expresses his hope that
this reform will continue. On pages 112-117 the Protestant reformation is used
as a kind of a model for the direction which the Catholic Church should take
today...This includes liturgical changes, greater consensus finding among its
members, more freedom for Theologians, less emphasis on rules. At the end of
this section he seems to take away importance from current Catholic dissent on
the birth control issue, ascribing it to an expected manifestation of
independent thinking, which is evident in Protestant denominations.
In the second
part of the chapter he challenges Protestants to also rethink their ways of
living and preaching, and to ask if they are being true to the Gospel message,
especially with respect to issues of Christology and sexual morality. He chides
them for speaking so often on social issues, but avoiding any mention of
people's personal behavior. He also questions the many divisions in Protestant
Churches, and asks if this is truly the model for Christianity to follow.
Chapter VIII
purports to rethink the Episcopate in New Testament Churches. He questions if
there was any exercise of true episcopal authority in the first century, at
least as we understand it, highlighting the diversity of texts and terms used
for Church authorities (presbyters, deacons, bishops), and showing their
interchangeability in many cases. The underlying supposition here is that we
cannot prove from Scripture any real episcopal roles for the apostles, much
less an unbroken apostolic succession from the laying on of hands. On page 137
he states that the author of Acts interpolated the statement that Barnabas and
Paul appointed presbyters in every Church (ref. Acts 14,23), which in more
simple terms means that they didn't really ordain priests, but that an unknown
author in the 80's said that they did because that had grown to be the custom
at that time.
His rather free
translation of episcopos as "supervisor" (p.142) not only
lessens the dimension of sacrament and true authority in NT bishops, but gives
the word almost a commercial or administrative meaning in modern English which
the Greek does not have. Again he does not rely on the constant tradition of
the Church or the analogy of faith when he questions if the presbyters and
bishops performed any liturgy (p.142), and when he contrasts Paul's use of the
word teacher and father with Matthew's statement that Christ prohibited the use
of such terminology among his followers. (p.144) The chapter ends with a
critique of Pope Clement; his description of the apostles' ordaining successor
bishops is considered to be "over-simplifying" history.
CRITICAL
EVALUATION
Many of the
ideas brought up or implied in Brown's book were formally condemned by Pope
Pius X in the decree "Lamentabili" (1907), in which he warns
Catholic scholars of the dangers of Modernism. Doubts about Christ's knowledge,
the apostolic origin of the gospels, the institution of the sacraments and the
hierarchical Church founded by Him, were all specified and proscribed. Many of Brown's
implications are also reminiscent of Pope Leo XIII's warning against imprudent
statements by Scripture interpreters: "...those who maintain that an error
is possible in any genuine passage of the Sacred Writings either pervert the
Catholic notion of inspiration or make God the author of the errors" (Prov.Deus,
n.126).
In a more
general way, if one looks at the major encyclicals and declarations of the
Magisterium from 1893 to 1965 (the Dei Verbum) one finds consistently
two major themes:
a) it is necessary
to understand and appreciate the literary forms and historical situation of the
human writers involved.
b) it is
necessary to connect one's research with the Church as a whole, especially with
her Living Tradition that includes the Magisterium and the analogy of the
faith.
In a way this is
simply the Church's manner of defending completely the dual authorship of
Scripture, both human and divine. With respect to the historical-critical
method, there has always been caution against falling into its original atheist
or rationalist presumptions, while endorsing its validity. As a result, you can
see a pattern in the Magisterium of opening to it a little, but then closing to
it afterwards. For instance, the encyclical Prov. Deus opened the idea
of a narration by appearances for interpreting the cosmology of Genesis chapter
one, but Spiritus Paraclitus (1920) stated that you cannot use the
theory of appearances when dealing with historical events in the Bible. The
encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) opened the idea for a more
universal study of literary forms in biblical studies (1943), but eight years
later the same Pope in the Humani Generis issued a severe warning
against exegetes who had denied the historical content of the first eleven
chapters of Genesis. In 1955 the secretary of the PBC (according to the Jerome
Biblical Commentary, edited by Brown) declared that Catholic scholars had
complete freedom (plena libertate) with respect to the earlier PBC
decrees of 1905-1915, except in those matters that either immediately or
mediately touched on matters of faith and morals; six years later the Holy See
issued a Monitum against opinions that call into question the genuine
historical and objective truth of Sacred Scripture, not only of the Old
Testament but the New Testament. The document cautions prudence and reverence,
for such opinions can create anxieties both for pastors and the ordinary
faithful (cf. 2nd paragraph).
The most recent
Church documents have continued to encourage biblical studies from different
approaches, but have also been careful to affirm the apostolic origin of the
gospels, their historicity, and the inerrancy of the Old Testament and New
Testament. They also affirm the importance of interpreting Scripture within the
Living Tradition of the Church, with specific mention of the Magistierum and
the harmony of the faith (cf. Dei Verbum, n.12). The exegetes' findings
should lead to the edification of the faithful and be an authentic service for
the judgement of the Magisterium (see PBC declaration,
After the Second
Vatican Council, the PBC has ceased being an organ of the Magisterium, and
became a consultative commission. Its most recent document (The Interpretation
of the Bible in the Church, with a preface by Cardinal Ratzinger) is an
analysis of many different interpretative systems: historical-critical,
semiotic, sociological, liberationist, feminist, fundamentalist, philosophical
dialectic, etc. The study tries to be open to valid elements of them all, while
showing their shortcomings as well. It grants that "tensions" can
exist between various texts (p.95), and warns against any single solution to
complex problems and insights. It does state that "false paths would be
avoided if actualization of the biblical message begins with a correct
interpretation of the text and continues within the stream of the living
Tradition under the guidance of the Church's Magisterium" (p.121). The
Pope in his introduction to the document makes this even more specific, and
puts it in a positive way: "In order to respect (p.19) the coherence of
the Church's faith and of Scriptural inspiration, Catholic exegesis must be
careful not to limit itself to the human aspects of the biblical texts. First
and foremost, it must help the Christian people more dearly to perceive the
word of God in these texts so that they can better accept them in order to live
in full communion with God" (p.19).
In light of the
above, what can we say about Brown's 1981 book? In one sense, it is difficult
to judge. The Magisterium has been encouraging scholarly research continually,
even while warning against the mind-set behind the historical-critical and
other methods, which is either atheist or rationalist. At the same time she
continually has stated that the Catholic exegete should take into account the
entire tradition of the Church, and the harmony of the faith. Personally I have
known of very few works of Catholic exegesis over the last thirty years which have
been able to make this desired synthesis. Most modern Catholic scholarship,
like Brown's, is quite bound to the historical, time-conditioned, linguistic
considerations of a text or passage; it rarely connects with a larger meaning
of Scripture that will truly deepen the faith of the reader, or second the
truths affirmed by the Fathers or the Magisterium, either ordinary or
extra-ordinary. Many times such writings actually undermine traditional
teachings, or question its principles.
Also I note that
Fr. Brown has received no official censorship or reprimand from the Holy See
for his work; he is considered to be the premiere biblical scholar in the
For all the
above reasons I do not recommend the reading of this book, unless there is a proportionately
serious reason for doing so and the person has an adequate formation for
distinguishing his errors.
M.G. (1998)
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