BROWN, Raymond

The Critical Meaning of the Bible

Paulist Press, New York 1981, 150 pp.

 

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 Roman Empire at the end of the first century.

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 Trent's declaration that it refers to the sacrament of Baptism, of John 20, 22 that refers to the sacrament of Penance, and James 5,14 to the Sacrament of Anointing. Similarly Vatican I interpreted Mt.16, 6-9 and John 21,15-17 as referring to the promise and institution of the Papacy. In earlier centuries Is.7.14 was defined as referring to the virgin birth, against an author who had denied it.

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, April 21, 1964, p.8). The same document warns against minimalizing the authority of the apostles as historical witnesses to Christ' words and actions, or exaggerating the creative power of the community itself (p.5). With respect to this last point, the PBC document does not mention among the literary forms in the Gospel any term like "post resurrectional retrojection" or "pseudonymous history", which underlie many of Brown's statements in his 1981 book. Also scholars are warned against indiscriminate spreading of ideas that can upset the faith of many people in the Church (p.10).

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 U.S.; he is invited by many bishops to speak in seminaries, and some of his recent works have received favourable reviews by apparently sound writers. Perhaps his most recent books have improved, or he has moderated his way of expressing certain ideas so that they do not appear to contrast with Tradition. But I must conclude that his 1981 book, the Critical Meaning of the Bible, does not represent a good synthesis between historical-critical scholarship and the living Tradition of the Church. It puts into question, without giving any sound hope for resolution, such key concepts as the inerrancy of the Bible, Christ's direct and knowing institution of the sacraments and the Church, and apostolic succession in the early Church. He does not incorporate the decisions of the Magisterium in a positive and constructive way, but gives the impression that it is almost an obstacle to his own reflections. He does not take into account the Tradition of the Church in many areas, including devotion to Mary and the authenticity of the Gospels.

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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