Hey chill dude...don't get so worked up... They do not call the
Bible the Holy bible for nothing...So you think that the Catholic
Church denies that the Bible is the inerrant, inspired Word of God?
Well, consider the following opinions:
We have no wish either to see or hear Moses.
Job . . . is merely the argument of a fable.
Ecclesiastes ought to have been more complete. There is too much
incoherent matter in it . . . Solomon did not, therefore, write
this book.
The book of Esther I toss into the Elbe. I am such an enemy to the
book of Esther that I wish it did not exist, for it Judaizes too
much and has in it a great deal of heathenish naughtiness.
The history of Jonah is so monstrous that it is absolutely
incredible.
There are many things objectionable in this book [Revelation]. To
my mind it bears upon it no marks of an apostolic or prophetic
character.
St. James epistle . . . has nothing of the nature of the gospel
about it.
What Pope do you think declared this? What Cardinal dared to so
condemn the Holy Word of God? What priest took it upon himself to
judge the living and active Word? None at all. The above judgements
were made by the founder of Protestantism himself, Martin
Luther!
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has always defended the
inspiration and trustworthiness of Scripture. For example, in the
Vatican II document Dei Verbum, we find the following
affirmation:
Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented
in sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For [the Church] . . . holds that
the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety,
with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their
author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In
composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him
they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him
acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned
to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.
Therefore since everything asserted by the inspired authors or
sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it
follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as
teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God
wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.
(Dei Verbum, Chapter 11)
Contrast the holy and reverent attitude of the Catholic Church with
that of Luther:
Luther . . . freely charges the sacred writers with inaccurate
statements, unsound reasonings, the use of imperfect materials and
even urges the authority of Christ against that of Holy Writ. In a
word, as is admitted by a recent Protestant writer: Luther has no
fixed theory of inspiration: if all his works suppose the
inspiration of the Sacred Writings, all his conduct shows that he
makes himself the supreme judge of it (Rabaud, p. 42). . . . The
Inspired Word of God was nothing to Luther when it could not be
made to square with Lutheranism. He is prepared to assume the whole
responsibility for the changes he made, and believes he has the
faculty of judging the Bible without danger of error. He believes
he is infallible. My word says he, in an exhortation to his
followers, is the word of Christ: my mouth is the mouth of
Christ. . . . Not only did Luther knowingly make additions to the
text and expunge from the canon some of the Inspired Books, but he
distorted the meaning of several passages by interpretations that
were erroneous and nothing short of blasphemous. He even went so
far as to accuse the Divine Author of playful mendacity, of irony,
when no other sense of the Inspired Words would suit the Lutheran
cause. (OHare, Luther, 202-205.)
When reverent Scripture scholars decried Luthers improper addition
of the word alone to his German translation of Romans 3:28, he
replied, You tell me what a great fuss the Papists are making
because the word alone is not in the text of Paul. If your Papist
makes such an unnecessary row about the word alone, say right out
to him: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so, and say: Papists and
asses are one and the same thing. I will have it so, and I order
it to be so, and my will is reason enough. (John Stoddard,
Rebuilding a Lost Faith, (Rockford, IL: TAN Books), 136-7.)
The point of this is not to suggest that modern Protestantism
should be held accountable for its founders attitude toward
Scripture. Rather, the point is simply that people who live in
glass houses shouldnt throw stones. The Catholic Church has always
treated the Bible with the reverence it deserves, and the heirs of
Luthers reformation really arent in a good position to allege
otherwise.
The first six quotation of Martin Luther are from Patrick F.
OHare, The Facts About Luther, (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1987),
202-205; the last one is from The Works of Martin Luther, tr. C.M.
Jacobs, (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1932), copyrighted by the
United Lutheran Church in America, vol. 6, 443-444.
