November 2025 Print

By Patrick Murtha

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste no the Pierian spring
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain….¹

“The fool,” Proverbs says, “leaps over and is confident,” for he “trust[s] his own folly.” (14:16, 17:12) Here, to clarify outright, I do not address the clergy, but my peers, my fellow laymen—we with little learning in the sacred sciences, and whose little learning is often crammed with quotes about “unanimous consent of the Fathers,” with decrees from Councils, with terms from the tomes of theologians—so many words, but so little understanding. It is sad to say, but St. Justin’s rebuke to the Jew Trypho can often be applied to the layman who asserts of Scripture what he does not know and by that assertion usurps the teaching authority of the Church: “They are contained in your Scriptures, or rather not yours, but ours. For we believe them; but you, though you read them, do not catch the spirit that is in them.”² Or more severe, the reprimand of Christ to the arrogant Sadducees can again apply to such an Asserter, “You err, not knowing scriptures, nor the power of God.” (Mt. 22:29) In short, my contention is with those who assert, as definitive doctrine, matters in Scripture (the meaning of days, the extent of the flood, a sun-centered earth or an earth-centered sun, etc.), and by their imprudent assertions make Scripture and the Church a laughing-stock, a point of ridicule by the disbeliever or even push the believer to choose, like Luther, between faith and reason, or Scripture and science. Such men, says St. Augustine, wish to conform Sacred Scripture to their own reasoning “whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.”³ The significance is serious, argues Augustine, because “the credibility of Scripture is at stake….[There] is a danger that a man uninstructed in divine revelation, discovering something in Scripture or hearing from it something that seems at variance with the knowledge he acquired, may resolutely withhold his assent in other matters where Scripture presents useful admonitions, narratives, and declarations.”⁴

If the Catholic, untaught in the science of interpretation, in Biblical exegesis, were to offer not merely as opinion to be discussed but as doctrine an idea that observation, reason, and scientific judgment has made doubtful, if he were to argue that a certain passage from Scripture—say, when the writer of Joshua states, “And the sun and moon stood still”—a theory that has been rendered unreasonable, the harm is not merely to himself but more so to the Church and to Scripture. How can the non-Catholic approach with his intelligence and faith a Church he reasons is unreasonable in judgment of nature? Men, who rashly interpret Scripture against sound reason, Augustine calls “reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture [who] bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions.”⁵ St. Robert Bellarmine, according to the science of his time and the prudential interpretation by the Church, reprimanded Fr. Foscarini for his excessive trust in Galileo’s promotion of the Copernican hypothesis. But, the wise Doctor of the Church adds, “If there were real proof⁶ that the sun is in the centre of the universe…and that the sun does not go around the earth but the earth around the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining the passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion false which is proved to be true.”⁷ This itself follows the opinion of Augustine:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars…and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith should think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?⁸

In the face of such false arguments—such as that the book of Joshua proves the geocentricity of the solar system—the layman ought to defend the true truth of Scripture, that the writers spoke from a human perspective and were not intending to expound on scientific processes. As a good teacher speaks the language of his students, so God also speaks to man in human tongues with human figures of speech, and human habits of speech; or, as Fr. De Fraine once wrote, “the proper mystery of Holy Scripture—the language of God incarnate in the language of man.”⁹ So also argues Augustine, when expounding on the literal understanding of Genesis: the sacred writer, he says, deliberately chooses his words “in keeping with the familiar habits of our ordinary speech.”¹⁰ In like manner, St. Jerome, in his commentary on Jeremiah, said that the writers wrote “according to the understanding of that time…and not according to what was truly going on in the event.”¹¹ His example is when Mary, after the finding of Jesus in the temple, refers to St. Joseph as the father of Christ: “thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” (Lk. 2:48) And so, when Joshua commands the sun to stop, Scripture should not be said to be affirming that the sun orbits the earth, but simply speaks what is common to all men regarding the “rising and the setting of the sun.”

Such a thought can also be considered when interpreting the passages regarding the extent of the great flood. Is the Catholic to hold that, as literally written, “the waters of the flood overflowed the earth” (Gen. 7:10) and “all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered”? Is the Catholic bound by faith to believe that the flood reached the cruising altitude of aircraft, over 29,000 feet? Or might Moses, in order to express the flood’s enormity, employed a type of hyperbole—a common hyperbole that everybody everywhere uses, even to this day. A hyperbole that St. Luke uses when he writes, “there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled.” (Lk. 2:1) Or are we to believe that the whole world—those in what is now Russia, China, Ireland, Mexico, Peru, etc.,—lands never known by the Romans—followed the Romans’s decree? The thought is laughable. To assert as much would make Scripture a mockery. Also, when Moses writes of the plague of locusts in Egypt, he writes, in similar words to what he penned for the deluge, “And they covered the whole face of the earth.” (Ex. 10:15) And how shall we take St. Paul, who uses similar wording in his Epistle to the Romans, “Yes, verily, their sound has gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the whole world.” (Rom. 10:18) And yet, we know that an enormous swathe of the world had, at that time, still not received the Gospel: St. Boniface had not yet preached to the Germans, nor St. Patrick to the Irish, nor St. Isaac Jogues and Fr. De Smet to the Indians of North America. Rather, this term ought to be understood in that same hyperbolic sense as it is used everywhere today: to mean, in as far as I am concerned, a vast portion of people that I know of know it.

The point here is not to detract from Scripture, nor to make the language of Scripture appear trite and silly. Instead, it cautions the layman to use prudence in asserting matters of Scripture: what does the Church actually teach in these matters? For example, in interpreting the term day in the first book of Genesis, there should be no man asserting one way or another, declaring the Church has already affirmed the doctrine of either a 24-hour day or a billion years. Pius X’s Biblical Commission (1909) has made the Church’s voice abundantly clear: the matter is debatable. Pius XII’s Biblical Commission continues in this vein, saying the literary style is complicated and that “these chapters do not represent history in a classical or modern sense” and more study is required “to see more clearly the true nature of certain stories in the first chapters of Genesis” and that they do relate history but “in a simple and figurative language, suited to the understanding of a less advanced humanity” (January 16, 1948). In his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, Pius XII himself notes that the interpretation of Genesis is a difficult matter indeed, even for the Church Fathers, evidenced by the “oft-repeated efforts of many of them to explain the first chapters of Genesis.”¹²

While some might argue, as Luther did, that Scripture is ever simple in its language, the layman ought to be wary of such foolishness. That so many commentaries were written to interpret Sacred Scripture and that so many heresies have arisen because of misinterpretations, demonstrate the difficulty of these Sacred writings. While it ought not hinder the reader from “taking and reading,” it does verify the necessity of tuning one’s ear to the voice of the Church. As Leo XIII writes, “it must be recognized that the sacred writings are wrapped in a certain religious obscurity, and that no one can enter into their interior without a guide…most of all, they must understand that God has delivered the Holy Scriptures to the Church, and that in reading and making use of His Word, they must follow the Church as their guide and teacher.”¹³ Does not Christ Himself need to expound the prophecies to the confused apostles on the road to Emmaus, “open[ing] their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures”? (Luke 24:45) Does not the humble eunuch in the Acts of the Apostles respond to Philip’s inquiry about understanding Isaias: “How can I without someone to guide me?” (Acts 8:30-31) The layman ought to consider carefully the warning of St. Peter, speaking of the Epistles of St. Paul and the scriptures in general, “in which are certain things hard to understand, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16) St. Jerome, in a sarcastic moment, derides those who overly simplify Scripture: “The art of interpreting the scriptures,” he writes, “is the only one of which all men everywhere claim to be masters…The chatty old woman, the doting old man, and the wordy sophists, one and all take in hand the Scriptures and rend them in pieces and teach them before they learned them…Genesis, we are told, needs no explanation; its topics are too simple—the birth of the world, the origin of the human race, the division of the earth…” ¹⁴ He then compares the obscurity of Ezekiel to Genesis! Closer to our own time, Monsignor Ronald Knox¹⁵ similarly complained: “If you translate, say, the Summa of St. Thomas, you expect to be cross-examined by people who understand philosophy and by people who understand Latin; no one else. If you translate the Bible, you are liable to be cross-examined by anybody; because everybody thinks he knows already what the Bible means.”¹⁶

Again, let me be very clear, my intention is not to open Scriptures to contempt, nor is it to pit reason against faith or science against Scripture. Heaven forbid such thoughts! Rather, a respect for language and meaning, most particularly Divine language, is my motif, and ought to be the motive for anyone entering into interpretation. Rationalism is a heresy, not because reason and rationalizing are evil, but because it disregards the limits of reason. Literalism, particularly Scriptural literalism, should be a great concern, not because Scripture is not to be taken in any literal sense, but that the true literal sense of the word requires an understanding of how language expresses thought, which is sometimes more than the mere letter of a word, and the literalist fails to delve more deeply into language and thought. “The letter kills,” say St. Paul, “but the spirit quickens.” (II Cor. 3:6) The interpreter, if he has true love for the Word of God, always strives to apprehend the true meaning of the inspired words, and, recognizing his own limitations, submits himself to wisdom of the Church and asserts nothing contrary to Faith and reason and asserts nothing on own. For he realizes that a bad assertion of man regarding the good word of God is, as St. Augustine points out time and again, forcing God’s words to a man’s meaning, a detriment not only to the faith of the interpreter but also to the salvation of those to whom he communicates his bad interpretation. Perhaps words of St. Paul can be applied here, when he says, “And such confidence we have, though Christ, towards God. Not that we are sufficient to think any thing of ourselves, as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is from God” (II Cor. 3:4-5).

Endnotes

¹ Alexander Pope, “Essay on Criticism.”

² Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, Ante-Nicene Fathers, V 1, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and Cleveland Coxe, Christian Literature Publishing, 29.

³ Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. John Hammond Taylor (Newman, 1982), 1.18.

⁴ Ibid. 2.9.

⁵ The Literal Meaning. 1.19.

⁶ Galileo’s insistence and assertion of the veracity of the Copernican position had no true proof in his own day. Copernicus himself said he lacked evidence. Galileo’s own “proofs” were often confused and inconclusive, and at times—such as his argument that the tides were caused by the earth’s motion—stretched beyond the bounds of belief.

⁷ Bellarmine, “Letter to Fr. Foscarini.”

⁸ Augustine, Ibid.

⁹ Jean DeFraine, “The Encyclical Humani Generis and Sacred Scripture,” Theology Digest, V 2 (1954), 156.

¹⁰ Augustine, The Literal Meaning, 3.11.

¹¹ Jerome, Commentarium in Jeremiam Prophetam Libri Sex, 5.28.

¹² Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, 31. It might also be noted that, of all the books in the Bible, Genesis, it seems, has the majority of commentaries.

¹³ Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 14.

¹⁴ Jerome, Letter 53.8.

¹⁵ Monsignor Knox famously translated the Bible into English during the time of the Second World War.

¹⁶ Knox, “Nine Years’ Hard,” On Englishing the Bible, 66.

TITLE IMAGE: The Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Planets, Michelangelo (1475–1564).