On the Authority of Scripture

Keen thoughts on what to look from a study Bible from a YouTube video via St. Irenaeus Ministries:

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I want study notes that know their place. They’re there to serve the inspired Word, to help the faithful get what God is trying to give them in whatever Biblical text they attend. It’s like in Psalm 45: ’The princess is decked in her chamber with gold woven robes, in many-colored robes she is led to the King, with her virgin companions, her escort in her train.”

The biblical text is the princess. The text is inspired, the notes are not. And so the notes, maps and introductions are like those attendants, they are handmaidens to the Biblical text. 

So what makes for a good handmaiden? Does a handmaiden walk in front of her mistress? No, a handmaiden follows behind. Should a handmaiden try to make herself the center of attention? No, all eyes should be on her mistress. Should a handmaiden talk down to her mistress or contradict what she says?  Unthinkable. 

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In Old Testament critical thinking, it reorders the Pentateuch based on a new principle: evolution, which as you know was the shiny new tool in the 19th century’s intellectual tool belt. The story told is the gradual growth and development of human religion, from the primitive anthropomorphic “J” source to the decadent ritualistic “P” source, which is compared to later rabbinic Judiaism with abstruse legalism...Turns out the major proponents didn’t like the Jews, and the roots of this are in 19th century German anti-semitism is one of the things biblical scholars aren’t supposed to talk about in polite company.

Similarly, in the New Testament, the evolution was supposedly from a primitive gospel “q” source and Mark.  So what’s the problem with that? I don’t think it’s a problem for Luke since he specifically says in his preface that he put his gospel together from sources. But Matthew’s gospel is the apostolic gospel par excellence. It’s the authoritative statement on our Lord’s life and teaching by those who ate with him and walked with him and sat at his feet. And when you demote the gospel of Matthew to something cobbled together at the end of the first century by an anonymous redactor from earlier written sources you’ve opened an immense evidentiary chasm between us and our Lord.

What it means that we the Christian faithful are no longer in the position of receiving eyewitness testimony from the apostles. If we want to know about Jesus, we have to try to reconstruct the sources behind the gospels and in so doing correct the evangelists mistakes be they from human error or prejudice. 

In the traditional model, you approach the gospel text with reverence as though it were the very body of Christ, living and active. In the critical model, you treat the gospel text like a cadaver at the morgue and approach it with clinical detachment, scalpel in hand. 

It’s a fundamental shift, it’s a different kind of Christianity. It’s no longer the story of God made flesh to come down to fulfill the law and redeem the earth. Instead it becomes the story of religious development - from the primitive apocalypticism of the earliest sources to a more developed teaching suitable to the needs of the later communities who redacted them. 

In this new religion we, not God, are the protagonist of our religious narrative. And the story we tell is of our own growth, from primitives who believed in things like miracles to sophisticated, self-aware,  mature believers who tell hard truths and congratulate ourselves on how nuanced we are. 

The great struggle for the survival of the Catholic Church in our century will be over the authority of Scripture. You may think it’s women’s ordination or gay marriage or contraception. Those are all secondary. Mark my words: it’s the Scriptures. This is where we stand or fall.