Christian Bergsma on Dei Verbum
Robert Sungenis agrees with Bergsma that liberals at Vatican II tried to remove biblical inerrancy from Dei Verbum 11. The first draft denied it, two more tried subtler wording, and the final text kept the ambiguous phrase "for the sake of our salvation," which liberals now use to limit inerrancy to salvation, not history.
Could you respond to Christian Bergsma's ongoing series of articles on Dei Verbum at Integrity Magazine? He seems to go beyond what I understand your position on Dei Verbum to be, which is that is was weaponized by liberals to reject scriptural inerrancy. He portrays it as more intentional. It is worth saying that he is coming at this from a sedevecantist or sedevacantist-adjacent position, as is the magazine generally. https://integritymagazine.org/2026/09/08/dei-verbums-crafty-attempt-to-redefine-church-teaching-on-the-inerrancy-of-scripture/
Answer
Well, Bergsma is actually correct. The liberals wanted to get rid of biblical inerrancy, that is for sure. My focus is on the liberals after Vatican II who distort the phrase in Dei Verbum 11: "for the sake of our salvation" to say inerrancy is limited to salvation, not history. But the liberals inside Vatican II did their best to rid the document of inerrancy even then. In one of my papers I show how this happened. There were four schemas to Dei Verbum 11. The first one actually denied inerrancy. Paul VI was called to intervene. Then there was schema 2 and 3. They also tried to deny inerrancy but with subtler language. The conservatives led the charge to reject them. Then the liberals came up with schema 4, which is now in the Document but has the ambiguous phrase, "for the sake of our salvation," which, as I say, is now totally distorted by present day liberals. That was the plan, however.