The Demise of Catholic Scripture Scholarship

If a Catholic today doubts the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, or the historical claims of the Gospels, the reason often traces back to a single method and the men who wielded it. This book tells that story: how historical criticism entered Catholic biblical scholarship and how, in the wrong hands, it hollowed out confidence in the very Scriptures it was meant to serve.

Robert Sungenis follows the trail through the figures who shaped modern exegesis, with sustained attention to Fr. Raymond Brown, the origins of historical criticism, the quest for the historical Jesus, Vatican II and biblical inerrancy, and the interpretive concerns of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Contents

From the Introduction

In Catholic biblical scholarship a turning point occurred during the reign of Pius XII. In his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, Pius believed it beneficial that Catholic biblical scholars be able to use the exegetical tools of what is known as historical criticism. In a word, historical criticism seeks to apply scientific analysis to a written document. Is the document authentic? What is its date? Who wrote it? Did the author borrow from other sources? What type of literature is it? How much is the author influenced by his culture? Did the author fabricate, exaggerate, or embellish his story? These and many other questions the historical critic brings to his document, which can be any piece of literature of historical worth, a sonnet by Shakespeare, a Greek tragedy by Homer, or even the United States Constitution.

Historical criticism is not bad in itself. When used properly it can be a great asset to studies in literature. Unfortunately, when good things come into the hands of bad or agenda-driven men, bad things usually happen. Catholic liberals, who had been seething in the pot of dissent since the late 1800s, took advantage of Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu and eventually turned biblical scholarship into a three-headed monster, a creature so ghastly that it is safe to predict that Pius XII would have turned his head away in utter disgust were he alive today. It has gotten to the point in the higher echelons of Catholic scholarship that hardly anything the Bible says is taken at face value. Everything from the Resurrection of Christ, to the Virgin Birth, to the function of the papacy and the priesthood is questioned today, or even rejected, based on the historical-critical approach to Scripture.