Book Three: On the Interpretation of the Word of God.
Chapter One: Scripture is not so per se Open that it Suffices without Explanation for the Settling of Controversies of the Faith
Being, in this third book, about to write on the interpretation of the divine letters, I have thought a beginning should be made from the question: are the sacred Scriptures per se very easy and very open, or do they rather need interpretation? And Martin Luther indeed, in the preface to his assertion of articles damned by Pope Leo speaks thus, “it is necessary, with Scripture as judge, to vote this opinion, which thing can only be if we give to Scripture the first place in everything that is attributed to the Fathers, that is, that Scripture is itself the per se most certain, most easy, most open interpreter of itself, proving, judging, and illuming everything of everyone etc.” In the same place he contends that Scripture is clearer than the commentaries of all the Fathers. He teaches like things in his book on the Bondage of the Will, and elsewhere.
Because however Luther soon saw that the objection can be made of where so many controversies come from if Scripture is so clear, he thought out two subterfuges. One, that Scripture, although it is somewhere obscure, yet it proposes the same thing clearly elsewhere. The second, that Scripture, although per se very clear, yet is made obscure by the proud and the infidels because of their blindness and corrupt affection.
Brentius adds a third subterfuge in his Prologue Against Peter a Soto, that even while it is sometimes obscure, because of phrases in a foreign tongue, that is, in Hebrew and Greek, yet its sense is very clear. Which opinion is manifestly false; for Scripture itself gives testimony of its difficulty and obscurity. Psalm 118, “Give me understanding and I will examine your law.” Ibid., “Uncover my eyes and I will consider the marvels of your law.” Ibid., “Shine your face upon your servant and teach me your justifications.” And certainly David knew the whole Scripture which then was, and he knew the phrases of the Hebrew tongue, nor was he proud or an infidel. Wherefore rightly does St. Jerome in his epistle to Paulina on the institution of a monk, speak, in treating of these words, in the following way, “If so great a Prophet confesses the darkness of ignorance, by what night of unknowing do you think we little and almost unweaned ones are surrounded?”
Further, in the last chapter of Luke the Lord interpreted the Scriptures to his disciples, who certainly knew the Hebrew phrases, since they were Hebrews, nor were they proud or infidels. In Acts ch.3 the Eunuch of the Queen of the Ethiopians was versed in the Scriptures and he diligently read them, and was holy, pious, and humble, as Jerome teaches in his epistle to Paulina about the study of the Scriptures, and yet he was asked by Philip, “Do you think you understand what you are reading? He replied, How can I, unless someone shows me?”
Finally II Peter last chapter, Peter asserts that in the epistles of Paul are certain things difficult to understand, “which the unlearned and unstable distort.” Where it is to be noted that the Apostle Peter did not say there were certain things difficult for the unlearned and unstable, as the heretics expound, but difficult absolutely. For Blessed Augustine, who certainly was not unlearned or unstable, in his book on Faith and Works chs.15-‐16, confesses that very difficult to understand for himself was the place in I Corinthians ch.3, “If anyone build on the foundation, etc.” and he says that this is one of the places that Peter warned was difficult to understand.
Next, beside the witness of Scripture, the same thing can be shown from the common consent of the ancient Fathers. Irenaeus bk.2 ch.47, after he has said that many things in created and natural things are hidden to us, adds, “If therefore even in created things there are indeed certain of them that lie with God, but certain that have come into our knowledge, what evil is it if also in the case of things that are searched in the Scriptures, since all the Scriptures are spiritual, certain of them indeed we unloose according to the grace of God, but certain we commend to God, and not only in this world but also in the world to come, so that always indeed God teaches but man always learns the things that are of God?”
Origen Against Celsus bk.7, “Others also, men prudent in examining Scripture, have been able to find the understanding of it, since in truth it is obscure in many places.” Again, homily 5 on Leviticus contains a similar opinion, adducing a likeness with sacrificial victims, part of which was eaten by the priests and part was burnt for God. Again Homily 12 on Exodus, “Days and nights,” he says, “one must beg that the Lamb of the tribe of Judah come and himself deign to open the sealed book.” About Basil and Gregory thus does Ruffinus write Hist. bk.11 ch.9, “Both noble, both educated at Athens, both colleagues for 13 years, they gave attention, after all books of secular Greeks were taken away, only to the volumes of the divine Scripture and the understanding of them, not from their own presumption but from the writings and authority of the ancestors, who themselves too, as is clear, received the rule of understanding from Apostolic succession.”
Chrysostom, whom alone the heretics are wont to object to us, already in Homil.40 on John, on the verse, “examine the Scriptures,” says, “Christ sent the Jews back, not to the simple and bare reading of the Scriptures, but to an investigation very much diligent. He did not say, Read the Scriptures, but, Examine the Scriptures. For the divine writings need supreme diligence. For he did not speak in a shadow to the ancestors without purpose, and therefore he bids us to dig more deeply, so that we can find what is deeply hidden. For we do not dig for a thing on the surface and placed ready to hand, but for what is deeply hidden like a treasure. For he who seeks such a thing, unless he uses supreme diligence and labor, will never find what is sought for.” Again the author of the imperfect work, Homil.44 on Matthew, adduces two reasons why the Scriptures are obscure. First, because God wanted some to be masters, others to be disciples. Second, lest if Scripture be so clear, it would not be so much useful as contemptible.
Ambrose in his epist.44 to Constantius says, “the divine Scripture is a sea, having in itself profound meanings, a depth of prophetic enigmas.”
Jerome in his epistle to Paulina on the study of Scripture, purposely teaches that the Scriptures cannot be learnt without a master, and, running briefly through the names of the individual books, he shows that in every case there are many and great difficulties. In the preface to this commentary on Ephesians he says, “I have never ceased from my youth either to read or to ask learned men what I did not know, or I had myself as master. Next recently I went precisely for this very reason to Alexandria to see Didymus, and from him I inquired about the things in all the Scriptures where I had doubts.” And in his epistle to Algasia q.8 he says, “the whole epistle to the Romans is wrapped up in many obscurities.”
Augustine on Christian Doctrine bk.2 ch.6 says, “But those are deceived by multiple obscurities and ambiguities who read thinking one thing instead of another; but in certain places they do not find what they falsely suspect, so darkly do some statements introduce the most dense gloom. But this whole thing I do not doubt is divinely foreseen for subduing pride with labor, and for recalling from dislike the intellect of him to whom the things he investigates become for the most part cheap.” He also says in Confessions bk.12 ch.14, “The marvelous deepness of your orations, whose surface, behold, before us caresses little ones, but the marvelous depth, my God, the marvelous depth! The awe is to apply oneself to it, the awe of honor, and the tremor of love.” And epistle 3, “So great is the depth of Christian letters that in them I would make daily progress if them alone, from the beginning of youth to the decrepitude of old age, in greatest leisure, with supreme study, with greater genius, I tried to learn.” And epistle 119 ch.21, “In the sacred Scriptures themselves I am ignorant of much more than I know.”
Gregory Homil.6 on Ezekiel says, “The very obscurity of the orations of God is of great utility, because it exercises the sense so as to extend it by fatigue, and so that he who is exercised grasps what he who is at leisure cannot. It has too something else greater, that if the understanding of sacred Scripture were open in everything it would cheapen things that in certain obscurer places restore, when found, with so much the more sweetness the more that, when being sought, they weary the soul with greater labor, etc.” Certainly these Fathers knew the phrases, nor were they proud infidels, and they frankly confess that the Scriptures are difficult. From which fact, I think, the rashness and vanity of Luther and Brentius is sufficiently plainly refuted.
Nor, in addition to authorities, is reason lacking to confirm the same as well. For in the Scriptures two matters can be considered, the things that are said and the way they are said. If you consider the things you must necessarily confess that the Scriptures are very obscure. For they hand on supreme mysteries: about the divine Trinity, about the incarnation of the Word, about heavenly sacraments, about the nature of angels, about the work of God in human minds, about eternal predestination and reprobation, and about arcane and supernatural things that are not investigated without great study and labor, nor without danger of the greatest error. Certainly if the science of Metaphysics is more difficult and obscure than all other natural disciplines, because it treats of the highest causes, how will sacred Scripture, which deals with far higher things, not be most obscure? What about the fact that a great part of Scripture contains prophecies of future things, and prophecies written in poetry, than which nothing is more difficult, nothing more obscure?
But if we consider the way of speaking we will find innumerable reasons for difficulty. First, there are in the Scriptures many things that seem prima facie contrary, as this verse of Exodus ch.20, “I am a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons to the third and fourth generation,” and this of Ezekiel ch.18, “the son will not bear the sin of his father, but the soul that sins, it shall die.” Second, there are ambiguous words and statements, as John 8 when to the Jews who are asking, “Who are you?” Christ responds, “The beginning, as I also say to you.” For all interpreters marvelously twist this, nor is it yet known what is meant by ‘The beginning, as’; and in the Greek the thing is still more obscure, where ‘beginning’ is in the accusative case. Third, there are incomplete statements, as Romans ch.5, “Just as through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death; and so death passed to all men in whom all have sinned” and the following, where there is not a main verb in the whole period. Fourth, there are inverted statements, as Genesis ch10, “These are the sons of Shem according to their kindred, and tongues, and regions in their families.” For the beginning of chapter 11 immediately follows, “And the earth was of one tongue and of the same speech.” Fifth, there are phrases proper to Hebrew, as Psalm 88, “His throne as the day of heaven.” Again Psalm 118, “My soul is always in my hands,” and very many others. Sixth, there are many figures of speech, tropes, metaphors, allegories, hyberbata, ironies, and other things of this sort without number.
Add lastly the witness of our adversaries, which, willy nilly, they are compelled to give to this truth. For if Scripture were as clear as they say, why would Luther and Lutherans write so many commentaries? Why would they produce such diverse versions of Scripture? Why would they explain Scripture so variously?
Certainly Osiander in his confutation of the writing that Philip brought out against him, testifies that 20 very diverse opinions about justification according to the Scriptures circulate among the Confessionists alone. And did not Luther himself, in bk.1 Against Zwingli and Oecolampadius, leave in writing, “If the world stands any longer, it will again be necessary for us, because of the diverse interpretations of Scripture that now exist, to take again the decrees of the Councils and flee back to them for preserving unity of faith.”
Luther, who in the preface to the assertion of his articles asserts that Scripture is per se very open and clear, and boasts, in his book on the Bondage of the Will, that there is nothing of difficulty in the sacred letters and that no place can be brought to him which he himself would not easily interpret – he himself yet says in his preface to the Psalms, “I do not wish anyone to presume of me what none of the most holy and learned men has yet been able to provide, that is, to understand the Psalter in all respects in its legitimate sense. The Spirit has reserved many things for himself so as always to have us as disciples; many things he only shows so as to entice us, many things he hands on only so as to affect us.” And later, “I know him to be a man of the most impudent rashness who dares to profess that one book of Scripture has in all its parts been understood by him.” And in his book On the Councils p.12 he says, “Twenty years ago I was compelled to contemn the commentaries of the Fathers, since Scripture had to be read in the schools, and was compelled to seek out with great sweat its true and genuine sense.”
Brentius in his prolegomena Against Petrus a Soto says, “They trifle that Scripture is obscure and therefore needs interpretation.” And later he says, “For the impious and incredulous alone is Scripture obscure, but not for pious believers.” But he himself in his Wittemberg Confession, in the chapter on sacred Scripture, speaks thus: “It is not obscure,” he says, “that the gift of interpreting Scripture is not with human prudence but with the Holy Spirit; but the Holy Spirit is most free, nor is bound to a definite class of men, but distributes his gifts to men according to his own good will.” But why, Brentius, I ask, is the gift of interpretation necessary if, as you were saying a little before, Scripture has no need of interpretation?
But already Martin Chemnitz in his Examination of the Council of Trent sess.4 says, “God wanted the gift of interpretation to exist in the Church, which, like the gift of healing, of miracles, of tongues, is not common to all.” And later, “Gratefully,” he says, “and with reverence do we use the labors of the Fathers, who helpfully illustrated many places of Scripture with their commentaries.”
Very grateful, to be sure, was your parent Luther to the labors of the Fathers, since in his book On the Councils p.53 he wrote that the commentaries of the Fathers are wood in place of gold. Nor less in conflict with Luther are the Centuriatores, who however are rigid Lutherans, when in Centur.1 bk.1 ch.4 col.53 they thus write, “The Apostles thought that the Scriptures could not be understood without the Holy Spirit and without an interpreter.” But let us look at the arguments of Luther and Brentius.
Robert Bellarmine’s: Controversies of the Christian Faith – Volume 1: On the Word of God — HOME