Dark Passages

of the Bible
Dark Passages
of the Bible
Engaging Scripture with
Benedict XVI & Thomas Aquinas

Matthew J. Ramage

The Catholic University of America Press

Washington, D.C.
 Copyright © 2013
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standards for
Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ramage, Matthew J.
Dark passages of the Bible : engaging scripture with Benedict XVI
and Thomas Aquinas / Matthew J. Ramage.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8132-2156-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1.Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.
2. Bible—Hermeneutics. 3. Benedict XVI, Pope, 1927–
4. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?–1274.
5. Catholic Church—Doctrines. I. Title.
BS511.3.R36 2013
220.6—dc23      2013012085
 C on t e n t s

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: “How Can That Be in

the Bible?” 1
1. The Bible’s Problems 17
2. Benedict’s “Method C” Proposal and Catholic
Principles for Biblical Interpretation 53
3. The Problem of Development 92
4. The Problem of Apparent Contradictions 114
5. Method C Exegesis, the Nature of God,
and the Nature of Good and Evil 155
6. Method C Exegesis and the Afterlife 196
Conclusion: Method C Exegesis in
the Church 274
Bibliography 281

Scripture Index 297

General Index 301
 Ac k n ow l e d g e m e n t s

Before recognizing the many individuals who have directly con-

tributed to this book, I must begin by acknowledging the debt of grat-
itude I owe to our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, for his commit-
ment to the enterprise of a biblical exegesis that is at once thoroughly
critical and thoroughly faithful to Christ’s church. The inspiration for
this work in its present form came from Benedict’s encouragement
of scholars to help the faithful approach the “dark” passages of the
Bible in a way that elucidates their meaning in light of the mystery of
Christ.
As the first stages of this book were developed in my disserta-
tion at Ave Maria University, I first extend my heartfelt gratitude
to my director, Gregory Vall, who introduced me to Ratzinger’s
“Method C” proposal, meticulously examined and critiqued my
dissertation, patiently taught me Hebrew when I had only one eye
with which to read it, and offered a stellar witness of a family man
who strives unabashedly to do serious scholarly exegesis within the
heart of the church. I thank all my theology and classics professors
from Ave Maria, in particular Fr. Matthew Lamb, Jeremy Holmes,
and Michael Waldstein, who served on my dissertation board. The
many insights I gained through conversations with Roger Nutt and
discussion groups with Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, were also invaluable for
this endeavor. I likewise benefited tremendously from the tutelage
of Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais of the Aquinas Cen-
ter at Ave Maria University. Many of the translations I was commis-
sioned to prepare by the Aquinas Center served an important role
in establishing the Thomistic foundations of the present work.

vii
 viii   ac knowle d gme n ts

Although the first pages of this book were written at Ave Ma-
ria, many of the ideas it contains germinated some years earlier. I
therefore thank those who mentored me at the University of Illi-
nois, Msgr. Stuart Swetland and Dr. Kenneth Howell. These men
first awoke in me the desire to be a Catholic intellectual, to read the
works of the fathers, and to have a profound encounter with God’s
living and active word. I would be remiss not to mention also the
work of the fellowship of Catholic university students through
whose ministry I first began to read and ask deep questions of the
Bible on a consistent basis, as well as the Apostles of the Interior Life
whose spiritual direction and friendship have been a mainstay in
my life for over a decade. My colleagues in philosophy and theology
at Benedictine College—all of whom are united in their dedication
to the pursuit of the truth within the heart of the church—are also
a pillar of strength in my academic life. I thank James Madden in
a particular for thoughtful conversations which strengthened this
work and helped to refine its philosophical foundations. A word of
gratitude is also due to Jane Schule and the Benedictine College li-
brary staff for their dedicated work, without which I would never
have had access to the raw materials necessary for this project.
Finally, I would never been able to undertake this project with-
out the total, continued support of my family, especially my wife and
parents. My mom and dad raised me in the Catholic faith, taught me
the importance of the church and her Magisterium, and provided
an environment where the discussion of genuine, critical questions
was seen as a way to fall more deeply in love with God. My wife, Jen,
has contributed more to this book than I can express, from chang-
ing diapers and cooking while I read and wrote, to proofreading the
entire manuscript, to serving as a formidable “devil’s advocate” to
cross-examine my words. I dedicate this book to her, to my parents,
and to my children. I pray that the present endeavor will contribute
to their good and to the realization of Pope Benedict’s vision for the
New Evangelization as the church seeks to reawaken a vital encoun-
ter between the faithful and God through the medium of his word.
 Int rodu c t ion

“How C a n T hat B e i n t h e B i b l e ? ”

“How can that be in the Bible?” This question arises time and
again in the minds of Christians who undertake serious study of the
written word of God. When believers pose this question, often the
more pressing issues of life cause them to forget about it before they
are able to arrive at a satisfactory answer. Others pose it, do some
investigation, and eventually have to set it aside for want of a satisfy-
ing response. Some even lose their faith over it. Nevertheless, the
history of biblical exegesis is replete with attempts to reconcile con-
tentious texts with sound Christian doctrine.
Many of these endeavors have proven to be powerful and fruit-
ful. As a result, Christians who profess the doctrines of biblical in-
spiration and inerrancy tend not to bat an eye at the psalmist’s fre-
quent association of Yahweh with “the gods.” We typically do not
consider the possibility that the psalmist meant this literally, that
his portrait of the divine nature might entail elements of polytheism
which differ from or even contradict our own belief in the triune
God. Indeed, in light of divine revelation, we now know the “gods”
of which the psalmist speaks are not gods at all but rather demons
or inanimate objects we choose over and against the one true God.
This vindication of the truth and unity of scripture intuitively
rings true to the faithful Christian ear, but traditional interpreta-
tions often prove less convincing to believers today. When Psalm 137
declares blessed those who dash Babylonian infants against rocks,

1
 2 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bi ble?”

it simply does not suffice to insist that the author is not really refer-
ring to infant humans at all but rather to nascent sins that believ-
ers must “dash” before they spawn and grow into full-fledged vices.
There is something true, beautiful, and important in this interpre-
tation that preserves the unity of the biblical message concerning
God’s love, but in the eyes of many it falls far short of accounting for
the sheer amount of development we observe when comparing the
moral teaching of the Old Testament to Christ’s new commandment
of love.
With the advent of historical-critical scholarship in the early
modern period, once widely accepted Christian interpretations like
the ones described above have been seriously and sometimes radi-
cally called into question. Whereas readers in times past interpreted
scripture in such a way as to highlight its unity and stress its har-
mony, modern scholars typically have no problem acknowledging
development, diversity, and even apparent contradictions within the
biblical message. As fruitful as certain traditional responses have
proven to be, the challenges and insights of modern scholarship are
simply too great to write off as inventions of godless academicians.1
Nor can we overcome these problems solely by following the typi-
cal approach of conservative theologians today, an approach which
consists largely in elucidating the tradition of ecclesiastical dogma
on the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture. While this work is vi-
tal, one of the greatest weaknesses among theologians who strive to
follow the Magisterium of the Catholic Church is that we tend to
theologize about scripture without having scripture’s most challeng-
ing texts before our eyes.
It is therefore necessary that we add to our theologizing an in-
ductive dimension which takes into account not only ecclesiastical

1. As evangelical exegete Kenton Sparks points out, too often conservative Chris-
tians mistakenly dismiss historical-critical scholarship and the problems it raises due to
an assumption that these problems are not real but rather the mere result of spiritual
weakness on the part of biblical critics. For Sparks’s critique and response to this view,
see his God’s Word in Human Words: an Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical
Scholarship (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008), 303–8. Here he observes
that “there are no substitutes for good critical skills, nor for a healthy relationship with
God.” (306.)
 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bible?” 3

dogma but also the most difficult texts of scripture and the best in-
sights modern research has to share concerning them. All this will
keep us honest and purify our faith. It will force us to dig deeper than
ever in our attempt to reconcile traditional dogma with the concrete
challenges we encounter in the Word of God. We will therefore ask
poignant questions: What does the Church really mean when she
teaches that Sacred Scripture is “inspired” by God? How can one ex-
plain that the Bible is “without error” in the face of the myriad con-
crete objections of modern scholars? The present volume aims to
elucidate a theology of scripture, a systematic account of the nature
of scripture that will give Christians the principles and examples
they need to answer precisely these kinds of questions and to apply
those answers to the most challenging texts in the biblical canon.
Benedict XVI’s much anticipated apostolic exhortation Verbum
Domini and the second volume of his book Jesus of Nazareth were
both published in the midst of the present volume’s composition.
Having already laid this book’s foundations on the exegetical prin-
ciples set out in the writings of Benedict over the past decades, it
was thrilling to see the pope’s new works reiterate many of his same
central ideas in a new context.2 Of particular significance was the
fact that Benedict now directly called on scholars to help the faithful
grapple with the most challenging texts of scripture. In a section of
Verbum Domini entitled “The ‘Dark’ Passages of the Bible,” Bene-
dict recalls the instances of violence and immorality narrated in the
Bible and exhorts scholars to address these problems by keeping in
mind the historical rootedness of divine revelation, in particular the
fact that God’s plan to educate mankind was realized only slowly
and indeed in spite of our resistance. As this passage is among Pope
Benedict’s most recent statements directly relevant to the present
project, it merits to be cited in full:
In discussing the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments,
the [2008 Synod of Bishops meeting on the theme of The Word of God in
the Life and Mission of the Church] also considered those passages in the

2. Note that I have opted for the convention of referring to the one man Ratzinger/
Benedict as “Benedict” throughout this book even in writings antedating his pontifi-
cate.
 4 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bible?”

Bible which, due to the violence and immorality they occasionally contain,
prove obscure and difficult. Here it must be remembered first and foremost
that biblical revelation is deeply rooted in history. God’s plan is manifested
progressively and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stages and despite
human resistance. God chose a people and patiently worked to guide and
educate them. Revelation is suited to the cultural and moral level of distant
times and thus describes facts and customs, such as cheating and trickery,
and acts of violence and massacre, without explicitly denouncing the im-
morality of such things. This can be explained by the historical context,
yet it can cause the modern reader to be taken aback, especially if he or
she fails to take account of the many “dark” deeds carried out down the
centuries, and also in our own day. In the Old Testament, the preaching
of the prophets vigorously challenged every kind of injustice and violence,
whether collective or individual, and thus became God’s way of training his
people in preparation for the Gospel. So it would be a mistake to neglect
those passages of Scripture that strike us as problematic. Rather, we should
be aware that the correct interpretation of these passages requires a degree
of expertise, acquired through a training that interprets the texts in their
historical-literary context and within the Christian perspective which has
as its ultimate hermeneutical key “the Gospel and the new commandment
of Jesus Christ brought about in the paschal mystery.” I encourage scholars
and pastors to help all the faithful to approach these passages through an
interpretation which enables their meaning to emerge in the light of the
mystery of Christ.3
The key hermeneutical principle guiding our quest in this book is
taken directly from writings of Benedict like the one we read above:
problematic texts in the Bible can be adequately addressed only if
we take seriously the fact that “God’s plan is manifested progressively
and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stages and despite human
resistance.” According to Benedict, God patiently and gradually re-
vealed himself to his people in order to “guide and educate” them
with the ultimate end of “training his people in preparation for the
Gospel.”
The above text from Pope Benedict echoes the words of the Sec-
ond Vatican Council’s Dei Verbum and the later Catechism of the
Catholic Church. As the Catechism eloquently states: “The divine
plan of revelation . . . involves a specific divine pedagogy: God com-
3. Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, 2010, §42 (emphasis Benedict’s). Cited hereafter
as VD.
 “ H ow Can That Be in the Bible?” 5

municates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome

by stages the supernatural revelation that is to culminate in the
person and mission of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.”4 Through-
out the course of this work, the case will be made that a sound and
satisfying Christian reading of Sacred Scripture must take to heart
the divine pedagogy, the reality that the pages of scripture manifest
the gradual teaching method by which God led his chosen people
to the fullness of truth in Christ. We will see that the hermeneutic
of divine pedagogy is precisely the bridge that enables one to rec-
oncile the unity of scripture traditionally emphasized by Christian
exegetes with the development, diversity, and apparent contradic-
tions observed by modern scholars. For the hermeneutic of divine
pedagogy affirms that scripture has a unity in light of the fact that
it proceeds from God’s one wise educational plan for mankind and
communicates God himself to man.
At the same time, this hermeneutic is comfortable with develop-
ment and diversity within scripture. While Pope Benedict acknowl-
edges that these are the natural consequences of a divine plan which
unfolded gradually over time in accordance with man’s capacity to
receive it, he is intent on demonstrating that apparent contradic-
tions in scripture are precisely that—apparent. He explains that this
is the case because the Bible is a “living organism” that developed as
a result of the “process” of God’s gradual revelation: “The Bible is the
condensation of a process of revelation which is much greater and
inexhaustible. . . . It is then part of a living organism which, through

4. Catechism of the Catholic Church, translated by United States Catholic Confer-

ence. (Washington, D.C.: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994), §53. Cited hereafter as CCC.
I have cited the Catechism here because of its clarity and conciseness, but the Cate-
chism itself is summarizing the Second Vatican Council constitution Dei Verbum §15.
For other magisterial statements of the divine pedagogy, see Pius XI, On the Church
and the German Reich [Mit brennender sorge], 1937, §15 and Lumen gentium, 1964, §9,
which explains Israel’s relationship with God in terms of gradual instruction: “[God]
therefore chose the race of Israel as a people unto Himself. With it He set up a cov-
enant. Step by step He taught and prepared this people, making known in its history
both Himself and the decree of His will and making it holy unto Himself. All these
things, however, were done by way of preparation and as a figure of that new and per-
fect covenant, which was to be ratified in Christ, and of that fuller revelation which was
to be given through the Word of God Himself made flesh.”
 6 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bible?”

the vicissitudes of history, nonetheless conserves its identity.”5 The

following selection of Benedict’s Old Testament exegesis further elu-
cidates this dynamic process and pinpoints the key which enables us
to make sense of it:
The Bible is thus the story of God’s struggle with human beings to make
himself understandable to them over the course of time; but it is also the
story of their struggle to seize hold of God over the course of time. . . . The
whole Old Testament is a journeying with the Word of God. Only in
the process of this journeying was the Bible’s real way of declaring itself
formed, step by step. . . . For the Christian the Old Testament represents, in
its totality, an advance toward Christ; only when it attains to him does its
real meaning, which was gradually hinted at, become clear. Thus every in-
dividual part derives its meaning from the whole, and the whole derives its
meaning from its end—from Christ. Hence we only interpret an individual
text theologically correctly . . . when we see it as a way that is leading us ever
forward, when we see in the text where this way is tending and what its in-
ner direction is.6
Benedict emphasizes that the Bible is the story of a twofold strug-
gle: God’s struggle to “make himself understandable to them over
the course of time,” and the people of God’s struggle to “seize hold
of God over the course of time.” He describes this familiarization
between God and man as a journey of faith, arguing that “only in
the process of this journeying was the Bible’s real way of declaring
itself formed, step by step.” Once again, we are presented here with
Benedict’s own articulation of the divine pedagogy. The message of
the Bible becomes clearer as salvation history progresses and man
acquires an increasing ability to penetrate the divine mysteries. Ul-
timately, however, the whole Old Testament is “an advance toward
Christ,” and as such its real meaning becomes clear only in light of

5. Benedict XVI, “Sources and Transmission of the Faith,” Communio 10, no. 1
(1983): 28.
6. Benedict XVI, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Cre-
ation and the Fall, translated by Boniface Ramsey (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
1995), 10–11. See also Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Doubleday, 2007), where
he explains that the process of the Bible’s formation was “not linear . . . but when you
watch it unfold in light of Jesus Christ, you can see it moving in a single overall direc-
tion.” According to Benedict and his “Christological hermeneutic,” Christ is “the key to
the whole” of Scripture. (xix.)
 “ H ow Can That Be in the Bi ble?” 7

him who is its end. The pope therefore argues that exegetes interpret
individual texts correctly only when they “see in the text where this
way is tending and what its inner direction is.”
Benedict’s revealing interview God and the World likewise illu-
mines this point in a striking way. It is noteworthy that in this work
Benedict contrasts Islam and Christianity precisely on the issue of
whether the scriptures exhibit development. Contrasting Islam’s be-
lief that the Koran was dictated directly to Muhammad by God, he
observes that the books of the Bible “bear the impression of a his-
tory that [God] has been guiding,” since they were composed and
developed over a thousand years, mediated by “quite different stages
of history and of civilization.”7 As in the two texts just discussed,
so here he explains, “The Bible is not a textbook about God and di-
vine matters but contains images with perceptions and insights in
the course of development, and through these images, slowly and
step by step, a historical reality is coming into existence.”8 If the
Christian cannot turn to a given page of the Bible for the fullness of
revealed truth, then where can he find it? “The level on which I per-
ceive the Bible as God’s Word is that of the unity of God’s history. . . .
In our Christian reading of it, we are more than ever convinced, as
we said, that the New Testament offers us the key to understand-
ing the Old.”9 The idea I wish to convey by sampling these works of

7. Benedict XVI, God and the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 151–52
(emphasis added).
8. “Let us compare Holy Scripture with the Koran, for example. Moslems believe
that the Koran was directly dictated by God. It is not mediated by any history; no hu-
man intermediary was needed; it is a message direct from God. The Bible, on the other
hand, is quite different. It is mediated to us by a history, and even as a book it extends
over a period of more than a thousand years. The question of whether or not Moses may
have been a writer is one we can happily leave to one side. It is still true that the biblical
literature grew up over a thousand-year history and thus moves through quite differ-
ent stages of history and of civilization, which are all reflected in it. In the first three
chapters of Genesis, for instance, we meet with a quite different form of culture from
what came later, in the exilic literature, or in the wisdom literature, and then finally in
the literature of the New Testament. It becomes clear that God did not just dictate these
words but rather that they bear the impression of a history that he has been guiding; they
have come into being as a witness to that history.” Ibid. (emphasis added).
9. Ibid., 153 (emphasis added). Benedict again goes on to speak of the “process
of collective development” and the “many stages of mediation” by which the biblical
 8 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bi ble?”

Benedict on the importance of a divine pedagogy hermeneutic is

summarized well in a fourth work, Introduction to Christianity, in
which he states quite simply, “Anyone who wishes to understand the
biblical belief in God must follow its historical development from its
origins with the patriarchs of Israel right up to the last books of the
New Testament.”10 In the end, our ability to appreciate the dynamics
of God’s gradual teaching method in scripture is the key to ascer-
taining the meaning of challenging texts in the biblical canon and
in turn to developing a sound theology of scripture that accurately
grasps the nature of biblical inspiration and inerrancy.
In view of achieving this understanding, the ensuing chapters
will unfold in the following manner. In chapter 1 we will begin with
a brief survey of the types of problems which a modern, historical-
critical reading of the Bible reveals. The first part of the chapter is
devoted to important problems concerning the biblical canon and
the physical text of scripture, that is, the manuscripts by means of
which the scriptures have come down to us today. Here readers will
grapple with how any claim to biblical inspiration can be justified
given the many problems posed by a critical examination of extant
manuscripts. The chapter will also introduce to the reader three
important themes which run throughout the Bible, all of which are
greatly illumined by the hermeneutic of divine pedagogy: the na-
ture of God, the nature of good and evil, and the afterlife. We will
provide concrete examples within each of the above themes in order
to lay bare their respective problems.
The issues that emerge from this brief survey can be boiled
down to two: First, significant developments occurred within Isra-
elite and Christian theology over the millennia, and the scriptures
testify to this growth. The essential issue here is that the scriptures
present us with Israelites and Christians living later in history who

books gradually were able to “bring the history of God’s people and of God’s guidance
to verbal expression.”
10. Benedict XVI, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2004), 116. It is illuminating to read the entire chapter from which this citation is taken,
as in it Benedict traces the roots of Israel’s monotheism as it developed throughout the
Old Testament period.
 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bible?” 9

acknowledge certain truths that those who lived earlier did not. The
question therefore arises: how can scripture be inerrant if in cer-
tain areas it does not contain the fullness of revealed truth? Second,
granted the fact that certain parts of scripture do not explicitly teach
the fullness of truth known by Christians today, there remains a sec-
ond—and more problematic—difficulty for us to address: the fact
we sometimes observe biblical texts making statements that seem
plainly to contradict the teachings of other texts. This is especially
problematic when later texts seem to constitute regressions rather
than developments with respect to texts written earlier in the course
of divine revelation.
Cognizant of these two great problems that lie before the read-
er of scripture, chapter 2 will lay the foundation for a faithful and
robust theological response. Here we will spell out Pope Benedict’s
“Method C” hermeneutics proposal which he began articulating
almost two decades before becoming pope. This schema will pro-
vide the basis for our later work of grappling with the challenging
themes introduced above in light of the divine pedagogy. Put brief-
ly, Benedict argues that if today’s exegete is to make sense of the
problems in scripture he must have recourse to both ancient and
modern methods of interpretation. The ancient, patristic-medieval
method (which he calls “Method A”) is vital because it provides
us with something so many modern exegetes lack: an approach to
the biblical text which is based on faith and seeks to build up the
church. Within our discussion of Method A exegesis, we will need
to summarize the theological principles which govern biblical in-
terpretation within the Catholic Church. These include, above all,
the doctrines of inerrancy and inspiration which speak to the na-
ture of scripture itself. In addition, there is the importance of hav-
ing recourse to the traditional four senses of scripture and to the
guidelines of the Catholic magisterial teaching as expounded in
such sources as Dei Verbum and the later Catechism: to interpret in-
dividual scriptural passages in light of scripture as a whole, to read
scripture in light of the church’s entire living tradition, and to bear
in mind the analogy of faith. Here we will explore the divine peda-
gogy in more detail, emphasizing its nature as sacred teaching and
 10 “ H ow C an That Be in th e Bible?”

paying particular attention to the “condescension” whereby God

came down to mankind and taught us by means of our own feeble
human words.
With these general principles in place, we will introduce the es-
sential features of the modern, historical-critical method (“Method
B”). With his positive appraisal of historical-critical exegesis, Pope
Benedict has sometimes scandalized the Catholic faithful who tend
to reject this method outright due to the fact that many scholars prac-
tice it with a bias against the miraculous and even against the Chris-
tian faith in general. The pope, however, argues that the Method B
approach must be an essential component in faithful biblical exegesis
today. In particular, in this work it will enable us to ask deep ques-
tions—and entertain corresponding answers—which faithful exegetes
of the past did not tend to raise.11 Indeed, many of the problems in-
troduced in chapter 1 are recognizable precisely thanks to evidence
garnered by Method B exegesis. Method B is able to do this because it
provides us with scientific tools for ascertaining the meaning of bibli-
cal texts which even the brightest of ancient thinkers simply did not
possess. In later chapters we will draw on these resources to spell out
chapter 1’s problems in no uncertain terms. For the present, suffice it
to note that Method B and Method A both have their strengths and
weaknesses. Our work will entail sorting these out in the attempt to
synthesize the two into a “Method C” which later can be applied to
specific texts in scripture.
Having surveyed problematic themes within Scripture in chap-
­ter 1 and elucidated Benedict’s Method C exegesis proposal in chap-
ter 2, in the next two chapters we will be in a position to explore
more precisely how a Method C approach to scripture might oper-
ate. Here we will show that St. Thomas Aquinas’s theology provides
the proper basis for carrying out Benedict’s exegetical proposal. In-
11. On the subject of asking deep questions that challenge our Christian faith, it is
instructive to read Brennan C. Pursell’s book Benedict of Bavaria: An Intimate Portrait
of the Pope and His Homeland (North Haven, Conn.: Circle Press, 2008). In the present
volume, we will be joining Pope Benedict in asking demanding questions concerning
highly debated issues with direct relevance to the foundations of our Christian faith. A
helpful piece on the subject by Tom Hoopes can be found at www.ncregister.com/blog/
benedict_radical_questioner.
 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bi ble?” 11

deed, Pope Benedict himself has explicitly connected his exegetical

program with that of Aquinas. In his recent volume Jesus of Naza-
reth, for example, the Holy Father explained that Aquinas’s work is
not a “Life of Jesus” or a “Christology,” but rather that his treatise
on the life of Christ in the Summa is “closer to my intention” and
that with this work “my book has many points of contact.”12 Though
privy to modern tools for elucidating the words of scripture, Bene-
dict identifies with Aquinas in his patient attentiveness to God’s
word and his desire to put believers in touch with the mystery of
Jesus, his “figure and message.”13
In the section of his Erasmus Lecture entitled “Basic Elements
of a New Synthesis,” Benedict expounds at greater length on one
such point of contact: the importance of Thomas’s thought for help-
ing believers encounter Christ through his word. In contrast with a
Kantian “ready-made philosophy,” Aquinas’s “open philosophy” is
“capable of accepting the biblical phenomenon in all its radicalism”
by admitting that a real encounter of God and man is witnessed in
history—and made possible today—by the scriptures.14 For Bene-
dict, a “critique of the critique” requires a rejection of the false pre-
suppositions of those who would exclude a priori God’s ability to
speak through human words. Aquinas’s exegesis, deeply rooted in

12. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem
to the Resurrection, translated by Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2011), xvi. It is significant that here Benedict approvingly refers to two “excellent stud-
ies” of the person of Jesus which are thoroughly historical-critical and controversial to
some readers: Joachim Gnilka, Jesus of Nazareth: Message and History (Peabody, Mass:
Hendrickson Publishers, 1997); John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical
Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991). He also refers the reader to the “especially impor-
tant” work of Marius Reiser, Bibelkritik und Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift: Beiträge zur
Geschichte der biblischen Exegese und Hermeneutik (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).
13. Ibid.
14. Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and
the Itinerary for Exegesis Today,” in Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and
the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation, edited by José Granados, Carlos Granados,
and Luis Sánchez-Navarro (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 23. Note that there
are three different published editions of Benedict’s Erasmus Lecture in the English lan-
guage alone. Although I have used a different version elsewhere in the manuscript, this
one is appropriate to cite here as it reveals more explicit connections with Aquinas than
the other version of the text.
 12 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bi ble?”

the Catholic tradition with its conviction that the boundary of time
and eternity is permeable, allows for the Bible to be what the church
has always claimed it to be: the word of God in human words.
A second point of contact between Benedict and Aquinas is piv-
otal for the work of chapter 3. The key here lies in Aquinas’s and
Benedict’s mutual recognition of how essential it is to grasp the
Christological teleology of salvation history. Thomas serves as a
“counter-model” to the Kantian approach mentioned above, for he
presupposes that the action of divine providence guided salvation
history to its destination in Christ. Christ is therefore “the unifying
principle” of history “which alone confers sense on it,” and God’s ac-
tion gradually leading his people towards Christ is “the principle of
the intelligibility of history.”15
Chapter 3 will thus elucidate Aquinas’s “theology of the history
of revelation,” in which he is able to show the unity of scripture (em-
phasized by Method A exegesis) while acknowledging the signifi-
cant developments (emphasized by Method B exegesis) observable
as God gradually prepared his chosen people to welcome the com-
ing of Christ. We will use Aquinas’s thought in the effort to account
for the first major difficulty raised by chapter 1’s historical-critical
observations: the fact that not all portions of scripture explicitly
teach the fullness of revealed truth Christians expect to find in the
Bible. We will see that, according to St. Thomas, the substance of the
Judeo-Christian faith did not change throughout the course of sal-
vation history even though there was a development or increase in
the number of truths believed by the faithful as God gradually taught
them about himself in preparation for the coming of Christ, who
alone revealed the truth in its fullness. Aquinas’s framework illu-
mines the phenomenon of development within scripture, thus mak-
ing it possible to defend the inerrancy of early biblical texts which
fail to explicitly display a clear conception of the divine oneness
(Theme 1), an understanding of evil consonant with Christian doc-

15. Ibid., 24, n. 37. Benedict here is citing Maximino Arias Reyero, Thomas von
Aquin als Exeget: Die Prinzipien seiner Schriftdeutung und seine Lehre von den Schrift-
sinnen (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1971), 106; cf. “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,”
23, n. 35.
 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bible?” 13

trine (Theme 2), or hope for the resurrection of the dead (Theme 3).
Later in the book we will return to these problematic biblical themes
and apply Aquinas’s thought to them, but in this chapter our task
will be simply to elucidate his theological principles.
In chapter 4 we will continue our exploration into how a Meth-
od C approach might operate, now with respect to the second ma-
jor difficulty raised through the observations of chapter 1. Here our
concern is the problem of apparent contradictions within the bibli-
cal canon, specifically the reality that later biblical texts make state-
ments that appear to stand in direct opposition to the teachings of
earlier texts. In this chapter, we turn from Aquinas’s theology of the
history of revelation elucidated in chapter 3 to his theology of the act
of revelation. Although not aware of many of the challenging issues
raised in this book, Aquinas again is able to provide principles we
can appropriate in responding to them. Here we will see that ex-
amining what takes place when God reveals truth to a prophet is
precisely what enables one to make sense of apparent contradictions
in the scriptures. Specifically, with the help of Aquinas’s theology
we will be able to show that passages in which the sacred authors
seemingly contradict one another or what Christians know to be
true today do not in fact contain errors. For from the perspective of
Aquinas, the truth of scripture depends on what its authors intend
to affirm or teach, and if a given passage appears to contain some-
thing contradictory then the exegete must seek within this passage
an aim beyond that of definitively teaching an erroneous point of
view.
Most importantly, Aquinas’s work bids us to consider the spiri-
tual sense of scripture. In this lies scripture’s ultimate aim. This is
crucial because, at the end of the day, even if Method C exegesis is
able to account for all objections to the inspiration and inerrancy of
scripture, this explanation itself does not necessarily bring the be-
liever to an encounter with the word of God—which is the divine
author’s deepest purpose in composing the scriptures. As we will
see in the final chapters of this work, it turns out that the Christian’s
spiritual encounter with scripture provides a final and definitive key
for elucidating a sound theology of scripture.
 14 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bi ble?”

As an illustration of this point, in Verbum Domini Pope Benedict

has drawn on Aquinas, who himself cites Augustine to emphasize
the importance of the spiritual sense and the reality that “it is impos-
sible for anyone to attain to knowledge of that truth unless he first
have infused faith in Christ” since “the letter, even that of the Gospel,
would kill, were there not the inward grace of healing faith.”16 In the
Erasmus Lecture Benedict speaks to this at greater length:
To discover how each given historical word intrinsically transcends itself, and
thus to recognize the intrinsic rightness of the rereadings by which the Bible
progressively interweaves event and sense, is one of the tasks of objective in-
terpretation. It is a task for which suitable methods can and must be found.
In this sense, the exegetical maxim of Thomas Aquinas is much to the point:
“The task of the good interpreter is not to consider words, but sense.”17
In contrast with those whose methodologies focus solely on the
“words” of scripture, Benedict shares with Aquinas the conviction
that the words of scripture were meant to be “re-read” over time,
to point beyond themselves to a reality revealed through them but
which transcends them.18 In this way, their rich teaching on the
senses of scripture, while giving due attention to its words, also
points beyond the words so as to show that even scripture’s “dark-
est” and most problematic passages may put believers in touch with
Christ. The text in its wholeness, Benedict says, must become Rab-
benu, “our teacher.”
Having considered at length Method C’s principles as antici-
pated and exemplified in the work of Aquinas, in the book’s final
two chapters we will instantiate these principles by applying them
to challenging passages from each of the themes introduced in
chapter 1. The goal here is to synthesize the strengths of faithful and
practical patristic-medieval exegesis (Method A) with the tools and
findings of historical-critical exegesis (Method B). Our first task for
treating each of the themes in question will be to take up the tools
16. Verbum Domini, 29; cf. ST I–II, q. 106, a. 2.
17. Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 26 (emphasis added), citing
Thomas Aquinas, In Matthaeum, XXVII, n. 2321. Benedict cites Aquinas three times in
this work. Cf. Verbum Domini, 37.
18. For the reality of revelation being broader than the Bible see Benedict XVI,
“Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 26 and Verbum Domini, 16.
 “ H ow C an That Be in the Bible?” 15

associated with Method B with the goal of laying bare the respec-
tive problems introduced briefly in chapter 1. Our effort towards a
solution to these problems will then proceed as follows. First, we
will employ Aquinas’s principles in light of historical-critical obser-
vations in order to illumine the literal sense of problematic bibli-
cal texts. Countering objections to the inerrancy and inspiration of
these texts, we will attempt to search out intentions of their human
authors, ascertain their place within the canon of scripture, and elu-
cidate their role within the divine pedagogy as God used them to
teach the people of Israel about himself. Second, we will consider
these same problematic texts in light of the divine author’s ultimate
purpose in composing them. Here we come to an investigation of
the spiritual sense of the texts, asking what all we have ascertained
thus far has to teach us today. As part of this quest, we will seek to
show that the pedagogy by which God gradually taught his chosen
people as a whole, throughout history, has an additional dimension:
the divine author of scripture has used his word to teach not only
the nation of Israel and the church of the past but also to teach in-
dividual members of the faithful still today.19 As Benedict indicates,
Christians may be privy to the fullness of revelation in a way our
“elder brethren” of the Old Testament epoch were not, but the an-
cient truths taught therein “are of course valid for the whole of his-
tory, for all places and times” and “always need to be relearned.”20
It is vital that our hermeneutic emphasize this twofold character
of the divine pedagogy, as it encapsulates the two components that
go into Method C exegesis and provides a bridge between them. For
19. This second dimension of the divine pedagogy is eloquently described in Dia-
logue and Proclamation by the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, (1991).
“[The Church] takes her lead from divine pedagogy. This means learning from Jesus
himself, and observing the times and seasons as prompted by the Spirit. Jesus only pro-
gressively revealed to his hearers the meaning of the Kingdom, God’s plan of salvation
realized in his own mystery. Only gradually, and with infinite care, did he unveil for
them the implications of his message, his identity as the Son of God, the scandal of
the Cross. Even his closest disciples, as the Gospels testify, reached full faith in their
Master only through their Easter experience and the gift of the Spirit. Those who wish
to become disciples of Jesus today will pass through the same process of discovery and
commitment.” §69 (emphasis added).
20. Benedict XVI, God and the World, 154.
 16 “ H ow C an That Be in th e Bi ble?”

on the one hand, even the most problematic of biblical texts have a
definite literal sense. That is to say, their human authors had some
pedagogical purpose in mind when they composed them for their
original audience. Method B acknowledges this in an eminent way,
and one who wants to do Method C exegesis must attend to it. Mean-
while, these same texts signify something in addition to the origi-
nal intended meaning of their human authors: namely, they signify
realities in the lives of believers today who meditate on these texts
in order to gain the knowledge and strength they need to faithfully
endure the strife that is human life, suffering, and death. Method
A exegesis describes this further meaning of Scripture in terms of
a spiritual sense that surpasses any conscious intention on the part
of their original authors. In his own turn, a Method C exegete will
be such insofar as he seeks out this spiritual sense and shows that
it is not merely one among many possible readings of scripture but
rather the telos for which the literal was composed in the first place
and the key that discloses the logic of the divine pedagogy at work
therein. By doing this, Method C exegesis does not deny the impor-
tance of the literal sense—upon which the spiritual is founded—but
in light of the divine pedagogy it allows us to show how the literal
sense opens up into spiritual senses that touch the lives of believers
in every age. The following is an apt summary of Benedict’s twofold
approach to the divine pedagogy and his attitude toward how the
believer ought to approach scripture’s “dark” passages:
If I only read the Bible in order to see what horrible bits I can find in it, or
to count up the bloodthirsty bits, then of course it won’t heal me. For one
thing, the Bible reflects a certain history, but it is also a kind of path that
leads us in a quite personal way and sets us in the right light. If, therefore, I
read the Bible in the spirit in which it was written, from Christ . . . in faith,
then indeed it has the power to transform me. It leads me into the attitude
of Christ; it interprets my life to me and changes me personally.21
By attempting to following Benedict in his attempt to facilitate a
spiritual encounter with Christ teaching his people in the “problem-
atic” texts of Scripture, our project thus will have completed perhaps
its most significant and urgent task.
21. Benedict XVI, God and the World, 155.
 c ha p t e r 1

Th e B i b l e’ s P r ob l e m s

Responding to the question of how the extremely bleak book of

Ecclesiastes made it into the biblical canon, Peter Kreeft has written
that there is nothing more meaningless than an answer without its
question—and Ecclesiastes is in the Bible precisely because it pro-
vides the question to which the rest of the Bible is the answer.1 The
solutions proposed in the present work would likewise be meaning-
less if we did not first survey some of the problems in biblical exege-
sis today. The goal of this chapter is to elicit in the minds of readers
questions such as “How can that be in the Bible?” and “How can the
Bible be the inspired and inerrant word of God if the evidence pre-
sented here is true?” After arousing this wonder at the text of scrip-
ture in the present chapter, we will be in a better position to suggest
a meaningful theological response in the chapters that follow.

Three Challenging Biblical Them es

The following pages introduce the reader to some of the greatest
challenges a Christian must face in his quest to vindicate the truth
of Sacred Scripture. To this end, I will be using the same method I
employ in the university classroom where I group the Bible’s prob-
lems into three major themes which run throughout the canon,

1. Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 19.

17
 18 The Bible ’ s Problem s

each of which poses unique difficulties. What immediately follows

here is a survey of the problems bound up with these themes; at the
end of this book we will revisit them and offer a solution in light of
the hermeneutical principles laid out in subsequent chapters.

Theme 1: The Nature of God

It is foundational to the Christian faith that our God is the one
and only divine being in existence. Just as we saw above in the case
of the afterlife, however, scripture as a whole does not paint the uni-
form view of God’s nature that Christians tend to assume. An au-
thority no less than Pope Benedict himself takes it as an obvious
given that ancient Israelites once believed in the existence of Sheol
as well as in the existence of multiple deities. Taking up both of these
issues in the same breath, he writes, “The official religion of Israel . . .
no more denied all existence to Sheol than, at first, it denied the ex-
istence of other gods than Yahweh.”2 Whereas the previous section
explored problems bound up with the biblical portrait of the after-
life, in this section we will address scriptural evidence which seems
to contradict orthodox Christian teaching concerning the nature of
God, in particular his oneness.3
Let us begin with the issue of whether the Bible paints a unified
portrait of God’s oneness. Monotheism is at the heart of the Judeo-
Christian tradition, and it is rightly touted as one of our religion’s
unique and great contributions to civilization. To be sure, the Old
Testament gives us many clear declarations of Israel’s monotheistic
faith, as we will see later in this work. However, what concern us at
this point are those times when the Israelites seem to have accepted
as a matter of course the existence of multiple divine beings; for, if

2. Benedict XVI, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, translated by Michael Wald-
stein (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 83–84.
3. Important historical-critical sources whose evidence is drawn upon in this sec-
tion include: Brendan Byrne, “Sons of God,” vol. 6, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, (herein
after cited as ABD), edited by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992.),
156–59; Jarl Fossum, “Son of God,” ABD, vol. 6, 128–37; F. W. Horn, “Holy Spirit,” trans-
lated by Dietlinde Elliott, ABD, vol. 3, 260–80; Carol Newsome, “Angels,” ABD, vol. 1,
248–53; John Scullion, “God (OT),” ABD, vol. 2, 1041–48; Terrence Fretheim, “Word of
God,” ABD, vol. 6, 961–68.
 T h e Bible ’ s Proble ms 19

this indeed is the case, one would be hard pressed to find a more
salient challenge to the inerrancy of scripture’s teaching. We witness
the subtle presence of this view in passages like the following from
the book of Exodus:
But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should heed his voice and let Is-
rael go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover I will not let Israel go.” Then
they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us; let us go, we pray, a
three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the Lord our God,
lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword” (Ex 5:2–3).4
Here it is interesting to consider how Moses and Aaron reply to
Pharaoh, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us.” It is not far-
fetched—indeed it is common—to see in this statement the as-
sumption that Yahweh (translated “the Lord” in the RSV) is the
God of the Hebrews alone, that is to say one specific divine being
among others who also exist but are simply worshiped by nations
other than Israel. This would be consonant with Yahweh’s command
forbidding the worship of foreign deities, “I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bond-
age. You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:2–3). Again,
this statement does not claim that other gods are unreal but rather
that they are not to be worshiped by the people of Israel. In the eyes
of Moses, Israel’s worship of Yahweh is something the nation should
be proud of, for the gods of the neighboring nations are simply not
as close to their subjects as Yahweh is to the people of Israel: “For
what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our
God is to us, whenever we call upon him?” (Dt 4:7)
If the above sketch is correct, it clearly presents us with a prob-
lem; for both faith and reason inform Christians that only one God
exists, but here we seem to have the Old Testament assuming the
existence of more than one God. Of course, there are multiple ways
we could explain this statement without accepting such an inter-
pretation: Moses could be speaking of “the God of the Hebrews”
merely as a way of relating better to Pharaoh, and the “other gods”

4. Unless otherwise noted, all biblical citations in this work are from the Revised
Standard Version (hereafter RSV).
 20 The Bible ’ s Problem s

described in the First Commandment could simply refer to created

physical or spiritual idols. The question, however, is whether these
alternative explanations satisfactorily account for the evidence. This
problem will come into much sharper focus as we begin to adduce
other trace evidence of polytheism in ancient Israel.
Several passages in the Psalms have a similar feel to the former
in that they appear to be concerned with demonstrating Yahweh is
the greatest among the many gods that exist. For example:
There is none like thee among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like thine (Ps 86:8).
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods (Ps 95:3).
For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
he is to be feared above all gods (Ps 96:4).
For thou, O Lord, art most high over all the earth;
thou art exalted far above all gods (Ps 97:9).
For I know that the Lord is great,
and that our Lord is above all gods (Ps 135:5).
O give thanks to the God of gods,
for his steadfast love endures for ever (Ps 136:2).
As usual, the Christian tradition has various ways of interpreting
the “gods” described in these passages. The gods could be idols, or
even angels as the later tradition came to understand them. While
such explanations are theoretically possible, a more thorough ex-
amination of the biblical data reveals their shortcomings and makes
many question their credibility. At the same time, the fact that these
passages speak of multiple gods does not mean simply that ancient
Israelite religion was polytheistic. Indeed, scholars of religion in the
Ancient Near East often describe these passages as an expression
not of polytheism but of “henotheism” or “monolatry.” Henotheistic
systems are those which acknowledge the existence of multiple gods
yet see all but one as unworthy of worship.
If ancient Israel embraced a henotheism akin to other nearby
Canaanite religions, it would not be surprising to see it closely
bound up with the ancient Canaanite conception of a “divine coun-
 T he Bible ’ s Proble ms 21

cil,” a royal court in heaven headed by a king with divine beings as

his counselors, political subordinates, warriors, and agents. Indeed,
as Jarl Fossum states, “The Israelites took over the Canaanite con-
cept of an assembly of gods under the supremacy of El, even desig-
nating Yahweh as the ‘master in the great council of the holy ones.’ ”5
In the following texts we are introduced to the “heavenly beings”
who comprise this council:
Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly” beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength (Ps 29:1).
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment (Ps 82:1)
For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord?
Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord,
a God feared in the council of the holy ones,
great and terrible above all that are round about him?
(Ps 89:6–7)
For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord
to perceive and to hear his word,
or who has given heed to his word and listened?
. . . But if they had stood in my council,
then they would have proclaimed my words to my people,
and they would have turned them from their evil way,
and from the evil of their doings (Jer 23:18,22).
The members of the divine council spoken of here, sometimes
called “gods,” or “holy ones” (a term referring to divinities in ancient
Ugarit) and other times “sons of the gods” or “sons of God,” preex-
isted the creation of the material world. Brendan Byrne explains the
rationale for the term “sons” being applied to the members of Yah-
weh’s divine council:
The use of the expression “sons of God” (more correctly, “sons of the gods”)
with reference to heavenly beings does not imply actual progeny of God (or
the gods) but reflects the common Semitic use of “son” (Heb. ben) to denote
membership in a class or group. “Sons of the gods,” then, designates beings
belonging to the heavenly or divine sphere. Such allusions to a plurality of
divine beings, occurring especially in the Psalms and related poetic litera-

5. ABD, vol. 6, 129.

 22 The Bible ’ s Problems

ture, represent a stage when Israel’s Yahwism found room for a pantheon in
many ways similar to Canannite models (cf. the literature of Ugarit). In the
Bible, however, these beings are clearly subordinate to Yahweh, forming his
heavenly court or divine council.6
The “sons of God” of the Old Testament enjoyed special powers
such as the ability to intervene in the world’s affairs. We see this in
the case of Satan in the book of Job and in the mythological Neph-
ilim or “giants” in the book of Genesis:
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves
before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan,
“Whence have you come?” Satan answered the Lord, “From going to and
fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” (Jb 1:6–7)
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth . . .
when the morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Jb 38:4,7)
When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were
born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair;
and they took to wife such of them as they chose. . . . The Nephilim were on
the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in
to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the
mighty men that were of old, the men of renown. (Gn 6:1–2, 4)
In the above texts it is shown that the “sons of God” have the abil-
ity to test humans and, strangely, to intermarry with them. Other
passages present us with more subtle echoes of the divine council’s
activity and deliberation among its members:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gn
1:26).
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us,
knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of
the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (Gn 3:22).
Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not
understand one another’s speech (Gn 11:7).
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will
go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me” (Is 6:8)

6. ABD, vol. 6, 156.

 T h e Bible ’ s Proble ms 23

We have already observed that the divine council was typically

thought to be headed by a king who was served by subordinate
divine beings in their various roles. The Old Testament appears to
maintain remnants of this polytheistic tradition, especially in the
Genesis narrative of man’s creation and original sin. God says, “Let
us make man in our image,” “Man has become like one of us,” and
“Let us go down,” while in Isaiah he asks “Who will go for us?” Once
again, Christians have various means by which to deny traces of
polytheism here (for example, stating that God is speaking with the
“royal we” or that the “us” refers to the persons of the Trinity). The
question is whether these explanations hold up when we honestly
confront all the trace evidence of polytheism in the Old Testament.
The issue of polytheism becomes all the more acute when we ac-
knowledge the probable dependence of Genesis on other, much old-
er myths of creation and flood from the ancient Near East. The book
of Genesis was written no earlier than the thirteenth century B.c.
(the time of Moses, who was traditionally held to be the author of
Genesis), and current scholarship indicates Genesis was most likely
redacted by multiple authors over a period of centuries (between 900
and 400 B.c.). However, Babylon’s polytheistic creation myth Enu-
ma Elish—with the like of which the people of Israel would almost
certainly have been familiar—dates to the second millennium B.c.
Scholars possess tablets of the Enuma Elish which date to the seventh
century B.c., meaning the story is likely several centuries older than
Genesis. While there are significant theological differences between
the creation account of Genesis 1–2 and the Enuma Elish, both op-
erate within the same cultural milieu, share concepts, and at points
even narrate their stories in the same order (the “waters,” creation
of heaven and earth followed by creation of the heavenly bodies and
of man, etc.). Similarly, the flood narrated in Genesis 6–9 has close
parallels in much more ancient polytheistic myths with which the
Israelite authors of Genesis would have been familiar. For instance,
we possess copies of Gilgamesh dating to the first half of the second
millennium B.c. (though the story itself may date as early as the
middle of the third millennium B.c.) and copies of Atrahasis dating
to the seventeenth century B.c. What is the most probable and logi-
 24 The Bible ’ s Problem s

cal explanation for the similarities between Genesis and these other
myths? It is conceivable that these parallels are purely coincidental,
but as Kenton Sparks states, “The most sensible explanation for the
similarities is that the pentateuchal authors [of Genesis] borrowed
some of their materials from the ancient world.”7
Returning to the Bible’s divine council and the identity of its
individual members, we find traces in various places, but perhaps
some of the most interesting are those which seem to interchange
“The Lord” with subordinate agents such as his dabar or “word”
(used over 600 times in the Old Testament) and ruach or “spirit”
(used forty-six times in the Old Testament). Here, however, we will
consider a few examples of confusions between the God of Israel
and his divine messenger or “angel” (‫) ַמל ַ ְ֧אְך‬:
Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, “Jacob,” and I said, “Here I
am!” And he said, “Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that leap upon
the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled; for I have seen all that Laban is
doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made
a vow to me. Now arise, go forth from this land, and return to the land of
your birth” (Gn 31:11–13).
And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst
of a bush; and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not con-
sumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the
bush is not burnt.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God
called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here am I”
(Ex 3:2–6).
And the angel of the Lord appeared to [Gideon] and said to him, “The Lord
is with you, you mighty man of valor.” And Gideon said to him, “Pray, sir,
if the Lord is with us, why then has all this befallen us? And where are all

7. Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of

Critical Biblical Scholarship, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008), 97. On the
subject of the Bible’s dependence on more ancient myths from the Near East, see ibid.,
97–99; Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic,
2005), 23–56; Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say
about Human Origins (Ada, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2012); Victor Matthews and Don Ben-
jamin, Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East (New York:
Paulist Press, 1991). Creation and the Flood are by no means the only parallels that can
be drawn between the Pentateuch and other ancient Near Eastern literature. One can
also find parallels to the Fall, the tower of Babel, and Yahweh’s crushing of sea mon-
sters, to name a few.
 T he Bible ’ s Proble ms 25

his wonderful deeds which our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the
Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has cast us off, and given
us into the hand of Mid’ian.” And the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in
this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Mid’ian; do not I
send you?”. . . And the angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the un-
leavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour the broth over them.”
And he did so. Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of the staff
that was in his hand, and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes; and
there sprang up fire from the rock and consumed the flesh and the unleav-
ened cakes; and the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight. Then Gideon
perceived that he was the angel of the Lord; and Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord
God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.” But the Lord
said to him, “Peace be to you; do not fear, you shall not die.” (Jgs. 6:11–23).
On that day the Lord will put a shield about the inhabitants of Jerusalem
so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the
house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord, at their head
(Zec 12:8).
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the
Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said
to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusa-
lem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” (Zec 3:1–2)
Here we observe that the Israelites were not privy to a clear distinc-
tion between Yahweh and his divine messenger. In the first passage,
the “angel of God” appears to Jacob but subsequently tells him “I
am the God of Bethel.” In the second, it is the “angel of the Lord”
who initially appears to Moses, but then “the Lord” sees him and
“God” calls to him from the bush. In the third, “the angel of the
Lord” appears to Gideon, but all of a sudden the narrative tells us
“And the Lord turned to him” and spoke. This interchange between
the Lord and his messenger continues throughout this selection
from the book of Judges. The fourth text from the prophet Zecha-
riah contains an appositive that appears to explicitly identify “God”
with “the angel of the Lord.” Finally, the other text from Zechariah
is noteworthy because it presents us with “the angel of the Lord,”
“the Lord,” and Satan. The high priest stands before the angel of the
Lord, but then it is the Lord himself rather than his “angel” who
goes on to rebuke Satan. Also interesting here is the fact that the
Lord speaks to Satan in the third person (“And the Lord said to Sa-
 26 The Bible ’ s Problems

tan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan!”), an odd construction if Zech-

ariah is truly reporting the words of the Lord. As we have noted
above, Christians enjoy many different ways of interpreting these
challenging passages in such a way as to preclude a literal reference
to the existence of multiple divine beings or a confusion between
“the angel of the Lord” and Yahweh himself. However, we should
sincerely ask whether these explanations face the real problem or
not. It is also worth noting that Pope Benedict appears to assume an
identification between “the angel of the Lord” and Yahweh himself.
While the pope does not address the issue in depth, he does make
some comments on those times in the Old Testament when the “an-
gel of the Lord” appears in human form.8 Concerning the last two of
these theophanies, he writes:
In each case the “angel of the Lord” is recognized only at the moment of his
mysterious withdrawal. Both times a flame consumes the food-offering as
the “angel of the Lord” disappears. The mythological language expresses,
on the one hand, the Lord’s closeness as he reveals himself in human form,
and, on the other hand, his otherness, as he stands outside the laws of mate-
rial existence.9
From Benedict’s language, it is clear he understands that these appa-
ritions of “the angel of the Lord” are “mythological” expressions of
the mystery of God’s own “closeness” to man and his “otherness” in
relation to the material world. This identification has been depicted
beautifully in Rublev’s icon of the Trinity, in which the three angels
who visited Abraham are connected with the three persons of the
Trinity.
In order to fully appreciate the evidence presented thus far that
ancient Israelite religion was not strictly monotheistic, it is once
again important to recall that the patriarchs grew up within the
context of the broader religious landscape of the ancient Near East.
Indeed, the book of Joshua informs us that Israel’s ancestors were
polytheists:

8. Cf. Gn 18:1–33; Jgs 6:11–24; 13; Jo 5:13–15.

9. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem
to the Resurrection, translated by Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2011), 267.
 T h e Bible ’ s Proble ms 27

And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel,
Your fathers lived of old beyond the Euphra’tes, Terah, the father of Abra-
ham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. . . . Now therefore fear the
Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods
which your fathers served beyond the River, and in Egypt, and serve the
Lord. And if you be unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you
will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the
River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me
and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Jo. 24:2,14–15).
In the broader context of this passage, we clearly observe that
Joshua is not asserting that there are no other gods but simply that
Yahweh alone among them is worthy of Israel’s worship. The rea-
son Israel should follow Yahweh and not some other god is because
it was he who brought them out of the land of Egypt and into the
Promised Land. One can hardly overemphasize Joshua’s statement
that Abraham’s own father Terah “worshiped other gods.” For it is
easy for Christians to fall into the trap of assuming that the cho-
sen people have always professed the same fundamental elements of
the faith as Christians, minus Christ and the Trinity. However, the
commonly-used names Elohim and Adonai (which we translate
“God” and “Lord,” respectively) are themselves both plural forms
in biblical Hebrew, indicating they once likely referred not to one
God but to many gods. Indeed, the terms could just as well—and
indeed even more naturally if they were not accompanied by singu-
lar modifiers—be translated “gods” and “lords.” Another subtle but
important clue to consider is the fact that over a dozen names for
God are scattered throughout the Pentateuch, some of which initial-
ly may have referred to other gods before being subsumed by Israel
as titles for their God.10 This ancient association of Israel’s God with
the gods of the nations could help us account for the mythologi-
cal tone we sometimes encounter in stories of Yahweh thundering,
lightning, and crushing sea monsters.11

10. These include the commonly used Yahweh, Adonai, and Elohim as well as El,
Ha-El, El-Elohe-Yisra’el, El-Bethel, El-Berith, El-Olam, El-Elyon, El Shaddai, El Elyon
Shaddai, El Roi, Pahad-Yitzak, and Abir-Yakob.
11. See Is 51:9–10; Is 27:1; Hb 3:8–11; Na 1:3–6; Jb 26:12; Pss 74:14; 89:10; 104:26 for
images of Yahweh crushing mythological sea monsters and Ex 19:16–19; 20:18; Ps 18:14;
 28 The Bible ’ s Problem s

Taking all this evidence into account, Peter Enns concludes that
ancient Israelite religion at its inception did not look very different
from the religions of the nations that were its neighbors:
We must not allow our modern sensitivities to influence how we under-
stand Israel’s ancient faith. We may not believe that multiple gods ever ex-
isted, but ancient Near Eastern people did. This is the religious world within
which God called Israel to be his people. When God called Israel, he began
leading them into a full knowledge of who he is, but he started where they
were.12
The difference between Israel’s faith and that of her neighbors lay
in God’s plan for Israel and his gradual revelation to the people. For
the moment, however, the problem still remains of how we are to
explain that the inerrant word of God sometimes appears to affirm
the existence of multiple deities. All this is not even to mention the
various difficulties involved when it comes to defending against
claims that the New Testament’s portrayal of Christ and the Trin-
ity itself is polytheistic. However, for the purpose of this study we
will confine our discussion to the more obvious problems involving
God’s oneness in the Old Testament.
When it comes to defending the unity of biblical revelation, it
is difficult to think of a more poignant problem than the ambiguity
regarding God’s oneness that we have seen above; yet this is by no
means the only problem Christians must face with respect to scrip-
ture’s depiction of the divine nature. Divine immutability, the attri-
bute of God indicating that his perfect nature cannot suffer change,
is also at stake in this discussion. Leaving aside any issues regarding
the human nature of Jesus, his growth in wisdom (cf. Lk 2:52), and
his lack of knowledge regarding certain realities (cf. Mt 24:36), the
Old Testament appears to affirm that God learns new things in his
divine nature and even changes his mind. A handful of passages will
suffice to illustrate this problem:
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Jb 37:5; Am 1:2; Hb 3:11 for mythological imagery of Yahweh thundering and lightning
from the heavens.
12. Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation, 98.
 T h e Bible ’ s Proble ms 29

And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved
him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created
from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds
of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Gn 6:5–8)
And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people (Ex
32:14).
And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel
grieved over Saul. And the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over
Israel (1 Sm 15:35).
When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, “O Lord God,
forgive, I beseech thee! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” The Lord re-
pented concerning this; “It shall not be,” said the Lord (Am 7:2–3).
And God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; but when he was about
to destroy it, the Lord saw, and he repented of the evil (1 Chr 21:15; cf. 2 Sm
24:16).
[The angel of the Lord] said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad or do any-
thing to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not with-
held your son, your only son, from me” (Gn 22:12).
In the first passage, we discover that God is “sorry” and “grieved”
over his creation of man, odd sentiments to behold in an omniscient
being who presumably would foresee man’s sin even before his cre-
ation. In the next several cases, God changes his mind or “repents”
regarding a prior decision whether at the instigation of Moses’s or
Amos’s intercession, Saul’s faithlessness, Abraham’s faithfulness, or
simply of his own initiative. Again, the problem here is that, if God
really is the perfect being we take him to be, then by definition he
cannot learn new truths or change his mind as these passages claim.
The last example is drawn from the famous account of Abraham’s
faith that would have him sacrifice his firstborn son Isaac. According
to the narrative, the “angel of the Lord” has to learn that Abraham is
faithful. “Now I know that you fear God,” he says. Once in posses-
sion of this knowledge, the angel of the Lord can now release Abra-
ham from the command to slaughter his son. Of course, the faithful
Christian may well point out that in this last passage it is not the Lord
who learns but rather the angel of the Lord. However, as we have seen
above, this only creates more problems upon closer examination of
the nature of this “angel” of the Lord. This is but one of many illus-
 30 The Bible ’ s Problems

trations of how difficult it is to establish a biblical account of God’s

nature that accords with orthodox Christian doctrine today.
As a final note before turning to our next theme, there are other
issues concerning the nature of God which one could address more
thoroughly although we have only treated the issues of divine one-
ness and immutability here. For example, one has to contend with
challenging evidence that presents us with sophia or “lady wisdom”
who appears as a quasi-divine, feminine figure in the book of Prov-
erbs and the very late book of Wisdom.13 Christians also have to
reckon with Old and New Testament passages that intimate femi-
nine traits in Yahweh himself.14 Our pope has offered helpful sug-
gestions for confronting this issue in Jesus of Nazareth, but he does
not claim to have definitively solved the conundrum. The “femi-
nine” dimension of God in scripture only adds fuel to the fire of
texts which challenge the uniform portrait of the divine nature most
Christians expect out of the Bible.15

13. For Lady Wisdom (Σοφία), see especially Prv 1; 4:13; 7:27; 8; 9:1–6 and Ws 7–8.
14. In the Old Testament, see Dt 32:18 ( “the God who gave you birth”); Ps 22:10
(which appears to compare God to a midwife); Ps 131:2 (“like a child quieted at its
mother’s breast”); Is 42:14 (where God cries out as a woman in labor); 46:3; 49:15 (“Can
a mother forget her infant?”); 66:13 (“As a mother comforts her son . . .”); Nm 11:10–12;
Hos 13:8 (“like a bear robbed of her cubs”); Gn 1:2 (where the Spirit hovers over cre-
ation as over a brood); Ps 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 61:4; 91:1,4; Is 31:5 (shelter in the shadow of
God’s wings); Jb 38:29 (which contains the image of a divine “womb”). For the New
Testament, see Mt 23:37; Lk 13:34 (Jesus sighs, “How often would I have gathered your
children together as a ‘hen’ ”); Acts 17:28 (states that “in him we live, move, have our
being”); 1 Cor 3:1–3; 1 Pt 2:2 (calls us “babes in Christ” and speaks of “spiritual milk”);
Jn 1:13 (speaks of Christians being “born of God”; 3:5 (“born of water and the Spir-
it”). Moreover, on three occasions in his first volume of Jesus of Nazareth, 139, 197, 207,
Pope Benedict observes that the New Testament’s depiction of Jesus’s “compassion” (cf.
Lk 7:13, for example) is intimately bound up with the feminine imagery, particularly the
Hebrew notion of a mother’s womb (rahamim).
15. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 139–40. After treating the issue of whether
or not the Old Testament presents us with a God who is not only our Father but also
our “mother,” the pope concludes that “we cannot provide any absolutely compelling
arguments” for not praying to God as mother; however, he observes that “while there
are fine images of maternal love, ‘mother’ is not used as a form of address for God.”
The sobriety of Benedict’s conclusion is a testimony to his great humility as an exegete
and pastor: he teaches the fullness of Christian truth while willingly acknowledging the
presence of myriad difficulties and challenges to it.
 T he Bible ’ s Proble ms 31

Theme 2: The Nature of Good and Evil

Having just raised the question of how God could “repent of
evil” puts us in the perfect position to tackle our next set of prob-
lems which concern how the Bible deals with the phenomenon of
evil, particularly the questions of whether God can do or command
evil and what role Satan plays in our evil actions. This is a critically
important area, for even Christians who are willing to acknowl-
edge the subtle issues regarding history and science in the Bible
commonly assume that the sacred page presents a unified account
when it comes to matters of faith and morals. The problems we have
touched thus far have dealt with the “faith” issues of the afterlife and
God’s nature. Our next topic concerns what is typically referred to
as “morals.”16 Below, we will explore the question with several series
of statements which acutely frame the problem:
[Yahweh] blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the
ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they
were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were
with him in the ark (Gn 7:23).
At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to kill him (Ex
4:24).
And that night the angel of the Lord went forth, and slew a hundred and
eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose
early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies (2 Kgs 19:35).
At midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the
first-born of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the first-born of the captive
who was in the dungeon, and all the first-born of the cattle (Ex 12:29).
These first passages raise the simple question: how can a good God di-
rectly kill off the human beings he once lovingly created? This applies
both to the flood account in our first passage as well as to Yahweh’s

16. Important historical-critical sources whose evidence is drawn upon in this sec-
tion include: Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987); Elaine H. Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York:
Vintage Books, 1996); Victor Hamilton, “Satan,” ABD, vol. 5, 985–89; Duane Watson,
“Devil,” ABD, vol. 2, 183–84; Foerster, “διάβολος,” Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament (hereafter TDNT) 2:71–81.
 32 The Bible ’ s Problems

attempt to kill Moses (or Moses’s son, as some have interpreted it)
in the second passage. The first case of God killing off practically
the entire human race is difficult for many Christians to accept:
only Noah and those with him in the ark survived the flood, which
means that countless women and children were killed as a result of
God’s action. At least the author gives us a reasonable explanation:
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on
the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gn 6:5–6). In the second
scenario, the Lord has just called Moses to lead his people out of
slavery, and then turns around and seeks to kill his chosen messen-
ger—quite the opposite of what one would expect from a God who
loves his people and remains faithful to them even in the midst of
their sins. In the second and third texts we have the Lord and his
“angel” slaying Israel’s enemies. It is often argued that these indi-
viduals were guilty and therefore deserving of death, but to many
Christians there remains something odd about God slaying 185,000
Assyrians during the night and smiting the children of Egypt. Were
these children culpable and deserving of death? There are many
ways to go about arguing this point, but the issue is whether God’s
action is consistent with Christian doctrine today. The type of ques-
tion one could pose here is: would we place our trust in a God who
went around and deliberately killed babies?
Other times in the Bible we are scandalized not because God
himself kills people but rather because he commands humans to
kill—sometimes brutally and mercilessly—other humans:
Moreover I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them
among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they
had not executed my ordinances, but had rejected my statutes and profaned
my sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers’ idols. Moreover I gave
them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not
have life; and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer
by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might
know that I am the Lord (Ez 20:23–26).
When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering
to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hit-
 T h e Bible ’ s Proble ms 33

tites, the Gir’gashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per’izzites, the Hiv-
ites, and the Jeb’usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves,
and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them;
then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them,
and show no mercy to them (Dt 7:1–2).
But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an
inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall ut-
terly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the
Per’izzites, the Hivites and the Jeb’usites, as the Lord your God has com-
manded (Dt 20:16–17).
And the Lord our God gave him over to us; and we defeated him and his
sons and all his people. And we captured all his cities at that time and ut-
terly destroyed every city, men, women, and children; we left none remain-
ing (Dt 2:33–34; cf. 3:6; Jo 6:21).
And [Saul] took Agag the king of the Amal’ekites alive, and utterly de-
stroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people
spared Agag, and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fatlings,
and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them;
all that was despised and worthless they utterly destroyed (1 Sm 15:8–9).

The first of these passages offers us an explanation of Israel’s woes

from a God’s-eye point of view. God intentionally “gave them stat-
utes that were not good” and “ordinances by which they could not
have life.” He “defiled them . . . making them offer by fire all their
first-born” in order that they might come to know and accept his
lordship. Regardless of the good end which the narrator puts before
us, the glaringly obvious problem is that the text says God actually
made the Israelites destroy their own children. Any Christian moral
theologian worth his salt will teach us that a good end or intention
does not justify the use of intrinsically evil means, which to all ap-
pearances is what is described in this passage.
The other texts above present us with “the ban,” Israel’s total war-
fare commanded by Yahweh in order to govern the chosen people’s
conduct in their invasion of Canaan. God specifically commands
the Israelites to “utterly destroy” the land’s inhabitants and to “show
no mercy” toward them. In the second text it is clear that his order
is to “save nothing alive that breathes.” As we read in Moses’s nar-
ration within the third selection, the Israelites “utterly destroyed”
 34 The Bible ’ s Problems

every city they defeated, including the men, women, and children
of the towns. To make this problem all the more stark, in the final
text we observe God’s anger at King Saul for not “utterly destroying”
every living being among the cities he invaded. Saul had “destroyed
all the people with the edge of the sword”—presumably including
women and children—but because he failed to kill King Agag and
all the animals, God rejects him from being king over Israel (1 Sm
15:23). These texts are even more explicit than those cited in the
prior series, and they present us with a slightly different problem:
here it is not God himself who is said to have performed the kill-
ing but rather human beings whom he commands to kill other hu-
man beings. Many of those killed—in light of Christianity’s moral
standards today, at least—were innocent. In a nutshell, the problem
could be framed as follows: if he were witnessing this sort of behav-
ior today, what Christian would not unhesitatingly call it murder,
even genocide? It is also worth mentioning in this connection a pair
of troubling texts which, while not explicitly linking the killing of
children with God’s orders, are nonetheless very disturbing:
Samaria shall bear her guilt,
because she has rebelled against her God;
they shall fall by the sword,
their little ones shall be dashed in pieces,
and their pregnant women ripped open (Hos 13:16).
O daughter of Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall he be who requites you
with what you have done to us!
Happy shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock! (Ps 137:8–9)
The first of these passages is a prophecy from Hosea in which he
describes what will befall the people of Israel as a result of their re-
jection of God. Though not as problematic as the subsequent text, it
provides the imagery and context to help us understand just what
the psalmist means when he declares blessed the man who “dashes”
the Babylonian children against the rock. In doing this, the Israel-
ites are exacting revenge against their oppressors for what Hosea
had correctly predicted would be done to them. Again, here it is not
God who explicitly commands evil behavior such as we have seen
 T h e Bible ’ s Proble ms 35

in other passages, but many people are rightly disturbed by a sa-

cred author inspired by God and writing the word of God who yet
appears to be unchecked in his approval of horrific behavior. The
revenge endorsed by the psalmist cannot be condoned on the basis
of the New Testament or church teaching today.
The ensuing group of passages deals with a different, peculiar
dimension of the problem of evil within the Bible. Here we are not
dealing with the problem of God killing or commanding others to
kill, but rather with God deliberately interfering with human free
will by sending wicked spirits among them:
Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the
Lord tormented him (1 Sm 16:14; cf. 18:10; 19:9).
And God sent an evil spirit between Abim’elech and the men of Shechem;
and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abim’elech (Jgs 9:23).
And Micai’ah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord
sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his
right hand and on his left; and the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he
may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another
said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying,
‘I will entice him.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said,
‘I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’
And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go forth and do
so.’ Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of
all these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you” (1 Kgs
22:19–22; cf. 2 Chr 18:21ff).
The first two texts speak of an “evil spirit” sent by Yahweh in order
to disrupt the affairs of men. It is unclear precisely who this “spirit”
is; but the fundamental problem is to account not only for how God
could allow evil but could actually will evil upon someone—regard-
less of whether he is a friend or foe. In the third text, God put a “ly-
ing spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets,” apparently with
the end of setting King Ahab up to fall.
Although we would be hard pressed to find someone more evil
than the man duped by God in the above scenario, the question still
remains whether Christians today can exonerate a God who lies to
his creatures and sends evil spirits among them in order to set them
up for destruction. It is also important to grapple with the challenge
 36 The Bible ’ s Problems

of a God who directly hardens the hearts of individuals, as we see in

the following texts:
And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you
do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power; but I
will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go” (Ex 4:21; cf. 9:12;
10:1,20, 27; 11:10; 14:8).
For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come
against Israel in battle, in order that they should be utterly destroyed, and
should receive no mercy but be exterminated, as the Lord commanded Mo-
ses (Jo 11:20).
So then he has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of
whomever he wills (Rom 9:18).
What then? Israel failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, but
the rest were hardened, as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor,
eyes that should not see and ears that should not hear, down to this very
day” (Rom 11:7–8).
The first verse cited is one of many in a series which narrate the dia-
lectic of Moses and Pharaoh as Yahweh tries to get his people freed
from slavery in Egypt. At certain points the narrative goes on to in-
dicate that God directly “hardened the heart” of Pharaoh. Since Mo-
ses was appointed with the specific end of leading God’s people out
of slavery, it is mysterious that this same God would subsequently
harden Pharaoh’s heart, “so that he will not let the people go.” In any
event, for the purpose of our investigation the issue here is not why
God hardens Pharaoh’s heart but rather how we can justify God’s
apparent interference with human free will in the person of Pha-
raoh. It is likewise difficult to justify Joshua’s account of God hard-
ening the hearts of Israel’s enemies for the purpose of setting them
up to be “utterly destroyed” and “exterminated.” In this passage
which ties together the theme of killing with the theme of harden-
ing, the reader is presented with a God who apparently sets people
up, against their will, in order that they might be massacred. For
many people, such a description might seem little different from
that of a god who drugs someone and then places him in the driver’s
seat of a car about to head over a cliff. The same type of problem ap-
pears in a less dramatic but perhaps all the more troubling manner in
 T he Bible ’ s Proble ms 37

the final two passages from St. Paul. In Romans 9–11, the apostle draws
on concepts from Isaiah to explain that Israel’s rejection of Christ was
due to God’s hardening their hearts. This is troubling because it is one
thing to say the Old Testament presents us with theological problems,
but readers of the New Testament naturally expect to see its teaching
line up with modern standards of orthodox doctrine.
Before concluding this introductory survey of theological prob-
lems within scripture, there remains a final issue for us to consid-
er, namely Satan’s role in relation to evil. Many Christians are not
aware that there are only scant references to Satan in the Old Testa-
ment, and even when he does appear his role and identity is not the
same as what we gather from the New Testament. We have already
drawn from Zechariah 3:1–2 and Job 1–2, two of the four Old Testa-
ment texts that reference the figure of the celestial “accuser” or ‫ַהּׂש ָָט֛ן‬
in Hebrew. In Zechariah, ‫ ַהּׂש ָָט֛ן‬appears as a member of the divine
council. He is not precisely equivalent to the fallen angel “Satan” as
we know him today; rather, his function in the heavenly courtroom
is to accuse Joshua, the high priest. In Job, ‫ ַהּׂש ָָט֛ן‬is also described as
one of the “sons of God” who, though inferior to Yahweh, is grant-
ed license to torture the book’s protagonist. It is unclear whether
‫ ַהּׂש ָָט֛ן‬in Job is a legitimate member of the divine council or rather
an intruder from the outside, for God asks him: “Whence have you
come?” and Satan replies, “From going to and fro on the earth, and
from walking up and down on it” (Jb 1:7).
Whatever the case may be, Satan is not identified as the “devil”
here or in much of the Old Testament. The temptation narrative of
Genesis 3, for instance, does not mention the devil or Satan. This
identification was made later in the New Testament, where St. John
narrates that “the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient
serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan” (Rv 12:9). Nor do the
early strata of the Old Testament depict Satan as the cause of death
(Ws 2:24), the “god” of this world (2 Cor 4:4; cf. Jn 12:31; Eph 2:2),
the “tempter” (Mt 4:3; 1 Thes 3:5; 2 Cor 11:3), “father of lies” (Jn 8:44),
and “enemy” (Mt 13:19,39) of God’s people. Much less is ‫ ַהּׂש ָָט֛ן‬rec-
ognized as Satan in the book of Numbers, the third text in scrip-
ture where he appears. This passage tells us that “God’s anger was
 38 The Bible ’ s Problems

kindled” at Balaam, and “the angel of the Lord took his stand in the
way as his adversary” (Nm 22:22). It is important to observe that the
“adversary” described here is in no way inimical to God and in fact
appears to be a good angel acting on God’s own behalf—quite a dif-
ferent view from what most Christians would expect of Satan.
The only text in the Old Testament where the word Satan serves
as a proper name for an antagonistic celestial being is 1 Chronicles
21:1. Here, the chronicler pinpoints Satan as the cause of David’s un-
lawful act of numbering Israel: “Satan stood up against Israel, and
incited David to number Israel.” It is of the utmost importance to
realize that this is the only place in the Old Testament where ‫ּׂש ָָט֛ן‬
is mentioned without the definite article “the” (ַ‫)ה‬. Satan is there-
fore not merely a title for the prosecuting attorney of the heavenly
court, but rather a unique celestial being. The picture painted here
much more closely resembles that which Christians typically have
in their minds when pondering the role of Satan. He “incites” us to
evil and is therefore a cause of our evil actions. However, even this
passage which would appear to be the most promising of all Old
Testament texts presents us with difficulties in terms of reconciling
it with Christian doctrine. For it is common knowledge today that
the works 1–2 Chronicles were composed well after and 1–2 Samuel
and 1–2 Kings and retold their stories. The two histories, 1–2 Chron-
icles and 1–2 Samuel, run parallel, and often lengthy passages match
up nearly word for word. With this in mind, it is highly instructive
to compare 1 Chr 21:1, cited above, with the parallel text 2 Sm 24:1,
which states: “Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Is-
rael, and he incited David against them, saying, ‘Go, number Israel
and Judah.’ ” The difference between the two texts is clear: 1 Chron-
icles tells us that Satan was the cause of David’s evil action, whereas
1 Samuel indicates Yahweh is its cause. Why do these two texts read
differently? Many scholars suggest that the chronicler’s adaptation
of 1 Samuel was a piece of political propaganda, aimed at exonerat-
ing King David for his bad decision by placing the blame on a celes-
tial power who acted upon David without his consent.17
17. For example, see Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words, 101–4 and 126–29. Other
evidence for political propaganda in Chronicles can easily be adduced. For example,
 T he Bible ’ s Proble ms 39

The Christian should really feel the force of the argument at this
point. On what basis do Christians hold their beliefs about Satan
and his role in our evil actions? Can we trust biblical history when
it appears to contain, at best, pious but deliberate variations or, in
a worse case, perhaps even lying propaganda? This final issue ties
together the theme of evil discussed in the Bible with other impor-
tant themes, themes we could address in a lengthier volume. For
example, we could address issues of the trustworthiness of Israelite
historiography. Breaking down the Bible’s divergent histories, we
might ask how a document seemingly riddled with historical errors
and overt alterations of the sort discussed above could be consid-
ered anything but the mere feeble words of men.
We could also examine the related and sometimes apparently
tenuous relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Fur-
ther, we could ask why Jesus and the early church made such a great
enemy of Satan, a figure who plays so small a role in the Old Testa-
ment. Like the Old Testament, the New Testament itself contains
divergent histories and even employs different words to denote
the figure we commonly call Satan. In 2 Cor 6:15, St. Paul calls him
Be’lial, and in Mt 12:24 Jesus and the Pharisees speak of Be-el’zebul,
“the prince of demons.” Rv 12:9 alone identifies “the ancient ser-
pent” of the Garden of Eden with “the great dragon” who is called
“the Devil” and “Satan.” If we look back to the Old Testament, we
see still more demonic names: Tb 3:8 introduces the demon Asmo-
deus, and Hos 9:7–8 appears to speak of the demon Mastema, but in
neither case is it clear who these figures are or how they are related
to Satan.

when one compares 2 Sm 5:21 (“And the Philistines left their idols there, and David
and his men carried them away.”) with its parallel in the later 1 Chr 14:12 (“And they left
their gods there, and David gave command, and they were burned”), he has to ask at
least two questions. First, why did the chronicler make that change? To many it appears
that the chronicler, wanting to make David look good, deliberately changed the text so
as to make it appear that David obeyed God’s command to destroy the idols of his en-
emies. Second, if this explanation is even plausible, it begs the question of how portions
of the Bible which apparently contain outright factual distortions can be considered
inerrant. The principles established in the following chapters will enable us to address
precisely this type of question.
 40 The Bible ’ s Problems

Theme 3: The Afterlife

The theme of the afterlife is treated last here and will be explored
in the greatest depth at the end of the entire book, precisely because
in it we find ample, clear evidence that challenges a fundamental ar-
ticle of the Christian faith, namely hope for the resurrection of the
body. This is an important topic because too many Christians who
have great faith in the Resurrection do not realize just how significant
this doctrine is—that it is radical and unique in the history of world
religions, developing late even in the history of the people of Israel
itself. It is easy for Christians to fall into the trap of thinking that
since we believe in the resurrection of the body, the whole of Sacred
Scripture must explicitly teach the same doctrine. In reality, however,
there is little evidence for this position in scripture itself. If anything
there is evidence that Old Testament doctrine on the afterlife is quite
diverse and that even the New Testament is not utterly uniform in
its depiction of the hereafter. However, for the purpose of this study
we will largely prescind from issues within the New Testament and
focus on the more obvious problems present within the Old Testa-
ment, in which certain writers went so far as to deny altogether the
reality of life after death for man. We will now survey examples of
such denials, beginning with the work of the prophet Isaiah.
Although we will have occasion to observe later that the “Isaiah
Apocalypse” (Is 24–27) seems to indicate hope for an afterlife in a
few places, the book is far from unanimous in its view on the mat-
ter. For example, the prophet proclaims:
They are dead, they will not live;
they are shades, they will not arise;
to that end thou hast visited them with destruction
and wiped out all remembrance of them (Is 26:14).
It is important that we be familiar with the context of the above ci-
tation. In the previous verse he had just observed that “other lords
besides thee have ruled over us.” Thus the “they” who will not live or
arise has “other lords” as its antecedent. This makes the verse much
more palatable to the Christian who might otherwise see in it a blan-
ket denial of the possibility of the afterlife. On the other hand, this
 T he Bible ’ s Proble ms 41

verse still falls short of teaching the fullness of Christian truth vis-
à-vis the afterlife. For here the dead are depicted as mere “shades”
(‫)ר ָפ ִ֗אים‬, ְ֝ a term which elsewhere in the Old Testament clearly refers
to the hopeless and ever-roaming inhabitants of the netherworld. In
light of Christ’s teaching, however, we today are privy to knowledge
of man’s immortality—that even those who do evil continue to live a
bodily existence after their death as they come forth to the “resurrec-
tion of judgment” (Jn 5:29). In the Old Testament period exemplified
here by Isaiah, no clear distinction was made between the resurrec-
tion of the righteous to heaven and the resurrection of the evil to hell
or “Gehenna.” Indeed, in this period we do not find much evidence
of hope in a resurrection at all, not even for the righteous.
Turning to another text of Isaiah we catch a clearer glimpse of
how Israelites of the period tended to view life after death. Report-
ing the words of King Hezekiah, Isaiah writes:
For Sheol cannot thank thee,
death cannot praise thee;
those who go down to the pit cannot hope
for thy faithfulness (Is 38:18).
Here we find one of myriad biblical references to the ancient Israel-
ite belief in the netherworld (Heb. ‫ ;ׁש ְ֗אֹול‬Gk. ᾅδης) which for centu-
ries was generally accepted as the lot of the dead. Like others living
in cultures of the ancient Near East, ancient Israelites believed that
persons continued to exist in some form after their death. The Old
Testament describes that deceased human spirits all “went down”
through watery passages into a gloomy land below the earth, called
Sheol. Like a cistern, Sheol was far removed from the land of the
living and even from God himself. It was considered to be a land of
“darkness”18 aptly depicted through the synonyms “pit,”19 “earth,”20
“grave,”21 “cistern” or “dungeon,”22 and “Abaddon” or “destruction.”23

18. Cf. Jb 17:13, 10:21; Ps 88:7,12.

19. Cf. Ps 16:10; Jb 17:13–14; Is 38:17–18; Jn 2:3–7.
20. Ps 88:12, 143:3. 21. Cf. Ps 88:5, 11; Jb 10:19.
22. Cf. Is 5:14; 38:18; Ez 31:16; Pss 30:4; 88:4–5; Prv 1:12. For a more thorough pre-
sentation of the abode of the dead as it was viewed in ancient Israel, see Theodore J.
Lewis, “Dead, Abode of the,” ABD, vol. 2, 101–5.
23. Cf. Ps 88:11; Jb 26:6; Prv 15:11.
 42 The Bible ’ s Problem s

Dead souls would be trapped in this place indefinitely, devoid of all

thanksgiving, praise, and—most importantly—hope. For, having
crossed the chasm and descended to the underworld, they entered a
world sealed off by locks and gates: the “gates of death.”24 The “gates
of death” prevented anyone from ever returning to the land of the
living and to communion with the Lord.25
As Pope Benedict observed, in a work written while he was still
a cardinal, in his own work on the subject the ancient view of She-
ol described above remained dominant in Israel until around the
time of Christ. At this point in time, Israelites began to view Sheol
as the place where not all individuals, but rather the ungodly alone,
suffered the fate of eternal separation from God.26 Describing the
use of the Greek term Hades in the New Testament, W. D. Davies
and Dale Allison write, “By the first century there was a tendency
to think of Hades or certain sections of it as an underworld peopled
not by the dead in general but by the ungodly dead, as well as by
demons and evil spirits.”27 This notion appears in the parable of La-
zarus in Luke 16. Here, Jesus indicates that Hades is clearly reserved
as “a place of torment” for the unjust rich man, whereas Lazarus
was carried off by angels to the “bosom of Abraham.” However, Je-

24. L. Wächter, “Sheol,” translated by Douglas W. Stott, Theological Dictionary of

the Old Testament (hereafter TDOT) 14: 245. The expression “gates of death” and other
related expressions appear frequently in the Old Testament: “Have you entered into the
springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been
revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?” (Jb 38:16–17); “I said, In
the noontide of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest
of my years. I said, I shall not see the LORD in the land of the living” (Is 38:10–11); “Be
gracious to me, O Lord! Behold what I suffer from those who hate me, O thou who lift-
est me up from the gates of death” (Ps 9:13); “They loathed any kind of food, and they
drew near to the gates of death” (Ps 107:18).
25. “The general view is that Yahweh has nothing to do with the deceased and that
the latter have no community with him.” Wächter, “Sheol,” TDOT 14:246.
26. See Benedict XVI, Eschatology, 119–23, where he describes how Israel gradually
began to see the just and unjust as separated after death. Benedict analyzes biblical im-
ages and compares them to how the afterlife is portrayed in various apocryphal works
of inter-testamental Jewish literature, in particular the book of Enoch (c. 150 B.c.), the
fourth Book of Ezra (c. 100 A.d.), and the works of the community at Qumran.
27. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1988), 633.
 T he Bible ’ s Proble ms 43

sus does not clarify the relationship between Hades and Gehenna,
the ever-burning garbage heap outside of Jerusalem elsewhere em-
ployed in the New Testament as an image for everlasting punish-
ment (cf. Mt 5:22; Lk 12:5; Jas 3:6; etc.). The presence of both of these
terms only further complicates the Bible’s portrait of the afterlife, for
the teaching of Jesus himself does not square precisely with what
Christians who take the terms “heaven,” “hell,” and “purgatory” for
granted might expect.
Returning to the Old Testament’s portrayal of Sheol as a shad-
owy place forever barred off from the presence of God, in those
parts of the Old Testament that testify to this view one also observes
the belief that the dead “shades” exerted power over the living and
even communicated with them. As Wayne Pitard explains:
There is evidence that many Israelites thought that the dead continued to
play an active role in the world of the living, possessing the power to grant
blessings to their relatives and to reveal the future. This was done through
the process of necromancy, the consultation of the dead by a medium, and
related practices, which appear to have been quite popular in Israel.28
Pitard observes that Israel’s pre-exilic practice of necromancy does
not figure prominently in the Old Testament because it was even-
tually repudiated and denounced as heterodox.29 However, one ac-
count of an illicit necromantic session has been preserved in the
Bible, the story of Saul’s consultation of the witch at Endor:
When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart
trembled greatly. And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not
answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets. Then Saul said
to his servants, “Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go
to her and inquire of her.” And his servants said to him, “Behold, there is
a medium at Endor.” So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments,

28. Wayne Pitard, “Afterlife and Immortality,” in The Oxford Companion to the
Bible, edited by B. M. Metzger and M. D. Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993), 16. See also the discussion of the Rephaim in Benedict XVI, Eschatology, 80–81.
29. As he shows, a few passages from the late eighth to sixth-century prophetic
and legal literature illumine the matter since they attack wrongheaded popular notions
about the dead. See Lv 19:31; 20:6, 27; Dt 18:10–14; Is 8:19–20. These passages show that
much work had to be done by Yahweh in terms of correcting Israel’s early misconstrued
notions about the afterlife, a process of teaching that took time.
 44 The Bible ’ s Problems

and went, he and two men with him; and they came to the woman by night.
And he said, “Divine for me by a spirit, and bring up for me whomever I
shall name to you.” . . . Then the woman said, “Whom shall I bring up for
you?” He said, “Bring up Samuel for me.” When the woman saw Samuel,
she cried out with a loud voice; and the woman said to Saul, “Why have
you deceived me? You are Saul.” The king said to her, “Have no fear; what
do you see?” And the woman said to Saul, “I see a god coming up out of
the earth.” He said to her, “What is his appearance?” And she said, “An old
man is coming up; and he is wrapped in a robe.” And Saul knew that it
was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance.
Then Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me
up?” Saul answered, “I am in great distress; for the Philistines are warring
against me, and God has turned away from me and answers me no more,
either by prophets or by dreams; therefore I have summoned you to tell me
what I shall do.” (1 Sm 28:5–8, 11–15)
In this passage, Saul sees the Philistine army encamped against him,
and he beseeches God for help using every licit means possible.
When God refuses to answer him through these sanctioned means,
Saul turns to a medium and asks her to bring the spirit of Samuel up
from the dead for him. For the purposes of our work, the relevant
issue at stake in this passage is not whether or not Saul should be
practicing necromancy; rather, the problem lies in the fact that the
passage portrays the witch’s activity as efficacious; she actually suc-
ceeds in conjuring up the spirit of the godly Samuel from Sheol, and
Saul has a discussion with him. The passage is powerful and prob-
lematic because it unabashedly assumes the view of Sheol described
above. While not denying the reality of life after death for man, it
presents a strange picture that is difficult to reconcile with Christian
teaching on the subject.
The view of Sheol found in Isaiah and 1 Samuel 28 is even more
prevalent and pronounced in the book of Psalms. The following
texts testify not merely to King Hezekiah’s struggle with the phe-
nomenon of death but rather to the struggle of an archetypal man of
faith, namely David. As is typical of the psalmist’s mode of exposi-
tion, many of the problematic areas below are framed in the form of
questions. As questions, they do not represent categorical denials of
the afterlife, yet they are telling descriptions of the psalmist’s world-
view since the Hebrew construction he employs clearly expects a
 T he Bible ’ s Proble ms 45

negative response from God.30 It is easier to feel the weight of this

problem when one puts himself in the place of the agonizing psalm-
ist while reading the following texts:
Turn, O Lord, save my life;
deliver me for the sake of thy steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of thee;
in Sheol who can give thee praise? (Ps 6:4–5)
What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the Pit?
Will the dust praise thee?
Will it tell of thy faithfulness? (Ps 30:9)
What man can live and never see death?
Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? (Ps 89:48)
The questions posed in these texts seem to deny that God is present
to those who inhabit the netherworld. In death no one remembers
the Lord, and no one can praise him. There is no profit in death, and
no one has the ability to deliver the soul which has descended to
Sheol. As if this picture were not stark enough, the following is even
more so:
For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
I am reckoned among those who go down to the Pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
like one forsaken among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom thou dost remember no more,
for they are cut off from thy hand.
Thou hast put me in the depths of the Pit,
in the regions dark and deep . . .
Dost thou work wonders for the dead?
Do the shades rise up to praise thee? [Selah]
Is thy steadfast love declared in the grave,
or thy faithfulness in Abaddon?

30. If a Hebrew author expects a “Yes” answer to his question, he typically uses the
Hebrew form ‫( ֲ‍הֹֽלא‬translated best as “Do not . . . ?”) rather than ‫“( ֲה‬Do . . . ?”), which is
used commonly here and expects a negative response. Thus when we encounter ques-
tions such as “Do the shades rise up to praise thee?” we should understand the psalm-
ist’s tacit reply to be, “Of course not!”
 46 The Bible ’ s Problems

Are thy wonders known in the darkness,

or thy saving help in the land of forgetfulness? (Ps 88:3–6, 10–12)
This last psalm is especially powerful for the haunting images it uses
to name the reality of the netherworld: “Sheol,” “the Pit,” “regions
dark and deep,” “the grave,” “Abaddon (destruction),” “the dark-
ness,” and “the land of forgetfulness.” Also troubling is its depiction
of the soul who draws near to death: like “the shades” who inhabit
Sheol, he is “full of troubles,” “has no strength,” “like one forsaken
among the dead,” “like the slain,” “like those whom thou [God] dost
remember no more,” “cut off from thy [God’s] hand.” Here again,
the psalmist asks God a series of questions to which the expected
answer is clearly “No”: “Dost thou work wonders for the dead?”;
“Do the shades rise up to praise thee?”. At first glance this psalm
thus appears to be a work of despair and nothing more; God has
nothing to do with the dead, and there is no hope that he ever will
change this state of affairs. Later we will have occasion to respond to
the question of how such a hopeless text can be in the Bible.
Whereas we have seen that the psalmist typically framed his de-
nials of hope for the afterlife in the form of questions, the book of
Job often takes a more straightforward—and therefore perhaps all
the more disturbing—approach to the issue:
As the cloud fades and vanishes,
so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up (Jb 7:9).
As waters fail from a lake,
and a river wastes away and dries up,
so man lies down and rises not again (Jb 14:11).
For when a few years have come
I shall go the way whence I shall not return (Jb 16:22).
Unlike the psalmist, in these passages Job does not couch his doubt
in the form of questions: he who descends to Sheol “does not come
up.” A man lies down in death and “rises not again.” Job believes
that he will soon go the way of all flesh and “not return” to life. Ap-
parently these denials are factual descriptions of what Job takes to
be the lot of the dead, and for this reason they seem even more dif-
ficult to reconcile than the psalmist’s bleak questioning. For, even if
his questions displayed only the slightest glimmer of hope for the af-
 T h e Bible ’ s Proble ms 47

terlife, the fact remains that a problematic question is not the same
as a problematic denial.31
The book of Sirach is interesting to examine on this subject as it
combines both questions and outright denials on the topic of life after
death:
Who will sing praises to the Most High in Hades,
as do those who are alive and give thanks?
From the dead, as from one who does not exist,
thanksgiving has ceased;
he who is alive and well sings the Lord’s praises.
How great is the mercy of the Lord,
and his forgiveness for those who turn to him!
For all things cannot be in men,
since a son of man is not immortal (Sir 17:27–30).
My son, let your tears fall for the dead,
and as one who is suffering grievously begin the lament.
Lay out his body with the honor due him,
and do not neglect his burial . . .
Do not give your heart to sorrow;
drive it away, remembering the end of life.
Do not forget, there is no coming back;
you do the dead no good, and you injure yourself.
“Remember my doom, for yours is like it:
yesterday it was mine, and today it is yours.”
When the dead is at rest, let his remembrance cease,
and be comforted for him when his spirit is departed
(Sir 38:16,20–23).
As in the case of several passages cited above, here the sacred author
begins with a question (“Who will sing praises . . . ?”) which apparently
expects the answer “No one.” He then proceeds to make plain denials
of life after death for man: “From the dead, as from one who does not
exist, thanksgiving has ceased,” and “a son of man is not immortal.”
In the second passage, he continues this thread with the admonition,
“Do not forget, there is no coming back [from death].” In light of this,
he advises, “When the dead is at rest, let his remembrance cease.”
With this we come at last to the most melancholic of all bibli-
31. Here it is worth noting one passage in which the psalmist himself casts his
doubt in the form of a denial rather than a question. He tells the Lord: “Look away
from me, that I may know gladness, before I depart and be no more!” (Ps 39:13).
 48 The Bible ’ s Problems

cal works concerning man’s hope for life after death: the book of
Ecclesiastes, also known as Qoheleth (its Hebrew name). Ecclesias-
tes is well known for its gloomy view that all in life is ‫ הָ ֽבֶל‬or “vanity,”
but often Christians fail to appreciate the seriousness of this claim
which, while repeated throughout the book, is made especially clear
in certain places:
For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one
dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no ad-
vantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the
dust, and all turn to dust again (Eccl 3:19–20).
For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they
have no more reward; but the memory of them is lost. . . . Whatever your
hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or thought or
knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going (Eccl 9:5, 10).
It is hard to imagine a more categorical denial of life after death
than what we find here. The fate of man and the beasts is precisely
the same; everything comes from dust and everything shall turn
to dust again. In contrast to what Christians tend to assume, this
book makes no mention of rising from the dust; it is the final resting
place of man and beast alike. In this state, the dead “know nothing,
and they have no more reward; but the memory of them is lost.” You
are going to Sheol, Ecclesiastes reminds his reader. Therefore it is
best to enjoy the present life while possible, “for there is no work or
thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.”
After reading the texts introduced in the above pages, it is no
wonder that after the dust clears from the Old Testament period one
still has to reckon with the fact that the New Testament portrays two
powerful rival camps—the Pharisees and the Sadducees—who dis-
agree on the question of whether there will be a resurrection at the
end of time. The evidence above helps explain why the Sadducees so
adamantly denied hope in the resurrection. A successful defense of
biblical inspiration must be able to deal with the problem presented
by people like the Sadducees who base their rejection of Christian-
ity on the observation that doctrines so fundamental to Christians
as the resurrection of the body do not always appear explicitly in a
large portion of the writings Christians hold to be inspired by God.
 T h e Bible ’ s Proble ms 49

T wo Problems that Arise in L i g h t

of Method B’s Observati on s
As intriguing and worthy of treatment as these last issues may be,
our effort in the present volume remains modest. As Pope Benedict
stated with regard to his Jesus of Nazareth, it is even more true that
this work represents only the beginning of an effort to adequately
articulate a theology of scripture. In line with the exploration we
have already begun, this work will continue to focus on what di-
rectly concerns the nature of God, the nature of good and evil, and
the afterlife, since these are all clearly issues of “faith and morals.” To
be sure, Catholicism teaches that the entirety of scripture is inerrant
and not merely those parts which bear upon faith and morals. How-
ever, these problems are particularly crucial because Christians who
hold divergent opinions vis-à-vis what the Bible intends to teach
in matters of science and history typically agree in their expecta-
tion that the Bible “gets it right” when it comes to matters directly
concerning Christian doctrine (faith) and behavior (morals). What,
then, is the Christian to make of the discrepancies described in this
chapter, and why do they seem to be glossed over today? How can
the Bible be God’s word if it is rife with problems in so many areas?
Can we trust what the church teaches us concerning the nature of
God, the nature of good and evil, and the afterlife if the founda-
tions of our knowledge in these areas appear so tenuous? If we wish
to offer a credible vindication of the Catholic doctrines of biblical
inspiration and inerrancy, these are the type of questions we have to
ask ourselves today.
For the sake of brevity and clarity, our brief survey of theologi-
cal problems in the Bible can be boiled down to two essential issues
that will be addressed in the following chapters: First, in our inves-
tigation thus far we have drawn from evidence throughout the Bible
and not just from one theological school or one historical period.
Given this data, it is clear that significant developments occurred
within Israelite and Christian theology throughout the course of the
Bible’s composition. The Bible’s later declarations of Yahweh’s one-
ness are a far cry from earlier texts which accept the existence of
 50 The Bible ’ s Problem s

a heavenly council of divine beings. Late Judaism’s hope for resur-

rected immortality seems quite distant from the earlier view that all
deceased souls went to Sheol. The chronicler blames Satan for an
evil deed which had been attributed to Yahweh himself in the earlier
text of 2 Samuel. The fundamental challenge here is that the scrip-
tures present us with inspired authors living later in history who
write in a markedly different fashion concerning God, evil, and the
afterlife in comparison with their predecessors. Our first question
therefore arises: how can scripture be inerrant if in certain areas it
does not contain the fullness of revealed truth known by Christians
today?
Moreover, granted the fact that certain parts of scripture do not
explicitly teach the fullness of truth known by Christians today, a
second—and more problematic—difficulty demands our attention:
the fact that we sometimes observe biblical texts making statements
that seem plainly to contradict the teachings of other texts. This is es-
pecially problematic when later texts seem to constitute regressions
rather than developments with respect to texts written earlier in the
course of divine revelation. When we consider a historical-critical
dating of the biblical corpus, it is apparent that the Bible’s theol-
ogy does not always develop in a linear fashion; it does not prog-
ress ever closer toward the fullness of truth as we would naturally
expect. Ecclesiastes, for instance, wrote centuries after the prophets
began to exhibit hope for resurrected immortality, yet he still could
not accept their claim that God will vindicate the just man on the
other side of death. How is this not a manifest contradiction of the
Catholic doctrines of biblical inspiration and inerrancy? In the fol-
lowing pages, we will provide the principles for a robust solution to
precisely such questions.
Before turning for the moment from our considerations of prob-
lematic texts in the Bible, it is important to address a possible objec-
tion to all the arguments produced above. From time to time in the
following pages we will observe that Christians enjoy many ways of
addressing challenges to particular biblical texts. The believer may
therefore rightly ask: what is the point of all this effort to develop a
new hermeneutic when it is conceivable that every problem raised
 T he Bible ’ s Proble ms 51

by historical criticism can be answered independently on the basis

of already available explanations? As we mentioned earlier in this
chapter, this very question itself must be answered with another
question, namely whether traditional explanations are not only con-
ceivable but are also sensible and plausible for believers today. The
Method C exegete, one who accepts the best of historical criticism
and desires to meet Christ in the scriptures, must have the ability
to assess the body of biblical evidence as a whole, an effort which
entails much more than merely answering individual problems as
they arise. In other words, the Method C exegete will take into ac-
count the cumulative force of the evidence adduced thus far, asking
whether certain standard explanations account for the deeper fact
that problematic statements concerning God’s nature, the nature of
good and evil, and the afterlife appear not merely in one text but
throughout the Old Testament. The Method C exegete will have cer-
titude that the problems he observes are real precisely because of
the sheer amount of evidence pointing in their direction.
Pope Benedict and John Henry Newman both have helpful con-
tributions to make on this point. The pope is very open in his recog-
nition that historical criticism does not yield infallible conclusions.
He states, “We must be clear about that fact that historical research
can at most establish high probability but never final and absolute
certainty over every detail.”32 If the Method C exegete follows New-
man, he will find similar ideas confirming that the insufficiency
of certain traditional Christian biblical interpretations cannot be
proven deductively and beyond the shadow of a doubt. According
to Newman, however, when it comes to matters of religion such as
the inspiration of scripture, the proper method by which to arrive
at certitude is through “accumulated probabilities.”33 Newman most
fully elucidates the meaning of this expression in his Essay in Aid
of a Grammar of Assent, as when he says: “The real and necessary
method” for arriving at certitude lies in the “cumulation of proba-

32. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 104.

33. John Henry Newman and Charles Kingsley, Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua,
The Two Versions of 1864 & 1865; Preceded by Newman’s and Kingsley’s Pamphlets (Lon-
don: H. Frowde, 1913), 292.
 52 The Bible ’ s Problems

bilities, independent of each other, arising out of the nature and cir-
cumstances of the particular case which is under review.”34 Applying
Newman’s wisdom to this book and its concern with the nature of
God, the nature of good and evil, and the afterlife, we acknowledge
that the gravity of the problems we have observed is fully recogniz-
able only in light of the cumulative force of the biblical evidence. It
is for this reason that we dwelt at length on the problems and drew
from a wide variety of biblical texts which exemplify them. None
of these questions admits of a simple answer. Each one must be
dealt with patiently if we are to form reasonable conclusions that
both acknowledge the real issue at hand and approach it in a spirit
of faithful confidence. In this confidence we may now turn to Pope
Benedict and seek to articulate his vision for approaching the Bible’s
greatest problems.

34. John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (New York:
Clarendon Press, 1985), 230. The following words of Newman are also helpful: “None
of these questions, as they come before him, admit of simple demonstration; but each
carries with it a number of independent probable arguments, sufficient, when united,
for a reasonable conclusion about itself.” Ibid., 232.
 c ha p t e r 2

B e n e dic t ’ s “M e t hod C ”
P r o p o s a l a n d C at hol ic P r i n c i p l e s
f or B i b l ica l I n t e r p r e tat ion

Having highlighted many of the significant problems concern-

ing the text and contents of the Bible, we can now begin to lay the
theological foundation for a robust response that takes seriously
the claims of the previous chapter and yet maintains a deep faith in
the truth of scripture. In view of achieving this end, we will look to
Benedict’s “Method C” hermeneutics proposal for guidance, seek-
ing to elucidate the principles found therein so we can later apply
them to the various problems that arise within text of scripture.
At the conference following his Erasmus Lecture in New York
City in 1988 Pope Benedict, who was then prefect of the Congrega-
tion for the Doctrine of the Faith, argued convincingly that today’s
exegetes must have recourse to both ancient and modern methods
of interpretation if they are to make sense of the problems in scrip-
ture. He called upon exegetes to develop a new, fuller hermeneutical
method that makes the truth of scripture more evident by synthesiz-
ing the best of ancient (patristic-medieval) and modern (historical-
critical) exegesis:
You can call the patristic-medieval exegetical approach Method A. The
historical-critical approach, the modern approach . . . is Method B. What I
am calling for is not a return to Method A, but a development of a Method

53
 54 B e ne dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

C, taking advantage of the strengths of both Method A and Method B, but

cognizant of the shortcomings of both.1
Benedict’s program aims to incorporate insights from both the
patristic-medieval method, which tends to emphasize the unity
and truth of scripture, and the historical-critical method, which of-
ten observes development, diversity, and apparent contradictions
therein. The synthesis of these two approaches in the present work
aims to draw us closer to a sound reading of scripture’s most dif-
ficult texts by showing that a unity underlies the development and
diversity within scripture that came about as a result of the divine
pedagogy.
To be sure, entire volumes could be written just on the ques-
tion of what constitutes a particular hermeneutical method, ancient
or modern. It would be a very difficult task since there is no single
“method” followed unilaterally by all others of a particular epoch
or school. With Benedict one can, however, identify two basic sets
of principles held by modern scholars which distinguish them from
their patristic and medieval counterparts. As Gregory Vall explains:
Strictly speaking, we are dealing not with two specific “methods” but two
general approaches. A series of basic principles unites the work of exegetes
as diverse as Origen and Chrysostom, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas
Aquinas, so that we may speak of a single dominant patristic-medieval
approach to exegesis, which Cardinal Ratzinger has labeled “Method A.”
When we turn to consider those biblical commentators whose work falls
under the umbrella of “historical-critical” exegesis, the diversity of specific
methodologies is perhaps even greater. But in this case too, fundamental
principles of exegesis shared by these scholars may be identified, justifying
the label “Method B.”2
Before we can employ Benedict’s synthesis of methods to help ad-
dress problems within scripture, in this chapter we need to outline
1. Benedict’s words are taken from a summary and transcript of the discussion fol-
lowing his lecture. See Paul T. Stallsworth, “The Story of an Encounter,” in Biblical In-
terpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, edited by Richard
John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids, Mich. Eerdmans, 1989), 107–8. Benedict’s lecture “Bibli-
cal Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of
Exegesis Today” is printed in ibid., 1–23.
2. Gregory Vall, “Psalm 22: Vox Christi or Israelite Temple Liturgy?” The Thomist
66 (2002), 176, n. 2.
 B e n e di c t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l 55

the principles which Vall alludes to as distinctive of Method A and

Method B exegesis, beginning with Method A.

First Principles of Method A: I n spi r at i on ,

In e rr an c y, and t h e F ou r Senses of S cri p tu re
Christians who practice traditional patristic-medieval exegeti-
cal methods and are at least indirectly acquainted with historical-
critical scholarship are often struck—and disenchanted—by the fail-
ure of their historical-critical counterparts sometimes to appreciate
one key trait, the role of faith in exegesis. The question at hand here
is whether we should approach the biblical text through the eyes of
faith and with the goal of building up the church, or whether we
should above all treat the Bible “scientifically,” endeavoring to ana-
lyze it in an objective, disinterested manner. On this point, Method
A exegetes of both past and present steadfastly follow the Christian
tradition in emphasizing the former, faith-based approach, whereas
some Method B exegetes of the modern period feel no obligation
to adhere to the guidelines of the Christian theological and exegeti-
cal tradition. If the question of faith’s role in the interpretation of
scripture is the most striking feature which distinguishes ancient
and modern exegetical approaches, it is proper that we begin by
summarizing the theological principles which govern our under-
standing of the nature of scripture and its interpretation within the
Catholic faith.3
The first principal point of Catholic doctrine in this matter re-
gards the inspiration of scripture. The locus classicus for this dogma
is 2 Tm 3:16, where St. Paul writes, “All scripture is inspired by God

3. This book assumes Catholic theological principles, but I would like to express
my hope that it will be of benefit to all Christians who seek greater understanding
of their faith even as I draw largely from works in the Catholic theological tradition.
Catholics certainly have benefited from Evangelical Christians in this regard, and some
of them have made endeavors similar to mine. For example, in his Living and Active:
Scripture in the Economy of Salvation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002), Telford
Work seeks to articulate the nature of Sacred Scripture through what he calls a “bibliol-
ogy.” While I have not chosen to adopt that term, it does encapsulate the scope of the
present project.
 56 B e ne dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for train-
ing in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped
for every good work.” St. Paul’s original Greek word θεόπνευστος,
which we translate “inspired,” literally means “God-breathed.” This
term indicates that the scriptures issue from God himself, from his
breath, his word. As Dei Verbum articulates, God himself authored
all of Sacred Scripture: “The books of both the Old and New Testa-
ments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical
because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have
God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church
herself.”4 Just as the Holy Spirit guided the composition of the New
Testament, so the “the Spirit of Christ” was at work in the produc-
tion of the Old Testament, so that the Bible contains everything God
wanted written for the sake of man’s salvation, and nothing more.5
According to the Catholic tradition, God chose to achieve the
end of educating Israel in divine realities by humbling himself or
“condescending” to men. As one might explain it in Thomistic
terms, God the principal author of scripture ennobled humans as
secondary or instrumental authors so they could cooperate as true
authors in the composition of the scriptures. These human au-
thors were not puppets in God’s hands, but neither were they self-
sufficient in the process of composing scripture. It was a work which
entailed the full use of the faculties and gifts of scripture’s human
authors, put to use in order that God’s own ineffable words might be
put into human words which his people could understand. In order
to describe this dynamic, Dei Verbum thus employs the Christologi-
cal analogy: “The words of God, expressed in human language, have
been made like human discourse, just as the Word of the eternal
Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was
in every way made like men.”6 By keeping this Christological anal-

4. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, 1965, §11. Cited hereafter as DV; cf. CCC
§105.
5. 1 Pt 1:10–11; cf. DV §11. For more on a Thomistic view of the dual authorship
of Scripture, see the thorough discussion in Paul Synave and Pierre Benoit, Prophecy
and Inspiration: a Commentary on the Summa Theologica II-II, Questions 171–178 (New
York: Desclée Co., 1961), 93–145.
6. DV §13; cf. CCC §101; Pius XII, Promotion of Biblical Studies, [Divino afflante
 B e n e di c t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 57

ogy in mind throughout the course of this work, we may maintain

a mean between the various opposing theories of scriptural inspi-
ration proposed over the centuries.7 For as true human discourse,
scripture was not merely “dictated” by God to passive human in-
struments who blindly wrote down what God wanted them to
write. At the same time, as true divine discourse the inspiration of
scripture does not merely consist of a “subsequent approbation” by
which God later accepted as his own various human writings which
he had no hand in composing.8 Furthermore, the church acknowl-

Spiritu], 1943, §37. Cited hereafter as DAS. As regards the role of the Christological
analogy in maintaining a sound “Chalcedonian” doctrine of inspiration, see also Mary
Healy, “Behind, in Front of . . . or Through the Text? The Christological Analogy and
the Last Word of Biblical Truth,” in Behind the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation,
edited by Craig Bartholomew, C. Stephen Evens, Mary Healy, and Murray Rae (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2003), 181–95. Healy observes that the Christological analo-
gy ultimately has roots in the patristic period (e.g., Origen’s comparison of scripture to
the flesh of Christ). As she puts it, there exists a kind of “Monophysite” exegesis where-
in, as ancient heretics denied Christ’s human nature, the exegete “downplays or ignores
the human factors that went into the composition of the biblical text.” Ibid., 191. On the
other hand, Healy notes that the more typical form of modern scholarship is “Nesto-
rian.” She writes, “Such an approach deliberately and methodologically considers the
text as a purely human reality and superimposes the divine only as a second operation
after the crucial exegetical judgments have already been made.” Ibid, 192. According to
Healy, as the ecumenical council of Chalcedon recognized Jesus’s true divinity and true
manhood, so a “Chalcedonian form of exegesis” seeks to do justice to both the human
and divine aspects of Sacred Scripture. See also Denis Farkasfalvy’s treatment of the
Christological analogy in his Inspiration and Interpretation: A Theological Introduction
to Sacred Scripture (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010),
230–35. It is important for the present study that Farkasfalvy extends the Christological
analogy and suggests: “The ‘divine pedagogy’ and ‘condescension’ of which the anti-
Marcionite Church Fathers (beginning with Irenaeus) spoke, mostly in defense of the
imperfections of the Old Testament, must be extended to all of Scripture. . . . Just as
Jesus ‘grew in age and wisdom’ from infancy to maturity as a human being, each book
of the Bible had a true process of formative development.” (232.)
7. See James Tunstead Burtchaell, Catholic Theories of Biblical Inspiration since
1810: A Review and Critique (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), where the
author describes at length the various theories of scriptural inspiration proposed in the
Catholic Church over most of the past two centuries. A few examples of such theories
are mentioned in this section.
8. See Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q.11, a.1 ad 6. (Unless otherwise noted, cita-
tions to Aquinas’s smaller works are from www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html.
All of these writings can be found in S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia: ut sunt in In-
dice Thomistico, additis 61 scriptis ex aliis medii aevi auctoribus, edited by Robert Busa, 6
 58 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

edges that God is the author of scripture in its entirety. The Christo-
logical analogy leaves no room for the proposition that some parts
of the body of scripture (the “primary or religious” elements) are
of God and others (“secondary or profane” elements) are merely of
man.9 God is the principal author of all Sacred Scripture, and yet
he chose free human instruments to actively participate in his au-
thorship throughout its entire process. Attention to this mysterious
interplay of divine and human activity will be of capital importance
in the chapters that follow.
The second significant point of Catholic teaching on the nature
of scripture concerns its inerrancy. The fact that scriptures were
inspired and authored by God—who can neither lie nor deceive—
necessitates that they contain no error. This constant tradition of the
church was repeated once again at the Second Vatican Council:
Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writ-
ers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books
of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and with-
out error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake
of salvation.10
This teaching is pivotal for the present investigation, whose goal in
effect is to better understand how this sentence from the Second
Vatican Council applies to some of the most contentious texts with-
in the biblical canon. For if all of scripture is inerrant, then even the
darkest and most confusing passages of scripture are also inerrant,
and a robust Catholic theology of scripture must account for their
existence in such a way that preserves this understanding. In other
words, if a portion of scripture appears to state something that is dif-
ficult to reconcile with what we know today through such avenues
as philosophy, science, and Christian theology, it nevertheless must

vols. [Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980]). Also see Matthew Lamb’s

discussion in Aquinas’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, translated
by Matthew Lamb (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1966), 261, n. 29.
9. Benedict XV, On St. Jerome [Spiritus Paraclitus], 1920, §19. This is the terminol-
ogy used by the Holy Father in 1920 to describe the errors of those in his day who at-
tempted to narrow the inspiration of scripture to matters of the “religious” realm. Cf.
Leo XIII, On the Study of the Holy Scripture [Providentissimus Deus], 1893, §20.
10. DV §11.
 B e n e di c t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l 59

be believed to convey something true. The challenge for today’s

Christian is to discern with the church what precisely is being pro-
posed as true in scripture.
Given that Method A considers all of Sacred sacred to be the
inspired and inerrant word of God, it ought not to come as a sur-
prise that God’s voice resounds in unique ways through the vari-
ous portions of the sacred page. This brings us to a third point un-
dergirding Catholicism’s traditional view of scripture: its teaching
on the “voice” of scripture and its “four senses.” Accomplished hu-
man authors are not the only ones who craft their literary works to
contain multiple layers of meaning; God himself authored Sacred
Scripture in such a way that it can be read on multiple levels. In
certain parts of scripture God teaches man about himself in a di-
rect way. For example, as Method A exegetes understand, the pre-
incarnate Word was openly at work in ancient Israel teaching the
people about himself in order to prepare them for his coming as a
man. As Pope Benedict reminds us, for Method A it is the voice of
the pre-incarnate Word of God, the vox Christi, who speaks in the
Psalms; it is he who is foretold in prophecy; it is he who is present
in the types of the patriarchs.11 So strong is their sense of the divine
voice that in many cases Method A exegetes consider such Old Tes-
tament realities to be spoken more directly in reference to Christ
than to the nation or individuals in Israel that the human author
of scripture probably intended to describe in his work. An instance
of this can be seen in Aquinas’s discussion of Psalm 30, a psalm at-
tributed to King David. The verse in question reads: “O Lord, thou
hast brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among
those gone down to the Pit.” St. Thomas comments:
This cannot be literally understood of David, because he was not dug up
from Sheol when he wrote this Psalm. It can be understood of him meta-

11. In his second volume of Jesus of Nazareth, translated by Adrian J. Walker (New
York: Doubleday, 2007), Benedict writes: “Augustine offered a perfect explanation of
this Christian way of praying the Psalms—a way that evolved very early on—when
he said: it is always Christ who is speaking in the Psalms—now as head, now as the
body. . . . Yet through him—through Jesus Christ—all of us now form a single subject,
and so, in union with him, we can truly speak to God.” (146–47.)
 60 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

phorically, as if he was freed from mortal peril. But it is literally understood

of Christ, whose soul was drawn out of Sheol by God.12
According to St. Thomas, Christ is not merely foreshadowed in
Psalm 30. The subject of the psalm is not primarily David or any
anonymous author of the psalm; rather, in this case the literal
sense—that fundamental meaning intended by an author to be
signified by his words—is Christ himself. For Method A exegetes,
Christ is both he of whom the Old Testament speaks and he who
speaks in the Old Testament.
As seen above in the case of Psalm 30, sometimes Method A
views the literal sense of Old Testament passages in direct refer-
ence to Christ. At other times, however, Method A recognizes that
the obvious meaning of a text is not Christological and that such
a meaning is only attained by searching out its “spiritual sense.”
For example, according to its literal sense the word ἔξοδον—which
means “departure” in Greek—signifies that historical event whereby
the children of Israel departed from bondage in Egypt in the late
second millennium B.c. The spiritual sense, then, arises whenever
things signified by words themselves have a signification.13 In this
case, a look to the spiritual sense reveals that the event denoted with
the word “exodus” itself signifies something, namely the “exodus” of
Jesus as he departed this world through his Passion and death and
attained new life in the Resurrection.14 There is also the “exodus” of
the Christian believer when he dies to his old way of life and rises
to new life with Christ in baptism.15 And there is the “exodus” that

12. Thomas Aquinas, In psalmos Davidis expositio, super Psalmo 29 (my transla-
tion). Note that the numbering of St. Thomas’s commentary differs from the standard
numbering of Psalms in the RSV.
13. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica [Summa theologiae] translated by the Fa-
thers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1981),
I, q.1, a.10. (Hereafter, ST)
14. Narrating the Transfiguration event, the Gospel of Luke states that Jesus “ap-
peared in glory and spoke of his departure (ἔξοδον), which he was to accomplish at
Jerusalem” (Lk 9:31).
15. Even when not using the Greek term ἔξοδον, the New Testament conveys this
meaning of spiritual exodus in various ways. See St. Paul’s description of Christian
freedom with imagery of liberation from slavery, which he leads into by showing that
Christians enter through baptism into the mystery of Christ’s own suffering, death, and
 B e n e di c t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l 61

Christians hope to make when they, too, depart from their life on
earth and enter into heavenly glory.16
According to the tradition espoused by Method A exegetes like
St. Thomas and maintained throughout church history to the pres-
ent day, the spiritual sense itself is subdivided into three senses: the
allegorical, moral, and anagogical.17 In this way, a given passage of
scripture may speak to any or all of four things, one in a literal and
three in a spiritual manner. As a medieval couplet cited in the Cat-
echism has it, “The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; The
Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.”18 Thus, to return to the ex-
ample of the Exodus, four realities are signified by this word: the de-
liverance of Israel in the Exodus event itself (literal sense); Christ’s
exodus whereby he passed through death into the resurrection (al-
legorical sense); the exodus of the Christian believer who dies to his
old self through baptism (moral sense); and, the believer’s exodus
from death into eternal life on the Last Day (anagogical sense).

Resurrection: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Je-
sus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into
death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too
might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:3–4). See also 1 Cor 10:1–2, where St. Paul im-
plies that Israel’s passage through the sea was a type of Christian baptism: “I want you
to know, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the
sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” St. Augustine con-
firms this interpretation in his discussion of Old Testament signs in chapter 20 of his
On the Catechising of the Uninstructed [De catechizandis rudibus], translated by S. D. F.
Salmond, in vol. 3, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff
(Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888).
16. This anagogical sense of exodus seems to be at work in the book of Revelation
where St. John sees a portent in heaven of those who had conquered the beast and who
“sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, ‘Great
and wonderful are thy deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are thy ways, O
King of the ages!’ ” (Rv 15:3)
17. Thomas Aquinas, ST, I, q.1, a.10; cf. Aquinas’s treatment of the “four-fold way of
interpreting Sacred Scripture” in his Scriptum super Sententiis, q.1, a.5; cf. CCC 115–19.
As Henri de Lubac does well to point out, this four-fold schema itself was the prod-
uct of centuries of development with regard to the church’s theology of the spiritual
sense, and during this time other related schemas have been propounded. Cf. Henri de
Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, vol. 1, the Four Senses of Scripture, translated by Marc Sebanc
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 1–39.
18. CCC §118.
 62 B e n e dic t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l

Method A and the Canon: The Pivota l Rol e of

Sacred Tradition and the Mag i st e rium
Having reviewed Method A’s foundational principles regarding
the nature of scripture and the various modes by which it speaks to
us, it is instructive to take a closer look at the pivotal role played by
sacred tradition and the Magisterium—the church’s official teaching
office comprised of the bishops throughout the world in union with
the Roman Pontiff—in establishing the authoritative canon and in-
terpretation of scripture accepted by Method A exegetes. Here we
must first confront a potential challenge concerning the question
of where the “real” and authoritative Bible is to be found if no ex-
tant autograph (original copy) of it survives today. In other words,
the issue to be asked of Method A is: how can believers have any
confidence that the Bibles they read and hear proclaimed in their
own language faithfully transmit God’s revelation given that they
represent a mixed bag of variant textual traditions, the result of one
group of (non-inspired) scholars translating the work of another
group of (non-inspired) scholars whose “critical edition” the former
trusted to have reproduced the original biblical text as accurately as
possible?
For a Christian community whose faith is based on the Bible
alone, this question might appear to defy a rational answer. Method
A exegetes in communion with the Catholic Church, however, have
long held a very simple and profound understanding of this issue:
believers have always had and always will have access to the “true”
Bible because the Bible is not primarily found in any specific writ-
ten document or record in the first place but rather in the heart of
the church. As Pope Benedict puts it, “The Scripture emerged from
within the heart of a living subject—the pilgrim people of God—and
lives within this same subject. The People of God—the Church—is
the living subject of Scripture; it is in the Church that the words of
the Bible are always in the present.”19
Like Mary who treasured the mystery of Christ in her heart (cf.

19. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, xx–xxi.

 B e n e di ct’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l 63

Lk 2:19,51), Christian believers as a whole treasure the memory of

God’s word in their hearts, ceaselessly pondering its mystery and
searching out its authentic meaning in accordance with the mind
of Christ.20 This memory preserved in the church dates back to well
before the scriptures were written, a crucial point to take into ac-
count since the church’s life was not always bound up with the writ-
ten records we have since come to enjoy. For example, as the emi-
nent scholar Yves Congar tells us, “The Eucharist was celebrated and
administered without waiting for [the Scriptures] to be written. . . .
The Church could not wait until the critics were agreed among
themselves: she had to live.”21 Important as scripture is, Catholics
are aware that there has always existed a reality prior to it, a mem-
ory which was alive and present to the early Christians and which
enabled the heart of the church to pulse even before the canon of
scripture was complete. As Pope Benedict puts it:
The seat of all faith is, then, the memoria Ecclesiae, the memory of the
Church, the Church as memory. It exists through all ages, waxing and wan-
ing but never ceasing to be the common situs of faith. This sheds light once
again on the question about the content of faith. . . . The Church is the locus
that gives unity to the content of faith.22
In continuity with the Holy Father’s words, Christians today must
take seriously the living reality of the church’s memory if we wish to
maintain that the early church faithfully preserved divine revelation
while lacking the written scriptures.
These last statements push the previous paragraph’s question re-
garding the “location” of the Bible back a step. For even if we grant
Method A its premise that scripture is not primarily located in any
physical text, we still have to ask: where, then, is this reality called
the “Church’s heart” on which the scriptures are supposedly writ-

20. Cf. CCC §113. The Catechism refers here to Origen, whom Benedict XVI also
cited in his April 23, 2009 address to participants in the plenary assembly of the Pontifi-
cal Biblical Commission: “Sacred Scripture is written in the heart of the Church before
being written on material instruments.” Cf. Origen, Homilae in Leviticum, 5,5.
21. Yves Congar, The Meaning of Tradition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004),
22–24.
22. Benedict XVI, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamen-
tal Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 23–24.
 64 B e ne dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

ten? Earlier, we described the heart of the church in terms of the

Christian community’s continual reflection on God’s word, but now
we can address this reflective practice in greater depth. The heart of
the church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is the heart of Christ him-
self whom Christians encounter through the entirety of the church’s
sacred tradition present even when the physical text of scripture is
absent. Dei Verbum underscores the importance of sacred tradition
in the following words:
There exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradi-
tion and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine
wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same
end. . . . Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church
draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore
both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and vener-
ated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence. Sacred tradition and Sa-
cred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to
the Church.23
Sacred tradition, a source of revelation not limited to writing, com-
prises the deposit of God’s word along with Sacred Scripture. It is
venerated with the same reverence as the scriptures, but what, con-
cretely, is contained within sacred tradition? As Congar has shown,
“Tradition comprises the holy scriptures, and, besides these, not
only doctrines but things: the sacraments, ecclesiastical institutions,
the powers of the ministry, customs and liturgical rites—in fact,
all the Christian realities themselves.”24 The realities mentioned
in Congar’s list come together to form the dynamic, lived experi-
ence of the Christian who through his regular encounter with them
develops a sense for the “pulse” of the church’s heart. When one
considers the evidence indicating that the scriptures were typically
written down decades or even centuries after the period they relate
to their audience, it is easy to see that what we know today as the
Bible is itself part of this much broader tradition, a tradition which
preexisted the Bible and preserved the memory of God’s word until
it could be documented in written records. Indeed, in stating that

23. DV §§9–10; cf. CCC §§80–82.

24. Cf. Congar, The Meaning of Tradition, 13ff.
 B e n e di ct’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 65

“the whole of Scripture is nothing other than Tradition,” Pope Bene-

dict indicates that the Bible simply is sacred tradition crystallized in
its privileged, written form.25 He describes this process of crystalli-
zation using the evocative image of generation and “birth.” Extend-
ing the Christological analogy and applying it to the provenance of
the scriptures, he writes: “As the word of God became flesh by the
power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, so Sacred
Scripture is born from the womb of the church by the power of the
same Spirit.”26
Recent magisterial documents like Benedict’s Verbum Domini
cited above are replete with other images and expressions which shed
light on this relationship between scripture, tradition, and Christ
whose heart we encounter through them. A central idea therein is
that the Word of God contained in tradition and scripture bears
witness to the Word of God the person and enables believers to en-
counter him in a revelatory experience that cannot be exhaustively
described in written words. For example, the Catechism cites St. Ber-
nard of Clairvaux in describing Christianity as being not a “religion
of the book”—a religion limited to God’s written word—but rather a
religion of the living Word of God, Jesus Christ, whom scripture and
tradition make present to us.27 Citing the same words of St. Bernard,
Verbum Domini elucidates the analogical nature of the word of God
and additionally speaks of a “symphony of the word,” a “polyphonic
hymn” by which the Word reveals himself to man in his person, in
scripture, and in nature.28 Of particular note is the pope’s statement,
“Although the word of God precedes and exceeds sacred Scripture,
nonetheless Scripture, as inspired by God, contains the divine word
(cf. 2 Tm 3:16) ‘in an altogether singular way.’ ”29 This word of God
which precedes and exceeds scripture is none other than Jesus Christ
as he has made himself knowable through sacred tradition.
The idea that the Word of God preexists, exceeds, and is served

25. Benedict XVI and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Inter-
view on the State of the Church, translated by Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 160.
26. VD §19. 27. Cf. CCC §108.
28. Cf. VD §7. 29. VD §17.
 66 B e ne dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

by scripture was articulated by Pope Benedict XVI, even before he

became a Cardinal, decades ago in his work Revelation and Tradi-
tion. Concerning the revelation of the Word, he wrote, “Revelation
means God’s whole speech and action with man; it signifies a reality
which scripture makes known but which is not itself simply identi-
cal with scripture. Revelation, therefore, is more than scripture to
the extent that reality exceeds information about it.”30 In the more
recent Verbum Domini we find an expression which sheds light on
the meaning of the pope’s repeated statements to the effect that rev-
elation exceeds scripture. He writes, “Indeed, the word of God is
given to us in sacred Scripture as an inspired testimony to revela-
tion; together with the Church’s living Tradition, it constitutes the
supreme rule of faith.”31 Although the language of “testimony” or
“witness” has certainly been used by some to convey a very low view
of scripture, the terminology is extremely valuable for those Chris-
tians because it conveys the truth that the scriptures are the word
of God and yet also have the subservient role of testifying to the
person of the word, not exhausting the reality of the second person
of the Trinity but serving as a means to make available his revela-
tion to mankind. The excelling majesty of Christ’s revelation can be
no more fittingly described than it is at the end of St. John’s Gospel:
“But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every
one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not
contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25).
Granted that Sacred Scripture witnesses to the revelation of Je-
sus Christ and that it emerged out of the more ancient tradition de-
scribed above, this still leaves unresolved the question: how can a
Method A exegete justify the origin of the biblical canon in the early
church, that is to say the fact that some books were deemed “the
word of God” and other, ostensibly very similar books were not. The
short answer to this question is that it hinges on the existence of a
teaching authority instituted by Jesus himself, one invested with the

30. Karl Rahner and Benedict XVI, Revelation and Tradition (New York: Herder,
1966), 35.
31. VD §18.
 B e n e di ct’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l 67

power to make infallible determinations such as the establishment

of the biblical canon. A more in-depth explanation involves the rec-
ognition that the Magisterium was able to know and declare which
books constituted the biblical canon as a result of her contact with
the tradition already alive in the heart of the church.32 Since the
Bible itself does not explicitly define the canon, it was incumbent
upon the bishops and pope to search the various forms of tradition
to make their determination. In particular, Pope Benedict tells us
that “a book was recognized as ‘canonical’ if it was sanctioned by
the Church for use in public worship. . . . In the nascent Church, the
reading of Scripture and the confession of faith were primarily li-
turgical acts.”33 In other words, the bishops saw that the best guar-
antee of a particular text’s inspiration was the constant tradition of
the church solemnly proclaiming the contents of the text over the
centuries.
In addition to this all-important criterion, considered in sanc-
tioning texts in the church’s liturgy, the bishops also examined and
evaluated lists of books found in the writings of church fathers dat-
ing from the second century A.d. up to the time of their promulga-
tions in local councils beginning in the late fourth century. Writ-
ing near the end of the fourth century, St. Athanasius provides the
most ancient witness to a New Testament canon of twenty-seven
books, though his list lacks the Old Testament deuterocanon. Soon
thereafter, St. Augustine offered an authoritative list containing all
the books present in Catholic Bibles today, at which time discussion
regarding the extent of the canon was for all intents and purposes
closed in the Western church. At this point Augustine’s canonical
list of forty-six Old Testament and twenty-seven New Testament
books took on official ecclesiastical status as it was adopted and pro-
mulgated at the regional councils of Hippo (393 A.d.), Carthage III
(397 A.d.), and Carthage IV (419 A.d.), and affirmed by a letter of
Pope Innocent I in 405 A.d. The later ecumenical councils of Flor-
ence (1442 A.d.) and Trent (1546 A.d.) would go on to confirm this

32. DV §8; cf. VD §18.

33. Benedict XVI, Principles of Catholic Theology, 148.
 68 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

canon for all the Christians of their age. It is important to note that
in all these councils we observe the Magisterium authoritatively re-
affirming sacred tradition in the face of contemporary challenges to
the faith, not inventing new truths but guarding and transmitting
what is already there for future generations. Moreover, one cannot
overstate the truth that in Catholicism these magisterial promulga-
tions of the canon are not merely a matter of human judgment but
rather the exercise of a charism given by God. For as Bl. John Henry
Newman demonstrated, if this charism to ascertain the canon had
not been given to the Magisterium, Christians would never have
had any way of knowing with certitude which books belonged in
the Bible or not. Without the Magisterium of the Catholic Church,
we would never have had the Bible in the first place.34

Meth od A and the Interpretat i on

of Scrip t u re
The final aspect of Method A exegesis we need to consider at
this point concerns how those who follow the church can guaran-
tee that any given biblical interpretation of theirs is accurate. It is
one thing to say that the Magisterium has authoritatively defined
the list of books which comprise the Bible, but does that really get
today’s reader anywhere if he does not know whether he is reading
the sacred page correctly? As it turns out, the Bible not only does
not contain its own table of contents, it does not interpret itself, ei-
ther. Against the Protestant doctrine of scriptural “perspicuity,” Dei
Verbum relates that the Bible is understood correctly only within
the interpretative tradition of the church and under the guidance of
her Magisterium:

34. Newman states, “The most obvious answer, then, to the question, why we yield
to the authority of the Church in the questions and developments of faith, is, that some
authority there must be if there is a revelation given, and other authority there is none
but she. A revelation is not given if there be no authority to decide what it is that is
given. . . . The absolute need of a spiritual supremacy is at present the strongest of argu-
ments in favour of the fact of its supply.” John Henry Newman, An Essay on the De-
velopment of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1989), 88–89.
 B e n e di c t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l 69

The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or

handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of
the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This
teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only
what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously
and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with
the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith every-
thing which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.35
The same Magisterium which guarded sacred tradition and defined
the biblical canon in the early church today has the charism of search-
ing the tradition in order to provide authoritative interpretations of
the Bible when human efforts alone fail to clarify its meaning.
The Catechism contains a concise summary of Method A’s inter-
pretive principles as they have been exercised by the Magisterium
and the faithful over the centuries. As the Catechism observes, those
who wish to interpret scripture according to the mind of the church
must follow three guidelines. First, interpretation of difficult passag-
es must be done bearing in mind the rest of scripture and how these
passages fit into the unified whole: “Scripture is a unity by reason
of the unity of God’s plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and
heart,” the Catechism states.36 When passages seem to contradict
one another, the church assures believers that there is an answer to
the difficulty if these passages are placed within the context of scrip-
ture as a unified work given to man by God for his salvation. Even
the most difficult of passages take on light when they are viewed
as participating in God’s plan as it has developed throughout the
history of revelation. In other words, when texts of scripture are ap-
proached from the perspective of God’s gradual, providential edu-
cation of mankind rather than as mere monadic moments in linear
history, it is easier to understand why God might have permitted
there to be various difficulties in Scripture.37

35. DV §10. Granted the importance of the Catholic magisterial tradition for bibli-
cal interpretation, it is worth noting that the church only rarely steps in and defines
how a particular text must or must not be interpreted.
36. CCC §112.
37. Moreover, many of the same places in scripture that present difficulties on the
literal level have providentially led the church to a deeper understanding of divine
 70 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

Second, the Catechism indicates that a correct interpretation of

scripture must be in harmony not only with other scripture but also
with the entire living tradition of the church throughout history. It
invokes the church’s “heart” here as an image to convey the reality
of sacred tradition passed on through the ages: “According to a say-
ing of the Fathers,” the Catechism reminds us, “Sacred Scripture is
written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents
and records.”38 Ultimately, no human being can adequately under-
stand scripture on his own. The church alone enjoys this prerogative
because she is the subject whose heart bears the living memory of
God’s word throughout history.39
Third, the Catechism states that faithful Christian exegesis must
look to the “analogy of faith,” by which it means “the coherence of
the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of
revelation.”40 This is extremely valuable because it tells the Method
A exegete that if his own interpretation of a contentious biblical pas-
sage contradicts a dogma verified by the Magisterium, it is his own
interpretation that is erroneous, not the dogma. To expound on a
beautiful statement of Matthew Levering in this regard, the church’s
exegesis today is an ongoing participation in God’s own act of edu-
cating mankind throughout history, and so if the Christian exegete
is to faithfully execute this mission he must do so from within the
heart of the church and in accordance with her dogmas.41
It is appropriate to conclude this exposition of the principles of
Method A exegesis with a few words on the role the church’s liturgy

realities because they have driven exegetes to search out scripture’s various spiritual
senses. Indeed, insofar as they bring the reader to an encounter with Christ, these sens-
es may be the very telos of the literal sense, or at least illumine it. As Matthew Levering
states, “Since historical realities are richer than a solely linear or atomistic understand-
ing of time might suggest, the Church’s theological and metaphysical ‘reading into’ bib-
lical texts may largely be expected to illumine the realities described in Scripture rather
than to obscure them.” Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpreta-
tion (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 5.
38. CCC §113.
39. For a thorough discussion of the church as the subject who bears God’s word
through history, see Congar, The Meaning of Tradition, 47–81.
40. CCC §114.
41. Cf. Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis, 15.
 B e n e di ct’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 71

plays in guiding Method A’s interpretation of scripture. The liturgy is

one of the principal sources of sacred tradition and has always been
a privileged means employed by the Magisterium in her approach to
scripture. As the great Benedictine Abbot Prosper Guéranger wrote,
“It is in the liturgy that the Spirit who inspired the Scriptures speaks
again; the liturgy is tradition itself in the highest degree of power
and solemnity.”42 Guéranger’s words are but a modern expression
of the ancient dictum lex orandi, lex credendi, which indicates that
the church’s law of prayer is her law of faith.43 That is to say, if Chris-
tians want to know what the church should believe today about the
nature of scripture and how to interpret it, we need to look at how
she has prayed the scriptures over the centuries. While it is by not
means sufficient on its own, following this rule assists the Method A
exegete in his effort to confirm that even the toughest challenges
raised as a result of discoveries in modern biblical scholarship do
not contradict the tradition kept alive in the church’s heart through
constant prayer over the millennia. For even if there appear to be
ambiguities or contradictions between the extant text of scripture
and certain Christian doctrines, Method A exegetes enjoy the com-
fort of knowing that the meaning of the texts in question has been
preserved in the church’s heart, especially in her liturgy. This is but
a corollary of Congar’s thought in stating that not a single Catholic
dogma is derived from scripture alone without being explained by
sacred tradition (and vice versa).
The reality that Catholic belief does not depend exclusively on
a given passage of scripture likewise goes hand in hand with bibli-
cal textual expert Bruce Metzger’s observation that “no doctrine of
the Christian faith depends solely upon a passage that is textually
uncertain.”44 All of this is to say that while the truths of inspiration
and inerrancy are inextricably bound up with the physical text of
scripture, they are found above all in that scripture which resides in
the church’s heart. It is to this heart, pulsing through sacred tradi-

42. Guéranger’s work is cited in Congar, The Meaning of Tradition, 134.

43. Cf. CCC §1124.
44. Bruce Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content
(Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1991), 281.
 72 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

tion and guarded by the Magisterium, that the Method A exegete

seeks to conform himself and his understanding of scripture. Let us
conclude this section with the words with which the Second Vatican
Council articulates the relationship between scripture, tradition,
and Magisterium:
It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teach-
ing authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so
linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and
that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy
Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.45

A P otential Weakness of Method A a n d t h e

Prin ciples of Meth od B’s Re sp on se
Despite all the strengths of Method A exegesis and its pivotal role
in the life of the believer, at times those who employ this method
have tended to emphasize the unity and inerrancy of scripture and
dealt largely with its spiritual sense while neglecting its literal sense
with the evidence of development and the apparent contradictions
that can be observed through study.46 For historical-critical schol-
ars, this neglect of the literal remains a continual source of skepti-
cism with regard to traditional exegesis, and as such constitutes a

45. DV §10.
46. For instance, in his On First Principles Origen employs a helpful image to
describe Scared Scripture as having a “body” (historical sense) and “soul” (spiritual
sense). However, at times in his exposition he dismisses the importance of the literal
sense and goes so far as to say that it sometimes does not even exist. (4.12.) In contrast,
St. Augustine tends to provide a much more balanced view. Yet although his Exposi-
tion on the Psalms is profound, its particular aim was not to show how the Psalms’s
Christological meaning presupposed and built upon their literal meaning in ancient
Israel. Exposition on the Psalms [Enarrationes in psalmos], translated by J. E. Tweed, vol.
8, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff (Buffalo, N.Y.:
Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888). The commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas,
on the other hand, draws more on the literal and spiritual senses in the Psalms and
shows how they are united. It is for reasons such as this that Aquinas was chosen as the
primary Method A representative in this study. Even though he died before he was able
to complete his commentary on the Psalms, when compared to other exegesis of the
patristic and medieval periods his stands out as a forerunner to the Method C exegesis
called for by Benedict.
 B e n e di ct’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 73

weakness on the part of many Method A exegetes. Pope Benedict’s

work stands on a solid middle ground between the excesses of cer-
tain Method A exegetes and the skepticism typical of Method B. He
typically gives a positive but sober assessment of patristic spiritual
exegesis, as we see in the case of the parables of the Good Samaritan
and the Prodigal Son. Concerning the Good Samaritan, he writes:
The Church Fathers understood the parable Christologically. That is an al-
legorical reading, one might say—an interpretation that bypasses the text.
But when we consider that in all of the parables, each in a different way, the
Lord really does want to invite us to faith in the kingdom of God, which he
himself is, then a Christological interpretation is never a totally false read-
ing. In some sense it reflects an inner potentiality in the text and can be a
fruit growing out of it as from a seed.47
The pope proceeds to meditate on the parable’s various features over
a span of several pages. Of particular interest here is how he views
the interpretation given by the church fathers of the man who was
stripped and beaten, wounded and left half dead. He notes that the
fathers interpreted this particular man’s sufferings as an allegory of
mankind’s twofold alienation due to sin—which has “stripped” us of
the grace we had received and “wounded” us in our nature. Bene-
dict explains, “Now that is an instance of allegory, and it certainly
goes far beyond the literal sense. For all that, though, it is an at-
tempt to identify precisely the two kinds of injury that weigh down
human history.”48 Notice the pope’s language here. He states that
the patristic interpretation “bypasses the text” and “certainly goes
far beyond the literal sense.” The language that follows seems to in-
dicate a defect in the emphasis the fathers placed on the spiritual
sense. “For all that, though,” their exegesis is a worthy attempt to
plumb the depths of the passages. Thus he can say that the Christo-
logical interpretation “is never a totally false reading.” Why does the
pope insert the adverb “totally” before the adjective “false”? It is not
perfectly clear, but it would seem to be because he thinks there are
not only strengths but also defects in the way the fathers deal with
this parable.
47. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 199.
48. Ibid., 20.
 74 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

Similar language can be found in Benedict’s dealings with the

Prodigal Son. Noting the difficulty involved in the effort to locate
the figure of Jesus in this parable when it is read allegorically, he
asks: “Where does Jesus Christ fit into all of this? Only the Father
figures in the parable. Is there no Christology in it? Augustine tried
to work Christology in where the text says that the Father embraced
the son, explaining that ‘the arm of the father is the Son.’ ” The pope
comments, “This is a very evocative exposition, but it is still an ‘al-
legory’ that clearly goes beyond the text.”49 Once again, Benedict’s
assessment of patristic exegesis involves the observation that the fa-
thers often go “beyond the text.” In telling us that Augustine “tried”
to work Christology into the parable, he implies that Augustine’s
interpretation is not entirely convincing. For Benedict, successful
spiritual exegesis can only go beyond the text of scripture once it
has gone through the text by dealing with its literal sense. This is
not an easy task to achieve, for even the most brilliant fathers of the
church themselves struggled with it.
If then a hallmark of Method A is that it views scripture from a
spiritual perspective and is able to discern the voice of Christ within
it, then a strength of Method B is that it attends to scripture’s literal
meaning and desires to hear the voice of scripture’s human authors
at work therein. Method B does not so much approach scripture as
God’s word but instead operates according to the principle that it
ought to bracket out the question of faith and study these words as
human words that reflect a past context, a definite cultural milieu
with its own language and mindset. In the foreword to his book Je-
sus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict gives the parameters of historical-
critical work: “It attempts to identify and to understand the past—as
it was in itself—with the greatest possible precision, in order then
to find out what the author could have said and intended to say in
the context of the mentality and events of his time.”50 It employs
all the scientific tools at the disposal of modern man, not limited
to but including a broader knowledge of history, recent discoveries

49. Ibid., 207.

50. Ibid., xvi.
 B e n e di c t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 75

in archaeology and the various natural sciences, and an increased

competence in Semitic languages, that helps to attain a clearer un-
derstanding of the original meaning the texts had in Israel.
The “critical” attitude is not necessarily critical in the way many
people initially think. Concerning the attempt to employ historical-
critical exegesis in his own search for the face of Jesus, Benedict
writes:
Naturally this will require of us a readiness not only to form a “critical”
assessment of the New Testament, but also to learn from it and to let our-
selves be led by it: not to dismantle the texts according to our preconceived
ideas, but to let our own ideas be purified and deepened by his word.51
According to Benedict, historical criticism does not of its own na-
ture seek to dismantle or criticize the faith, but it does entail a will-
ingness to be purified by asking questions—and entertaining cor-
responding answers—that faithful Christians of previous ages did
not tend to raise. Some examples of such questions are: whether an
explicit teaching of the resurrection of the body is found through-
out the entirety of the Bible, whether the Old Testament presents a
unified account of God’s oneness, or whether the Bible is entirely
accurate in its understanding of evil. A Method B approach to texts
such as Psalm 30 discussed above would question St. Thomas’s claim
that the human author of this text originally intended it to be un-
derstood literally of Christ and his deliverance from death. In this
way, whereas Method A sees literal bodily resurrection in passages
such as this throughout the entire Bible, Method B sees authors of-
ten speaking of resurrection in an analogous sense, for example a
man’s being delivered from the moment of physical death as a kind
of “resurrection” from the perilous pit of Sheol, or Israel’s restora-
tion to the promised land as a kind of “resurrection” from exile.
Moreover, given Method B’s observation that the literal sense of
scripture does not intend a doctrine of bodily resurrection in all the
places many once thought it did, it is not a big step for those who
make this observation to further claim that the same texts some-

51. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem
to the Resurrection, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 120.
 76 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

times appear to be erroneous when it comes to such matters as the

afterlife—that writers like the psalmist were not the least bit inter-
ested in or even aware of the notion of bodily resurrection, and that
whenever such a possibility was raised they actually tended to re-
ject it. The way one deals with this claim is pivotal for a synthetic,
Method C approach to scripture, because it is one thing to acknowl-
edge that natural science does not fall within the scope of scripture’s
intended teaching, but it is an even greater challenge to account for
the traditional Christian view of scripture when scripture appears to
be teaching on a matter of faith, and teaching it incorrectly. Method
B’s attentiveness to the literal sense and its willingness to challenge
traditional assumptions about scripture is precisely what raised this
challenge, and the rest of this work will continue the search for an
answer to precisely such problems.

Meth od B’s Weaknesses

Of course, Method B’s willingness to question traditional Chris-
tian assumptions about scripture is not always accompanied by a
desire to build up the faith. It is well known among faithful Chris-
tians that many of those belonging to the historical-critical school
have sought to undermine central tenets of the faith, especially
when it comes to the figure of Jesus. As Benedict indicates, “Histori-
cally, this method was first applied at the time of the Enlightenment,
with the aim of using history to correct dogma, setting up a purely
human, historical Jesus against the Christ of faith.”52 The pope goes
so far as to insinuate the presence of a demonic element in certain
areas of historical-critical scholarship. Meditating on the exchange
between the devil and Jesus narrated in Mt 4, he suggests, “The devil
proves to be a Bible expert who can quote the Psalm exactly. The
whole conversation of the second temptation takes the form of a
dispute between two Bible scholars.” The pope bases his comments
on Vladimir Soloviev’s short story “The Antichrist,” a work we may
surmise he finds important because he also refers to it in his Eras-
52. Benedict XVI, Behold the Pierced One: An Approach to a Spiritual Christology,
translated by Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 43.
 B e n e di c t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 77

mus Lecture and his book Eschatology. In Soloviev’s work, the figure
of the Antichrist tries to seduce Christians by touting the honor-
ary doctorate in theology he has been awarded by the University of
Tübingen. Tübingen has long been known among biblical scholars
as a mecca for historical-critical biblical research. Soloviev, then, is
unabashedly connecting the hermeneutic of suspicion practiced at
Tübingen with the work of the Antichrist, and ultimately the devil.
Nevertheless, the pope nuances Soloviev’s story:
This is not a rejection of scholarly biblical interpretation as such, but an
eminently salutary warning against its possible aberrations. The fact is that
scholarly exegesis can become a tool of the Antichrist. Soloviev is not the
first person to tell us that; it is the deeper point of the temptation story it-
self. The alleged findings of scholarly exegesis have been used to put togeth-
er the most dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle
the faith. The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the
so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God can-
not act in history. . . . And so the Bible no longer speaks of God, the living
God; no, now we alone speak and decide what God can do and what we will
and should do. And the Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells
us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the
living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism; he
wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis, the supposedly purely
scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able
to keep abreast of the times. The theological dispute between Jesus and the
devil is a dispute over the correct interpretation of Scripture.53
According to Benedict, the Antichrist wants to show that scripture’s
teaching is false and that its spiritual meaning is a mere human in-
vention, a fundamentalist’s abuse of the text.54 He wants to have us
53. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 35–36.
54. Indeed, this was even the case at the very outset of the historical-critical move-
ment. See Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2007) and the analysis of Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering in Vatican II:
Renewal within Tradition, edited by Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 6: “Spinoza set forth the presuppositions of this denigra-
tion of revealed truth in his Theologico-Political Treatise. Like nature, the Bible can no
longer be treated as a whole; it must be broken up into fragmented parts. These isolated
texts must then be reinterpreted only by other texts. Because the wise attunement to the
whole Bible was lost, Spinoza remarks that one must never raise the truth question, only
the meaning question to be answered solely with reference to other fragmented texts.
The development of doctrine within the Bible from Old to New Testament and within
 78 B e ne dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

believe that an “objective” reading of the biblical text is one done

with the caveat that the spiritual and the material are incompatible,
that God could never enter into human history and disclose himself.
He has noted that in the present age these philosophical tenets of
some biblical critics have grown to the stature of academic dogmas,
to the point that criticizing them at all is considered tantamount to
sacrilege.55 Because of this bias, scholars and others committed to
creedal Christianity have rightly been taken aback by many of the
presuppositions of critical scholars.56 In light of these circumstances,
Benedict argues that if historical criticism is to play a role in the ex-
egesis of believers today, there must take place a “criticism of criti-
cism,” as he described it in his Erasmus lecture.57
Benedict’s critique helps us to see that, despite its capacity to
challenge longstanding assumptions of exegetes who profess the
Christian faith, Method B’s fundamental strength turns out also to
constitute its principal weakness: its willingness to ask radical ques-
tions of scripture and its ability to provide a scientific analysis of
scripture often leads to excess of regard for its own competence and
lack of regard for Christ.58 To illustrate, in his treatment of Peter’s

the ongoing mission of the Church is rendered impossible. Wisdom is replaced with ar-
bitrary power.” See also Matthew Lamb, Eternity, Time, and the Life of Wisdom (Naples,
Fla.: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2007), ix–x.
55. Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 21. Cf. Francis Martin, “Joseph
Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, on Biblical Interpretation: Two Leading Principles,” Nova et
Vetera 5 (2007): 285–314. Among the achievements of Martin in this article, he appro-
priates Benedict’s criticism of reductionist modern cognitional theories.
56. By employing the term “creedal Christianity” one includes not only Catholics
but all Christians who profess faith in the revelation of the triune God as expounded in
the church’s early creeds. The term “Chalcedonian Christianity” is also frequently used
by scholars of various denominations to articulate their shared belief in the nature of
God and his revelation in Jesus Christ. For more on the subject of scholars ruling out
the possibility of God’s self-disclosure in human history, see also Benedict’s “Biblical
Interpretation in Crisis” as well as the more recent VD §36, where he elucidates the
simple rule: “In applying methods of historical analysis, no criteria should be adopted
which would rule out in advance God’s self-disclosure in human history.”
57. “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 6. In Light of the World (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2010), 171, he also argues, “What is needed is not simply a break with the historical
method, but a self-critique of the historical method; a self-critique of historical reason.”
58. As is often the case, here I am indebted to a conversation with Gregory Vall for
insights and distinctions of his that I have tried to appropriate in my own work.
 B e n e di ct’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l 79

confession “You are the Christ,” the pope criticizes scholarship’s ex-
cesses in no uncertain terms:
The attempt to arrive at a historical reconstruction of Peter’s original words
and then to attribute everything else to posterior developments, and pos-
sibly to post-Easter faith, is very much on the wrong track. Where is post-
Easter faith supposed to have come from if Jesus laid no foundation for it
before Easter? Scholarship overplays its hand with such reconstructions.59
While the pope certainly does not hesitate to engage and even ten-
tatively accept certain historical-critical hypotheses, he shows that
scholarship often “overplays its hand with such reconstructions”
which are “very much on the wrong track.” In the case of Peter’s con-
fession, he is countering theories which would have the printed text
of Peter’s confession in complete discontinuity with Jesus’s original
spoken words. To such proposals he replies: “Where is post-Easter
faith supposed to have come from if Jesus laid no foundation for
it before Easter?” Benedict makes a commonsense argument: if the
words of Jesus and the words of the Gospels are in complete discon-
tinuity, then why do the Gospels say what they do? From Benedict’s
commonsense point of view, the obvious answer is that the Gospels’
portrait of Jesus are based on real, historical events in the life of Je-
sus which are presented theologically, to be sure, but by no means
haphazardly or without due respect for the events themselves.
Aside from its excesses, there is a more fundamental problem
often present in historical-critical exegesis. Since faith is a not a fun-
damental component of Method B exegesis, those who employ this
method sometimes miss the ultimate end, the very raison d’être of
scripture: the opportunity to encounter the living God who teaches
man through his sacred word. As Benedict puts it, “Approaches to
the sacred text that prescind from faith might suggest interesting el-
ements on the level of textual structure and form, but would inevita-
bly prove merely preliminary and structurally incomplete efforts.”60

59. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 303. In his second volume of Jesus of Nazareth
one also finds Benedict criticizing excessively self-confident historical-critical scholars:
“Exegetical hypotheses . . . all too often make exaggerated claims to certainty.” Jesus of
Nazareth: Holy Week, 105.
60. VD §29.
 80 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

When exegetes thus fail to rise up to appreciate the divine teaching

in Scripture and remain solely at the level of scripture as a collection
of texts, it is impossible for them to see its inspired unity:
[The historical-critical] method is a fundamental dimension of exegesis,
but it does not exhaust the interpretative task for someone who sees the
biblical writings as a single corpus of Holy Scripture inspired by God. . . .
The unity of all these writings as one “Bible” is something it can see only as
an immediate historical datum.61
For the pope, what we call the Bible is not truly the Bible unless we
see it “as a single corpus of Holy Scripture inspired by God.” Meth-
od B exegesis can examine lines of development and the growth of
traditions in Sacred Scripture, yet it cannot make the further step of
seeing them as a unity. For Method A, on the other hand, the many
books of scripture have a unity precisely insofar as they participate in
the economy of salvation and manifest the divine pedagogy. Accord-
ingly, to the extent that historical criticism disavows the possibility
of an economy of salvation, it denies scripture its unifying principle.
Thus, granted that Old Testament passages ought to be read with
more attentiveness to their Israelite context, as Method B does well
to observe, the pope demonstrates what a travesty it would be not to
accept the Method A principles which enlighten and heal the defects
in Method B and which alone enable scripture to be experienced as
God’s holy word.

B oth Approaches Are Nece s s a ry

f or t h e Meth od C Project
In light of this “criticism of criticism” initiated by Benedict,
Method B exegetes must be attentive if they are to ensure that their
efforts do not neglect the role of faith and ultimately end up bank-
rupt. The pope counsels exegetes today to take the “further step” of
acknowledging faith as a hermeneutic:
If it wishes to be theology, [exegesis] must take a further step. It must recog-
nize that the faith of the Church is that form of “sympathia” without which

61. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, xvi–xvii.

 B e n e di c t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 81

the Bible remains a closed book. It must come to acknowledge this faith as
a hermeneutic, the space for understanding, which does not do dogmatic
violence to the Bible, but precisely allows the solitary possibility for the
Bible to be itself.62
Contrary to the tenets of those who approach Scripture with a
hermeneutic of suspicion, Benedict understands that Method A’s
hermeneutic of faith is in reality the key to unlocking the true mean-
ing of Scripture, without which it remains “a closed book.”
Lest one assume that Benedict’s proposal of an exegetical syn-
thesis is solely a theoretical affair, it is important to emphasize that
he has long been instantiating it in his work, especially in the two
recent volumes of Jesus of Nazareth. In the foreword to the second
volume, he speaks to the necessity of synthesizing the “historical
hermeneutic” (Method B) and “faith hermeneutic” (Method A) and
his own attempt to do so in his work on Jesus:
If scholarly exegesis is not to exhaust itself in constantly new hypotheses,
becoming theologically irrelevant, it must take a methodological step for-
ward and once again see itself as a theological discipline, without abandon-
ing its historical character. It must learn that the positivistic hermeneutic
on which it has been based does not constitute the only valid and defini-
tively evolved rational approach; rather, it constitutes a specific and histori-
cally conditioned form of rationality that is both open to correction and
completion and in need of it. It must recognize that a properly developed
faith-hermeneutic is appropriate to the text and can be combined with a
historical hermeneutic, aware of its limits, so as to form a methodological
whole. Naturally, this combination of two quite different types of herme-
neutic is an art that needs to be constantly remastered.63
Here, Benedict warns that scholarly exegesis will become an end-
less, “theologically irrelevant” maze of hypotheses unless it takes a
“methodological step forward.” It must continue its patient atten-
tiveness to the historical nature of scripture, but this must be at the
service of theology. “A faith-hermeneutic” helps correct and com-
plete the historical method. The two methods can be “combined
. . . so as to form a methodological whole.” However, he notes that
“this combination of two quite different types of hermeneutic is an
62. Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 22–23; cf. VD §§51–52.
63. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, xiv–xv.
 82 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

art that needs to be constantly remastered.” The church is therefore

constantly working toward an adequate approach to scripture and
learning the art of balancing two very different exegetical methods.
Our efforts toward a synthesis will necessarily remain imperfect, but
their goal is always the same: an encounter with the Lord. Writing
as a theologian rather than in his capacity as the Roman Pontiff, he
humbly confesses:
I would not presume to claim that this combination of the two hermeneu-
tics is already fully accomplished in my book. But I hope to have taken a
significant step in that direction. Fundamentally this is a matter of finally
putting into practice the methodological principles formulated for exege-
sis by the Second Vatican Council (in Dei Verbum 12), a task that unfor-
tunately has scarcely been attempted thus far. . . . In the combination of the
two hermeneutics of which I spoke earlier, I have attempted to develop a
way of observing and listening to the Jesus of the Gospels that can indeed
lead to personal encounter and that, through collective listening with Je-
sus’s disciples across the ages, can indeed attain sure knowledge of the real
historical figure of Jesus.64
The pope concludes that the Method C synthesis he is searching for
is ultimately a matter of “finally putting into practice the method-
ological principles formulated for exegesis by the Second Vatican
Council.” The council’s teaching demands that exegetes have re-
course to the strengths of both the faith hermeneutic (“Method A”)
and historical hermeneutic (“Method B”) if they wish to plumb the
depths of scripture. Each method on its own is insufficient for this
endeavor and eventually leads to problems.65
Benedict certainly acknowledges the many problems preva-
lent in Method B exegesis, but he is very clear that the historical-
critical approach may not be discarded any more than Method A
may be. In fact, as he writes in Jesus of Nazareth, “The historical-crit-
ical method—specifically because of the intrinsic nature of theology
and faith—is and remains an indispensable dimension of exegetical
work. For it is of the essence of biblical faith to be about real histori-

64. Ibid., xv–xvii.

65. In point of fact, in Verbum Domini the pope goes so far as to claim that the two
levels of exegesis “exist only in reciprocity.” VD §35.
 B e n e di c t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 83

cal events.”66 As the Holy Father explains, God has really entered
into human history in his revelation to Israel and with the coming
of Christ, and for this reason historical-critical exegesis must be car-
ried out in order that the historical dimension of scripture might
be more greatly penetrated. Moreover, although Method B has the
weakness of sometimes thinking it can arrive at a pure and perfect
understanding of Sacred Scripture devoid of all reference to its role
within the church, the implementation of this method nevertheless
keeps one from the opposite extreme view of paying heed to eccle-
siastical traditions while neglecting discoveries in the field of criti-
cal scholarship. Thus he says, “There should be no particular need
to demonstrate that on the one hand it is useless to take refuge in
an allegedly pure, literal understanding of the Bible. On the other
hand, a merely positivistic and rigid ecclesiasticism would not do
either.”67 In other words, one’s adherence to the pronouncements of

66. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, xv. He recently reiterated the same teaching in
VD §32: “Before all else, we need to acknowledge the benefits that historical-critical ex-
egesis and other recently-developed methods of textual analysis have brought to the life
of the Church. For the Catholic understanding of sacred Scripture, attention to such
methods is indispensable, linked as it is to the realism of the Incarnation.” Benedict’s
words also corroborate what Pius XII wrote in Divino afflante Spiritu, the most recent
encyclical devoted to the topic of biblical studies. Concerning the place of modern
methods in biblical exegesis, he stated: “Hence the Catholic commentator, in order to
comply with the present needs of biblical studies, in explaining the Sacred Scripture
and in demonstrating and proving its immunity from all error, should also make a pru-
dent use of this means, determine, that is, to what extent the manner of expression
or the literary mode adopted by the sacred writer may lead to a correct and genuine
interpretation; and let him be convinced that this part of his office cannot be neglected
without serious detriment to Catholic exegesis. . . . Let those who cultivate biblical stud-
ies turn their attention with all due diligence towards this point and let them neglect
none of those discoveries, whether in the domain of archaeology or in ancient history
or literature, which serve to make better known the mentality of the ancient writers,
as well as their manner and art of reasoning, narrating and writing.” VD §§38, 40; cf.
Pontifical Biblical Commission, Sancta Mater Ecclesia §4.
67. Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 6; cf. 118, where he states, “We
cannot seek refuge in an ecclesiastical positivism.” Cf. VD §44, which cites the Pontifi-
cal Biblical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church: “The basic prob-
lem with fundamentalist interpretation is that, refusing to take into account the histori-
cal character of biblical revelation, it makes itself incapable of accepting the full truth
of the incarnation itself. As regards relationships with God, fundamentalism seeks to
escape any closeness of the divine and the human . . . for this reason, it tends to treat the
 84 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

the Magisterium in matters of biblical interpretation ought not to be

done in a positivistic manner, that is to say in such a way that one
closes the door to modern findings without considering the pos-
sibility that scripture’s mysteries might be more deeply penetrated
with their help. Likewise, this means that Catholics should be cau-
tious in theorizing about the nature of biblical inspiration and iner-
rancy if they are familiar with these dogmas yet lack a firm grasp of
the Bible’s content. This situation has unfortunately led many Cath-
olics to write off modern biblical scholarship without ever having
honestly considered its claims and evidence.
Benedict is a great model for believers as he displays great con-
fidence in historical criticism’s ability to refine the Christian faith.
This is evident in the way he deals with what otherwise might ap-
pear to be attacks on the faith. For example, he treats at length the
discrepancies between the various Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’s Last
Supper. He speaks in a way that might catch some Christians off
guard, as in the following two examples:
The problem of dating Jesus’s Last Supper arises from the contradiction on
this point between the Synoptic Gospels, on the one hand, and Saint John’s
Gospel, on the other.68
Despite all academic arguments [that attempt to vindicate the Synoptic Gos-
pels’ chronology of the Last Supper], it seems questionable whether the trial
before Pilate and the crucifixion would have been permissible and possible
on such an important Jewish feast day [as the Passover].69
Many Christians may feel uncomfortable that Benedict acknowledg-
es a “contradiction” in the Gospels’ dating or that he says it seems
“questionable” that the Last Supper took place on the Passover, as the
church has accepted for centuries. The pope, however, is not afraid
of these problems and indeed goes on to employ the relevant conclu-
sions of historical criticism in his quest to grasp the mystery of the
Last Supper. It is clear that by calling certain things “questionable”

biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit. It fails to recognize
that the word of God has been formulated in language and expression conditioned by
various periods.”
68. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 106.
69. Ibid., 107.
 B e n e di c t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 85

or “contradictions,” he remains firmly convinced that these contrac-

tions are only apparent—that they can be explained if only we work
through them instead of ignoring them. For Benedict, a healthy
“critical” or Method C attitude sees advances in historical criticism
and the other sciences as the work of providence which ultimately
assists us in the effort to better elucidate the church’s teachings.70
Spelling out the interplay between patristic-medieval and his-
torical-critical exegesis, Benedict writes that there are two exegetical
“operations” pertinent to the examination of any given text of scrip-
ture from a Method C perspective:
Certainly texts must first of all be traced back to their historical origins and
interpreted in their proper historical contexts to the extent possible. But the
second exegetical operation is that they must also be examined in the light
of the total movement of history and in the light of history’s central event,
our Lord Jesus Christ. Only the combination of both these methods will
yield understanding of the Bible.71

70. After discussing the various advances in the field of biblical studies over the
fifty years prior to writing his encyclical letter on promoting biblical studies, Pius XII
suggests that these be viewed by Christians in light of providence: “All these advantages
which, not without a special design of Divine Providence, our age has acquired, are as
it were an invitation and inducement to interpreters of the Sacred Literature to make
diligent use of this light, so abundantly given, to penetrate more deeply, explain more
clearly and expound more lucidly the Divine Oracles.” Pius XII, Promotion of Biblical
Studies [Divino afflante Spiritu], 1943 (hereafter DAS), §12. In this way, notwithstand-
ing the abuses of many who participate in (and of those who initiated the movement
of) modern critical scholarship, there may be a special providence to the advent of
this discipline, since it has brought about progress precisely because of its willingness
to question traditional assumptions. A Method C hermeneutic aims to appropriate
the tools and questions of modern scholarship while purifying these from any anti-
metaphysical or anti-Christian bias (Gregory Vall, conversation with author).
71. Benedict’s words are cited in Stallsworth, “The Story of an Encounter,” 107. He
repeats this theme in various works. For example, in his Feast of Faith: Approaches to a
Theology of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 58, he states, “The whole
Old Testament is a movement of transition to Christ.” In Eschatology: Death and Eter-
nal Life, translated by Michael Waldstein (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 1988), he likewise examines how this second exegetical operation
of examining events in light of Christ played out in the nascent church: “The risen
Lord became the canon within the canon, the criterion in whose light tradition must
be read. In the illumination which he brought, the internal struggles of the Old Testa-
ment were read as a single movement towards the One who suffered, was crucified, and
rose again.” (113.) As regards the topic of tracing texts back to their historical origins,
 86 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

The first operation, examining the historical origins and contexts of

biblical texts, is the prerogative of Method B. In a Method C herme-
neutic that incorporates the good of both Method A and Method
B, this comes first in the order of execution and provides ground
for the subsequent operation of Method A spiritual exegesis.72 It is
important to know as much as possible about the realities signified
by the words of a text (the literal sense) if one is to correctly grasp
any signification these realities might themselves have (their spiri-
tual sense). Meanwhile, just as grace perfects man by building on
nature, so Method A’s spiritual encounter with scripture perfects
Method B’s exegetical operation by placing the texts of scripture
within the total movement of history and understanding them in
light of Christ as history’s central event.73 Benedict makes this same
point in so many words:

Pius XII penned these words: “What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as
obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the
works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the
rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must,
as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the
aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what
modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use,
and in fact did use.” DAS §35.
72. In reality, of course, the ordinary Christian’s canonical reading of scripture is
not necessarily concerned with historical-critical questions and therefore comes “be-
fore” Method B academic treatment. However, I am trying here to describe the order
that is necessary in order to ensure a warranted rather than arbitrary canonical read-
ing, and this is achieved with the help of Method B.
73. Constitutive of this “perfection” wrought by Method A exegesis is the fact that
it does not negate, but rather preserves, the text’s original meaning ascertained through
Method B. For a Method C exegete, the spiritual sense apprehended through praying
biblical texts over the centuries makes the most sense when it is seen in continuity with
the historical events that gave rise to it. It is in this vein that John Paul II wrote, “The
truth of the biblical texts, and of the Gospels in particular, is certainly not restricted to
the narration of simple historical events or the statement of neutral facts, as historicist
positivism would claim. Beyond simple historical occurrence, the truth of the events
which these texts relate lies rather in the meaning they have in and for the history of sal-
vation. This truth is elaborated fully in the church’s constant reading of these texts over
the centuries, a reading which preserves intact their original meaning.” On the Relation-
ship between Faith and Reason [Fides et ratio], 1998, §94. For John Paul II as for Benedict
XVI, the historical and the spiritual are both vital dimensions of the word of God, and
one could not do away with one or the other without detriment to Christian theology.
 B e n e di ct’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l 87

The inner nature of the [historical-critical] method points beyond itself

and contains within itself an openness to complementary methods. In these
words from the past, we can discern the question concerning their mean-
ing for today; a voice greater than man’s echoes in Scripture’s human words;
the individual writings [Schriften] of the Bible point somehow to the living
process that shapes the one Scripture [Schrift].74
Method B exegesis may therefore come first in order of execution,
but it is not first in an absolute sense. What is first absolutely is
something the historical-critical method can only examine on a ma-
terial level and thus point toward—the reality of scripture as God’s
word, and the end of scripture which is to encounter God teaching
through his word (both of which are principles of Method A).75 In
other words, Method A gives the exegete the real reason for his in-
vestigation because it gives him God’s word, whereas Method B by
itself does not formally study scripture as God’s word; it examines
only its material components and therefore “does not transmit the
Bible to today, into my present-day life.”76 Method B’s investigation
of the human dimension of scripture must therefore be conducted
with the view of showing the inherent openness of scripture’s words
to a reality which transcends them and which they serve to make
present. Its operation should serve the reader by making it easier
for him to achieve what Method A seeks: an encounter with Christ,
who is not a mere figure of the past but is present teaching the read-
er of scripture today.
Benedict has described this interplay between the operations
of Method A and Method B in various other ways throughout his
corpus of work. He often uses different terms to describe the two
exegetical methods from different angles. He may speak of “Method

74. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, xviii.

75. As Benedict will write with regard to his own historical-critical work in Jesus
of Nazareth, “This book presupposes historical-critical exegesis and makes use of its
findings, but it seeks to transcend this method and to arrive at a genuinely theological
interpretation of the scriptural texts.” Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 295. For Benedict,
historical criticism is not an end in itself but rather an aid to our encounter with Christ
through “a genuinely theological interpretation of the scriptural texts.”
76. Benedict XVI, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, trans-
lated by Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 133.
 88 B e n e dic t’ s “ Method C ” Prop osa l

A” versus “Method B” at one moment and “historical hermeneutic”

versus “faith hermeneutic” in another; he has also referred to “schol-
arly” and “scientific” exegesis in contradistinction to lectio divina.
In an Angelus address delivered during the 2008 bishops’ synod on
God’s word, he taught Christians how to encounter Christ in scrip-
ture in the following manner: “Scientific exegesis and lectio divina
are therefore both necessary and complementary in order to seek,
through the literal meaning, the spiritual meaning that God wants
to communicate to us today.”77 This quote concisely encapsulates
the goal of the pope’s twofold exegetical approach. “Scientific exege-
sis” (Method B) ascertains the literal meaning of scripture, but it is
when the Christian turns to the prayer of lectio divina (a feature of
Method A’s approach) that he discovers the biblical text has a spiri-
tual meaning relevant to his own life. According to Benedict, this
spiritual sense is arrived at “through” the literal.78 In other words,
Method A does not negate Method B but rather presupposes and
builds upon it.
The upshot of Benedict’s work is that, when employing the tools
of Method B, the Method C exegete will be such only to the extent
that his Method B operation (investigating the origins and the lit-
eral sense of scripture) remains faithful to the principles of Method
A exegesis (e.g., sacred tradition, the Magisterium, inspiration, in-
errancy, the spiritual sense, etc.).79 In other words, even before he
77. Benedict XVI, Angelus. October 26, 2008.
78. It is significant that Benedict dedicated a section of his recent Verbum Domini
not only to the theory behind lectio divina but also to teaching Christians how to prac-
tice it today. As is frequently the case, here we have Benedict not only laying out theo-
retical principles for Christians but also offering guidance for instantiating them in real
life. Cf. VD §§86–87.
79. This schema seems to be consistent with the type of integration to which Fran-
cis Martin has recently alluded as being a necessary part of implementing the teachings
of Dei Verbum. See his “Revelation and Its Transmission,” in Vatican II: Renewal within
Tradition, edited by Matthew W. Lamb and Matthew Levering (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2008). Martin notes that although recent developments in the historical
sciences have challenged the traditional Christian model for approaching scripture,
little progress has been made since the council in terms of elucidating the truth of
scripture’s inspiration and dual authorship. He goes on to propose: “The solution lies
in a retrieval of the ancient principles and their application to our understanding of
the whole process of text production and text preparation as we now understand it. It
 B e n e di c t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 89

attempts to carry out Method A’s operation of spiritual exegesis, the

Method C exegete already begins his Method B operation in accor-
dance with the rule of faith adhered to by Method A.
In this way, it really is possible for the Method C exegete to in-
corporate Method B into his work: he is able to set aside the acci-
dental features or assumptions of particular exegetical “traditions”
without abandoning the principles of sacred tradition as a source
of revelation. For Pope Benedict, faith does not require that Chris-
tians espouse patristic-medieval assumptions to the extent of be-
lieving that Moses authored the entire Pentateuch, that the man Job
was a historical person, that the book of Isaiah was the work of a
single author, or that the Gospel of Matthew was the first of all the
Gospels to be composed.80 The Method C exegete can remain com-
pletely committed to the faith while asking questions and accept-
ing answers never entertained by exegetes of previous ages, and he

will also involve a profound reassessment of our modern and postmodern understand-
ing of cognition, history, and language.” (67.) Without naming them as I do, in this
brief statement Martin shows the importance of a “retrieval of the ancient principles”
(provided by Method A) as well as “their application to our understanding of the whole
process of text production and text preparation as we now understand it” (the work
of Method B). Also in this volume of collected essays on the documents of Vatican II,
Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, Denis Farkasfalvy, OCist, presents a detailed
study of Dei Verbum along with many insightful suggestions for projects that need to
be undertaken in order to build upon the theology presented therein. Cf. “Inspiration
and Interpretation,” in ibid., 77–100.
80. Indeed, in this respect Pope Benedict’s work often appears to endorse a diver-
gent view not only from the fathers but also from the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s
decrees in the early twentieth century, for example those which required Catholics to
hold Matthean priority and Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. For just a few indi-
cations of this, see his Eschatology, 37, 86; God and the World, 228–30; Daughter Zion:
Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 44–54;
In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, trans-
lated by Boniface Ramsey (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 10–11; Jesus of Naza-
reth: Holy Week, 106, 179; “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” in Opening
Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation, edited
by José Granados, Carlos Granados, and Luis Sánchez-Navarro (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2008), 126–34; Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press,
1966), 11–21, 116; “On the Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theo-
logian,” in The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Understanding Its Role in
Light of the Present Controversy, translated by Adrian Walker (San Franciso: Ignatius
Press, 1995), 106.
 90 B e ne dic t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l

can do this because his work stands in accord with the principles of
the Christian faith—not the least of which is the belief that greater
knowledge of the historical dimension of scripture leads to greater
knowledge of Christ.
It is appropriate to conclude this chapter with some of Benedict’s
most recent comments in Light of the World. In this book-length in-
terview, he once again reiterates the importance of historical-critical
exegesis and the need to establish a synthesis between critical and
faith-based approaches to scripture. Writing over twenty years after
the Erasmus lecture in which he introduced his Method C proposal,
the pope provides the following summary of its main principles:
The application of the historical method to the Bible as a historical text was
a path that had to be taken. If we believe that Christ is real history, and not
myth, then the testimony concerning him has to be historically accessible
as well. In this sense, the historical method has also given us many gifts.
It has brought us back closer to the text and its originality, it has shown
us more precisely how it grew, and much more besides. The historical-
critical method will always remain one dimension of interpretation. Vati-
can II made this clear. On the one hand, it presents the essential elements
of the historical method as a necessary part of access to the Bible. At the
same time, though, it adds that the Bible has to be read in the same Spirit in
which it was written. It has to be read in its wholeness, in its unity. And that
can be done only when we approach it as a book of the People of God pro-
gressively advancing toward Christ. What is needed is not simply a break
with the historical method, but a self-critique of the historical method; a
self-critique of historical reason that takes cognizance of its limits and rec-
ognizes the compatibility of a type of knowledge that derives from faith;
in short, we need a synthesis between an exegesis that operates with histori-
cal reason and an exegesis that is guided by faith We have to bring the two
things into a proper relationship to each other. That is also a requirement of
the basic relationship between faith and reason.81

81. Benedict XVI, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the
Times (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 171–72 (emphasis added). See also Bene-
dict’s recent comments in VD §34: “The Synod Fathers rightly stated that the positive
fruit yielded by the use of modern historical-critical research is undeniable. While to-
day’s academic exegesis, including that of Catholic scholars, is highly competent in the
field of historical-critical methodology and its latest developments, it must be said that
comparable attention needs to be paid to the theological dimension of the biblical texts,
so that they can be more deeply understood in accordance with the three elements
indicated by the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum.”
 B e n e di c t’ s “Method C ” Prop osa l 91

It is once again clear that for Benedict the historical-critical method

plays a key role in exegesis. At the same time, he quotes Vatican II
in explaining that scripture “has to be read in its wholeness, in its
unity.” The only way to achieve this is to read it as the story of “the
People of God progressively advancing toward Christ.” It would
be difficult to find a better endorsement of the hermeneutic of the
divine pedagogy than what Benedict has here. He likewise reiter-
ates the call for a “synthesis between an exegesis that operates with
historical reason and an exegesis that is guided by faith.” For Bene-
dict, the truth and unity of scripture cannot be reconciled in the
face of modern challenges unless exegetes have recourse to the tools
of both Method A and Method B exegesis and seek to illumine the
divine pedagogy at work within scripture. If therefore one grapples
with the greatest of problems within scripture in light of Benedict’s
plan for exegesis, it will lead Christians to a deeper encounter with
the mystery of Christ in scripture as well as a better understanding
of the nature of scripture itself.
 c ha p t e r 3

Th e P r ob l e m of Dev e l o p m e n t

Having surveyed problematic themes within scripture in chap-

ter 1 and elucidated Benedict’s Method C exegesis proposal in chap-
ter 2, we are now in a position to explore more precisely how a Meth-
od C approach to scripture might operate. In the next two chapters,
we will demonstrate that the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas pro-
vides the proper basis on which to carry out Benedict’s exegetical
pro­posal.
The present chapter elucidates Aquinas’s “theology of the history
of revelation,” in which he is able to show the unity of scripture (em-
phasized by Method A exegesis) while acknowledging the significant
developments observable within its Old and New Testaments (em-
phasized by Method B exegesis). We will use Aquinas’s thought in the
effort to account for the first major difficulty raised by the historical-
critical observations of the first chapter: the fact that not all portions
of scripture explicitly teach the fullness of revealed truth Christians
expect to find in the Bible. In what follows, we will see that, accord-
ing to St. Thomas, the substance of the Judeo-Christian faith did not
change throughout the course of salvation history even though there
was a development or increase in the number of truths believed by
the faithful as God gradually taught them about himself. Aquinas’s
framework illumines the phenomenon of development within scrip-
ture, thus making it possible to defend the inerrancy of early biblical
texts which fail to explicitly display a clear conception of the divine

92
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opmen t 93

oneness (Theme 1), an understanding of evil consonant with Chris-

tian doctrine (Theme 2), or hope for the resurrection of the dead
(Theme 3). Later in the book we will return to these problematic bibli-
cal themes and apply Aquinas’s thought to them, but in this chapter
our task is simply to elucidate his theological principles.

Th e “ Su bstance” of Faith
“Faith is the ‘substance’ of things hoped for; the proof of things
not seen.” Such is the translation of Hebrews 11:1 offered by Bene-
dict XVI in his second encyclical, Spe salvi.1 Benedict’s translation
squares precisely with the Latin translation of this text produced
at the time of the early church and taken up by St. Thomas Aqui-
nas. The term “substance” used above is a translation of the Latin
substantia and the original Greek hypostasis (ὑπόστασις). Benedict
indicates that this word choice is important because it emphasizes
something about the nature of the faith that other translations fail
to convey. Unlike translations which translate Heb 11:1 so as to de-
fine faith as the mere “assurance” of things hoped for (as the RSV
has it) or a “standing firm” (feststehen) in what one hopes, substantia
or “substance” implies that the Christian faith is an organism with
a unique and enduring identity.2 In his Commentary on the Epistle
to the Hebrews, St. Thomas deals with precisely this issue of what it
means for faith to be the “substance” of things for which Christians
hope. His considerations in this commentary will be foundational
for our own work of articulating how the “substance” of our faith
remained one and the same throughout the course of divine revela-
tion and throughout the scriptures.
The importance of correctly translating the term hypostasis as
substance becomes apparent when we read St. Thomas’s treatments
of the virtue of faith that show up throughout his corpus, including

1. Benedict XVI, Saved in Hope [Spe salvi], 2007, §7.

2. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not
seen” (RSV). The other rendition of the term hypostasis as “standing firm” in one’s faith
appears in the Einheitsübersetzung, the ecumenical translation of the Bible approved
by the German Catholic bishops.
 94 T he Proble m of Deve l opment

his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews as well as the questions

on prophecy and faith in De veritate and the Summa Theologiae. It
is precisely the reality that our faith has a “substance” that allows
Aquinas to develop his theology of the history of revelation, which
is able to vindicate the unity of divine revelation (a key component
of Method A exegesis) while recognizing its development over the
course of time (acknowledged above all by Method B exegesis).3
Specifically, Aquinas is able to argue that the “substance of the ar-
ticles of faith,” that is to say the essence of divinely revealed truth,
did not change over time even though the people of Israel affirmed
an increasing “number of the articles of faith” throughout salvation
history. He writes:
As regards the substance of the articles of faith (substantia articulorum fi-
dei), they have not received any increase as time went on: since whatever
those who lived later have believed, was contained, albeit implicitly, in the
faith of those Fathers who preceded them. But there was an increase in the
number of articles (numerus articulorum) believed explicitly, since to those
who lived in later times some were known explicitly which were not known
explicitly by those who lived before them.4
This distinction made by St. Thomas will help us to see that the faith-
ful of ancient Israel—and in turn their sacred writings—in some way
possessed the Christian faith and affirmed its beliefs. This point is
pivotal for the present study because righteous men who never met
Christ in the flesh cooperated with God in authoring the Old Testa-
3. The term “theology of the history of divine revelation” seems most fitting here
as we attempt to synthesize various writings of St. Thomas and show that he really does
have a comprehensive theological account of the unity and development of divine rev-
elation as attested by Sacred Scripture. This term was not used by St. Thomas himself,
but my use of it was inspired by similar expressions of two great Thomistic theologians.
Jean-Pierre Torrell explained that “Thomas had a clear consciousness of the temporal
condition of faith and of prophecy—or in other words the history of revelation (histoire
de la revelation) and of the Church.” “Saint Thomas et l’histoire,” 359 (my translation).
Charles Journet also spoke of a “théologie de l’histoire du salut” (theology of salva-
tion history). See his L’Église du Verbe incarné, Vol. 3: Essai de théologie de l’histoire du
salut (Paris: Desclée De Brouwer, 1969). The reason I do not employ Journet’s term is
because I am focusing on Aquinas’s theology of history from the standpoint of divine
revelation rather than the salvation of those who receive salvation through it. I might
just as easily have also called it “theology of revelation history.”
4. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.1, a.7.
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opmen t 95

ment. One can say that the Old Testament, and indeed the whole of
scripture, conveys revealed truth precisely because its authors pos-
sessed the substance of the Christian faith—even if it was in an in-
choate manner that fell short of belief in the Trinity, hope for the
Resurrection, or a clear articulation of the nature of good and evil.
Before delving deeper into St. Thomas’s treatment of faith, it is
important to review some basic definitions of terms operative in his
theology of the history of revelation. In particular, we must identify
the meaning of the expressions “substance of the articles of faith”
and “number of the articles of faith” introduced above, as well as the
meaning of the term “article of faith” which concerns them both.
According to Aquinas, the deposit of faith is made up of “articles” or
subject matters.5 These articles act like joints that connect the truths
of the faith to one another.6 Each one of them designates a funda-
mental revealed truth, from the Trinity to the Incarnation of Christ
to the resurrection of the dead—in short all the truths we profess in
the creed. These are the principles upon which the entirety of Chris-
tian theology rests.

5. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q.14, a.2. Translations from De veritate in the rest
of this chapter are mine.
6. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.1, a.6. The Latin word for joint is articulus, and
Aquinas notes that in Greek it is arthron (from which we get words such as arthritis).
The deposit of faith is also a unified body of knowledge to which a man can assent as
a whole, according to its substance, as it were. John Henry Newman in his An Essay
in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1989), gives an apt description of this act of assent: “He who believes in the depositum
of Revelation, believes in all the doctrines of the depositum . . . whether he knows little
or much, he has the intention of believing all that there is to believe whenever and as
soon as it is brought home to him, if he believes in Revelation at all. All that he knows
now as revealed, and all that he shall know, and all that there is to know, he embraces
it all in his intention by one act of faith.” (130.) Aquinas himself addresses this point
in dealing with the problem of those who do not have explicit faith in Christ. These
individuals may have implicit faith in him because they have assented to the substance
of the faith as a whole and would be ready to assent to more articles if they become
known to them: “As regards the primary points or articles of faith, man is bound to
believe them, just as he is bound to have faith; but as to other points of faith, man is not
bound to believe them explicitly, but only implicitly, or to be ready to believe them, in
so far as he is prepared to believe whatever is contained in the Divine Scriptures. Then
alone is he bound to believe such things explicitly, when it is clear to him that they are
contained in the doctrine of faith.” Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.2, a.5.
 96 T he Proble m of Deve l opm ent

Having defined what Aquinas means by an article of faith, now

it is important to explain the meaning of the other expressions in-
troduced above. To say that the number of the articles of faith in-
creased is another way of stating Method B’s observation that di-
vine revelation developed over time, that the faithful of later stages
within the history of revelation were privileged to affirm a greater
number of beliefs or articles than the faithful of previous ages. To
say the substance of the articles of faith remained the same, mean-
while, is to affirm with Method A that the essential content of the
faith did not suffer change on account of its development over time.
The substance of the articles of faith denotes the essential content
of what God has revealed about himself and about his plan for the
redemption of mankind. For St. Thomas, any person who has the
virtue of faith possesses its entire substance even if he is not privy to
explicit knowledge of how the substance has grown to maturity in
history and cannot affirm all the articles of the creed.
An illustration will serve to elucidate the importance of this
distinction between the substance of the articles of faith and the
number of the articles of faith. Say a certain man who does not con-
sciously accept Christ makes an act of faith in God and his provi-
dence, that God has ordered him to the end of beatitude and that he
will lead him there no matter what adversity afflicts him. Another
man similarly believes in God and his providence, but because of
God’s teaching he is also privy to specific details regarding how
God’s promise has been providentially fulfilled: that Jesus Christ
became man, that he died and rose to redeem man, and that the
man who believes in him will also rise from the dead on the last
day. Recalling that for St. Thomas the substance of the articles of
faith did not suffer an essential change even though the number of
the articles of faith increased over time, the first man in the exam-
ple (who held a more general belief in divine providence and was
not aware of the truth of the Resurrection) possessed substantially
the same faith as the man who was privy to explicit knowledge of
Christ’s death and Resurrection, which is the ultimate answer of di-
vine providence to the problem of affliction and death. Although
the second man explicitly assented to more parts or articles of faith,
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opm ent 97

the first man also possessed the entire substance of the Christian
faith because he demonstrated belief in God and his providence and
would have readily assented to more articles of faith if only they had
been revealed to him.

The “Rosebu d” or “ Embryo” of Fa i th

By itself what was said above does not suffice to explain pre-
cisely how a rudimentary faith can be substantially the same as
explicit Christian faith. The answer lies in St. Thomas’s exegesis of
Heb 11:6. The verse reads: “Whoever would draw near to God must
believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” For
St. Thomas, this verse already contains the whole “substance of the
faith” that is mentioned in Heb 11:1:
All the articles are contained implicitly in certain primary matters of faith,
[namely] God’s existence and His providence over the salvation of man, ac-
cording to Hebrews 11: “He that cometh to God, must believe that He is,
and is a rewarder to them that seek Him.” For the existence of God includes
all that we believe to exist in God eternally, and in these our happiness con-
sists; while belief in His providence includes all those things which God
dispenses in time, for man’s salvation, and which are the way to that happi-
ness: and in this way, again, some of those articles which follow from these
are contained in others: thus faith in the Redemption of mankind includes
belief in the Incarnation of Christ, His Passion and so forth.7
For St. Thomas, all that is essential to the Christian faith (the Resur-
rection, the triune nature of God, the moral law, etc.) is rooted in
the two primary “matters” (credibilia) of faith mentioned Heb 11:6,
namely, God’s existence and his providence. In his insightful reflec-
tion on this passage from St. Thomas, Charles Journet explains that
the Trinity is already involved in the more fundamental revelation
of God’s existence and is contained therein as a rose in its bud. Like
a rose that has yet to bloom, the doctrine of the Trinity is present
within the doctrine of God’s existence, but it is only over time that
God makes it fully available to man. In the same way, even though
people who lived before Christ could not see it, the revelation that

7. Ibid., II-II, q.1, a.7.

 98 T h e Proble m of Deve l opm ent

God cared for the salvation of men already implicitly involved the
promise of his redemptive Incarnation and all the articles of faith
bound up with it, including the resurrection of the body.8 As Jour-
net observes, these latter truths can only be known by an act of
divine revelation, and yet they flower from the primary matters of
faith which can be assented to on the basis of reason alone.
Journet employs another helpful analogy to convey how the
various articles of faith developed out of the two primary matters or
credibilia of God’s existence and providence: “Christianity existed in
embryo form before Christ. . . . Those who were saved before Christ
were saved through him; they constituted, by anticipation, his Mys-
tical Body, his Church. For, even then, grace was Christian.” 9 Jour-
net thus likens affirmation of the two credibilia to an embryo that
contains the whole substance of Christian faith in a manner that has
yet to fully develop. Like a rosebud, an embryo contains the whole
substance of an entity that is growing and developing, but its mature
state is something that humans can only see over the course of time.
Journet is not the only theologian to employ this analogy in refer-
ence to the substance of the faith and its various modes of presence
in believers. In Spe Salvi Benedict XVI offers a strikingly similar ex-
ample to illustrate this principle in the life of Christians today. He
likens the faith of Christians to an embryo that contains the whole
substance of the faith in a manner that will be fully developed only
in Heaven. He writes, “Through faith, in a tentative way, or as we
might say ‘in embryo’—and thus according to the ‘substance’—there
are already present in us the things that are hoped for: the whole,
8. Charles Journet, What Is Dogma? translated by Mark Pontifex, OSB (New York:
Hawthorn Books, 1964), 38–39.
9. Charles Journet, The Meaning of Grace, translated by Geoffrey Chapman, Ltd.
(New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1960), 38–39. Ultimately, only a robust understand-
ing of time and eternity can adequately account for how Christ’s grace reached back
into the time before his coming. For a lucid discussion of time and eternity, see Mat-
thew Lamb, Eternity, Time, and the Life of Wisdom (Naples, Fla.: Sapientia Press of Ave
Maria University, 2007). Lamb states, “All of creation, including the totality of concrete
durations with all of the events occurring in them, is present in the Divine Eternal
Presence.” (21–22.) In this way, the benefits of Christ’s Passion can touch any individual
at any time in human history, because the historical moment of Christ’s Passion is eter-
nally present in God and in God all human beings are present to it.
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opm ent 99

true life.”10 In other words, according to Benedict, Christians now

enjoy the fullness of truth revealed by God, and yet the reality to
which we assent will be fully manifest only in the beatific vision after
the “embryo” of our faith has grown to maturity. Although Bene-
dict’s analogy is made in order to describe the passage from the state
of Christian belief to the state of glory, and Journet’s is made de-
scribing the passage from the state of the Old Law to the New Law,
both illustrate the presence of development or flowering within the
substance of the faith. Those who have faith but have not explicitly
accepted Christ are fellow travelers with Christians. Christians are
blessed to have received additional divine revelation. We possess
substantially the same faith right now, and God willing we will pos-
sess substantially the same faith on the other side of the grave when
that faith will at last fully bloom.
Notwithstanding the precision and beauty of the above accounts,
it is not as if these men were the first to come up with analogies
to illustrate the development of faith in terms of substance. Aqui-
nas himself provides an analogy to illustrate the journey Christians
make when rising from faith in God in this life to vision of him in
Heaven.. This time belief in the primary matters of the faith is lik-
ened to grasping the principles of geometry and drawing conclu-
sions based on them:
Whoever has the principles of a science, say geometry, has its substance.
And if geometry were the essence of beatitude, whoever possessed the
principles of geometry would, in some way, have the substance of beati-
tude. But our faith is such that we believe the blessed will see and enjoy
God. Therefore, if we will to attain this, it is necessary that we believe the
principles of that knowledge. And these [principles] are the articles of faith,
which contain the entire summary of this knowledge. . . . In these words is
shown the order of the act of faith to its end, for faith is ordered to things
to be hoped for, as a beginning in which the whole is, as it were, contained
essentially as conclusions are in principles.11

10. Benedict XVI, Saved in Hope [Spe salvi], 2007, §7.

11. Thomas Aquinas, Super Epistolam B. Pauli ad Hebraeos lectura, caput 11, lectio 1.
Translations in this chapter from Aquinas’s commentary are mine.
 100 T he Proble m of Deve l opment

In conjunction with the images provided by Journet and Benedict,

Aquinas helps clarify that an individual Christian, by virtue of his
belief in the articles (here called “principles”) of faith, already pos-
sesses the whole “substance” he hopes to see and enjoy in heaven. In
order to possess the substance of the faith, the individual does not
have to explicitly affirm every “conclusion,” but only the “principles”
of faith. Given Aquinas’s understanding that believers of all times
and places possess substantially the same faith, it stands to reason
that believers of pre-Christian times who demonstrated sincere
belief in the two credibilia of Heb 11:6 but were unaware of other
Christian doctrines had faith in these truths as latent “conclusions”
to be drawn from the “principles” of their faith.

St. Thomas on t h e Divine Pe dag o g y

The hermeneutic of divine pedagogy beautifully illumines this
dynamic whereby “primary matters” of the faith develop and grow
numerically throughout the course of revelation without changing
the substance of the faith. To reiterate what was introduced in chap-
ter 1, the divine pedagogy refers to God the Father’s plan whereby he
gradually prepared his chosen people to welcome the revelation that
culminated in the coming of Jesus Christ. Without using this pre-
cise expression, St. Thomas has his own account of the divine peda-
gogy, and it shows up in many places throughout his corpus. For
St. Thomas as for the fathers from whom he inherited this image,
God is the teacher or master who little by little delivered to his dis-
ciple Israel the knowledge of the faith and the art of upright living.12
In De veritate, St. Thomas develops his divine pedagogy hermeneu-

12. Among the various fathers who employed the image of a divine pedagogy, of
particular note is Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus, which provides a thorough treat-
ment of how Christ teaches mankind in the moral life. Clement ends Book III of this
work with an indication that he will go on to compose a (now non-extant) work called
the Didaskalos. Another relevant work is Athanasius’s On the Incarnation of the Word
(Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), in which God is described as a
good teacher who condescends to mankind and instructs them through simple means
adequate to our bodily nature. (42–43.) See also Augustine’s On the Teacher and On
Christian Doctrine. Aquinas himself treats of the teacher in De veritate, q.11.
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opment 101

tic by comparing the education of the whole human race in divine

things to the education of an individual. He states, “Just as there is
a progress in the faith of an individual man over the course of time,
so there is a progress in faith for the whole human race. This is why
Gregory says that divine knowledge has increasingly grown over the
course of time.”13 In the same way that an individual believer slowly
appropriates the truths of the faith into his life, so, too, the people
of God gradually appropriated divine knowledge over the course of
time in which God taught them through revelation.
As Aquinas goes on to explain, God had to hand on the faith to
men in piecemeal form, not because he is an inept teacher, but be-
cause this is the only way men can digest its content: “Man acquires
a share of this learning, not indeed all at once, but little by little, ac-
cording to the mode of his nature.”14 Israel, God’s pupil, could not
perfectly receive the divine teaching precisely because she received
this teaching according to the mode of our weak human nature. It is
for this reason that it took time for God’s children to come to explic-
it knowledge of the full number of the articles of faith, even though
they possessed the substance of the faith throughout the entire du-
ration of the divine pedagogy. A perfect pedagogue who has perfect
knowledge of himself and his salvific plan, God did not reveal to Is-
rael more than she could handle at any given moment in history but
rather proposed truths in such a way that his pupil would struggle
with and internalize them in due time.
At the very foundation of Aquinas’s theology lies his astute ob-
servation that scripture itself likens the state of Israel in the Old Tes-
tament to spiritual childhood before God the Father. At every stage
of the divine pedagogy, God gave his children knowledge perfectly
adapted to their need and their ability to receive it. In the Summa
St. Thomas offers a concise yet robust account of this divine peda-
gogy:
The master, who has perfect knowledge of the art, does not deliver it all at
once to his disciple from the very outset, for he would not be able to take it
all in, but he condescends to the disciple’s capacity and instructs him little
13. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q.14, a.11.
14. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.2, a.3.
 102 T he Proble m of Deve l opm ent

by little. It is in this way that men made progress in the knowledge of faith
as time went on. Hence the Apostle (Galatians 3:24) compares the state of
the Old Testament to childhood.15
For St. Thomas as for St. Paul whose theology he invokes, God’s
firstborn son Israel gradually made progress in knowledge of him
in accordance with the divine teacher’s most wise pedagogy. God
condescended and taught man in accordance with the way he learns
best, which is “little by little.” In this way, as time went on and rev-
elation progressed, the people’s faith in God was able to grow ever
more explicit as truths previously unfathomable to the unaided hu-
man intellect became accessible through God’s teaching. Ultimately,
through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, man attained the per-
fection of knowledge with the explicit revelation of, among other
things, the resurrection of the body, the triune nature of God, and a
robust account of the nature of good and evil.
Aquinas explores this divine teaching method elsewhere in com-
menting on the same text just cited from St. Paul. He argues that
God’s teaching was perfectly suited to the needs and ability of the
people of God at every stage of divine revelation, despite the fact that
God did not attempt to convey the fullness of truth to them when he
theoretically could have done so. In the words of St. Thomas:
Nothing prevents a thing being not perfect simply, and yet perfect in re-
spect of time: thus a boy is said to be perfect, not simply, but with regard
to the condition of time. So, too, precepts that are given to children are
perfect in comparison with the condition of those to whom they are given,
although they are not perfect simply. Hence the Apostle says (Gal. 3:24):
“The Law was our pedagogue in Christ.”16
Here the word “pedagogue” explicitly appears in personification
of the law. God the divine pedagogue made instruments like the
law “pedagogues” in their own right. For St. Thomas, this does not
mean God was unable or unwilling to teach Israel himself; rather, it
was precisely because of his knowledge of frail human nature that
he used tangible and even transitory means like the law. Thus he is
able to say that “nothing prevents a thing being not perfect simply,
15. Ibid., II-II, q.1, a.7 ad 2.
16. Ibid., I-II, q.98, a.2 ad 1.
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opment 103

and yet perfect in respect of time.” In other words, the fact that God
had to teach Israel little by little and use means like the law does
not mean that it was the best teaching method in all conceivable
circumstances, but given man’s frail intellect and hard heart it was
“perfect in respect of time,” meaning that God adapted his teaching
to the needs of his disciple Israel at every moment throughout the
course of divine revelation.17

Th e T h ree Ages of Ma n
Aquinas is not content simply to state that the substance of the
faith developed over time as God gradually led his children to more
explicit knowledge of its various articles; he actually provides a
working schema that shows how the divine pedagogy unfolded and
the number of the articles of faith increased throughout salvation
history. Not surprisingly, he achieves this once again in the context
of a discussion of Heb 11:
Now our faith consists chiefly in two things: first, in the true knowledge
of God, according to Hebrews 11:6, “He that cometh to God must believe
that He is”; secondly, in the mystery of Christ’s incarnation, according to
John 14:1, “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” Accordingly, if we speak
of prophecy as directed to the Godhead as its end, it progressed accord-
ing to three divisions of time, namely before the Law, under the Law, and
under grace. For before the Law, Abraham and the other patriarchs were

17. In his work La rivelazione e l’ispirazione della Sacra Scrittura (Rome, Italy: Ediz-
ioni ADP, 1998), Giovanni Blandino, SJ, offers an illuminating analogy for how God
accommodated himself to Israel’s weaknesses as he gradually instructed the people in
the realities of God’s nature, the afterlife, and moral law. Like a missionary teaching a
catechumen, God began with a pagan people who knew little about the divine nature
or human destiny: “God worked through a gradual revelation: teaching Israel to believe
in one God, then revealing man’s destiny, the moral law, etc. He used the same method
a missionary does: beginning by teaching some simple and important truths, then oth-
ers. The catechumen at first has in mind a mix of exact and inexact ideas. Little by little
as the teaching progresses, the exact ideas increase more and more, while inexact ideas
gradually get eliminated.” (9, my translation.) When speaking of the divine pedagogy
in terms of Blandino’s analogy, however, it is crucial to emphasize the inspired nature
of scripture so as to clarify that scripture contains no formal assertions of error despite
the fact that it witnesses to growth in Israel’s knowledge and a gradual transformation
of “inexact ideas.”
 104 T h e Proble m of Deve l opment

prophetically taught things pertinent to faith in the Godhead. Hence they

are called prophets. . . . Under the Law prophetic revelation of things per-
tinent to faith in the Godhead was made in a yet more excellent way than
hitherto, because then not only certain special persons or families but the
whole people had to be instructed in these matters . . . because previously
the patriarchs had been taught to believe in a general way in God, one and
Almighty, while Moses was more fully instructed in the simplicity of the
Divine essence, when it was said to him, “I am Who am.” . . . Afterwards in
the time of grace the mystery of the Trinity was revealed by the Son of God
Himself.18
According to St. Thomas, history can be divided into three prin-
cipal epochs: the time before the law, the time under the law, and
time under grace. These epochs are marked precisely according to
the progress in knowledge of God made by mankind as a result of
the divine pedagogy. Those before the law such as Abraham were
prophetically taught things pertaining to God’s nature. Under the
law, however, God taught these things in a more excellent way, since
the whole people was then able to receive them. Moreover, under
the law knowledge of the Godhead was more explicit in that God
revealed to Moses his name, “I am Who am.” Finally, St. Thomas
indicates that in the time of grace “the mystery of the Trinity was
revealed by the Son of God Himself ” thus bringing to culmination
the history of divine revelation.
For this reason, St. Thomas can say that those who lived right
before the coming of Christ received the mysteries of salvation
“more fully” than did those who lived in previous epochs. Specifi-
cally, according to Aquinas, those who lived closer to the time of
Christ were more fully instructed about his Incarnation: “As to the
faith in Christ’s Incarnation, it is evident that the nearer men were
to Christ, whether before or after Him, the more fully, for the most
part, were they instructed on this point, and after Him more fully

18. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.174, a.6. As Jean-Pierre Torrell observes, Aquinas
was well aware of previous schematizations of history besides this three-tiered one he
received from Dionysius. He prefers this one, however, because it is based more di-
rectly upon scripture’s presentation of salvation history. See Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Saint
Thomas et l’histoire: état de la question et pistes de recherches,” Revue Thomiste 105
(2005): 363–67.
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opment 105

than before.”19 Aquinas elsewhere buttresses this argument by call-

ing upon the authority of St. Gregory: “Gregory says that ‘the knowl-
edge of the holy fathers increased as time went on . . . and the nearer
they were to Our Savior’s coming, the more fully did they receive the
mysteries of salvation.’ ”20 The reason why men of later times needed
to have more explicit knowledge of the mysteries of salvation, says
St. Thomas, was so that they would be prepared to welcome Christ’s
coming. For if the people did not possess a deep need and hope for
redemption but only thought of divine providence in a general way,
none of them would have accepted the man who claimed to be their
redeemer. They therefore not only needed the more general revela-
tion of God’s nature and providence that came before the law, they
also needed the law and the prophets to teach them more specifi-
cally who God is and what he promised to accomplish for mankind
through the coming of the Messiah.21
In his affirmation that the people of Israel received revelation
from God in different degrees throughout history, St. Thomas went
so far as to affirm that Moses saw the Lord face to face and therefore
had full knowledge of the nature of God.22 He likewise wrote that

19. Ibid., II-II, q.174, a.6.

20. Ibid., II-II, q.1, a.7. To illustrate how deeply rooted this thought is in Aquinas’s
thought, one may refer to his question on angelic knowledge where he makes a similar
point: “Among the prophets also, the later ones knew what the former did not know.”
Ibid., I, q.57, a.5 ad 3.
21. According to St. Thomas, preparation for the coming of Christ was not the only
reason people of later times needed fuller knowledge of divine things. They needed this
revealed knowledge because their natural knowledge had been clouded by sin: “For
as time went on sin gained a greater hold on man, so much so that it clouded man’s
reason, the consequence being that the precepts of the natural law were insufficient to
make man live aright, and it became necessary to have a written code of fixed laws, and
together with these certain sacraments of faith. For it was necessary, as time went on,
that the knowledge of faith should be more and more unfolded, since, as Gregory says
(Hom. vi in Ezech.): ‘With the advance of time there was an advance in the knowledge
of Divine things.’ ” Ibid., III, q.61, a.3 ad 2.
22. See Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.2, a.7. Here St. Thomas speaks of “learned”
men before the time of Christ who knew of his Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrec-
tion. To illustrate further, see De veritate q.12, a.14 and ST, II-II, q.174, a.4, in which
St. Thomas states that “Moses was greater than the other prophets. First, as regards the
intellectual vision, since he saw God’s very essence, even as Paul in his rapture did, ac-
cording to Augustine (Gen. ad lit. xii, 27).” In this statement, Aquinas takes the words
 106 T h e Proble m of Deve l opm ent

David was privy to an explicit knowledge of Christ’s Incarnation.23

In fact, according to St. Thomas, there were many in Israel both be-
fore the law and under the law who were privy to explicit knowledge
of the mystery of Christ. Contrasting the knowledge mankind had
of Christ before the Fall versus after the Fall, Aquinas writes:
But after sin, man believed explicitly in Christ, not only as to the Incarna-
tion, but also as to the Passion and Resurrection, whereby the human race
is delivered from sin and death: for they would not, else, have foreshad-
owed Christ’s Passion by certain sacrifices both before and after the Law,
the meaning of which sacrifices was known by the learned explicitly, while
the simple folk, under the veil of those sacrifices, believed them to be or-
dained by God in reference to Christ’s coming, and thus their knowledge
was covered with a veil, so to speak.24
It is interesting to note that in Aquinas’s view there were men be-
fore the time of Christ’s coming in the flesh who knew explicitly of
him and who expressed this knowledge through their sacrifices. Al-
though most men, the “simple folk,” did not know of Christ precise-
ly in this way, the fact remains that for St. Thomas many Israelites
were granted explicit knowledge of him before he came in the flesh.
Given this view, it is not at all surprising that Aquinas says that they
possessed the entire substance of the Christian faith.
Aquinas’s stance vis-à-vis the faith of Israelites before and un-
der the law becomes even less surprising when we examine what he

of Exodus quite literally and seems to imply that Moses had just as clear a vision of
the Godhead as St. Paul in the New Testament era did. He even goes so far as to affirm
that Moses’s gift of prophecy was greater than that of John the Baptist: “And yet, even
if none was greater than John the Baptist, it does not follow that none was greater than
he as to his grade of prophecy, for since prophecy is not a gift of sanctifying grace, one
who is less in merit can be greater in prophecy.” Ibid., q.12, a.14 ad 5.
23. In De veritate, q.12, a.14 ad 1, St. Thomas notes that although Moses is the great-
est of the prophets, those who came later (in particular, David) actually knew certain
other mysteries more fully than Moses: “Yet the vision of Moses was more excellent as
regards the knowledge of the Godhead; while David more fully knew and expressed
the mysteries of Christ’s incarnation.” In De veritate, q.12, a.14 ad 1, Aquinas speaks in
similar terms, all while still affirming the primacy of Moses as prophet: “Some later
[prophets] received more explicit revelation about [the Incarnation] than Moses did,
but they did not receive more explicit knowledge of the divinity, concerning which
Moses was most fully taught.”
24. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.1, a.7.
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opment 107

writes concerning the gentiles who lived in those same epochs. Ac-
cording to St. Thomas, there were righteous gentiles before the ad-
vent of Christ who knew him and attained salvation through true,
though implicit, belief. He states:
If, however, some were saved without receiving any revelation, they were
not saved without faith in a Mediator, for, though they did not believe in
Him explicitly, they did, nevertheless, have implicit faith through believing
in Divine providence, since they believed that God would deliver mankind
in whatever way was pleasing to Him, and according to the revelation of
the Spirit to those who knew the truth.25
For Aquinas, if a man who lived without explicit knowledge of Christ
attained salvation, it was on account of his affirmation of God’s abili-
ty “to deliver mankind in whatever way was pleasing to Him,” by vir-
tue of which he assented to the whole substance of the faith. Unlike
the “learned” of Israel, this man did not know specific details regard-
ing the form that his redemption would ultimately come to take in
Christ, and yet he could still possess the substance of the faith. Given
that Aquinas thus entertains the possibility of salvation even for gen-
tiles who were not privy to divine revelation, it is all the clearer that
an Israelite’s lack of explicit knowledge would not necessarily hinder
him from possessing the substance of the Christian faith. Regardless,
therefore, of whether or not one accepts Aquinas’s assumption that
learned men of pre-Christian times had explicit knowledge of Christ,

25. Ibid, II–II, q.2, a.7 ad 3. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Super Epistolam B. Pauli ad He-
braeos lectura, caput 11, lectio 1. As regards the extent to which gentiles need to dem-
onstrate explicit belief in God and his providence in order to be saved, Charles Journet
takes a step beyond St. Thomas in suggesting there exists a situation in which an indi-
vidual could possess the entire substance of the Christian faith and be saved even if he
lacks conscious assent to God’s existence and providence. This would take place in a
preconceptual manner through the will. Sooner or later in life, every individual is com-
pelled to choose for or against a rational human good. If a person chooses this good,
“without yet even thinking explicitly either of God or of his final end . . . he is tending
at once and directly, even though he is unaware of it, towards that good without which
the good proper to man would not exist for a single instant, towards God, the final
end of human life.” What Is Dogma? [Le dogme chemin de la foi], translated by Mark
Pontifex, OSB (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1964), 30. In Journet’s theology, this per-
son arrives at possession of the entire substance of the Christian faith through an act
of the will rather than the intellect. He there encounters in an implicit manner the full
mystery of the church. Cf. 35.
 108 T he Proble m of Deve l opm ent

his theology of the history of revelation wonderfully illumines Old

Testament texts that fall short of explicitly affirming the full range of
Christian belief.26 For, the fact that particular biblical authors fail to
explicitly affirm the full number of articles of the Christian faith does
not thereby entail that the substance of the Christian faith is not pres-
ent within them and their writings. With Method A exegesis, we can
therefore affirm that the word of God has a substantial unity, while
with Method B we recognize that this unity is not that of a monolith
but rather that of a living and progressively maturing organism.

Devel opment of D o ctrine w i t h i n

Rev e l at ion and wit h in t h e Chu rch
At this point we need to consider a possible misunderstanding
of Aquinas’s approach to the history of divine revelation: he states
that the substance of the faith remained the same throughout the
course of divine revelation, yet it is not as if the number of articles

26. Those who adhere to the Method B approach for the most part tend to reject
the premise that individuals living before Christ had explicit knowledge of his mystery.
Based on this modern insight (if it is correct), a Method C approach to the impasse
might entail the argument that there were indeed many before Christ who had knowl-
edge of him in an implicit rather than an explicit way. For, these particular thoughts
of St. Thomas concerning the degree to which Old Testament personages had explicit
knowledge of Christian mysteries do not form part of the body of revealed sacred tra-
dition. A Method C exegete therefore does not have to hold that Moses literally saw
the face of God or that David had conscious knowledge of Christ’s Resurrection. There
is indeed precedent in Aquinas’s work for seeing implicit knowledge of Christ among
those who lived before him, for we observed above that gentiles of any epoch could be
saved due to their implicit faith in Christ. Cf. ST, I-II, q.106, a.1 ad 3; II-II, q.2, a.7 ad 3.
The question here is whether the learned Israelites who lived under the Law were saved
because of explicit faith in Christ (as Aquinas assumes), or because they had implicit
faith in him (as a Method C exegete might say). I suspect Aquinas would still wish to
distinguish the implicit faith of Israelites from the implicit faith of gentiles, and this
certainly needs to be done; for, many gentiles only knew of the two primary credibilia
of faith whereas Israelites were privy to knowledge of these as well as to what came
to them through divine revelation. At the same time, it is interesting that Aquinas af-
firms there were times that gentiles received “revelations” directly from God: “Many
of the gentiles received revelations of Christ, as is clear from their predictions. Thus we
read (Jb 19:25): “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” The Sibyl too foretold certain things
about Christ, as Augustine states (Contra Faust. xiii, 15). ST, III, q.2, a.7 ad 3.
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opmen t 109

increased by a mere process of deduction. It can hardly be said that

those who merely believed in God and assented to the reality of his
providence could have arrived at knowledge of the entire Creed if
only they thought hard enough about it. A cursory reading of St.
Thomas’s exposition might lend itself to such an interpretation.
Upon closer inspection, however, one can see that the people of
God’s progress from implicit to explicit faith throughout the history
of revelation involved more than mere thought, explanation, and
deduction. Put simply, those who live in later epochs of salvation
history have benefitted from additional divine revelation.
In this lies the difference between the scriptures’ witness to de-
velopment of doctrine within divine revelation (which has been the
principal subject of our discussion) and the development of doc-
trine that has taken place through theology since the completion of
divine revelation in the early church. There is indeed a real analogy
between the development of doctrine within revelation and the de-
velopment of doctrine within the church, as prominent theologians
have noted.27 Yet as Charles Journet points out, a man’s passage
from implicit to explicit knowledge of the faith differs according to
whether it requires fresh revelations or occurs by “simple develop-
ment,” the type of development described masterfully by John Henry
Newman.28 For, on the one hand, the development within revelation

27. For example, in the volume Explorations in Theology: The Word Made Flesh (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), Hans Urs von Balthasar states, “There is an inner anal-
ogy between the progress of revelation and that of doctrine.” (89–90.) Not only does
Balthasar argue that the church’s doctrine has maintained a single substantial form in
its development over the centuries, in the work A Theology of History (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1994), he also describes divine revelation as a single form (gestalt) that
progresses over time in a way clearly distinct from the way mankind’s natural religious
knowledge grows. Cf. 135–36. In his In the Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the
Distinctively Catholic (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), Balthasar also speaks of Sa-
cred Scripture having a “form”: “This total picture,” he says, “is held fast in a corpus of
writings that outwardly seems strangely fortuitous; yet inwardly its parts are seen to be
related to one another in inexhaustibly new ways. As a picture, a form, it is open.” (95.)
28. Journet, What Is Dogma? 42. The Second Vatican Council likewise treats this
kind of doctrinal development: “This tradition which comes from the Apostles devel-
ops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the under-
standing of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens
through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in
 110 T h e Proble m of Deve l opm ent

we witness in the Bible was only possible due to fresh revelations

and new teaching on the part of God. The faith became more “ex-
plicit” to the people of God not merely because their knowledge of
the faith grew more conscious but also insofar as they received rev-
elation of realities which previously had lain “implicit” within the
realities they did know. Thus the Israelites could not have known
about realities such as the Trinity, Incarnation, and Resurrection on
their own; these had to be directly revealed by God himself.
On the other hand, development of doctrine within the church
(“simple development”) does not require, and indeed excludes,
God’s direct teaching of man through new revelation. The church’s
faith becomes more “explicit” insofar as we gradually apprehend, or
become more conscious of, the revelation entrusted to us once and
for all. Thus truths such as purgatory, papal infallibility, or Mary’s
Immaculate Conception are not taught explicitly in the Bible, but
when we take into account sacred tradition—which Vatican II de-
scribes as commanding “the same sense of loyalty and reverence”
as scripture itself—the church needed no additional revelation from
God in order to teach such realities.29 Those who are familiar with
Newman’s treatment of doctrinal development will recall that he ad-
their hearts (Lk 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities
which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through
episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the
Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words
of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.” DV §8.It is significant that Newman
himself sees an analogy between development of doctrine within revelation and within
the church. Addressing the notion of prophetic revelation in An Essay on the Develop-
ment of Christian Doctrine, (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989),
Newman states, “The prophetic Revelation is, in matter of fact . . . a process of develop-
ment: the earlier prophecies are pregnant texts out of which the succeeding announce-
ments grow; they are types. It is not that first one truth is told, then another; but the
whole truth or large portions of it are told at once, yet only in their rudiments, or in
miniature, and they are expanded and finished in their parts, as the course of revela-
tion proceeds.” (64.) Newman has the correct intuition that there exists an underlying
“idea” behind revelation itself which was clarified gradually over time as Israel grew in
her ability to apprehend the Lord’s teaching. Indeed right after the passage just cited he
says, “The whole Bible, not its prophetical portions only, is written on the principle of
development,” and “It is certain that developments of Revelation proceeded all through
the Old Dispensation down to the very end of our Lord’s ministry.” (65, 67–68.)
29. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, 1965, §9.
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opment 111

amantly rejects the possibility that growth of dogma in the church

is due to additional divine revelation over the centuries. Revelation
ended at the death of the last apostle. No Christian has ever known
more than the apostles knew, although their knowledge may be
more explicit (in the sense of being more conscious) than that of the
apostles. According to Newman, the church today “knows more”
than the apostles only in the sense that she has had time to contem-
plate the implications of the deposit of faith in view of applying it
to modern exigencies.30 Despite the many developments that have
occurred, the substance of the faith is the same now as it was two
thousand years ago at the church’s foundation.
In contrast to this doctrinal development within the church,
Journet points out that the development of doctrine within revela-
tion permitted, and even demanded, fresh revelations from God.
For Journet grants that the substance of the faith is the same in be-
lievers regardless of whether they affirm only the primary matters
of faith or any and all of the articles of the Christian Creed. How-
ever, he notes that while the article of the Trinity is in itself implic-
itly contained in the dogma of the existence of a supernatural God,
and the articles that follow from Christ’s redemptive Incarnation are
implicitly contained in the dogma of a God who rewards man, Jour-
net observes that these truths are not implicit in relation to man. In
other words, whereas an apostle may have explicitly confessed fewer
truths than Christians do today, all these truths would have resided
in his consciousness in an implicit way. An early Christian who had
never heard the word “Trinity” could have understood and assented
to it once it was explained to him. In contrast, those who lived be-

30. Cf. John Henry Newman, “The Theory of developments in Religious Doc-
trine,” in Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 312–51; cf. John Henry Newman, The Theologi-
cal Papers of John Henry Newman on Biblical Inspiration and on Infallibility, edited by
J. Derek Holmes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979): “The Church does not know more
than the Apostles knew . . . I wish to hold that there is nothing which the Church has
defined or shall define but what an Apostle, if asked, would have been fully able to
answer and would have answered, as the Church has answered, the one answering by
inspiration, the other from its gift of infallibility.” (157.) Cf. Ian Ker, foreword to New-
man’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, xxiii–xxiv.
 112 T he Proble m of Deve l opment

fore the fullness of revelation in Christ confessed fewer truths for a

very different reason: they could not explicitly assent to the dogmas
of the Christian Creed because these truths were in no way available
to their intellects in the first place.

C onclusions regarding Aquinas ’ s T h e ol o g y

of t h e H istory of Revel ati on
In this chapter, we have seen that Aquinas’s theology provides
a compelling framework within which to explain the presence of
problematic biblical texts which fail to paint an accurate portrait
of God’s nature, the relationship between good and evil, or the af-
terlife. The authors of the Old Testament are no exception to the
rule that no man ever came to full knowledge of the Christian faith
apart from the revelation of Christ. Nevertheless, as we have seen
through our examination of the writings of St. Thomas, all the arti-
cles of the Creed are implicitly contained in the fundamental reality
of God’s existence and providence, the primary credibilia of the faith
to which blessed men of every epoch have assented. However, since
revealed truths are not naturally knowable by man, God needed to
give him fresh revelations throughout the course of history. This is
what caused the people of God to affirm an increasing number of
articles as salvation history progressed and in accordance with their
ability to receive them. St. Thomas maintains that the substance of
the faith did not suffer change over the course of revelation on ac-
count of this gradual maturation in Israel’s explicit knowledge of
the faith. For St. Thomas, all the articles of the Christian faith are
in themselves contained implicitly in the dogma of a supernatural
God who rewards man, and consequently anyone who affirms these
truths by that very act demonstrates implicit knowledge of the Trin-
ity, Incarnation, and all the articles of faith bound up with them.
What is the upshot of Aquinas’s theology of the history of rev-
elation, and how does it fit into the big picture of our present work?
Aquinas’s theology dispels the first objection raised in the first chap-
ter by demonstrating that divine revelation has a unified substance
(as Method A has long affirmed) despite the fact that vast develop-
 T h e Proble m of Deve l opmen t 113

ments occurred within it over history (which Method B has brought

to light in recent times). His hermeneutic of divine pedagogy makes
room for Method C exegetes who find less than compelling certain
non-essential traditions which disregard the presence of develop-
ment within scripture. It gives believers a rational basis for accept-
ing the inerrancy of biblical texts even when they say disconcerting
things and refrain from explicitly teaching the fullness of the faith
in such matters as the nature of God, the nature of good and evil,
and the afterlife. That said, a Christian who admits the presence of
development within scripture would still argue that scripture can-
not deny the articles of faith or make affirmations that contradict
other parts of scripture. The question we have to ask at this point is
whether this expectation squares with the problematic biblical data
presented in chapter 1. Thus we now turn to address the second ob-
jection raised in chapter 1 regarding the presence of apparent con-
tradictions in scripture.
 c ha p t e r 4

Th e P r o b l e m of A ppa r e n t
C on t r a dic t ion s

The preceding chapters have emphasized that the problems of

development, diversity, and apparent contradictions in scripture
can be reconciled only if we develop a robust theology of scripture
based on a synthesis of the best of ancient and modern exegesis. To
this end, chapter 3 proposed a Method C approach to the problem of
scriptural development on the basis of St. Thomas’s theology of the
history of revelation. Aquinas demonstrates that divine revelation—
and consequently scripture as its inspired witness—maintained a
unity over the centuries (in accordance with Method A’s principles)
despite the fact that it greatly developed throughout this same time
frame (as emphasized by the Method B approach). However, the
apparent presence of blatant contradictions in scripture poses an
even greater problem—in particular in times when later texts seem
to constitute regressions rather than developments with respect to
texts written earlier in the course of divine revelation. We therefore
need to delve deeper yet into the thought of St. Thomas. This will
involve turning from his theology of the history of revelation, which
enables us to account for development and diversity in what God
reveals, to his theology of the act of revelation. In this chapter, we
will see that examining what takes place when God reveals truth to
a prophet is key to making sense of biblical inspiration even in the
face of apparent contradictions.

114
 Appare nt C ontr adic tions 115

Proph ecy and Divine Revel ati on

In line with those who wrote before him on the topic, St. Thom-
as wrote that the act of divine revelation was best understood in re-
lation to the Holy Spirit’s gift of prophecy. If we are to tackle the
problem of apparent contradictions in biblical revelation, we must
therefore understand something about prophecy. It is important to
observe that Aquinas’s use of the term “prophet” is quite broad in
comparison with today’s standards. For example, though not usu-
ally counted among the prophets, for Aquinas all the authors of
scripture (David, Job, the chronicler, the authors of the New Testa-
ment, etc.) were true prophets precisely because they received rev-
elation from God. Seeing, therefore, that Aquinas views the authors
of scripture as prophets, we stand to benefit greatly from an investi-
gation of his treatment of prophecy insofar as it applies to the com-
position of Sacred Scripture.1 The precision and depth of Aquinas’s
work in this area is all too unknown by Christians today, but we will
see that it is crucial since it provides us a framework within which
to assess the various kinds of truth claims—including the appar-
ently false ones—made by the scriptures. With the help of Aquinas’s
theology we will be able to show that passages in which the sacred
authors seemingly contradict either one another or what Christians
know to be true today do not in fact contain errors. For from the
perspective of Aquinas, the truth of scripture depends on what its
authors intend to affirm or teach, and if a given passage appears to
contain something contradictory then the exegete must seek within
this passage an aim beyond that of definitively teaching an errone-
ous point of view.
Let us begin by exploring the term “prophecy” itself. For Aqui-
nas, the object of prophecy is “something known by God and sur-

1. Prophecy is all the more relevant in this context because we have been treating
scripture in light of its development, and Aquinas himself views prophecy as God’s suc-
cessive illumination and teaching of chosen men. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Super I Episto-
lam B. Pauli ad Corinthios lectura, caput 14, lectio 2. “If [the divine light] . . . is infused
successively (infunditur successive), then it is prophecy, which the prophets did not
have at once but successively and in piecemeal fashion (non subito sed successive et per
partes), as their prophecies show” (my translation).
 116 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

passing the faculty of man.”2 Man cannot attain prophetic knowledge

by his own power; God must grant it to him from above in the form
of a gratuitous grace, also known as a charism or gift. In Aquinas’s
view, prophecy is an “imperfect” form of divine revelation. Through
the gift of prophecy, God enables men on their earthly sojourn to
participate in the fullness of revelation which will occur only in the
beatific vision.3 Aquinas’s treatise offers a much more robust view of
prophecy than those who consider prophecy to be merely a matter
of predicting future events. He writes, “Prophetic knowledge comes
through a divine light, whereby it is possible to know all things
both divine and human, both spiritual and corporeal; and conse-
quently the prophetic revelation extends to them all.”4 In this way,
a prophet may be granted knowledge of things which in themselves
are unknowable to all men by nature, including the future contin-
gent events typically associated with prophecy. However, according
to Aquinas God can also grant prophetic revelation to teach a man
something which is remote from the knowledge of all men but is
in itself knowable. For example, Aquinas observes that the mystery
of the Trinity is in itself knowable to man, but it cannot be known
by natural reason. Finally, a prophet may be granted knowledge of
things which are remote only from the knowledge of particular men.
Such is the case when the secret thoughts of one man are manifested
prophetically to another.5 This broad understanding of prophecy
will be helpful in our exploration of the scriptures since Method
B exegetes will quickly point out that the Scriptures do not always
contain information Christians typically associate with prophecy
and divine revelation (the earthiness of the Song of Songs, the mun-

2. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.174, a.1.

3. Ibid., II-II, q.171, a.4 ad 2. “Hence it is written (1 Corinthians 13:8) that ‘prophe-
cies shall be made void,’ and that ‘we prophesy in part,’ i.e., imperfectly. The Divine rev-
elation will be brought to its perfection in heaven; wherefore the same text continues
(1 Corinthians 13:10): ‘When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall
be done away.’ ”
4. Ibid., II-II, q.171, a.3 (emphasis added).
5. At this point I would also refer the reader to Matthew Lamb’s lucid analysis of
prophecy in Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians,
translated by Matthew Lamb (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1966), 254nn14–15.
 Appare nt C ontr adic tions 117

dane histories in 1–2 Chronicles, and the problematic areas studied

in this work are but a few examples of things one would typically not
expect to see in a work which is considered to be inspired in its en-
tirety). Indeed, Christians who tend to follow a Method A approach
expect to see divine revelation in all the scriptures, yet Method B
scholarship observes that the scriptures frequently appear as mun-
dane works which at times even contradict the revelation contained
in other parts of scripture.

T wo Dimensions of Proph e c y:
Inspirat ion and Revel ati on
Before we can apply Aquinas’s account of prophecy to the prob-
lem of apparent contradictions within scripture, it is necessary to ex-
plore his description of how God causes knowledge to come about in
the inspired intellect of the prophet. From this point through much
of what follows in this chapter, we will be drawing on the work of
Aquinas’s twentieth-century commentators Paul Synave and Pierre
Benoit as they provide a thorough and insightful interpretation of
Aquinas’s theology of scripture. Their work is by no means defini-
tive, yet it remains one of the most serious scholarly proposals in
terms of attempting to articulate a theology of scripture in a way
that is faithful to the Church’s dogmatic principles (emphasized by
Method A) yet unafraid to confront the most serious of challenges
to these same teachings (a characteristic of Method B).6 The work of
St. Thomas as interpreted by Synave and Benoit is therefore by no
means the final word regarding the nature of scripture, but it pro-
vides the Method C exegete with a viable framework within which
he can confront apparent contradictions in God’s word.
As St. Thomas explains and his commentators observe, there are
two dimensions to prophecy. In the first, God gives an “inspiration”
in which he elevates the prophet’s mind so that he can then go on to

6. The fact that their proposal remains in need of correction and nuance has been
well observed. See James Tunstead Burtchaell, Catholic Theories of Biblical Inspiration
since 1810: A Review and Critique, 238–45; Peter Paul Zerafa, OP, “The Limits of Biblical
Inerrancy,” Letter and Spirit 6 (2010): 359–76.
 118 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

perceive divine realities through “revelation,” the second dimension

of prophecy. The light of inspiration is precisely what makes rev-
elation possible since man cannot apprehend objects which exceed
the capacity of his unaided natural reason. In the only passage in
which Aquinas expressly juxtaposes and distinguishes these terms,
he comments:
It is requisite to prophecy that the intention of the mind be raised to the
perception of divine things: wherefore it is written (Ez 2:1): “Son of man,
stand upon thy feet, and I will speak to thee.” This raising of the intention
is brought about by the motion of the Holy Ghost, wherefore the text goes
on to say: ‘And the Spirit entered into me . . . and He set me upon my feet.”
After the mind’s intention has been raised to heavenly things, it perceives
the things of God; hence the text continues: “And I heard Him speaking to
me.” Accordingly inspiration is requisite for prophecy, as regards the raising
of the mind, according to Job 32:8, “The inspiration of the Almighty giveth
understanding”: while revelation is necessary, as regards the very percep-
tion of Divine things, whereby prophecy is completed; by its means the veil
of darkness and ignorance is removed, according to Job 12:22, “He discov-
ereth great things out of darkness.”7
This passage from Aquinas is clearly an attempt to develop a theol-
ogy of inspiration, a biblically-based account that uses texts from
the Bible itself in order to explain the phenomena of inspiration and
revelation we witness in the Bible. Synave and Benoit elucidate the
dynamic interplay of these different dimensions of prophecy as fol-
lows:
Inspiration is the antecedent influence which raises the mind above its or-
dinary level and endows it with greater intellectual vigor; revelation results
from it, and is found in the judgment which is formed by the mind thus
elevated, and by which it perceives divine truths. Understood in this sense,
inspiration always accompanies revelation and is a necessary prerequisite
for it. The mind is unable to discover divine mysteries unless it has first
been reinforced from above. There is no revelation without inspiration.8

7. Ibid., q.171, a.1 ad 4 (emphasis added).

8. Paul Synave and Pierre Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration: a Commentary on the
Summa Theologica II-II, Questions 171–178 (New York: Desclee Co., 1961), 70–71. Cf.
Pierre Benoit, Aspects of Biblical Inspiration, translated by J. Murphy-O’Connor, OP
and S. K. Ashe, OP (Chicago: The Priory Press, 1965), 50. In this chapter, I will rely pri-
marily upon the analysis in these two works. However, I would also refer the reader to
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tions 119

Inspiration refers to the “motion” of the Holy Spirit which comes

upon the prophet from the outside and raises his human intellect
in order to prepare it for the moment in which God will disclose a
truth to him in a revelation.9 Revelation, meanwhile, expresses the
essence of prophecy: the discovery that results when a truth hitherto
unknown is unveiled to the prophet whose mind has been elevated
through the motion of the Holy Spirit.
While the above discussion makes it clear that the prophet can
receive no revelation without the prior elevation that takes place
through divine inspiration, Synave and Benoit go on to inquire
whether there may ever be a case in which a man receives inspiration
without revelation. This is a poignant question since we have wit-
nessed that many portions of scripture plainly involve authors who
write concerning realities which are knowable without supernatural
revelation or which even seem to contradict divine revelation. There-
fore if the Catholic Church is correct in teaching that all of scripture
is inspired, it is worth examining this hypothesis to see if it might
help elucidate Method A’s doctrine of inspiration in the face of Meth-
od B’s observation that passages often not only lack evidence of, but
moreover positively seem to contradict, what is otherwise known by
divine revelation. As Synave and Benoit state, the fundamental ques-
tion at this juncture is how we are to explain the confluence of divine
and human activity in the authorship of scripture.10

Approac h ing t h e Divine Au t h or shi p a n d

In spiration of Scrip tu re “f ro m A b ove”
Exploring the hypothesis that scripture might at times entail
instances where inspiration occurs without revelation, Paul Synave
and Pierre Benoit observe that one of two avenues can be followed
when one considers the divine authorship and inspiration of scrip-

a couple of pertinent articles by Pierre Benoit: “Note complémentaire sur l’inspiration,”

Revue Biblique 63 (1956): 416–22; “Révélation et Inspiration selon la Bible, chez Saint
Thomas et dans les discussions modernes,” Revue Biblique 70 (1963): 321–70.
9. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, ST, I–II, q.68, a.1
10. Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 88.
 120 Appare nt C ontr adiction s

ture. On the one hand, one can begin from below, letting his inquiry
be driven by the human notion of authorship. From this perspec-
tive, one looks at what a human author is and from there proceeds
to ask how God’s authorship of scripture resembles that of a human
author. On the other hand, one can begin his enquiry from above,
with the first principle of faith in the divine authorship of scripture,
and from there proceed to articulate how scripture’s human authors
cooperate with the Holy Spirit. Synave and Benoit indicate that if we
approach inspiration in this second way, our account of scripture’s
divine authorship need not be confined to human notions of au-
thorship. For although the authors of human books conceive all the
ideas contained therein, this may not be the case when it comes to
the divine authorship of scripture. Synave and Benoit state:
It is certain that, among men, the author of a book must at least have con-
ceived the ideas; this seems to be a minimum requirement. . . . But there is
another possibility of which human psychology offers no instance, that of
one mind causing another to think by communicating an interior light to
it: it is this which the doctrine of inspiration teaches us to be the case with
God, and which transforms the ordinary meaning of the word “author.”11
In this brief comment, Synave and Benoit offer a reasonable Thomis-
tic account of scripture’s divine authorship, albeit one that differs
from many common explanations that approach the matter on the
basis of a human notion of authorship. They put forth the thesis that
God can truly be the author (auctor) of scripture even if not every
individual “idea” contained therein is his. This very simple thesis
rests on St. Thomas’s distinction between inspiration and revelation,
and Synave and Benoit believe it allows one to avoid the conundrum
of having God be the cause of scripture’s imperfect ideas.
11. Ibid, 102. Pope Benedict also offers some thought-provoking insights on the
topic of how our concept of purely human authorship must be transformed and tran-
scended: “The extent of the Word’s meaning cannot be reduced to the thoughts of a
single author in a specific historical moment; it is not the property of a single author
at all; rather, it lives in a history that is ever moving onward and, thus, has dimensions
and depths of meaning in past and future that ultimately pass into the realm of the un-
foreseen. It is only at this point that we can begin to understand the nature of inspira-
tion; we can see where God mysteriously enters into what is human and purely human
authorship is transcended.” Benedict XVI, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as
Communion, translated by Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 32–33.
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tion s 121

How, precisely, can God be called the author of scripture if not

every idea contained therein is his? It is important at this point to
draw on some authors who expound upon the subject at greater
length. As John Henry Newman explains in his work On the Inspira-
tion of Scripture, the Latin auctor used in the tradition to describe
God’s authorship does not primarily refer to “author” in the literary
sense of the term most people associate with the term today:
“Auctor” is not identical with the English “Author.” Allowing that there are
instances to be found in classical Latin in which “auctores” may be trans-
lated “authors,” instances in which it even seems to mean “writers,” it more
naturally means “authorities.” Its proper sense is “originator,” “inventor,”
“founder,” “primary cause.”12
Newman’s point is similar to that of Congar when he writes, “An
auctor is he who is responsible for something because he stands
first and decisively at its origin.”13 In other words, God is wholly
responsible for the Bible and he is its originator, but that does not
necessarily mean every idea therein is his. Still, it is important to
keep in mind that God is not merely the originator of scripture, as
if he set the authorship of scripture into motion and then let human
instruments put the Bible together on their own. On the contrary,
just as God as author of the universe did not leave the universe once
he created it, so God was intimately involved in the composition of
Sacred Scripture even after he initially inspired each of its writers to
write. Nevertheless, an important difference between God’s author-
ship of the universe and his authorship of scripture is that scripture
came about through the medium of free secondary causes, whereas
secondary causes in nature are not all free as humans are. It is pre-
cisely this presence of freedom within the instrumental causes of
scripture that accounts for the presence of human ideas that do not
issue directly from the mind of God.
As Matthew Lamb points out in his notes on Aquinas’s Commen-

12. On the Inspiration of Scripture, edited by J. Derek Holmes and Robert Murray
(Washington, D.C.: Corpus Books, 1967), 10. See also Karl Rahner, Inspiration in the
Bible, and Yves Congar, Sainte Église: études et approches ecclésiologiques (Paris: Éditions
du Cerf, 1963), 187–88.
13. Congar, Sainte Église, 187 (translation mine).
 122 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

tary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, if we are to properly un-

derstand the particular kind of instrumental authorship operative in
scripture, it is necessary to recall that it is a special instance of God’s
“universal instrumentality.” Lamb nuances the work of Synave and
Benoit in warning that it is easy to fall into the trap of approaching
the divine impulse of inspiration in an atomistic manner, that is to
say without adequately accounting for the role that inspired works
in their totality play within divine providence as a whole:
For Benoit the whole Bible is inspired because the Almighty controlled ev-
ery single writer and literary piece. St Thomas’s concept of instrumentality,
as Lonergan has demonstrated, affirms that God controls each event be-
cause he controls all. Applied to Scripture, this means that each and every
part of it is authored by God because he originated . . . the whole process
of the Bible’s formation. . . . The difference between the instrumentality op-
erative in the composing of the Scriptures and the Universal Instrumen-
tality discussed by Lonergan . . . is that the Providence guiding the genesis
of the Bible is an essential element in the special Providence concerned
with salvation history. . . . Note the affinity this has with K. Rahner’s thesis:
God’s willing of the Scriptures as a constitutive element in his willing of the
Church.14
As Lamb explains, God is the author of scripture precisely insofar as
he “originated . . . the whole process of the Bible’s formation.” What
makes the scriptures unique, then, if we assume that God originates
other works besides the scriptures? According to Lamb, it is crucial
to grasp that “the Providence guiding the genesis of the Bible is an
essential element in the special Providence concerned with salvation
history.” In other words, God in his eternal providence inspired the
scriptures in order that they could serve a unique role in salvation
history and in the formation of the church. Lamb here references

14. Lamb, trans., Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on . . . Ephesians, 259n22 (emphasis

added). Lamb is contrasting his view here with the reflections of Synave and Benoit on
the possibility of a text having multiple authors and redactors who “share” the charism of
inspiration. See their Prophecy and Inspiration, 124. Cf. Bernard Lonergan, “St. Thomas’
Theory of Operation” and “St. Thomas’ Thought on Gratia Operans,” Theological Studies
3 (1942): 375–401, 533–78, especially 391–95. For more on the complexities involved with
attributing inspiration to multiple individual authors and redactors rather than looking
at it from Lamb’s point of view, see Kenton Sparks, Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical
Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011), 92–99.
 Appare nt C ontr adic tions 123

Karl Rahner, who eloquently summarized this dynamic in his work

Inspiration in the Bible: “The inspiration of the Scriptures . . . is but
simply the causality of God in regard to the Church, inasmuch as
it refers to the constitutive element of the Apostolic Church, which
is the Bible.”15 The inspiration of scripture and the causality of the
church are inseparable from one another. Inspiration is not an end
in itself; the scriptures were inspired for the church.
Lamb also calls on the authority of Yves Congar to clarify this
point. Affirming Rahner’s thesis, Congar states, “Certain writings are
inspired because they were integral to the living establishment of the
Church not at any moment whatsoever in her history but in the mo-
ment of her birth and constitution.”16 This is an important statement
because it helps believers answer the age-old challenge of explaining
what makes certain books worthy to be part of the Bible when they
are not necessarily any more enlightening or beautiful than other
works of the same time period that did not make it into the canon.
For Lamb, Rahner, and Congar, the simple answer is that the inspira-
tion of these works lies precisely in the role they played in salvation
history and in the constitution of the church. In his eternal wisdom,
God willed them to fill a niche that no other sacred writings would
fill. As such, they must be approached in their totality and in light of
this role. If we may draw for a moment on the wisdom of Pope Bene-
dict, we will perhaps better understand this approach. He recently
wrote to members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission:

15. Karl Rahner, Inspiration in the Bible, translated by Charles H. Henkey (New
York: Herder, 1964), 50–51. Pope Benedict speaks in similar terms with regard to the
formation of the canon: “The establishment of the canon and the establishment of the
early Church are one and the same process but viewed from different perspectives.”
Benedict XVI, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theol-
ogy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 148.
16. Congar, Sainte Église: études et approches ecclésiologiques (Paris: Éditions du
Cerf, 1963), 188–89 (translation mine). See also Thomas Aquinas, Hic est liber, 1 and
note 284 above on the importance of correctly understanding what it means for God
to be the “originator” of scripture. For a more recent discussion of divine providence
and inspiration, see Denis Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation: A Theological In-
troduction to Sacred Scripture (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2010), 217–19.
 124 Appare nt C ontr adiction s

Lastly, I would only like to mention the fact that in a good hermeneutic it is
not possible to apply mechanically the criterion of inspiration, or indeed of
absolute truth by extrapolating a single sentence or expression. The plan in
which it is possible to perceive Sacred Scripture as a Word of God is that of
the unity of God, in a totality in which the individual elements are illumi-
nated reciprocally and are opened to understanding.17
For Pope Benedict as for our other authors, the notion of unity is
key to understanding the nature of scripture. The Bible has a unity
and cannot be done justice if we “apply mechanically the criterion
of inspiration . . . by extrapolating a single sentence or expression.”
Likewise, the unity of the Bible itself has to be viewed within the
context of that unity which is God’s providential plan to prepare a
people for himself and lead them into the fullness of truth.
Having elucidated the reality of scripture’s unity and divine au-
thorship in more detail, we are now in a position to return to the
work of Synave and Benoit and the issue of how scripture’s human
authors receive the gift of inspiration from God. They point out that
in granting human authors the interior light of inspiration, God
in no way suppresses their freedom or furnishes them knowledge
without making use of their own powers. On the contrary, Synave
and Benoit suggest the distinctive feature of scriptural authorship
is precisely that the Holy Spirit allows the human writer to work
and discover his ideas just like any other man, though with the add-
ed assistance of a supernatural light. It is in this vein that Aquinas,
following St. Jerome, contrasts Israel’s official prophets who spoke
directly in God’s name (e.g., Isaiah, Jeremiah) with those whom
here he calls the “hagiographers” (e.g., Job, David, Solomon) whose
works appear in the Bible but do not typically report God’s words
for us in a direct manner:
Hence they [the official prophets in Israel] spoke as God’s representatives
(ex persona Domini), saying to the people: “Thus saith the Lord”: but not
so the authors of the “sacred writings,” several of whom treated more fre-
quently of things that can be known by human reason, not in God’s name,
but in their own, yet with the assistance of the divine light withal (non

17. Benedict XVI, Address to Participants in the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical
Biblical Commission (May 2, 2011).
 Appare nt C ontr adic tion s 125

quasi ex persona Dei, sed ex persona propria, cum adiutorio tamen divini
luminis).18
According to Synave and Benoit, when Aquinas states that the au-
thors of scripture speak “in their own” name, he does not mean to
say that their authority is merely human, but rather that their ideas
come about in a truly human way, that they did not receive a ready-
made message dictated by God. Synave and Benoit tentatively pro-
pose that these are cases in which inspiration might occur without
revelation. The authors are true authors, and their works are truly
human works. The difference between these and non-inspired works,
then, is not that they treat of things which surpass human reason,
but that they are written in response to a special impulse of the Holy
Spirit, who has enabled their human authors to pen everything God
wanted written in them, and nothing more.
At this point it appears Synave and Benoit have made a reason-
able case for the hypothesis that scripture contains instances where
inspiration occurs in the absence of revelation. Before moving on to
our next section, however, it is important to describe the correction
to this hypothesis that Pierre Benoit made in his later work Aspects
of Biblical Inspiration.19 Here, Benoit decisively concludes that reve-
lation and inspiration are inseparable in the authorship of scripture.
For, although the sacred authors do not always receive supernatural
18. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.174, a.2 ad 3. Aquinas speaks in strikingly simi-
lar terms about the nature of the hagiographers’s writing in his inaugural sermon on
the commendation and division of Sacred Scripture: “The third [part of the Old Testa-
ment] is contained in the [works of] the hagiographers, who were inspired by the Holy
Spirit and spoke not on behalf of God but as it were on behalf of themselves (Agiogra-
phis, qui spiritu sancto inspirati locuti sunt non tamen ex parte domini, sed quasi ex se
ipsis). Hence the hagiographers are called sacred writers or writers of sacred things,
from agios meaning ‘sacred,’ and graphia meaning ‘scripture.’ ” Thomas Aquinas, Hic est
liber, 8 (translation mine).
19. Benoit discusses this in Aspects of Biblical Inspiration, 40. He notes that other
prominent theologians also expressed this view in their treatises on inspiration. Cf.
Augustin Bea, De Scripturae Sacrae inspiratione (Rome: Pontificio Instituto Biblico,
1935); Reginald Garigou-Lagrange, “L’inspiration et les exigences de la critique,” Revue
Biblique 5 (1896): 496–518; Jacques-M. Vosté, De divina inspiratione et veritate Sacrae
Scripturae (Rome: Collegio Angelico, 1932); Thoma Maria Zigliara, Propaedeutica ad
sacram theologiam in usum scholarum, seu, Tractatus de ordine supernaturali (Rome: S.
C. de Propaganda Fide, 1903).
 126 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

ideas from God, they deal with all natural material in light of God’s
plan, and thus their writing results in a “lesson of supernatural val-
ue, which is a secondary but nonetheless fully authentic mode of
revelation.”20 According to Benoit, there thus exists a mode of rev-
elation which is akin to, but distinct from, that of the prophet who
has received supernatural ideas (what Christians typically think of
as “revelations”) from God. What distinguishes the two modes of
revelation is whether or not the infusion of a supernatural idea is in-
volved in the process. In this way, Benoit proposes a more accurate
way of naming these modes than he previously employed. Rather
than referring to one as “inspiration without revelation” and the
other “inspiration with revelation,” he adopts the terms “revelation
in the broad sense” (referring to those parts of scripture which do
not contain ideas specifically of the supernatural order) and “revela-
tion in the strict sense” (as occurs when God grants a sacred author
or another prophet the knowledge of a truth known only through
supernatural means).21 The precision of Benoit’s distinction is pre-
cisely what is demanded in a Method C treatment of scripture. It
takes seriously the challenges of Method B, yet it maintains Method
A’s steadfast conviction in the inspiration of scripture and seeks to
refine the faith in light of Method B’s findings.

Sc rip ture’s Inst rumental Au thor shi p

Summarizing the importance of approaching scripture’s divine
authorship in light of the Thomistic distinction between inspiration
and revelation, Synave and Benoit write:

20. Benoit, Aspects of Biblical Inspiration, 48. As Lamb explains in his notes on
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on . . . Ephesians, “Much of the Scriptures deal with oth-
erwise naturally knowable subjects, such as Israel’s history, but as Aquinas points out
(ST I, q.1, a.7) they are related in the light of God’s plans for salvation-history . . . Even
the most ‘natural’ books of the Old Testament deal with their material in the light of
Yahweh and his plans for his people.” (256nn17, 21.)
21. Cf. ibid., 45. See also the work where Benoit himself discovered this distinction:
Christian Pesch, De inspiratione sacrae scripturae (Friburgi Brisgoviae: Herder, 1906),
414.
 Appare nt C ontr adic tions 127

Consequently we realize that the Bible takes on an entirely different as-

pect according as we see in it only “revelations” from God [“revelation in
the strict sense”], or, on the contrary, recognize in it, more often than not,
the product of simple “inspiration” [“revelation in the broad sense”]. In the
first case there is danger of looking upon it as a catalog of absolute truths,
in which each proposition comes directly from God through the passive,
almost negligible channel of the human instrument. In the second case it
appears more under the human aspect, which it really has, with the limi-
tations, the lacunae, and even the defects which that implies, not only in
the language, but even in the thoughts. Hence the Bible can resemble any
other book, as a concrete study of it shows. At the same time it is also, in the
true sense of the word, a divine book, different from any other. For it is in
truth God who immediately originates the entire thought process of the in-
terpreter whom he inspires. He is quite truly the Author of the Book, of the
entire book, just as man too is its author, each in his own degree: God is the
principal Author, and man his faithful instrument.22
This last reference to scripture’s human author as God’s “instrument”
is central to St. Thomas’s account. Aquinas envisions the concur-
rence of divine and human activity in scripture in terms of a “dual
authorship.” For St. Thomas, the same effect can at once be wholly
the work of two efficient causes, one instrumental and one principal,
one human and one divine.
Method C exegetes today have many good reasons for adopting
Aquinas’s framework of principal and instrumental scriptural au-
thorship.23 For instance, it is helpful to know that by its nature an
22. Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 98–99. For a more detailed criti-
cism of theological models that would seek a mere catalog of propositional truths from
Scripture, see Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992).
23. Not the least of reasons why one might employ this terminology is because the
Magisterium itself has done so. Pius XII wrote of the theologians of his day: “Catholic
theologians, following the teaching of the Holy Fathers and especially of the Angelic and
Common Doctor, have examined and explained the nature and effects of biblical inspira-
tion more exactly and more fully than was wont to be done in previous ages. For having
begun by expounding minutely the principle that the inspired writer, in composing the
sacred book, is the living and reasonable instrument of the Holy Spirit, they rightly ob-
serve that, impelled by the divine motion, he so uses his faculties and powers, that from
the book composed by him all may easily infer ‘the special character of each one and, as
it were, his personal traits.’ Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting
any light derived from recent research, endeavor to determine the peculiar character and
circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived, the sources written or oral
to which he had recourse and the forms of expression he employed.” DAS §33.
 128 Appare nt C ontr adiction s

instrument is not the source of its own action and moreover does not
act all the time. Aquinas shows that the instrument to whom God
has granted the gift of prophecy cannot simply use his gift whenever
he wishes. Considering the question of whether the gift of prophecy
habitually abides in the intellect of the prophet, St. Thomas states:
“The prophetic light is in the prophet’s soul by way of a passion or
transitory impression.”24 Unlike a habit or power, the prophetic light
is transient, supplied only momentarily to the prophet and even then
entirely at the discretion of the Holy Spirit. Thus, sacred authors as
diverse as Moses, Solomon, and St. Paul all could have written many
beautiful works which were not preserved in the Bible, but these
would not have been inspired since prophecy is a gift God gives at
specific times and for specific reasons. The prophet is dependent on
God for the inception of this knowledge and for its entire duration.
Prophecy for St. Thomas is truly a gratia gratis data, a grace freely
given.
Another, more pivotal reason to describe man’s role in the au-
thorship of scripture in terms of instrumentality has to do with the
effects God is able to produce in him through the gift of prophecy.
The gift of prophecy enables man to attain knowledge he never could
on his own power precisely because God is the principal agent and
the true cause of the knowledge.25 However, granted that the knowl-
edge received by the prophet surpasses that which he could attain on
his own, this does not mean he perfectly receives the prophetic gift
from God since he is a frail human being with his own sins, preju-
dices, and darkened intellect. In the case of scripture’s authorship,
this boils down to the plain truth that the sacred writer does not re-
ceive the light of inspiration in such a way that he pierces the depths
of what God is revealing to him. Aquinas will thus indicate that the
sacred writer’s knowledge ranks midway between that of faith and
beatific vision. He is a prophet to the extent that he has some vi-
sion of God, yet unlike those in the beatific vision he still sees God
from afar. In this way, it is only fitting that the scriptures themselves
24. Lumen propheticum insit animae prophetae per modum cuiusdam passionis vel
impressionis transeuntis. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II–II, q.171, a.2; cf. De veritate, q.12, a.1.
25. Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 77.
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tions 129

testify to the work of human authors who could see more than mere
men can see and yet still not see perfectly.
Finally, apart from the inherent limitations of man’s capacity as
an instrument to receive and appropriate divine revelation, one must
reckon with the fact that prophets sometimes exhibit a less than per-
fect use (usus) of the gift (donum) given them. Aquinas explains:
The use of any prophecy is within the power of the prophet. . . . Hence, one
could prevent himself from using prophecy; the proper disposition is a nec-
essary requirement for the correct use of prophecy since the use of prophecy
proceeds from the created power of the prophet. Therefore, a determinate
disposition is also required.26
As we will see below, these insights of Aquinas have significant con-
sequences when it comes to our effort to describe how it is possible
for scripture to contain human imperfections (times when an au-
thor denies the afterlife, appears to accept the existence of multiple
gods, or that the one true God can command evil) without also con-
taining formal errors. For, although prophecy is a gift from God, it
is a gift given to imperfect men who must make judgments on how
to use the gift. In order to further articulate the import of this, it is
necessary to turn to Aquinas’s account of the act of judgment, the
primary place in which divine inspiration works on the intellect of
scripture’s sacred writers.

The Role of t h e Au th or’s Jud g m en t

Before stating anything further about the role of judgment in
scripture’s authors, it is necessary to point out that judgment itself is
the second of two acts which take place in the intellect of the proph-
et whom God grants divine revelation. This becomes apparent when
reading Aquinas:
Two things have to be considered in connection with the knowledge pos-
sessed by the human mind, namely the acceptance or representation
of things, and the judgment of the things represented. . . . Now the gift of

26. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q.12, a.4. Lamb, trans., Thomas Aquinas, Com-
mentary on . . . Ephesians, 258. Lamb provides references to many other places in Aqui-
nas’s corpus in which he distinguishes the prophetic donum and usus; cf. 258n20.
 130 Appare nt C ontr adiction s

prophecy confers on the human mind something which surpasses the natu-
ral faculty in both these respects, namely as to the judgment which depends
on the inflow of intellectual light, and as to the acceptance or representation
of things, which is effected by means of certain species. Human teaching
may be likened to prophetic revelation in the second of these respects, but
not in the first. For a man represents certain things to his disciple by signs of
speech, but he cannot enlighten him inwardly as God does. But it is the first
of these two that holds the chief place in prophecy, since judgment is the
complement of knowledge.27
According to Aquinas’s cognitional theory, God imparts revelation
to the prophet first by granting him a “representation of things.”
Like a human teacher who represents realities to his disciple by
means of speech and images, God reveals supernatural truths to
the prophet by presenting his intellect with some “species” (e.g., a
dream, a vision, or a locution which ultimately furnishes the mate-
rial for an idea). However, Aquinas explains that God is unlike a hu-
man teacher in that he not only provides his pupil with the material
for an idea but can also enlighten a soul from within. Having pre-
sented the prophet’s intellect with some species, he then grants the
prophet a light that enables him to interpret reality from a God’s-eye
perspective. With the assistance of this light, the prophet reflects on
whether or not his initial apprehension of the species corresponds
to reality, whether it is truly of God. It is only in the judgment that
follows this reflection that the prophet can be said to have appre-
hended revealed truth. As Aquinas makes clear, the fact that God
grants a given prophet some species like a dream or vision does not
yet mean that the prophet has knowledge, because in order to know
he must judge that what he has apprehended is indeed of God. For
Aquinas, it is in this act of judgment that prophetic knowledge finds
its “complement” or completion (completivum).28 As Synave and
27. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.173, a.2. St. Thomas takes up a similar discussion
of the role of judgment in prophecy in De veritate, q.12, a.7. For a contemporary evan-
gelical approach to the role of judgment in speech acts that is distinct from but akin
to that of the approach followed here, see Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A
Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2005).
28. According to St. Thomas, the first act of apprehending a species does not yet
result in truth, because the prophet must reflect and make sure he is not being deluded
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tion s 131

Benoit describe, it yields “a penetration, a clarity, a certitude which

man could not have achieved if left to his own resources.”29
In order to confirm Aquinas’s claims as to the importance of the
act of judgment in relation to prophetic knowledge, it is instructive
to observe that in Scripture God sometimes presents an individual
with a species without giving him the ability to judge concerning it.
Immediately following the passage cited above, in the same article
Aquinas writes:
Wherefore if certain things are divinely represented to any man by means
of imaginary likenesses, as happened to Pharaoh (Gn 41:1–7) and to Nabu-
chodonosor (Dn 4:1–2), or even by bodily likenesses, as happened to Bal-
thasar (Dn 5:5), such a man is not to be considered a prophet, unless his
mind be enlightened for the purpose of judgment; and such an apparition
is something imperfect in the genus of prophecy.30
As Aquinas points out, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and Balthasar all
received certain species such as dreams from God, yet they were not
given the ability to judge concerning the truth of what they received.
He goes on to contrast these men with true prophets like Joseph,
who exercised the prophetic charism by judging and explaining the
meaning of those dreams which could not be interpreted by Pharaoh
himself.

Revel ation in the Broad Sense a n d t h e

C on diti oning of an Au t h or’s J u d g m en t
In the above example, God enabled a faithful man to make pro-
phetic judgments concerning a revealed species even though he him-
self was not the one who received it; but we have also seen, above,

by this apprehension. In other words, he must not only know what a thing is but that
it corresponds to reality. The saint writes, “Truth is defined by the conformity of intel-
lect and thing; and hence to know this conformity is to know truth. . . . But the intellect
can know its own conformity with the intelligible thing; yet it does not apprehend it by
knowing of a thing ‘what a thing is.’ When, however, it judges that a thing corresponds
to the form which it apprehends about that thing, then first it knows and expresses
truth.” ST, I, q.16, a.2.
29. Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 97.
30. Thomas Aquinas, ST, II-II, q.173, a.2.
 132 Appare nt C ontr adiction s

that there exist cases in which prophets receive the light to judge
reality in a supernatural manner without the involvement of any
revealed species at all (“revelation in the broad sense”). As Synave
and Benoit suggest, this is precisely what occurs when an inspired
scriptural author composes a text based on his own judgment, with-
out any intention of teaching a truth of the revealed order. He may,
for example, wish to teach a naturally knowable truth or convey a
historical detail that he received through ordinary means of human
communication (e.g., when the chronicler reports a deed of David).31
He may likewise be inspired to pen words which represent more his
own authoritative thoughts rather than ideas directly from God, as in
the case when Paul writes, “Now concerning the unmarried, I have
no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the
Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.”32 As Synave and Benoit relate, an author
can speak about many things but does not have to be making formal
truth judgments about every single one of them. They elaborate:
Truth is the adequatio rei et intellectus [conformity of mind and thing]. It
exists only in the judgment. And by “judgment” we obviously do not mean
every proposition made up of subject, verb, and predicate, but the formal
act by which the intellect (intellectus) affirms its conformity (adequatio) to
the object of knowledge (res). . . . An author does not speak of everything in
an absolute way; we must always inquire into his point of view. He tells the
truth or he is mistaken only within the limits of the field of vision which
he has established for himself and in which he forms his judgment. Fur-
thermore, he does not always make an affirmation. He may assent either
totally or in a restricted way to the objective truth contained in the proposi-
tion which he is enunciating. Sometimes his affirmation will be categori-
cal; sometimes it will be made with reservations of one sort or another: he
accepts it as probable, he thinks it likely, he considers it possible, a matter
of conjecture, etc. . . . He cannot be denied the right to limit the extent of
his own subjective conviction and to involve himself only to the extent he
wishes. We must therefore respect the varying degrees of his assent, rather
than take all his sentences as categorical affirmations.33
31. In Aspects of Biblical Inspiration, Benoit goes so far as to say that many times
“the inspired person does nothing but judge and present under divine light merely nat-
ural truths. This case being, in point of fact, the most frequently met with in the Bible,
it was important to link with prophecy in the strict sense.” (38.)
32. 1 Cor 7:25.
33. Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 134–35.
 Appare nt C ontr adic tions 133

As we saw above, revealed truth lies in the act of judgment where-

in a prophet’s intellect correctly apprehends a supernatural reality
shown to it by God. However, according to Synave and Benoit, not
every statement in scripture constitutes such a judgment. Indeed,
it seems clear that biblical authors conditioned their judgments,
sometimes speaking about divine affairs without intending to make
definitive judgments or to teach regarding them—even sometimes
in matters of “faith and morals” such as the nature of God, the na-
ture of good and evil, and the afterlife, all of which are examined in
this book.
According to Matthew Lamb, this conditioning fits with the na-
ture of Sacred Scripture as a testimony to the divine pedagogy by
which God gradually revealed himself to his people. He explains:
We tend to regard a truth as either clearly and explicitly revealed or not re-
vealed at all. But for St. Thomas man’s knowledge of the faith grows, [and]
truths are revealed slowly over a period of time. . . . The Bible communicates
this organic development of salvation-history to men up to its definitive
apex in the revelation of the Word Incarnate himself. The whole of the Bible
must be approached with faith; this does not mean that every sentence is a
definable dogma.34
In this way, the authors of scripture understood and taught revealed
truth with varying degrees of clarity depending on their place with-
in the course of salvation history and the divine pedagogy. As Lamb
indicates, it is not as if one can find a definable dogma in every sen-
tence of scripture; indeed, scripture never claims this about itself.
Pope Benedict himself has spoken to this point many times in the
way he instantiates his exegetical principles, attempting to deter-
mine the “essential point” asserted in concrete biblical texts. Bene-
dict demonstrates keen awareness that certain texts seem plainly to
contradict the assertions of other texts:
It is because faith is not set before us as a complete and finished system that
the Bible contains contradictory texts, or at least ones that stand in tension
to each other.35

34. Lamb, trans., Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on . . . Ephesians, 256n17.

35. Benedict XVI, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 152; cf.: “The problem of dating Jesus’s Last Supper
 134 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

It follows straightaway that neither the criterion of inspiration nor that of

infallibility can be applied mechanically. It is quite impossible to pick out
one single sentence and say, right, you find this sentence in God’s great
book, so it must simply be true in itself.36
As Benedict well knows, the problem of admitting the presence of
contradictory biblical texts lies in squaring it with the doctrine of
inerrancy as it is articulated in Dei Verbum: “[E]verything asserted
by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted
by the Holy Spirit.”37
When it comes to applying this concept to the works of scripture,
one must therefore inquire into the field of vision that a particular
author has established for himself and the point of view from which
he treats the subject at hand. With this in mind, biblical scholar and
abbot Denis Farkasfalvy goes so far as to affirm that biblical texts
may be found “faulty” in certain regards so long as one recognizes
that they do not aim to assert the imperfect or faulty statement in
question:
arises from the contradiction on this point between the Synoptic Gospels, on the one
hand, and Saint John’s Gospel, on the other.” Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy
Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2011), 106.
36. Benedict XVI, God and the World, 153; cf. Benedict XVI, Address to Participants
in the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (May 2, 2011): “Lastly, I
would only like to mention the fact that in a good hermeneutic it is not possible to ap-
ply mechanically the criterion of inspiration, or indeed of absolute truth by extrapolat-
ing a single sentence or expression. The plan in which it is possible to perceive Sacred
Scripture as a Word of God is that of the unity of God, in a totality in which the indi-
vidual elements are illuminated reciprocally and are opened to understanding.”
37. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, 11. The text continues: “. . . it follows that
the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without
error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”
An illuminating example of Benedict’s attempt to determine the assertions of biblical
authors can be seen in his treatment of Christ’s descent into hell. As the pontiff ex-
plains, “We can now define exactly what this word [hell] means: it denotes a loneliness
that the word love can no longer penetrate. . . . This article [of the Creed] asserts that
Christ strode through the gate of our final loneliness, that in his Passion he went down
into the abyss of our abandonment. Where no voice can reach us any longer, there is
he. . . . From this angle, I think, one can understand the images—which at first look so
mythological—of the Fathers, who speak of fetching up the dead, of the opening of the
gates.” Benedict XVI, Credo for Today: What Christians Believe (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2009), 89–90.
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tion s 135

Divine inspiration does not imply that each passage and sentence of the bib-
lical text must be found free of error from every conceivable point of view.
The grammarian, the scientist, the historian, and others may point out a par-
ticular passage which, when examined from some limited point of view by
some specialized endeavor of human learning, can be found faulty. But such
a realization does not prove that God’s word asserts error. Rather, it only
means that God’s message is expressed, at one or another point of salvation
history, with the imperfections characteristic of human existence. Neverthe-
less, in the way it serves both the human author’s concretely defined purpose
and its divine author’s salvific purpose, every passage expresses the truth
which it is supposed to express according to God’s salvific will.38
Here, Farkasfalvy acknowledges that the scriptures are not inerrant
“from every conceivable point of view.” One might expand upon
Farkasfalvy by employing the Thomistic form-matter distinction so
as to clarify that any purported errors are in reality material imper-
fections rather than true, formal errors.39 This is significant because
the charism of inspiration still conveys “the human author’s con-
cretely defined purpose and its divine author’s salvific purpose,” in
such a way that “every passage expresses the truth which it is sup-
posed to express according to God’s salvific will.”40
38. Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation, 232. Farkasfalvy’s explanation has
many resonances with the following of C. S. Lewis. Writing on the subject of the Psalms,
Lewis observes: “The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naiveté, error,
contradiction, even (as in the cursing psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total
result is not ‘the word of God’ in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable
science or history. It carries the word of God; and we . . . receive that word from it not by
using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or tem-
per and so learning its overall message.” C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London:
Harvest Books, 1964), 111–12.
39. Though Thomas does not apply this hylomorphic distinction in the present
context, one can see the principle in various places throughout his corpus: “Now, in a
voluntary action, there is a twofold action, viz. the interior action of the will, and the
external action: and each of these actions has its object. The end is properly the object
of the interior act of the will: while the object of the external action, is that on which
the action is brought to bear. Therefore just as the external action takes its species from
the object on which it bears; so the interior act of the will takes its species from the end,
as from its own proper object. . . . Consequently the species of a human act is considered
formally with regard to the end, but materially with regard to the object of the exter-
nal action.” Thomas Aquinas, ST, I-II, q.18, a.6. The material or external dimension in
question here lies in the words of the sacred author, while the formal dimension or end
concerns what the author intends to assert for its own sake by means of said matter.
40. This distinction between “material imperfections” and “formal errors” is ab-
 136 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

In order to draw out this distinction between material imper-

fections and formal errors, we need to consider Synave and Benoit
in their argument to the effect that while certain authors person-
ally may have held views that were mistaken to some degree, the
charism of inspiration prevented these authors from teaching such
views. They illustrate how it can be that these opinions of the sacred
writers do not result in formal written errors:
[God] certainly cannot prevent [the sacred author] from using in one way
or another these erroneous views and, consequently, from letting them
show through in his text. For example, no one will deny that the biblical
authors had now outmoded cosmological ideas in which they believed,
and that they employed them in their writings because they were unable
to think apart from contemporary categories. But they do not claim to be
teaching them for their own sakes; they speak of them for a different pur-
pose, e.g. to illustrate creation and divine providence.41
In this passage, Synave and Benoit propose an example from the cre-
ation account(s) of Genesis 1–2 in order to clarify how an inspired
work can be free of error despite the fact that its author personally
held erroneous views. A Method B analysis of Genesis’s creation ac-
count clearly indicates that its author held, and allowed to be vis-
ible, in his work a view of the universe and its creation that does not
square with modern science. However, while a Method C exegete
may admit that the author of Genesis held problematic views, he is
certain that Genesis was not intending to teach views which are in-

solutely crucial. I could equally have employed the term “material errors” instead of
“material imperfections,” but have not done so here in the effort to make it clear that
statements which fail to correspond to reality but which are not asserted or taught for
their own sake are not errors in the true sense of the term. The Catholic tradition lacks
the distinction between material/formal errors in scripture, but it does make such a
distinction elsewhere with respect to heresy, for example. A material heresy objectively
fails to conform to Christian doctrine, but one is not a true or formal heretic unless he
knowingly and willingly asserts a claim that contradicts orthodox Christian doctrine.
41. Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 142. Regarding this topic, an au-
thority no less than Leo XIII explains that professors of scripture must seek to ascertain
the communicative intention of the sacred author with the awareness that what sci-
ence demonstrates about the nature of the universe does not contradict the message
of scripture. He states, “There can never, indeed, be any real discrepancy between the
theologian and the physicist, as long as each confines himself within his own lines.”
Providentissimus Deus §18.
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tions 137

accurate with respect to what has since come to be known through

natural science. In this, then, lies the difference between material
imperfections and formal errors: a material imperfection may ex-
ist within a person’s statement or may be held by a person, while a
formal error is asserted or taught for its own sake. A formal error
occurs when what an author asserts for its own sake does not con-
form to reality.42
Even in her Method A approach, the church has long taught that
scripture does not treat of astronomy or the natural sciences for their
own sake. It teaches man about God and addresses other realms in
relation to their religious dimension, insofar as they are ordered to
God. When it comes to Genesis, the author’s interest lies not in the
number of days it took for the world to be created or in the order
in which the various animals came into being, but the place of man
and woman within a universe wisely ordered by the one true God so
that things are directed to and find their fulfillment in the sabbath.
Synave and Benoit expand upon this notion by explaining that the
authors of scripture were concerned more with the religious signifi-
cance of science and history than science and history themselves:

42. One might object that Synave and Benoit here make an unwarranted presup-
position in stating that scripture’s authors could not affirm or teach erroneous views.
However, beginning with the principle that the scriptures cannot assert or teach false-
hoods is precisely what is required by the decision to approach scripture “from above,”
that is to say from the church’s doctrine regarding the inerrancy of scripture. Still, crit-
ics could easily object that Catholics may appear to admit the presence of material im-
perfections in scripture, but then turn around and quickly dismiss all of them with the
facile and disingenuous claim that anything problematic in scripture is not actually be-
ing asserted or taught for its own sake. While this logic may arouse skepticism, there is
no way around it for a Method C exegete. Because Catholics acknowledge the harmony
of faith and reason, if our reason (in the form of natural science, philosophy, biblical
scholarship, etc.) indicates the presence of a material imperfection in scripture, then
our first principle of faith in the inspiration and inerrancy of the scriptures necessitates
that this material imperfection cannot be part of an assertion being made or taught
for its own sake, as that would constitute a formal error and therefore disprove Catho-
lic dogma. Lest one find himself overwhelmed at this point, it is important to keep in
mind that, for Aquinas, Catholic teaching—including its doctrine on the inspiration
of scripture—does not need to be proven by the Christian but rather defended against
objections. Cf. ST, I, q.1, a.8.
 138 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

It is quite clear that the inspired author, and behind him God, treats many
subjects only for their religious interest. The sun and the moon speak to
him of the wisdom and omnipotence of God; he is not interested in the
scientific laws which govern their revolutions. . . . Scientific history, which
seeks the minutest accuracy for its own sake, is one thing; quite different
is history of a religious or apologetic tendency, which is intent on bringing
out the important lessons from the dusty past and is concerned with events
for this sole purpose. While it assuredly does not falsify the events, it does
not worry about minute exactitude.43
By emphasizing the religious interest of scripture’s authors, howev-
er, Synave and Benoit are not advocating the popular view that one
should draw a divide between “religious” or “saving” truths (deal-
ing directly with God and his providence) and “profane” truths
(e.g. historical details). The former would be intended in scripture
and the latter would be excluded entirely from its scope of teaching
and therefore considered “non-inspired.” According to Synave and
Benoit, this view is falsified by the fact that scripture’s authors some-
times clearly do intend to convey so-called profane truths (though
one ought to remember that their presentation is always governed by
a greater theological concern).44 Thus, for a Method C exegete, even
those areas of scripture in which one might be tempted to admit the

43. Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 137. In the volume The Intellec-
tual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near
East (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), William Andrew Irwin sheds in-
sight into the purpose of history for the ancient Israelite. Like Synave and Benoit, Irwin
thinks that the authors of scripture at times personally held less than ideal views of the
universe and of the history that has transpired within it. Irwin is not bothered by the
presence of these views in scripture, but rather attributes them to the fact that the sa-
cred authors often concerned themselves with the meaning of history rather than with
a mere account of facts: “Some of the defects of the historian’s method are traceable to
the fact that his interest was not so much in recording events as in explaining them.
And such a temper can mean only one thing. Hebrew history was primarily a philoso-
phy of history.” (322.) Here, Irwin speaks of the Hebrew historian’s method as contain-
ing “defects,” but there could certainly be discussion over whether it is defective in se or
rather defective according to the standards set up for history in the modern world.
44. Various examples of Hebrew historiography being shaped by theological (and
even political) concerns are presented in Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words:
an Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Academic, 2008), 73–132. For example, in chapter 1 we discussed how the chronicler’s
writing about David differs in important ways from what one observes in Samuel-
 Appare nt C ontr adic tions 139

presence of formal errors must still be considered inspired and iner-

rant since the Holy Spirit employs their “profane” elements for his
own purpose. The task at hand, then, does not consist in adjudicat-
ing which passages of scripture are religious and inerrant on the one
hand, and which are profane and prone to error on the other hand;
rather, the real goal here must be to discern what precisely consti-
tutes the inerrant message scripture’s authors are intending to teach
us in each of their writings and as a whole.
When considering the entire gamut of Pope Benedict’s corpus,
one discovers a consistent attempt on the part of the pontiff to as-
certain precisely this message. One such example can be seen in how
he deals with the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai.
Benedict insists that the narrative refers to a real event in history,
but to the discomfort of the Christian, he observes that “whether
there really were any stone tablets is another question.”45 Even if it
were the case that one could disprove the existence of these physi-
cal artifacts, for Benedict it would not change “the essential point”
of the Sinai narrative, namely “that God, through the agency of his
friend, really makes himself known in an authoritative way.” This is
the substance of the narrative, the author’s principal concern in light
of the entire context. Benedict is adamant that the Christian need
not worry about whether the account conforms to contemporary
Western standards of historiography. Many details Christians con-
sider essential today are in truth accidental features of the text and
as such must be understood within the context of the entire Bible.
They were a part of the author’s presentation as a whole but not his
principal concern, and for this reason they cannot be deemed formal
“errors.” Indeed, it is doubtful that the compilers of the canon would
have been unaware of the problems people raise today: it seems
they deliberately left ambiguities in scripture so that later genera-
tions could “struggle with God” as they had done and perhaps build

Kings. For another example of an evangelical Christian scholar who deals seriously with
modern challenges in this area, see Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation, (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005)
45. Benedict XVI, God and the World, 166 (emphasis added). See also his attempt
to ascertain the essential point passages concerning creation, 75–95.
 140 Appare nt C ontr adiction s

on the tradition they were blessed to receive from their ancestors.

One finds the same modus operandi in Benedict’s discussion of
whether the events that unfolded on Sinai were myth or history.
Here, he concretely applies the principle he elsewhere praised in
Aquinas concerning his “open philosophy” that is capable of ac-
counting for a God who enters history and speaks through human
words. Benedict does not deny that the Sinai narrative is imbued
with a certain mythological flare (thunder, lightning, clouds, trum-
pets, flames, quaking, God’s hand writing on stone, etc.), but he af-
firms that it “refers to a real event, a real entering into history by
God, to a real meeting between God and his people,” and through
them to a meeting with mankind. This, according to Benedict, is the
“essence of the event.”46
Benedict follows this line of reasoning for matters concerning
the New Testament. At the very least, Pope Benedict suggests that in
his day Jesus often employed existing images of the afterlife and Ha-
des without intending to formally teach or assert their conformity
to reality:
Jesus uses ideas that were current in the Judaism of his time. Hence we must
not force our interpretation of this part of the text. Jesus adopts existing im-
ages, without formally incorporating them into his teaching about the next
life. Nevertheless, he does unequivocally affirm the substance of the imag-
es. . . . But, as we saw earlier, this is not the principal message that the Lord
wants to convey in this parable. Rather, as Jeremias has convincingly shown,
the main point—which comes in the second part of the parable—is the rich
man’s request for a sign.47
What Benedict has in mind here are Jesus’s apparent assumptions
about Hades such as they manifest themselves in Luke 16. Benedict
indicates that Jesus’s pedagogy involved the use of ideas and images
current in his day without “formally incorporating them” into his

46. Ibid., 165 (emphasis added).

47. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, translated by Adrian J. Walker (New York:
Doubleday, 2007), 215–16. On the question of the extent to which Jesus himself was
limited in his theological vision as a first-century Jew, see Sparks, Sacred Word, Broken
Word, 26–27; I. Howard Marshall, Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2004), 66–69; Colin Gunton, Christ and Cre-
ation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), 41.
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tions 141

teaching. While Jesus did “unequivocally affirm the substance of

the images,” the images themselves do not constitute “the principal
message the Lord wants to convey in this parable.” Agreeing with
Joachim Jeremias, the pope proposes that the “main point” of this
parable, when taken in light of the whole, concerns the rich man’s
request for a sign rather than the nature of the afterlife, which may
or may not be accurately conveyed through the imagery employed
by Jesus. Benedict’s work here thus provides the Method C exegete
with an example of how he is to go about his work of reconciling
apparently contradictory texts with Catholic teaching on biblical in-
spiration and inerrancy. The pope does not go so far as to allow that
Jesus himself held imperfect ideas about the afterlife, but his exege-
sis at least implies that an inspired author does not formally assert
every last problematic thing that he says.
We may bolster the claims of Benedict and the other authors
above by examining the issue of authorial affirmations or judgments
from two more angles. In the first, we will consider suggestions
made by James Burtchaell in his Catholic Theories of Biblical Inspira-
tion since 1810. Like the authors drawn from above, Burtchaell rec-
ognizes the presence of material imperfections in the Bible. What
he brings to the table is a theological meta-narrative that attempts
to reconcile the Bible’s imperfections in light of the divine pedago-
gy. Without using this precise patristic term, he conveys many of
the ideas discussed already throughout the present volume. For ex-
ample, he calls the Bible “the chief record of the faith’s gestation, of
those long years when Christianity was carried in the womb of Isra-
el. It documents that time—never to be repeated—when God’s rev-
elation was slowly and painfully trying to assert itself amid the night
of human disinterest.”48 This statement is particularly illuminating
for our study because it speaks of the Christian faith having a “ges-
tation” period in which it gradually developed inside the “womb” of
Israel—an idea comparable to the conception of Benedict and Aqui-
nas according to which the “substance of the faith” develops over

48. James Tunstead Burtchaell, Catholic Theories of Biblical Inspiration since 1810: A
Review and Critique (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 301.
 142 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

time like an embryo or a rose. Burtchaell also highlights the unique-

ness of this process, a time “never to be repeated,” as well as the fact
that God’s efforts were repeatedly met with disinterest and rejection
on the part of his people.
Burtchaell extends his narrative in the effort to illumine the
broader issue of how Christians are to reconcile the doctrine of bib-
lical inerrancy with the Bible’s many difficulties:
Both by those who accept these claims [of inerrancy and infallibility] and
by those who reject them, they have been imagined as some sort of flawless,
eternal ownership of the truth, expressed in formulas that might from time
to time need a little translating, but never need replacing. In this sense,
there has probably never been an inerrant declaration uttered or book writ-
ten, nor need we look forward to one. But if inerrancy involve wild, and
sometimes even frightening movement, if it mean being pulled to the right
and to the left, being tempted constantly to deviate, yet always managing
somehow to regain the road, then it begins to sound rather like what the
Church has been about. . . . In sum, the Church does find inerrancy in the
Bible, if we can agree to take that term in its dynamic sense, and not a static
one. Inerrancy must be the ability, not to avoid all mistakes, but to cope
with them, remedy them, survive them, and eventually even profit from
them. In a distinct selection of faith-leavings from a distinct epoch of faith-
history, we have the archives of the process by which our ancestral faith be-
gan from nothing, involved itself in countless frustrating errors, but made
its way, lurching and swerving, “reeling but erect,” somehow though never
losing the way, to climax in Christ.49
Burtchaell’s key contribution here is to suggest that Catholics take
the doctrine of inerrancy in a “dynamic” sense. He is criticizing what
he takes to be the common, “static” approach wherein Christians
isolate individual statements of scripture and expect to find perfect
correspondence to reality in every single one of them without con-
sidering the context of the Bible as a whole and the divine pedagogy
at work therein. He believes that this approach to scripture is not
faithful to the scriptures themselves, nor is it “what the Church has
been about” over the millennia.
According to Burtchaell, the insufficiency of a “static” approach
that would focus exclusively on the Bible’s formal truth claims is evi-

49. Ibid., 299, 303–4.

 Appare nt C ontr adic tions 143

dent from an investigation of the Hebrew term ‫ ֱאמֽת‬. Often translated

into English as “truth,” ‫ אֱמֶ ֽת‬occurs 126 times in the Old Testament
and is accepted in a variety of definitions, including “reliability,”
“permanence,” “faithfulness,” and “truth.” As the Hebrew language
bears witness, ancient Israelites did not view truth simply as theo-
retical but also in relational terms. In other words, for the Israelite,
God does not only teach what is true; he is also true (i.e. faithful) to
his word:
The Old Testament, speaking of God’s truth, or emeth, intends not so much
that his word is true, as that He is true to his word. . . . For the Old Testa-
ment, God’s truth is primarily given through his faithfulness. . . . While the
idea is never absent that God’s words are true, this never has reference to
the Scriptures, as if to imply that they contain no historical error. . . . This at-
titude confuses the truth of Scripture with faultless historical chronicle.50
Burtchaell’s argument here is not perfect, nor does it need to be. It
may not give adequate attention to scripture’s propositional truth
claims, but he is certainly on to something. For, to a certain extent,
challenges to biblical inerrancy actually present something of a
pseudo-problem if we understand inerrancy correctly. It is unlike-
ly that many things we demand of scripture today in the Western
world were concerns for those who wrote it. This is why it is crucial
to discern the intention of the sacred authors and to demonstrate
that their purpose was not always to teach propositional truths after
the manner of a textbook.
Interestingly, Burtchaell sides with Method B scholars in his de-
sire to seriously confront evidence that the Bible contains material
imperfections, yet he also argues in favor of Method A’s doctrine of
inerrancy. This scholar’s synthesis is precisely the sort of effort one
would expect in a Method C exegete, because it does not fit neatly
within traditional or modern categories. For Burtchaell, if one takes
the biblical data seriously, he cannot claim that inerrancy entails the
complete absence of individual statements that fail to accurately de-
scribe reality. Rather, if even some of the “wild” and “frightening”
variations within scripture that Burtchaell observes are real, then in-
50. Ibid., 266–67; cf. Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (hereafter TDOT)
1:310; cf. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (hereafter TDNT) 1:232–37.
 144 Appare nt C ontr adiction s

errancy must consist in the biblical authors’ uncanny ability to “regain

to road,” that is to correct the Bible’s various material imperfections
over time through the charism of inspiration granted to them by God.
Indeed, from a Thomistic perspective one might argue that this is to
be expected, that the good of God’s entire educational plan for man-
kind is not hindered by the presence of occasional “departures” on
the part of the secondary instruments whom he chose to execute it.51
A final avenue of approaching the Bible’s apparently erroneous
truth claims dovetails with that of Burtchaell and builds on contem-
porary scholarly debates concerning the epistemology of religious
belief. The suggestion run as follows: Given the premises their en-
vironment provided them, any sacred authors who penned mate-
rially imperfect statements often could not help but have inferred
these conclusions from their respective premises. For example, we
will see later that Ecclesiastes’s denials of the afterlife were the only
51. While Burtchaell speaks of dynamic inerrancy entailing the ability of the Bible to
gradually correct “countless frustrating errors,” I have continued to employ the term “ma-
terial imperfections” here. While not addressing this specific issue, Aquinas’s response
to an objection that “the will of God is not always fulfilled” is helpful here. He writes,
“Corruption and defects in natural things are said to be contrary to some particular na-
ture; yet they are in keeping with the plan of universal nature; inasmuch as the defect
in one thing yields to the good of another, or even to the universal good. . . . Since God,
then, provides universally for all being, it belongs to His providence to permit certain
defects in particular effects, that the perfect good of the universe may not be hindered,
for if all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe.” ST, I, q.22,
a.2. Applying this principle to the “particular defects” in scripture, we might suggest that
a great good would be absent if God had chosen a different means of revelation (e.g.,
wherein he prevented the sacred authors from writing with inaccurate understanding at
times), namely, man’s complete freedom to collaborate in the divine act of revelation as
a secondary cause. Aquinas likewise explains, “The rule in forms is this: that although a
thing may fall short of any particular form, it cannot fall short of the universal form. . . .
Something may fall outside the order of any particular active cause, but not outside the
order of the universal cause; under which all particular causes are included: and if any
particular cause fails of its effect, this is because of the hindrance of some other particular
cause, which is included in the order of the universal cause. . . . Hence that which seems to
depart from the divine will in one order, returns into it in another order.” ST, I, q.19, a.6.
This is a statement Burtchaell would likely endorse wholeheartedly. For, while the sacred
authors of scripture may “depart” from the fullness of truth at particular moments, God
ensured that scripture would never stray unrecoverably from the path of legitimate de-
velopment. Since the “universal cause” of God’s divine authorship encompasses “all par-
ticular causes”—in this case the human authors of scripture—anything they write while
inspired is ultimately that which God wanted written, and nothing more.
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tions 145

logical conclusion to be drawn from his accurate observation that

the traditional Israelite theology of retribution dominant in his day
did not square with his experience of justice in the real world. If we
then grant that Ecclesiastes was correct in observing that God’s jus-
tice does not manifest itself fully in this life (as his community at the
time believed), combined with the fact that he had no knowledge of
the justice that Christ renders believers after death, then it appears
relentlessly honest that Ecclesiastes could not help but draw the
logical conclusion that “the fate of the sons of men and the fate of
beasts is the same.” To borrow the language of philosopher Stephen
Wykstra, in Ecclesiastes we are presented with evidence of an “envi-
ronmental glitch” that causes the sacred author to draw a conclusion
which is inconsistent with Christian doctrine. Wykstra carefully
distinguishes the former sort of malfunction exhibited in Ecclesias-
tes from what some philosophers call an “error of rationality.” If the
Method C exegete is to make use of this distinction, we must deny
the existence of any “error of rationality” within the Bible; for, such
an error would entail a sacred author making an invalid inference
and therefore a formal error since he drew a false conclusion while
having full access to the revealed premise(s) necessary for arriving
at the truth. In this way, for example, if a New Testament author
who knew of Christ’s Resurrection had denied the afterlife after the
manner of Ecclesiastes, he would have committed a formal error or
“error of rationality,” whereas Ecclesiastes did not err in this manner
since he was not privy to the premises of Christian revelation.52
As we have already seen to some extent and will examine more
deeply in later chapters, the presence of environmental defects or
“glitches” within the Bible does not violate the doctrine of inerrancy.
For, as we saw above, truth or error results from an author’s judg-
ment, and the Catholic faith requires us to hold that the substance
of what the sacred author wishes to affirm corresponds to reality. In
point of fact, in cases such as Ecclesiastes we have a state of affairs in
which a sacred author is not only epistemically warranted in his im-

52. See Stephen Wykstra, “Toward a Sensible Evidentialism: On the Notion of

‘Needing Evidence,’ ” in William Rowe and William Wainright, Readings in the Philoso-
phy of Religion (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Publishers, 1998), 481–91.
 146 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

perfect conclusion but might even be obligated to it. To illustrate, let

us consider an example unrelated to the Bible. Say you are attending
a fundraiser and, without your knowledge, an accomplished actor
is also in attendance, disguised as Donald Trump. If you have seen
Trump on TV, you will be familiar with his appearance, voice, man-
nerisms, etc. If this actor is truly accomplished, you will quite likely
conclude that he is Trump when in fact he is not. However, assum-
ing you are given no reason to doubt Trump’s identity at the mo-
ment he introduces himself to you, the principle of charity requires
you to believe that he is who he claims to be, even though, abso-
lutely speaking, you are mistaken. A similar dynamic seems to be at
work in parts of the Bible that contain material imperfections. Wise
men like Ecclesiastes did not always arrive explicitly at the fullness
of Gospel truth, but they wrote precisely what God wanted them to
write at their respective points within the divine pedagogy. As with
you and your mistake with respect to Trump, Ecclesiastes and other
sacred authors may have made mistakes, but since these were due to
environmental factors that could not have been avoided at the time,
they must not be considered true, formal errors.53

The Practical Jud gme n t

As illuminating as the above suggestions may be, it is important
to remember that they are precisely that: suggestions. They are im-
portant because the problems we face in this book are not limited
to the scientific or historical sphere. Indeed, it is one thing to assert
that a sacred writer had only limited interest in the minute details
of astronomy, but it is another matter when one seeks to apply this
reasoning to overtly religious matters. The nature of God, the nature
of good and evil, and the afterlife are among the most clearly reli-
gious issues one can imagine, and we need a deeper explanation to
account for apparent mistakes concerning them.
Up to this point in the chapter, we have observed that God may
53. For the Wykstra source and other insights of the previous two paragraphs, I
am indebted to fruitful conversations with Jim Madden, my colleague in philosophy at
Benedictine College.
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tion s 147

grant his prophets the light to judge reality in a supernatural man-

ner even if this judgment does not directly concern things knowable
only through divine revelation. We have even raised the possibility
that a sacred author may make a mistake in judgment if he could not
have done otherwise given his environment. Now, however, we may
trace the work of Synave and Benoit as they further propose that God
sometimes grants a prophet the light to judge reality in a supernatu-
ral manner without primarily intending to teach a truth in the first
place. Using characteristically Thomistic terms, Synave and Benoit
suggest that inspiration may at times primarily enlighten a prophet’s
judgment not in the “speculative” order (influencing his intellect in
view of teaching some truth) but rather in the “practical” order (in-
fluencing his will in view of achieving some good). They propose:
[Scriptural inspiration] influences the will and practical judgment of the
writer as much as, and sometimes even more than, his intellect and specu-
lative judgment. This is the first very important respect in which St. Thom-
as’s doctrine on “prophecy” must be adapted if one wishes to extend it to
“scriptural inspiration.”54
Writing seven centuries after their predecessor and in response to
new challenges to the doctrine of inspiration, Synave and Benoit
realized it was important to expand upon Aquinas’s work in order
to elucidate prophecy’s impact on both the speculative and practi-

54. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 62. Cf. Benoit, Aspects of Biblical Inspiration,
43. It is important to reiterate that this position of Synave and Benoit is not universally
agreed upon, and remains in need of nuance. For example, in a recently republished
essay, Peter Paul Zerafa, OP, argues, “Can we get around this difficulty [of problematic
biblical texts] by supposing that in such cases the principal judgment applied by the
writer is a practical one? Hardly ever. . . . [The Bible’s] message remains the principal
factor of the book, and brings with it the speculative judgment as his principal intellec-
tual activity.” Zerafa, “The Limits of Biblical Inerrancy,” 372. Zerafa does accept many
of the distinctions made by Synave and Benoit, but he argues that exegetes should fo-
cus their attention more on ascertaining the Bible’s literary forms than on the type of
judgment being made by biblical authors: “As a result of Benoit’s imposing apparatus,
one has to admit that the speculative judgment is not a universal characteristic of the
Bible. We must not search for inspired truth in all that is said by the sacred writer, since
some apparent judgments are incorporated in the Bible for practical reasons, and not as
representing divine thought. This conclusion is sound, and it is exactly the duty of the
exegetes to ascertain, by studying the literary forms, where the sacred writer expresses
speculative judgments and to disclose their import.” (371.)
 148 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

cal judgments of scripture’s sacred authors. After explaining the bet-

ter known purpose of a speculative judgment, they offer a profound
statement of the difference between a speculative judgment, which
is made in view of teaching some truth, and a practical judgment,
which is made with the view of achieving some good. Of course, an
author will often write with the purpose of instructing his audience:
[B]ut he can also appeal to their affective side, working on their feelings and
emotions. There are many objects which an author can have in view—to
console, threaten, charm, relax, amuse, entertain, etc.—all of which are quite
distinct from the search for pure truth; they may even hinder or supplant
it. . . . It makes use of the speculative judgment as one element in the psycho-
logical complex which it wishes to deposit in the book, but not the only one,
since the presentation of truth is not its only purpose. It limits the formal
object of the speculative judgment or regulates its degree of affirmation and
of presentation according to its assigned function in the plan of the work. . . .
Not only does the practical judgment direct and moderate the expression
of the speculative judgment; it can even do without it. This will be the case
when the author says certain things merely for the sake of elegance, amuse-
ment, or relaxation, without attributing to these statements any importance
in the intellectual or doctrinal order and without making any appraisal of
their intrinsic truth. This will also be the case when he cites the remarks of
another author without having himself thought them through or made them
his own, but simply because he thinks it opportune to make them known. . . .
It is enough to open the Bible to realize that the sacred writers, under the
divine impulse, spoke with all the varying shades of meaning which men
employ in their daily speech and that they had in view other objects besides
doctrinal instruction. . . . Finally, we note more than once that even they
are anxious to transmit to posterity the recollection of ways of acting or
of thinking which they thought it useful to preserve, without intending to
inculcate them or to teach them. . . . As a result, the practical judgment too
receives its share of inspiration, and it does so in a higher or lower degree
according to its relative importance in the actual thought processes of the
inspired subject. To which of the two judgments will the first, principal im-
pulse of inspiration be directed? This depends on God’s intention, that is to
say, on the mission he is entrusting to the one inspired.55
55. Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 104–6. For a related but distinct
recent treatment of the “practical judgment” of scripture’s authors, see Sparks, Sacred
Word, Broken Word, 99–101. Sparks does not use the term “practical judgment,” but he
does discuss the fact that the biblical authors had other intentions in addition to giving
instruction. For example, “Empathy is another element in good reading. The point is
not to recover an author’s ‘intention’ but rather to enter into the human situation of the
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tion s 149

Entire studies could be based upon what is said in this rich passage,
but we should at least make the following observations.
To begin, Synave and Benoit point out that a sacred author may
receive the prophetic gift in such a way that he writes primarily in
order to achieve a practical end, for example the good of arousing
his audience’s affective side rather than instructing them regarding
a particular truth. An author may seek to console, threaten, admon-
ish, charm, relax, amuse, or simply entertain with a good story. The
law codes in Leviticus, for example, were not simply drawn up for
the purpose of teaching truths or elucidating the nature of good and
evil but in order to govern the people and lead them toward God.56
Similarly, the wise maxims in the wisdom literature (including the
negative statements of Ecclesiastes) were often aimed at instructing
the people in prudent conduct more than in speculative knowledge
of God. The Psalms themselves were often composed for non-spec-
ulative ends, for example prayer, song, and liturgical worship (rather
than for articulating the nature of God). Furthermore, Synave and
Benoit state that authors sometimes intend “simply to hand on to pos-
terity the memory of some customs or beliefs which he wants to save
from oblivion, without, however, proposing them as models for imi-
tation or as truths for belief.” This end is shown most clearly through
the fact that Scripture presents us with a broad and sweeping history
of the chosen people which includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.
When the sacred author recounts the misdeeds of David, for example,
it is unlikely that he wants his audience simply to learn new truths or
to imitate David’s behavior. Far from it; he probably has the practical
goal of getting his audience to learn from the failures of his ancestors
and to appreciate the work of the divine pedagogy that had led the na-
tion despite the successes and failures of its great men.57 It would be
easy to come up with dozens of similar examples which illustrate the
role of practical judgment in the books of Sacred Scripture.
author and audience.” (100.) This dynamic will unfold in later chapters as we discuss
biblical works such as Job more concretely.
56. The “practical” nature of many of these statutes is likewise indicated by the fact
that Jesus saw them as provisory.
57. The examples I offer above are based on the work in Benoit, Aspects of Biblical
Inspiration, 104.
 150 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

An examination of Aquinas’s biblical commentaries suggests that

he already acknowledged some of these practical ends in scripture.
For example, in the prologue to his Commentary on the Psalms he
states, “The mode or form in Sacred Scripture is found to be of many
kinds.”58 He proceeds to enumerate these modes, many of which
bear close resemblance to those discussed by Synave and Benoit.
First, in the historical books one finds the “narrative” mode. Aquinas
does not expound much upon what he has in mind here, but it seems
consistent with the thought of Synave and Benoit to the effect that a
writer may compose a narrative in order to pass on something rather
than to propose it as a model for imitation or a truth for belief. Next,
St. Thomas comes to the mode which is “admonishing, exhortative,
and preceptive.” He explains that this mode is found in the law, the
prophets, and the books of Solomon. He goes on to elaborate on the
“disputative” mode which is exemplified in Job. According to Aqui-
nas, Job ought to be read as a dispute between man and God over
the nature of divine providence rather a definitive teaching on the
subject. As we will see later in this work, the afflictions and strug-
gles of Job provide Christians with a theme for debate over the grave
problem of the existence of moral and physical evil. Finally, Aquinas
deals with the mode he calls “deprecative” or “laudative.” The book
of Psalms was composed by means of praise and prayer and for the
purpose of prayer; it exists “in order that the soul might be joined to
God.” For Aquinas, a person does not just read the Psalms: he prays
them in order to be united to God through this prayer.
In the various examples described above, Aquinas clearly has in
mind something other than the mere intention by scripture’s sacred
authors to teach truths of the speculative order. He does not make
use of the term “practical” in this particular context, but he seems
to have viewed these various modes in terms of the practical order.
However, we find evidence for this claim in Aquinas’s commentary
on 2 Tm 3:16, in which he writes that Sacred Scripture has a twofold
purpose: “[Scripture] is profitable for knowing the truth and for di-
recting action.” He goes so far as to articulate this explicitly in terms
58. Thomas Aquinas, prologue to In psalmos Davidis expositio (translations of this
work are mine).
 A ppare nt C ontr adic tions 151

of the practical and speculative: “For [Scripture] has a speculative as

well as a practical dimension.”59 He does not explicitly refer to the
latter aspect of scripture as an instance of prophecy, but once again
his words appear consistent with such an interpretation. Whatever
the case, the above analysis at least ought to show that Aquinas was
well attuned to the fine details of scriptural authorship and not en-
trenched in a framework that would view scripture solely in terms
of the speculative order. Far from it, as was observed above: Aqui-
nas sees that the ultimate effect of scripture is that it “leads men to
the perfect.” And according to Aquinas, a man is perfect when he is
“instructed, that is to say prepared for every good work.”60 To bring
this discussion full circle, we may point out that, in the same way
that Christian doctrine as a whole is both speculative and practical,
for St. Thomas scripture “instructs” us with the view of teaching the
truth as well as helping us achieve the good.61

C on clu sion: Th e Specu l ative a n d

Practical in Rel ation to Scri p t u re ’ s
U lt imat e Pract ical End
In concluding this chapter, we need to recall that whatever em-
phasis one may place on the role of practical judgment and the
fact that scripture is not simply a vehicle for transmitting doctrinal
propositions, scripture certainly does teach speculative truths. For
59. Thomas Aquinas, Super II Epistolam B. Pauli ad Timotheum lectura, caput 3,
lectio 3 (translations from this commentary are mine). See also ST, II-II, q.173, a.2: “In-
tellectual light is divinely imprinted on the mind—sometimes for the purpose of ‘judg-
ing’ of things seen by others . . . sometimes for the purpose of ‘judging’according to
Divine truth, of the things which a man apprehends in the ordinary course of nature—
sometimes for the purpose of discerning truthfully and efficaciously what is to be done.”
60. Ibid.
61. See Thomas Aquinas, ST, I, q.1, a.4. “Sacred doctrine, being one, extends to
things which belong to different philosophical sciences because it considers in each
the same formal aspect, namely, so far as they can be known through divine revela-
tion. Hence, although among the philosophical sciences one is speculative and another
practical, nevertheless sacred doctrine includes both; as God, by one and the same sci-
ence, knows both Himself and His works.” Despite the fact that divine teaching is or-
dained primarily to the knowledge of God in which man’s eternal bliss consists, God
also teaches man in order that he might apply this knowledge in the moral life.
 152 Appare nt C ontr adiction s

Synave and Benoit, it is important to have a balanced appreciation

of the roles of speculative and practical judgment when approach-
ing scripture, because there is no single hard and fast rule for telling
when a particular type of judgment is being made:
It may be that the sacred writer categorically affirms a doctrinal truth
which he has thought out by himself. In that event, his inspiration will in-
clude as complete an illumination of his knowledge as in the case of the
prophet. It may happen, on the other hand, that he makes no affirmations,
that he speaks or cites other authors’ accounts without vouching for them
as his own thought. In that case inspiration will affect only his practical
judgment. Or finally—and this is the most frequent case—it may happen
that he expresses a judgment of truth, but one which is conditioned in its
formal object and in its degree of affirmation by the general demands of the
end he has in view; in this case the light of inspiration will illuminate this
judgment, not as an absolute, but to the exact extent to which the author
conceives and expresses it.62
As Synave and Benoit write, it is most often the case that a given
passage of scripture has been composed with an admixture of spec-
ulative and practical judgments on the part of its author. In this sce-
nario, a truth claim is made by the sacred author, but he “conditions”
this affirmation based on the more general end he has in view. This
leads Synave and Benoit to conclude:
It is the practical judgment, as we have said, that ultimately controls all the
possible formalities and limitations of the speculative judgment, and it is
the practical judgment itself that comes primarily under the influence of
inspiration. It is because God sets up a certain goal as the purpose of his
interpreter’s activity that he causes him to look at a given aspect of his sub-
ject, to make a stronger or weaker affirmation, to instruct to a greater or
less degree—in short, that he causes him to choose a certain “literary type.”
The first principle, then, should be to discern God’s intentions through those
of the author.63
As we see here, an author’s practical judgment is ultimately what
governs the kind of speculative judgments he will make within his
composition. Before the human author even begins his work, God
the divine author already has an intention he wishes his instrument

62. Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 108.

63. Ibid., 143 (emphasis added).
 Appare nt C ontr adic tion s 153

to carry out in his writing. The Holy Spirit enlightens the human’s
mind in order to direct him to particular realities and affirm them
in accordance with the overarching purpose of the book. In this way,
if Ecclesiastes writes with the overarching practical aim of getting
his audience to think deeply and question a simplistic worldview,
without necessarily arriving at a definitive answer to the problem
of death, then his denials of life after death do not need to be taken
as categorical truth claims that err with respect to what Christians
know today. The same logic can be applied to biblical texts which ap-
parently contradict Christian teaching on the nature of God and the
nature of good and evil. For example, if God directed the psalmist
to be more interested in his prayer than in the identity of “the gods”
of which he speaks, it is not surprising that he sometimes employs
concepts which fail to square precisely with Christian theology of
the triune God. For this reason, Synave and Benoit tell us that the
interpreter’s primary task is to seek out God’s intention as its shines
through the intentions of scripture’s human authors.
By this point in our endeavor, the reader is keenly aware that
searching out a human author’s intention is anything but a simple
affair. Thankfully, even when the intention of scripture’s human au-
thor is uncertain, Christians can know with certitude that the divine
author has a clear end in mind for those who encounter his word.
The Holy Spirit’s ultimate “practical” aim for scripture is to convey
not only truths but the Truth, inviting the reader to know not only
propositions but to encounter the three persons of the Trinity.64
Concerning this it is illuminating to read Benoit on the topic of
truth according to the Semitic worldview. At the conclusion of his
survey of prophecy scripture, he states:
64. See also ibid., 251–52, where Farkasfalvy proposes that theologians seek to re-
discover scripture’s “sacramental” character as part of the synthesis that will allow them
to better account for its inspiration. At this point one might also do well to note that
such an emphasis could help steer discussion of inspiration in the right direction by
taking the emphasis off what Enlightenment rationalism would seek from scripture
and placing the emphasis back on scripture’s role in leading souls to an encounter with
Jesus Christ. Many moderns read scripture as they would a scientific textbook—on the
literal level alone, searching for propositions that will give them absolute certitude—
but it does not seem that any of scripture’s authors actually conceived of their work
with such an end in view.
 154 Appare nt C ontr adicti ons

Revelation in the Bible is not the communication of abstract truths, but the
concrete living manifestation of a personal Creator and Sanctifier who is
the Truth of Life. Though visions and auditions are often associated with
revelation, they are not demanded by its nature. Revelation can be con-
veyed by the immensely varied events of history in which God makes him-
self known to his people through inspired intermediaries. . . . Inspiration,
then, is not merely a charism of knowledge (which, however, it normally
implies), but an impulse which lifts up a man, and through him the whole
Chosen People, into a vital encounter with God.65
As Synave and Benoit rightly observe, the believer’s “vital encoun-
ter” with God is the ultimate practical aim of scripture’s divine au-
thor. What this means with respect to problematic texts of scripture
is that these sacred words, however challenging they may be, are
aimed at leading “the whole Chosen People” more deeply into the
mystery of the Word of God made flesh, Jesus Christ. This provides
an excellent way for Christians today to see that all books of Sa-
cred Scripture—not just the ones that neatly line up with Christian
doctrine—are relevant both for their role in the salvation history of
the past and in our lives today.
Above all else, the Method C exegete ought to emphasize this
spiritual dimension of scripture and seek to elucidate it even when
to all appearances the scriptures present us with nothing but confu-
sion and contradictions. The spiritual side of scripture is pivotal for
one final reason: at the end of the day: even if believer is able to ac-
count for all objections to the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture
on the basis of Benedict’s Method C proposal, this explanation itself
does not necessarily yield an encounter with the word of God, which
is scripture’s ultimate reason for being. As we will see in the last part
of this work, it turns out that the believer’s spiritual encounter with
scripture provides a final and definitive key for articulating a theol-
ogy of scripture.

65. Benoit, Aspects of Biblical Inspiration, 87.

 c ha p t e r 5

M e t hod C E x e g e si s , t h e Nat u r e
of G od, a n d t h e Nat u r e of
G o od a n d E v i l

In the previous chapter, we followed Aquinas and his commen-

tators as they argued that problematic portions of scripture can be
understood only when the exegete takes into account the practical
ends that govern the composition of biblical texts. The sacred au-
thor is an instrument whom God chooses to convey his truth to the
world, but God often wanted works written for a reason other than
merely teaching clear-cut dogmas. The purpose of a work may lie
simply in prayer (e.g. the Psalms), while other times it may be to
propose a debate (e.g. Job), govern (e.g. Leviticus), or exhort (as is
often the case in Paul), just to name a few examples. However, the
highest practical end of every word in the Bible is to lead the chosen
people of both past and present to an encounter with the Word of
God incarnate, Jesus Christ. The insight of Synave and Benoit will
go a long way toward vindicating the inerrant nature of scripture in
the face of apparent contradictions, as their insight clarifies the fact
that even challenging texts which fail to perfectly convey the fullness
of revelation have played a vital role in the salvation history of the
past as well as in the lives of believers today. Still, it is not enough to
propose a framework that claims troublesome statements have their
place in the Bible; in these final chapters we have to instantiate the

155
 156 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

proposal of previous chapters by applying it to challenging passages

that relate to each of the themes introduced in chapter 1.
To summarize, our goal in this work has been to follow Pope
Benedict in his call to synthesize the strengths of faithful and practi-
cal patristic-medieval exegesis (Method A) with the tools and find-
ings of historical-critical exegesis (Method B). We began in chap-
ter 1 by using Method B to lay bare the respective problems in our
three themes of inquiry (God’s nature, the nature of good and evil,
and the afterlife). In chapter 2, we laid out Benedict’s proposal in de-
tail, elucidating the strengths and weaknesses in both the ancient and
modern schools of exegesis. In chapters 3 and 4, we proposed Aqui-
nas’s theology as the ideal framework for instantiating Benedict’s
proposal. His theology of the history of revelation, based upon the
hermeneutic of divine pedagogy, provides a sound defense of bibli-
cal inerrancy in light of its development throughout the course of
salvation history. His theology of the act of revelation, meanwhile, is
able to reconcile apparent contradictions as it elucidates the specula-
tive and practical judgments of scripture’s authors. Most importantly,
it makes it possible to see that the ultimate practical end of all the
scriptures—even the most challenging texts—is to lead believers to a
vital encounter with the Word of God made flesh, Jesus Christ.
If we are to successfully apply Benedict’s proposal in these final
chapters, our first task must be to recall some of the problematic
passages within each of the respective themes introduced through
the Method B observations of chapter 1. Next, we will briefly con-
sider insufficient and sometimes simplistic responses to these prob-
lems as they are commonly offered by the Method A approach
when working in isolation from Method B. Our effort toward a
Method C solution to these problems will then proceed on the basis
of Aquinas’s framework and the hermeneutic of divine pedagogy,
examining the significance of problematic texts for both the past
of salvation history and the lives of believers today. As regards the
past, we will turn to Aquinas’s theology of the history of revelation
to elucidate how the chosen people gradually developed in their un-
derstanding of God’s nature, the nature of good and evil, and the
afterlife. We will likewise use Aquinas’s theology of the act of revela-
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev il 157

tion in order to search out the intentions of authors when they pen
apparent contradictions to Christian doctrine, confident that these
contradictions are precisely that: apparent. With respect to the sig-
nificance of problematic texts for the present, we will go on to see
that the pedagogy by which God gradually taught his chosen people
as a whole throughout salvation history has an additional dimen-
sion: the divine author of scripture uses his word to teach individual
members of the faithful still today.1 Here we arrive at an investiga-
tion of the spiritual sense of the texts and consider the divine au-
thor’s ultimate purpose in composing them.
It is vital that our hermeneutic emphasize this twofold character
of the divine pedagogy, as it encapsulates the two components that
go into Method C exegesis and provides a bridge between them.
For on the one hand, even the most problematic of biblical texts
have a definite literal sense. That is to say, their human authors had
some pedagogical purpose in mind when they composed them for
their original audience. Method B acknowledges this in an eminent
way, and one who wants to do Method C exegesis must attend to it.
Meanwhile, Method A tells us that these same texts signify some-
thing in addition to the meaning originallly intended by their hu-
man authors: namely, they signify realities in the lives of believers of
all ages who meditate on these texts in order to gain the knowledge
and strength they need to faithfully endure the strife that is human
life, suffering, and death.
In his own turn, a Method C exegete, while acknowledging the
literal sense, will seek out this spiritual sense and strive to show that
it is not merely one among many possible readings of scripture but
1. This second dimension of the divine pedagogy is eloquently described by the
Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, Dialogue and Proclamation (1991):
“[The Church] takes her lead from divine pedagogy. This means learning from Jesus
himself, and observing the times and seasons as prompted by the Spirit. Jesus only pro-
gressively revealed to his hearers the meaning of the Kingdom, God’s plan of salvation
realized in his own mystery. Only gradually, and with infinite care, did he unveil for
them the implications of his message, his identity as the Son of God, the scandal of
the Cross. Even his closest disciples, as the Gospels testify, reached full faith in their
Master only through their Easter experience and the gift of the Spirit. Those who wish
to become disciples of Jesus today will pass through the same process of discovery and
commitment.” §69 (emphasis mine).
 158 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

the end point for which God had been preparing the people through
his pedagogy over the centuries.2 By doing this, Method C exegesis
does not deny the importance of the literal sense—upon which the
spiritual is founded—but in light of the divine pedagogy it allows
us to show how the literal sense opens up into spiritual senses that
touch the lives of believers in every age. By attempting to facilitate a
spiritual encounter with Christ teaching his people in the problem-
atic or “dark” texts of scripture, our project will have completed the
most significant and urgent task called for in the exegetical proposal
of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict. With that said, let us begin our
investigation of the nature of God and the nature of good and evil,
reserving this entire chapter for the afterlife. Since biblical data and
scholarship abound especially for this problem, we will develop it at
greater length in order to offer a more detailed portrait of Method C
exegesis.

Method C Exegesis
and t h e Nat u re of God
Review of the Problem from a
Method B Perspective
In his book The God Delusion, well-known atheist Richard Daw­
kins gives a scathing review of the Old Testament and its God:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character
in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-
freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homopho-
bic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,
sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. . . . It is unfair to attack such
an easy target. The God Hypothesis should not stand or fall with its most
unlovely instantiation, Yahweh, nor his insipidly opposite Christian face,
“Gentle Jesus meek and mild.”3

2. I have borrowed this terminology from Gregory Vall in his “Psalm 22: Vox
Christi or Israelite Temple Liturgy?” The Thomist 66 (2002): 177. This article was semi-
nal for my own thinking about the divine pedagogy and how to reconcile ancient and
modern methods of biblical interpretation through it.
3. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 31.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 159

Dawkins’s critique is thorough and definitive. Yahweh is “the most

unpleasant character in all fiction” and the “most unlovely” example
of a god, period. Jesus, meanwhile, is just as bad as Yahweh. How-
ever, he is evil because he represents Yahweh’s “insipidly opposite
face.” Both are equally bad, though from Dawkins’s point of view
they are altogether different divinities. One would be hard-pressed
to find harsher criticisms of God’s nature than what we observe in
Dawkins.
That said, it is interesting that most popular critics of the Judeo-
Christian God focus on his moral (or immoral) attributes, appar-
ently unaware of more subtle historical-critical observations that
would seem to contradict orthodox doctrine on the nature of God.
In particular, in chapter 1 we observed that Pope Benedict himself
takes it as a clear given that there were times when the Israelites ac-
cepted the existence of multiple divine beings as a matter of course.
Here we will recall just a few passages:
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment (Ps 82:1)
There is none like thee among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like thine (Ps 86:8).
When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were
born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair;
and they took to wife such of them as they chose. . . . The Nephilim were on
the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in
to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the
mighty men that were of old, the men of renown. (Gn 6:1–2, 4)
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us,
knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of
the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (Gn 3:22).
Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, “Jacob,” and I said, “Here
I am!” And he said, “Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that leap upon
the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled; for I have seen all that Laban is
doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made
a vow to me. Now arise, go forth from this land, and return to the land of
your birth” (Gn 31:11–13).
And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel,
Your fathers lived of old beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abra-
 160 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

ham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. . . . Now therefore fear the
Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods
which your fathers served beyond the River, and in Egypt, and serve the
Lord. And if you be unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you
will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the
River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me
and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Jo 24:2,14–15).
In chapter 1, we also discussed problems concerning divine immu-
tability, the attribute of God by which we understand his perfect na-
ture cannot suffer change.
And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people (Ex
32:14).
[The angel of the Lord] said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad or do any-
thing to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not with-
held your son, your only son, from me” (Gn 22:12).
The apparent contradiction here is that the Old Testament some-
times presents us with a God who changes his mind and learns new
things, both of which are impossible according to our reason’s grasp
of the nature of God. This is merely a brief statement of a problem
that runs deeply in scripture and therefore merits attention in our
time.

Helpful but Insufficient Method A Responses

As the sampling of texts below shows, for centuries patristic-
medieval exegesis has largely overlooked the elements of polytheism
latent within the Old Testament. In light of the historical-critical
evidence presented in chapter 1, however, it is no longer possible for
the Christian to rely solely on even the best of traditional explana-
tions like that found in St. Augustine.
In his City of God, Augustine tackles the issue of how divine im-
mutability can be reconciled with statements which appear to indi-
cate God changes his mind. He is very clear that God himself can-
not “repent” or change that which he has foreknown he would do:
For though God is said to change His determinations (so that in a tropical
[moral] sense the Holy Scripture says even that God repented), this is said
with reference to man’s expectation, or the order of natural causes, and not
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev il 161

with reference to that which the Almighty had foreknown that He would
do.4
Augustine’s answer is brilliant. God cannot literally repent or change
his mind. What changes over time is “man’s expectation” with regard
to God and “the order of natural causes.” In other words, when we
think we see a change in God’s behavior, the change that has taken
place really lies in us rather than in him. While this explanation is
consonant with Christian doctrine today, we have to ask the same
question we asked before in reference to patristic exegesis on the af-
terlife in scripture: does Augustine arrive at this conclusion because
of the text of scripture or rather despite the intended meaning of its
human author? For it is one thing to say that Augustine’s account is
true in light of what Christians know today, but whether it is true to
the text of scripture is another question.
As for those places in scripture which appear to acknowledge
the existence of many gods, the doctor of grace is very adamant that
the “gods” of which scripture speaks are not divine beings. Rather,
at times the term “gods” refers to the men who worship the one true
God. As he writes on Psalm 82:1: “For it begins,” he says, “God stood
in the synagogue of gods. Far however be it from us to understand
by these Gods the gods of the Gentiles, or idols, or any creature in
heaven or earth except men.”5 In his work on Psalm 29, meanwhile,
it is clear that for Augustine this is “a Psalm of the Mediator Himself,
strong of hand, of the perfection of the Church in this world, where
she wars in time against the devil.” The “heavenly beings” described
in this psalm are not members of a divine council in heaven but rath-
er the sons of the church who have been begotten for Christ: “The
Prophet speaks, Bring unto the Lord, O you Sons of God, bring unto
the Lord the young of rams. Bring unto the Lord yourselves, whom
the Apostles, the leaders of the flocks, have begotten by the Gospel.”6
4. Augustine, City of God [De civitate Dei], translated by Marcus Dods, vol. 2,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff (Buffalo, N.Y.:
Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), 14.11.
5. Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms [Enarrationes in psalmos], translated by J. E.
Tweed, vol. 8, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff (Buf-
falo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), 82.
6. Ibid., 29. One might enquire why Augustine’s citations of biblical texts differ so
 162 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

Augustine’s treatment of Psalm 136 explains the nature of these

“gods” at greater length:
Give thanks to the God of gods, for His mercy endures for ever. Give thanks to
the Lord of lords, for His mercy endures for ever. We may well enquire, Who
are these gods and lords, of whom He who is the true God is God and Lord?
And we find written in another Psalm, that even men are called gods. The
Lord even takes note of this testimony in the Gospel, saying, Is it not writ-
ten in your Law, I have said, You are gods. It is not therefore because they
are all good, but because the word of God came to them, that they were
called gods. . . . But it is asked, If men are called gods to whom the word of
the Lord came, are the Angels to be called gods, when the greatest reward
which is promised to just and holy men is the being equal to Angels? In the
Scriptures I know not whether it can, at least easily, be found, that the An-
gels are openly called gods; but when it had been said of the Lord God, He
is terrible, above all gods, he adds, as by way of exposition why he says this,
for the gods of the heathen are devils, that we might understand what had
been expressed in the Hebrew, the gods of the Gentiles are idols, meaning
rather the devils which dwell in the idols.7
As he does in his commentary on Psalm 82 and on various other
psalms, Augustine here reiterates the idea that the “gods” of which
the psalmist speaks are none other than the holy men who wor-
ship the one true God. He then takes up the question of whether
the angels can be called gods. Interestingly, he refers to the original
Hebrew of Psalm 96 to help establish his point that the “gods” of
the Gentiles are not really divine beings but rather devils who dwell
in their man-made idols. This is a wonderful move from the stand-
point of Method C exegesis. For, whereas in other places Augustine
seems to bypass the literal sense of the text in favor of a Christologi-
cal interpretation, here he is willing to consider how the text in its
original language might shed light on its fullest meaning.
Nevertheless, despite the beauty and erudition of his efforts, Au-
gustine on his own ultimately fails to fulfill today’s requirements of
a Method C approach to scripture. Because he is not privy to knowl-

much from what we read in our English Bibles. This is explicable due to the fact he used
a Latin translation (and therefore interpretation) of the original Greek and Hebrew
text. Thus when Ps 29:1 in the RSV reads, “Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength,” the
Vulgate has “bring unto the Lord the young of rams” (adferte Domino filios arietum).
7. Ibid., 136.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 163

edge of the complexities involved with the authorship of the Psalms,

Augustine unquestioningly applies what he knows from Psalm 96 to
a problem that appears in Psalm 82. While it is a guiding principle
of Catholic exegesis to read scripture in light of other parts of scrip-
ture, Method C exegesis must do this while respecting the context of
each particular text, being careful not to read into it what we think
we know based on other texts. Historical-critical scholarship helps
keep Method C exegetes honest in this regard, for those who take
Christianity’s critics seriously constantly have to ask the question:
is what we are saying at least plausible in the eyes of those who take
seriously the literal sense of Scripture? The Method C exegete thus
may not convince his critics of the Bible’s truth, but at least they
cannot accuse him of brushing aside its greatest difficulties.

Toward a Method C Response

A Method C approach to the problem of God’s nature in scrip-
ture must begin with an appreciation of the magnitude of the task
God had before him when he set out to prepare his people for the
coming of Jesus Christ and the revelation of the Trinity. What many
Christians do not realize is that the divine pedagogy of the Old Tes-
tament begins at square one with a people who worshiped many
gods. The book of Joshua recounts Joshua telling the people of Isra-
el, “Your fathers lived of old beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father
of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods” (Jo 24:2).
Throughout the Old Testament, we witness Yahweh’s struggle to
woo the hearts of his people away from false gods and back to him-
self.
The narrative portions make this abundantly clear as they de-
scribe Israel’s idolatry in no uncertain terms: “And the people of Is-
rael did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. . . .
They forsook the Lord, and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth”
(Jgs 2:11, 13). The admonitions of the prophets, meanwhile, are noth-
ing less than scathing. As God reminds his people through the proph-
et Ezekiel, “You trusted in your beauty, and played the harlot because
of your renown, and lavished your harlotries on any passer-by. . . . And
you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me,
 164 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured” (Ez 16:15,20). The

prophet Elijah was so zealous to blot out Baal worship that he slew
many of the prophets of Baal (cf. 1 Kgs 18). The vast evidence of this
dynamic leads John Scullion to write:
God in popular Judean or Israelite religion is not necessarily the God of the
definitive Hebrew Bible. . . . One can speak of two religions in Israel: (1) the
official one, concerned with the one God and his law . . . (2) the popular one,
crass, ignorant, with emphasis on the periphery and with practices outside
official control.8
Scullion goes on to pinpoint some of the places where the official
and unofficial Israelite views of God show up in the Old Testament.
The popular, unsanctioned theology appears in the books of Samuel
and Kings (e.g., the necromancy of 1 Sam. 28 described in chapter 1)
as well as in the behavior of Israelites which was condemned by the
prophets and prohibited in Deuteronomic literature. In this litera-
ture it becomes clear that “those who followed strictly the first com-
mandment (Ex 20:2–5; Dt 5:6–10) and the Shema (Dt 6:4–9) were
few.”9 Given the prevalence of heterodox views among the chosen
people, it ought not to come as a complete surprise that sometimes
even the inspired authors of scripture themselves appear to hold
ideas about God which are incompatible with monotheism in the
sense Christians intend it today. Indeed, the many books of the Old
Testament exhibit great diversity with respect to the question of
God’s identity. How, then, is the Method C exegete to explain that
these deviations are not formal errors?
Although the Old Testament fails to paint an utterly unified por-
trait of God, one may observe a definite trajectory of growth in the
chosen people’s knowledge of the one true God over the course of
divine revelation. Scullion aptly refers to this phenomenon as the
Bible’s “monotheizing” tendency:
The Hebrew Bible and its final expression of one God is the end result of
a struggle for God that has been long and complicated. “The Bible prob-
ably should not be thought of as a monotheistic book but as monotheizing
literature. There is no serious treatise in it arguing monotheism philosophi-

8. ABD, vol. 2, 1042.

9. Ibid.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev il 165

cally. But every bit of it monotheizes—more or less well.” This process of

monotheizing came to an official end with the editing and crystallization
in writing of the struggle for the one God. . . . The religious history of Israel
is the story of constant falling away from the one God. . . . There are many
stages in the process that lead to the monotheism of Deutero-Isaiah. The
journey was not along a straight path.10
The Bible’s “monotheizing” process indicates its efforts to gradually
establish and vindicate monotheism. It did not take the form of a
philosophical treatise but was rather a process of trial and error car-
ried out “more or less well,” depending on the time period and bibli-
cal author one reads. The Old Testament was composed over a span
of some eight hundred years, with many high and low points along
the path that led to what many consider its culmination when God
speaks through the prophet Isaiah: “I am the first and I am the last;
besides me there is no god” (Is 44:6), and “I am the Lord, and there is
no other. . . . They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden
idols, and keep on praying to a god that cannot save” (Is 45:18,20).
Scullion points out that this section of Isaiah, along with Chroni-
cles and Daniel, contains the Old Testament’s clearest declaration
of God’s oneness and uniqueness, that is to say “monotheism in the
strict sense.”11
The low points of the Old Testament’s monotheizing efforts are
many and evident, as demonstrated in chapter 1. At this juncture,
therefore, we may turn our attention specifically to the high points
in the process and propose a way to account for their coexistence
in the canon with texts that seem to contradict orthodox Christian
doctrine. Our first task will be to address the nature of the “divine
council” described in chapter 1. There we saw that “such allusions
to a plurality of divine beings, occurring especially in the Psalms

10. Ibid. The citation within this citation is from James Sanders, Canon and Com-
munity: A Guide to Canonical Criticism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 51. The
“Deutero-Isaiah” spoken of here refers to the second of three portions of the book of
Isaiah (chapters 40–55) that have been distinguished by historical-critical exegesis.
11. Ibid. However, it is by no means the only Old Testament passage that endorses
a strict monotheistic view. The psalmist, for example, plainly states with regard to the
gentiles, “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths,
but do not speak; eyes, but do not see” (Ps 115:4–5).
 166 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

and related poetic literature, represent a stage when Israel’s Yahwism

found room for a pantheon in many ways similar to Canannite
models.”12 For a Method C hermeneutic that approaches divine rev-
elation in terms of the divine pedagogy, the operative word here is
“stage.” Israel’s belief in the existence of a divine council comprised
of “sons of God” was not the nation’s definitive view but rather one
major stage or step in the process of monotheizing that eventually
prepared her to welcome the coming of Jesus Christ as the incarna-
tion of the one true God.
How did the divine pedagogy eventually lead Israel out of her
early, polytheistic worldview? First, it is important to remember
that all along “these beings are clearly subordinate to Yahweh, form-
ing his heavenly court or divine council.”13 In other words, the Bible
never presents us with polytheism in the strict sense of the term but
rather a form of henotheism, a system that acknowledged the exis-
tence of many gods while refusing to worship any of them but one.
Thus, when we encounter statements to the effect that “there is none
like thee among the gods, O Lord” (Ps 86:8), we are really dealing
with a variation of henotheism, or at least a remnant of it. When the
psalmist makes the proclamation, “Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly
beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength” (Ps 29:1), he is not
simply equating Yahweh with the gods of the nations; he is demon-
strating that all these gods are subordinate to the God of Israel.
Over time, Israel’s fundamental belief in Yahweh’s superior-
ity over “sons of the gods” led to the recognition that these beings
were not gods at all. As Brendan Byrne informs us, “Eventually the
‘sons of the gods’ were fused with the concept of angels, a develop-
ment already to be seen in Dn 3:25 and reflected, for the most part,
in the LXX.”14 Again, the key word here is “development.” Dn 3:25
represents a later stage in the divine pedagogy, a theological devel-
opment with respect to Israel’s understanding of who God is. Dan-
iel recounts the astonishment of King Nebuchadnezzar when, after
casting the three Israelite boys into the fiery furnace, there myste-
12. ABD, vol. 6, 156 (emphasis added).
13. Ibid (emphasis added).
14. Ibid.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev il 167

riously appears a fourth being which he apparently takes to be an

angel: “But I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire,
and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son
of the gods.”
While this passage from Daniel does not explicitly equate the
“sons of the gods” with angels, in other places the Septuagint makes
their identity indisputable. Translated only a couple of centuries be-
fore the coming of Christ, the LXX represents the culmination of
the divine pedagogy insofar as it not only translates but also inter-
prets the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament based on its
more mature knowledge of divine realities. For instance, the LXX
version of Job repeatedly changes the Hebrew expression “sons of
the gods” (‫ )ּב ְֵנ֣י ָהאֱֹל ִ֔הים‬to “the angels of God” (οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ)
Thus, when our RSV translation of Jb 1:6 (basing itself on the He-
brew) reads, “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to
present themselves before the Lord,” the LXX actually reads, “Now
there was a day when the angels of God came to present themselves
before the Lord” (cf. Jb 2:1; 38:7). The LXX of Psalm 96:5 likewise
makes a significant change to its Hebrew original. In order to make
the true identity of “the gods of the peoples” perfectly clear, it dem-
onstrates that they are not merely “idols”; rather, according to the
LXX, “all the gods of the peoples are demons (δαιμόνια).” Emenda-
tions of this sort abound in the LXX, but these two are among the
most helpful in terms of demonstrating the way Israel’s more mature
thought articulated the nature of those beings they once described
as “the gods” or “sons of the gods.”15
To round out our treatment of high points in the Old Testament’s
portrait of the divine nature, we need to examine some other aspects
of God’s identity and how they pointed towards the New Testament’s
revelation of the Trinity. The first of these concerns God’s father-

15. See also Gn 6:2, in which the LXX rescriptor substituted “angels” for “sons” of
God. The LXX also emends the Hebrew of Dt 32:8 from “sons of Israel” to read “an-
gels of God.” The LXX of Dt 32:43 adds the statement “let all the angels of God wor-
ship [God].” It is interesting to note that the LXX is not alone in its emendations. For
example, the Targum (early translation of the Bible from Hebrew into Aramaic) also
substitutes “angels” for “sons of God.”
 168 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

hood. Our overview of Israel’s gradually developing monotheism

would remain far from complete if we did not make it clear that the
cultivation of man’s relationship with God the Father was the end to
which the rest of the Bible’s monotheizing process was ordered. The
Old Testament contains several statements of God’s fatherhood, but
perhaps the clearest of these forms the Old Testament’s Pater Noster,
found in Is 63:7–64:11.16 Here, the prophet prays:
For thou art our Father,
though Abraham does not know us
and Israel does not acknowledge us;
thou, O Lord, art our Father,
our Redeemer from of old is thy name (Is 64:8).
Yet, O Lord, thou art our Father;
we are the clay, and thou art our potter;
we are all the work of thy hand (Is 63:16).
It is worth observing that this prayer is found in Trito-Isaiah,
which Method B exegesis pinpoints as the last of three parts of the
book of Isaiah, composed during the Babylonian exile or shortly
thereafter. It provides a nice complement to the clear monotheistic
affirmations of Deutero-Isaiah we saw above, for here the proph-
et’s goal is not merely to denounce the gods of the nations as idols.
Rather, now we see that the purpose of denouncing the idols was to
clear the path for something overwhelmingly positive: Israel’s rela-
tionship with God the Father and the union of all Israelites with one
another in him. In another statement of staunch monotheism, the
prophet Malachi will take the reality of God’s fatherhood as a basis
for exhorting the people of God to union with one another: “Have
we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are
we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?”
(Mal 2:10)
16. Other Old Testament statements of God’s fatherhood not described in detail
here include: “Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, ‘Let my
son go that he may serve me’ ” (Ex 4:22–23); “You are the sons of the Lord your God;
you shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness on your foreheads for the dead”
(Dt 14:1); “Do you thus requite the Lord, you foolish and senseless people? Is not he
your father, who created you, who made you and established you?” (Dt 32:6); “When
Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hos 11:1).
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 169

The other aspect of God’s nature that comes into full view at the
height of divine revelation in the Old Testament is his spousal rela-
tionship with Israel. Several passages from the prophets portray God
as the jealous husband who seeks to woo back his unfaithful lover,
Israel.17 As God proclaims through the mouth of the prophet Hosea:
And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
when she burned incense to them
and decked herself with her ring and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
and forgot me, says the Lord.
Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her . . .
And in that day, says the Lord, you will call me, “My husband,” and no lon-
ger will you call me, “My Baal” . . .
I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord (Hos
1:13–14, 16, 20)
The apex of Old Testament doctrine on the nature of God thus re-
veals that he is not only Israel’s father but also her bridegroom. As
we discovered in the case of God’s fatherhood, so once again we find
that Trito-Isaiah provides us with perhaps the loftiest of all depic-
tions of God’s spousal nature in the Old Testament. The prophet
tells his people:
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;
but you shall be called My delight is in her,
and your land Married;
for the Lord delights in you,
and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a virgin,
so shall your [Builder] marry you,
17. Especially noteworthy are the denunciations of Jer 2–3 and Ez 16. The Song of
Songs is also an invaluable witness to the beauty of Israel’s spousal relationship with
God. Although it is a secular love poem that never once mentions the word “God,” it
has always been read by Method A exegetes—as it still is today—as an allegory of Yah-
weh’s love relationship with his people.
 170 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,

so shall your God rejoice over you (Is 62:3–5).18
Isaiah reveals that God’s love for his people is so great that it can be
described as nothing less than spousal. As a groom rejoices in his
bride, so Yahweh rejoices in us. We are his people, his virgin spouse,
and he is our bridegroom and builder who yearns to unite him-
self to us despite our sinfulness and constant rejections of his love.
Trito-Isaiah’s lofty theology of God’s spousal nature thus splendidly
anticipates the New Testament’s revelation of Christ, who revealed
himself as the bridegroom of the church (cf. Mt 9:15; 25:1ff; Rv 19:7,
Eph 5:21–33; etc.).
To be sure, the Old Testament’s mature view of God as father
and bridegroom does not amount to a trinitarian theology. Trito-
Isaiah does not distinguish multiple persons in God, yet we can see
it points in that direction, especially when taking other relevant
aspects of Old Testament thought into account. For example, the
Old Testament hints at the presence of a mysterious plurality with-
in the unity of God’s nature when it speaks of the divine “Spirit”
(ַ‫ ֥)רּוח‬and “Word” (‫)דְ בַר‬. The Old Testament mentions the “Spirit of
God” sixteen times, while the related expressions “Spirit of Yahweh”
and “Spirit of the Almighty” show up twenty-eight times and two
times, respectively. The “Word of God” makes 400 appearances in
the same body of literature, in addition to the “Word of Yahweh,”
which is mentioned 240 times. Despite all this evidence, Method B
exegesis is quite clear that the sacred authors of the Old Testament
did not consciously have in mind the second and third persons of
the Trinity when they employed this vocabulary.
On the other hand, Old Testament wisdom literature—partic-

18. “Builder” is in brackets here because of an emendation suggested by historical-

critical scholarship. Following the best available Masoretic Text (hereafter MT) manu-
script evidence, the RSV actually reads “sons” here, whereas I have followed other trans-
lations such as the New American Bible (hereafter NAB) in using the word “Builder.”
This emendation is explicitly suggested by the editors of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgarten-
sia, (hereafter BHS) in the critical apparatus (technical footnotes) because “sons” does
not seem to fit the context of the passage. The MT word ‫“( ּב ָ ָ֑ני ְִך‬your sons”) is possibly
the result of a scribal error which lost the original, very similar word meaning “your
Builder.”
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 171

ularly its figure of Lady Wisdom—seems to have exerted a strong

influence on the chosen people as God prepared them to accept
Christ’s revelation of a plurality within the divine unity. The book of
Proverbs personified wisdom as Yahweh’s companion who cooper-
ated with him in his act of creation:
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water . . .
When he established the heavens, I was there . . .
then I was beside him, like a master workman;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always (Prv 8:22–24,27,30).
The figure of wisdom described here is not equivalent to the Word
(Λόγος) of God whom the Gospel of John describes as being with
him from all eternity and cooperating in the creation of the universe
(cf. Jn 1). For, setting aside additional complicating factors, Proverbs
and its feminine “wisdom” (Σοφία) explicitly contrast with the New
Testament and its masculine Λόγος. The book of Wisdom itself de-
scribes it in this way:
For she is a breath of the power of God,
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.
For she is a reflection of eternal light,
a spotless mirror of the working of God,
and an image of his goodness.
Though she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God, and prophets (Ws 7:25–27).
Here, we discover that wisdom is a “pure emanation” of God, a “re-
flection of eternal light,” a “spotless mirror of the working of God,”
and “an image of his goodness.” It would be hard to find better words
within scripture itself to depict the presence of a plurality within the
Godhead, yet the author of Wisdom does not posit his theology ac-
cording to standard Christian categories.
 172 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

Before wrapping up our look into the high points of Old Testa-
ment teaching on the nature of God, it is appropriate to revisit a final
issue originally introduced in chapter 1. There we noted the confu-
sion some Old Testament authors apparently made between Yahweh
and his angel, the ‫ ַמל ַ ְ֧אְך י ְהוָ ֛ ה‬. However, it turns out that this equivo-
cation might have constituted more of a strength than a defect in
the biblical text. Writing on Hagar’s mysterious encounter with “the
angel of the Lord” in Gn 16:7–13, Carol Newsome proposes:
The explanation that seems most likely is that the interchange between
Yahweh and [the angel of the Lord] in various texts is the expression of a
tension or paradox. Yahweh’s authority and presence in these encounters
is to be affirmed, but yet it is not possible for human beings to have an
unmediated encounter with God. Hagar is correct—she has seen God. But
the narrator is also correct that the one who appeared to her was [an angel
of the Lord]. The unresolved ambiguity in the narrative allows the reader to
experience the paradox.19
As Newsome explains, some authors of the Old Testament had such
a strong sense of God’s transcendence that they insisted his encoun-
ters with humans had to take place through an intermediary, his
“angel.” Granted, authors of the Old Testament at times seem con-
fused as to who precisely this angel is. According to the above expla-
nation, however, the angel’s mysterious presence in the text actually
constituted a step in the right direction in terms of Israel’s growing
understanding of who God really is. In this life, we encounter God
through a mediating presence; he cannot literally be seen “face to
face” in this vale of tears, as some earlier Old Testament texts had
indicated (e.g. Ex 33:11). Eventually, Israelite theology would go on
to sharply distinguish Yahweh from his angelic mediators, but it is
providential that parts of the Old Testament exhibit the paradox of
a God who mediates himself to man, a God who is undeniably one
and yet contains hints of plurality within his unity. Borrowing the
words of Pope Benedict, we may therefore conclude that “although
in the Old Testament, especially in its early books, there is certain-
ly no kind of revelation of the Trinity, nevertheless in this process

19. ABD, vol. 1, 250.

 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev il 173

there is latent an experience that points toward the Christian con-

cept of the triune God.”20
Pope Benedict refers to the revelation of God’s nature in the Old
Testament as a “process.” The word choice here is important because
it conveys the idea that the people of Israel did not arrive at the full-
ness of revelation overnight but rather over the course of many cen-
turies of preparation through the divine pedagogy. Benedict also
states that the Old Testament people of God had a “latent” experi-
ence that “points towards” the Trinity. This phrasing too is helpful
since it corroborates Aquinas’s claim that the faith of God’s people
in the Old Testament and New Testament is of the same substance
even though people who lived in later ages were privileged to affirm
more articles of faith in God in comparison with those who expe-
rienced the Trinity in a more “latent” manner. With all this said,
we may not claim to have proven this thesis beyond the shadow of
a doubt, nor may we affirm that the trajectory of Israel’s growing
belief in God was an entirely linear process. We have simply pointed
to elements that indicate God had a unified plan by which he led his
people from early low points of polytheism to high points in which
they proclaimed a staunch monotheism that culminated in the rev-
elation of the Trinity. In his Regensburg Address, Pope Benedict
spoke concerning this process:
Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush
came to new maturity at the time of the exile, when the God of Israel, an
Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God
of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the
words uttered at the burning bush: “I am.” This new understanding of God
is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in
the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands.21
It is significant that the pontiff speaks of Israel’s knowledge of God
in terms of a process that exhibited development over the centuries.
It was only at the time of the exile that Israel finally understood that

20. Benedict XVI, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,

2004), 125.
21. Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections”
(September 12, 2006).
 174 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

Yahweh was not merely their God but rather the only God, the other
“gods” being merely human creations.
It is important to consider the following account from Robert
Martin-Achard in this connection, as he dwells at greater length on
the process described by Benedict:
Several assertions, implicitly contained in the ancient beliefs, were ren-
dered explicit and defined with precision through resistance to the claims
of rival faiths; little by little, the God of Israel took possession of the whole
world. Thus it is that at the beginning, Yahweh appears as the Lord of a
semi-nomadic clan, he is the “jealous God,” semi-nomadic and haughty as
the Bedouin, master of a rocky stronghold somewhere in the wilderness;
but after Israel has taken possession of Canaan and the crisis brought on
by the competition of the agricultural cults with Yahweh occurs, He is then
manifested as the true master of the soil of Palestine, the God who alone
provides water and rain and bread and wine, he upon whom Israel depends
day by day in the land that has been given to it; thus Yahweh appropriates
to himself prerogatives that belonged to Baal, but without becoming iden-
tified with any form of vital force. Still later, through the contact with the
mighty Assyrian and Babylonian empires whose tutelary god is Marduk,
Yahweh, when his people is dispersed among the nations, is revealed no
longer as a divinity whose power is confined within the frontiers of Pales-
tine, but as the absolute sovereign of the earth whose will determines the lot
of Egypt and Assyria as well as that of Israel, as the creator of the universe
who holds all things in the hollow of his hand. . . . At the very moment when
Iran is proclaiming the destruction of the world and its total renewal, Yah-
weh makes himself known as he who is going to put an end to the power
of death and utterly shatter the power of Sheol. He will raise the departed
from the dust, he will awaken his faithful from the sleep of death, he will
break open the gate of hell. Thus the Old Testament ends with the procla-
mation of Yahweh’s victory over the last enemy; the revelation of the God of
Israel begins in the wilderness, goes on to the conquest of nature, continues
by taking possession of the universe itself, and ends in the annihilation of
the forces of Chaos.22
One would be hard-pressed to find a more fitting description of
God’s gradual self-disclosure to his people than this. Martin-Achard
22. Robert Martin-Achard, From Death to Life: A Study of the Development of the
Doctrine of the Resurrection in the Old Testament, translated by John Penney Smith
(London: Oliver and Boyd, 1960), 194–95. For more on the topic of foreign influence on
Israel’s doctrine of the afterlife, see also Robert Martin-Achard, “Resurrection (OT),”
ABD, vol. 5, 680–84.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 175

illustrates several stages of growth in the Old Testament’s doctrine

on God’s nature. In the beginning, the Israelites only knew of God as
the Lord of their semi-nomadic clan but did not deny the existence
of other divinities. Thus Moses and Aaron told Pharaoh, “The God
of the Hebrews has met with us; let us go, we pray, a three days’ jour-
ney into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he
fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword” (Ex 5:2–3). This was
the “jealous” God who confused the nations at Babel (Gn 11:7) and
who would change his mind or “repent” of doing evil (cf. Ex 32:14;
1 Sm 15:35; Am 7:2–3, etc.).
Later, after Israel had taken possession of Canaan, Yahweh began
to acquire the prerogatives of Baal and be worshiped as the highest
of the gods, as we have seen above. Still later, through her contact
with Babylon and Assyria, Israel began to realize that their God was
“absolute sovereign of the earth,” the one true God who holds all
things together and who will ultimately vindicate his people by put-
ting an end to death itself. At this point, at last, Israel knew that
there was no god besides Yahweh, and that the gods of the nations
were mere idols (cf. Is 44:6; 45:18, 20). Even still, it is fascinating that
the faithful Israelites who compiled the canon of scripture did not
efface earlier statements that might appear problematic to later Isra-
elites. We find traces of Israel’s earliest traditions scattered through-
out the Old Testament, especially in the Pentateuch. These rem-
nants range from the apparent jealously of the divine council which
caused Adam and Eve to be exiled from Eden (cf. Gn 3:22), to the ire
of the council at the Tower of Babel (Gn 11:7), to the mythological
Nephilim who came to earth to take human wives (cf. Gn 6:1–4),
and even to the deliberations of the divine council at man’s creation
(Gn 1:26).
Notwithstanding Martin-Achard’s illuminating narrative, if we
wish to fully vindicate the presence of seemingly contradictory texts
within the biblical canon, it is necessary to make some suggestions
regarding the intention of the authors who penned them. For, even
if we are able to make a plausible case for the presence of a divine
pedagogy that gradually led the chosen people toward the fullness of
revealed truth, the Method C exegete still has to reckon with those
 176 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

passages which appear to blatantly contradict Christian doctrine.

Based on Aquinas’s theology of the act of revelation, our response to
these challenges must be simple and clear. Catholic dogma teaches
that everything asserted by the human authors of scripture is also
asserted by the Holy Spirit who cannot err.23 Therefore, any state-
ments in scripture that contain material imperfections must not
have been asserted as such. When looked at in light of their entire
context, they thus do not constitute true, formal errors since they
are not the principal affirmations of the sacred writers and are not
taught for their own sake.
Accordingly, when the psalmist proclaims that “there is none like
thee among the gods, O Lord” (86:8), his purpose is not primarily
to make a judgment about the nature of God but rather the practical
end of praising and beseeching Yahweh. Similarly, when the book of
Job states that “the sons of God came to present themselves before
the Lord, and Satan also came among them” (1:6–7), its author may
well be thinking of the “sons of God” as divine beings; there may
well be an “environmental glitch” that causes him to hold imperfect
ideas. However, if we look at such texts in light of the entire Bible,
then it can be more clearly seen that their author’s principal aim is
not to speculate about the nature of the divine council. Rather, it
could be suggested that the goal lies more in the effort to narrate
Job’s faithful struggle in the midst all the suffering Satan caused him
and to propose Job as a model of endurance.
In like manner, if the book of Genesis uses mythological lan-
guage (e.g., “Let us . . . ”) in its account of the creation of man and
the Tower of Babel, Catholic theological principles demand that we
look at the entirety of scripture and its development in order to see
that the author is not asserting the reality of polytheism for its own
sake in his text. As C. S. Lewis rightly points out, the Bible had to
depict the living God in terms that we would call anthropomor-
phic today—not because God literally thunders, pleads, changes his
mind, or hates individuals, but because these attributions are the
only way humans have of transmitting the sense of the living God

23. DV §11.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 177

that evaporates when we speak of him in merely abstract terms.24

Looked upon within the broader context of the Bible and its pur-
poses, one can see that these types of images serve a practical end as
they convey the sense of a God who engages in the affairs of man’s
daily life. They were not set forth as definitive metaphysical asser-
tions about the nature of God and ought not to be taken as such.
These are but a few examples of how the Method C exegete can ap-
ply Aquinas’s theology of the act of revelation to biblical texts that
seem to contradict orthodox Christian doctrine on the nature of
God.
Finally, Method C exegesis completes its work by discerning the
ultimate aim of biblical texts, that is to say their divine author’s pur-
pose in composing them. This requires us to ask the question: what
do all these challenging biblical texts concerning the nature of God
have to do with our lives today? At this point it becomes clear how
indispensible patristic-medieval exegesis is to the Method C proj-
ect. Although it has its weaknesses and excesses, spiritual exegesis
24. C. S. Lewis, Miracles, a Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 146. In
his various works, Lewis returns frequently to the phenomenon of myth in the Bible.
His thoughts are directly relevant to our present study as they evince in their own way
a clear articulation of the divine pedagogy. Reading the Old Testament, he says, “is
like watching something come gradually into focus. . . . The earliest stratum of the Old
Testament contains many truths in a form which I take to be legendary, or even myth-
ical—hanging in the clouds, but gradually the truth condenses, becomes more and
more historical . . . ‘God became Man’ should involve, from the point of view of human
knowledge, the statement ‘Myth became Fact.’ ” The Weight of Glory, and Other Ad-
dresses (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 129. His emphasis on the gradual nature of divine
revelation appears elsewhere in even greater detail: “Just as, on the factual side, a long
preparation culminates in God’s becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary
side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing
or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in
general is not merely misunderstood history (as Euhemerus thought) nor diabolical
illusion (as some of the Fathers thought) nor priestly lying (as the philosophers of the
Enlightenment thought) but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth
falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but
as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology—the
mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truths, the first step
in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely
historical.” Lewis, Miracles, 218. For a splendid treatment of myth, see also G. K. Ches-
terton’s The Everlasting Man, which can be found, among other places, in The Collected
Works of G. K. Chesterton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986).
 178 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

enables believers of all ages to encounter the living God through the
text of scripture. For example, when reading in the first command-
ment to “have no other gods before me,” believers who embrace
the Method C approach thus immediately see in their own lives
the danger of created realities or “gods” that threaten to enthrone
themselves on our hearts in place of the one true God who alone
deserves our worship. Like the translators of the LXX, we further-
more recognize that the things humans place before God are not al-
ways innocuous. Often times the idols we worship are placed before
us by the devil.
This spiritual meaning of the scriptures is applicable to the life
of every person who encounters them, regardless of one’s age, race,
gender, or circumstances. As such, it constitutes the scriptures’ ul-
timate reason for being and the point at which revelation is able to
take root in the human heart. However, Benedict’s exegetical pro-
posal is very clear in its insistence that we cannot jump to this spiri-
tual level without engaging the literal first. If we respect the human
authors who originally composed the Bible, our spiritual exegesis
must flow from their work rather than simply bypassing it as in-
significant. This is not to say that scripture’s human authors were
aware of the depths their words would have in light of divine provi-
dence. It simply means that the literal sense of scripture—which is
the object of historical-critical exegesis in a privileged way—is a vi-
tal aid for Christians in their quest to arrive at an encounter with
the living God in scripture. For Pope Benedict, we cannot have one
without the other. Admittedly, in our application of the historical-
critical method to problems concerning the Bible’s portrait of God,
we have not tried to resolve every last problem any more than we
attempted to unveil the entire host of problems bound up with this
theme. What we have done here represents only the beginning of
an approach that would fully account for the many issues that chal-
lenge the Bible’s inerrancy and inspiration.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev il 179

Method C Exegesis an d
the Nat u re of Go od and Evi l
Review of the Problem from a
Method B Perspective
Thus far we have addressed challenges to the Bible’s teaching on
the nature of God, but the issue of evil occupies the first place on the
laundry list of criticisms leveled at the Bible in popular literature to-
day. Many of these criticisms have a long pedigree. For instance, al-
ready in the nineteenth century Friedrich Nietzsche famously called
attention to the Bible’s dealings with good and evil in his On the Ge-
nealogy of Morals. In this work, the renowned nihilist boasted that
the priestly people who authored sacred scripture were the greatest,
most vengeful “haters” in world history. Such attacks continue to be
popular today, appearing in books like Christopher Hitchens’s New
York Times bestseller, God Is Not Great. As part of his case for athe-
ism, Hitchens presents his readers with everything from “demented
pronouncements” in scripture to more serious “atrocities” commit-
ted by God and the people of God. Concerning Numbers 31:17–18,
a passage similar to many of the texts discussed in chapter 1, he re-
marks that it is “certainly not the worst of the genocidal statements
that occur in the Old Testament.”25 Hitchens is to a certain extent
correct on this point. While this passage describes Moses telling the
Israelites to “kill every male among the little ones, and kill every
woman who has known man by lying with him,” it could have been
worse since it falls short of commanding the slaughter of young girls
in addition to all the males and adult women. Even so, the passage
is dark enough to make Hitchens utterly deny any claim that it is the
Word of God.
Hitchens also condemns Exodus 32:27, where the sons of Levi
follow the command of Moses to slay three thousand of their sinful
brethren. He comments:
[This is] a small number compared to the Egyptian infants already massa-
cred by god in order for things to have proceeded even this far, but it helps

25. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great (New York: Twelve, 2007), 106.
 180 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

to make the case for “antitheism.” By this I mean the view that we ought
to be glad that none of the religious myths has any truth to it, or in it. The
Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for
ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massa-
cre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude,
uncultured human mammals.26
In the first sentence, Hitchens is clearly referring to God’s smiting of
all first-born Egyptian males at the time of the Exodus (Ex 12:29). In
comparison with this vengeful act, he argues, the slaughter of three
thousand men looks insignificant. Hitchens states the implications
of his evidence very plainly: it helps make the case for “antitheism.”
For Hitchens, the Bible is a myth, pure and simple, and we would
come to the same conclusion no matter where we looked within the
supposed word of God: “One could go through the Old Testament
book by book, here pausing to notice a lapidary phrase . . . and there
a fine verse, but always encountering the same difficulties.27
Another fascinating criticism to this effect comes from what
one might consider a surprising source given that we have just been
dealing with apologetics of the New Atheism. One month after
Benedict’s Regensburg address in which the pontiff challenged Is-
lam on the point that “violence is incompatible with the nature of
God,” some 100 influential Muslim leaders countered the pope with
an open letter that included this argument:
Moreover, it is noteworthy that Manuel II Paleologus says that “violence” goes
against God’s nature, since Christ himself used violence against the money-
changers in the temple, and said “Do not think that I came to bring peace on
the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34–36).
When God drowned Pharaoh, was He going against His own Nature?28
At Regensburg, Benedict observed that Christianity made itself vul-
nerable to such criticisms when Duns Scotus broke from Augustine
and Aquinas by maintaining a position that “might even lead to
the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and
goodness.”29

26. Ibid., 101–2. 27. Ibid., 107.

28. www.sis.gov.eg/PDF/En/Arts&Culture/0726070000000000010001.pdf
29. www.vatican.va.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev il 181

But did the danger of fashioning for ourselves a capricious God

really arise with late-medieval voluntarism? Are the Muslims not cor-
rect in their assertion that the Bible itself often depicts a bloodthirsty
God who not only allows evil but even commands and rewards it?30
What immediately follows is a brief review of the biblical evi-
dence to this effect as initially presented in chapter 1. Some of this
data has been employed by popular authors like Hitchens, while oth-
er passages come up only in more erudite historical-critical scholar-
ship:
[Yahweh] blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the
ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they
were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were
with him in the ark (Gn 7:23).
At midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the
first-born of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the first-born of the captive
who was in the dungeon, and all the first-born of the cattle (Ex 12:29).
Moreover I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them
among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they
had not executed my ordinances, but had rejected my statutes and profaned
my sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers’ idols. Moreover I gave
them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not
have life; and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer
by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might
know that I am the Lord (Ez 20:23–26).
But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an
inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall ut-
terly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the
Per’izzites, the Hivites and the Jeb’usites, as the Lord your God has com-
manded” (Dt 20:16–17)
And the Lord our God gave him over to us; and we defeated him and his
sons and all his people. And we captured all his cities at that time and ut-
terly destroyed every city, men, women, and children; we left none remain-
ing” (Dt 2:33–34; cf. 3:6; Jo 6:21).
30. The gravity of this claim cannot be seen if we limit ourselves to addressing
individual “dark” texts as they come to our attention from time to time. It is fully rec-
ognizable by following the inspiration of Newman in his Grammar of Assent and taking
account of the “cumulation of probabilities” that points to a real problem in this area. It
is for this reason that scholars ultimately need to continue the present work by dwelling
at length on problems like the ones treated here.
 182 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

Samaria shall bear her guilt,

because she has rebelled against her God;
they shall fall by the sword,
their little ones shall be dashed in pieces,
and their pregnant women ripped open (Hos 13:16).
O daughter of Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall he be who requites you
with what you have done to us!
Happy shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock! (Ps 137:8–9)
Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the
Lord tormented him (1 Sm 16:14; cf. 18:10; 19:9).
For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come
against Israel in battle, in order that they should be utterly destroyed, and
should receive no mercy but be exterminated, as the Lord commanded Mo-
ses (Jo 11:20).
In some of these passages, God himself is the cause of apparently
evil actions. In other places, he commands his people to commit
what appear to be atrocities. How is the Christian to respond?

Helpful but Insufficient Method A Responses

In the section above we recalled a handful of the many challeng-
es to the Bible one may raise based on the way it accounts for evil.
While many traditional responses to these problems are quite beau-
tiful and insightful, unfortunately they have often skirted the deeper
issues which Method B shows to be at stake here. We will begin with
Origen’s thoughts on the “dashing” of babies in Psalm 137:
And in this way also the just give up to destruction all their enemies, which
are their vices, so that they do not spare even the children, that is, the early
beginnings and promptings of evil. In this sense also we understand the
language of Psalm 137. . . . For, “the little ones of Babylon” (which signifies
confusion) are those troublesome sinful thoughts that arise in the soul, and
one who subdues them by striking, as it were, their heads against the firm
and solid strength of reason and truth, is the person who “dashes the little
ones against the stones”; and he is therefore truly blessed.31

31. Origen, Against Celsus [Contra Celsum], translated by Frederick Crombie, vol.
4, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.d. 325,
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 183

For Origen, there is no question as to the psalm’s meaning: the “lit-

tle ones” who are to be slain are not human children but rather “the
early beginnings and promptings of evil.” He justifies the psalmist’s
words by appealing to the etymology of the word Babylon, which
is related to the word “confusion.” According to Origen, these na-
scent vices are called “the little ones of Babylon” because they arise
in the form of troubling thoughts that confuse one’s soul. The moral
of the psalm is that we should put an end to our evil behavior at its
outset—when it is still in its infancy, so to speak—lest it eventually
develop into an unbreakable vice. True as this wisdom may be, we
once again have to ask the question: does Origen’s exegesis respect
the text of Psalm 137 itself? Was the psalmist really thinking about
crushing his vices when he composed this psalm, or was he rather
thinking about vengefully crushing the heads of Babylonian chil-
dren? From a historical-critical perspective, the latter explanation is
patently the correct one.
Origen’s treatment of the book of Joshua likewise follows the
familiar lines of patristic-medieval thought. He exonerates Joshua’s
genocidal attacks because they prefigure the sacraments: “But mean-
while [Joshua] destroyed the enemies, not teaching cruelty through
this, as the heretics think, but representing the future sacraments
in these affairs.”32 Method A exegesis assumes that the Bible can-
not condone cruelty since it is the word of God. Therefore, it rightly
assumes that the true teaching of barbarous passages like those in
Joshua must lie elsewhere. In the case of Psalm 137, it was to point
out our need for eradicating vices; in the case of Joshua 10, it is a
prefiguring of Christ’s sacraments. In either case, the demands of
historical-critical scholarship, and therefore Method C exegesis as
well, are not met. In Origen we do not have a serious engagement
with the literal sense of these texts or an appreciation for the gravity
of the events recorded therein.

edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd-
mans, 1989), 7.22.
32. Origen, Homilies on Joshua 11.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1947), 105:119. Cf. Jos
10:22ff.
 184 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

Augustine, meanwhile, takes a different approach to these “dark”

passages of the Bible. Even if his response is not satisfactory to many
modern exegetes, he does attend to the literal sense of these texts as
he writes:
One should not at all think it a horrible cruelty that Joshua did not leave
anyone alive in those cities that fell to him, for God himself had ordered
this. However, whoever for this reason thinks that God himself must be
cruel . . . judges as perversely about the works of God as he does about the
sins of human beings. Such people do not know what each person ought to
suffer.33
Augustine openly acknowledges both that Joshua obliterated the peo-
ples he conquered and that God himself had commanded his action.
According to Augustine, however, those who would blame God for
this miss the point about “what each person ought to suffer.”
Later authors like Aquinas will make Augustine’s point even
more clearly: man has merited death through original sin, and God
therefore incurs no blame whenever he commands the slaughter of
seemingly innocent people. Concerning God’s commanding Abra-
ham to slaughter his son Isaac, he explains:
All men alike, both guilty and innocent, die the death of nature: which
death of nature is inflicted by the power of God on account of original sin,
according to 1 Samuel 2:6: “The Lord killeth and maketh alive.” Conse-
quently, by the command of God, death can be inflicted on any man, guilty
or innocent, without any injustice whatever.34
Immediately following this statement, Aquinas excuses a few more
actions which many modern believers would find contrary to the
nature of God. For instance, he justifies Hosea’s marriage to a harlot
by arguing that a man may have sex with any woman if God com-
mands it: “In like manner adultery is intercourse with another’s
wife; who is allotted to him by the law emanating from God. Con-
sequently intercourse with any woman, by the command of God, is
33. Augustine, Questions on Joshua, 16. Translation taken from vol. 4 of the Ancient
Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity
Press, 2005), 67. Cf. Jos 11:14.
34. St. Thomas Aquinas, ST, I–II, q. 94, a. 5 ad 2; cf. I–II, q. 100, a. 8; II-II, q. 154, a.
2 ad 2. Aquinas’s approach to the subject in De malo is very similar; see q. 3, a.1, ad 17;
q. 15, a. 1 ad 8.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 185

neither adultery nor fornication.” Such behavior is neither adultery

nor fornication since the woman ultimately belongs to God who has
willingly given her to the man in question. He likewise applies this
logic to the actions of the Jews in plundering the Egyptians, nar-
rated in Exodus 12: “The same applies to theft, which is the taking of
another’s property. For whatever is taken by the command of God,
to Whom all things belong, is not taken against the will of its owner,
whereas it is in this that theft consists.”
From these passages, it is clear that Augustine and Aquinas share
a strong sense of God’s majesty and man’s sinfulness. They are like-
wise willing to acknowledge what really happened according to the
literal sense of some of scripture’s most challenging texts. However,
believers often cannot help but feel unconvinced by their explana-
tions. Would God ever command a person today to steal, to kill, or
to have sex with any woman? If not, why would he have command-
ed it before and had it recorded in the scriptures? Might we need
to draw a distinction between what God actively wills and what he
allows to happen? Is it possible the scriptures sometimes record for
us what the people of God thought God wanted them to do rather
than what he actually has willed? If so, then how can the scriptures
be inerrant if they misrepresent the mind of God?

Toward a Method C Response

Tracing doctrinal development within the Bible’s portrait of good
and evil is difficult because problematic statements abound in the Old
Testament canon, from the Pentateuch, to many of the prophets, to
the Wisdom literature particularly the Psalms. Notwithstanding this
hurdle, in this section we can still make important suggestions for
how to apply Benedict’s proposal to the problem of good and evil in
specific biblical texts. A great place to start is by once again consider-
ing emendations of the Old Testament that shed insight into the tra-
jectory of the divine pedagogy in ancient Israel. In chapter 1 we dis-
cussed biblical texts that portray the figure of the celestial “accuser”
or ‫ ַהּׂש ָָט֛ן‬. We noted that this figure makes few appearances in the Old
Testament, and even when he does his role and identity is not always
the same as it is in the New Testament. Indeed, the Satan of the Old
 186 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

Testament is typically not inimical to God and sometimes appears to

be acting on God’s own behalf. However, historical-critical scholar-
ship shows that, by the time of the post-exilic author of 1–2 Chroni-
cles, Satan (‫ )ּׂש ָָט֛ן‬began to serve as the proper name for an antagonistic
celestial being who works against God and causes men to do evil.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of this development can be found
in 1 Chronicles 21:1, which pinpoints Satan as the cause of David’s
sinful act of numbering Israel: “Satan stood up against Israel, and in-
cited David to number Israel.” It is of the utmost importance to real-
ize that this is the only place in the Old Testament where ‫ ּׂש ָָט֛ן‬is men-
tioned without the definite article “the” (ַ‫)ה‬. Satan is therefore not
merely a title for the prosecuting attorney of the heavenly court, ac-
cording to this text, but rather a unique celestial being who attempts
to lead man down the path of evil. The picture painted here much
more resembles that which Christians typically have in their minds
when pondering the role of Satan. He “incites” us to evil and is there-
fore, along with our own free will, the cause of our evil actions.
In this passage we observe a marked development in compari-
son with the event’s parallel narration in 2 Samuel 24:1, which states:
“Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incit-
ed David against them, saying, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’ ” The
difference between the two texts is clear. Whereas 1 Samuel indicates
Yahweh was the cause of David’s evil action, the later work 1 Chron-
icles tells us that the cause was Satan. Although we mentioned in
chapter 1 that Method B scholars tend to see the chronicler’s adapta-
tion as a piece of political propaganda, now that we are approaching
the text from the standpoint of a Method C hermeneutic we may
glimpse a different, more sublime dynamic at work here. While it
is perfectly possible that the driving force behind the chronicler’s
adaptation was to make David look good, the fact that he attributed
the instigation of the evil deed to Satan suggests that he and his au-
dience were already beginning to suspect that Yahweh was not the
direct cause of man’s evil actions.35

35. See also the discussion of this text and the Targum’s connecting it with Job in
Scott Hahn, The Kingdom of God as Liturgical Empire: A Theological Commentary on
1–2 Chronicles (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2012), 87–88.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 187

If this explanation is correct, it helps demonstrate the presence

of a substantial unity in the Bible’s developing grasp of the nature of
good and evil, for both earlier and later texts shared in common a
clear understanding that Yahweh was in charge of the entire cosmic
order. Earlier authors were aware that Yahweh’s omnipotence meant
that he was ultimately, in some mysterious way, the “cause” of man’s
evil deeds, since they knew that man depends on God for every-
thing from food to shelter to success to God’s upholding him in ex-
istence from moment to moment. However, they explain this real-
ity in a way that many Christians today would find unacceptable. It
seems that they spoke in such terms because they were operating on
the (incorrect) premise that God was the direct cause of both good
and evil.36 For example, if Saul was possessed by a demon, they con-
cluded, it must have been at Yahweh’s command: “Now the Spirit of
the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tor-
mented him” (1 Sm 16:14; cf. 18:10; 19:9).37 If the earth was flooded
and everything on it killed, it must have been because Yahweh was
angry at man’s sinfulness: “[Yahweh] blotted out every living thing
that was upon the face of the ground, man and animals and creep-
ing things and birds of the air” (Gn 7:23). If Israel suffered because
she failed to live up to God’s commands, perhaps even this was di-
rectly willed by God for the nation’s greater good. The prophet Eze-
kiel thus reports God’s words: “I gave them statutes that were not
good and ordinances by which they could not have life; and I defiled
them through their very gifts in making them offer by fire all their
first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know
that I am the Lord (Ez 20:25–26). According to Ezekiel’s report, God
made his people kill their own children in order that they might be

36. For a helpful discussion of this point, see Kenton Sparks, Sacred Word, Broken
Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture, (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerd-
mans, 2011), 70–71, 105–6; John Collins, “The Zeal of Phineas: The Bible and the Legiti-
mation of Violence,” Journal of Biblical Literature 122 (2003): 3–21.
37. See also the book of Judges, which narrates that “God sent an evil spirit between
Abim’elech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with
Abim’elech” (Jgs 9:23). 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles also indicate through the prophet Mi-
caiah that “the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the
Lord has spoken evil concerning you” (1 Kgs 22:19–22; cf. 2 Chr 18:21ff).
 188 Nature of god & Go od & Ev il

horrified and eventually repent—a good end on the part of God, but
can we justify the means Ezekiel says he used to achieve it?
The Bible’s sacred authors applied this same line of reasoning in
the case of genocidal wars that they victoriously fought for the sake
of Yahweh. If it seemed clear that God wanted a certain battle won,
and the tactics employed therein were successful, then God must
have sanctioned or even directly willed these tactics: “And the Lord
our God gave him over to us; and we defeated him and his sons and
all his people. And we captured all his cities at that time and ut-
terly destroyed every city, men, women, and children; we left none
remaining” (Dt 2:33–34; cf. 3:6; 7:1–2; 20:16–17; Jo 6:21).38 This type
of case is particularly interesting when we consider what happens in
the Old Testament when Israel’s kings fail to execute Yahweh’s brutal
command to exterminate their enemies. Ultimately, the Bible’s sa-
cred authors observed that it led to national disaster. For instance, at
a pivotal point in the Old Testament narrative, King Saul “took Agag
the king of the Amal’ekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people
with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag,
and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fatlings, and the
lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them
(1 Sm 15:8–9). However, since Saul failed to carry out “the ban” to its
utmost extent, Yahweh actually removes him from office: “I repent
that I have made Saul king; for he has turned back from following
me, and has not performed my commandments” (1 Sm 15:11).
The case of Pharaoh’s “hardened” heart likewise represents a
splendid example of how ancient Israel’s assumptions about God’s
causality colored the way they viewed good and evil. If Pharaoh’s
heart was hardened, it must have been at least in part because Yah-
weh desired it to be so: “And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go
back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which
38. Though one might wish to express the following statement differently, it is quite
helpful to consider: “We are right, I think, to notice that the biblical author’s casual at-
titude toward genocide caused him to put words in God’s mouth that were warped
by human limitations. . . . The author knows that God is holy and just, that humanity
stands in rebellion against him and by right faces justice, that an all-out effort is needed
to eradicate evil from a fallen world, that God himself will ultimately secure this vic-
tory.” Sparks, Sacred Word, Broken Word, 112.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev il 189

I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will
not let the people go” (Ex 4:21; cf. 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8, etc.).
The example of Pharaoh is uniquely instructive because in it we wit-
ness firsthand the author(s) of Exodus struggling with the issue of
how God’s causality relates to Pharaoh’s evil actions. Although the
majority of the time Exodus narrates that “the Lord hardened Pha-
raoh’s heart” (Ex 9:12) or even reports God’s words, “I will harden
his heart,” as we saw above, in other places it states that “Pharaoh
hardened his [own] heart” (Ex 8:32), or simply that “Pharaoh’s heart
was hardened” (Ex 7:13).
What reasons can the Method C exegete offer for this discrepan-
cy? First, most Method B scholars concur that the Pentateuch as we
have it today is the product of many different authors writing over
many centuries. If this is the case, then one might argue that the dif-
ferences in Exodus’s approach to Pharaoh are due to the influence
of these different authors. In addition, a Method C approach would
acknowledge that, no matter how many authors had a hand in com-
posing and transmitting Exodus, the final redactors who gave shape
to the book would have been well aware of the discrepancies in the
text and could have eliminated them if they so desired. Implement-
ing the principles we outlined in chapter 4, we might therefore con-
clude that the authors and compilers of the biblical canon were not
attempting to teach definitively on the causality of God with respect
to evil, and that this is the reason that Exodus offers ambiguous and
even seemingly contradictory explanations for Pharaoh’s behavior.
These faithful Israelites were intent on discerning the truth about
God, and precisely because of this they did not wish to overstep
their intellectual boundaries. It seems that they deliberately left am-
biguities in scripture so that later generations could “struggle with
God” as they had done and perhaps build on the tradition they were
blessed to receive from their ancestors.
What all the authors we have just surveyed have in common is
that they were apparently not privy to the distinction made by lat-
er thinkers between God’s active will and his permissive will. This
distinction is the key to reconciling God’s attribute of omnipotence
with his attribute of omnibenevolence, the reality that he is all good
 190 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

and therefore cannot directly cause evil. According to this distinc-

tion, God directly causes some things to happen (active will), while
other things he indirectly causes or allows to happen (permissive
will). It turns out that, as later biblical authors discovered through
divine inspiration, the all-good and all-powerful God allows evil,
but does not directly cause it. This is where Satan eventually comes
into play. In Chronicles as in the New Testament, God allows Satan
to exercise his free will in tempting humans.
With the end of the Old Testament era and the advent of the
New, we find other significant developments in the chosen people’s
understanding of good and evil that are related the free will of Satan
and of man. Written around the time of Jesus, the book of Wisdom
is clear that “God did not make death, and he does not delight in the
death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist”
(Ws 1:13–14). While this passage fails to prove beyond the shadow
of a doubt that God cannot directly will the death of humans, it cer-
tainly points in that direction. The next chapter of Wisdom clarifies
Satan’s role with respect to the presence of death in the world: “God
created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his
own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world,
and those who belong to his party experience it (Ws 2:23–24). Of
course, the devil is not wholly to blame for death entering the world
any more than he was to blame for David’s sin described above. At
the end of the day, although Satan’s causality is a factor in man’s sin-
ning, it is not the entire cause. As St. Paul tells us, “Sin came into the
world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread
to all men because all men sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Because of biblical
revelation, we know that the blame for the problems of the human
race rests just as much on Adam as it does on Satan, and not on God
at all.39

39. For a more thorough understanding of how the Jewish people continued to
penetrate the mystery of evil in the centuries leading up to Christ’s coming, it is also
instructive to read how the presence of evil in scripture was reinterpreted in non-
canonical Jewish religious works from the second Temple period. For example, the book
of Jubilees rewrites Genesis 1 to Exodus 14 and blames “the prince Mastema” (a demon)
for some strange actions that had been attributed to Yahweh in the Pentateuch. For ex-
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 191

What, then, are we to make of the phenomenon of evil in the

Bible in light of Aquinas’s principles? First, we must once again af-
firm that God had a unified plan by which he led his people from
their early beliefs to the fullness of truth concerning the nature of
good and evil, from the belief that God himself was the direct cause
of evil to the recognition of Satan’s pivotal role in inciting men to
perform wicked deeds. In light of St. Thomas’s framework and given
the trajectory of development in this area, the Method C exegete
will acknowledge that the faith of God’s people in their earliest days
was of the same substance as it would be at its full flowering in the
New Testament era. In other words, sacred authors who penned
incriminating statements shared a common faith with those who
would come later and purify their understanding of good and evil.
In this way, simply because sacred authors of earlier periods
lacked the fullness of divine revelation does not mean that their
writings contained error. They knew that their all-powerful Father
was Lord of the entire universe, but they were not privy to addition-
al revelation of distinctions that would help later inspired authors
to articulate the relationship of good and evil more profoundly.
Just because the Old Testament does not teach us to turn the other
cheek (Mt. 5:39) or to return a blessing for an insult (1 Pt 3:9) does
not mean it is corrupt. Even though Jesus apparently contradicts the
Old Testament when he teaches his disciples to disregard the “eye
for an eye” morality of the Old Law, the truth is that Jesus himself
understood that he was fulfilling the essence of the law and elevat-
ing its standards for those who would partake in the New Covenant.
Like Jesus, St. Paul understood himself within the tradition of the
Judaism of his time and shared that same faith. He himself did
not hesitate to appropriate the language of Exodus that many find
problematic today: “So then [God] has mercy upon whomever he
wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills” (Rom 9:18;
cf. 11:8–8). The Method C exegete might even point out that the

ample, in Jubilees Mastema has a hand in God’s commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac
(Jubilees 17:15–18:13; cf. Gn 22:1–2), and he rather than God seeks to slay Moses (Jubliees
48:1–3; cf. Ex 4:24).
 192 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

thought of Paul, while playing a key role in the New Testament, it-
self needed to be elucidated by the church after divine revelation
ended with the death of the last apostle. Paul did not distinguish
God’s active will from his passive will, but like the Bible’s other sa-
cred authors, he gave later Christians the ability to do just that.
Nevertheless, the problem we have just discussed, of under-
standing God’s active or passive will, is the lesser of two problems
when it comes to the Bible’s understanding of good and evil. The
Christian must confront an array of texts that not only exhibit devel-
opment but moreover seem to contradict Christian teaching in an
overt manner. Once again, however, the Method C answer is simple:
since Catholic dogma teaches that everything asserted by the hu-
man authors of scripture is also asserted by the Holy Spirit who can-
not err, it is necessary to hold that any statements in scripture which
contain material imperfections do not thereby constitute formal er-
rors. Because the Method C exegete has the dogmatic principles of
the Catholic faith as his guide, he knows that any imperfect percep-
tion of reality on the part of the sacred author is not being taught
for its own sake. It may be the result of an “environmental glitch”
that causes him to draw an invalid conclusion about some aspect of
the faith or another. For example, if the environment of the authors
discussed above assumed that Yahweh’s omnipotence meant that he
directly caused evil, then these authors would be epistemically justi-
fied in concluding that Yahweh did what we today would recognize
as evil. This does not mean that their imperfect statements conform
to reality. It simply offers one avenue by which to explain that scrip-
ture does not contain error in the sense that Catholic magisterial
teaching understands it.
Ultimately, the exegete’s key task is to analyze God’s word for
the purpose of elucidating its message according to both the liter-
al and spiritual senses, as Pope Benedict’s own discussions of the
scandal of evil in scripture wonderfully illustrate. In particular, God
and the World contains a number of examples that are germane to
our present question concerning the nature of good and evil. In one
instance, interviewer Peter Seewald challenges Benedict with the
Levites’ slaughter of three thousand men at the command of God
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 193

uttered through Moses’s mouth: “So, basically, the story of the Ten
Commandments began with an enormous violation of command-
ment number five: Thou shalt not kill. Moses really ought to have
known better.”40 Benedict’s first move in response is a characteris-
tically honest acceptance of his interlocutor’s observation, namely
that this account “does sound terribly bloodthirsty.” His next is an
instantiation of one of the principles he professed to hold in com-
mon with Aquinas, namely to observe that if the episode is to make
sense, “we have to look forward, toward Christ,” that is, to see scrip-
ture as a whole. Third, rather than simply saying what the passage
cannot mean, he offers a suggestion for what God in his pedagogy
intended it to mean: “What happens expresses the truth that anyone
who turns from God not only departs from the Covenant but from
the sphere of life; they ruin their own life and, in doing so, enter into
the realm of death.”41
In another instance, Pope Benedict instantiates his principles as
he responds to challenging passages that describe God as jealous,
wrathful, and violent in his punishments:
The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a way that
is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow
away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning his life to-
ward wrath. . . . When God inflicts punishment, this is not punishment in
the sense that God has, as it were, drawn up a system of fines and penal-
ties and is wanting to pin one on you. “The punishment of God” is in fact
an expression for having missed the right road and then experiencing the
consequences that follow from taking the wrong track and wandering away
from the right way of living.42
Without employing the same vocabulary as he did above, Benedict
does not shy away from raising the tough question here: Is God ac-
tually wrathful, as the text states? This need not be admitted if one
understands that, while Old Testament authors may have held that
the “wrath” of the all-powerful God was the direct cause of all evil,

40. Benedict XVI, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 167.
41. Ibid., 168.
42. Ibid., 104.
 194 Nature of god & Go od & Ev i l

the main point they taught when speaking this way was that turn-
ing away from God’s love brings about disastrous consequences for
man. In other words, in the sacred author’s mind the mechanism by
which man gets punished for turning against God was subordinate
to his teaching about the reality of the punishment itself.43
The necessity and appropriateness of Benedict’s method is quite
clear in cases such as Psalm 137, the problematic text which appeared
in the opening paragraph of this book. When the author of Psalm 137
declares blessed those who would dash Babylonian infants against
the rock, Catholic teaching seems to necessitate that this outburst
not be the main point of the text according to its literal sense. What
was the principal affirmation of Psalm 137, then? In any given bibli-
cal text, a human author might wish to make multiple points. In this
case, there seem to be two related purposes of the psalm taken in
light of the whole. On the one hand, in his catechesis on this text
Pope Benedict explains, “We have before us a national hymn of sor-
row, marked by a curt nostalgia for what had been lost.”44 The Is-
raelites who went into Babylonian captivity “sat down and wept,”
“hung up” their lyres, and were “required” by their captors to sing
songs. On the other hand, the psalm reads as a prayer of hope in
God’s covenant faithfulness: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my
right hand wither!” (Ps 137:5) In the words of Benedict, “This heart-
felt invocation to the Lord to free his faithful from slavery in Baby-
lon also expresses clearly the sentiments of hope and expectation of
salvation.”45 In any event, the last two lines of the psalm which seek
vengeance for the destruction of Jerusalem are very problematic,
but they are subordinate to these other ends of the text.
As for the spiritual sense of “dark” passages like Psalm 137, the
Method C exegete must constantly return to the question of what
relevance they have for our lives today. While it may be difficult to
find a fitting spiritual interpretation of every passage that is prob-
lematic with respect to good and evil, many are profoundly illumi-

43. Paul Synave and Pierre Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration: a Commentary on the
Summa Theologica II–II, Questions 171–178 (New York: Desclée Co., 1961), 142.
44. Benedict XVI, General Audience, 30 November 2005.
45. Ibid.
 Nat u re of god & Go od & Ev i l 195

nating. To be sure, the Method C exegete may not simply pass over
the literal sense in favor of the spiritual, as we have seen above.46
However, what Christian would not find wisdom for life in the
patristic-medieval approach to texts such as Psalm 137? Regardless
of the accuracy of the above attempt to determine the text’s literal
sense, who would not agree with Origen’s spiritual exegesis that ex-
horts us to blot out nascent sins in our lives before they grow up and
develop into unbreakable vices? This is precisely the sort of exegesis
that makes a difference in our lives, and our Holy Father earnestly
desires that Christians will avail themselves of it.
46. Indeed, it is tempting at times to bypass the literal sense of such texts alto-
gether, as in the case of certain psalms (53, 83, and 109) which have been eliminated
in the Catholic Church’s current Liturgy of the Hours prayed by clergy and the faithful
across the world. The words which advocate the slaughter of children in Ps 137 have
likewise been omitted from the liturgy. For more on this subject, see William Holliday,
The Psalms through Three Thousand Years: Prayerbook of a Cloud of Witnesses (Minne-
apolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1993), 304–5.
 c ha p t e r 6

M e t hod C E x e g e si s a n d
the Afterlife

Whereas the Method C treatment of our first two themes was

fairly concise and to the point, I have devoted an entire chapter to
treating the theme of the afterlife in order to paint a thorough and
concrete portrait of Method C exegesis. The reason why the afterlife
was chosen for this task is because of the disproportionately vast
amount of biblical evidence we have of ancient Israel’s developing
understanding of the afterlife, as well as a correspondingly dispro-
portionate abundance of scholarly ink spilled on the subject—not
the least important of which is found in the work of Pope Benedict
himself.

Review of the Problem fro m a

Meth od B Perspect ive
As we saw in chapter 1, Method B scholarship demonstrates that
the Bible’s portrait of the afterlife is quite diverse at points. Bibli-
cal doctrine on the afterlife developed significantly over the course
of divine revelation, from Israel’s early view of Sheol to her later
hope for bodily resurrection. In his magisterial work on the Bible’s
portrait of the afterlife entitled The Resurrection of the Son of God,
N. T. Wright observes that the belief in resurrection makes few ap-

196
 the Afte rlife 197

pearances within the Old Testament, and even then mostly in texts
that came late in the development of the canon.1 Pope Benedict fur-
ther adds that “the doctrine of the resurrection had not been gener-
ally accepted in intertestamental Judaism.”2 Certain Old Testament
writers like Ecclesiastes went so far as to deny altogether the reality
of life after death for man:
For Sheol cannot thank thee,
death cannot praise thee;
those who go down to the pit cannot hope
for thy faithfulness (Is 38:18).
I am a man who has no strength,
like one forsaken among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom thou dost remember no more,
for they are cut off from thy hand. (Ps 88:4–5)
As the cloud fades and vanishes,
so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up (Jb 7:9).
As waters fail from a lake,
and a river wastes away and dries up,
so man lies down and rises not again (Jb 14:11).
From the dead, as from one who does not exist,
thanksgiving has ceased;
he who is alive and well sings the Lord’s praises . . .
For all things cannot be in men,
since a son of man is not immortal (Sir 17:28,30).

1. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis, Minn.: For-

tress Press, 2003), 85. For further reading regarding the dearth of evidence for a post-
mortem hope of beatitude among the Israelites, one might consult the article by Rich-
ard Friedman and Shawna Bolansky Overton entitled “Death and Afterlife: the Biblical
Silence,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner
(Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2000), 35–59. It is interesting to note that some
of the most important of these statements (e.g., Ws 3; 2 Macc. 7 and 12) are found in
books only in the Catholic canon of scripture. The presence of the doctrine of resur-
rection in these texts provides important testimony to the fact that God continued to
teach Israel and prepare the nation to receive the Paschal mystery up to the very time
of Christ’s coming.
2. Benedict XVI, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, translated by Michael Wald-
stein (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 112.
 198 the Afte rlife

For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one
dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no ad-
vantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the
dust, and all turn to dust again (Eccl 3:19–20).
For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they
have no more reward; but the memory of them is lost. . . . Whatever your
hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or thought or
knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going (Eccl 9:5,10).
Recalling the spectrum of evidence presented in chapter 1, these are
just a few passages in which the problem of biblical doctrine on the
afterlife comes sharply into focus.
Why is Method B’s emphasis on these observations so impor-
tant? In one way or another, Christians today will inevitably have to
confront historical criticism’s challenges regarding biblical doctrine
on the afterlife. Many popular thinkers reject Christianity’s hope
for bodily resurrection precisely on the basis of historical criticism’s
ability to highlight apparent contradictions in the way the Old and
New Testaments handle the issue of the afterlife. For instance, well-
known scholar Bart Ehrman argues forcefully that even the New
Testament is not utterly uniform in its depiction of eschatological
reality, including the very foundation of Christian hope: Jesus’s Res-
urrection. “Nowhere are the differences among the Gospels more
clear,” he writes, “than in the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. . . .
There are scads of differences among the four accounts, and some of
these differences are discrepancies that cannot be readily (or ever)
reconciled.”3 Based on the number of problems in the accounts of
Jesus’s death and Resurrection, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong
similarly asserts, “This means, of course, that we are relegating that
tradition of the empty tomb, the visit of the women, the burial by
Joseph, and the mention of Nicodemus to the realm of legend. Con-
temporary scholarship points in exactly that direction.”4 In contrast
with Pope Benedict, Ehrman and Spong assert that some discrep-
ancies in the Bible simply cannot be reconciled, and that we must
therefore relegate much of it to the realm of legend. In his number

3. Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted (New York: Harper, 2009), 47.

4. John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (New York: Harper, 1994), 226.
 the Afte rlife 199

one New York Times bestseller God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitch-
ens will go so far as to claim concerning Jesus’s Resurrection:
Having no reliable or consistent witnesses, in anything like the time period
needed to certify such an extraordinary claim, we are finally entitled to say
that we have a right, if not an obligation, to respect ourselves enough to
disbelieve the whole thing. That is, unless or until some superior evidence
is presented, which it has not been. And exceptional claims demand excep-
tional evidence.5
For Hitchens, the evidence proffered by modern scholarship is so
great that educated people today “have a right, if not an obligation”
to reject the entire Christian claim. With critics like Hitchens among
the most read authors in America today, Christians must take their
challengers seriously.

Helpful bu t Insufficie n t
Met h od A Resp onses
At this point we will review a few representative Method A at-
tempts to deal with problematic statements regarding the afterlife in
scripture. Patristic-medieval exegesis is often powerful and enlight-
ening, but many modern Christians find it wanting in terms of ac-
counting for the deeper problems raised by historical-critical scholar-
ship. For example, in commenting on Psalm 6, St. John Chrysostom
plainly rejects the suggestion that a deceased person ceases to exist:
[When the psalmist says] “for in death there is no one to remember you,”
[he is] not implying that our existence lasts only as far as the present life
perish the thought! After all, he is aware of the doctrine of resurrection.
Rather, it is that after our departure from here there would be no time for
repentance.6
Chrysostom is well aware of the apparent implications of Psalm 6.
They are the same implications chapter 1 teased out in demon-
strating the hopelessness of Sheol from the early Israelite perspec-
tive. However, according to this father of the church, the psalmist

5. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great (New York: Twelve, 2007), 143.
6. St. John Chrysostom, Commentary on the Psalms, vol. 1, translated by Robert
Charles Hill (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998), 6.4.
 200 the Afte rlife

is “aware of the doctrine of resurrection.” Given this assumption,

Chrysostom is sure that the passage cannot mean that one ceases to
exist after death, but rather that one has no opportunity to repent
after death. While what he says is true in terms of what Christians
know today, we have to ask whether his explanation is true to the
text—in other words, whether he arrives at a conclusion consonant
with Christianity because of the text or rather despite its intended
meaning. From a Method B perspective, the answer is clearly nega-
tive: the psalmist plainly denied the reality of an afterlife and demon-
strated no awareness of the doctrine of resurrection, arguing against
Chrysostom’s assumption. While his conclusion might ultimately be
correct, he did not arrive at it through a correct interpretation of the
biblical text.7
St. Jerome’s commentary on Ecclesiastes is similar to Chrysos-
tom’s treatment of Psalm 6 in that it seems to bypass the original
meaning of the text. Responding to Ecclesiastes’s claim that man
has no advantage over the beasts and that both return to the dust as
their final resting place, he writes, “Except that our belief in Christ
raises us up to heaven and promises eternity to our souls, the physi-
cal conditions of life are the same for us as for the brutes. . . . Man
and beast alike are dissolved into dust and ashes.”8 According to
St. Jerome, belief in Christ is ultimately the only thing that differ-
entiates man from the subhuman universe. If we lack a relationship
with Christ, then indeed our fate as humans is no better than that of
brute animals. However, notice how St. Jerome arrives here at a con-
clusion consonant with Christian doctrine almost in spite of what
the text of Ecclesiastes says. Method B exegesis is quick to observe
that Ecclesiastes makes no mention of Christ and gives readers no
reason to believe its author had foreknowledge of him. This begs the
question of whether Jerome’s conclusion, while ultimately correct,
really does justice to the words of Ecclesiastes. In short, it fails to
7. Although we will not deal here with the problems involved with this specific
passage, it is worth noting that Chrysostom’s exegesis is not unlike that of St. Peter
himself as recorded in the Acts 2:22–36. We will return to this point below.
8. St. Jerome, Letter 108, translated by W. H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W. G. Mar-
tley, vol. 6, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff (Buf-
falo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893), 28.
 the Afte rlife 201

confront the literal sense of the text because it has preconceived no-
tions of what the text “must” mean.
Let us consider one final example of an insufficient Method A ap-
proach to problematic biblical texts touching on the afterlife. Com-
menting on the bleak outcries of Psalm 88, St. Cyril of Jerusalem ex-
plains:
[The psalmist] said not, I became a man without help; but, as it were a man
without help. For indeed He was crucified not from weakness, but willing-
ly and His Death was not from involuntary weakness. I was counted with
them that go down into the pit. And what is the token? You have put away
Mine acquaintance far from Me (for the disciples have fled). Will You show
wonders to the dead? Then a little while afterwards: And unto You have I
cried, O Lord; and in the morning shall my prayer come before You. Do you
see how they show the exact point of the Hour, and of the Passion and of
the Resurrection?9
Once again, this is a beautiful piece of patristic exegesis, and its in-
sight into the mystery of Christ is profound. However, St. Cyril ig-
nores the actual situation the psalmist is lamenting and instead be-
gins with a parsing of the text (emphasizing that the psalmist is not
actually but only “as it were” a man without help) which is highly
questionable. With this he attempts to demonstrate that the psalm is
speaking of Christ, who was only “without help” insofar as he willed
to be so. He is convinced that the psalmist’s words “show the exact
point of the Hour, and of the Passion and of the Resurrection.” As
in the other two examples above, however, he arrives at conclusions
which affirm Christian doctrine yet bypass the literal sense of the
text. While St. Cyril has a more or less accurate grasp of Psalm 88’s
spiritual sense, our pope’s exegetical proposal demands a more ro-
bust hermeneutic that arrives at the spiritual truth of a passage not
in spite of but rather through an examination of its literal sense.

9. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, translated by Edwin Hamilton Gif-

ford, vol. 7, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff (Buf-
falo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894), 14.8.
 202 the Afte rlife

Toward a Meth od C Resp on se

In the sections above we have reviewed Method B’s observations
with regard to problematic areas in scripture’s account of the after-
life, and we have examined Method A responses that fail to address
Method B’s concerns in a convincing way. At this point, then, it is
indispensable for us to apply the principles of Method C exegesis to
the problem of the afterlife in scripture. First, we will elucidate the
trajectory by which Israel gradually developed her understanding of
the afterlife as a result of the divine pedagogy, proposing that earlier
biblical texts which fail to affirm the fullness of revelation are not er-
roneous on that account. Based on Aquinas’s theology of the history
of revelation, we will argue that they simply constitute a phase in
which the same “substance of the faith” present throughout the du-
ration of divine revelation had yet to fully bloom. We will likewise
employ Aquinas’s theology of the act of revelation in order to search
out the intentions of the biblical authors and show that they did not
make formal truth claims that contradict Christian doctrine on the
afterlife. Finally, having proposed solutions to the various problems
in the Bible’s presentation of the afterlife, we will search out the di-
vine author’s purpose in composing these texts in order to ascertain
what their spiritual sense has to teach Christians today (the second
dimension of the divine pedagogy).

The Afterlife and Aquinas’s Theology of the

History of Revelation: Why Are There “Dark” Areas in
the Bible’s Portrait of the Afterlife?
Our Method C response to the issue of the biblical doctrine on
the afterlife must begin with an honest encounter with the many
“dark” passages introduced in chapter 1 and reviewed above. In par-
ticular, one who studies other ancient Near Eastern religious sys-
tems such as the Egyptian and Canaanite will inevitably ask: why did
Israel continue to accept the gloomy view of Sheol for so long when
her neighbors whom she knew well—and who were bereft of divine
revelation—enjoyed the hope for a blessed afterlife? The thoughts
of John McKenzie represent a healthy contribution of Method B
 the Afte rlife 203

exegesis to this question; they explain a challenging phenomenon

in the honest yet constructive manner needed in Method C exege-
sis. According to McKenzie, it was Israel’s awareness of the drastic
difference between hers and neighboring nations’ worldviews that
ironically delayed her arrival at hope for a blessed immortality. For
example, concerning Egypt he writes:
The Egyptian idea of the afterlife, exhibited in the well-preserved tombs of
Egypt and in Egyptian literature, conceives of survival after death as a two-
dimensional continuation of earthly human existence and not as a new and
genuinely different state. . . . The Egyptian idea is incompatible with basic
Israelite beliefs about Yahweh and about humanity. The Egyptian afterlife
is not a world dominated by the personal divine presence and will, but is
really a thoroughly secularized world. . . . Perhaps Israel’s failure to reach an
idea of survival after death was partly due to revulsion for Egypt’s unmiti-
gated secularism.10
As McKenzie explains, Egypt’s view of life after death was not one of
an eschatological new life in a new world but rather a kind of con-
tinuation of earthly life only by new means. Unlike in Israel, where
all life was imbued with the personal divine presence and God con-
stantly commanded his people to act in a way befitting his dignity
10. John L. McKenzie, “Aspects of Old Testament Thought,” in The New Jerome Bib-
lical Commentary, edited by Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland
Edmund Murphy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 78:168. Hereafter NJBC.
The same logic is applicable with regard to Israel’s rejection of Canaanite views of the
afterlife. Far from being a source of Israel’s belief in the resurrection, the religion of Ca-
naan actually seems to have prevented Israelites from coming to such a belief during the
time they spent there. The people certainly would have been familiar with Canaanite
resurrection myths, but they knew that these were fundamentally incompatible with
worship of Yahweh. As Robert Martin-Achard thus argues, the doctrine of resurrection
could not have been revealed to Israel by God until it was forever freed from its ties with
nature-mysticism. Robert Martin-Achard, From Death to Life: A Study of the Develop-
ment of the Doctrine of the Resurrection in the Old Testament, translated by John Penney
Smith (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1960), 204. Indeed, based on a comment by Gerhard
von Rad he states, “It was one of the glories of the Chosen People that it refused [to
adopt a doctrine of resurrection] at that particular moment in its history.” (203.) Wright
adds, “This [Israel’s conviction that Yahweh was sovereign over creation] indeed may
help to explain why Jewish thinkers came to a belief in resurrection only very late, when
the main opponent to traditional belief was not a local vegetation-cult, but the power of
Babylon and, later, Syria.” The Resurrection of the Son of God, 126–27. It is this same faith
in the absolute sovereignty of Yahweh that prevented Israel from the attainment of hope
in a blessed immortality during their time spent in Canaan as well as in Egypt.
 204 the Afte rlife

as a child of Yahweh, entrance into the Egyptian afterlife was not

contingent on one’s moral character, and the afterlife itself was not
theocentric. Because of this, N. T. Wright similarly concludes that
Egypt’s idea of the afterlife would have been seen by ancient Israel
as more of a denial than an affirmation of the hope for nation, fam-
ily, and land to flourish.11 When seen in this light, the Method C
exegete may surmise that Israel’s arrival at hope for immortality was
delayed because part of the nation’s task early on in the divine peda-
gogy was to sort out her own worldview from that of her neighbors.
Sometimes these worldviews differed from hers in few respects, yet
these particular differences (e.g., whether the one true invisible God
played a large role or not in human affairs) were fundamental. It
was crucial that Israel not adopt a facile, prefabricated view of the
afterlife that would have individuals continue to exist forever but
in a way that was meaningless, and that neglected life’s most im-
portant dimension: man’s relation with one true God. Accordingly,
even if the nation of Egypt had great concern for the reality of life
after death long before Israel exhibited such an interest, this does
not make Egypt’s way any better.
Overtly committed to building up the faith through his exegesis,
C. S. Lewis approaches the issue from an angle that complements
the proposals described immediately above. Though a man of let-
ters rather than a biblical scholar by trade, Lewis offers profound
insights into the subject at hand. According to him, Egypt’s problem
was not only that its view of the afterlife was devoid of the personal
divine but that its very concern for the afterlife hindered Egyptians’
relationship with God in the present life:
To some it may seem astonishing that God, having revealed so much of him-
self to that people, should not have taught them [about the afterlife]. It does
not now astonish me. For one thing there were nations close to the Jews
whose religion was overwhelmingly concerned with the afterlife. In reading
about ancient Egypt one gets the impression of a culture in which the main
business of life was the attempt to secure the well-being of the dead. It looks
as if God did not want the chosen people to follow that example.12

11. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 122.

12. C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Harvest Books, 1964), 39.
 the Afte rlife 205

Lewis adds that it may even have been dangerous for God to teach
Israel to hope for eternal life at too early a stage in history:
It may have been absolutely necessary that this revelation should not begin
with any hint of future Beatitude or Perdition. These are not the right point
to begin at. An effective belief in them, coming too soon, may even render
almost impossible the development of (so to call it) the appetite for God;
personal hopes and fears, too obviously exciting, have got in first. Later,
when, after centuries of spiritual training, men have learned to desire and
adore God, to pant after him, “as pants the hart,” it is another matter.13
As Lewis understood, Yahweh did not want Israel’s belief in the af-
terlife to be naïve or facile but wholeheartedly centered on himself
as the God who would not forsake his promise to bless his people
even in this life. As part of his pedagogy, Yahweh instructed those
who worshiped him to look for his faithfulness in the here and now.
Once they succeeded in taking this step of faith and become suffi-
ciently clear on what his promises meant for the present life, they
would be better prepared to make the much greater step of hoping
for life beyond the grave. The people of Israel were to wait on God
to give them a deeper explanation for what occurs on the other side
of this vale of tears.
The above discussion has focused on the negatives of Israel’s
gloomy Sheol view and her refusal to accept foreign concepts of the
afterlife. What did the people of Israel positively affirm throughout
the period in which they denied the afterlife? It is easy to miss that
Israel’s original position (absence of hope for life beyond death) had
this in common with her final position (hope for eternal resurrected
life): an overwhelmingly positive affirmation of the goodness and
vital importance of the created order. However, the majority of pre-
exilic Old Testament writers did not face the question of the after-
life head-on because for the most part their central concern was to
make certain of the promise of God for the family’s possession of
the Promised Land. As Brian Schmidt states, “Prior to the exile, the
ancient Israelites, like many of their Ancient Near Eastern neigh-
bors, placed primary, if not sole, emphasis on the perpetuation of

13. Ibid., 40–41.

 206 the Afte rlife

the memory of the family dead and on making the best of life on
this side of the grave.”14 Almost everywhere in the Old Testament
one can find the people of Israel loving life, meeting it with opti-
mism, and seeing it as a gift from God. Unlike the adherents of some
ancient Near Eastern religions, the faithful Israelite did not long to
forsake the world and lose his carnal and personal self through a
rapture or premature death.15 He yearned to find himself alive in
the land, worshiping Yahweh and basking in his steadfast love. For
the Israelite, a happy life was one that abounded in offspring, pos-
sessions, and length of days. To die in peace at an old age was ideal.
If an Israelite met this kind of death, he peacefully accepted it as a
natural fact because, although dead, he would continue to live on in
the land through his offspring.
To men of today, this stance on the afterlife may appear extraor-
dinarily odd, but it was possible in Israel’s culture because their
fundamental worldview differed markedly from the individualistic
one prevalent in contemporary Western society. Martin-Achard de-
scribes Israel’s view of the human person and his place in the com-
munity of Israel:
For the Hebrews, there is nothing extraordinary in the thought that a hu-
man being continues to exist in his children; man is not an individual unre-
lated to his immediate or remote temporal and spatial environment. On the
contrary, the Israelite forms an integral part of his family past and present,
one body with his ancestors and descendents. . . . The future and the past of
the whole people are present in the destiny of every member of Israel.16
Thus for the faithful Israelite the story of Abraham, Moses, David, and
all the faithful men and women of Israel was his own story. If he saw
nation, land, and offspring flourishing, he could go to the grave in

14. Brian Schmidt, “Memory as Immortality: Countering the Dreaded ‘Death after
Death’ in Ancient Israelite Society,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, 99.
15. Martin-Achard, From Death to Life, 3–4, 18; cf. Gn 15:15; Jb 42:17. As Martin-
Achard notes, there are some exceptions, notably Ecclesiastes. As for Job’s imprecations
against life (Jb 3:3) or Jeremiah’s maledictions (Jer 20:14), these come off sounding more
like blasphemy than reiterations of the typical Israelite view of death. For more on the
ancient Israelite view of death, see Kent Harold Richards, “Death (OT),” ABD, vol. 2,
108–10; Benedict XVI, Eschatology, 80.
16. Martin-Achard, From Death to Life, 24.
 the Afte rlife 207

peace, knowing that his descendents in the corporate person of Israel

would continue to live his story just as he lived the story of his own
forefathers.17 In this way, it may never have occurred to many just
men of ancient Israel that they ought to have hoped for a blessed af-
terlife peculiarly their own, for the life of their descendants was their
life, and this life would be eternal. As Sirach 37:25 states, “The life of a
man is numbered by days, but the days of Israel are without number.”
Approaching the issue from yet another angle, Pope Benedict
likewise offers a keen insight into the deeply positive side of Israel’s
early refusal to hope for the afterlife In view of explaining why Israel
had a “this-worldly” view of the afterlife, he compares the pedagogy
by which Israel learned of the afterlife to the pedagogy by which she
learned of the oneness of God:
A number of Old Testament texts show clearly how popular piety in Israel
lovingly sought communication with the dead in just the way found in the
pagan religions of the ancient Near East. . . . The official religion of Israel,
as expressed in the Law, the prophets, and the historical books of the He-
brew Bible, did not accept these beliefs and practices. It no more denied
all existence to Sheol than, at first, it denied the existence of other gods
than Yahweh. But it chose not to deal with this area. It classified everything
to do with the dead as “impure,” that is, as disqualifying one for a share
in Yahweh’s cultus. . . . The refusal to admit the legitimacy of a cult of the
ancestors—still, of course, widely practiced in that society—was the real
reason for the naturalizing of death. . . . A certain demythologizing of death
was needful before Israel could bring out the special way in which Yahweh
was himself Life for the dead.18
According to Benedict, before Israel could learn to hope in the resur-
rection, death had to be naturalized and demythologized from ele-
ments bound up with popular ancestor worship (e.g., the necroman-
cy of 1 Sm 28 discussed in chapter 1). Thus the Lord did not initially
teach Israel the fullness of truth regarding the afterlife because Israel
first had to pass through a stage in the divine pedagogy where her
immature beliefs about the afterlife were completely eradicated. This
occurred through the purity laws and prohibitions that eventually
made clear the impossibility of worshiping or consulting the dead.
17. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 99–100.
18. Benedict XVI, Eschatology, 83–84.
 208 the Afte rlife

Wrapping up his presentation on Israel’s early view of the after-

life, Benedict observes that the reason for Israel’s view of Sheol was
twofold. On the one hand, the “this-worldliness” of Old Testament
faith was due in part to Israel’s understanding of the divine nature
and the incompatibility of the popular cult of the dead with belief
in an eternal communion of man with God. On the other hand, the
pope notes that the reason for Israel’s view is that it “simply illus-
trates a stage of awareness found in all cultures at a certain point
in their development. As yet, Israel’s faith in Yahweh had not un-
folded in all its inner consistency.”19 Israel was not unique in her
view of Sheol, but this is not problematic from Benedict’s point of
view because God gradually led Israel from this to a more mature
understanding of the afterlife. As he explains, there was an inter-
nal contradiction in Israel’s early belief insofar as they believed God
was omnipotent and yet unable to keep individuals alive after death.
Benedict rightly points out that this state of affairs was inherently
unstable, leading eventually to the crisis whereby Israel was forced
to either abandon faith in Yahweh altogether or to admit the unlim-
ited scope of his power—including his power to raise the dead and
keep them in definitive communion with himself. Israel’s belief in
eternal life thus emerges out of a completely natural view of Sheol
and is driven by her convictions about the nature of God, as he had
already revealed himself to his people.
Once Israel had been purified from delusory notions of the
world to come and was established in a healthy relationship with
the goods of this world, she was ready for the next crucial step of
the divine pedagogy: the people needed to be taught by God that
their aspirations for prosperity, deliverance, and national unifica-
tion would never fully be attained in this world, in the physical land
of Israel. Endless tragedies of sickness, exile, and persecution para-
doxically impelled the people to realize that their hope would be
realized only on the other side of the grave.20 Articulating this with

19. Ibid., 82.

20. Martin-Achard, From Death to Life, 161. In fact, according to Pope Benedict in
his Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, translated by Henry Taylor
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), the very fact that the Israelite religion flourished
 the Afte rlife 209

respect to the martyrdom literature of Daniel, Maccabees, and Wis-

dom, Pope Benedict relates, “In the path followed by the men who
wrote the Old Testament, it was suffering, endured and spiritually
borne, which became that hermeneutical vantage point where real
and unreal could be distinguished, and communion with God came
to light as the locus of true life.”21 As we will observe below, when
individual Israelites saw themselves suffering the same fate as their
nation, they learned to hope for their own personal restoration to
life after death and, eventually, to hope for resurrected life. Martin-
Achard summarizes this learning process as it unfolded in ancient
Israel:
Little by little, under the pressure of the tragic events that the people of Yah-
weh experienced (the disappearance of the northern kingdom in the eighth
century, the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the Judean state in the sixth
century; the exile and the difficult and precarious reconstitution of a Jewish
community around Jerusalem under the Persians), the condition of the in-
dividual in the midst of a national and religious community came to assume
the preponderant place, and, from this time forward, questions were asked
about the fate of the faithful one and in particular of the ultimate future state
reserved for him or her. The problem became especially acute during the cri-
ses that the Jewish people lived through under the declining Persian empire
and during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. . . . The Yahwistic cause seemed
a lost one, and the martyrs to have died in vain; the prophecy of the resur-
rection of the dead then allowed people to address the challenge brought on
by the circumstances they endured. With the resurrection doctrine, the last
word remained with the God of Israel.22

in the face of persecution and exile testifies that it is of God. He writes, “In the normal
way of things, a God who loses his land, who leaves his people defeated and is unable to
protect his sanctuary, is a God who has been overthrown. He has no more say in things.
He vanishes from history. When Israel went into exile, quite astonishingly, the opposite
happened. . . . The faith of Israel at last took on its true form and stature. . . . He could al-
low his people to be defeated so as to awaken it thereby from its false religious dream.”
(148.) Although in this specific instance Benedict is discussing Israel’s growth in under-
standing the nature of God, his reasoning is also consistent with a description of Israel’s
growth in understanding human destiny. Israel was required to go into exile before she
could be awoken from the delusory hope for fulfillment in this world.
21. Benedict XVI, Eschatology, 91.
22. Robert Martin-Achard, “Resurrection (OT),” ABD, vol. 5, 683–84.
 210 the Afte rlife

It is vital to emphasize that this ironic process by which Israel ar-

rived at hope for the resurrection through the non-fulfillment of her
worldly hopes was not a mere human invention but rather a result
of divine pedagogy. There is indeed a fine but crucial difference be-
tween viewing non-fulfillment as the vehicle for prompting Israel to
meditate deeply and discover the truth that God was teaching them
versus viewing non-fulfillment as the cause of a doctrine invented by
man out of desperation. As one may observe from the quote above,
Israel’s arrival at belief in a blessed immortality involved a kind of
deduction process that was truly human, and yet faith indicates that
the truth of the resurrection is not a mere product of human rea-
soning.23 The truth is available to man only with the additional help
of the divine light, but this does not change the fact that Israel had
to employ reason (and patient love through suffering) to arrive at it.
The apparent non-fulfillment of Yahweh’s promises to Israel drove
the nation to a deeper penetration of what his promise had meant
all along. It represented a sort of climax in the divine pedagogy in
which the nation transcended her previous aspirations and attained
a clearer glimpse of the true nature of divine providence and of hu-
man destiny.24 The logical conclusion that Israel drew from the non-
23. Far from seeing Israel’s developing belief in the afterlife as a mere human re-
sponse to unfulfilled desires, Benedict XVI believes that a man’s hope for a definitive
post-mortem reckoning, a Last Judgment, presents the strongest of arguments in favor
of human immortality. He writes that “faith in the Last Judgment is first and foremost
hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centu-
ries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or
in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal life. The purely individ-
ual need for a fulfillment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we
await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity;
but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the
final word does the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convinc-
ing.” Spe salvi §43. Although here Benedict is speaking about the faith of Christians,
this same reasoning applies to the people of Israel, who ever persevered through injus-
tice and arrived at a hope for immortality before the coming of Christ.
24. In The Origins of History (New York: Basic Books, 1981), Herbert Butterfield
and Adam Watson describe the effect of non-fulfillment on Israel’s beliefs: “In the high-
er regions of ancient Hebrew thought—particularly the kind of thought which arises
out of the non fulfillment of the Promise—there emerges an idea which brings the no-
tion of promise to a kind of climax where the concept of Promise is in itself in a way
transcended.” (89.) Likewise, C. S. Lewis gives his own account of how Israel’s material
 the Afte rlife 211

fulfillment of her earthly aspirations, based upon their belief that God
in his providence would ultimately deliver the people in his own way,
was that this deliverance would take place beyond the grave. In what
follows, we will explore how the above summary of Martin-Achard
plays out in scripture itself, tracing the trajectory of Israel’s developing
belief in the afterlife throughout the Old Testament from its begin-
ning stages to its full flowering, from the absence of hope for a blessed
existence after death as seen in chapter 1 to a profound hope for bodily
resurrection.25 We will see that Israel’s high regard for bodily existence
in the Promised Land and for a return to it from exile was a central
factor in establishing the hope that individual Israelites would return
from the exile of death to live again in their own bodies. Indeed, we
will observe that this second hope was a kind of reaffirmation or out-
growth of the first hope. In both cases, deliverance was envisioned as
taking the form of a resurrection, on either the national or individual
level as the case may have it. In his educational plan the Lord worked
on both of these levels in order to teach his children the fullness of
truth: the same pedagogy by which he led the nation of Israel to hope
for deliverance or resurrection was used to lead individuals within the
nation to hope that their own bodies would undergo a resurrection.
The endeavor at hand calls for an examination of specific biblical texts
that deal with these two aspects of Israel’s belief in the resurrection
and their relation to one another in the growth of doctrine on the
afterlife.
losses contributed to her growth in understanding divine realities: “Century after cen-
tury, by blows which seem to us merciless, by defeat, deportation, and massacre, it was
hammered into the Jews that earthly prosperity is not in fact the certain, or even the
probable, reward of seeing God.” Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 43.
25. Although this is not to say that Israel’s doctrine developed in a strictly linear
fashion over the course of divine revelation, we will see that there was indeed an intel-
ligible trajectory whereby the nation’s hope gradually emerged from her initial belief
that an individual would not live beyond death. St. Thomas himself recognizes that the
mere passage of time does not imply progress on the part of mankind’s knowledge of
God. In the case of the sciences, time can be a “cause of forgetfulness.” Sententia libri
Ethicorum, Lib. I, lect. 11. Cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Saint Thomas et l’histoire: état de la
question et pistes de recherches,” Revue Thomiste 105 (2005): 377–79. There is no rea-
son why the same would not apply to Israel’s growth, and therefore one must bear in
mind that there may have been individuals living in later times who in a sense had less
knowledge and less hope for a blessed afterlife.
 212 the Afte rlife

Hosea 6 and 13
The first text in this investigation contains the most ancient bib-
lical material in terms of divine revelation that explicitly concerns
the doctrine of resurrection. The book of Hosea, which reports ora-
cles originally delivered in third quarter of the eighth century B.c.,
is considered to have been behind the formation of later Israelite
thought on the afterlife, including Isaiah 26.26 The MT of 6:2 reads,
“He [the Lord] will revive us after two days; on the third day he will
cause us to rise (‫ )יְק ֵ ִ֖מנּו‬in order that we may live in his presence.”27
Robert Martin-Achard argues that Canaanite religion had an influ-
ence on this text:
Curiously enough, the numbers given by Hosea [“After two days . . . on the
third day”] are to be found in other documents relating to the agricultural
cults practiced in the countries round about Palestine, which were fairly
similar to those that must have led Hosea’s contemporaries [i.e., the ones
speaking the words recorded in Hosea 6:2] astray.28
As Martin-Achard explains, the cults of Adonis (Phoenicia), Tammuz
(Babylon), Osiris (Egypt), Attis (Rome), Inanna (Sumer), Melqart
(Tyre), and Baal (at Ras Shamra) all contain rituals in which they
habitually bewail the death of a god. In these religions, the young
god is thought to be periodically overcome by the powers of death
coinciding with the time when the moon (which is often associated
with fertility in cultic settings) vanishes for three days in its monthly
cycle. Time and again the god makes a descent to the underworld
and then rises back to life, usually within a matter of two or three
days. According to Martin-Achard, many in Israel absorbed this
myth of the dying and rising God from their neighbors whether they
were conscious of it or not, and this influence shows up in the Book
of Hosea. As a result of this interaction with Canaan, the people of

26. Phillip S. Johnston, Shades of Sheol: death and afterlife in the Old Testament
(Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 221; Martin-Achard, From Death to Life,
74; Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 118; C. L. Seow, “Hosea, Book of,” ABD,
vol. 3, 291.
27. Translation mine.
28. Martin-Achard, From Death to Life, 82.
 the Afte rlife 213

Israel began to appropriate its idiom, and this eventually translated

into the aspiration for a metaphorical resurrection—the revivifica-
tion of the nation of Israel and her restoration to the land.
However, as Martin-Achard shows, this is certainly not to say
that the prophet Hosea himself espoused a view of resurrection that
was influenced by the religion of Canaan or that his writings erred
on the matter. Within the larger context of Hosea 5–6, one can see
that 6:2 does not contain Hosea’s own thought: it is the report of a
petition made by the people to Yahweh in the hopes that he would
deliver them from impending disaster at the hands of the Assyrian
army.29 And, as Wright points out, there is a certain irony that “in
its original context it almost certainly was intended as a description
of a prayer that the prophet regarded as inadequate. It indicated the
people’s failure to repent at a deep level, a simplistic hope that may-
be Yahweh could be bought off.”30 Accordingly, the prophet Hosea
by no means intends to espouse a doctrine of resurrection like that
held in Canaan but on the contrary shows that Israel’s alleged re-
pentance from idolatry has left Yahweh skeptical. In response to Is-
rael’s prayer, in 6:4 he tells them “Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes early away.” Yahweh’s rejection of this prayer
and the lament that follows are due not simply to its lack of fervor
but to the deeper malaise of Baal worship that plagued Israel in that
period. According to Wright, Yahweh’s anger at this point results
from the fact that his children have imported rituals and language
of resurrection from a depraved culture and that this has impeded
their conversion to himself. In this way, the language of Hosea 6:2
may point to some Israelites having an early aspiration for some sort
of national restoration or resurrection, but in Hosea’s eyes it was a
false hope founded on the false beliefs of Canaanite fertility cults.
So strong was this rejection on the part of Hosea and others that the
29. Ibid., 76–77. Although the RSV translates the first two verbs of Hosea 6:2 in the
indicative (“he will revive us, he will raise us up”), an equally valid translation would
have these verbs as part of a volitive-volitive sequence that fits Martin-Achard’s under-
standing of it as a prayer: “After two days let him [may he] revive us; on the third day let
him [may he] raise us up, that we may live before him.”
30. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 118; cf. Martin-Achard, From Death
to Life, 78.
 214 the Afte rlife

nation did not entertain the idea of a literal bodily resurrection until
several centuries afterwards, when they were freed from the yoke
of Baal worship and its degenerate notion of a resurrection tied to
sexual immorality and worship of the forces of nature.
Nevertheless, when Israel was finally prepared to receive the full-
ness of divine revelation regarding the resurrection, Hosea’s words
would play an important role in the development of her tradition,
as we will see below in discussing Isaiah and Daniel. For although
the view presented in Hosea 6 was repudiated by the prophet at the
time it was composed, the language he introduced would later reap-
pear and the concept of resurrection would be purged of impurities.
By the time of Christ’s coming, it had already long been interpreted
in light of a blessed hope for the life to come. As Wright concludes,
“No second-Temple reader would have doubted that this [Hosea 6:2]
referred to bodily resurrection.”31 Discussing this passage in refer-
ence to Christ’s resurrection, Pope Benedict nevertheless cautions
Christians against seeing in Hosea’s text an explicit prophecy of Je-
sus’s Resurrection on the third day. Agreeing with Wright that the
text represents above all a “penitential prayer,” he writes:
The thesis that the third day may possibly have been derived from Hosea
6:1–2 cannot be sustained. . . . The text is a penitential prayer on the part of
sinful Israel. There is no mention of resurrection from the dead, properly
speaking. The text is not quoted in the New Testament or at any point dur-
ing the second century. . . . It could become an anticipatory pointer toward
resurrection on the third day only once the event that took place on the
Sunday after the Lord’s crucifixion had given this day a special meaning.32

31. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 148.

32. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem
to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 258. In another passage, Bene-
dict offers an illuminating explanation of the process by which New Testament Chris-
tians re-read Old Testament texts and found Christ in them: “The process of coming to
Resurrection faith is analogous to what we saw in the case of the Cross. Nobody had
thought of a crucified Messiah. Now the ‘fact’ was there, and it was necessary, on the
basis of that fact, to take a fresh look at Scripture. . . . Admittedly, this new reading of
Scripture could begin only after the Resurrection, because it was only through the Res-
urrection that Jesus was accredited as the one sent by God. Now people had to search
Scripture for both Cross and Resurrection, so as to understand them in a new way and
thereby come to believe in Jesus as the Son of God.” (245.) Benedict’s words likewise
help us to make sense of Old Testament texts cited by the New Testament authors as
 the Afte rlife 215

For Pope Benedict, Hosea 6 is an important Old Testament pointer

to faith in the resurrection, but ultimately it could be seen fully as a
pointer to Christ’s resurrection only once Christ had risen from the
dead. It was this “fact” of Jesus’s Resurrection that prompted the early
church to see in this text not merely a foreshadowing of resurrection
in general, but a pointer to Christ’s resurrection on the third day.
Before moving on to the next book, it is important to mention
Hosea 13 alongside Hosea 6:2. Hosea 5–6 and 13–14 contain paral-
lel imagery, which leads scholars to conclude that the two exhibit a
similar interest in life after death.33 For example, the Revised Stan-
dard Version (RSV), translating the Masoretic Text (MT) of Hosea
13:14, reads: “Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall
I redeem them from Death?” It is actually far from clear that the
Hebrew of Hosea 13 exhibits hope for life after death. For, as was ob-
served in the case of Hosea 6:2, it may not be the case that Hosea 13
was dealing with individual or bodily resurrection in the first place.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the LXX—which was produced
centuries after the original Hebrew version of the text—can be read
as attempting to resolve any ambiguity with regard to the question
of resurrection, a rather unlikely move if the translators thought the
passage was dealing with a metaphorical resurrection.34 As Wright

prophecies when it is clear that the human authors of the Old Testament texts in ques-
tion displayed no interest in predicting future events. His exploration into this dynamic
between fact and scripture, event and word, reflects the concern articulated in his 1988
lecture to “reexamine the relationship between event and word.” In this second volume
of Jesus of Nazareth, he takes up this same language to describe the dynamic at work
here: “It was not the words of Scripture that prompted the narration of facts; rather, it
was the facts themselves, at first unintelligible, that paved the way towards a fresh un-
derstanding of Scripture. This discovery of the harmony between word and event . . . is
constitutive of the Christian faith.” (203.)
33. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 118, 148.
34. Even if the possibility of life after death is being denied in the Hebrew version
of this passage, it nevertheless played a critical role in Israel’s resurrection tradition. In
Wright’s view, “The original Hebrew text is almost certainly denying that Yahweh will
redeem Israel from Sheol and Death. However, the LXX and other ancient versions, and
also the New Testament [1 Cor 15], take the passage in a positive sense, and there is no
reason why the author of Isaiah 26:19 should not have read it thus as well. The evidence
that he did so is cumulative but overwhelming: no fewer than eight features of text and
context can be paralleled.” Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 118. Hosea 13:14
 216 the Afte rlife

notes, whereas the Hebrew text of Hosea 13:14 is a question that ex-
pects the answer “No,” the LXX reads as an indicative statement:
“From the hand of Hades I will ransom (ῥύσομαι) them and from
death I will redeem (λυτρώσομαι) them.”35 It is therefore consistent
to read the LXX of Hosea 13:14 as proclaiming the victory of Yahweh
over death. Still, it ought to be noted that the notion of resurrection
operative here is one of the national rather than individual order.
Hosea is still an early Old Testament work, and the imagery and
ideas latent within it form the basis of more explicit developments
to come. As in the case of both Hosea 6 and 13, by the third century
B.c. when the LXX came on the scene, new meanings began to be
seen in texts previously unclear as to their stance on the resurrec-
tion, as well as in texts that originally appeared to deny it.36

Ezekiel 37
Like the account of resurrection found in Hosea 6 and 13, Ezekiel
37 depicts a national or metaphorical resurrection, in this case the
return of the Judean exiles from Babylon to the Promised Land. Eze-
kiel was active as a prophet between the years 593 B.c. and 571 B.c. 37
As the prophet himself records in the opening verses of his book, he
lived as an exile and did his preaching in Babylonia, “the land of
the Chaldeans.” Wright observes that Ezekiel 37 is perhaps the most
famous of all resurrection passages in the Old Testament, and it is

may not have originally been written with an eye to the resurrection, although it cer-
tainly was interpreted that way even centuries before Christ’s coming.
35. Translation mine. Cf. ibid., 148. Although the Hebrew of this verse lacks an
interrogative ‫ ֲה‬, this does appear to take the form of a question that again expects the
answer “No.” What the MT does contain is ‫א ִ ֱ֤הי‬, an odd form that appears to be the
result of a scribal error, the jumbling of three consonants. The RSV translation of
the third and fourth questions (the “where” questions) is based on a slight emendation
of the MT in light of the LXX, which, as noted in the BHS, translates ‫ ֱא ִ֨הי‬with the word
ποũ (“where?”). So the RSV emended translation reads: “Shall I ransom them from the
power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death? O Death, where are your plagues? O
Sheol, where is your destruction? Compassion is hid from my eyes.”
36. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 147; cf. Melvin Peters, “Septuagint,”
ABD, vol. 5, 1094. Peters points to several papyri from the early second century to the
first century that stand as primary witnesses to this date for the LXX translation.
37. Lawrence Boadt, “Ezekiel, Book of,” ABD, vol. 2, 711.
 the Afte rlife 217

also the “most obviously allegorical or metaphorical.”38 He explains

that the overall aim of the prophecy in Ezekiel 37 was to point to a
renewal of Israel’s national life in which Yahweh would restore the
Davidic monarchy, the nation would be reconstituted in peace, and
a new temple would be built. The entire chapter is significant, but
the following verses provide a concise demonstration of the point
at hand:
Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I
will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I
will bring you home into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am
the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my
people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will
place you in your own land; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spo-
ken, and I have done it, says the Lord. . . . Then say to them, Thus says the
Lord God: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among
which they have gone, and will gather them from all sides, and bring them
to their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the
mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; and they shall
be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. . . . I
will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant
with them; and I will bless them and multiply them, and will set my sanctu-
ary in the midst of them for evermore.39
In this passage, God addresses his people through the prophet,
promising to raise them from their graves and restore them to their
“own land.” The resurrection is intimately connected with Israel’s re-
turn “home into the land of Israel.” There the people will be consti-
tuted again as “one nation in the land . . . and one king shall be king
over them all.” The Lord will put his Spirit in them, make with them
“a new covenant,” and once again set up his sanctuary in the midst
of them.
As Wright comments, this and the few chapters preceding it
make it sufficiently clear that the author’s purpose was to provide
a highly charged and vivid metaphor of the way in which unclean
Israel was to be cleansed, exiled Israel to be restored to her land, and
scattered Israel to be regathered through the establishment of a new

38. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 119.

39. Ez 37:12–14, 21–22, 26.
 218 the Afte rlife

covenant and a new creation.40 Although the text could certainly be

taken in reference to a literal resurrection event in the distant future,
it is generally agreed that this resurrection was thought to take place
soon after the prophecy and so to be of a national or metaphorical
nature.41 Based on the metaphorical meaning of this passage, how-
ever, some think they have proof that the Old Testament as a whole
understood resurrection only allegorically and never literally—that
the nation of Israel remained focused solely on this world and had
no interest in the reunification of body and soul after death. As
Wright will show, however, the idea of national resurrection pres-
ent in Ezekiel and Hosea does not conflict with the doctrine of the
resurrection of an individual body but rather contributed providen-
tially to the development of the resurrection doctrine in later texts
of the Old Testament.
According to Wright, it cannot be proven that Ezekiel either in-
fluenced or was influenced by writers such as Hosea, Daniel, or Isa-
iah, and yet he notes that some of the parallels between them are re-
markable.42 Whatever the relationship between Ezekiel, Isaiah, and
Daniel may have been in their composition; any initial allegorical
character of Ezekiel 37 did not stop faithful Israelites from seeing it
as a prediction of a literal resurrection of the body in the same way
that they saw this type of prophecy in Hosea, Isaiah, and Daniel. It
is therefore appropriate to turn to these other passages to show that
the view of resurrection as the restoration of Israel to her land was
not peculiar to Ezekiel but rather constituted a common thread in
Israel’s thought that was inherently open to the further development

40. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 120.

41. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note the pregnant pause after God’s question:
“Son of man, can these bones live?” (37:3) Ezekiel does not reply, “Of course not!” but
rather “O Lord God, thou knowest.” As Jeremy Holmes pointed out, this refusal to deny
the possibility of bodily resurrection may represent a small step towards admitting its
existence, despite the metaphorical meaning revealed to the prophet in this passage
(Jeremy Holmes, conversation with author).
42. See also the discussion of possible relationships between Daniel, Isaiah, Eze-
kiel, and Hosea in Jon Day, “The Development of Belief in Life after Death in Ancient
Israel,” in After the Exile, edited by J. Barton and D. J. Reimer (Macon, GA: Mercer
University Press, 1996), 242–48.
 the Afte rlife 219

of the second view of resurrection as the reunification of man’s body

and soul.

Isaiah 24–27 (The Isaiah Apocalypse)

The “Isaiah Apocalypse” likewise contains a crucial contribu-
tion to the Old Testament’s doctrine on the afterlife and represents
a kind of transitional stage in which the text appears open to both
metaphorical and literal interpretations. Dating of this text has been
widely debated among historical-critical scholars, but it is likely rep-
resentative of a sixth century B.c. proto-apocalyptic genre.43 Like
Hosea and Ezekiel, Isaiah 24–27 deals with resurrection in the con-
text of a return from exile. Isaiah 25:6–8, however, may well be one
of the strongest and clearest affirmations of the hope for a blessed
afterlife in the Old Testament:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat
things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on
the lees well refined. And he will destroy on this mountain the covering
that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will
swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all
faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth;
for the Lord has spoken.
This passage has clear eschatological overtones. According to Wright,
“The image of the eschatological banquet draws together the divine
promise to the individual, to Israel, and to creation itself.”44 For Isa-
iah, God is not merely going to restore Israel from exile; he will de-
stroy the covering that is cast “over all peoples,” the veil that is spread
“over all nations.” The Lord “will swallow up death forever.” He will
wipe away tears from “all faces.”
Turning to Isaiah 26, the prophet predicts that a great song will
be sung in the land of Judah when death is swallowed up forever.
The unfaithful dead who worshiped other lords are mere shades and
will not survive their own deaths, but Yahweh’s dead will live and
rise.45 Although 25:6–8 appeared to speak overtly of bodily resur-

43. William R. Millar, “Isaiah 24–27 (Little Apocalypse),” ABD, vol. 3, 489.
44. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 117.
45. Is 26:14, 19. Cf. Johnston, Shades of Sheol, 225.
 220 the Afte rlife

rection, it is not obvious whether the view of resurrection conveyed

by the original Hebrew of 26:19 was literal, allegorical, or both.46
The RSV reads, “Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwell-
ers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For thy dew is a dew of light,
and on the land of the shades thou wilt let it fall.” The first part is
clear enough: “Thy dead shall live.” What comes next, however, ap-
pears somewhat jumbled in the original Hebrew. It requires a tex-
tual emendation of the next Hebrew phrase order to arrive at the
RSV translation “their bodies shall rise.”47 Following this is the ad-
monition to the dwellers of the dust to “awake and sing,” which is
not problematic from the standpoint of assessing that these bodies
are both masculine plural imperative forms.
Although it is somewhat unclear whether the MT of Isaiah 26:19
expresses hope in bodily resurrection in the same way as it appears
in 25:6–8, the LXX translation of the verse seems to espouse this
hope just as it did in the case of Hosea above: “The dead shall rise
and those who are in the tombs shall be raised, and those who are
in the earth shall rejoice. For thy dew heals them, but the land of the
ungodly shall perish.”48 Here, the LXX employs both synonyms for
resurrection that appear in the Greek of Hosea 6:2 and Daniel 12:2
and has them in the plural form (ἀναστήσονται and ἐγερθήσονται).
It furthermore adds words to make clear that this is a literal resur-
rection that will take place for those who lie “in the tombs” (ἐν τοῖς
μνημείοις). In the eyes of its LXX translator, whatever Isaiah 26:19
may have to do with the restoration of the nation of Israel as a
whole, it apparently intends to convey a doctrine of personal bodily
resurrection.
Of course, the later translation from the LXX does not much
help to clarify the question of whether the Hebrew prophet himself

46. N. T. Wright does well to point out this ambiguity in The New Testament and
the People of God (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1992), 322.
47. Based on evidence from the Syriac translation of this text, the critical apparatus
of the BHS notes that scholars have proposed the emendation employed by the RSV.
Otherwise, the noun ‫ נְ ֵבל ִ ָ֖תי‬would not agree with the verb that follows it. Without the
emendation, one would probably have to translate it adverbially with the result “to-
gether with my dead body they will rise.”
48. Translation mine.
 the Afte rlife 221

had both national restoration of Israel and individual resurrection

in mind in this particular passage, but support for the view can be
found in other sources. One particularly impressive witness to this
interpretation is St. Thomas Aquinas’s Literal Commentary on Isaiah.
Although we have been focusing primarily on what Method B exe-
gesis has to contribute to understanding Old Testament doctrine on
the afterlife, Aquinas’s understanding of Isaiah 26:19 is valuable (and
quite frankly surprising to see coming from a medieval exegete) be-
cause here modern insights into the two dimensions of resurrection
under discussion are vindicated by a doctor of the thirteenth century
who already perceived this dynamic. Commenting on Isaiah 26:19,
St. Thomas writes that the text refers to “the promise of the people’s
restoration by means of the resurrection, whether this be a corpo-
real [resurrection] on the last day or [resurrection] from the misery
of captivity” (promissio restitutionis populi per resurrectionem, sive
corporalem in die novissimo, sive a miseria captivitatis).49 Accord-
ing to Aquinas, Isaiah is concerned with both the captivity of death
and the misery of Babylonian captivity, an expression that occurs
repeatedly throughout the commentary. For present purposes what
stands out even more in Aquinas’s brief treatment of Isaiah 26:19 is
that he not only refers to two types of resurrection, but immediately
after he does so he cites Daniel 12 along with Hosea 6 and Ezekiel 37,
the other two passages discussed above in which a metaphorical
resurrection is presented.
To be sure, it does not follow of necessity from Aquinas’s con-
necting these passages that the Hebrew prophet himself had in
mind two types of resurrection or that he thought of these passages
in connection with one another. It is in fact possible that the prophet
was concerned strictly with one form of resurrection. Nevertheless,
significant weight ought to be given to Aquinas’s argument simply
given the fact that patristic and medieval exegetes did not typically
pay such careful attention to the ancient Israelite context of Old Tes-
tament texts. If anything, one might expect a Method A exegete to

49. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram, caput 26 (translation

mine).
 222 the Afte rlife

skip directly to a text’s spiritual sense if there is any doubt as to the

text’s historical referent. It is therefore remarkable that the ecclesi-
astical tradition represented by St. Thomas understood Isaiah to be
describing the metaphorical resurrection of Israel as well as the lit-
eral resurrection of human beings at the end of time. All this goes to
show that the notions of national and individual resurrection were
intimately tied to one another in the minds of ancient Israelites, and
that this interpretation of their writings was maintained even in the
Christian tradition at a time when, if anything, one might have ex-
pected to see less attention paid to the significance of Israel’s return
from exile.

Isaiah 40–55
Continuing our exploration of Isaiah and its presentation of
a twofold resurrection, it is now appropriate to examine how it
may have influenced the development of doctrine on the afterlife
in later writings, particularly Daniel. According to Wright, “The
main source for Daniel’s ideas and images in 12:2–3 is undoubtedly
Isaiah.”50 It is for this reason that we have discussed Isaiah’s account
of the resurrection before addressing the later, lucid depiction of
individual resurrection in Daniel. Still, in order to grasp Daniel’s
account of the resurrection of individuals, another aspect of Isaiah
must first be examined: the role of the servant (‫ ) ֶעבֶד‬who suffers for
the sins of many and is vindicated by God in his righteousness. As
we will see, what happens to this servant is a sign that Israel’s belief
in national resurrection also began to be extended to individuals, in
this case an individual representative of the nation. The particular
use of ‫ עבֶד‬which is of present concern appears 32 times throughout
the portions of the book of Isaiah which were composed during the
sixth century and which are conventionally referred to as Deutero-
Isaiah (chs. 40–55) and Trito-Isaiah (chs. 56–66).51
Sometimes ‫ ֶעבֶד‬occurs in the singular (beginning at 41:18) and

50. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 121.

51. The term also appears in Proto-Isaiah (chs. 1–39) but with a different use. For
the dating of these portions of the book of Isaiah, see Richard J. Clifford, “Second Isa-
iah,” ABD, vol. 3, 491.
 the Afte rlife 223

sometimes in the plural (beginning at 54:17). The first time it appears

it clearly refers to the people of Israel as a collective, a corporate per-
son chosen by God to be a light to the world: “But you, Israel, my
servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen.”52 Not long afterward, however,
the prophet uses ‫ ֶעבֶד‬to single out an individual Israelite who has the
spirit of God and who will be God’s representative to the nations:
“Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul
delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice
to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard
in the street.”53 Such references to the servant as an individual and
as a collective alternate with one another in the chapters that follow.
At times it is clear that the servant is Israel: “ ‘You are my witnesses,’
says the Lord, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may
know and believe me and understand that I am He.’ ”54 Other times
it is hard to think of the ‫ ֶעבֶד‬as anything else but an individual hu-
man being:
Behold, my servant shall prosper,
he shall be exalted and lifted up,
and shall be very high.
As many were astonished at him—
his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the sons of men.55
Here the servant appears as a righteous man who is stricken with
blows to the point of hardly being recognizable as a human being.
He dies and is buried, and in recompense for his hardship, the ser-
vant will be “exalted and lifted up” and “shall see the fruit of the tra-
vail of his soul and be satisfied.”56 Given this and other uses of the
term ‫ ֶעבֶד‬, readers are often left dumbfounded at what to make of the
servant. The servant seems to be an individual Israelite who suffers
on behalf of the people in order to justify them, yet at the same time
he is obviously a corporate personality, the nation of Israel itself. Is
there any relation between these two meanings?

52. Is 41:18. 53. Is 42:1–2.

54. Is 43:10. 55. Is 52:13–14.
56. Is 53:7–9; 52:13; 53:11.
 224 the Afte rlife

Daniel 12
Isaiah’s highly nuanced account of the ‫ ֶעבֶד‬demands patient at-
tentiveness on the part of the reader, but if one can come to terms
with the prophet’s language he will possess the key to understanding
the servant’s role not only in Isaiah but also in authors that were in-
fluenced by it, including Daniel. Now at last, we may turn to the text
of Daniel and elucidate the place of this book which ties together
so much that can be found in Hosea, Ezekiel, and Isaiah.57 Dating
much later than the previous books studied thus far (the Hebrew-
Aramaic version probably reaching its final form around 164 B.c.),
the section of Daniel pertinent to the present study was composed
during another time of crisis: the great persecution of the Jews by
Antiochus Epiphanes.58 The first few verses of Dn 12 are particularly

57. Describing the centrality of Daniel in the tradition of doctrine on the resurrec-
tion, Wright writes, “The text which became central for much later Jewish thought on
this subject is Daniel 12:2–3. Though it is almost certainly the latest of the relevant pas-
sages [since Wright is a Protestant, in this section he is discussing only passages in the
Protestant canon, meaning Maccabees and Wisdom are excluded from the present dis-
cussion], there are three good reasons for starting with it. First, it is the clearest: virtu-
ally all scholars agree that it does indeed speak of bodily resurrection, and mean this in
a concrete sense. Second, it draws on several of the other, probably older, relevant texts,
showing us one way in which they were being read in the second century B.c. Third,
conversely, it seems to have acted as a lens through which the earlier material was seen
by subsequent writers. To read Daniel 12 is thus to stand on the bridge between the
Bible and the Judaism of Jesus’s day, looking both backward and forward, and watching
the passage of ideas that went to and fro between them. Cf. Wright, The Resurrection of
the Son of God, 108. For more on the relationship between Daniel and the various texts
studied thus far, as well as a broad treatment of many of the elements discussed above
see Day, “The Development of Belief in Life after Death in Ancient Israel,” 231–56, and
Benedict XVI, Eschatology, 90.
58. John J. Collins, “Daniel, Book of,” ABD, vol. 2, 30. On the topic of Daniel’s dat-
ing, one must consider the relationship of its historical and fictive settings. Although
the book is presented as taking place in Babylon, scholars are in agreement that his
words were written and intended to refer to a persecution like that of Babylon but tak-
ing place centuries later under Antiochus Epiphanes. As Wright states, “The fictive set-
ting is of course Babylon, and the historical setting is that of the ‘continuing exile’ of
9:24, under various pagan rulers climaxing in the Syria of Antiochus.” Wright, The Res-
urrection of the Son of God, 115. Wright also comments, “The immediate context of the
passage is martyrdom: the martyrdom which occurred during the crisis of the 160s (see
1 and 2 Maccabees), and, in particular, the martyrdom of faithful Israelites under the
 the Afte rlife 225

relevant to the study of the Old Testament’s doctrine on the resur-

rection:
At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your
people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since
there was a nation till that time; but at that time your people shall be deliv-
ered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book. And many
of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise
shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many
to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.59
According to N. T. Wright, historical criticism’s attention to the He-
brew of this passage reveals its connection with the book of Isaiah. The
‫ׂש ִּכ ִ֔לים‬
ְ ‫“( ַּמ‬wise”) of Daniel 12:3 seem to be a plural version of the ser-
vant of Isaiah 52–53, who “prospers” or “deals wisely.” Moreover, Dan-
iel says that the wise ones will “turn many to righteousness,” just as the
servant in Isaiah 53:11 will “make many to be accounted righteous.”60
For Wright, this linguistic similarity is no coincidence, because the
entire theme of Daniel—those who remain faithful to Yahweh despite
torture and death and who are subsequently vindicated—fits squarely
with the scenario in which Isaiah 40–55 reaches its great climax. From
this Wright concludes that Deutero-Isaiah’s servant figure who “deals
wisely” was in the first place an individual who personified the nation
of Israel but who has been repluralized now in the form of Daniel’s
“wise ones” who will awake to shine like the stars in eternity.61

persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes. Daniel 11:31 speaks of Antiochus’s desecration of

the Jerusalem Temple, and his setting up of the “abomination of desolation” mentioned
already in 9:27. Verses 32–35 of chapter 11 describe what happens next, as some Judae-
ans compromise with the pagan invader and others stand firm and suffer for it, some
of them being killed. Verses 36–45 then describe the final boasting and sudden fall of
Antiochus, the earlier verses (36–39) staying close to what we know as actual events,
and the later ones (40–45) diverging at the point, we assume, where the writer’s own
time is to be located. But what matters is that at the time of Antiochus’s “fall, a time of
unprecedented anguish for Israel (12:1), the angelic prince Michael will arise to fight on
their behalf and deliver them. This is the context for the prediction of resurrection.”
(113.)
59. Dn 12:1–3.
60. Day also picks up on this in “The Development of Belief in Life after Death in
Ancient Israel,” 242–43.
61. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 115.
 226 the Afte rlife

As Wright’s work suggests, this passage of Daniel is precisely that

point in the divine pedagogy where the belief that Israel’s God would
restore the nation from exile fully breaks through into the belief that
he will restore the nation’s righteous representative, and ultimately
all the righteous of the nation, after death.62 The process of suffer-
ing and death is a reality that both the nation of Israel as a whole
and each one of her members must endure; and, since God is faith-
ful there awaits a reward for everyone who undergoes this struggle.
Initially, it was the suffering servant alone who would be vindicated
by God, but as time went on and all Israelites saw themselves living
the life of the servant through suffering, persecution, and martyr-
dom, they learned to hope that God would vindicate them in the
same way he did Isaiah’s servant of old. They had suffered and died
for the sake of righteousness, and they knew they would receive a
reward for their faithfulness, because they knew Yahweh would be
faithful to his promise and providentially restore the people from
exile. Wright offers a succinct summary of the passage toward hope
in the resurrection that was brought about because of Israel’s faith
in Yahweh:
Yahweh’s answer to his people’s exile would be, metaphorically, life from the
dead (Is 26, Ez 37). Yahweh’s answer to his people’s martyrdom would be,
literally, life from the dead (Dn 12). This was a bold step, indeed, but it was
the last step in a comprehensible line of thought going back to the earliest
roots of Israelite belief.63
In this way, Israel’s earlier national hope develops in a perfectly com-
prehensible and yet initially surprising direction: what began as a
metaphor (e.g., Hosea and Ezekiel’s depiction of the nation of Israel
undergoing a kind of restoration or resurrection from their suffer-

62. In fact, John J. Collins observes in his article “The Afterlife in Apocalyptic Lit-
erature,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner
(Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2000), “This is the only passage in the Hebrew
Bible that clearly predicts the resurrection of individuals.” (126.) Writing for a non-
Catholic audience, Collins makes no reference in this article to the individual resurrec-
tion in 2 Maccabees, which will be discussed below. Nevertheless, his analysis is signifi-
cant in showing how late and unique was the development of the doctrine of individual
resurrection in Israel.
63. Ibid., 127.
 the Afte rlife 227

ing and exile, and Isaiah’s use of the servant as a corporate person
chosen by God to bring light to the nations) is used by God in his
divine pedagogy to prepare the people to receive the doctrine that
he would do for righteous human beings what it was always hoped
he would do for the nation as a whole. According to Daniel, it is not
that all the righteous individuals of Israel will rise again metaphori-
cally in a return to the Promised Land, but they will instead rise
literally in the Promised Land of a renewed created order.64 In this
way, one can see that Israel’s hope for resurrection in its literal and
metaphorical dimensions was substantially the same hope, based on
the singular faithfulness of her God. The hope was not static but
developed throughout the centuries in the same direction in which
it began, only this development extended infinitely farther than any
of the people could have imagined before God revealed it to them.
Unaided by divine revelation, it is most improbable that the people
would ever have dreamed of the literal resurrection of their bod-
ies as the form that national restoration would take—that not only
temporal exile would end but that there would come an end to the
deepest exile of all, death.
Although it took a long time for the people of Israel to learn the
ultimate nature of the afterlife from God, once they received this
revelation it laid a deep hold on their consciousness and became
ever clearer to them as revelation continued to progress. In order to
make this clear, it is appropriate to turn to doctrine on the afterlife
as found in the deuterocanonical literature of the Old Testament.

64. As Wright does well to observe, this new created order envisioned by Daniel
still did not necessarily imply the precise New Testament view of the resurrected state
of heaven: “The Jews who believed in resurrection did so as part of a larger belief in the
renewal of the whole created order. Resurrection would be, in one and the same mo-
ment, the reaffirmation of the covenant and the reaffirmation of creation. Israel would
be restored within a restored cosmos: the world would see, at last, who had all along
been the true people of the creator God. . . . There is virtually no evidence that Jews were
expecting the end of the space-time universe. . . . What, then, did they believe was going
to happen? They believed that the present world order was going to come to an end.” The
New Testament and the People of God, 332–33. In the New Testament, meanwhile, resur-
rection appears as a state to be lived in heaven, outside of this space-time universe. The
risen Christ has ascended and now reigns in his kingdom where there is a “new heaven
and a new earth” (Rv 21:1).
 228 the Afte rlife

This body of literature is history’s most significant witness to the

sharpening of the doctrine of resurrection in Israel before the time
of Christ. Not only does it provide a bridge between Daniel and the
New Testament, it actually demonstrates that God taught the doc-
trine presented throughout the books of Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and
Daniel to Israel even more clearly in the years immediately before
the coming of Christ.

2 Maccabees
Although as an Anglican N. T. Wright does not accept the can-
onicity of 2 Maccabees, according to him this second-century work
“provides far and away the clearest picture of the promise of resurrec-
tion anywhere in the period [of second-Temple Judaism].”65 2 Macca-
bees begins where Daniel left off, with the promise of new bodily life
at some future date for those who had died as martyrs for their faith
in Yahweh under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes. Whereas
in Daniel the persecution is cloaked with imagery evoking the suffer-
ing of Israel in Babylon, here this Syrian tyrant is clearly in control
and is attempting to force loyal Jews to give up their God-given laws
and comply with his imperial dictates, particularly the command that
they conform to his rule by eating pork, an unclean food.
2 Maccabees 7 presents the story of the mother and her seven
sons whom she encourages to abstain from consuming this food
even though the penalty for doing so would be death. In what fol-
lows, one can see that the promise of resurrection described in Dan-
iel has fully flowered and is impelling the faith of the Maccabean
martyrs. As the second brother is having the skin and hair of his
head ripped off by his persecutor, he speaks to him: “You accursed
wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the
universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because
65. Ibid., 150. For more on the presentation of the resurrection in 2 Maccabees and
in many extra-biblical documents composed closely before and after the turn of the
millennium, see George Nickelsburg, “Judgment, Life-after-death, and Resurrection in
the Apocrypha and the Non-Apocalyptic Pseudepigrapha,” in Judaism in Late Antiq-
uity, edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner (Boston: Brill Academic Publish-
ers, 2000), 141–62. As Nickelsburg is writing from a non-Catholic perspective, in this
article he includes 2 Maccabees under the category of apocryphal literature.
 the Afte rlife 229

we have died for his laws.”66 Here, the Greek is undeniable: the King
of the universe will raise up the young men because they have died
for loyalty to his laws. The other brothers speak in similar terms.
The third brother’s words convey the understanding that God will
restore the full bodily integrity of the human being who righteously
loses any of his members for God’s sake. Putting out his tongue and
hands to be chopped off by his enemies, he speaks nobly, “I got these
[his tongue and hands] from Heaven, and because of his laws I dis-
dain them, and from him I hope to get them back again.”67 The next
brother continues in the same vein: not only does he confirm that
God will raise him and his brothers up again on account of their
faithfulness, he also denies that his unrighteous persecutors will at-
tain to the resurrection, or at least to the resurrection of life: “One
cannot but choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the
hope that God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there
will be no resurrection to life!”68 Eventually, all seven brothers and
their mother are killed in the same spirit of trust in God’s promise
for vindication through the resurrection of their bodies. For these
faithful Israelites of the second century, resurrection is not merely a
national affair; it touches their very being, and it alone manifests the
justice of a God who will reward his servants by giving them back
everything they offer him, even their own bodies.
This teaching on the resurrection, particularly evident in the ex-
hortations of the mother to her sons, furthermore manifests Israel’s
belief in the goodness of God’s creation which was a vital compo-
nent that impelled them to hope for redemption.69 The Maccabean
martyrs who hope in the resurrection share this in common with
their ancestors who were not privy to such a hope: they esteem
man as the handiwork of God. The martyrs of 2 Maccabees, how-
ever, have taken another step, for it is noteworthy that this passage
contains both of scripture’s most explicit references to the doctrine
of creatio ex nihilo and to the doctrine of bodily resurrection. For

66. 2 Mc 7:9. See also the discussion of these passages in Wright, The New Testa-
ment and the People of God, 323–24.
67. 2 Mc 7:11. 68. 2 Mc 7:14.
69. Cf. 2 Mc 7:22–23, 28.
 230 the Afte rlife

in the Maccabean period, Israel’s affirmation of creation’s goodness

translates into the belief that it would be unfitting for him who out
of his great mercy created man out of nothing to let those who love
him fade into nonexistence. The body was created by God to live,
and live it shall if a man proves to be a faithful steward of this awe-
some gift.
One more passage from 2 Maccabees impressively witnesses to
Israel’s faith in the resurrection in the years preceding Christ’s com-
ing. Much more could be said about the passage that follows, but
for the purpose of this study it is significant because it speaks of
faith in the resurrection almost in passing—as a given and as a ba-
sis for other Jewish beliefs, such as the belief that they could pray
for the dead and that those prayers could affect the salvation of the
deceased. In 2 Maccabees 12, Judas and his comrades discover that
those who died in battle against Gorgias’s troops had been wearing
sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia under their tunics, and it was
for this reason that they had been killed. Judas’s response is twofold:
first, he praises God, the righteous judge, for bringing this to light;
second, he takes up a collection for a sin offering and prays that the
sin might be blotted out so that the deceased might be able to join
the rest of the righteous in the resurrection on the last day:
He also took up a collection, man by man, to the amount of two thousand
drachmas of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In
doing this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resur-
rection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise
again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But
if he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall
asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he made
atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.70
These men had gone to their graves in sin, but Judas and his com-
panions had faith that the mercy of God could still bring about their
salvation. The resurrection was to take place some time in the fu-
ture, but from the point of view of 2 Maccabees the secret idolaters
resided in an intermediate state between life and the resurrection.

70. 2 Mc 12:43-45.
 the Afte rlife 231

There was hope that these could live eternally in the resurrection if
forgiven their sin through the intercession of their comrades.
For present purposes, however, this begs the question regarding
the temporary state of the deceased individuals described in 2 Mac-
cabees. By this point in time, Israel had come to learn that Sheol
would not swallow its dead for all eternity, yet the question remained
as to what would happen to the dead in the meantime before their
resurrection. The author of 2 Maccabees does not demonstrate any
awareness of a life between death and the resurrection, but the later
book of Wisdom clearly does. Wright repeatedly refers to this state
as “life after death,” and he distinguishes it from resurrected life or
what he calls “life after life after death.” In the discussion of Wisdom
that follows, this distinction will be elucidated and Israel’s mature
view of the afterlife will be made more evident.

Wisdom: Life after Life after Death

Although the book of Wisdom often perplexes readers in its pre-
sentation of the afterlife, it actually can help clarify the distinction
made above by Wright. A deuterocanonical book written in Greek
within a few decades of the coming of Christ, the book of Wisdom
is recognized for clearly teaching the immortality of the soul, but
scholars often assume that on account of this teaching it cannot si-
multaneously teach the resurrection of the body.71 As Wright strives
to demonstrate, however, the author of the book of Wisdom does
not simply believe in the immortality of the soul; he also holds to
the Jewish notion of resurrection, and his writing corroborates
2 Maccabees in describing the existence of an intermediate state
coming after death and before the resurrection of the body on the
Last Day. At the beginning of his discussion, Wright cites the fa-
mous passage from Wisdom 3:
But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,

71. For the dating of this book, see Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 163,
nn. 137, 139.
 232 the Afte rlife

and their departure was thought to be an affliction,

and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace.
For though in the sight of men they were punished,
their hope is full of immortality.
Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good,
because God tested them and found them worthy of himself;
like gold in the furnace he tried them,
and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.
In the time of their visitation they will shine forth,
and will run like sparks through the stubble.
They will govern nations and rule over peoples,
and the Lord will reign over them for ever.
Those who trust in him will understand truth,
and the faithful will abide with him in love,
because grace and mercy are upon his elect,
and he watches over his holy ones.
But the ungodly will be punished as their reasoning deserves,
who disregarded the righteous man and rebelled
against the Lord.72
According to Wright, the most serious misreadings of Wisdom have
occurred precisely in regard to this passage. It is often claimed that
verses 1–4 (ending with “. . . full of immortality”) and 7–10 (begin-
ning with “In their time . . .”) represent parallel descriptions of the
afterlife, namely two depictions of a disembodied state of immor-
tality typically found in Greek writings. Against this, Wright takes
pains to demonstrate the thoroughly Jewish nature of Wisdom, that
the passage at hand lies within a narrative of how divine judgment
will vindicate the suffering righteous of Israel in the face of persecu-
tion by the ungodly.73
That the book was written in a Jewish context is important for
Wright because it means that one ought to see in it a notion of the
resurrection held by the Jewish community at the time of the com-
ing of Christ. Against the claims of scholars who impute a com-
72. Ws 3:1–10. Although Wright does not use the RSV translation in his treatment
of Wisdom, I have continued to use it here as I have throughout this work.
73. Cf. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 165–67. See also Wright’s discus-
sion of Wisdom 3 in his The New Testament and the People of God, 329–30, and Pope
Benedict’s comments along the same lines in Eschatology, 91.
 the Afte rlife 233

pletely Greek worldview to the book and this passage in particular,

Wright finds that it espouses a view in which there are two states
of existence after death for the righteous, one before their bodies
rise on the last day, and the state of bodily resurrection itself. In this
vein, Wright comments, “It should be clear that verses 7–10 are de-
scribing a further event which follows upon the state described in
verses 1–4. The passage is not simply a second, parallel description,
a reinterpretation. After all, the ‘souls’ in verse 4 still have a ‘hope
full of immortality.’ ”74 For Wright, it would be meaningless to say
of deceased souls that their “hope is full of immortality” if they have
already reached their final state of existence.
Still, one who gives a mere surface reading to the text might
claim that the souls of the righteous being in God’s hand simply
means that they are loved and protected by God in the present
life. If one more carefully observes the context of 3:1–10, however,
it becomes clear that the righteous have already suffered and died,
and that “the time when the souls are the righteous are ‘in God’s
hand’ is simply the temporary period of rest during which they are
looked after, like Daniel going to his ‘rest’ or the souls under the
altar in Revelation, until the time when they, like him, rise for their
reward.”75 Indeed, as verses 2–3 state, these souls have already made
their “departure” (ἔξοδος) from the community. In the eyes of the
foolish they “seemed to have died,” but they are now “at peace.” And
although the souls are at peace in the afterlife, they nevertheless
await a day of “visitation” that will vindicate their hope for immor-
tality. The author’s use of this powerful word visitation (ἐπισκοπῆς)
leads Wright to his conclusion:
“The time of their visitation” clearly refers to an event still in the future. With-
in the book, “visitation” is a regular word for a day of judgment on which the
Creator will condemn the wicked and vindicate the righteous. . . . In the pres-
ent context, the point is that verse 7 cannot be reinterpreting the events of
verses 1–4 from another point of view. It must be adding a new point: that,
after a time of rest, something new will happen to the righteous.76

74. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 167–68.

75. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 174; cf. Ws 2:12–20; 4:7.
76. Ibid., 169.
 234 the Afte rlife

In this way, Wisdom and 2 Maccabees bring the Old Testament

revelation on the afterlife to its climax. The souls of the righteous
who have suffered for their faith in the one true God will indeed
live forever, but they must first pass through an intermediate state in
hope for the day of their visitation and resurrection.77 In this state,
the souls of Israel’s righteous will need to be further purified and
prepared so that they may attain to the fullness of life God took cen-
turies to teach them to hope for: the reunification of body and soul
that will enable them to enjoy the direct vision of God in the eternal
Promised Land.78
To sum up the first part of this chapter, our effort has attempted
to show forth the intelligibility of God’s gradual revelation of him-
self, to make it plausible to see the divine hand at work in Israel’s
gradually developing hope for life after death. We have used the best
of Method B exegesis to argue that what became the doctrine of the
resurrection in Daniel, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, and, ultimately, the
New Testament, was not a mere change or deviation but rather an
outgrowth of the most ancient of God’s teachings regarding his own
goodness, the goodness of his creation, and his plan to providential-
ly restore this creation in a way known to himself alone. What God
has done throughout the course of history as witnessed in these
texts is to gradually reveal to his children the fullest possibilities
that lay latent within their hopes. God cares for this material world
and man’s life within it, but his promise for restoration ultimately
reaches far beyond what could be offered to man in this world.
What is the upshot of all this as regards the doctrines of scrip-
tural inspiration and inerrancy? In light of Method C exegesis,
77. Cf. Ibid., 132–34, where Wright presents what he considers to be evidence from
the Acts of the Apostles for Pharisaic belief in an intermediate state between death and
the resurrection.
78. This passage of the book of Wisdom is pertinent for the Catholic Church’s
eventual doctrine of purgatory. As discussed above, Israel’s understanding of the after-
life in its interim stage between a person’s death and the Last Day developed over the
centuries preceding the coming of Christ. Here in 2 Maccabees and Wisdom 3 it is
evident that the dead were thought to have some form of life in the time before the day
of resurrection, but it would be centuries before what constituted the form of life after
death before the resurrection would be defined by the church in light of the revelation
of Jesus Christ.
 the Afte rlife 235

scripture can and must still be considered inerrant even though

in certain areas it does not explicitly teach the fullness of revealed
truth vis-à-vis the afterlife Applying terminology from Aquinas’s
theology of the history of revelation, we may say that such passages
simply represent a phase of the divine pedagogy in which the same
“substance of the faith” present throughout the duration of divine
revelation had yet fully to bloom. In other words, those who lived in
later ages and were privileged to affirm more articles of faith in God
nevertheless possessed the same substance of the faith as those who
lived earlier in the course of divine revelation. Christians are privi-
leged to have explicit knowledge of the full range of revealed truth,
but what we now enjoy was prepared for over the course of millen-
nia by a God who lovingly and patiently taught us.

The Afterlife and Aquinas’s Theology

of the Act of Revelation
Having proposed a way to account for the fact that certain parts
of Scripture do not explicitly teach the fullness of truth professed by
Christians today, the other difficulty our Method C exegesis must
now address is the fact that there are also apparent contradictions
in the things that Scripture intends to teach—in particular the fact
that there are some points in the Old Testament in which the sacred
authors seem to positively deny that there is such a thing as life after
death. Here we will search out the intentions of the biblical authors
and show that they did not make formal truth claims that contradict
Christian doctrine on the triune God. We will likewise seek the di-
vine author’s purpose in composing these texts in order to ascertain
what their spiritual sense has to teach Christians today.

The Role of the Spiritual Sense

In chapter 4, we followed the argument of Aquinas’s commenta-
tors Paul Synave and Pierre Benoit as they suggested that the various
texts of scripture must be assessed not only in light of the truths of
the speculative order contained therein but also taking into consid-
eration their various practical ends. The sacred author is an instru-
ment whom God chooses to convey his truth to the world, but God
 236 the Afte rlife

often wanted some things written for a reason other than teaching
clear-cut dogmas. Thus, we considered the example of the creation
account in Genesis, which according to Synave and Benoit was not
written to teach science but rather to effect other ends such as illus-
trating divine providence, bringing man to appreciate creation, and
enabling man to better understand his role within it. We further saw
that the purpose of scripture is not limited to the meaning origi-
nally intended by its human author, for all the books of scripture are
primarily the work of a divine author whose providence outstrips
any conscious authorial intention on the part of man. In this way,
scripture could have spoken in various ways to individuals in an-
cient Israel, and it can be just as relevant for believers today as it was
over two millennia ago.
We will begin with a summary statement of Synave and Benoit
which provides the basis for understanding how scripture may be
relevant for believers today. While acknowledging that the inspired
human author of scripture consciously decides to compose his work
with an admixture of practical and speculative ends in view, Synave
and Benoit recognize that the ultimate practical judgment concern-
ing Scripture’s purpose comes not from any human but from its di-
vine author:
We realize how much an individual author, no matter how strong the illu-
mination given him, is outstripped by the providential finality of the Sacred
Book. Beyond what he has consciously included in his text, the text itself
will always contain seeds of further development, refrains and resonances
which are beyond his power of clear perception; but they have been put into
the text with his concurrence, if not his knowledge, by the Sovereign Au-
thor of the whole Book. This is the whole richness of the secondary senses
which are a continuation of the primary sense known by the author. For
this whole residue of which he is not conscious, he is clearly an instrument
in the strict sense of the word.79
Through the “secondary” or spiritual senses of scripture (described
in more detail back in chapter 2), the divine author teaches believ-
ers truths that may never have been fathomed by the human au-

79. Paul Synave and Pierre Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration: a Commentary on the
Summa Theologica II–II, Questions 171–178 (New York: Desclée Co., 1961), 118.
 the Afte rlife 237

thors who penned the words containing them. In terms of the di-
vine pedagogy, these human authors served, Synave and Benoit say,
as instruments “in the strict sense of the word.” Their task first and
foremost was to be receptive to the gift of inspiration, and based on
this faithful response God used their writings as a vehicle to teach
his people and to lead them to contemplate spiritual truths ever
more profoundly throughout the ages. These spiritual senses are “a
continuation of the primary sense known by the author.” In what
follows, we will attempt to show that the way in which God con-
tinues to use texts from the Bible as a means of spiritual encounter
with Christians is something far surpassing their original authors’
expectations and yet truly in accord with them.80

Two Aspects of the Divine Pedagogy and the Struggles

of Ecclesiastes, Job, and the Psalmist
The texts dealt with in this section come from Ecclesiastes, Job,
and the Psalms. Our analysis of them will be twofold. On the one
hand, their claims will be assessed in light of the framework pro-
vided by Synave and Benoit. If Synave and Benoit are correct, then
although their view of the afterlife is sometimes quite bleak, these
men were enlightened with the gift of inspiration to compose their
text in such a way that a practical goal (e.g., showcasing the vanity

80. If I emphasize that the true spiritual sense of the Old Testament must be in
accord or continuity with its literal meaning, it is because this element of continuity is
a helpful criterion for distinguishing true and healthy interpretations from unfounded
allegorizations that are not in harmony with the Christian tradition. For further dis-
cussion of the relationship between the literal and spiritual sense, see Sandra M. Sch-
neiders, “Faith, Hermeneutics, and the Literal Sense of Scripture,” Theological Studies
39 (1978): 719–36. See also the lucid introduction to biblical theology by Dominique
Barthélemy entitled God and His Image: an Outline of Biblical Theology, translated by
Dom Aldhelm Dean, OSB (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007). Barthélemy tries to
show that the Old Testament is not merely an archive or artifact but a living document
which grew over the centuries and which still speaks to believers today. He argues that
the spiritual senses of the Old Testament grew in accordance with its original intention
precisely because it was the subject of a continual tradition of meditation in the believ-
ing community: “This revered Scripture remained deeply engraved in the minds of the
people—not like a dead letter or forgotten archives, but as the object of continual medi-
tation, which ensured that understanding would grow in the direction of its original
orientation.” (xxii–xxiii.)
 238 the Afte rlife

of existence apart from hope in a redeemer) predominated over any

imperfect concepts they might have had concerning the nature of
the afterlife. While not the definitive word on the matter, this in-
sight from Synave and Benoit goes a long way toward vindicating
the inerrant nature of the Bible in the face of apparently contradic-
tory statements on the question of the afterlife, because it offers an
account of how particularly challenging texts might have fit within
the divine pedagogy in ancient Israel. On the other hand, even if
one accepts that a particular author’s bleak statements were not
made as definitive speculative judgments about the nature of the af-
terlife, it is reasonable to expect that all of God’s word in scripture,
even the most ordinary of passages, at least teaches something or
provides some sort of occasion for today’s reader to encounter the
living Word of God. It will be of the utmost importance to examine
how these challenging books may teach Christians today and help
them enter into the mystery of Israel’s (and ultimately Christ’s) own
suffering, death, and resurrection.
In this section, we continue to operate with the understand-
ing that it was precisely in the greatest moments of strife, when Is-
rael had to trust in God most, that he began to reveal the deepest
of truths to them. As suggested above, it was through endurance
of suffering and persecutions that the nation of Israel was opened
to receive the fullness of divine teaching on the afterlife. Now, we
shall discover that the process of struggle and growth in the lives
of individual believers like Ecclesiastes, Job, and the psalmist repre-
sents a kind of microcosm of the strife Israel underwent as a nation
on its path to receiving the fullness of divine revelation. God taught
the nation to ponder the meaning of his promises by means of their
exile, pain, and persecution, but each individual Israelite lived and
meditated deeply upon these sufferings in his own life as well. In
fact, it was this desert of spiritual aridity, sickness, and pain that
prompted faithful Israelites to meditate deeply on what the divine
promise meant for their personal destiny—eventually coming to un-
derstand that their final deliverance would not be brought about in
this life but in the Promised Land beyond the grave. As we indicated
above, a helpful way of stating this dynamic is that the pedagogy by
 the Afte rlife 239

which God gradually taught the chosen people as a whole is also ob-
servable in how God has taught individual members of the faithful
throughout history. In order to make the twofold aspect of the di-
vine pedagogy clear, it is now appropriate to turn once again to the
scriptures to witness how God taught individual Israelites through
the process of struggle and questioning over the problem of death.

Ecclesiastes
Among the three books focused upon in this section, Ecclesiastes
presents the bleakest overall picture of human destiny. Seeing as it is
dated to sometime in the third century B.c. by many Method B schol-
ars today, the book with its stark outlook is particularly poignant for
study of what is supposed to be a forward-looking development in
Israel’s belief.81 However, it is not as if the late dating of the book is
the only difficulty it presents for work on the inerrancy of biblical
doctrine on the afterlife. Also to be reckoned with is the fact that
Ecclesiastes was authored by a faithful Israelite (in fact, the patristic-
medieval tradition held that the preacher in Ecclesiastes was Solo-
mon himself). Even before modern scholarship was able to identify
the style of the Hebrew in Ecclesiastes and conclude its dating with
the help of linguistic tools, exegetes throughout the centuries have
had to deal with passages like Eccleasiastes 3:19–20, which were
known to come from a man of faith and yet which portrayed such
desperation in the face of death.82 As pointed out above, the problem

81. James Crenshaw, “Ecclesiastes, book of,” ABD, vol. 2, 275; Addison G. Wright,
“Ecclesiastes,” NJBC 31:2. cf. Crenshaw, “Ecclesiastes, book of,” ABD, vol. 2, 274. For
more on death and the afterlife in the book of Ecclesiastes and in other wisdom litera-
ture, see Roland Murphy, “Death and Afterlife in the Wisdom Literature,” in Judaism
in Late Antiquity, edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner (Boston: Brill Aca-
demic Publishers, 2000), 102–15.
82. “For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies,
so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the
beasts; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust
again” (Eccl 3:19–20). It is worth noting that renowned biblical scholar Barthélemy
suggests that the word “vanity” (‫ )הָ ֽבֶל‬used here and throughout Ecclesiastes would be
better translated as “breath.” For Ecclesiastes and for the Israelites he represents, the
vanity of human life consisted in the observation that it was like a fleeting breath that
condenses momentarily upon meeting cold air and then vanishes, absorbed back into it
 240 the Afte rlife

raised by passages like these is that Ecclesiastes seems to contradict

the truth about God and his providence. For faith tells Christians
that man differs from the beasts, and that after death there is a re-
ward for righteousness in this life, yet Ecclesiastes’s words manifestly
deny these truths.83
One attempt to counter this problem, employed frequently by
Method A exegetes, has been to aver that problematic portions of
Ecclesiastes were not written by Solomon but rather by an Epicu-
rean philosopher who was simply unaware of revealed truth about
the afterlife. However, this explanation itself raises numerous other
questions and, most importantly, does not clearly fit the text itself.
In lieu of this option, the problem of Ecclesiastes may be confronted
in a way that accords more with the author’s own claims by attend-
ing to the commentary on the book by St. Bonaventure. St. Bon­
aventure’s solution is appropriate to call upon here because it tends
toward what one would expect from a modern Method C exegete.
For as one might expect from a Method B exegete, St. Bonaventure
takes seriously the disconcerting claims of the text of Ecclesiastes,
yet as a faithful Method A exegete he values its claims concerning
the importance of faith and obedience to God. Like other patristic
and medieval exegetes, this saint held that the work was authored
by a faithful Israelite, namely Solomon. Unlike many Method A ex-
egetes and in agreement with a more Method B approach, however,
St. Bonaventure also held that some challenging statements issuing
from Ecclesiastes’s mouth expressed the author’s own view and con-
veyed the literal sense he intended in composing his text.
St. Bonaventure does in fact raise the possibility that the bleak
statement “there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in
Sheol, to which you are going” was written from the standpoint of an

as quickly as it first appeared. Hence, Barthélemy proposes the following translation of

Eccl 1:2: “Breath of breaths, the most fugitive of breath, all is nothing but breath!” God
and His Image, 221.
83. This difference between man and beast is not part of only the Christian heri-
tage. It is clearly stated in the Old Testament itself and indeed in close proximity to por-
tions of it which would seem to contradict this very teaching. For example, in Job 35:11
Elihu speaks of “God my Maker, who gives songs in the night, who teaches us more
than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the air.”
 the Afte rlife 241

Epicurean (in persona Epicuri).84 However, in contrast with many ex-

egetes of the Christian tradition, St. Bonaventure does not allege that
troubling passages in Ecclesiastes were being stated as a kind of foil
to indicate the position of what things look like from the perspective
of an Epicurean who does not have faith in God. St. Bonaventure
prefers to accept Ecclesiastes 9:10 from the point of view of Solomon,
showing the conclusion a man would draw if the premises were true
that one cannot know whether what he does is pleasing to God and
whether virtue ultimately will have any reward.85 As for Ecclesiastes’s
dark claim “the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward;
but the memory of them is lost,” St. Bonaventure notes that its literal
sense is that the dead neither know the things of this world, nor re-
main in the memory of those in the world, nor have any affection for
things of the world. Knowledge presupposes life, but St. Bonaventure
observes that the dead have neither life, nor motion, nor sense.86
This interpretation of St. Bonaventure is consistent with the me-
dieval understanding of the underworld, a view which retained ele-
ments of the traditional Sheol imagery discussed earlier in this work.
According to this view, before the coming of Christ everyone who
died—the good and the wicked alike—went down into Sheol (inf-
eros). It is interesting that St. Bonaventure ties this into Job 10:20–22,
where Job speaks the words: “Are not the days of my life few? Let me
alone, that I may find a little comfort before I go whence I shall not
return, to the land of gloom and deep darkness, the land of gloom
and chaos, where light is as darkness.” St. Bonaventure explains, “Sin-
ners go there, and everyone [went there] before the advent of Christ,
as regards the outer part (limbum).87 St. Bonaventure does not think

84. Eccl 9:10.

85. Bonaventure, Expositio in Ecclesiasten, in Opera omnia; Sixti V., pontificis max-
imi jussu diligentissime emendata, edited by Adolpho Carolo Peltier (Paris: Ludovicus
Vivès, 1864), 9:657. For a more thorough presentation of Bonaventure’s commentary,
see Jeremy Holmes, “Biblical Scholarship New and Old: Learning from the Past,” Nova
et Vetera 1 (2003). I am indebted to Jeremy Holmes for first drawing my attention to
this work of Bonaventure, and whatever good can be found in my presentation of it is
thanks to the more thorough and precise exposition given in his article.
86. Eccl 9:5; Bonaventure, Expositio in Ecclesiasten, 9:655–57.
87. Ibid., 9:656 (translation mine).
 242 the Afte rlife

of this statement as a kind of spiritual exegesis or an extrapolation of

the text of Ecclesiastes. For him, this is simply the literal sense, that is
to say what the author had in mind when he wrote his book.
After citing the passage above, it is important to observe that in the
medieval view of St. Bonaventure, the realm of the dead was not indif-
ferent as to the status of those who dwelt therein, for it was thought
to have several levels or layers. The lot reserved for the damned was
believed to lie in the darkest, deepest, innermost realm of Sheol.
However, there was also believed to be a place where the righteous
dead went while they awaited the coming of Christ’s redemption, and
this was said to be the outer part or border (the limbus referred to
above) of the underworld.88 Although the Christian tradition held
that there was hope that souls in this realm could eventually be freed
by Christ at his coming, as one can see from works such as Dante’s
Divine Comedy their existence was not considered to be a particularly
happy one. Jeremy Holmes states in light of St. Bonaventure’s com-
mentary, “Truth be told, there was not much to be said for being dead
before Christ came. The ancient idea of the underworld as a shadowy
realm of gibbering half-men may well be the way things were.”89 If
St. Bonaventure’s reading of Ecclesiastes is accurate, this was in fact
the way things were before Christ, and it is precisely this that Ecclesi-
astes was intending to convey to his original audience.
If Bonaventure is correct that the dead of pre-Christian times
had to wait to enter into God’s presence, it helps show how Eccle-
siastes’s words are without error—and indeed teach a positive doc-
trine on the afterlife even on the literal level—even though they
actually deny the possibility that the dead in Sheol had a blessed

88. As the Catechism states: “Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the
dead Christ went down, ‘hell’—Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek—because those who
are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether
evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot
is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was re-
ceived into ‘Abraham’s bosom.’ ‘It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior
in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.’
Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damna-
tion, but to free the just who had gone before him.” CCC §633.
89. Holmes, “Biblical Scholarship New and Old,” 319.
 the Afte rlife 243

existence during the time before Christ’s coming. For, from the per-
spective of the first aspect of the divine pedagogy (Ecclesiastes’s role
in ancient Israel), one may see the literal sense of Ecclesiastes’s mes-
sage as a necessary step in preparing Israel for the fullness of revela-
tion, because it drove home the harsh truth that there is no justice
or hope for man apart from Jesus Christ. As far as Ecclesiastes could
tell, there would be no redemption for man after death, and all was
indeed vanity. Given this, Ecclesiastes probably ought not to be
blamed too harshly for his seemingly rash assertions.
Another reason one might view Ecclesiastes’s argument posi-
tively is because it is likely it was mounted against the theology of
retribution prevalent in his day. According to this view of retribu-
tion, exemplified in the book of Proverbs, the just would receive a
reward for their righteousness in the present life, whereas the life
of the wicked would be one of suffering and toil. As Ecclesiastes did
well to observe, this notion of divine justice was at times unrealis-
tic and demanded a strong response. The NJBC therefore explains,
“Qoheleth’s quarrel is with any theology that ignores experience
and thereby tends to become unreal. Thus he attacks the simplistic
statements of the traditional theology of retribution because they do
not square with experience.”90 Ecclesiastes’s negativity thus appears
to the reader as hopelessness, but in fact it was a work of realism,
and a work that helped prepare Israel for a positive answer from
Christ. As Pope Benedict explains, it required a realistic jolt the like
of which only Ecclesiastes (and Job) could provide in order to shat-
ter the traditional theology of retribution and make it possible for
Israel to realize that the answer to injustice ultimately reveals itself
not on this earth but in the life to come: “In their different ways,
Ecclesiastes and Job express and canonize the collapse of the ancient
assumptions. . . . Job and Ecclesiastes, then, document a crisis. With
their aid, one can feel the force of that mighty jolt which brought the
traditional didactic and practical wisdom to its knees.”91 The pope
has recently elaborated further on this dynamic:

90. Addison G. Wright, “Ecclesiastes,” NJBC 31:6.

91. Benedict XVI, Eschatology, 86. See also his discussion of the shortcomings of
 244 the Afte rlife

The early wisdom of Israel had operated on the premise that God rewards
the righteous and punishes the sinner, so that misfortune matches sin and
happiness matches righteousness. This wisdom had been thrown into crisis
at least since the time of the Exile. It was not just that the people of Israel
as a whole suffered more than the surrounding peoples who led them into
exile and oppression—in private life, too, it was becoming increasingly ap-
parent that cynicism pays and that the righteous man is doomed to suffer
in this world. In the Psalms and the later Wisdom Literature we witness
the struggle to come to grips with this contradiction; we see a new effort to
become “wise”—to understand life rightly, to find and understand anew the
God who seems unjust or altogether absent.92
For Pope Benedict, the works of late biblical Wisdom literature may
not convey the fullness of truth one may wish for in investigating
the nature of divine providence, but they represent an important
stage in the divine pedagogy that prepared Israel to receive this full-
ness. In them, we catch a vivid glimpse of Israel’s perpetual “strug-
gle” with God.
Nevertheless, the Method C exegete will not be completely satis-
fied with Bonaventure’s exegesis even though he incorporates ele-
ments typically associated with both Method A exegesis (e.g., his

this theology as expounded by Job’s friends in The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on
the Triune God (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 49–55. As Jeremy Holmes has
observed, the fact that Ecclesiastes was concerned with jolting the simplistic popular
notion of justice prevalent in his day may at the same time have made it impossible
for him to introduce any solution to the problem of death lest it annul the effect of the
aforementioned arguments. Holmes has suggested another possible reason for Ecclesi-
astes’s apparently contradictory stance on the afterlife: perhaps he did not necessarily
disagree with the writer of Proverbs but rather desired his work to function as a kind
of proverb in dialectic with the notion of justice portrayed in the book of Proverbs. The
wisdom writers characteristically set apparently contradictory sayings alongside one
another in the form of proverbs so that their readers would discover truths more pro-
foundly than they might through more didactic means. Ecclesiastes may therefore have
viewed his own work (which itself contains many such proverbs) as a complement to
the book of Proverbs which provided another piece to the puzzle that was discovering
the nature of divine providence. In this way, Ecclesiastes would pen blatant contrac-
tions not because he was a post-modern comfortable with contradiction or because in
reality he represented a group of editors with sharply divergent views, but because he
was a typical Israelite faithful to God and seeking the truth of things (comments based
on a communication of Jeremy Holmes with the author).
92. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, translated by Adrian J. Walker (New York:
Doubleday, 2007), 212–13.
 the Afte rlife 245

hermeneutic of faith) and Method B exegesis (his admission of Eccle-

siastes’s dark claims). In other words, one may rightly argue that it is
not enough for scripture to have a literal sense that states what is the
case in a given time period (e.g., that divine justice would not be met-
ed out on this earth, and that before Christ the dead resided as shades
in the limbus patrum), but that scripture ought to teach the truth ab-
solutely, namely that in light of Christ there is indeed hope for the
dead, that the fate of man and beasts really is different in the end. For
the Method C exegete, it is unfulfilling to say that Ecclesiastes had a
pedagogical purpose for people of a given time period but has no
truth to teach today. The Method C answer to the present objection
thus requires further exploration of the second aspect of divine peda-
gogy: Ecclesiastes’s role for believers today, its spiritual sense.
To begin, the book of Ecclesiastes is important for today’s believer
because he can look at it, as he can look at the whole Old Testament,
and recognize that Israel’s faith journey described therein itself has
a signification insofar as it sheds profound insight into every man’s
walk with God. Every person who embarks on the journey of faith
in the living God participates in the mystery of Israel’s own journey.
He must undergo the same process of questioning, struggle, and trust
that Ecclesiastes, and indeed the entire nation of Israel, endured. Just
as Ecclesiastes and the whole nation of Israel learned to believe in
God from God himself, so every believer must learn from God. One
who recognizes this second aspect of the divine pedagogy in Eccle-
siastes may find strength to guide him in his life’s journey because
in witnessing that men of faith like himself struggle with the reality
of death, he comes to see that he is not alone in his struggle. In his
treatment of Ecclesiastes in the NJBC, a work comprised almost ex-
clusively of Method B scholarship, Addison Wright makes an insight-
ful comment that one might expect from a Method A exegete:
Clearly, countless thousands of devout people travel in the dark as did Ec-
clesiastes, and they can find dignity in the believing community because
Ecclesiastes was deemed worthy to have a place among the biblical writings.
Surely the book needs to be complemented by the other voices of Scripture,
but its voice is of considerable importance.93

93. Addison G. Wright, “Ecclesiastes,” NJBC 31:8.

 246 the Afte rlife

Ecclesiastes may thus paint a bleak picture of man’s struggle with

his destiny, but at least its reader may find comfort in the knowl-
edge that other faithful individuals before him have endured similar
tests. Ecclesiastes teaches this person that it is part of human nature,
even a human nature endowed with the gift of faith, to grapple with
fear, doubt, and even despair in the face of death. This is not to say
that an individual ought to give in to these temptations, but Ecclesi-
astes is realistic in showing that they are real even in the lives of the
most faithful of people.
Another pedagogical aspect of Ecclesiastes is related to the pre-
vious explanation, as well as to the explanation of St. Bonaventure
explored above: just as Ecclesiastes pointed to the vanity of existence
for those who lived without Christ before his coming, so the believ-
er of today can read Ecclesiastes and perceive what becomes of a hu-
man existence entrenched entirely in the cares of this world, with-
out any conscious relationship with Christ. This point is put well by
Peter Kreeft in a manner the ordinary lay believer can appreciate. As
Kreeft explains, Ecclesiastes teaches the Christian the first thing he
must recognize when embarking on his journey of faith:
Let me put the point in a single word. It is a word I guarantee will shock
and offend you, though it comes from St. Paul. Paul used this to describe
his life without Christ. . . . Before Christ put him into the post-Ecclesiastes
relationship with God, what was his life? Shit. “Dung.”
. . . Compared with the all-excelling knowledge of God in Christ Jesus,
all of the greatest things in this world, according to Paul, are skubala—shit.
Dung. Job’s dung heap. That is the message of Ecclesiastes for a Chris-
tian.94
For Kreeft and his faith-based approach, the meaningfulness of Sa-
cred Scripture hinges upon the lesson that Ecclesiastes teaches us,
for it is only when one sees himself in the situation of Ecclesias-
tes that he appreciates why the coming of Christ was necessary in
the first place. Ecclesiastes was philosophizing about the meaning
of life from a merely human standpoint, without the assistance of
revelation or grace, and the answer he came up with was that there

94. Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989),
27–28.
 the Afte rlife 247

is none: life is vanity. Nowhere in scripture is this basic fact taught

more clearly than in the book of Ecclesiastes. Kreeft does well to
argue that the person who cannot learn Ecclesiastes’s lesson will
feel no need for Christ, and therefore will not embark on a quest
for him. As in the case of Ecclesiastes himself, the person who faces
death without hope in Christ finds it intolerable, insurmountable,
devastating, the end of everything.
According to Kreeft, the fact that Ecclesiastes (whom tradition
has long considered to be Solomon, the wisest of all philosophers) is
unable to come up with a satisfying answer to life’s most fundamen-
tal question was ironically the precise reason the book was included
in the canon of scripture in the first place. He explains:
Whatever rabbis first decided to include Ecclesiastes in the canon of Sacred
Scripture were both wise and courageous—wise because we appreciate a
thing only by contrast, and Ecclesiastes is the contrast, the alternative, to
the rest of the Bible, the question to which the rest of the Bible is the an-
swer. There is nothing more meaningless than an answer without its ques-
tion. This is why we need Ecclesiastes.95
A university professor, Kreeft goes on to explain that when he teach-
es Sacred Scripture as a whole, he begins with Ecclesiastes because
it frames the problem to which the rest of scripture is the answer.
He admits it does not teach a positive doctrine on the afterlife, since
its revelatory purpose is precisely the opposite of giving a definitive
response to man’s deepest question. It is thus that Kreeft adds to the
explanation provided above:
[Ecclesiastes] is inspired monologue. God in his providence has arranged
for this one book of mere rational philosophy to be included in the canon
of Scripture because this too is divine revelation. It is divine revelation pre-
cisely in being the absence of divine revelation. It is like the silhouette of
the rest of the Bible. It is what Fulton Sheen calls “black grace” instead of
“white grace,” revelation by darkness rather than by light. In this book God
reveals to us exactly what life is when God does not reveal to us what life is.
Ecclesiastes frames the Bible as death frames life.96

95. Ibid., 19.

96. Ibid., 23. On the theme of darkness and divine silence, it is instructive to read
Michael Rea, “Divine Hiddenness, Divine Silence,” in Louis Pojman and Michael C.
 248 the Afte rlife

Kreeft’s explanation is strikingly consistent with the global mindset

of the Old Testament. It was a unique strength of the people of Israel
that they would perceive as sacred a work whose teaching does not
provide a final answer to the problem of death but which instead
frames the problem. The fact that Ecclesiastes is in the biblical canon
testifies at once to the persistence and the humility of the faithful Is-
raelite, who would incessantly search with his whole heart for an an-
swer to the problem of death and yet admit in the end that only God
knew what this answer was and how it would come about in time.
The sort of faithful abandonment to God one sees in Ecclesiastes
is precisely what the community of Israel that accepted the author-
ity of this book recognized as necessary in the days before Christ’s
coming, and this same abandonment is required of Christians today
even though they now know God’s answer to the problem of death.
Although the circumstances have changed and knowledge has in-
creased, the faith of Israel witnessed to in Ecclesiastes—including
the struggles that accompany it—remains the same today.
Finally, although it may be argued that Ecclesiastes’s concern re-
mained rooted in matters pertaining to this life, it is important to
bear in mind the conclusion drawn at the conclusion of Ecclesias-
tes, which Method B scholarship indicates was composed by a later
epilogist.97 In giving final shape to the book, he strove to emphasize

Rea, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology (Boston, Mass.: Wadsworth/Cengage Learn-

ing, 2012), 266–75.
97. Cf. Crenshaw, “Ecclesiastes, book of,” ABD, vol. 2, 272. Crenshaw explains, “The
additional verses in 12:9–14 derive from one epilogist, or more probably two. To this
point in analysis a virtual consensus exists in scholarly discussion.” In light of Method
B’s analysis of the history of biblical texts, a great discussion could be had on whether or
how inspiration extended not only to individual authors but to communities and redac-
tors, as well. Some authors would see the presence of redactors as a corruption of the
original text rather than an inspired and providential development of it. For example,
according to Jon Day, the redaction of Ecclesiastes was done merely to cover up its diffi-
culties and make it appear more orthodox. See Day, “The Development of Belief in Life
after Death in Ancient Israel,” 252–53. On the other hand, a hermeneutic of faith would
seem to demand the recognition that there were inspired redactors to the books of scrip-
ture. For a brief statement of how this might be explained, note the work of Synave and
Benoit: “We therefore admit that the charism of inspiration may have been shared by a
large number of individuals, but in different degrees. As in the case of the human facul-
ties, the distribution of the divine influence must here be conceived in an analogical and
 the Afte rlife 249

that the protagonist remained concerned with trustful obedience

to God throughout his struggles. His inspired words testify to the
faith of Ecclesiastes and to a vital message this book has for those
who find themselves unsure of their destiny and of how God will
work to accomplish it. Ultimately what is important is to “fear God,
and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For
God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether good or evil.”98

Job
The book of Job narrates a prolonged process of existential
struggle and an investigation of divine providence akin to what one
encounters in Ecclesiastes. Unlike Ecclesiastes, Job’s protagonist is
eventually led to hope in Yahweh’s promise of eternal life, but like
Ecclesiastes the literal sense of Job contains outright denials of the
possibility that man could live forever in God’s presence. Job seems
to hold the traditional view of Sheol as the destiny of good and evil
men alike, a land of hopelessness, gloom, and shadows.99 Of course,
in other places one sees a Job seemingly confident in divine vindica-
tion, as in this famous passage of the Christian tradition: “For I know
that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and
after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see
God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not
another. My heart faints within me!”100 As one progresses through

proportional way. The share which each one receives of this influence will depend on the
extent to which he collaborates in the composition of the sacred books. This can occur
in the most varied ways, beginning with the known prophet who consciously receives
divine revelations and personally writes them down, and extending to the anonymous
editor who makes only some slight alteration in the sacred text without even being aware
that God is inspiring him to do so.” Prophecy and Inspiration, 124.
98. Eccl 12:13–14.
99. See the assessment of Job’s gloomy view of the afterlife in Day, “The Develop-
ment of Belief in Life after Death in Ancient Israel,” 252.
100. Jb 19:25–27. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that this passage itself
presents textual, grammatical, and exegetical difficulties and has been variously inter-
preted. For an analysis of these problems, see Edouard Dhorme, A Commentary on the
Book of Job, translated by Harold Knight (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publish-
ers, 1984), 282–86; cf. Day, “The Development of Belief in Life after Death in Ancient
 250 the Afte rlife

the narrative of Job, we witness a sort of vacillation between hope-

fulness and hopelessness, and this makes it difficult to pinpoint one
precise view of the afterlife being taught in the book of Job.
As in the case of Ecclesiastes, however, the purpose of Job’s re-
marks about the afterlife becomes clearer when viewed in light of
the divine pedagogy. For as to the first aspect of the divine peda-
gogy (the role of Job in its early Israelite context), it is not neces-
sary to suppose that the original intent of the book of Job was to
present a complete picture of the nature of the afterlife. To state it
briefly, as with Ecclesiastes the purpose of this work may not have
been to teach definitively on the nature of death and the afterlife but
rather to teach other important truths and frame important ques-
tions that would assist Israel in preparing to receive the fullness of
revelation. This may help to explain why the community of Israel
allowed statements to remain in the text which, taken on the literal
level and outside the context of the work’s broader purpose, would
present grave problems. There may also have been practical aspects
that drove Israel to read and meditate upon the text over the cen-
turies. In James 5:11, for example, the man Job is referred to as an
example of long-suffering patience.
One may find support for the above proposal by turning to the
prologue to Aquinas’s Literal Commentary on Job. Although written
by a Method A exegete, this work is known for its keen attention to
the literal sense of Job.101 Aquinas explains that Job was composed
not for the purpose of teaching the nature of the afterlife but for dis-
coursing about and vindicating another, more fundamental truth:
the reality of divine providence. In Job, the topic under discussion
is that “of the varied and grave afflictions of a certain man perfect
in every virtue called Job.” As Aquinas observes, the fact “that a just
Israel,” 251–52; and Benedict XVI, Eschatology, 85. With regard to the subject of escha-
tological hope in Job, Benedict observes, “There may be a glimmer of hope here for an
abiding life to come, but the textual tradition is too uncertain to allow any worthwhile
judgment about the form such hopes might have taken.”
101. At the end of his prologue, Aquinas himself states that his purpose is to ex-
pound the literal sense of Job. See Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1,
The Person and His Work, translated by Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2005), 57–59
 the Afte rlife 251

man [such as Job] is afflicted without cause seems to totally under-

mine the foundation of providence.” Being such an extreme exam-
ple of the difficulties bound up with belief in divine providence in
human affairs, the case of Job is “therefore proposed as a kind of
theme for the question intended [for discussion].” St. Thomas even
goes so far as to say that “the whole intention (tota intentio) [of Job]
is directed to this: to show through probable arguments that human
affairs are governed by divine providence.”102 If Aquinas is correct
in claiming this, then it sheds light on the nature of the book of Job
and its original place in the Bible. Like Ecclesiastes, Job raises life’s
most poignant questions. It does not necessarily give a definitive re-
sponse with respect to the afterlife, but it assisted the nation of Israel
in her quest to do so as it taught them to acknowledge God’s provi-
dence over all creaturely affairs.
Turning now to the significance of Job in relation to the second
aspect of the divine pedagogy (the role of Job in the canon today),
this same discussion of divine providence remains pertinent. Like
Ecclesiastes, Job shows what a struggle with the problems of suffer-
ing and death might look like not only in the character Job but in
the life of any man of faith.103 Today’s reader of Job enters into the
mystery of human suffering just as Job himself did, recognizing the
presence of apparently unmerited evil in his life and asking how this
can be if there exists a good God. Like Job and with the help of Job,
every man needs to confront the reality that good things happen to
wicked people and evil things befall virtuous people. Any man who
is to faithfully endure life’s most excruciating hardships must with
Job pass through successive stages of growth in his life, from his first
conversion to his final and total transformation into the likeness of
God.104

102. Thomas Aquinas, prologue to Expositio super Iob ad litteram. Translations of

this work provided here are mine.
103. I use the word “character” in referring to Job as part of the narrative, but one
may debate whether Job was originally intended as character in a parable or a histori-
cal individual. In the same prologue under discussion, Aquinas asks this question and
concludes based on references to other parts of scripture that Job was indeed a histori-
cal character.
104. This aspect of the purpose of Job, along with a broader discussion of the book
 252 the Afte rlife

If the Christian exegete approaches Job in light of this process of

conversion and existential struggle, then he does not have to run to
19:25–7 in order to salvage the book as a part of the inspired canon,
because the book of Job was not meant to teach whatever issues from
Job’s mouth as a sort of categorical statement concerning the nature
of the afterlife. Like other works in the Old Testament, the book of
Job contains a faithful protagonist whose virtues are to be modeled
and whose words are generally to be heeded; yet it is not the case
that one must approach every one of the character Job’s words as
if they could stand on their own as a dogmatic affirmation. This is
not to say that God could never speak through Job or through any
personage whose words are recorded in a biblical book, but rather
that the message of Job must be found by looking at the work as a
literary whole, how the character Job’s words fit into this whole, and
how this whole itself fits into the whole of Sacred Scripture.
As Kreeft explains in his matter-of-fact, accessible style, the role
of Job in the canon of scripture is not necessarily meant to provide
clear-cut answers so much as to help ordinary believers encounter
God, who is the answerer to life’s most poignant questions. Every
book in scripture is meant to bring its reader to this encounter,
but Job does so in a unique way: “Job is mystery. A mystery sat-
isfies something in us, but not our reason. The rationalist in us is
repelled by Job, just as Job’s three rationalist friends were repelled
by Job. But something deeper in us is deeply satisfied by Job, and is
nourished.”105 According to Kreeft, Job nourishes the soul not be-
cause it gives it any definitive answer but because it puts the reader
into prayerful dialogue with God. In Job’s struggle with the nature
of divine justice and providence a man recognizes his own struggle.
God did not eliminate Job’s struggles overnight or give him quick
answers to his questions, and God does not do this for believers to-
day either. As Pope Benedict puts it, “God’s answer to Job explains
nothing; rather . . . it reminds us of our limitations. It admonishes

in general, can be found in Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His
Work, 57–59, 120–22.
105. Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life, 61.
 the Afte rlife 253

us to trust the mystery of God in its incomprehensibility.”106 As a

good teacher, God arranges for men to discover the truth in their
own time and in a spirit of prayerful trust. They may have to endure
a trial of purgatorial proportions in order to find the truth, but once
they have found it they own it.
Thus far we have dealt with Job from the perspective of both
Method A and Method B exegesis. However, a Method C account
ought to incorporate all the resources of its respective hermeneuti-
cal methods, and in the case of Job this means a deeper examination
of the book’s structure and composition from a Method B perspec-
tive. In particular, a redactional history of Job can help show the
book’s purpose from the perspective of the Israelite community that
composed it, prayed over it, and continued to interpret it through-
out the centuries. As one observes the various additions and clari-
fications within the book of Job made throughout Israel’s history,
this helps to clarify what Israel gleaned from the text and how the
text itself opened Israel into deeper understandings of God and his
providence.
In short, the book of Job consists in a poetic dialogue and a prose
prologue and epilogue.107 Method B scholarship indicates that the
book of Job most likely originated as an oral folktale sometime be-
fore the Babylonian exile and that its poetic portion was composed
sometime thereafter, around 500 B.c. 108 The narrative frame was
probably grafted on some fifty years later, and the Hebrew version of
the book reached its final form with inclusion of the Elihu speeches
(Job 32–37) sometime around 400 B.c. Particularly, the addition of
the prologue and epilogue is significant because they provide evi-
dence that the community of Israel that received and transmitted
the book of Job did not endorse the character Job’s denials of hope
as if they were categorical statements regarding the nature of the af-

106. Benedict XVI, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,

2004), 26.
107. Jb 3:1–42:6, 1:1–2:13, and 42:7–17, respectively.
108. This presentation of Job’s redactional history is not the fruit of my own labor
but rather of communications with Gregory Vall. See also James L. Crenshaw, “Job,
Book of,” ABD, vol. 3, 863–64.
 254 the Afte rlife

terlife. Rather, with the help of the book’s prose frame, the reader is
enabled to enjoy a perspective that characters in the story cannot:
all that happens to Job is part of God’s plan, even though Job him-
self cannot see it clearly. Through it the inspired redactor shows that
the source of Job’s suffering was not God but Satan, and that in the
end God actually vindicates Job, who dies an old man blessed more
in his latter days than he was before his trials.109 Moreover, the Eli-
hu speeches, written in a later Hebrew and inserted between Job’s
final plea and Yahweh’s speeches, are significant because they vin-
dicate God’s punishing of Job as merciful chastisement. Elihu was
angry at Job and his three friends because none of them had found
this answer to the problem of Job’s sufferings.110 The redactor of this
speech wanted to make known that an answer to Job’s problems did
indeed lie hidden within the depths of divine providence, but none
of these men had found it.
Regarding the later LXX translation of Job, it is illuminating to
see that, once again, additions were deliberately made in places in
order to convey Israel’s developed understanding of the afterlife. For
example, it seems that the LXX translator attempted to show that
the meaning of Job 14:14 included truth about the resurrection. The
RSV, reflecting the MT of Job 14:14, reads: “If a man die, shall he live
again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my release should
come.” Given the presence of the Hebrew interrogative marker, one
can readily see that this is a question that clearly expects the answer
“No.”111 When one turns to the LXX, however, it reads: “If a man
dies, he will live having completed the days of his life. I will wait
until I am born again.”112 In the LXX, Job 14:14 no longer contains
a rhetorical question (the Greek here omitted the interrogative par-
ticle ‫ ֲה‬that was in the Hebrew) that seems to deny hope in the after-
life. Rather, here it is a declarative sentence that clearly supports a
view of the afterlife: if a man dies, he “will live” (ζήσεται).

109. Jb 1–2; 42:12–17.

110. Jb 32:2–3.
111. If the author had expected the answer “Yes,” he would most likely have used
the Hebrew form ‫( ֲ‍הֹֽלא‬meaning something like “won’t he?”) rather than ‫ ֲה‬.
112. Translation mine.
 the Afte rlife 255

Finally, the LXX appends yet another section to the conclu-

sion of Job in order to make clear what ought to be gleaned from
the story of Job’s trials. In the MT, Job 42:17 concludes the book:
“And Job died, an old man, and full of days.” The LXX, however,
adds several verses, including this one which immediately follows
upon the final verse of the Hebrew: “It is written that he will rise
again (ἀναστήσεσθαι) with those whom the Lord raises up.”113 In
the eyes of the book’s final redactor, Job is a tale of suffering, death,
and resurrection—a tale of existential struggle that ends with a clear
answer from God. Since the community of Israel, and in turn the
church, has read Job in this way, it presents a possible account of
how the book contains inerrant doctrine. For what might not have
been affirmed about the afterlife in the words of the character Job
was indeed affirmed by the LXX redactor of the story, as well as by
the community that continued to read Job as a testament of faith in
Yahweh and in his providence.
Thus the truth of Job does not simply lie in any one character’s
words but must rather be viewed in the context of the book as a
whole and in its history. It is a tale of suffering and of question-
ing but also, and ultimately as one can see in the final form of the
work, a tale of trust and of hope. In contrast with Ecclesiastes, at
least in the LXX the final form of Job explicitly affirms a hopeful
final end for man, yet both Job and Ecclesiastes display the convic-
tion that God is in control no matter what happens, and that no
man can measure his wisdom. The community of Israel itself like-
wise was convinced of God’s providential care for them throughout
their times of trial, as demonstrated by the fact that earlier texts like
Job were read in such a positive light. Especially given the Greek-
speaking culture in which the LXX originated, one might have ex-
pected this translation to have flattened out references to the resur-
rection into something more Platonic, as was the case in the tran-
sition from the Greek of 2 Maccabees to 4 Maccabees.114 On the
contrary, what actually happened was that in the centuries immedi-

113. Translation mine.

114. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 150.
 256 the Afte rlife

ately preceding Christ’s coming, hope for the resurrection became

all the more firm in Israel despite all earthly obstacles to this hope.
Although this insight stems from a Method B analysis, in the con-
text of the present work of Method C exegesis one ought to observe
that it too lends itself to interpretation on another level: Christians
often experience that their hope becomes vivid precisely through
their encounter with earthly obstacles.

Psalms
We will conclude our treatment of the afterlife with a look into
the book of Psalms because of its prominence in the church’s tradi-
tion of prayer, liturgy, and the history of biblical interpretation. The
Psalms offer a living record of what Israel believed, because texts
such as the Psalms—which were an important part of the official
liturgy of the Jewish Temple—reflect how Israel prayed. Here we
operate with the understanding that if the church’s law of prayer is
the law of her belief, the same ought to hold true for the Old Testa-
ment people of God. The texts contained in the book of Psalms are
far too vast and diverse to say that they intend a single definitive
belief regarding the nature of the afterlife, but like the previous two
works Psalms itself displays a twofold divine pedagogy that can help
one gain a better sense of how to address difficulties vis-à-vis their
account of the afterlife.115
In particular, we will turn to St. Thomas in order to ascertain the
various senses Israel intended when praying the Psalms. This will
hopefully serve to illustrate Israel’s broader understanding of hu-
man destiny, as well as to point out how believers today might face
life’s ultimate questions. As St. Thomas said, the book of Psalms “has
the general [material] of theology as a whole” and that it “contains
the whole of Scripture (continet totam Scripturam).”116 The Psalms

115. This diversity of views can be clearly observed through a brief reading of John
Goldingay, “Death and Afterlife in the Psalms,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, edited
by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2000),
61–85.
116. Thomas Aquinas, prologue to In psalmos Davidis expositio. Again, translations
of this work provided in the present chapter are mine.
 the Afte rlife 257

contain a kind of synopsis of salvation history put to prayer and

song. The book includes prayers for every situation in life, including
songs of royal enthronement, historical remembrance, lamentation,
repentance, wisdom, praise, and thanksgiving for deliverance.
When it comes to discussing doctrine on the afterlife in scrip-
ture, this last type of psalm is of unique importance. The people of
Israel had a rich understanding of the reality of deliverance, and this
is evident most of all in the way they prayed for it in the Psalms.
Even a cursory reading of these texts shows them to be replete with
references to deliverance from such forces as “death,” “enemies,”
“the pit,” and “Sheol.” However, reading the Psalms literally, with an
eye to physical reality alone, does not reveal the deeper meaning of
deliverance the nation of Israel, and later the church, found therein.
Drawing on these texts, St. Thomas distinguishes three sorts of de-
liverance that he thinks the reader of scripture ought to consider:
deliverance from the moment of physical death (which is often the
literal sense), deliverance from sin, and deliverance from the ever-
lasting death of hell through the resurrection of the body (these last
two senses are often spiritual senses in Psalms). Attending to these
various meanings of deliverance in the exegesis of St. Thomas, we
find that the psalmist composed texts open to being appreciated by
believers of every age for meanings that surpassed any conscious in-
tention on the part of their author.
It is now appropriate to turn to St. Thomas’s commentary itself
to see how his account of passages dealing with the afterlife in the
book of Psalms can be illuminating for a theology of Sacred Scrip-
ture and for the reader of scripture. Aquinas was only able to com-
ment on the first fifty-five Psalms before he died, but of those psalms
several are highly pertinent to the study of Israel’s view on the after-
life. In what immediately follows, we will consider Aquinas’s exege-
sis of Psalms 6, 18, and 30 and make our own observations regard-
ing Psalms 88 and 16.
St. Thomas’s commentary on Psalm 6 offers a fine example of
how his exegesis illumines passages that exhibit troubling perspec-
tives on the afterlife. The verses of the psalm in question read:
 258 the Afte rlife

Turn, O Lord, save my life;

deliver me for the sake of thy steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of thee;
in Sheol who can give thee praise?117
A reading of the literal sense of this passage raises important ques-
tions regarding Israel’s overall understanding of the afterlife in the
book of Psalms. First, what is Sheol ?118 Since the author does not
speak of heaven or hell, does he mean that all the dead go to Sheol
and remain there forever? Do those who die really lose the capac-
ity to remember God? Is it true that no one who dies and goes to
Sheol can praise God there? What precisely is the psalmist asking
for when he beseeches God to save his life? Does he have hope in
this life alone? As one might expect from a Method B exegete rather
than from a Method A exegete, St. Thomas first attends to some of
these issues surrounding the text’s literal sense before approaching
its spiritual sense, because according to him the spiritual sense is
based upon the literal and presupposes it.119
He begins by noting that the words “save my life” have an im-
mediate referent in the psalmist’s act of praying for deliverance from
his human enemies: “He shows that there is an imminent danger,
and this is first of all a danger of the present, that is to say natural
death.”120 This affirmation of St. Thomas regarding the text’s imme-
diate referent or literal sense stands in line with the initial analy-
sis of many modern exegetes on the topic of deliverance in the
Psalms—although some such scholars believe that on account of the
psalmist’s imperfect understanding of the afterlife he composed his
text exclusively with concern for the danger of physical death and
for preserving his earthly life.121 According to many who read this

117. Ps 6:4–5.
118. In this section, I will continue to transliterate as “Sheol” the Hebrew term used
by the psalmist and translated by St. Thomas in his commentary with the Latin infernus.
119. Thomas Aquinas, ST, I, q.1, a.10. The literal sense, whereby words signify
things, is defined by St. Thomas as that which is intended by an author. The spiritual
sense is that signification whereby things signified by words themselves have a signifi-
cation. A human author may or may not be aware of the spiritual sense of his words in
any given instance, but to be sure the divine author of scripture intends this sense.
120. Thomas Aquinas, In psalmos Davidis expositio, super Psalmo 6.
121. For instance, certain statements of Hans-Joachim Kraus in his Theology of the
 the Afte rlife 259

passage today, when the psalmist says “in death there is no remem-
brance of thee,” it means that the dead pass out of existence, and
that the psalmist is beseeching the Lord to uphold him in being.
St. Thomas, on the other hand, does not even entertain the pos-
sibility that deliverance from Sheol exclusively denotes the psalm-
ist’s own deliverance from the moment of natural death and the
preservation of his earthly life. Rather, for him this deliverance also
has a spiritual meaning that applies not only to the psalmist himself
but to every believer who prays the psalm. While it is important that
the evident literal reading of scripture be attended to first in the op-
erations of exegesis, as Method B exegetes do well to point out, nev-
ertheless it would be irresponsible for one aspiring to do Method C
exegesis to close off the possibility of a spiritual reading such as that
given by St. Thomas in what follows his initial observation:
And second [the psalmist] shows an eternal death from which there is no
return. Hence is said: “For in death,” that is after death, “there is no remem-
brance of thee.” Namely, no one ponders your steadfast love after death who
was not mindful of it during his life. . . . This is a second danger, because
there is a permanence to Sheol, and within Sheol there is no confession. . . .
So it says: “In Sheol, who can give thee praise?” And, “In death,” that is
within the depth of sins, “there is no remembrance of thee.”122

Psalms, translated by Keith R. Crim (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg, 1986), exhibit

strong opposition to admitting that the Psalms could be referring to deliverance on
multiple levels: “Yahweh’s saving actions take place in the midst of a life that is sur-
rounded by death and faces the constant threat of being swept away into the depths.
Therefore the songs of thanksgiving that testify to ‘deliverance from death’ are placed in
the mouth of all those who have experienced God’s saving intervention and the rescue
of their life from the power of sudden, unwholesome death. These realistic contexts
cannot and must not he modified or swept aside in favor of ‘New Testament perspec-
tives.’ ” (168.) The commentary of Hans-Joachim Kraus on Psalm 16 found in Psalms
1–59: A Commentary (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg, 1988), likewise stands out in this
regard: “Psalm 16 does not deal with resurrection, or even immortality, but with the
rescue from an acute mortal danger.” Kraus does, however, admit that Israel’s prayer is
ordered towards belief in the afterlife: “Basically, the problem of death is not solved in
the Old Testament, and yet it is clear in which direction the assertions of trust point:
man is destined for life. He learns to know Yahweh’s liberating power which knows no
limits.” (1:240.)
122. Thomas Aquinas, In psalmos Davidis expositio, super Psalmo 6. Of course, de-
bate could be had over whether this is truly a spiritual sense (intended by God but not
by the human author) or merely an extension of the psalm’s literal sense (in which case
 260 the Afte rlife

In this piece of exegesis, St. Thomas clearly goes beyond what he

previously said in reference to the literal sense of danger from sud-
den physical death. Man’s residence in Sheol is now seen in terms
of his being imprisoned in a state of sin. What Aquinas sees in this
passage is that not just the psalmist but every man in a state of sin,
remembering only himself and refusing to praise God, cuts him-
self off from God and thus in a real way causes his own spiritual
death. Moreover, St. Thomas shows that this state of spiritual death
has the potential to become a permanent death of both body and
soul, since no one who persists in ignoring God in this life will be
rewarded with eternal life, which consists precisely in the act of
knowing God.123 Again, it probably cannot be proven whether or
not the psalmist himself was consciously considering this connec-
tion of sin and hell to physical death when he composed the psalm.
This may be a spiritual sense in the very strict meaning of the term,
that is to say an instance in which the reality the author intention-
ally signified (physical death) itself had a signification which he did
not consciously intend (the death of sin or the permanent death of
hell).124 Whatever the case may be, this is a sense which believers of

the human author would have been consciously intending to speak not only of physical
death but also of sin and hell. Based on what he says here, it appears that St. Thomas
thought the psalmist consciously intended to connect sin, hell, and physical death. If
I am correct in this assessment, it means St. Thomas would have considered all these
meanings as literal. While accepting and valuing these meanings, a Method C exegete
might wish instead to argue that they are spiritual senses (i.e., perhaps the psalmist did
not intend to speak about sin and death, and these are spiritual meanings that grow out
of the text that refers only to physical death on the literal level).
123. Cf. Ps 73, where the fate of sinners is contrasted with that of those who are
close to Yahweh. The psalmist is confident he will be received into glory (73:24), where-
as those who stray will be destroyed: “For lo, those who are far from thee shall perish;
thou dost put an end to those who are false to thee” (Ps 73:27).
124. For more insight into this understanding of the spiritual sense, see especially
Aquinas’s discussion of the four senses of Scripture in Quodlibet VII. In q.6, a.3, he
asks whether the spiritual sense can be found in writings other than Sacred Scripture
and concludes that it cannot. Even a human writer (e.g., the poet) may intend that his
words signify a reality that in turn signifies something else. However, St. Thomas ob-
serves that in Sacred Scripture, whose author is the Holy Spirit (Scriptura, cuius spiritus
sanctus est auctor), realities are signified which never entered the consciousness of its
human author, who is an instrument (homo vero instrumentum). See also Jean-Pierre
Torrell, “Le savoir théologique chez saint Thomas,” Revue thomiste 96 (1996), 392–96.
 the Afte rlife 261

every age can apprehend and pray in their own lives. The Christian
reading this psalm ought to take it as a warning to avoid falling into
the “depth of sins,” for in sin there is no remembrance of God, and
he who does not care to be mindful of God in this life will not have
eternal life: “No one ponders your steadfast love after death who
was not mindful of it during his life.”
Finally, it is significant that the author’s principal focus in this
psalm appears to remain on Yahweh. He begins the psalm with sup-
plication, “O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger,” and he concludes
with a kind of recognition or thanksgiving, “The Lord has heard the
sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication; the Lord
accepts my prayer.”125 Although the forces of death are threatening
to cut the psalmist off from Yahweh, he knows that he is coming
to his rescue. He might not be sure how Yahweh is going to solve
such a dire problem as death, and, as in other cases above, he might
really be of the opinion that the dead who reside in Sheol can no
longer “remember” God. However, bearing in mind the work of the
previous chapter on the role of speculative and practical judgments
in scripture’s authorship, one ought not to conclude based on this
psalmist’s prayer that he is intending to make a categorical affirma-
tion that the dead will be eternally cut off from God in Sheol and that
there is no possibility for a person to return from the dead. As we ob-
served a moment ago, his eyes remain focused on God, and his atti-
tude is much more that of a desperate but nonetheless trustful plead-
ing and questioning, an attempt to find an answer rather than to give
one: “O Lord, how long? . . . In Sheol who can give thee praise?”126
The psalmist is exhausted and distraught, but he focuses on God’s
providence and remains confident that the Lord has heard his prayer
for deliverance, even if it has not yet been revealed to him how this
deliverance ultimately will be enacted. Accordingly, one may well ar-
gue that even as this sacred author remains in a state of questioning
regarding the nature of the afterlife, his text has value for readers of
every age precisely because it asks life’s most challenging questions.

125. Ps 6:1, 8–9.

126. Ps 6:3, 5.
 262 the Afte rlife

Moreover, as Aquinas has shown, the psalmist has composed texts

that are open to profound truths about the nature of sin and death,
truths not inconsistent with belief in the resurrection, which Christ
would one day reveal as the ultimate answer to his prayer.
The next text pertinent to St. Thomas’s discussion of passages
dealing with the afterlife in the Psalms is Psalm 18. Right at the be-
ginning, the psalm itself states that it was composed with the inten-
tion of describing deliverance not from eternal death but from a hu-
man enemy. The heading of the psalm itself thus indicates its literal
sense: “A Psalm of David the servant of the Lord, who addressed
the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord deliv-
ered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of
Saul.”127 This historical dimension or vox Israelitica of the psalm is
the first thing Aquinas addresses in his commentary on it. He states
that “this psalm is found word for word in 2 Kings 22. And it is his-
tory, because in 1 Kings 19 one reads how Saul sought to kill him;
and that, again after Saul had died (2 Kings 2), Abner and his son
were against him.”128 Despite the fact that this psalm clearly has the
history of David’s life as its primary referent, Aquinas has no prob-
lem also hearing the vox Christi in it: “And since Christ is signified
by David, all these things can be referred to Christ, either according
to the head, or according to the body, namely the Church, for it has
been liberated from Saul, that is, from death.”129 In the remainder of
his commentary on this psalm, St. Thomas focuses on this spiritual
127. This event is embedded within the story of David in 2 Sm 22:2–51. It is inter-
esting to note that the two texts coincide verbatim in their discussion of deliverance
from Sheol (Ps 18:5; 2 Sm 22:6). Although the MT vowel pointing of Ps 18 describes
David’s deliverance from the hand of Saul, the consonants forming the word Saul in the
Hebrew title could just as well be vocalized so as to state that David was delivered not
from Saul but from Sheol. This is stated simply to raise the possibility that those who
read this text may have heard either or both of these meanings in it. Deliverance from
human enemies was deliverance from Sheol. In this regard, it might also be helpful to
note that the psalm embedded in 2 Sm 22 serves alongside the canticle of 1 Sm 2 as a
bookend to the narrative of 1–2 Samuel, and that these passages contain similar themes
and imagery, e.g., the horn, deliverance from Sheol, God’s anointed, etc.
128. Thomas Aquinas, In psalmos Davidis expositio, super Psalmo 17. Note that
the numbering of St. Thomas’s commentary differs from the standard numbering of
Psalms in the RSV.
129. Ibid.
 the Afte rlife 263

meaning of death and takes advantage of the psalm’s linguistic simi-

larity to other psalms (i.e., the references to “ Sheol” and “death”)
in order to illumine for the reader the various “deaths” described
therein. The verses of Psalm 18 particularly pertinent to his exposi-
tion on death read as follows:
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.
The cords of death encompassed me,
the torrents of perdition assailed me;
the cords of Sheol entangled me,
the snares of death confronted me . . .
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
and from those who hated me.130
Aquinas’s commentary on this passage is noteworthy first of all for
its acknowledgement that death is not merely a physical phenom-
enon but is instigated by the activity of wicked forces, both human
and angelic. Not neglecting the Method B dimension of exegesis,
St. Thomas does recognize that the “strong enemy” spoken of by
David is first of all Saul, who had sought David’s life, yet he does not
stop at the literal level of interpretation. Examining the language of
Psalm 18 and its connection with other psalms dealing with the var-
ious meanings of death, he also looks at the “enemy” of Psalm 18:17
according to its spiritual sense. He writes, “The powerful ones, in
a mystical sense, are carnal sins. . . . The hateful ones are demons.”
Thus not only does David stand in danger of being killed by his hu-
man enemies, but demons constitute an even greater threat to his
life, or the life of any man, as they induce him first to die spiritu-
ally and ultimately to die physically and suffer eternal death in hell.
Once again, this insight which comes through spiritual exegesis of
the psalm may or may not have been intended by the psalm’s human
author, but the church has indeed long read it as being intended by
its divine author. For spiritual exegesis shows that the psalm teaches
timeless truth on the nature of sin, death, and hell, even if the lit-
eral sense falls short of explicitly affirming all the articles of the faith
bound up the mystery of sin and death.
130. Ps 18:3–5, 17.
 264 the Afte rlife

In this same section of commentary on Psalm 18, St. Thomas’s

exegesis brings out the inner ordering of the three deaths of sin,
physical death, and hell and makes it clear that each of them inevi-
tably involves the others, as well. He states:
Note that these three are thus ordered to one another: iniquity, death, and
Sheol (iniquitas, mors, et Infernus). For from iniquity a man is led to death,
and through death he is led down to Sheol: just as the first is the road to the
second, so the second is the road to the third.131
For Aquinas, an iniquitous or sinful life (the first death, the literal
sense) is already a participation in eternal damnation (the third and
final death, the spiritual sense). Physical death is a mere cataract in
the torrent that leads a man from the death of sin to eternal death in
the pit of hell. Accordingly, the three deaths are not opposed to each
other but rather mutually imply one another. It is for this reason that
St. Thomas can have such confidence in his spiritual exegesis of the
passage: of course the psalmist was praying about deliverance from sin
and deliverance from hell, for he prayed for deliverance from physical
death, which is a reality not at all separable from sin and hell.132 Even
though the obvious literal sense of the psalm describes David’s deliv-
erance from death at the hands of Saul, this does not prevent the same
text from shedding light on the wider meaning of mankind’s deliver-
ance from death, including deliverance from the deaths of sin and of
ell. As in other cases, here it is precisely this spiritual sense that gives
the psalm such an important place within the lives of believers today.
One might even argue that this psalm finds its telos precisely in that
prayer by which God’s people has learned to listen to the divine voice
revealing the truth of spiritual deliverance through it.

131. Thomas Aquinas, In psalmos Davidis expositio, super Psalmo 17.

132. Indeed, in his work Eschatology Pope Benedict shows that ancient Israel un-
derstood well the interconnectedness of these three “deaths.” He writes, “From this re-
alization [that death is not just to be accepted as an event of the natural order], and
above all in her life of prayer, Israel developed a phenomenology of sickness and death
wherein these things were interpreted as spiritual phenomena. In this way Israel dis-
covered their deepest spiritual ground and content, wrestled with Yahweh as to their
import, and so brought human suffering before God and with God to a new pitch of
intensity.” (81.) Benedict goes on to observe that “sickness, death, and Sheol remain
phenomenologically identical.” (86.)
 the Afte rlife 265

St. Thomas’s commentary on deliverance in Psalm 30 likewise

includes references to deliverance from death in both a physical and
spiritual sense. His thoughts on the following verse are of particular
significance: “O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Sheol, re-
stored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.” Aquinas
writes concerning this: “[The psalmist] indicates how he was freed.
First, from interior evils. Second, from exterior ones: O Lord, thou
hast brought up my soul.” Multiple forms of deliverance are observed
here by St. Thomas. He begins by discussing interior evil: “Interior
evil is infirmity, either bodily or spiritual.” According to St. Thomas,
the literal meaning of this text must again refer to David. David was
infirm in both body and spirit, while Christ did not have spiritual but
only bodily infirmity on account of his passibility. Thus, David need-
ed to be delivered from interior evil of the spirit, but Christ did not.
Next, St. Thomas treats of exterior evils as they are depicted in
this psalm: “Next, [the psalmist] says that he has been freed from
exterior evils: O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul. And first, from
imminent ones. Second, from those from which he has been pre-
served: restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.”
At this point, Aquinas makes an interesting move, a move typical of
Method A exegesis. Now, he sees that the “literal” sense of deliver-
ance from evil applies not to David but to Christ:
This cannot be literally understood of David, because he was not dug up
from Sheol when he composed this Psalm. It can be understood of him
metaphorically, as if he was freed from a mortal danger. But it is literally
understood of Christ, whose soul was drawn out of Sheol by God.133
St. Thomas’s observation is fascinating, as it runs utterly counter to
the standard approach of most Method B thinkers when it comes to
the perspective or voice of the psalmist. St. Thomas realized that the
human author’s reference to Sheol (the literal sense, in the way Aqui-
nas uses the term) was in this case an intentional metaphor.134 The

133. Thomas Aquinas, In psalmos Davidis expositio, super Psalmo 29.

134. A similar phenomenon occurs in Ezekiel:37, in which the human author de-
scribes the restoration of the people of Israel under the metaphor of dry bones regain-
ing their skin and returning to life. The prophet may not have had any intention of
describing the individual resurrection in which Christians believe today, and yet the
 266 the Afte rlife

psalmist did not literally intend to say that he had been dug up from
his grave, nor did he pretend to have a final answer to the problem
of the grave. Rather than reading this as an intentional metaphor,
however, St. Thomas emphasizes the providential fact that some-
one has “literally” been brought up from the pit: Christ.135 When
a Christian prays this psalm, he therefore enters into something
greater than the psalmist’s trials, sufferings, and joys. He recalls that
these very words likely could have been found in Jesus’s own mouth
in his days on earth, and he acknowledges that Jesus’s deliverance
from the pit of death was not the least important way in which he
recapitulated the life of the psalmist and the entire mystery of Israel.

literal sense of his text opened the way toward this spiritual signification that came to
be understood later. In both this case and in the case of Psalm 30, the literal sense of
the text (what the human author originally intended) is actually attained by reading
the text metaphorically rather than in the way most today are accustomed to call “liter-
ally.” In this way, it seems necessary to distinguish two uses of the word “literal.” One is
what one ordinarily associates with the word literal, i.e., not metaphorical; the other is
spoken of by St. Thomas, i.e., that which is intended by a human author and which may
indeed be metaphorical. When discussing the use of metaphors and parables in ST, I,
q.1, a.10 ad 3, Aquinas shows that the literal sense does not lie in the figure painted by
an author (e.g., God having an arm, the dry bones in Ezekiel, deliverance from Sheol in
Psalm 30), but in that which is figured (e.g., God’s power, national restoration, deliver-
ance from the moment of physical death). Meanwhile, the spiritual sense (what the
human author may not have intended although it was intended by God) may at times
be opened up by reading a text “literally,” that is to say not metaphorically as the human
author originally intended it to be read. In this way, it may be that the human author of
Psalm 30 intended to speak of deliverance from physical death under the metaphor of
Sheol, and yet his very words were also intended by God to speak “literally” of Christ’s
resurrection.
135. Note that here once again St. Thomas refers to the death of sin in relation to
physical death and eternal death. Christ was brought up from the pit of eternal death
precisely because he was first “brought up” from the pit of sin. Christ merited to be
raised from the dead because he was faithful to the Father and never sinned against
him. Aquinas comments, “In the pit, that is, in sin; for [Christ] was immune from sin.”
It is interesting to note that Kraus also sees a connection between deliverance from
physical death and deliverance from elements of this world that diminish a man’s life:
“In our way of thinking, we would conclude that the one speaking in Ps 30:3 has not
really died. But he did really die! For the reality of death struck deep into his life, in the
concrete diminution of life that he experienced. Thus ‘deliverance from death’ is rescue
from the power of anything that interferes with one’s life in an unwholesome and de-
structive way.” Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, 166. Kraus does not mention sin by name,
but if there ever was something that fit the bill of a destroyer of life, sin would be it.
 the Afte rlife 267

For the Christian, Christ’s living of this psalm brought it to the telos
he had for it when he inspired it as the pre-incarnate Word.
Finally, the believer who engages a psalm like this in prayer can
see that it not only applies to the psalmist or to Christ but also to
his own life. As with the psalms discussed previously, here also ev-
ery man finds himself on a journey where he must ask of the Lord
the questions the psalmist asks: “What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise thee? Will it tell of thy
faithfulness?”136 And with the grace of God, at the end of a believer’s
life, he may hope to join the psalmist in an exclamation of thanksgiv-
ing for the answer to his lifelong prayer for deliverance: “Thou hast
turned for me my mourning into dancing; thou hast loosed my sack-
cloth and girded me with gladness, that my soul may praise thee and
not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to thee for ever.137
St. Thomas died before having the opportunity to comment on
Psalm 88. However, we will address it as our last text precisely be-
cause it is among the bleakest and most challenging of all writings
in the canon of scripture, and therefore demands at least a moment
of consideration. Like Ecclesiastes, Job, and the previous psalms,
Psalm 88 offers the example of a faithful man who struggles with
the problem of death without being privy to knowledge of God’s an-
swer to the problem. It appears as the prayer of a sick man nearing
the end of his life and wondering what will become of him after his
death. The psalmist’s soul is “full of troubles” as his life draws near
to Sheol. He moans:
I am reckoned among those who go down to the Pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
like one forsaken among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom thou dost remember no more,
for they are cut off from [God’s] hand.
He has sunken into the nether regions of the pit of destruction, and
the waves of chaos pass over him. He is the object of God’s wrath

136. Ps 30:9.
137. Ps 30:11–12.
 268 the Afte rlife

and his friends’ scorn. For him it appears that there is no hope for
life after death. Again he asks questions which expect a negative
reply:
Dost thou work wonders for the dead?
Do the shades rise up to praise thee?
Is thy steadfast love declared in the grave,
or thy faithfulness in Abaddon?
As in the case of other authors discussed above, as far as the psalm-
ist can tell man will not live to see another day after he passes from
this earth, and yet once again this grim prognosis does not stop him
from pouring out his soul to God and trusting in his deliverance. As
the psalm begins, the psalmist cries to God by day and by night, and
after his series of questions he immediately turns back to the Lord:
“But I, O Lord, cry to thee; in the morning my prayer comes before
thee.”138 Despite this prayer, at the end of this psalm the Lord still
has not given the psalmist a definitive answer to his pleading, and
he feels nothing but a sense of shunning.
In line with the trajectory of enquiry throughout this chapter,
at this point one might well ask: how can such a text as Psalm 88
be inerrant when its author seems to blatantly contradict Christian
doctrine by claiming without exception that he who dies is cut off
from God’s hand and utterly forgotten by him? In response, it first
it ought to be remembered that Psalm 88 would have had a peda-
gogical purpose within its original context in Israel. Once again, the
psalmist’s purpose may have been more practical than speculative
in nature. Psalm 88 does not have the tone of a writing meant to
teach definitely on the nature of the afterlife. Rather, it appears as a
spontaneous prayer, an attempt of the author to confront the uncer-
tainties of death face to face, honestly and openly, in prayerful union
with his Lord. It may well be that the author of Psalm 88 did not
come up with an answer to the problem of death, but for a Method
C exegete this in no way threatens the integrity of scripture. The fact
that Israelites like the psalmist did not accept an easy answer to the
problem of death but rather posed the most difficult of questions

138. Ps 88:4–5, 1–2, 10–11, 13.

 the Afte rlife 269

to God about it is a testimony to their faith in his providence. The

community in which this psalm originated was certainly concerned
with finding an answer to the problem of death, but they were pa-
tient enough to pray about it, struggle over it, and plead with God to
give it. The pleading of Psalm 88 is just one way it may have served
ancient Israel in leading the nation toward the fullness of revelation
in Christ. This is by no means a complete and exhaustive explana-
tion, but it gives an idea of how one may approach the problem of
accounting for the original intention of Psalm 88.
When it comes to the place of the Psalms with respect to the sec-
ond aspect of the divine pedagogy (its role in the church today), the
Christian instinct is to pray Psalm 88 Christologically. As observed
earlier, any believer can relate to the trials endured by Ecclesiastes,
Job, and the psalmist in their search for an answer to the problem of
death. Indeed, these works all show how a faithful person may pray to
God and grapple with the workings of divine providence. Psalm 88,
however, strikes a special chord in the Christian consciousness pre-
cisely because it so easily lends itself to being heard as the vox Christi,
the voice of Christ. As its recitation in Friday Compline of the church’s
Liturgy of the Hours suggests, Psalm 88 is not the prayer of just any
faithful Israelite. Like other texts in the Psalter, this psalm is read as
the prayer of the suffering Christ, who went to the tomb shunned by
his companions and afflicted without any sign of vindication from
God. By praying this psalm in union with the church in her liturgy,
the faithful thus enter into the mystery of Christ’s suffering and death
and make his prayer their own. Psalm 88 therefore may not give an
answer to the problem of death, yet its place in the divine pedagogy
remains indispensable. For it exhorts the faithful man to cry to God
in the midst of life’s most harrowing moments, confident that despite
all sensible evidence to the contrary his cry for final deliverance will
be heard, just as Christ’s was heard.
As we conclude our treatment of the afterlife as presented in the
Psalms, we may greatly benefit from a consideration of Pope Bene-
dict’s own grappling with the prophetic nature of these sacred texts.
In his second volume of Jesus of Nazareth, he takes up the question
of what Christians are to make of how the Lukan author of Acts uses
 270 the Afte rlife

Psalm 16. Here, we read that St. Peter applied the text of Psalm 16 to
Christ, proclaiming boldly:
For David says concerning [Christ]. . . . “For thou wilt not abandon my soul
to Hades, nor let thy Holy One see corruption. Thou hast made known to
me the ways of life; thou wilt make me full of gladness with thy presence.”
Brethren, I may say to you confidently of the patriarch David that he both
died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore
a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he
would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke
of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor
did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are
witnesses.139
Method B exegetes would question the New Testament’s interpreta-
tion here on at least two points. First, is it correct to assume that
David composed this psalm? This challenge is important since
historical-critical scholars often date psalms to centuries after the
turn of the first millennium B.c. when David lived. Second, and
more important, did the psalmist himself actually foresee the resur-
rection of Christ, as Acts describes Peter claiming, or is this a mis-
leading spiritual interpretation that bypasses the original intended
meaning of Psalm 16? Pope Benedict treats briefly of this question:
In the Hebrew version [“You do not give me up to Sheol, or let your godly
one see the Pit . . .”] the psalmist speaks in the certainty that God will pro-
tect him, even in the threatening situation in which he evidently finds him-
self, that God will shield him from death and that he may dwell securely: he
will not see the grave. The version Peter quotes [“For you will not abandon
my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption . . .”] is different:
here the psalmist is confident that he will not remain in the underworld,
that he will not see corruption.140

139. Acts 2:25, 27, 30–32.

140. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem
to the Resurrection, 255. While the pope speaks of “The version Peter quotes,” it is worth
observing that most scholars presume that this speech (and others like it) was composed
by the Lukan author of acts and placed in the mouth of an apostle as a way to effectively
summarize his message. In his book, Benedict acknowledges this but chooses not to
pursue it: “We need not go into the question here of whether this address really goes
back to Peter, and, if not, who else may have redacted it. . . . Whatever the answer may
be, we are dealing here with a primitive form of Resurrection proclamation.” (256.) He
hints that the same applies to speeches described as issuing from Jesus’s mouth. Speak-
 the Afte rlife 271

Although the pope does not directly raise the issue of the New Testa-
ment possibly erring in its exegesis of the Old Testament, he recog-
nizes the difficulty posed by this exegetical approach and therefore
spends some time explaining the differences between the Hebrew
and Greek versions of Psalm 16. As Benedict observes, it turns out
that the version of the Old Testament used by the early Church in
general was the LXX. In that version, the verbs οὐκ ἐγκαταλείψεις
(“You will not abandon”) and οὐδὲ δώσεις (“Nor will you allow”) of
Psalm 16:10 occur in the future tense and describe the restoration
from physical death after his natural death occurs: “Here the psalm-
ist is confident that he will not remain in the underworld, that he
will not see corruption.” The original Hebrew of Psalm 16, on the
other hand, has rescue from physical death in its sights, reflecting
the psalmist’s hope that God would shield him from dying in the
first place.
Which version is correct, then? For Benedict, the answer seems
to be that both have their merits and that both are necessary for
Method C exegesis. For, on the one hand, it would be disingenuous
to ignore the reality that Psalm 16 referred to a historical event ac-
cording to its original, literal sense. On the other hand, in light of
Christ’s resurrection Christians know that the psalm has a deeper,
spiritual meaning which is arguably more significant and which
cannot be ignored. As to the question of whether Acts is accurate in

ing of “all the problems that arise” from a redactional history of Jesus’s eschatological
discourse, he writes, “[T]he very fact that Jesus’ words are intended here as continua-
tions of tradition rather than literal descriptions of things to come meant that the redac-
tors of the material could take these continuations a stage further, in the light of their
particular situations and their audience’s capacity to understand, while taking care to re-
main true to the essential content of Jesus’ message.” Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From
the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 27.
Shortly thereafter he adds, “The extent to which particular details of the eschatological
discourse are attributable to Jesus himself we need not consider here. That he foretold
the demise of the Temple—its theological demise, that is, from the standpoint of salva-
tion history, is beyond doubt.” (34–35.) Although he does not delve into the particular
details of what parts of Jesus’s discourse issued verbatim from Jesus’s mouth, the fact that
the pontiff raises the question is what is significant. It reveals that his methodology is
marked by a willingness to countenance the best insights of modern criticism even if it
means Christians have to rethink certain assumptions about the nature of scripture.
 272 the Afte rlife

relating that David composed this psalm or that the psalmist him-
self actually foresaw the resurrection of Christ, we may make a cou-
ple suggestions for a Method C approach to this passage based on
the principles articulated in earlier chapters. The issue at stake here
is whether the author of Acts intended to teach for its own sake that
David foretold the resurrection of Christ in this psalm. If the Meth-
od C exegete accepts the principles of Synave and Benoit outlined in
chapter 4 and takes to heart how Pope Benedict approaches Jesus’s
own use of imperfect eschatological imagery, he need not contend
that the author of Acts was asserting David’s authorship of the psalm
or his explicit awareness of Christ’s resurrection. An inspired author
may employ images or speak of certain things within the broader
context of his work without categorically affirming their conformity
to reality or teaching them for their own sake.
Assuming this is the case, we then must ask by way of conclu-
sion: What, then, was the principal affirmation of Peter’s speech in
Acts 2, if not to claim that David foretold the resurrection of Christ?
The answer to questions such as these has been a major task of this
book, and it is precisely the task that Method C exegetes must take
up as they seek to apply Benedict’s exegetical principles to scripture’s
most challenging texts. In this case, one helpful avenue of approach-
ing the issue is to ponder how the author of Acts himself might ex-
plain his words today in light of what Peter’s successors have taught
about the nature of scripture. Perhaps he would concur with the
present Roman Pontiff in his claim that certain Christological in-
terpretations of the Old Testament could only be made after Christ
actually came and rose from the dead: “Admittedly, this new reading
of Scripture could begin only after the Resurrection. . . . Now people
had to search Scripture for both Cross and Resurrection, so as to
understand them in a new way and thereby come to believe in Je-
sus as the Son of God.”141 Following this approach, the fundamen-
tal message of Acts within its broader context would not be altered
even if it turned out that David lacked explicit knowledge of Christ’s
resurrection or that he was operating based on the conventions of

141. Ibid., 245.

 the Afte rlife 273

his day. For, given the fullness of truth that has come to us in light
of Christ’s resurrection, Christians know that Psalm 16 itself speaks
of Christ whether David himself knew this or not.142 For today’s
Christian, however, it does not come easily to admit the possibility
that David may not have known his words pointed toward Christ as
Luke indicates, that David himself may not have written the psalm
in question as Luke assumes, or that even Peter may not have spo-
ken the precise words recorded in Luke. This recognition is one of
the keys to understanding Pope Benedict’s exegetical principles and
the way he instantiates them throughout his corpus. The Holy Fa-
ther stands as a shining example of a believer who knows that the
evangelization of modern man requires us to seriously engage the
challenges of contemporary scholarship with the conviction that
this need not be detrimental to belief but rather a necessary condi-
tion for maintaining the integrity of our Christian faith.

142. The same principles applied to the case of the Lukan author’s exegesis in Acts
2 may also be applied to the interesting words of Jesus in Lk 20:37–42, where he cites
Ex 3:6 as a proof of the resurrection (“But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed
. . .”). The Method C exegete must be able to answer the challenge of whether Moses
himself intended to “show” the doctrine of bodily resurrection, and, if not, how Jesus’
exegesis may be justified.
 C on c lu s ion

M e t hod C E x e g e si s
i n t h e C h u r ch

Just as our endeavor to tackle the “dark” passages of scripture

began under the guidance of the church’s teaching on the nature of
scripture, so we will conclude by underlining the vital role that the
church ought to play in the life of a Method C exegete. Having ap-
plied Benedict’s proposal to the themes of the nature of God, the
nature of good and evil, and the afterlife, I hope one finishes this
work better able to see the reasonableness of Catholic magisterial
teaching on the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture, and to have
confidence that apparently erroneous passages in scripture can be
accounted for through a faithful application of Pope Benedict’s prin-
ciples for Method C exegesis. On the other hand, what one ought
not to take from this study is some golden rule for determining the
sense of every sentence of scripture. Not even the most lucid theol-
ogy of scripture, much less the present one, provides the believer
with the answer to every possible difficulty he may encounter in the
revealed word of God. Although I am convinced readers will greatly
benefit from approaching scripture in light of Benedict’s Method C
proposal, ultimately even a faithful application of the pope’s prin-
ciples can never guarantee the accuracy of a particular individual’s
reading of scripture.
As Pope Benedict lucidly explains, the exegete’s most helpful ally
in this regard is the community of the church herself:

274
 M ethod C in the C hurc h 275

A communal reading of Scripture is extremely important, because the liv-

ing subject in the sacred Scriptures is the People of God, it is the Church. . . .
Scripture does not belong to the past, because its subject, the People of God
inspired by God himself, is always the same, and therefore the word is al-
ways alive in the living subject. As such, it is important to read and experi-
ence sacred Scripture in communion with the Church, that is, with all the
great witnesses to this word, beginning with the earliest Fathers up to the
saints of our own day, up to the present-day magisterium.1
Since the church is the living subject of the scriptures, the exegete
who wishes to penetrate their mysteries may do so only to the ex-
tent that he is in communion with the people of God. For Benedict,
the church is “the primary setting for scriptural interpretation.”2 The
church’s saints, moreover, are the true interpreters of scripture since
“the meaning of a given passage of the Bible becomes most intel-
ligible in those human beings who have been totally transfixed by it
and have lived it out.”3 The church gives to exegetes today the saints
as models for how they are to go about their work. The saints have
truly encountered God in scripture because they have done theol-
ogy on their knees, and today’s exegete must do likewise.
As a community of interpretation, the church provides us with
other indispensable aids which mediate fuller understanding of
scripture, above all a context to acquire and practice the virtues.4
By participating in the work of exegesis as a member of the Chris-
tian community, the interpreter of scripture becomes more attuned
to the wisdom of the church’s discernment in matters of faith and

1. VD §86.
2. VD §29.
3. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, translated by Adrian J. Walker (New York:
Doubleday, 2007), 78; cf. VD §48; John Paul II, On the Relationship between Faith and
Reason [Fides et ratio], 1998 §101.
4. For an insightful discussion of this point, see Matthew Levering, Participatory
Biblical Exegesis: a Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2008), 87. This point has been emphasized by theologians, but here
I will briefly mention the words of John Paul II who wrote on this in the context of
discussing philosophy’s need to recover its relationship with theology. The pope stated,
“In theology, philosophy will find not the thinking of a single person which, however
rich and profound, still entails the limited perspective of an individual, but the wealth
of a communal reflection. For by its very nature, theology is sustained in the search for
truth by its ecclesial context.”
 276 Method C in the C hu rch

thereby accustoms himself to prudence in his own life as an exe-

gete. The virtue of prudence enables the reader to make the sound-
est judgment possible regarding difficult biblical texts, all the while
realizing that the reliability of this very judgment is conditioned by
his own presuppositions and shortcomings.
The exegete who breathes the life of the church also engages in
the practice of charity. As St. Augustine indicated, this virtue builds
up the love of God and neighbor within the bond of ecclesial com-
munion, and thus constitutes the very end of Sacred Scripture.5 As a
result of his engagement with Sacred Scripture, Christ reorders man’s
loves and transforms his capacity to perceive the truth of scripture it-
self.6 Saints throughout history have been unanimous in their teach-
ing that Christians will be unable to plumb the depths of scripture
unless they are united to Christ through the theological virtue of
charity, precisely because the most profound meaning of scripture
is Christ himself. As Pope Benedict puts it, there can be no theology
without conversion: “In biblical language, in order to know Christ,
it is necessary to follow him.”7 Even the most erudite exegete pos-
sessing the most up-to-date Method B techniques cannot on his own
power elicit an encounter with Jesus Christ’s teaching in scripture,
for this will be given to him only in prayerful union with Christ.8
5. As stated by St. Augustine in On Christian Teaching, translated by James Shaw,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2, edited by Philip Schaff (Buffalo, N.Y.:
Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), “We should clearly understand that the ful-
fillment and the end of the Law, and of all Holy Scripture, is the love of an object which
is to be enjoyed, and the love of an object which can enjoy that other in fellowship with
ourselves.” (39.) Cf. Levering’s comments on St. Augustine and his description of char-
ity’s role in exegesis in Participatory Biblical Exegesis, 88.
6. It is helpful to recall the words of St. Athanasius on this topic. Although many
theologians have stated this in similar terms, some of the closing words of St. Athana-
sius’s On the Incarnation of the Word are particularly concise and to the point: “But for
the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and
a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature
can, the truth concerning God the Word.” Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word,
96. See also Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 12.
7. Benedict XVI, On the Way to Jesus Christ, translated by Michael Miller (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 67; cf. Benedict’s The Nature and Mission of Theology:
Approaches to Understanding Its Role in the Light of Present Controversy, translated by
Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 57.
8. Note the concluding words of St. Augustine’s discussion of scriptural interpreta-
 M ethod C in the C hurc h 277

Furthermore, the individual who has cultivated the virtue of charity

within the bosom of the church will have been formed in such a way
so as to recognize that he often must depend on an authority higher
than himself in order to identify the meaning of scripture. It might
sound ironic, but this exegete recognizes that he sometimes has to
accept the meaning of God’s word through faith and humble obedi-
ence to the church. Indeed, according to Pope Benedict, “The essen-
tial characteristic of a great theologian is the humility to remain with
the Church, to accept his own and others’ weaknesses.”9
By placing his trust in the church, the exegete does not there-
by abandon reason or neglect to employ all the modern exegetical
tools at his disposal. As Benedict has shown, it is crucial for the
Method C exegete first to determine the literal meaning of scripture
through the operation of Method B exegesis, since Method A’s spiri-
tual meaning of scripture depends upon the literal and builds upon
it. However, Benedict also makes it clear that the Method C exegete
must carry out his initial operation in accordance with the premises
of Method A outlined back in the introduction to this work: that
scripture is God’s word, that it is inerrant, and that Christ has en-
trusted this revelation to his church to guard and interpret it.
These truths of the faith are the first principles of authentic
Christian biblical exegesis, based on divine revelation itself and
handed on in the church for two thousand years. Not to accept them
is to sever oneself from one half—and certainly the most important
half—of the Method C project. Because they are first principles, we

tion in Book III of his On Christian Teaching: “Students of these venerable documents
ought to be counseled not only to make themselves acquainted with the forms of ex-
pression ordinarily used in Scripture, to observe them carefully, and to remember them
accurately, but also, what is especially and before all things necessary, to pray that they
may understand them.” Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 100.
9. Benedict XVI, General Audience (May 30, 2007). He later added that “intellec-
tual humility is the primary rule for one who searches to penetrate the supernatural
realities beginning from the Sacred Book.” Benedict XVI, General Audience (June 4,
2008). See the discussion of this dimension of Benedict’s thought in Scott Hahn, Cov-
enant and Communion: The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (Grand Rapids, Mch.:
Baker Brazos Press, 2009), 190–92. Note that the Catholic Church very rarely defines the
meaning of a given scripture passage through the exercise of the extraordinary Magiste-
rium, but when this occurs it demands the Catholic exegete’s assent. Pius XII, DAS §47.
 278 Method C in the C hurch

might add in the spirit of St. Thomas that they are not necessarily to
be proven to unbelievers but rather defended against objections.10 In
other words, for the Christian exegete the true task is not to prove
deductively that scripture is inerrant or to prove the validity of the
church’s interpretation of scripture. There is a real sense in which
these truths are recognizable only to those who already believe them,
those who have committed themselves to Christ and have entered
into his path through the church.11 Given this situation, the Method
C exegete’s work begins by making clear his premise that scripture
is from God and that the church guarantees its truth with infallible
certitude. It is from here that he may seek a way to explain how the
Bible is inerrant by answering objections against it. This has been the
particular task of the theology of scripture in the preceding chapters.
I have attempted to show how a Method C approach accounts for
problems in the Bible’s portrait of God’s nature, the nature of good
and evil, and the afterlife, and I have proposed that such an endeavor
sheds light on the nature of Scripture itself. We have addressed very
specific issues, but my hope for the future is that others will broaden
this endeavor to make up for its shortcomings.
I wish to conclude by reiterating the ultimate goal of a Method
10. Aquinas states, “Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dis-
pute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the
truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts
in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith, we can argue from anoth-
er. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means
of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections—if he
has any—against faith. Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of
a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith
cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.” ST, I, q.1, a.8.
11. To use the words of Pope Benedict, “The Christian faith is not a system. . . . It is
a path, and it is characteristic of a path that it only becomes recognizable if you enter
on it and start following it.” Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions,
translated by Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 145. For an illuminat-
ing discussion of the “practical realist” view that one can have warranted belief in the
scriptures in the absence of absolute proofs for its veracity, see Kenton Sparks, Sacred
Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011), 72–88. An insightful consideration of how to approach this
matter can also be found in Michael Bergmann, “Rational Religious Belief without Ar-
guments,” in Louis Pojman and Michael C. Rea, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology
(Boston, Mass.: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2012), 534–49.
 M et hod C in the C hurc h 279

C theology of scripture. At the end of the day, and at the end of our
lives, such a project has achieved its telos only if the improved read-
ing of scripture it provides actually brings us closer to God—if it en-
ables us to see the divine pedagogy leading the chosen people along
the arduous path to hope in the resurrection not merely as someone
else’s instruction but as our own, as well. Throughout his pontifi-
cate, Pope Benedict has made it a priority to teach Christians how to
achieve this goal in their own lives so as to bring about “a rediscov-
ery of God’s word in the life of the Church” and a “wellspring of con-
stant renewal.”12 As the pontiff teaches, this is to take place through
the practice of lectio divina or “divine reading.” Although there are
many ways to practice lectio, the essence of these endeavors is the
same in that it puts believers into communion with God by means of
their loving contemplation of scripture. Benedict drew attention to
this form of meditation multiple times in his recent apostolic exhor-
tation Verbum Domini, where he even took time to teach believers
how to follow five steps of lectio in a practical manner.13 Thankfully,
Christians enjoy two thousand years of tradition to guide us in our
journey of biblically-centered prayer. However, we must avail our-
selves of the church’s treasures if we earnestly desire to see renewal in
ourselves, our church, and our society. If we do this, our Holy Father
is convinced it will bring about a new springtime:
I would like in particular to recall and recommend the ancient tradition
of lectio divina: the diligent reading of Sacred Scripture accompanied by
prayer brings about that intimate dialogue in which the person reading
hears God who is speaking, and in praying, responds to him with trusting
openness of heart. If it is effectively promoted, this practice will bring to the
Church—I am convinced of it—a new spiritual springtime.14
If we allow ourselves to enter into the mystery of the divine peda-
gogy through a prayerful encounter with scripture, by the grace of
God we just may learn to love God more fervently, to overcome evil
in our own lives, and to hope confidently in the Lord’s promised gift
of eternal life.
12. VD §1. 13. Cf. VD §§86-87.
14. Benedict XVI, Address to the Participants in the International Congress Or-
ganized to Commemorate the Fortieth Anniversary of the Dogmatic Constitution on
Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum (September 16, 2005).
 B i b l io g r aph y

Be nedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger

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 Biblio gr aphy 283

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C ontemp orary Works Pertinent

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Biblico, 1935.
———. De inspiratione et inerrantia Sacrae Scripturae. Rome: Pontificio
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———. “Révélation et Inspiration selon la Bible, chez Saint Thomas et dans
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———. Aspects of Biblical Inspiration. Translated by J. Murphy-O’Connor,
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———. The Meaning of Tradition. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.
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———. The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about
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———. Inspiration and Interpretation: A Theological Introduction to Sacred

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———. De sacrae scripturae inspiratione. Rome: Apud Aedes Universitatis
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———. L’Église du Verbe incarné. Vol. 3, Essai de théologie de l’histoire du
salut. Paris: Desclée De Brouwer, 1969.
Lonergan, Bernard. “St. Thomas’ Theory of Operation.” Theological Studies 3
(1942): 375–401.
———. “St. Thomas’ Thought on Gratia Operans.” Theological Studies 3
(1942): 533–78.
Pinckaers, Servais. “Recherche de la signification véritable du terme ‘spécu-
latif.’ ” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 81 (1959): 673–95.
Reyero, Maximino Arias. Thomas von Aquin als Exeget: Die Prinzipien
seiner Schriftdeutung und seine Lehre von den Schriftsinnen. Einsiedeln:
Johannes Verlag, 1971.
Seckler, Max. Das heil in der geschichte. Munich: Kösel, 1964.
Synave, Paul, and Pierre Benoit. Prophecy and Inspiration: a Commentary on
the Summa Theologica II–II, Questions 171–178. New York: Desclee Co.,
1961.
Torrell, Jean-Pierre. “La traité de la prophétie de S. Thomas d’Aquin et la
théologie de la révélation.” In La doctrine de la révelation divine de saint
 288 Biblio gr aphy

Thomas d’Aquin: actes du Symposium sur la pensée de saint Thomas

d’Aquin, tenu a Rolduc, les 4 et 5 novembre 1989, edited by Leo Elders,
171–95. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990.
———. “Le savoir théologique chez saint Thomas.” Revue thomiste 96
(1996): 355–96.
———. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol. 1, The Person and His Work. Translated
by Robert Royal. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2005.
———. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol. 2, Spiritual Master. Translated by Robert
Royal. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2005.
———. “Saint Thomas et l’histoire: état de la question et pistes de recher-
ches.” Revue Thomiste 105 (2005): 355–409.
———. “St. Thomas Aquinas: Theologian and Mystic.” Translated by Ther-
ese C. Scarpelli. Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 1–16.
———. “Saint Thomas et les non-chrétiens.” Revue thomiste 106 (2006):
17–49.

Patristic and Medieval Exegesis

(Other than Aquinas)
Athanasius. On the Incarnation of the Word. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 2000.
Augustine. The City of God [De civitate Dei]. Translated by Marcus Dods.
In vol. 2 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip
Schaff. Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888.
———. The Confessions [Confessiones]. Translated by J. G. Pilkington. In vol.
1 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff.
Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888.
———. Exposition on the Psalms [Enarrationes in psalmos]. Translated by
J. E. Tweed. In vol. 8 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited
by Philip Schaff. Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888.
———. On the Catechising of the Uninstructed [De catechizandis rudibus].
Translated by S. D. F. Salmond. In vol. 3 of Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff. Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian
Literature Publishing Co., 1888.
———. On Christian Teaching [De doctrina christiana]. Translated by James
Shaw. In vol. 2 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by
Philip Schaff. Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888.
———. The Teacher. The Free Choice of the Will. Grace and Free Will. Wash-
ington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968.
Bonaventure. Expositio in Ecclesiasten. In Opera omnia; Sixti V., pontificis
maximi jussu Diligentissime. Vol. 9, edited by Adolpho Carolo Peltier.
Paris: Ludovicus Vivès, 1864.
 Biblio gr aphy 289

Clement of Alexandria. The Instructor [Paedagogus]. In vol. 2 of The Ante-

Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.
Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.
Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical Lectures. Translated by Edwin Hamilton Gif-
ford. In vol. 7 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by
Philip Schaff. Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894.
Jerome. Letter 108. Translated by W. H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W. G. Mar-
tley. In vol. 6 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by
Philip Schaff. Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.
John Chrysostom. Commentary on the Psalms. Vol. 1, translated by Robert
Charles Hill. Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998.
Lubac, Henri de. Medieval Exegesis. Vol. 1, The Four Senses of Scripture.
Translated by Marc Sebanc. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998.
Oden, Thomas C. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Old Testa-
ment. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001.
Origen. Against Celsus [Contra Celsum]. Translated by Frederick Crombie.
In vol. 4 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the
Fathers down to A.d. 325, edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James
Donaldson, 239–384. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans: 1989.
———. On First Principles [De principiis]. Translated by Frederick Crombie.
In vol. 4 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the
Fathers down to A.d. 325, edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James
Donaldson. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans: 1989.
———. Homilies on Joshua. Translated by Barbara J. Bruce and Cynthia
White. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2002.

The Afterlife
Boadt, Lawrence. “Ezekiel, Book of.” In vol. 2 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary,
edited by David Noel Freedman, 711–22. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Johnston, Phillip S. Shades of Sheol: Death and afterlife in the Old Testament.
Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2002.
Collins, John J. “Daniel, Book of.” In vol. 2 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary,
edited by David Noel Freedman, 29–37. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
———. “The Afterlife in Apocalyptic Literature.” In Judaism in Late Anti­
quity, edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, 119–39. Boston:
Brill Academic Publishers, 2000.
Davies, Jon. Death, Burial, and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity. London:
Routledge, 1999.
Day, Jon. “The Development of Belief in Life after Death in Ancient Israel.”
In After the Exile, edited by J. Barton and D. J. Reimer, 231–56. Macon,
Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996.
Friedman, Richard, and Shawna Bolansky Overton. “Death and Afterlife:
 290 Biblio gr aphy

The Biblical Silence.” In Judaism in Late Antiquity, edited by Alan J.

Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, 35–59. Boston: Brill Academic Publish-
ers, 2000.
Goldingay, John. “Death and Afterlife in the Psalms.” In Judaism in Late An-
tiquity, edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, 61–85. Boston:
Brill Academic Publishers, 2000.
Lang, Bernhard. “Afterlife: Ancient Israel’s Changing Vision of the World
Beyond.” Bible Review 4 (1988): 12–24.
Lewis, Theodore J. “Dead, Abode of the.” In vol. 2 of The Anchor Bible Dic-
tionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 101–5. New York: Doubleday,
1992.
Martin-Achard, Robert. From Death to Life: A Study of the Development of
the Doctrine of the Resurrection in the Old Testament. Translated by John
Penney Smith. London: Oliver and Boyd, 1960.
———. “Resurrection (OT).” In vol. 5 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited
by David Noel Freedman, 680–84. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Millar, William R. “Isaiah 24–27 (Little Apocalypse).” In vol. 3 of The Anchor
Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 488–90. New York:
Doubleday, 1992.
Murphy, Roland. “Death and Afterlife in the Wisdom Literature.” In Juda-
ism in Late Antiquity, edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner,
102–15. Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2000.
Nichols, Terence. Death and Afterlife: A Theological Introduction. Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2010.
Nickelsburg, George. “Judgment, Life-after-death, and Resurrection in the
Apocrypha and the Non-Apocalyptic Pseudepigrapha.” In Judaism in
Late Antiquity, edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, 141–62.
Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2000.
Pitard, Wayne. “Afterlife and Immortality.” In The Oxford Companion to
the Bible, edited by B. M. Metzger and M. D. Coogan, 15–16. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993.
Rea, Michael. “Divine Hiddenness, Divine Silence.” In Louis Pojman and Mi-
chael Rea, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 266–75. Boston, Mass.:
Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2012.
Richards, Kent Harold. “Death (OT).” In vol. 2 of The Anchor Bible Diction-
ary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 108–10. New York: Doubleday,
1992.
Schmidt, Brian. “Memory as Immortality: Countering the Dreaded ‘Death
after Death’ in Ancient Israelite Society.” In Judaism in Late Antiquity,
edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, 88–100. Boston: Brill
Academic Publishers, 2000.
Spong, John Shelby. Resurrection: Myth or Reality? New York: Harper, 1994.
 Biblio gr aphy 291

Spronk, Klaas. Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neu-

kirchener Verlag, 1986.
Wächter, L. “‫ׁש ְ֗אֹול‬.” In vol. 14 of Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament,
edited by Johannes G. Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 240–48. Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974.

The Nature of God

Byrne, Brendan. “Sons of God.” In vol. 6 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary,
edited by David Noel Freedman, 156–59. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Fossum, Jarl. “Son of God.” In vol. 6 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited
by David Noel Freedman, 128–37. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Fretheim, Terrence. “Word of God,” In vol. 6 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary,
edited by David Noel Freedman, 961–68. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Horn, F. W. “Holy Spirit.” Translated by Dietlinde Elliott. In vol. 3 of The
Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 260–80. New
York: Doubleday, 1992.
Johnson, Elizabeth. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological
Discourse. New York: Crossroad, 1992.
Levering, Matthew. The Betrayal of Charity: The Sins that Sabotage Divine
Love. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2011.
Mansini, Guy. “The Voices of the Trinity in Scripture.” In Wisdom and Holi-
ness, Science and Scholarship: Essays in Honor of Matthew L. Lamb, ed-
ited by Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, 173–204. Ave Maria,
Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2007.
Matthews, Victor Harold, and Don C. Benjamin. Old Testament Parallels:
Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East. New York: Paulist Press,
1991.
Newsome, Carol. “Angels.” In vol. 1 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by
David Noel Freedman, 248–53. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Penchansky, David. What Rough Beast? Images of God in the Hebrew Bible.
Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999.
———. Twilight of the Gods: Polytheism in the Hebrew Bible. Louisville, Ky.:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.
Sanders, James A. Canon and Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.
Scullion, John. “God (OT).” In vol. 2 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited
by David Noel Freedman, 1041–48. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Smith, Mark S. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Back-
ground and the Ugaritic Texts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
 292 Biblio gr aphy

The Nature of Go od and Evil

Bergmann, Michael, Michael J. Murray, and Michael C. Rea. Divine Evil?
The Moral Character of the God of Abraham. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
Collins, John. “The Zeal of Phineas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Vio-
lence.” Journal of Biblical Literature 122 (2003): 3–21.
Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament
God. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2011.
Dever, William G. “Archaeology and the Israelite ‘Conquest.’ ” In vol. 3 of The
Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 546–58. New
York: Doubleday, 1992.
Earl, Douglas. “The Christian Significance of Deuteronomy 7.” Journal of
Theological Interpretation 3 (2009): 41–62.
———. The Joshua Delusion? Rethinking Genocide in the Bible. Eugene, Ore.:
Cascade, 2010.
Ehrman, Bart. God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Impor-
tant Question: Why We Suffer. New York: HarperOne, 2008.
Foerster, Werner. “διάβολος.” In vol. 2 of Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, 71–81. Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1971.
Forsyth, Neil. The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1987.
Hahn, Scott. The Kingdom of God as Liturgical Empire: A Theological Com-
mentary on 1–2 Chronicles. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2012.
Hamilton, Victor. “Satan.” In vol. 5 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by
David Noel Freedman, 985–89. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great. New York: Twelve, 2007.
Holliday, William. The Psalms through Three Thousand Years: Prayerbook of a
Cloud of Witnesses. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.
Lohfink, Norbert. “‫ח‘ ֶרם‬.
֛ ֵ ” In vol. 5 of Theological Dictionary of the Old Testa-
ment, edited by Johannes G. Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 180–99.
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974.
Pagels, Elaine H. The Origin of Satan. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
Sparks, Kenton. Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark
Side of Scripture. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011.
Trible, Phyllis. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narra-
tives. London: SCM Press, 2002.
Watson, Duane. “Devil.” In vol. 2 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by
David Noel Freedman, 183–84. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
 Biblio gr aphy 293

Other Works
Bergmann, Michael. “Rational Religious Belief without Arguments.” In Louis
Pojman and Michael Rea, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 534–49.
Boston, Mass.: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2012.
Brown, Raymond Edward. The Critical Meaning of the Bible. New York:
Paulist Press, 1981.
———. An Introduction to the New Testament. New Haven, Conn: Yale
University Press, 2007
Brown, Raymond Edward, and Raymond F. Collins. “Canonicity.” In The
New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond Edward Brown,
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, 1034–54. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990.
Brown, Raymond Edward, D. W. Johnson, and Kevin G. O’Connell. “Texts
and Versions.” In The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Edited by Ray-
mond Edward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy,
1083–112. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990.
Brown, Raymond Edward, Pheme Perkins, and Anthony J. Saldarini. “Apoc-
rypha; Dead Sea Scrolls; Other Jewish Literature.” In The New Jerome
Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A.
Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, 1055–82. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1990.
Brown, Raymond Edward, and Sandra Schneiders. “Hermeneutics.” In The
New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond Edward Brown,
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, 1146–65. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990.
Butterfield, Herbert, and Adam Watson. The Origins of History. New York:
Basic Books, 1981.
Clifford, Richard J. “Second Isaiah.” In vol. 3 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary,
edited by David Noel Freedman, 490–501. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Crenshaw, James. “Ecclesiastes, book of.” In vol. 2 of The Anchor Bible Dic-
tionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, 271–80. New York: Doubleday,
1992.
———. “Job, Book of.” In vol. 3 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by
David Noel Freedman, 858–68. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Davies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on
the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1988.
Dhorme, Edouard. A Commentary on the Book of Job. Translated by Harold
Knight. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984.
Ehrman, Bart. Jesus, Interrupted. New York: Harper, 2009.
Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Interpretation of Scripture: In Defense of the
Historical-Critical Method. New York: Paulist Press, 2008.
 294 Biblio gr aphy

Frankfort, Henri, Henriette Antonia Groenewegen Frankfort, John Albert

Wilson, Thorkild Jacobsen, and William Andrew Irwin. The Intellectual
Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the An-
cient Near East. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946.
Gnilka, Joachim. Jesus of Nazareth: Message and History. Peabody, Mass.:
Hendrickson Publishers, 1997.
Gunton, Colin. Christ and Creation. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992.
Jepsen, Alfred. “.‫ ”אֱמֶ ֽת‬In vol. 1 of Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament,
edited by Johannes G. Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 309–23. Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974.
Kittel, Rudolf, Karl Elliger, Wilhelm Rudolph, Hans Peter Rüger, G. E. Weil,
and Adrian Schenker. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, 1997.
Kraus, Hans-Joachim. Psalms 1–59: A Commentary. Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1988.
———. Theology of the Psalms. Translated by Keith R. Crim. Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1986.
Kselman, John S., and Ronald D. Witherup. “Modern New Testament Criti-
cism.” In The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond Ed-
ward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, 1130–45.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990.
Marshall, I. Howard. Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology.
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2004.
McKenzie, John L. “Aspects of Old Testament Thought.” In The New Jerome
Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A.
Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, 1284–315. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990.
Meier, John. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. New York:
Doubleday, 1991.
Metzger, Bruce. The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content.
Abingdon: Nashville, 1991.
Nestle, Eberhard, Erwin Nestle, Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, and Barclay
Moon Newman. Novum Testamentum Graece. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibel-
gesellschaft, 2001.
Peters, Melvin. “Septuagint.” In vol. 5 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited
by David Noel Freedman, 1093–104. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Quell, G. “ἀλήθεια.” In vol. 1 of Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.
Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, 232–37. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 1971.
Reiser, Marius. Bibelkritik und Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift: Beiträge zur
Geschichte der biblischen Exegese und Hermeneutik. Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2007.
 Biblio gr aphy 295

Seow, C. L. “Hosea, Book of.” In vol. 3 of The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited
by David Noel Freedman, 87–100. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Spinoza, Baruch. Theological-Political Treatise. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2007.
Suelzer, Alexa, and John S. Kselman. “Modern Old Testament Criticism.”
In The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond Edward
Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, 1113–29.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990.
Vanhoozer, Kevin. The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach
to Christian Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.
Wright, Addison G. “Ecclesiastes.” In The New Jerome Biblical Commentary,
edited by Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland
Edmund Murphy, 489–95. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990.
Würthwein, Ernst. The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the
Biblia Hebraica. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1995. ^^Ramage. frst
index^^
 Sc r i p t u r e I n de x

Genesis 19.16–19: 27n11 24.2: 27, 160, 163

1–2: 23, 136–38 20.2–5: 19, 164 24.14–15: 27, 160
1.2: 30n14 20.18: 27n11
1.26: 22, 175 32.14: 29, 160, 175 Judges
3: 37 32.27: 179 2.11,13: 163
3.22: 22, 159, 175 33.11: 172 6.11–24: 26n8
6–9: 23 9.23: 35, 187n37
6.1–4: 22, 159, 167n15, Leviticus 11.23: 25
175 19.31: 43n29
6.5–8: 29, 32 20.6, 27: 43n29 1 Samuel
7.23: 31, 181, 187 15.1, 188
11.7: 22, 175 Numbers 15.8–9: 33
16.7–13: 172 11.10–12: 30n14 15.23: 34
18.1–33: 26n8 22.22: 38 15.34: 29, 175
22.1–2: 191 16.14: 35, 182, 187
22.12: 29, 160 Deuteronomy 18.10: 35, 182, 187
31.11–13: 24, 159 2.33–34: 33, 181, 188 19.9: 35, 182, 187
41.1–7: 131 3.6: 33, 181, 188 28: 44, 207
4.7: 19 28.5–8, 11–15: 44
Exodus 5.6–10: 164
3.2–6: 24, 273 6.4–9: 164 2 Samuel
4.21: 36, 189 7.1–2: 33, 188 5.21: 38n17
4.22–23: 168n16 14.1: 168n16 22.2–51: 262n127
4.24: 31, 190n39 18.10–14: 43 24.1: 38, 186
5.2–3: 19, 175 20.16–17: 33, 181, 188 24.16: 29
7.13: 189 32.6: 168n16
8.32: 189 32.8: 167n15 1 Kings
9.12: 36, 189 32.18: 30n14 18: 164
10.1, 20, 27: 36, 189 32.43: 167n15 22.19–22: 35, 187n37
11.8–18: 191
11.10: 189 Joshua 2 Kings
12: 185 5.13–15: 26 2: 262
12.29: 31, 180, 181 6.21: 33, 181, 188 19.35: 31
14.8: 189 11.20: 36, 187 22: 262

297
 298 s c rip ture index

1 Chronicles 42.7–17: 253–54 97.9: 20

14.12: 38n17 42.17: 255 104.26: 27n11
21.1: 186 107.18: 42n24
21.2: 38 Psalms 109: 195
21.15: 29 6: 257–62 115.4–5: 165n11
6.4–5: 45, 258 131.2: 30n14
2 Chronicles 9.13: 42n24 135.5: 30
18.21: 35, 187n37 11: 41n21 136.2: 20
16: 269–73 137: 182–83, 194–95
Tobit 16.10: 41n19 137.5: 194
3.8: 39 17.8: 30n14 137.8–9: 34, 182
18: 262–64 143.3: 41n20
2 Maccabees 18.14: 27n11
7: 228–29 22.10: 30n14 Proverbs
12.43–45: 230 27.10: 30n14 1: 30n13
29.1: 21, 161n6, 166 1.12: 41n22
Job 30: 265–67 4.13: 30n13
1–2: 37, 254 30.4: 41n22 7.27: 30n13
1.1–2.13: 253 30.9: 45 8: 30n13
1.6–7: 22, 167, 36.7: 30n14 8.22–24, 27, 30: 171
176 39.13: 47n 9.1–6: 30n13
1.7: 37 46.3: 30n14 9.16: 30n13
2.1: 167 49.5: 30n14 15.11: 41n23
3.1–42.6: 253 52.1: 30n14
3.3: 206n15 53: 195 Ecclesiastes
7.9: 46, 197 57.1: 30n14 1.2: 239n82
10.19: 41n21 61.4: 30n14 3.19–20: 48, 198,
10.20–22: 241 66.13: 30n14 239–40
10.21: 41n19 73: 260n123 9.5, 10: 48, 198, 241
12.22: 118 74.4: 27n11 12.9–14: 248–49
14.11: 46, 197 82.1: 21, 159
14.14: 254 83: 195 Wisdom
16.22: 46 86.8: 20, 159, 166 1.13–14: 190
17.13–14: 41n19 88: 267–69 2.12–20: 233n75
19.23–27: 108, 88.3–6, 10–12: 45–46, 2.23, 24: 190
249n100, 252 197 2.24: 37
26.6: 41n23 88.4–5: 41n22 3: 197n1, 231–34
26.12: 27n11 88.5: 41n21 3.1–10: 232
32–37: 253 88.7, 12: 41n18 4.7: 233n75
32.2–3: 254 88.11: 41n23 7–8: 30
32.8: 118 88.12: 41n20 7.25–27: 171
35.11: 240n83 89.6–7: 21
37.5: 27n11 89.10: 27n11 Sirach
38.4–7: 22, 167 89.48: 45 17.27–30: 47, 197
38.16–17: 42n24 91.1, 4: 30n14 37.25: 207
38.29: 30n14 95.3: 20 38.16, 20–23: 47
42.7: 206n15 96.4: 20
 s c rip ture inde x 299

Isaiah 12: 221, 226, 224–28 John

5.14: 41 12.2–3: 220, 222 1: 171
6.8: 22 1.13: 30n14
8.19–20: 43n29 Hosea 2.3–7: 41n19
24–27: 40, 219–22 6: 212–16 3.5: 30n14
26: 226 11.1: 168n16 5.29: 41
27.1: 27n11 13: 212–16 8.44: 37
31.5: 30n14 13.8: 30n14 12.31: 37
38.10–11: 42n24 14.1: 103
38.18: 41, 197 Amos 21.25: 66
40–55: 222–23 1.2: 28n
41.18: 223n52 7.2–3 29: 175 Acts
42.1–2: 223n53 2: 272–73
42.14: 30n14 Nahum 2.22–36: 200
43.10: 223n54 1.3–6: 27n11 2.25, 27, 30–32: 270
44: 165, 175 17.28: 30n14
45.18–20: 165, 175 Zechariah
46.3: 30n14 3.1–2: 25 Romans
49.15: 30n14 12.8: 25 5.12: 190
51.9–10: 26n11 6.3–4: 60n15
52.13–14: 223n55 Malachi 9–11: 37
53.7–9, 11: 223n56 2.10: 168 9.18: 36, 191
62.3–5: 169–70 11.7–8: 36
63.7–64.11: 168 Matthew 11.8–18: 191
66.13: 30n14 4: 76
4.3: 37 1 Corinthians
Jeremiah 5.22: 43 3.1–3: 30n14
2–3: 169n17 5.39: 191 7.25: 132
20.14: 206 9.15: 170 10.1–12: 60n15
23.18, 22: 21 10.34–36: 180 13.8, 10: 116n3
12.24: 39 15: 215n34
Ezekiel 13.19, 39: 37
2.1: 118 23.37: 30n14 2 Corinthians
16: 169n17 24.36: 28 4.4: 37
16.15, 20: 163–64 25.1: 170 6.15: 39
20.23–26: 32, 181, 187 11.3: 37
31.16: 41n22 Luke
37: 216–19, 221, 226, 2.19, 51: 63, 109n28 Galatians
265 2.52: 28 3.24: 102
37.12–14, 21–22, 26: 7.13: 30n14
217n39 9.31: 60n14 Ephesians
12.5: 43 2.2: 37
Daniel 13.34: 30n14 5.21–33: 170
3.25: 166–67 16: 42–43, 140
4.1–2: 131 20.37–42: 273 1 Thessalonians
5.5: 131 3.5: 37
11.31–45: 225n59
 300 s c rip ture index

2 Timothy James Revelation

3.16: 55, 65, 150 3.6: 43 12.9: 37, 39
5.11: 250 15.3: 61n16
Hebrews 19.7: 170
11: 97, 103 1 Peter 21.1: 227
11.1: 93, 97 1.10–11: 56n5
11.6: 97, 100, 103 2.2: 30n14
3.9: 191
 G e n e r a l I n de x

Accuser, 37–38, 185. See also Satan canon, 62–68

affirmation, 132, 152–53, 176–77 Christological analogy, 56–58
afterlife, 8, 40–48, 75–76, 144–45, 196–273 Chrysostom, 54, 199–200
Allison, Dave, 42 Collins, John J., 187n36, 226n62
angel, 20, 24–26, 29–30, 31–32, 161–63, Congar, Yves, 63–64, 70n39, 71, 121–23
166–67 contradictions, 114–54
angel of the Lord, 172–73 Cyril of Jerusalem, 201
Aquinas, Thomas, 10–13, 92–113, 114–25,
127–31, 150–51, 173, 191, 202, 221–22, David, 25, 38, 44, 59–60, 106, 115, 124, 132,
250–51, 256–67, 278 149, 186, 206, 262–65, 270–73
assertion. See affirmation Davies, W. D., 42
Athanasius, 67, 276n6 Dawkins, Richard, 158–59
Atrahasis, 23 death, 37, 40–48, 75, 106, 145, 175, 184,
Augustine of Hippo, 14, 59n11, 60n15, 67, 197–235, 239–71
72n46, 74, 160–63, 180, 184–85, 276 Dei Verbum, 4, 9, 56, 64, 68, 82, 88n79,
authorship, 94–95, 115, 119–25, 126–34; 110, 134, 279
instrumental, 126–29, 235–37, 144 development, 92–114, 214
Devil, 76. See also Satan
Baal, 163–64, 169, 174–75, 212–14 divine council 18, 20–28, 37, 49–50,
Babylon, 23, 175, 182–83, 194, 212, 216, 228 161–63, 165–68, 175–76
ban, 33–34, 188 divine pedagogy, 4–8, 15–16, 100–113,
Barthélemy, Dominique, 237n80, 239n82 133–34, 141–42, 157–58, 163–68, 173–74,
Benedict XV, 58n9 202, 204, 210–11, 237–39, 244–46,
Benedict XVI, 3–16, 120n11, 123–24, 250–52, 269
113–34, 139–41, 156, 172–73, 178, 180,
192–94, 197, 207–9, 214–15, 243–33, Ecclesiastes, 17, 47–48, 50–51, 144–46, 197,
252–53, 274–77 237–49
Benoit, Pierre, 56n5, 117–38, 147–56, Ehrman, Bart, 198
194n43, 235–38, 248–49n97, 272 Elihu, 240n83, 253–54
Bernard of Clairvaux, 54, 65 Enns, Peter, 24n7, 28, 138n44
Bonaventure, 240–42, 244 Enuma Elish, 23
Book of Jubilees, 190n39 environmental glitch, 145–46, 175, 192
Burtchaell, James, 57n7, 117n6, 141–44 Erasmus lecture, 11, 14, 53, 78, 90
Byrne, Brendan, 18n3, 21–22, 166 error, 134–39, 143–45, 153–54, 192

301
 302 ge ne r al inde x

evil, 8, 31–39, 179–195 Lady Wisdom, 171

Exodus, 60–61 Lamb, Matthew, 57n8, 77n54, 98n9,
Ezekiel, 163, 187–88, 216–19, 224, 228, 116n5, 121–23, 133
265n134 Leo XIII, 58n9
Levering, Matthew, 70, 275n4
Farkasfalvy, Denis, 56n6, 88n79, 134–35, Lewis, C. S., 135n38, 176–77, 204–5,
153n64 210n24
flood, 23–24, 31–32 literal sense, 59–61, 72–76, 86–88, 157–58,
178, 200–201, 258–59, 262–64, 266
Gehenna, 41–43. See also Hades Lonergan, Bernard, 122
genocide, 33–36 Lucifer. See Satan
Gilgamesh, 23
Guéranger, Prosper, 71 Martin-Achard, Robert, 174–75, 203n10,
206–13
Hades, 42–43, 47, 140, 215–16, 242 McKenzie, John, 202–4
Healy, Mary, 56n6 Method A, 9–10, 53–61, 68–76, 80–91,
henotheism, 20–28, 166–67 92, 94, 108, 125, 137, 143, 157, 160–63,
historical-critical exegesis. See Method B 182–85, 199–201, 240, 244, 253, 259,
Hitchens, Christopher, 179–81, 199 265, 277
Holmes, Jeremy, 218n41, 241–43 Method B, 9–10, 49–50, 53–55, 72–80,
Hosea, 212–16 80–91, 92, 104, 108, 125, 137, 143, 157,
179–82, 198–200, 240, 245, 253, 259,
immutability, 28–31, 160–63 263, 265, 277
inerrancy, 2–3, 9, 49–50, 58–59, 134–44, Method C, 9–10, 13, 51–52, 53–54, 80–91,
238–39, 255, 268, 274, 278 112–13, 125, 137–42, 143, 154, 157–77,
inspiration, 2–3, 114, 117–26, 134–39, 141– 185–95, 202–4, 244–45, 253, 259,
44, 152–53, 237, 247–49, 272, 274–75 271–73, 274, 277–79
intention, 13, 161, 176–78, 235–36, 260, Metzger, Bruce, 71
263 monotheism, 18–28, 164–68

Isaiah, 37, 40–41, 44, 89, 124, 165, 168–70, nature of God, 8, 18–29, 163–78
212, 214, 218, 219–28 necromancy, 43–44
Nephilim, 22, 159, 175
Jerome, 200–201 Newman, John Henry, 51–52, 68, 95n6,
Jesus of Nazareth, 3, 11, 26, 30, 49, 51, 59, 109–11, 121, 181n30
62, 73–75, 77, 79–84, 87, 140, 147, 214, Newsome, Carole, 172–73
244, 269, 275 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 179
Job, 46, 89, 115, 124, 150, 155, 167, 176, 238,
243, 249–55, 267, 269 Origen, 54, 63n20, 72n46, 182–83
Johnston, Phillip S., 212n26, 219n35
Journet, Charles, 97–100, 107n25, 109–11 Pitard, Wayne, 43
judgment, 129–46, 146–54; practical, Pius XII, 83n66, 85n70, 127n23, 277n9
146–54, 235, 261; speculative, 146–54, polytheism, 1, 18–28, 158–66, 176
261 Pontifical Biblical Commission, 89n80,
123
Kreeft, Peter, 17, 246–8, 252 prophecy, 94, 103–4, 115–34, 151–54
Proverbs, 243
 ge ne r al inde x 303

Psalm 6, 257–62 Sparks, Kenton, 2n1, 24, 38n17, 122n14,

Psalm 16, 257, 270–73 138n44, 140n47, 148n55, 187n36,
Psalm 18, 257, 262–64 188n38, 278n11
Psalm 30, 45, 59–61, 75, 257, 265–67 Spinoza, Benedict, 77n54
Psalm 88, 45–46, 197, 201, 257, 267–69 spiritual sense, 59–61, 72–76, 157–58,
Psalm 137, 1–2, 34, 182–83, 194–95 177–78, 86–88, 201, 235–37, 257–64
Spong, John Selby, 198
Qoheleth. See Ecclesiastes substance, 92, 93–113, 139–45, 173, 191,
202, 235
Rahner, Karl, 66n30, 121–23 Suffering Servant, 222–27
resurrection, 40–48, 75–76, 209–33, Synave, Paul, 56n5, 117–38, 147–56,
254–56, 257, 270–73 194n43, 235–38, 248–49n97, 272
retributive justice, 243–44
revelation, 65–66; act of, 115–54, 235–39; Vall, Gregory, 54–55, 78n58, 85n70, 158n2,
history of, 103–15 253n108
Verbum Domini, 3, 14, 65–66, 88n78, 279
Samuel, 29, 44 violence, 81, 180
Satan, 22, 25–26, 37–39, 185–86, 190
Schmidt, Brian, 205–6 Work, Telford, 55n3
Schneiders, Sandra M., 237n80 Wright, Addison, 245
Scullion, John, 164–65 Wright, N. T., 196–97, 203n10, 204, 207,
shades, 41–46, 219–20, 245 213–20, 222, 224n57, 225–29, 231–34,
Sheol, 18, 41–50, 59–60, 75, 174, 196–200, 255n114
202, 205–8, 215n34, 231, 240–43, 249,
257–70 Yahweh, 1, 18–22, 25–28, 30–31, 33,
Sirach, 47–48 35–38, 50, 126, 158–59, 166, 170–75, 181,
Solomon, 124, 128, 150, 239–41, 247 186–88, 192, 203–9, 213, 215–17, 225–28,
Soloviev, Vladimir, 76–77 255, 261
sons of God, 21–22
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