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Handout #264 |
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The biblical question at the end of the nineteenth century |
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Alfred Loisy was barred from the Catholic
Institute in Paris for a certain number of statements on the Bible which he
thought to be the assured results of historical science. They no longer
cause Catholics any difficulty today, even in Roman circles.
The Pentateuch, in the state in which it has come down to us, cannot be the work of Moses. The first chapters of Genesis do not contain an exact and real history of the origins of humanity. Not all the book of the Old Testament and the various parts of each book have the same historical character. The history of religious doctrine contained in the Bible displays a real development of this doctrine in all the elements which comprise it: the idea of God, of human destiny and of moral law. There is hardly any need to add that, for independent exegesis, as far as natural science is concerned the sacred books are not superior to the views generally held in antiquity. The conflict of facts in the Gospels on a large number of secondary matters is indisputable, and instead of denying them one must look for satisfactory explanations: the author of the Fourth Gospel reported the discourses of the Lord quite freely, so that it is appropriated to study the way in which he edited them. Closing lecture of a course given by Loisy in 1892/79f In 1900 Cardinal Richard was utterly flabbergasted to learn that the world had not been created in 4000 BC as is written in his catechism. Cardinal Merry de Val would prefer to believe that Jonah had swallowed the whale than to have it said that the whale did not swallow Jonah. Some day people will be surprised - I would like to hope, even in the Catholic Church - that a professor at a Catholic Church - that a professor at a Catholic university has been judged dangerous for having said in the year of grace 1892 that the accounts in the first chapters of Genesis are not to be taken as strict history, and that the so-called agreement of the Bible with the natural sciences is a poor joke. Alfred Loisy, Choses passes and Memories. |
