Friday, May 27, 2022

Sacrae Theologiae Summa Addressing Whether an Inspired Book of Scripture Could be Lost

  

56. Scholium. Whether an inspired book could be lost. This matter is obscure, and there is disagreement about it among the experts; and the Church has not defined anything concerning the question.

 

It seems that the following should be said: 1) If an inspired book was not canonical, i.e., handed over to the custody of the Church: probably it could perish, because it is probable that there existed lost inspired Letters, v.gr., another letter to the Corinthians, besides 1 and 2 Cor., as St. Paul says: I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons (1 Cor. 5:9); also another in the Church of Laodicea, concerning which St. Paul says to the Colossians: . . . have it read [this letter] also in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea (Col. 4:16).—But this is not certain, because the Greek authors deny the existence of a third letter to the Corinthians, and those words I wrote to you my letter . . . refer to the same letter, toe the preceding statement (5:2) about the incestuous man. Likewise, the letter to the Laodiceans is understood by others to be about one of our other canonical letters, which either was written from the city of Laodicea or like an encyclical it was read and the Laodiceans were to send it to the Colossians, or finally it can be understood as a letter by the Laodiceans themselves.

 

2) If an inspired book was handed over to the custody of the Church, the existence of the book and the truths contained in it were truths pertaining the deposit of revelation; and, although truths of lesser importance would be lost (for example, numbers, chronology, profane names or purely scientific things in the O.T.) because of the temporal purpose which was involved in their revelation . . . but it seems to be more difficult to be able to admit the loss of a whole book. However, Franzelin has a different opinion (De Deo Trino [1895] th.4 n.1 p.37). (Joachim Salaverri and Michaele Nicolau, Sacrae Theologiae Summa, 4 vols. [trans. Kenneth Baker; Keep the Faith, Inc., 2015], 1B-583)