Monday, March 30, 2020

The Anti-Intellectual Approach to Exegesis by Some Traditionalist Catholics Who Privilege the Vulgate


Timothy Flanders, a traditional Catholic who converted from Eastern Orthodoxy (and prior to that, Protestantism) wrote the following which highlights how the Vulgate tends to take a priority over textual criticism, exegesis, and other important sciences:

The Importance of the Vulgate: Doctrine

As we discuss why every word of Holy Writ matters, this becomes particularly acute when we look at the Vulgate of St. Jerome. This will have a significant impact on our discussion of Catholic English Bible translations. There have been a number of Catholic doctrines which have been based on texts from the Latin Vulgate which do not appear in modern Catholic Bibles based on the Masoretic Hebrew or Protestant Biblical scholarship . . . Galatians 5:22 also enumerates the fruits of the Holy Spirit based on a Latin variant, counting twelve: charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. This is the list enumerated and explained by St. Thomas in I-II q70. But this appears to be an early commentary in the Latin Text, as this list of twelve does not exist in the Greek manuscripts, which only have nine. The modern Catholic English translations all reduce the number to nine. Thus it might be concluded that the whole Latin Tradition was wrong about the number of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. But this is only possible if we assert that inspiration is restricted to the Text of the Holy Bible, and not the oral Tradition that governs it. Here we see how the oral Tradition and the original text overlap. Both must be accepted with piety. (Timothy S. Flanders, Introduction to the Holy Bible for Traditional Catholics: A Beginner's Guide to Reading the Scriptures for Spiritual Profit [Our Lady of Victory Press, 2019], 259, 261, emphasis added)

Not only does this show the priority of the Vulgate among many Catholics, it also means that this (purportedly apostolic) oral tradition seeped into the text of the Latin text of the New Testament (not the Greek!), expanding the number of virtues from 9 to 12.

We see this (ahistorical and anti-intellectual) approach with respect to Rom 5:12 and Original Sin:

But perhaps the most fundamental doctrine which is obscured today is Original Sin. St. Augustine drew evidence for this doctrine from a variant of Romans v. 12:

Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.

Propterea sicut per unum hominem peccatum in hunc mundum intravit, et per paccatum mors, et ita in omnes homines mors pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt.

The Council of Trent in its Fifth Session then issued an anathema of the dogma of Original Sin based explicitly on this passage:

If anyone denies that infants, newly born from their mothers’ wombs, are to be baptized, even though they be born of baptized parents, or says that they are indeed baptized for the remission of sins, but that they derive nothing of original sin from Adam which must be expiated by the laver of regeneration for the attainment of eternal life, whence it follows that in them the form of baptism for the remission of sins is to be understood not as true but as false, let him be anathema, for what the Apostle has said, by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned, is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church has everywhere and always understood it.

But the Protestants could read this anathema and laugh. They knew the Greek could be translated this way:

Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned (Catholic RSV 2006).

The Greek manuscripts all have eph’ ho which means “upon whom” or “in asmuch as.” It was translated into Latin as two variants: eo quod (because of) or in quo (in whom). St. Augustine obviously had the latter variant in the manuscripts he used, which was then confirmed by Trent. (Ibid., 262-64)

Flanders then offers this conclusion. Do note that if a Latter-day Saint or some other non-Catholic were to say something like this, the Catholic would claim that such is “anti-intellectual” and even “cultic”:

But an over-emphasis on the “original text” can be used by heretics in this case to undermine Augustine and Trent. Did Augustine err because he was not consulting the Greek? Of course not. This verse, like every verse of the Scriptures, is governed by the oral Tradition. It “is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church has everywhere and always understood it.” (Ibid., 264)