Friday, June 12, 2020

Robert Bellarmine on Psalm 85:11

Latter-day Saints sometimes (errantly) appeal to Psa 85:11 (84:12 in the LXX and Vulgate) as a prophecy of the Book of Mormon (on this, see: Psalm 85:11: A Prophecy of the Book of Mormon?). Interestingly, Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), perhaps my favourite Catholic theologian (he produced a lot of great work against the Protestant heresies that, sadly, still persist today) understood the text to be a prophecy of both the Incarnation of Jesus and of the Virgin Mary (Bellarmine had a very high Mariology, even holding to the belief, later dogmatised in 1854, that Mary was immaculately conceived). I will reproduce his comments here for those who are curious:

 

11 He now touches on the mystery of the Incarnation, making use of the past for the future tense, as is usual with the prophets. “Truth is sprung out of the earth.” Christ, who is truth, will be born of the Virgin Mary, “and justice hath looked down from heaven.” Then also justice from heaven will be made manifest, because, on the birth of Christ, true justice began to come down from heaven, and man began to be justified by faith in Christ; as also, because by the coming of Christ, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impiety and injustice,” for the extent of God’s anger and hatred of sin would never have been thoroughly known, had not God decreed that it should be expiated by the death of his only Son; and, even, we should never have known the extent of God’s anger to the sinner on the day of judgment, had we not seen the amount and extent of Christ’s sufferings in atoning for the sins of others, “For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?” says our Lord, Luke 23.

12 he still treats of the mystery of the Incarnation, showing that truth could spring out of the earth; not in the manner of the seed that we sow and cultivate, but in the manner of the natural flowers that grow spontaneously, with no other culture than the beams of the sun, and the rains of heaven. “For the Lord will give goodness,” he will send his Holy Spirit from heaven, who will overshadow a virgin, and thus our land, which was never ploughed nor sown, and was altogether an untouched virgin, will yield her fruit. Hence, he say, in the canticle of canticles, “I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valleys.”  (Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of Psalms [trans. John O’Sullivan; Dublin: James Duffy and Co., 1866; repr., Aeterna Press, 2015], 388)