Pontifical Biblical Commission

By his Apostolic Letter Vigilantiae (30 Oct. 1902), Pope Leo XIII established the Pontifical Biblical Commission to promote biblical studies in the Roman Catholic Church, “that God's words will both be given, everywhere among us, that thorough study that our times demand and be shielded not only from every breath of error but even from every rash opinion.” The commission was to study biblical questions in the light of modern trends and recent discoveries and to disseminate for the service of all whatever was useful for biblical interpretation. The first-word title of the Apostolic Letter, “vigilance,” however, sounded a note that was to mark the activity of the commission, which sought above all to safeguard the authority of the Bible against the exaggerated criticism of early-twentieth-century Modernism. Though the commission was not strictly a Roman congregation, it was organized, as were Vatican commissions of that period, with five cardinal members and thirty-nine consultors (biblical scholars from many nations).

Pope Pius X (1903–1914) furthered the work of the commission. During his reign it issued thirteen responsa (often popularly called “decrees”), and subsequently others (until 1933), with various other declarations about biblical studies in seminaries and requirements for ecclesiastical biblical degrees.

The responsa were issued in the form of brief answers (affirmative or negative) to long, intricate, often “loaded” questions. They dealt with such topics as the theory of implicit quotations in the Bible; the theory of apparently historical narratives; the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; the authorship and historicity of the Fourth Gospel; the authorship and character of the book of Isaiah; the historicity of Genesis 1–3; the authorship, date of composition, and character of the Psalms or of Matthew; of the Marcan and Lucan Gospels; the synoptic problem; the authorship, date of composition, and historicity of Acts; the authenticity, integrity, and date of composition of the Pastoral Letters; the authorship and composition of the letter to the Hebrews; the parousia in Pauline writings; the interpretation of two texts (Ps. 16.10–11 and Matt. 16.26 = Luke 9.25). These responsa caused a dark cloud of reactionary conservatism to settle over Roman Catholic biblical scholarship in the first half of the twentieth century.

The commission's responsa were never understood to have been infallibly issued. Pius X in his Motuproprio Praestantia sacrae scripturae considered them to be “useful for the proper progress and guidance of biblical scholarship along safe lines.” But he did require the same submission of Catholics to these responsa as to similar papally approved decrees of other Roman congregations.

In 1943, Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical, Divino afflante spiritu, on the promotion of biblical studies. Since that time, the Biblical Commission has played a more open-minded role in encouraging such studies. Its responsa have given way to “letters” and “instructions,” in which it has gradually assumed a more positive stance, though concern is still expressed about some errors or excessive tendencies.

To many people, however, both inside and outside the Roman Catholic Church, the responsa have seemed to be still in effect. This, however, is not true. In 1955, a semiofficial explanation of the character of the responsa was issued by the secretary and the subsecretary of the commission, distinguishing responsa that touched on faith and morals from those that dealt with literary questions, authorship, integrity, date of composition, and so on. The former were to be regarded as still valid, whereas the latter were recognized as time-conditioned, corresponding to a historical context that no longer existed. Both secretaries explained that in matters pertaining to the responsa of the second category Catholic interpreters were to pursue their research and interpretation “with full freedom.” Significantly, almost all of the above-mentioned responsa belong to the second category.

In 1964, the Biblical Commission issued an instruction “On the Historical Truth of the Gospels,” in which it dealt concretely and in a positive way with a problem that has vexed modern students of the Gospels both within and without the Roman Catholic Church. Instead of merely reiterating the historical character of the Gospels, it adopted valid aspects of form criticism and distinguished three stages of the gospel tradition: (i) what Jesus of Nazareth did and said; (ii) what his disciples preached after his death and resurrection about him, his message, and his deeds; and (iii) what the evangelists selected and synthesized from that preaching and explicated for the needs of their churches. Whereas the instruction insinuated a continuum between the first and third stages, it did not in any way (fundamentalistically) identify them. (The essential content of that instruction was briefly repeated in chapter 5 of the dogmatic constitution of Vatican Council II, Dei verbum.)

In 1971, Pope Paul VI revamped the commission, making it a counterpart of the International Theological Commission and associating it with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The members of the Biblical Commission are no longer cardinals, but twenty biblical scholars from across the world, appointed for five years, most of them of widely acclaimed competence.