Dei Verbum

The Second Vatican Council approved Dei Verbum near the close of its fourth session, and Pope Paul VI promulgated it at St. Peter's Basilica on 18 November 1965. Its Latin title is taken from the opening words, Dei verbum religiose audiens, meaning ‘hearing the word of God with reverence.’ It is one of the council's four constitutions and the shorter of its two dogmatic constitutions, consisting of a preface and six chapters divided into twenty-six numbered paragraphs.

The constitution expressly follows the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. It presents authentic Catholic doctrine on revelation and its transmission while addressing questions that had become acute in modern biblical scholarship, ecumenical controversy, preaching, catechesis, and the spiritual life. The council's treatment is therefore both doctrinal and pastoral: it confesses what God has revealed and directs the Church to hear, guard, explain, proclaim, and live that revelation.

Dogmatic constitution is the document's formal genre; it does not mean that every sentence is a new solemn definition. Vatican II deliberately issued no new dogma by an extraordinary defining act, but Paul VI taught that its doctrine bears the authority of the supreme ordinary Magisterium and must be received according to the subject and intention of each passage. Dei Verbum also repeats truths already taught definitively, including the inspiration of all the canonical books and the definitive fullness of public revelation in Jesus Christ.^[2]

A preparatory schema on the sources of revelation was debated during the council's first session in 1962. The fathers judged its form inadequate for the council's task, and Pope John XXIII entrusted the subject to a mixed commission. Several substantially revised drafts followed. The long drafting history explains the constitution's compressed language: its decisive sentences were fashioned amid close debate about revelation, Tradition, biblical inspiration, inerrancy, and the proper use of historical study.^[3]

The preface states the council's purpose. Chapter I treats revelation itself; Chapter II, its transmission through the Apostles and their successors; Chapter III, the inspiration, truth, and interpretation of Scripture; Chapters IV and V, the Old and New Testaments; and Chapter VI, Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church. This order moves from God's initiative to the Church's reception and mission rather than treating the Bible as an isolated object.

The final text must be read as a whole. Statements about Scripture belong with the chapters on revelation and apostolic transmission; statements about Tradition belong with the council's account of the one deposit of faith; and encouragement of scholarship belongs with the rules for ecclesial interpretation. Extracting a single phrase from that architecture can make the constitution appear to teach what its surrounding paragraphs exclude.^[4]

An initial Schema Constitutionis Dogmaticae de Fontibus Revelationis ("On the Sources of Revelation") was prepared by the Council's Preparatory Theological Commission before a period of world-wide consultation led to the formation of a draft for the bishops to consider. A subcommission of the Preparatory Theological Commission was appointed to prepare the draft, which was finalised after discussions during November 1961 and approved by Pope John XXIII in July 1962.^[11] Joseph Ratzinger, then one of the periti or expert advisors, but later Pope Benedict XVI, privately objected to the "negative tone" of the draft document and its lack [of] theological finesse".^[12], p. 4 The final version of the Constitution was promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 18 November 1965.^[13]

The preface links the document to its biblical foundations (quoting 1 John 1:2-3) and to the work of two earlier Councils, the Council of Trent (1545-63)^[14] and the First Vatican Council (1869-70).^[15]

Divine revelation is God's free self-communication. In his goodness and wisdom, the invisible God speaks to human beings as friends and invites them into communion with himself. Revelation communicates saving truths, but it is more than the delivery of information: through Christ in the Holy Spirit, the Father makes known the mystery of his will and gives access to participation in the divine life.

God's economy of revelation unfolds through deeds and words that possess an inner unity. The deeds of salvation history manifest and confirm the realities proclaimed by the words, while the words announce the deeds and disclose their meaning. Creation, the covenants, the patriarchs, Moses, the prophets, and Israel's history prepare for the Gospel; Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, is both mediator and fullness of revelation.

Christ completes revelation by his entire presence and work: his words and deeds, signs and wonders, death, Resurrection, sending of the Holy Spirit, and promised return. The new covenant is definitive and will never pass away. No new public revelation is to be expected before Christ's glorious manifestation, although the Church grows in understanding the apostolic deposit and may recognize private revelations that help the faithful live the Gospel in a particular time.^[1][4]

The fitting response to the God who reveals is the obedience of faith. By it a person freely entrusts his whole self to God and gives the full submission of intellect and will to divine revelation. Faith is neither a blind leap nor merely agreement with detached statements: it is a personal adherence to God that necessarily includes assent to the truths God communicates.

This act is possible through grace. The Holy Spirit precedes and assists belief, moves the heart, opens the eyes of the mind, and gives joy and ease in assenting to the truth. The same Spirit continually perfects faith by his gifts. The constitution thus holds together divine initiative, human freedom, personal communion, and determinate revealed truth.

Human reason can know God with certainty from created things, but revelation makes truths concerning God and the moral order knowable by all with ease, firm certainty, and freedom from error in the present condition of the human race. Revelation also communicates mysteries that surpass the unaided power of reason. Faith and reason therefore have one divine author and cannot truly contradict each other.^[1][4]

Christ commanded the Apostles to preach the Gospel, the source of saving truth and moral discipline, to every nation. They fulfilled this command by oral preaching, example, institutions, and observances, transmitting what they had received from Christ and learned from the Holy Spirit. Apostles and apostolic men also committed the message of salvation to writing under the inspiration of that same Spirit.

To preserve the Gospel whole and living, the Apostles left bishops as their successors and entrusted to them the teaching office. Apostolic succession is therefore not merely an unbroken list of ordinations. It serves the faithful transmission of the apostolic word in the Church's doctrine, life, worship, and pastoral government.

Sacred Tradition develops in the Church through the Holy Spirit, not by acquiring a new public revelation or reversing the apostolic faith. Understanding grows through the contemplation and study of believers, their spiritual experience, the witness of the Fathers, the liturgy, and the preaching of bishops who possess the sure charism of truth in succession from the Apostles. The Church advances toward the fullness of divine truth as the handed-on realities are more deeply perceived and faithfully expressed.^[1][4]

Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition flow from the same divine wellspring, form one sacred deposit of the word of God, and tend toward the same end. Scripture is God's word committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Tradition transmits in its integrity the word entrusted by Christ and the Spirit to the Apostles so that their successors may preserve, explain, and spread it faithfully.

The Church does not draw her certainty about everything revealed from Scripture alone. Scripture and Tradition are consequently to be accepted and venerated with the same loyalty and reverence. This excludes sola scriptura, but it does not reduce revelation to two unrelated stores of propositions. The written word lives within the apostolic Tradition that recognizes its canon, hands it on, celebrates it, and penetrates its meaning.

The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, written or handed on, belongs to the living Magisterium, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. The Magisterium is not above the word of God. It serves that word by listening devoutly, guarding it scrupulously, and explaining it faithfully with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium are distinct but inseparably joined; none stands without the others in God's design.^[1][4]

Chapter I deals with "Revelation itself",^[16] while Chapter II deals with the "handing on" of this revelation.

In Chapter II, section 7 refers to the revelation of the Gospel, encountered by the first apostles in hearing Jesus speak and "living with him". This section refers to "the apostles and apostolic men" (Latin: Apostolis virisque apostolicis),^[10]: Section 7 without defining who they were.^[17]

Further, under the heading "Handing On Divine Revelation", the Constitution states among other points:

Hence there exists a close connection and communication between sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.^[18]

The Word of God is transmitted both through the canonical texts of Sacred Scripture, and through Sacred Tradition, which includes various forms such as liturgy, prayers, and the teachings of the Apostles and their successors. The Church looks to Tradition as a protection against errors that could arise from private interpretation.^[12]

The books of the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because they were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, have God as their author, and were handed on to the Church as such. Inspiration extends to everything the sacred authors affirm; it is not confined to passages that sound explicitly religious.

God chose true human authors and employed their faculties and powers. They wrote as genuine authors, using human languages, literary forms, cultural conventions, memories, research, sources, and editorial judgment, while God acted in and through them so that they consigned to writing everything and only what he willed. Divine authorship does not suppress human authorship, and human composition does not make Scripture less truly the word of God.

Because all that the inspired authors assert is asserted by the Holy Spirit, Scripture teaches firmly, faithfully, and without error the truth God willed to be written for the sake of salvation. The phrase for the sake of salvation identifies the divine purpose of the scriptural truth; it is not permission to declare asserted teaching erroneous whenever it bears on history or the created world. Determining what an author actually asserts, however, requires attention to genre, idiom, convention, and intention rather than a modern literalism foreign to the text.^[1][5]

The Catechism states that "the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."^[35]: para. 105

Nevertheless, the Catechism clearly states that

the Christian faith is not a "religion of the book". Christianity is the religion of the "Word" of God, "not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living". If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open (our) minds to understand the Scriptures."^[35]: para. 108

The Catechism goes on to state that

In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.^[36]: para. 109

But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. "Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written."^[36]: para. 111

Since God speaks in Scripture through human beings in a human manner, an interpreter must investigate what the sacred writers intended and expressed. This demands attention to historical circumstances, linguistic usage, literary forms, and customary ways of narrating and speaking. Poetry, parable, prophecy, apocalyptic vision, law, wisdom, letters, and historical narrative communicate truth according to their respective forms.

Historical and literary study is necessary but not sufficient. Scripture must be read in the same Spirit in whom it was written. Dei Verbum names three governing criteria: the content and unity of the whole Scripture, the living Tradition of the whole Church, and the analogy of faith—the coherence of revealed truths with one another and with the whole plan of revelation.

Catholic exegesis therefore rejects both fundamentalism and a reduction of the Bible to an artifact sealed within the past. The historical-critical method can illuminate textual formation and authorial meaning, while canonical, patristic, liturgical, and theological interpretation disclose relations that belong to Scripture as the Church's inspired canon. Exegetes labor so that the Church's judgment may mature, and their conclusions remain subject to the Church's divinely commissioned ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God.^[1][6]

The teaching of the Magisterium on the interpretation of Scripture was summarized in paragraph 12, expressly devoted to biblical interpretation and the task of the interpreter.^[19] Avery Dulles observed that Dei Verbum distinguished between two levels of meaning, the literal sense intended by the biblical writers and the further understanding that may be attained due to context within the whole of Scripture.^[20], p. 69

The Old Testament records God's preparation for the salvation of the whole human race through his covenant with Israel. Its inspired books remain permanently valuable. They communicate knowledge of God and humanity, sublime teaching, wisdom for life, a treasury of prayer, and the mystery of salvation present in a hidden manner. Elements that were incomplete and temporary belong to a real divine pedagogy and do not deprive the books of truth or holiness.

The two Testaments form one divine economy. The New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old is made manifest in the New: the older books prepare for Christ and acquire their full Christian meaning in the Gospel, while they in turn illuminate and explain the New Testament. Christian fulfillment neither erases Israel's history nor licenses arbitrary allegory; it rests on realities and patterns given within the one plan of God.

The New Testament bears supreme witness to the incarnate Word, his kingdom, saving death, Resurrection, Ascension, and gift of the Spirit. The four Gospels possess a special preeminence as the principal witness to the life and teaching of Jesus. The Church firmly maintains their apostolic origin and historical character: the evangelists selected, synthesized, and explained inherited material for their churches while faithfully handing on what Jesus really did and taught for salvation.^[1][5]

In Chapter IV (paragraphs 14-16), Dei verbum affirms the saying of Augustine that "the New Testament is hidden in the Old, and that the Old Testament is manifest in the New" (paragraph 16).^[20], p. 70 ^[21]

Chapter V (paragraphs 17-20) covers the New Testament, especially the four gospels, which are "of apostolic origin" and "have a special preeminence" within sacred scripture.^[22]

The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerates the body of the Lord, receiving the bread of life from the table of God's word and the table of Christ's body, especially in the sacred liturgy. The comparison concerns the Church's reverent reception of Christ's nourishment; it does not identify the mode of Christ's presence in a book with his substantial presence in the Eucharist.

Dei Verbum calls Scripture, together with Tradition, the supreme rule of faith and requires all the Church's preaching to be nourished and governed by it. Sacred theology rests on the written word of God together with Tradition as its enduring foundation, and study of the sacred page must be the soul of theology. Homiletics, catechesis, pastoral instruction, and every ministry of the word likewise draw their health and force from Scripture.^[3]

Easy access to Scripture is to be provided for the faithful through suitable and accurate translations, particularly from the original texts. The constitution honors the Septuagint and the Vulgate, encourages cooperation on translations with separated Christians when ecclesiastical authority approves, and urges scholarship attentive to the Fathers and the liturgies of East and West. These directions join critical learning to service of the Church rather than setting the two against one another.

Clergy, religious, and all the Christian faithful are urged to read Scripture frequently and prayerfully, above all through the liturgy and sacred reading. Prayer must accompany reading so that it becomes dialogue with God. Bishops are responsible for sound formation and adequately annotated editions, while pastors and scholars help the faithful become familiar with the biblical text without separating it from faith, worship, and moral conversion.^[1][5]

Finally, the Council directs that "easy access to Sacred Scripture should be provided for all the Christian faithful".^[23] Treasured translations include the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, which the church has "accepted as her own", and the Latin Vulgate, but the objective of accessibility requires that "suitable and correct translations are made into different languages, especially from the original texts of the sacred books". Approved ecumenical cooperation on biblical translation is to be commended.^[23]

Frequent reading of the divine Scriptures is encouraged for all the Christian faithful, together with the guidance that prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, "so that God and man may talk together".^[24] Some are ordained to preach the Word, while others reveal Christ in the way they live and interact in the world.^[25]

Dei Verbum gave authoritative form to a Catholic biblical renewal already fostered by earlier teaching, especially Providentissimus Deus and Divino afflante Spiritu. Its reception contributed to wider scriptural reading among Catholics, richer biblical preaching and catechesis, increased use of original languages and ancient versions, renewed lectio divina, and closer integration of biblical studies with liturgy and theology.^[6][7]

Benedict XVI's apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini received and developed the constitution after the 2008 Synod of Bishops. It stresses that the word of God is broader than the written text while Scripture is its inspired and normative witness; that authentic interpretation belongs within the faith and living communion of the Church; and that historical-critical and theological exegesis must be reunited rather than treated as rival enterprises.^[8]

Later magisterial and Pontifical Biblical Commission documents have applied the constitution to disputed questions of method, inspiration, truth, the unity of the Testaments, and the ecclesial setting of interpretation. Such development does not replace Dei Verbum. It unfolds the constitution's own principles and guards them against opposed distortions: Scripture without Tradition, Tradition detached from Scripture, scholarship without faith, or piety that ignores what the sacred authors actually affirmed.^[8][9]

The schema, or draft document, prepared for the first council session (October–December 1962) reflected the conservative theology of the Holy Office, led by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani. Pope John intervened directly to promote instead the preparation of a new draft which was assigned to a mixed commission of conservatives and progressives, and it was this on which the final document was based.^[26][27] Wording in the first draft, which alluded to the several or "double" sources of revelation, was removed the final document, where the term "divine revelation" points to revelation having only one "source".^[12], p. 5

The doctrines of Dei verbum bear a striking similarity to the writings of St. John Henry Newman in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Dei verbum espouses Newman's concept of the "development of doctrine", writing "there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts."^[28] For his contributions to Dei verbum and many other parts of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI called it "Newman's Council".^[29] Dennis Hamm has also identified Pope Leo XIII's encyclical letter Providentissimus Deus, Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu, and a document issued shortly before the Council by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Sancta Mater Ecclesia: An instruction on the Truth of the Gospels (21 April 1964) as other doctrinal writings which had "contributed conspicuously" to the formation of the ideas expressed in the constitution.^[12], p. 2

The final draft was also significantly influenced by the work of the Dominican theologian Yves Congar, who had been appointed a peritus at the council.^[30]

Joseph Ratzinger identified three overall themes in Dei verbum:

1. the new view of the phenomenon of tradition;^[31]
2. the theological problem of the application of critical historical methods to the interpretation of Scripture;^[32] and
3. the biblical movement that had been growing from the turn of the twentieth century.^[33]

Regarding article 1 of the preface of Dei verbum, Ratzinger wrote: "The brief form of the Preface and the barely concealed illogicalities that it contains betray clearly the confusion from which it has emerged."^[34]