Does biblical scholarship benefit the church? Such a question seems ridiculous at first glance, yet it has often given me pause. While the church has placed a premium on learning, and the work of Catholic philosophers and theologians over the centuries has yielded rich insights into our relationships with God, nature, and one another, the value of biblical scholarship is not so immediately apparent. Certainly the church’s moral and social teachings are based on Scripture, yet the import of biblical scholarship per se is generally not apparent to people in the pews. Why?
Scripture scholars research and write, but too often they seem to write only for one another. This is unfortunate because the achievements of Catholic biblical scholarship in the past century are one of the church’s great success stories. A hundred years ago, Catholic Scripture scholars lagged far behind their Protestant counterparts. That began to change in 1909 with the establishment of the Pontifical Biblical Institute. It was founded to advance Catholic participation in the burgeoning study of ancient Near Eastern languages. By 1942, Pius XII’s Divino aflante spiritu officially endorsed advances in biblical scholarship. Subsequent church decrees-Dei verbum (Vatican II’s 1963 Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation) and, more recently, the virtually unknown but important The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1993)-have broadened the frontiers of biblical learning. Today, Catholic scholars are second to none among leaders in the field.
What is the aim of this Catholic biblical scholarship? In an essay titled “Dei Verbum: Its Historic Break from Curial Theology and Its Subsequent Official Use,” Francis Holland writes that Vatican II recognized that biblical exegesis has a necessary role in discovering the context in which the biblical authors wrote, and consequently in our understanding of what their words mean. As Holland notes, “Dei verbum concludes by affirming the ultimate goal of service to the word and its careful interpretation: The functions of reading and studying, and the pertinent roles of the magisterium and theologian are to allow ‘the treasure of revelation [to] fill human hearts more and more.’” Yet despite Vatican II’s efforts, four decades later the church’s mission to “fill human hearts” with the treasure of Scripture remains largely unaccomplished.
There is, nonetheless, a significant segment of the laity with a genuine thirst for biblical study. If you want to fill a parish hall, advertise a Bible study session. Unfortunately, these events often turn out to be less than satisfying. Pastors are rarely present, and some study groups end up being led by parishioners who have little formal training in Scripture. As a result, Catholics have begun to look elsewhere. It is not unusual for Catholics to attend Bible study under the auspices of other denominations whose understanding of biblical revelation differs dramatically from our own. Often, the tenor of such groups is fundamentalist or literalist. And with no credible voices to challenge this perspective, Catholics who attend these programs may think they are deepening their understanding of the church’s teaching of the Bible while, in fact, they are being shortchanged.
For many years, I taught biblical studies at Catholic universities. I discovered that there was less and less familiarity with the Bible in each incoming class. I don’t mean that students were ignorant of complicated concepts like the four-source theory of the Pentateuch or that they failed to comprehend redaction criticism. That is fairly sophisticated knowledge. I mean that fewer and fewer incoming students knew even the major personages and narratives of the Bible. Most couldn’t identify Abraham or recount the story of Joseph and his brothers. Many had heard of Moses, some even knew he had a connection with the Ten Commandments, but they were in the minority. Surprisingly, most of these students were raised in Catholic families and had graduated from Catholic schools.
My first reaction was to criticize the schools. Later I came to fault the church’s leadership for having paid too much attention to Catholic higher education at the expense of Catholic primary and secondary education. I thought: if only the bishops had spent as much time reviewing grade-school and high-school religion curricula as they had spent on debating Ex corde ecclesiae, we might be in better shape. While paying too little attention to the schools under their control-diocesan grade schools and high schools-they had unwisely focused attention on institutions that are largely independent of their jurisdiction.
There have been scores of wonderful Catholic biblical scholars in the last fifty years. One thinks of the late Roland de Vaux, John McKenzie, and Raymond Brown. Today, their number includes Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Carolyn Osiek, Joseph Fitzmyer, Pheme Perkins, Luke Timothy Johnson, Donald Senior, and John Meier, to name but a few. Yet this legacy has not improved most Catholics’ understanding of the Bible-including that of the average pastor. When will this rich treasure finally “fill the human heart”?
The good news is that it can eventually happen. I’ve seen it at Catholic colleges and universities. While there, many students are exposed to first-rate biblical scholarship in spite of their poor preparation. The problem is that too few of them maintain their interest in Bible studies once they graduate. Furthermore, they are not likely to encounter much reference to current biblical studies in the homilies they will hear.
Despite Vatican II’s directive that priests focus their homilies on the lectionary readings, many homilists are ill prepared to do so and often choose to preach on other topics, including letters from their bishops. I’m afraid any assumption that the advances of Roman Catholic biblical scholarship have reached the average Catholic is unwarranted.
Most priests feel overwhelmed by their parish duties and can’t keep up with current biblical scholarship. This creates a dilemma: called to provide weekly homilies on texts they do not fully understand, they often rely on prepared homiletical notes. While these are usually written by skilled and informed Catholic scholars, they can’t possibly provide the context needed to understand the Scripture readings.
When it comes to parish Bible-study programs for the laity, some well-meaning pastors resort to “canned” programs. Many of these are good, but pastors, already too busy, often turn such programs over to directors and teachers who are ill-prepared. Hence, these efforts often go astray, or simply founder after a brief time.
On the grade-school and high-school levels, “panic” is usually the word used to describe the reaction of teachers who learn they have been assigned the Bible as part of their religion curriculum. I’ve heard teachers exclaim they’d rather teach “anything but Bible!”
In addition to teaching undergraduate students, I’ve led many Bible classes for adult groups-sometimes in the basements of non-Catholic churches. During these sessions I often hear the refrain, “Why haven’t I ever heard this before-and I’ve been a Catholic all my life!” I used to bristle at these comments. “These are literate adults,” I’d say to myself. “Why can’t they educate themselves? There are books and periodicals available.” So I would hand out bibliographies and recommend magazines for them to read. But after more reflection, I came to see that simply making reading recommendations wouldn’t do. The average Catholic needs more hands-on guidance when it comes to the Scriptures.
The church as a whole must attend to this task. Biblical literacy should become a major goal of our grade-school and high-school religion curricula. New and more effective Bible-study courses should be developed and supported. Teachers should be given incentives to continue their education in biblical studies. Students should be tested regularly on their progress, and the results of these assessments should be shared with school officials and the local ordinary.
Seminaries must offer more rigorous courses in Scripture. Here, too, assessment is key. Many seminaries fail to evaluate student performance in this area. Bible courses should not be structured exclusively around homiletics and preaching the lectionary-as important as that is-nor should they be strictly academic. Seminarians should be taught that Bible study is an integral part of parish life-on a par with other sacramental ministries, like the parish RCIA program. Pastors, seminarians, and parish staffs must learn how to establish and support these groups. Most important, seminaries must teach how to pass along an infectious enthusiasm for the study of God’s word.
Church leadership must respond to the laity’s hunger for Bible study. Homilies must open up the word for the congregation, and ongoing parish programs must provide the rich soil where that word can take root. No text, especially not the ancient texts of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, can be understood without reference to their historical and cultural contexts. Conveying this information at Mass will be easier if there is an ongoing Bible study group in the parish.
Every class I teach-whether in a college classroom or in a church basement-begins with this challenge: “Bible study ain’t for sissies!” The hard work of biblical scholarship must continue, and the church must insure that the fruits of this scholarship reach the people of God. The words of Dei verbum have yet to be fulfilled: that the “treasure of revelation fill human hearts more and more.”
