The question that, according to Andrei Desnitsky, he has heard more than once: can one engage in biblical scholarship as a science and still remain a true Orthodox Christian? Even more often, he notes, he has heard the answer: no, it is impious. Yet in November 2013 an all-church conference devoted to biblical scholarship was held in Moscow. Desnitsky calls this a paradox.
He writes that statements about the distinctiveness and value of Orthodox biblical scholarship, compatible with traditional piety, often fail to explain what exactly this distinctiveness consists of. At best, examples of pre-revolutionary Russian biblical scholars are cited, but he does not find the achievements of the late 19th century convincing for the early 21st. In his view, the works of P.A. Yungerov or N.N. Glubokovsky have come down to us, but the criticisms directed at them have not. There are, in his estimation, no contemporary official church decrees on this topic: there are departments of biblical studies and books, but no all-church position.
Catholic Documents
Desnitsky proposes to look at how the position of the Catholic Church has changed, where, in his words, such a position exists. He identifies three official documents issued at intervals of exactly half a century. Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893) called the Latin Vulgate the only authorized text of the Bible, encouraged the study of texts in the original languages but as a secondary matter, condemned «higher criticism» for excessive rationalism, while leaving room for textual research. The main idea, according to Desnitsky: engage in those scholarly disciplines that cannot lead to a contradiction with the faith, but no more than that.
Pius XII's encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) saw the Vulgate as the most traditional but not the only authentic text, recognized various scholarly methods, and explained discrepancies between biblical texts and scientific data by the fact that the biblical authors did not possess our knowledge and spoke in the language of their time. In 1965 the main provisions of this encyclical were confirmed by the dogmatic constitution of the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, which emphasized the unity of Scripture and Tradition. The interpretation of Scripture is entrusted to the Magisterium, but the Magisterium too must serve Scripture, not stand above it. Both documents, Desnitsky writes, followed the «principle of incarnation»: the text of Scripture arises and lives within the historical process, and therefore its external forms can be studied by scholarly methods.
In 1993 the document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, «The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church», confirmed the main provisions of Divino Afflante Spiritu and Dei Verbum, noting that certain modern trends are unacceptable for Catholics—mainly «liberation theology» and «feminist hermeneutics». Desnitsky concludes: over a century and a half, everything that grew out of «higher criticism» has been assimilated by Catholics in one way or another, although contemporary biblical scholarship has moved far from the radicalism of the former «higher criticism».
Practice and a Proposal
According to him, the further along, the fewer specific recommendations and lists there were in official documents, but the more concrete achievements of Catholic biblical scholarship appeared: the «Jerome Commentary» on all the books of the Bible, the «Jerusalem Bible» translation series, the journal «Biblica», the Pontifical Biblical Institute in the Vatican. Desnitsky recalls that Orthodox and Catholics have many differences in approach, but since the time of Peter Mogila Russian theology has usually taken Catholic work as a basis, made corrections, and adopted it. He proposes that it is not necessary to adopt three documents at intervals of half a century: in the Catholic world there are people whose piety is compatible only with the first encyclical, and those whose piety is compatible with the second. There are probably also those for whom piety is fundamentally incompatible with biblical scholarship. Such people exist in the Orthodox world as well. «Perhaps we should simply give them the freedom to choose their own option, so that no one imposes anything on anyone?» the author concludes.
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