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PDF Ebook Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with Benedict XVI and St. Thomas Aquinas, by Matthew J. Ramage
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Multiple gods? Divinely mandated genocide? Rejection of an afterlife? If the Scriptures are the inspired and inerrant word of God that Christians claim them to be, how can they contain these things? For many believers in the modern age, traditional Christian answers to these challenges are no longer convincing. Though spiritually edifying, they are unable to account for the sheer scope and depth of problems raised through the advent of historical-critical scholarship.
Following the lead of Pope Benedict XVI, in Dark Passages of the Bible Matthew Ramage weds the historical-critical approach with a theological reading of Scripture based in the patristic-medieval tradition. Whereas these two approaches are often viewed as mutually exclusive or even contradictory, Ramage insists that the two are mutually enriching and necessary for doing justice to the Bible's most challenging texts.
Ramage applies Benedict XVI's hermeneutical principles to three of the most theologically problematic areas of the Bible: its treatment of God's nature, the nature of good and evil, and the afterlife. Teasing out key hermeneutical principles from the work of Thomas Aquinas, Ramage analyzes each of these themes with an eye to reconciling texts whose presence would seem to violate the doctrines of biblical inspiration and inerrancy. At the same time, Ramage directly addresses the problems of concrete biblical texts in light of both patristic and modern exegetical methods.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
"Ramage uses three difficult biblical motifs as proving grounds for this method: the nature of God, the nature of good and evil, and the afterlife. Exegetes and theologians will appreciate the author's wrestling with these issues in a considered way that tries to be true to both scientific methodology and the demands of a community of faith." -The Bible Today
If a sacred text can be literally incorrect about topics on which it claims to speak authoritatively, how can its words be trustworthy? Dark Passages sets out to raise the reader's awareness of how to use the Bible in ways that are not so cut and dried. The Method C reader appreciates myth or authorial overreach where they exist, and always reads the biblical word theologically, as an encounter with the divine Word. Method C goes beyond a simple, formulaic answer to problematic Bible passages." -First Things
- Sales Rank: #863593 in Books
- Brand: Ramage, Matthew J.
- Published on: 2013-09-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .70" w x 5.51" l, .99 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 312 pages
Review
“Unlike many other books, Dark Passages of the Bible does not limit itself merely to describing and applying abstract theories or doctrines of inspiration or inerrancy to “difficult passages” in Scripture. Rather, it reconciles actual biblical passages or themes that seem to contradict or be incompatible with doctrines of biblical inspiration and inerrancy . . . A significant contribution to explaining Pope Benedict XVI’s interpretive approach, which reconciles the best of pre-critical and post-critical exegesis.”―William S. Kurz, SJ, professor of theology, Marquette University
About the Author
MATTHEW J. RAMAGE is assistant professor of theology at Benedictine College.
Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
For the serious Scripture student
By Stuart Dunn
Dark Passages of the Bible begins by asking, "How can that be in the Bible?" This question, asked by many atheists, agnostics, and even some Christians, forms a brief introduction and starting point for this scholarly tome. We then dive into three problems in the Bible - 1. The Nature of God, 2. The Nature of Good and Evil, and 3. The Afterlife. Each problem or theme has ample Scripture passages that can be cited as evidence, and these passages read as troublesome for some. For example, regarding problem #2, "And that night the angel of the Lord went forth and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when the men arose early in the morning, behold these were all dead bodies (2 Kgs 19:35)."
When reading gruesome passages like these, people are often confused as to why God would condone such violence. Interpretation, which I will discuss in the next paragraph, is key here. We must read passages like this in their full context, both in Scripture and the time period. God's plan for man is slowly accomplished, sometimes in spite of man's resistance. God doesn't want man's death, but their salvation. Unfortunately, some pursue their own destruction so vehemently that God allows them to be destroyed so that extensive damage isn't done to the rest of the population. I'm sure I'm not explaining it as well as Dr. Ramage, so please read his book for better clarity.
Chapter Two, "Benedict's 'Method C' Proposal," was easily my favorite chapter. In this chapter, the reader receives an explanation on the two main methods for Biblical interpretation. Method A focuses on patristic-medieval exegesis. All Scripture is inspired by God and thus interpretation is viewed through the lens of faith. This is my preferred method of interpretation. Method B is better known as the historical-critical method. This method removes faith from interpretation and goes for cold, hard facts. Both have their merits, and both have their shortcomings. Pope Benedict's Method C draws upon the strength of both to create a fuller interpretation method. It seems so obvious, but it takes someone with a great mind to execute it. The rest of this book demonstrates how Method C exegesis would work, specifically as it relates to the Nature of God, the Nature of Good and Evil, and the Afterlife.
People often speak of the genius of Pope John Paul II and his Theology of the Body. I personally hope and pray it won't be long before more people realize the genius of Pope Benedict XVI.. Dark Passages of the Bible definitely serves as a demonstration of his brilliance. This scholarly tome is not for the casual reader, but for serious students of the Bible and biblical interpretation. However, to understand Pope Benedict's Method C, this book, and ultimately the Bible, you must be in communion with the Church, as it is "the primary setting for scriptural interpretation." And while this book is not an easy read, it is definitely a rewarding one. So if you fall into the category of serious Bible student, you will want a copy of this 5-star book.
This book was provided to me for free by Catholic University of America Press in exchange for an honest review.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Sheds Considerable Light on the Dark Passages
By Brandon Vogt
In his pivotal 2010 exhortation, "Verbum Domini", Pope Benedict XVI devoted an entire section to the so-called "dark passages" of the Bible:
"In discussing the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments, [we must consider] those passages in the Bible which, due to the violence and immorality they occasionally contain, prove obscure and difficult . . .
[W]e should be aware that the correct interpretation of these passages requires a degree of expertise, acquired through a training that interprets the texts in their historical-literary context and within the Christian perspective, which has as its ultimate hermeneutical key “the Gospel and the new commandment of Jesus Christ brought about in the paschal mystery”.
I encourage scholars and pastors to help all the faithful to approach these passages through an interpretation which enables their meaning to emerge in the light of the mystery of Christ." (VD, 42)
The Pope's request could not be more timely. When we combine the perennial difficulty of these "dark passages" with the heightened attacks by contemporary atheists, who wield them as daggers against the Church, it's clear we need a renewed focus on these troubling verses.
Thankfully, many Catholic scholars have stepped up to the plate. One of those experts, Dr. Matthew Ramage, assistant professor of theology at Benedictine College, has authored an important new book titled "Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with Benedict XVI and St. Thomas Aquinas" (The Catholic University of America Press, 2013).
Dr. Ramage examines three troublesome themes in Scripture: its apparent endorsement of polytheism, the Old Testament's disconcerting violence, and what seems to be the rejection of an afterlife. If the Scriptures are truly inerrant and inspired by God, how can it contain these passages?
Following the lead of Pope Benedict XVI, Dr. Ramage applies fresh hermeneutical principles to this question. By wedding the historical-critical method, favored by modern scholars, to the patristic-medieval approach, which the Church Fathers and scholastic theologians preferred, Dr. Ramage analyzes each dark theme and reconciles it with Church doctrines concerning the nature of God, biblical inspiration, and inerrancy. The result is a tremendously helpful book.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Aquinas and Benedict v. The New Atheists and Other Fundamentalists
By Peter S. Bradley
This is a thought provoking examination on biblical exegesis through the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and Benedict XVI. The objective of the book is to analyze "difficult" passages of the Bible in their literal context through both the critical legal method and reading the text in the context of the Christian community that canonized the scriptures.
In chapter 1, the author, Matthew Ramage, identifies three "challenging biblical themes." They are:
(a) The nature of God. Ramage points out that the nature of God as the only divine being appears to change over the course of the Bible. Monotheism seems to be contradicted in places where God speaks about "we" and "us." Other passages appear to refer to God as the God of the Hebrews alone, i.e., a specific divine being among other divine beings. (p. 19.) References in the Pslams, for example, to God being a "great King above all gods" (Ps. 95:3) point to the original Hebrew religion as being henotheism or monolatry. (p. 20.)
Ramage also points out the "interesting" way that "The Lord" is interchanged with subordinate agents such as his dabar or "word" or ruach or "spirit" and with his divine messenger or "angels." (p. 24.) For example, in the burning bush scene, the burning bush that interacts with Moses is described as both "the angel of the Lord" and as God. (EX. 3:2 - 6.) Similar confusion occurs in Jacobs dream (Gn 31:11 - 13.) and in other portions of the Bible. (Zec. 3:1 - 2.) The point seems to be that "we observe that Israelites were not privy to a clear distinction between Yahweh and his divine messenger." (p. 25.)
(b) The nature of good and evil. These issues involve those situations where God slays all living creatures, except Noah and the creatures on the ark, or when an angel of the lord slayed 85,000 Assyrians through a plague or orders the slaying of everything that breathes in the cities of the Hittites and Amorites and Canannites, etc.. (Gn 7:23; 2 Kgs 19:35; Dt. 20:16-17.) (p. 31.) And there are other dark passages where God seems to make people do evil things. (1 Kgs 22:19-22; 2 Chr. 18:21.) (p. 35.)
(c) The Afterlife. Early Hebrew scriptures do not seem to consider the possibility of an afterlife. some texts - such as Ecclesiaste - seem to affirmatively deny the possibility of an afterlife.(Eccl. 2:19 - 21.) (p. 48.)
In Chapter 2, Ramage discusses three methods of doing biblical interpretation. Ramage calls "Method A" the traditional ancient, patristic-medieval method approach which spiritualizes the text and uproots the text from any literal grounding. (p. 9.) Method A includes the traditional "Four senses of scripture" - "The letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; the Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny." (p. 61.) The weakness of Method A is that it doesn't treat the literal sense of scripture with the respect that the original authors may have intended.
Ramage offers some Catholic commonplace observations, such as noting that Pope Benedict observes that "the whole of Scripture is nothing other than Tradition." (p. 65.) Ramage cites Yves Congar as defining tradition - "Tradition comprises the holy scriptures, and besides these not only the powers of the ministry, customs and liturgical rites - in fact all the Christian realities themselves." (p. 64.) Likewise, "Pope Benedict tells us that ' a book was recognized as canonical if it was sanctioned by the Church for use in public worship...In the nascent Church the reading of Scripture and the confession of faith were primarily liturgical acts." (p. 67.)
"Method B" is the historical-critical method. (p. 10.) The strength of Method B is that it focus on the literal meaning of the text as to particular verses. The weakness of Method B is that it presupposes the denial of what Christianity affirms. Christianity affirms that the Bible is a unitary whole inspired by God in an "inspired unity." (p.80.)
Method C is what Ramage refers to Pope Benedict's exegetical approach which is to combine the prior methods. "A method C hermeneutic aims to appropriate the tools and questions of modern scholarship while purifying these from any anti-metaphysical or anti-Christian bias." (p. 85.)
In Chapter 3, Ramage looks at the Problem of Development. Ramage relies on Aquinas to demonstrate that the substance of the Judeo-Christian faith did not change, although there was a development in the number of truths believed by the faithful . (p. 92.) Ramage notes that Hebrews 11 defines "faith" as the "substance" of things hoped for, and "substance implies "that the Christian faith is an organism with a unique and enduring identity." (p. 93.) This insight means that every Christian doctrine believed in today was believed in an inchoate way throughout salvation history. (p. 95.)
Aquinas distinguishes between the "deposit of faith" and the "articles of faith." Articles act like joints that connect the truths of the faith to each other; each of them designates a fundamental revealed truth, from the Trinity to the Incarnation." (p. 95.) Aquinas described the "embryo" of faith as God's existence and providence: "For St. Thomas, all that is essential to the Christian faith (the Resurrection, the triune nature of God, the moral law, etc.) is rooted in the two primary "matters" (credibilia) of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11:6, namely, God's existence and his providence. (p. 97.) This leads to the interesting insight that "Those who have faith but have not explicitly accepted Christ are fellow travelers with Christians."(p.99.)
Development means that God teaches divine truths gradually, through "divine pedagogy," presumably fitting the information provided at any time to human need and ability to receive it. (p. 101.) (Aquinas also affirmed that some pre-Christian Jews, such as King David, had explicit knowledge of Christ's incarnation. (p. 106.) (ST II-II, q.1.a.7.) On the other hand, if a man who lived without explicit knowledge of Christ obtained salvation, it was on account of his affirmation of God's providence. (p. 107.)(ST II-II, q.2.a.7 ad. 3.)
In Chapter 4, Ramage deals with "apparent contradictions." This long section takes the reader into a lengthy analysis about what we mean be "inspiration" and "revelation.
Ramage's first move is to discuss the "two dimensions of prophecy: inspiration and revelation." through Aquinas' "theology of inspiration (p. 117.) Aquinas distinguished between "inspiration" and "revelation." (p. 120.) All scripture is inspired, but it is not all revelation. God inspired scripture so that they could serve a unique role in salvation history and in the formation of the church. (p. 122.) "The inspiration of scriptures lies precisely in the role that they played in salvation history and in the constitution of the church." (p. 123.) Because inspiration is not always revelation, and the purpose of inspiration is tied to its function in the church, there can be "inspiration without revelation" ("revelation in the strict sense") and "inspiration with revelation" ("inspiration in the broad sense.")
Another point that Ramage makes is that Aquinas Theology of Inspiration reckoned that God inspired authors by sharing with them "some species (a dream, a vision or a locution which ultimately furnishes the material for the idea) and enlightened the author's mind from within. From this enlightenment, the prophet made a judgment about the truth of the dream or vision, and the judgment completes the the prophetic knowledge. (p. 130.)
As an example of the separation of revelation and inspiration, Aquinas points to examples like Pharaoh who received visions but were not able to comprehend them.Joseph was able to comprehend the Pharaoh's vision, but did not experience directly the "species" that God manifested. (p. 131.) Thus, God can enable a faithful man to make prophetic judgments concerning a revealed species even though he was not the one who received it; there also exist cases in which prophets receive the light to judge reality in a supernatural manner without the involvement of any revealed species at all." (p. 132.) Moreover, revealed truth lies in the act wherein the prophet's intellect correctly apprehends a supernatural reality shown by God, (p. 133) but not every statement in scripture constitutes such a judgment.(p. 133.) "Indeed it seems clear that biblical authors conditioned their judgment, sometimes speaking about divine affairs without intending to make definitive judgments or to teach regarding them - even sometimes in matters of "faith and morals" such as the nature of God, the nature of good and evil, and the afterlife...."(p. 133.)
So, the question then becomes, "what was the judgment that the author was trying to make?" Scriptures are not inerrant from every conceivable point of view." (p. 135.) Pope Benedict makes the point by trying to focus on the "essential point" of the biblical text. (p. 133.)
Since scripture was not intended to be inerrant from "all points of view," Ramage distinguishes between formal errors and material imperfections. (p. 135.) For example, even under Method A, the Church taught that scripture did not treat of astronomy for its own sake, and so statements about astronomy are material imperfections, but not necessarily formal flaws.(p. 137.) The purpose of Genesis in that regard was to teach about the place of man in a universe wisely ordered by God, not about how the universe is arranged. (p. 137.) "Properly applying the historical-critical method may involve recognizing that the things we demand of scripture were not concerns for those who wrote it.(p. 143.) This is why it is crucial to discern the intention of the sacred authors and to demonstrate that their purpose was not always to teach propositional truths after the manner of a textbook. (p. 143."
Because of the human factor, Ramage also suggests that some "material imperfections" arise from the presence of "environmental defects" or "glitches" within the Bible. "These glitches do not violate the doctrine of inerrancy because "truth or error results from an author's judgment, and the Catholic faith requires us to hold that the substance of what the sacred author wishes to affirm corresponds to reality." In point of fact, in cases such as Ecclesiastes we have a state of affairs.in which a sacred author is not only epistemically warranted in his imperfect conclusion but might even be obligated to it." (p. 146.)
In addition, following Aquinas, Ramage distinguishes between "speculative" knowledge and "practical" knowledge. Sacred authors might include information not because they intend to impart propositional information, but in order to achieve a practical end, such as consoling, threatening, admonishing, charming, relaxing or even entertaining someone with a good story.(p. 149.) When the sacred author recounts the misdeeds of David, for example, it is unlikely that he wants his audience to simply learn new truths or imitate David's behavior. Far from it; he probably has the practical goal of getting his audience to learn from the failures of his ancestors..." (p. 149.)
In Chapter 5, Ramage applies the Method C principles to the problems he raised at the beginning of the book.
a. Nature of God - Ramage's approach is to acknowledge the problem that the early Old Testament is consistent with polytheism. However, it doesn't teach polytheism, and it shows a definite trajectory of growth toward monotheism. (p. 164.) Ramage explains concerning the former "When looked at in light of their entire context, they thus do not constitute true, formal errors since they are not the principle affirmations of the sacred writers and are not taught for their own end." (p. 176.)
b. The Nature of Good and Evil - Christopher Hitchens' heavy-handed polemics are mentioned in this section. (p. 179.) Ramage offers the following Method C approach:
//"the Bible's sacred authors applied this same line of reasoning in the case of genocidal wars that they victoriously fought for the sake of Yahweh. If it seemed clear that God wanted a certain battle won, and the tactics employed therein were successful, then God must have sanctioned or even directly willed those tactics.// (p. 188)
What seems to have been happening according to Ramage was that the Jews developed a more nuanced understanding of causality. Ancient Israel placed everything under God's providence; subsequently, Israel began to distinguish between God and other causal factors.(p. 189.) Again, Ramage points to a trajectory of development from a kernel that contained the substance subsequently affirmed.
Chapter 6 deals with Method C exegesis and the afterlife.This is a fascinating chapter that looks at the development of the idea of the afterlife in Ancient Near East. Ramage's point is that Israel initially fell into the common understanding of the ANE that either there was no afterlife or that the afterlife was a grim place. Over the course of time, Israel was "purified" of its ANE elements and developed along a trajectory toward a more robust and nuanced understanding of the afterlife. With respect to Ecclesiastes and its denial of an afterlife, Ramage argues that Ecclesiastes was written for a practical goal, which was to showcase the vanity of existence apart from hope in a redeemer.(p. 238.)
This is obviously a book for those with a deep interest in a thoroughly well-developed argument based on Thomistic insights. As someone who engages in internet apologetics, I think that some of the distinctions that are explored offer a way of dealing with the usual tropes of New Atheists, albeit I suspect that the ideas of this book will not be all that easy to boil down into "soundbites."
This is also an excellent resource for those interested in Aquinas' approach to biblical interpretation.
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