Did Trent Condemn Private Interpretation?

I have probably some well meaning but ill instructed Catholics praying for me to understand that Protestants approved and the Council of Trent condemned Private Interpretation.

Why say I this?

Because, by Providence, I came to this blog post today:

History for Atheists : COSMIC SKEPTIC BUNGLES GALILEO
July 15, 2022 Tim O'Neill
https://historyforatheists.com/2022/07/cosmic-skeptic/

At 2.23 min of a video by Cosmic Sceptic, as Tim O'Neill noted, Cosmic Sceptic alias Alex O'Connor wrote:

Most relevant to our present discussion is that in Session Four of the Council of Trent the Catholics explicitly limited the interpretation of the Bible to bishops and councils of the Church, meaning that only they could decide what the Bible really meant and how to interpret his messages.

As I am not a bishop and am not specifically authorised by a bishop, and despite my non-leanness very far from qualifying as a council, even further than Chesterton was, I find this somewhat ill-boding, should any comment on even one verse I give not come from a bishop or from a commenter who was authorised by a bishop to comment.

Even more ill-boding, when Tim O'Neill actually says that this is essentially correct. However, he goes on to quote the decrees, translated into English, from Richard J. Blackwell’s superb book Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible (Notre Dame, 1991), which he had recommended just before.

Here are his quotes:

The Council also maintains that these truth and rules are contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions …. Following then the examples of the orthodox Fathers [the Council] receives and venerates … both all the books of the Old and New Testaments, since one God is the author of both, and also the traditions themselves, whether they relate to faith and morals as having been dictated either orally by Christ or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in the Catholic Church in unbroken succession.

(“Decree on Tradition and on the Canon of Sacred Scripture”, in Blackwell, Appendix I, p. 181)

Furthermore, to control petulant spirits, the Council decrees that in matters of faith and morals, pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine no one, relying on his own judgment and distorting the Sacred Scriptures according to his own conceptions, shall dare to interpret them contrary to that sense which Holy Mother Church …. has held and does hold, or even contrary to the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.

(“Decree on Tradition and on the Canon of Sacred Scripture”, in Blackwell, Appendix I, p. 183)

Nope. I'm safe. It is not an unbroken universal tradition that Nimrod's Babel in Genesis 11 need be on the same spot as Nebuchadnezzar's or even Sargon's Babylon, or that the tower was obviously built and of the type we consider as towers. And even less that a man working on God's inspiration a miracle, can adress objects other than the one or ones meant to be other in essence or behaviour than previously or what they normally would continue as.

Because, the two passages where I have dared a private interpretation, so to speak, are

1) the location markers and object describers in the Tower of Babel passage : compatible with the place of Göbekli Tepe, since also in Mesopotamia, compatible with a rocket project which never came to fruition back then, put on delay to 1960's AD instead;
2) in Joshua 10, while verse 13 could be interpreted phenomenologically, as Earth ceasing to rotate, verse 12 is incompatible, since Joshua told the Sun and Moon to stand still, and their place would be highly irrelevant, as at least for Sun given, and for Moon following Earth, if the real clincher of the miracle was Earth ceasing to rotate.

Remember, the words in verse 12 were not inspired by God to constitute a human word of narration, free from error by God's inspiration, but to be a divine word of command to the nature obedient to God. A direct expression of God's omnipotence which is not divorced from His omniscience.

In any other case, what I affirm as most essential about the text itself is definitely there in other commenters, either themselves bishops or commenting with the express consent of bishops. For instance, the chronology of the Roman Martyrology for Christmas day came into not just first edition of Martyrologium Romanum, but late manuscripts or early prints (Venice 1490's) of its near twin, Usuardus, from the Historia Scholastica of Petrus Comestor (who also built Notre Dame de Paris - as distinct from men ruling the building as Evolution believers and seeing it burn) and he had found it in some writing of St. Jerome who was definitely acting with the consent of bishops. I only add how this makes sense in terms of Carbon 14 buildup, a matter in and of itself not in the text.

So, no, private interpretation is per se not condemned by Trent. It is to either deny the principle that the Bible has a few check-ups in Tradition or Magisterium or to in fact arrive at conclusions contradicting these check-ups, if not the text immediately looked at itself, that Trent condemns.

But, someone may object, the Protestants (actually more like Calvinists, Lutherans and Anglicans have tended to reserve Bible interpretation to scholars approved by State Churches much more than Catholicism has) are all for "private interpretation" and Trent condemned Protestantism, therefore, Trent logically must condemn private interpretation!

Not really. Here is from the Challoner comment on the proof text against "private interpretation" - II Peter 1:20 - in DRBO:

Text:

[20] Understanding this first, that no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation.

Bishop Challoner:

[20] "No prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation": This shews plainly that the scriptures are not to be expounded by any one's private judgment or private spirit, because every part of the holy scriptures were written by men inspired by the Holy Ghost, and declared as such by the Church; therefore they are not to be interpreted but by the Spirit of God, which he hath left, and promised to remain with his Church to guide her in all truth to the end of the world. Some may tell us, that many of our divines interpret the scriptures: they may do so, but they do it always with a submission to the judgment of the Church, and not otherwise.

And this is pretty much what even the Vatican II Sect says about it:

There is no conflict between the work of exegetes, scholars, and believers in exploring the meaning of Scripture on the one hand, and the work of the magisterium in authentically defining the meaning of Scripture on the other hand.

Exegetes and believers must not pit their private judgment against the mind of the Church, or treat their methods as the ultimate arbiters of what Scripture can or cannot mean (this is what is meant by “private interpretation“). But that doesn’t mean that ordinary Catholics and Scripture scholars cannot use their intellects to probe the meaning of Scripture.

Indeed, Scripture is so rich that even when a given passage has been authoritatively connected with a certain doctrine, that does not remove that passage from the sphere of scientific or devotional inquiry. We can interpret and explore Scripture, just not in a way that contradicts what has been defined concerning it.

Catholic Answers : Does the Catechism Encourage Private Interpretation of the Bible?
Q&A CATHOLIC ANSWERS STAFF
https://www.catholic.com/qa/does-the-catechism-encourage-private-interpretation-of-the-bible

Note that there could be people pretending that Heliocentrism has been defined (the words of "John Paul II" in his excuse speech about Galileo in 1992 do not constitute a definition) or that Fundamentalism has been condemned (an actual decree by "Cardinal" Ratzinger who was not an actual Catholic) - or that in some other way, my interpretation is against what the Church holds NOW.

But the definition of Trent is not about what the Church holds NOW. It is about what the Church "has held and does hold" - there is a safeguard against a hijacked "magisterium" imposing a turnabout in theology. Why shouldn't there be when so many bishops in the 4th C. Arian crisis were Arian?

So, one can also not appeal to new magisterial ideologemes contradicting previous (and longstanding) positions held by the magisterium. In case one were to pretend Immaculate Conception such, the contrary view was only longstanding in the West. The Catholic dogma was defended as Orthodox tradition by Avvakum, while the Latin West was divided on it.

It remains that those who consider me guilty of "private interpretation" are probably French-Algerians, importing the position of Ahmad ibn Hanbal al-Dhuhli into the Catholic view on what is not up for private judgement, as well as French admiring their French-Algerian fellow parishioners or fellow seminarians too much. Plus even for Ahmad ibn Hanbal's position to condemn me, I would be needing to pretend to be making some jurisprudence.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Decapitation of St. John the Baptist
29.VIII.2022

PS - it can be noted that just because Protestants generally approve a certain thing this does not automatically mean Catholicism condemns it - whether Catholicism condemns it needs to be checked case by case./HGL

Other Answer, Same Questions

I sometimes sponge on the feedback to CMI. 1) I look up the top of the article, copy the questions; 2) I do NOT immediately scroll down below them; 3) and I first answer them myself, then only after that look up how someone on CMI answered.

This article is a good occasion to play that game again.

God, the universe, tolerance and suffering
Feedback 2008
https://creation.com/god-the-universe-tolerance-and-sufferingamdashbig-questions-from-a-curious-seeker

1) If complexities and the personal weakness to explain those* does document the manifestations of god, does this mean that ...

... is a manifestation of god? Because I really can not explain this to me and, hey, it’s really complex. (Sorry, it’s bad rhetoric, but maybe a good example for the sub-question: Are things so very complex because they are designed or because we are so stupid?)

2) If god is beyond time and space, what is beyond god?

3) This universe is big and has many beings–maybe even many planets with life-whichever. Therefore what’s beyond this universe must even be bigger and more impressive. Where in that giant beyond is god? And why just one if it is so big?

4) Design requires a creator. It can be assumed, that the creator must be at least similar complex than the creator’s design. That results, that the creator must be complex, therefore designed. Who design the creator? Who designed god?

5) Could you very personal imagine having a beer with a black, Jewish Homosexual–and enjoying it?

6) There is stabbing in Melbourne, sexual misuse of Children, war etc. Mankind pollutes earth, reduces the amount of animal races. Is this the behaviour of god’s finest? Or could earth & us be just a kind of first try and the really good top designs are somewhere else?

Here are my own answers.

1) We are not speaking of "manifestations of God" in the sense of theophanies. Traces of God in organised complexity beyond what man can have done.

And note, it is not about simple complexity, but about one organised around a simple goal or being.

The mathematic laws are in a sense traces of God, and perhaps some of them even manifestations (God being one in three certainly means the three first numbers have their root in God Himself and are not just created by Him). And our ability to understand and apply them are an image of God.

2) Regress into infinity is a bad move in either logic proof or explanations.

3) God is not big, but infinite. God took on finite form, in Jesus, but in Himself is infinite.

4) Here is a false conclusion : "the creator must be complex, therefore designed"; and here is a false premiss : "It can be assumed, that the creator must be at least similar complex than the creator’s design."

What the false premiss is really trying to say is that one design, however impressive, doesn't exhaust the mind that made it, correct, but the impressiveness of the mind does not actually come from complexity, but from simplicity. God being perfectly simple means He needs no designer.

5) If the beer was good and in this case the word homosexual referred to lesbian, yes. Plus no bad talk about Our Lord or Our Lady.

Or if the homosexual man had decided to marry a woman (obviously not foolinger her about his condition, but either she knows because she's also lesbian, or anyway).

6) The really "good designs" are what we get when God sifts away the damned into Hell and resurrect the blessed into glory and into Heaven. In this life, we are works in progress, and some may be already irredeemably broken even before they die, but we usually do not know which ones./HGL

PS, after editing some detail above, I'll log out and see the answer by Andrew Lamb./HGL

* In fact, it is not about failing to explain, it's about seeing naturalistic explanation one after another fail, and undestanding very well with a supranaturalistic one.

Stone, Bronze and Iron - when and where?

Robert Carter gives incomplete and sometimes even wrong information in this post, on CMI's collective blog:

What were the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age?
by Robert Carter | This article is from
Creation 44(1):18–20, April 2022
https://creation.com/bronze

Now, let's get a few things straight.

Before the Flood, there was a Stone Age up to Tubal-Cain, everywhere, and there was a Bronze-and-Iron age with Tubal-Cain in the Nodian Civilisation, but Stone Age lasted longer in communities presumably somewhat marginal, like Amerindians, like what we seem to have found from Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans-Antecessors-Heidelbergian - the Nodian cities are however lost.

After the Flood, there was a Stone age (without Neanderthals or Denisovans) for 350 years on a mostly huneter gatherer basis : while Noah was a husbandman, a farmer, more precisely a vineyard owner, he was probably only doing prototypes on small scales of later agriculture. The earliest wine we have archaeologically found is from after Babel. One reason why hunting gathering was the thing was of course the Ice Age. And one reason for stone tools and wood and bone tools was, ores had not been refound yet.

Comes the Younger Dryas, around the death of Noah, and a milder climate allowing Agriculture around the time of Babel (Göbekli Tepe), a k a pre-pottery Neolithic.

After Peleg was born 401 after the Flood, Babel (göbekli Tepe) ends, and only after that do we get a New Bronze Age and a New Iron Age, not Tubal Cain's, but now in separate millennia.

The New Bronze age is preceded by the Chalcolithic, which for En-Gedi - also known as Asason Tamar - ended in Genesis 14, when Abraham was between 75 and 86.

Age -		Carbon date -		Real date
Pre-Flood Stone -		prior to 40 000 BP -		prior to 2957 BC
Post-Flood Old Stone -		ends 9600 BC -		ends 2607 BC
Post-Flood New Stone -		see above
New Bronze -		starts 3500 BC -		starts 1935 BC

Sorry if it comes off as nagging, but you asked for it, Robert Carter!/HGL

PS, Chalcolithic started in Belovode, on Rudnik mountain in Serbia, carbon date 5000 BC, real date 2153 BC, a bit more than a century before Abraham was born./HGL

Evolution is a Long Love Affair for Some French Intellectuals

In 10th grade or so, I was looking at a book that someone still at International Baccalaureate (if it was grade 11) or taking another English course in it (if it was still grade 10) or simply reading it for fun ... The Bridge over the River Kwai.

I could not wrap my reading habits around enjoying that book ... and today I am not too unhappy about it. You see, it is actually in French, Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï, and by one Pierre Boulle, full name Pierre François Marie Louis Boulle (20 February 1912 – 30 January 1994). His other ultrafamous (even more so) book was Planet of the Apes. Published in 1963, made into a film in the US in 1968 ...

Back in 1986, I met one Tom Zimmer, a Catholic vagabond in Rome, back then, both "prayer warrior" as some would call it and also essay writer - published on the charity of benefactors who admired his work. He gave me an update folder and Hope 84 and sent me more update folders. In one of the publications, there was this about Planet of the Apes, either Our Lady hates it or God hates it. Whichever statement was his wording, arguably both do.

Obviously, Pierre Boule was not a musician, or he would have seen the problem I mentioned in previous essay here - Soul, Anatomy, Speech - and the fact he was an apostate Catholic gone agnostic illustrates Faulhaber's (the cardinal's) dictum: "incredible how much you have to be credulous of in order to be an incredulous unbeliever!"

Pierre Boule wrote a book lot more fiction than science, this book of science fiction.

But some French intellectuals are still not over this love affair with lies and nonsense .../HGL

PS From wiki on the novel:

Cornélius, an archaeologist, excavates an ancient human city. An unconscious human lab subject recites from racial memory the events that led to the fall of human civilization: humans tamed apes and eventually used them as servants. As apes learned to talk, a cerebral laziness took hold of the humans. Apes gradually took over human homes, driving the humans into camps outside of the cities. In the final memory, apes attacked the last human camp, carrying only whips.

As apes learned to talk, ... no, they definitely didn't!/HGL

Soul, Anatomy, Speech

Can any anatomy embody a human soul?

Can you take a ... pig? ... being God omnipotent, insert a human soul, and hey presto, it can communicate in language as humans do, even if the accent is somewhat oink oink?

In that case, God would have to alter the laws that govern the relations from sound production to sound, and from ear anatomy to hearing.

Thomas Bailey*

@Hans-Georg Lundahl right and ours is the ONLY possible physical design that would befit a soul? Cmon now, that's just ridiculous. Besides, our physical design would be pointless without one, we'd just be another animal. It's not our physical design that separates us from Chimps.

From a debate under my comments on a Fr. Gregory Pine video on Pints with Aquinas.

But didn't Animal Farm feature a talking pig? Yes, but it's allegory - the animal bodies are standins for real faces, like if you were having a drama referred to be screen names like "Donald Duck" or "Mickey Mouse" ...

But didn't C. S. Lewis (who liked Animal Farm) also have talking animals?

Yes, and as he knew a thing or two about music, he also made a rationalisation. A Narnian talking animal is NOT the anatomy the animal kind has in this world plus a human soul. C. S. Lewis made it clear. When Aslan chose couple after couple, they went away from the rest of the type and followed Him - and He talked to them, telling them to be talking beasts. At one of these moments, they changed in anatomy. Hares and hedgehogs became bigger, elephants and elks smaller. At the same occasion one must presume they changed speech and hearing as well as brain anatomy and FOXP2 gene.

If one of Maugrim's wolves had been sent to our world, and been shot under circumstances demanding a scalpelled examination by a vet, the vet would have been very surprised at how the glottis and other articulatory region anatomy looked.

Now, here is the reason. A flute cannot go on changing between two notes very quickly for as long as a violin can - because the flutist does it breathing, the violinist with an arm, fatigue isn't suffocation. A flute can play one note at a time, a violin two (neighbouring strings) and a guitar up to all six strings if each has a note fitting into a chord (meaning some of the strings need a left hand finger on a fret). A flute - or guitar - could hardly imitate a violin glissando correctly, and neither a guitar nor a violin could imitate a flutist doing a Flatterzunge ... (pronouncing an Italian R while blowing into the flute).

Flutes, oboes, clarinettes, bassoons, even trumpets and tubas : all of these are wind instruments, and all of them sound different, even when playing the same notes. On big church organs, you can combine the different types of sound by pulling out or pushing back in "registers" - and the organ that can imitate each, is built different from all of them.

When the organ registers have some claiming to imitate violins, that's more approximative.

The human capacity to pronounce vowels very different from each other in "sound" - like having "formants" at different pitches - is very like an organ's capacity to do a flute or a clarinette, but superior.

The human capacity to pronounce different consonants is like an instrument doing the special effects of different instruments - we can even do a Flatterzunge, if our R phoneme is pronounced with the Italian R allophone!

All this is necessary, if not a combination of all these (half would suffice) at least around the same order of magnitude.

A bestial repertoir of sounds, any beast, is between one and two orders of magnitude smaller.

Sounds are no good for communication if not heard. You want to listen to a heartbeat, you use a sthetoscope, not the microphone you hold out to someone you are interviewing (never mind why you would need a microphone to hear him in the first place, the microphone could not catch the heartbeats).

And the human ear is to some other beasts' ears (notably chimps'), like sthetoscope to mike.

So, no, the human could not communicate in a chimp's body as in a human body. And probably the chimps brain would, I will not say obliterate the human rationality, but considerably warp it, especially about language, as lacking the areas known as Broca and Wernicke. If drugs can warp your rationality just by a changed brain state, what would changed brain anatomy do?

But what if the human anatomy had evolved prior to the gift of human soul? I am afraid, a chimp soul in a human body would be quite as lost. Human hyoids have no hooks, chimp hyoids have hooks. Human hyoids are stabilising the movements of the tongue, chimp hyoids attach movements of the tongue to amplification and distortion in air bags. A chimp dominant male in a human body (never mind the brain again!) would feel very lost as to why he couldn't shriek to his normal amplitude. The first ape to loose such hooks and airbags between Australopithecus and Man (assuming the paradigm, just to refute it) would be at an evolutionary disadvantage, precisely as if he had lost a leg or an arm.

How do evolutionists get around this?

Aren't they aware that human bodies are built for human communication, chimp and autralopithecine bodies for chimp and australopithecine communication?

Oh, they are. Their solution is, not "chimp to human" (that's a strawman) but "common ancestor to human" was a very gradual process for each side, mental / grammatical and physical equipment. But once you accept this, you have thrown out Christianity and the sharp divide between Man and Beast. Also, several things prove the gradual process impossible, none proves it possible, except the fact it is a postulate for Evolution believers.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Holy Martyrs Cyriac, Larg and Smaragd
8.VIII.2022

Sanctorum Martyrum Cyriaci Diaconi, Largi et Smaragdi, qui, cum aliis viginti Sociis, passi sunt decimo septimo Kalendas Aprilis. Eorum corpora, via Salaria a Joanne Presbytero sepulta, sanctus Marcellus Papa in praedium Lucinae, via Ostiensi, hoc die transtulit; quae postea, in Urbem delata, in Diaconia sanctae Mariae in via Lata fuerunt recondita.

Footnote
* See the post:
Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Fr. Gregory Pine OP attempts to talk about evolution - part 1
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2022/07/fr-gregory-pine-op-attempts-to-talk.html

A Reflection on Glossolalia

Just in Case ANYONE Confuses Young Earth Creationism with Megachurches · Or with JW's · A Catholic Creationist Cannot be Compared to a Catholic Doing Glossolalia · A Reflection on Glossolalia

I think I just understood how it could really be a gift from God, after last Sid Roth video I saw.

1) Sid Roth calls it "a personal prayer language" - it does not have the even same function as the type with prescriptions in Corinthians, where someone speaking a language he hasn't learned, or two of them, need to shut up while a second or third person (knowing or even better an inverse miracle) interprets what they say.

It would be impressive to a Gael, from the Gaeltacht, if I started to recite the Breastplate in Gaelic (I don't even know it in English, and my known facts about Gaelic is about getting pronunciation right and very little more) and if then another person who was known to be ignorant of Gaelic (both me and the other known so by the Gael) translating a non-standard, prose version of the Breastplate in his own words, in a language all three of us knew, English or French, for instance. That's the edification St. Paul talks about, and it's really edification IN CHURCH.

Like before a bishop, a priest, a deacon, who can then testify the Gael converted because he saw me speaking Gaelic.

Sid Roth talks about something else. You want to pray openly, so as to avoid distractions. You want to pray loudly, so as to avoid interior distractions. You want to pray loudly so as to be confident before God. But praying loudly is de facto also praying before other men. And as confident as you are about your exact prayer before God, as shy you are about it before men (well, the little girl who prayed to Jesus to heal a heart wasn't, unlike Moses who asked for a spokesman, she didn't have long social experience). So, God gives you a means to move your lips in prayer, but not in muteness, you do that, the other guys around (who aren't exactly Christians all of the time) don't know your very personal prayer, and the actual syllables you speak vocally aren't what matters most, they actually basically help you to shut off the other people and concentrate only on God. In medical terms, God allows you to use the alpha state for this aspect of personal prayer.

Asuza Street actually isn't a Church, the New Testament temple and priesthood, it's kind of a "training ground" for all or any spiritual battles one may have to go through in more serious situations.

Need to pray "in a private prayer language" in a Commie prison, when you tried to smuggle a Bible and got caught? Well, maybe train that in Asuza Street first.

As Asuza Street isn't a Church, the words of St. Paul are not applicable.

Police candidates don't shoot at targets on parades before the Prefect of Paris on July 14 (typically). They do shoot at targets when doing gun training.

Imagining the words of St. Paul to apply to Asuza street is like imagining the gun training needs to look like a parade.

2) I have actually just described the Rosary.

Imagine St. Bridget had an itch in certain parts while Ulf Gudmarsson was away and wanted to pray for this to cease. She being in a room with other people. God could put her in the kind of trance called a rapture or she could (partly that) put herself in a trance by praying the Rosary. If she was in a rapture, she wouldn't see the other people any more. If she was in a lighter trance in a Rosary, she would disguise the exact inner prayer she had from other men, by the outer sound of "Hell thigh Maria, thu full aff Naad" or "Ave Maria Gratia Plena" while obviously being exactly as candid and confident and few-words simple and direct before God as Christ required in Matthew 6:7.

Same thing would happen to someone in Asuza Street with a similar request and using the "private prayer language" ...

And if Lúcia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto had to pray the Rosary in a prison, in a country with Catholics oppressed by Freemasons, often as Atheist as Commies, where they were (unrealistically and abusively, but at their young age and lowest class education level they had inadequate grounds to dismiss it) threatened with death ... yeah, they needed a training ground too.

And while you pray the Rosary aloud together in Church buildings, you also do NOT do so during Holy Mass (St. Paul's "in Church" probably refers less to "inside hallowed buildings," which may have to be abandoned and changed during persecution, than to "at Holy Mass").

3) Pentecostalism is also named, as it so began "Asuza Street Revival"

Asuza Street is ... let me state the obvious : a Street.

A Revival is, a Reformation against the Church that came from a Reformation against the Church that came from a Reformation against Rome, or perhaps one generation more.

A street is a kind of Road. And "all roads lead to Rome" (the saying goes, and it was a fact about the road network in the Roman Empire - of which the US is kind of an avatar - as much as in France all roads lead to Paris).

I invite Sid Roth to consider, whatever "prayer language" he likes whether Asuza Street shall also "lead to Rome" (sweet home).

Would you get to Topeka where the Pope is being buried, he died August 2nd, a few days ago?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Our lady of Snows
5.VIII.2022

Romae, in Exquiliis, Dedicatio Basilicae sanctae Mariae ad Nives.