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