Editor’s note: This is Part I in a series of essays on Dei Verbum and the Second Vatican Council.
While much has been written contrasting the documents of Vatican II with perennial Catholic teachings, comparatively little has been devoted to what ought to be, second to Lumen Gentium, the most theologically important and authoritative conciliar document: The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, or Dei Verbum.
The original conciliar schema on revelation, De Fontibus, was removed from the agenda by John XXIII in 1962 in response to an outcry by the liberal wing of the Cardinals. It was handed over to a special theological commission of mixed persuasions in order to be rewritten. After a tortured process of further editing by a liberal-majority sub-commission and many rounds of voting by the Plenary Assembly, the final draft was approved and proclaimed in 1965. 1
The aim of this series is to examine the changes made to the text which represent a rupture from Catholic tradition. The first point to be examined on which Dei Verbum departs from the tradition is the authorship of the Gospels, especially those of the Apostles Matthew and John.
The Traditional teaching
The constant and unanimous tradition of the Church has always taught that the Gospels, in their entirety, were written exclusively by those Saints whose names they bear.  Particularly relevant in this regard are the three decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission on the authorship of the Gospels under Pope St. Pius X. Solemnly promulgated in Acta Apostolica Sedis, and enforced by an apostolic letter as binding in conscience under pain of grave sin, these decrees engage the repeated use of the Pope’s ordinary magisterium, “of which,” Pius XII writes, “it is true to say: “He who heareth you, heareth me.” While issues that such decrees leave open may be settled later, those that they give a judgement on cannot be reopened.
The Commission’s 1907 decree on the authorship of the Gospel of John teaches that “the constant, universal and solemn tradition of the Church” holds this Gospel to be written by the Apostle John “and no other.”
The Commission’s 1911 decree on the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew teaches that “the universal and constant consent of the Church from the first centuries” holds the Apostle Matthew as the sole author of this Gospel, and condemns the opinion that an anonymous author later used sources from St. Matthew to edit and compile this Gospel.
The Commission also issued a decree in 1912 affirming the same points for the Gospels of Mark and Luke.
De Fontibus admirably and unequivocally upheld these teachings. The relevant passage reads:
“Always and everywhere, and without any doubt, the Church of God has believed and still believes that the four Gospels had an apostolic origin; and it has constantly held and still holds that their human authors were those men whose names are in the canon: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the one whom Jesus loved.”
Dei Verbum’s break with Tradition
The equivalent passage from Dei Verbum Chapter V reads differently:
The Dispatch
“The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four Gospels are of apostolic origin. For what the Apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ, afterwards they themselves and apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, handed on to us in writing: the foundation of faith, namely, the fourfold Gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”
The first notable change is the addition of the words “and apostolic men.” Who does this pertain to? One may plausibly suggest that this term was simply added to describe St. Luke and St. Mark. Tertullian used this term to describe how, while not properly called Apostles, St. Luke and St. Mark still wrote with Apostolic authority, having received dictation directly from the Apostles.
However, this term becomes troubling in the context of another change to the text: the evangelists are no longer unequivocally identified as the human authors of the Gospels, which are simply handed on “according to” them. These “apostolic men” could therefore technically include any number of anonymous editors and redactors who constructed the Gospels, even those of Matthew and John, using the original Apostolic testimonies.
Ratzinger endorsed the rupture
To know if it was the intention of the Council fathers to allow for such opinions, we must look to their own testimonies. Commenting on the place in Chapter II where this term first appears, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, a peritus at the Council who contributed to the text of Dei Verbum, explains:
“It must also be pointed out that at the end, when the origin of Scripture is mentioned, ‘apostolic men’ are purposely mentioned as well as the Apostles, in order to keep open the question of the authorship of the Gospels (cf. Chapter IV 2 of the Constitution)” (emphasis added). 3
As prefect of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” Ratzinger later confirmed this intention by claiming that the decrees of the Biblical Commission were meant merely as temporary pastoral admonitions that had since been “superseded.” Of course, this claim is in no way substantiated either by the language of the decrees themselves nor by St. Pius X’s mode of promulgating and defending them.
Read more: Msgr. Joseph Fenton’s diary on Vatican II has been fully digitized
Ratzinger continued to take full advantage of this change in teaching. As “Benedict XVI”, he argued that the Gospel of John was not directly written by St. John, but by a later anonymous writer who made use of St. John’s original testimony. 4
Fr. Béda Rigaux, another peritus and co-author of Dei Verbum, confirms that the statement directly linking the Apostles to the final drafts of the Gospels was intentionally removed from the conciliar document. He writes that De Fontibus “required complete revision” because it “contained formulations that can hardly be regarded as matters of settled fact: e.g. that the Church has always held to the view, and does so, still that the human authors of the Gospels are those men whose names the Gospels bear: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.” 5 To explain why this formulation needed correction, he quotes the liberal Bible scholar Fr. Pierre Grelot:
“It is often assumed in criticism that the first Gospel was edited by a Christian catechist, who was not necessarily St. Matthew, and that the disciples of St. John had an active share in the final version of the fourth Gospel (cf. the postscript to St. John’s Gospel, 21:24). The true connection of a text with a particular man in the framework of a tradition should not be confused with literary authorship in the narrow sense in which we use the word today.” 6
In other words, the intention was to permit the exact opinions that St. Pius X had condemned, namely that the evangelists, especially St. Matthew and St. John, were not the sole and immediate authors of their entire Gospels, and that later authors had constructed the final drafts.
Though this point of rupture may seem smaller than others found in the document, it nevertheless provides a clear illustration of the purpose behind Dei Verbum: to depart from the Catholic tradition on Sacred Scripture.
- Ratzinger, in Vorgrimler et al., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. III (Herder & Herder, 1969), pp. 159-164. ↩︎
- Ratzinger evidently meant to cite Chapter V here, not IV. ↩︎
- Ratzinger, in Vorgrimler et al., Op. Cit., p. 182. ↩︎
- Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth (Doubleday, 2007), Ch. 8, Introduction ↩︎
- Rigaux, in Vorgrimler et al., Op. Cit., p. 252. ↩︎
- Rigaux, in Vorgrimler et al., Op. Cit., p. 256. ↩︎
