Mark 3: More recently, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been discovered -- an earlier Hebrew text than the late Hellenistic / early medieval Massoretic version -- and scholars have established that in many places the DSS agrees more closely with the LXX than the Massoretes.

R. Sungenis 3: But we're not arguing about "many places." We are arguing about Mal 4:2 only. If you have some evidence that "Thesbite" is the proper translation, and that all the Masoretic texts are wrong, and that Jerome was wrong, and that the Catholic Church was wrong in allowing Jerome to ignore the LXX in Mal 4:2, the please show me.

Mark 3: I am not arguing that one text or translation is "inspired" while the others are not, simply that we cannot make the assumption that the standard Hebrew text is the more accurate one. Furthermore, we must be open to God's work through the Church in passing on truth. Inspiration doesn't simply belong to the inspire authors, but to the Church which preserves and transmits the text from generation to generation.

R. Sungenis 3: If that is the case, Mark, then you just torpedoed your own ship, since the Church has decided to preserve "prophet" in Mal 4:2, not "Thesbite."

Mark 2: A most important example is the LXX use of "parthenos" (virgin) in Isaiah 7:14 where the hebrew texts have "almah" (young woman). Was St. Matthew, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrong when he quoted the "inaccurate" Septuagint rather than the "accurate" Hebrew in applying this prophecy to the virgin birth of Our Lord?

R. Sungenis 3: This is quite an elementary mistake, Mark. The word almah appears seven times in the Hebrew Old Testament (cf., Gn 24:43; Ex 2:8; Ps 68:25; Pr 30:19; Sg 1:3; 6:8; Is 7:14). None of the passages suggest that almah refers to a woman who is married or has had sexual relations. The usage of almah in Pr 30:19 also refers to a virgin. In this passage, "the way of a man with a maid (almah)," who is assumed to be a virgin since she is unmarried, is contrasted in the next verse, Pr 30:20, with an "adulterous woman (isha)" who is understood as married but having sexual relations with other men."

Mark 3: Pr. 30:19 could be understood to imply sexual relations. Pr. 30:20 is not necessarily a contrast, but could be a parallel. In any case, the Septuagint translators got it right. Later Jewish translators (the Aquila version, etc.) and countless Jewish, liberal, and agnostic exegetes have argued that they got it wrong. Don't you think this is a case of God working through the translators and the Church which preserved the texts, as well as the original prophet?

R. Sungenis 3: As for Prov 30:19-20, I'm not interested in "implications" or "could be's." If there is nothing definitive there for you, you don't have an argument. Besides, you missed the most important argument, which is that Genesis 24 uses both almah and bethulah in the same context referring to the same person. As for the LXX, where does the Church teach that "God works through translators" in any direct way? The Church teaches God inspired the original Hebrew, and that the LXX may or may not be correct. I hope you don't believe in the myth that God inspired the 72 translators of the LXX so that they all came out with the same version.

Mark 2: The point I am trying to make is that, regardless of whether Malachi originally wrote "Elijah the Tishbite" or "Elijah the prophet", the Holy Spirit has often used the LX translations and the interpretive traditions of the Church to draw deeper meaning out of the passages than a clinical, literal analysis of the texts would suggest. If we are to really understand what this passage, or any other passage of Scripture, means in a prophetic sense, we have to go beyond parsing the Greek and Hebrew and study how the text has been received and understood in the tradition of the Church.

R. Sungenis 2: The Holy Spirit didn't inspire the LXX, Mark, and neither did He inspire the Jewish interpretation of the passage. As for the "tradition of the Church," the fact remains that Chrysostom did not know Hebrew, and therefore couldn't even know what the original said. Jerome, which is the one key person representing our "tradition" in regards to judgments about the Hebrew and Greek texts, chose the word "prophet" and rejected the word "Thesbite." THAT is our tradition, Mark, since every other person who followed in Church history used the Vulgate and read "Heliam prophetam" not "Elion ton Thesbiten."

Mark 3: We have seen that the Glossa Ordinaria passed on the other version. And of course, every scholar in the Eastern Church would have continued to use the LXX.

R. Sungenis 3: Since when is the GO our authority, Mark? Did the Council of Trent authorize the GO or the Vulgate as our official translation? Did Leo tell us to go to the original Hebrew of the Old Testament or to prefer the LXX?

Mark 2: This is a general difficulty I have with your exegesis of Romans 11:25-27: you are very keen to show that the grammatical structure of the passage could support your interpretation of the text as denying that it refers to future end times events. But the question is not simply what the grammatical structure of the Greek suggests, but how the text is understood according to the analogia fidei.

R. Sungenis 2: As I explained quite thoroughly above in the analysis of all the "analogy of faith" you brought forward, it is a best equivocal.

Mark 3: It may be equivocal, in that there are minority views and there is the possibility of other interpretations, but it is a considerable harmony to this view. There is a harmony with other passages in the Old and new testaments, and a harmony of patristic witnesses. Interpretation according to the analogy of faith means interpreting texts harmoniously with each other, Church tradition, and Catholic doctrine. I believe that the interpretation of Romans 11:25-27 as implying a future conversion of the Jews at the end times is the most obvious way to read this passage in accordance with the analogy of faith.

R. Sungenis 3: You can "think" it all you want, Mark, but you haven't proven it by any stretch of the imagination. There is much more speculation than there is "harmony" in the witnesses. For that matter, you haven't even attempted to exegete the biblical text in any detail, rather, you just keep proof-texting Romans 11:25-27 as if just citing it is somehow going to prove your point.

Mark 2: That is why I put more "stock" in St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom's exegesis according to the Church's traditional understanding than I do in your exegesis based on strict attention to the Greek text.

R. Sungenis 2: Neither Augustine nor Chrysostom "exegeted" Romans 11:25-26. They simply referred to the text. Even at that, Augustine's view is equivocal. As for my "exegesis based on strict attention to the Greek text," you can dismiss it if you wish, Mark, but the Greek text is the inspired and inerrant word of God. Unless you can show a viable and provable alternative to the Greek text, then I'm afraid you don't have much of a case.

Mark 3: As I have said, scientific exegesis, determining the original texts, parsing the grammar, etc., is a very modern way of reading Scripture.

R. Sungenis 3: I suggest you read Leo XIII's encyclical on biblical interpretation before you start making your accusations about "modern way of reading Scripture," Mark.

Mark 3: Traditionally, the Church has read Scripture with an eye to the allegorical meaning. And the "literal" meaning was not understood as a "literalist" interpretation, but as a surface level, common sense interpretation. A common sense interpretation of Romans 11:25-26 certainly sounds like all Israel being saved in 11:26 is an event that follows the fullness of the Gentiles coming in 11:25 chronologically.

Your strict construction of the grammar shows that there may be another possibility, but it hardly negates that surface level meaning that apparently almost everybody who has read this text for 2000 years has understood.

R. Sungenis 3: I don't know what the "allegorical meaning" has to do with this discussion. As for "common sense interpretation of Romans 11:25-26" that "certainly sounds like all Israel being saved," if you claim that this is the plain reading of the text, then I will hold you to it. If you don't believe "all Israel" refers to all the Jews from Abraham to the end of time who will be saved, but instead think that it refers to some future time at or near the end of time, then the plain reading of the text will also require you to interpret "all Israel" as referring to every last Jew in that future time period. "All" Israel does not mean a "vast majority" or a "significant amount," or anything less than every Jew.

Apparently, the only one to see this requirement in a futuristic interpretation is Aquinas (yet Innocent III, Martin V disagreed with him). It is precisely because of this requirement that the futuristic view doesn't make sense, since it requires an unprecedented conversion of Jews that was not even true when they were the apple of God's eye in the OT! At no time in their history was their ever such a massive conversion. At each instance there was only a remnant who were saved. And the irony is that the interpretation that there will be such a massive conversion is all based on one obscure verse in Romans 11 that has several possible interpretations to its words. So if you want to go with the "common sense" or "plain sense" of the text, Mark, then please explain to me how you avoid the plain meaning of the word "all." At least my interpretation is faithful to what that word means.

Mark 3: More generally, as Newman warns us, we run the risk of error if we rely overly on the literal sense of Scripture, which he saw infesting the Protestant Church of his day. In The Arians of the Fourth Century, Newman writes of the heresy ridden Church of Antioch:

"[T]he immediate source of that fertility in heresy, which is the unhappy distinction of the Syrian Church, was its celebrated Exegetical School. The history of that school is summed up in the broad characteristic fact, on the one hand that it devoted itself to the literal and critical interpretation of Scripture, and on the other that it gave rise first to the Arian and then to the Nestorian heresy. In all ages of the Church, her teachers have shown a disinclination to confine themselves to the mere literal interpretation of Scripture. Her most subtle and powerful method of proof, whether in ancient or modern times, is the mystical sense, which is so frequently used in doctrinal controversy as on many occasions to supersede any other. In the early centuries we find this method of interpretation to be the very ground for receiving as revealed the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Whether we betake ourselves to the Ante-Nicene writers or the Nicene, certain texts will meet us, which do not obviously refer to that doctrine, yet are put forward as palmary proofs of it. {405} On the other hand, if evidence be wanted of the connexion of heterodoxy and biblical criticism in that age, it is found in the fact that, not long after their contemporaneous appearance in Syria, they are found combined in the person of Theodore of Heraclea, so called from the place both of his birth and his bishoprick, an able commentator and an active enemy of St. Athanasius, though a Thracian unconnected except by sympathy with the Patriarchate of Antioch. The case had been the same in a still earlier age;"the Jews clung to the literal sense of the Old Testament and rejected the Gospel; the Christian Apologists proved its divinity by means of the allegorical. The formal connexion of this mode of interpretation with Christian theology is noticed by Porphyry, who speaks of Origen and others as borrowing it from heathen philosophy, both in explanation of the Old Testament and in defence of their own doctrine. It may almost be laid down as an historical fact that the mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together."

In An Essay on the Development of Doctrine, Newman takes up the point again:

"[M]ystical interpretation of Holy Scripture" [is] one of the characteristic conditions or principles on which the teaching of the Church has ever proceeded.

[T]his has been the doctrine of all ages of the Church, as is shown by the disinclination of her teachers to confine themselves to the mere literal interpretation of Scripture. Her most subtle and powerful method of proof, whether in ancient or modern times, is the mystical sense, which is so frequently used in doctrinal controversy as on many occasions to supersede any other. Thus the Council of Trent appeals to the peace-offering spoken of in Malachi in proof of the Eucharistic Sacrifice; to the water and blood issuing from our Lord's side, and to the mention of "waters" in the Apocalypse, in admonishing on the subject of the mixture of water with the wine in the Oblation. Thus Bellarmine defends Monastic celibacy by our Lord's words in Matthew xix., and refers to 'We went through fire and water;' &c., in the Psalm, as an argument for Purgatory; and these, as is plain, are but specimens of a rule. Now, on turning to primitive controversy, we find this method of interpretation to be the very basis of the proof of the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Whether we betake ourselves to the Ante-Nicene writers or the Nicene, certain texts will meet us, which do not obviously refer to that doctrine, yet are put forward as palmary proofs of it. Such are, in respect of our Lord's divinity, 'My heart is inditing of a good matter,' or 'has burst forth with a good Word;' 'he Lord made' or 'possessed Me in the beginning of His ways;' 'I was with Him, in whom He delighted;' 'In Thy Light shall we see Light;' 'Who shall declare His generation?' 'She is the Breath of the Power of God;' and 'His Eternal Power and Godhead.'"

Be careful that in your grammatical parsing of the text and sticking to the strict literal sense that you don't willy nilly throw out valuable Church traditions that have found apostolic teaching confirmed in apparently unrelated passages of Scripture.

R. Sungenis 3: After you read Pope Leo XIII's treatise on interpreting Scripture in its "literal and obvious sense," then also realize that I didn't throw out any "valuable Church tradition," since there isn't one to speak of. When you have Aquinas saying "universal" and Pope Martin V says "remnant," and Lapide saying "Elijah" and someone else saying "Enoch," and a host of other divergent interpretations, you don't have a unanimity, Mark, you have your own wishful thinking on this subject.

R. Sungenis 2: One final note, Mark, is that when it comes to prophecy, there really is no one view espoused by the Church. That is precisely why you see such a divergence of opinion and equivocation among even the witnesses you bring forward.

Mark 3: yes, I agree. There is no infallible interpretation of this text proposed as a de fide belief. There is a considerable witness in the tradition, however, to the interpretation of this text.

Robert Sungenis 2: Nevertheless, a universal conversion would simply be totally adverse to everything God has ever done with regard to Jews and Gentiles. Ever since the beginning of time, there have only been a percentage of the world's people who have sought and remained with the Lord. From Abel and Noah, to the time Israel entered Canaan when only two of the original group that left Egypt remained faithful, to the time of David, there was only a remnant of Jews who believed, even in their glory years. God simply does not do "universal" conversions. He does not coerce people to believe in Him on massive scales or somehow bend the wills of all a particular people in spite of their obstinance. That has never been His way. The constant theme in Scripture is that only a remnant of people will turn to Him out of the free will God gave them.

St. Paul says the same of the Jews in Romans 11:23. He says: "And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again."

Notice that their conversion is based on "IF they do not continue in their unbelief" God will graft them in. It is not that God somehow sprinkles some pixie dust on them so that all their wills are irresistibly drawn to God at some future time. Rather, the constant message of Scripture is that God is saving Jews who bend the knee to Him now, and has always been doing so, according to His promise to Abraham, and the sum total of all those will be the "all Israel" who is saved.

Mark 3: I would accept that this future conversion does not imply a loss of free will, or necessarily imply a unanimous conversion. But there have been large scale conversions of whole nations.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9