When Jerome Turns the Argument Back on Rome

Denzinger part 75

The Authority Scripture Never Gives the Magisterium

Denzinger 2186, taken from Benedict XV’s encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus of September 15, 1920, deserves unusually close attention because the text does something profoundly significant. It invokes Jerome as one of the greatest witnesses to the supreme authority and truth of Scripture, quotes him as a defender of what is written against what is not written, and then almost immediately places the Roman magisterium in a position from which disagreement with ecclesiastical judgment itself becomes evidence of intellectual pride. The tension is difficult to miss. If Jerome is being summoned as a witness because he directs controversy back to the written Word of God, then Jerome’s own principle must also be permitted to test the later doctrines and authority claims of the institution invoking his name.

The issue in Denzinger 2186 is formally the inerrancy of Scripture, and that should be acknowledged from the outset. Benedict XV is defending the truthfulness of the biblical writings against theories that would confine inspiration and inerrancy only to explicitly religious material. There is much in that concern that can be defended directly from Scripture. The problem arises when the argument moves from the authority of the inspired Scriptures to the authority of councils, pontiffs, Fathers, and the magisterium, as though the latter possesses an authority of the same unquestionable character as the former. Scripture itself requires the first claim.

It does not automatically establish the second.

Denzinger 2186 begins:

“By the doctrine of Jerome those statements are well confirmed and illustrated by which Our predecessor, Leo XIII, solemnly declared the ancient and constant faith of the Church in the absolute immunity of Scriptures from any errors.”

It then appeals to Leo XIII’s earlier use of “the definitions of the Councils of Florence and Trent, confirmed in the Vatican Synod.”

This is precisely where the order of authority must be examined. Florence is not an apostle. Trent is not an apostle. Vatican I is not an apostle. Leo XIII is not an apostle. Benedict XV is not an apostle. Their statements may be studied as historical ecclesiastical testimony, but no New Testament writer tells Christians that later councils of bishops or the bishop of Rome will become the divinely guaranteed measure by which the truth of revelation is finally determined. The fact that one council repeats another council does not turn an ecclesiastical statement into apostolic revelation. Repetition can demonstrate continuity within an institution; it cannot by itself demonstrate divine origin.

The doctrine that Scripture is breathed out by God does not need Florence, Trent, or Vatican I to make it true. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16–17:

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.”

Peter writes that prophecy came when “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” in 2 Peter 1:21. Christ Himself says in John 10:35 that “the scripture cannot be broken.” The prophets repeatedly introduce revelation with expressions such as “the word of the LORD came,” while the apostles treat the writings of Scripture as possessing divine authority.

The authority originates in God.

The Church receives the Scriptures; it does not manufacture their divine authority.

That distinction becomes even more important because Benedict XV deliberately bases his argument upon Jerome. In Spiritus Paraclitus, Benedict describes Jerome as a man who appealed repeatedly to Scripture in controversy because he believed biblical testimony supplied “solid and irrefutable arguments.” The encyclical itself then quotes Jerome’s famous words from Against Helvidius:

“Just as we do not deny these things which are written, so do we repudiate things that are not written.”

Jerome continues:

“That God was born of a Virgin we believe, because we read it. That Mary was married after His birth we do not believe because we do not read it.”

These words appear in chapter 21 of Jerome’s Against Helvidius. Benedict XV quotes them approvingly precisely while praising Jerome’s appeal to Scripture as the decisive weapon of theological controversy.

This statement must not be made to say more historically than Jerome himself meant. Jerome certainly believed in Mary’s perpetual virginity, and Against Helvidius was written specifically to defend it. He was not advocating a later Protestant formulation of sola Scriptura. Yet that historical qualification does not remove the force of the principle Benedict himself chose to quote. Jerome’s words still establish a remarkably demanding rule: what is positively asserted concerning sacred matters must not be invented merely because it is possible. “We do reject what is not written.” Possibility is not revelation. Ecclesiastical preference is not revelation. Pious inference is not automatically revelation.

Indeed, Jerome immediately warns against making mere possibility a standard of theological judgment. That point is devastatingly important when later dogmas are considered. The question is not simply whether a doctrine can be harmonized with Scripture after it has been defined. The question is whether the apostles actually taught it.

There is an even more remarkable passage later in Spiritus Paraclitus which should be placed beside Denzinger 2186 because Benedict XV himself supplies, through Jerome, one of the strongest principles by which later Roman doctrine may be tested. Jerome insists that the task of the interpreter is not to make Scripture say what an ecclesiastical system requires it to say, but to discover what the inspired writer actually intended. Benedict quotes him:

“The real function of a commentator is to set forth not what he himself would like his author to mean, but what he really does mean.”

Jerome then gives an even graver warning:

“It is dangerous to speak in the Church, lest through some faulty interpretation we make Christ’s Gospel into man’s Gospel.”

Yet his strongest words come when he rebukes teachers who collect biblical texts in order to support conclusions they have already decided upon. Such men, he says, do not concern themselves sufficiently with discovering “what the Prophets and Apostles really meant,” but instead string texts together in support of their predetermined interpretation and “compel the reluctant Scripture to yield the meaning one wants.”

This principle should be written in enormous letters across any discussion of later dogmatic development. Jerome does not tell the interpreter first to discover what Florence taught, what Trent defined, what Vatican I required, or what a later pontiff pronounced and then search Scripture for ways of defending it. His methodological principle runs in the opposite direction. The interpreter must determine what the Prophet, Evangelist, or Apostle actually meant.

That distinction is decisive.

If the apostles never taught that the bishop of Rome possesses universal jurisdiction over every Christian, then later readings of Matthew 16 cannot simply be required to produce papal supremacy because Vatican I has already defined it. If the apostles never taught an infallible Roman episcopal office, scattered texts concerning Peter cannot be compelled to yield that doctrine merely because the institutional conclusion has already been reached. If no apostle taught Mary’s immaculate conception or bodily assumption, biblical descriptions such as “highly favoured,” the woman clothed with the sun, the ark, the queen, or the woman of Genesis 3 cannot legitimately be made to bear a dogmatic weight which the inspired writers themselves never explicitly placed upon them.

Jerome’s warning becomes particularly penetrating concerning perpetual virginity because his own argument illustrates the danger of moving beyond what the text actually establishes. He wrote:

“As we do not deny what is written, so do we reject what is not written. We believe that God was born of the Virgin because we read it. That Mary entered marriage after childbirth we do not believe because we do not read it.”

The older translation says that Mary was “married after she brought forth,” but Jerome’s context shows that the issue is whether she subsequently entered ordinary consummated marital relations with Joseph. Jerome certainly believed that Mary remained perpetually virgin. Yet his argument establishes first only that Scripture does not explicitly state that Mary later had intercourse with Joseph. From that silence he proceeds to the stronger conclusion that she never did.

Those propositions must not be confused.

“Scripture does not say that Mary subsequently consummated her marriage” is a statement concerning the contents of Scripture.

“Mary certainly remained perpetually virgin throughout the whole of her life” is a positive historical and theological assertion.

The former does not logically prove the latter. Silence may prevent someone from asserting confidently that an event occurred, but silence by itself cannot establish the opposite event as divinely revealed truth.

Indeed, Jerome himself warns immediately against making mere possibility the standard of judgment. That warning cuts both ways. One cannot argue, “Mary could have had ordinary marital relations, therefore she did.” But neither can one argue, “Scripture does not record those relations, therefore God has revealed that she never had them.” In both cases an inference has been added to what the text expressly says.

This becomes much more serious when an inference later becomes dogma.

The New Testament explicitly teaches the virginal conception of Jesus Christ. Matthew states that Mary “was found with child of the Holy Ghost” before she and Joseph “came together,” and the angel tells Joseph, “that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 1:18, 20). Luke likewise records Mary asking, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” and the angel answering that the Holy Ghost would come upon her (Luke 1:34–35). These are direct apostolic claims. The virgin conception does not depend upon an ecclesiastical inference centuries later.

What is equally important is that the apostolic teaching on marriage does not ordinarily present permanent sexual abstinence between husband and wife as the expected condition of marriage. Paul tells married believers plainly in 1 Corinthians 7:5:

“Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”

Paul therefore recognizes temporary abstinence by mutual consent for a spiritual purpose, but he expressly adds, “and come together again.” The passage is not about Mary and Joseph specifically, and therefore it should not be made to prove more than it says. Nevertheless, it is highly relevant to the wider question because it shows what the apostolic writings actually teach concerning marriage: abstinence may occur “for a time,” but ordinary marital union is not treated as something impure or spiritually inferior which must permanently cease. Indeed, Paul warns that prolonged abstinence may expose the couple to temptation.

That makes the later claim of Mary’s perpetual virginity all the more significant. The New Testament explicitly reveals that Christ was conceived while Mary was a virgin; it does not explicitly reveal that Mary and Joseph thereafter remained permanently continent throughout their marriage. If lifelong abstinence within marriage is to be elevated from a possible historical circumstance into a doctrine concerning Mary which Christians are expected to confess, then that additional claim requires its own apostolic evidence. First Corinthians 7:5 cannot tell us what Mary and Joseph personally did, but it does show that the normal apostolic pattern of marriage was not perpetual abstinence.

The absence of any stated vow of perpetual virginity makes the question still more difficult. If Mary had already bound herself before God to lifelong virginity, why does the Gospel never mention such an extraordinary vow, and why does the angel instruct Joseph, “fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife” (Matthew 1:20)? Joseph then “did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife” (Matthew 1:24). Nothing in the angel’s command explains that this marriage was to remain permanently unconsummated, nor does Matthew say that Joseph was being asked to enter an exceptional lifelong continent marriage because Mary had previously sworn herself to perpetual virginity. Luke 1:34, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”, establishes Mary’s virginity at the time of the annunciation; it does not state that she had vowed never to know a man. If such a vow is necessary to explain the later doctrine, then the vow itself is another inference which must be supplied from outside the Gospel narrative.

The distinction remains crucial: the virgin conception is written; perpetual virginity after Christ’s birth must be inferred.

Nor does the New Testament suggest that marriage and the continuation of family lines somehow became inappropriate among Christ’s own relatives after His birth. Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 9:5, “Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?” Whatever precise view one takes of the identity of the “brethren of the Lord,” Paul plainly knows of men belonging to that family circle who married.

Early Christian testimony makes the point still more striking.

Eusebius, quoting Hegesippus, records that in the reign of Domitian the grandsons of Jude, whom he calls the Lord’s brother “according to the flesh,” were denounced because they belonged to the family of David and were related to Christ Himself. They were brought before Domitian and confessed that they were descendants of David. The Davidic family had therefore continued through marriage and children among the earthly relatives of Christ. That does not by itself prove that Mary and Joseph subsequently had children, but it does make the later idea that continued marital relations would somehow have been unfitting because of Christ’s birth much harder to sustain from apostolic Christianity. Why would the God who had preserved the Davidic line through generations of exile, persecution, war, captivity, and political upheaval regard the ordinary continuation of that family through lawful marriage as something intrinsically incompatible with holiness once Christ had been born?

Scripture never says that He did.

The surviving evidence points in the opposite direction: marriage remained honourable, the brethren of the Lord married, and the Davidic kindred of Christ continued to have descendants. What must still be demonstrated, therefore, is not that Mary and Joseph could have remained continent, which they certainly could, but that God revealed that they did, and that their permanent abstinence was a truth which the Church was authorised to require Christians to believe.

There is another historical circumstance which deserves attention, although it must be distinguished carefully from what can actually be proved. Luke places the birth of Christ against the background of an imperial registration ordered by Rome: “there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed” (Luke 2:1). He then specifically connects Joseph’s participation in that registration with his Davidic ancestry: “And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife” (Luke 2:4–5). Luke therefore presents Roman registration and the identification of Joseph’s Davidic lineage together in the very narrative of Christ’s birth.

This must not be misunderstood to mean that Rome invented Jewish genealogical record-keeping. Israel had maintained genealogies long before Roman occupation. Ezra records that certain men seeking recognition among the priesthood “sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but they were not found” (Ezra 2:62), and Nehemiah records the same practice (Nehemiah 7:64). Genealogical identity mattered for tribal inheritance, priestly descent, and, in the case of David’s house, the expectation of the promised king. What Rome introduced was its own imperial machinery of registration and taxation into a people for whom ancestry could already possess profound legal and theological significance.

What happened to those records in the first century is therefore historically intriguing.

Josephus says that he himself was able to establish his priestly ancestry from public records, demonstrating that public genealogical documentation was still known in his lifetime. Yet Josephus also describes the destruction of Jerusalem’s documentary repositories during the Jewish war. During the revolt, archives containing financial contracts were deliberately burned, and in the final Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 he records that the repository of the archives was itself set on fire as Roman forces burned and plundered the city.

The Temple was destroyed in the same catastrophe.

We therefore have solid historical evidence that Jerusalem possessed important public archives and that archival material disappeared in the destruction of the city, although we cannot demonstrate that every genealogical register of every Jewish family was kept in the Temple or that Rome deliberately destroyed the archives for the purpose of erasing Davidic descent.

The early Christian evidence makes the situation still more fascinating. Julius Africanus, whose explanation of the Gospel genealogies was preserved by Eusebius, reports a tradition that Hebrew genealogies had once been kept in public archives and that some families maintained their own private genealogical records. He specifically identifies among those who preserved such family memories the Desposyni, the relatives of the Saviour according to the flesh. Africanus even relates a tradition that Herod had earlier attempted to destroy public genealogical registers because of his own ancestry, although that particular claim must be treated cautiously because Josephus’ testimony that he later consulted public genealogical records shows that such records had certainly not all disappeared. What is particularly important, however, is Africanus’ assertion that members of Christ’s own extended family preserved genealogical information privately even when public records were lost or endangered.

This fits remarkably well with Hegesippus’ much earlier tradition, preserved by Eusebius, concerning the grandsons of Jude. Decades after the destruction of Jerusalem, under the emperor Domitian, these men could still be identified as belonging to “the family of David” and as relatives of Christ Himself. Domitian questioned them specifically concerning whether they were descendants of David, and according to Hegesippus they acknowledged that they were. The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 had therefore not erased knowledge of Christ’s Davidic kindred.

There is a striking historical sequence here. At the beginning of Christ’s earthly life, Luke records a Roman registration in which Joseph is identified specifically as belonging to “the house and lineage of David.” Within a generation, Jerusalem is devastated by Rome, the Temple is destroyed, and Josephus records the burning of the city’s archival repository. Yet toward the end of the first century another Roman emperor is still searching for descendants of David, and members of the earthly family of Christ are still being identified as belonging to precisely that line. Josephus himself confirms that public genealogical records existed, while Africanus later preserves the tradition that the relatives of Christ maintained genealogical information of their own.

None of this proves a deliberate Roman conspiracy to eradicate documentary evidence concerning the family of Jesus, and it would go beyond the surviving evidence to claim that it does. The destruction of Jerusalem was the result of war, and archives were among innumerable things destroyed with the city. But neither should the historical significance of those losses be ignored. The first century witnessed the imperial registration of a man explicitly identified by Luke as belonging to David’s house, the destruction of Jerusalem and many of its records, and then later imperial concern about surviving descendants of precisely that royal family.

The destruction of written material was hardly unknown in the ancient world. Libraries, archives, legal records, and religious writings could disappear through war, fire, political upheaval, or deliberate suppression; even the collections associated with the Library of Alexandria suffered repeated losses amid warfare and destruction, while later Roman persecution under Diocletian explicitly ordered Christian Scriptures to be surrendered and burned. The loss of documentary evidence in antiquity was therefore not an extraordinary possibility but a recurring historical reality.

Most importantly for the present discussion, the early testimony shows that the Davidic family did not simply vanish with the birth of Christ. People recognised as His earthly relatives continued to marry, produce descendants, preserve knowledge of their ancestry, and be known as members of David’s house long after the crucifixion and even after the destruction of Jerusalem. The historical evidence therefore gives no support to the idea that the sanctity of Christ’s birth somehow required the Davidic family itself to cease ordinary married life or procreation. On the contrary, the remarkable survival of Christ’s kindred is one of the very things the earliest post-apostolic historians took pains to record.

Yet this historical discussion ultimately brings the argument back to the same question Jerome himself raises: what is actually written? The loss of records, the survival of Davidic relatives, and the fragmentary nature of first-century documentation may help explain why not every detail of Christ’s earthly family can now be reconstructed with certainty, but none of these things supplies a missing apostolic statement that Mary remained perpetually virgin. Historical possibility cannot be converted into revealed doctrine. Where the evidence is incomplete, the proper response is caution, not dogmatic certainty. That is precisely why Jerome’s own rule becomes so important: the distinction must remain between what Scripture explicitly reveals and what later interpreters infer from its silence.

The New Testament never gives an equivalent statement saying that Mary remained sexually untouched for every remaining year of her earthly life.

That difference matters if Jerome’s own rule is taken seriously.

It matters even more because Benedict XV later quotes Jerome condemning interpreters who decide beforehand what a passage must mean and then force the biblical text to yield that conclusion. Jerome describes this as attempting to “compel the reluctant Scripture to yield the meaning one wants.”

That phrase should be applied consistently.

A Scripture should not be compelled to yield papal supremacy when the apostle did not state papal supremacy.

A Scripture should not be compelled to yield papal infallibility when the apostle did not state papal infallibility.

A Scripture should not be compelled to yield purgatory when the apostle did not state purgatory.

A Scripture should not be compelled to yield an ecclesiastical treasury of indulgences when Christ and His apostles never instituted one.

A Scripture should not be compelled to yield the Immaculate Conception or bodily Assumption of Mary when no apostolic author records either event as revealed fact.

Neither should Hebrews be compelled to yield a continuing sacerdotal order offering Christ sacrificially when its sustained argument places the priesthood, offering, mediation, entrance into the heavenly sanctuary, and continuing intercession in Christ Himself.

Jerome’s own test is therefore extraordinarily searching. The question is not what later theology can make a biblical passage signify after centuries of doctrinal development. The question is what the Prophet or Apostle actually meant.

That is precisely what Benedict XV says Jerome required.

And once that rule is accepted, the final court of examination cannot simply be the later doctrine which is itself under examination. The reader must return behind Florence, behind Trent, behind Vatican I, behind medieval scholastic development, and behind later papal definitions to the words of Christ and the apostolic witnesses themselves.

Jerome’s warning is therefore far more dangerous to an expanding dogmatic system than Spiritus Paraclitus appears to recognise. Do not turn Christ’s Gospel into man’s Gospel. Do not decide the conclusion first. Do not make Scripture carry meanings its authors never gave it. Above all, do not “compel the reluctant Scripture to yield the meaning one wants.”

Let the Scriptures speak before the institution speaks for them.

That passage from Jerome is probably one of the strongest additions available in the whole encyclical, because Benedict XV himself preserves it.

Jerome’s own argument concerning Mary illustrates the distinction. He says that he will not believe that Mary entered ordinary marital relations after Christ’s birth because he does not read it in Scripture. That is an argument against asserting what Scripture does not say. It is not the same thing as an explicit apostolic statement that Mary remained perpetually virgin until her death. Jerome believed that conclusion and constructed arguments for it, but the distinction between an interpretation and an explicit revelation remains. Matthew explicitly teaches the virginal conception of Christ. Luke explicitly teaches it. No New Testament passage comparably states, “Mary remained a virgin for the whole of her earthly life.” The later doctrine therefore requires inference and ecclesiastical tradition beyond an express apostolic declaration.

That becomes even more significant when the same Jerome is invoked by an institution that eventually required assent to dogmas which cannot simply be read from the apostolic writings.

Where, for example, is the apostolic text teaching that the bishop of Rome possesses universal jurisdiction over every Christian on earth? Where is the apostolic text stating that the Roman bishop, under defined conditions, possesses an infallible teaching charism which binds the whole Church? Vatican I formally defined papal primacy and papal infallibility in Pastor Aeternus in 1870, nearly eighteen centuries after Peter and Paul. Catholic sources themselves acknowledge that these two dogmas were formally defined at Vatican I.

Matthew 16:18–19 certainly records Christ speaking to Peter. That text deserves serious exegesis. Yet it does not say that Peter will have an endless succession of Roman bishops who inherit universal jurisdiction and an infallibility unknown to ordinary Christians. Nor does Acts portray Peter exercising monarchical jurisdiction over all apostles and churches. In Acts 15, the Jerusalem council involves apostles and elders, Peter speaks, Paul and Barnabas speak, James delivers the concluding judgment, and the final letter speaks corporately: “For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us” in Acts 15:28. The structure is not that of a later Vatican definition emanating from one Roman office.

Paul can even recount resisting Peter “to the face, because he was to be blamed” in Galatians 2:11. Whatever distinctions later theology makes between personal conduct and an ex cathedra definition, the New Testament itself does not pause to explain a doctrine of papal infallibility. That doctrinal machinery must be supplied from later theological development.

The same test applies to the Immaculate Conception. Pius IX solemnly defined it in Ineffabilis Deus in 1854. The doctrine states far more than the biblical fact that Mary was specially favoured by God. It makes a specific claim concerning the condition of Mary from the first instant of her conception. Yet there is no apostolic sentence saying that Mary, from the first instant of her conception, was preserved from every stain of original sin. The dogmatic definition comes from 1854, not from an identifiable apostolic decree recorded in the New Testament.

The Assumption makes the problem still more visible because it was not solemnly defined until 1950, thirty years after Spiritus Paraclitus. Pius XII defined that Mary, after completing her earthly life, “was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” The apostolic writings contain detailed testimony concerning Christ’s resurrection and ascension, including witnesses, appearances, locations, speeches, and theological explanation. They contain nothing remotely comparable concerning Mary’s bodily assumption. Munificentissimus Deus itself appeals to centuries of liturgical practice, theological reasoning, petitions, episcopal agreement, typology, and perceived harmony with other Marian doctrines before issuing the definition. That is historical doctrinal development, whatever theological judgment one ultimately makes about it.

Jerome’s principle therefore raises an unavoidable question. If “we do reject what is not written” is a worthy maxim when defending Christian truth, why does a doctrine absent as an explicit apostolic teaching later become something a Christian may be required to believe as divinely revealed?

The same question can be put to purgatory, indulgences, and the elaborate system of sacerdotal mediation that developed within Western Christianity. The New Testament certainly teaches discipline, elders, bishops, deacons, teaching, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, forgiveness, correction, and church order. What it does not show is Christ establishing after Calvary a class of Christian sacrificing priests whose distinctive office consists in sacramentally offering Him to God.

This point becomes especially difficult when Denzinger 2186 insists that inspiration extends “even to the individual words of the Bible.” If individual words matter, then the individual words used by the Holy Ghost in Hebrews matter enormously.

Hebrews does not describe Christian ministers as another sacrificing priesthood standing between Christ and His people. Instead, it directs the reader relentlessly to the unique priesthood of Christ.

Hebrews 5:4 says:

“And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.”

The passage immediately applies the priestly calling not to a future Roman sacerdotal order but to Christ:

“So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest.”

Hebrews 5:9–10 continues:

“And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.”

Hebrews 7 makes the contrast even sharper. The Levitical priests were many because death prevented them from continuing. Christ, however:

“because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.”

Then comes the consequence:

“Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.”

The believer comes to God by Him.

Hebrews does not add, “provided that another sacerdotal order continually mediates His sacrifice sacramentally.” The text goes instead to the completeness of Christ’s own priesthood:

“For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.”

Hebrews 7:27 says that Christ:

“needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.”

The subject and object of the offering are crucial. He offered up himself.

Before Hebrews reaches that summary, however, it makes another distinction which cannot be treated as incidental: Christ’s priesthood is established by the oath of God Himself. Hebrews 7:20–21 deliberately contrasts Him with the former priests:

“And inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest: (For those priests were made without an oath; but this with an oath by him that said unto him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec:)”

The contrast could hardly be clearer. The Levitical priests were appointed under the former order “without an oath,” but Christ is constituted priest through the solemn and irrevocable oath of God: “The Lord sware and will not repent.” Hebrews immediately draws the theological conclusion in verse 22: “By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament.” His priesthood therefore does not rest upon ecclesiastical succession, human ordination, inherited office, or institutional appointment. It rests upon the direct oath of God concerning His Son.

Hebrews 7:23–24 then explains why the old priesthood required succession at all: “they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death: But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.” The many priests belonged to an order in which death continually removed one priest and another had to take his place. Christ requires no successor because He “continueth ever.” His priesthood is therefore not merely superior in degree; it is different in permanence and foundation. God swore concerning Him that He would be “a priest for ever.”

Hebrews 7:28 makes the contrast explicit once again:

“For the law maketh men high priests which have infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for evermore.”

This verse deserves particular attention. Hebrews does not say that after Christ God instituted another earthly sacerdotal order to inherit His sacrificial function. It says that the law made mortal men high priests, “but the word of the oath” made “the Son” priest “for evermore.” The divine oath is attached to Christ, not to a later ecclesiastical priesthood. If an institution claims a sacrificing priesthood under the New Covenant, the question therefore becomes unavoidable: where is the corresponding divine oath by which God instituted that priesthood? Hebrews names the oath which establishes Christ. It gives no equivalent oath establishing a post-Calvary order of men who sacramentally offer Him.

This makes Hebrews 8:1 even more decisive, because after distinguishing the mortal priests from the Son, the priesthood without an oath from the priesthood established by God’s oath, and temporary succession from Christ’s everlasting priesthood, the writer announces:

“Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest.”

Not “we have an earthly succession of sacrificing priests.” We have such an high priest, Christ Himself, “who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.”

Hebrews 8:6 calls Christ “the mediator of a better covenant.” Hebrews 9:11 identifies Him as “an high priest of good things to come.”

Hebrews 9:12 says:

“Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”

Again, Christ acts. Christ enters. Christ offers. Christ obtains redemption.

Hebrews 9:14 says:

“How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”

And therefore, Hebrews 9:15 concludes:

“And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament.”

The relationship is explicit. Christ offered Himself through the eternal Spirit; for this cause He is the mediator of the new testament. The text does not distribute His mediatorial identity through an institutional sacerdotal class.

If Benedict XV is correct that inspiration reaches even the individual words, those words cannot be brushed aside when they become inconvenient to a later ecclesiastical system.

The New Testament word choices themselves deserve attention. Christian elders are called presbyteroi. Overseers are called episkopoi. Servants or ministers are called diakonoi. The New Testament uses sacrificial-priest terminology for Christ, for the Jewish priesthood, and spiritually for the people of God. Peter tells believers collectively:

“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices.”

Then in 1 Peter 2:9:

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood.”

The priesthood explicitly conferred upon the New Covenant people is the priesthood of the whole believing body under the unique High Priest. What cannot be demonstrated from the apostolic writings is a post-Calvary Christian order instituted to offer Christ sacrificially to the Father.

That absence becomes especially significant in a paragraph supposedly defending the importance of every word of Scripture.

Denzinger 2186 then changes direction:

“Although these words of Our predecessors leave no place for ambiguity or evasion, We must grieve, Venerable Brothers, that not only were there not lacking some among those outside the Church, but even among the sons of the Catholic Church, moreover—which wounds Our soul more severely—among the clergy itself and the teachers of the sacred disciplines, who relying proudly on their own judgment, either openly reject the magisterium of the Church on this subject or secretly oppose it.”

The wording must be examined carefully. Those who oppose the magisterium are described as “relying proudly on their own judgment.”

But disagreement with an ecclesiastical authority does not logically establish pride. A conclusion can be arrogant or humble regardless of whether it agrees with an institution. The apostles themselves command Christians to exercise discernment.

Paul writes:

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

The Bereans are praised in Acts 17:11 because:

“they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”

Notice the extraordinary situation. Paul, an actual apostle of Jesus Christ, preaches to them, and Luke praises them for testing what they hear by Scripture. If examining the teaching even of an apostolic preacher against Scripture is “noble,” then testing the claims of a twentieth-century magisterium against Scripture cannot simply be dismissed as proud private judgment.

The alternative to Roman magisterial infallibility is not the claim that every individual Christian possesses infallible interpretation. No Christian possesses infinite knowledge. Every human interpreter can err. Pastors can err. scholars can err. councils can err unless God has explicitly promised otherwise. Popes remain human beings. Inheriting an ecclesiastical office does not make a finite mind infinite.

Catholic theology itself does not claim that a pope is omniscient or incapable of every kind of error. Its claim is narrower: that under specified conditions he is preserved from error when defining doctrine concerning faith or morals for the whole Church. But even this narrower claim still requires divine authorization. It cannot prove itself. A later institution cannot establish its own infallibility merely by declaring that Christ gave it infallibility. The question remains: where did Christ or the apostles institute precisely that charism?

This is where the Holy Spirit becomes central.

Christ promises in John 14:26:

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things.”

In John 16:13:

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.”

Those promises have an immediate apostolic context and therefore must not simply be reduced to a claim that every believer’s private interpretation is automatically correct. Yet neither may they be transformed into a promise that centuries later one particular episcopal office will become the exclusive or infallible possessor of divine truth.

John later writes to believers in 1 John 2:27:

“But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you.”

He continues that the anointing “teacheth you of all things.” Paul similarly says in 1 Corinthians 2:12:

“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God.”

The New Testament therefore describes the Spirit dwelling within the people of God, teachers serving the people of God, apostles giving authoritative revelation, and believers testing teaching. It does not describe a situation in which the Holy Spirit’s teaching ministry is identified exclusively with submission to one later ecclesiastical magisterium.

There is therefore something rhetorically dangerous in calling opposition to the magisterium “proud” before the magisterium’s own claim to final authority has been demonstrated from apostolic revelation. The accusation can become self-sealing: the magisterium claims authority, a Christian asks where Scripture grants that authority, and the very act of questioning is then offered as evidence of pride. That does not prove the authority claim. It protects it from examination.

Jerome himself is an awkward patron for such a method because Benedict XV records another statement from him:

“Neither is the error of parents nor ancestors to be followed, but the authority of the Scriptures and the will of God which teaches.”

That statement appears in Spiritus Paraclitus itself. Benedict therefore presents Jerome not merely as a defender of biblical inspiration but as a man who explicitly places inherited human religious opinion beneath Scripture.

The principle is biblical. Christ rebuked religious leaders precisely when inherited tradition was allowed to override the commandment of God:

“Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.”

Mark 7:13 concludes:

“Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition.”

The issue is not whether all tradition is evil. Paul himself speaks positively of apostolic traditions delivered to the churches. The question is whether a later tradition can be proven to be apostolic. Calling something “tradition” does not establish that Peter, Paul, John, James, or Christ taught it.

Denzinger 2186 continues by approving scholarship within defined boundaries:

“Indeed, We approve the plan of those who, to extricate themselves and others from the difficulties of the Sacred Codex, in order to eliminate these difficulties, rely on all the aids of scholarship and literary criticism, and investigate new avenues and methods of research; but they will wander pitifully from their purpose, if they disregard the precepts of Our predecessor and pass beyond certain limits and bounds which the Fathers have set.”

Again, the question is not whether the Fathers deserve respect. They do. They preserve extraordinarily valuable evidence concerning early Christian interpretation, controversy, language, worship, and theological development. Jerome himself is indispensable to the history of biblical interpretation.

But “the Fathers have set” boundaries is not equivalent to “God has set” boundaries.

Benedict attaches Proverbs 22:28:

“Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.”

Yet in its immediate biblical setting this proverb concerns the removal of an inherited boundary marker. It is not a divine institution of patristic interpretive infallibility. Applying it to theological boundaries established by Church Fathers is an analogy. An analogy may exhort caution toward inherited wisdom, but it cannot establish that patristic consensus possesses binding divine authority over biblical investigation.

Indeed, the Fathers disagreed with one another on numerous exegetical and theological questions. Jerome himself revised his opinions, corrected translations, disputed fiercely with other Christian writers, and returned constantly to Hebrew and Greek sources. Benedict’s own encyclical praises him for comparing texts, examining original languages, and determining what the sacred author actually said.

Jerome therefore cannot reasonably be invoked both as the champion of rigorous return to the biblical text and as though his legacy meant that later ecclesiastical boundaries must never be crossed.

Denzinger 2186 then addresses scholars who distinguish a “primary or religious element of Scripture” from a “secondary or profane” element and who restrict absolute inerrancy to the former. Benedict says that they hold inspiration to extend broadly but allow error in physical, historical, and similar matters.

There is a legitimate issue here. Scripture does not present revelation as though God tells religious truth while casually embedding falsehood around it. Luke explicitly introduces his Gospel as an orderly historical account based upon careful investigation:

“It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order.”

He gives his reason in Luke 1:4:

“That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.”

Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 15 likewise shows that historical truth and theological truth cannot always be separated. If Christ did not historically rise, the apostolic faith collapses:

“And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”

Thus Benedict was right to perceive the danger in creating an artificial wall whereby biblical religious teachings are protected while historical claims are treated as expendable.

Yet the correctness of that concern does not justify every part of his argument concerning ecclesiastical authority.

Denzinger calls opposing theories “fabrications of opinions.” Strong language is not proof. A theory is not shown false merely by calling it fabricated. The proper question is whether the interpretation adequately accounts for the text, its genre, its historical setting, its language, and the intention of the biblical author.

Scripture frequently describes natural phenomena as they appear to ordinary human observation. It speaks of the sun rising and going down. We still speak that way today without intending to teach an astronomical model. Such phenomenological language need not imply biblical error because truthfulness must be assessed according to what the writer is actually asserting.

Poetry must likewise be read as poetry. Parable must be read as parable. Apocalyptic imagery must be read as apocalyptic imagery. Metaphor is not falsehood simply because it is not literal description. Psalm 98:8 says:

“Let the floods clap their hands.”

No defender of biblical truth needs to argue that rivers possess anatomical hands. The statement is poetic personification.

Therefore, strong biblical inerrancy need not require a wooden literalism, and recognition of literary form need not entail denial of inspiration.

The same principle applies to biblical language concerning flesh and blood. Scripture itself tells us that blood signifies life. Leviticus 17:11 declares, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood,” while Deuteronomy 12:23 states even more directly, “the blood is the life.” Blood therefore carries a meaning greater than the physical substance alone: it represents the life of the creature, and when blood is shed it represents life poured out. Flesh likewise can signify embodied human existence, mortality, or the person in his bodily condition. When Scripture speaks of “flesh and blood” together, it can therefore describe the whole mortal human being rather than functioning merely as a laboratory description of physical tissue and fluid. Context must determine the precise meaning, but the biblical writers themselves give us no justification for assuming that every reference to flesh or blood must always be interpreted in the most physically literal sense possible. The same is true of “meat.” Paul says, “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat” (1 Corinthians 3:2), while Hebrews says that “strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age” (Hebrews 5:14). In both places, meat plainly signifies deeper spiritual nourishment rather than literal food. In sacrificial language especially, blood signifies life given, and flesh can signify the embodied life which is offered.

The encyclical itself acknowledges that sacred writers may speak concerning natural matters according to appearances. The controversy arises over how far such accommodation may legitimately be extended. That is a real exegetical question and should be decided by careful study of Scripture, not by declaring that one interpretation is false because a pope has ruled against it.

Denzinger 2186 eventually says:

“But how rashly, how falsely this is affirmed, is plainly evident from the very words of the Pontiff.”

That sentence exposes the deeper problem in the method.

The truth of an exegetical proposition is said to be “plainly evident” from the words of a pontiff.

But why should the words of a pontiff function as the final proof?

A pope may quote Scripture correctly. A pope may preserve an important theological truth. A pope may make an excellent exegetical argument. But the argument is true because it conforms to divine revelation and reality, not because the speaker occupies a Roman office.

Paul did not tell Christians that even apostolic preaching was immune from examination merely because an apostle spoke it. He pronounces in Galatians 1:8:

“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”

That statement is staggering in its implications. Paul places the content of the revealed Gospel above the status of the messenger. “Though we” preach another gospel, reject it. “Or an angel from heaven,” reject it.

Truth is not validated by rank.

That principle destroys any argument that says, in effect, “this interpretation must be correct because the Pontiff has said so,” unless it has first been demonstrated from divine revelation that God granted that particular judgment infallibility.

Jerome, ironically, makes the same point possible.

The Benedict XV who says critics are wrong because they cross magisterial limits is also the Benedict XV who praises Jerome for treating Scripture as the source of “solid and irrefutable arguments.” The Benedict XV who condemns those “relying proudly on their own judgment” is also the Benedict XV who quotes Jerome saying, “we do reject what is not written.” The Benedict XV who invokes Florence, Trent, Vatican I, Leo XIII, and the Fathers is invoking a biblical scholar whose own characteristic method was repeatedly to return to the written text.

That is why Jerome requires particular attention here.

If Rome appeals to Jerome, Jerome must be allowed to speak.

If “we do reject what is not written,” then the Christian is entitled to ask where papal universal jurisdiction is written.

Where is papal infallibility written?

Where is Mary’s immaculate conception written as an apostolic doctrine?

Where is her bodily assumption written as an apostolic doctrine?

Where is purgatorial satisfaction after death taught plainly by Christ or His apostles?

Where is an ecclesiastical treasury of indulgences instituted in the New Testament?

Where is a post-Calvary sacerdotal order commissioned to offer Christ sacrificially?

Where does Christ command believers to regard later Roman definitions as irreformable articles of divine faith?

These questions cannot be answered merely by saying that Florence declared one thing, Trent another, Vatican I another, or a pontiff another. That simply restates the authority claim under investigation.

The apostles must be allowed to speak first.

And when the apostolic writings speak concerning access to God, their direction is strikingly Christ-centred.

Romans 5:1 declares:

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Romans 5:2 continues:

“By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.”

Ephesians 2:18 says:

“For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.”

Hebrews 4:14 tells believers:

“Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.”

The conclusion is not that Christians must approach an earthly sacerdotal tribunal. It is:

“Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.”

Hebrews 10:19 speaks of “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,” and verse 22 therefore says:

“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”

The movement of the New Testament is continually toward Christ Himself.

This is the decisive weakness in Denzinger 2186. Its defence of the inspiration and truthfulness of Scripture contains much that can be strongly affirmed from Scripture itself. But it joins that defence to another proposition which is not self-evidently apostolic: that the Roman magisterium possesses the authority to establish the permissible limits within which Scripture may finally be interpreted, and that resistance to those limits may be characterized as proud reliance upon private judgment.

The first proposition can be demonstrated repeatedly from the apostolic writings.

The second requires an additional doctrine of ecclesiastical authority.

And that additional doctrine must itself be tested by the very Scriptures whose absolute authority Benedict XV invokes.

Jerome therefore stands in this passage almost as a witness against the method being constructed around him. He cannot simply be appropriated as a decorative patristic confirmation of later Roman authority. Benedict XV himself records Jerome returning controversy to Scripture, treating its witness as decisive, rejecting unsupported assertions, warning against following inherited error rather than “the authority of the Scriptures and the will of God,” and insisting that what is written possesses a status which human speculation does not.

That principle reaches much further than Benedict XV appears willing to allow.

The question for the Christian cannot finally be, “Has Florence said it? Has Trent said it? Has Vatican I said it? Has Leo XIII said it? Has Benedict XV said it?”

The question must first be, “Did Christ teach it? Did His apostles teach it? Is it written in the revelation delivered through those whom Christ personally commissioned?”

Councils can testify. Fathers can illuminate. Historians can clarify. Teachers can assist. Pastors can shepherd. None of those functions requires Christians to believe that later ecclesiastical judgments have become a second source of irreformable revelation standing over the written apostolic testimony.

Jerome’s own maxim remains the uncomfortable question inside Spiritus Paraclitus:

“As we do not deny what is written, so we do reject what is not written.”

Apply that standard consistently, and Denzinger 2186 no longer merely defends Scripture against modern criticism. It inadvertently provides the very instrument by which Rome’s later claims must themselves be examined.

The New Testament does not direct the believer finally to Florence, Trent, Vatican I, or an inherited pontifical office. It directs him to the Son of God, the one High Priest, the one Mediator of the new covenant, whose Spirit dwells within His people and whose apostles left the Church the testimony by which later claims can be tested.

“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

That is written.

And if Jerome is to be taken seriously, what is written must remain the measure by which everything later is judged.