In the previous editorial, we briefly reviewed the first two positions on the Bible taken by the Council of Trent, which distinguishes Roman Catholics and Protestants. Now we will look at the last two.
The third position taken by the Council of Trent has even been abandoned by the Roman Catholic Church, at least since 1943, according to the introduction to the New Catholic Bible! Unfortunately, although Catholic scholars recognized the mistake made by their church on this issue, fundamentalist Protestants have not yet learned the lesson that the Catholic Church learned, during which time she lost 100’s of millions of adherents, partly because of this false position. The third position condemned the idea that the Bible needed to be studied in the original languages. The reason this was condemned was because they believed they already had an inerrant or infallible Bible, the Latin Vulgate. Fundamentalist Protestants are in almost the same quandary today. There is the same distrust of scholarship in Biblical study and some feel that only scholars can understand the scriptures, and it is a waste of time and energy for anybody to study Greek and Hebrew. The reason is the same too—just as the papacy felt in the mid-16th century, that they did not need to study the original languages in which the Bible was written because they already had a perfect Bible. So Fundamentalist Protestants feel the same today about the King James Version of the Bible. The same reasoning will result in the same kinds of errors.
Ellen White was not in this group, and neither should we be in this group. She used other versions hundreds of times in her writings and felt free to correct the King James Version in places where it was in error. All other Bible students should have the same freedom which has been delivered to us by the Protestant Reformation.
Notice the practice of Martin Luther (who of course was able to read the Bible in Latin), “I am going through the Bible in Hebrew and Greek. I mean to write a discourse in German touching auricular confession, also to continue the translation of the Psalms, and to compose a collection of sermons.” Signs of the Times, October 11, 1883.
“Nearly every minister in the field, had he exerted his God-given energies, might not only be proficient in reading, writing, and grammar, but even in languages. It is essential for them to set their aim high. But there has been but little ambition to put their powers to the test to reach an elevated standard in knowledge and in religious intelligence. Our ministers will have to render to God an account for the rusting of the talents He has given to improve by exercise. They might have done tenfold more work intelligently, had they cared to become intellectual giants.” Testimonies to Ministers, 194.
The Council of Trent’s fourth condemnation of Protestantism was the Catholic rejection of their claim that the Bible was a book, plain in meaning, that could be understood, without use of commentary, by the help of God’s Spirit. This, until the present day, is one of the key differences between Catholics and Protestants and we will have to devote an entire editorial to that subject.
The Latin Vulgate was a very accurate translation when Jerome translated it, but it had become full of errors as a result of repeated copying. Modern scholars recognize that the Latin Vulgate was the most corrupted of all extant manuscripts of the New Testament. It was apparently copied more than any other Bible, judging from the extant copies, even more than the Byzantine text-type of the Greek New Testament, the Bible of the Greek Orthodox Church. Part of the schism between the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church involves the difference between their Bibles, with each group attempting to prove that theirs is best.