DEI FILIUS COMPARED

TO DEI VERBUM

ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF

SCRIPTURE/TRADITION/MAGISTERIUM

TO JESUS

BRETT FAWCETT

THEOLOGY OF REVELATION

STD 401i

FATHER DAVE NORMAN

 Despite the fact that it is named Dei Filius (hereafter DF), the Vatican I document is not

nearly as Christocentric as Dei Verbum (hereafter DV). In DF, the name “Jesus” appears two

times, “Christ” appears four times, and the titular name “Son of God” is used only five times, while

DV mentions “Jesus” eleven times and “Christ” twenty-six times. Some allowance must be made

for the fact that DV is a longer text, but it also makes Christ the centre of revelation in a way that

DF does not, calling Him “both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation”. An important

phrase is: “Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself

present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds…” There is no indication in DF

that revelation could ever be “perfected” because it is hard to see how revelation could ever be

imperfect: it is primarily the revelation of true statements. But since DV sees revelation as being

a history or an event (we see this when we later discuss the Old Testament), it can culminate in the

words and deeds of Jesus. “Words and deeds” becomes a recurrent motif in DV: revelation is both

propositional (which means that DV can include everything that DF says) and personal: “This

plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having an inner unity: the deeds wrought by God

in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words,

while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them.”1

There are a lot of differences in the attitudes towards Scripture in the two documents, right

down to the fact that DF suggests that only the Latin Vulgate is necessary for Scripture study does

not speak of Scripture in reference to Jesus at all, while DV also refers to the Septuagint and

commends Church-approved contemporary translations of the Bible into the vernacular. But there

are larger and deeper differences: DF says that revelation is “contained” in the Scriptures. This

1
Hebrew scholars have noted that the Old Testament expression for “word”, dabar, also means “event”.
suggests (though perhaps does not necessitate2) the propositional understanding of revelation: It is

something that can be contained in a text. Moreover, DF does not explicitly refer to Jesus when

talking about the content of Scripture. There is a fascinating passage where it says that the Church

does not venerate the Scriptures because they are inerrant, but because they have God for their

Author, “having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit”. The Holy Spirit is the

operative member of the Trinity here. DV, meanwhile, not only centres its description of

Scripture’s content on Christ, but also stresses that the Bible is not just an assembly of true

statements about Jesus but an unfolding story in which Christ is progressively revealed. The Old

Testament books “contain some things which are incomplete and temporary”; revelation needed

to be perfected by Jesus’ “life and teaching” (or, to put it another way, His words and deeds),

which is why “among all the Scriptures, even those of the New Testament, the Gospels have a

special pre-eminence”.

This brings us to the issue of the Magisterium. When DF talks about “the Church”, it is

talking about the Magisterium. (This is often how the phrase is also used in DV.3) as when Here,

the relationship to Jesus is largely the fact that Jesus is understood as having deputized the Apostles

with authority to protect and propagate His teaching: “[I]n order [notice: this is why God has

instituted the Church] that we may satisfactorily perform the duty of embracing the true faith and

of continuously persevering in it, God, through His only-begotten Son, has instituted the Church,

and provided it with clear signs of His institution.” We will come to those “clear signs” in a

moment, but the point here is that Christ’s role is understood historically: He has instituted the

2
If we understand Christ’s Person to be the content of revelation, we could possibly understand the phrase “Scripture
contains Revelation” to refer to a quasi-sacramental presence of Christ in Scripture—language which is used freely in
Dei Verbum.
3
DV: “…all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the
Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God.”
Church to preserve the teaching that He shared during His earthly ministry. The language of Christ

revealing Himself today in the Church does not clearly appear anywhere.

There are times where DV uses similar language in its section on “Handing On Divine

Revelation”. But it does not mention the Magisterium at all in its section on the interpretation of

Scripture4; it not only discusses what is not permissible but also what should be done in Scriptural

exegesis: textual, formal, and canonical criticism are all important and essential. Although this

section does not clearly talk about Christ as a principle of interpretation (though this comes out in

the sections on the Old and New Testament), an analogy between inspiration and Incarnation is

used, somewhat like how paragraph 21 will compare the Scriptures to the body of the Lord in the

Eucharist.

There is probably an indirect reference to Jesus when DF says that “God has willed that to

the internal aids of the Holy Spirit there should be joined external proofs of His revelation, namely:

divine facts, especially miracles and prophecies which, because they clearly show forth the

omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God”. Jesus, presumably, is the primary example of

miracles and fulfilled prophecies, which are understood as “external proofs” which validate the

authority of the Church.5

DV interprets the matter differently, almost “backwards” from the approach of DF: “The

principal purpose to which the plan of the old covenant was directed was to prepare for the coming

of Christ…to announce this coming by prophecy…and to indicate its meaning through various

4
There may be an implicit reference in the second sentence’s reference to “Holy Mother Church…hold[ing]…”
5
There is a kind of odd tension in DF regarding the nature of faith: it is different from knowledge because its only
basis is the authority of God who reveals what is to be believed, not human reason or investigation; however, God has
given the Church so many proofs of its divine provenance (“its marvelous propagation, its exceptional holiness, and
inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good works”, etc.) that it constitutes “an incontestable witness”. Previously, the
document has only referred to natural revelation as being incontestable whereas supernatural revelation appeals to
faith, and, strikingly, it adds that “an efficacious aid to this testimony has come from supernatural virtue”. Grace is
not what makes us recognize the Church’s authority: it supplements an already incontestable witness.
types.” Prophecies do not so much validate Christ’s authority so much as they explain the

significance of Christ’s coming; again, there is a revelatory quality to the union of word (prophecy)

and deed (fulfillment).

When it comes to Tradition, there is an interesting change of pace. In DF, Tradition is

something that is understood to have descended from Christ’s verbal instruction, and thus is

inherited from history (“the unanimous consent of the Fathers”) to be passed on intact. DV, on the

other hand, speaks of a “living tradition” which “develops with the help of the Holy Spirit”.

Though the word “Tradition” is not used, there is a reference to “the Church taught by the Holy

Spirit [being] concerned to move ahead toward a deeper understanding of the Sacred Scriptures”.6

Jesus is not explicitly mentioned; Tradition is linked more clearly to the Apostles than specifically

to Jesus. There is a reversal here: while DF links Scripture to the Holy Spirit and Tradition to

Jesus, DV links Scripture to Jesus and Tradition to the Holy Spirit.

One final thing to note: both documents speak of natural revelation, but neither of them

tie the revelation of God in creation to the Incarnation. DV does say that God creates all things

“through the Word”, but does not explicitly connect this to the Word’s earthly mission. That being

said, while both texts say that it pleased God to “reveal Himself and the eternal decrees of His

will”, DF adds that He does this “in another and supernatural way” than the way He reveals

Himself in nature. DV does not make the same clear distinction between natural and supernatural

revelation; paragraph 6 even hints at the possibility that natural revelation may be a subset of the

overall divine revelation with the aim of human salvation, so there is a gesture in the direction of

a Bonaventurean understanding of creation being always intended for the Incarnation.

6
The Church is no longer understood as just the Magisterium; the living tradition’s “wealth is poured into the practice
and life of the believing and praying Church.” Not just the Fathers but the whole mystical and hagiographical history
of the Church is now a criteria for Tradition, as are the “liturgies” which are to be studied in connection to Scripture
studies.