Dominican Idaho has an update on seven-year-old Sophia, who underwent the first of her operations for a brain tumor.
Here's the young lady in question.
The next surgery, which is tomorrow, will involve removal of the remaining portion of the tumor, which is wrapped around her pituitary gland and optic nerves. She will very likely lose some if not all of her vision. Please pray for the preservation of her sight and for her complete recovery. Anita recommends prayers to Blessed Margaret of Castello.
On the theology front, I'm wrapping up a paper on the notion of biblical inerrancy following Vatican II (see Dei Verbum, 11), particularly the notion of limited inerrancy. I couldn't put my finger on precisely why I bawked at this term until last night when the phrase "categorical error" popped into my mind.
Any thoughts?
UPDATE: See the comments for an explanation of the categorical error in question.
UPDATE 2: Yes, I updated this post nearly a year after the fact because I found spelling errors. Sue me.
[Technorati tags: Christianity, Catholic, Catholicism, Church History]
4 comments:
Explain a little further? Is this the development of the notion of limited inerrancy (ie: restricted, not general) that was developed post VII based on mistranslation of DV-11?
Correct. Essentially, some thoelogians took the phrase "for the sake of our salvation" to mean that only matters pertaining to salvation are inerrant. This statement in Dei Verbum was later corrected in some translations (cf. Flannery) and even cited in this corrected form in the CCC. A number of authors have commented on this misunderstanding and explained the problems with viewing scripture as a science or history text, while others have simply accepted the new "development" without question, saying "there are errors in scientific and historical detail."
However, my understanding of the ECFs and the conciliar documents I've read is that they all clearly indicate that the domain is science or history and that attempts to read it as such are misguided. Given the technicality of language in both modern science and history and the epistemological bias toward materialism, it seems clear to me that the proponents for "limited inerrancy" are actually committing a categorical error—using the wrong epistemological viewpoint concerning the topic at hand or using the wrong measure for the detail in scripture.
For example, say two books are written about pitching—one from the perspective of a pitching coach, the other from a physicist. While one talks about the visible appearance of a curveball and the necessary movement of the arm to throw a curveball, the other describes the matematical principle involved in the movement: velocity, trajectory, etc. If one then picks up the first book and indicates that it is deficient scientifically, one is assessing it from the epistemological category appropriate to the first.
This is no different from what's happening with the concept of "limited inerrancy," except that the scholars claiming the latter apparently forgot this particalar fallacy.
here's some help (if you read French)
http://www.chemere.org/le_magistere.html#publications
I'm wondering just how bad Google's translation will be. :-)
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