Dei Verbum - Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation - Vatican Council II

Background 

The 20th century brought the heresy of Modernism, the synthesis of all other heresies and the inheritance of the bad philosophies of the 19th century taking actual form. There was, of course, the two world wars and the invention of the weapons of mass destruction. Vatican II was concerned with globalization, the world has become a common community through the development of communication and transportation technology - planes, trains, and automobiles, radios and TV. What one community does will affect the whole world. There is also concerning developments in technology which threatens to undermine our understanding of sexuality, marriage, and the family. This was a pastoral council to address how the Church should relate and deal with the changes of this modern world. This also famously included liturgical changes to the Mass. 

Also, as a reminder, in terms of Biblical scholarship, certainly in the Church's mind there must have been some concern about the rise of the Materialist based Historical-Critical method of Biblical scholarship. 

Throughout the document, the phrase "deeds and words" is used to describe revelation. Here we a get a sense from Dei Verbum that revelation happens in the context of a person, who both acts and speaks, and the Church who both codifies this into Scripture and Tradition. 

Preface

This document is the most authoritative level of document produced from the council, a "dogmatic constitution". It clearly states two main concerns for this document: "to set forth authentic doctrine on divine revelation" and "how it is handed on". 

Chapter I - Revelation Itself

Natural revelation is the order and design built into the world which we can rationally understand. Divine revelation is God revealing himself to humanity from Adam to the death of John, which we call "Salvation History" and refers to God's "deeds and words" to us. We will never exhaust the depths of what God has revealed to us. There's always more to the mystery. It is not mystery in a sub-rational way, as though we are free to just throw our hands up when we encounter a difficult idea, but mystery in a supra-rational way, that we can know many fine things by reason but we will never exhaust that mystery. [Thus the theologian still has a job in today's world] Divine revelation allows the most uneducated believer to know the deepest truths that the greatest philosophers could not. [The Greeks would never have contemplated that God was a personal God who was a trinity of love itself and wanted to commune with humanity in the way Christians do]. 

Also, section one makes clear that the goal of all salvation history is to accept the invitation to be invited into intimate fellowship with God. 

Chapter II - Handing on Divine Revelation 

A key point that this section makes is that revelation is lived before it is written down. It mentions so many examples of them living the faith through: oral preaching, lived example, observances from Christ's teaching and living with Him, and their receiving guidance from the Holy Spirit, along with the following Apostolic Succession. AND along with this, they wrote things down. 

Secondly, Dei Verbum points out that the Apostles "handing on what they themselves have received, warn the faithful to hold fast to the traditions which they have learned either by word of mouth or by letter...". Thus Tradition constitutes the life, teaching, and worship of the Apostolic Church. "... and so the Church, in her teaching, life, and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes."

Likewise, it is through this sacred Tradition that the actual canon of Scripture is revealed and codified, not before. [There is no list of books that are biblical in any of the books of the bible.] 

Here Dei Verbum expresses a very important concept. While we are so used to associating the phrase "Word of God" with the Bible, and while this may be true, the phrase "Word of God" is first and foremost a reference to Jesus, the Word of the God, the divine person. It is the incarnation of Christ on earth and everything he said and did with the Apostles which is codified in the lived tradition and written down in the Scriptures that makes up the "one sacred deposit" of faith of God's revelation to man. 

Finally, it is the magisterium of the Church which is the authentic interpreter of the one sacred deposit. This role of the Church is not on the same level as Scripture and Tradition as fonts of God's revelation, but their protector. "This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Sprit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed." 

An analogy of a three-legged stool can be used here to represent what has been discussed. The top of the stool is the deposit of faith which is Christ the Word, his very person and everything he said and did. This deposit was captured or codified in two forms through Tradition and Scripture, which are two of the legs. But the whole thing won't stand without the third leg of the Magisterium which interprets, guards, and protects the rest. 

Chapter III - Sacred Scripture, Its Divine Inspiration, and Interpretation

In chapter three Dei Verbum makes the clear point that BOTH God and man are considered true authors of Scripture. Inspiration does not mean God writing the words directly, but employing a human writer through whom he uses "their powers and abilities". 

And here is the key line in the whole document regarding inspiration and inerrancy: "Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation." 

And so those truths which are related to the salvation of man are guaranteed to be correctly expressed by God through the human author. It does not mean that the human author cannot get some physical detail about the world wrong. 

Following this, when it comes to interpreting the Bible correctly one must aim for the meaning that the author intended to convey. To accomplish this, there must be scholars who understand the time, place, context, language, and style of the writers. In other words, they have to be scholars of the Ancient Near East. In other words, we need authentic exegesis, not eisegesis. 

Also, the Bible must be interpreted in "the content and unity of the whole of Scripture". This means we must read a passage within its context of its own book, and within the context of the testament, and in the context of the whole Bible. Not only this, but we must read it within the history of the tradition of the Church. This also means referencing the writings of the early Church fathers. 

Chapter IV - The Old Testament 

The section on the Old Testament mentions (against heretics like Marcian) that the Old Testament "...written under divine inspiration, remain[s] permanently valuable." 

It mentions that the main purposes of the old covenants were 1) "to prepare for the coming of Christ..." 2) "to announce this coming by prophecy..." 3) "to indicate its meaning by various types...". 

Now here is a key line in this section: "These books, though they contain some things which are incomplete and temporary, nevertheless show us true divine pedagogy." This is important because it references this idea that God takes a unique teaching mode during different stages of salvation history. In the Old Testament there are teachings that are seemingly at odds with the New. One could think of the examples of divorce, dietary and worships guidelines, and the idea of total warfare (I have written more in depth on this here). 

But the key point here is that justice and mercy are really two sides of the same coin. God has the same goal for humanity, as section I points out, to bring us into fellowship with him. And so justice and mercy are two tools of God's pedagogy in the economy of salvation which help achieve the same end. The use of either depends on the disposition of the receiver. If they are hard hearted, as we were in the Old Testament, then justice is needed to bring the person to repentance and respect. If one has learned their lesson and is repentant, then mercy can be applied with more good. 

And so the divine pedagogy is like a parent teaching their child. When they are little and throwing a tantrum, one cannot reason with them or show them mercy all the time or it will spoil them because they cannot receive what is trying to be communicated. Hence one disciplines the child differently than when they are a teenager, for example, and a more reasoned approach my suffice. 

Chapter V - The New Testament 

This section establishes Christ as the fullness of revelation, with the Apostles who first preached and lived out the Great Commission before writing it down. Here is a key passage: "The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, SELECTING some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, REDUCING some of them to a synthesis, EXPLAINING some things in view of the situation of their churches and PRESERVING the form of proclamation but always in such a fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus." 

This is an important passage addressing what some have labeled "the Synoptic Problem". The document cites four key explanations to the problem. 

The Gospel writers: 

- SELECTED "...some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing..."

- REDUCED "... some of them to a synthesis..."

- EXPLAINED "... some things in view of the situation of their churches..."

- PRESERVING "... the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus." 

[Here's a little background on the "synoptic problem": Sometimes, skeptics of the Gospels bring up an objection to the Gospel accounts known as the “Synoptic Problem.” This “problem” expresses the fact that Matthew, Mark, and Luke have similar narrative story lines, and all talk about some of the same stories, yet details are sometimes different between the three of them. For example, when talking about Jesus’ birth, Matthew talks about three wise men coming to visit Jesus, while Luke mentions nothing about that and talks about Shepherds being invited to visit Jesus. Which is true? Can we give an explanation for this? Yes, we can. We have to first dispel the idea that the Gospel accounts are trying or able to include all details about Jesus. John admits at the end of his Gospel that if everything were written down from Jesus' ministry there wouldn't be enough room in the whole world to hold the books. Likewise, in the ancient world writing space and supplies were very limited and expensive. If the Gospels were going to be something that was able to be spread around and copied, they would have to be rather short. They are going to have to pick and choose what facts and details to include or not to include. What they choose to include or not to include and the way they tell it is also directly correlated to the audience they are writing for. Each one is going to cater what is written and how Jesus is presented to connect with the culture of their unique audience. Luke wrote to Gentiles with no background in Judaism and who probably felt like outcasts from it. Mark to Roman Christians who were being persecuted under Nero. Matthew to Jewish people and converts in Palestine. All these things aren’t negative, but positive in that each writer gives us a different facet of Jesus and his ministry, so between all four we get a more full picture, like looking at different facets of the diamond. So going back to answer the above example, which fact is true, did wise men or shepherds visit the baby Jesus? Well, most likely, both stories are true, but Matthew picked on to tell his audience and Luke picked another to tell his audience because it helped make the overall point for his audience.]

Chapter VI - Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church 

This final chapter of the document places a huge emphasis on the renewal of Sacred Scripture in every part of the Church's life. This is certainly interesting reading this in 2026 and having 61 years of perspective on whether or not there has been a revival of the reading of Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church. There is a call for more theologians to edify the Church with their work and a reminder that "the study of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred theology."