In a recent post on the First Things blog, law professor Robert T. Miller complains that Catholic bishops are going beyond teaching about faith and morals, stepping into the arena of prudential judgments about empirical circumstances, and thus — Miller claims — leaving their legitimate area of authority. Yet Miller's arguments are not well founded, and are even contradicted by the references that he himself supplies.
   

His example deals with capital punishment. It is clear that Catholic teaching regards the permissibility of capital punishment as something that depends on circumstances (as opposed to, say, abortion or other intrinsic evils, which are always wrong, regardless of circumstances). The judgment of circumstances is a prudential judgment. So far, so good. But then Miller's aim is apparently to cast the Church's opinion on the necessity of capital punishment (in some specific set of circumstances) as just an opinion that Catholics must respect, but not one that would provide any particular  obstacle to an individual coming up with  a different opinion on that specific set of circumstances. For Miller's argument to succeed, the prudential judgment about specific circumstances would have to be taken out of the realm of faith and morals, else the Church's opinion would have authority.   

He  tries to define exactly what levels of belief or assent Catholics must have in relation to different kinds of teaching:    

Catholics are required, in defined circumstances, to believe with theological faith certain assertions by the Roman pontiff and the College of Bishops, and they are required to give a religious submission of will and intellect to other such assertions, but in each case the propositions must concern faith or morals. (See the commentary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the Professio Fidei available here). This is not to say that Catholics may ignore the Roman pontiff or the
bishops on other issues. Quite the contrary: Catholics must consider
what they say with great respect, but they must do so in the process of
forming their own judgments on such matters.      

And Miller also claims, in relation to capital punishment:    

…the Church teaches that sometimes, depending on the circumstances, the death penalty is permissible, and sometimes, depending on the circumstances, the death penalty is not permissible. So far we’re in the realm of morals; hence, depending on whether this teaching is definitive or not, Catholics must accept it either in theological faith or with a religious submission of will and intellect.   

Yet on going to the Ratzinger document he links to, we find three kinds of assent being described: an assent of theological faith for the most important doctrines, a firm and definitive assent to supporting doctrines, and a religious submission of will and intellect to non-definitive teachings. In describing the doctrines associated with the last of these three kinds of assent, the document says:    

A proposition contrary to these doctrines can be qualified as erroneous or, in the case of teachings of the prudential order, as rash or dangerous and therefore "tuto doceri non potest". [Trans: "not able to be taught safely"].   

So, teachings of the prudential order (i.e. teachings which necessitate a judgment about circumstances) certainly can come under the requirement that they be given submission of will and intellect — and that is much more than merely "respect".   

Miller goes on:    

When the bishops go further, however, and make claims about whether actual circumstances in the world are such as to make some particular application of the death penalty right or wrong, we are in the realm of empirical judgments about circumstances, and these judgments are not matters of faith and morals.   

And that is a most bizarre claim. The Church has been judging circumstances throughout its history. How could confessions ever work, if the priest had no authority to decide if a sin had or had not been committed, based on the circumstances? How could the validity of sacraments ever be judged, if circumstances could not be judged? And there are many other such judgments regularly made by the Church, to which the appropriate attitude of a Catholic is religious submission of will and intellect. 

And this submission of will does apply to capital punishment; since a Pope in an encyclical, and subsequently the Church in its Catechism, has judged that the necessity of capital punishment in modern times and circumstances is "very rare". That is a teaching of the prudential order, and not merely an opinion to be given respect.

The discussion of Catholic teaching on capital punishment — particularly relevant because of the recent execution of Saddam Hussein — has not always been precisely focused. And even an article by Cardinal Dulles does not necessarily help provided that needed focus. Catechism 2267 and the papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae are quite clear that capital punishment is never to be used when the safety of society against the aggressor can be achieved by any other means. Issues such as deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation play no role in the decision to execute, as opposed to some other punishment. The article by Dulles does not end up making this as clear as it needs to be, and it is far better to read the Catechism or encyclical to understand this. A recent article by Stephen Bainbridge unfortunately views Catholic teaching solely through the lens of Dulles article, and consequently ends up not addressing the central issue head-on. The blog Mirror of Justice asks whether the article by Bainbridge is persuasive, or alternatively another posting at Evangelical Catholicism. Since the article by Bainbridge doesn't address the central issue, and the other article does, Bainbridge shouldn't be viewed as legitimately persuasive of anything.

Discussion on the issue of Catholic teaching on capital punishment is reoccurring (here and here). What the Catechism says about this is quite straightforward and easy to understand.

Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent".

Despite this clarity, there is practical dissent to this teaching. The argument that leads to dissent runs along lines like this:

"The Church does not teach that capital punishment is always wrong — prudence is required to discern when it is permitted and when it is not. So I may legitimately disagree with the prudential judgement of other Catholics, and even the Pope."

And that is an ambiguous argument; the first sentence is certainly true, but the second sentence has both a true and a false sense.

To support the argument, a quote from the Pope (when he was a cardinal) is often supplied:

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

The part that seems to spring out is: "There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion..". But it does not logically follow from this that all different opinions are legitimate. The quote does not imply that. It says that if you disagree with the Pope on whether some particular abortion can be justified, then — without any further investigation of the cirucmstances — I can automatically conclude that you are wrong. If you disagree with the Pope on whether some particular application of capital punishment is justifiable, then I can't conclude automatically that you are wrong — I must look at the circumstances and on how prudence was applied before I might conclude that.

Nor does it follow from the quote that we are free to decide the grounds on which a prudential judgement can be made. Church teaching defines those grounds for us ("if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor").

To decide based on other grounds is not allowable.

 The discussion between Mark Shea and Jimmy Akin on the subject of torture continues to go astray. I think Akin has not yet seen that his approach to intrinsic evils in fact ends up with them being subjective — in a way that does not line up with Catholic teaching.

Akin claims that there is an element of subjectivity in decisions about intrinsic evils, and gives the example of theft. He says:

The definition of theft includes the fact that it is the taking of property against the unreasonable will of the owner, and a thief wanting to justify his actions can easily seize on this subjective determination regarding whether the owner's will against it being taken is unreasonable.

But the portion of the Catholic Catechism that this definition of theft comes from does not have any appeal to the subjective (despite what one might think by a superficial reading of the paragraph). This is shown by the examples that the Catechism gives for what kind of unreasonableness is meant. The Catechism says:

This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at one's disposal and use the property of others.

And those are objective bases; the actual will of the owner is irrelevant in such cases. It is the reasonableness of the taking that is being measured, not the will of the owner.

Akin then maintains that his line of thinking also applies to torture, saying:

In the same way, if an infliction of pain is objectively disproportionate then the act is one of torture regardless of what the person inflicting it might subjectively think.

But in fact, he has provided no satisfying basis for deciding on what kind of proportionality could genuinely be objective.

 When discussing issues around the concept of intrinsic evils, I have noticed over the years that there is a common confusion over the meanings of the English word 'intention' that can easily lead to all kinds of strange conclusions contrary to Catholic teaching.

An example: if someone performs some action, understanding both that the action will be accomplished, and freely choosing to perform that action, then we can ask them the question – in English — "Did you intend to perform that action?", and they will quite reasonably answer, "Yes".

We can also ask them the question: "What were your intentions for performing that action?", and they may answer (for example), "Because it saved me money" or "Because it pleased my wife" or "Because I was frightened", or some such.

But those are different kinds of intending. One kind of intention merely describes that the action was freely chosen, and the other describes the aims, purposes, or goals of the action.

When Catholic teaching indicates that a particular action is an intrinsic evil, this means that the action is evil regardless of the intentions for the action – and here it is using the second kind of intention (aims, goals, purposes), and not the first.

Not grasping this can lead to misinterpreting Catholic teaching — as Jimmy Akin has done in a recent posting on his blog, where he ends up concluding (incorrectly) that proportionality somehow enters into the definition of intrinsic evils.

Mark Shea clearly understands that Akin's discussions have gone off course. Some others do, and some don't. (Alas, blogs aren't very good for correcting mistakes, since the good and bad get mixed up together. We need angels to sort these things out.)

 Jimmy Akin has written some postings (here, here, and here) in an attempt to narrow down what 'torture' might mean when it was condemned as an intrinsic evil by Vatican II and Pope John Paul II. I think his reflections are interesting, but often as much off-course as on-course.

For example, he proposes two parameters to guide the process of coming up with a definition:

Parameter 1: The definition should correspond as much as possible to our pre-reflective sense of what constitutes torture.

I'm very dubious about that. Our human pre-reflective sense can be extremely muddled, and it is necessary to dissect that muddle, and drop out what is not useful (and what is dropped may be a little, or a lot).

Parameter 2: The definition should point to something that is intrinsically evil.

Whatever the Council and Pope had in mind for what was intrinsically evil, they clearly had something in mind, and not vague generalities. One part of a relevant quote from the Council and Pope is where it includes torture in a list of those things which:

violates the integrity of the human person

and that statement provides a strong clue to what it was that led to this kind of torture being an intrinsic evil.

Then Akin jumps ahead by more than a few steps, and says:

The fact that Church authorities once used torture, in keeping with the legal custom of the day in secular society, is a matter of intense shame.

As I have previously pointed out, I would like to wait to see exactly what 'torture' is defined as before trying to apply it to a previous historical situation. (Part of reducing the muddle.)

Akin proposes the following as a definition of torture:

The sin of torture consists in the disproportionate infliction of pain.

And I think that a definition like that can never help elucidate what must be an intrinsic evil. Firstly, it leaves undefined exactly what kind of proportionate comparison is proposed. And secondly, any proposed scale of pain leaves it necessarily vague as to who is to decide that counts as too much pain. Different people feel pain differently. What is too much for one is not for another. But then defining 'torture' in that way would necessarily be a subjective thing, and thus could not possibly be intrinsic. Nor, alternately,  could we leave it up to a social consensus, or a vote, as to what was to be counted as too much pain, since that would still be subjective. But the Church is condemning something as intrinsically wrong.

Akin also misses the Church's condemnation (directly adjacent to the condemnation of mental and physical torture) of attempts to coerce the spirit – which can be regarded as the spiritual form of torture. This means that the torture of an Islamic terrorist to find out about a ticking bomb (the explosion of which the terrorist regards, however mistakenly,  as a morally correct action) is an attempt to coerce the spirit, and thus also intrinsically wrong.

There has been a concerted discussion in various blogs (for example: here, here, here, and here) over Catholic teaching on the issue of torture. Having given this more than a little thought, I make various conclusions:

• whatever the definition of torture is, it is certainly an intrinsic evil, since both an Ecumenical Council, and a Pope have said so;
• the definition of torture cannot be something like "the application of severe pain", since "severe" has no specific meaning;
• any argument which says something like "since the application of the death penalty is sometimes permissible, therefore torture — being less than death — must also sometimes be permissible" is an incorrect argument, since the death penalty is only permitted as a defence, and not as a punishment, and the argument thus radically confuses two different categories;
• the Church's previous attitude to torture can presumably be found in documents such as Ad Extirpanda, but this document has not been provided in English, and thus has not been closely analyzed;
• based on what the Council said, I hold that the definition of torture should be something like: the application of pain to someone that is not for their direct benefit;
• a common scenario is to image an Islamic terrorist who has knowledge of some bomb about to explode. I have not yet seen it taken into account that the terrorist may hold in conscience that the bomb should be allowed to explode. If so, torturing them would be doubly wicked, since it would be an attempt to violently coerce their conscience.

In the comment boxes of Catholic and Enjoying It! I put down an amazed remark wondering if the owner of the blog, Mark Shea, was somehow drifting towards the Sungenis end of an unfortunate spectrum. That was a remark quite definitely (and non-fallaciously)  aimed in an ad hominem way at Mark Shea's own thinking, as expressed by him over the years, and not a general way of bringing up the usual current political issues involving Israel. As such, it didn't get much response. Later in the back and forth shuttle of remarks, Mark had this to say to another commenter:

The swiftness to label every peep of criticism of Israel as anti-semitism is one of the weird tics of American culture. In some theoretical way, it is general acknowledged that Israel could, in some alternate universe, do something wrong. But in actual fact, a considerable number of Americans find it almost impossible to admit it, even when they do something grossly unjust, like the story this blog entry mentions. It's *astounding* how quickly you get tagged as an anti-semite, or a kook, or some other nasty thing if you suggest that Israel is just another secular nation state, capable of all the evil that any secular nation state commits. In America, even Catholics buy into the thoroughly Protestant notion that *this* particular secular nation state is somehow specially ordained by God and is not simply the product of a UN resolution. I refuse to buy that particular bit of bogus theology and view Israel's claims to statehood through the lens of natural law, not supernatural revelation. Israel has all the claims that any other secular nation state has. No less and no more.

And that has consistently been Mark's position. In summary, he holds that (filtering out the exaggerations):

• Israel is just another secular nation state;
• Israel is simply the product of a UN resolution.

And consistently I have never been able to understand how Mark can hold such positions, or where they come from.

Imagine a country where this is true:

The country is Jewish. The majority of people pay mixed or no attention to God. A minority pay great attention to God. The rulers are sometimes religious, and sometimes not. They are criticized heavily. Traditional enemies attack them regularly. They are descendants of Abraham, and the promise given to Abraham is still alive in them. Sometimes there are prophets, and sometimes not.

Is this Israel of 900BC? Or the Israel of today? Is God working in promised ways in one, but not the other? On what grounds do I decide? I think it is clear that I had better get the answer exactly right, else I risk nullifying the Old Testament, or even nullifying the New.

But somehow Mark thinks he has a precise reading on the situation, and can tell that one is really God's Israel, and the other is really not. How he has managed to figure this out I do not understand.

In response to the death penalty being passed on Saddam Hussein, Cardinal Martino has commented:

"For me, punishing a crime with another crime, which is what killing for vindication is, would mean that we are still at the point of demanding an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"

This has upset Jimmy Akin (and will no doubt also upset others), who protests that the Cardinal has used "sloppy language" that is "grossly misleading". Akin appeals to the Catechism (CC 2267) to support his claim:

… it is grossly misleading to refer to imposing the death penalty as "punishing a crime with another crime." The death penalty is not a crime legally, nor is it one in principle morally, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church indicates when it states: "The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor" (CCC 2267).

But if this extract, and subsequent paragraphs, from the Catechism are read carefully, they support Cardinal Martino quite definitely. They say that the death penalty should only be imposed when there is no other way to protect society from the guilty aggressor. Consequently, it cannot be imposed by an appeal to justice, or an appeal to retribution, or an appeal to redemption by the suffering of the guilty, or by an appeal that it would bring some closure to the family or relations of the victim, or by an appeal that it would protect society from other, different aggressors — or any of the numerous ways in which people seek to support the death penalty. The death penalty can only be imposed if that is the only way to protect society from that guilty aggressor.

A look at John Paul's Evangelium Vitae makes that magisterial teaching quite clear:

the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society.

The death penalty cannot be justified for any other reason. Consequently, if it is imposed for any other reason, it becomes an unjustified killing. And an unjustified killing can legitimately be called a crime —

– which is what Cardinal Martino said.

In the process of examining what then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now the Pope) might think about evolution, John Allen provides the following quote from Ratzinger, which can be found included in Ratzinger's book Truth and Tolerance:

No one will be able to cast serious doubt upon the scientific evidence for micro-evolutionary processes. R. Junker and S. Scherer, in their 'critical reader' on evolution, have this to say: 'Many examples of such developmental steps [micro-evolutionary processes] are known to us from natural processes of variation and development. The research done on them by evolutionary biologists produced significant knowledge of the adaptive capacity of living systems, which seems marvelous.' They tell us, accordingly, that one would therefore be quite justified in describing the research of early development as the reigning monarch among biological disciplines. … Within the teaching about evolution itself, the problem emerges at the point of transition from micro- to macro-evolution, on which point Szathmáry and Maynard Smith, both convinced supporters of an all-embracing theory of evolution, nonetheless declare that: 'There is no theoretical basis for believing that evolutionary lines become more complex with time; and there is also no empirical evidence that this happens.

Now the book by Junker and Scherer is a controversial German anti-evolution text; and the provided quote from the book by Szathmáry and Maynard Smith is one that has been horribly ripped out of its context, having nothing at all to do with any distinction between "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution", and this has led one of its authors to complain that its use by Ratzinger was "misleading and inappropriate" (though it is probable that Ratzinger relied wholly — but wrongly — on Junker and Scherer for the appropriateness of the quote).

It is thus not unreasonable to suppose that Cardinal Ratzinger devoted little time to reading in science, and thus largely missed the scientific significances, contexts, errors and controversies of Junker and Scherer — in a way that he would be most unlikely to do for any philosophy or theology book.

Is that worrying?

On one hand, it's not worrying. Understanding science is not high on the list of expected duties of the vast majority of ordained priests, and so in general not much is provided to them.

On the other hand, more and more problems necessitate scientific understanding (evolution, cosmology, stem cells — and worse headaches to come) in order to locate them meaningfully within the realm of faith and morals. The difficulty (and it is an extremely widespread difficulty indeed) is that lacking a needed scientific understanding, people will often try to use only philosophy and theology in order to discuss these subjects — and that will often simply fail to provide useful answers. A bad scientific idea can be supported by appeals to good philosophy and theology. Then, lacking a good scientific understanding, some people may erroneously come to regard the bad science as good. (As has been seen in discussions of intelligent design, oh …. about a million times.)

(From other things, I know Ratzinger had a good idea of when he was starting to step inside the scientific field, and thus backed away a space.)

The controversy over the recent approval by the FDA of Plan B, an "emergency contraceptive", has taken an interesting twist. An otherwise strongly pro-life Catholic blog, Ales Rarus, has protested that Plan B is emphatically not an abortifacient (and thus not morally objectionable on that ground), despite that being exactly what the controversy is all about. Why such an opinion? Is the blog correct to claim that science demonstrates this?

One of the most widely quoted scientific papers on this subject is Pituitary–ovarian function following the standard levonorgestrel emergency contraceptive dose or a single 0.75-mg dose given on the days preceding ovulation, by Croxatto et al. ( doi:10.1016/j.contraception.2004.05.007 ). The abstract of this paper includes the claim that levonorgestrel (LNG, the active ingredient in Plan B):

can disrupt the ovulatory process in 93% of cycles treated when the diameter of the dominant follicle is between 12 and 17 mm. It is highly probable that this mode of action fully accounts for the contraceptive efficacy as well as the failure rate of this method.

That is a very strong claim ("It is highly probable …" and "fully accounts").

So, isn't the claim of Ales Rarus thus confirmed? Well, we would have to look more closely at the body of the paper, not just the abstract. After all, at least one survey of the accuracy of the abstracts of articles in medical journals came to the startling conclusion that:

Significant results in abstracts should generally be disbelieved.

And this is important because the vast majority of people only ever read the abstract, and never examine the body of such a paper — as is well known to authors.

So, the first thing to look for inside the Croxatto paper is any indication of the numerical uncertainty of the results. Studies such as Croxatto's always have associated uncertainties, and it is extremely difficult to assess the reliability or probability of any conclusion without some indication of what those uncertainties are. In particular, we are looking for the basis on which the conclusion "highly probable" was reached.

There's nothing.

In fact, not only does the body of the paper not back up the claim made in the abstract, it only makes much weaker claims about the significance of the results. One conclusion in the body says:

Based on all the above, it is therefore plausible that the high proportion of cycles with anovulation or ovulatory dysfunction when the EC is given with follicles between 12 and 17 mm (93%), explains most if not all the contraceptive effectiveness of this EC method.

Somehow, without any given reasoning, what is merely "plausible" in the body, has become "highly probable" in the abstract.

Another part of the body of the paper says:

In conclusion, the results of this study indicate that when LNG is used for EC, it prevents pregnancy primarily by interference with the ovulatory process and that method failures are most likely due to treatment given too late to effect such interference.

Which is again a notably weaker claim than the one given in the abstract, since it only concludes (though again, without any provided numerical basis) that the study has identified a primary method of action, leaving entirely open what the scale of secondary effects might be. The abstract makes the claim that the effect "fully accounts" for things, but the body only claims that it is a primary effect.

So, Ales Rarus (and anyone else pointing to this paper) needs to dig deeper into the science of these issues before making claims, or relying on the claims of others.

Several blogs (1, 2, 3) have been somewhat taken aback by some recent words of the Pope, going so far as to complain that the Pope is uttering error. Yet I do not think this is so. The words that have caused this occurred during an interview with the Pope, when he was asked a question relating to the current Middle East situation:

Question: Holy Father, a question about the situation regarding foreign politics. Hopes for peace in the Middle East have been dwindling over the past weeks: What do you see as the Holy See’s role in relationship to the present situation? What positive influences can you have on the situation, on developments in the Middle East?

Pope Benedict XVI: Of course we have no political influence and we don’t want any political power. But we do want to appeal to all Christians and to all those who feel touched by the words of the Holy See, to help mobilize all the forces that recognize how war is the worst solution for all sides. It brings no good to anyone, not even to the apparent victors. We understand this very well in Europe, after the two world wars. Everyone needs peace. There’s a strong Christian community in Lebanon, there are Christians among the Arabs, there are Christians in Israel. Christians throughout the world are committed to helping these countries that are dear to all of us. There are moral forces at work that are ready to help people understand how the only solution is for all of us to live together. These are the forces we want to mobilize: it’s up to politicians to find a way to let this happen as soon as possible and, especially, to make it last.

Misunderstanding two components of the Pope's reply may have led to the reaction; the first being: "war is the worst solution for all sides". But that part is not surprising because Catholic teaching (e.g. the Catechism, 2309) is that war must always be a matter of last resort — in which case it logically follows that it must be the worst solution (thus also being the only available solution, which is why it is always vital to work to open up other possible solutions).

The second component is: "it brings no good to anyone". That's actually a translation of the original German "er bringt für niemanden etwas", which is a bit vaguer in German that it is in English. Another translation could be: "it brings nothing for anyone". More idiomatically, and helpfully, perhaps: "It doesn't pay for anyone". War is the infliction of an evil — with the hope that it avoids the occurrence of a different greater evil. No one genuinely profits by it, and no positive good is produced by it. If an injustice is being inflicted on me, it is a good thing to remove that injustice — but that does not move me one inch closer to Heaven (which is the only measure of true positive good). It is surely along such obvious lines that the Pope was speaking.

A commentator to my previous posting claims that the interpretation I give is not based on the literal meaning of the psalm, but only on an allegorical one, and he makes an appeal to St. Thomas Aquinas for a teaching that the sense of Scripture must always be based on the literal.

It is certainly true that a correct sense of Scripture has to be based on the literal meaning. But first we have to clear up exactly what is meant by the literal meaning (especially since "literal" is often given a distinctly unhelpful meaning in non-Catholic circles). The literal meaning is simply the meaning intended by the author. For example, if an author makes the statement: "On the fourteenth day of the first month the returned exiles kept the passover", then (in the absence of any particular argument that it refers only to some hidden metaphorical meaning) we should make the interpretation that the author was simply recounting an historical fact, and that this historical fact is the literal meaning of the text. More interestingly, if an author says: "You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm", then since we do not think that God actually extended some giant physical hand and arm in order to rescue Israel, we see the author's intended meaning as a reference to the power God exerted in order to rescue Israel. In other words, the literal meaning of the author is that God exerted power, and not that God used some large physical hand. The author is expressing his literal meaning in a metaphor.

This is what Thomas Aquinas is referring to when he says: "The parabolical sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly and figuratively. Nor is the figure itself, but that which is figured, the literal sense. When Scripture speaks of God's arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely operative power."

Given that, let us now go through Psalm 137 looking for the author's intended meaning — which is to say, the literal meaning: "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!". Does the author really intend that only precisely and exactly his right hand withering is the correct punishment, such that no other punishment could possibly be correct — so that his left hand withering would be meaningless, or becoming deaf would not be an appropriate punishment at all? Or does he use the reference to right hand as a metaphor standing for something highly personal and valuable. Surely "right hand" is used as a metaphor; so that the intended meaning of the author is literally that an appropriate punishment for forgetting Jerusalem should be that he lose something personal and valuable. Similarly, when the author says: "Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you" this is again intended metaphor. The literal meaning is something like: "If I forget the home God gave us, may I never be able to speak of anything at all".

So, the author of the psalm is giving examples (i.e. metaphors) of punishments, and not precisely definitive statements.

Given that the author is already using examples and metaphors to express his meaning in the previous verses of the psalm (and after all this is plainly a very common thing to do in the psalms), we then have cause to read the last part of the psalm very carefully indeed. Should we take the details given as being precisely intended, or as intended example referring to an appropriate punishment for those who helped in the downfall of Jerusalem? As an example, not as a precise definition.

When the author of the psalm calls for a particular punishment for the Edomites, is he giving exact and precise physical details of the only possible way in which the appropriate punishment can be applied? Does the author intend to give the only way? No. After all, if we asked the author: "Suppose one of the guilty Edomites actually hated his own child, would it be an appropriate punishment for him to have his child dashed against the rocks?", I really cannot suppose that the author would say, "Oh, in that case he should escape punishment completely." But I do think that if the author were asked: "Suppose a guilty Edomite hated his own child, but had spent his whole life working at his business earning riches, would it be an appropriate punishment for him to have his business and wealth utterly destroyed in front of his eyes", that the author would agree with the punishment.

At the end of the psalm, the author is giving an appropriate punishment, but not the only possible appropriate punishment. In which case, the author is using an example to stand for a range of other things. Which is what metaphor is. So, when my interpretation relies on many things being our children, and not just our physical children, I do not think I have stepped away from what the original author intended — which is to say, I have not stepped away from the literal meaning of the text.

A meandering dispute has broken out in Mark Shea's blog concerning Biblical interpretation. Like most discussions there, it ends in no single or firm conclusion, but trickles out in patches of both fertile and infertile soil. As individual stand-ins for a host of issues are the usual passages: Psalm 137's apparent call for the dashing of infants to death, and the requirement that many of the people conquered by Israel should be killed (e.g. Joshua 6). Should we conclude from such passages that the Bible contains things that are wrong, and that the Bible thus cannot be counted as inerrant? No.

The Bible itself in numerous ways points out the difference between hearing and understanding. Isaiah points this out in Isa 6:9, and Jesus later confirms this, in Matt 13:14. One can hear all the words of a message, but not understand them, and thus conclude something incorrectly from them. A clear example of this in the Gospels is Matt 16:15-23. Peter hears and repeats the word of God correctly (as we know, since Jesus confirms him). But then Peter immediately makes a conclusion from those words that is incorrect, and gets an extremely robust rebuke from Jesus.

Peter hears absolutely correctly, but does not immediately understand correctly.

How does this help us understand something like Psalm 137? In that psalm the author addresses the enemies of Jerusalem, and says that it is a correct thing that those enemies should have inflicted on them the same fate that they inflicted on others: "Happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!". Is the author stating this correctly? Yes, the author has this absolutely correct. He has stated what he heard. The appropriate retribution for sin is to have the same thing inflicted on the sinner that they have inflicted on others. By this means justice is restored. And without the restoration of justice, no sin has been forgiven.

Now it is clearly possible to read Psalm 137 and conclude that it requires that the actual real-life historical infants of the enemies are to be killed. It is possible that the first readers of the psalm thought that it was a correct conclusion, and many contemporary readers of the Bible may think it is the only logically valid conclusion (these would be more examples of hearing, but not understanding). Plainly, however, dashing those infants to death does not give them the justice that is due to them — they have done nothing to deserve this, and so that cannot be the means of fulfilling the demands of justice.

Just because a conclusion is incorrect, we cannot thereby conclude that the original message was heard incorrectly. In the case of Psalm 137 this means that other conclusions are possible, that still maintain the requirements of justice, and maintain the absolute truth of what the psalmist says. How so?

Since I can speak as an enemy of Jerusalem (as all sinners are), what are my little ones, and how will they be dashed against a rock? My children are all the things I cause to come about. If they are bad, then they will come to nothing, and be fruitless, when all things are judged. If my children are good things, then (since all good things are in Jesus), they will still be dashed against a rock, and destroyed just as Jesus was — but in Jesus, justice is satisfied, and all the good things will still live. Whether destroyed in judgment, or destroyed and resurrected, the one doing this is blessed. The words of the psalmist are correct.

What about the other example I mentioned, the requirement that the enemies of Israel be destroyed? The authors of the Bible heard this from God correctly. God wishes there to be no enemies in Israel, no Amalekites, no witches, no evildoers of any kind. This was true when the authors wrote it, and it is still true. It is possible that the original readers concluded that this meant that this necessarily meant that they should physically kill these people. But this conclusion too was not correct. They heard correctly, but did not understand correctly.

The Bible contains the word of God repeated correctly. But the hearers of that word did not (and still do not) always understand it correctly. This does nothing to change the absolute truth of what was heard.