EXTENT OF INSPIRATION

The Council of Trent on April 8, 1546, decreed that “those entire books with all their parts as have been accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church” must be considered as sacred and canonical. This was reaffirrned by the Council of the Vatican in 1870. In the centuries since this decree, Catholic theologians differed on two points of interpretation, as to whether matters of faith and morals alone were to be considered inspired or to whether inspiration extended just to important matters. These questions were settled by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, in which he reaffirmed the decisions of the Council of Trent and emphasized that the Bible in all its parts was inspired and that a stated fact must be accepted as falling under inspiration, down to the most insignificatint item; that is, the whole Bible is the Word of God.