Free from All Error: Authorship Inerrancy Historicity of Scripture, Church Teaching, and Modern Scripture Scholars

by William G. Most

Ideal for college students, Free From All Error explains, from the perspective of Church teaching, such things as the historical accounts in the various books of the Bible, the multiple applications (or senses) of various texts, parables, the literal sense of Scripture, and the parameters under which Catholic Scripture scholars should operate. Author: William G. Most Format: Paperback, 196 pages Publisher: Franciscan Marytown Press ISBN: 9780913382516

Genres: Catholic, Religion, Theology

196 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1985

About the author

Fr. Most held doctorates in both classical languages and theology. For over 40 years, beginning in the 1940's, he taught undergraduates at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. Then at the end of the 1980's, while in his own mid-70's, Fr. Most moved to northern Virginia to take a position on the faculty of the Notre Dame Institute, a Pontifical institute offering a Masters Degree in religious studies.

Fr. Most's arrival in Virginia placed him on the doorstep of Trinity Communications, whose president, Jeff Mirus, had already published two of Fr. Most's books. In 1986, Trinity had also commissioned John Janaro to write a brief life of Fr. Most and nine other outstanding American priests in a book called Fishers of Men.

Therefore, when Trinity founded the Catholic Resource Network (CRNET) in 1993, it was natural for Fr. Most to become both a theological advisor and an important member of CRNET's Ask the Experts panel, which fielded Catholic questions from users. When CRNET moved to the Internet and merged with the Eternal Word Television Network, Fr. Most continued this role in the Catholic Q&A section on EWTN's web site.

Author of numerous scholarly and popular books and articles covering such topics as grace, Scriptural interpretation, the role of Mary in the redemption, and many other topics, Fr. Most was internationally recognized as one of the premier faithful Catholic theologians of our time. His theological breakthroughs on difficult questions regarding grace, free will and the prerogatives of Mary are already legendary.

For the last few years of his life in the late 1990's, Fr. Most suffered limited mobility because of blood cancer. He could not teach in the classroom as often as he would have liked. Yet his spirit was more than willing and his keen mind still in demand. The result? His contribution online became even more important -- both to himself and to those who would learn from this great Catholic thinker.

Although that contribution is continued in The Most Database on PetersNet, Fr. Most himself has passed beyond theological speculation. In late January of 1999, he began to suffer a general system breakdown and he died shortly after 1:00 a.m. on January 31st at Prince William Hospital in Manassas, Virginia.

Fr. Most was 84 years old. He had spent well over sixty of those years in direct, active and faithful service to the Church for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Reviews

[Eric Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Most is a Roman Catholic priest and theologian. In this work he presents a case that the Christian Bible without error or mistake. Fr. Most does this with six statements that he presents toward the beginning of the book and addresses throughout the text. These six statements center around Jesus and his claims and proofs, as well as the actions of his followers. "In summary then, we see a group that is commissioned to teach by a messenger sent by God, and promised God's protection for that teaching." Most continues by addressing various issues of Biblical scholarship, noting that "Numerous problems that early in [the 20th] century would have seemed unsolvable have been solved." Many of his critiques are pointed toward fellow Catholic scholar and contemporary Raymond Brown, although he does address numerous theologically liberal Biblical scholars across (and outside of) Christianity. This was a accessible and relatively short read, and especially helpful to one, such as a college student, who is entering into the world of Biblical criticism for the first time. While Most is a theological conservative, he is not a fundamentalist and makes notes of errors in that tradition as well. A well written, although slightly dated, response to many scholarly objections to the authority of Christian Scripture from a Catholic perspective.

[Jeff Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

The late Fr. William Most was a well known theologian and scripture scholar who never fell in with any fads and was a counter-ballance to so many more well know theologians and scripture scholars of the era. His book “Free from All Error: Authorship Inerrancy Historicity of Scripture” is an example of this. We so often hear about so-called errors in scripture and especially lists of these “errors” from atheists who are often literal fundamentalists when it comes to scripture. This calling out of errors though is not confined to atheists and such charges have been made from those in the Church including her clergy. Even worse, often no attempt is made to reconcile these passages and when done within the Church is often a denial of what Vatican II’s Dei Verbum says. Fr. Most notes:

Precisely at the time when new techniques enable us to do what seemed impossible before, so many scholars are not only not solving the problems but even saying that problems are insoluble whose answers have been known for a long time!

This book goes through the topics of inspiration and authorship, the cannon, senses of scripture, and the genre of scripture. He takes us through some cases of supposed errors and show how they can be reconciled using these tools and understandings. He also addresses modern techniques such as historical-critical method, source criticism, form and redaction criticism, etc. Fr. Most is totally inline with what Pope Benedict has written about these tools in that they can and should be used within their limits and under the guiding light of the magisterium.

In regard to the methods themselves, some think that only highly trained specialists can understand them. These people are too easily awed. Anyone can grasp at least the basics of these methods, and more too. These methods are not mysterious or formidable. They are our friends.

These methods when used without the analogy of faith quickly become deformed into a type of skepticism that produced the Jesus Seminar where miracles are ridiculous and the hard sayings were added later. Fr. Most gives examples when these tools have been used incorrectly and especially in the case of scripture scholar Fr. Raymond Brown.

This book provides a good introduction to scripture study and how to be able to read difficult passages using the methods as old as the Fathers of the Church or of the modern era and would be a good companion with Mark Shea’s Making Senses Out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did.

For a free ebook version of this see my blog link.

http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtje...

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is a very thoughtful reflection upon Holy Scripture and makes some outstanding observations, though it is by no means a scintillating read