From Culture Wars - An Often Unnoticed Accomp.of the Modernists

 

There is an article in the December issue of Culture Wars that reveals as much about the mind-set of the Novus Ordo as it does about the Jews. W. Patrick Cunningham proposes to tell us "Why Hanukkah Confuses the Jews." Keep in mind that one of the primary goals of the modernists was to strip the Holy Scriptures of what Modernism, in its worship of history, considers to be extraneous or mythological elements added to history. This article in Culture Wars is a good example of the Modernists' success! 

 

What comes through in Cunningham's prose is the reduction of the Divine Rhetoric of Holy Scripture, to the dryest of historical chronicle. It is necessary to understand the three modes of discourse in order to appreciate this reduction. Incidentally, this goal and eventual achievement of the modernists is not mentioned in Pascendi, but is elaborated in the Syllabus Lamentabili (1907) and the earlier Syllabus of Errors (1864). Both Pius the IX and Pope St. Pius the X warned theologians of this destruction of the Divine supernatural aspect of Holy Scripture that began with the textual criticism of Greek and Roman classics in the Renaissance - that period of world history so mis-named as the "revival of learning"!

 

The three modes of discourse are: Scientific - Rhetorical and Poetic. There are no others. Every form of speech falls into one of these three modes. What is absolutely unique about our canonical scriptures is the fact that they are a divinely inspired, inerrant and infallible rhetoric. In Providentissimus Deus, Pope Leo XIII even uses the phrase, which is traditional, that the scriptures were "dictated by the Holy Spirit." And these same Holy Scriptures are entrusted to the one Church founded by Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ. She alone is to preserve them, guard them and protect them from erroneous and heretical interpretations. The last pope to do this in a particular case was Pope Urban VIII in the 1616-1633 Galileo case. (For a complete and orthodox description of this case and its history, see the monumental two volume work, Galileo Was Wrong, the Church Was Right, by Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett.)

Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas gave us the model of scientific discourse. In this kind of speech, the author's intention is to make his mind and his speech conform as closely as possible to the truth about reality. The purpose of his speech is in reality. The purpose of rhetorical discourse is always in the person or persons being addressed. The end of the speech is in the hearer. This is the purpose of all of scripture, as St. Paul says: to teach, instruct, etc. And because the author is God Himself, using human instruments, this rhetoric is Divine. We know it is Divine, because there is always, even in the Wisdom Books, the poetic books, the historical books, and the Prophets, a dimension of the supernatural. This dimension of the divine rhetoric of Holy Scripture is most clearly manifested in typology. And it is this that is so conspicuous by its absence in Cunningham's article. It is true that what he gives us is good historical background - but any human history book could do this as well. It is the typology that makes the history of the Jewish people, from their origin in Adam's son Seth to Noah's son Sem, to the geneologies traced by St. Matthew and St. Luke, to be a divinely inspired, inerrant, infallible and therefore supernatural rhetoric. Nor is this supernatural dimension limited to typology. The Genesis account of Creation is as close to strictly scientific discourse as a divine rhetoric could come, because it contains all we need to know - given the discoveries of true science - permitted by God - about the material universe. One could say that Aristotle discovered the main principles in matter and Genesis showed their actuality in the narration of creation.