On the linguistic and theological errors of Sen. Miriam Santiago: meaning of “multiply”, God’s authorship of Scriptures, and the divinity of Christ

Senator Santiago clashed with Cong. Manny Pacquiao on the meaning of biblical verses (ABS-CBN).  An INC member posted the news as a comment in my blog, so here is my response:

Submitted on 2011/05/18 at 1:49 pm | In reply to benjie.

Benjie,

By quoting Sen. Santiago, I assume you as an INC believe her arguments. The good senator knows grammar well but she does not know what she is saying. The phrase “Go forth and multiply” I cannot find in my Bible (NAB). (Can you find it in your Bible?) The verses I found are these:

“God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.28 God blessed them, saying: “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.” (Gen 1:27-28)

The good senator knows grammar and high-sounding words, but she does know the meaning of simple word like “multiply”. Multiply does not mean to work with other men as stewards of the earth. There is another word for that: cooperation. Rather, the word “multiply” means to grow in number until humans “fill the earth”. The necessary condition for “multiplying” is to be “fertile”. A woman is considered “fertile” if it can grow a male seed planted on it into a baby. Otherwise, the woman is considered “barren”, as a way to compare a woman’s womb to a land where not even a grass grows. For example, Sarah and Elizabeth were barren because they have grown old and they did not have any child (until God blessed their womb and they gave birth to Isaac and John). Thus, contraception, the means to make a woman effectively infertile through pills and condoms, is against the commandment of God to be fertile and to multiply.

According to Sen. Santiago the Bible was not written by God and not even by any of the eyewitnesses to God since…. it was written at least 70 years after the death of Christ? This is a theological error. This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:

105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”69 “For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”70 106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.”71 107 The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”72 108 Still, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book”. Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, “not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living”.73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, “open (our) minds to understand the Scriptures.”74

The Ten Commandments were written by God: “When the LORD had finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the commandments, the stone tablets inscribed by God’s own finger.” (Ex 31:18)

I may be mistaken, but I assume Sen. Santiago is Catholic and not INC. If she is Catholic, she needs spiritual care (and maybe psychiatric care, too). As a spiritual work of mercy, she needs to be taught that Christ is God and his apostles saw him. The Bible says no one has seen God, but the verse does not stop there: “No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, 12 who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.” (Jn 1:18) “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (Jn 14:9)