It is dogma that Christ is the Messiah.

It is doctrine that the Servant Songs apply to Him.

Very good response. I had never read this section of the Catechism, and I am actually quite surprised that it gets this specific. I do wonder, however, if any of the above is dogma. Checking the footnotes (quickly), they all appear to be scriptural references, which leads me to believe (or at least conjecture) that what the Catechism is giving is a very "traditional" view of various interpretations of scripture, but of course presenting them in the Catechism does not (as we know) give them any greater weight than they have otherwise. So I am still interested if any of the above is actually dogma, and if holding the opinion that the Servant Songs in Isaiah are not prophecies pertaining to "the one who is to come" is actually in conflict with official Church teaching.

The Catholic argument seems to me to be that Jesus was the Messiah, and so anything that can be found in the Old Testament that appears to foreshadow Jesus is a Messianic prophecy. The blurb on the back of Fitzmyer's book says the following:

"Messiah" is one of the most contested terms in Christian reflection, with many people reading the concept back into early Old Testament texts. In The One Who Is to Come Joseph Fitzmyer contradicts that misreading, carefully tracing the emergence of messianism in Judaism to a much later date—the second century B.C.

Since Isaiah was written around the 8th century B.C., reading messianic prophecies into it would (if Fitzmyer is correct) be illegitimate.

It has long seemed strange to me to claim Jesus was the Messiah and the Jews did not acknowledge him because they were mistaken about the kind of person the Messiah would be. The fact is that Jesus was not acknowledged by the Jews as the Messiah because he didn't resemble the first-century Jewish conception of the Messiah. in claiming Jesus was the Messiah, it was necessary for the early Christians to redefine the existing concept of the Messiah to fit whom they believed Jesus to be. This is quite different from looking at Jesus and saying he must be the Messiah because he fulfills prophecies about the Messiah. Jesus was not accepted as Messiah by the Jews because he in no way resembled what they expected the Messiah to be. I am certainly not an expert in this area, but to the best of my knowledge, there is nothing in the Old Testament to imply any connection between the Suffering Servant and the expected Messiah. It appears quite illegitimate to me to claim Isaiah describes the Messiah when in fact the text of Isaiah does not make any references to a Messiah.

In any case, you have given a very good answer, but I am still not convinced that it is dogma that Isaiah's passages about the Suffering Servant are messianic prophecies and that they are "supernatural" predictions of Jesus. It seems to me that such a hypothesis would have to be proven by explicating the text. It does not seem just to "blame" Jews for not recognizing Jesus as the Messiah even if they saw Jesus as having some of the characteristics of the Suffering Servant, because there was nothing to indicate that the Suffering Servant material was to be taken as messianic prophecy.

Of course, if you take it as a given that Jesus was the Messiah, and that everything about Jesus is messianic, then you can of course ransack the Old Testament for phrases and concepts that might seem applicable to Jesus ("He will be born, live, and die . . .") and call them Messianic prophecies. But surely the legitimate way to determine if a prophecy (in the sense of a prediction or foretelling) is fulfilled is to take a look at the prophecy itself and try to determine what it meant, and then look to see if there is something that happened after the prophecy that seemed, in some striking way, to make it come true. Taking what has already happened and searching old texts for "prophecies" that did not seem to be predictions of the future when they were originally made seems to me to be "inventing" prophecies after the fact, as is done with the writings of Nostradamus, for example.

I have done a word search of the Bible, and it is amazing how infrequently the word Messiah appears. One would think from hearing some talk of Christianity that the entire Old Testament is about the wait for the Messian, and the entire New Testament is the story of the arrival of the Messiah. It does not appear to me to be anything like that.

Score one for the scribes ;-)

The Servant Songs belong to Scripture, of which God is the Author. The only authentic interpretation of the Scriptures belongs to the Church established by Christ to teach in His Name and with His protection.

CCC713 The Messiah's characteristics are revealed above all in the "Servant songs."82 These songs proclaim the meaning of Jesus' Passion and show how he will pour out the Holy Spirit to give life to the many: not as an outsider, but by embracing our "form as slave."83 Taking our death upon himself, he can communicate to us his own Spirit of life.

714 This is why Christ inaugurates the proclamation of the Good News by making his own the following passage from Isaiah:84

The Spirit of the LORD God is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good tidings to the afflicted;
he has sent me to bind up the broken hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor.

There's nothing I can do, Rick?!?

>> Nothing.

About what?

>> About the divinely ordained establishment, continuance, and final triumph of the Catholic Church.

I would fight for your right to believe whatever you want to believe, no matter how much your beliefs seem cultish to me.

>> Yes, the Pantheon is the quintessential solution of the well-indoctrinated pagan. I am sure the Romans could never grasp why the Jews and Christians refused to acquiesce in their politically enlightened inclusiveness. Imagine their surprise when the ragged Christians inherited the world subsequent to Rome's collapse. The smart money certainly wasn't on *that* one ;-)

There's nothing I can do, Rick?!?

About what?

I would fight for your right to believe whatever you want to believe, no matter how much your beliefs seem cultish to me.

Europe? I imagine the landmass was there before Saint Paul began preaching to the gentiles. As to the RCC's place in the constellation of factors which contributed to the Europe we know today, of course it had a large part. So did Cholera, Rats, Crop Rotation, the Mediterranean, domesticated animals.... Have you read Guns, Germs, and Steel yet? If not, you might want to do so asap: it might help you stop yourself from making statements like "My religion founded a continent."

Universities? No, sorry, you're wrong again there. The oldest degree granting institutions of learning weren't Catholic, or even European. http://collegestats.org/articles/2009/12/top-10-oldest-universities-in-the-world-ancient-colleges/
I don't expect facts to stop you, but there you go. (As a side note, the first school in Europe to use the term "Universitas" was not organized as an organ of the RCC to probe the meaning of the universe, it was designed to protect against outrageous taxes and penalties on foreigners imposed by the city-state, practices all too common in the feudal societies which relied on the fictional divine right of lords promulgated by...your church.)

However, now that we've come to your prognostication talents and you've let us know of the impending failure of the United States of America and the United Nations, I am speechless...

Oh well.

I might not be able to turn back time and stop the RCC from colliding the Eurasian and African tectonic plates together, but I can at least continue to shine a light of reason and fact where it is needed.

PS. What about the European Union, will that last?
PPS. How much of the lack of faith of Europe is the RCC responsible for, if it's responsible for Europe's creation?

Are you saying it is dogma that Isaiah contains messianic prophecies, or that the servant in Isaiah is a prediction or prophecy about Jesus? If so, could you point out to me where such dogma is documented?

This is not in any way to imply that some of the New Testament authors (and even Jesus himself) saw Jesus as a reflection or a kind of embodiment of the servant. But that is quite different from saying there are messianic prophecies in Isaiah, or the servant in Isaiah is a prediction of Jesus.

I know that many people have strong convictions about interpreting various passages of the Bible, and I know it is often claimed that the Old Testament as filled with "prophecies" about Jesus, but to the best of my knowledge, there is little in the way of dogma or magisterial statements about particular interpretations of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. I am aware of general statements, such as the following from Dei Verbum:

God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New.

However, I am unaware of anything that forces us to choose between any official teachings of the Church and any given interpretation made by Fr. Fitzmeyer. There is a book by F. F. Bruce titled New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes on my bookshelf which I haven't read a word of, but I think a great deal of what some people consider Old Testament foreshadowing or prophecies are much more appropriately New Testament developments of Old Testament themes. If Jesus was inspired by the depiction of the servant in Isaiah and saw part of his destiny to identify with and take on the role of servant, that does not mean Isaiah "prophesied" about Jesus. It means Jesus incorporated into his thinking and actions ideas from Hebrew Scripture, which is quite understandable for a first-century Jew living in Palestine.

Let's see. I've got to choose between one post that offers reason and explanation and another post that doesn't engage with that reasoning in any way but instead offers an unsubstantiated appeal to authority.

I don't know which post (if either) is correct, but I can tell you which one's off to a more promising start.

Since the Catholic Church from Her very inception has, including by the exercise of the heaven-protected magisterium which allows Fr. Fitzmayer to know what the Scriptures consist in in the first place, taught that the Servant Songs are prophetic utterances concerning the Messiah, we are faced with a choice.

We can believe the Church, or we can believe Fr. Fitzmeyer.

It is exactly in this way that we determine whether we believe Christ, or the scribes.

There are no references to, or prophecies about, Jesus or a Messiah in Isaiah.

Many interpreters give a "messianic" interpretation to the Servant Songs of Isaiah, especially to the Fourth Servant Song (Isa 52:13–53:12). That mode of interpretation is tendentious and problematic, because, to begin with, משיח is not found in any of the Servant Songs; nor is the verb משח used in any of them. . . .

As the Fourth Song stands in its present Deutero-Isaian context, however, "there is no room for an expected Messiah as the ruler of the age of salvation." In fact, the passage does not envisage the Servant even as a royal figure, or as a scion of David, or associate with him any political role.

If the reader wonders, then, why the Fourth Servant Song has been introduced into this discussion at this point, it is simply to stress once again that there is no passage in the book of Isaiah that mentions a "Messiah" in the narrow sense, and all attempts to speak of Isaiah's "messianic prophecies" are still-born.

From The One Who Is To Come by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., pp. 39-43.