phatcatholic Posted December 11, 2003 Share Posted December 11, 2003 phatpham, this is where you show em that Sacred Tradition has always been integral, since the very beginning. thanks, phatcatholic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phatcatholic Posted December 12, 2003 Author Share Posted December 12, 2003 Apostolic Tradition Early Church Fathers on the Coordinate Authority of Sacred Tradition Saint Athanasius and Sacred Tradition The Fathers on the Councils Fathers and Doctors in Scripture and Tradition Historical Development in the Understanding of Doctrinal Development of the Apostolic Deposit "Unanimous Consent" of the Church Fathers Fathers of the Church The Apostolic Fathers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lil Red Posted December 13, 2003 Share Posted December 13, 2003 Traditional Catholic Apologetics Pope Clement I "Then the reverence of the law is chanted, and the grace of the prophets is known, and the faith of the Gospels is established, and the Tradition of the Apostles is preserved, and the grace of the Church exults" (Letter to the Corinthians 11 [A.D. 80]). Papias "Papias [A.D. 120], who is now mentioned by us, affirms that he received the sayings of the Apostles from those who accompanied them, and he moreover asserts that he heard in person Aristion and the presbyter John. Accordingly he mentions them frequently by name, and in his writings gives their Traditions [concerning Jesus]. . . . [There are] other passages of his in which he relates some miraculous deeds, stating that he acquired the knowledge of them from Tradition" (Fragment in Eusebius, Church History 3:39 [A.D. 312]). Eusebius of Caesarea "At that time [A.D. 150] there flourished in the Church Hegesippus, whom we know from what has gone before, and Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, and another bishop, Pinytus of Crete, and besides these, Philip, and Apolinarius, and Melito, and Musanus, and Modestus, and finally, Irenaeus. From them has come down to us in writing, the sound and orthodox faith received from Tradition" (Church History 4:21). Irenaeus of Lyons "As I said before, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although she is disseminated throughout the whole world, yet guarded it, as if she occupied but one house. She likewise believes these things just as if she had but one soul and one and the same heart; and harmoniously she proclaims them and teaches them and hands them down, as if she possessed but one mouth. For, while the languages of the world are diverse, nevertheless, the authority of the Tradition is one and the same" (Against Heresies 1:10:2 [A.D. 189]). Irenaeus of Lyons "That is why it is surely necessary to avoid them [heretics], while cherishing with the utmost diligence the things pertaining to the Church, and to lay hold of the Tradition of truth. . . . What if the Apostles had not in fact left writings to us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of Tradition, which was handed down to those to whom they entrusted the Churches?" (ibid., 3:4:1). Irenaeus of Lyons "It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the Tradition of the Apostles which has been made known throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the Apostles and their successors to our own times--men who neither knew nor taught anything like these heretics rave about. "But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the successions of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the Tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the Apostles. "With this church, because of its superior origin, all churches must agree--that is, all the faithful in the whole world--and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the Apostolic Tradition" (ibid., 3:3:1-2). Eusebius of Caesarea "A question of no small importance arose at that time [A.D. 190]. For the parishes of all Asia . . . held that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should be observed as the feast of the Savior's Passover. . . . But it was not the custom of the churches in the rest of the world to end it at this time, as they observed the practice which, from Apostolic Tradition, has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast [of Lent] on no other day than on that of the resurrection of our Savior [sunday]" (Church History 4:23). Clement of Alexandria "Well, they preserving the Tradition of the blessed doctrine derived directly from the holy Apostles, Peter, James, John, and Paul, the sons receiving it from the father (but few were like the fathers), came by God's will to us also to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds. And well I know that they will exult; I do not mean delighted with this tribute, but solely on account of the preservation of the truth, according as they delivered it. For such a sketch as this, will, I think, be agreeable to a soul desirous of preserving from loss the blessed Tradition" (Miscellanies 1:1 [A.D. 208]). Origen "Although there are many who believe that they themselves hold to the teachings of Christ, there are yet some among them who think differently from their predecessors. The teaching of the Church has inDouche been handed down through an order of succession from the Apostles and remains in the churches even to the present time. That alone is to be believed as the truth which is in no way at variance with ecclesiastical and Apostolic Tradition" (The Fundamental Doctrines 1:2 [A.D. 225]). Cyprian of Carthage "[T]he Church is one, and as she is one, cannot be both within and without. For if she is with Novatian, she was not with [Pope] Cornelius. But if she was with Cornelius, who succeeded the bishop Fabian by lawful ordination, and whom, beside the honor of the priesthood, the Lord glorified also with martyrdom, Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and Apostolic Tradition, sprang from himself. For he who has not been ordained in the Church can neither have nor hold to the Church in any way" (Letters 75:3 [A.D. 253]). Athanasius "Again we write, again keeping to the Apostolic Traditions, we remind each other when we come together for prayer; and keeping the feast in common, with one mouth we truly give thanks to the Lord. Thus giving thanks unto Him, and being followers of the saints, 'we shall make our praise in the Lord all the day,' as the Psalmist says. So, when we rightly keep the feast, we shall be counted worthy of that joy which is in heaven" (Festal Letters 2:7 [A.D. 330]). Athanasius "But you are blessed, who by faith are in the Church, dwell upon the foundations of the faith, and have full satisfaction, even the highest degree of faith which remains among you unshaken. For it has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition, and frequently accursed envy has wished to unsettle it, but has not been able" (ibid., 29). Basil the Great "Of the dogmas and messages preserved in the Church, some we possess from written teaching and others we receive from the Tradition of the Apostles, handed on to us in mystery. In respect to piety both are of the same force. No one will contradict any of these, no one, at any rate, who is even moderately versed in matters ecclesiastical. inDouche, were we to try to reject unwritten customs as having no great authority, we would unwittingly injure the gospel in its vitals; or rather, we would reduce [Christian] message to a mere term" (The Holy Spirit 27:66 [A.D. 375]). Epiphanius of Salamis "It is needful also to make use of Tradition, for not everything can be gotten from Sacred Scripture. The holy Apostles handed down some things in the Scriptures, other things in Tradition." (Medicine Chest Against All Heresies 61:6 [A.D. 375]). Augustine "[T]he custom [of not rebaptizing converts] . . . may be supposed to have had its origin in Apostolic Tradition, just as there are many things which are observed by the whole Church, and therefore are fairly held to have been enjoined by the Apostles, which yet are not mentioned in their writings" (On Baptism, Against the Donatists 5:23[31] [A.D. 400]). Augustine "But the admonition that he [Cyprian] gives us, 'that we should go back to the fountain, that is, to Apostolic Tradition, and thence turn the channel of truth to our times,' is most excellent, and should be followed without hesitation" (ibid., 5:26[37]). Augustine "But in regard to those observances which we carefully attend and which the whole world keeps, and which derive not from Scripture but from Tradition, we are given to understand that they are recommended and ordained to be kept, either by the Apostles themselves or by plenary [ecumenical] councils, the authority of which is quite vital in the Church" (Letter to Januarius [A.D. 400]). John Chrysostom "[Paul commands:] 'Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the Traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our letter' [2 Thess. 2:15]. From this it is clear that they did not hand down everything by letter, but there is much also that was not written. Like that which was written, the unwritten too is worthy of belief. So let us regard the Tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. Is it a Tradition? Seek no further" (Homilies on 2 Thessalonians [A.D. 402]). Vincent of Lerins "With great zeal and closest attention, therefore, I frequently inquired of many men, eminent for their holiness and doctrine, how I might, in a concise and, so to speak, general and ordinary way, distinguish the truth of the Catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical depravity. "I received almost always the same answer from all of them--that if I or anyone else wanted to expose the frauds and escape the snares of the heretics who rise up, and to remain intact and in sound faith, it would be necessary, with the help of the Lord, to fortify that faith in a twofold manner: first, of course, by the authority of divine law [scripture] and then by the Tradition of the Catholic Church. "Here, perhaps, someone may ask: 'If the canon of the Scriptures be perfect and in itself more than suffices for everything, why is it necessary that the authority of ecclesiastical interpretation be joined to it?' Because, quite plainly, Sacred Scripture, by reason of its own depth, is not accepted by everyone as having one and the same meaning . . . "Thus, because of so many distortions of such various errors, it is highly necessary that the line of prophetic and apostolic interpretation be directed in accord with the norm of the ecclesiastical and Catholic meaning" (The Notebooks [A.D. 434]). Pope Agatho "And briefly we shall intimate to [you], what the strength of our Apostolic faith contains, which we have received through Apostolic Tradition and through the Tradition of the apostolical Pontiffs, and that of the five holy general synods [ecumenical councils], through which the foundations of Christ's Catholic Church have been strengthened and established" (Letter read at fourth session of III Constantinople [A.D. 680]). Pope Agatho "For this is the rule of the true faith, which this spiritual mother of your most tranquil empire, the Apostolic Church of Christ, has both in prosperity and in adversity always held and defended with energy; which, it will be proved, by the grace of Almighty God, has never erred from the path of the Apostolic Tradition, nor has she been depraved by yielding to heretical innovations, but from the beginning she has received the Christian faith from her founders, the princes of the Apostles of Christ, and remains undefiled unto the end, according to the divine promise of the Lord and Savior himself" (ibid.). Pope Agatho "[T]he Holy Church of God . . . has been established upon the firm rock of this Church of blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, which by his grace and guardianship remains free from all error, [and possesses that faith] the whole number of rulers and priests, of the clergy and of the people, unanimously should confess and preach with us as the true declaration of the Apostolic Tradition, in order to please God and to save their own souls"" (ibid.). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phatcatholic Posted December 13, 2003 Author Share Posted December 13, 2003 thanks red! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmotherofpirl Posted December 13, 2003 Share Posted December 13, 2003 catholic answers Apostolic Tradition Is Scripture the sole rule of faith for Christians? Not according to the Bible. While we must guard against merely human tradition, the Bible contains numerous references to the necessity of clinging to apostolic tradition. Thus Paul tells the Corinthians, "I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you" (1 Cor. 11:2), and he commands the Thessalonians, "So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter" (2 Thess. 2:15). He even goes so far as to order, "Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us" (2 Thess. 3:6). To make sure that the apostolic tradition would be passed down after the deaths of the apostles, Paul told Timothy, "[W]hat you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. 2:2). In this passage he refers to the first four generations of apostolic succession—his own generation, Timothy’s generation, the generation Timothy will teach, and the generation they in turn will teach. The early Church Fathers, who were links in that chain of succession, recognized the necessity of the traditions that had been handed down from the apostles and guarded them scrupulously, as the following quotations show. Pope Clement I "Then the reverence of the law is chanted, and the grace of the prophets is known, and the faith of the Gospels is established, and the tradition of the apostles is preserved, and the grace of the Church exults" (Letter to the Corinthians 11 [A.D. 80]). Papias "Papias [A.D. 120], who is now mentioned by us, affirms that he received the sayings of the apostles from those who accompanied them, and he, moreover, asserts that he heard in person Aristion and the presbyter John. Accordingly, he mentions them frequently by name, and in his writings gives their traditions [concerning Jesus]. . . . [There are] other passages of his in which he relates some miraculous deeds, stating that he acquired the knowledge of them from tradition" (fragment in Eusebius, Church History 3:39 [A.D. 312]). Eusebius of Caesarea "At that time [A.D. 150] there flourished in the Church Hegesippus, whom we know from what has gone before, and Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, and another bishop, Pinytus of Crete, and besides these, Philip, and Apollinarius, and Melito, and Musanus, and Modestus, and, finally, Irenaeus. From them has come down to us in writing, the sound and orthodox faith received from tradition" (Church History 4:21). Irenaeus "As I said before, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although she is disseminated throughout the whole world, yet guarded it, as if she occupied but one house. She likewise believes these things just as if she had but one soul and one and the same heart; and harmoniously she proclaims them and teaches them and hands them down, as if she possessed but one mouth. For, while the languages of the world are diverse, nevertheless, the authority of the tradition is one and the same" (Against Heresies 1:10:2 [A.D. 189]). "That is why it is surely necessary to avoid them [heretics], while cherishing with the utmost diligence the things pertaining to the Church, and to lay hold of the tradition of truth. . . . What if the apostles had not in fact left writings to us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition, which was handed down to those to whom they entrusted the churches?" (ibid., 3:4:1). ... "It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors to our own times—men who neither knew nor taught anything like these heretics rave about. "But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the successions of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. "With this church, because of its superior origin, all churches must agree—that is, all the faithful in the whole world—and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition" (ibid., 3:3:1–2). Clement of Alexandria "Well, they preserving the tradition of the blessed doctrine derived directly from the holy apostles, Peter, James, John, and Paul, the sons receiving it from the father (but few were like the fathers), came by God’s will to us also to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds. And well I know that they will exult; I do not mean delighted with this tribute, but solely on account of the preservation of the truth, according as they delivered it. For such a sketch as this, will, I think, be agreeable to a soul desirous of preserving from loss the blessed tradition" (Miscellanies 1:1 [A.D. 208]). Origen "Although there are many who believe that they themselves hold to the teachings of Christ, there are yet some among them who think differently from their predecessors. The teaching of the Church has inDouche been handed down through an order of succession from the apostles and remains in the churches even to the present time. That alone is to be believed as the truth which is in no way at variance with ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition" (The Fundamental Doctrines 1:2 [A.D. 225]). Cyprian of Carthage "[T]he Church is one, and as she is one, cannot be both within and without. For if she is with Novatian, she was not with [Pope] Cornelius. But if she was with Cornelius, who succeeded the bishop Fabian by lawful ordination, and whom, beside the honor of the priesthood the Lord glorified also with martyrdom, Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition, sprang from himself. For he who has not been ordained in the Church can neither have nor hold to the Church in any way" (Letters 75:3 [A.D. 253]). Athanasius "Again we write, again keeping to the apostolic traditions, we remind each other when we come together for prayer; and keeping the feast in common, with one mouth we truly give thanks to the Lord. Thus giving thanks unto him, and being followers of the saints, ‘we shall make our praise in the Lord all the day,’ as the psalmist says. So, when we rightly keep the feast, we shall be counted worthy of that joy which is in heaven" (Festal Letters 2:7 [A.D. 330]). "But you are blessed, who by faith are in the Church, dwell upon the foundations of the faith, and have full satisfaction, even the highest degree of faith which remains among you unshaken. For it has come down to you from apostolic tradition, and frequently accursed envy has wished to unsettle it, but has not been able" (ibid., 29). Basil the Great "Of the dogmas and messages preserved in the Church, some we possess from written teaching and others we receive from the tradition of the apostles, handed on to us in mystery. In respect to piety, both are of the same force. No one will contradict any of these, no one, at any rate, who is even moderately versed in matters ecclesiastical. inDouche, were we to try to reject unwritten customs as having no great authority, we would unwittingly injure the gospel in its vitals; or rather, we would reduce [Christian] message to a mere term" (The Holy Spirit 27:66 [A.D. 375]). Epiphanius of Salamis "It is needful also to make use of tradition, for not everything can be gotten from sacred Scripture. The holy apostles handed down some things in the scriptures, other things in tradition" (Medicine Chest Against All Heresies 61:6 [A.D. 375]). Augustine "[T]he custom [of not rebaptizing converts] . . . may be supposed to have had its origin in apostolic tradition, just as there are many things which are observed by the whole Church, and therefore are fairly held to have been enjoined by the apostles, which yet are not mentioned in their writings" (On Baptism, Against the Donatists 5:23[31] [A.D. 400]). "But the admonition that he [Cyprian] gives us, ‘that we should go back to the fountain, that is, to apostolic tradition, and thence turn the channel of truth to our times,’ is most excellent, and should be followed without hesitation" (ibid., 5:26[37]). "But in regard to those observances which we carefully attend and which the whole world keeps, and which derive not from Scripture but from Tradition, we are given to understand that they are recommended and ordained to be kept, either by the apostles themselves or by plenary [ecumenical] councils, the authority of which is quite vital in the Church" (Letter to Januarius [A.D. 400]). John Chrysostom "[Paul commands,] ‘Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our letter’ [2 Thess. 2:15]. From this it is clear that they did not hand down everything by letter, but there is much also that was not written. Like that which was written, the unwritten too is worthy of belief. So let us regard the tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. Is it a tradition? Seek no further" (Homilies on Second Thessalonians [A.D. 402]). Vincent of Lerins "With great zeal and closest attention, therefore, I frequently inquired of many men, eminent for their holiness and doctrine, how I might, in a concise and, so to speak, general and ordinary way, distinguish the truth of the Catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical depravity. "I received almost always the same answer from all of them—that if I or anyone else wanted to expose the frauds and escape the snares of the heretics who rise up, and to remain intact and in sound faith, it would be necessary, with the help of the Lord, to fortify that faith in a twofold manner: first, of course, by the authority of divine law [scripture] and then by the tradition of the Catholic Church. "Here, perhaps, someone may ask: ‘If the canon of the scriptures be perfect and in itself more than suffices for everything, why is it necessary that the authority of ecclesiastical interpretation be joined to it?’ Because, quite plainly, sacred Scripture, by reason of its own depth, is not accepted by everyone as having one and the same meaning. . . . "Thus, because of so many distortions of such various errors, it is highly necessary that the line of prophetic and apostolic interpretation be directed in accord with the norm of the ecclesiastical and Catholic meaning" (The Notebooks [A.D. 434]). Pope Agatho "[T]he holy Church of God . . . has been established upon the firm rock of this Church of blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, which by his grace and guardianship remains free from all error, [and possesses that faith that] the whole number of rulers and priests, of the clergy and of the people, unanimously should confess and preach with us as the true declaration of the apostolic tradition, in order to please God and to save their own souls" (Letter read at fourth session of III Constantinople [A.D. 680]). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmotherofpirl Posted December 13, 2003 Share Posted December 13, 2003 Tradition and Living Magisterium The word tradition (Greek paradosis in the ecclesiastical sense; which is the only one in which it is used here; refers sometimes to the thing (doctrine, account, or custom) transmitted from one generation to another sometimes to the organ or mode of the transmission (kerigma ekklisiastikon, predicatio ecclesiastica). In the first sense it is an old tradition that Jesus Christ was born on 25 December, in the second sense tradition relates that on the road to Calvary a pious woman wiped the face of Jesus. In theological language, which in many circumstances has become current, there is still greater precision and this in countless directions. At first there was question only of traditions claiming a Divine origin, but subsequently there arose questions of oral as distinct from written tradition, in the sense that a given doctrine or institution is not directly dependent on Holy Scripture as its source but only on the oral teaching of Christ or the Apostles. Finally with regard to the organ of tradition it must be an official organ, a magisterium, or teaching authority. Now in this respect there are several points of controversy between Catholics and every body of Protestants. Is all revealed truth consigned to Holy Scripture? or can it, must it, be admitted that Christ gave to His Apostles to be transmitted to His Church, that the Apostles received either from the very lips of Jesus or from inspiration or Revelation, Divine instructions which they transmitted to the Church and which were not committed to the inspired writings? Must it be admitted that Christ instituted His Church as the official and authentic organ to transmit and explain in virtue of Divine authority the Revelation made to men? The Protestant principle is: The Bible and nothing but the Bible; the Bible, according to them, is the sole theological source; there are no revealed truths save the truths contained in the Bible; according to them the Bible is the sole rule of faith: by it and by it alone should all dogmatic questions be solved; it is the only binding authority. Catholics, on the other hand, hold that there may be, that there is in fact, and that there must of necessity be certain revealed truths apart from those contained in the Bible; they hold furthermore that Jesus Christ has established in fact, and that to adapt the means to the end He should have established, a living organ as much to transmit Scripture and written Revelation as to place revealed truth within reach of everyone always and everywhere. Such are in this respect the two main points of controversy between Catholics and so-called orthodox Protestants (as distinguished from liberal Protestants, who admit neither supernatural Revelation nor the authority of the Bible). The other differences are connected with these or follow from them, as also the differences between different Protestant sects--according as they are more or less faithful to the Protestant principle, they recede from or approach the Catholic position. Between Catholics and the Christian sects of the East there are not the same fundamental differences, since both sides admit the Divine institution and Divine authority of the Church with the more or less living and explicit sense of its infallibility and indefectibility and its other teaching prerogatives, but there are contentions concerning the bearers of the authority, the organic unity of the teaching body, the infallibility of the pope, and the existence and nature of dogmatic development in the transmission of revealed truth. Nevertheless the theology of tradition does not consist altogether in controversy and discussions with adversaries. Many questions arise in this respect for every Catholic who wishes to give an exact account of his belief and the principles he professes: What is the precise relation between oral tradition and the revealed truths in the Bible and that between the living magisterium and the inspired Scriptures? May new truths enter the current of tradition, and what is the part of the magisterium with regard to revelations which God may yet make? How is this official magisterium organized, and how is it to recognize a Divine tradition or revealed truth? What is its proper rôle with regard to tradition? Where and how are revealed truths preserved and transmitted? What befalls the deposit of tradition in its transmission through the ages? These and similar questions are treated elsewhere in the CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, but here we must separate and group all that has reference to tradition and to the living magisterium inasmuch as it is the organ of preservation and transmission of traditional and revealed truth. The following are the points to be treated: I. The existence of Divine traditions not contained in Holy Scripture, and the Divine institution of the living magisterium to defend and transmit revealed truth and the prerogative of this magisterium; II. The relation of Scripture to the living magisterium, and of the living magisterium to Scripture; III. The proper mode of existence of revealed truth in the mind of the Church and the way to recognize this truth; IV. The organization and exercise of the living magisterium; its precise rôle in the defence and transmission of revealed truth; its limits, and modes of action; V. The identity of revealed truth in the varieties of formulas, systematization, and dogmatic development; the identity of faith in the Church and through the variations of theology. A full treatment of these questions would require a lengthy development; here only a brief outline can be given, the reader being referred to special works for a fuller explanation. I. Divine Traditions not contained in Holy Scripture; institution of the living magisterium; its prerogatives. Luther's attacks on the Church were at first directed only against doctrinal details, but the very authority of the Church was involved in the dispute, and this soon became evident to both sides. However the controversy continued for many years to turn on particular points of traditional teaching rather than on the teaching authority and the chief weapons were Biblical texts. The Council of Trent, even while implying in its decisions and anathemas the authority of the living magisterium (which the Protestants themselves dared not explicitly deny), while appealing to ecclesiastical tradition and the sense of the Church either for the determination of the canon or for the interpretation of some passages of Holy Scripture, even while making a rule of interpretation in Biblical matters, did not pronounce explicitly concerning the teaching authority, contenting itself with saying that revealed truth is found in the sacred books and in the unwritten traditions coming from God through the Apostles; these were the sources from which it would draw. The Council, as is evident, held that there are Divine traditions not contained in Holy Scripture, revelations made to the Apostles either orally by Jesus Christ or by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and transmitted by the Apostles to the Church. Holy Scripture is therefore not the only theological source of the Revelation made by God to His Church. Side by side with Scripture there is tradition, side by side with the written revelation there is the oral revelation. This granted, it is impossible to be satisfied with the Bible alone for the solution of all dogmatic questions. Such was the first field of controversy between Catholic theologians and the Reformers. The designation of unwritten Divine traditions was not always given all the clearness desirable especially in early times; however Catholic controversialists soon proved to the Protestants that to be logical and consistent they must admit unwritten traditions as revealed. Otherwise by what right did they rest on Sunday and not on Saturday? How could they regard infant baptism as valid, or baptism by infusion? How could they permit the taking of an oath, since Christ had commanded that we swear not at all? The Quakers were more logical in refusing all oaths, the Anabaptists in re- baptizing adults, the Sabbatarians in resting on Saturday. But none were so consistent as not to be open to criticism on some point. Where is it indicated in the Bible that the Bible is the sole source of faith? Going further, the Catholic controversialists showed their opponents that of this very Bible, to which alone they wished to refer, they could not have the authentic canon nor even a sufficient guarantee without an authority other than that of the Bible. Calvin parried the blow by having recourse to a certain taste to which the Divine word would manifest itself as such in the same way that honey is recognized by the palate. And this in fact was the only loophole, for Calvin recognized that no human authority was acceptable in this matter. But this was a very subjective criterion and one calling for caution. The Protestants dared not adhere to it. They came eventually, after rejecting the Divine tradition received from the Apostles by the infallible Church, to rest their faith in the Bible only as a human authority, which moreover was especially insufficient under the circumstances, since it opened up all manner of doubts and prepared the way for Biblical rationalism. There is not, in fact, any sufficient guarantee for the canon of the Scriptures, for the total inspiration or inerrancy of the Bible, save in a Divine testimony which, not being contained in the Holy Books with sufficient clearness and amplitude, nor being sufficiently recognizable to the scrutiny of a scholar who is only a scholar, does not reach us with the necessary warrant it would bear if brought by a Divinely assisted authority, as is, according to Catholics, the authority of the living magisterium of the Church. Such is the way in which Catholics demonstrate to Protestants that there should be and that there are in fact Divine traditions not contained in Holy Writ. In a similar way they show that they cannot dispense with a teaching authority, a Divinely authorized living magistracy for the solution of controversies arising among themselves and of which the Bible itself was often the occasion. inDouche experience proved that each man found in the Bible his own ideas, as was said by one of the earliest reforming sectarians: "Hic liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque, invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua." One man found the Real Presence, another a purely symbolic presence, another some sort of efficacious presence. The exercise of free inquiry with regard to Biblical texts led to endless disputes, to doctrinal anarchy, and eventually to the denial of all dogma. These disputes, anarchy, and denial could not be according to the Divine intention. Hence the necessity of a competent authority to solve controversies and interpret the Bible. To say that the Bible was perfectly clear and sufficient to all was obviously a retort born of desperation, a defiance of experience and common sense. Catholics refuted it without difficulty, and their position was amply justified when the Protestants began compromising themselves with the civil power, rejecting the doctrinal authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium only to fall under that of princes. Moreover it was enough to look at the Bible, to read it without prejudice to see that the economy of the Christian preaching was above all one of oral teaching. Christ preached, He did not write. In His preaching He appealed to the Bible, but He was not satisfied with the mere reading of it, He explained and interpreted it, He made use of it in His teaching, but He did not substitute it for His teaching. There is the example of the mysterious traveller who explained to the disciples of Emmaus what had reference to Him in the Scriptures to convince them that Christ had to suffer and thus enter into His glory. And as He preached Himself so He sent His Apostles to preach; He did not commission them to write but to teach, and it was by oral teaching and preaching that they instructed the nations and brought them to the Faith. If some of them wrote and did so under Divine inspiration it is manifest that this was as it were incidentally. They did not write for the sake of writing, but to supplement their oral teaching when they could not go themselves to recall or explain it, to solve practical questions, etc. St. Paul, who of all the Apostles wrote the most, did not dream of writing everything nor of replacing his oral teaching by his writings. Finally, the same texts which show us Christ instituting His Church and the Apostles founding Churches and spreading Christ's doctrine throughout the world show us at the same time the Church instituted as a teaching authority; the Apostles claimed for themselves this authority, sending others as they had been sent by Christ and as Christ had been sent by God, always with power to teach and to impose doctrine as well as to govern the Church and to baptize. Whoever believed them would be saved; whoever refused to believe them would be condemned. It is the living Church and not Scripture that St. Paul indicates as the pillar and the unshakable ground of truth. And the inference of texts and facts is only what is exacted by the nature of things. A book although Divine and inspired is not intended to support itself. If it is obscure (and what unprejudiced person will deny that there are obscurities in the Bible?) it must be interpreted. And even if it is clear it does not carry with it the guarantee of its Divinity, its authenticity, or its value. Someone must bring it within reach and no matter what be done the believer cannot believe in the Bible nor find in it the object of his faith until he has previously made an act of faith in the intermediary authorities between the word of God and his reading. Now, authority for authority, is it not better to have recourse to that of the Church than to that of the first comer? Liberal Protestants, such as M. Auguste Sabatier, have been the first to recognize that, if there must be a religion of authority, the Catholic system with the splendid organization of its living magisterium is far superior to the Protestant system, which rests everything on the authority of a book. The prerogatives of this teaching authority are made sufficiently clear by the texts and they are to a certain extent implied in the very institution. The Church, according to St. Paul's Epistle to Timothy, is the pillar and ground of truth; the Apostles and consequently their successors have the right to impose their doctrine; whosoever refuses to believe them shall be condemned, whosoever rejects anything is shipwrecked in the Faith. This authority is therefore infallible. And this infallibility is guaranteed implicitly but directly by the promise of the Saviour: "Behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world." Briefly the Church continues Christ in its mission to teach as in its mission to sanctify; its power is the same as that which He received from His Father and, as He came full of truth no less than of grace, the Church is likewise an institution of truth as it is an institution of grace. This doctrine was intended to be spread throughout the world despite so many obstacles of every kind, and the accomplishment of the task required miracles. So did Christ give to his Apostles the miraculous power which guaranteed their teaching. As He Himself confirmed His words by His works He wished that they also should present with their doctrine unexceptionable motives for credibility. Their miracles were the Divine seals of their mission and their Apostolate. The Divine seal has always been stamped on the teaching authority. It is not necessary that every missionary should work miracles, the Church herself is an ever-living miracle, bearing always on her brow the unexceptionable witness that God is with her. II. The relation of Scripture to the living magisterium, and of the living magisterium to Scripture. This relation is the same as that between the Gospel and the Apostolic preaching. Christ made use of the Bible, He appealed to it as to an irrefragable authority, He explained and interpreted it and furnished the key to it, with it he shed light on His own doctrine and mission. The Apostles did in like manner when they spoke to the Jews. Both sides had access to the Scriptures in a text admitted by all, both recognized in them a Divine authority, as in the very word of God. This was also the way of the faithful in their studies and discussions; but with pagans and unbelievers it was necessary to begin with presenting the Bible and guaranteeing its authority- the Christian doctrine concerning the Bible had to be explained to the faithful themselves, and the guarantee of this doctrine demonstrated. The Bible had been committed to the care of the living magisterium. It was the Church's part to guard the Bible, to present it to the faithful in authorized editions or accurate translations, it was for her to make known the nature and value of the Divine Book by declaring what she knew regarding its inspiration and inerrancy, it was for her to supply the key by explaining why and how it had been inspired, how it contained Revelation, how the proper object of that Revelation was not purely human instruction but a religious and moral doctrine with a view to our supernatural destiny and the means to attain it, how, the Old Testament being a preparation and annunciation of the Messias and the new dispensation, there might be found beneath the husk of the letter typical meanings, figures, and prophecies. It was for the Church in consequence to determine the authentic canon, to specify the special rules and conditions for interpretation, to pronounce in case of doubt as to the exact sense of a given book or text, and even when necessary to safeguard the historical, prophetical, or apologetic value of a given text or passage, to pronounce in certain questions of authenticity, chronology, exegesis, or translation, either to reject an opinion compromising the authority of the book or the veracity of its doctrine or to maintain a given body of revealed truth contained in a given text. It was above all for the Church to circulate the Divine Book by minting its doctrine, adapting and explaining it, by offering it and drawing from it nourishment wherewith to nourish souls, briefly by supplementing the book, making use of it, and assisting others to make use of it. This is the debt of Scripture to the living magisterium. On the other hand the living magisterium owes much to Scripture. There it finds the word of God, new-blown so to speak, as it was expressed under Divine agency by the inspired author; while oral tradition, although faithfully transmitting revealed truth with the Divine assistance, nevertheless transmits it only in human formulas. Scripture gives us beyond doubt to a certain extent a human expression of the truth which it presents, since this truth is developed in and by a human brain acting in a human manner, but also to a certain extent Divine, since this human development takes place wholly under the action of God. So also with due proportion it may be said of the inspired word what Christ said of His: It is spirit and life. In a sense differing from the Protestant sense which sometimes goes so far as to deify the Bible, but, in a true sense, we admit that God speaks to us in the Bible more directly than in oral teaching. The latter, moreover, ever faithful to the recommendations which St. Paul made to his disciple Timothy, does not fail to have recourse to Biblical sources for its instruction and to draw thence the heavenly doctrine, to take thence with the doctrine a sure, ever-young, and ever-living expression of this doctrine, one more adequate than any other despite the inevitable inadaptability of human formulas to divine realities In the hands of masters Scripture may become a sharp defensive and offensive weapon against error and heresy. When a controversy arises recourse is had first to the Bible. Frequently when decisive texts are found masters wield them skilfully and in such a way as to demonstrate their irresistible force. If none are found of the necessary clearness the assistance of Scripture is not thereby abandoned. Guided by the clear sense of the living and luminous truth, which it bears within itself, by its likeness to faith defended at need against error by the Divine assistance, the living magisterium strives, explains, argues, and occasionally subtilizes in order to bring forward texts which, if they lack an independent and absolute value, have an ad hominem force, or value, through the authority of the authentic interpreter, whose very thought, if it is not, or is not clearly, in Scripture, nevertheless stands forth with a distinctness or new clearness in this manipulation of Scripture, by this contact with it. Manifestly there is no question here of a meaning which is not in Scripture and which the magisterium reads into it by imposing it as the Biblical meaning. This individual writers may do and have sometimes done, for they are not infallible as individuals, but not the authentic magisterium. There is question only of the advantage which the living magisterium draws from Scripture whether to attain a clearer consciousness of its own thought, to formulate it in hieratic terms, or to triumphantly reject an opinion favourable to error or heresy. As regards Biblical interpretation properly so called the Church is infallible in the sense that, whether by authentic decision of pope or council, or by its current teaching that a given passage of Scripture has a certain meaning, this meaning must be regarded as the true sense of the passage in question. It claims this power of infallible interpretation only in matters of faith and morals, that is where religious or moral truth is in danger, directly, if the text or passage belongs to the moral and religious order; indirectly, if in assigning a meaning to a text or book the veracity of the Bible, its moral value, or the dogma of its inspiration or inerrancy is imperilled. Without going further into the manifold services which the Bible renders to the living magisterium mention must nevertheless be made as particularly important of its services in the apologetic order. In fact Scripture by its historic value, which is indisputable and undisputed on many points, furnishes the apologist with irrefragable arguments in support of supernatural religion. It contains for example miracles whose reality is impressed on the historian with the same certainty as the most acknowledged facts. This is true and perhaps more strikingly so of the argument from the prophecies, for the Scriptures, the Old as well as the New Testament, contain manifest prophecies, the fulfilment of which we behold either in Christ and His Apostles or in the later development of the Christian religion. In view of all this it will be readily understood that since the time of St. Paul the Church has urgently recommended to her ministers the study of Holy Scripture, that she has watched with a jealous authority over its integral transmission, its exact translation, and its faithful interpretation If occasionally she has seemed to restrict its use or its diffusion this too was through an easily comprehensible love and a particular esteem for the Bible, that the sacred Book might not like a profane book be made a ground for curiosity, endless discussions, and abuses of every kind. In short, since the Church at last proves to be the best safeguard for human reason against the excesses of an unbridled reason, so by the very avowal of sincere Protestants does she show herself at the present day the best defender of the Bible against an unrestrained Biblicism or an unchecked criticism. III. The proper mode of existence of revealed truth in the mind of the Church and the way to recognize this truth. There is a formula current in Christian teaching (and the formula is borrowed from St. Paul himself) that traditional truth was confided to the Church as a deposit which it would guard and faithfully transmit as it had received it without adding to it or taking anything away. This formula expresses very well one of the aspects of tradition and one of the principal rôles of the living magisterium. But this idea of a deposit should not make us lose sight of the true manner in which traditional truth lives and is transmitted in the Church. This deposit in fact is not an inanimate thing passed from hand to hand; it is not, properly speaking, an assemblage of doctrines and institutions consigned to books or other monuments. Books and monuments of every kind are a means, an organ of transmission, they are not, properly speaking, the tradition itself. To better understand the latter it must be represented as a current of life and truth coming from God through Christ and through the Apostles to the last of the faithful who repeats his creed and learns his catechism. This conception of tradition is not always clear to all at the first glance. It must be reached, however, if we wish to form a clear and exact idea. We can endeavour to explain it to ourselves in the following manner: We are all conscious of an assemblage of ideas or opinions living in our mind and forming part of the very life of our mind, sometimes they find their clear expression, again we find ourselves without the exact formula wherewith to express them to ourselves or to others an idea is in search as it were of its expression, sometimes it even acts in us and leads us to actions without our having as yet the reflective consciousness of it. Something similar may be said of the ideas or opinions which live, as it were, and stir the social sentiment of a people, a family, or any other well-characterized group to form what is called the spirit of the day, the spirit of a family, or the spirit of a people. This common sentiment is in a sense nothing else than the sum of individual sentiments, and yet we feel clearly that it is quite another thing than the individual taken individually. It is a fact of experience that there is a common sentiment, as if there were such a thing as a common spirit, and as if this common spirit were the abode of certain ideas and opinions which are doubtless the ideas and opinions of each man, but which take on a peculiar aspect in each man inasmuch as they are the ideas and opinions of all. The existence of tradition in the Church must be regarded as living in the spirit and the heart, thence translating itself into acts, and expressing itself in words or writings; but here we must not have in mind individual sentiment, but the common sentiment of the Church, the sense or sentiment of the faithful, that is, of all who live by its life and are in communion of thought among themselves and with her. The living idea is the idea of all, it is the idea of individuals, not merely inasmuch as they are individuals, but inasmuch as they form part of the same social body. This sentiment of the Church is peculiar in this, that it is itself under the influence of grace. Hence it follows that it is not subject, like that of other human groups to error and thoughtless or culpable tendencies. The Spirit of God always living in His Church upholds the sense of revealed truth ever living therein. Documents of all kinds (writings, monuments, etc.) are in the hands of masters, as of the faithful, a means of finding or recognizing the revealed truth confided to the Church under the direction of her pastors. There is between written documents and the living magisterium of the Church a relation similar, proportionately speaking, to that already outlined between Scripture and the living magisterium. In them is found the traditional thought expressed according to varieties of environments and circumstances, no longer in an inspired language, as is the case with Scripture, but in a purely human language, consequently subject to the imperfections and shortcomings of human thought. Nevertheless the more the documents are the exact expression of the living thought of the Church the more they thereby possess the value and authority which belong to that thought because they are so much the better expression of tradition. Often formulas of the past have themselves entered the traditional current and become the official formulas of the Church. Hence it will be understood that the living magisterium searches in the past, now for authorities in favour of its present thought in order to defend it against attacks or dangers of mutilation, now for light to walk the right road without straying. The thought of the Church is essentially a traditional thought and the living magisterium by taking cognizance of ancient formulas of this thought thereby recruits its strength and prepares to give to immutable truth a new expression which shall be in harmony with the circumstances of the day and within reach of contemporary minds. Revealed truth has sometimes found definitive formulas from the earliest times; then the living magisterium has only had to preserve and explain them and put them in circulation. Sometimes attempts have been made to express this truth, without success. It even happens that, in attempting to express revealed truth in the terms of some philosophy or to fuse it with some current of human thought, it has been distorted so as to be scarcely recognizable, so closely mingled with error that it becomes difficult to separate them. When the Church studies the ancient monuments of her faith she casts over the past the reflection of her living and present thought and by some sympathy of the truth of to-day with that of yesterday she succeeds in recognizing through the obscurities and inaccuracies of ancient formulas the portions of traditional truth, even when they are mixed with error. The Church is also (as regards religious and moral doctrines) the best interpreter of truly traditional documents; she recognizes as by instinct what belongs to the current of her living thought and distinguishes it from the foreign elements which may have become mixed with it in the course of centuries. The living magisterium, therefore, makes extensive use of documents of the past, but it does so while judging and interpreting, gladly finding in them its present thought, but likewise, when needful, distinguishing its present thought from what is traditional only in appearance. It is revealed truth always living in the mind of the Church, or, if it is preferred, the present thought of the Church in continuity with her traditional thought, which is for it the final criterion, according to which the living magisterium adopts as true or rejects as false the often obscure and confused formulas which occur in the monuments of the past. Thus are explained both her respect for the writings of the Fathers of the Church and her supreme independence towards those writings--she judges them more than she is judged by them. Harnack has said that the Church is accustomed to conceal her evolution and to efface as well as she can the differences between her present and her former thought by condemning as heretical the most faithful witnesses of what was formerly orthodoxy. Not understanding what tradition is, the ever- living thought of the Church, he believes that she abjured her past when she merely distinguished between what was traditional truth in the past and what was only human alloy mixed with that truth, the personal opinion of an author substituting itself for the general thought of the Christian community. With regard to official documents, the expression of the infallible magisterium of the Church embodied in the decision of councils, or the solemn judgments of the popes, the Church never gainsays what she has once decided. She is then linked with her past because in this past her entire self is concerned and not any fallible organ of her thought. Hence she still finds her doctrine and rule of faith in these venerable monuments; the formulas may have grown old, but the truth which they express is always her present thought. IV. The organization and exercise of the living magisterium; its precise rôle in the defence and transmission of revealed truth-- its limits and modes of action. Closer study of the living magisterium will enable us to better understand the splendid organism created by God and gradually developed that it might preserve, transmit, and bring within the reach of all revealed truth, ever the same, but adapted to every variety of time, circumstances, and environment. Properly speaking, this magisterium is a teaching authority; it not only presents the truth, but it has the right to impose it, since its power is the very power given by God to Christ and by Christ to His Church. This authority is called the teaching Church. The teaching Church is essentially composed of the episcopal body, which continues here below the work and mission of the Apostolic College. It was inDouche in the form of a college or social body that Christ grouped His Apostles and it is likewise as a social body that the episcopate exercises its mission to teach. Doctrinal infallibility has been guaranteed to the episcopal body and to the head of that body as it was guaranteed to the Apostles, with this difference, however, between the Apostles and the bishops that each Apostle was personally infallible (in virtue of his extraordinary mission as founder and the plenitude of the Holy Ghost received on Pentecost by the Twelve and later communicated to St. Paul as to the Twelve), whereas only the body of bishops is infallible and each bishop is not so, save in proportion as he teaches in communion and concert with the entire episcopal body. At the head of this episcopal body is the supreme authority of the Roman pontiff, the successor of St. Peter in his primacy as he is his successor in his see. As supreme authority in the teaching body, which is infallible, he himself is infallible. The episcopal body is infallible also, but only in union with its head, from whom moreover it may not separate, since to do so would be to separate from the foundation on which the Church is built. The authority of the pope may be exercised without the co-operation of the bishops, and this even in infallible decisions which both bishops and faithful are bound to receive with the same submission. The authority of the bishops may be exercised in two ways; now each bishop teaches the flock confided to him, again the bishops assemble in council to draw up together and pass doctrinal or disciplinary decrees. When all the bishops of the Catholic world (this totality is to be understood as morally speaking; it suffices for the whole Church to be represented) are thus assembled in council the council is called oecumenical. The doctrinal decrees of an oecumenical council, once they are approved by the pope, are infallible as are the ex cathedra definitions of the sovereign pontiff. Although the bishops, taken individually, are not infallible their teaching participates in the infallibility of tie Church according as they teach in concert and in union with the episcopal body, that is according as they express not their personal ideas, but the very thought of the Church. Beside the sovereign pontiff are the Roman Congregations, many of which are especially concerned with doctrinal questions. Some of them, such as the Congregation of the Index, are not so concerned save from a disciplinary standpoint, by prohibiting the reading of certain books, regarded as dangerous to faith or morals, if not by the very doctrine which they contain, at least by their way of expressing it or by their unseasonableness. Other congregations, such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have a more directly doctrinal authority. This authority is never infallible; it is nevertheless binding and exacts a religious submission, interior as well as exterior. Nevertheless this interior submission does not necessarily bear on the absolute truth or falsity of the doctrine concerned in the decree, it may only bear on the safety or danger of a certain teaching or opinion, the decree itself usually having in view only the moral qualification of the doctrine. To assist them in their doctrinal task the bishops have all those who teach by their authority or under their surveillance; pastors and curates, professors in ecclesiastical establishments, in a word, all who teach or explain Christian doctrine. Theological teaching in all its forms (in seminaries, universities, etc.) gives valuable assistance as a whole to the teaching authority and to all who teach under that authority. In the study of theology the masters themselves have acquired the knowledge which usually assists them to discern truth or falsehood in doctrinal matters, they have drawn thence what they themselves are to provide. Theologians as such do not form a part of the teaching Church, but as professional expounders of revealed truth they study it scientifically, they collect and systematize it, they illumine it with all the lights of philosophy, history, etc. They are, as it were, the natural consultors of the teaching authority, to furnish it with the necessary information and data; they thereby prepare and sometimes in an even more direct manner by their reports, their written consultations, their projects or schemata, and their preparatory redactions the official documents which the teaching authority completely develops and publishes authoritatively. On the other hand, their scientific works are useful for the instruction of those who should spread and popularize the doctrine, put it in circulation, and adapt it to all by speech or writings of every kind. It is evident what marvellous unity is attained on this point alone in ecclesiastical teaching and how the same truth, descended from above, distributed through a thousand different channels, finally comes pure and undefiled to the most lowly and the most ignorant. This multifarious work, of scientific exposition as well as of popularization and propaganda, is likewise assisted by the countless written forms of religious teaching, among which catechisms have a special character of doctrinal security, approved as they are by the teaching authority and claiming only to set forth with clearness and precision the teaching common in the Church. Thus the child who learns his catechism may, provided he is informed of it, take cognizance that the doctrine presented to him is not the personal opinion of the volunteer catechist or of the priest who communicates it to him. The catechism is the same in all the parishes of a diocese, apart from a few differences of detail which have no bearing on doctrine all the catechisms of a country are alike; the differences between those of one country and another are scarcely perceptible. It is truly the mind of the Church received from God or Christ and transmitted by the Apostles to the Christian society which thus reaches even little children by the voice of the catechist, or the savage by that of the missionary. This diffusion of the same truth throughout the world and this unity of the same faith among the most diverse peoples is a marvel which by itself forces the recognition that God is with His Church. St. Irenaeus in his time was in admiration of it and he expressed his admiration in language of such brilliancy and poetry as is seldom to be met with in the venerable Bishop of Lyons. The outer and visible cause of its diffusion and unity is the splendid organization of the living magisterium. This magisterium was not instituted to receive new truths, but to guard, transmit, propagate, and preserve revealed truth from every admixture of error, and to cause it to prevail. Moreover the magisterium should not be considered as external to the community of the faithful. Those who teach cannot and should not teach save what they have learned themselves, those who have the office of teachers have been chosen from among the faithful and they first of all are obliged to believe what they propose to the faith of others. Moreover they usually propose to the belief of the faithful only the truths of which the latter have already made more or less explicit profession. Sometimes it is even by sounding as it were the common sentiment of the Church, still more by scrutinizing the monuments of the past, that masters and theologians discover that such and such a doctrine, perhaps in dispute, belongs nevertheless to the traditional deposit. More than one among the faithful may be unconscious of personal belief in it, but if he is in union of thought with the Church he believes implicitly that which perhaps he declines to recognize explicitly as an object of his faith. It was thus with regard to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception before it was inserted in the explicit faith of the Church. Hence there is between the teaching Church and the faithful an intimate union of thought and heart. The teaching authority loses nothing of its rights; these are limited only from above by the very conditions of the command which they have received. But the exercise of this authority is by so much more certain and easy as the faithful, generally, so to speak, confirm by their adhesion the decisions of this authority: a dogmatic definition scarcely does more than sanction the faith already existing in the Christian community. The better to understand, adapt, and preserve revealed truth against attacks or errors the masters in the Church and the professors of theology naturally appeal to all the resources offered by human science. Among these sciences philosophy, history, languages, philology in all its forms necessarily have an important place in the arsenal of the teaching magisterium. With regard to theological systematization in particular, philosophy necessarily intervenes to assist theology better to comprehend revealed truth, the better to synthesize traditional data, and the better to explain the dogmatic idea. In the Middle Ages a fruitful alliance was formed between Scholastic philosophy and theology. It may happen that philosophy and the other human sciences are at variance with theology, the science of revealed truth. The conflict is never insoluble, for the true can never be opposed to the true, nor the human truth of philosophy and human knowledge to the supernatural truth of theology. But the fact remains that scientific hypothesis, science which seeks itself, and philosophy which develops itself sometimes seem in opposition to revealed truth. In this case the teaching Church has the right, in order to preserve traditional truth, to condemn the assertions, opinions, and hypotheses which, although not direct denials, nevertheless endanger it or rather expose some souls to the loss of it. Authority has need to be prudent in these condemnations and it is well known that the cases are very rare when it may be asserted with any appearance of justification that it has not been sufficiently so, but its right to interfere is indisputable for anyone who admits the Divine institution of the magisterium. There are then between purely profane facts and opinions and revealed truths mixed facts and opinions which by their nature belong to the human order, but which are in intimate contact and close connexion with supernatural truth. These facts are called dogmatic facts and these opinions theological opinions. In very virtue of its mission the teaching authority has jurisdiction over these facts and opinions; it is even a positive truth, if not a revealed truth, that dogmatic facts and theological opinions may also like dogmatic truths themselves be the object of an infallible decision. The Church is no less infallible in maintaining that the five famous propositions are in Jansenism than in condemning these propositions as heretical. A distinction must be made between dogmatic traditions or revealed truths, pious traditions, liturgical customs, and the accounts of supernatural manifestations or revelations which circulate in the world of Christian piety. When the Church intervenes in order to pronounce in these matters it is never to canonize them, if we may so speak, nor to give them an authority of faith; in such cases it claims only to preserve them against temerarious attacks, to pronounce that they contain nothing contrary to faith or morals, and to recognize in them a human value sufficient for piety to nourish itself therewith freely and without danger. V. The identity of revealed truth in the varieties of formulas, systematization, and dogmatic development, the identity of faith in the Church and through the variations of theology. The saying of Sully Prud'homme is well known, "How is it that this which is so complicated (the 'Summa' of St. Thomas) has proceeded from what was so simple (the Gospel)?" In fact when we read a theological treatise or the profession of faith and anti-Modernist oath imposed by Pius X they seem at first glance very different from the Holy Scripture or the Apostles' Creed. On closer study we become aware that the differences are not irreconcilable; despite appearances the "Summa" and the anti-Modernist oath are naturally linked with the Scripture and the faith of the first Christians. To grasp thoroughly the identity of revealed truth such as was believed in the early centuries with the dogmas which we now profess, it is necessary to study thoroughly the process of dogmatic expression in the complete history of dogma and theology. It is sufficient here to indicate its general outlines and characteristics. That which was shown in Scripture or the Evangelic Revelation as a living reality (the Divine Person of Jesus Christ) has been formulated in abstract terms (one person, two natures) or in concrete formulas (my Father and I are one); men passed constantly from the implicit seen or received to the explicit reasoned and reflected upon; they analyzed the complex data, compared the separate elements, built up a system of the scattered truths; they cleared up by analogies of faith and the light of reason points which were still obscure and fused them into a whole, in whose parts the data of Divine Revelation and those of human knowledge were sometimes difficult to distinguish. Briefly all this led to a work of transposition, analysis, and synthesis, of deduction and induction, of the elaboration of the revealed matter by theology. In the course of this work the formulas have changed, the Divine realities have become tinged with the colours of human thought, revealed truths have been mingled with those of science and philosophy, but the heavenly doctrine has remained the same throughout the varieties of formulas, systematization, and dogmatic expression. It is seen at different angles and to a certain extent with other eyes, but it is the same truth which was presented to the first Christians and which is presented to us to-day. To this identity of revealed truth corresponds the identity of faith. What the first Christians believed we still believe; what we believe to-day they believed more or less explicitly, in a more or less conscious way. Since the deposit of Revelation has remained the same, the same also, in substance, has remained the taking possession of the deposit by the living faith. Each of the faithful has not at all times nor has he always explicit consciousness of all that he believes, but his implicit belief always contains what he one day makes explicit in the profession of faith. Certain truths, which may be called fundamental, have always been explicitly professed in the Church either by word or action; others which may be called secondary may have long remained implicit, enveloped, as regards their precise detail, in a more general truth where faith did not discern them at the first glance. In the first case at a given time uncertainties may have existed, controversies have arisen, heresies cropped up. But the mind of the Church, the Catholic sense, has not hesitated as to what was essential, there has never been in the Christian world that darkening of the truth with which heretics have reproached it; these might have seen and they who had eyes to see did see. On these points disputes have never arisen among the faithful; there have sometimes been very sharp disputes, but they had to do with misunderstandings or bore only on details of expression. As regards truths such as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, there have been uncertainties and controversies over the very substance of the subjects involved. The revealed truth was inDouche in the deposit of truth in the Church, but it was not formulated in explicit terms nor even in clearly equivalent terms; it was enveloped in a more general truth (that e. g. of the all-holiness of Mary), the formula of which might be understood in a more or less absolute sense (exemption from all actual sin, exemption even from original sin). On the other hand, this truth (the exemption of Mary from original sin) may seem in at least apparent conflict with other certain truths (universality of original sin, redemption of all by Christ). It will be readily understood that in some circumstances, when the question is put explicitly for the first time, the faithful have hesitated. It is even natural that the theologians should show more hesitation than the other faithful. More aware of the apparent opposition between the new opinion and the ancient truth, they may legitimately resist, while awaiting fuller light, what may seem to them unreflecting haste or unenlightened piety. Thus did St. Anselm, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure in the case of the Immaculate Conception. But the living idea of Mary in the mind of the Church implied absolute exemption from all sin without exception, even from original sin; the faithful whom theological preoccupations did not prevent from beholding this idea in its purity, with that intuition of the heart often more prompt and more enlightened than reasoning and reflected thought, shrank from all restriction and could not suffer, according to the expression of St. Augustine, that there should be question of any sin whatsoever in connexion with Mary. Little by little the feeling of the faithful won the day. Not, as has been said, because the theologians, powerless to struggle against a blind sentiment, had themselves to follow the movement, but because their perceptions, quickened by the faithful and by their own instinct of faith, grew more considerate of the sentiment of the faithful and eventually examined the new opinion more closely in order to make sure that, far from contradicting any dogma, it harmonized wonderfully with other revealed truths and corresponded as a whole to the analogy of faith and rational fitness. Finally scrutinizing with fresh care the deposit of revelation, they there discovered the pious opinion, hitherto concealed, as far as they were concerned in the more general formula, and, not satisfied to hold it as true, they declared it revealed. Thus to implicit faith in a revealed truth succeeded, after long discussions, explicit faith in the same truth thenceforth shining in the sight of all. There have been no new data, but there has been under the impulse of grace and sentiment and the effort of theology a more distinct and clear insight into what the ancient data contained. When the Church defined the Immaculate Conception it defined what was actually in the explicit faith of the faithful what had always been implicitly in that faith. The same is true of all similar cases, save for accidental differences of circumstances. In recognizing a new truth the Church thereby recognizes that it already possessed that truth. There is, therefore in the Church progress of dogma, progress of theology, progress to a certain extent of faith itself, but this progress does not consist in the addition of fresh information nor the change of ideas. What is believed has always been believed, but in time it is more commonly and thoroughly understood and explicitly expressed. Thus, thanks to the living magisterium and ecclesiastical preaching, thanks to the living sense of truth in the Church, to the action of the Holy Ghost simultaneously directing master and faithful, traditional truth lives and develops in the Church, always the same, at once ancient and new-- ancient, for the first Christians already beheld it to a certain extent, new, because we see it with our own eyes and in harmony with our present ideas. Such is the notion of tradition in the double meaning of the word; it is Divine truth coming down to us in the mind of the Church and it is the guardianship and transmission of this Divine truth by the organ of the living magisterium, by ecclesiastical preaching, by the profession of it made by all in the Christian life. JEAN BAINVEL Transcribed by Tomas Hancil From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright © 1913 by the Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright © 1996 by New Advent, Inc. Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent). This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913 edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight, editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to contribute to this worthwhile project, you can contact him by e- mail at (knight.org/advent). For more information please download the file cathen.txt/.zip. ------------------------------------------------------- Provided courtesy of: Eternal Word Television Network PO Box 3610 Manassas, VA 22110 Voice: 703-791-2576 Fax: 703-791-4250 Web: http://www.ewtn.com Email address: sysop@ewtn.com ------------------------------------------------------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lil Red Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 Corunum Catholic Apologetic Website Documents illustrating the coordinate authority of Sacred Tradition HOLY WRIT '[A]nd maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you' 1 Corinthians 11:2 AMBROSE 'But if they will not beleive the doctrines of the priests, let them beleive Christ's oracles, let them beleive the admonitions of angels who say, "For with God nothing is impossible". Let them beleive the apostles CREED WHICH the ROMANS CHURCH as always kept undefiled' To Sircius ATHANASIUS 'The confession arrived at Nicea was, we say more, SUFFICIENT and enough by ITSELF, for the subversion of all ireligious heresy, and for the security and furtherance of the doctrine of the Church' Ad Afros 1 'But the WORD OF THE LORD which came THROUGH the Ecumenical Synod at Nicea, abides forever' Ad Afros 2 'forcing on the divine oracles a misinterpretation according to their OWN PRIVATE sense' Orat 1,37 '...that He was not before that time, but is wholly man by nature and nothing more. But this is NO sentiment of the CHURCH, but of the Samosatene and of the present Jews...' Orat 1,38 "This then I consider the sense of this passage, and that, a VERY ECCLESIASTICAL sense." Orat 1,44 'Who heard in his FIRST CATECHISING, that God has a Son and has made all things by His proper Word, *BUT* understood it in THAT SENSE in which we now mean it? Who on the rise of this odious heresy of the Arians, was not startled at what he heard, as *strange* ' Orat 2,34 "However here too they(the Arians) introduce their private fictions, and contend that the Son and the Father are not in such wise 'one,' or 'like,' as the CHURCH preaches, but as they themselves would have it" Orat 3,10 "If we now consider the OBJECT of that FAITH which we Christians HOLD, and using it as a RULE, apply ourselves, as the Apostle teaches to the reading of inspired Scripture. For Christ's enemies, being ignorant of this OBJECT, have wandered from the way of truth, and have stumbled on a stone of stumbling, thinking otherwise than they should think" Orat 3,28 'let us, retaining the GENERAL SCOPE of the faith, acknowledge that what they interpret ill, HAS a right intepretation' Had Christ enemies thus dwelt on these thoughts, and recognized the ECCLESIASTICAL SCOPE and an ANCHOR for the faith, they would NOT have made SHIPWRECK of the faith..." Orat 3,58 "We are content with the fact that this is not the teaching of the Catholic Church, nor did the Fathers hold this." Epis 59 "But our faith is right, and starts from the teaching of the Apostles and tradition of the fathers, being confirmed both by the NT and the Old." Epis 60 "But after him (the devil) and with him are all inventors of unlawful heresies,who inDouche refer to the Scriptures, BUT DO NOT hold such opinions as thesaints have handed down, and receiving them as the traditions of men, err,because they DO NOT rightly KNOW THEM nor their power" Festal Letter 2 'Scarcely, however, did they begin to speak, when they were condemned, and one differed from another; then perceiving the straits in which their heresy lay, they remained dumb, and by their silence confessed the disgrace which came upon their heterodoxy. On this the Bishops, having negatived the terms they had invented, published against them the SOUND and ECCLESIASTICAL faith....And what is strange inDouche, Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine, who had denied the day before, but afterward subscribed, sent to his Church a letter, saying that this was the CHURCH's faith and the TRADITION of the FATHERS' De Decretis 3 'Are they not then committing a crime in their very thought to gainsay so GREAT and ECUMENICAL a Council'? De Decretis 4 'For, what OUR FATHERS have delivered, THIS IS TRULY DOCTRINE; and this is truly the TOKEN of doctors, to CONFESS THE SAME THING with each other, and to vary NEITHER from themselves nor from their FATHERS...Thus the Greeks, as not witnessing to the SAME doctrines, but quarreling one with another, have no truth of teaching; but the holy and veritable HERALDS of TRUTH AGREE TOGETHER, and do not differ..preaching the same Word harmoniously' De Decretis 4 '...and it is seemingly and most irreligious when Scripture contains such images, to form ideas concerning our Lord from others which are neither in Scripture, nor have any religious bearing. THEREFORE let them tell us FROM WHAT TEACHER or BY WHAT TRADITION they derived these notions concerning the Saviour?...But they seem to me to have a wrong understanding of this passage also; for it has a RELIGIOUS and VERY ORTHODOX sense, which had they understood, they would NOT have blasphemed the Lord of glory' De Decretis 13 '...and in dizziness about TRUTH, are full set upon accusing the COUNCIL, let them tell us what are the Scriptures from what they have learned , or WHO is the saint by whom they have BEEN TAUGHT...' De Decretis 18 'MUST needs hold and intend the decisions of the Council, suitably regarding them to signify the relation of the RADIANCE to the LIGHT, and FROM THENCE gaining the illustration TO THE TRUTH' De Decretis 20 'We are PROVING that THIS view has been TRANSMITTED from FATHER to FATHER, but ye, O modern Jews and disciples of Caiaphas, how many FATHERS CAN YE ASSIGN to your phrases? Not one of the understandings and wise; for all abhor you, but the devil alone; none but he is your father in this apostasy, who both in the beginning sowed you with the seed of this IRRELIGION, and now persuades you to slander the ECUMENICAL Council, for committing to writing, not YOUR doctrines, but that which from the BEGINNING those who were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word have handed down to us. For the faith which the COUNCIL has confessed in writing, that is the faith of the Catholic Church; to assert this, the BLESSED FATHERS so expressed themselves while condemning the Arian heresy...' De Decretis 27 '...For they dissent from each other, and , whereas they have revolted from THEIR FATHERS, are not of ONE AND THE SAME MIND, but float about with various and discordant changes' De Synodis 13 'For it is right and meet thus to feel, and to maintain a good conscience toward the FATHERS, if we be not spurious children, but have received the TRADITIONS from them, and the LESSONS of religion at their hands' De Synodis 47 'Such then, as we confess and beleive, being the SENSE of the FATHERS...' De Synodis 48 '...but do you, remaining on the foundation of the Apostles, and holding fast the TRADITIONS of the FATHERS, pray that now at length all strife and rivalry may CEASE and the futile questions of the heretics may be condemned...' De Synodis 54 'Of course, the holy Scriptures, divinely inspired are self-sufficient for the proclamation of the truth. But there are also numerous works composed for this purpose by blessed teachers. The ONE WHO READS THEM will ==UNDERSTAND== the INTERPRETATION of the Scriptures AND will be ABLE to GAIN knowledge he desrires' C. Gentes 1 'But the sectaries, who have fallen away from the TEACHING of the CHURCH, and made SHIPWRECK concerning the faith' C. Gentes 6 'But that the soul is made immortal is a further point in the CHURCH'S TEACHING which you must know...' C. Gentes 33 'But what is also to the point, let us note that the very TRADITION, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning was preached by the Apostles and PRESERVED by the FATHERS. On this the CHURCH was founded; and if anyone departs from THIS, he neither is, nor any longer ought to be called, a Christian.' Ad Serapion 1,28 ANTONY of EGYPT "Wherefore keep yourselves all the more untainted by them, and observe the TRADITIONS of the FATHERS, and chiefly the holy faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, which you have learned from the SCRIPTURE, AND of which you have often been put in mind BY ME" Vita S. Antoni 89 AUGUSTINE "For in the Catholic Church, not to speak of the purest wisdom, to the knowledge of which a few spiritual men attain in this life, so as to know it, in the scantiest measure, inDouche, becuase they are but men, still without any uncertainty...The consent of peoples and nations keep me in Church, so does her authority, inaugerated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The SUCCESSION of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the APOSTLE PETER, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave it in charge to feed his sheep, down to the present EPISCOPATE...The epistle begins thus:--'Manicheus, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the providence of God the Father. These are the wholesome words from the perennial and living fountain.' Now, if you please, patiently give heed to my inquiry. I do not beleive Manichues to be an apostle of Christ. Do not, I beg you, be enraged and begin to curse. For you know that it is my rule to beleive none of your statements without consideration. Therefore I ask, who is this Manicheus? You will reply, An Apostle of Christ. I do not beleive it. Now you are at a loss what to say or do; for you promised to give knowledge of truth, and here you are forcing me to beleive what I have no knowledge of. Perhaps you will read the gospel to me, and will attempt to find there a testimony to Manicheus. But should you meet with a person not yet beleiving in the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not beleive? For MY PART, I should NOT BELEIVE the gospel except moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So when those on whose authority I have consented to beleive in the gospel tell me not to beleive in Manicheus, how can I BUT CONSENT?" C. Epis Mani 5,6 "Wherever this tradition comes from, we must believe that the Church has not believed in vain, even though the express authority of the canonical scriptures is not brought forward for it" Letter 164 to Evodius of Uzalis "To be sure, although on this matter, we cannot quote a clear example taken from the canonical Scriptures, at any rate, on this question, we are following the true thought of Scriptures when we observe what has appeared good to the universal Church which the authority of these same Scriptures recommends to you" C. Cresconius I:33 "It is obvious; the faith allows it; the Catholic Church approves; it is true" Sermon 117:6 "If therefore, I am going to beleive things I do not know about, why should I not believe those things which are accepted by the common consent of learned and unlearned alike and are established by most weighty authority of all peoples?" C. Letter called Fundamentals 14:18 "Will you, then, so love your error, into which you have fallen through adolescent overconfidence and human weakness, that you will seperate yourself from these leaders of Catholic unity and truth, from so many different parts of the world who are in agreement among themselves on so important a question, one in which the essence of the Christian religion involved..?" C. Julian 1:7,34 "The authority of our Scriptures, strenghtened by the consent of so may nations, and confirmed by the succession of the Apostles, bishops and councils, is against you" C. Faustus 8:5 "No sensible person will go contrary to reason, no Christian will contradict the Scriptures, no lover of peace will go against the CHURCH" Trinitas 4,6,10 BASIL "Let us now investigate what are our common conceptions concerning the Spirit, as well those which have been gathered by us from Holy Scripture AS WELL those which have been gathered concerning it as those which we have RECEIVED from the UNWRITTEN tradition of the Fathers" Holy Spirit 22 "Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have delivered to us in a mystery by the Apostles by the tradition of the Apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force" Holy Spirit 27 "The day would fail me, if I went through the mysteries of the Church which are not in Scripture. I pass by the others, the very confession of faith, in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, from what written document have we?" Holy Spirit 67 "While the unwritten traditions are so many and their bearing on 'the mystery of godliness' is so important, can they refuse us a single word which has come down to us from the Fathers;--which we found, derived from untutotred custom, abiding in unpreverted churches;--a word for which contributes in no small degree to the completeness of the force of the mystery" Holy Spirit 67 "In answer to the objection that the doxology in the form 'with the Spirit' has NO written authority, we maintain that if there is not other instance of that which is unwritten, then this must not be recieved. But if the great number of our mysteries are admitted into our constitution without written authority, then, in company with many others, let us recieve this one. For I HOLD IT APOSTOLIC TO ABIDE BY THE UNWRITTEN TRADITIONS. 'I praise you,' it is said, 'that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as I have delivered them to you;' and 'Hold fast the traditions which ye have been taught whether by by word, or our Epistle.' One of these traditions is the practice which is now before us, which they who ordained from the beginning, rooted firmly in the churches, delivering it to their SUCCESSORS, and its use through long custom advances pace by pace with time. If as in a court of Law, we were at a loss for documentary evidence, but were able to bring before you a large number of witnesses, would you not give your vote for our aquittal? I think so; for 'at the mouth of two or three witnesses shall the matter be established'. And if we could prove clearly to you that a long period of time was in our favour, should we not have seemed to you to urge you with reason that this suit ought not to be brought into court against us? For ancient dogmas inspire a certain sense of awe, venerable as they are with hoary antiquity" Holy Spirit 71 "...and I have not allowed my judgement concerning them to rest wholly with myself, but have followed the decisions given about them by our Fathers." Epis 204,6 Basil continues affirming that he would receive the Arians if they started: "accepting the Nicene Creed.." Epis 204,6 Basil Continues: "is to be recieved without hesitation and difficulty, citing in support of his opinion the unanimous assent of the bishops of Macedonia and Asia" Eps 204,6 Again repudiating private opinion and affirming Scripture, tradition and Church. Regarding the authority of St. Athanasius, the unanimous consent of Bishops, and Nicean Creed, Basil writes: "considering myself bound to follow the high authority of such a man and of those who made the rule, and with every desire on my part to win the reward promised peacemakers, did enroll in the lists of communicants all who accepted that creed. The fair thing would be to judge of me, not from one or two who do not walk uprightly in the truth, but from the multitiude of bishops throughout the world, connected with me by the grace of the Lord... you may learn that we are all of one mind and of one opinion. Whoso shuns communion with me, it cannot escape your accuracy, CUTS himself off from the whole Church." Epis 204,6-7 'Not to accept the VOICE of the Fathers as being of more authority than their OPINION deserves reproof as something filled with pride!' Epis to Canonicas CYPRIAN To Pope Cornelius 'After all this, they yet in addition, having had a false bishop ordained for them by heretics, dare to set sail, and to carry letters from schismatic and profane persons to the CHAIR of Peter, and the PRINCIPLE CHURCH, whence the unity of the priesthood took its rise. They fail to reflect that those Romans are the same as those who faith was publicly praised by the apostle, to whom unbelief CANNOT have access" Ep 59:14 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA Speaking of his own teachers, 'But they, safeguarding the TRUE tradition of the blessed teachin, which comes straight from the Apostles Peter, James, John and Paul and transmitted from father to son have come down to us with the help of God to deposit in us those acenstral and apostolic seeds' Stromata 1,11 Right after Clement repudiates the private interpretation of the Gnostics he writes: 'For US...having grown old in the Scriptures, PRESERVING the Apostolic and ecclesiastical correctness of doctrine, living a life according to the Gospel, is led by the Lord to discover the proofs from the Law and the prophets which he seeks.' ibid 7,104 COUNCIL OF NICEA I(AD 325) 'We believe in ONE HOLY CATHOLIC and APOSTOLIC ++++CHURCH++++' Nicene Creed COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE II(AD 553) 'We confess that(we) hold and declare the faith given from the beginning by the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ to the Holy Apostles, and preached by them in the whole world; which the sacred FATHERS CONFESSED and EXPLAINED, and HANDED down to the holy churches, and especially(those fathers) who assembled in the four sacred Synods, whom we follow and accept through all things and in all things...judging as at odds with piety all things, inDouche, which are not in accord with what has been defined as RIGHT FAITH by the same four holy Councils, we condemn and anathematize.' COUNCIL OF NICEA II(AD 787) 'If anyone rejects all ecclesiastical tradition either written or not written...let him be anathema' CYRIL of JERUSALEM 'But in learning the Faith and in professing it, acquire and keep that only, which is now DELIVERED TO THEE by THE CHURCH, AND which has been built up strongly out of all the SCRIPTURES.' Catechetical Lectures 5,12 'Learn also diligently, and FROM THE CHURCH, WHAT ARE THE BOOKS of the Old Testaments, and WHAT are the books of the NEW' Catechetical Lectures 5,33 CHRYSOSTOM 'So then, brethren, stand fast, and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word, or by our epistle of ours'. Hence it is manifest, that they did not deliver all things by Epistle, but many things unwritten, and in like manner both the one and the other are worthy of credit. Therefore let us think the tradition of the Churh also worthy of credit. It is a tradition seek no farther." Homilies on 2 Thess 2:15 "We may answer, that what is here written, was sufficient for those who would attend, and that the sacred writers ever addressed themsleves to the matter of immediate importance, whatever it might be at that time: it was no object with them to be writers of books: in fact, there are many things which have been delivered by UNWRITTEN TRADITION. Now while all that is contained in this Book is worthy of admiration, so is especially the way the Apostles have of coming down to the wants of their hearers: a condescension suggested by the Spirit who has so ordered it, that the subject on which they cheifly dwewll is that pertains to Christ as man. For so it is, that while they discourse so much about Christ, they have spoke little concerning His Godhead: it was mostly of the manhood that they discoursed, and of the Passion, and the Resurrection, and the Ascencion." Homilies on Acts 1,1 "Not in vain did the Apostles order that remembrance should be made of the dead in the dreadful mysteries" Hom Phil 3,4 EPIPHANIUS OF SALAMIS 'But for all the divine words, there is no need of allegory to grasp the meaning; what is necessary is study and understanding to know the MEANING of each statement. We must have recourse to TRADITION, for all cannot be received from the divine Scriptures. That is why the holy Apostles handed down certain things in writings but others by TRADITIONS. As Paul said:" Just as I handed them on to you." ' Panarion 61,6 GREGORY of NAZIANZUS "My sheep hear my voice, which I heard from the oracles of God, which I have been taught by the Holy FATHERS, which I have taught alike on all occasions, not conforming myself to the opportune, and which I will never cease to teach; in which I was born, and in which I will depart" Orat 33,15 "I desire to learn what is this fashion of innovation in things concerning the Church..But since our faith has been proclaimed, both in writing and without writing, here and in distant parts, in times of danger and of safety, how comes it that some make such attempts, and that others keep silence?" Epis 101 GREGORY of NYSSA "It suffices for proof of our statement that we have a tradition coming down from the Fathers, an inheritance as it were, by succession from the Apostles through the saints who came after them." C. Eunomius 4:6 "...I say, that the Church teaches this in plain langauge, that the Only-begotten is essentially God, very God of the essence of the very God, how OUGHT one who OPPOSES her DECISIONS to overthrow the preconceived opinion?" C. Eunomius 4,6 "They, on the other hand, who change their doctrines to this novelty, would need the support of their arguments in abundance, if they were to bring over to their views, not men light as dust, and unstable, but MEN of weight and steadiness: but so long as their statement is advanced without being established, and without being proved, who is so foolish ad so brutish as to account the teaching of the evangelists and apostles, AND of those who successively shone like lights in the churches, of less force than this undemonstrated nonsense" C. Eunomius 4,6 HILARY OF POITIERS 'It behooves us not to withdraw from the CREED which we have received...nor to back off from the faith which we have recieved from through the prophets ... or to back-slide from the Gospels. Once laid down, it continues even to this day through the TRADITION of the FATHERS' Ex. Oper. Hist. Fragment 7,3 HIPPOLYTUS OF ROME 'It is NOT by drawing on the Holy Scriptures NOR BY GUARDING the TRADITION of some holy person that the HERETICS have formulated these doctrines.' Refutation of All Heresies 1,Preface IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH 'If I do not find it in the ancient Scriptures(OT), I will not beleive the Gospel; on my saying to them, It is written, they answered me, That remains to be proved. But to me Jesus Christ is in the place of all that is ancient: His cross, and death and resurrection, and the FAITH which is by Him are undefiled monuments of antiquity..' Epis Philadelphians 8,2 'Follow the bishop, all of you, as Jesus Christ follows his Father, and the presbterium as the Apostles. As for the deacons, respect them as the Law of God. Let no one do anything with reference to the Church without the bishop. Only that Eucharist may be regarded as legitimate which is celebrated with the bishop or his delegate presiding. Where the bishop is, there let the community be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church' Epis Symyrnaens 8 IRENAEUS(The Father of Tradition) 'The apostles at that time FIRST PREACHED the Gospel but later by the will of God, they delivered it to us in the Scriptures, that it might be the foundation and pillar of our faith' Against Heresies(AH) 3,1 'Since, therefore, the TRADITION from the apostles DOES thus EXIST in the Church, and is PERMAMENT AMONG US, let us revert to the Scriptural proof furnished by those apostles who did also write the Gospel, in which they recorded the doctrine regarding God, pointing out that our Lord Jesus Christ is the truth, and that no lie is in Him' AH 3,5,1 "Through none others know we the disposition of our salvation, than those through whom the gospel came to us, first heralding it, then by the will of God delivering to us the Scriptures, which were to be the foundation and pillar of our faith...But when, the heretics are Scriptures,as if they were wrong, and unauthoritative, and were variable, and the truth could not be extracted from them by those who were ignorant of tradition...And when we challenge them in turn what that tradition, which is from the Apostles, which is guarded by the succession of elders in the churches, they oppose themselves to Tradition, saying that they are wiser, not only than those elders, but even than the Apostles. The Tradition of the Apostles, manifested 'on the contrary' in the whole world, is open in every Church to all who see the truth...And, since it is a long matter in a work like this to enumerate these successions, we will confute them by pointing to the Tradition of that greatest and most ancient and universally known Church, founded and constituted at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, a tradition which she has had and a faith which she proclaims to all men from those Apostles' AH 3,1-3 For Irenaeus tradition included three things 1)the faith that was handed on-oral or in writing 'For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us their writings? Would it not be necessary to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those whom they did commit the Churches?' AH 3,4:1 2)a living authority "Wherefore it is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church...those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have recieved the certain gift of truth..." AH 26:2 3)transmission and preservation by succession. "In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is MOST abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the Apostles until now, and handed in truth" AH 3,3:3 "Then I have pointed out the truth, and shown the preaching of the Church, which the prophets proclaimed(as I have already demonstrated), but which Christ brought to perfection, and the apostles have handed down , from which the Church, recieving [these truths], and throughout all the world alone preserving them in their integrity, has transmitted them to her sons. Then also-having disposed of all questions which the heretics propose to us, and having explained the doctrine of the apostles, and clearly set forth many of those things which were said and done by the Lord in parables--I shall endeavor, in this fifth book of the entire work which treats of the exposure and refutation of knowledge falsely so called, to exhibit proofs from the rest of the Lord's doctrine and apostolic epistles; [thus] complying with demand, as thou didst request of me(since inDouche I have been assigned a place in ministry of the word); and, labouring by every means...and convert them to the Church of God...that they may preserve stedfast the faith which they have recieved, guarded by the Church in its integrity, in order that they be in no way preverted by those who endeavor to teach them false doctrine..." AH V Preface "Now all these [heretics] are of much later date than the bishops to whom the apostles committed to the Churches; which fact I have in the third book taken all pains to demonstrate. It follows, then, as a matter of course, that these aforementioned, since they are blind to the truth,and deviate from the way, will walk in various roads; and therefore the footsteps of their doctrine are scattered here and there without agreement or connection. But the path of those belonging to the Church circumscribes the whole world, as possessing the sure tradition of the Apostles, and gives unto us to see that the faith of all is one and the same ....And undoubtily the preaching of the Church is true and stedfast, in which one and the same way of salvation is shown throughtout the whole world...For the Church preaches the truth everywhere..." AH V 20,1 "Those, therefore, who desert the preaching of the Church, call in question the knowledge of the holy presbyters....It behoves us, therefore, to avoid their doctrines, and take careful heed lest we suffer any injury from them; but to flee to the Church, and be brought up in her bosom, and be nourished with the Lord's Scriptures." AH V 20,2 Episcopal Succession "Wherefore it is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church, those who as I have shown, possess succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of bishops, have recieved the CERTAIN GIFT of TRUTH, according to the good pleasure of the Father. But [it is also uncumbent] to hold in SUSPICION others who DEPART from the primitive succession of the succession, and assemble themselves....But those who cleave asunder, and separate the unity of the Church, [shall] recieve from God the same punishments as Jeroboam did" AH 4,26:2 "Heretics assent neither to Scripture nor to Tradition" AH 3,2,1 JEROME 'Do you demand Scripture proof? You may find it in Acts of the Apostles. And even if it did NOT REST on the authority of the Scripture the CONSENSUS of the WHOLE WORLD in this respect would have the force of COMMAND...' C. Dialogue Luciferians 8 'And let them not flatter you themselves if they think they have Scripture authority sinc the devil himself has quoted Scripture texts...we could all, while preserving in the letter of Scripture, read into it some novel doctrine' ibid 28 JOHN DAMASCUS 'So, then in expectation of His coming we worship toward the East. But this tradition of the apostles is unwritten. For much that has been handed down to us by tradition is unwritten' Orthodox Faith 4,12,16 'Moreover that the Apostles handed down much that was unwritten, Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, tells us in these words: "Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught of us, whether by word or epistle" And to the Corinthians he writes, "Now I praise your brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the traditions as I have delivered them to you.' Orthodox Faith 4,16 'He who does not beleive according to the tradition of the Catholic Church is an unbeleiver' C. Nestorians MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR 'I have no private opinion, but only agree with the Catholic Church' Quoted from 'From the Housetops' Vol 9, No.2 Serial 23 , p28 ORIGEN "The Church's preaching has been handed down through an orderly succession from the Apostles and remains in the Church until the present. That alone is to be believed as the truth which in no way departs from ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition" First Principles 1,2 TERTULLIAN "We do not take our scriptural teaching from the parables but we interpret the parables according to our TEACHING" Purity 9,1 'Let them show the origins of their churches, let them unroll the list of their bishops,(showing) through a succession coming down from the very beginning that their first bishop had his authority and predecessor someone from among the number of Apostles or apostolic men and, further, that he did not stray from the Apostles. In this way the apostolic churches present their earliest records. The church of Smyrna, for example, records that Polycarp was named by John; the Romans, that Clement was ordained by Peter. In just the same way, the other churches show who were made bishops by the Apostles and who transmitted the apostolic seed to them. Let the heretics invent something like that' Prescr Ag Heretics 32 THEODORET OF CYRUS 'This teaching has been handed down to us not only by the Apostles and prophets but also by those who have INTERPRETED their writings, Ignatius, Eustathius, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory...and other lights of the world and before them, by the HOLY FATHERS gathered at Nicea whose confession of faith we have kept intact, as the inheritance from a Father, while those who dare to VIOLATE THEIR TEACHINGS, we call corrupt and enemies of truth' Epis 89 THEODOSIUS, says Socrates '..This being an anxious matter to Nectarius, Sicinnius advised him to avoid all dialectic contests, and to APPEAL to the STATEMENTS of THE ANCIENTS, and to put the question to the heresiarchs from the Emperor whether they made any account of the doctors who belonged to the Church before the division or came to issue with them as aliens from Christianity' Hist 5,10 VINCENT OF LERINS Vincent of Lerins remarks(as many of the Fathers do) that the first thing the heretic says to affirm his position is: 'It is written...!' 'When anyone asks one of these heretics who presents arguments: Where are the proofs of your teacing that I should leave behind the world-wide and ancient faith of the Catholic Church? He will jump in before you have finished with the question: "It is written" He follows up immediately with thousands of texts and examples...' Commonit 1,26 "Here perhaps, someone may ask: Since the canon of the Scripture is complete and more than sufficient in itself, why is it necessary to add to it the authority of ecclesiastical interpretation? As a matter of fact, [we must answer] Holy Scripture, because of its depth, is not universally accepted in one and the same sense. The same text is interpreted different by different people, so that one may almost gain the impression that it can yield as many different meanings as there are men. Novatian, for example, expounds a passage in one way; Sabellius, in another; Donatus, in another. Arius, and Eunomius, and Macedonius read it differently; so do Photinus, Apollinaris, and Priscillian; in another way, Jovian, Pelagius, and Caelestius; finally still another way, Nestorius. Thus, becuase of the great distortions caused by various erros, it is, inDouche, necessary that the trend of the interpretation of the prophetic and apostolic writings be directed in accordance with the rule of the ecclesiastical and Catholic meaning" Comm 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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