Authority over all, even authority over history

I’ve been looking into the whole idea of “how tradition functioned in the early church” and I came across this from R.P.C. Hanson (“Tradition in the Early Church”, originally SCM Press, © 1962, reprinted with permission, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, pgs 257-259):

It may perhaps be permissible to state the conviction that the subject of the development of doctrine and of the reformation of doctrine are equally alien to the thought of the early Church, because no writer had occasion to face seriously the question of what is to happen when the obligation to teach sound doctrine and the obligation to preserve the unity of the Church conflict with each other. This is the new problem with which the sixteenth century faced the Christian religion. The history of the early Church does not give an answer to it, any more than the Bible gives and answer to it. We are only justified in drawing the negative conclusion that the experience of the early church gives no justification for assuming the existence of any source of sound doctrine outside the Bible. It may however be profitable to make one or two observations about the contents of tradition as we can observe them in the period which has been under review.

In the first place, it is valuable and interesting that it has been possible to make a rough estimate of the ingredients of the rule of faith. It is clear that the subjects which were destined during the next two centuries to form the material for dogmatic and creedal decisions were already well to the fore in the Church’s consciousness, i.e., Christological and Trinitarian doctrine. The theological interpretation of the eucharist and the seat of authority in the Church were not considered to be part of the rule of faith and clearly did not occupy much attention, but it would be incorrect to say that they were totally beyond the Church’s ken. More remote still was any thought about dogmatic statements concerning the status of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but even these cannot be said to be something irreconcilable with the interest of the churchmen of these early centuries. Whether these subjects should be made material for dogmas is a question whose answer will depend upon what theory of the development of doctrine we may hold. What does appear to be entirely ruled out by the doctrine of tradition held in the early Church is the possibility of the formation of any new doctrine or dogma dependent upon an historical event not recorded in Scripture. By no sort of theory could this be justified according to the lights of the early Church. If the dogma of the corporeal assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary involves the belief in an historical fact (as well, of course, as the interpretation of fact), in some manner analogous the dependence of the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ upon historical fact, then it can have no support whatever in the tradition of the Church of this period. In fact, it is a fact wholly unknown to the writers of the second and third centuries. Tertullian can write a long treatise of sixty-three chapters On the Resurrection of the Dead, mentioning and discussing the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the raising of Lazarus, the translation without death of Enoch and of Elijah, the returning from the dead of Moses for the Transfiguration, and even the preservation from what was humanly speaking certain death of the three young men in the fiery furnace (of Daniel) and of Jonah in the whale’s belly. He does not once even slightly mention, he does not once even remotely and uncertainly hint at, the resurrection or corporeal assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Tertullian quite clearly, like all his contemporaries and predecessors, had never heard of this story.

This has had some personal meaning for me, because in the early days of my questioning whether or not I could remain a Roman Catholic, this sort of thing was in the front of my mind. True, it is said, “There is then no problem with the Church officially defining a doctrine which is not explicitly in Scripture, so long as it is not in contradiction to Scripture”, and of course it is said, the Roman Catholic Church has the authority to define such a thing.

But it certainly seems legitimate to ask, “in a religious context that’s so obviously dependent on the history and testimony of the earliest church, how does introducing something like this help anyone?” It appears to me to be a chest-beating attempt to make a statement of one’s authority as much as anything else.

In the CCC, a smiley face is put on this “dogma”, but in the dogma itself, Rome bares its teeth:

“It is forbidden to any man to change this, our declaration, pronouncement, and definition or, by rash attempt, to oppose and counter it. If any man should presume to make such an attempt, let him know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”

That’s the true nature of the “authority” that makes such a definition. The bare teeth under the guise of a sheep’s fleece. None of us should forget it.