I want to continue with my
series on Michael Kruger’s Canon
Revisited, and a subset of that series, “Kruger vs Ratzinger”, but first I’d
like to put some definitions on the table.
Reformed Protestants are
accustomed to thinking in terms of “Divine Revelation” in terms of “special
revelation” (in Scripture, which encompasses both the Old Testament and the “apostolic witness” which occurred orally during the lives of
the apostles and which was written down and accepted in the form of the New
Testament canon), and “general revelation” (for example Psalm 19 and Romans
1:19-20).
I’ll deal with the apostolic
witness and also the acceptance of the New Testament canon as I continue to
work through Canon Revisited”, but I also wanted to put this into some
perspective (vis-à-vis the Roman Catholic system). To that end, I’m providing
the complete treatment on “the transmission of Divine Revelation” from the “Catechism
of the Catholic Church”, Sections
74-94.
Texts and comments in red are areas that we will certainly want to contest. And we certainly have the historical basis to do so. As well, I’ll deal with some of the more specific definitions moving forward.
* * *
ARTICLE
2
THE TRANSMISSION OF DIVINE REVELATION
74 God “desires
all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”: that is, of Christ Jesus. Christ
must be proclaimed to all nations and individuals, so that this revelation may
reach to the ends of the earth:
God graciously arranged that the things he had once revealed for
the salvation of all peoples should remain in their entirety, throughout the
ages, and be transmitted to all generations.
75 ”Christ
the Lord, in whom the entire Revelation of the most high God is summed up,
commanded the apostles to preach the Gospel, which had been promised beforehand
by the prophets, and which he fulfilled in his own person and promulgated with
his own lips. In preaching the Gospel, they were to communicate the gifts of
God to all men. This Gospel was to be the source of all saving truth and moral
discipline.”
76 In keeping with the Lord’s command, the Gospel
was handed on in two ways:
- orally ”by the
apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example
they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had
received - whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works,
or whether they had learned it at the prompting of the Holy Spirit”;
* * *
One point
for discussion is that Reformed believers also hold that there was an “oral”
tradition; as I’ve noted in
a number of places, though, this “oral” testimony needed to be written
down, among other reasons, because of a “moralism [noted in the writings of the
‘Apostolic Fathers’] which ignore[d] the notion of grace, and of the redemptive
death of Christ”, and which was remedied by “the codification of the apostolic
tradition in a canon [a ‘canonical core’], henceforward the superior norm of
all tradition”.
* * *
- in writing ”by
those apostles and other men associated with the apostles who, under the
inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, committed the message of salvation to
writing”.
77 ”In order
that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the
apostles left bishops as their successors. They gave them their own position of
teaching authority.” Indeed, “the
apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books,
was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time.”
78 This living
transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is
distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. Through
Tradition, “the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and
transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes.” ”The sayings of the holy Fathers are a witness to the life-giving
presence of this Tradition, showing how its riches are poured out in the
practice and life of the Church, in her belief and her prayer.”
What occurs
above, for the most part, falls into the realm of what can be verified
historically. I’ll be tracing the process of this more thoroughly through works
like Ratzinger’s “Primacy, Episcopacy, and Successio Apostolica,”
in the work “God’s
Word: Scripture-Tradition-Office” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press ©2008;
Libreria Editrice Vaticana edition ©2005), along with interactions with Kruger,
Cullmann, Von Campenhausen, and others.
* * *
79 The Father’s self-communication made through his Word in the
Holy Spirit, remains present and active in the Church: “God, who spoke in the
past, continues to converse with the Spouse of his beloved Son. And the Holy
Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel rings out in the Church -
and through her in the world - leads believers to the full truth, and makes the
Word of Christ dwell in them in all its richness.”
80 ”Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely
together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out
from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one
thing, and move towards the same goal.” Each of
them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who
promised to remain with his own “always, to the close of the age”.
81 ”Sacred
Scripture is the
speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit.”
“And [Holy] Tradition transmits
in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by
Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the
apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully
preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching.”
82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation
of Revelation is entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed
truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be
accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”
83 The Tradition here in question comes from the apostles and hands
on what they received from Jesus’ teaching and example and what they learned
from the Holy Spirit. The first generation of Christians did not yet have a written New
Testament, and the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living
Tradition [emphasis added].
Tradition is to be distinguished from the various theological,
disciplinary, liturgical or devotional traditions, born in the local churches
over time. These are the particular forms, adapted to different places and
times, in which the great Tradition is expressed. In the light of Tradition,
these traditions can be retained, modified or even abandoned under the guidance
of the Church’s Magisterium [emphasis added].
At some
point, yes, theological and hermeneutical understandings will shape our view of
history. But at some point, within the Roman Catholic hermeneutic, the
historical record is stretched way too far, and far too much of what is current
Roman dogma is reflected “back” into the history, that the history becomes
evidence that the Roman hermeneutic itself is faulty.
It’s not
simply our word against theirs.
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