In my last
several posts, I’ve noted a few things, which I’d like to summarize and clarify
here. I’ve noted that the Roman Catholic concept of “Apostolic Succession” was
not present as a “tradition” “from the beginning”. Rather, Hans Von
Campenhausen has also established that in formulating the principle of “apostolic
succession”, the 2nd century church at Rome relied on, actually
borrowed, a Gnostic concept which had been in place in the “philosophical
schools of thought” for some time.
I’ve also
noted that this
account is not disputed by Ratzinger. In fact, he affirms it. He says, “We
see quite clearly here how in fact succession is equal to tradition: succession
is holding fast to the apostolic word, just as tradition means the continuing
existence of authorized witnesses”
But
Ratzinger here relies on a “bait-and-switch”.
Ratzinger speaks of the word διαδοχἡ, which signified both “tradition” and
“succession”. And he builds his case upon this word. However, this word is not
found in the New Testament. The New Testament concept, found in Paul’s teaching
on the “content” of the “apostolic tradition” (“παράδοσιν”, 2 Thess 3:6, for
example), is frequently simply “switched” with the same concept.
So now, whereas
for Paul, the “tradition” referred to “the content” of the teaching, by the
middle of the second century, the concept of “‘who’ was handing along the
content” rather came to the forefront. And it is this second century concept
upon which Rome bases its current “authority”. Paul’s first century concept,
that the actual message was what was most important.
Here,
Ratzinger says, while von Campenhausen may have been correct about διαδοχἡ (successio/traditio) being a 2nd
century concept, he is in “error” if he thinks that “a later and thus secondary
theology of successio/traditio” was “preceded
by a biblical theology” (25). In Ratzinger’s argument, this plays itself out in
his statement:
This open situation of the existence of
recognized New Testament writings without the existence of any New Testament
principle of Scripture or any clear notion of the canon lasted until well in
the second century—right into the middle of the period of the conflict with
Gnosticism. Before the idea of a “canon” of New Testament Scripture had been
formulated, the Church had already developed a different concept of what was
canonical; she had as her Scripture the Old Testament but this Scripture needed
a canon of New Testament interpretation, which the Church saw as existing in
the traditio guaranteed by the successio (Ratzinger, 25-26).
That was
from his 1961 article, which, conceptually, was reproduced in the 1994 “Catechism
of the Catholic Church”:
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].
In the
heavily footnoted CCC, this paragraph, interestingly, has no footnote, and as
best as I can tell, this language comes right from Ratzinger.
In my next
couple of blog posts, I’d like to spend some time clarifying some of these
definitions further – the concept of an oral, “apostolic tradition” which was
written down in the New Testament, as well as the development of “ecclesiastical
traditions”, which, like Ratzinger’s concept of διαδοχἡ, which was added later,
in the 2nd century.
* * *
This concept
of whether “a biblical theology” came prior to this second century concept of “successio/traditio”,
of course, is clarified, with a great deal of evidence, by Michael Kruger in
his work Canon
Revisited. But this isn’t the only element that’s in place. What Rome
offers in place of “a written New Testament” is “the process of living
Tradition”, which, in today’s language, means “the Magisterium du jour” gets to make up things as it goes. That
is a concept that is far, far away from even what was meant by successio/traditio in the second century.
I’ll get
into this in greater detail next time.
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