Resurrection of Sacred Tradition
Is all Revealed Truth consigned to Holy Scripture? No, Christ did not leave us a book, rather he left the Twelve under the leadership of Peter. So we need to ask did Christ give to His Apostles truths to be transmitted to His Church, that the Apostles received either from the very lips of Jesus or from inspiration of the Holy Spirit or from Divine instructions? He obviously did, but the question is whether they were all transmitted to the Church through inspired writings called Sacred Scripture or was there another form of transmission also going on or even maybe it was a transmission that was going on even before the Scriptures were all written down and collected together?
The Protestant principle is that the Bible, according to them, is the sole theological source; so 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. Problem, it is nowhere stated in the Bible that ‘the Bible is the sole rule of faith!’
Catholics, on the other hand, hold that there is in fact, and that there must of necessity be, certain revealed truths, apart from those contained in the Bible. They hold that Jesus Christ has established in fact a living organ for the transmission of Sacred Scripture and for the transmission of oral Revelation and it is called Sacred Tradition; a Sacred Tradition that includes what is written and what is not written. But both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are guarded, preserved and handed on by the Magisterium of the Church [the Pope and bishops in union with the Pope].
Here are some great bible verses which outline the importance of Sacred Tradition:
1 Corinthians 11:2: I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you";
2 Thessalonians 2:15: 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 Thessalonians 3:6: 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.
For The first 380 years or so there was no complete agreement on what we now call the New Testament. All of the apostles and disciples taught orally up to 90AD [Death of last Apostle, John] with Paul, Peter, John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, etc., writing down their epistles and gospels. But none of it was widely available to the geographically separated churches as there was not a "Bible" as such until the Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage put the 27 books of the New Testament together.
Furthermore, the Bible itself was collected and defined by the Tradition of the Church. So that we can say Tradition both logically and chronologically is prior to Sacred Scripture as it is from Sacred Tradition that we come to know which books were used by the churches belonging to what would be called the Old Testament and which ones were used by the churches belonging to what would be called the New Testament and of course which ones were not used by some or all of the churches. It was only with Pope Damasus I and the Synod of Rome in 382AD that we find the collection of these works into a Bible which was followed by THE Councils of Hippo [393AD] and Carthage [397AD].
But the Tradition includes matters, doctrines and practices not found in the New Testament which are fundamental to the life of a Christian in these days as they are today. For instance, the New Testament speaks of worship and sacraments but it does not tell us How to celebrate them! We find this in the unwritten and written traditions outside the New Testament books as witnessed by the Apologists, the Early and Late Fathers of the Church and the Sacramentaries of the early church [Leonine, Gelasian, and Gregorian Sacramentaries].
At the Council of Trent the following was taught about Sacred Tradition [Session IV, 1546]:
[The Synod recognizes the Gospel] as the fountain of all, both saving truth, and moral discipline; and seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand; (the Synod) following the examples of the orthodox Fathers, receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety, and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament--seeing that one God is the author of both --as also the said traditions, as well those appertaining to faith as to morals, as having been dictated, either by Christ's own word of mouth, or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession.
Remember that the source of Revelation is the Word of God and the Word of God is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Revelation is firstly not a book but a Person, the divine person of the Son of the Father! Indeed, all three divine persons are involved in the work of Revelation, Redemption and Salvation. It is for this reason that Dei Verbum, a dogmatic document of Second Vatican Council, said the following [n. 9]:
"Hence there exists a close connection and communication between Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end.
For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit. To the successors of the apostles, Sacred Tradition hands on in its full purity God’s word, which was entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.
"Thus, by the light of the Spirit of truth, these successors can in their preaching preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same devotion and reverence.“ [cf CCC 74-100]
But when we speak of Sacred Tradition there are three important distinctions to keep in mind:
Distinction 1: When we speak of the unwritten word of God, called Tradition, we do not mean it has never been written, but rather it was never written by the man to whom God revealed it. It was committed to writing afterwards by his disciples, or by others who heard it from his lips.
Distinction 2: the word Tradition, considered in its object, means whatever is delivered or transmitted. We call this objective Tradition.
Distinction 3: If we consider the act, or the way and the means by which an object is propagated or transmitted, this is called active Tradition.
So when we consider Tradition we must consider it in a composite sense, that is, as made up of 2 parts: the act of transmission and the thing being transmitted. Thus, we cannot explain nor understand a tradition without knowing the source, the act, the way and the means through which it has reached us.
Not all traditions are of the same kind and so cannot have the same value or authority.
Distinguish - The manner in which they are transmitted: some come to us already written, others orally like Father to Son, or practically eg ceremonies of the Church. So traditions are either written [eg Scriptures], oral or practical.
Traditions also needed to be distinguished by the objects they convey – what they are about: so they are either dogmatic or disciplinary.
The Origin or the source of the traditions are either from God or from the Church: so there are Divine Traditions and Ecclesiastical Traditions
Divine Traditions belong to the essence of the Faith: either they stem from our Lord himself - Dominical Tradition; or from the Apostles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit called Divine-Apostolic tradition. But both are identical as Divine Tradition.
Ecclesiastical Traditions belong to Discipline: some of these traditions were introduced by the Apostles themselves i.e. simply Apostolic Traditions or introduced in Post-Apostolic times i.e. simply Ecclesiastical Traditions.
However, when a Tradition contains a doctrine that belongs to the Faith and proves to be of Apostolic origin, it must be considered as a Divine Tradition; especially if it has never needed to be defined or never questioned or never instituted by a council but has always been held, lived and handed on.
The above points show us that the matter and study of Sacred Tradition is fundamentally important and profoundly complex requiring distinctions to be held in mind when we study the elements of what the Church calls Sacred Tradition. Unfortunately, this is rarely reflected in Seminaries nor in theological faculties. The consequences of this has been evident by those who speak of ‘modernising the church’, ‘ossification of past practices’, ‘getting rid of old ways of doing things’, ‘evolution of the Church’s liturgy, doctrine and morals’, ‘Jesus got rid of traditions because they are just human traditions and so must we today’ etc… How did this come about?
In the years following the Second Vatican Council [1963-65] many false interpretations of the Council were peddled. One of these pitted the Spirit against the Law which then was used to dismiss the Tradition and traditions. Some spoke of modernising the Church and therefore the need to throw out old traditions. Some spoke of Tradition as just being just human traditions, as man made things and therefore not of Divine origin. Consequently, bishops, priests, religious and some Laity, were caught up in a emotive wave of what was called ‘the Spirit of Vatican II’ and started to throw out the traditions, architecture, sacramentals, sodalities, symbols, devotions, novenas and other vehicles of the Tradition of Faith.
Often this throwing out process was to the clarion calls of either they were not scriptural or they were not relevant to the modern world; the first clarion call is Protestantism, whilst the second clarion call is Modernism!
What was not grasped in those days and even today was that the Mysteries of Faith were surrounded by traditions of architecture, rituals, sacramentals, stories, symbols and signs that acted as a constellation of meaning surrounding and framing the stories of Sacred Scripture that both protected and unveiled these mysteries; often linking them to our imaginations and our embodiment as embodied spirits – they touched the soul, the mind, the heart and the body of Catholics. How else could this not be the case given that only 1 in 10 people in the Roman Empire could read and it was only with the beginning of the printed press in the 15th Century that literacy among the people began to grow.
In other words, the discipline of holding asnd handing on traditions went back to the Apostles and, as a constellation of meaning, it protected the mystery of revelation and salvation and helped all peoples, both literate and illiterate, to grasp and live out the doctrines and biblical accounts that are the expositions of the Mysteries of Faith. We need to recover from a modern dementia concerning tradition and recover what was thrown away and this means a resurrection of the Church’s life and truth that Sacred Tradition embodies. For Sacred Tradition is like the fortications of a city that stands against the incursions of modern day barbarians, huns and vikings. Sacred Tradition needs to be studied, better understood, upheld in principle and recovered in practice so that we can stand our ground against all those who would proclaim the Gospel of the World in the heart of the Church! For a vaccuum in the Church was created by the throwing away of what makes up Sacred Tradition so that those who are the hirelings of the zeitgeist were able to proclaim the gospel of the world in the heart of the sacred life of the Church. It was this secularizing and worldly spirit that invaded clergy and people, young and old that contributed greatly to bringing about a collapse in both Catholic practice, Missions and vocations over these last 50 years.
Works on Sacred Tradition:
A Classic work and one that should be the first port of call on this topic is called ‘On Divine Tradition: De Divina Traditione’ [Paperback – 17 Sept. 2016] by Card John Baptist Franzelin SJ (Author), Mr. Ryan Grant (Translator);
‘Tradition and the Church’ by George Agius D.D. J.C.D.
