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Scripture

What We Believe, Part 27: Tradition and Dogma

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If St. Irenaeus taught that Scripture belongs to the Church, that it can be read and interpreted well only within the communion of the Church, then how does that affect…

If St. Irenaeus taught that Scripture belongs to the Church, that it can be read and interpreted well only within the communion of the Church, then how does that affect what we believe? How does Tradition relate to theology and dogma?

Remember that in John’s Gospel, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would lead the disciples into “all truth” (16:13). What does that look like? To explore this question, we’ll turn to another Father of the Church, St. Basil the Great. But, before doing so, let’s think about the Nicene Creed.

In most Catholic churches across the globe every Sunday, believers recite (or even sing) the Nicene Creed, beginning with “I believe in one God.” More properly, this profession of faith is called the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed because it is the final product of two ecumenical councils — the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Constantinople in 381. This creed (the first two-thirds of it) is the Church’s attempt to settle the fourth-century Arian controversy — an argument, in short, about the Son’s relationship to the Father, namely, about what exactly we mean by calling Jesus “God.” Arius — a popular Alexandrian priest and good preacher — argued that Jesus was not God in the same way the Father is God, saying that the Son “is not eternal or coeternal or co-unbegotten with the Father, nor does he have being with the Father.” The Son, Arius said, is in some sense a creature; that is, there was a time when the Son was not. Now, this didn’t sit well with his bishop, Alexander, who called him on it; and soon, basically, a theological war broke out across the whole Christian world.

The new lone emperor, Constantine, didn’t like all this fighting one bit, because it threatened the unity of the empire. In response, he called an ecumenical council, gathering as many bishops as he could at Nicaea in 325, who said in substance: “No, Arius, the Son is indeed of the same substance (homoousios) with the Father. The Son is certainly begotten — the ‘only-begotten’ Son, in fact, but not ‘made,’ as you, Arius, wrongly teach.” The Son is “true God from true God,” Nicaea declared, meaning that Jesus is indeed God. That, in short, was the fight the bishops of the Church attempted to settle. Though, in the end, they settled nothing, for the fighting just spilled out into new debates. They succeeded, though, in preserving a key element of the Christian faith — the full divinity of Christ — which is why the declaration of Nicaea has stood the test of time.

But the bishops at Nicaea didn’t say anything about the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Stating what they believed in, the Nicene fathers simply said, “And in the Holy Spirit.” And that’s probably because the theology of the Holy Spirit wasn’t yet an urgent issue needing articulation. But it soon would be. It wasn’t until the Council of Constantinople in 381 that the Church articulated her belief (albeit somewhat diplomatically) in the divinity of the Holy Spirit, adding that third portion of the Creed — which begins “I believe in the Holy Spirit.”

Now, the Church didn’t invent its belief in the Holy Spirit in the fourth century as some have argued. That’s not the case at all. Christians had always believed in the Holy Spirit. It’s just that it wasn’t until controversy arose that the Church struggled to state its belief in the divinity of the Holy Spirit — and then, only after a great deal of argument.

Here enters St. Basil the Great. He, alongside St. Gregory of Nazianzus, was one of the great champions of the Church’s belief in the Holy Spirit, arguing against those he derisively called the “Pneumatomachians” or “Spirit-fighters.” These, Basil argued, didn’t believe the Holy Spirit was divine like Jesus and the Father. In the fourth century, it wasn’t all that clear to some people — even after reading Scripture — that the Holy Spirit was God. Some believers in Jesus don’t believe this even today. It just wasn’t clear to some that the Holy Spirit should be ranked equally with the Father and the Son. Which, basically, was what the debate was about: Is the Holy Spirit also God?

The way the Church argued then for the divinity of the Holy Spirit was dynamic. First, theologians pointed out that if you read Acts of the Apostles and other passages in the New Testament that speak of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit often acts and speaks as a person. And the argument was that only God speaks personally as the divine. In Acts of the Apostles, for instance, the Spirit speaks (Acts 1:16; 8:29; 10:19, etc.), the Spirit sends (Acts 13:4) and appoints (20:28) and directs the apostles (Acts 16:6), and so on. But this wasn’t the most persuasive argument. The more powerful argument rested on the Church’s practice of baptism.

As long as anyone could remember, Christians had been baptized in the name of the “Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” No one could remember differently. It was St. Athanasius who first made the argument from the Church’s practice of baptism that since only God can sanctify and save, and that — if you’re baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for salvation — then the Holy Spirit must be God as well. It was absurd to think otherwise, Athanaius said (“Letters to Serapion,” No. 1.30). But this was an argument based upon Christian tradition, not just Scripture. It was based on how Christians celebrated and understood baptism that informed their reading of Scripture, which enabled them to see in Scripture the fuller revelation of the Trinity.

Using both Scripture and Tradition to make theological arguments was completely appropriate, as St. Basil the Great taught in his treatise “On the Holy Spirit.” “Concerning the teachings of the Church,” he said, “whether publicly proclaimed or reserved to members of the household of faith, we have received some from written sources, while others have been given to us secretly, through apostolic tradition. Both forces have equal force in true religion.” Aside from particular theological questions about the Holy Spirit, for our purpose, the larger point is that St. Basil here cuts down to the ground the notion of sola scriptura — the argument that one needs only the Bible to make theological claims or settle theological arguments. “No one would deny either source — no one, at any rate, who is even slightly familiar with the ordinances of the Church. If we attacked unwritten customs, claiming them to be of little importance, we would fatally mutilate the Gospel, no matter what our intentions — or rather, we would reduce the Gospel teaching to bare words” (“On the Holy Spirit,” No. 27.66). Basil is quite clear that if you cut out tradition, we wouldn’t be able to read Scripture properly; rather, we’d “mutilate the Gospel.”

For Basil, this wasn’t a small point. The Christian faith itself hung in the balance. Those arguing on behalf of “Scripture alone” in the fourth century were those who argued against the divinity of the Holy Spirit. But Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Athanasius and others knew that wasn’t faith, for it grated against the full experience of the Christian faith. Hence, Basil’s tirade against those who rejected Tradition. “The one aim of the whole band of these enemies of sound doctrine is to shake the faith of Christ down to its foundations, by utterly leveling the apostolic tradition to the ground,” he wrote. “They clamor for written proofs and reject the unwritten testimony of the Fathers as worthless. … We will never surrender the truth; we will not betray the defense like cowards. The Lord has delivered to us a necessary and saving dogma: the Holy Spirit is to be ranked with the Father” (“On the Holy Spirit.” No. 10.25).

Now, all of this should make clear the larger point: When reading or hearing Scripture, our reading and understanding is mediated by other people’s reading and understanding, and our interpretation is influenced explicitly and implicitly by those who interpreted and lived out the Scripture before us. Even so-called fundamentalists are influenced by a tradition, it’s just that they adhere to a conceptual fiction that they’re reading the text purely, unfiltered by earlier interpretations. This is silly, Augustine basically said, for no one can claim any insight exclusively their own “except possibly falsehood” (“On Teaching Christianity,” Paragraph 8). Reading the Bible through the community is not only good, it’s necessary; it’s as it should be. Tradition is as necessary to the Faith as Scripture — our established belief in the Holy Spirit is proof of that truth.

This is what the Catholic Church teaches, and this is what we believe. Tradition is the “living transmission” of the Faith, distinct but closely connected with Scripture (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 78). Both “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’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 80). So, what was going on, for instance, when St. Basil the Great stood upon the ancient practice of baptism, and read Scripture so as to argue that the Holy Spirit is to be ranked with the Father? The answer is that Tradition and Scripture were working together to present the true Gospel in the fourth century. The Church’s practice of baptism was basically primordial to the Christian era, predating Scripture. And referring to that primordial sacramental practice was necessary, as Basil argued, to understanding the Scripture correctly. In short, only by the light of Tradition can we understand that Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit is God.

Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.

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What We Believe, Part 26: Apostolic Tradition

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How do Scripture and Tradition work in the Church? What does their relationship look like? To answer this, it’s perhaps best to begin with one of the great heroes of…

How do Scripture and Tradition work in the Church? What does their relationship look like? To answer this, it’s perhaps best to begin with one of the great heroes of the Faith, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, who was a bishop in France at the turn of the third century.

Irenaeus was writing when — if you were to consider the vast religious landscape of his tumultuous time — it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to discern one single form or expression of the Christian faith. Rather, it was a time (not unlike our own) when there were several competing versions of Christianity vying for believers’ allegiance. These different “schools,” as St. Irenaeus derisively called them, each had different attitudes toward the Gospel, different ideas about Jesus and different approaches to the Scripture. Some “schools” thought Jesus was a shapeshifter, for instance; some thought he wasn’t fully human; others thought he wasn’t fully God. Some believed all knowledge of God came entirely from personal inspiration while others had different theories of spiritual enlightenment. All sorts of slight nuances distinguished these very similar but still quite different versions of Christianity. It really was a free market of Christianities, so to speak, in these early centuries. And, it was in this environment that Irenaeus asked a very simple question: How does one tell the authentic Christian faith from the inauthentic, the true faith from the false?

His answer was simple: because the apostles said so. As St. Irenaeus put it: “We have learned from no others the plan of our salvation than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.” In pointing to what we today recognize as Scripture, Irenaeus wasn’t just holding up the texts, but those who wrote them. Matthew wrote his Gospel; Peter and Paul preached in Rome; Mark, Irenaeus said, wrote down what Peter preached; Luke was influenced by Paul’s preaching; after that, John wrote his Gospel at Ephesus. “These have declared to us that there is one God,” he wrote (Against Heresies, No. 3.1.1-2). Irenaeus’ simple argument was that in a competitive religious atmosphere — this free market of Christianities — authentic belief, right belief (“orthodoxy”) takes its stand on these Gospels and these particular texts written by these particular people whose lineage we can trace, whom we know. That is, to guarantee correct belief, the Scripture had to be with and within the Church. It had to be accepted as apostolic Scripture.

Taking this stand is important, Irenaeus argued, because otherwise, one risks following whims and myths and personal and collective distortions. Or, one risks pridefully listening to oneself other than the truth. Those who go it alone, apart from the Church, Irenaeus said, teach what “neither the prophets preached, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles handed down.” Instead, “they boast rather loudly of knowing more” about the Faith than others, referring to “unwritten works; and as people would say, they attempt to braid ropes of sand. They try to adapt to their own sayings in a manner worthy of credence, either the Lord’s parables or the prophets’ sayings, or the apostles’ words, so that their fabrication might not appear to be without witness.” They twist the Scripture, Irenaeus said, disregarding “the order and the connection of the Scriptures.” They “disjoint the members of the truth;” they “transfer passages and rearrange them; and, making one thing out of another, they deceive many by the badly composed fantasy of the Lord’s words that they adapt” (Against Heresies, No. 1.8.1). Distorting Scripture, taking stuff out of context, bending words: that’s the problem, Irenaeus said, that follows from abandoning apostolic tradition. That’s what comes from reading the Scripture without tradition outside the Church. It may look a lot like the true faith, but it’s subtly ruined. St. Clement of Alexandria described it once, this subtlety of subversion, saying how some people can “twist the Scriptures by their tone of voice to serve their own pleasures” (Stromateis, No. 3.39.2). That’s the sort of danger one falls victim to, Irenaeus says — cutting and pasting, twisting fragments of true faith into false faith.

But that’s not how a person engages the Scripture if they’re seeking the genuine Christian faith. Rather, one seeks the single voice of the Church, the one faith “though disseminated throughout the world.” The Church, Irenaeus said, “carefully guards this preaching and this faith, which she has received, as if she dwelt in one house. She likewise believes these things as if she had but one soul and one and the same heart; she preaches, teaches and hands them down harmoniously, as if she possessed one mouth.” Preachers of the true faith will not make things up and will not be innovative, Irenaeus says. Orthodox preachers will not claim new personally discovered insights. “Neither will any of those who preside in the churches, though exceedingly eloquent, say anything else (for no one is above the Master); nor will a poor speaker subtract from the tradition. For, since the faith is one and the same, neither he who can discourse at length about it adds to it, nor he who can say only a little subtracts from it” (Against Heresies, No. 1.10.2).

That’s the mark of the true faith: that it’s connected to the Church and that it’s traditional, not esoteric or charismatically progressive. In the whirl of competing Christianities, Irenaeus hunkers down within apostolic tradition and upon this apostolic Scripture found only in the Church. For Irenaeus, there is a stark difference between an orthodox approach to the Christian faith and those not orthodox. For instance, when confronting false preachers with the Scripture, Irenaeus says, “they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures as not being correct, nor of authority, and that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be derived from them by those who are ignorant of tradition.”

However, when confronted with the Tradition — that is, the teaching of the apostles and their successors — “they object to the tradition, saying that they themselves are wiser not merely than the presbyters, but even than the apostles, because they have discovered the unadulterated truth.” This, for Irenaeus, is simply the mark of heretical belief — constantly shifting reasons “that these men do now consent neither to Scripture nor to tradition” (Against Heresies, No. 3.2.1-2). When, neither Scripture nor apostolic tradition is accepted in matters of belief, the Faith is lost through the incoherent whims of innumerable charlatan preachers who twist texts or claim new truths. Detached from the Church, ignorant of tradition, the Scripture is dangerous and bound to be misused, Irenaeus seems to say.

In St. Irenaeus’ writings, we have a picture of an early era of the Church in which in a rather crowded marketplace of competing Christianities — some more fantastic and some more plausible — it’s clear that to embrace authentic Christianity, one must belong to the Church. One must accept the apostolic writings and the traditional view that certain sacred texts are properly interpreted by and preserved by the succession of bishops and presbyters in the Church. The truth of the Scripture is always mediated by the Church, guaranteed over time by the succession of the apostles, the Tradition and the communion of believers enduring through the centuries. “The Church alone understands Scripture,” wrote Henri de Lubac (“History and Spirit,” Page 347). That’s a bold claim. But, put simply, it just means that in one’s search for the authentic Christian faith, one can’t abstract theological truth from the community founded by Christ on the apostles. The Scripture and the Church always go together, which is why we insist that the Church is necessary for a right reading of Scripture.

It goes back to the understanding we began with, which is that when we encounter the word of God, something more than academic is going on. Rather, something spiritual is going on — a mystical experience, an ecclesial experience. God remains involved in the event of encountering the word of God; therefore, so does the Church. As Jesus said in John’s Gospel: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth” (Jn 16:12-13). Jesus himself promised that the Spirit would be present among his disciples and that the job of the Spirit is to lead the disciples into “all truth.” So, in our post-Resurrection dealing with the Gospel, its oral and scriptural transmission and interpretation are still involved with God, sharing in the same Spirit in which the texts were written (cf. Dei Verbum, No. 12).

This is why an authentic encounter with the Scripture is always ecclesial and is always connected to the Church enlivened by the Holy Spirit. Not just as Irenaeus said, but Peter too. “Know this first of all,” Peter wrote, “that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the Holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God” (2 Pt 1:20-21). That is, the transmission of the Gospel, the reading and proclamation of the word of God, and the interpretation of the word of God, is not just a man-made event. When the truth is preached, God is involved. God is the originator of the transmission of the Gospel and its interpretation. It’s not just a matter of human ingenuity. God remains involved. Truth is the first cause, so to speak, of the Scripture and its interpretation. But it’s never detached from the Church — never from the Tradition. This is what Catholics believe: that the Scripture and the Church always belong together.

Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.

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Importance of Jesus’ Parables

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Parables are perhaps the best-known aspect of the Lord’s teaching in the New Testament, but in this He accommodated himself to patterns of teaching already in use at the time….

Parables are perhaps the best-known aspect of the Lord’s teaching in the New Testament, but in this He accommodated himself to patterns of teaching already in use at the time.

In the Old Testament, God commanded Ezekiel to teach Jewish exiles in this manner (see Ez 17:3-21; 19:1-14). Here the prophet was employing the Hebrew genre mashal. The genre appears in older settings (Jdg 9:7-15), but probably the best known is the mashal of the ewe lamb that the prophet Nathan used to convict David of his murder of Uriah the Hittite (2 Sm 12:1-4).

What is a mashal? A mashal is usually translated as “riddle,” but really it is less a brainteaser than an allegory told with different levels of meaning, with each element corresponding to a real life referent — here, the “rich man” is David, the “poor man” Uriah and the “ewe lamb” Bathsheba.

The Good Shepherd. Renata Sedmakova / Shutterstock.com

Parables can be very short, proverbial and aphoristic. Luke 5:36 and 6:39, for instance, are simply pithy, memorable sayings. In fact, in Luke 4:23, what the Revised Standard Version Bible and New American Bible translates as “proverb” is parabole in the Greek.

More common, however, are the extended parables that involve several different aspects of comparison — for example, Matthew 7:24-27 and the parable of the two houses, one built on sand and the other on rock. The Lord — unlike his hypocritical opponents — actually puts into effect His own advice, choosing a rock named Peter on whom to build His house the Church (see Mt 16:16-18).

The parables of Jesus in Matthew highlight theological themes found only in the first Gospel. The well-known parable of the wheat and the weeds (see Mt 13:24-30) and the more concise parable of the fishnet (Mt 13:47-50), both serve to underscore the Church as a mixed body consisting of both saints and sinners whom God will providentially leave in place until the time of the great eschatological separation.

Even parables common to more than one Gospel are recorded differently by each of the Evangelists. Some, like the parable of the wicked tenants are understood by friend and foe (see Mt 21:45; Mk 12:12; Lk 20:19). But the misunderstanding motif figures enormously in Mark’s version of the parable of the sower (4:1-20). Most homilists will take the view that the parable concerns our receptivity to the Word of God. But I am afraid this is a case in which the homilists have allowed the more familiar versions of the story in Matthew and Luke to color their reading. In the context of Mark, thus far there has been a great deal of opposition to Jesus and very little receptivity. Even the disciples of Jesus who have followed Him do not understand Him and demonstrate fear and unbelief (Mk 4:12-14; 4:40; 6:50-52; 7:17-18; 8:17-21). They have received the mystery of the Kingdom all right, but apparently not the knowledge and understanding that must come with it (compare Mk 4:11 and Mt 13:11).

Jesus’ Approach

The Gospel of Mark’s ironic introduction to parables begins in 4:10. Jesus is asked why He teaches in parables. What is striking is that He does not respond the way we imagine that He should, with something like, “Parables are my way to use earthly similitudes to convey heavenly realities because such analogies are the only things earthly human beings can understand.” Astonishingly, Jesus himself explains that parables are not to teach anyone anything at all, but rather to confound and confuse and to separate the insiders of Jesus from the outsiders for whom parables will be opaque (see 4:11-12).

The Laborers in the Vineyard. Shutterstock

But if this is the case, why should the disciples of Jesus have needed an explanation of the parable at all? “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables?” (Mk 4:13). In the context of Mark, the disciples are little more secure than the enemies of Jesus who are confounded by his message. How often in real life have we seen the irony of supposed Church insiders not getting the message at all?

What is going on here is that our understanding of parables is being challenged. In this instance, it is not really about our response at all, or, more precisely, it is about the fact that in spite of the opposition of enemies of the Kingdom and in spite of the moral and intellectual failings of the Kingdom’s putative friends, the Kingdom will succeed immensely in the end. Even though most of the seeds sown by God seem to be failing, the ones that do take root will bear abundant fruit. In other words, the parable is, first, Jesus’ explanation of why the apparent failure of His ministry is, in fact, part of God’s plan — much as Isaiah’s original mission was to harden hearts for a time (see Is 6:9-13). Second, the apparent failure of the kingdom proclamation will be the seeds of its success. We could even say that not only is the parable of the sower a parable about the kingdom proclamation of Jesus, but it is a parable about parables.

The Prodigal Son

The parable of the sower shows us that we should be a little more careful about naming parables than we usually are. This parable could have been called the parables of the seeds or the parable of the soils, and each name would subtly affect our interpretation. But nowhere is the name we impart to the parable more powerful to affect our construal of it than in the parable of the prodigal son (see Lk 15:11-32).

Unlike the aphoristic parables or even the more extended ones such as the mustard seed (see Mk 4:30-32), this one has a complete story line and most of us know its basic outline. A son sells all his goods and runs away from the family, squandering his precious inheritance in the process. But then, realizing the self-imposed squalor of his condition, he repents, and his overjoyed father runs halfway down the road to meet him. The father gives him a great celebratory banquet, delighting that his lost son has now been found. From the classic spiritual “Amazing Grace” to countless homilies, this parable of repentance has piqued the religious imagination of Christians of all stripes down through the centuries.

But perhaps the repentance and joyous acceptance of the Father is not the parable’s most important theme. Often left out entirely from reflection is the anger of the elder brother, who thinks he has received nothing for his years of fidelity while his lesser, disobedient sibling is welcomed back to the family on an equal basis. The parable of the prodigal son, in fact, could be more aptly named the parable of the elder brother. Read in its entirety, the parable of the prodigal son seems like an expansive retelling of Matthew’s parable of the two sons (see Mt 21:28-32). In both cases the parables are Jesus’ thinly veiled commentaries on the state of affairs in the Church with the younger brother as a stand-in for the wayward Gentiles — welcomed back to the people of God after centuries of dissolution and rebellion — and the elder brother representing Jewish Christians, upset that their long-held privileged position in the family is being compromised.

But whatever we call it, Luke’s parable of the elder brother is among the most famous in the Jesus tradition. Indeed, as the state of Idaho’s motto is “Famous Potatoes,” Luke’s Gospel’s motto should be “Famous Parables.” It is only Luke who contains the well-known parables of the accursed fig tree (see 13:6-9), the rich man and Lazarus (16:19-31) and real sleepers like the parable of the widow and the unjust judge (18:1-8). By far the most famous of the special Lucan parables is that of the good Samaritan.

The Good Samaritan

The Good Samaritan. Renata Sedmakova / Shutterstock.com

On a surface level, the message of this one is easy to grasp — the true love of neighbor will be shown by the one who actually extends mercy (in this case corporal mercy) — and not necessarily by the professional religious. But a fuller understanding of the good Samaritan must include the degree to which the parable is profoundly subversive of the religious assumptions of Jews living in Palestine for whom a “good Samaritan” was a contradiction in terms and actually rather scandalous.

But whether they scandalize or challenge us, motivate or frighten us, we encounter the heart of Our Lord’s teaching in the parables and thus the mind of the Lord himself. The style of the teaching wasn’t unique, but the Divine Person whom we encounter is!

Dr. Peter Brown earned his doctorate in Scripture from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He serves as academic dean of the Catholic Distance University.

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What We Believe, Part 25: Scripture’s Apostolic Nature

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As we turn now to tradition, it’s helpful, as with so much else we’ve explored thus far, to remember what we learned about the Church as communion. Remember that the…

As we turn now to tradition, it’s helpful, as with so much else we’ve explored thus far, to remember what we learned about the Church as communion.

Remember that the Roman Catholic Church can be viewed in several different ways: as an ancient civilizational institution, older than empires and nations; as a broad social or spiritual movement with a history long enough to be both grotesque and glorious; or bureaucratically, politically, and so on. And, in these historical, sociological and organizational terms, the Catholic Church is indeed, in some ways, all these things.

However, the Church’s ultimate reality is communion. It’s a Trinitarian communion: a communion with God the Father in Christ the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a communion we experience together as we live our faith in Jesus as brothers and sisters in peace. Such is the ritual significance of the exchange of peace at Mass, for instance. It signals our genuine and mystical relationship with each other in the peace we have together in Jesus. This, by the way, was a ritual highly significant in early Christianity, marking who enjoyed (or didn’t) the fellowship and peace of the Church. In its earliest form, the ritual was a kiss of peace, which is why early Christians (calling each other brother and sister, as they did) were sometimes accused of incest. But that aside, the point is the exchange of peace signified what the Church truly is, our communion with one another and at the same time our communion with God — one mysterious communion both earthly, human and horizontal, as well as heavenly, divine and vertical.

And at the heart of this communion of the Church — a billion people broad — this communion of God, angels, saints, and those who have gone before us in death, the “democracy of the dead” — is one’s individual search for the personal love, personal touch, the intimate spiritual kiss of Jesus himself. That’s what’s beautiful, that in the Church, one can have this broad experience but also this intimate, personal experience, this unique loving relationship with the Lord. That’s what it means to belong to the Church. It’s to experience both: to encounter Jesus Christ within the broad communion of the Church.

And as we’ve just explored, we encounter Jesus Christ scripturally through the word of God proclaimed and heard in the Church. The Scripture offers us an encounter with the genuine Christ, not a false one we fabricate. To put it simply: We encounter Christ in the communion of the Church and that encounter is scriptural. This is why the Bible matters; it’s what the Bible is for — to offer us that encounter.

But, of course, that wasn’t the way it was at the very beginning. At the start, there was no Christian Bible. At the beginning, people came to faith in Jesus because other people who knew Jesus and believed in Jesus told others about him. At the beginning, it wasn’t so much scriptural transmission but oral transmission. In this early oral transmission, people encountered the living Jesus, not so much through reading, but more through evangelical conversation.

But, as generations proceeded, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the message did take written form, finally in what the Church recognizes today as sacred Scripture, offering what the Second Vatican Council simply says is “the honest truth about Jesus” (Dei Verbum, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation,” No.19). Undoubtedly, it took centuries for the Church to articulate what we call the “canon of Scripture,” the authoritative collection of texts we call the Bible, the Word of God. Nonetheless, the Church has always believed that when you encounter the written word of God — either in its proclaimed form as you hear it in Church on Sunday or when reading it privately — something more than hearing or reading is going on. That is, when you encounter the Word of God, there is something sacramental about the experience; that is, we believe that when we encounter the Scripture, Christ is really, albeit mystically, speaking to us (cf. Verbum Domini, “Word of God,” No. 56). To use a loose analogy: if a husband long separated from his wife were to read a letter she wrote to him, his experience reading her letter would be something more than mere reading. That is, reading her words, he would also experience her love; there would be some extra-verbal communication of affection, something more than a mere display of information. That’s kind of what it’s like reading the Scripture. We come into contact not just with a spouse’s love or a friend’s affection but with the mystery of Christ. To encounter the Scripture is to encounter something alive and real, something bigger than us, something risen, never a dead academic text. When we encounter the Word of God, we’re changed.

So, the experience of encountering Christ within the communion of the Church is an experience that is oral and scriptural but always mysterious. That is, it’s always an encounter that transcends the mere physical experience of hearing or reading words. And that’s because hearing or reading the words of the Scripture brings us into contact with the living Christ; it is not simply an intake of information about Jesus but a genuine meeting with Jesus. But it’s at this point that we should note something equally important about this encounter, and that is that this mysterious scriptural or oral experience of encounter with Christ in communion is also always a human experience, always embodied, always something we experience within a web of relationships, within communion, within the Church.

To put it simply, when you come into contact with the written word of God, it’s because someone gave you that written word of God. You can’t read it without recognizing that other people are reading it and have read it. That is, this mystical communion coming to you also comes by others, and we each share what we’ve experienced with other people, inviting them also into this mystical communion. That is, we never encounter the Scripture in a vacuum, in isolation. The encounter is always inscribed upon us by others. This is what theologians mean when they talk about mediation — that the truth of God almost always comes to us through someone or something. We Catholics, for instance, believe grace is mediated: that it comes through the work, ministry and love of others. Mediation is not a difficult concept; we experience something like it every day. My daughter, for example, learns about love because my wife and I love her. My daughter will learn how to be a woman because my wife is a woman in front of her. Of course, our daughter’s personality is undoubtedly her own, but it is, in a very real sense, mediated through us. We as her parents, for good or ill, have a profound effect on her.

The Gospel works the same way. It comes to us through human mediation as well. That’s why we have saints and preachers. In their lives, the Scripture is interpreted for us. We learn about what the Bible means and what holiness looks like not from books but from saints. Also, on Sunday it wouldn’t work if we simply pushed play on some recording or passed out an essay for people to read. No, the Church insists that someone stand up to read or preach. A human must speak. And that’s because it’s not just about the delivery of information but the communion of persons. Because truth and grace are mediated.

Which is why we call the Scripture apostolic. Because Scripture always comes from and is embedded with and connected with a certain group of people — the apostles and their successors, those human beings who over the generations have been part of this human community that talks about Jesus. Remember again the First Letter of John: “What we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you,” he begins. That’s mediation — the mystery of Christ coming through people.

And the thing is, this people still exists as the Church, and this process, described in John, continues in Scripture and Tradition communicating with one another, “flowing out of the same divine well-spring” (Dei Verbum, No. 9). As we’ll explore next time when we look at a few of the early fathers — particularly St. Irenaeus of Lyons — we’ll see in action how the Scripture and tradition relate and function together all for the sake of true faith and the mission of the Church.

Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.

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Lectio Divina: Reading Scripture

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How do we allow the Scripture, in all its awesome power, to draw us closer to God? One important spiritual discipline that can help us in this regard is called…

How do we allow the Scripture, in all its awesome power, to draw us closer to God?

One important spiritual discipline that can help us in this regard is called lectio divina, which is Latin for “sacred reading.” It’s one of the oldest forms of Christian prayer, and the bishops at the synod repeatedly recommended that Catholics discover its power to make the Bible come alive.

From the very beginning, the early Christians imitated the Jewish model of using Scripture (the Old Testament) as a gateway into prayer. Once the New Testament books were written, Christians approached these sacred texts in the same way.

They understood that God was the author of Scripture, and that He was personally present in the words of Scripture. They read the words in a way that connected them to God. They learned how to read the Word of God with their hearts as well as their minds.

The Fathers of the Church read Scripture this way. St. Jerome, who translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, was an early advocate of “sacred reading.” Sts. Augustine, Basil and Benedict all made ample use of it.

Eventually, the practice became a common form of prayer in monastic communities in Europe. Lectio divina is still closely associated with monasteries, but in recent decades many Christians who lead active lives in the world have learned to pray this way as well.

Four Stages

The essence of lectio divina is reading the words of Scripture with one’s “heart,” guided by the Holy Spirit. It’s a flexible method and cannot be reduced to a technique. But those who are most skilled in it agree that lectio divina usually involves four stages.

Nearly a thousand years ago, a monk named Guigo de Castro described them in a letter to a fellow monk. Guigo’s outline is still the standard description of this prayer practice.

The scriptural text for lectio divina is usually chosen in advance. Typically, it is a short text, often a single verse containing the words of Jesus or a brief description of his actions.

The first step is lectio — reading. We read for understanding. What is the context of the verse? What did the author mean to convey to the people he was addressing? The question to ask in lectio: “What does the text say?”

The second stage is meditatio — meditation. We ruminate on the verse. We memorize it. We say it over and over again slowly and carefully. What do the words mean to me? How do they interact with our thoughts and memories? The question to ask in meditation: “What does the text say to me?”

The third stage is oratio — prayer. Our hearts have been stirred by meditating on the verse. God has spoken to us through the words. Now, what response do we make? The question asked in oratio: “What do we say to God in response to this text?”

The final stage is contemplatio — contemplation. Our prayer moves beyond words and beyond thought. We simply rest in God. We let His love transform us. The question asked in contemplation:”What is God saying to us?”

Lectio divina does not always unfold in an ordered progression of stages. Often we will oscillate between times of acting and times of receiving. We are “busy” reading, thinking, speaking. Then we quietly listen and receive what God has for us.

Nevertheless, the natural movement of lectio divina is toward ever-greater simplicity. It begins with close scrutiny of the words of Scripture. It ends with wordless enjoyment of God.

Gradually the words of Scripture dissolve and the Word of God is revealed before the eyes of our heart. Reading the sacred words fosters a dialogue with God. It’s a dialogue that concludes with an act of consecration, whereby we offer ourselves to God.

New Habits Needed

If we are to pray lectio divina successfully, we need to learn some new habits. First of all, we must slow down. Sacred reading takes time. Those who consistently pray this way often recommend that we set aside at least an hour in a quiet place for it. It’s not exactly an ideal way to pray on the bus during your daily commute (though this is just a guideline, not a rule).

We also need to learn to read differently. We’re accustomed to reading texts in order to understand the information they convey. It’s a cognitive process, an act of the intellect.

The goal of “sacred reading,” however, is to seek God. It’s an exercise of the heart and a process that’s led by the Holy Spirit. As one writer on lectio divina put it, “The full process of ‘reading’ could take 15 minutes or be spread over 15 years.”

Interest in lectio divina has surged in recent years. Pope Benedict XVI recommended it as a way for us to hear God and to respond to Him “with openness of heart.” If we learn to pray this way, the Pope has said, “this practice will bring to the Church — I am convinced of it — a new spiritual springtime.”

Jim Manney writes from Michigan.

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What We Believe, Part 24: Showing Us How To Love

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We have established that Scripture shows us Jesus. But why does that matter? As I have written earlier, the purpose of Scripture is to inspire belief, to reveal God’s justice…

We have established that Scripture shows us Jesus. But why does that matter? As I have written earlier, the purpose of Scripture is to inspire belief, to reveal God’s justice and to call us to holiness in faith. But, as I’ve hinted, there is indeed more. The purpose of Scripture is also love, and before moving on to explore tradition, we should look at this more closely.

To do so, the great spiritual master St. Augustine can help us, and in an interesting way. To think about how we relate to God, he asks us to think of ourselves as exiles, hopelessly lost and lonely for home. “Suppose we were wanderers who could not live in blessedness except at home,” he wrote. Imagine, he said, that “we felt wretched in our wandering, and wishing to put an end to our misery, determined to return home” (“On Christian Doctrine,” No. 1.4.4). That, Augustine said, is what it’s like for humans after the fall. We’re miserably estranged from God and lost. This sets up a simple question: How do we get back?

St. Augustine’s answer was simple. Imagine we’re on the road home, but the road is “blocked, as if by a thorny ledge,” he said. What would be more merciful, then, than for someone to clear the road for us, opening a path? That’s what Jesus did, Augustine said; he forgave our sins, and he himself became the path back home. We’re lost, and Jesus helps us get home. But getting back to God is not a journey involving physical distance or travel; it’s a spiritual and moral journey. This road Augustine is talking about is not a physical road, not a road “from place to place.” Rather, it’s a “road of affections” — that is, a road of loves (“On Christian Doctrine,” No. 1.10.10). Jesus comes to us, Augustine said, lives among us and forgives us. He shows us the way to go and gives us the means to return to God by showing us how to love and live rightly.

Jesus quite simply shows us how to love and how not to love; he shows us through his love what it means to be fully human. And, through his passion (which we’ll talk about later), Jesus gives us the means to imitate him and walk with him back to God, to “our native place.”

Which is what happens when we discover Christ in Scripture — we see Jesus and learn how to love as he loves. That is, the whole purpose of Scripture is the “love of Being” — the love of God and neighbor we discover in Jesus. That’s the purpose of “the whole temporal dispensation,” the point of all truth, all knowledge, and all that’s contained in Scripture: to teach us how to love (“On Christian Doctrine,” No. 1.35.39). That is, in the story of Jesus of Nazareth — in his life, death and resurrection — we see what it means truly to love. Specifically put, we see what it means to give up our will to God’s will as he gave up his will to his Father in Gethsemane. We see what it means to forgive like he forgave. And we see what it means to be holy like his Father is holy. To learn how to love like this is to experience what we call “salvation.” But, of course, Jesus not only shows us how to love, he enables us and gives us the grace to love. (This we’ll talk about later when we talk about the sacraments.)

Given all of that, Scripture is a tutorial in love, yes, but it is also more. To explain what I mean by that, I should say clearly what we’ve only hinted at thus far: that the reading or hearing of Scripture is a mystical experience. Scripture not only shows us who Jesus is, it genuinely introduces us to Jesus. Encountering Scripture is not like reading a novel, a biography, or a textbook. The difference is that Christ comes to you in Scripture through worship or through personal reading. The belief of the Church is that in such moments we encounter not just a historical record but a “living transmission” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 78). We believe that when one genuinely hears Scripture, it’s a moment of a personal encounter.

This belief is ancient. Origen, for example, said that “If the Scriptures are true,” then Jesus speaks “today too, in our congregation … not only in this congregation, but in other gatherings, and in the whole world” (“Homilies on Luke,” No. 32.2). There’s a contemporariness to the Christ we meet in Scripture. Among the earliest Christians, it was understood that Jesus was genuinely present in the community — especially when the Gospel was being announced. Early Christians, for instance, would likely have thought the old evangelical acronym “WWJD?” to be heretical. Never was it a question of what Jesus “would” do as if he wasn’t present. Rather, it was always a question of what Jesus “is” doing. His presence was never doubted. Never was there any sort of wistfulness that longed for the days when Jesus “was” present.

Early Christians knew that Jesus was present in word and sacrament, and that’s what we Catholics still believe: that the “Father’s self-communication made through his Word in the Holy Spirit remains present and active in the Church” (Catechism, No. 79). This, of course, is simply biblical belief in the Jesus who is the same yesterday, today and forever — the Christ whose mind we’re able by grace to make our own (Heb 13:8; Phil 2:5).

But if Christ is present among us today, then why do we need Scripture to discover the real Jesus? Why can’t we just intuit the truth of God? Why can’t we just close our eyes and think of Jesus? Why do we need oral and written communication, all these ancient texts? Why can’t we simply conceive God and commune with him wordlessly?

Again, St. Augustine — who clearly thought a lot about this — helps us think this through. “The scriptures,” he wrote, “employ no manner of speaking that is not in common human usage — they are, after all, speaking to human beings” (“The Trinity,” No. 1.23). The Scripture, he said, makes use of created things like words — “like children’s toys” — to help us learn how to seek what is above created things, “step by step as best we can” (“The Trinity,” No. 1.2).

Anyone who’s read poetry or a love letter understands this. It’s lovely how Augustine thought about it. He didn’t view Scripture merely scientifically or historically or even as mere literature. Rather, he understood that as humans — material and spiritual beings who speak — God lowered himself to speak on our level, with words, images, beauty and flesh, so that we could see the divine in and beyond material things. Angels, being purely immaterial and spiritual, do not need words to commune with God; humans, however, do. We, being material and spiritual creatures, need words and images to encounter God. That’s how God meets us where we are. It’s why ours is a religion of incarnation and Scripture.

The Second Vatican Council summed this up wonderfully: “For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men” (Dei Verbum, No. 13). In other words, we have Scripture because we’re human; and God knows how to talk to humans — with words we understand.

So, Scripture, in the Christian sense, are the texts of the Old and New Testaments, believed by the Church to be the authentic and living witness of God’s saving work in history. Scripture witnesses to our belief that Jesus is the perfect work of God’s salvation. But it’s more than that. In reading Scripture, we encounter Christ in a mystical way, not merely in a historical report. Although there is indeed historical fact in the Bible, the Christ we encounter in Scripture is not merely a historical construction or even a purely literary construction. Rather, Jesus is mystically present in the event of hearing or reading Scripture itself — a “living transmission.” To put it simply, it’s the Body of Christ speaking.

Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.

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