Tag: Apostles

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.

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.