Tag: Scripture

6 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 31: Be Baptized Every One of You

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

November 14, 2022 4:34 pm November 14, 2022

6 min read

384 views

Comments Off

6 min read

The Church is koinonia — an organic communion, a fellowship, a union of all: all races, all tax brackets, a communion in whom is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor…

The Church is koinonia — an organic communion, a fellowship, a union of all: all races, all tax brackets, a communion in whom is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free person, male nor female as Paul beautifully described it (Gal 3:28). This means it’s a communion transcending every human distinction.

But the Church is also a communion with God the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A communion, so to speak, both horizontal and vertical — it’s communion not only with our fellow human beings but also communion with God himself. That is, the communion that is the Church is sacramental. It’s communion both divine and human, immaterial and material. The Church is invisible, as well as visible; it has a visible structure. But its invisible structure is what’s triumphant and eternal, revealed in what’s materially made holy.

To stand before this communion is to stand mystically before Christ. To encounter the Church, the sacrament of Christ, is, therefore, a personal encounter. And if it’s a personal encounter, this Body of Christ communicates personally; that is, Christ speaks to us, in a sense, in his body, the Church. This is how we understand Scripture, tradition and revelation. Scripture is how the Body of Christ, the Church, speaks. When we encounter Scripture, that encounter is always mystical; it’s a coming into contact with the “mystery of Christ.” And it’s when we encounter Christ scripturally within the Body of Christ — the human and divine fellowship which is also called the Church — that we experience the event of revelation. Thus, as Catholics, our experience of the Bible is fundamentally a relational experience.

Because of this, what we’re talking about really is how to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We Catholics believe that to have a personal relationship with Christ, a person must also have a relationship with him within the communion of the Church, the Body of Christ. This is where one finds the real Jesus with whom one can have a personal relationship, which brings salvation. For we Catholics, knowing Jesus personally and scripturally, and also living within the communion of the Church cannot be separated; to separate these truths is to render each false. This is a fundamental truth of Catholicism.

While Jesus, the Church, the Body of Christ, speaks to us in Scripture and tradition, so too we are communicated with: that is, in sacrament, the Sacraments — the sacred mysteries.

To talk about the sacraments, begin by thinking of the person you love — your wife or husband, a friend. How do you express your love? Do you simply use words? Do you simply say, “I love you”? Do you never hug, kiss, hold hands? When you express your love for another person, do you never express that love sensually? Of course, you do: you hug, kiss, hold hands and so on. Because that’s what love is — it’s more than words. And that, very plainly, is why we have not only Scripture, the words of God’s love, but also the sacraments, the sensual expression of God’s love. It’s really that simple.

But how are the sacraments sensual expressions of God’s love? A little basic theology is helpful here. Now the classic definition of a sacrament is simply this: A sacrament is an outward visible sign of an inward invisible grace. The sacrament of the Eucharist, for example, is an outward sign (bread and wine) or an inward invisible grace (the body and blood of Christ).

Now this is a perfectly good definition of a sacrament. But I find another definition helpful too: A sacrament is a sign, which participates in what it signifies. That is, again looking at the Eucharist, not only does the bread and wine signify Christ’s body and blood, the bread and wine actually participate in Christ’s body and blood — the bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of Christ. In the sacraments, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ acts by means of visible signs to “make present efficaciously the grace that they signify” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1084). A stop sign, for instance, is simply a sign that relates a message: Stop! But it’s not a sign that participates in any sort of metaphysical form or being; there is no eternal being of stop-ness. A sacrament is a sign and more: it’s a sign that participates in what it signifies. And this definition can be applied to all the sacraments.

Before we look at the first sacrament, baptism, consider this story: I have a friend who’s a believer in Jesus but who’s never been baptized. Though he’s a good and faithful person, he didn’t grow up in a family or community that placed much importance on baptism. What mattered more, he thought, was your heart, your faith; as long as you loved Jesus and believed in him, it didn’t matter whether you went through some material ritual. The ritual is insignificant, he believed.

This is not an uncommon view. Many of our Protestant sisters and brothers think this. And it does certainly have logic and plausibility. It rightly emphasizes the priority of faith over works and over ritual. Yet, on the other hand, such a view is simply not biblical. It’s actually contrary to Scripture. How so? Well, one need only read Peter’s words in Acts of the Apostles where he said, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38). This passage comes from Pentecost, where Peter gives this instruction at the end of his first sermon — the very first apostolic sermon in Christian history. Peter had just preached the Gospel of Jesus, moving the crowd to the threshold of faith. And in response, the people ask, “What are we to do?” And this was Peter’s answer: Repent and be baptized!

This, very simply, is why my friend’s view is unbiblical. This is why saying the ritual of baptism isn’t important is contrary to Scripture. Yes, my friend’s view bears a logic and plausibility; he does have a moral point. But he can’t say it’s a biblical point. From day one, as we’ll see, baptism has been put forward as a necessity for Christian believers. Since the very beginning, baptism was considered important, essential. That’s simply the testimony of Scripture, and it’s something we Catholics have always believed.

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.

Comments Off

9 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 30: The Vision of Christ

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

November 7, 2022 12:28 pm November 7, 2022

9 min read

946 views

Comments Off

9 min read

Clearly, from the Catholic point of view, Scripture and Tradition should fit together, work together for the sake of presenting, without error, the “mystery of Christ,” so that all people…

Clearly, from the Catholic point of view, Scripture and Tradition should fit together, work together for the sake of presenting, without error, the “mystery of Christ,” so that all people might hear the “summons to salvation” (Dei Verbum, No. 1). The purpose of the Scripture is to show us Jesus, to teach, to sanctify, to change us.

The Church we’ve been talking about is the Catholic Church, the Scripture is the canonical Scripture, the Tradition is apostolic tradition centered on Peter. These are real things, not just ideas. And that’s because all of it points to the real Christ — who isn’t just a concept either. Rather, he’s a Christ we can see, whom we can touch and even taste.

Which brings us — to conclude our discussion of the Scripture and Tradition — to the final purpose of it all. And that is, simply, the vision of Christ. That’s what encountering the Scripture through Tradition within the communion of the Church does for the believer: it offers the vision of Christ. Such is what we mean when we talk about the “mystery of Christ” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 80). That’s the event of revelation. And again, that’s a real encounter, a real vision. And that’s because it’s a sacramental vision, Eucharistic and holy.

Firstly, what we mean here is that the vision of Christ is granted in the Eucharist. We see this in Luke’s Gospel, in the story of the risen but hidden Jesus who walks and talks with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Starting with “Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures,” Luke writes. Which causes the men to desire this mysterious figure. “Stay with us,” they beg him. It’s a prayer that gathers the three around a table. And there, Luke says, “they recognized him” in the breaking of the bread (Lk 24:25-32). Jesus opened Scripture to them, so they would see him in the Eucharist. This is what Scripture does: it helps us recognize Christ in the Eucharist. We see in this story the basic twofold shape of the Mass — the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. In the Liturgy of the Word, we hear the Scripture proclaimed and preached. In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we encounter Jesus just as these two men did in the breaking of the bread. Our eyes are opened, and we recognize him.

For the present purpose, we should notice that this twofold pattern of Word and Eucharist is found throughout Christian history. In the writings of St. Justin Martyr, for instance, we find a description of the Eucharist as celebrated in Rome in the second century, and, in it, we see the same pattern found in Luke is the same found in the Mass today. “And on the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen” (“First Apology,” No. 62). That’s the same pattern as found in Luke 24. That’s the Catholic Mass today. The Scripture helps us see Christ in the Eucharist. That ultimately is what the Scripture is for. It’s to help us find Christ and to receive him — in the Eucharist.

But the vision of Christ given us through the Scripture is not just Eucharistic. It’s not just about seeing Jesus. It’s also about seeing like Jesus. It’s about seeing the world through the eyes of Christ. If you think about it, that’s what the Revelation to John is. Swept up in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, John heard a voice, “Write on a scroll what you see” (Rv 1:11). The Scripture not only helps us see Jesus, it also gives us a way of seeing, a way of looking at the world and at history much the same way John saw the world in the vision given him at Patmos.

But it’s not a way of seeing in some sort of silly magical sense. Rather, I mean what David Bentley Hart, a Orthodox theologian, means. He said, “the Christian should see two realities at once, one world (as it were) within another: one world as we all know it, in all its beauty and terror, grandeur and dreariness, delight and anguish; and the other world in its first and ultimate truth, not simply ‘nature’ but ‘creation,’ an endless sea of glory, radiant with the beauty of God in every part, innocent of all violence. To see in this way is to rejoice and mourn at once, to regard the world as a mirror of infinite beauty, but as glimpsed through the veil of death; it is to see creation in chains, but beautiful as in the beginning of days” (“The Doors of the Sea,” No. 61). That’s what it means to have the vision of Christ, to see all things as Jesus does. Being people of faith, seeing Jesus, formed in the idioms of Scripture and in the rhetoric of the word of God, it transforms the way we view things. It helps us see things differently, at a different angle — from a spiritual and ultimate perspective.

The Scripture is its own idiom, training believers to see the world a certain way. And that’s because the Scripture itself describes reality in a certain way. Scripture gives us a new way of seeing — the vision of Christ, seeing like Jesus. This actually is the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, that the purpose of the revelation of God in Christ is “to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature” (Dei Verbum, No. 2). That is, the purpose of the Bible is not to explain the universe scientifically, to be for us some sort of cosmic manual. Rather, the purpose of the Bible is to show us God’s heart, his salvation; and from that, to see everything else differently.

What I mean by this different way of seeing — given through the Scripture — we see most clearly in the lives of the early Christian martyrs. In them, we see powerfully what Christians look like when they see the world with the eyes of Jesus. As when martyrs like the priest Pionius — as so many others did — rejected pagan gods for the “God who is almighty … who made the heavens and the earth and all the things that are in them … the God we know through Christ his Word” (“The Martyrdom of Pionius,” No. 8). These people saw things differently. “Why do you rush towards death?” Pionius was asked. “I am not rushing towards death, but towards life,” he answered. Because in Christ he saw things in a radically different way — the way Christ does. Such is the moral and spiritual result of being a scriptural person. It gives us the eyes of martyrs.

But, of course, there’s even something more. When you become a scriptural person, Christ becomes visible in you. That is, people see Jesus in you. Again, we can see in the martyrs what I mean. We see this in St. Blandina, a second-century Christian slave who, in her dying moments, looked like Christ to her brothers and sisters. As the account of her martyrdom reads: “Blandina was hung on a post and exposed as bait for the wild animals that were let loose on her. She seemed to hang there in the form of a cross, and by fervent prayer she aroused intense enthusiasm in those who were undergoing their ordeal, for in their torment with their physical eyes they saw in the person of their sister him who was crucified for them, that he might convince all who believe in him that all who suffer for Christ’s glory will have eternal fellowship in the living God” (“The Martyrs of Lyons,” No. 1.41). Blandina believed in Jesus and loved him and knew him because she responded to the Gospel that was delivered to her. And in that love, she followed Jesus, obeyed him and lived like him. She saw the world as Christ did. And for her, that meant she had to go to the amphitheater and die. But in her faithfulness and adherence to God’s word, not so much intellectually but in love, she died brutally. But those who saw her saw Jesus. They saw Christ in the “person of their sister.” Which is the final result — this side of heaven — of being a person shaped by the Scripture. For Christ to become visible in you. If you want to be a scriptural person, that’s the goal. To be that sort of person who sees Jesus, sees as Jesus; and then by grace, to be the sort of person in whom others see Jesus. Which, of course, is to become a saint.

And that’s how we Catholics view the Scripture.

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.

Comments Off

10 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 29: Scripture and the Church

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

October 31, 2022 11:45 am October 31, 2022

10 min read

728 views

Comments Off

10 min read

In a sense, the Body of Christ speaks through the Scripture. But, as we know, such an encounter — if it’s an encounter with the real Christ — implies faith…

In a sense, the Body of Christ speaks through the Scripture. But, as we know, such an encounter — if it’s an encounter with the real Christ — implies faith and the “traditioned” communion of the Church. These are the factors necessarily involved in the event we call revelation. It’s how the Church, through the Scripture and Tradition, presents the “mystery of Christ” to the world (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 80).

But however clear this process is, it doesn’t really clear everything up. That is to say: by no means does it prevent arguments from breaking out about the Bible or its interpretation and application. If you’ve ever been around Christian people for any length of time, you know this. Christians have always argued about the Scripture — and they always will.

This is why, when we talk about the Church in relation to the Scripture, we’re not talking about some abstract or merely conceptual church. Rather, we’re talking about a real Church, the Catholic Church. For that’s where and how such arguments are handled — by the Church exercising its teaching authority, its “living Magisterium.” The task of the Magisterium is simple: it’s to preserve the People of God from error so that they may remain in “the truth that liberates” (cf. Catechism, No. 890). It’s a task that demands a real, tangible, fully human, but also inspired, Church. When we talk about the Church as necessary to the right reading of the Scripture, that Church must indeed be an actual Church. Otherwise, this process leading to the event of revelation, which I’ve described, all falls apart. This is undoubtedly a bold claim on the part of the Catholic Church, yet by no means is it a novel claim. It’s not new at all.

We see this in the writings of the early Church Father St. Irenaeus. When he emphasized the necessity of the Church, he wasn’t talking about some mere concept, but the real Church. “Suppose there arises a dispute relative to some important question among us,” he said, “should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held in constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question?”

Writing in a free market of competing Christianities, Irenaeus’ argument was basically that Christians should stand on the Faith associated with the apostles and their successors. When a tricky argument arises, go to the apostolic line, Irenaeus said, referring to the apostolic communities in which the Faith has always been proclaimed. “For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary in that case to follow the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?” (“Against Heresies,” No. 3.4.1). The Church, which preceded the formation of the Scripture, remains the arbiter of theological controversy for Irenaeus. And such remains the Catholic view. By now, it should be clear that the notion that each individual is free to interpret the Scripture for himself or herself is not a Catholic idea. But nor is it really a Protestant idea; even the Reformers were clear that the Bible had to be read under some authority. It’s just that the Reformers rejected Roman authority.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean every argument among Christians needs immediately to be appealed to the teaching office of the Church. Argument is in fact good for a community. As St. Augustine said of heretics: they’re useful in that they help us seek the truth more urgently (cf. Sermon No. 51.11). The same is true for charitable arguments generally. Before seeking out the final word of the Church’s Magisterium, Christians should take up the studious and spiritual task of interpretation. For instance, as Augustine said, “When investigation reveals an uncertainty as to how a locution should be pointed or construed, the rule of faith should be consulted as it is found in the more open places of the Scriptures and in the authority of the Church” (“On Christian Doctrine,” No. 3.2.2).

That is, Scripture interprets Scripture, Augustine said; yet, even this method of interpretation presupposes the rule of faith. For example, if there’s a passage in the Gospels that makes Jesus look merely human (say, when he thirsts on the cross) we should remember those passages wherein he looks like God (say, when he walks on water). That is, we should remember both the “form of God” and the “form of the servant” when reading about Jesus in the Gospels (cf. “The Trinity,” No. 1.3.14). That’s how Augustine applied the rule of faith: by remembering always the core Christian belief that Jesus is fully human and fully God, by remembering what the Church has always proclaimed to be true. “Remember you are Catholics!” Augustine once preached; again, Christians do indeed read the Scripture with a ready set of commitments (“Sermon,” No. 52.2). That’s what engaging the Scripture as a Catholic looks like — like faith, like study and, finally, like obedience to the Church.

And this is basically the Catholic approach today. Each Catholic is encouraged to read the Scripture and, within reason, even interpret it for himself or herself; however, such reading and personal interpretation must always be subject to the Church’s traditioned guidance and even the Church’s correction. I personally could interpret a certain passage of the Scripture and think I’ve achieved some remarkable insight, and indeed I may have. However, if I were to pass such insight off as settled Catholic teaching, then there’s a problem. Each person may be comforted by the Scripture in his or her own way, but the Church insists we are guided by several millennia of faithful reading, by the tradition and finally the authority of the Church.

Interpreters and readers of the Scripture form a spiritual symbiosis with the Church’s Magisterium, a symbiosis of spiritual and intellectual exploration and humble ecclesial obedience. As the Second Vatican Council teaches, “It is the task of exegetes (interpreters of the Bible) to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgment.” However, “interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God” (Dei Verbum, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation,” No. 12). The Catholic Church does indeed say there is an ultimate authority capable of making a judgment about what is an appropriate interpretation and what isn’t. Again, the Reformers believed this too. They just took Rome out of the equation.

Now, this authority is mostly a negative authority. That is, the Catholic Church has left many questions of Biblical interpretation open. Only in rare instances does the Church exclude an interpretation, and then, only when it contradicts the rule of faith or seems otherwise contrary to the truth. It’s a policing authority, so to speak. And necessary, considering the long strange history of heresies and cults and wild biblical ideas put forward that have ruined people’s lives. Like Harold Camping, to cite one example among too many: he said the world would end on May 21, 2011; then he said Oct. 21, 2011. Now, of course, Camping was just deluded. It was simply foolishness. Yet, some people were ruined by his foolishness. The Catholic Church, though, weathered that apocalyptic nonsense 1,000 years ago. Of course, one still finds such nonsense from time to time among Catholics, but it never takes the form of authoritative teaching; it’s always fringe. And that’s because the Catholic Church exercises a “living Magisterium,” an authority capable of settling such nonsense, preserving the faithful from harmful speculation.

And as I said, the Magisterium is exercised by a real Church, the Catholic Church. Again, this is a bold claim — but necessary. Authentic interpretation is “entrusted to the living teaching off of the Church alone” (Dei Verbum, No. 10) And particularly, “This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome” (Catechism, No. 85). So, the Catholic Church does attach the final word on interpretation — again, mostly in a negative sense — to the bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome, the pope.

But this is no different than what St. Irenaeus said in his time. For him, if one wanted to settle some important argument about the Faith, one should seek out the apostles and their successors, particularly, “the Church that is greatest, most ancient, and known to all, founded and set up by the two apostles Peter and Paul at Rome.” By appealing to the tradition and the faith proclaimed “down through the successions of bishops even to us,” believers are able “to shame all who in any way, through infatuation or vainglory or blindness and a wicked doctrine, gather together wrongly.” But again, Irenaeus pointed first to Rome. “For it is necessary for every church — that is, the believers from everywhere — to agree with this church, in which the tradition from the apostles has always been preserved by those who are from everywhere, because of its more excellent origin” (“Against Heresies,” No. 3.3.2). So, even in the early Church, the buck stopped somewhere. And for Catholics — for a very long time — it stopped in Rome.

Now, the claim made by the Catholic Church to be the final interpreting authority of both the Scripture and Tradition is indeed bold. However, it’s not an authority merely to invent things. The Church cannot invent doctrine and dogma. Everything the Church teaches must be obedient to the rule of faith and the word of God. Again, this is a patristic principle, as St. Augustine exemplifies. “The authority of these books,” he said, “had come down to us from the apostles through the succession of bishops and the extension of the Church, and from a position of lofty supremacy claims the submission of every faithful … mind” (“Against Faustus,” No. 11.5). Augustine was clear that the Scripture wields authority over doctrine. As the ancient ecumenical councils enthroned the Gospels before deliberation, the Church has always understood its role to be steward, not master, of the Scripture. Again, as the Second Vatican Council taught, “this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant (Dei Verbum, No. 10). What the Church teaches, it believes always to be under the authority of the Scripture. The dogmas of the Church are not something added to the Scripture; rather, such dogma is in coherent harmony with the Scripture, a traditioned articulation of the Scripture. And that’s because, as we’ve said before, the Scripture and Tradition, although distinct, are not two separate sources of truth; rather, they flow “from the same divine well-spring.” They “form one thing, and move towards the same goal” (Dei Verbum, No. 9). And that’s the revelation of the “mystery of Christ” — a revelation we believe still possible today.

Comments Off

6 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 28: The Rule of Faith

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

October 21, 2022 9:33 am October 21, 2022

6 min read

755 views

Comments Off

6 min read

Theological controversies, such as when Arius taught what he taught or when the “Pneumatomachians” taught what they taught, caused an almost visceral reaction within the Church. “Jesus is God just as the Father is God!” the Church seemed to scream at Arius. “The Holy Spirit is to be ranked with the Father!” the Church seemed to shout to the Spirit-fighters. We will “never surrender this truth,” St. Basil exclaimed (“On the Holy Spirit,” No. 10.25).

Why did these Fathers of the Church almost instinctively know these ideas were heretical, that they didn’t belong to the Faith? The short answer is the rule of faith. This is what keeps everything together in reading Scripture. This is how we make sense of Scripture.

Some Fathers in the early Church talked about something called the “rule of faith,” sometimes also called the “rule of truth.” Remember that the core belief of the Gospel is that God became man, born of the Virgin and that he died, rose again and ascended to the right hand of the Father, and that he now dwells in us by faith and the gift of the Holy Spirit. This core message — the Gospel, basically — was around and was being communicated long before anything was written down. This core message is the Christian assumption, so to speak — the Christian hypothesis. And so, when the Scripture comes along, this basic Christian assumption, this core message, becomes the “rule of faith.” It becomes the pre-scriptural theological lens through which we interpret the Bible. For example, if someone comes along with an interpretation of the Gospel of Mark, arguing (as some did) that Christ is not fully divine, the rule of faith insists that such an interpretation is wrong. Why? Because we know, even before there was the Gospel of Mark that Jesus is God. Because that belief predates any written text; no text can change that. That’s what the rule of faith is. They are our assumptions, our presumptions, the a priori claims we hold in faith as Christians, the most important being that Jesus is truly God.

That Christians hold such a rule shouldn’t shock anyone. Every philosophy and each science holds its a priori commitments, its hypotheses. This has always been the case, even before the Christian era. “Prejudice” is a bad word today, but before the Enlightenment, it was a good word. To be a cultured and educated person you had to hold certain prejudices. The idea our intellectual inquiries begin tabula rasa, or with a clean slate, is simply a modern myth. Even the Enlightenment rationalists who said so didn’t see their own prejudices as prejudices. They all thought the rational mind was basically white, male, aristocratic and European. No, intellectual inquiry always begins with some set of assumptions, some givens. Christian thought is no different. Such is what St. Clement of Alexandria said, citing (of all people) Epicurus — that faith is a “preconception of intelligence,” for it’s impossible “to conduct an investigation” without some “preconception” (Stromateis, No. 2.4.16.1-3). For Christians, that “preconception” is our belief in the core message of the Gospel. That’s our rule of faith. And it’s what makes all other theological exploration possible. Fides quaerens intellectum, or Faith seeking understanding, is the shorthand phrase describing this theological principle. In order fully to know the Catholic faith, strangely, you must first fully believe the Catholic faith. To understand the Scripture correctly, you must first believe in Christ.

Another way to think about how the rule of faith works is to think of it in terms of human relationships. Think of it as a high school dance. If a pretty girl asks my son to dance, my advice to him will be to not waste time asking silly questions, but rather, to just dance. For bliss and enlightenment will be sure to follow. That similarly is how we should approach the Scripture. When you come to the Gospel, don’t ask too many silly scientific or critical questions, important though they are. Rather, just enjoy the story, and — trust me — you’ll love it and be changed. Any sort of intellectual project begins with certain givens. In the scientific method, we call it a hypothesis. For Christians, our hypothesis, our faith, is that Jesus is God. Belief in the core message of the Gospel is the Christian given.

In St. Irenaeus, we see this clearly. Sharing what must be an early credal statement, we see what was for him the Christian rule of faith. He said: “The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith … in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit” — and so on (“Against Heresies,” No. 1.10.2). Such is the Faith, which no later interpretation or theology may challenge. That is the Christian assumption. And it’s what is necessary to any reading of the Bible or later theological speculation or argument.

So when you open your Bible with your emerging faith and you read the Bible by yourself, whether you know it or not, various preconceptions are at work in you — various understandings of the text are at work. You may think you thought something up yourself, but you didn’t. It was “traditioned” in some way. When this happens, however, this traditional reading, carried out within the communion of the Church, becomes sacramental. That is, when this happens, Jesus mystically confronts the reader in heart and mind.

Again, this more properly is what we mean by revelation. Revelation, to speak theologically, names an event, not just a collection of sacred texts. And that, remember, is because of what we understand the Church to be: namely, communion in the body of Christ. Encountering the word of God in the event of revelation is how we encounter Christ. It’s just that this dynamic, sacramental event always in some sense happens within the Church, the body of Christ. The traditioned environment of the event of revelation is always the Church.

Comments Off

9 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 27: Tradition and Dogma

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

October 17, 2022 10:57 am October 17, 2022

9 min read

988 views

Comments Off

9 min read

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.

Comments Off

9 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 26: Apostolic Tradition

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

October 10, 2022 2:06 pm October 10, 2022

9 min read

948 views

Comments Off

9 min read

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.

Comments Off