Scripture and Tradition:
The Bible and Tradition in Roman
Catholicism
by Dr. Sinclair
Ferguson
[This
article is from chapter 6 of the book Sola
Scriptura! The Protestant Position on the
Bible (Copyright 1995 by Soli
Deo Gloria Publications). We highly recommend this
book.]
The year
1996 marks the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
the death of Martin Luther, whose famous Ninety-Five
Theses sparked off a religious fire in Europe which the
Roman Catholic Church was unable to extinguish. The
theological conflict which ensued has often been
characterized as focusing on the so-called four- fold
"alones" of the Reformation: sola gratia, solo Christo,
sola fide, sola Scriptura -- salvation is by grace
alone, in Christ alone, by faith alone, and all that is
necessary for salvation is taught in Scripture alone.
Each of these principles, and certainly all four
together, served as a canon by which the teaching of the
Roman Catholic Church was assessed and found to be
wanting.
In these
great slogans the nouns -- grace, Christ, faith,
Scripture -- were and are of great importance. But in
each case the qualifying sola (alone) was in some ways
even more significant. For Rome had always taught that
salvation was by grace through faith in Christ, and had
always held that the Bible was the Word of God -- but
never alone. To speak of sola Scriptura has almost
always been viewed in Rome as a prescription for
spiritual anarchy in which everyone would create for
himself the message of the Bible. The only safeguard
against this was the living tradition of the Church
viewed as a further channel of the divine
revelation.
The
printing press (and therefore widespread access to the
Bible) is a Renaissance phenomenon, and literacy levels
were low in the Middle Ages. But this alone does not
account for the Reformation horror stories about the
large-scale ignorance of the Bible among both priest and
people. Nevertheless it would be uncharitable to
extrapolate from those dark days to the present day as
though no counter-reformations had taken place in the
interim. And it would reveal considerable ignorance on
the part of Protestants if they did not recognize that
in the past century a widespread interest in the Bible
has developed within the Roman Catholic
Church.
Can it
be, then, that we now face a new situation in Roman
Catholicism? For the first time since the Reformation
"common" Bibles are being published. Moreover, not only
within the World Council of Churches (largely dominated
by liberal theology), but also within evangelicalism
substantial rapprochement has been viewed as possible in
our own time. So it is timely to ask: Has something
unprecedented happened within Roman Catholicism's
interpretation of the Bible so that the old differences
can, at last, be laid to
rest?
During
the past century and a quarter -- from the First Vatican
Council (1870) to the publication of the Pontifical
Biblical Commission's important work The Interpretation
of the Bible in the Church (1993) -- the Roman
Magisterium has published a series of significant
statements on the nature, interpretation and role of the
Bible in the Church. These began in the nineteenth
century in the widespread crisis for faith created by
the effect of Enlightenment thought and thereafter by
the onslaught of scientific humanism which found its
impetus in the evolutionism of the late nineteenth
century. Pronouncements have continued to appear up to
the present day, when the Vatican has sought to wed
together contemporary historical-critical methods of
biblical interpretation with the ancient dogmas of the
Church. Each of these statements is of interest on its
own account; together they mark a development which has
been significant for the work of large numbers of Roman
Catholic biblical
scholars.
The
story of this development is not well known among
Protestants. Indeed probably most Roman Catholics are
relatively unfamiliar with it. It is worth narrating, at
least in broad outline.
Developments in Rome In 1893 Pope
Leo XIII issued the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus
Deus. It was the first wide ranging attempt of the Roman
Church to deal specifically with the impact of the
critical methodologies which had come to characterize
theological scholarship in the latter part of the
nineteenth century. In them the Bible was treated as an
ancient Near Eastern text and assessed from the
standpoint of critical historical investigation and
linguistic and religious development. In sophisticated
theological terms, Scripture's "humanity" was explored
(and, in fact, its divinity was increasingly ignored and
denied).
Against
this background, in which the idea of human evolution
played a major role, Providentissimus Deus insisted on a
long-standing principle of Christian orthodoxy: If God
is Author of both Nature and Scripture, these two
"books" of divine revelation must be in harmony with
each other. The encyclical emphasized that there could
therefore be no ultimate conflict between the Bible and
either the natural sciences or historical investigation.
It urged both theologians and scientists to respect the
limits of their own spheres. In addition, biblical
exegetes who employed the fruits of secular scientific
and historical studies were counseled to remember the
importance of the analogia fidei (analogy of faith): the
Scriptures should always be interpreted in keeping with
the apostolic rule of faith to which the church
subscribed. The last word on what the Bible taught lay
with the Roman
Magisterium.
Providentissimus Deus was thus
characterized by a conservative (some would have said
"reactionary") character, expressed particularly in its
negative criticisms of the way in which
historical-critical principles were being used. The
underlying anxiety of the entire encyclical was that the
results of this critical movement would prove to be
injurious to the faith of which the Church was called to
be the guardian, not the
destroyer.
Fifty
years later the face of Europe had changed dramatically.
The Great War had been fought from 1914 -- 18; the
Second World War of 1939 -- 45 was in full course. The
misplaced and anthropocentric optimism of
nineteenth-century liberal theology had collapsed,
shattered before the enormity of human need; the notion
that humanity was evolving from a lower to a higher
moral condition had been dealt an embarrassing blow. The
"gospel" of the universal Fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man stood exposed in all of its inherent
poverty. There arose a new sense of need for some
powerful word from God. In Protestantism the "theology
of crisis" emerged and what came to be known as the
"Biblical Theology" movement was stirring into
life.
Significant developments had also
taken place within the world of Roman Catholic biblical
scholarship. The Pontifical Biblical Commission was
created by Leo XIII in 1902. In the wake of
Providentissimus Deus, its earliest responses (responsa)
to questions of biblical interpretation were
characterized by negative reaction to higher criticism.
But in due season (it was completely reorganized in 1971
following the Second Vatican Council) it would prove to
be a spearhead of the new way of reading the
Bible.
In 1943,
Pius XII issued his Encyclical Letter Divino Afflante
Spiritu. It was promulgated when the Second World War
was in full flood, but not until the turn of the decade
did its full impact begin to be felt. Now a more
positive note was struck. For one thing, Roman Catholic
biblical scholars were largely set free from the burden
which the Church had carried for centuries: the use of
the Vulgate (Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible).
It had been regarded as the authoritative text for
ecclesiastical use since the time of the Council of
Trent (even now it was still declared to be "free from
all error in matters of faith and
morals").
In a
manner reminiscent of the humanists of the Renaissance,
with the motto ad fonies ("back to the original
sources"), Roman Catholic scholars now enjoyed a new
freedom and fresh impetus to gain and employ expertise
in the biblical languages to enable a true understanding
of the text of Scripture. A new value was recognized in
the use of such tools as textual, literary and form
criticism. The importance of history, ethnology,
archaeology "and other sciences" was affirmed. The "true
meaning," indeed the so-called "literal sense" of
Scripture was to be sought as well as the "spiritual
significance." Precritical ways of reading the Bible
were widely (but not entirely) replaced by the new
approach. Now a clear distinction was made between the
"meaning" of the original text and the contemporary
application ("significance") of it. Principles of
interpretation which had long been familiar to
Protestants were now increasingly recognized as
essential to proper biblical exegesis. The
historical-critical method had come to
stay.
All this
was encouraged (it could scarcely have been prevented,
but the genius of Rome, unlike Wittenberg and Geneva,
has always been its ability to hold opposite tendencies
together). The underlying principle was that the
Scriptures cannot be charged with error. Supposed errors
in Scripture, it was held, could be resolved by a right
reading of the text. Any tensions between Scripture and
"reality" could always be resolved in favor of biblical
integrity. Harmonization was an essential key to reading
the Bible as a modern
Catholic.
Times
change, and we change with them. The second half of the
twentieth century has seen continued movement in Roman
Catholic biblical scholarship. This has not been without
ecclesiastical bloodletting (at one point professors at
the Biblical Institute were banned from teaching!). But
the overall result has been that some of the most
erudite biblical studies published during this period
carry the imprimatur and nihil obstat which identify
them as the work of Roman Catholic scholars which has
been declared "free of doctrinal or moral
error."
The most
recent succinct expression of this development can be
seen in the Pontifical Biblical Commission's statement
on biblical interpretation, published in 1993. Here the
fruits of critical scholarship set within the context of
the Church's tradition are warmly welcomed. Indeed,
strikingly -- in view of the importance of the principle
of harmonization at all costs which marked earlier Roman
Catholic pronouncements -- it is now of a
Protestant-style fundamentalist approach to Scripture
that the Church seems to have become most critical, and
perhaps most fearful.
But why
should this development since 1870 be of interest to
Protestant Christians? For a reason which lies on the
surface of much of the very best Catholic biblical
scholarship. There is a clear recognition in Roman
Catholic biblical scholarship that there is a gulf -- or
at least a distance -- between what the text of Sacred
Scripture states and the teaching of the Sacred
Tradition of the Church. There is also recognition that
the words of Jesus recorded in John 16:12 -- 15, often
taken as a specific promise guaranteeing the truth and
infallibility of Sacred Tradition, do not refer to such
Tradition at all.(1) By necessity, therefore, some Roman
Catholic interpreters of Scripture have found it
necessary to develop a novel view of the relationship
between Scripture and Tradition in order to hold them
Together: Tradition adds to Scripture, but Scripture is
"open" to Tradition.
Can this
contention be readily illustrated from Roman Catholic
biblical scholarship?
In
critical discussion it is always a great temptation to
treat the most extreme examples of the opposition's
viewpoint as though they were representative. That is an
unworthy tactic and often merely hardens prejudices on
both sides. In this context, however, the point can
readily be illustrated not from the worst historical
examples of Roman Catholic biblical interpretation, but
-- albeit from a necessarily limited sample -- by what
is widely regarded as its
best.
It would
be hard to find a better illustration of the new
approach to the Bible in Roman Catholicism than the
recent widely acclaimed commentary on Romans by Joseph
A. Fitzmyer. Professor Fitzmyer is a leading Roman
Catholic scholar whose outstanding academic gifts
pervade his almost 800-page commentary. While it is
often true in the matter of commentaries that "one man's
meat is another man's poison," it is impossible to
imagine any student of Scripture failing to find
considerable profit from the erudition and stimulus of
Fitzmyer's work. Raymond E. Brown, the outstanding
American Catholic Johannine scholar, describes Fitzmyer
as "the most learned N[ew] T[estament] scholar on the
American Catholic scene."(2) Elsewhere he says of his
work on Romans that "It can lay fair claim to being the
best commentary on Romans in English."(3) Even those who
might award the palm to someone other than Fitzmyer
recognize the value of the
commendation.
But it
is precisely because of the quality of this commentary
that its contents are so significant. A desire for
careful exegesis coupled with faithfulness to the
Magisterium of the Church leads Fitzmyer (a Jesuit) to
state, albeit with appropriate sensitivity and
discretion, that the teaching of the Scriptures cannot
simpliciter be identified with the teachings of the
Sacred Tradition. The following selection of
illustrations will underline
this.
A Roman
Catholic on Romans In an extensive introductory chapter
on Pauline theology, Fitzmyer includes an essay on
faith. In the developed theology of the medieval period,
theologians had spoken and written much of fides
caritate formata, justifying faith which was "faith
formed by love." This, not "faith alone," justifies.
This view was confirmed at the Council of
Trent.
Many of
the Tridentine statements reveal misunderstandings of
the teaching of Luther and the other Reformers;
nevertheless, its teaching in this connection is clearly
intended as a rejection of the principles the Reformers
regarded as central to the gospel. Trent's Decree on
Justification reads as follows: If anyone says that
people are justified either by the sole imputation of
the righteousness (justitia) of Christ or by the sole
remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and
charity which is poured into their hearts through the
Holy Spirit and inheres in them; or even that the grace
by which we are justified is only the favour of God, let
him be anathema.(4) Rome's great fear has always been
that sola fide would breed antinomianism and moral
license. Christians, it was held, were preserved from
this by the fact that justification takes place through
faith which is formed by love; i.e., justification
involves personal transformation. But, comments
Fitzmyer, Paul's notion of faith which "blossoms" in
love is to be distinguished from this fides caritate
formata:
That is
a philosophical transposition of the Pauline teaching --
acceptable or not depending on whether one agrees with
the philosophy involved -- but the genuine Pauline idea
of "faith working itself out through love" is implicit
in Romans... he does not equate faith with love; nor
does he ascribe to love what he does to faith (viz.,
justification, salvation), even though he recognizes the
necessity of the two working in tandem.
(5)
Here is
an important recognition of the fact that we must
distinguish between what the Tradition has said and what
the Scriptures actually affirm. The idea of faith and
love being instrumental in justification cannot be read
out of the text as such. It is no part of the exegesis
of Paul's words.
Note
however that Fitzmyer is careful to suggest only that
there is distance between what is affirmed by Paul and
what is stated in the Tradition. He does not affirm that
there is any necessary contradiction between Scripture
and Tradition.
More is
to follow. Commenting on the central passage, Romans
3:21 -- 26, Fitzmyer states that Paul here formulates
"three, or possibly four, effects of the Christ-event
[i.e., the work of Christ]...: justification,
redemption, expiation, and possibly pardon" and adds,
"It is important to recognize that such effects of the
Christ-event are appropriated through faith in Christ
Jesus, and only through faith. It is the means whereby
human beings experience what Christ has done."(6) Here
again the Pauline text is to be read on its own terms
without recourse to post-Pauline developments in the
Church. Fitzmyer knows that within the Church there have
always been those who have read Paul's words as implying
the principle of sola fide. It would be quite wrong,
however (indeed naive), to read this distancing of the
Church's pronouncements from the statements of the
biblical text as a capitulation to the Protestant
exposition. For Fitzmyer is no less careful to point out
the difference between the text and the way in which it
has been interpreted within the Protestant
churches.
Within a
page of the previous citation we find Professor Fitzmyer
rejecting the interpretation of a Protestant scholar on
the grounds that "that reading would introduce an
Anselmian distinction into the Pauline text, which does
not warrant it."(7) But even here the concern is to
allow Paul to speak for himself in distinction from
reading him through the eyes of the construction of a
postbiblical tradition (in this case one which also
appealed to Protestantism). Whether or not Fitzmyer's
critique is accurate, what is at first sight remarkable
is the way in which his recognition of Paul's emphasis
on the unique role of faith might easily be mistaken for
the comment of a Protestant
exegete.
There
are other noteworthy illustrations of an exegesis which
self-consciously seeks to let the Scriptures speak for
themselves apart from the. dominance of theological
tradition. In this sense the Roman Catholic scholar is
approaching the text in a manner similar to the
Protestant.
Commenting on the words
"justified freely by his grace" in Romans 3:24, Fitzmyer
notes:
It
should be superfluous to stress... that in using dorean
and te autou chariti, Paul is not referring to the
efficient cause of justification by the former and the
formal cause by the latter (as if chris were
"sanctifying grace"). That is anachronistic exegesis, a
distinction born of later medieval and Tridentine
theology.(8)
Here
again, without rejecting Tridentine teaching as such, a
distinction is made between what the text itself states
and the theology which has developed within the Catholic
tradition.
The
comments which may strike the Protestant mind as most
unexpected are to be found in Professor Fitzmyer's
exposition of Romans 3:27 -- 31. It was in his
translation of Romans 3:28 in 1522 that Luther's appeal
to sola fide emerged as seminal for the Reformation
understanding of the gospel. Fitzmyer recognizes that in
fact this language long predates Luther and can be found
already in the writings of the early Fathers. He frankly
states that "in this context" Paul means "by faith
alone" although he contends that in the Lutheran sense
its use is an extension of what Paul says. This
inevitably prompts questions as to what the nature of
this "extension" is, and whether there is any Roman
Catholic "sense" in which justification is genuinely "by
faith alone." But the admission in and of itself is
significant.
The same
distance between Scripture and Tradition is further
indicated when Fitzmyer turns to the exposition of
Romans 5:12. The traditional Roman Catholic view of this
text is to see here a reference to "original" sin. This
was made explicit by the Council of Trent, which not
only set its imprimatur to this exegesis of Paul's
words, but also forbade any other understanding of his
statement. Fitzmyer
comments:
This
tradition found its formal conciliar expression in the
Tridentine Decretum de peccato originali, Sess. V, 2 --
4... This decree gave a definitive interpretation to the
Pauline text in the sense that his words teach a form of
the dogma of Original Sin, a rare text that enjoys such
an interpretation.
Care
must be taken, however, to understand what Paul is
saying and not to transform his mode of expression too
facilely into the precision of later dogmatic
development... Paul's teaching is regarded as seminal
and open to later dogmatic development, but it does not
say all that the Tridentine decree says.
(9)
Again we
can hardly avoid noting the caution which emerges with
respect to reading Church Tradition back into Scripture.
The dogma as such is not rejected; what is made clear is
that it is not to be identified simpliciter with the
teaching contained in the New
Testament.
Next, in
commenting on Romans 6:12, Fitzmyer alludes to the
teaching of the Council of Trent that what Paul
sometimes calls "sin" (as, for example, in Romans 6: 12)
is not described as such by the Roman Catholic Church,
but rather is understood as the fomes peccati. The
allusion here is to one of the most astonishing (and
surely embarrassing) statements in the documents of
Trent, in the Decree Concerning Original
Sin:
This
concupiscence, which the apostle sometimes calls sin,
the holy Synod declares that the Catholic Church has
never understood it to be called sin, as being truly and
properly sin in those born again, but because it is of
sin, and inclines to sin. And if anyone is of a contrary
sentiment, let him be
anathema.(10)
Again we
must not make the mistake of thinking that Fitzmyer has
ceased to be a faithful son of the Church. For this, he
notes (in agreement with the earlier biblical scholar
M-J. Lagrange), "might be an exact theological
transposition," but it is a precision not yet found in
the Pauline text.
Our
concern here is not to discuss the precision of the
theology involved in this statement, but once more to
underline the gap -- although for Fitzmyer manifestly
not an unbridgeable historical gulf -- which is fixed
between the revelation as it comes to us in Scripture
and what the Church has received as its authoritative
Tradition.
No doubt
this whole approach strikes anxiety in the hearts of
Roman Catholics who are conservative and traditionalist
(there are "fundamentalists" in both Roman Catholicism
and Protestantism). They may find some relief in the way
Professor Fitzmyer's concurrence with the Roman
Tradition is given notable expression in his handling of
Paul's teaching on justification. Professor Fitzmyer
nuances the meaning of dikaioo in the direction of
"being made upright." Here, at perhaps the most critical
point, his exegesis harmonizes with the Vulgate's
translation of the New Testament's dikaioo by justum
facere.
Despite
the presence of Lutheran sympathizers at Trent, the
Council committed the Church irrevocably to a
transformationist doctrine of
justification:
Justification... is not the
removal of our sins alone, but also the sanctification
and renovation of the inner man through the willing
reception of the grace and the other gifts by which a
man from being unjust (ex injusto) becomes just, and
from being an enemy becomes a friend so that he may be
an heir according to the hope of eternal life.(11)
Even
Fitzmyer's further qualification -- he notes that this
justification takes place "gratuitously through God's
powerful declaration of acquittal" -- does not eliminate
a distinctively Tridentine exegesis, as he makes
clear:
The
sinful human being is not only "declared upright," but
is "made upright" (as in 5:19), for the sinner's
condition has changed. (12)
Much is
at stake here. In many areas where Sacred Tradition is
not already present and perspicuous in Sacred Scripture,
Fitzmyer and other Roman Catholic scholars reduce the
gap between what is taught in the biblical text and the
dogma of Sacred Tradition by an appeal to the "open"
character of biblical teaching. In this way they
minimize the force of the Reformation criticism that
Tradition contradicts
Scripture.
Jesus'
washing of the disciples' feet and His exhortation to
them to imitate Him John 13:1 -- 15) give an example of
this "open" character of Scripture. Foot washing might
well have developed into a Sacrament, in a manner
parallel to the development which took place in another
"open" passage, James 5:14. Here, "under the
Spirit-guided development of Tradition" the text became
the basis for the Sacrament of the Anointing of the
Sick.(13)
No
appeal to the theory of Scripture's "open" character can
be of service, however, in relationship to the doctrine
of justification. It would simply not be possible for
Fitzmyer at this juncture to agree with the Reformation
exegesis of justification as declaratory, imputed
righteousness yet appeal to the "open" character of
Paul's teaching and to the Spirit's continuing work in
the Church as bringing out the fullness of meaning in
justification as including infused righteousness. For
these two things stand in
contradiction.
Fitzmyer's interpretation is,
nevertheless, based on an exegetical appeal -- to his
own exegesis of Romans 5:19: "Just as through the
disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so
through the obedience of one many will be made
upright."(14) He takes Paul's verb kathistanai ("made")
in the sense of subjective condition, i.e., in a
transformationist
sense.
Two
things should be said here. First, we believe Fitzmyer's
interpretation of Romans 5:19 can be demonstrated to be
mistaken.(15) But second, his logic is wrong. Even were
kathistanai understood in a subjective-transformationist
sense, it does not necessarily follow that Paul's use of
dikaioo is transformationist rather than forensic and
declaratory. Consistently to interpret "justify" in the
light of this assumption is an exegetical procedure
without justification!
But even
here there is a formal recognition of the principle:
Sacred Scripture must be distinguished from Sacred
Tradition; we should not assume that the latter is an
exegesis of the former.
Naturally Protestants view this
distinction through Protestantized spectacles. Anyone
convinced of the sole authority and sufficiency of
Scripture is bound to ask how it is possible for a
scholar of integrity to recognize this gap and yet to
remain a faithful Roman
Catholic.
It is
too simple a construction, however, to conclude that
there is manifest duplicity here. Rather, the general
consistency and clarity with which Fitzmyer's exegesis
illustrates the gap between Scripture and Tradition
highlights why it is that the Protestant appeal to
Scripture alone to refute Roman Catholic dogma seems to
cut little ice: For Rome, neither Scripture nor
Tradition can stand on its own. The rationale for this
should now be clear: In the Roman Catholic Church,
Sacred Tradition stands beside Sacred Scripture as a
valid and authoritative source of divine revelation. In
fact both emerge within one and the same context: the
Catholic Church.
Understanding this principle
helps us to see the mindset of the Roman Catholic
Church's approach to interpreting the Bible at this
juncture.
Scripture and Tradition For Rome,
the Bible itself emerges from within the Church. The
Church exists prior to the Bible; the Bible is itself an
expression of the living voice of the Church -- in its
own way it is Tradition. In the words of the recent
Catechism of the Catholic Church, "the New Testament
itself demonstrates the process of living
Tradition."(16) The New Testament is Tradition -- the
earliest tradition inscripturated in distinction from
the living Tradition which arises within the ongoing
life of the Church in the context of apostolic
succession.
This
perspective is well attested in the succession of Rome's
authoritative doctrinal
statements.
Appeal
in this context is made to the Profession of Faith
composed in connection with the Second Council of
Constantinople (553), to the Council of Lateran (649)
and to the Second Council of Nicea (787). It was,
however, in the context of the Counter-Reformation that
the Church's position was set in concrete by the Council
of Trent:
The holy
ecumenical and general Council of Trent... clearly
perceives that this truth and rule are contained in the
written books and unwritten traditions which have come
down to us.... Following, then, the example of the
orthodox Fathers, it receives and venerates with the
same sense of loyalty and reverence all the books of the
Old and New Testaments -- for God alone is the author of
both -- together with all the traditions concerning
faith and morals, as coming from the mouth of Christ or
being inspired by the Holy Spirit and preserved in
continuous succession in the Catholic
Church.(17)
The
implication of this, specifically drawn out by the
Council itself, was that no one should dare to interpret
the Scripture in a way contrary to the unanimous consent
of the Fathers, even though such interpretations are not
intended for
publication.
Leaving
to one side the doubtful concept of "the unanimous
consent of the Fathers," it is clear here why the
Tradition becomes the master element in the
Scripture-Tradition liaison. Historically it has always
been the case that a "living" (in the sense of
contemporaneous) word of revelation will become the rule
for Christians de facto (whatever may be claimed to the
contrary). That is virtually a psychological
inevitability. In the case of Rome, what may have begun
as a limiting concept (the regulum fidei) developed into
the master concept.
This
position, with appeal to these very citations, was later
confirmed by the Church at the First Vatican Council in
the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius (1870). A quarter
of a century later, Providentissimus Deus (1893)
appealed to the principle of the analogy of faith
understood as the consensus fidelium as an essential
principle for Catholic exposition. Roman Catholic
exegetes were summoned to use critical skills with the
specific agenda of confirming the received
interpretation.
All this
was stated within the context of Leo XIII's affirmation
of the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. Such
was the continuing impact of modernism, however, that
within two decades the Decree Lamentabili (1907) was
issued to stem the tide of theological corruption. It
repudiated and condemned the view that "The Church's
teaching office cannot, even by dogmatic definition,
determine the genuine meaning of Sacred Scripture."(18)
As recently as the International Theological
Commission's brief but seminal work The Interpretation
of Theological Truths (1988) Rome has continued to
affirm that any conflict between exegesis and dogma is
provoked by unfaithful exegesis. Genuinely Catholic
exegesis will, by definition, always seek and find the
appropriate harmony between biblical text and
ecclesiastical dogma. In this light, the Pontifical
Biblical Commission
comments:
False
paths [i.e., in exegesis] will be avoided if
actualization of the biblical message begins with a
correct interpretation of the text and continues within
the stream of the living Tradition, under the guidance
of the Church's
Magisterium.(19)
The
circle of reasoning here appears to be "
Vicious."
In the
nineteenth century the Magisterium rightly recognised
that the rise of Higher Criticism and of theological
Modernism would endanger the faith of Catholics (as it
had already done among Protestants). But Rome faced an
additional problem. The view that Sacred Tradition is
also Revelation implies that the Tradition possesses the
attributes of Revelation, including infallibility and
inerrancy. Consequently the Tradition had to be regarded
as infallible. The inevitable correlate of this emerged
in Vatican I's Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus in
which papal infallibility was promulgated as a "divinely
revealed dogma". The Pope's ex cathedra definitions of
faith were stated to be "irreformable of themselves and
not from the consent of the Church" ("I myself am the
Tradition," commented Pius IX). The anathema sit was
pronounced on any who might "contradict this our
definition."
The
later pronouncements of the Second Vatican Council
continued basically to affirm what was historically
regarded as the Tridentine view of the relationship
between Scripture and Tradition reaffirmed in Vatican
I's Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei
Filius. Tradition, declared Vatican
II,
...derived from the apostles,
develops in the Church with the help of the Holy
Spirit... The words of the holy fathers witness to the
presence of this living tradition... Through the same
tradition the Church's full canon of the sacred books is
known.... (20)
Especially significant is the
statement made on the relationship between Tradition and
Scripture. It employed the phraseology of Trent,
apparently on papal insistence (presumably in view of
the need to hold together the traditionalist and the
progressive wings of the
Church):
Hence
there exists a close connection and communication
between Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both
of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a
certain way merge into unity and tend toward the same
end. For Sacred Scripture is the Word of God, while
Sacred Tradition takes the Word of God entrusted by
Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and
hands it on to their successors in its full purity.
Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that
the Church draws her certainty about everything which
has been revealed. Therefore both Sacred Tradition and
Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with
the same sense of loyalty and reverence. Sacred
Tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit
of the Word of God, committed to the
Church....
It is
clear, therefore, that Sacred Tradition, Sacred
Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in
accord with God's most wise design, are so linked and
joined together that one cannot stand without the
others, and that all together and each in its own way,
under the action of the one Holy Spirit, contribute
effectively to the salvation of men.(21)
We ought
not to make the mistake of assuming that the Roman
Catholic Church is thoroughly monolithic. As we have
noted, it too has a conservative and liberal wing.
Problems and disagreements arise in tracing and
exegeting the Tradition as much as in exegeting the
Scriptures! Thus, for example, it has become
characteristic of many Roman Catholic scholars to reread
the Tradition in as ecumenical a fashion as
possible.
One of
the most interesting developments within this context
has been the emergence of a school of thought especially
stimulated by the work of the Tubingen theologian J. R.
Geiselmann. This school argues that the view that
Scripture and Tradition are twin sources of revelation,
complementing one another, is a misreading of the
teaching of the Council of Trent. Geiselmann appealed to
what he held to be the significant change introduced
into the final text of the decree through the influence
of Bishop Pietro Bertano of Fano and Angelo Bonucci, the
General of the Servites. The draft for the Decree on
Scripture and Tradition had stated that revealed truth
was to be found partly in the books of Scripture, partly
in the Traditions ("partim in libris... partim in...
traditionibus"). But the final document spoke of this
truth being in the scriptural books and in the unwritten
traditions ("in libris scriptis et sine scripto
traditionibus"). Geiselmann argued from this change that
Trent did not deny that all saving truth is contained in
the Scriptures. The truth of divine revelation is found
not partly in Scripture while the remainder is found in
the traditions (the draft formulation); it is all in
Scripture. It is also all to be found in the tradition.
It could be argued therefore that the sola Scriptura
principle, properly understood, is consistent with
Trent.(22)
In
response to Geiselmann's position, however, Cardinal
Ratzinger (now Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the
Doctrine of the Faith) has argued that as a Catholic
theologian, [Geiselmann] has to hold fast to Catholic
dogmas as such, but none of them is to be had sola
scriptura, neither the great dogmas of Christian
antiquity, of what was once the consensus
quinquesaecularis, nor, even less, the new ones of 1854
and 1950. In that case, however, what sense is there in
talking about the sufficiency of scripture?(23) In a
word, the deposit of the faith (depositum fideli) is
contained in both Scripture and Tradition, and the task
of interpreting it is "entrusted to bishops in communion
with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of
Rome."(24)
The
recent document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission,
The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, continues
to affirm this position, if in a less polemical and
dogmatic manner and in an ecumenically conscious
fashion: "What characterizes Catholic exegesis is that
it deliberately places itself within the living
tradition of the Church."(25) In this context, however,
the Commission is careful to
add:
All
pre-understanding, however, brings dangers with it. As
regards Catholic exegesis, the risk is that of
attributing to biblical texts a meaning which they do
not contain but which is the product of a later
development within the tradition. The exegete must
beware of such a
danger.(26)
No hint
of criticism is made of the fact that Sacred Tradition
requires belief in dogma which is not contained in
Sacred Scripture. But there is present here a hint that
exegetes in the past (and still today) may read the New
Testament as though it had been written in the light of
the Tradition, and thus distort the teaching of Sacred
Scripture (and by implication perhaps also the function
of the Tradition). Implicit in this is the recognition
of the substance-gap between Sacred Scripture and Sacred
Tradition.
The
historic Protestant view is that this gap becomes a
chasm at certain strategic points. There is an
unbearable discrepancy, not merely a healthy tension,
between Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition in many
areas.
In the
earlier Roman Catholic handling of Scripture, any gap
between the exegesis of Scripture and the content of the
Tradition was minimized. The faithful Catholic exegete
should not even in private exegete Scripture in a manner
contrary to the
Tradition:
Furthermore, in order to restrain
petulant spirits, it [the Council] decrees, that no one,
relying on his own skill, shall -- in matters of faith,
and of morals, pertaining to the edification of
Christian doctrine -- wresting the sacred Scripture to
his own senses, presume to interpret the said Scripture
contrary to that sense which holy mother Church -- whose
it is to judge the true sense and interpretation of the
holy Scriptures -- hath held and doth hold; or even
contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even
though such interpretations were never [intended] to be
at any time published. Contraveners shall be made known
by their Ordinaries, and be punished with the penalties
by law established.(27)
A wide
variety of factors contributed to the Reformation of the
sixteenth century. Among the chief was the discovery,
fueled by the Renaissance spirit of ad fontes, that the
gap between the clear teaching of Scripture and the
teaching of the Tradition was at points so great as to
involve not merely development but
contradiction.
Roman
Catholic scholars such as Professor Fitzmyer have been
given the freedom to explore what Scripture teaches.
They discover themselves looking over their shoulders at
the Roman Catholic traditionalists who do not hide their
anxiety that such open distancing between Scripture and
Tradition will be the downfall of the Church.
Consequently their characteristic refrain is that the
difference between the content of Scripture and the
content of the Tradition does not involve contradiction
but only development. What becomes clearer than ever,
however, is that the pririciple of sola Scriptura
remains a watershed. As Cardinal Ratzinger as much as
admitted in his reaction to Geiselmann, there are major
Roman doctrines which are simply not found in the
Scriptures. In this sense Scripture alone cannot be
regarded as sufficient for the life of the
Church.
But we
must go further. There are important teachings in the
Tradition which are not only additional to, but
different from and contradictory to, the teaching of
Sacred Scripture. These include the very doctrines which
were the centerpiece of the Reformation struggle: the
nature of justification; the importance of the principle
of sola fide; the number of the sacraments; the
sufficiency of the work of Christ, the effect of
baptism, the presence of Christ at the Supper, the
priesthood of all believers, the celibacy of the
priesthood, the character and role of Mary, and much
else. The more that Scripture is exegeted on its own
terms the more it will become clear that in these areas
Sacred Tradition does not merely add to Sacred
Scripture, it contradicts it. And if it does, can it any
longer be "sacred"?
A major
development has taken place, then, in Roman Catholic
interpretation of Scripture. For this we may be
grateful. We should not grudgingly minimize the
rediscovery of the Bible. Indeed it might help us
greatly if we recalled more often than we do that
responsibility for the confusion in Rome's understanding
of justification rests partly on the shoulders of the
great Augustine himself whom we often claim with Calvin
as "wholly ours." Having said this, however, it is now
clearer than ever (pace Geiselmann) that the Roman
Catholic Church cannot and will not subscribe to sola
Scriptura. It must deny the sole sufficiency of the
Bible. And, as the Reformers recognized, so long as Rome
appeals to two sources, or even tributaries, of
revelation, the contents of Scripture and the substance
of its own Tradition, it is inevitable that it will also
withstand the message of Scripture and of the
Reformation: sola gratia, solo Christo, sola
fide.
--Endnotes--
1 See,
for example, Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to
John, Vol. 2 (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1966) pp.
714-717.
2
Raymond E. Brown, Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine
(New York: Paulist Press, 1985)
p.9.
3 Cited
on the dustjacket of Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (New
York, 1994).
4
Council of Trent's Decree on Justification, Canon XI..
See Rev. H. J. Schroeder, O. P. Canons and Decrees of
the Council of Trent (Rockford, Ill.: Tan,
1978).
5
Fitzmyer, Romans, p.
138.
6 Ibid.,
p. 342.
7 Ibid.,
p. 343.
8 Ibid.,
p. 348.
9 Ibid.,
p. 348.
10
Council of Trent's Decree Concerning Original Sin,
Session V in Schroeder.
11
Council of Trent's Decree on Justification, Session VII
in Schroeder.
12
Fitzmyer, Romans, p.
347
13 J.A.
Fitzmyer, Scripture, The Soul of Theology, p.
78
14 The
translation is
Fitzmyer's.
15 See,
e.g. Douglas Moo, Romans, Vol. 1 (Chicago.: Moody, 1991)
pp. 358-9; J. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, Vol. 1
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959) pp. 205 -- 6, 336 --
362.
16
Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liquori, Mo.: Liquori,
1994) p. 26, #83.
17
Decrees on Sacred Books and on Traditions to be
Received, 1S46.
18 J.
Neuner and J. Dupois, eds., The Christian Faith in the
Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, rev. ed.
(Staten Island,: Alba, 1982) p.
79.
19 The
interpretation of the Bible in the Church (Boston, 1993)
p. 121. 20 Dogmatic Consitution on Divine Revelation,
II:8. (For an English translation of the pronouncements
of Vatican II, see Walter M. Abbott, ed., The Documents
of Vatican lI, New York: Crossroad,
1966).
21
Ibid., II. [10].
22 The
view Geiselmann rejects has been the view of the major
Roman apologists since Trent. For a brief account see J.
R. Geiselmann, "Scripture, Tradition, and the Church: An
Ecumenical Problem" in D. J. Callahan, H. A. Obermann,
and D. J. O'Hanlon, eds., Christianity Divided (London,
1962) pp. 39 -- 72.
23 J.
Ratzinger in K. Rahner and J. Ratzinger, Revelation and
Tradition, translated from the German, Offenbarung und
Uberlieferung, by W. J. O'Hara (New York, 1966) p. 33.
The references to 1854 and 1950 are to the Bull
lneffabilis Deus promulgating the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception (i.e., the perpetual sinlessness
of the virgin Mary) and to the Apostolic Constitution
Munificentissimus Deus which promulgated the Bodily
Assumption into heaven of the virgin
Mary.
24
Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 27,
#85.
25 The
interpretation of the Bible in the Church, p.
89.
26
Ibid.
27
"Decree Concerning the Edition, and the Use, of the
Sacred Books," in Phillip Schaff, The Creeds of
Christendom, Vol.2 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1966) p.
83.
