What exactly is a “divine tradition”? I’ve heard the Church speak of bit “T” Traditions and little “t” traditions… If the authorship is not dogmatically defined then it must just be a “tradition”,
That is incorrect. The immaculate conception was not just tradition before it was dogmatically defined. Little (t) – in order for it to be a big (T) had to have been held BEFORE the dogmatic definition.
Historically, one can trace the belief of Matthew writing his own Gospel back to the earliest church fathers, and I have never even heard of dissent on this point at any time in early church history. (I am open to correction as I am not omniscient.).
The first dissent I am aware of comes from modern/post-modern historical-critical scholarship. There is a sensus fideii – sense of the faithful – which can reasonably be asserted to Matthew’s authorship up to all times before historical critical scholarship. This does not make historical critical scholarship wrong, in and of itself, but it does point to the novely and present uncertainty of the results of such scolarship – which the instruction is concerned with in teaching environments. A CCD class for children would be a highly inappropriate place to use such scholarship – a bible study, depending on the members and their in-ability to accept multiple possibile theories may also be inappropriate in my opinion; though I admit bible studies using/advancing historical critical scholarship can be appropriate given qualified members.
Dogma, and especially ex cathedra statements, generally do not come in to being without an erroneous scholarly idea becoming publicly contentious. The controversy can last for quite a long time (centuries) before a dogmatic proclamation officially suppresses the scholarship in error.
The all male priesthood has never DOGMATICALLY been defined, but as pope John Paul pointed out – IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE.
At least with respect to the immaculate conception one can find dissent in the early church fathers (Aquinas,etc. who was double minded on the subject) – can you do the same with the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew ?
If not, my statement still stands – you are giving the
appearance of calling a divine tradition into question. It is for the undiscerning which the church wishes to protect that such a superficial judgement of logic is warrented.
The scholarship of authors such as Raymond E. Brown and Fitzmeyer are dubious and definitely can be shown to have novelty which is in fact fallacious in places – even by their own standards and methods.
I have the Jerome Commentary, and can easily point out ( using their own methods and statements ) a few errors that are BASIC building blocks of their other arguments. The more unproven ideas a conclusion rests on, the higher the likelihood of error. When the base idea is itself fallacious – provably – than all logic built on that block of logic is unsound and needs to be totally re-thought.
I would hold up as a prime example, the dating of the Gospels taking into account the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD as a decisive reason, eg: such that Brown and Fitzmeyer regularly use this fallacious argument as the basis of later and more complicated arguments. Accepting their method (which the instruction warns against), I can still show it to be HIGHLY UNCERTAIN and pointing to a date as early as ~30’s AD. eg: that knowledge of the immanence of the fall was known NON-MIRACULOUSLY in times before 70AD, such that 70AD is not an earliest date for the writing of Gospels containing reference to it by NON-MIRACULOUS methods.
As a secondary example, I would hold certain proofs of St. Luke being a proselyte/convert (which I don’t dispute he LIKELY is) are also laugably fallacious
(though convincing to the un-studied, and especially those who have not read and thouroughly contemplated the Gospels ON THEIR OWN for the sake of FAMILIARITY with the material, not it’s interpretation, before using an uncertain guide.) Experience allows one to more easily see the logical connections which historical critical scholarship occasionally misses, and therefore fallaciously argues without reference to.
My basic contention is this, Fitzmeyer and Brown have not sufficiently tested their basic premises to have ONLY theories which are even
probable, let alone right by virtue of correct reasoning. It is the chain of reasoning of one unstable argument upon another which makes these authors very unreliable – and their results mixed (half true).
–Andrew.
etc.
I don’t see a single thing there that has anything to do with eye-witness accounts. I could witness an event, and then truthfully tell it in a different order than it occurred without lying about the events themselves; some things can’t be re-ordered, but others can. The first sentence merely says the writers paraphrased christ – but did not change the meaning (eg: no spin ) of his words.
