For E.E.N.S.: Supremacy of Scripture

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In the now closed thread, E.E.N.S. asked what I meant by this:
We don’t reject everything else. Therefore, your question makes no sense. We regard the Bible as the supreme authority precisely because this is how the Church has historically regarded it. Insofar as late medieval and early modern Catholics departed from this Tradition, they were wrong.
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The Council of Trent can be read as denying the supremacy of Scripture, and many Catholic apologists of the sixteenth century appeared to be heading in that direction. One encounters this sort of argument even today. That is what I was talking about. Of course Catholics believe in the inspiration of Scripture. But whether Catholics can speak of the supremacy and uniqueness of Scripture as a record of apostolic Tradition in the same way the Fathers did–that’s a tougher question. It appears that they can, and that’s a very good thing. But some Catholic apologists certainly don’t.

Edwin
 
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Contarini:
In the now closed thread, E.E.N.S. asked what I meant by this:
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The Council of Trent can be read as denying the supremacy of Scripture, and many Catholic apologists of the sixteenth century appeared to be heading in that direction. One encounters this sort of argument even today. That is what I was talking about. Of course Catholics believe in the inspiration of Scripture. But whether Catholics can speak of the supremacy and uniqueness of Scripture as a record of apostolic Tradition in the same way the Fathers did–that’s a tougher question. It appears that they can, and that’s a very good thing. But some Catholic apologists certainly don’t.

EdwinCould you do me a favor and cite some examples of this?

(Thanks by the way for following up on my question.)
 
Are you asking what has supremacy: Sacred Tradition or Sacred Scripture should the two disagree on a point? If so, the answer is neither, for they should not disagree on any teaching. The two are equal legs of the foundation of truth that the Catholic Church uses to teach the Good News of the Lord, the other being the Magisterium. I hope I’m understanding the question correctly.

Scripture can NOT be the only surpreme teaching, since a) everything Christ taught is NOT in Scripture, and b) the Church went for so very long without the New Testament to guide us.

NotWorthy
 
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NotWorthy:
Are you asking what has supremacy: Sacred Tradition or Sacred Scripture should the two disagree on a point? If so, the answer is neither, for they should not disagree on any teaching. The two are equal legs of the foundation of truth that the Catholic Church uses to teach the Good News of the Lord, the other being the Magisterium. I hope I’m understanding the question correctly.

Scripture can NOT be the only surpreme teaching, since a) everything Christ taught is NOT in Scripture, and b) the Church went for so very long without the New Testament to guide us.

NotWorthy
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Precisely. If Scripture was ultimately and unwaiveringly supreme, then the first 350 years worth of Christians had a real problem. So did the first 1500 years of unwealthy Christians, whom did not know how to read.
 
(I’ve posted this before, but I thought it would fit in nicely here. 😉 )

The holy ecumenical and general Council of Trent…] has always this purpose in mind that in the Church errors be removed and the purity of the Gospel be preserved. The Gospel was promised of old through the prophets in the Sacred Scriptures; Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, first promulgated it from his own lips; he in turn ordered that it be preached through the apostles to all creatures as the source of all savings truth and norms of conduct. The Council clearly perceives that this truth and rule are contained in the written books and unwritten traditions which have come down to us, having been received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself or from the apostles by the dictation of the Holy Spirit, and have been transmitted as it were from hand to hand. 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 Testament-for the one God is the author of both-together with all the traditions concerning faith and practice, as coming from the mouth of Christ or being inspired by the Holy Spirit and preserved in continuous succession in the Catholic Church.
 
It would be appropriate to say that the Gospel is supreme, and that both Scripture and Tradition are subservient to it.
 
E.E.N.S.:
Could you do me a favor and cite some examples of this?

(Thanks by the way for following up on my question.)
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I think some of the posts on this thread are good examples. Particularly the wholly bogus claim that the Church went for a “very long time” without a New Testament, and hence Scripture can’t be supreme. I can argue against this if you need me to–suffice it to say that these posters are clearly denying the supremacy of Scripture.

It seems that at least some 16th-century apologists did as well, though to some extent I’m relying on Protestant accounts here, and that’s not a good idea. Martin Chemnitz, for instance (arguably the greatest defender of Protestantism against Trent), cites a Jesuit theologian Andrada as downplaying the authority of Scripture. Later on (late 17th century), French Catholic scholars actually invented historical criticism in order to show that the authority of the Church was necessary because the Bible was not self-evidently authoritative. There’s a long tradition of Catholics downplaying the authority of Scripture in response to Protestantism. And this tradition is wholly contrary to the witness of the Fathers.

I can try to give you more specific examples, but this was some of the stuff I had in mind.

Edwin
 
Where in the New Testament did Jesus say:
  • “I leave you this Book to guide you in truth”.
  • “Upon this rock, I will write My book”.
  • “You will read this book, which is the pillar and bulwark of truth”.
  • “Hold true to these truths, which have been handed down to you in My book”
NotWorthy
 
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NotWorthy:
Where in the New Testament did Jesus say:
  • “I leave you this Book to guide you in truth”.
  • “Upon this rock, I will write My book”.
  • “You will read this book, which is the pillar and bulwark of truth”.
  • “Hold true to these truths, which have been handed down to you in My book”
NotWorthy
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Why is this relevant? Since you don’t hold to Sola Scriptura, you can’t use a Sola Scriptura argument. I’m not defending “sola scriptura” (at least not in the rather caricatured sense that would make this argument effective). I’m defending the primacy and supremacy of Scripture as the most authoritative and reliable source for Sacred Tradition. This position is clearly taught by the Fathers, and if you depart from it you are departing from the Tradition.

Edwin
 
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NotWorthy:
Where in the New Testament did Jesus say:
  • “I leave you this Book to guide you in truth”.
  • “Upon this rock, I will write My book”.
  • “You will read this book, which is the pillar and bulwark of truth”.
  • “Hold true to these truths, which have been handed down to you in My book”
NotWorthy
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Sounds like quotes from Mormon scriptures.
 
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Contarini:
In the now closed thread, E.E.N.S. asked what I meant by this:
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The Council of Trent can be read as denying the supremacy of Scripture, and many Catholic apologists of the sixteenth century appeared to be heading in that direction. One encounters this sort of argument even today. That is what I was talking about. Of course Catholics believe in the inspiration of Scripture. But whether Catholics can speak of the supremacy and uniqueness of Scripture as a record of apostolic Tradition in the same way the Fathers did–that’s a tougher question. It appears that they can, and that’s a very good thing. But some Catholic apologists certainly don’t.

Edwin

Which is one reason why the recent tendency in some Catholic circles to refer to other things than the Bible or Christ as “the word of God” is unsettling - Tradition, however sacred or important for doctrine, is not the Word of God; to say otherwise, is to undermine the unique status of the Bible.​

ISTM that the Patristic esteem for the Bible is being eroded - and that this is happening as a consequence of “creeping infallibilism”: IOW, that the certainty of infallibility, a quality which it shares with the Bible, is being misread as a shared inspiration - the result: because one quality is common to both, all qualities of the Bible are thought to be common to both.

IMO, there is far too much emphasis on infallibility, and far too little on other things which matter far more. An issue which may matter in apologetics, is not necessarily of great importance for a balanced Christian theology. Infallibility (for instance) is of far less importance than the Holy Spirit.

Maybe there is too much concern (in practice at least) with dogma, and not enough emphasis on thinking theologically. ##
 
Rom 3:1 Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?
Rom 3:2 Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews are entrusted with the oracles of God.
Rom 3:3 What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?
Rom 3:4 By no means! Let God be true though every man be false, as it is written, “That thou mayest be justified in thy words, and prevail when thou art judged.”

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race.
Rom 9:4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;
Rom 9:5 to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen.

When Paul refers to “the promises” - he quotes the OT. So it is simply untrue to say that the Church got by without the Bible for 350 or 400 years. The NT writers and Fathers were quoting the Bible, such of it as was canonised; & other things too: but certainly the Bible - as having very high authority. It may be significant that whereas Protestants write at length about the excellence of the Bible, Catholics (at least since the Reformation) seem not to. Perhaps a fear of agreeing with non-Catholics is the problem.​

We can’t have it both ways -

either

the NT quotes certain books of those often called the Apocrypha, and these quotations can be used to show that those books were counted as fully Biblical & canonical

or

the Bible did not exist at all before 350-400 AD - in which case, quoting NT quotations & allusions to books often called Apocrypha, proves nothing about their status at all.

Either the argument showing the canonicity of books in the so-called Apocrypha, or the argument showing that the Church doesn’t really need the Bible, needs to be modified. At present, they collide with and destroy each other.

The fact is, the Church has never been without a Bible - she has merely been without a settled and final canon. But if the Bible is not very important anyway, it shouldn’t matter at all that some books were in some places not recognised as canonical from the very first; Catholic apologetic on the canon is in some danger of swallowing its own tail. There are difficulties in the mainstrean Protestant apologetic for Sola Scriptura - it does not follow that the Catholic apologetic is free of difficulties. ##
 
Gottle of Geer said:
## Which is one reason why the recent tendency in some Catholic circles to refer to other things than the Bible or Christ as “the word of God” is unsettling - Tradition, however sacred or important for doctrine, is not the Word of God; to say otherwise, is to undermine the unique status of the Bible.
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Michael,

I would say that “Word of God” can be used in three senses (I think Barth made some such distinction):
  1. Christ, the Word of God in the highest sense, in whom all the fullness of God is made manifest.
  2. The Gospel–the message about Christ, revealed by God to the prophets and apostles and handed down by them to us, in both written and oral form (according to the Catholic view).
  3. Actual words which, in all their historical and cultural specificity, embody the Word of God in sense 2 and hence mediate to us the living presence of Christ.
In this third sense only Scripture can fully be spoken of as the Word of God. But any authentic proclamation of the Gospel is a proclamation of the Word of God. Inasmuch as the Gospel was entrusted to the living memory of the Church, the content of that living memory can be spoken of as the Word of God. But the specific forms in which the Gospel has been handed down (outside Scripture) cannot be spoken of as themselves the Word of God.

In other words, Scripture is not unique in containing the Word of God, but it is unique in containing the Word of God in such a way as to be itself the Word of God.

I share your concerns with “creeping infallibilism” and the tendency to blur any distinction between Scripture and other embodiments of Tradition. Indeed, these concerns are partially responsible for my still being in some sense a Protestant. But I’m trying to do justice to the Catholic position, and I think the view I have described above can be a useful starting point for ecumenical understanding.

In Christ,

Edwin
 
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