po18guy
Well-known member
“Tradition” means that which is handed down.
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Nicea325
Guest
And how does the above verse = The Bible-Only is the final authority?
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onlyvoice
Guest
Thanks. Is that handed down by word of mouth only?
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Nicea325
Guest
Or by the action.
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bogeydogg
Guest
It can also be written for example the works of Augustine, Thomas and on the protestant side, Luther, Calvin, etc.
The tradition is that which is not in Scripture but helps the Church to understand the Scripture and to use it more fruitfully in their lives.
God Bless
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onlyvoice
Guest
Thanks. So, Tradition are those truths handed down by word or mouth or by action. It does not include those handed down in writing. So, what you’re saying is that the doctrines in Tradition cannot be found in the Bible?
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Nicea325
Guest
Precisely! Case in point, the canon of the NT. Where does Scripture mention a 27 book NT? This one case of Tradition.
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onlyvoice
Guest
Ok, just keep your cool. I’m just asking questions, trying to have these teachings clarified.
So, these doctrines from Tradition, where do they originally come from? Are there from Jesus Himself being handed down to the Apostles and hence to the Church?
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pablope
Guest
From Jesus to the Apostles…and their successors…also called Sacred Tradition…there is much more explanation in the link below…and after reading, please continue to ask questions…
mark-shea.com/tradition.html
And here…calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/ecclesial-deism/
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onlyvoice
Guest
Thanks for the link.
Mark Shea: “Sacred Tradition is the living and growing truth of Christ contained, not only in Scripture…”
So, Nicea325 is wrong in saying the doctrines in Tradition cannot be found in the Bible?
Council of Trent: “this truth and teaching are contained in written books and in the unwritten traditions that the apostles received from Christ himself or that were handed on, as it were from hand to hand…”
Does this contradict with Mark Shea’s statement that Tradition is contained in Scripture and therefore not unwritten?
Shea: “We cannot know what the NT canon is apart from Sacred Tradition.”
Trent: “this truth and teaching are contained in written books and in the unwritten traditions that the apostles received from Christ himself or that were handed on, as it were from hand to hand from the apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and so have come down to us.”
So, was it Jesus who handed on to the Apostles the knowledge of what the NT canon was to comprise?
Shea: “Sacred Tradition is not a separate, secret and parallel revelation.”
Does Mark Shea mean not a parallel revelation to written Scripture?
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bogeydogg
Guest
I think he is saying that tradition is not some special esoteric knowledge that only a select few have access to. That is what the Gnostics taught. Rather the tradition of the Church is found in the Catechism and in the writings of the Fathers and in the writings of the Popes and in the writings of the Councils and is readily available for all to read such as Scripture is as well.
Scripture, btw, which the Catholic Church highly encourages faithful Catholics to read and learn. There are those who deny this truth but they are slandering the Church in so doing.
Tradition and Scripture are readily available to be read and there is help in the Church to understand it if there is any confusion about it.
God Bless
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inkaneer
Guest
Tradition = teaching. Tradition with an Upper case “T” refers to Apostolic Teaching. But tradition with a lower case “t” refers to custom of habit. Apostolic Tradition is handed down by two means. One is the Oral Tradition. This is the teaching of the Apostles that was not written down. The other is the Written Tradition which is that which was written down. This conforms to what Paul told the Thessalonians in 2 Thess 2:15:
“So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.” [2 Thess 2:15]
Because it is scripture, that verse, penned 2,000 years ago, is still valid today. If you look at Paul’s writings they are incomplete as far as the gospel message is concerned. That is because Paul’s writings were not his principle evangelization method. Paul preached orally. His writings were remedial in nature to address problem areas or issues that came up. That is why Paul tells the Thessalonians to hold onto both because the writings are incomplete. That Oral teaching of Paul and the other apostles was passed down, as Paul told Timothy in 2Ti 2:2:
“and what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” [2Ti 2:2]
Here Paul mentions the first four generations of teachers. First is himself, second, Timothy, third, the faithful men that Timothy would teach and the fourth are the others who would be taught by the faithful men.
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onlyvoice
Guest
Sorry, but I don’t think you’re answering my questions. Or maybe I’m not getting what you’re saying. Could you please elaborate? And please provide an answer for each question I asked. Thanks.
po18guy
Well-known member
I was just reading my copy of Mark Shea’s By What Authority? today. Excellent book for those who question Church authority, or the nature of tradition. He walks you through it, just as he made the journey.
po18guy
Well-known member
Scripture is the written Tradition that has been handed down. Paul taught the Bereans using the oral Tradition. Theophilus (prologue to Luke), like all first generation Christians, received the oral Tradition, which the written Tradition served to confirm. None of it is of any value without the teaching authority given by Christ to the Apostles and then passed on.
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onlyvoice
Guest
Again, my questions:
Mark Shea: “Sacred Tradition is the living and growing truth of Christ contained, not only in Scripture…”
Question: So, Nicea325 is wrong in saying the doctrines in Tradition cannot be found in the Bible?
Council of Trent: “this truth and teaching are contained in written books and in the unwritten traditions that the apostles received from Christ himself or that were handed on, as it were from hand to hand…”
Question: Does this contradict with Mark Shea’s statement that Tradition is contained in Scripture and therefore not unwritten?
Shea: “We cannot know what the NT canon is apart from Sacred Tradition.”
Trent: “this truth and teaching are contained in written books and in the unwritten traditions that the apostles received from Christ himself or that were handed on, as it were from hand to hand from the apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and so have come down to us.”
Question: So, was it Jesus who handed on to the Apostles the knowledge of what the NT canon was to comprise?
Shea: “Sacred Tradition is not a separate, secret and parallel revelation.”
Question: Does Mark Shea mean not a parallel revelation to written Scripture?
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bogeydogg
Guest
No Trent and Shea are not wrong. All tradition is ultimately rooted in Scripture but not all of it is specifically found in Scripture. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity, or the Doctrine of imputation (Lutheran) infusion (Catholic) and yet you find essentially no Christian Churches denying these doctrines. Some Tradition is found in Scripture and some is not, I would like to see the full context of your quote from Trent.
Now you asked the same question in reverse, but you cannot have it both ways, and the answer is the same. Some tradition is clearly found in Scripture, “Christ is Lord, Christ is Risen, Christ will return” and some is not, and Scripture tells us so. The Gospel of John for example, John 21:24 This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true. 25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
The Apostles received the teachings of Christ but did not immediately write them down, instead they taught them to the nacent Church and within about 15 years the records began to be written as the Church grew because the Apostles could not teach everywhere and so their words were written down and passed along from Church to Church. Also the Apostles, when they planted Churches, named Bishops and those bishops received tradition from the Apostles as well. Some of which is written down in the records of the Epistles of Paul, Peter, James, John, and Jude and some of which was passed by word of mouth directly to the bishops from the Apostles, 2 Timothy 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. So Paul clearly says Timothy learned the Scriptures, but also Tradition from his grandmother and mother as well as from Paul by Paul’s word and life (earlier in 2Timothy)
So tradition was unwritten and not contained in Scripture, which Scripture tells us, and tradition was written and contained in Scripture which Scripture Tells us. Need I remind you of 2Peter when he calls Paul’s writings Scripture? So from very early on, even during the days of the living Apostles this dual understanding of Scripture and Tradition was already extant.
God Bless
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bogeydogg
Guest
The NT cannon was received by the Church. It was comprised of the books which the churches, from which the Bishops who made up the council, had already received and were treating as Scripture, but this was no Fourth Century invention. Among the Early Church Fathers who spoke of a New Testament and a Canon were Justin Martyr who died in 165 AD, Irenaeus who died in 200AD, Clement of Alexandria who died 215AD, Tertullian who died 225AD and so an understanding of the Apostolic writings being Scripture equal to the OT was part of the very earliest Church Traditions.
In 367 Athanasius in his Festal Letter declared the 27 books we now accept as Canon to be Canon, and while there was some debate among the Early fathers it was nearly so much as modern day scholars would have us to believe. For example the “gnostic gospels” such as Timothy, James, Judas were never considered part of canon because they were fakes for one thing, that is the documents did not appear until the middle of the second century at the earliest and so the supposed authors could not possibly have written them, and two they contradicted the Apostolic witness. And the controversy over the Catholic Letters (Hebrews-Jude) and Revelation was not nearly so heated as we would be made to believe.
The Canon did grow out of tradition, but the Church always acknowledged that a New Testament Scripture did in fact exist, it was just not gathered into one document until the fourth century. But do not suppose that this was because someone challenged the Canon for the fist time because the earliest challenge to the New Testament Canon came from the Gnostics with their fake Gospels in the second century and from Marcion who produced a severely truncated “Bible” in 144 AD which excluded the OT and many of the Books of the NT as well, for which he was excommunicated.
So challenges to the Canon are not new, neither are the Gnostic books, and the Gospel, the Canon and Tradition have always walked hand in hand.
Once again, Mark Shea is declaring that the Gospel, the Scriptures, Tradition, the Papal Bulls, the Council Records, are all part of one revelation which has been part of a cohesive whole from the very beginning of the Church. The Fathers and the Bishops and Pope did not secret these things away. In fact the production of a Latin Bible and the writings of the Fathers all being in Greek and the later Fathers, such as Augustine and Thomas, being in Latin, were not to keep the laity from reading them, the laity couldn’t read their own language. But rather they did so to insure that the maximum number of scholars and teachers and students, who all spoke Latin and some spoke and read Greek, could have access to them. It does no good for Anselm in England to write in the common language a document he intends scholars in Spain and Germany and Italy to read, so he wrote it in Latin.
This attitude was the exact opposite of the Gnostics who did everything they could to hide away their “knowledge” to prevent those who were not enlightened from “seeing the truth”. The Church has always been open and honest about herself. I know that seems hard to believe in the post Dan Brown world, but these vaults at the Vatican and monasteries were very often the keepers of the knowledge of the western world. Books were valuable and very expensive to make and so yes not just anyone was allowed to peruse them, but for those who could read and had reason to study the documents there was no secrecy.
In fact almost everything we know about the ancient writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Tertullian, Justin, the Bible itself, were preserved not by illiterate landlords who cared little for anything except marrying off their children and expanding their holdings, but rather by the Church. Which I think makes it terribly unfair that it has now fallen under such scrutiny for having done the world such a great service to now be treated with suspicion for having done so.
God Bless
po18guy
Well-known member
Look at John 21:25. The “many other things” that Jesus did were all known to the Apostles who saw and heard them. It was impossible to write them all down, so John wrote in John 20:31 “but, these are written, so that…”
So, either the majority of what Jesus did and said is not important, or it was preserved via another method.
As to claims of biblical sufficiency, there is a huge difference between “sufficient” and “complete.” Cliff’s Notes are sufficient. The original work is complete.
No. The oral Tradition contains all that is in the written (since the oral produced the written), but it goes far beyond it, just as John wrote. Since John wrote that Jesus did many other things, it is fact that He did, and evidence that it was preserved via a different method. This is a biblical proof for sacred Tradition - John tells us that “many other things” exist in the oral Tradition. John’s Gospel was written 60 years after! Since it was not written for 60 years, how was it kept?
Think about it. There were perhaps one hundred writings that were circulating at that time - all claiming to be scripture. We have 27 of them. How was that accomplished?
No. Since the canon was not settled until three hundred years after John’s Gospel was written, it was the Holy Spirit that guided the Church into testing, recognizing and assembling the NT. They had to examine all available writings, comparing and testing them against the deposit of faith that was contained in the oral Tradition, in order to determine if they were genuine. Of course, they had to have the guidance of the Holy Spirit to discard the chaff and keep the wheat.
Yes. That is one of the common attacks against the oral Tradition - those of Jesus’ teachings that John said were not written down. The only way to know them is to subscribe to the oral Tradition as well as the written. What so many forget is that the oral Tradition produced the bible. John tells us so in plain language. As well, not one jot of scripture was written as it actually happened. It all was set to papyrus 20-90 years later.
What John is telling us is that we are supposed to read, but even more importantly, we are to listen, since the bulk of Jesus’ teachings are transmitted orally, rather than in written form.
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onlyvoice
Guest
Thanks. But my question here was whether poster Nicea325 was wrong in saying the doctrines contained in Tradition are not found in the Bible. So, what you are saying is he was wrong.
The Tridentine formula:
“The Council clearly perceives that this truth and rule (the CC’s Deposit of Faith) are contained in written books and unwritten traditions which were received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or else have come down to us, handed on as it were from the apostles themselves at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”
Notice Trent makes a clear distinction between the “written” and the “unwritten.” The “written” revelation is in “books,” clearly referring to Sacred Scripture, while the “unwritten” are traditions, or what the CC now calls “Sacred Tradition.”
So, here we see that Trent defines the church’s Deposit of Faith as being contained in 1) Sacred Scripture, the “written books,” and 2) Sacred Tradition, the “unwritten traditions.”
Now, Shea said, “Sacred Tradition is the living and growing truth of Christ contained, not only in Scripture…" So, my question here was whether this does not contradict Trent since Shea is saying Tradition is contained in Scripture while Trent says Tradition is only in unwritten form, handed down orally.
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