Material sufficiency of Scripture

[Randy_Carson]

So scripture and tradition are not two separate sources?

From the Catechism
scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a2.htm#83

II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRADITION AND SACRED SCRIPTURE

One common source. . .

80 "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, 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."40 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”.41

. . . two distinct modes of transmission

81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."42

"And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching."43

82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence."44

 

[Vinny213]

Khalid how long have you been Catholic?

 

[Khalid]

Four years. Christian for a bit longer.

 

[Khalid]

From the Catechism
scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a2.htm#83

II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRADITION AND SACRED SCRIPTURE

One common source. . .

80 "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, 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."40 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”.41

. . . two distinct modes of transmission

81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."42

"And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching."43

82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence."44

But paragraph 80 strongly implies that Tradition is in an identity with Scripture, since all revelation from the divine wellspring flows forth to form “one thing” (the canon of Scripture). God’s primary intent in revelation was to reveal himself, not to found a Magisterium.*

But he found the Magisterium necessary because otherwise people would even wrest divine revelation unto death by their heretical interpretations. But the necessity of the Magisterium should never cause us to give it an ontological priority over the Word of God, either written (as the Magisterium is the interpreter of it, a minister of the word, not a magister of the word: only a magister to men), or incarnate (as the Church is the vicegerent of Christ, not Christ himself, although I’ve seen some Catholics take the “he who heareth you, heareth me” thing too far and establish at least a quasi-identity between the Church and Christ, and the Magisterium and the Sermon on the Mount**).

The Magisterium is not there to add to revelation: it has no authority to do so. It has precious little positive function. The vast majority of the magisterial function has been negative - not adding to revelation, or even telling men what revelation says, but only telling men who have erred precisely what revelation is not. This may have changed a bit since the 19th century (with a spate of Popes that liked to proclaim new Marian dogmata and not content themselves with denouncing Marian heresy), and more since Vatican II, but the classical and traditional attitude and intention of the Magisterium, as well as its modern drift, is summed up well in the last two words of every canon of every ecumenical council until Vatican II: anathema sit, “let him who holds this opinion be condemned”. The canons tended to stay very short in length as well. The first alteration from this pattern was the Tridentine Decree on Justification, which had a lengthy essay (monograph) prescribing what exactly justification was and how it was to be spoken of “prefixed” to the half-a-dozen canons. The canons (the negative function, proscribing belief) were for the first time an after-thought to a “decree” (the positive function, prescribing belief).

It’s hard to exegete an English text. They need to write the Catechism in Greek the next time so the layman can be convinced it says whatever the occasion calls for.

*Although I hear the retort even now, that the “one thing” is the Church, the Petrine office, or the general Magisterium of it (the Church, not the Petrine office). This seems to be excluded by the context, given the way “the Church” is mentioned in the next sentence.

**This is not denying that the Church is the mystical body of Christ, or that Christ is the head of the Church. It’s just that a body (no matter how mystical) has no authority or ability to think on its own without its head (which containeth the brain, the reason, the word - the logos!). It is to say that the Church does not and can not give forth new revelation on its own (which is a prerogative which, on my view, is ascribed to the Church by several views on the relation of Scripture and Tradition), but can only expound that revelation which it already has. If my analogy is too irreverent I beg forgiveness of thee and of God.

 

[fhansen]

But paragraph 80 strongly implies that Tradition is in an identity with Scripture, since all revelation from the divine wellspring flows forth to form “one thing” (the canon of Scripture). God’s primary intent in revelation was to reveal himself, not to found a Magisterium.*

But he found the Magisterium necessary because otherwise people would even wrest divine revelation unto death by their heretical interpretations. But the necessity of the Magisterium should never cause us to give it an ontological priority over the Word of God, either written (as the Magisterium is the interpreter of it, a minister of the word, not a magister of the word: only a magister to men), or incarnate (as the Church is the vicegerent of Christ, not Christ himself, although I’ve seen some Catholics take the “he who heareth you, heareth me” thing too far and establish at least a quasi-identity between the Church and Christ, and the Magisterium and the Sermon on the Mount**).

The Magisterium is not there to add to revelation: it has no authority to do so. It has precious little positive function. The vast majority of the magisterial function has been negative - not adding to revelation, or even telling men what revelation says, but only telling men who have erred precisely what revelation is not. This may have changed a bit since the 19th century (with a spate of Popes that liked to proclaim new Marian dogmata and not content themselves with denouncing Marian heresy), and more since Vatican II, but the classical and traditional attitude and intention of the Magisterium, as well as its modern drift, is summed up well in the last two words of every canon of every ecumenical council until Vatican II: anathema sit, “let him who holds this opinion be condemned”. The canons tended to stay very short in length as well. The first alteration from this pattern was the Tridentine Decree on Justification, which had a lengthy essay (monograph) prescribing what exactly justification was and how it was to be spoken of “prefixed” to the half-a-dozen canons. The canons (the negative function, proscribing belief) were for the first time an after-thought to a “decree” (the positive function, prescribing belief).

It’s hard to exegete an English text. They need to write the Catechism in Greek the next time so the layman can be convinced it says whatever the occasion calls for.

*Although I hear the retort even now, that the “one thing” is the Church, the Petrine office, or the general Magisterium of it (the Church, not the Petrine office). This seems to be excluded by the context, given the way “the Church” is mentioned in the next sentence.

**This is not denying that the Church is the mystical body of Christ, or that Christ is the head of the Church. It’s just that a body (no matter how mystical) has no authority or ability to think on its own without its head (which containeth the brain, the reason, the word - the logos!). It is to say that the Church does not and can not give forth new revelation on its own (which is a prerogative which, on my view, is ascribed to the Church by several views on the relation of Scripture and Tradition), but can only expound that revelation which it already has. If my analogy is too irreverent I beg forgiveness of thee and of God.

In my humble opinion the “one thing” is the faith itself, made present to us in the doctrines of the Church, her source for which are the two separate but complimentary streams of revelation, Scripture and Tradition. The Magisterium is a necessary function of the Holy Spirit simply to protect those doctrines from error.

 

[Vinny213]

Khalid are sure what you have written in your latest post is in harmony with Roman Catholic teaching? I am not confident that it is.

 

[Khalid]

Neither am I, fully - I may be a material heretic, but I would not preach the opinion if I believed it was not allowed to Catholics and not in concord with the Sacred Text. The more “famous” theologians of the 20th century (Balthasar, Rahner, Kung, Schillebeeckx) were far more protestantizing (and liberal) than me. Just read Balthasar’s The Theology of Karl Barth or Kung’s Justification. What I wrote in my third paragraph, about the largely negative function of the Magisterium, is historical fact, and available to be verified from a perusal of any of the pre-Tridentine councils.

Then again no heretic believes himself to be an heretic. I believe everything I write is in harmony with Catholic teaching: or else I wouldn’t write it. This doesn’t mean that everything I write actually is in harmony with Catholic teaching: I have been disabused of that notion. (Although for some reason I don’t think the abortionist politicians have.) I used to preach deistic (commonly but incorrectly called “theistic”) evolutionism, for example.

If the one thing is the faith, from whence does the the faith flow? We are back to the original question that those paragraphs were trying to address.

 

[QNDNNDQDCE]

Khalid, I am baffled at your assesment ofthe Council of Trent. You have said that the Church does not have the positive authority to formulate doctrine, only negative authorty to rule out heresy. You have suggested that a positive formulation of doctrine is somehow adding to revelation. Your distinction between canons (as negative) and a decree (as positive) is false because they are functionally the same. For example, look at Canon 1 of the Council of Ephesus.

“If anyone will not confess that the Emmanuel is very God, and that therefore the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God (Θεοτόκος), inasmuch as in the flesh she bore the Word of God made flesh [as it is written, The Word was made flesh] let him be anathema.”

You see that this is really as positive as anything. It proposes the doctrine of the way in which the Virgin Mary is Theotokos, which is a belief to be firmly held by all the faithful, and it is only negative in the sense that it anathemizes all who deny this. There is no logical difference between denying “not p” and affirming “p.” The decree on justfication is no different except that it is longer and not broken down into one-liner anathemizations. So, explain this: what expressed in the Decree on Justification is both not affrmed in the Canons and could not have been (rightly) added as an additional canon?

Why does Trent have any less authority to affirm the orthodox doctrine of justification than Ephesus did to affirm the orthodox doctrine of the Theotokos? Do you believe that Trent expressed anything on justification that is contrary to Scripture or that the Scriptures allow in any way for anyone to hold to the heretical Protestant doctrine of justification which they nowhere teach?

 

[Khalid]

No, I do not say the Church does not have the positive authority to formulate doctrine: God forbid that I write so unclearly. I say that the Church, historically, has done far more in the way of the condemnation of heresy than the positive promulgation of doctrine, but not that it has done only thus, as I believed was obvious in the very first example that should come to mind, the first ecumenical council of Nicaea, and the appropriation of the (non-Biblical, originally Modalist, over which much contemporary controversy ensued) word “homoousion” to describe the relation of the Son to the Father.

History can not conceivably rule on whether or not the Church has the authority to formulate doctrine or forbid heresy: it can rule on whether the Church does formulate doctrine or forbid heresy, and the great share (although, I attempt to make more clear this time, not the exclusive share) of the Church’s Magisterial function has been in condemning heresy.

The very concept of the development of doctrine as developed by John Henry Cardinal Newman demands that the main function of the Magisterium be to define and anathematize heresy (which could be considered a roundabout way of enforcing positive orthodoxy, which is the point you seem to make in equating the positive and negative functions), as, historically, nearly every single doctrine, with few exceptions, has been fully elucidated only when challenged with the heresy which opposes it. The doctrines arise out of not a positive legislation on the part of the Church, but on the condemnation of the Church of all positions that are held by heretics, which can take time, as new heretical propositions crop up that are virtual substitutes for the old ones (trace Arianism, or Monophysitism, or Pelagianism, any other heresy through history to see this).

For example, the Tome of Leo (proclaiming the first iteration of what would eventually become the doctrine of the hypostatic union) was not the first salvo in the wars for Christological orthodoxy: there were whole waves of heresies first: “God, not man” was condemned; “man, not God” was condemned; “more man than God” was condemned; “more God than man” was condemned, leaving only “fully God and fully man”. This is the only true doctrine, and was true and the heresies false even before they were affirmed and anathematized respectively. The Church could have legislated it from the beginning, had that been God’s will: but, as the mediaeval theologians were wont to say, de potentia Dei ordinata, it is not how it was done.

In a sense, the key to my understanding is this: the Church has absolute authority, to a degree that would make an Ultramontane blush, when it comes to the interpretation of the deposit of faith. It has no authority, to a degree that would make a Baptist cringe, when it comes to the deposit of faith itself. Our disagreement here seems to be over what is proper to the deposit of faith, since we both agree on the Catholic doctrines (disregarding this doctrine of Scripture we are debating), but disagree on how they were formulated and where they came from.

If we are to debate justification (I believe Trent taught infallibly on the matter, although, as the range of opinion in the Church testifies, it is - and was purposefully designed to be - open to broad interpretation, as a Pope prohibited Thomists from accusing Molinists of Pelagianism after the Council of Trent, accepting that both Thomists and Molinists worked from within the same, orthodox Tridentine framework) - that is, debate the proper interpretation of the Tridentine Decree and canons - we should conclude the one on Scripture first.

 

[Potato1237]

MATERIAL AND FORMAL SUFFICIENCY
By JAMES AKIN
archive.catholic.com/thisrock/1993/9310fea2sb2.asp

This has been referred to by Church Militant in post #3.

“For Scripture to be materially sufficient, it would have to contain or imply all that is needed for salvation. For it to be formally sufficient, it would not only have to contain all of this data, but it would have to be so clear that it does not need any outside information to interpret it.

“In order to prove sola scriptura a Protestant must prove the different and much stronger claim that Scripture is so clear that no outside information or authority is needed in order to interpret it.”

This they are unable to do.

excellent point.