Scott Hahn and "Prima Scriptura"?

[BRB1]

It should be obvious to all that Scripture is Prima. The Mass is structured around the 3 readiings from scripture, and then the true presence of Eucharist.

Scripture is the Word. Tradition doesn’t predate the OT word, now does it ?

To make Scripture Prima doesn’t relegate Tradition to an inferior status. It just acknowledges what we all instinctivelly know … & why we have a category on CAF called Sacred Scriptures, and not Sacred Traditions.

 

[Crumpy]

This is from Catholic Answers website at:

catholic.com/library/scripture_and_tradition.asp

In the Second Vatican Council’s document on divine revelation, Dei Verbum (Latin: “The Word of God”), the relationship between Tradition and Scripture is explained: "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 a unity and tend toward the same end. For sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit. To the successors of the apostles, sacred Tradition hands on in its full purity God’s word, which was entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.

“Thus, by the light of the Spirit of truth, these successors can in their preaching preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. 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 devotion and reverence.”

Sounds to me like the Church does not put the “prima” in “prima scriptura”, but I would like to hear others that can find documentation to the opposite.

Other than that, I don’t have too much problem with Hahn. I’m sure it is a primary method of going after sola scriptura Protestants and getting them to convert!

-JohnDeP

I think that Hahn sees the need, especially after Vatican II, to put scripture back into focus in the Church much moreso than it had been previously.

Even as a child, I heard things like this, that putting more emphasis on scripture was making the Catholic Church more protestant – which of course is silly. But, I do believe that scripture studies at the parish level have been long neglected and are still in a very dismal condition, at least locally in my diocese (Saginaw).

There was a particular bias popularized in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, that to have a scripture class, you needed a leader or teacher with nothing less than a master’s degree in ministry or scripture. Of course, this tends to make people feel inadequate to even think or say anything about scripture – which of course is totally wrong. If that were the case, then scripture study should be encouraged all the more to make them (us) competent and to support us in our divine mission to evangelize the world.

Some of the contributors to the NJBC were, in fact, members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, who, in their 1993 document on the Interpetation of the Bible in the Church, gave the conflicting advice that to study scripture all you needed was a Bible and a (presumably authorized) commentary.

Hahn steps over this and has been providing both encouragement to Catholics to study the bible (as the Church and catechism actually say) and expertise to help Catholics understand the Bible with whatever resources they may have available.

The Gospel is not the domain of experts alone, period.

 

[graceandglory]

Thanks everyone for the great insights and references on this!

For the record, my friend is a strongly orthodox Catholic as far as I am aware–this is why it shocked all of us to hear him talk like this about Scott Hahn. He studied at Steubenville and then in Rome for 7 years, he is currently going for his doctorate in theology.

I have no idea what grade he got in Dr. Hahn’s class, he didn’t mention it but I highly suspect that it may not have been an ‘A’…

He had many personal comments about Dr. Hahn as well, bordering on slander in my opinion (therefore I will not share them here…).

Sounds to me (from this thread) that your friend is well on his way to being “more Catholic than the Pope.” He will find good company among the folk at The Remnant, remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/archive-2005-1115-hahn.htm
and the New Oxford Review.
newoxfordreview.org/letters.jsp?did=0105-letters