What is the difference between Scripture and the Magisterium

[MarcoPolo]

So essentially, Scripture, which is founded on Christ and the Apostle’s words and teachings, is sort of the bedrock of Christian Tradition, and anything after that - which is not Scripture, but Tradition - is elucidation on Scripture?

Often Tradition will be an understanding of Scripture, such as how John 3:5 is a reference to Baptism. Although I know of no “rule” that Tradition has to be an interpretation of Scripture, particularly because Tradition is antecedent to NT Scripture, historically speaking. After all, the first texts of the NT were written some 10-15 or perhaps more years after Christ’s Ascension. And the NT canon itself was discerned over a few hundred years after that too. Yet the heritage of the faith was handed down prior to all this.

An example I can think of that does not have an “explicit” Scriptural reference is infant baptism. *The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants. The apostles, to whom were committed the secrets of the divine sacraments, knew there are in everyone innate strains of [original] sin, which must be washed away through water and the Spirit." (Origen, Commentaries on Romans 5:9, ca 248 A.D.) *But don’t get me wrong, I think theological principles in Scripture very much support the notion of infant baptism, going all the way back to the Old Testament baptismal prefigurement of circumcision at 8 days old. Nor were infants said to be forbidden from participating in other baptismal prefigurements, such as the crossing of the Red Sea, or getting on the Ark, etc…

 

[InDefense]

Infant baptism is one such tradition that goes against scripture. An infant cannot make a decision to get baptised. Water baptism is an individual decision, and for others to decide on someone else’s behalf, makes water baptism ineffectual.

If you haven’t been baptised in water as a person who has the capacity to make their own decisions, you are putting yourselves outside of salvation.

Mark 16:16 “He who believes and is baptised shall be saved…”

Jesus Christ is returning again and if you haven’t been water baptised as a decision making individual, then you only have yourselves to blame ! Don’t blame me if you end up in hell, with your church having deceived you, I’m telling you the truth. Eternity is forever. Also, one needs to receive the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues. I bet your church doesn’t teach you that, yet this is what happened in the early church (Acts).

 

[bmullins]

Infant baptism is one such tradition that goes against scripture. An infant cannot make a decision to get baptised. Water baptism is an individual decision, and for others to decide on someone else’s behalf, is ineffectual.

Then I assume that all children circumcised were also not part of Israel’s covenant because they never had a choice? God is outside of time. Why do you feel that baptism is confined to the moment in which the ceremony occurs? When the child is old enough to decide for him/herself, God is not limited by time or water, He puts the mark on the child’s soul in His time not ours. That is what confirmation is all about.

Baptism replaces circumcision, the book of Hebrews tells us this. Why do we feel that as Christians we get to rewrite God’s law concerning that?

 

[TarkanAttila]

Often Tradition will be an understanding of Scripture, such as how John 3:5 is a reference to Baptism. Although I know of no “rule” that Tradition has to be an interpretation of Scripture, particularly because Tradition is antecedent to NT Scripture, historically speaking. After all, the first texts of the NT were written some 10-15 or perhaps more years after Christ’s Ascension. And the NT canon itself was discerned over a few hundred years after that too. Yet the heritage of the faith was handed down prior to all this.

This I know, which is why I said that Scripture came from Christ and His Apostles, the Tradition which was the predecessor to Scripture. Not that the Tradition that came after Scripture was any different, but it took on a different role: now Tradition also has to interpret the Word of God, which itself is part of Tradition, but is distinct in that it is the seminal written work in Tradition - the first recorded instance of Tradition - from which all other Tradition flows.

So to speak, before the NT Scripture, there was only the OT and Tradition. When Scripture, the recording of this primary, beginning, Apostolic Tradition was written, Tradition remained, but it based itself… off of the NT canon (Scripture) and Apostolic Tradition that was not written in the Bible. ?

An example I can think of that does not have an “explicit” Scriptural reference is infant baptism. The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants. The apostles, to whom were committed the secrets of the divine sacraments, knew there are in everyone innate strains of [original] sin, which must be washed away through water and the Spirit." (Origen, Commentaries on Romans 5:9, ca 248 A.D.) But don’t get me wrong, I think theological principles in Scripture very much support the notion of infant baptism, going all the way back to the Old Testament baptismal prefigurement of circumcision at 8 days old. Nor were infants said to be forbidden from participating in other baptismal prefigurements, such as the crossing of the Red Sea, or getting on the Ark, etc…

Yes, I agree. I still find it difficult to distinguish between Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers, though. I mean, aside from the established canon, of course. But I was hoping for a better definition Scripture as distinct from Tradition.

 

[TarkanAttila]

Infant baptism is one such tradition that goes against scripture. An infant cannot make a decision to get baptised. Water baptism is an individual decision, and for others to decide on someone else’s behalf, makes water baptism ineffectual.

If you haven’t been baptised in water as a person who has the capacity to make their own decisions, you are putting yourselves outside of salvation.

Mark 16:16 “He who believes and is baptised shall be saved…”

Jesus Christ is returning again and if you haven’t been water baptised as a decision making individual, then you only have yourselves to blame ! Don’t blame me if you end up in hell, with your church having deceived you, I’m telling you the truth. Eternity is forever. Also, one needs to receive the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues. I bet your church doesn’t teach you that, yet this is what happened in the early church (Acts).

Are you from CARM by any chance?

mullins makes a good point; circumcision, the predecessor to baptism, is also done at infancy to mark a Jew as a Jew. Does that mean all infants circumcised as infants weren’t truly Jews because they may not have wanted to be Jews later in life?

Speaking in tongues doesn’t mean speaking gobbeldygook BTW. In Acts, “speaking in tongues” meant being able to speak, and all would understand, whether Jew, Greek, Arab, Persian, Scythian, Cyrene, Roman, or anyone else. That is the speaking in tongues the Apostles experienced.

 

[bmonk]

Infant baptism is one such tradition that goes against scripture. An infant cannot make a decision to get baptized. Water baptism is an individual decision, and for others to decide on someone else’s behalf, makes water baptism ineffectual.

If you haven’t been baptized in water as a person who has the capacity to make their own decisions, you are putting yourselves outside of salvation.

Mark 16:16 “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved…”

Jesus Christ is returning again and if you haven’t been water baptized as a decision making individual, then you only have yourselves to blame ! Don’t blame me if you end up in hell, with your church having deceived you, I’m telling you the truth. Eternity is forever. Also, one needs to receive the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues. I bet your church doesn’t teach you that, yet this is what happened in the early church (Acts).

Ummm, where should I begin?

Baptism is about the choice God makes of us, and the work God does in us, more than our choice for God. Yes, a person baptized as an infant or child must make, ratify that choice for themselves as an adult. On the other hand, parents routinely make choices for their children. And one of the solemn obligations that parents take on when having their children baptized is to raise them in the faith, to teach them what the grace they are receiving means and asks of them. As a cradle Catholic myself, I can bear witness that the grace can and does take root.

As for being against the Scripture, the Bible is not clear on the point. In some places it speaks of the need to believe to be saved. When is that possible? Age one day? One year? Six years? 25 years, when we grow into mature judgment? And then in other places it tells how “whole households” were baptized. True, it does not specifically mention infants or children–but few households in those days would not have some children. And the tradition of the Church, as well as the analogy to circumcision, argue for baptism of infants from early on.

One "needs to receive the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues? I might agree with the need to receive the Holy Spirit, but St. Paul speaks of the variety of gifts of the Spirit in 1 Cor 12:4-11, 27-31, among other places. He even asks in 12:30, “Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?”–and the presumed answer is, “No.” Not everyone is called to speak in tongues.

In short, this is a prime example of what comes of a community that does not have the Magisterium to remind us of what the Scripture and Tradition teaches: it’s easy to go astray.

 

[TarkanAttila]

In short, this is a prime example of what comes of a community that does not have the Magisterium to remind us of what the Scripture and Tradition teaches: it’s easy to go astray.

The sad thing is, he probably doesn’t understand that the guy next to him probably believes at least one thing that’s radically different from his beliefs, all based on the same belief that one can interpret Scripture privately. Sometimes you can, but when it comes to something the whole church needs to know the answer to, not just you, who ought the church trust: YOUR interpretation, or an authoritative interpretation?

Our interpretation, history shows, traces all the way back to the Apostles through history. How much more authoritative can you get than that?

 

[rom422]

Yes, I agree. I still find it difficult to distinguish between Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers, though. I mean, aside from the established canon, of course. But I was hoping for a better definition Scripture as distinct from Tradition.

The writings of the Church Fathers are part of tradition. The NT Scriptures are also part of tradition; in fact, they grew out of the traditions of the Church. If you want a definition, then I’d say that the NT Scriptures are that part of tradition that has been committed to writing and which the Magisterium (the teaching office of the Church) considered infallible. Infallibility is the key. Although the writings of the Church Fathers are also part of tradition, they are not considered infallible and, therefore, are distinct from Sacred Scripture. But, although the writings of the Church Fathers are not infallible, the Magisterium draws from the wisdom of the Church Fathers in making its interpretation of Sacred Scripture.

Don’t forget that besides Scripture and Tradition, we Catholics also have the Magisterium. It was the Magisterium that decided which ancient writings should be considered as infallible, and therefore part of Scripture. It is the Magisterium that judges the writings of the Church Fathers. It is also the Magisterium that interprets the Scripture. Having said that, it does not mean that the Magisterium is above the Word of God, because it cannot pronounce a teaching that is contrary to the teachings of Holy Scripture, which the Magisterium determined to be infallible.

The Magisterium is also infallible, which is why it can never be in conflict with Sacred Scripture. Our separated brethren, the Protestants, agree that the Sacred Scriptures are infallible, but they do not consider the Catholic Church to be infallible. I find that rather odd, because they only got their bible also from the Catholic Church. If the Magisterium is not infallible, then how reliable are their Bible books that the Magisterium determined to be infallible?

 

[Jerry-Jet]

The order of the books of the New Testament is Sacred Tradition.

 

[rom422]

The order of the books of the New Testament is Sacred Tradition.

It is not only the order of the books of the New Testament that is part of Sacred Tradition, but even the identity and authorship of the books themselves. For example, how did the Magisterium know what books were to be considered as part of the Bible? None of the books of the OT or the NT gave us a list of inspired books. So how did the Church know what books would constitute the OT and the NT? Answer: Tradition! Also, how did the Church know that the gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Unlike St. Paul who identified himself as the author of his epistles, none of the gospel writers identified themselves as the authors of these gospels. So, how did the Church know that the gospel of St. Matthew, for instance, was written by St. Matthew and not by anybody else? Answer: Tradition! Thanks to the Magisterium that knew how to draw from its own traditions, we now have a Bible - a set of inspired writings from which we learn what God wanted to communicate to us.

In Post #27 above I said that the Sacred Scriptures differ from the writings of the Church Fathers in the fact that they are infallible or inerrant. Another way of saying this is that the Sacred Scriptures are inspired writings, or that they were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and, for that reason, inerrant or infallible. So, if we want to define Sacred Scriptures to distinguish them from all other ancient writings, we could also say that these are the books that were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

 

[bmullins]

I’ve been bothered by the comment above taken out of context, used to claim that Jesus said not to follow traditions at all. I used to use that same argument. I would vehemently tell you that Jesus said time and again not to do tradition. I wasn’t reading my bible. I was reading the parts that made sense and ignoring the others. The bible is a ‘whole’ not a part. Theology can’t be built on one verse, ignoring all those that don’t fit it.

In Protestant circles we throw around the words of Jesus as he calls the Pharisees snakes and white washed tombs. We talk about how he calls them hypocrites. We declare almost all of Mathew 23 about washing cups and ignoring the inside. All of which is good advice.

We ignore the very start of that. We ignore where Jesus reaffirms that when someone is in the established seat, the one established by God we are to listen to them.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.

Mathew 23:1-3​

Notice Jesus never once said ignore those who are in authority over you. He never said when you don’t agree with something that a person is doing, to go and form a new church. He rather affirmed that there are established seats, and that when someone sits there and teaches the truth (whether or not they follow it) you are to follow it. Jesus then went on to establish a new seat. The seat of Peter. We can’t just stop following because a priest is a bad person. Or a pope is a bad person. We are to be very careful to follow what they teach, and not follow what they do. The church is still an authority, by Jesus own standards, so be careful to do all that the Church tells you to do.

 

[rom422]

I’ve been bothered by the comment above taken out of context, used to claim that Jesus said not to follow traditions at all. I used to use that same argument. I would vehemently tell you that Jesus said time and again not to do tradition. I wasn’t reading my bible. I was reading the parts that made sense and ignoring the others. The bible is a ‘whole’ not a part. Theology can’t be built on one verse, ignoring all those that don’t fit it.

In Protestant circles we throw around the words of Jesus as he calls the Pharisees snakes and white washed tombs. We talk about how he calls them hypocrites. We declare almost all of Mathew 23 about washing cups and ignoring the inside. All of which is good advice.

We ignore the very start of that. We ignore where Jesus reaffirms that when someone is in the established seat, the one established by God we are to listen to them.

Mathew 23:1-3​

Notice Jesus never once said ignore those who are in authority over you. He never said when you don’t agree with something that a person is doing, to go and form a new church. He rather affirmed that there are established seats, and that when someone sits there and teaches the truth (whether or not they follow it) you are to follow it. Jesus then went on to establish a new seat. The seat of Peter. We can’t just stop following because a priest is a bad person. Or a pope is a bad person. We are to be very careful to follow what they teach, and not follow what they do. The church is still an authority, by Jesus own standards, so be careful to do all that the Church tells you to do.

Very well said!

 

[TarkanAttila]

I’ve been bothered by the comment above taken out of context, used to claim that Jesus said not to follow traditions at all. I used to use that same argument. I would vehemently tell you that Jesus said time and again not to do tradition. I wasn’t reading my bible. I was reading the parts that made sense and ignoring the others. The bible is a ‘whole’ not a part. Theology can’t be built on one verse, ignoring all those that don’t fit it.

In Protestant circles we throw around the words of Jesus as he calls the Pharisees snakes and white washed tombs. We talk about how he calls them hypocrites. We declare almost all of Mathew 23 about washing cups and ignoring the inside. All of which is good advice.

We ignore the very start of that. We ignore where Jesus reaffirms that when someone is in the established seat, the one established by God we are to listen to them.

Mathew 23:1-3​

Notice Jesus never once said ignore those who are in authority over you. He never said when you don’t agree with something that a person is doing, to go and form a new church. He rather affirmed that there are established seats, and that when someone sits there and teaches the truth (whether or not they follow it) you are to follow it. Jesus then went on to establish a new seat. The seat of Peter. We can’t just stop following because a priest is a bad person. Or a pope is a bad person. We are to be very careful to follow what they teach, and not follow what they do. The church is still an authority, by Jesus own standards, so be careful to do all that the Church tells you to do.

**AMEN. **