The Apostolic Deposit of Revelation: Scripture in the Two Systems, and Oral Tradition

§ 16. The False and Self-Contradictory Position of Holy Scripture in the Protestant System

We have seen that Holy Scripture holds a very high position as a source of Faith. This does not mean, however, that it is the only source, or even a source accessible and necessary to each and all of the faithful; indeed, without the intervention of some living authority distinct from Scripture itself, we could never even prove that Scripture is a source of Faith at all. Protestants, nevertheless, reject the Teaching Apostolate, and maintain that the Bible — the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible — is the sole Source and Rule of Faith. We shall show in § 19 that Oral Tradition is a substantial part of the Apostolic Deposit, so that Scripture is not the only source of Faith; that it is not even the only rule may be seen from the following.

I. The Rule of Faith should be materially complete — embracing the entire sphere of revealed truth; formally perfect — needing no supplement from any other source; and universal — applicable to all men, always and everywhere. None of these characteristics can be affirmed of Holy Scripture alone. There are, as we shall see, revealed truths handed down by Oral Tradition only; and the Bible, notwithstanding the excellence of its contents, is a written document lacking systematic arrangement, often obscure, hard to understand, and exposed to many false interpretations — some further means must be provided by God to remove these difficulties, or the very purpose of Revelation would be frustrated. Indeed, some of the very qualities that make the Bible excellent — its being a written document of considerable length, full of deep and difficult matter expressed in the metaphorical idiom of the East — make it unfit, taken alone, for the general use of ordinary people.

Protestants cannot help feeling the force of these considerations, and usually admit, more or less explicitly, some further rule of Faith — the mind of the reader guided by a private supernatural illumination, say, or by its own natural light and inclination. The result has been that the Bible has become the plaything of innumerable sects, and the source of endless divisions; the resulting mischief has, in practice, been checked only by the ordinary believer’s submission to the guidance of others, or even to “Confessions of Faith and Formularies” possessing no properly recognized authority. It follows from all this that the reading of the Bible is neither strictly necessary for salvation nor even advisable for everyone in every circumstance, and the Church has accordingly, with great wisdom, imposed certain regulations on the matter (see Fr. R. F. Clarke, S.J., The Pope and the Bible).

II. But the Protestant theory is not merely false — it is self-contradictory. Inspiration results from so mysterious an influence of God that its very existence can be known only by means of Revelation; we cannot infer it simply from the character of the writers or the nature of their writings, since there have been Prophets and Apostles who were not inspired in the strict, technical sense, while some inspired writers were neither Apostles nor Prophets. Some Sacred Books do state that their writers were moved by the Holy Ghost, but this need not mean the particular divine influence that goes by the technical name of Inspiration; and even granting that it does, the question remains whether these statements themselves were inspired. The only way to escape this vicious circle is to appeal to some testimony external to the Inspired Books themselves — the “consoling effect” on the reader, the gustus spiritualis of the early Protestants, cannot seriously be put forward today as a genuine test of Inspiration. There must be some public and authentic witness to the fact of Inspiration, and this, as we have seen, is precisely the Teaching Body of the Catholic Church (cf. Cardinal Newman, Idea of a University, p. 270).

There is a further difficulty. Even granting that the inspired character of every book of the Bible was made known at the time of its original publication, we would still need official testimony to that fact; and how, besides, could we be sure that the copies we now possess agree with the originals? Apart from the Church’s authority, the common belief in the canon of Holy Scripture, and in the identity of later copies with the originals, rests on evidence that is by no means historically conclusive on its own — and this common belief has, as a matter of historical fact, been produced by the action of the Church herself. We may still say, with St. Augustine long ago: “I, for my part, should not believe the Gospel, except moved by the authority of the Catholic Church” (Contra Epistolam Manichaei, 6).

§ 17. The Position and Functions of Holy Scripture in the Catholic System

The position and function of Holy Scripture in the Catholic system may be briefly stated: Scripture is an Apostolic Deposit entrusted to the Church. That is, the Apostles published Holy Scripture as a document of Divine Revelation, and handed it over as such to their successors; it is on this ground that the Teaching Body claims the right to preserve and expound the sacred writings. Protestants, by contrast, have no right to call the Bible an “Apostolic Deposit” at all, having rejected both the authoritative promulgation by the Apostles and the necessity of entrusting the Deposit of Revelation to a living Apostolate — for them, consequently, the very word “deposit” is emptied of meaning, and the Bible becomes, in effect, a windfall, come they know not whence.

I. Catholics maintain, and can prove from evidence drawn from the earliest centuries, that the Apostles promulgated, by God’s own order, both the Old and New Testaments as a document received from God, thereby giving it the dignity and efficacy of a legitimate source and rule of Faith. Such promulgation follows naturally from the nature of Scripture itself and from the Apostles’ own function: God would hardly have cast His Word upon the world to become the plaything of conflicting opinion, but would rather have committed its publication to the very men He was sending to preach the Gospel to all nations, with whom He had promised to remain until the consummation of the world. This fact of apostolic promulgation is generally treated by the Fathers in connection with the transmission of Scripture; the mere writing and publishing of a text, even by an Apostle, was not itself considered sufficient promulgation of its inspired character — the document had also to be placed on a footing with the Old Testament and approved for public reading in the Church. As St. Jerome says of St. Mark’s Gospel: “when Peter had heard it, he both approved of it and ordered it to be read in the churches” (De Viris Illustribus).

II. Besides promulgating Scripture as a divine document, the Apostles transmitted it to their successors with the right, duty, and power to continue its promulgation, to preserve its integrity and identity, to expound its meaning, to use it in demonstrating and illustrating Catholic doctrine, and to resist and condemn any attack upon its teaching or any abuse of its meaning. All this follows from the very nature of the Apostolate and the character of the Sacred Writings themselves (see the passages already quoted from St. Irenaeus and Tertullian, § 9, III, above).

III. The function of Holy Scripture within the Catholic Church is determined by these two facts — that it is an Apostolic Deposit, and that its lawful administration belongs to the Church. Hence: (1) Holy Scripture, in virtue of its permanent and official promulgation, is a public document, whose divine authority is evident to every member of the Church. (2) The Church necessarily possesses an authentic text of Scripture, identical with the original; where a given text has been approved by the Church, whether by constant use or by express declaration, that text thereby acquires the character of public authenticity — its conformity with the original is to be held not merely as a juridical presumption but as certain, on the ground of the Church’s own infallibility. (3) The authentic text, duly promulgated, becomes a Source and Rule of Faith, but remains, even so, only an instrument of instruction and proof in the hands of the members of the Teaching Apostolate, who alone have the right of interpreting it authoritatively. (4) Private interpretation must submit to authoritative interpretation. (5) The custody and administration of Holy Scripture is entrusted not directly to the body of the Church at large but to the Teaching Apostolate, though Scripture remains the common property of every member of the Church; the duty of its administrators is to communicate its teaching to all who live in the obedience of Faith, and the body of the faithful thereby secures a surer knowledge than if each interpreted according to private light — such private handling of Scripture, indeed, is really opposed to the very notion of its being common property. (6) The Bible belongs to the Church, and to the Church alone; those outside her visible bounds may legitimately use it as a means of finding and entering the Church, but they have no right to turn it against her. This is the fundamental principle of Tertullian’s De Praescriptione Haereticorum: Catholics, he argues, should, before ever arguing individual points of scriptural doctrine with heretics, first contest the heretics’ very right to appeal to Scripture at all, thereby defeating their whole approach at the outset (praescribere actionem — a mode of defence corresponding, roughly, to a legal demurrer). (7) Lastly, the Teaching Apostolate’s rights include that of taking and enforcing disciplinary measures to promote the right use, and prevent the abuse, of Scripture.

§ 18. Decisions of the Church on the Text and Interpretation of Scripture

The principles laid down above were applied by the Councils of Trent (sess. iv) and the Vatican Council (sess. iii).

I. The Council of Trent issued two decrees on the Sacred Text, one dogmatic and one disciplinary. These decrees did not so much confer upon the Vulgate its public ecclesiastical authenticity as declare and confirm the authenticity it already possessed through long-continued public use: “if any one,” the Council says, “receiveth not, as sacred and canonical, the said books, entire, with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate edition, let him be anathema… moreover, the same sacred and holy Synod… ordaineth and declareth that the said old and Vulgate edition, which by the lengthened usage of so many ages hath been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare to reject it under any pretext whatsoever.”

1. These decrees are not exclusive: they affirm the authenticity of the Vulgate, but say nothing about the original text or about other versions, which retain their own public and private value. No Hebrew text has ever been in liturgical use in the Church since apostolic times; the Greek text in public use during the first eight centuries must be considered fully authentic for that period, though since the Eastern Schism its authenticity is guaranteed only by the continued use of Greek Catholics.
2. The Vulgate’s conformity with the original is not to be taken as absolute — differences of distinctness and force of expression, even in dogmatic texts, may occur, along with additions, omissions, and diversities in non-dogmatic passages. But in matters of Faith and morals, the Vulgate never puts forward, as the Word of God, anything that either openly contradicts the Word of God or is simply not the Word of God at all; its entire contents are substantially correct, and, on the whole, identical with the original (cf. Kaulen, History of the Vulgate [in German], p. 58ff.; Franzelin, De Scriptura, sect. iii).
3. The Vulgate may accordingly be used with full confidence in demonstrating and expounding doctrines of Faith and morals, and its authority may not be rejected — it should be used in every public transaction touching Faith and morals, possessing complete demonstrative force within the Church; hence the saying, “the Vulgate is the theologian’s Bible.” At the same time, this decree does not forbid the use of other texts, especially the originals, even in public matters, whether to support and illustrate the Vulgate, or as an argumentum ad hominem against non-Catholics, or in purely scientific inquiry. Clement VIII, executing the Tridentine decrees, published an official edition of the Vulgate that came into general use, and must now be considered an authentic reproduction of the text approved by the Council.

II. The Council of Trent also issued a decree on the Interpretation of Scripture — further explained in the Creed drawn up under Pius IV, though much misunderstood in later years, so that the Vatican Council found it necessary to clarify its true extent and meaning. The Tridentine decree continues: “furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, [the council] decrees that no one, relying on his own skill, shall, in matters of faith and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which Holy Mother Church — to whom it belongeth to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures — hath held and doth hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” The Creed of Pius IV states the same principle: “I also admit the Holy Scriptures according to that sense which Holy Mother Church hath held and doth hold, to whom it belongeth to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures.” And the Vatican Council concludes: “forasmuch as the wholesome decree of the holy and sacred council of Trent concerning the interpretation of the Divine Scripture… hath been perversely explained by divers persons, we, while renewing the said decree, declare this to be its meaning: in matters of Faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the true sense of sacred Scripture which Holy Mother Church hath held and doth hold, to whom it belongeth to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures; and therefore it is lawful to no man to interpret the said sacred Scripture against this sense, or even against the unanimous consent of the Fathers.”

The meaning of the Tridentine decree, then, as clarified by the Vatican Council, is that the Church has the right to give a judicial decision on the sense of Holy Scripture in matters of Faith and morals — that is, to give an interpretation that is authentic, infallible, and universally binding, not merely indirectly and negatively but directly and positively. To oppose such a decision is unlawful, precisely because it amounts to a denial of the true sense of Scripture, and not merely an act of disobedience; and the unanimous interpretation of the Fathers, whose writings reproduce the Church’s own authentic teaching, carries a similar weight.

A little reflection shows that this Catholic rule of scriptural interpretation does not clash with a reasonable liberty of inquiry or with the development of scientific exegesis — quite the contrary, the period following the Council of Trent produced some of the most distinguished biblical commentators in Christian history, while the principle of private judgment has produced, on the whole, little beyond error and destructive criticism (see Stapleton, Principia Fidei Demonstrativa, XI, X; Franzelin, De Scriptura, sect. iii; Vacant, Études théologiques sur le Concile du Vatican, I, p. 405ff.).

§ 19. The Oral Apostolic Deposit — Tradition, in the Narrower Sense of the Word

The Protestant rejection of a permanent Teaching Apostolate, injurious as it is to the Written Word, destroys the very existence of Oral Tradition outright. Catholic doctrine, by contrast, maintains that the preaching of the Apostles, unwritten as well as written, is an independent and trustworthy Source of Faith, forming, like Holy Scripture itself, an essential part of the Apostolic Deposit. The Council of Trent, “seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand… receiveth and venerateth, with an equal affection of piety, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testaments… and also the said traditions, as well those appertaining to Faith as to morals, as having been dictated either by Christ’s own word of mouth or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession” (sess. iv).

I. This Catholic doctrine is an evident consequence of the perpetuity of the Apostolate. Holy Scripture and the testimony of the early Fathers make plain that the Apostles handed to their successors, together with the written documents of Revelation, the contents of their oral teaching as well, as an independent and permanent Source of Faith — an Oral Deposit that can, given the natural and supernatural qualifications of its depositary, be transmitted as securely and as perfectly as the Written Deposit.

1. Scripture nowhere states, or even implies, that it is meant to be the sole Source of Faith. The whole composition of the New Testament books presupposes the existence of a Teaching Body, and the fact of the Apostolate’s perpetuity implies the perpetuity of its teaching authority as well. St. Paul expressly enjoins the holding of the things he preached, no less than the things he wrote: “therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle” (2 Thess. 2:14; cf. St. John Chrysostom on this text). And again: “hold the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me in faith, and in the love which is in Christ Jesus. Keep the good thing committed to thy trust by the Holy Ghost” (2 Tim. 1:13–14); “the things which thou hast heard of me by many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men, who shall be fit to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). In the earliest ages of the Church, too, it was universally held that the contents of apostolic preaching were transmitted to the Church as a permanent Source and Rule of Faith, exactly as shown above (§ 9, III) — a doctrine confirmed further by the fact that in patristic times the true interpretation of Scripture was itself governed by the Teaching Apostolate, and many truths not explicitly contained in Scripture were held simply on the Apostolate’s own authority (cf. Stapleton, XI, c. 3).
2. Protestant objections — that an Oral Deposit cannot be perfectly transmitted, given the imperfection of the human beings who compose the Apostolate — simply fail to touch the Apostolate as Catholics actually conceive it: as infallible through the assistance of the Holy Ghost. Any real force such objections carry could equally be turned against the transmission of Scripture itself. Even from a merely human standpoint, the very constitution and organization of the Apostolate offer an almost perfect guarantee for the purity of the doctrine transmitted — the cohesion of its different members, their fidelity to and respect for apostolic tradition, their constant mutual watchfulness, and the daily application of most of these truths in private practice and public worship, are all admirably suited to preserve truth and prevent error (cf. Franzelin, De Traditione, th. ix; Kuhn, Dogmatik, Introd., § 5). The very fact that a doctrine is held universally throughout the Church is itself sufficient proof of its apostolic origin and faithful transmission, as Tertullian argues forcefully: “granted that all [the churches] have erred… that the Holy Ghost hath looked down upon none of them to lead them into the truth, although it was for this very purpose that he was sent by Christ, and asked of the Father, that he might be a Teacher of truth; granted that God’s steward, the Vicar of Christ, hath neglected his duty… is it likely that so many, and such great, churches should have gone astray into one and the same faith? There is never one single result among many independent chances — the error of the churches, had it occurred, would have taken as many different directions as there were churches to err. Whatever is found to be one and the same among many persons, independently arrived at, is not an error but a tradition” (De Praescriptione, 28).¹

II. Oral Tradition could, absolutely speaking, have been the sole Source of Faith, since it could stand on its own even without any Written Deposit at all, whereas, as already shown, the inspiration and interpretation of Scripture cannot themselves be known without the aid of Tradition. Nevertheless Holy Scripture has a value entirely its own, and is, in a certain sense, even necessary: it contains not only the Word but the very language of God, and gives details, developments, and illustrations to a degree Tradition alone cannot match — it is, in effect, a kind of text-book of Tradition, enabling the faithful to acquire a vivid knowledge of revealed truth. There is, indeed, no revealed doctrine that lacks at least some foundation in the Bible, and the most important truths are stated there explicitly. On the whole, we may say that Oral Tradition is the living and authentic commentary on the written document — yet not a mere commentary, but something self-subsistent in its own right, confirming, illustrating, completing, and giving life to the text.

III. The Fathers and the Schoolmen often insist on the completeness and sufficiency of Holy Scripture, but always in the sense just explained. The Bible clearly teaches the doctrine of the Teaching Apostolate, and this teaching implicitly contains the whole of Revelation within it; in that sense, we may fairly say that the Bible itself is complete and sufficient. Sometimes, however, the Fathers speak of Scripture’s completeness only with regard to certain specific points of doctrine. In the well-known passage of St. Vincent of Lérins where he writes that “the canon of the Scriptures is perfect, and of itself enough and more than enough for everything” (Commonitorium, c. 2), the Saint is, in fact, stating an objection he goes on to answer, in defence of the necessity of Tradition; and Tertullian’s own phrase, “I worship the fulness of Scripture,” refers there specifically to the doctrine of creation (cf. Franzelin, De Traditione, th. xix). Certain other patristic texts that might, at first glance, seem to support a Protestant reading in fact refer to matters of discipline rather than of dogma.

There are, further, many regulations handed down with apostolic authority but not, strictly, as revealed truths from God — these are called Merely Apostolic Traditions, as distinct from properly Divino-Apostolic Traditions. This distinction, though clear enough in itself, is not always easy to apply outside matters strictly dogmatic or strictly moral. In other matters — ecclesiastical institutions and discipline, for instance — various criteria help guide us: (1) the distinct testimony of the Teaching Apostolate, or of ecclesiastical documents, that some institution is of divine origin (the validity of baptism conferred by heretics, for example); or (2) the nature of the institution itself (the essential, as opposed to the merely ceremonial, parts of the sacraments, for instance). Where neither criterion applies, and the Church’s own practice does not settle the point, it remains an open question whether a given institution is of divine right and belongs to the Deposit of Faith; in any case, we remain bound to respect such traditions, no less than those that are merely ecclesiastical. Hence the Creed of Pius IV states: “I most steadfastly admit and embrace Apostolical and Ecclesiastical Traditions and all other observances and institutions of the said Church… I also receive and admit the received and approved ceremonies of the Catholic Church used in the solemn administration of all the Sacraments.”