The clearest example of
a sacred Tradition that both Catholics
and Protestants accept is the canon of Scripture. The word canon comes from a Greek word that means “rule,” and refers to the Church’s
official
list of inspired writings. You can find this list
in the table of contents of every Catholic or Protestant Bible.The
canon of Scripture was first declared
in Rome in A.D. 382and was later defined at two Catholic councils in North Africa(Hippo
in A.D.
393 and Carthage in A.D. 397).
However, if you are a Christian who denies
the authority of the Catholic Church, then
by what authority can you say
Christians must accept the canon of Scripture found in today’s
Bibles?
Some say it’s just obvious the books of the Bible all belong
there and we don’t
need any Church to prove they do,
but is it really
so obvious? Paul’s
letter to Philemon doesn’t teach any specific doctrine,
and the third letter of John doesn’t even mention the name of Jesus
Christ. Conversely, other writings that were popular in the early Church, like
the Didache or the letter of Clement,are
not in the canon of Scripture.
Others say“the church”
(with a lowercase “c”) determined the canon,
but we aren’t obligated to follow what any church might
teach today. But if that
group of early Christians did not have Christ’s
authority, then we have no reason to continue following their doctrinal decisions, including their decisions about the
canon. The Protestant theologian R.C.
Sproul famously suggested that the best we can say is that the canon of
Scripture is “a fallible list of infallible books.”This means any
Christian who feels moved by the Holy Spirit could claim the table of contents
in the Bible needs to be revised, or even
that some portions of
the Bible should be removed.
In fact, five
hundred years ago Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers did just that. Luther called the letter of James “an
epistle of straw” because it contradicted his theology,so he
moved it to the back of the Bible. Even though Luther and the other Reformers kept the letter of James,
they removed books,called
the deuterocanonicals,
from the Old Testament.
These books, like Sirach, Tobit, and Maccabees (among others), were part of the Bible Jesus used
and were considered inspired Scripture in the early Church. One reason the
Reformers rejected books was because they teach Catholic doctrines like the
existence of purgatory and the
need to pray for the dead.
Scripture, Tradition, and the Church
Catholics agree we should not believe anything that
contradicts God’s word, in either its written form (the Bible) or its oral form (Tradition).
If an alleged tradition
contradicts Scripture, then the tradition must be of human—small“t”—rather
than divine—capital“T”—origin.
But
if a document that claims to be Scripture (such as a forged or heretical gospel)
contradicts Sacred Tradition, then it too
must be of human origin. God speaks through the written word, but as we’ve
seen, only through Scared Tradition can we know which writings are
the word
of
God and which ones are
not.
Sacred Tradition also protects the Church from false
interpretations
of the Bible. My Protestant friends would sometimes
debate other religious
people who denied basic Christian
doctrines like the deity of Christ.They’d
point out Bible
passages that they say proved
Jesus is God, only to hear
the other person say, “Yes,
but that’s not how I
interpret
those
passages.”I
thought it was ironic when one of my Protestant friends said, “But
my
interpretation of these passages is the same one
Christians have held for two
thousand years!”
This was a perfect example of how God’s
word speaks in Scripture through
the
written word (or what the Bible says),
but also through oral Tradition (or
teachings about what the Bible means).
But
whose tradition should we look to for guidance on
interpreting the Bible?
My Protestant friends couldn’t even
agree among
themselves on what the
Bible taught concerning
issues like whether babies should be baptized or if your
salvation can be lost. It’s
no wonder that in his second
letter St. Peter taught,
“no
prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s
own interpretation” (2
Pet. 1:20).
St. Vincent of Lerins
made this point in the fifth
century when he noticed that heretics could cite Scripture just as well as the
faithful. This meant that another authority was necessary to settle
disputes about what Christians should believe.
This
authority could be none other than the Church Christ founded, or,
as Vincent
wrote, “The
rule
for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should
be framed in accordance with the standard of ecclesiastical and Catholic
interpretation.”
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