De locis theologicis

WHERE THE ARGUMENTS OF THOSE WHO ATTACKED THE APOSTOLIC TRADITIONS ARE RECORDED

Very well. We have already established in the first place the authority of the Divine Scriptures. Let us now proceed to the second matter and explain by what way and reasoning the force and authority of the apostolic traditions should be understood. The Lutherans consider this point too weak to provide arguments by which the dogmas of faith can be confirmed. For they think it impossible to prove that the Church’s traditions descend from Christ and the apostles. They are not so foolish as to keep weakening Christ’s words once it is clear that they are Christ’s, on the ground that they were not written by the Evangelists. But since they think that only those who heard Christ and the apostles know what Christ and the apostles said, they conclude that among us not even one dogma can now be proved by tradition; rather, all controversies of faith and religion must be settled by testimonies of Sacred Scripture, and nothing may be decided except what is expressed in Sacred Scripture. Erasmus too, often elsewhere and also in the dedicatory letter to his edition of Hilary’s works, asserts that true theological learning consists precisely in defining nothing beyond what is handed down in the Sacred Books; all else, he says, are questions to be deferred until that time when, with the mirror set aside, we shall see God face to face. Yet these people were neither the first nor the only ones to try to bring this pestilence to this point. Wycliffe had tried the same earlier, as Thomas Waldensis writes lib. Doctr. fid. antiq. 2, cap. 19; heretics in earlier centuries had tried it too, as Bernard mentions in homil. 66 in Cant.. Augustine also attributes this heresy to the Arians in disputatione contra Maximinum, as Thomas Waldensis reports lib. 2 De Sacramentis. Certainly, the Arians who assembled at the Synod of Seleucia plainly testified that in a question of faith they would receive absolutely nothing besides the Divine Scriptures, as Epiphanius reports Haeres. 73; he too attributes this error to the Arians Haeres. 75. Basil says Eunomius held the same error. Tertullian lib. De praescript. haeret. and Irenaeus 3 lib. Adversus haereses, cap. 2, add Valentinus and Marcion to this group. Basil of Ancyra, in the confession he presented to the Seventh Synod, says in anathema 7 that this view was held in common not only by the Iconoclasts but by Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, and Dioscorus as well. Although this error was common to almost all heretics, the Lutherans have nevertheless adopted it as if it were their own, and have tried with all their might to establish that nothing besides the Sacred Scriptures has apostolic authority.

First argument. “That tradition handed down from one person to another,” they say, “is untrustworthy and uncertain, because the one who receives it either does not listen carefully enough, or sometimes forgets it through illness, age, or the weakness of human nature, or dies before passing on what he received. Things passed from ear to ear either grow day by day or certainly do not remain the same, but are altered as they pass from one ear to another. Indeed, they perish unless preserved in written records. How little of Pythagoras’s teaching remains? Is anything left of the Druids? They relied on traditions, of course, and committed nothing to writing to preserve it in memory forever. Therefore, whatever the Lord Christ saw to be necessary for the salvation of the faithful, and wished to be certain and lasting in the Church, he either commanded or suggested should be consecrated in writing.” Second argument. Augustine also testifies that the Lord both did and said many things that were not written down, but that those things were chosen for writing which would suffice for the salvation of believers. Augustine also taught that when a matter of the greatest obscurity is debated, without the aid of certain and clear proofs from the Divine Scriptures, human presumption ought to restrain itself and do nothing by leaning either way. He then says: “I believe that the authority of the divine utterances would be clearest in this matter too, if a person could not be ignorant of it without losing the salvation that has been promised.” Therefore, nothing is necessary to be believed beyond Sacred Scripture. Third argument. Paul also teaches that Scripture is sufficient for the man of God to be perfect, equipped for every good work. If, then, everything sufficient to equip the faithful for every good work was written down, why are these unwritten traditions, supposedly necessary for forming morals, invented? Fourth and fifth arguments. Moreover, we are not commanded to believe whatever the priests teach us, but what they teach in accordance with the law of the Lord. If, then, they teach anything beyond the law, there is no need to believe them. For since seducers often come out of the true Churches themselves, as the author of the Imperfect Work aptly said, we should not believe even teachers who put forward any Church tradition whatsoever unless they say what agrees with the truth of Scripture. Papias, for example, inserted his thousand years after the resurrection as though it had been handed down by the apostles, and moved Irenaeus and many other men of the Church not so much by the truth of his argument as by the authority of apostolic tradition. Irenaeus himself also teaches, by the tradition of John the Evangelist and the other apostles, that the Lord Christ was forty years old on the day he died. This is so far from the truth that nothing could be more contrary to it. Sixth, seventh, and eighth arguments. Thus Theophilus of Alexandria wrote that it is the work of a demonic spirit to consider anything divine beyond the authority of the Scriptures. Jerome condemned doctrines that are put forward from apostolic tradition without the authority and testimonies of Scripture. Again, he says: “Without the authority of the Scriptures, loquacity has no credibility”; and again: “The opinion of those who, on the basis of an old historical tradition, held that that Zechariah who was killed between the Temple and the altar was the father of John the Baptist is refuted for this sole reason: it has no authority from Scripture. Hence it can be dismissed as easily as it is proved.” Origen too says: “We must call the Holy Scriptures as witnesses. For our opinions and expositions have no credibility without these witnesses.” Ninth argument. This is confirmed especially by the speech that Theodoret reports Constantine used at the Council of Nicaea. “In disputes about divine matters,” he says, “the teaching of the Holy Spirit is prescribed. For the Evangelical and Apostolic books”

together with the oracles of the ancient prophets, fully show us the mind of God. Therefore, let us take explanations of questions from the words of the Divine Spirit.” Calvin says no one then contradicted this speech. If it is true that, in obscure questions of faith, traditions of the Evangelists, apostles, and prophets are to be held alongside Sacred Scripture, that silence was not free of bad faith. Since Theodoret writes that the bishops gladly embraced what the emperor said, it is clear that this doctrine of tradition was new and altogether unknown in those centuries. These traditions of the elders, then, are of little force in proving the dogmas of faith; indeed, since they are human and not divine, we should not esteem them highly, lest the same charge that was made against the Pharisees be brought against us: “In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” Tenth argument. Moreover, has it not always been characteristic of heretics to instruct their disciples in mysteries and traditions? This is foreign to Christ’s teaching, since he spoke openly to the world and said nothing in secret. And if he said anything in the darkness, he certainly ordered the apostles to say it themselves in the light, and what they heard in the ear to preach upon the housetops. We Christians, then, do not have secret traditions of mysteries. Eleventh and twelfth arguments. If we defend our faith and religion by the traditions of the ancients, pagans, Jews, and Muslims do the same. They retain their sects for this very reason in particular: just as we cling to the institutions of our forebears, so do they, and they defend these by the possession of a very long time, undertaking what they consider a just war on their behalf. Our teaching is not Pythagorean, so that we follow traditions as though they were footprints; the doctrine of Christ has been handed down in writing, and in every question of faith and religion we must embrace those writings. These are the arguments the Lutherans put forward.