De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

That tradition, which is the rule of faith, is prior to Scripture in the order of time, of knowledge, and of comprehension; and differs from it especially in this, that it exists not only as a remote rule but also as a proximate and immediate one, according to the twofold consideration under which it can be taken.

1. — In the first place, it is no task at all to show that tradition precedes Scripture in the chronological order. This is already to be observed in the Old Testament. For Scriptures did not exist from the beginning of the world, and yet from the beginning there was a rule to which the holy men of God conformed their faith. « From Adam to Moses there was some Church of God in the world, and men worshipped God by faith, hope, and charity, and by external rites, as is clear from Genesis, where Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Melchisedech, and other just men are introduced. But there was no divine Scripture before Moses, as is clear..., because in Genesis there is no mention of written doctrine, but only of tradition: I know, says God, Gen. XVIII-19, that Abraham will command his sons, and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord. Therefore for two thousand years religion was preserved by tradition alone.... Then from Moses to Christ, among the people of God itself, although Scriptures existed, the Jews nevertheless used tradition more than Scripture, as is clear from Exod. XVIII-8, Deuter. XXXII-7, Iudic. VI-13, Psalm. XLIII-1, LXXVII-5, Eccli. VIII-II. »¹ In this is also the solution of the common difficulty, why in the Mosaic books so few things occur concerning the future life, and concerning the rewards or punishments established therein, and, speaking universally, concerning many truths that are held as the foundations of the moral and religious life. For the solution is largely drawn from this, that the Scripture coming afterwards presupposed the antecedent rule of tradition, and left it in its full strength, and always remaining in full vigour. But perhaps you think it happened otherwise in the economy of the New Testament? Nay rather, in the New Testament the same precedence of tradition is demonstrated by even more luminous facts, since all the monuments of Christian origins show that the churches were first founded by the apostles without Scriptures, and were already living their own life. Matthew had not yet written, and already the Church throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria was being built up, walking in the fear of the Lord (Act. IX-31). Mark had not yet written, and already there was the Roman church, whose faith was proclaimed in the whole world (Rom. I-8). John had not yet written, and already he had founded and was governing all the churches of Asia, as Jerome writes in l. de script. eccles. All the apostolic epistles were directed to churches already existing, as is more than sufficiently clear from their very inscriptions. Finally, Paul did not appeal to any written instrument when he said to the Galatians, whom certain men were trying to draw away from the right way of the gospel: If anyone has preached to you a gospel besides that which you have received, let him be anathema (Gal. I-9). And to the Corinthians: But I praise you, brethren, that in all things you are mindful of me, and that as I delivered to you, you keep my precepts. And again: For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, etc. It must therefore be said that from the beginning there pre-existed the rule of tradition alone, and that the subsequent addition of Scripture could not be that which would overturn the fundamental means once for all established in the Church for preserving and propagating the revealed doctrine, but that it was rather subordinated to it and even more served it.

2. — But even if the rule of Tradition did not precede the rule of Scripture in the order of time, it always does so in the order of knowledge. And indeed, tradition becomes known as the rule of faith by the very arguments by which the credibility of the Christian religion, or of the Catholic Church, becomes known. For from the moment you have demonstrated that the Catholic Church is revealed as instituted by God, by one and the same argument you have demonstrated that that organ of perpetual and ever-hearing magisterium was placed by God which is on the base and foundation of the same Church². You have demonstrated that the preaching of this magisterium was divinely ordered, so that the faith of believers must conform to it forever. You have therefore demonstrated tradition in the character of an obligatory rule of faith, since ecclesiastical preaching and the authentic tradition of which we now speak are really the same, as is clear and open from what has been said thus far. Nor does it matter what method or what process you employed in the demonstration of the true religion: whether you took the principle of arguing from the divine notes that are in the Church and inseparably adhere to it, or rather from the historical monuments of the mission, advent, and work of Jesus Christ, according to the twofold norm indicated in the Council of the Vatican, Sess. 3, cap. 3³. For always, and in the same way, the rule of Tradition is and remains demonstrated by that very fact.

But it is not so with sacred Scripture. For once that initial demonstration which is set out in the preambles of faith, or in what they call fundamental theology, has been completed, it is still, per se loquendo, altogether unknown to you whether there are or are not Scriptures inspired by God. For even if none such existed, the principles of the demonstration would be the same and unchanged; and the adequate conclusion to which those principles lead would also be the same. But if perhaps in the course of the demonstration, while treating the historical monument of the revelation that Jesus Christ brought us, you came upon those testimonies of Christ by which the faith of the Jews concerning the Law and the Prophets is confirmed, then indeed concomitantly, and as it were per accidens, there could have come to you a knowledge of those Scriptures of the Old Testament which are called protocanonical; but concerning the Scriptures that are proper to the New Testament, you still know nothing, and nothing besides. And if concerning these too, nay concerning these especially, you seek suitable testimony outside the authentic Tradition, there is nowhere to find it except in the apostolic writings. But apart from the fact that the knowledge of the authority of the apostles as organs for promulgating revelation presupposes the already known rule of Tradition which wholly runs down from them: what, I ask, will you find in the apostolic writings concerning the inspired Scriptures of the New Testament, formally as inspired? Nothing at all beyond that well-known passage of the second [epistle] of Peter, III-16, concerning the epistles of Paul. But the epistles of Paul are not all, nay not even the principal, Scriptures of the New Testament. Moreover, which epistles of Paul had already been published at the time when Peter was writing, someone might perhaps say it is uncertain. Finally, this very second epistle of Peter is rejected as supposititious and not genuine by those precisely who profess to depend solely on written documents. In every way, therefore, the biblical system of the Protestants appears to hang in the air, lacking base and foundation. Nor is it badly compared to the system of the world in the cosmogony of the Indians, who assert that the universe is like an elephant placing its feet on four tortoises, without saying what that is on which the tortoises themselves rest. But we, from the organ of tradition to which the office of teaching all truth was committed by Christ, rightly and deservedly receive the revealed truth of the whole canon of inspired Scripture, so that thus, through Tradition, Scripture becomes known, and is by that very fact posterior in the order of knowledge.

3. — Hence it is further established that Tradition precedes Scripture also in the order of comprehension, insofar as, namely, the revealed doctrine was integrally deposited, in a true sense, not in Scripture but in Tradition. — I say, not in Scripture: first, because, as was just premised, not even the truth about Scripture itself, that is, about the catalogue of books that are to be received as sacred, is contained in it; secondly, because it itself sends us back many times to tradition, as to the source of certain dogmas that are not written, as Bellarmine shows from 1 Cor. XI-2, 2 Thess. II-14, 2 Tim. I-13, 3 Ioan. 13⁴; thirdly and finally, because the mere writing of the books of the New Testament, which we saw above was occasioned by contingent circumstances, is a luminous sign by which God made plain that it was not His counsel that we should have in the sacred books a full and adequate depository of revealed truth. — But on the contrary, you will rightly and deservedly recognize such a depository as rich in Tradition. For it is Tradition that was placed by Christ as the primitive, principal, and primary instrument of doctrine. It is to Tradition that Scripture was consequently entrusted; entrusted, I say, not only in order to make known what is to be accepted as truly inspired by God as Scripture, but also in order to make known the sense which, without the key of understanding, either remains closed or is uncertain⁵. Whence it follows that in the deposited tradition there is also contained, in a true sense, the written revelation; and if also the written revelation, then the whole revelation entire.

Thus, therefore, tradition is the rule of faith prior in every way: in time, in knowledge, in comprehension. Last you will ask: is it a remote rule, or a proximate one? I say: both remote and proximate, under different considerations.

4. — And indeed, that unceasing preaching of the Church, persevering through the course of the ages even to us, is taken in two ways. First, in the intervening links of antecedent ages on which it depends, and through which it is always continued with the preaching of those who were the first and immediate promulgators of the revealed word.

Then, however, according to itself absolutely, in any separately designated difference of time. In the first way, therefore, ecclesiastical preaching is tradition under the precise aspect of the transmission of the revealed doctrine as it were from hand to hand from the apostles, or tradition reduplicatively as flowing from the source through an unbroken channel from ages past, and under this consideration it is no more than the remote rule of the Catholic faith. For thus it becomes known only through the investigation of the monuments of past ages, that is, through the study of works left from antiquity, which lead to the knowledge of the sentence, profession, and faith that once existed concerning Christian doctrine, considered either as a whole or in individual chapters. And if it is only by mediation of investigation and of a process proper to theological science that one knows that what it contains are dogmas, then it neither has nor can have the character of a proximate rule. Wherefore one must come to ecclesiastical preaching, no longer considered in the coherence of the continuous succession from the first origin of revelation, but absolutely in its exercise for this designated time now. Under this respect, it is indeed always tradition, insofar as it always hands down what it has received explicitly or implicitly from the fathers, but it is now tradition under the precise formality of the authoritative magisterium clearly proposing and explaining what must be believed according to the revelation running down from the apostles. And thus also, it is the proximate and immediate rule of faith, which is adequately convertible with the infallible and ever-living magisterium of the Catholic Church, formally as it is the magisterium.

But indeed, in whatever way you take tradition, whether as the proximate rule or as the remote, I would have this accurately noted: that its authentic organ was not instituted by Christ to preserve or propose material and inert formulas, but the true sense of revealed truth; and that accordingly, the office of infallibly transmitting, guarding, and proposing the deposit of faith is inseparable from the office of infallibly defining, declaring, and explaining what is contained in it. But now, if tradition is not only conservative but also explicative of the whole word of God, both written and unwritten, then some progress in it through the course of the ages is beyond doubt to be acknowledged: such progress, however, as in no way contradicts the immutability of dogma, and takes away nothing at all from the nature of the deposit, in which it is not lawful to change anything, still less to diminish or to add. And it will now be worthwhile, if we declare this same point somewhat more fully in the conclusion of the present chapter.