Tractatus de divina traditione et Scriptura

The manifold notion of Tradition is explained.

« Tradition can be considered either in the objective sense or in the active sense, or at once in both senses taken together. Since sacred Tradition in the objective sense, taken in its wider acceptation, can be called the doctrine or institution pertaining to religion which has been handed down by the forefathers to be guarded by the Church, one must distinguish, on the ground of origin, divine Tradition from Tradition that is simply apostolic and ecclesiastical, to each of which belongs its own authority and firmness, though disparate. Nor is there wanting a sure norm by which divine Tradition is discerned from that of a lower order. »

I. This thesis scarcely needs anything but the declaration of its concepts. In the objective sense Tradition is the very thing that has been handed down, doctrine or an institution transmitted by the forefathers: « the deposit you have received, not what you have devised, a thing brought to you, not put forth by you, » as St Vincent of Lérins says, Commonit. n. 27. But since the manner in which doctrine has been preserved and propagated down to us can be various, it is not of itself defined by the name of Tradition in this objective signification, whence the Fathers sometimes use epithets for some declaration of the manner, and call Tradition written (doctrine preserved for us in the sacred Scriptures) and unwritten. Thus Clement of Alexandria calls the deeper interpretation or understanding of the doctrine of the Scriptures received from the forefathers the unwritten Tradition of the written Tradition (ἡ τῆς ἐγγράφου ἄγραφος παραδοσις) Strom. VI. p. 679. ed. Paris 1641.

The act itself, or rather the whole series and complex of acts and means by which doctrine, whether theoretical or practical, has been propagated and handed down to us, is called Tradition in the active signification. In this sense Tertullian (de coron. c. 4.) says: « Tradition the author, custom the confirmer, faith the observer. »

But it is easily seen that active Tradition includes the object handed down, and conversely that the latter cannot have been preserved to us except with and through the former. If Tradition is taken more fully, therefore, it must always be considered in the complex, the object namely with the manner of Tradition, as matter with its form, because otherwise its preservation, integrity, force and authority cannot rightly be explained and understood, since all these depend on the manner of Tradition or on active Tradition, as will appear in the progress of the disputation. Thus the Tridentine Fathers (sess. IV.) considered the Traditions, i.e. the object handed down, together with the origin and manner of the Traditions, or with active Tradition; and the authority of those Traditions is vindicated from the manner of Tradition most briefly but most effectively, when the synod professes that revealed doctrine and discipline are contained (and it defines this) also in unwritten « Traditions, which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or handed down from the Apostles themselves at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, have come down even to us as it were by hand; » and that it receives and venerates « the Traditions themselves, pertaining both to faith and to morals, as dictated either by word of mouth from Christ or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in continuous succession in the Catholic Church, with equal affection of piety and reverence (as the sacred books). »

II. The distinctions indicated in the second part of the thesis must also be recalled, because, although a diverse grade of authority answers to the diverse origin of divine, simply apostolic, and ecclesiastical Tradition, the Protestants are wont to disguise this doctrine of the Catholic Church, evident enough of itself, and to accuse Catholics as though they attributed to the word of men an authority equal to that of the word of God, not only because the Protestants themselves take Traditions that are truly divine as though human, but also because they confound Traditions that are merely ecclesiastical with those that are divine, and then calumniously charge us with proposing all of them promiscuously to be believed with equal faith.

1°. Divine Traditions are constituted by doctrines, precepts, institutions which have been immediately revealed and ordained by God Himself, although in their promulgation there intervened the ministry of men discharging the embassy of God who reveals. In particular, as regards the New Testament, God is the author of the divine Traditions in such a way that the first visible promulgator was either God Himself, Christ Jesus, or the first visible promulgators were the Apostles, with the Holy Spirit revealing and dictating. From this difference of the first visible promulgator is drawn no diversity of authority, but an accidental and historical distinction of divine Tradition into dominical Tradition and divine-apostolic Tradition. In this distinction it is presupposed as a foundation that the whole divine revelation of the N. T. was completed, not by Christ Himself visibly abiding on earth, but only by the Holy Spirit, not only by bringing to mind all things whatsoever Christ had said, but also by teaching all (revealed) truth which the Apostles could not yet bear before, and by announcing the things that are to come, Io. XIV. 26; XVI. 12. 13. Whence the Council of Trent also, in the words cited a little above from sess. IV., expressly indicated this distinction, where it names unwritten « Traditiones which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or handed down as it were by hand from the Apostles themselves at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, have come down even to us; » and again, « Traditiones dictated either by word of mouth from Christ or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in continuous succession in the Catholic Church. » Vide Stapleton Controvers. l. XII. c. 9.

2°. To make clear the further distinction between divine Tradition (in particular the divine-apostolic) and Tradition that is simply apostolic, one must keep before one's eyes the twofold office of the Apostles. For the Apostles were both promulgators of the divine doctrine and divine institutions which they had received as revealed from Christ or from the Holy Spirit, and rulers and pastors of the Churches, who by the pastoral authority received from Christ and proper to themselves could regulate the discipline of the Churches and enact laws which they judged serviceable to the proposed end of the sanctification and salvation of the faithful. Whatever, therefore, pertains to religious doctrine, by the very fact that it is shown to have been handed down by the Apostles, is thereby established to have been divinely revealed. Hence it was always held in the Church that to inquire into the apostolicity of a doctrine and into its divine revelation was altogether one and the same thing. On the other hand, among the precepts and institutions that proceed from the Apostles, some are divine, of which they were only the promulgators, while others can be and are apostolic in such a way that the Apostles themselves, by their own pastoral power, were not only promulgators but legislators. Cf. 1. Cor. VII. 11. 12.

As regards the doctrine and institutions of divine Tradition, the apostolic power has the right and the duty of teaching and declaring them; but the precepts and institutions of Tradition that is simply apostolic are subject to the apostolic power perpetuated in the successors of Peter, so that this apostolic power extends itself not only, as in a law of a superior, to declaration, but also, as in its own law, to modification, dispensation and, should the circumstances of things require it, to abrogation.

Those former things, belonging to divine Tradition, cannot be diverse in diverse Churches, but hold necessarily the same for all; in the latter things, belonging to merely apostolic Tradition, diversity is not repugnant. A shining example can be the diverse discipline of the first centuries in the observance of the paschal season, when both the Churches of the West appealed to apostolic Tradition for their own custom, and the Churches of Asia for a diverse custom; and in this diversity they long persisted without breaking the peace: « the diversity of the fast (joined with the diversity of the paschal celebration) commends the agreement of the faith, » wrote St Irenaeus to Pope Victor. Vide Euseb. H. E. l. V. cc. 23. 24. But against the doctrine and practice of the Quartodecimans of the other sort, who namely by an Ebionite error contended that both the season and the Jewish rite of the celebration must be observed even by Christians from the precept of the Mosaic Law, appeal had to be made no longer to simply apostolic Tradition of discipline alone, but to divine-apostolic Tradition of doctrine, from which it is established that the legal and typical rites, after their fulfilment through Christ the antitype, are now dead and, once the Gospel is sufficiently propagated, even deadly. More examples of merely apostolic Tradition by law may be seen in Canus (de Locis l. III. c. 5.), who however speaks somewhat confusedly; more distinct are those in Petavius (de Ecclesiast. Hierarch. l. I. c. 1.).

3°. To ecclesiastical tradition belong institutions lawfully handed down by the Church after apostolic times. This can be the Tradition of particular Churches, or it can be universal. From the character of universality it is established that its origin, or at least its confirmation, if it is not from the Apostles, is from the supreme ecclesiastical authority which extends to the universal Church. « But as to those things which we keep, not as written but as handed down, which indeed are observed throughout the whole world, it is given to be understood that they are retained as commended and ordained either by the Apostles themselves or by plenary Councils, whose authority in the Church is most salutary, » St Aug. ad Ianuar. ep. 54. (al. 118.) n. 1. For although the lack of universality is not a decisive argument for denying the origin of a Tradition either from the Apostles or from the supreme ecclesiastical authority, universality is nevertheless a certain argument for asserting one or the other: ecclesiastical indeed, if it is established, whether from the nature of the institution in question or from history, that such a Tradition arose after apostolic times; apostolic, however, if as far back as Christian memory reaches it is found always to have been observed, and no later origin can be demonstrated or reasonably gathered. Which is the well-known rule handed down by St Augustine: « what the universal Church holds, not as instituted by Councils but as always retained, is most rightly believed to have been handed down by no other than apostolic authority, » de Baptism. l. IV. c. 24.

Although, further, of this threefold order of Traditions only the divine ones are immediately and in themselves the revealed word of God, and therefore the material object of divine faith, nevertheless the merely apostolic and ecclesiastical Traditions have for their foundation the supernatural power and authority which is itself revealed and to be believed with divine faith. Lege Stapleton Controv. l. VIII. c. 16. 17. Just as one who denied assent to dogmatic facts, in themselves nowise revealed yet defined by the Church, would thereby deny the revealed infallibility of the Church, so one who, e.g., rejected the sacred ceremonies in the administration of the sacraments and the celebration of the sacrifice, the signing of the forehead with the cross, the use of holy water, and other Traditions partly apostolic and partly ecclesiastical, would thereby deny the revealed apostolic and ecclesiastical authority and power, which, from the assistance of the Holy Spirit, in these things pertaining to Christian morals and religious worship and intimately bound up with revealed faith, must be believed to be altogether infallible; hence one who denied that rites of this sort are piously and holily observed and to be observed would violate divine faith itself. Rightly, then, does St Basil (de Sp. Sto. c. 27. n. 66.), speaking of unwritten Traditions and observances, among which he enumerates many that are merely apostolic or ecclesiastical, say that if we reject these, « unwittingly we wound the Gospel in its chiefest points; nay rather, we reduce the preaching to a bare name. » Hence in the very profession of the Catholic faith it is pledged: « I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical Traditions and the remaining observances and constitutions of the same Church... I likewise receive and admit the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church in... the solemn administration of all the sacraments. » This is also the reason why the Fathers sometimes call merely apostolic or ecclesiastical Traditions divine Traditions. Thus Cyprian, ep. 68. (to the Clergy and people in Spain, ed. Baluz. p. 119.), says that the form of the election of a Bishop by the neighbouring Bishops of the same province with the people present — a form which most certainly was derived from ecclesiastical Tradition only, or at most from merely apostolic Tradition — says, I say, that it is « of divine Tradition, and apostolic observance. » On these distinctions of Tradition there may also be seen Ioannes Ant. Bianchi (Della Potestà della Chiesa T. III. l. I. c. 4. §. 10.).

III. From what has been said the rules can also be understood by which divine Tradition is distinguished from that which is either merely apostolic or ecclesiastical. First, if it is a question of religious doctrine or of such an institution as can have no author but God, such as the efficacious signs of grace or sacraments of the N. T., there can be no doubt whether it is to be referred to divine Tradition or to Tradition of a lower order; for it is either divinely handed down or not handed down at all. Thus all Catholics now believe the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin to be of divine Tradition; but before it was certain of this Tradition through the definition of the Supreme Pontiff, all the theologians and faithful who asserted this doctrine already understood that it was to be asserted from no other than divine Tradition; others, on the contrary, doubted not what manner of Tradition it was, whether divine or merely apostolic or ecclesiastical, but thought that there was none, or at least that it was not sufficiently established. Likewise all hold that to deny that the dignity of a sacrament in the minor Orders has simply been handed down is the same as to deny that it has been divinely handed down; since, if such a Tradition existed, it could be none but divine, because God alone can be the author of the sacraments.

In precepts and institutions so constituted, however, that from their intrinsic nature they are not necessarily understood to be of divine origin, but may also have proceeded from merely apostolic or ecclesiastical authority, the ecclesiastical Traditions are indeed distinguished from the apostolic ones without difficulty by the rule described above from St Augustine. But when, in institutions of this kind — about which we now inquire — it is established that the origin is apostolic, and not only ecclesiastical of a later date, then, for discerning divine-apostolic from merely apostolic Tradition, there is forthcoming as a rule well-nigh the sole one, and a most safe one: the sense, the practice and (where it exists) the judgment of the Church herself. Vide Bellarm. De verbo Dei l. IV. c. 9; Wireburgens. De Tradition. art. 3.