Tractatus de divina traditione et Scriptura

On the way in which the agreement of the faithful in the doctrine of faith is a criterion of divine Tradition.

« The consciousness and profession of faith in the whole body of the faithful is always preserved immune from error by the Spirit of truth through the authentic magisterium of apostolic succession. Although, therefore, neither to individuals of the believing people nor to whole peoples belongs the power of teaching authentically, but the duty of learning, nevertheless the « catholic sense » and agreement of the whole Christian people in the dogma of Christian faith must be reckoned one of the criteria of divine Tradition. »

I. In the first part of this proposition two things are said: namely, that the integrity of faith is always preserved unharmed in the body of the faithful by the Holy Spirit, and further that the Holy Spirit accomplishes this not by His immediate operation alone and without visible ministry, but through the authentic magisterium of apostolic succession. This, which by some is called the passive infallibility of the Church¹, is easily understood from the mutual relation between authentic pastors and teachers on the one side and the flocks of the faithful on the other, as it is exhibited, disposed and instituted by Christ Himself, both in the evangelical and apostolic writings and through all subsequent ages in the other documents.

1°. It is proved, then, in the first place by a general but evident argument. When Christ, God and Lord, instituted the authentic magisterium and, with His legates—when He commanded them to baptize and teach all nations and to keep those initiated in the integrity of faith—promised that He would be with them all days even unto the consummation of the world, and that the Spirit of truth would remain with them as they bore witness for ever, the end of this institution was the very conservation of the doctrine and testimony received and the integrity of faith in the faithful; for these charisms were promised and conferred for the utility and necessity of the whole body, 1. Cor. III. 22. coll. Eph. IV. 16. Hence to this perpetual, indefectible, and infallible magisterium there answers, from Christ's very institution, a perpetual « obedience of faith » in believers (th. IV.). Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit always preserves the preaching and testification free from error in the unity of pastors and teachers, so through this very infallible testification of those who teach He always preserves free from error the faith of those who learn, who by obedience of faith remain in agreement and communion with the agreeing pastors: Christ the mind of the Father, the bishops throughout the world (joined by the bond and cement of unity) in the mind of Christ, the faithful in the mind of the bishops (th. VIII. n. I.).

2°. The argument drawn from the end of the charisms in apostolic succession and from the relation of the authority of those who teach to the obedience of faith in those who learn, taken in general, we can consider more distinctly from the very words of Christ and the Apostles. Of the apostolate and the divinely committed office of preaching and teaching, Christ and the Apostles never speak without at the same time regarding the faith and profession of believers corresponding to it as the scope and effect to which it is ordered; just as, conversely, they exhibit this faith and profession in connection with preaching as with its condition and cause (partial, to be sure, ministerial and external; cf. 1. Cor. III. 4-9.). When they regard faith and profession in connection with interior grace as the principal cause, such testimonies do indeed prescind from the exterior grace of preaching, but they do not exclude it, since according to the universal and ordinary economy instituted by Christ invisible interior grace is connected with the visible exterior grace of the hearing of faith. Here there is a divine, as it were, sorites: salutary profession and invocation, faith, the hearing of faith, preaching, the divine mission of the Apostles and their successors, and finally the revealed word of Christ. « The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart; this is the word of faith which we preach.... For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed, or how shall they believe Him whom they have not heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach unless they be sent?... Faith then cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ, » Rom. X. 8-17. Thus the nations are taught to observe all things whatsoever Christ commanded, but only insofar as on the other side there are those sent by Christ to preach and teach, with whom Christ is all days, Matth. XXVIII. Christ prays with a prayer that cannot lack effect that they all be one in the Father and in the Son; but that they be one as believers through the word of the Apostles, Io. XVII. 20. 21. One body and one Spirit, in one hope of the calling; as there is one Lord so there is one faith, one baptism; but for perpetually effecting and preserving this unity, « for the perfecting (καταρτισμὸν) of the saints in articulated order and perfection, for the building up of the body of Christ, that we may now be no more little children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, » for this end, I say, He Himself instituted offices both extraordinary, in the first revelation of the faith, and ordinary, for the conservation and propagation of the faith. « And He gave some apostles... and others pastors and teachers... until we all meet in the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ, » Eph. IV. 4-14. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church; but this Christ effects by building her upon the rock, and insofar as she rests wholly upon the rock and is held together by the rock, Matth. XVI. 18.

There is no need for us to confirm this same operation of the Holy Spirit upon the whole Church through the ministry of apostolic succession from the unanimous doctrine of the very guardians of the deposit from the apostolic age onward, since this demonstration can easily be transferred hither from what was said above. See th. VIII. IX. n. II.

The Spirit of truth, therefore, is present to the whole body of the faithful, « not allowing the Churches to understand otherwise, to believe otherwise than what He Himself had preached through the Apostles; » but this He carries out by a gentle providence through the visible ministry of pastors and teachers. To the pastors regarded in communion and agreement the Spirit of truth is present, leading into all truth as the immediate principle for the conservation of the catholic understanding; and through their ministry, as through an exterior grace—with which unction and interior grace is joined as by far the chief element—the same Spirit of truth is the principle of infallibly forming and preserving the « consciousness of faith » in the flock gathered to its pastors. Hence it is understood that the divine promises by which the charisms and offices proper to pastors are declared, in particular the office and charism of teaching infallibly (cf. th. V.), are referred indeed immediately and as to their subject to the Apostles alone and their successors, but mediately and as to their end they pertain to the utility and fruit of the whole Church.

3°. Hence, moreover, the Holy Spirit, insofar as He is the principle of interior grace and unction for believing the word and keeping the commandment of God proposed by the authentic magisterium, is promised to the faithful no longer according to the diversity of hierarchical offices but indiscriminately, « dividing to every one as He will ».

If, therefore, this interior grace is at times called doctrine, revelation, testimony, such expressions are to be understood not to the exclusion of exterior grace and authentic preaching, but rather as connoting it. So is that passage of 1. Io. II. 20-27 to be understood: « Now there are become many antichrists... they went out from us but they were not of us... But you have the unction from the Holy One and know all things. I have not written to you as to them that know not the truth, but as to them that know it... Let that which you have heard from the beginning abide in you... These things I have written to you concerning them that seduce you. And as for you, let the unction which you have received from Him abide in you, and you have no need that any man teach you; but as His unction teacheth you of all things, and it is truth and it is no lie. And as it hath taught you, abide in Him. » He who teaches is Christ Himself; but He teaches in two ways: namely, through the unction of interior grace, and through the exterior word proposed by those who discharge legation for Christ, among whom is John himself, who to be sure preached the Gospel in order to teach, and made this very epistle in order to teach². Hence in this very passage the Apostle joins the exterior ministry with that interior grace: « let what you heard from the beginning abide in you; » and in the opening of this very epistle: « that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes... we declare and announce to you, » I. 1-5. That is, with exterior preaching presupposed, the faithful have the unction from the Holy One, and are taught and know all things; and these all things are that very thing which they heard from the beginning and in which they are bidden to abide. Hence John indeed wrote both this epistle and the Gospel as to those already knowing the truth (see above, th. VII. n. II. 3io), yet he wrote in order to teach, and as it were in aid of preaching. But the teachers by whom the faithful « have no need » to be taught are those who teach novelties contrary to what they had heard from the beginning; these, therefore, the faithful are bidden to flee and repel, that they may preserve the unction which they received through interior grace together with the exterior preaching of the Apostles. « These things have I written to you concerning them that seduce you. And as for you, let the unction which you have received from Him abide in you, and you have no need that any man teach you. » In one word it can be said: in the unction the apostolic preaching is included; heretical preaching is excluded.

In a way not dissimilar are those prophetic words to be understood: « And I will make... all thy children taught of the Lord »³ Is. LIV. 13, which Christ the Lord Himself, Io. VI. 45., explains of the necessity of interior grace to be joined with exterior preaching, even when the latter proceeds from His own divine mouth. « No man can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draw him... It is written in the prophets: and they shall all be taught of God (διδακτοι θεου); every one that hath heard of the Father and hath learned cometh to Me. » That is, interior grace and theological sanctity is declared as the proper character of the New Testament in comparison with the Mosaic economy, which, insofar as it was peculiar to the one people of Israel, was exterior and ordered to legal justice. Not for that reason, however, is the exterior ministry excluded in the New Testament, nor is revelation promised to individuals immediately from God apart from ministerial causes set before them; just as, conversely, in the exterior economy of the Old Testament interior grace and sanctification was not excluded, but is rather to be understood as presupposed and included⁴.

So too, according to the analogy of faith and of the whole new economy, elsewhere most manifest, must the other oracle of Jeremias be explained. « Behold, the days shall come, saith the Lord, and I will make to the house of Israel and to the house of Juda a new covenant; not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, that I might bring them out of the land of Egypt, the covenant which they made void... But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will give My law in their bowels and I will write it in their heart, and I will be their God and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying: know the Lord; for all shall know Me from the least of them even to the greatest, saith the Lord, » Ierem. XXXI. 31-34. Here there is compared what prevails in the ancient covenant—namely, writing on tables of stone, and the exterior and temporary economy—with what prevails in the New Testament: namely, writing in hearts through grace (preaching through the legates of God not excluded but included)⁵, together with the economy of interior sanctification, never to cease. Thus the last words also—« no man shall teach any more his neighbour... for all shall know Me »—are to be understood by comparison with the Old Testament, and not to be pressed apart from it and absolutely, if they are restricted to this stage in which the Church still « walks by faith and not yet by sight. » But since often in the prophetic Scriptures the same words in a less full sense refer to the beginning not yet perfected, while in the fullest sense they signify the perfect consummation, the closing clauses of the prophecy can, with Augustine, be extended to the Church consummated in beatific vision, to the ἐπίγνωσιν in which all « shall know even as they are known, » 1. Cor. XIII. 12. « Now indeed, says Augustine (on the Spirit and the Letter, n. 37-41), is the time of the New Testament, of which promise was made through the prophet in these words which we have recalled from that prophecy. Why then does each one still say to his fellow citizen and his brother, know the Lord?... Since, then, this preaching is now spread abroad everywhere, how is it the time of the New Testament... unless because He has joined to it the eternal reward of this same New Testament, that is, the most blessed contemplation of God Himself? »

The comparison, then, for the stage of faith in the New Testament has a threefold term: a) knowledge will be more universal in extension and far ampler in intensity; b) teaching will be more interior through grace than exterior: « neither he that planteth is any thing, nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase » (1. Cor. III. 7.); c) this exterior teaching itself will not have a mere man as its first promulgator, and, as instituted by him (though by divine authority), men as its further propagators; but its first visible promulgator will be the God-man, who through the ministry of those discharging legation for Him will continue the preaching all days even unto the consummation of the world. « God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers in the prophets, last of all in these days hath spoken to us in the Son, » Heb. I. 1. « And Moses indeed was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be said; but Christ as the Son in His own house, » Heb. III. 5. Moreover, « what is Apollo, and what is Paul? Ministers of Him in whom you have believed... For we are God's coadjutors (συνηργοί); you are God's husbandry, God's building, » 1. Cor. III. 4. 5. 9. To these there can be added d) a fuller sense: that the very vision of God face to face pertains to the promise and reward of the New Testament.

II. The second part of the thesis follows from the first, now demonstrated. For the agreement of the faithful in some doctrine as a dogma divinely revealed is itself an argument and criterion of revelation and divine Tradition, for the very reason that the Spirit of truth always preserves the whole body of the faithful immune from error adverse to faith, although He accomplishes this through the ministry of those who authentically teach. Moreover, that such agreement cannot contain error in faith is also clear from this: that the whole Christian people cannot believe some doctrine as revealed without its being the catholic sense and understanding of the whole Church—as is both evident of itself and clear from the conjunction of the peoples with the bishops (p. 66.), and from the by far chief office of pastors of providing for the integrity of faith. « For the Church of God, set amidst much chaff and much cockle, tolerates many things; and yet what is against faith or good life she neither approves nor keeps silent nor does, » Aug. ep. 55. n. 35. al. 119. to Ianuarius. Hence the holy Fathers are wont to assume the absurdity of the hypothesis that the whole Christian people should have erred in matters of faith as a most well-known argument for demonstrating the truth of the ancient doctrine and the falsity of the new doctrine. If novelties introduced by heretics and contrary to antiquity are received, « it must be declared (so argues Vincent of Lerins from the absurd) that all the faithful of all ages, all the saints, all the chaste, continent, virgins, all clerics, levites and priests, so many thousands of confessors, so great an army of martyrs, the celebrity and multitude of so many cities and peoples, so many islands, provinces, kings, nations, kingdoms, tribes, at last well-nigh the whole circle of lands incorporated through the catholic faith into Christ the head, for so long a tract of ages have been ignorant, have erred, have blasphemed, have not known what to believe, » Commonit. c. 33. In almost the same words this same argument is turned by Tertullian (Praescript. c. 29), Athanasius (de Synodis n. 4), and Gregory of Nazianzus (ep. 2. to Cledonius, T. II. p. 97.). Hence the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX himself, as the proximate preparation for the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception of the B. V. M., asked among other things of the bishops of the whole world that they indicate « what was the piety and devotion of their faithful toward the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God; » and among other [evidences] of divine tradition the same Most Holy Our Lord numbers the « singular conspiracy of the Catholic bishops and faithful » (in the Bull « Ineffabilis »). Cf. Gregory of Valentia de Fide disp. I. q. 1. P. 7. §. 47; Analys. Fidei l. VIII. c. 9; Bellarmine de Ecclesia l. III. c. 14; Suarez de Fide disp. V. sect. 6.

It is clear of itself that the agreement of the Christian people must be certain and clear, if the argument for Tradition is to obtain its whole force from it. If agreement in a doctrine as in a revealed dogma be doubtful, account can and indeed must be taken of it more or less, yet of itself alone it does not suffice for a certain judgment to be passed. Likewise it is manifest that appeal to such agreement of the Christian people can be made only in those heads which either turn upon the explicit knowledge of the faithful or at least are contained in some public and constant practice and custom; for how could agreement be demonstrated in other, subtler doctrines, which are believed by the multitude of the faithful only implicitly, in the faith of pastors and teachers⁶? But in establishing doctrines which do not escape the catholic and explicit understanding of the multitude of the faithful, appeal was made with great confidence even in controversies against heretics to that agreement and to the strength of custom. So, e.g., Basil (de Spiritu Sancto c. 29.) says of Origen: « he does not in all things hold sound opinions concerning the Holy Spirit, nevertheless even he, fearing the strength of custom, uttered pious words concerning the Holy Spirit. » Augustine proves from the agreement of the multitude, against the Pelagians and their remnants, the effect of the Eucharist (de Peccator. merit. et remiss. l. I. n. 34.); the effect of baptism in infants (serm. 294. n. 14. 17.); original sin (ibid. and contr. Iulian. l. I. n. 31. 32.); the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith and for persevering (de Dono persever. n. 63.). When Julian had complained that against the Pelagian doctrine there was opposed only the « murmur » of the people, Augustine (against Julian, l. c.) showed the weight of this testimony. « And the people itself murmurs against you for this reason, because this is not such a question as can escape even popular knowledge. Rich and poor, high and low... know what in baptism is remitted to each age... As though the assertion of this truth were a small thing, in that upon this most firm and most ancient foundation of the faith the multitude spread through the whole world does not disagree with itself! » See Stapleton l. XI. c. 4.

Corollary. The celebrated saying of St. Hilary (against Auxentius, n. 6. T. II. p. 597.): « holier are the ears of the people than the hearts of the priests, » has only that most holy and most desirable sense: that the people prefer communion and agreement with the priests who remain in the unity and agreement of the Church to the doctrine of priests fallen from unity and the common faith; it would, however, be most absurd if the hearts of the priests were taken without qualification, or if the peoples were constituted judges of the priests. For, in an order altogether inverted, the hearts of the priests—the consciousness of faith and catholic understanding of the pastors who remain in the unity of the Church—are the ministerial cause and organ by which the Spirit of truth forms the holy ears of the people, that is, the catholic mind and understanding of those whose part it is to hear and learn and render the « obedience of faith, » ὑπακοὴν τῆς πίστεως, Rom. I. 5. It can indeed happen that even many bishops, even those of entire provinces, fall away from the faith, and yet the greater part of the faithful flocks, constant in orthodox profession, prefer communion and agreement with the apostolic succession which remains in agreement and communion with the centre of unity, i.e. with the See of Peter; yet it cannot happen that the whole episcopate fail, and that there not remain under the assistance of the Holy Spirit the organ of preserving Tradition, through which, as through the ordinary exterior magisterium, the same Spirit holds together and preserves the communion and faith of the Catholic people. For this to be true, however, it is not necessarily always required that the whole episcopate defend and uphold the orthodox profession against adversaries with signal ardour and zeal; but there can suffice its constancy in the doctrine once handed down, by which very constancy it remains the living directing norm and bond of union for the Catholic people. This alone is what could at most be suggested by the facts of ecclesiastical history, in particular from the history of Arianism gaining ground in the fourth century—not, however, what the anonymous author of the dissertation « on consulting the faithful in matters of Christian doctrine »⁷ thought could be deduced from that history: « that the teaching Church is not at every time the active instrument of the infallibility of the Church. » On the contrary, the exiles of so many Catholic bishops, their constancy against the Arians, the flight of the faithful people from intruded bishops and their communion with the exiles; the report of Sozomen that the people persevered more steadfastly in those cities whose bishops were braver and more constant in the faith (Soz. VI. 21.), the threat of the Antiochene people to expose the frauds of the Arian bishop Leontius to the Western bishops (Theodoret, H. E. II. 24.), and other facts—all of which the anonymous author of the dissertation himself relates—demonstrate that even at that time « the teaching Church was the active instrument of the infallibility of the Church ».