Tractatus de divina traditione et Scriptura

On the Authority of the Holy Fathers, If They Are Regarded Singly.

«The authority of the individual Fathers, regarded by itself, is indeed neither infallible nor peremptory; yet not only piety but also manifest reason persuades that both the theological opinions of individuals be not lightly esteemed, and that they be received in a sense dissonant from the common doctrine of the other Fathers in dogma and in theological matters only with the greatest caution.»

I. What is contained in the first part of the enunciation is evident of itself; for certitude and security that they never err, and the irrefragable authority thence arising, cannot be present from any excellence of knowledge and sanctity, but from the sole charism of the Spirit of truth and His indefectible assistance. This, however, was promised not to individuals, whether bishops or holy doctors, but, as we have long since demonstrated, to those alone who by Christ's institution received the charge of authentically teaching the universal Church, and insofar as they discharge this charge — to the successors of Peter, I say, in whom is the origin and bond of unity and agreement, and to the whole episcopate, if regarded in unity and agreement among themselves and with their centre. Two things, therefore, we shall note: first, that both in the thing itself and in the sayings and (if it be lawful so to speak) in the methodology of certain ancient doctors we carefully distinguish the agreement of the Fathers, insofar as it exhibits the agreement of the infallible Church herself, and then the authority of the individual Fathers; the second note will be concerning the conditions which some theologians require for the authority even of the agreement itself.

1°. Augustine most clearly distinguishes the Fathers regarded privately as individuals and regarded in unity and agreement as witnesses of Tradition. Having cited certain testimonies of Fathers attesting the dogma of original sin, whose agreement with the rest and with the whole Church he had gathered from the circumstances and manner of speaking (cf. th. XIV, n. II), he declares the difference between their private authority and the Tradition of the Church for which they testify. «These things,» he says, «I have mentioned not because I rely upon the opinions of any disputants as upon canonical authority; but that it may appear that from the beginning even to the present time, when this novelty arose, this concerning original sin was guarded with such constancy in the faith of the Church, that it was brought forward as most certain by those who handled the Lord's eloquence, rather to refute other falsehoods, than that it was attempted by anyone to be refuted as false» — Augustine, On the Merits and Remission of Sins, bk. III, n. 14.

That very agreement of the Fathers in a doctrine of faith, therefore, does not infallibly exhibit a true opinion because the individual consentients are in themselves and subjectively infallible; but although individuals can err, from Christ's promise it is infallibly certain that the agreement of all can never be in any error contrary to faith, never was, and by virtue of the promised divine providence could not be — since such a common agreement against the handed-down faith of the Church would already suppose or induce the corruption of the very faith and Tradition of the Church.

Concerning individuals, therefore, or even concerning several Fathers regarded outside agreement, are said and must be understood the things which Augustine sometimes seems to affirm — that he is moved not by the authority but by the reason and proof of the Fathers. For where agreement is present, it is not indeed the authority of individuals that proves, as the authority of the individual inspired writers alone suffices; but in the agreement itself is contained the reason and proof of Tradition, historical and philosophical as well as theological (above, th. VIII–X). Thus, therefore, are those words of Augustine to be understood: «I so read other books besides the Scriptures that, however much they excel in sanctity and doctrine, I do not therefore think a thing true because they so thought; but because they were able to persuade me, either through those canonical authors or by probable reason, that it is not at variance with the truth» — Augustine, ep. 82, n. 3, to Jerome; cf. Against Faustus, bk. XI, ch. 5; ep. 93, n. 35, to Vincent. In the same sense he asks in his own letters for free correctors — not indeed of the doctrine which he hands down in agreement with apostolic succession, but of his private opinions. «In all my letters,» he says, «I desire not only a pious reader but also a free corrector... as I say to him, do not serve my letters as the canonical Scriptures... what you did not hold as certain, unless you have understood it as certain, do not hold firmly; so I say to him, do not correct my letters from your opinion or contention, but from divine reading or unshaken reason» — On the Trinity, bk. III, proem; cf. On the Gift of Perseverance, ch. 21, n. 55. Hence too is understood the legitimate sense of the words of Tertullian (Prescription, ch. 3): «persons are approved by the faith, not faith by persons.» The sense, that is, is the very one expressed by Vincent of Lérins, ch. 23: «it is surely a great thing and necessary to be recalled... that all true Catholics should know that they are to receive doctors together with the Church, not to desert the faith of the Church together with (individual) doctors.» Likewise is understood in what sense that is true which St. Thomas says, I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2: «(theology) uses the authorities of the doctors of the Church as arguing from what is proper, but probably» only, not with necessary conclusion, as it argues from the authorities of Sacred Scripture. Lastly is understood how absurd and contrary to Augustine's own opinion is the proposition of the Jansenists (30th among those condemned by Alexander VIII, 7 Dec. 1690), which ran thus: «where one finds a doctrine clearly founded in Augustine, he can hold it absolutely, without regard to any Bull of the Pontiff.»

2°. This place, where we declare when the authority of the Fathers is not irrefragable, still necessarily demands the explanation of the twofold condition under which that highest degree of authority is wont to be denied them.

a) Some distinguish between the Fathers as they are witnesses of Tradition and as they are doctors; under the former aspect all confess their authority to be ineluctable, under the latter aspect they say it is not so great that it would be a sacrilege to depart with due reverence from their placita. For this distinction to be true, it would have to be made between the Fathers as witnesses of Tradition and authentic doctors regarded in unity and agreement, and the same men considered as private doctors. For the same men who are guardians of the deposit are also divinely instituted doctors, and this twofold charge, though it can perhaps be distinguished, cannot be separated, as we shall demonstrate elsewhere. Under the same condition, therefore, under which the Fathers infallibly guarded Tradition, they also, with the Holy Spirit assisting, infallibly expounded revealed doctrine and declared it according to its legitimate sense; which condition we have often said to be agreement among themselves and with the centre of unity. Where, therefore, the Fathers in discharge of the office of doctors unanimously, constantly and assertively declare the sense of a dogma that had been obscure, expound what had been implicit, define more strictly what seemed ambiguous, the sense of revelation so handed down and expounded by them must be believed no less true and genuine than when in discharge of the office of guardians they handed to posterity what they had received from their forebears already clear and expounded. If, then, the Fathers, insofar as they are doctors, are said to «hand down the mode in which the doctrine of the Church is subjectively conceived by them,» and furthermore in this business their authority is denied to be ineluctable, that cannot be understood of a unanimous and constant mode of conceiving; for this unanimous concept of doctrine is nothing else than the Catholic understanding formed and refined under the infallible assistance and direction of the Holy Spirit (th. XI, n. II). True it is, however, that individuals as private doctors and regarded apart from agreement are not infallible in their mode of conceiving, in the exposition and illustration of revealed doctrine, concerning which enough has been said. Where, therefore, there is question of defining the authority of the Fathers, a simple distinction between the Fathers in agreement and the same men regarded singly seems to us far fitter.

b) The other condition, under which the authority of the Fathers is denied to be irrefragable, I shall set down in the words of Melchior Cano, and with him it is twofold. First indeed he says: «the testimonies of the saints can be referred to the confirming of the dogmas of philosophy.» Of these he lays down: «the authority of the saints, whether of few or of many, when adduced for those faculties which are contained in the natural light, does not furnish certain arguments, but avails only so far as reason consonant with nature shall have persuaded.» To these he then adds certain other doctrines of ecclesiastical authors, «which,» he says, «without loss of piety can be unknown not only to the unlearned but even to the learned, because they are neither dogmas of faith nor derived from them.» Hither he refers certain questions concerning the nature of sanctifying grace, concerning the mode of operation of the sacraments, the question whether John the Evangelist has not yet departed this life; nay (for that age in which Cano wrote) even the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. Concerning questions of this kind he lays down this principle: «the authority even of all the saints, in that kind of questions which we have said do not at all pertain to faith, makes indeed probable faith, but does not make certain faith» — Cano, On the Places, bk. VII, chs. 2, 3; ch. 3, nn. 1, 9.

I readily concede further that in merely philosophical questions not the authority of the Fathers avails of itself, but the reasons by which what they affirm can be proved are to be regarded; provided, however, there be kept before one's eyes what we said (p. 125 ff.) and shall yet say elsewhere — that questions philosophical in themselves, on account of their intimate nexus with revealed truths, can be and frequently are in a certain respect truly theological. But in questions pertaining to religion and to the proper rationale and understanding of dogmas, which Cano mentioned in the second place, I would never say, nor without begging the question can it be said, what he says: «the authority of all the saints in that kind of questions which we have said do not at all pertain to faith does not make certain faith.» If it were already established in advance as true, what is assumed — that these questions do not pertain to faith — I confess that the agreement of all the Fathers would not effect that they pertain to faith; but this itself is what is in question, whether they do not pertain to faith. If, however, the Fathers unanimously, constantly and assertively agree, and so agree in them as either expressly or by their manner of treating to betray that they are held as truths of faith comprehended in ecclesiastical preaching and in the Catholic understanding, surely their very agreement proves with ineluctable authority that those questions pertain to faith, and in what they so unanimously teach they make certain faith. The begging of the question is evidently shown by the example by which Cano wished to illustrate his assertion. Immediately after those words, «the authority of all the saints... does not make certain faith» (bk. VII, ch. 3, concl. 4, n. 9), he subjoins the example of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, «which controversy, as he thought, was not of the number of those that could either promote or impair the Catholic faith.» The learned man could at that time, the truth not yet having been elicited, think that this question did not pertain to faith, because he thought there was no sufficient agreement of the Fathers and no testification of Scripture on either side; but surely he could not say that this question was of those «in which the authority of all the saints does not make certain faith, because it is a question not pertaining to faith.» For if the authority of all the saints have a ratified and firm affirmation, the agreement itself demonstrates that what they testify to pertains to faith — as indeed it was always contained in the objective Catholic revelation, and now pertains to faith even as proposed to all by the Church.

As to this second point, therefore, we think thus. When it is asked what is the authority of all the consentient Fathers in a theological matter, the distinction to be repeated first of all is not simply, as it were a priori, from a presumed discrimination between things that pertain to faith and things that do not; but far more safely is distinction made between the diverse modes in which doctrine is proposed by the Fathers. If they agree in such a way as manifestly to hold doctrine as pertaining to the common faith of the Church, the agreement itself demonstrates divine Tradition, so that to think against such unanimous doctrine is altogether nefarious, and in itself indeed heretical. If agreement exists in a doctrine or exposition of doctrine as religious or theological and true, yet it does not sufficiently appear whether they propose it as a doctrine of faith, or if the agreement itself is not so manifest — to clash against such common doctrine will for the most part not lack the note of error or temerity. Nay, though I do not deny that it can for the most part be discerned from the very nature of the thing whether a question is merely philosophical or theological, yet this itself you will often gather more safely from the very manner of teaching of the Fathers. For things that are merely philosophical you will not find treated and asserted by the holy Fathers in any common agreement as pertaining to Christian religion and piety.

II. The second part of the thesis, where we say that the authority even of individuals is to be venerated, is established from at least the office of pastors belonging to most of them, from their singular zeal for faith, unity and truth, from their knowledge and erudition in Christian doctrine and discipline, from their eximious sanctity, by which they rendered themselves fitter for God's peculiar illuminations and expressed Christian doctrine not only by word and writings but by life itself, from their antiquity by which they approach nearer to the beginnings of the Christian thing and cohere more closely in time with the Apostles themselves, from the signal veneration in which in the Church of God they were always held, both living and after death, as chosen by God's singular providence toward His Church and more abundantly furnished with the charisms of doctrine and sanctity for the exposition, illustration and defence of Christian faith. Hither are to be transferred the things we said in th. IX, n. II; th. XIV, n. II.

All those notes, which are the ground of the authority of individuals in things pertaining to Christian doctrine, are comprehended under the name Father of the Church. For four things are required, that an ecclesiastical writer in the proper sense be reckoned in the number of the Fathers of the Church. a) It is required that his writings be of great moment for maintaining and illustrating apostolic doctrine and Tradition — which can sometimes be obtained not so much by amplitude and erudition as by simple orthodox doctrine and antiquity, as e.g. happens in the writings of some of the apostolic Fathers and apologists. b) Besides doctrine there is required not only communion with the Catholic Church to the end, but also holiness of life; for in this is included a peculiar conjunction with God, the fount of all wisdom, thence a deeper and more refined understanding of Christian faith and discipline, an ardent love of the Church and of unity and sincerity of doctrine. Although this sanctity does not render individuals infallible, it yet bestows on them, even regarded apart, an authority in teaching such as does not belong to other, even most ancient, ecclesiastical writers regarded in themselves, who as historical witnesses, insofar as they agree with others, can be excellently employed, but as doctors avail less by their own proper authority; such are Tatian, Tertullian, Origen, Arnobius, Lactantius, Eusebius, Rufinus and others. c) These characters of doctrine and sanctity must be joined with antiquity. The ancient bishops and doctors call by this name of Fathers all their predecessors distinguished by integrity of faith, doctrine and sanctity, through whom they themselves had received Christian faith and doctrine. For several centuries now the usage has prevailed, as to this appellation, of distinguishing a twofold age of the Church. The earlier age, nearer to Christ and the Apostles, is reckoned through that time in which the exposition, illustration and defence of Christian doctrine and discipline against the inrushing heresies was accomplished in most of the chief heads. The holy theologians, for the most part bishops, by whose labours, studies and writings this was effected, and the doctrine of the Church illustrated for all posterity, and from whose documents the subsequent ages received the illustrated and defended doctrine; who therefore, from their nearer connection with the Apostles, from doctrine and sanctity were in peculiar authority and veneration with the subsequent bishops and doctors, as fathers with sons, so that later men derived from them as sons from fathers new defences and declarations perchance necessary, or at least sought confirmation of doctrine — these holy theologians and ancient bishops, I say, are called Fathers of the Church, and that time is called the age of the Fathers. But although the objective Catholic revelation after the Apostles receives no further increase, yet its exposition, illustration and defence can never be said to be simply and absolutely terminated; hence it comes about that the age of the Fathers, and consequently the series of the Fathers, is not assumed by all in one way and with the same terminus. By a sufficiently common usage St. Bernard (d. 1153) is wont to be reckoned the last among the Fathers. d) To these is added the approbation of the Church, which where the three foregoing are present is never wanting and is already included in them; for no solemn decree is necessary, but there suffices a practical, if it be lawful so to speak, agreement ¹.

III. Where there is question of reconciling the Fathers with one another, the difficulty can present itself in three ways. For either a universal agreement affirming of one age is objected to be opposed to a universal agreement denying of another age; or some of the Fathers seem contrary to the common doctrine of the rest; or, when at one time no agreement appears but diverse men seem to think diverse things, at a subsequent time all convene in one ratified and firm opinion.

1°. Opposition between the agreement of one age and of another in matters of faith can never be real, but only apparent. This is established from the principles demonstrated in th. VIII–X; because, namely, with a ratified and firm agreement in proposing and expounding the doctrine of faith there is always conjoined, from Christ's promise, the charism of truth; and truth remains one and the same for ever. It will therefore always be possible to show either that the opposition is not in the thing itself but in the manner of speaking; or that the supposed agreement of the antecedent age is not real, and is not a ratified and firm common opinion, much less a profession of faith, but a private opinion more or less widely spread among some Fathers. If at any time from historical and hermeneutical resources alone neither could be clearly demonstrated, yet from the theological principle, otherwise most certain, it would remain undoubted that the contradiction is not real but apparent. The theological principle is reduced to that which Leontius opposed to the Monophysite heretics feigning a dissension of the Fathers among themselves: «because the Fathers (regarded in agreement) received the charism of doctrine, nor were they themselves who spoke (left solely to their human studies); but the Holy Spirit spoke through them» (Gallandi, vol. XII, pp. 669, 682). See above, p. 74 ff.

The Arians or favourers of the Arians in the fourth century contended that consubstantiality, or at least the word consubstantiality of the Son with the Father as defined in the Council of Nicaea, had before been condemned by the Council of Antioch against Paul of Samosata, and so was repugnant to the preceding agreement. Against them St. Athanasius first of all lays down the theological principle itself. «It is not fitting to set those against these, for all are Fathers; nor would it be holy to define that these spoke well, those ill; for all fell asleep in Christ... It is not lawful to blame either, for all cared for the things of Christ, all turned their studies against the heretics» — Athanasius, On the Synods, nn. 43, 45. In general he admonishes, nn. 13, 14, that if once the consentient Fathers be accused of error, all teaching authority, and thus the whole economy of faith, will be subverted. Then indeed, so far as without the opportunity afforded of inspecting the letters of the Antiochene Fathers it seemed to him ², he explains, n. 45, in what way the Fathers of either Council are to be said to have taught diverse but not contradictory things for a diverse scope. In like manner have been confuted by Catholic doctors all those, both ancient and recent, who contended that one doctrine concerning the Most Holy Trinity flourished among the Fathers regarded universally before the Council of Nicaea, and another among the subsequent Fathers. From the theological principle itself, namely, it is certain that the contradiction cannot be but apparent. With hermeneutical and historical resources then rightly applied, this very thing is demonstrated — that the manner of speaking and arguing was diverse, but the thing and doctrine itself the same, though not expounded by all with the same clarity and distinction. Cf. Treatise on the Trinity, th. X, XI.

2°. The hypothesis of which we have hitherto spoken — of a real opposition between the agreement of one age and of another — is excluded by the very promised charism of indeficient truth in the authentic magisterium, nor can it ever be but an apparent opposition; but two other hypotheses can be real: that there is in truth no agreement of the Fathers concerning some head of doctrine, or that a few are found contrary to the common agreement of the rest. But in these one must proceed prudently and cautiously, lest dissensions be rashly feigned where in the thing itself there is perhaps full agreement.

a) If diverse Fathers seem to think diverse things, nothing else remains in interpreting but that the sense of individuals be determined from text and context and the remaining circumstances, and if the opinion of the diverse Fathers is truly diverse, that it be concluded that from the authority of the dissentient Fathers the truth of such doctrine cannot be established. Yet it would not thence yet follow that the truth of the doctrine cannot be established from elsewhere. For it can happen that after dissension among doctors there subsequently followed in some question full agreement in the Church of God; of which progress of exposition we shall speak below.

b) If a few Fathers seem to contradict the constant and already in their age common doctrine, then indeed the characters commemorated in this thesis, n. II, by which the individual holy Fathers were distinguished, and the principles on which they always rested in the exposition of Christian doctrine, and most of all the authority in which they were always held by the whole Church (th. IX and th. XIV), altogether demand that the ambiguous sayings of the Fathers, even if less proper and more unwonted significations of words must be supposed, be expounded in a sense consonant with the common doctrine of the others. For the character, the whole manner of thinking, and the principles of an author otherwise certainly known must be held as the chief norm of interpretation, at least in the negative sense — namely, that there be not attributed to his words a sense repugnant to that known character of the author. But nothing can be more repugnant to the known principles and character of the holy Fathers than a doctrine alien from the common agreement.

This very rule is handed down not only by Facundus of Hermiane — although he himself erred in its application to Theodore of Mopsuestia (see Petavius, Prolegomena, ch. 2, n. 8) — but long before him by St. Ambrose. «If a word offends,» he says (ep. 48, n. 4, to Sabinus III), «ask the virtue of the profession... even a doubtful word an undoubting mind overshadows and defends from lapse.» One example out of innumerable may be the exposition of Hilary's words given by Augustine. «When one wished most briefly to intimate the properties of the individual persons in the Trinity, he said: eternity, he says, in the Father, form in the Image, use in the Gift. And because he stood forth a man of no mediocre authority in the treatment of the Scriptures and the assertion of faith — for Hilary put this in his books — of these words... having scrutinized the hidden understanding so far as I could, I judge that he followed nothing in the word “eternity” but that the Father has no Father (principle) from whom He is» — Augustine, Trinity, bk. VI, ch. 10, n. 11. Thus see certain difficult locutions of Dionysius of Alexandria concerning the Son of God expounded in a sound sense in Athanasius, On the Opinions of Dionysius, and On the Synods, n. 47; like locutions of Gregory the Wonderworker declared in Basil, ep. 210, al. 64, n. 5; Chrysostom's manner of speaking concerning the innocence of infants to be baptized expounded, and at the same time the fraud of Julian the Pelagian detected, in Augustine, Against Julian, bk. I, n. 22. Many other locutions of certain Fathers come to be reconciled, of which there is treatment in wellnigh all treatises of theology — as when they say: that the Word immanent in the Father was made prolate in the creation of the world or in the incarnation; that the Father alone is by nature invisible; that the Son ministers to the Father; that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, yet proceeds through the Son and is the Spirit of the Son; that there is one nature of the three persons, as one is the nature of many men; that the persons in God are distinguished only by consideration of the mind (ἐπινοια). (Of these severally there has been treatment in the Treatise on the Trinity.) Thus likewise they say that the two natures in Christ are distinguished only by consideration; that there is one nature of the incarnate Word; that in Christ the virtue of the body sustained the force of punishment without sense of punishment; that the nature of the flesh in Christ was absorbed by the divinity, after the resurrection passed into the divinity (Treatise on the Incarnation). Further: that in good works we begin, grace follows; that it is necessary that we act according to what delights more; that man is moved by grace invincibly and insuperably (or inseparably). Further: that the word acceding to the element cleanses, not because it is said, but because it is believed; that to God alone it is necessary to confess sins; that communion of the Eucharist is necessary for infants, that they may enter eternal life; that in the Eucharist the nature of bread remains; that it is a sign of the body of Christ; that bishops are greater than presbyters more by custom than by the truth of the Lord's disposition.

Then: that sinners are not of the Church; that when Christ promised the building of the Church upon the rock, He promised the building upon Himself. All propositions of this kind, when put forward by heretics, are condemned or to be condemned, yet in the Fathers are expounded in a sound and Catholic sense from the contexts and from their clearer doctrine elsewhere.

Hence it is clear how absurd are the Jansenists, when they defend the propositions of Baius and Quesnel as immune from error for the reason that some of them are conceived almost in the words of St. Augustine. It is clear also how greatly deceived was that historian who in our time ³ on quite the same ground dared to defend that St. Augustine is the «parent of Jansenism.» Like the Jansenist is the cause of wellnigh all heretics — Arians, Monophysites, Pelagians, Socinians — who in defending their errors were wont to appeal to certain obscurer sayings of the holy Fathers.

Although these things are so, yet it is not to be denied that it could happen, and in fact happened, that in some head of doctrine some holy Fathers erred from the truth. The reason and condition, however, under which within the bounds of the Church diversity of opinions can have place, and under which therefore some dissension even of the holy Fathers could at some time prevail, is in general the obscurity of the question from defect of an antecedent solemn judgment. In particular, diversity of opinions was wont to arise from the mode in which a head of doctrine was still implicitly contained in another, not yet clearly and explicitly proposed in itself; or from the mode in which a dogma was contained more in practice and custom than in distinct and «insistent preaching.» On the other hand, such dissension itself is an index and argument of the question at that time not yet elicited and of the obscurity still prevailing.

But such obscurity at no time obtained in those fundamental revealed doctrines which were always to be known and believed explicitly by all, and therefore were contained in the public profession and symbol of faith; nor can it be admitted in any other revealed doctrines after a solemn and public definition. Therefore dissension even of individual holy Fathers from doctrines already in their age so elicited cannot be admitted, nor can it be composed with the principles by which they were ruled and with the authority by which they always excelled in the Church.

c) In those heads, finally, in which a real dissension of some individual Fathers from the universal agreement subsequently following can be shown, it can always also be demonstrated that those dissentient opinions are not derived from Tradition. In particular, their sources are wont to be wellnigh: α) a prejudiced interpretation of some place of Scripture (as in the opinion of those attributing bodies to angels; and of others, if any thought the beatific vision to be deferred until the resurrection, or who, opining a twofold resurrection, set up between the two a millenarian kingdom); β) conclusions wrongly deduced from the analogy of faith (as in the opinion of the rebaptizers of the third century, and in the opinion of those who in the second and third centuries reckoned the Shepherd of Hermas, the epistle of Barnabas, etc., among divine Scripture); γ) particular facts not rightly explained, or internal arguments wrongly applied (both of which happened in the hesitations of the third and fourth centuries concerning the canonical authority of some books of Scripture).