Sacred tradition

For example, when you mentioned the Christian terminology, whatever, what is for you to be a Christian? Is it just Trinity? No.

Well, I mean, you would affirm the Nicene Creed, of course, which would be a Trinitarian view, but you would be baptized into the holy tradition, the true apostolic tradition.

uh church of christ that he started that you can trace back to pentecost to the apostles to the disciples to um uh polycarp to saint irenaeus and onward and onward and onward and that succession which was going to be a key part of the debate tonight which is why lds um shouldn't be considered at all christian um not even i wouldn't even consider it quote heterodox uh because it fundamentally holds a view that is heretical and so uh just this is my view ben to claim you're christian is a historical claim do you agree not just a doctrinal belief claim because the beliefs have a source right

i mean when you say historical do you like what do you mean by it i think there's

But beyond that, there's the whole issue of who is the authority.

And when we see, as my friend Carlo Broussard in his recent essay, it's on our website, catholic.com, What Good is Sacred Tradition? It's October 19th.

You just Google his name, Carlo, K-A-R-L-O, and then put sacred tradition in parentheses to find it.

But he points out that there are certain controverted passages in Scripture, you know, like does baptism, is it merely an ordinance or is it really, as many Protestants believe, is it merely an ordinance or Or is there really baptismal regeneration as the Catholic Church has taught for 20 centuries? And in addition to that, that even the original Protestant reformers practiced infant baptism.

There's the issue of what is the authority, you know, of Matthew 16, 18 to 19 and other passages regarding the power to buy in and lose in Peter giving keys.

And we also know from the early church, beyond issues when the Bible, the books of the Bible were in existence, that there was a magisterium that interpreted what was true and what was not regarding Scripture.

And while many people accept that Jesus is Lord and correctly do so, There were issues in the early church, such as with the Arian heresy, which denied that.

And thus you see the need for a visible magisterium and thus sacred tradition, sacred scripture and magisterium being part of it.

And that is an essential distinction.

We're not suggesting that medical consensus should function like holy tradition or that the church's authority can simply be mapped out onto scientific institutions.

There are different kinds of authority concerned with different kinds of knowledge.

the church preserves and transmits the faith of the apostles within the life of the body of Christ.

Like, you know, theologians talk about the material sufficiency of Scripture.

What they mean by that is like the material stuff is there, right? So for example, the sacrament of matrimony and the sacrament of holy orders and the sacrament of confirmation, all of the stuff for the sacraments is there present in Sacred Scripture, so I would argue that But of course we're going to need sacred tradition and the infallible teaching authority of the magisterium to give proper form to that stuff that is in essence contained within the boundaries of the sacred page or the sacred writings.

So I would say they are there, and of course we're going to argue for this throughout the rest of our conversation today.

but they are there both explicitly and implicitly, and I think that's important to articulate.

And then the second thought, Cy, is even if they weren't in Sacred Scripture, it still wouldn't follow that they're not revealed, since, according to the Catholic view, Scripture is not the only means of transmitting divine revelation.

Scripture is not the only thing that we look to in order to derive certainty about God's revelation.

So the revealed status of the seven sacraments could also be known via sacred tradition.

So this sort of objection presupposes or assumes what we call and know as the principle of sola scriptura.

Or like, this is how I understand this text.

Tradition for us is that interpretive key.

And here's the biggest thing.

Well, not the biggest thing, but here's another significant thing.

And a lot of times when people object to tradition, it's because they're imagining it's something like oral Torah, but it's something like it, I think-

Well, I think a lot of people, they think of like sacred tradition for Catholics, they'll just think that it's anything random you could find in the church fathers.

Right.

When the catechism says, "The fathers are a witness to sacred tradition," doesn't say that they are sacred tradition.

Exactly.

And that's something people need to, like-

Let's get to a couple of these texts.

Walker in Mesa, Arizona says, "If even an apostle's spoken word had to submit to the ultimate authority of the written word, how can Rome claim its sacred tradition is equal to it?"

Yeah, thanks.

I really appreciate the question.

So I, I, I think that the, the, the terms of the question, the premises of your question, I, I don't know that I accept them at face value, right? Um, but I would like to, I'd like to explain how the Catholic Church and the apostles, I believe, understand and relate to sacred scripture, and also the role that sacred tradition plays in Catholic faith.

And, and some...

I may change the terms around a little bit, but I'm still gonna try to get at the substance of your question.

But he doesn't emry- ever say that this is the be-all and end-all, the comprehensive account of Christian faith and practice to which you have to slavishly adhere, and you can't say anything different.

But with the coming of the Holy Spirit, which means holy breathing, she began to breathe with His life and warmth, living the while on the same body and blood of Christ, which He through the holy sacrifice of the Mass had left to her as her super substantial food.

Tradition.

Although the Church reveres the Bible as the written word of God, yet since it is either silent or not clear on some matters essential to salvation, such as infant baptism and the exact number of sacraments, she does not depend on it as the sole rule of faith, but uses a second source of divine revelation called tradition.

This consists of the truths of the Catholic faith revealed by Jesus Christ to His apostles and handed down to us through the teaching of the Church and the writings of her Holy Fathers and Doctors.

Twenty, the Vatican Council AD eighteen sixty-nine to seventy, which decreed the infallibility of the Pope.

Thus through nineteen centuries has the Church, assisted by the Holy Ghost, carefully sifted the opinions of man, rejecting what was wrong, promulgating what was true and right.

Thus did she raise the edifice of her doctrine, building it on the great dogmas which the Scriptures and Tradition revealed to her, and ornamenting it with the devotion which the Holy Ghost inspired.

Thus did she exhibit the four marks by which men know that she is the Church of Christ, namely, the marks of being one, holy, catholic and apostolic.

One of the distinctions that Catholic theology draws is between what's called public revelation and private revelation.

Public revelation is what we find in sacred scripture and sacred tradition.

It's given as binding on everybody.

That's why it's called public.