Catholic Tradition

Whereas Protestants think the Bible is the only source of God-breathed information available to the whole church, Catholics think both the Bible and Tradition are God-breathed sources of information available to the whole church. Tradition is supposed to exist alongside the Bible and be equally authoritative.

Let's grant for the sake of argument that there was an oral Tradition in the early Church that was every bit as authoritative as the written scriptures. It's not an unreasonable thing to believe because (1) we know there were oral Traditions because some of them are quoted in the New Testament (e.g. 1 Corinthians 11:23-25 & 15:3-5), and (2) Paul tells the Thessalonians to hold firm to the Traditions they were taught whether by word of mouth or by letter (2 Thessalonians 2:15). I get the impression from passages like 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, and 2 Thessalonians 3:6 that oral tradition was the primary way Paul conveyed essential Christian doctrines to the churches he established. The letters always came after the new Christians had already been taught what Christianity was all about. Paul sometimes quotes oral traditions to remind people of what they had already recieved. There were probably a lot more oral traditions than what got quoted in Paul's letters. So I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that besides the written words of the Bible, there is also an oral Tradition that's just as authoritative.

But that isn't any reason to think Catholic Tradition carries the same authority as the Bible. In the case of the Bible, if we want to know what was originally written, we have to use the tools of textual criticism. Thankfully, we've got lots of copies we can compare, and that allows us to reconstruct with a good degree of confidence what was in the originals. But whatever oral Traditions there were in the first century obviously weren't preserved in the same way or even in an analogous way. If they were, we should expect the Catholic Church to be able to give us a written collection of these oral traditions. Or, if we accept the Catholic idea of apostolic succession, we could ask all the Bishops of the Catholic church to write down the oral traditions they received, then we can compare them to each other and reconstruct the original wording.

But it looks like none of the oral Traditions that supposedly existed were preserved in their original wording. The wording is completely lost. Now, what the Catholic Church appears to mean by "Tradition" is not a fixed memorized oral Tradition, but an interpretation of those original oral Traditions. The doctrines of the Catholic church, however they are explained and conveyed, are supposed to capture what the oral Traditions taught. How can we know that the interpretation is correct if we can't go back to the original wording? In the case of the Bible, we can at least go back to the original wording if we want to settle disputes about interpretation.

Well, it turns out that the Catholic Church claims to have interpretative authority that applies both to Tradition and to Scripture. I'll come back to this in a minute.

The idea that Tradition has been preserved in an oral form by passing it down from one Bishop to another or one Pope to another is a myth. There are no fixed oral traditions in the sense that Paul quoted them in the New Tesatment. They are all lost. All we have are the Scriptures. And besides that, if there were some fixed collection of oral Traditions that were accuratedly passed down from one Pope to the next Pope, we should expect more uniformity from Pope to Pope. The reality is that there have been Popes who were heretical. There's no point at which an out-going Pope sits down with an in-coming Pope and hands down oral Traditions they received from the previous Pope. That doesn't happen with Bishops either. Usually, a Pope dies, and the Cardinals vote a new Pope in, so the out-going Pope doesn't even know who the in-coming Pope is going to be. How can they pass down Tradition in the idealized way Catholics portray it happening?

It is hard to look at the history of the Church and believe there was this unbroken passing down of a fixed oral Tradition that's just as reliable as the written words of Scripture.

Nevermind for the moment whether Sola Scriptura is theologically correct. It strikes me as being necessary on a practical level. We know what the New Testament originally said because of how it was preserved. We have nothing comparable with oral Tradition. So even if there was oral Tradition that carried the same weight as Scripture in the earliest years of the Church, that oral Tradition is lost. It's possible that some of the teachings of the Catholic Church are reflections of an ancient Tradition that used to be passed on by word of mouth, but there's no way to confirm it with any degree of confidence. Without being able to confirm it with any degree of confidence, it can't carry the same authority as Scripture.

Catholics trust both oral Tradition and the written scriptures because of a third source of authority, namely the teaching magisterium of the Church itself. But why think the Catholic Church has this authority? Well, that's because of Scripture and Tradition. Yes, it is circular reasoning, as I explained in this post.

Catholics think Sola Scriptura is problematic because before you can know which writings are Scripture, you need an outside source of authority. They have the Church, but the protestants don't. This assumption is what leads Catholics to circular reasoning. If you need one source of divine authority in order to tell you about another source of divine authority, then you've either got to engage in circular reasoning or else an infinite regress of divine sources of authority. The only way to break out of that is to argue for a divine source of authority using premises that are not divinely inspired. That's essentially what protestants do. When the church tried to settle disputes about canonicity, they used arguments, not fiat. Protestants accept the canon because we believe the best arguments won out, not because the Church is infalliable. If Catholics try to establish the authority of one of their sources (the Bible, Tradition, or the teaching magiesterium), not by appeal to another source of divine authority, but by using reason, evidence, and argument, then they are basically arguing like protestants, and they have lost their basis for objecting to Sola Scriptura or for saying potestants can't know the canon.

James White accuses Catholics of subscribing, in practice, to Sola Ecclesia--the Church is the sole infalliable rule of faith. I think he's got a point. From a Catholic point of view, it all goes back to the teaching magisterium of the Church. That's what tells us what writings are Scripture, what they mean, and what is contained in Tradition and what it means. If Scripture and Tradition are subordinate to the Church (since the Church determines what Scripture and Tradition are and what they mean), then for all practical purposes, Catholics subscribe to Sola Ecclesia. But, as soon as they try to establish the authority of the Church by appealing to Scripture and Tradition, they are engaging in circular reasoning, and I'm not sure you can accuse them of Sola Ecclesia anymore.

If we accept the divine authority of the teaching magisterium of the Church, then the accurate preservation of Scripture and Tradition shouldn't matter that much. The Church knows correct doctrine even if it has forgotten the original wording. As far as I know, the Church doesn't claim to have an infallible critical text of the New Testament. They still rely on secular fallible means of preservation. We can know the original wording only insofar as we can use textual criticism to reconstruct it, and the Church doesn't claim this process is infallible. All they claim that's infallible is what the Church claims the Scriptures teach. But just as they lack the original wording of the oral Traditions and have preserved only the teachings supposedly contained in those Traditions, so also could they preserve the teachings of the New Testament without having the actual New Testament. The wording of the New Tesatment is really secondary when it comes to sound doctrine. It all basically comes down to what the Catholic Church teaches, and not to the original wording of the Bible or the oral Traditions. That's Sola Eccelsia.

I had more to say, but after taking a break, I've forgotten what it was. Maybe I'll edit this post later if it comes back to me.