What Is Holy or Sacred Tradition?
Back in February I embarked on a series of short articles exploring ancient Christianity as part of my own journey back into the fold I had left in my youth. If I’ve remembered them all right, here are the first three in the series. If anyone remembers any more, let me know:
What Is ‘Catholic?’
What Is A Bishop?
What Is A Pope?
I also published a sort of side article in the series, On Protestantism. I’m not sure if it really belongs in the series or not.
Anyway, in the first article we learned that the word “catholic” merely means “universal.” This is why numerous Christians believe they are a part of “one holy catholic and apostolic Church” even if they aren’t big fans of the Pope in Rome. When I use the term “Roman Catholic” I’m being ecumenical, because the Church seated in Rome is not comfortable with that name. The Vatican views itself as the seat of the one holy catholic and apostolic church, and all others as being only partially in communion with it or completely outside of it. The Orthodox have the same basic view, except they don’t think the earthly head of the Church is seated in Rome. Protestants, as usual, are so varied on the question it’s not possible to say what their view is; you have to actually go to the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc. and ask them each individually what they mean when they say they are part of “one holy catholic and apostolic church.”
In the second article, we learned that a bishop is an apostle, and an apostle is a bishop. That’s what all the oldest lines of Christianity, including the Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Union of Utrecht, and numerous other branches of Christianity believe. It is only Protestants who take a different tack on that, and, once again, each branch of Protestantism has different answers on that question.
In the third article, we learned that a pope is merely a chief bishop. That’s also what a patriarch is.
So far, the articles I’ve written have striven to be respectful of Protestantism and to include them where possible. Once we embark upon the subject of Holy or Sacred Tradition, however, we begin losing more and more Protestants. Still, Holy Tradition (or Sacred Tradition) is broadly embraced by all the oldest branches of Christianity. Roman Catholics like to call it Sacred Tradition, and the Orthodox like to call it Holy Tradition, but they’re both talking about exactly the same thing. Old-line Anglicans and Lutherans and at least some Presbyterians respect it too, although their take on it seems to vary.
So what is Holy Tradition? The first thing to understand about Holy Tradition is that it is not simply the loose collection of traditions in Christianity. There are a ton of traditions in Christianity which are not considered Holy Tradition. This, for example:
That’s a very traditional cross, especially in the Western Church. But it’s just tradition, not Holy Tradition. Numerous other types of crosses are used to symbolize Christianity, like this:
The crossbar at the top represents the plaque that was placed over Jesus’ head when he was crucified, and the slash near the bottom represents where his feet were nailed. It’s just a popular tradition. And, when it comes to crosses, you sometimes even find this traditional one used by Christians:
That one shocks the sensibilities because modern people’s brains immediately shout “Nazi!” when they see it, but in ancient Christian circles it’s known as the crooked cross, and it’s just a crucifix form with its sides bent; you’ll find that symbol has been used in many ancient Christian churches, especially in the East, occasionally even worn by a priest, all long before Hitler was born. You also, ironically, find this symbol in some ancient Synagogues, including at least one well-known one in Jerusalem. Other religions like the Hindus and Buddhists use this symbol too, which is after all just a cross with its angles bent.
When we celebrate Christmas is traditional. Easter too. Seating people in pews in church is traditional in Western Christianity. Taking communion wine from a golden chalice is a common tradition. None of that is Holy or Sacred Tradition. It’s just tradition with a lower-case “t.”
Holy/Sacred Tradition is a whole different animal. It is not a “my dad and granddad did it so I do it too” thing. It’s not something that has slowly built up over time, either. What most of the world’s Christians believe is that Holy Tradition is the direct teachings passed down by word of mouth, without alteration, without addition or subtraction, straight from the lips of Jesus Christ and/or the original 12 Apostles. It even goes further than that, for it includes some teachings of the Jewish Oral Torah. The only complicating factor with Oral Torah is that Christians who believe in Sacred Tradition generally believe the Pharisees probably changed the Oral Torah when they put together the Mishnah and the Talmud, so much of what is found in the current Jewish Oral Tradition is not compatible with Christianity. But the Oral Torah was alive and well at the time of Christ, and in the Bible Jesus refers directly to things found in it, without condemnation, and indeed even with endorsement. For example, in Matthew chapter 23, Jesus refers to the priests in Jerusalem as sitting upon the “throne of Moses” and accuses them of corrupting it. There is no reference in the written Old Testament to a seat or throne of Moses, but it was clearly understood by everyone at the time to be a reference from the Oral Torah, where the priesthood sat on the Throne of Moses, i.e. carried on his authority to the Jews.
This is not the only instructive example. There are others. For instance, in chapter 7 of the book of Mark, Jesus condemns the traditions of men while embracing the traditions of God, and does not distinguish between written tradition and oral tradition.
Jesus repeatedly, in the New Testament, demands that the apostles go out and preach the word. He never says to write anything, let alone go out and make a New Testament and distribute copies of it so people could decide for themselves what it was all about; heck, that’s just silly, because in that day and age less than 1% of the population would be able to read anyway. There are even parts of the New Testament which were written to reassure the early gentile Christians, who by and large could not read, that they could and should trust written scripture. This mentality was common: if it wasn’t something someone they trusted told them, why would they believe it? Because of marks on a page? They needed reassurance that the writings were valid, which is a big part of why Paul assured them that Scripture was trustworthy in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 when he said, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Many early Christians, especially non-Jewish ones, would have needed that assurance that Scripture was as valid as what the leaders they knew personally had told them.
The Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura, developed in the 16th Century, would simply have been alien to the early Christians. At least, that’s what Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and most other old-line Christians believe. It’s only Protestants who think otherwise, and not even all of them.
To quote an Orthodox source, “Holy Tradition is the deposit of faith given by Jesus Christ to the Apostles and passed on in the Church from one generation to the next without addition, alteration or subtraction. Vladimir Lossky has famously described the Tradition as ‘the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church.’ It is dynamic in application, yet unchanging in dogma. It is growing in expression, yet ever the same in essence.”
So what’s the Bible? Well, the bishops of the early Church needed to put together what written Sacred Traditions they had, because there were so many books floating around purporting to be legitimate Christian or Jewish documents, and many variations of those documents. Most Christians were using basically the same ones, but not all of them were, and not all of them were using the same variations. In the 4th Century, bishops from all over the world got together and hammered out what books would be considered canonical and which would not, and further, to decide which versions of those books were correct and which were mistaken (or at least questionable). As the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. David Anderson, wrote in his introduction to the Orthodox Study Bible:
“…in the early years of the Christian Church, those most important books of Holy Scripture that we call the Gospels did not exist. Several decades passed after Pentecost before the first Gospel was written. It was the end of the first Century by the time all four Gospels were written. Three hundred more years passed before a decision was made in the Church that there would be only four Gospels….The books that are in the Holy Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, are there because God’s people, through those who were set aside as having the authority to make the decision, decided that these books would be part of the Bible, and other books would not. The Church, as God’s people, inspired by God, wrote the Bible. The Church produced the Bible. The Bible did not produce the Church.”
Let me also add that “those who were set aside as having the authority to make the decision” were the bishops, appointed through Apostolic Succession. It was they who made the final call on the Canon. It wasn’t some generalized consensus among a loose affiliation of believing Christians, and it wasn’t some angel that came down and said, “here’s your Bible.” It was the bishops of the one holy catholic and apostolic church who made the final call on all of it. Because that’s the job of the bishops, to carry on the teaching office of the Apostles and to make sure it doesn’t change from generation to generation. The bishops decided to preserve the Written Traditions in the definitive canonical Bible, and they continued to pass on the Oral Traditions as they always had. Scripture was a touchstone and reminder of what was correct vs. incorrect Holy Tradition, and would act in many ways as the highest expression of the Sacred Tradition, but Scripture wasn’t the Alpha and the Omega all by itself.
This, by the way, is why it strikes many of us as odd when certain types of Protestants claim that they trust the words of God and not a “cabal of men” or whatever. Because it was a “cabal of men” who created and preserved the Bible in the first place! The Bible didn’t just appear one day in a puff of smoke, nor did some great prophet claim he got it from an angel (like Muhammed claimed for the Koran or Joseph Smith claimed for the Book of Mormon). The men who were appointed leaders of the Church produced the Bible, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
What any Orthodox Christian, or any Catholic Christian, can tell you (if he knows his stuff) is that you cannot construct a valid form of Christianity using the Bible alone based on your own personal interpretations. That’s a 16th century innovation introduced by Christians in the West who were basically mad at the Bishop of Rome. It’s a very liberal theological view, and it doesn’t hold much water for a lot of us since we know for a fact that very few early Christians were even capable of reading. Furthermore, before the printing press, producing just one copy of the Bible would take a team of monks about a year to complete, and it would cost the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of today’s dollars. The teachings were primarily spread orally, not by the written word, and all of the most ancient lines of Christianity believe that; not just the Roman Catholics, but also the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, and even the Union of Utrecht and Old Catholic movements all say so–and between them, they make up the majority of Christians worldwide, probably in excess of 75%.
Now, the fact that they’re in the majority does not make them right, but it should be a challenge to Protestants who disagree with things the Catholic Church teaches that we can now show, definitively, that many of those things they protest were not inventions of the Vatican after all, but are believed and practiced by multiple branches of Christianity who were out of any regular contact with the Pope in Rome for 1,000 years, 1,500 years, and even longer, yet still believe the same things (seven sacraments, a priesthood, bishops, literal and not just intellectual apostolic succession, sacred oral tradition, etc.). If the Church got corrupted, we can no longer say that it’s some corruption introduced by Rome; you have to believe the corruption happened at least as far back as the year 451, when the Oriental Orthodox split of from Rome and the other bishops. And it probably has to have been even earlier than that, since the Bishops of the Church in the 4th Century were the ones who decided which books even went into the Bible–which to me would indicate that the Bible canon itself is now open to questioning.
What all the oldest lines of Christianity believe is that “Sola Scriptura” is a modern innovation introduced by radical schismatics in 16th Century Europe. They’ll all tell you that the Bible is part of Sacred Tradition, an indispensable reference tool, and is complete and Holy for all its intended purposes, but that it cannot be understood properly outside of the Church that produced it, and cannot be properly interpreted if you throw out the Sacred Oral Tradition of the Apostles (or of the Jewish patriarchs that came before Christ). And they’ll tell you that if you try to read the Bible in a vacuum for yourself, with no understanding of all of that, you can come to almost any conclusion you want about almost anything. “You can make Scripture say anything you want if you torture it long enough,” as the humorous saying goes.
Protestants are free to disagree with any of this of course; many if not most of them do. But it becomes incumbent upon them to show evidence of the existence of supposed early Christians who preached and taught only through the Bible and who rejected the idea that there were any relevant oral teachings handed down from the Jewish Patriarchs and Christian Apostles. For the most part, I’ve never seen much evidence offered, although I’ve looked; I’ve read lots of books and articles by Bible-only Christians and mostly they don’t make much reference to early Christianity except with vague statements and few if any references. And, they mostly fail to acknowledge that “sola scriptura” is simply not found anywhere in the Bible, and the Bible never says that it alone contains the complete teachings of Jesus or of the ancient Jewish Patriarchs. It just doesn’t. This, all by itself, is a doctrine found outside the Bible.
So that, my friends, is how most Christians view the Bible, and that’s what Holy Tradition is. Much of this comes as a shock to people who’ve been told all their lives that Christianity is based on the Bible. But it’s what most Christians worldwide actually believe, and have believed for thousands of years.
For a good article on it from the Catholic perspective, with copious scriptural citations, see this Scripture Catholic article. While it is written by Catholics, I believe an Orthodox Christian would do no more than quibble with a few parts of it. Furthermore, the biblical citations in it are exhaustive, and may provide to some Protestants a perspective they’ve never seen before.
The Sacred Oral Tradition, or Holy Tradition, is the teachings passed down from the apostles and the Jewish patriarchs, preserved by the Bishops of Christ’s Church. It is the guide to proper interpretation of Scripture. Scripture alone cannot be properly understood without it. Or so most of the world’s non-Protestant Christians believe. For Protestants, Your Mileage May Vary.
More good reading right here.
*Addendum*: Anyone who is tempted to get angry with me for anything I’ve written here needs to step back and take a deep breath. I am faithfully, to the best of my ability, explaining something that most of the world’s Christians are taught and believe. You are free to disagree with any of it, or even correct me if you think I’ve made a factual error. But it would be wise to be sure you fully grasp what it is you’re arguing about, and who you’re arguing with (hint: it probably ain’t Dean Esmay), before you raise your objections. A spirit of Christian charity and tolerance is best to try to hold onto when having these discussions.
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[…] by Ron Coleman on May 17, 2008 Dean Esmay is trying slowly, carefully to explain basic stuff about Catholicism that a lot of people who talk about the subject really don’t […]
A rather thorough critique of sola scriptura can be found here: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/tca_solascriptura.aspx
It is written from an Orthodox perspective, but to reverse one of Dean’s comments above, I doubt a Catholic Christian would do more than quibble with a few parts of it.
I don’t believe that you are correct when you assert that people in the Roman Empire lacked trust in the written word. Most cultures with low literacy rates regard writing as magical, holy, and mystical. The word ‘talisman,’ for example, mean ‘to make marks like a magician.’ There are numerous other examples of writing, or even just letters themselves, being regarded as innately magical.
Secondly, the Roman Empire was highly organized and bureaucratic, with contracts and legal documents being kept in writing. While the extent of literacy in the Roman Empire isn’t known, most estimates range from 10-15%. It may well have been lower amoung members of a low status religion like Christianity, but regardless an understand of what writing and literacy were was common in that society. No one in the Roman world would think that writing was just some marks on a page.
Dave Justus’s last blog post..This is awesome!
Nate: Yeah, great article. An interesting side note is that "orthodox" basically means "correct belief" and "catholic" means universal. When the Church split between West and East (the traditional date for that split is 1054, but everyone acknowledges the estrangement began earlier), it was a major point of agony that continues to this day. The two were out of regular contact with each other because of the distances and language differences between them, but they did always attempt to keep at least some dialog going between them. By a sort of mutual consensus, the Church in the East began to be called "Orthodox" and the Church in the West began to be called "Catholic." The Catholic Church actually views itself as orthodox, and the Orthodox consider themselves catholic. But they refer to each other by those names mostly out of mutual respect, and a way of saying, "OK, we know you’re right about most things, and we need some way to distinguish each other when we talk."
I’ve long thought that the news of the emergence of Protestantism was probably greeted with some enthusiasm at first in the Orthodox community. I’m pretty sure they probably said, "Well we’re not surprised folks in the West are breaking with the Pope, he always did take on more airs than he was entitled to." There was clearly some excitement in the 19th and early to mid 20th centuries when emergent technologies made travel and communication between the Eastern and Western worlds more prevalent. Indeed, we know now that Orthodox bishops and theologians made stabs at finding ways to get in full communion with Anglican, Lutheran, and Presbyterian congregations, and on the Protestant side that was greeted with enthusiasm in some circles. "Aha, ancient Christians who broke away from the Pope too! We must have a lot in common!"
That all seems to have turned into ash in their mouths as they began to realize that it likely wasn’t going to happen. The Orthodox would see that the Protestants abolished their priesthood, threw out most of the Holy Mysteries (what Rome calls the Sacraments), elevated Scripture above the Church, and read scripture in ways that probably struck them as bafflingly weird. The Protestants on their part probably mostly thought, "Jeez, these guys rejected Papal supremacy, but they kept all that other crap we thought Rome had invented?" Full communion just wouldn’t be possible. Although there was great excitement in the early 20th Century with possible unification between Anglicans and Orthodox, and also possibly between Presbyterian and Orthodox, it eventually fell apart (although the Anglo-Catholics are still working toward that, and some of them seek to have their Bishops consecrated by Orthodox Bishops.)
I’m being a little flip about some of this, because it is a serious matter. Still, I think the Orthodox, especially the Oriental Orthodox who split off in the 5th Century, represent a major challenge to the fundamental doctrines of Protestantism. Any Protestant, especially a Christian Fundamentalist, should be troubled by the fact that we can now prove, without any reference to documents produced by the Vatican, that the priesthood was never supposed to be abolished, that priests commonly used the title “father,” that apostolic succession always meant direct physical and spiritual succession and not just intellectual succession, that there are indeed seven Sacraments, and other things like that. The idea that the Vatican produced all these ideas by a slow accretion of increasingly screwed up traditions is harder to sustain when you really look at what the Orthodox believe and practice.
All that said, I know most Orthodox try to maintain friendly relations with mainline Protestants, and participate in the World Council of Churches. But the Orthodox are (and always will be) adamant that the Protestants need to embrace the Orthodox Church as, well, correct.
I also think it’s rather exciting that the the Oriental Orthodox (i.e. the Non-Chalcedonians) are moving toward full communion with the Eastern Orthodox and a 15 century long rift may soon be healed there. (”Soon” being measured in mere decades, anyway.)
It’s also cool that some Orthodox churches have come back into communion with Rome.
The emergence of Biblical Fundamentalism out of the Protestant fold will be a challenge to all of these versions of the faith. Because a Christian who understands all of this usually finds it nearly impossible to have an in-depth conversation with a Fundamentalist; their approach is so radically different, they look at certain verses so completely differently, it’s barely possible to have a conversation–although it’s sometimes worth trying, it often leads to hurt feelings and confusion.
Dave Justus: Well, you’re right about some of that. The Septuagint, which the early Church (including the New Testament authors) used almost exclusively as its Old Testament, was already in circulation and being used by non-Christians by the time Christ showed up.
However, in the time of the apostle Paul, when he wrote those words, virtually all Christians were of very low status. It was a religion of outlaws, slaves, and poor freedmen, and a very few of the merchant class and the wealthy elite. It was a religion of the poor and unwashed and illiterate. This is probably a big part of why the Beatitudes struck such a chord with them. "Poor" and "meek" would describe most of them.
When in the book of Romans Paul wrote that God had placed the earthly authorities above them, that was also a powerful reminder that even though the Roman authorities were not Christian, they needed to be obeyed anyway. (Many centuries later that became the basis of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, but that’s not exactly what Paul had in mind.)
Still, in a culture of largely illiterate people, the everday experience was of talking to people you knew and trusted. The world of writings was about as far away from their everyday experience as, say, Hollywood is to the average American today: We see it, we’re familiar with it, we’re even influenced by it, but we aren’t part of it.
And, of course, there were lots and lots and lots of books floating around purporting to be Christian and not always in accord. They would have to have, at minimum, known which to trust and which not to trust based on the men they found trustworthy. They wouldn’t have been in any position to read and compare and draw judgment on all these documents themselves.
By the way, for anyone reading, I heartily endorse the article Nate linked above. It’s very hard on the Catholics, but on this issue there’s barely a word of it that isn’t relevant.
This is all the source of my frequent arguments with my very good friend Kevin D. It’s so hard to even know where to begin these conversations, and misunderstandings happen very quickly.
Dean,
Certainly I am not arguing the need to distinguish legitimate ’scripture’ from false, that problem is well documented in the early church. The very fact though that this was a problem, argues for the prevelence of the idea of writing as being an authoritive source, one that people would trust. If the primary problem was convincing people to trust ANY writing, rather then to convince them to distrust certain writing (and conversely only trust certain specific writings) we would see a quite different history.
I don’t really regard protestant vs. catholic vs. orthadox debates to be fairly interesting. My understanding of theology leads me to believe that pretty much all of them have missed the real point anyway, but it is fairly unarguable from a historical point of view that Roman civilization and Philosophy (including the Greek philosophy that so heavily influenced Rome and was even more powerful in the eastern provinces) had a massive influence on the early church. The New Testament books were penned fairly early on in this process, while the combination of the books into a single canon and the establishment of other founding church principles were done at the height of Roman influence on the Church. The council of Nicea, for example, only happened because a Roman Emporer wanted the increasingly powerful church to settle on something (anything as far as he was concerned) rather then it being a purely internal church matter.
One would expect, in such an environment, for the Catholic and Orthadox churches who both share this common origin to agree with each other in many areas in which the earlier written texts are silent on (or even possibly in contradiction.) The Church was molded, its traditions (both big and little t) were formed in this environment.
By the time of the schism between the eastern and western churhes, both of these societies were in a state of decline and ossification, an ossification that affected the church as much as it did every other aspect of society, and hence they remain pretty similar today.
Protestantism of course came into being during the enlightenment, it is also heavily influence by the culture it sprung from (and continues to be to this day.)
I don’t know of any strong ‘proofs’ that Protestantism ‘fixed’ what the Catholics got wrong, but those who try to claim from history that the 4th century church had maintained the pracitices, sacraments and Traditions of the earlier Christians really don’t have a whole lot of evidence backing them up, and similarities between Orthadox and Catholics today don’t add any evidence either.
Dave Justus’s last blog post..This is awesome!
Dave Justus: Hrrm. Can’t say I share your conclusions, although there’s obviously some truth to what you say. It is not really disputable, for example, that the vast majority of early Christians couldn’t read. It is also not really disputable that most of the New Testament books (not all, but most) were not written by someone who thought they were creating new Scripture, with the only possible exceptions being the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation, and even some of those are debateable. Nor is it disputable that word of mouth was the primary way they spread the Gospel from the beginning. Nor is it disputable that the Jews themselves maintained a very rich and integral unwritten Oral Tradition which a few centuries after Christ they codified in the Mishna.
It’s pretty clear that varying versions of what came to be called the New Testament were floating all around the Christian world, and they got codified in large part because the Emperor asked for it to be done in the 400s. On the other hand, it’s not really disputable that that got done by Bishops who saw themselves as being in Apostolic Succession, gathered from all over the known world at the time and decided what they could all universally agree were legitimate writings that affirmed what they believed and did not believe, nor that they chose the works that they believed came from the era of the 12 Apostles but they did not believe all other writings were false. It was good of the Emperor to ask for that, and kind of him to sponsor it, but he wasn’t the one who made the choices (and, as it happened, he was if I recall part of a sect that itself eventually died out).
This is why, for example, Catholics and Orthodox alike are relatively unperturbed when older variants of the various New Testament works are found and are different from the official Canon. The answer would be, "That’s fascinating, but so what? The Bishops of Christ’s Church, the inheritors of the Apostles, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, compiled and codified what they knew to be true." Thus, if you could prove definitively that the earliest version of a certain Gospel did not contain certain passages we would not excise them, nor if new books showed up that could be definitively proven to have been written by Moses, or Abraham, or Peter or Paul or any of the original 12 apostles, we would not reopen the canon and insert them.
Your position on these things is quite arguable, but what it would pretty much inescapably mean that you believe the New Testament itself is not really a reliable guide to the teachings of the Apostles or of Christ. If that’s what you think, then, much of this probably just strikes you as irrelevant.
…but, while it may strike you as irrelevant, it’s very relevant for people who are interested in understanding Christianity. It explains why there are such wildly different interpretations of the Bible. It explains much of the hostility and hurt feelings that fly so often between Protestants and Catholics. It explains why mainline Protestants are often uncomfortable around Fundamentalists and vice-versa. What it amounts to is this:
If you think the Bible as we have it is the sum total of all Christian teachings, from beginning to end containing the complete message, you have one view. If you view the Bible as an integral and critically important part of the much broader and deeper Christian Tradition, you have a wildly different view, and your read on even very small passages is often going to be different.
Obviously, striking a neutral pose and saying "they’re all wrong anyway, so who cares?" is intellectually pretty easy to sustain.
Well, I am not a Christian, but I am fascinated by philosophy, theology and all that. Basically it seems to me that the core of the Christian message is pretty simple, is easily availble by reading the bible and the rest of the minutia that is piled on top really doesn’t matter all that much. Most of the arguments between various sects remind me of a certain parable about motes and beams.
Certainly though most early Christians couldn’t read. Where is disagree with you is not how many could read (although 1% is probably an underestimation) but how they regarded the written word, whether they could read or not. Typically we find cultures with low literacy to have a higher, not lesser, refevence for the written word then cultures with more literacy. Beyond that, writing was an integral part of the Roman Empire, and its basic function and principle were well understood, even by those who lacked the skills to produce or decipher it. To use your example, I can’t make a movie but I have a basic idea of how movies are made.
I also don’t dispute that Christians, Jews, and everyone else throughout history has oral traditions. Certainly that is the case. If you are interested in maintaining continuity however, they are far inferior to written documents as oral traditions tend to change over time. As you mentioned above, the traditions of the Jews changed from when they were recorded by the Christians to when they were written down by the Jews themselves (although I imagine Jews would dispute this.)
It is of course precisely because of this problem that the an official canon of scripture, the Nicene creed, and other similar actions were intended to deal with. Oral tradition had become so divergent over the expanse of Christianity that different groups were teaching different things. Now, it is fine to believe that they got it right and were able to seperate the wheat from the chaff because they caught the problem soon enough, but to still maintain that oral tradition is reliable means of preserving doctrines and practices from the past is pretty foolish.
I also think you are either ignorant of, or purposefully ignoring, secular political pressures that were put on the early church, most particularly as it became the dominant Roman religion. One can of course believe as a matter of faith that the Church was impervious to these pressures and that everything happened as God willed it to, but there isn’t a lot of objective evidence to support that.
Dave Justus’s last blog post..This is awesome!
Well you’re certainly making the Muslims’ case for Koran pretty well there, Dave, because (ironically, just like fundamentalist Christians do in many ways) they believe the Christian message and tradition got corrupted over time and contains numerous inaccuracies. Their answer is the Koran, which after all was supposedly given to them by an angel and purports to be word for word from God and is meant to fix all that.
Anyway, I will grant that it was probably more than 1% in the early Christian world who could read, if by "read" you mean that a lot of people had at least a rudimentary literacy (what we would probably call “functional illiteracy” today). And yes, certainly, they would have been familiar with writing for various purposes. But, it’s a modern arrogance to believe that writing is or would have been considered more reliable than oral transmission of fundamental, life-defining information. Certainly, if you play teaching games like "Telephone," where you see how a message transmitted orally can get garbled as it goes from one person to another. But history shows that prior to widespread literacy most people’s memories were far better than the average person in the modern world realizes; people could often remember astonishing levels of detail perfectly because they were not used to relying on writing to help them, or to act as more than a touchstone.
Furthermore, as you hint at, writing doesn’t become all that much more reliable when all writing is done by laborious hand copying. And, documents can very easily be altered or miscopied or forged. These days we have an astonishing array of technologies to help us validate documents and make sure writings don’t get corrupted, but they still do get corrupted. We’re better at preventing that than we ever have been, but it still happens, and 2000 years ago the ability to detect such things was miniscule by comparison. On top of that, you have to add in the problems that are created by the fact that language evolves over time, so words come to take on different meanings from generation to generation and from location to location. And even if they speak exactly the same version of a language and are in the same culture, two different people can STILL read or hear the same sentence and come to different conclusions about what it means.
Essentially, to me, what this all amounts to is that you’re imputing a firmness to writing that is not really justifiable, and it was far less firm 2,000 years ago when most people couldn’t read and write (beyond a rudimentary level) and where all distributed writings were done by laborious and expensive hand copying.
More in a little bit. I have to switch computers.
OK, to continue:
My entire point boils down to the argument that writing is not, in and of itself, more reliable in the long run than other processes. What you can see in ancient Christianity is the struggle to make sure the message did not get garbled, and a ton of tools were created to make sure it didn’t. As you note, that’s the whole point of things like creedal statements, ecumenical councils, bibles, and so on. It’s also why elevating anyone to the level of Bishop (which, after all, is an apostle) is a Very Big Deal in Orthodox and Catholic circles. You don’t elevate anyone to that rank without making sure that they’ve got everything right.
To me the proof that it has worked pretty well is in the putting: while schisms are basically a bad thing, they serve (for me anyway) as a very powerful proof that the central Christian message has not, after all, been anywhere near as corrupted as is so often asserted. When you look at, for example, the Assyrian Church of the East, or the ancient Thomist Christians found in places like India, what is more striking to me is not their differences but their astonishing levels of similarity. We regularly find pockets of Christianity (particularly Orthodox Christianity) which have been out of contact with the larger Christian community for literally centuries, and then when they encountered their brethren again after those centuries (and thousands of miles) of isolation they find that, oh yes, some practices generally considered minor are different, but, despite speaking different languages, being placed in different cultures, and centuries of isolation from each other, on all the really big issues they are still in complete accord. And, they tend to be in accord on issues that really should disturb many who are part of the Protestant experiment, particularly the fundamentalist wing of Protestantism.
From a Catholic perspective, one of the most inspiring (to me anyway) would be a case of the Maronites of the Arab world. The Maronites are a form of Orthodoxy. They were also just about completely out of contact with Rome for many centuries and only got regularly back in contact with Rome in the 20th Century. You’re looking at about a thousand years of history and countless linguistic changes, and even more cultural differences. Yet despite all of that, and near-complete isolation, when they rediscovered each other the Vatican and the Maronite leadership found that on all the important issues nothing had changed between them. The Maronites never considered themselves out of communion with Rome. They were just out of communication with Rome. They’re still teaching and believing the same things the Catholic Church does, despite a thousand years of isolation.
The Christian perspective would be that most of this is powerful proof that the Holy Spirit is indeed alive and well in preserving Christ’s Church. I suppose the more secular view would be that, at minimum, apparently these Christians developed some pretty danged strong methods of fighting off the normal forces that would cause corruption of the message.
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Dean,
Presuming that one accepted the origins of the Koran, then yes, it would have a stronger case then other written works and a much stronger case then just oral tradition.
I maintain that your view that people who can’t read are less trusting of writing, rather then more, is something you can’t back up. Every instance I know of of society with low degrees of literacy holds writing in extremely high esteem.
I don’t though, and never have, assert that writing prevents all corruption of information transfer. Certainly all of the possible ways you listed above to corrupt that information are true and do happen. They happen less easily with written word then with oral tradidition, but they still happen.
As to your assertion that this corruption was prevented over the centuries by careful selection of Bishops, I find that laughable given the history of Catholic Church. Bishops have often been very much a political appointment, and many had little if any theological training or inclination. An example would be Sigmund Franz Erzherzog von Österreich, a Hapsburg Prince who became a bishop at the ripe old age of nine. Hardly convincing evidence that the Church has consistantly ‘made sure they got everything right.’
As to the Maronites, I think you misunderstand the history. They were isolated from the Roman Catholic church for about 400 years, from around 700 AD until the Crusades. During that period of time they embraced the monothelite heresy. After reconnecting with the Catholic church in 1182, they have maintained communication and followed catholic orthodoxy.
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I think you overstate the respect for the written word over the respect for the spoken words and traditions among non-literate people. [shrug] The proof to that is to simply look at the fact that the early Christians, and Jesus, frequently referred to things only found in the oral teachings, and the vast majority of the world’s Christians and Jews place the oral traditions on par with the written traditions, viewing each as equally important to understanding the other.
As for the idea that what I say about the bishops is laughable: well, that’s a common cheap shot at the Catholics, to be blunt. While it’s certainly true that there have been bishops and popes who should never have gotten those jobs, what is most remarkable about that fact is that these men did not fundamentally alter the Church’s message. Nowhere in Christian belief is there an idea that becoming a priest or bishop makes you a morally superior person, impeccable and always right about everything. Not even the controversial doctrine of Papal Infallibility on matters of the faith asserts that. Indeed, Catholic sources are quite forthright in saying there have been numerous bad popes and other bishops, or bishops including the pope who did bad things. The example of Judas is frequently cited, as is Peter’s denial of Jesus, and arguments between the apostles, to show that yes, we know this is going to happen. Jesus says the gates of the Church will prevail against the forces of Hell; he does not say the men who lead it on Earth will be flawless. Indeed, exactly the opposite is what most of scripture attests to.
To back up your idea that the apostolic succession and preservation of the core message and practices is "laughable," you have to show how and when bad church leaders altered the message and practices in fundamental ways. I assert that you can’t. Disagreement and controversy, yes. Corruption of personal practice, yes. Incompetence, yes. Change of fundamental teachings and doctrines? Nope.
Regarding the Maronites: I don’t think they see it your way at all. They claim to have never been out of communion with Rome. Go argue it with them.
Of course they referred they referred to things that were not written down. Everyone does that. I have never stated that they didn’t value their oral traditions, I have simply stated that saying the common people of the time would place more stock in oral tradition and tend to distrust written words doesn’t match up with what we know about the people of those times and other societies with low literacy. In all partially literate societies that I know of, the written word is highly valued, more valued then in societies with higher literacy.
I didn’t say that Catholics were wrong because they had appointed bad Bishops. I said that your assertion that careful selection of Bishops had prevented any corruption in the Catholic Oral tradition was laughable. They are not at all the same. I would maintain that the Church has been able to maintain its oral traditions because of the strength of the written works. If they had not established an official canon and documented other important decisions, I would expect Church teachings to be quite different today. As an example, your contention that Jewish faith changed from the time of Christ to when they made a concerted effort to record their teachings about 1000 years later. Indeed, I would expect the effect would have been far greater in a multi-ethnic faith like Christianity then in Judaism.
As for the Maronites: I presented a breif synopsis of the known history of the sect. What did I get wrong?
As for being in or not in communion with Rome, that is a spiritual matter I am not qualified to judge, but also one that I didn’t address. Nothing I said implies that they must have been out of communion with Rome, although they were out of communication for 400 or so years.
In any event, that they only got back in contact in the 20th century is flat out incorrect. They were far from ‘completely isolated’ since 1182.
The problem with saying that X belief is correct because of oral tradition of the Church is that unless one believes in some mechanism (probably supernatural) that prevents the Church from being wrong, it is simply a tautology. You are just saying the Church is right because the Church believes X and X is right because it is what the Church believes. That doesn’t prove that either X or the Church is wrong of course, but it doesn’t prove from an objective standpoint that it is right either. Certainly personal faith and an apprehension of enlightenment from God could make an individual trust such a thing, but it doesn’t add objective proof.
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I confess I’m losing track of what it is we’re arguing about. So why don’t you tell me: what WAS Paul trying to tell his mostly-illiterate early Christian audience when he told them to trust scripture? Something that they already knew and therefore didn’t need any reminding of? Or that they should trust it above any other source, even though in the very same epistle he clearly contradicts that? Explain it to me.
Regarding the selection of bishops: over the 2,000 year unbroken history of the church, there has indeed been
occasional appointment of bad leaders. Throughout that 2,000 year history, there have also been numerous mechanisms in place for correcting that. The Catholics refer to the group of bishops as a whole as the Majisterium, while the Orthodox have a very similar concept of all the bishops in communion with each other but I don’t know what their word for it is. Anyway, for us it’s the Majisterium as a whole that’s important, not various individual leaders or even groups or cabals of them that’s most important. Your suggestion seems to be that if here and there and in era to era we got some bad bishops, or people appointed to the office who shouldn’t have been, this means that the message and practices must also have been broken.
But, if Al Capone is made a bishop, and murders a bunch of people, and cavorts with prostitutes, and produces a hundred bastard children, also says, “Jesus is Lord,” should we assume that what he said was corrupted and wrong?
My point has been that by looking at the other lines of Christianity that split off–the Oriental Orthodox in the 5th Century, and the Eastern Orthodox in the 11th–and at the church’s history as a whole, and by the writings of the church fathers going back as far as the 1st Century, we can see that a lot of the accusations of corruption of the church and its message become highly questionable. Now, this argument is mostly addressed toward Protestant Christians, who’ve done things like abolish their Priesthood, in some cases also abolished their Bishops, and thrown out a majority of the sacraments because they can’t find direct and indisputable instructions laying these things out for them in plain black and white in the Bible. But the very people who produced the Bible and preserved it for them practiced and believed these things the Protestants got rid of because, supposedly, "they’re not in the Bible." My argument is simply, it doesn’t have to be, because that’s not what the Bible’s for and never what it was intended to be for–and, although it seems to constantly shock Bible-only fundamentalists, that is what the overwhelming majority of the world’s Christians still believe.
As for the Maronites: I may have them confused with one of the other Eastern Catholic groups (there are a couple of dozen of them), but I do know that they at least claim never to have been out of communion with Rome even though they were out of contact with Rome for extended periods of time. [shrug]
A little research on the Maronites turns up this:
Therefore, since 685 the Maronites have found themselves isolated from Christians of the Byzantine Empire and European powers. In turn, they have appointed their own Patriarch, starting with John Maron, who had been a bishop of Batroun, Mount Lebanon. Through him, the Maronites of today claim full apostolic succession through the See of Antioch. Nonetheless, a source of controversy surrounds the Maronites, as they have been accused of having fully adopted and embraced the Monothelite heresy. However, this charge has been adequately explained away, as noted in the 2003 new Catholic Encyclopedia (see reference below). Maronites themselves insist that they have "never been out of communion with the Roman Catholic Church."
I guess some don’t believe them. I didn’t know that. Now I do. To me this is a distraction from the larger point, which is as I laid out in my last comment above was that you find isolated pockets of Christianity like this, the Indian Orthodox Church, and others who are remarkably (to my eye) consistent in their beliefs and practices, which clearly shows that preservation of Christianity through Oral Tradition and the Communion of Bishops and not just the Bible works pretty well. YMMV and all that.
In the interest of authenticity,
Magisterium does not properly contain the letter " j".
Magisterium is the official organ and teaching authority of tradition.
Yes, it makes a difference.
Whoops. You’re quite correct. "Magisterium" it is.
BTW, a bit of trivia, the "Magisterium" appears to be the bad guys in the popular series of children’s books by Philip Pullman known as His Dark Materials. This is part of the general anti-Christian thrust of the series; the slap at Catholics is unmistakable if you know this. (Catholics are just used to this sort of thing.)
I would presume that if Paul had to convince anyone to trust the written word when they were not inclined to do so, he would not have used a letter to do so. It would seem to be a fairly pointless exercise. It seems to me that this letter, to the quite literate Timothy, it talking about how how things will become bad in the last days, how many educated and seemingly wise people will lose track of the essence of the gospel and that true believers will be persecuted. He also goes on to say that Timothy should hold on to what he believes because he knows who he learned it from and because he knows the scriptures, which are inspired by God and profitable for the doctrine, correction, reproof and instruction, letting a man of God be perfect.
Frankly, it is a pretty stinging indictment of just relying on oral tradition and a strong assertation of the importance of scripture.
Obviously talking about the corruption of the church in the middle ages offends you. I will just say that I think it was more the rule then the exception, steming from the secular political nature of these appointments being regarded as more important then their spritual nature. History is pretty clear on the extent of nepotism and political influence that governed these appointments.
That being said, I do think that Catholics have a fairly strong case that they have maintained fairly unchanged not because they can call upon some claim to oral tradition, but because they do have written records back to the early days of the church, although the first couple of centuries it is pretty thin.
If, as many protestants claim, the church went wrong in those early centuries (something that is certainly logically possible) then one would expect that the majority of the worlds Christians would still follow the established (even if incorrect) dogma that was set down (in writing) at that time. The major non protestant schisms since then have certainly not tried to revisit any of those issues.
It is of course also true that the protestant and non-protestant schisms were remarkably different in the the other schisms were between different brands of authoritarianism, while the protestant schisms, arising out of the enlightenment, can be viewed as a conflict between authoritarianism and individualism. The social consciousness and fabric of the enlightenment was really a pretty radical development that both fueled and was fueled by the protestant reformation. Other societies, more steeped in authoritarianism in secular as well as religious matters would not be expected to have responded in the same way. That the more authoritarin churches have maintained the authoritarian trappings, and mostly just worried about who is the boss is hardly surprising.
Once again, I am making no statement that the Catholic Church is wrong or evil, I have a great deal of admiration for that organization, but I don’t think your arguments for its legitimacy provide the proof you seem to think it does.
To a greater or lesser degree protestants tend to hold that Christ established a non-authoritarian church, with the scriptures and individual grace to guide Christians but the established Church quickly became corrupt and authoritarian although they were by and large not able to corrupt the scriptures themselves. Saying that the different authoritarian brands all agree on the necessatity for authoritarianism doesn’t disprove this argument.
Now, I think that the case for the protestant free wheeling Christ is weak as well. Their is ample evidence for a structure and lines of authority in the early Church.
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Hrrrm. I find that reading of 2 Timothy to be rather amazing. I’ve read the whole thing from start to finish multiple times, and I see no stinging indictment of oral tradition. Given that in the very first chapter he talks of the importance of oral teachings, as he does in other epistles, I just find that an odd read on the matter. You’d think that if he wanted to indict oral teachings, he might have clearly said that. Or at least I would. [shrug]
I’m not offended by talking about corruption in the church in the middle ages. If I were, why would I be openly discussing it and acknowledging it?
I don’t find anything else much to disagree with in what you wrote after that. I just think that if Christ genuinely established a Church, one that would endure to the end of time, then radical Protestants who actually believe that everything got corrupted even before the New Testament Canon was even formally ratified by the bishops of the Church (which they would logically have to believe if history is any guide) is awfully questionable. As are some more common and less radical Protestant doctrines stemming from the Reformation era, such as abolishing the priesthood and throwing out five of the seven universally recognized sacraments simply because they couldn’t find it spelled out in plain black and white for them.
All I really think is that if Christianity is a true faith, then we will find it in the oldest continuous branches of that faith, and not in radical reconstructionists who use "nothing but the Bible" or "have no creed but the Bible." I think that’s incredibly questionable–indeed, I consider it self-evidently false. It’s something that’s popular in SOME Protestant circles ("We have no creed but the Bible") that sounds really good and profound but is, well, crazy if you ask me.
Again I only note that if you think it’s all wrong from start to finish, that’s pretty easy to sustain intellectually as I said already.
This also raises an interesting question to my mind: I pretty carelessly suggested Paul was writing for an audience above, but was he? I don’t actually know. Yes, the letter was written to his dear disciple Timothy, however, did he have in mind that others would read it? I rather assume so, but I don’t know. I tend to think that he always figured anything he wrote would be read by others, but that’s not hardly a given.
I didn’t say that Paul made any claim that oral teaching was wrong, simply that he made it clear that one must also rely on scripture. If learned men can go astray, scripture can provide a backstop against false teaching by those learned men. I am pretty sure that Catholic teaching agrees with me on that, and acknowledges that scripture is quite important.
It is my understanding that the Catholic position is that were the traditions of the church to be in conflict with scripture, then scripture would prevail. The Catholics don’t believe that their traditions are in conflict, while some protestants think they are, but that doesn’t change the basic principle.
One thing that I once read, and I can’t recall the exact source, but it was from a Catholic source way (and I’m paraphrasing) ‘We know where the Church is, but we do not know where it is not." This was primarily focused on salvation for non-Christians, but I think that the same thing can apply to intra-christian schisms as well. It seems to me that a focus on proving another set of beliefs is outside of God’s grace is somewhat of a waste of time, and probably not something God is interested in having his followers spend a lot of time on. Rather I would think that a focus on what is good would be more useful. If, for example, someone thinks that some of the sacraments the Catholics perform are unnecessary or anti-Christian, then an explanation of how they spiritually affect you and provide a deeper understanding and a feeling of closeness to Christ would, it seems to me, be more useful, and more Christlike then proving to them that their faith is wrong. You can, through the vehicle of you faith, be sure that the rites you follow are where the Church ‘is.’ I don’t think though that you can have that same assurance of where it is not.
As to the Epistle to Timothy, while it is quite likely that Paul never expected his exact words to be widely used, It is fairly clear that he was teaching general principles and expected Timothy to teach those principles as well, so one can presume the applicability of what he was writing to Timothy, even if he never expected his precise writing to be a canon scripture. We can also assume that he wrote many letters that were lost to time.
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Dave, yes, most of that on how Catholic and Orthodox view Sacred Tradition is correct. But that’s all I was saying; one does not rely entirely on either oral tradition or written tradition exclusively. Both are indispensable, and each reinforces the other.
A quibble I have is that I’m not sure Catholics accept the notion that if scripture contradicts oral tradition, scripture wins. That’s more like what the original Protestants meant when they first formulated the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, although the doctrine has mutated over the centuries to where many Christians now take it as a sort of "Scripture Uber Alles, there is nothing but scripture" level, which is intellectually and spiritually hazardous and tends to explain the incoherence of so many fundamentalists, with constant disagreement among them over the meaning of even tiny things in the Bible. Increasingly, the original Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura is now being called Prima Scriptura, which allows mainline Protestants to distance themselves from the Bible-only variety of Christian.
Catholics and Orthodox are agreed that there is no conflict between Sacred Oral Tradition and Sacred Written Tradition (Scripture); if there appears to be a contradiction, it just points to the limits of human faculties, and shows that you’ve misunderstood something. Since Scripture and Oral Tradition are both indivisibly part of of the same Holy Tradition, the argument just doesn’t apply, although scripture is often used to double-check that we’ve got the oral stuff right. The creeds and doctrinal statements of the Ecumenical Councils are part of all that.
This is also why we separate Holy Tradition from what’s just tradition. For example, tradition holds that Peter established the first church in Antioch. That’s not Holy Tradition and if you could prove that he didn’t do that, then, well, that would be a little disappointing but would otherwise have no great impact. Similarly, if you could prove that Jesus was crucified on a cross that was in an “X” rather than the traditional “T” represented, no one serious would have conniptions over it.
I agree that it’s important not to treat Christians outside the Holy Tradition of the Church poorly. It is important, however, to point out where they seem to be in error, and how that can be intellectually and spiritually hazardous. For example, you’d think that if Jesus and the Apostles personally established all seven Sacraments (or Holy Mysteries), as Sacred Tradition holds, you’re not doing yourself any favor to get rid of them or de-emphasize them.
BTW, I forgot to add: Christians have long held that when the intellectual descendants of the Pharisees put together the current version of the Tanakh (their version of what Christians call the Old Testament), they used (created?) versions that were clearly incompatible with Christianity and obscured or changed prophecies that pointed to Jesus. Which just goes back to the point that relying on scripture alone simply isn’t workable; when you’re talking about hand-copied documents over dozens of generations, you cannot say that written information is inherently more reliable than orally transmitted information (so long as the orally transmitted information is viewed as a very serious matter). Arguably, in many cases it’s easier to alter a written document than it is to alter what everybody who matters has heard and already knows. To use a simplistic example: It would be very easy to publish a document stating that Benjamin Franklin was the first President of the United States, and you could even point to worldly evidence that makes that sound credible (look, his face is even on the $100 bill, the largest denomination currently in circulation!). Problem is if you did that, everyone who knows anything about it will tell you it’s BS.
Or not.
We all know the anecdote that if you tell someone something, then they tell someone, then that person tells someone, do that five or six times more, and it gets back to you, you can be assured what reaches you looks nothing like what you told that first person. So much for the reliability of oral tradition.
And as far relying on Scripture alone, you prove in your own example that you’re wrong.
You state that the Pharisees purposefully altered the Tanakh. How would you know that unless you were able to compare different documents from different time periods and come to that conclusion?
If you can do that, why can’t everyone else? Why can’t a believer do the same thing for themselves today? Why is it more reliable to believe that something someone said has been accurately passed down orally for 2000 years when we know we can’t trust even our own friends and family to accurately transmit something we tell them 9 times out of 10?
You prefer this method of transmission over the relative ease your average person can access and examine Biblical documents spanning several millennium themselves? I can look at different versions of documents throughout the ages and consult experts on the accuracy of those documents very easily. I can go within and without the Church to do this.
Whom do I consult to make sure what Messiah told the Apostles has been accurately passed down orally?
Your method of determining doctrinal reliably requires more faith than I think God can reasonably request.
ADDENDUM:
To address your Ben Franklin example:
How would you disprove the person stating that Franklin was President?
Everyone knows that’s hogwash, yes, but how do they know it?
You’d disprove them by pointing to the documentary record. You’d show them there isn’t a single document from the period showing that Franklin was ever President, or sought office, and, instead, we have a long documented history that shows he was never President.
Dean, you’d point to the documented historical record. Your “proof” about the untrustworthiness of documents is no proof at all when you yourself would consult the documents to disprove the President Franklin documents. Indeed, without the authentic documents you’d have no way of knowing for sure if you were right or not.
Well, when I was a kid the second most famous Dinosaur was the Brontosaurus. Everyone knew about it. It doesn’t exist anymore though, some writing wiped it out for all time. In 50 years even that it ever existed will be just a nearly unknown bit of trivia.
However, because it was written about, as long as those records are preserved people who want to will be able to go back and see what was really thought about the Brontosaurus at different points in history.
If all we had was oral tradition, some vague memory that once their was a Bronosaurus might be preserved, but we sure wouldn’t know much about it in 100 years.
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