The Meaning of Tradition by Yves Congar

Author:Yves Congar [Congar, Yves]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781681497488
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2017-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

The respective qualities of Scripture and tradition

Both Scripture and tradition are human and divine, but in different degrees and conditions. It would be misleading to say that Scripture was wholly divine and tradition purely human: Scripture too is human and historical; biblical studies have increasingly revealed how its composition was conditioned by literary styles, imagery and even ideas. Nevertheless, in the holy Scriptures the human element is fixed once and for all, whereas in tradition it is present throughout the whole of this tradition’s historical duration. The holy Scriptures give us the word of the prophets and apostles in a human form, which, however, is the actual form given it by the prophets and apostles, while the form of the different monuments of tradition neither comes from the apostles nor is even of their period. And the form a thought takes is closely linked to the thought itself.

In both cases the divine aspect depends on the active role played by the Holy Spirit. The fact that the same Spirit operates in both is enough to ensure a certain continuity running through tradition and the Scriptures; we have seen that the Fathers, Schoolmen and Council of Trent have in fact proved the value of tradition in God’s economy for revealing himself and his plan by the action of the Holy Spirit. But theology has come to distinguish with increasing clarity the action of simple assistance from that of true inspiration.20 To think of these two as opposites, or simply to put too great a distance—amounting to a breach—between them, would be alien to the traditional line of the Fathers, the Schoolmen, Catholic ecclesiology and the Catholic Magisterium. And yet the difference is real and qualitative. It indicates two phases that correspond to what O. Cullmann calls, after St. Paul (1 Cor 3:10; Eph 2:20), the foundation, and the building, carried out through time upon these foundations laid once and for all.

Exactly the same value, therefore, should not be attributed to tradition and to the holy Scriptures, even if they are paid the same respect. The holy Scriptures have an absolute value that tradition has not, which is why, without being the absolute rule of every other norm, like the Protestant scriptural principle, they are the supreme guide to which any others there may be are subjected. If tradition or the Magisterium claimed to teach something contradicting the holy Scriptures, it would certainly be false, and the faithful ought to reject it.21 Scripture is always the supreme rule and is never submitted to any other objective rule. It is, however, not the sole principle regulating the belief and life of the Church. To this end God has established two other principles: tradition and the Church, with her pastoral Magisterium. The Protestant Reformation has unhappily put these three realities in opposition, subjecting one to the other and setting one against the other, whereas the whole genius of tradition consisted in uniting them and recognizing their mutual relations, so closely linked that one cannot be conceived divorced entirely from the two others.

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