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Jesus spoke to his disciples long before the things he taught were written down
It is historical fact that man communicated orally before he wrote things down. Whether one puts the beginning of mankind at 5000 B.C. or 5,000,000 B.C., there is no archeological evidence of any written communication earlier than 4000 B.C.
The outside date any Scripture scholars are willing to give for the beginning of the writing down of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, is approximately 1450 B.C. Yet the Torah conveys facts relating to God’s creating the universe and events that happened as far back as circa 1850 B.C., when God brought Abram “from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan” (Gen. 11:31). Obviously, unless we were to dismiss the validity of the entire Bible, we must admit the Jews had an accurate oral tradition (from the Latin traditio, meaning “handed or passed down”) centuries prior to its being recorded in writing.
The life of a human being works similarly. Once born, it learns to speak long before it can write. It learns what is right and wrong from what its parents say and do. Only after years of upbringing does a child can learn to read and write. And so the life of a human being parallels that of Sacred Scripture: Oral tradition necessarily precedes the act of writing.
The same is true for the New Testament. Jesus spoke to his disciples long before the things he taught were written down. While tradition means a “handing down,” Sacred Tradition means the handing down of divine revelation from one generation of believers to the next, as preserved under the divine guidance of the Catholic Church established by Christ.
The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), defines Sacred Tradition as what “the apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with him, and from what he did, or what they learned from the prompting of the Holy Spirit” (DV 7). Sacred Tradition, of which Sacred Scripture is a part, is a deeply penetrating, living reality. It is transmitted to us through the practices of the Church since apostolic times. These include official professions of faith, from the Apostles’ Creed (circa A.D. 120) and Nicene Creed (325) to the Credo of the People of God by Pope Paul VI (1968); the official teachings of the 21 ecumenical councils of the Church, from Nicea I (325–381) to Vatican II (1962–65); the writings of Church Fathers and doctors; papal documents; sacred Scripture; sacred liturgy; and even Christian art that portrays what we believed and how we worshiped over the centuries.
Many non-Catholics today claim to base their faith on the Bible alone, a doctrine known as sola scriptura. This was a phrase coined by the Reformation Protestants who broke away from the Church in the 1500s. In addition to rejecting papal authority in all matters, daily governance, teaching authority, et cetera, the Protestants reject Sacred Tradition.
But where did the Bible come from? It came from the Church, not vice versa. In apostolic times most people were illiterate. So what Christ said and did was passed on orally. Christ instructed the apostles were to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). How could Our Lord order them to “preach the gospel” at a time when the gospels themselves did not exist in written form? Unless one is to accuse our Lord of being unreasonable, the only answer is that the gospel (“good news”) already existed in oral form as a part of the Sacred Tradition of the Church, “handed on . . . from the lips of Christ” (DV 8).
From the year of Christ’s Resurrection until roughly 100, the New Testament itself was not completely written. And in the view of many nothing was written prior to the year 50. Yet this was a period of tremendous growth for the Church. How could it have grown intact, with the same teachings being passed on orally and consistently, unless the Holy Spirit was safeguarding the transmission of Sacred Tradition? How were so many converted without the aid of Sacred Scripture, if not with the aid of Sacred Tradition?
Many Protestant churches, in order to circumvent the Sacred Tradition issue, maintain that the Catholic Church fell into error at some point before the Reformation. And they are somehow in a position to judge where God and his Church have gone wrong.
But Sacred Scripture contains many of Christ’s promises to protect and safeguard his Church until the end of time. He tells the apostles, “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Again he promises, “I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16–17). Jesus promises, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:13). And Paul calls the Church “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). These verses are quite clear: The one, true Church Christ founded cannot err because God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, protects it for all time.
Another place Sacred Scripture is quite clear is the divine origin of the papacy and therefore its divine authority. Our Lord says to Peter, “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:18–19)....
Jesus spoke to his disciples long before the things he taught were written down
It is historical fact that man communicated orally before he wrote things down. Whether one puts the beginning of mankind at 5000 B.C. or 5,000,000 B.C., there is no archeological evidence of any written communication earlier than 4000 B.C.
The outside date any Scripture scholars are willing to give for the beginning of the writing down of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, is approximately 1450 B.C. Yet the Torah conveys facts relating to God’s creating the universe and events that happened as far back as circa 1850 B.C., when God brought Abram “from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan” (Gen. 11:31). Obviously, unless we were to dismiss the validity of the entire Bible, we must admit the Jews had an accurate oral tradition (from the Latin traditio, meaning “handed or passed down”) centuries prior to its being recorded in writing.
The life of a human being works similarly. Once born, it learns to speak long before it can write. It learns what is right and wrong from what its parents say and do. Only after years of upbringing does a child can learn to read and write. And so the life of a human being parallels that of Sacred Scripture: Oral tradition necessarily precedes the act of writing.
The same is true for the New Testament. Jesus spoke to his disciples long before the things he taught were written down. While tradition means a “handing down,” Sacred Tradition means the handing down of divine revelation from one generation of believers to the next, as preserved under the divine guidance of the Catholic Church established by Christ.
The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), defines Sacred Tradition as what “the apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with him, and from what he did, or what they learned from the prompting of the Holy Spirit” (DV 7). Sacred Tradition, of which Sacred Scripture is a part, is a deeply penetrating, living reality. It is transmitted to us through the practices of the Church since apostolic times. These include official professions of faith, from the Apostles’ Creed (circa A.D. 120) and Nicene Creed (325) to the Credo of the People of God by Pope Paul VI (1968); the official teachings of the 21 ecumenical councils of the Church, from Nicea I (325–381) to Vatican II (1962–65); the writings of Church Fathers and doctors; papal documents; sacred Scripture; sacred liturgy; and even Christian art that portrays what we believed and how we worshiped over the centuries.
Many non-Catholics today claim to base their faith on the Bible alone, a doctrine known as sola scriptura. This was a phrase coined by the Reformation Protestants who broke away from the Church in the 1500s. In addition to rejecting papal authority in all matters, daily governance, teaching authority, et cetera, the Protestants reject Sacred Tradition.
But where did the Bible come from? It came from the Church, not vice versa. In apostolic times most people were illiterate. So what Christ said and did was passed on orally. Christ instructed the apostles were to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). How could Our Lord order them to “preach the gospel” at a time when the gospels themselves did not exist in written form? Unless one is to accuse our Lord of being unreasonable, the only answer is that the gospel (“good news”) already existed in oral form as a part of the Sacred Tradition of the Church, “handed on . . . from the lips of Christ” (DV 8).
From the year of Christ’s Resurrection until roughly 100, the New Testament itself was not completely written. And in the view of many nothing was written prior to the year 50. Yet this was a period of tremendous growth for the Church. How could it have grown intact, with the same teachings being passed on orally and consistently, unless the Holy Spirit was safeguarding the transmission of Sacred Tradition? How were so many converted without the aid of Sacred Scripture, if not with the aid of Sacred Tradition?
Many Protestant churches, in order to circumvent the Sacred Tradition issue, maintain that the Catholic Church fell into error at some point before the Reformation. And they are somehow in a position to judge where God and his Church have gone wrong.
But Sacred Scripture contains many of Christ’s promises to protect and safeguard his Church until the end of time. He tells the apostles, “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Again he promises, “I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16–17). Jesus promises, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:13). And Paul calls the Church “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). These verses are quite clear: The one, true Church Christ founded cannot err because God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, protects it for all time.
Another place Sacred Scripture is quite clear is the divine origin of the papacy and therefore its divine authority. Our Lord says to Peter, “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:18–19)....