In 1971, Irish band the Dubliners had a hit with “Hand Me Down My Bible” about a hard-living sinner who repents. The refrain of the song is:
Oh oh glorio,
Now I’m the Lord’s disciple
Oh oh glorio,
Now hand me down my Bible
That’s a good starting place to talk about the relationship between the Bible and Tradition… and the way in which the Bible is itself a Tradition. Catholics and Protestants often talk past one another on this topic. Protestants tend to hear “custom or rule,” whereas Catholics mean “something passed on.” And it’s too bad, because you simply can’t have Christianity without Tradition.
I hope you’ll check out my latest piece for Catholic Answers Magazine Online exploring this topic…
Wow. Just wow. That Bible word-choosing in order to fulfill man-made tradition is very revealing. Thank you for a powerful article.
Loved the article. When you mentioned NIV and how the translators mistranslate the original word for tradition to “teaching”, shows you how one has to be very careful with what Bible translation they actually use because a number of the Protestant versions like NIV and ESV had built in theological biases to support their views. RSV and KJV the same.
If you know anything about the world of textual criticism, you know that every. single. translator. comes to the table with biases/presuppositions/worldviews that inform and influence their interpretations/translations–and that’s one of many reasons why all translations are done by committee. Therefore, each translation has a bias, and also operates on a spectrum of ‘word by word’ equivalency vs. ‘dynamic’ equivalency. The ESV is a word by word translation; the NIV operates more dynamically and is geared to a lower reading literacy than the ESV. So you can’t say one translation is ‘better’ than another. The NIV was translated for readability by a modern mind. The ESV is more concerned with accuracy to the original texts, and is more wooden to read. SO…..to take one word from a specific translation and say it’s irrelevant because it doesn’t happen to fit your preferred biases/presuppositions/worldview is just plain silly. That means we all need to get busy learning Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, because there’s no translation that will ever be published that will perfectly capture the original languages.
Joe’s point is sometimes missed.
Have you learned all those languages which help with understanding?
Superb article! It’s one of the best, and easiest to understand, explanations of ‘Tradition’ that I have ever read.
Sacred Tradition is necessary for the Church, according to this teaching of Jesus in Matt 28:19 :
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Here, Christ says that all AUTHORITY is given to Him not only in Heaven, but below on Earth as well. And this implies that this ‘earthly authority’ is meant to be made effective, or made visible (via His ‘Mystical Body’), first through the gathered apostles that were then before Him, and then later on… through the leadership of their future ‘disciples’ that would succeed them until the ‘very end of the age’. Jesus was thus particularly founding His worldwide and missionary Church here (with this command “go and make disciples”), and showing the necessity of the sacrament of baptism as a sign particularly indicating those who were to be considered inside ‘the Church’ as compared those who were considered to be outside of it. Baptism is therefore a sign of the Church’s unity and universality, even extending as He said….unto the ‘ends of the Earth’ (all nations) and until the ‘end of time’.
The reason that it is fundamentally ‘Tradition’ which is necessary for the Church, as compared to merely ‘sola scripture’, is because Christ’s Holy Church is ‘living’, ‘physical’ and ‘dynamic’, and the same that was called by Christ to expand outwards to countless nations and peoples, all having their own particular languages, cultural difficulties and spiritual particularities. Only a ‘living Church’, led by the Holy Spirit and united by the catechesis and sacraments that Christ commanded and left to it, could convert to God, and bring to baptism and unity, such a wide variety of peoples and nations throughout the world.
And we can visibly see, through an adequate understanding of not only Church history, but world history as well, that the Catholic Church did exactly this, and continues to do the same to this very day…and will do so as Christ promised… “to the very end of the ages”.
No book can do this. Therefore, ‘sola scripture’ is a fantasy. Only a ‘living’ Church established with divine authority given to it by Jesus Christ Himself can accomplish this….even as Jesus intended in this excellent teaching of His in the quote, above. And at Pentecost we can also see a further example of how the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, was given to inspire, teach and guarantee the authority of Christ’s Holy Church on Earth, even as Jesus promised:
“I have yet many things to say to you: but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth. For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak; and the things that are to come, he shall shew you. He shall glorify me; because he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine. Therefore I said, that he shall receive of mine, and shew it to you.” (John 16:12)
Protestants have never had an issue with this meaning of Tradition.
Not sure this holds up when you get to things like Assumption of Mary, though.
Interesting that the Catholic Church has no problems teaching the traditions of men, after Jesus, in Mark 7: 6-8, condemned teaching as doctrines the traditions of men. Of course, when the Catholic Church teaches the doctrines of men, it is considered gospel, even if it conflicts with the Bible, the written Word of God.