llamaluvr

Not saying that at all- you don't need to accept the infallibility of any text to study it as part of historical inquiry. Purely historical inquiry apart from claims of inspiration is required for the only decent argument for inspiration I know (http://www.catholic.com/library/Proving_Inspiration.asp). Sacred Tradition doesn't enable historical inquiry, but brings historical inquiry into religious discussions. You need to recognize tradition to even have an argument for inspiration; without it, you have to prove inspiration from the Bible, and no book could ever prove its own inspiration.

These things are part of some sort of tradition, or history, but Sacred Tradition relates only to the "mind" of the Church. It starts with the "deposit of faith" which ultimately comes from Jesus and is passed through his apostles, and continues with the Church as the guardian of that deposit. Non-conforming teachings and the sins of church members do not figure into this, because they have no relation to the deposit of faith. They're mistakes, sins, heresies, and the like. They'll always be part of history, just as the defense of the deposit of faith will always be; I think it's pretty easy to tell the wheat from the chaff, though.

I know Sacred Tradition has no bearing on the beliefs of non-theists here, but I find the fact that this very important part of Christianity rarely factors into discussions here very disconcerting. Folks that assume that individual interpretation is the presumptive model of discernment for Christians do so at their own intellectual peril, as:

1) it isn't true, and hasn't been true for most of history, and even today isn't the norm for the majority of Christians,

2) it invites confirmation bias, as assuming sola scriptura makes any case for Christianity quite flimsy,

3) it invites poor exegesis, as it encourages hyperliteral readings of scripture that are completely untenable (if you believe all Christians read the Bible hyperliterally, why not use it against them?).

Starting from a sola scriptura assumption when debating Christian theology relegates discussion to a variant of Christianity which doesn't withstand historical scrutiny, and is the least defensible even apart from the lack of historical basis, so such debates end up being mental masturbation for non-Christians, at best.

jaymack2

I agree with you on this point, that there are a lot of Christians (I don't know if I'd call it a majority -- there are millions out there who believe in the Bible as the sole source of God's revelation) who look upon Sacred Tradition as at least as important as the Bible. And I agree that nonbelievers often get too caught up in parsing the Scriptures for errors and inconsistencies. The Catholic Church has not gone that route for some time. In fact, I once listened to a Bishop Sheen broadcast where he said the gospels were only an afterthought, written down so that people would have something to refer to in future generations. The Catholic Church has always claimed that Sacred Tradition is at least as important as the written record.

But here is my problem. You're making a statement of faith about Sacred Tradition, from what I can see. We have no proof whatsoever that ST is an accurate reflection of what Jesus taught. To my mind, it's a vague, nebulous concept that basically is whatever the Church hierarchy says it is. Saying that there were traditions in the early Christian communities that have been handed down faithfully is nonsense -- who's the arbiter of that? Who can say if a tradition really started in first century Palestine, or third century Rome? And who's to say that it accurately reflects what Jesus taught, or just what somebody at third-hand made up? There are so many problems with eyewitness testimony in the law that it's not recognized as solid evidence in a trial. Look at all the urban legends and hoaxes that get started and have a life of their own in our time -- and we live in an age that has instant media communication, far different from the first century rural communities of Palestine, where there was very little ability to check facts or verify rumors and tall tales.

To be brief, I'd like to know if you have any other reason to believe in Sacred Tradition, other than that the Church tells you so.

llamaluvr

[quote]Picking nits, I know...but the Christian traditions that represent the majority of Christendom believe in some sort of Sacred Tradition, or otherwise recognize Tradition as an important pillar of religious truth. Catholics and Orthodox believers make up a commanding majority of all Christians, and you could even throw high-church Anglicans into the mix to up those numbers a little more.

Adhering to Sacred Tradition is always ultimately going to be a matter of faith. It's a supernatural claim, really- that, through intervention of the Holy Spirit, an organization of humans, though apart and on their own they are flawed, might, as a whole, transmit and proclaim teaching infallibly. There's no way around that.

It's not a claim that you can prove is true. However, it is a claim that can be proven not to be false to a large extent. Suppose you take all of the writings up to the end of the fourth century from Church fathers that any reasonable historian would conclude were transmitting what, at the time, was considered Christian orthodoxy. That's a helluva lot of writings communicating a ton of important Christian doctrines. If you compare them to what the Catholic Church teaches today, it can be shown the two sets of teachings are consistent with each other. So, there you have it- infallibility from 400 to today.

That doesn't sound that remarkable, except for that fact that you couldn't even come close to doing the same thing with any of the Protestant churches. If Christ's church was supposed to persevere to the end (Matthew 16:16-19), and the Protestant churches together, or even a subset of them or one of them, are that church...well, by looking at what's been documented, they're not that original church, and by comparing those early doctrines with what they believe, Christ's church died, rendering Christianity false. Catholicism does not suffer from this historical/ logical quandary.

Anyway, you can go back further in history with just documents- you'll have fewer writings, but you can still construct a lot even just considering 2nd century documents. Also, you can learn a lot by what they're didn't write about- why didn't they write positively of the existence of all these Protestant distinctives? If the Church was vociferous about the legitimacy of infant baptism starting in the 2nd century (at least as far as we have evidence), and quiet about the illegitimacy of it before, up to, and long after that time, as well as being silent about it in the scriptures (except for those references comparing baptism to circumcision and whole families being baptized, of course :-) ), what are the odds that Baptists are right, and the reason it got fouled up was due to a mixed-up game of telephone?

Anyway, the point I'm getting at here, is, if the Church has been consistent for the 1850-or-so years where we can start tracing doctrines by extrabiblical documents, it's not that unreasonable to believe she is going to be consistent tomorrow. Especially when every other church has failed in this regard. Name any organization, secular or otherwise, that has pulled that off.

Do you mean "hearsay," instead? To be very brief, eyewitness testimony/ hearsay issues are far more nuanced than that, and doing historical analysis is apples to the oranges of convicting a felon, not to mention that the rules change in many jurisdictions when it comes to civil proceedings. To conclude, we would lose most of our historical perspective (basically everything that isn't made of stone) if we did not lean on testimonies to inform our understanding of past events.

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I would generally take issue with the claims that 1) oral traditions were problematic in ancient times, and 2) that communications were prohibitively ill-suited for transmitting information as important as the Gospel.

1) Are we so bad at transmitting information orally because that mode is inherently unreliable, or because we're simply not as good at it anymore? We have more tools at our disposal, so we don't need to do it as much. They had to do it all the time. Even if a later timeline for the writings of the gospels and epistles is accepted, the fact that they were written in different corners of the Roman Empire at different times speaks to the fact that the information could be transmitted reliably through whatever means they used before putting pen to paper. The gospels alone represent Judea, Rome, and Asia Minor, and are even reconcilable in sequence events (I know, another debate, another time). Even if you don't agree with that, it's a huge stretch to say that they're inconsistent in the doctrines they express.

2) The Roman Empire had very impressive infrastructure. Christianity spread quite quickly through it, with evidence emerging soon thereafter doctrine was transmitted consistently from Egypt to Gaul.


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To get back to what it means to you and other non-theists- it's not really about Sacred Tradition. It's about tradition with a lower-case 't.' Just respecting the fact that sola scriptura is silly and unsustainable, that no religion should rely on only a book, that analysis of the consistency or lack thereof of Christianity has to include a consideration of what Christians believed historically about the discussed issues, that Christians have a very ancient heritage and it did not include the beliefs of 21st century fundamentalists, etc. Not saying you agree with all those, but I do get the sense that you at least understand where I'm coming from. If someday a large group of us get to the point where someone doesn't have to jump into a debate to remind everyone that the belief that they're claiming tanks Christianity is barely a hundred years old, we've made tremendous progress in the discussion.

Huon

I would be interested to know how the Sacred Tradition explains the story of Jesus.

Jesus is said to be a Jew, of royal descent (David). He lived in Judea, Samaria, Galilee. Perhaps he said he was anointed (messiah). He said and did some things among the Jews which led him to be crucified, seemingly by a coalition (Romans, Herod Antipas, Sadduceans).

All this is the not very exceptional story of a Jew among other Jews. I doubt much that Jesus claimed to be the son of God. Possibly his followers said that, from a hyperbolic point of view. He could have been called a prophet, that belongs to the jewish tradition.

The last supper of Jesus and his friends is quite a normal event, inside a tight group, jewish or not jewish. The Eucharist, as a Christian rite, is not jewish. The Jews do not eat their God, even as a symbol. Almost certainly the Eucharist is the transformation by the Sacred Tradition of a jewish supper.

What I do not understand, is how this 100 % jewish story led to a religious split between the early Christians and the Jews. I suspect that Jesus was not a Christian of the Sacred Tradition.

Huon

Another example of Sacred Tradition is the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The only mention of Mary which could be invoked is in Luke 1.28. The Protestants do not accept this dogma.

bopot

I must not understand Catholicism then, because when I think of hard-line Christians I put Catholics right up there with fundamentalist Protestants. Then again, I tend to look at history as a whole rather than myopically focusing on present-day Christian behavior (which has become heavily tempered by scientific advances).

llamaluvr

There's a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why there was a religious split- Jesus claimed the things that the apostles and gospel-writers said he claimed. Relating back to tradition, I'm at a loss to recall any early writings offering your alternative explanation. Some may have claimed Jesus was a fraud (I seem to recall Talmudic writings of this nature), but did any actually say, "oh, well Jesus didn't actually mean this." Even vocal critics of Christianity from the era acknowledged that Jesus claimed he was either God or a god (Celsus is an example).

Huon

Celsus is not exactly a good example. He wrote between approximately 170-180 CE, and his writings were reproduced and criticized by Origen around 250 CE.

The split between the Jews and the Christians is much earlier, 70-100 CE.

llamaluvr

Celsus is a great example- 100-200 years is practically nothing. If the words attributed to Jesus were made up at a later time, everybody in the intelligencia a hundred years later would know that and would call them out on that above anything else, as it would be a slam-dunk case against Christianity. The best you could say is that people called the Christians out on their lies for a few years and then everybody suddenly forgot for the next umpteen centuries, until a few enlightened-individuals suddenly picked up on this in recent times. Of course, you have to ask, where'd these folks get these ideas from if all traces of said ideas disappeared by the beginning of the second century? Sorry, this sounds really implausible.

Huon

Perhaps you don't know that the words attributed to Jesus were made up by the authors of GMatt, GLuke, GMark, GJohn, and Acts, AFTER the split between the Jews and the Christians. They contain attacks against the religious authorities of the Jews. The NT tells us of conflicts between "Paul" and "James the brother of Jesus". We have the point of view of "Paul", and nothing from the other side.