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MARGINAL NOTES TO A DISCUSSION

ON SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION

In the continuing discussion about the relationship between Sacred Scripture and tradition1 perhaps a few thoughts from yet another source are not out of place. Tradition can be defined or described in many ways. If it is employed as the term for the living voice of the magisterium, then patently Sacred Scripture is part of tradition. If the word is reserved for the monuments of Christian antiquity which contain the teaching of Christ and the Apostles, again Sacred Scripture is a part of tradition. One can also conceive that a part of divine revelation is transmitted in the Bible and that other truths and practices (if such a distinction is to be made) have been handed down to us in another way, in tradition, which is said to be unwritten in the sense that it was not placed in written form by a Biblical author.

It is clear from the New Testament that there were non-written communications of truths before any of these truths were placed in writing. While this fact of itself may not be overly important since the Church was in that period still in a formative stage, it gains in importance when one notes that there are more than indi

1 Cf. G. Tavard, Holy Writ or Holy Church? (London: Burns, Oates, 1959); idem, "Is Tradition a Problem for Catholics?," Union Seminary Quarterly Review 16 (1961) 375-389; J. Murphy, The Notion of Tradition in John Driedo (Milwaukee: Seraphic, 1959); idem, "Unwritten Traditions at Trent," The American Ecclesiastical Review 146 (1962) 233-263; V. Moran, "Scripture and Tradition: A Current Debate,” Australasian Catholic Record 38 (1961) 14-22; G. Owens, "Is All Revelation Contained in Sacred Scripture?," Studia Montis Regii 1 (1958) 55-60; R. Baepler, "Scripture and Tradition in the Council of Trent," Concordia Theological Monthly 31 (1960) 340-362; J. Lodrior, "Écriture et Tradition," Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 35 (1959) 425-427; P. De Vooght, "L'Evolution du rapport Eglise-Ecriture du XIII au XV siecle," Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 38 (1962) 71-85; J. Geiselmann, "Das Konzil von Trient über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift und der nicht geschriebenen Traditionem," in M. Schmaus, ed., Die mündlichen Uberlieferung (Munich: Huber, 1957) 123-206; H. Lennerz, "Scriptura Sola?," Gregorianum 40 (1959) 38-53; idem, "Sine scripto traditiones," Gregorianum 40, 624-635; idem, "Scriptura et traditio in decreto 4. sessionis Concilii Tridentini," Gregorianum 42 (1961) 517-522.

cations in the New Testament that some of the apostolic teaching was never placed in a canonical writing (cf., e.g., II Thess., 2:1-12; John, 20:30 f.; 21:24 f.). The practice of the Church has shown that certain of the things imposed by the Apostles on some or all of the members of the nascent Church were not definitive, though there is no nuance to the Apostles' directives as they are transmitted in the Bible: the law of Acts, 15:29 does not bind today; perhaps the same is to be said, for example, of Saint Paul's words in I Cor., 11:2-16 about the veiling of women's heads.2 Thus at the very least, an explicative tradition must be admitted alongside of Sacred Scripture. I do not believe that any Catholic denies this.

Can it be said that all revealed truth is contained in Sacred Scripture? If the answer is yes, what does it mean? Before these questions can be considered, we should note that the statement that everything necessary for salvation can be found in Sacred Scripture does not necessarily mean that all revealed truth is contained in Sacred Scripture; it may simply assert that the minimal object of divine faith can be found in the Bible-something which no one would deny. What a particular author may mean by the expression that everything necessary for salvation is found in Holy Writ can only be found from a consideration of all of his thought ;* moreover, one has to see if the author was consistent.

It is a fact that for reasons unknown the word partim was dropped before both in libris scriptis and sine scripto traditionibus from the final draft schema of the decree on Scripture and tradition some time before the final adoption of the decree by the Fourth Session of the Council of Trent on April 8, 1546, although in the final preliminary discussion of which there is any record the word

'Cf. J. Levie, La Bible Parole Humanine et Message de Dieu (Paris— Louvain: Desclée de Brouwer, 1958) 312 f.

Some of the early Protestants admitted this; cf. Baepler, art. cit., 354 f. regarding Martin Chemnitz.

In judging the authors of any given period one must take into account their vocabulary and also their use of the principles which they enuntiate. Thus De Vooght criticizes Tavard's op. cit. in not taking note of how Abelard, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, Richard Middleton, and Duns Scotus did not consistently apply the principle which Tavard thought was enuntiated in their works (art. cit.). It is my own belief that Tavard, erly inclined to understand in scriptura, en té graphé as meaning en at times it seems to mean in writing; this is especially -ion of some of the early Church Fathers.

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was retained in both places. However, it is also a well-known fact that the theologians in the immediate post-Tridentine period understood the decree as indicating two fonts or sources of revelation (which are not necessarily to be opposed). Is it licit today to state that everything is contained in Scripture? No Catholic will deny that many points of dogma are not contained explicitly in Sacred Scripture. Who, for example, can find in the New Testament that the Roman Pontiff or any particular Roman Pontiff is to be the successor of Saint Peter in the primacy? Who can find it expressed that the ministration of one priest is all that is necessary in the giving of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction?" A plethora of other examples can be adduced. It would be practically as impossible to state that many of these truths are contained implicitly in Sacred Scripture according to any usual understanding of the term implicit. In charity and in truth one must hold that those theologians who hold that everything is in Sacred Scripture must mean something else. But what is it? Do they mean that the Bible bears witness to God, to Jesus Christ and to His Church? If this is what is meant-and so it seems-then no one can object to their constructions; on the other hand they have not forwarded the cause of theology or of apologetics. It may well be that all that they do is to bear witness to "the inner unity, the reciprocal relationship, between Scripture, tradition and the magisterium.”8 But has that ever been denied by a post-Tridentine theologian?

It is to be granted that the position of Sacred Scripture in the total complex of the Church has not yet been fully worked out by the theologians. Yet the efforts being made today by some do not, it seems, contribute to the resolution of the problem, though they are drawing attention to it which is indeed something for the good. The problem is two-fold: Why divinely inspired works and why are some things in them but not all? The answer to the second part

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"Moran notes (art. cit., 21): "All through his article Dr. Geiselmann supposes that partim/partim means that what is in Scripture is not in Tradition and vice versa. . . All that partim/partim means is that what is contained in one source is not identical with all that is contained in the other. It does not mean that there is no body of doctrine common to both sources, or that one may not be the interpreter or complement of the other." 'Cf. Lennerz, "Sine scripto traditones," 631.

Murphy, art. cit., 256.

is not that all are contained in Sacred Scripture; all truths of faith are not contained in the Bible save in the attenuated sense already noted. Moreover, the problem of the Canon of Sacred Scripture cannot be resolved from Sacred Scripture alone; furthermore it is most unlikely that in every instance the literary nature of the particular books can be determined from Sacred Scripture alone.

Theology has its postulates as does any other science. For theology these include revealed data, some otherwise attainable by human reason and many which can only be known by divine revelation, and the first principles of human reasoning. Like all postulates these cannot be proved in the strict sense, at least in the ambit of the science; some of them simply cannot be proved by human reason. While it is true that theology can never fully embrace or understand its object (can any science?), it must proceed logically or it is not scientific (and hence is not really theology). Our speculations can come to naught, but we cannot affirm as the reason for this something which is opposed to the canons of logic. Is it correct to state that the content of the Canon of Sacred Scripture is just one of those basic points that precludes theological reasoning about it? At the very least, if it be a postulate, how can we know that it is such? We cannot prove by unaided reason that there is such a collection of books; nowhere in the collection is it stated that these books and no others possess this characteristic. It does not seem rash to state that the knowledge of the content of this group of books has to be obtained from outside the collection. If this be true, not everything can be said to be contained in Sacred Scripture, no matter how one attenuates the statement."

St. Charles Seminary

Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pa.

JOHN J. O'ROURKE

For this reason I must take exception to what are in many ways excellent observations of Murphy, art. cit., 262 f.

CATHOLICITY IN CALIFORNIA

For several years the author has been preparing a history of Catholicism in California. If and when the study is completed, the Church will be seen as one of the leading influences in an area which has witnessed over the past century a migration so stupendous as to outrank in point of numbers anything of its kind in the nation's history. This short article sketches in briefest detail some of the major events in the great pageant of California Catholicism.

The history of the Catholic Church in the State of California dates from the explorations of Juan Rodríquez Cabrillo in 1542 and Sebastian Vizcáino in 1602. These representatives of a Catholic power were accompanied by priests who celebrated Holy Mass on California shores over three centuries ago. In a more proximate and particular sense, the narrative begins with the establishment of Mission San Diego de Alcalá by Padre Junipero Serra, on July 16, 1769. The story of the California Missions, built and cared for by the Franciscan Fathers, is an epic of the West. From its beginning in 1769, until the erection of San Francisco Solano in 1823, twenty-one full fledged missions and several assistencies were founded. There, besides learning about the kingdom of God, the Indians were taught the techniques of agriculture and rude manufacture. Today the story of the Missions stands as an inte-. gral part of the state's ecclesiastical history, a narrative that has been described by the pens of Zephyrin Engelhardt, O.F.M., and his successor, the scholarly Maynard J. Geiger, O.F.M. In their many volumes, the well documented account of those eighty years which saw the rise, prosperity and ruin of the outposts of Christian civilization in the valleys and on the shoreline of California is historically narrated.

The decline of the Missions was rapid, resulting as it did from “secularization," the legal process which removed the mission establishments from the administration of the Franciscan friars. In 1834, a plan was inaugurated by the authorities in California for the "temporal welfare and spiritual interests of the Indians," and despite what might have been good intentions, lands and herds were expropriated by private parties, and even the churches were

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