Tradition: Source of the Written Gospels

Years ago, when I was first reading the Epistle of James, a couple of verses in chapter five jumped out at me. James didn’t give any indication that he was quoting Jesus, but I clearly recalled the same words in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount:

Epistle of James	Gospel of Matthew
But above all, my brethren, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, that you may not fall under condemnation. (5:12)	Do not swear at all, either by heaven…or by the earth…Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from the Evil One. (5:34-37)
Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. (5:2-3)	Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal (6:19)

Huh. Why didn’t James identify his source? Over the years, as I dug deeper into James’ epistle, I saw other places where he appeared to use Jesus’ words without any attribution. (Compare James 1:22 and Matthew 7:24; or James 3:12 with Matthew 7:16 and Luke 6:44.) What was going on here?

A couple of things occurred to me. The first was to realize that James, who was martyred in 62 A.D., probably composed his epistle in the late 40s or very early 50s – likely before Paul penned his first epistle and more than a decade before any of the gospels were written. Ironically, if I didn’t have those later gospels with which to compare James, I would never have known James was quoting the Lord! This leads to a second important realization: James wrote at a time when the Gospel existed purely in oral form, in Tradition.

That is extremely important, because Christianity was constituted, not as a religion of the book, but of the Word made flesh – alive and active in the ministry of the apostles. Jesus did not record his moral teaching or parables, nor write a monograph about the significance of his death and resurrection. Nor did he send forth the apostles with a command to write. Rather, his command was to make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching them to observe all that He had commanded (Mt 28:18-20).

When the apostles preached, each drew from the Tradition those words and actions of Jesus that best met their individual audiences’ needs. It wasn’t necessary to stop and identify every time they quoted Jesus’ earthly teaching; because when James and the other apostles preached, it was received by the Church as Christ speaking in and through them (Lk 10:16).

Initially, their preaching focused upon Christ’s redemptive sacrifice and resurrection. But those required an explanation, and that was found in what preceded it – Christ’s life, teaching and miracles. Each apostle had his own recollections of Jesus and manner of recounting them, his own personality and theological emphases. ^[1]

We must keep this apostolic preaching in mind when reading the gospels, since the same principles hold true. Sacred Tradition – the deposit of truth entrusted to the apostles – was the source from which the four evangelists drew Christ’s words and actions in the construction of their narratives. Luke, who was not an eyewitness to Christ’s life, began his gospel by stating, “I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning…just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Lk 1:3,2). Even though the four evangelists were inspired, the Spirit did not spare them the effort required of all authors; and that meant digging into the Tradition Christ had entrusted to the Church.

Each gospel bears the mark of its human author. “Of the many elements [the four evangelists had] at hand they reported some, summarized others, and developed still others in accordance with the needs of the various churches.”^[2]  This accounts for many of the so-called contradictions between the four gospels. The sequence, for instance, in which the evangelists narrate Christ’s life differs in some respects. This is not a challenge to a Catholic’s faith in the inerrancy of Scripture. The Church has always understood that the order in which the evangelists recounted Christ’s words and actions were not meant as a rigid assertion of chronology. Catholics are also not shocked to discover subtle differences in the wording of Christ’s sayings. We are used to reading modern historical texts, but the evangelists were inspired to write according to the conventions of their time. There were no audio recorders in the first century, and the apostles were not stenographers. When the sacred writers drew from the Tradition, they sometimes communicated the sense of Jesus’ words instead of exact quotations:

James 3:12	Matthew 7:16	Luke 6:44
Can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a grapevine figs?	You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?	…for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.

The meaning asserted by each of the inspired authors is the same, even if the phrasing differs. Another example: When Jesus sends out the Twelve in Matthew 10:9-10, he tells them to take nothing for the journey, “no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff; for the laborer deserves his food;” and yet in Mark 6:8-11 we read, “[Jesus] charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belt.” Whether Jesus said to take a staff or not, the memory drawn from the Tradition, and positively asserted by both inspired authors, was that Christ instructed the Twelve to look to God to supply their material needs. There is no true contradiction.

It’s funny how a couple of verses in James can lead to such heady subjects as inspiration and inerrancy and how Scripture is dependent upon Tradition – not just to be correctly interpreted, but to be written! That’s the way it was with God’s Revelation, though; it is all connected.

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[1] Augustin Bea, The Study of the Synoptic Gospels: New Approaches and Outlooks (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 37.

[2] Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Historicity of the Gospels (1964), http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/pbcgospl.htm

James, Wisdom, and the New Testament Canon

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him.” – James 1:5

Wisdom, the God-given ability to properly act upon knowledge – that is what Christians seek. I would suggest that wisdom has a great deal to do with Christian unity. Once we gain the knowledge God affords us, it will be processing and acting upon that knowledge in the correct way – exercising wisdom – that will restore Christian unity. A better knowledge of the formation of the New Testament canon affords us just such an opportunity. In this article we’ll chart the Church’s reception of the Epistle of James as a case study in the canon and the life changing wisdom to which such knowledge leads us.

The twenty-seven texts that make up the New Testament were inspired the instant they issued from their authors’ quills, but it took approximately three hundred years for them to be recognized as the closed collection we know today. Initially, a local church would have only possessed the New Testament document composed for them or their immediate neighbors. The printing press was fourteen hundred years away. Copies had to be made by hand and walked to their destination. As works began to circulate, it was natural for communities receiving new texts to question the tradition standing behind them. In some places, the testimony to certain works suffered. 

Our first witnesses to the authority of the Epistle of James are indirect. Clement, the third bishop of Rome, after the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, borrowed heavily from James in chapter 30 of his Epistle to the Corinthians (c. AD 95). Scholarship is also able to say that Hermas (the brother of Pius, the ninth Bishop of Rome) also made use of James in the first and third sections of his work The Shepherd (c. 140).  Christianity’s first stab at a NT canon, however, the Muratorian Fragment (c. 155), failed to include James. (Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter, and 3 John are also missing, with the Apocalypse of Peter substituted in.)

We have to wait until the third century for evidence of James being explicitly referred to as Scripture. Around AD 200, Clement of Alexandria included James, along with the Apocalypse of Peter, Epistle of Barnabas, and the twenty-six other books making up today’s NT, in his attempt at a biblical canon.  Approximately forty years later, Origen, Christianity’s first great biblical scholar, referred to James as “divine scripture” and identified its author as an “apostle” and “brother” of the Lord.  

James place in the NT was still far from solidified. At the beginning of the fourth century, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the father of Church history, identified texts as falling into one of three categories: accepted, disputed, and spurious; James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John belonged to the second group. Pope Marcellus quoted James 3:1-8 as the words of the “Apostle James” in his Letter to the Bishops in the Province of Antioch (AD 308). St. Cyril of Jerusalem and the local Council of Laodicea (c. 363) included James in their canons of Scripture (excluding only the Book of Revelation); and yet, the Cheltenham Canon, written in Africa c. 360, omitted James, as well as Hebrews, 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John.

The great watershed moment in the history of the New Testament was St. Athanasisus’ Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter. The Easter letter penned by this bishop and champion of orthodoxy in 367 A.D. was the first time that all twenty-seven books of the New Testament – and only those twenty-seven books – were listed together. This same canon was affirmed by the local Council of Hippo (393), St. Augustine in his On Christian Doctrine (397), and the local Council of Carthage (419).  The latter, attended by St. Augustine and over two hundred bishops, ruled that, “besides the Canonical Scriptures nothing be read under the name of divine Scripture.” They then listed the forty-six books of the Old Testament and twenty-seven of the New, ending with, “For the confirmation of this canon, the church across the sea [i.e., Rome] is to be consulted.”  Pope Boniface’s subsequent approval of their directives effectively settled the question of the canon until it was reopened by Luther.

This brief history of James’ acceptance among Christians serves as a case study in the formation of the New Testament. James, originally written to Jewish-Christians, was recopied and carried by hand to distant communities (composed of Jews and Gentiles) such as Rome and Alexandria. Over the next two hundred years, some who received the epistle questioned its provenance. Those bishops in whose churches James had been handed down as an apostolic work and proclaimed in the liturgy gave authoritative witness to the tradition they had received. That witness was accepted by their brother bishops and a consensus was reached. In union with their head, the Bishop of Rome, they delineated which books were to be regarded as Scripture in the Church. The bishops’ apostolic authority was the Holy Spirit’s instrument for giving the canon of Scripture to the Christian faithful.

That has serious repercussions for anyone who looks to the Bible as a source of God’s Revelation, because whenever a Christian recognizes the New Testament as a closed, fixed body of literature, he implicitly acknowledges the Catholic bishops’ authority to speak for Christ. And if the bishops spoke on Christ’s behalf to authoritatively settle the canon of Scripture, then on what grounds do we deny their authority to interpret it? You see, all of the key figures in the formation of the canon were unabashedly Catholic. They clearly taught that:

• Bishops are the successors of the apostles (Clement of Rome, Hermas, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Augustine)
• the bread and wine of the Eucharist are transformed into Jesus’ body and blood, making present His sacrifice (Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyril, Athanasius, Augustine)
• serious sin must be confessed to God through the ministry of the presbyters (Origen, Athanasius, Augustine);
• final salvation is not just a matter of faith, but works (Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine)
• the souls of the dead often require further purification and benefit from our prayers (Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine)

None of these great lights saw any opposition between such beliefs and the teaching of Scripture. In fact, these beliefs were integral to Christianity long before congregations were equipped with a twenty-seven book New Testament! Such knowledge is life-changing, and acting upon it can heal centuries of division within Christianity. Such knowledge can be difficult to act upon, though. Often times, it requires great humility and sacrifice. I will give James the final word, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord” (Js 1:5-8).

Book Review: "An Economics of Justice & Charity"

I have spent the past year delving into the Epistle of James, looking at the epistle's Jewish roots as well as how its inspired author's thought has continued to unfold within the Church's meditation and subsequent teaching. James had a number of things to say about the proper relationship between capital and labor, the rich and the poor; and it left me wanting to understand the Church's social justice teaching, specifically in regards to economics. I had heard phrases such as, "a preferential option for the poor," and "just wage." I knew of the Church's opposition to communism and that Leo XIII's Rerum Novorum began a series of papal teachings on the topic of social justice; but I felt ill-prepared to dive immediately into such deep waters. I needed a trustworthy guide - ideally an orthodox, one-volume overview of the subject. Archbishop Sheen's Justice & Charity (TAN, 2016) was, of course, excellent; but Sheen penned his lectures in 1938, before John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI made their decisive contributions.

I couldn't help but feel that Providence intervened when I received Angelico Press's email blast announcing the release of Thomas Storck's An Economics of Justice & Charity: Catholic Social Teaching, Its Development and Contemporary Relevance. It was exactly what I was looking for. Storck takes readers through all of the pontificates from Leo XIII to Francis, providing historical context and explaining the key points of their social justice encyclicals and speeches.

As an already-accomplished author and contributing editor of The Distributist Review, Storck's prose and analysis is impeccable. When I finished the book I felt like I had a decent enough grasp on the salient points to begin tackling the papal encyclicals for myself. (Links to the encyclicals at the Vatican website are provided after this review.) Prior to reading An Economics of Justice & Charity, I had no idea that the Church defined a "just wage" as one that allowed a man to care for his family, without need for his wife to work outside of the home. I was amazed to find Pope Pius XI advocating for "profit sharing" in the 1930s! I appreciated the popes' analysis of socialism as a reaction to laissez-faire capitalism. Storck's analysis of John Paul II's Centesimus Annus was especially detailed, and he supported his points well. He also provides an appendix wherein he seeks to explain the Church's ongoing opposition to usury.

If you want to delve into the untapped treasure of the Church's social justice teaching, An Economics of Justice & Charity is the place to begin. Storck is an ideal guide to explore the papal magisterium on this subject.
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Links to Papal Encyclicals:
Rerum Novarum (1891)
Quadragesimo Anno (1931)
Divini Redemptoris (1937)
Mater et Magistra (1961)
Populorum Progressio (1967)
Laborem Exercens (1981)
Centesimus Annus (1991)
Caritas In Veritate (2009)
Laudato Si (2015)