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).

Why I'm "No" on the Rapture, But "Yes" on Mary's Assumption

In my last post I shared my reasons for giving up belief in the Rapture.  Introduced to it by author Hal Lindsey, and confirmed in it during my time in a non-denominational church, study brought me to the conclusion that it was not a legitimate element of Christian Faith. Despite its popularity among Christians in the U.S., not only did it have no basis in Scripture, but it directly contradicted what Christianity has always taught - that in the last days, the Church will share Christ's Passion in an intense way, and then at His return, His Resurrection.

The wild thing is, at the same time that I believed so whole-heartedly in the Rapture, I also argued against the Catholic belief that Mary was assumed into heaven.  Do you see the irony?  I was absolutely convinced that Jesus was going to raise the entire Church up into heaven, but totally opposed to the Catholic dogma that Jesus had already done so for His Mother!

My change of heart occurred long before I came to have a positive view of the Catholic Tradition regarding Mary's assumption.  My thought process went something like this:  

• The Bible does not say that Mary wasn't assumed into heaven.

• The Old Testament does speak of two other people having been assumed, Enoch (Gen. 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11-12).If it was true for them, then couldn't it be true of Mary?

• Matthew's Gospel states that at the moment of Jesus' death, "The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. (Mt. 27:52-53).  Wasn't it reasonable to believe that after these appearances they too were assumed into heaven?  Again, if it was true for them, then why not for Mary?

• If the assumption occurred at the end of her life, then wouldn’t portions of the New Testament already have been written? Did the Bible have to explicitly say it for the event to have occurred?

• There are tons of things not explicitly recorded in the Bible; the Holy Spirit moved John to end his Gospel with that very thought, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written" (Jn. 21:25)

• The Assumption coincides with, dovetails into, Scripture; whereas a pre-Tribulation Rapture is in contradiction to the overall picture of the last days painted by the New Testament.

• Belief in Mary's assumption is witnessed to in writing prior to 400 A.D. (although it claims to go back to the apostles), while the Rapture does not make an appearance until 1850.  

• The Assumption squares with the Christian reality that glory follows suffering (Mary's share in Jesus' Resurrection came only after she shared in His suffering upon the Cross [Lk.2:35; Jn.19:25-37].)  The Rapture on the other hand, holds out a false expectation regarding freedom from suffering and persecution.

Catholics and Orthodox Christians have of course always said that the Christian Faith was not be limited to those things explicitly stated in Scripture.  (No legitimate point of belief could ever contradict Scripture, but there is not a requirement that it be explicitly stated in Scripture either.)   

If you, however, object to Mary's assumption because you are a "Bible-only" Christian, then you really ought to take a second look at John's vision in the Book of Revelation.  And as you read, please keep in mind how the Gospel of Luke's identified Mary with the Ark of the Covenant (compare Luke 1:39-45,56 with 2 Samuel 6:2-3,6-12,16) and how in the Gospel of John, Jesus always addressed His Mother as "Woman" (Jn.2:1-5; 19:25-27):

"Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold a great red dragon…the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne ... " (Revelation 11:19-12:5)

Something to consider. Catholics do not appeal to any particular verse of Scripture as a proof text for the dogma of the Assumption; but the above verses certainly do not hurt their case! As I looked more into the foundations of Catholic belief in the Assumption, I discovered that it had a much more ancient pedigree than whatone could find for the Rapture.Once Constantine became Emperor and Christianity was no longer a persecuted sect, Christians were able to erect churches over the sites sacred to them (such as the Holy Sepulchre in 336 A.D.). These sites had been preserved in the local church's memory throughout the centuries. One of the sites, close to Mount Zion where the first Christian community had lived, had always been reverenced as place of Mary's Dormition ("falling asleep). It was not the place where Mary's body resided however - only the place where it had temporarily rested before Mary was raised body and soul into heaven.   

Although different local churches could point to the tombs of the Apostles and martyrs and boast of having their relics (bodies), there was never any such claim made in regard to Mary.  Had their been a body, the early Church would have cherished it.  But instead of a body we have this memory, this witness, from the time of the apostles, ingrained within Christians in and around Jerusalem.  Just a little research on the web can provide early witnesses:

"If therefore it might come to pass before the power of your grace, it has appeared right to us your servants that, as you, having overcome death does reign in glory, so you should raise up the body of your mother and take her with you, rejoicing into heaven. Then said the Savior [Jesus]: 'Be it done according to your will" (Pseudo-Melito The Passing of the Virgin 16:2-17; 300 AD). 

"Therefore the Virgin is immortal to this day, seeing that he who had dwelt in her transported her to the regions of her assumption" (Timothy of Jerusalem Homily on Simeon and Anna; 400 AD).

"And from that time forth all knew that the spotless and precious body had been transferred to paradise" (John the Theologian, The Falling Asleep of Mary; 400 AD) 

"The Apostles took up her body on a bier and placed it in a tomb; and they guarded it, expecting the Lord to come. And behold, again the Lord stood by them; and the holy body having been received, He commanded that it be taken in a cloud into paradise: where now, rejoined to the soul, [Mary] rejoices with the Lord's chosen ones..." (Gregory of Tours, Eight Books of Miracles, 1:4; 575-593 A.D.)

 St. John Damascene, living in the desert outside Jerusalem in the early 700's, gave the same testimony:

"In the Holy and divinely-inspired Scriptures no mention is made of anything concerning the end of Mary the Holy Mother of God; but we have received from ancient and most truthful tradition ... the Apostles ... opened the coffin.  And they were unable anywhere to find her most lauded body ... Struck by the wonder of the mystery they could only think that He who had been pleased to become incarnate from her in His own Person and to become Man and to be born in the flesh, God the Word, the Lord of Glory ... was pleased even after her departure from life to honor her immaculate and undefiled body with incorruption and with translation prior to the common and universal resurrection." (Second Homily on the Dormition of Mary, c.715 A.D.)

The celebration of Mary's Dormition in the liturgy was first recorded in Palestine in the late 400's and was taken up throughout the Eastern Church and then the West throughout the 500's.  

In the end, I see the Assumption's credibility as standing head-and-shoulders above the Rapture's:

And thus, I was forced to change my tune.  Which is good because on top of everything I have already shared, in 1950 Pope Pius XII used the power of the keys to definitively state that Mary's assumption is a legitimate point of the Faith that has come to us from the Apostles.  To neglect it is forego knowledge of one of the "many other things" that Jesus did that were not written down in Scripture (Jn. 21:25), but have been preserved within the living memory of His Church.  And that Church is, in the words of Scripture, "the pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).

Catholic Beliefs - They're Biblical ... Deeply Biblical

I meet Christians from many different backgrounds, and I realize that several of our Catholic beliefs and practices seem foreign to them.  From time to time I'll even hear some element of the Faith referred to as "unbiblical," meaning that it isn't supported by the text of Scripture and therefore suspect, if not flat out wrong.  So lets take a little time to explore this issue.

First, we should all take a step back to ask ourselves, "Where does the Bible itself say that all of our beliefs as Christians have to be found in Scripture?"  People will try to point toward verses such as 2 Timothy 3:16-17; but re-read them - objectively, that is not the claim being made. The Bible actually extols, not itself, but the Church, as "the pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Timothy 3:15).  And why is that?  I have a few thoughts:


All Christians realize that God's written word is "deep."  Anyone who has studied the Bible for any period of time has had the experience of reading a passage once and appreciating it, only to come back to that passage several months, if not years later, to be hit between the eyes by a deep truth that went unseen on the first reading.  In the past 27 years I have had this experience multiple times - sometimes with a single passage!  That's because the words we find in Scripture are not just human, but divine.  There are always new depths to be mined!


So why is the Church "the pillar and foundation of truth"?  Well, she isn't just some institution moving through time.  No, she is the Bride, the Mystical Body of Christ, moving through time (Eph 4:11-16; Rev 22:17).  And each new generation, joined together within her as one body, builds upon the insights into God's word granted to the previous generation.  The Church is reading and living out the Bible in its worship and devotions at a very deep level - so deep I would dare to say, that both individuals and communities coming to the Bible as "newbies" (and who isn't a "newby" compared to a 2,000 year old?) often mistakenly label as "unbiblical," what they simply have yet to see.  I'll give you a simple example:  asking the saints in heaven to join us in praying for needs.

A person may object, "The Bible never says that we should ask saints to pray for us."  Really?  Paul asked the saints in Rome, Ephesus, and Thessalonica to pray for him, "I appeal to you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf"  (Rom 15:30; Eph 6:18-19; 1 Thess 5:25).

"But Shane, Paul was asking the saints on earth to pray for him - not the saints in heaven!" Granted, but I quote those verses to establish the biblical principle that we Christians pray for one another, and our doing so in no way mitigates Jesus' role as the "one mediator between God and man" (see 1 Tim 2:1-5).  We pray for one another as members of Christ, as cells of His Mystical Body, the Church. And here is where the Church's deep reflection upon Scripture recalls an important truth:  the Bible teaches that the Church exists not just on earth, but in heaven.

When you and I pray, as members of Jesus, we "approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).  But as we draw near we discover that it is crowded around God's throne; our Heavenly Father is surrounded by the kids who have already come home to him!  The Bible says that we "come to Mount Zion ... the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumberable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven ... to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant" (Heb 12:22-24).  And in the Book of Revelation, when the Apostle John was invited to come up to God's throne, what did he see the saints and angel's doing?  Offering to God the prayers of his saints back on earth!

At once I was in the Spirit, and lo, there a throne stood in heaven with one seated on the throne! ... Round the throne were twenty-four thrones and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders (Rev 4:2,4)… each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints (Rev 5:8) … And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God (Rev 8:3-4).

We may be surprised by this, but John surely wasn't.  He knew his Old Testament.  (Sadly, the Books of the Maccabees were dropped from Protestant publications of the Old Testament in the 1500's, but they were very much a part of the OT used by the Apostles - the Septuagint.)  John knew how Judas Maccabeus,

... cheered [his soldiers] by relating a dream, a sort of vision, which was worthy of belief. What he saw was this: Onias, [the deceased] high priest, a noble and good man, of modest bearing and gentle manner, one who spoke fittingly and had been trained from childhood in all that belongs to excellence, was praying with outstretched hands for the whole body of the Jews. Then likewise a man appeared, distinguished by his grey hair and dignity, and of marvelous majesty and authority. And Onias spoke, saying, “This is a man who loves the brethren and prays much for the people and the holy city, Jeremiah, the prophet of God” (2 Maccabees 15:11-14)

Lets go back to the Apostle Paul.  Look at what he says:

I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family, in heaven and on earth derives its name (Ephesians 3:14, NIV).

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ ... If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together (1 Cor 12:12-13; 25-26).

So lets re-cap:

• God's Family - Christ's Body, His Church - stretches from earth to heaven.
• The members in heaven, through Christ, offer the prayers of those on earth
• As members of Christ's Body we can request prayer from one another

The Catholic belief sounds biblical to me.  It may not be "surface" biblical the way a statement such as "When you are requesting prayers from one another, don't forget about your brothers and sisters in heaven" would be; but it is deeply, profoundly biblical to one who has meditated upon the Bible at great length and allowed these seemingly disparate truths to coalesce.  And this is what we Christians are meant to do!  There is no one biblical passage that states, "There is one God in three Divine Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;" and yet every Christian believes it.  Why?  Because that is the Christian Faith as proclaimed by Christ's Church.  It is not drawn from a "proof text" in the New Testament, but it is a statement that nonetheless is confirmed by the witness of numerous, individual, coalescing statements in Scripture.  

The Church's mission is to proclaim the fullness of Christ's teaching, not simply what appears plainly on the surface of Scripture - "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Mt 28:19-20).  As Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, "brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter" (2 Thess 2:15).  This is why the Bible calls the Church the "pillar and foundation of truth."

2 Timothy 3:16-17, which as I noted above, is often wrongly used to claim that the Bible claims to be a Christian's sole source of belief, actually witnesses to what we've been discussing. Lets look at it in context, with the verses that precede and follow.  (Remember, the Bible wasn't divided into chapters and verses until over a millenia later):

[Timothy,] … evil men and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from your childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and teaching (2 Timothy 3:13 – 4:2).

Paul was writing to Timothy, his “son in faith,” who had been validly ordained as one of the Church’s early bishops/presbyters (see 1Tim 4:14).  It is personal correspondence, an older shepherd to a younger, on how to care for God’s flock.  What does Timothy need, to do that effectively?  Both Apostolic Tradition and Scripture are extolled in the passage, as you can see by the underlined portions - Tradition (“what you have learned and believed”) and the Old Testament Scriptures (the “sacred writings” that Timothy had known since “childhood.”)  There is no setting up of the Bible as the sole source of Christian belief –the “Bible” Timothy was directed toward was missing the New Testament!  (Timothy was literally holding one of its earliest pieces.)  Did that mean Timothy was lacking in the Word of God?  No, it came to him through the Church – through Paul and the other Apostles.

I believe that 2 Timothy 3:16-17, read in context, was Paul’s instruction on how to be an effective preacher and shepherd. Look at the portions above in bold, the repetition of the concepts.  Timothy was to exercise the Church’s mission of being Christ’s established “pillar and foundation of truth” in the world.  And he was to ordain others to ensure that Christ's missionary mandate was continued: "what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others" (2 Tim 2:2).

That is how God's truth, and how Scripture itself, has come down to us today.  If Jesus had meant for each of us, in each new generation, to discern Christianity for ourselves from a book - even an inspired one - then He would have:

• sat down to write that book instead of founding a Church
• caused the Church to settle the New Testament canon prior to the late 300's
• infused the ability to read Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into our souls when we were baptized instead of making us dependent on translators
• caused the printing press to have been invented before the 1500's, and
• caused literacy rates to rise throughout the general population prior to the 1800's

The Church's life and worship give flesh to Scripture's treasures. They take us deeper into Scripture than any one of us living today could reach on his or her own. Catholic belief - unbiblical?  Nothing could be farther from the truth!  The Catholic Faith provides God's people with a context in which they can comprehend the Bible even more deeply.  And that's one of the main reasons I spend so much time writing and sharing the things I do!

So Catholics, GET READING!