...Totius Traditionis Mirabile Sacramentum:
Toward a heology of Tradition in the Light of Dei Verbum1
Lewis Ayres
Durham University & Australian Catholic University
I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth...
John 16.12-13
he reassertion of what is old with a luminousness of explanation
which is new, is a git inferior only to that of revelation itself.
Bl. John Henry, Cardinal Newman2
Introduction
he organizers of the meeting from which these papers low posed to speakers a number
of questions. One ran thus: "How, ... in our own secularized era can the documents [of Vatican
II] serve the tasks of theology, and advance the cause of Christian unity?" his paper suggests an
answer to at least the irst part of this question, and it does so with respect to Dei Verbum. he
1. his paper was presented irst to colleagues at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry of the
Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, then to the Ad Limina Apostolorum conference in
Washington DC, and inally to the systematic theology seminar of St Mary's College at St Andrews
University. I am particularly grateful to fr. Dominic Langevin O.P. for his comments on and help with
revision of the paper.
2. From "he Benedictine Schools," in Historical Sketches 2 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1888):
476. Reprinted, with original pagination, in John Henry Newman, Rise and Progress of Universities and
Benedictine Essays, intro, and notes by Mary Katherine Tillman (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2001).
council's constitution on divine revelation should be a central resource for thinking about the
nature and tasks of theology today, but many of its most important passages have been oddly
under-exploited in the half-century it has been ours. I think this to be particularly the case with
respect to the famous second chapter of this text, the chapter that concerns the "handing on" of
revelation, the theology of tradition. Recent decades have seen few attempts to think with this
section of the document, attempts to offer theologies of tradition that embrace upon the charge
Dei Verbum issues.
In this paper I embrace this charge by offering a constructive relection on principles
that are central to that second chapter. he constitution's insistence on the Spirit's role in the
unfolding of Christian faith pushes me to argue that we should treat the act of traditio - the act
of handing on and relecting on the faith - as sacramental. Traditio may be described as
sacramental within the broader context of the Church understood as sacrament, and locating
the act of traditio in this context forces us to ask what role that act plays in the economy of
salvation. I will address that question by arguing that the act of traditio is the fundamental
theological act because of fundamental Christological and Trinitarian dynamics, and as the
fundamental theological act reveals to us and may effect the gradual restoration of the intellect
that is intrinsic to life in Christ. hese arguments about tradition understood as act also suggest
some principles for considering the role of tradition understood as content within Catholic
theology. he inal section of the essay turns briely to the topic of doctrinal "development,"
suggesting that the 15th of Newman's University Sermons and the careful wording on the subject
to be found in Dei Verbum's second chapter still provide a basis for considering this question,
despite a persistent critique of the very idea over the past half century.
But how does this paper also serve an ecumenical purpose? he Catholic discussions of
Scripture, Tradition and Revelation during the 1950s and 1960s that formed the background to
Dei Verbum were oten focused toward the emergent context of ecumenical engagement. But
two distinct emphases are apparent, oten in the same author. At times these authors dig for a
common Biblical and dogmatic core, trying to emphasize that which is shared between our
traditions, and at least temporarily, putting aside distinctively Catholic emphases. At other
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times, they follow a different path and aim at exposing the roots of the Catholic difference in
the gospel itself, not hiding that difference but claiming for it a necessity that follows from its
presence at the source of our common faith, and opening a conversation about the most
fundamental contents of the Gospel. Both strategies are those of ressourcement, but rather
different in tone. My paper today is an example of this second path: my goal is to think with and
celebrate some themes at the heart of Dei Verbum, presenting them as central to the divine
economy and bringing to light questions that should draw us all into conversation. For Karl
Barth, of course, the second chapter of Dei Verbum, was its low point; in an age when there is a
broader interest in the concept and theology of tradition, I pray that my own arguments are
received less negatively!3
On Reading the Council
In developing a notion of tradition as sacramental on the foundation of Dei Verbum we
face one problem. he document uses the term sacramentum only once, and that in quotation of
Ephesians 1:9, speaking of the "mystery" of the divine will. We are faced then with a
methodological question - a useful one, in fact, that will help us raise questions about how we
should read and develop conciliar documents more widely. Let me take a few moments to sketch
two principles that guide my own usage.4
3. Karl Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum. A Appraisal of Vatican II, trans. Keith R. Crim (***: John Knox
Press, 1968): 48: "[Chapter II] which Stakemeier... calls the 'heart, midpoint, and focus of the whole
Constitution.' How differently we can read and judge! For my part I regard this second chapter as the
great it of weakness which befell the Council in the editing of our text."
4. he two methodological assumptions I highlight here are not intended to be sufficient. In a more
exhaustive treatment one would need also, for example, to comment on the concept of theological
"notes" attached to conciliar texts. Even here, though, the discussion becomes quite complex. While a
"note" is attached only to Lumen Gentium, chp. 25 of that text seems to presume something like the
divisions the tradition of "notes" offered; more recent theological writing reveals an ongoing conlict over
this tradition. On this tradition see for example Francis G. Morrisey, he Canonical Signiicance of Papal
and Curial Pronouncements Hartford CT: CLSA, 1974) and then idem, "Papal and Curial
Pronouncements: heir Canonical Signiicance in the Light of the 1983 Code of Canon Law," he Jurist
50 (1990), 102-125. See also Harold E. Ernst, "he heological Notes and the Interpretation of
Doctrine," heological Studies 63 (2002): 813-825. I am not convinced by the second half of Ernst's
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he irst is the principle that we best interpret one of the four conciliar constitutions in
the light of the others, and all in the light of the combined emphases of Lumen Gentium and
Dei Verbum.5 In this particular case, I am concerned to read some key sentences of Dei Verbum's
second chapter in the light of the appearance of sacramental language in both Sacrosanctum
Concilium and Lumen Gentium. he second principle may seem a little more quixotic. In legal
terms I am neither strict constructionist nor a strict textualist with regard to magisterial texts. I
certainly think that careful historical investigation into the work of those who framed these
documents provides an essential feature of good investigation. And, at the same time, I take it
that the words of the council's texts are delivered us by providence in this form and not another
- not only as a powerful synthesis of the Church's teaching phrased with care in Biblical and
Patristic teaching, but also with their ambiguities, their oten carefully chosen reticence and
their hesitations. To say this is certainly a form of textualism, but on which emphasizes that
ambiguity is also a providentially ordered invitation!
We might, in this regard, draw a parallel between Dei Verbum’s treatment of Tradition,
and its treatment of Biblical study. he constitution asserts both the necessity of reading
Scripture in the light of Christian faith, and the necessity of certain modern historical-critical
approaches. However, the text does not so much negotiate between these necessities, as simply
state the tension between them. But this acknowledgement may itself be a conciliar git. No
clear negotiation was at that point possible and thus an agenda was commended to future
generations. Similarly with the council’s account of Tradition: some basic orientation is offered
but many questions concerning how one might develop and explore these emphases are simply
article, but he draws on the denser work of Francis A. Sullivan, Creative Fidelity: Weighing and
Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium (New York: Paulist, 1996). Taking up critically some of the
lines of thought pursued in the wake of Sullivan is Lawrence J. Welch "Quaestio Disputata Reply to
Richard Gaillardetz on the Ordinary Universal Magisterium and to Francis Sullivan," heological Studies
64 (2003): 598-609.
5. For a particularly perceptive introduction to this principle see Christian D. Washburn, "he
heological Priority of 'Lumen Gentium' and 'Dei Verbum' for the Interpretation of the Second Vatican
Council," he homist 78 (2014): 107-134.
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let open.6 hrough such ambiguity the theologian is drawn to careful speculation and
expansion. We should certainly learn to worry when we ind ourselves thinking against the
world of those who drew up these texts, but we should also be prepared to think with them,
heeding the calls to further work that they issue.7
Moritur Christus ut iat ecclesia8
Where, then, to begin with Chapter II of Dei Verbum? At the end of the chapter we
ind:
It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching
authority of the Church, in accord with God's most wise design, are so linked and
joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and
each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, contribute effectively to the
salvation of souls.9
6. Indeed, some of the most important ambiguities concerning the role of Tradition in Dei Verbum
low from its discussion of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. he manner in which DV 9
attempts to incorporate the language of the two as a duality into the documents inal emphasis on their
unity (see DV 10) - "in a certain way" they "merge" - leaves open many avenues for us to explore. We
might also note the famous statement of DV 12: "But since sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted
with its divine authorship in mind, no less attention must be devoted to the content and unity of the
whole of Scripture, taking into account the Tradition of the entire Church..." How does one integrate
readings of Scripture undertaken in the light of the Tradiiton with readings developed on the basis of the
using modern-historical critical methods to determine the intentions of the human authors? Again the
text opens for us a theological task. An essential resource for studying the manner in which the inal text
of Dei Verbum still incorporates earlier formulations, and reveals some of the tensions between the
documents architects is Francisco Gil Hellin, Concilii Vaticani II Synopsis. Constitutio Dogmatica De
Divina Revelatione Dei Verbum, (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993).
7. And in this sense my principles are, I hope consistent with Benedict XVI's famous call for us to reasd
the Council in a "hermeneutic of reform." See his "Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman
Curia, December 22nd 2005 Offering hem His Christmas Greetings," http://w2.vatican.va/content/
benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia.html
(accessed October 11th 2016).
8. Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 9.10.
9. DV 6: Patet igitur Sacram Traditionem, Sacram Scripturam et Ecclesiae Magisterium, iuxta
sapientissimum Dei consilium, ita inter se connecti et consociari, ut unum sine aliis non consistat,
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Discussions of Tradition in Catholic theology tend not to relect on what is here presented as
central: the use of Tradition by God for salviic purpose. Two comments on this text will set an
agenda for the rest of my argument. First, note an ambiguity in the very word "tradition."
Nowhere does Dei Verbum deine the term; while the title of the chapter - De diviniae
revelationis transmissione / On the transmission/handing on of divine revelation - focuses on the
act of handing on, the matter of the chapter speaks both of the act itself, and of that which is
handed on. Once again, ambiguity opens multiple appropriate lines of possible speculation, and
I will focus on tradition as act. Second, this passage's emphasis on the effective contribution of
tradition to our salvation, invites us to ind ways of conceptualizing how this maybe so. I
propose to do so by locating the act of "handing on" within the notion of the Church's
sacramentality that is such a strategically important feature of Lumen Gentium.10 hus I cannot
proceed without sketching some theological foundations, without setting out a basic sense of
what it means to call the Church a "sacrament."
he recovery of this language that began in the nineteenth century has served a number
of goals, the most important of which is probably to emphasize the centrality of the incarnate
Christ as the heart of all sacramental action.11 For it is Christ who is the "great sacrament": of
omniaque simul, singula suo modo sub actione unius Spiritus Sancti, ad animarum salutem efficaciter
conferant. he text is available in Norman Tanner S.J. (ed.) Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Volume II
(Trent-Vatican II) (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990) and at www.vatican.va.
10. LG 1: Since the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very
closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race (veluti sacramentum seu signum et
instrumentum intimae cum Deo unionis totiusque generis humani unitatis)... LG 9: God gathered together
as one all those who in faith look upon Jesus as the author of salvation and the source of unity and peace,
and established them as the Church that for each and all it may be the visible sacrament of this saving
unity (ut sit universis et singulis sacramentum visibile huius salutiferae unitatis)... (quoting Cyprian, ep.
69.6). LG 48: Christ, having been lited up from the earth, has drawn all to Himself. Rising from the
dead He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him has established His Body which
is the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation (Ecclesia ut universale salutis sacramentum
constituit). Sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is continually active in the world that He might
lead men to the Church and through it join them to Himself and that He might make them partakers of
His glorious life by nourishing them with His own Body and Blood.
11. For the history of this theme in modern Catholic thought see Jean-Marie Pasquier, L’Eglise Comme
Sacrement. Le development de l’idée sacramentelle de l’Eglise de Moehler à Vatican II (Fribourg: Academic
Press Fribourg, 2008) (on the theme at Vatican II, pp. 191-273). For other commentary on the theme in
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1Tim 3.16. Scheeben, the greatest modern theologian of Christian mystery, will make the links
that we need:
Here [in the case of Christ] the supernatural in the most exalted sense is really and
most closely united to the visible humanity, the lesh, as the humanity is called from
its visible side, and in such a way that, although it is substantially and personally
present in the lesh, it remains hidden under the lesh. As the hypostatic union of
Christ's lesh with the Logos is the mystery in the sacrament of the lesh, so this lesh
itself is raised by the power of the divinity to a supernatural, spiritual mode of
existence, to the mystery of the sacrament of the Eucharist... hereupon also the
Church, by virtue of its connection with the Incarnation and Eucharist, becomes a
great sacrament, a sacramental mystery.12
For Scheeben, thus, the Church may be described as a sacrament because of the connection that
Christ effects between his transformed lesh and his body.
he same dynamic is explained with particular clarity in the early text by Edward
Lumen Gentium and in other texts from Vatican II see Aloys Grillmeier in Herbert Vorgimler (ed.),
Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. I, trans. L. Adolphus et al. (New York: Herder and
Herder, 1967), 138-152; Peter Smulders SJ, "L'Eglise Sacrement du Salut," in Baraúna, G. and Y. Congar
(eds.), L'Église de Vatican II. Études autour de la Constitution conciliaire sur l'Église, vol. II (Paris: Cerf,
1966): 313-338; Yves Congar, "he Church, Universal Sacrament of Salvation," in his Church hat I
Love, trans. Lucien Delafuente (Denville NJ: Dimension Books, 1969): 39-61. One of the very best
extended discussions in recent Catholic theology is to be found in Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeole,
O.P., Introduction to the Mystery of the Church, trans. Michael J. Miller (Washington DC: Catholic
University of America, 2014). See also idem, "he Economy of Salvation: Entiative Sacramentality and
Operative Sacramentality," he homist 75 (2011): 537-53. he theme is discussed in a broader context
in Henri De Lubac, ""How is the Church a Mystery?" and "Lumen Gentium and the Fathers of the
Church," in he Church: Paradox and Mystery, trans. James R. Dunne (Staten Island NY: Ecclesia Press,
1969): 13-29 & 30-67. In this essay I have said little about the centrality of this theme to the liturgical
movement. Were I to do so Odo Casel's 1932 Das christliche Kultmysterium would demand central
place, translated as he Mystery of Christian Worship and Other Writings, ed. Burkhardt Neunheuser
(London: DLT, 1962). I have also learnt a great deal from the inventive work on sacramentality and the
Church pursued in Jean-Philippe Revel, Traité des sacraments I. Baptême et sacramentalité 1. Origine et
signiication du baptême (Paris: Cerf, 2004).
12. Matthias Scheeben, he Mysteries of Christianity, tr. Cyril Vollert, SJ (London & St Louis: Herder,
1947): 560-1.
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Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God. Because of the hypostatic union,
Christ's humanity and his earthly life become the means through which the Word brings about
our salvation. As such salvation is intrinsically sacramental; it occurs through the enactment of
divine activity in an outwardly perceptible form. he acts of Jesus' life are expressions of the man
Jesus's love for and worship of the Father.13 And as such, Jesus's human life manifests the true
character of humanity's intended relationship with the Father; it does so because Jesus's life is
that of the incarnate Word. Indeed, we can go further and say that in his human love and
worship Christ reveals the eternal love of the Son for the Father. Christ in this theological
context is the sacrament; all other sacramental realities are named so analogically.14
he Father responds to the love manifest in Christ's life to the cross by raising him and
from the dead and drawing him to his right hand at the Ascension, establishing Christ as Lord
and the objective redemption of humanity (Heb 8-9).15 he gloriied is Christ eternally our high
priest, worshipping the Father, sending the Spirit and being the grace that he bestows (Heb
7.25).16 Christ has, thus, gone from our sight in order that he be gloriied, and that he may send
the Spirit. Christ's sending of his Spirit does not alter the fundamental nature of our need for
visible sacramental signs, nor the centrality of Christ's humanity as the locus of our salvation.
Hence, the gloriied Christ extends to us visible and corporeal signs that enable our encounter
with him; Christ acts among us through a sacramental Spirit-led economy to make present both
"his continual intercession for us and his active git of grace."17 In this perspective, "the
13. Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, trans. Paul Barrett, OP
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1963): 15-18.
14. note on Eucharist within such a scheme. and to Rahner.
15. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 32-33.
16. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 37-39.
17. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament: 45. See also 44: "from the moment, that, by his ascension, the
'primordial sacrament' leaves the world, the economy of the 'separated sacraments' becomes operative..."
With reference to this point Schillebeeckx quotes homas, SCG 4.76.7: "Christ Himself perfects all the
sacraments of the Church: it is He who baptizes; it is He who forgives sins; it is He, the true priest, who
offered Himself on the altar of the cross, and by whose power His body is daily consecrated on the
altar—nevertheless, because He was not going to be with all the faithful in bodily presence, He chose
ministers to dispense the things just mentioned to the faithful..."
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sacraments are the saving mystery of the worship of Christ himself in ecclesial visibility."18 And
as the "saving mystery of the worship of Christ" the Father always responds to that love and
worship from his Son. But this guarantee - which Schillebeeckx treats as an explanation of the
true meaning of the traditional "ex opere operato" - is, of course, not one which denies the
mystery of human freedom. Divine love's expressive gesture draws us, and grace is given that we
may respond, but respond we still must.19
his whole sacramental economy is, however, misunderstood unless it is seen within the
context of the Church's sacramentality as a whole. Christ stands as a representative of fallen
humanity before the Father, and in his redemptive activity he wins to the Father a redeemed
human community. hat redeemed community is the body of Christ in which Father, Son and
Spirit dwell, and which Christ has chosen to be united to his person.20 he visible society of the
Church is that mystical body, "a sign raised up among the nations" of the eschatological
community (Is. 11.12).21
Schillebeeckx here reiterates an insistence in recent Catholic
ecclesiology found implicitly in Pius XII's 1943 encyclical Mystici corporis and stated very clearly
at Vatican II in Lumen gentium 8.1 that the visible social community of the Church is the
mystical body; there is no separation between the soul of the Church, an inner communion with
the grace of Christ, and the visible body.22 And thus the visible social reality of the Church as a
18. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 70-79.
19. Note to the useful bits of Rahner on reception of sacraments. in he Church and the Sacraments,
Quaestiones Disputatae 9, trans.W.J. O'Hara (New York: Herder and Herder 1963), **.
20. My allusion here is to Augustine's discussion of the third of three ways in which we may speak of
Christ: serm. 341.11: "he third way is how the whole Christ is predicated with reference to the Church,
that is as head and body. For indeed head and body form one Christ. Not that he isn't complete without
the body, but that he was prepared to be complete and entire together with us too, though even without
us he is always complete and entire, not only insofar as he is the Word, the only-begotten Son equal to
the Father, but also in the very man whom he took on, and with whom he is both God and man
together."
21. Schillebeeckx's use of Isaiah here references that found at Vatican I, Dei Filius 3 (DS 3014 ).
22. LG 1.8: ...the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to
be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the spiritual community, nor the earthly
Church and the Church enriched with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which
coalesces from a divine and a human element (sed unam realitatem complexam efformant, quae humano et
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social communion is sacramental, an effective sign of Christ's salvation. he particular order of
the seven sacraments presents to us seven clear points of entry into this community, into Christ
himself.23
Now, identifying the Church as a sacrament in relationship to Christ the true sacrament
brings with it a number of dangers. In particular one runs the danger of attributing to all aspects
of the life of the Church the guaranteed sacramental efficacy that attends upon the seven. hus,
for clarity, in what follows I have reserved to the Church itself and to the seven sacraments the
term "sacrament" and I speak of other aspects of the Church's life as "sacramental."
In order to complete the sketch on the basis of which I hope to address directly the
particular topic of tradition conceived as sacramental, it will be helpful to identify four key
themes, grouped into two pairs.24
1. Mystery and Act. Once again Scheeben identiies some essential points:
It pertains to the essence of the sacramental mystery that the mystery remains a
divino coalescit elemento). For this reason, by no weak analogy, it is compared to the mystery of the
incarnate Word. As the assumed nature inseparably united to Him, serves the divine Word as a living
organ of salvation, so, in a similar way, does the visible social structure of the Church serve the Spirit of
Christ, who viviies it, in the building up of the body
23. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 54: "Each sacrament is the personal saving act of the risen Christ
himself, but realized in the visible form of an official act of the Church... he essential reality that in one
or other of seven possible ways is outwardly expressed in the reception of each of the sacraments is
consequently the entry into living contact with the visible Church as the earthly mystery of Christ in
heaven. To receive the sacraments of the Church in faith is therefore the same thing as to encounter
Christ himself. In this light the sacramentality of the seven sacraments is the same as the sacramentality
of the whole Church." For a recent and fuller discussion of this theme see de la Soujeole, Introduction,
122ff and 473ff. de la Soujeole along with a number of French writers wishes to accord the Church the
status of "person" in and of itself (see Introduction, 497ff ). While this theologoumenon inds some
warrant in Mystici corporis 53, I confess to inding it utterly unconvincing. he problem here is easily
seen, for example, in the case of Maritain's accoun. See On the Church of Christ, trans.Joseph W. Evans
[Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973]: 17, where Maritain quotes homas, ST 2-2, q.
83, a. 16, ad 3, to bolster his account. Attention to q. 83 shows that when homas speaks of the "person
of the Church" he does so because the Church as the body of Christ has been taken up into unity with the
person of its head.
24.
Jean-Philippe Revel, Traité des sacraments I.1 (Paris: Cerf, 2004).
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mystery. his would not be the case if the sacrament would literally manifest the
mystery. Something must be, and remain, hidden in the sacrament, within its
interior. his does not exclude the possibility that the sacrament may make known
the inner nature and meaning of the mystery... It is only the essence of the
supernatural mystery that may not become visible in the sacrament. his essence
must ever remain the object of faith which, penetrating beneath the surface of the
sacrament, lays hold of that which can be reached neither by the outer senses, nor by
the intellect groping about in the realm of sensory perception.
he character of a sacrament as mystery rests in its peculiar character as sign and in its
relationship to faith. Only in faith can the complexity of what lies before our eyes be
approached. As i have already noted, the mysterious character of the Church as sacrament stems
from the fact that in it and through it Christ acts. And, just as the mode of the hypostatic union
remains incomprehensible because the agent of that unity is the Word and the nature of divine
power is a priori beyond us, so too the Church is sacrament because in his divine power Christ
chooses us to be united to him. For the purpose of my argument, it is important to note that
such a resolutely Christological vision of the sacramental economy demands a necessary
complexity in our perception and discernment of reality.
2. Unity and Eschatology. As we have also seen, the sacramental act that is the Church, both is
and builds the unity of Christ’s body, the kingdom of God.25 his is a unity between the
members of that body founded on and encompassed within the unity that pertains between
Father and Son. And this unity, in turn, is founded on the Father’s git to the Son of all that the
Father is, and the Son’s loving return in the Spirit to the Father. his unity is already ours in
25. See also GS 4.42, quoting LG 1: "he promotion of unity belongs to the innermost nature of the
Church, for she is, 'thanks to her relationship with Christ, a sacramental sign and an instrument of
intimate union with God, and of the unity of the whole human race.' hus she shows the world that an
authentic union, social and external, results from a union of minds and hearts, namely from that faith
and charity by which her own unity is unbreakably rooted in the Holy Spirit."
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Christ through baptism, and that toward which we strive and are drawn.
And thus the visible, institutional Church serves the goal of purifying and unifying that
draws souls more closely into the body of Christ. But it is souls who are drawn, and souls still in
the process of transformation - souls who rarely grasp the unity toward which they head, and
souls whose receptiveness to the Spirit develops and matures in a schedule known to and guided
by God. And because of this fact, Christians experience the Church both as a sign of the
community that it mystically is and will be, and yet as wounded by the presence of sin,
confusion and injustice among and between its members. his injustice can of course be so
visibly present that some experience the Church only as alienating; even if, by the grace of God,
we are not among their number, we may easily acknowledge that the Church in via has both a
beautiful and a tragic guise.
he complexity of this situation is rendered all the greater because the head of the body
uses his various limbs with respect to each other. We cannot speak only of individuals pursuing
paths toward and on the basis of eschatalogical unity. Individuals are used as examples and
warnings, they ind themselves impelled together by providence for their mutual beneit, and all
this in ways that escape certain knowledge and oten the most basic understanding. hus, the
eschatological nature of Christian unity only enhances the mysterious character of the
sacramental order.
None of this is to deny that there exist means for guidance in the dark. he same
providential act that renders the sacramental nature of the Church mysterious also orders this
community so that it may teach with authority. But rather than dwelling on the ways in which
the community’s teaching authority in some ways makes possible a true appreciation for the
impenetrable nature of the individual member of the body, I would like to note that the
constant companion to accounts of the Christian community’s nature in via has been traditions
of spiritual discernment and guidance. Such traditions, which are to be found from the
Church’s earliest generations exist precisely because of the Church’s eschatological nature.
Finding ourselves mysteriously already in the end, and yet waiting for that end, traditions of
discernment and guidance have been given us both for enduring that wait, and to enable us to
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recognize ever better the sheer impenetrable nature of the human person in via. his
relationship between fundamental theological principles of ecclesiology and practices of
discipline and discernment will ind itself echoed in my treatment of tradition. But the question
remains, how does the act of handing on also serve the formation of this unity, and contribute
effectively to the salvation of souls as the council has it?
...unam realitatem complexam (LG 8, 1)26
And so, we come to Tradition. While the term most easily names that which is handed
on and down in the community’s life – and thus leads immediately to questions concerning the
relative authority of different beliefs and practices that have been handed down – “tradition”
names also the act of handing on. he background against which I understand this act is the
strain of relection that runs from Möhler and Newman to Blondel to, in its most theologically
sophisticated form, Congar. For this line of theologians, Tradition is at root a handing on and
communication of Christian teaching dependent on the possession of the whole reality of
Christian faith and life: dependent, that is, on something akin to a formed Christian
conscience.27 Congar speaks, for example, of the handing on of the faith in the early period as
not only noetic, but also as a handing on of the Christian life as the context for that
proclamation: "The noetic traditio of the faith was completed in a real traditio of the new life
of Jesus Christ in the waters of which he is the source."28 It is in this context that such
26. LG 8.1: Societas autem organis hierarchicis instructa et mysticum Christi Corpus, coetus
adspectabilis et communitas spiritualis, Ecclesia terrestris et Ecclesia coelestibus bonis ditata, non ut duae
res considerandae sunt, sed unam realitatem complexam efformant, quae humano et divino coalescit
elemento(10). Ideo ob non mediocrem analogiam incarnati Verbi mysterio assimilatur.
27. In response to an astute question from Mathew Levering, I'd like to note here that a fuller account of
the dimensions of the act of handing on as involving both proclamation and speculation, would have to
explore the different modes of intellectual activity that have been involved. My account of tradiito thus
does not imply that theological act always takes form as form of historical investigation, although I do
want to say that in the expression and formation of Christian doctrine we should regard such historical
work as integral to the act.
28. Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions, one volume edition, trans. Michael Naseby and T.
Rainsborough (London: Burns and Oates, 1966): 279. It is interesting also to see Congar expanding on a
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authors insist on the unity of Scripture and Tradition in Tradition; only within the life of faith
is the meaning of Scripture grasped.
But, at the same time, this same strain of relection insists that this presence of the whole
of Christian faith and life is a git of God. he Spirit is, for Congar, the transcendent subject of
Tradition, the Church's "operative principle" of unity, strengthening faith, ensuring its
transmission, drawing us into and toward unity in Christ.29 hrough the Spirit's work there may,
then, be both a formation and handing on through human means, and the reliable presence of
that whole in new generations. In this context the act of handing on, of traditio, may involve
both repetition and a drawing on the git of the whole in ways unknown to prior generations.
Of course, whereas the union of human and divine in Christ is hypostatic, the Spirit is not
incarnate in the Church. And thus the Spirit draws us toward into a unity in which Spirit and
humanity retain their personal identities - and human beings their ability to fall away.30
In considering the act of tradition as sacramental I am not striking out into entirely
unknown territory. Yves Congar's magisterial text Tradition and Traditions points the way, if in
rather general terms. At one point he considers the character of the Church’s time and writes as
follows:
Sacred history, where God's design is accomplished by his power, includes a
threefold presence: irst, a presence of saving acts, performed once for all, which are
effective not just by the simple mental reference of memory but by a present
operative power they keep; second, a presence of the end in view, not only as
thought of or as desired but as the fruit virtually present in the seed; third, a
discussion found at ST 3. q. 42, a.4. Why is it, homas asks, that Christ did not write books? Because he
taught in a manner that engraved his teaching on the hearts of his hearers, because his teaching could not
all be expressed in writing, and so that his teaching might slowly unfold in the Church. See e.g. he
Meaning of Tradition, trans. A.N. Woodrow (San Francisco CA: Ignatius, 2004), 23-24.
29. Yves Congar, he Meaning of Tradition, 51ff. See also DV 1.5's insistence on the necessity of grace
for faith and on the constancy of the Spirit's work, enabling our growth in understanding of revelation.
he same perspective is taken up in frther detail in DV 2.8.
30. Congar, he Meaning of Tradition, 55-56.
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presence of true union with God, as the fruit of what it brings about, as the seed of
the inal fulillment, and at the same time a present lived reality. We may call this the
sacramental nature of the time of the Church.31
Congar adapts his notion of a threefold presence from homas's own account of the threefold
reference of the sacraments, in order to show that the history of the Church must be understood
as a complex sphere of divine action within which we are drawn into the saving acts of Christ's
earthly mission and prepared for the end.32 he presence of union with God as a "lived reality"
is that which makes the act of traditio possible.
Not surprisingly, the work of the Spirit is central for Congar; for it is the Spirit's role (as
we saw earlier) to "effect a communication between realities" and ultimately to realize the
eschatalogical kingdom of God. Hence, the history of the Church should be understood as a
sphere of divine action within which the Spirit draws forth responses to the divine call,
responses which build toward that eschatalogical unity:
Sacred history, the history of the Church as the Church of God, is made out of the
succession of God’s ‘visitations’ thanks to which men elicit those responses of faith
and love by which the city of God is built up. In a theological analysis, this moment
of the divine activity, which logically precedes our free decisions or reactions, is
attributed simultaneously to God and to the sacred humanity of Christ, our
head…33
he sheer diversity of realities which must be included in that history if this is so is beautifully
conveyed by Congar a few paragraphs later:
...the history of the Church is... that of the achievement or consolidation of [the
covenant] relationship, already perfectly established, but not yet fully
31. Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions, one volume edition, trans. Michael Naseby and T.
Rainsborough (London: Burns and Oates, 1966): 259.
32. Congar references In IV sent. d.8. q.1. a.1., sol. 3; ST I-II, q. 101, a.2; III, q.60, a.3; q.73, a.4.
33. Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 262-3. Cf. 406ff.
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consummated. his history could be formulated as in Hebrews 11: 'it was by faith,
fulilling the gospel and by a mission of the holy spirit that the Council of Nicaea....;
it was by faith... that Augustine...; by faith... that Francis Xavier...that herese
Martin, and so on.' his history recalls Christians' responses to the calls of God and
of time; it is made up of councils, acts of the magisterium, missionary endeavours,
and religious foundations, of conversions and of decisions taken for God; but also
the more secret history, to be disclosed only at the last judgement, of all the
movements of faith and love drawn from our human freedom by God's grace." 34
hese responses, these moments of renewed or intensiied covenant relationship are moments of
traditio in which the faith is received and handed on in new and yet continuous form. And
thus, this account of the sacramentality of the Church's time hints at the possibility of a more
developed relection on Tradition’s sacramentality.
Acts of doctrinal deinition, theological statement and spiritual vision may be read as
moments of response to the divine call, moments drawn out of the community and of
individuals to reveal for us all aspects of the love that builds the City of God. Such moments are
transformative for their subjects because in such responses the intellect and the will are opened,
and formed, the depths of the mystery of Christ more keenly felt. For us dwelling on those
moments, they provide opportunities for recognizing dimensions of Christian faith and life in
action and thus opportunities for us to attend ever more closely to the git and its life in all the
baptized. It is important, I think, to note that many of the people and events Congar names are
complex personalities and events. Even in the case of the most fraught and politically complex of
ecclesial events we may see the beauty and tragedy of the Church in microcosm. Particular
individuals taken up into such events may, for example, present aspects inspiring or depressing in
turn, but we may still grasp the beauty of the thought that results, and may still acknowledge
that in such moments of deinition God is at work enabling human minds to articulate with
deeper penetration and in appropriate order what it is to think in the light of revelation and
34. Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 263.
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with the git of faith. As we learn, and always through God’s grace, our intellects and wills are
gradually better ordered toward their true ends and these events as Dei Verbum says,
“[contribute] effectively toward the salvation of souls.” However, already it may be apparent that
my vision of such events parallels how we regard the life of the Church more broadly as both
beautiful and tragic, and as consequently demanding of us complex habits of discernment. here
is more to be said here, and I would like to move forward by considering tradition as sacrament
in the light of the four different terms I introduced above when discussing the sacramentality of
the Church more broadly.
Act and Unity. Let us think a little more about why I have accorded tradition as act
priority. In the irst place, I have done so because the act of passing on is founded in Christ's own
actions toward the apostles. He speaks and acts among them to reveal the Father, and he does so
in a way that demands (and also elicits in the Spirit) their response. his emphasis on the
manner in which Christ reveals through the entirety of his personal life with the very earliest
Christian community is itself central to Dei Verbum. But in the second place, Christ’s self-giving
in revelation shows us who he is, it reveals the eternal relationship of Father and Son. he Son's
handing of himself over to us - which he does by revealing himself, by giving himself up for us,
and by incorporating us into his person - reveals and is founded in the Father’s git of being to
the Son (and we ind, once again, the same position is espoused in nuce by Congar). he Son's
git of himself to us is an incorporative act that enables our unity with him and with the Triune
life. he act of traditio is an act that is a part of this git at work, done faithfully it itself is an
effective sign of Christ's incorporative restoration of human intellect and will. hat we must
hand on the faith is no mere consequence of human incapacity!
But the character of this act is, however, misunderstood unless we see how central
interpretation, reimagining and speculation are to the act of traditio. If we focus for the moment
on the process of Christian thoughts gradual expansion and deinition over the centuries we see
interpretation in many modes as intrinsic to the activity of handing on. In, for example, the
work of basic catechesis and preaching the activities of synthesizing, inding examples, adapting
teaching to audience is always also a work of interpretation even if conducted with a deep sense
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of faithfulness to what has been handed on. More obviously, perhaps, the work of deinition
and achieving clarity (where faith allows!) has so oten involved both new formulation and even
the forgetting of older paths. his work occurs a myriad of times in the work of individual
thinkers, and is seen most clearly under the guidance of the Spirit in the work of the great
councils and deinitions of the Church’s magisterial history.
We could, at this point, devote much time, with proit, to slowly deining the character
of the newness that enters the world in such moments of deinition and interpretation. But I do
not want to take us there, rather I want to explore briely how recognizing the necessity of
interpretation to the work of faithful handing on helps us to see a little more clearly the
sacramental character of the act of traditio itself. Tradition is an act, I suggest, through which
Christ reveals to us and shapes the vocation of intellect and will, a vocation of aiding and
ordering the eschatalogical unity of Christ's body. It is the act that lies at the heart of the very
enterprise of Christian thinking, revealing to us the combination of submission and active
speculation to which we are called during the time between ascension and the end. And thus
this act is sacramental because it is an effective sign of the death and resurrection of the mind,
the restoration of the mind that we encounter in Christ. he acts of handing on that we see in
the Church’s history – acts marked by both beauty and tragedy – may through grace enable us
better to grasp the character of the reformation of intellect and will that has begun in us through
our baptism. As we grow in understanding of the act of tradition, following as far as we may the
work of grace in such acts, we also come to see the manner in which Christs draws out from his
body a diverse unity of lourishing intellects; we should come to see that the performance of
true theological diversity is an education in reason’s lourishing – even as we must also recognize
the tragedy of mere self-assertion.
When I considered the sacramentality of the Church in general I hope it was apparent that the
Church's sacramental nature intrinsically involves it function in being an effective sign of our
eschatological unity. he act of tradition necessarily partakes of the same quality: through this
act performed in good and mixed faith, the Spirit draws both a set or series of interrelated
monuments of tradition, giving structure to the rule of faith and showing us the possible
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boundaries and nodal points of Christian life and practice. As we properly attend to these
moments of response we too may come to grasp in the shape of the restored human intellect not
only as individuals, but as part of a conversation that will reach its fullness only at the end.
Mystery and Eschatalogy. Traditio is also an eschatological act. Consider how tradition,
as both act and content, seems designed both to elevate and to defeat the mind. It elevates the
mind, showing us paths down which reason may be restored; it defeats because of the sheer
difficult of proceeding without a constant reliance on grace in the face of impenetrable mystery.
that attends both on the mix of human and divine agency in the act, and on that in the content
of revelation that continually defeats the penetrative power of the human intellect. But this
mystery attends because of the manner in which the ultimate object agent and object of
tradition, presents himself to us. his is so because the Father presents himself to us in Christ,
through the sacramental economy of Christ’s body, in an economy that slowly but providentially
draws intellect and will toward their supernatural end in contemplation.
Learning From Tradition
My account of tradition as a sacramental act is partly intended to render more perspicacious the
central place of attention to tradition in dogmatic theology. In a recent essay in the homist I
have argued that a robust theology of Tradition helps us to view fundamental moments of
deinition as the ever-present and exemplary objects of theological attention.35 We should, I
suggested, conceive of dogmas not only as propositions expressing the truths of revelation, but
also as memorializing recalls of the situations that gave them birth, injunctions to attend to
particular historical moments of response to the divine call. his account is, I would hope,
further bolstered by an account of tradition as sacramental; those historical moments to which
our attention is summoned may be further viewed as grace-illed moments in which the
vocation of thought is actualized for us, and through which Christ's transformation of our
35. “heology And he Historia Salutis: Post-Conciliar Renewal And One Recent homism,” he
homist 79 (2015): 511-550.
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intellects and wills is made present.
Earlier I claimed that from awareness of the Church as an eschatological reality low
disciplines for spiritual discernment and guidance. Good ecclesiological relection, I suggested,
must sustain both robust notions of divine providential guidance and awareness of the
irreducible complexity of our knowledge of providence. Disciplines that enable attention to
both of these necessarily follow. It should not surprise, then, that describing the act of tradition
as sacramental within the context of the Church’s sacramentality per se has the consequence of
demanding from us an account of the habits of attention and discernment that are appropriate
for participating in and observing Tradition. here is much that might be said here about the
possibilities and challenges of reading the debates that led to the formed expressions of tradition
in the light of that tradition, but to get to the heart of what I have particularly in view allow me
to focus on just one concern. My exaltation of theological principles and perspectives may have
seemed to militate against an account of attention to tradition that can take seriously careful
historical investigation. I suggest that, in fact, the opposite is the case.
A properly theological account of Tradition demands of us a vision of handing on that
occurs under the aegis of Son and Spirit and as part of the divine economy of revelation and
graceful sanctiication. Such a theological emphasis demands that we hold before us a number of
perduring philosophical and theological questions, about the character of causality, about the
nature of historical action and change. hus, one who operates with a robustly theological
account of tradition will need of necessity to be attentive to the problems involved in accounts
of human action which a priori assume accounts of human or societal action that exclude divine
action. Such a conception of tradition will also demand a close engagement with hermeneutics
of suspicion that read acts of handing on as always betrayal, or as always involving rupture with
the past. While these accounts have much to suggest to a theological poetics, there is obviously
much that we are pushed to resist on theological grounds. For me, it is striking that while the
past few decades have seen some excellent deconstructive work focused on the assumptions of
modern sociological and hermeneutical analyses of human action, they have nevertheless seen
little work on the theological underpinnings of a vision of theological attention that takes them
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seriously even as it questions.
Such a theological articulation - attentive to the reality of the Spirit working among us
to preserve as well as aid human freedom - must sustain a robust notion of double agency.
Adopting Congar's language, tradition understood sacramentally is a series of responses and
encounters in which human agency as we know it between Ascension and the End is fully
operative. And those human agents are in the process of sanctiication and transformation, their
own intellectual vision not yet perfected, their ability to articulate the knowledge that the git of
faith has infused still weak, their love for God still in many cases faltering, however intense. And
thus there is need for constant attention to the mysteriousness of the interplay between divine
and human action in such moments. Drawing further on an analogy I offered earlier, the one
who investigates must become almost akin to the confessor or spiritual director of his or her
subjects, ever attentive to the complexities of discerning the penitent’s moral state, generous in
attributing motive and yet recognizing always that insight easily fails and that human beings are
easily seduced. he faithful and well-intentioned theological thinker, impelled to work by the
Spirit, drawn by the Spirit to state that which may become dogma, nevertheless frequently errs
in motive and reasons falsely and weakly. In such a context we can and must be robust in our
historical investigation, unlinching in our willingness to explore and admit contradiction and
uncertainty in those held up before us as theological exemplars; attentive to the sheer
mysteriousness of understanding the course of theological development, and willing to feel the
pull of all methodologies that proffer the possibility of a denser location of moments and
individuals in their historical contexts.
Of course, the analogy breaks down in at least one fundamental way; we investigate
texts and monuments of tradition, and do not question living subjects, we see their struggles at
even further remove than the confessor listening to the words of the penitent and trying to
discern the mind’s state. However, when we see that a sacramental account of tradition demands
of us this twofold attention, then it should be apparent that it is precisely the robustness of the
theology that allows a truly rigorous account of historical investigation. Again, none of this
militates against the possibility that there is a deined course of magisterial teaching within the
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Church. Rather, the divine provision of these points of propositional and intellectual light in
the darkness not only enables the mind to grasp through faith, as homists would say, the irst
truth; this divine provision creates a space within which we may take our time, breathe freely
and attend to the complexity of the tradition itself, knowing that here we ind divinely ordered
materials that will aid us in the development of intellect and love and thus draw us toward
realizing that unity which is ours in Christ.
Interlude: On Scripture
I have already hinted at the argument, deeply embedded in chapter II of Dei Verbum,
that Scripture lows from the act of tradition. he status of Scripture now needs direct (if brief )
comment, if only to show what sort of defense against the charge that so much emphasis on
tradition displaces Scripture emerges from my argument so far.
Elsewhere, in the recent Festschrit for John Webster, I offered a sketch of ways in which
we might draw on an early essay by Joseph Ratzinger to envision not only Scripture as
constituted by a series of creative and inspired interpretations of Scripture's earlier layers.36 hese
culminate in the New Testament understood as involving both Jesus's own radical interpretation
of the "Old," and in the earliest community's own radical interpretation of Christ in the light of
the resurrection and ascension. But this latter includes also the promise that the Church will be
guided in continued interpretation through the presence of Christ and his Spirit. Christian
thought and worship is thus both centrally scriptural, and yet is so under the aegis of its Lord
who guides us toward radical interpretation. he young Ratzinger's perspective here enfolds the
status of Scripture within a vision of a traditio which occurs under divine aegis. his argument
does not so much relativize Scripture over against a separate a distinct source of knowledge as it
characterizes the nature of Scripture itself and lays a foundation for appropriate attention to it.
36. “he Word Answering the Word: Opening he Space of Catholic Biblical Interpretation” in R.
David Nelson, Darren Sarisky, and Justin Stratis (eds.), heological heology: Essays in Honor of John B.
Webster (London: Bloomsbury), 37-53.
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he argument is drawn out of a clear insistence that the incarnate Word of God is revelation in
its fullness, an insistence that in turn undergirded the inal text of Dei Verbum itself. As the
second chapter of that text has it:
Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath
of the Holy Spirit. And Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which
has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.37
One of the most important things that such an account allows - perhaps particularly as i have
interpreted in the wake of Congar - is the argument that this account of tradition serves not so
much to relativize the status of Scripture as at the most fundamental level to offer an argument
as its status. Scripture's status is founded in an account of the incarnate Word as revelation and
then in an account of of Christ and the Spirit's encompassing and shaping of our response to
Scripture. Within such an account its text is "the speech of God" set down "under the breath of
the Spirit" but it is such intended to be interpreted in the light of the ever present Word's
speech. But even this is too simplistic, as it is Scripture, understood as that divine speech, which
has also formed our attention and stands as a constant referent in the process of attention to the
Incarnate Christ's presence.
One way in which unhappiness with my account of traditio might take form is to ask
how Scripture acts as a corrective voice of its own. Of course, there is a certain Romanticism
about the idea of a text speaking for itself; Stanley Fish will be turning over in his retirement.
But the metaphorical language may be allowed in part for theological reasons - he Word most
certainly uses Scripture to voice the gospel among us. And it may be allowed in order to
conceptualize a fairly constant moment in the history of the tradition in which attentiveness to
the way in which Scripture's words run stimulated reform or was the foundation for a critique of
particular (failing) conceptions of Christian practice. In such contexts Scripture may be said to
speak.
And yet there is a balance to maintain; Scripture's "voice" must be reiied with care. We
37. DV 2.9.
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fail to exercise sufficient care, I suggest, when we treat that "voice" as equivalent to
reconstructions of the meaning of the text by modern Biblical Criticism. My point here is not
to offer a rash condemnation in toto of a tradition as multifarious as "modern biblical criticism",
but to draw attention to the multiplicity of ways in which this voice may speak. It is certainly
the case, for example, that for many of those who fought (rightly or wrongly) against the
perceived aridity of Neo-homism many aspects of modern biblical study were foundational in
bringing to consciousness the reality of Christ's historical location and cultural consciousness.
But the text of Scripture, as I have also argued in the Festschrit essay mentioned above, may be
conceived as open to a multiplicity of readings. We should both struggle mightily to see the
contexts of textual production and how they may have been heard by their original audience,
and struggle to trace how the Church was led under the Spirit's guidance to read those texts in
the Tradition. Offering a fuller argument for how this might be so, and how such a conception
of multiple readings is a theologically coherent way to take forward Dei Verbum's emphases is a
grand task not. All I have tried to do here is to assemble some pieces of the puzzle that I think
may serve toward that end. I do so with a very strong sense that while giving an account of our
theological practice is always also a philosophical and hermeneutical task, it irst and foremost a
theological one, a dogmatic one.
Conclusion: Returning to "Development"
If the act of tradition may be read sacramentally, then the natural complement of so
doing is relection on the growth in understanding of the Gospel that comes over time. Dei
Verbum again, providentially alludes, but leaves to us further relection on this topic. he
relevant text runs as follows:
his tradition which comes from the Apostles develops (proicit) in the Church with
the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding (crescit
perceptio) of the realities and the words which have been handed down. his
happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these
things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of
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the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those
who have received through Episcopal succession the sure git of truth. For as the
centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the
fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulillment in
her.38
his text is interesting, in part, for what it does not say. While we ind clear statements that
tradition develops, and that the Church grows in understanding over time (statements which
must be read together39), we ind no invocation of any of the various analogies or metaphors
used to capture the notion development that had been in the air since the early nineteenth
century. his absence relects a careful decision to insist on the idea of development, while not
taking sides in an ongoing scholarly debate about how one could best describe this process.
Oddly, the debate that the document bypasses here has not been pursued with sufficient vigor in
the decades that have followed. In a manner that parallels the broader fate of the theology of
tradition, theological relection on the notion of doctrinal development has been halting in
recent decades. Penetrating and oten accurate critique of some of Newman's own language –
especially concerning the manner in which he deploys analogies concerning the development of
the mind to suggest the inevitable and organic development of ideas - has seemed to render his
vision incompatible with the decidedly non-linear complexities that modern historical work
38. DV 8: Haec quae est ab Apostolis Traditio sub assistentia Spiritus Sancti in Ecclesia proicit: crescit
enim tam rerum quam verborum traditorum perceptio, tum ex contemplatione et studio credentium, qui
ea conferunt in corde suo (cf. Lc 2,19 et 51), tum ex intima spiritualium rerum quam experiuntur
intelligentia, tum ex praeconio eorum qui cum episcopatus successione charisma veritatis certum
acceperunt. Ecclesia scilicet, volventibus saeculis, ad plenitudinem divinae veritatis iugiter tendit, donec
in ipsa consummentur verba Dei.
39. See J. Ratzinger in Herbert Vorgrimler (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II. Vol III,
trans. William Glen-Doepel et al. (London Burns & Oates, 1969): 186-8. Ratzinger notes that in debate
Cardinal Léger found the idea of tradition itself developing unhelpful. In its own debate the heological
Commission decided not to change this wording, noting that the clause asserting development in the
understanding of revelation should be read as qualifying the statement that tradition itself develops. In
the same context Ratzinger notes that, unlike Trent and Vatican I, this text does not cite Vincent of
Lérins' famous statement at comm. 23.3 that a growth in understanding occurs "with the same sense and
the same understanding (eodem sensu eademque sententia)."
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frequently delivers us.40 Parallel critiques have seemed to undermine the accounts of virtually all
who have thought in his wake (or in the parallel wake of the Tübingen school). Elsewhere I have
tried to exempt De Lubac from these critiques, but here I want to turn back briely to Newman
himself.41
he iteenth of the University Sermons is unfairly neglected in treatments of his account
of development, treated for the most part as merely a sketch of the work he would soon go on to
produce in the Essay on Development. I suggest that, in fact, we should read the sermon as
offering us the foundations for an account of "development" that is far more satisfactory than
that found in the Essay (whether or not Newman himself would have taken the path I want to
mark out). I will relect on two themes that are fundamental to this text, irst, the variety of ways
in which Newman describes the "idea" of Christianity, and second, the manner in which he
combines an account of divine action in giting that idea with a sensitive account of the human
mind’s failure to articulate what it knows. Taken together, what he suggests opens for us a
possible conversation complementary to those that I have suggested we should pursue through
the paper's earlier sections.
First, then, we should note Newman's use of a variety of different terminologies to speak
of “an idea” of Christianity. He speaks somewhat tentatively of an inward idea or belief in the
singular, but he speaks also of a collection of “ideas.” hese ideas are also a “living impression” or
“a collection of judgments and impressions.”his phenomenon is the result of the mind’s
reception of and initial attempts to comprehend divine activity, although Newman speaks of
this in different persons as both inchoate, as conscious and as unconscious.42 In any case, it is a
40. he literature here is extensive. A locus classicus, however, is Nicholas Lash, Newman on
Development. he Search for an Exploration in History (London: Sheed & Ward, 1975). In recent
literature one of the most extensive attempts at retrieving aspects of Newman's account in dialogue with
that of Congar is Andrew Meszaros, he Prophetic Church: History and Doctrinal Development in John
Henry Newman and Yves Congar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
41. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century heology (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004): 425-9.
42. John Henry Newman, Fiteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford, ed. J.D. Earnest & G.
Tracey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 216ff.
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reception of and relection on that which is received as divine git. his collection of judgments
or living impression is also “what Scripture calls knowledge.”43 he sheer variety of terminology
here opens the possibility of our stepping back from the singular idea and its unfolding, toward
a more hesitant sense of the mind’s engagement with the divine impress, the divine infusion of
faith. I use the phrase "divine infusion of faith" carefully; just ater Newman speaks of this
collection of judgements as "what Scripture calls knowledge", he writes:
his awful vision is what Scripture seems to designate by the phrases 'Christ in us,'
'Christ dwelling in us by faith,' 'Christ formed in us,' and 'Christ manifesting
Himself unto us. And though it is faint and doubtful in some minds, and distinct in
others, as some remote object in the twilight or in the day, this arises from the
circumstances of the particular mind, and does not interfere with the perfection of
the git itself.44
Newman thus sees the idea or collection of ideas as the result of Christ's impress on the soul. He
does not explicitly develop here a fully Catholic account of theological faith, he focuses on the
theological framework within which we may speak about such git, Christ's effective presence to
the soul.45
his focus, however, combines with his account of the mind's natural and "spontaneous"
desire to explore, analyze and describe that which impresses itself through divine action.46 he
43. Newman, Fiteen Sermons, 223.
44. Newman, Fiteen Sermons, 223-4.
45. See Newman, Fiteen Sermons 228: "it is difficult to determine what divine grace may not do for us, if
not immediately in implanting new ideas, yet in reining and elevating those which we gain through
natural informants. If, as we all acknowledge, grace renews our moral feelings... it does not appear why, in
a certain sense, it may not impart ideas concerning the nature of God." It is also worth noting that in the
rough notes that Newman prepared for a proposed preface to the French translation of the sermons
(available at Newman, Fiteen Sermons, 236-251) asserts laconically that through grace a divine certainty
of faith is infused (see p. 238), but that his main concern in the sermons is with the human side of faith.
his is not, I think, defensive, merely Newman being clear that his account is compatible with and
perhaps presupposes such an infusion, but that he will not focus on it here.
46. Newman, Fiteen Sermons, 216.
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ideas of which he speaks have "a life in them which shows itself in progress." his is so because of
the depth of truth that they contain, because they stem from the active work of Christ drawing
us on, because they have "a depth, which extends into mystery."
47
his "life" lows from the
character of revelation, both in the sense that Christ himself gits us this faith and uses it for our
salvation, and in the sense that this revealed knowledge draws and entices the human mind by
its joint character of truth and mystery. Already it should be apparent that Newman's account
can be developed alongside an account of traditio as the fundamental theological act, lowing
from the very nature of revelation, and as an act through Christ and the Spirit may reform and
restore the soul.48
Second, I would like to note Newman's account of the difficulty that fallen human
beings naturally experience in articulating what they know. Newman comments:
But, further, if the ideas may be latent in the Christian mind, by which it is animated
and formed, it is less wonderful that they should be difficult to elicit and deine; and of
this difficulty we have abundant proof in the history whether of the Church, or of
individuals. Surely it is not at all wonderful, that, when individuals attempt to analyze
their own belief, they should ind the task arduous in the extreme, if not altogether
beyond them; or, again, a work of many years; or, again, that they should shrink from
the developments, if offered to them, as foreign to their thoughts.49
A little later he insists in quite a striking passage that a "characteristic" of dogmatic statements is
“the difficulty of recognizing them.” Dogmatic statements, reasoned out by the Christian
community and under the guidance of Son and Spirit may be correct, yet our weak grasp of the
47. Newman, Fiteen Sermons, 214.
48. In this regard note also the concluding sentence about the salviic character of revealed knowledge:
Newman, Fiteen Sermons, 233-4: All is dreary till we believe, what our hearts tell us, that we are subjects
of His Governance; nothing is dreary, all inspires hope and trust, directly we understand that we are
under His hand, and that whatever comes to us is from Him. What is it to us whether the knowledge He
gives us be greater or less, if it be He who gives it? What is it us whether it be exact or vague, if He bids us
trust it? What have we to care whether we are or are not given to divide substance from shadow, if He is
training us heavenwards by means of either?"
49. Newman, Fiteen Sermons, 218.
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unitary living idea within us makes recognizing the correspondence of the piecemeal
differentiated statements of dogma to it extremely difficult.50 Similarly, when we look back it
may be difficult for us to grasp the reasoning that led to particular dogmatic formulation
because such reasoning always has a unique character because those who reason have recourse
both to deductive argument, and to the living idea within them.51 he difficulty that we have in
presenting doctrinal “development” as a logical and organic process, is simply a consequence of
the manner in which human and divine interact here. Neman adds as a proviso – as I have done
myself more than once in this paper – that recognition of this difficulty in comprehension in no
way militates against the idea of God’s provision of clear teaching in both Scripture and the
Church’s tradition, and in no way is license for presenting Christian teaching as an everchanging and discontinuous series.52 his emphasis on the sheer difficulty of comprehending
deepens Newman's account of the space opened up by the interaction of divine and human
agency in the Christian community's growth in understanding of revelation. But it is precisely
the importance of recognizing the space in which traditio occurs as one of divine and human
agency that I have argued to be central in understanding why that act - and particular those
moments of that act that have been deinitive for us as Christian thinkers - are sacramental. his
account of development, then, may form an integral part of a theology of tradition which takes
traditio as the fundamental theological act, and the unfolding of our understanding of revelation
50. Newman, Fiteen Sermons, 219.
51. Newman, Fiteen Sermons, 224-5. We should note especially this passage: "...though the Christian
mind reasons out a series of dogmatic statements, one from another, this it has ever done, and always
must do, not from those statements taken in themselves, as logical propositions, but as being itself
enlightened and (as if ) inhabited by that sacred impression which is prior to them, which acts as a
regulating principle, ever present, upon the reason... For though the development of an idea is a
deduction of proposition from proposition, these propositions are ever formed in and round the idea
itself (so to speak), and are in fact one and all only aspects of it." Here Newman hints at the sort of
notion of radical newness in interpretation (even as it remains interpretation) that is explored by such
thinkers as Congar and Ratzinger in the mid-twentieth century. For discussion see the brief comments in
the previous section of the essay and, more extensively, my “he Word Answering the Word."
52. It is, in part, this recognition that leads Newman to offer his famous "notes" of appropriate
development in the Essay. Read today those "notes" can seem somewhat circular, but if they were to be
read as removing the difficulty we have in understanding the interpretive leaps and moves that Newman
relects upon here so candidly, that would be an important loss.
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through the proclamation and speculation of truly human agents, through human sub-creation ,
as simultaneously nurtured and shaped by the impress of Son and Spirit.53
I hope, then, that taking forward some of the main emphases of Dei Verbum's second
chapter, and taking some of its ambiguities and conscious omissions as charges for our own
relection may prove a fruitful way of thinking theologically about the character of revelation
and theological relection. Emphasis on the manner in which the act of tradition is a
sacramental part of the divine economy may provide, I suggest, a unifying theme, one which
enabling us to shape an account of theology that will realize some of the untapped potential of
the Council's work. As I indicated at the beginning of this essay, although my approach is a
clearly Catholic one, I have tried to draw my central themes from the wellspring at the Gospel's
core. And of have done so as an opening to particular sorts of ecumenical conversation: only by
us attending to and even arguing (reasonably politely) over the very contents of the gospel do we
grow in ecumenical understanding.
53. I use "sub-creation" in the sense given the term by J. R. R. Tolkien in his "On Fairy-Stories," inTree
and Leaf (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964), 11-70. he term there describes the giving of
internal consistency and coherence to a "secondary" world in that type of tale he describes as fantasy. Of
importance, however, is the insistence that sub-creative activity, if successful speaks to fundamental
human and fallen experiences of recovery, escape and consolation (especially the consolation that follows
from acceptance of the inevitability and even beneits of death). In the essay's epilogue Tolkien sees the
possibility of this activity, the activity of "the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation" as now
hallowed by the character of the divine economy. Tolkien's perspective may, perhaps be used also to
approach the character of the Christian doctrinal enterprise; an act of "sub-creation" (using all the tools
of human sub-creative activity), but one which is not only hallowed by, but demanded by the Creator's
redemptive work, an activity taken up into that work.
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Lewis Ayres