Third objection: “But once the New Testament was finally complete
there was no more need for ‘tradition’.”
Such an argument goes back to the very core of the Sola Scriptura debate.
The short Catholic answer is: “Where does it say that in the Bible?”
Nowhere is it recorded that the Apostles or any of their faithful
contemporaries gathered all the inspired Gospels and epistles and declared
to the Christian world, “this will be the sole rule of faith after we have gone
to the Lord.” As time passed, the written New Testament would
supplement Tradition, but not supplant it. The best response, however, is
that Christ did not intend to leave all His teachings in a single book, but in
the Church, whether written, oral or otherwise. When Christ ascended into
heaven He left behind a hierarchical authority to continue His mission in
the world. This hierarchy was invested with divine authority to govern in
His name (St. Matt. 16:13; 18:18); is to be obeyed by all the faithful (St.
Luke 10:16); and will last until the end of the world (St. Matt. 16:18;
28:20).
Sola Scriptura, by implication, rejects the need for an authoritative body
outside of the Bible to determine vital questions of faith and morals. Yet
Christ never promised to give us an authoritative book, but rather an
authoritative Church: “on this rock I will build my Church” (St. Matt.
16:18). St. Paul attests that “the Church of the living God … is the pillar
and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). It must be also remembered that it
was the Catholic Church who assembled and canonized the books of the
Old and New Testaments, translated them faithfully, safeguarded them in
times of persecution and interpreted them free from error throughout the
rise and fall of every heresy under the sun. Without the Church and
Tradition, there would have been no Bible to base Sola Scriptura on in the
first place. As another convert from Protestantism, James Akin, states:
“The Protestant apologist is in a fix. In order to use sola scriptura he
is going to have to identify what the scriptures are, and since he is
unable to do this from scripture alone, he is going to have to appeal
to things outside of scripture to make his case, meaning that in every
act of doing this he undermines this case. There is no way to escape
the canon of tradition.”³
3
The Two Canons: Scripture and Tradition, Website 1/18/99, p. 6.
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