When my wife and I were dating, and things started to get serious, I took her home to meet my family. They wasted no time in breaking out the family photo albums and began to dissect my life picture by picture. There were the cute baby pictures, pictures of the major accomplishments, and more embarrassing photos than I knew existed. One by one my wife got little glimpses into the life of the man she was growing deeper in love with.
Each picture had a story behind it, containing details one could never learn from the picture itself. My family spent hours reminiscing, sharing their memories of good times and bad. By the end of the day my wife had gotten a good look at the person I was and how I grew into the person I currently am. The photos, however good, were not enough to do this. It was only with my family’s memories of the events that a proper understanding could be obtained.
The bible is the photo album of salvation history. The words on the page create the images in the mind that the stories are meant to convey. The album begins with creation itself and follows the journey of mankind through the fall to its salvation and redemption. As with my family, God’s family has reminisced about these stories throughout time. The Jewish oral tradition has meticulously passed down the stories of the Old Testament from one generation to the next. Likewise, the Catholic Church has done the same with both the Old and New Testaments through her Sacred Oral Tradition. Holy Scripture and Sacred Oral Tradition make up the deposit of faith that defines what Catholics believe and why. It is only through the written word and the Sacred Oral Tradition that a complete and accurate understanding of salvation history can be obtained. The story is incomplete and misunderstood if either is missing.
Catholic oral tradition was successfully used to combat the Luther heresies. When Luther decided to cast aside 1500 years of Church teaching to begin his own ecclesial community based upon his personal opinion he did away with Sacred Tradition. He kept only the photo album which he could explain in any way he saw fit to support his opinions. He made the claim that anyone, inspired by the Holy Spirit, could come to the correct understanding of Holy Scripture. That, after all, is what the Jews believed about the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament.
Two things would have happened if what Luther claimed were true. The first is that everyone, divinely inspired, would come to the same understanding as what was taught by the Church for 1500 years. Holy Scripture itself says this in 1 Timothy 3:15 –
“…the church (through her magisterium) is the pillar and bulwark of the truth.”
Second, if everyone can come to the correct understanding of Holy Scripture for themselves, we would not have, at last count, over 70,000 different versions of the truth proclaimed by the various denominational and nondenominational Christian churches throughout the world. We all would share the same truth and have the same understanding of what the photos in the photo album mean.
Luther was dubbed the father of the reformation. Revolution would be a more accurate word. If we were to call Luther for what he is truly the father of it would be Christian moral relativism. When he taught that every person could define what the bible means for themselves, he opened the doors for everyone to define what is right and wrong for themselves. The Church ceased to be the pillar and bulwark of the truth, as the bible says, and truth became a matter of person opinion. Now the tens of thousands of churches that exist throughout the world cannot even agree on something as simple and straightforward as the Ten Commandments.
The Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth, as scripture says it is. It is not just any church or every church but the Church that Jesus himself began. As the creed says that Church is, “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” It is not just anyone or everyone in that Church, but it is those to whom the authority has been given to lead the Church. That is the Magisterium. The Magisterium is the Pope in union with the bishops and they have been given the duty and responsibility to pass on to us the unchanged teachings of Jesus. When someone disagrees with the Church, they don’t disagree with just the Church, but they disagree with Christ himself.
The bible is a photo album and as such it does not contain everything that has come to pass. Scripture itself tells us this in John 21:25 –
“But there are also many other things which Jesus did, which, if they were written in detail, I expect that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.”
Scripture contains everything we need to know about salvation but scripture alone it not enough to properly understand it. We need both Holy Scripture and Sacred Oral Tradition to get a complete understanding of who Jesus is and the relationship he has with his Church.