Tradition and Doctrine
Most of the interaction between Catholics and protestants suffers from a lack of understanding of the relationship between tradition and doctrine. They both have a tradition even though some protestants still try and claim they don’t. It is like saying everyone has an accent but you. But even protestants who admit that they have a tradition often don’t really understand what it means. For example, when they say such and such a passage clearly teaches that this Catholic doctrine is wrong they are missing the point. What they are saying is that when someone reads this passage in my tradition they arrive at a different place than they would if they read it in the Catholic tradition. Essentially saying that the two traditions are different on this point. Most of the time you already knew that. It is a category error. What you want to know is which tradition is right. To do that you need to eliminate the assumptions that permeate your doctrinal thinking. It is those assumptions that make up your tradition. You can’t start with your tradition. It is begging the question.
Drilling down into the details of how each tradition handled this or that particular doctrine is not the best way. The doctrines are many and nobody has the expertise to stand above all the traditions and see the real truth of God. So we need to raise ourselves up and look at the traditions as a whole and see if we can find one that is objectively better than the rest.
I know that idea rubs many modern people the wrong way. When you have many different traditions people want to assume they are all equally right. That the best answer is to borrow from all the different traditions. But that would amount to constructing your own new tradition. Could you construct one that is better than the ones already out there? Is it really safe to assume all are equally right? Maybe one is much more right than all the others. Can we logically exclude that possibility?
I would go further. I would say we can logically conclude that one tradition must be basically right. Just based on the fact that theology contains a large number of very complex issues. If the Holy Spirit is really leading us into all truth then there must be some simple, high level principles that lead us into that truth. It cannot involve getting down into the weeds on every issue. Science is based on such faith. Christian culture did science because they believed God’s complex creation to be ordered by simple principles that could be understood by man. Further that by discovering these principles we would understand more deeply the beauty and majesty of the Creator.
If such is the case for science then it is more obviously the case for faith and morals. Science has limited value. It can help us to understand and control our physical world to an extent. It can invite us to ponder our creator more deeply. But at the end of the day it is temporal. It is a thing of this world which will pass away. Faith and morals have eternal consequences in a way that science does not. They much more directly effect the state of our immortal soul. So if God orders things physically so science can arrive at solid principles then how much more will He order the spiritual realities so that the truth will be knowable?
But that is essentially what we are talking about if we say there is not one tradition that is very accurate to God’s truth. It means we haven’t got a chance of getting theology right. There are so many issues. So many barriers of time, culture, and language. To get even big ones right is hopeless unless someone gives us the key. I mean Jesus came to earth and gave His life for the gospel. Did He do that so we could sift through hundreds of Christian traditions looking for nuggets of truth?
The only thing that makes sense is that the truth is there and we simply need to embrace it. Then the question comes, which one is it? Which of these many traditions is the one the Holy Spirit is leading into all truth? It turns out not to be that hard a question. It answers itself. It can only be the Catholic church.
