The Sources of Faith: Tradition

The following text is the transcript of our Youtube video Only the CHURCH Conserved All Christ’s Teachings.

This video is part of a series on “The Sources of Faith”. You can find all the videos in the series here.

Welcome to Catholic Hub. I’m David, and in this video, I’m going to talk about Tradition as one of the two Sources of Faith which Our Lord gave to us and which contain together all the truths we must believe in order to be saved.

First of all, what is Tradition?

Let’s go back to the time of the Ascension where Our Lord, after rising from the dead, had commanded his Apostles, not to WRITE, but to TEACH:

Going, therefore, teach ye all nations … to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you

Matthew 28:19

And this is exactly what the Apostles did. They went out into every country and passed on the teachings of Our Lord by preaching to all men.

St Paul wrote to Timothy:

The things which thou hast heard of me by many witnesses, the same commend (i.e., tell) to faithful men, who shall be fit to teach to others also

2 Timothy 2:2

Most of the truths which the Apostles preached at the command of Christ were afterwards written down by the Apostles themselves or by some of their disciples. But many important truths continued to be handed down by word of mouth.

In fact, in the whole New Testament we cannot find any sign of a purpose to put on paper all that Christ revealed. St. John, the last of the Apostles to write, says expressly that he has recounted only a part of what Christ had done:

Many other signs also did Jesus in the sight of His disciples, which are not written in this book.

John 20:30

And St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians:

Brethren, hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word or by our epistle

2 Thess. 2:14

It is these truths, precepts, and counsels, that were revealed by God but not found in the Written Word of God, that we call Tradition.

Now I’ve explained before in another video that Scripture and Tradition are both equally important. Both come from God, both contain truths of the faith that are necessary for us to believe and both deserve the same reverence and respect.

Either Scripture or Tradition alone is sufficient to establish a truth of our holy faith, and their contents are not in any way separate or distinct. Both form one deposit of faith, and every belief that was revealed by Our Lord Jesus Christ is contained in either Scripture or Tradition.

However, Tradition can explain more clearly and definitely a doctrine or teaching less clearly expressed in Scripture, e.g., the Immaculate Conception.

Tradition is absolutely necessary. Let me give an example of why:

Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us how many inspired books there are.

If we didn’t know this for certain by Tradition, we wouldn’t even have a Bible to begin with. When Protestants appeal to Scripture against the Catholic Church, they forget that it’s from this very Church, and on her authority, that Scripture is received.

This is one of the most obvious examples but there are a whole host more, a few of which I’d like to mention here.

The explicit doctrine of the Trinity, while hinted at in Scripture, has been traditionally held in the Church since the earliest times. The formula of Baptism as given by Our Lord himself in Matthew 28:19, is to baptise “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”. The writings of the Church Fathers consistently uphold the doctrine of the Trinity and the Nicene Creed, formulated at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, articulates clearly this belief.

The practice of confessing one’s sins to a priest and receiving absolution is firmly rooted in Tradition. According to John chapter 20, Jesus breathed on the apostles and said:

Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.

John 20:22-23

This passage and others such as 2 Cor. 5:18, whilst demonstrating the authority given to the Apostles to forgive sins, does not provide detailed instructions on exactly how sins are to be forgiven. It is through Tradition that the Church has understood and practiced Confession, ensuring the faithful have a concrete means to receive God’s forgiveness through the ordained priesthood and the rite of absolution.

The primacy of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, is another essential doctrine upheld by Tradition. In Matthew 16:18-19, Jesus says to Peter:

Thou art Peter; and upon this Rock I will build my Church

and gives him the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

It is very often claimed by the enemies of the Church that the primacy of the Papacy is a modern invention of Rome in order to exert power over all the other sees and bishoprics. However, this can be refuted from Tradition by showing:

• first, that Peter set up his seat of authority in Rome
• second, that after his death, the Church considered the successors of Peter in the see of Rome to have inherited his authority as head. Evidence of this is that in the third century the popes claimed authority from the fact that they were St. Peter’s successors, and no one objected to this claim or raised a counter-claim.
• third, to be in continuity with the Church founded by Christ, affiliation to the See of Peter is necessary, for, as a matter of history, there is no other Church linked to any other Apostle by an unbroken chain of successors. ¹

Thus the full understanding of the Pope’s authority as the successor of Peter is evident through the Tradition of the Church.

The belief in Purgatory, a state of purification after death for those who die in God’s grace but are not yet perfect, is also derived from Tradition. Scripture offers some evidence, such as in 2 Maccabees 12:45, which speaks of prayers for the dead, and 1 Corinthians 3:15, which mentions being saved through fire.

However, the detailed understanding of Purgatory, including the nature of the purification process and the practice of praying for the souls in Purgatory, has been handed down through Tradition. The teachings of the Church Fathers have provided a clear doctrine on Purgatory that has been consistently upheld by the Catholic Church.

A more recent example is that of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary, which are not explicitly stated in Scripture but are upheld by Tradition.

The Immaculate Conception was formally defined in 1854 by Pope Pius IX, and the Assumption was defined in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.

The beliefs of Mary as being a second Eve, and of being absolutely pure and free from sin, have been held and venerated in the Church’s Tradition long before their formal definitions. On this point, St Augustine, in his treatise On Nature and Grace, in a passage about how none of the Saints were completely free from sin, says that:

We must except the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it touches the subject of sins

Although some individual Church Fathers and Doctors were of the opinion that Mary may have been conceived with original sin, even these still held that immediately after her conception she was sanctified and remained henceforth free from any sin whatsoever, and this disagreement does not in any way take away from the many Scriptural passages and the vast majority of patristic writings that all agree as to the Blessed Virgin’s absolute purity.

According to the mere words of the Bible text in Matthew 28:19, we should let little children die without Baptism, because Christ gave the command first to teach and then to baptize, as the Anabaptists claim.

But according to the tradition and constant doctrine of the Catholic Church, received even by the so-called Reformed Churches, newborn children should be baptised before they are capable of instruction. This is shown, among others, by the Church Father St. Irenaeus, who explained that since baptism removes original sin and is therefore necessary for salvation, it should be extended to all, including infants.²

To reiterate: the Tradition of beliefs proposed to us by the Catholic Church that are not explicitly contained in Scripture, and that have been consistently held since the time of the Apostles, are necessary for us to have any kind of understanding of those truths that are contained in Scripture.

The Bible doesn’t, in doubtful passages, decide upon the true meaning of its own words; this is something that the Church does for us by drawing on Tradition.

And so we see that Tradition is necessary for us to possess faith, and that we must believe all that God has revealed and that the Church proposes for our belief, whether it’s contained in Holy Scripture or in Tradition.

That’s all for this episode. Please do leave a comment below if you found this video interesting or if you have a question, and don’t forget to give this video a like and subscribe to the channel if you’re new. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.