"Scripture teaches, scripture teaches, scripture teaches..."

Oh, please stop...you are killing me! RANT time!

Good old "Bible Answer Man" at it again. I suppose if he were to stop and try a different approach he'd have to change his name. His caller is seeking to know more about the "doctrine of the Trinity" and how it "developed." Asking, "Did it arise at the council of Nicea?"

"Well of course it didn't," Hank tells her, "it arose from the Bible."
REALLY?
And thus the scripture king planned his sneak attack and pummelled his poor doubting caller with proof-texts which did not seem to satisfy her anymore than they might have satisfied Arius. Despite the dozen or so times that we were treated to :"scripture teaches, scripture teaches, scripture teaches..." Can an inanimate object have a verb attached to it, unless something else is acting upon it? How can Scripture "teach"?

Let's say you go down to Walmart and pickup a book on Karate and begin to practice night and day. Then, believing that you have excelled in your roundhouse kicks and your breaking of boards someone might oneday ask: "Who was your teacher?" Would you respond with the author of the book you bought? Well you could, but would it not be disingenuous? In truth, would it not be more truthful to say that you were SELF-TAUGHT? Hmmmmm....

Naturally Hank closed up his lengthy process of setting the poor woman aright with his annunciation that the doctrine of the Trinity did not arise from "some tradition" (said with appropriate protestant disgust) but from the infallable, perfect, sacred, depository of revelation: Holy Scripture.

It all seems so foreign to me now, all the more I suppose since I used to venerate the BAM like a devout Catholic might the Pope (and it was the REAL BAM at the time!) How on earth did the council at Nicea manage the creed without appealing to Tradition???? Did St. Nicholas slap Arius with his Pocket NIV? Or perhaps St. Athanasius appealed to his NT Greek interlinear when writing "On the Incarnation"? I mean, gee, wasn't it some 40 or so years AFTER Nicea that we see St. Athanasios taking the time to announce exactly what ought to comprise the NT????

HOLY SCRIPTURE IS HOLY TRADITION, THE TWO ARE INSEPERABLE!
IN A SENSE, THEY ARE TWO PERSONS IN ONE NATURE.

Ok, enough.

Oh, sweet Paradosis...what a refuge.


Comments

Ice Gavin said…
People really need to stop asserting that there's a dichotomy between Scripture and Tradition. Side note: I haven't studied this enough, but I get the impression that the Counter-Reformation was more an attempt to reconcile the dichotomy the Reformation posed, rather than show it doesn't actually exist, and therefore perpetuated the problem.

The Church is all about the unknowable becoming knowable, for the sake of man's redemption. Christ is the Logos. So is the Scripture. So is the Tradition, which is no less than the necessary contextual and sacramental backdrop that makes the Scripture more than mere words. That said, the Tradition would be nothing without Scripture. And nothing would be what it is without Christ, who is all in all in the Church at least.

One of the Fathers devised an interesting metaphor: Suppose a man crafted a beautiful mosaic out of gold and precious stones, in the figure of a king. Then another man came and rearranged the pieces to make a donkey. The second man can't claim that his mosaic is the original, even if he used all the original pieces.
fdj said…
Thank you Alexander...VERY well said!

Popular Posts