Dr. White uses Jesus’ admonition of the Pharisees in Mark 7 to attempt to discredit Catholic teaching on Sacred Tradition. Here is the passage:
Mar 7:5 And the
Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not
walk according to the tradition
of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?"
Mar 7:6 And he
said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you
hypocrites, as it is
written, "'This people
honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from
me;
Mar 7:7 in vain do they
worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of
men.'
Mar 7:8 You leave the
commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men."
Mar 7:9 And he
said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting
the commandment of
God in order to establish your tradition!
Mar 7:10 For Moses said, 'Honor
your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever
reviles father or mother must surely die.'
Mar 7:11 But you say, 'If a man
tells his father or his mother, Whatever you would
have gained from me is Corban' (that is, given
to God)--
Mar 7:12 then you no longer
permit him to do anything for his father or mother,
Mar 7:13 thus making void the
word of God by your tradition that you have handed
down. And many such things you do."
This
passage is often used by anti-Catholic apologists to suggest that all religious
tradition is condemned as being opposed to the Scriptures. The problem with this argument is
clear: the condemnation is concerned only with religious traditions of men
which make void the word of God.
Catholic Sacred Tradition, on the other hand, is taught to be itself a
transmission of the word of God (Dei Verbum 9). Many articles are available which address
this issue.
However,
Dr. White’s approach to this passage is slightly more refined and seems
at first to be more problematic to the Catholic teaching. He points out that the Corban rule, which Jesus condemns, is contained in the Mishnah, the written codification of the Jewish equivalent
to Sacred Tradition. The Jews
regarded this rule as having come from God Himself. However, Jesus makes it clear that it is
a tradition of men that did not come from God. Dr. White contends that just as the Jews
regarded certain manmade traditions as being of Divine origin, so may the
Catholic Church. Catholics, he
says, must check their traditions against the fixed and certain word of God in
the Scriptures to determine if they are valid or not.
The
first problem with this argument is that the Mishnah
was not finally codified until sometime in the third century. There is no guarantee that the Pharisees
actually did regard this as a Divinely given
tradition. It is possible, for
instance, that the Corban rule was included in the Mishnah for the very reason that Jesus is recorded
condemning it in the gospels. If a
Jew believed Jesus had spoken against a tradition of Divine origin, it would
prove to him that Christ was not the Messiah. In fact, Dr. White himself stated in a
2004 debate with Gary Michuta that there is a
“tremendous amount of discussion [in scholarly works] as to what parts of
that literature [the Mishnah] are actually reflective
of the time when Christ was ministering.” It is therefore very tenuous to
assert that because it was contained in the Mishnah,
the Corban rule was accepted as a Divine tradition by
the Pharisees. It is not certain
whether this is the case, but it is worth noting as a possibility.
Even
if the Corban rule was regarded to be Divinely inspired, the only thing that this passage tells us
for sure is that at some point it made its way into the traditions of the Jews
as they were handed down. This does
not prove that all of these traditions were falsely regarded as being of Divine
origin, only that the Corban rule was.
This presents another problem, because it means
that the same argument used against Sacred Tradition could be used against the
Scriptures. As the Scriptures were
copied and handed down from generation to generation over time, many variations
crept into the manuscripts. Some
extra words and phrases, words and phrases of men, were placed in the
Scriptures and were regarded as the word of God. Dr. White would of course argue that this
is different from the problem of Sacred Tradition in that these words can be
tested by textual criticism, historical investigation, and so forth to
determine what originally belonged in the text, whereas Sacred Tradition cannot
be. The problem with this is that
this makes the accuracy of the word of God rely upon fallible human methods and
efforts. Another problem is that
Sacred Tradition can be tested by
such methods. Whereas textual
criticism and historical investigation are able to ascertain, to certain
degrees of accuracy, what words and verses were in the original autographs of
the Scriptures, by studying the writings of the early Church fathers, the men
who lived at the time of and knew the apostles, one is able to determine which
traditions were contained in the original body of apostolic Tradition as taught
by the apostles.
To counter this, it could be argued that when it
comes to the Scriptures, it is possible to compare questionable verses with the
rest of the Scriptures to see if they belong. However, this becomes a circular
argument and a meaningless exercise because it requires the assumption that the
Scriptures one is comparing something to are in fact
of Divine origin themselves, even though they may also be false additions. This gets to the very heart of the
biggest problem of Sola Scriptura,
which is that without Sacred Tradition one cannot know which books belong in
the canon of Scripture to begin with.
(Dr. White has argued on
more than one occasion that ‘God works with His people’ to reveal
the proper canon, however one must wonder why it is, if Dr. White is correct,
that He allowed the deuterocanonical books to make their way into Scripture for
1500 years when they in fact did not belong.)
The ultimate end of this methodology can be seen
in Martin Luther’s infamous removal of
Finally, this argument falls short because it
fails to take into account the new status of the Church as the “pillar
and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), a status which was not granted to
the Jewish religious establishment.
A bulwark is a fortification, a defense, a barricade. A pillar holds something up. The Church has been established by God
to hold up the truth, and to be a fortification and defense of it. If the Church were capable of teaching
error, she simply would not be a pillar and bulwark of the truth. In fact, in instructing Timothy in how
to avoid deceptions and stick to truth, Paul tells him to remember those things
he has learned (tradition) and to appeal to the Scriptures (2 Tim 3:12-17) In his instructions to the Thessalonians
on avoiding deception and loving truth, he also points both to oral tradition
and Scripture (2 Thess 2:9-15) In each case, Paul is specifically
addressing the issue of avoiding deception and clinging to truth, and in each
case he mentions both Scripture and
tradition. This is not a
coincidence. The reason he is so
confident that the Traditions will be preserved accurately is that he knows the
Holy Spirit will guard them, telling Timothy:
“But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I
have believed, and I am convinced that he [Christ] is able to guard until that
Day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you
have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy
Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” (2
Tim 1:12-14)
Here
Paul specifically states that the “sound pattern of words” Timothy
has heard from him will be guarded by Christ through the Holy Spirit. This is just one of many places in
the New Testament where this protection may be evidenced. Clearly, there is a difference between
the authority Jewish religious establishment and the authority and protection
of the Church given Her in a special way by Christ
through the Holy Spirit. It may be
argued in opposition of this that the Jewish religious establishment also
claimed authority, and that the Jews “were entrusted with the oracles of
God.” (Rom 3:2) It is true,
this argument says, that the modern Church has authority, but that authority
does not encompass any Sacred Tradition, because the Jews also had an
authority, yet Christ condemned their traditions. However, as it has been pointed out, it
is not clear that the Corban rule was regarded as
being of Divine Origin in Jesus’ time. Furthermore, by the time the Mishnah was codified, the Jews had lost whatever authority
they did posses in favor of the Church.
In
summary, we see then that Dr. White’s objection fails for at least four
reasons:
1
It assumes that the Corban
rule was actually regarded as Divine in origin, and fails to consider the late date of the
completion of the codification of the Mishnah and
possible anti-Christian bias in the codification.
2
It specifically addresses only one Jewish
tradition and extrapolates from this a general principle.
3
It presents an argument against Sacred Tradition
which can also be used against the reliability of Sacred Scripture, while
suggesting methods to ensure Scriptural reliability are also applicable to
Sacred Tradition.
4
It fails to take into account the special status
of the Church granted by God as compared to the Jewish religious establishment,
and fails to consider the special protection of the Church’s teaching
authority promised through the Holy Spirit.
2006
Shane Coombs