A Place for the Fathers (Part II)

The Fathers as Witnesses to Tradition

Having considered the ambiguous status of the Fathers in Catholic theology today, Ratzinger turns his attention to the role of the Fathers with regard to tradition (no distinction between “Tradition” and “tradition” here). Even if they are accorded a secondary importance with regards to the interpretation of Scripture—second, that is, to the historical-critical method—, he says, the Fathers are still “of primary importance as witnesses to tradition” (Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 137).

But what does it mean to be a witness to tradition, other than to be a witness to the interpretation of Scripture? On this point, Ratzinger seems to hold to the definition of tradition not as a distinct “source” of revelation, but the Church’s very interpretation of Scripture. This, he suggests, is the view of tradition held by the bishops of Trent and Vatican I: the Fathers were recognized as witnesses to tradition because they were revealers of the Bible. Thus, the Fathers’ role as bearers of tradition is rooted in and inseparable from their being regarded as the Church’s primary interpreters of Scripture.

In modern Catholic theology, however, things are quite different:

…[W]ith respect to tradition, modern Catholic theology has arrived, by both the irreconcilable paths that it has followed, at what amounts to an almost total dissolution of the bond between the concept of tradition and patristic theology (p. 138). [Emphasis added.]

He then discusses two modern views of tradition that have led to this “almost total dissolution”. The first view

regards tradition as but the living presence of Scripture, which adds nothing to Scripture but is merely the translation of Scripture into the living present of the Church. Hence, it is, in all ages, whole and entire, and, because every age can relate to Scripture directly in its own way, any appeal to the past is fundamentally meaningless (p. 138).

As Ratzinger then observes, thinking about tradition this way has implications for biblical exegesis. The Fathers are seen as people who can certainly lead us deeper into Scripture’s meaning, but they do not have hold any unique place in the Church’s reading of the Bible. After all, if tradition is by nature current and bound to “now”, why pay special attention to what happened in the first centuries of Christianity?

The second view sees as tradition all which the Church, at any given moment in history, holds as being revealed by God. Thus, what is understood as tradition does not have to trace its origins to the beginnings of the Church. Rather, to know what tradition means, one needs only “to take a cross section of the Church’s awareness of faith at any given time in her history” (p. 139). This, for Ratzinger, is the view of tradition is reflected in the papal definitions of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption (1950). What he alludes to here is the fact that neither of these dogmas have historical roots that reach all the way back to the beginnings of Christianity. There is no witness to the Assumption prior to the 5th century, and as late as the Middle Ages, St. Bernard and St. Thomas Aquinas did not think the Mother of God exempt from the stain of sin. According to this second view of tradition, however, all that is necessary as evidence for these traditions was that the Church believed them in the mid-19th and 20th centuries.

Fundamentally, this second view ends up “dehistoricizing” tradition, i.e. it denies that tradition has to possess real roots in the very beginning of the Church. After all, according to this perspective, something belongs to tradition not necessarily because it can be shown that the Church has always held it, but rather because the Church at some point in history did. For this understanding of tradition Ratzinger reserves some loaded criticism:

What happened here [i.e. the "dehistoricizing" of tradition] is of decisive importance, for the connection between the concept of tradition and patristic theology, which had so long been impregnable, is thus severed, and the importance of the Fathers, which, as we have already seen, had been reduced to a minimum by the historical-critical method of scriptural interpretation, is now being questioned from the perspective of dogma and in the sphere of tradition. Or, at least, the Fathers seem to be relegated to one and the same level as the rest of history and theology, so that they would have, in any event, no special meaning within this history… (p. 139). [Emphasis added.]

The Fathers, then, become unnecessary to tradition. What is clear is that this diminished role they are given is in no way compatible with the high view of them which we find throughout the Church’s history. Certainly, “the unanimous consent of the Fathers”, which the Council of Trent in the West held as normative for the interpretation of Scripture, seems to have been overridden by these ways of understanding tradition.

[To be continued.]