Can we rely on Scripture alone?

January 28, 2024

When Martin Luther, a German Augustinian friar, broke away from the Catholic Church in the 16th century and started the Protestant (those who protest) Reformation, the ground of his revolt was articulated in three phrases  Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, Sola Fides" ("only scripture, only grace, only faith").  The immediate instigation for his revolt was the corrupted practice of indulgences that were being sold as a means to collect money, and was being actively fostered in the Church of that time. The popular phrase that summarised the belief was "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs”.  In other words, the belief  was that one could buy salvation, by buying indulgences, and use them either for oneself, or to set free  one’s loved ones who were in purgatory.  Reacting strongly to that, Luther, a pastor and professor at the University of Wittenberg, started questioning many teachings that were part of the TRADITION of the Church. This led him to end up propagating his theological stance that Scripture alone (sola scriptura) must govern our beliefs and help us sift the wheat from the chaff of Tradition, i.e. the collation of all  Church teachings, including that of the Councils and Synods. And based on his understanding of Scripture he also propounded two other theological ideas that went against the Tradition of the Church, namely that it is not by good works that one is saved, but purely by faith in Jesus Christ (sola fides), and therefore it is only by God's completely gratuitous gift of grace (sola gratia), a grace that could never be earned, that anybody could be saved.

So one of the biggest theological differences between the Catholic and the Protestant Churches today is that the latter insist on Luther's sola scriptura principle, while the Catholic Church insists that Scripture and Tradition are together to be used to understand and interpret God's revelation to us in Jesus Christ

Today's second reading gives us a good opportunity to explore this struggle between these two approaches to divine revelation. In this passage from his first letter to the Corinthians,  Paul seems to be clearly teaching that those who are unmarried/virgins are more likely to focus on the Lord than those who are married. And so this passage is one of those often used to justify the belief that celibacy is a more spiritual or higher state than marriage - a belief that is commonplace not only in Christianity, but in many religions.

Here we have an interesting conundrum. Paul’s letter is part of Scripture and so we should be following it without any disagreement.  However, Paul himself says, a little earlier in the same letter: Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. (1 Cor 7:25)  So the teaching on virginity is, by Paul’s own admission, NOT part of Jesus’ teachings.  So is it to be given the same importance as the rest of Scriptural teachings? Or is it just Paul’s individual perspective?

Clearly, what we have here is Paul, a celibate himself, and one who believed strongly that the end of the world was imminent, giving his own perspective on this theme of virginity/celibacy.  This perspective of Paul gradually came to dominate Catholic thinking, so that though all the apostles (except John), and many popes, bishops and priests were married (right up till the 11th century), the general perception that celibacy is a higher state than marriage has taken  hold in the minds of most Catholics today for the reasons given by Paul in today’s reading.  A very obvious example of the role of perspective is the translation in our Bibles of the Greek word ‘parthenos’ used in the Gospels which were originally written in Greek. This word could be translated as ‘young girl’ or as ‘virgin’, in the same manner in which the Hindi word ‘Kumari’ or the English word ‘Maiden’ can be translated as ‘unmarried’ or ‘young girl’.  So it is interesting to note that Catholic Bibles translate that Greek word as VIRGIN, while those who do not accept as dogma that Mary was always a virgin, (like many Protestant groups) have the term ‘young girl’ as the translation in their Bibles.

Historically, too, soon after Luther’s insistence on sola scriptura, there arose many other Christian leaders all over Europe including Zwingli, Calvin and John Knox, each of whom started their own Church, precisely because each of them brought their own perspectives to understanding Scripture.  Today, these varied interpretations of Scripture (and for other non-theological reasons) have led to the reality that there are 352 Churches registered as members in the World Council of Churches.

So does Perspective influence our understanding of Scripture?  It seems that it inevitably does.  Thus, in the Catholic Church, we have Liberation Theology, initiated by South American theologians, which looked at the New Testament from the perspective of the poor and the outcast, reminding us that Jesus clearly called down Woes on the rich (Luke 6:24), and also taught that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven (Mathew 19:24) And that Luke’s “Blessed are the poor” (6:20) is probably the original teaching of Jesus and not the one from Mathew, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, (Mathew 5:3) - the latter being the version that those of us who read from the perspective of not being poor, would prefer.    

Similarly, Feminist theologians look at the New Testament from the perspective of women, and come up with fresh new insights that perhaps we had never thought of before.  They have pointed out that  it is commonly accepted by the Church/theologians that in the early Church, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated in house-churches and that the leader(s) in these house churches led the Eucharist. They then point out that Mary (Acts 12:12ff) and Prisca (Rom 16:3-5, 1 Cor.16:19) were both leaders of house churches, and so it could be assumed that sometimes, at least, these women presided over the Eucharist in their own house churches. Therefore, they suggest that these scriptural examples ought to make us question the denial of ordination to women that is prevalent in the Catholic Church - a rule which is further challenged by the fact that many mainline protestant groups (which take Scripture very very seriously) do allow the ordination of women.

So besides being inevitable, perspectives also give us new insights into Scripture - for they help us see truth from various angles and thus throw more light on truth, which itself is always multi-faceted. Perspectives only become dangerous when one perspective is perceived as the ONLY perspective.  

So, if perspective controls interpretation of Scripture, then can we depend on ‘sola Scriptura’ (only Scripture) ?  This is why the Catholic Church insists that, together with Scripture, there is need to use Tradition as another source, in order to help us better understand the Christian faith and scriptures.   But defining Tradition is extremely difficult.  

However, the experience in the early Church could give us insights to understanding this concept.  In the early Church, there was a significant difference of opinion on whether  non-Jewish (Gentile) converts to Christianity should follow certain Jewish rules, particularly the practice of circumcision, which was considered an essential feature of Jewish faith.  Peter, basing himself on the only Scriptures that he knew (Exodus 12:48), which insisted that if “a stranger… wants to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised” was of the opinion that the non-Jewish converts to Christianity had to be circumcised, as Peter still saw the new converts as just becoming Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah.  He had no intention of starting a new religious group.  Paul, however, was clear that the salvation brought about by Jesus did NOT depend on fulfilling the Jewish law, and so he opposed this rule of circumcision.  And so to solve this and other issues facing them the early Jesus community came together in what is today known as the Council of Jerusalem.  At that council, the various perspectives were debated, and finally, Peter, as the head accepted by all, articulated the conclusions arrived at by the Council.  But this is not the end of the story.  Gradually, over the centuries that followed, even some of the decisions of the Council of Jerusalem, like the decision that it was essential that Christians ‘abstained ….from food given to idols and from blood’(Acts 15:20) were gradually quietly shelved, though never officially repudiated.  With regard to abstaining from blood, a rule which is still followed by Jehovah’s witnesses who refuse blood transfusions, our increasing scientific knowledge taught us that ‘life’ was not sustained by blood, as was believed by Peter and the early Jewish disciples (Leviticus 17:14). In fact, this earlier belief about blood  being an essential element to life, still holds sway in Judaism and Islam, so that the practice of first draining away the blood of the animal before slaughtering it is the basis of kosher (Judaism) and halal (Islam) food. Similarly the injunction to abstain from food given to idols has gradually been whittled down - though many still follow it - as Indian Christians learnt to increasingly appreciate and immerse themselves in Indian cultural and religious practices. This respect for other religious and cultural traditions and practices was eventually encouraged and we have Pope John Paul II fostering the inculturation of Christianity by teaching that Christians should “take with wise discernment certain elements, religious or otherwise, that form part of the cultural heritage of a human group, and use them to to help its members to understand better the whole of the Christian mystery”.  

In this ‘story’ above, then, we have a helpful example that describes not only as to what constitutes Tradition, but also how it is articulated and evolves. As the experience of the Council of Jerusalem demonstrates, Tradition develops through the knowledge and insights that come from different sources, but it is finally articulated by an accepted authority like Peter, - which authorities today include the Popes, the Councils,  Synods and the Dicasteries (departments) of the Vatican and the national Bishops’ councils. Thus the centralised structure of the Catholic Church does play an important role in the articulation of the Tradition.

But from where does this new knowledge and/or these new insights come from? They come from the increasing knowledge that we have as a human race (therefore from all fields of human knowledge), an increasing understanding of Scripture based on this new knowledge, new perspectives that help us see Scripture in newer ways, and finally from what we have come to call the ‘sensum fidelium’ (i.e. the sense of the faithful) that includes many other individual thinkers and practices of the faithful.  Eventually, these newer insights and interpretations filter upwards, are challenged and questioned and argued over, either in Ecumenical Councils (convened by the Popes for the entire Church) or Synods (which are not necessarily convened by the Popes and could be restricted to a particular country or Rite in the Catholic Church). At these Councils or Synods, or in declarations by the Pope himself, by the Vatican Dicasteries or National Bishops’ Councils, there is an articulation (as Peter did) in which some emerging ideas are accepted, and some rejected.   That is not the end,  because knowledge and insights never end, and so as the Church continues to grow, newer inputs may challenge even these official articulations, and then the same process starts all over again.  For example, sometimes a Synodal teaching may question Church practices or beliefs, as happened a few years ago when the Amazon Synod challenged the celibacy rule for priests for the sake of the specific requirements of their particular geographical area.  Or again our understanding of the truth in the Bible has seen significant changes from the time when every single thing in the Bible was considered absolutely true (even as late as 1920) to later Church articulations (which were based on contributions by Scriptural scholars and new knowledge gained from the scientific world) that Biblical stories need not always be taken literally, and that finding the intent of the writer, as well as identifying the form/genre of writing, etc are all  important elements in understanding what Scripture is saying. Another example that comes to mind is the teaching on the immorality of the use of artificial means of birth control.  The Commission appointed by Pope Paul VI to study this issue ended with 64 of the 69 voting members saying that it was NOT immoral, but the Pope decided to follow the opinion of the 5 who dissented from this overwhelming majority opinion.  But that was not the end of the matter, for immediately after the Pope announced this in his encyclical, Humanae Vitae, 14 national bishops’ councils from different countries around the world officially declared that it was permissible for the individual Catholic to disagree with this teaching of the encyclical in theory and/or practice. Furthermore, the actual practice of Catholic couples from around the world seems to indicate that a large percentage of the faithful choose to ignore the conclusions of that encyclical.  So this is an example of the official articulation on morals being challenged.

As a result of all these various inputs and challenges, the official Tradition keeps getting reflected upon and re-articulated. These articulations by Popes and Councils and the rest are like plateaus on which one may rest for awhile,  before continuing to climb the mountain.  They are never the end-point, but they are articulations where those Catholic faithful who do not have the interest or capability to reflect further, can hold on to for their own peace of mind, - though it is important to always remember that these are only rest-stops on the continuing pilgrimmage to relating with God.  Therefore, while it can  be seen that the centralised structure of the Catholic Church does play an extremely crucial and  useful role in articulating Tradition, the danger lies in forgetting that this TRADITION also evolves and newer articulations may come further down history. Because of this ever evolving nature of Tradition, we too are constantly called to keep offering our own insights into helping this Tradition develop and evolve.

In short, Tradition includes many many elements and insights coming from various sources and perspectives, and is an ever-living and ever-evolving set of teachings that are articulated by the authorities in the Church.  So while Luther’s insistence on using Scripture as a touchstone on which to check all our Christian interpretations and teachings remains valid, we must remember that since perspective controls interpretation, we have to make a place for a second touchstone, which the Catholic Church has named, Tradition (understood in the wide sense explained earlier).  Without this second touchstone, we are left alone bobbing about on a sea of loneliness, where we end up interpreting Scripture using only our own individual perspective (also known as Eisegesis) rather than using tools and techniques and interpretations and perspectives that have been developed and accepted as valid by various scholars and Church communities over the centuries (knwn as Exegesis).  And so, like a scientist who builds on previous scientific findings, using the previous discoveries as a springboard rather than a straitjacket, we also need to seriously ground our new perspectives in the light of what we have learnt earlier (Tradition), so that we can move forward in understanding Scripture, standing on the shoulders of all those who have gone before us. 

First Reading: Deuteronomy 18: 15-20

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.”

The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him.  I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.  But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”

Second Reading: First Corinthians 7: 32-35

 

I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord, but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit, but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord.

Gospel: Mark 1: 21-28

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.  Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”  But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!”  And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.  They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He[a] commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”  At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.