Question 2: Whether Scripture was necessary.
Question 2: Whether Scripture was necessary.
§ 20. (II) The question arises: Was it necessary for scripture to exist in the Church? No Christian can deny that the Scriptures are useful in the Church, because the apostle claims this in clear language in 2 Tim. 3:16. They instruct us concerning matters unknown by nature, as is evident from the teaching of the Gospel. They preserve purity of doctrine against corruptions and errors (Matt. 22:[29]). They give certainty (Luke 1:3; 2 Pet. 1:19). Thus they are “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Therefore we are called to read them diligently and constantly (John 5:39; 1 Tim. 4:13; 2 Tim. 3:15). The point of this question, however, is whether some necessity has also been connected with that utility, because of which God wanted Scripture to exist in the Church.
Bellarmine denies this and tries to show that “Scriptures without traditions were not simply necessary” (De verbo Dei, bk. 4, c. 4). He states this opinion in this way: that Scripture was necessary “not simply, but for the well-being,” that is, merely useful. This he argues with the following reasons: “(1) Because before Moses there was no divine Scripture. Therefore as that ancient religion was able to be preserved for two thousand years without Scripture, so also Christ’s teaching could have been preserved for fifteen hundred years without Scripture. (2) There were Scriptures extant from Moses to Christ, but these were solely of the Jews. The other nations in which there was also true religion and faith used only the unwritten tradition. (3) Although the Scriptures were in existence among the people of God, yet the Jews used tradition more than Scripture because, until the time of Ezra, the Scriptures were not consigned to the form of books for one to have them easily and conveniently. Instead, they were scattered in various chronicles and papers and at times were not found for a long time because of the negligence of the priests (2 Kings 22). After the captivity, Ezra collected all these and put them into a single corpus. (4) The Church was without the Scriptures for many years after the coming of Christ,” according to Irenaeus (Adv. haeres., bk. 3, c. 4).
§ 21. We shall respond to this discourse of the Scripture-hater Bellarmine: (I) In general. We must distinguish between an absolute and hypothetical necessity. The Scriptures were not absolutely and simply necessary but are hypothetically necessary2 “on account of man’s corruption,” as Chrysostom says (homily 1 on Matthew), and for the other causes listed in the previous question. God could have taught us for eternal life without the Scriptures, but because He wanted to deal with us in the matter of salvation only through the Scriptures, the Scriptures are hypothetically necessary.
§ 22. (II) specifically. We shall also respond specifically to the individual parts of that discourse. (1) The times preceding Moses’ age were constituted in one way; the times following it, in another. In the times of the patriarchs before Moses, the purity of heavenly instruction could be preserved conveniently with an oral tradition. At that time, the great authority of the patriarchs was confirmed by various divine testimonies; their life spans were great; the narrow limits of the Church were confined to only one nation; there was a multiplicity of constantly repeated divine revelations; corrupting influences were rare, which, to be sure, the patriarchs’ authority quickly crushed; and the variety of rudiments were common to God’s holy people before Moses. When most of these ceased to exist at Moses’ time, divine wisdom judged that the Scriptures were necessary for the Church.
(2) It is freely said that among the peoples called into fellowship with the Israelite church the Scriptures were not used; rather, that they were content with the unwritten tradition. For how could those who gathered themselves by confession of faith to the people of Israel have been ignorant of Holy Scripture, when the principal and primary point of the Israelite faith—and, in fact, the foundation thereof—was that the heavenly instruction that teaches the way of salvation is contained in the Mosaic and prophetic Scriptures? We know that the Bible was brought to Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, and was translated into Greek under his auspices. We know the thefts of heathen philosophers and poets by which they transferred into their own books some things from the sacred writings. The eunuch of Queen Candace read the prophet Isaiah in his chariot (Acts 8:28). When “Moses (that is, the Mosaic writings) was read in every city of Judea on every Sabbath in the synagogues” (Acts 15:21), the proselytes also could have come to hear it. And even if it had been proved that those Gentiles who had been converted to the true God of Israel had used only the unwritten tradition, that would still merely prove that the Scriptures were not absolutely necessary for all people individually for salvation, since some are converted by the oral preaching that in every way conforms to the Scriptures. One cannot infer from this, however, that the Scriptures are not necessary with respect to the entire Church.
(3) Part of the same truth is the fact that, though the Scriptures did exist among the people of God, nevertheless the Jews used tradition more than Scripture. You see, everywhere the Israelites are called back to the written Law of God as to the only rule of faith, behavior, and divine worship (Deut. 4:26; 12:32; Josh. 23:6; Isa. 8:20), but nowhere are they sent back to unwritten traditions. Surely the things that parents were ordered to tell their children (Deut. 6:20; Ps. 44:1; 78:3) were to be sought not from traditions but only from the written Law of God. And the history of that time, to which Bellarmine refers, bears witness: As often as the Jews departed by so much as a finger’s breadth from the rule of Scripture and went to traditions, customs, their own reasonings, the examples of other nations, etc., they were immediately led off to the precipitous cliffs of error, and corruptions of heavenly instruction were brought in. What about the fact “that there are some Catholics who deny there was any unwritten tradition among the Jews,” as Bellarmine admits (De verbo Dei scripto, bk. 4, c. 8)? How, then, will they be able to cling more to tradition than to the Scriptures? What Bellarmine adduces for proof is of little strength. Ezra put the Psalter and other sacred books in order, yet the Scriptures were not so disorganized and unknown before him that people could not have read them.
(4) For a few years at the beginning of the New Testament, the teaching of Christ and the apostles was preserved without writing. (According to Irenaeus’s calculation, the New Testament Church did not have the apostolic writings for twenty years, for he relates that Matthew first wrote when Paul was already at Rome. On the other hand, Theophylact says that Matthew wrote in the eighth year after Christ’s ascent and before Paul was brought to Rome, by which time the latter already had written at least six epistles.) Afterward, however, when the teaching of the Gospel had spread to the heathen, from experience the apostles learned about the necessity of Scripture. In some way, Bellarmine himself recognizes this when, in the same chapter, § secundo, etc., he writes: “The apostles went to their preaching of their own free will and by their own intent. However, they applied their minds to write, being forced by nothing save a sort of necessity.” Moreover, the times when the apostles lived were of a diverse quality from the times that followed their deaths. Because they were directed by the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostles had the privilege of infallibility; their successors in the ministry, however, were devoid of that. In Exam. concil., p. 29, Chemnitz teaches this as well: Before the doctrine of the Gospel was put into writing, it had to be confirmed against the deceits and contradiction of both Jews and Gentiles by the preaching of the apostles and through signs and wonders throughout the world, and had to be approved by the assent of believers in every land, that we might be certain that those things that were written are not doubtful, uncertain, and weak but are “confirmed” [
] (Luke 1:1). That is, God confirmed them through the apostles, and the first of the faithful throughout the world approved of them as worthy of a most certain faith. Finally, at that very time when the New Testament Church lacked the apostolic writings, there existed the Old Testament Scriptures that explained the sum of that doctrine which the apostles taught, and to the reading of these they sent their hearers (John 5:39; 2 Tim. 3:15; etc.).