One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church

In our worship services in the Anglican tradition we usually recite the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed, which has a section that says we are part of "one holy catholic and apostolic church" or "one catholic and apostolic church." This phrase is inferred from Saint Paul's epistle to the Ephesians:

• "Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." (Ephesians 4:3-6, KJV) [1]

Church history is full of theological controversies and theological debates from opposing parties. These challenges to the faith delivered to us by the apostles had to be answered and clarified. Many of these controversies forced the church to further define and explain doctrines that were already in existence but not yet clearly explicated. The controversies over the incarnation of Christ as fully human while remaining fully divine led to a more detailed understanding of the triunity of the Godhead.

Moreover, Tertullian, in the second century, was the first church father to try to explain the trinity in formal terms. There are those today who take this to mean that the doctrine of the trinity is not taught in Holy Scripture at all and that the first century apostles did not teach or understand the Godhead in this way.

This raises a question. Are the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Churches correct that oral tradition is also divine revelation on an equal par with Holy Scripture? If so, then their use of it appears to be more of a doctrine of ongoing revelation. While it is true that the first century Christians reinterpreted the Old Testament in terms of an ongoing revelation from God, it does not follow that the church after the time of the apostles has the authority to add further doctrine to Scripture. First of all, the first century church used the Septuagint as their translation of the Old Testament. Their understanding of the prophecies in Scripture were therefore colored by their use of the Greek translation of the Scriptures. But even this is not a hard and fast rule since Jesus Himself would have been reading the Tanakh and probably not the Septuagint.

There is a valid point that in the first three centuries of the church there was no canon of Scripture that was officially recognized, including the Old Testament. Not even the Jews had an official canon of the Tanakh. However, this does not justify making oral tradition of equal authority with Holy Scripture since we can tell from reading the church fathers that their opinions were often heretical. Origen, for example, was a univeralist and was posthumously condemned as a heretic. This is precisely why Protestants insist that the only binding "oral traditions" are those that we have recorded for us in Holy Scripture. To insist that oral tradition or "holy tradition" is divine revelation on an equal foundation with Holy Scripture is to essentially reopen the canon. How do we decide what is divine revelation and what is not? Anyone reading the ante-nicene, nicene and post-nicene church fathers will immediately notice that this is a mixed bag. It therefore follows that if the written accounts of the traditions handed down to us from the church fathers are heterodox or even heretical in some cases, then the oral traditions are likely to be in error to one degree or another as well.

Jaroslav Pelican makes the argument that the Tanakh had no vowel pointings until the Masoretes in reaction to Christianity provided these textual additions based on their oral traditions of what those pointings were supposed to be. In several cases their oral tradition amazingly contradicts the Septuagint, which would have been translated by Jews of a much earlier period who would have been familiar with both the Hebrew and Greek languages of the time and with the Hebrew oral traditions that guided their translation from Hebrew to Greek. So who is correct?

The consistent Protestant position is that only the original autographs are inerrant and infallible. Textual transmission is prone to error as well, as the thousands of Greek manuscripts attest. Granted, the majority of these errors are spelling, reduplication of letters or words, words omitted, or glosses accidentally put into the text by later scribes, or the attempts of scribes to smooth out unclear, rough readings or readings that did not agree with their own theology. This would not make the textual tradition untrustworthy because the science of textual criticism has verified that our extant textual tradition is highly reliable in spite of these minor variant readings in the majority of cases.

Pelican's analogy of the oral tradition of the Masoretes fails in the final analysis, however. As I said, the textual transmission process is highly accurate while the opinions of the church fathers are a mixed bag. And as I pointed out, even the Masoretes had an agenda in reaction to Christianity. All of these factors must be taken into account.

These are difficult issues no doubt. But we know that the trinity is not a matter of progressive revelation since the doctrine can be clearly seen in Scripture, even though it is not fully defined there. The fact that the modalists, arians, and other challenges to the orthodox doctrine failed points us in the direction that the apostolic tradition, both oral and written, upheld the trinity. This can be difficult because Protestants hold that only Scripture is inerrant and infallible and divine while the oral traditions are not. That means that the church fathers who support the trinity are not speaking infallibly or without error. This presents a problem with modern heretics who distort the Scriptures to support aberrant views of the trinity. It seems that we can be caught between a rock and a hard place at this point. Do we give in to Rome and Constantinople and fall into the slippery slope of oral traditions that lead to ongoing revelations that add doctrines like veneration of icons, saints and prayers to the saints? I think not. Despite the difficulties we must uphold the Scriptures as the final authority in all matters of faith and practice.

This does not mean that we throw out the authority of creeds, councils and the church. It merely means that we must test them by the Scriptures. This is the safeguard that keeps us from inventing a new sect or cult. We cannot allow ongoing revelation in the form of holy tradition, nor can we allow private interpretation to the point that the Scriptures are twisted to create new religions that have nothing to do with Christianity as it existed from the beginning.

The peace of God.

[1] The Holy Bible : King James Version. 1995 (Electronic edition of the 1769 edition of the 1611 Authorized Version.). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.