Claiming that oral tradition survived a little after the NT was completed, or claiming that the Church went by the regula fidei, is not going to help Dr. Mathison, as I noted previously. Granted, he is making some concessions compared to the "Tradition 0" people, but they are very small concessions - concessions which end up saying virtually the same thing that the Tradition 0 people are saying, which is, there is no oral Tradition that has been preserved outside of Scripture. That is the bottom line. So all this talk about "obeying Church authority" is just that, talk. Unless Dr. Mathison submits himself to every single doctrine emanating from that "Church authority" in the first centuries of the Church, then HE IS NOT OBEYING THE CHURCH, plain and simple. He is obeying HIS OWN VERSION of what the church is. And I can tell you this: it is quite different than the Church of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and the rest.

Mathison: 2. Material Sufficiency

In my first response to Sungenis, I stated that his comments about the material sufficiency of Scripture are highly confusing. Throughout his first critique of my book, he repeatedly and insistently argues for a two-source view of revelation. In his comments on Irenaeus, for example, he wrote:

Obviously, there is a grand distinction in Irenaeus' mind between Scripture and unwritten Tradition which contains things that Scripture does not contain.

In his discussion of the Council of Trent, Sungenis asserted that "the Church decided firmly and finally to…teach the two-source understanding." His repeated assertions make it more than clear then that Sungenis believes in the two-source theory of revelation.

However, despite the fact that Sungenis repeatedly asserts his own belief in a two-source concept of revelation in which Tradition "contains things that Scripture does not contain," he also uses a quote of Patrick Madrid, which says that according to Catholic patristic scholars, the fathers believed in Scripture's material sufficiency. I then pointed out that "material sufficiency" is incompatible with the view that Tradition is a second supplementary source of revelation containing things not found in Scripture. I pointed out that the move from one view to another in Sungenis' critique is confusing.

Sungenis claims in his Second Rebuttal that I am the one who is confused. He writes:

The concept of material sufficiency does not rule out a two-source theory. One can believe that there is implicit information in Scripture of all Catholic doctrine that is contained explicitly in Tradition, yet still believe in a two-source revelation, since the implicit information means that there must be some explicit information in another source.

I must also mention that if a Catholic speaks of one-source and two modes what he means (and I called Madrid to verify this) he means that Revelation comes from one source, namely God, and is distributed in two modes, Scripture and Oral Revelation, both of which survive in the Church.

According to Sungenis, one "can believe that there is implicit information in Scripture of all Catholic doctrine that is contained explicitly in Tradition." The question is: Does Sungenis believe that all Catholic doctrine is contained at least implicitly in Scripture, or does he believe in the existence of "constitutive tradition"? In his original critique he comments about Tradition containing things "that Scripture does not contain." That comment, and many, many others like it, would lead one to believe that Sungenis does indeed believe in the existence of "constitutive tradition." However, here he says that it is possible for a Catholic to believe that all Catholic doctrine is contained at least implicitly in Scripture. He doesn't come out and say that he himself believes that all Catholic doctrine is contained implicitly in Scripture, but he says that a Roman Catholic can believe this. Of course, if a Roman Catholic did believe this, it would mean that all Catholic doctrine is either "implicit tradition" or "declarative tradition," and it would mean the rejection of the existence of any "constitutive tradition."

Sungenis claims that I am the one who has confused the issue. I would submit that until Sungenis and his fellow Roman Catholic apologists decide whether they are going to argue for the material sufficiency of Scripture or for the existence of "constitutive tradition" it is they who are inherently confused. It appears that Sungenis is content with the ambiguity and confusion for now, because as David King has illustrated in his new book Holy Scripture [Vol. 1 (Battle Ground, WA: Christian Resources, 2001)], Sungenis' book Not by Scripture Alone jumps back and forth between the two positions depending on which position is most convenient to the apologetic argument at hand (cf. King, pp. 189-91).

On the one hand it is said in Not By Scripture Alone, "Catholic theologians, by and large, do not have much of a problem with material sufficiency…" and "The Catholic position allows for the material sufficiency of the Scriptures…" (NBSA, pp. 221, 396). On the other hand, it is argued in the same book, "The Catholic Church has always taught that oral revelation serves as an additional source of revelation alongside the written word…" and "Sacred Scripture is the written portion, but not the totality, of Revelation which is given to us by the apostles with the authority of Christ Jesus himself" (NBSA, pp. 127, 169). The confusion that exists here is not in the minds of the reader; it is in the text of Not by Scripture Alone.

Sungenis: No, the problem comes in when Mathison expects Catholics to dance between the bullet shots of his conjured-up definitions of Tradition. The game for Mathison seems to be: let's keep making fine distinctions concerning Tradition and sufficiency so that we can divide and conquer the Catholics who have differing nuances on these subjects. Mathison gave us the five distinctions of Tradition posed by Anglican scholar R.P.C. Hanson. He gave us the half-dozen or more distinctions posed by Gabriel Moran. He's given us everything but what the Catholic Church officially teaches on the subject of Tradition, which, as I said above, can easily be found in the Catechism. No, we don't have to skip to the tune of Keith Mathison's categories and distinctions. It is precisely the opposite. As I said before, these things have already been decided long before Keith Mathison was born. He doesn't have to reinvent the wheel.

Mathison: Sungenis writes as if the Council of Trent "firmly and finally" settled the question for all time. But the whole modern controversy in the Roman Catholic Church is over what the decree of that Council actually meant. Rome has not firmly and finally settled the question of "constitutive tradition," the existence of which would rule out the material sufficiency of Scripture.

Sungenis: No, "constitutive tradition" would not rule out "material sufficiency," since "material sufficiency" has never been defined in the Catholic Church in order to be ruled out. "Material sufficiency" is a debated theological concept, and so is "constitutive tradition." The Church has made no motions to defining these issue simply because she has not seen the need to do so. The controversies presented by Dr. Mathison are those emanating from his own distorted view of Tradition. He is trying desperately to make believers in Tradition 1, and he seems bent on making as many distinctions as he can to accomplish his goal.

Mathison:There are Roman Catholic theologians who argue that Trent did teach the existence of such a supplementary source of revelation. There are many others who argue that Trent taught no such thing and/or that the council was deliberately vague in order to allow for both views. I have already referred to the book by the Roman Catholic scholar Gabriel Moran, which is devoted to examining this ongoing controversy in the Church of Rome. It was written in the early 1960s, and the controversy continues to this day.

Sungenis: There is no controversy in Roman Catholic dogma. There may be a controversy stirred up by Catholic liberal theologians who try to call into doubt the Church's traditional reliance on Tradition as an additional source of divine revelation, but they haven't changed anything. Vatican II reiterated the same teachings as Trent. Mathison can find various Catholic liberal theologians who believe in Tradition 1, since most of these liberal theologians have adopted Protestant beliefs. He will also find a lot who deny that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ; and deny that Scripture is inerrant in all it says; or deny the priesthood and apostolic succession, as Raymond Brown did. But he won't find any of these teachings in Catholic dogma. As for Trent, there is no ambiguity. Trent was clear, as is the Catechism, that Scripture and Tradition flow from one divine source, and they continue preserved that way today, both equally authoritative because each carries the divine revelation of God. It really is not complicated at all, but it seems that Dr. Mathison wants to make it complicated so as to cast doubt on the Church's teaching. But that is where I come in as a Catholic apologist - to tell you that Dr. Mathison is barking up the wrong tree.

Mathison: Both the book Not by Scripture Alone and the original critique of my book by Sungenis are confusing on the issue of material sufficiency because they both assert mutually contradictory positions. Both assert the existence of that which is termed "constitutive tradition" at times, and both assert something akin to the material sufficiency of Scripture at other times. The confusion has nothing to do with me or with any other reader. The confusion exists partly because Rome has yet to make up her mind whether she believes in the existence of constitutive tradition or whether she believes in the material sufficiency of Scripture, and it exists partly because Sungenis asserts both with equal dogmatism and equal vagueness.

Sungenis: Let me say it again. The polarity between material sufficiency and constitutive tradition exists only in the mind of Dr. Mathison, since they are the categories he has created for this discussion. I have no such categories, and neither does the Catholic Church. If Dr. Mathison believes otherwise, then I suggest that he give us the paragraph reference from the official Catholic dogmatic source that says otherwise.

Mathison: His entire discussion of this issue (as several Roman Catholic observers of this discussion have informed me) is one long series of obfuscations.

Sungenis: Oh yes, I have made many enemies among "Roman Catholics," and all of them come from the liberal ranks of theology. They despise me, because I uphold Traditional Catholic teaching and condemn their liberal ideas as heresy.

Mathison: When he tries to confuse and obscure the issue even further by saying (on Madrid's authority) that the one source of revelation is God, he knows full well that this is not the point of the controversy within the Roman Church. The question is simple, and I leave it to Sungenis to answer. He can answer it clearly and unambiguously, or he can continue to muddy the water: Does Sungenis believe in the existence of constitutive tradition?

1 2 3 4