Says Who 2 (Apologia Pt 2)
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Since Jesus Christ is the ultimate revelation of God to humanity, his life and teachings are the point of reference for all Christian beliefs and practices. After his suffering, death, and resurrection, he commissioned his apostles to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” As a result, he promised, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
The process of making disciples is one of intiation into a way of life. In their time with their master, the apostles did not learn only what could be written in books. They learned intimately the kind of person Jesus is. This is what they passed along to the first Christian disciples and what the Church has continued to pass along to Christian disciples in every generation.
From the very beginning, however, Christians have faced the ever-present temptation to change what they have received. The only truly good news is the story of our redemption through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. But this good news means following the commands of Christ, which are sometimes difficult. Addtionally, God’s plan of salvation boggles the limited minds of men. These two things together are the root of every heresy. A heresy is a warping — sometimes very subtle — of the way of life that has been delivered to us by Christ in the Church. Humans want to bend the gospel — the good news of Christ — and make it easier: either easier to fit into the limited categories of reason, or easier to live the old ways of life — or both.
This is why a Christian has an obligation to his brothers and sisters — living, dead, and unborn — never to change the good news that he has received. He may use new tools, new metaphors, new stories, but he must never invent any new teachings. The good news has been passed on to us from untold previous generations — some of whom shed their blood to protect its integrity. The Latin word for this passing on is traditio; thus, another word for the teaching of the Church is Tradition. Sometimes, tradition is misunderstood as dead or constricting. But Jaroslav Pelikan, a famous church historian, once noted, “Tradition is not the dead faith of the living, but the living faith of the dead.” In other words, the living, vibrant faith that breathed new life into the apostles, the martyrs, and the saints who confessed their faith against all odds is the same faith that breathes new life into us. This is why modern Christians, when they add their voices to the 2000 years of Church teaching, must be careful to ensure that their witness is consistent with that of those who precede them.
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One Response to “Says Who 2 (Apologia Pt 2)”
Copyright © 2002–2011 Kevin Robert (Basil) Fritts, all rights reserved.
May 7th, 2004 at 12:22 pm
Beautiful! The ideas aren’t new (which was part of the point, right?) but thank you for taking the time to express them so well.