of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and
the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands
it on to their successors in its full purity.”
This is the task of faithfully handing on
without diminution or adulteration the
“deposit of faith”—paratheke in the Greek
of the New Testament, which means that
which has been handed over as a trust.
The Role of the Magisterium
The Church is a fully human body, the
result of a genuine incarnation in time
and space. Thus, the task of passing on the
deposit of faith intact belongs to a “living
teaching office,” the Magisterium (DV, no.
10). This office belongs to the bishops, in
union with the pope, whose commission
is not to rule over the word of God but
to serve it, “teaching only what has been
handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission
and with the help of the Holy Spirit,” in
order to draw “from this one deposit of
faith everything which it presents for belief
as divinely revealed” (DV, no. 10).
It belongs to the Magisterium to maintain, with the help of the Holy Spirit,
the integrity of the deposit of faith so to
hand it on in its integrity. At the same
time, it falls to the Magisterium to discern the difference between what genuinely belongs to the deposit of faith and
what might be a venerable and valuable
custom, but not essential to the gospel.
Distribution of ashes at the beginning of
a forty-day season of penitence is not essential, but the call to repentance is.
As a living institution, the Church
grows and develops. She learns, gains
new insights, and moves forward. Tradition is stable but not inert. The deposit
of faith has been handed on whole and
entire, but the Church’s penetration of it
grows, through contemplation, study and
the guidance of the Holy Spirit through
time, until, as Dei Verbum no. 7 expresses,
“she is brought finally to see Him as He
is, face to face (see 1 John 3:2).”
Dr. John Yocum is an adjunct instructor of
theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary.
He is a leader in the Servants of the Word
brotherhood in North America.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem
Defender of the Creed
B
ecause of his deep understanding of the Faith, St. Cyril of Jerusalem (313386) was asked by his bishop to give catechetical teachings to catechumens. In his Fifth Catechetical Lecture, St. Cyril gives an apt illustration of the
relation between Scripture and Tradition as embodied in the Nicene Creed.
He points out, as does St. Irenaeus before him, that the gospel must
be able to be passed on in unwritten form; otherwise, how would the
illiterate (the great majority of those in the ancient world) ever have been
evangelized? He further shows how the Creed, a paradigmatic specimen
of the Church’s tradition, passes on the true interpretation of Scripture,
and Scripture proves the content of the Creed. (St. Cyril attended the
Council of Constantinople in 381, where the Nicene Creed of 325 was
ratified and the Arian heresy condemned.)
“For since all cannot read the Scriptures, some being hindered from
knowing them by lack of education [here primarily meaning illiteracy],
and others by a lack of time [for careful study], in order that the soul
may not perish from ignorance, we summarize the whole doctrine of
the Faith in a few lines. . . . For the articles of the Faith were not composed as seemed good to men; but the most important points collected
out of all the Scriptures make up one complete teaching of the Faith.
“Take heed then, brethren, and hold fast the traditions which ye now receive.”
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