Sacred Tradition

Don Garlington,

It is notable that Dunn’s [Protestant Theologian] book, The Partings of the Ways, was originally delivered as a series of lectures at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome. In the course of those lectures, Dunn paused to consider the place of tradition. His immediate concern was that of priesthood in the Letter to the Hebrews in relation to the Catholic doctrine of priesthood. Dunn confesses to some bewilderment at the way the argument of Hebrews can be “so lightly ignored or set aside by those Christian traditions which wish to continue to justify a special order of priesthood within the people of God, a special order whose priestly ministry is distinct in kind from the priesthood of all the faithful.”...But to use Heb 5:1 to justify Christian priesthood in the manner of the Second Vatican Council, while ignoring the clear thrust and argument of the letter as a whole, seems to him to constitute a form of eisegesis and special pleading that cannot really be justified from tradition. He confesses to no quarrel in principle with tradition [The teaching of the early church fathers, Prof. Christopher Hall, “The hermeneutical and historical proximity of the fathers to the New Testament church and its apostolic tradition demands that we listen carefully to their exegetical insights, advice and intuitions.”] taking up and developing a possible but less probable interpretation of some text. But can it be justified in making doctrinal use of an interpretation that runs counter to the main point of the text itself? In this case, he remarks, it is no longer simply a matter of tradition interpreting scripture, but of “tradition riding roughshod over scripture.”