The class affords me the opportunity to show that a narrative understanding of the Christian Scriptures is not a fideistic claim that denies historical reality, but is exactly what the material remains show us developed historically in the context of the church. The historical tradition leads to the Christian Scriptures even as the tradition arises out and looks back on the Christian Scriptures through Christ. The post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment view of tradition and Scripture as two sources of revelation collapses in face of the historical data found within the history the early church, particularly its history in worship.

Which brings me to Yves Congar. Congar's Tradition and Traditions worked historically and theologically with the concepts that I am seeking to overcome through artifactual evidence. It is a magisterial work, one which did much to overcome artificial bifurcations between Roman Catholicism and the classical Protestant reformers that developed over time. Much of contemporary Protestantism has abandoned the tradition in the name of Scripture -- and therefore, ironically, abandoned Scripture by eclipsing biblical narrative. Rather than the biblical text within the tradition in which we still stand, the Scriptures became an artifact to observe and then apply.

Congar reaches a conclusion to his work on pp. 422-24. He writes,

"Scripture and Tradition are two modes by which the apostolic heritages is communicated to men. Two modes neither of which is identifiable with God's saving and sanctifying presence. [God's saving and sanctifying presence is nothing less than the revelation of the Triune God -- the Father's revelation through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit]. Two means, also, in both, the communication is made through the employment of human agents.

In this respect,however, Scripture and Tradition are not on the same level. Scripture has an absolute sovereignty; it is of divine origin, even in its literary form; it governs Tradition and the Church, whereas it is not governed by Tradition or by the Church. Moreover, Scripture is fixed: it contains evidence from human witnesses who have now disappeared in the form in which they gave it. It is thus superlatively qualified to act as the unalterable 'witness', and in this respect both the Church and Tradition are seen to be subject to it. . .

It is always possible in practice to isolate one element and give to it an exclusive kind of centrality: Protestants treat Scripture in this way, certain Catholic statements would almost seem to do as much for the Church, giving it a kind of autonomy in regard to the objective and objectively accessible norms of Scripture and Tradition. Certain sects (the Schwaemer opposed by Luther, the Quakers) run the risk of isolating the Holy Spirit's activity not only from the Church, but also from Scripture. Tradition itself has sometimes been isolated from Scripture and made autonomous: for example, the Jewish Cabbala.

The Fathers, on the other hand, affirmed that Scripture, Church and Tradition could not be thought of independently of one another.

Tradition is in Scripture, which is only a partial drafting of it; . . . Not only the gospels, but also the Old Testament writings . . . betray the ideas and beliefs of a religious milieu, a community. In this way, and through the establishment of the canon as well, the Church is in the Bible. So is Tradition: Scripture only discloses its meaning, and the divine revelation of which it is, as it were, the sacrament only becomes a reality in Tradition and in the Church.

Scripture and Tradition act in the Church as an internal objective rule, entrusted as a deposit to its faithful keeping. They are subordinated and articulated in the manner which we have tried to explain: they make the Church as the tools Christ uses in building it up.

The Church is in Tradition as its human subject . . . ; it is the milieu of that life whose transcendent principle is the Holy Spirit. Scripture, too, is intimately related to Tradition. It is, indeed, interpreted within Tradition, but it is also its higher, and negative, guide (in the sense that what is inconsistent with it ought to be regarded as vain error).

These three realities are thus insufficient, even inconsistent, when separated one from another for they entail one another, beneath the causality of the Holy Spirit which is common to all three. They represent the means laid down by God in order to link us, under the Holy Spirit's ever-present and active influence, to the revelation given once and for all to the apostles." (pp. 422-23)

My claim is that such a statement is that the historical evidence of God's providence in pulling various scrolls together into a book over time does not annul historical reason; indeed, faith allows historical reason to be elevated, lifted, the data seen for what they really are. At the same time, historical reason helps clarify what faith reveals, purifies from distortion in its claims, and witnesses to what God has done in Jesus Christ by the Spirit in the life of the church as we faithfully embody the witness that God has given us in the Scriptures.