I.
Word and Church
9.
"In many and various ways God spoke of old to our ancestors
by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by the
Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also
he created the world" (Heb 1:1-2). The Church of God has been
brought into being by the same creative and self-revealing activity
of God. In the Son, God has spoken definitively to us: the Son who
is so completely the expression of his heavenly Father that he is
called God's Word (Jn 1:1-18). He makes known God's purpose and
carries it out. For the Word of God, now made flesh, speech and
action are intrinsically connected; his words take effect and his
deeds have meaning.
10. It is the Cross and Resurrection of Christ that supremely
reveal him to us, achieving his purpose and making him our Savior.
When the apostles preached Christ, they proclaimed Christ crucified
and risen. When the Church preaches Christ today, it is the same
proclamation that is made. Christ, the Word of God incarnate, still
has the same message for us and the same gifts of grace by which
he saves us.
11. The apostolic mission, the charge laid on the apostles to
transmit the message of Jesus Christ to their own and to all successive
generations, is precisely the service of the Word. The person of
Christ, his teaching and his work for us: it was to all this that
the apostles bore witness, for all this is God's Word.
12. As the Gospel was preached by the apostles, the Church was
called together and built up. Service of the Word was their overriding
responsibility (Acts 6:2-4), a service of Christ himself and of
the community that by faith came to be identified with him (Acts
6:7, 12:24, 19:20).
13. A profound understanding of the Church must begin with a reflection
on the Word of God, who brings the Church into being and continues
to make the Church what it is. The Word spoken to us in Christ calls
forth our response. Thus, the Church is sustained by a conversation,
initiated by the Lord. God, who called all worlds into being by
the power of his Word, speaks to us kindly and with sternness, gently
and with thunderous warnings, with laws and with love, in proclamation
to his people and heart-to-heart to each and every one. By calling
together a messianic community in which the promises were fulfilled,
Christ made himself known as Messiah. As he called his flock to
follow him, he showed himself to be the Good Shepherd.
14. That which the Church was to become as a consequence of the
apostolic mission is discernible in its first coming to birth, and
to discern that coming to birth, one must be aware of the extent
to which Christ by deed and by word engaged his followers in communication
with himself.
15. Christ was content to speak with other audiences and with
later generations through those who became his first disciples.
Only this degree of confidence invested by Christ in his followers
could match the free self-communication of God to the world and
to those whom he has made in his own image. To draw all to himself,
the Son died upon the Cross. He gave us his words and his very self,
and waits patiently for us to understand. Any other way would have
frustrated his own purpose: to draw us to love him. In order to
fulfil this saving purpose, he called into being the Church where
the Word's recreating power is evident, remaking people into a community
that could share his life and live in harmonious relationships with
one another. Thus the Church is the place where the Word of God
is spoken, heard, responded to, and confessed (Rom 10:8-17). The
Law of God, so the prophets said, was to become a law not written
externally on tablets of stone, but written on our hearts, taken
in and made heart-knowledge: it was to be our second nature (Jer
31:31-34).
16. The Tradition received by the apostles itself continues an
unbroken process of communication between God and human beings.
Every possible human resource is employed to sustain and deepen
this process: linguistic, ritual, artistic, social and constitutional.
The written word of Scripture is its permanent norm. Through the
sacraments of baptism and the eucharist the memory of the events
whereby the Church came into being is preserved. The living Word
has made a living community in which men and women converse with
God and speak their faith to one another. Guided by its pastors
and teachers, the Church continues to communicate with all generations,
preserves its own identity and message, and is daily renewed in
its obedience.
17. Through the living Word, recalling and renewing the acts of
Christ's life for us, his history becomes our history. We celebrate
our new birth, we are forgiven, strengthened and healed, we are
united with one another, we find our vocation for ministry, and
we give thanks to God through the power of Christ's death and living
victory. In his life on earth, the Word confirmed his words by his
actions for us; the same is true today.
18. The growth of the Church comes about through a continued hearing
and assimilation of the Word of God. To be sure that we are hearing
the Word, we maintain communion with those who have heard and obeyed
the Word before us. But we will not be saved simply by repeating
what other generations have said and done. We must express for ourselves,
act for ourselves and ourselves be transformed through the renewal
of our minds and hearts, if the living Tradition of Christ and his
apostles is to be continued. The faith must be handed on.
19. In every time and in every place, the Church lives and moves
by calling to mind all that it has seen and heard of the marvels
of God's Word in his created world and in the history he is making
with us. But we do not live in the past. Memory enables us to recognize
the Lord as he comes to us today. His presence in the events of
our lives proves to us that his words are true. His deeds for us
today make possible our own words of praise and our own acts of
service by which God is glorified.
20. But the Word of God, with us today, does not tell us, any
more than the apostles were told, what comes next in our story.
Since the Gospel Tradition looks to the future, we live in hope.
And Christian hope is the strength that enables us, claiming his
promises, to be totally committed to the present. We know that we
are traveling towards the One whose memory we cherish and whose
presence we know. By confessing our faith in living words, we learn
how to die with Christ, to hide our life in him, so that when he
appears we too will be made known in glory.
21. In conclusion, we recall that the search for ecumenical reconciliation
has revealed only too clearly the difficulty of reuniting Scripture
and Tradition once they have been notionally separated. Scripture
was written within Tradition, yet Scripture is normative for Tradition.
The one is only intelligible in terms of the other. We do not claim
to have resolved here all the ecumenical problems that arise in
relation to this issue. What we have sought to do is to ask ourselves
how the Christian of today can confess with Christians of all time
the one true faith in Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and
forever separated. Scripture was written within Tradition, yet Scripture
is normative for Tradition. The one is only intelligible in terms
of the other. We do not claim to have resolved here all the ecumenical
problems that arise in relation to this issue. What we have sought
to do is to ask ourselves how the Christian of today can confess
with Christians of all time the one true faith in Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday, today and for ever.
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