Not from Scripture alone. . .

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a section on Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture and the relationship between them.  It had been a while since I had opened the covers of this book but something jumped out at me.  It would seem that the CCC has enshrined the opinion of modernity that there was a time when the Church was Scriptureless, left to the oral teaching of Jesus in the minds and mouths of His apostles.  I think this is a primary tenet of modernity and a dangerous one.  The naysayers who agitate against orthodox Christianity love this mythology.  They constantly insist that Scripture is the creation of the Church, come three centuries after the Church, and are dependent upon the Church.  Indeed, the standard propaganda is that Constantine intervened to create the canon along with the religious leaders of the day and so it was a political decision as well as a theological one.  Great drama but poor history.

The reality is that Scripture has been with the Church from the beginning.  The Gospels were written by those who were custodians of the faith in the brief interval between the ascension of our Lord and the completion of the New Testament Canon.  They did not write differently than they spoke.  The mere fact that there are four Gospels is a sure sign that there was both means and method to the fact checking of the texts since other eyewitnesses were there to judge its accuracy and authenticity.  The letters of St. Paul were early and circulated well beyond the original addressees.  The book of Acts chronicles the history of the Church from the ascension forward into the age of Paul.  St. John was around late into the end of the first century, the last of the eyes to see Jesus and to speak of His saving work.  The earliest witnesses to follow the apostles and writers of the New Testament themselves speak regularly and posit authority with the words of these witnesses in speech and written record.  There is not and never was a definitive moment when the canon was in question even though very books of the New Testament were received in different places at different times.  There was no pronouncement of the canon of the New Testament but there were lists, more complete and substantial as time went forward and due not to problems with the Scriptures but the growing challenge of heresy.  It should not be a surprise that the Council of Nicea and the others that followed in the fourth century dealt with problems and problem teachers and that their criteria for orthodoxy was simply is it Scriptural [meaning New Testament Scriptures].  

It seems rather disingenuous to come along and now create two out of what was one and to make Tradition and the Scriptures almost competitors and independent records both under the authority of the Church.  It is also decidedly modern to see this in this light.  The voice of the Reformation continues to deposit the norming authority with the Scriptures alone without in any way making light of the Sacred Deposit, the Tradition capital T, or the traditions small t.  It places everything under the one authority of the Word of God which is not contained in Scripture but is Scripture -- and to this authority the Church owes her life and from this authority flows her message and mission.  The modern myth of a time when the Church was without Scripture is the invention of those who want to devalue and diminish the New Testament (and Old) and place it under the lens and interpretation of the Church and it provides a mechanism both to ignore and to contradict what it says (as liberal and progressive churches have done so well).  Scripture ends up merely part of this Tradition and both have their common source and end -- at least that is their theory.  Liberalism and progressivism always move us from certainty to doubt, from Scripture to reason or history, and from Scripture as God's Word to merely a container for some of those words.  This is what remains the problem of the Reformation -- not some petty fight between personalities but the question of authority.  That is why the Reformation remains relevant for the present -- even though the particular jurisdictions of the Reformation legacy have in the most part abandoned this legacy.  What the Confessions of the Lutheran Church have written is a defense of that which is catholic against a false idea of catholicism in which the Scriptures are merely one voice among other voices to inform and norm what is believed, taught, and confessed.

The CCC with some passages highlighted by me: 

80 "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal."40 Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own "always, to the close of the age".41

. . . two distinct modes of transmission

81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."42

"and [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching."43

82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence."44

Apostolic Tradition and ecclesial traditions

83 The Tradition here in question comes from the apostles and hands on what they received from Jesus' teaching and example and what they learned from the Holy Spirit. the first generation of Christians did not yet have a written New Testament, and the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living Tradition.

Tradition is to be distinguished from the various theological, disciplinary, liturgical or devotional traditions, born in the local churches over time. These are the particular forms, adapted to different places and times, in which the great Tradition is expressed. In the light of Tradition, these traditions can be retained, modified or even abandoned under the guidance of the Church's Magisterium.