That Catholics and Anglicans actually seem to agree on the nature of the authority of Sacred Tradition
3 min • Digitized on April 30, 2023
From A Defense of the Teachings of Mary, page 13
By St. John Henry Newman
2. There is another passage in your Volume, at p. 337, which it may be right to observe upon. You have made a collection of passages from the Fathers, as witnesses in behalf of your doctrine that the whole Christian faith is contained in Scripture, as if, in your sense of the words, Catholics contradicted you here. And you refer to my Notes on St. Athanasius as contributing passages to your list; but, after all, neither do you, nor do I in my Notes, affirm any doctrine which Rome denies.
Those Notes also make frequent reference to a traditional teaching, which (be the faith ever so certainly contained in Scripture), still is necessary as a Regula Fidei, for showing us that it 1s contained there; vid. pp. 283, 344; and this tradition, I know, you uphold as fully as I do in the Notes in question.
In consequence, you allow that there is a twofold rule, Scripture and Tradition; and this is all that Catholics say. How, then, do Anglicans differ from home here? I believe the difference is merely one of words; and I shall be doing, so far, the work of an Irenicon, if I make clear what this verbal difference is.
Catholics and Anglicans (I do not say Protestants), attach different meanings to the word “proof,” in the controversy whether the whole faith is, or is not, contained in Scripture. We mean that not every article of faith is so contained there, that it may thence be logically proved, independently of the teaching and authority of the Tradition; but Anglicans mean that every article of faith is so contained there, that it may thence be proved, provided there be added the illustrations and compensations supplied by the Tradition.
And it 1s in this latter sense that the Fathers also speak in the passages which you quote from them. I am sure at least that St. Athanasius frequently adduces passages in proof of points in controversy, which no one would see to be proofs, unless Apostolical Tradition were taken into account, first as suggesting, then as authoritatively ruling their meaning.
Thus, you do not deny, that the whole is not in Scripture in such sense that pure unaided logic can draw it from the sacred text; nor do we deny, that the faith is in Scripture, in an improper sense, in the sense that Tradition is able to recognize and determine it there.
You do not profess to dispense with Tradition; nor do we forbid the idea of probable, secondary, symbolical, connotative, senses of Scripture, over and above those which properly belong to the wording and context. I hope you will agree with me in this.