Quotes on Tradition (partim-partim)

Reason for these quotes outlined here.

"A rule of faith, or a competent guide to heaven, must be able to instruct in all the truths necessary for salvation. Now the Scriptures alone do not contain all the truths which a Christian is bound to believe, nor do they explicitly enjoin all the duties which he is obliged to practice. Not to mention other examples, is not every Christian obliged to sanctify Sunday and to abstain on that day from unnecessary servile work? Is not the observance of this law among the most prominent of our sacred duties? But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.

The Catholic Church correctly teaches that our Lord and His Apostles inculcated certain important duties of religion which are not recorded by the inspired writers.[See John xxi. 25; II. Thess. ii. 14.] For instance, most Christians pray to the Holy Ghost, a practice which is nowhere found in the Bible.

We must, therefore, conclude that the Scriptures alone cannot be a sufficient guide and rule of faith because they cannot, at any time, be within the reach of every inquirer; because they are not of themselves clear and intelligible even in matters of the highest importance, and because they do not contain all the truths necessary for salvation."

-The Faith of Our Fathers

Quotes on Tradition (partim-partim)

In the combox of this post, a Catholic was denying that the partim-partim view of Catholic tradition was a legitimate viewpoint:

"I thought you should have known what it meant before stamping it on the Catholic Church. Partim-partim, even if it was discussed at Trent, has never been a Catholic principle." (source)

A quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia and Jimmy Akin had no effect, so my intention was to provide further documentation of the Catholic view of partim-partim in a new post. Unfortunately, I have still not had the time to get that post together, but Rhology was kind enough to provide his own post and some other Catholic commenters have agreed that partim-partim is an allowable viewpoint to hold (for more background, read Rhology's post and the comments there).

However, I still think the subject is worth another post and I have a fair amount of quotes to share. But it may be a few days to weeks before I have time to sit down and formulate the post. So in the meantime, I have decided to just post a quote here and there leading up to a full post sometime in the future. Comments will be closed on these quotes to reserve discussion for the final post.

Here is the first quote from a Catholic Catechism:

2. Why must we believe all that God has revealed?

Because God is the eternal and infallible truth.

3. What means 'all that God has revealed'?

It means all that God has made known for our salvation by the Patriarchs and Prophets, and last of all by His Son Jesus Christ and the Apostles.

4. How has divine revelation come down to us?

Divine revelation has come down to us partly by writing—that is, by the Holy Scripture, or the Bible; partly by word of mouth—that is, by tradition.

11. Is it enough to believe only what is contained In the Holy Scripture?

No; we must also believe Tradition—i.e., those revealed truths which the Apostles preached, but did not commit to writing.

13. What, then, must the Catholic Christian believe in general?

He must believe all that God has revealed and the Catholic Church proposes to his belief, whether it be contained in the Holy Scripture or not.

A Catechism of the Catholic Religion
by Rev. Joseph Deharbe, S.J. (1889 with imprimatur), pgs 51-53

Partim-partim

My last post's combox contains almost nothing of relevance to the actual points made in the post. I guess I expected more from our Romanist interlocutors, but no matter. One off-topic assertion I'd like to deal with in a new post is this one:

Dozie (he/she of the anti-Semitic, race-baiting diatribe) said...
(Carrie) made the claim that the Catholic Church teaches some concoction of theology known as partin-partim (sic) and I am demanding that she produce the Catholic document where she found that. Now you (Rhology) come to obscure the facts because you think it is your duty to defend every silly statement made by a Protestant.

I repeat, where is the primary Catholic source that indicates the Catholic Church teaches partim-partim view of revelation? You either produce the document or you disqualify yourself from being able to discuss, with any level of integrity, Catholic issues.

First of all, yes, I defend EVERY statement made by a Protestant that Dozie thinks is silly. Every. Single. One.
Now that we have that out of the way, I thought I'd produce a few Romanist documents to that very effect. Carrie could probably find some other, much juicier ones, but these ought to do for now.

Just so you know, the claim is that Rome has never authoritatively pronounced to the effect that the Scripture is materially sufficient, that it contains, at minimum in nascent form, the foundation for all Roman dogma. The partim-partim view contends that the Scripture contains some of it and that some of it is found in Sacred Tradition, neither of the two having all of it.


"Catholics, on the other hand, hold that there may be, that there is in fact, and that there must of necessity be certain revealed truths apart from those contained in the Bible" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XV [New York: Encyclopedia Press, Inc, 1913], p. 6, 2nd column).

Peter Stravinskas, S.J. - "(a study of the debates at the Council of Trent) will demonstrate that no single theory of divine Revelation dominated the catholic landscape prior to Trent and indeed that none really did afterwards, either. Granted, all the Catholic apologists were united in asserting that both Church and Scripture carried weight, but they were far from unanimous in explaining the relationship between the two" (Not By Scripture Alone, Robert Sungenis, editor).

Karl Keating - "It is true that Catholics do not think revelation ended with what is in the NT. They believe, though, that it ended with the death of the last apostle. The part of revelation that was not committed to writing - the part that is outside of the NT and is the oral teaching that is the basis of Tradition - that part of revelation Catholics also accept, and in this they follow the apostle Paul's injunction..." (Catholicism and Fundamentalism, 1988, p 151).

Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI - "...no one is seriously able to maintain that there is a proof in Scripture for every catholic doctrine" (Joseph Ratzinger, "The Transmission of Divine Revelation", commenting on article 9 of Dei Verbum. Found in Vorgrimler, ed, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol 3, p 195).