Revelation, Scripture, and Tradition

Abstract

Abstract At the Second Vatican Council the theme of the relationships between Revelation, Scripture, and Tradition (which were topicsin the jettisoned section of Ratzinger’s habilitationsshrift) reappeared as the central issue of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, otherwise known as Deiverbum. The preparatory schema for this Constitution initially reXected the Suárezian approach to Revelation which had been promoted by Michael Schmaus at the young Ratzin-ger’s oral defence, in opposition to the approach of Gottlieb Söhngen and Ratzinger himself. In the post-Tridentine era Francisco Suárez (I548–I6I7) had underscored the propositional character of Revelation—a statement of faith became an occasion on which some aspect of Revelation is made clear. The study of these theological propositions then formed the sub-discipline of dogmatic theology. Just as Cajetan’s account of nature and grace came to be regarded as a baroque deviation from classical Thomism, at least according to de Lubac and those who followed him, Suárez’s account of Revelation came to be seen as similarly distortive of the classical Thomist position. Whereas Aquinas looked at faith from the ‘inside’ and focused on the change that faith brings about in the human being, Suárez looked at faith ‘from the outside’ and described the way we can see it working. Gerard O’Shea has presented the difference between the two in the following paragraph: