The Council of Trent

The first task of the Council of Trent was to delimit the spheres of Scripture and Tradition in the transmission of Catholic doctrine. For centuries the Church had been content with a rough-and-ready arrangement whereby Tradition (in the shape of the baptismal catechesis) introduced a believer to the doctrines of the faith, while Scripture was used at a later stage to test, to amplify and to collate those doctrines. Thus it was that St Thomas had said, in a much-abused phrase, sola canonica scriptura est regula fidei: only canonical Scripture—as distinct from apocryphal writings—is the (or a) rule of faith (lectio VI in John XXI). But doctrines which were accepted alone or mainly on the authority of Tradition were not unfamiliar. It was these doctrines which were the main objects of reforming attacks: purgatory, the invocation of saints, the conversion of the bread into the Body of Christ, infant baptism and the sacramental character of marriage. Hence the Council had to start by making its position clear on the value of Tradition as contrasted with Scripture.

After sharp discussion the Council came to the decision that it received and held in honour pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia, with equal devotion and veneration, the books of Scripture and the divine and apostolic traditions (that is, those coming from Christ or the apostles) which concerned faith or morals. It did not mean that each book of Scripture was inspired in exactly the same way, as some modern theologians have claimed, for the Council was not comparing book with book but the body of Scripture with the body of apostolic tradition.