When finally the Gospels were written, they did not prove what Christians believed; nor did they initiate that belief; they merely recorded in a systematic manner what they already knew. Men did not believe in the Crucifixion because the Gospels said there was a Crucifixion; they wrote down the story of the Crucifixion because they already believed in it. The Church did not come to believe in the Virgin Birth because the Gospels tell us there is a Virgin Birth; it was because the living word of God in His Mystical Body already believed it, that they get it down in the Gospels.

A second fact to be remembered is that this Mystical Body of Christ has a memory. If our physical life extends back forty-five years, we can remember two World-Wars. We speak of them as a living witness, not from the books written but from having lived through them and maybe through having fought in them. We may later on have read the books about these two World Wars. Yet they are not the beginning of our knowledge but only a recalling or a deepening of what we already knew. In like manner, Our Lord is the Head of the new humanity, the new fellowship or the spiritual organism which Saint Paul calls His Mystical Body. To this Mystical Body Christ is associated, first in His Apostles, and then in all who believed in Him throughout the centuries. This Body, too, has a memory, reaching back to Christ. It knows that the Resurrection is true because it, the Church, was there. The cells of our body change every seven years but we are the same personality. The cells of the Mystical Body which we are, too, may change every fifty or sixty years: yet it is still Christ that lives in that Body.

The Church knows that Christ rose from the dead and that the Spirit descended on the Apostles on Pentecost because the Church was there from the beginning. The Church has a memory of over 1900 years and this memory is called Tradition. The Apostles' Creed which was an accepted formula in the Church around the year 100 and which summed up the Apostle's teaching, is as follows:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, sit at the right Hand of God, the Father Almighty, from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.

Note the words: "Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" The truths expressed in the Creed were essential for entrance into the Church. Everyone who was baptized early into Christ's Mystical Body believed in each of these truths. The Virgin Birth was as much an accepted Truth as the Resurrection in the first Christian centuries.

There is not one single quotation of the Gospels in the Creed. The early baptized of the Church were recording the early Christian tradition, of which the Gospels were only the literary expression. There are also several volumes of writings from within the first hundred years of the life of Our Lord; for example, the writing of Saint Clement, one of the successors of Saint Peter who wrote in the year 92; and also, Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, one of the successors of John the Evangelist: and Iranaeus who names the twelve Bishops of Rome; and Ignatius of Antioch who said that he wanted to be "ground like wheat between the jaws of lions to be a living bread for His Saviour".

Many of these writers do not quote the Gospels. We have 1500 lines from Clement and yet two texts of his are from the New Testament: he was recording the Christian beliefs, accepted by the witnesses of Christ. Polycarp quotes the Gospel only three times, for he lived on familiar terms with many who had seen Our Lord and he wrote what he knew and had learned from the Apostles. Ignatius of Antioch (who lived within seventy years of the Life of Our Lord) wrote: "Our God, Jesus Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit... and was truly born of a Virgin".

There is a double evidence from which we can draw, to learn true Christian teaching: one is the reveal Word of God in the Scriptures - the other is the continuous teaching of the Church from the very beginning, that is, its living memory. Just as lawyers, in proving a point, use not only the bare statement of law but also the way the courts have understood and interpreted that law; so, too, the Scriptures are not a dead letter but are living and breathing in the beautiful context of a spiritual fellowship.

In the year 108, there were still many living who had been boys when Our Lord was crucified - who, as young men saw and conversed with the Apostles before they were martyred - and who, in scattered parts of the Roman Empire, were already familiar with the Christian tradition passed on through the Church. Some of the other Apostles were not martyred until later - John did not die until the year 100. Some of these early writers were closer to John and other Apostles than we are to World War I. And this much is certain: if the Apostles, who loved with Our Lord and who heard Him speak on the open hills and in the temple - who listened to Him preach on the Kingdom of God forty days after His Resurrection - did not teach the Virgin Birth, no one else would have taught it. It was too unusual an idea for men to make up; it would have been ordinarily too difficult for acceptance if it had not come from Christ Himself!.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -