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1. The primacy of the Word of God

6. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (Jn 1:1). The Gospel of John starts with a ‘prologue’. This hymn highlights the cosmic scope of revelation and the culmination of revelation in the incarnation of the Word of God. ‘What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people’ (Jn 1:3-4). Creation and history constitute the space and time in which God reveals himself. The world, created by God by means of his Word (cf. Gen 1), is also, however, the setting for the rejection of God by human beings. Nevertheless, God’s love towards them is always infinitely greater; ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it’ (Jn 1:5). The incarnation of the Son is the culmination of that steadfast love: ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth’ (Jn 1:14). The revelation of God as Father who loves the world (cf. Jn 3:16, 35) is realised in the revelation of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, the Son of God and ‘Saviour of the world’ (Jn 4:42). In ‘many and various ways’ God spoke through the prophets in former times, but in the fullness of time he spoke to us ‘by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds’ (Heb 1:1-2). ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known’ (Jn 1:18).

7. The Church greatly venerates the Scriptures, but it is important to recognise that ‘the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book”; Christianity is the “religion of the word of God”, not of “a written and mute word, but of the incarnate and living Word”’.[11] The gospel of God is fundamentally testified by the sacred Scripture of both Old and New Testaments.[12] The Scriptures are ‘inspired by God and committed to writing once and for all time’; hence, ‘they present God’s own Word in an unalterable form, and they make the voice of the Holy Spirit sound again and again in the words of the prophets and apostles’.[13] Tradition is the faithful transmission of the Word of God, witnessed in the canon of Scripture by the prophets and the apostles and in the leiturgia (liturgy), martyria (testimony) and diakonia (service) of the Church.

8. St Augustine wrote that the Word of God was heard by inspired authors and transmitted by their words: ‘God speaks through a human being in human fashion; and speaking thus he seeks us’.[14] The Holy Spirit not only inspired the biblical authors to find the right words of witness but also assists the readers of the Bible in every age to understand the Word of God in the human words of the holy Scriptures. The relationship between Scripture and Tradition is rooted in the truth which God reveals in his Word for our salvation: ‘the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures’,[15] and through the ages the Holy Spirit ‘leads believers to the full truth, and makes the Word of Christ dwell in them in all its richness (cf. Col 3:16)’.[16] ‘[T]he word of God is given to us in sacred Scripture as an inspired testimony to revelation; together with the Church’s living Tradition, it constitutes the supreme rule of faith.’[17]

9. A criterion of Catholic theology is recognition of the primacy of the Word of God. God speaks ‘in many and various ways’ – in creation, through prophets and sages, through the holy Scriptures, and definitively through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh (cf. Heb 1:1-2).