The Church preceded the New Testament, not the New Testament the Church. First there was not a Constitution of the United States, and then Americans, who in the light of that Constitution decided to form a government and a nation. The Founding Fathers preceded the Foundation; so the Mystical Body of Christ preceded the reports written later by inspired secretaries. And incidentally, how do we know the Bible is inspired? It does not say so! Matthew does not conclude his Gospel saying: "Be sure to read Mark; he is inspired, too," Furthermore, the Bible is not a book. It is a collection of seventy-two books in all. It is worth opening a Bible to see if we have them all and have not been cheated.
These widely scattered books cannot bear witness to their own inspiration. It is only by something outside the Bible that we know it is inspired. We will not go into that point now, but it is worth looking into.
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 set it down in the Gospels.
A second fact to be remembered is that this Mystical Body of Christ has a memory, as we have 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 St. 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 Apostles' 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 Ghost, 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, sitteth 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 Ghost, 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 Ghost, 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 members 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 St. Clement, one of the successors of St. Peter, who wrote in the year 92; and also, Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, one of the successors of John the Evangelist; and Irenaeus, 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 only 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 Ghost... and was truly born of a Virgin."
