Digital Continent Digital Continent Easter 2017 | Page 39

The Lateran Council 1215 and the Church Today
‘It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make
known the mystery of his will (cf. Eph 1:9)’, namely that all people might ‘have
access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and
thus become sharers in the divine nature (cf. Eph 2:18; 2Pet 1:4)’. ‘The novelty of
biblical revelation consists in the fact that God becomes known through the
dialogue which he desires to have with us.’ Theology, in all its diverse traditions,
disciplines and methods, is founded on the fundamental act of listening in faith to
the revealed Word of God, Christ himself. Listening to God’s Word is the
definitive principle of Catholic theology; it leads to understanding and speech
and to the formation of Christian community: ‘the Church is built upon the word
of God; she is born from and lives by that word’. ‘We declare to you what we
have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our
fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’ (1Jn 1:3). The whole
world is to hear the summons to salvation, ‘so that through hearing it may
believe, through belief it may hope, through hope it may come to love’. 102
The teachings and reforms promulgated by the Catholic church at Lateran in 1215 sought
to repudiate the heresies of the twelfth century. Today, in the twenty-first century, through
indefatigable evangelization by the Church she continues to educate the people of the world. The
Church promulgates the truths of God through the Word which existed from the beginning of
time, “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”
(RSV, Jn 1:1). The Word revealed through sacred tradition and sacred scripture was forbidden by
the perfected. They believed “the author of the Old Testament was a ‘liar’” and allowed only
certain passages of the New Testament to be read. 103
102
International Theological Commission: Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria,
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_doc_20111129_teologia-
oggi_en.html, accessed 6/7/2016. n.4.
103
Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, The History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans.W.A. and M.D. Silby, (NY: Boydell
Brewer, LTD., 1998), 11.