Tradition

JOHN A. MCGUCKIN

“Tradition” is a central term for Orthodox theological life. The church understands the “Holy Tradition” (by no means signify­ing every ecclesiastical custom) to be the essence of the evangelical experience as it lives it out fully, and mediates it through each generation to the world. Orthodoxy is itself the embodiment of the essential Christian tradition in time and space. The Latin term traditio (“handing on”) and its Greek counterpart paradosis both acquired technical meanings from the New Testament onwards (cf. 1Cor. 11.23), signi­fying tradition as the central core of evan­gelical experience that was communicated from Jesus to the apostles and through them to the Christian world.

The concept oftradition was clarified and elevated by St. Irenaeus in the 2nd century as the ultimate safeguard against Gnostic “innovations,” in an age when Christian self-identity was being publicly challenged by numerous speculative streams of redefi­nition. It was he who, in the Adversus Haereses, popularized the model of tradi­tion as a conservatory force (not necessarily a conservative one) that guarded the transmission of the message of salvation, through a regularly constituted order (taxis) from Jesus, to the apostles, to the early episcopate, who maintained the apos­tolic succession of the Kerygma. Tradition, as St. Irenaeus understood it, was the vital force of evangelism, as much as (if not more than) it was the mechanism whereby the church was able to filter out what it felt was inauthentic in relation to its central self-identity, from generation to generation. Jesus himself was less than patient with those who could not differentiate between the “customs of men” and the perennial demands of the Word of God. His anger was directed at those who resisted the dynamic process of the saving Spirit, by opposing against it deliberately “deadening” appeals to past “traditions” (Mk. 7.13). In his argu­ment with the Pharisees over the signifi­cance of traditions, the Lord was not opposing a developmental sense oftheology to a “static” or “traditionalist” one; rather, he was opposing a concept of living tradi­tion to a traditionalist attitude that oppor­tunistically served to screen the elect community from the ever-present demands of God.

In the apostolic age, St. Paul operated with a double sense of tradition. At some times he is conscious of how carefully he must deliver to others “what I myself received” (1Cor. 11.2, 23; 15.1–4), espe­cially when it concerns traditions about the Lord, or liturgical process. At other times, in advancing the cause of the church’s effective preaching of the message of salvation, he is more than conscious of how the Risen Lord has empowered him to “seize the moment” (Kairos), and how he himself authoritatively transmits his own contribution to the tradition, with the authority of no less than Christ, whom he serves apostolically. The first concept of tra­dition Paul sees as an unchanging verity. The second he sees as economically related to the saving Kerygma, and changing across the times as the servant of the efficient proclamation of the gospel in various con­ditions (1Cor. 7.10–12,25,40). In his times of conflict with other apostolic missionaries of the Jerusalem Church, who resisted his boldly “innovative” apostolate to the Gentiles, Paul is ready to use this missionary sense of tradition not merely as a flexible kerygmatic tool – “To be all things to all” (1Cor. 9.22) – but even in a fixed and canonical sense. He warns his disciples in several places to keep fast to the traditions he gave them, and to keep away from those who did not live accordingly (1Thes. 2.15; 3.6). The generation after Paul, less confi­dent than their teacher, represents a corre­spondingly more cautious attitude and speaks of that “deposit” of tradition that has to be preserved by the church with noth­ing added or taken away (1Tim. 6.20). The sense of kerygmatic adaptability was being conditioned at this period, on the cusp ofthe 1st and 2nd centuries, by an imminent sense of the End Times approaching.

In the writings of Clement of Rome, later in that same generation, one witnesses the first attempt to make the tradition synony­mous with that which the presbyters and bishops of the church both represent and protect. This first attempt to make the tra­dition align very closely with “authoritative preaching” on the part of church leaders was really the first formally elaborated patristic concept of tradition (more exactly, in this case, a doctrine of the episcopal inheritance of the charism of authority). It proved insufficiently flexible to meet the large range of challenges to church unity that the 2nd century threw out. In the following generation, witnessed both in Tertullian and Irenaeus, who were both much exercised with the problem of how to distinguish authentic tradition from heretical imposture, the broader principle of an appeal to the community’s sense of basic truths was more noticeably elevated. For Irenaeus, the question of what was true tradition could be proven by appeal to the record of the main apostolic centers, the ancient and leading churches. He further developed his thought by suggesting that the apostolic churches pos­sessed the “charism of truth” in a special way (Adversus Haereses 4.26.2). This was manifested above all in the manner in which they interpreted the Scriptures, soberly and with catholic consensus. In this context he developed his famous image of the interpretative “key” (hypothesis) which the church owned but which others do not possess. It was to grow into the fuller patristic concept of the Mens Ecclesiae, the “Mind of the Church,” what St. Athanasius was later to call the church’s dianoia and its instinctive sense of the true intentionality (skopos) of both scripture and tradition; that is, the compre­hensive overview given to the Spirit- illumined faithful, which was radically partialized and distorted by heretical dissi­dents. Irenaeus added further to the funda­mental vocabulary of the theology of tradition when he developed the argument that the key to biblical interpretation was the “Canon of Truth” (Adversus Haereses 3.2.1), which in the Latin version of his works gave to the West (decisively so in the hands of Tertullian) the principle of the Rule of Faith: Regula Fidei or Regula Veritatis. This Regula, Irenaeus says, is the strongest refutation of heretical variability, for it is maintained in all the churches and goes back to the apostles. Apostolic succes­sion, then, is not primarily a matter of succession of individual bishops one after another, but the succession of apostolic teaching from the time of the apostles to the present.

When the Arian controversy caused a crisis in the 4th-century church over the precise nature of fundamental truths (the divinity of Christ, the Trinity), the Orthodox fathers reacted instinctively by appealing to an older process of solving problems from the end of the 2nd century: that is, by holding regional synods where the church leaders would decisively address problems and offer solutions in a synodal consensus. At first, the “international” (ecumenical) synodical principle had a hopeful beginning, but soon the restless policy changes of the Imperial house and the party strife of bishops left the aspira­tions for public harmony in tatters. The 4th century saw the hope of an ecumenically led principle of synodical government heavily compromised as one synod countermanded and anathematized another.

The question of how to recognize the identifying marks of tradition rose again acutely at the end of the Arian period, over the issue of the deity of the Holy Spirit. Here, significant theologians such as Sts. Athanasius, Basil, and Gregory of Nazianzus all consciously theologized about the way in which tradition could make new statements about fundamental matters of faith that had not been explicitly witnessed hitherto. Gregory’s Oration 31 describes his own role in proclaiming the homoousion of the Holy Spirit (despite any lack of precedent) as a herald of God speak­ing in the time of a new “seismic shaking” of the world order. Similarly, Basil (typically, more cautiously) appeals to the range of “unwritten traditions” in the church’s litur­gical life (On the Holy Spirit 27) to justify the principle that the real inner life of the church (its core tradition) is something more extensive than its canonical or written traditions. This more or less stabilized the nexus of the ancient church’s overall doctrine of tradition, apart from two last movements: one eastern and the other western. The christological crisis of the 5th century was so fast, furious, and subtle, that many of the same problems over discerning “true tradition” that had occupied Irenaeus rose again in this period. The 5th-century answer (as manifested in the Acts of the Councils from Ephesus in 431 to Nicea II in 787) was to assemble dossiers of patristic evidences. The very notion of “patristic theology” was born in this era. Fathers of the church were regarded as possessing significantly elevated authority, and when accumulated in a florilegium, collectively they made a powerful testimony for authen­tic tradition. After this period, most Latin and Greek theology was constructed on the basis of assembling florilegia.

In the West, Augustine’s long fight with the Donatists had led him to elevate the principle of catholicity (a universal solidar­ity as opposed to a provincial regionalism) as a handy guide to authentic tradition. Catholicity was thus a necessary factor alongside antiquity (apostolic or scriptural status). This view of truth manifested by its geographical extension was always closely allied in the Western Churches with the principle of communion with the Roman see. It led inexorably to the famous formula of Vincent of Lerins, commenting on Augustine, who argued that “oral tradition” must always be subordinated to Scripture (Commonitorium 2.1–2) as being purely its exegesis. It was he who also defined the authentic Christian tradition as that which is held to be such “by everyone, always, and in all places.” This gave rise in later Latin thought to the doctrine of the clear distinction of Scripture and tradition (as two sources of Christian kerygma). The Orthodox Churches never followed this latter path, seeing always Scripture itself as one of the primal (but not exclusive) manifestations of the core tradition of the gospel kerygma, of which the inner life of the church was certainly another; as were also the other principles of tradition- discernment it had elevated across the centuries as a closely meshed interwoven web: namely the scriptural (canonic) principle, the apostolic principle, the epis­copal, the synodical, the conciliar, the pneumatic, and the canonical principle (legislative decrees). All these things together, harmoniously commenting upon one another, their balance discerned by spiritual Diakrisis, manifested authentic tradition in each age of the church. The Orthodox Christian doctrine of tradi­tion is thus an ancient and richly complex idea, which is no less than an investigation of the inner roots of Christian conscious­ness in history; and indeed more than this – for it is the tracing of the presence of the Divine Spirit in Christ’s church across the ages.

SEE ALSO: Apostolic Succession; Bible; Ecu­menical Councils; Episcopacy; Gnosticism; Heresy; Holy Spirit; Patristics

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Bouyer, L. (1947) “The Fathers of the Church on Tradition and Scripture,” Eastern Churches Quarterly 7 (special volume dedicated to scripture and tradition).

Florovsky, G. (1971) Bible, Church and Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View, in Collected Works Vol. 1. Belmont, MA: Nordland.

McGuckin, J. A. (1998) “Eschaton and Kerygma: The Future of the Past in the Present Kairos: The Concept of Living Tradition in Orthodox Theology,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 42, 3–4: 225–71.

Reynders, B. (1933) “Paradosis: Le progres de l’idee de tradition jusqu’a S. Irenee,” Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 5: 155–91. van den Eynde, D. (1933) Les Normes de l’enseignement chretien dans la litterature patristique des trois premiers siecles. Paris: Gembloux-Paris.

van Leer, E. F. (1954) Tradition and Scripture in the Early Church. Assen, Netherlands.