Why is tradition necessary even now?
Tradition has been recorded in the writings of the early Christians and the Fathers, as well as in the holy liturgies. Because Tradition is intimately bound to the life of the Church and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, it belongs to what the saints have called the very aim of the Christian life, “the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God” (St Seraphim of Sarov, Conversation with Motovilov). The same Spirit of Truth who animates the Church is the indispensable guide to the right understanding of Scripture (Joh 16:13; see Q035, Q069).
Tradition, reflecting the life of the Spirit in the Church, is therefore the guide to the right understanding of Holy Scripture, to the right ministration of the Mysteries, and to the preservation of the sacred rites in the purity of their original institution. Here, the ancient principle holds: lex orandi, lex credendi: the Church’s rule of prayer expresses and safeguards her rule of faith (cf. Prosper of Aquitaine, Capitula, 8).
In his treatise On the Holy Spirit, St Basil the Great not only explains the importance of Tradition but gives specific examples:
Of the doctrines and injunctions kept by the Church, some we have from written instruction, and some we have received from apostolic tradition, handed down in mystery. Both have one and the same force for piety… Indeed, if we dared to reject unwritten customs as if they had no great importance, we should unwittingly mutilate the Gospel in its very vitals. For instance, who has taught by writing that those who trust in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ should sign themselves with the sign of the cross? What Scripture do we have for turning to the east in prayer? Which of the saints has left us in writing the words of invocation at the consecration of the Eucharistic bread and the cup of blessing?… By what Scripture do we bless the water of baptism, the oil of anointing, and the one who is baptized? And from where comes the rule of triple immersion, and the renunciation of Satan and his angels? Are they not all from this unpublished and private teaching, which our Fathers guarded in silence, safe from curiosity and profane inquiry? (St Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 27.66)
This important distinction between the public proclamation of the Gospel (kērygma) and the inner, sacramental life of the Church (dogma, in St Basil’s usage; see Q017, Q042) recalls the teaching of the Lord: “Do not give what is holy to the dogs and do not throw your pearls before pigs” (Mat 7:6).
These “mysteries of the Kingdom of God” (Luk 8:10) must not be confused with the so-called secret apostolic traditions claimed by the ancient heretics (the Gnostics), for the Church’s Tradition was always public in its custodians, preserved openly in the Churches founded by the Apostles, through the succession of their bishops. As St Irenaeus writes:
If the apostles had known hidden mysteries which they imparted to ‘the perfect’ privately and apart from the rest, they would especially have delivered them to those to whom they were committing the churches themselves. (St Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III.3.1) And again: “True knowledge is the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution of the Church throughout all the world… according to the successions of the bishops, by which they have handed down that Church which exists in every place” (St Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV.33.8).
