Sacred Tradition - Holy Tradition in The Catholic and Orthodox Churches

Holy Tradition in The Catholic and Orthodox Churches

Holy tradition, for the Eastern Orthodox, is the deposit of faith given by Jesus Christ to the Apostles and passed on in the Church from one generation to the next without addition, alteration or subtraction. Vladimir Lossky famously described the Tradition as "the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church." It is dynamic in application, yet unchanging in dogma. It is growing in expression, yet ever the same in essence. The Eastern Orthodox churches do not regard holy tradition as something which grows and expands over time, forming a collection of practices and doctrines which accrue, gradually becoming something more developed. Rather, Eastern Orthodox believers view holy tradition as being the faith which Jesus Christ taught to the Apostles and which they gave to their disciples, without any development or deepening of understanding in the faith.

The Catholic Church, too, views holy tradition in much the same terms, as a passing down of that same Apostolic Faith, but, in a critical difference from the Eastern Orthodox position, holds that the Faith continues to deepen and develop over time, and in our understanding of it, all the while staying the same; thus the doctrine of the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the divine motherhood, the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary, along with other central Catholic Christian doctrines were not fully defined until many years after Christ had ascended and the Apostles had died, and that our understanding of them may continue to deepen, not only through mystical experience, but through the sciences of philosophy and theology, exemplified by the Scholastics, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham of the High Middle Ages. A common metaphor used to explain this phenomenon is to think of a seed: over time, it grows into a tall oak, but its identity and essence is still the same.