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.
Read more about this topic: Sacred Tradition
Famous quotes containing the words holy, tradition, catholic, orthodox and/or churches:
“We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve; and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The words of the Constitution ... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.”
—Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965)
“Go, you are dismissed.
[Ite missa est.]”
—Missal, The. The Ordinary of the Mass.
Missal is book of prayers and rites used to celebrate the Roman Catholic mass during the year.
“The gloomy theology of the orthodox—the Calvinists—I do not, I cannot believe. Many of the notions—nay, most of the notions—which orthodox people have of the divinity of the Bible, I disbelieve. I am so nearly infidel in all my views, that too, in spite of my wishes, that none but the most liberal doctrines can command my assent.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Here, the churches seemed to shrink away into eroding corners. They seem to have ceased to be essential parts of American life. They no longer give life. It is the huge buildings of commerce and trade which now align the people to attention. These in their massive manner of steel and stone say, Come unto me all ye who labour, and we will give you work.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)