By Fr. Michael Azkoul
Word Magazine, October 1960
The Church is “the Body of Christ” and is therefore essentially an organism. Orthodoxy is a growing thing, a living Body. She is the “extension of the Incarnation,” as the Fathers used to say. There is “one” Christ, therefore, the Church is “one”; He is “holy,” therefore, She is “holy”; Christ is “catholic,” thus, She is “catholic”; Christ is “apostolic,” She is “apostolic.” The Church is understood in terms of the Person of Christ.
Tradition is likewise “one,” existing in the “one” Church of God; it is “holy” because the Church is “holy”; it is “catholic” because, like the Church, Tradition is entire and not limited to one place and time; and it is “apostolic” or “sent forth” with the Church which has a foundation of Christ and the Apostles. What, then, is “Tradition”?
First, let us distinguish it from custom. A custom is a practice which has become habitual in some particular place and time, or perhaps in the whole Church, such as ringing the bells at the time of the Doxology; or presenting 5 loaves of bread for the Proskomedie: or not permitting menstrous women to receive Communion, etc. Customs appear to meet the needs of the time, They remain if the need remains. Customs may be changed. The Bishop may give dispensations for any custom. They are disciplines or methods or techniques or procedures. Some are important, like fasting before Communion; some are nice, like using grapes to celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration; and some are positively wrong and must be dropped, like receiving Communion but once a year.
Tradition or “Paradosis” in Greek (from paradidomi”: “to hand over,” “deliver,” “entrust”) is different. It includes the entire repository of the Christian Faith. It is handed over to the Church by God, it is entrusted to Her care. It includes, for example, “dogma” and “doctrine”: a “dogma” is the precise formulation of some revealed truth by a council accepted by the entire Church; a “doctrine,” which is equally as binding, equally as necessary for salvation, has no exact form. That Christ is both human and Divine, is a “dogma,” whereas the number of Sacraments is a “doctrine.” Usually, Tradition is confused with custom or with something which is done over and over again, i.e. if we have seen or heard something which is repeated we label it clumsily, Tradition. If we have read a little more, we think of it as a belief orally transmitted and contrasted with the written record, the Bible. None of this is entirely true.
Tradition is both written (traditio scripta) and unwritten (traditio non scripta), either by word of mouth or letter (II Thess. ii, 15). Tradition is historical, factual. It can grow and it does: continually, consistently, higher, deeper, wider, but is always the same. For instance, a man grows, but is the same man whether at birth, at 10 years old, at 20 or 30. Our understanding of the original deposit of the Faith increases.
Oral or Tradition by word of mouth is called by Bulgakov, “the Memory of the Church.” Like the human memory which stores away experiences and ideas, the Memory of the Church shapes the attitude of the Church. She remembers that God was incarnate, that He taught spiritual and ethical truths and values, that he was betrayed by Judas, that He was crucified, dead, buried, resurrected, ascended, that the work of Christ was continued by the Apostles and their successors, that She had enemies like Arius, that She fought the destroyers of the icons (Iconoclasts), that the Latins separated from Her and so on. Each experience of the Church caused the deposit to grow like a cake in the oven. Tradition, whether written or unwritten, is not human opinion, but truths received from the Apostles who were instructed by Christ. They, the Apostles, handed over, delivered, entrusted these truths to their successors which are taught by them and preserved in the hearts and conscience of all believers. It is for this reason that Origen (185-125) wrote in the preface to On Principles: “That alone must be believed to be truth which differs in nothing from the ecclesiastical and Apostolic Tradition.” (to be continued next week)
* * *
Prophet Zachariah
February 8
Troparion of the Prophet Zachariah Tone 4
By thy deeds, wise Zachariah, thou didst show that thou hadst righteously received thy name as a treasury of God's inspiration, for Angels were thy companions in life and thou wast a prophet of things to come. And now, as thou canst, fulfill from on high our petitions.
Kontakion of the Prophet Zachariah Tone 4
Enlightened by the brightness of the Spirit, O glorious Zachariah, like a lamp of many lights thou didst clearly describe beforehand the Savior's condescension.
