Tradition

Tradition (παράδοσις, traditio) is the transmission or handing over of an object (e.g., παραθήκη, depositum) to another. Theologically, its contours are complex, depending on multiple distinctions (e.g., active vs objective; apostolic vs ecclesiastical, etc.). Tradition, in one specific sense, can mean “a mode of transmission by way other than by writing”: something unwritten, or the act or fact of transmission. In its most general theological sense, however, tradition is the transmission (formal cause) of the deposit of faith (material cause) by the Church (proximate efficient cause), guided by the Holy Spirit (remote efficient cause), for the salvation of humankind (immediate final cause) and glory of God (ultimate final cause).

In what follows, we will first provide a positive theological account of tradition in order to perceive more clearly the roots of the theological concept in revelation and the history of the Church. Moreover, the development of key aspects of, and distinctions within, tradition, can be better accounted for through an examination of the historical controversies that prompted the Church to clarify its notion of tradition, especially in its magisterial teaching from Trent to the present day. Finally, a speculative theological account of tradition will flesh out the definition provided above.

I. Positive Theological Account of Tradition

1.1 From the New Testament to the Middle Ages

If tradition is the transmission of an object over time, and if this object is a religious covenant, then tradition can be considered to begin already with the covenants established by God with the Hebrew people in the Old Testament. The revelation of Yahweh, the commandment to love Him and witness to Him among the nations, the Hebrew moral and ritual laws, along with the command to remember the story of their liberation from bondage, are all to be transmitted from generation to generation. God’s vocation is addressed to “you and your son and your son’s son,” and it is fulfilled “by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you” (Dt 6:2).

But when in these “last days” God spoke through His Son, who established a “new covenant” (Heb 1:1; Lk 22:20), the same commandment was given, but under a new and universal dispensation: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19–20). All that Christ commands is to be taken, like the Deuteronomic command, in a comprehensive sense. It includes all that Christ said and did, His teaching about His heavenly Father, the kerygma and salvation (e.g., Lk 24:46–47), His moral commands, and His commands concerning prayer and ecclesial life (e.g., Lk 22:19; Lk 11:2ff.; Mt 18:15–20). The apostles and their companions hand this on by way of a παράδοσις [paradosis], or a “handing over,” such that St. Paul can say to the Corinthians, “For I delivered [Παρέδωκα] to you as of first importance what I also received” (1 Cor 15:3) and again: “I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions [παραδόσεις] even as I have delivered [παρέδωκα] them to you” (1 Cor 11:2). The act of transmitting is accompanied by a concomitant exhortation to maintain it: “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions [παραδόσεις] which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thes 2:15; cf. Lk 2:19). “Timothy, guard what has been entrusted [παραθήκην] to your care” (1 Tm 6:20; cf. 2 Tm 1:12-14). The Holy Spirit, furthermore, is seen to guide this process of transmitting what has been given, enlightening the Apostles and encouraging them (cf. Jn 14:26; 15:26; 16:13–15; Acts 1:8; Lk 24:48–49).

In subsequent generations of Christians, there was a recognition that the Church was the subject or bearer of what was received. In the second century, Irenaeus, for example, acknowledged that

the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it… she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same.{1}

While the preaching of the Church and the Scriptures are always held together, the so-called “rule of truth” (or less frequently, “rule of faith,” and even “rule of the Church”) is simply that divine word or Gospel content which has its origin in the Apostles.{2} This includes various kinds of worship, ritual, and discipline, but also texts or written formulae (e.g., the Baptismal rites accompanied by a creedal formula understood to be a summary of apostolic teaching).

The Nicene and post-Nicene fathers also continued to refer to the tradition’s content as a rule by virtue of its apostolic origins.{3} There are a number of key texts which would subsequently play a significant role in the Church’s magisterial teaching on tradition, one of which was St. Basil’s On the Holy Spirit, in which he consistently referred to the importance of tradition in establishing his doctrine. There he famously states that

of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us in a mystery by the tradition of the Apostles [ἀποστόλων παραδόσεως] and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force [ἅπερ ἀμφότερα τὴν αὐτὴν ἰσχὺν ἔχει πρὸς τὴν εὐσέβειαν].{4}

While other texts could be cited, here we find a clear example of a contrast between what is written and unwritten, as well as an affirmation of their equal authority. This text was influential for the Fathers at the Council of Trent.

The varying interpretations of what is written and unwritten, however, is perhaps most directly confronted by St. Vincent of Lérins in his Commonitorium, where, in defending the Council of Ephesus, he puts forward his two famous canons or rules: first, that the faith be maintained that has been believed semper, ubique, et ab omnibus (i.e., the rule of antiquity, ubiquity, and universality),{5} and second, that our understanding of this faith can increase, but always in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia (i.e., the immutability of the meaning of dogma).{6} The importance of the Lerinian’s text lies not only in its two canons, the latter of which would be cited at the First Vatican Council, but also because its argument draws attention to the authority of a universal council. The Council of Ephesus was deemed to be a faithful interpretation of Scripture by an appeal to the authority of the Council Fathers in the same way that the doctrine of Nicaea was reliable based on the consensus of the 318 Fathers gathered there. Having pronounced on the rule of faith [de fidei regulis pronuntiavit] (XXX.6), the consensus of the Fathers the world over, gathered at Ephesus, rendered it a sure manifestation of the “rule of the universal church” [universalis ecclesiae regula]. The first rule, then, is manifest at a council; but, importantly, this first rule does not preclude development, for Ephesus required defense precisely because of what seemed to be novel in its teaching.

St. Vincent’s work highlights a development from an ante-Nicene identification of tradition or rule with what the Apostles transmitted, to increasingly frequent attention to other facets of tradition in the post-Nicene period, such as authority, councils, bishops, popes, texts, and their consensus, all of which are seen to play important roles in the Church’s regular repulsion of a steady stream of heresies over the centuries. In short, attention is increasingly paid to the organs of tradition (rather than almost exclusively to its object). Further complicating matters is that, as the body of organs (especially in the number of texts) increases, an awareness of the post-apostolic and human contribution also increases, raising the issue of traditions, canons, and disciplines of ecclesiastical (and not apostolic) origin.

Medieval theology continued to grapple with these organs of tradition. Medieval theology took for granted that there were things observed by the Church that were not in Scripture, appealing, for example, to 1 Corinthians 11:34, Acts 16:4, and John 21:25.{7} Nonetheless, medieval theology was primarily preoccupied with texts. In particular, medieval theology and the study of the sacred page—not limited to the canonical scriptures but extending to patristic commentary—was conducted primarily according to a series of textual authorities, Scripture being the most important, but other texts also considered auctoritates to the extent that they communicated truth about God, the ultimate auctor.

The medievals’ strong sense of the Spirit animating the Church, however, would ultimately require further clarification about what precise pneumatological activity or assistance was behind the prophetic and apostolic preaching, on the one hand, and what was behind subsequent theological explication, interpretation, and even Church teaching, on the other. While Aquinas distinguished, for example, between the auctoritas of the canonical scriptures and that of the other doctores,{8} medieval thinkers still readily used words like revelatio and inspiratio to refer to acts of the Church during post-apostolic times. Coinciding with a time when papal authority and claims were at their height, the ambiguity concerning the relationship between the organs of tradition and its objective content would later be clarified, albeit, slowly and not without controversy.{9} Today, revelatio and inspiratio pertain to what can be called the traditio constitutiva, that initial transmission of the faith that simultaneously also established the deposit of faith, sacraments, and ecclesial order; assistentia, by contrast, describes the pneumatological activity behind the traditio continuativa, whereby the Church faithfully guards, discerns, and explains—but does not invent—what she is custodian of. It would only be in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries where such a distinction began to be solidified (e.g., with Domingo Bañez and Melchior Cano).{10} Such a distinction is crucial for avoiding any semblance of an “ongoing” or “new” revelation.{11}

Late medieval controversies catalyzed theology to engage further with the issue of the relationship between Scripture, tradition, and the Church. By the fourteenth century, Scripture and tradition were increasingly held to be in competition. With respect to both the novel interpretation of poverty practiced by the Spiritual Franciscans and condemned by John XXII, or with John XXII’s sermons on the delayed Beatific Vision, authority was critiqued and theologians began to pit Church and Scripture against one another. In his controversy with John XXII, Ockham in particular also forayed into the precise definition of heresy, the beginning of a more precise theological criteriology or what would later come to be known as theological notes and censures.{12} While some tended toward an ecclesial primacy over Scripture, others would lean towards Scripture, some, indeed, in increasingly extreme ways, such as Jan Hus (1369–1415) and John Wycliffe (1328–1384). This latter tendency would issue in the Reformation and the reactions to it in the Counter-Reformation.

1.2 From Trent to the Dogmatic Definition of Mary’s Assumption

Many instances of theological controversy have stimulated clarification in the Church’s teaching on a given question, and the question concerning tradition is no exception. With the onset of the Protestant Reformation, the Church’s teaching on tradition took on a definite form and juridical status in the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545–1563). It is really only in the wake of Trent and the Reformation that Catholic theologians begin to dedicate treatises exclusively to tradition.{13}

The dominant theological consensus prior to the Reformation held that one single deposit of faith was entrusted to the Church. Its privileged witness was Scripture, which was to be—indeed, had to be—interpreted by the Church. It was not uncommon for conciliar acts, papal acts, and writings of the Fathers to be considered scriptura, albeit, not scriptura canonica but, rather, writings which, under divine guidance, explained the Scriptures. With the increasingly radical denial on the part of the reformers of the normativity of these acta with a view towards relying solely and exclusively on God’s Word contained in Scripture, and with the radical consequences for the sacramental practice and ecclesial order that this denial entailed, the Council of Trent, in its decree on the canon of Scripture, declared that the Gospel was promised through the Prophets, promulgated by Christ Himself, commanded to be preached by the Apostles, and is preserved in the Church. This same Gospel, “the source of every saving truth and of instruction in morals,” and

contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions which have been received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the apostles themselves, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, have come down even to us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand.

The Tridentine Fathers continued, declaring that the Council,

following the examples of the orthodox Fathers, receives and holds in veneration with an equal affection of piety and reverence [pari pietatis affectu] all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament, since one God is the author of both, and also the traditions themselves, those that appertain both to faith and to morals, as having been dictated either by Christ’s own word of mouth, or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession.{14}

Trent teaches, then, that the Gospel is contained in both Scripture and unwritten traditions, and that both of these are held in veneration with an equal affection of piety and reverence. It is important to note that, while traditiones in theological writing often did not distinguish between apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, the Tridentine decree was concerned with those of apostolic origin which pertain tum ad fidem, tum ad mores, that is, they are norms for both doctrine and life. While, for prudential reasons, the Tridentine fathers refused to enumerate and specify these, the Acta make clear that, included in these traditions were doctrines such as Christ’s descent into Hell and Mary’s perpetual virginity, and practices such as the sacraments themselves, their ritual and discipline (e.g., the renunciation of Satan and the threefold immersion), the liturgical seasons, and practices such as the Lenten fast, the celibate priesthood, liturgical postures and orientations, and the change of the Sabbath.

It will be noticed at once that these traditions vary in their Scriptural witness. While the harrowing of Hell, for example, might appeal to 1 Peter 4:6 and Ephesians 4:9, others have only tacit—or perhaps no—scriptural basis. In this regard, the change in the decree from the formula partim…partim, present in the drafting process, to the use of the word ‘et’ in the phrase “contained in the written books and unwritten traditions” has given rise to theological debate, especially in the twentieth century, after Rupert Geiselmann’s study of Trent. That the Council did not teach that the Gospel is contained partly in written books and partly in unwritten traditions has, at a minimum, left open the possibility of holding the theological thesis of the material sufficiency of Scripture, that is, the thesis that Scripture’s content contains all truths necessary for salvation.{15} (This thesis is opposed to the material insufficiency thesis, according to which Tradition contains saving content not contained in Scripture.) Though already enjoying significant amounts of historical precedent, the popularity of at least some variation of the material sufficiency thesis was revived in the twentieth century, even if the Second Vatican Council’s Dei Verbum neither commended nor excluded it.

Also notable in the Tridentine decree is that traditiones is in the plural. The dominant understanding of tradition at this time was of particular traditions having apostolic origin. While this period was not devoid of the use of traditio in the singular, it is only later in theological reflection whereby this singular use of tradition is considered to be, firstly, a holistic transmission of the entire deposit and, in a secondary meaning, a unique mode of transmitting the deposit commensurate with the sum total of concrete rites, practices, beliefs, and devotions, inclusive of, but not limited to, those stemming from Christ or the Apostles.{16}

While Trent ultimately acknowledged the existence and normativity of apostolic traditions, it did not offer anything close to a full exposition of the notion. After Trent, theological reflection on the notion of tradition was largely shaped by controversy such that, inevitably, the focus of that reflection centered on the criteriology or formal aspect of the organs of tradition. Whereas the patristic emphasis was on the id quod traditur, post-Tridentine arguments over theological loci shifted towards the id quo traditur, or that by which individual traditions garner their normativity: namely, the infallible Church and her teaching authority. Opposing the sola scriptura principle, Tridentine theologians spoke of a regula animata or living rule as opposed to a regula inanimis (e.g., Francisco Suárez [1548-1617], Paul Gabriel Antoine [1678-1743], Charles René Billuart [1685-1757]).

The notion of a ‘living tradition’ equivalent to the magisterium arose in opposition not only to Protestantism, but also to Gallicans and Jansenists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The latter set, like the reformers, appealed to a documentary form of tradition. Unlike some of the reformers, their documentation encompassed not only Scripture, but also the Fathers and ecclesial writings. In this respect, the protagonists of a ‘living tradition’ were addressing what they viewed to be a kind of theological primitivism. It was also during this time that debates over papal and episcopal authority intensified, and Pope Innocent X’s condemnation of Jansenist propositions in Cum Occasione (1653) catalyzed a debate over the extensiveness of infallibility and whether it includes so-called “dogmatic facts” in addition to theological conclusions and other doctrines not belonging to the deposit of faith (or what today might fall under the category of “secondary objects” of infallibility). Hence, it was within this seventeenth- and eighteenth-century context—a post-Tridentine context in which theological controversy continued with Protestants but also among Catholics themselves, in which the precise kinds of error (e.g., theological or philosophical) varied greatly, and in which the rate of Magisterial interventions proliferated—that the category of fides ecclesiastica (ecclesiastical faith) became ever more common among theologians.{17} This development was in keeping with the tendency towards crystallizing the formal criteriology of tradition.{18} The main concern throughout these centuries, whether in the appeal to a ‘living tradition’ or to ‘ecclesiastical faith’, was to safeguard the Church’s capacity to teach the faith handed down in its integrity here and now by affirming that she can teach doctrines (or condemn their contraries) and make judgments concerning facts, morals, and disciplines which, while not revealed (de fide), were nonetheless so closely connected to revelation that, were they denied, revealed truth itself would be endangered. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Jansenism as a theological movement had basically disappeared, but the influence on theology of certain philosophical errors (e.g., rationalism and fideism) endured. Furthermore, tradition’s relationship to ecclesiology continued to be highlighted in the disputes between Gallicans and ultramontanes.

Vatican I’s teaching on tradition, though not as momentous as Trent’s, makes a number of aspects explicit, especially with regard to the Church. At the First Vatican Council, there is an explicit distinction between apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions. This is found in Pius IX’s profession of faith, which all bishops affirmed: “Apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and all other observances and constitutions of that same church I most firmly accept and embrace.”{19} Later, in the preface to Dei Filius, Pius IX makes explicit his and his fellow bishops’ reliance on the Church as guardian and authoritative expositor of God’s Word found in Scripture and Tradition [Dei verbo scripto et tradito, prout ab Ecclesia catholica sancte custoditum et genuine expositum accepimus].{20} Dei Filius proceeds to quote verbatim Trent’s teaching about the unwritten traditions of divine and apostolic authority.{21}

In chapter 3, however, Dei Filius goes further by clarifying the Church’s role in the determination of the material object of faith, expressing in more precise terms what was already contained in the preface:

[By] divine and Catholic faith, all those things must be believed which are contained in the written word of God and in tradition, and those which are proposed by the Church, either in a solemn pronouncement or in her ordinary and universal teaching power [ordinario et universali magisterio], to be believed as divinely revealed.{22} (DF, ch. 3)

Dei Filius reiterated the Tridentine teaching concerning the divine origin and normativity of apostolic traditions, but also drew out the implication of this for faith: namely, that that which is contained in this tradition is to be believed with divine faith. Dei Filius also introduced the term “ordinary Magisterium.” In this paragraph, then, we find the triad: Scripture, tradition, and Magisterium. The Catholic is to believe that which is contained in Scripture and tradition and that which is proposed by the Church, with divine faith.{23}

While there was relatively little said about tradition in Trent and Vatican I as a formal and explicit theological category, there are instances in which the verb tradere is used which highlight the deeper and more profound meaning of the word. The Scriptures, for example, are to be considered sacred and canonical because they were handed over to the Church [traditi sunt] as a divinely inspired—and hence authored—text.{24} And the reason why Catholic doctrine cannot be perfected by philosophical discovery is because it is a deposit committed to the Church [Christi Sponsae tradita].{25} These examples make clear that, although the Magisterium is understood to have the authority to make doctrinal judgments, or authentically interpret revelation, it does so only in its capacity as a custodian of something it has received.

It is also in the last paragraph of Dei Filius that the Church, while maintaining the immutability of the deposit of faith, explicitly and briefly acknowledges the development of doctrine when it quotes St. Vincent of Lérins. The immutability and homogeneity of Catholic doctrine is taught with these words:

[That] meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.

Referencing St. Vincent, this document affirms the development of doctrine:

May understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase as ages and centuries roll along, and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the whole church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same understanding.{26}

Vatican I’s words about development are brief and simply indicate the homogeneous nature of this development of dogma. How this development proceeds in the life of the Church was expressed at the Second Vatican Council. (This will be taken up in the speculative-theological section below.)

Despite the concise statements about tradition in Dei Filius, the nineteenth century witnessed a number of Catholic theological forays into a more profound understanding of tradition. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), for example, already as an Anglican, drew a speculative distinction between what he called an episcopal and a prophetic tradition. In addition to what he called at the time the “Episcopal tradition,” which was essentially Newman’s Anglican category for a creedal tradition traceable to apostolic teaching, he also described the ‘prophetic tradition’, which was more of an exploratory and speculative commentary on the creedal inheritance:

Prophets or Doctors are the interpreters of the revelation; they unfold and define its mysteries, they illuminate its documents, they harmonize its contents, they apply its promises. Their teaching is a vast system, not to be comprised in a few sentences, not to be embodied in one code or treatise, but consisting of a certain body of Truth, pervading the Church like an atmosphere, irregular in its shape from its very profusion and exuberance…partly written, partly unwritten, partly the interpretation, partly the supplement of Scripture, partly preserved in intellectual expressions, partly latent in the spirit and temper of Christians; poured to and fro in closets and upon the housetops, in liturgies, in controversial works, in obscure fragments, in sermons, in popular prejudices, in local customs. This I call Prophetical Tradition, existing primarily in the bosom of the Church itself, and recorded in such measure as Providence has determined in the writings of eminent men.{27}

While such a tradition encompasses intellectual work, it also, significantly, “pervades the Church like an atmosphere.” Next to theological work, one can observe phrases describing the sensus fidei. For example, this so-called prophetic tradition is “latent in the temper of Christians” and exists “primarily in the bosom of the Church itself.” The searching and exploratory nature of this kind of tradition is what drives development and gives the life of the Church a particular dynamism. In a similar vein Johann Adam Möhler (1796-1838) would refer to the “deep sure-guiding feeling” and “deep interior sense” which the Holy Spirit bequeaths to the body of Christians. “This general sense, this ecclesiastical consciousness is tradition, in the subjective sense of the word.”{28} While more restrained in his writing, and emphasizing the essential role of a living magisterium [vivens magisterium], Johann Baptist Franzelin (1816-1886) too acknowledged the progress of tradition that follows from a truth held at first more by use and practice than by distinct propositions [tenetur usu et praxi magis quam theoretica et distincta propositione].{29} In different but related ways, the Tübinger Schule, the Scuola Romana, and John Henry Newman highlighted a vital, pneumatologically driven understanding of tradition whereby the Church’s faith, delivered to the Apostles in its integrity, would nonetheless unfold over time in the mind of the Church [profectus quoad nos] by virtue of a deep-seated sensus Ecclesiae.{30}

These nineteenth-century thinkers would become influential in twentieth-century Catholic theological solutions to the problems posed by historical criticism. In the face of rising historical criticism, the gap between historical documentary evidence on the one hand, and what the Church held and believed on the other, resulted in the Modernist Crisis, which stimulated further reflection on what all was entailed in tradition. For his part, Maurice Blondel’s response to Alfred Loisy’s dogmatic evolutionism and historical reductionism—dubbed by Blondel as historicisme—entailed an appeal to a notion of tradition that amounted to more than a transmission of words or of historical monuments or texts. It amounted to the transmission of a reality that was possessed and lived out in the “depths of faith and practice.” For Blondel, it was not theological dialectic alone nor critical exegesis but rather tradition that elicited what was implicit in the deposit of faith. Hence, the historian who would only have recourse to these historical witnesses has an impoverished understanding of the historical reality that was Jesus and the early Church. Tradition is what made “something pass from the implicitly lived to the explicitly known” [de l’Implicite vécu à l’explicite connu].{31} Blondel’s appeal to experience, practice, and tradition was motivated by the conviction that the reality of Christ could not be captured by texts alone; there was more to the historical Jesus than what an analysis of historical documents could show. Both his understanding of history and of dogma separated him from Loisy and Tyrrell, respectively.{32} And both the notion of tradition and how it was to be employed in theological argumentation would be put into sharp relief in subsequent decades as the Assumptionist Movement gained both momentum and criticism.

When Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption in 1950, the theological rationale given for the definition was complex. Pius XII quoted Vatican I’s statement in Dei Filius about believing with faith all that which is in Scripture or tradition and proposed by the Church. But in the absence of explicit historical testimony to Mary’s Assumption, Scripture passages cited in support were oblique. The appeal to tradition, however, is multifaceted: he noted the consensus of bishops and faithful and appealed primarily to late patristic (c. seventh to eighth century) and medieval liturgical and theological texts, as well as to the existence of the feast, of churches dedicated to the mystery, and of theological arguments ex convenientia. Such witnesses from tradition become important because, as Pius XII taught, “the liturgy of the Church does not engender the Catholic faith, but rather springs from it.”{33} In other words, the primacy of Christian faith is the Church’s answer to the absence of earlier historical testimony. Regardless of whether one did or did not sympathize with Blondel’s understanding of tradition, there was definitely theological consensus around Blondel’s assessment of history: “the History in which Catholicism obliges us to believe is not only the history which the historian can establish.”{34} While the dogmatic advances were assured by an infallible magisterium and could find witnesses in historical documentation, they could never be reduced to, nor constrained by, this documentation because of the Reality that the Church possessed and transmitted,{35} with divine assistance, through its living tradition.

After the definition of the Assumption, the French Dominican and later peritus at the Second Vatican Council, Yves Congar, who later would draft key paragraphs on tradition in Dei Verbum, published his two-volume La Tradition et les traditions in 1960 (Essai historique) and 1963 (Essai théologique).{36} Its historical documentation and theological synthesis on the subject of tradition have yet to be surpassed. At that stage, then, all the major aspects of a theology of tradition were ready to be synthesized in the Second Vatican Council’s short but summative teaching on tradition in Dei Verbum.

The relevant paragraphs of Dei Verbum (ch.2, nos. 7–10) will serve as the base text for our second, speculative account of tradition. It is the most authoritative and extensive presentation of Catholic doctrine on tradition. One indication of its significance is that, after the Council, practically every treatise or book on fundamental theology or revelation contains a reflection, more or less extensive, on tradition.{37}

II. Speculative Theological Account of Tradition

A speculative theological account of tradition presupposes that reflection on tradition need not be relegated solely to controversy, apologetics or even “fundamental theology” but can, rather, reassume its place “among those Christian mysteries which it is the task of dogmatic theology to study.”{38} Such an approach is consonant with Thomistic theological principles whereby anything can be examined sub ratione Dei. A fortiori, the positive theological account above makes clear—from Scripture to the Church’s subsequent teaching, especially from Trent onwards—that tradition itself is a divinely willed instrument of God’s self-communication with His creatures, and therefore merits not only an apologetical examination (that is, one that considers tradition’s functionality and utility in controversy), but also a sapiential-theological one.

The controversial or apologetical-functional approach appeals to reason and examines something for its practical value. The sapiential-theological assumes faith and relates the reality it is examining to God and His plan of salvation. Let us take ecclesiastical authority as an example. The controversialist will mount arguments for the practical needs for authority and the chaos and disunity that ensues without it. A properly theological approach, by contrast, considers authority, not in this defensive way (e.g., by pointing out the practical defects in communions where an episcopal hierarchy is lacking) but in a sapiential way, that is, in a way that considers it as a part of the wise, ordered, and provident plan that God has established to gather together a scattered humanity.

The same dynamic applies when considering tradition. When tradition is considered apologetically, it becomes either the file cabinet that contains all the Catholic doctrines which Protestants do not have, or the Catholic way of interpreting Scripture which Protestants do not accept. Tradition is thereby reduced to a locus doctrinarum (when considered something extrinsic to Scripture) or an authoritative interpretation of doctrine (when considered ancillary to Scripture).

Considered theologically, however, tradition becomes the vehicle of God’s self-communication with His creatures{39} and the way by which the Church adheres to the word of God over time. Adherence and transmission are mutually ordered to one another: one cannot transmit that to which one does not yet adhere; and one cannot adhere to something that is not yet transmitted. This economy or concrete working out of God’s salvation in history has its origins in a divine transmission or a divine tradition: God “delivers” his Son into the world (Jn 3:16; Rom 8:32),{40} and the Father “delivers” the Holy Spirit through the Son (Jn 20:22; Gal 4:6). What the Father is transmitting, then, is the saving reality that is His inner life: our participation in which we call grace. “All things have been delivered [παρεδόθη] to me by my Father” (Mt 11:27; cf. 1 Jn 1:1-3). The dual (trans)mission of the Son and the Spirit establishes the Church which, in turn, continues to transmit the saving reality of God’s presence in history. “Tradition,” then, is a theological concept on par with “revelation” and the temporal trinitarian missions that are ultimately rooted in the eternal Trinitarian processions.{41}

The significance of this theological approach to tradition is that, in maintaining the divine origin of tradition and following through on its consequences, discourse about tradition does not devolve into an historicism whereby the Christian faith becomes reducible to what the historical record can prove according to the exigencies of modern historical science. If what is transmitted is ultimately of divine origin, then the only subject adequately ordered to perceive what belongs to this object of transmission is the subject to whom that object was transmitted: namely, the Church (and not historians, or philosophers, or even individual theologians).{42}

The concept of “tradition” implies three aspects without which tradition becomes unintelligible. Because tradition is the act of transmitting or handing on something, tradition implies (i) an object, or that which is transmitted; (ii) an act of transmitting; and (iii) a subject or agent who transmits. Naturally, these three distinct aspects are all correlative and, therefore, can never be disassociated. Nevertheless, it behooves a theological treatment of tradition to examine these three aspects for the sake of a deeper grasp of the Catholic faith. Due to its primacy, our theological treatment begins with the first aspect, namely, the object of transmission, which, according to Dei Verbum, is “everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith” (DV no. 8). Relative to the other two aspects of tradition, the object of tradition is primary because it bears a closer relationship to our last end, which is beatitude. The (iii) agent transmitting and (ii) the means by which this transmission takes place are all at the service of granting us a share in (i) God’s life, which the Gospel heralds.

2.1 Objective Tradition: God’s Revelation Transmitted

Tradition is a theological reality because it refers to God, both as its beginning and its end in the divinely ordained, salvific economy. As the transmission of revelation, tradition has God as its origin because God freely initiates and executes His plan of salvation. And tradition has God as its end because this transmitted revelation is the way by which creatures can reach beatitude. Dei Verbum [hereafter DV] teaches:

In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature. (see Eph 2:18; 2 Pt 1:4) (DV no. 2).

In the most general of terms, divine revelation is God’s self-communication to creatures. First through the patriarchs and prophets, and then in these latter days through his Son, God reveals who he is (the love that is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and what he wants for us (to have a share in this divine communion). This communication is a revelation because it makes what is hidden manifest; and it is gospel because it is the “source of all saving truth and moral teaching” (DV no. 7). Hence, this good news is essential for human creatures to reach their ultimate end, for without it, we would know with certainty neither our destiny, nor how to achieve it.{43}

At the end of his earthly sojourn, Christ commissions the Apostles to make disciples and to teach all to observe his commandments (Mt 28:19-20). The object of this commission, according to Dei Verbum, is “that Gospel which is the source of all saving truth and moral teaching” and those “heavenly gifts” which the apostles are to impart. Dei Verbum continues:

This commission was faithfully fulfilled by the Apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances handed on [tradiderunt] what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did, or what they had learned through the prompting of the Holy Spirit. (DV no. 7)

In short, the Apostles hand on everything they received from Christ. Dei Verbum alludes to the density of this revelation that is to be handed on:

And so, the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved by an unending succession of preachers until the end of time. Therefore the Apostles, handing on what they themselves had received, warn the faithful to hold fast to the traditions which they have learned either by word of mouth or by letter (see 2 Thess. 2:15), and to fight in defense of the faith handed on once and for all (see Jude 1:3). Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith of the peoples of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes. (DV no. 8)

The tripartite “teaching, life, and worship” alludes to the threefold office of Christ, Who is prophet, priest, and king (cf. LG, ch. 2). In giving Himself to the Apostles, Christ is giving the way, the truth, and the life (Jn 14:6); a law of conduct (including not only the moral law, but also an organized way of life for the Church), a doctrine (or the sum of revealed truth), and a form of worship (including all the sacraments and the ministries necessary to carry them out). These three sum up all that the Church is and believes: her Catholic faith and her identity as Christ’s mystical body, the Spirit’s temple, and God’s holy people. In other words, what the Apostles received and handed on was a new covenant that regulates the Church’s relationship with God and ushers her towards Him. Indeed, tradition and Scripture “are like a mirror in which the pilgrim Church on earth looks at God, from whom she has received everything, until she is brought finally to see Him as He is, face to face (see 1 Jn 3:2)” (DV no. 7).

Because of tradition’s divine origin, its content is normative. Its content is also made accessible to us by what the medievals called the documenta or what moderns call the monumenta traditionis. These monuments or expressions of tradition can be distinguished between those apostolic monuments which are constitutive (generative of) that new covenant and those which, subsequently, are only declarative or protective, and thus continue to transmit this apostolic heritage. The constitutive monuments are Scripture and unwritten (divine-apostolic) traditions (whose content we now know about through writing but which first emerged by preaching and practice).{44} The chief declarative monuments which clarify and transmit the constitutive content include the teaching of the Magisterium, inclusive of all the gradations in magisterial teaching; the liturgy; the writings of the Fathers (and Doctors) of the Church; the writings of saints; canons, laws, and customs in the life of the Church; and the writings of theologians. Significantly, the difficulty—if not impossibility—of delineating here and now in an absolute way tradition’s content, or what belongs or does not belong to this deposit, has led theologians in modernity to question the precise nature of revelation.

The theologically liberal solution is essentially to equate revelation with some kind of religious experience which the Church transmits over generations. This solution redefines (and relativizes) what a doctrinal proposition is: merely an expression of this experience. By reconceiving revelation as experience and voiding it of doctrinal content, the need to delineate what is and what is not of the Christian faith dissolves. Hence, the normativity of tradition’s monuments is recast according to their efficacy in nourishing this revelatory religious experience.

The opposite solution (though more of a caricature) is to consider the deposit of faith as a collection of propositions (e.g., the articles of the Creed) which, because of all that is implicit in them, are exhaustive of all that is transmitted. Prima facie, this seems to be a more straightforward though facile foundation for the task of ascertaining what does or does not belong to the deposit. The greatest critic of this hypothetical solution is the historical record, which fails to reveal any indisputable consensus in the early Church about key Catholic doctrines such as the Holy Trinity but instead shows a number of doctrinal divergences.{45} The hypothesis of an oral tradition, should one appeal to it, might explain delays in historical testimony, but does nothing to explain the doctrinal variances in history. Between the anti-dogmatic, liberal account of tradition and what might be called a static account (because of the supposition that all in the deposit was explicitly given to the Apostles and transmitted, but not always in ways verifiable by history [e.g., through an oral tradition]), lies a commonly held understanding of development of the tradition consonant with Church teaching. (See ‘Immutability and Development’ below). Accordingly, the Church teaches both that the object of tradition was in the Church’s possession by the end of the apostolic age and that the Church’s understanding of it has grown over time, making explicit that which was earlier only implicit in the deposit of faith.{46}

It is important to note that maintaining the propositional dimension of revelation—that is, understanding tradition as the transmission of Christ’s deeds and words and, by extension, the inspired words and deeds of His Apostles (traditio constitutiva)—entails neither the naïve assumption of an ability to “list” the contents of the faith, nor the exclusion of the communicative or revelatory power of the sacraments and other actions, rites, rituals, and customs established and handed on by the apostolic generation. John Henry Newman, for example, used the phrase “Christian Idea” to refer to this complex reality; but this reality must have included words such as “The Word became flesh.” Scripture itself testifies to such words, but also testifies to the surplus of Christ’s words and deeds that were not recorded (cf. Jn 21:25). Hence, the object of transmission, though it includes doctrine, is also more than just doctrine. It is the totality of means to living a life in Christ, a totality which can never be fully known now, but that is susceptible to an ever-deeper understanding by the subject transmitting it (the Church). Hence, the Second Vatican Council teaches that “the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her” (DV no. 8).

2.2 The Subject Transmitting God’s Revelation

The subject of tradition is the agent who bears and transmits the object of tradition (i.e., the new covenant). In order to account for the different levels of responsibility in this task, it is common to distinguish between a proximate subject of tradition, that is, the Church, and the remote subject of tradition, that is, God (or the Holy Spirit by appropriation).

The Remote Subject: God

Because tradition is an integral part of God’s saving plan, the subject of tradition is coextensive with the divine missions of the Son and Holy Spirit to reveal, redeem, and sanctify. In this way, God is the ultimate subject of tradition because God the Father sent His Son (cf. 1 Jn 4:14; Gal 4:4), Who sent His Spirit (cf. Jn 14; Jn 20:22; Acts 2) and commissioned the Apostles (Jn 20:21; Mt 28:18–20).

How to attribute divine acts to the Persons of the Trinity is a matter of dispute. While some theologians emphasize the indivisibility of God in all acts ad extra, others seek to attribute particular acts properly to one divine person or another. If we follow St. Thomas Aquinas, God’s transmission of the new covenant, though an act of an indivisible God common to all three Persons, is nevertheless an act conducted in a trinitarian mode, or a mode that reflects the eternal relations of each Person. To take the case of the Incarnation, the entire Trinity acts to unite Christ’s sacred humanity to the Person of the Word. “What belongs to the act of assuming is common to the three persons; but what pertains to the term belongs to one person in such a way that it does not belong to another. For the three persons caused the human nature to be united to one person, the Son.”{47} In like manner, though it is the Holy Spirit that is the term of the trinitarian act at Pentecost, it is through that visible mission of the Spirit that the entire Trinity is given to the Church. With respect to tradition, God transmits the new covenant and does so in a trinitarian mode through the visible and invisible missions of the Son and Spirit. Once the trinitarian mode of activity is acknowledged, all actions can be fittingly appropriated to a particular Person—in this case, the Holy Spirit—such as the inspiration of the Scriptures and the guidance of the Church.

There are a number of reasons for why it is appropriate to name the Holy Spirit the subject of tradition. As the Spirit is the vinculum amoris between the Father and the Son, it is fitting that He be the bearer and transmitter of tradition, whose object is the covenant by which we enter into communion with the Father through the Son. As the work of the Spirit accompanies the mission of the Son (e.g., through the fecundation of Mary’s womb and the driving of Christ into the desert) so the Spirit accompanies the mission of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. And as the Holy Spirit is teacher and advocate (Jn 14:16), it is fitting that the Spirit transmit the holy teaching that is revelation.

The Proximate Subject of Tradition: The Church

Whereas God is ultimately responsible for the transmission of the new covenant, He has willed a Church to carry on the missions of the Son and the Spirit.{48} While God through the Son and Spirit hands over the new covenant to the apostles, this transmission is to be perpetuated until the second coming:

But in order to keep the Gospel forever whole and alive within the Church, the Apostles left bishops as their successors, “handing over” to them “the authority to teach in their own place” (DV no. 7).{49}

With the transfer of authority from the Apostles (and other apostolic men) to subsequent generations, it is common for theologians to distinguish within the subject of tradition that part whose activity is constitutive of the covenant by virtue of divine authority or inspiration (i.e., prophets, Christ, Apostles, evangelists) and that part whose activity continues the covenant by faithfully guarding it. It is this constitutive phase that includes, through inspiration, the inclusion of, for example, the Scriptures or particular practices that are traceable to apostolic origin. This distinction between the traditio constitutiva and traditio continuativa is closely related to, but not exactly the same as, that between apostolic and ecclesiastical (or ecclesial) tradition. This former distinction pertains to the kind of mediation exercised by the subject: vision or inspiration in the case of traditio constitutiva, as the case may be; and assistance and guidance in the case of traditio continuativa. The latter distinction pertains primarily to the origin of the realities transmitted such as the canonical Scriptures or particular rules of conduct and discipline (e.g., the practice of confessing faith with Baptism in the case of apostolic tradition, and the wealth of theological reflection or devotions that have arisen over the course of time in the case of ecclesiastical tradition).{50} The Church here and now is the subject of both, for she is custodian of both the apostolic inheritance and the concrete practices and insights of her own patrimony. In her teaching, life, and worship, the Church holds fast to that which was entrusted to her:

Holding fast to this deposit the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread and in prayers (see Acts 2:42, Greek text), so that holding to, practicing and professing the heritage of the faith, it becomes on the part of the bishops and faithful a single common effort. (DV no. 10)

Not only the bishops, but all the faithful have a responsibility in this traditio continuativa or the transmission of faith. The entire Church, then, is the subject of tradition, transmitting it by holding fast and witnessing to it. The gift of an infallible adherence to the deposit of faith by the entire Church is referred to as the Church’s infallibility in credendo.{51}

Because this People of God with whom Christ establishes a new covenant is a structured people, a royal priesthood, a body with different members and distinct roles,

there is a diversity of ministry but a oneness of mission. Christ conferred on the Apostles and their successors the duty of teaching, sanctifying, and ruling in His name and power. But the laity likewise share in the priestly, prophetic, and royal office of Christ and therefore have their own share in the mission of the whole people of God in the Church and in the world (Apostolicam Actuositatem, no. 2).

The diverse activities constituting a “single common effort” on the part of the Church are exercised with divine assistance by the members of the Church according to their particular role or state of life (cf. 1 Cor 12).

Included in this common effort are all the faithful, including the laity, who, by virtue of their Baptism, transmit the faith by spreading “abroad a living witness to Him, especially by means of a life of faith and charity” (LG no. 12). This living witness and fidelity to the Gospel is the primary way by which the faithful—irrespective of their state (e.g., cleric, lay, religious)—guard the deposit of faith.{52} It includes the gift of an understanding of the faith (sensus fidei) and attractiveness in speech “so that the power of the Gospel might shine forth in their daily social and family life” (LG no. 35).        

That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God. Through it, the people of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints, penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life. (LG no. 12)

The People of God in its entirety is said to be the proximate subject, bearer, or transmitter of the object of tradition (i.e., the new covenant). But as this People is a hierarchically structured people, those with ultimate oversight and responsibility for faithfully guarding and authentically explaining [fideliter custodienda et infallibiliter declaranda]{53} the deposit of faith are those who, with episcopal succession, have the “sure gift of truth,”{54} that is, the bishops in union with the pope.

This sure gift of truth is rooted in the divinely given authority that comes from episcopal consecration. Indeed, because tradition is the means by which God, in His wisdom, chooses to perpetuate the new covenant in the Church until Christ’s second coming, God Himself guides the Church with an enduring indefectibility. At particular moments, God’s assistance is assured in such a way that particular, solemn, ecclesial acts of transmitting the covenant are guaranteed. These include, for example, the efficacy of the sacraments and of solemn dogmatic definitions.

The magisterium’s role in active tradition is threefold.{55} First, the Magisterium discerns what, in the historical life of the Church, is authentically of the Gospel, contributing “toward the holiness of life and increase in faith” (DV no. 8). But many things that belong to the Catholic tradition vary in their value. Hence, the second responsibility of the magisterium is to assign some value to historical writings, theses, customs, rites, ideas, devotions, and the like. The magisterium, for example, ascertains what books are canonical or what pertains to the essence of a sacrament; it discerns the difference between a Church Father and a mere ecclesiastical writer; it judges which ecclesiastical writer’s teaching is eminent (qualifying him or her for the title Doctor Ecclesiae); it renders judgments concerning what is theological opinion, or what is teaching on faith and morals requiring an obsequium religiosum, what is a truth closely connected to revelation such that, without it, revelation cannot be adhered to (de fide tenenda), and what is a revealed truth belonging to the deposit of faith (de fide divina).{56} In recognizing and declaring (but not creating) some value of a given reality (e.g., the custom of facing east during worship, the veiling of females during worship, dietary laws, the prohibition of rebaptizing, the reservation of the priesthood to men, or the dogma of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven), the “assisted magisterium turns the material elements of historical tradition into the formal elements of normative tradition.”{57} Finally, the Magisterium intervenes to render judgment or offer an authentic interpretation of the content transmitted. “The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ” (DV no. 8). This interpretation can be declared according to the norms governing the exercise of either the solemn (extraordinary) Magisterium or ordinary Magisterium.

Insofar as the Magisterium is the authentic interpreter of God’s word, it is a rule or criterion of faith. While regula fidei was used in antiquity to refer to the object of faith or divine doctrine, there is a sense, by now common, in which the category can also be applied to the magisterium. According to Aquinas:

Now the formal object of faith is the First Truth, as manifested in Holy Writ and the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth. Consequently, whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and Divine rule, to the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth manifested in Holy Writ, has not the habit of faith.{58}

For St. Thomas, the motive of faith is the First Truth, but this First Truth communicates itself through the historical and ecclesial organs established by divine wisdom, including preaching, Scripture, and magisterial intervention. If one is to maintain Aquinas’s and Vatican I’s teaching on faith according to which the motive for the act of faith is nothing but God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived (and not, say, the human mind or even the “ecclesial mind”), it follows that the Christian’s act of faith must be motivated by God having spoken. The Magisterium, however, can be considered, to use Cajetan’s phrase, the “ministra objecti fidei” insofar as, in fulfilling its divinely instituted mission, it determines the material object of faith.{59} In this sense, the Magisterium can be considered a rule or criterion of the material object of faith, but can never be confused with the formal motive of faith, which is always God. Hence, the Magisterium is “not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully” (DV no. 10). On the occasions when the Church through the Magisterium renders a solemn judgment about the deposit of faith, it must also submit to it, much like the person who submits to the judgment about the good made by his conscience.{60} Hence, the Magisterium is a rule but is also ruled.

Tradition’s Immutability and Progress (Or the Development of Tradition)

Theologians can place the consideration of tradition’s immutability and progress in different locations within a treatise on tradition. We consider tradition’s immutability and progress— or what is commonly referred to as “development”—within this section on the subject of tradition because what progress exists, in fact, is not in the object of tradition, which is complete and given “once for all” (Jude 1:3), but on the level of the ecclesial subject who bears tradition. That is, when theologians say with Dei Verbum that “this tradition which comes from the Apostles develops [proficit] in the Church,” what is meant, both by common theological consensus and confirmed by Dei Verbum itself, is that “there is a growth [crescit] in the understanding [perceptio] of the realities and words which have been handed down” (DV no. 8).{61} The growth, then, is on the side of the proximate subject of tradition [quoad nos], not the object [in se].

The Second Vatican Council maintains the immutability of the object of tradition. It affirms that the Christian covenant is “definitive” and that no other revelation is to be expected (DV no. 4). Furthermore, in its affirmation of tradition’s growth, the footnote of the text refers the reader to the relevant paragraph of Vatican I’s Dei Filius that also affirms a growth in understanding; following Vincent of Lérins rule, however, this growth can proceed only according to the same doctrine and the same meaning.{62} The ecclesial subject, then, is in possession of an integral deposit that is the mystery of the new covenant; this covenant cannot grow but can be penetrated ever more deeply by the subject of tradition, i.e., the Church. Three important factors contribute to the Church’s growth in understanding of this mystery: (1) contemplation and study or speculative theological work; (2) an intimate and experiential understanding of spiritual things, tantamount to the sensus fidei fidelis et fidelium (cf. LG 12); and (3) the divinely assisted teaching office, as noted above.{63}

Theological discourse that reflects specifically on tradition’s progress with attention to these factors is often referred to discourse concerning theories of dogmatic development.{64} Theologians differ with respect to the weight, priority, and relationships accorded to these three factors. The first two factors are aptly categorized as dispositive or instrumental causes of development in the hands of the proximate efficient cause, which is the third factor. To these can be added extrinsic factors, so-called “occasional causes,” or conditions in history (e.g., the rise of some heresy) that also contribute to the tradition’s development. How one integrates historical factors into one’s theory of development is a delicate matter, for while the Church has consistently condemned a Modernist historicism according to which elements of the Catholic tradition are reduced to socio-political or practical explanations, it is nonetheless undeniable that the Church, like her Savior, bears the marks of both her past and her present historical context, for, in order to complete her divine mission, she “enters into the history of mankind” (LG no. 9) and continues in her teaching and life that divine condescension whereby supernatural truths are made intelligible to human creatures (cf. DV no. 13).

2.3 Active Tradition: The Transmission of God’s Revelation

Tradition is the all-encompassing transmission of the new covenant, which is ultimately God’s grace and all the means necessary for communicating that grace. The traditiones are the ways by which this transmission takes place by some means other than by writing. This distinction means that, in God’s wisdom, He has chosen diverse ways of transmitting and mediating His revelation, both written and unwritten. The Church as Christ’s mystical body continues Christ’s words and deeds through its teaching, life, and worship. In the most general sense of the word, active tradition is the Church’s act of transmission—in ways both written and unwritten—of the Gospel. Tradition is “essentially the continuity of the religious life in a community, the expression—sometimes fixed, sometimes evolving in its forms—of its faith, of its hope, and of its love.”{65} In this holistic mode of transmission, tradition forms a via vitae, a milieu, or that nourishing and formative ecclesial environment in which one gradually attains to “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph 4:13). In this sense, tradition is not only an authority under which we live, but also “a whole world in which we live.”{66} It is for this reason that the Council calls it a “living tradition, whose wealth is poured into the practice and life [praxim vitamque] of the believing and praying Church” (DV no. 8).

According to this holistic understanding of tradition, there is a primacy of tradition considered as a mode of transmission over Scripture. For this tradition was already at work on the part of the Apostles prior to any writer making a record of it. The kerygma—in which is implied also doctrine—and the celebration of the sacraments preceded the documentary witness to these activities in the New Testament. This is perhaps most evident in Baptism and the Eucharist.{67} In this way, the holistically understood tradition includes the canonical Scriptures and is able to recognize them as canonical. Thus, the Church is beholden first and foremost to this tradition that, in a specific sense, exceeds Scripture because it contains everything that has been handed on. Hence the Council teaches:

Through the same tradition the Church’s full canon of the sacred books is known, and the sacred writings themselves are more profoundly understood and unceasingly made active in her; and thus God, who spoke of old, uninterruptedly converses with the bride of His beloved Son; and the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel resounds in the Church, and through her, in the world, leads unto all truth those who believe and makes the word of Christ dwell abundantly in them (see Col. 3:16). (DV no. 8)

Scripture’s normativity is based on its embeddedness in this more fundamental tradition.

Because the New Testament is but a finite, albeit inspired, witness to this living proclamation and cultic celebration of the faith, the question naturally arises (alluded to above)—as to whether that which is transmitted in this unwritten way surpasses in content that which is transmitted through Scripture. While theologians differ on the precise contours of Scripture’s and tradition’s material content, the Second Vatican Council teaches their inseparability:

Hence there exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence. (DV no. 9)

Reiterating the Tridentine decree on tradition, the Church is content to teach the necessity of tradition and its connection to Scripture. The precise nature of this connection can be elaborated in different ways, depending on whether one upholds the material sufficiency thesis; but at a minimum, we can say that tradition and the Magisterium serve to interpret the Scriptures, whereas the Scriptures, so interpreted, nourish the faith of the Church and, when so interpreted in a definitive way, serve as a norm to which the Church herself must submit.

Active tradition considered in a more restricted sense, however, refers to that unique mode of transmission that is unwritten (as opposed to written), or the sum total of activities, rites, and customs that communicate or transmit the deposit of faith. Such unwritten modes of transmission do not preclude the possibility of a so-called oral tradition. Nor are they necessarily devoid of words or doctrine; indeed, sacraments, for example, have words as an integral part of them. Nevertheless, some of these traditions also communicate the faith not only in an unwritten way, but also without words, or through a network of symbols that is more experiential-immersive than conceptual-didactic.

One major breakthrough in theologies of tradition in the modern period is the recognition that these individual means—means with and without words—work cumulatively such that, together, their power becomes formative for those who participate in them. Tradition so understood is that which forms faith habits through liturgy, devotions, gestures, customs, and feasts, not to mention the architectural, musical, and artistic heritage within the tradition. These monuments and rituals are not only visible or audible echoes of the Church’s living faith and, hence, worthy of theological reflection, but are also means by which the Church cultivates, strengthens, and thereby transmits, her faith.{68}

While many of these practices involve words (such as interrupting work to say the Angelus, or signing oneself with the cross), others do not (such as ascetical practices like fasting and abstinence). Though prayers accompany the laying on of hands at an Ordination, the silent gesture itself conveys for those who witness it a communication of power to the one receiving it.{69} Devotion to the Child of Prague, for example, is ultimately an affective adherence to the Christological teachings of Nicaea and Ephesus. A church’s cruciform architecture is a venerable tradition which, without words or writing, communicates the link between Christ’s sacrifice and the Church’s worship. One need not even be familiar with all the layers of symbolic and associative content that a baldacchino possesses in order to cultivate a deeper understanding and love of the Eucharist.{70}

As an unwritten mode of communication, tradition is effective already prior to verbal capacity or the age of reason and is, hence, the primary mode of transmitting the faith to young children. All Catholics, however, young or old, like children learning their mother tongue, are immersed in a tradition and thereby learn to speak the “Catholic language,” as it were, and thereby develop that Catholic sensibility and reverence that contributes to a robust sensus fidei.

This is not to say that tradition can function without propositions (doctrinal or devotional). Indeed, the existence of a nonverbal mode of communication (i.e., gesta) is not at all the same as affirming a nonverbal, aconceptual, or nonproponible revelation. It is simply to recognize that one teaches and learns not only by talking, listening, and memorizing, but also by living and doing. In short, there are unwritten, nonverbal modes of faith formation, insufficient in themselves, but which are nevertheless an essential part of tradition because, without them, the full import of doctrinal statements becomes elusive. Perhaps the most eminent example is the liturgy—not only its texts, but its entire celebration—which not only manifests or embodies Catholic doctrine, but also provides it a fuller meaning. Moreover, when one is immersed in these rites, customs, and institutions, they can strengthen one’s adherence to God’s word or create doctrinal associations whose more precise connections can be subsequently uncovered in a more discursive mode.{71} In this way, the written or verbal and unwritten (i.e., non-verbal) modes of faith-transmission, analogous to Christ’s words and deeds, have an “inner unity” (DV no. 2).

This understanding of tradition as a unique, unwritten, mode of communication contributes to that primacy of tradition alluded to above, a tradition that includes but is not limited to documentary evidence. This is what justifies the Church’s dogmatic tradition, or the Church’s capacity to make doctrinal judgments that move beyond what can be proven from documentary (i.e., historical) evidence alone, whether that documentation be scriptural, theological, archeological, etc. Because the subject of tradition is the Church, and because she is already in possession of that supernatural deposit which she transmits, the bases of her credenda are not reducible to the documentation that can be marshalled forward as a witness to them but, rather, are proportional to her supernatural mission. In short, because of the divine origin of both tradition and the subject who bears it, its mode of transmission is also divinely guided and includes all those gifts which are necessary for the successful transmission of its object, such as the Church’s indefectibility and infallibility:

So it is that Tradition is the living Gospel, proclaimed by the Apostles…Tradition, therefore, is the history of the Spirit who acts in the Church’s history through the mediation of the Apostles and their successors…Therefore, through the apostolic ministry it is Christ himself who reaches those who are called to the faith. The distance of the centuries is overcome and the Risen One offers himself alive and active for our sake, in the Church and in the world today.

This is our great joy. In the living river of Tradition, Christ is not 2,000 years away but is really present among us and gives us the Truth, he gives us the light that makes us live and find the way towards the future.{72}