Bishop Mikhail (Semyonov). Introductory Discourse on Holy Tradition #
Before engaging in a polemic against sectarian views on various issues, it is necessary to say at least a few words about the sources of doctrine that they accept and that we accept.
As is well known, almost all sectarians regard Holy Scripture as the sole source of faith and reject any references to the so-called “tradition of the Church.”
They claim that truth is found only in Scripture. Tradition, the opinions of the Fathers, they consider “husks that only pollute the truth of the Gospel, Christ’s good news—a heap of refuse amidst which it becomes difficult to find the revealed truth.”
We would be bound hand and foot in our further discourse if we did not at least briefly expose the falsehood of such reasoning.
What is Holy Tradition? #
First, it is a supplement to Scripture; second, it is an explanation of Scripture; and third, finally, it is the past and present revelation that lives within the living Church.
Do we need a supplement to Scripture, or does it already contain everything, leaving nothing more to be said?
“There is nothing more to say… Everything has been said,” sectarians claim.
Is this true? The Holy Evangelist John tells us that not everything about the Lord Jesus has been recorded:
“And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." (John 21:25)
We might think that the rest is unimportant, of no great consequence. However, in the writings of the Apostle Paul, we find a saying of the Lord that is not recorded in the Gospels:
“It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20:35)
Was this saying—omitted from the Gospels among the many things that four books could not contain—unnecessary?
And if this saying had reached us not through the Apostle Paul but, for example, through The Shepherd of Hermas or the Epistle of Barnabas, would we not have kissed this “goodly pearl” upon its discovery?
And what about the holy Apostles? How often do we find references to an unwritten revelation—an apostolic word that was meant to be inscribed only upon the tablets of Christian hearts?
The Apostle Paul wrote:
“Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle." (2 Thess. 2:15)
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust." (1 Tim. 6:20)
And in his letter to the Corinthians, he praises them for keeping the traditions as he delivered them:
“Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you." (1 Cor. 11:2)
The Fathers, beginning in the 1st and 2nd centuries, repeatedly point out that many decrees are not found in Scripture.
“Let tradition be your law." (Tertullian, De Corona Militis, ch. 4)
It would be strange to assert that all of this—unwritten yet preserved in the believing and reverent memory of Christians—is unnecessary, unworthy, and of less value than the “gold” of the Apostolic writings.
Indeed, the Apostle commands us to keep Tradition and to fulfill it. And to preserve Tradition in the sense of fulfilling it, we must also preserve in memory the very commandment of the Apostle—his word—even if it was not written down.
Moreover, by the very nature of things, much that was fundamentally important in the life of the Christian community could not be written down and did not need to be.
Take, for example, the practice of making the sign of the cross. Once the commandment regarding the sign of the cross was given, it was immediately realized in practice. The commandment became a fact, and writing it down became unnecessary, for what firmer record could exist than the countless daily repetitions of this practice in Christian life?
And there must have been many such commandments, inscribed not on paper but in the practice of life. Regarding sacred traditions, St. Basil the Great says:
“Of the doctrines and preachings preserved in the Church, some we possess from written instruction, while others we have received in secrecy through apostolic tradition. Both have the same force for piety, and no one—who is even slightly knowledgeable in ecclesiastical ordinances—will contradict this. For if we dare to reject the unwritten customs as of little importance, we shall imperceptibly damage the Gospel in the most essential matters, or rather, we shall leave an empty name from the apostolic preaching." (On the Holy Spirit to Amphilochius, ch. 27)
Where does the practice of triple immersion in baptism come from? The words of invocation in the Eucharist? Are they not from this unwritten and unspoken teaching, which our Fathers preserved in silence, inaccessible to curiosity and investigation, having been thoroughly taught that silence guards the sanctity of the Mysteries?
If we reject Tradition, we will leave only an empty name for the Gospel.
Indeed, this is the case: if we destroy or obliterate the practice that reflects Christ’s teaching—the very life of the Church, which has absorbed the power of the Gospel and established its spirit in eternal forms—would this not mean destroying the Gospel in its most essential part?
Yet, more than a supplement, Tradition is necessary as an explanation of Scripture.
First of all, Scripture itself does not exist until there is faith in Tradition.
Holy Scripture is a collection of certain books of the Old and New Testaments. But why do sectarians consider these particular books to be Scripture and not, for example, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of James, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Book of Enoch, and so on?
Is it because these books were written by the apostles? But judging by the titles, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of James also claim to be written by apostles.
And what about the Book of Judges? We do not even know who wrote it.
Clearly, the books of Scripture have been recognized as divine revelation through Tradition because they have been passed down to us by our Christian forebears—by the Church—as revealed writings.
Without faith in Tradition, one cannot distinguish the Gospel of John from the apocryphal and heretical Gospel of Thomas.
The same applies to the interpretation of Scripture.
Whenever two different interpretations of a particular passage of Scripture exist, it is evident that one must be true and the other false.
For instance, if I see in Scripture a commandment regarding the priesthood, but sectarians do not see such a commandment in the same passage, then clearly, one of us is mistaken.
How can we determine who is right?
I believe the correct and clear approach is as follows:
First, it is assumed that those who lived close to the apostles—both in time and in spirit—their disciples, must have had a clearer knowledge of what the Lord and His apostles taught and commanded.
This means we must turn to the writings of the saints—Hermas, Barnabas, Ignatius the God-bearer, and others—who heard the revelation of truth at the feet of the apostles. In other words, we must seek the truth in Tradition.
It is no coincidence that sectarians hold in high regard The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, a book that stands as a monument of Tradition.
Second, we must acknowledge that those who fully embodied the truth of Christ’s life, who placed their souls entirely under the yoke of the Lord, who bore witness to their devotion to God’s truth through their blood, and who, by the crystal purity of their hearts, demonstrated their ability to perceive God—that is, to comprehend the revelation of His truth—such holy men could not have spoken falsehoods in their preaching to the world and in their writings.
Therefore, in cases where the truth is unclear, we must not rely on our own thoughts—obscured by sin and moral estrangement from God, from Love, and from Life—but rather turn to their writings as the transmission of the Church’s Tradition.
In other words, we must turn to the Tradition of the Fathers.
As we shall see, this does not mean asserting the infallibility of any single Church Father.
Third, we must recognize that the successors of the apostles—the bishops of individual churches, entrusted with the pastoral care of specific cities and regions—naturally received, along with the responsibility for safeguarding “the souls of the faithful” and the Lamb of the Holy Eucharist, the right understanding of Christ’s teaching through Tradition—His very truth.
From this follows the principle that the collective opinion of all bishops, expressed at a Council, carries a greater probability of truth—in other words, that Councils preserve the purity of Christ’s understanding of the truth through Tradition.
“By the order and succession of bishops, the Church’s Tradition from the apostles and the preaching of truth have come down to us. And this serves as the fullest proof that the same life-giving faith has been preserved in the Church from the apostles to the present day and has been transmitted in its true form. In the same way, Polycarp, appointed by the apostles as bishop in Smyrna, having lived to an old age, always taught what he had learned from the apostles, what the Church has handed down, and what alone is true. Likewise, the Church of Ephesus, founded by Paul and having among its members John until the time of Trajan, is a true witness of apostolic Tradition. Because of this succession of bishops, Church Tradition is free from the uncertainty and instability that characterize the teachings of heretics…" (St. Irenaeus of Lyons)
None of this, however, means that we claim the infallibility of bishops.
The essence of the teaching on Tradition is not found merely in what has been said above.
The core of all that we have discussed is this: the truth of revelation can be understood differently by different people, and therefore, the correct understanding of truth must be sought.
In this search, we are faced with a choice.
On one hand, we—people of this world—stand before the truth with uncertainty, relying on our own interpretation, despite having done very little to make our souls and consciences into mirrors of truth and temples of the Holy Spirit.
On the other hand, there is a multitude of people who have beheld the Lord in the depths of their souls, whose minds, hearts, and wills have been united with Christ.
Their collective understanding is Tradition.
And I believe it would be the work of Satan if I did not exchange my own opinion—the opinion of those who live according to the flesh—for the opinion of these enlightened and illumined men.
I once shared what I felt when I looked at the painting The First Ecumenical Council in the patriarchal hall.
St. Athanasius, Paphnutius of Ptolemais—men whose very gaze revealed the spirit within them.
I said to myself: these men could not have spoken falsehood.
Their Tradition is true. They dared to say, “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us." (Acts 15:28)
I said this… I said it in the fervor of being captivated by the strictly inspired faces of the Fathers.
Now, as I sit before this paper, I would not say it so readily.
And therein lies the truth of our teaching on Tradition: it is not a doctrine of human infallibility.
As men, people cannot guarantee the truth of their words.
And the words of these Fathers of the Council, their tradition, I might have dared to consider as 7/8 of the truth, as the most probable true teaching—if we were to call the teaching of the Fathers alone Tradition, if, for example, we believed in the infallibility of a council of bishops.
If sectarians represent our doctrine of Tradition in this way, they are mistaken. This, if you will, is the doctrine of Catholicism and the Synodal Church, which has deified the episcopate.
“The immutability and preservation of Tradition in its integrity is conditioned by the perpetual presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, guiding it into all truth. For it is said: ‘And God hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers’ (1 Cor. 12:28), and all the other instruments of the Spirit’s operation. So where the Church is, there is also the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and every grace: and the Spirit is truth. Therefore, those who have no part in Him neither suck at the breasts of their mother unto life, nor drink from the purest fountain flowing from the body of Christ, but dig for themselves ‘broken cisterns’ in the earth (Jer. 2:13), drinking foul water from the swamp, fleeing from the Church’s faith so as not to be rebuked, rejecting the Spirit so as not to be taught." (St. Irenaeus)
Tradition, according to the teaching of the truly faithful, is the voice of the Church’s all-encompassing love.
Tradition is the Lord’s revelation for the sake of the gathered faithful—or even those not gathered but living in the unity of faith.
We believe that Christ lives in the community of the faithful, permeating with His power the believers who are of one mind, granting the Holy Spirit to the love that is faithful to Him, a love that is free from any ambition to exalt the Church itself.
And because Christ inspires the Church, she carries within herself a constant power of revelation and knowledge of the truth.
In the Church’s love—which wonderfully and mysteriously unites the believing living with the believers of past ages—there is revealed the possibility for the Church to faithfully preserve that which has been handed down in Tradition from the time of the apostles.
It is not memory but love, aided by the Lord, that preserves Tradition.
At the same time, within this love exists the possibility of new revelation.
When the Church (not the bishops) gathered at the Councils, she did not discover truth merely through historical records, as had been previously taught (although such records were necessary and were made precisely because of the loving connection of the present Church with the past). Rather, the truth was primarily revealed by the Holy Spirit, whom they drew upon through their love and their prayer.
This is the essence of Tradition as revelation, preserved in the Church by all her people.
And the holy Ecumenical Councils handed down Tradition not because this was the decision of the bishops, but because this was received by the universal consciousness of the Church.
For the holy Fathers, the immutable truth is that which their love preserved from the past, which the Church received from them as sacred, and which was sanctified through its reception in the common consciousness of God’s people, led by Christ.
One may deny Tradition as it is understood in this way.
But is not denying Tradition in this sense the same as denying that the Holy Spirit is living, and not dead, within the Church of Christ—a Spirit who is meant to teach the Church all things and to remind her of all that was handed down by the Lord and the apostles, even that which was not written? (John 14:26).