4 Points On Tradition

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4 Points on Tradition (Paradosis)

(My practice notes/outline / rough draft that I adlibbed off of)


\ I was looking to something on the nature of Tradition, concerning Christianity, the Bible etc. and was happily surprised to see my best friend do a nicely produced start up video, talking on the basics of Catechism.



1) The first point is that Tradition is not bad. At worst tradition is actually neutral. The Greek Lexiconic word, Paradosis comes from an ancient word for handing over a city, or some other thing like an inheritance. And in the context is very important when it comes to the Bible certain parts of the Bible like the Book of Job, and the book of Genesis seem to have existed as a kind of oral tradition, before they became written down. And this same phenomenon was true of the early Church, where it seems like it took a decade or more before people the Evangelists, got around to actually writing the Gospels. According to Hippolytus they did referring to the Logismoi the Aramaic saying of Jesus that were earlier recorded and that became the basis of the book of Matthew, that was finally written down because the disciples realized the need to leave Jerusalem because the ramped up persecution. Besides this there is the need to have a scribal tradition to write and preserve the books of the Bible. But nevertheless without a scribal tradition we would not have a Bible, because that is the means God gave for establishing and maintaining the scriptures.


2) Saint Paul uses it positively in 3 different areas of his epistles.


1 Corinthians 11:2: "and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you."

Galatians 1:14: "being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers."

2 Thessalonians 2:15: "stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether"


2 Thessalonians 3:6: "not after the tradition which he received of us."


3) Catechism is based on paradosis. The word for Catechism comes for the Greek word for echo, because it refers to rote learning, where students would repeat back the answers to questions from their instructor.


4) My last point, this also relates to the notion of the Faith as being “A Way”. This is especially true for anyone who has spent time learning a martial art. In my late teen years and early adult years I dabbled in them, because I was always fascinated by them since I was a kid watching David Carradine’s Kung Fu. In many ways the martial arts exemplify Christian and western views of the Logos. Each martial art often has its own philosophy that its based on, but that philosophy is reflected in it techniques, and general approach to fighting. But the way, you get there is through a lot of repetition of rote learning, so those techniques become a part of you so to speak, and that really I think describes also a Christian view of discipleship that Jesus had in mind, when teaching the disciples, not to mention also reflecting the approach of Judaism as well.

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Pavel Mosko
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