Speaking of Christian life, Paul mentions, among other things, the importance of Tradition (‘traditions’), without which that life would become, if not impossible, then we may suppose considerably more difficult...
Speaking of Christian life, Paul mentions, among other things, the importance of Tradition (‘traditions’), without which that life would become, if not impossible, then we may suppose considerably more difficult. But for him, ‘traditions’ are inseparable from the experience of personal communion with Christ, who Himself sustains and comforts the faithful. Clearly, for the apostle the two cannot be separated. This is hardly surprising: living Tradition can never be reduced to acquiring its outward forms. That is true of every tradition, including religious tradition, but especially of spiritual tradition. Today we associate tradition primarily with certain texts or rituals, which in a sense can also be considered texts.
But what is a text? It is a system of meanings expressed through some system of signs. To understand a text, it is not enough to read the signs in which it is written; one must also recreate the meanings behind them. Recreate them, precisely, because meanings cannot be read off a medium in the way that signs recorded on it can. To understand a text, one must follow its author's intellectual, and sometimes spiritual, journey.
The word of the Lord of which the apostle writes exists as a text. But for it to be alive, the text must live in the souls of those who can recreate the meanings behind it. In this case, however, besides the human authors there is another Author, without whose participation those meanings cannot be understood. A bearer of Tradition must therefore have experience of communion with this Author. Tradition remains Tradition with a capital T only as long as it exists as meanings reproduced by its bearers, not as forms they copy.
Such Tradition, Tradition with a capital T, truly helps those travelling a spiritual path. Within it, a traveller can always find something that resonates with them, their circumstances and their difficulties. But if Tradition degenerates spiritually and becomes only a collection of outward forms, it is of little use. It may remind someone of something that happened somewhere, sometime, to someone, but it will never become relevant to a person living here and now. It will therefore be useless on the spiritual path too: there as well, all that matters most takes place not in a great and glorious past, but here and now.
2
2:15 Hold - Without adding to, or diminishing from, the traditions which ye have been taught - The truths which I have delivered to you. Whether by word or by our epistle - He preached before he wrote. And he had written concerningthis in his former epistle.