Sources of Tradition

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What are the sources of Sacred Tradition? I know that one of them are the Church Fathers.
 
The actions of Jesus Christ observed and orally related by the Apostles.
 
plasmadash said:
What are the sources of Sacred Tradition? I know that one of them are the Church Fathers.
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It seems, based on this and the other two threads, that you are looking for sources of apologetics. In other words you want information to prove Catholicism to other people.

I have been studying Catholic apologetics for a few years now and I can tell you that it isn’t something that you can read a few things and Voila you can defend the faith. It takes a while to research it and absorb the information.

There are a lot of great tracts on various subjects on the Catholic answers web site. that’s where I started.
 
plasmadash said:
What are the sources of Sacred Tradition? I know that one of them are the Church Fathers.
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This section of the Catechism is a very good place to start:
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a2.htm
PART ONE
THE PROFESSION OF FAITH
…
I. THE APOSTOLIC TRADITION
…
II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRADITION AND SACRED SCRIPTURE
…
III. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE HERITAGE OF FAITH
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Good stuff with footnotes referencing scripture and Church documents
 
The Church Fathers are witnesses to Tradition in their time, but they are not the source of it. The source is God ultimately, and the Apostles more immediately. The whole Church is actually a witness to Tradition, but the primary and supreme witness to Tradition is the Church’s Magisterium, who the Fathers themselves were disciples of.
 
plasmadash said:
What are the sources of Sacred Tradition? I know that one of them are the Church Fathers.
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The common life, common teaching, common worship of the Church…which came from the teachings of the Apostles.

The writings of the ECF give a sense of this Tradition.

mark-shea.com/tradition.html

Sacred Tradition is the living and growing truth of Christ contained, not only in Scripture, but in the common teaching, common life, and common worship of the Church. That is why the Tradition that does not change can seem to have changed so much. For this common teaching, life and worship is a living thing-a truth which was planted as a mustard seed in first century Jerusalem and which has not ceased growing since-as our Lord prophesied in Mark 4:30-32. The plant doesn’t look like the seed, but it is more mustardy than ever. And this is an entirely biblical pattern, as we discover when we consider the circumcision controversy in Acts 15.
 
It is important to recognize the difference between ecclesial traditions and Sacred Tradtion.

Ecclesial traditions (lower case t) are the rituals, prayers, devotions and popular movements of the Church. Sacred Tradition (upper case T) however, is revealed truth - truths revealed to us by God. Sacred Traditon can be found within the ecclsial traditions of the Church.

The source of all Sacred Tradition is God. We can learn Sacred Tradtion from:
  • Church Worship - Liturgy, feasts, sacraments, sacred music and art which helps us worship God.
  • ***Church Doctrine ***– encyclicals, creeds, catechism, councils, writings of the Early Church Fathers.
  • Church Fathers – Writings of those who lived close to apostolic times and who contributed to the foundations of our faith.
  • Church Life – Devotions, popular movements, lives of the saints
I would also add the Religious Orders – a tremendous source of spirituality, prayer, the religious orders inform the secular Church.

-Tim-
 
The practices of the Church since time immemorial. Infant Baptism, the Real Presence, etc. Possible to support with scripture but impossible to prove conclusively-and no need to-we have Tradition! In the end practically no doctrine can be conclusively proven to be true by Scripture alone.
 
fhansen said:
The practices of the Church since time immemorial. Infant Baptism, the Real Presence, etc. Possible to support with scripture but impossible to prove conclusively-and no need to-we have Tradition! In the end practically no doctrine can be conclusively proven to be true by Scripture alone.
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I strongly diagree that these things are impossible to prove from scripture…

Many, if not all doctrines of the Church can be shown almost explicitly in scripture if we understand the cultural, political, social and economic context of the author and his intended audience. This is called the literal sense of scripture. Discerning the literal sense of scripture is the first step in understanding the spiritual meaning. For example, when Jesus speaks of being thrown into prison and having to “Pay the last penny” he is referencing a debtor’s prison. Modern man in the western world has lost that context because there are no debtor’s prisons.

This is why so many people make doctrinal mistakes. The vast majority of Christians just pick up the book and start reading it with the context and worldview of the modern, western world, but the author’s were Jews and the audience was Jewish, in a culture which existed two thousand to four thousand years ago, and so they miss things like purgatory and fail to se how the earliest Christians knew immediately that the consecrated bread was really the Lord.

***DIVINO AFFLANTE SPIRITU

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII
ON PROMOTING BIBLICAL STUDIES,

Sept 30, 1943
  1. Being thoroughly prepared by the knowledge of the ancient languages and by the aids afforded by the art of criticism, let the Catholic exegete undertake the task, of all those imposed on him the greatest, that namely of discovering and expounding the genuine meaning of the Sacred Books**. In the performance of this task let the interpreters bear in mind that their foremost and greatest endeavor should be to discern and define clearly that sense of the biblical words which is called literal. Aided by the context and by comparison with similar passages, let them therefore by means of their knowledge of languages search out with all diligence the literal meaning of the words; all these helps indeed are wont to be pressed into service in the explanation also of profane writers, so that the mind of the author may be made abundantly clear.
  2. What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use.*
The authors of scripture reference cultural, political, social and economic contexts, and even things like diet, roman military practices and some of the many varied calendars in use across the regions. When we understand these - when we become a student of biblical history - the meaning of the texts become much, much clearer.

There are too many individual doctrines to get into here but when we become studends of Biblical history, things like Purgatory, the Assumption and Queenship of Mary, and the Papacy jump off the pages.

-Tim-
 
TimothyH said:
I strongly diagree that these things are impossible to prove from scripture…

Many, if not all doctrines of the Church can be shown almost explicitly in scripture if we understand the cultural, political, social and economic context of the author and his intended audience. This is called the literal sense of scripture. Discerning the literal sense of scripture is the first step in understanding the spiritual meaning. For example, when Jesus speaks of being thrown into prison and having to “Pay the last penny” he is referencing a debtor’s prison. Modern man in the western world has lost that context because there are no debtor’s prisons.

This is why so many people make doctrinal mistakes. The vast majority of Christians just pick up the book and start reading it with the context and worldview of the modern, western world, but the author’s were Jews and the audience was Jewish, in a culture which existed two thousand to four thousand years ago, and so they miss things like purgatory and fail to se how the earliest Christians knew immediately that the consecrated bread was really the Lord.

***DIVINO AFFLANTE SPIRITU

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII
ON PROMOTING BIBLICAL STUDIES,

Sept 30, 1943
  1. Being thoroughly prepared by the knowledge of the ancient languages and by the aids afforded by the art of criticism, let the Catholic exegete undertake the task, of all those imposed on him the greatest, that namely of discovering and expounding the genuine meaning of the Sacred Books***. In the performance of this task let the interpreters bear in mind that their foremost and greatest endeavor should be to discern and define clearly that sense of the biblical words which is called literal. Aided by the context and by comparison with similar passages, let them therefore by means of their knowledge of languages search out with all diligence the literal meaning of the words; all these helps indeed are wont to be pressed into service in the explanation also of profane writers, so that the mind of the author may be made abundantly clear.
  2. What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use.
The authors of scripture reference cultural, political, social and economic contexts, and even things like diet, roman military practices and some of the many varied calendars in use across the regions. When we understand these - when we become a student of biblical history - the meaning of the texts become much, much clearer.

There are too many individual doctrines to get into here but when we become studends of Biblical history, things like Purgatory, the Assumption and Queenship of Mary, and the Papacy jump off the pages.

-Tim-
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1252 The practice of infant Baptism is an immemorial tradition of the Church. There is explicit testimony to this practice from the second century on, and it is quite possible that, from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole “households” received baptism, infants may also have been baptized.

This is an example from the Catechism of a doctrine which is much better supported by Tradition than Scripture. “whole households” refers to passages in Acts and 1 Cor which give vague and inconclusive support to the practice of infant Baptism, with little more mentioned.
 
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