Motto: Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.

                                      Jaroslav Pelikan[1]

INTRODUCTION

The importance of studying the implications of an appeal to tradition on the interpretation of Scripture is underlined by at least two facts:

            1. The renewed interest for the study of tradition in modern scholarship

            For centuries the sola scriptura principle of the Reformation has been an unchallenged basis for Western scholarship. This brought about a concentration on the text of Scripture alone and a neglect of the Sitz im Leben in which the books of the New Testament have originated. However, as comments Von Herder, one of the first to do so, in 1796-97, `Christianity did not begin with books, but with oral preaching'.[2] The progress made in folklore research and the birth of Formgeschichte with scholars such as Dibelius[3] and Bultmann[4] in the twenties has in turn brought about a new appreciation of the different literary forms in the Gospels and the role they played in the oral stage of the Gospel tradition. Later on, in the fifties, the redaction criticism schools of Conzelmann,[5] Marxsen[6] and Bornkamm[7] corrected the fragmented approach of the form-critics, concentrating on the Gospels as literary units and on the Gospel writers as theologians representing the concerns of the early Christian communities.

            This `quest for a tradition within and behind the received text', says Jaroslav Pelikan, `was responsible for an entire new era in the long history of biblical interpretation'.[8] Commenting on the oral background of the Biblical text, Gerhardsson describes in the following words the implications of this fact in the area of hermeneutics:

Awareness of the fact that the gospel is by nature a spoken word is essential for a sound interpretation of the holy scriptures of the church. It is a guard against the tendency - not uncommon within Protestantism - to think that the church believes in the Bible, not in the triune God, and it counteracts dead ecclesiastic routine, legalism and rationalistic literalism in interpretation.[9]

            The renewed worldwide interest in the study of tradition proved to be a the right occasion for Orthodoxy to make an impact on the modern ecumenical movement.

            2. The new insights on tradition provided by the involvement of the Eastern Orthodox Church in ecumenical dialogue

            The first significant Orthodox input in ecumenism in this century was the 1920 Encyclical of the ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, in which the Patriarch issued a call to fellowship and cooperation to all the Christian Churches, in spite of the doctrinal differences between them. Seven years later, at the Faith and Order World Conference at Lausanne, the Orthodox theologians present formulated in the following words their own understanding of the basis for ecumenical unity: `That reunion can take place only on the basis of the common faith and confession of the ancient, undivided Church, of the seven ecumenical Councils and of the first eight centuries'.[10] Such a statement can still be considered the Orthodox program for the ecumenical dialogue. Three national Orthodox Churches participated in the inaugural Assembly of the World Council of Churches (Amsterdam, 1948), the others joined later, after receiving permission from their respective Communist governments.

            The involvement of the Orthodox Church in the modern ecumenical movements has brought about not only a reconsideration of the doctrine of Trinity,[11] but also, because of the weight which tradition occupies in Orthodox thinking, has stimulated a renewal of interest on the role of tradition in the life of the Christian Church.

            In his book The Vindication of Tradition, Jaroslav Pelikan makes the distinction between an idol, a token and an icon taken over from the iconoclastic controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries. He uses this hermeneutical key in order to underline the different meanings that the word tradition has taken in various contexts.

            An idol, he comments, is `the embodiment of that which it represents, but it directs us to itself, rather than beyond itself'. When respect of tradition becomes traditionalism, it is idolatrous, `it makes the preservation and the repetition of the past an end in itself'.[12] This is how the Reformers and the thinkers of the Enlightenment have seen tradition, their subsequent protest against such an approach being legitimate. In its place they put tradition understood as a token, `a purely arbitrary representation that does not embody what it represents'.[13] According to this view tradition is like a ladder leading to universal truth, which, once reached, is self-sustained, thus rendering the ladder obsolete. It assumes, however, that tradition will not be replaced by something far worse, an assumption which, Pelikan rightly believes, the past two centuries do not warrant in any measure.

            In contrast with the former views, tradition seen as an icon `does not present itself as coextensive with the truth it teaches, but does present itself as the way that we who are its heirs must follow if we are to go beyond it... to a universal truth that is available only in a particular embodiment...'[14]         We, human beings living in the concreteness of space and time, do not have direct access to universal truth. This is directly accessible only to God. But this does not mean we do not have access to it, since Universal Truth came down to us and took a concrete historical form in order to translate in our language the otherwise unintelligible message of ultimate reality. This condescendence of the Universal Truth is expressed in the particular forms of our historical existence.

In doing so, it vindicate itself by managing to be as universal as the theorists rightly insist it must be, and yet at the same time as particular as the devotees of the idol correctly sense that it should be. But it refuses to chose between the false alternatives of universal and particular, knowing that an authentic icon, a living tradition, must be both.[15]

            In the present dissertation the model of Jaroslav Pelikan will be used in order to reveal the dynamics of the relationship between Scripture and tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy in the different stages of its historical development. Our study will analyze the Orthodox understanding of tradition as an icon, together with its inherent bend towards traditionalism, which tends to neglect Scripture as well as sterilize the spiritual life of the Church.

            At the same time, we shall try to argue that the interpretation of Scripture in the context of tradition, seen as an icon, offers a comprehensive model for the preservation of a relevant orthodox faith, whatever challenges history brings before the Church.

            We shall pursue our study from inside the Orthodox theological framework, although we are aware that, whatever degree of intellectual honesty we will manifest, it is impossible to overcome totally our Protestant background, inclined towards understanding tradition as a token.