{"id":2207,"date":"2011-07-25T13:44:22","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T20:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=2207"},"modified":"2011-07-25T13:44:22","modified_gmt":"2011-07-25T20:44:22","slug":"the-beauty-of-the-christian-faith-introduction-sources-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2011\/07\/25\/the-beauty-of-the-christian-faith-introduction-sources-tradition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beauty of the Christian Faith: Introduction: Sources: Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m working on an adult curriculum titled “The Beauty of the Christian Faith.”\u00a0 It explores the basic elements of Christian faith as expressed in the Nicene Creed.\u00a0 I’ll be posting excerpts as they’re done.\u00a0 Here’s the third part of the introduction.\u00a0 Prior posts can be accessed through the Beauty of the Christian Faith Page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n

The sources of Christian theology are scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.\u00a0 Every variety of Christian theology draws on each of these sources.\u00a0 One of the first decisions we must make when thinking theologically is how to understand the nature of, and relationship between, these sources.<\/p>\n

Tradition<\/h2>\n

Tradition<\/em> is the historical teaching, reflection, and worship of the Christian Church.<\/p>\n

For Catholic, Orthodox, and some protestant Christians, some documents produced by Church leaders throughout history are given special status.\u00a0 At various times, Church leaders met in \u201ccouncils\u201d to deal with controversial questions.\u00a0 When these councils included Bishops from both the Eastern and Western parts of the Church and were convened by a sovereign political authority (an Emperor), they were called \u201cecumenical\u201d councils (\u201cecumenical\u201d means \u201cworldwide\u201d).<\/p>\n

During its first few hundred years, the Church faced vital and difficult questions about the nature of God and Christ.\u00a0 How do the Father, Son and Holy Spirit comprise one God?\u00a0 Was Christ fully God?\u00a0 Was he also fully human?\u00a0 These questions went to the heart of the Christian story.\u00a0 In a series of ecumenical councils, the Church hammered out statements and definitions relating to these questions.\u00a0 These included the First Council of Nicea in A.D. 325, which led to the creation of the Nicene Creed \u2013 the basic text for our study in this class.<\/p>\n

After this period, differences between the Eastern and Western branches of the Church became more pronounced and difficult.\u00a0 There were numerous reasons for these differences, which included genuine theological debate as well as geography, culture, politics, and even war.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 By 1054 A.D., the Eastern and Western branches of the Church had definitively split, with the Western branch adhering to the central authority of the Bishop of Rome \u2013 the Pope.\u00a0 There were numerous other councils held after this split both in the East and in the West, which the Catholic and Orthodox Churches respectively continue to take as authoritative.\u00a0 However, there were no further ecumenical councils that produced any statement, such as the Nicene Creed, that would win broad acceptance in all branches of the Church.<\/p>\n

As mentioned in the section on \u201cScripture,\u201d the Reformation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries represents another significant break in the broad stream of Church history.\u00a0 The Eastern churches had split with the West over the primacy<\/em> of the Pope and other matters, but the Eastern Churches continued to understand themselves as existing under the authority of the line of Bishops (including the Bishop of Rome) extending directly from the Apostles.\u00a0 The Reformation became something far more radical:\u00a0 for many (but not all) of the heirs of the Reformation, it led to the complete rejection of the kind of authority historically given to the Bishops by both the Western (Catholic) and Eastern churches.\u00a0 The rejection or redefinition of \u201capostolic succession\u201d perhaps is the most significant legacy (for good or ill, depending on your perspective) of the Reformation.<\/p>\n

Scholars of the Reformation today debate whether the Reformation\u2019s key early figures \u2013 people such as Martin Luther and John Calvin \u2013 really intended the massive schism their movement produced.\u00a0 Luther, for example, at first hoped for more subtle changes within<\/em> the Roman church, and some scholars today suggest that he hoped for reconciliation with Rome well into his later life.\u00a0 In any event, these \u201cMagesterial\u201d Reformers did not reject \u201ctradition\u201d out of hand.\u00a0 To the contrary, they accorded high status particularly to the early history of the Church, including the ecumenical councils.\u00a0 They believed that their movement was entirely consistent with the teachings of those early ecumenical councils.<\/p>\n

In addition to documents from official Church councils, \u201ctradition\u201d includes the Church\u2019s historical reflection and worship.\u00a0 Christianity produced many of the most brilliant minds in the history of Western civilization.\u00a0 Writers such as Irenaeus of Lyon, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Karl Barth, and many others, have left us with a rich legacy of theological literature.\u00a0 Christianity also produced beautiful art, architecture, liturgies, music, poetry, and mystical writings.\u00a0 All of these resources are part of our \u201ctradition.\u201d<\/p>\n


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[1]<\/a> The city of Constantinople, the historic seat of the Eastern churches, was sacked and pillaged by Crusaders under the authority of the Pope in 1203 A.D.\u00a0 The attack on Constantinople was not part of the Crusaders\u2019 original mission and may not have been intended by the Pope, but it nevertheless sealed the split between East and West.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m working on an adult curriculum titled “The Beauty of the Christian Faith.”\u00a0 It explores the basic elements of Christian faith as expressed in the Nicene Creed.\u00a0 I’ll be posting excerpts as they’re done.\u00a0 Here’s the third part of the introduction.\u00a0 Prior posts can be accessed through the Beauty of the Christian Faith Page. Introduction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69,19,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beauty-of-the-christian-faith","category-historical-theology","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-zB","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}