Certainly a beautiful summary of Christianity, as expressed in the Scriptures!
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic and apostolic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
1. Can you point to a phrase or belief in the Apostle's Creed that doesn't appear in Scripture, but depends on tradition?
2. Also, since this was not written during the time of the Apostles, we know it is not what Paul referred to in the passages about tradition. What specific traditions did Paul refer to?
2. "the holy catholic and apostolic Church, the communion of saints, ..."
3, St Paul did not list (in writing) what he meant by the traditions he referred to, and yet he enjoined his disciples to cling to them and observe them. The rather clear inference is that it is not only writings which have authority, but primarily the preacher's words and example. What he says (oral preaching, teaching, advising, praying, conversing and counseling) and what he does. Writings followed later; sometimes decades later, sometimes generations.
How would we know what that Oral Tradition consisted of? By the actual practice of the oldest churches founded by the apostles and their first-generation disciples, across three continents, before ca. 300 AD:
Roman Enpire (Eastern): Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Asia Minor, Tiberias; Caesarea; Cyprus; Crete; Rhoades, Damascus, Greece, Libya
Roman Empire (Western): Rome; Italy outside Rome (Milan, Naples, Sicily, Syracuse); Carthage; Gaul (Marseilles, Lyon, Tours); Malta; parts of Spain (Cordova, Seville, Toledo)
Outside the Roman Empire: Ethiopia; Armenia (became a Christian kingdom in 300 AD, before Rome's Edict of Toleration); Georgia and the Caucasus region; Mesopotamia and Western Syria; Persia and Central Asia; Arabia (Red Sea coastal); Ethiopia.
Evangleized by the original Apostles and their disciples on three continents.
They had many language, cultural, and political differences. Here's what they had in common: they are ALL:
Some of the externals may look different, but the core is completely shared: e.g. the same 27 books of the New Testament; but in their various languages: Koine Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Old Slavonic, Geez, etc. and prayed, recited, chanted, proclaimed according to their cultural ways.
There's this remarkable continuity even though today some of them are now associated with the Roman Catholic Church; some with the Eastern Orthodox; some with the "Oriental" Orthodox (non-Chalcedonian) and other "Churches of the East." (These, BTW, founded in Apostolic times and severely conservative of their ancient traditions, are often stubborn survivors of a millennium+ of oppression by Islam, and have been almost wiped out by ISIS.)
Traditional practices faithfully observed across the continents, across the centuries, despite dislocations, displacements, and disruptions --- Biblical, Creedal, liturgical, hierarchical, sacramental, Eucharistic, praying always within the Communion of Saints including those on earth, in a state of Purgation, and in Heaven---
They didn't invent these basics. They learned them from their founders. This is what we mean by Apostolic Tradition.