[OLD REGGIE]

I see the problem. You see "tradition" as something static when tradition, in a living institution, is anything but static. Tradition is a living institution is dynamic.

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Please give a definition, and the dictionary it comes from, for "tradition". Any definition that implies "living" and "dynamic" would be novel indeed.

[OLD REGGIE]

paramount authority, Like the Constitution, or the Law. But Those requires application and interpretation by competent authority. Frankly, the Law lends itself to this sort of treatment than the New Testament. If religion is to be boiled down to explication of Scripture, then rabbinical Judaism or Mohammedeanism are preferable to Protestant Christianity.

WHAT????

[the808bass]

Tradition is a living institution is dynamic

Said the Orthodox before he was stoned :)

[conservonator]

Please give a definition, and the dictionary it comes from, for "tradition". Any definition that implies "living" and "dynamic" would be novel indeed. It was late... I was trying to point out that tradition in a living institution, when used as a basis for the development of dogma or doctrine (through the guidance of the Holy Spirit) is quite unlike the oral tradition that makes it in to some written form in a dead civilization. When the civilization dies, the tradition ends. The Church is quite alive and vibrant. The Holy Spirit guides it still and as such the development of dogma is dynamic.

BTW I can find no dictionary describes tradition as static, dead or fixed. Rather, it is commonly described as (in regard to Christians) “the unwritten teachings regarded as handed down from Jesus and the Apostles.” This is one definition I found in Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language published in 1957