" My Orthodox brothers - any comments?"
Like I said earlier, its not that any particular writing, even one with an excellent pedigree, is "infallible" or is "Holy Tradition" Writings may contain pieces of Holy Tradition, may be expressions of Holy Tradition but they themselves are not what is infallible. What is an infallible expression of The Faith is the consensus patrum, what is often called Apostolic Tradition or Holy Tradition.
Exactly, and correctly, Kolo!
FK: "(I was assuming that this document by James is considered infallible teaching.)"
Kolo: "I guess I never looked at it that way. Its part of Holy Tradition and tells us something about what people in the very, very early Church believed.
I thought we were talking about the whole document. So, if I have this right now, and please correct me if I'm wrong, :) if an entire document is declared infallible, then that is scripture. Holy Tradition and Apostolic Tradition and the singular "Tradition" are all really the same thing and may or may not be infallible. [Jo said: "I recently tried to describe what process the Church undergoes before it declares an Apostolic Tradition infallible."] But these do not refer to whole documents, rather, they refer more to ideas, concepts, or teachings that are written down, examined, and determined to be infallible or not. Is this right?
Just because something is acknowledged as Tradition doesn't make it infallible. It must be formally declared so by the Church. So, Jo when you said that Holy Tradition is one of the three legs of authority you didn't mean all Tradition. You meant only that Tradition that has been declared infallible? I feel like either I'm pretty close or 100 miles off. :)