Agrarian: "We in the Orthodox Church believe that Holy Tradition is inerrant, and that Scripture stands at the pinnacle of that body of Tradition.:
qua: "I think it is important that we understand this at two levels.
At the first level is the question of Tradition as revelation and how that doctrine came to be."
I wouldn't so much call it a doctrine as it is a way of thinking and acting. We begin with the fact that God reveals Himself to man, and that only through revelation can man know God. The first accounts of revelation are of how God reveals himself to Adam. Perhaps the most profound passage in this regard is this: "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?"
We understand this to mean that the Lord was accustomed to "walking" *with* Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Whatever this exactly means, we know that it means that God revealed himself to Adam and Eve in a direct and more extensive way than the few statements of God to Adam that are recorded in these chapters.
There is a passage somewhere in the liturgical texts or writings of the Fathers for Holy Saturday where it is said that the first thing that Christ did when he descended into Hades after his death was to go looking for his friend Adam, with whom he had walked in the Garden of Eden. Whatever the merits of this poetic portrayal (or the iconographic portrayal of Christ taking Adam and Eve by the hand in the icon of Holy Saturday -- commonly referred to as the icon of the Resurrection), the broader point is that God's revelation of himself to Adam was far more, both in content and immediacy, than the spoken words that were later recorded in Scripture.
The same is true of the revelation to the other prophets and patriarchs. The words of Scripture are a record of God's revelation of Himself to man -- they are the most perfect record of that revelation. But they are not the revelation itself -- if they were, we would be left with the nonsensical concept that the children who came to Christ to have him bless them and touch them were not having God revealed to them, but that any revelation involved in this act didn't happen until the evangelists recorded the events on parchment.
Holy Tradition, when spoken of in terms of written sources, is a record of God's revelation of Himself to man. When thought of as the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the Church, it has an even more direct and immediate connection to revelation.
"This is, again, an Origenistic doctrine derived by him through Platonistic categories. Because particularization, the many, is bad we must have a mediation to proceed to the One, the good."
I am unaware of whether Origen (or any close followers) articulated this in any particular way that was unique. I would welcome references. I haven't read much Origen, and so am not particularly familiar with his specific words.
I would, though, say that your statement that "particularization, the many, is bad," bears no resemblance to anything I have encountered in Orthodoxy. Quite the contrary. Particularization, as it were, is at the heart of the Orthodox approach to revelation and Tradition. I have articulated this in earlier posts, and so won't belabor the point, but ours is a highly particular faith.
The patristic approach is not one of abstraction, but rather of using the particulars of God's revelation to bring us to a direct and personal relationship with Him.
"In Origen, this mediation is the Church and the Sacraments which delivers us from the natural to the super-natural."
Again, I'm not familiar with the specific statements of Origen to which you refer. But to refer to the role of the Church and the Holy Mysteries (as we Orthodox prefer to call what the West calls sacraments) as a mediation that "delivers us from the natural" is again to speak of something in which I simply do not recognize the Orthoodox Christian faith.
Quite the contrary. The Holy Mysteries (and we Orthodox do not draw a hard and firm line limiting them to seven in number, let alone two) hallow the physical and bring the physical into union with the spiritual.
Orthodoxy considers the separation of physical from spiritual to be unnatural for humans. This is what is so unnatural about death, where the soul is separated from the body. We do not consider that Paradise (or hell) can truly and fully begin until our souls are reunited with our bodies after the general resurrection at the end of this age.
"Beginning with Augustine and through the Holy Spirit continued on at the Reformation we have men of God sanctified away from pagan dualisms understanding that God's good creation is not inherently evil..."
If by dualism, you mean a dualism of the physical and spiritual, I think that you would find that Orthodoxy completely rejects that. We of all people would reject the idea that God's good creation is inherently evil. That is a Gnostic idea.
"...but because of the fall became totally corrupt and that any movement toward the good is accomplished only by the supernatural work of the Word. What is meant by the "Word" is multi-faceted and layered and something I don't have time to get into presently."
Very well, we will leave the Logos for now.
"The second level is the question of inerrancy. This evolved from the controversies of liberalism in the Protestant Churches. Unfortunately Fundementalism took it too far, IMHO, incorporating enlightment epistemologies to fight the enlightment epistemologies. There is no consenus on a proper epistemology even within Reformed cirles as evidenced by the controversies between Warfield and Kuyper, and Van Til and Clark. Nonetheless, what is agreed is that only the Word in its full meaning can save."
You are correct that we should be careful in how we use words like "inerrancy" and "infallibility," since the connotations for different traditions are strong ones. This is similarly valid for concepts such as theosis/divinization -- Forest Keeper has a good point that certain terminology can actually get in the way of mutual understanding because of such connotations.
This is not a reason to abandon any given terminology, if it is true and appropriate, but rather is a reason to take care to define it, or at least to take the time to explain it when questions are raised.
The point I was trying to make, for the benefit of those of a Protestant point of view, was that the reverence that traditional Protestantism has toward the Scriptures is analogous to the reverence and deference that we Orthodox have toward Holy Tradition, within which Holy Scripture has the preeminent place. I can do little better than to quote from Bp. Kallistos (Ware):
"The Christian Church is a Scriptural Church: Orthodoxy believes this just as firmly, if not more firmly than Protestantism. The Bible is the supreme expression of God’s revelation to man, and Christians must always be ‘People of the Book.’
But if Christians are People of the Book, the Bible is the Book of the People; it must not be regarded as something set up over the Church, but as something that lives and is understood within the Church (that is why one should not separate Scripture and Tradition). It is from the Church that the Bible ultimately derives its authority, for it was the Church which originally decided which books form a part of Holy Scripture; and it is the Church alone which can interpret Holy Scripture with authority.
There are many sayings in the Bible which by themselves are far from clear, and the individual reader, however sincere, is in danger of error if he trusts his own personal interpretation.
'Do you understand what you are reading?' Philip asked the Ethiopian eunuch; and the eunuch replied: 'How can I, unless someone guides me?' (Acts 8:30). Orthodox, when they read the Scripture, accept the guidance of the Church."