The Church And Tradition In The Pre-Nicene Fathers

Abstract

There is an old tradition which can be traced back to the Middle Ages that the moon is made of green cheese. If we are to take as authentic all the traditions in all the old inns of England to the effect that Queen Elizabeth I slept a night in them, then we shall have to envisage that queen as spending most of her reign in bed. In other words, the word tradition is today used very loosely and vaguely, and there is such a thing as unreliable tradition as well as authentic tradition. These facts apply to tradition in the early Church as well as to other sorts of tradition. Indeed, we are sometimes tempted to ask whether there was such a thing as a consistent tradition of doctrine in the early Christian centuries, for some evidence suggests that there was not, or at any rate that ‘the tradition of the Church’, is not an easy phenomenon to identify in the early centuries. Justin Martyr, for instance, says that all orthodox Christians believe in a literal Kingdom of Christ which is to last on this earth in a restored Jerusalem for a thousand years. Origen says that it was part of the Apostles' teaching that accounts of such a Kingdom should be allegorised. Which of them is reproducing the tradition of the Church? Or (as seems to me most likely) are they both either exaggerating or mistaken and is neither reproducing it? Again, both Clement of Alexandria and Origen claim that the necessity of allegorising the Scriptures is part of the rule of faith.