As Khomyakov admirably puts it, “Neither individuals, nor a multitude of individuals within the Church preserve tradition or write the Scriptures, but the Spirit of God which lives in the whole body of the Church” (Russia and the English Church, p. 198).  “Concord with the past” is only the consequence of loyalty to the whole; it is simply the expression of the constancy of catholic experience in the midst of shifting times.  To accept and understand tradition we must live within the Church, we must be conscious of the grace-giving presence of the Lord in it; we must feel the breath of the Holy Ghost in it.  We may truly say that when we accept tradition we accept, through faith, our Lord, who abides in the midst of the faithful; for the Church is His Body, which cannot be separated from Him.  That is why loyalty to tradition means not only concord with the past, but, in a certain sense, freedom from the past, as from some outward formal criterion.  Tradition is not only a protective, conservative principle; it is, primarily, the principle of growth and regeneration.  Tradition is not a principle striving to restore the past, using the past as a criterion for the present.  Such a conception of tradition is rejected by history itself and by the consciousness of the Church.  Tradition is authority to teach, potestas magisterii, authority to bear witness to the truth.  The Church bears witness to the truth not by reminiscence or from the words of others, but from its own living, unceasing experience, from its catholic fulness ...  Therein consists that “tradition of truth,” traditio veritatis, about which St. Irenaeus spoke (Adv. Haeres, i. 10, 2).  For him it is connected with the “veritable unction of truth,” charisma veritatis certum (Ibid., 4. 26,2), and the “teaching of the Apostles” was for him not so much an unchangeable example to be repeated or imitated, as an eternally living and inexhaustible source of life and inspiration.  Tradition is the constant abiding of the Spirit and not only the memory of words. Tradition is a charismatic, not a historical, principle.

 

  It is quite false to limit the “sources of teaching” to Scripture and Tradition, and to separate Tradition from Scripture as only an oral testimony or teaching of the Apostles.  In the first place, both Scripture and Tradition were given only within the Church.  Only in the Church have they been received in the fulness of their sacred value and meaning.  In them is contained the truth of Divine Revelation, a truth which lives in the Church.  This experience of the Church has not been exhausted either in Scripture or in Tradition; it is only reflected in them.  Therefore, only within the Church does Scripture live and become vivified, only within the Church is it revealed as a whole and not broken up into separate texts, commandments, and aphorisms.  This means that Scripture has been given in Tradition, but not in the sense that it can be understood only according to the dictates of Tradition, or that it is the written record of historical tradition or oral teaching.  Scripture needs to be explained.  It is revealed in theology.  This is possible only through the medium of the living experience of the Church.

 

  We cannot assert that Scripture is self-sufficient; and this not because it is incomplete, or inexact, or has any defects, but because Scripture in its very essence does not lay claim to self-sufficiency.  We can say that Scripture is a God-inspired scheme or image (eikón) of truth, but not truth itself.  Strange to say, we often limit the freedom of the Church as a whole, for the sake of furthering the freedom of individual Christians.  In the name of individual freedom, the Catholic, ecumenical freedom of the Church is denied and limited.  The liberty of the Church is shackled by an abstract biblical standard for the sake of setting free individual consciousness from the spiritual demands enforced by the experience of the Church.  This is a denial of catholicity, a destruction of catholic consciousness; this is the sin of the Reformation.  Dean Inge neatly says of the Reformers: “their creed has been described as a return to the Gospel in the spirit of the Koran” (Very Rev. W. R. Inge, The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought, 1926, p. 27).  If we declare Scripture to be self-sufficient, we only expose it to subjective, arbitrary interpretation, thus cutting it away from its sacred source.  Scripture is given to us in Tradition.  It is the vital, crystallizing centre.  The Church, as the Body of Christ, stands mystically first and is fuller than Scripture.  This does not limit Scripture, or cast shadows on it.  But truth is revealed to us not only historically.  Christ appeared and still appears before us not only in the Scriptures; He unchangeably and unceasingly reveals Himself in the Church, in His own Body.  In the times of the early Christians the Gospels were not yet written and could not be the sole source of knowledge.  The Church acted according to the spirit of the Gospel, and, what is more, the Gospel came to life in the Church, in the Holy Eucharist.  In the Christ of the Eucharist Christians learned to know the Christ of the Gospels, and so His image became vivid to them.