Holy Tradition vs.

Sola Scriptura: The Witness of the Liturgy

by

Pedro O. Vega
(Teófilo de Jesús)

Since the Reformation, the polemics between Roman Catholicism and

Protestantism have centered on the role of the Bible as the only rule
of faith for the Church over and against any notion of Bible and
Tradition as being the normative rule of faith. In recent years, the
debate has taken the same popular note that it once had during the
Reformation. Roman Catholic apologists such as Karl Keating (director
of Catholic Answers) and Patrick Madrid frequently square off against
Reformed Protestant apologist James White (director of Alpha & Omega
Ministries) in a battle for the mind, the heart, and, ultimately, the
soul of their listeners and readers.

Orthodox Christians may assume that Roman Catholic apologists

represent the Orthodox position in Western polemics. This is due, in
part, to the absence of Orthodox Christian apologists from this
debate. The purpose of this article is to provide an Orthodox
perspective on the matter of Sola Scriptura, that is, the Protestant
tenet that the Bible alone is sufficient as the rule of faith of the
Church. At the same time, we will seek to restate the Patristic
framework Orthodoxy assumes when speaking of Holy Tradition, which is
not normally present within Roman Catholic apologetics. This
framework is provided by the Divine Liturgy of the Church.

This framework centers on the role of the Liturgy as the “container”

of Tradition, as something that owes its very existence to Tradition.
In other words, the Liturgy—the Eucharist in its core actions—is the
proof for the existence of an extrabiblical Christian belief that was
binding for all the Churches which called themselves Christian,
Orthodox, and Catholic, and which assert a historical continuity with
the New Testament Church. We will discuss the important implications
the Liturgy has on the Protestant claims of the sufficiency of the
Bible.
Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi

Lex orandi, lex credendi is a tenet of the early Church that nowadays
is often used as a cliché. But what did it mean then? What does it
mean to say that the law (or rule) of prayer is the law (or rule) of
belief? The answer lies in what Orthodox Christians call the Divine
Liturgy.

First, we will define what liturgy means, what is its origin, and
what its basic form, or shape, consists of. Once we organize and
briefly analyze the data, we will then proceed to formulate some
conclusions and, hopefully, state a definition of Holy Tradition from
the Orthodox perspective. From there we will examine the theological
implications of our findings upon doctrine and the notion of Sola
Scriptura.

Liturgy Defined

Etymology

Liturgy is derived from the Latin liturgia and the Greek leitourgia
(a compound word: leitos + ergon), meaning “public duty” or “public
worship.” The word and its cognates can be found in the New Testament
(cf. Acts 13:2).

Working Definition

Dom Gregory Dix,[1] perhaps the foremost liturgist of this century,

defines liturgy as follows:

‘Liturgy’ is the name given ever since the days of the apostles
(Acts 13:2) to the act of taking part in the solemn corporate
worship of God by the ‘priestly’ society (1 Peter 2:5) of
Christians, who are ‘the Body of Christ, the church’ (Ephesians
1: 22­23). ‘The Liturgy’ is the term which covers generally all
that worship which is officially organised by the church, and
which is open to and offered by, or in the name of, all who are
members of the church. It distinguishes this from the personal
prayers of the individual Christians who make up the church,
and even from the common prayer of selected or voluntary groups
within the church, e.g. guilds or societies. In the course of
time the term the Liturgy has come to be particularly applied
to the performance of that rite which was instituted by our
 Lord Jesus Christ Himself to be the peculiar and distinctive
worship of those who should be ‘His own’ (John 13:1); and which
has ever since been the heart and core of Christian worship and
Christian living—the Eucharist or Breaking of Bread.​[2]

Thus, whenever we speak of liturgy and liturgical in this essay, we

do so under the light of the above definition.

Nature of the Protestant Problem

We all participate in corporate prayer. Every Sunday we go to our

respective houses of worship to do just that: worship. Yet, very
seldom do we stop to think of the origin and the meaning of the
actions we perform within the context of public, corporate worship.
This is especially true of so­called low church Protestant
Christians. There is little or no connection between the way that
these Christians worship every Sunday (or every quarter) and the way
the early Church worshipped and prayed. If the question occurs to
them at all, they might answer that it is the spirit that matters in
their current worship circumstance. Ancient ritual can be safely
dismissed, without further thought, as dead letter and empty
tradition. It is at this spiritual and, ultimately, individual level,
however, that Protestant Christians experience their affinity with
the worship of the early Christians.

John Calvin represented the faction of the Reformation which most

rapidly did away with Catholic liturgical trappings (cf. The Second
Helvetic Confession, chapter XXVII, Of Rites, Ceremonies, and Things
Indifferent). Calvin’s liturgy itself was a modification of another
Reformed order of worship previously created by Martin Bucer. Calvin
published his order of worship in French at Strasbourg. He titled the
work La Forme des Prières Ecclésiastiques. It is said that Calvin’s
Institutes created the most international form of Protestantism; due
credit should also be given to his order of worship, which is
essentially preserved in every low church Protestant community to
this day. It also heavily influenced other Protestant traditions,
particularly that of the Church of England.

Much can be said of the Protestant break with the Roman Catholic
past. The liturgical and moral excesses of the medieval Church are
well known and do not need to be revisited in this article. It can
also be argued that the medieval Roman innovations were themselves
real breaks from the faith and practice of the early Church. That is
another subject unto itself. Suffice to say that the Reformers felt
justified in making the changes they did to the order of Christian
worship. Influenced by the humanist battle cry Ad fontes! and
permeated with the spirit of Nominalism, the Reformers set out on a
quest to restore the authentic faith, worship, and practice of the
early Church.

However, Protestant worship services have much in common with the

Latin Mass against which they reacted. Dix, in fact, sees the
Protestant worship services as a subdivision of the Western Catholic
liturgical rite. Dix writes:

Elsewhere in the West, as a consequence of the Protestant

Reformation in the sixteenth century, there has arisen what
from our point of view must be considered the ‘fourth crop’ of
local variants of the basic Western type, in the rites of the
Reformed bodies. It is true that those who use them do not, as
a rule, think of them in this way. Their compilers were far
more concerned to follow what they regarded as ‘scriptural
warrant’ than anything in the liturgical tradition against
which they were in revolt. But the Reformers themselves thought
largely in terms of the Western tradition within which they had
been trained. In consequence, their rites all reveal under
technical analysis not ‘primitive’ characteristics at all, nor
anything akin to the special Eastern tradition, but a marked
dependence on the basic Western liturgical tradition at a
particular stage late in its development.[3]

The Reformed Protestant problem is this: Though the Reformers set out
to restructure their worship ritual according to what they perceived
had scriptural warrant, their final product resembled more a
truncated late medieval Latin Mass than anything else that could be
called primitive Christian corporate worship. Proof of this
discrepancy is found by way of contrasting the Reformed orders of
worship with the ancient texts of the earliest Christian liturgies
available to us.

Low church evangelical Protestantism, especially that American

Protestantism still struggling to remain faithful to the insight of
the classical Reformers, faces a dilemma. The dilemma is, ironically,
the Reformers’ own creation.
Let us not forget the Reformers lived at the dawn of critical
historiography as a scientific discipline. Much of the Protestant
critique was based upon the work of the Roman Catholic philosopher
and humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam. It was he who advocated a full
critical reading of the ancient sources. He also produced the first
critical Greek edition of the New Testament. By using comparative
analysis, he debunked the historicity of long authoritative pro­papal
documents such as the Gratian Decretals.

The Reformers used these developments to their advantage. Luther’s

discovery that the New Testament said, “Repent, change your hearts,
change your ways!” versus the Latin Vulgate’s rendition “Do Penance!”
is a classic example of the superior scholarship inaugurated by
Erasmus under the motto Ad Fontes! Yet, we fail to see a similar
Protestant advance in the field of Liturgics.

This is due to four things: (1) Protestantism’s lack of interest in

ascertaining the existence of the historical Liturgy; (2) the lack of
manuscript tradition in which to work at the time; (3) the belief
that an appeal to Sola Scriptura superseded any other appeal to
Liturgy as a doctrinal medium; and (4) just plain apathy. The
Reformers felt free to recast public worship according their
particular view of scriptural warrant. Curiously, when it came to the
Liturgy, the Reformers fell short of the Ad Fontes! ideal.

This takes us back to the Protestant problem: Their worship is, in

one way or the other, a modified version of the late medieval Latin
Mass. Only the Quakers carried the Protestant recasting of the
Liturgy to its logical end: Their worship was devoid of any outer
form and relied solely on the illumination of the individual
worshipper. If the rest of Protestantism failed to reach this logical
end, they did so because of a vague feeling of the very human (and
Christian) need for communal worship.

Ad Fontes!

To say that the Orthodox Church holds the Liturgy in the highest
esteem is an understatement. The Liturgy is the basis for Orthodox
theologizing when it comes to Christology, soteriology, ecclesiology,
and almost every ancillary ­ology in the Church. Theology without
Liturgy is falsely so­called, according to Orthodox Christian
teaching.
Orthodox Christianity’s high regard for the Liturgy does not derive
from a merely antiquarian interest. Nor is it an attempt by the
Church to establish a historical continuity with the past by mere
imitation of ritual or gestures. The Orthodox Church holds the
Liturgy in the highest esteem because the New Testament Church and
the Church of the Fathers held the Liturgy in the highest esteem. And
the New Testament Church and the Church of the Fathers held the
Liturgy in the highest esteem on account of its origin, its purpose,
and its function.

The Liturgy in the Bible

That the Christians in the New Testament Church worshipped together,

no one denies. Thus in Acts 2:42,46 we find:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and

fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…And day by
day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their
homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord
added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
(RSV)

The verse does not tell us much about the how of New Testament
Christian worship, but it does give us two tantalizing hints: (1)
there is something Jewish about it (Temple worship), and (2) there is
something Christian about it (the Breaking of the Bread).[4]

The closest that the New Testament gets to talk about the actions
involved during Christian worship (and the earliest reference) is in
St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verses 23 to
26:

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that
the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is
my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the
same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the
new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in
remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and
drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
C.P.M. Jones[5] endeavored to sketch the Corinthian liturgy from an
in­depth study of St. Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians:

It is a plenary session and may not begin until all are assembled. It
is a real meal, to which (or at least the well off) all contribute
food and drink. It opens with the customary Jewish blessing of God
over the bread, which is then broken in pieces and distributed to
all, probably with words of interpretation or distribution
identifying the bread as the Body of Christ.…By this the gathering is
constituted as the Body of Christ. The meal continues, and at the end
the ‘cup of the blessing’ is produced and thanksgiving is said before
all drink of it. It would seem that during that thanksgiving the
death of the Lord , the risen, victorious ever­present Lord of the
community, is proclaimed ‘until he come.’

Post­Apostolic Development

Again, it is not the purpose of this essay to provide a detailed

narrative of the development of the Orthodox Christian liturgy. Such
a task would be, of itself, a very lengthy one. Instead, we shall
briefly sketch the development of the liturgy up until the fourth
century, highlighting certain common themes constantly present during
this development. We will do so by looking at a few representative
early Church documents:

• The Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles through the Twelve

Apostles, commonly known as The Didache. There are many
theories about the origin and purpose of this early work.
Paragraphs 9 and 10 are relevant to our discussion. Their
primitive character is attested by their lack of the Words of
Institution (Take , eat. . . . Take, drink.) and by the wording
of its Thanksgiving prayer, which is very close to that of
Jewish forms of grace at table.

• The Letter of St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthians. St.

Clement deals with issues of order and procedure (cf.
paragraphs 40 and 41). He already models the Eucharist on the
pattern of Temple worship.

• The Letter of St. Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans. St.

Ignatius’s reference to the Eucharist as the body,[6] or
flesh,[7] of our Savior may indicate that the Words of
 Institution, as they are known in the Gospels, were already in
use (cf. paragraphs 7 and 8).

• The Apostolic Tradition of Hyppolitus, a third­century

document, is the most important source of information we
possess on the liturgy of the pre­Nicene church.[8] It contains
an undeveloped form of the Eucharistic prayer and reflects the
liturgical tradition of the local Church of Rome. It makes
direct use of the Words of Institution.
• The Mystagogical Catecheses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The
Catecheses were instructional lectures, first delivered orally
but written down in shorthand. The form we have today is that
of a transcript made by someone in the audience, and it is not
St. Cyril’s original manuscript.[9] These lectures were
delivered to Christians in various states of instruction. It
contains a full description of the Liturgy in Jerusalem in the
fourth century.

The Form of the Early Liturgy

Several other liturgical traditions existed at the time; for example,

that of the Churches at Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Edessa. Though the
petitions and emphases of these early liturgies varied somewhat, they
all shared in common a central core, or form. This form, or shape, is
distinguished by a four­step scheme in the Eucharistic action:

(1) The Offertory. Bread and wine are taken and placed on the
table together;

(2) The Thanksgiving or Eucharistic Prayer. The president, or

celebrant, gives thanks to God over the bread and wine
together;

(3) The Fraction. The Bread is broken;

(4) Communion. The Bread and Wine are distributed together.[10]

This four­step action is somewhat different from the scheme we find

in the New Testament. There we find a seven­step scheme within the
inauguration narrative. There we read that Our Lord:

(1) took bread;

 (2) gave thanks over it;

(3) broke it;

(4) and distributed it, saying certain words.

Later, He:

(5) took a cup;

(6) gave thanks over it;

(7) and handed it to His disciples, saying certain words.[11]

The central question facing us is: why? Why is there a discrepancy

between the actions of Jesus, as narrated in the Synoptic Gospels,
and in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and the Liturgical
actions of the early Church? The answers lies, paradoxically, at the
origin of the Eucharist itself: the Last Supper.

The Last Supper, the Eucharist, and the Jewish Milieu.

The obvious answer to our question is this: The last supper of our
Lord with His disciples is the source of the Liturgical Eucharist,
but not the model for its performance.[12] Let us refocus our answer:
The actions which transpired during the Last Supper and preserved in
the canonical Gospels and in the First Letter of St. Paul to the
Corinthians are not the model for the performance of the historical
Eucharist. As it will be demonstrated, the New Testament narratives
influenced the Liturgy at a relatively late period of its
development. The traditions from which the New Testament and the
Eucharist developed had a common origin. They progressively
influenced each other’s growth and canonicity up until the doctrinal
settlement of the fourth century. To arrive at this conclusion we
examine the source of the Liturgical Eucharist: the Last Supper.

The Jewish Chabûrah Meal

The Last Supper should be seen within the historical context from
which both the New Testament narratives and the Liturgical Eucharist
evolved. To do that, the following hypothesis is in order: According
to St. John’s Gospel, our Lord instituted the Eucharist at a supper
with His disciples, which was probably not the Passover supper of
that year but the evening meal twenty­four hours before the actual
Passover.[13] The Last Supper, then, belonged to another formal
category of meals for which there were also exacting preparations and
rituals known as chabûrah (from Heb. chaber=friend).[14]

Dix uses quite a bit of ink to support his claim that the Last Supper
was a chabûrah meal. We will limit ourselves to reading one of Dix’s
conclusions that is relevant to our inquiry. Reconstructing the
primitive Eucharist, Dix finds the origin of the four­action shape of
the Liturgy in this meal:

(1) The Offertory. Each communicant brings for himself or herself a

little bread and wine, and also frequently, other small offerings in
kind of different sorts, oil, cheese. . . . This is simply a survival
of the custom or providing the chabûrah supper out of the
contributions in kind by its members, though in the case of the bread
and wine, another meaning was given to the offering by the church
before the end of the first century.

(2) The prayer. The long Thanksgiving at the end of the meal was
always regarded as and called in Jewish practice ‘the Blessing’ for
all that had preceded it. It was also specifically the blessing of
the ‘cup of blessing’ itself (which did not receive the ordinary wine
blessing). Accordingly, it now becomes “the Blessing” or “the Prayer”
of the Eucharist, said over the bread and wine together. . . . That
this was so can be seen from its special name. “The Eucharist” (­ic
Prayer), he eucharistia, “The Thanksgiving,” which is simply the
direct translation into Greek of its ordinary rabbinic name, berakah.

(3) The fraction. The bread was originally—at the chabûrah meal and
the Last Supper—broken simply for distribution and not for symbolic
purposes immediately after it had been blessed. So, in the liturgical
“four­action” shape of the rite, it is broken at once after the
blessing (by the eucharistia, along with the wine) for Communion,
which follows immediately.

(4) The Communion. It appears to have been the universal tradition

in the pre­Nicene Church that all should receive Communion standing.
This was the posture in which the cup of blessing was received at the
chabûrah meal, though the broken bread was received sitting or
reclining at table. Presumably the change in posture for receiving
the bread was made when the meal was separated from the Eucharist.
The Jews stood for the recitation of the berakah and to receive the
cup of blessing, and this affected the bread, too, when its
distribution came to be placed between the end of the berakah and the
handing of the cup.[15]

The Liturgy as Oral Tradition

Thus far, we have seen how the four­action shape of the Liturgy
differs in form with the series of actions narrated and preserved in
the Institution narratives contained in the New Testament. We have
also seen how this shape had as its origins the Jewish ritual meal
called chabûrah. Once again, the question we now face is: why? Why
has a non scriptural, Jewish religious meal provided the framework
for Christian worship for over 1500 years? Before we attempt to
answer this question, we will backtrack a little to the period
preceding the writing of the canonical Gospels.

We should agree, as a matter of principle, to the following tenets:

• Jesus wrote no book; He taught by word of mouth and personal

example.

• Some of his followers taught in writing as well as orally.

• Often, indeed, their writing was a second­best substitute for

the spoken word.[16]

There is nothing unlikely about this fact. In an era when reading and
writing were skills mastered by a relative few, oral tradition was
the necessary vehicle to preserve and hand down practical and
religious knowledge from father to son, and from teacher to student.
Nor were the Jews unique in this respect, either at this time, or in
that region of the world. Most, if not all, of the cultures in the
world at that time were, fundamentally, oral cultures.

The scholarly consensus is that the Synoptic Gospels were written

near or before 70 A.D. This is also true of the Pauline corpus. It
would take some years before they would become authoritative and, as
a result of this, canonical. Yet, even before St. Paul put in writing
“that which [he had] received” (cf. 1 Cor. 11:23­24), the shape of
the Liturgy already existed.

For now, we will refer to this tradition as the liturgical tradition.

The evidence also warrants the following conclusion: this liturgical
tradition existed independently from, yet shared a common origin
with, the oral tradition from which the New Testament evolved. That
it was held in the highest esteem is proven by the fact that the
four­action shape of the Liturgy was not affected by the Gospels or
First Corinthians. Apparently, the Church had very grave reasons to
hold to the shape even if it meant ignoring the New Testament in this
one point. Let us also remember that the first written hint of the
New Testament having an effect on the prayers of the Liturgy is found
in the letters of St. Ignatius.[17] By that time, the Church had been
celebrating the chabûrah of the Lord for about 80 years.

Again, in a culture such as the Jewish one, where oral tradition was
held in the highest esteem, the staying power of the shape is not
unexpected. What is unexpected and relevant to the Sola Scriptura
controversy is that it had such an authority, such a binding power
over and beyond the New Testament through subsequent generations of
Christians, most of them not even Jewish.

The Liturgy As Foundational, Binding Tradition

Once again, Dix seems to say it best:

It is important for the understanding of the whole future

history of the Liturgy to grasp the fact that the Eucharistic
worship from the outset was not based on Scripture at all, Old
or New Testament, but solely on tradition. The authority for
its celebration was the historical tradition that it had been
instituted by Jesus, cited incidentally by St. Paul in 1 Cor.
11, and attested in the second Christian generation by the
written Gospels.[18]

Thus, the Liturgy is:

• An oral tradition, originating with Jesus Himself;

• Parallel to the traditions that originated the New Testament;

• Handed down, as it were, in the very act of its celebration;

• Handed down from one generation of Christians to the next by

those who participate in it in different capacities.
We can then speak of the Liturgical tradition as a foundational
tradition, as one of the traditions that established the Church as a
chabûrah of the Lord, as a community of Thanksgiving, and as
something upon which the subsequent doctrinal and disciplinary
structure of the Church was to be built.

For Christians, a foundational tradition is a binding tradition. The

concept of binding was one that the Apostles and the first
Jewish­Christian generation were familiar with. The celebrated verses
in Matthew 16, for example, use the terms binding and loosing, no
doubt, because its intended recipients, converts from Judaism, were
familiar with the terminology. To bind is, in fact, a legal term
often used by the rabbis to define who belongs to the Elect (i.e.
Israel) and who does not. What is bound is the believer’s conscience,
who must respond in love and obedience to the authority of the God
who reveals Himself.

The Liturgical tradition, being foundational and binding, is then

considered holy. It is holy on account of its founder, Our Lord Jesus
Christ, Himself. The very fact that the liturgical tradition is
foundational makes it holy.

It is holy on account of its purpose, which is to define the identity

of the Christian Church against the unbelieving world, to set the
Church apart (i.e., to sanctify her, to make her holy) from the world
and for God as His chabûrah.[19]

The liturgical tradition is also holy on account of its end, the

glorification of God in the Person of His Anointed Son, whose saving
deeds are made present anew within the worshipping community. It is
also within this community, joined in holy Liturgy, where the hope of
His coming again in glory is preserved.

Though we can now speak of the Liturgy as a holy tradition, we cannot

still refer to it as Holy Tradition, in capital letters, as a proper
name. We will refrain from doing so until we define the Liturgy’s
pedagogical character, its relationship with the New Testament, and
its ultimate scope. Once again, we return to the period before the
writing of the New Testament.
The Liturgy as Pedagogical Tradition

The Liturgy preserves Apostolic, Christian teaching that predates the

writing of the canonical New Testament and parallels the
foundational, binding, oral traditions that originated the New
Testament. This teaching communicates real, historical knowledge
about the Person, the deeds, and the teachings of Jesus. What is this
teaching? The teaching is the kerygma: the proclamation of Jesus as
crucified and risen Lord, who was, is, and is to come; the teaching
and retention of the idea of monotheism, a tenet not contradicted by
the proclamation of Jesus as Lord.

Another object of teaching is about the nature of God and the

anamnesis (a memorial in the sense of re­actualization) of His saving
deeds contained in the berakah, the Jewish prayer of thanksgiving.
This prayer will retain its basic structure in the Christian
Liturgies. It becomes now a prayer to the Father of Jesus, “King of
All Creation.”

But most important for our inquiry is the fact that the Liturgy
probably served as the crucible for the New Testament’s formation,
its trigger and preserver.

The Liturgical Tradition and the Formation of the New Testament​[20]

As the Church developed from the day of Pentecost, so did her public
worship. The Church borrowed many things from Judaism: the usage of
reading from the Scriptures and singing of psalms being one of many.
This carryover became the Synaxis (Gr. meeting). The Synaxis became
fixed in Christian worship in the decade after the Passion.[21]

The Christian Synaxis had its own unchanging outline everywhere. It

is as follows:

(1) Opening greeting by the officiant, and the reply of the

Church;

(2) Lesson;

(3) Psalmody;

(4) Lesson (or Lessons, separated by psalmody);

 (5) Dismissal of those who did not belong to the Church;

(6) Prayers;

(7) Dismissal of the Church.[22]

The Lessons, or readings, were at first from the Old Testament, as

this was the immediate Jewish custom that the first generations of
Christians gave to the Church. It is within this context of worship
that the words and deeds of Jesus were first remembered.
First, quite informally, the Apostles or the surviving witnesses
would relate the words of Jesus, his sayings, his actions, or the
main events in the life of the Savior. This possibly took place after
the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, to which the given pre­Gospel
narrative would be related in some way.

The faithful remembered these words with varied degrees of clarity.

Other hearers would take notes of these extemporaneous, kerygmatic
narratives, centered on the words and deeds of Christ. As the
Apostles and the first Christian generation started to pass on, the
attempts to preserve the Memories of the Apostles became more and
more formal, culminating in the writing of the canonical New
Testament.

Clues to this scenario can be found in the New Testament itself. The
Gospel according to St. Mark, for example, preserves the simplicity
and the directness of something that was primarily proclaimed orally,
rather than in a written form. We can also find another clue in the
existence of hymns in the New Testament, which were later adapted to
support points of doctrine. We can see those hymns in the first
chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, for example, or in the
letter of St. Paul to the Philippians 2:5­11. These hymns (and there
are others) were more than likely composed by now unknown believers
and then sung in the early Christian Liturgies. They were significant
enough in doctrinal content to be included in the New Testament.
Thus, the Liturgy had a direct impact on the formation of the New
Testament. First, the Eucharist, the Christian chabûrah, preserved
the knowledge, nay, the experience of the risen Lord as Messiah and
Savior sent by the Father; now it fostered the thirst of the
community for more knowledge about the Messiah.

The Liturgy, then, attracted the foundational, binding, and oral

traditions that were later collated and redacted into the canonical
Gospels. As this relationship developed, these traditions influenced
the evolution of the Liturgy more and more. These traditions gave the
Liturgy new modes of expression, prayer, and song.

The pre­Gospel oral traditions received from the Liturgy their

legitimacy, format, and focus. Once this mutual relationship started,
it never stopped. The Christian Scriptures received their
constitution from the independent, foundational, and binding
liturgical tradition. They formed a continuum, a unity. They both
disclose, in exactly the same way, the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Each of the liturgical and the Gospel traditions only becomes
intelligible with the help of the other. Together they form the rule
of faith, the Holy Tradition of the Church, as Orthodox Christianity
understands it.

Holy Tradition Defined

We can now attempt to compose a definition of Holy Tradition:

Holy Tradition is the totality of God’s self­disclosure in

Jesus Christ, granted through the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and
preserved by the Holy Spirit for the benefit of the
worshipping, liturgizing Church, which is given for the purpose
of revealing to that very same Church God’s hidden designs
regarding the salvation and sanctification of the human race.

The above definition enjoys the following advantages:

• It sets the origin of Holy Tradition in God Himself. We have

seen that the Old Testament, the holy traditions that became
the New Testament, and the Liturgy all originate in the Person
of the Logos, be that in His eternal existence with the Father,
or during His earthly ministry;

• It is set in God’s disclosure in Jesus Christ; it is

Christian Holy Tradition;

• It is preserved by the Holy Spirit, not only in its outer

form, but also in its inner interpretation, be it of the Bible,
or of the Divine Liturgy;

• It is given to the Church, and to that Church that maintains

the Apostolic rule of worship; it is given to a Church that
 offers the Divine Liturgy. Other Christian bodies which do not
liturgize lack the Holy Tradition. It is also within the
liturgical context where the Word (to quote Luther) is rightly
preached and the sacraments rightly administered. Finally, this
aspect of the definition sets forth the constitution of the
Church as the Body of Christ, bound by the mysteries of God’s
revelation, the Eucharist, and the Apostolic Preaching. It sets
the Church of Jesus Christ apart from rival claimants;

• It is given for the salvation of the Church, which is granted

within the Liturgical Church. Those who are in the Church are
granted the full knowledge and benefit of God’s revelation in
Jesus Christ for the sanctification and salvation of their
souls.

Holy Tradition as Doctrine

Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan defined doctrine as that which is believed,

taught, and confessed.[23] For this definition to be complete, from
the Orthodox Christian perspective, we need to again recall the
ancient standard of belief: ​Lex orandi, lex credendi​.

The law (rule, or standard) of prayer is the law (rule, or standard)

of belief. How and when did they pray as a Church? They did so in the
Liturgy.

What is believed is then taught. What is taught is then confessed by

the Church. Where do we find this confession? We find it primarily in
the Divine Liturgy, where the primitive confession first took its
shape and found its earliest expression. We find it in the New
Testament, the first inspired, written confession of the Church.

Finally, we find it in the more formal declarations of faith that we

call creeds.

The Orthodox approach to doctrine is holistic. By maintaining the

liturgical context within which Christian revelation first came to
be, Orthodox doctrine is more organic, more attuned, to the entire
continuum of Christian revelation.24 Because it encompasses the rule
of prayer as the rule of belief, and the sources or instruments of
Revelation within itself, together with proper exegesis and
interpretation of the Bible, Holy Tradition is the source of doctrine
for the Orthodox Church.
What, then, of Sola Scriptura?

The Protestant failure to establish, reform, or restore the ancient

standard of Christian worship stands as a symbol of the failure of
Sola Scriptura. The Bible alone was not sufficient for the Reformers
to reestablish the ancient understanding and shape of the Liturgy and
the Eucharist. They only succeeded on rehashing the medieval Latin
rite in accordance to their notion of Scriptural warrant.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the Protestant preference for Sola
Scriptura preceded and justified the rejection of anything smacking
of Catholic forms of worship. This is especially true of Reformed
Protestantism in its multiple manifestations. Perhaps we have placed
the cart before the horse here.

Protestantism’s birth was due, in part, to a reaction to medieval

abuses that have crept into the Latin rite and deformed it, obscuring
its underlying, original shape. The tenet of Sola Scriptura is the
only logical remnant of Apostolic teaching after the rejection of the
historical Liturgy in all of its forms. Once Reformed Protestantism
rejected the revelational and salvific value of the Divine Liturgy,
it became necessary to hold on to, and further develop, the notion of
Sola Scriptura. There was no other alternative.

Conclusion

Sympathetic as we might be to the Protestant quandary, and to its

underlying causes, we need to understand the inadequacy of the Bible
being the only and sufficient source for Christian faith and morals
and the sole container of Divine Revelation, especially in the light
of the evidence presented above. The Protestant believer needs to
face the Orthodox challenge to Sola Scriptura, a challenge which
forms the basis for our conclusion:

The existence and divine origin of the Liturgy or Eucharist,

specifically, of its shape, and of its role in creating, forging the
belief, teaching, and the confession of Christian doctrine obviates
the need for the Protestant tenet of Sola Scriptura. It is not
Scripture Alone, but Holy Tradition, in its all encompassing nature,
that forms the basis of Christian doctrine. Protestantism has failed
in its mission of reforming the Church to its original intent through
its ignorance and failure to understand the Eucharistic nature of the
Church and the Liturgical context of Christian Revelation. This
failure is the fatal flaw of Protestantism.

This article was originally published in The Christian Activist Vol.

10.

End notes

1. Dom Gregory Dix was a British Anglican Benedictine. Vital dates

unavailable. 1901 ­1952
2. Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, p. 1.
3. Dix, 10.
4. This author does not deny the Jewishness of the bread­breaking
ritual itself. However, the Breaking of the Bread was, by Luke’s
time, already a Christian action, a uniquely Christian function (cf.
Jerome Biblical Commentary, 45:24). John Calvin himself understood it
as a uniquely Christian function, too. He refers to it as the
breaking of the mystical bread in his discussion on the fourth
commandment (cf. Institutio, 2.8.32).
5. The Rev. Canon C.P.M. Jones, was, at the time of the writing of
this article, Principal of Pusey House, Oxford University (cf. Jones
et al, eds, The Study of Liturgy, New York: Oxford University Press,
1978, “The New Testament,” p. 150).
6. Staniforth et al, Early Christian Writings, p. 103.
7. Jurgens, William A., The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1, p.
25.
8. Dix, p.157.
9. Jurgens, vol. 1, p.347.
10. Dix, p.48.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p.50.
13. Ibid. Dix quotes another work by Dr. W.O.E. Oesterly, Jewish
Background of the Christian Liturgy, as his authority to assert the
Johannine priority upon the development of the Liturgy. Dix is also
aware of the (for him) recent challenges to that Johannine priority.
The Reverend R. T. Beckwith, in his article for The Study of Liturgy
(“The Jewish Background to Christian Worship,” p. 48) takes the
opposite view: Jesus and His disciples took part of a Passover meal
as the Synoptic Gospels seem to tell us. Both authors agree that the
Jewish prayers contained in the Talmud (Jer. Berakoth 7.2; Bab.
Berakoth 48b) form the model of the Christian Eucharistic prayer.
The Orthodox Church has traditionally held the Johannine priority. It
also sees confirmation of the fact that the Last Supper was not a
Passover meal because of the use in all the New Testament sources of
the word artoz (leavened bread) to designate the bread that Our Lord
took and broke, and not axumoz (unleavened bread), which is essential
in the Jewish Passover rite.
14. This is not to deny the Paschal character of the Lord’s Last
Supper. After all, the New Testament belabors the connection between
the Lord’s death as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the
world” and the institution of the New Covenant with the Paschal Lamb
and the institution of the Old. Our purpose is to categorize the type
of meal that the Last Supper was, not to deny its obvious antitypical
significance.
15. Dix, 78. I disagree with Dix when he states that the breaking of
the bread had no symbolic meaning in the Last Supper, just as it does
not during the chabûrah meal. The Lord was quite free to invest the
elements of the ritual with new meaning, and He, in fact, did so with
the main purpose of the meal.
16. F.F. Bruce. The Canon of Scripture, p. 118. Bruce is known
worldwide as the dean of evangelical biblical scholars (from the
inside cover of his book).
17. It is also significant that these letters also offer the first
written testimony of the knowledge of, and the extent of, the
fledgling New Testament in the post­Apostolic Church.
18. Dix, 2. Emphasis mine.
19. “Set apart” is the primitive meaning of the verb sanctify or make
holy.

20. The following scenario is based upon what we know of the

development of the pre­Gospel oral traditions as determined by form
criticism.
21. Dix, 36.
22. Dix, 38. The transition to the Eucharist proper developed later.
23. Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the
Development of Doctrine. Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic
Tradition, p.3.
24. Orthodoxy avoids drawing any doctrine solely from one individual
source, be that the Bible alone, or the magisterium as the regula
próxima fidei.
Works Cited
Beckwith, R.T. The Jewish Background to Christian Worship. The Study
of Liturgy. Ed. Cheslyn Jones et al. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1978.
Brown, Raymond E., et al. The Jerome Biblical Commentary. Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1968.
Bruce, F.F. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove, Illinois:
InterVarsity Press, 1988.
Calvin, John. Ed. John T. McNeill. “How far does the Fourth
Commandment go beyond external regulation?” Institutes of the
Christian Religion. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960. 2
vols.
Dix, Gregory. The Shape of the Liturgy. London: Dacre Press, 1945.
Jones, C.P.M. The New Testament. The Study of Liturgy. Ed. Cheslyn
Jones et al. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Jurgens, William A. The Faith of the Early Fathers. Collegeville,
Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1970. 3 vols.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the
Development of Doctrine. Vol.1. The Emergence of the Catholic
Tradition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
1971.
Staniforth, Maxwell, and Andrew Louth. “The Epistle to the
Smyrnaeans.” Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers. Great
Britain: Penguin Books, 1968, 1987.