In the Bible, there is the tradition of the Jewish elders, the Law of Moses, for example. But by Jesus' day there were many add-ons, to the point where in some cases the very opposite of the law was being taught. This kind of tradition is alluded to by Peter and Paul (I Peter 1:18, Galatians 1:14.) Though there was much good in what reached down from Moses, much evil had been mixed in. In fact, one can see echoes of this phenomenon in the historic and official Christendom of our day.

There are other kinds of tradition. Colossians 2:8 talks about Gentile philosophies and principles that affected the early church and our own. It would be hard to gauge which of these two traditions are more harmful to the human soul. But boiled down to their basics, they are both the ideas of men and are to be avoided by the godly.

Now there are good traditions too. The oral and written teachings of Paul and the other apostles are in this category. I Corinthians 11:2, II Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6. It is stongly believed among us that all of the vital teachings, the foundational truths, given by God through the apostles, were written by them and passed on. Thus the New Testament is the living tradition of the church of all ages. By extension, all the Old Testament books similarly qualify.

That's the Bible's explanation of tradition: Jewish, Gentile, Christian. But another concept slowly has been woven into the fabric of historic Christian thought. One can only guess where it might have originated. Through the years the term tradition came to be divided twofold:

1. Apostolic preaching, oral and written, and

2. Apostolic succession. In this new entry is contained everything that good and holy men spoke from the days following the apostles down to our own time. It is taught that slowly God is bringing His people into all the truth. There have been revelations, it is said, all through the church's life, and there may be a new one tomorrow.

That gives a person pause, doesn't it? By this method, the ongoing church, particularly the one centered in Rome, becomes the creator and dispenser of truth in every generation, not just the guardian of that to which it was entrusted earlier. It assumes that all the teachings added in our day were not needed by believers of other ages. It opens the door for unscrupulous and unspiritual men, unlike the founding apostles who led lives of holiness and paid for their message with their own blood, to work their will on an evolving church. New truth can be a political weapon in the right hands.

What I have just described is exactly the picture of the church of the Middle Ages. This, as opposed to the church which one can trace by the trail of blood, blood always being shed by high-ranking residents of Rome, whether from the Coliseum or from under Vatican Hill.

By this kind of tradition, whether added by Talmudic scholars, scribes, and Pharisees, or by clerics and pontiffs faithful to the philosophies of Aquinas and Isidoran decretals, the Word of God was made ineffectual. Human tradition always does that.