645. On "Witness" and "Tradition"

Scanned PDF

                                                                                 On "Witness" and "Tradition"

It is clear to me that what I mean by "witness" when I speak of "the Christian witness of faith" is closely parallel to what many Christians and theologians today understand by "tradition."

By "tradition" (= traditio) they commonly mean both (1) the act of traditioning or handing on, i.e., "active tradition," or "act of tradition" (= actus tradendi), and (2) the content to be traditioned or handed on, i.e., "passive tradition" (= traditum tradendum). Correspondingly, by "witness" I mean both (1) the "that," or act, of witness and (2) its "what," or content.

There is the further parallel between "traditions" (= traditiones) in the sense of tradita tradenda and "witnesses" as the empirically given forms in which the Christian witness is alone accessible to us. The one traditum is actually given only in the many tradita, just as the one witness is actually given only in the many witnesses. Of course, so far as theological reflection is concerned, the one traditum is not datum but object or objective, to be discerned only in and through the many tradita that alone are actually given, even as the Christian witness of faith is not datum but object or objective, to be discerned and retrieved only in and through the many witnesses that alone are actually data.

But not all traditiones are on the same level, any more than all witnesses are. Decisive, indeed, is the apostolic traditio -- both as actus tradendi and traditum tradendum -- that is formally normative for all other traditiones, which are themselves substantially normative only because or insofar as they are authorized by apostolic tradition. And so, too, with the many witnesses, which are substantially normative only because or insofar as they are authorized by the apostolic witness.

But, then, why not get in the swim of things and talk in terms of "tradition" instead of "witness"? Perhaps the best reason is that "tradition" is sufficiently burdened with the results of the Reformation-post-Reformation controversies concerning "scripture and tradition" to make an alternative way of speaking desirable.

25 February 1976; rev. 23 August 2003