1. Let's take a controversial topic in which people of differing traditions often speak past one another. And let's look at it from the perspective of a nine year old Tibetan Buddhist monk learning the essentials of comparing two terms.
Yes, it looks like a traditional Western Venn diagram ... except notive the box around it and the #4 label. It makes all the difference.
Some people would make the following assignments for religious practices and beliefs:
- God's teachings (Tanakh/Scripture)
- -
- Human tradition
- Non-Jewish traditions
which works well for the references to human traditions added to the Jewish Law as portrayed primarily in the Gospels.
Others would make the following assignments based primarily on the epistles:
- God's teachings (Scripture)
- teachings covered both in Scripture and in Apostolic Tradition
- Apostolic Tradition
- Human tradition - a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly
What is critical is to recognize what is within one's two-term discussion and what, if anything, is outside it. Traditionally one would have to give an example of each category that you claim exists. This type of clarification usually clears up disputes that are not disputes but differences in terminology - some churches opposing the use of tradition meaning human tradition and other churches promoting the use of tradition meaning Apostolic tradition. The real issues are:
- Do you hold a cessationist view of Apostolic tradition? (or alternatively stated all Apostolic tradition is subsumed into God's tradition (Scripture) and the 3 only portion becomes empty/null).
- Is this particular belief or practice based on Apostolic or human tradition?
2. So how do I research what various theologians or denominations have said about Apostolic tradition - especially considering that the Systematic Theologies Section is in the Passage Guide which is dependent upon Bible verse references? There are three ways of getting relevant scriptures:
- a Bible search on the word "tradition"
- Related Verses section of a Topic Guide on "tradition"
- Catholic Topical Index Scripture subsection of the same Topic Guide.
3. Next convert each set into Passage Lists.
4. Now merge the lists together.
5. Remove non-Scriptural references and duplicates (usually individual verses that are also included in ranges.)
6. This results in a list of 16 verses relating to "tradition"
7. Add headers and sort the passages ... bearing in mind the lesson of the Buddhist two-term approach. You need to pay attention so that you don't force items outside your classification into your preconceived scheme but rather let the data define the scheme.
8. You now have a manageable list of passages to run through the Passage Guide Systematic Theologies section. An example of one reference.
Note that this method is dependent upon thinking through very clearly what the base issue truly is rather than mindlessly adopting the pop-slogan description.
See SUGGESTION: Logical next step: finding relevant passage to use for Systematic Theologies
