The Regula Fidei
Tradition was in the Early Church, first of all, an hermeneutical
principle and method. Scripture could be rightly and fully assessed and
understood only in the light and in the context of the living Apostolic
Tradition, which was an integral factor of Christian existence. It was so, of
course, not because Tradition could add anything to what has been manifested in
the Scripture, but because it provided that living context, the comprehensive
perspective, in which only the true “intention” and total “design” of the Holy
Writ of Divine Revelation itself, could be detected and grasped. The truth was,
according to St. Irenaeus, a “well-grounded system,” a corpus (adv.
haeres. II. 27. 1—veritatis corpus), a “harmonious melody”
(II, 38. 3). But it was precisely this “harmony” which could be grasped only by
the insight of faith. Indeed, Tradition was not just a transmission of
inherited doctrines, in a “Judaic manner,” but rather the continuous life of
the truth (5Cf. Dom Odo Casel, O.S.B., Benedict von
Nursia als Pneumatiker, in "Heilige Überlieferung" (Münster,
1938), ss. 100-101). It was not a fixed core or complex of binding propositions, but rather
an insight into the meaning and impact of the revelatory events, of this revelation
of the “God who acts.” And this was determinative in the field of Biblical
exegesis. G. L. Prestige has well put it: “The voice of the Bible could be
plainly heard only if its text were interpreted broadly and rationally, in
accordance with the apostolic creed and the evidence of the historical practice
of Christendom. It was the heretics that relied on isolated texts, and the
Catholics who paid more attention on the whole to scriptural principles” (Fathers
and Heretics, p. 43). Summarizing her careful analysis of the use of
Tradition in the Early Church, Dr. Ellen Flesseman-van-Leer has written: “Scripture
without interpretation is not Scripture at all; the moment it is used and
becomes alive it is always interpreted Scripture.” Now Scripture must be
interpreted “according to its own basic purport,” which is disclosed in the regula
fidei. Thus, this regula becomes, as it were, the controlling
instance in the exegesis. “Real interpretation of Scripture is Church
preaching, is tradition” (Tradition and Scripture in the Early Church,
pp. 92-96). (Georges Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern
Orthodox View [Belmont, Mass.: Nordland Publishing Company, 1972], 79-80)
