Introduction

There can be useful argument whether a treatment of Christian thought should begin with the Bible or with the tradition. The issue is commonly and sometimes crudely thought of as that which fundamentally divides the Protestant element in the Christian world on the one hand from the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox elements on the other. It is of course not as simple as that: no Christian community considers itself to be other than dependent on the authority and pervasive influence of Scripture or to be independent of what it conceives to be authentic tradition. The fact that, with this common basis, they can disagree so profoundly merely shows how varied is the interpretation to which both Scripture and tradition are susceptible. These massive entities, the one in literary bulk, the other in temporal, conceptual and human expanse, cannot reasonably be expected to yield simple and clear directives to those who would base themselves upon them.