Lesson Three: Tradition

Learning Objectives - Lesson 3

When you finish this lesson, you should be able to do the following:

• articulate the nature of Sacred Tradition as a vehicle for the transmission of revelation and source for theology

• explain both the positive and negative ways the word tradition is used in the New Testament as well as etymology of the word tradition and what this tells us as to what it is.

• explain the way tradition serves as the matrix for the formation of the written word of God as well as for its interpretation and transmission

• understand the difference between the "traditionalist" and "modernist" views of Tradition and how Vatican II and the Catechism opts for neither.

• explain the difference between Tradition and traditions

• explain the distinction between doctrine and dogma

• show the essential difference between heresy and orthodoxy

• explain what is meant and is NOT meant by "the development of doctrine"

• understand what Vatican II & the Catechism mean by the "hierarchy of truths"