On June 30 each year, we Orthodox honor the memory of the Twelve Apostles. Today because of Protestant Christianity many assume it is the Bible which preserves the Apostolic tradition. However, at the beginning of Christianity there was no New Testament – the Gospel was orally proclaimed. The New Testament itself does not portray the Apostles recording the words of Jesus, nor does it limit the Gospel to Scripture. The Gospel is the proclamation of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, who has come to save us. Jesus is the Gospel, not some text which the Apostles wrote down and carried with themselves. The Apostles were chosen by the Lord Jesus to be His disciples. They in turn chose and discipled others to carry on the tradition they proclaimed.
“The crucial term here is ‘succession’ (diadoxe). … It serves to underline the essential nature of tradition, namely transmission from person to person. This is a more important feature than its oral character, for it highlights the fact that the Apostles passed on the teaching of the Lord to persons whom they chose for this specific purpose. It is thus a matter of an institutional continuity within which the deposit of faith entrusted to the Apostles is preserved, thus underlining the fact that the Apostles did not rely for the safeguarding of their message on the Scriptures alone, but also on living people. A new feature of the Tradition now emerges: handed down by the Apostles, it is preserved as a deposit by the chain of succession.
In this connection it is worth noting that, if the term specific to the role of the Apostles is ‘transmit’ (tradere), the word which defines the role of the Church is ‘preserve’ (custodire, conservare).” (Jean Danielou, GOSPEL MESSAGE AND HELLENISTIC CULTURE, p 147)
The Church is not merely the repository of the written tradition. The Church also is those chosen to preserve the received tradition. And not only to preserve it but to interpret it, live it and witness to it. The Church is the people who have been chosen to be faithful to the Gospel and entrusted with the Apostolic proclamation. The written text is important only if it is the Scripture preserved by the chosen people of God. There can only be Scriptures if there are people to accept, preserve, interpret and live by them. The Church could and did exist without a New Testament, but there would be no New Testament without the Church – the people who recognize the writings as holy and who not only proclaim or celebrate them, but who live by them.
“… one can only understand the Word of God as it is revealed in the preaching of Jesus Christ, the enfleshed Word, yet, at the same time, one must not remain at the flesh itself, for the flesh only exists as the flesh of the Word. As we have seen, the Son of God, the enfleshed Word, is only made manifest in the preaching of the Apostles. . . . despite the fact that the Word of God was always seen and spoken of in human form, foreshadowing what was to come, Jesus Christ, the Son and Word of God, was really flesh as we are, though this can only be contemplated in the apostolic preaching, as the Word of God.” (John Behr, THE WAY TO NICEA, p 161)
The Word of God became flesh not Scripture (John 1:14). It was the Apostles and their disciples who recorded the proclamation of the Gospel to preserve it within the fellowship of believers. We now encounter Christ only because there are people who received the apostolic tradition, and preserved it by living it. Without the preaching of the Gospel and a community dedicated to preserving and living by it, we would have no New Testament and no Christianity. It really is only because there are people dedicated to living the Gospel that we can know the Gospel and its power.
Fraternized 