Holy Tradition (capital T) is the living presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, handed down from the Apostles through Scripture, worship, councils, and the Fathers. Human traditions (lowercase t) are customs, things like whether you eat kollyva at memorial services or which language you use for the liturgy. One is essential to the faith. The other isn’t.
This matters because people get them confused all the time. Someone visits an Orthodox church in Beaumont and sees Greek coffee hour customs or Russian headcovering practices, and they think that’s Orthodoxy. It’s not. Those are traditions. They might be beautiful. They might be ancient. But they’re not Holy Tradition.
What Holy Tradition Actually Is
St. Basil the Great said that the Church holds some teachings from written sources and others “transmitted in an explicit form from apostolic tradition,” and they all have the same value. Holy Tradition isn’t something separate from Scripture. It’s the Church’s living memory and experience of Christ, the stream from which Scripture itself flows.
Think of it this way: the Apostles didn’t hand out Bibles and say “figure it out.” They baptized people, celebrated the Eucharist, taught the faith, appointed bishops. They lived the faith in community. That entire life, the worship, the teachings, the way of interpreting Scripture, the understanding of who Christ is, that’s Tradition. Scripture is part of Tradition, the written deposit of it. But Tradition is bigger, because it includes the Spirit-guided life of the Church that produced Scripture and continues to interpret it rightly.
The seven Ecumenical Councils are Holy Tradition. The Nicene Creed is Holy Tradition. The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is Holy Tradition. Icons, affirmed by the Seventh Council, are Holy Tradition. These things don’t change because they’re the Spirit’s witness to Christ.
What Traditions Are
Traditions are the customs that vary from place to place without affecting the faith’s essence. In essential matters, doctrine, sacraments, worship, there aren’t differences among Orthodox churches. But in customs? Plenty.
Some parishes do coffee hour with Middle Eastern food. Others serve pierogi. Some communities fast from oil on Wednesdays. Others are less strict. Russian parishes might have different musical traditions than Greek or Antiochian ones. None of this is Holy Tradition. It’s all traditions, and it’s fine that they vary.
The danger comes when we confuse the two. Fr. Georges Florovsky warned against treating Tradition as mere “concord with the past” or rigid adherence to how things have always been done. That’s traditionalism, not Tradition. Traditionalism is dead, a museum piece. Tradition is alive, because it’s the Spirit’s presence, not our nostalgia.
How We Tell the Difference
The Church discerns through what’s been called universality, antiquity, and consent. Does this teaching or practice go back to the Apostles? Is it held everywhere, by the whole Church? Has it been affirmed by the councils and the Fathers? If yes, it’s Tradition. If it’s just how your grandmother’s parish did things, it’s a tradition.
This isn’t something you figure out on your own. You can’t read the Bible in your living room and decide what’s Tradition. That’s basically the Protestant approach, and it’s why there are thousands of Protestant denominations. To understand Tradition, you have to live within the Church, participating in its worship and life. The Church, guided by the Spirit, discerns these things together.
Why This Matters for Inquirers
If you’re coming from a Protestant background, you’re used to “Bible alone.” We don’t hold that. Scripture is authoritative, absolutely, but it’s received and interpreted within Tradition. Without Tradition, you get private interpretation, and that leads to error. The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 was reading Isaiah, but he needed Philip to explain it. We all need the Church.
If you’re coming from a Catholic background, you’ll recognize that we both value tradition, but we understand it differently. For Catholics, the magisterium defines tradition authoritatively. For us, it’s more conciliar, the whole Church, led by the Spirit, bearing witness together. We don’t add new dogmas centuries after the Apostles.
And if you’re just visiting Orthodox churches and feeling overwhelmed by ethnic customs, relax. You don’t have to become Greek or Russian or Lebanese to be Orthodox. Learn the faith. Receive the sacraments. Pray the prayers. The rest is just traditions, and they’re negotiable.
When you’re standing in St. Michael’s for Divine Liturgy, what you’re experiencing isn’t just how we’ve always done things around here. It’s the same worship the Church has offered for centuries, in Antioch and Constantinople and Jerusalem and now in Beaumont. That’s Tradition. The coffee afterward? That’s just tradition, and we’re glad to share it with you.
