What is the place of Tradition?

We live in a day and age where “tradition” has come to mean different things. To some, tradition has come to mean what those famous seven words have made clear, “we have always done (believed) it that way!” We have read the scriptures over and over in such a way that we can never hear anything fresh and new. This is where a good bibliolater would quote “that there is nothing new under the sun.” However, when you dig deeper, you find that whatever the “tradition” that is being held on to, has come to mean what it has only since the 1950’s or 60’s.

NT Wright helps us to see that the place of tradition can be found in “Living in dialogue with previous readings.”

Paying attention to tradition means listening carefully (humble but not uncritically) to how the church has read and lived scripture in the past. We must be constantly aware of our responsibility in the communion of Saints, without giving our honoured predecessors the final say or making them an “alternative source”, independent of scripture itself. When they speak with one voice, we should listen very carefully. They may be wrong. They sometimes are. But we ignore them at our peril. The study of church history is not, ultimately, a different ’subject to the careful Christian reading of scripture. Every period, every key figure, in the history of the church has left his, her or its mark on subsequent readings of scripture, and if we are unaware of this we are to that extent less able to understand why we ‘naturally’ read the text in this or that way.

What are some of the areas of our thinking that need a fresh dialogue with previous readings of the scripture?