Do We Need Unwritten Traditions?

Asaph Vapor kept asking "where does it say successors?" · Do We Need Unwritten Traditions?

If we are Christians, yes, we do need traditions from Christ over His Apostles, that are not in the New Testament directly.

Here is why.

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: (Matthew 28:20)

What do these include among other things?

[25] Then he said to them: O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. [26] Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory? [27] And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him. Luke 24.

So, Christological OT exegesis is included. Note "all the prophets".

But we do have some Christological comment in the New Testament, isn't that enough?

No.

It is tenuously possible to imagine that the canonic books of the New Testament refers back explicitly to each book of the Old Testament, though I don't think it is quite likely.

But it is very certain, we do not have references explicitly back to most passages and verses in the Old Testament, within this canon.

So, do we need that?

For if you did believe Moses, you would perhaps believe me also; for he wrote of me. John 5:46

One can also translate the Latin "for (it was) of me (that) he wrote".

We must therefore assume:

• all of the Old Testament refers to Jesus Christ
• all of it was exposed to the Apostles (those on the way to Emmaus and others)
• all of it was meant to be transmitted through the ages by the Apostles with their successors (see previous)
• and all of it is not simply there by referring to standard Jewish (as the word is now used) exegesis, since the Jews do not refer it to Jesus Christ.

Also, the bare text of the Old Testament is not enough, since the Jews have that too (but call it "the Bible" rather than "the Old Testament"). It is also too large a corpus to be written down in the New Testament.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Barbara
4.XII.2020