Tradition, Scripture, and the Work of Discernment

One of the most frequent criticisms leveled at Convergent Catholicism is the accusation of relativism. The concern usually follows a familiar line. If Scripture is held alongside Tradition, if reason and lived experience are taken seriously, and if East and West are allowed to speak to one another, then truth becomes unstable. Authority weakens. Everything becomes negotiable.

That fear deserves to be taken seriously. But it also needs to be examined honestly.

The reality is this. Every Christian tradition negotiates. The difference is not whether negotiation happens, but whether it is acknowledged or hidden behind claims of certainty.

From the beginning, the Church has lived with Scripture received, Tradition remembered, and discernment practiced in time and place. There has never been a Christianity untouched by interpretation. There has never been a Church that existed outside culture, language, or history.

The early Church fathers were clear about this.

Irenaeus spoke of the faith as something handed down and safeguarded within the life of the Church. Scripture held authority precisely because it was received and interpreted within a community that remembered the apostolic witness. For Irenaeus, Scripture and Tradition were not rivals. They belonged together, each protecting the other from distortion.

Origen understood that Scripture demands careful interpretation because God speaks through human language. He warned against flattening the text into literalism divorced from spiritual discernment. Scripture, he taught, must be read with discipline, patience, and humility. The depth of the Word could not be exhausted by surface readings alone.

In the East, Basil the Great named openly what many later traditions struggled to admit. Not all of the Church’s life was preserved in written texts. Some things were received through worship, prayer, and embodied practice. These were not innovations. They were part of the living memory of the Church. Fidelity, for Basil, did not mean freezing the faith in time. It meant remaining rooted while still alive.

John Chrysostom approached Scripture as a pastoral responsibility. He warned against using the Bible as a tool of domination rather than healing. The task of teaching was not to impose certainty, but to guide people toward faithfulness. Interpretation, for Chrysostom, always carried moral weight.

In the West, Augustine spoke with remarkable honesty about the limits of human understanding. He affirmed the authority of Scripture while acknowledging that readers are fallible. When disagreements arose, Augustine urged charity over triumph. He famously taught that any reading of Scripture that leads toward love of God and neighbor cannot be dismissed lightly, even when conclusions differ.

This is not relativism. It is humility shaped by faith.

The medieval Church continued this pattern. Thomas Aquinas held Scripture as supreme, yet insisted that reason is a gift of God and must be used carefully in theology. Reason did not replace revelation. It served it. For Aquinas, faith without reason risked distortion. Reason without faith risked pride.

The Reformation did not remove negotiation. It exposed it.

Martin Luther’s appeal to Scripture emerged from conscience, conflict, and lived struggle. His insistence on Scripture did not eliminate tradition. It reoriented which traditions carried authority. Even Luther recognized that Scripture is always interpreted within the Church and that interpretation requires accountability to the community of faith.

Anglicanism named this reality with unusual clarity. Richard Hooker articulated what later became known as the three-legged stool. Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. Scripture remains primary. Tradition witnesses to how Scripture has been received across time. Reason tests coherence and guards against contradiction. Remove one leg, and the Church loses balance.

John Wesley extended this insight by naming experience. Not personal preference, but lived encounter. Doctrine is not only confessed. It is practiced. Wesley believed that theology must be tested in the lives of real people. When doctrine consistently produces harm, the Church must listen. Not abandon Scripture, but ask whether it has been rightly understood.

This is where Convergent Catholicism stands.

We affirm Scripture as foundational. We receive Tradition as living inheritance. We use reason because interpretation is unavoidable. We attend to experience because theology always touches real bodies and real lives.

This does not make truth negotiable. It makes discernment unavoidable.

The pull toward fundamentalism exists in both East and West. In the East, it appears when Tradition is treated as untouchable artifact rather than living memory. In the West, it appears when doctrine becomes a closed system incapable of repentance or reform. Both promise certainty. Both resist accountability.

Convergence does not resolve this tension. It refuses to deny it.

We do not claim purity of method. We claim responsibility. Responsibility to read Scripture within the Church. Responsibility to receive Tradition without idolizing it. Responsibility to use reason honestly. Responsibility to listen to those most affected by our theology.

The early Church did not survive by pretending these tensions did not exist. It survived by remaining in conversation long enough to discern together.

That is not relativism.

That is tradition practiced faithfully.