2 Thessalonians 2:13-17 ~ Tradition's Role in Interpretation

The Bible means what the apostles said it meant. The early church had a living memory of the apostles’ oral teachings. Tertullian called it the “rule of faith.” Irenaeus called it the “canon of truth”. They had a teaching legacy that could be traced directly back to the apostles. The tradition of the apostles and the divinely inspired Scriptures together constituted their authority. When heretics began to distort the Bible’s teachings, the church found it necessary to draw up the ecumenical creeds (creed is from creedo and simply means “I believe”), such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. A fifth century monk named Vincent of Lerins (two islands in the Mediterranean) put it this way, “what everywhere, always, by everybody has been believed is true catholic doctrine. Heretics are those who stand outside the stream of apostolic tradition.