Guard the Good Deposit

Section I: Why Must We Guard the Good Deposit? • 19

You and I are not the first generation of the Church. We stand in a long line of brothers and sisters who have served Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Great Tradition is a record of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. No generation of the Church should try to rebuild the faith from scratch. We have the privilege to stand on the shoulders of giants! The Spirit of God leads us not only individually, but also through his people both past and present. The Great Tradition represents the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to the one Church united across the ages. The Great Tradition offers us a clear foundation for our freedom. It provides us with the tools we need to guard the good deposit as we live the radical freedom of the Spirit.

Does this make us Catholic? Does retrieving the Great Tradition threaten our Protestant identity?

When compared with the Great Tradition, the modern divisions and denominations of the Church are quite recent. The Great Tradition dates to the first 400 years of the church (c.100–500 AD). All our core doctrine and practices formed during this time. These truly are the sacred roots from which every branch of the church has grown. The division of the Church as we know it today began in 1054 with the split between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western Catholic Church. In the