J. I. Packer has commented on what constitutes the great tradition of Christian faith and life:

Recognizing the canonical Scriptures as the repository and channel of Christ-centered divine revelation; acknowledging the triune God as sovereign in creation, providence and grace; focusing faith, in the sense both of belief and of trust, on Jesus Christ as God incarnate; as our crucified and living Savior, Lord, master, friend, life and hope; and as the one mediator of, and thus the only way to, a filial relationship with God his Father; seeing Christians as a family of forgiven sinners, now supernaturally regenerated in Christ and empowered for godliness by the Holy Spirit. . . . Christianity began and spread as the worship of a Creator-God truly manifested in a risen, living, miracle-working divine Savior who forgives sins and bestows the divine Holy Spirit, thereby transforming believers into loving, rejoicing, praying, worshiping persons who live in an unquenchable hope of sharing Christ’s heavenly glory forever. . . . Nothing is nearer the heart of the great tradition, and therefore more purely and gloriously ecumenical, than loving the Lord who in love died for us and now lives in us, and with that hating sin, and practicing repentance, and testifying that we live by being forgiven, and proving God’s power to enable us to resist sin’s down-drag. . . . When Jesus told Nicodemus that with those born of the Spirt it was like the wind - ”you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going” (Jn 3:8) - he was referring to bewilderment on the part of unbelievers as to what makes Christians tick; true life in Christ will always have a supernatural quality that generates such bewilderment. Part of our calling is to unite to tell the world of this supernaturalizing of the natural and of the Christ who brings it to pass - and with that to demonstrate through the devotion of our own lives the supernaturalizing of which we speak. “Make your light shine,” says Jesus, “so that others will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in heaven” (Mt 5: 16).

I conclude the quotations taken from the book, Reclaiming the Great Tradition, with this series of quotations from J. I. Packer.

Kallistos Ware, in Reclaiming the Great Tradition, has stated that the Trinity is the “heart of our life.” I am posting more quotes by him from that book, showing how the Holy Spirit relates to the triune God:

God is a triunity of persons loving each other, and in that shared love the persons are totally “oned” without thereby losing their personal individuality. In the phrase of St. John of Damascus, . . . the Three are “united yet not confused, distinct yet not divided.” . . . The Father is the “fountainhead” within the Trinity, so that the Son and the Spirit find their unity in him and are defined by their relationship to him: the Son is begotten,” the Spirit “proceeds.” . . . In the case of the Trinity . . . every divine operation is one and undivided, and the Trinity has but one will and not three. In this manner the three persons of the Trinity are one in a way that three human persons can never be.

I now include a quotation by Kallistos Ware, who discussed the heart of our Christian life, the Trinity, in the book, Reclaiming the Great Tradition:

For traditional Christians the doctrine of the Trinity is not just a possible way of thinking about God. It is the only way. The one God of the Christian church cannot be conceived except as Trinity. Apart from the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, God cannot be known in the truth and reality of his being. The doctrine of the Trinity is not an embarrassing complication, a piece of technical theologizing of no importance for our daily existence. It stands at the very heart of our Christian life.

A quotation by William J. Abraham from Reclaiming the Great Tradition that addresses the attack on the Trinity that is occurring in the West:

The deep issue facing us in the West is not just an attack on the Trinity but a wider attempt to create new canonical material. We should be alerted to this by the fact that the doctrine of the Trinity expressed in the Nicene Creed was not just an option applauded by the church: it was an option formally adopted by the whole church and made binding for future generations. The rule of faith was developed alongside the canon of the New Testament to preserve the riches of the Christian heritage and ultimately to make possible the salvation of our souls. In and around this material the church also canonized the Chalcedonian definition, a network of liturgical practices, an iconographic tradition, a list of teachers or fathers, a system of episcopal oversight and various disciplinary canons for organizing the life of the community. The point of these canonical materials and practices is not to furnish us with a theory of knowledge but to initiate us into the kingdom of God. They are gifts of the Holy Spirit to create in us the mind of Christ and to make us truly holy. In and through them we are to become by grace what Christ was by nature. Their purpose is soteriological. Hence these gifts cannot be properly received and used without humility, repentance and faith on the one side and without a profound immersion in the life of the Holy Spirit on the other. Through this process we are intended to come to know the true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I am sharing quotations from Patrick Henry Reardon in the book, Reclaiming the Great Tradition:

We do not see the Father except in the Son, and then only by reason of the Holy Spirit who is poured into our hearts.

I include a final quotation by Harold O. J. Brown:

Just as the Holy Spirit persuaded the early church to acknowledge the right texts as Scripture and to reject the others, so today [bold type added] he moves in the life of the individual to create conviction that the Bible is God’s Word, fully authoritative and completely reliable.

The following quotations are taken from the chapter by Harold O. J. Brown in the book, Reclaiming the Great Tradition:

There can be no question that the Bible, the Word of God, is of the utmost importance for Christians and for the church. . . . The book itself, the actual printed text, can be the agent that brings people to faith in Christ, although more often a human witness or witnesses will be used by the Holy Spirit to bring the message home to the heart of the seeker. . . . . New Testament books were accepted as the Word of God and placed in the New Testament canon because the churches of the time recognized them to be the Word of God; the work of the Holy Spirit enabled the human writers to write God’s words, and it is this work of the Spirit that makes the Scriptures divinely authoritative and preserves them from error. In addition the Holy Spirit was active in the early congregations and councils, enabling them to recognize the right Scriptures as God’s Word. . . . When the Scripture is acknowledged to be the very Word of God, it necessarily becomes the . . . “norm that norms” the other standards, such as creeds, catechisms or manuals of discipline.

I include a quotation from the chapter by Richard John Neuhaus:

In acknowledging one another as Christians, we have already taken a very major ecumenical step. That is, we understand ourselves to be living in the same . . . world of faith. “So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” (Eph. 2: 19=20)

Objection: But Christ came to bring peace. We should work for peace.

Reply: He also said he came to bring a sword. He did not come to bring us the peace that the world gives. He explicitly said that. He clearly distinguished his peace from the world’s peace, just as he clearly distinguished his love from the world’s love, saying that by this all people would know and recognize and distinguish his disciples, by the new kind of love they had for each other. The peace that the world gives is saying yes to the world, the flesh and the devil. The peace Christ brought, the peace the world cannot give, is a peace with neighbor, with self and with God. This peace means making war on greed and lust and pride, which are the enemies of peace with neighbor, self and God. The two forms of peace are exact opposites. They are at war with each other. (Peter Kreeft, Reclaiming the Great Tradition)

I will be posting some blogs based on readings from the book, Reclaiming the Great Tradition, ed. James S. Cutsinger. Contributing authors identify what constitutes the “Great Tradition” in Christianity, the Trinity and the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ. They probe what it would mean for Christians from the different traditions to affirm together this “Great Tradition,” fundamental to Christianity.

It is becoming clear to [Christians of different traditions] that we are saved only by Christ, by grace; that faith is our acceptance of that grace, so we are saved by faith; and that good works, the works of love, necessarily follow that faith if it is real and saving faith, so we cannot be saved by a faith that is without good works. (Peter Kreeft, reclaiming the Great TRadition)

When we are saved in repentance by God’s grace through the sin sacrifice of Jesus Christ we are baptized by His Holy Spirit, who counsels us in the lifelong process of sanctification that results in good works and the manifesting of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.