Sacred Tradition and its Connection to Scripture

Sacred Tradition is the oral teachings of the apostles before they all died in some way or another. They are called sacred as they were given with the authority gifted to them to teach the faith by Jesus Christ. As the Gospels were originally oral teaching, scripture receives its own authority as it's a transcribed form of that oral teaching. These oral teachings are often not precisely defined until the church makes a doctrinal ruling on it and we have evidence of the teachings historically. The letters and thoughts of the leaders of the early church are very well recorded. What we usually call Sacred Tradition is what has been precisely defined.

There is also the notion that these teachings we know of exist as the seed to much larger truths. Through philosophical and scientific examination these teachings could yield greater knowledge. Thus, they remain dynamic in application but the same in essence and dogma.

>It's the traditions of man!
It must be clarified that Sacred Tradition and what we know as traditions are two different things. Their shared word causes confusion. Traditions as we know them - customs - are malleable and bare no importance to the Word of God. Sacred Tradition, however, is the oral teachings of those apostles of Jesus Christ himself from which all that we know of the faith springs.

>Scripture doesn't say this!
Before I answer this, it should be obvious that there was a period between Jesus' death and the writing of the gospels. It simply had to come from somewhere, and that's the apostles with their authority given by Christ. That said, we know from our records that the apostles taught more than in the scripture and no where in the scripture does it assert that is contains the whole faith so Sacred Tradition exists both as the root of scripture's authority and beyond it.

>But some of these things weren't made doctrine until HUNDREDS of years later!
Yes. This is because they were only precisely defined hundreds of years later. Sometimes due to people just not getting to some parts of discussion and other reasons.

>So... what are examples of Sacred Tradition?
Quality examples of this would be:

-The Biblical Canon
-The Trinity (it's not explicitly said to be the case in scripture)
-The Assumption of Mary
-Purgatory
-How all church sacraments (baptism, ordaining priests, and such) are to function
-The Dual Nature of Christ
-The post-Biblical stories of the martyrdom of the apostles

And there are more.