Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Theological Treatises gathers twelve works of systematic doctrine or spiritual instruction across five traditions, distinct from scripture itself and from the rules and codes that govern conduct.

Five stand in the Christian tradition. Augustine's Confessions moves from autobiography into meditation on memory and time; his City of God, written after the Gothic sack of Rome, answers the charge that abandoning the old gods caused the empire's fall by dividing history into two cities, one built on love of self and one on love of God. Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, left unfinished at his death in 1274, became the central reference of Catholic theology through its method of stating objections and resolving them in turn. Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, expanded to its definitive 1559 edition, gave the Reformed movement its most ordered statement of doctrine. The Philokalia, compiled from Mount Athos manuscripts and printed in 1782, gathers ascetic writings on prayer across eleven centuries around the Jesus Prayer.

Three are Buddhist. The Visuddhimagga, composed by Buddhaghosa in fifth century Sri Lanka, remains Theravada's most authoritative manual of doctrine and meditation. Shantideva's eighth century Bodhicaryavatara guides the bodhisattva path in verse. Tsongkhapa's 1402 Lamrim Chenmo organizes the whole path as a graded sequence and founded the Gelug school's curriculum.

Two are Quranic commentary, Tafsir al-Tabari from the early tenth century and Tafsir Ibn Kathir from the fourteenth, the most widely read tafsir today. Nahj al-Balagha collects sermons attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib, standing in Shia tradition beside the Quran and hadith. The Denkard, Zoroastrianism's encyclopedia, preserves summaries of Avestan books otherwise lost.