While tradition plays a key role in Christian beliefs and practices, its role in theology remains contested. Is tradition a stultifying force baffling hopes of new ideas? Or is it the precondition for development in doctrine and practices alike? By focussing on the praxis of “handing-on” (traditio) as well as what is handed on (tradita) we encounter in tradition a dynamic and layered process that may locate theologians with reference to an authoritative past, but does not foreclose future possibilities. Within this context, dissenting from tradition can mean not just disagreement with an authoritative past, but disagreement among those who would honour the past about what the future should look like. That is, dissent from sacred tradition can also be dissent within sacred tradition. Whatever its form, dissent can also mean working within or marshalling the resources of tradition to say something constructive, to meet new situations, to progress, to be future-oriented. What is it about sacred tradition that allows for this?This panel invites reflection on tradition as both product and practice, to ask, what are the conditions that enable tradition to be productive of the future as well as conversative of the past? We leave the call deliberately open, to allow for multiple methodologies, communities, and disciplines, to approach these sites of sacred tradition, and to explore the dialectics of dissent, conservation, and progress possible within them.Chair: Ben DeSpain (Australian Catholic University) Speakers:Lexi Eikelboom (Australian Catholic University), Seeing in Time: Formal Considerations for Thinking about Sacred TraditionJonathan Zecher (Australian Catholic University), Tradition as Practice: Doctrine and Dissent in Byzantine LiteratureElisabeth Maikranz ( Heidelberg University), Tradition between Continuity and DiscontinuityTihomir Lazic (Newbold College), From Dissent to Discovery: Insights from the Seventh-day Adventist Quest for ‘Present Truth’Julia Thwaites (Trinity College, University of Melbourne), Gratuitous Play: A Reading of Ritual According to Agamben’s Reading of PoetryWhitney Harper (KU Leuven), ‘Theology Today’ and the Question of (Im)pure Tradition