The meaning of tradition is broad. It can refer to the deposit of faith or the Apostolic Tradition, to Scripture as the most perfect expression of what is handed over from Christ, or to the disciplinary and liturgical practices of the Church. It can also refer more broadly to those theological and doctrinal teachings, inherited by one generation of ecclesiastical writers and passed on to another generation of theological heirs. The Fathers themselves were always acutely aware of the traditions they stood within and especially of their relation to the Apostolic Tradition.