Final Comments on Scripture and Tradition

This debate on scripture and tradition, though very stimulating and helpful, is using up too much of my time and energy that I need to spend grading papers and doing things with my children. This will therefore be my last post on the subject, although my friends may feel free to continue to post responses and rebuttals.

Another Objection

The friend whose questions I tried to answer in my last blog entry, has written to suggest that there are still a number of problems with my position. He writes as follows:

"At lunch I mentioned that your comparison between the authority of the creeds and the authority of a parent is an "apples to oranges" comparison. Let me explain that a little further. The authority of a parent is defined Biblically. Children are supposed to be respectful to their parents and to obey them as much as they are able. Parents are supposed to bring up their children in a godly manner and to not provoke them to wrath. This does not mean, however, that children have to believe everything that their parents teach them. When they reach adulthood in particular, they need to understand why they are expected to believe certain things, rather than simply accepting it because their parents told them to. In matters of theology, this means going back to the Bible and checking it through that. In some cases, they may find that their parents were wrong, and when they do, they still need to handle their differences with their parents in a respectful manner, but they are not required to give up their "private interpretation" in favor of the "secondary authority's" teaching.

In the same way, the authority that leaders in the church are given means that the people beneath them should generally be obedient and respectful, but it does not mean that they are to simply accept everything they are taught. Paul was an apostle with all of the authority that goes with thatposition, yet he was pleased when the Bereans checked his teaching against scripture. The teachers in the church are supposed to teach, but theyshould teach what they can be sure of (the Bible), and not their ownopinions. If Scripture is clear and something then they can teach itdogmatically, but if it is unclear, then they should not insert their ownopinions. In regard to the creeds then, they cannot be justified simply because theyare what the church has taught. This would be like saying that something is correct because your father told you so and he has Biblical authority.

Since they also do not teach us anything different than what the Scripturesteach, I would still maintain that they are redundant and not necessary for the correct interpretation of the Bible."

My Response

Although you begin by reiterating that the analogy between the authority of the church and the authority of parents are like apples and oranges, your argument suggests otherwise. In the first paragraph you define the nature and limits of parental authority and then you go on, in the next paragraph, to suggest that the authority of leaders in the church operates “in the same way…” If it operates in the same way, then in what sense releavent to our discussion are these two spheres of authority different and how does this difference undermine my position?

We seem to both agree that, (A) parents and church derive their authority from the Bible; (B) parents and the church are to teach those under them to do and believe what the Bible teaches, rather than invent new doctrine; (C) if a parent or church departs from Biblical doctrine, the child or Christians are under no obligation to do or believe what is being taught. Where I disagree is that it follows from A, B and C that the authority of the church is unnecessary.

You seem to have misunderstood my position on a number of points. My second to last response should have laid to rest the idea that I was advocating an unthinking acceptance of everything that the church ever taught. In fact, I said just the opposite in my last response in answer to your point about Trent, and I did so in a way that was consistent with still maintaining a robust view of church tradition. Hence, the points you are making now, though correct, are irrelevant to refuting my position. I also never said that something could be justified simply because the church had taught it. I can see how I might have given that impression in my first formulation, but my subsequent qualifications HERE and HERE attempted to address that. You would have to prove that such a priori acceptance of all church teaching is a corollary of my new qualified formulations, which I will now restate for a third time:

Secondary authorities (such as church tradition and parents and pastors) should be used to help us understand what the primary authority of scripture is saying. Because these are not our only means for understanding Scripture, however, we are also able to evaluate these secondary authorities on the basis of Holy Writ. When we do this we find that church tradition, as represented in the early creeds (particularly the first 6 ecumincal councils), is entirely in keeping with what the scripture teaches. This increases our debt to these formulations as secondary tiers of authority.

Your final paragraph seems to be a non-sequitur. How does it follow that because the creeds duplicate scriptural teaching that they are unnecessary? I can object to that on the Reductio ad absurdum principle since this same line of reasoning could lead you to say that the Holy Spirit or Sunday school teachers are unnecessary for understanding scripture. Since scripture specifically declares that both the Holy Spirit and teachers in the church are means by which Biblical truth is conveyed to His people, it follows that they most certainly are necessary. The same principle applies to church tradition. I presented some scriptural arguments for this in my last post.


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More Objections Answered

A friend wrote as follows about my last post:

"I think that your revised position avoids some of the circularity of your earlier explanation, however, I still see some logical problems with it. First, where does "tradition" get its authority? You cited Paul, but didn'tgive a specific citation. I know that he does mention 'traditions' in hisletters, but in context, he is referring specifically to his teachings(embodied now in his letters), or to the teachings of Christ (preserved forus now in the Gospels). It would be anachronistic to apply his statementsto later traditions of the church."

I would say in response that when Paul urges Titus to hold firmly to the traditions that have been handed down, he is referring to his teachings or the teachings of Christ which were later embodied in scripture. Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul praises the Corinthians for holding firmly to traditions he had taught them orally. But that doesn’t mean that once the New Testament was completed that we can now dispense with the authority of the church. Jesus promised that He would never forsake the church. Though the Bible is the ultimate authority, we are also told to heed the wisdom of parents (Prov. 1:8-9), the elders in the church (Heb. 13:7, 17) and all godly counsel (Prov. 12:15, 19:20, 20:5; 27:9). That is where tradition gets its subordinate authority. Its authority is derived from scripture. This is not circular for the reason I gave in my previous post.

My friend also raised the following objection:

"Secondly, you still have not addressed the issue of redundancy. Is theresome essential piece of information that the creeds provide that is notgiven in Scripture? If your answer is yes, then the creeds would beteaching something that is not directly taught by scripture. Since theirauthority is based on Scripture (the final authority), then they wouldessentially 'lose' their authority on that matter since they would no longerbe in alignment with Scripture. (Using your earlier analogy, this would belike the babysitter telling your kids to do something that's not on yourlist and that you didn't tell her to tell them). On the other hand, if your answer is no, then you cannot claim that they are necessary - one can accessall of the same information in the Scriptures alone."

Good point. The answer would be no, there is not some essential piece of information that the creeds provide that is not given in Scripture. But are they still necessary? Before I can answer that I must ask, “necessary for what?” In the sense that the Holy Spirit is free to work outside the creeds they are not necessary. But they are necessary in the sense that they are part of a church invested with legitimate subordinate authority. This is similar to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not give us any new doctrinal information that isn’t in the Bible and yet we need the Holy Spirit to properly understand scripture. One of the ways in which the Holy Spirit works is through the subordinant authority of the church and the early creeds (in particularly the Apostles' creed and the Nicene creed).

"Lastly, you also haven't answered how you know which creeds and councils define the essentials of Christianity and which ones don't. For instance, I don't think you would accept the Council of Trent, but how do you know thatit is qualitatively different than the Council of Nicea? You mentionedaccess to apostles, but I'm pretty sure that there wasn't anyone at either of those councils that directly knew any of the apostles..."

I thought I addressed that indirectly in my previous post when I said that because the scripture is the final authority, we have a mechanism with which to evaluate the creeds. Secondary authorities (such as church tradition and parents and pastors) should be used to help us understand what the primary authority of scripture is saying. Because these are not our only means for understanding Scripture, we are also able to evaluate these secondary authorities on the basis of Holy Writ. When we do this we find that church tradition, as represented in the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, is entirely in keeping with what the scripture teaches, while the tradition represented at Trent is not. This allows a balance between the Catholic position which elevates tradition to the status of scripture, and the modern evangelical tradition which does not recognize tradition as even a subordinant authority.

I hope this helps to clarify things.

TRADITION! TRADITION!

I will now try to answer the second objection stated in the previous post.

First, what about the "many 'traditions' of the church" that I would not accept? It is worth pointing out that when I originally spoke about the traditions of the church forming an interpretative rubric (see my article HERE), I was simply referring to the basic tenets of the Christian faith that distinguish it from heresies. The basic tenets found expression in the Rule of Faith, which was embodied in Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. Although there is room for the church to flesh out and further develop doctrines that are not found in these creeds but are still scriptural (such as justification by faith alone), if someone came up with an interpretation of scripture that contradicted the basic tenets that the church taught in these early formulations, their interpretation of scripture must be suspect at least.

This is not because the creeds or the Rule of Faith are infallible in their own right. Only Scripture is the ultimate source of authority. Although Scripture and tradition are both authoritative, Scripture is the only final port of authority. Tradition is a subordinate authority like that of the civil magistrate or the family.

In various places the Apostle Paul affirms that the church, family, tradition and civil government all have genuine authority, though not in an unqualified sense. This is the context with which we have to understand the creeds. Since they are invested with the authority of a church that had a direct link to the apostolic teaching, they should be taken extremely seriously, yet they remain a subordinate authority to that of the Bible and could, in principle, be challenged if they were found to be theologically spurious.

Does this lead to the circularity whereby I have to understand Scripture to know whether the traditions are correct, but I need the traditions to correctly understand Scripture?

I can see the problem here, but it is not just a problem with church tradition. The same could be said of the Holy Spirit: we need to understand Scripture before we can know whether the Holy Spirit exists (and in order to distinguish the Holy Spirit from false spires), yet we need the Holy Spirit to correctly understand Scripture.

When two things are mutually reinforcing like this, it is difficult to formulate it in a way that avoids circularity. However, by understanding the above distinction between primary and secondary authorities, we can re-state our position on church tradition non-circularly as follows:

Secondary authorities (such as church tradition and parents and pastors) should be used to help us understand what the primary authority of scripture is saying. Because these are not our only means for understanding Scripture, we are also able to evaluate these secondary authorities on the basis of Holy Writ. When we do this we find that church tradition, as represented in the early creeds, is entirely in keeping with what the scripture teaches. This increases our debt to these formulations as secondary tiers of authority.

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More Objections

The following comment was left on the last entry.

In your "An Objection Answered Section" you seem to have combined two objections, and do not seemed to have answered either.

Here is the first objection: if the written content of Scripture and the oral content of the Regula Fidei are truly identical in content and authority, then it should not matter if someone has access to one, the other, or both. Having either one should be enough and the second would be redundant, if they truly are identical. It is only if there is some difference in content or quality between the two that we would need both. I think you either need to concede that they are not identical (and therefore not redundant to one another), or that it is fine for Christians to rely on just one (eg. Scripture).

The second objection is this: there are many 'traditions' of the church that you would not accept (such as papal infallibility). Your stated reason for not accepting them is because they are not scriptural traditions (or at least according to your interpretation of scripture). However, you also claim that Scripture must be interpreted in light of tradition. So, I have to understand Scripture to know whether the traditions are correct, but I need the traditions to correctly understand Scripture. It’s sort of a catch-22. That’s why we were saying that it is circular.


Let’s unpack this step by step.

First of all, I am not aware how I combined those two objections since I did not even attempt to answer the second. But the second objection is a good point and worthy of a proper answer.

In this post I will only respond to the first objection. Although the rule of faith and the Bible are identical, the rule of faith is not always identical to our interpretations of scripture. However, the rule of faith OUGHT to always be identical to our interpretations of scripture, and that is why the rule of faith is a necessary interpretive rubric. This is simply another way of saying that private interpretation of scripture should never take precedent over what the church has historically taught. If a J.W. comes and tries to prove to a lay person that Jesus isn't God, the lay person may not have the education to adequately answer him, but it is sufficient to say “That is wrong because that contradicts what the church has always taught.”

Since what the apostolic church has historically taught is identical to the Bible, it is true that “having either one should be enough and the second would be redundant” – but that only applies if you truly have one. A way to know if we truly have one is if it is identical with the other.

This leads into the next objection, which I will answer in a later post.

No Theology Without Tradition

It has often been said that philosophy is the handmaid of theology. It might be said with equal truth that tradition is the handmaid of theology.

To properly interpret the Bible, we need church tradition, and in order to have church tradition, we need to saturate ourselves in church history and the theological systems of past thinkers.

If by studying the Bible we come to a conclusion that runs counter to what the church has historically taught, then we should suspend our private judgement and go with what the church has said.

This does not mean that church tradition is a higher authority than God’s word. Church tradition is to theology what light is to vision. Light does not create the objects that we see but enables us to view them with clarity. Similarly, church tradition does not create theological truths, but it does enable us to view the Bible with a degree of clarity that would otherwise be alien to us.

Teachers

Paul says in Ephesians 4 that certain people are called to be teachers. Throughout the history of the church, the Holy Spirit has raised numerous Christians up to fulfil this vocation. Even though they are now dead, they can still be our teachers. Men like Athanasius, Augustine, Ignatius, Polycarp, as well as more recent saints like the reformers and the great thinkers of the evangelical tradition. Since this cloud of witnesses is still available to teach us, we should avoid supposing that we can develop a theology without reference to their wisdom. To advocate theology without tradition is to imply that we do not need teachers, or at least that we do not need the great teachers of the Christian past.

The Wisdom of the Past

Even if it is possible to have theology without tradition, it is not possible to have good theology without tradition. To suppose that we can turn every Christian layperson loose with their Bible and expect them to autonomously develop their own theology, without reference to what the church has historically taught, is to invite the worst kind of theological aberrations. This applies even if the person is given the tools for correct exegesis. If it took the greatest minds of the church 4 centuries to work out doctrines like the Trinity, the canon of scripture and the various Christeological formulations, how can we expect each person to do this for themselves? (On the development of the New Testament canon, see http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon5.html)

Another reason why we should not approach theology a-historically is because then we will not learn from past mistakes. Sages throughout history have continually testified to the fact that by studying the errors of the past we can avoid the same mistakes. This applies as much to theology as it does to any other discipline. Alexander Solzhenitsyn said: “If we don’t know our own history then we simply have to endure all of the same mistakes and all of the same sacrifices and all of the same absurdities over again times ten.”

Alfred the Great said, “The past is given to those in the present to keep and guard those in the future, that lessons learned and obstacles overcome might contribute to the gospel’s assent and subvert the ready temptation’s lure.”

Alexis de Tocqueville said, "Since the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity."

Samuel Johnson said, “A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.”

Ps. 88:12 reads, “Shall Your wonders be known in the dark? And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?”

The early church fathers recognised this truth and vigorously opposed the idea that we could develop theology just using the Bible without reference to church tradition. This was one of the main areas of contention with the Gnostics.

The Role of Tradition in the Early Church

Even before the New Testament was formalised, or in the churches that didn’t have a complete collection of the manuscripts that would later be collected together as the New Testament, the apostolic teaching was preached and faithfully taught. The apostolic teaching was not confined to written documents, but it was certainly embodied in the scriptures. The content of revelation – both through written documents and oral tradition – was identical even though the medium was different. Precisely because it was identical in content, it was so necessary not to interpret scripture outside the boundaries of the apostolic faith. For example, if I sat down with my Bible and came to the conclusion that Jesus wasn’t God or that He didn’t really have a material body, or something weird like that, it would be legimiate for someone to refute me, not by arguing against the specifics of my interpretation, but on the basis that my interpretation contradicts the rule of faith handed down by the apostles from the beginning.

This was where the debates with the early heretics hinged. The heretics appealed to secret oral traditions that the apostles had, allegedly, passed down. This was what the heresy of Gnosticism claimed. Orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, maintained that the apostolic tradition was public and was mutually reinforcing with scripture. It is not possible to come up with a correct interpretation of scripture that reveals a hidden or secret meaning that everyone else has missed, because the scripture is the embodiment of the public rule of faith.

This public rule of faith was known as the regula fidei in Latin. The Apostolic fathers defended orthodox Christianity by appealing to the regula fidei or ‘rule of faith’, which “was essentially the content of the profession of faith that every catechumen was asked to recite from memory before his or her baptism. It was a summary of the faith taught by the Apostles and committed to their disciples.” [Meith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, p. 23] The Apostles’ creed represented this confession of faith, being a summary of the Apostolic rule of faith. It was a public tradition.

Because of this “there was simply no way of imagining possible conflict between the Christian Scripture and the Christian tradition – and, therefore, no necessity to choose between them.” [Albert C. Outler, cited in Jaroslav Pelikan, Obedient Rebels, (London: SCM Press Ltd.) p. 173]

During the first decades following Christ, there is no evidence that the Church considered the Apostles’ teaching to be entirely confined to written documents. However, they did teach that this public apostolic tradition had been safeguarded by being permantently recorded in the Holy Scripture. As Tertullian (AD 155-220) put it, the scriptures “indeed furnish us with our Rule of faith.” [Against Praxeas, ch. 11] “Because both the apostolic Scriptures and the apostolic rule of faith have as their source the Apostles, they are mutually reciprocal and indivisible for Tertullian.” [Mathison, p. 26]

Because of this, the fathers taught that scripture should be interpreted within the context of the apostolic tradition, the regula fidei. As Mathison puts it, “the regula fidei was the necessary context for the correct interpretation of that authorititve Scripture.” [Mathison, p. 23]

Where the heretics went wrong was in refusing to interpret scripture within the context of this public rule of faith, thus divorcing scripture from the apostolic tradition it embodied and preserved.

Because the scripture embodied, preserved and summarised apostolic teaching, the church fathers argued that all matters needed to be tested against the yardstick of scripture.

The reason these men instisted that everything must be tested by Holy Scripture was because they believed the scriptures embodied and preserved the apostolic tradition, the rule of faith. The proper interpretation of scripture was always within the context of this historic tradition. Thus, in the 4th century Athanasius (AD 293- 373) argued that the error of heretics is not in their appeal to scripture but in their appeal to scripture taken out of the context of the apostolic faith. Athanasius appeals to the sufficiency of Scripture as interpreted within this apostolic context.

Councils and creeds became increasingly necessary to defend the apostolic interpretation of Scripture against the attacks of heretics.

Keith Mathison gives a helpful summary of the situation during the first three centuries of the church:

“For the first three centuries, we find a general consensus regarding authority. The New Testmanet which was the ‘inscripturaisation’ of the apostolic proclamation, together with the ‘older Scriptures,’ [the Old Testament] was the source of revelation and the authorritative doctrinal norm. The Scripture was to be interpreted by the Church and in the Church within the context of the regula fidei. If it was taken out of its apostolic context, it would inevitably be mishandled. Yet neither the Church nor the regula fidei were considered second sources of revelation or equal uthoeities on par with scripture. The Church was the interpreter and guardian of the Word of god, and the regula fidei was a summary of the apostolic preaching and the hermeneutical context of the Word of God. But only the Scripture was the Word of God."

Scripture & Tradition in the Medieval Church

During the Middle Ages, the understanding of scripture and tradition gradually began to change. As early as the 4th century, we begin to get hints of a two-source concept of tradition – one which allows for an extra-Biblical revelation to be authoritative as Scripture itself. Nevertheless, throughout the Middle Ages, the predominant view was that scripture alone was the final authority, but interpreted within the context of the public regula fidei.

During the 12th century canon lawyers argued that the pope had authority to interpret scripture, but they did not argue that he had the authority to create new doctrine. Gradually, however, there began to develop the idea that the Popes were the custodians of an oral tradition which represented a second source of authority. A number of new doctrines began to spring up about which the scripture said nothing.

William of Ockham (c. 1280-1349) was the first person to explicitly defend a two-tier model for authority.

Mathison sums the matter up as follows:

“…the consensus of the early Church continued throughout most of the middle ages… In the changing environment of the twelfth century, the beginnings of a real movement towards a two-source theory can be discerned in the writings of the canon lawyers. The shift reaches a turning point in the work of William of Ockham in the early fourteenth century. He is one of the first, if not the first, medieval theologian to clearly and explicitly embrace a two-source theory of revelation. From the fourteenth century onward, then, we see the parallel development of two concepts of tradition. There are those who continue to maintain the position of the early Church by insisting that, although the Scriptures must be interpreted by the Church and in the Church according to the rule of faith, they are the sole source of authoritative revelation – ‘Tradition 1.' And there are those who maintain the existence of extra-scriptural sources of revelation equally as authoritative as Scripture."

This allowed the Roman church to become theologically insulated against the possibility of ever being corrected by a higher standard.

This sets the stage for some of the disputes that would occur during the Reformation. Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated a return to what Mathison calls ‘Tradition I’. They did this by asserting the doctrine of sola scriptura (‘scripture alone’). By this they meant that Scripture (interpreted in the light of the Apostolic rule of faith) was the sole source of revelation. They argued that over so many years the church had deviated from the teachings of the patristic era and needed to return. The reformation doctrine of sola scriptura was not a novel doctrine and neither was did it advocate private interpretation of scripture. Rather, it represented a return to the teachings of the early church.

“Until the sixteenth century the ancient doctrine of Tradition I and the newer doctrine of Tradition II were both found within the Western church. Tradition I had been the only position for the first three centuries of the Church and the predominant position for the next thousand years. But when, in light of ecclesiastical tyranny and apostasy, men such as Luther and Calvin asserted Tradition I (in terms of sola scriptura), Rome reacted by defending and later, officially adopting Tradition II.” [Mathison, pp. 120-121]

In more recent times, the Roman Catholic Church has gone even further to say that their teachings are the one and only source for revelation. This includes both the revelation of scripture and the revelation of the Apostolic tradition. Scripture is authoritative only because the Roman Catholic Church says it is, while our only access to church tradition is through the Roman Catholic Church.

Because the Roman Catholic Church believes in an oral tradition handed down uncorrupted through the centuries and embodied in whoever happens to be the present Pope, the Roman Catholic Church believes it has the authority to actually create new doctrines. They do not see it as actually creating new doctrines, but as realising what the tradition always was. This means that whatever the Roman Catholic Church happens to officially be teaching at the moment automatically represents the church’s tradition and always did even though we never knew it before.

Thus, when the church began to teach the immaculate conception of Mary (the view that Mary was preserved from original sin), they taught that this always had been the Church’s tradition. As one Roman Catholic theologian puts it, referring to the doctrine of Mary’s Corporeal Assumption:

“…if that is the teaching of the magisterium of the moment, if that is the Church’s tradition, then it was always part and parcel of the Church’s teaching, part and parcel of tradition.” [Walter Burghardt, cited by Oberman, Dawn of the Reformation, p. 295]

This means that whenever the Roman Catholic formalises a new doctrine, they believe they are simply recognising and publicly acknowledging a tradition that has always existed. But this raises a problem. Because the Roman Catholic church has come up with many doctrines for which there is no record in the first thousand years of the church (such as the Immaculate Conception, Papal Infallibility, Purgatory, etc.), it follows that if these doctrines were part of a tradition at all, it must have been a secret oral tradition that was handed down. That is what the Roman Catholic church is forced to conclude. But this was the very view that the early church fathers so strongly opposed in the heretics. Their argument against the Gnostics, remember, was not so much that they were interpreting the Bible wrongly, but that they were willing to read into the scriptures a secret oral tradition which was outside the public regula fidei. This was akin to an argument used by the Pharisees who taught that God gave Moses not only the written law, but also an oral one, which was handed down through the generations to only a privileged few. The Pharisees used this idea to preserve their own power and a monopoly on interpreting the Torah. The common people had to go to the Pharisees to find out how the Torah was interpreted because only the Pharisees were heirs of the oral Mosaic tradition. The Roman Catholic church used the same strategy to preserve their hegemony on Biblical interpretation.

Scripture and Tradition in the Reformation

This sets the stage for some of the disputes that would occur during the Reformation. Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated a return to what Mathison calls ‘Tradition I’. They did this by asserting the doctrine of sola scriptura (‘scripture alone’). By this they meant that Scripture (interpreted in the light of the Apostolic rule of faith) was the sole source of revelation. They argued that over so many years the church had deviated from the teachings of the patristic era and needed to return. The reformation doctrine of sola scriptura was not a novel doctrine and neither was did it advocate private interpretation of scripture. Rather, it represented a return to the teachings of the early church.

Also at the time of the Reformation, there developed among the Anabaptists something which I will call Tradition O. This is known in history textbooks as the Radical Reformation. The Radical Reformers insisted that not only was Scripture the sole infallible authority, but that it was the sole authority altogether, and that it was to be interpreted within a historical vacuum. All that was necessary was “me and my Bible.” This opened the way for individualism and the kind of hermeneutical irresponsibility that arises from interpreting scripture outside the bounds of the historic apostolic faith.

Many modern evangelicals are the heirs of the radical reformer’s approach to the Bible. The Spirit-inspired Word of God becomes divorced from the Spirit-indwelt people of God, with the consequence that the Bible becomes a plaything and the source of endless speculation. In the end, the problem with this approach is the same problem that exists within the Roman Catholic church, namely autonomy. Whereas the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions result in the autonomy of the church, the radical reformer’s position resulted in the autonomy of the private individual who become a law unto him or herself. Scripture is interpreted according to the conscience and reason of the individual, so that the believer’s own opinion of what is and is not scriptural becomes the highest authority. Mathison puts the matter as follows:

"The Bible nowhere gives any hint of wanting every individual believer to decide for himself and by himself what is and is not the true meaning of Scripture. The classical Reformed doctrine of sola scriptura meant that Scripture is the sole final and infallible authority. It does not mean that the lone individual is the one to determine what that Scripture means. Scripture was given to the Church within a certain pre-existing doctrinal context that had been preached by the Apostles for decades. [The radical reformer’s position] denies the necessity of that context, and it denies the necessity of that Church. In doing so it denies Christ who established that Church and who taught that doctrine to His disciples. It is rebellion in the name of God against the authority of God for the sake of preserving the authority of man.” (Mathison, pp. 252-253)


Scripture & Tradition Chart

Tradition I

Position of early church and reformers (referred to as sola scriptural in the later case)

The Apostolic teaching is the rule of faith (regula fidei)

Public

Scripture embodies the regula fidei and therefore must not be interpteted intependently of it

Scripture and tradition are mutually reinforcing

Tradition II

Emerges during the late Middle Ages

Scripture and tradition are two separate sources of authoritative knowledge

Extra-scriptural sources of revelation are equally authoritative as scripture

Tradition 0

The radical reformers and most evangelicals today

No regula fidei

No tradition has authority

Because no tradition has authority, scripture need not be interpreted within the context of the regula fidei

Private judgment of individual above corporate judgment of the Christian church

Tradition III

Later Roman Catholic Church

Only one source of revelation which is the Roman Catholic Church

Authority of scripture and tradition derived from the Roman Catholic Church


An Objection Answered

It has been suggested that if Scripture and the Rule of Faith / Apostles’ oral teachings were identical and if the scriptures furnish us with the Rule of Faith, then it is circular to say that scripture should not to be interpreted apart from the context of Apostolic tradition.

It is not circular to acknowledge that if the content of the Bible and the Rule of Faith are the same, then interpretations of the Bible which divorce scripture's teachings from the Rule of Faith are necessarily false. It is simply to say "if P then Q, then P and not Q must be false." If the Bible and the Rule of Faith are identical, then when evangelicals try to separate them (as they do when they say that private interpretation can, in principle, trump the historic rule of faith) they must be committing an error. How is that circular?

Pictures of Children

Matthew has now joined me in America, where he begins school next Monday. We have been having a good time making new friends, going on hikes, getting the things both of us will need for school and just spending time together.

Here is a picture of Timothy saying goodbye to Matthew before he left. (To view the image in its proper size, double click on it).

Here are some pictures of Susanna, who has changed a lot since I saw her in June.