Catholic Apologetics Guidebook

An Essay on the Role of Tradition in Christian Belief

The following is an essay that I posted on a largely Protestant public message board, on the role of tradition in Christian belief and in how we interpret the Bible.  I have edited it slightly, mainly to remove some specific references to other people and other discussions on the message board where I originally posted the essay.  This essay was inspired in part by some points that I made near the end of my dialogue on the meaning of John 3:3.

I was having an e-mail conversation recently with a Protestant acquaintance of mine, and we were discussing the meaning of baptism – namely whether it is only symbolic (his view), or whether it truly imparts God's grace and factors into our salvation (my view).  And what I found is that in some cases we would both quote the exact same Scripture passage in support of our positions.  In other words, I would say something like "just look at what St. Paul says here in such-and-such verse" – thinking that this verse quite clearly and obviously supports my position.  But then he would do the same thing, and in some cases refer to exactly the same verse to support his position, also thinking that that verse quite clearly and obviously supported his position.

So I posed the following question:  How is it that we can both look at the same Bible passage, and we can each see the plain, obvious meaning of that passage, and yet we are seeing two different meanings?  The answer, in my opinion, is tradition.  The fact is that virtually all of us Christians have learned Christian doctrine based on certain traditions of Biblical interpretation.  I doubt that any of us learned how to interpret the Bible in a vacuum.  We all were taught certain doctrines and the Biblical basis for those doctrines, but the people who taught us followed various different traditions regarding doctrine and Biblical interpretation.

Consider again my example [mentioned in a previous topic on the same message board] about seeing if a new Christian could come up with the doctrine of the Trinity simply by studying the Bible, with no outside influence from any other source.  I think that this example illustrates how all of us Christians read the Bible through the "lens" of our own particular tradition (or sometimes multiple traditions), even if we don't always consciously realize or acknowledge that fact.

For example, why do Catholics believe that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist?  Did every Catholic examine the Bible and come to that conclusion on their own?  Or is this belief actually guided by Catholic tradition?

Or why do Lutherans and most modern Protestants believe that divine revelation is to be found in the Bible alone (Sola Scriptura)?  Did each of them examine the Bible, or examine the historical evidence, or listen to the Holy Spirit, and come to that conclusion independently?  Or are most of them in fact following Protestant tradition, going back to Martin Luther?

Or why do most modern Christians of most churches and denominations believe that God is a Trinity?  Did each and every Christian examine the Bible on their own, and come to that conclusion independently?  Or are we all following the shared Trinitarian tradition that has been passed down from the ancient church?

So I guess for me, the question is not whether I should listen to tradition or listen to Scripture alone, because I think that listening to and being guided by tradition is clearly unavoidable, at least in the real world.  Rather, for me the question is, which tradition is the right one to listen to?  And which one (if any) is indeed not corrupt, and not a "tradition of men"?  Here are just a few of the possible choices:

• We can choose Roman Catholic tradition, which tells us (among other things) that God is a Trinity of three persons in one God, that Jesus is physically present in a miraculous way in the Eucharist, that baptism imparts God's grace and washes away our sins, and that Mary is deserving of a special honor as our spiritual mother.

• Or we can choose Eastern Orthodox tradition, which essentially tells us the same things as Roman Catholic tradition, with only a few subtle differences (which in most cases may not be so much a difference in belief, as different ways to express the same belief).

• Or we can choose Lutheran tradition, which tells us (among other things) that the Bible is the one and only source of God's divine revelation.

• Or we can choose Calvinist tradition, which tells us (among other things) that salvation is governed by a doctrine commonly called "TULIP" (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints).

• Or we can choose Baptist tradition, which tells us (among other things) that baptism can only be given to those who have already expressed faith in Christ (thus excluding infant baptism), and that baptism is symbolic rather than being a sacrament which imparts God's grace and washes away our sins.

• Or we can choose Darby/Scofield Dispensationalist tradition, which tells us (among other things) that Jesus will return to take all true Christians to heaven, just before the time of great tribulation which will occur prior to Jesus's Second Coming.

• Or we can choose Mormon tradition, which tells us (among other things) that God the Father was once a man like us, and that there are three different levels of heaven.

• Or we can choose Jehovah's Witness tradition, which tells us (among other things) that only 144,000 true believers will go to heaven, while the rest will inherit a paradisical earth, and that hell does not exist.

• Or we can choose Pentecostal tradition, which tells us (among other things) that the gift of baptism of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by speaking in tongues, is available to all Christians.

• Or we can choose the Gospel Assembly / William Sowders tradition, which tells us (among other things) that the Holy Spirit is not a person, that Satan is not a literal fallen angel, and that the church long ago fell away from Christ and must be restored.

• Or we can choose modern American Evangelical tradition, which tells us (among other things) that you must "accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior" in order to be saved.

Now this is not an exhaustive list, and obviously there is significant overlap among several of the traditions listed here.  Also, I apologize if I have misrepresented the beliefs of any of these traditions.  Any misrepresentations are entirely unintentional, and I would appreciate charitable corrections if needed.

So if we can take the fact that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God as our starting point (and I select this starting point only because this is something that virtually all Christians agree on), then the question here, as I see it, is as follows:  If I want to learn how to interpret the Bible correctly, which of these many and varied traditions should I trust to tell me the correct way to interpret it?  I think that there are at least two ways that we could try to answer this question:

The first way is simply to study the Bible and see which tradition (if any) lines up with what the Bible actually says.  This idea sounds great in theory, and I would actually say that it is a valid way to go, at least in theory.  In other words, I think that some of the above traditions definitely do line up better with what the Bible says than do others.  But while most Christians would probably agree that one (or maybe more than one) Christian tradition lines up best with what the Bible says, the problem is that we would have many disagreements about exactly which tradition that is!  So in practice, it seems to me that trying to determine which tradition lines up with the Bible is often a very subjective exercise – partly because it is very difficult for each of us to step back and to stop seeing the Bible through the "lens" of our own tradition.

The second way to answer the question of which tradition we should trust is to look at the history of each tradition.  Where and when did it start?  Who started it?  And if it started after the time of the apostles, then did earlier generations of Christians believe the things that that tradition teaches?

I won't go through the entire list above, but let's answer those questions for a few of the traditions from the list:

• Lutheran tradition started in the early 16th century, and virtually no Christians prior to the 16th century taught the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.  I know that many here will disagree with that assertion, but I haven't seen any evidence that Sola Scriptura was believed and taught at any point in Christian history before Luther.

• Baptist tradition started in the early 17th century (I think), and I have not been able to find the belief in symbolic-only baptism in Christian history prior to the 16th century.

• Dispensationalist tradition started in the early 19th century, and no Christian prior to that time had ever taught the idea of a pre-tribulation rapture of faithful Christians (with the possible exception of some folks in the late 18th century who may have influenced Darby's rapture theology).

• I am not sure exactly when modern American Evangelical tradition started, and obviously it draws on several prior traditions such as Lutheran, Calvinist, and Baptist.  But I would challenge anyone to find the exact phrase "accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior" in use prior to the 20th, or perhaps the 19th, century.

• Finally, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions are rooted in the very earliest centuries of Christianity.  In fact, I believe that these traditions go back to the apostles themselves.  Some say that Catholic tradition has become corrupted over the centuries, and this is a debateable point that is hard to prove definitively one way or the other.  But I think that we can see evidence (not iron-clad proof, but evidence) of the apostolic origin of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition by reading the writings of the early church fathers.

For example, I would invite anyone here to read the writings of Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Hermas, Papias, Justin Martyr, Tatian the Syrian, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Hippolytus of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian of Carthage, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Methodius of Philippi, as well as certain early Christian writings of unknown authorship, such as the Didache.  Several of these early Christian writers (specifically Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, and Clement of Rome) learned the Christian faith directly from one or more of Jesus's apostles, or from others who had learned directly from the apostles, so that they were only one or two steps removed from the apostles themselves.  And all of the men that I have listed here wrote prior to the time of Constantine, which is significant since some modern Christians believe that Constantine corrupted the Christian church by introducing pagan practices and beliefs.

So what will you find if you read these early church fathers?  Well, if you have sufficient time and curiosity, then I would invite you to read some of their writings and decide for yourself.  (A couple of good collections of some of their writings can be found here and here, and a good overview with excerpts from their writings and with commentary can be found here.)

I admit that I have so far read only a small fraction of the voluminous writings of these early church fathers.  But based on what I have read so far, I have found that their beliefs line up much more closely with the teachings and traditions of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches than with any of the other Christian traditions that I listed above.  Perhaps not everyone would come to this conclusion, but it is the conclusion that I have come to.

So again, the question is not will we follow tradition or will we follow the Bible alone, because in my opinion it is almost impossible not to use some tradition or another to form and guide our interpretation of the Bible.  Instead, the questions to ask ourselves are:  Which tradition will we follow?  Which tradition is correct?  Which tradition lines up best with the true meaning of Scripture?  Which tradition lines up best with what the early Christians taught and believed?  And which tradition (if any) truly is from God, and is not just a "tradition of men"?

I know which tradition I choose, and I know why I choose it.  Which tradition(s) will you choose, and why?