Does Scripture need Tradition?

    The Protestant Church has most often taken the position to insist that the Holy Scriptures are the only valid foundation for our faith in Jesus Christ. This has not always been such a radical idea however, for that was also the view of one of our most important Church Fathers, Saint Augustine of Hippo. Clearly, there has always been a certain tension between the purists who want to retain the simplicity of the faith and those who desire a fuller theological clarity and experiential richness in their worship. Just as there are those who feel the need to retreat from the world, to avoid contamination coming from pagan culture, there are also those who think that the world can be the stage for the illumination that can transform the lives of believers.

    There is a measure of truth in both of these positions. In Jesus' parable of the Sower, He warned us about the seed that fell along the stony path and was eaten by birds or lost among the weeds. The well travelled path being the choice to remain in residence within the populated cities. By contrast, those who choose retreat into the desert face the dilemma of being deprived of ready "water" flowing from fellowship in the Church, and having to justify a failure to pursue the command to preach the Gospel among the nations. But both also have their own strengths, to balance out the liabilities they face. The needs depend on circumstances.

    In the desert, hermits need little more than a basic organization and a rule to follow in their daily lives. The simple approach is enough, since their dedication may be assumed. But in the world there is much distraction, and many responsibilities demand the believer's attention, including those of family, home and career. Thus, the constant call for conformity and compromise can easily become an impediment to the pursuit of holiness. It's hard to remember that you are a member of a called-out community (ecclesia, the Church) when you live in the midst of an unregenerate culture. Augustine made this point eloquently in his book contrasting the City of God with the City of Man.

    In his own life, Saint Augustine lived out this contrast to the full. He lived a libertine pagan life when he was a young man, then after his conversion he retreated to the desert for a life of penance and prayer. Once there, he quickly became a leader among the monks and wrote a community rule to help standardize their  practice. His concern was to help avoid too severe austerities, and to limit the temptation to pride in one's own efforts to abandon the world. But his piety and humility so increased his reputation that the people in the town nearby acclaimed him their bishop, despite his objections. Once he acquiesced, he became famous for his orthodoxy, his eloquence and his apologetics against the various heresies of his day.

    This transformation shows not only how a saint responds to the calling of God, but also to the different kinds of responses that are needed according to our stations in life. A simple rule for simple habits is enough in a small, mostly quietist community of monks and hermits. But in the wider community of city folk, as Christians in the world, we always encounter challenges to our faith. Not only the usual pagan practices of the state religion, but the wrong-headed heresies or contaminated constructs that try to blend different beliefs together, as represented by Arius and Marcion. In the world, we have to combat these false beliefs, exposing their faults and pointing out how true Christianity teaches a better way.

    Such apologetics lend themselves readily to the construction of convoluted theology, and call for ecumenical councils to develop elaborate creeds. Indeed, these are built upon the traditional teachings that define the perspectives of the various patriarchal sees of the Church. And it was the false teachings and bad traditions that had to be condemned as heretical and excised from the body of the Church. The councils' decisions were based on many factors, including reason as well as popular emotion, but the final factor stood upon whether the statement would agree with the recognized Scriptures.

    This was made somewhat simpler when the canon of acceptable reference works was established in the 4th century as the New Testament. No more could spurious later works, or peculiar pseudonymos letters be accorded authority to arbitrate disputes, but only those that had long been recognized as authentic and decended from the earliest Apostles or their disciples. At this point, the most basic levels of Tradition also came to be crystallized, to support the Scriptures and the Churches that used them.

    For example, the appellation of Mary, Jesus' mother, as "Theotokos," or God-bearer, helped to establish the Christology that insists that Jesus is fully God and fully Man from the moment of conception, and indeed, from eternity. So when we adore and venerate Mary as "Mother of God," we do so in accord with the earliest traditions of the Apostles. Clearly, the primary sources for this tradition would be in the Gospel of Luke, from the account of the annunciation, and the Gospel of John, who held a very high Christology, and was given the honor and responsibility of caring for Mary by Jesus when He was on the cross. These were handed down from the very beginning, coming from eye witnesses of Jesus' life and resurrection.

    So it should be obvious that we cannot, nor do we wish to do without the formative instructions of long established traditions. And yet, the Church has never stopped building upon those traditions. Even when it is beyond unlikely that any further sayings or instructions from the earliest generations could be yet uncodified, the Church insists that it has authority to add layers of doctrine, even dogma, to its teachings. And what is their assumed authority based upon? It stems from "the authority of tradition" itself, and from the spurious assignment of "infallibility" to pronouncements of doctrine coming from the Pope. And all the while, for the past thousand years, the Church has been divided by the hubris of the Roman Catholic Pope's refusal to submit to the college of the Orthodox Patriarchs.

    Without the consensus of the entire body of the Church, how can recent accretions of tradition be regarded as equally authoritative with those that were held in agreement before the Great Schism of 1054? History remembers how that break happened. It records how a dispute between two irascible and egotistical leaders, one a Pope and the other a Patriarch, led to the peremptory mutual excommunication of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the western Catholic Church. And it details a dispute over a few issues that appear mostly trivial in hindsight and which could be patched by a judicious agreement to keep them in context and conscientious tolerance. Let your friends do as they please, so long as they have reason for it and can avoid lapsing into heretical nonsense, and so long as they don't insist that you must do as they do. The Church does not have to march in uniform and lock-step in order to protect the truth.

    There are differences of opinion between the various sects of Orthodox Christians, and with the Coptic, Ethiopian and Nestorian branches of the Church. So why not allow us all to maintain such differences that seem both essential to our regional identities and non-contradictory to basic Apostolic teaching and tradition? If the Catholics want to say the "Filioque" with the Nicene creed, let them. And if the Orthodox want to ban statues in their churches, they can do that. And if the Ethiopian Church wants to keep a different set of apocryphal books alongside the canonical Scriptures, so be it. We can respect each other, so long as we all agree on what is essential and basic to the faith.

    The central canon of the New Testament, and the oldest traditions that we share to agree upon, can be used to help define what is the essence of the Christian faith. Beyond that, let us only agree to not allow heresy to take root among us. If in the West, the Protestant Churches can find sufficient agreement amongst themselves, and can define simple differences with Catholicism and Orthodoxy, such that they can show how they avoid heresy and recognize some validity of the other branches, should we not allow them to coalesce into whatever organization may suit them? They will need to figure out how to send authoritative representatives to meet in council and negotiate for their own positions and statements of faith. If the chaotic variety and rainbow of practices of Protestantism can be brought into formal recognition by the authorities of the older Churches, we may be able to resume normal relations and share in communion as the mended Body of Christ.

    We may not be strictly adherent to the polar position of the declaration "Sola Scriptura," but perhaps we can draw a consensual line in the sand regarding the authoritative nature of Tradition. Maybe we can say that only what was held in agreement before the Schism of 1054, or from that time when we reached the level of agreement from whence we could dispute with heretics without being more restrictive than what the Scriptures and the Apostles allowed, thus far and no further will Tradition be obligatory. After all, we allowed the rehabilitation of the Nestorian split, and some rapprochement of Catholics and Greek Orthodox is beginning. Can we not seek even more brotherhood among those who were commanded by the King to "love one another as I have loved you"?

    The argument that the Church needs the authority of Tradition to fill in the gaps in Scripture has its own flaws. And it can easily lead us into the kind of Pharisaical leaven that Jesus warned us to avoid. Tradition, as such, cannot stand upon itself as its own authority. If tradition had had that kind of authority, it would not have been necessary to establish a canon of Scriptures. Instead, the Scriptures are necessary to curb the Church from wandering into heresies. The Scriptures are older than tradition, and so contain the core needed to keep tradition from adding foolish and pointless accretions. Traditions help us to know how to apply the Truth in the Scriptures, but the Scriptures are the final arbiters of whether the traditions have any validity.

    Indeed, the Church did exist as lacking in sufficient authority up until the canon was set. Only the continual reference to the apostolic authors and their Scriptures kept the Church in line, and when that was lacking ecumenical councils were called to seek definitions that could be held in consensus. But it was Scripture that had the authority, and that was the "canary in the mine" that warned us when heresy crept in to lead us astray. Traditions are not authority, only the canonical Scriptures can keep the Church from wandering away from the Truth.

    The disagreements in the Church after the Second Council of Nicaea, such that no further agreements could hold firm, shows that we should not place too much emphasis on tradition, and should resist resting too much on fine points of authority. Rather, we should agree to love one another as Jesus loved us, even when we don't understand clearly what He was trying to teach us. So let us avoid spurious accretions, and their arguments, and just remember that we are different limbs and organs of Christ's body. What the eye sees may not be the same as what the ear hears, nor where the foot needs to stand. But we should care for the Body of Christ, to keep it in health and harmony, until our beloved King returns to embrace us.