“Sola Scriptura” and Christian Traditions:
#1 Introduction
Written by Dan McDonald
I posted a tweet which probably
appeared snobbish to other readers. I
wrote: “I suspect
that Truth is always absolute, and that our explanations of truth are always
limited and incomplete conceptions of the Truth.” I believe that Truth is worthy of our pursuit, but we must
be cautious for our explanations of truth seldom do Truth or Wisdom the honor
she deserves.
I am an Evangelical Protestant, but
I am suspicious of promoting “Sola Scriptura” even though I think there is a
good case for holding to the primacy of the Holy Scriptures in matters of the
faith. But believing in the primacy of
the Holy Scriptures is historically a way of saying that one believes the
Scriptures are understood in a context in which both tradition and reason have
their say.
I want in this blog to review the
writing that first began to shape how I now view the relationship of Scripture and
Tradition. My thinking on these matters
began to be reshaped and clarified by the final essay in a book entitled A
Mind for What Matters by F.F. Bruce.
In the final essay of the collection F. F. Bruce discusses the
relationship of “The Bible and The Faith”.
Bruce gave an address on this subject, which he admitted he accepted
partly as a way of studying so as to refine his own perspective on the
matter. He was not an unlearned man on
the subject for he was a Bible scholar and was on the editing board as well as
a commentator in some of the commentaries published through the New
International Commentaries on the New Testament. He was the sort of man who maintained
fellowship with many diverse groups of Christians. He became an advocate for women in the
ministry before his death in 1990. He
was a man who remained within the Plymouth Brethren Church movement in which he
was born and raised, even though he disagreed with his own church’s perspective
regarding Dispensational and pre-tribulation perspectives. In essence F. F. Bruce belonged to the whole
of Christ’s Church and that is where his allegiance took him.[i] Perhaps part of the reason F.F. Bruce could remain
with a church with whom his beliefs had come to differ, and could serve so many
in his own dealing with Christian truth is due to his perspective on
“Tradition” that I want to introduce my readers to in this blog.
F.F. Bruce asked his readers to
consider what would have happened if Rome’s last great persecution had wiped
out the church and the Scriptures. He
says, “The living tradition, the continuity of Christian existence and witness,
is indispensable. Without it, the
interpretation of Scripture would lose its context. Suppose the church had been wiped out in the
last imperial persecution at the beginning of the fourth century and all her
scriptures had been lost, to be rediscovered in our day like the Dead Sea
Scrolls, what would their effect be?
Would their witness prove even so to be God’s power for salvation, as we
know it to be in our own experience, or would the Scriptures, like the scrolls,
be little more than an archaeological curiosity and a subject for historical
debate? It is a question worth
pondering.”[ii]
This statement by F.F. Bruce served
as a lightning rod to transform my perception of the importance of
tradition. Most of us, upon entering the
Christian faith, become participants among a group of Christians. We enter that faith community and are shaped
by it. We learn from it and in time we
contribute to it. We are never shaped by
the Bible alone, for we have models for our Christian understanding in lives of
men and women who are part of a living faith community. Such a community invariably has its
weaknesses, but it is in such weakness that God works in our lives.
This is not contrary to God’s
purposes for the Church. We understand
that God, speaking through the Apostles ordained faithful men to teach and
train other faithful men, who would teach others also. God called upon the church to set apart
servants (deacons), elders (presbyters) and overseers (Bishops). The Church was to teach by word and by
example of faith. So faith communities
began to live out the teachings of Christ.
When you or I entered the Christian life, we invariably became part of a
Christian community, likely flawed, and sometimes deeply flawed. That is how God began to work in our lives
through the people of a Christian church and community.
The Bible and the faith are
connected, therefore it is hard to imagine how the Bible’s message to us could
have ever had the impact it did upon our lives apart from the lives of
Christian believers that helped model and set forth Christian truth in human
lives for us to see and imitate when such lives were worthy of imitation.
The Scriptures in Bruce’s view are
also meant to serve Christian communities that have lost their way. Bruce says: “On the other hand, the living
tradition without the constant corrective of Scripture, without the possibility
of “reformation according to the Word of God,” might have developed in such a
way as to be distorted beyond recognition, if it had not slowly faded and
died.”[iii]
In conclusion, Bruce helped
establish for me an understanding of how the Spirit of God has prepared both of
these wonderful witnesses for instructing us.
The Holy Spirit gave us the Scriptures to correct our ways when we have
lost our way; but the Holy Spirit also gave us a tradition invested in living
faith communities so that we were taught not in word only, but through the
examples of human epistles written in flesh and blood to shape our lives.
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