Chapter 13.1

Recognizing & Evaluating Traditions in Christianity

Table of Topics

A) The Existence of Traditions

B) The Dangers of Traditions

Extras & Endnotes

Primary Points

• A “tradition” is: “An inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom).
• God’s people have consistently obscured the difference between tradition and revelation, and their place in a person’s life. As such, tradition has often become one more threat to the ultimate authority of Scripture.
• The NT itself speaks of holding to “traditions” and therefore such a concept is not necessarily a bad thing.
• While using Church tradition for the sake of establishing doctrine is wrong, using it to establish the historical claims of the Christian faith is essential. It is through these early traditions, for example, that we are assured of the authenticity of the NT documents.
• It would seem that Christ’s admonition to the Pharisees that “you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition” (Matt 15:6) may be applicable to many churches in our own day.
• Isaiah’s words are a good definition of what we will label traditionalism: “rules taught by men.”

A) The Existence of Traditions

Webster’s Dictionary defines “tradition” as: “An inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom)” ^[1] The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology defines it strictly in religious terms as:

The entire process by which normative religious truths are passed on from one generation to another. As such, tradition is found in all religious communities, whether its form be oral or written, its contents embodied in a closed canon or a living organism. ^[2]

Traditions and customs exercise a great deal of influence in our lives, sometimes imperceptibly. Here we are concerned specifically with its authority in the life of the Christian as compared with the guidance we receive from Scripture. How can we discern the difference between mere human traditions and divine revelation? How does the authority of traditions relate to the authority of Scripture? How do we evaluate the authority and value of traditions? As we will see, God’s people have consistently obscured the difference between tradition and revelation, and their place in a person’s life. As such, tradition has often become one more threat to the ultimate authority of Scripture.

It should be noted that the NT itself speaks of holding to “traditions” and that such a concept is not necessarily a bad thing (cf. 1 Cor 11:2, 23; 2 Thess 2:15; 3:6; 2 Tim 2:2). On this NT scholar Herman Ridderbos writes:

The New Testament concept of “tradition” stands in clear and complete agreement with the Jewish concept, i.e., it bears an overwhelming authoritative significance. “Tradition” means: what has been handed down with authority. And this importance tradition does not owe to its antiquity, nor to the communion in which it is preserved, but to the persons in whom the source of the tradition lies. These persons in the New Testament are the Apostles.

The apostolic kerygma and the apostolic witness form the foundation and the authority of the New Testament tradition. This is then also the technical significance of “tradition” (paradosis) in the New Testament and of the “preservation” and the “holding fast” of the tradition (1 Cor. 11:2; 15:2; 2 Thess. 2: 15; cf. Mark 7:4, 8). How important a place the concept of “tradition” occupies, for instance, in Paul’s epistles. ^[3]

It must be added at this point that there is a real value to the historical traditions of particularly the early Church. While using Church tradition for the sake of establishing doctrine is wrong, using it to establish the historical claims of the Christian faith is essential. It is through these early traditions, for example, that we are assured of the authenticity of the NT documents. While the traditions of the modern Church often usurp, derail, and dilute the authority of the Bible, the traditions of the early Church buttress and support the authority of the Bible. ^[4] As J. Van Engen puts it in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, “Even evangelical Protestants, inclined though they may still be to overlook it, must recognize that oral tradition preceded and shaped the canon of written Scripture.” ^[5] This is why we devote a whole book to this topic elsewhere. ^[6]

No doubt, some “traditions” are simply applications of Scripture. However, we wish to distinguish between the two, just as Christ did in His classic statement on the topic. The Apostle Matthew records:

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked,  ²“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

³Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?  ⁴For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’  ⁵But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’  ⁶he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 

⁷You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ⁸    “‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. ⁹    They worship Me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’” (Matt 15:1-9)

Isaiah’s words are a good definition of what we will label traditionalism: “rules taught by men.” It is such things that we must distinguish from Scripture, just as Christ did, and which God’s people have continually failed to do. In the following chapters we wish to highlight several influential religious traditions and compare them with Scripture.

In a discussion on traditionalism, the Roman Catholic Church immediately comes to mind as an institution that bases many of its teachings on supposed extra-biblical traditions. However, it is important that those outside of this institution also stop and ask what “traditions of men” we are giving authority to in our own lives and churches that usurp or “nullify the word of God” (Matt 15:6). Accordingly, J. I. Packer explains in a very helpful discussion on traditionalism in his book Truth and Power:

Nobody can claim to be detached from traditions. In fact, one sure way to be swallowed up by traditionalism is to think that one is immune to it. . . . Some who scorn tradition would hardly consider it a day at church or a proper evangelistic meeting without an “altar call,” and yet that is a tradition invented by Charles Finney in the middle of the last century. The question, then, is not whether we have traditions, but whether our traditions conflict with the only absolute standard in these matters: Holy Scripture. . . .

I ask my readers . . . to reflect on . . . the following pair of facts: (1) that backward-looking fixity, whether demanded by leaders or sought by followers, or both, can of itself make people feel good, safe, and wise; (2) that those feelings can in turn prompt people to gang up in order to impose the same fixity on others, in the belief that such action renders its recipients the truest service. That can happen either with historical movements and figures or with established codes of conduct.

Although the people in charge admit that their denominational distinctives, favorite Bible teacher, institutions, and behavioral standards may not have behind them direct biblical command, they often insist that in order to render fullest obedience to God we ought to surrender our own thought processes to those who have already made the difficult decisions for us. Peer pressure and group pressure are then exerted, and the persons who act as enforcers of the required conformity, whom I shall call “traditioners,” become truly tyrannical. . . .

What we must do . . . is acknowledge that we are frail children of tradition, good or bad, to a much greater extent than we realize, and must learn to ask by the light of Scripture critical questions about what we have thus far taken for granted. Testing everything by Scripture, while holding on to the good, as Paul commanded [cf. 1 Thess 5:21], is in fact a life’s work, and it is a vitally important habit for us to follow. The only alternative is to be enslaved to human tradition in practice, treating it as if it had divine authority, just as the Pharisees did before us.

Whereas it would be most unwise to disregard the accepted beliefs and practices of our community, it would be equally irresponsible to adopt the same with blind devotion. We must never embrace the sentiment that says, “I’m just a layman, and no theologian. I go to church and listen to the preacher and him I believe.” That, by the way, is a direct echo of Martin Luther’s warning to those who had settled for “implicit faith”–that is, a faith that takes the church’s word for things in unquestioning obedience. ^[7]

Unfortunately, there are plenty of extra-biblical and unbiblical traditions to go around in non-Roman Catholic churches. Where did our Lutheran, Episcopal, and Anglican friends get the idea that the Pastor needs to dress differently than the people? On what authority do Reformed denominations baptize infants? Where did our Baptist friends get the idea that people are to dress differently on Sunday than any other day, that playing cards is sin, and that the 1611 KJV is the only authorized translation of the Scriptures? The Greek Orthodox Church is also well known for its dependence on tradition, believing that early ecumenical councils were infallible and that post-apostolic leaders in the early Church were divinely inspired.

And not wishing to leave anyone out, we would ask where our Pentecostal and “charismatic” friends got the idea that a whole congregation could simultaneously and audibly pray in an uninterpreted “tongue” even though Paul had commanded that: “If anyone speaks in a tongue, two–or at the most three–should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church” (1 Cor 14:27-28)? It would seem then that Christ’s admonition to the Pharisees that “you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition” (Matt 15:6) may be applicable to many churches in our own day.

B) The Dangers of Traditions

Reformed theologian Wayne Grudem does a very good job of describing the dangers of traditionalism:

[The sufficiency of Scripture] is an important principle because there is always the tendency among believers to begin to neglect the regular daily searching of Scripture for guidance and to begin to live by a set of written or unwritten rules (or denominational traditions) concerning what one does or does not do in the Christian life.

Furthermore, whenever we add to the list of sins that are prohibited by Scripture itself, there will be harm to the church and to the lives of individual believers. The Holy Spirit will not empower obedience to rules that do not have God’s approval from Scripture, nor will believers generally find delight in obedience to commands that do not accord with the laws of God written on their hearts.

In some cases, Christians may repeatedly and earnestly plead with God for “victory” over supposed sins that are in fact no sins at all, yet no “victory” will be given, for the attitude or action in question is in fact not a sin and is not displeasing to God. Great discouragement in prayer and frustration in the Christian life generally may be the outcome.

In other cases, continued or even increasing disobedience to these new “sins” will result, together with a false sense of guilt and a resulting alienation from God. Often there arises an increasingly uncompromising and legalistic insistence on these new rules on the part of those who do follow them, and genuine fellowship among believers in the church will fade away. Evangelism will often be stifled, for the silent proclamation of the gospel that comes from the lives of believers will at least seem (to outsiders) to include the additional requirement that one must fit this uniform pattern of life in order to become a member of the body of Christ.

One clear example of such an addition to the commands of Scripture is found in the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church to “artificial” methods of birth control, a policy that finds no valid support in Scripture. Widespread disobedience, alienation, and false guilt have been the result. Yet such is the propensity of human nature to make such rules that other examples can probably be found in the written or unwritten traditions of almost every denomination. ^[8]

Dr. Packer helps us to distinguish between a good kind of conservatism and traditionalism that adheres to a faithful interpretation of Scripture and a “carnal conservatism” and traditionalism that:

is a blind, stubborn, “Archie Bunkerish” adherence to what is old and conventional just because it is old and conventional, a knee-jerk reaction of the mind expressing nothing more respectable or responsible than prejudices that one refuses to examine. Jesus noted that no one, after drinking old wine, wants the new, “for he says, ‘The old is better”‘ (Luke 5:39). He was exposing the psychology of that kind of conservatism, namely, a wish to be soothed and massaged and made to feel easy by a constant flow of the familiar. Such is [“carnal”] conservatism . . .: a nostalgic syndrome that buries its head with regard to the future and seeks only to hang on to the past. I label that, in King James language, “carnal conservatism,” since the inertia of mind at its heart is flesh-fed, just as it is flesh-pleasing. . . .

Carnal conservatism can and does emerge as soon as a Christian group comes to value something in its tradition as God’s ideal, and treats its own embrace of that item as integral to its testimony and its faithfulness to the Lord. It is observable that what a congregation has done (or, perhaps more to the point, not done) for a generation constantly becomes a focus for carnal conservatism as soon as a change is suggested.

“We never did it that way before.” “We would lose our Christian testimony if we allowed freedom in that area.” One may sympathize, knowing how familiar patterns of church life give a sense of stability to older people who feel that our fast-changing world is leaving them behind; but at the same time one must grieve that any should look for their security in unchanging church structures rather than in their unchanging relationship with Christ. ^[9]

Accordingly, Dr. Packer describes further how such traditionalism operates in far too many churches:

[T]o some the very rigidity of this culture-defying traditionalism (“we stick to the old-time religion”) makes an appeal: they see it as faithfulness to Christ and are sure that He approves and blesses it, or else it could not sustain itself. So they wheel into line behind the “traditioners,” admiring them for their bold eccentricity and orneriness, and venerate them as if they were God (which is not perhaps too surprising, in view of the authoritarian way they sometimes speak).

That combination-peremptory leadership, legalistic group distinctives that members receive as from God and as defining their own identity, community conformity, hostile and condescending criticism of others outside the group, and confidence that they alone constitute Christ’s faithful remnant borders on the cultic. Edward John Carnell gave great offense a generation ago when he described American fundamentalism as “evangelicalism gone cultic.” Whether we agree with his censure, then or now, we can see what he meant. ^[10]

Finally, Dr. Packer shares how tradition can be a blessing:

The cure for carnal conservatism [i.e. legalism] is creative conservatism. Creative conservatism uses tradition, not as a final authority or an absolute in any sense, but as an important resource, made available to us in God’s providence, to help us grasp what Scripture is telling us about who God is, who we are, what the world around us is, and what we are called to do here and now.

The real difficulty in making moral decisions lies in discerning the values involved: here tradition, which encapsulates in itself a vast amount of Christian argument, consensus, and experience, is always of great help. To tap into the great tradition of Christian conviction, contention, and counsel is to be nurtured in ways that present-day Christianity cannot come up to. ^[11]

Accordingly, we can see the importance of evaluating our traditions and ensuring that they are helpful instead of harmful. This we discuss in the next chapter. ^[12]

Extras & Endnotes

Devotion to Dad

Father, help us to recognize any unbiblical and harmful traditions we may be believing, promoting, practicing, and protecting. Make our goal to always please You instead of men. And may we always exercise grace to people and avoid legalism.

Gauging Your Grasp

1. What is a “tradition”?
2. What is an example of a tradition in Christianity that you think has been both unbiblical and harmful?
3. In what way do we claim tradition actually supports the authority of Scripture? Do you agree or disagree?
4. What would you consider as a good extra-biblical tradition in the church you grew up in or are currently a member?

Publications & Particulars

1. Webster’s Dictionary; online at http://www.merriam-webster.com. ↑

2. Van Engen, “Tradition” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Walter Elwell ed. (Baker, 1984), 1104. ↑

3. Herman Ridderbos, Studies in Scripture and its Authority (Eerdmans, 1978), 193. ↑

4. Of course, some dismiss the historical support of the canon of Scripture and ascribe to an ongoing “testimony of the Spirit” to authenticate what is Scripture. For a critique to this approach see chapter 3.4 ↑

5. Van Engen, 1104. ↑

6. See forthcoming Book 15. ↑

7. J. I. Packer, Truth & Power (Harold Shaw, 1996), 285-287, 290. ↑

8. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Zondervan, 1994), 133. ↑

9. Ibid., 294 ↑

10. Ibid., 285-287, 290. ↑

11. Packer, 289. ↑

12. Van Engen lists the following as resources on tradition in Christianity: H. Berkhof, Christian Faith; F. F. Bruce, Tradition Old and New; R. P C. Hanson, Tradition in the Early Church; O. Cullmann, La tradition; Y. Congar, Tradition and Traditions; H. E. W Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth. ↑