Chapter 13.2

Evaluating Traditions in Christianity

 

Table of Topics

A) The Importance of Evaluating Traditions in Christianity

B) Principles for Evaluating Traditions in Christianity

B.1) Traditions should be rejected when they violate the authority of Scripture and respected when they support it

B.2) Traditions should be rejected when they harmfully add to Scripture and respected when they helpfully support the application of Scripture

B.3) Traditions should be rejected when they violate love and respected when they facilitate it

B.4) Traditions should be rejected when they violate wisdom and respected when they reflect it

Extras & Endnotes

Primary Points

• It is vitally important to be able to recognize and evaluate the authority of the traditions operating in our lives, for they can both help and hinder us.
• The first question to ask about a tradition is whether it violates Scripture.
• God is wise enough to only make rules that benefit His people, but people lack such wisdom and therefore their rules can become a burden.
• God grants grace to obey His commands, but we are left to our own power to follow unbiblical man-made rules. This is why legalism is so exhausting.
• Adding to God’s word gives egocentric leaders a convenient way to exercise greater authority over the people than what God intended.
• Our traditions can lead to a false impression on “outsiders” of what authentic Christianity really is.
• Unnecessary rules can easily lead to false evaluations of spirituality.
• Fortunately, people can sense the lack of divine authority in our traditions.
• Unnecessary traditions can cause unnecessary division.
• Many traditions are simply earlier attempts to apply the Scripture to life, and while they may not serve us as well today, we can learn from all the thought that went into its initial implementation.
• God’s love for us is the motive behind all biblical instruction. Such is not the case with many of the religious rules made by people, which actually may spring from motives that are quite self-serving.
• Love not only tells us when to reject a tradition, but also when to conform to one. Therefore, love may dictate that we respect the extra-biblical traditions of other Christians.
• While we must protect against a carnal kind of pragmatism that exalts effectiveness and efficiency over morality or spirituality, God wants us to bear much fruit and this sometimes requires us changing the methods we have been using.

A) The Importance of Evaluating Traditions in Christianity

It is vitally important to be able to recognize and evaluate the authority of the traditions operating in our lives and churches, for they can both help and hinder us. Along these lines, Reformed theologian J. I. Packer observes:

Christians are at once beneficiaries and victims of tradition; beneficiaries, who receive nurturing truth and wisdom from God’s faithfulness in past generations; victims, who now take for granted things that need to be questioned, thus treating as divine absolutes patterns of belief and behavior that should be seen as human, provisional, and relative. We are all beneficiaries of good, wise, and sound tradition and victims of poor, unwise, and unsound traditions. This is where the absolute “last word” of Scripture must sort the wheat from the chaff. Hence, the apostle Paul’s counsel: “Test everything. Hold on to the good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). ^[1]

Likewise, Dr. Packer shares elsewhere:

To be sure, evangelicals value the tradition of the church – the whole church, be it said, not just its evangelical segment! Evangelicals are not stereotypical Anabaptists, imagining that nothing of importance for understanding the Bible happened between the New Testament era and their own day; nor are they stereotypical sectarians who think that all truth flows in their own stream and there is nothing they need to learn from any other source.

They know that getting help from the Christian past is a proper form of Christian fellowship, and since they know too that the Holy Spirit has been interpreting God’s word to the church from the start, they expect to find church traditions to be full of wisdom; which in fact is what they constantly do find.

But they treat tradition as ministerial rather than magisterial, and make a point of testing the various traditions (that is, the church’s past efforts to spell out and apply the Bible) by the Bible itself, for they also know that the church can go wrong, so that a position may be traditional and yet not true. Therefore, though evangelicals respect tradition, they do not regard any of its deliverances as infallible and irreformable, and remain in dispute with Roman Catholicism in particular with regard to this. ^[2]

In the following chapters, we will see some striking similarities between the authority of oral tradition in Judaism, Gnosticism, Patriarchialism (early Church Fathers), and Roman Catholicism. All claim that they possess divinely authoritative revelation that was not recorded for the public, but rather, secretly passed along orally from one generation of particular leaders to another. Therefore, this tradition is another Bible, and is used to support many extra-biblical and some clearly unbiblical teachings. For the most part, traditionalism in these faiths has been a tool of Christ’s enemies to distract His people from the only authentic words of God. Our cry is still that of the Reformers: “Sola Scriptura!”

B) Principles for Evaluating Traditions in Christianity

In the following chapters we will examine three major sources of tradition: Judaism, the early Church (A. D. 100 to 500), and Roman Catholicism. As we do, we will apply four basic principles that we would suggest allow us to properly evaluate traditions.

B.1) Traditions should be rejected when they violate the authority of Scripture and respected when they

support it

The first question to ask regarding a tradition is whether it clearly violates God’s written word. This is obviously taught by Christ in the passage quoted in the previous chapter. He asks the Pharisees, “why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matt 15:3) and then simply rebukes them when He says, “you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition” (Matt 15:6). Christ makes it clear that the Word of God must take precedence over any traditions of men, and any value of such traditions depends on how well they enhance, reflect, or adhere to Scripture.

Paul said essentially the same thing when he wrote the Colossians, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” (Col 2:8) Clearly then, any “human tradition” that clearly violates Scripture is to be rejected. This will be applied to many traditions we encounter in the following chapters.

B.2) Traditions should be rejected when they harmfully add to Scripture and respected when they helpfully support the application of Scripture

Adding to God’s Word can be just as offensive to Him as violating it. Christ alludes to this when He remarks to the Pharisees: “you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them” (Luke 11:46). God is wise enough to only make rules that benefit His people, but people lack such wisdom and therefore their rules can become a burden. In addition, while God grants grace and power to obey His commands, we are left to our own power to follow unbiblical man-made rules. This is why legalism is so exhausting.

Accordingly, Christ said:

“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  ²⁹Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  ³⁰For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matt 11:28-30; cf. Gal 5:1; 1 John 5:3)

Christ’s commands free us from the burden of our selfishness and lead to true happiness, while traditions can cause undue guilt, pressure, and concern. Along these lines Christ likewise said:

If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commands and remain in His love.  ¹¹I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  (John 15:10-12)

All of this is why we must be very careful not to expect more from people than what God Himself has. Traditions that go beyond what God has commanded are in danger of doing this and unnecessarily burdening God’s people. Dr. Packer writes along these lines:

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. ^[3]

The leaders of the first century Church were sensitive to over-burdening God’s people. When the new Gentile churches were asking the Jewish leadership what was expected of them, the officials at the “Jerusalem Council” wrote to them:

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements [“necessary things” KJV; “essentials” NASB]: ²⁹You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. (Acts 15:28-29)

These Church leaders could have imposed a great many requirements on these new Christians, but they endeavored to confine their “requirements” to the “essentials” and “things necessary.”

There are several other dangers of adding to God’s word. First, it gives egocentric leaders a convenient way to exercise greater authority over the people then what God intended. The more rules they make, the more control they can exercise, and the more powerful they feel. This was certainly true of the Jewish religious leaders in the time of Christ, and one reason why Christ so consistently exposed them. While many warn us of the “peer pressure” that the world can use to pull us away from Christ, there should also be a warning of the “peer pressure” that occurs in many churches, namely legalism, that can just as effectively come between us and Christ as well.

Secondly, our traditions can lead to a false impression on “outsiders” of what authentic Christianity really is. Dr. Packer comments that in such an environment:

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. ^[4]

Causing such stumbling blocks with our traditions is a serious matter.

Thirdly, unnecessary rules can easily lead to false evaluations of spirituality. Accordingly, Christ said:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.  (Matt 23:23)

How amazing that both the Pharisees and the people could have thought the Pharisees to be so spiritual simply because they scrupulously adhered to God’s will in insignificant ways, and ignored the heart of God. Of course, people do the same today, interpreting spirituality with mere attendance to a meeting, membership on a board, or pious sounding words. Along these lines, the popular NT scholar William Barclay (1907–1978) commented:

There is many a man who wears the right clothes to church, carefully hands in his offering to the church, adopts the right attitude at prayer, is never absent from the celebration of the sacrament, and who is not doing an honest day’s work and is irritable and bad-tempered and mean with his money. There are women who are full of good works and who serve on all kinds of committees, and whose children are lonely for them at night. There is nothing easier than to observe all the outward actions of religion and yet be completely irreligious. There is nothing more necessary than a sense of proportion to save us from confusing religious observances with real devotion. ^[5]

And it is precisely the making and enforcement of unnecessary rules in a spiritual community that can lead us to lose this very perspective. Too many Christian congregations steeped in tradition are painstaking about their formal, ceremonial trivialities but unconcerned about their true devotion to God and people. Christ’s charge of hypocrisy here is warranted and Dr. Barclay noted:

The word hupokrites has an interesting and revealing history. It begins by meaning simply one who answers; it goes on to mean one who answers in a set dialogue or a set conversation, that is to say an actor; and finally it means, not simply an actor on the stage, but one whose whole life is a piece of acting without any sincerity behind it at all.

Anyone to whom religion is a legal thing, anyone to whom religion means carrying out certain external rules and regulations, anyone to whom religion is entirely connected with the observation of a certain ritual and the keeping of a certain number of taboos is in the end bound to be, in this sense, a hypocrite. The reason is this–he believes that he is a good man if he carries out the correct acts and practices, no matter what his heart and his thoughts are like. . . .

There is no greater religious peril than that of identifying religion with outward observance. There is no commoner religious mistake than to identify goodness with certain so-called religious acts. Church-going, Bible-reading, careful financial giving, even time-tabled prayer do not make a man a good man. ^[6]

Unfortunately, our man made traditions can facilitate this very thing.

Fortunately, people can often sense the lack of divine authority in our traditions. While Pharisees imposed extra-biblical rules on the people in Christ’s day, the people sensed they were just “rules taught by men” (Matt 15:9), and this is one reason why they responded to Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount” as described by Matthew: “When Jesus had finished saying these things [the word of God], the crowds were amazed at His teaching, ²⁹because He taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law” (Matt 7:28-29). People sense the authority in God’s word, but not in mere man’s word.

Finally, unnecessary traditions can cause unnecessary division. It was this very thing that split all of Christendom in the sixteenth century. The Roman Church insisted on holding to its extra-biblical traditions and drove the Protestants from their churches. It is only biblical commands and doctrines that we are to divide over, not traditions, and the more of the latter we have, the more opportunity for disunity. Paul speaks to this very thing when he writes Timothy concerning Jewish false teachers in Ephesus: ^[7]

As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God’s work—which is by faith.  (1 Tim 1:3-5)

Evidently, Jewish teachers were making a big deal of “myths and endless genealogies” which composed a large part of the extra-biblical literature expressing the vast array of Jewish traditions. They were elevating these things to the level of Scripture and it was causing divisive “controversies rather than God’s work.” Such is the danger of placing too much importance on traditions.

However, it should be recognized that traditions can help us apply Scripture to our lives. The first century Church established the tradition of meeting on Sundays to devote themselves, “to the Apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). We have no record of any instruction from Christ to do so and no biblical basis to insist that a Christian assembly must be held on Sundays. But this tradition has served to help Christians for centuries consistently practice some of the vital Christian disciplines.

Many traditions in our churches are simply reflections of much earlier attempts to apply the Scripture to life, and while they may not serve us as well today, we can certainly learn from all the thought that went into its initial implementation. While we are certainly to evaluate the past and its current effects on us, we must be willing to learn from it as well.

B.3) Traditions should be rejected when they violate love and respected when they facilitate it

Paul reflected the goal of all of God’s commands when he wrote concerning a particular one: “The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” (1 Tim 1:5). God’s love for us is the motive behind all biblical instruction (cf. 1 Tim 1:5). Such is not the case with many of the religious rules made by people, which actually may spring from motives that are quite self-serving. Love is always the best guide in all aspects of the Christian life, including the evaluation of traditions.

This perspective is closely related to the thoughts above about ensuring that our man made rules do not unnecessarily burden people. When a mere tradition makes unnecessary demands of others it is not a tradition of love, therefore, it is not of God. Paul wrote the Philippians: “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,  ¹⁰so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ” (Phil 1:9-10). Likewise, love will help us discern the value of our traditions and keep them from becoming sinful, rather than helpful.

Because their traditional interpretation of the Law was their guiding principle instead of the “spirit of the Law” which is love, Christ had the following encounter with the Pharisees:

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them.  ²When the Pharisees saw this, they said to Him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

³He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?  ⁴He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 

⁵Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent?  ⁶I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.  ⁷If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.  ⁸For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

⁹Going on from that place, He went into their synagogue,  ¹⁰and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked Him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” ¹¹He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?  ¹²How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” (Matt 12:1-12)

What a horrible thing it is when our traditions become more important than meeting people’s real needs, and in fact hinder us in loving our neighbor. Those who wish to make a divine law out of a mere human tradition need to ponder the following from Paul:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.  ⁹The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Rom 13:8-10)

It is clear then that we must have the courage and love to reject and even publicly rebuke those traditions which hinder love itself.

However, love is such a central guiding principle of Christianity that it not only tells us when to reject a tradition, but also when to conform to one.

After Jesus healed a man from leprosy, He told him, “go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them” (Matt 8:4). Christ’s reason for encouraging obedience to a Mosaic law was not because the man was under obligation to do so, but for the sake of respecting the Jews (cf. 17:24-27; Rom 14:1-15:4).

The “Jerusalem Council” had the same motives when they instructed Gentile believers to follow Jewish laws that, in fact, had no authority over them. Their reason was because, “Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath” (Acts 15:21). There was a desire to avoid unnecessary offense.

The Apostle Paul, of course, had the same perspective and wrote:

Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.  ²⁰To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.  (1 Cor 9:19-20)

Therefore, love may dictate that we respect the extra-biblical traditions of other Christians. This would seem to be what the leaders of the Church of England during the Reformation were wanting to express in their Thirty-Nine Articles under article thirty-four entitled “Of The Traditions of the Church”:

It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word.

Whosoever through his private judgment, willingly and purposely, doth openly break the Traditions and Ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly, (that others may fear to do the like) as he that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren.

Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, Ceremonies or Rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority, so that all things be done to edifying.

While the individual would certainly be free under God to follow their own conscience, it is wrong to impose our conscience concerning a tradition on others. Therefore, it is love that guides us in the very difficult decision of when to respect a mere tradition for the sake of others, and when to reject it, and even speak out against it as Christ often did, and also for the sake of others.

B.4) Traditions should be rejected when they violate wisdom and respected when they reflect it

Solomon instructs us in Proverbs 14: “The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception. . . . A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps” (Prov 14:8, 15). God gave us reasoning faculties to use in order to discern His will, and wants wisdom to guide us. While we must protect against a carnal kind of pragmatism that exalts effectiveness and efficiency over morality or spirituality, God wants us to bear much fruit and this sometimes requires us changing the methods we have been using.

This may be illustrated in Paul’s ministry in Ephesus. Luke records:

Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the Kingdom of God. ⁹But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the [Greek] lecture hall of Tyrannus.  ¹⁰This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. (Acts 19:8-10)

Throughout Acts we see that Paul’s habit was to preach the Gospel in the Jewish synagogues, the traditional place where the Scriptures were expounded. However, when this tradition did not serve to advance the Gospel, Paul did something untraditional. Instead of confining himself to teaching on the Sabbath in the synagogue, he taught daily, probably in the afternoon reflecting the culture, ^[8] and in the school of a Greek philosopher.

Likewise, our churches would do well to use wisdom in order to evaluate the effectiveness of our own evangelistic methods in the culture we are in. Dr. Packer applies this to his “creative conservatism” as well and writes:

What does the pursuit of creative Christian conservatism require of us? . . . The first is honesty in self-criticism. Socrates is reported to have said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and that is as true of mental as of moral life, and for Christians no less than for nonbelievers. Constant, searching assessment of the things we have taken for granted, so far as we are now aware of them, with a willingness to discover that we have been wrong and need to change, is the life-activity with which creative conservatism begins. ^[9]

Extras & Endnotes

Gauging Your Grasp

1. What are the four principles we suggest for evaluating a tradition in Christianity?\
2. What are the reasons for each of these principles?
3. What are several harmful effects of imposing unnecessary or unbiblical man-made rules on people in our churches?
4. How does the guiding principle of love help us in evaluating our response to a tradition in Christianity?
5. Why must we constantly evaluate the traditions that we are following?
6. What traditions in your life or church need to be abandoned? Which ones need to be supported?

Publications & Particulars

1. J. I. Packer, Truth & Power (Harold Shaw, 1996), 289. ↑

2. Ibid., 151. ↑

3. Ibid., 295. ↑

4. Ibid., 296. ↑

5. William Barclay, Daily Study Bible, CD-ROM (Liguori Publications, 1996), Matt 23:23. ↑

6. Barclay, Mark 7:3. ↑

7. Cf. v. 7; Tit 1:10, 14; 3:9. As G. W. Knight concludes: “The false teachers [addressed in the Pastoral Epistles] were primarily but not exclusively Jewish.” (The Pastoral Epistles (NIGTC) [Eerdmans, 1992], 12. ↑

8. One ancient manuscript adds a note here that Paul’s teaching took place between 11 a. m. and 4 p.m. This would match the Greek habit of ceasing work during this period in order to escape the heat of the day. ↑

9. Packer, 288. ↑