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The
Rule of Faith:
Why
Protestants Shouldn't Be Afraid of Tradition
When
it comes to tradition, today’s Christian sees no baby, only bathwater.
Paul may have instructed Timothy to hold fast to the tradition entrusted
to him, but we aren’t having any of that. People who embrace tradition
end up swinging incense burners and praying to the saint of the
week. We are happy to remain blissfully ignorant of two millennia
of Christian thought, convinced that we are somehow part of the
New Testament church. Ironically, with the spread of New Age and
charismatic heresy within Christianity, we were never more in need
of a tradition of truth to fall back on. The question is, which
tradition? The one from Rome? Let’s find out.
Early
church & tradition
Irenaeus
wrote Against Heresies, a refutation of the Gnostic error,
in about AD 185. At the time he was the bishop of Lyons. As a young
boy, he had sat at the feet of Polycarp, who in turn was a protégé
of the Apostle John. So Irenaeus was only a generation or two removed
from the apostolic era, and we can assume he had an excellent grasp
of what the apostles taught—a knowledge he used to good effect in
his anti-Gnostic writings.
The
Gnostics claimed to have discovered a ‘hidden’ revelation that was
not available to the average believer. Because they twisted Scripture
to fit their teachings, Irenaeus chose to rebut their arguments
with two sources: Scripture itself, and the tradition of teaching
handed down by the apostles. The logic was simple: if there were
a secret teaching of Christ, surely it would have been revealed
to his inner circle of apostles—men like the Apostle John—who in
turn would have preserved it. The fact that John never mentioned
these secrets to Polycarp and Polycarp never mentioned them to Irenaeus
suggested that no such mystery existed. In fact, the whole of the
apostles’ teaching argued against such a hidden revelation.
So
far, so good. Irenaeus refuted the Gnostics, but in the process
he opened a Pandora’s box: the elevation of ‘tradition’ to the same
authoritative level as Scripture. Or did he? Although Roman Catholic
apologists have used Irenaeus as a justification for their doctrine
of the Vatican’s teaching magisterium, arguing that in addition
to Scripture there was an authoritative tradition handed down from
the apostles and entrusted to the church hierarchy, a close reading
of Irenaeus suggests this isn’t what he had in mind at all.
Preserved
continuously
When
Roman Catholics talk about tradition, they have in mind a living
organism. The tradition is not preserved over time; it is embellished.
New teaching is incorporated into the existing tradition, and believers
are expected to consider recent additions to be as authoritative
as apostolic teaching. But Irenaeus’ treatment of tradition undermines
this view.
When
Irenaeus tells us “the apostolical tradition has been preserved
continuously” (Book III, Chapter 2, #2), he is talking about a settled
tradition that is fixed in content. Remember, he invokes this tradition
as an antidote to heresy, and if the tradition he advocates is a
living thing capable of changing and expanding, then its effectiveness
against the Gnostics is negligible. Does it matter that Gnostic
teaching contradicts the apostolic tradition if that tradition might
later grow to include what the Gnostics believe?
Also,
the strength of the argument derives from the fact that the apostolic
tradition coincides perfectly with the plain teaching of Scripture.
Irenaeus does not propose tradition as a supplement to God’s Word;
rather, he demonstrates that the teaching of the apostles and the
Scriptures they authored via inspiration coincide. Note that the
tradition is “handed down,” not created. This would preclude new
traditions being included under the rubric of ‘apostolic.’
It
is as if Irenaeus had said, “Scripture means what it says, and this
is proven by the fact that the church everywhere affirms the plain
meaning. If there were a hidden meaning, then the apostolic tradition
would reflect it.”
The
‘new knowledge’ gained by heretics is untrue precisely because it
is not part of what was revealed in Scripture and taught to the
apostles, and the fact that it was not taught to the Apostles is
evident because they did not teach it to their own students. Rather
than establishing an innovative ‘teaching authority,’ Irenaeus seems
to lock the future church into the framework of the tradition as
it was transmitted to his day.
The
content of tradition: regula fidei
So
what is this fixed tradition? Let’s take a look. In Chapter 4, Irenaeus
sums up the tradition when he describes the beliefs of the ‘barbarians’—those
who do not have the written witness of the apostles, and instead
rely on an oral version of the tradition:
To
which course many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ
do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit,
without paper or ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition,
believing in one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all
things therein, by means of Christ Jesus, the Son of God; who,
because of His surpassing love towards His creation, condescended
to be born of the virgin, He Himself uniting man through Himself
to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again,
and having been received up in splendour, shall come in glory,
the Saviour of those who are saved, and the Judge of those who
are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform
the truth, and despise His Father and His advent.
As
a summary of tradition, this would not be very satisfying to a modern
Roman Catholic, but it serves Irenaeus’ purpose nicely. Instead
of a mandate for ex cathedra innovation, this tradition is
an inventory of fundamental doctrine that coincides with Scripture
and serves as an independent witness to the orthodox Christian faith.
The
technical name for this summary of doctrine is the regula fidei,
or ‘rule of faith,’ and as Keith Mathison points out in The Shape
of Sola Scriptura (Canon Press, 2001), Irenaeus was by no means
the only church father to advocate its use as an interpretative
tool against the heretics. Tertullian formulates the rule in his
On the Prescription Against Heretics in such a way that the
resemblance to the Apostle’s Creed is unmistakable. Far from being
elevated above Scripture, the regula fidei is derived from
God’s Word and serves as a “hermeneutical context” in which the
Bible can be accurately understood.
Mathison
quotes F.F. Bruce on the correspondence between the regula fidei
and Scripture: “If at times [the rule of faith] is formally distinguished
from Scripture in the sense that it is recognized as the interpretation
of Scripture, at other times it is materially identical with Scripture
in the sense that it sums up what Scripture says.”
In
other words, interpretations of Scripture that run contrary to the
regula fidei are wrong because the rule of faith is an accurate
summary of what the Bible teaches. This was the position of the
early church, and it was revived during the Reformation, where we
see Puritan divines from William Perkins to John Owen advocating
the interpretation of Scripture in light of this summary of teaching.
What
about Rome?
At
one point in his argument against the Gnostics, Irenaeus holds up
the example of the church at Rome. He goes so far as to say that
all Christians everywhere are obligated to believe as they do in
Rome. This shouldn’t be a problem passage for us, though, now that
we understand the kind of tradition Irenaeus had in mind.
Why
does he point to Rome? Because in his day, the church at Rome was
a model of orthodoxy. They embraced the truth and taught it faithfully.
Their witness to the Gospel was a light to the world. Rome is not
special because of its location. It is special because it is typical—i.e.,
its doctrine was the doctrine universally recognized by the church.
Irenaeus does not say that Rome must be followed because it is Rome,
but rather, that Rome must be followed because it is a faithful
witness to the truth.
If
Rome loses its witness, then it is no longer an example to the church.
Irenaeus does not say that any teaching coming from Rome should
be considered to have the authority of the Apostles behind it. Rather,
he considers the example of Rome authoritative to the extent that
it obeys the exhortation of Paul to Timothy—as long as it holds
fast to the tradition that was entrusted to it. By distorting and
elaborating on that tradition, the church at Rome has lost the prominence
its faithfulness earned in the second century.
Post-Christian
crisis
We
live in a post-Christian culture, which means that today’s great
artistic and intellectual works are often antithetical to the faith.
Fortunately, all is not lost. The Renaissance began when thinkers
and artists rediscovered Greek and Roman culture. Imagine what will
happen when some future generation rediscovers Christian culture!
In the meantime, a rich tradition of Christian spiritual and intellectual
life has been preserved in two thousand years’ worth of books.
There’s
no need to be afraid of the Christian tradition. Properly understood
and applied, our tradition serves as a witness to the Gospel and
a record of God’s providence in the lives of His people.
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