In the last blog post we briefly discussed the concept and importance of orthodoxy and I suggested that whilst there is quite a bit of room for disagreement amongst Christians on certain topics, there are also essential core truths that are non-negotiable that have been passed down from generation to generation and that we are responsible to steward and pass on ourselves. To speak of passing something from one generation to another immediatly places us in the realm of tradition and that is what we are going to delve into in this blog.
Rejection of Tradition
One of the first things worth noting here is that we live in an age that is profoundly sceptical of tradition. For whether we are aware of it or not, we live in a culture that has been deeply influenced by an intentional rejection of tradition in a misguided and naieve attempt to liberate itself from its past. As Tim Stanley notes, ‘here in the West we’ve been at war with our traditions for decades, if not centuries, in the mistaken belief that emancipating ourselves from our history would set us free. We have obsessively deconstructed our past, customs, rituals, and beliefs, all at a terrible cost’.1
Historically, cultures and societies have been legitimised and held together by shared beliefs, values, rituals, and symbols, which, together, made up the tradition that was passed down from one generation to the next and which gave them a sense of identity, purpose, and belonging. But we have deconstructed much of this without really knowing what to replace it with, and this has left many, many, people with a profound sense of rootlessness and an abiding anxiety over questions of identity and purpose.2 Who am I? Where do I belong? Why am I here? What is wrong? What is the solution? Historically, these deep existential questions about what it means to be human and to exist in this cosmos, were answered by the traditions that we inherited, but now the burden of answering them is on us as individuals.
This is not to suggest that all traditions are good and should be accepted or that there haven’t been good reasons for rejecting certain beliefs and practices. It is, however, to highlight the dangerous and foolish nature of adopting an uncritical posture toward tradition whereby anything that we inherit is rejected out of hand simply because it had been handed down. It is dangerous because we believe that truth and tradition are inextricably linked to one another and that that tradition is the vehicle within which truth travels down through time. It is foolish because it assumes that the previous generations have no wisdom to offer us by which we might better navigate the complex questions facing us today. It is this attitude that C.S Lewis called ‘chronological snobbery’ and which he defined as ‘the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited’.3
Paul and Tradition
The position outlined above reflects a complete reversal of the ancient paradigm that deeply respected that which was old and was deeply sceptical of anything new. In fact, one the key tasks of the early church preachers and teachers was to justify the ‘new’ thing that God was doing through Jesus by appealing to ancient sources and showing how it stood in continuity with what had been before.4 It was the apostles, those specifically chosen by Jesus, who were the authoritative teachers in the early church and it was this teaching that became known as the apostolic tradition.
Paul is an interesting figure in this regard for whilst he was not one of the original 12 apostles, he went from persecuting the church to being one of her main leaders after his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus (See Acts 9). And despite being adamant that his gospel and his authority came directly from God (Gal. 1:1), he also says made a couple of trips to Jerusalem where he spend time with Peter, James, and other leaders where he presented his gospel to them ‘in order to make sure that [he] was not running, or had not run, in vain’ (Gal. 1:13-2:2). Paul lays out his gospel before the apostles and leaders and he is recognised and affirmed by them as sharing in the same authoritative apostolic work that they were (Gal. 2:7-8). From this it is clear that whilst Paul speaks of receiving his gospel revelation directly from the Lord, he is also deeply concerned that he, and his churches, were correctly aligned with the wider apostolic tradition. For example…
- In 1 Corinthians 11:2 he commends the church because they ‘maintain the traditions just as [he] had handed them on [them]’.
- In 2 Thessalonians he exhorts the believers to ‘hold fast to the traditions that [they were taught by [him]’ and to stay away from other believers who refuse to live according to these same traditions’ (2 Thess. 2:15, 3:6).
In this way Paul viewed his role, and the role of the other apostles, as something akin to a steward or guardian of the gospel, as those who had been commissioned to faithfully pass onto others what he himself had received.
- In 1 Corinthians 3-4, Paul describes himself and the other church leaders as ‘servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries’. He goes on to say that ‘it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy’ (1 Cor. 4:2).
- Later in that same letter he highlights the importance of tradition when he says, ‘for I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you’ (11:23) and that he ‘handed on to [them] as of first importance what [he] had received’ (15:3)
- When he is heading toward the end of his life he charges his protege Timothy to ‘guard what [had] been entrusted to [him]’ (1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:14).
In each of these examples Paul is making an appeal to what we discussed in the previous blog post as Christian orthodoxy.5 Or as Jude, the brother of James succintly put it, it is a neccessary call to appeal to the church to ‘contend for the faith that was once and for all entrusted to the saints’ (Jude 3).
‘Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints’
Jude 3
God had acted decisively in history in the person of Jesus and Jesus had entrusted himself and his message to his apostles, his authoritative messengers, who then entrusted this treasure to other faithful and trustworthy individuals and so the tradition is passed on from one person to another. Tradition therefore is the vehicle through which truth travels through time and should be welcomed, protected, preserved, and passed on to those who come after us.
For some of us who have grown up or been around the evangelical charismatic circles, we may have something of an instinctive aversion to the concept of ‘tradition’ as it often gets lumped in with the ‘tradition of the elders’ that Jesus condemned for standing in opposition to the commandments of God (Mark 7; Matt. 15). Tradition then too easily gets associated with the idea of a ‘religious’ or ‘Pharisaic’ spirit that is the antithesis of the ‘new thing’ that the Holy Spirit is doing. This, I want to suggest is a mistake and it might be helpful to draw on Jarislov Pelikan’s distinction between traditionalism which he describes as ‘the dead faith of the living’, and tradition, which is the ‘living faith of the dead’.6 Tradition is not, as someone else poetically stated it, ‘the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire’.
The apostolic faith is the fire that true tradition seeks to preserve for each and every generation and when the flame dies low we need to reexamine how we stand in relation to this tradition and pray for the breath of the Spirit to rekindle it again.
- Stanley, Whatever, 1. ↩︎
- See the recent conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an interesting example of someone who has found christian faith as a result of these cultural challenges. https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/. ↩︎
- https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/c-s-lewis-on-chronological-snobbery/. Thomas C. Oden called this ‘modern chauvinism’. ↩︎
- For a good example of this, have a read of the opening chapters of Luke’s Gospe (1-2) and see how often he cites or alludes to the Old Testament. ↩︎
- Allert, High, 55. ↩︎
- Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition, The 1983 Jefferson Lecture. ↩︎