When Evangelicals Treat Catholic Tradition Like Revelation [Ecumenical]

In the following article, adapted with permission from his book "By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition" (Our Sunday Visitor Books), Mark recounts his thought processes when he was an Evangelical considering the role of tradition, which Evangelicals supposedly reject in belief and practice.

I wondered: Is it really true that we Evangelicals never treat extra-biblical tradition as authoritative revelation? Is it really the case that all Evangelical belief is derived from the clear and unambiguous teaching of the Bible alone? Do we really speak forth only what Scripture speaks, keep silent where Scripture is silent, and never bind the conscience of the believer on those questions in which Scripture permits different interpretations?

To find out, I decided to try an experiment. I would look at Evangelical—not Catholic—belief and practice to see if there were any evidence of tradition being treated like revelation. I would see if there were any rock-bottom, non-negotiable, can’t-do-without-’em beliefs that were not attested (or very weakly attested) in the Bible, yet which we orthodox Evangelicals treated like revelation. If I found such things, and if they had an ancient pedigree, it seemed to me this would be very strong evidence that the apostolic tradition not only was larger than the Bible alone, but had—somehow—been handed down to the present.

So I started taking a good long look at non-negotiable Evangelical beliefs as they were actually lived out in my church and churches like it. To my surprise, I found several such weakly attested non-negotiables.

Arguably the most pressing issue of our time is the question of the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. While you are reading this, several thousand preborn babies, ranging in age from first trimester to full term, are going to be legally suctioned, burned, dismembered, or decapitated by skilled professionals. As this evil occurs, a bewildered modern society, long ago cut adrift from its Christian roots, will not recoil in horror but will instead flop its hands passively in its lap, register a befuddled shrug of discomfort, and continue lacking the capacity to tell whether or not this is bad.

Meanwhile, the culture of death will not sleep. Rather, emboldened by our morel paralysis in the face of so obvious an evil, the purveyors of "choice" will ask ever more loudly, "If we can do these things when the tree is green, what can we get away with when it is dry? If the life of the helpless infant is cheap when the economy is strong, why not the life of the disabled, aged, and sick when medical costs skyrocket?"

It seems obvious to me that the question of the sanctity of human life is a bedrock of Christian morals. If the protection of life from conception to natural death isn’t essential to Christian teaching, what is? Surely here we ought to find a sharp dichotomy between the church and the modern world. Right?

Wrong. The plain fact is, things don’t break down that way. On one side of the cultural divide are not only secularists, but, alas, many liberal Christians who, with trembling devotion to the spirit of the age, dutifully parrot the rhetoric that those who defend human life are "antichoice."

On the other side of the divide are most Evangelicals, conservative members of the mainline Protestant churches, the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and conservative Jews.

Yet for 20 centuries absolutely all of Christianity stood staunchly behind the defenseless ones against the culture of death. Indeed, so recent is the minting of the "right to choose" that not even theological liberals were willing to call abortion anything other than a grave sin until the past few decades. That is why we can scarcely find a shred of Christian theology written in favor of abortion and euthanasia before the 1960s and ’70s. From the first century to the present, a shoreless ocean of testimony from every sector of the church decries this terrible crime against God and humanity. And we Evangelicals, with very few exceptions, are of one voice with 20 centuries of Christian preaching concerning this most elementary of Christian moral truths.

I am proud to number myself among the ranks of prolife Christians and will never waver from this commitment. But as I began to argue my position with liberal Christians who supported the "right to choose," I did begin to waver in something: my conviction that the irrefutable basis for our prolife conviction as Evangelicals is Scripture alone.

I know the verses that are quoted. "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb" (Ps. 139:13), "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jer. 1:5), and so forth. I certainly agree that these verses bear oblique witness to a prolife position. Indeed, I emphatically agree that the prolife position is an obvious fact of Christian teaching throughout all ages. But in arguing the matter with other Christians who read the same Bible I do, I began to realize that I could not make opposition to abortion and devotion to the sanctity of preborn life an intrinsic, absolutely essential, utterly non-negotiable part of the Christian faith on the basis of Scripture alone. For the fact is, a modern apologist for the culture of death can and does argue that Scripture alone, apart from tradition, is as ambiguous about abortion as it is about the question of just war vs. pacifism — and therefore abortion is a matter of "Christian liberty."

Consider: Neither testament gives a clear understanding of the status of unborn life. Is the fetus a human person possessing the same dignity as an infant after birth? Is the conceptus? Is the act of directly causing the death of such a one an act of murder or some lesser offense? Is it an offense at all? No direct answer is ever attempted to these questions anywhere in Scripture.

Worse, the indirect ways in which Scripture addresses these issues are very oblique and open to multiple interpretations—apart from tradition. Thus Exodus 21:22 reads: "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."

Far more questions are raised by this passage than are answered—if we are left to interpret it without reference to Jewish and Christian tradition, as prochoice Christians urge us to do. For instance, the Hebrew word which is here translated "gives birth prematurely" is in fact much more flexible than this. It means "departs" and can be read as "gives birth prematurely" or as "spontaneously aborts." So does the caveat about "serious injury" apply to the woman or to the miscarried child? Does the Law demand wound for wound for the mother’s injury or the unborn’s? If the mother is not seriously injured but the child dies, is this what is meant by "no serious injury"? The text does not say. Nor does the rest of Scripture help us.

Similarly, the New Testament does not tell us how to understand another difficult Old Testament passage: Numbers 5:20-27. This strange text prescribes an ordeal for suspected adulteresses, in which the suspected woman is placed under oath and made to drink "bitter water that brings a curse." The purpose of the ordeal was to call down a divine curse on the adulteress that will cause her "belly to swell and her thighs [to] waste away" or as the footnotes to NIV Bible put it, to make her "be barren and have a miscarrying womb."

If we do not have any larger tradition for understanding such a text—if we "let Scripture interpret Scripture" as we Evangelicals say—it seems that some induced miscarriages (i.e., those of adulteresses) ought to be countenanced by the people of God. In short, Scripture does not automatically give one the impression that the Bible lends itself to an irrefutable case for the sanctity of every human life from conception to natural death.

At this we Evangelicals may attempt to create a larger interpretive context by "letting Scripture interpret Scripture" again. We might raise the counter example of John the Baptist, moved by the Spirit in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary arrived (Lk. 1:41). Is not this a strong indication that even unborn children are persons responsive to the Spirit of God? Is it not a pretty good hint that unborn babies are people too?

Of course it is. That is, it’s a "strong indication"—a hint, a sign, a good possibility. It is not, however, incontrovertible proof that all children are similarly graced with supernatural gifts, including the supernatural gift of personhood, when they are as yet unformed in their mother’s womb. Thus, I know Christians who have actually taken this text as license for first-trimester abortions since babies cannot be felt to kick in utero before the second trimester. Such Christians are living proof that the bare text of Scripture, apart from the interpretive tradition of Christendom, says nothing clear and definite about abortion or human development anywhere. Instead it gives only signs, clues, and hints which individual Christians, forsaking that tradition, can and do interpret in ways that directly contradict one another.

"OK," the Evangelical says. "Maybe John the Baptist isn’t a biblical prolife proof, but what about our Lord himself? Surely the personhood of the Second Person of the Trinity at his conception lends his dignity to all human beings from conception onward so that ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these’ (Mt. 25:40) applies supremely here."

Now I happen to agree with this argument. But I have spoken with other well-meaning, Bible-believing Christians (most of them strongly prolife) who don’t. They see no such extension of Christ’s dignity to us by the mere fact that Christ was born a human being. They note that Christ is speaking of the "least of these brothers of mine" and argue that we become his brothers and God’s children, not by being born but by being born again. They fear that to protect the unborn child on this basis is ultimately to mislead people into thinking we are holy when we are merely human.

Of course, I have counter-arguments to all this and they, of course, have counter-counter-arguments till between us you can’t count the counters. But this is hardly evidence of the undeniable clarity of Scripture alone on this crucial point of Christian ethics.

"Well then," someone proposes, "maybe Scripture says so little because abortion was unheard of at the time? After all, you don’t pass laws against speeding if no one has yet invented the automobile." The difficulty with this theory is that it simply isn’t true. Abortion predates Christianity by centuries and it flourished in pagan culture then as it flourishes in our quasi-pagan culture now. That is why the Didache, a manual of Christian instruction composed around A D. 80, during the lifetime of the gospel writers, commands: "You shall not procure an abortion. You shall not destroy a new born child." Nor was the Didache alone in this. The subsequent writings of the post-apostolic period are simply unanimous when it comes to the Christian teaching on this subject. The Epistle of Barnabas, the Letter to Diognetus, the writings of Athenagoras, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Epiphanius, Jerome, and a vast army of the Fathers, indeed every last Christian theologian who addresses this question until late in this century says exactly the same thing: Abortion is a grave evil and the taking of human life.

Yet the odd thing is this: The old writers, the Fathers of the Church closest in time to the apostles, speak of their doctrine both in this area and in many others as definitely decided by the mind of the Church and the tradition of the apostles. For them abortion is contrary, not so much to the Bible, as to the Holy Faith they received from their predecessors. Thus Basil the Great writes (c. 374): "A woman who has deliberately destroyed a fetus must pay the penalty for murder," and, "Those also who give drugs causing abortions are murderers themselves, as well as those who receive the poison which kills the fetus." Yet, for Basil, as for the rest of the Fathers, this teaching, like many others, has been preserved, not only in Scripture, but "in the Church." As he himself says:

"Of the dogmas and kerygmas preserved in the Church, some we possess from written teaching and others we receive from the tradition of the Apostles, handed on to us in mystery. In respect to piety both are of the same force. No one will contradict any of these, no one, at any rate, who is even moderately versed in matters ecclesiastical. Indeed, were we to try to reject unwritten customs as having no great authority, we would unwittingly injure the Gospel in its vitals."

In short, the Faith of which the Fathers speak (including its prolife ethic) is revealed, not merely by Scripture alone, but by Scripture rightly understood (and only rightly understood) in the context of a larger tradition which is just as much from God as the Scripture it interprets.

And no one, least of all we Evangelicals, questioned this prolife teaching until this century. Indeed, the overwhelming number of Evangelicals quite faithfully followed this tradition without it even occurring to us to question it. Why was this, if we were truly deriving our beliefs from the clear and unambiguous teaching of the Bible alone, speaking forth only what Scripture spoke, keeping silent where Scripture was silent, and not binding the conscience of the believer on those questions in which Scripture permits different interpretations?

The obvious answer seemed to be that I was looking at a facet of extrabiblical tradition which is so profoundly part of our bones that we Evangelicals never thought to distinguish it from (much less oppose it to) the Scriptures themselves. Indeed, as I looked at it, I began to realize that the total prolife tradition was Scripture and tradition together; distinct, yet an organic unity like the head and the heart, the right hand and the left. The Scripture gave light, but a very scattered light on this most crucial of issues. The tradition acted like a lens bringing that dancing light into focus. Tradition without Scripture was a darkened lens without a light; but likewise, Scripture without tradition was, on this vital issue, a blurry, unfocused light without a lens.

In realizing this, I realized we Evangelicals were no different from Catholics on this score. We were not treating this tradition—the Tradition of Prolife Interpretation—as a fallible human reading of Scripture. Rather we treated it as absolutely authoritative and therefore as revealed.

What could be more central to Evangelical belief than the deity of Christ? This is the great thundering truth proclaimed by every good preacher of the gospel. If that is not essential Christianity, then there is no such thing as Christianity. Yet as I began to read Scripture and look at church history, I began to realize there are ways of denying the deity of Christ which can easily slip in under the Evangelical radar screen, ways which reverence him and call loudly for trust in Scripture as the one and only source of revelation, yet which firmly consign Christ to the status of mere creature just as surely as does the most ardent skeptic. Most famous among these ways is a third-century movement known as Arianism.

Arians were principally concerned to preserve the Oneness of God from pagan polytheism. They argued cogently from Scripture. They were well-trained theologians who could read Scripture in the original tongues. The only problem was that they had the idea that Jesus was not truly God but only a sort of godlet or superior created being.

In defense of this idea, the Arians rejected tradition and pointed to texts like "the Father is greater than I" (Jn. 14:28) and "Why do you call me good?... No one is good-except God alone" (Mk. 10:18). They could come up with plausible explanations for terms and expressions which we Evangelicals think could only point to Christ’s divinity. For example, Arians said the statement, "I and the Father are one" (Jn. 10:30) refers to oneness of purpose, not oneness of being. They pointed out that Scripture refers to supernatural created beings as "sons of God" (Job 38:7 NAB) without intending they are one in being with the Father. They observed that even mere humans were called "gods" (Ps. 8:2-6; Jn. 10:34-36), without the implication that they are God. Therefore they inferred that the Son, supernatural though he may be (as angels, principalities, and powers are supernatural), is neither co-eternal with the Father nor one in being with him.

How would we Evangelicals argue against Arianism using Scripture alone? We’d say that John speaks of the "only begotten" and says of him that he "was God" and was "with God in the beginning" (Jn. 1:1-2, 18; 3:16). We would reply that, although the "Trinity" is not in Scripture, nonetheless the concept of Trinity is there.

But a good Arian would be quick to point out that God plainly says, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father" (Heb. 1:5), which implies that there was a time before the Son was begotten. In other words, the Arian can argue that there was a time when the Son was not. But there was never a time when the Father was not. He is without beginning. Therefore, according to the Arian, the Son does not share God’s eternal, beginningless essence. This amounts to a denial of the deity of Christ. Great and supernatural as he may be compared to the rest of creation (and Paul implies he is a creature when he calls him the first-loom over all creation [Col. 1:15], doesn’t he?), nonetheless he is only a creature, says the Arian.

How then, I wondered, can we even be sure of this foundation stone of the Faith if the ambiguity of Scripture made it too a "matter of liberty" according to our own Evangelical criteria?

I discovered the answer as I listened to one of those radio call-in shows where theologians tackle various questions about the Bible. The host of this show was a solid Evangelical who was always very careful to speak of Scripture alone as the bottom line of revelation. Yet the odd thing was, when a particularly articulate exponent of anti-trinitarianism called and pointed out the typical Arian readings of various Scriptures, the host had one final bottom line below the bottom line. After citing various counter-Scriptures (and receiving more Arian readings by the caller until yet another stalemate seemed imminent), the host finally said, in essence, ‘Your interpretation is simply not what historic Christianity has ever understood its own Bible to mean." He then asked the Arian caller if he was really prepared to insist that 20 centuries of Christians (including people who had heard the apostles with their own ears and who clearly regarded Jesus as God) had been utterly wrong about the central fact of their faith while he alone was right?

This made sense. It seemed plain to me that it was idle for the Arian caller to wrench Scripture away from 20 centuries of ordinary Christian interpretation of so crucial a matter and declare the entire Church, from those who knew the apostles down to the present, incapable of understanding what it meant in its own Scriptures concerning so fundamental an issue.

Is it even remotely likely that the entire early Church misunderstood the apostles that badly? Is it not obvious that the churches preserved the plain apostolic meaning of the Scriptures by carrying in their bosom not only the text of Scripture, but the clear memory of the way the apostles intended these texts to be understood? Was it not obvious that this living memory was, in fact, essential to correctly reading Scripture?

But in seeing this, I couldn’t help seeing something else: My Evangelical radio show host (like my Evangelical friends and I) was saying that a Tradition of Trinitarian Interpretation living in the church was just as essential and revealed as the Scripture being interpreted. When we spoke of the absolute union of the Father and the Son, we Evangelicals were in fact resting serenely, not on the Bible alone, but on the interpretative tradition of the Church, just as we rested serenely on its Tradition of the Sanctity of Human Life (and we could draw the same conclusions with the Tradition of Monogamy).

This meant that whatever we Evangelicals said about tradition being "useful but not essential" to Christian revelation, we behaved exactly as though we believed trinitarian tradition—a tradition both in union with and yet distinct from the Scripture it interprets—is the other leg upon which the revelation of Christ’s deity stands.

It was then a plain mistake to think we Evangelicals spoke forth only what Scripture spoke, kept silent where Scripture was silent, and never bound the conscience of the believer on those questions in which Scripture permits different interpretations. On the contrary, we lived (and had to live) by tradition almost as deeply as Catholics. For us, as for Rome, tradition was the lens that focused the light of Scripture. For us, as for Rome, that tradition was not a pair of "useful but not necessary" disposable glasses; it was the lens of our living eye and the heart of vision. It was so much a part of us that we were oblivious to it. I realized we Evangelicals had been so focused on the light of Scripture that we had forgotten the lens through which we looked.

I agree with the author. Born & raised & educated for many years in Evangelical Protestantism, I accepted “sola scriptura” as an article of faith.

One thing that made me think: If a pastor, teacher, or anyone in the Evangelical tradition were to deny ANY POINT of any the first seven ecumenical creeds, his teaching would be REJECTED out of hand. No matter how he attempted to buttress his position with original language exegesis of scripture references. Why? Because all Christian churches that are considered orthodox accept these creeds.

So it isn’t simply a matter of “believing the Bible alone.” Evangelicals accept theological formulations that are the creation of albeit godly and wise teachers of old as INDISPUTABLE TRUTH.

I’m not saying these theological formulations are “equal” to Scripture. Rather, they derive their authority from the fact that they are authentically rooted in Scripture and wholly reflect the truth of Scripture.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are a good example of how even if someone were to quote many scriptures, if their position contradicted the creeds, it would not be accepted. JW’s are fond of quoting scriptures to “prove” their heterodox doctrines, and are trained to counter orthodox teachings with other scriptures. Even though, for example, they can point to numerous scriptures that appear to contradict the Trinity (I have argued with many) their arguments have little effect upon a trained Evangelical. Why? Because we know that the Trinity is God’s Truth (as found in the ancient creeds).

Of course we have some scriptures that support that key doctrine, but to be honest the Trinity is a mystery that is only alluded to in the Bible. The fact of the matter is that we believe the Trinity because it is a doctrine held since the early days of the Church and is enshrined in the creeds.

"The Scottish tradition started in the 1600s..."

Actually the tradition of Scottish independence goes back much, much further. For example the Romans failed to subdue the Scots and the vikings were ultimately purged. The history associated with William Wallace and Robert the Bruce took place in the 13th century (1200s). In 1320, the Declaration of Arbroath was sent by the Scottish nobility to Pope John XXII. The declaration rejected the claim of the kings of England to the Scottish throne and also emphasized the priority of the entire Scottish nobility over the authority of any single monarch in maintaining independence. One passage in particular is often quoted from:

...for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.