Is ‘Tradition’ Good or Bad?
The word ‘tradition’ embraces a range of things. Brittania.com refers to it as ‘a way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group for a long time.’ Family-centred examples in the ‘doing something’ category might include going for a walk in the countryside every Bank Holiday, or alternating which side of the family hosts on Christmas Day. Wider society examples might include adhering to the appropriate dress code for certain occasions (e.g., ‘black-tie’, ‘smart casual’, and so on).
Perhaps the most intriguing of the Brittania.com elements is the first one. A traditional ‘way of thinking’ reflects what the group considers to be self-evident—‘obviously’ right, and ‘obviously appropriate’—to which all should therefore conform.
Some years ago, there was outrage amongst (small ‘c’) conservatives, sparking fierce debate, when the then-leader of the Labour Party, Michal Foot, wore what was described as ‘a donkey jacket’ to the Cenotaph Remembrance Day ceremony. Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, evoked similar controversy when he very deliberately flouted the traditional black-tie and white-tie dress codes at a number of City of London events, wearing a lounge suit instead. The behaviour of both these Labour politicians was cited as inter alia rude, dishonouring, and disrespectful.
We would need psychologists to confirm whether human societies have an innate disposition towards affirming traditions (and if so, why). But that’s not our concern here (at least not directly), which is tradition in its religious equivalent. In this context, the Oxford Dictionary describes traditions as ‘doctrine(s) believed to have divine authority though not in the scriptures’ (emphasis added). This identification of ‘tradition’ with ‘doctrine’ is intriguing, because they often become commingled. A ‘doctrine’ is a required belief (with direct implications for required practice) that is insisted upon by a religious group if a person wants to be in good standing within that group.
A notable example concerning tradition is the divide between Protestant thinking and Catholic thinking concerning the authority granted by tradition to the pontiff in Rome (via direct apostolic succession). Since the Reformation, Protestants have insisted on the authority of Scripture over the authority of church tradition. The original context for the Protestant mantra of Sola Scriptura (‘the Bible alone’) was as opposed to the supremacy of the pronouncements of the institutional (Catholic) church. Similarly, evangelical insistence on the infallibility of the Bible is a response to Catholic claims for papal infallibility (though both those Protestant doctrines have since taken on a life of their own outside of that).
In sum, evangelicals believe that only the Scriptures carry divine authority. Doctrines do not—unless and to the extent that they are clearly referenced in Scripture. And therein, of course, lies the debate!
The evangelical relationship with tradition is somewhere between ambiguous and selective. On the one hand, it will, on paper, affirm the ‘traditional beliefs’ that define classic Christian orthodoxy (specifically, the Apostles’ Creed and the similar but longer Nicene Creed). And yet, I say ‘on paper’ because few evangelical Sunday liturgies (especially those of the newer church expressions and charismatic varieties) will include a creed. Still less will the average person in an evangelical pew get very far in reciting one from memory, if asked. Those factors notwithstanding, tradition in relation to affirming the early creeds should be accepted by all Christians, since those creeds define orthodox Christian belief. Technically, that is dogma rather than doctrine (though evangelicals often confuse the two, adding their versions of the latter to the former). Our focus here, though, is the extension of the concept of tradition beyond that.
For example, one of the main arguments that evangelicals cite against same-sex relationships is that marriage being exclusively between a man and a woman is a ‘traditional’ belief. As one nationally-known conservative church leader said to me, “Why is there now such a clamour to affirm same-sex marriage, when up until now we’ve had two thousand years of clarity on it?” He saw this as highly suspicious—an insidious infiltration of the ‘spirit of the age’ that weak-minded Christians were now at risk of being unwittingly deceived by. He saw his mission as to stop that from happening. The reality, of course, is that the first 1,900 of those 2,000 years are as good as irrelevant; there was no scientific awareness of same-sex orientation as a naturally occurring feature in humanity. Before that awareness, which began only in the latter part of the nineteenth century, there was nothing to talk about. It would be tempting, though somewhat puerile, to say “Never let the facts get in the way of a good tradition,” especially when it confirms our personal thinking.
Whatever the reader’s beliefs on that particular question, it draws attention to the complexities attendant to affirming non-creedal ‘tradition’ as authoritative for beliefs and practice. There was a time, not that long ago, when slavery was considered a traditional biblical belief (Christian focus at the time was on being a decent sort of slave-owner—oxymoronic though that self-evidently is to us). So, too, the inferior status granted to women: in the home, in society, and in the church, which remains to this day in the more conservative expressions of evangelicalism. Both of these were seen as traditional beliefs supported by Scripture. It’s easy to say about same-sex relationships, “Ah, this one is different.” But I’m sure the same was said about those other traditional beliefs at the time.
Evangelicals need to be careful what we wish for. To fully affirm the authority of tradition in Christian history, extant in its first 1,500 years, we would need to apologise to the pope for the rebellion of the Reformers and apply to rejoin the Catholic church.
Even if we limit our affirmation of tradition to specifically Protestant traditions, notwithstanding that they are of comparatively recent vintage (the most recent 500 years of Christianity’s 2,000-year history), we run into difficulties with the legacies that the rejection of Catholic tradition has left us. For example, it’s easy to affirm a traditional evangelical belief in the supreme authority of the Scriptures, over against the pope’s authority. But when it comes to the interpretation of those Scriptures (bearing in mind that there is no such thing as uninterpreted Scripture), Protestantism has no magisterium! There is no authoritative interpretation.* As someone once said, every evangelical is their own pope! The unfortunate legacies range from proof-texting decontextualised verses (“The Bible says …”) through to “God has told me” (it’s a brave person who responds, “Well, God hasn’t told me that …”). It’s ironic that, within a movement which has unwittingly given birth to a Wild West of biblical interpretation and attendant misuse, there is concurrently an embedded anti-intellectualism inherited from its fundamentalist roots. You would think that a key objective would be to affirm intellectual rigour and academic excellence as a safeguard. But evangelicalism has tended to be suspicious of both (largely because it fears creeping liberalism in disguise).
Let’s close by considering Jesus’ perspective on tradition, so far as we can discern it. Given what we’ve said already about evangelical ‘personal interpretation’ of Scripture, there’s every likelihood that people will select different sets of proof-texts to support whatever their own view is on that. Be that as it may, if we do a word search for ‘tradition’ in the Gospels, the results are really quite interesting.
In every instance that Jesus encountered beliefs and practices centred in ‘tradition’—variously, the ‘traditions of the elders’ (the most revered members of the community in those days, with consequent implied authority), the ‘traditions you have handed down’, and ‘human traditions’—he was invariably critical. For example: “Why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matt 15:3). “Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.” (Matt 15:6). “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions.” (Mark 7:9). And, with a sting in the tail here, “Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” (Mark 7:13). Evangelicals should pay particular attention to the fact that in each case Jesus’ argument was centred in those traditions being incompatible with Scripture (read well).
Once again, it’s easy to think, “Ah, but that was different! Jesus was talking about the traditions of the Pharisees and teachers of the law. You know, those legalistic hypocrites! That’s not the case for us and our traditions. Obviously it’s not.” Aside from the fact that modern scholarship (in the so-called ‘New Perspective on Paul’) has discredited those (traditional!) stereotypes as no more than flawed caricatures—amplified by the Reformers’ misreading of first-century Judaism and taken-for-granted by popular evangelicalism since then—it’s all too easy to assume that whenever Jesus (and indeed, Scripture generally) has something negative to say, it’s always talking about people other than us (in this case, someone else’s traditions).
*Except insofar as an evangelical institution claims hegemony for certain interpretations, in which case, of course, we’re back to where we started with the institutional Catholic church claiming hegemony over the interpretation of Scripture!