Three-legged Stool: Scripture, Tradition, Church

By Hans Boersma

Distrust of Tradition

Distrust of tradition is in my genes. The tradition in which I grew up held unwaveringly to the sola scriptura maxim. I was convinced tradition invariably skews our understanding of the Bible. Only the careful, consistent use of the grammatical-historical method would yield the true meaning of the text. Decent grades in my studies gave me an extra confidence booster, convincing me that with consistent, patient use of the proper method I would be able not just to determine what the text really says, but also to decide on the various doctrinal issues that have divided the church over the centuries. It took several humbling lessons before I began to realize that perhaps the adjudication of each and every exegetical and doctrinal issue was beyond my abilities.

In retrospect, my distrust of tradition stemmed from the equation of tradition with traditionalism. Convinced that Scripture comes from above and tradition from below, I opted for the former and wrote off the latter as human invention. (This doesn’t mean that the creeds or the church’s history were unimportant to me; but my sola scriptura position allowed me largely to repress the question of what kind of genuine authority they might have.) For Catholics to accept both Scripture and tradition as authoritative seemed to me to raise error-prone tradition to the level of infallible Scripture, thereby treating tradition as a source of divine revelation in addition to the Bible.

My view of Scripture versus tradition wasn’t completely without warrant. Several biblical passages caution against adding to or taking away from Scripture (Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Rev. 22:18–19). Jesus chastises the Pharisaic custom of washing hands and utensils prior to eating as “tradition (paradosis) of the elders” (Mark 7:3, 5; cf. Luke 11:37–53), which he equates with the “commandments of men” (Mark 7:7) to which Isaiah refers (Isa. 29:13). (1) And Saint Paul warns the Colossians not to be taken “captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition (paradosin tōn anthrōpōn)” (Col. 2:8). Some traditions deserve to be deconstructed.

In the case of Jesus’s conflict with the Pharisees and lawyers, a combination of factors renders their tradition of washing hands and utensils problematic: they focus on externals rather than on the inside (Luke 11:40–41); they major in minors, neglecting the most significant teachings of the Law (11:42); they love the public adulation that results from their tradition observance (11:43); they fail themselves to observe the traditions that they impose on others (11:46); and they introduce traditions as a way to circumvent the Decalogue (Matt. 15:3–6; Mark 7:9–13). In short, Jesus assails the hypocrisy that is involved in his critics’ traditions. His comments hardly constitute a wholesale rejection of tradition. After all, he explicitly insists that although tithing of mint, dill, and cumin may be a tradition that carries relatively little weight, the scribes and Pharisees were nonetheless right to observe it: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” (Matt. 23:23). (2)

It is not easy to trace what precisely Saint Paul may have had in mind in warning against “human tradition” in Colossians 2:8. Whatever the historical backdrop, Paul’s rejection of traditions in this passage associates it with “philosophy and empty deceit” and opposes it to Christ. (3) In line with the overall message of Colossians it seems safe to suggest that Paul aims to uphold the all-sufficiency of Christ over against those who would add something to the God-given redeemer. Paul does not speak of “the traditions of men” here so as to play off Scripture against tradition. He has already positively used “tradition” language in 2:6, where he speaks of the Colossians having “received” (parelabete) Christ. The apostle wants the Colossians to uphold the tradition of Christ over against traditions that would undermine his sufficiency. Distrust of tradition is warranted when it supplements or undermines Christ as the center of the faith.

Tradition: Noun, Verb, and Adjective

A strict sola scriptura position becomes difficult to maintain once we recognize that as a historical fact, Scripture lies embedded within the tradition. (4) In other words, in an important sense tradition precedes Scripture and as such has priority over it. That is why in the second century Polycarp’s companion Papias inquired after the teaching of the Lord’s direct disciples: “For I did not suppose that information from books helped me so much as that from a living and abiding voice.” (5) Papias is referring to doctrines and morals passed on by the apostles. Prior to the canonization of the New Testament, the church was not without the contents of the gospel. It was passed on through the liturgy, through other practices and disciplines, and by means of episcopal succession.

The famous 1963 Montreal report on “Scripture, Tradition and Traditions” distinguishes between

the Tradition (with a capital T), tradition (with a small t) and traditions. By the Tradition is meant the Gospel itself, transmitted from generation to generation in and by the Church, Christ himself present in the life of the Church. By tradition is meant the traditionary process. The term traditions is used in two senses, to indicate both the diversity of forms of expression and also what we call confessional traditions, for instance the Lutheran tradition or the Reformed tradition. (6)

With the first use of the term “Tradition” (capital-T), we think of it as a noun: the contents of the gospel. The second understanding of “tradition” (small-t) is more that of a verb: here we have in mind the process of traditioning or passing on. In yet a third use of the term “tradition,” we focus on the adjective that precedes the term (e.g., Lutheran tradition or Reformed tradition). (7) Both as noun and as verb, T/tradition  precedes the Scriptures historically. (8) Scripture has the role of presenting Tradition (Christ himself) and as such has a function within the tradition (the traditionary process).

It is impossible, therefore, to separate Scripture and T/tradition. Scripture contains Tradition (capital-T). After all, Christ, or the gospel itself, is Scripture’s contents. Scripture is also the most significant monument of the tradition (small-t). (9) We cannot pull apart Scripture and T/tradition. Whether in terms of contents or transmission, they are inseparable. My view of the relationship between Scripture and tradition, therefore, is one of coinherence. Such a view rejects two alternatives. The one is what we might term the “supplementary view,” which was prevalent in Catholicism from the time of the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century until the nineteenth century. On this understanding, God has revealed some teachings in Scripture, others in tradition. This view separates Scripture and tradition too neatly, as if there were two separate sources of divine revelation. It doesn’t adequately do justice to Scripture’s own status as one aspect of the tradition. It also runs the danger of introducing doctrines that have little or no grounding in Holy Scripture. 

The other alternative is the “ancillary view” of Protestantism. A. N. S. Lane describes this view by suggesting that the Reformers regarded “tradition not as a normative interpretation of Scripture nor as a necessary supplement to it but rather as a tool to be used to help the church to understand it.” (10) This approach turns to tradition because it is a helpful source that can assist our own interpretation of Scripture. This is indeed an important function of tradition: we borrow from the wisdom of previous generations in our own interpretation of Scripture. Still, the term “ancillary” makes too tidy a split between Scripture and tradition. It ignores that Scripture is one of the monuments within the tradition and it isolates that one element in order to give it authoritative status all by itself. As a result, while it treats tradition as helpful in interpreting Scripture, it does not regard it as indispensable. (Far too often, we fail to make use of the tradition in our exegesis; helpful antidotes to such amnesia are the Ancient Christian Commentary Series edited by Thomas C. Oden; The Church’s Bible edited by Robert L. Wilken; and the Reformation Commentary on Scripture edited by Timothy George.) 

Tradition in Scripture

Small-t tradition—the process of transmission of Christ—originates in the triune God and extends through history by means of the church. When on the day of his resurrection, Jesus comes through locked doors to appear to his disciples, he shows them his hands and his side and greets them: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). He then breathes on them, giving them the Spirit: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld” (20:22–23). (11) In this Johannine Pentecost Jesus passes on the tradition: the Father sends the Son who sends the apostles. Jesus’s commissioning of the apostles is in line with his earlier high priestly prayer: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (17:17–18). The reliability of the subsequent tradition lies in Jesus’s breathing—in his gifting of the Spirit. Jesus does not leave the apostles as orphans (14:18). Their hearts need not be troubled (14:1, 27). When Jesus departs, he will leave them with the Helper (paraklētos), the gift of the Spirit, who will show them the gospel (Tradition): “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (14:26).

In the light of Jesus’s gifting of the Spirit, the overwhelmingly positive use of tradition language in Saint Paul is hardly surprising. In his second letter to the Thessalonians he encourages his readers to “stand firm and hold to the traditions (paradoseis) that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thess. 2:15). Paul considered both his spoken words and his letters as means of passing on “traditions.” He commends the Corinthians for maintaining “the traditions (paradoseis) even as I delivered (paredōka) them to you” (1 Cor. 11:2). Later in this same chapter, when he discusses the abuses surrounding the Lord’s Supper in Corinth, the apostle introduces the words of institution by saying, “For I received (parelabon) from the Lord what I also delivered (paredōka) to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed (paredideto) took bread” (11:23). Jesus was not just betrayed; he was traditioned or handed on. This traditioning of Jesus to death was both the cause and the contents of the Tradition (the gospel) that Paul received.

Saint Paul pairs the verbs “receive” (paralambanō) and “deliver” (paradidōmi) a second time in 1 Corinthians 15: “For I delivered (paredōka) to you as of first importance what I also received (parelabon): that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve” (15:3). Christ’s death and resurrection were both “in accordance with the Scriptures,” and it is this Tradition that Paul has received and has passed on. The contents of capital-T Tradition is identical to that of the Scriptures. Both have at their core the paschal mystery. The gospel comes in twofold garb: both in writing and by means of oral tradition. Scripture and tradition cannot be separated.

We will only get the Scripture-tradition relationship right when we acknowledge that both are bound up with the church. After all, it is people (the church) that pass on the gospel (Tradition). Christian tradition is simply the dynamic process of the church continuing Christ’s life through history. The coinherence that I’ve talked about so far is really a threefold coinherence, namely, of Scripture, tradition, and church. This raises the question of how exactly each of the legs of this three-legged stool (of Scripture, tradition, and church) functions in relation to the others. We’ve already seen that traditions can go awry. Similarly, church councils can and do err. (For an example, we only have to think of the so-called Blasphemy of Sirmium in the year 357, when a council attempted to restore Arian teaching to ecclesial hegemony.) The Eastern church has it right, I think, when they insist that only over time do councils attain authority. The church needs to “receive” (paralambanō) council decisions, and this reception process takes time.

This reception is a matter of discerning whether a decision is in accordance with “the faith that was once for all delivered (paradotheisē) to the saints” (Jude 3). Jesus’s promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the rock of the church (Matt. 16:18) implies a high view of providence and trust in the church’s tradition; but it does not entail the belief that councils or popes never err. If that were the case, one of the stool’s legs would effectively trump the other two: the church’s magisterium would become the de facto source of all teaching. (This, it seems to me, is the Catholic temptation.) A coinherence view insists that this would lead to a wobbly stool, with one leg decidedly longer than the other two. A coinherence view insists that church teaching must always be grounded in Scripture and tradition. 

Protestants typically run the opposite danger: they tend to saw off not only the leg of tradition but also the leg of the church. Sola scriptura all too often treats biblical interpretation as something that as individuals we do on our own. But while it is certainly true that individual people interpret Scripture, we are meant to do this within the context of the church’s tradition. One of the unique features of the Bible is that it functions within the church with a particular purpose. The Scriptures are God’s means to equip the saints so as to mature them spiritually and to lead them to eternal fellowship with God. In other words, within the church the Scriptures have a sacramental function: they are a means of grace.

Useful Scriptures

Saint Paul tells Timothy that the inspired Scriptures are “profitable (ōphelimos) for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16). This text is usually discussed in the context of inspiration. That’s entirely legitimate, but we should keep in mind that Paul mentions inspiration as the backdrop to the Scriptures’ profitability or usefulness. He underlines this by using five times the preposition “for” (pros) and by employing a purpose clause, which he introduces with the word “that” (hina; “that the man of God…”). Within the community of the church, we read the Scriptures with a particular purpose: teaching, reproof, correction, training—all with the ultimate aim of being equipped for good work.

The early church treated the usefulness (ōpheleia) of Scripture as one of the keys to interpretation. Biblical readers often insisted that one of the reasons to move from the letter to the spirit in one’s exegesis is that often only the spiritual level gives us the text’s usefulness. Mark Sheridan points out that the criterion of usefulness was prominent in Origen, Didymus the Blind, Gregory of Nyssa, Diodore, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Cyril, and Hesychius. (12) Sheridan gives the example from Origen’s commentary on the story of Deborah in the book of Judges (Judg. 4:4–6), where Origen quotes 2 Timothy 3:16 and then makes clear there is no “usefulness” in simply knowing the historical facts of Deborah being the “wife of Lappidoth,” sitting “under the palm tree between Ramah and Bethel, on Mount Ephraim.” (13) He therefore proceeds with an allegorical reading of these details. (14)

In the prologue to his sermons on the Song of Songs, Gregory of Nyssa too homes in the notion of “usefulness.” He acknowledges: “If there is profit (ōpheloiē) even in the text taken for just what it says, we have what is sought right before us.” (15) The plain meaning, however, is not always “profitable” (eis ōpheleian), since Scripture often presents matters “by way of enigmas and below-the-surface meanings.” (16) When Gregory discusses the Song’s statement, “As the apple among the trees of the wood, so is my kinsman among the sons” (Song 2:3), he rhetorically questions what this text could possibly be driving at: “What guidance in virtue would there be in this, unless there were some idea profitable (ōphelountōn) for us contained in the words?” (17) Hubertus Drobner rightly suggests that for Gregory of Nyssa, the first principle of allegorical exegesis had to do with usefulness. “At the beginning,” writes Drobner, “the question of utility (ὠφέλεια) is asked.” (18)

Modern historical readings typically assume that it is the individual (scholar) who determines the true meaning of the biblical text. The “usefulness” of the text, on this understanding, is to find out what it meant historically. Within the communal body of the church, however, the “usefulness” of the text is not something buried in the past but something aimed at in the future: for the church fathers, the purpose (or usefulness) was to equip the saints for every good work. To be sure, whenever historical insights contribute to the greater spiritual usefulness, they too have their own (limited) usefulness. But it is the communal aim of entering into the divine life that determines what the text is for. Scripture’s communal or ecclesial role is sacramental in character—it aims at the reality of the beatific vision. It simply won’t do to substitute as the task of exegesis individual aims for this communal purpose.

Conclusion

Perhaps the most fatal flaw of the application of scientific methodology to biblical exegesis is that it relies upon an elite, academic guild to provide the one, correct meaning of the text. Ironically, this elitism has its origin in the anti-elitist sentiments of Enlightenment philosophy. The Enlightenment was in part a reaction against the authority of the priesthood over the faithful. The Irish freethinking philosopher John Toland, in his 1696 book Christianity Not Mysterious, took aim at the clergy’s claim to superior insight into the divine mysteries. Toland’s book, therefore, was a broadside against clerical snobbery. As Toland saw it, one of the main reasons that Catholic clergy had recourse to mystery was the will to power. The clergy have laboured hard, writes Toland, “not only to make the plainest, but the most trifling things in the World mysterious, that we might constantly depend upon them for the Explication.” (19) As Toland saw it, starting with the second and third centuries, the clergy began to establish all manner of ceremonies and rites. They organized into a separate hierarchical body, pretending to be “Labourers in the Lord’s Vineyard.” (20) Feigning that the faithful needed them as intermediaries, “the Clergy were able to do any thing; they engross’d at length the sole Right of interpreting Scripture, and with it claim’d Infallibility, to their body.” (21)

Toland’s anticlericalism was the direct result of an unfettered appeal to human reason and centered on the question of authority. His book was a biting attack on the authority of the magisterium. To make the Scriptures depend on the church for its authority, as the Papists did, obviously entailed a circular argument: “You must believe that the Scripture is Divine, because the Church has so determined it, and the Church has this deciding Authority from the Scripture…. Hey-day! are not these eternal Rounds very exquisite Inventions to giddy and entangle the Unthinking and the Weak?” (22) Toland’s rationalism left no room for mystery and as a result couldn’t conceive of circularity as coinherence.

Toland’s rationalism exposed in the harshest of terms the clericalism of the medieval church. He failed to recognize, however, that at best he was replacing one form of elitism with another. From now on, the faithful would depend, not on the church’s clergy but on the academy’s scholars. When we remove the ecclesial context of canon, liturgy, and creeds from hermeneutical consideration for the sake of recovering the text’s original meaning, the church invariably ends up at the mercy of a scholarly elite that determines the true meaning of the text.

Whatever the shortcomings of late medieval clericalism, the church cannot be at the mercy of the latest scholarly consensus (which is typically feeble and of short duration); intellectual elitism is foreign to the character of the church. David Steinmetz’s famous words in conclusion of his treatment of pre-critical exegesis are well worth repeating: “The medieval theory of levels of meaning in the biblical text, with all its undoubted defects, flourished because it is true, while the modern theory of a single meaning, with all its demonstrable virtues, is false. Until the historical-critical method becomes critical of its own theoretical foundations and develops a hermeneutical theory adequate to the nature of the text which it is interpreting, it will remain restricted—as it deserves to be—to the guild and the academy, where the question of truth can endlessly be deferred.” (23) The church cannot afford to wait with the question of truth—and the good thing is: the biblical text yields meaning not primarily as a result of scholarly insight (though this contributes) but through heavenly contemplation in the company of the saints. 

I do not want to be misunderstood as disparaging historical or archeological study for the sake of deeper knowledge of the Scriptures. I simply want to suggest that a biblical interpreter is first and foremost not a historian but a theologian (who uses historical insights as one part of the interpretive process). The primary context for exegesis is not the academic guild but the church. Without the church, we would have nothing but antiquarian or sociological reasons to study these particular books and to refer to them as Scripture. Only in the church is the Bible the Bible.

Hans Boersma is the Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Chair in Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House, Wisconsin. Dr. Boersma’s preceding article is adapted from material that will appear in the forthcoming book Five Things That Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew by Hans Boersma. Copyright (c) 2020 by Johannes Boersma. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com.

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(1) Cf. Saint Paul’s language of “the traditions of my fathers” in Gal. 1:14.

(2) Cf. the helpful discussion in Edith M. Humphrey, Scripture and Tradition: What the Bible Really Says (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 31–34, 55–57.

(3) The current consensus seems to be that Saint Paul is reacting to Jewish ascetics (who may have been influenced by their pagan philosophical environment). See Peter T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, Word Biblical Commentary 44 (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), xxx–xli; James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1996), 23–35.

(4) Eugen J. Pentiuc uses the felicitous phrase “Scripture (with)in Tradition” and comments: “If Tradition is conceived as the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, Scripture might be imagined as the Church’s pulsating heart …” (The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition [New York: Oxford University Press, 2014], 136).

(5) Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History: Books 1–5, trans. Roy Joseph Deferrari, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari, Fathers of the Church 19 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 3.39 (p. 203).

(6) “Scripture, Tradition and Traditions,” in The Fourth World Conference on Faith and Order: The Report from Montreal 1963, ed. P. C. Rodger and L. Vischer, Faith and Order Paper 42 (London: SCM, 1964), par. 39 (p. 50).

(7) These associations of noun with contents, verb with activity of passing on, and adjective with particular confessional traditions was suggested to me by Rev. Doug Simmons.

(8) Cf. Scripture, Tradition and Traditions,” par. 42 (p. 51): “The very fact that Tradition precedes the Scriptures points to the significance of tradition, but also to the Bible as the treasure of the Word of God.”

(9) Cf. Yves Congar, The Meaning of Tradition, trans. A. N. Woodrow (1964, repr.; San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2004), 129–30.

(10) A. N. S. Lane, “Scripture, Tradition, and Church: An Historical Survey,” Vox Evangelica 9 (1975): 37–55, at 43. I borrow the terms “supplementary” and “ancillary” view from Lane’s article.

(11) Edith Humphrey links the “reception” (lambanō) of the Spirit in 20:22 to Jesus’s “giving up” (paradidōmi) of the Spirit in 19:30 (Scripture and Tradition, 121). As we will see, in Saint Paul, paradidōmi and paralambanō function like a linguistic pair denoting the passing on and reception of the gospel.

(12) Mark Sheridan, Language for God in Patristic Tradition: Wrestling with Biblical Anthropomorphism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 227.

(13) Origen, Homilies on Judges, trans. Elizabeth Ann Dively Lauro, ed. Thomas P. Halton, Fathers of the Church 119 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 5.1 (p. 76). Cf. Sheridan, Language for God, 228.

(14) Origen explains that Deborah’s name (meaning “bee” or “speech”) refers to the sweet honeycombs of prophetic teaching. Prophecy has a seat under the palm tree because the Psalmist compares the righteous to a palm tree (Ps. 91:13 [92:12). This prophecy has its place between the “heights” (Ramah) and the “house of God” (Bethel) (5.2–3 [pp 77–78]).

(15) Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, trans. and ed. Richard A. Norris, Writings from the Greco-Roman World 13 (Atlanta. GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), Preface 4 (p. 3).

(16) Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, Preface 5 (p. 3).

(17) Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs 4.125 (p. 139).

(18) Hubertus R. Drobner, “Allegory,” in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco and Giulio Maspero, trans. Seth Cherney, Vigiliae Christianae Supplement 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 21–26, at 24. See also my more extended discussion in Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa: An Anagogical Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 66–70.

(19) John Toland, Christianity not Mysterious: Or, A Treatise Shewing, That there is nothing in the Gospel Contrary to Reason, Nor Above it: And that no Christian Doctrine can be properly call’d a Mystery (London, 1696), 26.

(20) Toland, Christianity not Mysterious, 171; italics omitted.

(21) Toland, Christianity not Mysterious, 171; italics omitted.

(22) Toland, Christianity not Mysterious, 32; italics omitted.

(23)  David C. Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” Theology Today 37 (1980): 27–38, at 38.