Yesterday, I began to talk about Martin Luther’s view of Scripture, and pointed out that there was a fundamental flaw with it. I’d like to elaborate on that a bit more. Some of this might sound a bit redundant from the last post, but I think it is worth emphasizing.
Luther: The Precursor to Enlightenment Thinking?
Another thing to realize about the movement Martin Luther started is that we must remember that the Protestant Revolution was happening roughly at the same time as the early stages of the Enlightenment, which ironically called for the rejection of the Church and its traditions as well. In its place, the Enlightenment elevated autonomous human reason as the sole arbiter of truth. Ironically, that was what the Reformers were advocating as well. Even though the battle cry was “Sola Scriptura,” when it came right down to it, they too ended up rejecting Church tradition, and instead came to say, “Just get alone with your translation of the Bible, and you’ll be able to come to the truth using your own reason and the inner-witness of the Holy Spirit.” Remember what Martin Luther himself said at the Diet of Worms:
“Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason, I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.”
Let’s be clear, that’s not really “Sola Scriptura.” That’s saying, “I’ll reject the interpretation of Church Tradition if it conflicts with my own interpretation that I arrive at using my own plain reason.” The real authority here that is being used to read and interpret the Bible is autonomous human reason, without any consideration to what the Church had taught throughout history.
Now, to be fair, in face of the abusive and authoritarian Catholic Church at that time, Luther was right to stand against what was going on. But when it comes to understanding the Bible, it simply is not wise to rely on your own, limited, autonomous reason, without any consideration of what countless Christians over the centuries have taught. Such a mindset has more in common with the ideals of the Enlightenment than historical Christianity. In fact, it can be outright dangerous. Yes, when one tries to understand the Scriptures, one should use one’s own reason, but one has to remember that your particular view is inevitably going to be limited in a variety of ways. Therefore, of course, you shouldn’t blindly accept what some Pope tells you a certain passage means; but neither should you simply disregard traditional understandings and interpretations throughout Church history and set up your own, limited autonomous reason as the sole arbiter of understanding Scripture.
In order to come to a fuller understanding of Scripture, I must use my own reason, but I also must try to understand Scripture within the context of the Church. Unfortunately, this is precisely what Luther made impossible to do, for he essentially blew up any notion of “the Church.” Now, it is true, the Holy Spirit can and does speak to individuals in their individual study of the Scriptures. But when it comes to elaborating and explaining the teachings and doctrines that the Church has always held to, it is very dangerous to just “go it alone,” without reading and interpreting Scripture without an eye to what Christians throughout Church history have understood about it. When people do that, it often leads to heresy and cultish doctrines. In the first five centuries of the Church there were heresies like Arianism, Apollinarianism, Pelagianism; and in our modern world we have had examples like the Millerites, the Mormons, the Jehovah Witnesses, and the “health and wealth gospel.” What do they all have in common? They were started by people who claimed to have a “special insight” to the Scriptures, who completely ignored and rejected the traditional teachings of the Church, and thus went off in a very heretical directions.
Protestantism’s Failure to Have a Concept of a Unified Church
Unfortunately, when one looks at the past 500 years after the Protestant Revolution, one can see (as we will later in the book) a host of outright heretical teachings that have sprung up within Protestant churches that have simply never been addressed, precisely because the very concept of a unified Church is non-existent within Protestantism. In the early centuries of the Church, whenever men came up with “special teachings,” and started teaching things that went against the historical Christian faith, the Church leaders would convene councils, and speak as a unified Church that the teachings of men like Arius (and countless other heretics) had never been taught by the Church. Arius had the Scriptures, just like everyone else, but he interpreted them in a way that was not consistent, and indeed was contrary, to the traditional Church teaching. Yet within Protestantism, there simply is no way to address false teaching as a unified Church.
The Relationship Between Church Tradition and the Scriptures
The reason I’ve gone into this mini-history lesson is because it goes to the understanding and role that Church tradition should have within the Church. The reason why tradition is considered so important in the Orthodox Church is because they are committed to preserving the teachings of Christ and the tradition that the apostles handed down. Paul himself talks about this very thing in II Thessalonians 3:6: “Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us.” One must keep a clear distinction between the “traditions of men” that Jesus condemned (which was specifically a reference to the oral tradition of the Pharisees), and the tradition that Jesus handed down to the apostles, who thus handed it down to the various churches they established.
Simply put, Luther kept the faulty blueprint that the Catholic Church had set up. Yet whereas the Catholic Church put the Pope up on a pedestal and proclaimed him the ultimate authority, Luther simply knocked the Pope (along with any concept of Church tradition) off that pedestal, and put the Bible in its place on that pedestal. This rather quickly led to Bible idolatry. And just as pagan priests would often attempt to manipulate their false gods with sacrifice and ceremony (and effectively exercising their authority over the idols), Protestant revolutionaries ended up manipulating various passages of Scripture and developing their own pet doctrines to the detriment (and death) of others who interpreted the Bible differently. In effect, even though they declared the Bible to be the ultimate authority, in reality various Protestant revolutionary leaders set themselves up as their own popes, and thereby continued to use the Bible establish and prop up their own authority.
This hierarchical understanding of authority, and the claim that this authority is rooted in the Bible, is ironically unbiblical and contrary to the living witness of the early Church. We must remember that it was within the first century that the early Christians were inspired to write the Gospels and various letters that now make up our New Testament. Simply put, it was the Church, acting on the authority bestowed upon it by Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, who wrote the New Testament. Therefore, one cannot separate the Bible from the Church, as if one was “more authoritative” than the other. They enjoy a symbiotic relationship and are mutually intertwined. The Church wrote the Bible, and the Bible is the canon by which subsequent Church teaching and practice is measured.
This, incidentally, is what the Orthodox Church means by Tradition: it should be understood as the teachings and practices that the Church has held to from the very beginning. It is nothing that anybody made up on a whim—it is the very teaching, beliefs, and practices that Christ Himself had given the Church. Simply put, the Tradition of the Orthodox Church is the fundamentals of the faith; it is the Tradition that Christ gave the apostles, and to which the New Testament bears witness; it is not “the traditions of men.”
