Truth Unites - "Obey Tradition!" is LITERALLY IN THE BIBLE!

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund discusses whether the commandment to obey apostolic tradition in I Corinthians 11:2 and II Thessalonians 2:15 contradicts sola Scriptura. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Protestants believe that scripture is the only infallible rule for the church, but doesn't the scripture itself say maintain the traditions? First Corinthians 11, 2. Hold to the traditions, whether by spoken word or by letter, 2. Thessalonians 2.15. So it doesn't sound like scripture alone, right? It sounds like scripture plus tradition. It looks like the apostles deliver their teaching in both forms, both oral and written. So how does Soliscriptura make sense of that? Is that a problem for Soliscriptura? probably familiar with these claims if you follow these conversations. This is a common charge against Sola Scripura. Here's one quote from an Eastern Orthodox book,

which is using these two verses and then basically trying to make the argument that Sola Scriptura can only account for written apostolic instruction being actually authoritative. So this video is going to be a response to this. Here's my basic position. 1 Corinthians 112 and 2 Thessalonians 215 are not at all contrary to Sola Scriptura in no way. are these passages at odds with the idea that scripture is the only infallible rule for the church, and that can be seen as soon as we define the word tradition. The apparent tension here comes from an equivocation on the word tradition.

So equivocation means using the same word in two different ways. So let me explain this, and I'll explain this in the same way I, basically, by doing what I do in all my videos, or almost all of them, which is draw from old books and then try to channel from old good books to the contemporary questions and anxieties in a compact and succinct way. So this is from William Good, who's in a leading text, one of the top three texts, I'd say, on Sola Scriptura from a historical vantage point. He says, we are all agreed that apostolic tradition, that is what the apostles delivered respecting the doctrines of Christianity, is a fit and proper foundation of our faith. Indeed, there can hardly be any division of sentiment upon such a subject

in the Christian world, all are ready to receive with reverence whatever the apostles delivered, but the question is where that apostolical tradition is to be found. We say that the only record of it upon which we can fully depend is the scripture. Now, why is that? Well, let's put up our verse again. You see the word traditions there. The question is, what are those traditions? Whatever Paul is talking about by the word traditions, we only know of by means of a fallible process of transmission and discernment. So the Thessalonians, they lived during the apostolic age while scripture is still being written. They received that tradition directly from the mouth of Paul, but we live in the post apostolic age. We only have access to that through the telephone game,

through non-apostolic, fallible intermediaries. Here's how good puts it, as to the oral tradition or teaching of the apostles, it is evident that however infallible it may be in itself, We can only have a fallible report of it through fallible men, and that, in fact, the report we do possess of it is, on many accounts, open to just suspicion. So Soliscriptura is a framework for the church, but how we as the church function, how does authority function in the church as we rumble forward throughout history? When we as the church read the words of the Apostle Paul in the book Second Thessalonians, we are getting direct access to apostolic teaching itself. The only questions that could possibly arise would be text-critical. issues, but those are a relatively minor. They don't concern any major dogmas of the faith. When we seek to discern what 2.15 is talking about with oral traditions, we don't have that

directly. We're in a different situation. We're not getting the direct words of the apostle there like the Thessalonians themselves did. We're getting what will come to us through the telephone game, through a very fallible process of transmission. Now, or someone can make an argument for an infallible process of transmission. We'll address that. But I'm just trying to make the the basic equivocation on this word tradition clear right up front. Because Soliscriptura is not the idea that if you live in the year 52 AD, you can disobey apostolic instruction. That's a real caricature in the book Rock and Sand that I quoted.

I'll put up the caricature and then the actual position to try to make this as clear as possible. The caricature of Soliscriptura is that written apostolic instruction is superior to oral apostolic instruction, not what we believe. The actual position is that apostolic instruction is superior to non-apostolic instruction. In other words, it has nothing to do with writtenness per se as a medium. It has everything to do with apostolicity. We're not rejecting oral apostolic teaching. We're just saying, what is that oral apostolic teaching? How do we know where it is located? Because we want to obey it. So the equivocation here is that the word tradition is being used both for direct oral

teaching from the apostles while they are alive during the apostolic age, as well as for subsequent claims of apostolic tradition in the post-apostolic era. But these are very different things. Now, the latter usage of the word tradition, and actually there's a whole slew of different usages of that word, but just in the basic dichotomy I've made, this is not necessarily something you have to reject. You know, patristic testimony about apostolic tradition, ecclesial claims about apostolic tradition, you just seek the truth about those things. But all we're saying is they're not infallible. They're not the same thing as direct oral instruction from an apostle.

And this is, of course, what Protestants have pointed out. I mentioned there's a whole slew of different options. Martin Kemnitz goes through eight different definitions of the word tradition in his response to the Council of Trent, and he says, the first seven are fine. They're completely harmonious with Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is not a generic rejection of tradition, as though, you know, a positive reference to tradition is a problem for it. Rather, he says the only problem we have is with the eighth kind of tradition, which was affirmed at the Council of Trent, and this is traditions that pertain to both the faith and morals of the church, and cannot be proven by any testimony

of Scripture, and yet we're enjoined to receive them and venerate. them with equal reverence and devotion as we do the scripture itself. By the way, this is a general point is you'll always get more conceptual clarity about what Sola Scriptura is by seeing it in relation to its opposites. So looking at like a Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox view of Scripture and tradition, and you'll know you're dealing with a caricature of Sola Scriptura. If you see the opposites over here, your version of Sola Scriptura over here, and this huge conceptual gap in between them. So let's just make this really clear through scenarios. You know, sometimes it gets a little bit more concrete. If you think of like specifically for people, how will this work? So let's say

scenario one, scenario two. Okay, scenario one, let's say there's a wealthy Christian woman. Let's give her the name Aurelia, because I googled popular names in ancient Greece, and this is the first one that came up. So Aurelia is a wealthy woman who lives in Thessaloniki around the year 52 AD. And she is a friend of Jason, one of the Christians in that region. Through Jason, she learns about Paul and Silas coming to preach two years earlier. Aurelia is one of the women mentioned in Acts 174, so she becomes a Christian. And during that month and a half stay, Paul gives oral instruction to the church. Let's just say that one of the things that Paul commands is that anyone who was a thief before they became a Christian and must pay back what they have stolen because Jesus is coming again in judgment,

and therefore those of us who follow Christ must return anything we have stolen. Let's say that's one of the oral. Now, if you don't like that as an example of, I think that is consistent with Pauline teaching generally, but let's say you don't like that example fine. The exact tradition or the exact instruction oral teaching from an apostle is not really too important for the point here. You could change that. It wouldn't it really affect the point. But that's the scenario one. So let's call this payback before the Perusia tradition. Aurelia has received the payback before the Perusia tradition straight from the vocal cords of Paul.

It was a Thursday night in Jason's home. She heard Paul say that. That's what the word tradition is meaning in scenario one. scenario two let's say there's a Christian named jack who lives in Illinois southern Illinois in 2004 and he becomes a Christian through his campus ministry but it's a it's a broadly evangelical campus ministry now he's watching YouTube videos and he's wondering which church he should join and he's wondering if I should become Roman Catholic and he's trying to figure this out so he's looking at various different Catholic doctrines and he's currently studying the immaculate conception of Mary Now, Pius the ninth in ineffabellus dais, apostolic constitution, defining this dogma, said that this doctrine always existed in the church and has been received from our ancestors and has the character of a

reveal doctrine. So there's a claim that this is basically apostolic tradition. Now, Jack is trying to figure that out. So here you have the word tradition being used as well. But obviously, as soon as you think about the specific things in question, you realize the word tradition is being used for two very different things. In scenario one, it's being used to refer to something that Paul directly teaches. In scenario two, it's being used to refer to an ecclesial claim about apostolic tradition. Second Thessalonians 215 and 1st Corinthians 112 are talking about

scenario one. They're talking about people like Aurelia who become a Christian and they're hearing directly from, these are first century apostolic churches receiving instruction directly from the apostles, in this case from the apostles. Paul. It's very different from subsequent claims about apostolic tradition that a non-apostal is giving you. Now those, even if you think they are actually true and apostolic, you still recognize that's a categorically different kind of entity altogether, but the word tradition is being used for both of them. So then we ask the question, well, okay, if we've got post-apostolic claims of apostolic tradition, what do we do about them?

what Protestants are saying is they're not an infallible rule. You have to look at them in light of the apostolic instruction we do have. So you measure them based upon scripture and based upon every other testimony you can find. And so we would basically say that things like the Immaculate Conception, we have good reasons to think aren't apostolic. And this is why, you know, William Good, whom I cited earlier was saying that these are open to just suspicion. Remember that language? Why do we say that? Well, a couple of reasons. One is that pretty much as you study the early church, as soon as you get the apostles off the scene, various debates pop up, and you will find Christians on both sides of the dispute appealing to apostolic tradition to establish contradict reviews. You see this in the dispute about the date of Easter arising in the second century. Both sides are appealing to apostolic tradition to say, we're in the right and you're in the wrong. You can read about that in Eusebius. You see that in the third century, in the about the rebaptism of those baptized by heretics. Both sides are appealing to apostolic tradition to bolster their own side. They both can't be right, you know. And then you've got

other various strange claims about apostolic tradition. Ironaeus is famous for this. He uses apostolic tradition to ground various claims about the millennium, the nature of the millennium of Revelation 20. He seems, I'll put up this passage to think that Jesus died as an older man, and he says that's from John, the apostle, as well as potentially others. Sometimes people dispute that passage, and it is a little bit of confusing text. I'll leave that one off if you don't think that that's the right way to read Ironaeus there. But the point is that it's very clear, as you read Church history, that there is a fallible process of the transmission of apostolic tradition. And this is why we call it the telephone game, and it happens very quickly. And it's

easy to see how it can happen. And here it's happening very quickly, even about relatively factual matters, like the date of Easter, which is not a complicated piece of theology so much is just a historical event and when it happened, you know. Whereas when we have written apostolic testimony, you can just go to the text and just verify it straight from the Apostle's words. So when it comes to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, we would say something similar to many other cases of purported apostolic tradition, that this is really not plausibly apostolic, because we don't have anyone from anywhere around the time of the Apostle. None of the Apostles' writings mentioned it It's not from anywhere around the time of the apostles.

You go generations and generations without hearing anything of it, unless you try to read it back into typology or something like that. And in fact, basically, you have very centralized and connected church authorities like John Chrysostom preaching sermons, talking about Mary's sin and vain glory and so forth without any awareness that this will be controversial. There doesn't seem to be any pushback. J.N. D. Kelly, in his widely respected summary of early Christian doctrine, note that this was nearly universal in the east after origin. In the context here of this passage

I put up, he's talking about moral frailties. And in my video on the Immaculate Conception, I go into that and I talk about others in the West as well, Turtallian and others and so forth. So the point that I'm trying to make is Aurelia is in good grounds for accepting tradition in scenario one as apostolic, but Jack may have some really good reasons to question the claim of ineffabellus dais in scenario two, that this doctrine has always existed. That it doesn't seem to be true. And yet, here's the fundamental problem. People are trying to appeal to scenario one to compel you to accept scenario two.

But they're completely different. The word tradition is referring to something completely different. In one case, it's directly apostolic. In another case, it's not really plausibly apostolic at all. So, final question, what are these traditions then that the New Testament talks about? What are 1st Corinthians 11-2 and 2, Thessalonians 2.15 talking about? And the answer is, we don't know. And that's fine. If we were to venture a guess based upon the context, we might wonder if in 1st Corinthians 11, Paul is giving various traditions that have to do with worship in some way. because immediately after this you get instruction about head coverings and prayer in worship and prophesying in worship and so forth.

And then right after that, you get instruction about the Lord's Supper, which is also described as a tradition that is delivered to the Corinthians. So perhaps these traditions, you know, maybe there's various instruction for how to regulate worship, maybe even liturgical formulae to be used in worship and so forth. In 2nd Thessalonians 2.15, some have proposed that maybe based upon the context, this is referring to instructions related to the Second Coming of Christ or the Perusia. And most people think it has something to do with ethical instruction, as well as doctrinal based upon 2nd Thessalonians 3.6, where walking in idleness is contrary to these traditions. But the truth is, we don't know, and that's fine. That's not a problem.

Soliscriptura is not claiming that everything that is apostolic makes its way into the scripture. and saying the scripture is our only fully reliable guide to what is apostolic. But remember the verse in John 21 at the end of his gospel where he says, you can't possibly write down everything Jesus did, and the same is true for the apostles. You can't possibly write down everything that they ever said or did. This has always been conceded. It's not a problem. William Whitaker is one of the other top three texts I'd mention for this topic way back in 1588,

and he says very plainly. You don't have all apostolic instruction in the scripture, and that's totally fine. And so we simply do not know. But we are not disobeying those passages. If we look into the evidence surrounding purported apostolic tradition, like the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and say, I don't think that's an apostolic tradition. All we want to do is Protestants is follow the apostles teaching. That's everything.

That's the whole point. That's what Soliscriptura is trying to safeguard. Hopefully that clarifies about these passages. I wanted to put out another video on this topic because I just put out the one on the canon. I'll put out other things on Solo Scriptura as well. actually not for a little while, moving on to a few other topics in the weeks ahead. The next video that comes out will be in a few days video explicating the Apostles' Creed, which I'm really excited to release. I've been working hard on it, so I hope that will,

hope that will meet needs and be a blessing. Thanks for watching, everybody.