Seraphim Hamilton

In Martin Luther’s break from the Papal Church, he was forced to develop a doctrine that allowed him to legitimately break from the institutional church.  This doctrine, known as Sola Scriptura, is hailed by many today as divine truth.  In short, Sola Scriptura suggests that Scripture is the supreme witness of divine truth, to be held above the Church’s tradition.  In a more extreme variation, Sola Scriptura is the doctrine that only the Scripture reveals divine truth, with all other church tradition being worthless.

Both of these doctrines are repulsive to the Scripture itself.  Denying the Tradition of the Church does not exalt the Scripture any more than denying God the Son exalts God the Father.  In supporting their doctrine, Protestants often appeal to the Lord’s words in Mark 7:8, where Christ rebukes the Pharisees, saying, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”  And likewise, in Matthew 15:3, Jesus asks the Pharisees, “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?”  From these passages, it can seem to the lay reader that the Bible speaks forcefully against tradition.  However, one must take into account the whole of Scripture.

St. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, “Stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.”  And likewise, in 1 Corinthians 11:2, it is written, “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.”  Yet, St. Paul also writes in Colossians 2:8, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition….”

What does one make of these seemingly contradictory passages?  The answer is to simply look at the qualifiers attached to tradition.  When the Lord speaks negatively of tradition in the Gospel, He does so against the Pharisaic tradition, the tradition of men, which had corrupted the word of God.  However, it is simply illogical to then infer that there is no divinely inspired tradition.  The Gospel of Thomas is a false and heretical “scripture.”  It does not follow, however, that the Bible is not divinely inspired.  Likewise, there are traditions that corrupt the word of God.  However, there are also traditions that are the word of God.  When St. Paul speaks of human tradition, he is clearly speaking of the former kind.  Again, we see that there is no statement that all tradition is uninspired, only the “human traditions.”

On the contrary, we saw in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 a clear portrait of the status of Tradition.  St. Paul wrote that Christians are to keep the Apostolic Traditions, contained in their writings and in their spoken preaching.  Hence, St. Paul implies that not all of the apostolic faith is contained within their writings.  The Apostolic Writings later became known as the New Testament.  The teaching of the Apostles that was not written in Scripture is known colloquially as “tradition.”  More properly, however, Tradition is the entire deposit of faith, made up of the written Scriptures as well as the rest of apostolic teaching.  Christians are to maintain the tradition of the Church as delivered by the Apostles as steadfastly as they maintain Scripture.  Neither is supreme over the other, because both are divinely inspired.  To say that one is superior is like saying that St. Mark’s Gospel is more inspired than St. Matthew’s.

The final authority on the interpretation of Scripture is not the individual reader.  Rather, it is the visible, united body of Christ, the Orthodox Catholic Church.  It is written in 1 Timothy 3:15, “If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth.”  It is then the Church of God that is the pillar and ground of divinely revealed truth.  It is the Church that is to guard and define the revealed truth.  Christ endowed his authority to the Church with the keys of the Apostolic priesthood, which He promised to give in Matthew 18:18, where the Lord says to the Apostles, “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.  And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.  Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Christ endowed the Church with the divine authority to render judgment on men and justified this authority by endowing the Apostles with the keys to bind and loose.  Lest the Church lose its authority, the Apostles endowed the grace of the priesthood upon others, as it is written in Acts 1:20, “For it is written in the Book of Psalms, ‘May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it’ and ‘Let another take his bishopric.’”  And likewise in Titus 1:5, it is written, “This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint priests in every town as I directed you.”

For 40 years the Church existed without a complete New Testament.  How then could the New Testament be a requirement for the existence of the Church?  The New Testament did not build the Church.  God built the New Testament through His Church.  The New Testament is recognized Scripture only because the Church has decreed it so.  In the synods of Rome and Carthage, the Church ratified the canon of the New Testament as containing 27 books.  Hence, for a Protestant to use the Bible is in itself a subtle acknowledgement of the authority of this Church, and hence, a refutation of Sola Scriptura!

Sola Scriptura is in itself a tradition of men.  Protestants must abandon this corrupt tradition and get in line with the Word of God.