Tag Archives: Tradition

Obeying the Bible

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b&w bibleYesterday I pointed to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral as an interesting way of looking at theological reflection. This system puts Scripture at the top, then gives room for three other voices: Experience, Reason, and Tradition. I want to take some time to look at those four voices and how they speak to us on theological matters.

I think most of us believe that we put more emphasis on Scripture than we actually do. A strict, literal reading of the Bible leads us to some strange places. When someone practices self-mutilation based on Matthew 5:29-30, we don’t applaud them for their literalism; we place them in a psychiatric hospital. Even though 2 Timothy 4:13 is one of the clearest instructions in the New Testament, yet few of us feel the need to travel to Troas to look for Paul’s cloak, scrolls, and parchments.

So we read Scripture through filters, like the three mentioned above: Experience, Reason, and Tradition. Some may say, “We just read the Bible and do what it says,” but that’ just not true. There are other voices in the discussion; the questions we have to decide are which voices deserve to be heard, in what way should we hear them, and how much weight should we give them.

Wesleyan Quadrilateral

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I thought I had written about this before, but I can’t find it. For many of you, this is something very familiar. It was new to me when I saw it a few months ago. It’s a method of theological reflection called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (many credit John Wesley with its development) or the Methodist Quadrilateral.

The four sides of this quadrilateral are:

  • Scripture
  • Tradition
  • Reason
  • Experience

One document from the United Methodist Church describes it like this:

“Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason. Scripture [however] is primary, revealing the Word of God ‘so far as it is necessary for our salvation.'”

(The Book of Discipline)

When I heard this presented, the speaker said that almost everyone will agree that Scripture should be of primary importance. Where we differ is how we value the other “voices” in this system.

Over the next few days, I want to discuss this system, looking at the different aspects, getting a feel for how different groups might value different items, and trying to get a handle on how I value each of these four voices in the theological discussion.

I hope you’ll join me. I’d like to hear your initial thoughts and reactions.

Bridging the past and the future

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Van Gogh shepherd

Tradition is the living faith of those now dead.

Traditionalism is the dead faith of those still living.

Jaroslav Pelikan
The Vindication of Tradition

Traditions of a church can provide an organic link to her past. They can also choke out the future. It takes discernment to have traditions without traditionalism.

Another reason that I think that, in most cases, the elders are the ideal ones to lead the church is their tie to history, their ability to bridge the past and the future. The average minister comes into a congregation and spends a limited number of years. He’s not part of the past of the congregation and probably won’t be part of the future.

A wise minister recognizes the temporal nature of his work. He doesn’t defer to his elders on everything nor kowtow to the youth at every turn. He works to shine God’s Word on the church’s present situation, helping provide insight that might not be there otherwise.

A strong eldership provides the knowledge of the past with a desire to prepare the church for the future. It allows the minister to focus on God’s Word and its application to the congregation, while the elders focus on shepherding the flock.

Lots of ideals there. But I think a healthy congregation has an eldership that refuses to be a board of directors and a minister that refuses to be CEO. They choose to walk the path of the Lamb rather than the cold cobblestones of Wall Street.

How worship practices changed in the Bible

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Travis raised an interesting point in the comments yesterday. He wrote:

Here’s another question I’ve been pondering. Maybe you can start a thread on this some day. We have passage after passage about not changing “worship” or adding to/taking from God’s word, etc. But in studies I’ve done over the past few months, I’ve noticed how much the worship and celebrations within Judaism changed through the centuries. Hannukah is a religious celebration (of a sort) and Christ took part (it appears He did. We have no record of Him rebuking those who celebrated it.). Also, the Passover feast changed significantly from its origins, adding the drinking of wine (nowhere mentioned in the OT), the reading of certain psalms, etc., and we see Christ celebrating the Passover on multiple occasions. In both of these examples, we see Christ later using them as teaching moments, first to teach “I am the light” (Hannukah) and second the institution of the Lord’s Supper during Passover. My question is, from these examples, does this signify acceptance on God’s part that we are not obligated to keep 100% what is specified for worship? We can change it, without penalty?

We do see a worship evolution in the Bible. Along with the things Travis mentioned, I think we can point to the synagogue as a major “innovation.” (The fact that the King James uses the word “synagogues” in Psalm 74 does not mean that the Old Testament “sanctioned” synagogue assemblies) There were also numerous Jewish traditions which are reflected in the New Testament.

Considering what we talked about yesterday, it’s helpful to me to see that the church didn’t try to start from zero. They continued with what was being practiced in their day and adapted it as necessary. For a long time (possibly until A.D. 70) the Jerusalem church functioned primarily as a Jewish church. Acts 21:20 tells us that the Jewish converts remained “zealous for the Law.” To some degree, worship continued to be related to the temple. We have in mind that all of that was immediately left behind, yet we see Paul participating with Jewish Christians in temple worship in Acts 21, to the point of planning to make an offering!

The early church took the synagogue format of weekly meetings and adapted it to their own needs. Early Christian writings show that Christians saw Sunday assemblies as a replacement for the Sabbath meetings of the synagogue. In Ignatius letter to the Magnesians, he wrote:

We have seen how former adherents of the ancient customs have since attained to a new hope; so that they have given up keeping the sabbath, and now order their lives by the Lord’s Day instead (the day when life first dawned for us, thanks to Him and His death.)

That’s what I see in the Restoration Movement. When early leaders of the movement sought to return to biblical practices, they took what was being practiced in their day and analyzed it in the light of Scripture. They didn’t start from zero. They built off of the practices in vogue in the 19th century in the churches they had been a part of: weekly assemblies centered around preaching, Sunday contributions, singing of modern hymns, etc. (Jay Guin had a wonderful post about this a couple of years ago; my searches of his site have proved fruitless, so if anyone can spot the post I’m talking about, please mention it in the comments section)

I do an exercise with my anthropology students, talking about the reactions a 1st-century Christian might have if he were somehow transported to one of our churches today. Personally, I think he’d be shocked to find out it was a Christian church! So much of worship and the trappings around worship have changed through the years.

As Travis asks, is that a bad thing?

Zero-based worship

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So what if we could forget everything we know about worship, start from zero, and rebuild our worship experience from the ground up?

Yes, this is one of those purely hypothetical, impossible to achieve in reality, questions. No one could start from absolute zero. We all bring experiences and ideas from our past when we approach the subject of worship. The early church obviously did this. We necessarily do it. Everyone has certain things that they view as normal and essential, before they even begin thinking about what Christian worship should be like.

But what if we could wipe the slate clean and start over? Let’s say that we got a copy of Scripture (preferably not bound in black leather and free from verse numbers and chapters). If we could approach Christian worship from a completely objective point of view, what conclusions would we draw from Scripture alone? What practices would we discern as appropriate? What things would be seen as necessary? What would our assemblies look like, if we had assemblies at all?

It’s an interesting exercise to try and think about that. I’m not arguing that we should approach worship in this way; I’m not even saying it’s possible.

Still, I think it’s healthy to think about it. If a people with no experience with worship of any sort received God’s Word and wanted to live by it, what would their worship look like?

Photo by Ian Britton. Courtesy of www.freefoto.com