Traditions
Every doctrine treated elsewhere rests on a prior question, and it is not a question about any one doctrine. It is the question of authority. The real issue behind the Reformation is much larger than the thoughts of men; it most fundamentally has to do with the authority of thoughts. Who has the authority to tell people what they must believe?
Ask a priest how he knows that purgatory exists, or that indulgences may be applied to the dead, or that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven, and he will not point you to Scripture. He will point you to the Church and her traditions. That is not evasion; it is the consistent application of a settled principle. Rome does not claim that every article of faith can be proved from Scripture, and has never claimed it.
The Reformation did not begin as a quarrel about relics or purgatory or the Mass. It became one. It began when a monk was asked to recant, and answered that he could not unless he were convinced from Scripture. Everything else followed from that refusal.
What Rome Means by Tradition
The word needs care, because Protestants and Catholics do not use it alike. A Protestant hearing “tradition” thinks of custom — the way a thing has long been done. Rome means something far weightier: a body of divine revelation, given by Christ to the apostles, handed on by them orally as well as in writing, and preserved in the Church.
So Tradition, in this sense, is not the Church’s reflection upon revelation. It is revelation — a second channel of it, parallel to Scripture and flowing from the same source. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states the relation:
Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture … are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing.1 Catechism of the Catholic Church§ 80
The two are then distinguished by mode rather than by authority. Scripture is “the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit,” while Tradition “transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ” and passes it to their successors.2
A third element completes the structure, and without it the first two cannot function: the Magisterium, the teaching office, which alone may say authoritatively what either channel contains.
The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone.3 Catechism of the Catholic Church§ 85
In fairness, the Catechism immediately adds that this office “is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant,” teaching “only what has been handed on to it.”4 But the servant here is also the only authorized interpreter, and there is no court above him to which appeal may be made. When Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium are said to be so joined that none stands without the others, the practical effect is that the Church is the final arbiter of what the Church may be corrected by.
Two Sources, Equal Reverence
The decisive statement was made at the Council of Trent in its fourth session, on April 8, 1546 — the first doctrinal decree the council issued, and issued first because everything else depended on it. Before Trent defined justification or the sacraments, it defined where doctrine comes from.
The decree locates saving truth in two places, not one: “this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us.”5 And it then assigns to both the same honor:
[The Synod] receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety, and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament … as also the said traditions, as well those appertaining to faith as to morals.6 Council of TrentSession IV, 1546
The Latin is pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia — with equal affection of piety and reverence. That phrase is the hinge of the whole controversy. The Reformers did not object to the Church honoring what had been handed down; they honored much of it themselves, and cited the Fathers constantly. They objected to unwritten tradition being set beside the written Word as an equal authority, and therefore as a source from which articles of faith could be drawn that Scripture does not contain.
The Catechism restates the principle without softening it, and the sentence is worth weighing slowly:
The Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.7 Catechism of the Catholic Church§ 82
Here the issue is stated plainly by Rome herself, and a Protestant should be grateful for the clarity. This is not a caricature drawn by opponents. It is the doctrine, in the Church’s own words: Scripture alone is not sufficient to give certainty about all that God has revealed.
Tradition at Work: Four Examples
The principle is best understood by watching it operate. In each of the following, the doctrine cannot be established from Scripture, and Rome does not pretend otherwise. The warrant is Tradition as interpreted by the Magisterium.
Purgatory. The Catechism grounds it in the practice of prayer for the dead and cites 2 Maccabees; the councils of Florence and Trent supply the definition. The doctrine developed over centuries and was defined late. See Purgatory.
Indulgences and the treasury of merit. No passage teaches a fund of surplus satisfaction held by the Church. The doctrine was given official form by Clement VI in 1343 and regularized thereafter. See Indulgences.
Transubstantiation. The word first appears in the twelfth century and receives conciliar use at Lateran IV in 1215, with an Aristotelian apparatus the apostles never knew. See Transubstantiation.
The Marian dogmas. These are the clearest cases of all, because they are the most recent. The Immaculate Conception was defined by Pius IX in 1854; the bodily Assumption by Pius XII in 1950 — each proclaimed as divinely revealed and binding on all the faithful, nineteen centuries after the apostles, with no text to rest on. See Mary.
The pattern is consistent. Where Scripture is silent, Tradition speaks; and what Tradition is found to have said is determined by the Church that is teaching it. This is why the Reformation could not treat the authority question as one issue among several. It is the issue that decides all the others.
The Reformation Response
The Reformation answer is summarized in a phrase that is often misunderstood. Sola Scriptura does not mean that Scripture is the only authority a Christian may recognize, nor that creeds, councils, and the Fathers are worthless. The Reformers wrote confessions, appealed to Nicaea and Chalcedon, and quoted Augustine on nearly every page. It means that Scripture is the only infallible authority — the one court from which there is no appeal, by which every other authority is measured, and to which none may add.
The doctrine was forced into the open at Worms in April 1521, when Luther was shown his books and asked to recant. His answer was not a claim to private judgment but a demand for a standard:
Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason — for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves — I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.8 Martin Lutherat the Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521
Observe the ground of the refusal. Luther does not say that popes and councils have no authority. He says they have erred and contradicted one another, and that a fallible witness cannot be the final one. See the Diet of Worms.
The argument was pressed on three fronts, and they are worth distinguishing because each answers a different Roman claim.
Tradition contradicts itself. Councils have opposed councils and popes have opposed popes. Where two traditions conflict, one of them is not apostolic; and something other than tradition must decide which.
Tradition cannot be verified. An unwritten apostolic tradition is, by definition, one for which no apostolic document can be produced. Its credentials are its own claim.
Tradition has been used to overthrow the written Word. This was not theoretical. The cup was withheld from the laity against the plain institution; Scripture was kept from the people in a tongue they could not read; and men were burned for translating it.
Stillingfleet on the Uncertainty of Tradition
One of the most careful English treatments of the question in the seventeenth century came from Edward Stillingfleet, Dean of St Paul’s, in a sermon preached at Guildhall Chapel on November 27, 1687 and printed the following year under the title Scripture and Tradition Compared. His text was Colossians 2:6, and his subject was precisely the one before us: by what means the doctrine of Christ is conveyed with certainty from the apostles to us.
He begins by granting the Roman premise for the sake of argument — that the apostles did teach orally — and then asks the obvious question. Paul reminds the Thessalonians of things he had told them by word. Very well; where are those things now?
For, what is become of that Tradition? If it be lost, then it follows that Tradition is no Infallible Way of conveyance; and therefore we have more Reason to adhere to a written word.9 Edward Stillingfleet
He then turns from theory to the record, and the sentence that follows is the heart of the sermon:
There ought to be a written Rule for discerning true primitive Christianity; and that is from the notorious uncertainty of mere Tradition. I say, notorious, because there never was any Trial made of it, but it failed, even when it had the greatest Advantages.10 Edward Stillingfleet
His illustrations are telling. He notes that even the Creed — a thing short, often repeated, universally used, and guarded with unusual care — came down in differing forms in the greatest churches. If oral transmission failed there, under the most favorable conditions imaginable, what confidence can it bear elsewhere?
Stillingfleet also observes that the apostolic church itself did not trust to memory. Luke wrote so that Theophilus might know the certainty of the things in which he had been instructed — and that instruction, Stillingfleet notes, had already been oral:
His instruction was by an Oral Tradition; but that it seems wanted something to strengthen and confirm it; and that was by St. Luke’s writing his Gospel. How could they add any assurance to him, if all the ground of his certainty were to be taken from Tradition?11 Edward Stillingfleet
And so he concludes, not with polemic but with thanksgiving — which is where this controversy ought to end for anyone who holds a Bible in his own language:
What cause have we then to be thankful to God, that hath taken so much care of his Church, as to provide us an Infallible Written Rule in the Holy Scriptures, whereby we certainly know, what the true Primitive Christianity was, which was delivered by Christ and his Apostles?12 Edward Stillingfleet
The Confessions
The Reformation churches wrote the principle into their standards. The Thirty-Nine Articles state the sufficiency of Scripture and draw the practical consequence in the same breath:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.13 Thirty-Nine ArticlesArticle VI, 1571
Article XX then fixes the limits of church authority with precision, granting the Church a real office while denying her the power to add: although she is “a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ,” yet “as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.”14 And Article XXI adds that general councils “may err, and sometimes have erred.”15
The Westminster Confession is the most exact statement of all, and it names both of the ways men add to Scripture — the enthusiast’s and the traditionalist’s — in a single clause:
The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.16 Westminster Confession of FaithI.6, 1646
And it answers directly the question of who decides:
The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.17 Westminster Confession of FaithI.10, 1646
What Scripture Says about Tradition
Scripture is not silent on this subject. It speaks of tradition in three distinct ways, and the distinctions must be kept or the argument collapses into confusion.
First, there is apostolic teaching, and it is authoritative. Paul can use the word positively: “stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). This is the text most often urged against sola Scriptura, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a dismissal.
The answer is that Paul is writing to a church that had an apostle. His spoken word and his letter carried the same authority because the same apostle stood behind both, and his hearers could verify what he had said by asking him. That situation ended with the apostles. The verse establishes that apostolic teaching binds; it does not establish that any later body may identify unwritten apostolic teaching, centuries afterward, with no apostle to appeal to. Rome must show not merely that the apostles spoke, but that what she now teaches is what they said — and that is precisely what cannot be shown.
Second, there is human tradition, and it is dangerous. Paul warns the very church whose letter furnished Stillingfleet his text: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
Third human tradition tends to displace the very commandment it claims to guard. This is the warning the Lord himself pressed. The scribes and Pharisees were not irreligious men inventing novelties for their own sake. They were conservatives, honoring what had been handed down. And our Lord’s judgment on them is the sharpest word in Scripture on this subject:
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. … You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! … thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. Mark 7:8–13
Three things in that indictment demand attention. The tradition in question was not openly wicked. Corban was a pious-sounding practice. Its defenders did not intend to nullify Scripture; they intended to honor it. And the Lord nevertheless says that the effect was to make the word of God void. Good intentions did not save the tradition, and the length of its pedigree did not save it either. The test our Lord applies is not how old is it? but what has it done to the commandment of God?
The positive case follows from the same principle. Scripture claims for itself exactly what Rome says it lacks — sufficiency: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable 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 Timothy 3:16–17). If the man of God is complete and equipped for every good work by the Scriptures, then nothing necessary has been left outside them.
And the posture Scripture commends toward teachers is not deference but examination. The Bereans heard an apostle preach and were called noble for checking him: they “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Isaiah gives the rule and the sanction together: “To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn” (Isaiah 8:20). And the last page of the canon closes the door on addition: “if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book” (Revelation 22:18).
None of this makes the Christian a man without a history. He receives the creeds gratefully, learns from the Fathers, and honors the confessions of his church — and he does so precisely because he has tested them by Scripture and found them faithful. That is the difference, and it is the whole difference. Tradition as a servant of the Word is a gift. Tradition as a second source alongside the Word is a rival. The one hands you the Bible and says, read it, this is what the church has found there. The other stands between you and the Bible and says, you may not know what is there until I tell you.
Luther, when asked to submit to the second, answered with the first, and the answer still stands: the conscience is captive to the Word of God.
Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version.
