In the most recent issue of the journal Foundations I have an article arguing in favour of a theological sensibility described as Reformed Catholicity. I presented similar material at a local ministers’ fraternal recently, which gave me the opportunity to revisit the topic. The original article summarised, evaluated and augmented a book by Scott Swain and Michael Allen, but I felt on reflection that that article probably did not go far enough in digesting and representing in a more accessible register (i.e. it was too much like a seminary essay, which, funnily enough, is where it originated). What follows is therefore my second pass through the material with that goal in mind – an edited version of a spoken presentation.
“We believe Nicaea because Nicaea is biblical.”
So said one respected Christian scholar and teacher, a man from whose work I have benefitted greatly, in an interview in about 2015. And clearly there is a sense in which this simply states a central Protestant conviction: Scripture is our authority. So put negatively, if a confession, theology book, or preacher is not teaching Scripture, they are not teaching truth.
But I want to argue that there is more in play than that mere negative principle lets on. Is it true that the only weight we account to a teaching is the degree to which we instantly follow it’s re-presentation of the words of Scripture? Is there any sense that my reception of the Nicene Creed is also (even first) influenced by it’s reception within the historic visible church? And that this gives it a greater authority over, say, an exegetical opinion of a friend in conversation (though still an authority firmly subordinate to Scripture)?
What we are talking about under this heading “Reformed Catholicity” is essentially the relationship between Scripture and tradition; tradition here broadly meaning church teaching in various forms but particularly focussing on creeds and confessions as codifications of doctrine that have particular weight within particular churches. How should a Protestant feel about this kind of tradition?
In their 2015 book “Reformed Catholicity”, Michael Allen and Scott Swain attempt to justify a certain way of thinking about tradition: a posture, a sensibility, a set of instincts. A posture that is friendly to tradition. That says that what has come down to me from the past – commentary, doctrine, creeds, prayers – my instinct will be that those things are going to be helpful to understanding Scripture rather than something that gets in the way of my understanding Scripture.
Of course, we know that what is passed down to us sometimes is not helpful. Luther stood on the word of God against church tradition. Jesus said to the Pharisees that their traditions had obscured the word of God.
But what Allen and Swain are saying is that’s not the only function tradition has; there’s a positive side too. Protestants, looking to Luther and the Reformation, can be instinctively anti-tradition but that’s not the only way they have seen themselves. William Perkins styled himself a “Reformed Catholicke”. Why call himself that? To emphasise that his theological starting place was the heritage of doctrine held in common by the church, from which the errors of Rome (and others) were to be pared off.
Notice the different between this procedure and that of attempting to start afresh with me and my Bible in my room, and come up with doctrine – maybe consulting the heritage of the past. Perkins’ approach is to stand in a stream of teaching and remain there, but reform it according to Scripture. To adopt this posture of Reformed Catholicity, then, is to see myself as standing with the visible church down the ages, and having a positive relationship with what comes chronologically between me and Scripture (rather than an antagonistic one).
So what?
You may say: so what’s the problem? I love the Puritans! I’m up for accessing the riches of the past. What does Allen and Swain’s argument have to add?
And in one sense yes, their argument may fall on receptive ears in circles already well disposed to (some) traditions. Nonetheless, Allen and Swain still give us something – they give us a theological underpinning for loving those old books. Not just a pragmatic one.
Almost everyone has heard the C. S. Lewis argument about the sea breeze of the centuries. But all that does is convince me it might or could be a good thing to read old books. I can see why that would add benefit. But in pressures of life, is it enough to convince me I have a duty to stand in the heritage of the past? Is it going to persuade me I have some need to stand in a stream (and reform) rather than jump over the past to the Bible?
But on the other hand there are strands of evangelicalism that say otherwise – the only important move is directly back to the Bible – you and your Bible in the room, that’s the best place to work things out. Don’t bring your framework to the text. Tradition is an obstacle we need to get out of the way of the truth. And if you want to counter that, you’re going to need more than Lewis’ argument. You’re going to need to argue theologically, and from Scripture itself (though not in a tradition-jumping and therefore self-defeating way!).
The test of Allen and Swain’s book, and of my appropriation of it will therefore be: are you convinced that there’s a theological, scriptural case for this attitude to tradition? If the word tradition makes you nervous, try substituting “teaching” and see if the argument is more palatable!
So let me lay out their case as I’ve tried to hone and bolster it, and deploy it in the UK church contexts with which I’m personally familiar. The main headings here correspond to Allen and Swain’s main chapters, but the formulations are my own.
1. Tradition should be thought of as a means by which the Spirit teaches the church (brings the church to a deeper understanding of Scripture) across generations.
Do you think the church possesses greater resources to articulate and defend the doctrine of the Trinity today than it did in 200AD? If so, then there is a sense in which the church visible has corporately matured over centuries. Allen and Swain’s first point is that this is the case, and that such a process is presented in the New Testament as the work of the Spirit.
Consider, for example, John 16:13-15. As Christopher Ash points out in his book Hearing the Spirit (p146-150), these words of Christ have a two-fold application: firstly to the apostles alone, in that the Spirit will enable them to lay down the apostolic foundation in the Scriptures. But then in a derivative way he continues to lead the church into that same truth. In subsequent generations there’s no extra truth revealed. Doctrine doesn’t develop in the sense of adding to (let alone correcting) the New Testament. But the Spirit can give us greater clarity on what Scripture says and means (as per also 1 Cor 2:12).
What Allen and Swain are saying is that maturity can be collective not just individual. Ephesians 4:11-16 speaks of corporate, body growth. The offices and the people are given: apostles, prophets etc – and the fact that the apostles are mentioned shows Paul is thinking wider than the local church (as not every local church had apostles even in NT times). Those people then do their bit in the functioning of the whole body which grows together.
Now if growth in maturity can happen across generations, then rather than starting afresh we have to be able to pass the results of that growth down. That, say Allen and Swain, is simply what tradition is. The Spirit teaches generation A, and the result of that teaching crystallises out into artefacts of tradition: sermons, books, hymns, confessions, creeds ,and is therefore not lost but passed down, and can be built on. The fact that is process is not a gentle ever-upwards slope – that there are errors and heresies, apostate churches, and bad movements in theology – doesn’t mean nothing good can be passed down, or that there can be no cumulative progress. Tradition can be a fruit of the Spirit’s work that can help us understand Scripture.
Pragmatically if we don’t have resources from another generation we’re stuck with our limited perspective (Lewis’ argument). Theologically, the Spirit uses tradition to give the church this intergenerational perspective. Because the Spirit is the teacher of the church as a whole body considered through time and space.
Analysis
Allen and Swain’s point here seems to me to be liable to three obvious pushbacks from Protestant hearers.
Firstly, they will seem to some to be reading between the lines of Scripture quite a lot. The basic point that the Spirit teaching the church in the New Testament is extrapolated some distance to make their argument for tradition as a means of the Spirit’s cross-generational teaching. Partly this is because there is more evidence yet to come at a later stage in their book. Partly it is because they are willing to lean on the principle of good and necessary consequence to engage in extended theological reasoning. I would defend them on this latter procedure, but a defence will probably be necessary for many audiences.
Secondly, Allen and Swain make a lot of statements about “the renewed mind of the church”, which will surely cause Protestants to ask: “what church”? How can you work out what the collective mind of the church is without working out who counts as “in” or “out”? Or, put from another angle, how much do you need to believe in one visible church for their argument to work? If “church” only applies to local congregation, does the argument fall down? Clearly for some ecclesiological traditions one visible church will be more palatable a notion than for others. But my response to this objection would be that one only needs to be able to talk in quite a general sense of the church militant, only at quite a thin level be able to speak of “the church” as a united visible thing, for their argument to work. Such that if you do grant that the church now possesses better resources on the doctrine of the Trinity than was the case in the 2nd century, that is sufficient for their case to hold water. I’d also point to contemporary Baptist and Free church defences of catholicity as in principle possible.
Thirdly, I think eschatology plays a bigger role than Allen and Swain acknowledge. If one is a committed pre-millenialist, I’m not sure how much you can think of the church as on an upward path of maturity. Your view of history is that things will only get worse and the church will end up more and more an embattled minority. There is a general point to be made here that what you think Scripture is, and how you think Scripture speaks to us, will be dependent on what you think God gave it to us to do. If Scripture contain merely our marching orders to survive the tribulation, that’s one thing. But at other end of scale: for a fully committed post-millenialist, once we have converted the world, Scripture will help us to do everything – from scientific exploits to culture to government, because the church will have to disciple the nations in all those things. All I’m pointing out here is that perhaps Allen and Swain don’t acknowledge enough how eschatology plays into their arguments. But once again, I would answer this objection by arguing that unless someone is strongly pre-millenialist, this will not be a deal-breaker for their argument.
2. Sola Scriptura doesn’t imply that Scripture is the only theological authority, but the only supreme authority. A healthy Protestant approach to theology gives tradition a secondary, derivative, but real authority under Scripture.
Under this second heading, I’m summarising Allen and Swain’s case that for the original Reformers, sola Scriptura was about how you engage with tradition, not about going to the Bible over, around, or instead of tradition. This is firstly an historical case (what did the Reformers mean by sola Scriptura), and then a theological appraisal of this original shape of the doctrine as superior.
Put another way, the Reformers never argued that Scripture was the only authority, but that Scripture sits (alone) at the top of a hierarchy of authorities. Scripture is the authority that rules other authorities (there is one norming norm), but other authorities do exist and function as such (there are normed norms). Anyone who accepts the necessity of a doctrinal basis admits this to be the case.
What is authority? Here’s a definition from John Finnis: “authority is defined as a quality by which something (opinion, order, rule etc) gives sufficient reason for believing or acting in the absence of understood reasons (or even contrary to some understood reasons).” (Natural Law and Natural Rights, 233-4)
So as a parent, if I say to my child “Stop”, the fact that I have authority means they are obligated to stop even if they can’t see why they should. If I speak to a colleague and say, “I think you should stop approaching this project in that way because of xyz,” there’s no authority involved – so whether they stop or not will be wholly about whether they follow the reasoning independently.
There are different kinds of authority, levels, that give them different weight when they say do x, as compared with the weight of my understanding the reasons to do x. If I advise an 18 year old to do something, I think my words have weight (I’m 20 years older, have been through his stage of life, I’m his Bible study leader). But this is not a particularly strong sort of authority, so I would want to give a lot of reasoning to show him why I advise what I do. I’m not expecting him to do what I say even if he still thinks it’s a bad idea. As a parent a have a different kind of authority, and policeman has another kind.
But authority in each case is about who (or what) the source of authority is, and what clout that gives their words.
And that is also true of authorities in the church. It is not the case that the authority Nicaea has over me is only that it doesn’t contradict Scripture. That would make it no different from any book on my shelf that happens to say the same. And not the case that the words my pastor speaks on Sunday morning only have the authority of being not contrary to Scripture. Because they have a different weight from the words the person in the pew says to me afterwards, even if his words are also faithful to Scripture.
Now all those other authorities are under Scripture, they are not the same as Scripture. They can be challenged by appeal to Scripture. They are subject to, under Scripture – Scripture is the only one from which you can’t appeal upwards to anything else.
This, Allen and Swain say, was what the Reformers meant. Their problem with the Roman Catholic church was not that they claimed authority for the church. The church does have authority! It was that they claimed the same level of authority as Scripture – you always have to believe what the church says even if it looks to you like it contradicts Scripture. Because the church is not to be corrected by Scripture, but the church gets to tell you what Scripture means.
Allen and Swain give evidence this is how the Reformers thought particularly from the fact that they consistently speak of Christ’s rule over his church as exercised through ministers and other forms of subordinate churchly authority (using the word authority to do so).
Furthermore, as the First Helvetic Confession puts it, “Where the holy fathers and early teachers…have not departed from this rule [i.e., Scripture], we want to recognize and consider them not only as expositors of Scripture, but as elect instruments through whom God has spoken and operated.”[1]
In other words, church teachers and what they produce aren’t just a signpost to Bible verses. Teaching, especially in confessional forms, crystallises the Spirit’s work teaching the church in the past and that gives such forms authority – you have to listen to them, in an analogous way to the way you have to listen to your pastor because he’s your pastor.
But such secondary authorities should be always pointing to Scripture to show themselves to be under, submitting to, wanting to visibly exalt Scripture as the final authority.
Allen and Swain also point out (as a kind of implicit argument) that the Reformers produced tradition and expected it to help not hinder the right understanding of Scripture. It struck me in this vein that some of the contexts in which the direct-to-the-Bible approach is most prevalent are also ones in which there is a great zeal to pass on and maintain that particular approach itself, and a tacit assumption that it will not be maintained simply by printing Bibles but only by oral and printed tradition…
3. Scripture itself does not speak of tradition only negatively, but also positively
We can all cite where Scripture speaks negatively of tradition: Jesus saying to the Pharisees that they had nullified the word of God by their traditions. Is there any counterbalance to that? Any positive talk of tradition in Scripture?
Allen and Swain think there is. The first place they go is the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. They say this is an example of the church getting together, the whole visible church at that time under the apostles, interpreting Scripture (Acts 15:15 “the words of the prophets are in agreement”), and giving to the church a new formulation of that truth that has weight, authority.
This seems to me, however, to be fraught with problems. This is a council of apostles that produces a document that ends up part of Scripture. Seems to me very difficult to use that as an argument for extra-Scriptural or post-apostolic tradition. There is simply not enough continuity with a Council which is apostolic and unique.
Allen and Swain do try and deal with that: they point out that the council included not just the apostles but elders as well, treated as having some authority – which raises the possibility that after the time of the apostles maybe you can have the same kind of thing going on. They point out that the final product of the council refers to the authority of “the apostles and elders with the whole church” (Acts 15:22). But to my mind their argument is not strong here.
Where else can you go to find a positive account of tradition in Scripture? The other place Allen and Swain go is the pastoral epistles. They pick up on Paul saying to Timothy, “what you heard from us – the pattern of sound teaching – stick with that.” So apart from his letters, Scripture, Paul is passing down a tradition that shapes how Timothy understands.
But again, I’m not convinced this will seem a persuasive argument to unpersuaded Protestants. Allen and Swain are trying to toe the line of not falling into a Roman Catholic reading of the pastorals which says “aha yes, you need some unwritten traditions alongside Scripture, and we have them handed down”, and yet to find a positive reference to extra-Scriptural tradition. But I am more persuaded that that “pattern of sound words” simply is the apostolic gospel itself, now sufficiently contained in Scripture.
If then, both of Allen and Swain’s arguments are insufficient here, is this the place where their case falters?
I think there is a way to rescue it by seeing a reference to teaching not in some product but the process of handing down that Timothy is instructed to engage in. In a sense (a firmly non-Roman sense) Timothy is the tradition.
After all, Paul doesn’t say to Timothy: the only thing that matters is that you keep my letters, because all the truth is in there. And as long as you have the bare artefact of Scripture, in every generation the truth will spring up afresh. Although that is true to a great degree!
What he says is “teach others who can teach others”. You Timothy, in your own teaching, hold to the pattern. And train others who hold to the pattern. That’s how you guard the gospel. There is a inter-generational continuity of people and their teaching. Not just: keep printing Bibles and have them open and you’ll be alright. But hand down the Scriptures and teach what they mean – pass down, not just the Scriptures but the tradition of what they mean. Not in the Roman sense that you elevate that tradition to the same level, and need an institutional church that can declare what the Scripture means. But nonetheless, teaching is passed down alongside Scripture that aids the right reading of Scripture.
Again I would repeat the point that in some circles in which there is a real focus on “the Bible is the only thing that matters” (we need to leap tradition back to the Bible) there can be a strong patterns of thinking and ministry and ways of understanding that to those circles it’s very important to pass on and maintain. Funnily enough it does not seem to be assumed that those ways of thinking, patterns, doctrines, not assumed they will just arise spontaneously from Scripture – that tradition has to be passed on.
So ultimately how would I defend this third point – Scripture speaks positively of tradition? I would say tradition means the same as teaching. And that teaching in Scripture doesn’t only refer to Scripture. If pastors are able to say more than just the words of Scripture itself, then teaching is good. And if it’s good for one generation, it’s right to be passed down to others and built upon.
4. Reading Scripture in a way that is guided by tradition can be part of the church’s submission to Scripture, rather than a muting or eclipse of Scripture.
Allen and Swain’s fourth and final point is about how this whole discussion applies to how you read your Bible. Again, what has gone around a lot in UK conservative evangelicalism is the idea that doctrinal structure gets in the way of reading the text. Don’t bring your bag of knowledge, let the text speak. Don’t let your framework guide the way you read a passage.
But of course this flounders pretty quickly if you take it to logical extreme. If you read Mark 1:1, “the beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ the Son of God,” most of those words require knowledge from the rest of Scripture to understand. The “good news” means the good news of Isaiah 40-55 that the Lord is coming to save. The term “Messiah” requires quite a lot of Old Testament background, as does “Son of God”.
How then do you read Scripture coherently? You have to read one part with the rest of Scripture informing you. If you genuinely put out of your mind all the rest of Scripture, you will likely read one part in such a way that it contradicts another. And yet everyone is agreed that’s not good – Scripture is thoroughly consistent and we should read it like that.
What you need is some shorthand way of remembering what the rest of Scripture teaches when you read passage X. Hello doctrine! This is what good doctrine is and does: summarises Scripture so that you can hold key shaping truths in your head when you read any passage so that you read the part in harmony with the whole.
I think that’s inescapable and everyone does it: it’s just a question whether you admit it or not. Better to formulate doctrine precisely and be up front about what it is.
However, that then means that doctrine in a sense guides or rules how we read Scripture. Where the idea of the rule of faith comes in. I remember first hearing this and reacting strongly: no! Surely we can’t rule Scripture by anything else, that must be wrong – Scripture is supreme!
But then I realised that was not what it meant: it’s me being ruled, my reading of Scripture (not Scripture itself).
Where’s the best place to read Scripture? Is it on my own in my bedroom? Or is it in the gathered church, under a faithful teaching ministry? What’s best to shape my reading of Scripture? Is it my own experience alone, and the particular patterns of thought of my era and cultural questions I’ve imbibed? Or is it the accumulated wisdom of the church through the ages?
So all this fourth point claims is this: you need some summaries of Scripture, of the key things it teaches, to read the parts in light of the whole. Isn’t it better to make use of ones that have proved their worth through the centuries? Like creeds and confessions and doctrines that have been shaped over time. And therefore you can be Protestant and advocate a ruled reading of Scripture – that tradition should (with some authority!) guide and shape the way we read the text of Scripture.
Again, Scripture is supreme, so there has to be a feedback process by which our summaries of doctrine can be corrected. But that process itself will work better if we are up front about what the frameworks are. And that process can go on over generations, rather than saying it will be better if we start afresh all the time.
Conclusion and Applications
If Allen and Swain are right, then as Protestants we consistently can and should take a posture of welcome, receptivity, and trust to the tradition of the church. We shouldn’t think the best approach is to leap the centuries and get around tradition to the Bible – we read Scripture best through the lens of what the Spirit has taught down the centuries.
In some ways this may just be justification for things we already do. If you celebrate the heritage of teaching before you, the 1689 Confession, the Reformers, a faithful ministry in your church that shaped you – this is intended to be added theological justification for doing so.
But beyond that, here’s some applications for stretching our thinking and practice:
Firstly, if this argument is persuasive, perhaps the scope of our influences should widen. Plenty of evangelicals, for example, are happy to plunder Puritan writings for wisdom. But Reformed catholicity pushes us further than our favourites. Reading one branch of tradition (probably the one that sounds most like us!) won’t do justice to the work of the Spirit throughout the whole church.
How about not merely the Puritans, but the desert Fathers; not only John Owen on Song of Songs, but Bernard of Clairvaux; not only Calvin’s exegesis, but that of Aquinas or Chrysostom? Conservative evangelicals can learn from the Christology of Thomas Weinandy or the theology of the body of John Paul II. Reformed catholicity inspires evangelicals to think this can be done not only with a critical eye, but also with generosity and gratitude.
Secondly, if this argument is persuasive, we need to develop patience with extended theological reasoning. Just because Scripture has supreme authority and clarity doesn’t mean that every truth that might be of use to the church is immediately available to the most recent convert opening the Bible in their bedroom – or even to the kind of exegesis appropriate to a sermon.
The work of the Spirit teaching the church is far richer than this. His work takes place in community, so we will need different sorts of theological work: the individual reading of Scripture, the preaching of the pastor, the study of the scholar. His work takes place coherently over time, so each generation of the church will need to pick up and press on with labours begun long ago. His work is to lead the church to an ever-deeper grasp of the truths in Scripture (about the infinite God and all his works!), so will generate lengthy, rich and complex reflections. His work equips the church with truth so as to guide our obedience in every situation, so we should expect to be able to formulate complex theological judgements fit to meet complex contemporary questions. And the positive contribution of well-formed doctrine to exegesis would be welcomed, helping us to read Scripture as one coherent whole.
Thirdly, our attitude to secondary authorities would be recast. Do we “receive Nicaea because Nicaea is biblical”? No, because treating traditional theological formulations as mere pointers to Bible verses is not to treat them with any authority at all, even secondary authority. Actually, I receive Nicaea initially on the authority of the united witness of the church that Nicaea guards and expresses biblical truth, not because by my own authority alone I can affirm the correlation with Scripture.
And the authority of the words preached to me Sunday by Sunday is not suspended pending the independent verification of my own exegesis: I take them substantially on trust (though remembering their authority is secondary and falsifiable against Scripture). This kind of submission to the context in which the Spirit teaches the church from Scripture breeds humility. What better to counter the pride of a culture in which the individual is lauded as the arbiter of truth?
All these things said, the forgoing argument in favour of “Reformed Catholicity” is not held out here primarily for the benefits I’ve suggested it might bring. Rather, it’s offered as a more consistent posture for us evangelicals to take, because it’s more scriptural and therefore more honouring to God than the alternatives. On those criteria, Allen and Swain’s case (and my appropriation of it) stands or falls.
[1] Emphasis mine, quoted in Allen and Swain, Reformed Catholicity, 67.