Skip to main content

Tradition and Sola Scriptura

We read this statement from a Korean affirmation of faith this past Sunday: "We believe in the Old and New Testaments as the sufficient rule both of faith and of practice." Incredibly, I found myself immediately disagreeing with that. Necessary? Yes. Sufficient? I'm not sure. George Florovsky in "The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church" writes "Tradition was, in fact, the authentic interpretation of scripture. . . . Tradition was actually scripture rightly understood."
What does that mean? Well, it seems to me, that scripture can't stand on its own as a guide. After all what does Jesus mean when he says "And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes"(Luke 16:9)? I don't know, maybe Robert Tilton can tell us, or your pastor, but better perhaps one of the church fathers. Why trust the accumulation of history, culture, and strange interpretation, when one could see what the fathers had to say about a particular scripture's meaning?
Without tradition, we have the Bible, but we are blind.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Worth Quoting

There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property.                                                                                                 --Hilaire Belloc                                                   ...

Independent Women?

      During breakfast today I was reading an excerpt from a play in The New York Times Magazine (I know, I was a day behind and read Saturday's edition yesterday) entitled Rust .  The play, written by a professor at Grand Valley State University, here in Michigan, is a nonfiction drama about the closing of a GM plant in Wyoming, MI.  The play itself sounds interesting and I enjoyed the excerpt, but what caught my eye was something a character said.  The character is "Academic" and plays a historian and guide to the playwright, also a character.  He is explaining the rise of the automobile factories and the effect of the car on American culture.  He says, "Women became independent, they go from producers of food and clothing to consumers of food and clothing."  This was meant as an earnest, praiseworthy point.     I would counter with "How far we've fallen."  To say that a woman (or a man) is independent because she has m...

Mystery Meat indeed!

During my grocery shopping today I was asked to pick up some hot dogs for some meal or other. Now I am not an aficianado of the 'ot dog, but will usually have a corn dog or BBQed version of one or two during the summer. If my children like them, so be it. The trouble came when trying to find a package that didn't arrive from a chemistry lab. Nitrates and nitrites, sugars (including HFCS), the preservative sodium benzoate, and other fun substances littered every package I picked up. Even Hebrew National which "Answers to a Higher Standard" was doped. Apparently Kosher doesn't mean it can't be injected with a chemical cocktail. So-called "Natural Casings" were prominently displayed to catch my eye. As if sheep or pig intestine somehow offsets Agricorps tinkering. I ended up buying the brand "sold at Tiger Stadium" not because it was chemical-free, Hell no! It was merely the brand with the least additives. Why does a hot dog need su...