Recently I was invited to teaching at a church in which one of the members said to me, “We’re a Bible-Only Church”—meaning that they do not acknowledge the early church creeds (e.g., the Apostles Creed, etc.) as authoritative or valid for Christian belief and practice.
While holding the very important conviction that the Bible is the inspired Word of God as the top-level authoritative source for Christian belief and practice is good, and right (i.e., the doctrine of prima Scriptura), there are a number of problems with the notion of a “Bible-Only” church.
For starters, the Bible itself is tradition. The 66 books of the Bible (or 73 if you’re Roman Catholic, or 81 if you’re Eastern Orthodox) are the canon of scripture according to church tradition. No where does Jesus give us a list of the books of the Bible (as the New Testament was written after Jesus), nor does he give us a list of the Old Testament books of the Bible. As Christians, we acknowledge the canon of scripture definitively determined by church tradition at the Council of Rome in 382 A.D.
In other words, to deny church tradition is to cut off the very branch on which the Bible sits!
Secondly, the early creeds and councils—contrary to what “Bible-Only” churches think and believe—are themselves Bible only. The entire purpose of the early ecumenical councils of the church was to preserve the right interpretation of the text, not add to it. The Apostles’ Creed, for example, is a concise declaration of the fundamental teachings of the Bible. The Apostle’s Creed is not adding to the Bible or human invention, it is safeguarding the apostolic witness of the New Testament itself.
We need church tradition because, the Bible needs interpretation. Jesus says in Matthew 5:30, "if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” I’ve noticed that there aren’t many Christians walking around with one hand (or one eye, for that matter). This is because Jesus wasn’t speaking literally, he was speaking figuratively. The reality of figurative speech means that the Bible needs to be interpreted; there is a difference between what the text says and what the text means.
Take, for example, the command to remember the Sabbath to keep it holy (Ex. 20:8–11). Can we wash dishes on the Sabbath? Go for a walk? Can we get out of bed? Go to the grocery store? Watch football? Play with the kids? The point is that the command to rest on the Sabbath needs to be interpreted. Even further, it is only based on the church’s theological tradition that we understand why Sunday, rather than the Sabbath, became the Christian holy day. As one theologian once said, the Bible sometimes gives us all the ingredients but doesn’t always tell us how to bake the cake.
Church tradition results from moving beyond what a text says and arriving at what it means. Tradition is founded on the conviction that the Holy Spirit inspires both the writing and the reading of Scripture (Heb. 4:12 and 2 Tim. 3:16). The Holy Spirit not only gives God’s people the Word of God but also helps us to understand what it means and apply it in our times.
When the worshiping community arrives at an interpretation by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that interpretation becomes tradition. The role of tradition, then, is not to invent teaching, but to preserve the integrity of the original meaning of Scripture with the help of the Holy Spirit. We are significantly aided in our efforts to understand the Holy Spirit by recognizing the Great Tradition of the church and entering into dialogue with those who came before us in the effort to live faithfully.
Matt Ayars is Lead Pastor at Wellspring Methodist Church in Madison.
