The way we’ve always done it: How is Tradition related to Revelation?

Christ is the head of the church over which he rules through the Scriptures, and so of its tradition. Tradition refers to “the handing down of the faith from generation to generation”[1]. All Christians are shaped by tradition, whether they are acknowledged or implicit.

Tradition is not regarded as a separate and distinct source of revelation in addition to Scripture[2]. While the teachings and traditions the apostles received directly from Christ and passed onto the earliest Christians existed before the authoring of the New Testament canon, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments serve as the definitive witnesses to Christ. Fidelity to the revelation of God in Christ is maintained through conformity to Scripture, as the reliable public written record of these traditions, rather than to the teachings of the church, which may err, although not ultimately.

Formal traditions such as creeds, confessions, and dogmas, and informal traditions that operate within a faith community such as the authority of a pastor, or the “private judgement” of individuals must be tested against the revelation found in Scripture. Tradition is a response to revelation and is authoritive only to the extent that it is consistent with Scripture. The relationship between Scripture, tradition and the church is thus ancillary, subordinating the tradition and the teaching authority of the church to the supreme authority of the Scriptures[3].

Tradition is also understood to mean “a traditional way of interpreting Scripture within the community of faith”[4]. Thus how Scripture is handled in a tradition of interpretation becomes salient. Traditions of interpretation can be regarded as providing a guide to the interpretation of Scripture. Migliore identifies that “Scripture must be interpreted ecclesially”[5], that is, “in the context of the life and witness of the church”[6]. The church as an interpretive community has certain rules of understanding (“traditions”) of the scared writings, including the Christocentric rule of faith, the rule of love, and the rule of hope. Theses rules are not arbitrary, but informed by the Scriptures themselves. Thus Scripture “only functions as such when it is embedded within a tradition of pious use it both informs and is informed by”[7].

This is not to then elevate these hermeneutical principles above Scripture. Rather, it is to identify the extent to which Christ is revealed when such ecclesial interpretive traditions represent faithful interpretations of Scripture. Although tradition is worthy of respect and can provide an interpretive framework which guides the reading of Scripture, “[t]he Scriptures remain the decisive and final authority, the norm by which all the teaching of tradition and the church is to be tested”[8].

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[1] Anthony N. S. Lane, “Tradition” in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Michigan: Baker Academic, 2005), 809.

[2] Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (Victoria: Blackwell, 2001), 186.

[3] Lane, “Tradition”, 811.

[4] McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 186.

[5] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 58.

[6] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 58.

[7] Gerard Loughlin “The basis and authority of doctrine” in Colin Gunton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 48.

[8] Packer, “Scripture”, 628.