(This is part 3 of a four part series on tradition. Part one can be found here, part two here.)
Tradition is where religious authority is found; it is no wonder then that it is deeply embedded in the concepts of orthodoxy and sacred scriptures. Tradition is the endless cycle of dialogues between scripture and orthodoxy that travel through each generation, never quite the same in each instance. The tradition handed down is the contextual backdrop for the current dialogue. There is never a moment in these dialogues that tradition is not somehow involved, even in the most extreme theologies (e.g., theologies that believes that the scriptures can be completely understood at face value without any context). In other words, even a theology that says it rejects tradition still plays in the game of interaction between scripture and orthodoxy.
Beginning with the Council of Trent and surfacing most recently in the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church has emphasized its belief in tradition as coming from the same authoritative source as scriptures [Robert Murray, “Tradition and Sacred Texts,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 6:1 (Jan 2004): 6. Also, the document “Dei Verbum” which was the backbone for II Vatican]. Protestant denominations have frequently claimed “sola Scriptura” as Martin Luther did during the Reformation, yet many still appeal to a form of tradition (e.g., the Baptist Faith and Message, Westminster Confession, and Thirty-nine Articles). No group of Christians has been able to survive without tradition because it undergirds orthodoxy.
Why is it that some (or many) Christians want orthodoxy without tradition? This can be answered by looking more closely at how orthodoxy views itself.
Orthodoxy distinguishes itself by the quality of its theology: originality, proper (or true) transmission from its inception, unity and universality, and a middle way between heretical extremes [John B. Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1998): 85]. In other words, orthodoxy is seen as the original “formula” that existed from the beginning and was accepted by all believers. Heterodoxy was, by extension, a deviation from orthodoxy; Eusebius used this as an argument against heterodoxy[Henderson, 85].
Even when it is clearly not the case that the orthodox position was the primary, original view, it has been re-interpreted as such by its proponents. An example of this can be found during the Reformation when Luther rejected the deuterocanonical books as part of the canon, part of his (and later followers’) argument was that these texts were originally not part of the canon, despite the Council of Carthage in 397 declaring otherwise (this is the same council that affirmed the Synod of Hippo’s canon, which Protestants accept for defining the canon of the NT).
Another argument used by orthodoxy is the harmony and unity of their beliefs in contrast to the heterodox ones. This notion is a powerful argument for the orthodox because it paints all other theologies as not only divergent from the “true” orthodox but also as divergent within themselves. Why should heterodoxy be entertained if it is self-refuting? Related to this quality is that of universality.
The earliest form of the church was the catholic—universal—church. The Nicene Creed of 381 states that there is “one holy catholic and apostolic Church”—the two qualities that come only from orthodox belief.
The final quality of note is that of moderation. Orthodoxy prides itself on keeping away from heretical extremes. We can see examples of this in the most basic doctrines of orthodox Christianity: Christology (both divine and human in one person) and the trinity (three persons in one substance). In order to fuel this line of argument, orthodoxy must create a canon; both church fathers such as Augustine and Reformation leaders such as Luther agreed that the church had the “power to recognize the books of the canon” [Jaroslav Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984): 263].
As beliefs grow from a singular point (e.g., Jesus the crucified and risen messiah), regular texts are perceived in new light as authoritative. One example of this is the acceptance of 2 Peter into the canon in order to “[oppose] those who promote false teaching” [Bart Ehrman, The New Testament (New York: Oxford, 2000): 421] even though its claim to authorship by the apostle Peter was not well received.
Another more well known example is Luther’s exclusion of not only the deuterocanonical books but also James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation from the canon! [Lee McDonald, The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995): 226] Just as the nature of orthodoxy is the creation (and maintenance) of a canon, the function of a canon is to define orthodoxy. Tradition, in the sense of this interaction, is the compass (orthodoxy) and map (scriptures) to the territory of belief.
I believe your assertion that Luther excluded certain books from the canon is false. There is no doubt that he took issues with the books you mentioned, but from what I have read he never went as far as excluding them. See: http://www.ntrmin.org/Luther and the canon 2.htm
Also, the Council of Carthage may have been the first council to create the canon of 66 plus the deuterocanonical books, but was it not only a local council, and thus not binding on the whole of the church?
Luther link that works
Okay, it won’t let me post the link correctly. Do a search in Google for “10 Frequent Mistakes in Understanding Luther’s View of the Canon” and it will be the first link that shows up.
I tried to fix it for you Bryan - is that right?
Yes, thanks Colin. It doesn’t like the percent symbol does it?
It does sometimes. It depends on its mood.
Bryan, even your link says that Luther removed the books from the set of “divinely inspired texts” (to put it as pointed as possible). These texts, the “Apocrypha,” were not to be held in the same regard as the other books.
Secondly, while Carthage may have been a local council, there are several councils that echo this sentiment, as well as Athanasius’s festal letter 30 years earlier, and common usage by church fathers of that Nicene era that all suggest that the majority of Christianity saw these texts as “canonical.” In fact, when Jerome excluded them from his Latin Vulgate (because he was attempting to follow the Jewish “canon” that came about well after Christianity had split from it*), the pope made him include those texts because they were “scriptures.” Furthermore, much of this takes place before there is a single codex of “scriptures” in Hebrew. The only single codex around at this time is the Septuagint, which includes these books; that version of Jewish scriptures is what is used by Christianity to form the Old Testament.
*At the very earliest, it can be argued that the Council at Jamnia at the close of the first century was when Jewish leaders closed their “canon.” However, it should also be noted that this is generally considered a “local” council and the debate still continued well into the third century, as evidenced in both the Jerusalem Talmud (2nd Century) and the Babylonian Talmud (5th century).