The Tradition of Scripture

-

An interesting online conversation I was in the other day got me thinking about the relationship between "tradition" and "scripture." In my theological training there was much made of the Wesleyan quadrilateral and the inter-relatedness of "Scripture," "tradition," "reason," and "experience." What I've been thinking a lot about, lately, those is the fact that Scripture itself is a tradition.

What do I mean by that?


Well, no one alive today was there when the texts of Scripture were written. Every one of us receive the text(s) of Scripture from someone else, who received them from someone else, who received them from someone else... and so on. They are passed from person to person, or more specifically from peoples to peoples, as a tradition. When we receive them we accept that they are treated as Scripture within the tradition in which we receive them and this we do so as an act of faith. That is, if they are indeed received within a faith tradition we receive this text in the belief that they have not just come from the person(s) who gave us the text but in some way this has come from God.

In the church I am now a part of the liturgy reinforces this concept when we say at the end of each reading "This is the Word of the Lord" or "This is the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." After this the congregation joins together and proclaims "Thanks be to God" (or similar). 

As a result, we confess together that the text is something more than the text and we believe that in faith. Indeed to call it Scripture is to confess something well beyond the historical facts of the reception of the text.

And that's OK. Indeed, it's a good thing. If we were left to prove the historical reliability of each individual text contained within Scripture every time we read it we'd never get on with the any of the work of the Kingdom.

So, all this is to say that the dichotomy between "Scripture" and "Tradition" is a false one and irrelevant. Things like the "Wesleyan quadrilateral" need to be reconsidered, reworked, nuanced, or abandoned as a result. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inerrent, Infallible, Inspired... Interpreted?

-
Image
I love Chopin. I love listening to his music, but I especially love playing his music. His Nocturnes in particular. There's something very satisfying about playing Chopin. He was a pianist, and every piece of music he wrote was for the piano, and so he "gets" what it's like to sit at a piano and wrestle with those 88 keys in front of you. He was a genius who knew how to get the most out of this instrument, and to challenge those who would want to call themselves a pianist (ever tried playing 12 notes at once with 10 fingers?). Perhaps what I like best, though, is the opportunity that playing Chopin gives me to really express myself through the music. It's like nothing else that I know and taps right into the depths of my emotions and indeed my soul. For me, it's very much a kind of prayer to play this music. Anyone who plays a musical instrument well understands (or should understand) that it's so much more than just the notes on the page. In fact, the b...
Read more

Sermon: Mark 1:29-39

-
Image
  Do you think you can keep a secret? I have an important secret. A secret so powerful that it will change your life forever. Can you keep a secret? You probably already know this secret, but I want to make sure you know it. Really know it. Can you keep a secret? Here’s the secret. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. It’s a good secret isn’t it? Do you know it? I mean really know it? Mark shares this secret at the start of his gospel account. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). Mark wants to make sure you know this secret too. There is general agreement that Mark is the earliest of the four gospel accounts. It bears so many similarities to Matthew and Luke that scholars also agree that those other authors used Mark as a source for their own accounts. More recently, it’s been suggested that Mark wasn’t written to be read but rather to be performed. That makes sense given only a few people were actually able to read anyway. Mark is short, sharp, and...
Read more

An end and a beginning...

-
Image
At about 4:30pm on New Year's Eve (2023), I submitted my PhD thesis. It was a quiet moment, with my wife by my side. It was a simple moment, with only an email disappearing off my screen to confirm the disappearance of year's of work into the hands of the examiners - no printed and bound copies, no physical copies of any kind. Just a PDF attached to an email. Gone.  It was the end of years of work, struggle, and wrestling. Throughout my candidature, I encountered many doubts and fears. Was my idea good enough? Was I being heretical? Was my idea new enough? Could I do this? Then there was the inevitable imposter's syndrome and writer's block. Wow, did I struggle with these two. There were too many times to count when I sat at my computer with barely more than a paragraph added to a document because I couldn't get the ideas out of my head and onto the page. This, of course, fed the idea that someone was going to figure out that I really didn't know what I was doin...
Read more