What Role Should Tradition Play in the Church?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching
Scripture: 2 Thessalonians 2:15, Matthew 15:3-9, 1 Corinthians 11:2, Matthew 18

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--what-role-should-tradition-play-in-the-church
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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the short answer is tradition can be a helpful tool but it should not be regarded as Authority so you're correct the Roman Catholic church and Eastern or Orthodoxy both say that tradition and scripture are equal in Authority so that's how for example they teach the doctrine of the Trinity that's how they have a special place for venerating Mary because even though these things are not explicitly taught in the Bible they believe the Holy Spirit taught it through ancient theologians Church councils in the case of the Roman Catholic Church through the pope himself uh obviously Protestants reject that uh however in a backhand way they bring bring it in again because those same Protestants that say the Bible is the only Authority many times they will have authoritative Creeds and if you do not ascribe to those Creeds then you're automatically in false Doctrine you're not Orthodox so they're trying to have it both ways and of course they're very inconsistent because they pick and choose which parts of the Creed so the nyine Creed for example as it's come down to us teaches the three persons of the Trinity but it also teaches that baptism is essential to Salvation so those same Protestants say if you don't accept the Trinity as stated by the nying Creed you're in false Doctrine but uh the nine creed is wrong because baptism isn't necessary so so they pick and choose but let's take a Biblical approach um first of all there's definitely a danger in making tradition and Authority we see that from Jesus Christ himself going to Matthew chapter 15 so uh Jewish leaders were critic izing the Disciples of Jesus because they did not follow all the traditions of ceremonial Washings and so in verse three uh and I'm using the new King James Matthew 15:3 he answered and said to them why do you also transgress the Commandment of God because of your tradition for God commanded saying honor your father and your mother and he who curses father or mother let him be put to death but you say whoever says to his father or mother whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift of to God then he need not honor his father and mother thus you have made the Commandment of God of no effect by your tradition Hypocrites well did Isaiah prophesy about you saying these people draw near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me and in vain they worship me teaching as doctrines the Commandments of men so Jesus came very strongly against tradition saying instead of following the word of God you're subsitute sub stituting human Traditions Commandments of men the example he gave may not seem obvious to us but it comes from the Ten Commandments honor your father and mother and one of the implications of that you should take care of your elderly parents when they're no longer able to support themselves you should still honor them you should take care of them well the Jews of Christ day came up with a little loophole and they said well I I have some money uh some extra savings to support my parents but I'm going to dedicate this to the Lord so I will pledge it that it's to be given to God so therefore I can't give it to my parents because it's already pledged to God so under the guise of Holiness they continue to hold on to that money saying one of these days I'm going to give it to God so I can't spend it on my parents and Jesus said you're a hypocrite it's obvious you should honor your parents you're claiming to honor God but you're actually dishonoring your parents and so that's the example he gave gave now you quoted from 2 Thessalonians talking about Traditions but notice when you look at that carefully now here here's a valid tradition okay here's the kind of tradition we're supposed to follow let me read it again therefore Brethren Stand Fast and hold the Traditions which you were taught whether by word or our epistle so the Traditions that I preach to you when I was there are that I'm writing to you and of course we would regard these words as inspired so when Paul established the gospel when he established these churches he preached the gospel to them and now he's writing inspired scripture to them so those are the Traditions that we should uphold another example is in 1 Corinthians 11: 2 it's interesting it's in the context of teaching on hair and also teaching on the Lord's supper and he regarded those as binding 1 Corinthians 11:2 now I Praise You Brethren that you remember me in all things and keep the Traditions just as I delivered them to you so here's the answer tradition is good when it's handing down the word of God so I'm a second generation Pentecostal my mother came in the church as a teenager my father with his family as a child so I was taught taught from childhood the basic Apostolic Doctrine so in that sense it's a tradition but why should I uphold those Traditions not just because it's a family tradition not just because my mother and father taught them to me but because it's from the word of God so those Traditions are good and in fact necessary but Traditions that would substitute for the word of God instead of following God's word you follow human teachings and Commandments we're not supposed to follow them so unfortunately with the Catholic and Orthodox doctrine of making tradition equal to scripture they are actually negating scripture and I would actually say in practice they're putting tradition above scripture because there are a lot of things in scripture they don't follow or they reinterpret and I would even say the Protestants with their Orthodox Creeds end up saying well you have to believe it this way according to our tradition not according to the way it was originally written so instead of going back back to the first century and the original text of scripture and trying to figure out what does it mean what does it say what does it teach well just follow this 15th or 16th century Creed and it tells you what to think and it tells you what the scripture says or follow this fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh century Council or follow follow this 10th Century or 20th century pope and they'll tell you what it means well in effect they're not merely making tradition equal they're making it Superior so uh the the simple articulation is if you mean by tradition perpetuating the doctrines of the Bible and teaching it to your children to your grandchildren to your converts that's a good thing you don't start from scratch but if it means taking what's in the Bible and substituting it or reinterpreting it and depending on Traditions developed over the centuries more than the text itself then that's a bad thing now in the middle you might say there are Traditions that are not presented as authoritative so the way we conduct Service uh Church buildings our music um you know maybe some of the ways that we prefer uh that we should express ourselves as long as those aren't made doctrinal or mandatory then of course there's a room for what what you might call human culture or Pentecostal culture ways of doing things so I'm not saying we have to sing the style of songs in first century Palestine we we don't really even know exactly how they sang so in that sense we might have a 21st century tradition or an American tradition or you know another a Latin American tradition that's okay because we're not talking about either of these extremes we're not talking about either we're not saying it's Bible uh and we're not trying to replace the Bible so in that sense if we look at an International Church and there's a diversity of practices or methods or cultural expressions if we want to call those Traditions one of the tests is that we obviously don't think they're mandatory because we allow that diversity among families within a church among churches within a nation among nations of the world as long as we're obviously allowing that diversity not considering authoritative then I I would say really those are more in the nature of preferences or methods or cultural expressions um and I think there is room for that I also think there's room the Bible gives us certain principles and especially when it comes to the New Testament Church the Bible doesn't give us a detail of how to structure a local church it doesn't give us a detail of how to structure an organization nationally or internationally but it does give us some very clear principles and I've done a podcast on Church government it gives us principles that we need Implement such as ordaining ministers it doesn't give us the details of what process to follow so I believe in those cases God gives us Liberty to implement the scripture in our own way in our own cultural context and that's why you find in Matthew 18 Jesus said what you bind on Earth will be bound in heaven what you loose on Earth will be loosed in heaven that doesn't give us authority to teach new doctrine or to impose certain restrictions or to remove that aren't in the Bible or to remove certain teachings that are in the Bible but it does say as you carry out my business as you implement what I've told you I will back you up when you decide you know we're all going to meet together on Sunday at 11:00 a.m.

to worship God I'll back you up everybody should cooperate in that local church so in that sense Traditions that become implementations of scriptural teachings that's also acceptable but to go back to the main question if we mean by tradition trying to teach subsequent generations of Believers what the Bible teaches that's good if we mean replacing the Bible adding new doctrines that aren't in the Bible are taking away and substituting doctrines um from the Bible with something else then that's wrong and that's why we tend