Father R,
I love Anglicanism, but I could never be an Anglican, because they seem to be extinct. Your analysis of Anglicanism seems to say that you are an Anglican specifically because you are not one, and that if we knew more of Anglican history we would understand why this is so. But if what Anglicanism is, is not what it was, then what it will be in the future will not be what it is today, and so you might already not be an Anglican. Perhaps Anglicans are Buddhists now, or Hindus, or Atheists. The only thing we know from your writing is that they are not, Anglicans. There’s no sense to religion when we define ourselves by a theological state of flux.
With this, I’ll start with what you write last that could have been first, when you lightly dismiss the tradition of your Anglican Fathers. We should all respect our Fathers Father. That too is a tradition. Now the argument you give, the center of it all, is the most over worked and under explained device for the presentation of “tradition” as being of equal, and so by necessity superior authority, to Holy Scripture. Since you say that tradition is for the right interpretation of Scripture it would follow that it determines what Scripture can and cannot say and thus it is a higher authority. Whatever controls the hermeneutic controls the text. For Protestants, the Bible is our hermeneutic, our lens for the interpretation of reality, and so traditions are subject to it. So really, if your interpretation of interpretation were correct, whatever the Bible actually said would be irrelevant to its meaning. It could as easily be a cook book that when interpreted by your infallible community, brought us something like truth. But communities do not create truth Father R; they either have it or they do not. And there is nothing about Community that is inherently good; every Community is either good or bad.
And since what tradition is in your interpretation, is measured by whatever the Clergy think at the time, it might be taken to mean that the Clergy are always right, no matter how far their thoughts are from the written word of God. Things like this are part of the reason why solid Christian folk often don’t like the Clergy. We put up with them for the function they serve in society, like tax collectors and politicians, but we often wish they would find gainful employment.
We Protestants of course have a high regard for tradition, but we mean by it the thoughtful writings of our noble dead, to remain highly valued as our heritage no matter how much they disagree with each other, and then be laid in their rightful place, always subject to Scripture itself.
This is why we love Augustine and Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, but understand that these men would be horribly offended if they thought anyone were bold enough to consider them infallible. I wonder if the Nicene Council would consider us heretics for thinking them infallible, instead of right. Groups of Christians together don’t magically take on infallibility either, which is why Protestants love their Creeds and Confessions but never make Scripture subject.
You say, “Tradition….has the priority in time.” This is just to say that tradition existed prior to Scripture and this is as obviously true as it is irrelevant. The resurrection, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the Creation of Heaven and Earth have priority in time also, but were it not for Scripture we would have no record of the events themselves, and so the epistemological limitation nullifies the temporal primacy. Whether or not traditions, because we know there were many, existed previous to the writing of the New Testament is made less than useful by the fact that the only record that we have of those traditions is within the contents of the New Testament itself. We have an epistemic horizon that limits us to the reading of the preserved text.
How do we know there was a tradition? The Bible tells us that. Notice that you need to quote Scripture in order to substantiate the claim to a tradition. No coherent argument can be made without it. How do we know that there was a Church? The Bible tells us that. How do we have understanding as to the nature, identity, offices, officers, history, formation, powers, and authority of that Church? There is no way to know any of these things apart from Scripture. The writings of the Apostles and Prophets have both primacy in content and temporal primacy, because they are all that we have by way of data and the earliest record that we have of that data. They are it. And so how do we measure the content of any possible claim that something was or was not a tradition? (Your unreasonably late date for the texts does not escape notice by the way.)
Everything else is probable or possible or unbelievable or an exercise of mere authority and authority is as usual, useless as a persuasive force. Some people do not believe that the texts are true, but no thoughtful person denies that we have all of these ancient historical texts lying around. What do we have of the first century traditions? Second and third century texts? The Church Fathers still provide texts I guess, but they are not very useful in cataloguing facts about first century AD traditions of which we have no records.
The Anglicans understood all of this, which is why they wrote, “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” Article VI. Of the sufficiency of the Holy Scripture for Salvation. The 39 articles of the Anglican Church.
And again later the Anglicans wrote this on the proper use of tradition, “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.” The Westminster Confession of Faith chapter VI.
People like to wave their degrees around when their arguments get flabby. It doesn’t help your arguments. I have a couple myself professor but I won’t bore you with them. It’s enough to say that it doesn’t matter if someone knows a lot if what they know is wrong.
I will certainly get back to your other concerns soon, but as my training is in a practical discipline I have labors provoking me. You know, that old Puritan thinking that a plow boy that labors to the glory of God can be of greater value than the Priesthood. Both are considered holy callings in the Protestant way of thinking. That is our tradition.
All the best,
Christopher Neiswonger
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