Holy Tradition: The Road That Leads Home, Part 1
Introduction
The Reverend Dorraine
Snogren has been a United Methodist pastor for over thirty years. In the past
several years he has come to feel increasingly that most Christians today,
while they might have a certain reverence for Church history, are in fact quite
ignorant of this heritage. This ignorance can largely be explained by the
entire approach to Christianity that emphasizes the freedom of the individual
to arrive at his own beliefs, guided only by his interpretation of the Bible.
The Christian message, cut off from its heritage, is becoming more and more
arbitrary and indefinite.
An Evangelical Protestant
who desires to make a careful study of Church history must overcome certain
difficulties. This article is a record of such a study, the difficulties
encountered, and the conclusions that presented themselves. It was written by a
Protestant minister as a help in formulating his own conclusions, and to share
with certain members of his congregation.
In the tenth chapter of
the Acts of the Apostles, we read the account concerning Cornelius the
centurion, a Roman living in the midst of Romans in Caesarea, the
administrative capital of all of Judaea, who yet was "a devout man, and
one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and
prayed to God always," (Acts 10:2) one who also was accustomed to fast
until the ninth hour (v. 30). On these accounts he is worthy of praise, as
Saint Paul writes in his Epistle to the Romans, "But glory, honour, and
peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek:
for there is no respect of persons with God" (Romans 2:10–11). Virtue has
its own value, wherever it is to be found. And yet these virtues are
insufficient in themselves, without faith in Christ and reception into His
Church. Before meeting the Apostle Peter, Cornelius neither believed aright
concerning God, or taught others the truth. But God, beholding his diligence in
that which he knew, and foreseeing also how willingly he would embrace the
truth, brought him to know Christ in a wondrous manner. When Cornelius had
fasted until the ninth hour of the day, and was in prayer, an Angel appeared to
him, announcing to him that his prayers and alms had arisen before God for a
memorial, and commanding him to summon the Apostle Peter, who would tell him
what he should do. The Apostle Peter was himself prepared to receive the
messengers from Cornelius by a vision and a voice telling him, "What God
hath cleansed, that call not thou common," and he was commanded by the
Holy Spirit to accompany the messengers from Cornelius. In such a wondrous and
extraordinary manner was the Apostle Peter brought to Cornelius, and having
heard the Apostle Peter, Cornelius and those with him straightway believed and
were baptized. Saint John Chrysostom, commenting on this passage, has written,
". . . if He did not overlook the Magi, nor the Ethiopian, nor the thief,
nor the harlot, much more them that work righteousness, and are willing, shall
He in anywise not overlook." The righteousness of Cornelius was not
overlooked by God; it prepared him to receive the Gospel and so to be joined to
the Church, wherein was the fulfillment and reward of that righteousness.
The Reverend Dorraine
Snogren aptly writes, " ... just because God in His grace and mercy has
met us where we are and adapted Himself to our unique cultural and religious
circumstances in no way means He has abandoned His original plan." Truth
is found in the Church, and those who would apprehend the truth must unite
themselves to the Church. If God could in so wondrous a manner provide for the
illumination and salvation of Cornelius, who was from among the pagans, how
much more will He provide for those who seek Him from among the Protestant
denominations.
How diligent we Orthodox
should be, who have as our heritage the "Faith which was once delivered
unto the Saints" (Jude 1:3), received from the very Apostles, and
preserved within the Church unto our own days as that living and holy
Tradition. And how we should rejoice, beholding the earnestness with which the
Reverend Dorraine Snogren has sought the truth, and discerned it in the
Orthodox Church.
Some years ago, one of the
Reverend Dorraine Snogren's four sons entered the Holy Transfiguration
Monastery, where he has since been tonsured a monk, receiving the name
Philaret. In the years since that time, Father Philaret's three brothers have
also converted to Orthodoxy. His oldest brother, Andrew, also a former
Methodist minister, together with his wife Alexandra and their two children,
Krista and Hilary, live in Wentworth, New Hampshire, and are members of the
Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos, in Concord, New Hampshire. Another
brother, John, with his wife Valerie and their son Nicholas, live in
Washington, D.C., and are members of the Church of Saint Cosmas of Aitolia, in
Riverdale, Maryland. A third brother, Constantine, lives in Brookline,
Massachusetts, and attends services at both the Holy Transfiguration Monastery
and the Church of Saint Anna, in Roslindale, where he is one of the chanters.
Since writing this
article, the Reverend Dorraine Snogren has resigned from the ministry of the
United Methodist Church, and he and his wife Ruth have moved to Concord, New
Hampshire, where they plan to become members of the Church of the Dormition of
the Theotokos there.
+ + +
I am on my way home to the
Orthodox Church. For me this is a most unlikely journey. Where I have been
doesn’t seem to support where I am allegedly going. Here I am, an evangelical,
charismatic, Protestant, having served the Lord faithfully for over thirty
years as a United Methodist pastor, now considering becoming Orthodox. It
doesn’t make sense. Or does it? It makes a lot of sense when one begins to
understand the meaning and function of Tradition in the early Church.
I believe Tradition is the
most formidable barrier a Protestant must deal with in his pursuit of the
historic and authentic expression of the Faith. And if my experience is at all
typical, once one begins to understand Tradition as understood and expressed in
the early Church, then Tradition as barrier gives way to Tradition as a road
map that leads one safely home to Orthodoxy.
Needless to say, that
statement needs a lot of explanation. Let me quickly proceed.
Part I: The Meaning and Function of Tradition
Georges Florovsky, one of
the outstanding theologians and writers of our century, made a statement to the
effect that he would not isolate himself to his own age.
That thought is not only
provocative but also disconcerting. For isolating ourselves to our own age is
precisely what the vast majority of Christians are doing today. We are ignorant
of our spiritual heritage. We have cut ourselves off from our spiritual roots.
We might recall that there
were Church Fathers, but we are completely ignorant of what they said. Our
recollection of the Church’s Seven Ecumenical Councils dims even more, even
though the Councils’ decisions, definitions, and directions were understood to
be the irrevocable mind of the Spirit upon which the entire Church was forever
to be secured and defined.
In other words, vast
segments of Christendom are not benefiting from what the Church has been, said,
or done. We are not building on the mind of the Spirit, which was pursued so
faithfully and defended with such meticulous care by our spiritual forefathers.
We are living and thinking as though the Church did not exist until we got on
board or that the Church of the past is irrelevant and inconsequential. For
many it is as though the Church ended in Acts 28 and did not reappear until the
sixteenth century Reformation, or for a few, not until the twentieth century.
What we are saying in all
of this is simply that many of us have cut ourselves off from what the Church
has called Holy Tradition. This has not only created an anemic condition among
us; it has drastically deformed our concept of the Church. When some of my
friends say, "I wish we were more like the early Church," I fear they
do not know what they are asking and would be reluctant to pursue the only
avenue that leads to its restoration. You see, it is Holy Tradition that
provides us our living connection with the past. We can be like the early
Church, but not without Holy Tradition. It alone "contemporizes" the
past with integrity. It alone introduces us to the mind of the Spirit, which
never contradicts itself.
I recognize, however, that
for many, Tradition has a lot of negative associations. It speaks of man-made
rules and regulations; of things antiquated, irrelevant, and formalized; of
quaint ideas suited best for a museum. It speaks of a restrictive adherence to
the past that handicaps our freedom to pursue the fresh breeze of God’s Spirit.
But possibly most damaging is the assumption that Tradition speaks of things
that Jesus forthrightly condemned. People erroneously equate Jesus’
condemnation of the "tradition of the elders" with the Church’s Holy
Tradition. They fail to see that those human precepts were substitutes for the
Gospel, while the Church’s traditions are the very framework that opens the
Gospel up to us.
We commonly think of
tradition as something handed down to us from the past. Christian Tradition is
that, but much, much more. Holy Tradition has to do with the Faith which our
Lord imparted to the Apostles and which, since Apostolic times, has been handed
down from generation to generation in the Church. It is that understanding and
those practices, which have been tested by a long time and were permanently
lasting. But let me be more specific.
A Common
Understanding
Tradition, first of all,
has to do with a body of material, a common understanding, an accepted way of
interpreting and dealing with the Faith. The importance of this presumed unity
is seen clearly in Scripture. The Apostle Paul passionately appeals to the
Christians at Corinth, "that all of you agree and that there be no
dissensions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same
judgment" (I Cor. 1:10). He insists that all church leaders "hold
firm to the sure word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound
doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it" (Titus 1:9). Our
Lord’s prayer for unity in John 17 has everything to do with His followers
being sanctified "in the truth" (v. 17). And again, His promise to be
present with those who gather in His Name is predicated by His saying, "if
two of you agree . . ." (Matt. 18:19). Then, of course, there is Paul’s
unparalleled reference to "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph.
4:5).
From the time of our Lord
there began developing a body of truth, a particular interpretation of the
divine events; and the Church leaders from the time of the Apostles were given
to preserving and building on that sacred "tradition." So the Apostle
Paul exclaims, "stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught
by us, either by word of mouth or by letter" (II Thess. 2:15). "I
commend you," Paul says to the Corinthian believers, "because you . .
. maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you" (I Cor.
11:2). [2]
And so, Saint Vincent of
Lérins echoes the attitude of the early Church in the matters of faith when he
wrote, "We must hold what has been believed everywhere, always, and by
all."
The Mind
of the Church
Seeing Tradition as
encompassing this common understanding, the appeal to Tradition also becomes an
appeal to the mind of the Church. It is the thinking capital of the Church. So
the fourth century Greek Father Athanasius encourages a Church Bishop: "Let
us look at that very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from
the very beginning, which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached, and the Fathers
preserved. Upon this the Church is founded."
Thank God the Church has a
mind. It is healthy. It retains. It doesn’t forget. There is an ecclesiastical
understanding that lives in the Church. We don’t have to be "tossed to and
fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men"
(Eph. 4:14).
Occasionally someone
suggests that the early Church quickly became an apostate, but this is so
incongruous with the integrity with which the mind of the Church was
maintained. If ever there were "fundamentalists," in the best sense
of the word, they lived in those early centuries. They were sticklers for the
truth. In dealing with heretics, the defenders of the Faith always appealed to
the mind of the Church, to that Faith which had been once delivered and
faithfully kept.
So instead of becoming
apostate, just the opposite was taking place. As one writer said, "In the
divine economy of Providence it was permitted that every form of heresy that
was ever to infest the Church should now exhibit its essential principle and
attract the censures of the faithful. Thus, testimony to the primitive truth
was secured and recorded: the language of catholic orthodoxy was developed and
defined, and landmarks of faith were set up for perpetual memorial to all
generations."
So we have Saint Irenaeus
(ca. 130–215) writing of Polycarp:
But
Polycarp also was not only instructed by Apostles, and conversed with many who
had seen Christ, but was also, by Apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the
Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried (on earth)
a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering
martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had
learned from the Apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which
alone are true.
Saint Irenaeus further
states that the true Faith "is being preserved in the Church from the
Apostles through the succession of the presbyters." This speaks of the
Church holding the same Faith with one voice as handed down by the Apostles and
preserved by the successive witnesses.
Reflecting this mind of
the Church, one writer penned it so beautifully:
We
preserve the Doctrine of the Lord uncorrupted, and firmly adhere to the Faith
He delivered to us, and keep it free from blemish and diminution, as a Royal
Treasure, and a monument of great price, neither adding any thing, nor taking
any thing from it.
So appealing to Tradition
is appealing to the mind of the Church, to an ecclesiastical understanding;
indeed, it is our living connection with the fullness of the Church experience.
It is the total life of the Church transferred from place to place and from
generation to generation as it is inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit.
"For tradition which expresses the voice of the whole Church is also the
voice of the Holy Spirit living in the Church." How comforting and
securing it is to be a part of that stream of consciousness, that river of
truth.
Patristic
as Well as Apostolic
Our understanding of
Tradition is further enhanced when we realize that the early Church considered
itself Patristic as well as Apostolic. Apostles and Fathers were coupled
together. The Fathers were the theologians, the teachers of the Faith if you
please, whom God raised up to give definition to the truth recorded in
Scripture. They preserved and developed the Faith in keeping with the ongoing
ministry of the Holy Spirit.
The book of Acts begins
with Luke reminding his readers that in his previously written Gospel he
"dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach" (Acts 1:1). The
implication is that our Lord continued His ministry and teaching long after His
Ascension. This is in keeping with Jesus’ promise to His disciples that after
His departure, "When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all
the truth" (John 16:13). The Church believed that one of the critical
evidences of the ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit was in and through the
Fathers of the Faith.
The mind of the Church and
conforming to the Traditions of the Fathers are synonymous. The heretics were
judged by the Church because they had no Fathers. They were innovators; their
thinking was not in keeping with the Tradition that the Spirit had revealed and
that the Fathers had preserved. And so the eighteenth century monk, Starets
Paisii, sums it up well in a letter to a friend:
I plead
and ask you from my whole heart to have undoubting faith in the Fathers and in
the teachings contained in them, for they agree in all respects with the Divine
Scriptures and with the minds of all the ecumenical teachers and the entire
Holy Church, because one and the same Holy Spirit was working in them.
Scripture
and Tradition
Undoubtedly the most
troublesome facet of Tradition for the Protestant is the relationship of
Tradition to Scripture. The Protestant puts Scripture above the Church. It is
as though the Church was made for the Bible, when in reality the Bible was made
for the Church. One must begin by realizing that the Bible and Tradition are
not two different expressions of the Christian faith. Holy Tradition is the
source of Holy Scripture. The Bible is given to us in Tradition. Holy Tradition
is the faith of which Holy Scripture is an expression.
The Scriptural message was
given to men not in paper and ink. God’s Word was first placed in men’s souls;
His words were engraved and imprinted in spirit and not by letter. Our Lord’s
message was first presented orally and only later written down (see Luke
1:1–3).
Early in the Church the
Word of God began to develop and take on specific form and expression. A common
understanding, a "tradition," if you please, began developing under
the leadership of the Holy Spirit. The Apostles and their converts taught and
founded churches all over the Mediterranean world and left them with its oral
Tradition (see Acts 2:42; II Thess. 2:15, 3:6, etc.).
Some might say,
"Didn’t Tradition get out of hand and impose a lot of excess baggage on
the Bible?" It is true that certain doctrines began to take shapes that
are only alluded to in the Bible (e.g., the Trinity). Specific forms of worship
and practice also began to develop, like the rites of Baptism and the
Eucharist. The Fathers, however, always spoke of these as having
"Apostolic" origin. It is helpful to think of these so-called
"additions" to the Bible as what might be omitted from a biography. A
biography does not exhaust the life of its subject. One would never say that
because such and such is not in the biography, therefore, it did not happen.
Saint Basil (ca. 330–379) spoke of these as the "unwritten mysteries of
the Church," all of which were flourishing in the fourth century and were
understood to have great authority and significance and were considered
indispensable for the preservation of the right Faith. "Some things we
have from written teaching," said Saint Basil, "others we have
received from the Apostolic Tradition handed down to us in a mystery; and both
these things have the same force for piety."
"But shouldn’t the
Church be identical with the Church of the Apostles? The Church in the Acts of
the Apostles appears so simple." That is like comparing your picture as an
adult with your picture taken as a child. There is a correspondence, but
something would be woefully wrong if your appearance remained identical. A seed
has an entire tree hidden in its smallness. As the seed begins to grow,
phenomenal changes take place. However, its identity and continuity with the
seed is never lost. Even if that tree should live for one hundred, two hundred,
or more years, every single leaf that shall ever appear will have had its
origin and existence in that tiny seed from which the tree sprang forth. Apple
seeds don’t produce cornstalks. So it is with the Church. The Gospel starts
like a seed, but as it takes root and develops, changes do take place. The
Spirit, however, does not contradict Himself; so the Church’s development in
its self-awareness, doctrine, and practice had to be meticulously in line with
the mind of the Spirit as He had always been known and expressed.
Just because an idea was
ancient did not automatically make it authentic. Something became a part of
Holy Tradition only if a comprehensive consensus of the ancients could be
satisfactorily demonstrated. And that consensus, as such, was not conclusive
unless it could be traced back continuously to Apostolic origins.
Tradition was never
regarded as adding anything to Scripture; it was the means of ascertaining and
expressing the true meaning of Scripture. Tradition, therefore, is the true
interpreter of Scripture. We would say Tradition is Scripture rightly
understood.
Scripture
Rightly Understood
It is important to realize
that the Church existed before the New Testament was written. Little by little
the Gospels and Epistles began to appear. One writer rightly observed:
Moreover,
when we take into account how few "books," or manuscripts, there were
in those days, and the fact that besides the genuine writings there were other
gospels and texts written under the names of the Apostles, it is easy to
understand how important the living Tradition of the Church was in safeguarding
the true Christian faith. The prime importance of Tradition is plainly shown by
the fact that it was not until the fifth century that the Church established conclusively
which books in circulation should be regarded as genuinely inspired by God’s
revelation. Thus the Church itself determined the composition of the Bible.
As the Church defined the
content of the Bible, it is to the Church that we turn for the interpretation
of the Bible.
No, this does not mean
that we can’t read the Bible for ourselves and hear God speak to us from that
reading. But on the other hand, "private interpretation" (II Peter
1:20) is never the basis for our authority. The judgment of Scriptural
interpretation must never be a merely private judgment, but must be a judgment
in harmony with the mind of the Church as expressed in Holy Tradition.
It is
from the Church that the Bible ultimately derives its authority, for it was the
Church which originally decided which books form a part of Holy Scripture; and
it is the Church alone which can interpret Holy Scripture with authority. [16]
Saying this puts one on a
collision course with what the vast majority of Western Christians believe today.
Today we have bowed to the cult of proud individualism. "I can believe
anything I want," or "Nobody tells me what to believe except the Holy
Spirit" are heard time and again. We freely re-interpret Christ’s
teachings according to our personal tastes, guided only by our personal liking.
As Georges Florovsky put it, "We are in danger of losing the uniqueness of
the Word of God in the process of continuous reinterpretation.". We might
preach salvation in Christ, but it is a salvation in egocentric isolation from
the Church. As someone observed, the Protestant in protesting the Pope has
promoted each individual to the rank of infallible Pope. Private
opinion reigns.
The Christian message is
becoming increasingly indefinite and appearing as only one more teaching in the
series of teachings ancient and new. And all of this because "without the
Church the possibility is open for an innumerable quantity of the most
arbitrary and mutually contradictory understandings.". Because "the
faith of Christ becomes clear and definite for man only when he
unhypocritically believes in the Church; only then are the pearls of this faith
clear, only then does the faith remain free from the pile of dirty rubbish of
all-possible, self-willed opinions and judgments.".
We need the Bible. We need
Tradition. We need the Church. George Cronk in his book The Message of the
Bible summarizes it well:
Since
scripture is given within the context of tradition, it must also be read,
interpreted, and understood within that context. And since as we have seen,
tradition is the total life and experience of the Church, it follows that the
Church is the sole authoritative interpreter of the Bible. Christ is the
founder and head of the Church, and the Church is the body of Christ (see Eph.
4:1–16 and 5:21–33). This means that Christ lives in, inspires, and guides His
Church through the Holy Spirit. Christ, in and through the Church, provides the
correct interpretation of the Bible and of other aspects of holy tradition. It
is only within the living Tradition of the Church and the direct inspiration of
Christ’s Spirit that the proper interpretation of the Bible can be made.
Source: The Road That Leads Home by the Reverend Dorraine S. Snogren, with an Introduction by Bishop Ephraim
http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/trad_body.aspx
