Protestants and Tradition: A Response to ‘Goldilocks Protestantism’
Many people today openly pine for a former, simpler age when our relation to religious, moral, and national traditions was less complicated. This yearning for a tradition which can be merely passively received is evidenced in the rise of “theo-bros” and “trad-wives” and, at times, in growing Protestant interest in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism (this interest is, ironically, often driven by YouTubers). In an age where everything seems up for debate, a form of authority promising to deliver us from the burden of deciding what to believe, how to live, and who to trust, is an enticing prospect.
Nonetheless, deciding which traditions to embrace and thereby judging their merits is inescapable. One can suppose joining Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism removes the burden of “private judgment”—as it is sometimes called—only if one avoids examining these religious communions too closely. They are teeming with rival factions which disagree about central theological and moral questions and about the nature of ecclesial and traditional authority itself. This is not a criticism. At some point, we all must face the fact—no matter our community or communion—that we are engaged in a series of choices about the traditions we will trust.
However, if the view that tradition can simply be passively received is a myth, so too is the belief that we can make moral or religious judgments from a neutral, “un-traditioned” vantage point. As scholar Hans-Georg Gadamer argues, our process of reasoning itself is produced by traditions we did not choose. Indeed, Immanuel Kant’s individualist maxim—“dare to know,” sometimes loosely translated and expanded as “think for yourself”–only makes sense in the context of a western, Enlightenment tradition of thinking about rationality. Similarly, those who extol “being true to oneself” are not radical free-thinkers. The celebration of “authenticity” is a product of Romanticism. We judge traditions only from within traditions.
Why does exposing these two myths—i.e., the myth of a purely “passive” reception of tradition and an “un-traditioned” individualism—matter? In a recent piece for First Things, Brad East critiques what he calls “Goldilocks Protestantism.” He provocatively suggests magisterial Protestants such as Lutheran and Reformed Christians are unlikely to have a future. According to East, the problem is not merely that they are losing numbers. More alarmingly, such traditions are incoherent. They unstably affirm both the authority of creeds and confessions and sola scriptura. Further, East says one cannot “become” a part of such a tradition, for “participation in a tradition cannot be reverse-engineered.”[1] According to East, tradition is received not elected. He thus objects to churches seeking to recover a Reformation heritage.
Yet no tradition is simply received. Traditions, if they are to flourish, need means of enabling both grateful reception and continual and deliberate recovery and re-invention. They need, in other words, ways of deferring and submitting to the past, as well as ways of dealing with the inevitable disagreements, complexity, and even distortions within traditions.
During the Reformation, humanist historiography popularized the view that the early church did not speak with one voice. A supposed consensus amongst the fathers and mothers of the church was increasingly seen to be a myth. In response, the Reformed aimed to affirm the authority of the traditions of the past while admitting they are not uniform. They did this by deferring to the Christian past while distinguishing it from infallible scripture, which was the most trustworthy source for discovering what the apostles taught. They thought the claims of the church fathers should be assumed to be correct as far as possible and tended to reaffirm the ecumenical councils and creeds. This is because when the universal church truly spoke with one voice, it was not in conflict with but was a reapplication of authoritative apostolic teaching. [2] Nonetheless, in the face of the disagreements between various early theologians, they propounded that scripture is the means of evaluating traditions passed down. Scripture is the criteria according to which one discerns what traditions reproduce and extend the teachings of the apostles and what traditions were merely “man-made” (Mark 7:7). As Wolfgang Musculus says, traditions should “be examined and tried” according to the standard of apostolic teaching—i.e. scripture—because the value of traditions is determined not simply by antiquity but truth.[3]
This process of assessment was not placed on the shoulders of any individual in isolation. Assessing various traditions was not the job of “me and my Bible” but a shared task of the church. The Reformed convened synods which produced confessions, summaries of biblical teaching which interpreted scripture in dialogue with Christians of the past. Importantly, the authority of these confessions, as well as the higher authority of the creeds and councils, was not thought to be separate from scripture. Rather, a confession was authoritative insofar as it reproduced and reapplied the teaching of the Bible for a new era.
A Reformed approach to tradition offered a way of revering and deferring to the Christian past, while admitting it is not uniform and includes variety and disagreement. The supreme lens of scripture allowed Christians to evaluate what had been “handed on,” seeking to recapture the dynamism of the apostolic tradition that might be in danger of being obscured, while also affirming the non-supreme but genuine authority of the church of the present.
The Reformed approach at its best articulated a durable and honest approach to tradition which allowed for deference as well as recovery and reformation. So, is there a future for magisterial Protestants such as the Reformed and Lutherans? I dare to hope so. For all its flaws, magisterial Protestantism offers a way of respecting the Christian tradition without pretending it is uniform. It allows us to defer to our fathers and mothers in the faith while admitting their imperfections. It unifies us around creeds and confessions, while leaving us open to what the British theologian John Webster called the “uncontrollably alive presence of God” which continues to interrupt and surprise us.[4]
For 150 years, Calvin Theological Seminary has been and will be a place to not just passively receive but actively recover, celebrate, and propound the richness of creedal and confessional Christianity.
Jared Michelson - Future Calvin Theological Seminary Systematic Theology Professor
