3. Authority: Scripture and Tradition

Trenham does not treat Protestant errors as a scattered collection of mistakes. He sees them as branches growing from a single root. That root is the Protestant teaching that Scripture is the final authority for the Christian, often called by its Latin name, sola scriptura, “Scripture alone.” In his words, it is the source “from which all other Protestant heresies flow.”³⁶ If he is right about the root, there is little point in examining the branches. So this question must come first.

What Is Being Claimed

Before deciding whether a teaching is true, it is wise to be sure what it says. Trenham describes the Protestant view as the belief that every doctrine “must rest upon clear and explicit teaching of Scripture.”³⁷ That is narrower than what Protestants have actually taught. Their confessions accept not only what Scripture states outright but also what follows from it by sound reasoning.³⁸ And the Baptist position is plainer still. It does not say that Scripture is the only thing worth reading, or that teachers, history, and the wisdom of earlier Christians are useless. It says that Scripture is the only rule that cannot be wrong, and therefore the rule by which every other teacher must be measured.

A country’s laws offer a rough comparison. Judges, lawyers, and scholars write a great deal about what the laws mean, and much of what they write is wise and useful. But when two of them disagree, neither appeals to his own commentary as the final word. Both go back to the text of the law. The commentaries serve the law. They do not stand above it. That is all the Baptist means by “Scripture alone.”

Where Trenham and Baptists Agree

Trenham opens his case with a statement that a Baptist could have written: the foundation of the Church is the teaching of the apostles. He points to the first Christians, who “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42), and he argues that no one can follow Christ without following the apostles He sent.³⁹ That is entirely true. He goes on to show that the New Testament calls the apostles’ teaching “tradition,” that is, what is handed down (2 Thess. 3:6).⁴⁰ That is also true. The apostles did hand down the faith, and Christians are bound to hold it.

So the two sides are not arguing about whether the apostles’ teaching is authoritative. They agree that it is. They are arguing about something else: where the apostles’ teaching is to be found today. That is the real question, and it is worth keeping in view, because a good deal of Trenham’s argument proves the first point, which no Baptist denies, and then treats it as though it had proved the second.

The Word of Mouth

Trenham’s chief text is Paul’s instruction to the Thessalonians: “stand firm and keep the traditions which we taught you, whether by word or by letter” (2 Thess. 2:15).⁴¹ Here, he argues, are two forms of apostolic teaching, spoken and written, and both are binding. He asks his reader to imagine being a Christian in Thessalonica who had heard Paul preach for hours. Would such a person obey only what Paul later wrote down, and ignore what he had heard with his own ears?⁴²

The answer, of course, is no. A Thessalonian who heard Paul speak was bound by what Paul said. But notice what made his position secure. He had heard the apostle himself. He knew the voice, and he could ask Paul or Timothy what was meant. Nothing stood between him and the source.

No one today is in that position. Suppose a man receives two things from his late grandfather. One is a letter in the grandfather’s own hand. The other is a saying that has passed through many members of the family over many years, each of whom assures him that the grandfather really said it. Both may be true. But only one of them can still be checked. If the saying and the letter ever seem to disagree, a sensible man will trust the letter, not because spoken words are worth less than written ones, but because he can be sure the letter is his grandfather’s.

That is the position of every Christian living two thousand years after the apostles. Paul’s spoken teaching was every bit as authoritative as his letters. The difficulty is not its authority but its identity. What, exactly, did Paul say in Thessalonica that he did not write? The only apostolic teaching that can be confirmed as apostolic today is the teaching the apostles wrote down.

The same letter shows how this happened. Paul reminds the Thessalonians, “even when we were with you, we gave you this instruction: ‘Anyone who will not work should not eat either’” (2 Thess. 3:10). Here is a spoken instruction, given in person, that the apostle then took the trouble to write. Trenham offers a similar example. Jesus’ saying “It is more blessed to give than to receive” is not found in the four Gospels, which shows, he argues, that the Lord taught more than the Gospels record.⁴³ That is true. But how do Christians know this saying today? Only because Luke wrote it down in the book of Acts (Acts 20:35). The example does not show that unwritten tradition preserved the saying. It shows that Scripture did.

A Test for Tradition

Trenham freely admits that not every tradition is holy. Jesus warned against human traditions that set aside the word of God, and Trenham agrees that such traditions exist.⁴⁴ But if there are two kinds of tradition, holy and unholy, a Christian needs some way to tell them apart. What test should he use?

Jesus Himself answered that question. When the Pharisees objected that His disciples did not keep the traditions of the elders, He did not reply by appealing to another tradition. He appealed to the written commandment. “You set aside the commandment of God and hold fast to human tradition,” He told them, and He pointed to the law of Moses to show it: “Thus, you nullify the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down” (Mark 7:8–13). The Pharisees’ traditions were old, respected, and taught by learned men. Jesus measured them against Scripture, and they failed.

Jesus did the same thing with the Sadducees, a party that disagreed sharply with the Pharisees about the meaning of Scripture. He did not conclude from their disagreement that Scripture was too unclear to settle anything. He told them, “Is this not why you are mistaken, by not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God?” (Mark 12:24). He held them responsible for what was written.

The people of Berea, who were mentioned in the Preface, applied the same test even to an apostle. They “examined the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were true” (Acts 17:11), and Luke commends them for it. Paul himself reminded Timothy, “From infancy, you have known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for instruction in righteousness, so that the man of God may be fully qualified, completely equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:15–17). A rule that is complete for its purpose needs no partner of equal rank.

The Unwritten Customs

What, then, does Trenham offer as examples of unwritten apostolic tradition? He names the sign of the cross, baptism by threefold immersion, and praying toward the east, and he refers to a longer list of such customs given by Basil of Caesarea in the fourth century.⁴⁵ These are customs of worship, and many Christians have found them helpful. A Baptist need not quarrel with a man for facing east when he prays.

But notice what is missing from the list. None of these customs is a doctrine about how a sinner is saved. None of them teaches that infants should be baptized, that baptism is the new birth, or that a true believer may lose his salvation. Yet these are the very doctrines on which Rock and Sand parts company with Baptists. When unwritten tradition is called upon as a witness, it speaks about how Christians pray. It is silent on the questions this review must decide.

The Argument from Disagreement

Trenham returns again and again to one argument above all others. The Reformers all claimed that Scripture was clear, yet they could not agree with one another. Luther and Zwingli divided over the Lord’s Supper. Calvinists and Arminians divided over predestination. Surely, Trenham argues, this proves that Scripture alone cannot unite the Church.⁴⁶

The argument has real force, and it deserves a fair answer. Protestants have disagreed, often bitterly, and their divisions are a grief. But consider what the argument would prove if it were sound. When two doctors disagree about a patient, no one concludes that the study of medicine is worthless. Both doctors go back to the patient and look again. Disagreement shows that readers are fallible. It does not show that the thing they are reading is unclear.

Moreover, the argument proves too much, because churches that accept Tradition as their authority have also divided. Rome and Constantinople both appealed to the Tradition of the Church, and they parted in the Great Schism of 1054, an event Trenham himself calls “the most sorrowful event in the history of the undivided Church.”⁴⁷ The Russian Orthodox Church suffered a lasting division in the seventeenth century over changes to its worship.⁴⁸ If disagreement among Protestants shows that Scripture cannot be the rule, then disagreement among those who follow Tradition shows that Tradition cannot be the rule either. An argument that would sink both ships is no help to either.

Who Gave Us the Bible?

A further objection lies close at hand. If the Church decided which books belong in the Bible, does that not place the Church above the Bible? Trenham presses this point, observing that nothing in Scripture proves that the Church’s list of books is infallible.⁴⁹

The answer lies in the difference between making something and recognizing it. A jeweler who knows gold when he sees it does not make the gold. He only recognizes what was gold before he touched it. In the same way, the early churches did not give the books of the New Testament their authority. They recognized an authority the books already had because God had inspired them.

This is not a new or Protestant idea. Israel received the Scriptures of the Old Testament long before there was any Christian council. Paul says that the Jews “were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2). Israel had no infallible council to declare which books were Scripture, yet Jesus held the people of His day accountable to those books, as the passages above have shown. God’s word was able to make itself known to His people before any church voted on it.

Trenham also points to Paul’s description of the Church as “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).⁵⁰ The image is a good one, and it is worth looking at carefully. A pillar holds something up and lifts it where others can see it. It does not create what it holds, and it does not stand above it. The church’s calling is to uphold the truth and display it to the world. A church that does so is a faithful pillar. But a pillar can lean, and the same letter warns that “some will fall away from the faith” (1 Tim. 4:1). To know whether a church is still upholding the truth, one must know what the truth is, and that brings the question back to Scripture.

The Early Witnesses

It would be a mistake to think that this way of reasoning began with the Reformation. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing about A.D. 180 against false teachers who claimed secret traditions of their own, said that the apostles first preached the gospel aloud and then, by the will of God, “handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.”⁵¹ It is striking that he applies to the Scriptures the very words that Paul applied to the Church.

Cyril of Jerusalem, instructing new converts in the fourth century, went further. He told them not to accept even his own teaching on the strength of his word alone: “Even to me, who tell you these things, give not absolute credence,” unless they found the proof in the Scriptures.⁵² These men were not Baptists, and they held many views that Baptists do not share. But on this point they stood where Baptists stand: the teacher submits to the written word.

Conclusion

Trenham says that the trouble with Protestants is that, on this point, “they are not biblical enough.”⁵³ It is a fair challenge, and the way to meet it is to accept it. When the question is put to Scripture, Scripture points back to itself. Jesus judged tradition by the written word. The apostles wrote down their spoken teaching. The Bereans checked an apostle against the Scriptures and were praised for it.

This is the measuring tape described in Section 1, the standard that no church made and that every church must answer to. It does not make Christians infallible readers, and it does not end every disagreement. But it gives them a place to stand when they disagree, and a way to be corrected when they are wrong. The next section turns to the question that has been in the background all along: if Scripture is the rule, what does Scripture say the Church is?