Whither tradition

David Heddle is defending the Protestant use of tradition. He begins by pointing out that the Protestant objectiong to Catholic use of tradition isn't the use of tradition per se. In fact:

Protestants should and in many cases do regard tradition with high esteem. In short:

Protestants do not (or should not) deny tradition.

Protestants find traditions to be valuable.

Protestants have many traditions.

And David is right. There is absolutely nothing wrong with tradition. As David says it can be extremely valuable. Tradition is the collected wisdom of all that have gone before us boiled down to its most fundamental points.

Of course, tradition can also be misleading if used incorrectly. You'll note that I said above that tradition is history's collected wisdom "boiled down to its most basic points." What I mean by that is that tradition typically (but not always) transmits the what without also transmitting the why. If we're not careful, tradition can lead us to continue following certain practices even when the reason for them has long since past.

Now, there's nothing wrong with doing something for no reason. However, it's dangerous to be doing something for no reason if you don't know that's what you're doing. That's largely so because it's extremely tempting to assume that what you're doing is right in and of itself. That belief tends to cause people to denounce those who choose not to follow tradition.

However, it only makes sense to condemn people for renouncing a particular tradition if you accept the Catholic doctrine of sacred tradition. This doctrine, in simplified terms, carries the assumption that tradition is more than the collected wisdom of those Christians who came before us. Under this view, tradition has been guided by the hand of God. It would therefore be better described, in this view, as the collected wisdom of God. ¹

If you hold this view, than it would clearly make sense to bind others to tradition. If you don't hold it, then tradition is just the words of man and, while it may be valuable, it is not invaluable. In other words, if you reject the doctrine of sacred tradition, then it makes no since attempting to bind anyone else to those traditions. As David says, "The difference between Protestants and Catholics is that we do not believe that a church has the authority to bind your conscience to a tradition."

It would probably be more accurate to say that while Protestants dont believe that, we're not entirely consistent in that regard. I don't want to go into specifics here, but I have read of splits between Protestants that I suspected boiled down, at least in part, to one side being angry that the other had rejected certain traditions.

This is unfortunate for two reasons. The first is that it is simply unacceptable for people who agree that tradition isn't binding to, nevertheless, attempt to bind people to certain traditions. The second is that it opens us up to charges of hypocrisy such as David is responding too.

Of course the most frustrating thing about being called a hypocrite in these regards is that it is often true. I will point out that the inability of some Protestants to remain consistent in regards to tradition does not in any way affect the validity of their beliefs. The doctrine either stands or fails on its own irregardless of whether those who hold it are hypocrites.

Indeed all Christians are hypocrites to some degree or another. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Each and every one of us continues to sin even though we know it to be wrong and further know that our sins caused the death of our Savior. That doesn't make the doctrines of the Death, Burial, and Resurection less true. That doesn't make the doctrines of repentence and forgiveness less true. It just means we need them more.

No Christian can afford the argument that his opponents are in error because they are hypocrites. If you advance that arguement you are going to have a lot of difficulty when you turn around and try to teach to the unbeliever.

¹I'm not currently interested in debating which view is best. My focus, as one who would generally be considered "Protestant" is to discuss tradition as protestants view it. On a wholly unrelated note, I generally reject the label of protestant, as I generally reject all labels other than Christian. I am not, in fact protesting anything. The doctrines of the Church of Rome rarely appear on my radar, either to pronounce them or denounce them. It seems rather strange then to label me based on the protests lodged several hundred years ago.