Too often I let personal filters get in the way of real people. I let the institutionalized block my view of the organic. Thanks for the encouragement here.

As I said under Part 1, I totally agree that a Christian ought not exclude himself/herself from the institutional church. We ought to remain loyal to our churches in all their imperfection. But I would not go so far as to say that we ought to stick to that church no matter how “horrible” it becomes. I am thinking in terms of major doctrinal failure, not failure of community love. There comes a point when a church can deviate so far from biblical/ apostolic teaching that it becomes apostate, and therefore, no longer a true church.

This raises the issue of what exactly makes a church a church. The Roman and Orthodox churches insist on an unbroken chain of apostolic succession. The problem is that this does not account for instances when the church strays from apostolic teaching (i.e. Scripture). This was precisely the problem faced by the Reformers. The NT attests the succession of apostolic doctrine, not apostolic office. Therefore I find more convincing the Protestant understanding of church as being defined by (1) the Word of God rightly preached, and (2) the sacraments rightly administered (Calvin).

I must respectfully disagree with your assertion that without church-administered sacraments “there is no salvation to talk about”. Even a cursory reading of the gospels, Acts and the epistles shows us that people are saved by personal faith in Christ, not by sacraments. Augustine defined a sacrament as the sign of a holy thing. A sign points away from itself to the thing signified; it is wrong to identify a sign with the thing signified. The sacraments signify grace received through faith. The medieval church saw the sacraments as the effective means of obtaining the grace signified by them, thus confusing the sign with the thing signified. The Protestant Reformers thus found it necessary to oppose the sacramentalism of the Roman Catholic church. Neither the church nor the sacraments can save. In the NT, the church is the community of individuals already saved by faith in Christ, just as the sacraments are signs pointing to grace already received. They are not in themselves means of salvation, rather, they presuppose a group of already saved people.

Another important point you bring up is the relationship between the bible’s authority and the church’s. Please correct me if I misunderstand you. You seem to place the authority of the church above that of the bible. If I read you correctly, you say that the bible is only authoritative because the early church decided to make it its authoritative document. You then identify the authority of the bible with that of the church – they are one and the same.

The bible, however, has a much higher view of its own authority. It is not just a history of the 1st century church, nor is its authority simply that bestowed upon it by the church. The bible is authoritative because it is the Word of God written. It is the revelation of God’s will for humanity, and in particular, for his church. It therefore has an independent authority apart from that of the church, and it is this authority which decides whether a church is in fact a true church. Only adherence to the bible’s teachings constitutes the true church. The early church did not arbitrarily make the bible its authoritative document, it simply recognized the inherent authority that the bible already possessed. The authority of the bible is invested in the church only insofar as the church remains faithful to the bible.

Not only that, all of the church’s subsequent “self-understanding” is not to be placed on the same authority level as Scripture, as you seem to imply. I do not dismiss the great insights to be found in the foregoing centuries of theological thought and church tradition. However, they remain fallible, only the bible is infallible. All church dogmas and traditions are to be scrutinized in the light of God’s word. Otherwise, if one truly believes that the institutional church holds ultimate authority, in order to be consistent one has to accept without question all the church’s ‘subsequent developments’ including the so-called dogmas of the immaculate conception and papal infallibility. All I’m doing is simply reasserting the fundamental Reformation principle of sola Scriptura.

You say “no authentic Christianity can exist apart from the church institution”. In Part 3, you write “there is no Christianity outside the church in its institutional form”. I understand and applaud your eagerness to emphasize that the church is essential to Christianity, but in so doing, I am concerned that you have not allowed for the possibility that any given institutional church may deviate so far from biblical truth that it no longer is an expression of authentic Christianity. Here, Calvin’s distinction between the invisible and the visible church is very helpful. This distinction has a NT basis, for although ‘ekklesia’ is used in the NT in reference to discrete local congregations, it also denotes the universal fellowship of believers (e.g. Gal 1:13; Eph 1:22; Col 1:18). The invisible/universal church is the communion of all true believers throughout all ages. The visible/local/institutional church is the visible expression or representative of the church universal in any given locality. The visible/ institutional church in this age will always contain a mixture of true and false believers (see Jesus’ parable of the weeds, Mt 13:24-30). It has the capacity to stray from biblical truth. It is only the invisible/universal church that is the ‘one holy catholic and apostolic church’ of the Apostles’ Creed – no institutional church in itself can exclusively claim this designation.

In making a distinction between the invisible and visible church, I am not saying that the visible/institutional church is unimportant or only an optional extra. God commands it to be the visible representation of his church on earth. All I am doing is introducing the caveat that any given church may lose the right to command adherence among true believers if it departs from the received apostolic teaching found in the bible.

Thus I believe that evangelical ecclesiology most accurately reflects the teaching of the NT. The evangelical conception of the church is that of the ‘invisible church’. The church consists of all who believe in Christ for salvation, and therefore the church transcends denominational and local ecclesiastical boundaries. We can and ought to be in fellowship with those in other denominations and churches who share the same Lord, the same Spirit, the same faith, without requiring that they separate from their institutional churches. That is the ideal which is sadly not always put into practice. In reality, it is a matter of great shame that evangelicals have often been so schismatic. Unfortunately many of the issues over which evangelicals split are non-essential issues (e.g. church governance, personality clashes, which version of the bible to use, views of the millennium etc etc). The ideal of the spiritual unity of the church is often not borne out in a visible unity.

I am making no excuse for such failure among evangelicals – there is much to repent of. But this failure does not invalidate their understanding of the church, which is fundamentally correct. Their failure is not due to a weakness in their theology, but in the sinful human heart which fails to live up to one’s theology. In reacting against such failures, I think it problematic to swing to the other extreme and uncritically embrace the institutional church if that has to occur at the expense of a high view of Scripture and a biblical view of salvation.

Hi Sherman, would like to hear your respond on this...

Hi ST,

I’m so sorry that it has taken so long to reply your comment. Thank you so much for the time and effort you’ve taken to initiate this discussion. Whatever we may agree or disagree on, I would like to first of all say that I very deeply appreciate your honesty and your respectful way of expressing theological disagreement. Such a manner of interaction is very hard to come by nowadays, especially on weblogs.

Okay, I’d better move on with my response, since I have just about half an hour before I have to go conduct a lecture.

If I understand you correctly, you do agree that the marks of a true church are oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. But the divergence in our understanding probably comes from the interpretation of that which constitutes “apostolicity”. For the Orthodox and Roman Churches, “apostolicity” comes from the unbroken chain of apostolic succession. For the Reformed tradition, “apostolicity” is qualified by the preaching and the sacraments.

As far as the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches are concerned (as they stand today - it wouldn’t be fair to judge either of them according to their past just as we probably wouldn’t like to be judged by our past too), I think they would agree that the proclamation and the sacraments are extremely crucial non-negotiables in the life of the church. But they’d go further to say that it’s the unbroken chain of apostolic succession that ensures the efficacy of the proclamation and the sacraments.

In using the NT to support the case for the Reformed position, I would think that these other Christian traditions similarly have an equal number of (if not more) quotes from scripture to support their case. Ultimately, it’s an issue of

a) Hermeneutics - How we interpret scripture. Being Protestant, it would naturally mean that most of us hold our hermeneutics to be the most legitimate and reliable one. I must be honest to say that I personally have shifted somewhat from this understanding. In fact, I have questions about hermeneutics which the “science of exegesis” has not yet been able to answer until this day.

b) Holy Tradition - The place of tradition in relation to scripture. The Roman Catholic view sees tradition as something that complements scripture. The doctrine of the papacy allows for the Pope to establish traditions ex cathedra that are deemed to not contradict scripture. I personally have a problem with the idea of a papacy, although I have profound respect for the Pope himself as a model of spirituality I’d like to imitate. But this means that I cannot with a clear conscience agree to the Pope’s right in establishing traditions as a religious monarch. The Eastern view sees the Holy Tradition as the rule of faith. This Tradition is not in exclusion of scripture. In fact, scripture is of ultimate importance in the Tradition. Everything that is contained within the Tradition finds its life in the way the Ecumenical Councils and the Fathers of the Church have interpreted scripture. And the Eastern Church sees herself as a continuation of that Tradition. Scripture is the part of the Tradition that is documented. Everything else that isn’t documented is preserved by the church, i.e. the community of faith that has preserved the teachings of the apostles. In fact, the Orthodox Church says that we cannot understand the scriptures correctly without the help of the Holy Tradition.

So even in our appeal of scripture in such arguments (healthy ones, that is), I think we end up debating on different frequencies because of the sheer difference in the ways we view scripture.

In speaking on salvation, the Reformers emerged with a rather variant understanding of salvation as a personal event, often devoid of the ecclesiological dimension. I take an Eastern Orthodox view of salvation as a process of ontological unification with Christ, through which we partake in his nature (they call it theosis or “deification”). In this view, Christ has given the church the means to bring each Christian towards theosis, and these means are called the mysterion (or better known to us as the “sacraments”). Some of these sacraments were directly instituted by Christ himself, whilst others were instituted by the Apostles and Church Fathers (we’ve established how this is seen as legitimate in the Eastern understanding of Tradition).

Again, as far as the authority of scripture is compared to the authority of the church, the Eastern Orthodox faith believes that scripture belongs to the church, in the sense that the community of faith is a continuation of scripture and is the depository and guardian of the truths of scripture. I stand on this position too. The people who wrote scripture have always been a part of the community of faith (either the Israelites or the Early Church). It was they who wrote that scripture is our supreme rule of faith, and Jesus did approve of this showing it to be his rule of faith too during his time on earth. So scripture was written by the people within the community of God (who were certainly inspired of the Holy Spirit). And it’s precisely the same community of God that is now given the task of interpreting scripture in accordance to the way of the Ecumenical Councils and the Church Fathers. Whilst having quoted Augustine (because Luther was himself an Augustinian monk prior to the Reformation), the Reformers had somewhat defied the successive chain of scriptural interpretation in like manner, holding that scripture could be interpreted anew through one’s own reading. On this, I often find myself having an issue.

The institutional church is the visible embodiment of this community of faith, even if not all within the institutional church constitute a part of this community of faith. And likewise, the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed cannot be claimed to possess a life of their own apart from the visible embodiment of these claims in the life of the church. Having said this, I too affirm that “the church may lose the right to command adherence among true believers if it departs from the received apostolic teaching found in the bible”; and ironically, this is precisely the Orthodox church’s gripe about the Protestant churches – we’re legion, and we have variant ways of interpreting scripture with seemingly no past to appeal to beyond the Reformation. So what we call our preservation of apostolic teaching is, to them, less than apostolic. Also, it’s interesting to note that even among the Protestant churches themselves, there is until now no consensus on what constitutes the exact content of our “apostolic teaching”.

The Reformed tradition has often had a problem with those people who seemed to place an “over-emphasis” on the institutional church, even if Calvin himself insisted that the institutional church is indispensable for anyone who calls himself/herself Christian. I appreciate your concern that in reaction to the unjustifiable exercise of a churchless Christianity, many like me might have pandered to an over-emphasis on the institutional nature of the church. For me, it has been a result of my intra-faith interaction rather than as a reaction towards this phenomenon. I sincerely hope that it has not come across as a reaction.

Once again, thank you so much, ST. I can see that we do not fully agree on certain ecclesiological issues, but this discussion is innately beautiful in itself because there has been such a sense of mutual respect in our articulations.

A huh!!!No wonder I was so confused about which should be first the authority of Scripture, relationships and church tradition in ur CT class. Now I got ur drift that your stand is Church Tradition and Scripture go hand in hand. That's why u challenge us along that drift. Hmm..something new to me. I used to stand on the ground of experience and Scripture goes hand in hand being a Pentecostal fan. But now, I'm more towards Sola Scriptural. anyway, at least I know where u r cuming from when you teach.

Thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to write your very charitable and gracious response and for your openness in allowing me the opportunity to share my viewpoint on your blog. I’m glad to be able to discuss this as brothers in Christ, even though we don’t know each other. I hope you don’t mind if I prolong the dialogue by responding to some of the interesting points you raised. I agree that we are on somewhat different wavelengths given that we are arguing from different foundational beliefs about Scripture. So I want to tackle this issue of Scripture and hermeneutics first.

On Hermeneutics:

All theological discourse must appeal to some authority or other, as we have seen in our own discussion, and the issue of hermeneutics always becomes central. The popular view in postmodern thought is that all interpretations are subjective and can never truly reach the original meaning of the author. I think this is too pessimistic. When we talk to people, we work on the assumption that it is possible for them to understand exactly what we are saying! If there is an objective meaning, there must be an objective interpretation in any given context.

I would affirm that the bible’s authors consciously intended to convey a particular meaning, and that it is possible, by and large, to understand what they were saying, despite our temporal and cultural distance from them. We do bring our personal and cultural presuppositions to the text, but if we try to become conscious of what these are, and always keep watch that we are not imposing them on the text, then I believe it is possible for the text to speak in its own right. A prooftexting approach to Scripture is certainly inadequate to gain an understanding of its meaning. Deep understanding of Scripture can only come from a historical knowledge of the ancient world and its thought forms, as well as a painstaking grammatical and literary study of the text. Another principle is to use what the Reformers called ‘the analogy of Scripture’, which today we call ‘a canonical approach’, i.e. allow clearer parts of Scripture to interpret parts that are more obscure. Otherwise, if we have little confidence in the possibility of getting the author’s intended meaning, then no matter how authoritative we claim the bible to be, it ends up being useless to us because we can’t understand what it is saying.

On Holy tradition:

Historically the church appealed to the ‘rule of faith’ to guard against heretical interpretation. This procedure is effective only if the church itself has a correct interpretation of Scripture. So, for example, in the Arian controversy, the council of Nicaea appealed correctly to Scripture. But I contend that it is also possible for the church to incorrectly interpret Scripture. As I said previously, Scripture’s authority is independent to that of the church. If the church incorrectly interprets it, then Scripture no longer stands on the side of the church.

Consider the many issues on which the medieval Catholic church had misinterpreted Scripture: the doctrine of purgatory, the intercession of the saints, withholding the Communion cup from the laity, not allowing priests to marry. And what about the doctrine of limbo which has finally after centuries been discarded by the Vatican this year? Please don’t think I am dragging out the Roman Catholic church’s past faults to “judge it by its past”. Protestants too are susceptible to error, not just Catholics. I am merely arguing from history, particularly given that the emphasis you place on church history.

Even the ecumenical councils and other official church pronouncements are not immune from error or schism. One only has to think of the shameful ‘Robber Council’ of Ephesus in 449. Or the East-West schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople. Or the council of Pisa in 1408, which dealt with the problem of 2 warring popes by simply electing a third pope. My point is that ecclesiastical authority is fallible as it is inevitably tainted by human sinfulness. Unfortunately, church history shows us the falsehood of the claim that the community of faith has always been “the depository and guardian of the truths of Scripture”, because the “successive chain of interpretation” down the ages has at times distorted and contradicted Scripture. We should regard church tradition as a respected dialogue partner alongside us rather than as an authority over us.

I will not only appeal to church history, but also to the bible. Hopefully there will be no question of hermeneutical uncertainty in the following passages. Even an apostle only has authority if he himself is subject to the message he proclaims. (Gal 1:8 – “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!”) Even an apostle is susceptible to error when he deviates from the gospel entrusted to him (Gal 2:11). Even an apostle’s word must be confirmed by Scripture (Acts 17:11 – “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”) How much more true are these things of those who come after the apostles! No church authority deserves uncritical blanket approval. Also, the rise of theological error in the church is nothing to be surprised about, because Scripture repeatedly predicts this. Our only defence against this is for all our thought and ministry to be permeated by Scripture (1 Tim 4:13; 2 Tim 3:16-17; 4:2). We can’t rest on our laurels just because we are in a position where we can claim to speak for the church, but must continually evaluate our life and doctrine by Scripture (1 Tim 4:16) and “correctly handle the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15).

To rely solely on the ‘rule of faith’ method is to end up reading our theological presuppositions into the text (eisegesis) rather than out of it (exegesis). It is to allow our theological framework to determine our Scripture interpretation rather than vice versa. I agree with Grant Osborne who writes in his book ‘The Hermeneutical Spiral’ that “The “Rule of Faith” in the Middle Ages developed out of the patristic desire to gain control over subjective exegesis, then became a victim of its own ascendancy!” (p413) To put church tradition on a par with Scripture is effectively to silence Scripture, precisely because church history claims to speak for Scripture. When there is a divergence between the two, do we allow Scripture to speak for itself, or must we always filter the voice of Scripture through church tradition, thus forcing Scripture to say only what the church wants it to say? As for the authority of the church to institute its own sacraments, I think even the church fathers would disapprove, not to mention Scripture. This kind of arbitrary theologizing is like a runaway train, unfettered by any ties to Scripture.

Ultimately the ‘rule of faith’ fails also because it begs the question of ‘whose rule of faith?’ The only argument the Catholic or Orthodox churches can use to claim to be the true inheritor of ‘the holy tradition’ is that of apostolic succession (which I will address below). Both sides claim apostolic succession, and so do the Anglican and Swedish Lutheran churches (if I’m not mistaken), so who is right? It ends up being entirely arbitrary and based on prior theological commitments and tribal loyalties. Take away the primacy of Scripture, and you are left with a cacophony of conflicting human voices.

The Reformers insisted on the right of appeal against the church where they could not in conscience obey the church without disobeying Scripture. This Protestant emphasis on the right of private judgement has had both positive and negative consequences. There has been, and continues to be, disagreement on how to interpret Scripture, and therefore, a Protestant tendency to split and become “legion”. While I agree that this is a legitimate criticism of Protestantism as a whole, I agree with J I Packer who asserts that often these splits are caused by the failure to uphold the principle of sola Scriptura. He points out that in fact there is substantial agreement on important theological matters within all the forms of historic Protestantism as long as they hold fast to sola Scriptura.

I don’t think the solution to being “legion” is to impose uniformity from above, the option chosen by the Roman and Eastern churches, nor is it right to leave it entirely up to the individual interpreter’s discretion. The right of private judgement shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning that human reason is the ultimate authority in interpretation. That too is fallible. The solution is to continue to uphold sola Scriptura and allow that to scrutinize every theological formulation and all our life and conduct. The text itself must be our guide. We must foster careful study of the bible and fairly weigh each interpretation on its own merits. Technical proficiency is important, but not enough in itself. We must also rely on the inner witness of the Holy Spirit (another of Calvin’s emphases – Inst. I.vii). Word and Spirit work together in revelation. We must involve “the community of faith” and listen to how others interpret it, and allow them to evaluate and sharpen our own interpretations. We must be humble, keep an open mind and be prepared to listen to sound Scriptural arguments by others. We must train Christian teachers and pastors to use the bible carefully, rather than simply rely on human authorities, be they teachers, commentaries, or respected theologians. And we must be prepared to be ‘agnostic’ on issues the bible is not clear on (which are not essential to salvation) and not take a divisive dogmatic stance on these.

On the apostolic succession:

Firstly, the sacramental (magical?) view of ordination has no biblical basis. If the apostles were the only channels for valid ordinations, then you would expect them to have taken the greatest care about their ordinations and left clear instructions for how to carry on the ministry. But the NT does not provide for continuation of the apostolic office, which is deemed to have ceased with the apostles. Certainly there is not a whiff of evidence in the NT that any apostle transmitted to anyone the ‘power’ to ordain. Neither is there anything in the NT to justify the idea of a sacramental ‘succession’ of the office of bishop to those on whom the bishop has laid hands. On the contrary, the NT repeatedly emphasizes the faithful transmission of the apostolic gospel and doctrine. As I said before, the NT provides for the succession of apostolic teaching, not the apostolic office.

Church history gives us more insight into the views of the early church on this. 1 Clement speaks of the officers of the community interchangeably as bishops (episkopos) or presbyters/elders (presbyteros), as does the ‘Shepherd of Hermas’. 2 Clement mentions presbyters only, Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians mentions presbyters and deacons, and the ‘Didache’ mentions bishops and deacons. The equating of bishop with presbyter is of course in line with the NT usage of the terms, which never assumes the whole episcopacy system of church government. The word ‘bishop’ in the 1st century did not have the connotations it has now. Ignatius extravagantly insists on the authority of the bishop, with very good motives of course, but in so doing, certainly goes beyond NT warrant. Irenaeus never speaks of a transmission of grace through ordination, but only of an open and public admission to office, even though the episcopal system is well established by his time. It is clear from church history that the episcopacy and its associated belief in apostolic succession developed gradually after the apostolic era, in the first 2-3 centuries.

While those who claim apostolic succession might see it as a great heritage, I certainly don’t think it’s essential. Reminds me somehow of John the Baptist’s words to the religious leaders: “And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.” (Matt 3:9). I don’t think God cares much for that kind of succession, be it Abrahamic or apostolic. Moreover, taking the NT at face value, Congregationalism and Presbyterianism have just as much claim (perhaps even more!) to following the NT pattern as does Episcopalianism. I have no objection in principle to churches being organized on an episcopalian system. However, I disagree when people claim that this system is the only legitimate way to organize the church and that those outside this system are not real churches and have no right to preach the Word or administer the sacraments. My response is that, in the NT, it is those who depart from the belief and conduct handed down from the apostles that have lost the privilege to be the church. Think of Jesus’ warnings to the churches of Sardis and Laodicea in Revelation 3. So, if one has to speak of apostolic succession, the true ‘succession’ in my view belongs to those successors who remain faithful to apostolic doctrine and practice – in Calvin’s words, the Word rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered.

On salvation:

A final brief note on your comment that the Reformers emphasized salvation as a personal event. Salvation as a personal event is a completely NT understanding of salvation. It is certainly not a “variant understanding”. The NT doesn’t see salvation as dead orthodoxy (small letter ‘o’) but a living encounter with the Lord Jesus. It is not being born into a Christian tradition that makes one a Christian, but personal faith in Christ. But having said that, I don’t think the Reformers ever despised the ecclesiological dimension of Christian faith. The idea of a privatized faith disengaged from the wider community may have originated with the Pietists and was inherited by certain branches of evangelicalism. But to force us to choose between personal experience and corporate experience is to introduce a false dichotomy. Both are essential components of Christian faith and praxis. The need for personal faith does not necessarily make that faith entirely subjective or immune from the formative influence of the church or other Christians, as long as that influence is grounded in the teaching of Scripture.

I would love to go on to respond to many other points you raised, for example, the Eastern view of theosis. But this is dragging on way too long, and I’m sure you are weary of it, as I am. So I’ll leave it here, but before that, thank you very much once again for your kindness in allowing me the opportunity to interact with your theological ideas on your forum.

Hi ST,

Yes! I absolutely agree that the postmodern reader-response, and therefore relative, view of the text is a self-defeating notion. Together with this, I affirm that there must be some procedure to interpret scripture in a way that’s true to the ethos of the historical Christian faith. This begs the following question:

Can we ever get entirely beyond our cultural presuppositions? The Enlightenment approach supposes that it is possible to derive accurate scriptural interpretations based on the science of exegesis, which includes all forms of criticism (e.g. historical, textual, literary-source, form, redaction, structural, etc). I tend to think that even the exegetical exercise itself is fraught with many Enlightenment-conditioned presuppositions which remain unexamined, rendering it a questionable method for scriptural interpretation when compared to the method offered by the unbroken tradition (which has a much older and longer precedence than the use of exegetical method itself). This is not to say that the exegetical method is dysfunctional and serves no purpose, but rather, that the result of my exegetical work should not defy the interpretations of the tradition.

I find it is difficult to justify the position of scripture apart from that which has been accorded to it by the faith community. The canon was historically determined by the church itself, not imposed externally through a divine decree from heaven (notwithstanding that Jesus recognised that very canon of the Old Testament). I am not arguing for a primacy of tradition over scripture. I’m positing a claim that scripture is actually a part of tradition itself. This argument may not seem familiar to many, because we’re more familiar with the Roman Catholic dual-source theory, not with the Eastern Orthodox way of seeing scripture as being a part of the Holy Tradition (and the most important part of it at that). Whilst the apostles in the New Testament believed that they could not preach a message apart from the gospel, that gospel in itself did not exist in written form during their time save for the Old Testament scriptures. What I’m saying is, the apostles were very much propagating a gospel by oral tradition. Whilst part of that oral tradition was later on documented, the only way by which we can more fully understand that which has been documented is to also understand the oral traditions that were not documented, which provide crystalisation on that which has been documented and which we call “scripture” today. It is demonstrable that during those points of church history when wrong interpretations of scripture were made, they were made apart from that which has been prescribed in the tradition (and it is true that this is quite an inclination in Roman Catholicism, but not in Eastern Orthodoxy).

The problem with Roman Catholicism is that it has had an inclination to see tradition and scripture as two separate things, both having equal jurisdiction. But within Orthodoxy, scripture is a part of tradition, and that has implications on the way scripture is handled. So by and large, this is why I tend to take the Orthodox view that to understand the tradition documented (scripture), we need to allow the undocumented tradition to help us interpret our readings. This is also where the concept of the church as the depository of truth comes into light, where the teachings of the apostles have been preserved by those who have received the conferred authority from scripture. It is for this reason that the Orthodox church has a problem with the sola scriptura principle.

But this does not mean that the Orthodox church has no allowance for disagreements. There is a marked difference between Tradition and traditions. Tradition refers to those theological fundamentals of the church that must not be detracted from that which has been held since the days of the Apostles. Traditions refers to those practices that are arbitrary and do not affect the authenticity of the Christian faith even when expressed variantly. In our terms, it would mean that to defy the Tradition would be to diverge from the original interpretation of scripture. It is held that the same Holy Spirit who has spoken to the Apostles and their subsequent descendents in the faith continues to preserve the Tradition among the faithful.

On apostolic succession, this practice constitutes the part of the tradition that isn’t documented as a part of scripture. Since it arises from the Orthodox belief that scripture is a part of tradition and not the only thing (which means there is more than just scripture), to use scripture to deny the practice would not make sense to the Orthodox church. It makes sense only for the Protestants, since we largely tend to hold the sola scriptura principle. It still has yet to be demonstrated within the Protestant faith how it is possible to hold that our teachings are apostolic without the apostolic succession. If it is based on the exegetical exercise, this science did not emerge until after the Enlightenment in the West.

In speaking of the Protestant emphasis on personal salvation, I’m referring more to an “individualistic” rendition of salvation. Orthodoxy certainly has no qualms about the faith being personal in the sense of an individual’s involvement. In fact, when I asked an Orthodox priest about his faith journey, his very experiential description was “satisfying”, which speaks of a very personal dimension of his faith. Much of orthodox liturgy sounds very relational and experiential.

Wow, this has been quite some conversation! I’ve certainly benefited much from your articulations of Reformed theology. Once again, thank you, ST.

Wow...this is really great stuff:) Will take time for me to chew !! oyah Sherman, let me introduce my ex high school M'sian friend, Swee Teng (ST), he's M'sian who is studying Ridley College, Melbourne, Aust, 2nd yr MDiv. I'm the one introduce him to your blog. ST, hope u dun mind me introducing yourself to Sherman- tot this will make interactions more effective - iron sharpens iron, man sharpens man.

Great to "meet" you, ST!

Hi Sherman

It’s truly a pleasure to make your (cyber) acquaintance too. (Thanks CK for the introduction – no more incognito for me!) Thanks for clarifying the views of Eastern Orthodoxy in distinction to Catholicism, which often get tarred with the same brush by ignorant evangelicals like me! I must admit having very little exposure to and certainly no personal encounter with Eastern Orthodoxy (except on TV), so I’ve done a wee bit of catch-up reading on it as time allowed. Perhaps some day I should go and attend one of their services too. Theological writings and seminaries in the West tend to ignore the East, though there has been more East-West dialogue of late, including with evangelicals. I’m sure such a lamentable omission is not found at your institution. Indeed I’m surprised to find such an enthusiastic apologist for Eastern Orthodoxy in a Malaysian seminary of all places, but there you go! In any case, although I make no pretensions to a full grasp of Eastern theology, I offer what follows as a preliminary critique based on the little I know at present.

On the canon:

You are right that the canon was determined historically by the church itself. But this does not mean that its establishment was not also a work of God (if that’s what you mean by “imposed externally through a divine decree from heaven”). My understanding of divine agency allows for God to work through mediate/secondary causes including human agency (as in the case of the writing of the Scriptures). I agree that the OT canon had been established by Jesus’ time (and it didn’t include the Apocrypha).

Without getting into a full-blown debate about the canon, I think the church’s role in establishing the NT canon was not so much one of selection but one of recognition. The apostolic traditions that had been transmitted orally had to be preserved in writing, particularly in view of second century heresies like Marcionism. The church set about to identify those writings that were already regarded as authoritative Scripture in various church communities scattered throughout the ancient world. For example, the church at Rome had Mark’s gospel, the church at Syria Matthew’s gospel, the church in Asia Minor John’s gospel, and presumably Luke’s gospel was associated with the Pauline churches. All these documents were collected and shared around for everyone to evaluate and use. The gathered church did not confer authoritative status on them which had not existed beforehand, but merely recognized their intrinsic authority and made that recognition official by finalizing the canon.

The criteria used for such recognition perhaps included the use of those writings in the church communities as Scripture, their subject matter being consistent with received apostolic teaching, and their authorship by apostles or those intimately associated with the apostles (except in the case of the book of Hebrews where the authorship is unknown). The fact that there was unanimous agreement across the entire church with all its regional differences, even on the disputed books, suggests to me that the collection and identification of the NT canon is a work of God’s Spirit. I therefore agree with you regarding the church’s role in ‘crystallizing’ early apostolic tradition. They crystallized the written traditions that were already there, they did not invent them, nor did they suppress any traditions that were equally authentic records of apostolic tradition (as Dan Brown in his Da Vinci Code would have us believe).

On the Great Tradition:

On the basis of the above, you see Scripture as forming part of a fuller Tradition, which also incorporates the consensus of the church in the first 500-1000 years of its history. In your view, Scripture is merely a subset of a larger tradition that was preserved in the church both in written and oral forms. However, our paths must diverge at this point. Within this larger Tradition, I would insist on a distinction between the apostolic tradition and all subsequent tradition. Even though the canon was finalized only centuries after the apostolic period, it is a true embodiment of the apostolic tradition. That is because the NT documents were all written by the close of the 1st century (notwithstanding the scepticism of modern liberal scholarship). The same obviously does not apply to the subsequent development of Christian doctrine. While the inscripturated apostolic witness is infallible, what comes after that (which you call the Tradition) is fallible, because of the cessation of the apostolic office. As Calvin repeatedly emphasized, the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” (Eph 2:20) Subsequent tradition should be built on and corrected by apostolic tradition in Scripture. You say “the result of my exegetical work should not defy the interpretations of the tradition.” I say the reverse – the interpretation of my tradition should not defy the result of my exegetical work.

Please don’t think I am saying that the Tradition is to be summarily dismissed. That would be a great act of hubris on the part of evangelicals (although sadly some have gone in this direction). Eastern Orthodoxy can’t seem to move beyond the caricature of evangelicals as having “no past to appeal to beyond the Reformation”, as you said in your earlier post. Evangelicals are not Anabaptists! We do not see church history from NT times up till the Reformation as altogether useless. Good evangelical scholars interact with theologians ancient and modern, both those they agree with and disagree with, and increasingly also with Eastern Orthodox scholars. They study the creeds, they benefit greatly from the insights of others in understanding Scripture. But they don’t place them as authorities to be accepted without question. They see church tradition as a respected dialogue partner alongside them rather than as an authority over them.

So, I see the subsequent ‘Tradition’ as the church’s ongoing development of/reflection on the foundational tradition of the apostolic witness preserved for us in Scripture. Both can be regarded as traditions in the broader sense of that word, but I would disagree with merging the two into one all-encompassing Tradition. That would be to merge the words of God and the words of man, a very dangerous exercise. Not only so, that would mean putting the words of man in a position where they claim to speak authoritatively on God’s behalf. That’s what I meant when I said that “to put church tradition on a par with Scripture is effectively to silence Scripture”.

I do not doubt your sincerity when you say that you do not intend to argue for “a primacy of tradition over Scripture”. But the logical and necessary consequence of subsuming Scripture into the larger entity of Tradition is to drown out Scripture’s distinctive voice altogether. Whenever something cannot be justified in Scripture, all one has to do is say “oh, that wasn’t in the written tradition but it’s in our unwritten tradition” – that’s how you’ve justified things like apostolic succession and the church making up its own sacraments. This effectively sidelines Scripture – Scripture might as well not be there at all, because it doesn’t make any real difference in practical terms. Scripture’s voice becomes shrouded, smothered even, in layers of calcified tradition which claim to be a faithful representation of Scriptural teaching. Much like Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine chapel before the accumulated grime of centuries was stripped from them! The purest, most authentic gospel is not to be found in theological formulations centuries down from the time of the apostles, but in the Source itself, namely, Scripture. As the Renaissance men cried, so do I: “Ad fontes!” (Back to the sources!)

While I’m sure that Eastern Orthodoxy continues to pay lip service to the authority of Scripture, I would contend that, on the practical level, Scripture seems quite dispensable to them. Greek friends have told me what a typical Orthodox service is like. Not much place for preaching from Scripture at all. A quick flick through the writings of Eastern theologians gives me the impression that they appeal to the authority of patristics far more than they do to Scripture (though I’m not that familiar with Eastern theology so I stand to be corrected). You may say, well, the church fathers interpreted Scripture so the later Eastern tradition simply piggy-backed on the older interpretations. But can one assume that all of the church fathers used Scripture well? There was a lot of speculative theologizing without Scriptural basis in the patristic period, just as there is today. I rarely hear of good biblical scholarship coming from Eastern Orthodoxy. Lots of speculative theologians and mystics, yes, but less interest in listening to what the bible has to say in its own right. So, I ask, what would it look like in practice (not in theory) to adopt the Eastern view of Tradition? It would mean we simply don’t think studying the bible or appealing to it in theological discussion is all that important. All we would need to do is quote the definitive opinions of authorities like Athanasius, or Basil, or Gregory of Nyssa, or John of Damascus, or Maximus the Confessor. I am not persuaded by such an approach.

As always, let me illustrate from the bible. In Jesus’ time, the Pharisees had their own oral tradition, the Halakah. Of course, they did not consider it as a separate authority to the Hebrew Scriptures (God forbid!), but as explicating and drawing out the implications of the Scriptures, as ‘fencing the Torah’. Needless to say, Jesus saw right through that pretence: “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!” (Mark 7:9) And what about the golden calf incident in Exodus 32? Surely Aaron was not so senseless as to suppose that the Israelites should actually worship the calf itself. No, it was more sophisticated than that – the calf was a visual aid to the worship of Yahweh! (See Exod 32:5 – “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD.”) Perhaps it would be called an ‘icon’ in our day, a visual representation pointing to Yahweh, just another additional layer of tradition coming from a most authoritative figure! The OT prophets repeatedly called Israel to “turn back” to the Lord, for whenever the people of God drifted apart from God’s Word (the Torah), they turned away from God himself.

It seems that the difference between the Orthodox and evangelical views is that they have a largely optimistic view of the capacity of human tradition to preserve truth, whereas we are more pessimistic. Our position is based on the doctrine of human depravity emphasized by the Reformers, which is itself solidly Augustinian, whereas the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of sin is much more (dare I say it) semi-Pelagian. They are much more idealistic, we are much more realistic. They see the role of subsequent tradition as creative, we see it as derivative.

Having read a little of the arguments of Orthodox theologians, I see that they dislike the notion of authority as if it were an external imposition, but see authority as innate to the church itself, a work of the Spirit. I’m glad that both Christology and pneumatology are fundamental to their ecclesiology – the church being ‘the body of Christ and the fullness of the Spirit’. However, I would venture to suggest that the presence of the Spirit in the church is no guarantee that truth will prevail in all quarters of the church. I totally agree that the Spirit is present in power in his church, but just as there is sinful conduct in the church, there is also faulty doctrine.

Indeed, “the Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons”! (1 Tim 4:1) I previously alluded to Jesus’ parable of the weeds, which teaches the mixed state of the church until the parousia. Moreover, if orthodoxy or orthopraxis follows automatically from the Spirit’s presence, why the instruction not to “quench the Spirit” (1 Th 5:19) or “grieve the Spirit” (Eph 4:30)? Why the need for Paul to warn the Corinthians that they must stop sinning because they are the temple of the Holy Spirit both corporately (1 Cor 3:16) and individually (1 Cor 6:19)? The very presence of these warnings implies the possibility of Christians falling short, despite the presence of the Spirit in what was a very ‘Spirit-filled’ Corinthian community. So, within the larger institutional church, there will be quarters where faithful adherence to apostolic teaching is preserved and where that teaching is abandoned for more humanly attractive options. The only protection against false doctrine is to hold fast to Scripture (see verses I quoted in previous post). The Spirit works in his church alright, but he works through the Word which Christ passed on to his apostles. “But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14:26, cf also 16:13-15) The Spirit does not work against the Word, for that would be a self-contradiction, because the Word was inspired by the Spirit in the first place. So it is not possible for us to claim that Tradition is fostered by the Spirit if that tradition runs counter to the Word.

You distinguish between the Tradition and traditions. The latter are not of equal worth, some are patently false. I pointed out that even the highest of church authorities, the ecumenical councils, can err. So, I would ask the Orthodox people, how do you decide which tradition qualifies as part of the Tradition? By what criteria? Church history split between East and West in 1054, and then in the West, split once again at the Reformation. What makes the East think that it is the inheritor of the true Tradition, and not the West, or for that matter, the Reformation? On what basis? It is no small thing to claim the exclusive right to speak for God. It is no small thing to claim to be THE (only) one holy catholic and apostolic church, to the exclusion of all others. One had better be able to justify that audacious claim. And I am not persuaded that Eastern Orthodoxy has done so at all. The only authority they appeal to is themselves, a somewhat circular argument in my mind. At the end of the day, there needs to be an independent authority that we can appeal to. To say that authority is innate to our community (but not yours) is a display of arrogance and exclusivism.

You say that “it still has yet to be demonstrated within the Protestant faith how it is possible to hold that our teachings are apostolic without the apostolic succession.” I will not repeat my arguments that ‘apostolic’ means apostolic doctrine rather than office. I will say this – if evangelicals have been faithful to Scripture and preserved apostolic teaching, then they can only be accused of being “less than apostolic” by those who hijack and copyright the label “apostolic” for themselves in a most un-apostolic fashion! It is odious that some would boast about their ‘heritage’, but if I was forced to do so as a Protestant, I’d much rather boast of the heritage of being faithful to the teaching of Jesus and his apostles than the heritage of all the councils and patriarchs in the world. To give priority to later formulations of apostolic teaching without paying attention to the source itself is surely to put the cart before the kerbau!

I’m not saying that we have nothing to learn from the Orthodox church. Some point at evangelical disunity and admire the apparent unity of the Orthodox church. However, I’ve read media articles where that mirage of unity evaporates when you dig a bit deeper beneath the surface. (Check out this link where none other than an Orthodox leader laments Orthodox disunity: http://www.oca.org/Docs.asp?SID=12&ID=119) Some evangelical churches make you cringe by the superficiality and banality of their worship and theology. No wonder that some have converted to Orthodoxy, hankering after the perceived depth of their worship and liturgy. But it works both ways. Many Orthodox believers have converted to evangelicalism too, having grown up in a nominal Christianity they feel to be rich in form but devoid of substance. Many Russians are disillusioned with the Orthodox church, seeing it as tainted by political compromise and stuck in the Middle Ages. To me, it is possible to be orthodox (small letter) without being Orthodox (capital letter). I am orthodox and affirm the early creeds like the Nicene creed or the Chalcedonian formulation just like any other orthodox Christian. But I’m not Eastern Orthodox because I reject a lot of their fundamental assumptions on Scripture, revelation, sin, salvation, ecclesiology and sacraments. And I’m certainly not happy about how Orthodox churches in many Eastern European countries persecute Protestants.

On the exegetical enterprise as an Enlightenment innovation:

I wouldn’t regard the practice of grammatical-historical exegesis as an Enlightenment invention. It’s basically just a disciplined and systematic way of understanding any written communication. Exegesis adhering closely to the historical background and the literal meaning of the text was practised by the church fathers in the Antiochene school by people such as Theodore of Mopsuestia (later unfairly anathematized), Theodoret of Cyrus and John Chrysostom. One has only to read their commentaries and sermons. History tells us that the Alexandrian allegorizing method (e.g. of Origen) won the day, resulting in the medieval Western Quadriga method (the fourfold sense of Scripture). At the Reformation, the Reformers reasserted the literal (not literalistic) method of exegesis. The Enlightenment adopted this method, but brought to it many sceptical presuppositions that had previously been absent. Whereas the Reformers had regarded Scripture as the very Word of God, along with all other branches of Christendom, the Enlightenment questioned that presupposition. Thus, I would not align the sceptical assumptions of the Enlightenment with grammatical-historical exegesis as such, because the latter does not necessarily go hand in hand with the former.

The accusation from the postmodern stance nowadays is that evangelical exegesis has adopted wholesale the modernist assumptions of the Enlightenment which has been so devastatingly critiqued by postmodernism. That criticism holds true in some evangelical quarters, but not all. The Enlightenment essentially switched from the authority of church tradition in Scripture interpretation (a.k.a. the rule of faith) to the authority of human reason. Not all Protestants/evangelicals agreed with that, on the contrary, many Protestant theologians of a previous generation critiqued modernism, just as some evangelical scholars today critique postmodernism.

Phew! I will have to stop here. It’s been a very worthwhile discussion and I’ve learnt much from your clear articulations and from having to think through them. Thanks for the privilege!

Sorry, here's that Orthodox web link again (without the bracket on the end):
www.oca.org/Docs.asp?SID=12&ID=119

Hi ST,

Thanks for your reply. I really appreciate your having taken the time to think through the issues of our discussion.

I must admit that I've run out of steam. But it would've been wonderful if we could have discussed these issues face-to-face.

I have no qualms about the Protestant/Evangelical position you've taken on things. In fact, this is precisely the position I've grown up with almost my entire Christian journey. For a number of reasons, I've found a compelling need to move beyond Evangelical/Protestant - and in fact, Western - categories of theological positions. But this does not in any way indicate disrespect for the Evangelical tradition in which I've grown.

Like you, I too find that one can be orthodox without being Orthodox - for this reason, I'm still where I am today. So hopefully we both can find ourselves standing in a common place where we can agree or disagree, and at the end, to allow our agreements/disagreements to be silenced at the sight of our God's beauty. I'm sure you too will affirm this to be of utmost importance.

It's been tremendously wonderful having corresponded with you here!

Once again, thanks very much for patiently listening to me and bothering to respond, what's more, doing so with such magnanimity. May the Lord enable us to speak his truth in love so that in all things we will grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. (Eph 4:15)

Thanks guys for sharing those thoughts. I actully enjoyed reading it...wish some day I could be part of it to contribute some issues with you guys. Anyway, it has enriched my understanding on evangelicalsm and orthodoxy on Scripture. Should publish a book on this issue ...hee hee:p