Dangerous Tradition

Rex Koivisto argues (One Lord, One Faith, 155-6) that all churches have traditions, including supposedly Bible-only Evangelicals. All traditions can harden into harmful habits, but Koivisto thinks that this danger is particularly threatening among Evangelicals who claim to be free of tradition. “The danger . . . comes not from having traditions, but from being unable to distinguish our traditions from the clear teachings of Scripture.”

For such supposedly traditionless Evangelicals, “all of our practices are perceived to have come directly from Scripture,” and therefore “all take on the same note of authority.” Even practices that have no clear biblical warrant are treated as the word of God, and “that is the precise extension of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy that sola Scriptura is intending to avoid in the first place: confusing the word of humans with the voice of God.”

Refusal to acknowledge the existence of tradition also encourages sectarianism: “all evangelical groups believe that their distinctives – where they differ from other Bible-believing evangelicals – are ‘clearly’ biblical!” If they are clearly biblical, they have to be defended, against everyone. Tradition is in this sense, and in others, an aid to catholicity.