The Importance of Tradition in Defending the Christian Faith
As I mentioned before, two thousand years is a very long time. And people, both believers and skeptics, think that they can easily transport themselves back at that time and know exactly what happened. This to me is illogical. There are evangelical Christian apologists who quote Bible verses to show that Jesus said He was God, or that He rose from the dead. Skeptics are right in arguing that this is a circular argument. They argue that you cannot use the Bible to prove the validity of Christianity, since one must presuppose the validity of Christianity before using the Bible. Also these Christian apologists are using evidence that is 2,000 years old as if these events happened just yesterday.
But the same can be said of the skeptics who try come up with a naturalistic alternative explanation of who Jesus was and what He did. For instance, Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code argued that Jesus was just a man who actually escaped the death on the cross and fled to Europe with Mary Magdalene. Hyam Maccoby argued that Jesus was actually just the revolutionary who tried to organize the Jews into revolting against the Romans. Another common argument among skeptics is that Jesus was just a moral teacher who went around telling everyone to be nice to each other. Again, these skeptics fall into the same problem into which the Christian apologists fall. They act as if these things all happened yesterday.
So the first thing we must do is appreciate the fact that this happened a very, very long time ago. We need to stop treating it as if we can transport ourselves, with our 21st century mindset, into a era 2,000 years ago, with their first century mindset, and know what exactly happened. We must not impose our modern ideas into the ideas of the people in that century. And both believers and skeptics are guilty of that.
But how can we do overcome this? We need to take baby steps. We may not be able to know what people believed 2,000 years ago, but we can know what people believed only 50 years ago. Fifty years ago is very feasible, because we still have people alive today who remember what it was like fifty years ago. There is not much of a cultural difference between now and fifty years ago. OK, so we have 50 years ago down! So let’s go back another 50 years into the past. We probably do not have anyone alive now who remember what it was like 100 years ago, but we can still read from and talk to those who lived only 50 years ago. These people would have known the people who would have lived 50 years before that. So we can continue to take these baby steps backward. We can go back another 50 years. And then back another 50 years. We do this through each century until we get to the first century.
This is what John Henry Newman did back in the 1800’s, in his book The Development of Christian Doctrine. He would take a doctrine, such as the resurrection of Christ. He would go back to the 1700’s and see what Christians believed. Then he went back to the 1600’s, then the 1500’s, and so on, and so on – until he is all the way back to the first century. He found that there was not a century where Christians did not believe in the resurrection of Christ. And you can say the same about the deity of Christ as well. These beliefs can be traced all the way back to the first century and the apostles. This does not mean that we believe exactly what they believed in the first century. There is a progression in Christian thought. But it is more of an evolution than a revolution. There is an increasing refinement of what was believed. We have a deeper and deeper understanding of what was originally taught. But the underlying ideas remain the same.
Imagine what would happen if you came up with a radically new idea. Suppose you came up with the idea that you just discovered that there is a fourth person in the Trinity (actually that would make it a Quadranity). Let’s say that you started to tell the people in your church that there is the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Holy Spirit #2! Imagine what commotion this would cause! Imagine how much people in your church would argue with you, and fight with you over this. No doubt your pastor would ask you to leave. People are very resistant to radical change. This is what happened to Galileo. He came up with a radical idea that the earth revolved around the sun. This was not just upsetting to the Church, but to the scientists at that time. The scientists then were resistant to change. People do not like change, it makes them feel insecure. What John Newman discovered is that the throughout the centuries there was never a time when any of the basic Christian doctrines were treated as novel ideas that should be resisted. If the Church had come up with the idea that Jesus rose from the dead, then there should have been a big commotion. But Christians always accepted it as fact. In fact, the novel idea was when someone stood up and said that Jesus did NOT rise from dead, or that Jesus was NOT God! Then the heresy trials would start!
This is very important for us to remember when arguing with the skeptic. The skeptic would argue that the deity of Christ was made up by the Church. First, ask him who exactly started that idea and when. After all, if this did not originate with Christ and the apostles, then he should be able to pinpoint exactly who started it and when that happened. Chances are he will not be able to do this; people today tend to make statements about history without really knowing anything about history. But if he should come up with an exact person and exact date, let’s say by someone in the fourth century, it can then be shown that this was actually believed before then. Second, ask him why there was no commotion at the time when this new idea was introduced. Certainly there must be some who were resistant to such a radical idea. Imagine the Christians in the first few centuries believing that Jesus was just a man spreading a message that we should love one another. Then someone comes into the scene and says “Hey, I got an idea! Let’s start treating Jesus as if He is God! Let’s say that He rose from the dead, and is now in heaven!” I doubt that everyone would just say “Oh, Ok! Let’s do that.” This goes against everything we know of human nature. If that happened, there would be such resistance. There would be a split within the Church. True, there was a man named Arius who did teach that Jesus was just God, and some people followed him and left the Church. But his idea was the novel idea. The deity of Christ was always taught by the Church.
Most modern skeptics see that it is hard to show that the Church developed these doctrines later on, so they try to say that the apostles who manufactured these ideas. For instance, Hyam Maccoby argues that Paul was the one who came up with the deity of Christ, but Peter and the others taught that Jesus was just a man. But if that was the case, then we would expect there to be a strong commotion from the other apostles. Would they not be upset with Paul? Would they not be writing letters stating that Paul was a heretic? And not only that, but would this not have caused a split between the followers of Paul and the followers of Peter, so that in the second and third centuries we would see a Pauline Church, believing in the deity of Christ, and a Petrine Church, believing that Jesus was just a man? And yet we have no evidence of such a split.
So we are able to establish, through tradition, through the teachings of the earliest Christians in the second, third, and fourth centuries, what the apostles originally taught. By applying Newman’s methodology, we can trace the deity of Christ or the resurrection of Christ without even using the Bible. Furthermore, we avoid forcing the first-century Christians to think in terms that we do in our age. We are looking at them through the eyes of the second-century Christians, third-century Christians, and so on. Once we are sure what the Jesus and apostles actually taught, we can use the logical arguments such as the Liar, Lunatic, Lord argument or that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophesy, or that the apostles were eye-witnesses to the resurrected Christ.
But although this gives a much better defense of the faith, Protestants in general are resistant to this argument. John Henry Newman’s book not only showed that Christ’s deity and resurrection can be traced all the way back to the apostles, but also some very Catholic doctrines as well. This is what made Newman convert to Catholicism. Originally, he wanted to show that the Catholic doctrines, such as Mary, purgatory, the primacy of the pope, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, as being later inventions by the Church in the Middle Ages. But he discovered that this was not the case. These doctrines can be traced back to the earliest centuries. And if these were later inventions, then this should have caused a commotion among the faithful. After all, the Christians in the first few centuries were willing to be fed to the lions rather than compromise on their faith. It is hard to believe that we were willing to accept any idea that was radically opposed to the teachings they received from the apostles.
Some argue against the use of tradition by giving the “telephone” argument. We all played this game when we were kids. This is how it worked. One person whispers something in someone ear. Then that person whispers in someone else’s ear. And so on, and so on. Eventually, someone whispers in your ear. You share what was whispered, and it is radically different than what was originally said. On the surface, this seems to be a valid argument against the use of tradition. But I see some problems with it.
The telephone requires one person whispering privately into one person’s ear for a few seconds and then that person whispering into another person’s ear. This is not how tradition is passed from one generation onto another. There is no whispering going on. The apostles were called by Jesus to “make disciples of all nations”. Disciple-building entails a mentor spending years with his disciple – this is not just whispering in a person’s ear for a few seconds. This disciple-making did not involve just one disciple, but many other disciples. So if one disciple got it wrong, the others were there to correct him.
Also, even if we accept the telephone argument, then it only proves more the need to understand the earliest part of the Christian teaching. Like it or not, we are end of the chain of the telephone game; we are 2,000 years at the end of the line. In playing the game, it is the last person who was whispered in the ear who got it wrong. The ones at the beginning of the chain would be the closest to what was originally said. So that means that those in the second and third century are far more likely to understand the message of the apostles than we would.
One thing I found that most Protestants and skeptics had in common – they both have a disdain for tradition. They think that they can have a better understanding of Jesus and His message, and what the apostles taught, than the Christians in the first few centuries did. This is what Martin Luther believed. He believed that the Christians lost the gospel of salvation by faith alone, until he re-discovered it. This is what liberal scholars have said. They said that the Christian lost the simple message that Jesus gave us to love each other, and replaced it with all these myths that Jesus was God and that He rose from the dead. It is always that they, twenty centuries later, have a better understanding of what Jesus said and did than the Christians in the first centuries did. This is why Protestants (and dissident Catholics with a Protestant way of thinking) are vulnerable to the arguments of the skeptics. If one accept the premise that the Church lost or corrupted part of the message taught by Jesus and disciples, then any attack that is built on that premise could seem credible. Once you accept the idea that the Church corrupted the gospel then this Church is also capable of corrupting anything else handed down through them. If the Church was capable of manufacturing ideas concerning Mary, or purgatory, or the Sacrifice of the Mass then this same Church would also be capable of manufacturing ideas that Jesus was God or that He rose from the dead. Once you start with this idea that the Church corrupted something, it is hard to stop. Even the Bible is then suspect. After all, it is through the Church that we have our Bible. We do not have the original documents. We only have copies, of copies, of copies made by Catholic monks. If the Church corrupted the message of Christ, then how do we know that the Church did not corrupt the Bible? How do we know that the Church did not add passages in the Bible that makes Jesus out to be God? If the Church started to “worship” Mary because of pagan influence, then how do we know that the Church did not make Jesus out to be God because of pagan influence?
The only thing that can help us to withstand this argument from the skeptics is an appreciation of tradition – especially the teachings of the Early Church Fathers. We need to understand that that it is illogical that the Early Church, being persecuted in the first few centuries of its existence because of its unwillingness to compromise on the truth about Christ, would then compromise on other important doctrines. We need to have some humility – of realizing that those who were closest to Jesus and the apostles understood them far better than we can. To think that we in our modern age could understand the real Jesus better than the first Christians is, as C.S. Lewis called it, chronological snobbery.
Then when we hear that another person in our modern age came up with a new theory of who the REAL Jesus was, we would just laugh. There is always someone, like Dan Brown of the Da Vinci Code, who says that all Christians for the 20 centuries got it all wrong, even those closest to Him and His apostles, until now, when he has gotten it right. When we analyze this, we realize how absurd this is.
When we just take baby steps, and take one century at a time, we then will have an accurate picture of what Jesus and the apostles taught. Now, this does not prove what they taught was true. But we can then use common sense to determine whether they told the truth. We can know for sure that the apostles taught that they were eyewitnesses to the resurrected Christ. And we know from very early tradition that these apostles were all martyred for their testimony. People may die for what they think is true but are mistaken. But it makes no sense that a person would die for something that he knows is a lie.
But before that, we must show that this was not just a mere legend manufactured by the Church later on. We do this by showing that this was testified in our earliest tradition.
