Is there a Great Tradition?

Some of you know that I have been arguing for some time that evangelicalism is going the way of all flesh–that is, historical Christian flesh.  Throughout history heresy has arisen when Christians have been more concerned about bringing the faith up to cultural speed than staying true to creeds and confessions.  I have been saying that the only way that evangelical theology will remain orthodox is for it to exercise intellectual humility and submit to the Great Tradition of historic orthodoxy.

Some have challenged me on this.  They have asked, What Great Tradition?  Where is the consensus?  On almost every point of classical doctrine there has been furious disagreement.  Look at the debates over the Trinity, they say. East and West to this day disagree on how they understand the Trinity.  And what about salvation?  The Orthodox and Catholics disagree with Protestants on the relation between faith and works.

And even within Protestantism there are raging debates between Arminians and Calvinists.  So how can one talk about a Great Tradition as if there is consensus?

Well, Thomas C. Oden is a wonderful guide through this thicket of controversy.  I recommend his new autobiography, A Change of Heart (IVP).

Now Professor Oden and I disagree on the Arminian-Calvinist debate.  He is an Arminian and I am not.  Nevertheless he and I agree that there is what he calls an “ancient consensual Christian tradition.”  This refers to a “method” of consent and consensus that has been guided and sustained by the Holy Spirit through more than twenty centuries.  It was a “distinctive way of consensual reasoning that had ripened within classical Christianity” (139).  It is a return to “deep theology that has stood the test of time and links us to the prophets, apostles, saints and martyrs of the earliest times” (299).

Like John Henry Newman a century and a half before him, Oden submerged himself in ancient texts for years.  And like Newman, Oden found that there was a surprising consensus.  He discovered that “the Holy Spirit sustained the right memory of the truth revealed in history.”  This memory of truth was not static, for it developed over time through “the constant course-correction of the community” (176).

Oden also found that this was not a top-down thing, created and maintained by theologians alone.  “The clergy did not create this consent; it was achieved by an act of the worshiping community confirmed by the laity in song, prayer and Scripture” (176).

So what about the Trinity and salvation?  Are they not still unresolved?

The simple answer is No.  There still exists a consensus that links East and West on the Trinity, and Rome and Wittenburg on salvation.  On the latter, for example, Oden’s Classic Christian Readers series showed that “Reformation teachings on justification, good works and sanctification were profoundly rooted in the most consensual patristic writers in a way consistent with Reformation reasoning” (289).

More on these matters anon.