Customs, Traditions and Biblical Faithfulness
The intention of this article is to examine some commonly held assumptions concerning church customs and practices as they relate to the three foundational purposes of the Church: ministry to God, ministry to believers and ministry to the world. My starting point is that any church practice, custom or tradition (or innovation) that does not support the three purposes of the church should be re-evaluated and if found wanting, either modified or possibly discontinued. This is not about modern (or post-modern, if you prefer), liberal churches verses conservative, traditional churches. It is not my intention to advocate for either modern or traditional practices, but rather to advocate that we carefully, reflectively and prayerfully consider what we do in the clear light of Scripture, always returning to God’s Word as our radical arbiter and final judge of what is right and proper in any situation. For some modern congregations, for instance, this could mean throwing out the praise band in favour of exclusive psalmody. In conservative, confessional congregations it may mean instituting outreach activities, using more accessible Psalters during worship or giving classes in “How to Read and Appreciate the King James Bible.” Let us begin the discussion with a brief look at the nature of customs and traditions. Two types of factors are involved in the generation and perpetuation of customs: a: the corporate sum of the temperaments and dispositions of a group of individuals living in a degree of mutual inter-dependence and b: a set of external conditions which may be either acute or chronic and that exert a powerful motivational influence on the group in question. Customs, and their resulting traditions, arise as a way for people to regulate social life, just as habits in the individual regulate personal life. In essence, the customs of one generation handed down to newer generations become tradition. This being so, logic dictates that if originating dispositional or conditional factors change, any customs which derive from them will also need to change in order for the social life of the group to be regulated. But this is only true when the group in question is required to interact and be responsive to other groups or to larger cultural or societal groupings and needs. For example, the monastic culture within the Catholic Church arose from a unique set of conditions prevalent in Palestine and Egypt in the post-apostolic era together with strong dispositional and temperamental qualities of many Christians of the time. This culture was sanctioned and supported by the Church at large and to a lesser degree by a society which was increasingly dominated by the Catholic Church. It worked because the monastic orders were only required to be responsive to the Church, which itself was a very conservative entity, changing very slowly over time. The customs and traditions of the Church protected and safe-guarded the monastic culture within. The monastic tradition of the Catholic Church has remained intact because it has never been required to regulate its social life in ways that make it responsive to needs or demands from outside itself. This is both its strength and it weakness. The problem with customs and traditions that do not change is realized only in relation to something from outside those customs and traditions. If there were no need to interact or be responsive to the needs of a world outside our own customs or traditions, there would be no need to adapt or change those customs or traditions; this is true whether we are speaking of institutions or individuals. But Scripture does not allow us that option. Over and over again, Christians are exhorted to engage with the world for the restoration of justice, the relief of suffering and the presentation of the gospel to perishing sinners. Any customs and traditions that hamper our engagement with the world or impede us in our work as ambassadors of Christ are acting as obstacles to the furtherance of the Kingdom of God on earth. This is also true for our personal temperaments and dispositions. If we are allowing our personal habits and preferences about how our congregation should conduct itself to interfere with the greater work of the Church, then we are at fault. The only customs or traditions that cannot—must not—change are those which come to us from Scripture. Why? Because such traditions are really ordinances or behavioural prescriptions given for our benefit by a creator and covenanting God who is sovereign and ultimately just and beneficent. The Scriptural traditions or ordinances come from the very source and fountainhead of life. Because of this, they are not optional but normative. Things get muddled up when we mistake our traditions for God’s. When we think that our own customs and traditions are on an equal footing with God’s ordinances, we create stumbling blocks. This is true for any branch of the Church that refuses to look at its customs and traditions, thinking that it has all the truth it needs. “If it was good enough for our great, great grandfathers and mothers, then it’s good enough for us!” Well, no, it’s not. We don’t live in a bubble or a vacuum; we live cheek-by-jowl with others who are in need of the hope and salvation that only the gospel offers. And if what we do prevents the gospel from reaching out into the world, we bring dishonour to ourselves and to our Lord and Saviour. So the regulated life of the Church must be true to Biblical ordinances just so that, as we change our own man-made customs and traditions to accommodate the spiritual needs of an ever-changing world, we will always have a firm foundation, a never changing, universally applicable set of ordinances that are trustworthy and true and upon which we may build our house. So we must learn to separate the form or our customs and tradition from their content. The content of our traditions is what we must never give up. The form in which the content is delivered is (or should be) adaptable and malleable, able to change as circumstances dictate. Marshal McLuhan was wrong. The medium is not the message. The message is the message! The medium is just the vehicle used to carry and convey the message This is not to argue against the existence of differing cultures between denominations or even differing congregational cultures within denominations. It is a fact that every organized body of people will develop a culture, given time. This is their identity. The culture of a cohesive group will have a profound impact on how that group—and in varying degrees each individual within it—behaves and what it considers of value. But I believe that, as Christians, it should be our constant endeavor to inculcate, nourish and promote a “culture of the Word”, a “culture of the Spirit”, and a “culture of Christ.” We are reminded by Paul that there are to be no barriers within the culture or community of believers; that ultimately our entire being, should be in accord with Christ’s own culture. This is what it means to be one in the body of Christ. So our culture within our own congregation should be, first and foremost, a Christ-centered one, suffused by grace. This means however, that some of our most cherished ideas and customs might have to be re-examined in light of what it means to be Christ’s disciples. I’m reminded of the encounter Christ had with the rich young ruler. When told by Christ to give away all he had and to follow Him, the young man was found wanting. He was unable to give up his treasure; he was bound by it. Cannot the same lesson be applied to us when we are unable to give up those practices, customs and traditions to which we have become accustomed, which are our treasures, but which are not to be found in the Word or cannot be deduced by good and necessary consequence from it? If these things impose themselves between us and our active engagement with the purposes of the Church, purposes which are the outcomes of God’s Word, then we have indeed given up our true birthright for a mere bowl of lentils. But this begs the question, “How are we to prevent these things from imposing themselves upon us, or at least how can we mitigate their influence?” We have been talking about changing the customs and traditions and perhaps even the culture of our congregations as a way to accomplish this goal. But is this process of change a willy-nilly affair? No. The change I am advocating is regulated by principle, not by chance (or rules, for that matter). The principle to which I refer is called the Regulative Principle (RP) and is usually applied to worship (RPW). But we should understand that this principle is far more radical and has a far greater application than simply to worship, as important as that is, no doubt. The RP is in fact applicable to all aspects of the Christian conversation. The heart of the RP is the idea that, speaking negatively, if God in the entire counsel of His revelation has not told us to do a certain thing, then we must refrain from doing it. Speaking positively, if God has told us to do a certain thing then we most certainly must do that, neither more nor less. The “locus classicus” as it has been called—the most important single citation in support of the regulative principle—is Deuteronomy 12:32, “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it..” This verse tells us to be biblically faithful—another way of describing the RP—in our spiritual lives. We are neither to add nor subtract from what God has revealed, whether plainly and directly in His Word or indirectly by “good and necessary consequence from it”—to use the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF 1:6). Let me use an unpopular example to illustrate. In 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, we are told by Paul that women are expected to wear a head covering during worship (specifically during prayer and prophesying). There is absolutely not a shred of evidence to support the notion that this is not an ordinance, a commandment, in effect for all Christian women in all eras. Women who do not obey this ordinance or prescription are not being biblically faithful—are not, in other words, being guided by the Regulative Principle. Notice that Scripture does not specify the nature of the head covering. Paul does not say it must be a veil or hat. He does not say it must be of a certain dimension, colour or fabric. It is the principle of the matter Paul was conveying to his readers. This is an example of the Regulative Principle. If a church or congregation were to start prescribing a certain kind of head covering, a veil for instance, along with the required dimensions of the veil, they would be in error. The Church has no authority or warrant for creating ordinances not already given by God in the entire counsel of His Word—a fundamental error of the Roman Church. Let me use a second example. In Colossians 3:16 and again in Ephesians
5:19, we are told to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, “singing
with grace in your hearts” and “making melody in your heart
to God.” These musical types are all found in the book of Psalms.
Therefore we are justified in maintaining that this kind of musical
praise—and this alone—is normative for the Church. However,
Paul does not specify the actual musical form the Psalm singing is
to take, nor the exact wording (given the impossibility of absolute
accuracy due to the differences in languages) of the musical praise.
In this then, we are to acknowledge that while singing the psalms is
the prescribed norm, the musical forms (and even the specific words)
are not. We deduce this by good and necessary consequence. Therefore,
for a congregation to insist that psalm singing is not prescribed by
Scripture and consequently chooses not to engage in it as part of the
worship service, is unbiblical and is contrary to the spirit of the
Regulative Principle. However, for a congregation to insist that the
only acceptable version of the Psalms is that found in the Scottish
Psalter of 1650 (for example) also seriously contravenes the spirit
of the RP. The choice to use only one version of the Psalter is an
expression of that congregation’s culture, not an expression
of biblical faithfulness or the RP. The same sort of thing can be said of our ministry to believers. There will be many new or unseasoned Christians in the Church at any given time, not to mention those who are not yet believers. We have a responsibility to ensure that our teaching is carried out in ways that do not needlessly alienate people and inhibit them from taking catechism class or bible study. If we teach from a standard catechism, such as my congregation does, we must strive to convey the teaching in ways that build on the experience people bring to class as well as to relate the lessons to contemporary life so that people recognize more easily that what is being taught is not something that was true once but no longer. This is why the church today must have teachers. The third area where we must maintain the Regulative Principle or biblical faithfulness is in our ministry to the world, of compassionate outreach and of evangelism. Central to the Christian experience is the requirement to relieve suffering and to share the gospel (Luke 6:35-36; Matt. 28:19-20). Anything that hampers outreach and evangelism is contrary to this fundamental aspect of the Church. There are in our time whole denominations that have basically thrown out the biblical gospel and have adopted a different gospel, such as the gospel of social justice or universal love, while others have adopted practices (especially in the context of worship) that are completely unknown to the Bible either by example or by principle. These are the innovators. Still others, in a kind of orthodox stubbornness, have decided to hold on to customs and traditions that have remained unchanged for virtually hundreds of years. These are the traditionalists. Not to push the parable too far, but while the innovators are those who put their own unfermented juice into new bottles, the traditionalists are those who refuse to keep the new wine in new bottles, preferring their old tried and true bottles instead. And Jesus tells us what happens then. The old bottles break, making the wine unavailable for anyone to drink. There is a way, though, in which the new wine can be received, and shared with others too. This is the way of Radical Biblicism, a term first coined by Jack Crabb but which really has the same meaning as the older term, Puritan. The Puritans were those in the established church in England who recognized the need—often to their own great harm—for new wineskins to hold Christ’s new wine of the gospel. They were those who rebelled against the status quo, who realized the stagnancy of the established church and attempted to reform her. The same can be said of the Radical Biblicists of our own time. They are those who recognize the central, permanent and unconditional nature of the gospel message and the peripheral, temporary and provisional nature of everything else. If our customs and traditions and the practice based upon them are keeping people out of the Church; if they are impeding us from extending ourselves both corporately and individually from engaging with an unbelieving world; if they are preventing us from doing mission work; if they are hampering us from feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, providing shelter to the stranger and visiting the shut-ins, then we are in error. If we maintain our customs and traditions, apart from those prescribed in the Bible or that must be deduced by good and necessary consequence from it, and it alone, then we are not doing Christ’s work. If we hold on to those customs and traditions, which are the form of the truth and not its content, then we do violence to the name of Christ. In
Acts 13:36, we are told that David served his own generation (those
of his own
time) by the will of God. Is this not
good advice for us
as well? Should our unofficial motto be “Semper eadem” (always
the same) or “Semper Reformanda” (Always reforming)? The
Reformers knew that for the Church to remain true to Christ and His
law, she must always be ready and willing to reform. The Radical Biblicists
understand the real intent of the term Sola Scriptura—Scripture
alone—and which forms the very foundation and justification for
the Regulative Principle. They realized that such reform must be based
on Scripture alone and honestly and sincerely attempted to apply what
God revealed in His
precious Word and this alone. Let us be like David as well as the Reformers
then, always ready and willing to serve our own generation by the will
of God. |