I'm a Traditional Guy

In most, if not all aspects of my life, I like tradition. I like Christmas listening to the Robert Shaw chorale, and I like reading the news paper at the dinner table.

In my quest to have traditions I am not inflexible, I guess because I like to try new things too. Although I will say that from time to time I have used the inexcusable phrase, "My mom does it like...." Very rarely does that go over well.

This sort of tradition is not what I would like to write about today, however.

I find a great comfort in another tradition. That is the tradition of biblical interpretation.

Very often I hear a half baked idea being spun as the new 'gotta have it.' Well I'm sorry, I don't. I do not have the time or inclination to spend hours dispelling the error of odd new teachings, or the flavor of the month that came before them. There are scholars that are much more adept at both scripture and apologetics, than I could ever be, and far be it from me to try to explain what those in vein of Hanegraff, Sproul and Stackhouse, have done more than competently.

As I said before, there is a tradition of biblical interpretation that has occurred throughout history. It is a tradition that I can only assume is guided by the Holy Spirit. The guidance of the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the process that gave us the Canon, and He is inseparable from the means of interpretation. Guiding what our Lord has to say to us from the Canon now.

I find that the more I read and the more I learn, I see a continuity. In the same likeness of how scripture was assembled into the masterpiece that is the Canon, full and beautiful, right and complete, we see a certain beauty in the history of the Christian traditional interpretation of that Canon.

I do not think that I am alone in my astonishment. Reading Augustine, and Luther, and Calvin, and Spurgeon, and Lewis I have at times not been able to distinguish their voices. I don't think this is error. I think this is a historical traditional truth, that is a gift of God through the church to us as mankind today. It also continues from here.

I look at all that I read through the filter of this historical traditional interpretation. When I hear of something new, it smacks of wrong. We are not the first generation of truth, nor was the last, nor will the next be. It is a canon of truth for all mankind, for all time.

We would be best to learn from those who go before.