What is the best way to argue against the Orthodox Church’s traditionalism?
This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 2004.
We have our Lord's own guidance as to what our attitude should be towards tradition. Both in our Lord's day and up to the present time, Orthodox Judaism has the same attitude to the Old Testament as the Orthodox Church does to the New Testament.
Orthodox Judaism teaches that Moses originally gave Israel the Law, the commandments, the statutes and the ordinances. The Law, they claim, was written down; but all the rest were preserved by oral tradition among the rabbis until the men of the Great Synagogue began to write them down. What they began, and to this day continue to write, forms the Talmud, which Orthodox Jews regard as far more important and authoritative than the Old Testament itself.
This is exactly the same as the Orthodox Church claims for the New Testament. They say that the apostles wrote down some of the revelation that was given to them, but the rest they passed on by oral tradition. The Church, by which they mean the ecumenical councils and the present patriarchs and archbishops of the church, has received and is the storehouse of this oral tradition, and this tradition is the only valid authority for interpreting what was written down in the New Testament.
Hence, the similarity between the Jewish situation in the time of our Lord and our present situation in the church age. Challenged by the representatives of tradition in his own time (Matthew 15 and Mark 7), our Lord pointed out that tradition in itself is not wrong, but in the course of the centuries tradition had become perverted. He laid the following charges against the traditionists:
God complained that many of their doctrines were simply the precepts of men (Mark 7:7, quoting Isaiah 29:13).
They had a tendency to leave the commandments of God and hold fast the traditions of men. That is to say, all of their traditions did not necessarily contradict the word of God; but men tended to leave the commandments of God and concentrate on the traditions.
The traditionists rejected the commandments of God in order to keep their own tradition. And our Lord cites one particular glaring instance of this perversion in Mark 7:10–13. They made void the word of God by their tradition; and he added that they did many suchlike things.
One may cite as an example of tradition, both in the Orthodox Church and in the Roman Catholic Church, what tradition has done with the Lord's Supper. There is no need to argue with them the question whether the bread and the wine are, or are not, literally the body and blood of Christ. What one can point out from Scripture is that nowhere does our Lord say that believers are to offer the body and blood of Christ. What he told them to do with the bread and wine was to eat it and to drink it. I repeat, nowhere does he say that they are to offer it, and, as you know, Hebrews 10 forbids such an offering.
It points out that the Jewish priests stand daily ministering and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices. That is, their process of offering sacrifices in order to obtain forgiveness is endless. By contrast, Christ, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down at the right hand of God. He is not sitting in heaven, still offering. The process of offering a sacrifice for sin is finished, and finished for ever, and has been ever since Calvary. Then Hebrews 10:18 adds that, as far as the believer is concerned, there is no more offering for sin. That is to say, the process of offering anything for sin is finished. The believer does not have to offer anything in order to get the forgiveness of sins; not even the Body and Blood of Christ, as the Orthodox Church calls it.
The Orthodox Church however says that believers still have to offer, and they offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist in order to get forgiveness of sins. This is a plain contradiction of the New Testament, based on their tradition. It has a grievous result upon all those who follow their tradition.
The Holy Spirit's argument in Hebrews 10:16–18 is that, since according to the new covenant a believer is assured that God will never bring up his or her sins and their penalty again, the believer has complete forgiveness; and where a believer has complete forgiveness, he or she will not go on offering sacrifices in order to get forgiveness.
In this connection it is important to see that the Greek word for 'offering', namely prosphora, has two distinct meanings: the gift offered, such as a lamb, bullock or goat; and the process of offering, whatever the gift that is being offered.
The question is, therefore, which of these two meanings does the word prosphora carry in Hebrews 10:18? If it were the first meaning, then perhaps it would be saying that, when a person has complete forgiveness, he should not go on offering any other sacrifice except the sacrifice of Christ. But plainly the verse does not mean this at all. It must be read in the context of the contrast between every Jewish priest and our Lord, as given in Hebrews 10:11–12. Whatever the sacrifices were that the Jewish priest offered, the point of verse 11 is that the process of offering was never finished, but had constantly to be repeated.
In contrast to that, Christ has offered one sacrifice for sin forever: the process is for ever finished and never needs to be repeated. Coming to the climax of this argument, verse 18 points out why the process of offering is no longer required. The reason is that a believer has complete forgiveness, and therefore has no need to go on offering anything at all in order to get forgiveness.
Now, this is an absolutely fundamental doctrine of salvation, and to my mind it is good tactics to pin down the Orthodox teaching on tradition to this particular example. They will try to elude it by concentrating discussion on whether the bread and the wine are literally the body and blood of Christ. It is best to ignore this discussion completely, and fasten on the fact that, according to Scripture, any process of offering anything at all for forgiveness is finished, because we have complete forgiveness already. Orthodox tradition denies this explicitly, and teaches people that they can and must offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist—which they claim is the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ—in order to get forgiveness.
According to our Lord then, when tradition contradicts the plain statement of Scripture, tradition is wrong and must be rejected.
Ever yours truly in Christ,
