Does Sola Scriptura Warrant Traditionalism?

John Frame, against the idea that sola Scriptura warrants traditionalism:

Over and over again, God's prophets challenge the people to rethink their traditions. A while ago I listed some of the heroes of the faith in Scripture and in church history, as people who stood up for principle, for the word of God, against overwhelming odds. What I want to add now is that these heroes of the faith always stood for something new, because the word of God imposed upon them something new. It knocked them out of their routines, routines both of thinking and of living. From them we learn the lesson that when people think they have God figured out, reduced to a routine, God comes with his powerful word and shakes them to the roots.

Think of Noah and Abraham: how God shook up their routines. The flood had no historical precedent at all; God called Noah to do something entirely new. And God specifically called Abraham to tear up his historical roots and to start over in a new country, to become the father of a new people. He did not break all ties with his brothers and their families, but his move was a decided break with the past, and a commitment to a divine promise for the future that seemed from every human point of view quite incredible.

Think of Moses delivering God's word to Israel in Egypt. Leave Egypt? Promised land? When Pharaoh hears this, he will only make us work harder! We have a routine here; let's stick with it! And even after God brought them out of Egypt with a mighty arm, they remembered that routine: Didn't we have great food in Egypt? Why, Moses, did you bring us out here to die in the desert?

All through the history of the Old Testament, people were tempted to mistake their routines, their traditions, for God's word. The Lord says through Isaiah, “The people come near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.” (Isa. 29:13) This passage is quoted in the New Testament in Matt. 15:8-9 and Mark 7:6-7. In these passages, we learn that the Pharisees dishonored their parents by their tradition of giving to God what would have otherwise gone to parental support. Jesus accused the Pharisees of making the word of God of no effect by their tradition. The example is multiplied, for Jesus said that the Pharisees did many other such things.

The Pharisees thought they were experts in the word of God, that they knew what God expected of them. They were the ones who in their time were considered the most principled in their adherence to God's word. But they had developed various traditions, which they thought were applications of the word of God, and they had their pattern of obedience down to a routine. But Jesus told them their routines were wrong. The word of God actually challenged those routines and called for change.

The Pharisees also had their hermeneutical or exegetical traditions. They read the Old Testament and concluded that a certain kind of Messiah was coming: one that would restore the throne of David, the independence of Israel from Rome, and the earthly prosperity of the Jewish people. Again, they had it wrong. Their traditional ways of thinking prevented them from recognizing Jesus Christ, the Son of God, come in the flesh to save his people from their sins.

In John 5:39-40, Jesus says to the Jews, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” A terrible indictment: they gave themselves over to study the Scriptures, to becoming experts in God's word; yet they missed the entire thrust of it, its most important theme.

To two disciples who mourned the death of Jesus, not knowing that he had risen from the dead, the risen Christ complained, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and to enter into his glory" (Luke 24:26)? Again, these disciples had read the Scriptures, but had missed the whole point. But their hearts burned within them as Jesus taught them the Old Testament in a whole new way.

Similarly, through the history of the church, God has from time to time called his people to reconsider their traditions and to return to the purity of the word of God. Most of us would agree that the greatest of these occasions was the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation was a great time of housecleaning for the church-- in theology, worship, preaching, and every area of the church's life. The reformers were conservative in going back to the scriptural teachings; but they were radical in their attack on the traditions of men.

Thus came the slogan “sola Scriptura," by Scripture alone. We sometimes refer to that principle as "the sufficiency of Scripture." This was one of the great "alones" of the reformation, together with sola gratia, "by grace alone," sola fidei, "by faith alone," sola Christo, "by Christ alone," and soli deo gloria, "glory to God alone." The sufficiency of Scripture means that the ultimate authority for faith and life is the Scripture alone, not any ideas or traditions of men. Popes and councils may err and have erred. But God's word does not fail. All human ideas, whether contemporary or traditional, are to be tested by the Scriptures. As Paul said to Timothy in 2 Tim. 3:16-17, Scripture is inspired of God, God-breathed, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Scripture is our sufficient rule; we need not and dare not supplement it with our own ideas.