Reformation Day is coming up on the 31st of October.

 

What - you mean you didn't even know there is this thing called Reformation Day? Why, it commemorates that day in 1517 that Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. An event which sparked off the continental Reformation!

 

It's a sad thing that Chinese churches don't know a lot about the reformation - because we can actually learn a lot from its lessons. And especially so since some of the key re-discoveries of the Reformation actually challenge our Chinese culture at very uncomfortable points...

 

One of the slogans of the Reformation was sola Scriptura. This was Latin for "Scripture alone", and summarised the realisation that Scripture alone was the final source of authority for church - not Scripture plus the church's traditions.

 

You see during the middle ages people had wandered away from biblical Christianity, and churches had accumulated many traditions and ways of doing things. While at some point someone had to come up with these traditions, after many years these traditions had taken on a life of its own, and had become as important as the Bible - sometimes even more important!

 

But it wasn't just that these traditions were old and therefore valuable! No, it was because the church had come up with these traditions. Surely God had spoken through the church, just as God had spoken through the apostles and prophets in the Scriptures. And therefore, surely the traditions of the church were on par with Scripture. And maybe even superior - because those church traditions were given by God at a later date!

 

Roman Catholicism doesn't deny the Bible is right - it just has all these other traditions that they think are just as valid, and just as authoritative - if not moreso!

 

Well, what about Chinese culture? What does sola Scriptura have to do with the Chinese churches?

 

Chinese culture has a great love for the past. In contrast to the Western worldview which looks forward and values new things, Chinese culture looks back and values old things. And so tradition is greatly prized in Chinese culture. While the Chinese have travelled to many lands and set up restaurants everywhere, adapting themselves superficially to many foreign places, their culture and traditions do not change very much.

 

Well, Chinese churches also develop their own traditions. As do other churches, by the way - tradition is just another way of saying "the way things have always been done", or "the way we've always understood things". Traditions are not bad in itself, and can in fact be very useful as a guiding light! Take for instance the creeds. But Chinese churches are prone to the danger of elevating their traditions to the authoritiative level of Scripture.

 

And so in Chinese churches it becomes bad form to question "the way things have always been done" - because that would be to judge negatively those who have made those decisions. It's not possible to question "the way we've always understood things" - because that's already been decided by those in the past. And so unfortunately, "the way things have always been done around here" quite often becomes a good-enough argument against the plain teaching of the Bible!

 

And sometimes the equation is turned around in completely the wrong direction. Sometimes Scripture is blatantly re-interpreted in order to fit "the way things have always been done"...

 

Unintentionally then, Chinese churches slip into a Roman Catholic form of thinking. It fits so smoothly with the past-revering aspect of Chinese culture that it's an automatic thing for us! But it is in fact bad theology.

 

Yes, God spoke through the prophets and apostles as they wrote the Bible. And yes, God has worked powerfully in our church in past years as well. But to equate God's word through the prophets and apostles with the decisions of Christians before us, is wrong. God's speaking to the prophets and apostles is called inspiration - and his work in Christians as they now read the Bible is called illumination. But to confuse the two and equate inspiration with illumination is bad theology! The thrust of Hebrews 1 is that God's ultimate revelation is found in Jesus Christ - not in the founding members!

 

The decisions and ideas (and traditions) of Christians are always contingent. And because of our tendency to elevate our traditions, those of us in Chinese churches have to work extra-hard to let these things be tested by Scripture - our final authority.

 

[ PS: what church issues have you come across that may fall into this category of traditions? ]