Tradition serves to correct our assumptions, expose our blind spots, and cultivate accountability in a garden we have turned into a wasteland. But most of all, she introduces us to creeds so that we do not gather as one but join the assembly of believers now and yesterday to praise the King of glory with one voice.

It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
–G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Today we are experiencing a surge of renewed interest in retrieval. However encouraging that resurgence may be—and it certainly is reassuring—a lingering, even nagging hesitation remains among a remainder of theologians and pastors. Those reluctant are not identical with those alarmist fundamentalist “no creed but the Bible” types. Such an overt, frantic biblicism is conspicuous enough as a theological cancer. Instead, it stems from that type of theologian or pastor who appreciates the past, but nonetheless considers engagement with our Christian heritage as nothing more than a pragmatic recruitment of conversation cronies. At the end of the day, they are far more interested, so they say, in what the Bible says. Putting labels before that word “tradition”—whether it be “Great” or “Reformed”—is precarious business sure to distract from scripture or even overcome its message.

In a strange way, I almost prefer to battle with the overt, alarmist “no creed but the Bible” types than this second, more subtle biblicist. At least the former is honest. Disastrous no doubt, but honest. But the latter represents that quiet, almost indetectable cancer that is never caught by a doctor. Concealed, it infiltrates the blood system over years, even decades. When it’s finally identified for what it is everyone stares at the floor in defeat knowing it’s much too late. “You have three months to live,” says the helpless physician, conquered by a battle he never had the chance to help his patient fight.

Why is this more subtle form of biblicism so fatal to the health of the ecclesiastical body? It is so threatening because it preys on Christianity by means of a half-truth. It acts as if the past is important; it even encourages dialogue. Yet by the end of the day, its reason for doing so is quite secular: talking to the dead is merely pragmatic. If you find the Nicene Creed or a Calvin or an Augustine helpful, then by all means. That is, as long as they become nothing more than practical, mere aids to what really matters.

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