Which councils are we to accept, and which are we to reject? Evangelicals have a coherent, practical answer: we are to “test everything” in light of Scripture and “hold fast what is good” and abhor “what is evil,” including all falsehood (1 Thess. 5:21; Rom. 12:9; Eph. 4:25). Those who wish to embrace the Great Tradition are going to be sorely tried at this point, for there will be a tension between tradition and Scripture which will be resolvable only by choosing between the two.

Writing in light of his recent delivery of the inaugural lecture for the Center for Classical Theology (CCT), Carl Trueman has issued an appeal for modern Protestants, especially evangelicals, to “go back to basics” by recovering “classical theology,” which he defines as “orthodox Christian doctrines as set forth by the creeds, the Great Tradition of theology exemplified by the ancient ecumenical councils, and traditional Protestant confessions such as the Westminster Confession.” That definition will not suffice. One, the Great Tradition, so named, does not merely include creeds, confessions, and councils. It also includes the teaching of ancient and medieval teachers, hence the CCT’s popular outlet, Credo, has published issues titled “What Can Protestants Learn From Thomas Aquinas?” and “The Great Tradition: Patristic Edition.” This Great Tradition also includes Platonism, hence Credo also says “the Great Tradition believed Platonism’s metaphysical commitments could serve Christianity,” and explicitly links both to early church teachers (the next sentence says “consider Augustine, for example, whose conversion to Christianity may have been an impossibility apart from Platonism”).

Again, this is not my conception, but that of the Great Tradition’s proponents themselves, and as such the abbreviated definition Trueman gives fails to apprise the reader of what all is entailed in “classical theology” and the Great Tradition. (Brief aside: those quotation marks around classical theology are not snide, but are original to Trueman, for whom I have a warm respect.) And as I have written elsewhere, there are grounds for concern about some of the teachers of this Great Tradition. For example, Aquinas was an idolater, and Scripture’s instructions on that point are plain (“I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is . . .  an idolater,” 1 Cor. 5:11).

The second problem with Trueman’s definition here is that bit about councils. Which councils are we to accept, and which are we to reject? Evangelicals have a coherent, practical answer: we are to “test everything” in light of Scripture and “hold fast what is good” and abhor “what is evil,” including all falsehood (1 Thess. 5:21; Rom. 12:9; Eph. 4:25). Those who wish to embrace the Great Tradition are going to be sorely tried at this point, for there will be a tension between tradition and Scripture which will be resolvable only by choosing between the two. For example, the seventh ecumenical council, Nicea II, anathematized people who reject worshiping images (i.e., idolatry), and so Scripture (Ex. 20:4-5; Lev. 26:1; Deut. 5:8-9; 27:15; Acts 17:29) leads us to reject it as erroneous and unauthoritative. Such cases prompt us to assert that all of us ought to be able to sincerely say, with Luther, that we are we bound to the Word of God alone, since councils “have often erred and contradicted each other.”

In addition, Trueman’s conception is a strange one. He speaks of going back to basics when it seems that in many cases this idiom does not suffice at all. There are many evangelicals who have a notion of initial conversion but who do not have much doctrine beyond that: their whole effort in ministry is bringing people to faith and repentance, but they do not have a robust body of doctrine to teach the disciples they make by their evangelistic activities. In such cases it is not going back to the basics but rather moving beyond them that is needed; such people are in the milk stage and need to move along to solids (1 Cor. 3:2; Heb. 5:11-14). Given his passing mention of contemporary evangelical doctrine owing much to revivalism and his keen historical and doctrinal acumen, I suspect Trueman would agree on this point.

Others do indeed need to go back to basics, but not in the way that Trueman suggests. There are those who are ensnared in pedantry who need to return to the basics of the faith as including practice and not being merely a matter of knowledge in the head (Eph. 2:10; 1 Tim. 6:18-19; Tit. 2:14; 3:8; Jas. 2; 2 Pet. 1:5-10; 1 Jn. 3:17). In addition, we might forgive any evangelical who felt a certain perturbance at Trueman’s suggestion here. Well might one rejoin:

Go back to the basics? What is the Reformation if not a large and enduring plea for people to go back to the basics of the faith as revealed in Scripture and practiced and believed by the primitive church? For over half a millennium now we have been calling people to lay aside the corruptions of human tradition, needlessly convoluted, impossible to perform, and antithetical to the truth as they are, and to return to basic doctrine and practice. We have been calling people to the basics of authority (Scripture alone instead of what a corrupt and fabulously wealthy institutional church says Scripture and tradition teach); of how to be saved (grace alone through faith alone, not submission to priestcraft and participation in manmade practices that contradict Scripture and leave one with no assured hope); of the only means of maintaining a right relation to God (through the merit and intercession of Christ alone, not via the intercession or merits of the earthly church, dead saints in glory, angels, or Mary); of the purpose of human life (to give glory only to the jealous God who will share his glory with no other, not to build an ostentatious earthly institution that revels in its own power); of the dignity of all lawful earthly vocations, the priesthood of all believers, church polity conducted along scriptural lines, of a right understanding of the means of grace and how to act in the world (all against Rome’s dizzying hierarchy and multitude of offices, its elevation of a ‘religious’ life above common earthly labors, its distorted notions of the number and nature of the sacraments, and its commendation of asceticism and monastic lifestyles). Our whole aim and modus operandi is to call people out of burdensome, false, soul-crushing human accretions and back to the basics of the faith God has given us in his word.

This last point touches something which is concerning in Trueman’s article. In his commendation of classical theology he asks:

Why do Protestants, especially those of an evangelical stripe, typically prioritize the doctrine of salvation over the doctrine of God? If an evangelical rejects simplicity or impassibility or eternal generation, he is typically free to do so. But why should those properly committed to the creeds and confessions consider that person closer spiritually to them than those who affirm classical theism but share a different understanding of justification? 

The answer to the first question is that if you botch salvation a pristine doctrine of theology proper will not avail you – for “even the demons believe” (Jas. 2:19). To know God in truth we must first believe and enter into eternal life (Jn. 17:3; 1 Jn. 5:20); a theoretical knowledge about him does not require this. As for the second, Trueman subsequently elaborates:

At an Association of Theological Schools accreditation meeting I once found myself placed among the “evangelical” attendees. In that group was someone who denied simplicity, impassibility, and the fact that God knows the future—all doctrines that I affirm. Those are not minor differences. Wistfully my eyes wandered to the Dominicans at another table, all of whom would at least have agreed with me on who God is, even if not on how he saves his church. We would at least have shared some common ground upon which to set forth our significant differences. The Reformed Orthodox of the Westminster Assembly would have considered deviance on the doctrine of God to be anathema and, if forced to choose, would certainly have preferred the company of a Thomist to that of someone who denied simplicity, eternal generation, or God’s foreknowledge. Why do we not think the same? The modern Protestant imagination is oddly different from that of our ancestors. 

One might opine that such an episode says more about the classification tendencies of accreditation agencies than of the relative propriety of associating with either Dominicans or so-called ‘evangelicals’ that deny essential divine attributes. And one might further opine that such a tendency to be sloppy in their classifications – and for that matter, to accredit such divergent bodies as Westminster Theological Seminary (Trueman’s former institution), Dominican institutions, and schools that employ open theists – calls into question the usefulness and desirability of having the approval of such an agency, but I digress. Much of the difficulty here arises from the term ‘evangelical’ being used too loosely, and even being applied to people whom we consider heretics and whose teaching we avoid, such as the man in Trueman’s example who denies God’s foreknowledge.

I am not sure, however, that it would be just or prudent to regard as heretical people who do not understand or reject something like impassibility. That would be tantamount to condemning pretty much all professing believers to perdition over a doctrine which is neither easily understood nor obvious from a simple reading of Scripture. Growth in understanding being a process, it seems we should gently and patiently commend sound doctrine on this point and not be so frustrated by current affairs regarding it that we wistfully yearn for others to associate us with Dominicans.

That last point is particularly concerning. The Dominicans are a Romanist order, with all the associated false doctrine and practices. For a Protestant to wistfully want to be associated with them is to forget just how badly Rome distorts the truth and subjects people to tyranny, and of how “bad company ruins good morals (1 Cor. 15:33). For him to do so in the midst of an article calling for a return to “traditional Protestant confessions such as the Westminster” is especially curious, since that confession says participation in oathbound orders like the Dominicans is “superstitious and sinful” (WCF 22.7).

As for the “Reformed Orthodox of the Westminster Assembly . . . preferr[ing] the company of a Thomist to that of someone who denied simplicity, eternal generation, or God’s foreknowledge,” that seems like begging the question, depending upon what is meant by a Thomist. The Reformed Orthodox were keen on rejecting the errors of all who stumbled from the truth, regardless of what way or direction in which they fell. In WCF 1.6, for example, they say of Scripture that “nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men,” the latter being aimed against Rome and the former against the radical sects that believed in continuing revelation.[1]

So also with WCF 1.7’s statement asserting Scripture’s perspicuity, which says that “not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them,” which is directed against both Rome and the sects that emphasized the “inner light,” as well as WCF 1.8’s assertion that Scripture had been transmitted and preserved faithfully.[2] And recall that the open practice of Romanism was forbidden by law at the time in which the Westminster Assembly was meeting, and that the radical sects such as the Quakers often fell afoul of the law as well in those days. This leads me to suspect that the difference between us and our forebears on this point is not that we keep company with one rather than the other, but that we keep company with one where they would not have kept company with either. Trueman’s broad point about many evangelicals needing to further clarify (or purify) their theology proper is indeed sound, but well might we fear that the movement urging them to do so sometimes leans a bit too far in the other direction, keeps the wrong company, or presents itself, as here, in a garb that is not wholly accurate to the case at hand.

Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] The Westminster Assembly and Its Work, B.B. Warfield, p.199

[2] Ibid., pp. 209, 212