Chapter Ten — Bench Two: Is This Scripture or Tradition?

Drawn from When Did You Last Check the Foundation of Your House, The Day You Shall Surely Die, Pride in Tradition at the Expense of Scripture

Part One gave the three levels of a tradition, and Part Two gave the five-step move and the anger test. This bench puts them in the order a disciple actually needs when a doctrine is being defended with heat. Four questions, in sequence.

First, find the level. Ask which of the three the argument is happening at. The conclusion and the cited verse are levels one and two, and the real work is done at level three. The Foundation volume's question for the buried assumption is "is this assumption in the text, or was it added to protect something real?" The volume on death and the fall adds a courtesy that is also a method: state the strongest case of the opposing view before answering it, and ask a brother "can you identify your load-bearing assumption here?" Talk at level two, the volume advises, and not at level one.

Second, take your own temperature. If you notice anger, treat it as information. The volume on tradition applies its anger test to the reader before anyone else, and it separates the examination of the heat from the examination of the claim.

Third, run the move. Ask whether the framework began as honest work from Scripture, spread into a community's identity, stopped being answerable to the text, began to feel like the text itself, and is now defended with sola Scriptura. The volume states the point that matters most: "The container changed. The move did not." It applies the move to Rome and to the Reformers' heirs, to confessions of faith and to the claim to stand outside such critique.

Fourth, draw the line. The apostolic standard is in Acts 15:28, and the volume turns it into a definition.

Beneath all four questions sits the volume's measure: "is this tradition producing the knowing of John 17:3, or has it become a substitute for it?" That is the question to ask of the tradition. The second question to ask is of the one asking it. Part Two gave the Tertullian watch for that. A correct diagnosis can become a credential, and the volume that prints the warning in section after section puts the failure in a sentence: "once you are motivated to defend a position rather than test it, your critical faculties — however formidable — are working for the wrong team." Run the sequence once on a tradition you love before you run it on one you do not.