Muller on Scripture and Tradition
From the second volume of Richard Muller's quadrilogy, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics:
The strongly worded arguments of Protestant theologians of both the Reformation and orthodox eras against the idea of a coequal authority of Scripture, tradition, and church, typically summarized by the phrase sola Scriptura, must never be taken as a condemnation of tradition or a denigration of the authority of the church as a confessing community of believers. The Reformation took as its point of departure the late medieval debate over the relation of Scripture to tradition and assumed that tradition stood as a subordinate norm under the authority of Scripture and deriving its authority from Scripture. This assumption of the fundamental value and rectitude of the church's faith insofar as it was genuinely grounded on the biblical Word allowed place in the Protestant mind both for a use of tradition and for a churchly use of confessions and catechisms as standards of belief.
This is really nothing new, but it's good. And it is especially pertinent (for me, anyway) in light of what I taught on for this past Sunday's adult Sunday School. More on that forthcoming.
