It strikes me as completely petitio principii (circular) to simply presume that the Great Tradition of the Church just is caused by God’s design. It is a total adjunct of natural theology to maintain that we, even collectively, can simply scan the contours of ecclesial history and identify what counts as orthodox, and what doesn’t; and then use what we count as orthodox to relegate anything we deem outside of ‘orthodoxy’ as heretical or heterodox. I write and think as a Protestant, a Free Church Protestant (FCP). Even if I wasn’t an FCP, just being a mere Protestant ought to fortify the thinker from simply affirming something as orthodox because ‘the Church’ says so. But this is what we continue to get as the mantra from evangelical and Reformed (and Lutheran) theologians. I’m sorry, but I can’t get over this.

I’m a “Bible believing Christian,” who sees value in the doctrinal contours presented by the church catholic. Along with Barth I even see a Chalcedonian pattern that ought to be paradigmatically followed in the ordering of our theological inklings. But it is a pattern that I see; it isn’t an absolute frame whereby I adjudge this ‘in’ and that ‘out,’ per se. There, of course, is a standard for determining what is in and what is out, but it isn’t ultimately Church tradition; for the Protestant it is Holy Scripture—but not Holy Scripture that is sublated by the Church’s tradition. The Protestant, like myself, is committed to what the Reformed refer to as the Protestant ‘Scripture principle.’ Yet, even those committed to this, or sola Scriptura, often qualify it to the point that in order to ensure they are understood to be ‘catholic,’ that they end up hijacking Scripture’s authority and embassy by using the categories presented by The Great Tradition as their biblical exegetical lenses. The result is that we are really given a reading of Scripture whose esse (being) is the Church’s magisterium and the tradition that that is.

As an alternative, and what I take to be a genuinely Protestant doctrine of authority, for those committed de jure to the Scripture principle, I believe we ought to see Scripture’s esse, or reality grounded in Christ alone (solus Christus). If we don’t intentionally, and RADICALLY, make this move then all we are left with is what we see unfolding currently in so much of the theological environs of ‘conservative’ Protestant existence today. As an illustration, just go onto conservative theological social media (Twitter and Facebook come to mind), and see how many of the folks there are committed to some form of Thomism. Thomism has become the Tridentine Church’s (post-Trent) mode for doing all things theological. And yet we can equally say that this mode has been just as entrenched, ever since the 16^th and 17^th centuries of Post Reformation Reformed orthodox development, for the Protestant churches. This is what being ‘recovered’ currently. But I would argue that this whole movement, particularly as that was given impetus in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, belies the very intent of the Lutherian and Calvinian (et al) Reformation to begin with. Luther in particular, even while constructively deploying certain Aristotelian categories, completely rejected the Thomist or Aristotelian theology of his day. Some point out that Luther only rejected what he understood of Aristotle and Thomas in order to marginalize my point, but the reality remains that Luther fundamentally saw the Pure Being theology of the Church at odds with the Faith of Christ as presented on the pages of the NT. And yet people continuously ignore this fact, and rush headlong into the Catholic faith; even as Protestants. They aren’t reforming anything, they are only submitting to the power of the river Tiber and drowning in its Thomist eddies and Papal undercurrents.

More importantly, what I am really at a loss over is what I was mentioning at the beginning of this post. In order to take advantage of some of the important doctrinal patterns that have developed over the centuries doesn’t mean that the person attempting to take this advantage must swallow the whole ball of wax! A person can constructively skiff these patterns as they see those emerging from the reality of Christ revealed or not. A person does not have to be a Thomist or Scotist (or even a Palamite) in order to find helpful conceptual theological matter that might be present in even some of those patterns. But it seems to me that people are conflating catholicity with identification with this sort of Church Tradition; that one must be Aristotelian or ‘speculative’ or of the negative way in order to be a catholic thinker. And yet all of this seems oh so AD HOC! Protestants, or what I take to be genuinely Protestant, don’t read God’s face off of the developments of natural history; even if that takes place in the Church. Protestant’s know their Shepherd’s voice because their Shepherd is their life; their Shepherd is their brother and Savior, Jesus Christ. As such the Protestant knows that they have a direct and unmediated line between themselves and God, who is their Father by the adoption of Grace. Protestants don’t have a speculative relationship in regard to knowing Who their God is, they know Him concretely and relationally in and through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is their mediator, and through participation and union with Him the Protestant comes to have a theological slab illumined for them that does not require the sort of speculative meandering that Tridentine theology requires.

I submit that in order to be genuinely Protestant in theological orientation, the Christian must forgo commitment to the sort of speculative theology that is being recovered by so many today in the Protestant churches (as part of a long line with Protestantism). I submit that in order to be Protestant one must be radically committed to Holy Scripture’s authority and her reality in Jesus Christ. I submit that in order to be Protestant the Christian’s whole frame of reference must be shaped by the regula fidei, who I, in a reified sense, take to be Jesus Christ directly (not mediately through the Church). I submit that in order to be Protestant the disciple must repudiate all forms of natural theology, and rely solely on the apocalyptic and in-breaking of God’s life in the risen Christ as that comes to be known by the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit as attested by Holy Scripture. To be genuinely Protestant, as a theological thinker, I submit that we must operate as confessional agents who reject all forms of apology as the basis for the theological task. To be a genuine Protestant thinker I submit that we have no other tradition but Christ, who in fact turns out to not be a tradition at all; but a person! If you attempted to place what I’m saying in the history of Christian ideas it would be in the spirit of the via moderna, but I won’t explain that now.