In Defense of Holy Tradition w/Hank Hanegraaff, Francis Chan & Metropolitan Yohan (Hank Unplugged)

okay so my whole life i have been a bible guy about you know my christian life uh and any time a tradition is brought up or even the thought of church tradition i've seen it as an attack on the authority of scripture um i i look at church tradition i have looked at church tradition as just i don't i don't get that now i will say my views are starting to change a little bit i i'm starting to go oh okay maybe it's not as blasphemous as i thought it it was um i i would love to hear from you guys for all the people that are in the same boat i was just a few months ago just looking at everything that i cannot read in the bible specifically as somewhat heretical what would you say to them first of all any tradition that contradicts this scripture or divali the scripture i think we should be careful not to jump into that and embrace it it is like a bird has two wings you clip one wing off it will not make it um so the the the the scripture didn't create the church the church created the scripture and the apostles doctrines and apostolic traditions that's where paul said to thessalonians if people don't follow the traditions we have handed down to you do not have anything to do with them and he said that elsewhere in corinthians chapter 11 with all the stupidity of the church he said one thing i tell you good about you people have followed the traditions that we have handed down to you even with the mistakes they had so there is a human tradition that people create themselves for themselves but then there is a holy tradition which enhances us to follow the lord and so not understand that the difference is a big problem um like a train we need two tracks to run on so the holy traditions are things handed down you know it's like look at the american flag look at the american anthem after 2000 years if there is time no one is going to change the flag or the anthem and they keep doing that and shake hand or bowing these are all um you know traditions that are handed down to us when i was a small boy eating with a hand not fork a knife but with regards to following god for us to understand the ways of god kneeling in prayer raising hands or incense in the in the worship or how they conduct the holy communion the liturgical service these are all traditions that are enhancing and helping people for example sacrament life is one thing that it's one of the things we do constantly to teach people to embrace sacramental life what does that mean sacraments are means for us to experience god's grace like before i go take a shower for example this is one of the traditions that is there i i stop for a second and say i just can't believe god this water this place you created this and i make the sign of the cross which simply saying god from heaven came down from heaven to earth died on the cross take me from the left put me on the right my body my soul my spirit belong to him that's a tradition but it helps me to think about him before i eat meal or after the meal is over or you know there's a million things 24 hours our life is actually become sacramental it is nothing physical nothing visible is unspiritual they are means first look through as c.s lewis said and see god so rightly understanding the tradition that's reason why the ancient church the pattern of worship and the icons or a lot of things that are helping us to understand um the the way we should worship god and and old testament you'll find god told the people thousand things they should do they perpetuated the thing the holy traditions are non-negotiable it's like the other wing of the word that is we need both some people say we only need the scripture but they don't understand a lot of times it is not explained how to do things and what to do so how to do things what to do is given to us by the apostles and early fathers okay so so you're distinguishing there's some traditions that are just great they help us you know believers have used them for all time but then there's other ones that are holy traditions that you're saying this is this is what paul is referring to you know in second thessalonians those there are traditions that were written and then there were others that were spoken he's explicitly in scripture how do we know uh like where would a common person like me where would i find out what are those holy traditions um where would you turn me to yeah well first of all i'd um i'd uh agree with what metropolitan johannan has just communicated and i think very very well but what i would add to that is that tradition is also scripture rightly understood meaning that the early church did not have the scriptures but they had word of mouth that was being communicated from one uh believer to another it it wasn't just the holy fathers or the apostolic fathers but it was the grandmas in the churches who are passing it on to their children and their grandchildren uh so so these are are are teachings of the church that are being communicated by one generation to another generation to another generation uh if you only miss one generation you you you lose that whole tapestry you know if we fail to communicate the truths that we have been entrusted with we fail to communicate them to our children to your children to my children to your children if we fail to do that the whole glossary strand of civilization becomes lost that's why it's so important that we hand down the faith once for all delivered to the saints to our own children and they to theirs in other words we lose the faith and that is happening even now so uh but but but now there is a time in which the letters that are circulated in the church are formally codified in scripture in 367 by athanasius and then they become widely circulated in the churches and in the latter part of the 4th century and the 5th century and the 6th century and so forth but in addition to that you have you have the traditions that are passed on that can become traditionalism uh you're you're a sloth pelican a great orthodox scholar from yale university i believe it is said that tradition is the living faith of the dead traditionalism is the dead faith of the living let that percolate in your mind for a moment you know we are as it were dancing on the ashes of the saints we're not living vitally in their reality why because we don't know it so the thing that i'm adding to this with respect to tradition is the tradition is the bible rightly understood because not only was the bible given to us through the churches kp rightly said but a proper understanding of the bible is given through the church and that is holy tradition it is a proper understanding a proper reading of the bible which of course is logically communicated by those who are closest to the apostles geographically and speaking the same language now and you see that didn't all churches have traditions yeah that's right yeah i mean bible churches or any any church they all have printed the way they conduct their service so many songs so in prayer then preaching then this and that all that that's they never changed that for all people all over it's the same thing but what we are concerned about is the holy traditions that's right that was from the beginning handed down that like the the the sensing what does that mean that's a holy tradition and the women covering their head in the worship the baptism how it is done and the holy company how it is done the marriage how it is done so there's a lot of things so when you say orthodox church or the ancient church unless we get into the details of what they do we miss the intricacies of how they do these things in here in the western theology especially america i mean it's independent you do what do you feel like doing you know that kind of i i think that takes away from the our willingness to be part of a church together worship the liturgical service is so sacred because it is not individual worshipping it is the people of god together worshiping and angels and archangels and and we can see them but they're present in this it's it's it's a it's a amazing mystery when entering to a worship where we embrace the word and also the traditions well i think there's a lot of us that have not thought that through for one and and we just thought it was uh the righteous thing to do is to study the scriptures and figure out what would be most biblical i mean that's what i've been doing um now but now i hear this and i go okay this makes some sense but honestly i i just think maybe i'm looking for cliff notes or something i'm saying okay what are those holy traditions again where would i find it is there one book with proof that tells me look they did this like if you lived in the first second third century a.d here's what your worship experience would have been like universally um is there some place to look and get that not necessarily but what what you know when you're talking about sensing as kp rightly said um this goes back to perpetuating what happened in the old testament what happened in the early church this is something that's passed on and and so it's not innovative when you talk about human traditions i mean it's easy to look at the at the ancient church and saying oh that tradition is bad but look at the traditions that have cropped up in the modern church all kinds of traditions and kp alluded to some of those traditions think about the fact that in the 19th century you have a man who comes up with a new tradition that is now the most popular tradition in modern evangelicalism john nelson darby just as darwin put a speculative spin on the quote unquote scientific truths that he discovered and he was an innovator so you have john nelson darby putting a speculative spin on the scriptures so he looks at the scriptures now and he says and he was part of the plymouth brethren and he says you know what i think god has two distinct people with two distinct plans necessitating two distinct phases of the second coming a secret coming seven years later a second coming well that became a whole new way of reading the scripture because rightly dividing the word of truth now became trying to understand which of the scriptures apply to israel and which of the scriptures apply to the church that's a brand new tradition the apostle paul if you go back and say what is authentic tradition as opposed to human tradition well you go back to the apostle paul the apostle paul never communicates that god has two distinct people already he is communicating that god has always had one covenant community beautifully connected by a cross and illustrated by the apostle paul as a cultivated olive tree that has branches some grafted in and some cut off but one cultivated olive tree so god doesn't have two people he's got one covenant community i guess last thing i want to ask is uh you know i think about when christ would look at the the pharisees and he says you know you're tithing mint and coming but your way you're neglecting the weightier provisions of the law and this is again from like an outside perspective sometimes i'll look at a church that's more sacramental and go it seems like you guys are caring a lot about how you burn this incense and what you do with this cross and and yet the people i'm meeting coming out of these churches a lot of times i don't see this vibrant love for christ and love for each other passion for evangelism and it seems like maybe uh uh improper weightiness you know what it would be you know just this again my perception and like is there within you know your church's idea of like here are the more important things um you know are there the more weighty because from from my study of scripture like when i look at you i've got what did christ emphasize most i want to emphasize those things what those new testament authors emphasize the most i want to emphasize those things and again this is one person's experience when i look at people that come from maybe anglican catholic eastern orthodox uh my gut sense or read i don't know what the word is is sometimes wow you guys care very much about this dress and this and this and i'm not saying they're not important but it seems like there's a neglect maybe of the waiter thing is that no i think that's inaccurate no i think it's it's right i mean it's what i was trying to communicate when i was trying to communicate the difference between tradition and traditionalism i mean i think that you can again tradition being the living faith of the dead and traditionalism being the dead faith of the living you know where we were no longer enveloped in the treasure chest uh and we're we're we're doing things just in rote as opposed to in reality um but think about some of these traditions that are so critical they're like three braided chords that are woven together that so much of the church today has neglected in fact relegated oh that's just tradition think about fasting how significant is fasting jesus didn't say if you fast he says so when you fast and he says oh by the way when you fast don't disfigure your faces to show men you are fasting then you have your reward already instead wash your head put oil in your head and and don't make it obvious that people uh to people that you're fasting then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you opening so this is a a tradition that is passed down from one generation to another it is part of the liturgical calendar it has been in the church in time memoriam we don't practice that prayer proper prayer as as as mr paul johannan has as properly said i mean whether you use a prayer rope or not uh i find this is to be extraordinarily helpful as well but the prayer the jesus prayer you know the the the prayer of jesus as i call it a best-selling book i wrote called the prayer of jesus but there's also the jesus prayer that keeps you constant in prayer which is the very thing that paul prays for in ephesians chapter 6 in the chapter on the full armor of god uh so it's one of the ways in which you can calm your your anxious mind and and do the very thing that that kp so properly and beautifully said i mean we focus on the fact lord jesus christ on the grandeur of our lord and savior jesus christ lord jesus christ son of god have mercy on me a sinner and so we we see ourselves as helpless uh unworthy sinners in need of the greatness of our savior to pray that over and over again was a tradition that is passed down in the church and has been very very helpful in keeping us constant in prayer you know obviously reading the bible is a tradition what about arms giving this is what a gospel for asia has done so beautifully all over the world they've given alms when you fast you you you withdraw from food to feast on god you fast from food you feast on god well there's money left over what do you do with that money that you didn't spend on the food you give alms to the poor so it starts building a habit within you of giving and those are traditions that all have a root in scripture they're grounded in principles of scripture so perhaps you cannot trace the origin directly by connecting the dots from a to b to c to d and so forth but these are traditions in the church that have withstood the test of time and they're all traditions that ultimately have validation in the scripture and you know the another thing is the confession that is it's so sad the western church replaced the confession with the counseling sessions where people go and talk to a pastor with these problems but the biblical thing from the beginning was um in in in the worship um you know there's always people had time to go to the um priest and and have this private confession and hear the words from him your sins have forgiven us you have asked the lord to do so and those those kind of practices are very very helpful to keep the body united and feeling you know i'm weak but i'm loved by the church and the holy church never forgets um [Music] anyone you know whether they're living or dead um so in the early church you know they they never use the word frequently somebody died they use the word departed they are departed but they are alive and they are cloud of witnesses with us and so france there's a sense of the church really in a in a alien land but belong to the lord and everybody shared together in worship and everything we do and actually many of the ivories not too long ago met a catholic cardinal and he looked gloomy and sad i said um what happened to you and i know him he said oh nothing so i said no you you look kind of a little sad he said well tell you i was 40 days fasting and praying i said some problem he said no every year i do that just to get to know the lord that's a tradition he developed um of spending that you know the time and of course you know we have our church every year is every day is packed with something going on celebration or we just had the three days of nineveh you know the fasting and prayer um applying you know god made the decision to destroy the nineveh but they cried out to god and their court could see the visibility their repentance and god forgave them and it's invitation for uh people to take those three days of land um you know the land season is coming up all our churches militantly follow the land season in this is 40 days of fasting you know one meal or two meal and praying much and then going out in the community and sharing with the poor and needy and helping and all that so those these kind of these are things that will help our people to learn more about well and i think that's what some of this comes down to even in my thinking and i don't want to be too pragmatic over it all but i look at the condition of the church right now and i remember one time when you drove me to a speaking event and there's smoke and lights and you know okay this band and friend you made the comment you go you just kind of chuckled and says you americans are funny you know no one will show up unless there's a great speaker no one will come unless there's a great band and you said you know in india when they hear there's a prayer gathering oh people get excited just to pray and then you talked about when that people would get excited to celebrate communion and they would flock just to celebrate communion and that was so convicting to me because i thought no one does that here but i thought and again this is just from my pragmatic mind i'm thinking you know from god's point of view looking down and seeing these people in india flocking looking forward to take of the body and blood of christ meanwhile here this flocking depending on the speaker and the band and just going uh there was a there was a just a very unsettled feeling in me going gosh we're going further and further in this direction to where we're canceling prayer means because who even wants to come to those anymore or let's make them more exciting or let's figure out a way to get communion more exciting and and seeing a rightness of people gathering for the sake of you know devoting themselves to the body and blood and going i want to see that change and uh and and yet in all our efforts to be more creative to attract people to the church we've tried to use other means than some of the things we spear you know see spelled out in scripture and what i'm hearing from you both is there are also these traditions that were passed down and the idea of them were it was to preserve and to keep us pointing to christ in his incarnation and his resurrection rather than um getting caught up in some of these other other things that could attract you to gathering so i just the sacramental life is a life of worshipping god and i think that's where you're driving at and and that's that's the thing that i always experience when i open the door uh on sunday to the church in my mind i'm not going for a great sermon i'm not going for a musical extravaganza i'm going to worship god and the sacramental life allows me to worship god there are sacraments for reason the church has always embraced the sacrament of confession i think you alluded to that the sacrament of confession is not it's been prostituted and added to in many ways so now you're you know you have a little booth and you uh curtains open and there's a priest in there it is a priest that you confess to and well true sacrament of confession was never a confession to a priest the priest was the witness of your confession to god and became the counselor for you but that became a way of confessing your sins knowing he's faithful and just will forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness sacrament of confession was something i knew nothing about until i went back and studied the ancient church and realized wow this is what you do in the ancient church even at the beginning of my journey towards examining orthodoxy i had no idea of going in and confessing my sins and boy i'll tell you what there are a couple of things that are just so beautiful about it number one i recognize when i confess my sins it makes me very vulnerable and i want to make sure that i'm living a righteous life before god you know where no one else can see what i'm doing but re living a righteous life before god because i'm confessing that with a witness the priest who is on earth and and so but i'll tell you the first time i went to and experienced the sacrament of confession i felt like i had been born again not born again and the born-again sense but born again as a new baby just birthed out of my my mother's my mother's womb i i felt cleansed because i had i confessed my sin in the sacrament of confession and i'd do that individually but this is also something that is done within uh within the context of the body of christ i'm not a lone ranger christian you know i think i told you i i i know i told uh kp this that i i remember sitting around with a bunch of christian leaders who are friends of mine and their household words in the christian world i would never divulge their names but they and i were communicating this many many years back you know do you go to church no i don't go to church anymore do you go to church no i don't go to church i don't like to go to church anymore either why well because you know we've sort of been lifted out of that well today i can't imagine ever having thought that i am absolute i can't wait to get to the church to partake of the body of blood of christ the real presence of christ in the eucharist i can't wait to avail myself for the sacrament of confession throughout the year i the sacraments are part of the tradition of the church now there isn't necessarily a guidebook for it but there are markers along the way and i alluded to the decay you know which is a which is a uh which which is a book that is written that that that that that you can access and and you kind of see okay what was the church doing it's sort of a catechism for the church you know what was the church doing at the end of the first century well go read the did okay you know it it dates back to the first century to the early embryonic church so we don't have to re-event the wheel over and over again and we don't have to raise in our own churches new traditions which are the truth kp is absolutely right i mean you know people talk about tradition in a negative sense but every church has their own traditions and many of them make some of these traditions alluding to earlier acid tests for orthodoxy when they're not acid tests for orthodoxy at all i appreciate it i mean i i think my hope in this discussion was you know with others listening in obviously was not necessarily to convince everyone these are the holy traditions everything else but hopefully to shed light on here's two men that are pursuing their faith in christ oh yeah but i'm pointing to you obviously um that are pursuing christ in this way not not say everyone has to do it just this way but to i look at that and i go i don't see why i would disassociate with you that doesn't make sense to me biblically whether i completely buy into which traditions are holy which traditions are not or even if i say i don't believe in tradition i would still go gosh but their faith in christ uh the the non-negotiables that we talk about those foundational things are still there i guess i'm just saying um we're so quick nowadays to point one thing out and say okay everybody disassociate with him or him because he does this and as i listen to the way you explain even confession just now okay that's interesting i'll need to research that a little bit more um that does sound refreshing it does sound like a great tradition um it's a sacrament yeah sacrament okay and again i'm learning all this myself i guess my point is i just i still have a lot of learning to do i believe a lot of people do um it's just how we do it in that spirit of love not saying we just embrace everything but what is within that realm of orthodoxy and how can we have um loving and helpful discussions on this and humble discussions about this and so and thanks for your time i know you're both extremely old so there's not that much time and so you're giving that to me is great so thank you francis it's a blessing yeah it's always great to be with you yeah it's great to have this discussion [Music] you

Channel: Bible Answer Man

Views: 19,855

Keywords: Apologetics, Bible Answer Man, Bible, Christian Research Institute, CRI, Hank Hanegraaff, Christ, Christian, Christianity, God, Gospel, Jesus, Scripture, Truth

Id: eifyYugUXAU

Length: 32min 53sec (1973 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020