Now we command you, brothers, in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is
walking in idleness . . . For even when we were with you, we would give you
this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear
that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy-bodies. Now
such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work
quietly and to earn their own living.
2
Thessalonians 3:6a, 10-12
This charge was made openly to the
men of Thessalonica and the apostle even went on to say, “if anyone does not
what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing
to do with him, that he may be ashamed” (v. 14). (Jeremy Howard, You’re the
Husband: A Blueprint For Leading in Marriage [Greenville, S.C.: Ambassador
International, 2017], 46)
One will notice ellipsis (“…”) in the quote from 2 Thess 3. Here
is the rest of the verse:
and not in accord with the
tradition (παράδοσις) that you received from us.
So in reality, Paul was not teaching “if anyone does not what
we say in this letter” merely but also his (inspired) oral teaching, too,
which elsewhere he described as “the word of God” and on the same level of
authority as inscripturated revelation:
And we also thank God constantly
for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you
accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God,
which is at work in you believers. (1 Thess 2:13 ESV)
So then, brothers, stand firm and
hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or
by our letter. (2 Thess 2:15 ESV)
On the topic of inspired (oral) revelation, one I am fond of
using is that of 2 Chron 29:25 and 35:4, which read thusly:
And he [King Hezekiah] set the
Levites in the house of the Lord with cymbals, with psalteries, and with harps,
according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king's seer, and Nathan
the prophet: for so was the commandment of the Lord by his prophets. (2 Chron
29:25)
And prepare yourselves by the
houses of your fathers, after your courses, according to the writing of David
king of Israel, and according to the writing of Solomon his son. (2 Chron 35:4)
With respect to the first text, we learn the following: (1) David,
Gad, and Nathan were dead for about 250 years at this point; however, (2) they
passed on a "command . . . from the Lord" which was prescribed by
God's prophets on how worship to be conducted in the temple (hardly a minor
issue; the worship of God is a central issue in theology) and (3) such a
prescription and commandment is nowhere found in the entirety of the Bible and
yet Hezekiah regarded them as authoritative and binding. And
before anyone brings up Mark 7/Matt 15 and the Korban rule, note that a
Protestant who uses this “argument” is shooting themselves in the foot.
Consider:
If Jesus had taught that Scripture had a higher
authority than tradition, this would mean Jesus’ own words, which existed as an
oral tradition after his Ascension, would have had less authority than
Scripture. Whenever the first Christians said that the Lord Jesus “declared all
foods clean” (Mk 7:19), the Jews could have used Jesus’ own words against them
by saying Jesus’ oral tradition was less authoritative than the Old Testament’s
written kosher laws. The words Jesus spoke during his earthly ministry that we
have received through Scripture, as well as the words he spoke to the apostles
that they transmitted to the Church through Sacred Tradition, both represent
and word of God and are equal in authority. (Trent Horn, The Case for
Catholicism: Answers to Classic and Contemporary Protestant Objections [San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017], 43; for more on the Korban rule and Sola
Scriptura itself, see Not
By Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura)
Protestantism forces her apologists and pastors to engage in
blatant deception to support her pernicious doctrines. It is funny that they
use the term “cult” and “cultists” against Latter-day Saints: functionally
this butchering of Paul’s words is nothing short of cultic.