What Is Protestant Traditionalism? A Pro Trad Invitation

There is a growing hunger among many Christians for something deeper than modern evangelical minimalism. Many are tired of shallow worship, thin doctrine, personality-driven ministry, religious entertainment, and the constant reinvention of Christianity according to the trends of the age.

They are not looking for novelty. They are looking for roots. They are not looking for a religious product. They are looking for the ancient faith. They are not looking to deconstruct the Church. They are looking to rebuild.

This is why we speak of Protestant Traditionalism, or Pro Trad. And, it is the most vital issue of our day—the return to the ancient faith.

To become a Protestant Traditionalist is not to become Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, or nostalgic for some imagined golden age. It is to become a more faithful Protestant by recovering what Protestantism itself once understood: the Bible is supreme, the Church matters, doctrine must be guarded, worship must be reverent, and the faith must be received before it can be faithfully handed down.

Pro Trad is not a departure from Reformed Christianity. It is a recovery of Reformed Christianity in its fuller biblical, confessional, historical, and ecclesiastical form.

At the heart of Protestant Traditionalism is a proper understanding of Sola Scriptura. Scripture alone is the only infallible rule of faith and life. No creed, confession, council, theologian, pastor, tradition, or church practice stands above the written Word of God. Everything must be tested by Scripture. Everything must bow before Scripture. Everything must be corrected by Scripture.

But Sola Scriptura never meant that every individual Christian becomes his own final authority. It never meant private interpretation detached from the Church. It never meant that each generation must begin from scratch, as though the Holy Spirit had not been preserving, teaching, correcting, and sanctifying the New Covenant Church for two thousand years.

The Westminster Confession of Faith teaches that the whole counsel of God is either expressly set down in Scripture or may be deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence. That phrase is vital. Much of the Christian faith depends not merely upon isolated verses, but upon the whole counsel of God rightly understood, faithfully deduced, and carefully confessed.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not contained in one single verse using all the later theological language of the Church. Yet the doctrine is plainly and necessarily taught by Scripture. The same is true of the two natures of Christ, the covenantal unity of Scripture, the ordinary means of grace, the Lord’s Day, the ordered ministry of the Church, and many other doctrines and practices that arise from the whole Bible faithfully read.

This is where Protestant Traditionalism becomes necessary.

A traditional Protestant asks more than the modern question, “What does this verse mean to me?” It asks, “What has God said, what has the Church confessed, and how must we faithfully receive and practice the whole counsel of God?”

That does not place tradition over Scripture. It places tradition under Scripture. Sacred Tradition, rightly understood, is not an independent or infallible source of revelation. It is, when rightly deduced from Sacred Scripture, the faithful transmission, preservation, confession, and practice of biblical truth within the life of the Church.

Tradition can be abused and corrupted. Therefore, Protestant Traditionalists must never treat tradition as infallible or absolute. We must be willing to reform all things according to the Word of God.

But we must also reject the arrogance of modern individualism that treats the wisdom of the historic Church as useless. We are not the first Christians to read the Bible. We are not the first Christians to worship the Triune God. We are not the first Christians to wrestle with doctrine, heresy, discipline, sacraments, liturgy, catechesis, family life, and the mission of the Church.

To become pro tradition is to become humble enough to receive an inheritance.

• It means receiving the ecumenical creeds as faithful summaries of biblical truth concerning the Triune God and the person of Jesus Christ. It means receiving the Reformed confessions as faithful doctrinal standards that help guard the Church against error. It means learning from the pastors, theologians, martyrs, and faithful saints who came before us.
  
• It means loving the Church as the household of God, not treating it as a weekly vendor of religious goods and services.
• It means seeing worship not as entertainment, but as covenantal communion with the living God through Word, Sacrament, and Prayer.
• It means recovering catechesis, discipline, reverence, repentance, covenant households, psalm singing, historic hymns, ordered liturgy, robust preaching, and the Lord’s Table as a means of grace for the people of God.
• It means refusing to let the spirit of the age determine the shape of the Church.

Becoming a Protestant Traditionalist begins with repentance. We must repent of thinking too lightly of the Church. We must repent of treating doctrine as optional. We must repent of worship shaped more by preference than by Scripture. We must repent of confusing informality with sincerity, novelty with life, and emotional excitement with spiritual depth.

Then we must REDISCOVER.

• Rediscover Scripture as the supreme authority over all faith and life.
  
• Rediscover the creeds as ancient guardrails of orthodoxy.
• Rediscover the confessions as faithful summaries of biblical doctrine.
• Rediscover worship as the holy assembly of God’s covenant people before His throne.
• Rediscover the Church as the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God.
• Rediscover the communion of saints, not merely with those sitting beside us, but with the faithful Church throughout the ages.

Then we must RECOVER.

• Recover what has been neglected.
  
• Recover the reverence of worship.
• Recover the seriousness of doctrine.
• Recover the beauty of ordered liturgy.
• Recover the discipline of catechesis.
• Recover the ordinary means of grace.
• Recover the biblical government of the Church.
• Recover the practice of Christian households.
• Recover the conviction that Christ is King over all things.

Then we must REBUILD.

• We must rebuild churches that are not driven by entertainment, personality, consumerism, or cultural compromise.
  
• We must rebuild families that worship, pray, confess, repent, forgive, catechize, and persevere.
• We must rebuild Christian communities that love one another, bear one another’s burdens, and stand firm together in the ancient faith once for all delivered to the saints.

This is not easy work. It is slower than novelty. It is less flashy than entertainment. It is often misunderstood by those who have been trained to think that anything ancient must be dead and anything modern must be alive.

But the Church is not built by trends. The Church is built by Christ.

And Christ builds His Church through His appointed means: His Word, His sacraments, His Spirit, His shepherds, His people, His discipline, His worship, and His truth.

So, are you interested in becoming a Protestant Traditionalist?

Then begin by submitting yourself to Scripture as the Word of God.

• Read the Bible not as an isolated individual, but as a member of Christ’s Church.
  
• Learn the creeds.
• Study the confessions.
• Sit under faithful preaching.
• Join yourself to a true church.
• Receive the ordinary means of grace.
• Reject shallow Christianity.
• Stop looking for a church that merely makes you comfortable and start looking for a church that will help make you faithful.

Protestant Traditionalism is not about being academic, aesthetic, or contrarian. It is about faithfulness.

• It is about standing firmly upon the Word of God while receiving the wisdom of the Church under the authority of Scripture.
  
• It is about being Protestant without being rootless.
• It is about being traditional without being unbiblical.
• It is about being Reformed without being modernistic.
• It is about receiving the faith, guarding the faith, living the faith, and handing down the faith.

At Holy Trinity Reformed Church, this is what we mean when we say: Rediscover. Recover. Rebuild.

Come rediscover the ancient faith. Come recover what has been lost. Come rebuild what has been deconstructed. Come rediscover the ancient faith build upon Christ, the prophets, the apostles, the Early Church Fathers, and the Reformed Fathers.

Become a traditional Protestant and recover the ancient faith once for all delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3).

Don’t abdicate. Don’t hesitate. Don’t delay. We have been called by God to content for the faith (Jude 1:3). But first we must possess the faith. And then, we must pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor for the cause of Christ. Will it require sacrifice? Yes! Will it require determination? Yes!

So come and “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1).

Time is of the essence and it is high time to rediscover, recover, and rebuild. Will you join us?

“See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” –Ephesians 5:15-16