Beyond Traditioned Anti-Traditionalism: An Anglican Response to the Matthew Barrett Controversy

Bryan Hollon

Jul 28, 2025

Introduction

Trinity Anglican Seminary recently hired Dr. Matthew Barrett to serve as Research Professor of Theology. Dr. Barrett, formerly of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has made the significant decision to convert to Anglicanism, citing among other reasons his concern that the Southern Baptist Convention would not affirm the Nicene Creed and his desire to retrieve the "Great Tradition" of Christian orthodoxy. This announcement, as many have observed, has caused quite a stir online – with hundreds of thousands engaging with social media posts on the subject and prominent Baptist voices expressing sharp disagreement with Dr. Barrett's theological journey.

The controversy has exposed deep fault lines within evangelical circles about the nature of tradition, biblical authority, and denominational identity. Some Baptist critics have accused Dr. Barrett of elevating tradition above Scripture, of abandoning "biblical Christianity" for high-church formalism, and of embracing a "Catholic" understanding of authority that undermines the sufficiency of God's Word. These are serious charges that deserve a serious and sustained response. While I’m sure this won’t be the last word, I’d like to offer my own “two-cents” on the issue in what follows.

I write not to attack our Baptist brothers and sisters, whom we love and with whom we share the fundamental truths of the gospel, but to offer a gracious explanation of the Anglican position on these matters. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate that Anglicanism maintains an exceptionally high view of biblical authority while embracing the Great Tradition in a way that is not only consistent with Scripture but necessary for its proper interpretation. More pointedly, I want to suggest that the Baptist critique of Dr. Barrett's position reveals an inconsistency at the heart of much contemporary evangelical thinking about tradition – what we might call "traditioned anti-traditionalism."

Beyond Traditioned Anti-Traditionalism

The response to Dr. Barrett's move has been illuminating precisely because it reveals how deeply embedded Baptist life is in its own particular traditions. James White of Alpha & Omega Ministries has criticized Barrett for "promoting the 'Great Tradition' at a Baptist institution," arguing that his conversion "proves our point" about the self-contradictory nature of such retrieval efforts within Baptist contexts. Other critics have focused on Barrett's supposed abandonment of "no creed but the Bible" principles in favor of conciliar authority.

But here lies the central irony: the very phrase "no creed but the Bible" is itself a creedal statement – and one that appears nowhere in Scripture. It represents a particular tradition of biblical interpretation that emerged in nineteenth-century American Protestantism, not an apostolic teaching. When Baptist critics invoke "Baptist distinctives," appeal to "what Baptists have always believed," or defend their denominational identity against Anglican influence, they are engaging in precisely the kind of traditional reasoning they claim to reject.

This is not hypocrisy – it is the unavoidable human condition. As the great 20th-century historical theologian, Jaroslav Pelikan, memorably observed:

Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.¹

We all stand within interpretive traditions whether we acknowledge them or not. The question is not whether we will be shaped by tradition, but whether we will engage with tradition thoughtfully and deliberately, or allow ourselves to be unconsciously controlled by unexamined assumptions.

The controversy surrounding Dr. Barrett's move demonstrates how entrenched these unexamined traditions have become. When Baptist voices speak of defending "biblical Christianity" against "traditional Christianity," they reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of how Scripture itself speaks about tradition. This brings us to a crucial theological point: the Bible itself has a complex and nuanced understanding of tradition, recognizing both its dangers and its necessity.

Scripture's Own Teaching on Tradition

The Scriptures speak of tradition in both negative and positive terms, and we must attend carefully to both. Jesus warned against "the traditions of men" that "nullify the word of God" (Mark 7:8, 13), and Paul cautioned the Colossians about being "taken captive by philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men" (Colossians 2:8). These passages rightly warn us against human traditions that obscure or contradict divine revelation.

But Scripture also speaks positively of tradition, using the crucial term paradosis – the handing down of authoritative teaching. Paul commends the Corinthians because they "hold firmly to the traditions just as I delivered them to you" (1 Corinthians 11:2), and he instructs the Thessalonians to "stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us" (2 Thessalonians 2:15). Most significantly, Paul describes the gospel itself as a tradition: "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3).

This biblical understanding of paradosis refers to the necessary process by which "the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) is transmitted from generation to generation. It is not an addition to Scripture, but the faithful preservation and transmission of scriptural truth. The apostolic tradition is not something alien to Scripture – it is the living community of faith that gave birth to Scripture, preserved Scripture, and continues to interpret Scripture according to the rule of faith that Scripture itself establishes.

The Body of Christ Across Time

This brings us to a fundamental ecclesiological point that Baptist critics of the Great Tradition often miss: the church is not merely a collection of autonomous individuals or local congregations, but the body of Christ that transcends both geographical and temporal boundaries. Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 12 makes this clear: "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ... Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it" (1 Corinthians 12:12, 27).

If the various members of Christ's body cannot say to one another "I have no need of you" (1 Corinthians 12:21), then this principle surely applies to the temporal dimension of the church as well. The great cloud of witnesses described in Hebrews 12:1 are not merely past exemplars but continuing members of the one body of Christ. The fathers of the first centuries, the bishops who gathered at Nicaea, the theologians who articulated the doctrine of the Trinity – these are our brothers in Christ, members of the same body, participants in the same Spirit.

This means that when we read Scripture, we do not read as isolated individuals but as members of a community that spans the centuries. The Holy Spirit who inspired the apostolic writings is the same Spirit who has guided the church in its understanding of those writings. To ignore or dismiss the theological reflections of our forebears is to commit precisely the sin Paul warns against – telling other members of the body that we have no need of them.

This is not to say that the fathers were infallible or that later tradition carries the same authority as Scripture. But it is to say that we should read Scripture at least somewhat as they did if we are truly members of Christ's one body. Their insights, their struggles with heresy, their careful articulation of biblical truth – these form part of the context within which Scripture is properly understood.

The Anglican Way: Scripture, Tradition, and Authority

This brings us to the distinctive Anglican approach to these questions, which offers a way forward that honors both the supreme authority of Scripture and the ministerial authority of the Great Tradition. Importantly, we can distinguish between Scripture as the only source of revelation and Scripture as the only source of authority. This distinction is crucial for understanding how tradition functions in Anglican theology.

Scripture alone is revelatory in the strict sense – only the written Word of God conveys God's presence and communicates divine truth authoritatively. The creeds, councils, and fathers do not add new revelation to what God has already revealed in Christ and recorded in Scripture. In this sense, Anglicans are committed to sola scriptura in its proper meaning: Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith and the only source of revealed truth necessary for salvation.

But this does not mean that Scripture is the only source of authority in the church's life. Non-scriptural sources can have a certain ministerial authority – particularly in helping us interpret Scripture correctly. The distinction here is between magisterial authority (which belongs to Scripture alone) and ministerial authority (which can be exercised by creeds, councils, and the tradition of the church when they faithfully serve Scripture's own teaching).

This is precisely how the early church understood the relationship between Scripture and the rule of faith. As Michael Bird has written:

Our biblical canon and church creeds go together like peanut butter and jelly or like Vegemite and avocado... The formation of the biblical canon and the origin of the early creeds arose out of processes that were concurrent and mutually influential.²

The same apostolic tradition that gave us the New Testament also gave us the Nicene Creed. They are not competing authorities but complementary expressions of the one apostolic faith. But the Creed does not convey Christ as the Word does – the Creed is not the Word written.

Thomas Cranmer’s Understanding of Tradition

This Anglican understanding finds its classical expression in the work of Thomas Cranmer, the chief architect of the English Reformation. Cranmer, whose Protestant credentials are unimpeachable, provides an excellent example of how to embrace the Great Tradition without compromising biblical authority. His approach is instructive for contemporary discussions about tradition and Scripture.

We should not forget that Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake by order of the Roman Catholic Mary Tudor. Cranmer was most certainly aligned with the Protestants, theologically.

In Cranmer's preface to the Great Bible of 1540, he writes:

"Here may all manner of persons... learn all things what they ought to believe or do, as well concerning Almighty God, as also concerning themselves and all other."

Scripture is the supreme authority for faith and practice. But Cranmer does not stop there. He recognizes that Scripture must be interpreted, and that this interpretation benefits from the wisdom of the church's greatest teachers.

In his theological treatises, Cranmer consistently appeals not only to Scripture but to the fathers of the church, particularly Augustine, Chrysostom, and other ancient authorities. But he does so in a way that maintains Scripture's supremacy. The fathers are valuable interpreters of Scripture, not additional sources of revelation. When they agree with Scripture, they help us understand Scripture better. When they disagree with Scripture (or with each other), Scripture judges them.

This is precisely the approach that Cranmer takes toward the creeds and councils. In his "Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament," he writes:

The old holy fathers and ancient bishops were in many points much better learned, and in all points much more godly, than our men be nowadays... But yet they were men as we be, and might err as we may err.

The fathers deserve our respect and careful attention, but they do not possess infallible authority.

Cranmer's treatment of the Nicene Creed exemplifies this balance. He includes it in the liturgy not as an addition to Scripture but as a faithful summary of scriptural teaching about the Trinity and the Incarnation. The Creed has authority precisely because and insofar as it accurately reflects what Scripture teaches. It serves as an authoritative guide for interpreting Scripture, but Scripture remains the ultimate standard by which the Creed itself must be judged.

This approach allows Cranmer to embrace the theological achievements of the early church while maintaining the Protestant principle of Scripture's supremacy. The Creed does not compete with Scripture; it serves Scripture by providing a reliable interpretive framework that has been tested by centuries of faithful use. As Cranmer puts it in his homily "Of the Salvation of Mankind":

These be the very words of our Saviour Christ, which ought to be believed of every Christian man without doubt or mistrust... But because we be ignorant and cannot perceive the meaning thereof, let us hear what the ancient fathers have written.

The genius of Cranmer's approach is that it is thoroughly Word-saturated while remaining deeply traditional. His prayer book, collects, and homilies demonstrate that embracing the Great Tradition actually serves biblical faithfulness rather than undermining it. The tradition helps us read Scripture better, not differently.

The Mutual Dependence of Canon and Creed

This brings us to a crucial historical point that contemporary Baptist critics of tradition often miss: the biblical canon and the early creeds emerged from the same historical process and serve the same theological purpose. Both represent the church's attempt to preserve and transmit the apostolic faith in the face of heretical distortion.

The process by which the New Testament canon was established was not a purely individual or congregational matter – it was a community process that unfolded over several centuries and involved the same kind of conciliar discernment that produced the Nicene Creed. Church fathers like Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, and Irenaeus,

"frequently quoted and referred to various texts in their epistles and theological works. Their writings not only reflect the theological inclinations of the time but also exhibit a discernible pattern of which texts were considered authoritative and inspired."³

Moreover, "these texts had to align with the rule of faith, a set of core theological beliefs derived from the apostolic teaching. This rule of faith acted as a benchmark against which the content and doctrinal integrity of the texts were measured."⁴ The same theological discernment that recognized certain writings as canonical also produced the creeds that summarize the faith those writings teach.

Historically speaking, to accept the biblical canon while rejecting the conciliar tradition that helped establish it is inconsistent. It’s like cutting off the limb upon which we are perched. The authority that Southern Baptists grant to the 27 books of the New Testament rests on precisely the same kind of ecclesial discernment they reject when it comes to the Nicene Creed. As is well known, the 27 books of the New Testament were first published in a single list in 367 AD by Athanasius of Alexandria - who incidentally had a major theological influence on the Nicene Creed. Moreover, the 27 books of the New Testament were first sanctioned by a church council at the Third Council of Carthage in 393 AD.

Importantly, both the canon and the creeds represent the church's faithful response to the apostolic tradition, and both serve the same purpose: preserving the integrity of the gospel against heretical corruption. I’ll have more to say on all of this in the next post.

A Living Faith, Not Dead Traditionalism

None of this should be understood as an argument for blind traditionalism or the uncritical acceptance of everything that calls itself traditional. Anglicans are not Roman Catholics; we do not believe in the infallibility of popes or the equality of Scripture and tradition. We distinguish carefully between Tradition with a capital T (the apostolic faith itself) and traditions with a lowercase t (particular practices and interpretations that may or may not faithfully reflect that apostolic faith).

According to Pelikan, "tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” A theology of tradition never insists that we repeat the past in slavish fashion but that we are aware of its influence and sensitive to the ways that it will sometimes guide us rightly and sometimes steer us off-course.

This is precisely what allows Anglicans to embrace the whole of the church's past without having to defend every particular expression of it. Whether one affirms the theology of N.T. Wright or not, I hope all Anglicans can agree when he suggests that "if it is true, then Anglicans have believed it." We Anglicans are free to believe whatever is true of the gospel, and we are compelled to allow our own "tradition" to be corrected by gospel truth when necessary. Our embrace of "tradition" is one of the great strengths of the Anglican way precisely because it allows us to escape the tyranny of "traditionalism."

The genius of this approach is that it provides both stability and flexibility. We are rooted in the apostolic tradition, but we are not enslaved to particular historical expressions of that tradition. We can appreciate the theological insights of Augustine while rejecting his views on particular theological points. We can embrace the Trinitarian orthodoxy of Nicaea while acknowledging that the political circumstances of the fourth century are not normative for all times.

The Deep Connection Between Canon and Creed

This understanding prepares us to appreciate what Bishop Lancelot Andrewes famously called the foundations of Anglican orthodoxy:

One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries, that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.

This is not a hierarchy of competing authorities but a description of how divine revelation has been received, preserved, and transmitted through the apostolic community. The "one canon reduced to writing by God himself" maintains its supremacy as the only infallible rule of faith. But that canon is properly understood within the interpretive framework provided by the "two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers."

Andrewes' formula elegantly captures the Anglican balance between biblical supremacy and traditional wisdom. Scripture is the ultimate authority, but it is Scripture interpreted within the community of faith that spans the centuries. The creeds do not add to Scripture; they help us understand what Scripture teaches. The councils do not replace biblical authority; they serve biblical authority by protecting the church from interpretations that would distort the apostolic faith.

In my next essay, I will explore more fully this deep connection between canon and creed, showing how both emerge from the same apostolic tradition and serve the same theological purpose. I will argue that far from undermining biblical authority, the Great Tradition actually serves to protect and preserve the gospel that Scripture proclaims.

Conclusion: The Unavoidable Role of Tradition

The controversy surrounding Dr. Barrett's conversion to Anglicanism has revealed something that many in our contemporary evangelical communities would prefer not to acknowledge: tradition plays an absolutely necessary and unavoidable role in Christian life and biblical interpretation. The question is not whether we will be influenced by tradition, but whether we will engage with tradition thoughtfully and deliberately, allowing ourselves to benefit from the wisdom of our forebears while maintaining proper biblical priorities.

Anglicanism offers a way forward that honors both Scripture's supremacy and tradition's ministerial authority. We affirm with our Baptist brothers and sisters that Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith and the only source of revealed truth necessary for salvation. But we also recognize that Scripture is best understood within the interpretive community that gave birth to it, preserved it, and has been guided by the Spirit in understanding its meaning.

This is not a compromise with "Catholicism" or an abandonment of "biblical Christianity." It is a recognition that biblical Christianity itself is traditional Christianity – that the faith once delivered to the saints has been faithfully preserved and transmitted through the centuries by the very community that produced the New Testament canon.

I would argue that Dr. Barrett's journey toward Anglicanism represents not a departure from biblical faithfulness but a deeper embrace of it. In retrieving the Great Tradition, he has found not a competitor to Scripture but the creeds, councils, and perhaps most importantly - the members of Christ’s body who produced the creeds. They were among Scripture's faithful servants, and we need them (1 Corinthians 12:21). In affirming the Nicene Creed, he has not elevated human tradition above divine revelation but recognized that this creed faithfully summarizes what divine revelation teaches about the triune God.

The Baptist critique of this position, however well-intentioned, reveals the problematic nature of traditioned anti-traditionalism. It attempts to reject tradition while remaining deeply embedded in particular traditions. It defends "biblical Christianity" while ignoring how that Christianity was understood by the very communities that gave us the Bible.

While the ACNA, and the Anglican tradition more generally, are far from perfect, I believe that Anglicanism offers a better way on this issue – a way that takes seriously both the authority of Scripture and the wisdom of the ages, both the finality of apostolic revelation and its transmission through the generations. This is the Anglican way that Dr. Barrett has embraced, and it is a way that serves not only theological precision but pastoral wisdom, providing the stability and continuity that God's people need in every generation.

As we continue to engage these important questions, I’m grateful to have Dr. Barrett with us, and I pray that we will all contend for the faith with both clarity and charity, recognizing that our common commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ far exceeds our denominational differences, while also appreciating the distinctive contributions that each tradition brings to the church catholic.

1.       Jaroslav Pelikan, interview with U.S. News & World Report, July 26, 1989.

2

Michael Bird, How God Became King, 29.

3

Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited, 145.

4

Ibid.