Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 148 · May 28
Word or Epistle
“Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.”
For centuries this verse has been used as a weapon in an argument it was not written to settle. The fight usually starts by lifting a few words out of the middle of it.
Paul built the source into the sentence: "hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle." Two parts of that set limits. These are traditions the Thessalonians had been taught, and the teaching came from Paul himself, either by his own preaching or by his own letter. He does the same in the next chapter, speaking of a brother "that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us." The word tradition simply means something handed over, and by itself it says nothing about whether the thing is good. That is why, twice in two chapters, Paul names who did the handing over.
The verse also leaves something out: it does not tell you what the spoken teaching was. Paul reminds them, "Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?" Some of what he taught in that room is not written in this letter, so anyone who claims to know exactly what it said is filling in the gap themselves. And the reason the Thessalonians needed something firm to hold sits thirteen verses earlier. Paul has to urge them not to be "shaken in mind" or troubled "by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand." Teaching was going round that claimed to come from Paul.
The same word for tradition is the one Jesus uses in Mark: "For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men." Then, more sharply, "Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition." Neither passage sorts traditions by how old or how beautiful they are. Both sort them by who handed them down, and by whether the commandment of God survived them. That is a question you can ask about anything you have been taught, including what you were taught by people you love. And you can ask it without fear, because Paul's very next words are a prayer that our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father, who "hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace," will "Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 148 is Beyond Imagination (1 Corinthians 2:9).