This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Rome Examined: Examination of the Decrees of the Council of Trent. In this concise distillation of Chemnitz’s magisterial critique, we present his scriptural case against Rome’s decrees on tradition, justification, the sacraments, and papal authority—one section at a time. (Find all the excerpts here: https://wolfmueller.co/category/rome-examined/)
1:3: Papal Tradition in Its Relationship to Pharisaic and Talmudic Tradition
[1] The appeal to tradition is not new but is rather an old armament of Jewish wickedness against the sword of the Spirit, against the written Word of God.
[2] The sound doctrine at the time of Christ was corrupted. The Gospel history shows us that this corruption came from false and empty tradition. The luminous words of Scripture, such as the Second and Fourth Commandments, were opposed by the statutes of men, and they sought to drag Scripture down to the level of tradition with the phrase, “It was said to those of old” (Matthew 5:21 ff).
[3] That this became the source of all the perversities in the doctrine of the Pharisees at that time the Son of God demonstrated in many places.
[4] When Christ had to contend with the Pharisees about traditions outside of and alongside Scripture, He could have easily invoked many other real words and works of the patriarchs beyond the written Word. Without a doubt He would have done this if He had not understood that Scripture contains everything which is necessary to salvation. But Christ not only refuted the human statutes of the Pharisees as delusions, but He also led the Pharisees themselves back to Scripture, without inserting traditions or arranging them alongside Scripture as necessary.
[5] The friends of Andrada will certainly respond that the Pharisees and rabbis lied with their human statutes, whereas the papal traditions were handed down by the apostles. So great is the semblance between the two sides that if the Talmud had not been written earlier, I would have assumed that the rabbis had borrowed their skill from the papists.[1] Without a doubt, the chain of lies in the traditions of the Talmudists and papists stem from the same architect, the one who has scattered weeds among the good seed.
[6] Now let us imagine that we are dealing with a Jew who out of proper sense rejected the Talmudic tradition and wants only to retain what agrees with Scripture and is in accordance with it, and we confront him with the claim of Pighius: “How do you, O Jew, know that the books of Moses and the prophets are trustworthy, whose originals you have not seen? Surely this could only be known through the testimony of those who in reliable succession have preserved those books and handed them down to posterity. If, however, you accept the sacred books according to the testimony and tradition concerning them, how then can you have the heart to reject the rest of the traditions which been reliably left by those men.” I would like to hear Andrada about this. In his opinion, how should a Jew who wants to clear himself from Talmudic traditions respond to this charge? I do not hold him to be so unreasonable so as to believe that the Talmudic books are due the same reverence as the biblical ones. From this comparison, he should conclude how weak this claim of his is: “If we accept the sacred books on the basis of ecclesiastical tradition, so must we also consent to additional traditions of the church.”
[1] The Talmud is the collection of rabbinic material about law, philosophy, and biblical interpretation structured as a commentary on the Mishnah, which is a collection of oral traditions known as the Oral Torah. There are two versions of the Talmud: the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud.
