Every so often you hear in the church the argument: “We’ve never done that before, so we’re not going to start now.” Nowadays this argument is generally invoked against things like the ordination of women or of homosexuals. It has a converse expression, too: “We’ve always done it this way,” and therefore to do otherwise is wrong.

This I will term the “argument from antiquity” and honestly I find it quite baffling that pastors (or any other Christians, for that matter) ever use it.

For one thing, it is the chief argument used by the laity against the clergy, to the latter’s enormous frustration. Pastors beg and plead their flock to understand things from a theological point of view, not from the dead-end of whether or not it has been done before. So for pastors then to invoke it in other matters strikes me as a cop-out from the theological work required of them.

For another thing, the argument from antiquity founders quickly, because everything except God Almighty started at some time or another. Everything that is old now—for instance, the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom—had a beginning, a point of introduction, a moment at which it was in fact a whippersnapper challenger to the older practice preceding it. It must have had value in and of itself to overturn the argument from antiquity in its own time and place!

A corollary argument, which, I think, is often confused with the argument from antiquity, is this: Give the tradition a chance, because it might know something we don’t. That is certainly valid, but it is also considerably more modest in scope. Augustine lived about sixteen hundred years ago, but we may just find that he understood human nature remarkably well. But Augustine is not insightful simply because he is ancient. There were fools and heretics aplenty long ago, too.

Another corollary argument that is still not identical to the argument from antiquity is: What is old is more universal and therefore binds us in a way new things don’t. Again, so far as this goes, it has a point. We use the Small Catechism in confirmation not only because it is good, but because it is something that dates back to the origins of our church and has been used universally by Lutherans since then; it has a binding force. But if it was not a good text, it would not be worth the preservation, and there was a time before which there was no Small Catechism, and therefore a time at which the brand new Small Catechism was accepted by evangelical parishes despite its lack of universality. The argument from antiquity founders on this point again.

The argument from antiquity also does not work in Christian thought because it was at one time an enemy of Christianity itself. The earliest theologians had to devote a great deal of energy to defending the faith against those who discounted it merely because it was so young. The pagans appealed to ancient myths about the gods, but Christians had to defend a man risen from the dead just eighty years before—or a hundred years—or two hundred. Not long enough ago to be venerable or shrouded in the mysteries of the ages. Christianity does not become successively more true as the years roll by, which is what the argument from antiquity implies. Either Jesus rose from the dead, or he didn’t; and no amount of past time can alter the fact one way or another.

Finally, the argument from antiquity fails because it ignores the Scriptures’ love of the new. Psalm 149 exhorts us: Sing to the Lord a new song! (I love “A Mighty Fortress” as much as the next Lutheran, but let’s face it—it’s not a new song anymore—though once it was.) The very last book of the Bible glorifies many new things: the new heaven, the new earth, the new Jerusalem, the new song sung before the throne of God. In the penultimate chapter the one seated on the throne declares, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Our faith looks forward, too, not just backward. And that means our theology cannot ground itself on the mere fact of the past.

Don’t misunderstand; I am in no way rejecting things of the past just because they are past (that would simply be the argument from antiquity inverted), or accepting the new just because it is new (the opposite mistake). But, to be precise, the passage of time, and the length of time a certain belief is held or tradition is practiced, is no confirmation of its truth one way or another. There are better and stronger arguments for what we believe, teach, and confess, and we need not rely on the argument from antiquity to make them.