What does the Bible actually mean when Paul tells the Thessalonians to hold fast to the traditions they were taught “either by spoken word or by letter”? Rome has long leaned on that verse to defend a body of unwritten apostolic teaching preserved by the church. In this episode, church historian Dr. W. Robert Godfrey walks through the Greek word behind “tradition”—a plain word meaning to hand over or deliver—and shows how Paul uses the same word group in 1 Corinthians 11 for both the Lord’s Supper he delivered to the church and the night Christ was delivered over to be betrayed. Tradition, in its biblical sense, is simply what the apostles taught.

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