To my — I hope — brothers and sisters in Christ who profess Eastern Orthodoxy:

The goal of 'Lutheran Twitter' is neither to be mean, nor to denigrate, nor to score 'points'; rather, our goal is to encourage you to investigate the bill of goods you've been sold.

Eastern Orthodoxy, quite simply, is not. Certainly, it is Eastern, but it is not orthodox. It would be more accurate to call it "Eastern Heterodoxy". The premium placed upon "Tradition" comes at the expense of Scripture — of the Word of God.

What God has said is the ultimate truth for Christians, not what a pope or a bishop or a church father — no matter how venerable any of them may be — has said. If a man says *anything* that conflicts with Scripture, he is wrong. Full stop.

The name we give to a thing is not its essence, and so calling oneself or one's tradition "orthodox" does not necessarily make it so. If I were to call my dog a cat, he would remain a dog.

Further, the Church did not give us Scripture; God gave us the Scriptures, and He preserves them. In fact, if anything, it is the Scriptures that create the Church, for the Word of God has the power to bring life to the dead, and it is in the pages of Holy Writ …

that we find the Sacraments, which create and strengthen faith and work forgiveness of sins. The Church exists to proclaim the Word and rightly administer the Sacraments; she is a servant of the Word, not its master.

Now, certainly, human traditions — particularly sacred ones — may be good, and many, in fact, are good, but the fact that they are good does not elevate them to the level of necessity, and certainly not to the level of Scripture.

We should guard — jealously — those traditions that are good, but we should zealously reject those that are not. This, fundamentally, is the core of Lutheran belief:

We believe we are saved by grace alone through faith alone for the sake of Christ alone because Scripture alone is true.

For the sake of order and propriety, we uphold tradition, but we do not worship it, and we certainly do not call it "Holy".