Research Topic Cont.:
My case is essentially this: Modern Evangelical method of interpretation as a result of adopting a scientific approach to scripture rejects (not outrightly, but the proof is in the pudding)the reading, and thus interpretation, of scripture with predisposed confessions to doctrinal statements in hand(such as creeds or confessions which were the result significant church councils).
In my case for maintaining a confessional/creedal interpretation of scripture the point will surely be made that the Reformers attempted to free us from the bondage of Tradition for after all, it is that Tradition which empowered the abuses and disasters of the Catholic church.
What about the reformation? Were the Reformers set on freeing the people of God from the "Church" and thus its tradition because they had found their method of interpretation to lead elsewhere, away from the "Church's" traditions? Or said differently, were the Reformers rejecting Tradition or traditions? It can be established that the Reformers purposes and intents were to free the people of God from man's traditions, those traditions that crept into the faith without consent of the body of faith, but they certainly were not abandoning the universally agreed upon confessions of faith found in the early church, namely the Apostle's Creed, Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc. The Reformers were not trying to separate the Tradition from the Church, they were simply affirming the commonly agreed upon points of faith that have existed since the early church and denying those that had not been agreed upon by the universal body of believers.
The case of Urbanus Rhegius, a 16th century reformer suggests that the Reformers were interested in maintaining the Tradition which was passed on, even in the Catholic Church. I quote from D.H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism, 178.
The reformer Urbanus Rhegius, for example, was committed to the idea that Scripture should always be interpreted in accord with the received teaching of the universal church, and maintained that preachers should be ready to cite opinions of the Fathers in support of their points. Indeed, Rhegius argued that that no true understanding of Scripture could exist apart from the fundamental articles of the faith because these were forged during the earliest centuries of the church. Not just any opinion of a church father could be used, but only those which agreed with the consensus of the ancient faith as required by th principle of catholicity and Scripture... As the Reformation became increasingly associated with the recovery and reestablishment of the original Tradition in the church, using the same patristic sources of their opponents, the issue also became how one could discern which of the traditions truly reflected the ancient Tradition.
Here in we see that even the Reformers (at least one) maintained that the reading and interpretation of Scripture within the church must be led by the established Tradition of the faith.