Doxos

Question

DEAR Readers:

Is it possible to honestly engage the totality of Christian Tradition, constructing arguments for and against, etc, without treating the entirety of it like a smorgasbord and building some sort of a la carte pastiche but also without ending up folding under the weight, the oppression of 2,000 years of cultural accretion? To phrase it another way: is it possible to give the past a voice – but not a veto – without drowning in the very shallow, heretical end in the theological pool?

6 Responses to “Question”

Fr. Ernesto
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:27 am

Short answer: No

Even Vatican Council II found to its chagrin that an “Ecumenical Council” itself cannot perform surgery on tradition without engendering some unexpected results.

That is not to say that tradition is unchangeable or that it cannot be slowly changed. For instance, neither the Greeks nor the Antiochians do the Litany of the Catechumens anymore, nor do they ask catechumens to leave. Nor do women have to wear veils in the New World, or the priests grow beards, etc. (Although those issues still resonate among us.)

But it is to say that the “veto” power of tradition is rather powerful. The individual or small group has no hope of being able to navigate its currents and arrive at some mythical island paradise of either Early Christianity or some type of modern non-cultural, non-traditional Christianity.

Huw
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Your answer calls me to ask what went wrong. You seem to imply that the council, itself, is responsible for those who ran amuck in its aftermath: ergo so is Trent responsible for those who ran amuck in the wake of Trent, burning Prots, etc. And so also is Nicea responsible for the violence that has followed it – although I don’t think either of those claims are true.

And all the things you write about are not “still resonating” they are serious life-and-death issues for some… even some Antiochians as you well know in the pages of this blog.

“The individual or small group has no hope of being able to navigate its currents”

Define who does then?

This was the ongoing problem in this disuccsion as you know: and my reason for giving up asking at all. There is no way to tell what is (T)radition and what is (t)radition. No way at all.

Fr. Ernesto
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:44 pm

Amanda, you are correct any slice of the Church can become a mythical paradise.

Huw, I was not thinking theologically when I wrote those words, but culturally, which is why I used a lower case “t”. However, let me make a couple of comments. But, you knew I would. GRIN.

The people of Vatican Council II (bishops, theologians, etc.) vastly underestimated the strength of the cultural traditions that held pre-Conciliar Roman Catholicism together. They also vastly overestimated the practical authority of the bishops who would be implementing it. Part of what held the Roman Catholic Church so tightly together was a popularly shared view of “how it all worked” whether that view was right or not.

Once that view was changed, something had to replace it, some overarching explanation of “how it all works.” However, the Council Fathers were not able to move into that vacuum, rather many Roman Catholics (at least in the USA) began to doubt that it did all work. Once the doubt crept in and the bonds of a shared tradition were loosened, you began to see some people running off in all directions, every one of them claiming the imprimatur of the Council to do as they wished.

That is, speaking theologically, the Council Fathers assumed that Conciliar authority was sufficient. What they found out was that tradition (whether Holy or not) forms a counterweight to Ecumenical Councils. There are various examples in history of Conciliar pronouncements that were never able to be universally implemented. Among them are the forbidding of the use of the image of the Lamb as an image of Christ (the West never listened to that canon.), and the prohibition against unleavened bread (the West never accepted the Council of Trullo, anymore than Armenia did.).

Scripture has its own countervailing authority, but that is not being discussed here. So, this post is not talking about the difference between tradition and Holy Tradition. I am saying that any tradition (cultural, theological, or Holy) plays a counterweight to Conciliar declarations. It would be a second step to try to claim that the Holy Tradition is itself that counterweight, and I am not taking that second step at this time.

Chris Jones
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm

Is it possible to honestly engage the totality of Christian Tradition …

It depends on what you mean by “engage.”

If you mean “to engage intellectually” — to regard the Tradition as a body of knowledge, opinion, and analysis coming from a variety of social and historical contexts, and to use it as a source of one’s own synthesis of a theological and intellectual stance — then no, it is not possible to engage it without treating it as smorgasbord. If for no other reason than that it is not possible to hold all of that knowledge, all of that history, all of that art and poetry, in one’s head at one time.

But that is not what the Church offers us in her Tradition. Tradition is not for us to mine for our theological convictions. It is for us to receive, to live by, and to pass on, neither adding anything nor taking anything away. That means that we do not find its treasures in the library or in the lecture hall, but in the font, the altar, the pulpit, the confessional, and our own icon corner at home.

The Tradition is not grist for our intellectual mill; we are grist for the Tradition’s spiritual mill.

Huw
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:10 pm

What started this topic in my head was this post on B16s slow and patient moving of the Roman Church in a specific direction.

Chris – I mean “engage” in the Rabbinic sense. A Rabbi and his community do not pick and choose, per se, but they do – through the rabbinic process – evolve a local flavour, a local tradition, a local rite. And the Rabbi keeps in touch… It’s Critical: debated each point over and over. But there are also touchstones from which one does not depart.

Yes, in the past, Rabbis might have drifted “too far”, but only recently have there been wide-spread “excommunications” of Rabbis for “heresy”. Yet, largely, the followers of those rabbis are Jews, for all intents and purposes – except for Marriage in Israel.

A rabbinic engagement does not deny the wider tradition: but rather struggles with all of it.

By struggle, I mean – after due scholarship and debate – admitting that something may not be useful any more and trusting in God’s mercy in its absence.

Father Ernesto – thank you for that post. I think it’s possibly the best explanation I’ve read on this material. This is the issue of Women’s Ordination as I raise it: if it is of God it will survive. If it is not, it will fade away. The “Council Fathers” who decreed it have the weight of Tradition against them. But, I believe, in the long run that (1) God’s mercy is larger than the issue; (2) it will either survive or not; (3) I believe the time is right for the change, but also I believe it may take 400 years for the rest of the church to agree. I’m ok with all of the above.

To point at an issue that is *not* a hot button topic here (except for Palin supporters) the issue of the Charismatic Gifts comes to mind. It is generally assumed that the early Church enjoyed these. The more-conservative Protestants say God took them away when the Bible was completed. The more-Conservative Romans say God took them away when the Hierarchy was in place. Either of these positions may be agreed with by more-Conservative Eastern Orthodox folks, but the more sensible of all three traditions point to the saints (including St John of San Francisco and Fr Seraphim Rose) and say the Charismatic Gifts of the Spirit are still with the Church as she needs them.

I think the latter is a Rabbinic engagement of this issue. We don’t see’em so much any more, but God can give gifts to us as he wishes – no matter what the Apostles said “back in the day” about everyone Speaking in Tongues, etc. But largely, we don’t think that happens too much any more: some things have changed, culturally and ecclesially.