Tradition!
ANY OF the conversations happening around my RSS feeds, recently, seem to all revolve around the same subjects:Derek’s, Christopher’s, Luiz’; comments here, and here; most importantly
Arturo’s on-going postings all over his blog – too numerous to provide individual links.
I’ve also been reading Olivier Clement’s Roots of Christian Mysticism about the theologians from the 1st-c4th centuries of the Christian Era, as well as Eamon Duffy’s Stripping the Altars about piety in England just prior to the Reformation. Most of these books and bloggers are really drawing lines between traditional and non-traditional worship. The interesting thing is that most of them draw the bounds differently, labelling “here” as “non-traditional” and “there” as “traditional”. Most of the conversations seem to revolve around the question, “How do we get back there where we need to be?”
Everyone is acting as if everyone should know what is meant by that word, “Traditional”. Increasingly I’m confused by such assumed definitions and, rather than edified I’m pained by the conversation. It seems impossible to weigh in without raising the assumptions that I’m being dismissive. Follow my argument – and pardon me if I sound like the Southern White Trash that I am as I present it.
Two topics are coming to mind as I think about this: politics and marriage.
On politics, we have no patristic or gospel passages on which to stand as regards our voting in modern elections. There is no basis at all within the earliest sources to advocate for (or against) Christian participation in secular, representative democracy. This fact was used in the late Middle Ages and early Enlightenment as supportive proof that Christians should follow Kings and only Kings. These ideas were part of the competing forces that tore Christians from Christians, created nationalism and capitalism and brought us into the modern era. Yet from this lack of support have arisen (at least) three sets of ideas about politics – dominionism, participation and anarchy. Of the three only the first, dominionism, expressly advocates for Christian control of the Gov’t. The latter two both allow for Christian Cooperation with the Gov’t with a greater or lesser sense of distance.
On politics, I would argue that all three of these fall within the Tradition. Does that make any (or all) of them “Traditional”?
On marriage, we have many patristic and scriptural sources that indicate that marriage is an arrangement between a man and a woman (sometimes one man and many women) with a great sense of inequality woven into the relationship. We have little or no scriptural/patristic feet to stand on in creating our modern image of an equal partnership and, certainly, we have no tradition at all of creating as equal the idea of same-sex unions. Yet, today, we have Christians arguing all points along that spectrum. And while, yes, I think the most ancient model is outmoded, I’m not sure where I stand on the latter two options as regards Church. Yet, I’ve read the theological arguments from all sides and I sense that all the participants are doing what they feel is a faithful work within the tradition. Does that make any (or all) of them “Traditional”?
A third area comes to mind as I write: the ordination of women.
Here I think the traditional sources are most vague – for I’ve seen a lot of sources (sometimes the same sources) as spun both ways by modern readings. While it is certain that at least from Empire onwards, there were no ordained women in positions of public authority, is that the entirety of the tradition? What is traditional in this matter?
I will lay out my answer here: define traditional first.
For if traditional means “old fashioned” then we have to go with no women, no gays and no democracy! (Democracy is not traditional and we should promptly withdraw from it.) In like manner, we should, essentially, all stop being Protestants. Period. But I sense a lot of people saying they can be “Traditional” and Protestant. (And I don’t want to get in to the issue of Pope vrs the other Patriarchs!)
Arturo has been a member of an Eastern Rite monastic community as well as a member of the SSPX. He should know “traditional” when he sees it. Yet, in his blogging about Mexican, Philippine (etc) religious practices he seems to be inviting us to take a very different look at our definition, our very understanding of tradition.
Arturo seems to be arguing that it is the element of choice that makes us entirely non-Traditional. Not the fact that our culture presents choices, per se, but rather that each of us entertains the idea that we are free to make those choices. It is this sense of freedom that makes us untraditional. Here is an entomology of “Heresy”: Middle English heresie, from Old French, from Late Latin haeresis, from Late Greek hairesis, from Greek, a choosing, faction, from haireisthai, to choose, middle voice of hairein, to take. From that history we might see that anytime something “traditional” is just one option among many seen as equally valid we are heretics.
Again, the problem in many of these conversations is the a priori assumption that “everyone” “knows” what is “traditional”, that we all share the same definition of “traditional” liturgy, theology and church. Post-reformation, post Great Schism, such an assumption is false if we wish to remain Protestants. And, Catholic, Orthodox or Prot, that assumption is all the more false if we wish to include non-heterosexual people in the conversation in ways other than life-long celibacy. Once we have made that choice we have broken out of the mould – no matter what theology or traditions we use to support the argument.
Another post to continue… but here are my thoughts at 7AM on a Thursday. I need coffee.
Tags: fiddler on the roof, gay, litugy, modern, tradition | Category: Teh Gay, orthoparadoxy
Discussion: You came too late to this party
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Thank you for the kind words. I think what most determines “tradition” is what we bring to the table. I think the greatest revelation about the SSPX is that they are fetishizing some very “traditional” things in very idealistic, totalitarian ways. The same go with the Orthodox when they approach modernity, as well as with more traditional Catholics. In the end, the picture that is created is a totalizing picture, one that leaves aside and cuts out much of the story, if you will. Certain things don’t “fit” in their vision, and are simply ignored, or worse, persecuted.
I would thus say that “tradition” is something that is not ideal; it is something that works. It is not determined by ideology because it is not ideal; it is religion with all of the blemishes, it is Faith as it has to be. I would like to say that the attack on tradition started with the Protestant Reformation, but Catholicism since then has also treated this tendency as an enemy within; the old canard of lay “superstition”.
In the end, the first principle that I start with is that the most certain starting point is tradition as it has been passed down to you immediately by those who preceded you. It is a foolish errand to try to figure out how the “first Christians” thought or acted; for all we know, they could have been a bunch of fornicating magicians who used the name of Jesus to put curses on people (there is some evidence that this was the case in some places). You can’t determine belief by ideology. In the end, you have to go with what has been put into your own hot little hands, tempered a bit by reason. I emphasize, however, “a bit”.
I keep meaning to put you on my blogroll.
I would amend the comment above saying:
“You can’t determine belief by archeology.”
Arturo, thanks for dropping by. I must thank you for your kind works as well!
Your words about “tradition” being “not ideal” echo for me your words about politics in most of the world as compared to America.
Your series of posts have made clear to me the difference in experience of religion between (eg) me and your grandmother, or eg the tradition of Simbang Gabi (which I seem to remember reading about on your blog last year or the year before?) as vrs the rather trite complaining about “Having Christmas Parties in Advent” among Anglo-Catholics and Orthodox Converts…
I agree with you here, “I would thus say that “tradition†is something that is not ideal; it is something that works. It is not determined by ideology because it is not ideal; it is religion with all of the blemishes, it is Faith as it has to be.”
But then I trip up here: “the most certain starting point is tradition as it has been passed down to you immediately by those who preceded you.”
For that would say that the generation of Catholics born during the 1970s were totally up the creek without the proverbial paddle. Right? OR should they have given up on the idea of recapturing what was done 40 years ago? I don’t know. Or is the idea that they *can* recapture what was done 40 years earlier the very essence of “Tradition” or is it simply fetishism.
I just emailed the following to a friend, probably the seed for the next post in this series: The tradition piece is very hard for me. I know there’s something that I’m trying to say – but not getting there yet. It’s also wrapped up in something you said to me once about an “Anglican approach to liturgy” rather than “An Anglican Liturgy”: I think I’m looking for “An Anglican approach to tradition” but not “an Anglican tradition”.
In the line “do what you were handed” I seem to hear the implication that there is no Anglican who can keep Tradition – because of the rbeak in the 1550s. Or there is no RC that can because of the break in the 1960s and no Orthodox that can because, well… because the whole thing is constantly changing over and over.
Or, maybe, the tradition isn’t the things we do?
I really don’t know the answer to all of that. All I know is that the loss of tradition in the case of the RC Church is something that is not complete in much of the world, and it is far from a distant memory here. As for everyone else, the unchurched, Protestants, etc., even if I would exhort them to come into the Una Sancta, I would do so with the exhortation not to piss backwards on those who came before them. And certainly don’t turn all of it into some romanticist crusade that is detached from the reality on the ground. That is what I see the whole “convert” phenomenon in this country: it’s just another form of the “altar call”, and such things are nearly obscene in my opinion. People should only change from the faith of their fathers for very grave reasons.
As for myself, I have usurped the theological slogan of that foul-mouthed, rosary-clutching woman who appears at the beginning of Thomas Day’s Why Catholics Can’t Sing when it comes to most things that have transpired in the RC Church in the last 50 years:
“I don’t believe in that shit!”
Pardon my French, but to put it any other way would be unjust.
In like manner, we should, essentially, all stop being Protestants.
Well, yes.
Also what Arturo wrote:
Even if I would exhort them to come into the Una Sancta, I would do so with the exhortation not to piss backwards on those who came before them.
Right then. I’ll set out to fix that.
But seriously there is a conflict in the argument:
Do what your Daddy did, unless your Daddy was wrong. But don’t try to recapture something that’s gone by (unless it’s not too far gone, or maybe that’s not the case…).
If that’s the definition of salvific tradition, we might just as well all give up and consign ourselves to hell – cuz we were off base by the time we let Gentiles into the Church.
Huw and Arturo,
I just responded to a piece at the Anglican Centrist on the Revised St. Andrew’s Covenant and Covenants in general. This conversation about tradition was much on my mind as I wrote it, and in particular, Arturo, what it might mean to live in a tradition without ‘archaeology.’
Responding to Greg’s thoughts about the covenant and his premise that covenants are a good thing are necessary to us, I wonder about the sacraments of Christians of the first millennium or so where promises weren’t part of the way the church made or enacted sacraments:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5121296330278170688&postID=8172667459661703254&page=1
The problem this poses us is a ‘how to’ problem in archaeology. When someone says that something is essential to the church’s life or of the essence of a sacrament – for example Words of Institution to a valid Eucharist, and we have good evidence that for some centuries the church did without what we’ve just declared essential, we’ve got a problem. Either we find some way to say that what we know be archaeological data (and I’m assuming that by that you mean historical research of any kind) is false or at least unreliable and that all that counts is our own experience (which sounds oddly like a Reformation sola scriptura model of a believer and the Spirit reading unmediated truth from the Bible)…OR we saw that a chunk of the church’s history doesn’t count.
I’m frustrated that I can’t attribute this, but recently, I read, “Tradition is what we hand on to the next generation.” I like the present action and future orientation of that a lot. It implies that tradition is our commitment to continuity, to a a blessed community’s unfolding life in the Spirit. But it also assumes that we’ve received something from the past.
Interestingly the ancient appeals to tradition point as far back as they can. The battle about whether to count Hebrew Scriptures as inspired and part of a Christian canon is such a move. Irenaeus claim that the public apostolic witness he attests to goes back to John the Apostle and is all there for anyone to consider (living continuity and ancient affirmation), and even the appeal of every Ecumenical Council after Nicaea that they’re simply re-affirming Nicene faith seems to me to include an appeal to continuity and an openness to archaeology.
Of course any of us reading the past will read it through our own eyes and with our own questions and prejudices. But I think the corrective to that is the next generation and the generation after that. Watching tradition’s momentum through history and observing our own desire to amend our practice with the best of our knowledge of the past (which is ours in the Spirit) and experience of the present moment (also ours in the Spirit), we can use tradition to remind ourselves that — we may be wrong —. Alcuin argued the legitimacy of unleavened bread for Eucharist assuming that ordinary bread had somehow crept in as a corruption. The Anglican Reformers, reading the Bible and seeing leavened bread at the Last Supper reversed Alcuin’s correction. Liturgical reformers in the 19th century reversed the Reformers, largely in the name of Catholic sympathies and taste and to honor tradition. 20th Century scholarship challenges Alcuin’s assumption that there was a time in the early church when leavened bread was routinely used for Eucharist. I think our best understanding of the tradition is that unleavened bread is not ‘necessary’ for Eucharist and though it’s got a long history, it’s not historically normative. That puts us to weighing questions like what’s gained by consecrating ordinary bread and what’s gained by consecrating bread that is already and evidently special and a symbol of purity. Ancient practice and the formational power of seeing, touching, and tasting the ordinary made Christ’s body would decide it for me. But I know I might be wrong and another generation may regard my/our efforts in that direction as short-sighted, ill-informed (on account of additional new archaeology), or just not that significant.
Donald Schell
of course one of the problems of archaeology has got to be typos or their equivalent in whatever century we’re considering. Sorry about same in the post above.
Donald –
Thank you for reminding me of Alcuin! Here’s an extended piece you did on Alcuin and quite a few others. I was tempted to quote several paragraphs. There and here you raise several crucial points where Church has changed her practice in ways that are seen now as “traditional” but were, at one point, innovations. Schmemann’s books – and Hugh Wybrew’s, as well – point us to the reality of a constantly evolving Eastern liturgy and praxis. Where do we draw a line there and say, “this is tradition but that isn’t”? If we take the simple rule that “tradition is what was done before now” we can see with our own eyes that there were many things that don’t make it all the way back. My own question is why does Alcuin, or Chrysostom or Trent (etc) get to innovate – but we do not?
Ecumenical councils, it is said, have to be affirmed by succeeding councils – or they do not stand. We no longer have the ability to have an ecumenical council because we do not have an Oikumene. But we do have Church in all her forms – from the SSPX to The Fellowship (where we now find Carlton Pearson, btw) and all points in between. And Church in all her fullness is evolving new things to hand to her children.
Arturo hit on two very primary points, I think: 1) tradition is not ideal; and 2) tradition as it has been passed down to you immediately by those who preceded you.
Point 1 makes perfect sense. We’re doing the best that we can with what tools we have. Church is already but not yet the Kingdom of God on earth.
But the second point is where I trip up. I understand point to mean that A) it leaves out Protestants; and B) you can’t go home, either. And the replies indicate that Arturo and Fogey (aka Serge) agree with me.
But if you apply that logic to Prots, you need to indicate where the boundaries are so that we know how far is too far. What happened with the Protestant Reformation that made the break from tradition to be so total? What happened with the reformation that did not happen with the Great Schism? Nothing, if you ask me. And in that light, Rome and Orthodoxy severed Una Sancta irreparably.
The answer seems to be what you’ve said, Donald. “Tradition is what we pass to our children.”
Maybe there is Church, after all, that is bigger than our petty disputes imagine? His Point 1 answers his Point 2. Tradition is not ideal – it’s always going to be messed up and needing fine tuning, or weeding, or even rejection.
The one thing I would add to all of this is that Faith, in the very end, is a supernatural gift. It entails the direct intervention of the Divine into the soul of the believer. As a Roman Catholic, I believe that such Faith only exists in the bosom of the Roman Church. Or rather, I can only really say that this is the only place where God gives Faith: the rest is just elaborate opinion.
That being said, I would however add that if the truth is indeed divine, it must manifest itself in spite of error. That is, just because the Roman Catholic Church is right, that does not necessarily mean that it has nothing to learn from other traditions or that it is somehow complete in itself. The Church is the transfigured cosmos, and in that sense it encompasses all things. Even if one enters the Church from paganism, Protestanism, or atheism, one will see the vestiges of that truth throughout history and in all circumstances. Perhaps it is not enough that one can save one’s soul, but to reject them outright as evil things is a sin of ingratitude against Providence. That is perhaps where the Pythagorean dictum that I referred to comes in: “Do not urinate against the sun”, though I have altered its meaning in this case.
What I have argued against in my own Church is the presupposition by some to know what authentic tradition is, when it is much, much broader than that. Although, to be quite frank, I could never include Episcopalianism in this conversation. That is just too foriegn at this point.