Guest Post: Tradition!
Other — By Dustin R. Steeve on March 16, 2009 at 3:50 amA man who forgets his history….
Is like a man who loses his birth certificate: he’s not legally alive.
Problem: As Americans and specifically as Evangelicals we believe whole-heartedly in making our own traditions when we disagree with or dislike the tradition from which we come. Yet to remain charitable, I think most of the separation movement was due to extenuating circumstances that called for some kind of change. In fact, I think change is a good thing but it must be progressive.
It is a dangerous thing to uproot oneself from history and tradition. Failing to recognize where one comes from and how one has arrived at where they are now, results in a lack of identity and a failure to understand the present circumstances. We could learn a lot and avoid many of our current mistakes if we paid more attention to history.
At the risk of showing my hand, the idea of maintaining tradition was strongly developed in the philosophy of Edmund Burke and the Modernist movement in the early 20th century. These men recognized the necessity of returning to their roots in order to help change bad political circumstances and to become innovative artists.
T.S. Eliot, one of the leaders of the Modernist movement, was born and raised in America. However, after many years of developing the Modernist philosophy, he eventually moved to England – from which he derived his heritage – and joined the Anglican Church with all of its rich traditions. As he says in his poem, East Coker, “In my beginning is my end/In my end is my beginning.”
On the one hand, history and tradition is a thing we cannot escape. We have a history and we are a part of a tradition whether we like it or not. The problem arises when we think we can sever ourselves from our history and tradition in order to make a new one. Instead of trying to break from our heritage we ought to sink deeper into its roots.
A man without a tradition is a hollow man and a man without a history does not have an identity. It is the paradoxical theology of the Christian Church: when we imitate Christ we become more of our true self. We must realize that we are not our own and we cannot make our identity.
The very nature of creativity testifies to this. Art is made with the combining of things that already exist forming to make a new thing. We become ourselves with the combination of history and tradition. When these two things are combined, we become the new thing.
We cannot create ourselves ex-nihilo – that is God’s power. Standing firm upon the foundation of our ancestors, we ought to strive for change that is not revolutionary but beneficial to the understanding of ourselves and of God.
Nick Dalbey is an English Literature major at Biola University and a student at the Torrey Honors Institute.
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Define “tradition.” It means differnt things to different people. It can mean church teachings created by men that are full of error. It can lead to an attitude that when soul sufficient individuals using their free will, they are called heretics – and bad things follow.
Consider the tradition of “Limbo” as a teaching in some churches. How long did it stand? It was renounced last year. How much error, folly and persecution followed the teaching and enforcement of that tradition?
Conversely, what about actual heresies like Gnosticism, Arianism, and Pelagianism, that threatened to wipe out the orthodox church and blot out the Gospel message?
James, you’re erecting a bit of a straw man. Here’s what I think is one of the best definitions of tradition:
“Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.” — Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition
Tradition, in the general sense, is a foundation we ALL start from. We learn lessons and glean inspiration from it. Across the spectrum, Right and Left, we look to history for precedent and authority. We build upon the ideas, words, and deeds that have come before us. We have nostalgia, retrospectives, revivals, reimaginings, and the use of the past, its iconography and ideas, throughout our society. Art, religion, science, and civilization as a whole are an accumulation of many generations.
Pointing out the blemishes and errors with in tradition doesn’t negate it, nor the good passing on a legacy. Jesus quoted OT Law and Prophets to justify his teachings, despite its abuses by the Pharisees. The Apostles, in turn, quoted it for instruction in the rest of the NT. The Scriptures, in turn, acted as a guide for the thoughts and teachings of Christian thinkers throughout the ages. I see on your website that you were an infantry officer. Well, the basic just war theory of the West is rooted in the writings of Augustine, who in turn was indebted to Cicero, despite having some marked differences is his own work. The Natural Law thought of the Declaration is derived from the work of Christian philosophers and theologians. The workings of federalism in the Constitution were partly inspired by the writings of Calvinist political thinkers.
Tradition are those things which are worth passing on. Like all human things, it’s imperfect, but our thoughts and actions are imperfect. We don’t stop thinking and acting.
To add: Just as a person cannot operate without memory, a community cannot operate without some sort of tradition and shared history.
I’m pretty sute that you are still “legally alive” even if you lose your birth certificate.
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There is tradition and there is history. An understanding of biblical and church history can deepen our faith, it certainly has mine, and has helped me understand how certain traditions within the church developed and whether they are still useful, helpful, or misguided. Many traditions have turned out to be divisive or lacking in focus on Christ, but others have helped Christians for centuries to turn to Christ. So, rather than following traditions blindly, we should be willing to examine them and either let them go or maintain them, depending how they focus us on Christ.
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