Jeff wrote below: “Is our precious Reformed tradition above criticism? I believe it is part of our tradition to be suspicious of tradition, and maybe more importantly, to never rely on our tradition to adjudicate theological and ecclesiastical controversies. But that’s all we seem to want to do these days.”
This belies a relatively modern understanding of tradition which roughly boils down to: “what my dad told me.” It has become our birthright to question what our dads told us, and by doing so, we think we are being suspicious of tradition.
But tradition, understood rightly, is not only or even mostly what your dad told you. It is who your dad is, what he remembers, who remembers him, the name he bore which you now bear, his skills, what he taught you how to do at his knee, what you learned from his friends, the whole community of memory and membership in which he was enfolded and which now enfolds you.
Tradition is not something that can be simply valued or appropriated without doing it great damage. It is like picking up a butterfly. That is what the magisterial Protestant reformers tried to do, insisting on their catholicity, denying sectarian labels and charges of innovation, and not intending to destroy the idea of a Christian culture. I describe their mindset as one of attenuated traditionalism; that is, it is a mindset that attempts to support while also undermining and moving away from “the traditional.†By “the traditional†and “a traditional mentality,†I mean a habitual state of mind in which authority to which one properly owes one’s fidelity and obedience, especially textual and political authority, is understood to rest on—as a Weberian scholar has put it—“the sacredness of an order whose origin [is] shrouded in the deep past†and thus “the claim that the order had always existed.†Tradition of this sort is something to reside, dwell, and rest in, as Harry Blamires put it in The Christian Mind. Tradition must become inheritable, or always-already inherited, to be wholly itself. It must become a gift of givenness, given to the point of being so formative it is ineradicable even from minds that turn against it. It must be so given that it is liable to be taken for granted. As such the process of rethinking and renewal is supple enough to permit exploration and questions without generating schism or paralyzing interminable question-filled “conversations.â€
I am sorry to quote Voegelin so extensively, but consider: “A tradition is not a block that can be thrown out. One can throw out a tradition only by throwing oneself out of it. This feat, however, is not so simple as it looks to the naive minds that who believe they can return to a ‘primitive’ Christianity without returning to the civilizational state of ‘primitive’ Christians. This feat, if realized socially, would imply the complete destruction of contemporary civilization, not only under its intellectual aspects, but also economically and technologically.†This explains the folly for those of us in a Reformed Tradition, even if it is in crisis, of throwing ourselves out of that tradition in favor of some form of primitivism.
Or this from Eamon Duffy: “An insistence on the subversive potential of tradition is valuable in a culture where self-styled ‘traditionalism’ is more often than not invoked in the service of reaction. But there are problems about privileging the notion of unsettlement as much as [Rowan] Williams does. Tradition on this account can seem a never ending argumentative seminar, constant upheaval without any point of rest or leverage. Yet if unsettlement is built into the vocabulary of Christian self-understanding, there is also a venerable Christian vocabulary of solidity, dependability, confidence in a faith once revealed to the saints, tradition as a rock. Argument has its limits. The believer is not always to be at the mercy of the scholars, and there must be ways of deciding when at last a particular problem has reached resolution, an argument has come to an end.â€
I can’t help but hear an Apostalic affirmation to this in Paul’s discription of the godlessness of the last days in 2 Timothy 3:7, of which one bad charateristic is, “…always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”
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I’d like to speak to this, but first to set a bit of context. When I was in college (67-71) as campus representative for ISI, I wore a pin that said “Don’t Let THEM Immanentize the Eschaton.” We sold on our book table *Science, Politics, & Gnosticism* and *The New Science of Politics,* plus a bunch of Roepke and other stuff. I used *Order in History* for a paper I wrote on the Iliad. I took a trip and spent a few days with Russell Kirk, all of whose works I’d read.
When in seminary (1975-80) I wrote a paper on Voegelin and Th. Molnar. To help me with that paper, R. J. Rushdoony graciously provided me a trip to a Voegelinian conference at Vanderbilt University, where I heard V. speak. So, I know who Voegelin is. By no means have I read everything, though.
He’s a pagan, of course, like Leo Strauss. Plato or Aristotle is God for all intents and purposes. Worth reading, but with care. Nowhere near as insightful as Rosenstock-Huessy.
The problem with Voegelin and with what you write above is this notion of tradition. THIS notion. Tradition does not exist. People exist. Communities exist. They exist in time and on an eschatological train. To treat tradition as a “thing” is the error of reification.
This statement: “Tradition of this sort is something to reside, dwell, and rest in, as Harry Blamires put it in The Christian Mind” is a statement that immanentizes the eschaton. We are not supposed to be comfortable now. We are pilgrims on a journey. Seeking for ease and comfort and familiarity and nostaligia at the present time is simply wicked. Pardon my French, but I don’t know how else to put it. Sure, Voegelin believes in exactly that: Just hang in the middle, in the metaxy, and don’t rock any boats.
How can a Christian live with that? EVERY single example of the righteous we have in the Bible is of discontented people who, following God, challenged their societies and moved into a vague future. The refusal of the future is to immanentize sabbath and to make an idol of the present.
It as Korah who clung to the old ways back when every man had his own altar. It was the high placers who clung to the old ways before Solomon’s Temple was built. It was the Judaizers who would not move into the new when it came.
—“the sacredness of an order whose origin [is] shrouded in the deep pastâ€- “which has always existed.” —
I’m sorry, but that’s just heresy. The sacredness of an order lies in its conformity to God: Be holy as I am holy. Past shmast. The past is a myth believe by those in the present who filter out all except what they prize or hate. Sacredness has to do with the Spirit, who proceeds from Father and Son at every moment of time, right NOW. What is sacred changes with the covenants in the Bible; it’s not in the past, it’s in heaven, right now. We are to be oriented processionally to the Spirit, not successionally to the past. So says the Creed.
The “tradition” that exists is what present communities think exists. There are people in the Presbyterian world who actually think that a meritorous covenant of works is part of Reformed tradition. It does not matter how many citations we have provided to show that this is not true. They believe it anyway. This is mytho-history and mytho-tradition.
I believe myths also. All of us do. Only God knows what the past was really like.
If your essay is what you mean by tradition, then, you are very right that I do not hold to it. God says to move forward. He has instituted a Way. I walk that way in community, with others who have other pasts, in a context of many concentric pasts (as I posted before).
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I disagree with your characterization of Voegelin as a pagan. I likewise disagree with your use of that term as a pejorative.
More later as I have time.
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Well, okay. If we want to go way far afield from what the “FV controversy” is about and debate whether pagan means something bad per se or something Pre-christian but possibly okay, why don’t we not do that here. WE have two weeks. Voegelin was all about Plato when I heard him speak, toward the end of his life. I brought up my readings in V. just to show you that I’m not shooting from a position of ignorance.
Have you read much Rosenstock-Huessy? If not, I recommend him to you.
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“Conformity to God”? This from a Van Tillian. What ever happened to the creator-creature distinction? We are never other the way God is other. I think I even learned that from John Frame.
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While I’m at it, my sense of a tradition is this. It is a community of discourse over time. Members of a tradition start within this conversation and may make interventions and ask questions that keep this extended conversation going.
No offense, but again my sense of FV is that its proponents started with their own interpretations of the Bible (James Jordan and JMyers comments here have admitted as much), some of which were shaped by the Reformed conversation to the extent that these persons received a Reformed seminary education, some that were influenced by a host of eclectic sources, and then as controversy encircled they were surprised and they tried to show that their interventions were simply part of the ongoing flow of dialogue. They were surprised because they didn’t realize how many of their interpretations were at odds with the Reformed churches’ creedal statements. At which point they began to rifle through the confessions to either find support or inconsistency.
But no matter how poorly this portrays what has happened since the first FV conference, it sure seems that the starting point for FV was not very deep within the Reformed tradition. It was an effort to understand the Bible. And that effort was Reformed to the extent that individual FVers were members or ministers in Reformed communions.
I understand that his comment sounds as if I’m trying to shove the FVers out of the tradition. That is not my intent. But I do offer it as a possible explanation for controversy surrounding FV. I also wonder if any FVers are willing to admit that their starting point was not to view the Bible through the lens of the Reformed tradition, understood as this ongoing conversation.
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I’m not sure if I qualify as “FV” or not – and no one else seems sure either. 🙂
But I can say this: I was raised in the RPCES and PCA, am descended from a long line of Scots-Irish Pennsylvania Presbyterians, and was given a pretty thoroughly Reformed education through our Westminster Catechisms and Confession, the wider confessional traditions, and a variety of other tools, such as Berkhof and Hodge.
And I’m deeply appreciative of all of that. Indeed, when I teach Scripture classes or lead small groups (which I’ve done for a couple of decades), I can scarcely think through biblical teaching without reference to the Westminster Standards, though now I read those against the backdrop of Calvin, Reformed scholasticism, and 17th century English divinity, refracted through the lenses later interpreters from the Marrow Men through Old Princeton and its successors. Still, I’ve often joked that the only way you’ll get me out of Presbyterianism is when you pry my copy of the WCF from my cold, dead fingers.
But, the sort of Presbyterianism in which I was nurtured was one that remained in dialogue with ongoing developments in biblical theology, with the history of the tradition itself, and with Christians in a variety of other traditions, whom the Spirit has also gifted and from whom we can learn.
While some Dutch expressions of Reformed Christianity have tended towards seeing their own church as THE Christian church (and everything else at varying degrees of declension from that), this was never the case with the mainstream in the Church of Scotland or the Reformed tradition more widely, which often engaged in vigorous pan-Protestant ecumenical efforts. So, I have difficulty recognizing my tradition in what Darryl put forward in an earlier post.
We need to allow our Reformed understanding of the biblical faith to shape what “tradition” means for us, rather that looking to MacIntyre or Voegelin or whomever to define “tradition” for us – not to disparage whatever helpful insights they may offer. And I wonder if the notion of tradition generated from within the resources of our living tradition might not embody itself in a somewhat different manner – less tribal, less gemeinschaft – than has been suggested.
It seems to me that any Christian notion of tradition – Reformed or otherwise – would have to be deeply subversive of notions of tradition that emerge from outside of Christian belief and practice. Our faith involves new wine bursting old wineskins, losing our identity in order to save our identity, considering some traditions rubbish for the sake of what is truly lasting. This isn’t anti-traditional, but a notion of tradition that nonetheless remains open to the new things that God may be doing, recognizing that the dynamic of death and resurrection preserves everything good and true from the past as it is taken up into a renewed present.
I think the best of the Reformed tradition has always been able to see that and embrace it, as we see in a variety of witnesses: the Reformed appropriation of the Fathers, Reformed liturgical renewal at the time of the Reformation, use of humanistic tools in the study of Scripture and other ancient texts, various efforts at ecumenical rapprochement, the connectionalism of international Calvinism, adaptations to the American denominational context, and so forth.
At any rate, I suspect that all of this runs rather far afield from the specific questions that the views of “FV” proponents raise with regard to Reformed theology. Whether they embrace a proper regard for the tradition or not doesn’t, in itself, answer the question of whether their proposals are within the legitimate and flexible bounds of the tradition nor whether their proposals might diagnose some actual significant problems or aporias within the tradition, while offering remedial proposals.
Perhaps we should return to those sorts of questions if this conversation is to be fruitful rather than merely interestingly engaging.
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James, I have a few minutes now, so a bit more in response.
I think you are reacting too quickly without really reading what I’m writing very thoroughly. I understand your defensive posture comes from being anathemized by many so-called “traditionalists” who drive you crazy with their modern innovations from happy-clappy/grape-juice worship to lives easily lived enmeshed in the structures of the world.
I agree with you that tradition can easily be reified, become brittle, spiritually empty, and a mere tool of the powers that be. I think I made clear my views on the dogmatomachy. All of this is pretty straight forward, said by many better than I, including Voegelin.
But to react to this situation with blustering about “past shmast” just puts you in the thoughtless evangelical “history is bunk” category.
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I’m sure I’m misreading you. We’d have to chat for quite a while to get on the same page here. “Past shmast” was in the context of linking holiness with the past. That’s not Biblical.
But it is also the case that what most people regard as traditional is only one or two generations old. The Jews of Jesus’ day actually had come to believe in an Oral Torah, though the notion cannot have been more than a couple of generations old. The hymn-singing evangelicals who dominate most of the conservative presbyterian groups actually think that Norman Shepherd was not articulating the Reformed tradition about justification — something no psalm-singer would have thought, considering how often David calls on God to justify him for his works and integrity. Psalm-singers know that justification is a broader concept than what Arminian American Individualists think it is.
Girard has shown how a community can wipe its memory clean in three generations. Happens all the time, even today.
So, I don’t really see how tradition can play much of any real part in anything. It reminds me of my old friend Russell Kirk’s “Right Reason.” Sounds great until you try to find out what it is. Then it becomes little more than emotion-speak.
I’m not really interested in discussing tradition. I’d be happy to discuss the issues around the so-called FV. But it seems we can’t get there because the charge is that the FV has abandoned hoary traditions that arose about 30 years ago.
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James, you are right, this discussion is pointless because you are boxing shadows. I never charged FV with abandoning any particular tradition. I never linked holiness with the past. You are firing shots so indiscriminately you are likely to wound or at least drive off many with whom you might share common ground.
You have maintained so strenuously that there is no such think as the FV that what does it matter what we discuss? If there are no FV issues, why not discuss tradition, which actually seems quite germane to me. The problem is that “the issues around the so-called FV” are not really the most basic issues driving this controversy, are they?
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Mea Culpa. I did not realize the rules here. I thought that replying to the general points made by you and Hart and others was okay. In future I’ll try to stick very closely with what you in particular write.
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James, with this kind of reaction, it should be no surprise that people quickly get fed up with your infantile posturing. No one is whacking you on the head with any arbitrary rules other than the rule for basic honesty and integrity in debate.
You wrote “past shmast” directly in response to what I wrote. I believe you described what I said as heresy. Then you reiterated that you were responding to the idea of linking holiness to the past. If you were a careful reader, or cared to be an honest debater, I think you would find that you misread the original statements in haste to defend yourself against charges not being leveled from this quarter.
Others are free to check the record in this particular instance.
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Well, I did not come here to fight with you or anyone else. As a recognized FV person, I thought I might be able to help with understanding that matter. I’m not sure I want to continue this particular conversation.
You wrote: By “the traditional†and “a traditional mentality,†I mean a habitual state of mind in which authority to which one properly owes one’s fidelity and obedience, especially textual and political authority, is understood to rest on—as a Weberian scholar has put it—“the sacredness of an order whose origin [is] shrouded in the deep past†and thus “the claim that the order had always existed.â€
I did not take this as YOUR view, nor did I attack it as such. I did attack it, however.
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To James: Only hymn singers thought Sheperd was wrong on justification? Puh-leezze. Then why did the Westminster Divines affirm exclusive psalmdody and define justification in a way that did not conflate faith and obedience? Talk about traditions being only two generations old.
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James, look, this is going to sound annoying, but if you don’t want to fight, then quit fighting. Like I said, you appear to me to be boxing shadows.
Yes, that is what I wrote, and it is my view. You, however, did not attack it. Rather you attacked some caricature about tradition equating holiness with age. What I said was that a traditional mindset was one in which fidelity was owed to a sacred order whose origin is located in the deep past and can be said to have always existed.
This is why the magesterial reformers attempted to locate their movement as a return to ancient allegiances. This shouldn’t be all that controversial and I wonder why it is. It is the view of many traditionalists, Lewis for example, that FVers like Wilson love to cite.
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To Darryl: But Shepherd does not conflate faith and obedience.
To Caleb: I clearly misread your original statement. I apologize for my responses to it. If I understand you aright now, then those of us who go back to the Bible are operating with a traditional mindset. Is that fair?
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James, no problem. I will respond to your question as I think it important. And as I’d like to do it justice, I will need to wait until I have more time. I will also try again to show why I think this matters in the context of the FV controversy. Probable not ’till Monday though, which is several eons in blogging time.
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Yea, Caleb and Jim – get together for a beer – you like each other. Trust me.
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I would welcome that.
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