My Tradition Conference Essay! It's a bit clunky in parts, but I'm rather fond of the overall idea.
Given that Jesus is the Truth (Jn. 14:6), explore the
implications for Sacred Tradition.
In the opening
paper of the Tradition Conference, Catholic
Moral Tradition, Bishop Anthony Fisher noted that it is in our nature as
human beings to have traditions.
These generally function by providing conventions for actions or ways of
thinking, and arise from a process of handing on received wisdom and custom. When we consider the fact that Christ
identifies the truth with His very own being,
we arrive at the startling notion of “traditioning”
or handing on a person. This paper
will attempt to see what sense we might make of such a proposition, and its
implications, with particular reference to the ideas discussed at the Tradition
Conference. I propose that thinking of Tradition in this way gets right to the
heart of precisely what Sacred Tradition is, and should not be a foreign
concept at all. Furthermore, drawing from the four causes of human persons, I
will apply them analogously to this idea of Tradition as a Person.
I will argue that this fashion of thinking of Tradition allows its purpose to
shine through with greater clarity, revealing that Sacred Tradition ultimately finds
its fulfilment in the encounter with Christ made possible for the world through
the Church as a whole and through all her individual members.
The
Tradition Conference presented an array of angles from which tradition might be
viewed, which aligned themselves in various thematic ways. One of these in
particular was that tradition may refer either to the process by which truth is
transmitted from one generation to the next, or to the transmitted truths
themselves. When thinking about Sacred Tradition, however, we do well not to
draw too hard a line between the two. Renee Kohler-Ryan, in her paper Keeping Truth in Style, provides us with
a helpful analogy- that of envisioning Tradition as a long conversation that
has been going on within the Church, through the ages.
Those engaged in conversation (whether written or oral)
and the ideas exchanged may be distinct, but nonetheless very much intertwined.
The ideas would not be present if not for the agents’ minds, and the agents,
without exchanging ideas, would not be conversing. Thus persons and ideas need
each other for the conversation to take place. Their inseparability may be
better understood as being similar to that of matter and form. Matter and form
should not be thought of as distinct, but rather as different ways of looking
at the same thing.
Similarly, Tradition as process and Tradition as doctrinal content are merely
different ways of looking at Sacred Tradition.
Truth
is generally held by realists to be “the adequation of the mind to being”, or that which
arises from “our knowing apprehending being.”
In his conference paper Tradition,
Temporality and Transcendence: A Biblical Ontology of Time and Space,
Robert Tilley dwelt at length upon the contrasting paradigms of modernity and
Scripture regarding the nature of space and time. He pointed out that two
currents in modernity, namely, anti-clericalism and anti-metaphysics or
sacramental ontology, have led to the separation of meaning from reality.
Modernity contends that any meaning we perceive the cosmos to have is precisely
merely that: perceived. They claim that we project or even impose meaning on
reality, and thus reality is subject to the individual’s interpretation, with
no real connection between being and meaning.
This destroys any concept of teleology. Truth is thereby relativised, the
effects of which are legion in contemporary society. The position of the
Church, in opposition to this, is that meaning is intrinsic to being.
The consequences of such a position for one’s conception of Tradition are
manifest in Terence Tilley’s Inventing
Catholic Tradition, a critique of which is the focus of Matthew Levering’s
paper Catholic Tradition: Invented or
Received? Tilley rejects realism, a rejection followed by the “relativisation of
propositional truth, the view that Catholic tradition has no definite content
or starting-point, and the view that Catholic tradition evolves in a
non-teleological fashion.” Hence, when truth is relativised, by becoming merely the
individual’s projection onto reality, one arrives at an understanding of tradition
that runs along similar contours to Terence Tilley’s, namely one that
“envisions Catholic tradition as a continual re-invention of the practice of
Catholic faith, without doctrinal stability.”
Thus a well-grounded concept of truth is essential for grasping Sacred Tradition,
which claims to be the preservation of the deposit of faith,
necessarily requiring a sound notion of objectivity.
An
alternative (but by no means contradictory) account of truth is found in Hans
Urs von Balthasar’s definition, “being revealing itself”.
It is obviously relevant to note that God is existence or Being itself.
So, truth is God revealing Himself, which is none other than revelation. The
fullness of revelation is found in Jesus Christ, and accordingly He quite intelligibly
(and yet mysteriously) says “I am the truth.”
Revelation has been taking place throughout the history of humanity, as
recorded in the Old Testament, where God slowly prepared mankind to receive the
fullness of revelation. This fullness arrived in the Person of Jesus Christ,
the Incarnate Word, the Son of God. By definition, revelation requires someone
to whom things are unveiled, a receiver. The receiver of God’s complete
revelation in Christ is the Church. She constantly receives it anew in each generation,
and is simultaneously the bearer of that which is received. It is within this
larger context of revelation that Sacred Scripture and Tradition must therefore
be considered.
Thus
we arrive at the core of the question at hand. Having reflected upon truth,
revelation and Christ in connection with Tradition, it seems that thinking of
Tradition simply as unchanging truth claims about God is inadequate. Rather, if
Sacred Tradition is the revelation that Christ has charged the Church to
transmit to every age, that revelation is inseparable from the Person of Christ
Himself. Tracey Rowland, in her paper Tradition
and Revelation in the Theology of Benedict XVI, provides us with Pope
Benedict XVI’s reflections on this matter. While some aspect of Sacred Tradition
is certainly the “material transmission of what was given to the apostles,”
this by no means exhausts it. More than that, Tradition is “the effective
presence of the crucified, risen Jesus who accompanies and guides in the Spirit
the community He has gathered together.”
It is more because what Jesus left in His Church was not just a collection of
truths about Himself- He promised to remain with His Church always,
and to send the “Spirit of Truth”.
Furthermore, as noted previously, He identified His own person with Truth
itself. This fact is expressed by Emery in the following way: “the Son is the
truth of the Father.”
Therefore, to understand that that which the Church hands on in Apostolic
Tradition is the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ is to understand
Tradition in its fullest sense.
At
this point, it might be expedient to draw some brief conclusions from our
reflections thus far. While the idea that Tradition and a Person are intimately
connected may at first seem counterintuitive, if one examines the relationship
between truth, Christ and divine revelation, such an idea becomes the only way
that Tradition makes real sense. It is the best way to think of Tradition, since
it is the most holistic and comprehensive, getting to the heart of what Tradition
actually is, rather than the more simplistic notion of preserving a set of
dogmatic truths through time. Furthermore, it is worthwhile noting that, since
the process and content of Tradition are inseparable, Christ may be identified
not only as that which is handed on by the Church in Tradition, but also with
the process of Tradition itself. This implies that one may not only say Christ
is traditioned, but, along with Benedict XVI, that Tradition is Christ.
It
is important to have this clear understanding of what Sacred Tradition is, so
that we may know what it is for, if we are to play our proper role in it. One
way of gaining a comprehensive knowledge of what an object is and of its
purpose, is accomplished by
discerning that object’s four causes. Although Christ is a divine Person, not a
human one, He does possess a human nature. I propose, therefore, that we may analogously
consider the four causes, as applied to human persons, as they relate to the
Person of Christ in His humanity.
Insofar as Sacred Tradition is the preservation of the Incarnation, the four
causes of Sacred Tradition and of Christ in His humanity are intimately
connected. By so doing, I hope to build a more complete account of Sacred
Tradition. Briefly, the material cause of the human person is the body, the
formal cause is the soul, God and one’s parents are the efficient causes and
man’s final cause is to be united with God eternally.
The respective means by which Christ has remained on earth that echo these are:
in His Body, the Church; in the soul of His Body, the Holy Spirit, who guides
the Church into all truth; in His instituting the Church, and her every
generation successively becoming bearers of the deposit of faith; and in the
purpose of the Church being the means by which Christ draws all humanity to
Himself, so that every person may fulfil their end, by encountering Christ.
What follows will be a more in-depth discussion of each of these ways of
understanding Tradition.
The
Person of the Son of God, post the Incarnation, is irrevocably united to His
human nature. As such, if Christ is to remain on earth, as He promised He would,
integral to this plan is that He remains in a tangible manner, corresponding to
the bodily dimension of His humanity. This is manifested in the Church, a
visible entity, appropriately called the Body of Christ.
Recall that according to Dei Verbum this
Church traditions herself, and the Incarnation, and so Sacred Tradition is
inextricably linked to her teaching, life and worship.
This was the main point made by Robert Tilley in his conference paper. He
argued that “redemptive and perfective sacramental action is dependent on the
priestly role of humanity, a role perfected and fulfilled in the humanity of
the Word made flesh, and by reason of a real participation in the body and
blood of this humanity, all humanity is involved, and this through his body the
Church. And this real participation is through the words of the Apostles, both
in Scripture and Tradition.” In other words, Tradition has a thoroughly
material aspect, in that is it bound to the liturgy and sacraments, which are
necessarily tangible,
and also in that it is carried out by the members of the Body of Christ.
The
formal cause of Sacred Tradition may be said to be the soul of the Body of
Christ, namely, the Holy Spirit.
This Spirit, “the Spirit of truth”,
guides the Church and allows Tradition to evolve in a teleological fashion.
The Church engages with revelation over the centuries, under the guidance of
the Holy Spirit, questioning and explaining, seeking to effectively hand on the
faith to the next generation, allowing new aspects of Christ to shine forth. It
is a never-ending quest to exhaust the inexhaustible depths of God, and therefore
a foretaste of heaven.
These new aspects that must be allowed to surface were described by Kohler-Ryan
as scandals,
by Kingwell as ruptures,
and by Rowland quoting Balthasar as “the Spirit blowing where it wills,
bringing new aspects to light in every age.”
Hence, the Holy Spirit acts as the animating principle of the Church, guiding
her as she engages in traditioning, so that the revelation of Christ is
authentically preserved and engagement with Him is made possible in every age.
An
object’s efficient cause is the “primary source of the change or coming to
rest.”
Thus for Sacred Tradition, we have as the primary source Christ’s establishment
of the Church, leaving her with the Apostolic deposit of faith, to be handed on;
but since this Tradition is an ongoing reality, each generation, as they become
the new bearers of the deposit (after the Apostles), also causes the deposit to
remain for the next age. This process is inaugurated by the Father, who, in the
primordial act of handing on, sends His Son to the world.
Together, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit to the Church, and it is
His actions in the Church that facilitate the handing on of Christ to each age.
In Baptism, the Church Traditions herself, as new persons are born anew into
the life of God as His children, and as part of His Church, they receive the
responsibility of playing a part in handing on the faith they have received.
In this way the perpetuation of humanity and that of the Church bear striking
similarity.
And it is precisely in the perpetuation of the Church that Sacred Tradition
exists. In the words of Dei Verbum,
in Tradition “the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and
hands on to all generations all that she
herself is, all that she believes.”
Hence God is the Divine Author of Tradition, in that He initiated it,
established a community to continue it, and pledged to guide that community
Himself.
Finally,
we turn to the end to which Sacred Tradition is ordered, utilising what we now
know about its nature. The Body of Christ hands itself on, and this same
Church, which is also the Bride of Christ, is guided by its “soul”, the Holy
Spirit, into all truth. In this way the Bride is engaged in an ongoing
conversation with her Bridegroom, as He leads her to unfold more and more of
the mystery of Revelation in Christ. It is in this manner that Tradition
“evolves teleologically”.
But this development is not an end in itself. It finds fulfilment in being the
means by which all men are able to encounter Christ in every age, whether that
encounter be directly (through the liturgy in word and sacrament) or indirectly
(through the witness of members of the Church).
On
an individual level, we oscillate between sharing our faith and receiving it
from others, as we grow and learn individually and help those around us to do
the same, within the Church community. Sharing our encounter with Christ is
not, however, an optional extra. It is an imperative from Christ,
and, argued Dr John Armstrong in The
Difficult Duty of the Few to the Many, a natural obligation. We have a duty,
he says, to attempt to persuade others of that which we are convinced is true
and good and therefore helpful for living a fulfilled life.
Obviously this is true in the most complete sense of the Christian faith. This
is done not only in what we say, but by the very way we live, in who we are, since, through baptism, we are so
closely identified with Christ as to become “other Christs”, through whom
others may truly encounter Him.
Thus Tradition truly becomes, in the words of Prof John Haldane, a means to
being introduced to the Truth.
In
conclusion, while the idea of a person being identified with tradition might
seem counter-intuitive, in the case of Sacred Tradition, looking at Tradition
from this angle in fact captures a fuller picture of Tradition than does the
idea of preserving a set of truth claims, as this exposition has attempted to
argue. By contemplating Tradition in connection with its organ, the Church, we
can grasp in a more complete way how Jesus carries out His promise to remain
with us always. An Aristotelian examination of Tradition as revelation in the
person of Christ reveals the depth of this connection, and also illuminates the
relationship between what Tradition is, how it works, and what it is working towards.
Its purpose is ultimately seen to be the enabling of all humanity to encounter
their Saviour, Jesus Christ.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Aquinas, Thomas., Summa Theologiae, Thomas Gilby O.P. (Ed.) & T.C. O’Brien O.P.
(Trans.) (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1965)
Aristotle, ‘Physics’ in Great Books of the Western World Vol. 8-
Aristotle I, Robert Maynard Hutchins (Ed.) (Chicago: William Benton, 1952)
Armstrong, John., The Difficult Duty of the Few to the Many, Tradition Conference
2013, unpublished
Biemer, Gunter., Newman on Tradition (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967)
Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2nd
Edition, English translation for USA (Washington, USA: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 1997)
Chappell, Timothy., Persons and humanity, Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
Copleston, Frederick.,
A History of Philosophy Vol. I Part II
Greece & Rome (New York: Image Books, 1962)
Costello, Archbishop Timothy., Personal faith and development in the light
of Sacred Tradition, Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
Dulles, Avery., Models of Revelation (New York: Orbis Books, 1992)
Emery, Gilles., Trinity, Church and the Human Person (Florida: Sapientia Press,
2007)
Fisher, Bishop Anthony.,
Catholic Moral Tradition, Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
Gregory, Brad., The Unintended Reformation- How a Religious Revolution Secularized
Society (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012)
Haldane, John., What philosophical sense can we make of Sacred Tradition? Tradition
Conference 2013, unpublished
Journet, Charles., Theology of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004)
Kingwell, Mark., Fugitive Democracy: A Gift in Time, Tradition Conference 2013,
unpublished
Kleinig, John., Leviticus (Concordia Commentary)
(Concordia: St Louis, 2003)
Levering, Matthew., Catholic Tradition: Invented or Received?
Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
New
Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 11, 2nd Edition, Berard Marthaler (ed.) (Washington,
D.C.: Thomson Gale, 2003)
Rowland, Tracey., Tradition and Revelation in the Theology of
Benedict XV, Tradition Conference 2013,
unpublished
Second Vatican
Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum (November 18, 1965)
Tilley, Robert., Tradition, Temporality and
Transcendence: A Biblical Ontology of Time and Space, Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
Trigg, Roger., Ideas of Human Nature- An Historical
Introduction (Oxford: Athenaeum Press, 1988)
The
Holy Bible Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
REFERENCE LIST:
Aquinas, Thomas., Summa Theologiae, Thomas Gilby O.P. (Ed.) & T.C. O’Brien O.P.
(Trans.) (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1965)
Aristotle, ‘Physics’ in Great Books of the Western World Vol. 8-
Aristotle I, Robert Maynard Hutchins (Ed.) (Chicago: William Benton, 1952)
Armstrong, John., The Difficult Duty of the Few to the Many, Tradition Conference
2013, unpublished
Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2nd
Edition, English translation for USA (Washington, USA: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 1997)
Chappell, Timothy., Persons and humanity, Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
Copleston, Frederick.,
A History of Philosophy Vol. I Part II
Greece & Rome (New York: Image Books, 1962)
Emery, Gilles., Trinity, Church and the Human Person (Florida: Sapientia Press,
2007)
Fisher, Bishop
Anthony., Catholic Moral Tradition, Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
Gregory, Brad., The Unintended Reformation- How a Religious Revolution Secularized
Society (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012)
Haldane, John., What philosophical sense can we make of Sacred Tradition? Tradition
Conference 2013, unpublished
Kingwell, Mark., Fugitive Democracy: A Gift in Time, Tradition Conference 2013,
unpublished
Kleinig, John., Leviticus (Concordia Commentary)
(Concordia: St Louis, 2003)
Kohler-Ryan, Renee., Keeping Truth in Style, Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
Levering, Matthew., Catholic Tradition: Invented or Received?
Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
Rowland, Tracey., Tradition and Revelation in the Theology of
Benedict XV, Tradition Conference 2013,
unpublished
Second Vatican
Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum (November 18, 1965)
Tilley, Robert., Tradition, Temporality and
Transcendence: A Biblical Ontology of Time and Space, Tradition Conference 2013, unpublished
Trigg, Roger., Ideas of Human Nature- An Historical
Introduction (Oxford: Athenaeum Press, 1988)
The
Holy Bible Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
Gal. 3:26-27; Rom. 6:3-11; Rom. 8:17