From the Revd Professor David R. Law
Sir, - In his article (
Comment, 28 March), the Revd Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard exhorts us
to "have the nerve to follow the early Christians" and urges the
Churches to be "truly innovative". It seems that Christians today
are merely "curators, not creators", and, "as inheritors of
tradition, we lack the habits that would help us to innovate."
Innovation, it would appear, is something good in itself, and the
early Christians provide us with examples of innovatory practice
which we should follow.
Clarification is needed, however, concerning the identity of the
early Christians whom Dr Rayment-Pickard has in mind. The
Christians responsible for the New Testament clearly respected the
tradition that they had received, and were concerned to preserve it
and pass it on to subsequent generations (1 Corinthians 11.23,
15.3; 2 Thessalonians 2.15; 1 Timothy 6.20; 2 Timothy 1.13-14, 2.2;
Jude 3).
Far from being innovators, the early Christians of the
post-apostolic period were concerned to demonstrate the antiquity
of the Christian faith, since, in contrast to the situation in
21st-century Britain, novelty was generally viewed with suspicion
in the ancient world. To refute the charge of novelty and to
demonstrate Christianity's antiquity, Justin Martyr argued that the
pre-incarnate Logos had been responsible for the inspiration of the
Old Testament prophets and the Greek philosophers. The Fathers
after Justin repeatedly emphasised the importance of tradition.
To take just two of many examples that could be cited, Clement
of Alexandria warned that "he, who has spurned the ecclesiastical
tradition, and darted off to the opinions of heretical men, has
ceased to be a man of God and to remain faithful to the Lord"
(Stromateis, 7.16), while Vincent of Lérins famously
stated that "in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must
be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed
everywhere, always, by all" (Commonitorium 2.6).
The truly innovative groups in the Early Church were the various
Gnostic sects with their elaborate cosmologies, and, perhaps most
innovative of all, the Montanists, who wished to supplement the
scriptures with the new revelations supposedly imparted by the Holy
Spirit to Montanus and his followers. Having the nerve to follow
such groups today would certainly be innovative, but it would mean
a radical departure from the historic faith.
Another issue with Dr Rayment-Pickard's critique of tradition is
its implicit assumption that past generations of Christians have
nothing worth while to teach us, and that we cannot draw on their
insights as a resource for our own attempts to live out the gospel
today. We might also ask what Dr Rayment-Pickard's criteria are for
identifying what he considers to be "authentic religion". What is
the source of these criteria? Do they have a history - or tradition
- behind them, do they stem from a modern secular world-view (which
is, of course, itself a "tradition" that can be traced back to the
Enlightenment), or are they based purely on the individual's
personal likes and dislikes? In short, what is the authority on
which Dr Rayment-Pickard's notion of authentic religion is
based?
Once we raise questions concerning authority, we are confronted
with questions concerning the origins of that authority, and thus
are inevitably led back to some sort of notion of a tradition that
has mediated that authority from its past origins into the
present.
The theological task is not to abandon tradition, but to sift
it, and to preserve what is good and valuable, while discarding
what obscures or stifles the gospel. To achieve this, it is helpful
to distinguish between the traditum, the core doctrines
and practices of the Church essential to the Church's identity and
ministry, and the actus tradendi, the means by which these
doctrines and practices are handed down and formulated in new ways
to communicate the gospel to each new generation.
Distinguishing between these two dimensions of tradition is, of
course, a complex theological task, but it is one that is not
addressed by the wholesale rejection of the Church's
inheritance.
DAVID R. LAW
School of Arts, Languages and
Cultures
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
From the Dean of St Edmundsbury
Sir, - In Reflections on the Revolution in France,
Edmund Burke differentiated between innovation and change, very
usefully, to my mind.
Following Hooker, he thought that change, when it was necessary,
was a very good thing to enable human society in its necessary
institutional forms to develop and grow in response to perceived
failings and the impulse to make things better.
The spirit of innovation (the desire to begin again from
scratch, to implement a utopian blueprint) he distrusted, believing
that it "is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined
views". Innovation - the motivation behind the French Revolution as
it cut free from the wisdom handed on from one generation to
another - led too often to the exercise of arbitrary power.
Yes, he underestimated the abuses of the ancien regime,
but his distinction is a powerful one, I think. At the door of
"innovation", it could be argued, can be laid many of the utopian
disasters of the 20th century; and today the innovation-fatigue
that exerts such a negative pressure on institutions like the NHS
and education today, with wave upon wave of ill-thought-through new
systems.
One of the strengths of the Church of England is its respect for
tradition, and its nerve, when it has it, to hold on to what has
been received and handed on to us, weighing up carefully any change
to ensure that it is for the better. Having confidence in what the
Church of England does well, in its liturgy and social action,
always seeking to do things better, to the glory of God, is not
about perpetuating "an old religious paradigm of blind
rule-followers".
Almost everything we see around us on a Sunday, including the
entire church building and its contents, is the result not of
Christian in-novation, as the Revd Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard argues,
but, I would say, of Christian tradition. And it is the living
traditions of a lively body of Christ which we should be commending
to the unchurched and de-churched.
The Easter collect prays that we may be dead to sin and alive to
God in Jesus Christ, and states that it is God who makes all things
new in Christ. I am sufficiently distrustful of human innovation to
leave the new to God.
FRANCES WARD
The Deanery
Bury St Edmunds
Suffolk IP33 1RS
From Canon R. H. W. Arguile
Sir, - The Revd Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard and I clearly visit
very different churches. I cannot remember any systematic teaching
at any church that I have attended over many years. The handing on
of the tradition of Augustine, Aquinas, Hooker, Newman, and co.,
let alone "telling people what to think and feel and do", is
unknown to me.
As for liturgies, the problem is ever the same: the need to do
liturgy well, as if one means the words and is aware of the
awesomeness of the occasion. The problem of badly conducted liturgy
is not solved by replacing it with anecdotes and songs. I would not
wish to go in the direction of the joke that the Quakers tell
against themselves: that they sing hymns very slowly in order to
check whether they agree with the next line. "In order to recover
our freshness of vision", on the contrary, we need to rediscover
the riches of the tradition that we have so carelessly
abandoned.
It is true that there is a need to engage with the culture,
though, frankly, the candyfloss character of much of it does not
invite engagement. What can one do with the cult of celebrity? And
how can one engage with people who refuse to talk because they are
"offended" by opposing views?
Yes; of course there should be much more debate, but I am always
glad for it to be informed by someone who knows what he or she is
talking about. The problem is that, unlike professionals in every
other sphere, the clergy can serve a ministry of 30 years without
ever having to undertake in-service training.
Meanwhile, Alasdair McIntyre's lament about our lack of any
common grammar of ethical thinking is more than 30 years new.
Whether recent developments have been positive or not, Dr
Rayment-Pickard and I may agree. That he had made the case for the
direction that he would take I would deny.
R. H. W. ARGUILE,
10 Marsh Lane
Wells next the Sea
Norfolk NR23 1EG