I've been thinking more about what "tradition" means thanks to something I read recently.
Joseph Ratzinger/now Pope Benedict XVI, in a collection of some of his earlier essays on the Church and ecumenism, points out that different Christian groups - Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, etc. - have different fundamental understandings of what "tradition" is. Ratzinger points out that the word "tradition" itself is used to describe different things depending on one's church or denominational location, but says that the proper Catholic understanding of tradition involves a rather complex set of theological and historical presuppositions that line up with an idea like John Henry Newman's description of the "development" of doctrine.
In other words, Ratzinger distinguishes between little "t" traditions and big "T" Tradition; Ratzinger defines big T, Catholic "Tradition" as the providentially ordered progress of the Gospel through its contact with Greek philosophy and up through its shaping of the West into the modern age. "Tradition," for Ratzinger, is a development of doctrine through time that always builds on what came before. We can talk about Baptist or Anglican "traditions," but Ratzinger says that talking about these (the historical roots and practices of a social or religious group) is something different from this historical and theological claim involved in describing a big T "Tradition."
I'm not sure how I feel about this model in Ratzinger/BXVI's work, but it does describe "tradition" and "Tradition" in a clear way. I also wonder if there is a way to read groups like Baptists or Methodists theologically as themselves being legitimate "developments" of the Gospel's path through history.
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The problem with Ratzinger's version--as Kung points out in his memoir--is that no development of the capital T tradition can ever be an erroneous or sinful development that needs repentence and fundamental correction. He can have ressourcement and renewal, but not doctrinal reform--certainly not radical reform.
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ReplyDeleteThe landmark Baptists claimed to be the only legitimate development (which is analogous to the way some RC Christians view Catholicism) and at least some Anabaptists had some hint of this kind of successionism - so it's obviously possible to read them this way.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that Baptists today (both so-called moderates and conservative SBC Baptists) call down some form of tradition in support of their ecclesiological and theological positions - whether that tradition be a tradition of biblical inerrancy or of the "four freedoms" that folks like Shurden hearken to.
To deal with the other specific group you've mentioned, I do think most Methodists (or at least most Wesleyans) do have some sense of being somehow "different" within the history of the Gospel. They often point to Wesley's "conversion" and the development of his thought as being something revolutionary and speak often of how being Methodist makes them distinctive (this has been especially true in the church I now serve and especially in the regional conference youth events in which I've been involved).
This post also makes me think of those Baptists (admittedly a very small number) who thin of themselves as "dissenting Catholics" who would see Baptists as a distinctive and legitimate development within Catholicism (though certainly a strange development).
The "dissenting Catholics" view is really close to my own, but I think a lot of Baptist thinking on tradition plays down is how much Baptists today are part of the Reformed tradition.
ReplyDeleteBaptists in America may not have received Calvinism in all of the most pastorally and socially helpful ways, but Baptists owe a lot to the particular tradition of Reformed theology and I think this gets ignored by theologians who have an axe to grind with the modern presentation of Calvinism for various reasons.
In other words, I often wonder if a more interesting Baptist + tradition question isn't "how can Baptists be more Catholic?" (a question I heard around Duke quite often, referring both to big and little "c" catholic)
ReplyDeleteInstead I wonder if a better question is, "how can Baptists be a creative, faithful, discipleship-oriented offshoot of Reformed theology?"
I'm sure some of the Calvinists at Southern Seminary in Louisville would argue that they offer just such a "creative, faithful, discipleship-oriented" sort of Reformed theology.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure they do (minus wanting it to be "creative," I'm sure), but you know me well enough to know that I'm obviously going to go in different directions than them.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say creative offshoots of Reformed theology I think Karl Barth, T.F. Torrance, and Willie Jennings. Jennings is Baptist himself.