Yves Congar discusses Tradition

There's been two recent posts this week that quote at length from Yves Congar's The Meaning of Tradition. Some of Congar's ideas in the Intro relate to the recent discusson here re: Milinerd's and Reno's comments on Theological Education and Art Discourse, so I thought I would quote a small bit.

Paul Claudel compared tradition with a man walking. In order to move forward he must push off from the ground, with one foot raised and the other on the ground; if he kept both feet on the ground or lifted both in the air, he would be unable to advance. If tradition is a continuity that goes beyond conservatism, it is also a movement and a progress that goes beyond mere continuity, but only on condition that, going beyond conservation for its own sake, it includes and preserves the positive values gained, to allow a progress that is not simply a repetition of the past. Tradition is memory, and memory enriches experience. If we remembered nothing it would be impossible to advance; the same would be true if we were bound to a slavish imitation of the past. True tradition is not servility but fidelity.

This is clear enough in the field of art. Tradition conceived as the handing down of set formulas and the enforced and servile imitation of models learned in the classroom would lead to sterility; even if there were an abundant output of works of art, they would be stillborn. Tradition always implies learning from others, but the academic type of docility and imitation is not the only one possible: there is also the will to learn from the experience of those who have studied and created before us; the aim of this lesson is to receive the vitality of their inspiration and to continue their creative work in its original spirit, which thus, in a new generation, is born again with the freedom, the youthfulness and the promise that it originally possessed.

At last year's AAR, Hans Boersma gave a paper in response to Vanhoozer's Drama of Doctrine in which he suggested that Vanhoozer could benefit from appropriating Congar into his overall picture of how doctrine is developed and implemented. I confess that I don't remember much of his paper and can't find it in article form online. But I think the salient point is that inherent even to a proposal as generous as Vanhoozer's is the tension between the Protestant and Catholic relationship to scritpure, the (sometimes) radical individualism of sola scriptura and the perceived crustiness and equally rigid rules of tradition. In Congar's words:

[S]ince the Reformation there is controversy between Christians on "Scripture versus tradition", a controversy on the rule of faith.

At the dualism goes on...

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Three Views of the Eucharist? (Eventual) ruminations on the place of the Eucharist in Anglican theology

Per Caritatem has an interesting 3 part series on a Reformed View of the Eucharist by Mike Vendsel that just ended last thursday. Vendsel reviews Douglas Farrow's article, "Between the Rock and a Hard Place: In Support of (something like) a Reformed View of the Eucharist". I must confess, I didn't know there was such a thing. Just goes to show the state of catechesis when I was growing up. Farrow's article basically posits two views: 1.is the "traditional" reformed view that attempts to safeguard a notion of Christ's ontological body, existing in space and time, quite distinct from the sacramental elements. This perspective reminds me of something a youth leader said to me back in high school: "We don't have sacraments; we have ordinances." At the time, I took him to be mincing words, but since then I have come to wonder if it really wasn't just an excuse to not deal with the tensions of being in a rather new tradition that has failed to articulate a metaphysic. Anyway, the problem with this for Farrow is how it radically seperates our materiality from Christ's, and the Gnostic connotation of the worshipper engaged in some mental/spiritual connection to Christ.

The 2nd view is is the RC perspective, best articulated by Thomas, summarized by Farrow:

"by virtue of His divine omnipresence and omnipotence as the Logos, Jesus is able to provide on earth a eucharistic form of His humanity under the accidents of bread and wine, making present (albeit non-spatially) the actual substance of His exalted body and blood” (p. 171)

Calvin provides the foil to this view. For Calvin, the power of the Eucharist is not in dilluting Christ's humanity, but rather in transporting us to heaven in union with Christ - a kind of beatific experience, it seems.

I won't summarize the rest of the posts from Per Caritatem here, but rather direct your attention to the links to each post: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

The series followed a post on an article on the Eucharist by Catherine Pickstock, "Thomas Aquinas and the Quest for the Eucharist." The post highlights Pickstock's work with "Desire" and the allegory of the Grail. Here's an interesting quote from Pickstock that seems to encapsulate most of the summary from Per Caritatem:

"Thus we can see that what the Eucharist is is desire. Although we know via desire, or wanting to know, and this circumstance alone resolves the aporia of learning, beyond this we discover that what there is to know is desire. But not desire as absence, lack and perpetual postponement; rather, desire as the free flow of actualization, perpetually renewed and never foreclosed” (pp. 178-179).

These posts got me thinking about how one might capture the distinctiveness of an Anglican view of the Eucharist. Rowan Williams talks about Hooker's doctrine of Christology and Sacraments in his book, Anglican Identities. A major theme Williams brings out is Hooker's emphasis of the incarnation as the redemption (or "restoration") of humanity via the work of the Holy Spirit, not simply a relationship of solidarity by virtue of his being human: "it is a relation with a humanity itself already transfigured (not annihilated)by the outpouring of a divine gift." The Holy Spirit can act upon and through us in multiple ways, including by not limited to the Eucharist - however one may theorize the relationship of Christ to the elements.

"Papist error about the Eucharist is less in the doctrine of transubstantiation as such than in the insistence on this as the only legitimate account of how Christ acts... Hooker can say, boldly, 'there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us (67.2, p. 358); [similarly] Herbert argues that Christ died for humanity, not for bread, so it is the former that needs changing..."

While Hooker doesn't seem to want to spend a lot of time fleshing out the metaphysics of the Sacraments, the point is clear: Christ acts on us through his gifts. "Receive the gift of divine action and the effects of divine action follow - in Christ's humanity, in the bread and the wine, in the holy person."

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Marilyn Adams and the Trouble with Anglican Polity

Thanks to links from Generous Orthodoxy and Medius Temporis, I direct your attention to a recent speech by Marily McCord Adams, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford (Christ Church), on the fate of LGBT and female ordination in the wake of the recent Primate Meeting.

Adams offers a helpful, while opinionated, reading of the situation. I say helpful because she attempts to present a broad scope reading of the situation before launching into detailed critique and suggestions for ways forward. She also makes the theology behind many of her clear to the audience. However, she fails in one area: she begs the question about the equivalence between sexual identity and personal identity. Yet, I admit that had she stated from the get go that such was her presupposition, I believe I probably could hang with the arguments that she had built from the presupposition.

Nevertheless, I think its safe, and sad, to say that many will be drawn to the mercifully irenic tone of her argument when compared with the alternative offered by Forward in Faith, which spends much less time telling a convincing story and much more time bickering details.

Aron said the other day that he thought the way forward in this argument is not the political bashing and name calling that even the Anglo-catholics have resorted to these days. Rather, the solution must come from well-reasoned and charitable theological formulations. Hopefully, Adams can continue to move in this direction and encourage others to follow.

Moreover, as recently re-iterated to me by a much loved priest, the Church is once again becoming embroiled in another difficult controversy to which many are directing much attention when they should be attending to the details and needs of their own parishes and dioceses.

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