On the Concept of Continuity in Tradition

[The following is my small, and somewhat confused, reflection paper written at the beginning of a class on Medieval theology two semesters ago dealing with the text The Medieval Theologians ed. by G.R. Evans in which I slightly disagree with her characterization of continuity and discontinuity in tradition.    For what its worth Im still just as confused on the question so comments and suggestions are welcomed.]

In an age which exalts the immediately experiential and revels in the therapeutic qualities of religion, being discovered as an (aspiring) professional theologian in a conversation is often, I have found, analogous to the unearthing of a long forgotten relic.  There is surprise, a little confusion.  Everyone seems to have a slight inkling that this artifact from what seems like long, long ago, in a galaxy perhaps (maybe, possibly) like this one, does something important.  Its just that no one is quite sure what that important thing it must be doing is.

Perhaps the most frequent of the slightly bemused inquires (even from some believers) is why exactly a theologian is necessary.  Being a theologian cannot, of course, make one “more saved,” they know in their heart of hearts.  Nor really, it often (though falsely) seems, does the theologian add to the body of knowledge of being human.  So whence the theologian?  What more to “believe in Christ and be saved!” or simply reading the Bible, must be added?  For the sake of this brief essay I can respond no better to this inquiry, and bring out the reigning theme of our forthcoming confusion, than G.R. Evan’s does in her introduction to The Medieval Theologians:

           

“Faith in” the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth had to take a definitive shape in the first generations after his death.  It was perhaps enough for the salvation of the individual to “believe in him” that is, to trust in a person.  But the faith had to be communicated; the believe had to be able to explain to others what he believed, or there would be no new Christians.  When St. Paul urged Christians to be read to give reasons for the faith that was in them, he was setting in train a process of immense length and complexity.  A map had to be made of what that faith consisted in, its intellectual as well as its affective content. (xiii)

Which is in some sense to say theologians exist, and historians exist, because communication exists.  And there is a content to be transmitted, often called tradition.  Further, it is often commented today that we are all embodied thinkers, who locate our rationality and understanding within the horizons of a previously established discourse.  Gadamer as a particularly famous example writes that, “an individual’s prejudgements [or prejudices] far more than his judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being.” (Truth and Method 276-7).

But the concept of complex communication, tradition, and continuity all seem to need clarification: what is continuity?  How is it understood?  “Unity and continuity are of the essence of the faith,” according to Evans (Medieval Theologians vi) which appears to mean what defines the unity of the Christian tradition is the essence of faith itself.  But what is striking is the way in which she essentially frames the entire work: continuity and break-offs of continuity are apparently mutually irreconcilable polar opposites, lodestones marking the end points of pathways with nearly no spectrum between, just an abyss.  Just so she ends her introduction by suggesting the leading questions for further reflection as we read:  “The question with which this story must leave us is whether the medieval theologians simply went too far down a road which was a high road until the thirteenth century but in the end petered out as a mere track.  Or did the sixteenth century changes destroy a mature study as it reached its full fruition?” (xx).

These appear to be important questions to ask, especially given the rising importance of tradition, authority, and reason as themes in the medieval theological imagination.  But perhaps the type of question she asks, and leads us to ask, are more important than the specific way she has formulated them, for is this not a false dichotomy?  While a change in the Reformation is undeniable, that in either question the Medieval period simply “ended” appears to be the only courses for investigation that Evans has left us (indeed, in a comment on the creativity of modern theologians one can almost sense a palpable angst in Evans as she senses threats to continuity.)  This appears untenable, especially in light of remarks from many investigating the origins of modernism and postmodernism that, in the words of Catherine Pickstock, “What we have in postmodernity is a persistent Middle Ages.  The issue does not involve a contrast between the modern and the postmodern.  It is rather that both represent a certain middle ages.” (“Modernity and Scholasticism” 30-32). We are not here to write a systematic theology, obviously, but Evan’s questions as a point of reference actually caused me confusion as I read, and so I felt they needed to be addressed.

Reflecting what Charles Taylor wrote recently that “bad arguments, more often even than good arguments, often change the course of history” (A Secular Age p.586) even in the very first essay on Augustine, John Rist has a slightly different historiographical take (or so it seems): “No account of the effects and influence of Augustine can ignore the challenge of the relationship between the genuine and supposed beliefs of the bishop of Hippo.” And he adds “At the beginning of the third millennium we are in a better position to trace that challenge than were the medieval.” (3).  He then gives a brief summary of Augustine and the dichotomies present in his work, both as they evolved historically and how, if one took him to be a systematician, how attempted reconciliations of his whole system contained in nascent form many of the unresolved tensions that would furiously put medieval ink to quill.  And in closing he states “The medieval Augustine was not always the most philosophically or theologically powerful Augustine, and in some matters he became a ‘false friend’ or even an opponent of the real Augustine.  But to say as much is only to say that Augustines legacy is both what he did, said, and intended, and what he was assumed to have meant.” (22).

Rist concludes that to deny one or another of these “Augustines” is to impoverish the history of theology.  Not to pick on Evans who may have simply wanted to pose some questions to stimulate thought, but are not the her questions in their material formulation essentially enabling just such a reduction as Rist warns of?  The Medieval world “ending” or even just “petering out” (the two ends of her dichotomy) seem in some sense to imply that the Reformation was a de novo creation (surely as such a distinguished scholar she didn’t mean this, but her questions appear to make it look as much).  It also seems to contain particular assumptions regarding tradition and proper continuity.

This thus brings us back to the question of what constitutes a continuity of tradition?  Thankfully I don’t have room to try and resolve the issue, so I will cover instances in the reading that will hopefully serve for a closer analysis to formulate more precise questions.  Benedicta Ward’s chapter on the Venerable Bede shows an excellent example of a man who was not “a great systematic theologian,” but “saw himself as following in the footsteps of the Fathers” and saw his task was “to receive, verify, and transmit, and in doing so he ensured  the Christianity of the Anglo-Saxons was a continuation of the teaching of his predecessors.” (57).  At first blush then we appear to have a man who would be more or less pure example of continuity as apparently envisioned by Evans.  But it is not necessarily so clear in exactly what “continuity” here consists still.  Certainly Bede was a faithful compiler and believed himself to be faithful to the fathers.  None of that is under question.  Nor indeed do I want here to question whether or not he was accurate as an interpreter (no doubt he was in many ways).  What I want to bring up that even the act of compiling in order to be faithful cannot stand as an example of pure tradition, as Pelikan puts it “it also deserves to be called a form of doctrinal development when an era summarizes into a systematic whole the doctrines that have developed in the preceding centuries,” (The Christian Tradition 3:269) which applies I think, mutatis mutandis, to an individual compiling.  Continuity as straight succession, eventual diminution, or breakoff automatically seems too simplistic in this light.

Things get even more complicated with the Carolingians—who may resemble traditionalists par excellence.  Willemien Otten in his essay on the Carolingians (with modification) follows Hobsbawm’s concept of “the invention of tradition,” (65) and Morrison’s concept of tradition as “mimesis,” (66) and concludes “The Carolingians built a cultural home for themselves which would subsequently be considered Europe’s shared Christian heritage.”  He continues by adding a telling remark:

It is important not to narrow the importance of Carolingian theology to the sum of its controversies.  The emergence of different, even divergent opinions marking the theological landscape can itself be seen as a clear sign of the Carolingian’s self awareness.  This self-awareness was at the basis of a kind of intellectual confidence by which they were able not just to defend their own positions as in conformity with the Fathers but, on a deeper level, to harmonize the Father’s different voices in such a way as to create a coherent sense of tradition. (66)

As became more and more often, we see in the Carolingian controversies too a turning of tradition against tradition—both Alcuin and Elipandus thought the other was a heretic and that they themselves were bastions of orthodoxy; Theodulf is a bit more difficult to place, as he indeed wanted to be in continuity with tradition for his and Charlemagne’s iconoclasm, but whether or not this was in the name of orthodoxy or politics is hard to discern from Otten’s retelling of the tale; and indeed Radbertus and Ratramnus’s disagreement seem to in some sense show the flexibility of Orthodox positions in one sense, as their “controversy” didn’t even become a controversy until it became a talking point of the Reformation (74).  But even here I must humbly disagree (even if only slightly) with Otten’s summary that “Thus we notice [with Radbertus and Ratramnus] a first crack in the serenity of the monastic sphere.  For when monastic meditation becomes misunderstood, there arises the need for a procedure of extrinsic validation whose rules are no longer co-extensive with those regulating monastic life itself.” (76)  In one sense this is true, but I think, to offer a slight modification, that this “crack” is merely a coming to slight self-awareness of the necessity of such a principle, rather than its sudden insertion.  Presenting this as a “crack” in the monastic edifice, however poetically appealing, almost appears to represent the Enlightenment narrative of the emergence of man from blind credulity into reason.  But to call this a “crack”, even if this would have been seen as a crack to the Carolingians, is surely to overstake the matter.  For even when tradition is hegemonic, when compilation of multiple sources begins, and indeed even in the activities of the Father’s themselves, there are already (even if unspoken or unthought) “rational” criteria being applied in the name of tradition itself.  To use the  term “crack” then is to, however slightly, already evoke the idea that tradition is one thing, and reason another discrete thing.  I think that the transformation needs to be described somewhat differently.

Which brings me to my last comment on what continuity is.  When looking at the figures of Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Gregory I by Kannengiesser, one is struck how important each man was, and how their concerted efforts each came in their realization and fascination that they stood on the cusp of great changing times.  I think one of the inherent paradoxes in the Medieval striving for continuity is that it both creates and breaks in actual continuity with the Fathers.  For figures like Augustine, or the Cappadocians, or in figures like a Cassiodorus and a Gregory, these are men who attempt to transmit tradition with the best tools and methods of inquiry of their day and age.  So certainly whatever continuity is it cannot be slavish devotion or represented by an unbroken line, because if in fact one wants to find themselves in continuity with the Fathers, one must try to be faithful to their conclusions while at the same time realizing that to truly reproduce some of their methods is precisely not to reproduce their conclusions, because to follow in their footsteps would be to bring them into conversation with the best methods (or seemingly best methods) of our contemporary climate.  In that sense I humbly think Evan’s is wrong in her questions, because this both seems to imply that, formally and materially, The Reformation onwards somehow found itself on the other side of a historical divide.  In my opinions, continuities exist even there, and even with us today.