Don Friesen
When the Roman Catholic monks at the Great Saint Bernard Hospice in the Swiss Alps recently decided to sell off their stock of mountain dogs, Swiss officials were shocked! The noble Saint Bernard, the fabled barrel around its neck, is famous for rescuing avalanche victims buried in alpine snow and stranded travellers on the high mountain pass into Italy, so officials asked the monks to reconsider their plans. The director of the nearby tourist office was particularly disturbed, but the monks replied, "The last time these dogs rescued anyone was more than 30 years ago!"
The Saint Bernards are expensive to feed and most of them have been replaced by speedier and lighter-footed Golden Retrievers or German Shepherds and occasionally by helicopters and heat sensors! However, tradition is tradition — even canine tradition — and so an agreement has been reached with the new owners of the Saint Bernards to bring them back to the monastery in the summer tourist months. ("Monks criticised for muzzling canine tradition in the Swiss Alps," Ecumenical News Internationale, October 29, 2004)
Even Tradition Is Subject to Change...
Even tradition is subject to change, but then, where would we be if it wasn't? If, as the Apostle Paul advises in our New Testament reading, we had always held to the traditions we were taught, we would not be Mennonites! There would have been no Reformation; no monastic movements; no renewal movements of any sort; no Christianity! No Judaism! There would have been little human progress! Which is to say — in an exaggerated way — that tradition has more fluidity than conservatives like to think. Traditions evolve!
On the other hand, tradition by its very nature is a pattern of thought or practice of long standing and evolves slowly. It is often an inherited pattern of thought or action, something that has stood the test of at least a few generations. There is something within tradition itself that begs for conservation and that resists change, particularly change based on little more than whim. Tradition is not unchanging, but its conservative — or conserving — nature prevents us from changing it for insufficient reason.
...but Changes to Tradition Require Discernment
Tradition is adaptable, but changes to tradition require discernment. The picture of Saint Bernards rescuing lost souls on the slopes of the Alps is a romantic memory, but it leads us to ask: what is the tradition in question? Is it big, lumbering dogs traipsing through the Alps rescuing the lost and fallen? Or is it the rescue itself?
Christianity has brought to human civilization a dynamic that inspires the intellectual enquiry and scientific curiosity that prompt calls for change, and yet Christianity is also something which people hold so dear that Christians do not wish to see it eroded by change. And the Church has always had both impulses within its ranks — those on the margins pushing the envelope, and those who feel protective of what has stood the test of time.
Already in the Scriptures there were some believers wandering off in doubtful directions. (1 Timothy 6:20; 2 John, verse 7) In the early centuries the Church held Councils to test new, emerging ideas. After several centuries the Church closed the canon of Scripture, for there was already consensus on the majority of the books considered authoritative for the Church. On the margins were several contested books, but the Church said, in effect, Okay, we're closing off the list, and let's move on to practising the bulk of what we already know for sure!
Five centuries ago (1542) the Roman Catholic Church established the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, initially to defend the Church from heresy and now, more generally, "to promote and safeguard the doctrine" of the Church. It's a worthy goal for a church that has reached across countless linguistic, cultural and ideological borders.
Every Christian Church has similar concerns. A decade or so ago our own denomination created a commission "on faith and life" out of a concern that 300 Canadian Mennonite churches not go off in 600 different directions!
Earlier this year a meeting was sponsored by Conrad Grebel College and the Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre at which Tom Harpur, a Canadian journalist, shared his quest to get at the core of all religious and spiritual experience. His recent book, The Pagan Christ, has captured the imagination of many Christians, including Mennonites. Harpur began his spiritual journey as a conventional Christian, but in his quest to uncover the foundations of all religious and spiritual experience and the core of Christianity itself he repudiates the historicity of Christ and contents himself with a vague "eternal Christ within".
I appreciate Harpur's intellectual struggle. His spiritual journey has been a sincere one. The fact that his book is popular suggests that many people are on a similar quest. I'm also thankful to Jim Reimer, who teaches at Conrad Grebel College and who shared his own spiritual journey at that meeting in response to Harpur. Reimer's spiritual journey was very different; it began with skepticism and led to a rediscovery of the profundity of classical, institutional, creedal Christianity. Reimer mourns the loss of the classical imagination. He said that while both he and Harpur are attempting to retrieve something lost, he wants to "retrieve exactly what Harpur appears to reject: the Christian confessions and creeds of the first five centuries." "I do believe in the historicity of the Christian claims," says Reimer. ("Is There Anything New in Christianity? A Critical Response to Tom Harpur," by A. James Reimer, TMTC Newsletter)
Hold Fast to the Peace Tradition
Both of these thinkers have done us, the Church, a service, but I am particularly intrigued with this debate on a day that we mark the importance of one of our own traditions, the peace tradition. We are the heirs of a long and noble pacifist tradition, and while Mennonites have at times pretended to have a corner on this tradition it is a much, much older tradition than our own. It's a tradition that spans at least twenty centuries, a movement inaugurated, one could say, when Jesus pronounced a blessing upon peacemakers. (Matthew 5:9) It's a core conviction exemplified most courageously when our Lord himself accepted crucifixion rather than call down ten thousand angels (Matthew 26:53) to smoke out the Romans!
The Early Church embraced pacifism for at least three centuries, leaving us a rich legacy of courage as already in the first century men like Polycarp (69-155) chose to die rather than take up the sword. When rulers like the Emperor Constantine tried to co-opt and pervert the tradition, it was kept alive in the monasteries.
Our reading from 2 Thessalonians tells us to "stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that (we) were taught" (2 Thessalonians 2:15) and I take that to include the peace tradition. It is a tradition that we ourselves trace back to the Soviet Union and Switzerland and Prussia and the Reformation, John Hus, the monasteries, the Early Church, and Jesus himself, who in turn drew upon the Old Testament prophets who spoke of a time when "...nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more...." (Micah 4:3)
Jim Reimer links our peace tradition to the historicity of Christianity, saying, in effect, that if you spiritualise the Christian gospel there is little need to try and live peaceably in a violent society. This is not to say that the gospel is not a spiritual reality, but the reason the early Christians fought against Gnostic heresy with such passion was precisely because they viewed Jesus "not solely a Christ within but a Christ among human beings in the form of a new literal, historical, concrete moral and ethical community." (Reimer) The historic Christian community ...saw itself quite literally as being called to love the enemy.
I confess that my own spiritual journey is more akin to Reimer's than to Harpur's. My faith was nurtured, initially, in a shallow certainty, rescued by a raging skepticism, but re-born and kept from self-destruction by a discovery of the profundity of a Christ whose spirt and teaching are deeply rooted in the tradition of the Church.
We live in a time that encourages us to abandon tradition for various reasons. If we hold to tradition, we won't attract people to our tradition, goes the oxy-moronic plea. Some traditions are fairly inconsequential, but in the long history of human violence and strife the Christian peace tradition refuses to go away. It continues to challenge us to believe in a real Jesus who asked real people to love real enemies!
Clarence Jordan, who tried to put the gospel of non-violent love into practise in the deeply segregated south in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, wrote, "Jesus has been so zealously worshipped, his deity so vehemently affirmed, his halo so brightly illumined, and his cross so beautifully polished, that in the minds of many he no longer exists as a man. He has become an exquisite celestial being who momentarily lapsed into a painful involvement in the human scene, and then quite properly returned to his heavenly habitat. By thus glorifying him we more effectively rid ourselves of him than did those who tried to do so by crudely crucifying him." (Introduction, The Cotton Patch Version of Luke (Jesus' Doings) and Acts (the Happenings))
Clarence Jordan's efforts, and the efforts of countless others continue to challenge us to stand firm and to hold fast to the traditions we were taught — that God is a God of love and peace; that God desires fullness of life — shalom — for all people; that God calls the community of faith to embody the gospel of love and peace so that the world may be redeemed. May God give us grace so to do.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.