Church Matters: Retrieving the Great Tradition

Session 4 Church Matters and Going Back to the Future: What’s All the Hubbub about the Great Tradition?

You Got to Go Back to Move Forward The permanent tension in the poetics of liturgy is between the necessity of local cultural modes of perception (expression and interpretation) and the common culture of Christian faith and life. Only by maintaining this tension can we also assert specifically Christian faith and life over against the assumptions of much post modern and technological culture. Though each subculture has its own integrity, there is a manner of celebration which is Christian, stemming from the particular claims of the paschal mystery. There is a way of enacting the rites which is ultimately the human reception of what God has done in creation and in Jesus Christ. This has been referred to by Gelineau and others as the “paschal human in Christ” – a manner enacted in particular cultural languages that evidences “both reserve and openness, respect and simplicity, confident joy . . . and true spontaneity. . . .”

~ Robert Webber. Music and the Arts in Christian Worship . 1st ed. Nashville: Star Song Pub. Group, 1994, p. 504.

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I. Defining the Traditions of the Church: Three Levels of Christian Authority

Why on earth read about a hundred or so figures from the past? Why not confine our reading to the present? Why read people with whom we might not agree? We need to read about the past in order to understand the present. People without a grasp of history are like a man without a memory. Many of the current beliefs in our society are properly grasped only when we see how they have emerged. A knowledge of history will help us to understand better both ourselves and those with whom we might disagree. We also need to read about the past in order to escape the present. Every generation has its blind spots and its hobby horses and ours is certainly no exception. By studying the thought of past generations we can be challenged where our views are defective and helped to see our own pet ideas in a proper perspective. We do not need an excessive degree of humility to recognize that our own grasp of truth might be less than perfect and that it is possible to learn from those with a different perspective. ~ Tony Lane. Harper’s Concise Book of Christian Faith . New York: Harper and Row, 1984, p. 7.

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