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C.S. Lewis once wrote that history is “a story written by the finger of God.” For the Christian, there is a profound and inseparable link between one’s faith and history. Judeo-Christian thought is distinguished from that of all other world religions precisely because of the weight attributed to history. Not only did God moor the incarnational revelation of His character, plan, and action in history, but He gave His people explicit commands not to forget theirs. It is through history that God’s people learn of His character and devotion as well as how to trust and believe.
It also through history that we preserve the ancient Christian faith and faithfully transmit it to the next generation. Having grown up in the myopic Pentecostal tradition that only dates back to the Asuza Street Revival of 1906, my old soul always longed for greater sense of depth and transcendence. This is why I love the Apostles’ Creed, which has roots dating back to the second century. It’s why I love old hymns, old liturgies, and old rituals. It all serves to foster a continuity within the Body of Christ through the centuries that transcends even death.
At the same time, historically-inclined Jesus followers are the best and the worst. They’re the best when they use the lessons of history to stand back from the urgency of the moment, glean the wisdom of our ancestors, question our contemporary presuppositions, and bring to bear a much-needed larger perspective. Meanwhile, they’re at their worst when their atavistic tendency devolves into an arrogant rigidity that demands uncritical deference our forebearers and naively seeks to revert to any number of perceived golden ages that never actually existed.
This brings us the crucial distinction between tradition and traditionalism. According to Jaroslav Pelikan, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.” Tradition is great but traditionalism sucks.
The original beatniks never held tradition in high regard. Theirs was a spirit of non-conformity that relentlessly challenged assumptions. Doing something a certain way solely because that’s the way it has always been done seemed rather inane to the Beat Generation. And yet I wonder, would they have been receptive to a philosophy that loves history and values tradition while remaining allergic to traditionalism? My hunch is they would’ve loved a meta-critique of most anti-traditionalists unknowingly being bound to a tradition of non-conformity.
