Francis Berger
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The Tradition The Prince of Lies Does Not Know

1/8/2023

9 Comments

 
If there's a glaring fault in tradition, it's in the belief that tradition is a "finished product." More precisely, that everything that needed to be learned and said has been learned and said. Nothing new needs to be added. All the individual has to do is learn the tradition and obey it. 

This external attitude toward tradition, especially in Christianity, lies in the conceptualization of truth as an eternal criterion -- truth as a mooring anchor; fixed and static; immovable as it holds everything in place. 

The problem with this approach to tradition is it enforces an artificial stasis onto God and Creation, which are inherently dynamic. In this sense, Christians have chosen fixation over creativity. Choosing a condition without positive movement or change leads to a variety of difficulties.

To begin with, a tradition that has stopped moving forward can be easily studied and dissected. Inertia and inactivity on the part of traditionalists invites activity and energy from those who seek to destroy tradition. A fixed, immobile, stubborn tradition is easy prey for opportunistic predators who have all the time in the world to analyze its victim, discover its weak points, and gnaw away at them.

The only course available to tradition then is reaction to action. It raises its defenses and attempts to shield truth from the attacks. The reactions do little more than encourage further action on the part of the predators, who turn their attention to devising new strategies and tactics to breach the defenses once and for all.

Satan has an easy time with a fixed and static tradition. Since there is no new "material" forthcoming, he can content himself with learning the old material inside-out until he knows it off-by-heart. If there is one thing traditionalists must not delude themselves about, it is this -- no being in this world understands or will ever understand a fixed, static conceptualization of tradition better than the Prince of Lies.   

Those who abide by the fixed and static conceptualization of tradition do so primarily because of the belief in truth as an eternal criterion. This conceptualization is incomplete rather than blatantly wrong. The criterion of truth is eternal, but it is not fixed, static, and external, but dynamic.

The Prince of Lies knows this, which is why he uses "progress" to attack tradition. The progress he employs is directly opposed to God and Creation; thus, it proclaims to draw on the tradition to further its cause, but instead actively works against it. Thus, the progress Satan demands and institutes is destructive rather than creative. 

Those who defend tradition see the destruction for what it is and retreat further behind their defenses. However, by doing so, they also retreat from the possibility of true creativity -- from the potential and long overdue continuation of tradition via creativity.

Hence, the Prince of Lies is able to accomplish two objectives at once -- keep tradition fixed and static where it remains an easy target to faux and destructive "progress", and turn traditionalists away from the potential of true creativity, through which tradition could continue to evolve by becoming what it has always been and what is was always meant to be -- a dynamic unfolding in time. 

As stated above, a fixed and static tradition offers no significant challenge to the Prince of Lies and his legions. They have been studying it, analyzing it, and attacking it for centuries. To them, the war against the fixed and static tradition is little more than a war of attrition. They have the upper hand. They know it's only a matter of time. 

But if they had to deal with a vigorous, energetic tradition that embraced dynamism and creativity because it embraced the obvious truth that the Holy Spirit is dynamic, not static; if they were faced with Christians who understood that God, Creation, Christianity, and man are not "finished products" -- well, I daresay they would find themselves on the back foot, scattered and confused in territory they could have never imagined, let alone studied and learned. 
9 Comments
ben
1/9/2023 00:35:42

It's interesting to think about Truth, Beauty, Virtue - Value, as something made and (hopefully not) destroyed. This creation of Value would be one of the primary concerns of God and associated Good beings.

With this understanding, there would be geniuses not only uncovering Truth but actually making it, like gods. The Value of a genius invention could be understood as something truly created (in collaboration with God and other beings) and brand new, rather than something merely coming to be known about and pre-existing abstractly.

There would be pre-existing Truth, much of it made by God, that could be known. But also Truth to be made, in the way that an artist makes Beauty.

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Francis Berger
1/9/2023 08:01:08

@ ben - Good comment. Yes, that's what I'm getting at. Tradition embraces saints but has left little room for geniuses, most of whom have taken their creativity elsewhere.

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ben
1/9/2023 23:50:13

My understanding would be that some of the saints were geniuses engaged in the creation of Virtue.

Lady Mermaid link
1/9/2023 04:00:37

I know I've repeatedly quoted this, but it still is true. "Tradition is not the worship of ashes but preservation of fire"- Gustav Mahler

There is a lot of frustration as to why leftism and modernity keep triumphing despite their failures. The inherent problem w/ conservatism is that is a fundamentally a defensive force. It's focused on hanging on to something. Defensive forces may hold up for a while, but they will eventually fall. Even once stalwart communities such as the Amish and LDS are starting to collapse.

While leftism is evil, it is always pressing forward. It has a relentless energy towards something new, even if it's ultimately bent to destruction. Jesus stated that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. Notice how many Christians take that statement. Even I had unconsciously pictured the Church fighting the forces of hell defensively behind the gates. However, that statement is saying the opposite.

Jesus likened the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed. That's far from being a finished product. Now there is a real danger is using "progress" to justify immoral acts or bad spirituality. However, it's clear that simply being on the defensive is not working. Christians are going to have to be for something. I believe that the Inklings group consisting of Tolkien and Lewis was the start of a creative Christianity that grows dynamically from our roots.

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Francis Berger
1/9/2023 08:15:55

@ Lady Mermaid - Early leftism seems to have had some forward moving momentum that -- at the very least -- indirectly addressed the development of consciousness that tradition refused to acknowledge. Unfortunately, without a solid foundation in the divine, these early leftist movements fixated almost purely on the material. Churches confounded the problem by doing the same.

With that in mind, I don't believe leftism has any forward movement "left" in it. It certainly offers that illusion, but any honest assessment of current events and developments quickly reveals leftism to be entirely destructive -- without any real goals, objectives, or definable, long-term direction. The newness it offers is inverted creativity, which is just a fancy way of saying destruction.

The only way to defend against inverted creativity is through authentic creativity -- at least so it would appear -- but conservatives and tradition are interested only in defending past creation. New creation strikes them as anathema, mostly because they seem to equate it with inverted creation.

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JMSmith
1/9/2023 13:01:53

There are traditionalists who fit this description, but I still think you've set up a straw man. T.S. Eliot, for instance, described a dynamic tradition that changes. It is, one might say, in conversation with the past. Alasdair Macintyre described tradition in a similar way. The present is not a duplicate of the past but incorporates the past creatively. The aim is something like remodeling an old house so that it is new without ceasing to be old.

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Francis Berger
1/9/2023 15:47:18

@ JM - Any remodeling of Christian tradition would have to include a place for men to be genuinely creative in this time and place and in the future -- an acknowledgement of man as an embryonic divine co-creator striving to work in harmony with God's divine creation -- of a being capable of adding something to creation (beyond procreation and subcreation).

Classical, mainstream, traditional Christian theology has no place for any of that, implying that some of those assumptions would have to be discarded or, as I prefer to view it, "grown out of." Tradition considers this to be an abandonment of tradition instead of a fulfillment of tradition.

Any conversation with the past would have to include the acknowledgement that tradition has been building up toward that development. Tradition is unwilling to accept that.

Consequently, we have anti-creative forces who have basically filled that gap and are working feverishly (and quite successfully) to destroy all tradition and all vestiges of Christianity by working in complete disharmony with God and Creation.

The only solution most traditionalists recognize is to wind the clock back to some pre-modern monarchical form of feudal Christendom, only this time with microwaves, airplanes, and air conditioners.

My point is, tradition does not recognize the potential good in the fundamental changes man's consciousness has undergone. Tradition sees only a mutinous, sinful prodigal son that needs to sort himself out and get back on the path. Modern people truly are a mutinous, sinful bunch, no doubt about that, but getting them back on the path of tradition based solely on a remodeled past will not work, not even if modern people freely accepted it.

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bruce g charlton
1/9/2023 18:51:23

From the Protestant side, the equivalent of tradition is the ("literal", "inerrant") truth of The Bible.

The main church I have supported over recent years (until the birdemic lockdown) was of this kind (Conservative Evangelical Anglican - less Church of England than affiliated with GAFCON - look it up - and the global South).

They were typical of such Protestants in that it was asserted and believed that they were a Bible-based church; and always spoke and taught as if The Bible was unchanging guidance - closely analogous to tradition for some Catholics (especially Orthodox).

Yet this Bible-tradition has been - in actuality - subverted and corrupted and just changed in multiple ways, over the decades. Translations of the Bible have been subverted by the use of multiple versions, and by their reliance upon modern - essentially secular - language and history scholarship. The professional theologians often disagree about what the Bible actually says and teaches, and eminent evangelicals in practice therefore differ on major issues such as the ordination (and teaching role) of women, and same-sex-marriage - but overall once-conservative evangelicals have converged with the secular-left mainstream.

When it came to the spiritual test of 2020, *suddenly* major principles concerning the necessity of gathering to pray, sing, study and teach; were overnight abandoned in favour of healthism - a healthism based on the advice of secular-leftist political authorities that, until just a few days earlier, has mostly been spoken of as agents of evil, leading us to damnation...

My point here is that *in practice*, Bible-based tradition (including traditions of how to read the Bible, what to focus upon) changes and is (in that sense) 'dynamic'. BUT because there is an ideal of unchanging faithfulness to The Bible - these changes are covert, unconscious, and denied.

Perhaps because this is a fundamental dishonesty, and lying is a sin; it means that the in-practice changes are almost always negative and corrupting - and almost always convergent with mainstream secular leftism.

I think the same analogously applies to church tradition, or (as with Roman Catholics) the authority of the Pope and Magisterium. These are not supposed to change, are denied to have changed; but they do change - yet they do not change in a positive and creative fashion, but instead get passively dragged by the dominant power structures of secular society.

This is why the need is for an inner and committed creative dynamism - the benefit of which is almost wholly a matter of genuine motivation. 2020 showed us that legalistic restrictions on change, or to prevent corruption, are completely ineffective over time.

It is all about the hearts and desires of those who are doing the creative work. If these are not aligned with God and divine creation, then change will harm.

Probably, at least at present, it is not possible for any organization to operate on the basis of the good intentions of its leaders; and those in positions of power who propose creative change are likely to be wrongly motivated - just as those who resist change (and pretend to hold fast to tradition, authority or The Bible) are also likely to be wrongly motivated.

Power has been very substantially corrupted in The West, so that anyone who does Not wish to join with the trend to corruption has little choice but to take personal responsibility.

Francis Berger
1/10/2023 11:31:36

@ ben - Some saints were certainly creative geniuses, but many possessed neither genius nor creativity.

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