What is tradition?

Not only the spoils belong to the victor.  With the spoils comes the opportunity to rewrite history to favor
the victor.  We have always known that was the case in secular history, especially in the history of the nations.  Now, it appears, there are those who are trying to claim the same privilege for religion as well.

Not so terribly long ago there were those who suggested that the Jesus of history and the Christ of the Scriptures could be framed in this same sense.  We cannot know the Jesus of history but only the Christ who is defined and proclaimed by the victorious among the various parties, versions of history, and theological perspectives.  The convenient target then was Constantine who apparently had so much power he was the one to define Christianity for the ages (at least until modernity began to question the official version of things).  Constantine kept some books out of Scripture and made sure some were included.  Constantine defined the dogma that would be enshrined in the Nicene Creed.  Of course, how we are smart enough to know this and to challenge the historical record and tradition.  Now we can begin to piece together what later generations had done to change who Jesus was and is and what the Gospel was and is.

It started with Scripture itself.  Three Isaiahs were later lumped together into one.  The Gospel were derived from a source now unknown but then known to all the Gospel writers.  You get my drift.  The point is to say that what we have today is in reality a doctored text defined by those who won the doctrine wars of the past.  It soon became the mantra of those ostensibly engaged in bringing Christianity into the modern age but guilty of more than this.  There arose the idea that it was not only possible but the duty of the present to undo what had been done to stifle the challenges and challengers of what we now call Christianity.  The liturgy as we know it was preceded by a common, simple, and primitive form that we should all now return to.  It was the foible of some within the modern liturgical movement to decry the elaborate and complicated received form and put together something they thought might better reflect the pristine and unpolluted form of Christian's earliest ages.  It was not enough to make incremental changes but wholesale change was required.

While some claim that Lutherans suffered the same as Rome in this misguided pursuit of a liturgical ancestor, what ended up in Lutheran hymnals was less the radical shift Rome endured and a more careful remodeling of the past.  All the Divine Services in LSB show this connection in every place except the canon of the mass.  There the bare Verba were given a context in the prayers of thanksgiving that did not Romanize this part of the mass as much as it reflected an evangelical Eucharistic prayer.  Sure, one can argue about the actual words chosen for the new translations of the ordinary or the choices to retain the creedal forms going back to the 1941 hymnal but in reality there is less divergence between the older tradition and what we have now.  I am sure, however, that some will disagree.  It is fairly easy to see that the forms are similar, however.

Rome did something far different.  Rome did not merely translate the Latin into the vernacular but made a wholesale change in the form of the mass.  Yes, the Latin was gone but so were many of the distinctives the Roman mass had known through the ages -- at least as afar back as Trent.  The end result was not a deliberate evolution but a radical disconnect that was not even envisioned in the conciliar documents of Vatican II. That rupture has contributed not only to the rise of voices who wish to retain the Tridentine Mass but to those who want to be free of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal to do what they please.  While Lutherans always had some variation, the demise of the Tridentine Mass made sure that Roman had one liturgical identity which, in the aftermath of Vatican II, became many identities.  Look at how the Roman Mass is being celebrated and you see a remarkable diversity not simply of style but also texts and music in a church that once celebrated with a clear uniformity the mysteries of God.  Apparently the battle over who controls what happens on Sunday morning is focused now less on those who go beyond Vatican II than on those who retain what was before.

In other words, tradition has come to mean whatever the future says it means.  This is not only true for Rome but for Lutherans.  Our confessions are seen as less prescriptive than as merely descriptive of what was happening at the time and the great intention of Lutheranism was always a great diversity.  This is said because we have such diversity now and so those who enjoy it and wish to be free to depart from the liturgical forms and ceremonies of the past trumpet diversity as a confessional hallmark of adiaphora. The reality, of course, is that the claim of our first Confession is that we do not depart from but are rigorous in keeping what is catholic in form and in practice, that liturgical uniformity while not required is still advantageous and beneficial, and that the goal is to retain rather than replace or omit.  Now we are hearing from some that the current hymnal is not merely a minimum but also a maximum in terms of the form and its ceremonial and that even this is too much to expect from those who claim our confession.  Rome is letting the extreme voices behind the liturgical transformation that was imposed upon the parishes and priests in the aftermath of Vatican II now exclude what was considered by Rome to be sacred and faithful.  Lutheranism is letting the same kind of extreme voices insist that there can be no return to a more catholic identity in worship or in practice because of a strange and hidden new confessional principle that less is more.  In response I would say this to both.  The modern forms resulting from the liturgical changes of the late 1960s through the 1970s can be used and should be used in a manner consistent with our tradition and not to depart from it.  Tradition does have a meaning and a form and you do not need to be a rocket scientist to recognize that.  Along with everything else lost in the last 50-60 years, we seem to have also lost a great deal of common sense.