Tradition as Temporal Depth and Conscious Present

In this essay, I want to propose an understanding of tradition that will help to illuminate some problematic statements in Pope Benedict’s The Spirit of Liturgy. Tradition is a fundamental piece in the self-understanding of Catholicism and, therefore, a key to comprehend liturgy. Pope Benedict seems to be an avant-garde defendant of the centrality of retrieving tradition; nevertheless, I claim that his interpretation of it tends to be too narrow and, consequently, problematic when facing issues such as historicity, inculturation, interreligious dialogue, among others. In order to offer some sort of solution to this situation, I will structure the essay as follows. In the first section, I will present a dialectical-hermeneutical understanding of tradition using Sandra Schneiders’ The Revelatory Text and David Tracy’s The Analogical Imagination. These theologians directly address the question of tradition in a mode that is different than that implicitly/explicitly defended by the Pope. In doing so, they offer a more open-ended interpretation of the concept which enables us to think in a better way about the problems stated above. In the second part of the essay, I will present the main ideas of Benedict’s position in order to show how Schneiders and Tracy’s perspective seems to be more helpful to our purposes. I will suggest, also, that Benedict’s approach is in risk of falling into the realm of ideological statements. In this regard, some considerations from critical theory will be very helpful. Finally, I will offer a brief balance of both positions—that of Benedict and Schneiders and Tracy.

Folklore, 2016

If we define tradition too hastily we leave to one side the question of what the relevance of tradition is for us. Here the concept of tradition is opened up by considering the different views of it taken by Hannah Arendt, Michael Oakeshott and Alasdair MacIntyre. We see that each has put tradition into a fully developed picture of what our predicament is in modernity; and that each has differed in their assessment of what our relation to tradition is or should be. Arendt sees tradition as something which no longer conditions action, Oakeshott sees tradition as something which conditions all action, and MacIntyre sees tradition as something which should condition right action. In each case, the view of tradition is clearly one element in an attempt to see how the most important constituent elements of human existencevariously called the human condition, human conduct, or human virtue-should be understood in a modernity which is ours because it has put the traditional concept of tradition into question.

Human Studies, 2013

Noting the prevalence of a misguided suspicion towards tradition, as well as an overt misunderstanding of the very notion of tradition in certain academic circles, this essay seeks to outline some of the basic tenets of an alternative understanding of tradition, based on a ‘sociological’ reading of several major philosophical works. It does so by revisiting and synthesizing some well-known, highly influential conceptual arguments that, taken together, offer a compelling, comprehensive interpretation and understanding of tradition, which manages to avoid and overcome the false dichotomies that have dominated social-scientific thought. The article offers three corresponding analogies that capture the complex nature of tradition: tradition as language, tradition as narrative, and tradition as horizon. It then goes on to discuss the main implications these analogies carry to our understanding of tradition.

Biblische Notizen : aktuelle Beiträge zur Exegese der Bibel und ihrer Welt., 2021

The need for this thematic issue arose from the realization that the term "tradition" has become one of the key terms employed in biblical studies in recent years, yet what is meant by it is rarely explicitly discussed. There appears to be a true need in the field for a concept that allows scholarship to explore, for instance, the transmission and reception of literary works, themes, concepts, and literary figures in a way that would reflect their complex historical, cultural and social settings in an appropriate manner. There does not appear to be an overarching reason for this seemingly rising awareness of a need for a concept like tradition in the field of biblical studies. It is rather a result of many different fundamental advances made in recent decades of biblical scholarship. One of these advances is surely the plurality of scriptural and other literary works that has confronted scholars, especially after the full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It has become abundantly clear that only a part of the literary evidence has survived and that transmission processes are much more complex than previously realized. Mapping and evaluating direct literary dependencies between all these works is not possible nor does this approach exhaustively reflect the diverse ways different authors and editors used and adapted their literary heritage to answer the fresh needs of various user communities. But this is not the only avenue of investigation that has led to the need for a more flexible concept, able to cover and reflect such complex phenomena. There has been an increasing need to find ways to place material evidence-like individual manuscripts or iconographic evidence-and the role of oral transmission and performances in their appropriate roles in this broader constellation of transmission, reception, use and practices reflected by the source material. This widening of perspectives likewise relates to the growing number of fruitful studies that have been conducted on scriptural and other early Jewish writings in relation to the diverse communities reflected in them as well as their constant interaction with the literary, social, and cultural customs and developments in wider cultural spheres, be they Near Eastern, Hellenistic, or Roman. Together with the realization that there was no "bible" in Second Temple Judaism, such studies have demonstrated the need to consider an ever-widening corpus of source material and to appropriately categorize their shared elements as well as their important differences. These preceding examples do not in any way represent all the recent developments in the scholarly discussion that have given rise to a more

Árpád Töhötöm Szabó–Mária Szikszai (ed): Cultural Heritage and Cultural Politics in Minority Conditions. Kriza János Ethographic Society – Intervention Press, Cluj-Napoca–Aarhus, 2018

How are notions of "tradition" and "modernity" deployed to express changes in people's everyday lives? I explore these issues through a consideration of discourses and practices concerning food, dress and home decoration on the island of Kalymnos, Greece. I suggest that these be approached using the concept of "existential memory work," in order to show that these are not simply markers of status and class distinction but express deeply moral concerns about individual and collective identities. A key concern for Kalymnians is the question of how to live properly in the present, thereby tying contemporary life to a remembered past and an imagined future.

2021

To recontextualise from the perspective of a religious tradition depends on a capacity to make that tradition meaningful, and this first involves a commitment to its meaningfulness. The best teachers of English are those who have seen beauty and truth shine from within a poem or a piece of prose, for no matter how any of the students in the class judge the same work, such educators teach with a passion that can only come from a genuine love of their subject. They do not need the affirmation of others before revealing this love. Instead, they bear witness to it constantly because they cannot do otherwise. The work has called to them unmistakably, and while students at first chuckle to think that their teacher can speak so passionately, they eventually come to know that there is something deeply consonant between the love and the work. In this paper, we will examine: the notion that God reveals Godself by means of tradition, what it might mean that tradition is interrupted and develops in different contexts, and what it might mean that persons who have glimpsed something of God in tradition might come to be responsible for its development through recontextualisation.