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The Living Faith And The Growth Of Tradition

The Living Faith And The Growth Of Tradition

Last updated on: November 12, 2026 at 6:01 am by Henry Karlson

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The Living Faith And The Growth Of Tradition 2026-11-12T06:01:13-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Tolkien loved trees, which is why it should not be surprising he believed they represented a way for us to understand history and the development of the Christian tradition. Photo: Jim Linwood: Tolkien’s Favorite Tree, Oxford Botanical Gardens / Wikimedia Commons

The history of Christian tradition is like a chain. As one link in a chain is connected to and leads to what comes after it, with every link having its own unique position, with its own unique (but similar role) in the chain, so each age of history creates, as it were, traditions which come together to establish its own link on the great chain of Christian tradition. The chain continues to be built, age after age. We have to realize we are currently at the end of it, building a new link; when we die, a new link will be forged. We must accept our place in the chain. We must not try to come into it at a different point, adding ourselves to it, as it were, in its middle; if we tried to do so, we risk undermining the integrity of the chain itself (and possibly destroying many important links in the chain in the process).

It is important for us to engage tradition, not by trying to imitate the past, not be doing what was done in the past, but by taking on our present situation, engaging and using all that came before us, while doing so in a way which fits our present needs. We must follow the church as it is today, not expecting it to do the things the same as it did in the past. To ignore the changes which occur over time is to ignore tradition itself. It is to treat tradition, not as a chain, but as one link in the chain. This is the problem with so-called traditionalists; they look to the way things were done in the past, and they demand we do things today the exact same way. They destroy tradition by cutting off all the developments which happened after the time they want us to imitate.

Tradition is meant to promote a living, not dead faith; it is meant to help us engage the Spirit which gives the church life today instead of embracing the dead letter of the past which will not be able to provide us all that we need to live and properly deal with the present. Tradition is important, but the “traditionalism” which only wants to repeat the way things were ultimately is the opposite of tradition, just as Scripture is important, but embracing the dead letter instead of the spirit of the text undermines the proper meaning and intent behind Scripture.

All those who have been baptized into Christ, and who have been confirmed with the Spirit (chrismated), have their share in the Spirit, making them, in their own way, prophets; and so they should embrace that Spirit, following the prophets of old in the way they engaged tradition:

First and primarily, the prophets support tradition but are wary of traditionalism. They know what it is like to be suffocated under the weight of meaningless laws when the soul is crying out loud for a new vision of leadership. The prophets remind us that faith in the living God has often been smothered, even abandoned, by the institutional trappings of the past. [1]

We can and should be able to look to the past, understand how and why things developed as they did, so that we better understand the good and the bad, what was done right and want needs reform. We must allow the church to grow, to deal with the needs of the people today, not the needs of the past. We can recognize how things were done were good within the context in which they were doing while realizing we can and should be doing things differently today. We can see this in the way communion is received. Before he was pope, the then Cardinal Ratzinger reflected on the reception of the eucharist in the past, pointing out that it would be wrong for us to assume one way is the only right way to receive communion, but to realize each way of receiving the eucharist was right in its context. We must accept that the church can and will change its discipline in regards how communion is distributed. When we do so, we should not act like other ways are inferior or wrong. What we should do is recognize why reception of communion was done one way or another in the past, recognize the value of that form of reception then, while pointing out why our current cultural situation suggests other approaches:

Well, here again we know that until the ninth century Communion was received in the hand, standing. That does not of course mean that it should always be so. For what is fine, sublime, about the Church is that she is growing, maturing, understanding the mystery more profoundly. In that sense the development that began after the ninth century is quite justified, as an expression of reverence, and is well-founded. But, on the other hand, we have to say that the Church could not possibly have been celebrating the Eucharist unworthily for nine hundred years.[2]

At one time, communion was received in the hands, while the faithful were standing up. In the West, medieval sensibilities gave way to a new practice: the faithful would come to receive communion on their tongue while they were kneeling. Today, the West has a different approach, because our culture is much different from medieval society. We rarely bow or kneel to others, to show them honor; instead, we emphasize the inherent dignity found in each other standing up, sometimes by standing at attention. Thus, it makes sense that it is becoming normal for the faithful to receive communion while standing, especially if we look to the history of communion and realize standing, not kneeling, is the norm, a norm which goes back to Nicea and is still emphasized in the Christian East.

Embracing tradition, just like engaging Scripture, requires us to do more than read what was said and done in the past. It certainly requires us to do more than collect a series of proof-texts and use them to tell others what we think they must do. Rather, we must get to understand the spirit of tradition, the spirit and meaning behind those texts, so that we can better take what we have learned and use that same spirit to deal with present needs. This is how we connect with tradition. Like proving the way we understand what some wisdom teaching means, we prove our connection to tradition, not by simple repetition, but by adapting what we have learned. This is extremely difficult to do if all we do is take elements of tradition in isolation (which is what proof-texting does). We must respect those who came before us and what they taught. However, we must realize, they developed ecclesiastical disciplines and doctrinal explanations which dealt with the needs (and understanding) of their times. This shows us that if we want to be like them, if we want to follow their example, we will continue to develop disciplines which fit the times we live in, and find ways to explain the truths of the faith which connect with and deal with what we have learned since those who came before us. This is not always easy, and sometimes, it might seem to be the cause of confusion as the church tries to discern what is needed, but if we look into the past, we will find similar confusion, similar debates, occurred; there has never been a time without such conflict, and so it should not stop us from doing what is needed today.

Consequently the individual Christian himself must bear the courage and patience of the Church. He must rejoice when he sees that the Church is re-thinking the old, abiding Gospel and is not simply repeating monotonously the old, though true and valid, formulas of its understanding of that Gospel. Even if he must abandon what has become dear and familiar to him, he must rejoice if the Church within the framework of divine law changes its human law and adapts itself to the new situation.[3]

J.R.R. Tolkien understood this; he suggested Christian tradition should be seen to be like a tree; it started out as a small seed, but now it is a full-grown tree; it would be wrong for us to expect that tree to become as it were in the past, just as it would be wrong to try to find that “seed” today:

Still more because ‘my church’ was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history – the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set. There is no resemblance between the ‘mustard-seed’ and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is pan of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred. The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree.[4]

The faith remains the same, even when it is lived out through a diversity of disciplines, even if the ways it is presented changes over time, even if our understanding of it develops and grows richer over time. Just as a tree is the same tree, whether it comes to us in the form of the seed, a sapling just beginning to grow, or a large, ancient tree which has survived floods, fires, and droughts, so tradition presents one and the same dogma, even if the form in which that dogma is presented and lived out changes. The faith remains the same over all Christian history. The church remains the same church, even if there are radical changes in its liturgical traditions, or if it recognizes mistakes it has done in the past, apologized for them, and forbids us to do such mistakes ever again. The church is guided by the Spirit, and it is the church, not just individuals studying or researching the past, who has what is needed to properly understand its past and how what came before, what was said before, applies today. The church is meant to be living, not dead; what has life, changes and develops over time; when it doesn’t, it dies. But, again as Karl Rahner points out, all these changes do not change the core, and so the church in the midst all its changes remains the same:

The Church is a living reality which has had a history of its own and still has one. There really is a change in the Church, therefore, change which is different in nature and magnitude according to whether it concerns style of life, law, dogma or non-defined but authentic doctrine. Whatever the change, however, one thing endures: the nature of the Church as the presence in social form of God’s grace in Christo, in doctrine, worship and life. The history of what is enduring in the Church is the history of the reality which alone among social realities has God’s promise that it will not lose its identity or die if it descends into the stream of history. The Church is always in the flux of history, not on the motionless bank, but in this movement God’s eternity is present with it, his life, his truth and his fidelity. Consequently the Church has less reason than any other historical reality to fear its historical character.[5]

[1] Joan Chittister, The Time Is Now (New York: Convergent Books, 2019), 19.

[2] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, The Heart Of Life. Trans. Henry Taylor. Ed. Stephan Otto Horn and Vinzen Pfnür (San Franciso: Ignatius Press, 2003), 70.

[3] Karl Rahner, “The Changing Church” in The Christian Of The Future. Trans. W. J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 36-7.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Revised and Expanded Edition. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (Broadway, NY: William Morrow, 2023), 553 [Letter 306 to Michael Tolkien].

[5] Karl Rahner, “The Changing Church,” 35.

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