A Living Tradition: Faithfully Inhabiting and Engaging the World

What does it mean to live and work within a tradition? It’s a question I often ask myself in the work that I do as I teach theology at Dordt University. We are a school rooted in the neo-Calvinist tradition—a tradition that traces its roots back to the nineteenth century in the Netherlands when figures like Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck sought to retrieve the riches of the Reformed tradition for the sake of life in the modern world. As such, the neo-Calvinist movement was more than an ecclesiological and theological movement; it was also political and social.

However, claiming to be rooted in a particular tradition raises a myriad of questions, not least of which is the role of traditions themselves. How do they shape and form us? What does it mean to inhabit a tradition? Does it mean blind loyalty to the past that shuts down new or novel ideas and ways of being in the present? Does adherence to a tradition result in shutting down human creativity—the very kind of creativity this In All Things series has explored as an aspect of what it means to be created in the image of God? While it is important to acknowledge the possibility of tradition(s) stifling creativity, I would suggest that creativity arises from inhabiting and dwelling in a tradition well, namely, by rooting ourselves within it and allowing it to shape and form us so that we can learn how to play within it, responding creatively to contemporary challenges and opportunities.

To start, we must briefly look at how tradition(s) shape us. Theologically, tradition is usually defined as the ‘deposit of faith’ passed down from generation to generation through the Church’s teaching as it bears witness to what the Triune God has done in Christ in fidelity to Scripture. However, considered in its broadest sense, tradition is more than just a theological concept. Socially, culturally, politically, and theologically, tradition is that which connects the present to the past, informing and forming the ways in which we live in the world. Tradition includes both that which is passed down (its contents, the traditia) as well as the process or means by which it is passed down (its transmission, the traditio).[1] As creatures born into particular times, places, and cultures, we are inescapably traditioned creatures. We are historically, geographically, and culturally situated, and we learn to live in the world as our communities pass on developed ways of inhabiting and engaging the world.

Much like learning a language, we often pick up the traditions passed on to us naturally and often unconsciously, becoming ‘fluent’ in these tradition(s) and inhabiting them as they help us live in the world and make sense of it. Like learning a language, we learn to live and be in the world as our communities pass on their traditions to us. In turn, these traditioned ways of being in the world teach us to inhabit the world in specific ways, training our attention, informing our intuitions, and enabling our active participation in the world. We are traditioned creatures who are rooted in the historical, social-cultural, and theological contexts we are born into, and we are brought into ways of being in the world that form our understanding of what it means to be human and to live a good life.

As with any tradition, the neo-Calvinist tradition trains our attentions and forms our intuitions. For those of us who inhabit it, it forms these intuitions in particular ways. First, the neo-Calvinist tradition is radically theocentric, training us to be attentive to God. Second, it trains us to see all things in light of God, beholding the ‘fullness of created reality’ and, in so doing, be drawn into wonder, mystery, and delight.[2] Thus, it turns our attention to see creation in all its magnificent diversity and complexity.[3] But we are not just trained to behold creation but to engage in it. Emphasizing the creational mandate, the neo-Calvinist tradition tunes us to see creation as a gift to care for and develop, bringing our work back to God as an act of worship.[4] And yet, at the same time, the neo-Calvinist tradition emphasizes the scope of the triune God’s redemption in Christ. The work of Christ goes ‘as far as the curse is found.’ God is at work restoring and redeeming all things. Redemption, like creation, is a gift that comes from the sovereign God alone. Furthermore, while the fullness of God’s redemption of creation is assured, we await the final and full restoration of his kingdom in the eschaton. Thus, we are trained to be attentive to God’s work in the world, but we are also formed to be a people of hope who are learning what it looks like to wait in expectation of the day when the old order of things will truly pass away (Rev. 21-22). Finally, it fixes our eyes on the triune God and His work in the world, it trains us to see this work through the lens of Scripture.

As our attention is trained within this tradition, we are invited to inhabit and engage a world filled with meaning—a world alive with God’s grace, even as we await the final restoration of all things. Formed by deep intuitions about the world, we are invited to engage in it in capacious, generative, and non-reductive ways. Redeemed and restored in Christ, we are called to engage with the world with curiosity, developing and exploring all its beautiful diversity and ways of putting things together. It also invites us into serious engagement in the places where we find ourselves, listening to and appreciating but also being critical (not dismissive) of the ways in which sin still twists and distorts all things. It also invites us to learn to lament and grieve as we see the depths of the devastation and brokenness in our world.

Finally, with its broad and deep understanding of God and all things in relation to God, tradition calls us to take our whole lives, no matter how big or how small, and live them before God. In light of who God is, nothing in this world is truly ordinary, but, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins notes, the world is “charged with the grandeur of God.”[5] And, as we engage in God’s good world for the sake of His glory and the love of His creation, every day, ordinary acts become extraordinary moments to behold and declare the goodness of God.

It is when we are formed by the story of Scripture and attentive to the contours of the tradition—attending well to its contours and letting it continue to shape and form us—that we are welcomed into creative play. To inhabit a tradition well is to be invited to play with its ideas in order to respond to the demands and questions of our day. We are called to be faithful and creative as we seek to develop and pass on the tradition so that it remains a living tradition that can form and inform our engagement with the world. In The Wonderful Works of God, Bavinck is insistent that every generation must bring “forth old truth in a form that corresponds with demands of this era.”[6] For Bavinck, re-articulating the faith keeps the tradition alive, and it is essential because God is providentially at work in the world in every age. We are called to discern how the faith that we have received speaks to our time. To do this, we have to learn how to play with ideas, both from the tradition and from the contemporary context(s) we find ourselves in.

Thus, far from closing down creativity, inhabiting the neo-Calvinist tradition well not only gives us the space and resources to live creatively in God’s world, but calls us to do as much.

Footnotes:

[1] See John Webster, Culture of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 90.

[2] Richard Mouw, Called to the Life of the Mind: Some Advice for Evangelical Scholars (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 61.

[3] One of the hallmarks of the neo-Calvinist tradition, particularly in its philosophical outworking, is its non-reductionistic account of creation. See for example D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, Introduction to Philosophy, trans. John H. Kok (Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2005).

[4] The Reformed tradition uses the biblical concept of Covenant to articulate the relationship between God and humanity and develops a wholistic account of the image of God. For the sake of space, I did not develop these concepts in this paper, but they are significant in Reformed theology.

[5] Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur," in The Poetical Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Norman H. MacKenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 66.

[6] Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God, trans. Henry Zylstra (Glenside: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), xxxii.