Tradition, Technology & Triple-A Theologians

Tradition, Technology & Triple-A Theologians

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            This blog is meant to be a meandering grab-bag of thoughts sort of loosely brought together when everything is said and done.  I had to reject some thoughts because they didn’t fit into my “T” alliteration scheme.  Speaking of “T” I think before I go any further I’ll brew a cup of my favorite Twining’s.  I like to tell readers I drink ale, but really for every mug of ale I consume there must be about 40 or 50 gallons of tea; iced, hot, and even room temperature.  I’m a bit eccentric.  I’ve never tasted a cup of ice coffee I could stand, but at room temperature I could drink all day long.  Yes I am insane; it is a coping mechanism.  This world the theologians tell me is fallen, but fortunately its orbit hasn’t collided with any other large moons, or planets, nor has our warm friend Sol yet turned into a supernova flash burning everything around us.  So our fall has been if I understand the theologians something manageable for a caring Deity willing to drop down into our world and inhabit it in the form of the weakness of human flesh.  And you wonder why theology gets so messy and hard for us to agree on.

            My first thought is that I like tradition.  Maybe it’s the history student in me.  Maybe it’s because I really don’t trust my generation and have some questions about other generations around me.  Someone once said that tradition is the way we give the dead a voice in the present generation’s attempt to build the future.  They said something like that.  Christian tradition is sort of like the highway between Jesus and the Twenty-first century.  Highways are like needed traveling paths linking distant locations with one another.  I grew up within twenty miles of route 66 that linked the then #2 city Chicago with the now #2 city Los Angeles.  I have moved 600 miles from Illinois to Oklahoma just to get within about 2 miles of the old Route 66 highway.  Commerce, culture, and sometimes the sort of cultural connections that foster and help create civilizations are built along highways.  Tradition is a highway, and like it or not there was a highway called tradition that sprung up along the Gospel highway between first century believers in Christ and twenty-first century Christians in America.  A lot of thoughts and sometimes wasted gas, and also necessary pit stops link us on one end of the highway to the other.  That is something to think about.  There is a lot that has taken place on “Route tradition” between Jesus’ time and my own time.  I would love to make some more analogies with my route 66 metaphor, but I fear that people with a sort of skittishness about tradition would think that maybe the best thing is to add one more six to the route 66 metaphor in talking of “route tradition.”  I don’t like that idea.  Every generation a new round of battles spring up between the traditionalists trying to preserve the valuable lessons of the history of culture and the reformers or progressives trying to undo the shackles of the past.  It looks messy, creates traffic jams, ah so it must be road construction and maintenance crews building that extension to tomorrow’s generations on the tradition highway.  Well, sure enough there is bound to be some big battles up ahead and some solutions to be discussed for the centuries.

            My second “t” right after I get around to brewing my cup of tea that I told you about is technology.  Sorry no fancy tea maker – there is that one with the “K” in the beginning of the trade name.  Lots of people swear by them, but I would really rather prefer a real nice Samovar and someone to teach me how to use the thing.  . . .  I’m back.  The fire is under the kettle; maybe I’ll offer you a cup when I get it finished.  It will have to be virtual, tasteless, odorless, and colorless . . . oh no I just described carbon monoxide.  Alright, I was sort of moving from tradition to thinking of talking about technology.  You know we use technology to help us, does it scare you that the same technology we use to help us, ends up shaping us?  Sounds sort of like an idea for a horror movie.  I mean, right now I’m into comparing the Boomer and Millennial generations.  I think one of the big differences between our two generations is the sort of communication technologies that were used to help us communicate with others.  Those technologies sort of shaped us.  I think I’ve heard this idea before, but it has been so long ago I don’t know who to give the credit for this idea.  The idea is that my generation and even my parents’ generation's new technologies shaped our generations very differently than something like Twitter is shaping the millennial generation.  Telephones and televisions were the rage when I was an it’ll bitty boy bursting upon the scene.  You had one messenger on one end and one person on a phone or one family watching a television on the other end.  But a popular Twitter feed or a popular internet site with a lively comments section, all sorts of folk, and not all with total complete mental disorders, put their comments on the blog or article.  Us older folk we took things in as individuals or families.  The Millennial generation is twittering away with groups of people getting accustomed to throw their ideas into a big ole hopper of thoughts on the latest question of the day.  So you know what that means?  I tweeted away my thought one day on what that meant.  Someone then re-tweeted it.  That is when you post something on Twitter and someone chooses to pass it along to his group of friends.  The guy who did this with my tweet wasn’t even on my list of people to receive the tweet.  He was probably on one of the other person’s lists to which my tweets went out.  He saw it on a thread he was reading and posted it on to his readers.  You never know how something is going to be circulated or be used in all sorts of varied conversations in the Twitter world and it moves about in groups at electronic speed.  My tweet, of which I was so doggone proud, was “Boomers are individualists hanging out with people like themselves.  Millennials are social networkers trying to find themselves in the crowd.”  My generation, especially those in my conservative quadrants, are a bit worried about these Millennials.  I expect some good things from this younger generation.  They are learning in their twenties to try to consider issues around a sort of gathered consensus.  That happened in church history back at Nicaea and Chalcedon.  There would be a big blow-up in the church and the emperor would say “knock it off theologians.”  He’d invite all the church leaders from the Roman Empire and say, “Here are the rules battle it out until you can get a decision on what is right and true and until then you don’t get to leave.”  Maybe it wasn’t quite that way, but the councils that met then and struggled to reach consensus have influenced the church throughout the world ever since for fifteen hundred years or more.  Consensus decisions may be rare in world history, but they tend to be good decisions made on a lot of varied inputs with lots of contributions from people wanting to make sure the wrong thing did not result.  That is why I am so hopeful.  Now my tea is ready.  It is Prince of Wales, a really smooth delicious black tea.  Do you want a cup?  I drink mine black, I suppose you want sugar and how about cream?  I think I need a butler if I am going to start making a habit of offering tea to my readers.  Anyway this millennial generation is shaped by a technology that implicitly is more consensus building and communitarian in decision making.  Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Millennials, with progressives and conservatives, traditionalists and reformers just might say to their churches: “It is time you guys get together in a room and don’t come out until a consensus is reached.”  We’re talking eighth ecumenical council.  Maybe I’m too hopeful, and maybe some others say “That is downright frightening."  Well, someone somewhere has just said to one probably both of our views, “Whatever?”  In case you’re thinking that I’m hearing these voices in my head – that would be the song Gloria performed by Laura Branigan.  I’m not listening to it, but thinking about it and probably will when I’ve finished this writing.

            Some of you were reading this whole thing to want to know what I had to say about Triple-A theologians.  What is a triple A theologian?  It is not a minor league for theologians working on throwing strikes for their big chance at the majors.  It isn’t even a motor club for minor league theologians.  It is sort of like the three B’s of classical music: Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven.  In theology it is Athanasius, Augustine, and Anselm.  I thought of this neat science fiction thriller and what if scenario for the triple-A theologians.  I thought, wow if we could do this at least in our minds we could really explore the meaning of tradition.  We would send a shuttle, better yet a Millennial Falcon from Star Wars, my generation but a later generation’s name and have it do a Star Trek sort of slingshot effect off the Sun’s gravity force and end up in the past.  The Millennial Falcon, with Hans Solo running a taxi service for theologians of the very ancient past would pick up Athanasius, and then Augustine and finally Anselm.  After the Triple-A guys got used to Chewbacca, we would give them an additional ten years to acculturate to modern life, the Internet and Twitter accounts.  We would introduce them to leading intellectuals, scientists, theologians of varied backgrounds and then have them relate the lessons of tradition to today.  I would almost bet that these three guys would have a deep respect for tradition, and I would almost bet that each of these guys would push the envelope forward with the work of theology they believed needed set forth in this time and age.  I sort of wish I could say that Hans and Chewbacca actually did that.  They didn’t.  They did rescue the princess.  But Hans sent a note from the Triple-A guys saying, there were people we wished we could have had transported to us.  But we each are made to live in our own time, to draw upon the wisdom of the ages, and to build consensus with others in your own time and try to reach solutions based on the truth and based on everything you have understood from the past in the present that appears meant for the future.  Okay I made up the note by Hans Solo.  But do you see how a study of tradition may surprise us.  The guys we study in tradition weren’t drab dudes that never pushed the envelope as they sought sincerely the past for signs of what to do in the future.  If they had been, contrary to conventional wisdom, they wouldn’t have gotten their icons on the cover of “Theologians Rocking” weekly.

I hope this was fun to read.  - - - The writer fades from sight with a song playing in the background - - - Gloria . . . You’re always on the run now . . . all the voices in your head now calling Gloria, Gloria.”