Maude's Tavern

March 25, 2009

Fads and Trends, Progress and Tradition

Filed under: Booklist, Church — Thomas @ 10:08 am

In the midst of current affairs, it is difficult to distinguish trends from fads and to tell what seeming progress will become tradition in the future.

Christians have, however, the One Who Is from everlasting to everlasting, who is our Rock and bulwark and who has given us precious resources throughout the ages. Just in the area of books, I want to list a few:

Bible

First, of course, there are the Scriptures, that library of God’s interaction with us in 73 books (tho some Christians use an abridged version of only 66 books).

Divine Office

The Liturgy of the Hours is next on my list. Based upon the Psalms and developed over centuries, in its current English form its full version is published in four volumes (8,140 pages). In addition to organized scripture readings, it has extensive selections of hymns (mostly english), early church writings and even selections of religious poetry. Along with this, the Gregorian Missal and Liber Hymnarius from the Solesmes Abbey and The Parish Book of Chant from the Church Music Association of America provide musical resources for daily worship. The Mundelein Psalter as well as the Roman Catholic Daily Missal (Angelus Press) for the extraordinary form also fits here.

Catechism

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (second edition, with indexes, 902 pages) and the related Compendium to the Catholic Catechism (204 pages) are a wonderful resource. Flowing out of Vatican II and based on Scripture and the Ecumenical Councils of the Church, they provide a magisterial introduction to the doctrinal teaching of the Church, extended in space and time. Speaking of the Councils, the two volume Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils edited by Norman Tanner (volume I: Nicea to Lateran V; volume II: Trent to Vatican II) with orginal Greek/Latin and English translations are a useful supplement.

Classics

While Scripture, liturgy and catechism are the essential foundation, I also include classics of literature as part of this tradition (of western Christendom, at least). For me, this would certainly include Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Dante and Shakespeare along with, perhaps, modern writers such as Dostoevsky and O’Connor and secular writers such as Tocqueville and Hayek. Personally, I include commentaries on books from the Hebrew scriptures in this category also.

1 Comment »

  1. Beyond that, there is much to read of course, there are no end of books and interesting rabbit trails. However, just as a creed must be concise to serve its purpose, a booklist must end somewhere in order to assert that everything in the list is more important than what’s outside the list. Life is much more than books; however, they do provide indication of breadth and depth of foundation on which to build. So, if someone wants to propose some alternate foundation, my first question/request is that they propose an alternative dozen to my little booklist in order to have a clear basis for discussion.

    Getting back to the general topic of distinguishing Godly development from mere worldly change, the most extensive consideration of this issue is in John Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. That extensive and difficult work is, of course, from a Catholic perspective but is, I think, useful generally.

    Regarding Newman’s book, a publisher’s note on Amazon remarks:

    An Essay on the Devleopment of Christian Doctrine, reprinted from the 1888 imprint, “is rightly regarded as one of the most seminal theological works ever to be written,” states Ian Ker in his foreword. “It remains,” Ker continues, “the classic text for the theology of the development of doctrine, a branch of theology which has become especially important in the ecumenical era.”

    John Henry Cardinal Newman begins the Essay by defining how true developments in doctrine occur. He then delivers a sweeping consideration of the growth and development of doctrine in the Catholic Church, from the time of the Apostles to Newman’s own era. He demonstrates that the basic “rule” under which Christianity proceeded through the centuries is to be found in the principle of development, and emphasizes that thoughout the entire life of the Church this law of development has been in effect and safeguards the faith from any real corruption.

    Ker concludes that, “we may say that the Essay is not only the starting point for the study of doctrinal development, but so far as Catholic theology is concerned, it is still the last word on the subject, to the extent that no other theologian has yet attempted anything on the same scale or of similar scope. . . . But even if the Essay was not one of the great theological classics, it would still be of enduring interest for two reasons. First it is one of the key intellectual documents of the nineteenth century, comparable to Darwin’s Origin of Species, which it predates by over a decade. Second, if this were the only book of Newman to survive, its rhetorical art and style would surely place him among the masters of English prose.”

    In the fifth section of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s introduction to An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine:

    And Protestantism has ever felt it so. I do not mean that every writer on the Protestant side has felt it; for it was the fashion at first, at least as a rhetorical argument against Rome, to appeal to past ages, or to some of them; but Protestantism, as a whole, feels it, and has felt it. This is shown in the determination already referred to of dispensing with historical Christianity altogether, and of forming a Christianity from the Bible alone: men never would have put it aside, unless they had despaired of it. It is shown by the long neglect of ecclesiastical history in England, which prevails even in the English Church. Our popular religion scarcely recognizes the fact of the twelve long ages which lie between the Councils of Nicæa and Trent, except as affording one or two passages to illustrate its wild interpretations of certain prophesies of St. Paul and St. John. It is melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever Gibbon. To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

    Comment by Thomas — March 23, 2009 @ 5:08 pm | Reply


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