Kavin Rowe: Traditioned innovation (Part 1): A biblical way of thinking

I've been having a rather heated conversation lately with fellow Episcopalians who can't condescend to commune with infidels such as Methodists and Presbyterians. This is somehow connected by them with a tradition that they were taught in seminary and can't get past that leads them to conclude that such groups as the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Moravians both are and are not part of Christ's Church because of the fact that they can't trace an uninterrupted line of bishops going back to the original apostles. I am committed to respecting their tradition and their conscience, but I think we need to reflect theologically on what Duke dean Greg Jones has dubbed "traditioned innovation" and which my friend and professor, Kavin Rowe develops biblically in this article I've excerpted (read the whole article if you can by following the link at the bottom).

Considered theologically, the future and the past belong together, tradition and innovation hand in hand. Traditioned innovation is a way of thinking and living that points toward the future in light of the past, a habit of being that requires both a deep fidelity to the tradition that has borne us to the present and a radical openness to the innovations that will carry us forward. Traditioned innovation names an inner-biblical way of thinking theologically about the texture of human life in the context of God’s gracious and redemptive self-disclosure.

.... Focusing on redemption thus discloses a productive tension that marks all life until the end. To remain in what is already known of the tradition is to refuse the priority of new creation; and yet, that which is new includes the old. Radical innovation? Yes. Radical continuity with tradition? Yes.

.... Thinking about traditioned innovation in light of the hope of consummation shows that tradition and innovation are not finally two different ways of being in the world. They are instead a helpful way to speak about the fundamental manner in which the Triune God graciously relates to the world he made and to which, in the face of its profound brokenness, he remains everlastingly committed -- anew. We cannot think, therefore, that tradition and innovation are opposites. In the Bible, tradition and innovation are realities of our common human life, inseparable aspects of participating in the world God made and is redeeming. Tradition and innovation go together in the divine purpose that leads toward the final restoration of God’s good creation.
To the extent that we both remain faithful to tradition and innovate -- even radically -- we will follow the pattern of the creating and redeeming God of Scripture, and will, therefore, flourish. This is not to say that the flourishing of human life will be apparent immediately to us in the present. After all, flourishing in the biblical sense is frequently counterintuitive. Israel wandered for 40 years in the desert, Moses never made it to the promised land and Jesus was killed -- to take only a few striking examples. But it is to say that the underlying and ultimate purpose to which our lives will be oriented will be in harmony with the work of the God of the Bible.

via faithandleadership.com

Kavin is a Princeton trained PhD who taught me at Duke.