A Few Things

Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day. I was looking around and decided to take a few verses of this little Whitman poem:

HERE, take this gift! I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or General, One who should serve the good old cause, the great Idea, the progress and freedom of the race; Some brave confronter of despots—some daring rebel; —But I see that what I was reserving, belongs to you just as much as to any.

Next, saw Philomena last night (extras include DVD commentary and a bit of footage of the real lady), which is based on a true story about an Irish woman with help of a former journalist (a mismatched pair though Judi Dench is a bit of an ironic choice given some of her royal roles) trying to find the son she gave up for adoption via the Catholic Church in 1950s Ireland.  How things turned out, especially in regard to the boy's ultimate life, has a stranger than fiction quality in various ways. The film is a charming one, often perhaps we can say softly told with some striking moments. The two leads are very good as are various others.

Finally, referenced the book on Didache and the subtitle suggests its theme -- "A Window On the Earliest Christians."  What sort of "window" though?  The first page, even before the title page, provides a good summary  of the author and approach of the book overall. It holds that understanding of Christianity and individual belief can be "located within the dynamic life of the communities that produced them"  So, "tradition" is not "a weight from the past that pulls a community backward" but "the life of the community, constantly seeking to reinterpret its inheritance in the light of current experience and hopes."  "How" this occurred and in a fashion continues to occur is the "historical theologian's (the author is a British professor of Historical Theology) task."  So it goes.

I often see a connection between constitutional and religious interpretation, the "originalist" in both cases insisting that they are the true defenders of the truth and past when they are the ones that seem mistaken.* The author here sees that tradition develops, that times change, even if certain overall ideas continue through the ages. This is seen even when certain rituals continue, but different meanings are given to them. The rituals have a feel of familiarity to them, such as the ritual of baptism having roots in Jewish traditions, which doesn't mean they mean the same thing these days. We learn things over time and fit and adapt as we do. The biblical comments about slavery, for instance, are from a past age. It is a reminder that even those sources that we might honor in various ways are not perfect, even if they might be deemed inspired.

One other thing to note is that the author instructs us to have some humility when examining such works and tradition as a whole. Some things will be confusing and we simply - though we can theorize - do not fully know what it all means or what happened. For instance:

And every prophet, proved true, working unto the mystery of the Church in the world, yet not teaching others to do what he himself does, shall not be judged among you, for with God he has his judgment; for so did also the ancient prophets.

This "mystery" verse confuses various commentators.The author provides a theory or two, but ultimately notes that we really do not know for sure what was meant here. And, the ultimate point of the exercise here was as a training manual for new members. The needs of the document partially addressed the needs of the era.  So, it was adapted over the years as was the Eucharist meal, the leadership of the church and so forth. So here, so in other places. Again, humility of complications is warranted.

---

* The developing tradition principle is the rule of the game now as it always was in some sense, some appeals insisting otherwise notwithstanding.  As Justice Brennan noted once:

The document that the plurality construes today is unfamiliar to me. It is not the living charter that I have taken to be our Constitution; it is instead a stagnant, archaic, hidebound document steeped in the prejudices and superstitions of a time long past. This Constitution does not recognize that times change, does not see that sometimes a practice or rule outlives its foundations. I cannot accept an interpretive method that does such violence to the charter that I am bound by oath to uphold.

And, ultimately, the sentiment in its fullest sense only got two votes, Kennedy/O'Connor concurring to make that clear. Plus, ultimately, Rehnquist accepted that things changed too, ultimately a pragmatic sort on that front.  That left Scalia, who at the end of the day, accepts it too.