“The word ‘tradition,’ like koinonia, refers both to an action and a possession. In the first sense it is the activity by which one shares in the community, receiving and contributing. In the second sense it is the reserve of practices and communicative patterns received from the past — but only those which continue to command recognition, that is, which have been effectively communicated down to the present time. The essential thing about tradition is that it creates social continuity. It binds the communal action of the present moment to the communal actions of past moments. What we often call ‘traditionalism,’ the revival of lapsed tradition, is, properly speaking, a kind of innovation, making a new beginning out of an old model. This may or may not be sensible in any given instance, but it is not a tradition. The claim of tradition is not the claim of the past over the present, but the claim of the present to that continuity with the past which enables common action to be conceived and executed.
“The paradigm command of tradition is, ‘Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.’ It appears to our eyes to be concerned with the duties of children, but this is a mistake. The duties of children are purely responsive to the duty of parents to be to their children what their parents were to them. This is a command addressed to adults, whose existence in the world is not self-posited but the fruit of an act of cultural transmission, which they have a duty to sustain. The act of transmission puts us all in the place of receiver and communicator at once. The household is envisaged as the primary unit of cultural transmission, the ‘father and the mother’ as representing every existing social practice which it is important to carry on. Only so can community sustain itself within its environment, ‘the land which the Lord your God gives you.’ No social survival in any land can be imagined without a stable cultural environment across generations. By tradition society identifies itself from one historical moment to the next, and so continues to act as itself. . . .
“The peculiar value of art to tradition lies in its capacity to elicit recognitions, reminding us of the sources of our cultural objects within the structures of natural necessity. This power of reminiscence we call ‘beauty,’ and it arises from the coincidence of natural order with artificial form. Both poles, the natural and the conventional, are essential to an art form, that the evocation of the one within the other may be experienced. Formal qualities are as important as substantive references in evoking the presence of nature in culture. A poem may allude to springtime, or a tune may imitate birdsong. But an abstract fugue evokes nature, too, by exploring the power of repetition in difference, and a sonnet by its balance of thesis development, and resolution.”
— from Oliver O’Donovan, Common Objects of Love: Moral Reflection and the Shaping of Community (Eerdmans, 2002)
Related reading and listening
- The fatal polytheism of late liberalism — Oliver O’Donovan on the failure that leads to social collapse, marked by conflict, suspicion, and violence
- Courtesy as a theological issue — FROM VOL. 37 Donald McCullough discusses his insights into the increasingly coarse nature of society and the theological foundations for courtesy. (12 minutes)
- Recovering the primacy of contemplation — Augusto Del Noce finds in St. Augustine resources to diagnose the fatal flaw in progressivism
- Insisting that political leaders are incapable of obeying Christ — Oliver O’Donovan on the unintended consequences of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
- The historian’s communal role as storyteller — FROM VOL. 127 Historian Christopher Shannon discusses how American academic historical writing presents a grand narrative of progressivism, which it defends by subscribing to an orthodoxy of objective Reason. (21 minutes)
- The gift of objective reality — Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan makes an argument for the consistency of the idea of law when it is conceived in a theological context. (40 minutes)
- Friendship and life together — In a lecture at Providence College, Ken Myers explores how the concept of friendship, which used to be central to political philosophy, was banished from considerations of public life as the state was exalted over society. (53 minutes)
- Freedom as conformity to reality — W. Bradford Littlejohn summarizes the definitions of liberty offered by Richard Bauckham and Oliver O’Donovan
- The sovereignty of love — In this 2022 lecture, Oliver O’Donovan explains the historical background — and present consequences — of the assertion by Jesus of two great commands. (67 minutes)
- Blest be the ties of language that bind us — Marion Montgomery on the precious gift of words
- The academy’s deconstruction of both person and community — Marion Montgomery on cultivating “a deportment of intellect governed by a continuing concern for the truth of things”
- O’Donovan, Oliver — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Oliver O’Donovan held teaching posts at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and Wycliffe College Toronto before becoming Regius Professor of Moral & Pastoral Theology and Canon of Christ Church at the University of Oxford in 1982.
- Community, the giver of freedom — Thomas H. Naylor and William H. Willimon on why suspicion about big government shouldn’t take the form of autonomous individualism
- Why kings are compelling — Historian Francis Oakley describes how the modern idea of “secular” politics is a striking departure in human history. (32 minutes)
- Conscience seared with a red-hot iron — Oliver O’Donovan on the convicting role of a good conscience
- Culture in light of Easter — Oliver O’Donovan rejects a gnostic reading of redemption
- Welcoming one another — Christine Pohl describes the practice of hospitality in Church history and the particular challenges to hospitality we face in our era. (30 minutes)
- Religion within the bounds of citizenship — In a 2006 lecture, Oliver O’Donovan argues that the conventional way of describing Western civil society creates obstacles to the participation of believers (Muslim, Christian, and other). (68 minutes)
- The purpose of government and God’s eternal purpose — Philip Turner on understanding the state in light of the eschatological reality of the Church
- Convivial is beautiful — Ivan Illich on “the opposite of industrial productivity”
- Politics in light of the Ascension — Oliver O’Donovan on the necessity of situating all political authority within redemptive history
- A foretaste of the kingdom of God — Oliver O’Donovan on the sovereignty of love
- Loving relationships in community — In conversation with moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan, and with readings from his book, Entering into Rest, Ken Myers explores a central theme in O’Donovan’s work: that we are created to enjoy loving relationships in community. (27 minutes)
- Freed from the burden of choice — Writing in the mid-1990s, Alan Ehrenhalt reflects on the relationship between authority and community
- Why communities need authority — Alan Ehrenhalt argues that real community can only be sustained when three things are assumed: the goodness of limits, the necessity of authority, and the reality of personal sin. (13 minutes)
- The first virtue of citizenship: Taking the law seriously — Oliver O’Donovan reflects on how the reality of the Kingship of Christ must be affirmed as a present reality
- Reasoning about values — Revisiting a 1974 text that examined the mutual animosities of the 1960s
- “Whose kingdom shall have no end” — Oliver O’Donovan and his mentor, George B. Caird, offer lessons from the book of Revelation for thinking about politics
- The social context of freedom — Brad Littlejohn talks about the necessity of a more expansive understanding of freedom, one which recognizes that we are really only free within the social experience of shared meaning and mutual recognition. (17 minutes)
- The Bruderhof’s Christ-centered community — Clare Stober discusses the book she edited of stories of the Bruderhof, a network of 26 community settlements around the world. (30 minutes)
- Impact of “infotainment” on community — From 1999 Journal interviews, Neal Gabler and C. John Summerville discuss how the mentalities conveyed by our experience with communications media work against the nurturing of community. Ken Myers also reads related excerpts from George Steiner and Oliver O’Donovan. (33 minutes)
- The Kingdom of God and the kings of the earth — In a 90-minute conversation with Matthew Lee Anderson and Ken Myers, Oliver O’Donovan explains some of the central themes of his work in political theology. (91 minutes)
- Learning about the meaning of government — In a telephone conversation during COVID-19 lockdowns, Oliver O’Donovan talks about lessons we can learn about the proper role of government from our experience of pandemics and quarantine. (51 minutes)
- Ethics as Theology, Volume 2 — Drawing from St. Augustine and figures such as Aelred of Rievaulx, Oliver O’Donovan describes how the Church, communication, community, and friendship all significantly contribute to how we understand the role of love in both ethical and political reflection. (52 minutes)
- Ethics as Theology, Volume 1 — Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan discusses the first two volumes of his three-volume set, Ethics as Theology. Among other topics, he reflects on the significance of the thinking moral subject as well as what form of moral inadequacy the “life of the flesh” suggests. (58 minutes)
- Lessons from quarantine: Making do with tinned fruit — In this audio reprint of “Wendell Berry and Zoom,” Front Porch Republic editor Jeffrey Bilbro reflects on two metaphors that can help put our new-found “dependency” on web-based video conferencing into perspective: tinned fruit and a prosthetic limb. (17 minutes)
- The Liberal Arts tradition, II — context and extension — Kevin Clark explains how the book he co-authored defines a framework in which the Trivium and the Quadrivium are the core of a curriculum that includes piety, gymnastics, music, philosophy, and theology. (20 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 146 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Mark Mitchell, Hans Boersma, Henry T. Edmondson, III, Brian Clayton, Douglas Kries, Conor Sweeney, and Carole Vanderhoof
- The Liberal Arts tradition, I — science and harmony — Ravi Scott Jain discusses the place of the Quadrivium — the four mathematical arts — within the larger framework of the classical approach to education. (21 minutes)
- The inevitability of escalating public animosity — With excerpts from books and lectures by Alasdair MacIntyre, Oliver O’Donovan, and Wendell Berry, Ken Myers argues that modern political theory has guaranteed increasing levels of public conflict. (19 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 138 — FEATURED GUESTS:
John Milbank, Adrian Pabst, Glenn W. Olsen, Rupert Shortt, Oliver O’Donovan, David Bentley Hart
- Oliver O’Donovan on ethics as theology — Oliver O’Donovan explains how moral deliberation always occurs in anticipation of the eschatological fulfillment of redemption. (9 minutes)
- The leaning tower of gabble — Oliver O’Donovan on how authority and language connect us with reality and thus sustain community
- Discerning the spirit of the age — Oliver O’Donovan on the difficult but essential task of reading our times
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 133 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Darío Fernández-Morera, Francis Oakley, Oliver O’Donovan, Thomas Storck, John Safranek, Brian Brock, and George Marsden
- Culture as legacy — Hannah Arendt on the place of authority and tradition in education
- The body’s goodness (and beyond) — Oliver O’Donovan on what the erotic body is for
- Command and liberation — Oliver O’Donovan on the freedom of living under authority
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 127 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Christopher Shannon, Kevin Vanhoozer, Oliver O’Donovan, Rebecca DeYoung, Thomas Forrest Kelly, and Calvin Stapert
- The rulers of the world bowed before Christ’s throne — Oliver O’Donovan on Christendom and the Church’s mission
