In Tradition Awakening, volume 2 of A Post-Christendom Faith, Philip Rolnick presents an innovative account of tradition as a countercultural remedy to contemporary deracination. Where the historical roots of current problems were addressed in volume 1, The Long Battle for the Human Soul, this volume is an in-depth development of the solution--the still-untapped possibilities of tradition, defined as a community sustained over generations of time. Because the church is the intergenerational messenger of the gospel, it must take the form of tradition.
But in contrast to a stodgy "traditionalism," Rolnick elaborates a traditioning process, a dynamic interaction of "dwelling in and breaking out," borrowing Michael Polanyi’s phrase. It is impossible even to begin advanced human life without first dwelling in what is already known; but once the tradition is handed over to newcomers, they will emphasize and deemphasize and sometimes creatively break out into new skills and understandings. Demonstrating the dual stability and creativity of the traditioning process, Rolnick presents the church as both an enclave and an outpost: an enclave fellowship where the gospel is learned and Christ is experienced; and an outpost for evangelism. Through these functions the church attempts to deepen faith in those who have it and to awaken faith in those who do not.
Rolnick then explores the interrelationship between the gospel in the greater church and the "domestic church," the human family--itself a tradition. As part of a protracted critique of autonomy, the growing phenomenon of "spiritual but not religious" is examined as a foil to tradition. In education and across the public square our post-Christendom civilization has become vulnerable to virulent pathologies. But alerted to the high stakes of contemporary struggles, the church and the family can bolster their own strength, their members' spiritual health, and indirectly exert a medicinal influence on the ailments of late modernity.
Tradition Awakening is not just about God; it is also a Christian humanism--a vision of humanity elevated by divine input.
Philip A. Rolnick is Professor of Theology and Chair of the Science and Theology Network at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He is also the author of Origins: God, Evolution, and the Question of the Cosmos; Person, Grace, and God; Analogical Possibilities: How Words Refer to God; and A Post-Christendom Faith I: The Long Battle for the Human Soul.
