An aside on traditions

This post does not directly follow yesterday’s post on government. Rather, it is an aside on tradition that will help with our understanding of government. I am currently reading a fiction book for relaxation. It is set in old Russia at an indeterminate time. It is sometime after the arrival of Christianity, but far enough away from Kiev to still have a population that also follows the old gods. Talk of domovoi, rusalka, and Baba Yaga are present. But, in the midst of the plot, one of the older characters makes the following remarks about traditions, and honoring those who came before us.

“All young men are impatient to have a life, and that’s understandable,” Yasha replied. “But Ivan–he wanted everything, but never cared for all the work and effort it took to create what he wanted. When no one’s opinion counted to him but his own, he didn’t even have the respect to cherish and protect what his father felt was important, and what went into making up what he was.” Yasha groped for words, Ilya remained silent while the old hunter searched for the way to say what he wanted to.

“It’s this–I know all old men complain that young men pay no attention to tradition, but there’s usually a reason for tradition. Sometimes it’s a reason that doesn’t hold anymore, but there was always a reason for it. That’s why it’s important to listen to old men–they know they ‘why’s’ as well as the customs. And a man without customs and tradition is a man without roots; he’ll blow away in the first hard strom, and no one will ever miss him.”

“I think I see what you mean,” Ilya replied, creasing his brows. “If you don’t have a tradition behind something, there’s nothing to keep you from changing it every time you don’t happen to like what’s going on at the moment. And if you keep changing your mind and the way you do things, you’ll never really figure out what is going to work.”

Yasha nodded eagerly. “The reason traditions start is because they work, and someone probably paid a dear price to find that out. When you throw all that away, you’re throwing away their lives and all they stood for and sacrificed along with it! When you throw it away, you’re saying that your ancestors had nothing to do with what you are now, that your prosperity and your life all came into being because you were somehow so meritorious just by being alive that the world made it all spring up out of nothing just for you. And that was Ivan all over; throwing everything away so that he could make his own rules–and what has it gotten him? A houseful of contention, enemies in his own family, a wife who despises him, and the only son worth more than the earth to bury him in is the one that is the least regarded.” Yasha snorted. “So much for believing that every new idea has to be a good one just because it’s new!”

One of the hardest thing for Americans to understand during the various judicial hearings for Supreme Court justices is their adherence to precedent. We want judges to be chosen for the Supreme Court that will change the interpretation of the laws immediately to be what we wish them to be. But, there is a terrible danger in that. One educator comments:

The doctrine of judicial precedent is at the heart of the common law system of rights and duties. The courts are bound (within prescribed limits) by prior decisions of superior courts. Adherence to precedent helps achieve two objects of the legal order. Firstly it contributes to the maintenance of a regime of stable laws. This stability gives predicability to the law and affords a degree of security for individual rights. Secondly it ensures that the law develops only in accordance with the changing perceptions of the community and therefore more accurately reflects the morals and expectations of the community.

A system based on precedent will be rational (without making reason its god), will be adaptable to varied and changing circumstances, will take into account all the varieties of human experience, will be highly practical and will be composed by the finest minds of many generations, tuned to a fine balance and learned in the art of detecting legal issues and resolving legal problems. The gradual development of the system will avoid the pitfalls of hasty and counterproductive reformism.

Neither Ivan, the character in the fictional novel I quoted, nor many people today realize the importance and what common law calls judicial precedent and the Church calls tradition. In both cases, most people are searching for a fixed set of unchangeable rules by which they may live their lives (except for the few libertarians and anarchists who wish to have no rules and nothing to bind them). But in neither the common law system we inherited from England nor in the Church is there such a fixed set of unchangeable rules. There is no doubt that in both jurisprudence and the Church there is an essentially unchangeable core (barring a Constitutional amendment or an Ecumenical Council), but the overwhelming majority of laws, canons, precedents, ruling, hierarchical interpretations, etc., are actually in the changeable realm. Yet, in both the common law system and the Church, the more important the precedent, the harder it is to change, in practice.

For some, the fact that it can be changed is a great source of angst. They want to return to a supposedly golden era in which everyone agreed on the one way in which to apply the law or the faith to particular subjects. But, one only needs to read the New Testament epistles to see that there was no such era of agreement. Rather, the decision of Acts 15, despite being in Scripture, only remained in force for a short time in the history of the Church. Every time you eat a rare steak, you violate the Acts 15 accords. The same process is found in jurisprudence. There is no doubt that some things that were done in colonial times are no longer done, and I would not wish to return to them. On the other side is the more common American view that if I see something wrong, it must change right now, otherwise we are being either unethical or immoral or both. But, God himself took 300 years to guide the Church to define the doctrine of the Trinity, and well over 2,000 years to finally declare that polygamy was wrong and that God’s intent was for a marriage to be composed of two, only two, people.

You see, in Scripture, in the Church, and in jurisprudence, there is a role for tradition, and it is a very important role. Tradition, rightly understood and managed, gives stability to both the Church and the State. As we discuss government and its processes, remember that one of the most important things government can provide is a stable space within which people can carry out their lives. There is a balance that must be kept between responsiveness to the will of the people and the maintenance of stability so that the people know that they can safely build lives without seeing everything that they have built uprooted by a passing reformist wind. It is often a difficult balance to keep.

[Note: to you theological geeks, I was not speaking of Holy Tradition, which is another whole subject. But, far too many modern Orthodox, particularly the converts, wish to place everything the Church does within the confines of Holy Tradition. That is plain wrong. There is a difference between tradition and Holy Tradition, but that is another subject for another day.]