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MacIntyre on Tradition j oh n m il ba nk I s the notion of tradition applicable to all cultural phenomena, both secular and religious? Or is it to be associated especially with religious phenomena ? We speak very easily of both cultural and religious traditions, and in general we tend to contrast a ‘‘traditioned’’ mode of life with a ‘‘modern’’ mode of life that is seen as having emanated from the West. ‘‘Tradition’’ as a category then appears to be at once global, ecumenical, and nostalgic. It is seen in contrast to the ‘‘modern,’’ which—though contemporary and now global—is also regarded as parochial because of its specifically European lineage. Yet precisely in the most seemingly innocent generic category, the danger of a concealed specificity can often lurk. One of the things which this colloquium needs to ask is whether this is true of the category ‘‘tradition.’’ It is, after all a Roman word: is it specifically marked in a significant way by this Latin legacy, or are equivalent terms in other languages—for example, Arabic—strictly speaking equivalents? To this question I do not know the answer, but it is certainly true that the word ‘‘tradition’’ in Romance and semi-Romance tongues (such as English) carries a specific semantic freight. And that freight is reflexively to do with the notion of ‘‘carrying’’ itself. Or more exactly with ‘‘handing over’’: the handing over of a gift, as the etymological components of ‘‘traditio’’ in Latin are ‘‘trans’’ and ‘‘dare.’’ The semantic echoes here are very complex and include the proximity of the idea of ‘‘handing over’’ to that of a journey, just as the English word ‘‘passage’’ has such a double sense. Thus the English word ‘‘trade’’ lies close to the word ‘‘tradition.’’ Although it now primarily indicates a process of exchange, it more originally meant a course, way, or path; the track of a beast; or the route of a wind. And this more self-contained and unilateral sense survives in the transference of ‘‘trade’’ as a practice to ‘‘trade’’ as a profession, as the chosen course of an individual life. Similar points can be made about the equivalent Greek term ‘‘paradosis,’’ which also implies, at root, the handing on of a gift. Cognates of this term are 157 158 John Milbank used in several places in the New Testament (e.g., Luke 1:2) to indicate the passing on of the word of God, or of Christ. In fact, the enhanced importance of the notion of ‘‘tradition’’ in later Western culture stems precisely from this source. In later usage ‘‘tradition’’ especially had to do with both the public passing on of oral words, ritual usages, and written texts besides elements of more esoteric tradition. Indeed, while paradosis was an important term in connection to ‘‘secret teachings’’ in originally proto-orthodox early Christian circles, it was then far more developed as a notion of central importance by Christian Gnosticism .1 Only with Irenaeus and then Origen was the term reappropriated by Catholic Christianity. Here it once more refers to the exoteric and yet continues also to refer to the esoteric. Thus, Irenaeus contrasted the public and simple character of the traditio (in both substance and category) of Christian baptism, compared with the convoluted and hidden character of Gnostic rites, while both he and still more Origen insisted on the necessarily originally ‘‘secret’’ character (to guard truth from those lacking in insight) of Old Testament traditions hidden symbolically beneath historical events and literal-seeming texts.2 So for both the Latin and the Greek terms one can validly say that to be within a tradition means both to pass something on and to pursue one’s way along a path. But although a path always leads into the future, its difference from a trackless waste in which one might wander is that it has been markedout by previous walkers. To walk a path, therefore, is also to receive a gift, and in further tracing the path through one’s own footsteps, it is to hand over this very same gift to future walkers. One can therefore conclude that the unilateral, self-contained, and temporal dimension of tradition is more primarily interpersonal, and that for just this reason the root meaning of ‘‘handing over a gift,’’ which can be spatial as well as temporal, retains its primacy. To act in a traditioned fashion is to pass on a gift that one has already received according to a particular laid-down manner...

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