Powerful Education in the Great Tradition

Tradition Is Formative, a Great Tradition Is Transformative

The following post is adapted from a presentation I made at the recent Circe Conference in Denver earlier in July. The theme of the conference was “a contemplation of power” and so I am sharing the ways I think the tradition of classical education is powerful and transformative.

Forma in Latin means shape, beauty, or form. Forma lives in at least a dozen English derivatives: form (as a noun and verb–so we can count it twice), formal, informal, inform, conform, transform, reform (and reformation and reformer), reformatory, reformation, and a host of adjectival forms–informative, transformative, conformative, and simply formative. There are adverbs too: formally, informally.

Then there is the Greek word idea (in Greek, ἰδέα an from the verb ἰδεῖν, to see). When we come to understand an idea we often say I see it! Plato uses this word to describe the heavenly, pre-existing realities from which all that is true, good, beautiful is derived and reflected here on earth, even if imperfectly. These forms are independent of us and our physical eyes, but we see them with our mind’s eye, intellectually.  We see formally, not visually. These ideas are not material and thus they are eternal and unchangeable. You have likely heard of Plato’s philosophy of the Forms or the Ideas. 

From the Greek word ἰδέα we get: idea, ideology, ideate, ideation. Do you generate lots of ideas–then you are an ideator. Idiot, by the way, comes from a different Greek word that refers to someone who keeps to himself and utters incomprehensible propositions we call idioms. 

Plato certainly was a great ideator–he thought a lot about forms and so much so that we sometimes capitalize the word (Form) when we speak of his philosophy. 

Plato’s philosophy of forms was received as a venerable tradition of thought by the ancient and early Christians such as Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Basil, and Augustine. When Augustine praised the Platonists he was writing at around 400 AD, over 700 years after Plato. Plato’s doctrine of the pre-existing forms, his doctrine of virtue, harmony, and education–they were all received into Augustine’s thought and into theological thought generally but with modification. Plato said many things that were true and in harmony with biblical teaching, but several things that decidedly were not (like this doctrine of the pre-existing soul, the transmigration of the soul, and knowledge as recollection of what we once knew before we were born). Augustine writes, “Many wonderful things have I read in the Platonists, but now once have I read ‘Come unto me all you who are weary and I will give you rest.’” 

This is to say that Plato represents an early part of a great tradition, but his doctrine of the forms needed to be transformed so that he might conform to the form of biblical truth and teaching. 

Chesterton reminds us that reform must always have reference to form. If Plato the ideator is to be reformed, what is our standard for form? As Christians we might say the teaching of the Bible, the revealed truth that comes to us in the Incarnation of Christ. Aristotle disputed Plato’s claim that there was a form of the good. Christians quote Christ: Who is good but God alone? The Christian Form for the True, Good, and Beautiful is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity one in essence and undivided. Some, like Augustine, think that had Plato been born after the Incarnation, he would have confessed the same.

Paul writes in Romans 12:1-2 that we are not to be conformed to the world or age,  but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we might prove or demonstrate the will of God–that which is good, well-pleasing, perfect. 

Paul is writing in Greek but he is using words that we will all recognize. His word for conformed (be not conformed) is suschematizo, and you can clearly hear the word “scheme” in it. We know the word scheme. We know the word schemata. It is a plan, a lay-out, a design. In Greek it also has the connotation of what appears to us but is not real. The world has its schemes that we should avoid, patterns of life that are false. Here the word can be rendered Don’t be remodeled.  He also says we are to be transformed, and here he uses the word morphe (morphao) which is another Greek word for shape. We think of “morph” as to change, but it has reference to changing into a particular morphe or shape. Note that when we are transformed we demonstrate the the good. The word that Paul here uses is agathos, the same word Plato uses for his form of the good. Is this a Christian fulfillment of pagan longing? 

As we can see, by simply starting with Plato and his doctrine of the forms or ideas, and then noting his treatment by Augustine and comparing Plato with St. Paul–we are entering an important tradition of thought, a tradition that has often been called the Great Tradition. In fact it is said of Plato and Aristotle that never had a teacher such a student or a student such a teacher. But what about Socrates and Plato? Maybe we should say never had a teacher such a student or a student such a teacher as Plato and Aristotle, except for Socrates and Plato. But then there was Ambrose and Augustine. And also Origen and Gregory the Wonder Worker. Gregory who said of Origen “I would have fellowship with that man.” But there was also Macrina who taught her brothers Basil and Gregory, both of whom became bishops. Then there was the Venerable Bede, Ecgbert, and Alcuin, and Alcuin and Charlamagne. If we allow for gaps of time, we have such relations (in just the epic tradition) as Homer to Virgil to Dante to Milton to CS Lewis to Wendell Berry to Marlyn Robinson. And let’s not forget Christ and the 12 apostles. There was the Apostle John and his disciple Polycarp. Tradition comes from tradere which means to hand down. Person to person, teacher to student, wonderful wisdom has been passed down. But it is not really a tradition until we receive it. 

Can you see why we can call this tradition The Great Tradition?  We might even call the renewal of classical education the renewal of Great Tradition Education.

Chesterton called tradition the democracy of the dead because it is wise and appropriate not to silence our ancestors. People like Augustine out to have a voice and vote and not be excluded from conversation for the inconvenient fact they have departed this earthly life. We shall have the dead at our councils, says Chesterton. 

It is worth noting and knowing the ways in which this tradition is great, venerable, and blessed. The Great Tradition is transformative and empowers us simply by giving us remarkable gifts that can be compared to the magic healing potion given to Lucy by Aslan, or the unbeatable excalibur sword given to King Arthur by the Lady of the Lake, or the impenetrable mithril given to Frodo by Bilbo. 

The tradition bequeaths to us a horde of wealth impossible to delineate but I will suggest five priceless gifts that are freely offered to anyone who would open his hands to the Great Tradition. The Greek word for power is dunamis, from which we get dynamite, and one Latin equivalent is potentia (related to our word potent and potential). These gifts are dynamic and they are potent. 

The Great Tradition Imparts Fellowship

First, the Great Tradition imparts fellowship. We all need a place to belong; we all need to know we are from somewhere, we have a place from which we have come, a home, and a home base. As a tradition the Great Tradition seats us at a table–a long table–where we find ourselves seated next to and in conversation with Plato, Augustine, and St. Paul, and many others who are our fellows and friends. They love the same things we love, and thus we find ourselves loving them. They become amici (Italian and Latin) derived from the word amor, love. They are our loved-ones. 

I remember interviewing a high-school student from the Regents School of Austin several years ago, and asking her why she enjoyed her study of Latin. The first thing she cited was the sense of connection and community she experienced reading authors like Augustine in his own tongue. Even reading Augustine in English will bring you into a friendship with him. Any Christian who has  thoughtfully read The Confessions, or On Christian Doctrine, or The City of God has found a friend and a very wise one. 

Many of you have very close friends who have lived hundreds of years ago, like Augustine, or St. Paul–or Jesus. Our lives are like grass, and flowers of the field, Jesus says, or a vapor like James says. We could line up across the front of a church all of the great bishops of Jerusalem or all of the bishops of Rome (the pope), or sit them all down in a small church. Our fraternity is smaller than we might think when we qualify the tradition by saying it consists of the Great writers and the Great books. Those who are truly great are fewer in number than we first imagine–but more importantly they are closer than we imagined both in terms of time and thought. Their thought, like the one thought given us by Chesterton–that tradition is the democracy of the dead–can be as near as your own beating heart in the same way that a million angels can dance on the head of a single pin because angels, being bodiless, have no extension in space. Thoughts, too, have no extension in space, and so Chesterton’s thought can dwell in you–it can be your thought: tradition is the democracy of the dead. Chesterton can be a very close friend indeed. He is to me. 

People of the Great Tradition (is that you?) have often talked this way. Petrarch, for example, was a great seeker after ancient manuscripts in the 1300s. He read and loved Cicero. Then he found a lost letter of Cicero. What was his response? Naturally, he began to write letters back to Cicero–never mind that Cicero had lived over 1000 years before.

He also loved The Confessions of Augustine so much that he decided to make Augustine his confessor, and wrote to Augustine of his struggles. To what address he sent his letters to Cicero and Augustine, I don’t know.

The Tradition Imparts Virtue

If the Tradition give us friends, it follows that it also gives us virtue, for friends lead us to virtue, perhaps more than anything else. The tradition itself tells us–even as it tells us about the formative power of the traditions itself. Cicero says it is the nature of friendship not to lead us to vice but to aid virtue. Aristotle says that friendship is like a single soul occupying two bodies. He says as well that there are three kinds of friends and one is preferred above all. There are useful friends, like those friends we have who own a pick-up truck (it’s always good to include in your circle of friends one who owns a pick-up truck). Friends can be useful in more profound ways too. You might have a friend who knows Latin or Italian when you want to learn those languages. Or a friend who is great at financial management and budgeting when you are in need of those skills. Aristotle says there are secondly friends who are pleasing to us–like the friend who is exceptionally good-looking and stylish, or the friend who is witty, or a delightful story-teller, or a humorist easily setting you to laugh. But then there is the third category–the friend who is a good friend in the sense of embodying the good, a friend who by virtue of his virtue makes you virtuous. Do you have a friend like this? 

Why are friends so necessary to form us in virtue? Because we need models. We need to see incarnations of virtue, we might say we need to see forms of virtue if we are to be formed in virtue. We are naturally imitators–this is wisdom confirmed by the great tradition. Aristotle says it. St. Paul says it when he tells the Corinthians, Follow me as I follow Christ, and when he tells Timothy, The things you have learned from me, impart to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Christ is always the great teacher in our midst, and we walk in his footsteps, denying ourselves, even as he did, and carrying our cross, even as he did. 

Christ himself tells his disciples that he will no longer call them servants but friends, and we are right to infer that he calls us friends too, if we are in fact his disciples. 

In one of his short works on education (The Catechesis of the Uninstructed), Augustine describes the ways in which the teacher and the student can and should become in an important sense, friends. It is worth hearing him in his own words: 

Augustine on Sympathy and Fellowship

Once more, however, we often feel it very wearisome to go over repeatedly matters which are thoroughly familiar, and adapted to children. If this is the case with us, then we should endeavor to meet them with a brother's, a father's, and a mother's love; and, if we are once united with them thus in heart, to us no less than to them will these things seem new. For so great is the power of a sympathetic disposition of mind, that, as they are affected while we are speaking, and we are affected while they are learning, we have our dwelling in each other; and thus, at one and the same time, they as it were in us speak what they hear, and we in them learn after a certain fashion what we teach. Is it not a common occurrence with us, that when we show to persons, who have never seen them, certain spacious and beautiful tracts, either in cities or in fields, which we have been in the habit of passing by without any sense of pleasure, simply because we have become so accustomed to the sight of them, we find our own enjoyment renewed in their enjoyment of the novelty of the scene? And this is so much the more our experience in proportion to the intimacy of our friendship with them; because, just as we are in them in virtue of the bond of love, in the same degree do things become new to us which previously were old.

Note how Augustine describes teaching as requiring love for a student–the love of a brother, father, or mother. Are these not instances of the greatest forms of friendship? Is this not why we often say that when we send a girl to a classical school that we place her there in loco parentis (in the place of parents)?  Do we not all want our children to be taught, as it were, by another brother, father, or mother?

This is precisely what is happening in thousands of classical homeschooling co-ops and schools across the country. In the typical co-op, several moms come together to teach one another’s children. In the typical school, you will find multiple teachers (fathers and mothers) who have their children enrolled in the school. 

Note as well Augustine’s reference to a “sympathetic disposition of mind.”  The teacher and the student (like any good friendship) share a similar mind, a similar love for the true, good, and beautiful. They have the same pathos. Again, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says friendship is like a single soul dwelling in two bodies–sympathy indeed! 

Augustine goes so far as to say that there is a mutual indwelling of teacher and student such that the teacher begins to live in the student, and the student begins to live in the teacher, creating a virtuous circle in which truth travels round and round from soul to soul, almost erasing the lines between teacher and student.

The classical tradition has regularly noted the way in which friendship (amicitia in Latin, philia in Greek) is essential to education. Christ says that “when a student is fully trained he will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40).

When a friend helps lead us to virtue, he or she is helping us to become more human, to become the fullest version of ourselves. Virtus itself is derived from vir, the Latin word for man. To have virtus is to realize one’s humanity; it can mean to “manly” in the sense of being brave or courageous, it also means to possess excellence, any excellence that can typify a human from cooking to kicking, from horse riding to novel writing, from plumbing to professing. 

You likely know something of the cardinal virtues described early on by Plato, Aristotle, and company: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude. These are the anthropological virtues that chart the potential excellences to which a human might attain. Virtuous friends help us to do this, thus friends give us power to become ourselves. 

Understanding that Imparts Wisdom

The great tradition provides us with a family, with fellowship, and makes us a citizen of a global, timeless republic. Then it tells us we need friends and provides us with a long and continuing table of friends–friends who help us grow in virtue. Such growth in virtue slowly blesses us with another gift that comes to us so slowly that we hardly notice it: wisdom.

Growth in virtue naturally means growth in wisdom–at least prudential wisdom–because prudence is the first and governing virtue of the four cardinal virtues. Prudence is a shortened form of providence which means it is a virtue having to do with seeing–and even seeing beforehand what the real state of affairs are. Prudence is perception of reality, and when is that not helpful? The truly prudent person knows what to do in various circumstances, and can even foresee events before they happen.

So what is real? The tradition empowers us to know. Oddly, at our present moment, some previously very basic perceptions of the real are being questioned–like the nature of family, marriage, gender, sex, biology. The questioners like to assign phobias to those who question their questions, clearly showing they have erotosaphobia (fear of questioning questions). Earlier this year, I wrote an article on cosmophobia–the irrational fear of the world as it really is. The tradition forms us to become cosmophiles and I plead guilty to any charges of cosmophilia.

If you will indulge me in another piece of etymology: 

The Latin word res means things.  Now you want to know and understand things right? You want to know the res of the world.  If you concern yourself with public matters you want to know the res publica (the public things). In Latin, anything having to do with things  (with the res of the world) is called realis. And reor means to think and the participle of reor is ratus which give us ratio which means reason.  We need to reor on res to know with ratio (reason) what is realis in our res publica. I trust you get the picture. Even the history of our language is in its own way formative, and the tradition freely gives us this as well.

The reason prudence leads and governs the other virtues is because you must see what is real before you can give each man his due (justice) or curb your passions to act justly (temperance) or endure obstacles and hardship in order to do so (fortitude). 

There are two kinds of wisdom specified in the great tradition, and the tradition wishes us to know the difference. The practical, prudential wisdom that we have mentioned is phronesis in Greek and prudentia in Latin. The comprehensive wisdom that knows reality in the most global sense is sophia in Greek and sapientia in Latin. For a man to grow wise, he will need this double wisdom, both practical insight and the more universal knowledge of the ways of God, men, and the cosmos. 

How does this happen? Slowly. The tradition says to walk, not run. It says to contemplate, re-read, make haste slowly, to master each step. It says to ponder, linger, savor, and relish. The Latin word sapientia is related to the word sapio/sapire which means to taste, to savor. We might imagine that to know the ways of the cosmos means that we are regularly to taste it, to eat it as it were, as Ezekiel was commanded to eat the scroll. The world may not be our oyster, but it presents a continual feast, or maybe an eternal wine-tasting junket that leaves us tipsy but never drunk. This is how you grow wise–have another drink.

It is worth noting the pairing of these two Latin wise-words. Sapientia metamorphosizes our sense of taste. Taste and see that the Lord is good, and that his cosmos is good too. Prudentia (a version of providence) connects to our sense of sight. Acquiring both sapientia and prudentia we can say both “I see it!” and “I savor it.” 

The man or woman who attains to some measure of wisdom–the traditions praises. The noble woman of Proverbs 31 is a classical example: 

She speaks with wisdom,

    and faithful instruction is on her tongue.

She watches over the affairs of her household

    and does not eat the bread of idleness.

Her children arise and call her blessed;

    her husband also, and he praises her.

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;

    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

The great tradition, therefore, shows what to love (the lovely) and what to praise (wisdom and virtue). That in itself is immensely formative, for what praise, is what we worship, is what we behold, and is what we become.

The tradition also tells us that we should seek wisdom above all else. We are told to turn our ear to wisdom and our hearts to understanding (in Proverbs 2)--to call out for insight and to cry aloud for understanding–and to search for it as hidden treasure. Only then can we expect to find it. We must seek before we find, ask before it will be given, and knock if the door will be opened before us. 

Another classic passage comes to us from John Henry Newman (writing in 1852) who summarizes for us what happens when someone has been educated enough to become wise:

That perfection of the Intellect which is the result of education, and its beau ideal, to be imparted in their respective measures, is the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the fine mind can embrace them, each in its place, and with its own characteristics upon it.  

It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music of the spheres. 

If you cannot quite grasp the profundity of this passage–neither can I. He cites several words and phrases previously well known that we are relearning: perfection of the intellect, beau ideal, beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, the music of the spheres. What spheres? What spheres make music? Most of us don’t know but it sounds like a really cool name for a band. 

The Great Tradition Imparts Blessedness

If we could become wise, we would become blessed. The tradition tells about the beauty of being able to see things as they really are, and then conforming our life to the beauty and harmony we encounter in things as they really are. If like Elisha’s servant the heavens could open up a bit so that you could even just one small legion of angels–you would cry out Beauty!  If you are given–or acquire–eyes to see then you will learn the meaning of “intellectual vision” and more pointedly of “beatific vision.” Plato believed in intellectual seeing that would transform a soul; Augustine prays for it throughout The Confessions. Aquinas writes of in his Summa, and Dante shows it to us–the best perhaps a poet can–in the Paradisio. 

The beatific vision is present in the passage we read from Newman when he speaks of the calm, accurate vision and comprehensive vision of all things and especially when he mentions the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation.

20th century continuators of the Great Tradition like A. G. Sertillanges and Joseph Pieper write about this vision and its blessedness regularly. This is why Sertillanges can call study “a prayer to the truth” and why Pieper says that anyone who truly sees reality will respond with worship and make plans to celebrate. When we truly see what is real, we see that the real, having come from God, is good (even if fallen) and our heart gladdens to the point of praise and celebration even through the various deserts we must travel. It is good that we are here; and here it is good.

Which of us does not want to be blessed? Pieper notes that to see and know the true, good, and beautiful comes to us when we stop working and grasping for it but rather turn our hands and hearts upward and outward in a posture of receptivity. When we stop long enough to gaze–the insight comes to us without work just as light enters our eyes if and when we simply open them. 

Thus the tradition tells us not merely to look but to gaze. Gifts come to the gazer. We can note that the busiest executive in Judah at about 1000 BC was King David. But David had time to be a poet, which means he had time to observe. And what observes in Psalm 27 is that he would like to be a gazing poet everyday–if he could:

One thing I ask from the Lord,

    this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

    all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord

    and to seek him in his temple.

How are we formed? We gaze. The medieval maxim was: We become what we behold.

Blessedness that Imparts Hope

The Great Tradition holds forth virtue and wisdom as the great ends of education. Growing in virtue and wisdom will bring a man happiness (or eudaimonia) according to Aristotle along with contemplation. The Christian faith brings all of these Platonic and Aristotelian ideas to fulfillment: Plato’s forms are fulfilled in Christ the arche or archegon, the author and finisher of all; Plato and Aristotle’s longs for virtue and wisdom are also fulfilled in Christ who is the power and wisdom of God. Christ brings us not only virtue and wisdom but blessedness–in Greek makarios that quality enjoyed principally by the gods who are beyond human care. Christ brings us makarios (blessedness or happiness) even when we mourn, even when we hunger and thirst, even when we are persecuted. 

The beatitudes listed by Jesus in Matthew 5 all begin with makarios:

Makarios are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Makarios are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Makarios are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Makarios are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
  for they will be filled.
Makarios are the merciful,
   for they will be shown mercy.
Makarios are the pure in heart,
  for they will see God.
Makarios are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Makarios are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Christ therefore compliments the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, courage) promising a kind of heavenly happiness that infuses our earthly life. He compliments the cardinal virtues with the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. If the cardinal virtues are anthropological virtues that help us realize our humanity, the theological virtues are infused with the presence of Christ himself within us, the hope of glory, and help us not only to be humans, but to be like Christ, or Christ-ones, which is to say Christians. 

St. Patrick, a captured slave in Ireland from age 14 to 20, then later the evangelist and converter of pagan Ireland, saw that Christ was within us to bless us, and therefore to give us hope. But not just within us:

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
of the Creator of creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.
I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In the obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In the predictions of prophets,
In the preaching of apostles,
In the faith of confessors,
In the innocence of holy virgins,
In the deeds of righteous men.
I arise today, through
The strength of heaven,
The light of the sun,
The radiance of the moon,
The splendor of fire,
The speed of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of the sea,
The stability of the earth,
The firmness of rock.
I arise today, through
God's strength to pilot me,
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptation of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
afar and near.
I summon today
All these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel and merciless power
that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul;
Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me an abundance of reward.
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
of the Creator of creation.

Patrick’s prayer reveals the theological transformation of the Great Tradition that calls forth as witnesses, advocates, and friends not only the remarkable beauty and power of the cosmos (stars, sun, lightening) but the ready obedience of the invisible angels, the echoing prayers of Abraham, the pronouncements of Isaiah, the preaching of Paul, the present power of the Trinity, and the intimate indwelling and animation of Christ himself. Just as Patrick, living in the 300s AD, looked back hundreds of years to the prophets and apostles, we look back to not only the prophets and apostles, but to Patrick himself, who lived hundreds of years before our time. Patrick looked to a rich tradition; now we see Patrick in the tradition of which we wrote and prayed. We might add a line to his prayer: I arise today in the strength of…. the preaching of the missionaries.

To the great cloud of witnesses before us and around us we can add Patrick. His prayer is a prayer in and of the tradition, and it should be our prayer too.

Conclusion

The tradition itself, having been forged over centuries in the furnace of God’s good providence, is strong like Christ is strong. It is an anvil that has worn out many hammers. The Great Tradition does not need to be defended any more than one needs to defend a lion. It is we who need the Great Tradition, not it that needs us. The Great Tradition gives us a fellowship, friends, a kind of citizenship in a longstanding republic that will continue after our day has passed. 

Alfred J. Nock saw this nearly 100 years ago when he gave a series of lectures on education at the University of Virginia. He was not confident that the U.S. would soon return and embrace the Great Tradition but this did not disturb his peace, because he was first a citizen of the Great Tradition and only secondarily to the U.S.:

…The Great Tradition will be no man’s debtor. When we speak of promoting it or continuing it, we are using a purely conventional mode of speech, as when we say that the sun rises or sets. We can do nothing for the Great Tradition; our fidelity to it can do everything for us. Creatures of a day, how shall we think that what we do or leave undone is of consequence to what abides forever? Our devotion, our integrity of purpose, our strictness of conscience, are not exercised in behalf of the Great Tradition, but in our own behalf. Our recreancy cannot weaken it; our faithfulness cannot strengthen it; we alone are damaged by the one and edified by the other. The Great Tradition is independent of us, not we of it.

We have therefore no responsibility but the happy one of keeping our eye single to our own obedience. We need take no thought for the Great Tradition’s welfare; but only for our own; it asks no protection or championship from us, and any volunteer service of this kind is mere officiousness.

The Great Tradition, like the church, will never perish from the earth. It stands like a mountain that will not move. If we receive this tradition, if we are in this tradition–then we find ourselves on this mountain, elevated and sustained despite any floods, storms, and turbulence. The ark rested on a mountain and the law was given on a mountain, and Christ was transfigured/transformed on a mountain. On this mountain of the Great Tradition and by its power, we too are transformed.