You have to change to stay the same

When I wrote this essay in 1997, I was thinking, among other sources, of John Henry Newman. Newman regarded doctrine as the idea of Christianity - mysterious, and inexhaustible. Through Christ all truth was given, yet its inexhaustible quality means that there is yet more to see as that great truth unfolds through successive eras. It is not possible to articulate fully the essence of Christianity. Change, therefore, doesn't mean a move towards something new in essence, but a new perception or articulation of what is already there.

Unlike the approach to change and development in radical disjunction one sometimes finds in Protestant thinking, Newman viewed development as a faithful unfolding of the essential idea of Christianity, depending upon the Church (and for him, of course, ultimately on papal infallibility) to act as a control to that development.

There are lots of ways in which I couldn't go along with Newman. But I do largely buy into his idea of change as faithfulness to tradition, or continuity in discontinuity, rather than seeing change as a return to a former truth, a corrective, or - alternatively - a disallowed venture. Change that is boundaried allows for a creative tension, a forming and reforming, a discovering and rediscovering of God, in a way that is lively, moves with the times, and adapts itself in different cultural settings yet without losing its central identity. Hence, "you have to change (go forward, re-express) to stay the same (remain faithful to the living centre of the faith)".

Further, though, it is the experience of many artists, authors and designers that change needs boundaries in order to occur. The unlimited text flops all over the page, full of untamed goodness. But as often as not it is the word limit, the script timing, the publisher's deadline, the need to fit the work to the purpose, that pushes us to edit, condense, simplify, check for repetitions, tighten arguments, trim the excess that stops a good piece from being great.

Certainly there are times in life when you need to kick down doors and pull down walls. But sometimes it is the walls and the doors that force the wordsmith to better creativity, the designer to the glimpse of genius. Slavish obedience to the detail of an outdated tradition doesn't help anyone. But traditions leave tramlines in the ground, and sometimes the smartest, most creative thing to do is to work within them, finding out what else can run on them, and discovering that those faithful lines in the sand are there for a reason.

You have to change to stay the same, in Cray, Dawn et al: The PostEvangelical Debate [London: SPCK, 1997]