And then, of course, a tradition that is capable of self - critique, a tradition that is capable of affirming the truth
found in all other traditions — that is something that could actually help you.
Clearly, Blannin is participating
in that other tradition of abstraction that is connected more to Constructivism than to American Abstract Expressionism, the tradition that includes the British Constructionists and the Systems Group where the sense of «system» is a mathematical one.
If this analysis is correct, Evangelicals and committed members of other religious traditions could find themselves united in the Republican Party facing Seculars and less committed members
in other traditions among the Democrats.
The task of the missionary today, it was maintained, is to see the best in other religions, to help the adherents of those religions to discover, or to rediscover, all that is best in their own traditions, to cooperate with the most active and vigorous
elements in the other traditions in social reform and in the purification of religious expression.
But if there is a hard core of authenticity, and if the process of transmission has been largely an expansion of this tradition by, and its accommodation to, the influence of parallel
stories in other traditions, then the unique element in the tradition in comparison with its parallels is that which has the highest claim to authenticity.
We should do this, however, in such a way as to be open to the question of whether we can
hear in these other traditions the voice we have been disciplined to hear by our own Scriptures.
Can we openly and honestly encounter the mystery of the
universe in other traditions without being willing to surrender the claim of the universal significance of Christ?
When members of the Abrahamic faiths have encountered what seemed good and
true in other traditions, they have typically held that this, too, was the work of God.
Christians must not confine themselves to the revelation they have received and to their own spiritual experience if they want to know how God is at
work in other traditions.
As he told the MoMA curator William Rubin in 1969: «My main interest has been to make what is popularly called decorative painting» — decorative being the ultimate insult in western modernism, though no bad
thing in other traditions — «truly viable in unequivocal abstract terms».
Indeed, there are points of convergence as well as dissonance between this imperative and similar imperatives
found in other traditions.
In other traditions, the continuation of the apostolate is more diffused among the corporate body of Christians.
In other traditions the practice of doing theology authoritatively is institutionalized in the powers of constitutionally legitimated representative denominational assemblies elected to govern the church.
Beyond these two principles, I thought, I also saw more interest in eschatology than
in other traditions.