Any religious tradition faces a dilemma. It must propagate its life or die but it must also conserve its identity or become something else.

The sanctity of a tradition is always in tension with its adaptation in new times and places, through media that may be alien to the fidelity of its originating expressions. Religious tradition is self-contaminating in being self-perpetuating. Perpetuation necessitates the reiteration of inaugural sacred imperatives; reiteration occurs in other times and places, introducing “contaminants” that threaten the perceived conservation of these imperatives. (Derrida)

Reiteration is necessary to religious tradition, yet it is also a source of inevitable compromise within tradition. The more intensely a tradition is propagated, the greater the risk that tearing will occur within the fabric of its sacred identity and imperatives.

A religious tradition sustains a sacred trust, which is necessarily reiterated in its perpetuation. Reiteration is also a source of schism as innovation for some is a source of consternation for others. The possibility of introducing contaminants is already inscribed within the reiteration of an inaugural sacred trust. A religious tradition must perpetuate its trust or die but it must also conserve its sanctity or inevitably promote something alien instead.

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The tension between conserving religious sanctity and its contamination through reiteration has limited applicability to Christian faith with its testimony to triune love and incarnation.

Christian faith is not concerned with perpetuating a sacred trust that, having emerged from cultural, philosophical and social phenomena, is either enhanced or compromised by changes in other times and places. Christian faith articulates the intimate involvement of God in the time and space of human existence, even as exposure to death in a passion of complete self-giving. This exposure is ultimately vindicated in the reality of triune communion as life-giving grace applicable to every time and place.

What Christian faith articulates is wholly unlike the preservation of religious sanctity as a cultural phenomenon.

The tension between sacred trust and its compromise through reiteration might be pertinent to tradition that seeks to sustain the purity of sacred phenomena but Christian identity is given in Jesus Christ as God intimately with us. In the incarnation, the initiative of God in grace within history invites humanity to the future of God in ascension and the gift of the Spirit, exceeding any possibility within the time and space of human tradition. This reality comes from the future because it unfolds from the reality of God in the word that calls to be things that are not, to be present with the same veracity and integrity in the body of Christ within any time or place, culture or society.

Christian Scripture orientates us to a word otherwise than the sacred institution and conservation of particular phenomena. In this, Christian faith is radically differentiated from religion in its exposure to the death of anything but grace, within which the life of God as grace is life-giving in the world. Grace gives a reality that exceeds the resources of human existence, whether these resources are conserved in institutions or sustained as religious practices.

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Christian testimony to creation de-sacralises nature and matter. The prohibition on idolatry in Israel gives specific focus to the non-sacred status of natural and cultural phenomena. As creator, God is the source of human existence by the vocative word that calls to be, which has its quintessential expression in Christ the Word.

Human dignity is ultimately not derived from material or cultural phenomena, even if these are inscribed with sacred values. The Word became flesh, demonstrating through grace and truth that all flesh has its dignity in the creative and sustaining word of God. This dignity was always endorsed by the Word, the true light who enlightens all, as the implicit impetus toward social equilibrium.

The natural world is the home of humans and no time or place, except by human tradition, is intrinsically more sacred than another. Human life is lived with possibilities of love and good-will within various expressions of cultural life through God’s grace alone.

When Jacob is in a far country, God is there; when the exiles are in Babylon, God is sovereign over the universe. If the law is given in one place, it is promised to all in every place. God is neither worshipped in mountain nor temple but in spirit and truth.

The Pentecost community is ever-moving from the holy city. Jerusalem does not remain a sacred centre of Christian identity. All times and places are the appropriate milieu of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is the sustaining source of an extraordinary possibility within humanity in which sinners are called saints or holy ones.

In Christian faith, no time or place and therefore tradition can assume sacredness that is not also relativised in relation to human life through which the Word became flesh and the ends of the earth, to which the Holy Spirit is present as distinctive life for the sanctity of all human life to the glory of God.

Any sacred claim is relative in relation to the word that questions every time and place in which the sacred is asserted against another or others, within and between religious traditions. The word of God is finally the criterion of faithful tradition and the source of critique pertinent to any tradition, as this word speaks otherwise than the elevation of particular times or places to sacred status.

Christian memory is inscribed in diverse times and places to which it cannot but be exposed. Yet its expressions of life are always resourced by grace from beyond any time or place, even if it is called unequivocally, to demonstrate this life within every time and place. This tangible possibility is a triune initiative in grace and engagement with human life as life in the Spirit, to which Christian faith gives testimony beyond any presumed sacred time or place.

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By distinguishing sacred or pure phenomena from the profane, humans are exposed to the potential shock of discovering that through change and movement within time and space, life continually contaminates everything humans seek to sanctify.

Contamination haunts human quests for purity. Time and space generate the possibility of contamination. Tradition is always tearing as a temporal ratchet clawing inexorably into time even as it is anchored in the past. Community is always porous, threatening to transgress someone’s spatial surveillance and social marshalling.

Competing claims to human sanctity are slightly comic, as they are in gospel caricatures; without exposure to such review, competing claims to human sanctity are also a source of violence.

Contamination happens. As much as we try to cover-up our scene of crime—the scene of mortal anxieties and self-compromise—the more contaminated evidence we leave behind.

Reiteration of anything is exposure to time and space contingencies—temporal as new decisions before the unknown; spatial as regional perspective. Both haunt attempts to pin down the sanctity of times, places and therefore cultural phenomena, without such sanctity being sullied for someone.

The quest for unequivocal purity in tradition is theoretically, to invoke violence more violent than any violence within the vicissitudes of history. We would not figure as distinct entities in a state of absolute purity. This would be nothing less than eliminating time and space by which we exist.

In Christian testimony, these are the context of Emmanuel, God with us, ever-new in every time and place, without differentiation as to their purity or sacredness. In Christ, humanity, in all times and places, is invited into Pentecost community and triune communion as the source of sanctity within human life in every time and place. 

Reference: Derrida “Faith and Knowledge” Acts of Religion