Last week, Aaron Taylor concluded that defenders of marriage should scrap "traditional" in favor of "Christian."

In short, as he writes,

ultimately it is God who makes the natural law law, and not merely a series of correlations. If the ultimate telos is removed from the picture, no other telos makes sense. Precisely because it is the true vision, the Christian vision of marriage has the answers to questions people are already asking. This is how Christianity shows its “reasonableness” in the public forum.

Arguments can and should be made as to whether or not the naturalness of natural law is universally accessible—and if not, to whom and upon what conditions it is. Here, though, I'd like to follow up briefly on Taylor's provocative conclusion with a few comments on the rejection of "tradition," both concerning the nature of marriage and more generally.

Maybe the most convincing case for a healthy skepticism toward the notion of "traditional" anything is presented by Alasdair MacIntyre in the book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?. While not a summary argument, MacIntyre's position boils down to the idea that any particular tradition contains certain terms and concepts that are incommunicable with any other tradition. In a word, traditions are what they are (i.e., value-rich systems of being and doing) because they are self-contained, and because they purport to have—or at least have mechanisms for attaining—criteria for knowing objective truths. (If I've mischaracterized MacIntyre, I'm happy to hear about it from those who know him better. If you can do it in two sentences, for the sake of others, all the merrier.)

By calling foul on the defensibility of "traditional marriage," Taylor's argument seems to follow the MacIntyrean lead. Yet while Taylor stops with the possibility of a convincing defense of marriage vis-à-vis "tradition" (one he proposes has not been offered and which would be better given in specifically Christian terms), a further question remains: namely, is there even such a thing as "traditional marriage"—or "traditional values"—at all?

It's easy to see why one would claim that tradition is no monolith. The rejection of so many seemingly obvious things (marriage chiefly among them), offered as part of a generic Western patrimony, shows that something about "tradition" doesn't line up with contemporary social and ethical expectations. And that's a big problem. Even if we narrow the scope of that patrimony to the Western (Judeo-)Christian patrimony, certain ideas (again, marriage among them) remain in conflict. To propose that there's something identifiable, and a fortiori defensible, then, bound up with the generic idea of "traditional marriage" seems unlikely.

The best we appear to get, as Taylor argues, is a version of marriage consistent with a very specific interpretation of Scripture. The fact that such an interpretation (i.e., the Catholic intellectual tradition) was dominant for the better part of two millennia doesn't make it de facto timeless. It isn't the dominant tradition anymore; of that we can be sure. (It's important to note, here, that while pre-Christian versions of marriage were conjugal in nature, the inviolability of marriage—which I take to be part of what needs defending just as much as its 'orientation'—does seem to coincide with the historical period mentioned above. This is to extend what's at stake beyond, I think, what Taylor proposed; although not beyond what really is at stake.)

One of the key features of MacIntyre's position, as I mentioned, is that traditions are incommunicable—and even incompatible—beyond their own borders. While an orthodox Christian might have every reason to call conjugal marriage something "traditional," such a claim says nothing more than that conjugal marriage is part of my tradition. What's more, this claim sets up a scenario whereby anything that's not part of my tradition, or consistent with its criteria, is rendered incompatible with it. In the case of marriage, even language and concepts concerning the significance of family life—if not specifically connected to an orthodox Christian worldview—cannot necessarily be regarded as reliable or convincing.

If Taylor is right about the indefensibility of marriage on "traditional" grounds, then the reason is more than simply pragmatic: it's epistemological. (To this point, he makes the metaphysical case that to remove the telos of God renders arguments from purpose null and void. What I'm attempting, here, is a further explanation of why "no other telos makes sense" in its absence.) Furthermore, if "traditional marriage" is an unhelpful tautology, then we can assume much the same for "traditional values," which are perhaps even more ubiquitous in daily life.

While the summons to defend "tradition" swells, it is important not to be hastily seduced by it. Objectifying human patrimony—rather than the truths that such patrimony considers and judges—is a dangerous thing. Not only is it unadvisable from a prudential standpoint (i.e., if we want to win converts, we should make our case as strong as possible), but more importantly it lacks an appeal to wisdom, which shows us plainly that the best things are not always and everywhere demonstrable.

That said, throwing out "traditional" as a poor descriptor for "marriage" or "values" doesn't necessarily mean that neither is accessible on natural grounds. Michael Bradley makes a case to that effect, here, and there are many others. The take-away, I suggest, is simply that "traditional marriage" gets us only part way to the thing we, as Christians, wish to defend. And it does so in a manner that relies little, if at all, on the role of tradition, properly speaking—and much more on the faculties of natural knowledge, which are de facto particular and non-transferrable.

Andrew M. Haines is the editor and founder of Ethika Politika, and co-founder and chief operating officer at Fiat Insight.