Actually, it is Peter Leithart offering up some Habermas with some Peter Gordon thrown in. The post concerns the burden that secular societies place upon religious citizens. Leithart quotes Habermas on the burdens that modern societies, in trying to bracket religious convictions, place upon both believers and secularists:
Religious citizens who regard themselves as loyal members of a constitutional democracy must accept the translation proviso as the price to be paid for the neutrality of the state authority toward competing worldviews. For secular citizens, the same ethics of citizenship entails a complementary burden. By the duty of reciprocal accountability toward all citizens, including religious ones, they are obliged not to publicly dismiss religious contributions to political opinion and will formation as mere noise, or even nonsense, from the start. Secular and religious citizens must meet in their public use of reason at eye level.
Leithart doesn’t believe the burden is equal and grabs support from Peter Gordon:
Does it even make sense to say they are both burdens? Consider the analogy of translation between profane languages: If a Frenchman is asked to express his claims in public where English is the only language in principle intelligible to all participants, then of course the Frenchman can be required to obey the rules of English grammar. That is surely a burden, and it may be a great challenge for someone who has spent his entire life thinking in French. But it makes no sense to say that the Englishman bears a symmetrical burden because he cannot think of himself as a “judge” concerning the comprehensive merits of France. There is nothing about speaking English that makes such a judgment plausible, let alone necessary. Habermas, I suspect, is trying to dress up the unidirectionality of the burdens of translation in a way that promotes a more favorable vision of reciprocity. This may be diplomatic—and, given the frequent intolerance of both parties, religious and secularist, some diplomacy may be called for—but the notion of a shared burden in translation does not accurately capture Habermas’s deeper commitments to profane reason.
According to Leithart, who continues to invoke Gordon, Habermas’ notion of translation is weak and invalid because the very idea of translating religion into the secular public sphere is — I guess — unequal. Gordon writes: “Translation, after all, is a linguistic event of semantic transfer, from a language of origin to a target language—from religion to the secular public sphere. The analogy thus reveals how Habermas’s earliest ideas concerning the character of public reason have not lost their validity.”
I am not interested exactly in Habermas’ or Gordon’s points, but I am intrigued that Leithart finds the idea of translation to be revealing of the difficulties that believers confront in secular societies. Is it the case that Christians do speak a different language of government, or law, or public policy from non-Christians? Do Christians even have their own language? This is particularly important since the Reformation sought to put the Bible, the liturgy, and theology into the vernacular. That included indirectly Luther’s translations of the Bible setting the agenda for modern German and Calvin’s French functioning as an important stage in the development of modern French (so I’ve read; I don’t presume to be a historian of language).
In other words, language is a common human activity. When the Holy Spirit regenerates Christians they don’t and shouldn’t speak in new languages (at least cessationist ones don’t). When Christians talk about politics, nations, and laws, they use the same words, syntax, and punctuation as other citizens. They may use words like morality, justice, king, Lord, or law. But non-Christians don’t have any trouble understanding what those words mean. They may disagree about the virtue of a monarchy, since they live in a republic (or an empire that in its “aw shucks” moments pretends to be a republic). But the words that Christians use, even the words to describe Christ as king of kings, or the magistrate’s duty to enforce the entire Decalogue are not foreign to non-Christians. Just because someone disagrees with you does not mean you are speaking a foreign tongue. To think that a difference of opinion is really a problem of translation is bizarre.
But it does indicate the lengths to which the application of the antithesis between believers and non-believers may run. In the haste to assert that Christianity goes all the way down and claim a victim status for believers who live under oppressive secular governments, Federal Visionaries, transformationalists, and neo-Calvinists make the world safe for thinking that Christians are so different that they speak in ways that other people can’t understand. In other words, they pave the way for those Christians who really do think they have a Christian language — Pentecostals.
Old Life 
Surely there is a “middle ground”. The Church- especially the Reformed and Presbyterian churches- certainly does have its own language. What are terms such as “justification”, “sanctification”, “regeneration” et. al. if not our own language? To be sure, these are words which are not “exclusively” Christian. They are English words (with corresponding words in other languages), not the mumbo jumbo of the pentecostals. But you can’t surely claim that when we use the word “justification” we do so in a way that is understandable to your average unbeliever without us explaining what we mean. The words “king”, “law” and so on do have an automatic understanding by unbelievers as you say, but we also use a lot of terms and and speak in a way that is foreign to the world.
Furthermore, we should cultivate this otherness. The church should stand apart from the world, and do so conspicuously: we do this through the way we live, worship and speak.
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Funny how these topics so relate to everyday life. After reading your post, I went back and re-read a victim impact letter that I am working on today.
My cousin- in-law, father to two young boys, husband and professor of art at a leading art institution, was murdered almost two years ago, defending his family at a “well to do” party in Westlake Village California. The defendent was convicted of man-slaughter, and the sentencing is later this month.
A victim impact letter is a request for the judge to show
no leniencey in his sentencing, in basic, we want the convicted party to have to pay the full penalty of the sentence allowable for the crime in which he was convicted. Why do I want this? Because the murderer took a precious life, and shows no remorse for it.
My letter is witness to the fact that Christians do not have special words they need to use, when making their case, or speaking in the civil realm. In fact, civil/legal grammar is as close to biblical language as any grammar gets, with the only exception being, that officers of the court of law are trained to use words as precisely as possible.
It was actually quite refreshing, and tremendously less frustrating than speaking in most “Christian” circles.
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Alexander,
What does cultivating “otherness” look like?
If I am teaching my three year old about shapes, I show her the shape and I tell her what the shape is called. “This is a square.” If I hold up a square and ask her what it is, and she says “triangle”, I say “No, it’s a square.” Is there a middle ground? Quite frankly, I don’t need to tell her that there will those in this world that will argue, she will find that out soon enough.
I’ll say one more thing, before I get ready for my “date night.” I am homeschooling my children. I am teaching them using the classical method. First is grammar, then logic, the rhetoric. First learn the vocabulary of a topic, then learn the systems of the discipline studied, then and only then are you ready for the rhetorical stage, in which you discuss your ideas and opinions using the grammar correctly and appropriately.
All things should be done well and in order, and no where more than in communication.
Have a great weekend.
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But if you take away the language of Christianese, how will you be able to mass produce religious bumper stickers. Isn’t bumper sticker theology still a good litmus test of being “salt and light”? Not that most bumper sticker theologians know what any of these theological camps are (federal vision or neo-Calvinism), but evangelicalism reeks of transformational living no less.
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I don’t know, Alexander, what about that Letter to Diognetus, which reads in part:
“Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.”
It’s hard to see how this observation of the early church props up conspicuousness. It suggests more an alien residence. Have you ever contemplated the significance of Jacob and Esau being twins? One loved and the other hated and yet at the same time indistinguishable, in fact the one loved being a quiet man and living in tents. I can see how the way we worship should be peculiar, but I wonder if the same could really be said about the way we live and speak.
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Zrim, most twins are fraternal rather than identical and Jacob and Esau always came across as fraternal twins to me. Not that you don’t have a point, it’s just that I know from being a twin and having known a few fraternal twins that identical twins are not all that common even among twins.
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Ginger- if you want to homeschool your children that’s up to you. Not sure what it has to do with what I said. But in answer to your question about how we cultivate otherness, I’d say homeschooling one’s children would certainly accomplish that! In America especially homeschooling says very loudly: we’re Christian and we don’t want to use your public schools.
Another way of cultivating otherness: when the culture around us engages is promiscuous sex, we don’t.
Zrim: all very true. And yet Christians, especially Reformed Christians, should be able to recognise one another wherever they go in the world. This is because our otherness is drawn from one, shared faith. Also, do we dress the same? I believe our esteemed blogger pointed out in an interview that the way the Reformed typically dress for worship- smartly- sets us apart from the culture. Over the generations the church has increasingly moved away from the culture around us, this is particularly so here in Scotland. The church cannot but be other, and increasingly conspicuous, if it’s true to the gospel.
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Alexander, I think you’re confusing technical terms with a different language. Hypotenues was a word I used to know the meaning of and could use. I’m sure plumbers and bankers and engineers uses all sorts of words that we wouldn’t understand. But dictionaries and Berkhof is always available. It’s a different question if you’re going to trust the eternal destiny of yourself to the meaning of that word.
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Alexander, I think I indicated that our dress for worship could set us apart from the world. In the 1920s and 1950s it would have not, since dressing casually was not the ideal then.
As for a common faith, that commonness extends everywhere except to Escondido. The Reformed faith would go something like, “we affirm the teachings of the Standards and 3 Forms; and we deny the teachings of WSC.”
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Ok I get ya. And I agree: technical terms are perhaps a category unto themselves. I’d still argue that our use of them, our way of speaking around those terms and how we speak to one another constitutes a language of sorts, or perhaps dialect might be a better term.
Law is an interesting example. I’d say the Christian understanding of law is fundamentally different: we do not believe justice, in an objective sense, can ever be done here on earth by secular authorities especially. Yes we can talk about justice in a relative or subjective sense, but whenever we talk about law and justice in the secular realm we must remember that what we are talking about is a very pale imitation- perhaps not even the thing at all- of true law and true justice.
And of course you can argue that we can all- believer and heathen- join in the conversation together nevertheless, but our faith and thus our understanding will always put us slightly askew to what the world means.
You’re right about our dress being the same 60 years ago, but not anymore. That’s my point (and I thought it was yours too). We’re living in a time when the practises of the Reformed are so different to the culture that otherness is a fact, one I believe should be cultivated and celebrated.
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Alexander,
I think you’re missing Leithart’s point. Leithart’s analogy supposes that there is little or no overlap between the language of Christians and the language of non-Christians. In other words, Leithart is suggesting that a Christian and a non-Christian could have no meaningful communication about baseball…unless the Christian adopts the “secular” way of talking about baseball.
2K doesn’t deny that the church uses a language of her own to describe specifically religious principles. But we would distinguish between the Lord’s Day worship and baseball in a way that Leithart and neo-Calvinists do not.
A friend of mine recently referred to the theology of Leithart, the Baylys, and the Kuyperians as “Christian Marxism”. The above comments by Leithart suggest that this may be an apt way of categorizing this band of would-be theocrats.
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Isn’t the battle over justification so heated
and so important precisely because we do, in a sense, trust our eternal destiny to the understanding of that word?
Shame about all the nastiness towards WSC. I don’t get what the beef is.
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Apologies, I wasn’t defending Leithart’s position: I couldn’t even understand what he was saying(:P)
I was just trying to argue that there is a middle ground: we’re not two distinct persons (Christian kingdoms, secular kingdom) but one person in two kingdoms but we belong to the kingdom of the church and so we will always be Other in the secular kingdom, though being able to chat about baseball quite easily.
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Alexander, you say that we Reformed should be able to recognize one another wherever we go in the world. Step back and really think about that. Do really mean that if I go to Brazil or the Congo I should be able to walk the streets and pick out the Reformed believers? I can’t even do that here in Little Geneva. Well, ok, my little game on Sunday mornings is to predict which car is going to which church: the big van with 7 kids and a license plate that says “Dykema 9” is going to the little Reformed church, while the wannbe goatees and edgy frames are going to the megachurch. I’m always right and stereotypes are fun. Other than that, though, I generally cannot walk into a Meijer and pick out the Reformed from the Methodist from the Catholic from the atheist.
Where you do have a point is in worship. I’ve heard DGH’s point before about smart doxological dress, but while it’s fine as far as it goes, I hedge. I’ve been in well dressed Catholic and Baptist churches. So what? While the point that how we dress both expresses and nurtures our spiritual posture is very well taken, the dress of the Reformed just doesn’t seem nearly as poignant as our actual worship. And if we worship like revivalists or Catholics I think we have a problem.
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By recognise I mean when we meet and converse with another there should be an affinity, a shared understanding. Not that I can look around the streets and pick out all the Christians.
Our dress was just a minor point. But small things like that are important.
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Zrim, so you dress like a slob when you go to church?
My only point is that everyone should dress (as much as possible) in a matter that fits the activity of worship. And if we had a sense of what was fitting, as Baptists, RC’s, and Reformed used to before 1970, we wouldn’t tolerate arguments about juggling in worship.
I’m all for transformation of culture if it means a return to standards of decency in worship.
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But, Alexander, even when I meet and converse I don’t know someone is Reformed until he tells me.
Darryl, yes, I agree that everyone should dress in a manner befitting a piety of reverence and awe. I have two surly daughters who will testify. But I guess I have more tolerance for flip flops if they aren’t tapping or jumping up and down.
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