Month: December 2012

Blame It On the Reformation (Part 3): When Disruption Started

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

Another feature of the Reformation that harmed the West, according to Brad Gregory in The Unintended Reformation, is the state’s increasing power, including the authority to regulate religious life.

Historians frequently regard the Reformation as a natural extension of secular authorities’ increasing control of the church in the fifteenth century. Such a view distorts more than it discloses, because the doctrinal disagreements introduced by the Reformation radically altered the nature of the long-standing jurisdictional conflicts between ecclesiastical and secular rulers.(146)

What that long-standing relationship was, however, is another question, one settled by Francis Oakley in his book, The Mortgage of the Past. He describes the conflict between pope and emperor during the Investiture Controversy this way:

Historically speaking, “there is really nothing unusual,” Brian Tierney has rightly argued, “in one rule aspiring to exercise supreme spiritual and temporal power. That . . . is a normal pattern of human government.” What was unusual instead about the European Middle Ages “was not that certain emperors and popes aspired to a theocratic role but that such ambitions were never wholly fulfilled.” The governmental dualism that sponsored this novel state of affairs was doubtless the cause of an immense amount of wasteful and destructive conflict. But it was conflict that marked the birth pangs of something new in the history of humankind: a society in which what we now call the state was gradually stripped of its age-old religious aura and in which its overriding claims on the loyalties were balanced and curtailed by those advanced persistently by a rival authority. That rival authority [the papacy], in turn, in no less significant a fashion, found its own imperial ambitions thwarted reciprocally by the competing power of emperors and kings. A society that was distinguished, therefore, by a deeply rooted institutional dualism and racked by the internal instability resulting there from. [40-41]

In other words, well before the Reformation came along to introduce doctrinal pluralism and instigated appeals to magistrates to prevent other magistrates in league with Rome from taking off the heads of Protestants, the medieval church, thanks to the ambitious claims of the papacy, introduced something new. This division between the secular and sacred was, as Oakley says, new in the history of the planet (except for Jesus’ own words about rendering to Caesar and to God). It also created an instability and rivalry in European governing institutions that predated the Reformation.

Another way of putting this is that from the perspective of the Eastern church circa 800, medieval Rome did to the unity and comprehensiveness of Constantinople what Gregory asserts about Protestantism. Not only did the Western church break with the East in 1054 to divide an earlier version of Christendom. But soon after that division came papal claims to supremacy during the Investiture Controversy that unsettled the existing political order in Europe and that further prevented a restoration of the older and historic Christendom.

In which case, Gregory’s decision to start his narrative with medieval Europe is arbitrary. If you start five hundred years earlier, Rome is the one guilty of setting into motion modernity, its pluralism, and its hegemonic nation-states.

How Protestants Read

Published on by D. G. Hart26 Comments

John Fea a while back posted this as his quote of the day:

“Good God! The People of Pennsylvania in seven years will be glad to petition the Crown of Britain for reconciliation in order to be delivered from the tyranny of their new Constitution.” John Adams on the democratic, unicameral 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution that gave all male taxpayers the right to vote. (Adams to Benjamin Rush, 12 October 1776).

I can imagine three major Protestant approaches to interpreting this remark.

1) The nationalist Protestant: “See? This proves the founders really were orthodox Christians.”

2) The experimental Protestant: “See? This proves the founders were not regenerate since they took the Lord’s name in vain.”

3) The two-kingdom Protestant: “See? This shows how fragile the American founding was (and what’s wrong with democracy).”

In other words, what is political should stay political. We don’t have to insert religion everywhere.

Of course, I left out the neo-Calvinist response: “See what happens when you legalize gay marriage? What’s that you say, gay marriage didn’t come along for another two centuries? Two centuries, two kingdoms, what’s the difference?”

What Protestant Converts May Be Giving Up

Published on by D. G. Hart144 Comments

First, they may exchange ecclesiastical deism for purgatorial deism. So explains Peter Leithart:

Some years ago, Jacques Le Goff argued in The Birth of Purgatory that the notion of Purgatory as a place distinct from heaven and hell emerged only in the late twelfth century. Notions of purgation after death appear much earlier, but Le Goff claimed that the linguistic evidence pointed to a later development. Purgatorium replaced purgatorius ignis and purgatoriis locis between 1160 and 1180.

Le Goff’s book ignited a fiery battle among medievalists, but more recently Megan McLaughlin (Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France, 18-19) has defended Le Goff. While admitted that he may have overstated his thesis, she thinks Le Goff “essentially correct.” She adds, “While individual early medieval writers (notably the Venerable Bede) may have described something like Purgatory in their works, there was certainly no shared notion of a single place of purgation in the next world before the twelfth century.”

They may also leave behind a culture where Bible reading and study is the norm (even if in decline, thanks to all those enthusiastic ways of accessing the Spirit). Here is one reader’s response to an appeal for Roman Catholics to read the Bible regularly:

The personality and intellectual type that would read the Bible cover to cover and remember pivotal passages as Aquinas did… is rarely present in Catholicism. That’s why you’ll come across Popes urging Catholics to read the Bible for the past 150 years to no avail. The type person is gone from Catholicism. Aquinas was the last famous Catholic who exhibited an encyclopedic memorization of Scripture. His equals before him were Jerome and Augustine. After Aquinas some saints like St. John of the Cross know a lot of scripture but not nearly as much as Aquinas. The vast reading and memorization of Jerome, Aquinas and Augustine of the Bible later passes into some Protestant sects instead of continuing within Catholicism. You can find fundamentalist truck drivers from say “Holiness” church who have read and memorized hundreds of verses just as Aquinas did. The mystery is why did the Aquinas/ Jerome/ Augustine Bible habit stop within Catholicism and reappear in some…not all…Protestant sects. Read Aquinas’ Summa Theologica end to end and you’ll see him on average quote pivotal passages of scripture perhaps 5 times a page for several thousand pages of five volumes in some editions. If Aquinas suddenly returned to earth, he would enjoy more, a week of conversing with a Billy Graham type than he would conversing with a Catholic with a Masters in Theology but who had not yet read even 20% of the Bible…nor memorized much of that. Why did the Bible habit exist in Aquinas but later pass into Protestant sects instead of remaining in Catholicism? We all know the switch involved the Reformation and the emphasis on the Council of Trent as corrective of lone Bible reading. But how did the flight from scripture become so thorough?

Why do the Callers at Called to Communion obscure these realities?

When Transformation Transforms the Transformers

Published on by D. G. Hart33 Comments

In arguably his most important book, The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry writes the following about the Amish (in ways that neo-Calvinists might find instructive and inspirational):

First, the Amish communities are, at their center, religious. They are bound together not just by various worldly necessities, but by spiritual authority. . . Whereas most contemporary sects of Christianity have tended to specialize in the interests of the spirit, leaving aside the issues of the use of the world, the Amish have not secularized their earthly life. . . .

Second, the Amish have severely restricted the growth of institutions among themselves, and so they are not victimized, as we so frequently are, by organizations set up ostensibly to “serve” them. Though they pay the required deferences to our institutions, they accept few of the benefits, and so remain, in perhaps the most important respects, free of them. They do not become dependent on them and so maintain their integrity. As far as I know, the only institutions in our sense that the Amish have started are their schools — and his, by our standards, for a strange reason: to keep the responsibility for educating their children and so, in consequence to keep their children. . . .

Third, the Amish are the truest geniuses of technology, for they understand the necessity of limiting it. . . . Whereas our society tends to conceive of the community as a loose political-economic mechanism of mutually competing producers, suppliers, and consumers, the Amish think of “the community as a whole” — that is, as all of the people, or perhaps, considering the excellence both of their neighborliness and their husbandry, as all the people and their land together. If the community is whole, then it is healthy, at once earthly and holy. The wholeness or healht of the community is their standard. And by this standard they have been required to limit their technology.

Berry goes on even to violate Old Life standards by applying the word Christian to a secular enterprise — as in Christian agriculture, which is “formed upon the understanding that is is sinful for people to misuse or destroy what they did not make.”

As side from the irony from H. Richard Niebuhr categories of Christ and culture that Anabaptists may have done more to create a Christian culture than Niebuhr’s (and Kuyper’s) Calvinist transformationalists, the example of the Amish (as Berry understands them) may also be instructive for those wanting to transform out culture. Instead of infiltrating the city to redeem it, the Amish have fled the dominant culture to cultivate a Christian culture (as they understand it). In so doing, they have avoided the problem that generally afflicts the infiltrators — that they become like the culture they inhabit, that is, in the case of city transformers, they become as urban and hip as they are Christian. The Amish are also apparently free from the self-delusion that often infects the transformationalists, then one where to justify redeeming the culture the cult loses what makes it distinct (the salt is no longer salt).

This is not, by the way, an endorsement of either the Amish (whom I admire) or the project of Christian culture. I am more and more persuaded that the longing for a Christian culture is illegitimate and whets the soul’s appetite for something we cannot have in this world. But if you are going to look for examples of Christian culture, the Amish may have unwittingly outscored the neo-Calvinists. Think Free University.

If Critics of 2K Have So Much Time To Criticize 2K, the Culture Must Be Fine

Published on by D. G. Hart127 Comments

Recent interactions with Dr. K. and his followers have confirmed at least to (all about) me that no end (or substance) is in sight for the fine tooth comb applied to two kingdom theology. In an earlier exchange, potential clarification of views went essentially nowhere. Dr. K. did admit finally that Misty Irons may not be the best evidence of 2k’s problems, though he continues to make gay marriage a test case for cultural engagement (when he is not banging the drum for Christian schools). Why blasphemy laws are not also not on the table for culture warriors is still up for grabs (at one point Dr. K. said that gay marriage and blasphemy were apples and oranges).

So too some clarification came in the realm of biblicism. Dr. K. went out of his way to say that the Bible is not sufficient for all of life. But then with the other hand he insisted that the Bible must provide the lens with which to interpret everything. I don’t know about you, but if a book is silent on plumbing and then I am told the book in question needs to be used to interpret plumbing, the drip in my mental faucet quickens.

Arguably, the only glove that landed on 2kers was our failure to be as outraged as neo-Calvinists were about the incident of a transgender man exposing himself (herself?) to co-eds at a Washington State college.

Now (okay, a little while ago) comes another assessment of Matt Tuininga’s effort to find a middle way between 2k and neo-Calvinism. Part of the annoyance of this post is the mind-numbing numbering of paragraphs the way that European academic books do (arguably nothing makes scholarship look more arcane than numbering and sub-numbering paragraphs in the manner of a automobile manual). After three articles of trying to explain 2k to people unfamiliar with it and a tad frightened, Tuininga receives a barely passing grade from Dr. K.:

This essay written by Matthew Tuininga is the third in a series seeking to explain the heart of the new movement known as “natural law and two kingdoms” (NL2K, R2K, or simply 2K). It remains to be seen, however, whether his numerous qualifications designed to safeguard his position and to effect rapprochement with worldview Calvinism will offer genuine clarity or generate more confusion.

With the culture in such bad shape as neo-Calvinists have it, you might think Dr. K. would see 2k as a rather minor concern. Do anti-2kers really think that a few book writers, who are by no means celebrities at the Gospel Coalition’s registrants count celebrity, are derailing the project to return the United States to biblical standards? If only Old Life were that popular.

Meanwhile, not to be missed is a good statement of 2k convictions on Tuininga’s part:

Perhaps the most obvious expression of this reality is Ephesians 4, the passage Calvin used to link his two kingdoms doctrine with its institutional implications for church government. Paul explains that the fruits of Christ’s ascension, in which he was made Lord of all things, is expressed in his pouring out of the gifts of the church’s ministry. It is as the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers equip the saints for ministry and build up the body into Christ that the saints “grow up in every way into him who is the head” (Ephesians 4:7-16). This is Paul’s presupposition when he declares in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23, “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future – all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”

Thus, the church is the only corporate expression of the kingdom in this age. It is only as we join ourselves to the body of Christ, the body of those who hold fast to Jesus, that we participate in the kingdom that is coming. And although we witness to our citizenship in this kingdom in every single thing that we do in this age, doing everything “as unto the Lord,” the primary form this witness to Christ’s lordship takes is that of submission, service, and sacrifice in an often hostile and oppressive world. Only after believers, like Jesus and in conformity to his example, set aside the glory that they have been promised, take up the form of a servant, and humble themselves to the point of death, can they be confident that God will exalt them above every knee “in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Philippians 2:5-11). Only by following in the way of the Lamb that was slain, to the point of martyrdom if necessary, do the witnesses of the Lamb conquer with him (Revelation 12:11; 14:4).

My lone quibble with Matt is the sign of lingering neo-Calvinism (which I attribute to his Covenant College education, in part, and which he denies). For instance, he still believes that Christians will look or be different and noticeable when they apply the Bible to their daily lives:

The call of the Christian life is therefore not to establish the Lordship of Christ through conquest or external cultural transformation but to witness to Jesus’s lordship by imitating him in his sacrificial service. When we conform to Christ’s example faithfully the effect on our various vocations and communities will indeed be profound. Those in government will recognize the Lordship of Christ (Psalm 2) and seek to use their power to secure peace and justice for those under their charge, rather than self-aggrandizement, and to protect the church in order that it might fulfill its task (1 Timothy 2:1-2). Those in positions of economic power will serve those placed under them rather than dominate them (Ephesians 6:9). Husbands will sacrifice themselves for their wives in imitation of Christ, recognizing their equality together in him (Ephesians 5:25-33). Those who have been given gifts, talents, or riches will use those resources to provide for those who are in need (Ephesians 4:28; 1 Timothy 6:18). About all of these cultural affairs, in which believers engage in common with unbelievers, Scripture has much to say.

I know Matt thinks I am less than moderate at times in my expression of 2k and part of my provocation stems from an unwillingness to grant culturally distinct ways to Christians based on biblical teaching. But I also know and I am sure Matt knows, plenty of non-Christians who believe government officials should serve the public, that businessmen should not ruthlessly pursue profits, that husbands should be considerate and loving toward their wives, and that those with resources will share them with those in need. In other words, I see nothing inherently distinctive or biblical in the Christian pursuit of these social and cultural goods. Do different motives exist for Christian businessmen compared to their unbelieving peers? Sure. Can I see those motives? No. And that is the point. The best stuff that Christians produce in public or cultural life is hardly distinct from non-Christian products. Where you do literally see Christianity at work is on Sunday.

Oh no, there goes 24/7 Christianity.

Like Eating Broccoli or Wearing a Scarf?

Published on by D. G. Hart51 Comments

I have been doing a little research lately with the aim of figuring out my (all about me) status in the world of Roman Catholicism. The more I read, the more it seems that the rationale for a Protestant converting to Rome is that he gets something akin to what my mother wanted me to have when she commended eating my vegetables or dressing appropriately for cold weather. It is not a life and death matter whether or not I am in fellowship with the Bishop of Rome. I am a separated brother and my baptism in the name of the Trinity should get me through — to what I am not sure since I know I have committed mortal sins and have not received forgiveness through the proper channels. But since Vatican II expanded (I mean developed) the earlier teaching on no salvation outside the church, my status seems to be one where salvation is possible even if I have not communed with Christ through the ministry of the one, holy, apostolic church. In other words, the reason for converting seems to be a matter of wisdom, or desiring a fuller expression of Christianity. Rome offers richer fare than Protestants’ fast food piety. But whether my soul is in danger is not altogether clear.

I refer to a discussion that took place a year or so ago over at my favorite arch-Roman Catholic site, Called to Communion. Tom Brown interacted with a piece by David VanDrunen about alleged changes in Rome’s views on salvation. The sticking point for logocentric Protestants seems to be the disparity between the Council of Florence and the Second Vatican Council. According to the former (1442):

It firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.

But according to the delegates to Rome during the 1960s:

For they who without their own fault do not know of the Gospel of Christ and His Church, but yet seek God with sincere heart, and try, under the influence of grace, to carry out His will in practice, known to them through the dictate of conscience, can attain eternal salvation.

VanDrunen calls this a “watershed” but Brown regards it as a development:

We see from Trent and St. Augustine a clear belief that the washing of regeneration is necessary for salvation, and a belief that extraordinary non-sacramental means of obtaining the fruits of Baptism are possible. To the teachings of Trent and St. Augustine, many more examples could be added. These teachings mean that very early on, Catholic doctrine qualified extra Ecclesiam in a way that left open the possibility of salvation for those not materially united to the Church. This proves false VanDrunen’s claim that the Catholic Church has recently “changed” its “older” teaching that “people could enjoy eternal life and escape everlasting damnation only by being received into its membership.”

In fact, over the centuries the Church carefully has developed a nuanced doctrine of salvation for those not materially united to her. This process has been so cautious because of the weighty concern of calling all sinners to the ordinary means of grace through formal union with the Church, on the one hand, and the similarly weighty concern of avoiding the appearance of delimiting God’s ability to extend grace and salvation through extraordinary means, on the other. It is this process which has led the Church to its reflection on salvation for those who are invincibly ignorant, the subject of VanDrunen’s article. As the Catholic Catechism teaches, “Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.

Worthy of comment here is what this seems to mean for the doctrine of original sin. It appears that Brown’s view weakens the devastating effects and consequences of sin. He seems to think that Rome teaches that anyone can be saved, even without a baptism that would remove the guilt of sin (according to Rome). So I’m not sure how this really helps the case he is making. Whenever Rome started to teach that it was possible for salvation outside the church, and even if Vatican II is a development of earlier teachings, a view which makes salvation possible apart from Christ is one in need of serious reform. In other words, how seriously does Brown think Rome takes sin?

Either way, it is a curious defense for another reason. Conservative Protestants objected to Protestant liberalism for denying that belief in Christ was essential for salvation. Back when Re-Thinking Missions came out, and when missions boards of the various Protestant churches countenanced the idea that Christians could cooperate with non-Christian religions in the enterprise of religion, conservatives were rightly opposed and believed the proverbial straw had broken the mainline churches’ witness. Rome’s own flirtation with an expansive view of salvation seems to move in a direction comparable to the old liberal Protestant project. The irony is that some Protestants are attracted to Rome because of its conservatism as opposed to the wishy-washiness and diversity of Protestantism. That quest for a Roman Catholic conservatism would be a lot more plausible if it included the old view articulated by the Council of Florence.

Postscript: in one of the comments in this thread, even a younger Jason Stellman was not buying development over change:

From where I sit as a non-Catholic, what this looks like is an example of a true change being euphemized as a development. When the early position is “No one can gain eternal life unless he is joined to the Catholic Church,” and the later position is, “Some people can gain eternal life even if not joined to the Catholic Church,” well, that sounds like a change rather than a development.

To me, anyway….

If You're Not a Member, You Don't Commune

Published on by D. G. Hart149 Comments

Here is an article lauding church membership to parachurch workers. In many respects, each of the ten reasons exposes the parasitic relationship that parachurch organizations have with communions. For instance:

3. Church membership allows you to invite members of your local body to participate in your work and be strengthened by it. It enables you to invite others to join in the work of your ministry. Other church members can pray, give, help strategize, or volunteer to help you in your work.

Or:

9. Church membership might even allow you to cultivate your support base. Submitting your life to a church allows people to know you and trust you, and, I hope, to make you trustworthy. In other words, Christians should be able to give their money to people they know and trust, and your formal commitment to a church allows this to happen.

Only in number ten does the author get around to the biggest reason:

10. You will experience the ordinances as Scripture intends. With the exception of missionary contexts in which no church exists (as in Acts 8), Scripture always places the practice of the ordinances in the setting of the local church. The Lord’s Supper and baptism should be practiced among a community of believers who have covenanted together under the preached Word and discipline. In some ways, this point is the culmination of the others above. We should share the bread and cup of communion with those who are alike and different from us—those whom God has brought together—so that we might corporately declare his death until he comes again (1 Cor. 11:17-34). Communion among affinity groups can cloud the universal and inclusive nature of the gospel.

In point of fact, unless someone is baptized and a member in good standing in a church, they should not partake of the Supper nor should any session permit the baptism of the non-members’ children.

Sorry to sound so vinegary. But I am trying to remind the parachurch Gospel Co-Allies of their commitment to the visible church.

What Bible Are Neo-Calvinists Reading?

Published on by D. G. Hart52 Comments

Is this the tone or posture that characterizes those Reformed Protestants who insist that the only genuine Christianity is the one that is fully engaged with this world, 24/7?

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. (2 Corinthians 5:1-10 ESV)

And when you turn to Calvin for his comments on this passage, we read the following:

For Paul has it in view, to correct in us impatience, dread, and dislike of the cross, contempt for what is mean, and in fine, pride, and effeminacy; and this can only be accomplished by raising up our minds as high as heaven, through contempt of the world. Now he has recourse to two arguments. On the one hand, he shows the miserable condition of mankind in this life, and on the other hand, the supreme and perfect blessedness, which awaits believers in heaven after death. For what is it that keeps men so firmly bound in a misplaced attachment to this life, but their deceiving themselves with a false imagination — thinking themselves happy in living here? On the other hand, it is not enough to be aware of the miseries of this life, if we have not at the same time in view the felicity and glory of the future life. This is common to good and bad alike — that both are desirous to live. This, also, is common to both — that, when they consider, how many and how great miseries they are here exposed to, (with this difference, however, that unbelievers know of no adversities but those of the body merely, while the pious are more deeply affected 508 by spiritual distresses,) they often groan, often deplore their condition, and desire a remedy for their evils. As, however, all naturally view death with horror, unbelievers never willingly quit this life, except when they throw it off in disgust or despair. Believers, on the other hand, depart willingly, because they have a better hope set before them beyond this world. This is the sum of the argument. Let us now examine the words one by one.

Calvin adds on verse eight specifically:

Observe here — what has been once stated already — that true faith begets not merely a contempt of death, but even a desire for it, and that it is, accordingly, on the other hand, a token of unbelief, when dread of death predominates in us above the joy and consolation of hope. Believers, however, desire death — not as if they would, by an importunate desire, anticipate their Lord’s day, for they willingly retain their footing in their earthly station, so long as their Lord may see good, for they would rather live to the glory of Christ than die to themselves, (Romans 14:7,) and for their own advantage; for the desire, of which Paul speaks, springs from faith. Hence it is not at all at variance with the will of God. We may, also, gather from these words of Paul, that souls, when released from the body, live in the presence of God, for if, on being absent from the body, they have God present, they assuredly live with him.

Neo-Calvinism indeed.