Pagan Virtue or Angel Unawares?

Published on by D. G. Hart

I wonder if the w-wists out there have considered how much travelers to foreign countries need to trust people with the wrong w-w (only two exist, right?). Of course, back in the States we depend on pagans to drive on the right (spatially and legally) side of the road, give us correct change (not for buying a lottery ticket, of course), and remove the plaque from between our teeth. But when you don’t really know the currency or the language, your levels of trust go way up. The airline pilot is a biggie. Baggage handlers sure do make life easier if they make the correct transfers and place the bags on the designated carousel. And taxi drivers, who speak maybe 4 words of English, are particularly helpful when they deliver you to an apartment on an out of the way alley that you know even the best of cabbies in New York City would never know. (Plus, the name of the alley is longer than the alley itself, so long that you can’t even put it in the address field when reserving a taxi.)

And then comes the unexpected graciousness of temporary Italian neighbors. The other night as Mrs. Hart and I went out for dinner (her first night in Rome), I left without my key. Doors in Rome seem to come with latches that automatically lock. So we were locked out of our flat and had no phone. Our computers were inside and so email was out. Plus, the owner of the flat was away in Paris. I had no idea what to do other than break in the door or break down in sobs.

A neighbor, however, came to the rescue. It took about two minutes of hand gestures and pantomime to explain that that we were locked out of an apartment that we were renting for the short term. She called someone who knew our owner, who in turn called our owner, who in turn called a friend who had a spare key, who in turn drove ten minutes to let us use the key. In the meantime, our neighbor had gone out to buy a bottle of water for us while we waited for the key to arrive. Within 15 minutes we were back in business and headed out for dinner. And I was thanking the dear Lord that we did not have to try to use security guards from the institution where I am studying to make arrangements for a lock smith and for alternate housing for the night.

I still can’t believe what a kind providence this woman’s intervention was.

So, given my views of the fall, how do I account for this exceptionally gracious assistance? Common grace seems to be niggardly, as if this person only does something nice because God made her do it. An angel unaware might work and that would allow me to retain a view that pagans really are incapable of doing good.

Or maybe all people have a residue of goodness in them that is the after effect of being created in the image of God. Of course, they cannot do anything sufficiently good to merit God’s favor. But they can recognize right from wrong, the kindness of helping a stranger from the hurtful nature of ignoring someone’s distress.

Then again, I’m sure the obedience boys will tell us how this woman is not sanctified. In which case, I’m glad she can’t read English.

44 thoughts on “Pagan Virtue or Angel Unawares?”

  1. Surely (vestigial?) common sense, kindness, and reasonableness can be attributed to the imago dei. My example is one involving the hated, fart-in-your-general-direction, haughty French. One decent airport security official in Paris kept an innocent ticket swap from becoming cause for detention and imprisonment in my family’s case. In Xian America someone would likely have been cavity searched over it. Human scale helps, as opposed to the tyranny of procedure and bureaucracy.

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  2. Another explanation is that these were all Christians. But the naivete required to sustain it is too hard.

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  3. Darryl,

    Respectfully, I’m not sure the point here. Where do the “obedience boys” or world viewers disagree with this:

    “Or maybe all people have a residue of goodness in them that is the after effect of being created in the image of God. Of course, they cannot do anything sufficiently good to merit God’s favor. But they can recognize right from wrong, the kindness of helping a stranger from the hurtful nature of ignoring someone’s distress.”

    And I thought the point of the “only twoworld views” was that those who don’t have a Christian worldview can do things that manifest their being made in God’s image, it is just that (a la Van Til), when they do such things they are in some way being inconsistent with their most fundamental commitments?

    Maybe I’m completely wrong, but I’m not sure any of the “obedience boys” would deny that the hospitality you were shown are at least civic goods that manifest God’s common grace.

    Of course, it is difficult to pin down the content of the Christian worldview beyond what the Creeds and Confessions say, so that is a point against those in the Reformed camp at least who want to prescribe things that go beyond the confession.

    At any rate, I’m glad you and the Mrs. are okay and that you got back into your flat. A happy providence it would seem.

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  4. DGH,

    Great story, I am sure those were some stressful moments.

    Is the following what you are alluding to? The sum of the law is this: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart…, and love thy neighbor as thyself. This law is written on the heart of man as image bearer of the holy God (Romans 1-3).

    While it is true that the unregenerate suppress the truth of the law written on their hearts and some do this more than others, all unregenerate will not suppress all knowledge all the time. In fact, they may actually do things that would show forth the law written in their hearts. The result, as you experienced, is that we may often time live quiet and peaceable lives and even be aided by the unregenerate (though I do not want to assume the kind lady was unregenerate).

    I am struggling then with the obedience boys tie in. Can you elaborate? Also, for my sake, who are the particular people you are referring to as “obedience boys”? The BBs?

    Thank you,

    B

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  5. I don’t think the obedience boys really care. She’s not in college, doesn’t carry their surname and in no way pertains to their southern heritage or legacy with any greek fraternal society.

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  7. I think the problem in the camp of the GRN/Obedience Boys is that the ‘Napoleans on the Committee’ heavily influence the rest of the pack. I would guess that among the entire convocation, there is a percentage of ‘confused/unsure, but blindly following’, ‘a percentage that fears ‘voicing disagreement might mean not getting a letter of recommendation/be penalized/marginalized’, and of course, the rest of the group who ‘wholeheartedly share the Napoleanic Committee views’ (Bonaparte, not Dynamite). This conjectural statistical analysis could be refined further, but it just seems that many times the dynamic at work is to either agree, disagree, or remain uncertain/confused. By the way, this is all speculative on my part and not empirical or scientific.

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  8. Yes, but to really refute Schaffer, you have to replicate your experience in cultures that do not have “borrowed Christian capital.”

    Sounds like a grant proposal to me.

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  9. Robert, it may score epistemological points to assert inconsistencies between fundamental commitments and real word behaviors, but if we actually receive correct change and hospitality from unbelievers then what’s the point? Plus, isn’t it a little incoherent to at once admit that a “Christian worldview” isn’t needed to manifest being made in the image of God and then say one is being inconsistent? If all one needs to do good is to be made in the image of God then when it happens he’s being consistent.

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  10. Jeff, when we had Japanese exchange students in college their self-effacement, courtesy and respect put American arrogance in bold relief, making relative hash of the “borrowed capital” argument.

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  11. I wish I could stack up my mental abacus from life and conclude that Christians showed basic decency better than the other side.

    Or that Evangelicals and P&R were better than the other side of Christianity.

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  13. Plus, it would be hilarious to read a monograph about getting locked out of rooms around the world.

    He could call it Ausgeschlossen: The Worldview From the Fire Escape

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  14. Would be hard to top what Don Draper saw when he had to use the fire escape.

    And put it into stride for the business trip.

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  15. While life on earth is not yet heaven; it certainly is not hell either. Although there is much to dislike in our world, culture and society, there is also a large degree of mutual trust to maintain a good ordered society. Your wonderful story of God’s gracious providence evidences that the unbelieving are still compelled to live wisely and kindly.

    Thanks for sharing.

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  16. Zrim,

    Robert, it may score epistemological points to assert inconsistencies between fundamental commitments and real word behaviors, but if we actually receive correct change and hospitality from unbelievers then what’s the point?

    I think the point is to preserve the necessity of the Christian God for anything to make sense, or at least that’s how I read the presuppositionalists. The point is to preserve God as the standard of good and that if pagans do good, they’re doing so because they can’t fully suppress the knowledge of God. It comes through unconsciously in their acts of service. I’m not sure why that should be objectionable.

    Plus, isn’t it a little incoherent to at once admit that a “Christian worldview” isn’t needed to manifest being made in the image of God and then say one is being inconsistent?

    I’m not sure your point, here. If one’s fundamental commitments are oriented away from God and toward oneself, there really isn’t any reason why anyone should think an act of self-sacrifice such as the Italian neighbors displayed in this example is better than them mugging the Harts. We can be glad for it, but its purely a subjective evaluation.

    If all one needs to do good is to be made in the image of God then when it happens he’s being consistent.

    To bear the image of God fully, we have to bear the image of Christ perfectly, which none of us do. It seems to me that if one’s fundamental commitments are against God (certainly you agree in the case of the unregenerate), then these fundamental commitments are against what is truly and fully God in His sight. Insofar as an unbeliever or non regenerate person does good in any sense, he’s not reflecting his fundamental commitment to hate God and all that God loves. The inconsistency is with his fundamental commitment.

    I’m not sure why this should be objectionable except that a lot of you guys seem to come across at times as if you think that to even talk about a worldview means that one is a theonomist, want to reinstate medieval theories of masculinity, or that you’re just trying to maintain middle class bourgeois entitlement. Look, I know that there are a lot of people on the worldview side that come across this way or who actually want to do all of those things. But they’re not all like that, just like not all of the guys on the 2K side that you guys endorse are libertine kooks.

    Non-Christians can do good, though not in a meritorious sense for salvation, as Dr. Hart says. But it’s set up as if the “world viewers” deny that. I’m sure some of them do, but the Kuyperians who I’ve had as my professors didn’t.

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  17. Robert: The point is to preserve God as the standard of good and that if pagans do good, they’re doing so because they can’t fully suppress the knowledge of God. It comes through unconsciously in their acts of service. I’m not sure why that should be objectionable.

    I’m not sure that that is what is objected to.

    I’m with you: God is the standard of good. His moral law is binding on all persons, justified and unjustified alike.

    But whither now?

    If we’re going to talk ethical theory, then who is our object — the individual or the magistrate? What is our goal — sanctified behavior per 3rd Use of Law, or restraint of evil per Romans 13, or transformation of society per postmillennialism? What is our desired outcome — practical ethical behavior, or theoretical ethical decision-making?

    Each of those is legitimate, but not all of those are going to use Scripture in the same way or to the same degree.

    So those preliminaries have to be clearly sorted before we can start talking about the relevance of a distinctly Christian worldview to our enterprise.

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  18. Well, each of those is legitimate except the transformation of society per postmillennialism.

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  19. “Or maybe all people have a residue of goodness in them that is the after effect of being created in the image of God. Of course, they cannot do anything sufficiently good to merit God’s favor. But they can recognize right from wrong, the kindness of helping a stranger from the hurtful nature of ignoring someone’s distress.”

    Pardon the half-baked tangent off this point, but it also reminds me of something I’ve noticed about the message in some New Calvinist / PCA circles. And that is the tendency to insist that all unbelievers are deep down unhappy and miserable and need the gospel to fill the hole in their lives. Whether it’s whipping out the Augustine quote about the restless heart, or psychologizing the gospel to talk about the “idols of the heart,” the message is that we Christians need to help them fill that void, which is slightly different than calling them to repentance and faith. Maybe it fits the conversion narrative that is common with revivalism (i.e. I hit rock bottom until I found Jesus), but it comes off as a little condescending. In fact, many of the non-Christians I know in my suburban middle-class bubble are the decent type of people Dr. Hart describes above who also seem genuinely happy with their lives.

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  20. Most people do tend to be pretty decent in our day-to-day dealings with them. Sadly, religion seems to be one of the ways that people excuse NOT being decent to others at times. That’s unfortunate. We sometimes confuse how God might deal with certain people on Judgment Day with how we are allowed to treat them as fellow sinners.

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  23. Robert – I’m not sure why this should be objectionable except that a lot of you guys seem to come across at times as if you think that to even talk about a worldview means that one is a theonomist, want to reinstate medieval theories of masculinity, or that you’re just trying to maintain middle class bourgeois entitlement. Look, I know that there are a lot of people on the worldview side that come across this way or who actually want to do all of those things. But they’re not all like that, just like not all of the guys on the 2K side that you guys endorse are libertine kooks.

    Erik – It’s more about Colonial theories of masculinity.

    http://literatecomments.com/2014/04/15/civil-lawsuit-for-over-1000000-filed-by-lourdes-torres-manteufel-against-doug-phillips-vision-forum-ministries/

    Redcoats, no less. Meow!

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  24. Insofar as an unbeliever or non regenerate person does good in any sense, he’s not reflecting his fundamental commitment to hate God and all that God loves. The inconsistency is with his fundamental commitment.

    Robert, so what is he reflecting? If one’s fundamental commitments are oriented away from God then how do you explain that same person doing good or contrariwise explain another whose fundamental commitments are oriented to God doing evil? The point is that it’s not as simplistic as worldviewry seems to suggest, namely that there is a direct correspondence between one’s fundamental orientation and one’s works. Things are more complicated and less tidy than that. Abiding sin explains the believer’s evil deeds and the imago Dei explains the unbeliever’s good deeds, but you wouldn’t know it to hear neo-Calvinism speak.

    …a lot of you guys seem to come across at times as if you think that to even talk about a worldview means that one is a theonomist, want to reinstate medieval theories of masculinity, or that you’re just trying to maintain middle class bourgeois entitlement.

    The problem with worldview is that it isn’t a biblical category, it’s a construct of modernity. Where neos talk about worldview, 2kers talk about faith, which is the biblical category. Worldview has to do with this world, faith with the next one. Where do you think liberalism comes from? That it drops out of the sky from the liberalism factory? But it starts somewhere, namely a fundamental orientation away from God and to this world, speaking of fundamental orientations.

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  25. I know I’ll never look at a Colonial times diorama again without thinking of the homeschooling kingpin and his lady-in-waiting picture

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  28. Erik, the actor on your personal icon is……Stuart..?…can’t remember his last name. He was always the gentleman laying down his raincoat in the mud puddle for ladies to walk on in the old ‘Love American Style’ television show from the 70’s (giving away my age).

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  30. Robert, but if the obedience boys teach sanctification in ways that make me — as one who loves Jesus — feel inadequate, imagine our Italian neighbor.

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  31. B, all I meant was that if you’re going to raise the standard real high for sanctification of Christians, the “good” works done by non-Christians won’t even have a chance of clearing any threshold.

    And overall, I am concerned by a view of regeneration and sanctification that ignores what it means simply to be human, civil, courteous, respectful. Sanctification doesn’t really address manners and etiquette. I don’t think it has to. But manners and etiquette are by no means a monopoly among Christians. In fact, I know some sanctified folk that are pretty uncivil.

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  32. Jeff, maybe, but I’m more interested in all those Roman Catholic w-ws. Man, is that church diverse and decentralized, and boy have Jason and the Callers bought a certain bridge.

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  33. Robert, to be clear, I don’t think w-wists believe good works to be meritorious. But all the talk of redeeming culture sure doesn’t clarify what salvation is.

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  34. Is it too simplistic to say that common virtue, knowable by all, can be pleasing to men, but not God?

    Art. 12 (39 Articles) – “Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; neither do they make men meet to receive grace . . . yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but that they have the nature of sin.”

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  36. Erik,

    I don’t know if in your area local TV stations have alternate channels that play vintage shows, but sometimes it’s interesting to see people like Stuart Margolin in early roles before they became well-known, and it’s the same for films as well. I had (still have somewhere around here) the 1956 film “Away All Boats”, which is one of my favorite WWII movies. I watched it a few times and then saw a newly printed DVD of it in a store that had more information about the movie – and one line on the back cover said, ‘look for a young Clint Eastwood as a medic’. I could not remember seeing him before when I viewed it, but the next time I watched the movie, I watched it very carefully, especially after the heroic ship got hit by a kamakazi pilot, and the medics were at work on the wounded. Sure enough, the film’s hero asked a couple of medics on the deck how they were holding out, and one of them turned around to answer, and it was Clint Eastwood – for about a second, or not quite two. He was also in “Revenge of the Creature” as a lab assistant, before Rawhide.

    By the way, the obedience boys would ‘already be on me’ for making Clint Eastwood an idol for the narrative above.

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  37. DGH,

    Thank you for the response. Again, I am a little confused by what you are referring to. It seems like you have some book or sermon or article in mind that I am not aware of.

    What reformed Christians argue that etiquette or good manners are evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification?

    Regarding sanctification, I agree that even the plowing of the wicked is sin.

    The unregenerate can do things beneficial to the regenerate (my real estate tax bill went down last year!) but they do not do things pleasing to God (WCF 16:7). The regenerate can do things displeasing to God but may also do things glorifying to God because God looks on the regenerate in Christ (WCF 16:2,6).

    This does of course lead us straight back to what Christ did and what the Spirit is doing hence the beautiful phrase of the Divines that the uses of the law sweetly comply with the grace of the gospel.

    Again, thank you for your time, especially while traveling in Rome!

    B

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  39. Welcome, Erik. I would like to look into ‘Six Moral Tales’, also. Sounds interesting.

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  40. B, I don’t want to claim that any Reformed Christians look at manners or etiquette as the sanctifying work of the Spirit. But why don’t we talk about manners and etiquette being aspects of human existence that are necessary for life together before the consummation. And if we do start talking about the value of manners and etiquette, perhaps the obedience boys back off the bombast about good works.

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  41. I don’t know which is stranger, your acting like this is a revelatory insight, or your sniping at the “obedience boys” out of left field. Quit thinking so much and enjoy the water and the wine, dude.

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  42. Darryl, I’m glad you had such a heaven-sent intervention.
    Unexpected and unnecessary kindness is so striking. I fell once in a supermarket carpark and landed on my face, blood flowing, and sat there for a few stunned minutes with a stream of passersby averting their eyes (very wealthy neighbourhood). Then one woman came rushing up and offered what help she could, running off to the supermarket to get a pack of frozen peas for the swelling. God bless her, whoever she was.
    But your lady (in Rome after all) was probably neither a pagan nor an angel, just a regular Catholic with the attitude that God would like her to be kind to people. Although I am of Reformed background I sometimes see such things from Catholics that leave me awestruck. (Not just from them of course).

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  43. Token Woman, from what I can tell, lots of nuns in Rome, fewer priests, and lots more pagans. My neighborly helper is likely relieved that popes don’t run the city any more (though they sure do have a lot of real estate).

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  44. Well, obviously you know her and I don’t, but as a quick look at Wikipedia (not infallible I know) puts nominal Catholics at well over 80% of the Italian population, there’s certainly a passing chance that her loyalty lies there. Anyway she did something kind, and may God bless her.

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