Author: D. G. Hart

How Deep Down Does Religion Go?

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Word has it that the polls on Scottish independence are narrowing, with the yes vote gaining momentum. Sorting out all the angles of relations among the Brits and Irish can get really complicated, especially if we remember what Fintan O’Toole reminded us a few decades ago:

In ethnic terms, Ireland is far less complex than many European societies, and infinitely less so than the United States. The biggest inward migration in the last five hundred years came from Scotland in the eighteenth century, and its descendants still form the largest single minority group. But Scotland itself had been settled by the Irish many centuries before. The very name Scotland means “land of the Irish,” “Scotus” being the Latin for an Irishman. The west of Scotland even today is called Argyll, from Ar-Gael, the eastern Irish. In the long view, the Scottish influx in the seventeenth century to the northern Irish province of Ulster is part of a pattern of back-and-forth migration between two places that are, after all, separated at their nearest point by less than forty miles of water.

O’Toole used that feature of Irish and Scottish history to make a two-kingdom point about “the troubles,” namely, that they had far less to do with Protestant-Roman Catholic conflicts than meets the eye:

Only a fool would deny that the Troubles in Northern Ireland or the sporadic episodes of rebellion and repression in the previous five centuries can be understood without taking account of the division between Catholics and Protestants. What can be denied, I think, is that religion itself has ever been the primary source of those conflicts. In Tanner’s eyes, religion is the wound that has caused Irish people to bleed over the centuries. It makes more sense, however, to think of religion as the weapon that has been used to cause the wound. Religion, like its secular counterpart history, has been wielded at different times and in different ways in the pursuit of economic and political advantage.; “Take away the religious factor and you still have enough economic, political, and national divisions to fuel a great deal of nastiness and a few wars.”

The broad shape of modern Irish history certainly forces the issue of religion to the forefront. From the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, the Irish ruling class was Protestant and imperial, deriving its power from its origins in the slow conquest of the island by England. Those over whom it ruled were for the most part Catholics. Indeed, Ireland stands out as one of the few European countries in which the religion of the masses was not simply determined by the choice of their masters. The Catholic population stubbornly resisted the Protestant Reformation. The state church, the Episcopalian Church of Ireland, treated the Gaelic-speaking masses as a subject people rather than a flock to be protected and served. As a consequence, Catholicism became by and large the faith of those whose politics could, after the French Revolution, be called nationalist; and Protestantism was the religion of those who were loyal to Britain.

This is what happened; and give or take some important nuances, it is not in dispute. Still, an interesting set of questions can be promoted by a little counterfactual speculation. What if Henry VIII had remained happy with Catherine of Aragon and true to his papal title of Defender of the Faith? What if the English Reformation had failed, or had been reversed by the Stuart dynasty? With England and Ireland still loyal to the pope, would there have been no oppression and resistance, no haughty land-owning aristocracy and resentful dirt-poor peasantry, no eventual nationalist revolution? The answer to those questions, surely, is no. Take away the religious factor and you still have enough economic, political, and national divisions to fuel a great deal of nastiness and a few wars.

O’Toole could well have used the factual of England’s relationship to Scotland in the seventeenth century to make his point. Even though both kingdoms were Protestant, that “common” faith hardly provided a smooth ride to the Union of 1707. Charles I’s head is proof.

The Call's Fine Print

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Still waiting for Jason and the Callers to weigh in on these matters:

In life, Archbishop Fulton Sheen was exceptional, a riveting Catholic preacher on radio who outpolled star comedian Milton Berle in the early days of television, winning two Emmys and a following that was the envy of Bible-thumping Protestants.

After his death in 1979, it was no surprise that Sheen would be pushed for sainthood. But now two bishops have clashed in an unusual public dispute over who holds claim to Sheen’s body: the New York archdiocese, where he is buried, or the diocese of Peoria, Ill., where he was raised and ordained.

The fight between Illinois Bishop Daniel Jenky and Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York erupted into public view Wednesday, when Jenky issued a statement blasting the New York archdiocese for thwarting Sheen’s expected beatification next year by reneging on an agreement to return the late archbishop’s body to Peoria.

“Bishop Jenky was personally assured on several occasions by the Archdiocese of New York that the transfer of the body would take place at the appropriate time,” the Peoria diocese said in a statement.

The statement said that senior Vatican officials were set to approve a miracle attributed to Sheen’s intervention — the revival after an hour of a stillborn baby — clearing the way for him to be beatified in a few months, the final step before formal canonization, which would require a second miracle.

Rome expected that Sheen’s body would be transferred from the crypt under St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where he is buried, to Peoria to collect relics from the body, the Illinois diocese said. Peoria has been in charge of Sheen’s cause for canonization since it was opened in 2002. In 2012, then-Pope Benedict XVI declared Sheen “venerable,” a requisite first step before beatification.

But the New York archdiocese denied Jenky’s request to move the body and “after further discussion with Rome, it was decided that the Sheen Cause would now have to be relegated to the Congregation’s historic archive.”

The Callers’ spin? The veneration of relics is biblical:

I began to appreciate was just how biblical the practice really was. I realized that the veneration of relics, belief in their miraculous powers, and in the intercession of departed saints and angels was deeply Hebraic and Jewish.

Never mind how deeply political and messy and unedifying the making of saints is. Just set your mind on things above (except when you’re receiving notices from the Vatican and looking at maps on your way to the remains of your favorite saint).

Glass Half-Full Kind of Guy that (all about) I Am

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So who is more optimistic or pessimistic? Two-kingdom folks are generally dismissive of efforts to Christianize society and so are known for being overly sour about the possibilities of human “flourishing.” Theonomists, neo-Calvinists, and transformationalists, in contrast, are much more hopeful about the prospects of improving the world and doing so through Christian influence (however defined). (In light of certain affinities among the obedience boys, experimental Calvinism, and sanctification, we may also count the pietistic Calvinists as optimists. And just so Roman Catholics don’t feel left out, the folks who are nostalgic for Christendom and think it possible to defend and maintain western civilization also seem to qualify as optimists.)

And yet, look at how this works out in practice. The optimists about improving society wind up being nattering nabobs of negativism (thanks Spiro) because they look around and recognize that everything is not measuring up to the standards of human “flourishing.” In contrast, the pessimists wind up being fairly hopeful about the prevailing social conditions because they sense it could be a lot worse. Think back to Cain and Abel, or think of all those monarchs in Israel and Judah who were not exactly in the obedience-boy camp, or think of those early Christians who were falling away to bad teaching or committing immoral acts (think Corinth).

So maybe the question is where do we place our expectations? Are they high or low or somewhere in between? It does strike me that anyone who takes original sin seriously, that means Calvinists (who put “total” in Total Depravity), can never set the bar too low. Even though Augustine was not a Calvinist — it would have been anachronistic for him to be — he seemed to understand (according to Francis Oakley) the value of low expectations based on human turpitude:

. . . accepting the fact that Augustine’s whole conception of the two cities is shaped by his overriding preoccupation with the effects of original sin and his insistence that only the grace of God, gratuitously given, can counteract those effects, and accepting also the corollary that the elect and the reprobate remain inextricably commingled in all the societies of this world, we can still ask of him what position, what dignity, is under such circumstances to be accorded to the civil community, to the empires and commonwealths of this world. And in the reply that Augustine yields to this question, he succeeds in being responsive not only to the several strands, positive as well as negative, woven into the Christian pattern of thinking as it emerges from the New Testament but also to some strands of Hellenistic political thinking and even, in more muted fashion and going back further still, to the Platonic vision of the ideal republic capable of assuring to its citizens true peace, concord, harmony, and fulfillment.

In so doing, however, he is responsive also to the complexity of the Gospel teaching about the Kingdom of God. He recognizes, that is to say, that according to that teaching the Kingdom of God is at once a spiritual kingdom coming into existence as Christ comes to reign in the hearts of the faithful and, at the same time, a transcendent society, a kingdom not of this world, one not destined for complete realization until the ending of time. And by that recognition Augustine firmly endorses the New Testament’s forthright rejection of the archaic sacral pattern and its revolutionary reduction of what we call “the state” to the position of a merely secular entity . . . . because of the Fall and the concomitant corruption of human nature, not only has there been a palpable dimming in man=s perception of those norms but, beyond that, and even when he recognizes them, a catastrophic diminution in his ability to follow them. Only among the ranks of the redeemed, by God’s inexplicable mercy and the gratuitous bestowal of supernatural grace, can now be attained the peace and harmony that, in the state of innocence, man had enjoyed as his natural condition. As for the rest of humankind, their very survival depends on the protection of new institutions and new laws of an essentially political nature appropriate to their fallen condition.

For Augustine, then, subjection to political authority enters the picture not as something natural to man but, like slavery or for that matter death itself, as an outcome of Adam’s primordial fall from grace. Far from being a means of redemption, or a school for character, or even an agency capable of securing for humankind a good quality of life, the commonwealth or empire is a remedy, indeed a punishment, for sin, and it has in all humility to be accepted as such. . . .

The central thrust, then, of Augustine’s mature theopolotical thinking, as we encounter it in The City of God, is to make unambiguously clear the fact that the “state” or civil authority, however vital its function, is nothing more than a secular instrumentality adapted to the evanescent conditions of the saeculum or present age, an essentially limited and necessarily coercive force that lacks both the authority and the ability to reach beyond the imposition of a merely earthly peace and a merely external order to mould the interior dispositions of men. (Francis Oakley, Empty Bottles of Gentilism, 127-130)

Reporting as Cheerleading

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Here’s another sign that the world is not going to the secularist dogs: the Boston Globe has started a website devoted to covering Roman Catholicism. Here’s one early story about the effort (and another):

Crux joins a small, and growing, network of sites connected to the paper, including Boston.com, BostonGlobe.com, BDCWire, and the most recently launched Beta Boston. For newspapers like the Globe, diversification typically means finding a way to spin off parts of the existing business to niche audiences inside a geographic boundary. Crux shares a strategy more common with online publishers who want to tap digital audiences through interest areas.

“We saw an opportunity to fill a need,” said Globe editor Brian McGrory. “There’s a real hunger. We’re at a unique moment.”

But since other organizations do this, why bother with Crux?

Crux is entering a crowded field of Catholic news sites like the National Catholic Reporter, the National Catholic Register, and Commonweal. Allen said many religious news sites can be too close to the story, either backed by the church or sponsored by Catholic groups.

Allen said they hope their independence and backing from the Globe will give Crux credibility and a distinct identity. “The trick is to be close enough to the story to get it right, but far enough away to be objective,” he said.

The early signs are not encouraging, since Allen’s first story (and he is a fine journalist in my estimate) is one part Chamber of Commerce, two parts devotional uplift (and oh, by the way, does Jesus matter?):

■ In India, the Catholic Church this week hosted a major conference on family farms, responding to a growing crisis of farmer suicides.

In the last 10 years, 300,000 Indian farmers are believed to have taken their own lives. Generally these are small-time rural farmers squeezed among mounting debts, declining yields, and pressure from large agriculture conglomerates.

Led by Caritas, a Catholic charitable group, the Indian church is proposing a program of support for small farmers that includes favorable tax and credit policies, price supports, organization of rural cooperatives, and stronger social security protection.

■ In South Sudan, security services loyal to President Salva Kiir raided the church-run Bakhita Radio in Juba, taking it off the air for alleged violations of national security. Most observers saw it as an effort to muzzle criticism, which was seemingly confirmed when officials said the station could resume broadcasting if it agreed not to air political programs.

Catholics are an important chunk of the population in South Sudan, and Kiir himself is Catholic. The church backed independence in 2012, but many Catholics have soured on the country’s direction. It’s mired in a civil war and, according to the United Nations, has the worst food crisis in the world, with 50,000 children facing death from malnutrition.

Bakhita Radio was a voice of the independence movement, and Kiir appears afraid it could be a threat to his power as well.

■ In Lebanon on Thursday, leaders of Eastern Catholic churches from across the Middle East issued a statement denouncing the Islamic State in northern Iraq and urging the international community to stop its “crimes against humanity.”

In a separate interview with Italian TV, Patriarch Louis Sako of Baghdad called for an international military effort, including Arab nations, to bring down the self-declared caliphate. He objected to the current US strikes, not on pacifist grounds, but because they don’t go far enough. If the United States was serious, Sako said, it would go after ISIS in Mosul.

In their statement, the patriarchs also warned against mounting anti-Christian pressure in Syria and Egypt, saying Christians there are being forced to migrate due to “aggression and criminally hateful acts.”

These cases are all different, but the common thread in each is that Catholicism matters.

Peter Lawler, a Roman Catholic himself, might be tempted to say in response, “not so fast”:

A plausible interpretation of America and the world at the moment is that the imperatives of the 21st century global marketplace are so powerful they trump anything religious and political leaders say or do.

Techno-economic change does not, to be sure, trump anything and everything that nature might do. We recently had the near-miss of the stormy sun disrupting our electric grid and plunging us into the 18th century, and experts think there’s a 12 percent that could still actually happen over the next decade. That’s a lot more scary, if you think about it, than the possible long-term effects on the climate of anthropogenic global warming, although I’ll admit there’s an inconvenient truth or two there, too.

There’s also, of course, the disturbingly successful indifference of Putin and ISIS to the market, and the maybe more disturbing agility by which the Chinese manage to be both authoritarian nationalists and techno-cagey capitalists.

Still, there’s plenty of evidence that capitalism—despite lots of blips here and there—has won. On the strength of that evidence, we are seeing a kind of libertarian convergence in the behavior of the two major American political parties. We read that the Koch brothers, who understand themselves as humane social liberals on issues such as same-sex marriage, are moderating the Republican agenda by working to rid the party of its reactionary social/cultural conservatism. The Republicans should restrict their message to the issues of cutting taxes on “job creators” and eliminating as many government regulations as possible—including getting rid of the basic arbitrariness of affirmative action quotas and any laws privileging the rights of unions over the rights of free individuals to work.

Granted, it might be hard for the editors and reporters for the Globe’s new website to report that capitalism matters more than Roman Catholicism, but then again, isn’t it a journalist’s job at least to ask that question.

My impression of Crux so far is that it is going to do to Roman Catholicism what features journalism does to the new restaurant in the neighborhood. Whether Bostonians or U.S. Roman Catholics need such a service is anyone’s guess, and whether non-Roman Catholics will be tempted to turn to the Globe’s Crux for news on why Roman Catholicism matters is even a bigger mystery.

What does deserve some attention, though, is that for all the complaints about the secular media and its neglect of religion, when journalists do report on faith they wind up saying more positive things than asking tough questions. That’s true for Protestants as much as Roman Catholics. Believers generally like to have their religious identities stroked. Accentuate the positive.

That’s an odd outcome for Christians since if they pay any heed to the Bible they will notice that a large section of it — the Old Testament — is devoted to the royal screw ups (literally) who ran Israel and Judah into exile. That is not an uplifting story, and that may be another reason for taking the republication doctrine to heart.

Was Victoria Osteen Channeling Jonathan Edwards?

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I was not planning to write about this since discussing the Osteens is like mistaking Bill O’Reilly for Michael Oakeshott. But I am intrigued by the experimental Calvinist response to Pastorette Osteen’s remarks on the importance of experiencing happiness in worship. The issue is conceivably whether we pit God’s glory with our experience in worship. And sure enough, the experimental Calvinists echo Pastorette Osteen. Ligon Duncan reminds us that even the famous first answer of the Shorter Catechism (an experimental Calvinist product) combines God’s glory with our enjoyment:

The Reformed steadfastly affirm that the fundamental purpose of human existence is God’s glory, but we refuse to pit God’s glory and human happiness against one another (as Ms. Osteen, perhaps unwittingly does in her misguided exhortation). The very first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism gets at this. “What is man’s chief end?,” it asks. The resounding answer is: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” In other words, our chief and highest purpose, goal and end in life is God’s glory. That is what we live for. Whereas many of our contemporaries think that God is the chief means to our highest end (happiness), the Reformed do not believe that God is a means to an end, he is The End. He is the reason and aspiration for which we exist. There is no ultimate happiness and satisfaction and fulfillment and joy apart from him.

BUT, the Reformed do not believe that God’s glory and our joy stand in opposition. We do not believe that those two things are in contradiction. Indeed, we believe that they are inseparable. The Reformed believe that it is impossible to pursue God’s glory without our own souls being blessed with everlasting good. We think that our fullest joy cannot be realized or experienced apart from the pursuit of God’s glory.

That is John Piper’s cue:

Christian Hedonism teaches that all true virtue must have in it a certain gladness of heart. Therefore the pursuit of virtue must be in some measure a pursuit of happiness. And the happiness, which makes up an essential part of all virtue, is the enjoyment of the presence and the promotion of the glory of God. Therefore, if we try to deny or mortify or abandon the impulse to pursue this hapiness, we set ourselves against the good of man and the glory of God. Rather we should seek to stir up our desire for this delight until it is white hot and insatiable on the earth.

And then Piper chimes in with Edwards:

Self-love, taken in the most extensive sense, and love to God are not things properly capable of being compared one with another; for they are not opposites or things entirely distinct, but one enters into the nature of the other. . . Self-love is only a capacity of enjoying or taking delight in anything. Now surely ’tis improper to say that our love to God is superior to our general capacity of delighting in anything. (Miscellanies, #530, p.202)

I am not saying that Piper, Duncan, and Edwards are wrong because they echo Pastorette Osteen. But it is striking to see how many people reacted negatively (Christian and not) to Osteen’s video and how experimental Calvinists are less inclined to pounce.

Now in the world of Reformed Protestant objections to Lutheranism, it is also striking to see how the funny Lutheran guy (thanks to our New Jerusalem correspondent) responds to the Osteen comment:

In their sermons and books, both Joel and Victoria Osteen give full-throated endorsement to the prosperity gospel, a theology which states that those enduring hardships, poverty, and sickness have only their lack of faith and confidence to blame for their suffering. There are, of course, some enormous theological problems with this Christianized version of “The Secret,” where you obtain God’s blessings by speaking them into existence. The first is that it has no basis in the Scriptures and conveniently ignores all of the words that Jesus speaks about the question of suffering, the cost of discipleship, and the blessedness of persecution. The second is that it offers nothing but despair to those who are faithfully enduring the crosses Christ has given them to bear. And the third is that such a doctrine simply doesn’t square with the lives of those who were the first to tell us about God’s blessings in Christ (self-promotion alert).

So is it bad for Victoria Osteen to encourage us to think of God as the “Treat Yo Self” Tom Haverford to our name-it-and-claim-it Donna Meagle? Most definitely. But surely it’s a few notches lower on the pole of theological indefensibility than speaking words that, one, say the exact opposite of what the Bible says; two, belittle suffering Christians with the insensitivity a man horking down a hot fudge sundae three inches from the face of a starving child; and, three, imply that St. Peter, St. Paul, and even Jesus Himself must have been really lousy Christians who couldn’t unlock God’s potential blessings.

In other words, the funny Lutheran guy sees here a version of the prosperity gospel. And so my point is whether we should see the prosperity gospel also at work in experimental Calvinism — as in the happier, the more you’re experiencing God’s presence, or the more holy you are, the more pious and spiritually successful you are. And lo and behold, along comes Mark Jones to confirm the point:

I am of the view that powerful preaching, by a minister who labours week-in, week-out, with his flock has a strong correlation to his own godliness. I think Robert Murray M’Cheyne was right to say, “a holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.” A man who has been broken – who really does preach with “fear and trembling” (1 Cor. 2:3) – is a man people will listen to week-in, week-out. There’s a reason God “breaks” his servants: he wants them to preach as broken men, not as those who strut around like peacocks. There’s a reason old, seasoned ministers have a massive advantage over young ministers. And it’s a good reason – they speak with a type of wisdom that comes from many years of ministry. Personally, I rarely listen to preachers under the age of 45 – with apologies to my friends who are ministers under 45 (you know who you are).

In 1 Timothy 4:16 Paul writes the following to Timothy: “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

A plain reading of the text leaves us with little doubt that personal holiness and perseverance in holiness are means (along with teaching true doctrine) that God uses in the salvation and sanctification of Christ’s bride. What a thought, for ministers, that watching ourselves and our teaching has eternal consequences for us and our people. That’s why, if you desire to be a minister, you’re either called or mad, though hopefully not both!

And there you have it — making the world safe for celebrity pastors (how else do we explain their success or their joy?).

Sad Day in Calvinist History

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Say so long to New Amsterdam.

On Aug. 26, 1664, 350 years ago Tuesday, a flotilla of four British frigates led by the Guinea, which was manned by 150 sailors and conveying 300 redcoats, anchored ominously in Gravesend Bay off Brooklyn, between Coney Island and the Narrows.

Over the next 13 days, the soldiers would disembark and muster at a ferry landing located roughly where the River Café is moored today, and two of the warships would sail to the Battery and train their cannon on Fort Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan.

Finally, on Sept. 8, the largely defenseless settlement tolerated a swift and bloodless regime change: New Amsterdam was immediately renamed New York. It would evolve into a jewel of the British Empire, endowed with a collective legacy — its roots indelibly Dutch — that distinguished it from every other American colony.

Do not take it personally, though, if you have not been invited to the 350th birthday party. None is scheduled in the city. Neither the British nor the Dutch are planning any official commemoration. Nor is Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Shouldn’t the good Calvinists at Redeemer NYC have led a protest? After all, those Dutch colonists were the forerunners of neo-Calvinism.

Are Christians Unfit to Govern?

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The old canard about Roman Catholics in the U.S. was that they put loyalty to a foreign prince (the pope, who still is a prince within the Vatican’s 150 square acres and its very big bank) above the Constitution. For some reason, except for the Covenanters U.S. Protestants didn’t seem to think that their allegiance to Christ as king and submission to him as lawgiver jeopardized their loyalty to the Constitution or their patriotism.

The problem is still with us — the Protestant one, that is (more to come on the Roman Catholic aspect). If your religious identity is so deep-down diving that it is going to kick in practically any moment that you are in power, then shouldn’t citizens who don’t share your faith worry that you are going to rule in a way that contradicts the religious neutrality that the Constitution tries to adopt (impossible though it may be for all of those first-principle folks). Here’s an example:

I’m a conservative before I’m a Republican. I was once even an elected Republican. But before I’m a father or husband, I am a Christian. My politics have to be balanced by my faith. That faith requires me to put faith, hope, mercy, and grace ahead of much, including a lot of short term political gain. And sometimes that requires me to rely on Christ for justice, not the government.

Eschatology is the study of end times. It is the one area of biblical study people often view in their own time. In the 1800′s with the rise of the Great Awakening, students of eschatology viewed the end times rather favorably. The whole world would come to Christ, many of them thought. I view the ends times more pessimistically. I think there’ll be many more through the pearly gates than I want, but a whole lot less than I expect. And I think as we descend into more cultural and societal chaos on the road to the last day, it will be more and more important for those of us in politics to decide which comes first, faith or politics. They can be balanced. I try, sometimes fail, but keep trying. A growing number of people on the right are no longer trying to balance. They are either going completely out of the public square, or all in without Christ in their heart or on their tongue thinking they can just visit him on Sunday.

We should find balance. We may fail, but we should keep trying. We should not recede from the public square and a growing number of conservatives are showing more willingness to drive from the public square those who urge greater measures of Christian grace and charity than they prefer.

Why does this fellow feel he needs to regard political problems as religious? The challenges that confront the U.S. government have almost nothing to do with the difficulties that confront pastors and church officers. So if you are a legislator or president or judge and you hold office by virtue of being elected by Americans, not just the Christian ones, then don’t you have an obligation to execute your office in a way that is in the best interests of the people you serve (Americans and American-Christians)? But if you think that you are always going to have to act as a Christian in public office, then should you be allowed to hold power in a government that shows no religious preferences?

I get it. Politicians face ethical dilemmas but those are not the same as a personal preference or conviction on the one hand and what is best for everyone on the other. A Major League Baseball umpire may have grown up as a Phillies’ fan, but if he is behind the plate for a Phils-Pirates game, he’s supposed to call the same strike zone for both pitchers. An elder in a church may love his wife, but if she comes before session owing to complaints from other mothers about poor performance during nursery duty, the elder has to either recuse himself or apply a standard that he might not apply at home (if a relative of the BB’s his rule at home is likely even less forgiving).

So doesn’t the same apply to Christian legislators who would seek public office in the greatest nation on God’s green earth? Don’t they have to act in the best interests of citizens who are both God-deniers and God-fearers?

Why Republication Matters

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What exactly is so threatening about this?

Every Reformed minister loves preaching from Romans and Galatians. Presenting the Mosaic law as teaching a works principle really helps in explaining Paul’s doctrine of justification: what sin is all about, why people can’t rely on their own law-keeping, how faith is radically different from works, how Christ fulfilled the terms of the law so that we may be justified. That’s the gospel as I see it, but you can’t explain the gospel without understanding the law. Or take all of those Old Testament passages that call for Israel’s obedience and promise blessing and threaten curse in the land depending on their response. For example, the beginning of Deuteronomy 4, which tells Israel to follow the law so that they may live and take possession of the land. Or Deuteronomy 28, which recounts all sorts of earthly blessings in the land if the Israelites are careful to obey and all sorts of earthly curses if they aren’t. I don’t want a congregation to think that God was holding out a works-based way of salvation here, and I also can’t tell the congregation that this is the same way that God deals with the New Testament church when he calls her to obedience, for there’s nothing equivalent in the New Testament, no promise of earthly blessing for the church today if we meet a standard of obedience. Saying either of those things might by simple, but of course they’d be misleading, and damaging for the church to hear. (The Law is Not of Faith, 5)

Could it be that this view seems to allow Christians to think that law-keeping does not contribute to their salvation? Well, if the law requires “personal, perfect, and perpetual conformity and obedience thereunto, in the frame and disposition of the whole man, soul and body, and in performance of all those duties of holiness and righteousness which he owes to God and man: promising life upon the fulfilling, and threatening death upon the breach of it,” who is up to that challenge? Don’t be bashful.

Looking both Ways

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What would happen to race relations in the U.S. (at least) if Americans of African descent sometimes tried to identify with the experience of a white person? It may happen more than blog posts after racially charged incidents suggest, but the theme of many an African-American pastor after the Michael Brown shooting was that white people need to empathize with the experience of African-American men.

Well, sometimes, an African-American does see the world through the eyes of a white man (or boy). How could that happen? Well, in the case of mixed-race couples who reproduce children who look white, an African-American parent will need, as Trillia Newbell reminds her readers, to consider the experience of white folk in the U.S.:

Because he is white-looking, I fear my son will grow up in an environment that is hostile towards white males. I do live in the south where racial tension and strife have plagued our history. So what if we end up doing just the thing we’ve fought so hard to stop? What if we, black Americans, begin judging other brothers and sisters solely based on the color of their skin? Could my son be thought of as an ignorant, uncaring, privileged white male? There is a good and needed call to repentance, action, and – at the very least – acknowledgement that there remains a problem in America regarding racial reconciliation. We haven’t arrived—far from it. And yet I wonder how it feels to be a white male in America today. There are some who have indeed acknowledged that racism continues to rot the hearts of men and women—even those within the Church. There are many who feel a weight of responsibility that could prove to be useful, but there are others who I believe feel a weight of responsibility, guilt, and fear. I want my son to know about our country’s history, to realize the sin of man, and to not retreat when faced with difficult and heart wrenching situations like that of Ferguson. But I don’t want him to walk around feeling guilt, shame, and fear.

If a mother can empathize with a son in this way, what about an African-American pastor who ministers to white and black people? Does a minister of the word, no matter what his background, need somehow to lay aside his own experience based on race or class or nationality and minister to the people in his congregation whose experience may be very different from his? It makes sense that a mother looks out for a son. It also makes sense that an undershepherd looks out for his sheep whether they are white or black.