Author: D. G. Hart

Lumpers, Splitters, and Historical Honesty

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I could not help but think of a recent post at CTC while preparing for class on Turkey and the United States today. In his chapter from Islam and the West, “Other People’s History,” Bernard Lewis takes aim at those who accuse Orientalists (those who study the Middle East, China and India for starters) of intellectual imperialism, as if the study of non-western civilizations arises from a “predatory” or “larcenous” interest in “other people’s cultural possessions.” He goes on to say that scholarship should be competent, fair, honest, and not distorted by “loyalties and purposes.” But these considerations “are of no importance to those who believe that all scholarship or, rather, all scholarly discourse is ideological and that their ideology, and therefore their scholarly discourse is better or stronger because it is openly avowed and, more especially, because it is theirs.” He goes on to describe this disregard for even-handed scholarship in the following way:

“You want to study in my archives, read my literature, talk to my people, work on my history? Then you must pay your respects to my point of view, you must promote my national aspirations as I may from time to tie define or redefine them.” To comply with this requirement, the historian must choose for himself and demand of others a presentation of history that includes only what in the present climate of opinion is seen as positive and excludes, and if called upon denies, anything that in the present climate of opinion is seen as negative. (122)

This description of biased history resembles Ken Howell’s description of the “Classic” Roman Catholic approach, in “Three Frameworks for Interpreting the Church Fathers,” for examining the early church (and arguably for the rest of Roman Catholic history). What Howell describes is not necessarily cynical about “objective” historical frameworks. But he does affirm that “true” historical account has to conform to a certain bias in favor of “the home team.”

An honest historian working within the Classic Catholic Framework (CCF) will face all the diverse and varied expressions of Christian belief brought forth from the relevant texts. He will, however, ask different questions about those texts from those who work in the CPF (Classic Protestant) or the MCF (Modern Critical). Central to inquiry in the CCF is the notion of witness. Witnesses point to something greater and more enduring than themselves. In the CCF, the goal is to study the relevant witnesses in order to discover the deposit of faith which is the doctrinal content of the Christian faith. This approach assumes continuity across space and time. That continuity may not be total or exhaustive but it has essential qualities and characteristics which are transmitted over time.

Howell’s goes on to contrast this with how Protestants approach the early church:

The problem posed by the Protestant interpretation of early church history was as follows: how do you know what in the Fathers should be taken as binding and what should not? The Protestant answer was clear if not always easy to apply in practice: measure the Fathers against Scripture. Of course, the learned Roman Catholics believed this was an insufficient answer. How does one know if one’s interpretation of Scripture, which is being used as the criterion of judging the Fathers, is correct? The criterion of “the unanimous consent of the fathers” turned the Reformation’s answer on its head. It said that the way we know what interpretations of the Scriptures are legitimate is by the universality, antiquity, and consensus of the fathers. In this view, what was unanimous among the fathers, such as the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, was binding on the church. What was not unanimous, such as how the creation narratives of Genesis were to be interpreted, was not binding.

I know that in Reformed circles some historians have argued, following the Dutch Calvinist w-v notion, that “objective” history is impossible and that the bias of faith in understanding the past adds value — it sees the hand of God at work or the importance of religious “values” where a non-believing historian miss them. Howell not only seems to follow this rejection of academic neutrality, but he adds criteria for studying the past that in my view rig the game before it even starts. He says that a historian needs to find continuity and unanimity among the church fathers.

This is sometimes what historians call lumping. That is, they take all positions and force them into a kind of consensus so that difficulties, tensions, even contradictions are ironed out of history. On the other side are splitters who recognize disagreements, discrepancies, rivalries, and discontinuities. I myself prefer the splitting model if only because the vacuous term “evangelical” is supposed somehow to make sense of the Assemblies of God and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, or Calvinism is supposed to make sense of Scott Clark and Nelson Kloosterman.

If you pushed most historians, even though they complain about lumpers in their ranks, most would concede that the craft of history errs on the side of splitting because humans rarely agree, ideas are contested, and free societies (at least) inherently nurture disagreements (though the history of the human race is littered with intellectual combat). This is why Howell’s use of the word “honest” is curious. A Roman Catholic historian who must find consensus and unanimity may be honest. But people who see differences where others see the same thing can well ask whether the lumpers are truly being fair to the past. Funny, not even the Bible approaches salvation history as a lumper does it is hard to imagine a time in the sagas of the Israelites or the really early church (REC) when everyone agreed.

Jonathan Edwards and American Exceptionalism

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Richard Gamble in his new book, In Search of the City on a Hill, spends a lot of time on John Winthrop’s role in appropriating and transforming Jesus’ trope of a “city on a hill” for Puritan and (later) U.S. purposes. But he also observes Jonathan Edwards’ contribution to the myth of America as God’s “New Israel”:

A fuller understanding of Edwards’s role in making Jesus’ metaphor into an American myth would take us into his eschatology, his expectation that America might be the site of the coming of Christ’s millennial kingdom, his view of history as the outworking of the conflict between the Papacy and the Reformation, and the nuances of his theology of church and state. Among these larger questions, one historical debates has centered on the degree to which Edwards promoted what Ernest Lee Tuveson in the 1960s called America’s ‘Redeemer Myth.’ . . . As one voice among thousands, Edwards helped perpetuate that quintessentially Puritan notion of a righteous city set high upon a hill for all the world to see. . .

. . . whether righteous or unrighteous, obedient or disobedient, New Englanders were God’s chosen people, a spectacle to the world. Either way, the covenantal relationship was real and inescapable. America could not be hidden. Its light may have grown dim, but the city on a hill — even as just one city on a hill among many possible cities — laboured under the duties of a national covenant of works. This view may indeed be ‘pessimistic,’ but it does nothing to affect America’s standing as a city on a hill and how that theology can affect the nation’s understanding of the church and its calling in the world. A more nuanced ‘Edwardsian’ handling of the metaphor might make for a more chastened national identity, or a more restrained foreign policy, or a more communitarian theory of social justice, but it would still be premised on an identification of America as ‘our Israel’ and open the way for all the implications of national chosenness. Edwards used the metaphor of the city to bind his church members with the cords of a national covenant, obscuring the Augustinian understand of a sojourning City of God on pilgrimage through the City of Man. Better known, his sermons might have restrained American conduct with a sobering sense of divine accountability. But like so many of his era, he blurred the sacred and the secular. The things of Caesar looked very much like the things of God from inside the walls of Edwards’s city. (84-85)

The Four-Fold State of Musical Appreciation

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Ken Myers’ recent visit to Hillsdale College to deliver lectures on Music and the Great Tradition, has me thinking about the relationship between Christ and culture, or at least the way some Christians conceive of it. Ken persuaded me of the importance of music in the created order, why harmonic structures parallel mathematical forms, why singing is such an important part of creation (soulful and soulless) giving praise to God, and why music can have such a profound effect on listeners. He also was convincing that some forms of music are superior to others, that a predilection for some kinds of music reflects a disordered soul, and that appreciation of good music requires education and discipline. (I hear but do not know when these lectures will be available on-line.)

Where I have questions is in trying to correlate musical aesthetic with Christian truth or conviction. I wonder for instance, if we could do for the musical soul what Thomas Boston’s Four-fold State of Man did for the human soul. We might imagine humanity divided up into the following categories

1) Good Music Lovers
a) regenerate
b) unregenerate

2) Bad Music Lovers
a) regenerate
b) unregenerate

In category 1a, we have people who know and love God and also know and appreciate good music. But we can’t regard musical appreciation as a fruit of the Spirit because of category 1b — that is, people who are not saved but appreciate music even more than some of the saints. What accounts for this love of good music is not something spiritual but a natural capacity by which a person with the right training (and some natural abilities) can learn to understand the way music works and revel in its beauty and forms.

The natural aspects of musical appreciation are all the more apparent when we turn to the category of 2a — that is, the Christian who has no ear for the great musical traditions and actually regards people who celebrate good music as elitist. Here, the work of sanctification has no apparent bearing on musical appreciation. If it did, we might expect a believer to listen to more and more good music as he or she dies to self and lives to Christ. But in point of fact, no church in human history has ever countenanced musical taste as evidence of God’s grace. (And I am not saying the Ken thinks it is.) If a church were to do that, we face the uncomfortable reality of regarding Beethoven or Wagner as Christians.

As I say, Ken was not arguing for musical appreciation as a form of sanctification. He was, though, talking about what music and its place in the universe says about the human soul and its relation to the creator. Without sufficient care and theological rigor, such considerations can lead to blurring the lines between what happens in sanctification and what occurs with a well-ordered natural soul. At the end of the day, it seems to me that confessional Protestant culture vultures need to be content with Christians who don’t appreciate good music and humble around non-Christians who understand much of creation and its creator better than most believers. In 2k parlance, culture is part of the ordinances of creation and fallen humans, who bear the image of God still, participate in and enjoy culture as part of their creatureliness. Cult, however, requires more than nature; it requires a supernatural reordering of the soul which may or may not lead to good culture.

Reckoning with Vatican II

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In Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After, edited by Adrian Hastings, Enda McDonagh writes the following about Gaudium et Spes:

. . . the Council endorsed a document unprecedented in conciliar history and quite radical in Church history. Its unprecedented character derived from the pastoral concerns of the Council as originally conceived by John XXIII. Its openness to the world of its time built on social and other encyclicals, various episcopal and lay initiatives and on the pioneering theological work of Chenu, Congar, Rahner and many others. In the face of the flat rejection of the ‘modern world’ by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors just a century before its continuing influence to the very eve of the Council, the Council’s shift in perspective may well be describes as revolutionary. It was certainly profoundly liberating. . . .

The second limitation must be the absence of the cross from the gospel reflections: social sin, mass oppression, a sheer conspiracy of evil needed to explain so much of human history, all that is largely absent. The world it portrays is one needing development rather than liberation. It is one whose problems seem rather easily resolvable with a bit of goodwill and a renewal of Christian idealism. And this from a dominantly European-American gathering whose members had been through two world wars in this century and still had to live with the responsibility of the Holocaust. The sense of the tragic is largely missing from its world-view as the cross is from its theology.

There are limitations and confusions too in its understanding of the way Christ related to the world, because it concentrates on the mediating symbol of the Church and largely ignores that of the Kingdom. Any attempt to discuss the Church in the world without spelling out the Church’s role in discerning, promoting and realizing the Kingdom in the world is bound to be limited and frustrated. . . (96, 110-111)

And they keep saying that Rome doesn’t change.

Should it Be Caliph Instead of Rabbi Bret?

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Bernard Lewis continues to impress me in his accounts of Islam, especially the parallels that emerge between Christian and Muslim objections to the modern West. Here’s one example:

For the modern Westerner, religious freedom is defined by the phrase “freedom of worship” and means just that. But the practice of Islam means more than worship, important as that may be. It means a whole way of life, prescribed in detail by holy texts and treatises based on them. . . . It is not enough to do good and refrain from evil as a personal choice. It is incumbent upon Muslims also to command and forbid — that is, to exercise authority. The same principle applied in general to the holy law, which must be not only obeyed but also enforced. Thus, in the view of many jurists, a Muslim not only must abstain from drinking and dissipation, but also must destroy strong drink and other appurtenances of dissipation. For this reason, in any encounter between Islam and unbelief, Islam must dominate. . . .

There are some who followed this argument to its logical conclusion and maintain that an authentic Muslim life is possible only under a Muslim government. There are other who reject this extremist view and admit the possibility of living a Muslim life under a non-Muslim government, provided that that government meets certain specific requirements. (Lewis, Islam and the West, 52-53)

To read this and not think of the various critiques of two-kingdom theology (whether theonomic, neo-Calvinist, or Christian American) is difficult. Of course, simply because some Christians in opposing 2k views sound like Muslims does not make them wrong automatically. But as Lewis also observes, the origins of Christianity and Islam politically are almost the opposite, with Jesus dying a sacrificial death in which offered no resistance and Muhammad establishing himself through military conquest.

So Lewis does imply indirectly that 2kers are the better heirs of Christ and the apostles if only because 2k critics do such a good impersonation of the Turks.

Between Whitefield and the Vatican

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A winsome Oldlifer reminded me yesterday of how troubling the First Great Pretty Good Awakening was and is. He was referring specifically to George Whitefield’s sermon on Romans 14:17, “The Kingdom of God.” There Whitefield does exactly what John Williamson Nevin detected when he experienced a revival, namely, the outlook of revivalists that the church and her ordinances “are more a bar than a help to the process” of becoming a Christian.

Here are three points that Whitefield makes:

The kingdom of God, or true and undefiled religion, does not consist in being of this or that particular sect or communion.

. . . neither does [the kingdom of God] consist in being baptized when you were young. . .

. . . neither does it consist in being orthodox in our notions, or being able to talk fluently of the doctrines of the Gospel.

These are sentiments that explain why Whitefield can express the sort of disregard for denominational differences that would become common among Protestants in the so-called ecumenical movement and continue to afflict The Gospel Coalition (and which by the way would make mid-twentieth-century mainline historians and ecumenistsfans of the First Great Pretty Good Awakening):

. . . there are Christians among other sects that may differe from us in the outward worship of God. Therefore, my dear friends, learn to be more catholic, more unconfined in your notions; for if you place the kingdom of God merely in a sect, you place it in that in which it does not consist.

Whitefield is arguably one of the biggest problems facing confessional Protestants because his effort to do justice to the Spirit winds up doing an injustice to the Word and the ordinances the Bible prescribes. Consequently, when confessional Protestants become sticklers about worship or church government or even doctrine (as we tend to do with Gospel Coalition types), then followers of Whitefield construe us as as being liberal Protestants (only protecting the order of the church) or even Roman Catholic (having too high a view of the church).

Seeing support for Whitefield among conservative Presbyterians (Iain Murray, for instance, but the vast majority of Presbyterians in the U.S.A. after the Plan of Union, 1758) who subscribe the Westminster Standards, is equally frustrating since the evangelist took dead aim at the confession’s teaching (whether he knew it or not):

2. The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

3. Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and doth, by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto. (ch. 25)

So the line confessional Protestants walk is the real via media, between the enthusiasts who justify what they do by appealing to the Spirit (without the Word) and the Romanists (who rarely let the Spirit get in the way of the magisterium). The Reformation was about Word and Spirit, about ordinances and godliness, about a churchly pattern of piety. It is too formal for Whitefield and too loose for Rome. But that’s where we are — in the moderate middle, plain, vanilla, simple, buttoned-down (but never perfect).

How Discerning the Call!

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I understand that the CTCers would like to see all the conservative Presbyterians and Reformed Protestants swim the Atlantic and the Mediterranean to embrace the holy pontiff (though I suppose the former Protestants will have to towel off first). But I wonder if they ever consider that the Protestants with whom Rome finds ecumenical relations are the liberal communions who ordain women, have interpreted and interpreted away the churches’ confessions, and who turn a blind eye to a woman’s right to choose. Here is news (thanks to our mid-Western correspondent):

In a monumental occasion for ecumenical relations, the U.S. Roman Catholic church and a group of Protestant denominations plan to sign a document on Tuesday evening to formally agree to recognize each other’s baptisms.

Catholic leaders will join representatives from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Christian Reformed Church in North America, Reformed Church in America and United Church of Christ at the ceremony in Austin, Texas, to sign the agreement, which is called the “Common Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism.” The event coincides with the national meeting of Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A.

Currently, the Protestant churches recognize Roman Catholic baptisms, but the Catholic church does not always recognize theirs. The mutual agreement on baptisms, a key sacrament in the churches, has been discussed between denominational leadership for seven years and hinges in part on invoking trinity of the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” during the baptism. . . .

The Roman Catholic church as a whole has generally recognized the baptisms of most mainstream Christian denominations since the Second Vatican Council, a series of historic church meetings from 1962 to 1965, but the formal baptism agreement is the first of its kind for the U.S. church.

Is warm relations with liberal Protestants really what the Call is about? Then again, Rome could simply be imitating evangelicals who have always been squeamish about drawing lines between conservative and liberal Christians.

Winter 2012 NTJ

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The print publication that preceded Oldlife.org has been out of circulation for some time. But the Nicotine Theological Journal returns to the world of the living with the Winter 2012 issue. If features two separate reflections by Baptist-turned-Presbyterian baby boomers on their parents and church life of their youth, an assessment of Presbyterian church growth, a review of Carl Trueman’s Republocrat, and a reprint of an post at Oldlife about the development of doctrine.

This issue also explains plans for future publication. The idea is that existing subscribers will receive hard copies for the next year by mail. All others will have access to Portable Document Formats of the NTJ through Oldlife.org. Once the next issue is out (Summer 2013), the NTJ will be available only on-line as a pdf. All readers will be able to access these files for a modest price through PayPal.

This material is too good to give away. At least, that was the consensus of the editors at our last meeting.

What You Don't Hear in the Call to Communion

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In his discussion of medieval university faculty’s achievement of academic freedom (of a sort), Francis Oakely writes the following:

By the following century (fourteenth), moreover, the Parisian Faculty of Theology was so confident of its independent standing as to denounce as heterodox a novel doctrinal take on the Beatific Vision that Pope John XXII had ventilated in a series of sermons preached at the papal court in 1331-1332. And such was that Faculty’s standing and prestige that the hapless pope, a very distinguished canon lawyer but self-confessedly no theologian, accordingly withdrew his endorsement of the suspect doctrine. (The Mortgage of the Past, 64)

Lest CTCer’s suspect that Oakley is some post-Vatican II renegade Roman Catholic historian, they might want to consider what the Catholic Encyclopedia says about the same pope:

In the last years of John’s pontificate there arose a dogmatic conflict about the Beatific Vision, which was brought on by himself, and which his enemies made use of to discredit him. Before his elevation to the Holy See, he had written a work on this question, in which he stated that the souls of the blessed departed do not see God until after the Last Judgment. After becoming pope, he advanced the same teaching in his sermons. In this he met with strong opposition, many theologians, who adhered to the usual opinion that the blessed departed did see God before the Resurrection of the Body and the Last Judgment, even calling his view heretical. A great commotion was aroused in the University of Paris when the General of the Minorites and a Dominican tried to disseminate there the pope’s view. Pope John wrote to King Philip IV on the matter (November, 1333), and emphasized the fact that, as long as the Holy See had not given a decision, the theologians enjoyed perfect freedom in this matter. In December, 1333, the theologians at Paris, after a consultation on the question, decided in favour of the doctrine that the souls of the blessed departed saw God immediately after death or after their complete purification; at the same time they pointed out that the pope had given no decision on this question but only advanced his personal opinion, and now petitioned the pope to confirm their decision. John appointed a commission at Avignon to study the writings of the Fathers, and to discuss further the disputed question. In a consistory held on 3 January, 1334, the pope explicitly declared that he had never meant to teach aught contrary to Holy Scripture or the rule of faith and in fact had not intended to give any decision whatever. Before his death he withdrew his former opinion, and declared his belief that souls separated from their bodies enjoyed in heaven the Beatific Vision.