Category: Adventures in Church History

Putting the Ecclesia in The Ecclesial Calvinist

Published on by D. G. Hart42 Comments

Bill Evans comments on the ongoing fall out surrounding Pete Enns and Westminster Seminary. He sees it as an impasse between two ways of interpreting the Bible — the Christotelic (Enns) and the grammatico-historical (anti-Enns):

What are the characteristics of christotelic interpretation? First, there is a rejection of grammatical-historical interpretation as the only legitimate hermeneutical approach to Scripture. Yes, they say, it is important to understand the biblical text in its original linguistic and historical context, but we can’t stop there. Grammatical-historical interpretation is a creature of modernity, and earlier Christian interpreters were not tied to it—the NT writers sometimes interpret OT texts in ways that likely would not have occurred to Isaiah or Hosea. Also, grammatical-historical interpretation asks what the text would have meant to the original human author, but the Bible is also divinely inspired and our interpretation must take this divine origin and perspective into account as well.

Second, the larger meaning of the text resides in the text as it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and this meaning is then progressively grasped by the human audience over the course of redemptive history. Here there is particular focus on the Scriptural canon as a whole as the context within which christotelic interpretation takes place.

Finally, all this leads to a programmatic distinction between “first reading” and “second reading.” In the first reading we encounter the text without reference to the conclusion of the story, while in the second reading we see levels of meaning we did not see before precisely because we know how the story ends and how things fit together.

It is not entirely surprising that this approach would be controversial. Proponents of christotelic interpretation have sometimes overstated their case, suggesting that the Old Testament, when interpreted simply according to grammatical-historical method, is not a Christian book. One can understand why some would view this as a denial of the “organic connection” between the OT and the NT and as an example of creeping naturalism. In addition, evangelical Protestants have generally had a rather static view of the text and its meaning as inhering in the intent of the original human author, and grammatical-historical interpretation is often regarded as the normative method of interpretation. Finally, this approach also seems to engage questions of Protestant identity in that grammatical-historical interpretation is often regarded as a hallmark of Protestantism over against Catholic allegorical and sensus plenior approaches.

How, then, shall we characterize the opposing position? First, there is the affirmation of grammatical-historical interpretation as the normative method of biblical interpretation. Thus the meaning of the text resides in the author’s intention.

Second, the grammatical-historical method is redefined so as to remove the Enlightenment emphasis on human autonomy and the resulting exclusion of God from consideration. Thus it is expanded to include divine influence on the human authors’ psychology as legitimate considerations for interpretation. Along this line, grammatical-historical method is also recast to include biblical typology, which is seen as arising intrinsically out of the grammatical-historical meaning of the text.

The odd aspect of this analysis is the idea that Enns and others are somehow adopting an older, premodern understanding of the Bible compared to Enns’ critics who have embraced the Enlightenment. In point of fact, it was largely the theologians and historical theologians who opposed Enns’ views, while Enns and some of his supporters were academically trained at elite universities and thoroughly at home in the very modern and enlightened world of the Society of Biblical Literature.

So if the contrast between old and new academic methods doesn’t explain the controversy, what about the church? Here I’d argue that Enns was not thinking with the church about interpreting the Bible or how to conceive of Scripture while his critics were representing the confessional standards of Reformed churches. Furthermore, if Enns had been thinking with the OPC or the PCA, he likely wouldn’t have written his controversial book. Does that mean that Reformed churches put limits (in a very pre-modern way) on academic freedom? Heck yeah. Which also means that the Enlightenment/pre-modern assessment by Evans doesn’t go very far.

Evans concludes somewhat nostalgically about what this means for WTS:

The institution that I attended in the 1980s was one in which Ray Dillard and Dick Gaffin and Sinclair Ferguson and Harvie Conn and Tremper Longman and Vern Poythress and Philip Edgcumbe Hughes and Clair Davis and Robert Knudsen and Tim Keller and Moises Silva and Roger Greenway and Manny Ortiz and Rick Gamble could get along and work together despite their sometimes considerable differences. That institution is now apparently gone. Of course, nothing stays the same, and perhaps a new context and new challenges demand that lines be drawn more narrowly. It remains to be seen, however, whether a narrower institution can thrive in the current challenging seminary market environment. Furthermore, will it produce scholarship that is meaningful and useful to the broader Christian world rather than catering to the boundary preoccupations of the conservative Reformed subculture?

But Evans doesn’t consider that WTS 2.0 was not WTS 1.0 — the school of Van Til, Murray, Stonehouse, Young, and Kuiper, the school that was decidedly ecclesial in serving the OPC but also achieving an international reputation (at least among Protestants). I don’t think Harvard or Yale were paying much attention to WTS 1.0. But I’m not sure they did to 2.0 either.

Am (all about me) I the Reason for Presbyterianism's Failure?

Published on by D. G. Hart18 Comments

Once upon a time, Episcopalians really did believe in truth and error, and condemned Presbyterianism as a departure from true Christianity (winning over the crown didn’t hurt efforts to prove Anglicanism true). One of the errors of Presbyterianism was ordaining the laity to be rulers in the church (read elders). Here is how one pamphleteer at the end of the seventeenth century put it (Parallel between episcopacy & presbytery; or The Church of England vindicated from all the false and uncharitable reports and suggestions of either papist or Presbyterian [1680]:

. . .which of these two governments have the more effectual means to procure the end of Church-government, the preservation of truth and peace, and the suppression of heresy and schism. I answer Episcopal; for ‘tis strange, that laymen, from whose education has no knowledge beyond their trades and such like affairs can be expected, should be as fit instruments for such kind of employments, as grave and learned scholars, whose only business is to tread the path of all arts, both humane and Divine.

Come to think of it, in an elite world of princes and bishops having all the power, putting the affairs of heaven and hell in the hands of ordinary laymen was risky. And that diceyness may explain why Presbyterians throughout the modern era have looked for professionals — physicians, attorneys, and academics — to train and ordain as elders. At least these well educated persons would know more than the ordinary bishop.

Worship in Spirit and Truth or Place

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

On Sunday, with English-speaking Protestant churches in short supply in The Eternal City, I took advantage of streaming audio but also decided to observe the 10:00 Mass at the Basilica of St. John Lateran. When in Rome do as some of the Romans do (I say some because the Saturday before Pentecost Sunday, Romans turned out loudly and brightly for a gay pride parade). While observing the proceedings, which included a Cardinal and about 25 assistants with the liturgy (how do they pay them all?), a choir that sang better than the liturgical music I’ve heard in U.S. Roman Catholic parishes but that did not hold a candle to the evensong performances in Christ’s Church Cathedral (Dublin) or St. Mary’s Cathedral (Edinburgh), and a surfeit of images (statues, paintings, tile work in the ceiling, I couldn’t help but think that U.S. Roman Catholics who worship in Rome must feel a tad underwhelmed when they return to their home parish. Rome simply has more stuff than Lansing, Michigan. In fact, place seems to matter for Roman Catholicism in ways that rival Judaism and Islam — certain locales are holy and function as the spiritual capital for the faith.

In comparison, I can return to the States (in a week or so) after worshiping with Presbyterians in Dublin and Edinburgh and not think twice about missing the liturgical bling — and I can say that even while admitting Presbyterianism’s debt to the Scots, and to the charms of what might qualify as Presbyterianism’s capital city — Edinburgh. For Presbyterians, worship doesn’t depend on the tie between the minister and another church official, nor does it include relics or objects that point to holy persons who inhabited that space. The services in Dublin and Edinburgh were not any more special or meaningful because they were closer to Presbyterianism’s original space.

That would seem to confirm Jesus’ point to the Samaritan woman at the well that Christian worship depends not on place or space but on word and Spirit. Sure, that’s a root-for-the-home-team point. But it does account for the lack of liturgical envy among New World Presbyterians. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Spirit and the word are just as much a part of worship as in the Presbyterian heartland.

Today I Crossed the Tiber (or, I didn't walk where Jesus walked)

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

I didn’t get wet and I remained a Protestant. Amazing how handy those bridges are.

Since the river runs through the city, it is hard not to cross it when navigating Rome. This makes me wonder why the phrase is supposed to signify converting to Roman Catholicism.

This answer likely makes the most sense:

I don’t know where the phrase was first used, but it’s based on the geography of Rome. St. Peter’s Basilica & Vatican City are located on the opposite (west) side of the Tiber River from classical Rome (on the east) with its famous seven hills, Colosseum, Forum, Pantheon, Imperial Palace, Circus Maximus, and whatnot.

I would guess part of the idea in the language is that a Gentile crosses from paganism (represented by classical Rome) to Christianity (represented by St. Peter’s) through the waters of baptism (represented by the Tiber). Of course, not everyone who now “crosses the Tiber” was a pagan before doing so. Some are Christians, some are Jews. But I do think it’s a possible dimension of the metaphor.

But given the way that Roman Catholicism incorporated pagan philosophy (read Aristotle), does this make sense?

How Is this Conservative?

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

The Catholic News Service (via Dwight Longenecker courtesy of our mid-western correspondent) explains how we are supposed to understand a Muslim prayer being offered in the Vatican:

When leaders of different religions come together and pray for a common cause, they are not only appealing to God, they also are showing the world they believe that followers of different religions are still brothers and sisters before the one who created them.

That is not the same as ignoring religious differences or pretending those differences do not matter.
“It should be evident to all who participate that these occasions are moments of being ‘together for prayer, but not prayer together,’” said guidelines for interreligious dialogue published in late May by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

“Being able to pray in common requires a shared understanding of who God is,” the document said. “Since religions differ in their understanding of God, ‘interreligious prayer’ — meaning the joining together in common prayer by followers of various religions — is to be avoided.”

The distinction between praying together and praying at the same time is one Vatican officials have found increasingly necessary to emphasize as popes have led more and more interfaith gatherings for peace.

That sounds about as clear as the distinction between praying to Mary and praying to God through Christ.

But John Paul II may have established the pattern in his catechism:

841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”

These are clearly Roman Catholic matters and I am not in a position (even if writing from Rome) to tell Roman Catholics how to interpret the Bible or their tradition. But I am befuddled, to put it mildly, that formerly conservative, strict-subscriptionist, inerrantist Presbyterians can switch sides and then tell us with a straight face that they have entered a communion that is more conservative than even the PCA.

BTW, I wonder if those team-switchers notice a resemblance between Called to Communion and this.

Speaking of Special Pleading (in Scotland no less)

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

David Robertson is not happy with one of the letters — the secularist one — to one of his many columns about Christianity in Scotland. According to the correspondent, “Scotland was a theocracy for 1,000 years, which left nothing but bloodshed and heartache in its wake.” To which Robertson responds:

In a post-modern age this 
Alice-in-Wonderland view of history, where history is just what you want it to be, may ring true for the more fundamentalist secularists whose faith tells them that any public expression of religion is bad, but anyone who actually reads history would know that this is a grotesque and laughable caricature.

The Romans did not bring their law beyond Hadrian’s 
Wall, although Christians writers did adapt some aspects of Roman law (Christianity does, after all, teach about God’s common 
grace reaching to all human 
beings who are made in the image of God).

Theocracy is the rule of the state by the Church, and that clearly did not happen in the supposed “1,000-year reign”, although, as my letter pointed out, there have been those who have used Christianity for political ends and vice versa).

Robertson is certainly correct to react against secular fundamentalism, though he might do a better job of explaining the modern era’s debt to the medieval world — constitutionalism, universities, cities. But shouldn’t he also say something about a complicated relationship between church and state in Scotland that concedes that the head of the church — the British monarch — is also head of the state. Might not he also understand the complaints that secularists do have legitimately about the sometimes less than progressive mixing of religion and politics in the United Kingdom? It may not be theocracy, but the king’s headship within the church is some variety of Caesaropapism. Not to mention that the king’s and queen’s sovereignty within the church sent Presbyterians into a rightful tizzy to protect the crown rights of Christ as head of the church.

Political Theologians Pleading Specially

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

Why does Peter Leithart find this encouraging, uplifting, or persuasive? Why does the inadequacy of secularism somehow prove the sufficiency of God-drenched conceptions of the world?

The task is not simply to expose the inadequacy of a world without God or to show the collaborative spirit of religious engagement in the common good. It surely must more specifically be to demonstrate the unique power and thrilling wisdom of the logic of God in Christ and to reconceive tired issues in the light of the shape of Christ’s coming. The authority and the credibility of the public theology rest not so much on the theologian’s insight, intelligence, or subtle grasp of complex issues (wondrous as each may be) as on the ability – respectfully, lucidly, and accessibly – to show how Christ redefines human nature, transforms death, and overturns the givens of life; to show what only God can do and only God has done; and more intriguingly, to highlight the way that questions in public life today reflect and recall issues faced by the church in shaping and embodying Christian doctrine.

Who said secularism was going to figure it all out? Who says that Christendom ever did? In fact, if Peter Heather is correct about the appeal of the Roman Empire to Christian Emperors — Constantine, Justinian, and Charlemagne — then the European world even in its most Christian phase was responsible for a lot of senseless war:

. . . a restored empire that captured the essence of the Roman original had become completely impossible by the year 1000. Not only had Islam broken apart ancient Mediterranean unity, and the balance of power in Western Europe shifted decisively north of the Alps, but, still more fundamentally, patterns of development were now much too equal across the broader European landscape. Thanks to this equalization of development, you might say, the scene was set for the thousand subsequent years of fruitless warfare which followed as Europe’s dynasts intermittently struggled to achieve a level of overarching dominance that was in fact impossible. In that sense, it took the nightmare of two world wars in the twentieth century before the European Dream was finally called into existence to try to put a stop to the process of endless armed competition between powers that were always too equal for there to be an outright winner. (The Restoration of Rome, 294-295)

And let’s be clear, these were dynasts with Christian motivations (at least in part — Hegel’s w-w had not come along yet). So why does Leithart think that putting God into the questions surrounding public life will do any good? This time, he thinks, the politicians, inspired by his guy Constantine, will get it right?

And if anyone ever wants to argue for Christendom as an example of politics accomplished Christianly, or that the Christian society secured human flourishing, s/he should merely consider the fundamental dynamic of medieval monarchy — gain control and keep it by taxation, warfare (and don’t forget leaving behind an undisputed heir). According to Heather:

In the small-state world of early medieval Europe, expansionary warfare replaced large-scale taxation as the source of renewable wealth that was necessary to maintaining a powerful central authority in anything but the very shortest of terms. . . . All of which prompts one final question: if expansion was so crucial to the longer-term exercise of central authority, filling the massive gap in royal finance created by the end of taxation, why did later Carolingian monarch allow it to end? . . . A more profitable route into the problem is to consider expansionary warfare in terms of cost-benefit equations which governed it. Expansionary warfare would bring in profits, but also involved costs, not just in financial terms (food, weaponry, etc.), but also in personal terms since some of those participating would certainly die. If you think about it in this way, then the ideal profile of an area ripe for expansion is easy enough to construct: it needs to be economically developed enough to offer a satisfying level of reward both in terms of moveable booty and potential land-grabbing, but militarily not so well organized that too many of your expeditionary army, on average, are going to die winning access to the prize. . . . On every corner of the frontier, the cost-benefit equation was starting to deliver a negative answer, either because the enemy was too formidable (Spain), or because the likely benefits were not that great (the Balkans), or some combination of the two (southern Italy and the Southern Elbe region). (288-90)

When you think about empire and government in those terms, the modern secular nation-state surely does seem to have its advantages. That’s not because it doesn’t go to war or because it’s run by a bunch of virtucrats. Instead, say what you will about capitalism and its appeal to baser human motivations, it does generate the kind of internal wealth that many times prevents nation-states from having to conquer another people who will pay the government’s bills. Not to mention that constitutionalism and enumerated powers are a much better way of gaining consent than intimidation by force (cheaper too).

Belfast Replay: DG Opens for PJ

Published on by D. G. Hart14 Comments

Talk about Providence. The weekend I was in Belfast (2 weeks ago) witnessed two book talks by authors from the U.S. The first was me talking about Calvinism (more below), the second was P. J. O’Rourke who was promoting his new memoir, Baby Boom. PJ spoke at the Ulster Museum, an impressive facility in Belfast that covers most aspects of Northern Ireland politics and culture. I chatted at the Evangelical Bookshop, an unusually good bookstore operated by the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. If you ever get to Belfast, you should visit both.

It almost goes without saying that O’Rourke was funnier than I, even though we both used stages of life to frame our subjects.

PJ contends that you cannot understand the boomers as a block since the dates for this demographic cohort run from 1946 to 1964. The experience of people like him who were born just after World War II was different from boomers like me who grew up in with the threat of missiles in space. The older boomers smoked a lot more dope. The youngsters paid attention in school. So O’Rourke divides the boomers into the grades of senior high school, with the seniors (himself) being a whole lot more experimental than the freshman. In the senior group, running from 1946 to 1951, are such disparate figures as Hillary Clinton and Cheech Marin. To the junior class (1951-1955) belong the computer whiz kids, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. O’Rourke didn’t mention any representatives for my sophomore class (1956 to 1961). But the standout from the freshman class is Barack Obama, a group of Americans so swimming in the BS produced by the seniors that Jeremiah Wright’s rants about African-American brains could never have distracted Obama from his smart phone.

I used age to divide Calvinism into its old, middle-aged, and young identities. Old Calvinism (1520 to 1660) includes the institutional churches that arose with the help of the magistrates — why we call it the magisterial Reformation. This Calvinism was established, national, institutional (read churchly), and had its greatest influence among the Swiss, Scots, Dutch, English, and Germans (all of which except for the Swiss became the major exporters of Calvinism to non-European settings).

Middle-aged Calvinism (1660-1800) was on the move. It transferred from Europe to Africa, North America, and Australia through colonialism (English and Dutch) and immigration (Scots and Germans). Calvinism also spread beyond the walls of the institutional churches through the rise of experimental Calvinism (also nadere reformatie) which strove to make all of life reformed especially since the national churches (England and the Netherlands) would not. Middle-aged Calvinism also spread through the auspices of foreign missions, first created by parachurch agencies inspired by experimental Calvinism (and the example of David Brainerd), with the established churches bringing up the rear of support for foreign missions — many were still trying to do home missions (the American West or the Scottish Highlands).

The youngest group of Calvinists, the truly Young Calvinism, were the churches that after 1800 began to extricate themselves from the confining compromises of ecclesiastical establishment by forming either voluntary or secessionist communions. The Dutch kicked off the process in 1834 with the Aufscheiding, which later inspired Abraham Kuyper and the Doliantie which formed the backbone of the GKN (1892). Then came the Free Church of Scotland with the disruption of 1843 led by Thomas Chalmers. In the twentieth century the chief efforts to leave behind Reformed establishmentarianism came from J. Gresham Machen who withdrew from the Protestant mainline through the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, and then from Karl Barth who articulated such a high view of divine transcendence that Christian truth could never be reduced to societal or cultural (or even ecclesiastical) norms.

By this scheme the so-called “New” Calvinists are really middle-aged since Edwards is their home boy, a man who stands smack-dab in the middle of Calvinism’s second stage. This also means that if the New Calvinists want to be truly young, they need to come to terms with Chalmers, Kuyper, Machen, and Barth.

O’Rourke still isn’t laughing even if he is home by now and taking his advance and honorarium to the bank.

The European Roots of American Christianity

Published on by D. G. Hart184 Comments

As I walked around Rome this morning I could well understand the appeal of Roman Catholicism to Christians in the U.S. who desire a faith more profound than James Dobson’s or even Tim Keller’s. (TKNY’s historical vibe does not seem to be any older than 1990s New York, despite the comparisons of him to C. S. Lewis.) Heck, part of the appeal to me of Reformed Protestantism was that it situated me in a set of debates and a system of Christian reflection and ministry that went well beyond 1938 — the year my parents’ Baptist congregation started (we had no clue about Roger William and Rhode Island). So with Zwingli and Bucer I get almost five hundred years of tradition (or records, anyway). And for a U.S. Presbyterian who just spent a week in Edinburgh, arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world with a population of less than 600,000, to walk through the streets and read through the archives and be reminded of arguments and assertions that still hold sway in some American communions sure beats following a trail that ends in some recent odd American locale.

Even so, with Rome, you get a lot more and a lot more grandeur, and if you are simply in the who’s-got-the-oldest-church-cornerstone mode, Rome beats Geneva and Edinburgh (though the latter has more polish than Rome which seems to suffer, along with Istanbul, from being too old; when you get used to having ruins around, you may also become accustomed to a place being a tad disheveled). Still, I’m not sure how Rome beats Jerusalem or Antakya except that western Europe has more cultural cache in the U.S. than Asia Minor (Turkey).

Amid these reflections on Europhilia, David Robertson came to the rescue to keep European Christianity real:

Put any group of Christians together and you will get a wide variety of opinions – some of them contradictory. That is particularly true when we are trying to assess the state of the Church in Europe today. On the one hand there are the doom and gloom merchants, the Jeremiahs, full of facts and figures about numbers and visions of the past, pointing out that the church is dying and we are all “doomed, doomed”. On the other there are the “God is doing a new and greater thing” brigade, the revivalists who are also full of facts and figures but their visions are visions of the future. They assure us on the basis of what is happening in a couple of churches, and a dream that they had that victory is just around the corner, revival is on its way and all we have to do is help their ministry. Isn’t it strange how both the “realists” and the “revivalists” seem to be able to justify their own ministeries because of their prophecies? We are told that we need to support the realists because only in that way will the remnant hang on until the Lord returns. On the other hand we had better support the revivalists because we don’t want to miss out on the revival.

So maybe European Christianity isn’t all that we Europhilic Christians in the U.S. make it out to be. It sure has more history, better architecture, and civilizational presence. But freed from all the baggage of Christendom, perhaps Christianity is better off. That’s not an expression of American Christian exceptionalism. Nor is it an assertion that American Christianity is somehow independent from Europe’s churches. Unmoored from Europe’s tragedies and buoyed by America’s can-do (Pelagian) spirit, mixed with a blasphemous belief in the nation’s divine purpose, American Christianity (Protestant and Roman Catholic) has no room to gloat (even though we usually gloat in spades). At the same time, returning to Europe and its Christian ways won’t do either.

If the South Had Called a Referendum

Published on by D. G. Hart136 Comments

Instead of firing on Fort Sumter, would the Confederate States have had a better chance of declaring their independence (like Jefferson did in 1776) if they had followed the lead of the Scots and simply voted. I understand that elections are not always decisive as the imbroglio between Russia and Ukraine attests. But a peaceful vote to leave a union may have worked. After all, if the Scots can do it after over three centuries of being governed by London, why couldn’t the South have departed after a mere seven decades of “more perfect” union?

I write this from Edinburgh in a postage stamp of a hotel room that is smack dab in the middle of a city that is amazingly beautiful (and even boasts a statue of Thomas Chalmers). If Scotland secedes, will Edinburgh become less beautiful? And what will happen to all the royal bits of Edinburgh? You can’t walk fifty meters (however long that is) and not see something that was opened by British royalty or land owned or granted by a prince, queen or king. I hear that if Scotland secedes, the Prince of Wales will become the King of Scotland. That sounds like a put down for the Scots, as if a mere prince among the Welsh is the equivalent of a monarch in Scotland. Then again, if it means that the Stuarts don’t return to the thrown, I am for Prince Charles.

David Robertson, a Free Church of Scotland pastor, thinks that ministers — in good 2k fashion — should not preach about secession, nor should the church adopt a stance:

. . . the Free Church does not ,and will not take a stance either for or against independence. Why? Because the Bible says nothing about it and we are here to teach the bible. In applying Gods word to our current society there is nothing in it that would tell us we should vote yes or we should vote no. Each has to be persuaded in their own mind. The Church should not make pronouncements on issues for which it has no scriptural warrant. These are my personal opinions and I hope I would never proclaim them from the pulpit as though they had the authority of Gods Word.

That’s an encouraging word from a man normally inclined to follow Tim Keller on holy urbanism. It shows how sensible 2k is. The church only says that the Bible says — and even then, you need to read the entire Bible in the entire perspective of God’s plan of redemption. So while monarchy was (not so) great for the Israelites and while emperors were honorable for (even while torturing) the apostles, the rest of Christian history leaves believers to make it up as they go.

But after jumping out with such a promising start, Pastor Robertson can’t help himself. He believes — seriously — that nationalism can be redeemed:

I am somewhat bemused by people who warn about the evils of nationalism when it is Scottish, but seem to think it is ok when it is British. As the Mangalwadi quote at the start of this article states, nationalism when yoked to the reforming power of the Bible, can become a powerful redemptive force. At the end of the day – that is what I will work for, whether in an independent Scotland or a dependent Britain.

It is hard to know where to begin or end with this opinion. But for the sake of blogging’s brevity, I’ll keep it short. First, what does Pastor Robertson make of all the nationalism in twentieth-century Europe and the wars of global proportions it unleashed? It’s one thing to be patriotic (a form of loyalty to the land of one’s fathers), but another to wrap up a people’s identity along national lines. What would become of non-Scots in an independent Scotland? That is not an impolite question given Europe’s history.

Second, why does adding the Bible or salvation to something that has such a dubious record — nationalism, urbanism, theater, mathematics (plumbing is fine) — make it better? The record of mixing religion and nationalism is a narrative of the gross excesses of civil religion. And civil religion is a betrayal of the gospel because Jesus did not rise again to save the members of the Church of England or the Church of Scotland or even the Free Church of Scotland. Churches having to negotiate national boundaries is part of the business of Christian ministry in this age. But turning national boundaries and jurisdictions into redemptive purposes is an example of every-square-inch naivete.