Category: Christ and culture

Culture Redeemed

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

I find it odd that the books on Christ and culture (which may not be legion but are numerous) pay almost no attention to Old Testament Israel. If you wanted to find a case where God (in good sufficiency of Scripture fashion) specifies what a saved, holy, or transformed culture is supposed to look like, you can’t find a better example than what the Israelites received in the pages of the Pentateuch. Here is a sampling of OT laws governing the culture of the saved (borrowed from here):

Times and Seasons

That the new month shall be solemnly proclaimed as holy, and the months and years shall be calculated by the Supreme Court only (Ex. 12:2) (affirmative) (the authority to declare months is inferred from the use of the word “unto you”).
Not to travel on Shabbat outside the limits of one’s place of residence (Ex. 16:29) (CCN7). See Shabbat.
To sanctify Shabbat (Ex. 20:8) (CCA19). See Shabbat.
Not to do work on Shabbat (Ex. 20:10) (CCN6). See Shabbat.
To rest on Shabbat (Ex. 23:12; 34:21) (CCA20). See Shabbat.
To celebrate the festivals [Passover, Shavu’ot and Sukkot] (Ex. 23:14) (affirmative).
To rejoice on the festivals (Deut. 16:14) (CCA21).
To appear in the Sanctuary on the festivals (Deut. 16:16) (affirmative).
To remove chametz on the Eve of Passover (Ex. 12:15) (CCA22). See Passover.
To rest on the first day of Passover (Ex. 12:16; Lev. 23:7) (CCA25). See Passover.
Not to do work on the first day of Passover (Ex. 12:16; Lev. 23:6-7) (CCN147). See Passover.
To rest on the seventh day of Passover (Ex. 12:16; Lev. 23:8) (CCA27). See Passover.
Not to do work on the seventh day of Passover (Ex. 12:16; Lev. 23:8) (CCN148). See Passover.
To eat matzah on the first night of Passover (Ex. 12:18) (CCA23). See Passover.
That no chametz be in the Israelite’s possession during Passover (Ex. 12:19) (CCN3). See Passover.
Not to eat any food containing chametz on Passover (Ex. 12:20) (CCN5). See Passover.
Not to eat chametz on Passover (Ex. 13:3) (CCN4). See Passover.
That chametz shall not be seen in an Israelite’s home during Passover (Ex. 13:7) (CCN2). See Passover.
To discuss the departure from Egypt on the first night of Passover (Ex. 13:8) (CCA24). See The Passover Seder.
Not to eat chametz after mid-day on the fourteenth of Nissan (Deut. 16:3) (CCN104). See Passover.
To count forty-nine days from the time of the cutting of the Omer (first sheaves of the barley harvest) (Lev. 23:15) (CCA26). See The Counting of the Omer.
To rest on Shavu’ot (Lev. 23:21) (CCA28). See Shavu’ot.
Not to do work on the Shavu’ot (Lev. 23:21) (CCN149). See Shavu’ot.
To rest on Rosh Hashanah (Lev. 23:24) (CCA29). See Rosh Hashanah.
Not to do work on Rosh Hashanah (Lev. 23:25) (CCN150). See Rosh Hashanah.
To hear the sound of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah (Num. 29:1) (CCA30). See Rosh Hashanah.
To fast on Yom Kippur (Lev. 23:27) (CCA32). See Yom Kippur.
Not to eat or drink on Yom Kippur (Lev. 23:29) (CCN152). See Yom Kippur.
Not to do work on Yom Kippur (Lev. 23:31) (CCN151). See Yom Kippur.
To rest on the Yom Kippur (Lev. 23:32) (CCA31). See Yom Kippur.
To rest on the first day of Sukkot (Lev. 23:35) (CCA34). See Sukkot.
Not to do work on the first day of Sukkot (Lev. 23:35) (CCN153). See Sukkot.
To rest on the eighth day of Sukkot (Shemini Atzeret) (Lev. 23:36) (CCA37). See Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.
Not to do work on the eighth day of Sukkot (Shemini Atzeret) (Lev. 23:36) (CCN154). See Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.
To take during Sukkot a palm branch and the other three plants (Lev. 23:40) (CCA36). See Sukkot.
To dwell in booths seven days during Sukkot (Lev. 23:42) (CCA35). See Sukkot.

Dietary Laws

To examine the marks in cattle (so as to distinguish the clean from the unclean) (Lev. 11:2) (affirmative). See Animals that may not be eaten.
Not to eat the flesh of unclean beasts (Lev. 11:4) (CCN93). See Animals that may not be eaten.
To examine the marks in fishes (so as to distinguish the clean from the unclean (Lev. 11:9) (affirmative). See Animals that may not be eaten.
Not to eat unclean fish (Lev. 11:11) (CCN95). See Animals that may not be eaten.
To examine the marks in fowl, so as to distinguish the clean from the unclean (Deut. 14:11) (affirmative). See Animals that may not be eaten.
Not to eat unclean fowl (Lev. 11:13) (CCN94). See Animals that may not be eaten.
To examine the marks in locusts, so as to distinguish the clean from the unclean (Lev. 11:21) (affirmative). See Animals that may not be eaten.
Not to eat a worm found in fruit (Lev. 11:41) (CCN98). See Animals that may not be eaten.
Not to eat of things that creep upon the earth (Lev. 11:41-42) (CCN97). See Animals that may not be eaten.
Not to eat any vermin of the earth (Lev. 11:44) (CCN100). See Animals that may not be eaten.
Not to eat things that swarm in the water (Lev. 11:43 and 46) (CCN99). See Animals that may not be eaten.
Not to eat of winged insects (Deut. 14:19) (CCN96). See Animals that may not be eaten.
Not to eat the flesh of a beast that is terefah (lit torn) (Ex. 22:30) (CCN87). See Kosher slaughtering.
Not to eat the flesh of a beast that died of itself (Deut. 14:21) (CCN86). See Kosher slaughtering.
To slay cattle, deer and fowl according to the laws of shechitah if their flesh is to be eaten (Deut. 12:21) (“as I have commanded” in this verse refers to the technique) (CCA48). See Kosher slaughtering.
Not to eat a limb removed from a living beast (Deut. 12:23) (CCN90). See Kosher slaughtering.
Not to slaughter an animal and its young on the same day (Lev. 22:28) (CCN108).
Not to take the mother-bird with the young (Deut. 22:6) (CCN189). See Treatment of Animals.
To set the mother-bird free when taking the nest (Deut. 22:6-7) (CCA74). See Treatment of Animals.
Not to eat the flesh of an ox that was condemned to be stoned (Ex. 21:28) (negative).
Not to boil meat with milk (Ex. 23:19) (CCN91). See Separation of Meat and Dairy.
Not to eat flesh with milk (Ex. 34:26) (according to the Talmud, this passage is a distinct prohibition from the one in Ex. 23:19) (CCN92). See Separation of Meat and Dairy.
Not to eat the of the thigh-vein which shrank (Gen. 32:33) (CCN1). See Forbidden Fats and Nerves.
Not to eat chelev (tallow-fat) (Lev. 7:23) (CCN88). See Forbidden Fats and Nerves.
Not to eat blood (Lev. 7:26) (CCN89). See Draining of Blood.
To cover the blood of undomesticated animals (deer, etc.) and of fowl that have been killed (Lev. 17:13) (CCA49).
Not to eat or drink like a glutton or a drunkard (not to rebel against father or mother) (Lev. 19:26; Deut. 21:20) (CCN106).

Business Practices

Not to do wrong in buying or selling (Lev. 25:14) (CCN47).
Not to make a loan to an Israelite on interest (Lev. 25:37) (CCN54).
Not to borrow on interest (Deut. 23:20) (because this would cause the lender to sin) (CCN55).
Not to take part in any usurious transaction between borrower and lender, neither as a surety, nor as a witness, nor as a writer of the bond for them (Ex. 22:24) (CCN53).
To lend to a poor person (Ex. 22:24) (even though the passage says “if you lend” it is understood as obligatory) (CCA62).
Not to demand from a poor man repayment of his debt, when the creditor knows that he cannot pay, nor press him (Ex. 22:24) (CCN52).
Not to take in pledge utensils used in preparing food (Deut. 24:6) (CCN58).
Not to exact a pledge from a debtor by force (Deut. 24:10) (CCN59).
Not to keep the pledge from its owner at the time when he needs it (Deut. 24:12) (CCN61).
To return a pledge to its owner (Deut. 24:13) (CCA63).
Not to take a pledge from a widow (Deut. 24:17) (CCN60).
Not to commit fraud in measuring (Lev. 19:35) (CCN83).
To ensure that scales and weights are correct (Lev. 19:36) (affirmative).
Not to possess inaccurate measures and weights (Deut. 25:13-14) (CCN84).

Employees, Servants and Slaves

Not to delay payment of a hired man’s wages (Lev. 19:13) (CCN38).
That the hired laborer shall be permitted to eat of the produce he is reaping (Deut. 23:25-26) (CCA65).
That the hired laborer shall not take more than he can eat (Deut. 23:25) (CCN187).
That a hired laborer shall not eat produce that is not being harvested (Deut. 23:26) (CCN186).
To pay wages to the hired man at the due time (Deut. 24:15) (CCA66).
To deal judicially with the Hebrew bondman in accordance with the laws appertaining to him (Ex. 21:2-6) (affirmative).
Not to compel the Hebrew servant to do the work of a slave (Lev. 25:39) (negative).
Not to sell a Hebrew servant as a slave (Lev. 25:42) (negative).
Not to treat a Hebrew servant rigorously (Lev. 25:43) (negative).
Not to permit a gentile to treat harshly a Hebrew bondman sold to him (Lev. 25:53) (negative).
Not to send away a Hebrew bondman servant empty handed, when he is freed from service (Deut. 15:13) (negative).
To bestow liberal gifts upon the Hebrew bondsman (at the end of his term of service), and the same should be done to a Hebrew bondwoman (Deut. 15:14) (affirmative).
To redeem a Hebrew maid-servant (Ex. 21:8) (affirmative).
Not to sell a Hebrew maid-servant to another person (Ex. 21:8) (negative).
To espouse a Hebrew maid-servant (Ex. 21:8-9) (affirmative).
To keep the Canaanite slave forever (Lev. 25:46) (affirmative).
Not to surrender a slave, who has fled to the land of Israel, to his owner who lives outside Palestine (Deut. 23:16) (negative).
Not to wrong such a slave (Deut. 23:17) (negative).
Not to muzzle a beast, while it is working in produce which it can eat and enjoy (Deut. 25:4) (CCN188).

Agriculture and Animal Husbandry

Not to cross-breed cattle of different species (Lev. 19:19) (according to the Talmud, this also applies to birds) (CCN142).
Not to sow different kinds of seed together in one field (Lev. 19:19) (CCN107).
Not to eat the fruit of a tree for three years from the time it was planted (Lev. 19:23) (CCN105). See Tu B’Shevat.
That the fruit of fruit-bearing trees in the fourth year of their planting shall be sacred like the second tithe and eaten in Jerusalem (Lev. 19:24) (affirmative) (CCI16). See Tu B’Shevat.
Not to sow grain or herbs in a vineyard (Deut. 22:9) (negative).
Not to eat the produce of diverse seeds sown in a vineyard (Deut. 22:9) (negative).
Not to work with beasts of different species, yoked together (Deut. 22:10) (CCN180).

Clothing

That a man shall not wear women’s clothing (Deut. 22:5) (CCN179).
That a woman should not wear men’s clothing (Deut. 22:5) (CCN178).
Not to wear garments made of wool and linen mixed together (Deut. 22:11) (CCN181).

Of course, good reasons exist for not following the Old Testament in the creation of redeemed or holy culture (which I assume would be transformed). One is that little delicacy of theonomy. If we follow OT laws, are we not obligated to keep all of them, including the ones about monarchy and slavery? The way around this theological riddle is to distinguish among the ceremonial, judicial, and moral laws of the Israelites, with the moral law still in effect but the judicial and ceremonial nonbinding because of Christ’s fulfilling them. This is why the Confession of Faith says:

3. Beside this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly, holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the new testament.

4. To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require. (ch. 19)

The other way around using these laws as the model for redeeming culture is to go to Paul who says in Romans 14 that for Christians, for instance, no food is unclean. Again, the sufficiency of Scripture comes to the rescue and tells Christians that they don’t have to follow all the restrictions that determined a “Christian” or redeemed culture before Christ.

But if Scripture says that Christians no longer have rules governing business, agriculture, food, or slaves, why do some Christians want to establish rules independent of Scripture for transforming culture? If this question suggests that transformationalists are the contemporary equivalent of the Judaizers, then wear the shoe comfortably. For those on the 2k side of the aisle, transformationalism has always seemed to be essentially theonomic with a progressive facade.

Slippery Christendom, Theonomic Patriotism

Published on by D. G. Hart27 Comments

The Baylys once again tightened my jaws by asserting that spirituality of the church folks don’t choose Jesus when the choice is between Jesus and the U.S. This is pretty nutty since, one, the Baylys choose the U.S. all the time when they fashion their message, rather than limiting it to what Jesus revealed; and, two, they constantly complain that spirituality of the church men won’t choose the U.S. and fight secularism, immorality, feminization. Damned if we do or don’t. That is life in a theocracy. See the Old Testament.

The BeeBees (brothers B for those who can’t remember the Brothers Gibb) take their cue this time from Doug Wilson who says rightly that American Christians need to be Christians first and give up American exceptionalism:

So when the decree comes down and we are told — as we are now being prepared to be told — that we cannot oppose same sex mirage and be good Americans, our first reply ought to be “very well then, have it your way. We shall be bad Americans.”

My citizenship, my affections, my loyalties whether national or regional, my manner of expression, my lever-action Winchester, my language, my love of pie, my Americanism . . . these are all contingent things. They are all creatures, because they are attributes of my life and existence, and I am a creature. Our nation, and all its pleasant things, is a creature. The grass withers, and the flower fades.

The purveyors of soft despotism want to arrange things so that we conform fully to their agenda, or consign ourselves to their idea of the outer darkness, which turns out to be the same kind of place as Stalin’s.

Because I think like a Christian, I don’t necessarily think it is a necessary choice at all. But it is only not necessary in a nation that is not despotic — and ours is metastasizing into despotism. So under their terms, under their rule, such a choice is mandatory — because in times of persecution, they will make it necessary — which means that I will swallow the reductio. Force me to choose between Jesus and America, and then watch me choose Jesus.

Wilson is clever but his cleverness is always tinged with hysteria — as in, we are about to be persecuted just like the early Christians were, because they would not bow to the emperor who claimed to be divine. Try to convince Wilson that Obama lacks divine pretensions and he can point to all the soft despotism that nurtures a reverence for the president akin to emperor worship (and forget all the freedoms Christians still enjoy — and for which they should not have a chip on their shoulder — that allow them to worship every Sunday and in most cases have the entire day off). It is never lines of demarcations but shades that blur from 21st-century U.S. to first century Jerusalem. A tax that is objectionable, becomes a tax that is unjust, becomes theft, becomes policy that nurtures disrespect for life, becomes murder. Forget distinctions, feel the similarities. (Or a New Mexico court ruling becomes a noose around Christians’ necks.)

The problem in part is that Wilson also traffics in an unspecified patriotism. Most of the viewers of Fox News and readers of World magazine distinguish between the U.S. as a government and America as a land, country, or people. So it is easy for Wilson to gain a following among these folks when he denounces Obamacare as sin, or Federal Treasury policy as abomination. Does he issue similar condemnations when George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan is in office? I doubt if Wilson was blogging during the Reagan years. (A quick search for Bush at his blog revealed this: “Because of the Incarnation, the bias of particularity in politics favors the anti-ideological, which is to say, it is a bias against idolatry. And that describes historic conservatism very well. At the same time, I grant that it does not describe George W. Bush’s spending habits very well — there the resemblance would be more like a pack of simians that got into an Congo merchant’s storehouse of trade gin.” Wow, the doctrine of the second person of the Trinity used to justify paleo-conservatism. What would Michael Oakeshott do?)

Most paleo-conservatives distinguish the U.S. from the national government. For them, patriotism is love of the people (Americans) who live in a particular place (the U.S.A.). Does Wilson actually look at the U.S. this way? I suspect he loves the land south of the Canadian border in a way differently from the way he might appreciate Europe or Palestine. But does he love the American people which includes a diverse lot of believers and non-believers, gays and straights, feminists and Sarah Palin? This isn’t a trick question, insinuating that Wilson hates non-Christians. It is though a question about Wilson’s love of country. Does he love America when populated only by Christians? Or can he love America when it includes idolaters (Mormons) and blasphemers (Jehovah’s Witnesses)?

The bigger problem is Wilson’s commitment to Christendom. Is Wilson willing to say of Christendom what he says of America?

My citizenship, my affections, my loyalties whether national or regional, my manner of expression, my lever-action Winchester, my language, my love of pie, my Americanism Christendom . . . these are all contingent things. They are all creatures, because they are attributes of my life and existence, and I am a creature. Our nation, and all its pleasant things, is a creature. The grass withers, and the flower fades.

In other words, is Christendom a creation or is it heaven on earth? Does Wilson violate every canon of Christian and conservative conviction by immanentizing the eschaton? It sure looks like his postmillenniaism and repeated briefs on behalf of Christendom has a lot of immanentizing going on. Then again, it’s a slippery Christendom and a libertarian theocracy he advocates (oxymoron intended).

In point of fact, Wilson does not acknowledge that Christians are aliens and strangers. His model for Christian political and cultural engagement is Christendom (minus the Crusades, papacy, Index of Books, Jewish ghettos). It is not the Israelites in exile who went along with regimes that were suffused with assertions of pagan gods and did not whine, except to long for their homeland. Nor is it the early Christians who tried to fit in and honor the emperor but refused to worship him, and suffered the consequences. (I can’t imagine Paul blogging about Nero the way Wilson or the BeeBees do about Obama.)

Of course, the image of Christians as persecuted and martyrs doesn’t play well among folks who like to hurl “sissy” as an epithet. Turning the other cheek is not a model for cultural domination or for Mere Christendom — not sure it works for cultural engagement, actually. (And Wilson and others need to be clear that turning the other cheek is not what turned around the empire — the emperor, Constantine did; go figure.) Nor did turning the other cheek inspire political revolutions like the Dutch, the English, or the American. So alienated spirituality of the church men are not only strange but pansies in the eyes of the soft theonomists. I understand the stereotyping. I’m having trouble finding the proof text.

Did Evelyn Waugh Write Brideshead Revisited to Transform Culture?

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

In case anyone wondered what happened to Rick Santorum, the once rising-star of GOP politics from the virtuous commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a news story puts those questions to rest. He’s starting a movie company.

“For a long time, Christians have decided that the best way to fight the popular culture is to keep it at bay, to lock it out of their home. … That’s a losing battle,” Santorum said in an interview at America’s Center Convention Complex, where he was attending the International Christian Retail Show.

With “the pervasiveness of (media) right now, the content just seeps through. The only option is to go out into that arena and try to shape the culture, too.”

Santorum said one problem with Christian-themed films was that they’ve traditionally been aimed at just Christian audiences, rather than attempting to appeal to audiences that don’t necessarily share the movie’s messaging going in.

He blamed that limited appeal on what he said were often the “hokey” and “cheesy” feel of such films, with all the filmmakers’ attention focused on the message and not enough on artistic quality.

“Quality. Quality acting, quality directing, quality scriptwriting. That is going to be a watchword for me,” Santorum said at a news conference talking about the studio’s pending projects. He said the goal was to produce movies “that rival any good Hollywood film.”

Aside from the entertaining thought of inserting Santorum into Barton Fink, I am snickering at the proposition that the better way to respond to worldliness is by making the worldliness wholesome rather than fleeing it. I understand that the petri dish that produced Mrs. Hart and me, the fundamentalist mentality of not drinking, dancing, smoking, or going to movies, is a tough sell. It was tough even in the 1960s and it had limited success (obviously) since I became a film studies major. Major DOH! Still, even if the prescriptions weren’t air tight, we did have a sense that worldliness existed and that it was something to avoid. (Just as when it came to worship we had a sense that God could be offended and that we shouldn’t offend him — a sense seemingly lost on worship leaders and members of their bands.) And we also had productions that some believers thought could compete with mainstream culture. (Seriously.) Aside from Billy Graham’s production company, Ralph Carmichael‘s musicals, like “Tell it Like it Is” which Wikipedia describes as a “folk musical about God” (Laugh track, please) were the occasions for relief from not having to endure a sermon.

So I have serious doubts whether Santorum and company will figure out the right mix of piety and entertainment. A major reason is that producing quality rarely is so self-conscious. If you are committed to producing the best thing possible, you are not also calculating its broader effects on society. I can’t prove this but it does seem self-evident about most creative efforts. Only after finishing such a work do its wider consequences become evident. But if you start with the idea of influencing society, you’ll end up not with The Wire but The Restless Ones.

Better to stick with the catechism (especially one that comes in less than 140 questions — that way, there’s time for milk and cookies).

Is Infant Baptism (or the Mass) a Life-Style Choice?

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

George Weigel comments on the anniversary of the Edict of Milan (313). I agree with this (though leveling the dangers of coercion to Protestants and Roman Catholics when Inquisitions were a Roman Catholic reality until 1870 is a bit much):

The immediate effects of the Constantinian settlement, both good and ill, were limned with customary wit and literary skill by Evelyn Waugh in the novel Helena. After 313, the tombs of the martyrs were publicly honored; so were the martyr-confessors, often disfigured by torture, who emerged from the Christian underground to kiss each other’s wounds at the first ecumenical council. Before those heroes met at Nicaea in 325, though, grave theological questions had gotten ensnared up in imperial court intrigues and ecclesiastical politics. Later unions of altar and throne led to a general cultural forgetting of Lactantius’ wisdom, as the Church employed the “civil arm” to enforce orthodoxy. Protestantism proved no less vulnerable to the temptation to coercion than Catholicism and Orthodoxy; one might even argue that the seventeenth-century Peace of Westphalia, which ended the European wars of religion by establishing the principle of cuius regio eius religio (the prince’s religion is the people’s religion), reversed the accomplishments of the “Edict of Milan”—and was, in fact, the West’s first modern experiment in the totalitarian coercion of consciences.

But then he shows the addling effects of preoccupation with the political outcomes of faith:

Very few twenty-first-century Christians would welcome a return to state establishments of religion as the accepted norm. So however much the Constantinian settlement led Christianity into what some regard as a lengthy Babylonian captivity to state power, the “Edict of Milan” also affirmed truths that have proven stronger over time than the temptation to use Caesar for God’s work. Today’s challenge is quite different: it’s the temptation to let Caesar, in his various forms, reduce religious conviction to a privacy right of lifestyle choice.

What about when Christ’s followers reduce religious conviction to a privacy right? What Weigel doesn’t see is that the churches are as complicit in privatizing religion as the Obama administration. When Manhattan Declarationists, including Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox, defend religious freedom in the name of the gospel, when the Gospel Coalition understands its union of Presbyterians, Baptists, and independents as defending the gospel, or when participants at Vatican II recognize Muslims, Jews, and Protestants as on the way to salvation, the particularities of Christianity like baptism and the Lord’s supper fall into irrelevance almost as quickly as it takes to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Now lest I fall prey to the same error of leveling George Weigel to President Obama’s status, I will grant that the Manhattan Declaration, the Gospel Coalition, and Vatican II mean/meant well. Then again, so does the president. And in both cases the means of grace, word, sacrament, and prayer, that I spend so much time defending (as part of my private responsibilities) make as much difference to the Declarationists, the Allies, and the Cardinals (and their ecumenical observers) as the Seventy-Sixers do to professional sports.

What's In Your Wallet?

Published on by D. G. Hart54 Comments

Will it still be there after the resurrection? Will you still have a wallet?

I do not think it is gnostic to believe that Christians will not have access to their pre-resurrection savings accounts in the new heavens and new earth. In fact, countless Christian organizations and ministries solicit donations precisely because practically every Christian on this earth knows that what he now owns he will not possess once he dies. Now, maybe we get it all back (with interest?). But since wills and other legal arrangements see every believer make provisions to zero out his books, so that all his possessions go to someone else, does the idea of redeeming the material world indicate that most Christians need to reconsider how they prepare to meet their maker?

Believe me, when Matt Tuininga argues for continuity between the pre- and post-resurrection world, I am tempted. After all, if the books I have written (which are part of the material world) will survive the end of the world, perhaps I’ll have a chance to present a copy of Defending the Faith to J. Gresham Machen (not to mention being able to show my parents what I wrote since they went to be with the Lord). But I have no more confidence that the circumstances of the new heavens and new earth will include the contents of my curriculum vitae any more than that of my wallet.

Maybe Matt’s case for environmentalism only extends to God’s possessions and not to mine. So the fields and streams and cattle and trees, which all belong to the Lord, may show up in the world to come because they are God’s. What belongs to those who won’t be glorified, remains with those who need no glorification. But since much of the world that ultimately belongs to the Lord, provisionally belongs to farmers, developers, and investors, then the material world to survive the world’s end may be reserved to those remotest parts of Canada, Brazil, and Siberia, where ownership does not apply.

But if the point is that the human body, which is part of the material world, will be resurrected and so functions as an example of other material things that will be saved, redeemed, or resurrected, then why not my cash, credit cards, books, cats, house, and herb garden?

Or maybe we only see through a glass darkly.

Critics of 2K May Not Sing "A Mighty Fortress"

Published on by D. G. Hart100 Comments

Most Protestants older than 35 are familiar with the text of Luther’s hymn. Since Luther himself was a two-kingdom advocate, the notion that “A Mighty Fortress” has 2k connotations is hardly surprising. What comes as a surprise is that anti-2kers have not removed the hymn from our hymnals. The fourth stanza sings:

That word above all earthly powers,
no thanks to them, abideth;
the Spirit and the gifts are ours,
thru him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go,
this mortal life also;
the body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still;
his kingdom is forever.

Obviously, reading cultural transformation into those words is a feat possibly only John Henry Newman could perform. But finding an eternal dimension in the work of civil magistrates is well-nigh impossible. How exactly can the temporal affairs of the civil government be eternal?

This observation disproves once again the common notion that Christians learn far more theology from hymns than from doctrinal teaching.

Jonathan Edwards and Neo-Calvinism

Published on by D. G. Hart23 Comments

Ryan McIlhenny responds to David VanDrunen’s review of Kingdoms Apart:

Neo-Calvinists would agree that Christians and non-Christians share truths equally, but on a surface or common (creational, natural law) level only. Anyone digging deeper into a particular area of study will be confronted with anomalies, irony, or just plain mystery that can never be critically and creatively worked out apart from a theoretical interpretive grid rooted in one’s religious ground motive. It is the religious heart that reveals the competing understandings of the common. As I mentioned in the book, the neo-Calvinist distinction between structure and direction is helpful on this point. Thus, in both morality and reason, an explicitly biblical approach is better or more advanced, again in theory, than one that rejects or simply ignores the importance of Christ.

The “religious heart” reveals competing understandings? Does that apply to interpreting the Civil War (U.S.)? Or do graduate students in history need to learn from a host of non-saved historians, whose hearts are not religious, to sort out the competing understandings of what led to the war and what its consequences were for the nation (and local communities)?

And does this apply to medicine? When I need to have my hip replaced and get a second opinion, do I need to ask whether the surgeons’ hearts have been strangely warmed?

No one lives this way. Neo-Calvinism leads to intellectual theonomy. It allows pietists to wear their faith on their intellect. But if doesn’t explain how Christians operate (unless neo-Calvinists are willing to claim that the way Christians ordinarily operate is sinful), how smart can it be?

Life among the Christians and Turks

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

Pope Francis’ recent words about atheists stand in stark contrast to the encyclical (1009) that Pope Serguis IV issued to remedy the Muslim destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (966):

Let all Christians know that news has come from the east to the seat of the apostles that the church of the Holy Sepulchre has been destroyed from roof to foundations by the impious hands of the pagans. This destruction has plunged the entire church and the city of Rome into deep grief and distress. The whole world is in morning and the people tremble, breading deep sighs. . . .

With the Lord’s help we intend to kill all these enemies and restore the Redeemer’s Holy Sepulchre. Nor, my sons, are you to fear the sea’s turbulence, nor dred the fury of war, for God has promised that whoever loses the present life for the sake of Christ will gain another life which he will never lose. For this is not a battle for an earthly kingdom, but for the eternal Lord. (Andrew Wheatcroft, Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam, 159)

Wheatcroft does not use this encyclical to show up the fanaticism or intolerance of medieval Christianity or the Vatican. His aim is much more complicated and the history he tells is a complex affair of how both sides demonized the other, and how both Christians and Muslims were responsible for perpetuating myths about the other that would have resonances in the memories of the West and the East all the way down to the Balkan Wars of the 1990s and responses to 9/11. In other words, the language of crusade and jihad played off each other for the better part of a millennium (and it looks like the Christian West and Islamic East have still not recovered):

The theory of jihad was drawn from a few occurrences of the word in the Qur’an and more fully in the juristic commentary and oral traditions (hadith) of the Prophet Mohammed. These statements often required considerable interpretation to mold them to events. In theory, for Islam as for Christendom, war was an evil. For battle and killing to be sanctified it had to be a struggle in a good and godly cause. Over time, therefore, both communities evolved superficially quite similar ideas for a just war in a good cause. But there were differences between the parallel but separate processes of evolution. In Christendom, the doctrine of holy war was hotly debated and transmuted over time into many different ideological strands, mostly in response to social and political change. The terminology of “Crusade” was highly mutable: “pilgrimage,” “journey,” “signed by the cross,” and so on, were the ways of describing it. In Islam, there were two commonly used – jihad, and ghaza in Ottoman Turkish – and there could be little debate about the meaning of these terms, and little theoretical investigation of their limits and boundaries.

When the organized forces of “Crusade” and jihad confronted each other directly on the battlefield, the contrast between them was immediately apparent. Visually speaking, the dominant motif of the Western Christian side overwhelmed all others. The Muslim banners carried many different emblems and texts, mostly the names and qualities of God and other suitable verses. . . But on the Christian side the single image of the cross was dominant. From the first contact the defining characteristic of the Crusade was the symbol of the crucified Christ. (177)

Wheatcroft goes on to describe the how the Crusaders violated Islamic and even Byzantine sensibilities that distinguished the private and holy realm from the public and common.

For [Muslims], the concept of Christ on the cross transgressed a wide range of taboos. God made flesh was unthinkable, and even more so a God who experienced a physical birth. In Islam God was transcendent, while the Western Christians proclaimed his materiality. The Crusaders’ capacity to pollute seemed limitless. They had, unwittingly or deliberately, defiled the holy site in Jerusalem . . . from the first moments of their occupation. They had killed thousands within the holy precinct. . . . Another Muslim traveler was shocked when he climbed up to the holy sites. “I entered Jerusalem and I saw monks and priests in charge of the Sacred Rock . . I saw upon it bottles of win for the ceremony of the mass. I entered the Aqsa mosque and in it a bell was suspended. The most manifest evidence of this desecration of Muslim eyes was the large gold cross that had been placed on the highest point of the Dome of the Rock. (180)

Though perceptions of Christians and Muslims had already been shaped by life together in Spain some three centuries earlier, the Crusades established the pattern, according to Wheatcroft:

. . . during their confrontation in the East, Muslims and Western Christians developed much more complex and roughly symmetrical views of each other.. The degree to which each group produced reverse or mirror images is remarkable. Christians regarded Muslims as inherently cruel and violent; Muslims felt the same about Westerners. Christians developed wild imaginings about the sexual proclivities of Muslims. Muslims regarded the Franks, as Usamah made clear, as little better than animals in terms of sexual propriety. (189)

And now, one thousand years later, in some parts of that troubled world, Western tourists can enjoy an Efes and Turkey’s natural charms, and wonder why some Turks think they are living in a country the political equivalent of Syria.

Christians Assimilated (but compromised?)

Published on by D. G. Hart14 Comments

A terrific book review, now a little long in the tooth, of two books on Europe and its immigrant populations is worth pondering for a variety of reasons but it got me thinking specifically about the assimilation of Christians in a secular republic like the United States. Here is a striking passage:

PEOPLE WHO ASK whether better government policies could have made Muslim immigration to Europe less of a debacle tend to look at Britain and France as two ends of a spectrum of approaches. Britain has let immigrants go their own way. It has been multiculturalist, laissez-faire, tolerant of partial allegiances and unintegrated identities. If you are a Sikh policeman, you can wear your turban on duty. In immigration as in other matters, the United Kingdom is unusually disorderly and willing to run the risk that “parallel societies” will form; but it does offer immigrants more self-respect and freedom of religion. France, by contrast, favors the assimilatory pressures of the melting pot. It wants immigrants to embrace a single model of republican citizenship. France’s model may sound condescending and hypocritical, but at its best it can convince a newcomer that the country’s thousand-year-old history belongs to him as much as anyone. It is a fool’s errand to call either the French or the British approach “better.” Each is built out of thousand-year-old habits of political culture. But immigration experts tend to laud whichever of the two has led to riots less recently.

What was I thinking:

1) it is hard to assimilate people of diverse cultural backgrounds and religious heritages into a peaceful, moderately ordered, and free society. Americans often bemoan the size of the government, the disregard for morality, or the inconsistency of cultural expectations (myself included). But keeping very different groups relatively calm and peaceful is no mean feat (especially if you believe what Reformed Protestants do about human nature).

2) Where does the U.S. fall in this model? In some ways it looks more like its cultural grandparent, Britain. But we also have conformist expectations that resemble the French (which likely owes to our adopting a republican form of government under the influence of Enlightenment political thought).

3) If Christians who complain about the decadence of the U.S. only kvetch and do not riot, is their desire to follow God weaker than Muslims?

4) If Christians want non-Christians to fit in with American norms that stem from Christian convictions, are they doing the same thing as the French even though for religious as opposed to enlightened reasons?

The First Law of 2K Dynamics

Published on by D. G. Hart109 Comments

The more committed you are to a high view of the church (teaching, worship, and government), the less concerned you are about political causes and cultural transformation.

This law came back to me after reading a post that commended an article by John Frame, who was yet again singling out Mike Horton. At one point, Frame writes:

[Horton] brings up the distinction between the church and civil society. But one can surely acknowledge such a distinction without disavowing attempts of the former to influence the latter. So far as I know, nobody in this discussion thinks that the state should administer sacraments, or, again, that the church should lead Christians into armed warfare. So to bring up these issues is to make a straw man argument.2. Horton asks whether the kingdom of God is a culture, created by man, or God’s sovereign action? Certainly the latter. Again, I know of no evangelical who thinks otherwise. Does this distinction mean that we should take a passive stance, waiting for God to deal with social evils, rather than seeking to alleviate them by our own resources? Scripture never draws this sort of conclusion. The sovereignty of God never excludes human responsibility in this way.

Frame’s objections to Horton — no one is actually denying the distinction between the church and the wider culture — actually put Frame in the hot seat. The reason is that he is well on the record for having worship services that are fully accessible to people who aren’t in the church. In which case, the anti-2k critics are not as firm in their distinctions between the church and the world as Frame thinks. For 2k’s critics, the goal is a Christianized culture, maybe not as moral as the church, but more so than what you get in a secular arrangement. And for these same critics, the church domesticates its distinct teachings and practices to be open to a wider part of the community. The relationship appears to be that as the church lifts the boat of culture, the church also lowers itself several notches below (in this case) Reformed ideals.

2Kers, on the other hand, have no trouble separating the church’s standards from those of the culture. The two are distinct. When the lines blur, you get New School Presbyterianism — nationalistic, revivalistic and evangelistic, and moralistic. When they don’t, you get the kingdom of heaven, the means of grace, and the gospel.