I Feel His Pain

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

And I imagine that Boniface could feel mine even though the Tiber separates us.

Boniface explains why conservative or traditional Roman Catholics are worried about Pope Francis and the recent public foot washings are just one example. People prone to view conservatives as folks who don’t care for the poor or oppressed, or who think that critics of the pope are nostalgic for Pius X should think about the actual nature of the papacy. On the one hand, the pope washing the feet of prisoners is no big deal. But doing so on Holy Thursday sends a very different signal, one that shows the pope as Bishop of Rome is neglecting his duties to his own diocese:

The Holy Thursday Mass, which inaugurates the sacred Triduum and which (until 1642) was a holy day of obligation is in a totally different category than, say, a daily Mass. This is why when Benedict XVI wanted to celebrate Mass in the Casal del Marmo, he did so in a daily Mass, not the Holy Thursday Mass, which as part of the sacred Triduum, is of a much more solemn and public nature than a mere daily Mass.

Remember, the pope is also Bishop of the diocese of Rome. This means that for the past three years, the faithful of that diocese have been deprived of access to the celebration of one of the most sacred Masses of the year by their bishop. I admit this is not a huge issue or a monumental scandal – but it is something.

Boniface also explains that foot-washing on Holy Thursday was designed for bishops to serve their clergy (not as a photo op):

It must be remembered that though foot washing in general is a sign of service (cf. 1 Tim. 5:10), the Holy Thursday foot washing in particular is much more than that. Christ did not just wash His disciples’ feet as a sign of service to mankind in general, but of the service the hierarchy renders to the clergy in particular. This is why most liturgical foot washing in the Church’s history has always focused on the bishop’s service to his clergy; priests, canons, deacons and subdeacons have been the recipients of foot washing; this was true of diocesan bishops as well as the pope. It is an ecclesiological ritual relating to the clergy and their superiors, not a general sign of service to mankind.

. . . If the Holy Thursday foot washing is supposed to signify the service of the hierarchy to the Church – and to the clergy in particular – then we can easily understand why it is totally inappropriate that non-Christians should be the recipients of the ceremony. In what fantasy land can a Muslim or atheist in any way represent the Church?

And to the papal supremacists who defend Francis by citing his power to change church law (not doctrine) as he sees fit, Boniface observes that procedures exist for such changes and they don’t include merely breaking existing law:

. . . it seems lost on many that to say one has an authority to change a law is not the same thing as suggesting he can simply break the law. We all understand this. If the Holy Father does not like the current legislation, he has the power to change it. He can promulgate new rubrics or new norms if he so chooses. But for law to be law, this is accomplished by an act of law; i.e., the lawgiver changing the law by an legitimate exercise of his legislative power. The law is not changed by the lawgiver simply breaking the law.

Suppose the speed limit in your town was 30 mph. Suppose your small town Mayor decided he did not like that speed limit. Suppose, on the premise that he was the “supreme authority” in your small town, he just decided to start breaking the speed limit with impunity. How would you react? You would be indignant! You would say, “If the Mayor doesn’t like the speed limit, then change the law, but for heaven’s sake, don’t just break it!”

Since the rubrics for Holy Thursday have not changed, the fact remains that Pope Francis is simply violating the rubrics. You may say the law should change. You may applaud his inclusiveness. You may affirm that he has the power to change the law. But you cannot deny that he is breaking the law every time he washes the foot of a female on Holy Thursday. There’s no other way to explain it.

Aside from the merits of Boniface’s points or what Francis may indicate about the current magisterium, the post is instructive for a couple reasons:

First, Bryan and the Jasons seem to have no awareness of these nuances of significance in the public face of Roman Catholicism. Their conversion is a full-on embrace of Rome no matter what anyone does or says. And because the supremacy of the papacy is crucial to their conversion, they will never be in a position to raise the concerns that Boniface does. Why? Because ultimately their conversion is not about the pope or his infallibility but about their own certainty. It’s all about (not me) them.

Second, Boniface raises concerns about Francis that Old Lifers raise about the Presbyterian Pope, TKNY. Fans of Keller cannot understand critics because TKNY does so many good things that look so lovable and cuddly. But if you take Presbyterianism at all seriously, and ordination vows should suggest a degree of seriousness not to mention an entire chapter in our Confession of Faith devoted to oaths and vows, you might actually see that despite all of TKNY’s good intentions, he isn’t playing by rules that he agreed to follow. Maybe the rules are bad or need to be changed. But breaking those rules doesn’t change them. It only breeds license, an indifference to forms and structures that allows anyone to define Presbyterianism as he or Kathy sees fit.

Update: Pope’s prayers on Easter:

Continuing his blessing Sunday, the pope asked and several times implored God to stop violence in many places of the world — mentioning particularly Iraq and Syria, Libya, Yemen, Nigeria, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and Ukraine.

The pontiff also asked for “peace and freedom” for men and women “subject to old and new forms of enslavement” and for “peace and liberty” for those who are victims of drug dealers, who he said “are often allied with the powers who should defend peace and harmony in the human family.”

Mentioning Christians suffering persecution, Francis asked: “Jesus, the Victor, to lighten the sufferings of our many brothers and sisters who are persecuted for his name, and of all those who suffer injustice as a result of ongoing conflicts and violence.”

Following with the list of nations suffering violence, the pope also prayed for a “resumed” peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.

But what about Betty Falconi, member of Rome’s St. Clement’s parish, who is going in for foot surgery on Thursday?

The Bible Can't Speak To All of Life

Published on by D. G. Hart1,133 Comments

That’s why you need the Roman Catholic Church.

That, anyway, is the logic of a golden-oldie from U.S. Roman Catholic teaching about the dangers of fundamentalism:

Biblical fundamentalists are those who present the Bible, God’s inspired word, as the only necessary source for teaching about Christ and Christian living. This insistence on the teaching Bible is usually accompanied by a spirit that is warm, friendly, and pious. Such a spirit attracts many (especially idealistic young) converts. With ecumenical respect for these communities, we acknowledge their proper emphasis on religion as influencing family life and workplace. The immediate attractions are the ardor of the Christian community and the promises of certitude and of a personal conversion experience to the person of Jesus Christ without the need of church. As Catholic pastors, however, we note its presentation of the Bible as a single rule for living. According to fundamentalism, the Bible alone is sufficient. There is no place for the universal teaching church—including its wisdom, its teachings, creeds, and other doctrinal formulations, its liturgical and devotional traditions. There is simply no claim to a visible, audible, living, teaching authority binding the individual or congregations.

A further characteristic of biblical fundamentalism is that it tends to interpret the Bible as being always without error or as literally true in a way quite different from the Catholic Church’s teaching on the inerrancy of the Bible. For some biblical fundamentalists, inerrancy extends even to scientific and historical matters. The Bible is presented without regard for its historical context and development. . . .

We observed in biblical fundamentalism an effort to try to find in the Bible all the direct answers for living—though the Bible itself nowhere claims such authority. The appeal of such an approach is understandable. Our world is one of war, violence, dishonesty, personal and sexual irresponsibility. It is a world in which people are frightened by the power of the nuclear bomb and the insanity of the arms race, where the only news seems to be bad news. People of all ages yearn for answers. They look for sure, definite rules for living. And they are given answers—simplistic answers to complex issues—in a confident and enthusiastic way in fundamentalist Bible groups.

The appeal is evident for the Catholic young adult or teenager—one whose family background may be troubled; who is struggling with life, morality, and religion; whose Catholic education may have been seriously inadequate in the fundamentals of doctrine, the Bible, prayer life, and sacramental living; whose catechetical formation may have been inadequate in presenting the full Catholic traditions and teaching authority. For such a person, the appeal of finding the “ANSWER” in a devout, studious, prayerful, warm, Bible-quoting class is easy to understand. But the ultimate problem with such fundamentalism is that it can give only a limited number of answers and cannot present those answers, on balance, because it does not have Christ’s teaching church nor even an understanding of how the Bible originally came to be written, and collected in the sacred canon, or official list of inspired books.

Our Catholic belief is that we know God’s revelation in the total Gospel. The Gospel comes to us through the Spirit-guided tradition of the Church and the inspired books: “This sacred tradition, therefore, and Sacred Scripture of both the Old and New Testament are like a mirror in which the pilgrim church on earth looks at God” (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 7).

A key question for any Christian is, Does the community of faith which is the Lord’s church have a living tradition which presents God’s word across the centuries until the Lord comes again? The Catholic answer to this question is an unqualified yes. That answer was expressed most recently in the Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council. We look to both the church’s official teaching and Scripture for guidance in addressing life’s problems. It is the official teaching or magisterium that in a special way guides us in matters of belief and morality that have developed after the last word of Scripture was written. The church of Christ teaches in the name of Christ and teaches us concerning the Bible itself.

The basic characteristic of biblical fundamentalism is that it eliminates from Christianity the church as the Lord Jesus founded it.

Notice that a desire for certainty in all of life’s dilemmas is not wrong. Neo-Calvinists take heart. The problem is asking the Bible to supply all the answers. The Bible only goes so far. After that, the church and tradition need to kick in.

A similar dynamic may very well be at work with neo-Calvinism. You need the Bible but you also need philosophy which provides the rudiments of w-w, which in turn yields the answers to life’s questions.

Both Rome and neo-Calvinism give a living tradition that augments Scripture. Both also like philosophy — a lot.

2kers should also take heart. The idea that the Bible doesn’t speak to all of life is like what we’re sayin’. We’re also saying, live with the uncertainty. To which the Romanists and Amsterdamists reply, “that’s not inspiring.”

Thought Experiment

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

Is the persecution that U.S. Christians face comparable to that experienced by Syriac Christians?

On the situation in the U.S.:

If the media, the law and our elite institutions succeed in lumping Christian sexual morals in with white racism, how long will it be before believing Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox (and many religious minorities) find themselves labelled as members of “extremist sects,” no more to be trusted with the care of their own children than the Branch Davidians were?

Does that sound crazy to you? Then ask yourself why the German government, and the European Court of Human Rights, felt justified in seizing a Christian home-schooled student — with the apparent approval of the Obama administration. Think about the moral views you teach your own kids. Would your local education bureaucrats approve?

Perhaps Chicago’s cardinal, Francis George, wasn’t guilty of hyperbole when he said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

On Syria’s Christians:

Based on my contacts with Archbishop Behnan Hindo of the Syriac Catholic Church and Bishop Aprem Nathanael of the Assyrian Church of the East, who are the only heads of Churches remaining in Hassakeh, the situation over there is still very tense. People are in disarray and filled with fear.

The invasion by the Islamic State and its supporters on some 30 Christian villages on the Khabur River Feb. 23 resulted in the killing of more than two dozen people, the kidnapping of around 300 and the uprooting of around 2,500 people. The survivors had nowhere to go other than to Hassakeh, the capital of the province, where they obtained refuge in church halls and some abandoned buildings.

In Hassakeh, people manage to survive because of the presence of the Syrian National Army that ensures security, along with the Kurdish Protection Army and some Christian defense groups, which are monitoring and defending the city. Because of the ongoing tension, the region is besieged by terrorists. It happens that sometimes those entities clash among themselves, as occurred a few weeks ago. But what is most feared are the booby-trapped explosives that usually hit civilians and cause a lot of destruction, as well as instilling more fear.

Can we have a little perspective on Indiana?

A Fundamentalist Is A Mean Evangelical

Published on by D. G. Hart264 Comments

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. Evangelicalism of the Billy Graham variety was supposed to present a kinder gentler conservative Protestantism. But as Tommie Kidd recently observed, evangelicals rarely receive positive press these days:

It’s nice to be liked. But it also comes with temptation – that of focusing all the church’s work on things that will engender the world’s approval. A hundred years ago, social gospel Christians began to suggest that service and aid, not evangelism, should encompass all of a believer’s missionary responsibility. Thus began one of the most important turns away from evangelical Christianity which has haunted the mainline denominations in America ever since.

That lesson may be one that advocates of a progressive brand of evangelicalism may want to remember. I mean, if Jimmy Carter is the best you can do for presenting a positive image of evangelicalism, then you may not be operating from a position of strength. Unless, that is, you want to make this all about Christian truth and devotion and turn Jimmy Carter’s critics, whether political or Southern Baptist, into mean SOBs who don’t trust Jesus as their personal savior. In which case, the kinder, gentler, progressive version of evangelicalism is no less intolerant than fundamentalism.

The subject of evangelical meanness is much in the news these days with all the hysteria over Indiana’s religious freedom laws. It’s a hysteria that has the socially conservative Roman Catholics and evangelicals (and some Eastern Orthodox) pitted against the secular left who as some people tell it are out to destroy freedom in America. I had wanted to follow Eric’s advice and sit this one out with this assessment of the situation:

What we have here it seems to me are 3% of the population who would not do business with gay people in a fight with a minority of gay people who would try to force someone who is hostile to them to perform services for them or sell goods to them. Meanwhile the rest of the population takes sides and gets mad at each other over it while politicians of all stripes posture.

For the defenders of this law not to think that gay marriage is the subtext is well-nigh inconceivable and suggests a level of naivete that is truly destructive of politics since politics goes best when people admit self-interest rather than thinking themselves innocent.

Just as helpful was the Reformed Episcopal Curmudgeon’s point about the flaws of Civil Rights legislation and a legitimate question of whether the federal government should have such social engineering power as to legislate business transactions:

What the “public accommodations” law required, if originally in a limited fashion, was that businesses which provided “accommodations” were required to do business with anyone regardless of race. Goldwater believed it was morally repugnant to practice racial discrimination in providing “public accommodations,” but he believed the federal government had no power to coerce businesses that provided “public accommodations” to provide them to anyone who wanted to do business with them. In other words, the government should not force hotels to sell rooms, restaurants to sell food, or movie theaters to sell tickets to anyone who wanted to do business with them. Those were decisions for business owners to make.

What does this have to do with gay rights? We have accepted as a society that civil rights includes the requirement that all businesses sell their goods and services without discrimination. We believe that a person, regardless of race, ethnicity, or color has the right to buy gasoline from any business that sells gasoline. . . .

It seems to me that the only protection against being forced to do business with gays who want to marry is if there were a recognized right not to have to do business with anyone you don’t want to do business with. It is too late by much, but perhaps, if Goldwater had prevailed in 1964 and the freedom to do business or not do business with anyone you please, even if you are wrong, had been established, those with moral objections to doing business related to gay weddings would be protected. Put another way, perhaps protecting the freedom of people to do wrong (discriminate in doing business with blacks if that is what you want to do) is the only way to protect their freedom to do right when when an action violates their moral code (not do business with gays planning marriage).

Sheesh, what will the obedience boys do with civil magistrates who protect the freedoms of citizens to do wrong?

I still don’t understand why a gay or black person (caution, we’re treading in microaggression territory) would want to give business (and the inherent profits) to someone whose views they find repugnant. I understand the importance of sit-ins during the Civil Rights protests. But conceivably, an African-American who objected to Jim Crow could occupy a lunch-counter seat and not purchase anything. But after segregation laws went away, did African-Americans return to businesses that had refused to serve them? I could well imagine why they wouldn’t. So why do gay people and their enablers want to make anti-gay bakers make a cake for gay weddings and have gay people pay anti-gay people for such services? The whole understanding of human motivation is off. Doesn’t anyone fear an inedible cake? Or will the government set standards for tastiness to which all business must comply?

What I understand even less is the sensitivity of religious consciences to gay marriage. I do not support the legalization of gay marriage on social grounds. But I have no idea why some consciences object to gay marriage but not to providing services for other breakers of the Decalogue. Would a Protestant baker object to making a wedding cake for a marriage in a Roman Catholic church even when Rome’s teaching on marriage violates the sufficiency of God’s word? Or what about a cake for non-believers? I get it. Their money spends. But are we really supposed to think that homosexuals are the only ones with sin entering into nuptials?

Why Aren't More Americans Gospel Allies?

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

According to a recent Pew survey:

Americans are more religious and Americans are more hopeful about their ability to improve their future than are other wealthy countries.

Americans are more prone to think hard work will uplift, to reject thinking that outside forces control their destinies, to be happy and to prioritize religion. Over half of Americans say religion is very important to them, twice the rate found among Canadians, Australians, British and other wealthy nations.

In fact, Americans have more confidence that hard work will uplift than any other country. And Americans reject fatalism more than any country than, interestingly, Venezuela, which is perhaps Venezuelans subversively rejecting the nonsense rhetoric of their socialist regime.

Wait, the findings even have Calvinists in view:

Fifty-seven percent of Americans disagree with the statement “Success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control,” a considerably higher percentage than the global median of 38%. Similarly, Americans place an especially strong emphasis on the value of hard work – 73% think it is very important to work hard to get ahead in life, compared with a global median of 50%.

According to Mark Tooley:

Such confidence in hard work in America obviously reflects the undying Puritan work ethic, still strong after 400 years, and reinforced by countless waves of ambitious immigrants. As to rejecting “forces outside our control,” this American trait is also rooted in historic Puritan/Anglo Protestant confidence about providential mastery over the future. Calvinists may have believed in predestination but not determinism or passivity. Americans, even the non-religious, are culturally embued with a notion of individual and national purposefulness.

In other words, Americans are ripe for the New Calvinism that the Gospel Coalition promotes. Why doesn’t anyone ask what the Allies are doing wrong? Is Kathy’s b-s detector using all the electricity?

Be Merciful to Me, Person Forgetful of the Persecuted

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

Is this really the way the Stations of the Cross are supposed to work?

Lord Jesus, Pope Francis has asked us to contemplate “the martyrs of our own time” saying, “They refuse to deny Jesus and they endure insult and injury with dignity. They follow him on his way.” Help us learn from them to follow in your footsteps.

First Station

Pilate condemns Jesus

“Crucify him!” they said. “The verdict of Pilate was that their demand should be granted.” Luke 23:21, 24

We remember those who stand before modern Pilates, atheist materialists, drug lords and Islamists from Colombia to China, powerful rulers who see Christ and his Church as an obstacle and want to destroy both in their people.

Lord Jesus, like our brothers and sisters before us, help us accept the unjust judgment of Pilate in order to show your perfect love and goodness.

The Second Station

Jesus Accepts His Cross

“Carrying the cross himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha.” John 19:17

We remember Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio. In 1928 Mexico, the 15-year-old boy was tortured and attacked as he made his own way to his place of execution. “If you shout, ‘Death to Christ the King,’ we will spare your life,” the soldiers told him. Jose shouted “Viva Cristo Rey!” (Long live Christ the King!) and died a martyr.

Lord Jesus, when we are offered an opportunity to share your cross, give us the grace to say yes.

The Third Station

Jesus Falls the First Time

“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.” John 15:18

We remember those who stop practicing their faith in times of persecution. Not everyone is a hero. Many quietly denounce Christ either out of fear of reprisal, or for fear of unpopularity.

Lord Jesus, you fell on your way of the cross and then got up. Have mercy on those who have stopped practicing their faith when persecution has come in whatever form, and inspire them to return.

(Eleven more stations and lots of empathy and denial.)

Is the suffering of Jesus supposed to make us think of international affairs and struggles among national powers? Or might it not be helpful for remembering the reason for his suffering and death, like my sin?

Just askin’.

Proto-Protestant On A Roll

Published on by D. G. Hart57 Comments

And Constantinians (all kinds) should be very afraid:

Leithart’s Christ is not the Christ of Scripture. I say that not as a theological liberal who views Christ as a type of Gandhi and finds the idea of a coming Judgment to be abhorrent. I say this as a follower of Christ who understands the nature of the Spiritual Kingdom and our call to suffer as martyr-witnesses in This Age. The Triumphalism of Leithart is only to be understood in light of the Second Coming and in a context in which sin has been eradicated. A Postmillennialist like Leithart looks for the Church to bring in a millennial golden age, a Church through the force of cultural transformation to all but eradicate sin. Through culture and legislation (and presumably the Spirit) the reign of Christ will be brought to bear on This Age. Christ returns after the world has been Christianized… again a term and concept I would argue is the result of abstract philosophical commitment and speculation, not the fruit of New Testament exegesis.

I’ve always found it ironic that Calvinists, believers in Total Depravity would embrace such a vision of Christianization. I too embrace Total Depravity and believe there’s no Scriptural warrant for this view. They would argue the Spirit will effect this change. The same Spirit inspired the New Testament and provides a very different interpretation of the Old Testament than they will grant or receive and nowhere is there any suggestion that sin will in any way be diminished before Christ’s return or through the cultural efforts and/or political expressions of the Church.

Like the Dispensationalists they prioritize the Old Testament and its prophetic visions over and against the New Testament and its interpretation of them. In their systems The Old Testament interprets the New rather than vice versa. Rejecting the Apostolic hermeneutic they insist (like the Dispensationalists) that a future chiliastic kingdom is the destiny of the Church. The Dispensationalists believe this promise to be centered on Israel of the Old Covenant. The Postmillennialists rightly believe The Church is the New Israel and the inheritor of its promises but it wrongly believes that not only will the Church conquer Palestine, it will politically and culturally conquer the whole world. One camp believes the political millennium will be based on the Jews, the other on the Church but their basic assumptions are the same. They both embrace a politico-cultural doctrine of the Kingdom.

Both schools seek prophetic fulfillment apart from the Christocentric teachings of the New Testament. Both reject the New Testament’s teaching that all the Old Testament promises, types and symbols point to and find their fulfillment in Christ (2 Cor 1.20).

How Inorganic

Published on by D. G. Hart28 Comments

Why do pseudo-Calvinists complain so much about mean Calvinists? If you thought much about total depravity in your own life, you might not be in a nice frame of mind during waking hours. Or if you pondered most of the Bible, saw what happens to law breakers or how Christ interacts with the self-righteous, you might not be inclined to don a yellow-happy-face pin. Or if you considered the majesty and sovereignty of God and tried to imagine how a holy and righteous God puts up with a world that — let’s say — falls short of his standards, your jaws might be tight a lot of the time. So why does Daniel Montgomery continue the meme of the Gospel Allies that TGC Calvinism is nice and other kinds aren’t? Do these folks actually think that Mr. Rogers is more interesting than Christopher Hitchens? Then why make avoidance of offense the hallmark of your brand?

The main point for considering Montgomery’s post, though, is an odd metaphor that he invokes from TKNY about theological vision (w-w anyone?):

Without the clarity of a comprehensive theological vision, we succumb to emphatic theology with no connection between all the different fragments of theology and the arenas of our lives. As Tim Keller argues, if theological confession is our hardware and methodological strategy our software, we desperately need the theological “middleware” of vision to bring our confession to life and inform our methodology. This is an extension of Richard Lints’s siren call in The Fabric of Theology. Reflecting on the necessity of having a coherent theological vision, Lints writes:

The Christian gospel calls us not only to a well-formed theistic matrix but also to make conscious connections between that matrix and the other matrices of our lives. What I believe about God ought to influence how I view my own identity, my vocation, my family, my leisure pursuits, and so on. It is this matrix of matrices that I have been calling the theological vision. It is composed more narrowly of the theistic matrix (what I will be calling a theological framework) and more broadly of the interconnections between the theistic matrix and all other matrices in one’s noetic structures. Theology involves not just the study of God (theistic matrix) but also the influence of that study on the rest of one’s life (theological vision). It is possible to distinguish these two levels, but they are never separable in practice.

Huh?

One way to spot a true Kuyperian from a poser is to watch for metaphors. The more organic, the more Kuyperian since Abraham Kuyper himself everywhere employed images from the natural world — roots, branches, life-giving sources, the folk with ties to the fatherland. But Keller and Lovelace employ mechanical and even mathematical metaphors to try to explain the way that theology functions in Christian devotion.

I can’t think of a better way to remove a church’s confession from officers’ and church members’ consciousness than by likening it to computer hardware. If anything, ecclesiology is the hardware on which the software of confessions runs so that users may worship and serve God. But this is a poor analogy. I prefer the stool (preferably handmade) to the computer. Confessional Presbyterianism is like a three-legged stool with polity, confession, and liturgy each constituting a leg. Remove one and confessional Presbyterianism falls and confessional Presbyterians land on their arses.

But TKNY’s computing metaphor may explain the dynamics of TGC. When your fellowship is digital and web-based, you may wind up treating doctrine like computer hardware — invisible and beyond your competency. Keller may explain more than he knows.

By the way, Montgomery quotes Piper on the appeal of Calvinism to a certain type of person:

There is an attractiveness about [the doctrines of grace] to some people, in large matter, because of their intellectual rigor. They are powerfully coherent doctrines, and certain kinds of minds are drawn to that. And those kinds of minds tend to be argumentative. So the intellectual appeal of the system of Calvinism draws a certain kind of intellectual person, and that type of person doesn’t tend to be the most warm, fuzzy, and tender. Therefore this type of person has a greater danger of being hostile, gruff, abrupt, insensitive, or intellectualistic. I’ll just confess that. It’s a sad and terrible thing that that’s the case. Some of this type aren’t even Christians, I think. You can embrace a system of theology and not even be born again.

Obviously, Piper has never encountered Jason and the Callers.

Americanists All

Published on by D. G. Hart14 Comments

Folks in other faiths or branches of THE faith are either worried or desirous of America working its wonders on belief and practice.

Richard Mouw, for instance, recognizes the problem of his former advocacy of a post-American Christianity in comparison to his hopes for Muslims to find a form of Islam that fits with American realities:

Sojourners magazine was originally given the name Post-American, and in my own activist association with that magazine in those early days I responded positively to Jim Wallis’s message that some of us in the evangelical world wanted to proclaim a “post-American Christianity” to a “post-Christian America.” There are times when it is important to boldly counter the excesses of patriotism with reminders that our supreme allegiance should be to a Kingdom that transcends the kingdoms of this world. . . .

But now after 9/11 Americanized religion doesn’t look so bad:

I read recently that some young Muslims in the United States are complaining that what goes on in their mosques is not “American” enough. They say that the patterns of worship and religious education seem designed to preserve the connections to the countries from which their Muslim communities emigrated, while these young folks want their faith to guide them in their lives in America. Shouldn’t their leaders be doing more, they ask, to help them understand how their faith applies to the country of which they are now citizens?

I say: Good for them. I hope they succeed in getting a positive response from their elders.

On the other side of coin are some Roman Catholics, like Michael Sean Winters, who argue that politically conservative Roman Catholics have capitulated to American norms:

[These conservatives show], instead, the deep level of secularization that has long afflicted the American Catholic right when it comes to issues of social and political obligations. They refuse to let very explicit Catholic teaching challenge, still less refute, their political and economic theories. They are quick to object to secularization in other areas, but the Gospel is not permitted to instruct those areas of life where most people spend most of their time and energy, in the marketplace of business and politics. In this sense, they are as lukewarm in the Catholicism as a casual critic of Humanae Vitae. This may never provoke a formal schism, but I fear that non-formal schisms are often just as potent.

I wonder yet again why Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum gets to set the standard for Roman Catholic social teaching but not Urban II’s call for the Crusades. Weren’t the Crusades all about extending Christian society to Muslim-occupied territories? How does Winters get around that social teaching and could it be the same way that GOP Roman Catholics get around Leo XIII?

But I digress.

Meanwhile, in Reformed Protestant circles, all-of-life Calvinists, whether theonomic or neo-Calvinist, regularly worry that 2k is an Americanized and secularized and relativized form of Protestantism. It may be. But Presbyterians in the U. S. of A. have been living with this Americanized Presbyterianism for over two centuries and objections are only about three decades old.

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.

If Roman Catholics and Muslims want help with adapting to America, just look to those upholding the spirituality of the church.

From DGH on Does The Gospel Threaten Submitted on 2015 03 24 at 12:22 pm

Published on by D. G. Hart56 Comments

Mark,

You have me scratching my head again. If the gospel threatens, as you say:

God, as Adam’s father, threatened Adam in the Garden. His threat was an act of love (grace?), designed to keep Adam from sinning. Adam had good reason, then, to be afraid of God when he sinned. It would have been the “essence of impiety” not to have been afraid after he rebelled against God. Adam’s first sin was unbelief. But he clearly forgot to fear God, which was a factor in his unbelief. Adam doubted God’s threat to him as well as God’s love.

then when God said to Adam, “if you eat of the tree you will surely die,” we have the first expression of the Gospel — the protoevangelion as it were. And here I had thought that Genesis 3:15 was the first instance of the gospel:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.

Silly me.

While I have you, I have to ask about your math skills. In your reflections on China (and I do wonder what the sound of 1,000,000 Chinese Christians clapping sounds like) you say that the underground church in China is the size of 100,000 OPC churches. Did you mean the OPC with its total church membership (roughly 32,000) or number of churches/congregations (roughly 300)? If the former, my math says the underground church in would reach a level of 32,000,000,000. But if it is only the size of the number of OPC congregations, then the underground church would be 300,000,000.

Is this one of those metric system differences between the U.S. and Canada?