Who Made Doug Wilson Judge and General?

Published on by D. G. Hart29 Comments

I suppose Doug Wilson thinks he won a battle since one of his posts about Duck Dynasty made it on the radar of Rush Limbaugh. The gist of it — as we’ve heard so many times from the BeeBee’s — is that if you’re not fighting the culture war the way Doug Wilson does, you’re gutless, have let your education run rough shod of your love of Jesus, and have taken vows to the church of respectability.

The need of the hour is Christian leadership that is willing to show some intelligent fight. As Chocolate Knox put it in a recent tweet, “Homo’s know what Christians believe there’s no secret, yet they get surprised every time they hear us say it. Time to lean in.”

Time to lean in. This is why I want to come back to the third point I made about this imbroglio yesterday. This whole thing makes me think it is some kind of reprise of the Chick Fil A uproar. Somebody strayed from the Appointed Way, the homolobby flexed in order to shut up a critic, middle America responded by buying so many metric tons of chicken sandwiches, and then sophisticated Christians sneered at this inadequate and “entirely predictable” and “red statey” response. . . .

So what do we need? We don’t need generals. We have that. We need generals who fight. We don’t need leadership councils. We have those. We need national leaders who fight. We don’t need pretty boy preachers. We have those. We need preachers who fight. We don’t need evangelical regiments of pajamaboys. We have that. We need fight, and we need to fight with everything we have — heart, strength, and brains. All in.

Show me your forearms. Unless there are scars all over them, then I honestly don’t want to hear your views of the inadequacy of these cultural clashes (Gal. 6:17). When the barbarians are throwing their scaling ladders against the city walls, if the only defenders at the top of those walls are Chick Fil A employees in paper hats and hot grease from the deep fryer, and rednecks with their beards and shotguns, and nobody at all there from Red Brick Memorial Reformed, Rev. Forsythe P. Snodgrass, D.Min, minister, then let us be frank. We shouldn’t blame the folks who are there.

This is, by the way, the same tactic used by the left. Unless you conceive of a woman’s freedom, or race relations, or global warming the way we do, you are a mysoginist, racist, and ignorant. Fundamentalism is the word often used to describe this kind of all-or-nothing w-w. But I think, having been reared by two of them, fundamentalists were smarter than this. At least my parents didn’t blog.

What Doug Wilson fails to see is that many other believers do fight but some of us don’t evaluate the enemies the way Wilson does. Some us actually contend with our own demons — we struggle against the flesh. Some of us also fight the principalities of this age by supporting the Christian ministry. Some of us also think that a cable television show and the star’s contract is going to amount to a hill of beans in six months, let alone two millennia.

So go ahead, Doug. Fight your battle. It’s a free country (irony noted). And I’m going to fight your inadequacy to discern the times and your capacity to distract your followers from the less obvious but more serious battles that confront the gospel. And please note. I am not fighting Phil Robertson. From some 700 miles away and not having cable television (boo hoo), I don’t know enough to evaluate Phil’s situation. (Not sure you do either.)

Postscript: Geography and denomination alert!

Wilson adds:

The contrast must not be between how unsophisticated Christians fight and how sophisticated Christians . . . what do they do? At most, they demur, with a throat-clearing caveat or two. Theologians and ecclesiastical eggheads can make merry over this kind of pop culture melee if they like. The material is there — “look at those rubes, standing against the principalities and powers with their duck calls, zz top beards, and chicken sammich haute cuisine, hold the mayo.”

But the lack of self-awareness in this criticism is staggering. These are shepherds who feed only themselves (Ezek. 34:2). When shepherds have neglected the flock for so long, and the wolves are ravaging them, and the sheep come up with some kind of strategy to defend themselves, and the shepherds sit up on the ridge, laughing at the tactical inadequacy of what the sheep are attempting, what shall we call that?

Is Doug Wilson, a CREC minister in Moscow, Idaho, feeding Phil Robertson, a professing Christian in Louisiana who attends White’s Ferry Church of Christ? Talk about self-aware.

Hollywood Is No Respecter of Culture

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

Word from the local radio station that today in 1966 was the last airing of Rawhide sent me on a goose chase that reveals (to me anyway) how remarkable and idiotic Hollywood can be.

First, I have never understood the appeal of Westerns. Sure, I watched Gunsmoke and I guess I got caught up in the recurring plot twist of whether Sheriff Dillon would rescue Kitty (a woman whom I always thought a little loose). But I couldn’t imagine life on the frontier (and public school history courses gave me no reference). How could any baby boomer living in the suburbs relate to one-sheriff towns with one saloon and perhaps a brothel, populated by ranchers? The only ranchers I knew were the ones designed by William Levitt.

Second, what’s up with Rawhide’s theme song’s lyrics:

Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’

Keep movin’, movin’, movin’,
Though they’re disapprovin’,
Keep them doggies movin’ Rawhide!
Don’t try to understand ’em,
Just rope and throw and grab ’em,
Soon we’ll be living high and wide.
Boy my heart’s calculatin’
My true love will be waitin’, be waiting at the end of my ride.

Move ’em on, head ’em up,
Head ’em up, move ’em out,
Move ’em on, head ’em out Rawhide!
Set ’em out, ride ’em in
Ride ’em in, let ’em out,
Cut ’em out, ride ’em in Rawhide.

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Rawhide!

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Though the streams are swollen
Keep them dogies rollin’
Rawhide!
Rain and wind and weather
Hell-bent for leather
Wishin’ my gal was by my side.
All the things I’m missin’,
Good vittles, love, and kissin’,
Are waiting at the end of my ride

CHORUS
Move ’em on, head ’em up
Head ’em up, move ’em on
Move ’em on, head ’em up
Rawhide
Count ’em out, ride ’em in,
Ride ’em in, count ’em out,
Count ’em out, ride ’em in
Rawhide!

Keep movin’, movin’, movin’
Though they’re disapprovin’
Keep them dogies movin’
Rawhide!
Don’t try to understand ’em
Just rope, throw, and brand ’em
Soon we’ll be living high and wide.
My hearts calculatin’
My true love will be waitin’,
Be waitin’ at the end of my ride.

Rawhide!
Rawhide!

Finally, as odd as Westerns are and as little as Rawhide’s lyrics have to say, the singer who sang for the series, Frankie Laine, made the song one that you not only can’t get out of your head (in a good way) but also tempted you to emulate the song’s object and herd your cat. Here’s a little background on Mr. Laine (that may engage our Roman Catholic readers):

Singer, composer and author Frankie Laine was born March 30, 1913 in Chicago. His real name was Francesco Paulo LoVecchio and he lived in Chicago’s Little Italy. Frankie was the oldest of eight children born to Sicilian immigrants John and Anna Lo Vecchio, who had come from Monreale, Sicily near Palermo. His father first worked as a water-boy for the Chicago Railroad and he was eventually promoted to laying rails. His father subsequently went to a Trade School and became a barber. One of his most famous clients was gangster Al Capone. Frankie made his first appearance in a choir at the Immaculate Conception Church where he was an altar boy. At 15, he performed at the Merry Garden Ballroom in Chicago while attending Lane Technical School. He supported himself by working as a car salesman, bouncer in a beer parlor and as a machinist. He also sang at a weekly radio station (wins) for $5.00 per week. The program director for wins convinced him to change his name to Frankie Laine after he auditioned for the radio. His name was stretched out to Frankie because opera singer Frances Lane (Dorothy Kirsten) and Fanny Rose (Dinah Shore) were singing at nearby radio station WNEW. At 18, he went to Baltimore and participated in a marathon dance contest after coming off the heels of winning ones in Stamford, CT. and Chicago. Laine set an all-time marathon dance record of 3501 hours in 145 consecutive days in 1932 at Wilson’s Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey and his competition was an Olympic miler named Joey Ray and included 101 other contestants. Altogether, he participated in 14 marathons, winning three, second once and fifth twice. His last contest was back in Chicago at the Arcadia where a 14-year-old girl was disqualified because the judges found out her age. She later became successful singer, Anita O’Day.

Laine’s nicknames were Mr. Rhythm, America’s Number One Song Stylist, Old Man Jazz, and Old Leather Lungs. Those are not names that come to mind with the song, Rawhide. Maybe Gene Autry?

As tempting as it is to kvetch about Hollywood’s artificiality and its materialist cultural appropriations, the buck actually stops with (all about) us, the people glued to our television sets as 8-year olds, the grad school student watching a romantic comedy for a distraction from dissertation writing, or the middle-aged small town dweller who continues to be fascinated by the comings and goings of Daniel Day Lewis. Whether the big screen at the local movie house or the small one at home, that shining screen beckons as enticingly as Jay Gatsby’s green light.

Bishops Talking, and Talking, and Talking

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

Patrick Deneen recently complained about the right-wing, GOP-supporting, critics of Pope Francis under the provocative title, “Would Someone Just Shut that Pope Up?” Deneen’s point was more to the effect that critics like Rush Limbaugh should shut up than the other way around. Either way, the piece brings attention to how much the papacy speaks and how much pundits or talk-show hosts speak more. We are surrounded by papal speech and responses to and interpretations of papal speech.

After looking at the Archbishop of Albany’s pastoral statements yesterday, I was unaware of all the speech that all bishops communicate. In fact, a quick surf around the interweb revealed that Archbishop Howard Hubbard (Albany) is restrained compared to other archbishops. Here, for instance, is a catalog of Charles Chaput’s statements, the archbishop of Philadelphia. Here are the statements of Archbishop Francis Xavier DiLorenzo of Richmond, Virginia. And here are the statements from William E. Lori, Archbishop of Baltimore. Compared to papal statements, these U.S. bishops rival in number the communications from popes like Paul VI or Gregory XVI.

Some of the bishops’ statements are trivial, such as this from Archbishop Di Lorenza on the relocation of a prep school:

An outstanding Catholic education has been provided to high school students in the Benedictine tradition at its three-story facility on Sheppard Street in Richmond’s Museum District since 1911. In 2011 the Diocese of Richmond purchased the Sheppard Street complex including the school building, the priory building, the gymnasium and the parking lot parking adjacent to St. Benedict Church to insure the viability of St. Benedict Parish.

Others like this one by Archbishop Chaput, explore tensions that Jason and the Callers sublimate:

Tocqueville saw public opinion as a great vulnerability for democracy. In a democracy – at least in theory — every man is his own final moral authority. But the reality is different. Men and women very soon discover how isolated and uninformed they are as individuals. In the absence of a strong religious or similar community, they tend to abdicate their thinking to public opinion, which is the closest that purely secular democracies ever come to a consensus. To the degree that public opinion can be manipulated, democratic life is subverted.

This is why the Founders saw religion as so important to the health of the public square:. At its best, faith creates a stable moral framework for political discourse and morally educated citizens to conduct the nation’s work. The trouble is, no religion can survive on its utility. People don’t conform their lives to a message because it’s useful. They do it because they believe the message is true and therefore life-giving. Or they don’t do it.

My point is this: The “next America” we now see emerging – an America ignorant or cynical toward religion in general and Christianity in particular — shouldn’t really surprise anyone. It’s a new America, but it’s made in America. We can blame the mass media, or the academy, or science, or special interest groups for the environment we now face. But we Christians – including we Catholics — helped create it with our eagerness to fit in, our distractions and overconfidence, and our own lukewarm faith.

Too many people who claim to be Christian simply don’t know Jesus Christ. They don’t really believe in the Gospels. They feel embarrassed by their religion and vaguely out of step with the times. They may keep their religion for comfort value. Or they may adjust it to fit their doubts. But it doesn’t reshape their lives because it isn’t real. And because it isn’t real, it has no transforming effect on their personal behavior, no social force and few public consequences. That sort of faith is exactly the same kind of religion that Symmachus once mourned. Whatever it once was – now, it’s dead.

Still others indicate the changes that were in the air after Vatican II, like this from Archbishop Hubbard in Albany:

When we speak of the Church, we are dealing with a living mystery. As the Second Vatican Council expressed it, the Church is a mystery prefigured in creation, prepared in the history of Israel, initiated by the Holy Spirit and reaching its fulfillment only at the end of time (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, par. 2). The Church is that mystery in which is made visible God’s saving presence in Christ Jesus. It is Christ’s mission that the Church is about; it is Christ’s message it strives to communicate to others and it is His ministry that it extends into the world.

Because the Church is a mystery, therefore, it cannot be totally understood or fully defined. But from its very beginning the Church has been revealed to be a community of people formed by the word of God, animated by the creative power of the Holy Spirit and sustained by the worship and service of its members. Its mission is both to proclaim the message of Christ for the enlightenment of the hearts and minds of people and to provide a place where His healing presence can be experienced. As such, the Church must always understand itself as not existing for itself but for the world. The Church can never be a mission or ministry to itself; rather it is to be a community of ministers charged with the task of bringing the healing presence of Christ to a wounded humanity.

We who belong to the Church today, then, are called to be the community described in the New Testament where all things were held in common; where Paul urged that competition should be in giving service; where Jesus said that those who would be great should be the servants of all people.

SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

In 1978, I suggested that the Second Vatican Council had given us a concept that enables us to be the Church, the community of God’s people in our day: the concept of shared responsibility. Put succinctly, shared responsibility means that each of us, by virtue of baptism, has the right and the duty to participate in Christ’s mission of praising and worshiping the Lord, of teaching His word, of serving His people and of building a community here on earth in preparation for the fullness of life together in the kingdom of heaven.

Through baptism, in other words, every Christian is brought into an intimate, personal and abiding union with Jesus and with all other Christians. This sacramental dignity unites popes, bishops, priests, deacons, religious and laity in the one body of Christ which is the Church. It also serves as a mandate to each of us to use his or her talents so that the mission of Christ and His Church may be fulfilled.

. . . the Church is a community of collaborative ministry. That is a community in which each member is challenged to see his or her baptism as a call to holiness and ministry; a community which seeks to help its members to discern the personal charisms given them by the Spirit and to enable them to employ their gifts in the mission the Church; a community whose ordained and vowed ministers see the fostering of greater participation in the work of the Church as essential to their responsibility as leaders.

This understanding of the priestly ministry which belongs to the entire Church and this emphasis on collaborative ministry have profound implications for ordained ministers, religious and the laity.

Bishops, priests and deacons, for example, must recognize and appreciate that their ordained ministry arises from the priestly call that is given to the entire Church and exists for the purpose of enabling the whole Christian Community to be a priestly people.

Still, no matter how much the bishops talk, no one except for perhaps a very few in the church pay attention to their bishop’s statements. For instance, the pastoral letter from Jose H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, a reflection on the new evangelization called for by Benedict XVI, failed to gain any press coverage outside Roman Catholic news agencies. (A search at the Los Angeles Times produced the proverbial crickets).

So why do church members and journalists and pundits pay so little attention to any bishop who is not presiding at Rome? Don’t these non-Roman bishops have charism? Are not they successors to the apostles? And what happened to the collegiality for which Vatican II called? Did St. Peter only have one set of keys made? Are non-Roman bishops chopped liver? (Ask Alexander VI.)

My explanation is that the doctrine of subsidiarity notwithstanding, the qualities of celebrity, publicity, historical associations, and nostalgia for the imperial capital all point to the papacy as an institution that detracts from the pastoral work of local bishops and priests. The government of the United States is a perfect analogy. How much do I know about the mayor of Hillsdale or the governor of Michigan compared to the news I easily follow about the president and congress of our national government? (How much, for that matter, do I know about Chinese or French politics and economics compared to what I think I know about the Affordable Care Act or the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan?)

I understand from some interlocutors that I don’t know what I’m talking about (on many things) when it comes to subsidiarity. Some have tried to instruct me that subsidiarity only applies to society, which is even what the church’s catechism teaches. But that same catechism defines as society as “a group of persons bound together organically by a principle of unity that goes beyond each one of them. As an assembly that is at once visible and spiritual, a society endures through time: it gathers up the past and prepares for the future” [1880]. Since the church is a society — “The church, as has been seen, is a society formed of living men, not a mere mystical union of souls. As such it resembles other societies. Like them, it has its code of rules, its executive officers, its ceremonial observances” — I don’t see why what’s good for one society is not good for another, natural law, grace completes nature, and all that (especially since for more of its history than not the papacy ruled over a temporal society).

If that is the case, then I (all about Protestant me) do not see why this interpretation of subsidiarity does not apply to all the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

This is why Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. The Pontiff wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. This “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

Why subsidiarity does not apply to the relations among the local bishops and the pope is hard to figure. Could it be that the Vatican does not trust local authorities? If so, this suspicion has not kept the bishops quiet. They have been more talkative that most church officials. Maybe with the help of subsidiarity, the spotlight can shine less on Rome and more on places like Lansing, Michigan and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Stories You Did Not See at Called to Communion

Published on by D. G. Hart68 Comments

John Allen keeps it real for Jason and the Callers with the top five under reported stories of 2013. Here are three of the five:

2. Scalfari and the perils of projection

So far, Pope Francis has had four extended sessions with the press, and while all have been fascinating, none was more of a blockbuster than the text published by veteran Italian journalist and nonbeliever Eugenio Scalfari on Oct. 1. Among other things, the choice by Francis to sit down with one of Italy’s most prominent secular intellectuals was seen as further confirmation of his commitment to outreach and dialogue.

Memorable lines from the Scalfari piece included the pope criticizing a “Vatican-centric” worldview, the assertion that some clergy suffer from “the leprosy of a royal court,” and the mother of all sound bites, “God is not a Catholic.” It also featured Francis describing a moment before he accepted the papacy when he thought about refusing and exited the Sistine Chapel to pray in a small room off the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square.

4. The church’s Italian problem

It’s possible that the influence and reputation of the Italian bishops reached a new low in 2013.

One sign came in national elections in February, when both the Vatican and the Italian church wrapped technocratic Prime Minister Mario Monti in a warm, loving embrace, yet Monti barely drew 10 percent of the vote and finished in an embarrassing fourth place. While Monti had political handicaps of his own, it’s striking how little difference the bishops’ support meant.

Here’s another: The headline of a recent national poll about which institutions Italians trust was that the church has gained 10 points since the election of Francis. However, that bump brought its trust level up to just 54.2 percent, meaning fully half of the country remains skeptical. (For the record, the church finished well behind Italy’s forces of order.)

Say “church” to most Italians and they think “bishops,” so in effect, the survey was a referendum on the hierarchy.

5. Allam and heartburn for ideologues

The highest-profile Catholic convert during the Benedict years was Magdi Cristiano Allam, an Egyptian-born politician and essayist who rose to fame in Italy as a fierce critic of radical Islam. Allam was personally received into the church by Benedict XVI during the 2008 Easter vigil Mass, but announced in late March that he considered his allegiance “expired” because of a “softer” line on Islam under Francis.

Allam published an essay adding four additional reasons for his defection: what he called the built-in “relativism” of Catholicism, its inherent tendency to “globalism” (instead of defending Western culture and values), its “do-gooder” streak, and its imposition of unrealistic teachings on sex and money.

Aside from the debatable fourth point, Allam was basically right on the first three.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis shows no reluctance to continue to make news:

“You should be real witnesses of a world doing and acting differently,” the pope told some 120 leaders of male religious orders during a closed-door Nov. 29 meeting at the Vatican, according a new account of the event released Friday by the Italian Jesuit magazine La Civilta Cattolica.

“But in life it is difficult for everything to be clear, precise, outlined neatly,” the pope continued. “Life is complicated; it consists of grace and sin.”

“He who does not sin is not human,” said the pope. “We all make mistakes and we need to recognize our weaknesses. A religious who recognizes himself as weak and a sinner does not negate the witness that he is called to give, rather he reinforces it, and this is good for everyone.”

Show Me Ze Money, Lebowski

Published on by D. G. Hart15 Comments

If you ever wanted proof of how wealthy American Christians are and how little the ordinary means of grace receive from believers’ charitable contributions, just take a look stories like this:

In its fourth annual State of Giving report, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) reveals that charitable giving to more than 1,600 of its accredited organizations increased 6.4 percent last year. Donations reached $11 billion in 2012, compared to $10.3 billion in 2011. . . .

The biggest winners among 28 categories: foundations (up 25%), adoption (up 12.2%), K-12 education (up 12%), short-term missions (up 12.1%), and higher education (10%). The presence of education among the top five is notable, given the segment has seen one of the biggest declines since 2007.

Better yet, go to ECFA’s own website where you find numbers (for 2012) like this:

Bethany Christian Services — Expenses $82,735,557 Revenue $84,569,821

InverVarsity Christian Fellowship — Expenses $84,192,000 Revenue $83,494,000

Home School Foundation — Expenses $1,790,302 Revenue $1,770,418

Evangelical Presbyterian Church — Expenses $12,097,370 Revenue $16,059,164

Desiring God Ministries — Expenses $5,784,699 Revenue $6,023,726

Gospel Coalition — Expenses $1,106,824 Revenue $1,456,923

So that Roman Catholic readers don’t feel left out (or superior), I should mention that I tried to find figures on various diocesan budgets. Guidestar will provide them for a fee. But I did run across this dated tidbit in a pastoral letter from the Bishop of Albany (why the press did not cover a church officer sporting apostolic succession and episcopal charism is beyond me):

A recent study by Bishop William McManus and Father Andrew Greeley entitled Catholic Contributions: Sociology and Policy reveals that although American Catholics earn on the average over a $1,000.00 a year more than their Protestant counterparts, Catholic financial contributions to their Church are much less than those of Protestants. For example, on the average, Protestants contribute $580.00 to their Church annually as opposed to $320.00 for Catholics. Furthermore, Catholics contribute only 1.1 percent of their income to the Church while Protestants donate at the level of 2.2 percent of their income.

More strikingly, the study finds that the disparity between Catholic and Protestant giving is the result of the dramatic change in giving patterns of contributions to one’s Church over the past 25 years. In the early 1960’s, Catholics gave the same proportion of their income to the Church as Protestants contributed. In the last quarter century, however, the Protestant giving rate remains stable at approximately 2 percent of annual income while the Catholic rate has fallen from more than 2 percent to about 1 percent.

Why has this occurred? Is it that Catholics have become stingier or more miserly? I hardly think so. Is it due to the changing levels in Church attendance? No, because Protestant church attendance has declined significantly more than Catholic in this time frame but their level of giving has not. Is it because Catholics give to our schools rather than the Church? Statistics reveal that this is not the case because parents who send their children to Catholic schools contribute more rather than less to the Church than do other Catholics.

I believe that the decline in the pattern of Catholic giving to the Church is due primarily to the lack of communication and the lack of leadership.

Good News — Megachurches Are Facing Retirement

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

. . . and will be in nursing homes within 15 years.

That, at least, is a plausible conclusion given how closely the megachurch experience correlates with baby boomer demographics:

Even though megachurches only account for 0.5 percent of the 320,000 Protestant churches in America, nearly 10 percent of Protestant churchgoers attend one.

Only 21 percent of megachurches were founded in the last 20 years (the median founding year: 1977), and only 22 percent were founded by their current lead pastor.

The average (median) age of megachurch lead pastors is 55, while nearly 1 in 5 are under 45. Only five percent are under 40. (CT recently noted how one of America’s youngest megachurch pastors drew scrutiny for how his building a “big house” was connected to his bestselling book.)

Meanwhile, some aspiring sociologist needs to figure out why Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont escaped the megachurch bug (and why South and North Dakota did not).

The Limits of Logic and the Benefits of Geography

Published on by D. G. Hart60 Comments

Jason Stellman continues his brief for Roman Catholic superiority with the twist of posting at his own blog and, making his membership in Jason and the Callers complete, at at Called to Communion. Apparently, Bryan Cross and Sean Patrick will now edit comments on Jason’s posts so that Jason can do more televised interviews. The funny thing about this arrangement is that posting at CTC has not united Bryan’s logic with Jason’s style. In fact, if Jason’s first post is any indication, Bryan’s scholasticism has taken a back seat to Stellman’s intuition. But the oxymoronic ecumenical (call to communion) polemics (we’re better than Protestants) abide.

It turns out — surprise — that Roman Catholicism makes better sense of the incarnation than Protestantism. The simple logic is that since Christ assumed and maintains a physical body that could and can be seen, an ecclesiology that features visibility beats one that invokes invisibility. But the logic of Jason’s argument is almost as confusing as his understanding of geography.

If there is a connection between Christology and Ecclesiology (Umm, hellooo ? The Church is the Body of which Christ is the Head, so I’d label this connection as “uncontroversial”), then the idea that the eternal Son assumed human nature and took on a real, flesh-and-blood body just like ours, is more consistent in a visible-church paradigm than in an invisible-church paradigm. The physical body of Christ was visible; you could point him out in a crowd or identify him with a kiss as Judas did for the Roman soldiers.

The key word here is was. Jesus’ body is no longer on earth and cannot be seen. And by sending his Spirit to be with the church after he left planet earth, Jesus could very well have been teaching that the nature of the church, its bonds of fellowship and its worship, is going to be spiritual, not visible (like Old Testament devotion was with the altar, sacrifice and priests — sound familiar?). In fact, Jesus tells the woman at the well that the new pattern of worship emerging is one where place matters less than spirit and truth. And then Jason has the problem of being so insensitive to believers whose relatives have died and no longer have bodies. Are they visible? Are they excluded from the church because they don’t have bodies? Or is it the case that an ecclesiology that so features physicality is shallow compared to one that recognizes a fellowship among those saints who are both seen and unseen. (Hint: if God the Father is spirit and cannot be seen, fellowship with the unseen is important. Duh!)

Not to be tripped up by such theological or logical subtleties, Jason stumbles on to give two big thumbs up to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist.

Is Christ present at the Table or not? Like with the question “Is the church visible or not,” the answer here is, “It depends.” If the worshiper is a worthy receiver, then yes, he indeed feeds spiritually and truly upon the body and blood of Christ. But if the worshiper is unworthy and faithless, then what he is eating and drinking is not Christ’s body and blood, but simply ordinary bread and wine. This also smacks of Docetism, as if Jesus of Nazareth could have been truly present with Zaccheus, partially present with Nicodemus, and completely absent with Judas, even though they were all standing right in front of him in the flesh.

First, Jason gets the Protestant position wrong. The unworthy receiver eats and drinks judgment. The last time I had ordinary bread and wine, I was not sinning overtly or deserving judgment. But that inaccuracy notwithstanding, second, the idea that Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper to everyone equally, just like he was to the people with whom Christ lived, walked and talked, commits some sort of Christological error — can’t remember which one — because the nature of a body is being limited in time and space, and if Jesus is not here then he can’t be here in the same way that he was here to Zaccheus. And since Jason doesn’t mention the Spirit, the person of the Trinity that helps Protestants understand Christ’s real presence in an omnipresent way, his bad logic suffers again from poor theology.

Jason’s last point exhibits a Romophilia that makes chopped liver out of the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople.

Moreover, the Catholic paradigm makes much better sense of the Incarnation by its gospel demonstrating the need for the ongoing and continual humanity of Christ. If salvation consists largely (almost exclusively to hear some Protestants tell it) in the forensic imputation of the active and passive obedience of Christ by which the sinner is legally justified in the divine court, then the need for Jesus’ humanity can be said to have expired after the ascension. But if, as the Catholic Church maintains (echoing the fathers), salvation consists primarily in the deifying participation of humanity in the divine nature, which happens by means of Christ’s glorified humanity and risen flesh, then what happened at the Incarnation was a much bigger deal than some Protestants realize.

The deifying participation of humanity in the divine nature is what the Eastern Churches call theosis. In fact, Jason’s entire post may vindicate his personal decision to leave Presbyterianism but his boosterism apparently blinded him to the substantial difficulties he raised for his own ecclesiology from Eastern Orthodox challenges. After all, Jesus never made it to Rome to found a church — if we take the physicality of the incarnation seriously. He did though found a church in Jerusalem. If Jason wanted to talk about the Jerusalem Catholic Church he might have a point. But since he wants to root, root, root for his new home church, he needs help from Bryan to make his argument coherent.

Meanwhile, Jason may want to pay more attention to what’s going on in his visible church than tilting at Protestant windmills:

I think it is obvious that Wuerl belongs to the more traditional, pilgrim model and always has. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the prophet model was invoked mostly by liberal theologians to justify their positions. In the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, it was conservatives who claimed the prophetic mantle for themselves. Both groups forgot that in the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophets were reluctant to accept the mantle. Both groups forgot that the dominant Catholic mode of leadership has almost always been the pilgrim model, and when the prophet model dominated, ruin came: Savonarola, Saint- Cloud, Pio Nono. The Church is not at Her best when Her leaders are busy hurling epithets or indulging what Pope Francis has called a “self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism.” Wuerl strikes me as one of those bishops who does not over-inflate his own significance. Yes, he takes his job seriously and expects his collaborators to do so as well. But, like Pope Francis, he leaves room for the Spirit to do its work. Let us have more bishops like this in the coming year. The first test will, of course, be Chicago. No need for extensive previstas from the nuncio on this nomination as all of the candidates will be well known. The rumors of any particular names have dried up, which usually means those who are being consulted are shifting from speculation to decision. I have no idea who it will be but I will venture one prediction: Some jaws will drop. . . .

The divisions within the Church are not going away, but they are likely to change in the coming year. I predicted early on that you would begin to see cleavage within the Catholic Left between those who are thrilled by the Holy Father’s focus on the poor, and for whom that focus is enough, and those who argue for changes where no change is likely to be forthcoming, the ordination of women, same-sex marriage, etc. And, on the Catholic Right, you will see a similar cleavage between those who will allow themselves to be challenged by Pope Francis and those who will shift towards a rejectionist position, either completely gutting the pope’s words of their obvious meaning and import as Morlino did in the article mentioned above or, for the more extreme members, moving towards schismatic groups. The Left, when it gets disaffected, just walks away. The Right causes trouble. In 2014, many bishops will face the prospect of clear, unambiguous dissent on the Right and it will be curious to see how they respond.

New Year's Sobrieties

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

In observance of the seventy-seventh anniversary of J. Gresham Machen’s death (Jan. 1, 1937), what follows is an excerpt from a Westminster Seminary commencement address (1931) that reflects a measure of sympathy for an otherworldly Roman Catholicism that embodied it in significant cultural expressions, and has the added benefit of exposing the provincialism of evangelical Manhattanophiles.

About one week ago I stood on the one hundred and second story of the great Empire State Building in the very city of New York. From there I looked down upon a scene like nothing else upon this earth. I watched the elevated trains, which from that distance seemed to be like slow caterpillars crawling along the rails; I listened to the ceaseless roar of the city ascending from a vast area to that great height. And I looked down upon that strange city which has been created on Manhattan Island within the last five or ten years — gigantic, bizarre, magnificently ugly. It seemed like some weird, tortured imagination of things in another world. I came down from that building very greatly impressed.

But as I reflected upon what I had seen, there came into my mind the memory of other buildings that I had contemplated in the course of my life. I thought of an English cathedral rising from the infinite greenness of some quiet cathedral close and above the ancient trees. I thought of the west facade of some continental cathedral, produced at a time when Gothic architecture was not what it is today, imitative and cold and dead, but a living expression of the human soul; when every carving in every obscure corner, never perhaps to be seen by human eye, was an act of worship of Almighty God.

As I revived these memories, certain thoughts came into my mind. The modern builders, I thought, can uplift the body; they uplifted my body in express elevators twelve hundred and forty feet in record time. But whereas the modern builders, in an age of unbelief, can uplift thee body, the ancient builders, in an age of faith, could uplift the soul. As one stands before the tower of a medieval cathedral — with one century laying the foundation there below, another century contributing its quota in the middle distance, and another century bringing the vast conception to its climax in a spire greater than the twelve hundred and forty feet of the Empire State Building; one is uplifted not by some rebellious tower of Babel seeking to reach unto heaven by human pride, but rather on the wings of faith, up and up until one seem to stand in the very presence of the infinite God.

I am no medievalist, my friends; and I do not want you to be medievalists. I rejoice with all my heart in the marvelous widening of our knowledge of this mysterious universe that has come in modern times; I rejoice in the wonderful technical achievements of our day. I trust that you, my brethren will never fall into the “Touch not, taste not, handle not” attitude which Paul condemned in his time; I hope you will never fall into that ancient heresy of forgetting that this is God’s world and that neither its good things nor its wonders should be despised by those upon whom, through God’s bounty, they have been bestowed. I trust that you will consecrate to God not an impoverished man, narrowed in interests, narrowed in mind and heart, but a man with all God-given powers developed to the full.

Moreover, I cherish in my soul a vague yet glorious hope — the hope of a time when these material achievements, instead of making man the victim of his own machines, may be used in the expression of some wondrous thought. There may come a time when God will send to the world the fire of genius, which he has taken from it in our time, and when he will send something far greater than genius — a humble heart finding in his worship the highest use of all knowledge and of all power. There may come a time when men will wonder at their former obsession with these material things, when they will see that these modern inventions in the material realm are in themselves as valueless as the ugly little bits of metal type in a printer’s composing room, and that they true value will be found only when they become the means of expressing some glorious poem. (“Consolations in the Midst of Battle,” Selected Shorter Writings, 203-205)

Synod of Bishops?

Published on by D. G. Hart20 Comments

Roman Catholic websites keep talking about the upcoming Synod of Bishops, a body about which I had not heard much (after all, Jason and the Callers never point to this Synod as a slam dunk of Roman Catholicism’s superiority). So I wonder what kind of standing it has in the church and how much lay Roman Catholics actually know about it. It appears to be a kind of board of trustees that has an advisory role with the pope — one of the institutional manifestations of a collegial ecclesiology if Wikipedia is to be believed. But it is clearly a body in subjection to the Bishop of Rome:

It is for the Pope to

convoke the Synod of the Bishops

ratify the election of participants in the assembly

determine the topic of discussion, if possible at least six months before the assembly

distribute the material for discussion to those who should participate

to set the agenda

to preside either personally or through delegates over the assembly.

In addition, the Pope may appoint further participants in any assembly of the Synod of Bishops, in number up to 15% of those who participate either ex officio (the heads of Eastern Catholic Churches and the cardinals at the helm of departments of the Roman Curia) or because elected by episcopal conferences or the Union of Superiors General.

The Synod appears to have met formally 13 times since its institution in 1967, with a period during the 1990s when it convened in a “special” capacity. (The upcoming Synod will be the 14th meeting.)

After the 13th Synod in 2012, Pope Benedict issued an apostolic exhortation devoted to the theology of the Word of God (Verbum Domini). One paragraph caught my eye:

The Synod Fathers greatly stressed the importance of promoting a suitable knowledge of the Bible among those engaged in the area of culture, also in secularized contexts and among non-believers. Sacred Scripture contains anthropological and philosophical values that have had a positive influence on humanity as a whole. A sense of the Bible as a great code for cultures needs to be fully recovered.

Since the Telegraph recently ran a story about upcoming Hollywood productions on biblical narratives, I wonder if the Synod of Bishops deserves much more attention and credit than it has received:

Phil Cooke, a film-maker and media consultant to Christian organisations, said Hollywood’s epiphany had financial, not spiritual, origins. “What’s happened is they’ve understood it’s very good business to take Christians seriously, and this is a real serious market,” he said.

“For years Hollywood bent over backwards to reach special interest groups, be it feminists or environmentalists. It has finally realised that there are 91  million evangelical Christians in America.”
For their part, studio executives have taken something of a leap of faith that films in which religious figures save the world will bring big box office receipts.

That faith is based in no small part on the success of The Bible, a television mini-series shown on the History channel earlier this year, which averaged 11.4 million viewers and became America’s most watched cable show of 2013.

“It made the Bible cool to talk about again,” said Mr Cooke. “The separation of church and state in America is so strong that people had become afraid to talk about God, at work or at school. Suddenly, these Bible stories were water cooler conversation again.”

I’m still waiting for HBO to do a series on David. Talk about political intrigue, sexual scandal, and family foibles. It could rival The Sopranos.

The Appeal of Otherworldliness

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

I have often wondered whether neo-Calvinists have a difficult time singing hymns that put singers in the passive position of waiting for the triumph over sin and death in the world to come. I mean, constantly looking for signs of Christ’s victory in the affairs of this world has to be depressing, unless you avoid the news or are remarkably naive. The analogy might be something like a Chicago Cubs fan who every season and off-season believes the franchise is proving itself the best in Major League Baseball.

One hymn I’ve had in mind that would not make a neo-Calvinist editorial cut is #444 (original Trinity Hymnal), “Father I Know that All My Life” (exclusive psalmodists, avert your eyes):

Father, I know that all my life
Is portioned out for me;
The changes that are sure to come,
I do not fear to see:
I ask thee for a present mind,
Intent on pleasing thee.

I would not have the restless will
That hurries to and fro,
Seeking for some great thing to do,
Or secret thing to know;
I would be treated as a child,
And guided where I go.

I ask thee for the daily strength,
To none that ask denied,
A mind to blend with outward life,
While keeping at thy side,
Content to fill a little space,
If thou be glorified.

In service which thy will appoints
There are no bonds for me;
My secret heart is taught the truth
That makes thy children free;
A life of self-renouncing love
Is one of liberty.

The stanza about not having a restless will must especially give those who would go out and transform the world pause.

But then it turns out that sometimes a little quiet time this side of the new heavens and new earth is just what the physician of souls ordered. Jim Bratt, at The12, anyway, gives reasons (in connection with Harold Camping’s death) for thinking otherworldly thoughts:

Now the coincidence. That same day I read the gloomiest forecast I’ve seen to date about global warming. (“Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice? Scientists Consider Extinction,” by Dahr Jamail.) Melting Arctic shelf, disappearing glaciers, warming and acidifying oceans, all the old familiars strains, but then the big one—the likely release of unfathomable amounts of methane from the Arctic permafrost, spiking the mean global temperature by at least 4 degrees C—and ending life on earth as we know it. The sixth mass extinction in planetary history is underway, and our species is part of it. Their food sources and fresh water supplies wiped out, the human race will be reduced to slight remnants huddled around the two poles, trying to keep cool. It all makes Camping’s prediction of seven billion people dying in his end-time disaster sound quite plausible. Who knows, maybe 2011 will turn out to have been the tipping point, the year the books were closed on human folly. Funny, the Christian fundamentalists who tuned into Camping revile the global-warming scenarios spun by eco-radicals, and the eco-radicals, secular to a fault, have not the slightest use, not even ridicule, for the likes of Camping. But they come out at the same place.

So Advent? Christmas? Not on the tip of my singing tongue. Today being the deepest midwinter, the pit of darkness, my mind and my mood go instead to an old Dutch hymn that we used to sing on New Year’s Eve when I was a boy. Right after the congregation’s necrology was read, and after a sermon heavy with the specter of judgment and finality and aspersions upon “the world’s” way of spending the evening in frivolity and laughter. Set against that background, the hymn ain’t bad. Not bad at all. A sense of an ending is there, but so—even more—is God’s “right hand [that] will take us/to our everlasting peace.” For a fidgety boy dying to get out of church those nights, knowing that yet another service faced us the next morning, the lyrics felt solid and honest, and the tune sounded somehow noble and assuring in its steady march up and down the scale.

Here’s the hymn:

1 Hours and days and years and ages
swift as moving shadows flee;
as we scan life’s fleeting pages,
nothing lasting do we see.
On the paths our feet are walking,
footprints all will fade away;
each today as we enjoy it
soon becomes a yesterday.

2 But from sin your mercy drew us,
would not leave our souls alone.
Gracious Lord, you did renew us;
in Christ’s death we are your own.
Through the mercy of your leading,
each short step along our way
now becomes a path to guide us
to the land of endless day.

3 Though swift time keeps marching onward,
it will not decide our end.
You will always be our Father,
loving God, eternal Friend.
When life’s dangers overwhelm us,
you will ever be our stay;
through your Son you are our Father,
always changeless, come what may.

4 Speed along, then, years and ages,
with your gladness and your pain;
when our deepest sorrow rages,
God our Father will remain.
Though all friends on earth forsake us
and our troubles shall increase,
God with his right hand will take us
to our everlasting peace.

What do you know, it’s only a digit removed in the CRC’s Psalter Hymnal from “Father I Know that All My Life”‘s number in the Trinity Hymnal.