Blame It On the Reformation (Part 5): Channeling Schaeffer

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

In his chapter on economics and the “goods life,” Brad Gregory has a kvetch-fest about free markets and consumerism (that echoes Francis Schaeffer on Aquinas):

The earlier and more fundamental change was the disembedding of economics from the ethics of late medieval Christianity’s institutionalized worldview, in conjunction with the disruptions of the Reformation era. What needs explanation is how Western European Christians, whose leaders in the Reformation era condemned avarice across confessional lines, themselves created modern capitalism and consumption practices antithetical to biblical teachings even as confessionalization was creating better informed, more self-conscious Reformed Protestants, Lutherans and Catholics. Conflating prosperity with providence and opting for acquisitiveness as the lesser of two evils until greed was rechristened as benign self-interest, modern Christians have in effect been engaged in a centuries-long attempt to prove Jesus wrong. “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” Yes we can. Or so most participants in world history’s most insatiably consumerist society, the United States, continue implicitly to claim through their actions, considering the number of self-identified American Christians in the early twenty-first century who seem bent on acquiring ever more and better stuff, including those who espouse the “prosperity Gospel” within American religious hyperpluralism. Tocqueville’s summary description of Americans in the early 1830s has proven a prophetic understatement: “people want to do as well as possible in this world without giving up their chances in the next.” (288)

To his credit, Gregory does not exempt the Roman Catholic Church from the guilt of avarice. He observes that the Renaissance papacy was not too bullish on self-denial.

. . . the popes and cardinals at the papal court, along with wealthy bishops in their respective dioceses — who, already long before the Avignonese popes and their courtiers intensified all these trends in the fourteenth century, so often sought to augment their incomes through simony, pluralism, and a deep participation in the monetized economy through the purchase of luxurious material things and the borrowing of large sums of money. (253)

At the same time, he credits the papacy with an effective rejoinder to modern acquisitiveness, the Church’s social teaching:

They reiterated the claim that the natural world is God’s creation, intended by God for the flourishing of all human beings; repeated that economics and the market are not independent of morality; reasserted that the right to private property is not absolute, but is rather subordinate to the common good; restated that unrestrained acquisitiveness does not serve but rather impedes genuine human flourishing and eternal salvation; confirmed the biblical view that the pursuit of affluence above love for God and service to others is idolatry; argued that minimizing workers’ wages in order to maximize profits is exploitative and immoral; and insisted that the poor and marginalized, as a matter of justice, have a moral claim on the more affluent to share with and care for them. (296)

What is missing from this social teaching and from Gregory’s account is where human beings, who are supposed to be dead in trespasses and sins, are supposed to summon up the reservoirs of virtue to carry out such social teaching. His summary does mention eternal salvation on the plus side and idolatry on the down side, but where is grace and how do fallen people become good apart from the supernatural work of the Spirit? Not even the best of the church’s sacramental system and all of that papal charism could prevent popes from padding their accounts, nor did the theology of the medieval church prevent the hierarchy from raising revenues through the sale of grace — as in indulgences.

If the Reformation contributed to modern acquisitiveness, at least it supplies a good explanation for why people are selfish and want to acquire lots of cheap stuff. It is called depravity. The Reformers also knew that the only genuine remedy and the only way for people to lead a selfless life is through the operation of the Holy Spirit. If we want the redeemed and lost to live virtuously, we need to redefine this notion of human flourishing, call it some kind of moral subsistence, and double-down on efforts to beef up the authorities — parents, teachers, pastors, neighbors — who create expectations that restrain human viciousness.

In the meantime, Gregory’s history needs to avoid the kind of sermonizing that follows from an assumed theology, or he needs to write his own version of How Shall We Then Live?

My (All about Me) Only Comfort

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

Any real Reformed Protestant would know that 2013 marks the 450th anniversary of the Heidelberg Catechism. The Heidelberg Conference on Reformed Theology, sponsored in part by the Selbständige Evangelisch-Reformierte Kirche Heidelberg, will be held in Heidelberg from July 18 to July 20, with a worship service on the following Lord’s Day. The speakers include a variety of international scholars and pastors.

In addition to the conference, the conference organizers, Jon D. Payne and Sebastian Heck, have edited a volume of essays on the Catechism, A Faith Worth Teaching: The Heidelberg Catechism’s Enduring Heritage. Here is an excerpt from my chapter:

Ever since English colonial powers took control of the North American region to the north of Chesapeake Bay and turned New Netherland into New York, the Heidelberg Catechism has taken a back seat to the Westminster Assembly=s Shorter Catechism. As members of the Church of England, the eventual governors of New York were not particularly zealous about a catechism that had originated during the tumultuous war of the 1640s and that had failed to unify the English churches or Parliament. But once the English gained the upper hand over the Dutch in North American colonial developments, that victory sealed the fortunes for the catechism that was the primary teaching device and doctrinal standard for German- and Dutch-speaking Protestants. From the late seventeenth century on, the most influential and numerous churches in North America would be of English descent. This meant that in the New World and, later, the United States, Westminster=s Shorter Catechism would enjoy greater popularity than Heidelberg, and that the latter would be restricted to immigrants and settlers of Dutch and German descent.

This implicit ethno-confessional rivalry between Heidelberg and Westminster was not intentional but it was inevitable thanks to the United States’ debt — despite political independence — to the people, language, and churches of the United Kingdom. Estimates of each catechism from respected leaders in the United States= Reformed and Presbyterian churches illustrate that Heidelberg has always took a back seat to the Shorter Catechism among Reformed Protestants in the United States.

I won’t be speaking, but I wish I could go. It’s a wonderful city, a great cause, and an impressive line-up.

Whose Political Party, Which Church Faction

Published on by D. G. Hart20 Comments

Confessional Protestants complain often about the way that partisan politics has driven the wedge between evangelicals and mainliners more than doctrinal or liturgical matters. That is why two-kingdom theology has some appeal. It prevents concerns for social-well being, which are legitimate, from undermining the identity and mission of the church (“let the church be the church”). The same problem of partisan politics driving church politics seems to afflict Roman Catholicism in the United States according to this (but not this):

Surveying the Catholic Church in the U.S. today, there is no doubt that the church is polarized over doctrinal and other ecclesial issues. What is particularly dismaying about this polarization, though, is how easily it has coalesced with political partisanship. In recent elections, the Catholic vote has closely tracked with the national vote, meaning there is no identifiable “Catholic vote.” In 2011, a survey by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate showed that only sixteen percent of U.S. Catholics were even aware of the bishops’ Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship voting guide, and only three percent had read it. Of those who were aware of it, three quarters said that it had no influence on their vote in the 2010 elections, and a similar percentage of those who were not aware of it claimed that even if they had been, it would not have mattered. Clearly Catholic identity is not having a significant influence on politics. In fact, it seems rather that political identity has more influence on church life. We saw this with the protest of President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame in 2009, followed by that of House Speaker John Boehner at the Catholic University of America in 2011. Earlier this year nearly 90 faculty wrote a letter of protest when Paul Ryan visited Georgetown University because of his budgetary priorities, whereas only nine could be mustered to protest the selection of Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius as the commencement speaker, despite her radical views on abortion, not to mention her role in denying funding to the U.S. bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services and in the contraceptive mandate controversy. Catholics pick and choose elements of Catholic social teaching that fit their partisan agenda, leaving the rest to “prudential judgment.”

Yet the solution to this problem is not a more forceful statement that Catholic social teaching crosses partisan boundaries, or greater efforts to implement a more complete public policy agenda. This is because the root of the problem is the focus on the state as the primary locus of Christian witness. For two generations, the U.S. Catholic Church, including its bishops and leading intellectuals, have focused the church’s social energies on transforming the state, and I believe we are seeing signs of the impending failure of this approach. Despite his exaggerations, George Weigel has described the rise and fall of what he calls the “Bernardin Machine,” his term for the progressive American church of the 1970s to 1990s whose signature accomplishments were the two pastoral letters The Challenge of Peace and Economic Justice for All, and which Weigel believes was embodied in the person of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. This is the church of Bryan Hehir and David Hollenbach, as well as the other social ethicists Michael Baxter has criticized for adopting a form of public discourse accommodated to the state. This progressive church largely failed, unable to fundamentally transform American political life and leaving behind an under-catechized church whose institutions, such as universities and hospitals, were in many cases largely indistinguishable from their secular counterparts. The progressive church has since ceded ground to a more conservative church, one set to restore the Catholic Church’s identity, in its institutions and social role. Cardinal Francis George declared liberal Catholicism an “exhausted project,” and proposed “simply Catholicism,” which, although avowedly neither liberal nor conservative, has certainly shown a conservative face, given its ecclesial preoccupations and political leanings.

If the folks at CTC think the situation is any better for conservative Roman Catholics in the United States, they should think again:

With its focus on Catholic identity, this new conservative Catholicism might have been expected to embody a more robust form of communal witness, but this has not proven to be the case. Although the causes are probably many, one has to be that the leading intellectual advocates of conservative American Catholicism are captive to the same state-dominated logic as the progressives. Both Weigel, and, despite his philosophical brilliance, Robert George, explain the reasonableness of the natural law in terms of its public accessibility. These conservatives differ from the progressives in affirming that the natural law can lead us to definite conclusions on controverted issues, such as abortion and homosexuality, but the claims about the natural law itself remain the same. “Catholic identity” becomes identified with adherence to natural law teachings with generally conservative political implications. As Peter Steinfels notes, although Weigel contrasts the supposed cultural accommodation of the progressive church with the “intense focus” on Catholic identity of the conservative church, he mentions no major initiatives concerning Catholic institutions, catechetics, or liturgy as evidence of this shift, jumping immediately to the realm of public policy. Again, the measure of the Church’s social witness is its influence on the state. Weigel sees this new church as being ascendant, but we are already seeing the beginnings of its collapse. Bishops in the mold idealized by Weigel, such as Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston and Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, have played a major role in discrediting the moral authority of the church through the sexual abuse scandal, despite Weigel’s attempts to blame the scandal on the progressives. This past summer the bishops attempted to convince Catholics that the erosion of conscience rights represented by the contraceptive mandate is a profound threat to the Church, but have no comparable plan to combat the much graver threat that Catholics do not want to freely exercise their religion in the way taught by the bishops, or in many cases at all.

This estimate of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States should not lead to gloating. It should make all believers — Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews (Muslims likely already know this) — understand what happens to religious convictions when employed to better, transform, or even Christianize the modern social order. What happens is that the United States Americanizes the religious order. The other lesson is that Protestants tempted to look to Rome to solve Protestantism’s many ills are only going to find the same version of what has afflicted evangelicals and mainline Protestants since John Witherspoon signed the Declaration of Independence.

Where Do Unbelievers Go for a Trial?

Published on by D. G. Hart148 Comments

One of the other themes of the Twenty-Seven Propositions describing two-kingdom theology is the notion that the Bible is binding on all people:

7. Scripture is not given as a common moral standard that provides ethical imperatives to all people regardless of their religious standing.

The Reformed confessions testify that the moral imperatives of Scripture are binding on all men everywhere.

This does make the world safe for theonomy and for theocracy, since another common assertion of 2k critics is that special revelation must interpret general revelation, which implies that only those whose souls have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit may interpret general revelation, because only those with the eyes of faith can interpret Scripture aright, the necessary lens for interpreting the light of nature.

Aside from the covenantal implications of Scripture which make havoc of this critique of 2k, Scripture itself confounds this criticism. For if Paul were writing to the Corinthians with this anti-2k outlook, he could never write the following:

When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers! Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? (1 Corinthians 6:1-9 ESV)

Notice that this is an imperative that according to the anti-2k outlook applies to all people (even though Paul is writing directly to the saints at Corinth). If Paul believed that Scripture was given for believers and unbelievers alike, then his admonition here would be to tell unbelievers to take their cases to ecclesiastical courts. And if unbelievers take their cases to those who rule outside the church, they are guilty of sinning. Talk about being damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

But Calvin doesn’t fall for this folly.

. . . if any one has a controversy with a brother, it ought to be decided before godly judges, and that it ought not to be before those that are ungodly. If the reason is asked, I have already said, that it is because disgrace is brought upon the gospel, and the name of Christ is held up as it were to the scoffings of the ungodly. For the ungodly, at the instigation of Satan, are always eagerly on the watch for opportunities of finding occasion of calumny against the doctrine of godliness. Now believers, when they make them parties in their disputes, seem as though they did on set purpose furnish them with a handle for reviling. A second reason may be added — that we treat our brethren disdainfully, when we of our own accord subject them to the decisions of unbelievers.

In other words, Calvin, who ministered in a town very much unlike Corinth, where the rulers of Geneva were members of the church, still recognizes that these words Paul apply to Genevan Christians, that is, that they should not look for justice with fellow Christians but should bear each other’s burdens patiently and endure slights and offenses.

I acknowledge, then, that a Christian man is altogether prohibited from revenge, so that he must not exercise it, either by himself, or by means of the magistrate, nor even desire it. If, therefore, a Christian man wishes to prosecute his rights at law, so as not to offend God, he must, above all things, take heed that he does not bring into court any desire of revenge, any corrupt affection of the mind, or anger, or, in fine, any other poison. In this matter love will be the best regulator.

This is moral instruction, in other words, that applies to Christians not to unbelievers. Christians are capable, by the work of the Spirit, of not seeking revenge. Paul concedes that unbelievers are not.

What is also interesting to observe is that Calvin does not believe that Paul is invalidating the rule of ungodly magistrates, as if it were wrong to take certain civil matters to the courts, or as if the ungodliness of rulers invalidates their rule:

Paul does not here condemn those who from necessity have a cause before unbelieving judges, as when a person is summoned to a court; but those who, of their own accord, bring their brethren into this situation, and harass them, as it were, through means of unbelievers, while it is in their power to employ another remedy. It is wrong, therefore, to institute of one’s own accord a law-suit against brethren before unbelieving judges. If, on the other hand, you are summoned to a court, there is no harm in appearing there and maintaining your cause.

Calvin also goes on to distinguish in ways that would send neo-Calvinists, in the worlds of Ralph Kramden, “bang, zoom, to the moon” between the public matters before magistrates and private matters of Christians.

We must always keep in view what causes he is treating of; for public trials are beyond our province, and ought not to be transferred to our disposal; but as to private matters it is allowable to determine without the cognizance of the magistrate. As, then, we do not detract in any degree from the authority of the magistrate by having recourse to arbitration, it is not without good reason that the Apostle enjoins it upon Christians to refrain from resorting to profane, that is, unbelieving judges.

So if anti-2kers want to argue that biblical morality applies to all human beings, they may want to take up their case with the apostle Paul. Or they could reconceive their claims with the same scrupulosity they apply to 2k advocates.

Five Burroughs (obsolete variation of borough), Eight Kingdoms

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

To what kingdom does New York City belong? Cutting through the redemptive historical hooey surrounding certain claims made on behalf of Manhattan Island, may we speak of New York City as a kingdom? Hardly. Even Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to restrict Big Gulps is not going to make him a divine right monarch. So, when thinking about two kingdom theology is it possible even to apply the word “kingdom” to civil polities that are not ruled by monarchs?

This may seem a tad precious, but it is a question that the recent posting of Twenty-Seven propositions about two-kingdom theology invites. Matt Tuininga has already reacted and not so favorably (which may show how fruitless it is to interact with folks who are more intent on finding contradictions or tensions than they seem to be in actually promoting the kingdom of God). Here are several of the assertions that caught my eye (bold is supposedly the 2k view):

22. The family is part of the common kingdom.

The institution of the family is formed by God and is to be directed to the glory of God. It is agreed that it is an institution shared by unbelievers, but unbelievers misdirect or suppress the direction the institution should take.

23. The Christian is a dual citizen, as a citizen of both the spiritual kingdom and a citizen of the common kingdom.

It is agreeable that we share and interact with unbelievers but the term “kingdom” could confuse if such activities are thought in spatial terms as some “realm” governed by some different king or different ethic.

24. The unbeliever is a citizen only of the common kingdom.

This is generally agreeable, but with same caveat as #23 on the definition of “kingdom.”

25. The Christian lives under a dual ethic, namely, the natural law-justice ethic governing life in the common kingdom and the grace-mercy ethic governing life in the spiritual kingdom.

The Reformed confessions and scripture testify we live under a unified Biblical Christian ethic, not a dual- antithetical ethic that depends on which “kingdom” we are operating in. Thus, for example, the Christian family is not guided solely by an ethic of lex talionis justice, but also an ethic of mercy and forgiveness.

26. The common kingdom pertains to temporal, earthly, provisional matters, not matters of ultimate and spiritual importance. It includes matters of politics, law, and cultural life more generally.

The Reformed confessions do not exclude the kingdom of God as being manifest in these earthly matters of law, politics, and cultural life more generally.

27. The spiritual kingdom pertains to things that are of ultimate and spiritual importance. Insofar as this spiritual kingdom has earthly existence, it is found in the church and not in the state or other temporal institutions.

See comment on #26.

One thing that is highly dubious about these propositions and responses is the language of “the Reformed confessions do or do not” assert this or that. In point of fact, the Reformed confessions say little about kingdoms. When they do they apply the language of kingdom almost exclusively to spiritual realities. The civil magistrate has nothing to do with actually promoting or extending these spiritual realities because the magistrate’s rule (obviously the Westminster Divines and Guido de Bres were hardly fans of monarchs) only extended to outward not to internal or spiritual realities.

For instance, the Belgic Confession uses the word kingdom only one and it does so in Art. 36 by invoking the “kingdom of Jesus Christ.” The magistrate may “promote” the kingdom of Christ but does not establish it, something only God can do, and something to which the word, sacraments, and prayer are means and the magistrate may not minister.

In the Westminster Standards, we see eight uses of the word kingdom (“heaven” 8.5, 23.3, 30.2; “Lord Jesus Christ” 25.2; “God” WLC 53; “Satan” WLC 191, WSC 102; “power” WLC 191; “kingdom” simply WLC 196, WSC 107; “grace” WSC 102; “glory” WSC 102). The only time the word occurs close to the work of the magistrate is in Chapter 23 where the confession says explicitly that the magistrate may not assume the use of the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

The attempt then by critics of 2k to assert that the kingdom of Christ, or of heaven, or of grace, or of glory may be identified with the kingdoms or boroughs of this world is to confound the kingdom theology that undergirds the Reformed churches in their understanding of the church and its ministry. It is also why the critics of 2k are at odds with John Calvin who wrote at the beginning of his discussion of civil governments the following:

. . . before entering on the subject itself, it is necessary to attend to the distinction which we formerly laid down (Book 3 Chap. 19 sec. 16, et supra, Chap. 10), lest, as often happens to many, we imprudently confound these two things, the nature of which is altogether different. For some, on hearing that liberty is promised in the gospel, a liberty which acknowledges no king and no magistrate among men, but looks to Christ alone, think that they can receive no benefit from their liberty so long as they see any power placed over them. Accordingly, they think that nothing will be safe until the whole world is changed into a new form, when there will be neither courts, nor laws, nor magistrates, nor anything of the kind to interfere, as they suppose, with their liberty. But he who knows to distinguish between the body and the soul, between the present fleeting life and that which is future and eternal, will have no difficulty in understanding that the spiritual kingdom of Christ and civil government are things very widely separated. Seeing, therefore, it is a Jewish vanity to seek and include the kingdom of Christ under the elements of this world, let us, considering, as Scripture clearly teaches, that the blessings which we derive from Christ are spiritual, remember to confine the liberty which is promised and offered to us in him within its proper limits. For why is it that the very same apostle who bids us “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not again entangled with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1), in another passage forbids slaves to be solicitous about their state (1 Cor. 7:21), unless it be that spiritual liberty is perfectly compatible with civil servitude? In this sense the following passages are to be understood: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female” (Gal. 3:28). Again, “There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all” (Col. 3:11). It is thus intimated, that it matters not what your condition is among men, nor under what laws you live, since in them the kingdom of Christ does not at all consist. (Institutes IV.20.1)

I understand that Calvin’s Geneva is not the United States of America and that the civil magistrates there enforced some laws congenial to critics of 2k. But those are the same magistrates that executed heretics and forbade Roman Catholics from worshiping within the city. I doubt they would have allowed Mormon congregations or Jewish synagogues either. Which is to say, for the zillionth time, the critics of 2k have no coherent understanding either of the theology that prompted an pastor employed by the state from identifying the kingdom of Christ with the urban polity of Geneva or the political arrangement for which they long. (Ironically, the Netherlands in the hey day of the Synod of Dort was a republic where folks like Descartes and Spinoza could hold their views freely and that also was a home to arguably the largest population of Anabaptists in Europe.) If they want the magistrate to enforce all of God’s law, they will receive a lot more than they bargain for.

Then again, if all they want is to criticize 2k, have at it. It’s a free country that allows grousing about the magistrate (instead of honoring the emperor as Paul and Peter teach). It’s even a free church where their views of the kingdom of grace, falling as they do outside the confessions’ precise discussion of the kingdoms, do not get them in trouble. We will continue to forebear with them even if they are not as charitable.

Two Kingdoms, Five Burroughs (obsolete variation of borough)

Published on by D. G. Hart11 Comments

From a real East Coast correspondent came this story about Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn taking modesty into their own hands, better their own furrowed brows:

The Brooklyn shopkeeper was already home for the night when her phone rang: a man who said he was from a neighborhood “modesty committee” was concerned that the mannequins in her store’s window, used to display women’s clothing, might inadvertently arouse passing men and boys.

In many neighborhoods, a store owner might shrug off such a call. But on Lee Avenue, the commercial spine of Hasidic Williamsburg, the warning carried an implied threat — comply with community standards or be shunned. It is a potent threat in a neighborhood where shadowy, sometimes self-appointed modesty squads use social and economic leverage to enforce conformity.

The owner wrestled with the request for a day or two, but decided to follow it. “We can sell it without mannequins, so we might as well do what the public wants,” the owner told the manager, who asked not to be identified because of fear of reprisals for talking.

In the close-knit world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, community members know the modesty rules as well as Wall Street bankers who show up for work in a Brooks Brothers suit. Women wear long skirts and long-sleeved, high-necked blouses on the street; men do not wear Bermuda shorts in summer. Schools prescribe the color and thickness of girls’ stockings.

The rules are spoken and unspoken, enforced by social pressure but also, in ways that some find increasingly disturbing, by the modesty committees. Their power is evident in the fact that of the half dozen women’s clothing stores along Lee Avenue, only one features mannequins, and those are relatively shapeless, fully clothed torsos.

On the one hand, it is another indication of the way that ancient faiths adapt or don’t adapt to the diversity and freedoms of modern society, right there with Muslims advocating sharia law and theonomists supporting the Old Testament. On the other hand, it is also a case of a religious community exercising the freedom of association, which includes defining who is in and practicing the faith, and who isn’t.

Not sure what more to say.

The State of Rome in the U.S.

Published on by D. G. Hart66 Comments

John Fea thinks this exchange between Stephen Coulbert Colbert and Garry Wills exhibits on Wills’ side a low church evangelical outlook. When I watched it, it sounded more like Luther. When do evangelicals ever invoke Augustine against transubstantiation — “to think we consume and eliminate the body of Christ”? No mention here of a conversion experience or sola Scriptura (though Wills does seem to know the Bible better than Coulbert Colbert who opened a can of worms when invoking Hebrews on Melchizedek).

What is worth noting is that both of these men grew up in the Roman Catholic church, still identify with Rome, and could not be more at odds on the very matters of faith that make Roman Catholicism Roman Catholic.

Update: and here is a Lutheran video, approved, recommended, and circulated by Fr. Z, that supports what the interview with Wills reveals.

The Limits of Unlimited Authority

Published on by D. G. Hart279 Comments

When you hunt around for explanations of the Council of Trent’s anathemas on various Roman Catholic websites, you find a recurring assertion that the church cannot damn anyone to hell, only God can do that. The anathemas as such only apply to Protestant doctrines, not to Protestants themselves.

Like other excommunications, anathemas didn’t do anything to a person’s soul. It didn’t make him “damned by God” or anything like that. The only man who can make a man damned by God is the man himself. The Church has no such power. An anathema was a formal way of signaling him that he had done something gravely wrong, that he had endangered his own soul, and that he needed to repent. Anathemas, like other excommunications, were thus medicinal penalties, designed to promote healing and reconciliation.

Love the Protestant, hate Protestantism, I guess.

This explanation is odd for a couple reasons. First, if Protestants are not anathematized by Trent, is it not the case that Protestants are still schismatics, which is not a good condition for the soul since schism is a mortal sin?

Sins against Faith: 2087 Our moral life has its source in faith in God who reveals his love to us. St. Paul speaks of the “obedience of faith”9 as our first obligation. He shows that “ignorance of God” is the principle and explanation of all moral deviations.10 Our duty toward God is to believe in him and to bear witness to him. 2088 The first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning against faith: Voluntary doubt about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated doubt can lead to spiritual blindness. 2089 Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. “Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”

Some apologists will also tell us that we are under obligation to go to Mass if we want to go to heaven.

We may be spared Trent’s condemnations, but the very idea of no salvation outside the church and Rome’s claim that it has the power to dispense grace takes Protestants from the Council’s frying pan into Rome’s fire.

The other odd aspect of this distinction between Rome’s authority and God’s when it comes the fate of souls is that the papacy does apparently have the power to canonize saints. This implies that the church can determine who is in heaven. It even has access to a treasury of merits to liberate souls from purgatory with indulgences.

Now maybe such limits on Rome’s power truly exist. But why does it seem like a case of public relations where Roman Catholic apologists are uncomfortable with hell and try to distance themselves from anathemas but not so much with heaven and the process of canonization? Have Rome’s apologists been reading Rob Bell?

Playing with Lenten Fire

Published on by D. G. Hart151 Comments

If I didn’t know better, I would suppose that Crossway Books, the patron of the Gospel Coalition, is a subsidiary of McDonald’s. Here is the connection. McDonald’s has for a limited time made available Fish McBites and this offering just happens to coincide with the transition from Fat Tuesday to Ash Wednesday, and will be available through March. As one news story has it, “Brian Irwin, director of marketing for McDonald’s USA, told the Associated Press that research revealed parents want the seafood option. In keeping with its 2011 campaign to give customers a healthier choice, Irwin said the Fish McBites give parents another selection to choose from.” The reporter added that, “The poppable fish-bites will float on participating McDonald’s menus though March to coincide with the season of Lent.”

So where is the Gospel Coalition? Well, today the blog posted two items recommending Lent to is gospel allies. One says this:

Lent strikes many Protestants as the exclusive domain of Roman Catholics, but this season can serve any Christian as a unique time of preparation and repentance as we anticipate the death and resurrection of Jesus. On the Christian calendar, Lent (from Latin, meaning “fortieth”) is the 40 days beginning on Ash Wednesday and leading up to Easter Sunday. (Sundays aren’t counted, but generally set aside as days of renewal and celebration—”mini-Easters” of sorts.) Whatever you might think about popular practices, “Lent is first and foremost about the gospel making its way deeper into our lives,” Kendal Haug and Will Walker observe.

The editors of the blog at TGC also dug up a recommendation of Lent from Chuck Colson. He identifies five virtues: 1) searching the depths of our sin; 2) considering the sincerity of our fellowship; 3) reflecting on our mortality; 4) more opportunities for charity; and 5) preparation to celebrate Easter. Colson concludes:

And so, I invite you to a holy Lent. Take up the opportunity to dwell upon the grief of our broken world, the sin within your heart, and the deep love of God that exceeds these realities. Reflecting on the hospitality of God, consider the needs of your neighbor, especially those without life’s basic needs. And, most importantly, in the gritty details of Lent, don’t forget—Easter is coming!

Strikingly absent from these recommendations are any of the older Protestant warnings about church calendars and liberty of conscience or about the devotional assumptions that lay behind the practice of Lent for Roman Catholics. Here is one explanation of Lent’s meaning for Roman Catholic readers:

Though we were created lovingly by God to enjoy the goods of the earth, these goods can consume us, and even become the object of sinful pride, as our first parents in the garden demonstrated. By temporarily renouncing these goods through fasting, we willingly suffer their absence in our flesh as a way to attack sin.

Fasting hurts us, but, like the pain brought about from physical exercise, it is supposed to hurt us. And like exercise, the more pain we endure for God, the more we gain in spiritual rewards.

The desert, then, is the place for Lent not only because it represents the pain and consequences of sin, but also because it is a place of abstinence from the fruits of the earth. When we spiritually withdraw to the desert, its emptiness reminds us that the goods of the earth ultimately cannot satisfy us.

As much as I appreciate Rome’s attention to sin and its consequences — something that doesn’t come through when leaders speak of Christ’s self-sacrificial love as a model for social justice and the dignity of the human person — Lent has significance for Roman Catholics that it cannot have for Protestants. After all, Protestants don’t have a history of self-inflicted pain to merit spiritual rewards. If as the gospel allies would have it that Lent is to remind us of Christ, then we should also be reminded that nothing we do to attack sin can compare with what Christ accomplished in his own suffering and death. If Protestants deny themselves, it is part of sanctification, the mortification of the self, that comes daily and year round through the means of grace and the armor of God (Eph. 6). We don’t spend forty days a year denying self.

TGC’s mix-and-match piety, a dose of urban transformationalism from column A, a slice of Roman Catholic devotion from column B, and a dish of sweet (charismatic) and sour (Calvinist) conferences from column C is a undisciplined program by which to promote and defend the gospel. It is further evidence of why Protestantism needs confessional churches, not the parachurch agencies that pillage those those communions.

Are Protestants Logocentric? Proudly (in a humble way)

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

From Luther’s comments on John 3:

What should Christ do, and of what use is the Messiah? What kind of Messiah is He? . . . What does He do? He testifies. If He walks in such weakness and holds on His kingdship no more fimrly than that He testified, is there nothing else that He can do but preach and talk? If He is no soldier, possesses no land (not even the width of His palm) and no people, what does He do? Preach. Yes, such a Messiah are we bidden to accept.

How if it be God’s will that the Messiah should not come like a Caesar? Such an honour He will not grants unto them, that He should come arrayed with power like theirs. But that He comes so unadorned and does nothing but preach, that is unspeakable wisdom and strength, yes, the treasure of wisdom and knowledge, for whosoever believes in Him shall live eternally. But who sees this? You are not meant to see it. His reign and His preaching are a testimony. It is a preaching which testifies to things which no man can hear, see, or read in books of the law or anywhere else in the world. To witness means to speak of what the hearer has not seen. A judge does not judge what he sees. He must hear witnesses. But here He must preach and witness to something which men do not see, and that is how the Lord Christ is a witness to the Father in heaven, high uplifted above all men. He shall do nothing but preach, and His preaching shall be His testimony to the Father, how He is inclined, how He desires to make men blessed and to redeem them from their sins, and from the power of death and the devil. That is His testimony.

Luther might explain why Protestants have stressed sermons as the center piece of worship.

This would explain why Roman Catholics emphasize the Mass:

The Tridentine Decree on Justification is one of the most impressive achievements of the council. The leaders of the council had reported to Rome that “the significance of this council in the theological sphere lies chiefly in the article on justification, in fact this is the most important item the council has to deal with.” But reading it can give one a false impression of the significance of justification within Roman Catholicism. The decree was needed, and the doctrine received the attention that it did, because of the Protestant challenge. For the inner life of the Roman Catholic Church, however, the doctrine was not very important. In 1564 Pope Pius IV promulgated the Creed of the Council of Trent. Justification is mentioned just once in passing: “I embrace and accept each and every article on original sin and justification declared and defined in the most holy Council of Trent.” Shortly afterward, his successor, Pope Pius V, promulgated a Catechismus ex Decreto Concilii Tridentini, the so-called Roman Catechism. This contains only scattered passing references to justification, mostly in the context of teaching on the sacraments. The sacramental system is as central to the catechism as the doctrine of justification is peripheral, and the need to offer satisfaction for sins receives the sustained exposition denied to justification. Justification needed to be treated in response to the Protestant threat, but at the heart of the Christian life in Roman Catholicism is not justification but the sacramental system. The Council fathers turned from justification to the sacraments, and the Decree on the sacraments begins with the observation that all true righteousness begins with the sacraments; having been begun, increases through them; and, if lost, is restored through them. (Anthony Lane, “A Tale of Two Imperial Cities,” in Bruce L. McCormack, Justification in Perspective, 141-42)

Two paradigms, indeed, (but not much reform in the Counter-Reformation).