Does the United States Need a Spanish Inquisition?

Published on by D. G. Hart28 Comments

The folks at Called to Communion generally avoid the culture wars and that is to their credit, though their apolitical posture is hardly characteristic of Roman Catholics in the United States these days. Two of the significant GOP presidential hopefuls were Roman Catholics — Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. And now another is on the Republican ticket, Paul Ryan for vice president (though whether Ryan is a “good catholic” depends on how your understand the church’s social teaching).

Other bloggers are not so circumspect about the United States and its increasing barbarism. Fr. C. John McCloskey III, writes at the Catholic Thing. He recently argued that if the United States is going to be a Christian nation it needs Roman Catholicism because Protestantism has run out of gas:

With the passage of time, homegrown American Protestant sects sprang up so profusely that they now can be counted in the thousands. Despite this variety, almost all shared a biblical moral philosophy not far removed from Catholics. The loosening of divorce laws and the propagation of the birth control pill in the Sixties, however, precipitated further retreat mere decades later by mainstream and traditional Protestant denominations on other moral fronts, including abortion, homosexual activity, and most recently same-sex marriage.

The primary reason is the lack of dogmatic authority in Protestantism and the reliance on the principle of private judgment. Leaving people to rely on only their opinions or feelings as moral guide is not enough to sustain a country that was once Christian and now is increasingly pagan.

What is the solution? Can American become Christian again? In my judgment, mainstream Protestantism is in an irreversible freefall. Don’t count on any great religious revivals. America needs witness, not enthusiasm. The United States will either become predominantly Catholic in numbers, faith, and morals or perish under the weight of its unbridled hedonism and corruption.

Notice the theme of Protestant diversity and subjectivity versus Roman Catholic unity and objectivity that Called to Communion paradigmatists also stress.

Protestants certainly deserve their share of blame for what has happened to moral conventions in the United States. The mainline churches have been particularly negligent on sexual ethics and marriage, not to mention the atonement.

But the analysis here which reflects a common trait of conservative intellectuals — to attribute rotten cultural fruit to bad religious seed — misses the elephant in the room, namely, government. Churches may promote or tolerate all sorts of moral goofiness but the state can still pass and enforce laws that proscribe conduct. The abolition of plural marriage in Utah is one example. At the same time, churches do not have the power and never have had it to enforce temporally or civilly their teachings or codes of conduct.

In the sixteenth century when Roman Catholics wanted to rid the Low Countries of Protestantism they depended on Phillip II and the Duke of Alba (Margaret of Parma wasn’t too shabby either) to implement the church’s ban on heretics. In fact, Rome’s mechanisms of inquisition generally relied up civil authorities to enforce the temporal penalties for heresy.

So if Fr. McCloskey wants a Christian United States he is going to need more than Roman Catholic priests, religious orders, and parishioners. He is also going to need a strong state. Nowhere has Christianity (or Islam for that matter) become the cohesive glue of a society or country without a government that enforces religious teaching and practice.

In which case, the real problem with the United States is the freedom granted in the Constitution. We cannot have religious uniformity and have the political framework established in the nation’s system of government.

Meanwhile, if national order requires an iron fist, would not the same go for ecclesiastical order? I have made the point before, but it may bear repeating. If the structures of Roman Catholicism yield the kind of uniformity and solidarity that Protestantism does not, then why is liberalism a problem for Roman Catholics in the United States? Churches may depend on the state to enforce their norms in the general society, but churches do have the power to enforce their teachings and rules within the household of faith.

Again, Rome suffers from this problem no more than Protestants do. Without a civil pope to call the shots, churches have to make do with the spiritual powers they have, limited though they are. And yet, if Christians — Roman Catholic and Protestant — are longing for the political equivalent of the papacy to restore decency in the United States, do they still qualify as political conservatives who — think Constitution — are supposed to be wary of the centralization of power in one person?

Last I checked, it is still 2012, some 236 years after the Declaration of Independence. The American Revolution has many faults, and one of them may very well be no provisions to check dangerous religious and philosophical views. At the same time, the order that the revolutionaries established granted freedoms that protect Protestants and Roman Catholics to worship, teach, and blog. Those freedoms were not readily available in places like the Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century. It may just be (all about) me, but I think I’d rather live now under Obama than then under Phillip II.

Of Paradigms, Persons, and Popes

Published on by D. G. Hart114 Comments

Another theme that comes up in the Called to Communion ecclesiology is the superiority of Rome because of — surprise — the pope. This is not some form of papal infatuation but a genuine recognition of the difficulty of interpreting the Bible. If you have no way of determining which interpretation is correct, you wind up with lots of denominations. CTCers don’t consider that when nation-states were confessional, parliaments and kings also did a good job of keeping denominations down in the single digits. Then again, CTCers seem to like authority in the abstract rather than in its hands on (or hands off as the case may be) instances.

An example of CTC logic comes from Bryan Cross in the previously discussed post about sola scriptura where he tries to answer several objections to the idea that a Roman Catholic convert is doing the same thing as a Protestant when he decides to join the correct church. He makes the distinction, repeated often at CTC, that a book is one thing, a person is another:

The problem with this dilemma (one where a person supposedly needs a series of authoritative interpreters ad infinitum to determine which interpreter is correct) is that it ignores the qualitative ontological distinction between persons and books, and so it falsely assumes that if a book needs an authoritative interpreter in order to function as an ecclesial authority, so must a living person. A book contains a monologue with respect to the reader. An author can often anticipate the thoughts and questions that might arise in the mind of the reader. But a book cannot hear the reader’s questions here and now, and answer them. A living person, however, can do so. A living person can engage in genuine dialogue with the reader, whereas a book cannot. Fr. Kimel talks about that here when he quotes Chesterton as saying that though we can put a living person in the dock, we cannot put a book in the dock. In this respect, a person can do what a book cannot; a person can correct global misunderstandings and answer comprehensive interpretive questions. A book by its very nature has a limited intrinsic potency for interpretive self-clarification; a person, on the other hand, by his very nature has, in principle, an unlimited intrinsic potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification. This unlimited potency with respect to interpretive self-clarification ensures that the hermeneutical spiral may reach its end. A book cannot speak more about itself than it does at the moment at which it is completed. A person, by contrast, remains perpetually capable of clarifying further any of his previous speech-acts.

Right away, any Protestant with a well-informed doctrine of Scripture will notice the implicit (though likely unintentional) insult done to the author of Scripture — that would be God himself — in this distinction between a mere book and a person. God is three persons and also omnipotent and omniscient. For some reason, he decided to reveal himself in the pages of holy writ, and he did not then simply stand back and let the interpreters have at it (another instance of canonical deism?). He also gave his Spirit to guide his interpreters into all truth (would Cross’ neglect of the Spirit be an instance of pneumatological deism?). So the mere book that Cross uses in this contrast is the very word of God. As Hank Kingsley might say, “hey now!”

But this contrast is complicated further by a strange notion that persons are better understood than books. To understand a person, we need to hear them speak or write. In which case, a person uses the same medium of communication as a book — language. And language, whether spoken, written, or blogged, needs to be interpreted. Yes, a person may be able to follow up and explain how an interpreter was mistaken about what was said or written. But even here the explanation may need several iterations of additional explanations. So the ontological point misses entirely the linguistic reality. The problem with books and persons is that the language of both, even in authoritative occasions — a father, the Constitution, a papal encyclical, a school district superintendent — is capable of misinterpretation or misunderstanding. This is not hypothetical given John Paul II’s apostolic letter, Ad Tuendam Fidem, along with the then Cardinal Ratzinger’s commentary on the letter (more below).

One last curiosity of this contrast between a person and a book is that the pope technically is not a person. The papacy is an office. That distinction between person and office is important for the sake of infallibility as I understand it. A pope gets to say and do a lot of things. When he greets his butler (if he has one) in the morning, he is not speaking infallibly. He only does that when certain conditions are met and those conditions go to the heart of what the papal office is (as opposed to the person occupying the office; since not every pope becomes a saint, not every person who becomes pope has the same spiritual worth). And when an authority is more official than personal, then the capacity to explain interpretations drops and may even vanish. According to wikipedia, 265 persons have occupied the office of pope. Whether all of those persons would interpret the Bible or each other the same way is doubtful. Even more dubious is the notion that an officer overseeing the kind of bureaucracy the Vatican is would take the time to explain to sit down with the average Roman Catholic and explain infallibly how to resolve her disagreement where her priest over the correct interpretation of John 3:16. It would be like the Secretary of Health and Human Services responding to Hillsdale County’s coroner about the latest guidelines on tabulating causes of death. If the Secretary were to try to explain to all such questions, she would be on the phone 24/7.

This may explain John Paul II’s Ad Tuendam Fidem (1998), an apostolic letter designed to clarify church authority and what Roman Catholics must believe.

TO PROTECT THE FAITH of the Catholic Church against errors arising from certain members of the Christian faithful, especially from among those dedicated to the various disciplines of sacred theology, we, whose principal duty is to confirm the brethren in the faith (Lk 22:32), consider it absolutely necessary to add to the existing texts of the Code of Canon Law and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, new norms which expressly impose the obligation of upholding truths proposed in a definitive way by the Magisterium of the Church, and which also establish related canonical sanctions.

With all the singularity of persons or officers at the top of Rome’s hierarchy, one might think a letter like this was unnecessary. But if you read the letter or Ratzinger’s commentary, you may still be scratching your head on the clarity of interpretations coming from the papal office. For instance, the commentary says a lot more about the criteria for what is authoritative than what the actual content of the faith is. From explanation number five:

5. The first paragraph states: “With firm faith, I also believe everything contained in the Word of God, whether written or handed down in Tradition, which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed.” The object taught in this paragraph is constituted by all those doctrines of divine and catholic faith which the Church proposes as divinely and formally revealed and, as such, as irreformable.

These doctrines are contained in the Word of God, written or handed down, and defined with a solemn judgment as divinely revealed truths either by the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ‘ex cathedra,’ or by the College of Bishops gathered in council, or infallibly proposed for belief by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

These doctrines require the assent of theological faith by all members of the faithful. Thus, whoever obstinately places them in doubt or denies them falls under the censure of heresy, as indicated by the respective canons of the Codes of Canon Law.

To see how complicated this business of binding interpretive authority is, check out Ratzinger’s clarification number nine:

9. The Magisterium of the Church, however, teaches a doctrine to be believed as divinely revealed (first paragraph) or to be held definitively (second paragraph) with an act which is either defining or non-defining. In the case of a defining act, a truth is solemnly defined by an “ex cathedra” pronouncement by the Roman Pontiff or by the action of an ecumenical council. In the case of a non-defining act, a doctrine is taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Bishops dispersed throughout the world who are in communion with the Successor of Peter. Such a doctrine can be confirmed or reaffirmed by the Roman Pontiff, even without recourse to a solemn definition, by declaring explicitly that it belongs to the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium as a truth that is divinely revealed (first paragraph) or as a truth of Catholic doctrine (second paragraph). Consequently, when there has not been a judgment on a doctrine in the solemn form of a definition, but this doctrine, belonging to the inheritance of the depositum fidei, is taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, which necessarily includes the Pope, such a doctrine is to be understood as having been set forth infallibly. The declaration of confirmation or reaffirmation by the Roman Pontiff in this case is not a new dogmatic definition, but a formal attestation of a truth already possessed and infallibly transmitted by the Church.

So what are those instances of infallibility, the doctrines that Roman Catholics must believe? You finally reach in Ratzinger’s eleventh point:

11. Examples. Without any intention of completeness or exhaustiveness, some examples of doctrines relative to the three paragraphs described above can be recalled.

To the truths of the first paragraph belong the articles of faith of the Creed, the various Christological dogmas and Marian dogmas; the doctrine of the institution of the sacraments by Christ and their efficacy with regard to grace; the doctrine of the real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the sacrificial nature of the eucharistic celebration; the foundation of the Church by the will of Christ; the doctrine on the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff; the doctrine on the existence of original sin; the doctrine on the immortality of the spiritual soul and on the immediate recompense after death; the absence of error in the inspired sacred texts; the doctrine on the grave immorality of direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being.

And even here the requirements are not altogether clear since there may be a lot more to be believed.

For all CTC’s confidence in the explanatory powers of a single person, it looks again like their exaltation of Roman Catholicism over Protestantism is more hype than substance.

Canonical Deism

Published on by D. G. Hart181 Comments

Further discussion of Protestant conversions to Rome and Jason Stellman’s views over at Green Baggins have set me thinking about a curious feature of the Called To Communion paradigm (how do you like them apples?). Jason is trying to give a biblical account for Bryan Cross’ understanding of agape and he has challenged Reformed Protestants to show where Calvinism’s idea of imputation is found in the gospels or Christ’s own teaching. His point is that if Paul’s teaching on justification were so basic, you’d expect to see it in the accounts of Christ’s teaching and ministry.

My counter to this is that if Paul’s teaching is consistent with Christ’s, then Paul’s views of justification may very well be what he learned from Christ. Doctrinal development being what it is, you surely wouldn’t want to imply that Paul was making this stuff up. Jason says he’s not positing a red-letter edition of the Bible, or Jesus against Paul, but the tensions are there in his view. He can read Jesus through the lens of Paul or he can read Paul through the lens of Jesus. (Or you try to harmonize.)

Either way, this discussion has made me wonder if CTCers are guilty of their own form of deism. According to Cross’ idea of ecclesiastical deism, Protestants have no way to explain convincingly how the true church popped up after 1,000 years. So to counter the Protestant and Mormon view of church history, he doubles down and insists that the church was there all along. And to do this, CTCers put great emphasis on the early church fathers as a body of teaching that reflects what the apostles handed down to the church from Christ. Hence the continuity, authority, and infallibility of Rome’s teaching in the CTC paradigm.

But there is a gap here that is quite startling when you think about it. Consider three important Roman Catholics beliefs, the primacy of Peter, the status of the virgin Mary, and the authority of the papacy. You may be able to find biblical support for these in the gospels. But where do you find in Acts or the epistles a stress upon Peter, belief in the import of Mary, or signs of the bishop of Rome? The New Testament after the gospels is virtually silent on these matters.

So how do CTCer’s account for the gap between Christ and the Early Church Fathers? Do they suffer from a deism of their own? Did the Early Church Fathers all of a sudden pop up with the teachings found in the gospels after the New Testament epistle writers neglected them? Of course, CTCers will deny any gap exists. But two can play this game.

Liberal Christianity Makes A Come Back

Published on by D. G. Hart40 Comments

Maybe not. Ross Douthat’s reflections on what ails the mainline churches in the United States (though a bit stale now) generated a round of responses about the nature and viability of the Protestant mainline. I plan to return to this discussion, particularly in relation to a parallel one among historians about ecumenical Protestants. But for now I draw attention to the response to Douthat by Diana Butler.

On the one hand, the New York Times columnist cannot but help connect the dots between liberal Protestants’ capitulation to sexual promiscuity and declining church membership. Case in point, The Episcopal Church (no longer the ECUSA and be sure to capitalize the definite article):

. . . instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.

Butler counters:

. . . liberal churches are not the only ones declining. It is true that progressive religious bodies started to decline in the 1960s. However, conservative denominations are now experiencing the same. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention, one of America’s most conservative churches, has for a dozen years struggled with membership loss and overall erosion in programming, staffing, and budgets. Many smaller conservative denominations, such as the Missouri Synod Lutherans, are under pressure by loss. The Roman Catholic Church, a body that has moved in markedly conservative directions and of which Mr. Douthat is a member, is straining as members leave in droves. By 2008, one in ten Americans considered him- or herself a former Roman Catholic. On the surface, Catholic membership numbers seem steady. But this is a function of Catholic immigration from Latin America. If one factors out immigrants, American Catholicism matches the membership decline of any liberal Protestant denomination. Decline is not exclusive to the Episcopal Church, nor to liberal denominations–it is a reality facing the whole of American Christianity.

As much as this looks like a “well-your-glass-is-half-empty-too” retort, Butler goes on to suggest that liberal churches are healthier for having experienced decline earlier than conservatives. She also believes that given the mainline’s ordeal, liberal Christians are discovering resources that constitute them as the site of unexpected spiritual vigor among Protestants (talk about counter-intuitive):

Unexpectedly, liberal Christianity is–in some congregations at least–undergoing renewal. A grass-roots affair to be sure, sputtering along in local churches, prompted by good pastors doing hard work and theologians mostly unknown to the larger culture. Some local congregations are growing, having seriously re-engaged practices of theological reflection, hospitality, prayer, worship, doing justice, and Christian formation. . . . There is more than a little historical irony in this. A quiet renewal is occurring, but the denominational structures have yet to adjust their institutions to the recovery of practical wisdom that is remaking local congregations. And the media continues to fixate on big pastors and big churches with conservative followings as the center-point of American religion, ignoring the passion and goodness of the old liberal tradition that is once again finding its heart. Yet, the accepted story of conservative growth and liberal decline is a twentieth century tale, at odds with what the surveys, data, and best research says what is happening now.

To back up this contention, Butler cites a study by the erstwhile pulse-taker of the Protestant mainline — the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership and Professor of Religion and Society at Hartford Seminary. According to the press release linked in Butler’s post:

Innovative Worship: The surge in contemporary worship continued, to more than 40 percent of congregations that always or often use electric guitars or drums in their worship in 2010. Also, both innovative and contemporary worship are catalysts of spiritual vitality.

Religion Goes Electronic: A third of congregations reported that their use of modern technology grew more than 10 percent. The more a congregation uses technology, the more open it is to change.

Racial/Ethnic Congregations: There has been a dramatic increase in racial/ethnic congregations, many for immigrant groups. In 2010, three in ten congregations reported that more than 50 percent of their members were members of minority groups, up from two in ten in 2000. One clear impact of the increase in minority congregations is that they inject a strong dose of growth and vitality into American religious life.

“Congregation is More Than Worship”: Despite the overall erosion in congregational vitality and size from 2000 to 2010, there has been a slight increase in member-oriented and mission-oriented programming.

Financial Health: The number of congregations with excellent financial health declined from 31 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2010. Eighty percent of congregations reported that the recent recession negatively affected their finances.

Congregational Conflict: Almost two of every three congregations experienced conflict in 2010. In a third of the congregations, the conflict was serious enough that members left or withheld contributions, or a leader left. Conflict is corrosive – it leads to attendance decline and financial stress.

Demographic Details: The average percentage of participants over 65 has increased at the same time as the average percentage of 18-34 year olds has declined. Racial/ethnic congregations buck this trend, with significantly higher proportions of young adults among their participants than white congregations. Among historically white congregations, the membership of the typical Oldline Protestant congregation is much older than that of Evangelical Protestant congregations. For 75 percent of Oldline Protestant congregations, less than 10 percent are young adult. This aging of congregations is significant because as congregations age, their capacity for change erodes.

Interfaith Engagement: A little more than one in ten congregations surveyed in 2010 indicated they had shared worship across faith traditions in the past year, 13.9 percent in 2010 versus 6.8 percent in 2000. A special report on congregations’ interfaith engagement is available at http://www.faithcommunitiestoday.org.

The Electoral Process: There has been a reversal between Oldline and Evangelical Protestantism in political action, through voter registration or education programs, in the past decade. While the use of the political process declined from 2000 to 2010 among Oldline Protestant Congregations, to 11.9 percent, it surged among Evangelical Protestant congregations, to 25.8 percent. The Black church also continues to use the political process, with 55 percent saying they offer voter education or registration campaigns.

Church Attendance: The average weekend worship attendance at a typical congregation declined from 2000 to 2010. Median weekend worship attendance at the typical congregation dropped from 130 to 108 during the past decade. More than one in four American congregations had fewer than 50 in worship in 2010.

Spiritual Vitality: Fewer congregations report high spiritual vitality – from 42.8 percent in 2000 to 28.4 percent in 2010. This decline in spiritual vitality is true across the board – including denominational family, race and ethnicity, region and size. Among the trends that negatively impact spiritual vitality are decreasing financial health, shrinking worship attendance, aging membership and high levels of conflict. One unexpected finding is that spiritual vitality rises considerably higher at the liberal end of the theological continuum than the very conservative end.

I am no sociologist, so I don’t have credentials to crunch the data responsibly. But how do you look at the figures on finances, controversy, church attendance, membership, and vitality and then conclude that liberal Christianity is making a comeback? I understand Butler’s need to cheer lead for her peeps. But the director of Hartford’s Center, David Roozen, cannot summon up the positivity that Butler taps. Even his conclusion, “Despite bursts of innovation, pockets of vitality and interesting forays into greater civic participation, American congregations enter the second decade of the twenty-first century a bit less healthy than at the turn of the century,” sounds like a reach.

What I'm (all about ME!) Sayin'

Published on by D. G. Hart147 Comments

While looking through the blogs today I came across a couple worthy of highlight.

In keeping with the theme of the realities of contemporary Roman Catholicism, Samuel Gregg’s piece on Vatican II and modernity might be of interest (especially to CTCer’s who whitewash dilemmas from church history). He seconds a point I often make that Rome’s decision to open itself to the modern world came at one of the worst points in modern history. Do you really want to open yourself to feminism, deconstruction, the Beatles, and suburbia? Here’s an excerpt:

Vatican II is often portrayed, with some accuracy, as the Church opening itself to “the world.” This expression embraces several meanings in Scripture. God loves “the world” (Jn 3:16). Yet “the world” can also mean that which opposes God (Jn 14:17). At Vatican II, however, the world took on yet another connotation: that of the “modern world.”

Curiously, you won’t find a definition of the modern world in any Vatican II text. But modernity is usually a way of describing the various Enlightenments that emerged in the West from the late seventeenth-century onwards. Among other things, these movements emphasized applying instrumental and scientific rationality to all spheres of life in the hope of emancipating humanity from ignorance, suffering, and oppression.

Given the often-vicious treatment inflicted upon the Church by many self-identified moderns—including Jacobins and Bolsheviks—Catholics were often wary of anything asserting to be modern. It’s untrue, however, that the pre-1962 Church was somehow closed to modernity’s genuine achievements. This quickly becomes evident from cursory reading of encyclicals written by popes ranging from Leo XIII to Pius XII.

Nonetheless, many Catholics during the 1950s and 60s were tremendously optimistic about possible rapprochements between the Church and modernity. And that includes the present pope. In a 1998 autobiographical essay, Joseph Ratzinger recalled his hopes at the time for overcoming the gaps between Catholicism and the modern mind. A similar confidence pervades Gaudium et Spes, the Vatican II document that specifically attempted to approach modernity in a non-antagonistic manner. Yet even in 1965, many bishops and theologians (including some associated with efforts for renewal) were warning that Gaudium et Spes’ view of modernity was excessively hopeful, even a little naive.

Of course the modern world has witnessed tremendous achievements since 1965. Its technological successes are the most obvious. Even diehard traditionalists find it awkward to be uncompromisingly anti-modern when needing dental-care. Likewise the spread of the economic modernity associated with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations has lifted millions out of poverty at a historically unprecedented speed.

The warnings, however, about undue optimism concerning modernity turned out to be quite justified. The cultural and intellectual chaos that erupted in the late-1960s should have been proof enough. Since then, we’ve witnessed what might be considered an ongoing crack-up on modernity’s part.

Then on a different subject, prayer, Paul Helm registers reservations about the amount of detail that we put into our petitions. I have wondered about this for a long time, especially in those small group gatherings where you almost faint from the descriptions of medical conditions and procedures. Helm is addressing public worship but his point about prayer works just as well for the prayer closet (does any reader actually have such space?). Here he goes:

I don’t know how it is with you, but I cannot cope with times in services of worship when the minister or leader invites the congregation to ‘spend a few moments of quiet praying for someone in special need’. My mind starts to think about anything or nothing except a person I know of who’s in need. It’s rather like someone who says ‘Don’t think of a white horse’, an invitation that it’s impossible to accept.

We could spend a few moments reflecting on the view of public worship that it is implied by the ‘periods of silence’ invitation, of whether it is appropriate to think of public worship as involving the sum of the private devotions of the people who are present. Ought we not rather to think of public worship (as a general rule) as common worship, as in ‘The Book of Common Prayer’, as expressing in public the common, communal needs and aspirations of Christian people? But instead of thinking out loud along these lines I would rather spend these few minutes thinking out loud with you about what I shall call The Affliction of a Failure of Concentration.

Here’s my suggestion – not a novel one, but still, I think, worth airing and emphasizing – that praying, and particularly that branch of praying that is called petitioning or asking, including of course interceding for others, is not primarily, or even, a matter of acquiring and processing information, and then presenting it in bite-sized pieces to Almighty God. It is not a condition of responsible and genuine Christian prayer that it is ‘intelligent’ i.e. well-informed.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against the provision of information. I have spent much of my adult life as a teacher and writer, engrossed in the world of ideas and arguments. I expect the students I teach to be able to absorb, understand, weigh and produce information. The more the merrier. But the point is that not all speech is primarily informative, and most certainly Christian petitionary and intercessory prayer is not primarily informative. Fellow-prayers in the prayer meeting may learn all sorts of things about Mr Smith when he prays publicly. But the living God is in a rather different position from our fellow worshippers in the pew. Does he need educating? Is he ignorant of any detail? Has he overlooked any of the needs of his people?

Selah.

Called To Communion Hype and Roman Catholic Reality

Published on by D. G. Hart366 Comments

Bryan Cross’ response to Nick Batzig on the Reformed view of imputation has kicked up a little dust over at Green Baggins and for good reason, though I plan to go in a direction different from many of the Protestant complaints. Cross contends that Roman Catholics understand justification through the lens of agape while Reformed Protestants use a list paradigm:

From a Catholic point of view, as I explained in “Why John Calvin did not Recognize the Distinction Between Mortal and Venial Sin,” there are two different paradigms here regarding what it means to keep the law. Call one the list paradigm, and call the other the agape paradigm. In the list paradigm, perfect law-keeping is conceived as keeping a list of God given precepts. According to this paradigm, perfect law-keeping requires perfectly and perpetually keeping (and not in any way violating) every single precept in the list. In the New Covenant, we are given more gifts for growing progressively in our ability to keep the law, but nevertheless, nobody in this life keeps the list perfectly. All fall short of God’s perfect standard of righteousness. That’s the paradigm through which Batzig views God’s requirement of righteousness for salvation.

In the agape paradigm, by contrast, agape is the fulfillment of the law. Agape is not merely some power or force or energy by which one is enabled better to keep the list of rules, either perfectly or imperfectly. Rather, agape is what the law has pointed to all along. To have agape in one’s soul is to have the perfect righteousness to which the list of precepts point. Righteousness conceived as keeping a list of externally written precepts is conceptually a shadow of the true righteousness which consists of agape infused into the soul. This infusion of agape is the law written on the heart. But the writing of the law on the heart should not be conceived as merely memorizing the list of precepts, or being more highly motivated to keep the list of precepts. To conceive of agape as merely a force or good motivation that helps us better (but imperfectly, in this life) keep the list of rules, is still to be in the list paradigm. The writing of the law on the heart provides in itself the very fulfillment of the law — that perfection to which the external law always pointed. To have agape is already to have fulfilled the telos of the law, a telos that is expressed in our words, deeds, and actions because they are all ordered to a supernatural end unless we commit a mortal sin. The typical Protestant objection to the Catholic understanding of justification by the infusion of agape is “Who perfectly loves God? No one.” But this objection presupposes the list paradigm.

This is rich given the recent news out of the Vatican that Rome has added to the Church’s list of deadly sins. (Look for the words list and agape.)

After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalization. The list, published yesterday in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “secularized world” and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.

The new deadly sins include polluting, genetic engineering, being obscenely rich, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice.

So the communion that originally gave us a list of sins is adding to the list. Agape indeed.

And to underscore the point — which is that Bryan Cross has remarkable intellectual gifts that have little purchase in reality — consider that the little, old (not ancient, of course) Orthodox Presbyterian Church, with all of its alleged list mentality, resisted mightily producing lists of sins. One occasion came in 1950 when the church, through a study committee of the General Assembly, concluded that belonging to the Free Masons was a sin. But contrary to some in the church who wanted a constitutional amendment to list Masonry as a sin, the committee opposed the composition of lists of sin:

Although it is unwarranted to condemn all cataloguing of sins by the church, history shows that it ma easily be carried so far as to become fraught with undesirable consequences. This danger becomes especially great when the church in its official book of discipline seeks to enumerate the precise sins which render their doers subject to ecclesiastical censures. . . .

It is obviously impossible for the church to draw up a complete catalogue of sins. Any list is certain to be a partial one. The almost unavoidable result will be that the members of the church will receive an unbalanced view of the Christian life. For example, let us suppose that a church catalogues as offenses certain types of worldliness, as gambling, the performance or viewing of immoral or sacrilegious theatricals, and many forms of
modern dancing. The danger is far from imaginary that the psychological effect of such partial cataloguing will be that other forms of worldliness, which in the sight of God are no less reprehensible, such as the love of money, the telling of salacious jokes by toastmasters and other speakers at banquets, the display of wealth in a palatial dwelling, and the stressing of the numerical rather than the spiritual growth of a church, to name no more, will be condoned and even overlooked. In another respect too the cataloguing of sins is liable to result in an unbalanced conception of the Christian life. It may easily impart the impression that Christian living is essentially negative rather than positive. Church members will be led to stress the separated life at the expense of the consecrated life. Very plainly put, they will conclude that merely not to do this and that and a third thing is the essence of Christian living and is proof of the Christianity of him who abstains from these things. (1950 GA Minutes, 26)

In case you didn’t notice, the church allegedly characterized by the agape paradigm makes lists of sins. And one of the churches that you might expect to draw up a list of sins, given its supposed reliance on the list paradigm, has tried not to make lists.

In which case, I am not sure what Bryan Cross’ point is other than to show the inadequacies of Protestants always in the peace of Christ.

Postscript:

The Baltimore Catechism on sin:
52. Q. What is actual sin? A. Actual sin is any willful thought, word, deed or omission contrary to the law of God.

The Shorter Catechism on sin:
14. Q. What is sin? A. Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.

We print, realists decide.

Whose Ancient Church, Which Apostolic Succession?

Published on by D. G. Hart128 Comments

In continuing to reflect on the audacity of Called to Communion’s justification for their attachment to Rome, I was struck by Bryan Cross’ Jesuitical efforts to distinguish the Roman Catholic from the Protestant convert’s determination to join the church he believes is true. In the post on sola scriptura that ran for miles, Cross wrote this:

The objection is understandable, but it can be made only by those who do not see the principled difference between the discovery of the Catholic Church, and joining a Protestant denomination or congregation. Of course a person during the process of becoming Catholic is not under the authority of the Church. At that stage, he or she is like the Protestant in that respect. But the Catholic finds something principally different, and properly finds it by way of qualitatively different criteria. The Protestant is seeking a group of persons who believe, teach and practice what his interpretation of Scripture indicates was the belief, teaching and practice of the Apostles. He retains his final interpretive authority so long as he remains Protestant. No Protestant denomination has the authority to bind his conscience, because [in his mind] the Church must always remains subject to Scripture, which really means that the Church must always remains subject to [his interpretation of] Scripture, or at least that he is not ultimately subject to anyone’s interpretation but his own.

The person becoming Catholic, by contrast, is seeking out the Church that Christ founded. He does this not by finding that group of persons who share his interpretation of Scripture. Rather, he locates in history those whom the Apostles appointed and authorized, observes what they say and do viz-a-viz the transmission of teaching and interpretive authority, traces that line of successive authorizations down through history to the present day to a living Magisterium, and then submits to what this present-day Magisterium is teaching. By finding the Magisterium, he finds something that has the divine authority to bind the conscience.

In other words, part of Cross’ point is that the Roman Catholic converts finds a church that has antiquity and apostolic succession on its side.

Fine. But since other churches also claim to be successors to the apostles, why isn’t the Roman Catholic doing exactly what the Protestant does? The Eastern churches have as much apostolic succession and antiquity on their side (probably more) as Rome. So the convert who comes across the importance of apostolic succession and history now needs to decide whether or not to join Rome or one of the Orthodox communions. At which point, the convert needs to choose a church that aligns with his own understanding of apostolic succession and antiquity. In the case of the convert to Rome, to use Cross’ words, he “retains final interpretive authority” so long as he needs to decide how to apply the standards of apostolic succession to the communions that claim it.

Like I say, coming to truth requires interpretation and personal choice. I understand the appeal of submission to higher authorities and relinquishing the mess that comes with discernment. But the CTC solution (and supporting rationale) resembles Homer Simpson’s wish for a Land of Chocolate.

What the Cats Missed This Week

Published on by D. G. Hart63 Comments

Disruptions in routines this week reduced the opportunities for viewing movies. Those challenges did not prevent Isabelle and Cordelia from sleeping every night after dinner.

The week started with a Turkish movie, Distant, from Nuri Bilge Ceylan, one of Turkey’s leading directors according to The New Republic‘s Stanley Kaufmann. It is slow in the manner of a Krzysztof Kieslowski but not as full of dialogue as the Polish director’s films. Its portrayal of Turks coming to terms with modernization is understated but thoughtful. Worth seeing even if you have not recently taken a trip to Turkey.

Then we reverted to the seventh season of Curb Your Enthusiasm — our first disk from Netflix. We had seen these six episodes before but I had not remembered them very well. They are clearly funny and their humor is all the more catchy because of the nervous tension created by embarrassment for Larry David (much like you cannot believe how impolite David Brent is in The Office). What I find remarkable is Larry David’s observations about etiquette and manners, and his defense of them in many occasions. This is not Henry James’ study of morals and manners, of course, but when Larry discusses with Jerry Seinfeld whether he needs to call back a friend after his cell signal dropped, he is putting his finger on precisely the ambiguities that lurk in so many contemporary interactions among people. (My favorite from an earlier season is when Larry is walking with Ted Danson — as if they ever walk in So Cal — and wants to put an apple core — the remainder of what he has just eaten — in a neighbor’s trash can positioned by the curb and discovers that notions of private property extend not simply to not littering on someone else’s yard but to not even having access to their trash can.)

With the Mrs. away for part of the week, I decided to give Breaking Bad another try. I thought starting with episode three of Season One would get me past the removal of the bodies. But it did not. I persisted, but the series has not yet gripped me. I do remember that it was not until the sixth episode or so of The Wire that I was hooked. So I will not give up yet. But I am doubtful.

Finally, I watched This is England, again without the better half, suspecting that she would not have much of an interest in a movie about skinheads in the U.K. during the early 1980s. I’m sure if I knew more about English history and politics, the writer’s decision to surround this story of a 12-year old boy drawn into a gang with clips from the Falkland War would have made more sense. The most I could pick up was the same kind of disapproval for skinheads as for Maggie Thatcher’s foreign policy. Without the politics, the movie might have been really good. As it was, it was kind of good.

Perhaps Jason Stellman Can Feel Our Incredulity

Published on by D. G. Hart38 Comments

It has to be one of the longest discussions in blog history (following an unbelievably long post — doesn’t Bryan Cross know the difference between a blog and a theological quarterly). The comments totaled over 1,100 though the word count has to be in the millions. Meanwhile, comments kept going for almost 18 months. The target was sola scriptura and the arrows were the standard CTC assertions about the magisterium, papal infallibility, tradition, and THE church. But inside those comments were several poignant remarks made by none other than Jason Stellman. Here is one exchange on the Protestant’s decision to join a communion and the Roman Catholic convert’s decision to cross the Tiber and whether both are examples of private judgment:

Stellman: Thanks for the interaction, it is helpful.

We necessarily make use of private judgment in the discovery of divine authority. But once we discover that divine authority, we subordinate our own judgments to it. That’s true for Protestants and Catholics alike. The fundamental point of difference between Catholics and Protestants is that the Catholic believes he has found living divine authority in those having the succession from the Apostles, and a Sacred Tradition from the Apostles and a written form of the Word of God as the Bible, while the Protestant would not claim to have found the first two, but only the latter.

But all that says is that the fundamental difference between a Catholic and a Protestant is that the former believes Catholic theology, while the latter doesn’t. I mean, if we’re both using our deliberative faculties, but you come to believe in the Magisterium and I do not, then I still fail to see why you get to slap yourself on the back.

If we both went to Baskin Robbins and surveyed their 31 flavors, and I chose vanilla (hey, I’m Presbyterian, remember?) and you chose Rocky Road (no hidden meaning there), we can debate the merits (ahem) of our respective choices, but I don’t see how either of us is more a company man while the latter is maverick.

Now of course, if you vow from that moment on to eat Rocky Road forever, even if they tinker with the recipe in a way that makes you a bit uncomfortable, and I make no such vow, THEN you can say that you’re a more submissive guy and I’m more of a rogue.

Now swinging back to the point under discussion, I completely agree with you that you are more submitted to your church than I am to mine. But it’s not like we both “discovered the Church’s divine authority” but I alone rejected it. No, you believe you discovered it by means of your own personal study, while my own personal study yielded a different conclusion. So the difference between you (a Catholic) and me (a Protestant) is that you adhere to Catholic theology, while I do not. And likewise, the difference between me (a Presbyterian) and James White (a Baptist) is that I adhere to Presbyterian theology while he does not.

Yes, James White and I each reached our conclusions through private judgment, but so did you.

Bryan Cross: No, that’s not all it says. Your redescription of what I said reductively eliminates some of the relevant content of what I said. I’m not simply saying that the Protestant believes Protestant theology, and the Catholic believes Catholic theology. The person becoming Catholic does not just come to believe a theology; he discovers a living divinely-appointed authority, and that discovery then shapes his theology. The person becoming Protestant does not discover such a thing, and so remains his own ultimate interpretive authority in shaping his theology. This difference has nothing to do with back-slapping; it is simply the reason why the Catholic is not subject to the tu quoque objection, in response to our argument that there is no principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority.

In the peace of Christ,

Stellman’s frustration is rising.

Stellman (in response to another Roman Catholic): I think I need to just give up, because we’ve been talking about this for over a year and I still can’t see your point.

You say that “The Catholic is Catholic [not because he believes Catholic theology, but] because he believes it is the visible Church vested with the authority of Christ and graced with divine revelation and preserved from error.” But isn’t the belief that “the visible Church is vested with the authority of Christ and graced with divine revelation and preserved from error” itself Catholic theology? Isn’t that the WHOLE ISSUE that we disagree on?

So when you say that “the Catholic believes Catholic theology because he is a Catholic,” I scratch my head in bewilderment. As Bryan has repeatedly said, the convert to Rome doesn’t surrender private interpretive judgment until he has joined the church, but uses it in order to “discover a living divinely-appointed authority, and that discovery then shapes his theology.” So at the most crucial stage in the game, namely, when you are reading the Scriptures and the fathers about apostolic succession and weighing all the evidence against the Protestantism that you are now beginning to doubt, you are admittedly not yet submitted to Rome, but are still in the deliberative, investigative stage. Now regardless of which road you take (to Rome or Geneva), the decision you make is NOT made out of deference to a Magisterium, since you’re not yet convinced of its authority. Sure, once you are, you bow to it. But first you must make that determination, that “discovery.” So my question is, what constitutes it a “discovery” (which is good) rather than a something you reject? It can’t be the case that you come to believe that the Magisterium is the Magisterium because it says it is (else I’ve got a bridge to sell you). And it has already been stated that it’s not a leap into the dark. So the only other option that I can see is that you came to believe that the Magisterium demands your submission because you weighed the evidence and found it satisfactory and in accord with your private interpretation of the facts as you understand them.

So putting aside the differences between us once we’ve chosen our road (since I’ve admitted that you’re way more submitted to your church than I am to mine), I see no difference between the way we each come to make our respective decisions.

Please tell me what I’m missing, because it seems that you are every bit as subject to the tu quoque objection as we are.

I could add a few more, but I think these exchanges show that the disbelief expressed here at Old Life with CTC was once the possession of Jason Stellman. He even introduced the phrase “bragging rights” to suggest how CTC came across with their all right, all Rome, all the time arguments:

My only point in all of this has been that you guys lose all bragging rights (for lack of a better term) when you concede that at the most crucial moment—deciding that Rome’s Magisterial authority is in fact Christ’s authority—you are relying on private judgment every bit as much as I was when I finally embraced TULIP.

And it did not end there. Jason much later, over a year, brought up a few reservations about the bodily assumption of Mary and Rome’s claim to add nothing to the “deposit of faith”:

Can you see how we Protestants hear this claim that the CC adds nothing to the original deposit, then look at beliefs you hold (such as the Assumption of Mary), and then scratch our heads in utter bemusement?

In the case if the Assumption, it’s not like you’re just connecting some doctrinal dots and reaching a theological conclusion that took a while for the Church to recognize, but rather, you are making a claim about an absolutely incredible event that is purported to have actually happened in history, one that no one seemed to have noticed at the time, or for the several centuries that followed.

My point here is not to debate the Assumption, but simply to ask how utterly bizarre Rome’s most important claim is when compared with her teachings on so many extra-biblical subjects.

The commbox is inactive, but Jason Stellman’s questions still need answers.

Defining Celebrity Down

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

While I was reading a story about Mark Driscoll’s congregation moving into a downtown-Seattle church, a former United Methodist property, I remembered an poignant segment from one of Terry Gross’ interviews with David Rakoff. For one period in his life, Rakoff was a small-time actor and he told Gross about an essay where he described his playing a small part on one of the soap operas produced in New York City. Rakoff self-deprecatingly explained that he was generally chosen to play one of two rolls, either Jewy McHebrew (the stereotypical Jew) or Fudgy McPacker (the stereotypical homosexual). Rakoff was struck by the sense of embarrassed celebrity that characterized many of the actors and actresses. These people were known by millions of Americans who regularly watched the afternoon melodramas. But these stars also understood that no one else, like Rakoff, knew who they were. The way he discussed it, these stars possessed a form of humility that was disproportionate to their real celebrity.

I wish that those who write about the exploits of evangelical celebrities would do so in a way that recognized these preachers’ limited appeal. I was in Seattle for a conference about six years ago and had just begun to follow Driscoll’s exploits. So for the weekend I decided to ask all the natives I met — mainly hotel staff and sales clerks — if they knew who Mark Driscoll was. No one knew him, at least among those to whom I talked. But if I had walked into a Redeemer-like Presbyterian church on the other side of the continent, I bet that at least 25% of the worshipers would have known Driscoll’s name.

Granted, Driscoll has been on The View! And Al Mohler has been on Larry King. And Tim Keller has been featured in New York Magazine. But if I asked my former neighbors in Philadelphia or my current ones in Hillsdale if they recognized these names, I’m sure they’d shrug and wonder why I don’t have a thicker, greener front lawn. This suggests that when evangelical celebrities appear on national broadcasts or in widely circulated publications, the effect is not to increase name recognition among Americans but to increase star status within a small demographic. It also suggests that people who feel marginalized cherish feeling vindicated by the national media. But such vindication doesn’t lead to real celebrity. The only evangelical who still fills that bill is Billy Graham himself. Though Graham’s real star power began in a similar way — evangelicals rooted for him and swooned when the media featured the evangelist. But then Graham and his organization cast a real national presence through their own media productions. It didn’t hurt that Graham appeared to hang out with various presidents though it is more likely that Nixon and company were using Graham for electoral purposes than that they were listing to him.

The punchline, if there is one, may be that celebrity is a two-pronged problem. You have to wonder about the pastors who allow their images to be cultivated in a certain way. But you also have to wonder about a group of believers who become giddy over seemingly famous pastors. Pathetic might be too strong. But unhealthy certainly applies.

Protestants are not supposed to venerate saints or stars. Built-in to the Reformed faith is a spiritual egalitarianism that says all are equal as sinners. Consequently, boasting, if it happens, should be in Christ. Some converts to Rome see evangelical veneration of saints and think it’s a small step to Rome’s regard for Mary and others. Rome’s veneration surely has more dignity than Protestantism’s crass commercialism (though both cultivate the same problem of reducing Jesus’ genuine notoriety). But the solution is not to dress up sentimental attachments to mere human beings with ritual and pomp. It is to gather each Sunday with the saints and worship God’s only begotten son who offered the only sacrifice for the sins of celebrities and fans.