Divorce—Cowardice or Courage?

It's important to state every so often along the way in the course of this divorce discussion that it wasn't completely one-sided. My ex, depending on your point of view, was either a coward or courageous. But our relationship had died years before, not least due to my own words and actions. 

I was holding on because I had a bottom-line commitment to the ideal of the lifelong marital bond (absent adultery and abuse—but even then I had thought in theory that reconciliation was best). We did not share that fundamental starting point, apparently. But this presses into all sorts of other questions, perhaps most importantly the questions revolving around—from a Christian perspective—what constitutes a viable divorce beyond adultery and abuse (emotional or physical). And this is, again, where Martin Bucer comes in.

The vertigo from being left is felt as a result of the shock of its coming, even if you had seen it coming for a while. Unrequited love may or may not be wrapped up in that shock, and of course that just sucks. There are no more words to add to that kind of pain. Suffice to say, you will read Le Morte d'Arthur, Remains of the Day and The Sun Also Rises in a new way.

Rejection, shame, wounded pride—all of these get mixed in there too. I was truly a mess for a time (fighting off apostasy as much as anything else), but I still don't think I can put a finger on the precise feelings that made up why I was reacting the way I did. I thought perhaps love for my ex had something to do with it, but even now I'm not so sure. Perhaps it was more a love of what was lost: the best that was yet to be, would never be. I do know this much: the event unfolding before me went against a core value—an identity marker—and that goes a long way to at least helping me understand the devastating affect it was having on me at the time.

We must not forget that the leaver has also experienced the pain the leavee is feeling. They've simply walked that path already, and probably more slowly. The one being left is playing catch-up in this instance, and that's also a part of what makes the upheaval so intense. The resolved (or seemingly cold) nature of the leaver jars the leavee, but, again, that's likely because the leaver turned the corner long ago. If grace is ever going to be a factor in your handling of divorce, continually humanizing the other is necessary (hypocrisy alert!), which, of course, doesn't entail winking at toxic behavior.

And speaking of human dignity, Bucer's views on divorce and remarriage were meant to uphold exactly that. If you're unfamiliar with the going narrative, the gist is that the majority of Reformers stuck to the Catholic line on divorce, even if they jettisoned the notion that marriage is itself a sacrament—preferring instead to locate it within the context of a creational ordinance and civil institution rather than within the church. If the late medieval Catholic teaching on divorce is flattened out to be that the church simply never recognized divorce a vinculo (a total divorce), even in response to adultery (where it would grant a divorce a mensa et a thora, i.e., a legal separation), then that doesn't hold up: affirming a complete divorce in response to adultery was widespread among the Reformers.

So, while it's not a total mistake to consider Bucer's views as more liberal than say, Calvin's or Luther's, it's very easy to overstate the case. Mere freedom wasn't his major concern; caring for abandoned women and children was. In short, most of the Reformers—Calvin and Luther included—argued that divorce is allowed in certain scriptural cases, in which the "innocent" party is permitted to remarry another person (and I can only think of a very few instances where one party is, indeed, "innocent"). Bucer said the same (and he did interpret those biblical reasons more liberally than others), and he added that remarriage is also allowed across the board, because in the end he thought it better before God to sin less by remarrying than to "fornicate."

It's worth noting that it was in response to the perceived reformational laxity with respect to divorce and remarriage that the Council of Trent upped its ante on the indissolubility of marriage. (The oddity that is seen among—in my experience—the patriarchal Reformed crowd nudges up against this view, which admittedly gets its impetus from WCF 24.) This brief article in the January/February 2017 issue of Christianity Today covers the ground fairly well, even if it necessarily lacks nuance at key points: "Divorce and Remarriage from Augustine to Zwingli." Here's a more in-depth historical overview from the old Winnipeg Theological Seminary's Trinity Journal: "Divorce and Remarriage from the Early Church To John Wesley." (Note the bit about John Milton, who was undoubtedly influenced by Bucer in this regard.)

I find that I've chased a few other rabbits in this post, so allow me to pick up with Bucer immediately in the next one.

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Photography Friday (10)

On this Photography Friday we're traveling from Eisleben to Erfurt. Our Lutheran pilgrims should like this one.

As I mentioned in passing in another photography post, no, I'm not wealthy. In the early 2000s, my wife and I had the privilege of going overseas a few times, mostly to Europe, to work on a history project with Ligonier Ministries. Basically, I served as her grip, while she shot tons of B-roll.

A few items of note I remember from this particular part of the trip:

• Germany has a very fine selection of local wines from which to choose.
• We met and were guided by international pilgrimage guide and now author Arthur Pahl on this trip (he went on to guide us on our subsequent three trips). One of the sweetest men you'll meet. "Pine Tree!" (sorry, inside joke.)
• The High Relief Judensau on the facade of the Wittenberg Town Church, as well as the new monument beneath it.
• Seeing R.C. Sproul teach on the (supposed) precise spot where Luther himself prayed, "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen." For R.C., this was clearly a true spiritual pilgrimage. In both theology and demeanor, R.C. deliberately, if not a little unconsciously, seemed (at least up to that time) to model himself after Luther.

Per the usual, all of these photos were taken on a Canon AE-1 with E100VS (slide film). Click on an image to get a closer look. We're moving from north to south.

Stadtkirche Wittenberg (Town and Parish Church of St. Mary's)
It features a triptych by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

St. Andrews Church, Eisleben
Luther preached the last four sermons of his life in 1546 in this pulpit.

Site of Luther's birth house, Eisleben

Wartburg Castle
The Castle Keep (a bergfried tower)

St. Elizabeth's Boudoir (mosaics done ca. 1900), Wartburg

Augustinian Cloister, Erfurt
After 1505, Luther lived in the monastery and in 1507
he became priest in Erfurt Cathedral.

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Fear Is (not) the Heart of Love

 
{A portion of what follows originally appeared in my introduction to Perspectives on the Sabbath, B&H Academic, 2011.}

If someone had it incessantly banged into his head, when it came to the practice of Christianity, that “fear is the heart of love,” then we might empathize with him if he “never went back.”¹ But it would still be a shame, never going back because of such a blatantly false proposition, at least as it relates to being a follower of Jesus. Quite to the contrary, “perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). But how does love do this?

C. FitzSimons Allison argues that the answer is worship—“the means whereby we are opened to the love of God. . . . Worship is an immediate and present means of God’s love, making us new creatures and giving us the ever more abundant life now.”² This comes as no surprise since worship of the one true God by humans fulfills the express purpose of our creation. “To say that God made us in his image is to say that God made us for himself, and that he made us to worship him.”³

Christian worship can, on one hand, be the most altruistic, God-centered moment in the church’s common life, or, on the other hand, it can be the most viciously narcissistic. Indeed, “sometimes our worship is more a hiding from God than allowing God to find us.”⁴ Bishop Allison goes on to argue that the parable of the talents offers a good depiction of our propensity to hide from God, even in the midst of attempting to worship him. In Matthew 25:24–25, the third servant, in response to his master, fearfully pleads, “Master, I know you. You’re a difficult man, reaping where you haven’t sown and gathering where you haven’t scattered seed. So I was afraid and went off and hid your talent in the ground. Look, you have what is yours." Consequently, he meets his doom (vv. 26–30).

While the other two servants didn’t live in such fear, which enabled them to take the talents and invest them, the third servant disbelieved in the presence of love in his master. In a sense it didn’t matter what kind of person the master actually was; what mattered was what kind of person the third servant thought his master to be. And this paralyzed him. What the servant believed about him was wrong, and this affected his relationship with and service to him. So it is in Christ’s church. How we relate to God in worship is inextricably bound to what we believe about him. Is he a loveless taskmaster, a “difficult” deity?

What can keep us, as humans, from so paralyzing a thought? To be found in Christ, for the perfect love of God is shown to us in him. “For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgment. . . . [and] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began” (2 Tim 1:7,9). This holy calling, which begins now and extends into the eschaton, has a transformative goal for the called—to share in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), to be as fully unified with God as creatures can be (see Eph 1:3–14). A purely theocentric existence—when God is all in all (1 Cor 15:28)—remains the destiny of those in Christ Jesus, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, as Letham notes:

Every single aspect of salvation is seen “in Christ” or “in him" . . . . Our proper place is to share God’s glory; by sin we fell short and failed to participate in his glory, but in and through Christ we are restored to the glory of God as our ultimate destiny. Glory is what belongs distinctively and peculiarly to God. We are called to partake of what God is.⁵

Such union is the goal for all those who ingest God’s Word (Matt 4:4), feed on Christ in the Supper (John 6:47–51), and have been baptized into his death and resurrection (Rom 6:3–6)—in short, for those who have been given faith by grace (Eph 2:8). And this brings us back around to worship—arguably the most human thing we can do—the very act in this time between the times that develops and disciplines our union with Christ in God by his Spirit. Through the practice of praise, supplication, confession, and thanksgiving (in a word, prayer), hearing the Word, and receiving the sacraments, the final and full redemption and transformation of the church is anticipated as she gathers together in continued repentance, obedience to God’s commands, and participation in a common life, caring for the needy in her midst.⁶

But one day the reconciled, yet fallen, worship of the Christic community will no longer carry the burden of Luther’s simul iustus et peccator; the way of the cross will fade (even if its marks remain), and streets of pure gold will descend from the heavens. Wendell Berry depicts this thought poetically:

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.⁷

Indeed, all our work through worship (leitourgia) on the way to becoming sharers in the divine nature will cease. The road ends in the most holy place—the court of the Almighty. In the meantime we’re left to choose which of the three servants we will be. We Christians serve God directly in worship,⁸ and thus it behooves us to avoid the pride—the narcissism—to which it is always open; in brief, to engage wisely the question about which of its elements remain in perpetuity and which of them have become obsolete in order to honor the triune Lord. It won’t do to claim ignorance or hide behind tradition when seeking to resolve this question. If worship truly is “an immediate and present means of God’s love,” then may we be zealous to keep open to its sanctifying power, which necessarily means taking seriously questions about which elements, if any, God desires his people to enact in worship and, in that enactment, gather together as the called-out assembly, the body of which Christ is the head.

---

1 From the song “I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie on their album, Plans (Atlantic, 2005).^↩
2 C. F. Allison, Fear, Love & Worship (Regent College, 1962), 17, 19.^↩
3 E. P. Clowney, The Church (InterVarsity, 1995), 118.^↩
4 Allison, 14.^↩
5 R. Letham, Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy, A Reformed Perspective (Christian Focus, 2007), 255, 257.^↩
6 Ibid., 261–63. See also A. P. Ross, Recalling the Hope of Glory: Biblical Worship from the Garden to the New Creation (Kregel, 2006), 503–12, for a good list of “several principles that surface again and again and therefore seem . . . to be absolutely essential for developing the worship of God” (503). Noticeably absent from this list, however, is any reference to which particular day, if any, God’s people ought to gather.^↩
7 W. Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997 (Counterpoint, 1998), 216.^↩
8 See Clowney, 117.^↩

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Free Is Not Cheap

The ovens of Buchenwald | © Chris Donato

WHEN JESUS PREDICTED his death to the disciples (Matt 16:21), it surprised them. The Messiah wasn’t supposed to die—especially at the hands of the pagan Roman empire. In another sense, however, it wasn’t all that surprising.

Prophets like Jesus, Jeremiah, or John the Baptist often met with less than happy endings. In this case, it’s equally surprising that he pushed on toward Jerusalem. But such was the cost of discipleship.

Jesus understood well that his messianic work of establishing God’s kingdom entailed more than preaching and eating with unclean sinners. It included suffering and death, and, of course, vindication through resurrection. Upon these final acts, the whole battle hinged. If the creator God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, would have the effects of his kingdom bear on earth as they do in heaven, then his Messiah would have to shoulder the battle that would eventually end all battles.

Jesus therefore easily makes the connection from his suffering to ours, not because ours redeems anyone but because he was fulfilling God’s plans through the cross, which began in the garden; thus we too must go his way. That is, if we want to belong to the new covenant community in this time when the Evil One continues to wage war, then we also must say no to our selfish desires, pick up our crosses, and follow him.

This call so captured a young Lutheran pastor during the rise of the Nazi regime that he wrote in 1937 what is now the classic Cost of Discipleship. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, like so many with a prophetic voice before and after him, paid the ultimate price for refusing to consider his Christianity, his following of Christ, as nothing less (but certainly more) than active protest against injustices—an undeniable facet of bringing God’s will to bear on earth. Jesus knew such sacrifice all too well (and his disciples would also learn this soon). He didn’t doubt for a second that the likes of Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate, and Caesar would cut him down the first chance they got. His message challenged their little kingdoms by undermining their pathetic attempts to grasp for the kind of power that sets itself up against the throne of God.

Hitler’s Germany posed a threat to the world and a challenge to the Christian church. History sadly records how badly the established church in Germany did in facing that challenge. After the Reformation, Bonhoeffer argued, the church again cheapened the preaching of the forgiveness of sins, and this has seriously weakened her witness: “The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the Word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving. . . . But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard.” Thus the collective consciousness of the country went on with business as usual, baking their bread, selling their goods, with a prison camp like Flossenbürg just a few miles outside of town.

It was in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, incidentally, that Bonhoeffer met his untimely death in April 1945, just as the American forces were approaching. The account is gruesome. Suffice to say it was slow and painful. Thus Bonhoeffer understood well the difference between what he called costly grace and cheap grace: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” Or, to put it even more clearly, it is to hear the gospel preached as follows: “Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness.” If the gospel made no such demands for discipleship, then Bonhoeffer could and should have happily joined the ranks of the organized church in Germany. And we too can happily join the church in America at those precise points where it baptizes the injustices of its culture.

Nazi Germany, however, is an easy target. Wading through the subtleties of idolatry and calling them out in America is another matter. Where do we begin? How do we avoid both extremes of baptizing anti-Christian culture or withdrawing to the point of quiet inaction? The cost of discipleship in these United States doesn’t seem all that costly. Or have we missed what it means to be a disciple? Consider again Jesus’ warning to us: “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it” (Matt 16:25). What good will it do for us to accumulate bigger, better, and more things and yet lose our lives?


{Part of this originally appeared in Tabletalk 32.7 (July 2008): 28–29}

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Confirmation & Stuff

OVER AT JESUS CREED, Scot McKnight posted about a "note from a pastor in a denomination that baptizes infants and then proceeds to catechism and confirmation, but this pastor has his doubts." (There are some good thoughts/advice in the comments section over at JC, btw.)

I too responded in the combox, but this issue is one that's near to my heart, having taught such classes for a few years, which teaching challenged me more than any other to date (whoever said "if you can't explain it to children, you don't understand it well enough," was right in my opinion).

The discussion can easily turn into a perspectives match on why—or not—baptism is efficacious (covenantally binding and enabling grace), essential, and preferably paedo- to following the Christ. But that's not the point of this post. Rather, it's simply to get at an answer to the question: What do you think would improve confirmation? By way of personal anecdote, I'll try to offer part of a suggestion:

I was raised Baptist, which of course didn’t use words like confirmation but nevertheless had a baptism preparation class that carried with it all the automation and pressures of most confirmation classes. To be sure, a profession is expected before enrolling in this class. If memory serves correctly, I was six or seven, which, to my understanding, for the majority of Baptist traditions is kind of young (perhaps not among Southern Baptists—see, for example, this article on the upward trend of pre-schooler baptisms since 1974).

At the time I started practicing Christianity more seriously (around 20 years of age), I was not re-baptized, as many of my fellow Baptists were wont to do. However nascent my theological understanding was in these matters, it seemed to me one dunk was clearly enough.

Some five years later, I married in to a confessional Lutheran family, and my wife’s experience in confirmation, despite the automatic feel among that crowd, was, according to her, absolutely confirmatory (a bolster) for her faith.

I should note at this point that I think we fail to grasp what confirmation is, not least as a result of its relationship to (the historic church’s view of) baptism, if we’re losing sleep over this “automatic” flavor. That said, I understand why (theologically) Baptists and Anabaptists take umbrage with it.

Fast forwarding to my own practices and experiences in the local church as a teacher: At the church I had been a member of (an independent Reformed congregation) for six years during the first decade of this century, I taught the communicants (confirmation) class for four years.

Here’s what was cool about this particular church’s practice: We asked parents to decide when to put their children in this class. This meant that during any given year, I had children ranging from 5 (the youngest) to about 12. Average ages were 8–10. All throughout the class, I spent time with each parent discussing their children’s “progress.” Receiving first Communion was by no means automatic after taking part in this process. The final class(es) consisted of walking through the gospel (in age appropriate Q&A form) with a (senior) elder present. That elder would make the final call regarding the child's understanding of the gospel (if Scot reads this, I made sure it was not the potentially truncated "soterian" version being rehearsed, as described in his book on the subject).

Now, given my conviction regarding baptism and confirmation (that the former is efficacious and enabling, and the latter is meant to confirm—sacramentally, though not in the same sense as baptism and the Supper—what has been promised and thus presumed in the former), I’d made sure that each of my kids would be admitted to their first Communion. But even then, a small handful over the years would come back the next year for a do-over.

I hope this last personal experience and example helps answer the question. In short, what do I think would improve confirmation? Put the ball in the parents’ court to decide when to put their children forward. Move past the notion that every child has to be a certain age before he/she can enter confirmation. And get a spine—imagine the words coming out your mouth, “Your child is not ready,” and then brace yourself for the consequences. Finally, see each family as a mentoring opportunity—both for the child and her parents.

Or sidestep this whole issue and just go Eastern Orthodox—their children receive confirmation (chrismation) right after they’re baptized (but whence comes catechesis, which is what I think constitutes at least one major import of confirmation in the West [along with the sealing of the Holy Spirit], in the Orthodox tradition?).

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Yet More Perspectives on the Sabbath

Scott Oakland of ReformedCast called me on Monday for a live podcast revolving around the book Perspectives on the Sabbath.

The time flew by, but I do think this was one of my more articulate presentations. I could be totally wrong on that score (I know one thing, participating in radio/podcast interviews are quick lessons in humility—the boring, monotone sound of my own voice; the fumbling diction; incorrect facts; sticking my foot in my mouth, etc.). Why not listen for yourself?

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Peace: It's What's for Dinner (in both kingdoms)

IN THIS POST, on the good and thoughtful Faith and Theology blog, contributor Kim Fabricus writes of the ten most influential moments in his life that pushed him on toward pacifism. There's no reason to summarize it; go on, read it.

First, let's give the dictionary definition of pacifism: "Opposition to war or violence as a means of solving disputes." Now, the government's policing efforts will not be brought into question in this post. Such is not the focus here, if for no other reason than what Saint Paul writes about it in Romans 13:4:

   "The government is God's servant working for your good. But if you do

    what is wrong, you should be afraid. The government has the right to 

    carry out the death sentence. It is God's servant, an avenger to execute

    God's anger on anyone who does what is wrong."

The fact that this was written before any major persecutions against Christians is beside the point. The apostle in that case might have more fully explained the "wrong" he was speaking of (or he might have tweaked it in the direction Saint Peter does in 1 Pet 3:13–14; 4:12–19).

What I'm interested in is a small, yet misguided statement by Kim (and perpetuated by a few responders) encapsulated in the following:

   "I should say that at no time did I have any truck with two kingdoms

    doctrine, in spite of clarifications and fine-tuning by theologians like

    Pannenberg. My thoroughly Reformed understanding of the universal

    Lordship of Christ over church and world (or state) precluded any such

    Lutheran 'compromises.'"

I'm of the opinion that this is flat wrong, as it rests upon an oft-promoted, yet faulty, assumption. In brief, Martin Luther's articulation of the two-kingdoms model (a model that discusses the role of the church in the world) has been grossly distorted. Many think that Luther taught silent, supine submission to the absolute authority of the state and thereby liberated the government from any form of moral constraint from the church. Ernst Troeltsch's massive study The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches popularized the view that Luther promoted state absolutism and moral dualism while the Reformed offered a vital interrelationship between church and state. This inaccurate stereotype was perpetuated in the English-speaking world by Reinhold Niebuhr, along with a legion of others.

In popular history, this perversion became the widespread explanation for the rise of Hitler and the failure of German Christianity to recognize and resist the evils of Nazism (coveniently ignoring the fact that those in the Lutheran underground church were arguably more patriotic than the Lutheran state church). But in actuality it was Fredrick the Great (1712–1786), not Luther, who paved the way toward Nazism (it, of course, must be recognized that in his late life, Luther was no friend of the Jews; yet we are speaking here of the two kingdoms model and whether or not it's dualistic — that is, whether or not the state is to be governed by a completely different ethic than the church. We're starting to nudge up against natural law here, but that's a discussion for another day).

Frederick eventually left his Lutheran roots and became Reformed (of the theology-of-glory stripe); he also found himself increasingly enthralled with the Enlightenment. The culmination of his (and others') subsequent ecumenicity was manifested in the Prussian Union of 1817 (decreed by King Frederick William III on the 300th anniversary of the Reformation), which unionized the Lutheran and Reformed churches, essentially decimating confessional Lutheranism and along with that, the two kingdoms model (N.B. this is when major Lutheran emigrations to the U.S. started, and the LCMS finds its origins here). Herman Sasse, a faithful confessional Lutheran, who played a leading role in the German Church Struggle against Nazi coercion within the church contends:

   "No, it was not Lutheranism as such, but a sick Lutheranism that gave

    National Socialism an open door into the church. It was a Lutheran 

    Church which was no longer capable of standing guard over the souls of

    its people because it had fallen asleep itself. It had lost its power over 

    demons because it no longer possessed the power of distinguishing 

    between "spirits."...We have noble families in which the grandfathers 

    were conservative and confessional Lutherans, the fathers were German

    nationalists and members of the union church and the sons joined the SS"

    (Stewart Herman, The Rebirth of the German Church, 50–51). 

Those who cited Luther in favor of subservience to the state no matter what were guilty of abusing and distorting the reformer's true position. Sasse asserts: 

   "They picked out of Luther's teaching those phrases regarding govern-

    mental authority which were opportune and which people wanted to

    hear; phrases concerning the dignity of divinely ordained offices and 

    the duty of obedience to them. But what Luther said about the sins 

    of governmental authority; about the tyrannous murder of man's soul

    by the authority which goes beyond its limits or about the boundaries

    of obedience — all that was whispered very softly in the first years of 

    the Third Reich, or not mentioned at all. …They supplemented Luther 

    with Robespierre" (Herman, 52).

The reason for all this banter up to this point is this: to show that the two kingdoms model does not preclude pacifism. It's arguable as to whether it demands it, but it doesn't preclude it.

And now, Luther's own words:

   "In all his works [the Christian] ought to entertain this view and look 

    only to this object — that he may serve and be useful to others in all 

    that he does; having nothing before his eyes but the necessities and

    the advantage of his neighbor" (from Luther's On Christian Freedom).

This, arguably, puts duty to fellow humans before any other secular duty — even the obligation to one's country. It may be that pacifism is only implicit in Lutheran theology during the Reformation, but it nevertheless seems to be well-founded upon the non-dualistic two-kingdoms model. The model emphatically does not necessitate playing the part of judge, jury or executioner (as both Article 16 of the Apology and Article 12 of the Formula of Concord explicitly endorse). Alternatively, the two kingdoms model does, in fact, necessitate always carrying one's Christian faith everywhere, which frees the Christian up for positive ethical involvement (like pacifism) in the world. It is not a "confusing of the two kingdoms" to suggest this, as Gene Edward Veith asserts here. Remember, pacifism does not (cannot!) preclude the policing efforts of governments; it refuses to see war or violence as an option to resolve disputes. This message is the church's own, as it stands as prophet in this world. The church's business is not to promulgate some notion of a "Christian nation" or "christen-dom" (an oxymoron both in Lutheran and apostolic terms). It, in fact, needs to confront christendom with the ethics of the kingdom, the already/not yet, the paradox, far more than it currently does. The two kingdoms model enables and informs this work. And the reason why pacifism is a valid Lutheran position is both because pacifism is grounded in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and because there are no just wars, not now, and, arguably, post the resurrection of Christ (I have an eye on old covenant theocracy here), not ever. (Maybe the world's involvement in WWII could be pointed to as an exception. But it'd be just that — an exception.) So, the reason why it's best for a Christian to not be a soldier is precisely because of the inherent injustice of that vocation — both in christological and practical terms (remember the obligation of which Luther spoke quoted above). Some more Luther:

   "Beyond that, however, he [that is, the pastor] does great and mighty

    works for the world. He informs and instructs the various estates on 

    how they are to conduct themselves outwardly in their several offices 

    and estates, so that they may do what is right in the sight of God. …To

    tell the truth, peace, the greatest of earthly goods, in which all other 

    temporal goods are comprised is really a fruit of true preaching. For 

    where the preaching is right, there war and discord and bloodshed do 

    not come; but where the preaching is not right, it is no wonder that 

    there is war, or at least constant unrest and a desire to fight and shed

    blood" (from On Keeping Children in School).

You might ask, then, in light of this, what is the purpose of the two kingdoms model? Well, and this might surprise you, it's for the church's protection. It's to be held out in front of us so as to protect us from suffering under the delusion that even our best efforts here will produce some kind of golden age before the return of our king. This by no means is to be equated with that old cliché: "Why polish brass on a sinking ship?" The ship doesn't have to sink, and, indeed, it won't, as a result of the intervening and gracious hand of Christ our Lord. Our vocations as callings are clear: bring the future hope into this present darkness, whatsoever ye do. But the two kingdoms model takes seriously the collective sinfulness of nations, institutions and well-meaning Christian politicos, pundits and activists and guards them from perpetuating Constantinian notions of christendom.

Would you like a slice of pie with that? For what it's worth (and to calm my fellow two-kingdoms naysayers), peace will be served in God's coming kingdom, but he's apparently called us to start preparing the dish. Who knows? Maybe all he'll have to do when he returns is add some special sauce. But on the other hand, maybe he'll have to throw it all away and start from scratch. I really don't know, and, what's more, I don't think we can know. I just don't want to be standing there like an idiot when the head chef starts demanding ingredients I haven't prepared.

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