With Great Zeal, and Little Thought

 
As mentioned in the first post of this series, one of the intents of Jesuit priest Richard Simon back in the 1670s–80s with his Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament was apologetic in nature: the Old and New Testaments as they've come down to us could not bear the weight of the formal cause or principle of the Protestant Reformation, sola scriptura, in that Protestantism lacked the means with which to determine the truth from a fallible text.

We then went on to see how for Dryden the Deists of his day suffered from incoherence: The best of their doctrines that they thought could be squeezed out of general revelation alone actually presupposed special revelation. What makes the Deists such "vain, wretched creatures" is their spitting in the face of the God who condescended to reveal himself in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, session and eventual return of his Son for the sake of a lost and dying world. They know better, in other words; they're sinning with a high hand (Num 15:30).

Next, we looked how Dryden in Religio Laici more directly challenged Simon's claim of the infallibility of tradition in order to save the revealed religion come to us in a fallible text. Dryden's answer in this matter, as with the others, was quintessentially Anglican (for his day): the Scriptures are sufficient unto salvation (even if errant in some of the historical minutiae of the OT, hypothetically speaking), and the few articles necessary thereunto (and contained therein) are so simple and self-evident that they are available to all grace-enabled people. Dryden wasn't out of bounds in his response. Two hundred years later, the so-called father of modern inerrancy, B.B. Warfield, could say that verbal plenary inspiration is, at most, a secondary doctrine:

Were there no such thing as inspiration, Christianity would be true, and all its essential doctrines would be credibly witnessed to, as in the generally trustworthy reports of the teaching of our Lord and of His authoritative agents in founding the Church, preserved in the writings of the apostles and their first followers, and in the historical witness of the living Church. Inspiration is not the most fundamental of Christian doctrines, nor even the first thing we prove about the Scriptures. It is the last and crowning fact as to the Scriptures. (“The Real Problem of Inspiration,” Presbyterian and Reformed Review [April, 1893]; HT Mike Licona)

This was the essential argument of the late seventeenth-century latitudinarian Anglicans in the face of nascent higher criticism: Granting errors in a few minor details did not undermine the veracity of the faith in any way, for the gospels and the apostolic letters are basically reliable eyewitness testimonies and teachings based on those reports. Add to this their universality and timelessness over the span of 1,700 years (the age of the Restoration), and you've got a faith and practice that is more true than any of its competition, which probability is the most we can hope for when embracing a fallible tradition.

Disparaging infallible tradition, however, does not a radical make. By the time of Dryden, the Protestant call for sola scriptura (while both scripture and tradition work together in the life of the church, scripture wields the primary authority, and thus is the final arbiter in matters of faith and practice) had already come to bear much schismatic rot as well as devolved more and more into the practice of solo scriptura (tradition has no bearing upon the church’s interpretation of scripture). So, finally, we come to Dryden's criticism of the puritans and their heirs, the nonconformists (at the time of the Restoration, these constituted everyone not under the rubric of the Church of the England).

It's important to recognize that while Dryden targets explicitly the purely rational theology of the Deists on the one hand and fideistic papists on the other, his critique of the more radical elements of voluntaristic nonconformity occurs indirectly.

As an Anglican, Dryden would not do away with tradition. Like Richard Hooker before him, matters of faith and practice are in part determined by that which “the church by her ecclesiastical authority” thinks and defines as true (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 5.8:2). Tradition, indeed, is not "useless here"—when "general, old disinteress'd and clear" (ll. 334–35). Through "the reverend Majesty of Age," the tried and tested commentary of the "Ancient Fathers" has the force of their catholicity confirmed (ll. 335–37). Dryden, like any good catholic Christian, assumes that the closer a church can get to the apostolical tradition (best ensconced in Scripture, the Apostles' Creed, and the seven ecumenical councils), the more robustly Christlike and truth-carrying she will be:

And still the nearer to the Spring we go
More limpid, more unsoyl’d, the Waters flow.
Thus, first Traditions were a proof alone;
Cou’d we be certain such they were, so known: (ll. 340–43)

Granting a relative amount of certainty regarding apostolic traditions, those traditions then come to define what the church ought to practice in matters of faith. But how (we might hear the Catholic retort) are we to determine which tradition is binding and which isn't? Being a realist, Dryden admits that "since some Flaws in long descent may be, / They make not Truth but Probability" (ll. 344–45). Then are we not hopelessly lost in a morass of equally competing sects of opinion? Hardly.

Truth by its own Sinews will prevail.
Tradition written therefore more commends
Authority, than what from Voice descends: (ll. 349–51)

So, then, there is probable cause to practice the faith one way and not another. There is not, nor can there be by definition in this fallen age, an infallible extra-biblical determining source (another quintessential Anglican response). But again I must be quick to point out that Dryden's not suggesting there's no determinative source (against the nonconformists, confessional though they may be), for tradition . . .

. . . as perfect as its kind can be,
Rouls down to us the Sacred History:
Which, from the Universal Church receiv’d,
Is try’d, and after for its self believed. (ll. 352–55)

This is rather more like the Eastern Orthodox Church's view of tradition than anything else (even if the Orthodox end up slipping infallibility in through the back door), the so-called Vincentian Canon: "Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all" (Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory ch. II, §6; NPNF Series II Vol. XI, p. 132). It's important to remember that when Vincent wrote this he had in mind the undivided church founded by Christ (giving further impetus to the reasons behind holding the first seven ecumenical councils to be universally and timelessly binding), which is precisely the church Dryden has in mind when he speaks of "first Traditions" that are "nearer to the Spring" (ll. 340, 342).

To put it another way, for Anglicans in general (Dryden included), universality, antiquity, and consensus are inextricably bound together: "first Traditions" stemming from "the reverend Majesty of Age" by "the Universal Church receiv'd" determine for God's people the content of their common faith and practice. Or, to paraphrase Irenaeus, the one church, expanded and scattered in the whole world, yet speaks with one voice, holding the same faith everywhere, as it had been handed down by the blessed apostles and preserved by the succession of the presbyters.

This, then, serves as our only recourse in the face of competing interpretations. For example, arguments over christology: 

We hold, and say we prove from Scripture plain,
That Christ is GOD; the bold Socinian
From the same Scripture urges he’s but MAN.
Now what Appeal can end th’ important Suit;
Both parts talk loudly, but the Rule is mute. (ll. 311–15)

Not just with respect to indifferent matters (but not less than), Dryden goes on to critique the blind sectarianism of both radical and conservative nonconformists. In lines 400–16, we see that when the "Book thus put in every vulgar hand, / Which each presum'd he best cou'd understand," the tried tradition of "Sacred History" became the prey of the "rabble" (i.e., the nonconformists). The guy with the loudest mouth was the one most able to expound Holy Writ ("gifted most that loudest baul'd"). Spirit-led private interpretation of scripture over against reason, learning, tradition, and church discipline (i.e., solo scriptura) became most highly prized:

Study and Pains were now no more their Care;
Texts were explain'd by Fasting, and by Prayer:
This was the Fruit that private Spirit brought;
Occasion'd by great Zeal, and little Thought. (ll. 413–16)

No doubt such criticism is not without its political overtones given Dryden's time and place (the puritans had not too long ago brought civil strife to the nation, and the nonconformists of the day were thus more reprehensible than Catholics). What good is "great Zeal" with "little Thought"? The proof was in the historical pudding. To all such sectarians who continued to act divisively against the established church (remember that religion and politics were on the same continuum back then)—especially the nonconformists—Dryden would say, simply, submit:

. . . after hearing what our Church can say,
If still our Reason runs another way,
That private Reason ’tis more Just to curb,
Than by Disputes the publick Peace disturb.
For points obscure are of small use to learn:
But Common quiet is Mankind’s concern. (ll. 445–50)

In short, with respect to matters inessential to salvation, go with the traditional flow. Embody the latitude with which Jesus calls all, without exception or prejudice, to come to him. For Dryden, this meant to shut up about "obscure" nonconformist or Roman Catholic adiaphora and, if not join the Church of England in her fight against the rising tide of Deism, at least refrain from destabilizing society with disputes that disturb the "publick Peace."

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Ever-Day Has Begun

 
Not only does the church suffer from an open wound of schism, she is weak, and unsurprisingly so, in this time between the times. The former continues in disobedience; the latter is just the way it is, at least until that final day.

Has anything ever been decreed absolutely by God (when it comes to his contingent creation), without any expectation of meeting certain conditions on our part, without any response on his part to intervening historical contingencies? Taking our cue from the sacred Scriptures, we see that even those decrees (oracles, prophecies, apostolic utterances, etc.) that appear at first glance to be absolute (e.g., Jonah 3:4), are nevertheless laden with conditions (when dealing with humankind in particular).

I submit that the same holds true with respect to the people of God and their calling to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

Put another way, I'm talking about a God who called out of the massa perditionis a Christ (the eternal Son of God who took upon himself our nature), in whom people are united (through baptism and faith), which people are then called to be what they are. Being thus made posse non pecare they are given the tasks laid out in various places throughout the Scriptures of embodying what it means to be corpus Christi, and, by virtue of the indwelling Spirit of God, are thus able to do so. In doing so, they falter, they err, and all the while their loving and patient God struggles with them, responding to them, and continually goads them on toward the unity (of will and purpose and substantiality) that is shared among the Godhead, the great Three in One.

And the reality is, the church continues to fail in this particular calling toward unity set before it, a church of the open wound. So far as this world and our finite perspectives are concerned, Christianity, with all its divisions, worldly alliances, demagoguery, and heterodoxy, does indeed look false. But there's hope with each dawn, which will be fully realized on that final morn when there will be no more night, for the Lord God himself will shine (Rev 22:5); indeed, the city will have "no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb [will be] its light" (Rev 21:23).

No-nightness comes.

Ever-day has begun to encroach upon the lightless land,
and we, lamp-stands all, called to remove the basket covering.

But how is the church "rightly" weak today? Perhaps it's better stated this way: the church has always been weak, and we have the tools to recognize it as such, and therefore we have the tools to better "let our good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise our heavenly Father" (Matt 5:16).

Recently, an essay over at First Things by Matthew Rose on "Karl Barth's Failure" produced some critical responses by a few Protestant bloggers. One, in particular, stood out: David Congdon's "In Defense of Modernity." In brief, Congdon writes, "Put plainly: modernity is Protestant, so to reject modernity is to reject Protestantism. Perhaps that is the underlying message of Rose’s article. Barth finally fails, because he remains, at the end of the day, "a theologian of the Reformation."

And what are some of the contours of that modernity? You can read Congdon's post to see, but I'd like to highlight one—the rise of historical consciousness as a genuinely theological event. He quotes Gerhard Ebeling at length to unpack the point:

The sola fide of the Reformation is directed not only against justification by works and thereby against a legalistic exposition of scripture, not only against mysticism and against multiplication of the revealing reality in the form of saints and against materialization of the revealing reality in the form of sacred objects. But the sola fide has undoubtedly also an anti-sacramental and an anti-clerical point. To the sola fide there corresponds solus Christus. Revelation and the present are separated from each other in such a way that only one bridge remains: the Word alone—and indeed, lest any misunderstanding should arise, the Word interpreted as salvation sola gratia, sola fide. All other bridges have been broken up. The whole system of Catholicism has thereby collapsed. There is no such thing as a simple, matter-of-fact presence of revelation. (emphasis mine; Word and Faith, 35–36)

"There is no such thing as a simple, matter-of-fact presence of revelation." The sola fide of the Reformation implies a rejection of all absolute institutional claims, of all offers of restored taken-for-granted institutional certainty (to paraphrase Peter Berger). But does this mean that no institution is left standing? No. But what type of institution can we then speak of? Extraordinarily weak associations of individuals with no deep commitment. Can such institutions survive? They can and do. (I'm a member of a vibrant parish in a decidedly progressive mainline diocese, and it has much more in common with its traditionalist counterparts in Roman and Lutheran churches, and yet is not filled with parishioners who maintain a posture of alleged certainty. And this phenomena occurs regularly within the old mainline churches, often cast in less traditional forms, whether broad-church or evangelical.)

No doubt the certainty of Rome’s institution has been considerably weakened by historical scholarship and the social sciences. The same holds true, of course, for Protestant institutions as well. Every time the structures of Protestant orthodoxy sought to recapitulate Rome's absolute claim—in order to maintain a "strong" institution, one that has a "foundation of taken-for-granted verities, requiring representatives who exude an air of self-assured certainty," so Berger—those structures have also come tumbling down. It's one of the unintended consequences of the Reformation—the divine and human protest again any absolute claim made for a relative (i.e., socially constructed) reality, which immediately turns directly back on to itself.

What this means is simply this: "For the sake of Christ, take pleasure in your weakness . . . . For when you are weak, then you are strong" (2 Cor 12:10). Knowing you're weak, recognizing the gaping wound in the side of our Lord's bride, reshapes the mission each of us have been called to in this American life.

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Strange Confidence: On the Infallibility of Tradition

 
Previously we looked at the occasion of Dryden's writing of Religio Laici, and then we looked briefly at his dealings with the Deists. Those "vain, wretched creatures" argued for a rather robust revelation extrapolated from nature alone; but as it turns out (according to Dryden), their arguments themselves were made possible only through the special revelation put forth in God's holy Word. In short, "Reveal'd Religion first inform'd thy Sight, / And Reason saw not, till Faith sprung the Light" (ll. 68–69).

You may also remember that Dryden's approach to matters of faith and reason and tradition was quintessentially Anglican, indeed, Hookerian, and now we'll see how that position played itself out poetically "as a via media . . . maintaining a proper equilibrium between a purely rational theology (Deism) on the one hand and fideism (Catholicism) and voluntarism (Puritanism) on the other."¹ Specifically, in this post, Simon's claims for an infallible magisterium in response to a fallible received holy text will come under Dryden's scrutiny.

At the outset, it's worth to note the majority Anglican approach to both tradition and the church's authority²: Both are contingent, and are not absolutely necessary for salvation (but nota bene: the church isn't contingent). The orthodox Anglican view in Dryden's time had been to affirm the truth and sufficiency of a few articles of faith, such as the Apostles' Creed (as understood by the early church Fathers), with all other matters adiaphora ("things indifferent"), and hence liable to differences of opinion. Note, however, that this can be overstated quickly.

The Anglican position by the late seventeenth century and into the "Age of Lights" grew increasingly latitudinarian, and thus shared greater similarity with other Protestant groups in its approach to this matter than it had previously. Note also that just because a particular group of Protestants deem much of the Christian tradition to be a matter of traditions (plural) and thus filled with things indifferent, doesn't mean that its opinions on, say, ecclesiastical polity (or how Christ is present in the Eucharist, or eschatology, etc.) are held lightly or loosely. In other words, this isn't subjectivist theological reductionism for the sake of sidestepping the Catholic solution to the pluralism problem; it's objective salve for the sake of the soul oppressed by the demagogic eclipse of the simple gospel: "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom 10:9).

At any rate, Dryden, like his orthodox Anglican forebears, argued that the Scriptures were sufficient unto salvation and that the few articles necessary thereunto (and contained therein) are so simple and self-evident that they are available to all grace-enabled people. Thus he writes that Scripture "speaks it Self, and what it does contain, / In all things needfull to be known, is plain" (ll. 368–69). To show humankind his way, God furnished a "Sacred Volume" in which is contained all that is sufficient and clear to that end (see ll. 121–67). Reason attests to this canon (even if it's limited in its attestation of saving faith), just as it did to the early church Fathers.

Here we come to the crux of Dryden's response to Simon's higher critical history: he asserts the fallibility of tradition, and consequently the necessity of weighing the evidence by the light of reason (not fideistic reliance on tradition), which is exactly what the formulators of that tradition did, having no other option open to them (whether at Jerusalem, Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, or Chalcedon). While agreeing with Simon that many errors have crept in through the copyists' and translators' fault ("And where Infallibility has fail'd," l. 251), Dryden disagrees with him on how to resolve that tension. He articulates the Catholic argument thus:

Oh but says one, Tradition set aside,
Where can we hope for an unerring Guid?
For since th' original Scripture has been lost,
All Copies disagreeing, maimyd the most,
Or Christian Faith can have no certain ground,
Or Truth in Church Tradition must be found. (ll. 276–81)

To this argument for the primacy of an enduring church tradition to fix the problem (and its necessary correlation—an infallible church), Dryden replies sarcastically:

Such an Omniscient Church we wish indeed;
'Twere worth Both Testaments, and cast in the Creed:
But if this Mother be a Guid so sure,
As can all doubts resolve, all truth secure,
Then her Infallibility, as well
Where Copies are corrupt, or lame, can tell;
Restore lost Canon with as little pains,
As truly explicate what still remains:
Which yet no Council dare pretend to doe;
Unless like Esdras, they cou'd write it new:
Strange Confidence, still to interpret true,
Yet not be sure that all they have explain'd,
Is in the blest Original contain'd. (ll. 282–94)

With no small amount of irony, Dryden remarks that were it true that church tradition be infallible, we would wish indeed for "Such an Omniscient Church." Scripture, however, is another matter. Its adequacy unto salvation rules out the need for such an infallible guide:

More Safe, and much more modest 'tis, to say
God wou'd not leave Mankind without a way:
And that the Scriptures, though not every where
Free from Corruption, or intire, or clear,
Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, intire,
In all things which our needfull Faith require.
If others in the same Glass better see
'Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me:
For MY Salvation must its Doom receive
Not from what OTHERS, but what I believe. (ll. 295–304)

Here we have it—the quintessential modern Anglican answer to Simon's higher criticism and its attendant Catholic apology. Such a position finds itself immune to the more destructive (unintended, in the early years) consequences of higher criticism to the faith, given that whatever is necessary for salvation is in Scripture "uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, intire," even if it is "not every where / Free from Corruption, or intire, or clear."³ Added to this is Dryden's commitment to the idea that such fundamentals of the faith must eventually be a matter of fiducia on the part of individuals—one cannot simply rely on what others believe to save her (which he thinks is implied by the Catholic Church's assertion of an infallible magisterium with respect to matters essential to salvation).

Lest we miss it, Dryden's arguing specifically against Simon's apologetic here (re-read ll. 282–94): if indeed the Catholic Church has recourse to an infallible magisterium, why doesn't it "Restore [the] lost Canon" (something that "yet no Council dare pretend to doe," by the way)? What "Strange Confidence" indeed, to pontificate infallibly on scriptural matters that the pontiff itself is unsure are even contained in the original autographs. It's much more modest to conclude reasonably that "God wou'd not leave Mankind without a way" and that that way would reflect the reality of the world as it is, rather than so much wishful thinking.

I must quickly point out that Dryden, however, cannot be put to service in the ranks of modern Western Christianity, with all its repudiation of the catholic tradition in favor of solo scriptura. After providing his answer to Simon's apologetic (which apparently didn't hold for terribly long—remember he converted to Catholicism by 1687), he turns his attention to the Puritans and their heirs, the Non-Conformists (at the time of the Restoration, these constituted everyone not under the rubric of the Church of the England). We'll dig into all this more deeply when we look at the next portion of the poem.

The Anglicans are, by definition, governed by tradition, which tradition they deem closest to the apostolical tradition, and which is best ensconced in Scripture, the Apostles' Creed, and the seven ecumenical councils. This is, of course, basic to the Anglican position that its churches are more robustly catholic than many of Rome's churches.

This is not to suggest that therefore the Anglican church becomes an end in itself, for then we run the risk of making sacred an open wound. It is to suggest, with Dryden, a "much more modest way": God's breath-out word, much like his Son the Word, is a "Common Largess to Mankind," not more for Roman Catholics "than every Man design'd." The "welcome" good news, the simple heralding that God's Messiah is now king of kings and lord of lords, having begun to make all things new through his victory over Sin and Death, "is in the Letter found." In a fragmented state of ecclesial affairs, there is no one "Carrier," like, for example, the Roman Catholic Church, that's "Commission'd to expound" (ll. 364–67). To suggest otherwise would be to assume, . . .

                                 . . . with wondrous Art,
Themselves to be the whole, who are but part
Of that vast Frame, the Church: . . . . (ll. 358–60)

So much for Dryden's response to the "father of higher criticism"—Richard Simon—and the Roman Catholic apology he employed alongside his hermeneutical work. I don't find Dryden's response groundbreaking or anything, but it is pretty impressive in that it's cast entirely in the "plain and natural" yet "majestic" heroic couplet (see last paragraph of Religio's preface for Dryden's explanation for using this style).

In the next and final post, I'll wrap it up with Dryden's commendation to go with the traditional flow in matters inessential to salvation.

---

1 Thomas H. Fujimura, "Dryden's Religio Laici: An Anglican Poem," PMLA, 76.3 (June 1961): 205-217, at 207. Fujimura's essay is especially important when discussing the "theography" of Dryden, who converted to Catholicism by 1687. What part does Religio Laici (1682) play in Dryden's journey of faith? Fujimura's answer to the "widely accepted view that it is a Catholic poem in spirit" is that this is "completely unsound, and that [Religio Laici] is, in most respects, a conventional work of Anglican apologetics" (205).^↩

2 We've already discussed the typical Anglican understanding of how faith relates to reason, i.e., that the two are not opposed but rather complementary. Neither anti-rationalistic nor rationalistic (though the latter certainly was a temptation, given that many of the Deists came out of the Church of England), Anglicans typically recognized the limitations of reason in the realm of faith, but they also understood that it played its part in the apprehension of God's Word and the formulation of conclusions "by force of reason" (to use Hooker's words).

Beyond our scope here is the possibility that by Dryden's time, and quite probably in reaction to the misuse of reason in the direction of Deism and Socinianism, churchmen in general began to follow the Cartesian divorce of the spiritual and natural realms. With the rise of early modern empirical investigation, "reason was delegated more and more to the domain of natural knowledge, and the domain of religion was handed over to faith" (Fujimura, 206).^↩

3 This principle, incidentally, was adopted by all the early higher critics who remained Protestant churchmen: They had no intent of acting destructively against the faith. But they thought that such criticism is the appropriate tool for investigating the historical ground and theoretical formulation of theology. While personal faith could not be harmed in this manner, theology, which is a matter of public and objective expression, requires the full arsenal of critical scholarship.^↩

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Finding the Pure Language of God

 

One of the intents of Jesuit priest Richard Simon back in the 1670s–80s was apologetic in nature: the Old and New Testaments as they've come down to us could not bear the weight of the formal cause or principle of the Protestant Reformation, sola scriptura (while both scripture and tradition work together in the life of the church, scripture wields the primary authority, and thus is the final arbiter in matters of faith and practice), which had already by the time of the seventeenth century come to bear much schismatic rot as well as devolved more and more into the practice of solo scriptura (tradition has no bearing upon the church’s interpretation of scripture). Simon wrote:

There is no one, Jew or Christian, who does not recognize that these Scriptures were the pure language of God. . . . but since men were the guardians of the sacred books, indeed of all other books too, and since the first originals have been lost, it is in all ways impossible that there have not been many changes, as much because of the length of time as by the negligence of copyists. (Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament, Rotterdam: 1678, p. 1)

By raising doubts in particular about the integrity of the Hebrew text—due to the redacted emendations of the public scribes who came along after the original authors—thus allowing for certain inaccuracies in the minutiae of detail (such as didactic abbreviated renditions of certain events, dischronology, etc.), Simon concluded that scripture should not be viewed as presenting an inerrant chronological history, setting forth the full history of Israel. As an offshoot of this conclusion, he sought to expose the Christian’s need for a teaching authority upon which these doubts could be put to rest. Enter: the magisterium of the Catholic Church (or the collegiate episcopal magisterium of the Orthodox Church). Such an authority could helpfully clear away the crisis of interpretation caused by this thicket of textual problems revealed through the application of proper (higher/source critical) hermeneutics. Protestants, by contrast, did not have any sure means with which to restore the "lost originals" of scripture or to know which translation or interpretation most closely approximated the Bible's "original" texts.

Woodbridge's 1685 ed. of Histoire

In the debates that followed—both with traditionalist Protestants and Catholics and radicals like Jean Le Clerc (the father of Red Letter Christianity), Simon stood in the much more moderate position of appropriating Augustine (who held like the traditionalists that the Spirit accommodated the cultures and language of men to convey God’s meaning—but without error), arguing for divine inspiration, but then pushing the envelope toward higher criticism with his views about the "errors" contained in the church’s received holy text. With respect to intellectual history, it’s easy to underestimate Simon’s reach and influence: Modern biblical criticism in many ways started with Simon in France and only then worked its way into Germany. Ask most Old or New Testament scholars today in what geographical locale the majority of their studies focused. Germany will most likely be their answer. France may not even show up.

Even though much of what Simon wrote wasn't necessarily new (e.g., Ezra's denial of total Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; Cappel's work on vowel points and accents in the Hebrew text; Morin, who followed Cappel in his depreciation of the Masoretic text; and La Peyrère's pre-Adamite theory, to name a few), he nevertheless stands out precisely because of his modern (Enlightenment) position: Unlike earlier commentators who failed to exegete apart from their church's doctrinal presuppositions, Simon would, in "perfect neutrality," simply translate and interpret unbeholden to any particular tradition (it's amazing how long this sort of approach has enjoyed influence).

But back to the main point of this post, which is really just a longish introduction to get to some poetry, namely, John Dryden's Religio Laici. In 1682, right on the heels of the English translation of Simon's Histoire, Dryden wrote Religio, dedicating the piece to "an ingenious young Gentleman my Friend; upon his Translation of The Critical History of the Old Testament, compos'd by the learned Father Simon." In the poem, Dryden takes on Deism as well as Roman Catholicism, in favor of Anglicanism. I want to get much deeper into his response in coming posts, particularly as it relates to the issues raised above about textual instability and ecclesial authority.

But for now, whether or not you think the text of scripture is unstable, inerrant, or whatever, on what basis do you place your belief about scripture’s authority (assuming you have this belief)? The answers, depending (perhaps ironically) on your tradition, are invariably: the authority of the church (whether magisterium, creed, or confession), the testimony of the Holy Spirit, the testimony of the scriptures themselves, the basic historical reliability of the texts, and any combination of these. Did I miss any?

Dryden's Religio Laici and the Question of Authority: Series Overview

"Finding the Pure Language of God"

"Vain, Wretched Creatures"

"Strange Confidence: On the Infallibility of Tradition"

"With Great Zeal, and Little Thought"

 

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That Won’t Do, Pig. That Won’t Do.

When was the last time you went to a private social club? If you think that kind of thing is for the elite members of our society alone, guess again. The Yellow Pages are filled with lists of social clubs in which anyone in the neighborhood can become a member. They meet mainly on Sunday mornings—but don’t be foolish enough to wait for an invitation.

Unfortunately, like most other clubs, this one is designed to keep certain people in and other people out. You will find in it a decidedly internalized and individualized faith, complete with its own set of man-made regulations. You will find in it a group of folks who act as if they are enjoying life to the fullest, no matter where they are or what they are doing. And what do they do? They do exactly what they wish to do. In this Sunday club, then, it comes as no surprise that God Is One Who Exists for Me.

But in reality, this private social club has been called out of the world of clubs, not to be just another club—albeit a little cleaner (if not a lot less fun)—but to be the anti-club, the place where the mantra above is flipped: I Am He/She Who Exists for God. Apart from this, we would have no purpose, being left anchorless in a torrid sea, unable to know our worth as creatures among other creatures wrought and redeemed by a holy God. (I’m paraphrasing R. Clapp here, A Peculiar People, p. 42; see also Eph 4:14).

And this reminds me of what the apostle Paul wrote long ago. One word, among a few others, that sums up Ephesians 4 is this: friendship. I know that sounds trite to modern ears, but that might have more to do with how trite our friendships are in this shallow, isolated age (friendship in the classical period in which the apostle lived could be summed up as "the sharing of two selves," and, once cultivated in childhood, went on to form the basis of politics and the family of economic activity). St. Paul often exhorts the church in Ephesus to simply act like a community of friends. Chapter 4 of his letter is littered with such exhortations: support each other in love and preserve unity (vv. 2–3); use your gifts to knit the body together and strengthen it (vv. 12, 16); “speak truth to one another” (v. 25); don’t sin in your anger against a friend (vv. 26, 29, 31); and work an honest job in order to share with those in need (vv. 28, 32).

In short, practice friendship. For a church without friendship, just like a "beautiful woman who lacks discretion," who turns aside from her dignity, is like “a gold ring in a pig’s snout” (Prov. 11:22).¹

---

1 I'm assuming, perhaps not unlike the trajectory laid out for us by the church fathers, that the primary interpretation of "women" when found in Jewish wisdom literature in this new covenant age often can refer allegorically to the church, original intent notwithstanding.^↩

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A Sacred Place

A long time ago, as Genesis 1 recounts, God began naming, separating, and assigning functions and roles to his creation. In other words, he spoke purpose for his creation into existence (often when God speaks, reality changes). The garden that resulted—Eden, by name—was pervaded with the presence of God, not in the general sense of omnipresence but in a special, intimate way—a perpetual, ongoing presence. The garden was the temple of God Almighty.

Fast forward a good amount of time (but not too much, say, between 2,500 years and 2.2 million years), and we come to the building of God’s dwelling place among his people, Israel (see Exod 25:10–40:33). Clearly, the look and materials employed throughout are meant to symbolize the original creation described in Genesis 1, and thus further represent, to use what has become the old cliché, “heaven on earth.”

Just as the Creator didn’t seek council with his creatures when preparing the garden, so too did he initiate and dictate to Israel the building of his new dwelling place, the tabernacle (Exod 25:9). In fact, we see that God doesn't leave it to his people to define the parameters of worship they will offer him.

The same holds true today—God provides the grand playground in which we’ve been called to play. Yet he has also graciously provided a fence for our protection. We (the church) are not to invent alternative ways to worship the living God—ways that are outside the fence and thus leave behind the essentials God has instituted; nevertheless, we are free to express our God-given creativity when worshiping him in each passing age.

In our time and place, riddled as it is with hyper-individualism and the temptation to live as if God doesn’t exist, we need now more than ever to recapture the biblically defined idea of sacred place, not as a building so much as that which presupposes and points to a personal God. “For where two or three come together in my name,” Jesus said, “I am there with them” (Matt 18:20). Not one, but two or three. And then the Christ comes. What this assumes is that our growth as persons (that is, our development into more fully image-bearing humans) happens only in relation to others—first with God in Christ by the power of his Spirit, and second with the temple of the Most High, his people. Only through this do we have a ready-made resistance against “the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age” (Eph 6:12).

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Pope Francis, Carl Trueman & Protestant Reflection

Carl Trueman wrote recently, in the midst of a brief look at George Weigel's Evangelical Catholicism (see his distilled version in this month's First Things), on "what the point of reflecting on Rome is for a Protestant" at such a time as this. He offered three reasons, which you can read at the link provided above.

They're decent reasons, but they're also largely skin-deep. There's a more fundamental reason that Protestants ought to reflect on Rome when a pope is chosen, and it's teleological and twofold in nature. (Note my assumption: Catholic, Orthodox, and creedal Protestant communions are Christian communions. Each have their tares, their wolves, their covenanters who don't persevere.)

The first teleological fold is one major goal in which our hope as Christians is placed, a fixed post that our triune Lord promises throughout the various texts of sacred Scripture:

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the Christians who have died will rise from their graves. Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever.
(1 Thess. 4:16–17)

In short, we Christians are in this together, forever—whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, the resurrection to life on a new earth is our great hope. The election of a new overseer of the largest Christian communion in the world ought to promote Protestant reflection, precisely because we share the same destiny with the Christians in that communion.

The second teleological fold may be particularly distasteful to Protestant ears that don't share my ecclesiastical sentiments. It has to do with a more finite goal, one that is hardly fixed: the reconciliation and reunification of Protestants and Catholics in this time between the times. This is by no means a given, but it is a hope, and one I believe all Protestants should share. Caring about and reflecting upon Rome at such a time as this comes naturally if you think and hope that one day the pope himself will one day be a pastor under whom your pastor (and their pastors) ministers, at least in a collegiate sense (as primus inter pares).

Yet most Protestants don't even consider that their respective communions are not to be ends in themselves. They've forgotten that they're branches shooting off the one, mother trunk, and instead believe the lie that they are trees themselves, every bit as robust and as life-giving as the tree from which they sprang. It's not true. Much of Protestantism is wilted, particularly in those places where God's Word and Sacraments are neglected.

I hope this doesn't come across as a romanticized version of reality or flat-out naïve (or "young and cool," even though I am young-ish and definitely cool). It's just that I don't care about the things you do, or at least I don't think they're as important as you think they are. Put another way, I think it's far more important to reflect on Rome and her pope and our shared destiny than it is to continue, unfazed, in the work of building up your own little fiefdom.

Update: It has come to my attention that the "you" in the above paragraph may be misconstrued to refer to Carl Trueman. That is emphatically not the case. Carl is one of the last persons I'd suspect to be guilty of creating his own little fiefdom. Generally speaking, my antagonist around here is the autonomous, demagogic, second-degree separationist Christian leader. That's who I'm carrying on my make-believe conversation with in the concluding paragraph—whether or not he/she actually exists.

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A Question I Heard Often . . .

. . . back when I used to hang around churches.

WHAT IF you're scheduled to work on Sunday? And the question this implies: Is the old Sabbath still in effect today for Christians?

My answer usually goes something like this: I don't think so (read this to find a good reason). But you are indeed to reserve and guard the time for the gathering of the assembly, which, in God's wisdom and since God raised Jesus from the dead on the first day of the week, happens to be Sunday (and it's no small fact that the church eventually confirmed this day too). The day itself isn't sacred. The time and space set aside for the gathering of the elect is.

This is why Christ's disciples "need corporate worship to keep them strong" (as commonly expressed). God decided it would be through these means so to do. If a Christian is asked to work on Sunday, she does so. But she may want to make it clear that she'd prefer not to work during the time the church gathers (the principle still applies even if her Christ-community gathered at some other time during the week). We work when we're scheduled to work (with all due respect to Eric Liddell [but, damn, that's inspiring]). And you let your bosses know that you'd prefer not to work Sunday mornings, since that's when your community gathers (I assume for the sake argument). Going in right after the services let out is of course a perfectly viable option.

As an aside, the ancients (Israel included) reckoned the close of the day at sundown, not at 11:59 p.m. So, technically, if you are sabbatarian, you couldn't work from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday.

Being scheduled to work on the Lord's Day is not a test from God to prove your sabbatarian mettle. But it could be a test from him to prove your standing up for what he has commanded you to do—not forsaking the assembly. And this "not forsaking" isn't a checklist thing, that is, going to church every Sunday. It's a way-of-life thing. To forsake the assembly is to consistently forgo—when you are able—gathering with God's elect for the purpose of re-coventanting together in the name of our triune Lord.

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The Orthodox Church of the West

THE MORE VOCAL I am about my Anglo-Catholic leanings, the more frequently I hear the following question: "What do you think about the Ordinariate?"

The short answer is much and not too much.

On November 4, 2009, in Rome at St. Peter's, on the Memorial of Charles Borromeo (is the significance of this fact due to his being venerated earlier in England than in other parts of the world?), Pope Benedict XVI presented the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus. Briefly, it provides a canonical structure within the Roman Catholic Church that "enables former Anglicans to maintain some degree of corporate identity and autonomy with regard to the bishops of the geographical dioceses of the Catholic Church while preserving elements of their distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony."

If that sounds complicated, at least the process of becoming Catholic if you're an Anglican isn't.

Nevertheless, what do I think? For an Anglican who finds himself in hostile territory, alone in the wilderness, starving and wishing he were dead under the shade of a tree (HT 1 Kings 19), then (re)attachment makes obvious sense (assuming the Anglican thinks the Reformation is well-nigh over). Why go it alone?

But many of us are not alone: "Yet I will leave seven thousand people alive in Israel—all those who are loyal to me and have not bowed to Baal or kissed his idol" (v. 18). This remnant (hardly analogous to WWII Japanese soldiers fighting unawares that the war is over) embodies the four marks of the church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic (insofar as any Christian communion can in this time between the times). What's more, an Anglican parish (we have to speak in terms of individual parishes these days, alas) that incarnates these four marks finds itself in the unique position of embodying an unrivaled Western Orthodoxy (not to be confused with Western Rite Orthodox—those Orthodox churches that have adopted traditional Western liturgies).

Those from an Eastern Orthodox communion may know exactly what I'm getting at (despite their probable disagreement): An Anglican parish that is part and parcel of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church is a microcosm of the Western Orthodox church before the Great Schism of the medieval era (as the Roman Church once was—at least more robustly than today)—more so than any transplanted Eastern Orthodox church or Western Rite Orthodox church. It reflects organically what an Orthodox church looks like having germinated in the soil of the West. I'm talking more or less about its indigenous or tribal features, an element of parish life that most Orthodox communions know all too well.

My current response to the Ordinariate, then, is thanks, but no thanks. In this regard, Anglicanorum Coetibus kind of misses the mark (not to mention its seeming underhanded end-around the See of Canterbury). We'll be getting somewhere when the Roman Catholic Church recognizes these faithful Anglican parishes in the same manner that they recognize the Orthodox. For starters, that means recognizing the validity of Anglican orders (Anglican priests entering the Ordinariate are, by all accounts, treated as if they're being ordained for the first time) and thus the sacraments she administers (which must needs lead to intercommunion).

One other factor remains pertinent: if, collectively speaking, a parish or diocese, etc., avails itself to the Ordinariate, that's one thing. A parishioner of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church operating under a proper understanding of ecclesial authority will not easily act alone—as a secta una—but will instead trust and obey, seeking first to honor the Christ by honoring his duly appointed ministers, the under-shepherds of our souls.

And all of this, perhaps ironically, reminds me of the grand hope of faithful Anglicanism—its end. "Anglicans may choose to regard the incoherences (yet riches) of their own Church as simply a microcosm of those of Christianity world-wide," wrote Aidan Nichols. "In this case they will argue that Anglicanism has no distinctive contribution to make to the coming Great Church: its destiny is to disappear, its triumph will be its dissolution" (p. xx).

Maranâ' thâ'

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Open Wound Now Sacred?

NOT THAT I EVER stop thinking about this particular subject, but perhaps a recent revelation precipitated my hitting "publish" on this post. Perhaps.

A couple of months ago I laid out a way of making sense of the church as it is in actuality (as opposed to its ideal), labeling it “Open Wound Ecclesiology.” Bryan Cross responded to it in his way, which is to say, both unsurprisingly and formidably. I regret not to have responded in kind, though I was going back-and-forth on this matter over at Called to Communion at the time (and much of what appears below appeared in some form over there).

What follows is an attempt to further clarify this “Open Wound Ecclesiology,” while answering some of the challenges Mr. Cross put forth in my combox.

Let me first say that I acknowledge the depressing nature of this ecclesiology (a friend responded to me about it in precisely those words). If you’re looking for something a tad more certain, then this is not for you. Perhaps you prefer redefining unity in response to our fragmented reality along with the high-church confessionalists in Geneva (unity=spiritual unity), or maybe you prefer the safety of the Vatican’s walls (unity=visible unity with the Roman Catholic Church alone). I know the openness I’m suggesting is unnerving.

Regarding the ancient creed's confession that “we believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” and its relationship to what I perceive to be a tautology—that the church is disunited—Mr. Cross wrote that “to interpret this line of the Creed as an affirmation of a future hope, and not as referring to a present reality, is to deny this line of the Creed, because it has never meant that, nor does it mean that.” It’s a matter of historical honesty to acknowledge this in the case of the early church, even, of course, in the midst of her struggles with schism. No doubt it’s no different than today, to Mr. Cross’ mind.

My only recourse is to suggest a development in doctrine on this score for Catholics to consider (with Vatican II nudging us along): that the church herself is in process, and thus her Lord along with her engages, and responds to, this process. Only God is sure; all else is subject to change. The body politic is a fragmented mess, and is failing her charge to be one, just as the Father and the Son are one. But this is what God himself chose to get into. We are thus left with the question and its implied challenge: What will the church evolve to be?

I hope not what it looks like—from the vantage point of the weeds. So far as this world and our finite perspectives are concerned, Christianity, with all its divisions, worldly alliances, demagoguery, and heterodoxy, does indeed look false.

I of course don’t think it is, but therein lies my hope, which brings us back around to the creed. There is, after all, a unity among all professing Christians, entailed in the creed’s language, that is yet retained (in the language of Lumen gentium: “though they [non-Catholics] do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter,” are “in some real way…joined with [Catholics] in the Holy Spirit, for to them too He gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power”). No need to emphasize any of the words there; and they cannot be undone no matter how hard some of the Good Pope’s bishops and successors try.

Apparently, according to Lumen gentium, we who are not of the Roman Catholic Church are “joined” in some “real way” to that communion. And the locus of that union? The Holy Spirit himself. Nevertheless, it is not God’s ideal for his body, the church, for it’s currently suffering from an open wound.

This decidedly does not suffer from Mr. Cross’ charge that we’re outdoing Christ. There are indeed communions that more robustly embody the faith, and thus represent the visible church with a unified ecclesial structure: these are they who are in succession (through the laying on of hands as well as doctrinally); who rightly administer the sacraments; and who faithfully preach God’s Holy Word; in short, “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.” It is these who are burdened with the charge to actively reconcile (re-attach) the fragmented body of Christ, precisely because it is they who retain the most robust embodiment of the faith once delivered. They are not (emphatically!) the faith’s sole proprietors; they are its mothers, called to gracefully repent and heal and nurture the body to full communion.

This means that, yes, I’m suggesting that what God wants from us (ecclesiastically) isn't what he has received from us. But this does not provide an example of “ecclesial deism,” as if I’m saying that while God wants visible unity from us, he then simply stands back to see what he’ll get from us. If striving toward unity is "outdoing Christ" (in that "it seeks to go beyond the unity that Christ Himself saw fit to establish in His Church by imposing on what He founded as a merely invisible entity a visible unity He Himself did not see fit to establish"), then so too is living the Christian life, that is, keeping the faith—or else apostasy is only ever merely hypothetical.

Has anything ever been decreed absolutely by God (when it comes to his contingent creation), without any expectation of meeting certain conditions on our part, without any response on his part to intervening historical contingencies? Taking our cue from the Sacred Scriptures, we see that even those decrees (oracles, prophecies, apostolic utterances, etc.) that appear at first glance to be absolute, are nevertheless laden with conditions (when dealing with humankind in particular).

I submit that the same holds true with respect to the people of God and their calling to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

What I'm describing is quite down toward the opposite end of the spectrum from deism, and, if anything, can be taxed with placing too much emphasis on the immanence of God in relationship to his creation. I'm talking about a God who called out of the massa perditionis a Christ (the eternal Son of God who took upon himself our nature), in whom people are united (through baptism and faith), which people are then called to be what they are. Being thus made posse non pecare they are given the tasks laid out in various places throughout the Scriptures of embodying what it means to be corpus Christi, and, by virtue of the indwelling Spirit of God, are thus able to do so. In doing so, they falter, they err, and all the while their loving and patient God struggles with them, responding to them, and continually goads them on toward the unity (of will and purpose and substantiality) that is shared among the Godhead, the great Three in One.

I've already mentioned how Vatican II and its doctrinal development revolving around ecclesiology pushes us on toward this unity. This is also where I’d like to bring in Henri de Lubac to further help suggest the way forward: the Eucharist, he wrote, makes the church. The idea is not new (Augustine saw it when he wrote that “we become what we have received”). The so-called “communion ecclesiology” ensconced in Vatican II has paved our way (in the West; Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology already gets it, in my opinion, even if it too needs to be goaded here). The sacramental purpose of the Eucharistic body has seemingly been forgotten: it is to create the ecclesia (not merely pontificate about how Christ is present). Put another way, the real presence of Christ in the bread and the wine is inextricably tied to its purpose—the creation of his one body.

Why not, then, break bread together? This open wound will not be healed without shared participation in the meal Jesus gave us. Indeed, what anticipates that future marriage feast more clearly than open communion?

Catch up with your most recent ecumenical council, Catholics, for the love of God (or is "for Pete's sake" more apropos?).

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Check, Please

The empty tumbler

tumbled onto the floor,

Accentuating the

saturninity of the scene.

His lecture lowered,

only now through clenched teeth;

Her eyebrow raised and curled,

unbroken yet abashed.

*Produced as a result of Judith Baumel's poetry exercise "Anglo-Saxon Lines" in The Practice of Poetry.

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A Faith of Whose Own?

AS A TWO kingdomite, of the Pannenberg persuasion, I always begin reading “Christ & Culture” books with a sigh and some hesitation. Jonathan Merritt's A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars was no exception.

First, though, I'll warrant that I'm not representative of the target audience of this book, for the following three reasons: (1) I've read my fair share of academic "Christ & Culture" books; (2) I'm in my late 30s (and thus a cynical, disengaged and barely Christian genXer); and (3) I am not southern (though I am intimately familiar with the Southern Baptist Convention and the Royal Ambassadors, Living Christmas Trees, 4th of July Sunday extravaganzas, as well as Freddy Gage crusades). But enough about me.

This isn't to say that I ought not to have read the book, or that I didn't enjoy it, for what it's worth. I do think the target audience very much ought to read this book, however. If you're just coming to the "Christ & Culture" discussion, if you're in your 20s–early 30s, if you were raised in the Bible Belt, or (which I didn't mention previously) if you're from an older generation and desire to get a glimpse of the angle from which Millennials are engaging these matters, then read this book.

I think I'd commend it even if I didn't largely agree with it; I remain somewhat surprised that I did, actually. I was expecting a conflation of the kingdoms at least on every other page, but Merritt is refreshingly aware that if he were to simply swing the pendulum the other way, to simply react to the cultural construction in which he was raised, that he'd end up being just another side of the same coin (e.g., Fundamentalist/Modernist; Christian Right/Christian Left; Mohler/Wallis, etc.). In the end, Faith of Our Own is essentially a lay-level version of certain bits of James Davison Hunter's To Change the World.

Nutshell message:

• "As one plunges deeper into the culture wars, one loses a sense of reality and embraces a partisan perception" (p. 35).
• Christians are not to abandon the public square, but we need to learn how to engage it in a less worldly and politically partisan way.
• "Good Christians are good citizens, and as such, they should establish a faithful presence in the public square as in media, business, science, education, and the arts" (p. 40).
• "Ousting is a typical culture-war tactic," leading to third-degree separationism. (And I would add, it's a typical tactic among those who think they have the corner on dogmatic truths.) "The result is an insulated group in an isolated echo chamber where conservatives become more conservative and liberals become more liberal. No one has permission to think for themselves" (p. 61).
• "We take a slice out of the Bible-pie and then call it the pie" (p. 88).
• "The change we're witnessing is a shift from a political faith to an incarnational faith. One that seeks to be a faithful presence in the public square but knows that real change happens when we heal and help each other" (p. 153).
• In his role as public representative of his church (and, by default, Christianity), he "never wades into debates about specific legislative proposals," and "where the culture wars are fought, unity is almost always absent" (p. 160).

It wasn't until the last chapter that it became clear to me that Merritt's thinking about the relationship between the church and state (or "Christ & Culture") was one that I hope others of his generation and younger pick up. Merritt recounts a time when Richard Mouw had written an essay on social ethics that caught the eye of Carl Henry. Henry wanted to publish it, but not without implementing a few edits. Here's the text (from pp. 173–74):

Mouw argued that the church should take stands on specific issues of social justice, but Henry wanted to change the wording to speak of individual Christians' needing to take stands. But Mouw . . . believed that the church as an institution should speak to specific social justice concerns in the public square, so he turned down Henry's offer.

Note that by "specific social justice concerns" what's not meant is the church as an institution decrying in general poverty, racism, criminal justice reform, hunger, etc. (I mean, who would disagree that those are societal ills?), but rather specific legislative solutions to those problems. As the story goes, after a few weeks of back-and-forth, Mouw let Christianity Today publish the essay:

The final version asserted that the church must maintain its prophetic voice and say "no" to the status quo of injustices, but stopped short of saying the church should endorse specific policy solutions. . . .

[Mouw later wrote] "What I really wanted to say is that the church—in the form of both preaching and ecclesial pronouncements—could do no more than merely utter a 'no' to some social evils. There were times, I was convinced, that the church could rightly say a bold 'yes' to specific policy-like solutions. I now see that youthful conviction as misguided. Henry was right, and I was wrong."

What else can I say? [queue: Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus] If this isn't a good two-kingdoms start in the right direction, I'm not sure what is. God bless you, Jonathan, for not offering the same old reactionary tripe.

But this wouldn't be a proper review without some critique, right? While I'm not familiar with Merritt's other writings, the prose is just okay. Not much literary flair here, even if there's a good handful of quotable content throughout it. He also nudges up against pietism at times, spiritualizing everything. And despite his caveat in chapter 9, his generation comes off smelling a little rosy. He sometimes conflates the two kingdoms in his desire to alleviate societal ills through Christianity, as if the gospel itself is about making the world a better place. Sure, it may serve as an impetus to do this or that, but more properly this is where the concept of natural law would enter, which for obvious and forgivable reasons didn't have a place in this book. Finally, his brief recognition of the sinful fragmentation of the church catholic in chapter 9, while commendable, offers little more than the typical Protestant low-church ecclesiology (pp. 162ff.; but Merritt is Baptist, after all).

Because Faith of Our Own is, as one endorser put it on the back cover, "part memoir, part manifesto," the reader ought to move beyond it pretty quickly. Anecdotes can only take one so far. Here's my short list of "Christ & Culture" must-reads, for those whose palates have been whet (in a somewhat arbitrary chronological order of reading):

1. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge and The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion

2. The Politics of Jesus

3. Resident Aliens: A Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know that Something is Wrong

4. The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It's Tempting to Live As If God Doesn't Exist

5. A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society

6. To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

7. The Cost of Discipleship

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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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Church of the Open Wound

A COLLEAGUE recently brought my attention to this portion of Jürgen Moltmann's The Trinity and the Kingdom (p. 49):

God and suffering belong together, just as in this life the cry for God and the suffering experienced in pain belong together. The question about God and the question about suffering are a joint, a common question. And they only find a common answer. Either that, or neither of them finds a satisfactory answer at all. No one can answer the theodicy question in this world, and no one can get rid of it. Life in this world means living with this open question, and seeking the future in which the desire for God will be fulfilled, suffering will be overcome, and what has been lost will be restored.

The question of theodicy is not a speculative question; it is a critical one. It is the all-embracing eschatological question. It is not purely theoretical, for it cannot be answered with any new theory about the existing world. It is a practical question which will only be answered through experience of the new world in which ‘God will wipe away every tear from their eyes’. It is not really a question at all, in the sense of something we can ask or not ask, like other questions. It is the open wound of life in this world. It is the real task of faith and theology to make it possible for us to survive, to go on living, with this open wound.

The person who believes will not rest content with any slickly explanatory answer to the theodicy question. And he will also resist any attempts to soften the question down. The more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over the suffering in the world, and the more passionately he asks about God and the new creation.

Moltmann's underpinning panentheistic doctrine of God notwithstanding, let's focus on two themes that arise as he writes of theodicy and the so-called "problem of evil":

1. The question of God and suffering is an "all-embracing eschatological question," because it can "only be answered through experience" of the new heavens and earth. Right now, it is, in fact, not really question at all. It just is; it simply hangs here all heavy and stifling, just like an . . . 
2. . . . "open wound." Theodicy is the open wound of life in this world. It can't be answered sufficiently this side of the eschaton: "Life in this world means living with this open question."

It seems to me that the reality of a fragmented church in a world that has witnessed the ascension of God's Christ also falls under the "question" of theodicy. And it is a great evil too easily dismissed by Protestants in general (Carl Trueman and others like him being exceptions)—and by evangelicals in particular (leading to a kind of gnostic ecclesiology, as the folks over at Called to Communion often note).

Just a few short centuries ago, we Protestants were, of course, Roman Catholic. And our forebears—of the first generation, at least—from the start had their eyes on reforming their Mother, the church of Rome. In this, I'm reminded of Stanley Hauerwas' 1995 Reformation Sunday homily:

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

To put it as Trueman did in the hyperlinked article above, "Protestants need a positive reason not to be Catholic."

At any rate, my Roman Catholic friends would deny the possibility of real body fragmentation, that is, of members of the body being severed from the body. No doubt, they do think people can be separated from the body, but they're not taking a part of the body, so to speak, with them.

I, along with everybody who isn't Roman Catholic (and perhaps Eastern Orthodox), demur.

The notion of a "perpetual divine protection of the unity and orthodoxy of the church through the apostolic succession of the bishops, by virtue of its being a continuation of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, in his mystical body" makes little sense in light of the realities of the church's history, which continue to surround us ("St. Ignatius of Antioch on the Church"). It's not the latter points with which I have problems (apostolic succession; the church being a continuation of the life and ministry of Christ); it's the former—the "perpetual divine protection of the unity and orthodoxy of the Church." That conflates the truth with the proclamation, or participation in, the truth (ousia vs. metousia). Scripture, tradition, and reason demand otherwise. And "the person who believes will not rest content with any slickly explanatory answer" that attempts to justify God's ways in this matter.

Thus, the disunity of the church catholic is an open wound. Put another way, I think Roman Catholics (helped by none other than John Calvin, who took his cue from Cyprian & Cyril!) are right to demand that the ontological connection between Christ and his church by the power of the Spirit be upheld, but I think they're wrong that her being necessarily leads to an infallible act. Again: the church's union and communion with Christ in ontological relation doesn't by its very nature procure infallibility. The words of Jesus and his apostles regarding the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, like the prophetic utterances of old, are to be construed as goadings toward righteousness—toward that oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity—not as absolute promises or blueprints of infallibility that will simply unfurl throughout the course of history.

Let me try to put it more plainly: I think that the church is to be one in this time between the times. One, not just in will and purpose, but one physically and ontologically—in a collegial episcopate (in contradistinction to the universal jurisdictional claims of the Roman pontiff). I think this is what God wants. But I also think that we have failed miserably in this regard, that the body has indeed fragmented, that toes have left their feet, that wrists have left their arms and have caused whole hands to suffer the same.

In other words, the church—both catholic and local, invisible and visible, one and many—suffers from an open wound. I therefore think God would have us continually aching for reattachment, of having broken hearts at the church's division, or else we're left with being an end in ourselves, that is, anathema.

But whence the credo? How can we pray, "I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church," if it doesn't quite exist?

With hope.

It may be that this open-wound ecclesiology can only be resolved in "the future in which the desire for God will be fulfilled, suffering will be overcome, and what has been lost will be restored," but ignoring the charge to be one (or worse, to theologically justify fragmentations) is fatalistic at best and heresy at worst.

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The Logical Order of Things About Which We Know Next to Nothing

Augustine (6th c. fresco)

THERE HAVE BEEN, at times, moments of expected flack since I’ve outed myself as a single predestinarian. At worst it’s deemed a belligerent betrayal, at best with a wink and a nod it’s seen as a defect—often in intelligence. Not too long ago, a dear friend approached me quite concerned about not having vocalized my thoughts on this subject to him or others near to me (he did this for all the right reasons; we all should be so lucky to have at least one friend who cares to this extent), also suggesting my thinking has changed on this issue. With my typical smug chuckle, I didn’t offer any explanation one way or the other—but I thought there wasn’t much of a point when it’s a presumed fact that the breadth of the Reformed tradition excludes single predestination.

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'He that Cometh' Maketh the Church (3)

SHALL WE NOT CLOSE THIS SERIES? It's well past time. In the first and second posts on this topic, I briefly covered Hans Boersma's three reasons for recapturing Henri de Lubac's views on Holy Communion: (1) help us recapture the pre-modern, sacramental view of the world (over against the rationalism of the High Middle Ages and the neo-scholastic theology of the early 20th century); (2) reappropriate a pre-modern "sacramental" hermeneutic with respect to Scripture (here Boersma has in mind St. Augustine's exegetical approach of literal meaning pointing beyond itself to spiritual meaning); and (3) apply the genuine ecumenical potential inherent in de Lubac's sacramental outlook.

In this (hopefully) final post, I want to look at the crux of de Lubac's objection against both mere sacramental symbolism and the complete identification between the sacramental symbol and the reality to which it points, which, according to Boersma, paves the way for authentic ecumenical action. As mentioned in part 2, de Lubac's church (not to mention the Protestants) had forgotten the very purpose of the Eucharistic body, thus suffering from a severly truncated ecclesiology.

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