Growing Grace-full

Not Now or Never, but Now and Forever

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Sat, 16 Dec 2017 04:05:00 +0000

This is no eulogy. Those are best written by those who know the subject in only one or two dimensions, as the kind of objectification that’s required to eulogize comes easier to the writer who hasn’t had to put up with the humanity of the subject for any length of time. What’s more, many eulogies about religious leaders are often total snoozers, amounting to little more than pious gobbledygook. At least this offering will put you to sleep for other reasons.

True to my self-absorbed proclivities, what follows is a brief reflection on the time in which my life intersected with R.C. Sproul, who died on December 14, 2017.

It’s an odd thing to say, and I trust it'll be taken the right way, but I’m more saddened and melancholic upon hearing of his death than I anticipated. I had been watching the updates regarding his declining health and felt emotionally distant, but now that he’s gone, I’m sad. If you’ve ever had the chance to exchange witty banter with him and share in a great, big belly laugh, or found yourself in his line of vision as his eyes narrowed and his Pittsburgher growl aimed itself in your direction, you’ll know what I mean. The challenge now is to put some words down that don’t succumb to over-sentimentality.

I worked for R.C. (and Vesta) from about 2002 to 2011. They were deeply formative years. More than half of them were spent living the idealized life of DINKs (double income, no kids). Ligonier provided me with my first real taste of putting one’s professional loves into practice (out of college I did a brief stint as a high school sports beat reporter; emphasis on beat). I struggled hard with the Reformed tradition and eventually found a comfortable place within it. We traveled the world, bought our first house, adopted our first dog. Both our boys were born, the eldest of whom was baptized by R.C.

Before that, I don’t remember exactly when it was that I came across his writings, though he was one of the reasons I chose to enroll in seminary at RTS-Orlando (come to find out, the spring semester prior to the year I began was his last as an adjunct there), another reason being its proximity to Tampa, where my immediate family resides, and yet another reason being that location’s broadly Reformed ethos (at the time at least). I have a sketchy memory of my older brother forcing Grace Unknown upon me during college. After both our “conversions” to Christianity, we continued fighting about almost everything like we had before then, only now it included doctrine. He became determinedly Calvinist and, I think he’d admit this, one of those zealous types that proceeded to try to get most people around him to give their hearts to Calvin as well. For my part, I had been ravished by the Renaissance humanism of Petrarch and the Romantics and subsequently the Transcendentalists: if I couldn’t imagine a loving God sending folks to hell by their own choice, how could I entertain the possibility that they had been consigned there by an absolute decree of reprobation?

Grace Unknown went a long way into undoing some of my misconceptions about Reformed theology that I had gathered from liberal Christianity. For a while, the more Christian I became, the more I just Christianized my pluralism and universalism (e.g., God sovereignly and unconditionally saves everyone, etc.). By the time I went off to seminary and even into my Ligonier years, I simply became a recovering universalist, and a closet single-predestinarian (having made my peace with at least one side of the election coin). Nevertheless, Grace Unknown impressed upon me just how amazing and, well, unknown divine grace is. It set me on a trajectory that would forever shape the course of my journey, both in aligning and in contrasting ways. Other works of his that affected me were his Consequences of Ideas and The Last Days According to Jesus.

I only “knew” R.C., however, for a handful of years out of that decade. Unsurprisingly, it grew out of our travels together. The Sprouls adored my then wife, Liz. Not only did that help me get a job at Ligonier, but it also provided me with a great buffer when rubbing shoulders with them. I’m not a particularly friendly or open person, and am usually quite content to remain silent in most acquaintance situations when it comes to giving opinions about this or that current event or idea. Perhaps to no surprise, I found R.C. far more willing to engage in sports chitchat (with a notorious focus on the Steelers) than anything else. I get that. His day job was to have opinions, and no doubt he was constantly asked for his. In private company, when dusk fell and the wine glass half-empty, he’d talk about anything other than history or theology, probably also because he was somewhat of an angry theologian (other angry people and diplomats call this “passion”), and his blood pressure would noticeably rise. The niche that he cut out for himself in the world was oppositional, resistant. More on that later.

What I’ll cherish most is that pasta al nero di seppia on Murano in Venezia before riding a gondola to close the evening, or the family-style feast in a Firenze buca, or that lunch in a garden off the Appian Way right outside Rome, or the impromptu seafood extravaganza—in an effort to escape the cruise’s cuisine—on the isle of Rhodes, or standing on the exact spot where the Diet of Worms took place, or gazing at the intricacies of the library façade in Ephesus, or the grandeur of the temple ruins in Corinth. R.C.'s presence in the party was as integral as anyone else's on these occasions—he didn't monopolize the conversation or command the room—and it’s when I got to know him as much as I ever did. We traveled overseas three times in three consecutive years (2002–2005), not to mention the many times we traveled all over the States for conferences and whatnot (but most of those times were much less intimate).

I had been to his home a few times, and once knew both his German Shepherds by name. They were good and obedient dogs, if not slightly supercilious. If I remember correctly, he had been to mine on at least three occasions, one of which was to welcome us into our new home and the latter two being baptismal parties for our sons.

My first gig straight out of seminary consisted of working directly with R.C. in developing manuscripts for publication. The preparation entailed taking a transcript of an audio/video series (e.g., Defending the Faith) and turning it into legible copy. I’d then pass that on to him and after engaging it on his own, he’d come by my office and we’d hammer out edits, trajectories, methods, arrangements, etc. For those who care about this sort of thing, imagine first getting paid to do this sort of work, and then imagine also the intimidation you may feel as a wannabe theologian in your late 20s sitting across from R.C. as he talks through and often challenges how you’ve taken this or that approach or used this or that word or phrase. On many days, it felt like sparring, and he was always gracious enough to allow it, even if what he really wanted more-or-less was a solid writer who didn’t think too much about the theological or methodological details. With no small amount of irony, it so happened that during the writing of Defending I was concurrently enrolled in John Frame’s apologetics course at RTS-Orlando. Those in the know will recognize the humor in sitting under a dyed-in-the-wool Van Tillian for three hours in the morning and then heading to the office to work on and engage with a staunch classical (Thomist) apologist. I worked very hard to keep anything that smacked of Frame out of my writing and speaking during the course of that project.

Writing like that is intense and laborious. After that first project ended, we moved on to the next one, which eventually became R.C.’s three-volume commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith (Truths We Confess). But after the first volume wrapped up, thankfully a position on Tabletalk magazine opened and when asked if I’d like to join that team, I ran at the opportunity. Ghost-writing is thankless and, as I mentioned, labor-intensive work. I figured if I was going to spend any serious time writing anything of value, I’d sure like my own name on it.

By the way, therein lies an inextricable part of this story—my own name. The idea of creating a name for oneself in the cult-of-personality evangelical world was intoxicating, and the untouchable air that its leaders put off, whether they knew it or not, only drove that desire harder.

R.C. was grandfatherly by that time though. His name was secure. His place in the story of the resurgence of Calvinism (e.g., Young, Restless, Reformed), while not front and center, was nevertheless essential to its telling. Nothing he did or said seemed to come from a motivation to make his name greater than it already was. But he sure did enjoy the perks of popularity—and who wouldn’t?—the status, the financial gain, the respect, the aloof protectionist way of being in the world (after all, you’ve got to save something for those you love most). Like many successful folks he was also generous, both (from what I know) personally and professionally. He didn’t truck with the notion that just because Ligonier, for example, was a nonprofit organization that it should make a habit of compensating its employees under market value. And he also gave of his own surplus to others around him, and my family received with gratitude that generosity when it was offered (I’m still driving their 2000 Camry, which was barely broken in when I purchased it for well under the bluebook value).

I went to seminary to obtain a masters in theological studies, with no intention of seeking employment inside the institutional church, planning instead to blaze through my studies, hopefully getting grounded in the tradition along the way, and then move on to doctoral work in literature (with an eye on religion). It was not to be. I found myself “enjoying” (that’s really not the right word; it’s more like “suffering joyfully”) work in the church—teaching, mentoring, discipling, performing liturgies, and so on. There were bits of it I downright disliked as well—hospital visitations, preaching (though I have a feeling this might’ve grown on me the more I believed in myself and in the name I was making), and tolerating the conservative politics of many of the parishioners. With a great gig going at Ligonier (writing and editing and traveling the world!), I was in no hurry to get on with post-graduate studies, and when I was presented with the prospect of becoming a ministerial intern at St. Andrew's Chapel, I went for it. It’s the kind of internship most MDiv programs require of their students in order to be given a stamp of approval of fittingness for ministry. I can say with all honesty that during this decade, especially the first half of it, I felt like I was beginning to hit my stride, professionally and spiritually. (I also went through some of my darkest days in my mid-30s, suffering with a couple bouts of depression and incessant generalized anxiety. It’s not unrelated from my work both at the office and in church, but it was wrapped up primarily in my life at home, so that’s another story for another time.)

A few experiences in my ministerial internship are perhaps worth retelling, but the one I remember with R.C. was when I served at his side as liturgist on a Lord’s Day. Nothing felt more natural in my service to Christ and his church, despite the apprehension and nervousness one may feel when working so intimately alongside someone like R.C. He put all that to rest. The time we spent together in prayer before the divine service began changed everything. His petitions were salve to whatever thoughts I had about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the experience confirmed for me the direction I had been heading for so long—the liturgical tradition, which actually provides a decent segue to the next turn in this story.

R.C. has made a name for himself over the years by being willing to divide on very few grounds. He hated Pelagianism wherever he caught whiff of it, whether an apparition (among his own fellow Reformed confessionalists) or semi-bodied (among evangelicals and Roman Catholics). The inerrancy of the scriptures and justification by faith alone were perpetually live issues for him, and soteriological monergism may have been his most beloved prolegomenon. Perhaps unfit to be included in this list was his utter disdain for what he deemed to be “epistemological fideism” (read: Van Tillians, presuppositionalists). But to his mind, those Reformed fideists were little better than the neo-orthodox dialecticians who were content to forgo consistency for the sake of sola gratia but who in the process lost the very (logical) holiness of God. And, as he used to say, the one thing the Reformed tradition simultaneously has in common and in contrast with the rest of christendom is its doctrine of God.

I say he was willing to be divisive on very few grounds because R.C. was also known for his generous theological spirit; the hills upon which he chose to die were, indeed, very few. This would become less so during the 2000s, but I chalk that up to his being increasingly surrounded by those TR^© boys we all love to whip (of which R.C. had made a career of decidedly not being).

As a personal example of that odd amalgamation in R.C. of generosity and anger, when I was "let go" from Ligonier (essentially) for being confirmed in and serving as a subdeacon in the Episcopal Church (I made this move a few years after my internship), the severance I received was quite generous (not being an executive and all) for the nonprofit world. I know that this was procured by others in Ligonier's administration, but if the boss let it go (assuming he knew about it), then I considered that an act of grace on his part. Sure, the whole circumstance was a total bummer in every way (two little kids and a stay-at-home mama, a mortgage, car payments, etc.), but, hey, I found new and sustainable work while still in that severance zone. Of course it should come as no surprise that I never saw or spoke to the Sprouls again. It would’ve required an effort that at the time just wouldn’t have made any sense.

The thing was, I understood the reasoning (I think I may be less understanding now, if for no other reason than my being far less tolerant of unnecessary division today). Ligonier is a ministry that has centered on making very clear the difference between soteriological monergism, which was ensconced clearly in the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity, and every other soteriology on offer in the global church, past and present. While Ligonier expanded that work later on, its main focus was still on Reformed soteriology and it used even those expanded practices (like, e.g., translation or missionary work) to promote it. Nevertheless, like most Christian organizations, there are shibboleths that one would express at his or her peril. Joining ranks with an “apostatized church” (like the ECUSA) was one of them. It made no difference that the Central Florida Diocese was (and is) one of the last orthodox bastions within that national institution. In short, these were churches that had not only denied soteriological monergism (and thus sola fide) but had bent to every wind modernity blew. On second thought, it came as no surprise. What really have I got to criticize?

"Every cup of cold water that you give to a thirsty person counts," R.C. wrote some years ago, "and it counts forever."

In the end, I can only be thankful for R.C. and Vesta, for all that they are. Everything they taught me and everything they gave, not least that cup of cold water to a thirsty dilettante. For the better, I’m in large measure the professional and the churchperson I am today because of their willingness to allow me to grow under their care. Perhaps for the worse, I’m no longer Reformed in any way that they’d recognize. But if anyone understood what was at stake for Luther when he said that “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe,” it was R.C.

In the meantime, I know the family finds comfort in the fact that their Pappy’s happy.

Three Sides to the Story

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Thu, 11 May 2017 15:23:00 +0000

You know that quintessential '70s scene where in the midst of a raging argument a wife leaves her husband and home, heading to her parents' house with kids in tow packed into a Pontiac station wagon?

I thank God, for the sake of every loving and engaged father out there, that such stories are seldom heard anymore.

My own short story in this regard is that I was put through the custody ringer (a legal racket, if ever there were one) during the course of my divorce. That is to say, when my ex filed for divorce (on fallacious grounds), she also vied for sole custody and removal (from the area) of our children, to which I responded with a simple no, and in so doing kicked off an excruciating eighteen-month legal process (because she chose to fight for it until it became obvious that it wouldn't go in her favor). If this reflects your current reality, take comfort. Fathers have rights recognized and protected in the courts these days. Oh, you still have to fight for them (they are unfortunately not assumed, as they are for most mothers), but while doing so is draining in every way imaginable, at least there's a clear opening these days to make your case. And what's more, judges are bound by laws protecting fathers' rights to judge according to the evidence.

So, take a breath. Calm down. And then get to work, protecting yourself and especially your children from the harm that groundless (and so I assume, vindictive) sole custody can do. For example, you'll want to start recording (e.g., on a calendar) the length, breadth, and depth of your loving engagement and presence with your children (as strange as that will feel). It's worth the effort and will cut lies off at the knees, should you perchance have the unfortunate luck to face such a thing.

I'm not at all suggesting that there aren't warranted instances where sole custody and even removal of the children (from the geographical locale) ought to be granted. Usually those are obvious to everyone but the toxic and irresponsible individual at the other end of the suit. But in a situation where you have two loving and engaged parents, being the cause of an unnecessary battle over custody until the bitter end makes no sense (it's deeply damaging to everyone involved—physically, financially, spiritually, etc.; and it also subverts any modicum of mutual respect you'll be needing to show while co-parenting). This isn't to deny that there are always two sides of a story (it's the third side in this instance that's too often forgotten). Of course there are, and of course those "reasons" put forward for sole custody and/or removal can be validated. That doesn't mean, however, that those validated reasons outweigh the reasons why sole custody and/or removal is not in the "best interests" of your children (get familiar with that phrase).

"Bitterness blinds life," preached Harry Emerson Fosdick, "love anoints its eyes."

Bitterness is like a tuberous weed—a gigantic pain in the ass to kill. Removing the growth above ground won't do; you must dig the entire root and all its tubers out. In the midst of an unwanted and subsequently acrimonious divorce due to specific hateful and hurtful actions revolving around the children on the part of the one suing, it requires a Herculean effort to avoid bitterness. If you do not, you will share in the cause of the malignancy to come. While you cannot control the victimization, self-absorption, manipulation and avenging that emerges in the actions of someone who has allowed bitterness to take deep root, you can control how you respond. There are wonderful resources out there (not least face-to-face therapy or just a friendly shoulder)—no matter what your learning style—to help you check yourself.

Even a few years on, I find myself continuing to battle with vigilance the bitterness before it takes root. It's hard to say this with absolute certainty, but I can imagine one getting over his or her divorce once the shock of it all subsides and the parties involved come to a relatively respectful parting. I mean, I can honestly say, on this side of it, that being divorced from that woman is A-OK. The battle with bitterness, it seems to me, would not feel so acute so often. But reflecting on what I had to go through in order to protect my children's lives and relationships with both their mom and dad still makes me angry. Add to that the burden of providing maintenance (and I'm not talking child support here) to a capable and educated person—really just an adult child, at this point—which puts both households at the poverty line, and bitterness and anger become very real and regular threats, indeed.

I've returned a few times to a helpful little booklet on bitterness written by Lou Priolo in the Resources for Biblical Living series published by P&R. Yeah, it's not the most robust treatment, leaning heavily as it does in the direction of nouthetic counseling, but I've found it useful each time I've read it. I know there are better (i.e., psychologically responsible) resources available out there on this issue, so I don't recommend it unless you're able to read it critically and openly, while at the same time attending to the trauma in your life that is in part one of the reasons you'd be struggling with bitterness in the first place (this booklet will not help you with trauma). Read with your eyes open, and probably don't read it first, is all I'm saying.

I'll leave you with Mary Baures helpfully highlighting the contours of bitterness and the role of hate and forgiveness in the wake of trauma (in the great article I link to in the above paragraph):

Allowing oneself to feel the fury of hate...is often a healthy part of the recovery process but it is only healthy if one can also learn to let it go. Hate minimizes a victim's feelings of powerlessness and self-blame and counteracts feelings of destruction. But after anger has been experienced, when self-compassion has replaced self-blame, and when the terror of the experience is no longer intrusive, letting go of hate can give survivors vitality and hope. ...The world is full of violence, and many are its victims. It is natural to become angry and even to hate as part of the healing process. But the final step is to forgive. Forgiveness does not condone evil behavior; it acknowledges evil without denying a person's potential humanity.

A Stream Flowing in a Field

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 20:16:00 +0000

So different, this man
And this woman:
A stream flowing
In a field.

~Wm. Carlos Williams

Bailing on a long relationship seldom happens suddenly, severe mental instabilities notwithstanding. They die very slow deaths more often than not. I sometimes hear stories where people are shocked when the leaver finally leaves, but I've usually chalked that up to their stubborn unwillingness to be honest with themselves and their shared past with the other.

In seeming contradiction, there's this thing called "ghosting." Because ghosting is now a thing (but really it's nothing new; it just takes a unique form in our digital dating culture), research is being conducted on it. Psychologists and relationship coaches tell us that ultimately it stems from fear—fear of conflict, which leads to avoidance of confrontation, of difficult conversations, and of hurting someone's feelings.

I get that. I really do. Because I hate conflict, and I'll do almost anything to not hurt someone's feelings. (On second thought, maybe I'll do almost anything to not feel the way I feel after I've hurt someone's feelings.)

But it should come as no surprise that all that avoidance actually increases anxiety and conflict, sometimes from the one being ghosted, and often from the lingering guilt that comes with taking the wrong kind of exit from a relationship. Such anxiety can end up ruling you. I know this. I spent most of my early-to-mid 30s suffering from it, because my life was one big ball of avoidance—particularly with my now ex-wife. I had tried open communication early in our marriage, but I'm sure I wasn't doing it right: I was impatient and unkind. At times I was condescending and angry and overbearing. Because I didn't get anywhere with that communication (no surprise, looking back), I shut down ("ghosted") and became avoidant (incommensurate withdrawal or slamming the door on someone is the same thing as ghosting, only perhaps more painful because it occurs in the midst of an actual long-term relationship). So our communication occurred only out of mounting frustration. Never was there resolution. I avoided confrontation (and so did my ex), and my anxiety grew, and depression crept in. And then one day, I woke up, and my marriage was over, kicking off years of mere cohabitation. That's when the seething bitterness made its home in my heart. And I walked the earth with furrowed brow and heaving, heavy shoulders, dragging around black clouds wherever I went.

Then came the day when those clouds parted. My marriage was still over, this time legally. Sadness set in, but almost immediately so did growth and awareness and vitality and friendship. And, yes, even love. Whether reciprocal or rebounded or unrequited, I realized I could actually feel something in my guts, something better than what I had been feeling for so long. Integral to that growth has been not avoiding conflict, not avoiding doing the hard thing. Caring for the surplus of meaning inherent in the symbol of the holy, the other, the I-Thou.

If only symbols were empty, irrelevant things that aren't inextricably bound to each of us, bringing to world new relations, binding each of us anew to the discreet places they reveal. If only. Then we could dash them against the rocks without consequence. The idols would quietly go into the twilight, and the marketplace would open the next morning without any sense of loss, of meaninglessness. Take heed: symbols gather, symbols world nothing into something. It is for this reason they are to be revered—broken only as a last resort. And yet, a demolished symbol gathers another kind of world, sometimes in Elysian fields, sometimes in the abyss.

Walk, then, with fear and trembling. Guard the symbol with your life. Protect but whisper those unsaid things that cannot as yet survive in this world on their own (like little birds). Become the place—the field-stream—of peace and respite for the weary.

It's like she ceased being Thou, fully human,
With her own despair and desires.
Now she's become a symbol,
A signature of abandonment, a seal of longing.
Toward the Emerald Isle, dizzy in lofty flight.
Ghosted away: This is the dust we carry.

When Divorce Is the Only Option

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 19:38:00 +0000

Knowing only a little about this subject—that Bucer held slightly more "liberal" views than his fellow Reformers—I sought to get my head around it in order to see if my ex had sufficient grounds to initiate the divorce.

I did not do so with the intent to present whatever I found to her; it's an obvious though unfortunate fact that reasonable discourse is not tolerated, much less heard, in situations such as this. What I wanted was to be confronted with my own sin so that I could own up more honestly and faithfully to the part I played in the dissolution of our marriage. Probably my greatest hope was that I would be vindicated (not of our relational demise, to which I no doubt contributed), at least to my own mind and before God, should I find that I was not implicated in Bucer's grounds.

In short, what I wanted to find was that while we marrieds can easily find multiple reasons to leave each other over the years, the higher road or calling was to stick with the marriage, not least in the absence of infidelity or abuse.

What I found was that I could've divorced my wife years before (unilateral abstinence, irreconcilability), and she probably also could've made the case on at least one ground to initiate when she did (irreconcilability)—because by the time she did pursue a legal divorce, the relationship had grown very toxic, indeed. Claiming the "higher road" by not initiating made me feel better, but I'm a pretty pathetic judge.

Ah, well. Life's events seldom shake out in black and white.

John Burcher, who stood in opposition to Bucer, wrote in a letter to Henry Bullinger June 8, 1550, that Bucer was more than licentious on the subject of marriage. He accused Bucer of having asserted that a divorce should be allowed for any reason, however trifling (see H. Robinson, Original Letters, vol. 2, The Parker Society, CUP, 1846, p. 666). I could see how downstream from Bucer this could be extrapolated from what he wrote (e.g., recall Milton's spin on the subject). There's no doubt that the paradigmatic shift away from procreation being the centerpiece of a marriage in favor of mutual companionship lies upstream from no-fault divorce, just as the sacramental notion of the indissolubility of marriage has just as often led to the imprisoning of women in abusive relationships (whether physical, emotional, spiritual or sexual). There are of course other factors leading to such unfortunate circumstances (e.g., the absence of an individual woman's legal rights), but the causal relationship of the aforementioned appears obvious to me.

So, what Bucer ultimately taught me about divorce was to in principle find the path that is in your power to please God. Staying together remains that path if—and only if—your partner is willing so to do. Absent that, what's in your power to please God is to negotiate the divorce in such a way as to be able stand with your head held high before the only judge who counts in the end. It is by grace (and hopefully not delusion) I can say today that with respect to my ex and my children, I conducted myself during the entire divorce proceedings in a manner I'm not ashamed of. That is to say, I can talk about my actions and reactions both in court and at home publicly without shame.

When we're hurt, we often lash out. In such a situation as this, where emotions run high and fear takes control, we might be tempted to, for example . . .

Initiate a divorce on fallacious grounds.
Sue for sole custody of the children.
Seek removal of the children to another locale, far away from one of their parents.
Refuse to consider mediation for the sake of establishing a healthy, co-parenting relationship once the dust has settled.
Take conversations and/or texts out of context in order to besmirch the other's character.
Anonymously write the other's place of business with accusations—however close to the truth they might be (the best lies always are)—with hopes that they'd terminate employment.
Cling to the sole custody and removal suit until the last possible moment (say, 18 months), until it becomes obvious that it will not go favorably, thereby wreaking havoc on all finances in the process.
Refuse to take any responsibility for the breakdown of the marital relationship and foist all the blame on the other.
Steal opportunities from your children by refusing to find sustainable and gainful employment—despite being young, healthy and educated—in order to contribute something financially to the rearing of the children.

Don't succumb to these temptations. Nothing good ever comes from playing the victim.

If you're on the receiving end of such vengeance, protect yourself—legally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially. The avenger suffers from a (we hope) momentary lapse of reason. Hold on.

To be sure, I missed the mark (and continue to do so) in other, personal ways during that time, but my actions and reactions both in court and at home exhibited, I believe, a kind of grace that can only emerge in a situation where you've committed not to play the nihilist, where you're not taking an "ends justifies the means" approach to getting what you want in court, where you're constantly humanizing the other by remembering your own faults, despite the violence she's perpetrating, not least for the sake of your children and their lifelong relationship with you—and their mother.

You want a divorce predicated on irreconcilable differences? Then go get one. Just don't blame anybody else for it. And, most of all, remember that there's an entire life to live on the other side of it, and especially the children's lives, coram Deo. What you do building up to that will impact those lives deeply. Outdo each other in kindness. It's never too late to start.

And it's important to hear: You are allowed to terminate toxic relationships. You are allowed to walk away from people who hurt you. You are allowed to be angry and, for a brief time, selfish and unforgiving. You don't owe anyone an explanation for taking care of yourself.

While that selfishness and unforgiveness must pass quickly if healing is to take place, it is nevertheless part and parcel of that process early on. In my life at the time, I needed to remember that I could walk away, but that meant I could not judge my ex for doing the same, even if I abhorred it, even if I thought she'd be wrong or giving up in so doing. As I said, I'm a pretty pathetic judge, and, at any rate, I'm not her judge for walking away, not least if I had perpetrated pain and toxicity, which, to my chagrin, implicates me in Bucer's grounds, after all.

Knit with Love & Consent: Grounds for Divorce

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 13:30:00 +0000

Martin Bucer as an intermediary between Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli, by Josef Ehrismann

Here we finally get to what Martin Bucer wrote about divorce (and remarriage), which helped me along in my journey through divorce. For those wanting the complete story, check out Marriage and Divorce in the Thought of Martin Bucer by Herman J. Selderhuis. What follows has been culled mostly from this book (the page numbers throughout correspond to it).

BUCER'S GROUNDS

Irreconcilable Differences:

As a result of a lack of love and good will, a marriage has irreparably broken down. In this instance (which is decidedly not a matter of trifling disagreement), while the divorce is as yet unofficial, the marriage in fact has ceased to exist, in that personal relations are essential to the existence of a marriage.

. . . there is no true marriage between them, who agree not in true consent of mind; so it will be the part of godly magistrates to procure that no matrimony be among their subjects, but what is knit with love and consent.

(Lifted from chap. XIX of John Milton's translation of Bucer's De Regno Christi.)

Adultery:

This entails the obvious—extramarital sex—but also the withholding of sex, according to Bucer. The withholding of sex also includes being guility of driving the other toward sexual immorality, which marriage in part is meant to thwart. "Unilateral abstinence not only leads to but is adultery" (p. 289). (How's that for a response to being caught sleeping with the neighbor's wife? "You drove me to do it with all your conveniently placed headaches!")

Desertion or Banishment:

Included here is geographical separation, either deliberately or as a result of a cause out of their control (e.g., imprisonment, soldiers of wars, commercial travelers who fail to return, etc.). Deserters are "certifiable marriage-wreckers" (p. 293). Such "unchristian conduct is proof of unbelief," Bucer wrote (p. 294).

Sexual Relations:

"Conjugal work" is so important for marriage, said Bucer, that where it is refused or cannot be rendered, a divorced has to be legitimated.

Psychological and Physical Factors:

If sexual intimacy is rendered impossible due to psychological or physical illness, then a divorce is to be legitimated (clearly this is a pre-Viagra world). Bucer's thinking primarily of all forms of "dementia" here. Physical illness refers to anything that renders sexual intimacy permanently impossible. (But note, where Bucer saw a legitimate grounds for divorce, Luther saw an opportunity to serve God by serving the spouse in his or her illness, and thus the opportunity to live up to one's salvation, p. 295.) Both Bucer and Luther in the end agreed that indefinite impotence was grounds.

The Pauline Privilege:

Apparently at the time among Protestants, a divorce was permitted when an unbelieving partner no longer wished to live together with the believing partner (i.e., desertion; 1 Cor. 7:15). But this only applied if the deserting spouse was an unbeliever from the beginning. If he or she becomes an unbeliever after the marriage, then the only recourse is legal separation, with no possibility of remarriage for either parties.

Bucer took umbrage with this common interpretation: if an unbelieving spouse divorces, he argued, then the believing spouse is free to remarry. Unbelief in this instance is seen in the fruit—one who leaves his spouse for unsanctioned reasons and divorces shows him- or herself to be an unbeliever, in violation of God's Word (see Eph. 5:1–33). Also, "the refusal of sexual communion is disobedience to a divine mandate and therefore unbelief" (p. 304).

Insofar as there are no other grounds for divorce, the believer is absolutely not permitted to leave the unbelieving partner. The believing partner must persevere as long as possible. Only when the other categorically refuses intercourse and to show love and fidelity and there's no longer any hope for change, can the believing spouse divorce (p. 306).

Physical and Emotional Abuse:

In instances of physical abuse that is habitual and harsh, the spouse may divorce (these qualifiers of "habitual" and "harsh" will no doubt run against the grain of our modern sensibilities. We would say now—and rightly so—to take every legal measure possible to extricate yourself from an abusive relationship, before it gets physical). Wherein a spouse becomes a tyrant (emotional abuse), a dissolution of the marriage is permitted. The courts are bound to deliver the victim from unjust tyranny (pp. 308–309).

"God instituted marriage so that a [spouse] would receive love and faithfulness from the other and not ugly language, pain, and grief." The divorce is legit if a spouse receives nothing but "ranting, pounding, beating, pain, and agony" (p. 309).

Special Calling:

Divorce is permitted in response to a special call, that is, to a monastery or nunnery. Very few people are called in this manner, noted Bucer.

Criminality:

A legitimate divorce may be procured in response to a serious crime perpetrated by a spouse—murder, sedition, and abortion are noted as examples by Bucer.

* * *

In all of these instances, it is important to note Bucer's premise: an attempt must be made—at least initially—to bring about reconciliation. Yet the innocent party must not be forced so to do. If there are legitimate grounds for divorce, a Christian must forgive (without continuing to tolerate toxic behavior and habits), but that does not necessarily entail staying. If he or she finds that they are not able, on account of what has happened, to love the other with an open mind and heart and to maintain full communion of life with him or her, then no obligation to stay married remains.

Even the guilty can remarry before God, according to Bucer, provided they repent (pp. 317–18). Perhaps somewhat contradictorily, even if they don't repent, he thought it was probably better that they do remarry, despite his recognition of 1 Corinthians 7:10, which suggests that a spouse who leaves the other for an invalid reason must remain unmarried (p. 318). But Bucer thought that marriage as a divine mandate trumps all the other concerns put forth about remarriage (p. 321). Why? Because, as I wrote in the previous post, in the end he thought it better before God to sin less by remarrying than to "fornicate."

Divorce—Cowardice or Courage?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 19:03:00 +0000

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.

Saving Your Marriage Isn't the Goal

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 20:35:00 +0000

Remember that I warned you about how deeply existential and one-sided my thoughts on divorce would be. I only expect that to continue.

In my last post, I intended to grope toward and commend the viability of letting go. When someone has turned the corner, it's better to realize that finality sooner rather than later. Of course, there are always exceptions to this principle, and you will find the interwebs offering up a great many stories to that end, and many of them come with expansive and detailed—if not manipulative—formulas to help them materialize in your life. They will give you hope. For a time.

But then you should come to realize that many of the suggestions and practical steps only you can take to save your marriage do pay off—whether or not you end up staying married. Because in the final analysis, avoiding apostasy, rather than saving your marriage, is the goal. While it's true that there are fates worse than death (and, at least initially, divorce as I experienced it was one of them), it's also true that there are fates worse than divorce.

When facing the inevitable death of your marriage, after all the disbelief that it's happening, all the negotiating with God and your partner, you will eventually need to get on with acceptance. It starts with truly repenting and owning up to your part in the dissolution. This can be a sensitive and touchy subject for many, not least for those who have suffered from some form of abuse at the hands of their former spouse. I cannot pretend to speak to those particular victims, except to plead that they run from that relationship, and take every legal measure at their disposal to make it so.

I also learned quickly that "emotional abuse" is a very real thing, with very real and negative consequences for all parties involved (even if a notion like "mental cruelty" as a ground for divorce is I suspect more often than not a thinly veiled attempt to justify an unjustifiable no-fault divorce, or worse, to perform character assassination in a child custody case). Facing the grounds with which I was strapped at first, I dove deeply into the subject, not least out of fear in light of my life and actions. Did I actually provide legal (not to mention biblical) grounds for this divorce?

If you have a modicum of humility, when you're world is unraveling, and you're an emotional wreck, you are far more susceptible to believe everything being thrown at you, to take on far more blame than the situation warrants. Guard yourself. Do not walk alone during this time. Find an honest friend who knows you for real and who can respond to certain allegations about you with a more reasonable and objective clarity than you'll be able to muster. It also helps tremendously if he or she doesn't let you drink alone.

The truth is, even though it felt like I was being ripped apart at the (ontological) seams, I had given up on my marriage well before my ex initiated. There was a time after that but before her initiation that I tried to turn it all around, but if I'm being honest I think I had intuited it was too late, and so it was a last-ditch effort with no real hope of success.

So, if you're like me, which is to say an oddball interested in literature, history and theology, and if you find yourself in a similar predicament as me, you may find yourself looking for similar resources to help you walk through and eventually accept what's happening to you (and I don't mean that in a passive sense—for you brought this upon yourself as much as your partner did). Such resources involve digging into the scriptures, reading theologians of the church on issues revolving around marriage and divorce, swallowing tomes of angsty Gothic poetry and spinning multitudinous records of 80s ballad music (and some outlaw country, for good measure).

In order to help me make sense both of my failures (which I came to readily accept and confess—and of course I still have a ways to go in discerning all of them), my former spouse's failures (which I had to impute, never having had the luxury of receiving a mutual confession) and my need, given my oddball interests, to find some guidance within the historic church to my dilemma, I unsurprisingly found myself sitting at the feet of one Martin Bucer.

In my next post, I'll unpack what I learned from him. Maybe it'll help someone else out there.

I'm Sorry for That

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 21:10:00 +0000

"The Myth of Sisyphus," by Nicci Bedson

I've been itching for a bit to put down in writing a little more after my initial post on divorce. Today I was inspired to do so when I read a post from a young evangelical who has walked a similar path. His stakes are no doubt higher (=greater courage)—not least with respect to keeping up appearances—so I figured I could at least shake some of my journaling out these past three years and see what sticks, without (I hope) succumbing to questionable motivations, as the aforementioned poster warns against when going public in this particular context. Being a feeler first, and a thinker second, I realize how distasteful this may be to whole swaths of what little readership I have. C'est la vie.

I was struck some time ago prior to his death a quote I'd heard Robin Williams say in World's Greatest Dad:

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone.

It succinctly summarized how I'd been feeling for so long, feelings that I'd previously found in the lyrical sentiment penned by Ben Folds back in the mid-90s:

Now that I've found someone,
I'm feeling more alone,
than I ever have before.
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly. . . .
For the moment we're alone.
She's alone, and I'm alone.
Now I know it.

I can handle being alone—defined among the single crowd in terms of the absence of a monogamous, marital relationship—in contrast to being lonely. That's a healthy place to be. But handling the feeling of neglect and abandonment—as if you don't exist—from someone you've covenanted to love, that's well-nigh unbearable. I can see how it leads one to consider whether or not to live now, in reality (whether it be suicide or simply checking out), as "the only really serious philosophical question," as Camus suggested.

If you're the praying type, then one perhaps valuable prayer during times like these would be that God empower you to be freed from the need you feel for that other in the face of unrequited love. This isn't to suggest a desire to lose the ability to love deeply, to trust recklessly; you just want to be freed from having that other be the object of that love and trust.

It's okay to let go.

Now, I don't think it's unhealthy to be wrapped-up in another person (i.e., co-dependent in a very specific sense), insofar as one's identity (in Christ, for the Christian) isn't swallowed up in the process. Loving God with all one's heart, soul, mind and strength is a matter of priority, not a matter of exclusivity. I'm reminded in this that there is a place for speaking of God's love and trust as "risky"—risky in the sense that whenever a person opens him- or herself up to love and trust another, he or she runs the risk of it being unrequited. In some small way (given the parts we've all played in our own relational implosions), then, each of us who has had our deep love and affection and reckless trust betrayed, unrequited or used, taste the hurt, sadness and remorse that the covenant God feels in the face of the countless betrayals he has experienced at the hands of those to whom he has given everything.

In line with my penchant for unoriginality, I'll leave these thoughts here by commending a particular way to let go. I understand very well that many times it doesn't go in such a way that allows for this kind of parting (mine did not). At any rate, here's Theodore's last letter to Catherine for your inspiration:

Dear _____,

I'm sitting here thinking about all the things I wanted to apologize to you for. All the pain we caused each other. Everything I put on you. Everything I needed you to be or needed you to say.

I'm sorry for that.

I'll always love you because we grew up together. You helped make me who I am. I just wanted you to know that there will be a piece of you in me always, and I'm grateful for that.

Whatever someone you become, wherever you are in the world, I'm sending you love. You're my friend till the end.

Love,
_____

A Riff on Gaffin's Centrality of the Resurrection

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:55:00 +0000

Now almost forty years old, Richard Gaffin’s work on The Centrality of the Resurrection (republished as Resurrection and Redemption in 1987) still stands strong as a contrarian manifesto in late twentieth-century debates among confessional Reformed theologians, not least with respect to those issues deemed most important by the mainstream scholastic strain articulated in (mostly) American Reformed dogmatics. This work in many ways served as a harbinger of the coming hostile separations within those churches insofar as it “revised” (in the words of his opponents) doctrines essential to salvation—faith, redemption, justification, sanctification, and adoption—providing an alternative way to think of how salvation itself is accomplished and applied in this time between the coming of the Messiah and his reappearance.

At the risk of oversimplification, the contours of Gaffin’s theology emphasizes redemptive history (historia salutis) as the essential place in which the order of salvation (ordo salutis) works itself out. This he thinks serves as a corrective to the emphasis on the often abstract and forensic, juridical ordo at the expense of the historia within the Reformed tradition. Moreover, the center of the ordo as he explains it in this and other works, is not justification by faith alone (which entails the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ, which in turn tends to focus only on his death, pp. 11–12 n.2, 15) but rather union with Christ wrought by the resurrection through Spirit-empowered faith. Put another way, the centerpiece of salvation consists in being and continuing to be united with Christ by faith in virtue of his resurrection, faith that, through the power of the Spirit, embraces the risen Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel (pp. 12–13, 135–36). Gaffin has often argued that this ordo is reflected at several points in the Reformed tradition, though not as clearly elaborated as one might wish. It’s at this point that he picks up on the ideas emphasized among the Dutch Reformed redemptive-historical school, most notably Geerhardus Vos in The Pauline Eschatology and Herman Ridderbos in Paul: An Outline of His Theology (as well as the Scot John Murray).

In Part 1, Gaffin lays out his “Methodological Considerations,” which in a nutshell serves as his apologetic to favor approaching scripture according to “biblical theological” methods that are consonant with “systematic theological” ones. They are not to be “arbitrarily and artificially separated" (for Gaffin, Vos embodies the former; Kuyper the latter). I realize in the 1970s it was especially popular to pit the former interpretative methodology against that of the systematic theologians, who over the years, it must be admitted, have contorted much of the canon by forcing it through some kind of procrustean pedagogical grid or, in Gaffin’s words, “encyclopaedic distinctions” (e.g., the covenant of works/grace schema—itself as historically situated and biased as that of the scripture’s original authors, not to mention of biblical-theological exegetes). We have to do better in this regard. This is not to suggest, however, that the turn toward history (or, redemptive-history in this instance) wasn’t necessary in the modern era. With the rise of socio-grammatical exegesis of scripture during the Reformation period came the need to understand the historical horizon in which these texts were written, as well as the mind by which they were produced. This also meant recognizing that an exegete’s understanding of the parts hinges on her understanding of a larger whole, which, again, can only be understood on the basis of the parts—the so-called hermeneutical circle. What does not lend itself to immediate understanding can be interpreted by means of philological work. Thus, the study of history became an indispensable tool in the process of unlocking hermetic meaning and language-use. But all of this Gaffin washes over, even if it’s lurking beneath the surface, and yet the very writers he heavily leans upon produced their works in precisely this light. Of course, Gaffin’s book is far more narrowly focused than to get into such epochal socio-cultural turns that led to the paradigmatic shifts across all theological traditions, not just the Reformed one. Nevertheless, perhaps his argument would have been better served if he made the case that his study embodies best what’s required—in light of the turn toward hermeneutics and history—to do the sort of theological and exegetical work he sets out to do in Centrality.

Parts 2–3 of the book contain Gaffin’s exegetical and theological account for this paradigmatic shift (the turn toward heilsgeschte and the resurrection) within the Reformed tradition, focusing, as the title indicates, on how the resurrection of Christ changes everything forever, and he goes on to traverse how that event plays out in the redemptive story, especially as told in the writings of St. Paul. People are saved, so Gaffin, not through belief in the finished work of Christ alone, and certainly not through belief in some set of doctrines about Christ, but through an “existential” and “experiential” union through which believers achieve “solidarity” with Christ. Believers, in short, participate with Christ in his benefits and thus obtain salvation (via the believer’s past spiritual resurrection—i.e., union through faith—and future bodily resurrection, pp. 33–62). Each soteriological loci—including but not limited to redemption, justification, sanctification, adoption, and glorification—was accomplished by Christ in his person and work, raised to life by the Father (pp. 62–66), and applied already (though not yet fully) to believers when they are unified with him by the power of the Spirit (pp. 66–74).

And what kicks this journey off? According to Gaffin, it’s baptism: “Baptism signifies and seals a transition in the experience of the recipient, a transition from being (existentially) apart from Christ to being (existentially) joined to him. Galatians 3:27 is even more graphic: ‘Those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ’ (cf. I Cor. 12:13)” (pp. 50–51). This union with Christ thus commences with baptism—“the inception of the individual Christian existence, the moment of being joined existentially to Christ” (p. 58), thereby causing participation in the very accomplishments and subsequent rewards of the risen Christ (p. 129). Since Christ himself was redeemed (delivered from death) via the resurrection (pp. 114–17), those who have been raised with him participate in that same deliverance. Just as the resurrection forensically declared Jesus to be God’s Son, at that time adopted as the second Adam (Rom 1:4), so too are believers now adopted children in God’s family, brothers and sisters of Christ and thus heirs as children of the living God (pp. 117–19). In Christ’s justification (1 Tim. 3:16)—that is, by virtue of his bearing the sins of the people as the ungodly one and subsequently being raised from the dead—those united with him, both now and in the future (pp. 119–24, 133), are also declared not guilty. Distinct but not separated from this justification is the believer’s definitive and progressive sanctification, again, all his through union with Christ, by virtue of his resurrection (definitive sanctification) from the old aeon into the new (pp. 124–26). Finally, Christ’s glorification experienced at his resurrection “involves the final definitive investiture of his person with glory.” This, too, means that what Christ is by virtue of resurrection, through solidarity with him, believers will be as well on that final day when they are resurrected (p. 126).

There is no doubt that Centrality brought to the fore in a more accessible manner strains within the Reformed tradition that until that time had largely been underemphasized. At their worst, oppositional critiques defame Gaffin with undoing the very principles of the Reformation (i.e., justification by faith alone). I would strongly object. Speaking personally, I found very little in Centrality theologically or exegetically with which to disagree. I experienced within my own journey through the American Reformed landscape both strands—scholastic and redemptive-historical—both vibrant, and both, sadly, at each others’ necks (though admittedly it was the former that set itself up as the keepers of the orthodox gate—and not without warrant, as that crowd had been for well-nigh three hundred years). However, the gospel proper (which is neither justification by faith nor union with Christ but the fact that Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, sent to rescue the world, is Lord) was never at stake in the course of these particular debates; and yet it isn’t mere semantics either. The battle was and is over the center from which the gospel is heralded and applied to the life of God’s people. Be that as it may, the appropriate critique of the Reformers contra late medieval Roman Catholic merit theology is only partially appropriate today. The alternative ways to tell this gospel story, perhaps itself ensconced in the very divisions felt between biblical theology on the one hand and systematic theology on the other, are just as desperately needed in our late modern context as sola fide was (and no doubt still is) in the early modern situation.

My So-Called Country-Song Life

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 14:44:00 +0000

Within the span of a year, almost to the day, I lost my wife, my Dad, and my dog.

On November 21, 2014, my wife of fifteen years had me served with divorce papers at home (unsurprisingly). I had just put the boys down to sleep and I heard a rap at the door. When I peered outside the window, some schlep asked if I was who I am. I didn’t respond. He left the papers wedged in the jamb.

Shortly after being served these papers, which attempted to actually ground the divorce (it was in the end deemed no-fault, i.e., "irreconcilable"), I was subsequently served petitions for removal and sole custody of the children. That next year was filled with my quiet yet persistent nein to these latter two (as well as to the alleged grounds). Things are finalized now, which is why I'm writing about it. Perhaps some of the gory, albeit one-sided and deeply existential, details will come out in the course of writing about it publicly.

On May 9, 2015, I received a call that my Dad’s health had taken a turn for the worse. He had not been sick for very long—a week prior he’d gone into hospital in order to relieve some symptoms and seek diagnosis. During the day on that Saturday, it sounded bad. Heading into the evening and into the middle of the night it started to sound better. I woke up, however, with the clear need to rush to the airport. Right before I was dropped off at O’Hare, I received the call from my younger brother that Dad had died. I then spent the next 6+ hours flying to Tampa, with a layover in Atlanta. Have you ever flown under such duress? It’s like being wrapped in a straightjacket, collared to a wall in a closet-sized dungeon.

Then, finally, on November 27, 2015, I held my eleven-year-old dog Zöe at home as she breathed her last. She, too, had only been sick for a short time (unlike our marriage). From puppy to death’s door in a matter of weeks.

This last death felt fitting. Almost a year to the day of getting served with divorce papers, the pup we found together died.

They make country songs about this sort of stuff, don’t they?

***

UPDATE: Here's the growing list of ramblings on the topic of divorce.

With Great Zeal, and Little Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 14:59:00 +0000

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."

Ever-Day Has Begun

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 16:49:00 +0000

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.

Strange Confidence: On the Infallibility of Tradition

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 11:01:00 +0000

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.^↩

Vain, Wretched Creatures

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Wed, 21 May 2014 11:01:00 +0000

Having discussed briefly the occasion of Dryden's writing of Religio Laici, we now get to turn to the piece itself.

Remember that Simon's Critical History raised the ire of both traditionalist Catholics and Protestants. It met flames in Paris, prompted by Jacques-Bénigne Bousset, and the few copies that made it to England in 1678 received just as "warm" a welcome.

It's not clear as to when or how deeply Dryden became familiar with Simon's work (was it as late as 1682 when the first English translation was produced?), but in any event, he set out to write Religio in order to reason his readers "into Truth"—a particularly Anglican version of it, in contrast to the claims of Deists, papists, and the non-conformists surrounding him. True, reason is dim light (l.1), but nevertheless it is a guide (l. 7); it simply pales before the blinding light of supernatural revelation (ll. 10–11). Put another way, Dryden's view of faith and reason and tradition is quintessentially Hookerian; that is to say, there is a hierarchical ranking when approaching matters of faith and practice: (1) “What Scripture doth plainly deliver”; (2) That which may be concluded “by force of reason”; and (3) That which “the church by her ecclesiastical authority” thinks and defines as true.

How can the less the Greater comprehend?
Or finite Reason reach Infinity?
For what cou’d Fathom GOD were more than He. (ll. 39–41)

Starting with the caveat that finite reason cannot reach the infinite (a version perhaps of the Reformed notion of finitum non capax infiniti), Dryden begins his section against the Deists. We won't spend much time covering this part of the poem, suffice to say that he thinks the Deists are self-refuting—the truths they assert are arrived at only after faith had shown the way for their reason:

These Truths are not the product of the Mind,
but dropt from Heaven, and of a Nobler kind.
Reveal'd Religion first inform'd thy Sight,
And Reason saw not, till Faith sprung the Light.
Hence all their Natural Worship takes the Source:
'Tis Revelation what thou thinks Discourse. (ll. 66–71)

A fine example of early modern presuppositional apologetics, yes? He then wonders if the Deists think they're all smarter than Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Seneca, or Cicero, none of whom saw these truths so well? The implication is clear: the Deists are borrowing from revealed religion in their extrapolations from the natural world. "Vain, wretched Creature, how art thou misled / To think thy Wit these God-like notions bred!" (ll. 64–65)

Dryden then moves on to assert how in the end the Deists stand lost, forsaking as they have all the essentials of salvation revealed to us in Holy Scripture (the incarnation, the sacrifice, the atonement, etc.). And then he allows the Deist one objection: the problem of pluralism. What about those who never "saw the Light" (l. 183) of God's Messiah revealed in the scriptures? Dryden's answer is fairly typical among the latitudinarians of his day (which is a widely misunderstood term, not least since its meaning changed over time; cf. Griffin's Latitudinarianism in the Seventeenth-Century Church of England). He has hope, hope that God's "boundless Wisedom, boundless Mercy, may / Find ev’n for those be-wildred Souls, a way" (ll. 189–88). It's the chief objection to the Christian faith in an increasingly spherical and undiscovered world in a heliocentric solar system; so Dryden wonders, "Who knows how far transcending Goodness can / Extend the Merits of that Son to Man?" (ll. 194–95) But reason ("Charity") alone doesn't afford him this speculation, St. Paul grants him the impetus as well: In his paraphrase of Romans 2:12–16, Dryden sees a direct correlation to those . . .

. . . who follow’d Reasons Dictates right;
Liv’d up, and lifted high their Natural Light;
With Socrates may see their Maker’s Face,
While Thousand Rubrick-Martyrs want a place. (208–11)

Perhaps this pushes the envelope a little (not least in his Catholic or Remonstrant interpretation of Rom 2), but that many theologians and thinkers during this time faced the new pluralism and answered it similarly is a matter of fact.

Next time, we'll dive into Dryden's "digression" about Simon's Critical History and his Roman Catholic claims.

Finding the Pure Language of God

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Mon, 19 May 2014 11:01:00 +0000

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"

Reading Genesis 1–2 with Richard Averbeck

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Thu, 08 May 2014 11:03:00 +0000

In Reading Genesis 1–2: An Evangelical Conversation, Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages Richard Averbeck wrote that his attempt to present an "honest reading of Gen 1 from a literary, exegetical, historical, and theological point of view" is not "a matter of somehow finding more time in Gen 1 to accommodate the vast ages of evolutionary science." Affirming something like a division of labor, Averbeck noted that as Old Testament scholars "we are not scientists," even if the "discoveries in physical sciences most certainly cast a long shadow over the conversation."

Averbeck picked up that conversation again this past semester at TEDS, first by briefly walking through his current interpretative work on Genesis 1–2, and then by fielding a few questions concerning the ramifications of that work.

At the outset, Averbeck noted that exegetical debates on this topic often produce far more heat than light. It seems that no matter how irenic, how careful, one's interpretation is, it will polarize and offend.

Averbeck then recalled how for many years he had taken a literal day approach to the Genesis 1 creation narrative (and the often-attendant view that creation occurred recently), but the more he came across the various creation accounts throughout scripture (e.g., Psalm 104), the more he realized these other inspired accounts actually can help us to better work through how we should be reading Genesis 1–2.

Beyond the biblical canon, Averbeck brought his knowledge of ancient Near Eastern texts and culture to bear on the discussion. In answer to the anxiety this may cause some evangelicals, Averbeck argued that knowing the world in which this portion of the scriptures were written, including its own pagan versions of creation, helps to shed light on the biblical text in ways that both clarifies its context but also challenges many of the common assumptions of that ancient culture (for example, that Israel's God Yahweh alone is the creator God of the cosmos).

Averbeck likened Genesis 1:1 to a title, a snapshot, a kind-of introductory remark about God's creative activity, while the rest of the narrative (up to Gen. 2:3) unpacks that fact in terms of the observable world, that is, from a human perspective. It's driving home the point, in short, that "Yahweh did this." The days are also better seen as literary constructs, Averbeck said, rather than literal, 24-hour days, in order to bring home the importance of the pattern of 6/7—six days of work and a day of sabbath, both as a reflection of God's creative work and as a witness of faithfulness to the one, true God of Israel in the surrounding pagan culture.

Another particularly interesting point had to do with Averbeck's take on where the "image and likeness" of God is located in humankind. Too often we push the image of God into to the realm of metaphysics, or hyper-spiritualize it, Averbeck said. But it's concrete, rooted in this physical world. To be created in the image of God is to be erected on earth as the creator God's statue, meant to extend his wise dominion.

Also of crucial importance to Averbeck's view is his insistence on a historical Adam and Eve, without which, he argues, significant portions of scripture would make little sense (for example, Rom. 5). He noted that the "historical markers" in Genesis 2, such as the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, point us in the direction of seeing the first pair as historical figures.

Averbeck then wrapped up with what he deemed to be one of scripture's major themes, introduced in Genesis 4:26 (the end of the section beginning at Gen 2:4): It's the only solution given in the midst of the plight we see unfolding in these early chapters of scripture, and it is one that is often highlighted throughout the canon: "Calling upon the name of the LORD." The rest of scripture essentially tells the story of those who do and don't follow that charge, eventually culminating in the one who did so perfectly, even unto the point of death, for the sake of the whole world.

Paul and Union with Christ via Con Campbell

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Mon, 05 May 2014 21:45:00 +0000

This is not a book review (I have to read it in full!). That may come later.

One of the perks at work consists in attending presentations or lectures that strike my fancy, schedule permitting. Last week, Associate Professor of New Testament Con Campbell gave a presentation on his award-winning book Paul and Union with Christ (read the TOC and Introduction).

In this book, Campbell offers (according to the publisher) "a thorough exegetical exploration of the Greek phrases Paul used to express the idea of union, or participation, with Christ, and injects solid biblical insight into ancient and recent debates on the topic. His careful handling of the Greek text flows into theological and pastoral reflection on the importance of the believer’s union with Christ, and thus also serves as a helpful reference tool for students, scholars, and pastors to consult its treatment of any particular instance of any phrase or metaphor that relates to union with Christ in St. Paul's writings."

During the presentation, Campbell noted that since the Reformation the phrase "union with Christ" was often thought to have only one meaning. But he demurs, arguing that the phrase has multiple emphases, depending on its context. They are:

Union: spiritual, nuptial, modeled on the mutual indwelling (perichoresis) of the Trinity—it's real (though spiritual, i.e., effected by the Spirit) and corporate
Participation: sharing in the events of Christ’s mission—law-fulfilling, dying, rising, ascending, ruling, etc.
Identification: belonging to the realm of Christ rather than the old realm of Adam
Incorporation: built together into the body of Christ, the temple of God

Campbell was subsequently asked if he came to any conclusions while working on this book that surprised him. He answered:

How Paul's "union with Christ" is inextricably and incessantly trinitarian. The Father is in Christ and by the Spirit we are in Christ. In other words (if I take his meaning correctly), "union with Christ" is shorthand for "union with the Holy Trinity."
On the issues of justification and imputation: Are we justified via imputation or union? Campbell said he held to the former prior to this study. But the Pauline corpus clearly assumes that we are justified via our union with Christ—not through imputation (see pp. 399ff.).

Where, then, does this leave the doctrine of imputation? It still has a place theologically, argues Campbell, in that it protects the idea that the righteousness with which we are given is an alien righteousness, i.e., not self-generated or infused. But "en Christo" allows us to better understand that Christ's righteousness now belongs to all those who are in union with him. To be sure, there is a legal and forensic element to justification (so long as we don't construe it as a material transaction in which righteousness can be passed around a courtroom), but primarily it has to do with a declared status—a vindicated status. Being raised with Christ, we now share in that vindication.

Campbell went on to say that a lot of the contemporary debate is built on false dichotomies and mischaracterization. He found that for the early Reformers (not least both Luther and Calvin) it was obvious that justification is mediated via union with Christ (He cited Mark Seifrid's article "Luther, Melanchthon, and Paul on the Question of Imputation" as a helpful and clarifying work in this regard). In short . . .

Imputation ought to be understood as the unmerited reception of a righteousness that belongs wholly to another, and this reception of 'alien' righteousness is facilitated through the 'un-alienation' of two parties; once believers are joined to Christ, his righteousness is shared with them. In this way, imputation and union with Christ coexist, with one flowing from the other. (401)

Check out Campbell's own take on his work:

Reading Genesis 1 Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 16:35:00 +0000

In the weeks building up to and after the "debate" between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, my enduring series on John Walton's reading Genesis 1 responsibly has seen an influx of clickers. So, to make navigating it easier, here's a summary of the series, along with an addendum or two.

In the Beginning: On translating culture and language
Propositions 1–2: The ancient cosmogony that underlies Genesis 1 is function-oriented.
Props 3–4: The word "create" in Genesis 1 primarily concerns assigning functions (not making materials appear).
Props 5–6: Days 1–3 of Genesis 1 establish functions, and Days 4–6 install functionaries.
Props 7–8: Divine rest occurs in a temple, and the cosmos (particularly the garden of Genesis 1) is a temple.
Props 9–10: The seven days of Genesis 1 relate to the cosmic temple inauguration; they decidedly do not concern material origins.
Props 11–13: This "functional" reading of Genesis 1 offers the most literal reading; other readings tend to go too far or not far enough, which can be avoided if we pay attention to the fact that the difference between origin accounts in scripture and science is metaphysical in nature.
Props 14–15: God as "creator" and "sustainer" means almost the same thing. And Intelligent Design theory is all about purpose; by definition, it isn't science.
Prop 16: Scientific explanations of origins (like, e.g., evolutionary theory) can be viewed in light of purpose, and if so, are unobjectionable.
Prop 17: The theology proper (doctrine of God) that emerges on this reading of Genesis 1 is stronger, not weaker.
Prop 18: Science education in public can only be (or ought to be!) neutral regarding the purpose of creation.
Land of the Lost: Nutshell

When compiling this list, I was also reminded of the hubbub that occurred around the time I was reading through Walton's and others' works on this subject: Bruce Waltke taken to task for his comments about how the (evangelical) church will be destined for "cult" status if, in the course of time, all the data points decisively to something akin to the neo-Darwinian synthesis and the church still denies that reality. I followed this up with "Strawmen: A Fundamentalist's Trojan Horse."

Photography Friday (10)

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:30:00 +0000

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.

On Certainty Mixed with Doubt

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 20:45:00 +0000

A recent rabbit led me to a trail upon which an old, forgotten (by me) book had been assigned by its author for a systematic theology class back in 2002. A portion of it had to do with "cognitive rest," or the coming to a certain position “because of the presence of something very much like a feeling . . . . It is the sense that now one can commit himself to the belief, that he can 'live' with it” (John Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 152–53). Regarding Christian belief, coming to a cognitive rest “is achieving a ‘godly sense of satisfaction’ with the message of Scripture” (153). Cognitive rest means no more struggling against the truth but rather embracing it.

In the end, cognitive rest, wrought by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, is not new revelation but rather “the Spirit’s work [that] illumines and confirms the revelation already given” (156).¹ Professor Frame concludes this brief discussion with the recognition that it does concede “some truth to the subjectivist position: I cannot regard any belief as justified unless it accords with my subjective inclinations . . . . Thus the godly sense of satisfaction may be defined in terms of Scripture. What satisfies me is what I believe Scripture warrants. Or it may be defined situationally as a feeling that I have understood the facts. The three perspectives are one!” (161–62).

This last sentence is of course an example of the main reason why many disagree with tri-perspectivalism: all the perspectives are said to collapse into the existential.

But maybe the good professor feels the weight of the inevitable relativity inherent in any human society, and thus tri-perspectivalism is an attempt to (re)construct an institution worth handing down, namely, a foundation for thinking and acting in this modern world? I'd suggest tentatively that those who kick hard against these goads are those who see the radical contingency of this present world and yet refuse to think that they are affected by it, that their deductive dogma renders them untouchable. Maybe the tri-perspectivalist has gone through an epistemological crisis—which crisis actually enabled tri-perspectivalism to begin with? What crisis would that be?

In a word, it is pluralism. Pluralism brings along with it the imperative of many choices, and along with that comes—necessarily—uncertainty. How do we face the notion that everything we do and believe is historically located, that the institution of religion itself is socially constructed and therefore unable to be known with any epistemological certitude? While this modern world seems to actually create the necessity of a presuppositionalism or fideism, I have yet to see the correlation between tri-perspectivalism and a presuppositionalism of the more dogmatic sort. In other words, tri-perspectivalism does not allow for the mere dogmatic (and axiomatic) assertion (of Christianity) for which many presuppositionalists are known.

Still, the question remains: with respect to the Christian faith, can anything be known without even a hint of doubt? Most Christians would say yes. Some might say the Word of God is certain (a certainty wrought by the internal testimony of the Spirit, no doubt). When it tells us something clearly, that something we are to hold with certainty. Also, it does appear that doubt is castigated at some points in Scripture—for example, those instances in Scripture where “unbelief” is found wanting as an excuse on Judgment Day.

Peter Berger (I know, I know) writes in “Protestantism and the Quest for Certainty” that pluralism affects us deeply in relation to how we believe (not what).² “Pluralism ensures that socialization processes are not uniform and, consequently, that the view of reality is much less firmly held. Put differently, certainty is now much harder to come by." At any rate, Berger argues that the Reformation inadvertently created this situation. How? Because of its principle of individual conscience ("Here I stand . . ."), which carried with it the potential for an ever-expanding variety of Christian groupings. “History is always the arena of unintended consequences." Eventually, every religious tradition had to come to terms with the simple fact that it no longer controlled a captive population of adherents. The modern is faced with a plethora of choices, one of which is leaving a particular tradition only to try on another. Thus, nothing can be taken for granted any longer, which essentially means that all claims to truth are relativized. However, we are not left with a crass open-ended and unchecked relativism, nor are we forced into some variant of “absolutist retrenchment.” There is a middle way, and it expresses itself in “prototypically Protestant . . . language: . . . sola fide.” Berger argues further that once we recognize this situation, attempting to construct taken-for-granted institutions in this modern world would, over time, be difficult to fake. To him, the Protestant principle of sola fide implies a rejection of all absolute claims, “ipso facto of all offers of restored taken-for-granted certainty. It insists that the believer should live by faith alone—and that, by God’s grace, this is actually possible." The reader may see how this substantiates, for example, Esther Meeks’ view of certainty (that it cannot be without doubt), as opposed to Frame's tri-perspectival answer to the certainty question: Some things are to be known without doubt, because the Bible tells us that in some cases doubt is wrong. But consider the following from Berger, which I should “know” to be misguided, yet feel otherwise (I quote him at length):

Conventional Christian language maintains that there is a contradiction between faith and lack of faith, belief and unbelief. The implication is that unbelief is sinful. This has never been very persuasive to me. God has not exactly made it easy for us to believe in him, and, it seems to me, a just God will not hold it against us if we don’t manage the exercise. Be that as it may, it seems more plausible to me to propose a contradiction not between belief and unbelief but between belief and knowledge. If we know something, there is no reason to believe; conversely, if we say that we believe something, we are implying that we don’t know. A world that is taken for granted is one in which people know (more accurately, think they know) what is true; they don’t have to believe. Putting the contradiction in this way, one must then ask: Just what do we know when it comes to religion?

His answer is simply that what we affirm, we must affirm modestly and with no pretense of certitude. We ought to be a people “unsure of [our]selves, groping for a few glimpses of truth to hold onto, even where it seems that the roof is about to fall in.” The reason behind this posture is the paradox between Christ and culture. While Christians believe in the resurrection of Jesus and in his glorious return, that glory is obviously not yet. “The triumphant Christ is still coming; we are still in the aeon of the kenotic Jesus." The church therefore pronounces this coming triumph, yet it still bears the marks of Jesus’ kenosis.

I find this hard to deny. We gaze upon the conquered Promised Land, yet we wander in the wilderness, exiled, and in great need of repentance. Nonetheless, contra Berger, is there not even one object in which we can place our confidence that nudges up against something like certitude? Is it not this message of coming triumph? Whatever one’s views about inerrancy, are not the promises of God through Jesus the singular item that mysteriously comes to be believed with little doubt precisely because of God’s gracious call? Maybe everything else contained in the annals of historic, Christian orthodoxy should be under “permanent reflection,” but the coming triumph? So what if, for example, the kingdom of Solomon was greatly exaggerated, that doesn’t mark the difference between sheep and goats. What makes one a Christian, apparently, is personal trust, flowing from Word and sacrament, in he who is “able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted” (2 Tim. 1:12). In short, it is he who trusts and obeys God's Christ by the power of his Spirit. Anything resembling certainty with little or no doubt must be found there—yes, through (not in) the institution of the church, the religious experiences she gives, and the authority of the sacred text she proclaims.

To be sure, we still must exercise faith through such institutions (for such is the means by which beliefs and values are transmitted from generation to generation³), but taking them for granted is untenable is this modern world. All of them have been weakened: the certainty of church institutions by historical scholarship and the social sciences; the certainty of inner experience by psychology and the sociology of knowledge; the certainty of the biblical text by the findings of biblical criticism. Tri-perspectivalism perhaps attempts to prepare us for this very feeling of vertigo that comes when we are faced with the weakening of our beloved taken-for-granted institutions. Berger’s theory of the social construction of reality does much the same thing, though perhaps more consistently. Could the two be close cousins? Both, after all, are able to relativize the relativizers. Both undermine dogmatic assertions by recognizing the role of self and situation in the gaining of “knowledge.” Both affirm the existence of an absolute (i.e., the truth) that is knowable only through (to use a once-familiar phrase in Frame's classes) the participation of the other perspectives. Both force us to take a stand in the face of pluralism and place our trust in Providence, even while we approach most things as milquetoast “uncertainty-wallahs.”⁴

Our faith, then, is that God is really and truly present in the world, whether we receive him or not (much like the the proclamation of his Word and the administration of the sacraments). The same can be said for the other institutions mentioned above (the church, the experience, the text). The hope is held but cautiously. As a community of imperfectly glorified people, can we do much better? Maybe in the end sola fide does stand as the only non-Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox answer to this peculiarly modern situation. But while Saint Paul had much to distrust, underlying this contingency was a trustworthy God: “I know in whom I have believed.” I think we can say this too, while at the same time recognizing that our tradition is not immune to criticism, or put another way, to the relativity intrinsic to any social construction. To pretend that it can be immune, is nothing more than entering the world of self-delusion. This is not the Emersonian disdain for any and all institutions; rather, this is a simple affirmation that God, and God alone, is sure. All else is subject to change.

What other option is there in this time between the times?

1 Similarly, Kierkegaard wrote that there is “only one proof for the truth of Christianity—the inward proof, argumentum spiritus sancti.” He then cited 1 John 5:9–10 to substantiate this. ^↩

2 From The Christian Century, 115.23 (Aug 26, 1998). ^↩

3 In case the reader is wondering, so Berger: “Yes, such institutions . . . can survive—and sometimes they show a surprising vitality." All this means is that our choices must be deliberate. No longer can we unthinkingly ‘go with the flow.’ ^↩

4 This idiosyncratic phrase is Berger’s way to describe himself and others who by free choice belong to “weak” religious institutions, that is, those institutions that are not founded upon taken-for-granted verities, and which are entered and left voluntarily. See also my description above about Christ being in paradox with culture. ^↩

The Covenantal Contours of Limborch's Compleat System

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 20:41:00 +0000

The efforts of self-identified Arminian (or Wesleyan) theologians in recent decades who debate over the heart of “Arminianism” have mostly aimed to undermine the mischaracterizations prevalent among those with whom they disagree on important soteriological issues but who nevertheless share with them in the communion of saints (read: Young, Restless & Reformed).¹ The church at large ought to be grateful for this work to that end, for it has ably shown that Arminius is rightly to be distinguished (but perhaps not separated) from, say, Philip van Limborch (1633–1712), the subject of this brief descriptive summary. While no discernible difference exists, for example, in the way Limborch lays out the order of God’s eternal decrees as compared to Arminius,² there are a few when it comes to other matters related to the accomplishment and application of God’s redemption in time. Any comparisons on this score, however, are beyond the scope of this post.³

In what follows, I will quickly cover the historical-covenantal contours of Limborch’s theology as they appear in the Compleat System, Book 3, starting with his discussion of the relationship between Adam and his Creator in the garden, then moving on to the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, and ending with the new covenant of Christ Jesus. It is worth mentioning at the outset that as a Dutch theologian, Limborch, by the time of his appointment in 1668 as professor of theology at the Remonstrant seminary in Amsterdam, had inherited a robust, if not one-sided, federal-covenantal theological tradition (whether scholastic or narratival), one in which he could find many examples that were to his mind worth challenging (e.g., Gomarus, Trelcatius, Cloppenburg, or Cocceius).

Before the specific chapters that deal with the history of redemption, Limborch remarks in passing during his discussion on providence that God’s first act of governance is “legislation, or making a law, whereby God prescribes bounds to the will of man” (157), without which humans would will unrestrained to their detriment. There is a history to this legislation, as Limborch notes (158):

This law was prescribed to man at the very creation: And tho afterwards the more especial revelations of the divine will were made to Abraham and his posterity, and a particular law enacted upon promises and threatnings was given to the Jews by the hands of Moses; yet still the rest of mankind had the law of nature written in their hearts, to inform them of the difference between good and evil. But the most perfect law which God prescribed to mankind, was that which he made by his Son Jesus Christ.

Here we see a glimpse of Limborch’s entire system as it relates to the unfurling covenantal narrative of Scripture: humanity was (and is) endowed with a law of nature, and then along came the more revealing covenants of Abraham and Moses, all of which culminate in “the most perfect law” of the new covenant.⁴ For Limborch, there is no entertaining the idea that a covenant can be unilateral or unconditional; it is, by definition, a pact—what God promises to another party if she carries out the conditions of that covenant (bilateral and contractual). With respect to prelapsarian man, God did not make a covenant in any federal sense with Adam (e.g., 187, 197–98). Rather, he was endowed with natural law, an innate knowledge of his creator’s will, and on that basis was given one positive command, with only a threat attached to it (and thus no covenant).

As a result of Adam’s fall, humanity lost this actual knowledge of the divine will, being born with a tabula rasa (144); nevertheless, God still left them the “light of right reason, whereby to discern betwixt good and evil” (210). Even those who exist outside of God’s later covenants are still potentially included in the prospect of eternal life because of this residual law of nature (219).⁵

Upon the arrival of Abraham on the scene, we begin to see God engaging humanity in terms of covenant, clearer than natural law in its precepts, promises, and curses. The Mosaic covenant (though temporary and for Israel alone) was simply a greater and sharper revelation than the Abrahamic. Both were conditional, and both promised blessing and threatened condemnation (temporal and spiritual) based squarely on obedience or disobedience. As with natural law, so too were those living under the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, for the sake of Christ (whose future sacrifice permits a less demanding application of the law to humanity), justified on the condition of sincere obedience to the precepts under (not by) which they lived (214–15, 229–30). But in the end, natural religion and the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants show themselves to be ineffectual in restoring humanity and delivering them from sin and death (e.g., 230–31). Only the new covenant mediated by Jesus Christ accomplishes this.

In short, Limborch argues that the gospel of the new covenant in Christ Jesus is a new law—but of faith not works (298–99). Like the previous covenants, the new covenant also promises salvation depending on one’s meeting the covenantal stipulations; but now, however, the demands are easier to meet because of the appeasement of the Son (via perfect obedience) to his Father (195). God has decided in his mercy and because of the Messiah’s work to accept imperfect faithful obedience for righteousness rather than perfect law-keeping. To be sure, such faithful obedience finds acceptance through grace, but the legal principle remains, albeit less strict and applied with less rigor (270–71; see also 5.74.7). The new covenant, in other words, is little more than a relaxed old covenant, a little less law and a lot more grace.

1 There’s a similar battle among the Reformed, couched in terms of “Calvin vs. the Calvinists,” that has raged for a few centuries. With the publication of R.T. Kendall’s Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (OUP, 1979) and Paul Helm’s response, Calvin & the Calvinists (Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), the debate received renewed popular attention, and has shown little signs of going away (even if with finality debunked through the ongoing work of Richard Muller, the sentiment is nevertheless sticking around).^↩

2 See Compleat System 4.1, pp. 343–44. Earlier in the treatise, Limborch takes umbrage with the ordo decretorum as delineated by theologians who most raise his ire—all forms of unconditional election that tell us “God by one, single act of his will has at once decreed all things, and that there is no prius or posterius in the divine decrees.” But they are also those who posit—in response to Limborch’s doctrine of conditional predestination—that God has necessarily decreed salvation “prior to his foreseeing their faith and obedience” (118). Instead of belaboring the problems he sees with such thinking at this point, he decides to move on from this “nice subject” (119). Note that nice in its seventeenth-century context could have meant “foolish, stupid, or senseless” just as much as “precise, careful, or agreeable.”

All quotations are taken from Philip Limborch, A Compleat System, or, Body of Divinity, both Speculative and Practical, founded on Scripture and Reason (London: William Jones, 1702). Subsequent citations will be noted in parentheses in the text.^↩

3 A good place to start on some of those differences is with Roger Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (IVP Academic, 2006). A more exhaustive (but perhaps overstated) treatment can be found in John Mark Hicks, “The Theology of Grace in the Thought of Jacobus Arminius and Philip van Limborch: A Study in the Development of Seventeenth Century Dutch Arminianism,” PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1985.^↩

4 This could be little more than what the pre-Reformation church had taught for some time with respect to the history of redemption: the triplex model of natural law, old law, new law. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiœ I–II.91.2, 5. At the very least, it is in opposition to the “decretal” and bi-covenantal perspective of the federal theologians.^↩

5 The imago Dei, however, remains intact, because for Limborch, that image only consists in the “power and dominion which God has given to man over all the works of his hands” (2.7.6, p. 142). Traditionally (at the time, at least), the image of God was defined in terms of faculties and nature of the soul (reason, emotions, etc).^↩

When Teleology Trumps Soteriology

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 10:43:00 +0000

I delivered this rant a few weeks ago in a doctoral seminar I'm taking from Tom McCall (co-author of Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace). It's basically a riff on Newbigin's doctrine of election and how it completely subverts the ordo decretorum (logical order of God's decrees) debates of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries between supras, infras, conditional infras, etc., etc. Due to the required length of the paper, I had to leave a whole lot of thoughts on the floor, so it definitely runs the risk of presenting a lopsided view of the matter. I also focus criticisms on Arminian arguments because, well, it's a seminar on that very subject.

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

Mercutio: I am hurt.

A plague a’ both your houses! I am sped.

—Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.86–87¹

The church has been hurt, indeed, “sped” throughout the years whenever she finds herself caught in the crossfire of battles over the logical order of things about which we know next to nothing. This is not to suggest that one view with respect to the ordo decretorum is as good as any other; some truly do, however inadvertently, commit blasphemy: some “logical” orders make God the author of sin, while others make man the author of himself.

Nevertheless, the church suffers every time its leaders and laypersons obsess over the reasons for an individual’s election by probing backwards toward the secret counsel of God instead of pressing forward from one’s election (in both individual and corporate terms) to the purpose of that election.² This obsession most notably plagued the Reformed churches in the late sixteenth century and well into the seventeenth century. The Arminian and Remonstrant response, unfortunately, faired little better, precisely because they too shared in their compatriot’s assumptions regarding the final destiny of individuals flowing from decrees made in eternity “past.” Despite the appropriate Arminian allergic reaction to certain Reformed articulations of election that lead to churches thinking of themselves as exclusive beneficiaries of God’s saving love, the biblical fact and fundamental truth of election is that it is made according to God’s sovereign and unconditional choice. Keeping the center of the doctrine of election away from any consigning of individuals to either eternal life or death ought to remove the edges with which it is unnecessarily laden. In so doing, we can see the highly speculative and unedifying nature of the ordo decretorum for what it is, a less-than-robust expression of the purpose of election itself—expressions that Arminians and Remonstrants only recapitulated in their protests.

Taking my cue from St. Thomas, as many others often have, election appears to be primarily teleological—it is all about where we are sent, rather than from where we have come. And by invoking destiny, I do not mean so much individual or corporate salvation as individual and corporate purpose, not so much related to the salvific outcome of absolute decrees among the Godhead as to the purpose for which those decrees were made: Like an arrow directed by the archer towards its mark, the movement of predestination “gets its specific character from what it is a motion to, not a motion from.”³ And it is with that motion to in mind that the mission of God in the election of his people becomes most robustly realized. When members of Christ’s church consider their election as a calling to die to self for the salvation of the world, not as God’s way simply to secure for himself an elite group of chosen individuals, or as a pronouncement upon people he foresees who employ grace just enough to work out their salvation to the end of their lives, the pastoral objections (that the Reformed ordo causes despair or presumption) to God’s sovereign choice in election fall away. In other words, properly emphasizing the individual and corporate teleology, rather than the individual soteriology, of election renders both the Reformed and Remonstrant ordo constructions moot.

When looked at in this way, arguments over whether God elects unbelievers and predestines them to become believers or whether he elects foreseen believers and predestines them to become his children are out of place. This is not to deny a cause or basis of God’s election, because, as stated above, it is biblically obvious that election stems from the elector’s good pleasure. Yet this need not make the Arminian interlocutor anxious, as if her argument that the cause of God’s election instead centers on the free will act of an individual fulfilling the conditions of salvation suffers from incoherence. If the purpose of election was primarily the salvific destiny of individuals, then the Arminian rebuttal to the majority of Reformed expressions merits serious attention. That is to say, in the context of early seventeenth-century debates revolving around the ordo decretorum, Arminius’ opposition to deterministic supra- and infralapsarianism was raised for all the right reasons.

Still, relegating predestination merely to a function of divine foreknowledge is less than satisfactory. Whatever else can be said of the differences between Arminius and subsequent generations of seventeenth-century Remonstrants on redemption, there’s no difference among them on the subordination of God’s decree to predestinate and reprobate certain individuals to his foreseeing their completion or rejection of salvation’s conditions. If, again, the ordo decretorum primarily has to do with how an individual comes to be elected rather than the missiological why that individual was elected, then the Arminian construction finds itself rightly critiqued for reviving something akin to late medieval works-righteousness—perhaps worse, depending on how anemic its ecclesiology is.⁴

Thus, the Remonstrant critique could be seen as a recapitulation of the covenantal nomism that Saint Paul challenged so long ago. Arminius’ confession that he “ascribes to God’s grace the origin, the continuance, and the fulfillment of all good”⁵ may excuse him from the sharpest points of this criticism, but it may also be that his remonstration lead to the unintended consequence of making too much of human performance as a condition of God’s mercy. E. P. Sanders’ summary of second-temple Judaism as “getting in by grace, staying in by obedience”⁶ parallels in significant ways the Remonstrant view that any move toward God is by (prevenient) grace alone while increase in grace and final justification depends ultimately on human cooperation. Not even the most strident Remonstrant has argued that one can be saved by works alone, as human works are not seen to be meritorious in and of themselves (and thus always insufficient to gain God's forgiveness). Yet according to the Remonstrants in particular, in God’s new covenant in Christ Jesus, he promises to accept as righteousness the believer’s obedience of faith. The implication is that the law we humans have always transgressed has been softened to the point that people who make good use of grace can now do it and live, provided they continue to perform.⁷ What is this if not the principle of “getting in by grace, and staying in by obedience”? But this is the very principle that the apostle opposed when he wrote, “You began by God’s Spirit; do you now want to finish by your own power?” (Gal 3:3). If indeed the gospel is a new law, then Augustine’s prayer to a sovereignly electing God to “grant what you command, and command what you will” becomes ever the more necessary.⁸

In short, the debates revolving around the ordo decretorum simply miss the point. What God commands, and what he grants to that end, is encapsulated most succinctly in the motion to of the Great Commission. Herein lies the purpose of election, the telos of which the church forgets at her peril. Lesslie Newbigin summed it up best:

And we can also see that wherever the missionary character of the doctrine of election is forgotten; wherever it is forgotten that we are chosen in order to be sent; . . . wherever men think that the purpose of election is their own salvation rather than the salvation of the world; then God’s people have betrayed their trust.⁹

The salvation of the world with which the elect of God have been entrusted, the called-out ones commissioned to enact God’s kingdom will on earth as it is in heaven, must leave this old debate in the old books where it belongs if it will ever get down to doing its “best to make [the day of God] come soon . . . where righteousness will be at home” (2 Peter 3:12–13).

1 From The Yale Shakespeare (Barnes & Noble Books, 1993), 918.^↩

2 St. Augustine’s warning comes to mind: “Wherefore he draws this one and not that one, seek not to decide if you wish not to err.” From Tractates on the Gospel of John, 26.2 (NPNF¹ 7).^↩

3 Thomas Aquinas, ST, I, Q. 23, Art. 1, Reply Obj. 3. Quoted from Summa Theologica, “God’s Will and Providence” (1a. 19–26), eds. Thomas Gilby and T. C. O’Brien, Blackfriars, vol. 5 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 111. See also Thomas’ ordo in Art. 4: particular love→election→predestination. “Therefore all the predestined are picked loved ones” (121). God creates the lovely through his electing love; it’s in no way based on the created’s loveliness (cf. Art. 5).^↩

4 It's beyond the scope of this post to defend this here, but suffice to say that where baptism and the Eucharist are largely removed from the equation of election, the theologian is left to over-emphasize—and thus truncate—the means ordained in Scripture by God to actualize his elect.^↩

5 W. Stephen Gunter, Arminius and His Declaration of Sentiments: An Annotated Translation with Introduction and Theological Commentary (Baylor University Press, 2012), 141.^↩

6 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 93, 178, 371.^↩

7 See, e.g., John Mark Hicks, “The Theology of Grace in the Thought of Jacobus Arminius and Philip van Limborch: A Study in the Development of Seventeenth Century Dutch Arminianism” (PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1985), 103–11, esp. at 110. See also Keith D. Stanglin and Thomas H. McCall, Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace (OUP, 2013), 167–68.^↩

8 Saint Augustine, Confessions, X.xxix (40), trans. Henry Chadwick (OUP, 1998), 202. It may be that the historic triplex model of natural law→old law→new law best encapsulates the covenantal framework of God’s redemptive plan, but I do not concede that the necessary grace required to fulfill that new law has been imparted indiscriminately. Even the Remonstrant Limborch confessed as much when he wrote that while God’s general decree of salvation and damnation is not unclear, the other special decree regarding the means thereunto is mysterious, “upon the account of that disproportion wherein God is pleas’d to communicate the means of salvation to men. For he does not bestow an equal share of grace every where at all times and upon all men.” This depends “on the mere good pleasure of God,” and is unsearchable. Quoted from A Compleat System, or, Body of Divinity, both Speculative and Practical, Founded on Scripture and Reason (London: William Jones, 1702), 347.^↩

9 Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God (Wipf & Stock, 2008), 55.^↩

Fear Is (not) the Heart of Love

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 11:45:00 +0000

{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.^↩

Eden Raised

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 11:51:00 +0000

A CROWD GATHERED around Jesus of Nazareth and wondered: Could this person be the son of David, the one who, like David, wreaks havoc upon our enemies? A few of the local leaders standing by did not take kindly to the clear implications of what they witnessed and accused the man of beating up his own people by the power of the prince of demons. He responded with no ounce of timidity: “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste. . . . How then will his [Satan's] kingdom stand? . . . But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house” (see Matt. 12:22–29).

What Jesus said in effect here was that paradise was in the process of being regained, that the power of God's kingdom and thus its presence was the only explanation needed for his dominion over the demons. The crowd wondered as much, and their question showed it. The Pharisees, knowing full well what this kind of ministry meant if it was indeed supported by the one, true God of Israel, decided to accuse Jesus of the only other option: He must really be the enemy, working for Beelzebul, the prince of demons.

As interesting as this story is, it is Jesus' allusion to the binding of the strong man that must hold our attention for a while. Because by it, he suggests that he has had an initial victory. Indeed, some kind of prior battle must have been won if he was going to wage subsequent battles—like exorcisms—with any success. In short, Jesus was claiming that he had already met the accuser, the prince of demons, and defeated him. But when?

John Milton wrote of it long ago. In 1671, Paradise Regained was published four years after his famous epic Paradise Lost. It deals with one major event in the life of Jesus, the one major event that Jesus himself considered his initial victory—his temptation by Satan in the wilderness.

Resting on the robust theology of Saint Paul about the parallels between Adam and the Messiah (Rom. 5:12–21), Milton wrote: “I who erewhile the happy garden sung, / By one man's disobedience lost, now sing / Recovered Paradise to all mankind, / By one man's firm obedience fully tried / Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled / In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed, / And Eden raised in the waste of wilderness” (Paradise Regained, ll. 1–7). Thus begins his poetic rendition of the decisive initial victory of Jesus over the accuser.

The working of miracles, not least exorcisms, were evidences that the future kingdom of God had broken through into the present day. The coming of the kingdom was greatly anticipated by the people of Israel in the first century, and when it did come, it was thought that it would be filled with all the pomp and circumstance a complete overthrow of the world would entail. The whole redefinition that Jesus embodied—around himself as Israel's representative—was, however, mostly unexpected. But the world was being overthrown nonetheless, and the prince of the world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11) was being challenged in the name of God.

At the outset of Jesus' public career we witness this fact (Matt. 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13). During his temptation in the wilderness nothing less than the messianic kingship of God's anointed was at stake. We see this especially with respect to the temptation involving “all the kingdoms of the world.” Who was the real prince? Jesus or Satan? Ultimately at stake, then, was victory over Satan's kingdom by the kingdom of God. This victory, however, was not to take place by raw power alone, for the Messiah's obedience to his Father was to be its primary feature. Jesus was not to gain all authority over heaven and earth in a capricious or violent manner (the only kind of authority Satan knew how to wield). Rather, he would have to obtain the authority Satan offered him in the wilderness only in the way ordained by God.

This he did, and Philippians 2:5–11 contains a good hymn all about it. The obedience of the Messiah figures prominently in the thought of the apostle not only in this passage but in Romans 5:12–21 as well. In Philippians, Jesus is the one who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death on a cross (2:8), and in Romans Jesus is the one whose obedience makes the many righteous (5:19). In contrast to the first Adam, this last Adam perfectly obeyed God's will, and in so doing, undid the disobedience of the first one, defeating sin and death in the process. And this victory was already underway by the time Jesus had rejected Satan's temptations in the wilderness, the event (as described in Matthew 4:1–11) to which we now turn.

After many days and nights of living in the wilderness alone, Jesus is confronted by the tempter. Each of the three temptations the devil throws at him is meant to undermine the very task to which he has been called as God's Messiah. He was to be precisely what the nation of Israel had failed to be: a light to the world. In response to the Babylonian judgment, the prophet Isaiah assured the Israelites that they are God's servant whom he has chosen and has not cut off (41:8–9). It is that servant in whom God will be glorified by restoring the tribes of Jacob and bringing back from exile the preserved of Israel. It is that servant who will be a light for the nations so that God's salvation will reach the ends of the earth (49:3–6). But Satan desired that Jesus, the servant, the true Israel, would doubt this mission and thus avail himself to become Lord of the world through some other means than the one spoken about by the prophets long ago (in, for example, Isa. 38–55).

When Jesus was baptized by John, his identity was confirmed by his Father: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). And what were the first words out of Satan's mouth in the wilderness? “If you are the Son of God . . .” (4:3). This reminds us right away of the serpent who confronted Adam and Eve in the garden (Gen. 3:1): “Did God actually say . . . ?" In both instances, the tempters call into question the veracity, and thus the faithfulness, of God.

In the first temptation, the devil takes aim at the hunger pains Jesus undoubtedly feels. Hunger is a cruel taskmaster, and many atrocities have been perpetrated in order to lift its oppressive weight. But Jesus refuses to succumb to the temptation to take by force what is his by right (see Phil. 2:6). His hunger would have to continue to gnaw at him, choosing as he does to do the will of his Father and endure suffering as his servant. Adam, in contrast, refused to go without, instead judging for himself—despite God's command—what he should and should not eat. So he ate and plunged the world into despair.

The tempter then takes Jesus to Jerusalem, to the very heights of the temple wall. Again, the devil tempts him, this time to throw himself down into the Kidron Valley, knowing full well that the covenant God would not allow his anointed to strike his foot against a stone. If he did so, and God saved him, then everyone around would immediately know and recognize his status as God's Son. But this was a shortcut, a cheap and shallow way to grasp at the titles Lord and Christ. Adam, in contrast, seized the moment for his own glory, and instead of going the way of humble obedience, exalted himself. In snatching the forbidden fruit, Adam intended to bypass the path of righteousness. He accepted the very shortcut Jesus refused.

Finally, Satan takes Jesus to the peak of a nearby mountain, where he says, “All these [kingdoms] I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matt. 4:9). Undaunted, Jesus binds the strong man in a flurry of rebuke: “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve'" (v. 10). Contrarily, Adam bound himself in his pathetic attempt to show the world that he was its true lord. Adam's belly was full; the garden was magnificent and comforting. Jesus, on the other hand, was famished, and the wilderness was as unwelcoming as it was lonely.

There should be no doubt Jesus was tempted to bring about the kingdom through means other than the way of suffering and obedience to the will and covenant of God. He constantly saw the tyranny of Rome and of all the other empires that trod the Holy Land underfoot. The people wanted action, violent if necessary, to overthrow the yoke of their oppressors. But tempted as he was to answer his calling in that particular way, there was another way to which he was utterly faithful. He saw the temptation for what it was, an end around the plan and purpose of his Father.

Having defeated the accuser in this initial victory and confirming the tone of his mission, Jesus began his public ministry, putting into practice the results of this battle (exorcisms, healings, and so on). In this manner—through the faithfulness of Christ—paradise was beginning to be regained. And in time, all things will be restored (Acts 3:17–21). Until then, being in Christ means that we too have been called to take part in God's regaining of paradise.

{Part of this originally appeared in Tabletalk 32.12 (Dec. 2008): 18–21}

A Little Lower Than God

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Donato) — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 18:38:00 +0000

“O LORD, what are human beings that you should notice them, 
mere mortals that you should think about them?” (Ps. 144:3)

In certain circles, Christian Humanism gets a bad rap. But I think it may have to do with a fundamental misunderstanding of what it actually is—from both a theological and methodological perspective. Most of us realize that it has little to do with twenty-first century secular humanism, as it strives to affirm the dignity of humanity without any reference to God, an unthinkable prospect to the Christian humanist, since any talk about the dignity of humankind apart from the imago Dei is unintelligible.

In contrast, Christian Humanism argues that, precisely because Christ Jesus is Lord of both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, individuals and their culture have value (this is what it brings to the table theologically). Of course, this notion isn’t foreign to Scripture or the early church (e.g., Justin Martyr’s Apology), but it had become somewhat eclipsed during the medieval period (i.e., humankind´s fundamental problem in relating to God is not sin, it is our finitude, our inferiority as such). Not surprisingly, this particular humanistic anthropological perspective trickled down to educational methodology, Christian Humanism’s other major contribution: devotion to studia humanitatis, or the liberal arts, including history, literary criticism, grammar, poetry, philology, and rhetoric, became a prominent feature of this movement. (It should be obvious by now that if not for the blossoming of Christian Humanism during the Renaissance, there would’ve been no Reformation—or Counter-Reformation—as there would’ve been no return to the sources of the original languages of Scripture, which in turn produced a critical barrage against late medieval scholastic methodology and, oftentimes, theology.)

It must be admitted that many Christian humanists tweaked their anthropology in the wrong direction. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man comes to mind, in which he stressed that men had the free will (apparently apart from prevenient grace) to travel up and down a moral scale. But this particular view isn’t necessary to Christian Humanism, as many of the Reformers had, as a dear friend often puts it, a high regard for the doctrine of depravity. This isn’t to suggest that theirs was all “worm theology,” however.

Among the magisterial Reformers, John Calvin stands out as one such Christian humanist, at least in a few significant ways. I think especially of his grammatical-historical, literary-critical exegesis, his devoted attention to the church fathers, his love of the classics (his first complete published work being a commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia), his somewhat tension-riddled acceptance of a kind of “Christian philosophy,” and the strongly ethical character of his teaching on the Christian life (see Bouwsma’s John Calvin, pp. 113–127 for more on this). Stressing the dignity of man, Calvin's social reforms included relief for the poor, construction of hospitals, schools (which were free), new prisons, laws protecting consumers, provisions for refugees, and a sanitation system that made Geneva one of the cleanest and healthiest cities in Europe.

In his Institutes, Calvin notes that humankind was bestowed with a certain status as the noblest of the works of God (1.15.1). Humans are the mirror of his divine glory, and the most distinguishing quality of humankind is its likeness to God, defined in terms of faculties and nature of the soul (reason, emotions, etc.; 1.15.4). Despite the fall of humanity, the imago has not been destroyed: “It is not the will of God, however that we should forget the primeval dignity which he bestowed on our first parents—a dignity which may well stimulate us to the pursuit of goodness and justice" (2.1.3). People maintain the dignity of their creation, and all the responsibilities flowing from this inherent dignity remain intact.

There may be something worth recapturing here, after all.

Consider also the oft-quoted psalm, which bespeaks, at the very least, the dignity of humankind in the economy of God’s creation:

What are mere mortals that you should think about them,
human beings that you should care for them?
Yet you made them only a little lower than God
and crowned them with glory and honor. 
You gave them charge of everything you made, 
putting all things under their authority . . . . (Ps. 8:4–6)

In his typically reasonable fashion, Calvin comments on this passage: “[God’s] glory is beheld in a special manner, in the great favor which he bears to men, and in the goodness which he manifests towards them.” He goes on to ground this exaltation of man in the fact that he was created in the image of God. But to persuade his reader not to get carried away, Calvin quickly advises him to note the psalmist’s design here, “which is to enhance, by this comparison, the infinite goodness of God; for it is, indeed, a wonderful thing that the Creator of heaven, whose glory is so surpassingly great as to ravish us with the highest admiration, condescends so far as graciously to take upon him the care of the human race.”

Calvin’s final admonishment is as good as any: “Whoever, therefore, is not astonished and deeply affected at this miracle, is more than ungrateful and stupid.”