The Modern Pharisees?

I have been contemplating recently one of the odder passages in Christ's teachings.  In the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, we find Him discoursing on the state of Israel's ecclesiastical leadership.  I excerpt the following:

Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, saying, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.  For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.  But all their works they do for to be seen of men...

But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren... But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.  And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in."

Then follows a list of the Pharisees' misdeeds and errors: abusing the poor, misinterpreting the essence of the law, and coming up with creative legalisms which miss the point entirely.

As a Protestant, it has always been easy to look at this passage - and similar ones in the apostolic epistles - and find an analogy to the practices of the Roman Catholic church.  To take a few of the more obvious: what else is penance - especially once established as a sacrament - but a "heavy burden grievous to be borne"?  Now, the instructed Catholic will look on and defend it as a discipline leading to virtue, but the practice has no Biblical warrant, neither does salvation depend on it, but on Christ: where is the use to be found?

Or take again the Roman practice of forbidding priests to marry.  While justified with the pious-sounding "be more like Christ", it flies in the face of Christ's choices and the apostolic teaching.  Christ, it should be noted, for the head of his church on earth (if we accept the papal claim for the apostle Peter), chose a married man.  The apostle Paul, giving instructions to his under-ministers Timothy and Titus, told them to find men as elders and deacons who were married and - to give the lie to later ideas of "celibate marriage" - had children.  Well-behaved children, of course.  The position of Paul, himself unmarried, has to be seen as the anomaly: he recognizes it, and defends his own right to marry should he want to to the Corinthians: "Have we [Paul and Barnabas] not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas [Peter]?"  He goes on, true, to imply this is something he has given up for the profit of his ministry, but we must recognize Paul's place in the early church as the great traveling missionary, and one often in jail: Paul's private considerations should not affect church policy on the whole, and especially are much different from those of the pastor of an individual church.

These are the two most blatant problems: there are of course also the invented "days of obligation", the whole problem of images, and more.  But I point these out to make the point that the issues exist.  All of this criticism is relatively straightforward: Christ - Himself or through His inspired ministers - says to do this, and you don't.

In contrast, doctrinal problems are more difficult to chase down.  Paul says that we are justified by faith.  James says a man who trusts in faith but does not do good works is fooling himself.  If both were inspired - as all churches agree - how can this be reconciled?  The Protestant churches tend to teach Paul, with James as a footnote: this matches the content provided, in amounts if not in exactness.  The point here is that I have become less and less comfortable arguing specific doctrines, the more so as I have become aware of my own lack of knowledge.

None of this criticism, or refraining from criticism, though, addresses the way Christ begins this section - which is to instruct his disciples to obey the very Pharisees he then criticizes for the rest of the chapter.  Let me say that again: Christ instructed his disciples to obey the corrupt leaders of Israel, because they were the leaders of Israel, the ones who "sit in Moses' seat".  The apostles also instruct us to obey those in authority over us.

So the question is, how does this apply to us today?  Does - to take the possibility I find most disturbing - the Roman Catholic church really have Peter's seat", as they claim, regardless of corruption, scandal, and false teachings?  Or, to look at a more general view, if you go looking for authority how are you supposed to tell the "authentic church" from those with clear trails to the early church: the Orthodox, Roman, or Coptic?

I do not see any perfect church.  I do not even see any church with a perfect system of doctrine and practice which would be amazing if only fallen humans were not human.  I see a number of churches running around making various errors - the Reformed churches I attend, for instance, have concocted Presbyterianism somewhere, I am not sure how - with no clear best option.  I have reached the point where, if I had been raised Orthodox, say, or Anglican, I do not know how I would justify leaving that communion; but then the same argument applies to my own, which is part of the reason I stay.

But remaining wrong does not seem like a good option, either, if it is possible to be more correct.  An odd problem.

Thoughts On a Confirmation

On the Saturday before Easter - or as some would insist, on the eve of Easter, the liturgical calendar beginning days at night - a previously Protestant friend was confirmed in the Roman church.  I note this merely as background; as explanation or perhaps the provocation of the following.  In itself the circumstance was (for me) hardly unique: I could likely have said the same thing for any of the past five or six years, with regard to the Roman or Orthodox churches, though matching particular names to particular years is more than I can do now.

My own opinion of the Roman church I have probably stated before in this space: however, I will restate it briefly.  While possessing a certain superficial historicity, the Roman Catholic church is wracked by un-Scriptural doctrines and practices.  Any argument which would convince me to join the Roman church would have to either convince me of the validity of the pope's authority (if he has that authority, I am no one to argue doctrine, certainly not from outside "the Church"), or present a sufficient apology for the Roman church's doctrine from Scripture, or represent the conclusion a true reformation within that church.

Yet the point of this post is not to debate Roman views.  If demand requires, I will do so - elsewhere or at another time.  (As for the Orthodox: my knowledge is less, but the second and third criteria would also apply.)  No, this is more a record of self-reflection.  I am Reformed in my own theology, and attend generally churches both presbyterian and Reformed - though I am not a particularly convinced presbyterian.  I spent several months last year attending and studying at a Lutheran church - on invitation - due mainly to this lack of conviction, with additional impetus provided by a growing concern over the general practice regarding the Lord's Supper among Reformed churches: which is to say, in practice if not in confession, we lean too much towards mere symbolism.

The Lutheran experiment foundered, on a double (or perhaps treble) difficulty of its own.  The first: the use of the crucifix in worship, to say nothing of bowing, if not actually scraping, to the thing.  My greatest distaste for the Roman church I found in abridged form in the Lutheran - though at least there were no parades of and towards likely specious relics.  The second: a certain lack of utility - not to say precision - in the Lutheran doctrines of the Church and its governance, at least as presented to me.  To be more accurate, the Lutherans seemed to want all of the exclusivity provided by Roman or Orthodox doctrines of Tradition and infallibility (of church-through-pope or council, as may be), while claiming with Luther that "councils have erred" - and presumably must still continue to do so: a most curious stance.  Perhaps a more thorough investigation would have clarified matters, but I suppose I lack patience.  Also (note my count to three!) the music tends towards the excessively Germanic - and German native rhythms are noticeably different from those which fit English lines.  I suppose I should have been grateful that at least the words were English, but would it be too difficult to reset the tunes - as most other Protestant hymnals have done - to suit the different flow of words?  This is however a highly technical complaint, and not one which holds that much water in light of the rampant banality, not to say occasional stupidity, of many modern compositions spread widely throughout my own Reformed circles.

Once again, I wander fairly far afield.  The crux of the matter, brought home to me this weekend, is that maybe I do not care.

Does this sound strange?  Most people who know me know I am Christian; the rest probably assume so correctly.  I periodically - as now - discuss matters of the Faith here and elsewhere in public.  I can defend my faith, as Peter commanded, both as a Christian generally (all the way to the details of forcing talk of presuppositions) and as to my particular denominational choice (though less certainly here - for example, I have no significant attachment to and only slightly more defense for presbyterianism as currently practiced and taught as a system, Biblical or otherwise, for governing the church) and I do so, when occasion has arisen.

My friend's father remarked - I summarize - that he had been thoroughly impressed, though not a Catholic himself, with the zeal of my friend's friends for Christ.  Myself?

Well, I have some knowledge; a certain confidence; assurance - one might suspect self-assurance, I suppose; but not so much any burning energy.  I have a certain amount of self-discipline even with regards to my religious devotions; but I do not go out of my way to be conspicuous; rather the opposite.  Praying in the closet comes far more naturally to me than taking the pains to make sure my actions will cause others to glorify the Father.

Again, on my own denominational particulars, I accept what I have been taught to accept, but not always with the confidence of complete understanding.  Consider the acronymic summary of the Reformed confessions: the TULIP.  I rather suspect flaws in some arguments for limited atonement; yet those flaws depend on phrasing.  Is it the extent (as some would have it) of the atonement achieved that is limited?  This seems to fly flat in the face of Scripture's proclamation of redemption and love for the world.  Or is it (as others would say) the application that is (or will be, or has been - tenses melt in the face of eternity) limited? - this much at least seems undeniable in light of the testament the Word bears to the goats and reprobates.  And then what is the functional difference?  I illustrate: I could produce a similar contrast or dilemma in interpretation for each point, and then go on to consider problems posed by the phrasing of the formal confessions and catechisms.  I am tempted to believe that the majority of schisms in the Church over the years have been caused by such too-quibbling confrontations over various parties' attempts to explain the ineffable - but then there are battles that needed to be fought, as well, and who am I to draw the line?

On the other hand, in that I try to stand away from public debate on doubtful points. who is to say I am taking a wrong part?  Given my uncertainties, would adding "zeal" do any good?  Lewis writes, in various places, that he did not consider himself one to address any difficult points of the faith - even going so far as to avoid writing at all on subjects he had no knowledge of or temptations he had not experienced.  For me, the state of affairs is such that I simply have no opinion, or only the most guarded of opinions, on many of a wide range of topics.  The Nicene Creed I can defend in detail; an inquisitor refuting the Westminster Confession would find me rather more short-handed in apology.  Should I put in the effort to study further - or simply trusting God accept that I am not called as a theologian and put myself under the teaching of those who sit, as it were, in Moses' seat?  Or both?  The danger to me seems rather to be charging off in approximately the wrong direction - or am I simply too cautious, held back by my own habits and character?

Liturgy, and All That Jazz

Here at Alexandria Presbyterian Church (located, unsurprisingly, in Alexandria, Virginia), it was decided – I feel the passive justified as I do not know who made the decision – that on this coming Sunday, as it will be Christmas day, the service would be held in the evening.  Similar decisions have no doubt been made elsewhere.

I am of two minds.  The latent liturgicist within me protests that this is not a thing which is appropriate: that a piece of existence as important as the worship of the Lord by his saints should not be moved lightly aside to make way for other things, no matter how important, like family, in earthly terms – and goes on further to suggest that on Christmas of all days corporate worship should be not just present but a priority, as we find it on Easter Sunday.

The Hidebound Protestant, on the other hand, drags out dusty verses (or actually not that dusty, unless we go looking for one of the translations I have but do not use regularly) about not being bound to observe days, and the Sabbath being made for man: if in fact it is more convenient for the people of God to gather at an unusual time for one week out of the year (or even to skip services altogether, as happens occasionally when forced by blizzards, floods, fires, wars, and other disasters), why should there be anything wrong with that?

When I moved to Alexandria, I attended for several months at the Lutheran church one of my roommates attends, for various reasons: convenience, some misconceptions about APC (gathered I am not sure how), and some misgivings about Presbyterian polity (which still exist, but currently seem less important at the moment).  Immanuel celebrates an extremely high church service, which I found beautiful: but when after that I first went to APC, I found myself actually welcoming the praise choruses I tend to make fun of.

Mind you, I still make fun of them: musically speaking, they are most often not good.  The lyrics are often, even mainly, insipid.  But what they unquestionably are, at the very least by contrast, is joyful, emotional, expressive.  I am not exactly complaining about the liturgy of the Lutheran church in itself (although I found the hymns settings still jarringly Germanic); I found the service insistent, in a way often forgotten in other churches' presentations of worship, on the grace of God; but with this insistence there also seems to come a division.

The visual example may be the clearest: Immanuel has a rail around the communion table, and calls that table an altar; APC has no rail, and calls it a table.  Bearing in mind that at Christ's death the curtain protecting the Ark itself – God's presence – was torn, there seems no question to me which more accurately represents how God would have us approach him.  (As an aside, I have been reading lately on the history of the early church and find it strange how quickly the church "progressed" from the Ethiopian eunuch's "why should I not be baptized" to requiring months and years before new converts (or repentant heretics) were brought completely into the fold: this desire to "protect the altar" (my phrase) is hardly a new problem for Christianity.)

If then we live not just "under" grace (as before under the law), but in Christ we live in and by grace – go ahead, move the service.  I can find no harm in it.

Science and the Fine Art (of Making Distinctions)

A friend on facebook linked this article today. Like most articles, it has its good and bad points. To the good, it points out that a Christian rejection of reason and science is a bad idea – unfortunately, I am naturally a critic, so I want to talk more about its bad points.

And the bad point is basically this: most Christians don't reject science, and are of all religions the most especially relation on rational arguments. True the premises we accept may differ from the secular mainstream, but premises have to be false to invalidate an argument. The question of falsehood is most notoriously not settled.

Anyway, Dr. Giberson makes a striking error when he offers up as evidence that "fundamentalists" refuse to believe in evolution and global warming. We'll take the latter first, because it's an easier target. To deny global warming is not to in any way disregard science: the peer pressure applied and lies perpetrated to keep up the climate change 'hype' are well-documented, if conveniently forgotten: Forbes (the magazine) on the subject; FOX on a fraudulent experiment; the BBC on how models don't match reality. And then there's the bit where thirty or forty years ago the whole "little ice age" theory was the new big thing. Man-made climate change could be true anyway, of course, but it's not like there's no debate.

And evolution? At least there pretty much is a scientific consensus here. And yes, most people who disagree are religiously motivated – though most of them take good care to find some sort of scientific basis as well (e.g. Ham and ICR's positing that much of the upheaval credited to several million years of existence could also be explained by global flood conditions). At the same time, I'm automatically suspicious of anybody claiming to know what happened 17 million years ago, especially when it might actually be 3 million or 50 million depending what the current "evidence" suggests. I don't say these conclusions are necessarily wrong: but I don't care much, not least because I don't have the expertise to evaluate the claims myself. At the same time, we don't have much but circumstantial evidence on the question. To be facetious, "God said so" seems like just as good a reason to me as "these little rocks say so" when we're talking about things I'll never actually experience myself.

Which is all to say, rejection of evolution or global warming (or other dangerously accepted idea that may not have sufficient backing) is not a rejection of reason. In fact, if anything, it's not much more than a hyper-skepticism, which I thought was supposed to be a good thing. Imagine a conversation: "This skeleton is 250,000 years old." "How do you know?" "Well the carbon here decays..." "How do you know?" "Well we've determined in a lab that..." "Okay, but this wasn't in a lab. What if something changed?" "Well we're assuming nothing major changed." "...For two hundred fifty thousand years? NOTHING major changed in two hundred fifty thousand years?" "...uh, yeah?" (Off the top of my head, wouldn't industrialization over the last two hundred years or so have changed "natural" carbon levels and stuff? Again, I'm not making a decision here on the validity of current scientific research, and I'm well aware that I'm oversimplifying drastically – I'm just pointing out that skepticism may not be entirely out of order.)

Finally, if "everyone knows" something's true... Galileo was wrong. Even if the YECs are off their collective rockers, they're at least a challenge to the scientific establishment, and answering them ought to both prove a valuable exercise and solidify the evidence further, right? Ignoring them does nothing except create ideological martyrs (if they ever get noticed at all, at least).

In other words, the worst you can accuse a Christian skeptic of, say, abiogenesis of is hypocrisy. "So you trust a book you've been told by 'experts' is divine, but you won't trust a bone 'experts' say is a million years old." But you always have to choose which authorities to trust: Hayek or Keynes? Your dad or your friends?

A Reformed Sticking Point

Reformed churches are mostly fiercely dedicated to remaining with and in the Word of God.  This is commendable.  This dedication does however often extend to insisting on a necessity of preserving in all cases the exact wording of professedly uninspired documents.  We might call this linguistic legalism.  As an example, I want to comment on this condemnation issued by certain Pastors Bayly.  I do not have anything against their words of warning for those who try to use the Gospel 'for profit' (though St. Paul's other commentary on envious preachers comes to mind as a counter-warning against taking such condemnations too far).

But at the end of their pronouncement, the Baylys leave the realm of reasonable warnings.  They accuse Pastor T.D. Jakes – one of those preaching for gain, in their accounting (at least a plausible accusation, given the tone of his ministry's website) – of heresy.  How so?  On the basis of this statement:

"There is one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in three manifestations: Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

The offending word is "manifestations", with its overtones of the various kinds of essentially gnostic heresies throughout the church's history.  The Baylys particularly identify Jakes with the Modalists (that link is original to BaylyBlog: the possible irony of their using a Roman Catholic webcyclopedia amuses me).

To be sure, "manifestations" is not the accepted term "persons" used in the Western translations of the Church's creeds.  And as mentioned, to the historically literate Christian it has unfortunate overtones.  But the charge of heresy is concocted entirely on that poor word choice, with no regard for the rest of the statement.  Take for instance

"Further, [Jesus Christ] arose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, where, at the right hand of the Majesty on High, He is now our High Priest and Advocate."

and

"The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ..." (emphases mine)

Both these statements accept, even emphasize, even require the traditional and orthodox doctrine of the separate persons of the Trinity.  Nowhere does Jakes' church veer into clear heresy (at least on that score) in their statement.  The charge is ludicrous – and making it worse is that searching for departures from orthodoxy within the ministry of The Potter's House is easy: the Baylys might have started, say, in the church's inclusion of female pastors.  Instead, they appear to be clutching carelessly at any straw of accusation they can find.  That's careless rhetoric, if nothing else, but often is the hallmark of personal attacks – which I doubt either Bayly had in mind at all, but again is an appearance to avoid if possible, for rhetorical reasons if nothing else.

I might have just dismissed the post out of hand and ignored it, but I had been reading earlier today in Henry Osborn Taylor's The Medieval Mind, where in a footnote to an account of Patristic discussions he has this to say:

"... The Latin juristic word persona [is] used in the Creed.  The Latins had to render the hypostaseis of the Greeks; and "three somethings," tria quaedam, was too loose.... hypostasis would have been substantia; but that word had been taken to render ousia.  So the legal word persona was employed in spite of its recognized unfitness." (Chapter III, note 1)

Hypostasis might literally be translated an "under-standing-ness", or more colloquially a thing which stands by itself (while supporting another), thus translations such as "foundation", "substance" (derived from the Latin word with the same literal meaning as the Greek), and the philosophical sense of the English "essence".  Yes, even the "somethings" of quaedam are more definite, more material than Jakes' "manifestations", to say nothing of substantia, Taylor's (and by his account the Church Fathers') preferred word if had been possible.  But we have to recognize that persona – meaning legally approximately the same thing to a Roman that "persons" now does to us, I believe – is itself an approximation, and that makes the charge look even sillier.  "Manifestation" is a poor choice, given that it carries a connotation of appearance only – but none of us are perfect, and perhaps a friendly letter, rather than flinging down a gauntlet?

On the "Christian Nation"

Let's say there is a person who knows the Absolute Truth about how the world should be run. Let's say he thinks he has a good chance to shape the world – or at least his own town, state (or province), country – in that image. Let's say that he believes even if he can't accomplish his own goals entirely, his efforts will at least yield an improvement.

The above paragraph describes everyone who has honestly held a political opinion, ever. Everyone. Ever. Can we accept that much?

Now a favorite modern bogey-man is the idea that the "far right wing of American politics", whatever it calls itself at the moment and whatever it says its goals are, wants to impose a "Christian nation" scenario on the United States. In this rhetoric, the phrase "Christian nation" suggests, not merely that the nation as constituted pursue morals and policies consistent with a Christian ethos (which, for the record, is what most Christians in politics want, and the majority would likely be satisfied even with a consistent natural law ethic), but that the "Christian vote" wants to reconstitute America as a direct theocracy – or at best, a caricatured medieval-style polity where the church says what goes.

On any consideration, that caricature falls to pieces. Even the most hide-bound traditionalist Christian recognizes that this goal – even if any significant number actually have this goal – would falter on the simplest question of, "Which church?" The 1st Amendment was written to prevent that sort of authoritarianism. What the First Amendment doesn't say, however, is that an opinion is politically invalid just because it is religiously based. In fact, it protects the right to express your opinion: and bearing in mind the time period of writing, we have to realize that what the Founders were primarily protecting was religious, and religious political expression. Even if there were a vast conspiracy of loonies proposing to establish the rules of order of the Southern Baptist Church (or whatever) as the law of the land, they're completely allowed to say so: just vote them down.

As I mentioned, however, that's not what anyone – okay, almost anyone – is proposing. Politically active Christians, like anyone else who applies their beliefs to politics, think that their ideas are the best ones to put into practice. At the same time, almost all Christian politicians – it might even be fair to say especially Christian politicians – believe in working with the system of government as it is. If this means political movements largely made up of Christians want a "Christian nation" then we have to apply the same logic to other movements. Liberals want a "liberal nation". Neo-cons want a "Neocon nation". And so on and so forth. Communists want a "Communist nation".

If the ideas these groups advocate are goofy ideas, expose them as goofy ideas. If Christian ethics are goofy – I obviously think they're not, but then I'm Christian – then attack the ideas of the Christian ethics themselves. Debunk Christianity and its morals, if you can. But don't act as though it's ludicrous that Christians think Christian ethics are good for everybody: that's a logical fallacy from the ad hominem family. "Christians want an essentially Christian law code," is neither news nor a good reason to vote for or against such a code, any more than, "Homosexuals want a sexually free law code," is unusual or reason to vote one way or another on the subject.