Libertine Legalists

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(This is an excerpt from a thesis chapter I am drafting, “Richard Hooker and the Freedom of the Christian Commonwealth”–it explores the paradoxically libertine yet legalist implications of the Puritan rejection of human authority)

For Hooker, the problem with Puritanism is a warped doctrine of Christian liberty which will assuredly destroy the liberty of the Church (and along with it, the State and the individual).  As we have seen already, the doctrine of Christian liberty declared that Scripture alone had authority over the conscience, and that therefore, no other authority outside Scripture could bind the believer.  Given the original thrust of this doctrine as a weapon against papal authority, it is no wonder that it should tend to abridge the liberty of the Church, pitting against it the freedom of the individual and the authority of Scripture.  Rightly qualified, of course, this exclusive authority of Scripture applied only in matters of faith and salvation, in “the spiritual kingdom” into which, by definition, no man could reach, and the doctrine did not need to pose any threat to suitably humble human institutions.  But as the Puritans had made Church discipline and ceremonies to be matters of faith and salvation, a clash was inevitable.  

The problem this posed for the Church of England is revealed in a fascinating passage in Book V, chaper 71, where Hooker, discussing the particular case of the Church’s power to command holy days, takes the opportunity to unfold the alarming implications of Puritan biblicism:

“It is not they saie in the power of the Church to commande rest because God hath left it to all men at libertie that if they thinke good to bestow six whole daies in labor they may, neither is it more lawfull for the Church to abridg anie man of that libertie which God hath graunted, then to take awaie the yoke which God hath laid upon them and to countermande what he doth expreslie injoigne.  But without some expresse commaundement from God there is no power they saie under heaven which may presume by any decree to restraine the libertie that God hath given.  Which opinion, albeit applied here no farther then to this present cause, shaketh universallie the fabrick of government, tendeth to anarchie and meere confusion, dissolveth families, dissipateth colleges, corporations, armies, overthroweth kingdomes Churches and whatsoever is now through the providence of God by authoritie and power upheld.  For whereas God hath foreprised thinges of the greatest waight, and hath therein precisely defined as well that which every man must perform, as that which no man maie attempt, leaving all sortes of men in the rest either to be guided by their owne good discretion if they be free from subjection to others, or els to be ordered by such commaundementes and lawes as proceed from those superiors under whome they live, the patrons of libertie have heere made sollemne proclamation that all such lawes and commandementes are voide, in as much as everie man is left to the freedom of his owne minde in such thinges as are not either exacted or prohibited by the law of God, and because onlie in these thinges the positive preceptes of men have place, which preceptes cannot possiblie be given without some abridgment of theire libertie to whome they are given, therefore if the father commaund the sonne, or the husband the wife, or the Lord the servant, or the Leader the souldier, or the Prince the subject to goe or stand, sleepe or wake at such times as God him selfe in particular commaundeth neither, they are to stande in defense of the freedom which God hath graunted and to doe as them selves list, knowing that men maie as lawfullie comaunde them thinges utterly forbidden by the law of God, as tye them to any thinge which the law of God leaveth free.  The plaine contradictorie whereunto is unfalliblie certaine.  Those thinges which the Law of God leaveth arbitrarie and at libertie are all subject unto possitive lawes of men, which lawes for the common benefit abridg particular mens libertie in such thinges as farre as the rules of equitie will suffer.  This wee must either maineteine or els overturne the world and make everie man his own commander.”

Here Hooker attributes to the Puritans the claim that, in all matters on which Scripture is silent, the individual is left free, and human authority cannot claim to interpose itself.  Although not explicitly stated, the comparison with Anabaptism, which was a standard of conformist polemics and which makes an open appearance several times in the Lawes, is clear enough.  The Puritans would have vociferously denied it, to be sure, and with good reason–they certainly held that the magistrate, in properly “civil” matters, could bind by positive law on matters which Scripture left at liberty.

  Nonetheless, when it came to “spiritual” matters, and the public order of the Church, many Puritans certainly held something like what Hooker attributes to them here–and since Hooker will argue that laws of ecclesiastical polity are of the same nature as civil polity, he is not unfair in here drawing out the Anabaptistic implications of their doctrine.

 

Clearly, however, this apparent libertinism was not incompatible with the starkest legalism.  It is this latter which Hooker is seeking to combat in III.11.  In the Admonition Controversy, Cartwright had argued that if God had given through Moses a thorough constitution for the people of Israel, then how could he omit this gift to the much greater new Israel, the Church of Christ?  The more laws given, the more blessed, reasoned Cartwright, so we must assume that Christ gave to the Church more and stricter laws than ever Moses gave to Israel.

When Whitgift objected that on the contrary, it appeared that the opposite was the case–whereas the political organization of Israel was strictly determined, little or nothing was said of civil matters in the New Testament, Cartwright retorted that 

“the leaving of us at greater libertie in things civill is so farre from proving the like libertie in things pertaining to the kingdome of heaven, that it rather proves a streighter bond.  For even as when the Lord would have his favour more appeare by temporall blessings of this life towards the people under the Lawe then towards us, he gave also politique lawes most exactlie . . . so his care for conduct and government of the life to come, should (if it were possible) rise, in leaving lesse to the order of men then in times past.” (255)

Since divinely-given law is the key to receiving blessings, then just the temporal blessings of Israel’s commonwealth were provided for by detailed divine law, so the spiritual blessings of the Church cannot come except by detailed laws.

Hooker responds by refusing to accept Cartwright’s presupposition that God must have blessed the Church with detailed laws, insisting on the simple empirical fact that he didn’t: “it is manifest that our Lord and Saviour hath not by positive laws descended so far into particularities with us as Moses with them . . . [therefore] to us there should be freedom and liberty granted to make laws.”  Here then it is Hooker arguing that we are “left at liberty” when Scripture is silent; only the liberty is that of an institution to make laws, not of an individual to be free from law. 

The strange dynamic between legalism and libertinism that Hooker identifies in Puritanism was a recurrent one in various forms of radical Reformation movements.  On the one hand, the Puritan platform asserts the absolute authority and massive scope of Biblical law, regulating in detail the conduct of a believer and leaving him, it would seem, very little liberty before God.  On the other hand, so all-encompassing is this divine law that it muscles out of the way all other forms of authority–since it leaves no matter in need of legislation untouched, we are to assume that no further legislation is permissible where it does not speak.  The believer is thus left a great deal of liberty before man.  By failing to distinguish the different planes on which divine and human authority operate, so that freedom of conscience before the one can coexist with bondage before the latter, the Puritan has imagined the two to be competing for territory on the same plane, necessarily in conflict, and with the latter sure to give way before the superior claims of the former.  Thus the assertion of Christian liberty strikes directly at the foundation of institutional liberty.

On the contrary, says Hooker, those things left uncommanded by divine law, being matters of adiaphora, are grants of liberty to political societies to frame positive laws “for the common benefit,” not chains restricting them from any legislation.  If we do not say this, then nothing is left to the authority of such institutions, but all to the individual or to Scripture.

The result of this, Hooker is convinced, will be the crippling of any capacity for corporate action and hence the destruction of society. 

Two Faces, Two Kingdoms

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Each time I read through C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece, Till We Have Faces, I’m struck by some new layer of meaning, some new profound insight, and this latest (fifth, I think) time was no exception.  One of the most emotionally wrenching and mentally jarring moments in the book comes on the very last page, the only bit not written from the perspective of Orual.  “I, Arnom, priest of Aphrodite, saved this roll and put it in the temple.  From the markings after the word might, we think the Queen’s head must have fallen forward on them as she died and we cannot read them.  This book was written by Queen Orual of Glome, who was the most wise, just, valiant, fortunate, and merciful of all the princes known in our parts of the world….”

On their own, there is nothing particularly arresting about these words.  However, to any reader who has traversed the pages of this book, following Orual on her psychological journey of love, hate, envy, insecurity, and pettiness, these words come like a splash of cold water on the face.  This is the same Orual who has been consumed, up till the final days of her life, with jealousy and self-love, who is Ungit, the embodiment of sin and ugliness, devouring everyone around her: “It was I who was Ungit.  That ruinous face was mine.  I was that Batta-thing, that all-devouring womblike, yet barren, thing.  Glome was a web–I the swollen spider, squat at its centre, gorged with men’s stolen lives.”

How can she be simultaneously the embodiment of wickedness and yet praised by her subjects as “the most wise, just, valiant, fortunate, and merciful”?   Read More

Two Faces, Two Kingdoms

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Each time I read through C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece, Till We Have Faces, I’m struck by some new layer of meaning, some new profound insight, and this latest (fifth, I think) time was no exception.  One of the most emotionally wrenching and mentally jarring moments in the book comes on the very last page, the only bit not written from the perspective of Orual.  “I, Arnom, priest of Aphrodite, saved this roll and put it in the temple.  From the markings after the word might, we think the Queen’s head must have fallen forward on them as she died and we cannot read them.  This book was written by Queen Orual of Glome, who was the most wise, just, valiant, fortunate, and merciful of all the princes known in our parts of the world….”

On their own, there is nothing particularly arresting about these words.  However, to any reader who has traversed the pages of this book, following Orual on her psychological journey of love, hate, envy, insecurity, and pettiness, these words come like a splash of cold water on the face.  This is the same Orual who has been consumed, up till the final days of her life, with jealousy and self-love, who is Ungit, the embodiment of sin and ugliness, devouring everyone around her: “It was I who was Ungit.  That ruinous face was mine.  I was that Batta-thing, that all-devouring womblike, yet barren, thing.  Glome was a web–I the swollen spider, squat at its centre, gorged with men’s stolen lives.” 

How can she be simultaneously the embodiment of wickedness and yet praised by her subjects as “the most wise, just, valiant, fortunate, and merciful”?  

 

In this story, I think that Lewis has eloquently and beautifully portrayed what the Reformers meant when they spoke of the two kingdoms in man, the distinction between civil justice and true justice.  Often the Reformers’ conception of total depravity sounds strange and harsh to us.  Luther will say things like “Even just and pious men, whose justice might be found pure outside God’s judgment in the realm of mercy, are in his His judgment not at all helped by this justice but are equal to the last and most vile sinners.”  Even our best works, he insists, are sins apart from Christ.  How can Luther speak like this, we wonder?  It is not just that he says that our good works cannot save us–he says that they are not even good.  If a man practices justice, surely that counts for something?  Surely it is better than committing injustice.  

Luther goes on to endorse the importance of justice in the civil kingdom, but separates this entirely from justice in the spiritual kingdom.  Any pagan, he says, can be just in the civil kingdom, just as much as any Christian.  But this justice, whether pagan or Christian, however appreciated it may be in the eyes of men, counts for nothing coram Deo.  Surely this is an unhelpful dichotomy, we say.  If God’s standard of justice bears no resemblance to what we humans recognise as justice, doesn’t this make God’s justice arbitrary?  

 

Lewis’s narrative, however, powerfully explains Luther’s logic.  We each have two faces–the face which we show toward the world, and the face that only God sees, unless he enables us to see it for ourselves.  Too often, our most loving actions toward other people turn out to be, as Orual realises, “a love that can grow to be nine-tenths hatred and still call itself love”–a love that devours and consumes others in its self-love.  Our best works of justice and mercy, our labours for the common good, turn out to be only distractions by which we seek to escape from the emptiness within us: 

“What did I not do?  I had all the laws revised and cut in stone in the centre of the city.  I narrowed and deepened the Shennit till barges could come up to our gates.  I made a bridge where the old ford had been. . . . I did and I did and I did–and what does it matter what I did?  I cared for all these things only as a man cares for a hunt or a game, which fills the mind and seems of some moment while it lasts, but then the beast’s killed or the king’s mated, and now who cares?  It was so with me almost every evening of my life; one little stairway led me from feast or council, all the bustle and skill and glory of queenship, to my own chamber to be alone with myself–that is, with a nothingness.”  

 

This darkness in our souls renders, from the eternal perspective, all the good works which we do outwardly worthless.  But of course, that is not Lewis’s (or Luther’s) final word.  We ought not think therefore that civil justice is pointless or meaningless. It does nothing for the person doing it, perhaps, if their soul is dark, but it does much for others.  Arnom meant it when he penned those words with grief, “the most wise, just, valiant, fortunate, and merciful of all the princes known in our parts of the world….”  Part of Lewis’s point, I think, is to remind us how much good is done in the world by people whose souls are consumed with rottenness within, how many, no doubt, of our great heroes and saints were men and women who would be ashamed for us ever to read the journal of their inner thoughts.  And this can be a comfort to us, deeply mindful of our own sin and twistedness–that God works through broken vessels, through warped instruments, to accomplish good for his creatures upon earth.  Remembering this profound distinction between these two faces, these two justices, these two kingdoms, can teach us to appreciate outward justice where it may be found, not demanding of it an inward perfection, but neither putting too much trust in it, forgetful of the darkness that lies deep within each of us.

PS: Apologies to those who have been having trouble accessing the site, or their RSS feeds, in the past couple days.  I myself have been blocked from it several times.  Hopefully Squarespace will get their act together soon.

Wells Cathedral

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One of England’s smallest cathedrals (“only” 383 feet long and 82 feet wide–135 in the transepts) but also one of its most perfect, most charming, and most beloved, Wells was the only cathedral where we were able to attend Sunday worship–a fantastic and vibrant service, with a remarkably fine sermon.  We returned Tuesday to photograph it properly.  It was not hard to see why so many cathedral aficionados speak with such reverence of Wells.

 

Its great claim to fame, of course, are its elegant scissor arches, added to help shore up the collapsing central tower, but fitting in perfectly with the overall design.  There are three of them in total, one on each transept and one at the end of the nave, making the crossing of Wells Cathedral among the most enchanting architectural spaces I have ever been in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cosy size of Wells Cathedral makes it much easier to appreciate all at once for the visitor, but poses challenges for photography.  Only in the nave can one get the long wide vistas that makes the English cathedrals so photogenic.

 

 

Another of the cathedral’s lovely idiosyncrasies is the “forest of pillars” behind the quire.

 

Finally, on the outside, Wells Cathedral boasts an arresting and unique west front, sporting fully 300 medieval statues, the largest surviving collection in England.  Although unable to surpass Salisbury for sheer dazzling beauty and elegance, Wells found a special place in my heart as well, as one of England’s warmest, most inviting cathedrals.

 

And that wraps up this series of posts at last!  We also visited some other amazing examples of church architecture, both perfectly-preserved (King’s College Chapel, Bath Abbey) and ruined (Tintern Abbey, Glastonbury Abbey), but I think six posts is enough for now.

 

Updates, Kindling, and Creation

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Just a few notes for regular readers:

First, for the first time in six months, I have updated the Projects page of this blog, rectifying a number of frightful anachronisms.  Most of the changes are fairly minor updates, but one long-dormant project has been swept off the stage to make room for an exciting newly-hatched one.  Let me emphasize again that if you have interests in any of the areas described in these projects, I would love to hear from you and profit from your input.  The second project, the Mercersburg Theology Study Series, is at last nearing a significant milestone, as the first volume nears completion and we prepare to launch a website–a one-stop shop for all things Mercersburg.  Stay tuned for that.  In the meantime —

— Second, my book, The Mercersburg Theology and the Quest for Reformed Catholicity, is now available on Kindle!  So if you’re an avid e-reader who’s interested in an idiosyncratic and unstable mix of Reformed theology, Hegelianism, and Anglo-Catholicism, go check it out! 😉

Third, my bandwidth-devouring series on English cathedrals that I visited last month will be drawing to an end with the lovely Wells Cathedral tomorrow, and I’ll at last begin posting the long-promised series from my friend, Brad Belschner, on Creation and Evolution (delayed till now due to the unfortunate theft of his laptop), which will give me the opportunity to focus almost wholly on some writing deadlines–though I’ll probably intersperse some themes of my own on familiar themes while the Creation series is ongoing.