The Perilous Business of Pastoring

3 Comments

I am grateful to Doug Wilson for his thoughtful response to my post yesterday on the matter of binding consciences. It offered a good opportunity, I think, to move the conversation forward in clarifying the central issues at stake, both for the purposes of the present kerfluffle and any others that might arise. I agree with almost everything he has to say at the level of principle, and my only concerns lie with how one might apply these principles to particular issues of controversial preaching and teaching.

But first, let me clear up two possible confusions.

First, let the record show that my essay was not intended primarily as “a contribution to the great pink hair discussion,” so much as an attempt to clarify some principles that underlie both it and a number of other discussions ongoing at Trinity Reformed Church about preaching, good hermeneutics, conscience binding, and Christian liberty. For myself, I must confess, I am probably a 9 out of 10 on the troglodyte scale when it comes to matters such as pink hair, piercings, yoga pants, and the rest, and were I a pastor, I would no doubt have to be restrained often by my dear wife from venting my huffy opinions on such subjects. That she ought to so restrain me, more often than not, I will proceed to fortify with arguments below. Read More

On Binding Consciences: The Word of God and the Words of Man

1 Comment

It’s tough being a pastor. I know because I’ve never dared try, but I’ve watched others try. Sure, you can always avoid preaching on anything so concrete and close to home as to ruffle any feathers, and some ministers have perfected the art of doing so for years on end. But as soon as he takes seriously his task as a shepherd of souls, the minister is likely to hear howls of indignation raised—he is a legalist, a killjoy, binding consciences and trampling on Christian liberty. Or perhaps, depending on his congregation, he may find himself accused of being a softie or an antinomian, refusing to man up and speak uncompromisingly to our culture.

Nor can the pastor take refuge in saying that his task is simply to proclaim the gospel. For the good news is, as Oliver O’Donovan has said, a “demanding comfort,”[1] and the task of pastoring means knowing how to apply both demand and comfort to the concrete lives of his flock, which will necessarily take the pastor beyond Scripture—if not its spirit, certainly its letter. To preach and pastor effectively, the minister must be waist-deep in the stuff of everyday life, the myriad personal, social, political, and cultural challenges that confront his congregation and that at every point draw them closer to or drag them further from the face of God. And Scripture, it must be said, does not address modern challenges like home mortgages or legalized gay marriage as such—obviously, it does address debt and sexuality, but these specific challenges that confront us, in all their concrete particularity and novelty, are not in view in the biblical text.

Or to put it another way: one task of the pastor is to name and confront sin in the lives of his congregants, but while sin resides in the heart, all he has to go on is behavior. In a few rare cases, a behavior is so unavoidably and automatically sinful that he does not have to see the heart to name it as sin; there is no innocent way to murder or commit fornication. But even here, some knowledge of circumstances is necessary—after all, if the man with the gun is an officer pursuing a dangerous criminal, he may not be guilty of murder, and if the man making love with the woman has secretly married her, it is not fornication. As we move beyond such non-negotiable norms as murder and adultery, these qualifications proliferate, so that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends greatly on circumstances, or intentions, or both. To be sure, Jesus says that “You shall know them by their fruit,” and someone’s outward actions may strongly suggest that something is not right within, but even where we feel reasonably confident making this judgment in the case of one individual we know well, it becomes much harder to universalize it. And when a pastor preaches or writes, he must name and rebuke sins in general; he cannot pause mid-sermon and say, “Now, in your case, Jimmy, this means that you are sinning whenever you do this, but given your different circumstances, Tammi, I’m not worried about your conduct here.”

Read More

Why We Fast (or Don’t, as the Case May Be)

2 Comments

With their newfound appreciation of liturgy and tradition, many Protestants (me included) have rushed headlong into taking up the observance of Lent—ashes, wearing black, fasting, the whole nine yards.  Such a rush to tradition runs the risk of being a mere fleeting aesthetic choice in the consumerized religious marketplace, or of fetishizing such observances as cool just because they’re “old” and “traditional.”  Even for the well-intentioned, there is a danger that, lacking any communal tradition of fasting, they will take it up without much sense of exactly what it’s supposed to accomplish.  In response, other Protestants, slightly slower to wade into the frothy liturgical hot-tub, wring their hands with old worries about superstition, Pharisaism, and self-righteousness, and wonder if fasting isn’t a bad idea altogether.  

So the pastors of the CREC, in preparing an excellent booklet of Lenten devotions for use in their churches, felt compelled to preface the booklet with a skeptical warning against Lenten fasting, particularly the common practice of “partial fasts,” when people give up something particular like meat, or alcohol, or of course chocolate.  (The document is unclear whether fasting entirely from food for short spells of time, such as a day of the week, during Lent, is likewise to be condemned.)  Lent, they emphasize is supposed to be about penitence, about giving up sin, rather than giving up fun.  So I thought it might be helpful to reflect for a bit on why we might fast (partially or otherwise) and what might be gained from it.

The first thing to be emphasized is that Lenten fasting is a matter of sanctification, not justification.  That might seem obvious, but it’s worth emphasizing.  Protestants have insisted forcefully that fasting is not a way of earning merit in God’s eyes; we don’t do it for His benefit, but for our own benefit.  There is thus no ground for self-righteousness; on the contrary, fasting is an act of humility, an acknowledgment that you have a long way to go in becoming righteous, and that’s why it might be helpful to fast.  Moreover, while some matters of sanctification are categorical—every Christian must seek the sanctification that is to be found in weekly worship and sacraments—others are adiaphorous, and fasting is most certainly one of the latter.  That means, it might help you, it might not.  It might help at certain times, but not at others.  It might help in certain ways, but not in others.  There is no one right way you have to fast.  It is most certainly a matter of Christian liberty, and so we should be relaxed about it, not uptight about it.  Now, to be sure, a church or group of churches can decide to call on its members to all observe a particular fast at a particular time, often as a way of offering a public witness of repentance for corporate sin—although very few churches do so anymore.  When this is the case it may be most edifying for everyone to go along with it (although no one’s conscience is bound).  Aside from such cases, I’m not inclined to think that a decreed fast is a very good idea; this is one area where it seems that internal Christian liberty should generally be allowed external expression.  So while I think it may be helpful for churches to create a culture in which Lenten fasts are encouraged and supported, they should also encourage people to feel at liberty, each mindful of their own physical and spiritual needs.

Under this heading, I think I should perhaps offer a bit of an apologia for letting one’s fast be known. Much of the hand-wringing that I see among Protestants about Lenten fasts derives from an overly literal reading of Jesus’s exhortation to fast in secret.  We forget that in that same passage, Jesus speaks also of the need to pray in secret, and yet most of us have not thereby renounced public or family prayer, or shied away from ever telling anyone else that we were going to pray.  Jesus’s point is to discourage ostentatious personal displays of fasting that seek to call attention to one’s own holiness.  It should be obvious that, in a setting where Lenten fasting is the norm, it’s quite a casual matter to mention one’s fasting, without any hint of self-righteousness (just as there’s no self-righteousness in praying publicly at a prayer meeting where everyone’s expected to do so).  Indeed, it is often helpful to the broader community of believers for everyone to be upfront about their fasts.  If I am giving up meat or alcohol, it can quickly create awkwardness when I start turning down offered food and drink at social occasions, or avoiding such social occasions altogether, if no explanation has been given.  Of course, given that many of us do not occupy social circles in which such fasting is simply expected, we do face the temptation that we announce our fasts as a way of showing that we are part of the cool club of liturgically-minded people that do such things.  That’s something to be on guard against, to be sure, but we needn’t freak out automatically at any public mention of fasting.

A second thing to emphasize is that, if the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, all the more so for Lent.  It’s a human tradition, which may be edifying, but isn’t automatically.  If you’re sick, or you’re pregnant, or you’re malnourished, fasting doesn’t make much sense.  If you haven’t seen your wife in awhile, and Valentine’s Day is two days into Lent, and you want to treat her to a really nice meal and a bottle of wine, then let Lent wait, for Pete’s sake!  Legalism is a genuine danger, and the best way to avoid it is to hold traditions like Lenten fasting very lightly.  If you really think you need to cultivate self-discipline, then maybe you need to be kinda strict with yourself, but if there’s a good reason to make an exception (say your buddy just graduated and you want to take him out to celebrate), then make an exception!  And of course, one thing this means is that, if fasting isn’t helpful for you, if you find yourself just doing it because other people are doing it, or because you think you’re supposed to get some spiritual benefit that doesn’t seem to be coming, then don’t!  There are many many great ways to observe Lent.

Which leads to the third point—of course, fasting is just supposed to be one small part of  the picture.  The Lenten exhortation invites us “to observe a Holy Lent, by self-examination and penitence, by prayer and fasting, by practicing works of love, and by reading and reflecting on God’s Holy Word.”  If your Lent consists of giving up Godiva chocolate and that’s it, then you probably have, as the CREC booklet worries, missed the point.  All of the other things listed here are more important than fasting itself, though fasting can be helpfully combined with each of these, as I shall outline below.

So, these three prolegomenal points having been made, what are some things that might be gained in this day and age from fasting, and yea, from partial fasting?

Let’s work from the words of imposition used in the Ash Wednesday service: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Turn away from evil, and follow Christ.”  

Remember that you are dust…

As I have argued in the past, one of the most valuable uses of the Lenten discipline of fasting can be, quite simply, to remind us that we have bodies, and to remind us of their limitations.  Ironically, in our materialistic age, we are perhaps most at risk of forgetting our bodiliness, because we can maintain it so effortlessly.  In an earlier age, when sickness and hunger were never long absent, when food and drink could often only be won by focused toil, and travel required significant bodily exertion, it was difficult to forget that one was made from the earth, and was therefore radically dependent on the earth for one’s continued strength and existence.  Academics like myself, especially, are prone to think of ourselves as disembodied minds, as drawing all our strength and resources from the power of our own thoughts.  Once you go without food for just 18 hours, it becomes difficult indeed to screen out the stubborn fact of embodiment, and you find quickly that those brilliant thoughts don’t come so naturally when the blood sugar runs low.  Far from encouraging self-righteousness, then, fasting can help to instill the most radical humility, reminding us of how little we can accomplish without the lowly daily gifts of food and drink.  With such humility comes greater gratitude toward God for providing us so richly with such means of sustenance. 

And to dust you shall return…

Along with the awareness of embodiment goes the renewed awareness of mortality.  Again, our need for this is much more urgent today than in most former ages, when death was a fairly common companion.  Most of us, especially young folks like myself, have never actually watched someone die, and rarely experience the death of a close friend or family member.  Scripture is full of exhortations for us to remember our mortality, without which we are liable to forget God, and indulge in prideful fantasies about our own importance or indestructibility.  By bringing us face to face with the fragility of our bodies, their constant reliance on food to maintain their strength, fasting can be a good way of teaching us that these bodies will have an end, and that we must live in light of that end.

It bears noting that these first two closely related functions of fasting are likely to work much better through short regular complete fasts (e.g., not eating for a day, or even a meal, out of each week), rather than through simply giving up some favorite food or drink, but consuming roughly the same amount of total sustenance.

Turn away from evil…

This is probably the most important and often-emphasized dimension of fasting.  But how does it work?  What exactly is the connection between fasting and penitence?  If you are like me, you may have puzzled over this when you first experimented with fasting: “OK, so I’m really hungry now…how exactly is this supposed to make me sin less?  All I can think about right now is a steak, not my sin.”  There are actually several possible dimensions to consider here.

First, fasting can serve as a way of demonstrating the authenticity of our penitence.  This seems often to be the role of fasting in Scripture.  After all, it’s all too easy to say, “Well, dang, I’m sorry God.  I really wish I could stop sinning in this way, and I’ll try to, promise,” and then to move on, forget about it, and promptly sin again.  By fasting, we say to ourselves and to God, “No, this sin is serious enough that I need to actually do something about it.  I need to start changing my lifestyle.  And I’m going to mark and signify that change of lifestyle by changing the way I eat/drink/etc. as I pray about this sin.”  Or it can be a way of saying, “Sin hurts.  Sin has a cost.  By casually asking for forgiveness, I can ignore this fact, but I need to show that I recognize the seriousness of this sin by being willing to suffer a little bit for it.”  Such asceticism can be dangerous, if we start thinking that we can atone for our sin by punishing ourselves for it.  But done correctly, it can simply be an acknowledgement of the fact that habits are formed by associations, and physical discomfort can leaves a deep impression on us.  Just as we discipline a child, causing them physical pain to help them remember the painful cost of sin, so we may need to discipline ourselves by depriving ourselves of ordinary pleasures as we struggle to overcome a sin.  

This leads into a second point, which is that fasting can help serve as a way of disciplining our sinful, or at the very least intemperate, desires.  If the sins of which we are repenting are fleshly sins, sins involving an idolization of comfort, or addiction to pleasure, or an inability to control our physical reactions—a category that can include sins like gluttony, sloth, greed, lust, anger, and many more—then fasting may be particularly appropriate or useful.  This is perhaps particularly obvious in the case of gluttony, where fasting may be a way of directly combating the sin.  However, any sin that involves an overindulgence of the flesh and its desires is one which fasting may help us to overcoming by training us in patterns of self-discipline.  Indeed, although the CREC booklet seems to doubt that practices of “partial fasting”—abstaining from some common habit or particularly preferred indulgence throughout the season of Lent—could serve in any way toward this end, it seems on the contrary that a long-term partial fast may be more effective in disciplining the flesh than short periods of complete fasting.  Denying oneself that usual pint of beer, or eating any kind of meat, day after day may prove more painful on the whole, and will likely tend to form habits of self-control more effectively, than abstaining from food altogether for a day or two.  

Finally, such fasting, while an effective means of responding to known sins, can also help us identify sins we didn’t know we had, and can thus be a helpful aid to the “self-examination” that Lent is often used for.  I may have had no idea that I was a glutton, or overly fond of strong drink, until I find just how hard it is to go without my favorite food or whiskey for a few weeks.  

…and follow Christ

One of the biggest complaints against fasting is that, by causing us to observe Lent in purely negative fashion, by not-doing something, it distracts us from the more important purpose of Lent, which is actively devoting ourselves to Christ and to others.  Accordingly, many churches emphasize the value of “taking something up” for Lent—a new prayer routine, a couple hours a week helping at the homeless shelter, a deeper study of Scripture—instead of “giving something up.”  This is the more important, as Lenten fasting is usually temporary, but the new patterns of devotion we take up may become part of our long-term routine of serving God and others.  However, the two are not mutually exclusive, and for some of us, fasting can help us to take up such positive practices of devotion.  

First, and most centrally, fasting can be a way of focusing us on Christ himself by helping us to remember his sufferings: we take up our own cross in some small way to help us remember his taking up the cross; we follow him both into the wilderness and on his road to Calvary.  Such an emphasis should be qualified carefully, of course, because we mustn’t forget that Christ has died, Christ is risen, his work is done; therefore, our reflection on the work of Christ should chiefly be a reflection on the forgiveness he has already wrought for us, rather than camping out in the asceticism of pre-Calvary.  However, inasmuch as redemption is already/not yet, inasmuch as we are simul justus et peccator and have not yet entered into glory, we may profit by reflecting on the sufferings of Christ, and not merely fast-forwarding to the glory of Easter.

Beyond this, fasting can help us take up the various other activities recommended in the Lenten exhortation: self examination and penitence we have already covered; the others are prayer, practicing works of love, and reading and reflecting on God’s Holy Word.  

How might fasting help us pray?  I had always thought that somehow the sense of hunger and weakness was supposed to help focus the spirit and remove distractions, though truth be told, in my own experience, it often seems to merely add an extra distraction.  Perhaps the connection, for many of us, is rather more mundane and straightforward than that.  If we know that we are fasting in order to focus on prayer, then the sensation of hunger can serve simply as a reminder to take a few moments to pray—after all, how often do we find that we intend to pray, and time simply got away from us? Hunger pangs can make good alarm clocks.  Or, if we are fasting completely from a meal or meals, we can resolve to use the time we would otherwise be eating to pray instead.  Most of us probably will find that we spend so little time in focused prayer that even skipping a few meals can give us far more time to pray than we are accustomed.  Fasting may serve in the exact same ways to help us to take up more Scripture reading and reflection: both as a reminder, and as a way of carving out more time.  Although this is another area in which occasional full fasts are likely to be more effective than giving up a favorite food (how does abstaining from meat necessarily enrich one’s prayer life?), an ongoing fast from a favorite activity or habit, as some people practice (say, “fasting” from watching TV) can serve a similar function.

Similar things can be said of “practicing works of love.”  Here, there is perhaps a direct spiritual connection to be made, in addition to the more pragmatic considerations.  In fasting, we are consciously denying ourselves luxuries, things that we usually treat ourselves to, but can technically do without.  If done in a spirit of love, this self-denial may turn our thoughts to those who must do without such luxuries out of necessity, those who can never afford meat, or who go to bed hungry every night.  Fasting may thus serve as a direct stimulus to animate us with compassion and love for the needy, and to move us to act on their behalf.  More practically, it frees up resources of time and perhaps money that we can dedicate to their service.  Just as some Christians are tempted to think of Lent as a convenient time to lose weight that they otherwise wanted to lose, sometimes we can be tempted to think of it as a good time to balance a budget that was being overspent, as less delicacies are purchased.  Better, perhaps, to try to set aside that extra $50 a month saved on groceries for charitable use, and perhaps better still to dedicate time saved to works of service.   

Obviously, with all of this “giving something up to take something up,” the danger is that our changed habits will last only for a season, after which we will revert to our usual complacency and consumerism.  If this is happening, if Lenten practices are having no effect on the rest of our lives, then there is little point, and the practices are in danger of becoming an empty ritual, or worse, a means of trying to earn merit before God: “See, God, see how much I’m denying myself right now?  I think you’ll agree that this should earn me enough brownie points to last me to next Lent, so I don’t have to worry about this self-denial business in the meantime.”  This, I think, is actually one argument in favor of “partial fasting.”  Better to take baby steps that you can keep up consistently than to take off at a sprint only to give up in exhaustion and vow never to try again.  If we fast too aggressively, and it comes to feel like an unbearable burden, we’ll find ourselves sticking with it solely out of pride, and eagerly going back to the status quo.  But if we try to temper our self-indulgence in some small, but still significant way, it may help form habits that will continue to shape our lives well beyond Lent.  

Of course, there’s a balance here, since fasting is supposed to be fasting, and it’s hard to see that many of the spiritual benefits mentioned above could be reaped by “giving up Godiva chocolate” (to use the CREC booklet’s example).  On the other hand, the key point is “if you fast, fast for your own edification.”  I have described here what might be some ways in which fasting might edify, but these will not work for everyone in the same way, or even at all, and so no one need feel bound to try them.  Conversely, no one ought to judge his brother’s fasting or lack thereof.  If you’re so into Godiva chocolate that you think giving it up for Lent might really be a good spiritual discipline for you, far be it from me to tell you it couldn’t be.  

And I should add—lest anyone imagine that this lengthy list of ways that fasting might edify means that I am some kind of fasting warrior, I’m afraid I’m nothing of the sort.  This is much more a list of things I’d like to try than things that I have tried.  Being, indeed, a complete novice in the ways of fasting, I would quite welcome input in the comments as to whether others have found fasting helpful in these ways or not, or in other ways that I haven’t mentioned.

“A word of God for all things we have to do”

1 Comment

The long-promised discussion on Elizabethan theonomy, although it turns out to be a rather short one, developed amidst a discussion of Puritan biblicism more generally—adapted from the draft of ch. 3 of my thesis.

Unfortunately, Cartwright does not rest content with asserting the supremacy of our duty to God’s glory and our brethren’s salvation over civil concerns.  Indeed, how could he, after long battles in the Vestiarian controversies had ended indecisively, with conformists earnestly insisting that God’s glory and the salvation of the brethren was not in fact at stake?  A more certain rule for resolving the doubtful conscience and adjudicating clashing loyalties was needed—Scripture.

“No man’s authority . . . can bring any assurance unto the conscience,” Cartwright concluded.  Perhaps in “human sciences” the word of man carried “some small force” but “in divine matters [it] hath no force at all.”  Of course, whether the matters in question were “divine matters” or “human sciences” was precisely the point at issue between him and Whitgift.  Whitgift would concede that in divine matters, Scripture alone was our guide, but if the disputed orders and ceremonies were merely civil ordinances, Scripture did not necessarily have much to tell us.  When pressed, then, Cartwright would go so far as to insist that in all actions of moral weight, Scripture was our guide: unless we “have the word of God go before us in all our actions . . . we cannot otherwise be assured that they please God.”  Recognizing the boldness of this claim, Cartwright offers a syllogism to back it up: “But no man can glorify God in anything but by obedience; and there is no obedience but in respect of the commandment and word of God: therefore it followeth that the word of God directeth a man in all his actions.”  Whitgift, breathless at such a declaration, answers that this would make not merely the matters in question, but all civil matters as well dependent on the Word, indeed, any action whatsoever, even “to take up a straw.”

Cartwright happily swallows the reductio, acknowledging that the guidance of Scripture is needed for the taking up of a straw.  Why?  Because although a class of action may be indifferent in itself, any particular action takes on the moral quality of goodness or badness based on the motive, and the motive, says Cartwright, must always be a desire to please God; since he has already argued that no man may be confident he pleases God except when acting in adherence to the Word, Scripture must in some sense go before us even in the most trivial of actions.  Cartwright has thus, under pressure to find some certain rule for guiding the Christian amidst doubtful and disputed moral decisions, collapsed any distinction between indifference epistemologically construed and morally construed, with the result of rendering the concept largely meaningless.  Since no action is morally neutral, and since the Christian must have guidance in all moral matters, and since Scripture is the Christian’s surest guide, Scripture must be taken to pronounce positively or negatively on all matters.

Even the relative indifference of the adiaphora, it would seem, would have to come from the positive permission of the Word.  And indeed, when Whitgift expresses concern on this score, Cartwright confirms that this is his meaning: “For even those things that are indifferent, and may be done, have their freedom grounded of the word of God; so that unless the word of the Lord, either in general or especial words, had determined of the free use of them: there could have been no lawful use of them at all.“  This is a remarkable transformation of the doctrine of adiaphora; no longer is Scriptural silence regarding a matter demonstrative of its moral lawfulness, but it is constitutive of it, so that this silence is to be construed as a positive act of  permission, without which the matter would have remained morally illicit. 

 

The fundamental difference between the conformist and the precisianist, then, is not merely that the precisianist considers that fewer matters have been left indifferent than the conformist does, although that is certainly the case; nor is it merely that the precisianist considers Scriptural guidance on matters that are indifferent to be more detailed and constraining than the conformist does, although that is certainly the case; rather, it is that the precianist considers all the relevant moral criteria to derive from Scripture, rather than merely being expressed in it.  We may see what this difference of approach entails by considering the role of the Mosaic judicial laws in Cartwright’s system.  Whitgift, worrying that the precisianist principle of Scriptural direction for every action would lead not merely to the abridgement of the magistrate’s freedom over ecclesiastical matters, but over strictly civil matters as well, was met with a curious waffling on the part of his adversary.  On the one hand, Cartwright and other precisianists would frequently insist that as ministers of the Gospel, they disclaimed all interest in merely civil and political matters, leaving those to the lawyers; moreover, they denied that the principles they advanced regarding ecclesiastical polity necessitated a similar reconfiguration of civil polity.  On the other hand, however, they at times forthrightly admitted that the laws of England ought to take the laws of Moses as their guide, and were to be condemned as unjust whenever they failed to do so.

This emphasis on the abiding validity of the Mosaic judicial laws has frequently attracted the interest of scholars for its idiosyncrasy among the Protestant Reformers (with the exception of the Scotch Presbyterians, who were in this of a similar mind as their English brethren), and its lasting influence on later Puritan theonomic/theocratic aspirations.  Paul Avis, in his instructive article “Moses and the Magistrate,” has shown that even where they used similar language, there was a compelling difference between a Calvin and a Cartwright on this issue.  The former, although much more emphatic about the positive uses of the law than Luther was, took a fundamentally similar tack on the judicial laws.  Luther believed that the while the Ten Commandments summed up the natural law, the latter temporally and logically preceded this formal expression, and the same principle applied to the rest of the Mosaic laws.  They were expressions and applications of natural law in a particular polity, and so, although its accuracy as a good application was, by virtue of its divine revelation, more assured than that of the law of Solon, it was not intrinsically more binding.  Only inasmuch as our own circumstances were the same as those of the Hebrews should we expect our own judicial laws to be similar to theirs.  Calvin’s argument is similar, viewing the natural principle of equity, perfected in the gospel principle of charity, to be instantiated in the Mosaic judicial laws, but to exist independently of them, so that it might and often should be instantiated quite differently in a contemporary Christian polity.  Cartwright, however, while he will use Calvin’s term of the “general equity” of the law, understands this as something posterior, rather than prior, to the particular positive law, extracted from it, rather than instantiated in it.  Accordingly there is some room for flexibility in application, but not a great deal:

“And as for the judicial law, forasmuch as there are some of them made in regard of the region they were given, and of the people to whom they were given, the prince and the magistrate, keeping the substance and equity of them (as it were the marrow), may change the circumstances of them, as the times and places and manners of the people shall require.  But to say that any magistrate can save the life of blasphemers, contemptuous and stubborn idolaters, incestuous persons, and such like, which God by his judicial law hath commanded to be put to death, I do utterly deny.”

 

This is because, for Cartwright, as Joan O’Donovan says, “the particular command . . . is the perfect form of law because it ‘leave[s] as little undetermined and without the compass of the law as can be.’”  Accordingly, we ought never to rest content with a mere general moral intuition if a clear Scriptural directive can be found; indeed, the latter is the only basis upon which the former can be valid.  This conviction leads Cartwright to a preposterous dependence on Scriptural prooftexts at many points in his debate with Whitgift where mere common-sense would have more than sufficed.  For instance, when complaining that in the Prayer Book service, the minister cannot be clearly heard by the congregation when he stands at the far end of the chancel, Cartwright feels the need to allege a Scriptural positive law for the principle, and resorts to Acts 1:15: “Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples.”  When Whitgift raises his eyebrows, Cartwright holds his ground: “The place of St. Luke is an unchangeable rule to teach that all that which is done in the church ought to be done where it may be best heard, for which cause I alleged it.”  At another point, discussing the requirements for elders, he says “The holie Ghost prescribing by Jethro what officers are to be chosen doth not only require that they should fear God . . . be wise and valiant, but also requireth that they be trusty.”  Jethro’s counsel to his son-in-law can no longer be read merely as prudent counsel, the prudence of which ought to be obvious in similar situations, such as the choosing of church officers, but must appear as a specific prescription of the Holy Spirit, intended for use as a positive law for the church.

This style of reasoning permeates the writings of Cartwright, Travers, and other precisianists, and is undergirded by two syllogisms that we find frequently repeated.  The first finds perhaps its most amusing expression when Whitgift queries the Admonition’s statement that in the Apostles’ time, there was always a careful examination of communicants before they were permitted to receive the Supper—how, he asks, do they prove this in Scripture?  “After this sort,” replies Cartwright: “all things necessary were used in the churches of God in the apostles’ times; but examination of those whose knowledge of the mystery of the gospel was not known or doubted of was a necessary thing; therefore it was used in the churches of God which were in the apostles’ time.”

It should not surprise us to find this sort of reasoning given the precisianist obsession with finding certainty; for the Christian convinced that he must please God in all actions, it was clear that the Church needed detailed guidance in all its practices, and since God must love and favor His church, it stood to reason that he must have provided such guidance in Scripture.  Moreover, since the most specific form of law was the most perfect, the more God loved his Church, the more detailed legislation we should expect.  Accordingly, we frequently find the following form of a fortiori syllogism:

“To prove that there is a word of God for all things we have to do: I alleged that otherwise our estate should be worse, than the estate of the Jews.  Which the Adm. confesseth to have had ‘direction out of law, in the least thing they had to do.’  And when it is the virtue of a good law, to leave as little undetermined and without the compass of the law as can be: the Answerer in imagining that we have no word for divers things wherein the Jews had particular direction: presupposeth greater perfection in the law, given unto the jews, then in that which is left unto us.  And that this is a principal virtue of the law may be seen not only by that I hade showed that a conscience well instructed and touched with the fear of God seeketh for the light of the word of God in the smallest actions.”

In a remarkable early passage of his Full and Plaine Declaration, outlining the Scriptural plan of Presbyterian polity, Walter Travers manages to combine both syllogisms side-by-side.  God’s care for his people, he says, is apparent in the precise and detailed legislation for the building of the tabernacle in the Old Testament; even though Scripture describes David and Solomon’s changes to the worship and building of the temple without narrating God’s prescription of them, we may safely conclude, given the obvious approval of their actions, that they would have only made such changes by express divine command.  “And,” concludes Travers, “how absurd and unreasonable a thing is it, than especially to think the love and care of God to be diminished towards his Church” that he would omit such express commands in the New Covenant?  

 

In their quest to safeguard Christian liberty, then, the precisianists have so hedged it in with unchangeable divine law that even Whitgift’s cold call to submission seems a charter of freedom by comparison.

Love, Law, and Christian Liberty

3 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I tracked down a remarkable document which has been almost entirely overlooked by scholars, a set of “Propositions or articles framed for the use of the Dutch Church in London” on the subject of Christian liberty and related doctrines.  These articles were occasioned by a dispute over the use of godparents in baptism in the Dutch Strangers’ Churches in London, which raised fundamental questions about Christian liberty, adiaphora, and ecclesiastical authority and led ultimately to a schism.  The Dutch ministers therefore drew up a set of articles, attempting to express the magisterial Reformed understanding of these doctrines, and submitted it to the review of the leaders of Reformed churches in Heidelberg, Bern, Lausanne, Zurich, and Geneva.  After incorporating many of the suggested revisions, which were primarily of a stylistic, not a substantive nature, the resulting document was published under the auspices of Edmund Grindal, the Bishop of London with jurisdiction over the Strangers’ Churches.  It thus can lay claim to comprising a kind of pan-Protestant, or at least pan-Reformed, consensus statement on these issues, and encapsulates teachings that we find in Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Vermigli, Bullinger, and others.  

The key points of the Dutch articles may be summarized as follows:

 1. That Christian liberty is spiritual, which means, among other things, that it consists in a free submission to  constraint, not a freedom from all constraint.  This constraint may be that of divine law, which the Christian must follow, though as a result of rather than a means to justification, or, may be imposed by men, in things left indifferent by divine law.

(Art. I: “CHRISTIAN liberty is not a wandering and unruly licence, by which we may do or leave undone whatsoever we list at our pleasure; but it is a free gift bestowed upon us by Christ our Lord; by the which, the children of God (that is, all the faithful), being delivered from the curse of the law, or eternal death, and from the heavy yoke of the ceremonial law, and being endowed with the Holy Ghost, begin willingly of their own accord to serve God in holiness and righteousness.”

Art. IV: “Conscience is the feeling of God’s judgment, whether that a man be assured out of the word of God of that judgment, or that he make it to himself rashly or superstitiously. But whereas it is the duty of Christians to observe the commandments of their Lord, that indeed is properly called a right and good conscience, which is governed by the word of God. Whereby it cometh to pass, that every faithful man by that revealed word doth examine and weigh with himself, both what he doth, and also what he letteth undone, that he may judge of them both, which is just, and which is unjust.”)

2. Things indifferent are not void of moral content, therefore, but take that content from variable circumstances, and by virtue of those circumstances, exert a moral claim on us.

(Art. V: “Indifferent things are called those, which by themselves, being simply considered in their own nature, are neither good nor bad, as meat and drink, and such like; in the which therefore, it is said, that the kingdom of God consisteth not; and that therefore a man may use them well or evil: wherefore it followeth, that they are marvellously deceived, which suppose they are called indifferent, as though without any exception we may omit them, or use them as often as we list, without any sin.”)

3. There are two main ways in which this claim comes about—(a) the law of charity, by which we are bound to use adiaphora to the edification of our neighbor, and (b) human law, by which we are bound to use adiaphora in accord with the commands of civil or ecclesiastical authority.

(Art. II: “Therefore, sith that he which is the Son of God is ruled by the Spirit of God, and that the same Spirit commandeth us, we should obey all ordinances of man (that is, all politic order, whereof the magistrate is the guardian), and all superiors, which watch for the health of our souls; yea, and that according to our vocation we should diligently procure the safeguard of our neighbour; it followeth, that that man abuseth the benefit of Christian liberty, or rather, is yet sold under sin, who doth not willingly obey either his magistrate or superior in the Lord, or doth not endeavour to edify the conscience of his brother.”

Art. VIII: “Generally, the use of these indifferent things is restrained by the law of charity, which is universal.”

Art. IX: “Specially, the use of these things is forbidden by ecclesiastical or civil decree.”)

4. By virtue of both of these, what is in itself free for the conscience becomes per accidens conscience-binding as an indirect command of God, since he commands us to love our neighbor and to obey the magistrate.

(Art. VI: “Things otherwise indifferent of themselves, after a sort change their nature, when by some commandment they are either commanded or forbidden. Because, neither they can be omitted contrary to the commandment, if they are once commanded, neither omitted contrary to prohibition, if they be prohibited; as appeareth in the ceremonial law.”

Art. IX: “For although that only God doth properly bind the conscience of man, yet in respect, that either the magistrate, who is God’s Minister, doth think it profitable for the commonwealth, that something, otherwise of itself lawful, be not done, or that the Church, having regard to order, comeliness, and also edifying, do make some laws concerning indifferent things, those laws are altogether to be observed of the godly, and do so far forth bind the conscience, that no man wittingly and willingly, with a stubborn mind, may, without sin, either do those things which are forbidden, or omit those things which are commanded.”)

5. However, to prevent tyranny, human authorities may not make laws in adiaphora arbitrarily, but only for purposes of edification, civil order, or ecclesiastical order.

(Art. XI: “They, which for any other cause either command or forbid at their pleasure the free use of indifferent things, than for one of these three, that is, neither for edifying, nor for policy, nor ecclesiastical order; and especially those which do rashly judge other men’s consciences in these matters; offend heinously against God and against their neighbor.“)

6. Conversely, because the conscience is bound only insofar as these purposes are at stake, the Christian remains at liberty if the circumstances giving rise to a law no longer pertain, and it can be disregarded without causing offence.

(Art. X: “And sith these things are not ordained simply for themselves, but in respect of certain circumstances, not as though the things themselves were of their own nature unlawful things (for it belongeth only to God to determine this) in case those circumstances do cease, and so be that offence be avoided as near as we can, and that there be no stubborn will of resisting; no man is to be reproved of sin, which shall do otherwise than those ordinances: as it is plain, by the example of David, in a case otherwise flatly forbidden, when he ate the shewbread.”)


This, however, is to make things rather neater than they appeared in fact.  For in point of fact, a great deal of tension attached to the connection between the two laws mentioned above in point (3)—the law of charity and the law of authority.  Is the latter merely valid so long as it remains a subset of the former, as points (5) and (6) imply?  Moreover, although the Dutch articles could speak of “either ecclesiastical or civil decree” in adiaphora as essentially parallel, it was far from clear just how these two were to be correlated.  Both   In fact, these two problems are closely related, as shall readily appear.

Luther and Melanchthon, as Bernard Verkamp has noted, were keen to deny to ecclesiastical ceremonies not only a necessity of means (intrinsically necessary to good standing with God) but also a necessity of precept (necessary to good standing with God merely by virtue of being commanded by church authorities).  Accordingly, Melanchthon will not use the rather clericalist language of the Dutch articles, by which we have an direct obligation before God to obey the commands of ministers, just as we do of magistrates.  To be sure, we can be bound outwardly in ecclesiastical adiaphora, but this obligation proceeds only from the principle of charity, from the demands of peace, order, and edification—while the concrete nature of these demands may happen to be determined by the command of authority, the connection is contingent, rather than necessary.  Therefore, in ecclesiastical matters, Melanchthon will endorse the reasoning of point (6) above—that should the demands of authority and the demands of charity cease to overlap, the latter may be dispensed with, so long as peace can be maintained.  Interestingly, however, he will not take this tack when it comes to civil affairs, for it would seem to disrupt the fabric of human society far too much if individuals were allowed to judge for themselves when laws were no longer binding.  Accordingly, to the principle of charity, he adds what we might call the principle of wrath, which he finds in Rom. 13:5—that to disobey civil authority is to disobey God and risk His wrath: “These are clear words, showing that obedience is necessary, that disobedience hurts the conscience, and that God condemns it.”  Indeed, he sees no need to qualify the conscience-binding character of these laws as indirect, but attacks “many dreamers [who] have written that worldly commandments do not bind us to eternal punishment, for man can punish no one eternally!”  At other points, however, he suggests that there are certain civil laws which are only contingently or circumstantially binding, or else that if civil laws can never be safely disobeyed, it is because to do so will always disrupt peace and cause offense. If so, this suggests that in fact, even in civil laws, it is only the principle of charity that necessarily binds us to their observance. 

Nonetheless, Melanchthon did not satisfactorily resolve this ambiguity, and because of his heavy stress on the intrinsically conscience-binding nature of civil laws, maintained a discontinuity of sorts between ecclesiastical and civil laws, which he otherwise treated as essentially the same, as adiaphorous ordinances of the “civil kingdom.”  In this scheme, it remained ambiguous what was to be done with civil authorities made laws regarding ecclesiastical ceremonies, as in the Adiaphora Controvery and the Vestiarian controversies.  The republication of Melanchthon’s scholia on “Whether it be a mortal sin to transgress civil laws” as part of conformist propaganda in the Second Vestiarian Controversy, then, hardly resolved the fundamental question.

 

In his Institutes, John Calvin had tackled the problem more directly and clearly, denying that there was any fundamental difference in the way that ecclesiastical and civil ordinances related to the conscience, but some ambiguity remains.  Both, as Calvin makes clear in Book III, chap. 19, “On Christian Liberty,” are to be understood as matters of the civil kingdom or “external forum,” wholly different from spiritual matters that occupy the “forum of conscience.”  Calvin’s discussion of ecclesiastical laws in IV.10 shows him to be far from VanDrunen and other advocates of the “regulative principle,” who make the “forum of conscience” co-extensive with the institutional church and rule out man-made laws and ceremonies within it.  On the contrary, such ordinances are absolutely necessary, since any human society requires a “form of organization . . . to foster the common peace and maintain concord.”  The particular form, however, is widely variable depending on circumstances, and accordingly our obligation to obey such laws is not necessary, but contingent.  Calvin’s treatment of this issue is close to that given in the Dutch articles, which are almost certainly drawing on the Institutes here.  In their decree regarding meat sacrificed to idols in Acts 15:20, says Calvin, the Apostles do not lay down a new law binding on the conscience before God, but rather “the divine and eternal command of God not to violate love.”  This command is being specified into a particular requirement in present circumstances, and in those circumstances, the Christian is bound to obey; but the circumstances being changed, so that charity no longer concretely demanded these actions, the law could be disobeyed without sin.  

Unlike Melanchthon, Calvin makes the same distinction of contingency and necessity with regard to civil laws, recognizing that Romans 13:5, if read the way Melanchthon and others appeared to, would threaten the principle of Christian liberty in ecclesiastical laws as well, seeing as both shared the nature of human law: “Moreover, the difficulty [of defining conscience] is increased by the fact that Paul enjoins obedience toward the magistrate, not only for fear of punishment, but for conscience’ sake.  From this it follows that consciences are bound by civil laws.  But if this were so, all that we said a little while ago and are now going to say about spiritual government would fall.”  Therefore, the same restrictions must reply to both: “human laws, whether made by magistrate or by church, even though they have to be observed (I speak of good and just laws), still do not of themselves bind the conscience.  For all obligation to observe laws looks to the general purpose, but does not consist in the things enjoined.”  This “general purpose,” however, is not spelled out by reference to the law of love, but by reference to “God’s general command, which commends to us the authority of magistrate,” although like Melanchthon, Calvin would probably equate the two, arguing that love of neighbor requires subjection to the magistrate, who advances the common good.

 

While all parties acknowledged the value of a certain division of labor between ecclesiastical and civil authorities, given that ministers would be best placed to identify what edification and order demanded in matters pertaining to worship and church government, and magistrates better suited to judge in matters pertaining to more strictly civil affairs, the asymmetry we have just seen posed a problem.  For if the demands of charity, edification, and order in these two spheres clashed, the civil magistrate held the trump card: the divine testimony that to disobey the ruler (within his legitimate sphere) was ipso facto to violate the demands of charity.  Accordingly, we find an increasing tendency to suggest that even in adiaphorous matters, ecclesiastical authorities have an autonomous, divinely-given jurisdiction over church ceremonies and polity.  We see this in the second of the Dutch articles, where God’s command to obey “all superiors which watch for the health of our souls” is put on the same par as His command to obey “all politic order, whereof the magistrate is the guardian.”  Later on, in article 23, they state explicitly that “It belongeth only to the Consistory, to be occupied in making new laws of discipline.”  Indeed, in article 20, the Dutch ministers imply a juridical authority for the clergy in their sphere that is equal to and separate from that of magistrates in their sphere: “In the Church of Christ, that is to say, in the house or city of the living God, the Consistory, or fellowship of governors, consisting of the Ministers of the word, and of Seniors lawfully called, sustaineth the person of the universal Church in ecclesiastical government, even as every magistrate in his commonwealth.”   

Such authority for ministers in making church laws, would seem to run flat contrary to the original anti-clerical impetus of the doctrine of Christian liberty, and could only be reconciled to it by emphasizing that this authority was not arbitrary, but closely bounded by Scripture.  Accordingly, we find the articles repeatedly emphasising that in making such constitutions, “judgment [must] be taken out of the word of God, what may or ought to be done, or not done” (Art. 8).  Of course, to emphasise this, as we have already seen, was to call into question their status as adiaphora in the first place.  Moreover, since all adiaphorists had admitted that divine positive law could in principle render a matter that otherwise would be indifferent (for instance, some aspect of church polity) to be in fact necessary, and therefore out of the discretion of the magistrate, it was possible to argue that divine law in fact required such an autonomous, Scripturally-regulated clerical jurisdiction.  In the wake of their failures in the Vestiarian controversy, it was just this that some of the English dissenters would begin to contend.

 

(This post is in lieu of a thorough analysis of and commentary on the articles which I have been planning to post on The Calvinist International, but which I have been prevented from finding time to write.  The above exposition will likely be part of chapter 2 of my thesis.)