Brethren of the Free Spirit: Kissing cousins with Word of Faith?

The Theologia Germanica was an anonymous theological treatise written around 1350. It has become associated with Martin Luther, who said of it, "Next to the Bible and St. Augustine, no other book has come to my attention from which I have learned --and desired to learn--more concerning God, Christ, man, and what all things are."

Chapter 27 is an interesting polemic against a popular medieval heresy propagated by the antinomian Brethren of the Free Spirit. It is notable how similar this aberration sounds to the present-day "Word of Faith" heresy, whose purveyors are the constant foil of Luther's devoted disciple, Chris Rosebrough.

One hears people assert that man can and should become free from suffering during his earthly life in all respects as Christ was after His Resurrection. 

They try to prove and establish this by citing Christ: "But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee, there you will see Me." This statement by Christ is also quoted: "A spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have."  

 These utterances are then interpreted as follows: "As you have seen Me and followed Me as I was in a mortal body and life, so you should also see Me as I go ahead of you and you follow Me into Galilee; that is to say, you will follow Me into a state where pain has gone and serenity reigns; you will taste it, live in it, remain in it before you have gone through and suffered death of the body. As you see Me appear in a body of flesh and bones, yet beyond suffering, in a similar manner you will also, before your bodily death, become free from suffering and soar beyond pain in your mortal humanity."

I would like to counter these assertions. First, Christ did not mean that man can and should attain that stage unless it were preceded by all the suffering that He, Christ, went through and endured. 

Now, Christ did not attain this stage before He had passed through and suffered the death of His body and the experiences that came with it. Thus no man can or should attain that perfect peace and spiritual serenity while mortal and subject to suffering. 

For if this state is the noblest and best and if it were possible and spiritually commendable to attain it within our earthly life, then, as pointed out, it would also have occurred in the life of Christ. 

For Christ's life was and is the noblest, the best, most pleasing to God, the loveliest of all lives that were lived and ever will be lived. 

Yet, since this serene freedom from earthly woe was not permitted and intended to occur in Christ, it will never appear in any human being, for this would mean that a human life would in fact be the best and the noblest. 

You are of course free to fancy such a thing and you can, of course, talk about it. But fancy and words do not that freedom make.

Christmas is the birthday of peace -- St. Leo the Great

Although the state of infancy, which the majesty of the Son of God did not disdain to assume, developed with the passage of time into the maturity of manhood, and although after the triumph of the passion and the resurrection all his lowly acts undertaken on our behalf belong to the past, nevertheless today’s feast of Christmas renews for us the sacred beginning of Jesus’s life, his birth from the Virgin Mary. In the very act in which we are reverencing the birth of our Savior, we are also celebrating our own new birth. For the birth of Christ is the origin of the Christian people; and the birthday of the head is also the birthday of the body.

Though each and every individual occupies a definite place in this body to which he has been called, and though all the progeny of the church is differentiated and marked with the passage of time, nevertheless as the whole community of the faithful, once begotten in the baptismal font, was crucified with Christ in the passion, raised up with him in the resurrection and at the ascension placed at the right hand of the Father, so too it is born with him in this Nativity, which we are celebrating today.

For every believer regenerated in Christ, no matter in what part of the whole world he may be, breaks with that ancient way of life that derives from original sin, and by rebirth is transformed into a new man. Henceforth he is reckoned to be of the stock, not of his earthly father, but of Christ, who became Son of Man precisely that men could become sons of God; for unless in humility he had come down to us, none of us by our own merits could ever go up to him.

Therefore the greatness of the gift which he has bestowed o us demands an appreciation proportioned to its excellence; for blessed Paul the Apostle truly teaches: We have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. The only way that he can be worthily honored by us is by the presentation to him of that which he has already given to us.

But what can we find in the treasure of the Lord’s bounty more in keeping with the glory of this feast than that peace which was first announced by the angelic choir on the day of his birth? For that peace, from which the sons of God spring, sustains love and mothers unity; it refreshes the blessed and shelters eternity; its characteristic function and special blessing is to join to God those whom it separates from this world.

Therefore, may those who were born, not of blood nor of the will fo the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God, offer to the Father their harmony as sons united in peace; and may all those whom he has adopted as his members meet in the firstborn of the new creation who came not to do him own will but the will of the one who sent him; for the grace of the Father has adopted as heirs neither the contentious nor the dissident, but those who are one in thought and love. The hearts and minds of those who have been reformed according to one and the same image should be in harmony with one another.

The birthday of the Lord is the birthday of peace, as Paul the Apostle says: For he is our peace, who has made us both one; for whether we be Jew or Gentile, through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Leadership transition in the early church

The martyrdom of James and the imprisonment of Peter (Acts 12:1-17) mark a pivotal moment in the life of the early church. Up until that time, the Twelve had remained in Jerusalem while Philip and other evangelists scattered about the region preaching the gospel. Now, however, even the Twelve will begin to disperse.

Peter, following his miraculous escape from prison, was obviously a wanted man. He would not be able to remain in Jerusalem, thus creating a leadership vacuum. But Peter already had someone in mind to fill the void. After explaining how an angel of the Lord delivered him from prison, he directed those gathered at the home of Mary, the mother of Mark, to "Tell these things to James and to the other brothers."

This would not be the same James who had just been put to death by Herod, often referred to as James the Greater. This is the half brother of Jesus himself, often referred to as James the Less or James the Just. The significance of Peter naming him is that it marks the first time he is referred to as a leader in the early church. From this point on, as Peter and the remainder of the Twelve begin to disperse, James will become the most influential leader in the Jerusalem church. When Paul, Peter, and others return to Jerusalem for the first church council (Acts 15), it is James who presides.

The transition that took place as Peter handed off leadership to James preserved a unique place for the Jerusalem church. While the mission of the church became focused more on the Gentile world, the church in Jerusalem would remain largely a Jewish congregation, even maintaining many of the Jewish distinctions, right down to the time of Jerusalem's demise in A.D. 70. It stood as a reminder to the increasingly evangelized Gentile world that salvation was a gift of God given first through the people of Israel.

The Future of Protestantism: Leithart, Sanders, and Trueman

In his First Things column today, Leithart offers a few post-mortem observations.

Inevitably, after an event like the Biola panel on the future of Protestantism, one wakes up thinking of the things one should have said. Here are a few.

1) One thing I did say that I need to reiterate: It seems that the three participants meant different things when we used the words “Protestant” and “Protestantism.” For Fred Sanders and Carl Trueman, Protestantism seems to be primarily about doctrinal affirmations – summarized by the solas. What I mean by “Protestantism” is more concretely sociological and historical. The Reformation was a revolution in doctrine, but it was equally, and for many lay people primarily, a revolution in liturgical practice and piety. It was, whether anyone intended it or not, also a revolution in the church’s relation to political powers and society. As the churches of the Reformation have developed historically, they haven’t simply been communities that hold to the solas, but have been communities with a range of different social and political locations, different attitudes and interactions with Roman Catholics and one another. Protestant churches are far from uniform in their sociological and political contours, but there are common features. I affirm the Reformation solas, but they don’t exist outside historical ecclesial and political configurations.

2) Fred Sanders characterized the Evangelical churches as bearers of a message, particularly of a Protestant message. The church is the pillar and ground of truth, the herald of the gospel. But to say that the church’s message is specifically Protestant is, in the actual circumstances of post-Reformation Christianity, to make the church a tribe. I believe that where Roman Catholics and Protestants differ on the message and the meaning of the message, the Reformers were right. But Protestant churches are called to proclaim Christ and the good news of the kingdom, not to perpetuate a particular Christian tradition. Insofar as we are part of a particular tradition, we hold the particulars of that tradition in order to serve the church as a whole and to proclaim the good news shared by all believers with clarity and power. Talking about a Protestant message also suggests a mis-centering of the gospel. The gospel is not, as NT Wright points out, justification by faith. It is: Jesus lived, died, and rose again to be the world’s Lord. That’s a Christian message, not a specifically Protestant one. Protestants and Catholics proclaim that message differently in important respects, but we should be searching, praying, arguing for ways to proclaim that message in full unity of mind.

More fundamentally, describing the church as a bearer of a message is ecclesiologically adequate. She is the bearer of a message, but she is also the body of Christ, a Eucharistic assembly, a communion in the good gifts of the Spirit, the Bride of the Father’s Son indwelt by the Spirit. I suspect Fred agrees with me about at least some of that, but his way of describing the church functionalizes the church; it is support for the gospel, rather than the goal and embodiment of the gospel.

3) I should have made clearer the force of my argument about what Protestant churches are to do. I gave examples in my talk of ways that the Protestant churches might converge toward a common confession, a common liturgical and sacramental life, a common discipline. That is, I’d like to see Protestant churches converging toward classical Protestantism, but – and the but is critical – without anxiety that this convergence might make Protestants too Catholic. I would like to see every Protestant church celebrating weekly Eucharist and baptizing babies, for instance, without fearing that they will be mistaken for Catholics.

4) Several times Carl Trueman expressed the worry that my agenda would make it impossible for him to give comfort to people with the Reformation teaching concerning justification and assurance. I’m not sure I see the connection. I don’t believe we should use the Reformation confessions as standards for fellowship, but that “relativization” doesn’t eliminate pastoral and governmental uses and applications of the Confessions.

In addition, it’s worth observing that Catholics and Lutherans have come to a joint understanding of justification (the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” the JDDJ) that affirms the importance of assurance of salvation. That document states in part:

“34.We confess together that the faithful can rely on the mercy and promises of God. In spite of their own weakness and the manifold threats to their faith, on the strength of Christ’s death and resurrection they can build on the effective promise of God’s grace in Word and Sacrament and so be sure of this grace.

“35.This was emphasized in a particular way by the Reformers: in the midst of temptation, believers should not look to themselves but look solely to Christ and trust only him. In trust in God’s promise they are assured of their salvation, but are never secure looking at themselves.

“36.Catholics can share the concern of the Reformers to ground faith in the objective reality of Christ’s promise, to look away from one’s own experience, and to trust in Christ’s forgiving word alone (cf. Mt 16:19; 18:18). With the Second Vatican Council, Catholics state: to have faith is to entrust oneself totally to God, who liberates us from the darkness of sin and death and awakens us to eternal life. In this sense, one cannot believe in God and at the same time consider the divine promise untrustworthy. No one may doubt God’s mercy and Christ’s merit. Every person, however, may be concerned about his salvation when he looks upon his own weaknesses and shortcomings. Recognizing his own failures, however, the believer may yet be certain that God intends his salvation.”

5) The JDDJ also addresses the expressed the skepticism and pessimism about the possibility of Christian unity: As the Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity pointed out, for all its flaws and limits, the ecumenical movement was able to make significant progress in coming to a common faith and common liturgical expression. A consensus emerged from the ecumenical movement that the Eucharist should be central to Christian worship, and there was progress in coming to common understanding of some of the doctrinal issues that have divided Protestants and Catholics, Orthodox and Catholics, Orthodox and Lutheran (in Finland at least).

6) Fred Sanders’s opening discussion of the “anchor” of the Trinity was left completely undiscussed. That was unfortunate. His suggestion not only provides a pathway for stabilizing Evangelicalism, but also, in my mind, provides potential avenues for cross-demonational unity. I wish Fred many more years of content-provision for the nascent Evangelical trinitarian community.

"Liberalism" then and now: Different, but still the same

Trevin Wax has an interesting post examining the great reversal which has taken place in "liberal" Christian circles in the roughly 100 (actually 90) years since the publication of J. Gresham Machen's classic, Christianity and Liberalism. "Liberalism" in Machen's day referred to an aberrant religious system which sought to preserve certain vestiges of Christianity, namely its moral foundations, while casting aside its "miraculoous" or "supernatural" elements. Wax outlines the trajectory of early twentieth century liberalism thusly:

We are living in a scientific age of discovery.

The miracles we read about in the Bible were written from another cultural vantage point.

It is important to maintain the ethical and moral teaching of Christianity.

Belief in the literal occurrence of biblical miracles is not needed to maintain the moral center of Christianity.

If belief in miracles is embarrassing to modern people, we should deemphasize them in order to extend Christianity into the next generation.

Christian "liberals" in Machen's day wanted to advance a society based on Christian morals and ethics but, as Machen so adeptly pointed out, this was a fool's errand. Any number of religions encouraged moral and ethical living. Only Christianity backed up the truth of its claims with signs heralding the in-breaking of the kingdom of God.

Conversely, Wax observes, the present-day heirs of "liberalism" have done a 180, embracing the miraculous and ditching the morality.

We are living in a tolerant age of enlightenment.

The morals we read about in the Bible were written from another cultural vantage point.

It is important to maintain the miraculous and supernatural events of Christianity.

Interpreting the commands of biblical morality literally is not needed in order to maintain to center of Christianity.

If belief in biblical morality is embarrassing to modern people, we should deemphasize it in order to extend Christianity into the next generation.

I'm not sure I would agree that today's "liberals" (a misnomer today, as it was, likewise, in Machen's day) are anymore favorably disposed to "miracles" than were their predecessors. It would be more accurate to say they have embraced an expansive view of the work of "the Holy Spirit," whom they often credit with leading them into "new truth," that is, a new understanding of morality and ethics unfettered from traditional restraints.

This "Holy Spirit" is not the Third Person of the Trinity which we encounter in Scripture, but an impersonal force whose "leading" today's open-minded "liberals" seem incapable of resisting. As such, they are, in fact, no different from those who came before them. In both Machen's day and our own day, the only "spirit" which guides "liberalism" is the spirit of the age. By any other name, it is, in the words of that great theologian Bob Seger, still the same.

Two bitter fruits from the same poisonous tree?

The emergence of theological liberalism in the nineteenth century had a devastating effect on the American pulpit. Preachers like Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) and Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) were at the forefront of the transition from strict doctrinal precision to broad doctrinal license. Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) was a twentieth century man, building his reputation through adept use of the mass media of book publishing and radio (the weekly "National Vespers" on the NBC network). However, he was every bit a product of the nineteenth century liberalism in which he was immersed.

Paul Scott Wilson, in A Concise History of Preaching, describes how Fosdick came to develop "a new, alternative method of preaching."

Fosdick

 In journal articles in the 1920's, 1930's 1950's, and in his autobiography, Fosdick discussed his "project method" of homiletics. It was in contrast to topical preaching, which he felt was a "Sir Oracle" lecture on a theme, and expository preaching, in which preachers "assumed that folk come to church desperately anxious to discover what happened to the Jebusites." He outlined the contemporary expository preaching of which he was critical: "First, elucidation of a Scriptural text, its historical occasion, its logical meaning in the context, its setting in the theology and ethic of the ancient writer; second, application to the auditors of the truth involved; third, exhortation to decide about the truth and act on it."

After floundering for his first years as a preacher, he devised a homiletic based in pastoral counseling that made preaching an adventure for him. Every sermon was to start with the "real problems of people" and was to "meet their difficulties, answer their questions, confirm their noblest faiths and interpret their experiences in sympathetic, wise and understanding co-operation." He looked for the way even larger issues of the day, national and international, affected the lives of ordinary people. He wanted sermons to be conversational, "a co-operative dialogue in which the congregation's objections, questions, doubts and confirmations are fairly stated and dealt with." The preacher's business is "to persuade people to repent . . . to produce Christian faith [and] to send people out from their worship on Sunday with victory in their possession." To this end, "A preacher's task is to create in his congregation the thing he is talking about." A sermon on joy is to explore wrong ideas about it, false attempts at it, problems in getting it, and then move to create it.

Whereas lectures had "a subject to be elucidated," preaching had an "object to be achieved." Determining this "object" or problem to be solved was the first step in preparation. This was followed by "free association of ideas," perhaps for several hours, followed in turn by exploration of literature, cases from counseling, the Bible, and personal experience. His structure, commonly three points, for which one must listen carefully to discern, often emerged in the writing of his sermons. Someone said his "sermons begin by describing a human need, next illustrate that need from literature, from contemporary events and personal experiences, and then turn to the Bible for those principles which could meet that need." His critics caricatured his preaching as "undogmatic Christianity" and "problem-solving."

Fosdick was also criticized, rightly according to Wilson, "for taking his message to the biblical text and for using the text to illustrate his predetermined point." He was not the first, and certainly not the last, preacher to commit this error. His methodology, the mistakes inherent in it, and the paucity of its doctrinal and theological underpinnings represented the coming of age of the liberalism birthed in the preaching of Bushnell and Beecher and brought to its tragic conclusion in the incoherent psychobabble of Spong and Schori. Less obvious, at least on first glance, is the sowing of the seeds of the equally innocuous false gospel of "positive thinking" first popularized by Norman Vincent Peale, advanced through mass media by Robert Schuller, and now embodied in all its garish glory by the insufferable Joel Osteen.

Except for students of homiletics and church history, Harry Emerson Fosdick's sermons and writings are largely forgotten. To the person in the pew, he is best remembered for the stirring hymn "God of Grace and God of Glory." In recalling the era in which he was at the height of his influence, however, we can see two bitter fruits produced from the same poisonous tree of the liberalism which shaped his methodology and his ministry.

Horace Bushnell: A misguided herald sounding an uncertain trumpet

Naturalistic theology (often referred to as theological liberalism) did not appear as a challenge to orthodoxy overnight. Its precursors constituted the panoply of heresies repudiated by the Ancient Church and, as the preacher of Ecclesiastes long ago observed, there is nothing new under the sun. The rise of naturalistic theology first in Europe and then in America was, in large part, merely a repackaging of old lies in newer, more sophisticated, wrapping.

In his encyclopedic history of homiletics, The Company of Preachers (Kregel, 1998), David L. Larsen notes the rise of "New England theology" in the early nineteenth century and the negative influence it had on the preachers of the day. Like most expressions of naturalism, this was a theology of denial, not affirmation. New England theology denied the orthodox doctrines of sin, depravity, and imputation, paving the way for even more radical departures from the faith as the century progressed.

The person at the center of the transition from doctrinal purity to theological liberalism, was Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), a gifted preacher with a penchant for pushing the doctrinal envelope well beyond acceptable limits.

Bushnell has been called the father of liberalism, and indeed in moving beyond New England theology he lurched very close to Unitarianism. Certainly in God in Christ he lapsed into Unitarian thinking, espousing a modal view of the Trinity. In his Vicarious Sacrifice and Forgiveness and Law, Bushnell jettisoned transactual and propitiatory aspects of the atonement. In a reaction against revivalism, he opted for gradualism rather than conversion in his book Christian Nurture. Neither did he believe a child to be depraved. He believed the child was to grow up never knowing that he or she is other than a Christian.

Charles Hodge spoke of his views as "less than Christian." For Bushnell the Bible was essentially figurative. In 1866 he indicated his leaning toward understanding the fall in Eden as a myth. Jesus was teacher rather than the crucified and suffering God. His were "orthodox memories, Unitarian hopes." The old wine had not survived being transferred to new bottles. He scoffed at the idea of the Second Coming. He was very theological but he did not preach sound doctrine.

What Bushnell lacked in doctrinal substance, he made up for in homiletical style. This was not enough, however, to spare him criticism for going off the theological and exegetical reservation.

Yet Bushnell was a preacher's preacher. There was a virility in his style and a fire inside him, but the common people were not drawn to his variety of naturalism. Early on, he gained a reputation as a public speaker of note, and his ability to title sermons is dramatic. Little wonder he was offered the presidency of the College of California (later the University of California at Berkeley), which he turned down.

Bushnell's celebrated sermon on "Unconscious Influence" is based on John 20:8, "Then went in also that other disciple." But for Bushnell this had nothing to do with the resurrection or Jesus Christ. He did not do exegesis, and even Brastow speaks of his interpretations as often "fanciful" and lacking "the support of recognized exegetical canons."

[Larsen, p. 528]

In the end, Bushnell must be characterized, in Larsen's words, "as a tragic figure in American pulpit annals" whose "influence upon successive generations has been unfortunate." For all his intellect and homiletical ingenuity, he was a misguided herald sounding an uncertain trumpet.

Haven't we been here before? Church of England gives up on evangelism

 

Winston Churchill once famously said, "I did not become His Majesty's First Minister so that I might oversee the liquidation of the British Empire!" Justin Welby, conversely, appears to be resigned to be the Archbishop who oversees the liquidation of Christianity in the British Isles. Underneath yet another unflattering portrait of His Grace in his oversized "dolphin" mitre is written the following lede by Ruth Gledhill:

The Church of England has admitted that the country has become a nation that knows almost nothing about Christianity and that there is no point any more attempting to convert anyone.

To read the entire article, you have to subscribe to The Times, which is a bit difficult if you don't have access to British currency. Ms. Gledhill was kind enough to e-mail me a copy of the whole piece but I will not reprint it here since that would be violating a trust. Suffice it to say it doesn't get any better as the article unfolds. Apparently, the Mother Church, or at least its beleaguered leadership, is chafing under the withering attacks of atheism and secular humanism.

It is hardly earthshaking news that the Church of England in its current state is not the most vibrant expression of the Christian faith in the twenty first century, but such a state of spiritual dullness is hardly unique to its history. There was nothing particularly vibrant about eighteenth century Anglicanism, either. It was in danger, so it seemed, of being eclipsed by deism and rationalism until a peculiar band of field preachers led by John Wesley, his brother Charles, and George Whitefield arrived on the scene. All they did was start proclaiming again a simple truth which much of England knew almost nothing about at the time: the message of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The result was a spiritual awakening which not only spared England a fate similar to the disastrous French Revolution, but also crossed the Atlantic and ignited the fires of faith on the shores of America.

The Mother Church today is not likely to produce another Wesley or Whitefield. Such a person is more likely to emerge from the global Anglican diaspora. The awakening will come, however, in God's time and on God's terms. Whether it begins in a small parsonage in Epworth or a remote village in Kenya, you can rest assured it will find its way back to Canterbury, and the half-hearted elites who were so willing to accommodate a godless culture will be shamed either into repentance or obscurity.

Leithart nails it . . . again!

Peter Leithart (H/T to A Living Text) writes today about the real issue behind the Reformation, namely, the elevation of relics and religious images to the level of idolatry.

Like the great reformations of Hezekiah and Josiah, the Protestant Reformation was, above all, a purging of idolatry – a stripping of the altars.

Despite his apparent focus on justification, Luther was equally provoked by the idolatries of late medieval practice and theology. In a stimulating essay, Lutheran theologian David Yeago has argued that the key question that sparked Luther’s “Reformation turn” was not “How can I find a gracious God?” but “How can I find the true God?” Above all, Luther wanted to root out the subtle spiritual idolatry of treating God as a means to the end of one’s own spiritual satisfaction.

Ultimately, Yeago argues, Luther addressed this problem in a way that “anchored [him] more deeply than ever before in the traditions of catholic dogma, catholic sacramentalism, and catholic mysticism.” In particular, Luther’s turn in 1518 hinged on his struggle to formulate a coherent sacramental theology. As Yeago puts it, “Luther’s overriding pastoral concern throughout the indulgence controversy was that ordinary people were being misled about where and how grace is to be found.”

Positively, Luther wanted to direct sinners to those ordinances that Christ Himself had established as the “places” of encounter with God. Christ’s promise to communicate Himself to the faithful through specific means answered Luther’s pastoral concerns and simultaneously resolved the issue of idolatry.

After 1518, Yeago writes, “It is the particularity and concreteness of God’s presence that now bear the brunt of the task of foreclosing idolatry; the true God, who by definition cannot be used, is the God who makes himself available as he chooses, here and not there, in the flesh born of Mary and the specificity of his church’s sacramental practice, not in the groves and high places consecrated by our religious speculation and self-interest.” Luther resolved the theological problem of idolatry by appealing to Christology: Who is the true God? The one incarnate in the womb of Mary and born at Bethlehem, risen and ascended into heaven. He resolved the issue of practical idolatry by an appeal to a sacramental theology founded on Christ’s authoritative word: Where can he now be found? Where He has promised to be.

In short, throughout the Reformation, idolatry was the problem; high sacramentalism allied to a high Christology was the solution.

That, to put it mildly, is not how the Reformation is characterized in textbooks and pulpits, but this double concern with theological and practical idolatry were as much at the heart of the Swiss Reformation as of the Lutheran, and Calvin’s resolution of these issues was the same as Luther’s. Interwoven with his satiric attack on the idolatrous veneration of relics, for instance, was Calvin’s insistence that relics were spiritually destructive because they pointed sinners away from those designated sites where Christ had promised to make Himself available — in the water, where the word is opened, at the table, in the fellowship of saints.

Only by recognizing this underlying concern for idolatry and the centrality of sacramental theology in the Reformation battle with idolatry can we grasp the unity of the doctrinal and practical-liturgical dimensions of the Reformation. Without this insight, the Reformation can look like sophistry, a precisionist movement concerned with nailing down the logical connections between faith, justification, and works.

With this insight, the Reformation can be seen for what it was: an exhumation of fundamental elements of the Christian faith that had been buried for some time under mountains of relics, images, and distorted theology.

It is probably not an exaggeration to say that some contemporary Protestants have so come to revere the Reformation doctrine of justification that they have done with it much the same as their medieval predecessors did the relics.

[Annual Re-post] Jeremy Taylor: Not everyone's favorite Anglican

On the Anglican liturgical calendar, today is the commemoration of Jeremy Taylor, the prolific divine who served as Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland after the Restoration. Most famous for his devotional treatises, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, Taylor was influential to several generations of Anglican clerics, including Charles Wesley. However, the theology he espoused in many of his written works (the notable exception being his prayers) has left him open to charges of legalism and Pelagianism. Samuel Taylor Coleridge offered the first, and for several centuries the only, comprehensive critique of Taylor's theology.

And yet Jeremy Taylor will not be called a Pelagian. Why? Because without grace superadded by Christ no man could be saved: that is, all men must go to hell, and this not for any sin, but from a calamity, the consequences of another man's sin, of which they were even ignorant. God would not condemn them the sons of Adam for sin, but only inflicted on them an evil, the necessary effect of which was that they should all troop to the devil! And this is Jeremy Taylor's defence of God's justice! The truth is, Taylor was a Pelagian, believed that without Christ thousands, Jews and heathens, lived wisely and holily, and went to heaven; but this he did not dare say out, probably not even to himself: and hence it is that he flounders backward and forward, now upping and downing. (Quoted in Allison, p. 94)

Elsewhere, Coleridge made the devastating conclusion that "Socinianism is as inevitable a deduction from Taylor's scheme as Deism or Atheism is from Socinianism."

In more recent times, Bishop C. FitzSimmons Allison has acknowledged the usefulness of Coleridge's critique and offered a comprehensive critique of his own in his book The Rise of Moralism. Taylor, according to +Allison, expounds a Gospel that "may be concisely summed up as the willingness of God to accept us tentatively on account of his more lenient covenant. Thereafter, however, our hope depends upon our sincere endeavours in the life of repentance."

Christianity is, for Jeremy Taylor, an enterprise only for those capable of helping themselves. There is no indication as to how Christianity applies to the helpless, nor as to how the weak and the wicked are initially contacted by God's grace. A person caught in a sinful habit of which he is unable to purge himself cannot expect God's pardon to help him, and the Church's role is merely to exhort him to further, seemingly futile, efforts. Such a person may receive Holy Communion only at the further peril of his soul. Taylor almost invariably insists upon the initiative of the sinner and not of God. The sinner must first endeavour, obey, believe, and love, then God will accept, forgive, pardon, love, and save. (pp. 80-81)

Jeremy Taylor, while still held in high esteem for his literary and devotional works, is not everyone's favorite Anglican.

Our Father, by grace

Yet the love of God for humanity is such that by grace he becomes Father of those in relation to whom he had previously only been Maker. He becomes their Father when created human beings receive "into their hearts the Spirit of the Son, crying out, 'Abba, Father'" (Gal. 4:6), as the apostle says. These are the ones who, by receiving the Word, receive authority from him "to become children of God" (John 1:12). Being creatures by nature, they would not become "sons" except by receiving the Spirit of the natural and true Son. So it was in order to bring this about and to make humanity receptive of divinity that "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14). . . . Accordingly, the Father calls "sons" those in whom he sees his own Son and he says "I begot" since "begetting" signifies "son," while "making" is indicative of the works. Therefore, we are not begotten first but made, for it is written, "Let us make humanity" (Gen. 1:26). But when we later receive the grace of the Spirit, we are henceforth said to be also begotten.

Athanasius

Orations against the Arians

Error, truth, and the fellowship of Christ's religion (or, Collects then and now)

Three years ago, I made these observations about the sheer ugliness of inclusive language:

The surest way to dumb down a church's theology is to tamper with its liturgy, and there is no more reprehensible way to wreak havoc on the liturgy than to pepper it throughout with "non-offensive" or "inclusive" language. Mainline churches today are dead in large part because their liturgies are lifeless expressions of rancid sterility laced with the deadly poison of idolatrous gender neutrality. The "God" who is "worshiped" in these liturgies is not a loving Father of infinite goodness and mercy, but a faceless functionary who is apparently so distant as to be beyond personal pronouns. If "God loves all God's children," why can't this loving "God" be addressed as Father or referred to as he, him, or his?

A "God" who is not personal is neither capable of loving nor of being loved. The prophets of inclusiveness will insist that "love" is all that matters. But "love," to them, is not unconditional self-sacrifice, but narcissistic self-exaltation. Thus, it is no longer "right to give him thanks and praise," but "right to give our thanks and praise." That subtle alteration, now standard in many eucharistic liturgies, illustrates profoundly the shift which inevitably takes place when "inclusive language" is the main concern. The focus is not on God, but on ourselves. God is no longer the object of worship; we are the object of our own self-congratulation.

It should go without saying that inclusive language liturgies are but the culmination of a process of dumbing down the liturgy which began over half a century ago. It is a long and winding road littered with ironic twists and contradictory turns, one of the clearest illustrations of which will take place the Sunday after next when Anglicans of varied theological persuasions across America will pray this collect from the 1979 BCP:

O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people; Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

There is nothing objectionable about the language, theology, or content of this prayer. It was composed to correspond with the Gospel reading for Year A of the lectionary, Jesus's well known discourse on the Good Shepherd (John 10:1-10). In that regard, it is biblical and most appropriate for the occasion.

It is also, however, a radical departure from the collect Thomas Cranmer originally appointed for the Third Sunday after Easter and included in every American Prayer Book before 1979.

Almighty God, who shewest to them that be in error the light of thy truth, to the intent that they may return into the way of righteousness: Grant unto all them that are admitted into the fellowship of Christ's religion, that they may eschew those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Cranmer borrowed this prayer, one of the oldest in his original compilation, from the Sacramentary of Leo I. It emphasizes one of the principle themes of the Easter season, namely, the incorporation into the body of Christ of new members via baptism and profession of faith. Barbee and Zahl, in their commentary on Cranmer's collects, offer these observations:

The Collect for the Third Sunday after Easter draws its power from the relation it represents between "the light of thy truth" and "the way of righteousness." We might have expected the Collect to posit God's showing forth His light to all "that be in error," to the intent that we would return to His truth. But no! The intent of our receiving His light is, in Prayer Book logic, that we return to "the way of righteousness." Truth creates right doing!

How can this be so? Truth here must be something potent in practice. It must be more than an abstraction. It must be more than principles or correct thinking. It is in fact right relationship. It is fellowship with God, to use the Collect's phrase. Truth enables relationship. The link between truth and relationship is the truth about ourselves in the light of the truth about God. When we are truly known, particularly in the darkness and shadows of our lives, by a Love which does not reject, we are cemented to God. To be known in truth and at the same time loved is the coup de grace to our retreat from relationship.

If what you believe is God's truth (grace) and your truth (the way you really are), the fruit of your belief will be works of righteousness and "all such things as be agreeable to the same." The relation between what you believe and what you do will be of cement, or better, of steel.

The ancient Collect posits the formula for true and lasting inclusion in "the fellowship of Christ's religion," namely a turning away from the darkness of error and a joyful embrace of the light of God's eternal truth.

Leithart: Schleiermacher still not rebabilitated

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was, for all intents and purposes, the father of liberal Protestantism. His well-meaning but misguided attempts to reconcile the Christian faith with the criticisms raised by its "cultured despisers" of the Enlightenment era opened the door for more radical revisions. Despite the best efforts of Karl Barth, the influence of Schleiermacher is still felt in liberal Protestant circles to this day.

Chief among the weaknesses of Schleiermacher's theology was his muddled Christology, which rejected, or at least strongly criticized, the Chalcedonian Formula, which declared that Jesus Christ was "at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man."

In an article first published a decade ago in the Harvard Theological Review, Lori Pearson attempted to rehabilitate Schleiermacher, claiming that his "Christology continues the ‘Antiochene’ tradition of protecting the absolute integrity of Jesus’ human identity while at the same time maintaining a more ‘Alexandrian’ emphasis on a single (divine) subject that is the source of all Christ’s redemptive activities.”

It is a valiant effort but, as Peter Leithart notes, it is unconvincing for several reasons.

First, Schleiermacher’s characterizations of the problems of classic Christological formulae seem contrived, and arise only because of idiosyncratic and rigid definitions of terms. There cannot be two natures in one person, he argues. That’s because “nature” refers to a conditioned, limited, corporeal existence, moving between activity and passivity; it doesn’t apply to God at all. Besides, he argues, a nature is normally a universal in which individuals participate, and it makes no sense to say that an individual person partakes of two natures at the same time. Person, he says, denotes a unity, but a double-natured being like Christ cannot really ever be unified.

But who says that “nature” has such a restricted meaning? In Christology, it obviously doesn’t. And classical Christology answers the question about unity by insisting that Christ is a single subject, the eternal Logos, who assumed a full human nature. That hardly satisfies our every curiosity, but then one wonders if Schleiermacher’s questions take sufficient account of the fact that in talking about Christ we are talking about an unparalleled mystery.

Pearson points out that for Schleiermacher the main problem with the two-natures doctrine is pastoral and perhaps apologetic: “It cannot give any guidance in the proper preaching of Christ,” Schleiermacher claims. It cannot, perhaps more precisely, make any sense to the cultured despisers to which Schleiermacher wanted to appeal.

The second problem is that even when there are “parallels” with classical Christology, Schleiermacher has put them in a quite different framework. Sein Gottes in ihm, Schleiermacher affirms, but this affirmation comes at the end of a sentence that identifies the Sein Gottes with Jesus’ fully operational God-consciousness: “The Redeemer. . . is like all men in virtue of the identity of his human nature, but is distinguished from them all by the constant potency of His God-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in Him” (Christian Faith 94). As Pearson explains it, “The Redeemer has what other humans have (a God-consciousness), but in a perfectly ordered and complete way. Since, however, the Redeemer has this perfect God-consciousness, he is a new creation, a ‘new implanting’ . . . of the God-consciousness in human nature.” In this way, Jesus is, Schleiermacher says, the one in whom “there is an existence of God in the proper sense.”

On Pearson’s description, further, Schleiermacher’s position is inconsistent. On the one hand, the God-consciousness is something he shares with other humans; yet she claims that he also “takes great pains to protect the immutability and impassibility of God” by exempting the “inner” divine life principle from the changes of his humanity. It’s not clear how these two statements cohere: Pearson says that Jesus’ “God-consciousness went through a process of development” (p. 357) and, quoting Schleiermacher about Jesus’ determination by His cultural identity, “such determination in no way concerns the real principle of His life but only the organism.” Perhaps the contradiction is Pearson’s and not Schleiermacher’s, but it’s there.

On Pearson’s description too, Schleiermacher combines Alexandrian and Antiochene motifs in a way that results in a (somewhat modified) Apollinarianism. Jesus has a full humanity in Schleiermacher’s scheme, but a “divine principle” of some sort or other plays the active role of shaping all Christ’s actions. Apollinarianism is far more orthodox, because at least it affirms that the Logos occupied the empty soul-space of the humanity of Christ; Schleiermacher insists that the Redeemer is not the second Person, not the Logos: “The Person of Christ began only when He became a man” (Christian Faith, 105). For all his talk of Sein Gottes, there doesn’t seem to be much to distinguish the Redeemer from an inspired man.

Pearson has shown that formal parallels to Chalcedon are evident in Schleiermacher. To my mind, though, she only confirms the common charge that he revised Christology in the direction of psychology and, one cannot avoid the Barthian charge, anthropology.

Wolfhart Pannenberg would still give Shcleiermacher a hearing but, in doing so, he treads on dangerous ground. Leithart notes in a follow-up post:

Pannenberg (Jesus – God and Man (scm classics), 285) offers a more sympathetic summary of Schleiermacher’s Christology than I have done. He agrees that Schleiermacher’s definition of “nature” as “a limited being existing in opposition to others” doesn’t fly: It “does not meet the patristic doctrine, since its concept of nature is interchangeable with the concept of being.” This addresses also to Schleiermacher’s objection that the language of Trinitarian theology and Christology clash.

But Pannenberg thinks that Schleiermacher is on stronger ground in his objection that using nature flattens the Creator-creature distinction: “how can divine and human be so subsumed under any single concept, as if both could be mutually coordinated as more precise specifications of one and the same universal?” asks Schleiermacher.

Pannenberg thinks this question “scores a direct hit” since “one cannot speak of divine being and human being as though they were on the same plane.” While admitting that “this was not the intention of patristic Christologies,” he argues that the “two-natures doctrine is objectionable” for just this reason.

A point taken, but I wonder if any language about God can meet Pannenberg’s strictures, including his own. In formulating his objection he speaks of “divine being and human being.” Has he treated God and creation “as though they were on the same plane”?

A wrestling church is a living church

Almost from its inception, the church faced the challenge of false teachings and "different" gospels. We see this in Galatia, where Paul chastises the congregation for "so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6). There is no other true gospel, as Paul makes clear, but some, perhaps all, of the Galatians, have fallen prey to the nefarious deception of false teachers who have beguiled them into believing something other than the truth. Paul is determined that his beloved fellow believers in Galatia not be led astray so quickly. Hence, the necessity of his letter and his exposition on the truth of the only gospel, that of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.

Herman Sasse (1895 - 1976) saw the church wrestling for truth and constantly praying for the Lord's protection against falsehood as a sign, not of a dying, but of a living church. A church not wrestling with questions of truth and falsehood is, in his view, "always in danger of dying."

The Apostle of Love warns Christians: "Believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world." Although John's Gospel and Epistles constantly set forth the love of one's fellow believers as the criterion for true faith and genuine Christianity, his criterion for erroneous faith and heresy is a dogmatic statement: "Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus is come in the flesh, is not of God and this is the spirit of the Antichrist." In other words, contrary to all expectation, the correct teaching of the Incarnation appears as the touchstone according to which true doctrine is distinguished from false, the church from heresy. It was so at the beginning of the church's history; it shall continue so until the light of eternal truth shall enlighten us all. Of those times in which the life of the church was not very much disturbed by concern for pure teaching and by alarm concerning false teaching, it may be said that they do not belong to the great ages of the church. On the contrary, the church is always in danger of dying when it ceases to wrestle for truth and to pray that the Lord may guard it against the devil's wiles and false teaching.

A wrestling church, then, is a living church. The enemy is always eager to engage in battle. In guarding the great deposit of faith, the church must be ever vigilant.

Ash Wednesday's ashless collect

It is interesting to note that the collect Thomas Cranmer composed for Ash Wednesday presumes the absence of the practice most often associated with the observance, namely, the imposition of ashes. The English Reformers believed too many superstitious beliefs had grown up around the practice and saw it as too closely connected with attrition, auricular confession, contrition, priestly absolution, and penance -- doctrines they believed to be errant.

Consequently, Archbishop Cranmer composed a new collect which emphasized repentance and forgiveness, rather than fasting and penance.

Almighty and everlasting God, which hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that be penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ.

Additionally, in the Gospel reading assigned in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, Jesus explicitly denounces the hypocritical outward expressions of righteousness which the Reformers believed such rituals had become.

“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

(Matthew 6:16-21 ESV)

It was not until the nineteenth century that the imposition of ashes was reintroduced in the churches of the Anglican Communion. It began gaining popularity in many Protestant churches in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The sad legacy of Resolution 15

Bishops seated at the 1930 Lambeth Conference

In light of the recent assault on religious liberty by the Obama Administration, specifically its bullheaded refusal to allow educational and charitable agencies of the Catholic Church conscientious exemptions from health insurance mandates regarding contraceptive and abortifacient drugs, it is prudent at this time to revisit a fateful resolution adopted by the bishops of the Anglican Communion at the 1930 Lambeth Conference.

Resolution 15 addressed The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex. It read as follows (emphasis added):

Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.

As the late Peter Toon noted in a 2008 essay, this resolution represented a radical departure from what had been, up to that time, an undisputed ecumenical consensus and codified throughout the Anglican Communion a novel teaching on artificial birth control which has yet to be refuted by any national or regional body.

In the Early Church, in the Medieval Church, in the Churches of the Protestant Reformation and in the Christian tradition to the 1920s (e.g., see the Marriage Service in The BCP 1662), any form of artificial birth control in order to make the sexual act sterile was regarded as a serious sin against God’s holy law. In 1930 the Anglican Council of Bishops, for what seemed to be good pastoral reasons, suggested ways for Christian couples in certain circumstances to reject this law.  

By this Resolution, which went around the world like wild-fire, the Anglican Way was changed permanently. No attempt has been made in any Lambeth Conference since 1930 to reverse it, and no national or regional synod of the Anglican Communion has officially rejected it. Thus it stands as part of the modern, Anglican teaching on sexual relations within marriage.

The sad legacy of Resolution 15 has been the disintegration of the Anglican Communion, at first gradual, but accelerated in the past few decades by the schismatic practices of its most liberal provinces in North America and the British Isles and, most recently, by the rebellious actions of the indigenous leaders of once promising missionary jurisdictions. The fact that it probably comes as a surprise to even the most conservative of Anglicans in America and Britain that the change in the Communion's teaching on contraception came so relatively recently, and that the present teaching is alien to Reformed, as well as Catholic, tradition ought to be evidence enough that the depth of our troubles is far greater than we had first thought. Indeed, the innovations of the more recent past are merely the inevitable metastasis of a malignant tumor which first invaded the body in 1930.

Jones: Passive resistance, civil disobedience, and the method of Jesus

Here are a few more paragraphs from E. Stanley Jones's The Christ of the Mount. Written in 1931, on the cusp of the myriad of crises which ultimately led to World War II, the book reflects, in its more dated material, what turned out to be the great missionary's overly optimistic assessment of the world situation. However, much of what Jones wrote about the principles set forth by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount remain relevant today. In particular, his reflection on what distinguishes the method of Jesus from the popular secular methods of passive resistance and civil disobedience is quite pertinent for a day in which organized protests and "occupation" movements garner so much attention in the media and considerable sympathy from church organizations that have strayed from their biblical moorings.

"Aren't we non-Christians more Christian than you Christians in that we act on the principles and methods of Jesus and you don't?" has been asked again and again at the question hour since this movement began. I have had to answer that the method that Ghandi and his followers have adopted is very closely akin to the method of the Sermon on the Mount, and in acting on this they have been more Christian than we have usually been. And yet I cannot identify the two methods -- the method of Civil Disobedience and the method of the Sermon on the Mount. When constitutional means are not open there are three ways by which righteous ends may be gained apart from war -- Passive Resistance, Civil Disobedience, and the Method of Jesus. Passive Resistance is the method of bearing passively imposed wrongs and penalties in the hope of calling attention to the wrongs and thus gaining redress. Civil Disobedience is the choosing of certain laws and regulations to be disobeyed in order that by their disobedience and the bearing of consequent suffering, a larger end may be gained in the changing of the whole system of which these particular oppressive laws and regulations are thought to be representative. The difference between Passive Resistance and Civil Disobedience may be illustrated thus: It is Passive Resistance when a man drafted for war refuses to be drafted and goes to jail instead; it is Civil Disobedience when a man, opposed to war in general and desiring to oppose it, chooses the draft law as the test-point, deliberately breaks it before it actually touches him and tries to get others to do the same. The one is passive and personal, the other is active and collective. The one chooses to break the law when it is specifically imposed, the other chooses the law to be broken when not specifically imposed on him.

The method of Jesus is different from either and yet it sums up both and goes beyond each. It has within it the passive elements of the first and the active elements of the second, but it adds a third -- an active offensive of love on a higher level. Passively bearing a wrong is not enough; nor is going out and precipitating a crisis in order to bear the penalty of that precipitation enough. You must add an element, the vital element that may be lacking in each -- the active and audacious offensive of love. Without this element the whole thing will fail. It is this plus that puts soul into it.

Because this element of active love has been absent very often in the Civil Disobedience movement many an Englishman fighting on the other side could see nothing but lawlessness in the act of civil disobedience. He met the breaking of law by the imposing of the penalty of law and felt that he was righteous in doing so. And especially did he feel that way when in the faces and attitudes of the civil resisters he could see only hate toward him. He was untouched, for the thing that might have touched him was not there, namely, an active love.

It is for this reason that Jesus, after talking about turning the other cheek and going the second mile, immediately adds that we are to love our enemies and do good to them that despitefully use us. He links the passive resistance of evil and the active love of the enemy who does evil and makes them one. Without this active love the method of conquering by turning the other cheek is savorless salt. It may do harm. Without this active love, going one mile, and even going two, may do harm to the oppressor and the oppressed in that it may produce contempt in the mind of the oppressor and may further weaken the oppressed. One may allow himself to be smitten on the other cheek, but in his heart of hearts he may be saying, "Yes, but I hate you and will get even with you if I can." That kills the active element that would work on the heart of the oppressor and renders the method sterile. Love gives the method life. That which made the death of Jesus different, in addition to the character of the sufferer, was the fact that out form him went an active love toward the men that put him to death and which expressed itself in the prayer for his enemies, "Father, forgive them." That spirit wrested the offensive from their hands and turned the tragedy into a triumph.

The real story behind Christmas and December 25

GetReligion's resident Anglican George Conger finds some holiday merriment in a story from the U.K. Daily Mail about an American Scrooge who has a disdain for Christmas lights.

A group homeowners on one street with Christmas decorations have received an anonymous note saying the lights honour the ‘Pagan Sun-God.’

The residents in Hudsonville, Michigan, were baffled by the notes which were attached to their mailboxes on Wednesday night.

The note said the lights have nothing to do with the birth of Jesus, according to ABC News affiliate WZZM.

The letters begin on a warm note by saying ‘Hi neighbour, you have a nice display of lights.’

But it swiftly becomes serious by talking of how the ‘pagan tradition’ of putting up lights began.

No doubt, the perpetrator of this anti-Christmas scheme is of a kind with those fringe cultists who decorate interstate highways with billboards declaring, "Sunday Worship is the Mark of the Beast." Conger's main objection, however, is the story's use of "a meme often found in Christmas related stories that December 25 is a Christianized pagan holiday." Conventional wisdom, expressed in a recent article in the Huffington Post, usually gets it backward. Conger refers readers to a 2003 essay by William J. Tighe published in Touchstone magazine.

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.

A Mistake

The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.

In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.

There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.

As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Persian Empire to the east.

In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.

Advent sermon by Phillips Brooks

As something of an addendum to my recent post on "O Little Town of Bethlehem," here is a sample of the preaching of Phillips Brooks, appropriate for the season, from a sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent. Reflective of the theology ascendant at the time, the elements of so-called Christian humanism are apparent, but it is, nevertheless, a stirring exposition on the Incarnation. You can read the full text of the sermon here.

"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God."—John I. 11, 12.

I cannot stop to tell you what I am sure that many of you must know—how real this belonging between God and humanity becomes to a man at the time of his own conversion. God stands far off from you, and you think that you have nothing to do with Him. You send Him duty-prayers as if you shot arrows into the darkness, toward a voice which you are not wholly certain that you hear. By and by that God comes to you; and the surprise of all surprises in conversion is to see how your heart knows Him and opens and lifts itself to take Him in. "My beloved is mine, and I am His," it says, with surprised and sudden recognition. Christ has come "unto His own."

But there is a yet closer and tenderer meaning of these words, I think. They mean that Christ came in answer to a most urgent and pressing call of need. That is what it signifies when it is said that "He came unto His own." For in a true sense everything is a man's own which needs that man; not everything which he needs, but everything which needs him. Do you not know what that is? Your child is yours not merely by the claim of birth and nature, but by the tie of continual dependence. He is most yours when he needs you most. He is never so much yours as when he requires your forgiveness for some sin. He ceases in part to be yours as he outgrows his most urgent need of you. So the charitable man or woman talks about "my poor." So the teacher talks about "my boys." Everywhere that is yours which needs you. I pity the man who does not know the responsibility and privilege of that high sort of ownership. It is a most sacred claim upon another to go to a poor helpless creature and say, "You need me. I will help you. You are mine." Now when it is said that Jesus came to His own, is not this at least part of the meaning? He came to those who needed Him; most of all to those who from the stricken earth held up to Him the deepest of all needs, the need of sin that craved forgiveness; and that was what made them His. Certainly no level-eyed intercourse of sinless man with sinless Christ could have wrought in us such a profound and precious sense that we belong to Him as this simple knowledge that we need Him. Need has its sacred rights. Because we want forgiveness and help, and He only can forgive and help us, therefore we are His.

How clearly this shines out in those typical men and women of the Gospel stories! How closely they became Christ's by merely needing Him! How He acknowledged their claim! The sinning woman who crept in and touched the hem of His garment was completely His; she commanded with a perfect freedom His sympathy and time and care simply because she was so wretched and could not do without Him. The poor man to whom He gave sight, and whom the Pharisees turned out of the synagogue, laid hold of Christ immediately, and Christ acknowledged him as one of His because he could not do without Him. And who among the apostles was more perfectly Christ's own than Simon Peter, whom Christ was always answering and saving in extremest need?

Need I say more about the meaning and the purpose of the Incarnation? Put these two ideas together. Jesus "came unto His ovm." To men forgetful of their godlike nature He came to tell them that they were the sons of God; and to men who could not do without Him He came because they needed Him. Oh, my dear friends, by what high warrants does the Saviour claim us for His own! Because we are His Father's children, and because we are so needy, therefore our divine Brother comes. He comes to you and says, "You called Me." And you look up out of your worldliness and say, " Oh no! I did not call. I do not know You!" But He says, calmly, "You did, although you do not know it. That power of being godlike which is in you, crushed and unsatisfied—that summoned Me; and that need of being forgiven and renewed which you will not own— that summoned Me. And here I am! Now wilt thou be made whole? If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." Just as all through the crowds of Jerusalem there must have been many who walked with a sense that they peculiarly belonged to the great Healer—one with his healed arm that once was withered, another with the new-given sight in his eyes, another witb his body yet missing the long possession of the demon who was cast out yesterday, each with some need which had been recognized and supplied—so through this congregation there are many who rejoice that they are Christ's. They needed Him and He owned their need. He took them, He forgave them, He holds them, and nothing shall pluck them out of His hands.

Shall not Christ be heard? (Charles Spurgeon)

. . . With all his amiability, the minister should be firm for his principles, and hold to avow and defend them in all companies. When a fair opportunity occurs, or he has managed to create one, let him not be slow to make use of it. Strong in his principles, earnest in his tone, and affectionate in heart, let him speak out like a man and thank God for the privilege.

There need be no reticence--there should be none. The maddest romances of Spiritualists, the wildest dreams of Utopian reformers, the silliest chitchat of the town, and the vainest nonsense of the frivolous world, demand a hearing and get it. And shall not Christ be heard? Shall his message of love remain untold, for fear we should be charged with intrusion or accused of cant? Is religion to be tabooed--the best and noblest of all themes forbidden? If this be the rule of any society, we will not comply with it. If we cannot break it down, we will leave the society to itself, as men desert a house smitten with leprosy. We cannot consent to be gagged. There is no reason why we should be. We will go to no place where we cannot take our Master with us. While others take liberty to sin, we shall not renounce our liberty to rebuke and warn them. Wisely used, our common conversation may be a potent means for good. Trains of thought may be started by a single sentence which may lead to the conversion of persons whom our sermons have never reached. . . .

Be it ours to sow not only on the honest and good soil, but on the rock and on the highway, and at the last great day to reap a glad harvest. May the bread which we cast upon the waters in odd times and strange occasions be found again after many days.