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.

Leithart: Lightning, thunder, hail, and the crumbling of the barrier

Peter Leithart on Revelation's unfolding narrative of God's throne breaking down the barrier between heaven and earth:

God’s throne in heaven, like Sinai, flashes with lightning, crashes with thunder (Revelation 4:5). Those throne phenomena are repeated at crucial seams in the book of Revelation, with additions.

After the seventh seal, an angel throws fire to earth, which reproduces the heavenly throne on earth (8:5)—thunder, sounds, lightning, with the appropriate addition of an earthquake.

After the seventh trumpet, the same phenomena appear in heaven (11:19), this time with a hailstorm added.

The scene comes to a climax after the seventh bowl (16:18-21). but this time the earthquake is unprecedented and the hailstones are 100 pounds apiece.

There’s an intensification of the throne phenomena here, but something more. The throne moves from heaven to earth, and as it does it shakes earth. But as it moves, it also brings hail. As James Jordan has suggested, hailstones are, cosmologically, fragments of the firmament. As the throne descends, the barrier between heaven and earth cracks and crumbles.

When it’s all said and done, the heavenly city descends. It can get all the way to earth because the firmament boundary has already been opened. By the end of Revelation, you don’t need doors in the sky to get to heaven, because the walls of heaven have been broken down and heaven has come to earth.

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.

Shallow-minded malcontents continue witch hunt against Leithart

Peter J. Leithart is one of the most insightful theologians ever produced by the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Yet, rather than bask in the glory of the theological credibility he brings to the denomination, some of his colleagues have been, for the last several years, seeking to discipline Leithart for allegedly holding views contrary to the church's Westminster Standards. In 2011, Leithart was acquitted on five charges of deviating from those "standards" by the Pacific Northwest Presbytery. The verdict, however, was not satisfactory for several other presbyteries, who are now calling for a new trial, citing alleged extraordinary circumstances surrounding the original trial.

Three Presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) recently approved an overture requesting the General Assembly to assume original jurisdiction over TE Peter Leithart, a teaching elder member of Pacific Northwest Presbytery.

Calvary Presbytery approved the overture at its April 25, 2013 meeting, and Gulf Coast and Mississippi Valley Presbyteries approved the overture at their respective meetings on May 7, 2013. The vote at all of the meetings was unanimous or at least without audible dissent. . . .

In June 2011, Pacific Northwest Presbytery held a trial, and the Presbytery found TE Leithart not guilty of the five charges. In November 2011, one month after the Presbytery met and adopted the judgments on the five charges, a complaint was filed against the actions of Pacific Northwest Presbytery. In April, 2012 the Presbytery denied the complaint at which point the complaint was carried to the SJC. . . .

The three Presbyteries voted to approve the overture asking the PCA General Assembly to, “Assume original jurisdiction and direct the Standing Judicial Commission to hear ‘Pacific Northwest Presbytery vs. Peter Leithart,’ because PNWP has ‘refused to act’ per the provision found in BCO 34-1, by not declaring a mistrial in this case because of its chief prosecutor’s conflict of interest, stemming from his transition into membership of the Roman Catholic church.”

So, the lead prosecutor in the original trial wound up converting to Roman Catholicism. Ironic, of course, and quite embarrassing to those who claim it is Leithart who is inviting people to swim the Tiber. As Leithart himself explained, however, what he offers is the antidote to, not the cause of, "Roman fever."

About a year ago, I was tried by the Pacific Northwest Presbytery of the PCA on charges of deviating from the Westminster Confession at a number of points. The Presbytery exonerated me of all charges. One of the underlying themes of the trial and the surrounding debates over the past several years has been the charge that my views on sacraments and on soteriology lean toward Roman Catholicism. Some have claimed that my writings and those of my associates and friends have been a gateway drug that led them to convert to Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy.

Now, the prosecutor in my case, Jason Stellman, has resigned from the PCA and is heading toward Rome.

One might conclude from this turn of events that conversion is no respecter of persons – Roman fever touches every branch of the Reformed church, from Reformed catholics to hard-core Confessionalists. Perhaps. In my view some of the theological assumptions and ecclesial instincts of Protestant Confessionalists provide a smooth on-ramp to Catholicism, or an off-ramp from Protestantism.

Confessionalists, after all, place a great deal of emphasis on the tradition of Reformed theology, embodied especially in Reformed confessions. Throughout the debates of the past few years, I have presented mainly biblical arguments for my positions, and kept historical concerns subordinate. My opponents have typically been much more interested in testing my views by the Westminster Confession. The touchstone of their theology is a piece of the Reformed tradition as much as, and in some cases more than, Scripture. Confessionalists claim that the Confession provides standard exegesis of Scripture, to which Reformed theologians have to submit. Confessional Reformed theology thus has a natural affinity for Rome that biblicists like me don’t share. Confessionalists want the Confession to be a paper Pope. It’s not surprising that some find the paper Pope inadequate, and go searching for a live one. (If, as some will charge, Scripture is a paper Pope, it’s one whose ring I gladly kiss.)

Behind this Confessionalist elevation of tradition (in practice, over Scripture) is a broader tendency related to what I have critiqued elsewhere as “tragic metaphysics,” the notion that the original and old is necessarily preferable to the derived and the new. In its Trinitarian dogma, Christianity says the opposite: The Son, though He comes from the Father, is equal to the Father in every respect; in fact, there is no pure, unsupplemented origin, because there can be no Father without a Son. It says the opposite too in its eschatology: The golden age is not lost in the unrecoverable past but ahead of us in an eschatological future. Its Trinitarian theology and eschatology give Christian faith an open-endedness that can be unsettling. It’s unnerving to have to seek foundations in a city that is yet to come. (According to Fergus Kerr, this is exactly what Thomas says –Thomas is an “eschatological foundationalist.”)

This is not at all to say that we learn nothing from tradition. We learn much; tradition is absolutely essential to the life of the church; no matter what the pastor says, every church has its traditions. It’s often useful to evaluate the recent past in the light of a more distant past (which is what the nouvelle theologie is all about). And the church has come to a fixed understanding of some teachings of Scripture over the centuries – the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas of the early church are the basic ones. Smaller units of the church have come to other fixed points – justification by grace through faith and election in the Reformed tradition, for example.

Still, essential as the past is, for Protestants the past ought never become an ultimate standard. Even the fixed points can be freshly formulated (cf. recent developments in Trinitarian theology and in Pauline studies). Beyond those few fixed points, much remains up in the air (for Catholics and Orthodox too), and will for centuries to come, as Christians continue to pore over the Scriptures and seek unity of mind concerning what they teach. Scripture remains fixed and immovable, the test and touchstone always of everything. Our understanding doesn’t stay fixed. Protestants should be perfectly comfortable with that.

Confessionalists aren’t comfortable with that, and share with many Catholics the instinct to find a place of anchorage at the origin. Catholics reach back to an apostolic church; Confessionalists reach back to the Reformation or the post-Reformation creeds. It’s not surprising that some Confessionalists will discover they haven’t reached back far enough. If you move from Roman Catholic to eschatological Protestant, you change games; to move from Confessional Protestantism to Catholicism is start playing an older version of the same game. And in a war over venerability, Catholics have a distinct advantage.

Catholics who charge that Protestantism leads to postmodernism are not entirely wrong. To be Protestant is to believe in some form of differance and dissemination, though to be Protestant is also to believe (against secular postmodernism) that God has spoken intelligibly and will someday speak a final word. Confessionalists often resist the “postmodern” tendencies of Biblicist Protestantism by anchoring in a tradition; but that is a “Catholic” response to the vertigo of unrealized eschatology.

On the other hand, some Reformed converts to Rome have been motivated by “postmodern” recognition of the historical embeddedness and contextuality of all human knowledge. All thought occurs within a tradition of thought, and insofar as American Protestantism has been a me-and-Bible Protestantism it has ignored this reality. I agree with this in large part, but with a crucial qualification – No tradition can keep God from acting in new ways and saying new things in His world; God is Word, and therefore His voice is not simply identified with the voice of the church or the voice of the past. In any case, the point here is that Confessionalism defended on “postmodern” grounds is structurally similar to Catholic ideas of tradition.

It appears also that certain Reformed versions of the nature/grace duality lend themselves to Roman Catholicism. Some years ago, I lectured on nature and supernature in the nouvelle theologie at the University of Steubenville, and I was surprised to find myself debating Meredith Kline’s theology with Scott Hahn. Hahn, a former Presbyterian converted to Rome, defended Kline, while I defended de Lubac. It was slightly surreal, but it led me to conclude that Kline’s theology of nature and grace (cult and culture, special/common grace, etc. are variations on this theme) makes a very neat match with older Catholic views of nature and the supernatural. At several points, the Klinean version of Confessionalism is a natural ally of Roman Catholicism.

Along with many friends and colleagues, I have long advocated a sacramental, liturgical form of Protestantism. We talk a lot about the Eucharist, and actually use the word “Eucharist,” which can send shivers up the spines of some Reformed Confessionalists. We emphasize the efficacy of baptism, and many of us wear a white robe when leading worship. When I use the word “catholic,” I usually mean it positively. Schmemann, de Lubac, Congar are among my favorite theologians.

At first taste, all that can seem a gateway drug to something stronger that is found only in Rome or Constantinople. But all the basic components of what we offer come from Wittenberg and Geneva. What I and my friends offer is the antidote to and not the cause of Roman fever.

At the heart of the controversy are Leithart's views on baptism, which he recently reiterated on his blog.

With my views on baptism again subject to scrutiny, I take a moment to summarize what I’ve written on the subject. There is nothing new here. It is what I wrote in my dissertation, The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism, in my book, The Baptized Body, and it is the assumed theology of baptism behind my various incidental writings on the topic.

First, we should take the Bible’s statements about baptism as statements about baptism. Through Paul, God says that those who have been baptized are dead and buried with Christ (Romans 6:4) and that as many as have been baptized into Christ are clothed in Christ (Galatians 3:28-29). By analogy with the exodus, Paul implies that those who are baptized are rescued from Egypt and baptized into Christ, the new Moses (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). Peter tells his hearers at Pentecost to repent and be baptized “for the remission of your sins” (Acts 2:38) and says “baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21). We can choose to disbelieve these things, or explain them away, but that’s what these texts say. I submit that we should believe what God has to say on the subject of baptism. That’s the starting point. When the Bible speaks about baptism, it is speaking about the rite of baptism; and what it says is true.

But how can we say this? We know that not everyone who is baptized is saved. We know that not all baptized people even profess to believe. The New Testament speaks this way about baptism, I have argued, because of what it teaches concerning the church.

What it teaches is that the visible church is the body of Christ; Head and body form a single reality that Paul is willing to describe as “Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). That is a metaphor, but not merely a metaphor. The church consists of those people who have been joined to the incarnate Son by His Spirit, the Spirit active in Word and Sacrament. Since the church is a divine-human society, since it is that kind of community, it is impossible for membership in the visible church to be merely external, social, or legal. If you are baptized into the body, you are baptized into a real union with the incarnate Son. You are a son in the Son.

Yet, of course, not everyone who is united to Christ in His body perseveres. Those who fail to persevere ultimately fail because they are reprobate. They eventually grieve the Spirit and fall away, showing themselves to be rebellious sons. But in the meantime, while they share in the life of the body of the Son of God, they share in various ways in the gifts of Christ through His Spirit (cf. Hebrews 6:4-6; 2 Peter 2:17-22).

Ooh, really dangerous false teaching there, eh? Actually, this is about as orthodox as you can get. I cannot imagine any thoughtful member of the PCA not being embarrassed by the endless witch hunt being conducted by a few shallow-minded malcontents who would rather maintain a narrow sectarian identity than interact with the wider Christian community.

More from Leithart on the Apocalypse

Peter Leithart is spending a good deal of time with Revelation lately. As noted yesterday, he offers a few simple points to guide responsible interpretation. The first point is self-evident to any serious reader of the Scriptures.

1) Revelation is a book of the Bible. It is packed with Old Testament language and imagery, and cannot be understood without that Old Testament background. One scholar has suggested that Revelation uses the Old Testament “compositionally” rather than “expositionally” – there is no commentary on biblical texts (as in, say, Romans), but the Old Testament provides the palette from which Revelation is painted. Attempts to explain Revelation primarily by reference to Roman history or current events forget this principle.

Leithart's point that it cannot be understood without an Old Testament background is illustrated in the similarities between Isaiah 60 and Revelation 21-22.

The sun shall be no more
your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon
give you light;
but the LORD will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory.
Your sun shall no more go down,
nor your moon withdraw itself;
for the LORD will be your everlasting light,
and your days of mourning shall be ended.
Your people shall all be righteous;
they shall possess the land forever,
the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,
that I might be glorified.
The least one shall become a clan,
and the smallest one a mighty nation;
I am the LORD;
in its time I will hasten it.

(Isaiah 60:19-22 ESV)

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

(Revelation 21:22-22:5 ESV)

There is, after all, a very good reason Revelation is the last book in the Bible. What is written there has probably also been written somewhere else, earlier in the canon. The death and resurrection of Christ, however, brings new meaning to those old prophecies.

Today, Leithart draws from antiquity to solve the Apocalypse's most puzzling mystery.

Bede offers several explanations of the number 666 in his Bede: Commentary on Revelation. The number is the number of the Greek word “Titan,” a “giant,” because “it is thought that Antichrist will usurp this name, as if he excelled all in power, boasting that he is the one of whom it is written, ‘he rejoiced as a giant to run his course.’”

The name “Antemos,” which means “contrary to honor” is also a 666, and the verb “I deny” has the same numerical value. Both exhibit “the character of the person and the asperity of the work of Antichrist.”

Bede eventually offers a reading that is more firmly rooted in the Bible: “who is ignorant, that the number six, in accordance with which the world was created, signifies the perfection of work? And this, whether simple, or multiplied by ten, or a hundred, demonstrates the fruit of the same perfection to be sixty-fold, or a hundred-fold.” Plus, “The weight of gold also which was brought to Solomon every year was six hundred and sixty-six thousand talents. The seducer, therefore, will presume to exact for himself the offering which is rightfully due and paid to the true king.”

666 means “a counterfeit Adam” and “a false Solomon.”