Yes, the Gospel is radical. And this returns me to a theme I’ve been sounding repeatedly on this blog: the radicalism of being made perfect in weakness is temporal social and cultural suicide.

I agree that we should seek to do justice to the paradox. I think we can fail to do justice to the paradox by underappreciating the omni-present necessity of temporal “pagan” goods that our creaturely existence demands.

Consider:

“The doctrine of the sermon [on the mount] is an eschatological doctrine. It demands a change of heart and imposes rules of conduct that have their meaning for men who live in the daily expectation of the kingdom of Heaven. It is not a doctrine that can be followed by men who live in a less intense environment, who expect to live out their lives and who wish to make the world livable for their families. Following the doctrine of the sermon to the letter would in each individual case inevitably entail social and economic disaster and probably lead to an early death. The pressure of an eschatological doctrine of this type influences strongly the structure of a civilization. The rules of the sermon are not a code that can be followed like the Ten Commandments. The radicalism of the demands precludes their use as a system of social ethics. Any set of rules that is accepted by a Christian society as the standard of conduct will inevitably fall far short of the teaching of the sermon.” EV, HPI vol. i.

I find this compelling. Hence my advocacy for a penitent political theology. One that will theorize on a foundation of the stark experience of power and shortage in the temporal world, yet also will come under the eschatalogical pressure of the radicalism of the Gospel, which tempers that experience with the Christian experience of guilt, confession, repentence, and renewal.

Caleb, when you say that evangelicals deny “the truth of what is going on” what exactly do you mean by what is going on? Is it not realizing their double dealing? Or is it not recognizing the dilemma of Luther’s teaching for the sanctified life or virtue? I’m particularly interested because I like your take on the objectivist-subjectivist schizophrenia among evangelicals.

In the name of provisional goodness I am willing to say to an unbeliever that it is better for him not to violate God’s law because I do think his eternal punishments will be less because of some “virtue.” But I wonder if that is going to be persuasive.

My fundamentalism comes from my constantly being struck by the paradoxical relationship between grace and virtue/wisdom. Last Sunday our New Testament reading came from 2 Cor. 12. The very idea that we are made perfect in weakness, or that the folly of the cross is wiser than the wisdom of the Greeks is simply stunning to me and confounds even the brightest light of nature. For whatever difficulties Luther precipitated, he certainly recognized the paradoxical nature of the gospel in ways that always shock as you read him. And as long as neo-Calvinists and evangelicals fail to do justice to the paradox, as long as I have breath I’ll keep reminding them of it and being a pain in the bleep about it.

I completely agree with your large paragraph describing the failures of both fundamentalism and neocalvinism. In fact, it tracks quite nicely with this paper by Ken Meyers (http://www.marshillaudio.org/resources/pdf/ComGrace.pdf) from which I cribbed the Bavinck quote.

But this does, in fact, toss us back into the sticky (squishy?) question of understanding the social/cultural implications of Luther’s understanding of justification, which, by all acounts (including your own a few days ago) leaves no room for a common account of the good. If we wish to preserve the light of nature we must understand that such goodness as may be had through the light of nature does in fact precipitate God’s favor. For Augustine, at least, whether such favor ever become salvific or not remains unknowable.

This explains my comments on evangelicals, not that I am going soft on them, but rather that the most generous read one can put on evangelicalism is that it is a kind of double-dealing (or having a reformed cake and eating someone elses natural law cake, as you might put it) that mediates between fundamentalism and outright transformationalism (whether it by theonomic or neocalvinist). Even given this generous read, I would argue that evangelicalism is an extremely weak form of mediation due to its denial of the truth of what is going on, which renders it defenseless against the liberalism of pop politics, pop markets, and pop culture. This would explain, for example, the mind-bending phenomena of evangelicals openly and simultaneously arguing for an objectivist public ethic (abortion, homoesexuality, etc.) and a subjectivist private ethic (praise songs, birth control, etc.). This also explains why so many in the evangelical camp who are tasked with spying on and making night raids on the storehouse of virtue contained in other traditions (Rome) so often “go native” and one night, never return to the evangelical camp.

Bill, your comments on Reformed scholasticism are interesting. I would like to interact some with that tradition, but alas, am mostly ignorant of it at this point.

I do think Bill is on to something, though, in that the Westminster Confession leaves room for the “light” of nature informing the circumstances of church life. That light seems to give great value to Robert’s Rules and could likely be employed to trash praise songs.

But before I throw the towel in completely on A, B, and C, I wonder what Caleb thinks of a distinction between what is ultimately good and what is provisionally good. This is where I think the light of nature goes — it gives us the true, good and beautiful but only in a provisional sense. What fundamentalists and Kuyperians both seem to be guilty of is not having such a sense, as if the world and its affairs are good but not sacred or redemptive. Of course, fundamentalists avoided the world because it was wicked. Kuyperians seem to make up for this by making the world full of the possibility of redemption. Neither approach has it right in my view. And a lot of this goes back to how we read the Garden. God created it good, but it wasn’t blessed. That blessedness awaited Adam keeping the Covenant. And now on this side of the fall, that goodness is seriously diminished. But I still think it’s available through said light of nature.

What justification does is to remind us that such goodness will not suffice to merit God’s favor.

Or is this squishy?

In the corpus of their works we find an unmovable defense of justification along with a reintroduction of scholastic methodology, Aristotelian logic, and ethics.

So Luther damns Aristotle. Melanchton’s loci restores him. Sure Calvin spits venom at scholastics, but the question is which scholastics? In fact, I would argue that Post-Reformation orthodoxy (especially the Reformed variety) is closer to the medival realist position on culture, ethics, and metaphysics than it was to the via modernity of Occam-ist nominalism.

I am not sure Luther is the best guide to these questions. He is the point of most extreme tension. Raised in a theological environment of nominalism, this Augustianian rebelled against the spirit of his age. The tensions are roughly defined and not well understood by Luther.

Viva Reformed Scholasticism!

Yes, your serious acceptance of the dramatic concessions of the Reformational shift is far preferable to those who would deny the shift had any costs at all. It is, in fact, what makes this discussion worth having.

The only thing remaining is to grapple with the very difficulty of this defeat. It is a defeat that only souls with substantial spiritual stamina seem able to endure. How should we account for this historical truth? This is where Evangelicalism becomes relevant, as it seems to be the current historical force capable of mediating the between the Reformed disenchanting of the world and the mass of spiritually weakened people (a weakening, by the way, attributable to the very disenchantment we are talking about). I’ll make it specific: You dislike Evangelical praise songs (as do I), yet you have given up any possibility of a coherent rational for human artistry. Here is how I see the situation: I think it is acceptable for you to say, “I won’t budge on X, and I concede that X (protestant view of justification) fatally undermines A (common ethics), B (common politics), and C (common culture), yet we still have a provisional need for ABC so I will object to the philistines who want to dispense with ABC at every opportunity.” (This is my basic reading of Luther). The only problem is that people simply will not go along with this unless you operate within a context of some kind of shrewd Machiavellian sleight-of-hand. The most generous reading of Evangelicalism, to me, is as a tragically necessary sleight-of-hand. But if we are to do away with it and retain X, we need a better trick (broadly speaking, the “trick” of post-Reformation modernity has been the economists’ reliance on “self-interest” and the political theorists reliance on the “swindle of consent”—the narrative of western declension might be viewed as the “wearing thin” of these noble lies). (On the other hand, I was holding out hope that you would show me how X does not fatally undermine ABC. But since you just went and conceded it, this is what we seem left with.)

Finally, even if one concedes that the glories of Greece led to the glories of Rome, can we not also concede with St. Augustine that Rome had “at least such worthiness before God that the Savior would appear in their empire.” If I recall correctly, C.S. Lewis once said that before the mass of western people could become good Christians they would first have to re-learn how to be good pagans.

I have my reservations about “common grace” not simply because it is part of the neo-Calvinist oeuvre. I generally appreciate what folks are trying to accomplish when appealing to common grace but I think the older categories of creation and providence work just as well, and may even take the created order more seriously.

At the same time, I think it is hard to answer Voegelin’s question historically the way you do. The glories of Greece seem to have led to the glories of Rome and with it a theology of glory that would have embarrassed the Corinthians. This doesn’t mean that I am opposed to the wisdom or proposals of the ancients or of Voegelin. I’d much prefer Aristotle to Mandeville, and in either case will take some kind of common life wherever I can find it. (It actually works amazing well on our block in Philadelphia where our non-observant Christian, Roman Catholic and agnostic neighbors tolerate a couple of Calvinists with remarkable grace.) What I balk at are efforts to make Christianity continuous with the true, good, and beautiful of the world, as if the gospel is the culmination of those goods. I believe that Protestantism recognized the paradoxial relationship between cult and culture.

This doesn’t mean that the world’s culture is inherently without value. To the extent that it reflects the created order and to the extent that God ordains it as a platform for his gracious work, it is something in which Christians should participate depending on their callings. But the reality of sin, as I understand it, means that no human efforts, no matter how true, good or beautiful, will please God. It’s that wrinkle of Protestantism that leads me to answer Voegelin by saying that the glories of Greece are glorious and unfortunately still lead to hell. (Please don’t tell my neighbors.)

As far as my objections to evangelicalism, they are legion and I don’t think they have much to do with common grace or related issues. In a nutshell, my problem is that evangelicalism is a generic form of Christianity that doesn’t sufficiently address all of God’s revealed truth as Reformed, Lutherans, Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have tried to do.

“There existed in paganism a continued revelation through nature and the reason, in heart and conscience,—an illumination of the Logos, a speech from the wisdom of God through the hidden working of grace. . . . No doubt among the heathen this wisdom has in many respects become corrupted and falsified; they retain only fragments of truth, not the one, entire, full truth. But even such fragments are profitable and good. The three sisters, logic, physics and ethics, are like unto the three wise men from the east, who came to worship in Jesus the perfect wisdom. The good philosophical thoughts and ethical precepts found scattered through the pagan world receive in Christ their unity and center. They stand for the desire which in Christ finds its satisfaction; they represent the question to which Christ gives the answer; they are the idea of which Christ furnishes the reality. The pagan world, especially in its philosophy, is a pedagogy unto Christ; Aristotle, like John the Baptist, is the forerunner of Christ. It behooves the Christians to enrich their temple with the vessels of the Egyptians and to adorn the crown of Christ, their king, with the pearls brought up from the sea of paganism.”

Herman Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” Princeton Theological Review
7 (1909)

Now Bavinck was part of a movement that tried (and I have admiration for the attempt) to recover from within the Reformation of Luther and Calvin some coherent rational for ethics, politics, and art. That this movement ultimately failed does not, to me, dilute or negate the truth of the sentiment above (though Bavinck’s attempt to root this deeply in Calvinism may be at the root of his movement’s failure).

Or as Voegelin puts the rhetorical question to Luther: “Do the glories of Greece lead only to hell?” The answer is, no, they lead to Jesus.