RSSCatholicity, Provincialism, and Middle Earth
I believe in catholicity. The church is one in all ages and in all places. It is a mystical body united to Christ. Today I worshipped with all the saints alive today and all the saints that have gone to sleep in Christ. St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Richard Hooker, Karl Barth… all united in one mystical corporation uniting the elect in all ages.
The visible church is catholic. The Westminster Confession of Faith says so. I pray that visible unity will be possible before the eschaton. I leave the outcome in the hands of the King.
But, I am also Reformed. With Darryl Hart, I am happy to affirm that I am Reformed first, catholic second. I believe that the Reformed church is the most biblical expression of Christ’s catholic church. I am excited to be Reformed and because I live in her I love her. What is catholicity be comparison? It is a beloved abstraction. The Reformed Church, being an embodied tradition with real ministers, sacraments, and discipline, she commands my foremost love and allegiance. Call me provincial. Call me sectarian.
Or better yet, call me true to the best of catholic principles. I do not know the FV men. I have read some Douglas Wilson. I know enough about him to believe we share much in the realm of sentiment. Wilson, like me, (and I suspect most of the contributors of this discussion) loves J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Russell Kirk. (Heck, Wilson even occasionally contributes to the paleo-conservative Chronicles Magazine.) I suspect some of the FV’s love for catholicity comes from these sources, no?
But what do these sources teach us? Certainly not a love for abstraction. Rather, a love for the provincial. A love for the peculiar and unique… a love for your little plot of Middle Earth. Sure, Hobbits, Elves, and Men share a common existence in Middle Earth but that does not mean any self respecting Hobbit would love the Gondor more than the Shire. Sure, he might be awed by the sight of the last homely house, but it is the fields of the West Farthing that command his most primal love and fealty.
What is the point? You cannot love an abstraction. It is the peculiar malady of modernity to prefer the cosmopolitan to the local. Yet, loving the local is part of catholicity’s response to modernity. It is the catholic doctrine of subsidiarity and it is a bulwork against the excesses of our age.
I had hoped that the FV would have answered our initial question something like this: We are trying to break Protestantism’s peace with modernism (and its ugly step child post-modernity… which is really just modernism on steroids). Instead, we have heard a good deal about individual biblical interpretation, sola scriptura, a Protestant tradition of suspicion against tradition. In orther words, the same old suspects. To bad… but we still have a week to go.
DWilson
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Bill, I am all about Burke’s little platoons. And in this sense I love the saints in my congregation in a way that I do not (and cannot) love all the elect, say, in South America. So your point is taken, and I enthusiastically agree with it. The second greatest command is to love my neighbor as myself, not to love an abstraction, however noble or scriptural, as myself.
But there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this. The sinful side of trying to do this is sectarian, mindless provincialism. It is the kind of thing that even shows up in Middle Earth. The hobbits should love the Shire more than Gondor, but at the end of the trilogy, the wise hobbits admire and respect Gondor as well. And there were exasperating hobbits who didn’t have a clue about those who were protecting them — they were provincial in the negative sense of that word.
So Bill, help me out here. What are my duties — applying your point above, with which I heartily agree — in the following scenario. What are my respective duties to fellow Reformed ministers in the CREC, who are in another presbytery, and whom I will see every three years at council, and with whom I have agreement on every essential point of doctrine, and non-Reformed ministers that I see every week at our morning prayer meeting? Or the non-Reformed men who serve together with me on the board of our local Christian school?
James Jordan
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Dear Mr. Chellis,
Let me address different aspects of your essay. This is the first:
1. I’m Biblical first, catholic second, and Reformed third. That was the position of Geneva Ministries in the 1980s and it is the position of Biblical Horizons (me & others like me) now. An abstraction? I don’t believe so. I’m Biblical because that’s the ultimate authority, though an authority that functions not as a silent text that I read as an individual, but that functions in the living discussion of breathing (enSpirited, out-louded), messianic (baptized, anointed) humans in the prophetic conversation. A conversation that’s been going on for a long time and to which I’m obligated to listen for a time before blabbing my thoughts into it. I’m 57. I’ve listened for a while, and talked for a while also.
2. I’m catholic second (though this first, second, third stuff is really not completely true, accurate, valid, and useful). But this means I accord prima facie acceptance to any trinitarianly baptized Christian and encourage him to improve on his baptism, as the Standards say. Also, it means I believe that the Spirit is active in him/her and may well have things to say that I need to hear.
3. I’m Reformed, which means that’s my default position unless seriously challenged, at which point I rise not to defend “Reformed” but to take the Bible with utmost seriousness in the whole context of 2000 years of the infancy of the Church and of the present community of Bible-committed Christians.
That’s for one comment.
James Jordan
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Second reply: Thou scrobe: I had hoped that the FV would have answered our initial question something like this: We are trying to break Protestantism’s peace with modernism (and its ugly step child post-modernity… which is really just modernism on steroids). Instead, we have heard a good deal about individual biblical interpretation, sola scriptura, a Protestant tradition of suspicion against tradition. In other words, the same old suspects. Too bad… but we still have a week to go. EOQ
Well, now, but it seems to me that “we” HAVE said what you wanted to hear. Maybe, though, not in sentences that have connected with you. So, to rephrase and say things maybe a bit differently:
Modernity is individualistic. FV (And I’m going to forego the quotation marks and the “so-called,” though they’re always in place) is theocratic. FV believes Jesus is king of the nations. ALL power and ALL authority has been given to Him, and He says He wants to disciple ALL nations. He’s not going to fail, believe me. ALL nations will become theocracies before it’s over. We still live in the early ages of Christendom. Does that count as a critique of modern Calvinism?
Modernity is individualistic. FV acknowledges the importance of individual ordo questions, but sets them in a context of the gospel, which is not ordo for individuals but the proclamation that now at last The Man has become King of kings and Lord of lords, that He intends to baptize every nation as He did Israel of old, and to disciple the nations qua nations as He did Israel of old. (How else would those Jewish disciples have understood His commission?) In that context, getting every jot and tittle right on ordo questions becomes less pressing than it does for individualistic pietists, for whom ordo question are all there is. That is to say, we FV are all Protestant and Reformed, but on matters like “imputation of active obedience” we are willing to wait a while, since the Reformed tradition and the rest of the Biblical church is unsure about this and the Confessions don’t speak to it. Maybe 5000 years from now Tamil Christian theologians in trialogue with some in New Guinea and others on a space station around Wolf 369 will come up with a formula to which all Christians will say “AHA!” We don’t deny this. What we know absolutely is that Jesus is King, and that salvation is by faith alone.
Modernity is individualistic. FV is sacramental. Consult Leithart on this.
Modernity is individualistic. FV is liturgical. Consult Jordan and Meyers on this.
Modernity is depressing. FV is trying to get the life-sucking dementors out of worship and restore the original dancelike joyous singing of the Reformation and the Ars Nova and the Early Church and the Davidic Reforms.
Modernity is political. The Klineans dispensationalists say that God is suzereign and use the suzereign treaty as the model for the covenant. We say NO. We stand with TRADITION. God is Father and we are Son. Family. “Israel is My son, My firstborn. Pharaoh, let My son go!” Son, not vassal. Son, not wage-merit earning servant. Son. (Got that, Klineans?) Son.
Modernity is a-historical. The Klinean dispensationalists divide history into periods of pure abstract rationalism (intrusions, where all sin is punished wholly) and pure abstract irrationalism (commongrace, where no sin is punished and nothing makes sense). This is totally Greek/pagan and totally anti-Reformed and anti-Vantillian. For these dispies there is no growth and maturation of the Daughter into the Bride. There is only this yin-yang bounce back and forth. There is no history. This is modernism and spatial thinking with a vengeance.
Surely that’s enough. Others have listed areas where the so-called “FV” challenges modernism. I’ve listed some. So, maybe we can move off the question of who says “shibboleth” about “Reformed” the right way and talk about these.
Meanwhile, I’ve got a new CD of Peteris Vasks to listen to. A wonderful employment of time!!
Kent Will
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Without detracting from provincialism, I’d like to point out that, in a very important sense, the entire catholic church is our “province.” Catholicity is not an abstraction because it flows from our common Head, Christ. The Church is one body, not many, and so you can’t “love your own people” more than “their people.” The whole set of the baptised are “our own people.”
The only difference is that our particular expressions of the church are local, and therefore most of our love must take a local expression. But still, catholicity is not an abstraction because it’s founded in Christ, a person, and every Sunday the whole body is local to a single place–Heaven.
D Hart
September 24th, 2007 at 5:37 am
Doug, I know you asked Bill, but to sort out your multiple duties I’d encourage you take a does of two-kingdom theology. It works amazingly well over here.
W.H. Chellis
September 24th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Douglas, what do you think of Darryl’s cheeky response? I have been thinking the same thing myself.
A related point. I think a Covenanter, RP, minister would always think of his collegues as those who toil in the Presbytery with him. This can cover some large geographic distance. Still, the RP Church is a very ancient community with markers and boundries that set it apart from others who are toiling for the same gospel.
I wonder if the contruction of “catholicity” to the detrament of provincialism has a tendency disregard a church’s life as a unique people (RP’s are very peculiar!!) and authentic community?
DWilson
September 24th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Okay, I’ll bite. Which kingdom are these non-Reformed ministers in? Which kingdom is this explicitly Christian school in? I know how two-kingdom theology could help me out of a jam if I were opposing some abortion legislation alongside some Mormons doing the same thing. But my question presupposed some local actually-going-to-heaven Christians (in fruitful Christian work) that I am not confessionally bound to in distinction from distant Christians that I am confessionally bound to. Those aren’t the two kingdoms. Right?
JMeyers
September 24th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Two kingdoms? Someone explain to me how that is REFORMED tradition? I have to listen to rants about the “two kingdoms” from Lutherans all the time. But Reformed theology is all about the the one, all-embracing kingdom of Jesus. He reigns over all, church, school, and human governors. My Lutheran professors know this. They understand that TRADITIONAL Reformed theology is opposed to their “two kingdom” dialectic. They don’t like it. But more and more I’m hearing this “two kingdom” stuff from Reformed men.
So what happened to sticking with Reformed tradition?
W.H. Chellis
September 24th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Sorry Jeff. The Reformed had a tradition before R.J. Rushdoony.
I take for granted that the Church of Scotland and the Scottish Covenanter’s have a pretty respected place in that tradition.
Many Covenanters died for the cause of the two kingdoms. Indeed, Andrew Melville admonished King James VI:
“Sirrah, ye are God’s silly vassal; there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland: there is king James, the head of the commonwealth; and there is Christ Jesus, the king of the Church, whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king, not a lord, not a head, but a member.”
JMeyers
September 24th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
THAT’s what Dr. Hart meant by “two kingdom theology”? I’m incredulous.
James Jordan
September 24th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
What Melville was talking about is not at all what the W2K people are talking about. In fact, it’s the direct opposite.
W.H. Chellis
September 24th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
W2K? I am a C2K guy (C=Covenanter).
Surely, what Presbyterians have meant by 2 Kingdom is a bit different from Luther but the 2nd Book of Discipline makes clear distinctions between Christ’s Holy Kingdom (the church) and Christ’s common kingdom (the nation).
Rutherford and Gillespie were so committed to this distinction that both denied (I think wrongly but still…) the mediatorial Kingship of Christ over the nations.
James Jordan
September 24th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
You bet. But I think all believed that Jesus Christ is lord of nations, even if not mediatorially so. Nations were to be discipled under Jesus’ non-mediatorial but still enthroned kingship, not ignored and left to “common grace.” As I understand this modern view, it is that Jesus rules in the Church and NOT over the nations, which for the life of me seems to be anabaptistic and not Reformed in any sense at all. Maybe someone here can clear that up. Anyway, you and I are in agreement about the mediatorial kingship over the nations. And when you say that the Reformed faith existed before Rushdoony, you ought to know that Rushdoony was a covenanter on this matter, so he’s in YOUR tradition as regards mediatorial kingship over the nations.
Anthony Cowley
September 24th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Wow - Loose a Hard Drive, miss a month on De Regno and … boom … I miss most of the FV discussion!
C’mon Bill (Chellis) - The Kline view of the Two Kingdoms involves an eschatological as well as an historical perspective which is alien to the genius of the Covenanters, including Rutherfurd and Gillespie (perhaps it’s a bit anachronistic to refer to them as Covenanters, though they were Original Covenanters, having signed the SL&C and reaffirmed the National Covenant [from the time of Knox], renewed it, in 1638/1643, etc.). I’m familiar with Gillespie’s incorrect statements anent the Mediatorial dominion of Christ over the Church, but am not remembering where old Sam R said the same things. However, in any case, both men were strong establishmentarians. Why? Because the nation was to covenant with Christ in a different sense than the Church. The nations come through the Church - hence the establishmentaianism. The strictest Covenanters, of course, including the RP Willsons and even the modern neo-Steelites, hold to the distinction between the two kingdoms (of Christ, the king) in Church and State. Gillespie’s Aaron’s Rod Blossoming is big on this, of course. But, the Associate Presbyterians (Seceders) also were establishmentarians (at least the early ones, and most of the various splits, though maybe not the new light anti burghers!). Even the Free Churchmen (1843) supported establishmentarianism.
Despite all the ink spilt on this topic, I believe that the *heart* of the fight between seceders and covenanters was *not really* whether or not Jesus was KING as mediator over the nations simpliciter (tho some seceders flatly denied this), but HOW that functioned. He is married the Church, his bride. Not to the nations who come to Christ by way of Covenant. But, in all cases, they held that the call to come to Westminster (part of the outworking of the SL&Covenant, 1643) was valid, because Christian magistrates were asking for it. The Scots made sure the English affirmed the Covenant before they would come down and sit with the Assembly of Divines.
In other words, none of these gents were secularists. They didn’t have a secular faith, in the modern sense. They thought Biblical law, the whole bible, applied to the whole creation. They were not (most of them) Theonomists in the modern sense either. Rutherfurd didn’t think we should burn the daughters of Ministers who commited fornication, which he feared would have been the equity of applying OT law to the NT situation. But, they were, like Jim Jordan, Theocrats, and Biblicists, as well as Confessionalists. In fact, the Covenant was called a national Confession. Would Dr. Kline be happy if the USA had a national Confession? He gladly admitted that the theocratic impulse was a mistake of the Westminster Divines. Hence Theonomy was an “old/new” error, in his terms.
Too much fun. Cowley out