skip to main |
skip to sidebar
"If it is true that the law oppresses simply because of its formal character as ordered demand, then the converse would seem to hold: anything with the formal character of ordered demand oppresses. That is to say, anything which proposes some particular ordering of our existence or calls for a determinate response from us will be perceived as being, simply as such, the oppressive law from which the gospel delivers us. And since the gospel's liberating character is defined in terms of its antithesis to the law, it will not be our sinful abuse of the law and hostility to the commandment, and God's wrath against us on that account, from which the gospel liberates us. Rather, the gospel will liberate us from the situation of having to hear commandment at all, from having to reckon with any word whatsoever which has the formal character of ordered demand.
"Thus the law oppresses because it proposes a determinate ordering of our existence and calls for a specified response, and it follows that the gospel liberates because it delivers from determinate order and specified response. . . ."
"already in the tough-minded [Werner] Elert[, even,] we are [therefore] well on the way to contemporary tender-minded rhetoric about all those 'hurting people' who need more than anything else to be liberated from all order and absolved of all expectations by the redemptive 'inclusivity' of the antinomian church."
David S. Yeago, "Gnosticism, antinomianism, and Reformation theology: reflections on the costs of a construal," Pro ecclesia 2, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 41, 42 (37-49). But the costs are not just ethical; they are also dogmatic (pp. 43 ff.). For "Within a horizon structured by the absolute antithesis of law and gospel, of form and freedom, dogma must be suspect simply as such, as a form of that oppression and bondage from which the gospel is to liberate us" (43):
It is not only that from within a theological universe structured by the absolute antithesis of law and gospel the very idea of dogma is finally inadmissable. . . . The problem lies even deeper. If the saving gift of God through the gospel is deliverance from form, liberation from order and the call for order, then the God of the gospel cannot himself be a God who has 'taken form' concretely in history. When the law/gospel distinction is absolutized, it becomes at least plausible to regard the triune God, the God who is conclusively self-bestowed and self-identified in the particular history of Jesus, as the oppressive, hidden God of the law, the God who enslaves and torments the human spirit. As Robert W. Jenson has written,
Surely, it is said, God . . . cannot be Jewish, or male, or a figure from a long-past century, or an apocalyptic seer, or hung up on legal commandments, or . . . Whatever may be true of the human individual Jesus, it is said, surely the 'Christ' of Christianity must be a 'Christ principle' or a 'Logos-in-itself' or something similarly metaphysical and malleable, that is not Jewish, or male, or crucified, or blessed with a mother, or hung up on righteousness, or etc.
It matters little what feature of the particularity of God's self-bestowal is singled out for offense; the deeper offense is that God should take form in history at all.
The logic is simple: if form is enslavement, then a God who took form in history would be an enslaving God. The liberating God must therefore be a formless God, a God at most dialectically related to any particular form, a God who is everywhere and nowhere, whose faceless elusiveness frees us from the tyranny of the particular and ordered and definitive. This is the God whom, we are told, we must not 'limit,' that is, whom we must not confess as definitively self-given and self-identified in Jesus Christ. This is the God whom we know only in an endless sequence of throwaway 'images' whose utility consist solely in their novelty, their capacity to shake us loose from familiar forms. This is the God with whom we commune only on an endless 'spiritual journey,' an infinite quest with no goal and no purpose except sheer ceaseless movement beyond form [43-44].
"the recognition of the divine authority in the testimony of the First Truth calls on our part for [simple] obedience and the acceptance of what it affirms, but that is not the whole of faith; above all it is in no sense its raison d'être. God does not demand faith of us in order to humble [(humilier)] us in this time of testing; he gives it to us as the indispensable principle of our orientation towards our supernatural end, the beatific vision; he thus offers us already, but on [the strength of] his word, not face to face, the First Truth the [ultimate] vision of which will [someday] beatify us. It is to this Truth that faith unites us; the substance of the object of faith, this will be what manifests to us its mystery and the means by which God saves us and leads us to see him in heaven."
M.-M. Labourdette, O.P., "La vie théologale selon saint Thomas," Revue thomiste 58 (1958): 614 (597-622).
"the diversity of early Christianity was substantially different from that of pagan religions and early Judaism. The concern for the unity of the kerygma, for the right teaching and practice was dominant in Christianity from the very beginning. The pagan cults, in contrast, exhibited no tendency toward the unification of beliefs. While some syncretism and blending was inevitable, the cultic leaders showed no interest in reconciling divergent mythological accounts or providing one confessional statement. . . .
"The Christianity of the great church emerged and differentiated itself from all religions of the Roman Empire, as well as from most of its heterodox rivals, as a confessional faith, as a religion uniquely committed to the rule of faith."
Paul L. Gavrilyuk, "Scripture and the regula fidei: two interlocking components of the canonical heritage," Canonical theism: a proposal for theology and the church, ed. William J. Abraham, Jason E. Vickers, and Natalie B. Van Kirk (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 33 (27-42). Footnote after "from the very beginning" cites Gal 1:6-9, 5:20; 1 Cor 11:18-20; 1 Tim 1:3; Heb 2:1; Acts 18:26; 1 John 2:24, 4:2-3; Ignatius, Trallians 6.1, Philadelphians 2.1; Polycarp 3.1. Footnote after "a religion uniquely committed to the rule of faith" quotes Frances Young as follows:
Christianity is the only major religion to set such store by creeds and doctrines. Other religions have Scriptures, others have their characteristic ways of worship, others have their own peculiar ethics and lifestyle. . . . But except in response to Christianity, they have not developed creeds, statements of standard belief to which the orthodox are supposed to adhere
(The making of the creeds (London: SCM Press, 1991), 1).
"[I.]4. Yet the number of those who abused the ordinances of God was far greater than of those who despised them, till certain men arose, not only of great understanding (sometimes joined with considerable learning), but who likewise appeared to be men of love, experimentally acquainted with true, inward religion. Some of these were burning and shining lights, persons famous in their generations, and such as had well deserved of the church of Christ for standing in the gap against the overflowings of ungodliness.
"It cannot be supposed that these holy and venerable men intended any more at first than to show that outward religion is nothing worth without the religion of the heart; that 'God is a Spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth;' that, therefore, external worship is lost labour without a heart devoted to God; that the outward ordinances of God then profit much when they advance inward holiness, but when they advance it not are unprofitable and void, are lighter than vanity; yea, that when they are used, as it were, in the place of this, they are an utter abomination to the Lord.
"5. Yet is it not strange if some of these, being strongly convinced of that horrid profanation of the ordinances of God which had spread itself over the whole church, and wellnigh driven true religion out of the world, in their fervent zeal for the glory of God and the recovery of souls from that fatal delusion, spake as if outward religion were absolutely nothing, as if it had no place in the religion of Christ. It is not surprising at all if they should not always have expressed themselves with sufficient caution; so that unwary hearers might believe they condemned all outward means as altogether unprofitable, and as not designed of God to be the ordinary channels of conveying his grace into the souls of men.
"Nay, it is not impossible some of these holy men did at length themselves fall into this opinion: in particular those who, not by choice, but by the providence of God, were cut off from all these ordinances—perhaps wandering up and down, having no certain abiding-place, or dwelling in dens and caves of the earth. These, experiencing God's grace in themselves, though they were deprived of all outward means, might infer that the same grace would be given to them who of set purpose abstained from them."
John Wesley, "The Means of Grace" (Sermon 16 (which is undatable), on Mal. 3:7), [I.]4-5. The works of John Wesley (The Bicentennial edition of the works of John Wesley), ed. Albert C. Outler et al., vol. 1, Sermons I, 1-33 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, ), 379-380. Wesley continues as follows:
"6. And experience shows how easily this notion spreads, and insinuates itself into the minds of men: especially of those who are throughly [sic] awakened out of the sleep of death, and begin to feel the weight of their sins a burden too heavy to be borne. These are usually impatient of their present state, and trying every way to escape from it. They are always ready to catch at any new thing, any new proposal of ease or happiness. They have probably tried most outward means, and found no ease in them—it may be, more and more of remorse and fear and sorrow and condemnation. It is easy, therefore, to persuade these that it is better for them to abstain from all those means. They are already weary of striving (as it seems) in vain, of labouring in the fire; and are therefore glad of any pretense to cast aside that wherein their soul had no pleasure; to give over the painful strife, and sink down into an idolent inactivity."
Those last lines would be unfairly applied to the leading early Quakers, but the first four paragraphs are wonderfully generous. I'm not sure that the position Wesley assumes in response (his position on the number (II.1 par. 4) but also nature of "the means of grace") is quite enough of a corrective, but find his insistence that the Quakers and other such "burning and shining lights" (Jn 5:35) be considered saints virtually driven into error by the consolations afforded them in a time of great persecution (application to them of Heb 11:38, among others!) very moving.
"I had rather be he, who, from love of Christ and want of science, thinks some strange sight in the sky, comet or meteor, to be the sign of His coming, than the man, who, from more knowledge and from lack of love, laughs at the mistake."
John Henry (Cardinal) Newman, "Waiting for Christ" (6 December 1840, on Rev 16:15), Parochial and plain sermons, vol. 6, Sermon 17. Cardinal Newman's best plain sermons, ed. Vincent Ferrer Blehl, S.J. (New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1964), 129 (120-137). This follows
though Christians might be mistaken in what they took to be signs of Christ's coming, yet they were not wrong in their state of mind; they were not mistaken in looking out, and that for Christ. Whether credulous or not, they only acted as one acts towards some person beloved, or revered, or admired on earth. Consider the mode in which loyal persons look up to a good prince; you will find stories current, up and down the country, in his favour; people delight in believing that they have fallen in with tokens of his beneficence, nobleness, and paternal kindness. Many of these reports are false, yet others are true, and, on the whole, we should not think highly of that man who, instead of being touched at this mutual sympathy between sovereign and people, occuped himself merely in carping at what he called their credulity, and sifting the accuracy of this or that particular story. A great thing, truly, after all, to be able to detect a few mis-statements, and to expose a few fictions, and to be without a heart! And forsooth, on the other hand, a sad deficiency in that people, I suppose, merely to be right on the whole, not in every particular, and to have the heart right! Who would envy such a man's knowledge? Who would not rather have that people's ignorance? And, in like manner, I had rather . . .
etc. (128-129). Nonetheless, Newman does distinguish "loyal persons" like these from "Enthusiasts, sectaries, wild presumptuous men" (131).
"if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink,—to the Pope, if you please,—still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards."
John Henry Newman, A letter addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, on occasion of Mr. Gladstone's recent expostulation § 5 (Conscience) ((London: B. M. Pickering, 1875), 66).
"the fundamental question from our point of view is not whether the new trend is weak or strong, but whether it is fully religious, that is, whether it restores the sacred to its previous position. . . . Indeed, one might intepret the [new] religious trend as a more radical (and more sophisticated) effort to be secular by expanding the immanent world view so as to include even the religious experience. Thus modern man would attempt to embellish by a religious glow his basically secular existence. . . . After man has ceased to take seriously the traditional expressions of the transcendent, he nevertheless continues to feel the need for that other dimension which neither Enlightenment nor scientism nor even the new social activism can provide. So he endeavors to regain the experience which now lies buried in deserted cathedrals and forgotten civilizations. But he intends to do so at no cost to his secular lifestyle, that is, without accepting a commitment to the transcendent as to another reality. Instead of risking the leap into the great unknown which his ancestors so adventurously took, he cultivates self-expanding feelings. He may even share his religious enthusiasm with a privileged few and articulate it in symbols borrowed from ancient traditions. But by and large he is not committed to their content and his concern remains primarily with his own states of mind."
Louis Dupré, "Has the secularist crisis come to an end?," Listening 9, no. 3 (1974): 14 (7-19). "feelings, by their very nature, lack real transcendence. One feels one's feelings and nothing more. . . . to be truly religious, feelings must be determined by a more outward-oriented act: In themselves, they remain self-centered and never fully deserve the name religious. There is no doubt that feelings and passive experiences have at all times played an important role in the religious consciousness. But they have never been sufficient. Today this is more than ever the case because the 'religious feelings' of the new culture are, as a rule, no longer contained within the complex structure of dogmas, myths and moral and ritual demands which once provided them with the necessary outward-orientation. They appear in a more fragmented state, isolated from any religious attitudes. To escape the immanence of the secular universe demands a positive commitment" (15).
"If it is true that the law oppresses simply because of its formal character as ordered demand, then the converse would seem to hold: anything with the formal character of ordered demand oppresses. That is to say, anything which proposes some particular ordering of our existence or calls for a determinate response from us will be perceived as being, simply as such, the oppressive law from which the gospel delivers us. And since the gospel's liberating character is defined in terms of its antithesis to the law, it will not be our sinful abuse of the law and hostility to the commandment, and God's wrath against us on that account, from which the gospel liberates us. Rather, the gospel will liberate us from the situation of having to hear commandment at all, from having to reckon with any word whatsoever which has the formal character of ordered demand.
