Paul gets bashed sometimes by modern Western types for not denouncing slavery and trying to launch an abolitionist crusade; but if he’d tried, he would only have made things worse. He would have suddenly been taken far more seriously by the Romans as a troublemaker (and most likely executed as a result), Christians throughout the empire would have abruptly been treated with far greater suspicion and hostility, people who already didn’t like Christians would probably have been roused to defend slavery . . . and all in all, the gradual drift of Roman society away from slavery would probably have been reversed somewhat, not speeded up. He was simply too outnumbered and outgunned for a frontal assault to work.In the letter to Philemon, though, we can see how Paul sought to work against slavery in and through the church. He wrote the letter as an amicus domini—a “friend of the master” interceding on behalf of a fugitive slave, in this case Onesimus—and took full advantage of the opportunity as a teachable moment. The keynote of the letter comes in verses 15-16, where he writes, “Perhaps Onesimus was separated from you for a little while.” Note that. He doesn’t say, “Perhaps Onesimus separated himself from you”; he says, “perhaps he was separated.” That’s what’s called the “divine passive,” and you’ll find it all over the Old Testament. The Jews were so careful about not taking God’s name in vain that they avoided using it whenever possible; and so if they wanted to say God did something, they would often write, “It happened.” That’s the divine passive, and that’s what we have here: Paul is gently suggesting to Philemon that it wasn’t Onesimus who did this—it was God.To what purpose? Onesimus’ salvation, for one; more than that, a major change in his relationship with Philemon as a result. We cannot know how Philemon treated his slaves, though given his position in the church one would hope he treated them well; but it seems likely that he treated them, and thought of them, as slaves—people, yes, but definitely second-class, second-tier. Now Paul is saying, perhaps God was at work here so that Onesimus might be saved and Philemon might have him back “no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” in Christ, a fellow Christian. This is the keynote to everything Paul says in this letter, to his appeal to Philemon to welcome Onesimus back rather than punishing him and all the rest of it: Philemon, this man isn’t just your slave anymore, he’s your brother in Christ; I led him to Christ just as I led you to Christ, and you can’t look at him the same way as you used to. In the world, you own him and he’s your inferior; in the church, Jesus owns both of you, and Onesimus is your equal.This is how the church gradually ended slavery in the ancient world; slaves became members of the church alongside freemen and citizens, and they became elders, and they became pastors, and some even became bishops. About forty years after this letter was written, one Onesimus became bishop of Ephesus; we don’t know if it was the same one or not, but personally, I think it was. And the more people saw slaves as their equals, and sometimes even their betters, the less supportable slavery became, until eventually the Emperor Justinian ended it altogether.Everywhere this dynamic has been allowed to work (rather than being undermined and suppressed by the church itself, as one must admit has happened all too often), everywhere that Christians have learned to see one another first and foremost as people whom God loves, for whom Jesus died, all the distinctions that we use to say this person is better or more important or more valuable than that one have tended to fade away. That’s why Paul could tell the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”; and we could add, there is neither rich nor poor, black nor white nor Hispanic nor Asian nor American Indian, Republican nor Democrat nor independent, American nor foreigner, not because these divisions don’t exist but because they aren’t what really matters. Jesus is for everyone, and loves everyone equally—that’s what matters in the end. Everything else is just details. Everything else.
Monthly Archives: August 2008
The Runaway
(Deuteronomy 23:15-16; Galatians 3:26-29, Philemon)
This morning, we’re starting a sermon series on Colossians; we’ll be working our way through the letter to the Colossians over the course of the fall. Now, as I say that, some of you might be wondering what I’m talking about, since we didn’t read Colossians this morning; wasn’t I listening as Dr. Kavanaugh read Philemon? Well, yes, I was listening, and I didn’t make any mistake in what I asked him to read; we’re starting a series on Colossians by looking at the book of Philemon. I’ll grant, it’s not the usual way to do things, but I do have reasons for putting things together this way. Some are just reasons of scheduling, minor practical matters; of greater importance is the fact that this letter is part of Scripture, which means that while it’s usually ignored because of its size, we ought to stop and consider what God wants to say to us through it. If we’re going to do that, then, the logical time is to put it together with Colossians, because these two letters are related. In fact, they’re quite closely related, as you can see if you flip over to Colossians 4:9, where Onesimus is mentioned along with Tychicus as one of the people carrying that letter; you’ll note there that Paul explicitly says, “he’s one of you.”
We don’t know a lot of Onesimus’ story, but we do know that he was a slave. That’s a loaded word, and rightly so, but it’s important to realize that slavery in the Roman world was very different from American slavery; and while it could still be a terrible thing, on the whole it was far better. Yes, slaves were owned by another human being and under that person’s absolute authority, and yes, some masters were cruel and exploited their slaves; but most, it seems, treated them at least decently. There was certainly societal pressure to do so, partly on moral grounds (for they knew full well that slaves were human) but more on practical grounds: it was unwise to provoke slaves by ill-treating them, for one thing, and for another, it was uneconomical, because it reduced both their ability and their motivation to work. Indeed, unlike in America, it was quite common to teach slaves and train them so as to increase their productivity, and some slaves became quite important people in their own right. Slaves were allowed to work on their own, though their owners took much of the money they received, and to own property—some even owned other slaves. In a society which was rigidly structured by class (which was rigidly determined by money), slaves who belonged to an owner of social standing who took good care of them were better off than many who were free but poor. There were even people who voluntarily sold themselves into slavery in order to improve their lives, usually because they were too deeply in debt to get themselves out of it.
Still, even given that Roman slavery was generally a far better thing than American slavery, especially in the context of unjust Roman society, the fact remains that it’s intrinsically a bad thing; people shouldn’t own other people. As such, Paul’s response to slavery is obviously a central concern for us as we read this letter; and to understand the response he offers here, we need to get the details straight, as far as we can. We know that Onesimus belonged to Philemon, a man of some importance in the city of Colossae who was one of the leaders of the church there. As we’ll talk about later on, the church in that time period met in the homes of members, and each house church was under the direction of overseers (we would call them elders). Philemon was rich enough to have a house big enough for the church to use—no surprise, since he was rich enough to own slaves—and as such was probably one of the overseers of that particular congregation.
We also know that at some point, Onesimus escaped from his master and fled the city. He was almost certainly still young enough to be unmarried, so he had no one but himself to worry about; that made escape easier. He may have taken some of his master’s money or valuables with him; that’s not clear, but it might well be part of the financial harm done by Onesimus which Paul has in view in verse 18. You can understand why Onesimus would have stolen as much as he could carry on his way out the door, since he had a long journey ahead of him. A slave who had run away could never feel completely safe as a fugitive; it wasn’t like in America, where there was a safe place to run to. The best chance of safety lay in fleeing to one of the great port cities of the empire; the nearest of those was Ephesus, down the Lycus valley a ways from Colossae, but that would be far too close for comfort. Instead, Onesimus made for the greatest city of all, and the one that offered the greatest hope for a better life: the capital city of Rome.
Now, we don’t know anything about his journey, or what might have happened along the way; but we know that somehow, he fell in with Paul, who was under house arrest in Rome at this time. He may well have known of Paul as one of his master’s friends and someone Philemon held in high honor—indeed, he may actually have known Paul already—or maybe not, we can’t really say; but however it happened, he became part of Paul’s unorthodox little household, and Paul led him to Christ. This was a critically important thing for Onesimus, not just for his spiritual destiny but for his daily life, because under Roman law there were only a couple ways for a fugitive slave to regain some sort of legal status. One was to go to a temple that could offer asylum to fugitives and appeal to the priests; they would then contact the owner and try to broker a safe return for the slave. The other was to go to a friend of the master, an amicus domini, and appeal to them for asylum and assistance. If that person was willing to intercede on the slave’s behalf, and if they were willing to write a letter to that effect in the slave’s defense, then under Roman law the slave was no longer a fugitive.
This gave Paul an opening. He gets bashed sometimes by modern Western types for not denouncing slavery and trying to launch an abolitionist crusade; but if he’d tried, he would only have made things worse. He would have suddenly been taken far more seriously by the Romans as a troublemaker (and most likely executed as a result), Christians throughout the empire would have abruptly been treated with far greater suspicion and hostility, people who already didn’t like Christians would probably have been roused to defend slavery . . . and all in all, the gradual drift of Roman society away from slavery would probably have been reversed somewhat, not speeded up. He’s simply too outnumbered and outgunned for a frontal assault to work. Instead, he does what he can to undermine slavery in and through the church, beginning with this letter.
You see, Paul writes this letter to Philemon as the amicus domini for Onesimus; and in it, he does several things. We’ll look at a few of them next week, but now, I want to focus your attention on the most important one. Look at verses 15-16. Paul writes, “Perhaps Onesimus was separated from you for a little while.” Note that. He doesn’t say, “Perhaps Onesimus separated himself from you”; he says, “perhaps he was separated.” That’s what we call the “divine passive,” and you’ll find it all over the Old Testament. The Jews were so careful about not taking God’s name in vain that they avoided using it whenever possible; and so if they wanted to say God did something, they would often write, “It happened.” That’s the divine passive, and that’s what we have here: Paul is gently suggesting to Philemon that it wasn’t Onesimus who did this—it was God.
To what purpose? Onesimus’ salvation, for one; more than that, a major change in his relationship with Philemon as a result. We cannot know how Philemon treated his slaves, though given his position in the church one would hope he treated them well; but it seems likely that he treated them, and thought of them, as slaves—people, yes, but definitely second-class, second-tier. Now Paul is saying, perhaps God was at work here so that Onesimus might be saved and Philemon might have him back “no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” in Christ, a fellow Christian. This is the keynote to everything Paul says in this letter, to his appeal to Philemon to welcome Onesimus back rather than punishing him and all the rest of it: Philemon, this man isn’t just your slave anymore, he’s your brother in Christ; I led him to Christ just as I led you to Christ, and you can’t look at him the same way as you used to. In the world, you own him and he’s your inferior; in the church, Jesus owns both of you and he’s your equal.
This is how the church gradually ended slavery in the ancient world; slaves became members of the church alongside freemen and citizens, and they became elders, and they became pastors, and some even became bishops. About forty years after this letter was written, one Onesimus became bishop of Ephesus; we don’t know if it was the same one or not, but personally, I think it was. And the more people saw slaves as their equals, and sometimes even their betters, the less supportable slavery became, until eventually the Emperor Justinian ended it altogether.
And everywhere this dynamic has been allowed to work, everywhere that Christians have learned to see one another first and foremost as people whom God loves, for whom Jesus died, all the distinctions that we use to say this person is better or more important or more valuable than that one have tended to fade away. That’s why Paul could tell the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”; and we could add, there is neither rich nor poor, black nor white nor Hispanic nor Asian nor American Indian, Republican nor Democrat nor independent, American nor foreigner, not because these divisions don’t exist but because they aren’t what really matters. Christ Jesus is for everyone, and loves everyone equally—that’s what matters. Everything else is just details. Everything else. We are God’s people—that’s the bottom line.
One more argument for Sarah Palin
I can’t let the news of the Biden pick go by without noting that Joe Biden on the ticket with Barack Obama is the best argument yet for Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket.Sen. Joe Biden vs. Gov. Sarah Palin
Member of Congress vs. experienced administrator
Pork-winner vs. pork fighter
Washington Establishment vs. Washington outsider
Party insider vs. maverick
Uncharismatic vs. charismatic
“Old” vs. “young”
Unexciting vs. exciting
Hothead vs. cool headUpdate: that last is courtesy of Adam Brickley, who has a brilliant post up on how Gov. Palin would neutralize Sen. Biden, the D. C. attack dog, by making him look like a bratty, mean-spirited jerk (which, with Biden, is exactly what you have to try to do, since that’s the way he usually beats himself). As he points out, she’s done it before.
Joe Biden: Barack Obama’s new backbone
I have to wonder if Sen. Obama’s decision to pick Sen. Joe Biden, party and Washington insider extraordinaire, as his running mate wasn’t solidified this past week when Dick Morris branded him “the new Jimmy Carter.” Certainly, in my opinion and in the minds of many, Morris was right when he wrote,
Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. . . .
Harsh? I don’t think so. As Morris continues,
Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt the convention or demonstrate outside, she would pay a huge price among the party faithful. . . . But, without having any leverage or a decent hand to play, the Clintons bluffed Obama into amazing concessions. . . .If Obama can’t stand up to the Clintons, after they have been defeated, how can he measure up to a resurgent Putin who has just achieved a military victory? When the Georgia invasion first began, Obama appealed for “restraint” on both sides. He treated the aggressive lion and the victimized lamb even-handedly. His performance was reminiscent of the worst of appeasement at Munich, where another dictator got away with seizing another breakaway province of another small neighboring country, leading to World War II. After two days, Obama corrected himself, spoke of Russian aggression and condemned it. But his initial willingness to see things from the other point of view and to buy the line that Georgia provoked the invasion by occupying a part of its own country betrayed a world view characterized by undue deference to aggressors.
As indeed he deferred to the Clintons’ aggression. This, I suspect, is where Sen. Biden comes in. Whatever his flaws, he’s definitely a strong character; I think, if Sen. Obama wins in November, that Sen. Biden will be a powerful voice in his ear over the next four years, and a man who will wield considerable influence in our government. Since I happen to believe that Sen. Biden is much more prepared and qualified to be president than Sen. Obama is, I don’t think that’s at all bad. And while I do believe, as I said in the previous post, that selecting Sen. Biden will tie Sen. Obama even more closely to the leadership of the Democratic Congress, at least Sen. Biden represents the realist stream in foreign policy among that leadership. Were I an Obama Democrat, I probably wouldn’t like that very much; as one who generally votes Republican, however, I find that reassuring.Which of course raises the big question which will be answered over the next two months: has naming Sen. Biden to the ticket accomplished anything politically for Sen. Obama besides reassuring people who aren’t going to vote for him anyway? Stay tuned—we’ll find out.
Above his pay grade?
When Rick Warren asked Barack Obama, “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?”, here was the Senator’s response:
Yes, he really claimed that having an opinion on that is above his pay grade. But that doesn’t mean he thinks all opinions about abortion are above his pay grade. Listen to the audio from the beginning of this clip, taken from comments he made in the Illinois State Senate as he led the fight against the state’s version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act:
In other words, it’s above his pay grade to say that an unborn baby is in fact a baby, but it’s well within his pay grade to say that efforts to protect babies who are born alive after an attempted abortion constitute an undue burden on the women who birthed them. Sounds like what’s really above Sen. Obama’s pay grade is challenging Democratic Party orthodoxy—not a good sign for someone claiming to offer a “new politics” and a post-partisan way of doing business.But then, this is becoming the pattern. As Michael Reagan wrote,
During the forum, his struggle to please everybody by straddling the issues was plain for all to see. He showed he was willing to say and do what he believed everybody wanted to hear. When you try to find any real depth in his beliefs you quickly discover he is utterly shallow and soulless, a sloganeer instead of a missionary. He’s just a politician on the make, trying to be all things to all people—an empty suit proclaiming empty promises. Being without real depth, his platform merely floats on a surface of promises categorized as “Hope” and “Change,” neither of which is clearly defined. He assures us that he wants to change Washington and sweep away all that this city represents. Yet one has only to look at next week’s Democratic National Convention to understand that it’s not change, but lots more of the same.
For that matter, now that we know Sen. Obama’s VP pick, one need look no farther than Joe Biden. I understand the pick, as a matter of political calculation; it’s the same calculation George W. Bush made when he picked Dick Cheney so that voters could feel sure there was a grownup in the White House. Sen. Obama is hoping Sen. Biden can be his Dick Cheney, a man who has the gravitas and foreign policy experience and solid judgment that he himself lacks. At the same time, though, Sen. Biden is as much a member of the Washington establishment as it’s possible to be; more than all but a handful of people, he is the quintessence of the Democratic Congress. I’ve argued before that an Obama administration will really be a Pelosi administration, as the Democratic congressional powers will run the show and Sen. Obama will have to fall into line to get anything done; bringing one of them right into the inner circle of the administration will only strengthen that.Sen. Obama got where he is on a wave of excitement, partly because of his racial heritage, but also in large part because of the power of his rhetoric in promising us a new politics and a new way forward, a way out of the polarized partisan warfare of the last decade or three. Right now, it looks like the power to follow through on his promise is above his pay grade.
Skeptical conversations, part IX: The church and its mission
Continuing the conversation . . . Parts I-VIII here. Also, I’ve updated the credo Wordle post.
R: The church, then, is the people of God; and specifically, we are the people God has brought out of slavery to sin. Just as he led the people of Israel on the Exodus, out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land, so he is leading us on a new Exodus toward his eschatological kingdom.
A: I’m not familiar with the word “eschatological.”
R: I’m not surprised. Eschatology is the part of theology that deals with the end times, the Second Coming of Christ and all that; the eschatological kingdom is the kingdom of God as it will be once the world as we know it has ended and been remade new.
A: So that would be Heaven, then?
R: Close enough for now. The point is that the church exists in motion, on the road; and as we journey toward eternity with God, we are to be caring for one another, helping each other grow in spiritual maturity and meeting each other’s needs. We are not left to grow as Christians alone, but we help each other along.
The Bible also describes the church as a body, with Christ as its head. This captures many truths about the church, including that every one of us in the church has gifts to offer and that none of us can go it alone; but it also, I think, makes the point that we are the physical representatives of God in the world. We are the ones Christ left here to be his feet, to go to those who need him, and to be his hands to reach out in love. When Christ was on earth he made a career out of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable; one major element of both was his proclamation of himself as God’s good news for the world, including the news that those whom the religious leaders rejected were welcome to come to God. Another was his ministry of healing and deliverance, setting people free from sickness and demons, raising the dead and forgiving sin. When Christ ascended into heaven, he left that work behind for us, his body, to carry out: the work of outreach, of proclaiming the good news and of working to bring good news into the lives of the poor, the downtrodden and the powerless.
A: It sounds like you’re saying that the church has a social mission to fulfill.
R: Yes. I don’t want to prescribe any one political program—I have my ideas and others have theirs—but social justice, however we might seek to achieve it, is clearly a concern of the biblical writers; you can see that in Jesus’ ministry and also very distinctly in several of the OT prophets, as well as in many other places in the Bible.
A: You’re shattering my image of the church as a collection of Bible-thumping right-wing reactionaries. I’m not sure I like that.
R: Good. The simple fact is, the church has just as many left-wing reactionaries anyway, it’s just a matter of who gets the press and why. Anyway, another major image of the church is as the temple of the Holy Spirit, because God’s Spirit no longer makes his home on earth in a building, but rather in the hearts of his people. Besides completing the picture of the church in trinitarian terms, this points up the third major work of the church on earth (another echo of the Trinity there), which is worship. That is, after all, what temples are for. These three works interrelate, for while we worship God for his sake, not for ours, worship is still necessary to our spiritual growth; and as we grow more like Christ, we are moved more and more to do his work in the world. As we share his good news with others and bring them into the covenant community, they see what God has done for them and are moved to join in worship—and so the cycle continues.
A: All this is very good, I’m sure, but couldn’t a false church make the same claims? How would you distinguish a real church from a church that’s going to end up drinking the Kool-Aid?
R: I think Jim Jones is a bit of an extreme example, to be sure. But the question of telling the true church apart from false churches is a live one, and there are three points which have been offered as the marks of the true church. One, the true church preaches the pure gospel, with nothing added on or taken away. Two, “the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them”—baptism and the Lord’s Supper (also called communion or the eucharist) are administered faithfully and properly with no distortion of their meaning, nothing added or removed. Three, proper church discipline. The true church doesn’t wink at sin in the lives of its members, and when necessary it disciplines them by one means or another. This is especially true when it comes to leaders who sin. I think this is probably the most obvious area in which false churches show themselves false, since in many cases those who lead such movements take flagrant advantage of their position.
A: But what about sexual abuse by clergy? A lot of churches wink at that.
R: I never said the church is perfect. You’re right, that’s a problem, and it’s one that individual churches don’t always address. Denial is a pretty typical human response to bad situations, after all. But the church as a whole does take clergy sexual misconduct seriously, even if we still handle it imperfectly.
I think, too, that there’s a distinction to be brought in here, which is that the word “church” is used to mean different things—related, to be sure, but not identical. Again, it’s a threefold distinction. You might use the word “church” to mean the church mystical, which is all of the church as it has ever existed or will ever exist throughout time and space, going all the way back to the beginning of humanity’s history and stretching forward all the way into the future. Should we carry on long enough to plant colonies in other star systems, the church of Christ will go with them, and they too are part of the church with us in the mystical sense. Or by “church” you might mean the universal church, the church everywhere in the world today, from Russian Orthodox in Moscow to Southern Baptists in Texas to Pentecostals in Brazil to Presbyterians in Korea. Or, most commonly, “church” might mean the local church—or perhaps one should say the localized church; you might mean a particular congregation in a particular place, but you might also mean, more broadly, a particular denomination, such as mine, the Reformed Church in America. Whether you talk about one small church or the entire church spread throughout space and time, though, the same truths apply, and the same marks; and I suppose that individual congregations can cease to be true churches, or perhaps better to say that they can cease to be true parts of the true church.
Going back to the marks of the true church, however, I would add a fourth, that the true church is characterized by love. After all, God is love, and he created us and saves us in order to bring us into relationship with himself and to make us more like him; just as he is a community of love between Father, Son and Spirit, so he creates us as a community of love to reflect his character. 1 John makes it very clear that anyone who knows God will reflect that in love for him and for others, and the same is true for the church as a whole.
A: That makes a lot of sense. I had a question, though, about the second element you listed as a mark of the true church. What did you mean by “the pure administration of the sacraments”? I’m not familiar with the term.
R: That’s another phrase from the Belgic Confession, which goes on to offer a very good definition of the sacraments: “They are visible signs and seals of something internal and invisible, by means of which God works in us through the power of the Holy Spirit.” There are two that Christ instituted (though the Catholic church counts some others as well), baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and they are ceremonies of the new covenant which correspond to and supersede circumcision and the Passover, which are covenant ceremonies established by earlier covenants.
A: What I know about baptism is that some churches baptize infants while others only baptize adults. Where do you stand on that?
R: My tradition practices infant baptism, and I agree with that. Baptism is the initiatory rite of the covenant, and the covenant is not a covenant God makes with mere individuals but a covenant he has made with his people; so baptism is the sign that one has joined the covenant community. Infants were always understood by the biblical writers to be part of that community, to be under the covenant, as you can see from the fact that Hebrew children were circumcised at birth, not at their coming of age or any other time. This is because baptism is about God’s promise to his people, not about what the individual says or thinks or does. It is not a guarantee that the child who is baptized will be saved, because baptism of itself does not save; that child is free to keep the covenant or to reject it, as is anyone. Baptism is, however, a guarantee of God’s faithfulness.
A: What about someone who is baptized as an infant, rejects God and Christianity, and then later converts? Would that person be baptized again?
R: No, no one in that situation would need to be baptized again; their conversion is rather a validation of the faithfulness of God promised when they were baptized. It is the fruit of that baptism, in a sense, their return to the covenant community in which they were born.
The other sacrament is communion, the Lord’s Supper, and you might call it a covenant celebration ceremony, if you can say that without tangling your tongue. The Passover, which communion supersedes and completes, celebrates the central act of God’s relationship with Israel—his deliverance of them from slavery in Egypt, which launched the Exodus; and communion celebrates the central act of the new covenant—Christ delivering us from slavery to sin, which launched the New Exodus. Unlike baptism, communion is restricted to committed believers, because the first Lord’s Supper was something Jesus shared only with his close disciples; those who celebrate it properly are blessed through it, but those who partake when they are not right with God bring judgment on themselves, 1 Corinthians makes that clear.
I like the description in our liturgy of the Lord’s Supper as “a feast of remembrance, of communion, and of hope.” That captures beautifully the fact that this is a celebration in three dimensions. We look back to remember and proclaim what Jesus did for us in his death and resurrection; we look at our present, to celebrate the communion we have with him as we eat and drink—not just as individuals but as his people, and so it is communion with each other as well; and we look forward, as Jesus himself did when he ate that last supper with his disciples, to the time when we will sit down to eat and drink with him in his kingdom, when we will know him fully as he is.
A: I have a question about all this. I know that Catholics believe that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus, though apparently they still look and taste like bread and wine. That has never made any sense to me at all. From what I can tell, it doesn’t make any sense to Protestants either, but the way you talk it doesn’t sound like you understand this to be merely a memorial dinner, either. So how do you understand this, then?
R: That Catholic doctrine, which is called transubstantiation, is rooted ultimately in Aristotle’s metaphysics; he was a great philosopher, but his scientific understanding is a couple millennia out of date. No, I don’t agree with that understanding of the Lord’s Supper, for a lot of reasons, nor do I believe it is merely a chance to sit and think. As in most cases, I think Calvin’s view makes the most sense here. Christ is not physically present on the table, because his body is in Heaven with the Father. At the same time, though, he is present in a special way in the bread and the wine, through the work of the Spirit. This, too, is a mystery, but in communion the Holy Spirit unites us with Christ in a special way as we eat the bread and drink the wine; they are not literally, concretely the body and blood of Christ, but it is not merely metaphorical to call them so, either. Jesus is spiritually present in the elements, and so they are a feast for our spirits.
A: That sounds quite strange.
R: I can see where it would. It’s hard to express, but the Lord’s Supper is more than just a memorial; as with baptism, it’s more about what God does and has done than it is about what we do.
If I may shift topics slightly at this point, there’s one last point to address in regard to the church, and that’s the question of church government. There are three basic forms: first, there is the episcopal form, in which there are bishops above the individual churches, archbishops above the bishops, and so on; the Catholic and Episcopalian churches are representative. Then there is the presbyterian form, which retains the hierarchy but replaces individual bishops and archbishops with representative bodies; that would include the Presbyterians, of course, and the Reformed denominations, including mine. Finally, there is the congregational form, in which the individual congregation is independent and self-governing; congregational denominations are called associations, conferences, or conventions—such as the Southern Baptist Convention—and the individual churches which belong to them are free to disassociate themselves at any time.
A: Given that your denomination is presbyterian in structure, I suspect you’re going to tell me why that’s the best form.
R: I am indeed, and I do believe that. First, though, I want to make the point that none of these three forms of government can really be supported from Scripture. We know that in the early church, congregations were led by elders, and there is clearly some concern that the right people be chosen; and we know that another role was established, that of the deacon, to carry out works of service—providing meals and that sort of thing. We know, too, that the position of pastor evolved as, in essence, the lead elder, to take responsibility for preaching the word of God and administering the sacraments. I can easily affirm that the church should be led by pastors, elders and deacons, and that these people must be chosen according to the call of God. Beyond that, we have no real prescription in the Bible for how the church is supposed to be organized, so it is very much a matter of opinion as to which of these three forms best fits with biblical principles.
And since opinions are like noses, I have one on the subject. My problem with congregationalism is that it atomizes the church. Just as some Christians believe that the individual conscience is paramount and reject the claim of the church on their lives, so does congregationalism exalt the individual congregation at the expense of the greater church. All commitments by any congregation to the larger church are purely voluntary, to be broken whenever it seems good. This leaves church unity a very fragile thing, and what is worse, it emasculates church discipline. Sometimes the leadership of a congregation, or even the congregation in general, need to be disciplined—for instance, every young pastor has heard horror stories about church boards that bring in, chew up and spit out one pastor after another—and in the congregational system, there is no person or body who is truly empowered to administer that discipline, because the congregation literally does not have to sit still for it. So a stronger bond and a real hierarchy are necessary in the church, I think.
The episcopal form goes too far in the other way, though, in setting up a hierarchy of individuals. This elevates a handful of individuals above the rest of the church; and not only does this make the church unhealthily dependent on a very few people—a bad Pope, for instance, can cause terrible problems for the Catholic church—it promotes a sense of inequality in the church which is very much at odds with the gospel. One of the principles which the Reformers strongly articulated is that of the priesthood of all believers—in more modern terms, that we are all ministers and all equal before God, that the only difference between those who are paid and those who aren’t is the details of the job description—and this structure denies that principle.
What I appreciate about the presbyterian form of church government is that it makes the structure of the church corporate and representative. At the level of the church, one has the pastor or pastors, the elders, and the deacons; each group has certain responsibilities, and together they lead the church. The elders and deacons are chosen from the congregation by one means or another, they serve their terms, and then they step down to be replaced by others. They are chosen to represent the congregation to the denomination, but also to represent God to the congregation, to lead them in his name.
The elders and pastors of each congregation in an area make up the classis, which is the first level of government above the church; they, collectively, are the bishop. The classis is both an administrative body, making decisions and handling necessary administrative tasks, and a judicial body, responsible for disciplining congregations when necessary. From among the members of the classis, some are selected to be part of the regional synod, which is the next level up; and some are also selected as delegates to General Synod, which meets every year, which is to our system as the Pope is to the Catholic church, more or less. And so you have the structure for making decisions, and for imposing discipline when necessary; it’s human and therefore imperfect, but the same could be said of our nation’s government. As with the U. S. Constitution, it’s as good a balance as is fair to expect, and all in all it works pretty well.
A: “Pretty well” doesn’t seem like much of an accolade.
R: I believe it was Churchill who once observed that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others; I think the same applies to the presbyterian form. Not much of an accolade? Perhaps. But it’s still a human structure after all, and still human beings running it, and so nothing you can do is going to make it perfect. Really, to form a perfect government you need to find a perfect person and give them all the authority. The further you get from that, the higher the minimal degree of imperfection in the system—and the less damage any one person’s sin can do, and the more chances there are to fix whatever problems may arise.
You see, there’s this split view of the church, in a way. You look at it from one angle and it’s a group of recovering sinners who sometimes do things beautifully and sometimes make big mistakes; and it’s terribly easy, down in the trenches of the day-to-day, to lose sight of the big picture and forget that we’re all headed somewhere. But then sometimes it’s possible to step back and look at the bigger picture, to get a sense of the church mystical, “spread out through space and time and terrible as an army with banners,” as I think Lewis has the demon Screwtape say. We need that change of perspective; if nothing else, we need it for the reminder that we are a pilgrim people, a church on the way, that we are headed for the kingdom of God.
Blob spirituality
“Spirituality” is a big word these days, a vogue word; even people who don’t like the word “religion” or anything to do with it are often proud to call themselves “spiritual.” I think for instance of the comedian Bill Maher, who says, “I would describe my spirituality as exactly the opposite of having a religious affiliation”; having seen a good bit of his work, I’d agree. Of course, while most people would say that being “spiritual” is a good thing—even that, as the Buddha put it, “Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, people cannot live without a spiritual life”—there’s little consensus on what exactly that is. Which for many is the point; they would stand with the guru Baba Ram Dass (aka Dr. Richard Alpert, Harvard psychology professor and LSD advocate), who declared, “The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”That statement captures, I think, why so many people set “spirituality” over against religion—religion requires adherence to something outside the self, while it’s perfectly possible, in this view, to be “spiritual” on one’s own terms. For all of that, though, “spirituality” tends to fall into predictable forms. One big one is nature spirituality; the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright, for instance, declared, “I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” On a lighter note, the Scottish actor and comedian Billy Connolly once said he loved fishing because “it’s like transcendental meditation with a punchline.” Folks like this would agree with the Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki that our spiritual needs “are ultimately rooted in nature, the source of our inspiration and belonging.”Another view might be described as “self-oriented spirituality”—rather than looking for the god in nature, look for the god in yourself. This sort of spirituality can take higher forms, as captured by the American intellectual Felix Adler, who wrote, “The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. . . . For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.” Unfortunately, it can also take quite crass forms that simply put a spiritual veneer over complete self-absorption. It’s easy to say, with the Dalai Lama, that “our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness,” but if your self is your temple and there’s nobody but you to tell you whether an act is kind or not, there’s nothing to stop our natural tendency to use what we say we believe to justify doing what we want to do.With the language of spirituality everywhere, it’s easy to forget that this is a relatively recent phenomenon, a reaction against views of life that were either all in the head, all about “definitions, explanations, diagrams, and instructions,” or all about work, consisting of little but “slogans, goals, incentives, and programs”—views of life which, as the pastor and writer Eugene Peterson notes, took over the church as much as anywhere, thus tending to take spirituality out of religion, and out of the life and work of the church. He continues, in his brilliant book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, with these words:
There comes a time for most of us when we discover a deep desire within us to live from the heart what we already know in our heads and do with our hands. But “to whom shall we go?” Our educational institutions have only marginal interest in dealing with our desire . . . In our workplaces we quickly find that we are valued primarily, if not exclusively, in terms of our usefulness and profitability—they reward us when we do our jobs well and dismiss us when we don’t. Meanwhile our religious institutions . . . prove disappointing to more and more people who find themselves zealously cultivated as consumers in a God-product marketplace.
In consequence, as Eugene notes,
“spirituality” . . . has escaped institutional structures and is now more or less free-floating. . . . The good thing in all this is that . . . hunger and thirst for what is lasting and eternal is widely expressed and openly acknowledged.
The downside is that this is a view of spirituality which is set against religion, which is to say, against any sort of external shape, governance, direction, or even definition; it’s a view which intentionally sees spirituality as formless and unconfined. The problem is, we can’t live without forms, and in the absence of anything else, we tend to take the forms with which we’re already comfortable and familiar. As a consequence, though our spiritual longing is driven by the desire to “liv[e] beyond the roles and functions handed to us by the culture . . . much of it ends up as a spirituality that is shaped by terms handed out by the same culture.” There lies the lost opportunity of American spirituality, and one of the great challenges for the church in our country.
Seneca as advocate for the missional church
For good or ill, I’m something of a quote freak; I like things said with some zing and a point on the end, and when I run across something that’s truly well put, I like to hang on to it. Over the years, I’ve built up a rather eclectic collection of favorites. I truly appreciate, for example, the wise counsel of the great pitcher Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back—something might be gaining on you.” Then there’s the Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra, who stressed the importance of community thus: “If you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t go to yours.” Lately, as things grow somewhat thin on the back of my head, I’m especially grateful for the Roman writer Seneca, who once observed, “I don’t consider myself bald, I’m just taller than my hair.”Amen.Of course, Seneca’s particularly quotable because he wasn’t just a great wit, he was also a formidable philosopher, and there’s considerable wisdom in his witticisms. He noted at one point, for instance, that one “who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary”—a point to which I can attest from frequent experience. He also declared, “A great fortune is a great slavery”—though I’m not sure how that fits with his statement that “a great mind becomes a great fortune.” His insight that “a well-governed appetite is the greater part of liberty” is one which our libertine society would do well to take to heart, along with his comment that “Modesty forbids what the law does not.” Of all his insights, however, the one I most value is this:
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he seeks, no wind is the right wind.
This, I think, is something which the church really needs to bear in mind. It’s inevitable and natural that the church should care about numbers—members, attendance, giving, volunteers—because they’re the only concrete information we have about how many people we’re reaching and how people are responding to what we’re doing. That is by no means all that matters about our work, because it doesn’t tell us whether people are growing as Christians or whether we’re doing what God wants us to do, but that doesn’t mean that this information is irrelevant, either. When you factor in that for most churches, the numbers represent our main practical limitation (we can’t do x because we don’t have enough people/money/volunteers to pull it off), obviously they’re going to take a lot of our attention.Where the problem comes in is when we focus on the numbers. As Christians, our focus should only and ever be on Jesus, and our primary goal should always be to be where he wants us to be and do what he wants us to do. Our aim should be to see Jesus and go where he is, and there to do what he’s doing. When (even for the best of motives) we come to focus instead on adding people, or raising more money, or developing more volunteers and leaders, we lose sight of our goal, our plans have no true aim, and we fix our eyes on the means: whatever works to improve the numbers. When we start to think that way, then we begin to seek any harbor that promises to give us more people and more money; and as Seneca said, when we reach that state, no wind is the right wind.
On this blog in history: February 2007
A couple weeks ago, I noted the concerns Jared raised about the ephemerality of blogging, and his decision to address those concerns by reposting old pieces; for my own part, I decided to try links posts, looking at a month of a time. I started off with January 2007, so I figured I might as well keep going in chronological order for a bit.Musings on the missional church
This is probably most valuable for the links to Theology Matters; it is what the title says.Knocking on Heaven’s Door
I link to this because I highly recommend this book.Atheism and its discontents
My first post on atheism, I think, and a reminder that Christians should always treat critics with grace and love.An insurgency divided against itself cannot stand
I saw the signs of the surge’s success, though I didn’t draw all the right conclusions.In a mirror, darkly
If we don’t practice unsparingly honest self-reflection, someone else will do the reflecting for us—and we won’t like what we see.
Barack Obama, you’ve been rickrolled
This is weird, but it’s funny. (At least, I think so; I’ll let you judge for yourself.)
If we can’t laugh at our politicians, who can we laugh at?HT: Carlos Echevarria