Sacramental Activity?

The distinction between the faith, piety and practice of confessionally Reformed Christianity and the faithfulness, pietism and practicality of much of Evangelicalism becomes apparent in the contrast of response to initiative. The difference between Word and Sacrament vs. advice and excitement is that one produces gratitude in response to the Law and Gospel, while the other incites, through psychological manipulation and suggestion; an introspection and insecurity that in turn is used to justify the pursuit of a pietism that produces a rationalistic gnosticism nourished by a lack of confidence in the life and work of Christ and an overemphasis of the ability of the individual. Sin becomes confused with the affectations and accouterments of the sinner and creation is divided into the “sacred” and the “secular”. By this conflation of substance into the sin which utilizes it, an inverse conclusion is arrived at; for if one thing can be sinful than why can’t sanctification be caused by the possession and use of Christian “culture” and “merchandise”?

The reinvention and reintroduction of iconoclasm into much of mainstream Protestantism is the result of a loss of confidence in the traditional method of preaching and by a view which transforms the sacraments into empty sepulchers of memory. The verbal method of transmission that is preaching is no longer viewed as sufficient to reach the masses. Baptism has become a mere act of obedience and communion a memorial, remembering nothing but a name. Nothing is communicated, nothing is received other than the reminisce of a deed. So what inevitably occurs is that other, cultural and non-ordained practices are elevated to the level of sacrament and thought to communicate that necessary spiritual food to our souls. The most notable example is contemporary Christian music, but this envisioning of “stuff” that sanctifies by communicating grace is extended into the civil realm.

Thus, what we do has become sacramental in much of Evangelicalism; in the counter culture of societal sanctification or the sacramental application of Christendom, vocation has become a sacrament, rather than a common element of creation. It is thought that we must now resort to the contextualization of the Church and the Gospel into the new media, maintaining relevance in the new world. And so the recidivism of the verbal to the pictorial is of inevitable necessity in the new paradigm in order to advance the kingdom of God. Spiritual utilitarianism, the new iconoclasm, the new industry of indulgences fueling the false expectation that a parochial culture will produce a life of sanctity, mortification of the flesh, and ultimately the notion that we can express and present the life and work of Jesus Christ with nary a word from our mouths; personal piety over corporate, covenantal participation, one finds that the objectivity of the covenant to be too rankling to man who would pull God down to him.

This is a form of Christianity that has more in common with the pioneer spirit and rugged individualism of early America than the historic Christian Church; the me first and God second religion, looking to God for reward and safety rather than mercy and grace. Furthermore, in this commingling of cult and culture, this confusion of the two kingdoms, some within the Church begin to see themselves as a political body empowered and compelled to take action by virtue of their status and possession of moral and ethical “superiority” in the culture to transform it. Yet, lacking authority, but proclaiming superiority of ethics and culture, they inevitably generate the the notion that they are fundamentalist, extremist, intolerant of all but their own kind and seeking to bring all people under the sway of their ideologies.

My position is that this, if practiced on a large scale this cannot but help to cause a reaction of oppression, discrimination, and fear. Thus the identity of the Church, when not in political ascendency will be that of the oppressed, but a persecution  caused by a paradigm of manifest destiny rather than simply the preaching of the Gospel. And to begin to associate the people of God, or the Church, with the political and socially oppressed is to incorporate, implicitly, the notion of revolution as a viable act in the furtherance of the Gospel and the liberation of God’s people in order to extend the reach of the Kingdom of Heaven. What makes this even more odd is that this notion of being on the outside looking in is developed by the American Church in a situation of affluence and in the absence of real political and social oppression in comparison to the global, in/visible church; this is not the liberation theology of Latin America, where there is real oppression. Therefore, any oppression that does occur is the consequence of an attitude of ascendancy and arrogance, not on account of a confession of Christ as Lord as primary but the way in which they use the Word of God as a manifesto for all life.

To do this is to believe that the Church’s place in this present evil age is one of social and cultural domination and enforced cultural homogeny rather than contribution without permanence; that we contribute to society, on the terms that Caesar has set without seeking to become Caesar. The Church must be content to dwell in the tents of impermanence rather than in cities of permanence.

Silence, Thoughts On The Sabbath

…our daily life in office and home, in cars and airplanes, at parties and conferences, while reading magazines and watching television, while looking at advertisements and hearing radio, are in themselves continuous examples of a life which has lost the dimension of depth. It runs ahead, every moment is filled with something which must be done or seen or said or planned…As long as the preliminary, transitory concerns are not silenced, no matter how interesting and valuable and important they may be, the voice of the ultimate concern cannot be heard.

Paul Tillich “The Lost Dimension in Religion“

I’m reminded of a conversation that I had with a friend a few weeks ago. He was fairly irate by discussions he had overheard in the Church that morning by people sitting in the pews that had nothing redeeming about it, or for that matter, discussion at all. Now, they weren’t swearing or flirting-that I know of-they were, rather innocently I think, talking about common things, things which any other day of the week would sanction, but not the Sabbath, I think.

The question is, what place do the mundane things of our everyday lives have in the Church as we prepare for the Divine Service; what is rest and how does that comport with our conduct on the Lord’s Day as we attend Word and Sacrament? What is the fundamental distinction, if there is one, that is delineated when we step through the door of the Church and then into the Sanctuary? Is there a difference between being on the outside looking in and being inside, or in other words, the difference between what we do in six and what is done for us on one and how that determines our thoughts, words and deed?

I have the feeling, that aside from our cultures disdain for all that is formal and possessed of a code of conduct, part of the issue that my friend encountered was the residual practice of fundamentalism/evangelicalism which remains, often long after the person has jettisoned their theology. It’s the remnants of a tradition-yes I said tradition-that encourages the idea that the Church, rather than primarily being the place of Word and Sacrament, is really just a place, just a building, where a bunch of Christians get together on Sunday to hear a man tell them his opinion about what a particular passage of scripture means. And ultimately, though I don’t think they are conscious of it, they wind up collapsing the Church visible into the Church Universal, emphasizing the sanctity of each day and the priesthood of the believer to such a degree as to relegate the Sabbath and the services thereupon as simply another day of the week on which they happen to go to Church, not to the Divine Service and certainly not to receive anything other than a “recharge” as they do worship. And “real” Christianity gets moved into the home, the workplace, the culture at large, or as I would say, Law. And because their Gospel is an ethic, a do this and live, “living it out” makes a lot of sense to their system. Since they have already located faith in themselves as an active righteousness which compels God to save them-this is why I think charismatics and and the wordfaith crowd are second cousins-why should their worship be any different, why their should preaching not be the progressive statement of their lives rather than the static and objective Gospel preached by the Apostles?

How do you do worship, how do you do church, these are phrases that are bandied about too much for my taste these days, as if the Sabbath rest was about work, seemingly defying the very concept of rest. It seems that in the midst of our humanity we forget that the Sabbath was made for man rather than man for the Sabbath and so, often we awake on Sunday with Law on our hearts as we seek to “please” God by the issue of our hearts and mouths. Let us attend the Divine service with reverence and awe, as passive sheep looking to their shepherd to provide everything, so that we might give ear to that which is of ultimate concern, Christ and his Gospel.

The Church Is Not A Soup Kitchen

 

The Church is neither modern nor antiquated but ahistorical. The functionality of the Church is not based upon trends, polls, or demography but upon biblical mandates and structure that supercede what is normative in society to create a peculiar ethical community within the broad community of common history. Somewhere along the way, though, Evangelicalism left the reservation, she has become determined to strike out on her own, and seemingly decided that any notion of historic, confessional Christianity is a sentiment for those who don’t hear the Spirit call, but that since she has received revelation and continues to presently, then all that she needs is her heart and her bible. Evangelicalism has created and is continuing to perpetuate a determined and methodical theological suicide.

The Gospel has been traded for the belly, it has became more important that we better society than save souls. Consequently, the temporal has been awarded primacy over eternity and the pure, historically presented Gospel has come to be viewed as anachronistic. Hearing and receiving from God as the primary purpose of the church has been soundly rejected by many today, who spend countless hours attempting to “hear” the Spirit speak to them and give them direction for their “ministry”. I am sorry to quash their sentiment and pseudo-compassion, but point of their “ministry” is to preach the Gospel and care for the people of God by Word and Sacrament, not feed the poor and cloth the homeless outside the community of saints.  Sorry but the church is not a soup kitchen, it is the place where the kingdom of God manifests in the here and now, giving us a foretaste of the world to come.

Furthermore, the desire to be culturally relevant has become in practice the call to expedite the “mission” no matter the medium that becomes requisite to reach the culture on their terms, resulting in pragmatic sacrifices of doctrinal and confessional character and stability in the pursuit of the damned and lost.

With this has come the reversal of the first and second greatest commandments, where it had been that we must first love the Lord in order to love our neighbor rightly, has instead been transformed into loving our neighbor in order to love God rightly, placing the creature over the creator within the structure of the covenant and morphing the sense of cultural mandate into a liturgical form. Inevitably, then, the endeavor to improve the social welfare of the immediate and distant culture acts in a sacramental function, infusing the society with “salt and light”, social programs reoriented as soteriological acts and methods of preaching the Gospel. This is story or what I call headline evangelism, it isn’t truly concerned with the content of the actual Gospel, but rather the immediate emotional impact that their experience can elicit from you.

This is the course of pietism which moves into the taxonomy of the social Gospel adherents and ultimately transforms into rationalism masquerading as Christianity, resulting in the death of God in their theology. Geerhardus Vos stated it thusly,

…Rationalism is from its cradle devoid of historic sense. It despises tradition; the past it ignores and the future it barely tolerates with a supercilious conceit of self. Moreover Rationalism is bent upon and enamored of the inward. To it the essence and value of all religion lie in purely-subjective ethico-religious experiences.

The Pauline Eschatology

No better definition, I think, may be found to describe the current state of broad, ecumenical Evangelicalism.

What Regulative Principle?

When I was a budding Calvinist still attending a charismatic, evangelical church, all that ever aroused my ire was their militant arminianism. Now the thing that I notice the most is the insufficient or utter lack of ecclessiology.

Lately, I think that I have somewhat taken for granted the fact that I attend and am a member of a reformed, confessional church where the liturgy is Biblically established, Christo-centric, and theologically defensible. I was reminded of this comfort a few days ago during a chance conversation that I had with a complete stranger.

As I talked with this gentleman I started to realize how different broad evangelical worship services are from the reformed liturgical services. We as reformed structure the service theologically and covenantally, looking to receive word and sacrament whereas the evangelical often attends the service on the Sabbath seeking what to do or perform in order to please God.

In short, we as reformed seek to define the church and its practice biblically where the evangelicals view the church psychologically and thus structure their services accordingly. They truly are the seed of Finney, seeking to excite the people, leading, I believe, to what Dr. R. S. Clark calls the quests for illegitimate religious experience and for illegitimate knowledge. I also think that this is what happens when the offices in the church are devalued by an overemphasis of the priesthood of the believer, at least, it was in my experience.

Hello, my name is John Hagee and now for something completely different

A family reunion?

Empiricism, apart from the ontological and ethical/covenantal structure of reality given to it by God as mediated to us by his word, is an orphan; ever seeking its parentage but never arriving home. It is always asking what, thinking that in it it will discover the why of existence. But this is the limitation of tangible observation being the foundation for belief, it can never reach beyond our own abilities.

Furthermore, this is also a significant flaw/characteristic in the theology of vision/glory, the theological counterpart to scientific empiricism. Both only believe what they may see and touch, what is explicitly manifest to them. And they both, in their own way, demand to see God now, unmediated.

These two estranged siblings both function upon an epistemological foundation of autonomy, that man has some inherent right to know the mind of God apart from what is conveyed to us by his word; discomfited by the mysterious, they would taste and try rather than believe.

There is no room left for transcendence in the contemporary mind, it is immanence or bust. At the end of the day, they all grasp for the forbidden fruit held forth by the that great adversary of the Gospel.