Giving Marriage the Old College Try

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Matt

I have a new piece up at the Federalist.  Long story short:  those of us who believe that marriage is essential to civilization need to do a better job of encouraging it–not to strangers through legislation or mass media, but among the children whom God has entrusted to our care.

It would be foolish of parents who so value a college education to content themselves with telling their little children that they’ll come across the right college someday and feel in their heart that it’s the right one when it happens. They wouldn’t disregard their high school students’ academic indicators, content that the right college won’t be shallow enough to care about such things. They would hardly resign themselves to passively watching their offspring occasionally audit classes that look fun or sign up for a correspondence course from time to time, remaining silent except for the occasional passive-aggressive comment at Thanksgiving dinner that it would be nice to see them settle down with a nice B.A. program. If parents think of college as extremely important, avoiding this uninvolved approach would be a no-brainer. It’s too key to a child’s future to approach the goal so casually.

It is therefore a stark contrast when we compare parents’ dedication to getting their children into a good college with their dedication to getting their children into a good marriage.

You can read the whole thing here.

Posted in Chastity, Culture | Leave a comment

Cultural Doggie Bag – Arrow & Indiana Jones

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Matt

Sometimes I watch a movie or TV show that I want to write about, but it turns out to not have enough substance for a full blog post. At the same time, I don’t want to just throw away what I wrote either.   And so, just for the opportunity to post something a little more fun for the holidays, I’ve put together a couple of these leftovers into one Tupperware.

Oliver Queen is a Serial Killer

I’ve recently begun watching Arrow, the WB’s CW’s latest iteration of Pretty White Kids with Problems, this time based on the DC comic character, Oliver Queen (aka the Green Arrow.) Oliver was a spoiled trust fund teenager until his yacht sank, his father sacrificed himself to save him, and he became stranded on a not-quite deserted island for five years. He eventually returns home with a bow, a grab-bag of combat skills, and a list of people to hunt down who have harmed his city in a variety of vague ways.

Superheroes have traditionally refrained from intentionally killing their foes for many reasons—a moral boundary to their questionable vigilanteism, culturally imposed comic codes, the opportunity for recurring villains, and so forth. I’m only about a half-dozen episodes in, but so far it seems that Oliver eschews this convention in favor of his preferred method of dealing with villains: 1) immediately kill all of their bodyguards, 2) give them a choice between atoning for their crimes or death, 3) embroil them in some scheme that usually involves atoning for their crimes and death.

At first, I thought the casual murder was just a lazy way for the writers to make things gritty. But a few episodes in, they seem to become conscious of the moral discrepancy. As it happens, one man on Oliver’s list installed faulty smoke-alarms in low-income housing, and Oliver responds in the only sensible way: kill a dozen of his employees and extort money to donate to fire victims. But before Oliver can murder him, another assassin shows up and beats him to it. This assassin, of course, provides an opportunity for Oliver to look in the mirror and examine the morality of his own mission.

Oliver embraces this opportunity without any angst whatsoever because he immediately realizes that unlike himself, the assassin does his work for money. Oliver, on the other hand, already has all the money he’ll ever need and then some, which he spends primarily on weapons to extort money out of bad guys in order to help the poor. Oliver also observes that unlike himself, the assassin follows no code of honor—after all, just like that other famous DC hero, the Joker, Oliver usually gives his victims a gruesome choice before releasing one last arrow. These two differences are enough to ensure that Oliver never wavers in his conviction that he is totally different from this assassin whom he immediately sets out to kill.

The ethical hilarity continues a few episodes later when he hooks up with another vengeful DC hero, the Huntress. Oliver tries to instruct her on the finer distinctions between justice and vengeance, which, as it turns out, are twofold: murder needs to at least be Plan B and justice uses bows while vengeance uses guns. I wish I were joking about that last one, but apparently bows require more discipline and are therefore less vengeful than firearms. Curiously enough, this is the first episode where Oliver actually tries to take out henchmen using non-lethal force. Maybe he was afraid to look like a self-righteous hypocrite in front of his new girlfriend. For the viewer, unfortunately, it’s already a lost cause.

Indiana Jones and the Nuclear Fridge

I received Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures for Christmas this year. This box set contains all three Indiana Jones movies along with another amateur film involving communists and aliens made by some novice computer animators. They did somehow manage to get Harrison Ford to reprise his role, which is nice, but it might have been a better effort if it had been made by fans of the original movies.

All kidding aside, there’s been no shortage of commentary on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s deficiencies, and so I’ll pass over any further mention of nuclear fridges, terrible CGI, and Shia LaBeouf and proceed to one reason for the movie’s lack of soul that I haven’t seen explored yet:  its deep secularization.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana begins with a practical, no-nonsense approach to searching for the Ark of the Covenant. When Marcus expresses his concern about the search because the Ark is unlike anything he has gone after before, Indy laughs it off and responds, “I’m talking about a object of incredible historical significance, and you’re talking about the boogeyman” before packing his gun. By the end of the movie, he’s witnessed the Ark’s unspeakable power and is frustrated because the government bureaucrats he hands it over to don’t understand the significance of what they have. Though it begins as a mere treasure hunt, the movie eventually dabbles in a spiritual dimension as well.

The same transformation occurs in Temple of Doom. After selling off a priceless artifact to a gangster in some shady deal at a nightclub (you know, typical archeologist stuff), Indiana lands in India (through a series of events that were, frankly, more ridiculous than the whole fridge thing). His hosts tell him about an evil cult that stole the sacred Shankara Stone from their village and beseech the aid of Indy and friends who they perceive were sent by Shiva because they fell from the sky. Indy helps for the sake of their kidnapped children, but dismisses the whole Shiva/magic rock stuff as legends about fortune and glory. Nevertheless, by the end of the movie, he’s accusing the villain of betraying Shiva and after all is resolved, ultimately tells the village elder that he now understands the power of the Shankara Stone.

Indiana must regress on more mystical matters fairly regularly because the same thing happens yet again in Last Crusade. After the intro sequence is finished (in which Indy recovers a cross purely for the sake of putting it in a museum,) the movie proceeds to the classroom. Professor Jones lectures his students about how “archeology is the search for fact, not truth… We cannot afford to take mythology at face value, we don’t follow maps to buried treasure, and ‘X’ never ever marks the spot.” He then proceeds to refute his own lecture point-by-point for the remainder of the film. Midway through the movie, Indy’s father reminds him that “the quest for the Grail is not archeology; it’s a race against evil” and by the end when Indy has learned to let the grail go (i.e. realizes that it doesn’t really belong in a museum), Henry Jones Sr. explains that even without possessing the physical grail, he still found “illumination.”

None of these three movies are really religious in any coherent sense, but Indiana’s archeological adventure is nevertheless always caught up in some kind of cosmic struggle between good and evil. Like your average American, they’re spiritual but not religious. This facet is entirely missing from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which followed purely secular themes. Indiana searches for aliens and their artifacts, a discovery that is important because it tells us about our history and could potentially alter the balance of cold war political power, but nothing more. The movie is about an object of incredible historical significance, but not really of any cosmic significance. Just like Lucas reduced the Force to microscopic organisms called midichlorians in the Star Wars prequels, he reduces Indiana Jones’ brand of archeology back to the search for fact, not truth. Sure, Indy discovers that the aliens’ treasure is knowledge, but it comes off as nothing more than a feel-good aphorism.

When souls are irrelevant to the film, it’s no wonder that the film feels like it has no soul.

Posted in Culture | 1 Comment

The Fisherman’s Choice

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Matt

I was pondering a modern parable recently. I can’t remember where I first heard it, but the gist of it is this:

Once upon a time, a rich businessman and his entourage visited a harbor examining some ocean-front property to buy and develop. Their business concluded, he was about to return to his helicopter and take off when he noticed a plainly-dressed middle-aged man sitting on a chair near the docks, smiling and looking out over the ocean.

The businessman approached the other and asked him what he did for a living that allowed him to simply sit back and relax even though it was only early afternoon. He replied that he was a fisherman, and that he had already caught enough fish for the day, so he was just relaxing and taking in the view.

The businessman pointed out that he could go back out and catch even more fish and make more money. The fisherman asked what that would gain him.

The businessman pointed out that he could save up enough money to buy an additional boat & crew and catch even more fish and make even more money. The fisherman again asked what that would gain him.

The confused businessman replied that he could build an even larger fleet and hire captains & managers to run it. Once again the fisherman asked what that would gain him.

The businessman told him that then he would be able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ocean. The fisherman smiled and replied, “But that’s what I’m doing now.”

The parable came to mind as I read a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. In “Are Boys Irrational,” James Taranto analyzes an issue brought up in an earlier article by Kay Hymowitz: why are men increasingly opting out of higher education, career advancement, and raising families? Ms. Hymowitz concluded that a lack of father figures in their lives was causing these men to act irrationally and miss out on these important parts of life. Mr. Taranto, on the other hand, suggests that these men are not necessarily behaving irrationally at all. He writes:

Except perhaps in very conservative communities, men with sufficient social skills can find sex and companionship without need of a matrimonial commitment (and for those who lack social skills, a willingness to marry is unlikely to provide much compensation). The culture’s unrelenting message–repeated in Hymowitz’s article–is that women are doing fine on their own. If a woman doesn’t need a man, there’s little reason for him to devote his life to her service. Further, in the age of no-fault divorce, “reliable husbands and fathers” not infrequently find themselves impoverished by child support and restricted by court order from spending time with their children.

As for education, the story of Joshua Strange ought to be enough to give any sensible young man second thoughts about enrolling in college. And work? Not all jobs, including those that require a college degree, are as rewarding as writing for an intellectual magazine (or, we hasten to add, a newspaper). Men traditionally sought to “better themselves” not because working in an office or on an assembly line was itself a source of delight, but because being a workingman enabled them to earn respect and made possible the joys of domestic life.

So why did this make me think of the fisherman’s tale? The point of the parable is presumably to question the wisdom of the kind of masculine ambition that leads a man to build, advance, and produce more than what he needs for himself, but the far more interesting question is this: where does this ambition come from and what is its purpose? Consider: if you think about the characters in the parable, it is not hard to guess which of the two men is more likely to be married. The businessman would certainly be a better catch in the eyes of most women, and the fisherman isn’t scaling back his hours to spend more time with a wife and kids. His highest aspiration is to simply relax and enjoy life whenever he is able. We are just speculating here, and it is certainly possible that the fictional businessman is just in it for greed, but even then, it is interesting that family is the single most likely factor to determine whether or not his ambition is truly greedy.

Mr. Taranto’s analysis of the matter is essentially that these underemployed young men are making the fisherman’s choice. Sure, sitting on the beach is replaced with casual sex and video games, but the principle is the same: for a man without ambition, the fisherman’s choice is not really irrational.

But there is a point at which the fisherman’s choice does become irrational, and it is probably this realization that has been alarming many people like Ms. Hymowitz. What makes good sense on a personal level can make less sense on a societal level. Civilization depends on the tendency of men to produce more than they consume for themselves—it depends on that masculine ambition. In the parable, the fisherman feeds himself. Following the businessman’s ambition, however, could mean feeding himself & his workers, along with any family they might have. His ambition could be a huge boon to society. Take that away, and you have a bunch of men doing what they need to do to stay comfortable, but nothing more—nothing for any women or any increasingly hypothetical children.

This leads some folks to call the disinterested men lazy and shame them on an individual level into manning up to provide for society. However, if the irrationality is at a societal level, perhaps the critique should also be leveled at society. Permanent and chaste marriages along with the legitimate children they produce are a social feature that traditionally cultivated masculine ambition by rewarding it and channeling it towards benevolent ends. Men tend to love their wives and children, take satisfaction in working on their behalf, and used to gain commensurate social respect for doing so.

And yet, this kind of marriage is precisely what has been taken away from men in our society. Instead, our elites have sought to structure the family around child support instead of marriage. The mother has custody of the children, but she receives much of the necessary resources from elsewhere. This could be from her husband, but it could just as easily be from her ex-husband, her boyfriend, or the taxpayer. Where it comes from doesn’t matter so long as the child has resources and the woman is freed from any moral or social obligation towards these men.

This rickety new system has sort-of worked so far, but only on inertia. While it may not matter whether the resources come from a husband, ex-husband, boyfriend, or taxpayer, the system does hinge on there being husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, and taxpayers who are producing more than they consume for themselves. Men have done this so far because that’s what’s been expected of them, but more and more are realizing that they have no incentive to do so. Sure, they could try to marry and start a family, but half of marriages end in divorce, a supermajority of divorces are unilaterally inflicted by wives on their husbands, and the wife is all but guaranteed custody of the family along with most of its property and a large chunk of the husband’s future earnings. This is a pretty big hurdle to jump, and a man can hardly be considered irrational for declining the risk. The more that men are alienated from their families, the less stake they have in society or future.

Mr. Taranto concludes his article: “Boys and young men are no less rational, or capable of adapting to incentives, than girls and young women are. They are, in fact, adapting very well to the incentives for female power and independence–which inevitably also serve as disincentives to male reliability and self-sacrifice.” In a way, he is entirely correct. Strong independent women in control of their own lives need no men and offer men no incentive to an ambition that benefits society. However, if that independence were as real as people pretend, there would be no alarm over men giving up those ambitions. Truly independent women would not need all the welfare, alimony, child support, paid maternity leave, government sponsored daycare, and so forth that other people (men) are supposed to provide for them. But if society truly does need such things from men, perhaps society should also honor and reward men for their contribution instead of pretending they are unnecessary. Perhaps they should make their ambition rational again. Reigning in the ability of women to take a father’s home & family away from him by reintroducing permanent and chaste marriage would be a good start.

Posted in Culture, Ethics, Feminism, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Three Kinds of Doubt

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Matt

Not all doubts are created equal. Dealing with doubts is part of the nature of Christian apologetics. Reasonably answering intellectual challenges to Christ’s teachings is a God-given responsibility (1 Peter 3:15). Fulfilling that responsibility well hinges on recognizing the different kinds of doubt and responding accordingly. There are probably many ways to categorize doubts, but what follows are the three categories I find most helpful.

The first kind of doubt is emotional doubt. This is when a person experiences feelings of uncertainty about his faith. These feelings may be momentary or may persist for months or even years. They may be triggered by any number of causes—sometimes intellectual and sometimes personal. For example, a father might lose his young child to disease and have no idea where God is in the face of such tragedy. He has no argument against Christianity per se—he is simply grappling with his anguish and wonders how a good God could allow such a thing to happen to him. Such circumstances call less for apologetics and more for general pastoral care—mourning with those who mourn and reminding them of God’s goodness which has been overshadowed by their evil circumstances. Philosophical answers to the problem of evil are not high on the list of needs in such a situation.

The second kind of doubt is reasonable doubt. This is the kind of doubt which occurs when a person encounters new information that gives him a reason to question his beliefs. This may be accompanied by emotional doubt, but remains distinct from it. For example, a college student might hear his professor mention that there are hundreds of thousands of manuscript discrepancies in old copies of the New Testament. If he was raised with a relatively shallow understanding of Biblical inerrancy, this new information might lead him to start questioning whether Christianity is really true.

Here, the task is primarily an apologetic one. Rather than telling him that his feelings of doubt will pass or reminding him of God’s goodness, we help him understand the new information he’s received. We tell him that though there are many variances in the ancient manuscripts, the majority of these are simple typos, transposed words, and so forth. We tell him that the number only seems high because we have orders of magnitude more ancient manuscripts for the New Testament compared to any other work of antiquity; if one manuscript says the Greek equivalent of “teh” instead of “the,” and the other 6000 do not, that’s 6000 discrepancies right there. In short, we help him understand textual criticism, the fact that this abundance of evidence gives us incredibly reliable modern copies of the Bible, and that the variances do not get in the way of understanding what God has told us.

There is a certain measure of intellectual responsibility to entertain reasonable doubts. There are limits to this, for intellects come in all different sizes. No matter what the subject matter, no human is capable of answering any and every question, and we have no cause to be troubled when we encounter some questions that are simply beyond our ability or expertise. At the same time, however, a person who simply closes his eyes to all new information that doesn’t fit into his beliefs is not considered intellectually honest. It is a lazy way out. When this mental sloth is applied to matters of faith, we often call this a blind faith. This is not the kind of faith required by the God who calls us to love Him with all our minds.

Treating reasonable doubt as though it were emotional doubt is irresponsible. One ought not tell a student who is confused by information given to him by his atheistic college professor that he ought to ignore him because he’s an unbeliever. One ought not command such an individual to simply have faith. That might make him feel better (though it probably will not), but it does not deal with the reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt is best addressed by reasonable answers.

The third kind of doubt is volitional doubt, and it is characterized by choosing to doubt even when one does not have a reasonable cause. This is the kind of doubt on which most forms of modern and postmodern skepticism depend. Rather than new information, volitional doubt is built on an assortments of maybe’s, what-if’s, and unanswerable questions designed to confuse and undermine beliefs.

For Americans, the distinction between reasonable and volitional doubt can perhaps be seen best in the courtroom. The accused is supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Say there’s a video that shows the accused shoplifting. A good lawyer might raise the reasonable doubt that the video never shows the accused’s face clearly. A bad lawyer might raise the volitional doubt that the figure in the video might be a shape-shifting alien or a hitherto unknown evil twin. This bad lawyer wants the jury to choose to doubt his client’s guilt, but has not given them a reason to. Is it possible that there’s a shape-shifting alien in the video? Sure. But we have absolutely no reason to believe that this is actually the case. How can you be sure shape-shifting aliens don’t exist? We have no real way of testing this, but we don’t need to test it because we have no reason to. Accordingly, such a doubt should never trouble the jury because it is unreasonable. Intellectual integrity does not require anyone to entertain volitional doubt.

The success of professional skeptics hinges on their ability to rhetorically conflate reasonable and volitional doubt. The Bart Ehrmans of the world, for example, will tell Christians that we have no idea what Jesus said because we cannot trust the New Testament to report his teachings accurately. Why not? Copyists make mistakes. Translators make mistakes. Any given word in your copy of the New Testament might be the result of human error rather than divine inspiration. Therefore, no intelligent person could possibly think that it is trustworthy. The doubt introduced by such an argument is volitional because its force is in the “maybe.” The core of the argument is not the fact of specific errors (though such facts are usually thrown into the mix as well for rhetorical effect) but rather the possibility of generic errors. No specific error bothers us, but anything could possibly be an error.

The rhetorical twist of the knife comes in with the “no intelligent person” bit which can be phrased in any number of ways. Though the doubt is volitional, the passive-aggressive insult is an attempt to tie it into the intellectual responsibility to entertain reasonable doubts—this is why unwarranted accusations of fundamentalism or close-mindedness are so common from skeptics. Both our desire to be thought well of and our desire to be intellectually responsible are tugged at, and many people end up concluding that they have an obligation to doubt. When they cannot answer all the questions or account for every potential variable, they then come to believe that their beliefs do not stand up to scrutiny.

The apologetic response to volitional doubt requires additional work. Because volitional doubt is often accompanied by pieces of new information, the apologist must still be able to properly understand, explain, and augment that information. However, he must also be able to expose volitional doubt for what it is and delineate it from the reasonable. This requires identifying the maybe’s and challenging the skeptic to either put up or shut up. If someone wants me to doubt the transmission of those parts of the Bible that talk about the Resurrection or the forgiveness of sins, or any other part of essential Christian theology, they need to actually point me to the manuscripts that say something different. Nine times out of ten, they’ve got nothing. It is reasonable to doubt the story of the woman caught in adultery because it doesn’t show up in every ancient manuscript, and when it does show up, it doesn’t always show up in the same place. It is not reasonable to doubt the accurate transmission of those Biblical narratives with abundant manuscript evidence. It just so happens that 99.5% of the New Testament falls into the latter category, and the details of the other .5% don’t affect any significant doctrine or history.

My examples have focused on textual criticism, but volitional doubt can show up in most intellectual challenges to Christianity. Did the Resurrection happen? Maybe Jesus just swooned. Maybe the disciples were hallucinating. Did God mean what he said about homosexuality? Maybe Paul was talking about something else. Maybe it was just a reflection of the culture of the time. Regardless of the topic, the task of the apologist is the same: expose it for what it is. You show me your evidence for your maybe, I’ll show you my evidence for my belief, and we’ll see whose prevails.

So when our brothers and sisters in Christ are beset by doubts, it couldn’t hurt to listen to them for awhile and figure out just what kind of doubt they’re suffering. Do we comfort? Do we teach? Do we call out? It’s all part of the practical wisdom necessary to give an answer with gentleness and respect.

Posted in Apologetics | 7 Comments

The End of Modern Theology in England

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Matt

On May 11th, 1959, C.S. Lewis addressed the students of Westcott House, the Anglican theology school at Cambridge. They no doubt found his message to be peculiar. It was, after all the message of a Christian who believed that his religion was actually true delivered to young men being trained in the heresy of Theological Liberalism—the hallmark of which is a belief that Jesus Christ, his work, and his teachings are primarily an inspiring fairy tale. Lewis’ arguments against higher criticism in “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism” both were and are worthy of our attention. Today, however, it is the end of the speech that I’d like to highlight:

Such are the reactions of one bleating layman to Modern Theology. It is right you should hear them. You will not perhaps hear them very often again. Your parishioners will not often speak to you quite frankly. Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the Vicar; he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more. Missionary to the priests of one’s own church is an embarrassing role; though I have a horrid feeling that if such mission work is not soon undertaken the future history of the Church of England is likely to be short.

The quote came to mind as I read an article from the Telegraph indicating that this ‘future history’ is now. According to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, the Church of England is one generation away from extinction. Why? After all, “it is still the case that people are essentially looking for spiritual fulfillment.”

“So many churches have no ministry to young people and that means they have no interest in the future.”

“So many people do not see the average church as a place where great things happen. To sit in a cold church looking at the back of other peoples’ heads is surely not the best place to meet exciting people and to hear prophetic words.”

So the problem is that church is too cold, too boring, has poor seating, and does too little to pamper the youth. His diagnosis does make the cause of death very clear, though not in the way one would ordinarily expect from a diagnosis. It is like watching an oncologist explain that his patient is dying because his regimen of acupuncture is too lax. One can see exactly why the cancer was never treated even if the doctor cannot. While I cannot help but agree with him that “more gimmicks” are not the answer and that “We have to give cogent reasons to young people why the Christian faith is relevant to them,” it is quite clear that the real problem has sailed over his head. Being as exclusively tied to modernist culture as it is, everything Theological Liberalism has come up with in its roughly two centuries of existence has been a gimmick. Every cogent reason why the Christian faith is relevant to anyone was dismissed as foolishness that no enlightened modern person could possibly believe. But sure… the problem is that they have not made church appealing enough to the youth.

Meanwhile in America, where youth ministries abound, we are beginning to find that they are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Oddly enough, it turns out that cutting off children from the rest of the body of Christ so that they can be raised in the faith by professional youth workers in a program based on community and entertainment is not terribly effective when you live in a culture that offers better entertainment than one could ever find in a church and forcibly breaks up youth communities when half of them are sent off to college.

But there is one religion that is doing quite well among the youth of England: Islam. British Muslims are expected to outnumber practicing British Christians in the next decade or so. It is not because they have gone out of their way to cater to the whims of youth; it is precisely the opposite. Rather than segregating their young in some kind of children’s mosque, they raise them up as part of the same community as the adults by teaching their youth how they are supposed to behave and believe with respect to Islam and expecting them to actually do it. Say what you will about Muslims, at least they take their religion seriously and expect their youth to do the same. It is hard to do that when a church is beholden to outdated academic traditions that insist that Christ’s teachings be treated with an unwarranted skepticism. It is hard to do that when a church is so desperate for numbers that it is transformed into a place for social clubs and amusements to bring in the crowds.

Though the details differ, the root problem is the same on both sides of the Atlantic. The life of the Church is found in Christ, and he has directed us to find him in his Word and Sacraments. His gifts are the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. We know that these things are relevant to youth and adult alike because we have good reason to believe that our religion is actually true. Christ really is who he said he is and did what he said he did, and unlike Muslims, we have a record of these things that stands up to historical scrutiny. “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain… If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” When we think that God is found primarily in our experiences, our political activism, our worldly success, our excitements, or anything other than where God has promised to be, we make the Church obsolete. Once we do that, how can we blame anyone for leaving her?

It is better that the false churches fall away lest they continue to be confused with the true ones. I mourn the Church of England’s apostasy, but not its death.

Posted in Apologetics, Christian Youth, The Modern Church, Theological Liberalism | Leave a comment

Theological Pietism Part 6: Moving Forward

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Matt

So what has been accomplished after spilling so much text on the subject? Well, aside from probably offending many of my fellow confessional Lutherans whom, present appearances aside, I really do have a great deal of respect for.

When writing a piece like this, there is always the hope that it will serve as a wake-up call—that people will take a reflective look at their rhetoric and their pet peeves and realize they need to make some adjustments. Whether or not this happens it outside my power.  We sinners are who we are, and we do not like to accept criticism.

At the very least, however, I wanted to provide a vocabulary and a theologically sound description of the problem in hopes that the conversation can continue more fruitfully than it has. One of the reasons we don’t stumble over the two natures of Christ so much is because we inherited such terminology from our ancestors in the faith. We have a name for each extreme: Nestorianism and Eutychianism. I likewise wanted to give this contemporary problem a name. Because if we do not start calling this heteropraxy something like ‘theological pietism,’ people are eventually going to start calling it ‘confessional Lutheranism.’

I do not want that. The errors that confessional Lutherans fight against are very real and very dangerous, and the battle is taken up by a relative few. I do not want this crucial defense to become synonymous with a different error. And so I want people to have a name for the overall problem along with terms for some of the practical details like Lutheran nihilism, and saint/sinner Nestorianism. I want them to recognize these things when they see them so that they can turn away from them.

Though I have been very critical over these past few posts, we are not yet very far advanced along this road; we can still turn back. Nevertheless, I see us picking up steam in the wrong direction as more well-intentioned Lutherans are trained and encouraged to identify defending sound doctrine with fulfilling man-made requirements that merely show off our theological acumen. Our own God-given impulses towards good works are being trained into the task of denying the opportunity to do good works to everyone else. Our doctrine of vocation seems to be directed solely towards this stilted version of the vocation of pastor while everyone else is told that their good works are for their neighbor and then set adrift with only a copy of the 10 Commandments to guide them. We are left to figure it out on our own without being properly equipped to do so. The practical elements of difficult vocational and moral matters are seldom considered in our churches because we think that success would be impious to even imagine. In the end, this leads to nothing but alienation towards our own salvation.

For the sake of the delivery of the Gospel and the teaching of sound doctrine, theological pietism needs to stop.

The best antidote—the only antidote—to our tendency towards opposite extremes is to steadfastly and honestly proclaim the whole counsel of God. So let’s start doing it.  Do parts of God’s Word make us uncomfortable?  Great!  For sinners like us, that means it’s working. Can parts of God’s Word be easily misunderstood?  Yes, but thankfully, we have pastors to help correct and guide our theology.  Are we surrounded by false doctrines?  Yes, so keep refuting them, but stop letting false prophets define which subjects are “safe” to preach about.  Rick Warren does not have a monopoly on purpose. Theologies of glory do not have a monopoly on glory.  Enthusiasts do not have a monopoly on ethics. Pietists do not have a monopoly on the sanctified Christian life. We should stop acting like they do.

Posted in Lutheranism, Theological Pietism | Leave a comment

Theological Pietism Part 5: Saint / Sinner Nestorianism

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Matt

This criticism of theological pietism is not simply a matter of nit-picking for the sake of picking nits. There are negative spiritual consequences to a steady diet of this kind of rhetoric. To put all my cards on the table, this is not a hypothetical issue for me. What follows is a reflection on something I have genuinely struggled with since attending seminary and being immersed in confessional Lutheran culture. I’ve come to call it “Saint/Sinner Nestorianism.”

The heretic Nestorius was involved in a controversy over the two natures of Christ. On one hand, there were the Eutychians who blended Christ’s human and divine natures so that he became some kind of god/man hybrid who was not really God anymore and was not really human either: Part God, Part Man, All Christ. In response to such teachings, Nestorius sought to keep Christ’s two natures distinct from one-another. Unfortunately, in yet another example of error-by-overreaction-to-error Nestorius did so by separating the two natures amongst a human Jesus and divine Son who essentially amounted to two separate beings. Nestorius described it as seeing two stars at a great distance—they look like the same star, but really are not.

One of the effects of Nestorius’ false teaching was a divided narrative in the Gospels. Some of the actions of Christ (such as miracles and teaching) could be attributed only to the Son, while others (such as suffering and dying) could be attributed only to Jesus the man. Needless to say, the Gospels become a convoluted mess when one approaches them this way. Jesus becomes divided into two different characters. In contrast to both Nestorius and Eutyches, the mark of orthodoxy is the doctrine of the hypostatic union—that these two distinct natures are shared by one Person, the Son, Jesus Christ.

But Christ is not the only one possessing two distinct natures. Every Christian does as well. Lutherans rightly teach that we are simul justus et peccator—simultaneously saint and sinner. By the gracious working of the Holy Spirit, each of us is a saint: utterly righteous before God, perfect and faithful. However, while we still live in this fallen world, each of us is also a sinner: utterly depraved and wicked, and even our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. The righteous saint needs no moral improvement, and the wicked sinner cannot be morally improved—he can only be slain. This is most certainly true.

We cannot forget or dismiss either of these natures anymore than we can Christ’s without swiftly falling into error. If I forget that I am a saint, I live in constant guilt and despair. I am nothing more than a sinner without hope. No matter how I might try to improve myself, I’m always going to fall short of what God demands. This is an exhausting and hopeless way to live—never sure if the works I have done are good enough (unless I actually take the Law as seriously as Christ does, in which case I know that they are not.) If, on the other hand, I forget that I am a sinner, I go the route of the Pharisee. I cut myself off from God’s grace because I think I no longer need it. I become a self-righteous legalist who holds himself up as the standard. And every time I sin, I either have to trick myself into thinking that I have not or else temporarily classify myself as a sinner instead of a Christian until I can adequately improve myself.

Neither can we blend these two natures together without falling into error. I cannot be some half-saint/half-sinner mixture anymore than I can be half saved and half-damned. We will enter into heaven with only one nature: the saint. When we die, our sinful flesh finally dies, and only the saint is raised up. But what would that last statement mean if we didn’t just distinguish our two natures, but separated them—just as Nestorius separated Christ’s? Which one of us would be saved?

Many Lutherans inadvertently teach precisely this kind of wall of separation because of the over-zealous rhetoric used in keeping our works away from our justification. Consider how very familiar these kinds of phrases are in Lutheran circles: “You don’t have to try to do good works–they flow naturally from faith.” “If you’re making an effort at being good, you’re enslaving yourself to the Law; let the Gospel set you free from this burden.” “Only the Old Man asks for moral instruction so he can try and justify himself; the New Man doesn’t need it.” “Let yourself be nourished by Word and Sacrament and any good works will just take care of themselves.” “God doesn’t care about your good works; your good works are only for your neighbor.” “Trying to be Christlike leads to self-righteousness and should be avoided.” “Christ has already won the battle; there’s nothing left for a Christian to do.” Though they are poorly phrased, each of these alludes to essential truths about our distinct natures of saint and sinner. But because they are poorly phrased, they divide the narrative of our lives amongst the two natures.

In short, each Christian becomes described as two different people, one a saint and one a sinner. But which one am I? Invariably, theological pietism assigns every sense of struggle and activity to our old sinful nature while every sense of passivity and inertness is assigned to our new sinless nature. After all, we have to keep our works away from our righteousness at any cost. This separation is reinforced when every request for law, every mention of trying to please God & do His will, and (God-forbid) any talk of God’s plan for our lives is met with suspicions of trying to ascend to heaven on a ladder of our own works and assigned exclusively to the Old Man. But what does human life consist of? Mainly, it consists of doing things. I am the one who struggles. I am the one who tries to do good. I am the one who learns what “good” means. The only times I am as inert as theological pietism makes the New Man sound are times when I am unconscious, and so the saint fades from any kind of perception. What else can I conclude except that the real me is the sinner and not the saint? Sure, there’s going to be a saint raised on the last day that has some kind of connection to me, but only in the most abstract and intangible sense. The saint is an utter mystery.

At this point, a peculiar kind of Lutheran nihilism sets in. God does not care what I do with my life. God cannot be pleased or displeased by anything I do. God does not care about my successes or my failures, my joy or my suffering; that’s just a theology of glory. God does not even listen to anything I say in my prayers; He only listens when I repeat His words back to Him. God does not care how I behave. Sure, my neighbors need my good works, but since God does not care what happens to them anymore than He cares what happens to me, that likewise loses all meaning. I am saved, though, and when I die I will go to Heaven instead of Hell. I should be thankful for that. In the meantime, I might as well just sit around and wait to die. Except, of course, on Sundays when I should go to church to make sure I don’t forget that I am forgiven before I die because if I do, I won’t be saved anymore.

In the end, all of God’s promises become empty because they are only given to this abstract saint who has no substance and no relevance to anything or anyone until after I die.

This is bleak, and this is torturous. If one reads the Bible at all, one cannot help but realize intellectually that this nihilism is not really true because one cannot help but encounter the myriad verses that theological pietism passes over. But it is difficult for this intellectual realization to penetrate the heart when nearly every theologically-informed Lutheran one hears or reads—the ones we count on to instruct and defend against the theological errors in the world—seems to be inadvertently reinforcing the nihilism. Remember some of the uncharitable ways many confessional Lutherans treat expressions of piety that were laid out in Part 2, the disdain with which specifics of the law are treated in Part 3, and the suspicion cast on a desire for instruction in Part 4. When this is the kind of rhetoric he is surrounded with, one cannot help but begin wondering whether that intellectual realization is something he reads into Scripture. For the record, I am not the only Lutheran to experience this. Anthony Sacramone has written about an experience very similar to my own.

Now, I want to again be clear: this is most certainly not the logical conclusion of Confessional Lutheran doctrine. It is, instead, the practical conclusion of theological pietism—a misapplication of confessional doctrine. There is, after all, a very clear solution to Saint/Sinner Nestorianism: a hypostatic union between saint and sinner analogous to the hypostatic union between God and Man in Jesus.

This kind of union has consequences—the kind that make the impossible possible. We can, for example, say that Mary is the mother of God because she is the mother of Jesus and Jesus is God. We can say that God died because Jesus is God and Jesus (being also a man) died. The hypostitic union between saint and sinner has similar consequences. I can say that a sinner does good works, because I am a sinner and I (being also a saint) do good works. I can say that saints sin because I am a saint and I (being also a sinner) sin. The saint may already be perfect and the sinner may be irreparable, but I can be improved as the sinner is put to death and the saint is nourished. Everything the sinner does may be sinful and everything the saint does is already pleasing to God, but I do some things that are pleasing to God and some that are not, and sometimes I even consciously choose between the two. Here, in this hypostatic union, we encounter the real Christian life. Here, by this hypostatic union, our actual experience is explained with theological accuracy and faithfulness to our confessions. Most importantly, here, God’s promises are finally “for me” because the saint is finally the same person who does what I do and experiences what I experience.

So why must we come down so hard on any Christian who says he’s making moral improvement, trying hard to live a godly life, and encouraging others to do the same? Why must we narrow our eyes whenever such ideas cross anyone’s lips?

Again, most confessional Lutherans acknowledge this when pressed. But why should anyone have to press for this? How many lay people would even know how to ask? How much more likely is it that people will instead learn that being a faithful Lutheran means being a theological pietist and casting suspicion on any mention of moral instruction? How many people will try to be better people by following this man-made instruction instead of what God has given us. Theological pietism turns our understanding of the Christian life into a convoluted mess, just as Nestorianism did to our understanding of the Gospels. But how can this misunderstanding ever be corrected if Lutherans are afraid to talk about the Christian life and about good works? How can we rightly instruct when we are afraid of God’s Word?

Tomorrow, I will wrap this up with a way forward.

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Theological Pietism Part 4: The Vivisection of God’s Word

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Matt

In Part 3, I wrote about one of the precepts that theological pietism foists on pastors: “avoid specifics.” But this is not the only man-made rule out there that ends up reaching the pulpit and trimming God’s Word at the fringes. Consider the classic 49% Law / 51% Gospel sermon. Rightly distinguishing Law and Gospel is, of course, essential to the task of preaching. However, is that because a pastor uses that principle to properly understand God’s Word so that he can pass it on to others, or is that because he must construct a sermon by combining a Law segment with a Gospel segment in which the latter ultimately overshadows the former?

Sermons, we are often told, should start with the Law to lay everyone low (in other words, 2nd use only) and end with the Gospel. We are told that if a pastor mentions or describes a new life in Christ after the Gospel segment, all it will do is leave people in crushing doubt over their salvation. We are also told that most preaching on Sanctification inadvertantly does this, so the topic should be avoided lest it take our eyes off of Christ.

Now, it is not the chronological order of the sermon that is really the important issue here. The issue is that this guideline betrays a mindset in which the Law must be entirely annihilated by the Gospel before the sermon ends for the safety of the congregation. Accordingly, talking about God’s expectations for the saved and forgiven Christian is seen as a confusion of Law and Gospel that snatches the latter away. With this mindset, it does not really matter when the Law segment of the sermon comes because its only purpose is to provoke an emotional reaction of fear so that the Gospel segment can bring an emotional reaction of relief. There is obviously a natural ordering of the two reactions, but regardless of which segment comes first, a congregation that has grown numb to emotional manipulation will always hear the Gospel as “ignore everything that I just said or ever will say about the Law because it has absolutely no relevence to you now anyway.”

Did I just say “emotional manipulation?” Yes; I did. Simply teaching God’s Word is, of course, not manipulative. However, engineering a sermon to be 49% Law (containing 2% or less of specifics) and 51% Gospel for the sake of a desired reaction from the audience is. God has authorized pastors to do the former, but I have seen nothing to indicate that He has authorized the latter.

Man-made rules and advice like this are perhaps why many Lutheran laypeople report that they virtually never hear an imperative verb from the pulpit. And yet the whole counsel of God contains many imperatives and specifics. Unfortunately, those who fall victim to theological pietism are not content to preach the whole counsel of God. They have to fix it first. Far better to teach people that they are always and only sinful—that they can never succeed in doing a good work, for good works arise spontaneously without any effort. In short, good works are not anything you can actually do, but are simply done… somehow… whatever they are. But in reality, if we speak of a Law that lays everyone low but does not also describe the shape of our new life in Christ, then we are speaking of an abridged Law.

In response to this, many Lutherans who know that they are not getting the whole story request more law from the pulpit. But these requests are often treated with deep suspicion unless they are made with a theological precision that most laity have never been trained to possess. Consider, for example, this response from an LCMS pastor to such complaints:

You know, it always either amuses or frustrates me when people complain about not hearing enough 3rd use of the Law. This is because we forget what the Third Use of the Law is. The 3rd use isn’t Christian advice. It isn’t a specific method of phrasing the Law. It’s not a style of Law.

It is a way in which the Holy Spirit uses and works any statement of Law.

For example – what “use” is this statement: If you are angry with your brother, you are liable to the council.

You know what – it could be all three.

[…]

So which is the “right” one. Whatever the Holy Spirit brings out and emphasizes. And you know what — the Holy Spirit may in fact make you aware of all three, as needed.

But you know what this means? If you aren’t “hearing enough 3rd Use” – you ought not complain about this to your pastor – it’s not his “use” of the law. That’s the Holy Spirit at work – you could take it up with him.

Or you might ponder what it means that you keep hearing 1st or 2nd use instead of 3rd. Maybe it means… you need to be hearing 1st and 2nd use.

Just saying. The Holy Spirit knows what He’s doing… and actually, if you are upset with this fact, you probably do in fact need the first 2 uses more than the 3rd at the moment.

It’s all great stuff until you reach “But you know what this means?” The responder is quite right in pointing out that such complaints are ill-formed because the three uses belong to the Holy Spirit. I have been beating that same drum for four posts now. He is, however, quite wrong in using that fact to deny any legitimacy to the complaint. He is even more wrong to use that fact to insinuate that the complaint is only being raised because the complainer is a self-righteous Pharisee. And if anyone thinks I am being unfair because I’m reading too much into a short and informal blog post, read the long conversation spawned in the comments and judge for yourselves whether these concerns are in any way ameliorated (be sure to note the way in which the imperative parts of God’s Word are treated.)  Unsurprisingly, the doctrine is all spot-on; confessional Lutherans do that well. What is lacking is in the way in which portions of our doctrine reach (or fail to reach) our practice.

So once again, there is not really a doctrinal error at the heart of these rules & guidelines. When pressed, almost any Lutheran will acknowledge that a sermon does not have to be that way, that God does have expectations for the Christian, and that Sanctification can be taught properly. The problem is one of practice—that too many Lutherans have to be pressed to acknowledge these things. It is even worse when pressing without drawing friendly fire requires a level of theological precision that (judging from the quality of our typical Bible study materials) laypeople are never expected to possess in any other context.

So what then can we conclude? The mistake of theological pietism is ultimately the same as that of moral pietism: the attitude that God’s Word needs to be fixed to bring about the best results; that if we preach it as-is, people are going to end up with bad doctrine. Whether its discarding specifics in favor of original sin, eschewing imperatives as overrated, or re-engineering every lectionary reading into a 49% Law / 51% Gospel sermon, the attitude is that God’s word cannot be trusted to condemn all of us as hopelessly sinful and incapable of making ourselves righteous before God on its own—imperatives and all. No, these overrated parts that provide instructions that Christians can and should accomplish need to be removed, glossed over, or otherwise minimized—all in the name of preaching the Law to its fullest and the Gospel to its sweetest.

But we still need to go further. I am not spending so much time on this topic for kicks; I am doing so because a steady diet of theological pietism brings about some very negative consequences which I will discuss in Part 5: Saint / Sinner Nestorianism.

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Theological Pietism Part 3: Theological Pietism in the Pulpit

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Matt

As unfortunate and ridiculous as moralistic incidents like those recorded in Part 2 are, they remain only the shallow disapproval of men. The biggest dangers of theological pietism only become apparent when it makes its way into preaching and theological instruction. As I wrote last time, theological pietism seeks to engineer God’s word to produce the 2nd use of the law, but the three uses of the Law belong to the Holy Spirit. Preachers don’t get to choose whether He curbs our behavior, shows us our sin, and/or provides us with guidance when He tells us, for example, to be chaste. Trying to do so only results in a stilted and incomplete proclamation of God’s Word—regardless of whether the intended bent is theological or moral.  But what does this look like in practice?

Consider the subject of “Life Sunday,” a contemporary thematic choice for a church service that focuses on God’s proclamations against abortion and other violations of the 5th commandment that are the subject of popular political controversy. This event makes some Lutherans uncomfortable, and I read a blog post to this effect not too long ago. I write this with all respect due to the author, because his discomfort is not bad in itself. The church’s purpose is not political advocacy—even on a subject as serious as the ongoing murder of millions of innocent children—and pastors must always be wary about how they use their pulpits lest they displace Law & Gospel. Nevertheless, theological pietism is an error of practice, and I must take issue with the way in which this wariness is carried out:

Preachers this Sunday will have to deal with the temptation to preach against specific actual sins while not making sure that all hearers are cut to the quick rather than pinning medals on one another’s chests for being “pro-life”. By this I mean that this Sunday still needs to be about sin and grace, and yes there are specific “anti-life” sins that are out there, but the problem with specifics is that someone who has not done them will not feel guilt from it, but actually may begin building their ladder into heaven on their works. There should be always a good dose of Original Sin so that all may be laid low.

Let me be completely blunt here: Preachers are not capable of making sure that all hearers are cut to the quick. That is always and only the job of the Holy Spirit. In this objection, we see the seeds of what happens when preachers do try the impossible, and the casualty is the specifics of God’s instruction.

The reasoning, which I’ve seen in many places, is basically this: If you preach against abortion, that’s only going to trouble the consciences of those involved in abortion; only they will be driven to the Gospel. Worse yet, those who haven’t been involved in abortions may think to pat themselves on the back for being better than those who have. The same is true if you preach against premarital sex, gossip, or theft. If you tell someone not to sleep around, he might actually refrain from it and think himself a good person. Even if you put a few of these specifics together in one sermon, there are going to be some people who slip through the cracks. What then shall we do? Preach original sin. After all, original sin affects us all—we’re all guilty in Adam without exception. The conclusion is therefore that a good preacher doesn’t waste much time on specifics or imperatives, but focuses mainly on original sin so that everyone is covered.

There is, however, one catastrophic problem with this approach. Preaching original sin is not preaching the Law—it is preaching about the Law. To simply preach that we are by nature sinful and unclean is like skipping to the end of the book. You intellectually know what happens, but it is entirely abstract because you know nothing tangible about any of the characters or the significance of what has transpired. Likewise, when you tell someone that they have a sinful nature which they inherited from Adam, even if they believe you, it’s only an intellectual belief. Original sin becomes an abstract checkbox on some divine birth certificate. Futhermore, as soon as the Gospel part of the sermon is reached, it is brought to our recollection that the mark in the checkbox is already unchecked in baptism. So not only is original sin abstract, it was also irrelevant even before the sermon began.

There is only one reason that hearing about original sin can cut me to the quick: I see it rearing it’s ugly head in everything that I do. I do not sacrifice myself for my wife. I have not honored my parents. I find myself wishing evil on those who wrong me. I lust after other women. I’ve been lazy. I’ve been irritable. I’ve neglected my most basic responsibilities time and again. I’ve hurt those closest to me. What kind of preson am I? Well, I’m a person whose very nature is sinful and unclean! But it is only through the specifics that I understand that in any tangible way. If no one ever bothered to remind me that I’m supposed to honor my parents, or love my wife, or avoid impurity, or return good for good—if no one ever preached the Law to me—then original sin would mean nothing to me. Unless a person understands his specific guilt on some Sundays, he’ll never understand his sinful nature every Sunday.

Nevertheless, many Lutherans are handing out manmade recommendations to not spend much time on specifcs and to not bother with “overrated imperatives.” We are quick to teach that all have sinned and fallen short. We are quick to point out that we have not loved God with our whole heart nor loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are slow to point out what any of that actually means. In my adult life, I cannot remember having heard a sermon that specifically denounced things like divorce, gossip, or fornication. Consider the world around us for a moment compared to what God teaches in Scripture and reflect on these conspicuous absences.

Unfortunately, it seems we Lutherans do not actually trust what we confess. Specifics cannot cut everyone to the quick? Preaching against, say, theft does apply to all of us precisely because all of us have broken the 7th commandment! Unpacking it as Luther does in his Large Catechism makes this plain. The vast majority of the Large Catechism’s section on the 10 commandments is specifics, and yet I’ve come away from that far more cut than I have from any sermon I’ve heard in the last decade specifically because, by any reasonable measure, I overtly fail half of those specifics. This, in turn, leads me to realize that I probably covertly fail the rest even when I seem to succeed. And yet, it is precisely these convicting specifics that theological pietism warns against lest we fall victim to “Life Righteousness” or any other kind of works righteousness.

Once again, this advice is given out with the best of intentions, and agreement on sound doctrine is hiding just beneath the surface.  But we need to ask ourselves what a steady diet of this kind of reaction to moralism sounds like because “no specifics” is not the only man-made rule that has become ubiquitous in Confessional Lutheranism.  In Part 4, we will talk about the classic 49% Law, 51% Gospel sermon.

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Theological Pietism Part 2: What Is Theological Pietism?

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Matt

Part 1 of this series can be found here.

So what do I mean by “theological pietism?” Well, the adjective modifies the noun, so let’s begin with ‘pietism.’

To put it briefly, pietism was a practice that grew out of 17th century Lutheranism. Pietists sought to cultivate an inner godliness that flowed out into their works. While (all other things being equal) godliness is next to cleanliness and therefore worth pursuing, they ultimately focused on their own works so much that they all but forgot the Gospel. As Rod Rosenblat likes to put it, they put the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble. They turned from their responsibility to the whole counsel of God in order to focus on those parts which they thought they could engineer to produce piety and morality. Their preaching of the Law tried to focus on Third Use (teaching us to behave) to the exclusion of First and Second (curbing our outward sinfulness and showing us our utterly sinful nature) except inasmuch as those two uses taught us how to behave. As a result, they preached only a subset of God’s word and bolstered it with their own inventions. The standards by which faith and salvation were discerned thus became behavioral rubrics invented by the pietists rather than trust in the Cross. Assurance of salvation was undermined, and because different people invented different rubrics, churches began breaking down into self-righteous cliques of “real” Christians surrounded by “fake” Christians or “strong” Christians surrounded by “weak” Christians.

So what then is theological pietism? While traditional pietism has a moralistic bent, theological pietism has a doctrinal one. Theological pietists seek to cultivate a proper understanding of sound doctrine that flows out into our teachings. While this too is a worthwhile goal (indeed, moreso than mere moral improvement), they also turn away from their responsibility to the whole counsel of God in order to focus on those parts which they can engineer to produce a proper doctrinal understanding that excludes moralism and self-righteousness. To their credit, this precludes forgetting the Gospel the way pietists did.  However, it still bears a deep flaw:  While pietists tried to turn God’s Law into a machine that cranked out third use and only third use, theological pietists try to tune it towards second use and only second use. Though diametrically opposed in their motivations, pietism and theological pietism end up having the same effect on preaching: it only involves a subset of God’s Word, and is bolstered by human invention.

Ironically, theological pietism’s attempt to exclude self-righteous legalism results in the same kind of schismatic rubrics as its older cousin.  These unofficial “rules” are then used to determine just how Christian different people are based on their behavior–not on a scale of moral correctness but on one of theological correctness.  Now let me be clear: theological correctness is much closer to the mark of Christianity than moral correctness.  After all, though we are saved by faith in Christ rather than proper theology, a person’s theology does describe what exactly they have faith in. Likewise, determining a person’s beliefs by their actions as much as by their words is Biblical common sense.  However, neither of these two disclaimers negate the fact that such theological judgment can be and routinely is carried out very very badly–especially when it is based more on human rules than on the Word of God.

I wrote about one example of this back when Tim Tebow was getting a lot of press for his overt gestures of praise when he succeeded on the football field. I saw many Lutherans condemning the man, ostensibly for his alleged bad theology—a theology of glory in which God’s work is seen primarily in worldly success. Curiously enough, however, none of his theological statements were ever brought up. The only case made against him was based on his failure to abide by either 100% man-made rules (e.g., he should only be giving thanks for his small measure of God-given skill, not for actually using it and succeeding, which God cares nothing about) or by his failure to abide by rules that are (mostly) derived from Scripture but that condemn literally all Christians along with Mr. Tebow and therefore cannot be used to discern theological correctness (e.g., he should give just as much thanks for his failures as his successes).  Do we need a show of hands to determine how many of us have been just as overtly thankful when we’ve lost a job as when we’ve gained one?  Do we need to be reminded to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn rather than scold them for being inconsistently thankful?

I saw the same thing upon the death of Thomas Kinkade. Artistic merits aside, the painter was routinely denounced for producing artwork depicting a world without the Fall (supposedly another sure sign of a theology of glory.) And yet, this rule is likewise man-made. The Bible does, after all, speak of lions laying down with lambs and other such images of a world without sin—the world which all of us are instructed to look forward to.  And yet, Kinkade’s artistic focus on this kind of imagery was being used as an excuse for the worst kind of armchair psychoanalysis in which all his many personal problems were laid at the feet of strain brought on by acute self-righteousness.

I’ve even seen Lutherans denounce the practice of New Year’s resolutions because “they attempt to do by human power under the Law what can be done only by the Holy Spirit under the Gospel.” Now, this is absurd, for it is entirely possible for people to lose weight, read more books, or even give up vices like drunkenness apart from the Holy Spirit and the Gospel (unless every AA member now receives the indwelling of the Holy Spirit simply because they acknowledge a vague higher power). A New Year’s resolution may or may not be a help to such endeavors for every individual, but the point is that there is absolutely no adequate reason to assume that the purpose of a New Year’s resolution is making ourselves holy before God. A man who wants to be healthy, sober, or an avid reader because those things are good and uses a common ceremony representing a fresh start as a small aid in this endeavor is not automatically participating in works-righteousness.

As unfortunate and ridiculous as such incidents are, however, they remain only the shallow disapproval of men. The real dangers of theological pietism only become apparent when it makes its way into preaching and theology. The three uses of the Law, after all, belong to the Holy Spirit. Preachers don’t get to choose whether He curbs our behavior, shows us our sin, and/or provides us with guidance when He tells us, for example, to be chaste. Trying to do so only results in a stilted and incomplete proclamation of God’s Word—regardless of whether the intended bent is theological or moral.

Stay tuned for Part 3:  Theological Pietism in the Pulpit

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