Retired Pastor Ruminates

My friend and United Church of Christ colleague Herb Davis writes lectionary study notes weekly for the Confessing Christ Web site.  These are uniformly thoughtful and inspiring, and reflects Herb's life-long engagement with theology and church life.  Herb is also one of the best preachers I have ever heard.  Here are his reflections on the Gospel reading for Pentecost Sunday, John 14:8-17:

“It is fashionable to say,‘no one knows God’ or ‘there are many ways to God.’ Both statement may be true. Moses' request to see God was denied to protect him. God is wholly other, so in a sense God is not accessible to humans. These are not John's concern. He know that if you see Jesus,  you have have seen the Father. If you know Jesus you know the Father. The Father we see in Jesus is one who loves the world, who lays down his life for us, who is not ashamed of us but invites us to dwell with him forever. The Father we know is the judge we love. John is convinced that the God we know in Jesus Christ is to be proclaimed to all the world. The world needs to know and love the Father we see in Jesus.

Yet at the same time we are like Philip who is unsure, who have difficulty seeing the Father. The Jesus we meet is a scandal. There is no solid proof that this is the One. There is no absolute certainty that we have made the right choice. The Father we see in Jesus is not a noble, exalted man we seek but a Jew who dies on a cross.

Yet the Holy Spirit teases us, woes us, and sometimes convinces us that this crucified and risen one, this pushed aside one, this down-trodden, rejected, mocked one is truly The One, the face of the Father, the very heart of God. Miracle of miracles we believe!

So we celebrate the Pentecost, the miracle of miracles that a people still gather to praise Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Miracles of miracles is that there is still a people who keep watching and waiting for the new creation and get a glimpse or whiff of the Kingdom's presence. Miracle of miracles there is still a people who bear one another burdens. Miracle of miracles we see in our midst greater works than those of Peter and Paul and the Apostles. We know that what we ask in Jesus' name is done. Like Jesus the church is a scandal. There is no positive proof that we have received grace upon grace, love never ending. There is always the temptation to celebration Pentecost as an event in the past, to be nostalgic, to dress up in red and light flames of fire and remember the ancient Pentecost. John will not allow us to live in the past. The work of the Holy Spirit is a present work. The Mighty Acts of God are present in our midst. Greater works than these are alive in us who in spite of the darkness, Confess Christ as Lord of Lords, very God of Very God. We can't help ourselves! Jesus always a scandal is in our midst.”

I especially like the reminder that the work of the Holy Spirit is a present work.

1.  “Does justification by grace through faith (God's good news) call us to good works of justice?"

This question requires an affirmative answer but one with qualification, especially in light of the way both “justification” and “justice” are often understood today. The problem of a privatized understanding of justification and a secularized understanding of justice (identified below in question 2) are a modern development which cloud the intentions of the Reformers, who saw the hand of the sovereign God in all things in heaven and earth in ways we do not. Both Lutheran and Reformed articulations of the Pauline concept of justification by grace through faith carefully guarded the primacy and sovereignty of God as the actor in salvation. So, the Augsburg Confession, for instance, insists “we cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before God by our own merits, works, or satisfactions, but that we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God by grace, for Christ's sake, through faith, when we believe Christ suffered for us and that for his sake our sin is forgiven and righteousness and eternal life are given to us.” (Augsburg Confession, Article IV).

Likewise, the Westminster Confession (and Savoy Declaration) state: “Those whom God effectually calleth he also freely justifieth; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous: not for any thing 'wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness, by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.” (Westminster Confession, Chapter XI, I.) This is language which is confident in its assumption that the primal theological issue is salvation of sinful mortals before the holy God. That God was sovereign over nations and societies, as well as over persons, was also taken for granted. The Reformation Christian, Roman Catholic, as well as Protestant, was located in a Christian state, despite disagreement over the exact confessional nature of that state.
The “good works of justice” which flowed from justification were described in the Reformation Confessions under the category of sanctification as “good fruits” or “good works.” (Augsburg Confession, Article VI, “The New Obedience,” and Article XX, “Faith and Good Works”; Westminster Confession, Chapter XIII, “Of Sanctification” and Chapter XVI, “Of Good Works”) Here again, God's sovereignty as the actor of salvation is carefully protected. “Faith should produce good fruits and good works  . . . but we should do them for God's sake and not place our trust in them as if thereby to merit favor with God.” (Augsburg Confession, Article VI) “Their ability to do good works is not all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ.” (Westminster Confession, Chapter XVL)

To the Reformers the doctrine of justification needed no justification, as it seems to today, against the charge that it led to a privatized faith. Rather it protected God's sovereignty and initiative in the act of salvation and in the processes by which the salvation takes hold of people. That “good works and responsible service in the whole world” (Invitation to Action, p. 9, paragraph 6) were the fruits of justification was not questioned.

2. How does the atoning "work of Christ" inform out work?

The “lost chord” in modern mainline Christianity is atonement: the conviction from which the church was born and by which its life was fueled for centuries. Because of this loss the question of the proper relationship between justification and justice, between what God does and what we do, is the critical theological question for our time. In the modern period Christian faith has increasingly been understood as a religion of amelioration, rather than a religion of redemption. Thus understood, Christian faith is reduced to a series of ethical imperatives; guidelines for relationships of human being to human being, rather than of human beings to God.

Christians of an earlier time knew themselves the recipients of redemption by an act of a righteous God, so justice was, for them, the social righteousness demanded by the righteousness of God. For example, P. T. Forsyth (1848-1921) could write: “Righteousness is applied holiness,” and (quoting Wernle) “ ... it is in the doctrine of justification that Christian theology and Christian ethic meet.” (The Christian Ethic of War, pp. V and 165)

When justice is wrenched from justification the church loses its way and finds itself running errands for society, rather than confronting that society with the grace and judgment of the cross of Jesus Christ. Where the cross is seen as a sign or symbol, even of high principles, rather than as an atoning act of the Holy God, the church will understand its primary charge to make like sacrifices on behalf of others. Jesus is then seen more as model and exemplar rather than as savior. But classical Christianity, in a variety of formulations, asserted that only God can save, that God doesn't show something by the cross but does something on the cross. The cross is not an object lesson or demonstration, but a divine act of life which justifies sinful humanity before the holy God.

Certainly there can be disagreement on the theological articulation of the atonement, but can we question the fact of atonement itself and remain identifiably Christian? My "bridge-repair" suggestion is renewed attention to the Biblical conviction of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of humanity. The "work of Christ" might then have its ethical content restored, so often lost when we focus on the person of Christ using metaphysical categories. In theological terms this means Soteriology precedes and controls Christology.

3. How are Christ's obedience and ours related?

The “Joint Statement on Justification” from the Lutheran-Reformed Dialogue (Invitation to Action, p. 9, items 2, 5, 6) offers these summary statements: “This gospel is the good news that for us and for our salvation God's Son became human in Jesus the Christ, was crucified and raised from the dead. By his life, death and resurrection he took upon himself God's judgment on human sin and proved God's love for sinners, reconciling the entire world to God . . . This doctrine of justification continues to be a meassage of hope and of new life to persons alienated from our gracious God and from one another. Even though Christians who live by faith continue to sin, still in Christ our bondage to sin and death has been broken. By faith we already begin to participate in Christ's victory over evil, the Holy Spirit actively working to direct our lives . . . As a community of servants of God we are called and enabled to do works of mercy and to labor for justice and peace among individuals and nations.”

Emilio Castro's evocative book title “Sent Free” captures the dynamic relationship between justification and justice. We are not justified out of the world but for the world which God loves and for which Christ died. Of special importance today is a new understanding of humanity's relationship to the created order in the light of the atoning work of Christ, which brings about "a new creation.” The World Council of Churches now identifies “The Integrity of Creation” as a concern along with “Peace and Justice.” These emphases properly recognize that the gospel has implications not only for individuals but for nations and societies as well. There are cosmic implications to the work of Christ, and justification must not be understood in a social vacuum.

But neither can justice take the place of justification at the center of the gospel. The ethical fundamentalism of some Liberationists resembles nothing so much as Biblical and confessional fundamentalism in its resistance to critical questions. To view the issue of inclusive language, to take one example, solely as a justice issue, without regard for substantive theological issues, is to mistake the complex for the simple and to risk the church's teaching and witness. Another example where we have lost the proper relationship between justification and justice is this: Certain associations in the United Church of Christ are requiring candidates for ordination to document their commitment to justice issues. This is right-minded but wrong-headed. It puts the ethical cart before the theological horse. But a vacuum will be filled, and since the historic religion of redemption has given way to the religion of amelioration there is a certain logic to this new requirement. How uncouth it would seem today if a Church and Ministry Committee would inquire of a candidate, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins?” Would a negative answer be outweighed by a dramatic commitment to peace and justice? Whose peace? Whose justice? Will volunteer work for “Right to Life” be accepted or rejected? On what grounds? Since we are not saved because of works, neither should we be ordained because of them?

Our works of justice must be eschatological and symbolic. We still bear the burden of a Constantinian conception of Christendom, when a sectarian and missionary model of the church more closely approximates our situation in the modern world. One mission instrumentality executive confessed: “We cannot deal with every social issue, but we look constantly to determine how we can make a difference.” (S. Rooks) This recognizes the proximate nature of all our good works, and expresses a proper Christian humility. Justice understood apart from justification can easily become functional atheism, losing sight of God's primacy and sovereignty, which is what the doctrine of justification by grace through faith is meant to insure.

(I delivered this paper at the Seventh Craigville Theological Colloquy, Craigville, MA, July 16 - 20, 1990.)

(Photo:  R. L. Floyd, 2010)

My town sits on a particularly rich literary and intellectual “trade route.”  Most notably Moby Dick was penned here in the mid-nineteenth century (see my post Moby Dick as Theology.)  Moby Dick wasn’t the commercial success Melville had hoped for, but Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom it was dedicated, understood and appreciated it.

I have ruminated about why Hawthorne “got” Moby Dick, when most of the critics of the day saw merely a dark muddled fish story interrupted by frequent wordy digressions on whaling.

The answer I think, and this is hardly a new theory, lies in their common New England heritage and the ever-looming memory of the two centuries long Puritan experiment, by their time for all practical purposes over.  Hawthorne, of course, wrote the enduring iconic Puritan novel, The Scarlet Letter, which every American schoolchild must read.  That The Scarlet Letter is more about Hawthorne’s nineteenth-century neighbors than about his seventeenth-century Puritan forbears should not let us underestimate its importance in defining Puritanism in the popular imagination (any more than Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, another school favorite, should, although it too is less about the Puritans than it is about its own context, the social hysteria of 1950's McCarthyism.)

The third canonical school text on Puritanism is Jonathan Edwards’ notorious Enfield sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a brilliant but scary depiction of the fires of hell and the tenuousness of human life.  To those of us who have actually read other Edwards' sermons, the choice seems largely to have been made on the basis of dramatic impact, and not to get too paranoid, another piece of literary ammunition to discredit the Puritans.  At least “Sinners” is an actual Puritan text.

But even Edwards’ ritual enemies often admit he is a towering intellectual figure.  Recently I have been reading in and about him, and the first thing that struck me is that a mere 100 years separates Edwards Freedom of the Will (1754) from Moby Dick (1851), both written here in the Berkshire Hills but in different intellectual worlds.

Much changed here in that hundred years.  For one thing, when Edwards lived, Pittsfield didn’t exist as a city, but was part of the much conflicted frontier, the “howling wilderness” as Edwards was to describe nearby Stockbridge, to which he came in 1750.  I like that the local community college has a “Jonathan Edwards Library,” but Edwards died in 1758 and Pittsfield wasn’t founded until 1764.  But it is the Berkshire Community College so the title is apt.  I once delivered a community forum lecture on Puritanism there and, while the students were attentive and eager to engage, their knowledge of Puritanism in general and Edwards in particular was spare, and largely formed by the aforementioned canonical school texts.

Pittsfield was named after the British Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder, who so influenced the future of North America by his efficient administration of the Seven Years’ War.  The first minister of Pittsfield’s First Church of Christ was Parson Thomas Allen, Harvard trained but influenced by the New Divinity of the Edwardsian disciples that developed Edward’s themes after his death.  (I was the eighteenth minister of that church.)  By Melville’s time in the mid-19th century my eighth predecessor John Todd (1800 -1869) was the incumbent, but there is no record of Todd and Melville crossing paths that I have found.  Todd thought of himself as being in the Puritan succession, but the grand granite meeting house he built in the Gothic revival style points more to the prosperous 19th century Congregationalism of the beginning of the Gilded Age than to the Puritans.

All thoughtful New Englanders in these times had to engage the legacy of the Puritans.  Edwards himself in the mid-eighteenth century was dealing with a changing world far removed from the world of the 17th century founders.  It was his genius to cast the theological preoccupations of that world into the new thought-forms of the Enlightenment.  He wasn’t the only bright young man in his time to read Locke and Newton and have his eyes opened, but he seems to be the only one who didn’t turn away from the old verities, rather he used the new learning as tools to express the old truths.

But by the mid 19th century it was more the novelists than the theologians who were grappling mightily with the themes of the founders.  So Melville’s fish story plumbs such deeps as election, predestination, and theodicy.  Where Edwards found human freedom in the affections, Melville finds the demonic in human obsession.  Hawthorne’s village soap opera explores old themes as well: covenant and community, morality and hypocrisy.

That is why Hawthorne “got” Melville.  He understood what Melville was trying to do, because he was trying to do it as well: make sense of this rich and ambiguous religious and intellectual legacy that had so shaped the American mind and soul for better and for worse.

That Puritanism, real and imagined, continues to be a template for American ideas, even in our own time, is as true as a quick look at the rhetoric of American Exceptionalism proffered by the W. Bush era neoconservatives as a defense of the Iraq war demonstrates.

Which is to say that the ghosts of the founders’ faith linger.  Perhaps a more nuanced reading of their actual beliefs and positions would result in a more nuanced approach to the issues they raised.