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The Reign of Wickedness and Unbelief
From Bossuet’s Elevations on the Mysteries:
O God! unbelief reigns on the earth. We are no longer wicked out of weakness; it is by design; we are by principle, by our sayings. Send us some John the Baptist who confounds error, who shows that unbelievers are senseless. Bring them back to real prudence, these unbelievers and professional libertines. Real prudence is not to believe yourself, and to practice what the Sage says: Do not trust your prudence. But, Lord, confound also the recklessness of those who say that they believe, even though they do nothing of their belief. Therefore bring back unbelievers of all kinds to the prudence of the righteous.
More so now than in Bossuet’s day, although the clouds were certainly gathering…
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About Those Altar Calls…
Matt Broomfield’s sad piece about British Charismatic preacher Mike Pilavachi has many issues which need to be unpacked. I won’t get to them all, but let’s start with this: Anglicans don’t need to be smug about this for the following reasons:
- Pilavachi is in fact an Anglican minister; Broomfield notes this and addresses him as the “Rev. Canon.” When the Charismatic Renewal hit more than fifty years ago, many classical Pentecostals had serious reservations about these inhabitants of “nominal” churches. Some were doctrinal, but many were cultural (different socio-economic levels and secular cultures) and some were based on the fact that the Charismatics has received the gifts without going through the legalism that Pentecostals considered de rigeur. In this case Pilavachi and many like him had ignored the pastoral lessons classical Pentecostals had learned in the previous half century. Additionally, had the Church of England enforced the “three strikes and you’re out” approach to worshipping according to the BCP, they could have put a stop to Pilavachi’s activities early.
- Pilavachi isn’t unique in his being drawn to kinky sex practices; the Anglican Evangelicals have had their woes with John Smyth, Jonathan Fletcher and the Iwerne Camp fiasco. What is wrong with these people?
I’d like to spend most of this post on one topic which Broomfield spends a lot of time on: the altar call. I think I can claim some special consideration because I actually wrote the book on this subject (for the Church of God, at least.) The altar call as it is currently practiced has its origins in the early nineteenth century with people like Charles Finney. It’s interesting to see how Broomfield equates this with Paul’s “Road to Damascus experience” because, for many, the altar’s only purpose is salvation, or another major spiritual experience. For many churches this is it, as they (explicitly or implicitly) believe in unconditional perseverance, irrespective of whether they accept the rest of TULIP or not. Most notorious of these are the Southern Baptists; Billy Graham was one of them, his altar calls were centered on salvation. But that was his ministry.
In Pentecostal churches altar calls are a much more varied business. In addition to “saved/sanctified/baptised in the Holy Ghost” we pray for healing, finance matters, and many other life issues. To do that effectively requires altar workers who have some training and Scriptural knowledge they can share, and the purpose of Ministering at the Altar was to train (mostly lay) people in how to do that. That in turn implies that trips to the altar can be multiple, and that is certainly the case. An altar experience can be a major experience or an incremental one. I’m not sure if the mistake of thnking otherwise is Pilavachi’s or Broomfield’s, but it’s definitely a serious one.
As far as Broomfield’s loss of faith through all of this, all I can say is this: I worked for our denomination for 13 1/2 years, saw and experienced many things, some good, some bad. Losing my faith? Forget about it, what I have from God came from God, not from one of these preachers. That simple fact helped me to avoid turning my experience during the Catholic Charismatic Renewal into a covenant disaster and many other life rescues.
Today I get to remind my church of where it came from and hope to continue that influence in the Advent Series I’m working on. There is life in God beyond people like Mike Pilavachi, you just have to be willing to find it.
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Objective Reality is Rather Important
I haven’t engaged Bobby Grow in a long time (for good reason) but he, in his encapsulation of Karl Barth, Thomas Torrence, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham et.al., makes the following statement:
At a purely superficial level, does the reader see how what Barth and Torrance are doing sound a lot like the characteristics present in the thought of both Scotus and Ockham, respectively? Do you see how theologians like Barth and Torrance might be read as modern-day adherents of what also became known as Nominalism (i.e., what we see, loosely, in the thought-life of both Scotus and Ockham, respectively)? Indeed, some would attempt to argue that Immanuel Kant himself, and the dualism he proposed, was very much so akin to the nominalism developed by someone like Ockham. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of all of that, let it simply be noted that while someone like Barth was indeed conditioned by the impact of Kant on the modern Germanic ideational landscape, what Barth was doing, by way of the analogy of the incarnation (and thus faith), was to flip any sort of Kantian or Nominalistic dualism on its head by bringing the heavenlies into the earthlies as that obtained and concretized in the incarnate Son of God, the Man from Nazareth, the Theanthropos, Jesus Christ.
What he and many others overlook is the fact that large swaths of Christian thought–and this is especially true the closer we get to our own day–don’t make a particularly good case that a) they are objectively real or b) have a meaningful relationship to the creation in general. It was this lacuna (among other things) that drove me out of the Episcopal Church and to Roman Catholicism and Thomism. The fact that the latter church couldn’t bring itself to have a pastoral system to match its theology was something I could not anticipate going in. I don’t see how anyone with scientific training can avoid this issue. For someone who came out of a very secularised background, it was likewise unavoidable.
But such it is…I also think it’s a pity that he’s decided to pass up a PhD for another Master’s degree. There’s probably a dissertation in his blog (assuming he could find an institution and academics to go along with his idea) and his erudition and ability to handle the jargon would certainly keep him in good stead. But it is his decision…although I should point out that he is from Oregon…
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Disregarding the False Dichotomy of Calvinism and Arminianism [Commentary on Browne: Article XVII]
In keeping with his earlier treatment of Article X and Article XVI, Browne holds that Article XVII is neither Calvinist nor Arminian, although, as mentioned previously, he suggests the Article allows for both positions: “It seems worthy of consideration, whether the Article was not designedly drawn up in guarded and general terms, on purpose to…
Disregarding the False Dichotomy of Calvinism and Arminianism [Commentary on Browne: Article XVII]Much of what is here buttresses my points–especially on the Book of Common Prayer–in my post Kicking Final/Unconditional Perseverance Out of Anglicanism. One thing he does bring up is the business of “ecclesiastical election.” This may seem to be a clumsy piece of theology, but the role of the church was an integral part in Augustine’s view of predestination (along with about everything else.) That becomes evident when you look at a true Augustinian such as Bossuet. Calvin eliminated the role of the church, which gives his theology the raw, fatalistic feel that it has.
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Those Dreadful Evangelicals: My Response to “Methodists At 180 Feet Below: A Short Reflection On Showmanship”
Tyler Hummel’s piece in the North American Anglican is one of those things that surfaces from time to time in the Anglican/Episcopal World. It has the feel of the Palm Beach Old Guard’s worst nightmare: the dread of tasteless nouveaux riches making a statement and getting away with it. As someone who started out in the Old Guard’s premier parish and ventured through Roman Catholicism to end up in one of Classical Pentecost’s premier churches, I think I can speak to some of the issues he brings up.
Let’s start by reviewing the classical Main Line critique of evangelicals, something I have discussed in the past. It goes like this:
- They’re Bible thumpers, ready to pounce with their memorised verses and pushy evangelism.
- They’re impecunious money-grubbers, always pushing for a big offering so their ministers can go off and do God-knows-what.
- They’re judgmental and moralistic, always trying to push their morality on you when in fact they can’t keep it themselves.
- The ones that do get a couple of nickels to rub together are tasteless nouveaux riches (see above.)
- Their hymnody (such as it is) is dreadful and belongs more in a honky tonk or the Grand Old Opry than a church.
- They are totally lacking in discipleship of any kind.
- They don’t drink.
Needless to say Evangelicals had some retaliatory opinions of their own:
- Their people are unsaved, having never experienced being born again or anything subsequent to that (what’s subsequent depends upon the Evangelical.) They have no idea when they were saved or if they are.
- Their Sunday “worship” is a social event rather than a time to really “have church” and seek God. Their religion is not heartfelt. Beyond all that it is boring.
- They never share their faith or lead anyone to Jesus Christ as their personal saviour.
- They’re ignorant of the Bible, they never read it.
- They drink. A lot.
I think any objective observer will note that, with these stereotypes, there is an element of truth on both sides. The sad part is that, instead of learning from each other, both sides are content to use them as weapons rather than to educate themselves about the “other.” The complexities of the last fifty years have muddied the waters for many but unfortunately these divisions persist.
Which leads us to the matter of the Methodists.
Mark Tooley is right in asserting that Methodism is the quintessential American form of Christianity. One evidence of that is the diversity (until now) of Methodist churches. IMHO no other Protestant church has a greater spread of church “types” and socio-economic groups than the Methodists, although that is now falling victim to our social media/either-or culture. People in the Anglican/Episcopal world who would stick their nose up at the Methodists’ current plight would do well to remember their own recent history, and consider that Methodism is simply twenty years behind in the same struggle with which the Anglican/Episcopal world has been consumed. And that lag, I might add, is with a longer history of WO. Hummel’s characterisation that “…it is a church riddled with schism and political controversy at the moment” is certainly not unique to Methodism.
Hummel, however, make another curious statement, namely that this schism is “…likely due in part to the fact that its theology and authority as a tradition were not rooted in tradition or strict hermeneutics but grew as an appendage of the Church of England.” He really doesn’t elaborate on the meaning of this statement, but to be honest it has the feel of a dog whistle for Calvinism. The fact that Calvinists believe their idea is the sine qua non of Christian theology is well known and I discussed it in relation to Anglican theology recently in Kicking Final/Unconditional Perseverance Out of Anglicanism. Anglican theology is sui generis and needs to be treated that way, not only for itself but its direct progeny of Methodism and indirect such as Wesleyan Holiness and Modern Pentecost. I discuss this relationship in my post Liturgy, Pentecost, Wesley and the Book of Common Prayer, Part I: What is a Liturgy? (It’s worth noting that George Whitfield was a Calvinist and that led to strained relations with Wesley.)
His lengthy discussion of Southern religion brings me to a favourite topic of this site, namely the Scots-Irish. He emphasises the “showmanship” nature of Southern Christianity, but I think the evangelisation of the South was a task that was amazing in that it was done at all. As I noted in What Working for the Church of God Taught Me About Race:
Now I’ve spent a great deal of time on this blog on the subject of the Scots-Irish, with controversy following. The point I want to make on that subject here is that, as my Russian friends would say, the Scots-Irish are a very “specific” people, with some very unique cultural qualities that have moulded the life of the church. Don’t drink alcohol? Best way to deal with serious binge drinking. “Clothesline” religion? A counter to provocative dressing from Colonial times to the days of Andy Capp. Like preachers to holler? The custom from the “old country”. Bringing the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ to a people for whom “moderation” was a dirty word was tough, but it was done, and you really have to admire the people who did it.
Ever since the days of William Laud and Jenny Geddes the Anglicans’ inability to effectively reach many of the peoples of the British Isles outside of its English core should be instructive, but sad to say it is not.
There are many things about Southern Evangelicalism that are subject to improvement. But the unravelling of the system that so many worked so hard to achieve isn’t a pleasant business. Much of the political restlessness we see–and that includes Donald Trump–is a result of the secularisation of the culture, not making it more Christian or religious. After years of whining about the Religious Right, we need to start paying attention to the non-Religious Right, which is in the ascendant.
I could go on about other lacunae in Hummel’s piece, especially the lack of mention of the class-stratified nature of American Christianity in general and Southern Christianity in particular. But, as Origen would say, this blog post having reached a sufficient length, we will bring it to a close.
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 