Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Something to Use, Something to Risk

Douglas Wilson

October 27, 2014

Blog and Mablog

I have written critically in the past about James Davison Hunter’s approach to not really changing the world. In the last analysis, his tag phrase “faithful presence” ought to be a means to victory, not a goal in itself. If we make it a goal, it is as though the coach settles for getting his team to just show up for the games, and the end result of that approach is what theologians used to call a “losing season.”

But my purpose here is not to dig through those old bones. One of the points that Hunter made very well, and which I appreciated very much, concerned the role of elite institutions in accomplishing whatever transformation might occur. Quite properly he leans against the idea that reformation is necessarily a grass roots “proletariat” sort of thing.

I actually think that the necessity of this kind of grass roots reformation is a bit of propaganda from the other team that we have bought into, and which has been greatly debilitating. In Rodney Stark’s book, The Rise of Christianity, he has a powerful chapter that demonstrates the explosive growth of Christianity was actually centered in the middle and upper classes of Roman society. The idea that Christianity grew so rapidly because it appealed to the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, the outcasts, and so on, was an idea that was floated early on by Friedrich Engels, and yes, that one, the Communist Manifesto guy.

The problem is that the data just doesn’t back that idea up. Christianity was an urban movement, and it was dominated by the educated and literate. Paganus was a word that referred to country bumpkins, and became associated with attachment to the old ways — hence, pagan. The preaching of the gospel attracted not a few prominent women (Acts 17:4). Members of Caesar’s household believed (Phil 4:22). Erastus, an important city official at Corinth, was a believer (Rom. 16:23). Lydia and Philemon were good examples of wealthy householders who were attracted to the gospel. One of the leaders of the church in Antioch had graduated from Eton with Herod (Acts 13:1). Stark shows how 1 Cor. 1:26-28 has been over-interpreted, and besides, Paul there says “not many,” not “not any.”

The same kind of phenomenon occurred in the Reformation. As C.S. Lewis put it, “The fierce young don, the learned lady, the courtier with intellectual leanings, were likely to be Calvinists” (Eng. Lit. in the Sixteenth Century, p. 43).

But this brings us to the rub. Why does the idea that only the dispossessed would risk everything for Christ seem so compelling to us? Well, we think it is easy for them because they have nothing to lose. But while it is true they have no influence to lose, they also have none to use.

This is why, for well-placed Christians, there is resistance to overcome. We know for a fact that the world is sticky, like pine sap, and we do get attached to it. When we are attached to something valuable, we could use it, but only by risking it. Thus the well-connected are in a position actually to do something, but they are also a group of people who really do have something to lose. But once that resistance is overcome, and many of the well-connected believers start to push their chips to the middle of the table, reformation begins.

This is another way of saying that the work of reformation requires leadership, but there is no such thing as Christian leadership without sacrifice and risk.

What a Lovely World

When Evil Unmasks

One of the most strange, yet wonderful works of God occurs when He brings a culture to epistemological self-consciousness.  Cultures and civilisations develop to the stage where evil is unmasked and their latent demonic inspiration becomes overtly displayed.

Christians, through their knowledge of the Scriptures and the Christian faith, often see these things well in advance.  They know there is a logic in Unbelief.  They know that all Unbelieving cultures have a lust for power.  They know that tyranny lurks just below the surface of all Unbelieving political and social systems.

For a time, a culture can coast along on gratuitous assumptions about being grounded in “common sense” or the “wisdom of the Founding Fathers” or “right reason”.  Concepts like justice, rights, morality, the rule of law, and freedom are believed to be self-evident, forever beyond dispute, except to fools and horses.  “Common law” or the “Anglo-Saxon legal tradition” or “Western civilisation” seem like unassailable bulwarks against the void.  Yet these remain nothing more than empty notions without foundation or any grounding in ultimate principles.  Cultures not grounded in the law of God, the Creator of all things, are built upon shifting sand.  When peoples appeal to cultural or historical traditions for what they regard as self-evident it is a sure sign they are not epistemologically self-conscious.  They are sleep-walking.

One of the clearest portents of growing epistemological self-awareness occurs when blatant evil begins to be trumpeted as good.
  When the ancient Jewish people executed the Son of God for the good of the nation, it was clear it was all over.  When Rome celebrated the glories of wild beasts tearing people apart in the arenas as a wondrous entertainment and a signal demonstration of the power and glory of the Imperium, it was clear the end was nigh.  Ordinary Romans became disgusted at themselves and their culture and what it had become.  Evil had shown its hand.  Satan was unmasking himself. At such times, more and more Unbelievers become epistemologically self-conscious and they find their own beliefs disgusting.  They finally comprehend where their Unbelief has led. 

We seem to be entering this stage in the West.  Here is an example of what we speaking about: the UN has been ramping up their promotion of abortion.  To do this, it has commenced arguing that those who oppose abortion are actually torturing children, abusing children, and so forth.  It is calling evil, good and good, evil.

According to some United Nations experts, opposing abortion would be a kind of torture, it would also be a violation of children’s rights. . . . Those accusations against the moral opposition to abortion is the last move of a long term strategy to impose on States, through International law and agencies, a “human right to abortion”, and making opposition to abortion a crime. The abortion lobbies are currently very active as they want access to abortion to be included in the “post-2015 development agenda”, under the pretext of improving maternal health worldwide. This post-2015 agenda, under negotiation at the UN, will determine the priority development goals for decades to come. It will be supported by billions of dollars, and governments will have to implement it. Therefore, the issue at stake is huge. [Emphasis, ours]

. . . . The ultimate goal of the abortion strategy is to win on the field of values: making pro-life immoral and pro-abortion moral, and to silence pro-life advocacy. This would be a complete inversion of values: indeed, in reality, abortion is torture and causes maternal mortality. Abortion, whether legal or not, not only kills a human being but also carries serious physical and psychological health risks and contributes to maternal mortality.

To recap: the one who kills the unborn child is a righteous man.  The critic of such acts is cast as the murderer, the criminal, the immoral degenerate. 

The more evil casts itself as morally good, the more it is unmasked.  Ordinary, epistemologically un-self-conscious  people become deeply disturbed, finding such monstrosities repellent.  The more evil unmasks, the more “ordinary” people long to return to their Creator, and seek for the Father of Lights, the Giver of every perfect and good gift. 

When Satan unmasks himself it is not a pretty sight.  Reformations and revivals begin at such times. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Dear XYZ

Posted on Monday, December 2, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

An open letter to black Reformed rappers, in light of the recent dust-up.

Dear XYZ,

I hope you don’t mind receiving a letter like this, coming, as it does, out of the left field bleachers. To begin with a confession of the perfectly obvious, I am not naturally part of that demographic that buys, listens to, or is otherwise conversant in, the work you do. You might say it is not my cup of T. At the same time, I do follow cultural trends widely, and sometimes deeply, and have been aware of your active presence in the Reformed world for some years now. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.

So I want to ask you to think of this letter as the work of an appreciative and affectionate and somewhat distant Dutch uncle . . . although I am not Dutch. I believe you have been called to a very important task, and I want to urge you to honor God in that work. The reason for this letter is that I believe that the importance of your labor is such that it is going to generate a great deal of trouble for you, and I believe that I do know something about handling that, whether we are talking about causes or consequences.

As I observe the work you do, I wanted you to know that there are three things that I am very thankful for, and which I would urge you to guard and protect. There are also four things to be wary of, four traps, four snares.

Let me begin with the positive.

First, your mere existence is more than a little surprising. What are you even doing here? The Reformed presence among black rappers does not appear to be comparable to the Reformed presence among black Christians generally. Black Reformed rappers are a splinter of a splinter of a splinter. At the same time, your influence is strikingly disproportionate to your actual numbers. What is that about? The reason this is notable is that it is a hallmark of how God loves to work. He loves the unexpected twist, especially when it messes up the hair of the pious. From Nazareth? Really?

After the Puritan high water mark in 17th century England, the zeal began to ebb. Some of it was because the most devout were emigrating, and some was because of the natural forces of ossification that always tends to set in with every movement. By the middle of the 18th century, the non-conformists, descendents of the Puritans, were fully orthodox and dozing peacefully. And so God sent an Anglican priest named George Whitefield, an Anglican for pity’s sake, in order to preach England and New England back to life again, and over the course of a few decades he preached himself to death in the doing of it.

To reapply the words of the prophet, we must not despise the day of odd beginnings. To my mind, this oddity is very much alive in your surprising presence. That does not determine what this necessarily has to be, but it is enough to make me want to watch closely. I have written before about black swan revival, and believe it would be marvelous if black men were a significant part of the coming black swan.

Second, your art is unabashedly logocentric, and comes at a time when a lot of our fifty pound heads are stroking their postmodern chins and wondering what the big deal is with words anyhow, and are now thinking to make their scholarly pursuits a lot more like the work of my grandsons, which is to say, legocentric. But Christians are people who worship the Word, which means that we must, of necessity, have a high view of words. And here you come, with dense, hand-packed, cream-laden theology, and all presented in words that high school students want to memorize. Because Jesus is Lord, words have power. Poetry has power. Poetic words have authority. This is your only authority, and you must never let it go. Without the rhythm of the Word, you have nothing to offer us — but with it, everything.

Third, over the course of centuries we have let the masculinity of poetry slip away from us. We still have poetry, some of it great, but we don’t have popular poetry that appeals to men. You are calling men to take responsibility as husbands and fathers, you are calling them back to true masculinity. You are doing this in a time when our nation is undergoing a father famine, and this crisis is particularly acute in the black community. Many of you have been yourselves shaped by the weight of fatherlessness, and have spoken eloquently about it. Continue to do so — when God breaks into the downward spiral of generations, someone has to be the first real fathers. You be that, and speak about it. Call men to it. Call men to find one woman, and call them to faithfulness to her, and to covenant faithfulness to all the children she gives them.

At the same time, there can be no opportunity like this — a glorious opportunity — without a thousand and one possible ways to screw it all up.

So first, beware of lame defenses for your art. We live in a time of aesthetic relativism, and so this means that when someone sniffs contemptuously at what you are doing, you must resist the temptation to hide behind a “who’s to say what good art is?” It is cheap and easy, and our relativistic age will applaud if you do. But it is the defense of a poser. Develop a true aesthetic, grounded in Scripture, and in the way God made the world.

You shouldn’t want any defense of your art that would work equally well with the lamest attempt at art known to man. If you adopt the relativistic apologetic for what you are doing, thinking Christians will have every right to write you off. Do not hide behind “preferences,” to each man his own. In the recent imbroglio resulting from that panel discussion, I saw more than a few of your defenders offering the rousing defense of “beetles fancy other beetles.” Aesthetic relativism is a true death rattle in our culture’s throat, and if you accept this cheap and chintzy defense, Morecraft’s point will be proven right.

Second, when the devil can’t get you to fail, he will switch directions and will get you to succeed. Unfortunately, that usually works very well. Beware of money. Beware of mammon. Beware of the world’s blandishments. Beware of everything that goes with it. Many men have suddenly come to the place where they realized that they could now, at last, buy the world. But when they were all done, and they read over the papers they had signed again, they found out that the world had actually bought them. If God prospers you, and you start to “make it,” you may rest assured that there will be a long series of choices that open up before you, and a good half of them or more will represent death. You should therefore strive for success in the full knowledge that when you get there, you will be in the gravest peril of your life.

Third, the Bible says nothing negative about putting powerful words in a rhythmic framework, and delivering that word to the people who will listen. Whatever you do, do it heartily, with all you have and are. But there is a danger on the flip side of the masculinity you are seeking to recover. Beware of cheap counterfeits of masculinity, for which we have a lot of words — swagger, bravado, machismo, swank, bluster, and male peacock bling. Those rappers who do not fear God have successfully made this kind of thing a virtual hallmark of rap. About this kind of attitude, the Scriptures say a great deal, and you must have nothing to do with it. The idea that true authenticity is found in a raw, untutored, and slovenly slouching is actually a white boy schtick, invented and refined by seventeenth century opium addicts. Your rejection of this kind of thing must be one of the most obvious things about you.

And last, when it comes to the racial component of this — and there is a racial component to this — do not be children. You live in a world where true accomplishment by a black man is extraordinarily difficult. Some of the difficulty arises because of internal cultural factors like missing fathers, lousy schools, and an entitlement mentality, but much of it also comes from the attitudes of the outer society you simultaneously live in and are excluded from. Liberals exclude you from that society by giving you freebies and calling it accomplishment, and want you to receive your participant ribbon like it was the Medal of Freedom or something.

And bigots exclude you by means of open hostility and contempt, patronizing tolerance, or some exasperating combination of those. Sometimes it is open, and sometimes coded, but it is frequently there. The situation is complicated by the race hucksters who play the race card every chance they get, and you don’t want to be associated with them. Racism can be coded, but these guys can find the deep codes of racism on the Arby’s reader board.

So I grant that when it comes to true accomplishment, you live in a time when you will have to work twice as hard to get the same results as someone else without your challenges. But given that, what will happen — in terms of true accomplishment — if you only work half as hard? If God blesses what you do, then no collection of men will be able to get in the way of it.

You and God will outnumber them all.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Just Like Tomorrow Morning Is

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

 Douglas Wilson

With the Supreme Court doing its part today to advance the homosexual agenda, while trying not to provoke a major backlash, as happened with Roe v. Wade, I thought a little encouragement for the saints might be in order.

All this reminds us again that there is no political solution to what ails us. We are a nation with the staggers, and our prophets and judges all have paper bags over their heads. There is such a thing as political and legislative faithfulness, but there is no such thing as political and legislative salvation. God brings us to the end of our puny little abilities so that we may trust, not in ourselves, but in Him, the God who raises the dead.
So we remind one another — as we ought to — that there is no political solution. There will be political consequences when the solution arrives, but there is no political solution. This is true as far as it goes, but there might be an assumption buried in there that is not so true.

As the old joke has it: “Well, I guess we have to pray about it.” “Oh, has it come to that?”

Realizing that there is no political solution, and that only Jesus can save us from this, is quite true . . . but might be just a couple steps away from unbelief. It is like being in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs, and your weakest batter has two strikes on him and no balls, and he hurt both his wrists getting the bag of sunflower seeds open. Only God can pull this out now is often an introduction to the thought and He’s not going to.

But that is not where we are at all. The salvation that Jesus is bringing to us is not a possible salvation, or a probable one, or a likely salvation. It is an inexorable and necessary salvation. Reformation, revival, salvation, forgiveness, and a spirit of deep repentance is coming at America just like tomorrow morning is.
Because our only salvation is found in resurrection from the dead, and because resurrection from the dead is an inexorable fact of life now — ever since Jesus rose on the third day, He set resurrection power completely loose in the world — the deliverance we long for is a certainty.

In other words, it is not “there is no salvation except in the off chance . . .” Rather, it is “there is no salvation in any other name except the one that has been given to you forever.” That one name is the name of Jesus. Luther doesn’t say, but I suspect that name is the one little word in his hymn that fells the pandemonic captain, and it is the name that remains, no thanks to the jurisprudential scurrying of the black-robed strokers of chins.

If our way out were political, we can be (and have been) thwarted, out-spent, out-maneuvered, lied to, and betrayed. But if our way out is Jesus, not only do we have a sure and certain hope, but our adversaries have no hope at all.

And so what do we have to do? We simply have to stand still and watch (Ex. 14:13).

Perspective

Why the Church Needs Cranky, Cynical Historians

Justin Taylor
June 27, 2013

From an older piece by Carl Trueman:

Some years ago, Phyllis Tickle likened Brian McLaren to Luther and the Emergent Church to the kind of paradigm shift that happens only once a millennium. The amazing thing was not that she said this; in a world shaped by the continual escalation of sales rhetoric, this kind of language is to be expected in advertising. No. What was truly amazing was that people actually took her seriously, friend and foe alike. Such people are in urgent need of help to stop them saying or believing things that are very, very silly and absurdly self-important.

Enter the church historians. Any intellectual historian of any merit will tell you that the last 1,000 years in the West have only produced two moments of paradigm shifting significance, and neither of them was the Reformation.

The first was the impact of the translation into Latin of Aristotle’s metaphysical works. This demanded a response from the thirteenth century church. The response, most brilliantly represented by Thomas Aquinas, revolutionized education, transformed the philosophical landscape, opened up fruitful new avenues for theological synthesis, and set the basic shape of university education until the early eighteenth century. Within this intellectual context, the Reformation was to represent a critical development of Augustinian anti-Pelagianism in terms of the understanding of the church and of salvation, but it did not represent quite the foundational paradigm shift that is often assumed.

The second major moment was the Enlightenment. Like the earlier Aristotelian renaissance, this was a diverse movement and the singular term is something of a scholarly construct; but the various philosophical strands covered by the terms served to remake university education and to demand new and fresh responses from the church in a way that the Reformation had never done.

In this light, to hear that the work of some trendy representative of the angst, insecurities and obsessions of middle America somehow represents the kind of paradigm shift that comes along once in a millennium in self-evidently laughable. He may have an enviable gift for writing popular books and speaking (the musical talent is, I fear, more questionable) but he is not bringing about a comprehensive revision of the whole of theology, establishing a comprehensive framework for understanding the world, or reshaping the very foundations of knowledge as either the church or the wider world understands it. Further (and here is the real historical rub) even if he were doing so, it would be a hundred years or so before anybody would really be able to make that judgment with any confidence. . . .

And that is why church historians play such an important role and our cynicism is such a boon. Church history keeps things in perspective. Through reading the texts and studying the actions and events of the past we can truly say that we have seen it all before. Thus, whatever it is that the latest guru is suggesting, it definitely will not work as well as expected, probably will not work at all, and anyway it will be a hundred years or more before we can say whether it made a real difference or not.

Thus, the next time someone comes along and tells me that a movie by Mel Gibson is the most significant contribution to church culture since the Apostle John laid down his stylus and parchment, my eyes can glaze over in confident knowledge that what I have just been told is complete drivel. When I am informed that a book by the Rev. Tommy Tweedlethumb is the most important piece of Christian literature since Augustine’s Confessions, I can politely stifle a yawn behind my hand and go back to reading the newspaper, for I know full well that in a hundred years time Tommy’s complete works will be as long-forgotten as genre-shattering pop bands such as ‘Men Without Hats.’

The old saying has it that the cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Whether or not that is entirely accurate, it is certainly true to say that cynicism is one of the historian’s great gifts to the church. To put it bluntly, cynicism serves to keep things, especially us, in proper perspective. After all, most of what goes on today in the name of earth-shattering paradigm shifts has no value, whatever the price tag.

You can read the whole thing here.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Jabba the Hutt With a Thyroid Condition

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Douglas Wilson

Chesterton observed — and why wouldn’t he? — that we drastically misunderstand the nature of our sin and rebellion. We like to flatter ourselves in our discontent, saying that the spirit of rebellion rises up within us because of all the things that are wrong. But the reality is the other way — things go wrong because rebellion has risen up within us.

Satan did not revolt against God because of the grim conditions of Hell. Hell is the result of him revolting against the delightful conditions of Heaven. Adam did not rebel against God because he was tired of living in a slum. No, his children live in slums because he grew tired of living in Paradise. Thus far Chesterton.

Now that history is mixed — good and evil mingled together — we have multiple opportunities to make our confusion on this point more plausible. There are evils present, and so we may readily point at them, but our revolt is actually against the good things that are present. That’s our story, and we continue on our way, sinners in search of plausible deniability.

This is the fundamental difference between radicals and reformers.
Both recognize that good and evil exist, but the radical wants to blame the good as the root source of all evil. The reformer wants to fight evil, and so he does. The radical resents what is truly evil, but what he fights is the good. The reformer doesn’t resent evil — he is no sentimentalist — but he does hate it. St. George fights the dragon, and does so with a good will.
The radical blames sex; the reformer blames lust. The radical blames money; the reformer blames mammon. The radical blames the systemic nature of oppression; the reformer blames men and women.

Radicals want to mess with the categories. They operate with an intellectual dishonesty that is truly fundamental. How can you tell? It really is simple — they call good things evil, and call evil things good (Is. 5:20). The distinction between men and women is a good thing, and so they blur it with metrosexuality. Worldliness is a true evil, and so they pursue it in the name of cultural engagement. The ability to raise the poor from poverty by teaching them how to make money is a good thing, and so they blur it by condemning the ability to make money. Nowhere are the sentimentalist contradictions of radicalism so apparent as here. The fact that people are poor is an outrage, and the fact that the means exist for bringing them out of poverty is an even worse outrage. The disease is wicked, and the medicine worse.

So what we should be after is true engagement, not surrender. What we must pursue is cultural engagement, not cultural surrender parading itself as engagement. In order to keep our bearings, and in order to keep our heads, we have to reject every attempt to get us to compromise our fundamental allegiance to Scripture as God’s infallible Word to us. It all comes back to this. Yea, hath God said is a strategic move so that we may jump in there with here’s what I think.

The radical thinks that human sexuality is up for grabs. The reformer knows what God’s intention from the beginning was. The radical has no understanding whatever of basic economics. The reformer knows that envy distorts economic understanding, and is the only thing that really does. The radical believes that he has a vision that justifies all his social tinkering. The reformer knows that he cannot possibly understand anything so complicated as the simplest human economy, which is why God gave us His law.

Here is how the whole pattern of cultural engagement has played out in our nation, and in our generation. After evangelicals were forced out of their position of privilege in the public square in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they retreated to their cultural ghettos. When the general cultural apostasy forced them out of their abdication in the seventies, they came back into the process in force, and the religious right became an identifiable factor in national affairs again. Those who had taunted these religious conservatives for being disengaged were dismayed by what their engagement looked like, and so they began to taunt them for that. We were only to be allowed back into the public square if we immediately veered over to the left.
It turns out that what the radicals had meant by cultural engagement was actually code for “get with the program,” and the program coordinator, as always, needed to be a state so swollen it looks like Jabba the Hutt whenever his thyroid was acting up.

So we should be in the market for young Christian men and women who are willing to be trained in genuine cultural engagement. They won’t be embarrassed by old-fashioned virtues, like hard work and discipline. They will respect authority and defy the authorities. They won’t get fired from jobs because of laziness, and they will get fired from them because of something they said about homosexuality. They won’t resent money and success, and they won’t be dazzled by money and success. They will laugh at the hipsters, and they will laugh at themselves laughing at the hipsters. They will loathe the enticements of corrupt entertainment, and they will love a true story. They would rather die than become one of the cool kids. They will be cool.

Chrestomathy

Capturing the Imagination

So the arrival of mere Christendom will therefore be convulsive — but it won’t be a legal revolution. It will be a great reformation and revival — it will happen the same way the early Christians conquered Rome. Their program of conquest consisted largely of two elements — gospel preaching and being eaten by lions — a strategy that has not yet captured the imagination of the the contemporary church.
Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

A Deeply Flawed Human Being 

Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 23 April 2013

One of the first things a reformer has got to get used to is the experience of being despised and unpopular. Societies do awful things (that which needs to be reformed) because they want to, and the reformer is the one beckoning them to a state of affairs that they don’t much want.

“You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit” (Ex. 23:2-3, ESV).

Notice what this passage requires of us. There are times when the doing of evil is popular. Many want to do evil, and they summon you to join them. There are other times when you are being pressured to bear false witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, in order to pervert justice. And if you didn’t trip over the next verse, you weren’t paying attention. It prohibits every form of affirmative action, along with all its ugly cousins. The man of integrity decides according to the law, and not according to whether the plantiff has had a hard life.

A reformer has to be the kind of man who can stand up to the clamor of the mob. This is the vertebrate mentality exhibited by Athanasius when he was informed that “the world” was against him. Well, then, he replied, let it be known that Athanasius is contra mundum, against the world. A true reformer gives the PR department fits.

The reformer marches to a different drummer, to not coin a phrase, but when he does this he elicits real hatred. There are two kinds of non-conformity, and only one of them wears hipster glasses. The kind that does wear them is a very popular form of pretending to be out of the mainstream, in order to be the envy of it, and the other is a radical form of unpopularity, calculated to get you slandered and viciously attacked, on the way to changing the mainstream. One kind of non-conformity requires courage, while the other kind requires nothing more than vanity and a five dollar cup of fair trade coffee.

The reformer will be attacked by the establishment in the name of a previous generation of reformers. The men who killed the prophets have descendents, and those descendents identify themselves by building memorials to the prophets (Matt. 23: 29-31). The men who lionize the prophets, Jesus teaches, are the kind of men who would have tied them to the nearest stake themselves. And the men who are charged with attacking the legacy of the prophets are the true sons of the prophets.

In short, the reformer cannot expect anything worthwhile to happen if all he hears is polite golf applause floating toward him from the establishment. And that reminds me of something . . .

Leading Indicators

Winnowing Forks and the Wind

God’s people are always being winnowed and refined.  It’s not something many Western Christians give a great deal of attention to, although we expect that this will not continue to be so.  When our Lord was about to commence His public ministry the prophet, John the Baptist was sent by God as a forerunner, to prepare His way.  John said of Jesus’ coming ministry,

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. (Luke 3: 16,17)

This winnowing–separating the wheat from the chaff–occurs through the proclamation and ministry of the Word of God.  God’s ministers address His people with enjoinders such as, “Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)  But it also occurs through oppression and public rejection and mockery of the Christ and His people.
  When a culture turns against the Christ, it costs people to profess Christ.  Fellow travellers will not pay a cost for belief.  Their hypocrisy is revealed and they drift away.  On the other hand, Christians of different groups and denominations close ranks and pull together.

In New Zealand today the opposition to Christ and His people is slowly mounting.  The opposition is beginning to insinuate itself into the law, into the courts, and into the Parliament.  It has long been found in government schools and the media and amongst the Commentariat.

Here is an illustration of what we have in mind.
  A church in the Wairarapa was to allow a well-known and popular singer to perform in its church building.  However, consternation arose when it became known that the singer was a public lesbian, thereby making her public performances inextricable from her sexual perversions.

Singer Anika Moa has had to switch venues for her Wairarapa concert because an evangelical church objected to her sexuality. She was due to perform at Masterton’s Lighthouse Church on March 23, but promoter Mark Rogers said it became clear after the booking was made that some members of the church were not comfortable with hosting her.

A solution was reached when the promoter Anika Moa switched  her performance to St Marks Anglican Church in Carterton.  It appears that the Lighthouse Church endeavoured to be as kind and civil as possible.

Lighthouse pastor Russell Embling said Mr Rogers had decided to move the gig after discussions with church leadership. He would not comment on whether some of his flock were opposed to having a lesbian singer perform. He said the church held to “traditional biblical values regarding marriage and the family”. The church had offered, in good faith, to pay for some of the costs incurred, including new concert posters and tickets, and had given the money to Mr Rogers, he said.

Enter homosexual advocate and Green Party MP, Kevin Hague:

Mr Hague, a veteran gay rights activist, said the church had arguably “created a situation where the promoter feels he has no choice but to shift the venue – it could be classified as constructive discrimination, which would be illegal”. 

Here is the hint of the winnowing to come.  Constructive discrimination is illegal.  A church, by refusing to allow its venue to be used for a public performance by someone whose morals were offensive, is liable to be accused of constructive discrimination.  The vice of pagan law begins to tighten.

Throughout it all, the Saviour is applying His  winnowing fork to His people.  No doubt the Lighthouse Church members and leaders will have looked at one another, thought, read their Bibles afresh, and concluded that the use of their church for entertainment by a public homosexual was wrong.  They have been choosing this day whom they will serve.  But maybe there will be folk in the congregation who will decide after all that they think their church was wrong to object to Anika Moa’s performing in their house of worship.  They may well leave the church.  That’s what a winnowing fork does–it tosses the wheat into the wind which then blows away the chaff–the empty, dry bits of straw clinging to the grain.

Then there is the Carterton Anglican Church.  It too is being winnowed, and its chaff is blowing in the wind.  In this case, the church leaders appear to be revealing themselves as the chaff.

St Mark’s vicar Jenny Chalmers said she regretted the attitudes of some within the Lighthouse congregation. “I’m really sorry for that, because sexuality is such a small part of a person’s makeup.”

The reality is that we Christians and churches need refining all the time.  Most often the Lord deploys suffering to complete this vital and holy work.  Many, many older Christians face the attenuation of their bodies and physical capacities together with the attendant pain and discomfort.  As the outer man wastes away, the inner man grows.  This is part of the refining fires of our loving and gracious Lord.  He disciplines those whom He loves.  

But it is likely we will increasingly see and experience the winnowing work being done through pagan opposition to the Gospel and hatred of the Lord and His Church.  But, ironically this also brings great encouragement.  It is a leading indicator that God is at work and is beginning to stretch forth His mighty arm.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

11 Theses on Believing God 

Theology – Welcome to the Reformed Faith
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 12 February 2013

1. Born as we are in a fallen race, we need to begin with the recognition that unbelief is our default setting (Matt. 13:58). Unbelief is abnormal, but not really unusual.

2. This means that we are in a state of perpetual tension, because everything in the world around us declares the faithfulness of God (Rom. 1:19), and is declaring it with clarity to hearts that don’’t want to accept it.

3. Because our loss of faith did not cause us to lose our wits, we retain a high level of ability in rationalization (Eph. 4:18). Faith and unbelief therefore traffic in competing narratives.

4. This condition of unbelief is incorrigible, and cannot be undone apart the efficacy of an imperishable seed that comes to us from outside ourselves (1 Pet. 1:23).

5. Faith must therefore be understood as a gift from God. It is not something we autonomously offer to God; it is something He gives to us so that we may render it back to Him in gratitude (Eph. 2:8-9).

6. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Rom. 10:17). The imperishable seed that reverses our natural state of unbelief comes to us in the form of propositions. The Word comes to us by means of declarative speech. And this is not sola Scriptura only, but also tota et sola Scriptura.

7. Once genuine faith is quickened in us, it grows as a seed grows into a mature plant. Faith therefore admits of degrees (Matt. 8:26).

8. Once genuine faith is quickened in us, unbelief does not vanish in an instant, but as with every other aspect of how sin is dealt with in our sanctification, it is mortified and weakened continually (Heb. 3:12).

9. Faith is to be understood as a function of relationship, as we considered Him faithful who had made the promise (Heb. 11:11).

10. We are to walk in faith in the same way we began our pilgrimage by faith. Being a Christian is not radically distinct from becoming a Christian (Gal. 3:3).

11. Faith has a punctiliar beginning, but the faith itself is not punctiliar. The just shall live by faith (Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17).

Faith, therefore, is a gift of God, and is the natural response to the perceived faithfulness of God.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

With the Smell of Burnt Marshwiggle

Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 16 January 2013

A real reformer is not a member of a faction. Men have always tended to divide into opposing factions, whether it is Crips and Bloods or Guelphs and Ghibellines. But factional differences (while very real) don’t go down to the deep foundations. An ancient city is debating whether to defend the city with a powerful navy, or with an entrenched army. The conflict between the factions arguing for both options can be very real, but everyone’s goal is to defend the city.

But real reform is not that which argues left at the crossroads instead of right. Reform opposes the revolution, and the revolution is that “faction” (if we must call it that) that is in full-throated opposition to the way God made the world.
In contrast to this, we must have our debates, our conflicts, and even our wars, over differences that rest on the back of enormous commonality. When the question before the house is whether to stop on this island and build our city, or proceed to the next one, or if we shall allow the prince over our territory to be a Lutheran, or if our legislature should be bicameral or not — you can imagine the conflict getting hot.

But the question before the house in our day is whether we are going to live in the world God created, or shall we do otherwise. A reformer takes the affirmative view, and the revolutionary insists that we must, we shall, do otherwise. This puts the whole conflict on an entirely different footing. Who shall, at the end of the day, ascend to the sides of the north?

Think for a moment what sorts of “reforms” the revolutionaries are instituting. They want women to be able to marry women, and men to marry men. They are seriously discussing the minting of a trillion dollar coin backed with the requisite amount of balloon juice. And whether they ever mint that particular coin or not, they are doing the same thing in principle now, to the tune of trillions of metric tons of balloon juice. The Federal Reserve is now being run by non-Euclidians who have been a little too free with the bourbon. They want our philosophers to spin a new world for us that will provide full scope for all of our horny little lusts. And sexbots. Don’t forget the sexbots. They will be squaring the circle next.

Back in the old days, when the conflict was between supporters of the king’s dim-witted oldest son and his charismatic younger son, the outcome really was up in the air. With the establishment on one side, and the lean, hungry ambitious young men on the other, we might have real trouble predicting which way it was going to go. But now . . .? The real reformer has a real advantage, but one which he rarely recognizes himself as having. Living in the world that actually exists is an enormous advantage. There are times when it almost seems to me like cheating or something. In the long run, we need not worry. In the long run, blind stupidity never works.

The revolutionary alternates between throwing rocks at the moon and barking at it. . . .This is why the battle over homosexual marriage is almost ideal for us. Or, rather, it is why it would be an ideal issue for reformers who have been blessed with some measure of courage. We don’t need much courage — just enough to see and say how ludicrous it all is. Just enough to summon up the nerve to fill the room with the smell of burnt marshwiggle.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

A Black Swan Revival 

Culture and Politics – Creative Control of the Reformation
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 27 December 2012

Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the phrase black swan in the title of his fine book The Black Swan. A black swan event is a surprise, it has a major impact, and there will be those (after the fact) who claimed they saw it coming. But in actuality, virtually no one saw it coming because these things are extremely difficult to predict. But after they happen, they seem so obviously inevitable. Take a daily feature of everyone’s life now — the development of the Internet. There it is, a black swan.

In fact, any historical event, once it occurs, however unlikely, can be shown to be inevitable by any competent historian. But reading the clues before it all happens is a different matter.

Christians understand the resurrection of Jesus was the black swan of all history
— it was a surprise to everyone, it has transformed the world, and modern Christians like to tsk at the twelve disciples for hiding in the upper room instead of being out by the Lord’s grave, looking expectantly at their watches. Jesus had told them plainly beforehand what He was going to do, and then after the fact, He showed them again — going through all the Scriptures — how these things had to happen. It is so plain to us . . . now that it has happened.

But the resurrection was not a one-off event — it was more like a theme. And so, as Chesterton observed once, Christianity has died often, but it has not even slowed us down. This is because we serve a God who knows the way out of the grave.

But however many times it happens, the result is always the same — total surprise, a major impact, and then a short period of time where we all adjust, learning to take it all for granted. As any apt student of church history should be able to tell you, reformations and revivals are quintessential black swan events.

“But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9):

When it comes to revivals, the reason why it comes as such a surprise to us is simple. God — in order to keep the glory where it needs to be kept — makes sure that we are in such a bad way, in such a condition of death and hopelessness, that nobody expects a resurrection. Resurrections are a key ingredient in what might be called one of God’s favorite events — the surprise party.

In fact, this element of surprise is so key, I would be inclined to argue that if someone genuinely (and accurately) expects it to happen, this should be taken as evidence that it is already starting to happen. He may not see the valley flooded, but he does see cracks in the dam, and an abnormal amount of water coming through. Some people call it five minutes beforehand, just not five years.

Why does God let things get into a horrible condition before He rises up and acts? The text above tells us why He did that to the apostle Paul. It was so that they would not trust in themselves. Now if there is any group of Christians who need to be taught not to trust in themselves, but in God who raises the dead, that group would be American evangelicals. For us, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” is a Christian school slogan for our track teams’ t-shirts. Paul was talking there (Phil. 4:13) about this profound death and resurrection cycle in his life, while we tend to think it is about jumping higher, running faster, hanging with cute girls afterwards, and all with whiter teeth.

There are of course a number of situations where a “can do” spirit is admirable, but we don’t really need to be reminded of those occasions. There are other places — like the boneyard — where such a mentality is plainly demented. We need our preachers to stop telling the skeletons to develp a positive mental attitude.
So is this why our country is coming apart in our hands? Is this why popular entertainment is so corrupt? Is this why our justices despise the gift of life? Is this why our laws cannot make out the reason God gave us boys and girls? Is this why Congress does not understand the concept of red ink? Yes — so that we would stop trusting in ourselves.

Is this why our fathers devise various means to run out on their families? Is this why wives are terminally disrespectful to them, doing what they can to chase them out early? Is this why our children are so sullen and unhappy? Yes — so that we would stop trusting in ourselves.

Is this why our seminaries do their level best to train sexless capons for future ministry? Is this why pulpits are treated as bunkers to hide in, instead of cockpits to fight from? Is this why we call theologians conservative if they condescend to believe most of the Bible? Yes — so that we would stop trusting in ourselves.
All hope is lost? Good. That means the conditions for a black swan revival are improving by the day. The stone cold deader we get, the more God is hastening the day. Nothing is dying but what needs to die. Let it go, and let the black swan surprise you.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

7 Rules for Reformers 

Political Dualism – Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, 24 September 2012

A generation ago “community organizer” Saul Alinsky famously penned his Rules for Radicals, and it is my conviction that those interested in reformation should match his craft and self-awareness without trying to compete with the speed and depth of his revolutionary destructo-vision.

Some revolutionaries are patient and some are not. Gramsci argued for the “long march through the institutions” and Lenin wanted the massive meltdown all at once. Most revolutionaries have what Billingsly described as a “fire in the minds of men,” but some are willing to go for the slow burn. So more than just simple patience is required to distinguish a revolutionary from a reformer.

So what are the basic rules for reformers?

1. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Reformation of culture is either a species of salvation or sanctification, and you can’t have either one without Jesus. Secular conservatism will sometimes buy you time, but that is about all it can do — that and lure you into the complacent notion that it can do more than this. Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. The person and work of Jesus is not optional.

2. Always remember the distinction between principles and methods. Say that the principle is to win the war against the enemy — the methods would be navy, artillery, air force, ground troops, etc. Someone enamored of method would think that the war can be won by their branch of the service alone, without any help from the others. Those who latch on to the methods being employed, without any awareness of the principles being served, are either simple-minded or partisans. The simple need leadership; they can make great foot soldiers, but don’t ever make them generals. The partisans need a peculiar kind of leadership, but you have to be careful — they are the ones who are already a tad too gung ho about your leadership. And they think you are as gummed up about particular methods as they are.

3. Reformers are conservatives, which means they must prefer the concrete to the abstract. The past is concrete, just like the future is going to be. The goal is to preserve and defend everything the Spirit has done in history in such a way as to carry it forward into what the Spirit is going to do. Given our time-bound nature, we must conserve some things, and we must progress toward certain things. But what do we conserve, and what do we seek to build? Our duties are always in the present, but we must read the past, as well as the future (albeit more dimly), and we must do so by the performance of concrete duties. Love your neighbor, not mankind. Build an actual school for your children, and do not love the notion of educational great concepts in some Euclidean eschaton.

4. Reformers must cultivate a high sense of humor. Reformation involves conflict, as we shall see in a moment, but how you fight makes all the difference. Should you fight like a cavalier, with swift sword play and witticisms, or like a thug with a club and a wart on your nose? The besetting sin of ostensible reformers is the sin of shrillness and officious forms of uplift. We need reformers, not another round of bossy-pantses. We also need someone who knows how to form the plural of bossy-pants.

5. Reformers must be combative. There is no way to do any of this without involving yourself in the rough stuff. This means that courage is required. The adversary fights back, and they know how to fight back. Not only that, but because this is a battle between good and evil, and you are fighting for the good (right?), the other side gets to cheat, and you don’t get to. You have to fight, and you have to fight clean, and you have to fight fair. When you enlist in the army, you cannot feign surprise when you find yourself in battles.

6. Reformers must play the long game. We are not laboring for a convenience store reformation, where you buy and consume your “item” before you pull out into traffic, depending on how troublesome the shrink wrap is. If we have Christ, we have all things future, and so we can leave the outcome of our present labors to Him. We don’t have to see the larger end to perform our part in that larger end. And our part is now.

7. Reformers must remember always that religion shapes culture, and culture trumps politics. The plug-in ought not to go straight from reformation in the church to legislation. Legislative battles are important in the meantime, but mostly as a defensive measure. The offense won’t happen until we make the connection between our faith and culture — the kind of culture that forms apart from laws. Just as you can’t fight a naval war without ships, or tank warfare without tanks, you can’t fight a culture war without a culture. The reformation of the church must occur so that there is a reformation of our subculture, and then our subculture will affect the larger polis. Expecting our faith to affect the larger polis when it has not yet changed the average shelf at the local Christian book store is expecting something that is not going to happen. With the weird exception of baseball, where the ball is handled entirely by the defense, you can’t score points until you have the ball. And reformers will not have the ball until they have a culture.

That’ll do for the present.

Reforming Spirituality

Liberation and Subjection

The Reformation was an attempt to reform Christianity, back to its historical doctrinal positions and to the Scriptures itself.  The Reformers taught that contemporary Christianity as they experienced it in Western Europe had departed significantly from the early Church fathers and the Scriptures. 

An evidence of this is how often the Reformers cite the early Church fathers in their writing.  For example, in The Institutes of the Christian Religion Calvin cites and quotes Augustine most often amongst the fathers, but the work contains wide ranging references to ante-Nicene and post-Nicene theologians and church leaders. 

One of the reformulations of the Reformation had to do with how we understand the spiritual.  For many in pre-modern Europe the notion of spirit and spiritual was more informed by neo-platonic pagan conceptions than the Scriptures.
  It was understood as being immaterial, opposed to matter and physical reality.  It was a case of body versus spirit–a dualism which ran right through all reality.  God was a pure Spirit, without corporeal reality.  Man was a dualistic being, having both body and spirit.  The more he departed from the body, as it were, ascetically subduing it, the closer he came to resemble and reflect God Himself. 

Thus, even to this day, many Christians mistakenly think that anything which involves bodily and material activity cannot be rightly thought to be spiritual.  Eating food, for example, may be a necessary activity (one shared with all other sentient creatures) but it cannot be regarded as spiritual.  Spiritual activity is attending worship, praying, reading the Bible and so forth. 

One of the reformulations of the Reformation was to recover spirit and spiritual to mean “of the Holy Spirit”, and being subject to God’s Word and to acting out of faith and trust in God Himself. In this way, one’s eating and drinking could and ought to be spiritual acts.  Here, for example, is Luther’s re-formulation:

Everything that our bodies do, the external and the carnal, is an is called spiritual behaviour, if God’s Word is added to it and it is done in faith.  There is therefore nothing which is so bodily, carnal, and external that it does not become spiritual when it is done in the Word of God and faith. [Taken from Luther’s exposition of I Corinthians 7, cited by Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004 {1957}), p.70]

There are many Christians today who would find such truth radically liberating.  They would also find it to be profoundly challenging.  Every thought, word and deed must needs be sanctified and holy, and it must also be thoroughly engaged with the created world in which we live.  If there is no spiritual realm to escape to then the demands of spirituality encompass everything one is responsible to be and do in this world.  One cannot be spiritual without being engaged thoroughly in the material and the fleshly, the carnal and the bodily.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Silver on Top, and Black on the Bottom 

Theology – Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 27 May 2012

It is bad when a blogger gets in over his head, or when a theologian does, or when a pamphlateer does, or when a connector-of-the-dots does. But, with all necessary qualifications made, it not bad when a preacher does. It is a preacher’s calling to get in over his head (2 Cor. 2:16). But he needs to be careful to do it the right way — there is a way to be in over your head in the pulpit which is just ordinary confusion, and there is a way that is the work of the Spirit of God.

I wrote earlier about the reunion of Christendom, and how it was going to be glorious. But precisely because it is going to be glorious, it will not the result of careful negotiations hammered out by the canon lawyers. As Lloyd-Jones once memorably put it, getting all the ecclesiastical corpses into one graveyard will not bring about a resurrection.

As a pamphleteer, as a blogger, I do find it necessary to argue for the absolute necessity of the new birth, as I am doing here. But for a preacher, much more than this is involved. The preacher declares words calculated to raise the dead, which is quite different than flattering the living. When the Spirit is pleased to move, He will do so. But the Spirit, when He moves, will not be like a little zephyr, stirring the gauzy curtains of our theological library. It will be more like a massive thunderhead, silver on the top and utterly black on the bottom, coming in from the west, and looking to soak absolutely everybody.

I am an evangelical, the son of evangelicals, and so I do insist on the absolute necessity of the new birth. That’s our wineskin. There is nothing wrong with wineskins, because wine always has to go into something. But there is something wrong with empty wineskins, and there is something wrong with the idea that trafficking in the idea of wine is the same thing as wine, which it isn’t.

The glories that are coming will be the result of what we are talking about, and not the result of our talking about it. Elegant formulations are necessary in their way, but they are also as dead as an idiom about doornails. Reformation and revival consists of the reality of the Spirit moving, and we cannot whistle Him up — we can’t do it with sacraments, we can’t do it with church music, and we can’t do by rolling up our shirt sleeves in order to preach a hot gospel. Here, hold your mouth this way, and maybe that will make the Spirit fall.

But the Spirit will fall. The thunderhead will roll in. And when it happens, the work of regeneration will be a gully washer and lots of ecclesiastics will be pretty upset. But many more of them will be soaked through, and it will become increasingly harder to preach little floating dust cloud sermons.

And it will not be preaching that ushers this in, but rather the folly of preaching. But mark it well — the Spirit never moves in such a way as to leave things right where He found them. The detritus of religiosity — whether prohibited by Scripture or required by it — will be either washed away or washed clean. I speak of icons, candles, sermon manuscripts, choral anthems, lectionaries, processionals, and white eucharistic table cloths. If you want it all to be washed clean, and not washed away, then fasten it to the plain teaching of Scriptures with the nails of evangelical faith, and use as many as you have.

When God pleases, and He showers us with kindness, we will be given the wisdom found in the old song, God Don’t Never Change . . .

God in the pulpit,
God way back at the door,
God in the amen corner,
God all over the floor.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Getting Our Sensate Groove Back 

Culture and Politics – Creative Control of the Reformation
 Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, 23 April 2012

I recently caused a small stir on Facebook by saying this:

“One of the greatest aesthetic and arististic gifts the world ever received was the casting down of images in the Protestant Reformation.”

I thought it might be good for me to explain what was behind that comment, at least a little bit. . . .

I have no problem with evangelicals receiving criticism for producing schlock. That is what criticism (rightly conceived) is for. What I cannot abide is schlock criticism — memes that make no sense getting endlessly repeated as though they were some kind of wisdom. One of those memes is that evangelicals are unique in their ability to produce this stuff. Anybody who says this cannot have been in a video rental store recently. Evangelicals make bad movies because making good movies is hard, which turns out to be the same reason why people generally make bad movies. Evangelicals make bad movies for the same reason evangelicals have ten toes — they are people and people tend to generate lots of crapola.

If we want to compare aesthetic contributions, then let us compare the best to the best, or the worst to the worst. Let us not — unless we want to reveal that we have a mongrel dog in the fight — compare the best of one to the worst of the other.

And this should be done carefully. When we are talking about the contributions of Christian civilization, I don’t mind (at all) Roman Catholics taking pride in Bach, and they shouldn’t mind it that I can glory in Dante. But when we come to the crossroads, and we compare Protestant civilization and artistry with Catholic, there are certain things that the facts prevent us from saying. It could be a useful talking point to say that the stripping of the images from the churches constituted an opening salvo in a war on beauty, and was sort of an aesthetic fall from Eden, a point that is just as false as it is convenient.

Keep in mind that I am comparing the general ethos of one form of civilization to another — I am not talking about whether a particular artist went to Heaven when he died. In this sense, civilizations can even take credit for their heretics and apostates. And, in a slightly different way, we can take some mutual pride in men who passed each other crossing the Tiber, men like Chesterton or Donne.

Also remember that Francis Schaeffer used to talk about the “mannishness of man.” Even in the grip of a really bad idea, it is hard to keep the image of God from manifesting itself. Take the Shakers and their radical simplicity. That was some bad whiskey, as far as civilization-building is concerned, but we still got some cool furniture out of it.

So then, be done with the idea that Protestantism “has no artistic soul.” Remember my earlier point about Bach and Dante. I understand that we have to factor in Newton’s comment about standing on the shoulders of giants — the magisterial Reformation does not show contempt for the great things accomplished down through church history prior to the Reformation. We know that what came after was built on what went before. But, I would want to argue (alongside Phillip Schaff) that the greatest accomplishment of the Roman Catholic church was Protestantism, and I would want to include the arts in this.

I believe that the elimination of that idolatry in the churches was a great liberation for the people of God, and when the people are set free, like a loosed deer, they make and say beautiful things. “Naphtali is a deer let loose; He uses beautiful words” (Gen. 49:21).

And in the aftermath of that liberation, we do not see aesthetic contributions of the evangelical Reformation going all to blazes. Just the reverse. Protestantism gave us Bach, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Rembrandt, Cranach, Durer, Holbein, Milton, Spenser, Defoe, Wren, Bunyan, and I could keep going with a very long list that ends with C.S. Lewis.

Now I am more than ready to acknowledge that our civilizational high water mark was in part possible because of prep work by earlier Christians before those images came down. But in addition, I want to argue that a lot of it happened because the images came down. Ordinary life was exalted (in much the same ways that the Protestant doctrine of vocation glorified ordinary work), and beauty began to flow over the threshold of Ezekiel’s temple, toward its appointed task of inundating the world of the mundane. Glory came to the ordinary, and it was brought there by Protestant missionaries.

The goal was not to destroy holiness, but to get it out of the monasteries. The goal was not to destroy beauty, but to get it out of places where it was being falsely worshipped, and move it to places where it could be innocently enjoyed. Zwingli did take the organ out of the church, that’s true enough, but it should also be remembered that he took it to his house. . . .

My favorite Catholic writer is, of course, Chesterton. He once said, in another context, that a courageous man ought to be willing to attack any error, however ancient it is. He also added, however, that there are some errors too old to patronize. The same principle applies here. There are some civilizations that are far too aesthetically accomplished to be patted on the head and told that they have the soul of a badly educated Philistine. And if the critics go on to point out that the mistake we made was our cleansing of the sanctuaries, back before our fathers in the faith brought so many beautiful things into the world, then I will begin to suspect the creation of a brand new fallacy — post hoc ergo non propter hoc.

Reformed Heritage

Book of the Month/April 2012

Engaging the Culture – Book Review
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 01 April 2012 16:48

Reformer of Basel
Diane Poythress
Reformation Heritage Books

This might seem like an odd book to get excited about (at least to some), but I have wanted to see a book like this for years. In Reformer of Basel, Diane Poythress has given us a very fine introduction to the life and influence of John Oecolampadius, the great Reformer of Basel. It is available at Amazon here, but they don’t seem to have a deep bench on this title, and so you can also obtain it here.

I call them the lost Reformers. Men like Luther and Calvin are the A team, and men like John Knox are right behind them. The B team would be men like Zwingli, Bucer, and Bullinger — the names are generally known to those who know the period at all, but not a lot is known about them. And then . . . the lost Reformers.
I speak here about Junius, Tremellius, Ursinus, and Oecolampadius. Then there are the Reformers out in the deep weeds, men like Wolfgang Musculus, not to mention that other notable Wolfgang, a gent with the last name of Capito.

Speaking of Capito, this is as good a place as any to mention that after Oecolampadius died, his widow, an able woman named Wibrandis was married by Capito, a widower with children of his own, who took in Oecolampadius’s kids as well. And then, after Capito died, Martin Bucer, another widower with children, married her, and took in Oecolampadius’s kids, along with Capito’s (p. 23).

At any rate, I have wanted someone to introduce us to Oecolampadius for years. To begin with, who doesn’t want to know more about a Reformer with such a great name? The name is the Latin form of the more pedestrian German name Hausshein, which simply means “house lamp.”

Part of the reason for wanting modern Reformed believers to know more about men like Oecolampadius is that their obscurity is richly undeserved. His influence on the history of the church was enormous, even though largely unremarked currently.

“Calvin became both a brother and a son to Oecolampadius. The implication is clear that although Calvin is perceived as the father of the Reformed church, he is actually the son of Oecolampadius” (p. 55).

Think, as an example, of the evangelistic impact of the no-name, whoever it was, that led Billy Graham to the Lord.

Diane Poythress, wife of theologian Vern Poythress, has provided us with just what we needed around here. She writes ably and clearly, and her learning on this subject is quite obviously deep. At the same time, the book is written on an accessible level, and will be a blessing to anybody who loves the history of the Reformation.

The book divides into three general sections. The first is an overview of Oecolampadius’s life, a brief biography. The second goes into the nature of his theological and ecclesiastical influence. At the time of the Reformation, he was a major player. That makes him a major player now, just one we have forgotten. The last section is a detail bibliography of all that he wrote, along with a translation (by Poythress) of a section of his influential commentary on Isaiah.

Here at New St. Andrews, we are engaged in the task of recovering a widespread expertise in Latin. One of the obvious benefits that could come from this is the translation of the many Reformation resources available only in Latin. When that happens, we might see another remarkable movement of the Spirit — the Reformation’s afterburners kicking in. Diane Poythress has shown us the real value of this kind of labor. This book is highly recommended. Get three.

Culturally Impotent Christians, Part I

When Worship Becomes Seeker Friendly and Entertaining

In his book One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), sociologist Rodney Stark  argues that there are at least two sociological conditions under which monotheistic faiths have been particularly strong.  These conditions are times of persecution and of adherence to the rituals of public worship.

“Strength” here refers strongly to maintaining traditions, beliefs, and practices and locking those attributes into the next generation.

His first example is the the sociological power of the rituals of public worship.
  It creates solidarity amongst the community of the faith.  In theological and Christian terms we would say the rituals of public worship are a means of grace, appointed by God, to work redemption powerfully amongst His people.   But the reverse is also true: where worship and its rituals are man made or reflect false beliefs they become powerful in consigning people to darkness, and eventually the outer darkness. 

According to Stark,

People do not remain loyal to a particular religion primarily because of the appeal of specific doctrines.  Rather, they find these doctrines appealing because they share them with an intimate network of believers.  Religious persistence is a group phenomenon, because religion itself, especially monotheism, is a group affair.  (Ibid, p. 177).

In other words, public worship and its rituals do not necessarily make the doctrines true, but they make them powerful and more compelling to the heart and soul.

Stark again:

Quite simply, and individual’s confidence in religious explanations concerning otherworldly rewards is strengthened to the extent that others express their confidence in them. . . . Throughout our lives we rely on the wisdom and experience of others to help us make good choices. . . . Testimonials are especially effective when they come from a trusted source.  thus friends are more persuasive than acquaintances, and the testimonials even of acquaintances are more persuasive than those of strangers. . . . When a group of Muslim men gather for prayer, form lines facing Mecca, and press their foreheads to the ground, each is reinforced by the actions of the others. (Ibid., pp. 178, 183).

The reinforcing effect of public worship and a community believing together should be nothing strange.  Clearly this is how God created the world and human society to be.  After all, in secular affairs every matter is confirmed by two or three witnesses: how much more in matters of faith and religion. 

Participation in public rituals and worship not only builds religious convictions, it helps bring about group solidarity.  The believing community is strengthened as a community; solid and strong communities tend to be self-reliant and  culturally powerful.  Stark draws an analogy with military drill and training:

It is well known that it requires months of constant drill and practice maneuvers to produce reliable and effective military units.  Drill not only accustoms troops to acting together in immediate response to orders; more important, if affords the circumstances for linking the individual soldiers to one another by strong bonds of trust and friendship.  It is these bonds, not idealism, what enable soldiers to face death–the role of idealism is to shape the expectations they impose in judging one another.  In his masterpiece on military command, S.L.A. Marshall noted that because fear affects everyone in battle, training should be designed to foster friendship among the ranks: “When a soldier is unknown to the men who are around him, he . . . has relatively little reason to fear losing the one thing he is likely to value more highly than life–his reputation as a man among other men.”  Marshall went on to point out that “it is the man who . . . is well known to his fellows” who will stand fast.” 

Participation in religious rituals is a form of drill that is well suited to foster strong bonds. . . . (P)articipation in religious “drills” may not be needed to sustain uncontested faiths.  But they are vital for the persistence of embattled minorities.” (Ibid., p. 183f)

What Stark implies–and indeed what is taught in Holy Scripture–is that a people that worships together regularly will be a strong abiding believing community.  When people believe the truth–that is, the Holy Spirit has opened their hearts and minds to the Living God–the solidifying effect of public worship is even more powerful to deepen religious commitments, solidarity and courageous persistence in the face of opposition. 

One reason why, in the West, the Church is so attenuated and ineffective, lacking authority and spiritual influence and control over its members, is because public worship and its rituals have become relatively unimportant as worship.  For many professing Christians, public worship is optional: it can be taken or left.  For many evangelical (and even, now, Reformed) congregations public worship has utility as an exercise in evangelism–reaching the lost.  It is deemed useful for contacting unbelievers and bringing them into the fold.  Under such a rubric, public worship rapidly devolves into public entertainment and primarily a social occasion in the course of which we would introduce a bit of religion.  Thus music is performance music: “worship leaders” perform for the congregation.  The idiom of music is what one might hear at the local pub or club–because “that’s what people want”.  The lyrics are those of “love songs” toward Jesus.  “Seeker friendly” congregations ultimately become corporately weak. They lose solidarity, unity, and loyalty.  As they say, the back door becomes as big as the front door, with as many people leaving as coming.   Folk drift off in search of the next coming “religious night club” where the band is better. Or they seek entertainment from a “dynamic personality”, where there is a personality-cult-type leader.   Eventually they, or their children, stop going entirely. 

We generalize, but the reason the Christian faith and Christendom is so culturally anaemic and impotent in our day is because it has become anaemic and impotent amongst its own adherents.  A central reason for the loss of strong loyalty and faith amongst modern Christians is because churches and congregations no longer worship, using the biblical rituals and liturgies.  Churches perform and entertain; the gathered folk want be performed for and entertained. 

True Reformation, when it comes will, first of all, be seen in the reformation of public worship.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Bad Stories and Good Cameras

Culture and Politics – Creative Control of the Reformation
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, September 21, 2011

A few weeks ago I wrote about A Jungle Full of Monkeys. In that post, I talked about the incipient reformation of aesthetics that may be taking shape among the young, restless, and Reformed. The interest in that post, and response to it, tells me that I am not just firing random neurons on this subject.

Here are just a couple of follow-up thoughts — cautions directed at two different generations.

There are saints out there of a more seasoned mien — old, listless, and Reformed — no, just kidding — who bring a great deal of experience to the subject of aesthetics. Those of them who care about it could easily miss this trend because the burgeoning interest in aesthetics is taking place in areas where they are not accustomed to look. If a church service takes place in a warehouse, it looks (architecturally) like there is no theological interest in aesthetics at all. But often it has simply been relocated — in this church, the fanatics of “standards” are all laboring at the sound board in the back. I am not here participating in a debate about where the standards should be manifested; I am simply maintaining that there ought to be such a discussion, and that we could easily find people to take up each side.

In short, I am saying that there has not so much been an abandonment of aesthetic standards among the young and Reformed as there has been a relocation of where those standards are on display. But they care about it, a lot, and when committed Christians care about glorifying something, it is astonishing how much can be done.

But to those who are engaged in this kind of reformational work, I would say this — beware of the equipment. Back in the old days, buying a bunch of brushes didn’t make you a painter. The same thing is true now. The fact that the “brushes” are far more expensive doesn’t change the principle. In the realm of aesthetics, we are dealing with some permanent things, and it never will be possible to fix a bad story with good cameras. The best sound engineer in the world won’t turn a “Jesus is my girlfriend” song into “Love bade me welcome . . .” by Herbert.

Consequently, those who are laboring in the creative arts among the young, restless, and Reformed need to pray that God give them some words. They need poets, writers, wordsmiths, screenplay writers. Special note: this is not the same thing as needing people who desperately want to be poets, writers, etc. Still less is it a need for people who want to have written something grand, but are too lazy actually to do it. We need that kind of aspiring screenwriter like we need a sucking chest wound.

The lure of the equipment exists because the equipment is complicated and expensive. Having mastered the features of the complex tool, it is easy to think there is nothing left to master. But how many of us have had the experience of staring at a movie screen, thinking that thing up there the “dumbest thing I ever saw,” while at the same time reeling under the weight of the knowledge that the dumbest thing you ever saw cost 75 million to make? And somebody — let us call him Mr. Chump — coughed that money up.

So pray that God send you someone with the words. We are the people of the Word, and so it is a good prayer.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

A Jungle Full of Monkeys

Goo-Mongers – Postmodernism
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, September 07, 2011

There are two basic ways for evangelical Christians to care about the arts. One is the Kuyperian Reformed route, and the other is the way of bohemian pose-striking. One of the most heartening aspects of the “young, restless, and Reformed” development is the possibility of a real aesthetic reformation. Perhaps I should explain myself.

Scripture teaches us, over and over again, that deliverance comes from odd and unexpected places. And Scripture also tells us repeatedly that the faithful who are waiting for such deliverance have a tendency to wait by the wrong door.
David was just a shepherd boy. Joseph was handed off to a passing caravan for a bit of money. Daniel was a slave, captured in war. Esther was just one more beauty for the harem. Jeremiah was just a kid. And Jesus grew up in that podunk place, Galilee of the Gentiles.

When it comes to what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful, the emergent types have gone bohemian in all three areas. Their truth has gone to relativistic mush, their ideas of goodness are more interested in anal intercourse than they ought to be, and their concept of beauty is summed up by outre tattoos in inappropriate places. They have fallen for the simplest of Screwtape’s devices, the idea that “gritty” is real and “lovely” is bourgeois. They fell into that simple trap because they are such deep people.

In the meantime, with our culture teetering on the edge of the great desolation, the academic Keepers of Kuyper have been reading learned papers to each other, dealing with lots of good material, but when anybody coughs, a small cloud of dust appears above the audience, and then slowly drifts away. A lot of really good stuff there, but about as lively as you might expect. They do produce some good books though.

And so then, in this setting, against all odds, a large sector of up and coming young evangelicals become ardent . . . Calvinists. And by Calvinist, I do not mean someone who grew up in the environs of Grand Rapids, and whose thought processes are tinctured with some elements of a by-gone Reformed tradition. I mean somebody who acctually thinks that God is God, all the way up, all the way down, and all the way across.

This means that all the elements of a true Kuyperian rennaissance are now in place. It has not happened yet, but it is starting to. I have noticed some quite striking developments, which I may write about in a future post. This is because it is not really possible to believe that God is God, and then not have it come into authoritative contact with everything. The young, restless, and Reformed are on the same conveyor belt called time that the rest of us are, and this means they will shortly have kids to educate, schools to start, businesses to build, albums to record, paintings to paint, novels to write . . . and decisions to make.

If those decisions continue to be in line with the evangelical truth that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, and the Reformed truth that He did not do this in some kind of haphazard way, and the Kuyperian truth that He is invested in the entire creation, then we are on the threshold of a striking aesthetic reformation. And about time.

Don’t get me wrong. When I look at the young, restless, and Reformed I do not see a likely source of deliverance. They actually make me think of a jungle full of monkeys. But perhaps the Holy Spirit smiles and says, “Just the thing.”