I began to read John Stott's book on preaching, Between Two Worlds, this morning. He opens with a brief historical sketch examining the place of preaching in the thought and practice of some of the notable church leaders down through history. I was a little surprised to read this about some of the great Catholic figures in the Middle Ages:

'The Age of Preaching', wrote Charles Smyth, 'dates from the coming of the Friars... The history of the pulpit as we know it begins with the Preaching Friars. They met, and stimulated, a growing popular demand for sermons. They revolutionzed the technique. They magnified the office.' Although Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) was a man more of compassionate service than of learning, and insisted that 'our acting and teaching must go together', he was nevertheless 'as committed to preaching as to poverty: "Unless you preach everywhere you go", said Francis, "there is no use to go anywhere to preach." From the very beginning of his ministry, that had been his motto.' His contemporary Dominic (1170-1221) laid even greater emphasis on preaching. Combining personal austerity with evangelistic zeal, he traveled widely in the cause of the gospel, especially in Italy, France and Spain, and organized his 'black friars' into an Order of Preachers. A century later Humbert de Romans (died 1277), one of the finest of Dominican Ministers General, said: 'Christ only once heard Mass...but he laid great stress on preaching.' And a century later still, the great Franciscan preacher St Bernardino of Siena* (1380-1444) made this unexpected statement: 'If of these two things you can do only one – either hear the mass or hear the sermon – you should let the mass go, rather than the sermon... There is less peril for your soul in not hearing mass than in not hearing the sermon' (21-22).

Recognizing, of course, that it is a much more recently composed document, it is nonetheless interesting to note that the Catechism of the Catholic Church seems to exalt the Mass over preaching, in contrast to what the Medieval leaders taught: "The Eucharist is 'the source and summit of the Christian life.' The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it" (par. 1324).

However, despite the declaration on the primacy of the Mass, when you turn to the section of the Catechism that speaks about Scripture, it appears that it is to be viewed on the same level: "For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body" (par. 103), and, "'The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerated the Body of the Lord': both nourish and govern the whole Christian life" (par. 141).

Does this mean, then, that Scripture in and of itself, or perhaps as interpreted and contained in the tradition of the Church is on equal footing with the Mass? Does the nourishment that comes from Scripture come through the preaching of Scripture, or in some other way? Or is the Catechism simply saying that the two are equally important?

Given my limited knowledge of Catholicism I may be missing something simple and obvious on this matter. Therefore, please discuss below.

*On a side note: the story of Bernardino's missionary work on the ever-authoritative Wikipedia page is quite interesting. He seemed to have been something of a medieval Whitefield.

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As many children innocently prepare their costumes and empty bags or pillowcases for an enjoyable evening of collecting candy, Protestants will be battling the forces of Satan on two fronts tonight: boycotting Halloween, and gathering together for a few rousing rounds of Rome-bashing.*

Now, I don't enjoy Halloween (specifically what American culture has made of it) and have no problem with those who wish to abstain from participating in it; there are many good reasons not to. However, I am sure there are many doing so tonight who have no idea what they are actually boycotting.

More importantly, I am very thankful the Reformation happened—I am glad that the doctrines of grace were recovered, I am glad that the abuse of power by Church leaders was curtailed, and I am glad that I did not have to pay for St. Peter’s to be built pay for my relatives to be sprung from purgatory. In the Reformation, there is indeed something to be thankful for. However, I think Rae Whitlock has it right—would we even celebrate Reformation Day if it didn't conveniently fall on the same night as Halloween?

For me, the question is why we need a special night to celebrate the Reformation. It seems to be the equivalent of using Valentine's Day to tell your wife that you love her. As your love for her should be manifest each day, shouldn't our rejoicing in God's grace be something we do each day? This grace should pour forth from the preaching of the Word and we should taste it in partaking of the Lord's Table each Sunday. Do we really need a specific day to commemorate this?

No. And that is why the celebration of Reformation Day is not a day to celebrate some theological truths. It is, in effect, a day to celebrate the disunity of the Church. That, to me, is certainly not worth celebrating.

For some reason, Protestants seem to forget that while Martin Luther ultimately made the move and broke from the Roman Catholic Church, he did not do so immediately. He spent years in agony deciding whether or not to leave the Church he knew as mother and to go against Christ's call for unity in the body of believers (John 17:20-26, 1 Corinthians 1:10). Some of the earlier Reformers who went before Luther also tried earnestly to reform the Church from within. Separating from the Church was never the intention of these men, yet their valiant efforts to remain united seem to go unheralded.

Am I advocating a return to Rome? No. Do I think the Church will ever be one this side of our Lord's return? Of course not. But when you have to start constructing graphs that look like this (and this is just the American Presbyterians!) something is terribly wrong. And it is nothing to celebrate.

* I would be remiss not to mention the few gathering together to burn non-KJV Bibles tonight.

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Filed under  //   Church   ecumenism   Martin Luther   Protestantism   Reformation   Roman Catholic Church  

Our church met for a service on Maundy Thursday last week. It was essentially a Good Friday service, given the absence of the observance of Good Friday itself in the United States. In addition to the usual elements of worship, they incorporated a variation of the “Stations of the Cross” at the end of the service. It is on that part of worship that I had a few thoughts in reflection.

The Stations of the Cross was something new to me. I’d only heard of it before, but had never experienced or taken part in it. I knew that it had its origins in the Roman Catholic tradition and had been appropriated to a degree by more liturgical bodies like the Anglican and Lutheran traditions as well. When I arrived at the church and looked at the setup they had in the sanctuary, I could immediately tell, without prior knowledge of the practice, that this was a thoroughly de-Catholicized version of the Stations of the Cross. Beyond the name, it would likely not have been recognizable to a Roman Catholic. It tended toward the individualizing view of salvation characteristic of evangelicalism and placed more emphasis on the benefits procured by us in Christ's death, than on Christ and His passion itself.

I am not altogether opposed to the church doing that sort of thing, as I believe there is room for some diversity in how we express our worship to God. However, I do wonder why we appropriate a mish-mash of liturgical practices without appropriating the tradition those practices properly belong to. Evangelicalism’s non-committal nature has tended towards this sort of thing. Churches pick and choose the elements they like from various traditions, but do so without aligning themselves with that tradition. A prime example of this was the Emergent movement, which wanted to recover some of the flavor of the ancient Church, but in some cases rejected or shied away from the orthodox theology that belonged to the ancient tradition.

Perhaps this is even more of a problem in a Presbyterian church, such as I belong to. This church already belongs to a specific, historical tradition. Are we questioning the value of our Presbyterianism by adopting these different practices, and in doing so implying that our tradition is not quite good enough and needs to be supplemented with these other elements? R. Scott Clark, in his recent book, Recovering the Reformed Confession, argues that the Reformed tradition not only has its own doctrine and piety, but a specific practice as well. There are points at which I disagree with him on the details, but his overall point stands. Being a part of such a tradition, can we properly adopt a variety of practices from differing traditions without compromising our own? My gut reaction is to say we can’t.

Additionally, it seems to me that we adopt a posture of arrogance when we do this. In the case of the Stations of the Cross, we have taken a Roman Catholic tradition, removed many of the Roman Catholic distinctives, and infused it with characteristics that would cater more to our evangelical sensibilities while attempting to retain the mystic nature of the practice. In effect, we are saying that we can appreciate a centuries-old Roman Catholic tradition so long as we alter it to fit into our own mold. Granted, there are not many Roman Catholic practices that would fit in a Presbyterian church given the discrepancy in the theology and practice of these two traditions. But does that make our adoption and remodeling of it right? Again, my gut reaction is to say it isn’t.

These are just musings. My biggest concern is with the way we are so quick to jump at the chance to use certain elements of worship without fully understanding them or where they come from. In effect, we treat them as a sort of novelty. Whether our appropriation of these various elements without their accompanying traditions is done of out an innocent sort of ignorance, or worse, a brazen rejection of the original intention of the practice, on either level we demonstrate a great deal of disrespect to that tradition.

Perhaps more significant, though, is that we then devalue our own tradition. In modern evangelical churches, especially those linked to a specific denomination and tradition, I think it is fair to say that most of the members of such churches do not have a healthy awareness and appreciation of their tradition. In this case, I would tend to think that appropriating different aspects of other traditions has the potential to be injurious to cultivating a posture of respect for one's own historical tradition.

All that being said, I'm not really sure what to think about it. I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on this.

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An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical & Global Perspectives is the 2002 book by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, and it does exactly what you would think a book with that title would do--it offers a survey of some of the major ecclesiological perspectives within the Church. It does so relatively well, although on some points Kärkkäinen's analysis falls short or is misguided. His chapter on Reformed ecclesiology, for example, contains some misunderstandings of that tradition and, I think mistakenly, offers the ecclesiology of Karl Barth as the sort of archetypal understanding of the Church in the Reformed tradition. Additionally, despite being a survey of ecclesiology, he is quite biased toward Free Church ecclesiologies (those lacking distinctive structure) and critical of traditional structures established by the original Protestant Reformers. However, he later maintains that it is important for Pentecostal and Charismatic churches to work on developing some sort of structure.

Still, the book has strengths, and Kärkkäinen's chapter on the ecclesiology of the Roman Catholic Church is one of those strengths. He makes note of the significance and importance of the Second Vatican Council for the Catholic understanding of the Church specifically as it is laid out in the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium ("Light of the Nations," or the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church). Having read that document for a class in my senior year of college, I am well-acquainted with its significance for Catholicism. Most notably, the new understanding of the Church that emerges from Vatican II replaces the Church as "the old societas perfecta, [under an] institutional-hierarchic ecclesiology, with the dynamic 'people of God' notion" (Kärkkäinen, 28). As such, the Church is now understood as "a sign and instrument...of communion with God and of the unity of all human beings" (Lumen Gentium, 1).

Historically, as noted briefly above, ecclesiology in the Catholic tradition focused largely on the hierarchy. In 1906, Pope Pius X declared that the Church is "essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the Pastors and the flock...so distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members towards that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors" (Vehementer Nos, 8). Vatican II overturned a great deal of this understanding and gave new life to the idea that the Church is the whole people of God and an equal society.

A further development of this more robust ecclesiology is a broader understanding of the local church, brought out by Michael Fahey in his chapter on the ecclesiology in Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives. He writes:

The Church is one because of the indwelling of the one Holy Spirit in all the baptized; it is holy because it is set apart by God's graciousness for the reception of a mysterious love of predilection; it is catholic in the original sense of the word, meaning that it is whole and entire, possessing all the parts needed to make it integral; and it is apostolic because it remains in continuity in essentials with the original witnessing of the first-century apostles...Catholics are often inclined to apply these descriptive characteristics only to the worldwide, universal church, yet they are beginning to learn...that these characteristics are meant to apply just as truly to the local church (43).

This has renewed the sense of communion in the Catholic Church--communion referring not to the Eucharist, but to the the communal life of the people of the Church in reflection of the communal life of the Trinity. Naturally, the sacramental nature of the Catholic Church plays a role in this understanding of communion, but I will not get into that at this point. More important to note here is that part of this conception of communion is rooted in the idea of κοινωνία (koinonia), the Greek word most often translated as "fellowship" or "communion" (cf. the notion of koinonia mentioned specifically in Acts 2:42, and spoken of in a number Paul's letters). As such, Catholic theologians like Karl Rahner have placed a great deal of emphasis on allowing the Spirit to work within the Church. Rahner notes that "if the Church is founded in the sovereign action of the Spirit...it means that the Church cannot be understood or defined from a point within the Church itself but rather from outside, from the Spirit of God" (Kärkkäinen, 33).

Finally, what is important in this revised Catholic ecclesiology is the emphasis on ecumenism. Pope John Paul II, who played an instrumental role in the drafting of Lumen Gentium, saw it as absolutely necessary that this new perspective on the Church include a significant stress on ecumenical considerations, as he outlines in his 1995 encyclical, Ut Unum Sint ("That They May Be One"). If the Church is to be understood as the communion of the people of God, this includes those outside of the Catholic Church. John Paul II was one of the foremost figures in working towards ecumenical relations with other bodies of Christians. He writes that the unity of Christians "is not just some sort of 'appendix'" attached to the end of a description of the life of the Church, but instead "is an organic part of her life and work, and consequently must pervade all that she is and does" (Ut Unum Sint, 20). Of course, John Paul II's understanding of ecumenism was qualified with the caveat that there can be no true unity without the primacy of the Bishop of Rome over the Church, but nonetheless, has led to some remarkable practical implications in recent history.

Like John Paul II, it is important to me that we seek the unity of the Church. I know that the body of Christ is divided to great extents, and that many will decry any ecumenical efforts as entirely fruitless. However, difficult as it may be, that does not negate our task to pursue it. In John 17, we read the record of Jesus' prayer before he is arrested in which he places a great deal of emphasis on this unity. Paul also talks about it at length (see Eph. 4:1-16).

So, if you are wondering why I use this space to include a discussion on Catholic ecclesiology, I hope that by now the reasons have become more clear. I am not a Catholic myself, but I am aware that there are a great deal of misunderstandings within Protestantism as to what Catholics believe. We hold a lot of unfair and unwarranted stereotypes because of our ignorance. Many Protestants are not aware of how monumental of an event Vatican II was for Catholic theology and how it has transformed the Catholic Church. It is important that we do. Before we can engage in any ecumenical efforts, it is essential to understand the perspectives of one another on issues like ecclesiology. A lot has happened since the time of the Reformation, and many of us do not know a great deal about each other. However, it is crucial that we do, and therein lies the rationale for posts like this.

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There is a lot of great material out there on the TED.com website, and if you have some time to spare in order to fill your head with some big, important questions and to consider a lot of different issues relating to science, technology, and culture, then you ought to take a look at the site. I recently listened to this talk by Barry Schwartz, who is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA. Here he addresses one of the central tenants in Western culture and society—the notion of freedom of choice.

I think it is fair to say that most of us think freedom of choice is a good thing. But interestingly, Schwartz suggests that perhaps it is not and we need to think about the deeper implications of having the magnitude of options that we do. Ultimately, he argues, having the ability to choose almost anything does not make us happier or more satisfied, but instead causes despair and anxiety. Watch the video here and listen to what he has to say.

If you recall, a number of weeks ago I posted a list of suggestions for resisting the impacts of modernity, part of which, in essence, urged us to not yield to this plethora of choices and instead to limit ourselves in some ways. After listening to Schwartz and thinking about it some more, I am more persuaded that having less options is a better thing. You might recall what Henry Ford famously said when the Model T went into production: "You can have any color you want, so long as it is black." Ford thus limited the choices to his costumers, and the Model T went on to be one of the best-selling cars in history. This is certainly not the case today, however. While in the early 20th century Ford may have limited consumer choices on their vehicles, they do not do that today anymore. One television advertisement states that their F-series pickup trucks can be configured in almost three billion different ways. Our choices are seemingly endless. Admittedly, I have very little economic knowledge, but I do know that here again we are presented with a significant societal problem when we let economics drive everything. I think what Schwartz is suggesting here is that our free market is perhaps not so liberating after all.

Schwartz does not address it, and I am not sure if he has a faith commitment, but from my standpoint I would extend his discussion of this issue to the Church where, in relatively recent history, we have also seen the element of choice become so prevalent. We have more than thirty-thousand denominations throughout the world. Churches hold four services on a Sunday morning with four different flavors of worship so that each member can find a style they like. Our cars are the ticket to going to any church we want to within a reasonable distance if we are dissatisfied with another one. This level of choice can, on the one hand, overwhelm us in a number of different ways, and on the other hand, fosters a serious lack of committment to the local church.

Often I have wondered how things would be different if the churches I have been a part of operated in a manner similar to the Catholic parish system. That is, if you live within a certain geographical area, you attend the church within that parish. This, of course, is a limitation in choice, but has numerous benefits. For one, it saves you from what can often be a very difficult task of finding a church to attend. But secondly, it works very well to build the type of community that is supposed to exist within the body of Christ.

Listen to what Schwartz has to say and think about the issue for yourself. I am by no means stating anything definitively here, and would like to hear your thoughts on this.

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