Trickle-down Christianity: where medieval integralism went wrong

Henri de Lubac:

It is from within that grace seizes nature, and, far from diminishing nature, raises it up, in order to make it serve its (grace’s) own ends. It is from within that faith transforms reason, that the Church influences the state. As the messenger of Christ, the Church is not the guardian of the state; on the contrary she ennobles the state, inspiring it to be a Christian state and thereby more human.

Integralism did not go wrong after Constantine and the Germanic chieftains were converted, bringing their lands and peoples into and under the Church. The problem started with the very act of seeking to convert a people through converting the leader and the elites, and through them to transform society into the City of God. This form of evangelism, if it “succeeds”, leads to the situation of being a Christian leader of a non-Christian people. Because state neutrality with respect to religion is neither possible nor desirable, this leads Christians to attempt to transform society from without, rather than from within.

Attempts to re-Christianize America through evangelizing “the city” (that is, the gentrifying urban elites) will similarly fail, even if they “succeed”. Similarly, attempts to re-Christianize America through the court system are also misguided. Both attempts, whether through cultural power or legal power, are ultimately recapitulations of the Judaizer Heresy, which failed to realize that the power of the Gospel transforms from within, giving each person and society a new heart with the Law written on it, a heart that is capable of love spontaneously, rather than one that requires imposition through law.

This and not that

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.

And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.

But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No”; anything more than this comes from evil.

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.

Rend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Marriage: female submission or mutual submission?

Some passages talks about the wife submitting to the husband, while another passage talks about both husband and wife submitting to each other. What can we conclude from this? There are to possible guiding contexts, corresponding to egalitarianism and complementarianism, respectively:

1. Some passages forbid both sexual immorality and drunkenness. Other passages forbid only sexual morality. But both are equally forbidden, and forbidden in the same sense. The presence and omission of each precept was based on the context: which precept the audience needed to hear. Similarly, both husband and wife ought to submit to each other in the same sense, yet wifely submission was enjoined especially because it needed to be heard.

2. The two commands about submission take place in two different textual contexts. And in these two textual contexts, submission takes on two related but different meanings. Therefore the husband’s submission to the wife is very different than the wife’s submission to the husband.

I’m not sure what I think about egalitarianism vs complementarianism in general. But on this particular question, it seems that both contextual differences are true, which means that the correct interpretation is somewhere in the middle.

Protestantism, Democracy, and the Dunning-Kruger effect

C. S. Lewis wrote:

When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget but as an ideal we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies. It will kill us all if it grows unchecked. The man who cannot conceive a joyful and loyal obedience on the one hand, nor an unembarrassed and noble acceptance of that obedience on the other, the man who has never even wanted to kneel or to bow, is a prosaic barbarian.

[…]

Every intrusion of the spirit that says “I’m as good as you” into our personal and spiritual life is to be resisted just as jealously as every intrusion of bureaucracy or privilege into our politics. Hierarchy within can alone preserve egalitarianism without. Romantic attacks on democracy will come again. We shall never be safe unless we already understand in our hearts all that the anti-democrats can say, and have provided for it better than they.

This spirit that says “I’m as good as you,” is in my opinion endemic to both Protestantism and Democracy as ideologies. Not all Protestants and not all people who support democracy are afflicted with this disease, but resistance towards acknowledging hierarchies of knowledge and virtue has become a core value of both movements. Resistance to hierarchies of virtue leads both to resistance towards recognizing Saints and also to the idea that “all sins are equal.” Fortunately, this is impulse is limited by obvious intuitive realities.

Resistance to hierarchies of knowledge, on the other hand, has reached pandemic proportions. There’s even a name for this: the Dunning-Kruger effect!

Knowing God is an NP-complete problem

St. Anselm writes,

I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand.

Each of us finds certain revealed truths to be incomprehensible and paradoxical. The proper response is to believe, and then work backwards to a better apprehension. Thus, we face what is (roughly) an NP-complete problem. Locating the solution is very hard, but once it has been located the solution can be verified much more easily. Faith is the assent of the will that allows us to make the leap to the solution. But we should not be satisfied with having the (unverified) solution. So Anselm also writes,

Faith seeks understanding.

For I see through her eyes

For I see through her eyes, the Eyes of God to shine, and through her lips I hear His words. In each of her hands as she raises them to bless, I see the wounds that dripped on Calvary, and her feet upon her Altar stairs are signed with the same marks as those which the Magdalene kissed. As she comforts me in the confessional I hear the voice that bade the sinner go and sin no more; and as she rebukes or pierces me with blame I shrink aside trembling with those who went out one by one, beginning with the eldest, till Jesus and the penitent were left alone. As she cries her invitation through the world I hear the same ringing claim as that which called, “Come unto me and find rest to your souls.”

– Robert Hugh Benson

Sacramental time and the liturgical calendar

Hans Boersma, writing in Heavenly Participation, says:

 

Congar observes that, for Aquinas, the sacraments had a threefold reference: they referred to Christ’s own redemptive acts, which were active in the sacraments (past reference); to eternal life as the sacraments’ aim (future reference); and to the effect that the sacraments have in our lives (present reference). Congar then makes it clear that he believes that, according to the Christian understanding, time itself is sacramental in character:

Thus the sacraments have a peculiar temporal duration, in which past, present, and future are not mutually exclusive, as in chronological time. Sacramental time, the time of the Church, allows the sharing by men who follow each other through the centuries in an event which is historically unique and which took place at a distant time; this sharing is achieved not merely on the intellectual level, as I could commune with Plato’s thought, or with the death of Socrates, but in the presence and action of the mystery of salvation. (Tradition and Traditions, p. 260)

For Congar, “sacramental time” or “the time of the Church” means that past, present, and future can coincide. As a result, people from different historical eras can participate or share in the same event.

God uses the cyclic nature of the liturgical calendar to reveal this truth to us. In astrophysics, a wormhole is a loop in the fabric of space. This shortcut connects point A and point B, which would otherwise be far apart, so that they are nearby. Similarly, while year 2017 and year 0 are far apart, Advent 2017 and Advent 0 become close to us, through the temporal wormhole of sacramental time. In mathematics, particularly number theory, modular arithmetic is a system in which integers “wrap around” like the arms on a clock. Two numbers a and b are congruent modulo n if they have the same remainder after being divided by n. For example, we have

359 × 2017 = 724,103 ≡ 359 (modulo 365).

Similarly, Christmas Day 0 AD and Christmas Day 2017 AD have a sacramental congruence, made available to us through the liturgical calendar. This was all part of God’s plan from the beginning:

And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.

God’s righteousness and ours: Trent and Augustine

The Council of Trent says:

The alone formal cause [of justification] is the justice of God, not that whereby He Himself is just, but that whereby He maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we being endowed by Him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just, receiving justice within us, each one according to his own measure, which the Holy Ghost distributes to every one as He wills, and according to each one’s proper disposition and co-operation.

St. Augustine says:

This then is the righteousness of God. As it is called, The Lord’s salvation, not whereby the Lord is saved, but which He gives to them whom He saves; so too the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord is called the righteousness of God, not as that whereby the Lord is righteous, but whereby He justifies those whom of ungodly He makes righteous.

The quote from Trent is Session 6, Chapter 7, while the quote from Augustine is his Sermon 131 (counted as Sermon 81 in Eerdman’s) on the text of John 6:53.

Asymmetry in grace and predestination

Aquinas attributed rejection of God to the action of man, but the acceptance of God to the grace of God. Calvinists have a problem with this: “If people who reject God and go to hell do it because of their own free choice, this implies that people who accept God and go to heaven do it because of their own free choice.” Therefore, the real reason for the difference in outcome must be attributed to man, not to God; the Calvinist quite rightly cannot accept such a conclusion, so he wrongly attribute both outcomes to the action of God.

Arminians have the opposite problem: “If people who reject God do it because of the grace of God, then those who reject God do it because God did not give them sufficient grace to accept God.” Therefore, the real reason for the former outcome must be God; the Arminian quite rightly cannot accept this conclusion, so he wrongly attributes both outcomes to the action of man.

But there is no logical need for symmetry because God can work differently with different people. God is perfectly capable of working asymmetrically among different people. Asymmetry only feels problematic if we begin think about it in terms of a counterfactual for a single person.

1. But counterfactuals don’t make sense in the context of God’s decree for an individual, because each person is a monad. If God’s ultimate predestining will for a person were different, we would be talking about a different person altogether. A person across all time, including eternity, is one thing.
2. Counterfactuals (middle knowledge) in general might not actually exist.

Of what sort we are whom God loves

God loves us for what we shall be by his gift, and not by our own deserving. – Council of Orange

In loving each one of us, God doesn’t zoom out and look on the Church as a community, only loving us for being part of a bigger, more worthy whole. In loving us, God doesn’t just pan away and focus on Jesus, to avoid disappointing Himself with the sight of us. Rather, God zooms in on each of us, already seeing in us the true perfect persons in glory whom He is making each of us into.