St. Bartholomew's Day - Claude Goudimel

Today the 24th of August 2008 is the 436th anniversary of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. As is my tradition, I like to post a little remembrance of what happened on that day, a day too often forgotten by us all. So far we have talked about the massacre in general. We have talked of its most famous victims Admiral Coligny and Peter Ramus. We have talked about a few other martyrs along with those who denied the faith to live. We have even talked about God’s mercy in the massacre. Today I would like to remember another martyr.

His name is Claude Goudimel. His exact age is unknown, but we do know he studied music at the University of Paris. He was an accomplished musician and musical theorist. Around 1560 he converted to Protestantism. He was forced to move several times on account of persecution and the many wars that France fought about religion. Finally, he settled in Lyon. Goudimel helped with the Genevan Psalter. He put the Psalter of Marot in four-part harmony. He even put the melody in the highest voice. That is the common practice now, but was at that time rare and revolutionary. He wrote other things as well of course including secular music. He was well known and renowned and not just in France. Goudimel was not a pastor. He was a musician. Yet, he was targeted and murdered during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre for no other reason than the fact that he was Reformed.

Now, the reason I chose Goudimel this year is to draw our attention to a fact that is often lost in the discussions of this atrocity. Goudimel did not die on the 24th of August 1572. Instead, he died four to seven days later. You see, sometimes I fear we think of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre as a riot that was just driven by passion and emotion. Or that sometimes we think a mob hunted people in the street for a day and maybe two. This is not the case. The Massacre was a drawn out and well plotted event by the Queen-Mother and her catholic allies the Guises. De Medici the Queen Mother sent letters a head of time to the governors of the realm instructing them to kill the Protestants and that it would start with the death of Coligny on the morning of the 24th. The hunt was to continue not just a day, but until they were all killed. While I have no doubt that a lot of passion was poured out during this blood bath, it was nevertheless a cold blooded affair. Goudimel was hunted down after several days of killing. He was hunted not in Paris, but in Lyon. He was no where near the wedding ceremony or Coligny. He had no court influence, and was not known to be a trouble maker in politics. Yet, he was known to be a Protestant, and so when they found him at least four days after Coligny was beheaded, they took Goudimel’s life too.

On this day then let us remember Claude Goudimel and the others who fell for the gospel in France 436 years ago. Remembering that the depth of our devotion should extend to even giving our lives. While we pray it will not be required of us, let us be willing to give it freely.

Peace and Argumentation

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3)

This is a very misused verse these days. I do not think that the real meaning is mysterious. In fact, I think Paul spells out the bond of peace in the following verses where he speaks about having one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one body, one Spirit, one hope and one God and Father. I do think Paul is urging brothers and sisters in Christ to bear with one another in love and patience. This is true and not really debatable.

Where I think this verse is misused is that it has become a rallying cry to end conversation, to stop talking and let ‘peace’ reign. The problem is that Paul is saying that peace reigns where the oneness of Christianity reigns. However, if we cannot agree on the ‘one faith’ or the ‘one hope’ or even the ‘one Lord’ then there is no peace. None. The history of the church is littered with times that people used the cry of peace to stop discussion and before you know it, unbelief wins the day. Because peace cannot exist outside of those bonds Paul describes. In the 1920’s the Presbyterian church tried to have peace and the next thing you know the church is kicking people out that think Christians need to believe in the Bible or that Mary was a virgin and many other things. The ‘one faith’ is now optional and those who did not think so were removed. That same Presbyterian Church (USA) is going through similar things now. An accord had been struck between the pro-homosexual minister group and the anti-homosexual minister group. A peace if you will. Then what happens? The pro-homosexual group makes a big power play and there is little left for the conservative branch of the church left to do but leave. The fight is over and won because they tried to pretend bonds of peace existed where the ‘one faith’ did not. Just to show that I am not picking on any one church, I think my denomination, the RCUS, did the same thing in the late 19th century.

I point this out because of a discussion that happened recently on Reformed Catholicism. It began with a quote from A.B. Bruce about how “very humiliating” it is that “the symbol of union has been turned into a chief cause of division” of course referencing debates about the Lord’s Supper. Yet, there are denominations or religions out there that teach a version of the Supper that denies our ‘one faith’, and our ‘one hope’. The Supper is not our symbol of union with those who deny the complete efficacy of Christ’s death on the cross. Why should we try to have peace with those who deny the bonds of peace? Peace is not something we create. Peace is not the absence of talking or discussion or some visible unity of being in the same church building or eating the same meal. Peace is found in the things listed by Paul. Without those there is no peace no matter how much we may avoid discussing the hard things.

It is hard to imagine the trouble the church has caused by silencing itself in hopes of a peace that does not exist. If you want to make a Christian mad today and have him stomp off, try discussing your ‘one hope’ or the doctrine of our ‘one baptism’. Doctrine divides they scream as they shut their ears. We have mistaken peace for the absence of argumentation and discussion. A serious error.

John Robbins

John Robbins of the Trinity Foundation, passed away. He was not well liked because of his polemical style and nature. And I have to admit sometimes his rhetoric was over the top and his tendency to blame Van Til for everything put off more than a few. However, Robbins was a Christian leader and thinker. He is too often pigeon holed as that polemical man who annoyed a lot of people. His short little pamphlet on Philemon is excellent and shows that Robbins could deal with Biblical texts. If you have not read his critique of Doug Wilson entitled Not Reformed At All then you have not read everything you should. His works on economics were stellar, and his chore of reprinting Gordon Clark too often goes unappreciated. I have little worry in saying that Robbins has left the church militant and joined the church triumphant. So put aside anything you have heard about the man. Go get a few of his works and read them. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

My prayers will be with his friends and family.

Response to Sandlin's De-Intellectualization Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

Sandlin response part 3

Another important thing to notice in Andrew Sandlin’s article is the latent episcopacy in his thought. Sandlin is in effect arguing for bishops despite the objection to such leaders on the surface. His article starts off commenting on a response to a book written by Carl Trueman. Trueman makes the following criticism of the book Young Restless and Reformed and the movement associated with that title.

First, there is the absence of the church at key points. Now, this criticism needs to be nuanced. All of those mentioned above are churchmen, and none would wish to see their conferences or their personalities becoming in some way substitutes for the institutional church. Yet the danger is always there whereby people become attached to the man rather than to the message or to the church. We are commanded to love the body of Christ; and our leaders are useful only to the extent that they are instrumental to that end.

Sandlin seems to agree with this attack, but feels it does not go far enough. This is when he launches into the his idea about the need for intellectuals and the lack of them in the list of people in this movement. Again note the criticism is that the leaders of this movement may draw a cult of personality rather than draw people into the body of Christ despite the fact that most of the leaders named by Trueman are by his own admission churchmen and pastors.

Sandlin gives a list of people that were leaders of the Reformed ‘Movement’ when he came into it, who were all intellectuals.

Greg Bahnsen, Donald Bloesch, Gordon Clark, John Frame, John Gerstner, J. I. Packer, R. J. Rushdoony, Francis Schaeffer, Cornelius Van Til.

Note these leaders: Bahnsen was ordained, but never a pastor a church as far as I can see. Bloesch taught at a school for his entire career (E&R and UCC if you are interested). Clark was a professor at Wheaton and Butler for most of his career. Frame is a professor for Westminster for most of his career and is currently at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. Gerstner was a professor at Pittsburgh Theological and Knox Theological Seminaries. J. I. Packer is a professor most recently of Regent College in Canada, and never appears to have pastored a church. Francis Schaeffer was a pastor for about 10 years, but is most famous for his work at L’Abri, not his work in a pastorate. Cornelius Van Til was yet another life long professor. He taught at Princeton and Westminster Seminaries. R. J. Rushdoony is an exception as he served as a pastor and a missionary; however, he is again best known for his work as a philosopher and writer.

The point here is this. The very objection made by Trueman and expanded upon by Sandlin can be applied to Sandlin himself. Trueman warns against a cult of personality that will end up with follower of man and not followers of Christ implanted into his church. Trueman makes this critique of men who currently pastor churches like John Piper, Ligon Duncan, and Mark Driscoll. Sandlin feels the critique does not apply to the men of his generation like Bahnsen and Van Til, but why? The reason is because they are the intellectuals, and the current crop of men are not. The critique of having a personality cult does not apply to Van Til, Bahnsen, Clark, and Schaeffer because they taught other people ideas and intellectual innovative ideas (according to Sandlin), and they did not ‘shepherd’ (we have seen what Sandlin thinks of that)

I am not saying that Sandlin is against pastors or against the local church. By no means. But, I am saying that Sandlin clearly believes that the leaders of church as a whole ought to be above that. His argumentation appears that way. Here he is in his own words:

We now have in their [see the above list] stead Mark Driscoll, Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Joshua Harris, Tim Keller, C. J. Mahaney, Albert Mohler, and R. C Sproul — popularizers and pastors and effective leaders, but not intellectuals.

Sandlin then seems to think the church is only "a virile, creative, living, world-engaging intellectual force" when it is led by intellectuals who are not pastors. What other way is there to describe this than episcopacy? He may not want the actual church hierarchy to go with it, but effectively he wants a bishopric of the Teacher of the Theology. Only under their guidance and leadership can the church then become effective. Sandlin is actively arguing that the church needs Intellectual Bishops to led the church in a direction that will make it an effective force in the world.

This is neither the time nor the place to argue presbyterian from of church government, but it is the time to point out what Sandlin argues for. He is not really against personality cults. He is just against them if the personalities are pastor popularizers.

Sandlin response part 2

Part 1

The next thing I want to point out about Sandlin’s article, The De-Intellectualization of the Reformed Movement, is the complete and utter lack of respect if not out right contempt for the “pastor”. Sandlin is arguing for more giant intellectuals, and that is okay to want giant intellectuals, public intellectuals, but it is not okay to spurn the pastors of the church in the process. This statement is the first hint that something is amiss.

We were not "shepherded" into the movement; we were tractor-beamed into it by the force of ideas.

I do believe that some people come to the Reformed faith because of the consistency of it logically, or because they see the ‘force of ideas’ that are coming out of it. But does that mean we should mock or put scare quotes around those who were ‘shepherded’ into the Reformed church? Certainly not. Can we not minister to people in different ways? Not everyone is the same. I do not need to prove that the Bible favors shepherding people. That really ought to go without saying.

The critique from Sandlin gets more specific in his last section entitled, ‘The Pastoralization’. That entire section is a derision of pastors. Sandlin means to specifically attack the modern leaders of the Reformed Church who are in his mind Pastors or popularizers, but his attack reveals more than that.

The pastoral concerns — concerns, to be sure, from a Reformed perspective — will predominate. The life of the mind will be pushed to the periphery. Calvinism will be reduced to the institutional church, to the "5 Points," to devotional books, to seventeenth-century reprints. It will become therapeutic recovery for exhausted and jaded Arminians. What it will not be is a virile, creative, living, world-engaging intellectual force.

While it is nice he admits pastoral concerns are nice, he separates completely the pastoral concerns from the life of the mind. And this is how I think his attack goes to far. If he thinks that Popularizers are not good for the church as a whole fine. But this attack is not upon popularizing the message. The only fragment of a sentence that can be seen as an attack on popularizing is the ‘5 Points’ comment, which he explained earlier was a term of derision for those that over simplify Calvinism. Devotional material cannot be seen as bad. Should not leaders produce devotional material. Should not pastors be devotional? Is teaching others to be devotional a bad thing? Is it a good thing that Sandlin approves of intellectual leaders who could not write a devotional book if their life depended upon it? I do not think so. I can agree that the church should not be mainly a place of recovery for jaded Arminians, but how can one object to the church being a refuge for such people? I am not sure, but Sandlin appears to object. His comment about the 17th century reprints actual belongs in his earlier paragraph, and his attack on the institutional church is just confusing? Should we be encouraging the non-institutional church? What is it that we do not like about churches? One can only assume it is because they are too ‘pastoral.’

Sandlin then continues his assualt and goes overboard once again.

We should not be surprised that this reduction of Calvinism should occur in a deeply postmodern age — an age that eschews rigorous thinking and sharp distinctions, that delights in "community" and warm emotions, that craves not truth but "relationships." In this way, despite their antipathy to postmodernism, the new non-public intellectual pastoral Calvinists reflect a concession to today’s "postmodern turn."

Now it is true that post-modernism hates truth and prefers relationships. But does that mean that relationships and truth are really against one another? No, of course not. The church can have both, and should have both. Of course intellectual leaders and book writing can only have truth and has nothing to do with relationships or community. However, the bible has different views. We are commanded to come together and worship and not neglect the communion of the saints so that we can provoke one another to good works (Hebrews 10:24-25). It seems the author of Hebrews believes that relationships and community provoke people to good works in their life. Their life in the world. Sandlin of course disagrees:

How can we have a virile, creative, living, world-engaging intellectual force when we lack virile, creative, living, world-engaging intellectuals

Again Hebrews seems to answer this question at least in part with community and relationships. Sandlin thinks such ‘pastoralization’ a bad idea.

Sandlin's De-Intellectualization: A Response Part I

Andrew Sandlin has written a blog called, The De-Intellectualization of the Reformed Movement. It is a piece that deserves attention and probably will receive several responses from me at least because of the many things within it that deserve full treatment by all men.

I do want to say right off the top that I am not against intellectuals or the church having rigorous thinking. I think Sandlin and I would define intellectual very differently, but I understand and appreciate his point that the church needs serious thinkers to interact with the culture at large.

That being said, I disagree with almost everything else said in the blog/article. Let us start with what everyone is expecting me to say: this is pure blooded theological development. I have long thought Sandlin is the most honest and up-front about his holding to theological development that is similar to Schaff. Sandlin again makes that clear here. He starts it in the very title by making sure he always refers to it as the Reformed Movement rather than Reformed Theology or the Reformed Church or the Reformed Tradition. All of that is pushed aside so that we know to be truly reformed means to be moving into new theological ideas all the time. He praises the idea of theologians doing ‘paradematic science’ which he defines as:

"Paradigmatic science," on the other hand, is a landscape-altering scholarship that rearranges the scholarly data into a new model or way of looking.

What Sandlin advocates is a completely new way of looking at the Bible or at Christ or the world through Christ or something. He leaves it a little unclear, but what he misses is the people who took Christianity and jumbled it up, changed it up, twisted it up, and said "here a new theology." To Sandlin that is the heritage of the Reformation. I could not disagree more. Sandlin goes on to bemoan the fact that

The latter [Van Til, Rushdoony, among others], creative thinkers, were, in one way or another, reshaping the theological landscape. The former [Scott Clark, Lig Duncan among others], plodding thinkers, are today trying to get the landscape back to what it looked like before the creative interlopers came along and messed up the lawn.

Sandlin glorifies the ‘creative thinker’ as if the Bible needs to be viewed creatively. If we need to reshape what the Bible teaches every generation or maybe even more often. When we see this love of theological development in Sandlin, it becomes easy to see how this undergirds the modern movements toward Theonomy and why so many theonomists continued on into the Federal Vision. And one can see why Norman Shepherd is beloved. They crave the new. Anyone who comes along and preaches a new way of doing ‘Christianity’ will be the champion. Those who desire something new will continue to move with any new thing because the newness is itself a good virtue. Not following new things is a sad misplaced staleness which Sandlin insults as plodding thinking. He continues his backhanded assault.

First, the bright younger leaders, lacking the intellectual firepower of their immediate predecessors, retrench in a scholastic orthodoxy, taking refuge in the older confessions, wary of the speculation, innovation and daring that characterized those predecessors and committing themselves to policing the ranks of all heterodoxies — real or imagined.

Listen to the insults and see what he is actually insulting. Yes, he is insulting everyone who is not following some new trend and some people are specifically named. But look at what else he insults. "They take refuge in the older confessions". The confessions themselves are insults. Who would want to cling to such ‘old’ (read ‘outdated’) relics. Only the wimps, the intellectual lightweights. The confessions are not good because they do not speculate, change, and innovate. This is very much like Nevin’s comment that they are a ‘necessary evil’. Once people use creeds to hold on to they have missed the point and become intellectual lightweights.

Where oh where do we see the Bible speak like this? Does the Bible invite us to innovate or does it say that it can be understood now and forever. "And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And the flower falls away, But the word of the Lord endures forever." (I Peter 2:24-25). Does the meaning of the Bible change or does it endure as a timeless truth to be held by all?
I cannot but help but think of Jeremiah 6:16, "Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein."

More to come

Sectarianism?

This quote from James Jordan says it all.

“The sectarian compares the weakness of other churches to his own supposed strength, and pronounces them apostate on that basis. The catholic notes the weakness of other churches, and because of that tries to work with them, and prays for them. The sectarian thinks history has ended; the catholic realizes that it has not. (If anything, by the way, ‘postmillennialists’ should be even more flexibly catholic than others, because they believe that history has a long way to go, and that theology and ecclesiology will be developing for centuries to come.)”
- James Jordan, The Sociology of the Church, pg. 59

I took this quote from The Liturgical Institute.

The sentence in the parenthesis is what needs pointing out the most. Theology and ecclesiology will be developing for centuries to come! That is a bold statement. Let me boil it down. It basically means that
1) James Jordan knows that Christ will not return for centuries to come, 2) that everything we know about Christ, the Trinity, salvation, the church, and the Bible are all wrong, 3) we need to be willing to jump on whatever new fad comes along.

Call me sectarian if you like, but that is clearly what he is saying. Some might come along and try to paint theological development as like ‘organic’ growth or ‘aging’ growth. They like to use the comparison of math. They argue as follows: ‘When you are young all you know is 2+2=4. But soon you learn division and then geometry and maybe even a little calculus. That never invalidates 2+2=4, but builds upon it.’ That is a nice try at a defense, but it is wrong. The whole idea of theological development is not based on a math model, but on Hegel’s dialectic model. Where the thesis and the antithesis make a new synthesis. The original thesis and antithesis are now both wrong. They are not built upon, they are left behind. So it is with theological development. The more honest thinkers will admit that (see Philip Schaff), but that is hard to come by today. The other reason the analogy with math breaks down is because of the nature of theology. Justification by Faith Alone is invalidated if add works to it. It is no longer justification by faith alone. One can change the definition of the word ‘faith’ or the word ‘alone’, but it still invalidates the original claim, and it does not build upon it.

I am tired of people telling me that the church is ignorant and needs a few centuries to grow up. The truth is the truth yesterday, today, and forever.

Competing Visions

I was fascinated by the difference between a couple of Conservative visions for America’s future that I came across. The two visions are Grover Norquist’s and Judge Andrew Napolitano’s. Norquist lays out a very positive and hopeful vision of an America who is coming around to the conservative way of thinking in his book Leave Us Aloneand Napolitano spreads doom and gloom in The Constitution in Exile (his other book Constituional Chaos is similar).

There are some differences in approach that might explain the difference in vision for America’s future. Norquist takes a shorter historical glance backward. He mainly talks of how far America has come since FDR and LBJ. Napolitano looks all the way back to the Founding Fathers and shows how the Constitution is now universally ignored. Napolitano does also focus more on the Supreme Court. He spends equal time on all three branches in his book, but Norquist says very little about the Supreme Court in his book. Norquist instead focuses on the elected positions. The liberal nature of the Supreme Court and its left leaning decisions could cause one to have a more negative outlook on the future of the country.

The two books are a fascinating glimpse in the Conservative mindset, and current status. Norquist is focused on the endless possibilities if the Republican Party would just preach the message of the ‘Leave Us Alone Coalition’. He has endless numbers and arguments to back up his assertions that the American publc at large would rather be left alone. He does this for guns, family, taxes, education, religion, and a few other things. Norquist is full invested in the two party system and practicalities of winning elections. For him the Leave Us Alone Coalition is the Republican Party and the Takings Coalition is the Democratic Party. He lays out his blueprint for electoral success, which does call for some changes in how the Republican Party runs things, and makes his arguments in favor of it. Napolitano has some figures and numbers, but is not really interested in winning elections, but seem rather to be raising the alarm bell. Rather than quoting numbers all the time, he cites specific examples, usually of court cases. He gives concrete examples of times the Patriot Act has been used to prosecute child pornography and copy write infringement rather than terrorists. Napolitano is short on help and long on misery. He does provide a short chapter at the end suggesting some changes that might stop the ignoring of the Constitution. Sadly, his suggestions were all amendments to the Constitution to clarify it. Of course if the meaning is ignored now, will clarifying it really solve the problem, or will it just continue to be ignored?

In the end, I believe Napolitano has it right. The Republican Party is worthless as it is currently structured. Norquist is so caught up in the Republican Party that he cannot see what is really going on. He criticizes McCain in the early parts of the book, but the book as a whole ends up clearly calling people to stick with the Republicans, even McCain who signed some pledge about taxes. Despite the evidence to the contrary Norquist blindly trusts that the Republican Party will return to their roots of the ‘Leave us Alone Coalition’. What Norquist fails to see is that the Republican Party’s roots are not in the Leave Us Alone Coalition and never have been. With the possible exception of Reagan, there has not been a Leave Us Alone Republican elected to the White House. The Party itself was founded on violating the Constitution and its meaning. This is where the short sighted view of history comes back to hurt him. While I agree with Norquist that if people vote the way they believe about being left alone it would carry the day, I disagree with him that the Republican Party is the tool to do that anymore. He also does not understand the politics of some states. He boasts in the book that the Republicans could have 60 Senators if solidly ‘red’ states like North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana to name a few vote Republican for senators like they do for President. He misses the point that people in the Dakotas are not fully ‘red’ or ‘Leave us Aloners.’ He misses the point that some states prefer Republican Commander-in-Chiefs, but could care less about Republican Senators. He fails to see trends in places like Minnesota. These places like the odd ball outsiders like Jesse Ventura. Or Wisconsin that has a long history of sending people from one extreme or another to the Senate rather than being consistent on which extreme it is. Wisconsin has liberal Senator Russ Fiengold, one of the most liberal. But it was barely 50 years ago that they sent Joe McCarthy to the Senate several times. He, by the way, dethroned the Progressive Party’s leading family the LaFollete’s from the Senate. These fundamental misunderstandings make me have to side with Napolitano.

Also everyone needs to take a look at Napolitano’s book just to see the astunding lies we are told everyday about our government. The chapters on the Patriot Act alone are worth the book. The brief discussion about Natural Law versus Positive Law is good, and having someone lay side by side the founding vision of this country and the current state of things is a shocking eye opener.

The Republican Party had a clear choice in this election. Continue on the path of liberalism with McCain. Focus on financial stability and spending cuts with Romney or follow the Constitution with Paul. They chose liberalism. The direction of the Party is set in stone.