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Being free to do whatever you want but being a slave to sin is not real freedom.

The libertarian streak in me just doesn’t buy the opposite though. Being free from sin but being in chains is not freedom either. Granted, it is better to be free from sin, but the chains (whether they be imprisonment, totalitarian government, a dehumanizing job, or an unjust tax burden) are still oppression.

It’s hard not to fall into some sort of “class warfare” indignation when reading this section of church history from Williams:

All through the Middle Ages and through the Reformation Augustine’s phrase that liberty comes by grace and not grace by liberty had been at the bottom of the organization and imposition of belief. To be properly free man must be in a state of salvation, and there had been through those centuries less enthusiasm for the idea of his being improperly free – free in a merely temporal sense.

-Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p.216

OK. Right. We want freedom from sin. Salvation is freedom from the curse of sin and death. That’s better than being free in “a merely temporal sense”.

It was approved, it was even encourage, but it was conditioned by the very much more important necessity of offering him the super-natural freedom. What mattered was not that he should be able to speculate as he chose but that he should be able to act as he chose. Only the service of God supplied that perfect freedom, and men, as far as possible, were to be compelled to come in to that service.

Oooookaaaayyy. Compelled (forced), as far as possible to become followers of Christ. Alright. I’m OK with that if that’s really all it is. But how long does it take before you’re being compelled to do all kinds of other things that have the odd side-effect of lining the pockets of the people in power? Quicker than you can say the Lord’s Prayer, that’s how fast.

Messias [Jesus] and his Apostles had not spent a great deal of time talking about freedom and personal independence and individualism and a man’s right to his own opinions.

This is a remarkably good point. Jesus did NOT preach the American Dream. This is the best case out there I think for the idea of the church originating with a community, not the individual. This includes all the stuff that goes along with that: households being converted, infant baptism, common cup communion, congregations based on tight geography (when relevant), and the possibility of a Christian state.

Nor, when the quality of disbelief was rediscovered and the upper classes went all Deist or infidel, was that freedom supposed to relate to the lower classes. Lord Chesterfield did not think one ought to discuss religion before the servants, and more than he thought his servants ought to help govern the country.

How convenient. We get to be free to not take God seriously anymore. But not the working class servants. They don’t count.

But what with one thing and another, the idea that everyone out to be as free as possible had spread widely during the nineteenth century.

And this eventually led to the sort of broad individual freedoms found in America to this day. There seems to be a lot of debate whether this is actually a very Christian idea or not. Being “as free as possible” does seem to be inline with the character of God. Though he “desires that none should perish”, and may even make darn sure some of us don’t.

I’ve begun reading a short collection of sermons by George MacDonald. I’ve only known him threw his childrens fantasy books. Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, and L’Engle sight him as a major influence. Since I’m still on an Inklings kick, I figured I had better check him out a bit more.

MacDonald was raised as a strict Scottish Calvinist. As a young man though, Limited Atonement started to really bother him. It wasn’t in line with the character of God that he knew. He eventually reformed his own theology to accommodate a more generous picture of Jesus, without minimizing his justice. In the process though he got kicked out of the pastorate of his first church.

He has this to say about Christ’s offer of rest to us in the gospels:

[The Lord] cries aloud, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

He does not say, “Come unto me, all ye that feel the burden of your sins.” He opens his arms to all weary enough to come to him in the poorest hope of Rest. Right gladly would he free them from their misery – but he knows only one way: He will teach them to be like himself, meek and lowly, bearing with gladness the yoke of His Father’s will.

The Lord knows what they need; they know only what they want. They want ease; He knows they need purity.

In this passage at least he continues to work this angle of purity and obedience, rather than a message of forgiveness. He spends plenty of time on that in other places. For some of us religious folk though, THIS is the sort of thing we need to hear.

It may be my reader will desire me to say HOW the Lord will deliver him from his sins. That is like the lawyer’s “Who is my neighbor?” The spirit of such a mode of receiving the offer of the Lord’s deliverance is the root of all the horrors of a corrupt theology, so acceptable to those who love weak and beggarly hornbooks of religion. Such questions spring from the passion for the fruit of the tree of knowledge, not the fruit of the tree of life.

Men would understand: they do not care to obey – understand where it is impossible they should understand save by obeying.

For the sake of knowing, they postpone that which alone can enable them to know. They will not accept, that is, act upon, their highest privilege, that of obeying the Son of God. it is on them to do His will that the day dawns; to them the day-star arises in their hearts. Obedience is the soul of knowledge.

-George MacDonald, Life Essential: The Hope of the Gospel, Ch. 1

Personally, I am predisposed to over-analyze situations. This includes seeking to deeply understand WHY I screwed up. This is helpful to a point, but then has severely diminishing returns. Somewhere in there, we need to just stop trying to understand. Just STOP. Cut it out and obey God. Resolve to turn from our sin, even if we don’t have a full grasp on our own psychology or what subtle situations (maybe not our fault) led to our trouble.

MacDonald ends with a disclaimer:

God forbid I should seem to despise understanding. The New Testament is full of urgings to understand. Our whole life, to be life at all, must be a growth in understanding. What I cry out upon is the misunderstanding that comes of a man’s endeavor to understand while not obeying. Upon obedience our engergy must be spent; understanding will follow.

John Halton posted an excellent passage on church history from philosopher Jacques Ellul today:

How can it be said, then, that freedom exists only in Christ and only for those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour? In spite of the experience of history, however, I do say this. Only in Christ and through Christians can authentic and undeviating freedom arise, take form, and spread in the world.

Nevertheless, the history of Christianity and the church is also marked by terrible failures. As I have often said, I do not like to accuse our forefathers in the faith of having been wrong, as though we were better and more enlightened than they. The church is a unity in time.

We cannot dissociate ourselves from the church in the middle ages, at the time of the Reformation, or in the nineteenth century. At these periods, too, the church was the church of Jesus Christ. It was his authentic witness. It carried the truth to men.

But in relation to its ethical task, and its function of representing the lordship of Jesus Christ on earth, we can only say that it has been a serious failure and indeed a veritable catastrophe for man in general. This enables us to measure the degree to which grace alone has made it the church of Jesus Christ and always sustained it as such.

-Jacques Ellul, Ethics of Freedom, p.90

He goes on to comment:

Wonderful stuff. Not many writers are able to make such high claims for the gospel and Christian faith (”freedom exists only in Christ and only for those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour”) while at the same time being so clear-eyed about the failure of the church (and Christians) to live up to their calling (”a serious failure and indeed a veritable catastrophe”), yet also avoiding the arrogance of blaming this on those ignorant hick Christians back then (”as though we were better and more enlightened than they”). Genius.

Just yesterday I finished reading Charles William’s church history (The Descent of the Dove), and had some of these same thoughts kicking around in my head. I was pleasantly surprised at how gracious Williams was with the various flawed leaders, Popes, reformers, etc. throughout the church’s life.

It’s such a contrast to what I learned in my homeschooling textbooks: (”the church was hosed until the Puritan’s came along”)

or heard preached on occasion: (”too bad Constantine ruined the church. We’ve been trying to get back there ever since…”)

and again in a church history class in college: (”all those losers back then were quenching the spirit, except for perhaps the Montanists, up until Azuza Street”).

How much more humbling (and truthful) to say, “Yes, mistakes were made. But it was MY OWN crew making them every time. And WE continue to make them. But we’re still the people of Jesus Christ. He’s not going to let us down.”

Such a method has the same dangers as an other; that is, it is quite sound when a master uses it, cheapens as it becomes popular, and is unendurable when it is merely fashionable.

So Augustine’s predestination was safe with him, comprehensible in Calvin, tiresome in the English Puritans, and quite horrible in the Scottish presbyteries.

There is no way of saving these things; even Francis of Assisi has produced, unintentionally, circle of hopeless bathos [really poor imitators].

All we can hope is that we may, by grace, recover different modes as and when they are most needed.

-Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p.191

This is a really universal principal. A good idea requires much subtlety, wisdom, and just plain common sense to really be executed properly. It needs a master.

My wife and I were talking about this recently with regards to parenting. Some people have a knack for good parenting. It’s a thousand little things. Some are very strict with their children, making frequent use of corporal punishment. And they kids turn out wonderfully. Others read all the same books, talk the same talk, and it’s easy to see at a glance that their relationship with their children is a mess.

The deep religious writing of the wise 70-year old… in the hands of the 22-year-old zealot. Think it loses something? A ton! Even if the new generation is following the great idea to the letter. This applies the same whether the 22-year-old is a protester at an anti-WTO ralley, an angry Jihadist, or a cage-phase Calvinist.

Williams asserts that this sublty, this mastery cannot be saved. I think that maybe with close discipleship some of it can be. For the most part, he’s right though. We need to keep our eyes open, work hard, and figure out how to be masters ourselves.

Quoting C.S. Lewis about love and marriage:

The general impression left on the medieval mind by its official teachers was that all love – at least all such passionate and exalted devotion as a courtly poet thought worthy of the name – was more or less wicked. This impression, combing with the nature of feudal marriage … produced in the poets a certain wilfulness, a readiness to emphasize rather than to conceal the antagonism between their amatory and their religious ideals.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, p.?

“the antagonism between their amatory and their religious ideals”. Sound familiar? A proper Christian marriage is boring. Nothing arouses like a forbidden affair. Family life is all work and duty and raising children. The real sizzling sex is found in being bad and following your passions, preferably when young and the consequences can be brushed aside or minimized. A medieval idea? Sounds still alive and well today.

Williams explains how some of the romantics sought to take back passion for the good guys:

…among it’s results was a tendency to contradict the official tendency towards Reason. The poets said, with Wordsworth, that passion itself was “highest reason”; they did not always add “in a soul sublime.” It began to be asserted that “passion” precesely excited and illuminated the intellect, that it delivered from accidia [sloth,bordom], excited to caritas [charity], and even (strangest reversal of all!) that such a passion could exist as or in marriage. The idea of marriage was a way of the soul became a possibility. Passion was no longer to be only morally dubious…

-Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p.131

Here, Williams explains how the toleration of different belief’s and religions across the British empire (and eventually in America) was actually moved forward by the Virgin Queen.

Years were to go by before the secular governments were compelled by their own eventual impotency to recognize that other beliefs existed and would continue to exist, that other believers existed and would continue to exist. At first, and for a hundred years or so, strong efforts were made to prevent their existence. It is arguable that the one point which decided that those efforts should fail and that a different state of things should come into being was the life – unexpectedly prolonged – and the beliefs – unexpectedly ambiguous – of Elizabeth of England.

-Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p. 179

In his church history, William’s devotes several pages to Michel de Montaigne, who, I confess I had never heard of. I had heard plenty of Pascal, who apparently took a lot of cues from him. (Update: Apparently, most Christian’s don’t consider Montaigne one of the good guys. Some of Pascal’s writing is rebuttal of some of Montaigne’s work.) Despite that, I really like his (Montaigne’s) quotes how how reason is not sufficient to comprehend God.

“All the principles of stoics, sceptics, atheists, etc. are true. But their conclusions are false, because the opposite principles are also true.”

“Our soul is cast into a body where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nautre necessity, and can believe nothing else.”

This indeed, as one might say, “is talking.” Reason is driven to call this communicated nature necessity, upon which necessity she erects her instruments. It is the old trouble which the wise Greek had seen so long ago: “Give me an inch of earth to stand on and I will move the world.” But there is no inch of earth; there never has been; there never – though “the heart has its reasons that the head does not know” – can be.

-Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p.197

Ministers of the gospel (this is all Christians on some level, but specifically pastors) should actually be administering the GOSPEL, right? And we do. But are we also dishing out anything else that may be negating the gospel? Turing us into hypocrites?

Leithart posted on this today. Good stuff:

Surprisingly, Jesus begins His litany of woe (Matthew 23) by commending the teaching of Jewish scribes and Pharisees.  They sit in the seat of Moses, and Jesus’ disciples are to “do and observe” what they say.

They may sit in Moses’ seat, but they are not Mosaic in their conduct.  Moses came to break the yoke of oppression and free slaves, but the scribes and Pharisees “tie up heavy loads and lay them on men’s shoulders” and refuse to lift a finger to help.  Despite their teaching, they are more Pharaoh than Moses.

These are sobering words for pastors.  We too “sit in the seat of Moses,” but we are capable of turning the gospel of freedom into an instrument of oppression.   We must beware the hypocrisy of announcing “Let my people go” with our lips while saying “bricks without straw” with our lives.

-Peter Leithart, 4/23/09

I’m not indicting pastor’s here, but myself for following some of them, sometimes eagerly, in their neglect of the gospel.

“Jesus is the lord of all creation. He has redeemed us and is redeeming the whole earth…AND while you’re at it, don’t you dare drink that beer, don’t you know Jesus is watching you man?”

“There is no condemnation for those in Chris Jesus! He has saved us from the Law of sin and death. Rejoice! Hey, what are you doing staying home from Sunday worship? Relaxing with your family? Dude, you are not gettin’ what being a disciple of Christ is all about.”

“Man and women, God created them both. We are children of God and co-heirs with Christ of redeemed creation. Hey, your daughter is in freakin’ graduate school? Like for a career? She should be married with a couple kids by now. Don’t ya know?”

Really?

When we sit in the seat of Moses, as parents, Church leaders, or community leaders, let us break the yokes of oppression. Note, for thos who would say “but…but…but…”, yeah I know. This is NOT the same thing as promoting rebellion and championing sinful permissiveness. I’m serious. This stuff is hard. Living the gospel takes wisdom too. Wisdom, not hypocrisy.

There is a lot packed into William’s passing paragraph on the rise of Deism in Britain in the 17th century.

Deism, with its Pelagian man (soon to be turned into the Noble Savage) its judicious reason, its social morals, spread widely in England, and was with some difficulty argued down in the eighteenth century by the orthodox, who at one time entertained a hope that the Whig Government would suppress it by force.

But the Government had other things to do; it was, unintentionally, creating the British Empire, and was, intentionally, neglecting philosophy.

The quality of disbelief had become a gentlemanly minimum of belief; and the eternal co-inherence of all mankind had been narrowed, at best, into the virtue of benevolence exercised according to the general understanding of the directions of “the absentee landlord” of the universe.

-Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p.196

Williams see’s Pelagianism and it’s denial or Original Sin to be the trapdoor through which Christians fall into all sorts of flakiness. Once man isn’t really evil deep down, he doens’t need a savior. He doesn’t really need a God either, though he may keep him around for posterity.

It doesn’t take much of this before someone starts telling parents that their children don’t need a spanking either. A general adherence to social morals is so deep within us that it will stay intact even though it’s foundation is neglected. Only a concentrated destructive effort can take it out. Since philosophy was neglected, this wasn’t actively attacked until later.

It’s too bad the orthodox were hoping the government might do something about this. That sounds more like what their opponents would hope. If there is no close God to pray to and man has plenty of potential to not be corrupt, then the obvious replacement savior from (fill in the blank problem) is the state. They should have appealed to the Lord of Heaven and Earth.

Does this sound familiar? How about us Christians in America propping up the Republican party, hoping they will save our people from moral decay? Oops. There’s history again. Time to appeal to the Lord.

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William’s, though a protestant, is very generous to the Pope(s) in his church history. He always assumes the best of them unless their actions consistently prove otherwise. Nevertheless, on the occasions when his holiness decided to digress into political socialism, he points it out.

[Pope] Leo XIII in the very noble Encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 demanded that the capitalist should deal justly by his workers. But he also demanded that the capitalist should see that the worker “be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions, and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family or to squander his earnings.” Workers do not usually look with gratitude on employers who take care that they do not squander their earnings, or who attempt to shield them from corrupting influences.

The receipt of a fair wage was to take with it the liberty to do as one chose with a fair wage, or it was meaningless. The Pope, no doubt, meant nothing but good. But the Pope was not a factory worker.

-Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p.226

Making a higher wage isn’t of much use if someone is telling you what you can and can’t spend it on. It’s funcionally the same as more taxes witheld from your check.