The problem with comedies

 

 I did a close reading of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in college when I was assigned a scene from it for an acting class, and decided that it really shouldn't be a comedy. Like most Americans, I like my comedies to be funny: I've never really accepted the classic definition of a comedy as a story with a happy ending (preferably a wedding or two). In the case of Measure for Measure, I thought the story so grim (a major plot point has a young woman pressured to have sex with Vienna's ruler to save her brother's life) that its happy ending seemed forced and inappropriate. A more consistently written Measure, I thought, would have turned out tragically, perhaps with a Hamlet- or Macbeth-style bloodbath.

When we know everything will turn out all right, it's hard to credit the emotional struggles through which characters must journey on their way to that happy ending. That's clearly the case with the Hebrew midwives whom Pharaoh told to kill all baby boys (Exodus 1:15-16). In just a few verses, they deceive Pharaoh by turning his own deceitful premise against him and so are rewarded by God (Exodus 1:17-21). I'm tempted to think of them as plucky, clever and indefatigable, but upon reflection I'm not sure why. Their bravery is remarkable, but is made remarkable because they didn't know they were living in a comedy: for all they knew, Pharaoh would kill them when he discovered they hadn't killed any babies.

In some sense, of course, this wasn't a comedy because Pharaoh simply takes his genocidal impulses public in Exodus 1:22: "Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, 'Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.'" I can't imagine anything about the episode seemed comic to Shiphrah and Puah. From the beginning, they must have been terrified that Pharaoh would see through their paper-thin deception. Then they had to live with even greater fear of what he might do to them once he had made his murderous intentions known to the world. Yes, God had given them families, but how long would they keep their own heads?

Perhaps that's the root of all anxiety: we don't realize we're living in a comedy. Jesus tells us anxiety is the sin of unbelief in Matthew 6:25-34, and it's one of the sins from which repentance is particularly difficult and signally uncommon. That may be because our time horizon is too short. We worry about tomorrow and the day after, forgetting that the deus ex machina which literally saved many a Greek hero and figuratively rescued the cast of Measure for Measure is an overly literal foreshadowing to the comedic end to this cosmic drama which we are all acting out.

Maybe we need more unfunny comedies. Life in a fallen world is rife with dread and struggle, and all too often we think that means it must therefore end badly. American Christians are particularly loathe to acknowledge the immense suffering of living in a fallen world because they fear that portends a tragic end. This is wrong, of course: I can say that God is good and my life is bad without any tension or contradiction. The Bible does have a few funny bits, but overall it's extremely unamusing. Nonetheless, its account of history is entirely comic.

Read this way, we can understand the experience of all believers from Shiphrah and Puah to our fellow congregants to ourselves, and how to survive that experience. We can get through the horrors of this life not on a reserve of innate cheerfulness, but on the basis of a Christian hope in the truths of comedy.

Iconoclasm is a virtue

 I suppose I'm thankful R.R. Reno's essay "Shared Loves and Strong Loyalties" is on the First Things
website. He helpfully clarifies just how I think both he and First Things, under his editorship, have drifted away from waters in which a Protestant can swim. 

Reno argues that the liberal political tradition has enervated our society and we need instead love, and in particular shared loves. Those shared and efficacious loves are inspired by and directed toward the strong gods of justice, nation, family and blood. He concedes that the strong gods are dangerous gods who may become idols, but

Misjudging lesser goods as the highest good (the essence of idolatry) always remains a danger. But the unstated premise behind Return of the Strong Gods [the book to which this essay is a preface] is that life without love is a greater evil than life in which finite loves are made absolute.

To this claim, the Christian might well respond that if both are evil, better to avoid both rather than merely the greater. Apparently anticipating this response, Reno goes on,

Let me issue my own theological warning: Beware iconoclasm. It is a heresy born of the fantasy that we can eliminate the possibility of idolatry by destroying every object of love other than the highest, which is God. 

This, in my view, the natural endpoint both of Reno's way of thinking and of the Roman Catholicism to which he converted some years ago: an obviously Biblical virtue is called a heresy. For what is iconoclasm but the smashing of idols, and what is the smashing of idols but sanctified obedience to the Second Commandment? 

Iconoclasm swept Europe as it entered its Christian Era, and the boldest fathers of presbyterianism, Ulrich Zwingli and John Knox, were iconoclasts in word and deed. As I have argued repeatedly in my own dialogues with Roman Catholics, iconoclasm is necessary to Protestantism. On the other hand, iconolatry and idolatry have overwhelmed Roman Catholicism as, for example, disordered love for glorified saints such as the mother of our Lord has crowded out all-consuming love for her son.

Life without love is evil, and life consumed by disordered love is evil. For love to be rightly ordered, it must be directed toward Jesus Christ. Europe entered its Christian era when the princes became Christian and the Church supplanted empire as the continent's great unifying power. Our culture indeed needs strong love: a love which hates false gods, strong or otherwise, and is monomaniacally preoccupied with the only truly worthy object of all love, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Carl Trueman gets weird

 If the Gospel Coalition's website is a reliable indicator, Carl Trueman's recent "The Failure of Evangelical Elites" in First Things has garnered thoughtful attention. I'm not sure why.

Trueman's thesis appears in the essay's second paragraph: "accommodation appeals to those who seek a seat at the table among ­society’s elite." "Those" are the university-educated elites of evangelicalism who, as he puts it later on, "[talk] in an outraged voice about racism within the boundaries set by the woke culture." From these statements and from the rest of the essay, Trueman clearly suspects their motives. Is he being fair or reasonable?

Trueman begins his discussion with Friedrich Schleiermacher, who made a great show of challenging liberal protestantism while conceding, upholding and endorsing all its tenets. While "On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers" is a truly awesome polemical title, the actual content was the exact opposite. From Schleiermacher, Trueman moves on to Mark Noll and George Marsden, who in the 1990s made a compelling argument for the recovery of Christian intellectualism in these United States. On the one hand, Trueman affirms the legitimacy and orthodoxy of that project ("And unlike ­Schleiermacher’s, I find their arguments convincing."), but with the other he denies it ("Nevertheless, a sociological comparison of their project with Schleiermacher’s is legitimate.") With this move, evangelical intellectuals "committed to a thoroughgoing supernatural Christian orthodoxy" are nonetheless associated with protestant liberalism, a counterfeit of the Christian faith.

This is guilt by association. Not only is it not nice, it's a logical fallacy.

Trueman makes a valid point when he considers the example of Francis Collins, the evangelical scientist who is head of the National Institutes of Health. Indeed, one might reasonably hope an agency headed by a faithful Christian would not so enthusiastically sponsor the use of genetic material taken from aborted babies in research and development. However, the pointedness drifts when he begins writing about "evangelical elites" and "Christian leaders." He may have specific persons in mind, but by not naming names, one is unable to check whether certain persons are actually the mealy-mouthed compromisers he implies they are.

Rhetorically, we call this a "glittering generality," which also happens to be a logical fallacy.

Trueman seems very annoyed by evangelicals who call for repentance from America's original sin of racism without simultaneously denouncing abortion and gender dysphoria affirmation. The money line in this piece comes toward the close.

Let me put it bluntly: Talking in an outraged voice about racism within the boundaries set by the woke culture is an excellent way of not talking about the pressing moral issues on which ­Christianity and the culture are opposed to each other: LGBTQ+ rights and abortion.

That sounds really good, until one remembers that Carl Trueman is a confessional presbyterian writing for a journal which toes the most Tridentine Roman Catholic line possible without drifting into outright Lefebvrism. To illustrate, I suggest a rewrite.

Let me put it bluntly: Talking in an outraged voice about evangelicals who oppose racism within the boundaries set by an apostate Anglican conservative Roman Catholic editor is an excellent way of not talking about the pressing theological issues on which ­Protestantism and Romanism are opposed to each other: justification by faith alone and the sole authority of Scripture.

In other words, Carl Trueman finds working with papists a rewarding and helpful way to promote ideas near and dear to him; he doesn't need to prosecute the material causes of the Protestant Reformation (i.e. the doctrines on which the faith stands or falls) at every turn. Good for him! Is it not possible that some of his coreligionists find working with secularists a rewarding and helpful way to promote ideas near and dear to them?

If I may point out the obvious, Mr. Trueman's lived experience in these United States is in the suburban outposts of Pennsylvania's two largest cities. His concerns about these United States, gathered from that lived experience, are entirely valid. At the same time, so are the concerns of those of us who have lived in parts of the United States which are not Pennsylvania. In fact, I tend to agree with many "evangelical elites" who think it is possible, and even necessary, to make inroads against systemic racism even if one is not directly addressing abortion on demand.

In sum, Carl Trueman's argument is just plain odd: anti-Trump evangelicals are posers petitioning for worldly acceptance because they argue against racism without, in the exact same breath, denouncing abortion on demand and LGBTQ+ rights. To put it mildly, I am not persuaded.

While I am a natural-born U.S. citizen under color of law, I was not born on American soil and so try to believe that other late-comers to our shores may understand our great country and her citizens, Christian or otherwise. At the present moment, Carl Trueman is not making that easy.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

It's been a week, and I've pretty much decided that Charles Yu never meant for How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe to be taken at face value as a time travel novel. It is, instead, a novel on memory and loss in which the tropes of science fictional time travel, and especially world-building, are referenced but never truly centered. Yu's ultimate theme is the son's longing for his father, which he evokes elegiacally and unashamedly.

Science fiction fans may be disappointed because Yu has written an allegory which exploits science fiction conventions, not a science fiction novel. Those steeped in said conventions who are open to explorations of the chasms between parent and child will be rewarded.

And the Scripture preached

 I am sure that someone, somewhere has written on the implications of Galatians 3:8 for our understanding of inspiration. In fact I'm pretty sure that I've read someone, in some place, write on said implications, but my theological library is, at present, in boxes in my garage and I'm not going to do literal heavy lifting in order to write a blog post.

The Curmudgeon family was listening to a sermon one Sunday evening when I was struck by the first part of Galatians 3:8: "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham…." The subject of that sentence is "the Scripture," not "God;" Paul asserts that the Scripture preached. Moreover, the Scripture even foreknew the eternal plans of God: Scripture is the mind of God. For all intents and purposes, "Scripture" is another name for "God" in Galatians 3:8.

I can't think of a clearer example of the Bible's understanding of itself as literally the divine voice itself. Galatians 3:8 is the necessary consequence of 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is breathed out by God…."

Attack on American Christendom

 The more you agree with someone, the more interesting your disagreements with that person become. Your disagreements are no longer so broad and sweeping that they barely scratch the surface; instead, they are about the innermost nuts and bolts which make the whole thing work.

As a rule, I tend to agree on most things with David French, the lawyer/journalist who writes and podcasts for The Dispatch. His take on constitutional law is close enough to my own Nat Hentoff-inspired strict constructionism that most of the time I can't tell the difference, and I certainly appreciate his membership in the Presbyterian Church in America. But while I'm sure he's a faithful Church member, I suspect (unlike me) he is more evangelical than presbyterian in his sensibilities. This came out in his most recent Sunday edition of The French Press.

Consider his use of Kierkegaard's Attack on Christendom, from which this newsletter's title ("How American Christendom Weakens American Christianity") is drawn. French summarizes Kierkegaard's

categories this way:

Think of the distinctions roughly like this—Christianity is the faith, Christians are believers in the faith, and Christendom is the collective culture and institutions (universities, ministries) of the faith.

Did you notice the missing institution? 

French then quotes Matt McManus's summary of Kierkegaard's argument: "In many ways, it was far better to see Christendom shrunk down to a few genuine believers than to see it ballooned and enforced into a parody of itself." 

Like David French, I haven't read much Kierkegaard since college, and I do not want to treat the entirety of his philosophy dismissively. Nonetheless, ever since college I've found this aspect of Kierkegaard's thought rather adolescent. It seems to assume Christianity can exist outside of an institutional structure. This is both naïve and impossible.

To put the matter simply: how will Christians learn the faith? How will persons learn about the faith in order to become Christians in the first place? The obvious answer is through teachers, evangelists and preachers. But these do not arise of themselves, unbidden. Common sense and bitter experience have taught all of us not to rely on anyone who credentials himself: authority to teach and preach must be legitimized by others. As soon as we bring in legitimation, authority and credentialing, we must have an institution.

To put the matter still more simply: you can't have the faith without an institution to inculcate and propagate it.

French begins with Kierkegaard in order to develop his thesis that the institutions of evangelical Christendom are at odds with Christianity. This is a profoundly true insight; as he writes, "the institutions of Christendom should model the way of the cross if they’re going to preach the way of the cross." Instead, they focus on their own survival even if that survival means crushing reeds and smoldering wicks; the institutions continue even though they can no longer sincerely fulfill the ministry they allegedly exist to carry out.

(French points to Ravi Zacharias Ministries and Camp Kanakuk, but I can't help but think of the Boy Scouts of America. While it's not a Christian organization, it the perfect example of an institution which has abandoned, by admitting girls, the very constituency [boys] which it was formed to serve. Apparently, it's more important for the Boy Scouts of America to continue than for a scouting program for boys to continue.)

By pointing to the way of the Cross, French suggests it would be better for some parachurch ministries to die than to continue as a symbol of Spiritual, physical or sexual abuse. Here again, I cannot agree with David French more. In fact, I'm content to see all the institutions of evangelical Christendom wither away and/or die. That's also where French seems to end up:

As Kierkegaard reminds us, it’s an old crisis. There are times when the great enemy of Christianity is Christendom itself. But Christendom isn’t Christianity. Indeed, the collapse of the institutions of Christendom does not mean the collapse of Christianity. And their collapse may be necessary for people to see through doctrine, through celebrity, and through politics to catch at last a glimpse of the man who is the faith, the man who carried a cross and now commands us to do the same. 

To which I can only respond, "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" (Romans 10:14-15) I think David French has forgotten about the institution Christ founded to send preachers.

The problem with American evangelical Christendom is that, with all its ministries bearing the names of their charismatic founders, it is not centered on the one Biblical ministry: the Church. The Church is not one amongst many ministries. She alone is the household of faith and the Kingdom of Christ in this world. And "the Church" is not another generic label for "Christians" or even "Christian ministries." Because the Church has officers and members (Hebrews 13:7, 17), the Church is an institution. 

Yes, the time has come for evangelical Christendom to go the way of the Cross. In its place, Christians need to return to the Church so that they can hear of the man and God who is the faith.