Sep 05 2008
Heartless Institutions
Bottlenecks in History
The distant past throws long shadows across modern life. Americans recently fought a war in the Balkans that lasted from 1991 to 2001, but did you know this conflict actually began in the 1500’s?
In the same way, many Christians don’t realize the trends in their modern Christian church are tied directly to the 1500s. These long chains of the past are now stressed by secular culture, forcing Christians everywhere to reconsider hallowed institutions once codified during this violent era in European history. The greatest impediment to the Gospel is the Christian’s blind loyalty to those antiquated human institutions.
During this war in the 16th century, King Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire tried to block Ottoman Turk Muslims from invading southern Christian Europe. King Charles did halt the invasion, but lacked the strength to dislodge the invaders. Known as “the Balkan Peninsula,” the area became a perpetual powder keg between Islamic and Christian religions.
Then 500 years later President Clinton and the American military finally settled the issue, theoretically, right here in Ohio at the “Dayton Peace Accords”.
The Birth of a Movement
As strange as it may seem, the Muslim invasions brought welcome relief to the infant Protestant movement. For two decades King Charles was entangled with Muslims in southern Europe, while Protestant uprisings grew in Germany, far to the north. The Vatican chaffed and issued threats and edicts from Rome to quash the Protestant movement, but Rome was unable do anything to prevent Protestants from dismantling a millennium of well-established church authority.
It was a raucous movement led by rowdy, beer-drinking Luther. The Reformation rocked Germany like John Bellushi’s Animal House (minus the sex, drugs and Rock ‘n Roll.) Protestants turned the Sunday Mass into a spirited attack against the papacy. This was all terribly exciting for the peasants.
The movement enjoyed widespread popularity. “High Church” ceremonies were swept away by spiritual freedom and love for a personal Savior. The somber atmosphere of Mass was shattered by a crazy new, beer-hall instrument called an organ. A joyful cry of “Sola Scriptura!” raced across Europe and spilled into France, where the carefree movement was suddenly crushed in great bloodshed.
One who fled these massacres was John Calvin. While in hiding, he furiously wrote his famous Magnum Opus a mere three years after his conversion. With Institutes of the Christian Religion, he established a theology of crushing, sovereign authority headed by Jesus Christ which justified torture, massacres and wars. He loved the Protestant cause, but his disciplined mind was repulsed by its wild pace and enthusiasm. He wanted more law and order.
Calvin soon unleashed his theology in Geneva where he established an orderly Protestant world and ruled it with an iron will. Catholics, who were previously the hunters of Protestant rebels, suddenly became the hunted ones in Switzerland.
Institutionalized Christianity
Without a doubt the institutions of the church are the greatest obstacles for God’s love and the single cause for Christianity’s dark history. With good motives, brilliant men wrapped tight structures around the church to preserve it.
Yet the Gospel is conspicuously silent about the structures and institutions we humans are so-enamored with. During the entire first century while the New Testament was written, Christianity spread like wildfire, yet we find little written about their structures and institutions. Why is this? History screams the answer: whenever the Gospel gets wrapped in the systems and business of the Kosmos — the “World System” as the Bible calls it — the sweet message of God’s grace is gripped by a monster that won’t let go. Human institutions always grow more complex, and their hold grows continually more fixed and frozen.
In this way biblical Christianity became the beastly Institutionalized Christianity that emerged in Europe from the Dark Ages.
An amazing transformation was underway in Europe. Large cities appeared everywhere for the first time since Rome’s collapse a millenia earlier. Suddenly the Renaissance exploded with new technologies and culture. But the rigid social structures of Feudalism remained, albeit with greater population and wealth. This created suffocating fiefdoms and monarchies. It became an age of servility.
Threaded throughout Europe was a monolithic institution called The Church. Its power was absolute and unquestioned. Even the Roman Empire was never so oppressive. At least the Romans allowed people to worship a conglomeration of gods and religions. But the early Renaissance Church censored beliefs, labeled dissenters as “blasphemers” and “heretics”, banned long lists of books, gouged out eyes, burned tongues, pulled out hair, and burned people alive in public squares…
Such is the monstrous face of Institutionalized Christianity.
God’s Spirit cannot be controlled, however. With all its rules, wealth and vast bureaucracy, The Church could not stamp out this revolt. It was ignited by the Bible itself, and fueled by the Holy Spirit.
Unfortunately, Europeans were accustomed to authoritarian governments and felt safer that way. The intellectual freedoms of the Enlightenment were still a century away, so when Protestantism stirred Peasant Revolts, oppression was quick to follow.
Protestant leaders endorsed Institutes, which brought their revolt under the control of local regimes. The Five Solas of Protestantism were far too liberal and triggered far too many freedoms. With Calvin’s Institutes, feudal lords gained the power to suppress the unrest of ignorant peasants infected by Protestant freedoms. Christianity fell under state control again, but with a Protestant flavor, as Calvin intended:
The characteristic of a true sovereign is, to acknowledge that, in the administration of his kingdom, he is a minister of God. He who does not make his reign subservient to the divine glory, acts the part not of a king, but a robber. He, moreover, deceives himself who anticipates long prosperity to any kingdom which is not ruled by the sceptre of God, that is, by his divine word.” Institutes of the Christian Religion, Prefatory Address.
The assertion that a human emperor must “make his reign subservient to the divine glory” defies the teachings of Jesus Christ, who said, “My kingdom is not of this world!”1 But for Calvin it was a shrewd political maneuver designed to place his religion on the throne of power.
With armies and wealth on his side, Calvin slammed the lid on the wild Protestant ride, and the movement was transformed into a respectable state religion. Calvin’s Institutes established an institution of faith, or a Protestant “Declaration of Faith” with fiber and respectability badly needed for an insecure, new Protestant Europe.
And he smothered the spiritual life out of it!
Cold-Hearted Theology
It is fair to say Calvin was a cold man and purpose-driven to the extreme. This is reflected in his ponderous and precise writings. Calvin’s epitaph for his diseased wife is revealing:
Calvin wrote that she was a helper in ministry, never stood in his way, never troubled him about her children, and had a greatness of spirit.2
He was a cold man, and he Reformed Theology he established is notoriously cold, spawning the era of “dead orthodoxy”. Early Reformed churches were highly ritualistic with formal creeds, recitations, responsive readings, and other High Church rituals.3 To the modern mind there is little difference between Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopalian, Dutch Reformed or Presbyterian services and the Catholic Mass. Following the pattern established in the Middle Ages, Protestants developed rituals, traditions, systematic theologies and academia ad nauseam which still continue today. Most seminaries and commentaries are still dominated by Reformed Theology. Although highly useful, the output from such Reformed institutions is often dry and obtuse. They read like a lawyer’s brief. This is far from the “living and active Word” described in Hebrews 4:12.
Reformed Theology became notorious for stressing pure and true doctrine, because doctrinal purity meant spiritual purity, or so it was believed. In the early Reformation it seemed necessary to separate “Protestant” from “Common Rebellious Peasant.” However, the effort to define a “Protestant Orthodoxy” also extinguished sweet, spiritual spontaneity.
This cold orthodoxy is causing many young Christians to leave their faith today. Consider the case of Ashley:
I recently de-converted from Christianity, the faith I have been brought up in for the past 17 years. I wanted to give an explanation as to how I came to this, and why… At 16, I “gave my life to Christ” and was baptized. After that event, I was in evangelist mode. I passed out Gospel tracts, witnessed to people, read my Bible everyday, studied apologetics, etc. I was quite sincere in this…
Ashley had right doctrine, but it provided no spiritual power. Then she read The God Delusion by the famously-hateful Richard Dawkins. Amazingly, his book won her over!
I started to see the world as it really is, and appreciate my life far more than I did as a Christian.
“Ashley” from Converts Corner, Dawkins Web.
Something is terribly wrong when Dawkinism, with its hate-filled rhetoric, can make a Christian “appreciate my life far more…” Christians are losing their children to the emptiness of spiritual death everywhere, 4 and the time to dump those Heartless Institutions established in the 1500s is now.
In retrospect, the problem is clear: Institutes garbled the original, simple call for Sola Scriptura, and overshadowed the Five Solas. Calvin and others fell prey to the classic scholarly pitfall of systematizing far too much. Calvin’s complicated mind prioritized great cosmological complexities which still entangle Reformed theology.5 Astonishingly, Calvin soon began to make claims that Institutes was on equal footing with the Bible:
And since we are bound to acknowledge that all truth and sound doctrine proceed from God, I will venture boldly to declare what I think of this work, acknowledging it to be God’s work rather than mine…I exhort all, who reverence the word of the Lord, to read it, and diligently imprint it on their memory… - Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1545.6
Institutes embraced Sola Scriptura in theory, but in practice, Institutes became the test of true orthodoxy and the Bible lost its prominent position.
Manmade structures were again smothering the simple message of God’s love in the Bible.
The Dogma of Dogmatics
More layers of control were wrapped around Christianity. The Vatican was forced to respond to Calvin’s Institutes by formalizing its own beliefs.
When he was finished fighting Muslims, Charles V convened the Council of Trent in 1544, gathering the most learned and brilliant minds in the empire. It was not an academic inquiry. Trent was governed by the need to condemn the Protestant rebellion, so all the dogma established by the council was a refutation of Protestantism.
The Council of Trent made a mess out of traditional Christianity. For the first time in church history beliefs such as the veneration of Mary, purgatory, transubstantiation, the infallible church, and the divine inspiration of the Apocrypha were canonized (proclaimed church law), among a litany of other decrees. After four years of debate, the council sealed a set of beliefs which simply lacked any credible ties to the Bible. They were derived primarily from political necessity and the astonishing claim of the “infallibility of the church” (which also required “the unconditional surrender of human reason”).7
Justification for these new beliefs relied heavily on various comments and citations made in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; therefore, elements of superstitious folklore and magic entered canon law. (To claim the communion wine is actually blood when it is, in fact, actually wine and tastes like wine with all the chemical properties of wine is irrational at best, but since it defies science, is it not a superstition?)
Thus the discipline of dogma developed. 
Dogmatics is “a system of principles laid down by an authority, especially the Roman Catholic Church, as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others.”8 When the Renaissance gave birth to the university, it was customary to systematize and codify knowledge. This led to a great explosion of scientific discovery. The same practice applied to Christianity became the course of study called Dogmatic Theology, and the results were not so great.
Theologians with good motives and brilliant minds still try today to distill God’s Word in a format compatible with university programs, so Dogmatics is also called a science. Structure is highly beneficial and even necessary for comprehending a vast body of knowledge, and at Xenos we study and teach systematic theology. But when systematized theology takes precedence over God’s Word, it actually suffocates the knowledge of God.
The Restless Reformed we discussed earlier are simply not restless enough. In the tradition of systematic theologies, they teach topically and break away from the biblical approach.9 The intentions are good: topical teachings are perhaps more relevant and seem more organized for the modern mind, which is cluttered with an overload of diffuse information. But Dogmatics should never replace the depth of God’s Word. Our knowledge-engineering is inevitably flawed because structures often emphasize things not emphasized in scripture, and minimize what scripture emphasizes.
The Owner of Truth
The Bible is clear that Absolute Truth does exist, and it can be studied and validated. However, it is tightly-coupled with the person of God.
The famous Roman governor Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” He did not expect an answer. But Jesus defines truth in clear terms:
Jesus said* to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:6 (NASB)
It means God owns Absolute Truth, not humans. Scientists can safely assume the universe is governed by truth, not by arbitrary or imaginary forces. Calling it “natural law’, the Renaissance Man emerged and began discovering how creation was designed. It may be said that natural science shows more respect for God than the history of theology. Science reveals the Designer’s design, but theologians smothered revelation from the Designer whenever they impose external authority over the Bible. Calvin did this with Institutes, and the Vatican did it by creating something called “church tradition”.
One very positive aspect of Postmodernism is the acknowledgment that truth is too vast to be packaged neatly by knowledge-engineers. Packages of Dogmatic Theology will always be an inferior substitute for God’s Word. History reveals glaring errors by theologians and “The Church”, especially as church authority grew increasingly oppressive in this era. Their Inquisition, the condemnation of Galileo, witch trials, and many other cruelties were initiated by church authorities and justified by theologians. Thus “dogma” is an insulting label today, but in the 1500s “dogma” was considered brilliant scholarship.
Of course, church law can never be the final determination of truth, since that domain belongs to God alone, as Paul says:
As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. Galatians 1:9-10 (NASB)
Our marvelous penchant for organization can build institutions that harbor falsehood and oppose God. The Vatican has, more than once, been in the embarrassing position of holding to the “infallibility of the church” while also attempting to rectify its terrible mistakes. Its bureaucracy grew so rigid that it became nearly impossible to change the institution.
In 1963 the Vatican finally reversed the lynchpin holding together the decrees made by the Council of Trent: Protestants were no longer deemed heretics (but no apologies were offered.) Galileo remained condemned, however, until 1992 when the Vatican finally admitted he was correct about the earth revolving around the sun!
Canon law is sticky business. The decrees made by the Council of Trent remain largely intact despite the Vatican’s recent dismissal of the viewpoint dominating all discussions at Trent. If Protestants aren’t going to hell, is it not possible some of those decrees were the passion of politics and not the Word of God?
The Traditional Trap
This brief survey demonstrates how sad it is when Christians turn away from the certainty of God’s Word and rely on manmade traditions instead. This was also the problem in Jesus’ day: “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” (Mark 7:8 NIV)
The traditions of both Reformed and Catholic theologies are glaring examples of moving away from the spontaneity and freedom of God’s Word and towards the controlling, suffocating institutions of tradition. The motives begin well. Augustine’s writings were an honest attempt to codify the Christian faith as he saw the darkness of the Fall of Rome looming. Calvin genuinely wanted to stabilize Protestantism in order to preserve it. The Catholic church codified its traditions because its officials were genuinely concerned for the preservation of Christianity through the Dark Ages. Even the Jewish leaders in Jesus’ time were sincerely trying to preserve their heritage and knowledge of the scriptures of God, or what they called “The Traditions of the Elders.”
But all these human efforts to preserve God’s Word backfired and ended up replacing God’s Word.
There is but one simple problem plaguing Christian history. Namely, if Christ is the head of the church as the Bible claims, then He is the one who will defend and preserve her. When humans usurp His role as “defender of the faith,” they ultimately become “owners of the faith.”
The Jesus Solution
Jesus was not ignorant of our penchant for building heartless institutions. In fact, he prophesied it.
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.” Matthew 13:31-32 (NIV)
Indeed, the institutions of the church in the Renaissance were monstrous old trees with gnarly branches where “birds of the air” nested in it. Because the church was so closely tied to the state, it was routine to pay political favors with high church positions. Many nesting “birds of the air” were political lackeys and relatives of the nobility and monarchs.
But at the same time, Jesus taught that God already knew how to work around this gnarly mess of Institutionalized Christianity in another parable.
Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
Matthew 13:24-30 (NIV)
The point is clear. Non-Christians and people with evil motives will come alongside those who truly love Jesus. His instructions are clear, too: don’t try to separate the wheat from the weeds! Why? We can’t do it! Only God sees the heart, and it’s in the heart that true spirituality is formed.
Jesus proved the futility of trying to guard the integrity of Christianity with “weed-proof” institutions. For all their many Catechisms, Protestants could not keep “the birds of the air” from nesting in their institutions. For all their many Papal Bulls, edicts, and church councils, the Catholic church fared no better.
Ray Stedman nails it in his classic work, “Body Life.”
What we call “the church” is really two churches! One is selfish, power-hungry, and sinful. The other is loving, forgiving, and godly. One has a long history of stirring up hatred, conflict, and bloody persecution, all in the name of God and religion. The other has always sought to heal human hurts, break down barriers of race and class, and deliver men and women from their guilt, shame, fear, and ignorance.
One is a false church, a counterfeit, masquerading as Christianity, but whose head is Satan. The other is the true church, founded by Jesus Christ, mirroring His authentic character through acts of love, self-sacrifice, courage, and truth.
For some reason, we are continually surprised when we are confronted by this counterfeit church. For some of us, a painful encounter with this false church creates so much pain and disillusionment that we actually begin to doubt the reality of God and His true church! But we shouldn’t be surprised or disillusioned when we bump up against counterfeit Christianity. Jesus Himself predicted that the false church would come. Ray Stedman, Body Life, Chapter 1.
Well said, Mr. Stedman! Christians badly need to read his material!
The Need for Change
As noted in the beginning, the secular pressures gathered against Christianity and churches everywhere demands — necessitates — a thorough reevaluation of the traditions of the church. The institutions of the Renaissance simply will not work in today’s world. This includes the traditions of the Renaissance, too.
The Restless Reformed described earlier are certainly refreshing, innovative thinkers moving away from some of the institutions of the Reformed tradition. But unfortunately they still cling to the theology of Calvin which can only be described as outdated, manmade, and rooted in the traditions of the “false church” Stedman described.
Next: the Fear Factor of institutional Christianity.
- In The Dawn of Covenant Theology we discussed the contradiction between the Bible and Reformed Theology’s penchant for government control. [⇑]
- See Wikipedia, John Calvin. [⇑]
- The term “High Church” was actually coined later by Anglicans to describe their efforts to retain the Catholic “Solemn High Mass”, but all the early Reformed traditions incorporated the formalism of the Mass, in varying degrees. [⇑]
- Read D. McCallum’s review of “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation” for statistics about the decline of Christianity. [⇑]
- Elegant speculations Calvin raised include Lapsarianism, Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism which we won’t delve into further; but it is entertaining to ask a Calvinist looking for a joust which of these schools he subscribes to! [⇑]
- From Institutes of the Christian Religion, Subject of the Present Work, Prefixed to the French edition, published at Geneva in 1545. [⇑]
- From The Catholic Encyclopedia: “The act of faith being nothing else than the unconditional surrender of human reason to the sovereign authority of the self-revealing God, it is plain that Catholic theology is…basing its teachings, especially of the mysteries of faith, on the authority of Divine revelation and the infallible Church established by Christ.” The “infallible Church” clause is necessary to sustain the novel “mysteries of the faith” arising from Trent. [⇑]
- Oxford English Dictionary [⇑]
- See the teachings at Mars Hill, for example, where all their teachings are organized topically, not around books of the Bible. [⇑]
Wow, what a paper … You should offer to teach a class at Kent on “The History of the Christian Institution” or something like that. It would be a good in because everyone would be into xian bashing but then you could show it’s not real xianity, it’s just what people in the kosmos do. Real xianity is real and relational.
I had to read this twice - you filled this article full of tasty tid-bits and with such gusto.
Interesting, I had never heard that particular exegesis for the Matthew 13 - mustard seed parable. But when coupled with the wheat and the tare parable - it makes sense.
Was their an outside source for that insight or were you inspired during your study? Just curious.
I ordered the 20th Century Theology book by Gretz and Olson - can’t wait to open its pages.
Yes, I really liked reading this. It spurs so many thoughts. I’ve been listening to people like Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Albert Moller talk about the “New Atheism” lately. They, in both cases, end up mentioning/contrasting the church in America with the church in Europe and their ability, or inability, to affect the cultural climate over the last few decades. Europe may be beginning a start, to pull out of their totally secularized culture. But the jury is still out on that one. And if I had to bet on who would be leading it, I would say it will be the Christian apologists delivering up some extremely thoughtful arguements to the young people in colleges everywhere.
America has not yet totally given in to that secularization. Even Richard Dawkins recognizes a ‘religious stubborness’ in America (I can’t remember where he stated this, but I think it was in his latest book, “The God Delusion”). Our’s has been a different problem that I started to mentioned at CT last night. The fundamentalist church of America has, tended to cultivate a separatist attitude fueled by fear. I know what this feels like from my end. It’s very ironic though. We supposedly live in the most free country on this spec of dirt we call earth, and yet we constantly shrink back from sharing our faith with people in a clear and consice way. Dang it! When we live by sight we fear. When we live by Biblical principle we win - God wins people over to himself. Dawkins is trying to drive the nail in God’s coffin. Dr. Moller believes Dawkins wrote “The God Delusion” to solidify the thoughts of uninformed unbelievers. That he’s not writing to Christians.
We still have a chance to dodge that secularization bullet. According to Craig, there is a resurgence of interest in the evidence for the existence of God on College campuses. Craig thinks the college campuses have a very serious impact on the culture at large and therefore the “invisible church” has a huge opportunity to keep an intellectual and philosophical dialog going in the “public milieu”. You college guys need to take advantage of the amazing resources found at http://www.williamlanecraig.com .
It seems to me that much of the baggage the European church has cultivated was, and seems still is, responsible for the developement of the Atheistic world view we see today. The word “Atheism” used to be a bad word. Today “Atheism” is a household word - God seems to be dead in the minds of many people. People who don’t want to really think about it. They say things like, “Of course there is no God, that’s a totally antiquated belief. They are into varificationism. That’s the thought that if you can’t varify it with the five senses, it doesn’t exist. They clearly haven’t thought about it much. They need our help.
Apparently people like Craig, Lennox and a plethora of other philosophy of religion Christians, are getting a good listen by many young people in the universities today. According to Craig, even liberal universities are looking for professors to teach the subject - even when it intails a primarily Christian world view! Does Kent State have such a class? Has any of our college students taken these classes. What were they like? How can you college people enter the “public milieu” of Kent State and give reasonable arguements for the existence of God? I think we, as a church, need to find more ways to support that. Us ‘old fuddy duddies’ could work behind the scenes of a conference, or debate, or something like that!
Thanks, Rick for your feedback. A European come-back? I doubt it, but I’ve been wrong before. Calloused hearts. They need some Chinese missionaries to bring a new wineskin into Europe, like in China, because the European state-run churches are way too dead.
Great resources on the Laine Craig Web site. You others should check it out at http://www.williamlanecraig.com
I think the saddest part is that so many people are alienated from God because their only exposure to the church has been through heartless institutions. Either they’re entirely turned-off by the cold, legalistic, artificial approaches to spirituality, or they immerse themselves in futile rituals and external behaviors, earnestly believing this is the way to God because of church doctrine or example. Interestly, many of “young, restless reformed,” other branches of evangelicalism, and emergents are turning to liturgical worship and rituals of the “ancient-future” church. Christianity Today’s has been covering the movement, with a cover story in the February 2008 issues. There was a sidebar called “Monastic Evangelicals: the attraction of ancient spiritual disciplines.” Yuck. The “ancient faith” was also the theme of Wheaton College’s 2007 Theology Conference.
[…] Dawn of Covenant Theology and Heartless Institutions - help Christian workers explain the problem of church history, which is a popular objection […]
Institutions, rituals, even traditions are not issues in and of themselves. As Keith pointed out, it is the reliance on them and their potential shallowness that is the danger.
When used properly, rituals and traditions can be positive forces in the church. In fact, I would argue that biblical xianity contains some very significant rituals - baptism and communion being the foremost.
The issue then is not liturgical worship, or even the trend toward and ancient-future faith. The issue is the meaning placed within these rituals and traditions and how they are employed. Rituals and traditions can be very powerful, very meaningful as long as they are not given the status of being efficacious themselves. LNS
LNS,
I appreciate your thoughts on this subject. However, I must respectfully disagree on a few of your points.
It is true that the NT church did have rituals - but only the 2 you mentioned: baptism and communion. There are no others. And compared to the rituals prescribed in the OT under the Law, it is a dramatic difference. “The Law is a tutor to lead us to Christ.” ANY rituals we use are a replacement for real relating with God. Rituals in the OT were “shadows of things to come.”
“When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear. ”
Hebrews 8:13 (NASB)
As an example, I do not set up certain rituals when relating with my husband. I can walk right into my husband’s presence and relate freely with him. Were I to suddenly introduce a ritual (or rituals), such as singing a certain song, standing and sitting a certain number of times, or reading a certain poem or other piece of literature written by someone else, he would consider it a formal and stilted thing, not to mention weird. He would say, “Why don’t you just talk to me?” We just don’t relate to people like that.
The death of Christ removed ANY barrier that exists between us and God, once we have chosen to be covered by His blood. I can now call God, “Abba, Father.” To relate to God in any formal or ritualistic way is to say that Christ’s death on the cross was “nice” but that we really prefer to go back and relate with Him the way people did in the OT. That’s a problem because Christ made that “obsolete.” We are no longer under the Law.
Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Hebrews 4:16 (NASB)
I would encourage you to study Hebrews 8-10. It makes a way better argument on this subject than I could ever do.
But thank you very much for your comments. I hope you post more.
Darlene,
Thanks for encouraging the dialogue. And since we’re disagreeing, I’ll start with your claim that “ANY rituals we use are a replacement for real relating with God.” This is both a false dichotomy and a false premise. The false dichotomy is between ritual and relationship and the false premise is that “any” ritual is a replacement. In fact, you acknowledged that the biblical example shows at least two rituals, therefore defeating the “any ritual” claim.
A ritual is simply the practice of a rite, a rite is simply a particular form or system of religious or other ceremonial practice. Therefore rituals are, in and of themselves, neutral. They certainly are abused – no argument there. But let’s not condemn the rite based on its abuse by some… shall we condemn alcohol based on is abuse by some?
You offered the relationship of you and your husband as an example. You again set up the false dichotomy between ritual and relationship. Would it really be all that weird and stilting if you read a Shakespearean sonnet to him (a poem written by someone else) - ok, maybe it would be weird… but it’s not wrong. If that’s all you did, then yes, it would be wrong… if somehow you thought you had to do that to be a good wife, then yes, it would be works not relationship - but that would be the abuse of the method, not the method itself.
With that in mind I maintain my point that the issue is the meaning placed within rituals and traditions and how they are employed. Rituals and traditions can be very powerful, very meaningful as long as they are not given the status of being efficacious themselves.
Hi LNS,
I was happy to see you respond so quickly!! It helps sharpen my mind when I discuss these issues with others. I appreciate the civil dialog! And I enjoy having to not only think through these things again, but also enjoy having to wrestle with putting them into words so others understand. As I’m sure you can tell, I am not a gifted writer. I’d rather dialog in person because I speak way more eloquently than I write. Ah, well, I will do my best.
Again, I encourage you to search the Scriptures on this issue. My example of the relationship between my husband and I was just an analogy, and all analogies break down at some point. Dealing directly with the Bible is a much better way of discussing this issue, imho.
And yes, Jesus does prescribe 2 rituals - but my point is, that is all He prescribes us to do as far as rituals are concerned. As a matter of fact, after being steeped in the Law and the OT rituals that went along with them, it is almost shocking to see the absence
of any others. It is a glaring omission.
It is also interesting to note how these two rituals are carried out. Baptism is a one time ritual - just once after you receive Christ. Not repetitive in the least. And the description of communion is even more amazing. Instead of a formal and somber thing, it is a joyous occasion practiced daily as groups of believers gathered, in large groups as we see in Acts 2, but most often in small groups. No priest or professional clergy needed. As a matter of fact, there are no longer any priests or clergy. They have been done away with because now the only mediator we need is Jesus. (1 Tim 2:5)
In addition, the NT writers have a lot to say to those coming into the NT church who were “spying out their freedom.” (Gal 2:4.) These “false brethren” were coming in behind Paul to add works to the grace message that Paul preached to them. They were telling them that, yes, Christ died to redeem them as a free gift, but now that they were believers, they needed to keep the man-made traditions, which included circumcision and other rituals. Paul said these guys were trying to “bring us back into bondage.” They were adding law to grace. And in doing so, clouding the message of grace and grace alone.
Add this to Hebrews 8-10 and to God’s thoughts there on the the role of Law and the continuation of rituals and there is a powerful argument for the dispensing of all rituals save two - baptism and communion because they are prescribed by the Lord, but rituals very different than those seen in the OT.
Elsewhere Paul calls traditions and the law “elemental things.”
But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?
You observe days and months and seasons and years.
I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.
Galatians 4:9-11 (NASB)
See also Col 2.
Now, I realize you probably don’t believe that these rituals are necessary for salvation or even necessary to walk as a believer, or necessary to be a “good” Christian. You mention that they have significance and contain deep meaning to you. I understand this and can appreciate your feelings on it. And I’m not even saying these things are wrong. But we need to be very careful not to emphasize them, as you mention yourself.
And that is why there is a danger here. Others do NOT understand, particularly the nonchristian. They observe Christians participating in rituals, liturgy, and traditions and believe participating in these is what provides salvation, or what makes you “holy,” or what makes you a “good” Christian. Christianity is very much misunderstood by Christians and nonChristians alike. Many, if not most, view it as a “religion” with religion being defined as, “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”
And the Bible takes exception when people teach that by doing these things, praying this way, avoiding this over here and that over there, is what provides salvation or even makes you more holy. Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, as I’m sure you agree. It is the opportunity to have a relationship with the Creator God of the universe without having to perform rituals that makes it so significantly different than any religion. When we participate in ritual, it is often misleading. Mind you, I’m not saying it is purposely misleading. But people expect to see liturgy and ritual because they expect to see a religion. They are not helpful in leading people into a relationship with Jesus, again, in my opinion. My main ministry is reaching the unchurched. To them, ritual and liturgy defines Christianity. I strive repeatedly to explain that there IS no jumping through hoops needed, merely faith that the death of Christ on the cross paid for your sin, and if you ask that his death apply to you, then you now have a relationship with Him. “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith.”
In the end, what I am saying is, although I don’t believe there is anything wrong with ritual per se, it cannot be the emphasis. And they do often cloud the issue of the message of grace, particularly to the nonchristian. For the Christian, the mistake that is often made is that by participating in rituals, etc, it makes you more successful and mature. It makes them feel good. (Please understand, I am NOT saying this describes you. I am saying it describes many.) The measure of maturity is the ability to love others as Christ loved us. And this is much more difficult to do than observing a tradition. It is why so many Christians will substitute tradition, ritual, and liturgy for going out and sacrificially loving others. (Again, I am NOT speaking of you.)
Thank you for dialoging with me on this. I hope to see more of your comments here and elsewhere on this site.
Boy, do I wish I could write better!
Your sister-in-Christ, Darlene
Darlene,
Between my second post and your’s I put 2 and 2 together as to how you fit with Xenos… so just so things are “fair” show my avatar to Keith and he can fill you in.
I’m not one to employ many rituals myself… with the exception of you typical Evangelical Non-denominational type. I was just “arguing” for what I see as balance.
Hi there Lon,
I see you’ve met my lovely wife Darlene! Well that’s good, she loves the repartee.
I do agree with you, Lon, that humans are designed to appreciate traditions and rituals. The 4th of July is a favorite, and we’ve raised our kids with “McCallum traditions” like opening presents on Christmas Eve. I recently taught Galatians 4:1-11 and pointed out my Scottish heritage where the traditions of bagpipes and kilts-without-underwear may seem strange to some, but not to a real Scotsman!
It is mostly true that the ritual doesn’t matter, but the meaning attached does. I say “mostly”, because it’s clear in Hebrews that the audience returning to the rituals & traditions of the Old Testament sacrificial system — even merely to please their neighbors — is tantamount to rejecting Jesus, since Jesus was the “substance” of all those “shadows” (c.f., Heb.10).
I think the Confederate flag is a modern-day Hebrews 10 corollary. People display it and say, “It means ‘independence’, not ‘racism’.” But they can’t control the hateful power of that symbol, and they are affected by the symbolic racism when someone breaks their nose!
Currently our church is receiving great condemnation from a someone offended that Xenos baptized her adult son when he became a Christian. Untold thousands of Christians were burned at the stake for adult baptism (the “Anabaptists”). Baptism and communion offend, but Jesus wants us to stand up & get persecuted for the important messages these rituals convey to the world around us.
Because rituals & traditions have so much power, Christians should not embrace them thoughtlessly, and I’m sure you agree on this point. If I embrace the liturgy of the “High Church”, I shouldn’t be surprised when I can’t reach people in this secular culture. Those traditions & rituals made sense in the Middle Ages perhaps, but why erect a barrier of ancient Christian culture against today’s world? Paul says, “I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.”
And this is my point, above: “the secular pressures gathered against Christianity and churches everywhere demands — necessitates — a thorough reevaluation of the traditions of the church. The institutions of the Renaissance simply will not work in today’s world.” Yes, traditions may be benign, but when they alienate us from the world around, they should go away. What’s important is the Gospel.
Just as a caveat, I think the older generation (say, WWII and before) is in a different position: their generations are comfortable with High Church rituals, so by all means go ahead! And not all the Gen-Xers or Millenials are alienated from ritual, BUT MOST ARE, and this is why it’s time to change things & drop the unnecessary things in order to reach the world for Jesus.
Would we not agree?
Keith,
Yes, I would agree.
Any disagreement probably comes from the nuanced usage of ritual. For example, we observe an advent season with the lighting of candles in a traditional looking advent wreath. We do this every year, it is “tradition” and it is “ritual.” In an Evangelical Non-denominational church it is also somewhat “unusual.” I think we employ this in such a way as to add meaning to our time of worship. On the other hand, a lot of liberal churches use advent wreaths in similar ways, but they end up being what you describe - meaningless, shallow, and maybe even problematic if people see them as efficacious. So, here is an example of a ritual that could go either way… LNS
It’s nice to see the action going down on this site. It has really got me to think through tradition and ritual. BTW - Dar where’s your gravatar? And I thought you were web savy!
Well, to tell you the truth Lon (and don’t tell anyone), I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for candle-light vespers.