On leaving the Facebook Covenanter Group

Okay, I admit this doesn't have the same existential or rhetorical import of Luther's 95 theses, but it might prove interesting, nonetheless.

The Covenanter Theonomist group on Facebook actually had a lot going for it.  Unlike Reconstructionists groups, they cared for the church (so to speak) and had a modicum of self-reflection.  I did notice a number of unhealthy habits, though.

1. Inventing Kinism:  One of the most overblown debates in the Reformed world is kinism.  I don't want to get into defining it.   The troubling phenomenon, though, is that groups associated with theonomy often attract kinists.  I wonder why that is.  These guys look for Kinists to create so they can talk about how evil slavery and the South is.   Their definition of kinism also happens to include every human society until 1789.  I am not endorsing kinism, mind you, but I am equally wary of over-reacting to such an extent that you are a Jacobin from the French Revolution.
2. Speaking of which, the Covenanters, which were usually a Northern Christian denomination in the United States, love to praise Lincoln and John Brown and attack the South (see here for the most devastating deconstruction of American Covenanter thought).  It's sort of myopic and disturbing.  They brag about how they opposed man-stealing while never reflecting on how Roman Christian slave-owners in the New Testament might have acquired slaves (hint: it had to do with empire and conquest).  They even boast about denying communion to Southern Slave owners (though this was probably a moot point, since the RCNA really wasn't operative in the South, and the Scottish ecclesial tradition probably didn't have Communion that often, anyway).  This is going beyond Scripture is is "getting holier than Jesus."
3. Will a Covenanter movement ever "get off the ground?"  No.  With a few exceptions, Covenanter denominations are almost always the results of schisms from the larger Reformed world.  They are intellectually isolated (this isn't a value judgment; it's a historical observation) and really haven't contributed much to Reformed theology in the last 300 years beyond some monographs on the Mediatorial Reign of Christ, which is staple Reformed thought, anyway.
4. One of the reasons they won't get off the ground is that they are self-legally obligated to support a magistrate who upholds the Solemn League and Covenant.  I'll let you reflect on that possibility for a while.  (although they didn't have a problem joining with Lincoln to attack their fellow Celtic brothers in the South; evidently the Constitution wasn't that bad then).

The above are some of the reasons I left the group. Below is a more sustained reflection on the self-limitations of Covenanter thought.

There is much good in the Covenanter tradition, and this post will pain many (myself most of all).  But if they want an intellectual (Or even better, political) future then they need to own up to some challenges.  I honor and admire Richard Cameron and Alexander Peden (hey, they received extra-scriptural prophecy.  Anybody want to take up that one?).  I do not think, however, that the entire Covenanting tradition was able to hold the strings together.  And that’s not just my take on it. I think Moore argues the same thing (Our Covenant Heritage). These challenges are not simply my making up because people started slandering Christ’s elders in his church on Facebook (like Stonewall Jackson).  They point to deeper issues.

While the problems in the Covenanter tradition can easily point back to the Battle of Bothwell Bridge (cf Maurice Grant’s biographies of both Cameron and Cargill; excellent reads), I was alerted to some of the tensions by T. Harris.  Again, I am writing this so Covenanters can work out the difficulties now instead of having to make hard and fast choices on the field of battle later.   You can be angry with me, but I am your best friend.

1.  The Hatred of the South

This is myopic and almost unhealthy.   Modern covenanting talks about how evil the South is and never once tries to work through the sticky issues of how best to help freed slaves.   Or slaves who didn’t want to be freed.  As evil as slavery might have been, simply throwing the blacks out on the street only it makes it worse.   The slave-owners (and many slaves) knew this.

And it really comes back to the question:  is the relation between master and slave sinful?  This is a very specific question.  This is why Freshman atheists have a field day with us.  But I know the response:  buying stolen property, especially human property, is sinful.  Perhaps it is, but didn’t Paul know this when he outlined healthy parameters for both masters and slaves?  How do you think the ancient Romans got slaves in the first place?  Democratic vote?  They were often prisoners of war, babies of raped women, and worse.  And does Paul say, in good John Brown fashion, “Rise up slaves and kill your masters” (though to be fair John Brown actually killed white Northerners)?

Northern Covenanters love to boast on how they “deny communion to man-stealers.”    Harris notes in response,

Athenagoras, defending the church against the pagan charge of cannibalism said, “moreover, we have slaves: some of us more, some fewer. We cannot hide anything from them; yet not one of them has made up such tall stories against us.” (Early Church Fathers, ed. C.C. Richardson, p. 338). But Alexander McLeod says to the slaveholder, “you cannot be in the church,” (p. 25) and this posture was eventually ratified by the entire covenanter church. On this point, their righteousness exceeded even that of our Lord and the apostles. And that is heady stuff.

Am I saying we should have slaves today?  Of course not.  But we need to seriously think through these issues instead of giving non-answers like “Christianity provided for civilization to move forward without slavery.”  To which I say, “early Medieval Russia.”

2.  The strange love-affair with Lincoln

This is odd, too.  Lincoln really didn’t care for Christianity and he routinely made darkie jokes.   He was the biggest white supremacist of the 19th century.  He ran on the platform, in essence, that he would not free a single slave.  My Covenanter friends–you are being deceived.

Someone could respond, “You’re just angry that the South lost.”  Perhaps, perhaps not.  That brings up another point

3.  Consistently outmaneuvered politically and militarily

Why is it that the Covenanters who have such a heroic (and rightly earned) reputation for godly resistance during the Killing  Times have routinely been outmaneuvered in the public square?  I’ll give three examples: Bothwell Bridge, Cromwell, and The War Between the States.

Bothwell

The Covenanters had already proved themselves at Drumclog.  Further, Bothwell Bridge forced the Royalists into a chokepoint.   While the ultimate cause for the covenanters defeat was lack of artillery and ammo, the outcome was in the air for a while.   The problem was whether to allow Indulged parties to participate.  Granted, the Indulged sinned and were under God’s judgment.  Cameron and others were right to resist elsewhere, but Bothwell was not an ecclesiastical act.  It was a military one.   Indulged ammunition wasn’t sinful per se.

Cromwell

Covenanters call Cromwell the Usurper.   It is somewhat ironic given that these Covenanters had fought a war of defiance (rightly so) against the very same king.  I have to ask, though, precisely what did you expect when rallying behind the (well-known) debauched papal pervert Charles II?  Granted, he vowed the covenants.  Granted, he should have owned up to them.   Still, anyone could have seen how this was going to end.

How else was Cromwell to interpret this?   He knew the Covenanters were militarily capable, so he is seeing an armed host rallying behind the dynasty against which both had recently fought a war.  But even then, the Covenanters could have held him off and forced a peace.   Their actions at Dunbar as as unbelievable as they are inexplicable.  They had the advantage of both place and time.  Ignoring that, they decided to meet Cromwell on equal footing.  In response, Cromwell executed one of the most perfect maneuvers in military history (that was still studied and practiced in the 20th century by America, England, and Germany) and in effect subdued Scotland.

To make it worse, Grant notes that Cromwell’s subjugation of Scotland allowed the kirk to flourish spiritually.  Ye shall know them by their fruits.  Interpreting Providence is dangerous, but this might mean that the Covenanters didn't even deserve political independence.

Lincoln (again)

I must quote Harris in detail for full affect.

“Most of its members were enthusiastically for the war and anxious to participate in it as far as they could without violating their principle of dissent from the government.” (p. 58) This despite the fact that Lincoln himself constantly said the war was not about slavery. We now know Lincoln was a pathological liar; the covenanters must have known this in their bones as well, and gave vent to their approval of the “real reason,” concealed by Lincoln. At any rate, it is hard to imagine them getting so excited about a war that was about enforced union. In view of their history, that would be ironic indeed.
However, they exhibited a certain naiveté in two ways which may go part way to explain the madness. At one point, they concocted an oath to propose to the US as a basis for enlisting in the army, an oath that would be consistent with continued resistance to full submission. “I do swear by the living God, that I will be faithful to the United States, and will aid and defend them against the armies of the Confederate States, yielding all due obedience to military orders.” (p. 58) The charming bit here is the notion of defendingagainst the armies of the CSA — armies which were purely defensive, and which would have been glad to disperse and go home, if it weren’t for the invading and marauding union armies. Somehow, they had built up a mythic view of an aggressive South, gobbling up adjacent lands by force of arms.

Covenanting on the Ground

This is open for discussion.  How exactly is National Covenanting going to work today?  Surely it means more than strong-arming congress in rejecting the First Amendment.

Note Bene:  Harris’s quotations are from David M. Carson. Transplanted to America: A Popular History of the American Covenanters to 1871. (Pittsburgh: Crown & Covenant Publications, n/d).

City of Blog Against the Pagans (Book 19)

I read Augustine's City of God ten years ago.  I figured on re-reading, given the current political scene.  I am going to do readings of each book and post them on the blog.  I am going to start with Book 19.

My analysis is from O'Donovan's Bonds of Imperfection.

A thing’s end is its perfection.  The summum bonum is that object for which other objects are sought, but which is sought only for itself.  

“Moral philosophy must be social philosophy.”

Book 2 flashback:  traditional Roman teaching had no inherent tradition of moral teaching.  

res publica:  

true right (ius) implies obedience to the true God; for right-ness (iustitia) “is the virtue that assigns everyone his due, and there can be no rightness when the worship owed to the Creator is offered instead to unclean demons” (53).  

The whole of Book 19 can be summarized along three points:

1. An eschatological claim:  the supreme good is perfect peace (19.11-12)
2. A negative conclusion:  relative to the perfect peace, our life is most unhappy.
3. A qualification of this negative conclusion:  we can have relative happiness if we make our life a means to the summum bonum.

Communis Usus

• each city has its own end.
• Augustine is not saying that the two cities get along together by having a common use of means towards different ends.  The connective phrase ita etiam connects chapter 16 with the first line of chapter 17:  the comparison is between the earthly city and the earthly household

Consensus of Wills

But what of the obvious fact that the Two Cities do seem to “get along” from time to time?  For one, we note that members of the heavenly city use the earthly as a means to an end; whereas the earthly city sees itself as an end.  There is no tertium quid between the two cities, no neutral space.  The agreement can only be on a surface level of means, and only that.

Ius and Iustitia

Augustine notes that “ius” flows from the source of iustitia (19.21).  There can be no iustitia common to the two cities because the earthly city does not deal or participate in the forgiveness of sins (Ep. 140.72; Spirit and the Letter 32.56).  Iustitia, nonetheless, is not at the forefront of Augustine’s concerns.  

If a state does display some virtues but it relates to some object other than God, then it is disorder (19.14-16).  This insight allows Augustine to say that there is some relative order and good in a state, but gives him the space to critique the State. (Interestingly, Augustine has no vision for political programs; sorry, Reconstructionists).  

O’Donovan then outlines a pyramid of ascending orders of peace in the universe (rerum omnium).  I will number them but I can’t reproduce the pyramidal scheme here.  The numbers aren’t of greater importance to lesser, or vice-versa.  Rather, beginning with (1) it is a continual movement outward.

(10) ?

(9)  peace of the heavenly city

(8) peace of the city

(7) peace of the household (19.14-16)

(6) pax hominum (Peace of Rome? or basic Peace between men)

(5) peace with God

(4) Body-soul union

(3) rational soul

(2) irrational passions

1. Body

The relation between peace and order is one of definition.  The peace of any household is the tranquility of order.

Household (Domus)

It is an ordered harmony of giving and receiving commands.  Unlike the City, though, the commands are not given from a desire to dominate, but from compassionate acceptance of responsibility.

Augustine does not try to “transform” society.  It is impossible to read Book 19 or the whole City of God that way.  Rather, he “transvalues” society’s structures (O’Donovan 68).  

A reflection on *Being*

Based on Robert Sweetman's essay in Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed T radition.  His larger target is the claim that nominalism created the Reformation (and hence ruined Christian Europe).  I think he ably rebuts that thesis, but his essay does a good job in showing what the analogia entis really is.

“Being” covers the most humble individual to the most general genera.  Being functions as a genus, but it is not a genus itself.  It does not have anything more universal in which it can participate.  Because being is not definable, it is not univocal.  

Because we have to predicate “being” over everything, this points to some sameness between everything.  And because there is a sameness, being cannot be equivocal.  Thus, it is analogical.  

Further, Thomas denies univocal knowledge (ST 1 Q. 13 a.5).  When we predicate some finite thing, we predicate it in a divided way.  When we predicate something of God, we are predicating it in an undivided way (since God has it immediately and simply).

Analogy is founded on the proportionality of one name to another where they participate in a common  unity.  The predicate of a term of both God and man is founded on some order of all creatures.  In short, analogical predication posits a single essence as a middle term uniting God and creature (Sweetman 83).  The dissimilarity is that the creature has a derived and diminished existence. 

Outline of Desire of the Nations

Rev David Field did his own outline.  You are encouraged to go read his.

The Revelation of God’s Kingship (36-41)

Isaiah 33:22:   Yhwh is our king; Yhwh is our judge; Yhwh is our lawgiver.  He will save us.”  

Ideas are connected.  Kingship implies judgment, lawgiving, and salvation.  

Salvation

The early Hebrews saw this element in the Psalms.   While it included salvation from sin, the term is often used to show God’s victories of his people’s enemies.   

What is the purpose of these victories? (Ps. 13:5; 85:7).   They show God’s hesed, his enduring commitment to those in his covenant.  Hesed often stands in parallel to the Hebrew word for faithfulness (Psalm 98.3).  

These victories also show God’s tsedeq, righteousness.  In the Psalms God’s righteousness is a public thing.   When he shows his right hand and holy arm, the nations will know (98.2). This is an important point in later Israelite history.   You are an Israelite living in Babylon.   While you are the chosen people of God, you have been publicly shamed by a pagan power (and presumably, so has your God).  Therefore, when God acts to show his righteousness, it must be public:  Is. 45.5; 46.13;51.5-8;56.1;61.10; 62.1).

Judgment

The Hebrew root words relating to God’s righteousness often appear in connection with his shpt, judgment.  

This illustrates the problem with ancient Israel’s existence.  They were God’s chosen people yet they often worshipped idols.  If it is true that God vindicates his name among the pagans because he is a just God, how much more true will he vindicate his name among his people?  

What do we mean by the words “judgment” and “justice?”  The Hebrew word for “judgment” is mishpat.  When it is used in the Bible it is seen as a judicial performance.  When true “judgment” is present it is not a state of affairs but an activity that is carried out.  

The prophet Amos calls for mishpat to roll on like a river.  Isaiah says that the citizens of Jerusalem should seek mishpat by giving judgment in the cause of the fatherless and widow (1:17).  Isaiah even goes on to say that Zion will even be redeemed by mishpat (1:26ff).  

The judgments of Yahweh have lasting validity because all of his acts have lasting validity.  

This leads into what the Israelites believed about…

Law

If you look at the Old Testament law code, it is strange.   But maybe it shouldn’t be.   For us Westerners there is a sharp distinction between history and law.    This was not so for the Hebrew.  For Israel “history” is the telling of God’s acts to future generations.  Law was the telling of his judgments (mishpatim).

Psalm 119 is a case in point.  There are several terms of importance.   Testimony and decree. Interestingly enough, other Psalmists use the words in connection with a word we have just seen:  judgment.  See Psalm 81:4-5.  

When the kingdom of Judah had its reforming moments, it is evident that “testimony” and “law” were in the foreground.  2 Kgs 22:8-13.  Jer. 26:1ff.  In both cases we see that “law” is simply more than a “code.”  It is attesting that God will live out his judgments in Israel’s history.  

Look at how Psalm 96:10 unfolds:  the nations are to be told that Yhwh is king, that he established the world on firm foundations, and that he will judge the peoples with equity.

Without the consciousness of something possessed and handed on, there could never be a political theology, since it could never be clear how the judgments of God could give order and sustain a community (48ff).  

In other words, something needs to be possessed and handed down.  This traditional possession was not always identified with “The Law.”  Originally, the existence of Israel was mediated through the Land.  Possessing the land was a matter of observing the order of life which was established by Yahweh’s judgments (Psalm 37:29ff).  

Land = material cause of Yahweh’s Kingly Rule

judgments = formal cause of Yahweh’s Kingly Rule

Victories = efficient cause of Yahweh’s Kingly Rule

Mediators of Yahweh’s Rule

Yahweh’s authority is image-less, like Yahweh himself.   However, Yahweh is immediately present in conquest, judgment, and law.  Israel still had a problem in its history:  it could never consolidate.  It had land, judgment, and victories (though never absolutely), but it had no stable means of passing it down.  Even acknowledging the sacred writer’s criticism of monarchy (1 Sam. 8), it must be acknowledged that monarchy exercised a stabilizing influence when contrasted with the Judges period.  Most importantly, monarchy allowed the passing down of the tradition (Land, Judgments, Victories).  

Dual Authority

Two cities; two rules.  Israel and Babylon side by side.  

The foreign sword, exile gives Israel a chance to separate from idolatrous connections (84).

Empire is necessarily unstable

The fulfilling of time

Jesus’s words of God’s reign were confirmed by power.  The point: instruction runs parallel to authority (Mark 1:22, 27: Luke:  4:36).  

The previous duality is transformed: The Two Cities (Babylon/Jerusalem) were indicative of Israel’s alienation.  They were soon to be replaced by the Two Eras (93).  Israel previously owed its existence (30-49) through Yahweh’s victories, Judgments, and gift of Land.  This is transformed in Jesus’s ministry

1. Works of Power;  demonstration of God’s rule.  Their function was to draw attention to his preaching.   
2. Jesus proclaimed the coming judgment of Israel:  Matt 8:11; this judgment creates new situations and new conditions.
3. Jesus, Israel, and the Law:  
1. Sabbath:  The law is reinterpreted so man could fully realize God’s welfare for him.
2. Disciples:  Forming a new community.  Authority has been refashioned on how God models his own authority.
3. Fulfilling the law:  Law is treated as a kind of promise.  It anticipates a righteousness for which the faithful hungered.  

Triumph of the Kingdom pp. 120-157

The Representative (120)

Jesus proclaimed Kingdom; apostolic church did not.  This is no accident.  The latter proclaimed/illustrated what happens when the Kingdom came in conflict with principalities.

Progressive mediations: “God’s rule was discerned through the judicial tasks of angels and kings in all the nations; it was discerned in special covenant through the vocation of the Davidide line.   But now the last layer of the veil is drawn back”(124).

In Ezekiel we see the immediate disclosure of Yahweh’s rule in the Davidic line (Ez. 34:1-31).

OO’s critique of classic republicanism:  127.

Representation and Authority:  our life under Christ’s resurrection is service to righteousness (129).  Resurrection establishes authority of new life (NB: Note the important connection between resurrection and reigning).  

Representation of Israel → Representation of human race:  OO rejects “replacement theology” (131).  Jesus is Israel’s identity.  Servant passages in Isaiah.  Israel’s public tradition (Romans 9:1-4) is continuous.   

Moments of the Representative Act (133)

1. Advent:  Jesus mediates kingdom in his personal being.  Fulfills all God intended (Isaiah 42).
2. Passion:    judgment has two acts:  separation of innocent and guilty; and affirmation of the innocent.  Both are seen in cross/resurrection:  Christ is set in opposition to guilty Israel and vindicated before Israel.  Pilate’s irony:  “The answer to his (Pilate) question is that his own authority, which he tries to assert by threatening, is also dependent on a source.  Is that source Caesar, or is it God?  The question is left open for the moment, but the answer will come:  because it depends on Caesar, it depends on God, since Caesar is destined to fulfill the role God designed for him…(continuing 141).
3. Restoration of Christ:  judges Israel’s sin and reaffirms Israel’s new identity in Christ.
4. Exaltation:  royal imagery (Ps. 2:1).  Power put forth, judgment effected, gift of communal identity.  

Subjection of the Nations

To what extent is secular authority compatible with the Christ-mission?  

Romans 13:1ff; government’s purpose is judgment.  To this degree is secular authority compatible with the Christ-mission:  it has the role of judgment.  Mishpt.  This reflects the New Christian situation.  

Secular authorities do not mediate the rule of God (rule = judgment, victory, law); they merely mediate his judgment (151).  Their victories and such are rendered irrelevant by Christ’s victory.  

The church has no distinct social presence:  its witnesses call back to the Holy City.  Interestingly in Revelation 18ff we see a converging of Israel, the Eschatological Church, and the Antichrist Empire.

The Authorisation of the Church

The dual authority assumes a distinct form. OO is somewhat confusing on this identity.  He says he isn’t defending Christendom, but its hard to see otherwise.  

1. OO asserts the church is a political society.  At the very least this means that the church is an independent society (161).  It is authorised by Pentecost.  
1. The church prolongs the ancient faithfulness of Israel, not replaces it.
2. Its essential nature as a governed society is hidden, to be discerned by faith.  This helps protect us from claims that such-and-so a church government is the essence of the bride of Christ.  OO rebuts Ignatius on p. 168ff.  Ministerial orders are derived, not posited.  They are disclosed from heaven.  
3. The relation of the church to Christ is a recapitulation of the Christ-event (171).  The church’s sacraments authenticate its ministry, not the other way around.  

Moments of Recapitulation

The Christ-event is the structuring principle for all ecclesiology.  

1. In response to the Advent, the church is a gathering community.   (Some thoughts on unity form 176-177).  The unity inheres in the confession of Jesus as God’s Son.  This is only possible by the Holy Spirit (177).   [NB:  Unity is a spiritual thing, not a material or tangible thing.  Therefore, Protestants should not be embarrassed by supposed “fractures”]  
   
2. The church is a suffering community.  
   
3. It is a glad community (181).  A Delight in what God has done in Christ.  
1. Moral life of the church:  vindication of God’s rule in Christ’s resurrection.  
2. Keeping of the Lord’s day:  Ground of all moral principles in the church (Barth).   OO tries to steer a mediating path between the Patristic denial of the Lord’s Day = Sabbath (radical newness) and the Reformation identifying the two (conservative sameness).  

4. It is a prophetic community.  The church is authorised to deploy the powers of the kingdom of God.  These powers are displayed through speech.  
1. The presence of prophecy directs us to the charism.  
2. To prophecy: to speak a word from God to the church in the here and now.  OO denies that it is merely synonymous with preaching.

Our narrative of the church is the inner logic of the sequence of the kingdom of God (191).  

The Obedience of Rulers

Christendom: The Doctrine of the Two

OO:  society and rulers have different destinies:  the former is to be transformed, shaped in conformity to God’s purpose; the latter to disappear, renouncing their sovereignty in the face of his (193).  Nice statement, but Revelation speaks of kings being healed by the New Jerusalem.

Contrary to critics, OO is not advocating Christendom.  He is merely noting it is a historical response to Christ’s witness (195).

OO offers good reading of Constantine and the interpretations that followed.  Per Eusebius, Constantine filled the place of the Parousia (which seems to echo Moltmann’s contention that the church ceased being premillennial because it became Constantinian).  

Redefining the Boundary

Church contrasted the roles of emperor and bishop as a transition from old age to new (199). This is best exemplified in Ambrose of Milan.  

Two Rules

Gelasius deconstructed Augustine:  he translated the duality from the level of society (two loves made two cities) to the level of government (two there are by whom this world is ruled; 203).  

Problem arose: who inherited the kingly aspect of Christ’s ministry, emperor or bishop?  

Supremacy of Spiritual Authority

soul of Christendom is church.  body is king.  Soul superior to Body.   highly neo-platonic (205).

The Authority of Word Alone

What does spiritual authority mean?  property meant power; power meant jurisdiction; jurisdiction meant authority, and authority meant a proper role for the church’s shaping society (207).  Franciscans rejected this line of thought.

Marsilius of Padua offered a good, even eschatological perspective:  since Christ’s judgment is still future, it is impossible to represent it now by any single icon of political government (208).

Restoring the Balance

Calvinism?

Mission or Coercion

The doctrine of the Two was best seen as a doctrine of two ages (211).  

State forms outer circle; church inner circle; kingdom the center.  The Church reminds the state and the state bears witness to Christ’s rule (per Barth, OO, 213).  

Antichrist: the convergence in one subject of claims to earthly political rule and heavenly soteriological mediation (214ff).  

Martyrdom is the witness of an alternative Lord.

OO is at pains to say that a Christian state need not be a coercive state.  Logically, he is correct.   

Christendom and the Liberal Tradition

OO gently rebuts Chesterton’s Catholic neo-Medievalism.  OO notes that the sources of modernity lie within the Christendom tradition and not simply Protestantism (228).