Christianity Archives - Page 9 of 12

Do You Have a Soul?

“O my friends, he said, if the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the danger of neglecting her from this point of view does indeed appear to be awful.”

That is Socrates talking in Phaedo, Plato’s account of the last conversation of Socrates’ life. If the soul is immortal, then surely Socrates is right. Indeed, if the soul is immortal, it is hard to imagine how that could be wrong.

In the phrase “if the soul is immortal,” one might think that it is the “if” which is the point of discussion. But, as it turns out, the “if” isn’t the problem at all. The problem these days is the word “soul.”

We talked about this book in one of my reading groups (The Grecian Urn Seminar). The room was sharply divided on whether there is such a thing as a soul. Socrates spends a lot of time in the dialogue proving that your soul existed before you were born and will continue to exist after you are dead. But, in order to figure out the life-span of the soul, it is obviously first necessary to believe in the existence of the thing itself.

The soul is not much in fashion in intellectual circles these days. What is the soul?

To hear the chatter in the academic world, the soul is dead. With the extraordinary advances in brain imaging, people have become quite confident that our brains are making decisions before we are even conscious that these decisions are being made. There is incredible confidence that the day is not far off when we will have cracked the code and we will be able to predict what you will think by watching your brain at work. Note: that is not “predict what you will do,” but “predict what you will think.” Free will has died. Your thoughts are just neuro-physical-chemical reactions in the lump of cells we call your brain.

Having shown that there is no free will, that you are just a lump of flesh falsely thinking it is making decisions, there is no need for and no room for the soul anymore. Once we can observe your thoughts as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen, what is left for the soul to do?

Ah, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The strange thing about the soul which has been destroyed by modern research is that it bears almost zero resemblance to the soul as discussed by Paul or Augustine or Aquinas or…well, by anyone who ever took the soul seriously. Nobody who ever believed the soul was real and important would be the least bit troubled by all that research on the brain.

Now I understand that modern scientists and philosophers are all far too cool and hip to actually go read a theology book and take the argument seriously and think about it for five minutes before they rush out to declare the soul is done and gone. But, surely all the cool kids could at least read Plato. Right?

And, further, is not one part of us body, and the rest of us soul?
To be sure.
And to which class may we say that the body is more alike and akin?
Clearly to the seen: no one can doubt that.
And is the soul seen or not seen?
Not by man, Socrates.
And by “seen” and “not seen” is meant by us that which is or is not visible to the eye of man?
Yes, to the eye of man.
And what do we say of the soul? is that seen or not seen?
Not seen.
Unseen then?
Yes.
Then the soul is more like to the unseen, and the body to the seen?
That is most certain, Socrates.
And were we not saying long ago that the soul when using the body as an instrument of perception, that is to say, when using the sense of sight or hearing or some other sense (for the meaning of perceiving through the body is perceiving through the senses)—were we not saying that the soul too is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard when under their influence?
Very true.
But when returning into herself she reflects; then she passes into the realm of purity, and eternity, and immortality, and unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with them she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging is unchanging. And this state of the soul is called wisdom?
That is well and truly said, Socrates, he replied.

The soul is by definition the part of man which is unseen. By definition. So, if someone wants to come along as talk about all the things we can now see, that discussion is by definition not about the soul at all.

To repeat what should have been obvious: by definition, the existence of the soul cannot be disproven by any physical means.

The mistake being made here is, to be honest, a bit shocking. Consider the argument: “we cannot prove the existence of the soul, therefore the soul does not exist.” Obviously faulty logic. How about “I cannot reason out why the soul needs to exist, therefore the soul doesn’t exist”? Or, “I cannot provide a precise definition of the soul, therefore there is no such thing”? Or…well, you get the idea. These are all just variations on a theme.

Imagine we define the soul as the unseen and unseeable part of a human, the divine spark in the image of God, that part of a human which longs for God or Heaven or immortality or truth. The soul is, in other words, the essence of the person, the immortal part of the person, the only part of the person that really makes a person a person instead of merely a hunk of decaying flesh. Such a soul would not even be fully describable in human language; it is something that transcends the physical realm that we can sense.

Now, defining the soul that way does not prove that it exists. But, if that is what a soul is, then it cannot be proven to exist. It would only be discoverable by faith.

And recall, the argument “If something can only be discoverable by faith, then it does not exist” is not a reasonable or logical argument.

Incredibly, Socrates provided a description of all those in the modern age convinced that they have proven the soul does not exist:

the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste and use for the purposes of his lusts—the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy

That passage is pretty funny when you think about it. Feel free to use it the next time someone tells you that all truth exists only in a bodily form in the realm of things we can observe.

Cheap Repentance

“Repent and believe in the gospel.”

Jesus says that at the outset of the gospel of Mark. This has become one of those “church phrases,” often used in Christian circles and everyone nods and knows exactly what it means.

Well, everyone knows exactly what it means until you start asking what exactly it means.

Consider the word “repent.” As I have heard in numberless sermons, it means turning away from your past sins, expressing sorrow for those past sins, asking for forgiveness for those sins you committed in the past, vowing never again to do those sins, and so on. So far, so good.

Then, there is the three step process: Repent, accept forgiveness, move on. Periodically, you need to repeat the process (after all, you will sin again). Every now and then you pause, think about how bad you have been, and then be glad you are forgiven, and move on.

Enter Augustine:

Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart. You had pity on it when it was at the bottom of the abyss. Now let my heart tell you what it was seeking there in that I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.

Now that is repentance.

Here is what fascinates me. I have read that paragraph from Augustine many times over the years. I’ve read it aloud many time in classes discussing the book. Last week, I read it in a reading group when we were talking about repentance. Everyone agrees that Augustine is really repenting here.

But, is that a good model for repentance? Because, as one student put it, it is a bit over the top.

Now add in the fact that the great sin for which he was repenting was stealing some pears off a tree. Does that ridiculously trivial sin require that much repentance?

Then add in the fact that this passage was not written the day after he stole the pears, or a week later or a month later—it was written 30 years later. Does he still need to repent for a three decade old event in his life, an episode of youthful indiscretion?

Suddenly the word “repent” becomes rather difficult to define. If what Augustine is doing is an example of true repentance, then that thing I and everyone else I know has been doing for years barely qualifies. We could even call what we have all been doing “Cheap Repentance.” Sure, many times I have thought “I wish I had not done that. Sorry, God!” And then I moved on as if nothing had happened. Augustine and I are playing in different ballparks here.

But, wait, there is more. Augustine is not only repenting of the pear stealing episode. There is also this:

Yet, for an infant of that age, could it be reckoned good to use tears in trying to obtain what it would have been harmful to get, to be vehemently indignant at the refusals of free and older people and of parents or many other people of good sense who would not yield to my whims, and to attempt to strike them and to do as much injury as possible? There is never an obligation to be obedient to orders which it would be pernicious to obey. So the feebleness of infant limbs is innocent, not the infant’s mind.

Yep. Augustine repents of the sin of being selfish when he was an infant. Do I need to do that too? (Suffice it to say, the students in the discussion had a hard time believing that they needed to repent of the sins of being a selfish toddler.)

The first instinct is to simply dismiss all this as Augustine using his autobiography to foolishly wallow in his own guilt. Indeed, he tipped us off in the title: the book is Confessions. He is, therefore, confessing his sins.

But, the focus of the book is not his sin; the focus of the book isn’t even Augustine. He doesn’t want you thinking about him at all; he wants you to be thinking about God. The entire book points toward God, not Augustine.

The direction the book points is the key. Augustine is confessing all these sins to point our attention to the God who forgives all these sins. Augustine wants to convince you that he is not good, that he is really wicked. “Don’t admire me,” Augustine says. “Admire God.”

So that makes sense of the tone of the book. But, what do I do about repentance? If what Augustine is doing is a model of repentance, then why don’t I repent like that? Why do we in the church talk about repentance like it is a simple thing; you do it and then you accept the forgiveness of God? You confess your sin, say a few quick prayers, and then we are all done here.

Do I really have to examine the depths of the depravity of my heart all the time, thinking about the sins I committed not just in the last week, but over my whole lifetime, and repenting of them even today?

Reading Augustine, it is hard to believe in the lazy cheap repentance we find so appealing, that it is easy to repent and get the nice thrill of forgiveness. On the other hand, though, continually repenting of the sins of my infancy seems so tiresome. When do I get to stop repenting?

Augustine says, “Never.”

Augustine’s answer is surely right. We cheapen repentance when we make it easy.

This is undoubtedly why, sitting in a room of thoughtful students, constantly probing to come up with a definition of repentance, repentance comes off as such a trivial thing. Everyone knows it isn’t a trivial thing. But, the rhetoric surrounding repentance in the modern age sure makes it sound like a trivial thing. Every person in the room had a definition of repentance they learned at some point; every definition collapsed under scrutiny; the notions of repentance could not stand the weight of sin.

We need a stronger definition of what it means to repent. Why? Because until I really come to grips with how much I need to repent and how little I actually feel compelled to repent, I can never really understand the depth of God’s love and forgiveness. When we cheapen repentance, we cheapen grace.

Solitude, Silence, and Prayer

“Arsenius prayed again: ‘Lord, lead me in the way of salvation’ and again he heard a voice saying, ‘Arsenius, flee, be silent, pray always, for these are the sources of sinlessness.’”

From that story, Henri Nouwen devises the plan for a Christian Life, explained in The Way of the Heart.

It is a three step program. Solitude, Silence, Prayer. But, right now you are imagining a pleasant mountain retreat for a weekend of relaxation with no TV and a few prayer times in the woods. That is not at all what Nouwen means. This Solitude, Silence, and Prayer is Hard Work.

Start with Solitude.

In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me—naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, private, broken—nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something.

A “nothingness so dreadful.” Think about that. Nouwen insists, “We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day…” Every day an encounter with nothingness. By yourself.

Then silence. No words. He is really serious about that too.

Silence is the way to make solitude a reality. The Desert Fathers praise silence as the safest way to God. “I have often repented of having spoken,” Arsenius said, “but never of having remained silent.”

We need, for example, silent preaching in our churches. Silent counseling. Organize silent meetings.

Then prayer. But not a wordy prayer. That uses the intellect. Instead, we need prayers of the heart. Use simple, short (maybe one word) prayers uttered over and over until it takes over your whole being and you are indeed silently praying without ceasing.

Nouwen is not gently suggesting these things. He in insisting on them. You need to do these things. Now. And tomorrow…and tomorrow and tomorrow. When you do so, you will hit elevated spirituality, like the Desert Fathers of old. And one day, you will arrive. How will you know when that is? Nouwen closes the book thus: “by the time people feel that just seeing us is ministry, words such as these will no longer be necessary.”

Where to begin with discussing this maddening little tome? How about here, from the section on silence?

This might sound too unworldly to us, but let us at least recognize how often we come out of a conversation, a discussion, a social gathering, or a business meeting with a bad taste in our mouth. How seldom have long talks proved to be good and fruitful? Would not many if not most of the words we use be better left unspoken? We speak about the events of the world, but how often do we really change them for the better? We speak about people and their ways, but how often do our words do them or us any good? We speak about our ideas and feelings as if everyone were interested in them, but how often do we really feel understood? We speak a great deal about God and religion, but how often does it bring us or others real insight? Words often leave us with a sense of inner defeat. They can even create a sense of numbness and a feeling of being bogged down in swampy ground. Often they leave us in a slight depression, or in a fog that clouds the window of our mind.

Yougottabekiddingme. Really, this has to be a joke, right? Does Nouwen really have zero idea about the joys found in conversation?

That problem generalizes all over the place. A solitude with no books is not only better than a solitude with books, the latter doesn’t even qualify as solitude? Silence should be our default state? Prayer using the intellect doesn’t even qualify as prayer?

Sure, I am perhaps the wrong audience for this book. I live my whole life in words. I read; I talk with people; I write; I give speeches and lectures and sermons. Words, words, words. What exactly is my life with no words?

But, before I hasten to simply toss Nouwen out the window, it is also worth noting that it would have been trivially easy for Nouwen to recast his book into something with which I would completely agree.

Solitude? Yes, we are completely bombarded every day with an endless array of stimuli. The cell phone alone is a constant interruption in our lives. We do need time away from all this. We need time to concentrate and in the modern world, you cannot concentrate unless you get away from the endless screaming of distractions.

Silence? Absolutely necessary for understanding God. Wittgenstein noted this at the end of the Tractatus. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” The rest is silence. We necessarily hit a wall when trying to use words to contemplate God. He is beyond our comprehension. Sometimes we need silence, not words, just to experience things that are beyond words.

Prayer? Absolutely praying without ceasing can only be attained by losing the idea that the only form of prayer is running through a list of prayer requests. Learning to commune with God is crucial. We need those groanings too deep for words that Paul describes in his letter to the Romans (8:26). That is real prayer.

In other words, I have absolutely zero disagreement with Nouwen about the ends he wants to attain. We are too busy, our lives are too cluttered and noisy, we compartmentalize prayer. We need a better view of what this relationship with God can be. The ultimate end is to draw closer to God. Nouwen completely agrees with this end.

But, Nouwen is horribly confusing ends and means in this book. If in my solitude I draw closer to God by reading the Four Quartets and letting my mind wander over the ideas therein and in his solitude Nouwen draws closer to God by wrestling with nothingness and demons trying to drag him out the door, then is that a problem? Is it really a problem that maybe, just maybe, Henri Nouwen and I have different means to the same end?

The problem here is much bigger than the annoyance I felt when reading Nouwen’s book. The book is typical of a much larger confusion in the church as a whole. People in the church are constantly confusing means and ends. I have often met people who felt an immense shame that they were not following the Official Rules of How to Draw Closer to God.

Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, not all of us are the same? The confusion of means and ends has created much harm in the church. Far too many Christians have become convinced that the rituals, the solitude done just the right way and the silence done exactly this way and the prayer exactly in this form is the secret to leading a Christian life.

But, all these rules are exactly what Paul condemns in his letter to the Galatians. If we need a list of rules to follow, “if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (2:21). When we in the church create these rules for others to follow, we are getting in the way of people actually discovering God.

So, if you would benefit from the solitude, silence, and prayer in the manner advocated by Nouwen then you should seek every opportunity to use these means. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the practices Nouwen describes. For some, perhaps many, they will be enormously beneficial.

But, means are not ends, and the failure to properly distinguish those two things, the temptation to blur the line between them, causes much harm.

Ticket to Paradise

Imagine being asked to make a travel brochure for Heaven. Could you do it? The goal is to make one of those glossy things beloved by all-expense paid resorts or cruise liners. But, your brochure will be about Heaven.

The challenge: make the Heaven brochure more enticing than the Caribbean resort’s brochure.

When you actually start imagining the pages of your brochure, what do you include? After saying in Big Letters “Best Place Ever!” what do you say?

The popular head picture of heaven is one of changeless perfection, sometimes in imagery of harps, halos, and clouds, sometimes in imageless concepts of abstract spirituality. That may be heaven for angels, but it’s more like hell for humans

That is Peter Kreeft in Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing. Kreeft knows we have a Heaven Problem. Heaven sounds boring. Obviously Heaven won’t be boing, but if you think about every description of Heaven you have read and imagine it is forever, well…

As Kreeft notes, this is similar to Milton’s problem in Paradise Lost. Satan is way more interesting that God in that book. It isn’t even close. In fact, Kreeft argues, there are only four modern writers who even managed to make good seem more fascinating than evil. (C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.)

Kreeft wants to convince us that Heaven is not boring. Asking, “How can heaven not be boring?” he immediately replies, “There are six things to be said in answer.” My hopes went quite high. After all, I have long been annoyed by the fact that heaven seems so boring. I would love to have explained the error of my thinking about heaven so that I can start thinking about heaven as exciting and interesting.

Sadly, Kreeft’s six answers are all just variants on one answer. The answer: Boredom is a product of living in Time. Heaven transcends Time. So, Heaven is not Boring. QED.

Sigh. I knew that part already. It doesn’t help.

Why do I find this book so frustrating? The failing is clearly in me. Early on, Kreeft asks us where we can turn to figure out the nature of heaven, that place for which we long. “To what, you ask, can I turn now?”

To your own heart. It is a teacher you can trust, for it will not despise you (it is you), and it is wiser than your head, wiser than you think. Listen to your heart. It will tell you for what you may hope; it will tell you “the meaning of life” if only you listen deeply. It will tell you of heaven…
What you will find in your heart is not heaven but a picture of heaven, a silhouette of heaven, a heaven-shaped shadow, a longing unsatisfiable by anything on earth. This book tries to raise that picture to consciousness.

In the contest between my heart and my head for being the source of understanding, I am afraid I am much too beholden to my head. All these attempts to speak to my heart, to raise whatever pictures linger in my heart to consciousness in my head are all far too mushy for my tastes. I see the shape of Kreeft’s arguments, but they just don’t fully resonate.

That conclusion sounds more critical of the book than it is meant to be. After all, if I tried to write a 200 page book about Heaven, I know full-well that it would end up sounding, well, terribly mushy. There are no edges here to describe.

Indeed, the only person whose description of Heaven is one that I can fully embrace is Dante’s:

for my sight, becoming pure,
rose higher and higher through the ray
of the exalted light that in itself is true.
From that time on my power of sight exceeded
that of speech, which fails at such a vision,
as memory fails at such abundance.
Just as the dreamer, after he awakens,
still stirred by feelings that the dream evoked,
cannot bring the rest of it to mind,
such am I, my vision almost faded from my mind,
while in my heart there still endures
the sweetness that was born of it.

I love that description; Heaven really is beyond words. Kreeft is trying to use words to describe what Dante found no words to describe. While I admire his attempt, it is not satisfying. However, we can give him a pass on this; it is hard to imagine it is even possible to provide a description of Heaven which will make it sound exciting. Our Language simply doesn’t have the words for it.

However, Kreeft wants to do more in this book than convince us that Heaven is not boring. He wants to convince us that we know Heaven exists because our hearts long for it. If you explore your heart, Kreeft assures us, you will find this:

What you will find in your heart is not heaven but a heavenly hole, a womblike emptiness crying out to be filled, impregnated by your divine lover…
What you will find in your heart is not heaven but “the highways to heaven”…
What you will find in your heart is not heaven but the finger pointing to heaven…
Many books have explored the heaven-shaped hole in the modern head, the meaningless of atheist and secularist philosophies. But there’s not a single book in print whose main purpose is to explore the heart’s longing for heaven. For the heart is harder to explore than the head and has fewer explorers. The field of the heart has been largely left to the sentimentalists. But sentiments are only the heart’s borders, not its inner country. We must discover this “undiscovered country.”

But, is that right? Theologically, I have no problem accepting the statement that we created beings are incomplete without a relationship to God. I can even agree that there is something in our hearts which longs for that relationship with God. But that is not what Kreeft is arguing.

He goes the extra step. He assures the Reader, no matter who that Reader might be, that if the Reader looks at the heart, that heaven shaped hole will be found. Is that true? Does everybody secretly know they long for heaven? Kreeft argues:

We have a homing instinct, a “home detector,” and it doesn’t ring for earth. That’s why nearly every society in history except our own instinctively believes in life after death. Like the great mythic wanderers, like Ulysses and Aeneas, we have been trying to get home.

That argument is just silly. Yes, Aeneas and Odysseus long for home, and yes they both visit the land of the dead, but in both cases the home for which they long is most certainly not the afterlife. This is just the flip side of Freud’s argument that despite the fact that lots of people have this oceanic feeling of eternity, because Freud does not have it, it does not exist. The lack of logic in Freud’s argument does not make the reverse argument any better. If someone insists that their heart does not have a heaven shaped hole in it, do we just tell them, “Well, yes it does”?

That criticism, however, might be terribly unfair. Perhaps I am still just using my head when Kreeft is trying to speak to my heart. I don’t know.

But, this is what I learned in Kreeft’s book: maybe, just maybe, I have been thinking about Heaven all wrong. Maybe it is not something about which I should be thinking at all. Maybe the reason heaven seems so boring is purely the result of wanting to use my intellect to ponder it. Maybe if I just felt the idea of heaven with my heart instead of thinking about it with my head, I’d have a better understanding of it.

Calvinists Anonymous

“Hi. My Name is Jim, and I am a Calvinist.”

(That is true, by the way.)

According to J.A. Medders, Calvinists have a problem; the first step is to admit that. He doesn’t suggest setting up a Calvinist Anonymous chapter, but that is the logical conclusion of his book, Humble Calvinism: And if I Know the 5 Points but Have Not Love…

First, a note about the audience for this book. Is this a book for you?

Quick Test: If TULIP makes you think about a 17^th century financial crisis, your garden, or an Easter bouquet, then you are going to find this book terribly bewildering. It isn’t until over 30 pages into this (short) book that the typical reader is going to discover that the “5 points” mentioned in the subtitle and the acronym TULIP which Medders keep mentioning are simply shorthand for the thing called Calvinism mentioned in the title. This is unfortunate, because much of what Medders has to say would be interesting for a great many people who know not TULIP.

So, who is the audience? Well, TULIP lovers.

Lest we replicate Medders’ Audience Limitation, what is this TULIP? Therein lies a tale.

First off: neither the acronym nor the five points originated with John Calvin, the 16^th century Reformer. It is possible that the five points have their origins in early 17^th century theological battles, but that origin story is not as crisp as many Calvinists would like it to be. It really isn’t until the mid-20^th century that the “Five Points” are established and the mnemonic TULIP is crafted and popularized. (And, in a little observed point, the acronym only works in English.)

What is the acronym?
Total Depravity
Unconditional Grace
Limited Atonement
Irresistible Call
Perseverance of the Saints

So, first note: if that is the first time you have seen that set of phrases, well, you are undoubtedly wondering what all the fuss is about because you didn’t get too excited about the list. Calvinists, on the other hand, often get ridiculously excited about that list.

What does it all mean? A curiosity of the five points is that it is really only one, fairly simple, point. But, it sure sounds better to talk about five points and have a cool acronym, doesn’t it?

Here is the little secret of the five points and TULIP and Calvinism: saying you accept TULIP and saying you believe in Predestination are for all practical purposes the same statement. (Calvinists: commence your quibbling.)

The argument: Humans created in the image of God rebelled against God and are thus not worthy of standing in the presence of God (that is the T). God, who is Love, decides to save humans from the effect of their own rebellion (U) through the death of Christ (L). The Holy Spirit draws those whom God has called to Himself (I) and those whom are called will spend eternity with God (P).

The only part of that which is even debated in Christian circles is whether God decided before the foundation of the world whom He would call or whether God simply puts out an offer to everyone and lets them decide whether to accept it. In other words, the only matter of dispute is the role of human agency. Once you settle that question, everything else follows.

Medders is surely right when he notes that the biggest problem with Calvinists is not their theology, but their arrogance. Calvinists often talk like they are the Spiritual Elite who know all things, unlike the rest of humanity (including even all the non-Calvinists who call themselves Christians) which is a bunch of foolish reprobates.

So, why do Calvinists get so worked up about TULIP? I suspect it is not really Calvinism that is the exciting thing. I suspect TULIP is just a proxy for what really excites Calvinists. Imagine growing up in church and hearing bland expressions of Christianity aimed at the intellect of a 10 year old. Then suddenly, one day, you hear about this exciting new thing called Calvinism. Your heartbeat leaps suddenly; for the first time in your life, you realize that this Christian thing may actually be an adult belief system.

In other words, I suspect what is really exciting to most Calvinists is theology, not Calvinism per se. If the Five Points is the first time in your life you have ever seen a theological system, it would be hard not to get excited and think you have discovered some great secret. Everyone else will suddenly seem ignorant and uniformed. Knowing the Secret of the Temple, it would be hard not to become arrogant.

Medders’ entire book is an argument to Calvinists that they need to lose this arrogance, tone down the rhetoric a bit, and, you know, love everyone, including Christians who are not convinced that Grace is completely unconditional. He is not the first to make an argument like that. C.S. Lewis was incredibly harsh when it came to thinking about Calvinists.

Modern parallels are always to some extent misleading. Yet, for a moment only, and to guard against worse misconceptions, it may be useful to compare the influence of Calvin on that age with the influence of Marx on our own…This will at least serve to eliminate the absurd idea that the Elizabethan Calvinists were somehow grotesque, elderly people, standing outside the main forward current of life. In their own day they were, of course, the very latest thing. Unless we can imagine the freshness, the audacity, and (soon) the fashionableness of Calvinism, we shall get our whole picture wrong. It was the creed of progressives, even of revolutionaries. It appealed strongly to those tempers that would have been Marxist in the nineteen-thirties. The fierce young don, the learned lady, the courtier with intellectual leanings, were likely to be Calvinists…As we recognize the type we begin, perhaps, to wonder less that such a work as the Institutio should have been so eagerly welcomed. In it Calvin goes on from the original Protestant experience to build a system, to extrapolate, to raise all the dark questions and give without flinching the dark answers. It is, however, a masterpiece of literary form, and we may suspect that those who read it with most approval were troubled by the fate of predestined vessels of wrath just about as much as young Marxists in our own age are troubled by the approaching liquidation of the bourgeoisie. Had the word ‘sentimentality’ been known to them, Elizabethan Calvinists would certainly have used it of any who attacked the Institutio as morally repulsive.

Ouch.

But, Medders was induced to write his book because the New Calvinists often do sound exactly the same as the way Lewis describes the O.C. (Original Calvinists). On this level, Medders is performing an admirable task. If you know any insufferable Calvinists (or, even more so, if you are one), then send them (or yourself) a copy of this book right away. Medders speaks the language perfectly and his message is accurate.

But, for the rest of us, Medders slips into what I am pretty certain is an inadvertent mistake. Consider the following pair of claims from the last chapter of the book:

Real Calvinism is a humble, God-enjoying, and loving-thy-neighbor Calvinism. Arrogance, lack of gentleness, impatience, and thinking we have the spiritual gift of street-fighting doesn’t reveal a problem with the doctrines of grace but with our hearts.

Calvinism is a pile of coal, mined from the depths of doctrine, that sets a fire blazing in our hearts that drives us down the track toward godliness. True Calvinism helps us love God with all our minds and hearts, and love our neighbors as ourselves. If your Calvinism doesn’t do that, then check the coal; you might have a bad batch.

Now both of those sentences are entirely correct in the advice they give. But, what is the word “Calvinism” doing in those sentences? The word should have been “Christianity.” “Calvinism” does not help us love God and our neighbors; Christ does.

This points to the real reason Humble Calvinism would have been stronger if Medders had expanded the scope of his implied audience. Another description of “Humble Calvinist” is “More Christ-like Christian.” While Medders’ argument in the book is that Calvinists need to stop confusing the subset (Calvinist) with the whole (Christian), because he thinks of himself as only talking with his theological tribe, he all too often rhetorically slips into the same error. I don’t know Medders, but based on the tone of his book, I think he would agree with that assessment.

Episodes of Grace

An Episode of Grace is a collection of short stories by Linda McCullough Moore. The title of the collection is apt. Yes, one of the stories bears the same name, but really every story in the collection could have that title.

The stories present an interesting way to think about life.

It seems obvious to think of our lives as akin to a novel. There was a beginning, someday there will be an end, and we spend our lives working out the middle. The events of our lives are all part of the larger story.

In those larger scale stories, however, there are those short stories, the small parts of our lives that could be taken out of the novel and presented as a whole and complete story unto themselves. We all have these short stories; indeed when we tell people about the episodes in our lives, we are relating those short stories. We have no real ability to relate the novel of our lives; we don’t yet know how it all turns out.

But, Moore points to yet another dimension of our lives. The episodes. Those brief moments, hardly noticeable, whose reflections ripple outward. Among those moments are the episodes of grace; those moments when the burden of life is lifted ever so slightly by a passing comment or a stunning sunset.

Reading about those moments of grace, I had a shock of recognition.

One of the curious things about being a professor is that I say a lot of good-byes. Every year, there is a whole set of students who are leaving Mount Holyoke. Some of them I will never see again. Sometimes a student comes back for a reunion or just visiting the campus, and we pick up right where we left off in the conversation. Sometimes I get an e-mail out of the blue from a former student. (I always like those e-mails.) Sometimes, I stay in regular contact with a student.

But, in every case, no matter which of those futures will materialize, there is that moment of good-bye.

One result of all these relationships, really friendships, in which neither of us knows whether or when we will talk again is that there is a comment I hear frequently. It is the sort of thing you don’t say to someone you know you will be seeing again. It is what you say when someone is leaving and you know this may be the last chance you have to say it. I cannot count the number of times a student has looked at me and said in a tone of deep gratitude, “I just want to thank for that time you said X to me.”

Here is the interesting thing: I don’t always remember saying X. I remember talking with the student. For some of them I remember having those long conversations which ramble all over the place. Others, I only talked with once or twice when they were taking a class with me. But, I don’t always remember the conversation in which I said X.

It is a weird feeling. Here is someone thanking me for saying something deeply meaningful, something which made her life a bit better, and I do not recall saying it.

I now know what to call those comments. They are episodes of grace. They are brief, not always memorable to the person saying them, but full of grace for the person hearing them.

We have all experienced these episodes of grace and we are grateful for them. But, before reading Moore’s book, I had never really thought about being a creator of episodes of grace.

What would it look like to actively work at creating episodes of grace in the lives of others? Interesting thought experiment. Imagine living your life thinking that the conversations you are having may be the single most important conversation the person with whom you are talking will have this year or this decade. Imagine that the comment you are about to make will be remembered in a decade by the other person.

If you think too much about that, it would be nearly impossible to have a conversation. So, how do you cultivate a life where you are unconsciously providing those episodes of grace?

I don’t have the answer, but it is hard for me to escape the conclusion that this is the sort of thing I really should figure out. The world could use more episodes of grace.