Salvation from Being “Spiritual”

Last updated on: July 22, 2023 at 4:55 pm By Gene Veith

Today people claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” Even many religious people seek to escape the material realm in favor of a more spiritual existence. But being “spiritual” is not always a good thing.

Catholic theologian Thomas Harmon has published a provocative article in The American Mind entitled The Spirit of the Clouds. Its topic is the “demonology of the internet,” which is interesting in itself. We’ll blog about that tomorrow. But in the course of that discussion, Harmon brings up why it’s wrong for human beings to try to be purely “spiritual,” and how Christianity has to do with “embodied life.”

He begins with a powerful quotation from the Catholic Christian novelist Walker Percy:

What she didn’t understand, she being spiritual and seeing religion as spirit, was that it took religion to save me from the spirit world, from orbiting the earth like Lucifer and the angels, that it took nothing less than touching the thread off the misty interstates and eating Christ himself to make me mortal again and let me inhabit my own flesh. –Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins

Let that sink in for awhile.

The Bible describes the Devil and our bondage to him like this (my bolds): “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:1-2). Thus, Percy describes Lucifer and his angels as “orbiting the earth,” as do his lost characters, who are disconnected from actual, ordinary life, approaching everything and everyone as mere abstractions. (See also Percy’s non-fiction treatment of this theme, Lost in the Cosmos.)

The Lutheran J. G. Hamann also targets this problem, which is especially acute for modern-day rationalists, who reduce everything to mental propositions, and postmodern-day relativists, who reject objective reality altogether in favor of their mental “constructions.” And, Harmon shows, that spiritualizing mindset is encouraged even further by today’s information technology.

He quotes the pioneering media scholar Marshall McLuhan, whose analyses of the electronic media of his day–when those were primarily television and the telephone–are startlingly prophetic of what we have today. Though McLuhan was lauded by Sixties icons like Timothy Leary, he was a devout and conservative Catholic. I had always wondered about seeming paradox, but Harmon quotes from a collection of McLuhan’s writings about his faith and his scholarship entitled The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion: (my bolds):

Electric media, McLuhan points out, produces the very odd impression that one is a “‘super angel.’ When you are on the telephone you have no body. And, while your voice is there, you and the people you speak to are here, at the same time. Electric man has no bodily being. He is literally dis-carnate.” This impression of being discarnate, which electric media produces and social media especially exaggerates, might be thought at the very least partially to explain some of the most discarnate delusions of our time—transgenderism being the most obvious.

The democratization and further distribution of electronic media to anyone with a smart device seems to have exaggerated the effects of electric media. McLuhan already worried well before the advent of the internet as a popular tool, “I also think that this could be the time of the Antichrist. When electricity allows for the simultaneity of all information for every human being, it is Lucifer’s moment. He is the greatest electrical engineer.” Lucifer’s name, of course, means “light-bearer.”

Harmon, Percy, McLuhan, and Hamann all agree that the answer to this disembodied hyperspirituality, which can easily become demonic, is Christianity. Not the Gnostic heretical version of Christianity, which likewise rejects the physical world, but orthodox Christianity, with its emphasis on Creation, Incarnation, and the Sacraments. Harmon writes:

Embodied life, which is validated and sanctified by the Incarnation, is the antidote to demonic manipulation. The sacraments, which Christians have always understood to be a bodily extension of the incarnation, is the Christian version of the admonition to “touch grass.” Get in touch with embodied, material reality, which is proof against the discarnate abstraction of “the air,” in both the demonic and social media sense. Especially pertinent is the type of embodied community enabled by this kind of life, which is grounded in and makes us realize we are subject to things outside of our wills and imaginations.

Lutherans can certainly agree with this, while adding another way that Christianity and the Christian life affirm the “embodied life”: the doctrine of vocation.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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Luther on NOT Obeying Rulers

Last updated on: July 14, 2023 at 6:00 pm By Gene Veith

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Last week we blogged about Luther’s view of earthly rulers, saying that they are mostly knaves and fools whom God uses as His jailers and hangmen, dressing up these lowly functionaries in fine robes and high social status as a kind of joke. Then he got into the duties of this vocation, saying that the highest lords must indeed be servants, exercising their authority in love and service to their people.

Luther says some other things about earthly rulers that deserve our attention, as well as the attention of modern-day officials and politicians. This year is the 500th anniversary of his quite brilliant treatise Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (also known as “On Secular Authority” or “On Worldly Authority”).

What he says directly contradicts the wide-spread notion that Luther taught total submission to earthly rulers and that the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms contributed to German authoritarianism by insisting that whatever the rulers dictate is to be accepted as God’s will. But this is what Luther actually says about rulers:

They actually think they have the power to do and command their subjects to do, whatever they please. And the subjects are led astray and believe they are bound to obey them in everything. It has gone so far that the rulers have ordered the people to put away books, and to believe and keep what they prescribe. In this way they presumptuously set themselves in God’s place, lord it over men’s conscience and faith, and put the Holy Spirit to school according to their mad brains. (p. 230)

But when a prince is in the wrong, are his people bound to follow him then too? I answer, No, for it is no one’s duty to do wrong; we ought to obey God Who desires the right, rather than men. (270)

Luther is alluding to the practice of some of the princes who outlawed possession of Reformation writings, including his translation of the New Testament, requiring their subjects to turn them over to be burned. They also required their subjects to confess their belief in the teachings of the pope.

If then your prince or temporal lord commands you to hold with the pope, to believe this or that, or commands you to give up certain books, you should say, . . .

Dear Lord, I owe you obedience with life and goods; command me within the limits of your power on earth, and I will obey. But if you command me to believe, and to put away books, I will not obey; for in this case you are a tyrant and overreach yourself, and command where you have neither right nor power, etc.

To be sure, Luther did not counsel rebellion in these cases. Like his namesake in the American civil rights movement, he counseled non-violent resistance, including accepting your punishment for doing the right thing.

Should he take your property for this, and punish such disobedience blessed are you. Thank God that you are worthy to suffer for the sake of the Word, and let him rave, fool that he is. He will meet his judge.

This may be where Luther got his reputation for quietism in the face of unjust rulers, but that is far from Luther’s point. He believed that God would judge the evil rulers and vindicate those who suffered for standing up against them.

There is a great power in being willing to undergo suffering for what is right. Sometimes, it even wins over one’s persecutors. Martin Luther may well have agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, paraphrasing Gandhi,

“We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children; send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities and drag us out on some wayside road, beating us and leaving us half dead, and we will still love you. But we will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.”

Not that Luther was a pacifist as King was. The charge that Luther and Lutherans were political quietists is absurd, given that Luther defied the major temporal authorities of his day, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, as did his followers in the Smalcald War and in the Thirty Years War. Under the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, earthly kings are subject to the laws of God, who reigns over them as their King.

Illustration: Emperor Charles V (1533) by Lucas Cranach, via Picryl, Public Domain

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God’s Hangmen & the Duty of Rulers

Last updated on: July 8, 2023 at 10:15 pm By Gene Veith

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Luther is often accused of being too deferential to earthly rulers. But in Temporal Authority, whose 500th anniversary we mark this year, he says this:

You must know that from the beginning of the world a wise prince is a rare bird indeed1; still more so a pious prince. They are usually the greatest fools or the worst knaves on earth; therefore one must constantly expect the worst from them and look for little good from them, especially in divine matters, which concern the salvation of souls. They are God’s jailers and hangmen, and His divine wrath needs them to punish the wicked and preserve outward peace. Our God is a great Lord, and therefore must have such noble, honorable and rich hangmen and beadles, and desires that they shall have riches, honor and fear, in full and plenty, from every one. lt pleases His divine will that we call His hangmen gracious lords, fall at their feet and be subject to them in all humility, so long as they do not ply their trade too far and desire to become shepherds instead of hangmen. (p. 258)

Despite this rather comical putdown, Luther goes on to explain how rulers should exercise their God-given authority:

For if they are born princes or chosen to office, they think only that it is their right to be served and to rule with power. He who would be a Christian prince certainly must lay aside the intention to rule and to use force. For cursed and condemned is every kind of life lived and sought for selfish profit and good; cursed are all works not done in love. But they are done in love when they are directed with all one’s heart, not toward selfish pleasure, profit, honor, ease and salvation, but toward the profit, honor and salvation of others. (263)

He must consider his subjects and rightly dispose his heart toward them in this matter. He does this if he applies his whole mind to making himself useful and serviceable to them, and does not think, “Land and people are mine; I will do as I please”; but thus, “I belong to land and people; I must do what is profitable and good for them. My concern must be, not how I may rule and be haughty, but how they may be protected and defended by a good peace.”

And he should picture Christ to himself, and say, “Behold, Christ the chief Ruler came and served me, sought not to have power, profit and honor from me, but only considered my need, and did all He could that I might have power, profit and honor from Him and through Him. I will do the same, not seek mine own advantage in my subjects, but their advantage, and thus serve them by my office, protect them, give them audience and support, that they, and not I, may have the benefit and profit by it.” Thus a prince should in his heart empty himself of his power and authority, and interest himself in the need of his subjects, dealing with it as though it were his own need. Thus Christ did unto us; and these are the proper works of Christian love. (264-265)

From Luther’s treatise, “Secular Authority: To What Extent Should It Be Obeyed,” from Works of Martin Luther, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman and Castle Press, 1930). Via Concordia Theological Seminary, Media Resources: https://media.ctsfw.edu/Text/ViewDetails/14900

This goes to the heart of Luther’s doctrine of vocation, the purpose of which–no matter the vocation– is loving and serving one’s neighbors. Not self-fulfillment; not glorifying God by how great you are; not even to serve God, as such. But to do as God directs those who wish to serve Him: Serve your neighbors, whom I will bring into your life through your vocation.

Those with vocations of authority must also use their office not for self-aggrandizement, but to love and serve those whom God has placed into their care. This applies to earthly rulers, government officials, heads of state, military officers, and other temporal authorities. God has not given you power to make your subjects bow and scrape before you so that you can think, “Land and people are mine; I will do as I please.” Rather, you are to use your power and your authority to serve them.

You are enjoying your high social status, but this is little more than God’s joke. You are His hangman–a notoriously low status job in the 16th century–who must punish evildoers to protect society. But it pleases God that His hangmen “shall have riches, honor and fear, in full and plenty, from every one” and that “we call His hangmen gracious lords.”

But the ruler earthly should “should in his heart empty himself of his power and authority, and interest himself in the need of his subjects.”

This applies not only to political rulers but to everyone with vocations that involve exercising authority over others in the workplace, the church, and the family.

Luther’s teaching here is simply that of Christ, who says as much when James and John asked to be seated next to Him in His glory, to the indignation of the other disciples:

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45)

Illustration: Luther and the Wittenberg Reformers [with Elector John Frederick the Magnanimous] (1543) by Lucas Cranach the Younger – ~, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21977954

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Marriage and Culture

Last updated on: July 11, 2023 at 8:02 am By Gene Veith

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All pastors would do well to subscribe to the journal Seelsorger, a publication of Doxology, the ministry to ministers. Unlike other periodicals for pastors, Seelsorger is not primarily about theology, the Bible, church growth, or leadership. Rather, it is about “the care of souls” and the “cure of souls,” the nearly forgotten art of giving spiritual–not just psychological–care to people who need it.

Seelsorger, which means “carer of souls” and is another word in German for “pastor,” is available, including back issues, here. The latest issue is about the pastoral problem of how to deal with parishioners who are just “living together” instead of getting married.

I was asked to write an article for this issue about marriage and culture. In the words of my charge, I was to address “how various societies and cultures have thought of human marriage” so as to help pastors deal with our culture’s confusions about the subject.

Recalling that topic from my university anthropology classes, I delved into the research about the role of marriage in culture; the cultural variations of marriage; what the Bible says about marriage in different cultures; and how a cultural perspective on marriage can help us makes sense of today’s issues, from same-sex weddings to “just living together.” To use the click-bait phrase, what I discovered may surprise you.

My article is not online–again, you can buy the issue here–but here are some things that I learned:

Marriage is a “cultural universal.” All cultures from all times and places have the institution of marriage, though it takes different forms.
No culture, except that of the contemporary West, has ever had same-sex marriage. Some cultures tolerate and even approve of homosexuality, but none of them have given those relationships the status of marriage. (The oft-cited Roman emperors Nero and Elagabalus are exceptions that prove the rule, since they were seen even in their times as paragons of depravity, and same-sex marriage was never sanctioned in Roman law or culture.) This is because. . .
Marriage is always oriented to bearing and raising children and establishing a generational family. The basis is not just sex, nor on romantic love. Those are outlier emphases from our culture. Marriage as a cultural universal has to do with starting a family.
Polygamy is more common culturally than monogamy. According to anthropologists’ tabulation, 80% of cultures accept some form of polygamy, having more than one spouse at the same time. This is usually one husband with multiple wives, though a few societies have one wife with multiple husbands.
The ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament accepted polygamy, but turned to monogamy by the time of the New Testament. This is evidently due to the influence of the Greeks and Romans, who always had only one spouse and considered polygamy to be barbarous. I comment, “Sometimes the outside culture can exert a positive influence on God’s people.”
In most cultures, parents choose whom their children marry. This is the case 69% of world cultures. The children usually have to consent to the choice, but the difficult decision of “is this the right one?” is mostly taken out of their hands. This is because marriage is all about family and the joining of families.
All marriages require some sort of social recognition. Not only is marriage, for all of its variations, a cultural universal. Marriage itself contains cultural universals that are common to all marriages in all cultures. One of these is that marriages must be public and socially affirmed.
Weddings are not necessary to marriage. This social recognition often is accomplished through some sort of wedding ceremony, but not always. In fact, 35% of the world’s cultures do not have weddings. The couple just moves in together. The social recognition happens in other ways.
The ancient Israelites did not have weddings, in our sense, and God was fine with that. Yes, they had celebratory feasts that could last for days. And there was an exchange of small, symbolic gifts between the bride and the groom. But no one said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
The early and medieval church did not have weddings, in our sense, and God was fine with that. Even where the church considered marriage to be a sacrament, under canon law, all that was necessary for a valid wedding was a promise, consent, and sexual consummation. Theologians said that matrimony was the one sacrament that did not need to be performed by a priest.
This caused big cultural problems that Luther railed against. The medieval church claimed authority over all marriages, imposing multiple restrictions, and yet its loose practices allowed “clandestine marriages” that no one knew about, dissolution of adult marriages when a younger attachment was uncovered, the adulterous pursuit of “romantic love” apart from marriage, and forbidding marriage for the clergy. Luther railed against all of this, insisting that the state regulate this earthly, though God-given vocation, rather than the church, which, at the Council of Trent began requiring weddings presided over by a priest.
“Common law” marriages are legally binding. In Protestant countries, “common law marriage,” in which a couple simply live together but under certain conditions are considered husband and wife, were commonplace and had the force of law. This is still the case in 10 American states, with all 50 states recognizing common law marriages contracted elsewhere.
A mechanism for dissolving marriage is also a cultural universal. Though few cultures have easy divorce like we do, every culture has a way of ending marriage. This is true even under Roman Catholicism, which can declare that a marriage with children never occurred by scrutinizing the still-loose requirement of “consent.” Since consent is necessary for the sacrament, if either member of the couple “didn’t realize what they were getting into” (as if anybody does), their marriage can be annulled.

And there is much, more more. See what I say about all of this and how I relate it to contemporary issues about marriage and to the Christian faith. You can order the issue with my article and lots of other helpful articles here.

This is how I conclude the article:

Cultures have universals, one of them being marriage, and marriage itself has universal features. Whether polygamous or monogamous, arranged or by choice, marriage is always between a man and a woman; is ordered for the conception and care of children; requires a formal recognition; is a permanent commitment, though there are provisions for divorce.

Our postmodern society today is violating all of these universals. Our marriages can be between individuals of the same sex. A large percentage of our children are not raised by married parents, and many sexual partners do all they can, to the point of abortion, to avoid having children. Cohabiting partners reject any formal recognition of their relationship. Marriage in the minds of many is not a permanent commitment, and couples living together without marriage are institutionalizing that impermanence and that lack of commitment.

What we are seeing is not a new culture but the dissolution of culture. We Christians are rightly concerned about how the decline of marriage violates morality and religion. It also violates culture.

Photo: Wedding in Ghana by Azekhoria Benjamin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Luther vs. Christian Nationalism

Last updated on: July 1, 2023 at 10:26 pm By Gene Veith

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As I mentioned earlier this week, this is the 500th anniversary of Luther’s treatise on Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed, published in 1523. I observed that this treatment of the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms has much that ties in to today’s controversies and that we would be blogging about some of those in the weeks ahead.

Temporal Authority–in some translations rendered “Secular Authority,” which uses the term we use today–has much to say, for example, about “Christian nationalism.” Can there be a Christian nation? If so, what would it take to create one? Can that be achieved with the force of law? Could a Christian ruler enforce laws to make his citizens righteous and devout?

Here is what Luther says:

lt is indeed true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject to neither law nor sword and need neither; but first take heed and fill the world with real Christians before ruling it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian, although they are all baptised and are nominally Christian. Christians, however, are few and far between, as the saying is. Therefore it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world, nay even over one land or company of people, since the wicked always out- number the good. (p. 237)

Temporal authority, he explains, is a matter of law. And law cannot make Christians. To be sure, temporal authority can enforce the first use of the law, to restrain evil. Indeed, this is its purpose. And Christian citizens and rulers should work towards that end. But making everyone be moral by force cannot make a Christian nation.

Christians are made such by the gospel, through which the Holy Spirit creates faith in Christ, through whose atonement we receive forgiveness of our violations of God’s law. But faith in the gospel cannot be created by political power.

“No one can be compelled to be a Christian” (248), wrote Luther. “For faith is a free work, to which no one can be forced. Nay, it is a divine work, done in the Spirit, certainly not a matter which outward authority should compel or create” (253-254).

All of this is to say that to have a Christian nation, the Christianity, from the gospel and faith, must come first. But if everyone in the country were a true, faith-filled, spirit-filled Christian, they wouldn’t even need a government. They would do what is right as the fruit of their faith, loving their neighbors with no need of legal coercion. The fact is, even Christians must still struggle against sin, so they still need to be governed by the law and by secular authorities, by whose vocation God limits the destructive power of sin.

The state, which rules by the law, cannot make anyone devout. And the church, which conveys the gospel, cannot rule politically.

For this reason these two kingdoms must be sharply distinguished, and both be permitted to remain; the one to produce piety, the other to bring about external peace and prevent evil deeds; neither is sufficient in the world without the other. For no one can become pious before God by means of the secular government, without Christ’s spiritual rule. Hence Christ’s rule does not extend over all, but Christians are always in the minority and are in the midst of non-Christians. (237)

This is not dualism. God is the King of both kingdoms.

Interestingly, contrary to the common assumptions, Luther says that morality is the business of the state, not the church, whose business is to bring forgiveness to those who have failed to be moral (that is, all of us).

So Christians are right to press for morality in the public square, for justice and righteousness. And yet the most that the state can do in this regard is to restrain external immorality, which is an important accomplishment. Though the state can never achieve this perfectly because it can never change the hearts of sinners, which bear fruit in overt evils. The church, though, can change the hearts of sinners through the gospel.

Most Christian nationalists today are thinking of morality when they think of creating a Christian nation. So they might not be completely wrong. But they would do well to work through Luther’s Temporal Authority.

Illustration via Pxfuel

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DISCUSSION: Reversing the Decline of Christianity in the U.S.

Last updated on: May 28, 2023 at 7:32 pm By Gene Veith

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As the research cited in today’s post confirms, religious affiliation is declining in the United States

My fellow Patheos blogger Benjie Shaw asks a good question: How Can We Reverse the Decline of Christianity? As a Southern Baptist, he says that his denomination’s intense focus on evangelism just hasn’t been working. He suggests that we can reverse the decline if Christians were to live a distinctly Christian life, one that will give credibility to what we say.

Easier said than done, of course, as is the suggestion I made in my post. I’d like to bring you into the discussion.

What can we do to reverse these trends? Or can we do anything?

Isn’t this to be expected in light of Jesus’ multiple statements that the world will “hate” us? If, as Jesus Himself says, “you will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (Matthew 10:22), how can we expect to be popular? And, judging from the Book of Revelations, won’t it get even worse? Jesus promises that “the gates of Hell” will not prevail against His church (Matthew 16:18) and in the last days, with His return, His church will be victorious. But that doesn’t mean large numbers of people will necessarily be part of it.

Maybe the hard times, even being persecuted, will help. That would surely purify the church, with nominal and unfaithful Christians running away from the danger, leaving true believers willing to suffer for their faith, and probably living more as my fellow blogger recommends. That certainly worked for the early church and is working that way in China today. When I was working for World Magazine, we received a letter from Chinese Christians worried about the state of American Christianity. They said they would pray that we would undergo persecution as they are experiencing, which they thought would help us greatly. Which reminds us that we should pray, since God is the one who brings people to faith and builds His church.

What could churches do or stop doing that would make them more credible? What could we do as Christians in our vocations? What approaches to apologetics and evangelism would be more effective?

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