Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

Last updated on: February 19, 2023 at 7:25 pm By Gene Veith

It’s Ash Wednesday, a day for repentance and sober reflection, launching the season of Lent. Retired literature professor that I am, I’m alert to imagery, so the day makes me think of ashes and literary portrayals of ashes. And on this day the children’s song and game always comes to mind:

Ring around the rosie,
A pocket full of posies.
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down!

I can still remember playing this in elementary school, us kids holding hands to form a circle, then running faster and faster in the ring to the point of everybody falling down with the last lines.

This song has since been somewhat spoiled by the claim that for all of its innocent cheer, it is really about dying from the plague. Supposedly, back in the Middle Ages when the plague stalked the earth and this song originated, one symptom of catching it was a red, “rosie” sore with a ring around it. People would carry around a “posie” of certain flowers in the mistaken hope that they would protect from the disease. Another symptom was sneezing. “Ashes! Ashes!” was actually something like “Atchoo! Atchoo!” And then, “we all fall down” dead.

I am happy to report that according to the Wikipedia article on the song, with the title of one of its variations “Ring a Ring o’ Roses,” the plague connection is almost certainly a “folk etymology,” an origin story that becomes popular but has no basis in fact. The entry gives multiple footnotes to folklore experts who give this reason why the plague interpretation isn’t true:

The plague explanation did not appear until the mid-twentieth century.^[19]
The symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague.^[31]^[36]
The great variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme (see above).^[32]^[37]
European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this “fall” was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.^[38]

The third reason is the most telling. The song has many variations in many languages. Only American children sing “ring around the rosie.” British children sing “ring-a-ring o’ roses.” But the oldest versions lack all of those alleged plague references!

Not that folklore experts know what the silly lyrics mean, though there are various suggestions, some of which you can read about in the article. (In addition, I have heard that “the rosie” refers to the rosary, so that the song becomes a Catholic jingle about the devotional practice of praying using a circle of beads to keep track of the prayer cycle. I suspect that’ a folk etymology also.)

I do not believe that the song and game has anything to do with Ash Wednesday. I don’t want to start any other folk etymology. But it does conjure up a picture in my mind about this holiday.

We are running around in circles, not getting much of anywhere, but going faster and faster. That is, we are busier and busier, as we pursue the ever-repeating cycles of our jobs and vocations; the weeks, the months, and the years; the cycles of history. All of that seems futile to some people. Or, more positively, it is a game that we play.

Then “Ashes! Ashes!” The message of Ash Wednesday summons us out of our trivial preoccupations: “You are dust. And to dust you shall return.”

“We all fall down.” All of the cycles end, for us, when we die. And death should give us a perspective on our running around in circles, waking us up from our complacency, our pockets full of posies.

This is the message of Law and the wages of sin.

The cycle of the church year turns from the joy of Christmas and the light of Epiphany to the darker season of Lent, a time when we think about the state of our souls and our need for salvation.

Then comes Easter. After “we all fall down,” Jesus takes us by the hand and raises us back up, with Him.

Photo: Children playing Ring around the rosie, by Edwing Rosskam (1941) from U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/071_fsab.html via Picryl. Public Domain

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How Four Strains of Protestantism Approach Politics

Last updated on: February 17, 2023 at 12:46 pm By Gene Veith

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The different strains of Christianity have different approaches to politics, based on their assumptions about theology and church polity. Baptists focus on individual liberty. Methodists seek social perfection. Calvinists criticize the culture and want to take it over. Lutherans. . .well, that’s a little complicated.

That’s the takeaway from Mark Tooley’s article, based on a talk he gave at Southwest Baptist Seminary, Methodist vs Baptist Political Theology.

He says of Baptists,

Baptist social and political engagement deduces from its commitment to soul liberty, the purity of the church and evangelism. Its congregationalism and democratic governance, without bishops or presbyteries, surely also are important. They all fed a zeal for religious liberty, for free speech, for aversion to centralized authorities, for commoners over aristocrats. Commitment to the Bible’s straightforward authority unmediated by ecclesial tradition perhaps also fuels commitment to strict constitutionalism. All of these Baptist assumptions have guided their devotion to and impact on American democracy.

As for Methodists,

Methodists emerged from a state church and so are not so separationist. Methodists usually have bishops, are governed by conferences, and don’t own their church property. This makes them perhaps friendlier to central authority and more supportive of government action. . . .

Methodists, like Baptists, believe in conversion and in confidence about salvation. But Methodists have a special focus on holiness, entire sanctification and perfection. This belief in personal perfection has transposed into forms of soaring political perfection that can be idealistic, ambitious and fraught with danger.

Tooley, a conservative Methodist, focuses on these two traditions, the two varieties of what he calls “democratic revivalism.” That is a useful label! Notice how big campaign rallies of every party resemble religious revivals, in their structure, fervor, and intended effect!

He spends most of his time describing the political influence of Methodism. His linking of the Methodist doctrine of moral perfectionism to social perfectionism is brilliant and explains a great deal. He says that the high point of Methodist political influence was the passing of Prohibition by Constitutional amendment, no less.

Methodist political perfectionism has manifested itself in the social gospel, the social reform movements of the 19th century, and the Marxist-infused liberation theology of the 20th century. The state church connection makes for an openness to government that tends towards political liberalism. But not necessarily. Methodist moralism has given us culturally conservative moral crusades as well.

I would add that today’s schism in the United Methodist Church over the acceptance of homosexuality shows a conflict between two kinds of Wesleyan perfectionism: the emphasis on personal morality, as defined in the Bible vs. the emphasis on social morality, as defined by the canons of woke progressivism, a social gospel that pervades mainline Protestantism.

Tooley briefly mentions Calvinism, which he says “remains the dominant intellectual force in orthodox American Protestant and Evangelical life.”

Most of the original modern Religious Right was Calvinist influenced. Francis Schaeffer, a conservative Presbyterian from Westminster Seminary, artfully welded traditional American post WWII Cold War conservatism with a Calvinistic critique of society and history.

I would add that the strain of Calvinism that has a “one kingdom” theology (not all of them do) contributes the notion that Christians should take over the secular realm, including the government. This can be found in Reformed “dominionism,” which can also be found in the Pentecostal “New Apostolic Reformation.”

So how about Lutheranism? We Lutherans never get invited to these parties. But let’s see if we can figure out where Lutherans fit in with all of this.

Taking Tooley’s emphasis on the effects of church polity, Lutherans do come from a heritage of a state church, with which it has often been in tension. This is especially true of conservative Lutherans in America, who migrated here precisely to escape the state church and the baleful influence of the King in promoting the Prussian Union.

Luther’s doctrine of the Two Kingdoms means that church and state are different realms, but that God is the king of them both, so that, by virtue of vocation, He does work through earthly governments. At the same time, though–and this is a point Lutherans have sometimes missed–earthly government is subject to God’s moral law.

This, I suppose, would manifest itself in a tendency to be politically conservative, due to the sense that God is already at work in the status quo, combined with a heightened awareness of sin, including in the government. This keeps Lutherans skeptical of utopian schemes of every variety.

So Lutherans, though anti-revolutionary, agree on the importance of this world and are capable of trusting in government up to a point. The church, though, must concentrate on spiritual issues and must never become entangled in politics. Individual Christians, though, in their vocation as citizens, are free to do so. Thus, both political conservatives and political liberals can be found among Lutherans.

Lutherans, being mostly late-coming immigrants, have had less influence than the other groups in the U.S.–though Madison, with good reason, credited Luther’s Two Kingdoms theology for the separation of church and state. But Lutheran social theory has been influential in Europe and has had free reign in Scandinavia, where it is credited with the invention of the welfare state. This is because Lutherans believe the government is under the Law and that Christians in government have a vocational responsibility to love and serve their neighbors by helping their citizens.

The bottom line, I suppose, is a conservative but activist government that helps its citizens. This sounds like the big government conservatism of Donald Trump and the “new conservatives.” This also accounts for what I keep reading in The Federalist, which has a number of Lutherans as editors and writers.

I am aware that I have been arguing against that model in favor of a more libertarian emphasis that I now see is Baptist. Some big government conservatives are going so far as to call themselves “social-democratic,” which would put them right up there with the “nordic model” of “Lutheran socialism.”

But I must not go so far as some of the new conservatives with their Catholic “integralism,” which derives from the Roman Catholic polity of the pope exercising temporal power enforced by a Holy Roman Emperor. That complete rejection of liberal democracy is, ironically, more like the Reformed and Pentecostal dominionists, whom as a Lutheran I must also reject.

Do I need to rethink my approach to politics? Or does Two Kingdoms theology also teach me that my approach to politics doesn’t matter all that much?

Help me out here.

Photo: President Gerald Ford at campaign rally, Union, New Jersey (1976) by Office of President of the United States of America, via Picryl, Public Domain

DISCUSS: Bonhoeffer vs. the Benedict Option

Last updated on: February 2, 2023 at 6:04 pm By Gene Veith

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I am reviewing a book about the German resistance to the Nazis. More on that later. But it included a striking quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian, who participated in a plot to kill Hitler and who is the subject of today’s other post:

“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. The Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes.”

Now this quotation was taken from his book Life Together, which is about Christian community, based on his experiences with that while running a seminary for the underground Confessing Church, one in which the seminarians all lived together monastic style.

So it wouldn’t be a complete repudiation of the Benedict Option, and Bonhoeffer certainly believes that Christians should be set apart from the world and not conform to its sinful ways. And yet he is opposing the notion that Christians should just separate themselves from the sinful world, as some Christians would like to do.

I believe his point is that Christian community, such as we can find in the church and as exemplified in his seminary, can support Christians as they live out their faith “in the thick of foes.” I think Rod Dreher, the author of The Benedict Option, would not disagree.

What do you think about the Benedict Option in light of the Lutheran critique of monasticism, the Two Kingdoms, and the doctrine of vocation?

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Revenge vs. Justice

Last updated on: January 15, 2023 at 6:16 pm By Gene Veith

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Yesterday we posted about revenge, focusing on an article by Lauren Blumenfeld, who makes the case that revenge has come back to our political and cultural life with a vengeance, so to speak.

There are some other aspects of revenge, though, that she doesn’t seem to get into. I wrote my Master’s Thesis on Seventeenth Century revenge tragedies, of which Hamlet is the most famous, though there were lots of them. I argued that these plays often show a tension within them between the passions that call for revenge and the knowledge that personal revenge is forbidden by God. Behind this tension, though, is the legitimate need for justice, which is often achieved in these plays through God’s providence.

In the course of this project, I did quite a bit of research into the nature of revenge. I learned that tribal societies, lacking an overarching central government with a legal system, deal with wrongdoing through elaborate systems of revenge. If a member of your tribe–or your family–is killed by a member of another tribe, or family, you–or a designated family member–must take revenge.

The problem with this system is that the other tribe will now take revenge against your tribe, whereupon you take revenge for that, and so on infinitum. The result is “feuds” that can go on for generations. Inter-tribal warfare, which plays a major cultural role in many tribes, often began with an action that provoked revenge, which escalated into a vendetta and then to total war.

Because revenge could be so destructive, ways to put a stop or a limit to the cycle of violence also developed, such as paying a sum of money or the equivalent to the injured party, called in the Germanic tribes the wergeld, or “man price.”

But this tribal way of administering rough justice could be resolved only with a higher form of government. This is illustrated in the Greek myth of Orestes, as portrayed by Aeschylus in his trilogy of revenge plays known as the Oresteia. The series depicts a horrendously bloody revenge cycle within a family, no less, which comes to an end when Athena, the goddess of wisdom, intervenes and sets up a trial of the offenders. She then ordains that no more may individuals take revenge themselves against a wrongdoer. Rather, the cases must be tried and, if need be, punished, under a rule of law. Athena is thus depicted as the founder of Athenian government, which brings justice, as opposed to the Greek’s earlier tribal revenge codes.

That’s a symbolic working out of the problem, of course, but it happened historically, as well. King Alfred the Great unified the Saxon tribes in England by claiming the role of avenger for himself and his court, in that he would collect the wergeld and give it to the injured families, so that they did not need to launch a destructive vendetta. He also introduced a system of laws, thus creating the nation of England.

The Bible, though, gives us the most ancient resolution and became the model for other nations. Ancient Israel was a tribal society (as in, the 12 tribes of Israel), and it practiced revenge. The Mosaic law limited revenge. (Donald Trump’s favorite verse, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” [Leviticus 4:17-24], was a formula for just retaliation, as opposed to the murders that had become commonplace for slights of honor. Taking a life deserved the death penalty, but not knocking out a tooth.)

More significantly, the Levitical Law provided for “cities of refuge” when the promised land would be settled, where a “manslayer” could flee from the avenger (Numbers 35; Deuteronomy 19). The elders of the city then conducted a trial. They would then determine if the killing were accidental or premeditated; that is, they looked at intent. If they found that the manslayer did not intend for the victim to die, he could stay in the city and be protected from the avenger. If the manslayer planned the killing–something that had to be established by more than one witness (note the rules for a fair trial)–he must pay for the murder with his life. In a concession to the old code, he would be turned over to the avenger, who would act as the executioner.

The New Testament speaks clearly to both the moral and the legal issues. Romans 12 could hardly be clearer in condemning revenge:

¹⁷Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. ¹⁸If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”²⁰To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” ²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21)

This rules out personal revenge completely. But God in His wrath against evildoers will repay. He is the source of justice, not our passions and resentments. We do not need to take the burden of punishing evildoers on ourselves. He is the avenger, not we ourselves.

And then, in the very next verses, which we often separate because of the chapter division, we learn one facet of how God executes justice:

13 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. ²Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. ³For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, ⁴for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:1-4).

That is to say, we must not take revenge because vengeance belongs to God and His wrath, which is exercised, in this world, by the governing authorities. The earthly magistrate is “an avenger,” who “carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” God is taking the revenge, which we must not take ourselves, and He does so by means of the earthly magistrate. This is another example of the doctrine of vocation, in which God works through and by means of human beings.

This is the supreme precedent and command for a rule of law, with a government and criminal justice system, as opposed to the rule of personal retaliation.

To be sure, people often revert back to the tribal revenge code in the absence of a government. People in remote areas for whom the government is far away often “take the law into their own hands,” even when this results in cycles of feuds and vendettas. Think of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Sometimes people who do not recognize the authority of the government because they consider it harmful to them make similar reversions. Gang killings in American cities often have the motivation of revenge, including for slights against a gang’s honor.

If revenge is coming back to the mainstream, as Blumenfeld says, though perhaps in the more genteel form of political retaliation or trying to get someone fired, this may be a symptom of our overall distrust in government and lack of confidence that the rule of law will bring justice. The Left has long attacked the government and sees the police as a tool of oppression. The Right too, in its suspicion of big government and its intrusions, doesn’t think much of government authorities. Indeed, part of the problem is that the government authorities often fail to act as they should. Combine this with an intellectual climate that reduces all authority to the exercise of oppressive power, of course revenge will come to the surface again.

But we need to remember how dangerous this is. Far better to “repay no one evil for evil,” and to leave the payback to God, who alone can act with full righteousness, with the correct measure of justice and mercy, both in this world and in the next.

Photo: The Hatfield Clan in 1897, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=632843

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Christianity and Matter

Last updated on: December 31, 2022 at 4:18 pm By Gene Veith

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This is the final day of the twelve days of the Christmas season. Tomorrow is Epiphany, which I will address then. Instead of writing about Twelve Drummers Drumming, I want to post another fascinating quotation from a church father about the Incarnation and its implications.

I stumbled upon this at the website of the Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science, and Technology, an ELCA-related group that I know little about. But an article by George L. Murphy from a few years ago entitled My Nominee for Patron Saint Is. . . caught my eye. In trying to come up with “an appropriate patron for those concerned about relationships between the natural sciences and understanding the implications of Christian faith,” he proposes St. John of Damascus, a.k.a., John Damascene.

This church father, especially important in the Orthodox tradition, used the science of his time regarding heavenly bodies in discussing the orthodox faith and the doctrine of creation. He also defended the use of icons against the iconoclasts. Here is the killer quote:

“I do not worship matter” [John wrote], “I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter … I honor all matter besides and venerate it. Through it, filled as it were with divine power and grace, my salvation has come to me.” (St. John Damascene on Holy Images [Thomas Baker and Sons, 1898], 1516.)

Rev. Murphy notes that the “Damascene” is cited in the Formula of Concord (see “The Person of Christ,” Article VIII. paragraph 22, of the Solid Declaration) and quite frequently in the Catalog of Testimonies, the compilation from the church fathers designed to show that Lutheran Christology, which underlies our doctrines of the Sacrament, are in line with the teachings of the early church (see paragraphs 33-40, 97-100, 115-118, 137-146, 161-164).

This also reminds me of what the German theologian Oswald Bayer said of Luther, who turned from “radical denial of the world” as a monk “to an impressive affirmation of everything that is of the world and nature” after understanding the Gospel. Bayer writes (his italics),

“After Luther was thoroughly convinced, because of his new understanding of Word and Sacrament, that the spiritual is constituted in the form of what was earthly—not only negatively but also positively—the spiritual importance of all things earthly was opened to him in a positive sense as well.”

“The spiritual is constituted in the form of what was earthly.” Thus we have the doctrine of the incarnation, the sacraments, and vocation.

Photo of an icon of St. John of Damascus by Ted, via Flickr, CC 2.0

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My Christmas Presents to You

Last updated on: December 22, 2022 at 6:58 am By Gene Veith

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A Christmas custom at this blog is for me to give you, my esteemed readers, presents to show my appreciation. I feel special gratitude to you this year, since in 2022 we moved to the subscription model and you have continued to read me anyway.

What giving you presents amounts to is simply putting you on to free or nearly-free stuff available on or through the internet that I think you will enjoy. So unwrap these. . . .

The Gift of Lutheran Public Radio

My first gift is Lutheran Public Radio: Sacred Music for the World. Go to that link to stream magnificent sacred music–classic hymns, moving chorales, world-class choirs–24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

LPR is the brainchild of Rev. Todd Wilken and producer Jeff Schwarz, whose Issues, Etc. talk radio program is one of the best of the breed. You can listen to that program live, from 3:00-5:00 Mondays through Fridays, on LPR. In fact, you can listen to archives of Issues, Etc.,24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

The sacred music follows the church year and is particularly sublime. On a recent road trip, my wife and I, despairing at the state of Christmas music on the radio–little but sentimentality, shopping songs, and sexy-Santa come-ons–learned how to hook our phones into our car radio, whereupon we could listen to LPR advent music in all of its glory. That is to say, glorifying God.

At the site above, you can access it all. You can also download apps for your phones. And if you have an Amazon Echo device, you can simply say, “Alexa, play Lutheran Public Radio.” And she will.

The Collected Works of Martin Luther

Yes, your are getting the Kindle edition of the The Collected Works of Martin Luther: Theological Writings, Sermons & Hymns. I thought it was free, but now I see that it costs 99 cents. But that is next to nothing for 31 of Luther’s most important works.

This is a translation from 1915, but it’s quite readable. It’s no substitute for the 30 volume American edition–all those red volumes on your pastor’s shelf–published by Concordia Publishing Company, but this is something good to have on your Kindle.

Actually, I now see that you can actually get a good number of Luther’s works on Kindle for free. Go here. I recommend especially the free or 99 cent editions of Luther’s sermons. Here we see Luther at his best, not just as a theologian or as a polemicist, but as a pastor, who proclaims and applies the Word of God with insight, humor, and empathy for his flock. These sermons on your Kindle make for excellent devotional readings.

The Cranach Digital Archive

Lucas Cranach is the patron saint of this blog, if Lutherans believed in patron saints. The artist, printer of Luther’s translation of the Bible, councilman of Wittenberg, and personal friend of Luther (who arranged his marriage), exemplifies the doctrine of vocation and the various themes we explore here.

So the Cranach blog is happy to gift you with The Cranach Digital Archive. Here you can find 2,360 paintings that have been digitalized, giving not only extremely vivid reproductions but also the ability to zero in on closeup views of the paintings so that you can see the artist’s actual brushstrokes.

And this is only the beginning of the resources available at this site, which also chronicles high-tech X-ray studies of the paintings, which allow us to reconstruct the underlying figures, earlier versions, and techniques of composition as the final painting emerged.

The site is in German, but in my Chrome browser a Google Translate box pops up. Hit “English” and the site gets translated accordingly.

Here is a “trailer” to give you a taste of the research behind this site. It’s in German too, but the visuals will give you the idea:

Also, you can still get the gifts from Christmases past: 2019 and 2021. (Sorry I didn’t give you anything in 2020. I’m sure it wasn’t because you were bad. I must have run out of shopping days.)

Merry Christmas and thanks for reading!

Photo by Yan Krukov, via Pexels.

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