2021-10-21T07:57:50-04:00

Last updated on: October 21, 2021 at 7:57 am   By
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A controversy has broken out among evangelical Christians on whether Christians should fight the culture or try to be accepted by it.

It began as frustration on the part of many evangelical leaders over the way so many of the evangelicals they thought they were leading were and are such strong supporters of Donald Trump.  This particular controversy, though, focuses on the leaders, or, stated more broadly, the evangelical elite.  Are they too eager for acceptance by the mainstream journalists, academics, and their social peers in the professional class?

The catalyst for the controversy was an essay by two young Christians Jackson Waters, still a college student, and Emma Posey, in American Conservative entitled  Church, State, and the Future of Evangelicalism.

They look at two different events, held in Nashville around the same time, a live podcast hosted by Christianity Today featuring Russell Moore and Beth Moore, who are not related to each other but who both left the Southern Baptist convention, and a conference put on by the cheerfully belligerent and counter-cultural Douglas Wilson.  “In alignment with popular evangelical theology,” the authors write, “Moore and Christianity Today emphasize pietism and prioritize an individualistic faith, focused on the relationship between an individual and Christ, over any denominational or familial commitments,” as well as over any political involvement.  Whereas, the participants in Wilson’s conference “repudiate neutrality in the public square, and champion the church as an explicitly political entity, citing Scottish Covenanters and the Reformed resistance theology.”  The authors conclude,

The direction Moore, [David] French, and Moore are walking is not simply traditional evangelicalism, but a form of cultural accommodation dressed as convictional religion. The result is a religious respectability that promotes national unity, liberalism, and wokeism under the rhetorical guise of love for neighbor. While Moore and his guest try to straddle the fence, there is little doubt that their biggest support is now coming from those significantly to their left politically.

Amidst this impending crisis in evangelicalism, [Wilson’s conference] Fight Laugh Feast offers a refreshingly sophisticated bulwark: a Puritan theology paired with an expectation of resistance.

Then Mark Galli, the former editor of Christianity Today, entered the fray with The State of Evangelical Leadership  .  Galli left the magazine soon after the blowup over an editorial he wrote saying that Donald Trump should be impeached.  He subsequently converted to Catholicism.  So it is surprising that, for all of his anti-Trump credibility and his experience with the evangelical establishment, he  too is critical of the “accommodationist” position, the desire to be socially acceptable to the non-Christian world.  He writes,

Now the mark of a successful evangelical writer is to get published regularly in the Times, Atlantic, and so forth. What’s interesting about such pieces is that (a) such writers make a point that affirms the view of the secular publication (on topics like environmental care, racial injustice, sexual abuse, etc.) and (b) they preach in such pieces that evangelicals should take the same point of view. However, their writing doesn’t reach the masses of evangelicals who take a contrary view and don’t give a damn what The New York Times says. If these writers are really interested in getting those evangelicals to change their minds, the last place they should be is in the mainstream press. Better to try to get such a column published in the most popular Pentecostal outlet, Charisma. Ah, but that would do nothing to enhance the prestige of evangelicals among the culture’s elite.

David French, who does get articles printed in the Atlantic and the Times, defends himself in his response Evangelical Elites, Fighting Each Other:  “As the culture war changes, there will be new divisions and new alliances,”  he says.  He is concerned with the conflict between  illiberalism and liberalism–that is, the rejection of liberty and democracy–that he sees on both the right and the left.  He is worried that the authoritarians on both sides might get together, forming a new political alliance that will be disastrous for everyone, including Christians.

The best discussion of this issue, in my opinion, comes from Carl Trueman, writing in First Things, in his article The Failure of Evangelical Elites.  He sees the controversy as a recurrent one, going all the way back to the Enlightenment.  He cites the way Christian scholars Mark Noll and George Marsden back in the 1990s argued that Christians could succeed in the academic world by the strength and integrity of their scholarship, which would not conflict with Biblical orthodoxy.  That formula actually worked for a number of Christian academics, who became respected in their fields, but today, Trueman observes, the strength and integrity of their scholarship offers no protection for any academic, Christian or not, if they disapprove of same-sex marriage or abortion.

Trueman makes the point that the hostility to Christianity an academic and other elite institutions is not a reaction to Christian doctrinal beliefs.  Rather, it is a reaction against Christian morality.  Today, elite morality is all about affirming abortion, championing LGBTQ issues, and opposing racism.  Christians also have a moral case against racism.  When given a forum in these circles, Christians tend to speak a lot about racism, upon which there is an agreement, but not about abortion and LGBTQ issues, the moral issues where there is conflict.

“We should not expect to be embraced by those whose thoughts and deeds contradict the truths of our faith,” Trueman concludes, citing John 15:18-19. “Nor should we seek to make our faith more palatable, lest the salt lose its savor.”

Read his entire essay.

Where would you come down in this controversy?

Could the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms help to sort this out?  How about the doctrine of vocation?

We Lutherans believe that God already rules in the cultural spheres, though in a hidden way, so that we ought not to reject secular culture or secular governments completely, as some other Christians do.  And yet, since God is the King of both the eternal and the temporal kingdoms, we can’t go along with secular ideas or practices that contradict His moral law.  When that happens, it is “Here I stand, I can do no other,” despite the cost.

Also, Christians in these kinds of discussions often speak as if the choice of cultural engagement is up to them.  A Christian might be willing and eager to engage the non-Christians in academia or other elite professions , but if the non-Christian academia or elite professions refuse to admit them or expel them, that’s not the Christian’s fault.  There are parallel Christian institutions, though, which are often desperate to find scholars or other professionals who do not conform.  And there are many secular institutions–in manufacturing, engineering, medicine, agriculture, food service, etc., etc.–that do not have a way of caring what their employees believe.  Perhaps Christians would do well to stop aspiring to be “elite,” either in society or in the church, and just carry out whatever callings they have, wherever they are, to what ever neighbors they encounter there.  And to do so faithfully, without compromising their convictions.

 

Photo by mohamed hassan from PxHere. CCO.  Public domain.

2021-09-09T08:52:07-04:00

Last updated on: September 9, 2021 at 8:52 am   By
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I have blogged about the case in Finland of Lutheran pastor Juhana Pohjola, who, along with physician and member of parliament Päivi Räsänen, will be tried for hate speech for publishing a pamphlet teaching what the Bible says about homosexuality.

Worldwide confessional Lutheranism has spoken out on the matter with a powerful statement entitled A Protest and Call for Free Religious Speech in Finland:  An International Lutheran Condemnation of the Unjust Criminal Prosecution of the Rev. Dr. Pohjola and Dr. Räsänen, and a Call for All People of Goodwill to Support the Freedom of Religious Expression in Finland.

I urge you to read it, along with the list of signatories from around the world.

We’ve already discussed the case, but I want to draw your attention to the way the statement distinguishes between the  authority of the state and the authority of the church.

It gives a distinctively Lutheran approach to the issue, drawing on the Augsburg Confession, but it shows that the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, far from encouraging an uncritical submission to temporal governments, offers a framework for positive religious and, indeed, intellectual liberty.  It also repudiates both totalitarianism on the part of the state and theocratic rule on the part of the church.  And it offers guidelines for some of church and state issues that we face today.

Here are the relevant paragraphs (my bolds and interposition):

The Augsburg Confession (AC) states that the Gospel

does not overthrow civil authority, the state, and marriage, but requires that all these be kept as true orders of God, and that everyone, each according to his own calling, manifest Christian love and genuine good works in his station of life.  [Note the doctrine of vocation.]  Accordingly, Christians are obliged to be subject to civil authority and obey its commands and laws in all that can be done without sin.  (AC XVI, Romans 13:1-7)

But authority holds only in its own jurisdiction.  The government holds sway over externals, the Word of god over internals.  “The civil magistrate protects not minds but bodies and goods from manifest harm.  The Gospel protects minds from ungodly ideas, the devil, and eternal death.  Consequently, the powers of church and civil government must not be mixed” (AC XXVIII).  Since faith must remain free, AC XVI concludes that when the commands of government cannot be obeyed without sin, “we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:39).”

These principles would apply to other issues.   For example, today many Christians, including many Lutherans, are rejecting the state’s authority to require masks and other anti-COVID measures.  Well, protecting bodies from manifest harm would seem to fall under the authority of the state.  That would hold true even if we think the reasons for those requirements are ill-founded.  The government, however, should not punish our inner thoughts about such measures.  Even if we disagree with mask-wearing requirements, we should probably submit to our government authorities in this, since wearing a mask and social distancing are not sins, as such.

Vaccination mandates are different.  Some Christians, in good conscience, refuse to get vaccinated because they believe the use of abortion-derived stem cells associated with certain vaccines, however remote the connection might be, makes the vaccines sinful.  That inner conviction could be a matter of religious liberty.  Some people refuse to get vaccinated on prudential grounds, because they don’t think the vaccines are safe.  That wouldn’t involve religious liberty, as such, but they could make the case that they have a right to act upon their internal ideas, over which the government holds no sway.  Christians could disagree with each other on issues like that, and they would always need to determine what is best not only for themselves but how they can best “manifest Christian love” to their neighbors.

And state mandates to shut the doors of churches are certainly different, even when the state is trying to protect “not minds but bodies and goods from manifest harm.”  For one sphere to cancel the other would violate the principle that “the powers of church and civil government must not be mixed.”

To be sure, this distinction is not always easy to apply, and it doesn’t account for all of the issues.  Our minds control what our bodies do, so our mental liberty must manifest itself in our external actions.  Still, the Augsburg Confession gives us a remarkably early assertion of intellectual freedom and the boundaries of the state.  It would, for example, rule out prosecution for “hate crimes.”  The state can and should punish external actions that harm the “bodies and goods” of someone else.  It should not, however, prosecute “hate crimes,” since it has no control or jurisdiction over citizens’ inner emotion of who they hate.  Only the gospel can get at that, not by threats of the law even then, but by working the inner transformation of faith that enables us to love our neighbors.

Am I applying the principles of the Augsburg Confession correctly here?  (Note that the test of believing a doctrine is accepting it even when it goes against one’s own inclinations.)  How else might these principles be applied, as churches and individual Christians try to sort out their relationship to the state?

 

Photo:  “Church and State” by Lee Coursey, via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0

 

 

 

2022-04-22T17:03:31-04:00

Last updated on: April 22, 2022 at 5:03 pm   By
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We have problems coming to terms with our bodies.

This is true of secularists who now insist that sex and gender have nothing to do with the body.  And it is true of Christians, who tend to be squeamish in talking about the body.

And yet many of today’s most important issues have to do with the body:  abortion, COVID policies, health care, genetic engineering, transgenderism, sex, pornography, homosexuality, marriage, parenting, race, virtual reality, virtual communities, the metaverse. . . .

Both Christians and non-Christians seem to be caught in a web of Gnosticism, that ancient heresy that taught that the body doesn’t exist or, at most, doesn’t matter.   This worldview manifested itself in the two opposite, but related, extremes of hyperspirituality (pursuing the “spiritual” while suppressing and trying to escape from the physical) and moral permissiveness (indulging all physical desires, since only the “spiritual” counts, it doesn’t matter what the body does).  And so it is today.

Christianity counters Gnosticism with its doctrines of creation, incarnation, sacraments, and vocation.  But those teachings do not carry the weight they used to.  In order to deal with the issues it now faces and to help Christians navigate through the increasingly Gnostic culture, the church needs to cultivate a theology of the body.

The late Pope John Paul II–sorry, Saint John Paul the Great–wrote a ground-breaking treatise entitled  The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan.  This has become very influential in conservative Catholic circles.  I have dipped into it found it well-worth reading, but it is, of course “Catholic,” both in its philosophical approach to theology and in its doctrinal presuppositions.  That book has launched a myriad of other theological treatments of the body, including some from Protestants.

But now we have Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body  by the Australian theologian John W. Kleinig.  Dr. Kleinig is well-known in confessional Lutheran circles.  (I’m currently working with him on his monumental translation of J. G. Hamann’s London Writings, soon to be released. )  But he is a resource that all Christians can draw on, and, beginning with this book, published by the evangelical publisher Lexham Press, I’m sure he will be.

I can think of no other author who can take on this subject in a more Biblically-rich, Gospel-centered, scholarly, readable,  engaging, and devotional way than John Kleinig.

Here are his chapters:

  1.  Body Matters
  2. The Created Body
  3. The Redeemed Body
  4. The Spiritual Body
  5. The Sexual Body
  6. The Spousal Body
  7. The Living Body

I have bought my copy and will give the book a proper review once I read it thoroughly.

In the meantime, here is the publisher’s summary and endorsements (my bolds) from Amazon:

2021-08-16T16:17:22-04:00

Last updated on: August 16, 2021 at 4:17 pm   By
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Robert Benne is a long-time Lutheran professor and the author of eight books, including one on vocation, Ordinary Saints.  He had been a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), but left that denomination to be part of the more conservative North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

In an article for First Things, Keeping the Main Things the Main Things, he throws down the gauntlet.  Here is how it opens:

If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely those points which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.

This quote is attributed to Martin Luther, though it is probably apocryphal. To paraphrase what it means: We would all agree that we are to “confess Christianity,” to proclaim and teach the gospel—the whole Trinitarian faith. But not all of the main things of the faith are under duress at all times. For instance, the world may think the Nicene Creed is simply a fantasy, but it is not specifically attacking the Nicene Creed. Right now the world is attacking other claims of the faith. If we ignore these attacks, we may be failing to prove our loyalty where the battle is raging.

Three of the main things the world is relentlessly attacking right now are Christian sexual ethics, the sanctity of life, and evangelism.

Prof. Benne goes on to examine those three areas “where the battle is raging.”

The first two, sexual ethics and the sanctity of life, are pretty obvious battlegrounds.  The attack on evangelism may be less so, but Prof. Benne cites how the ELCA has repudiated the sending of missionaries to people unreached by the gospel as an act of colonialism.  In the ELCA, missionaries may only support already-existing churches and give aid to poor nations. So I think he is right.  More broadly, evangelism in a climate of religious relativism can be seen as “trying to impose your religion,” an act of oppressive power, implying that there is something wrong with a person’s existing religion or lack of religion.

Are there other areas “where the battle is raging” that call for costly Christian confession?

In my Lutheran circles, the ordination of women has become such a battleground, involving not simply the social issue of equality, but bigger theological issues such as the doctrine of the ministry, accepting Biblical authority, and cultural conformity.  Thus, women’s ordination has become, for my church, the mark of theological liberalism in general.  (The NALC is, commendably, defending the three issues that Benne raises, but, like the ELCA, it still ordains women.  This is a problem for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, as is the recent decision of the Lutheran church of Japan–started by LCMS missionaries–to open the pastoral office to women.)

More broadly, another theological battle that must be fought is over the doctrine of the atonement, which not only liberal theologians are jettisoning or revising, but even some evangelical, Reformed, and–amazingly–Lutheran theologians are wanting to revisit.

Unfortunately, such battles have to be waged within the Church, even as the secularists lay their siege against all Christians.

Sexual ethics and the sanctity of life would seem to pit Christians against the secularists, but those are also battles within the church, as most mainline liberal denominations–including the ELCA–have gone over to the other side on these issues.

I know there will be disagreements about which issues are crucial, and different denominations and traditions will have issues of their own.  But I’m curious how you would apply that statement attributed to Luther.

We often say of controversies that are not all that important, “that’s not a hill I’d want to die on.”  Fair enough.  Many of our arguments are over matters that are trivial in the long term.  But what hill would you be willing to die on?

 

Illustration:  “The Battle of New Orleans” by E. Percy Moran via Library of Congress, Public Domain

2021-08-09T16:03:09-04:00

Last updated on: August 9, 2021 at 4:03 pm   By
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In my opinion, informed by decades of literary study, one of the greatest stories in literature is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  It has inspired a contemporary film, The Green Knight, which–though well-done in many respects–completely reverses the medieval tale’s original meaning, perhaps suggesting where our post-Christian mentality is heading.

The anonymous narrative poem of the 14th century, written in an obscure English dialect, is full of twists and surprises, with a brilliant structure, both comedy and thrills, and profound themes of both culture and faith.

I urge you to read it in J. R. R. Tolkien’s translation, collected in his book Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Pearl, and Sir Orfeo.  This is one of Tolkien’s greatest works, bringing together his vocations as a medieval scholar, a linguist, a literary artist, and a master of imaginative fantasy.  Tolkien was, like C. S. Lewis, an academic in his day job; and both Tolkien and Lewis are still highly respected in their fields of literary history to this very day, and by fellow-scholars who would never read The Lord of the Rings or Christian apologetics.  Tolkien not only understands this chivalric romance and emulates its power as a fantasy, he also brings into modern English the poem’s rhythm, alliteration, and rhyme scheme–something almost never even attempted, let alone brought off successfully, in translations.

Let me briefly tell you the main elements of the tale.  And then I’ll tell you what the movie does with it.

Spoiler alert!

The Original

The story begins on New Year’s Eve in the early days of Camelot.  Still celebrating the 12 days of Christmas with a feast, the young, energetic King Arthur, the beautiful Guinevere by his side, proclaims that he will not eat until he has witnessed some adventure.

Whereupon a giant green knight rides into the hall on his green horse, carrying an axe.  Despite this breach of etiquette (horses are to be left outside), King Arthur welcomes him.  The Green Knight proposes a game of trading blows.  A knight may give him his best shot with the axe.  And then, in a year and a day, it will be the Green Knight’s turn to strike the knight.

Young King Arthur wants to do it, but his court restrains him, so the young but already accomplished Sir Gawain takes up the challenge.  (In the Arthurian tales of Celtic Britain, Sir Gawain becomes the greatest of the knights.  Later, in the French versions, bringing in the theme of courtly love, the greatest knight is a Frenchman, Sir Lancelot.  In Sir Thomas Malory’s synthesis of the traditions, this will later lead to the civil war that destroys the civilization King Arthur has built.)

Sir Gawain, agreeing with the terms, goes up to the intruder, who bares his neck, and with one blow of the axe cuts off his head.  That would seem to be that.  But then the decapitated body of the Green Knight stands up and picks up his bloody head, which speaks:  I will see you in a year and a day at the Green Chapel.

The Green Knight is a vegetation deity, representing the old nature-based paganism that Christianity was supplanting in Britain.  Of course, if you cut off the head of a plant, it just grows back, something we are well aware of every time we mow the lawn.  Not so with human beings.  The story depicts a test for the new religion and for the new cultural values that Camelot represents:  Will this new order of knights, supposedly so superior to the old pagan warriors, keep their promises?

The year passes, with vivid and suspense-building descriptions, as Gawain gets closer and closer to the date of his certain doom.  When the time comes, he does as he promises, setting off on a quest to find the Green Knight and this mysterious Green Chapel, not having a clue where they might be.  But he sets forth anyway.  Unlike conventional quests to find a glorious treasure, this one, as far as Gawain is concerned, is a quest for his death.

After many hard adventures, Gawain, starving and in ice-encased armor, comes to a castle.  Here he is warmly received.  A friendly, hearty knight named Bertilak is delighted to entertain a knight from Camelot who has come all this way into the hinterlands.  And he says that he knows where the Green Chapel is, which is quite nearby.  He invites Gawain to rest up and to sleep in, while he himself goes hunting.  He proposes a friendly exchange:  He will give Gawain whatever he gets on his hunt, and Gawain will give him whatever he receives while back at the castle.  (Again:  Will a knight keep his promises?)

The next morning, while Gawain is luxuriating in bed, Bertilak’s beautiful wife comes into his bedchamber.  Gawain is aghast at this impropriety, but because of his courtesy and his chivalrous concern for women, both hallmarks of Camelot, he does not want to berate her or embarrass her.  As she asks about the fashions at court, though, she becomes more and more flirtatious.  Gawain pretends not to notice, and at the end of the morning, she leaves, but gives him a chaste kiss on the cheek.  When her husband gets back, he gives Gawain the deer he has slain, and Gawain honors their agreement by kissing him on the cheek.  (Note the moral test:  Will this Christian follow the sexual morality he says he believes in, and resist committing adultery?)

The next day goes much the same, with Bertilak’s hunt being much more difficult, going after a wild bore that attacks him, and his wife’s “hunt” also intensifying, as she becomes more and more aggressive.  Again, Sir Gawain fends off her and his own passions, and settles for another chaste kiss, which he returns to her husband.

On the third day, though, the wife just comes out with her desire to have sex with Gawaine, and he forthrightly–but with chivalrous consideration for her–refuses.  She says that she understands and, to show that there are no hard feelings, she gives him the gift of a magic green belt.  Wear it, she says, and no harm can come to you.

Suddenly, we readers, along with Gawain, are reminded of the main plot:  The rendezvous with the Green Knight!  This can protect him!  Gawain gladly takes the belt.  But when Bertilak comes back, giving him the only fruit of a bad hunt, a mangy fox, Gawain gives him a kiss, but keeps the belt for himself, thus violating their agreement.

He goes to the Green Chapel and meets the Green Knight.  “Now bare your neck like I did!”  Gawain does, but as the axe is raised to strike and starts to come down, he flinches.  “I didn’t flinch when you did that to me!”  “Well, I won’t be able to pick up my head and ride off like you did!”  Again, he prepares himself for the blow, but he flinches again.  The third time, the axe misses, merely scratching his neck!  Gawain jumps up, draws his sword, says you’ve had your blow, and is ready to fight.  Whereupon the Green Knight starts to laugh.

“You have passed the test, or at least done well enough.”  The Green Knight turns out to be Bertilak.  The real test was not in the Green Chapel but in the bedroom.  Chivalry and Christian morality were proven.  “You only failed once, in desiring to protect your own life, but that is understandable.”

Gawain is abashed, though, at how he depended on a pagan talisman to protect him, instead of Jesus and His Mother, who were painted on the inside of his shield.  He goes back to Camelot, which rejoices to see him, and confesses to all his failure and dishonor.  Whereupon the King and the court laugh.  They all resolve to wear a green belt in his honor, to remind them all of that crucial chivalrous and Christian virtue of humility.

The Movie

The movie is well-made, with strong acting and gorgeous cinematography.  It even picked up on some of the original story’s themes, giving me high hopes.  Even material it added seemed to be in line with the original (such as the bit it added with Gawain’s mother  Morgause, the sister of both Arthur and Morgan le Fay, whom the book credits for orchestrating the test.)  But then the movie switched the themes around.

Whereas the original tale was set at the beginning of King Arthur’s reign, the movie presents it at the end.   Arthur is old, weak, and decrepit, still noble, but approaching his end.  The book, as it were, dramatized the beginning of Christendom to a recently and probably not completely converted Celtic audience.  The movie depicts Christianity and the Western Civilization it created as being essentially over.

Instead of the way the book shows paganism giving way to Christianity, the movie shows Christianity giving way to paganism.  For example, Bertilak’s castle is full of books, which Gawain marvels at to the wife, who says she has read or written them all.  Christianity is presented as backwards, while paganism is presented as a well-spring of learning and education.  Which violates history completely!  In reality, Christianity in the middle and the previous dark ages was responsible for books and learning, while paganism, as depicted in the book, is about instincts, passion, and irrationalism.

The movie includes the original’s riff on the number 5 as symbolizing the five fingers, the five senses, the five knightly virtues, the five wounds of Christ, the five joys of Mary, etc., but presents it as a magical incantation rather than a confession of how his faith must impact his life.  It shows the inside of Gawain’s shield, with its icon of Mary and Jesus, only to have robbers throw it on the ground and cut it in two.

In the movie, Gawain is not even a knight, even though the title of the source book specifies “Sir Gawain. . . ”  Rather, he is presented as a clueless youth–though portrayed by a mature man–who wants to be a knight, something he associates with “honor,” with little reference to what that entailed back then.

And the movie doesn’t even consider the virtue of chastity.  Gawain is shown at the beginning frequenting brothels.  He has a sexual relationship with a lower-class Essel, but he is oblivious to her love for him and treats her despicably, unlike the way actual chivalry would demand.

And Gawain immediately gives in sexually to Bertilak’s wife so that she will give him the magic belt.  Here the movie comes off the tracks completely, in leaving out the best and most important part of the original story.  The three days of temptation and resistance, paralleling Bertilak’s three hunts, is eliminated completely, crunched into one day with a sex scene, ending with a shot of semen on the green belt.

The old paganism was at least a fertility religion.  This newly emergent paganism wants sex, but not fertility, which entails having children and generating new life.  Reflecting our new pornographic view of sex, this one is more of a masturbatory religion.

As for the ending, Gawain does flinch from the Green Knight blow and seems to run away, whereas, in a long and confusing sequence, we see his unhappy life unfold.  But that turns out be only a vision, from which he wakes up and says he is ready for the blow.  The Green Knight speaks kindly to him, but then says, “Now, off with your head!”  Fade to credits.

That abrupt, non-conclusive ending prevents any kind of happy ending, which is a necessity in every fairy tale.  Nature brings death, the film seems to say, but that is better than the pointless life you would have lived.

The problems of the film are not just the thematic inversions from the original.  They are also artistic, as elements are thrown in without being accounted for (such as the naked female giants that parade through) and loose ends are never tied together (such as Bertilak not being revealed as the Green Knight).

There was another more subtle problem that grated on me.  The movie is full of “thee’s” and “thou’s,” which I appreciate as being an attempt to evoke medieval language (though it is actually Early Modern).  But if you are going to use those pronouns, use them correctly!  In the movie, King Arthur gives a wimpy speech to his knights, in which he gives credit for all of his accomplishments “to thee.”

“Thee” is a singular!  “Thou” is the subject form, “thee” is the object form, and “thy/thine” are the possessives.  “Ye” is the plural subject form (as in “go ye into all the world and preach the gospel), and “you” is the plural object form, with “your/yours” being the possessive.

These distinctions acquired a social distinction, with the singular forms (“thou, thee, thy”) becoming an intimate address reserved for family and close friends.  (It was also used to address God, our most intimate friend of all.)  The plural forms (ye, you, your) were used to address social superiors.  But it was also still used as a plural, when addressing more than one person.

Eventually, we lost all distinctions and use “you” for everyone.  But no one in the Middle Ages or the early modern period would address a group as “thee”!

Read this for the grammar and this for the difference it makes in reading Shakespeare.

What this tells me is that the filmmakers of The Green Knight do not understand medieval history, language, or religion.  Unlike J. R. R. Tolkien.

 

 

Illustration:  From the original manuscript of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (14th century) by Unknown author – http://gawain.ucalgary.ca, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=621711

2021-07-24T15:23:05-04:00

Last updated on: July 24, 2021 at 3:23 pm   By
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I came across this bit from a discussion of whether it was right for a conservative student group to ban a conservative porn star who wanted to participate:

There’s a scene in Mel Brooks’s 1970 movie The Twelve Chairs, which is set in the Soviet Union in 1927, in which a Russian Orthodox priest played by Dom DeLuise expresses sympathy for communism in a fight with another character. His interlocutor asks him how he, as a priest, could be a Communist Party member since atheism is a requirement for membership. DeLuise shrugs and replies, “The church must keep up with the times.”

I thought of this too in the controversy among Catholics, with Pope Francis essentially banning the traditional Latin mass.  The  big convocation in the 1960s known as Vatican II sought to make the church “keep up with the times.”  So they jettisoned old identify-forming traditions like abstaining from meat on Fridays and  installed a new mass that was not only in the vernacular–something we Reformation types would certainly support–but also made it possible to tone down the mystery by incorporating contemporary Christian music and a host of informalities.   The post-Vatican II mass can still be reverent–there is even a Latin version–but in many parishes it comes across as far too casual, with 1960s-Peter-Paul-and-Mary style guitar music (not referring to the saints of those names but to the folk singers) and trying-too-hard attempts to be up to date.

(One problem with trying to “keep up with the times” is that, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, the times they are always changing.  By the time one style of “contemporary” music gets incorporated into a church service, it will have gone out of fashion.  There is nothing that seems more outdated than yesterday’s fashion, especially when older adults try to do it.  This is why, when the church tries to be contemporary, it is generally a step or two behind and thus comes across as old-fashioned.)

So some Catholics pushed for a return to the old Tridentine Latin mass (named for the council that launched the counter-Reformation), with all of its genuflections, prostrations, incense, rituals, and symbolism, and Pope Benedict XVI gave them permission to do so.  The return of the old mass, in parishes that chose to go that route–at least for some services–did attract die-hard traditionalists, including those who disapprove of Pope Francis, but it also attracted young people, who were captivated by how different it was from the pop culture they were used to and yearned to escape from.  This kind of worship seemed to them to be mysterious, transcendent, and holy.

But now Pope Francis, who is interested in modernizing the church, has reversed his predecessor’s permission.  In the name of church unity, he says, we need to go back to the vernacular, contemporized mass.  We must keep up with the times even when the times want to go back to something better.

Lutheran that I am, I don’t mean to defend the mass, whether traditional or modern, which is shot through with theological errors.  But we too have had our worship wars between those who want the traditional Lutheran liturgy–a form of the mass purged of its errors, but keeping the structure, the set-pieces, and the chanting–and those who want a more contemporary service, similar to those of evangelical megachurches.  There are also those in between, who blend some contemporary elements and contemporary music into the liturgical structure.  The debates were fierce a few decades ago, but my impression is that the worship wars among Lutherans have died down.

Our confessions actually allow for variations in “ceremony.”  The main issue for Lutherans is doctrinal unity.  And this is where the desire to “keep up with the times” is most caustic to Christianity.

The notion that the church should keep up with the times is perhaps the best definition of liberal theology.  The idea is that for the church to be relevant, it must change its teachings to accord with the beliefs of the day.  Thus, liberal theology has championed at various times, the social gospel of 19th century progressivism, New Deal liberalism, Marxist liberation theology, and now post-Marxist critical race-sex-gender theory; also, enlightenment rationalism, romantic emotionalism, civil religion, existentialism, feminism, queer theory, etc., etc.  Also psychology, the self-esteem movement, encounter groups, New Age, and becoming “woke.”   Paradoxically, just about every secularist idea can be found in churches; that is, among liberal theologians and the mainline Protestant–and liberal Catholic–churches they call home.

In fact, some liberal theologians have made a reality of what Mel Brooks intended as a joke, actually adopting what they call “Christian atheism”!

So in what sense should Christians “keep up with the times”?  The Bible commends the men of the tribe of Issachar, “who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” ( 1 Chronicles 12:32).  I think that Christians should try to keep abreast of what is happening–the news, the new ideas, emerging worldviews, and contemporary issues.  Not only because of their vocations of citizenship but because awareness of “the times” can help them from being unduly influenced and can identify areas that call for a Christian response.  Orthodox theologians should follow the new trends in their field, not to adopt them, necessarily, but to answer them.  And “the times” might also bring up trends, ideas, and technologies that Christians can put to good use.

How else might Christians keep up with the times without selling out to the times?  Are there some lines that can be drawn between accommodations that are acceptable and those that aren’t?

 

Photo:  The Tridentine Latin Mass  by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, available from http://fssp.org., Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons

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