Calvinist Baptists, But No ‘Lutheran’ Baptists?

As a Reformed Christian who is in some fashion heir to Calvin’s legacy, I find myself puzzled when I see a title such as this: Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention. What does it mean to be a Calvinist in a Baptist denomination? It cannot imply an acceptance of Calvin’s view of the sacraments, which take up considerable space in his Institutes of the Christian Religion and are more than incidental to his theology as a whole. It does not seem to imply recognition of a real spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, or of baptism as a sign and seal of God’s grace. Nor does it seem to imply an acceptance of Calvin’s ecclesiology, which takes up volume IV of the Institutes and is generally followed by those churches calling themselves Presbyterian or Reformed.

Although John Calvin and Martin Luther are generally recognized to be the two principal reformers of the 16th century, there is a certain asymmetry in their respective legacies, as seen in the fact that no one ever complains of creeping Lutheranism in the Southern Baptist Convention. As far as I know, there is no pro-Luther party in America’s largest Protestant denomination. Why not? If one becomes a Lutheran, it almost always means that one has joined an explicitly Lutheran Church, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (or Canada) or the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. By contrast, if one becomes a Calvinist, it usually means that one has embraced Calvin’s theology — generally his soteriology — while possibly staying put with respect to ecclesiastical loyalties. This is clearly the case with respect to Calvinist Baptists.

From an historical vantage point, the reason for this difference between the Lutheran and Calvinist labels is far from obvious. After all, Calvin was much more explicit in setting forth a reformed ecclesiology than was Luther, who was more willing than his Genevan counterpart to tolerate different ecclesiastical polities in different geographical contexts. The Churches of Sweden and Finland, for example, maintained an episcopal polity with bishops in apostolic succession. Nevertheless, when Swedes and Finns migrated to North America, their respective transplanted church bodies, the Augustana and Suomi Synods, were generally less hierarchical and more congregational in nature, without in any way impairing their continued communion with the mother churches. Their common adherence to the Augsburg Confession was more important than their polities.

On the other hand, when Reformed Christians established their churches in the New World, they usually brought their polity with them to this side of the Atlantic. Thus if Lutheranism has been historically more flexible than Calvinism with respect to ecclesiology, it is not immediately evident to some of us why becoming a Calvinist is usually thought to be a soteriological statement while becoming a Lutheran is an ecclesiastical one. But it may be that I’m missing something that others have picked up on.

Urban visions at odds: Haussmann, Kuyper, and the Chicago Housing Authority

As a child I had aspirations to become an architect and perhaps even an urban planner. I was especially captivated by an article in the May, 1960, issue of National Geographic titled, Brasilia: Metropolis Made to Order, about the newly inaugurated capital city of Brazil, the brainchild of President Juscelino Kubitschek, who sought to move his country's population away from the thickly settled coastal region. I admired the illustrations of the modern-looking buildings set amid the spacious plains of Brazil's interior. Designed by urban planner Lúcio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer (who died last year at the age of 104), the new capital's public buildings were impressive, giving an aura of a vigorous adolescent finally coming of age as a great nation. I imagined that Brazilians were experiencing something of the pioneer spirit that had motivated Americans to settle their own interior a century earlier, and I found it inspiring. Brazil was the land of the future, and it now had a seat of government to match its larger-than-life ambitions.

There was just one problem: Brasilia is a walker's nightmare, boasting one of the highest rates in the world of traffic accidents involving pedestrians. It is virtually impossible to get anywhere on foot, as the distances between destinations are too great, and so are the dangers to life and limb of trying to get there. Having admired Costa's and Niemeyer's handiwork for so long, I eventually came to understand the drawbacks of planning an urban centre from the top-down, with its flashy expressions of artistic modernism but with little sense of what it takes to build a genuine human community.

Read the full article here.

Viktor Orbán and Hungary’s Constitution

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is no stranger to controversy. Still in his 20s when the communist régime was phased out in his native Hungary, he organized the Alliance of Young Democrats, known in its abbreviated form as Fidesz, now the ruling party in that country. Originally libertarian, Fidesz changed its orientation in the mid-1990s in a conservative direction, leading to its eventual expulsion from the Liberal International (the world federation of liberal and progressive political parties). Fidesz now allies itself with the European People’s Party in the larger European context, and currently enjoys a two-thirds majority in Parliament along with its coalition partner, the Christian Democratic People’s Party.

This parliamentary supermajority has invited much of the criticism leveled at Orbán’s government. Critics, including the European Union, the Council of Europe, and even the United States, have charged him with using this overwhelming power to cripple the opposition and thereby subvert Hungarian democracy.

What has Orbán done? His most significant act has been the adoption of a new constitution, the Fundamental Law. While the other former communist states of eastern Europe adopted new constitutions shortly after the old regimes collapsed, Hungary continued for two more decades under its 1949 constitution. Once Fidesz returned to power with such overwhelming popular support, Orbán adopted a fresh constitution, which took effect at the beginning of last year.

Read the full article here.

An untimely death: 'Why, O Lord?'

The past week has been a difficult one for the Christian community of which we are part here in Hamilton, Ontario. A 32-year-old husband and father disappeared on Monday of last week in nearby Ancaster. He was a member of the Ancaster Christian Reformed Church and beloved by many. Now the worst news imaginable has been reported: Missing father Tim Bosma found dead, Hamilton police say. Although I did not know Bosma personally, I know many people who did. In the midst of such a senseless tragedy one can only say, "Why, O Lord?" The words of Psalm 6 come to mind:

Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.

As Christians we live in the sure hope of the resurrection and know that death will not have the final word. But in the meantime we grieve. And pray.

The tyranny of the choice-enhancement state

In chapter 2 of my own Political Visions and Illusions, I trace the development of liberalism in five stages: (1) the Hobbesian commonwealth, (2) the night watchman state, (3) the regulatory state, (4) the equal-opportunity state, and (5) the choice-enhancement state. The movement from each stage to the next requires an expansion of the state beyond its normative sphere of competence into the minutest corners of life—all in the name of expanding personal freedom. I have summarized this development here: Tracing the Logic of Liberalism.

Not everyone will agree with my analysis, especially those who persist in thinking early liberalism to have been solidly grounded and its later decadent manifestation a betrayal of the original vision. Yet I am by no means alone in noting the spiritual continuities among the stages of liberalism. To take just two of many recent articles on the subject: Douglas Farrow's The Audacity of the State is one of the more trenchant analyses, and this past Friday Wesley J. Smith's The Coercive Freedom of Choice probed what I call the choice-enhancement state, roughly encompassing the period since 1960. According to Smith, "We have now reached the point that others are expected to pay for individuals’ 'choices' and maximizing others’ self-identity—even when it violates the payer’s own beliefs. . . . Not too long ago, Americans mostly believed in 'live and let live.' The ironic motto for the current day: 'You do it my way.'"

Is this paradoxical quality in the unending expansion of individual autonomy implicit in the logic of liberalism? I don't know what Smith would say, but I would say: Yes, most definitely. If liberalism is based on the tendency to reduce all manner of communities to mere voluntary associations, as we see in the contractarian approach of Hobbes and Locke, then we should not be surprised if the effort to mitigate this tendency by, say, an appeal to natural law in the more conservative English-speaking liberals is unsuccessful over the long term, and in the name of freedom tyranny ends up extinguishing freedom.

Redefining reality to accord with our desires

The late Czech President Václav Havel was better positioned than most people to penetrate the ideological illusions that so marred the 20th century. Living in a communist country that claimed to be a workers' paradise made him aware of the dangers of any worldview built on a false construct that not only claims to be reality but attempts to suppress those who persist in telling the truth. According to Havel,

Ideology, in creating a bridge of excuses between the system and the individual, spans the abyss between the aims of the system and the aims of life. It pretends that the requirements of the system derive from the requirements of life. It is a world of appearances trying to pass for reality.

Rival leaders blood relatives

This rather insignificant story appears in today's National Post: Family feud? Genealogy site claims Trudeau, Mulcair are cousins after digging into lawmakers’ backgrounds.

Canada’s political spectrum could include a family feud, according to Ancestry.ca. The popular Canadian genealogy website says Liberal leadership frontrunner Justin Trudeau, and NDP leader Tom Mulcair are distant relatives – ninth cousins, to be exact. The two prominent politicians share a set of eighth-great-grandparents: Mathieu Amiot and Marie Miville, who were married in Quebec in 1650, the website says. Amiot and Miville were among the first Quebec settlers, and apparently had quite an impact on the political future of a country that, at the time, didn’t yet exist.

This is hardly news. Given that the two political leaders have roots in 17th-century Québec, and given the small number of French families living there at the time, it would be more surprising if they were not related to each other.

According to my own genealogical research, the Queen is my 13th cousin once removed, as is my own wife. Once you go back far enough, it turns out that virtually everyone is related to everyone else.

By the way, this month marks the tenth anniversary of this blog. Cause for celebration? Depends on your perspective, I suppose.

The PM and the 'bubble'

Unlike America's Constitution, which was deliberately planned by late 18th-century constitutional architects, the Westminster parliamentary system developed almost by accident through a series of fortuitous events that effectively empowered the people's representatives and curtailed the power of the king. Carolyn Harris presents a fascinating account of How the South Sea Bubble Created U.K.'s Modern Monarchy. At issue were the economic crash of 1720, King George I's mistress and his half-sister, and a financial scandal which incapacitated the King, whose power was already weakening due to his lack of facility in English.

In the inquiry that followed the South Sea Bubble, the payments received by Sophia Charlotte [the half-sister] and Melusine [von Schulenberg, the mistress] became public. George I blocked the extradition of South Sea Company Treasurer Robert Knight, who fled England in January 1721 after alluding to immense bribes paid to the most prominent people at court. John Blunt, one of the company’s founders, was arrested and provided the list of payments. In March, Melusine and Sophia Charlotte were accused in a House of Lords debate of accepting bribes.

Because members of his court were implicated, George I couldn’t claim the authority to resolve the situation alone. Instead, Robert Walpole, the newly created first lord of the Treasury, took charge. The assets of South Sea Company directors were confiscated and distributed to bankrupt shareholders, and the stock was divided between the East India Company and the Bank of England. Walpole also fought to protect the king, shielding Melusine and Sophia Charlotte from prosecution.

Although Walpole never formally received the title of prime minister in his lifetime, his authority after the South Sea Bubble was unprecedented and set the tone for the future of the constitutional monarchy. The monarch would retain some control over foreign affairs but the prime minister would assume the role of head of government in the domestic realm as “the King’s Servant.” Walpole conducted state business in the House of Commons and united the Cabinet as an executive authority. The monarch’s direct influence over subsequent prime ministers varied over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, but Walpole’s example set the tone for the office.

The monarch's power is by now almost completely dependent on that of the prime minister. Now if we could only find a way to curtail the PM's power. For this we would do well to look to Peter Aucoin, Mark Jarvis and Lori Turnbull in Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government, which I assigned to my Canadian Government students this term.

Democrats, Republicans and Pope Francis

Writing in The Washington Post, Charles Camosy draws a seemingly unlikely connection between the two major American political parties and the newly minted Pope: Republicans have a Pope Francis problem. Here's Camosy:

And the election of Pope Francis, if understood correctly by the Democrats, could push them over it.

Consider that this pope from Latin America has views about strong state and international government energetically standing for the poor and vulnerable, ecological protection, and nonviolence that are to the left of Nancy Pelosi. He would likely be considered too liberal for a prime time speaking slot at the 2016 DNC convention. The pope is radically suspicious of the libertarian approach to “autonomy” and “choice”—especially when it ends up hurting the vulnerable and opening the way for violence.

For Pope Francis, to no one’s surprise, this includes suspicion of the right to choose abortion. His anti-abortion views might make his pontificate seem unfriendly to Democrats, but in reality our peculiarly American obsession with autonomy and individual choice—whether it is about our guns, our pelvises, or our money—is more at home in the Republican party. If Democrats could embrace Pope Francis’ connection between social justice for the poor and equal protection of the laws for our prenatal children, they could finish the GOP for a generation.

It would be nice to think that Camosy is right, but, especially in matters of life and sexuality, the Democratic leadership, along with many of their candidates, are dogmatically wedded to this autonomy and individual choice and show no signs even of flexibility, much less of backing down. Those Democrats who have chosen the lonely path of dissent from this secular orthodoxy have been put under enormous pressure to conform. Such groups as Democrats for Life are swimming against the strongest current imaginable, and thus far without making so much as a dent in their party's monolithic public stance.

This should present an opportunity for the Republicans, but thus far they have chosen to squander it and indeed are difficult to take seriously. I do not envy ordinary Americans, whose political choices range from the preposterous to the unpalatable.

A commuter's communion with God

A few weeks ago I was on the GO train to Toronto filled with morning commuters. I would shortly be arriving at Union Station where I would then transfer to a VIA Rail train to Montréal. Although my mind was initially on the lecture I would be delivering at the end of my journey the following day, I became aware, sitting across the aisle from me, of a middle-aged woman who looked to be Filipino. She was reading from a very small tattered booklet that appeared to lack a cover. After reading she would close her eyes for a time and then resume reading again. She was obviously not dozing. As I myself had prayed the daily office using my e-reader back at the Hamilton GO station, I knew exactly what she must be doing. I had to resist the inclination to ask to see her well-worn booklet. Instead I silently prayed that God would answer her prayer.

Because I am not a regular commuter into Toronto, I will likely never see this woman again. I may have been the only person on the train who knew that she was praying, but because of this, I felt as if the two of us have something — or rather Someone — very precious in common. Someone whose sacrifice on the cross we observe with gratitude during this Holy Week.

Singing the Psalms through adversity: the Czechs

The following appeared in the 11 March issue of Christian Courier as part of my monthly "Principalities & Powers" column:

In November 1976 I was privileged to visit what was then called Czechoslovakia and its capital city, Prague. Although the communists were still in power and the weather was cold and gloomy during my stay, I fell in love with this beautiful 14th-century urban jewel, which managed to glitter despite the austere Stalin-era buildings at its periphery. As a child I had grown up hearing one of my mother’s favourite musical pieces, Bedřich Smetana’s Vltava, or Moldau, a tone poem dedicated to the river on which Prague is built. Thus I was thrilled finally to walk across the fabled Charles Bridge spanning the waterway that had inspired the 19th-century composer.

For an amateur musician Prague is a treat, as its residents glory in the music of Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů and many others. Stepping into a church one Sunday I heard a soloist singing two of Dvořák’s Biblical Songs, which I had worked up in my undergraduate voice lessons and had come to love. Dvořák wrote these haunting songs based on the Psalms while in the United States, after learning of the death of his friend and conductor, Hans von Bülow, and of the imminent death of his own father back in Europe. Not surprisingly, the grieving composer turned to the Psalms for comfort.

While in Prague I visited more than one antiquarian book shop, purchasing an 1845 Czech New Testament and Psalms. (In retrospect I’ve come to recognize the irony in my taking a Bible out of a communist country when so many other Christians were taking risks to bring Bibles in.)

But it was another purchase at one of those stores that I keep returning to decades later. This was a small, thick volume called Malý Kancionál, or Little Hymnal, published in 1900 by the Unity of the Brethren, also variously known as the Bohemian Brethren, the Moravian Brethren and the Unitas Fratrum, founded by Jan Hus at the start of the 15th century. On the front cover is a stylized illustration of a chalice, a prominent Husite symbol, stemming from their championing the right of the laity to receive the Eucharistic cup along with the bread to which ordinary believers were at that time restricted. Inside the covers I found a complete metrical psalter, along with some 350 hymns – a psalter hymnal, in short. This sat on my shelf for nearly a decade before I discovered the significance of this book. The 150 Psalms are in fact set to the Genevan tunes, as used in the Swiss, Dutch, Hungarian and other Reformed churches. I had had no idea that Czechs had ever sung these, but obviously some did. Where did they come from?

A few years ago I learned the full story. Jiří Strejc (also known as Georg Vetter, 1536-1599), was a Brethren minister born in Zábřeh in Moravia. Strejc studied in Tübingen and Königsberg, where he came into contact with the Psalter of Ambrosius Lobwasser, a professor of jurisprudence at the university there. Strejc was so favourably impressed by Lobwasser’s German translation of the Genevan Psalter that he decided to model his own Czech versification on it, an undertaking he completed in 1587. Strejc is probably best known for his German-language hymn text, Mit Freuden Zart, familiar in English as Sing Praise to God, Who Reigns Above, the tune to which comes from the Bohemian Brethren’s Kirchengesänge (1566) and bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Genevan Psalm 138. Whether Strejc and Lobwasser ever met I have been unable to determine, but the latter’s psalter would come to influence the liturgical life of Czech protestants by way of Strejc.

The modern Czech Republic is a largely secular society with abysmally low rates of church attendance, a condition undoubtedly exacerbated by four decades of communist misrule. Nevertheless, possessing such a rich heritage in Dvořák’s Biblical Songs and Strejc’s metrical psalter, Czech Christians have a solid basis on which to reinvigorate their country’s tepid church life six centuries after Jan Hus’s abortive efforts at reformation. May God grant that Hus’s work finally come to fruition in the churches of the Czech Republic.

Hamilton's 'New York Times'

In recent months the weekend edition of the Hamilton Spectator has included two sections from The New York Times for those willing to pay a modest amount on top of their regular subscription cost. Because the NYT adds more substance to the paper, The Spec has seen fit to drop its "Weekend Reader" section, the only part of the newspaper with any substance whatsoever. These developments raise two questions in my mind: (1) Has the NYT reciprocated by including sections of The Spec amongst its own sections? and (2) Why should readers not drop their subscription to The Spec and pick up the NYT instead?

Reformed Christian Prayers for the Pope

I consider myself a Reformed Christian of strongly confessional bent. I love Scripture and recognize it to be God’s Word, the final authority for faith and life. I love the Heidelberg Catechism with its warm, evangelical flavour as it speaks to the heart of believers of our “only comfort in life and in death.” I love singing the Psalms, especially the sturdy melodies of the Genevan Psalter.

Given my unequivocal commitment to the Reformation, and especially to the branch stemming from John Calvin, some may find it surprising that I would pray for Pope Francis and the communion which he leads. Yet I do so, because all Christians in every tradition have a stake in the world’s largest ecclesiastical body. The sixteenth century Reformers themselves initially had no desire to break with the western church, doing so only when forced to. Instead they wished to reform an institution they loved—an institution they believed was corrupt and not living up to the demands of the gospel.

I take no pleasure in the scandals that have beset the Roman Catholic Church in recent decades. Some Protestants may experience a certain schadenfreude at the travails of the church with which their forebears broke so many centuries ago. But not everyone. I genuinely hope and pray that the new Pope, who took the name of another would-be reformer loved by Protestants and Catholics alike, will be able to clean up what needs to be cleaned up in his church. My prayer to God is that, where there is despair he may sow hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is corruption, holiness and unwavering fidelity to the cause of Christ.

Whom to believe?

In the continuing controversy over climate change it is difficult to sort out the validity of conflicting reports. Here, for example, is a Financial Post column by Lawrence Solomon: Not easy being green. According to Solomon,

Arctic ice has made a comeback, advancing so rapidly that the previous decade saw less ice at this time of the year than exists today. And previously balmy Arctic temperatures just nose-dived, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute, which has tracked Arctic temperatures since 1958.

Alarmists shudder when looking south, too, at the stats from Antarctica. There the sea ice extent started growing early this year, and the ice cover remains stubbornly above average. All told, the global sea ice — including both polar caps — now exceeds the average recorded since 1979, when satellites began their measurements.

But then we read this from Emily E. Adams: Where Has All the Ice Gone? Here's Adams:

In September 2012, sea ice in the Arctic Ocean shrank to a record low extent and volume. The region has warmed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1960s—twice as much as lower latitudes. With less snow and ice to reflect the sun’s rays and with more exposed ocean to absorb heat, a vicious cycle leads to even warmer temperatures. Thinner ice combined with rising temperatures makes it increasingly difficult for the sea ice to recover. The historically ever-present white cap at the top of the globe could disappear entirely during the summer within two decades. . . .

While Greenland’s ice loss is astonishing, on the other side of the globe, parts of Antarctica’s vast ice sheet may be even less stable. The continent is flanked by 54 major ice shelves, which act as brakes slowing the movement of ice in land-based glaciers out to sea. Twenty of them show signs of thinning and weakening, which translates into accelerated ice loss. After the 3,250-square-kilometer Larsen B Ice Shelf collapsed in 2002, for instance, the glaciers it was bracing flowed up to eight times faster than before. The most dramatic thinning is in West Antarctica.

Which is right? Obviously they cannot both be. The two reports are separated by only a week, yet their respective accounts as to what is happening to the polar ice caps could not be more divergent. As a complete layman in the field, I am incompetent to judge the veracity of the two reports, which I am certain is true of most other readers as well.

However, in the absence of certainty on the issue, our political leaders must still make policies while weighing in the balance the various conflicting considerations at stake. The balance will never be perfect, of course, but in general it seems to me that, even if anthropogenic global warming is not occurring, we still have an obligation to pursue policies to protect our physical environment, both for the sake of future generations and in recognition of our responsibility before God for his creation. We may not be able to settle the debate, but it seems wise to err on the side of caution and of minimizing the environmental risks to our descendants.

Relevant religion and human desires

Sometimes it takes a nonbeliever to speak truth to believers. This time it comes from the "not even religious" George Jonas in Canada's National Post: Searching for one-size-fits-all religion. Amidst calls from some Roman Catholics that the new Pope toe their own line rather than lead them into truth, Jonas mentions the minor character Helene Bezuhov in Leo Tolstoy's famous novel, War and Peace.

Exquisitely drawn, like all of Tolstoy’s creations, once you make the Countess Bezuhov’s acquaintance, you can’t quite forget her. Helene is married to Pierre Bezuhov, one of the leading characters in the novel, but she doesn’t feel suited to him and hopes to contract a more agreeable marriage. Maybe even two marriages. She contemplates marrying an older prince first, and then, after he dies, perhaps saying yes to a much younger applicant.

Helene is beautiful. Her arms and shoulders are the marvel of Moscow. She doesn’t lack rich and socially prominent suitors, but she belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church. Divorce being unthinkable in that church at that time — during the Napoleonic wars — she converts to Roman Catholicism. Rome doesn’t permit divorce as such either, but the Pope can sometimes annul a marriage.

“According to her understanding,” writes Tolstoy, describing Helene, “the whole point of any religion was merely to provide recognized forms of propriety as a background for the satisfaction of human desires.” Then Tolstoy continues: “I imagine, (says Helene to her new Jesuit confessor) that having espoused the true faith I cannot be bound by any obligations laid upon me by a false religion.”

Helene would be reassured to know that her heritage lives on. Her standard is held up by men and women who, having acquired the liberty to do as they please, now demand religion to also applaud their moral choices. They want their churches, their priests, even the very Vicar of God, to approve and endorse what they do, or else they threaten him with irrelevance. God Himself becomes irrelevant unless he can be used to rubber stamp human desires – because, as Tolstoy points out, that’s what God is for, at least as far as Helene Bezuhov is concerned. That’s how it was in 1812 and that’s how it is in 2013.

If, on the other hand, genuine religion concerns the little matter of what is true and how we are to live in light of that truth, then whether that truth is relevant to and confirms our desires is beside the point. The martyrs of the church undoubtedly preferred to avoid suffering and preserve their lives, but they chose instead to accept their lot for the cause of Christ. Accordingly, we remember and celebrate their lives as signposts pointing to the coming kingdom.

In a world where so many of our brothers and sisters are still on the receiving end of persecution, martyrdom never loses its relevance, sad to say. Therefore, if we love God with all our hearts and glory in our salvation in Jesus Christ, we will do well to look to the likes of St. Stephen the Protomartyr and St. Polycarp of Smyrna rather than to the Helene Bezuhovs of this world.

Publisher found

I am pleased to announce that my second book, provisionally titled, We Answer to Another: Authority, office and the image of God, will be published by Pickwick Publications, a division of Wipf & Stock in Eugene, Oregon. Here is a brief abstract of the book:

Many observers tend to conflate authority and power, even when they give lip service to the difference between these two, by identifying authority with one or more of the various capacities at our disposal. Similarly many are inclined to view authority and freedom as, if not outright polarities, then dialectically related. By contrast, my argument is that authority is co-extensive with responsible agency and is resident in an office given us at creation. Moreover, when we encounter authority, we encounter nothing less than the image of God, which always points beyond itself. This central authoritative office is in turn manifested in a variety of offices related to the communities of which we are part.

Here is the table of contents as currently projected:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I: INTRODUCTION: DEFINING THE PROBLEM
II: AUTHORITY AND POWER
III: AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY
IV: AUTHORITY AND LEGITIMACY
V: OFFICE: THE KEY TO AUTHORITY
VI: THE PLURIFORMITY OF AUTHORITY
VII: EPILOGUE: AUTHORITY AND LOVE

These details, including the title, are, of course, subject to modification. I will keep readers posted on the progress of the book as it makes its way through the publication process. Stay tuned.

The Hungarian Reformed Church

Many North American Christians are unaware that the Reformation had an impact in east central Europe. Hungary was one of the countries affected by it, and this influence has lasted to the present. The Reformed Church in Hungary has a number of unique characteristics setting it apart from other churches. Its confessional standards are the ecumenical Heidelberg Catechism and the Second Helvetic Confession. It is one of only two explicitly Reformed churches to have bishops, although these bishops are little more than district superintendents and make no claim to be in apostolic succession. In fact, as its website puts it, "the church exists in its congregations." It is a member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. As the map indicates, the Reformed Church encompasses congregations scattered throughout the pre-1920 Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen, which extend from the Adriatic in the west to the Carpathian Mountains in the east, and from the borders of Poland in the north to those of Serbia in the south. In Hungary proper Reformed Christians make up the second largest church body after the Roman Catholic Church, while in Romanian Transylvania, they make up the largest Hungarian-speaking church denomination.

Why are Reformed Christians so concentrated in the east? These were the lands controlled by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century, whereas western Hungary was under the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs. The Habsburgs imposed the Counter-Reformation within their territories, while the Ottoman authorities were rather more tolerant of religious diversity within their lands. (Recall that they had taken in the Jews expelled from Ferdinand and Isabella's Spain in 1492.) Thus the Reformation flourished in the latter but was suppressed in the former.

A dozen years ago I guest lectured at one of Redeemer's sister universities. There I encountered a student in one of the classes who had a Hungarian name but carried a Romanian passport. He was a Reformed Christian who lived in a region of Romania with an ethnic Hungarian majority. Despite his Romanian passport, he told me that he felt himself to be Hungarian, which, as I understand it, is not atypical of the Hungarian-speaking populations in Romania. Thus to be a Reformed Christian in that country brings with it a Hungarian identity as well.

The geographic distance between the Hungarian Reformed and other Reformed Christians is undoubtedly exacerbated by linguistic distance as well. Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language related to Finnish and Estonian but completely unrelated to the Indo-European languages surrounding it in central Europe. I have considerable admiration for such people as Frank and Aria Sawyer, who teach at the Sárospatak Reformed Theological Academy and long ago mastered this difficult language.

In North America the Hungarian Reformed are represented in two bodies: the Hungarian Reformed Church in America and the Calvin Synod, a confessional body within the United Church of Christ. Reformed Christians in Hungary still sing the Genevan Psalms in Albert Szenczi Molnár's 16th-century versifications. If their North American counterparts have given this up, they would certainly do well to re-appropriate a tradition that has served their brethren in the old country so well over the centuries. If they should ever look for a usable English translation, I would be happy to provide them with one, however partial it may be at present.

Incidentally, although I have no known close Hungarian family relationships, my genealogical records indicate that my wife, daughter and I are all lineal descendants of Kings Geza I through Istvan V of Hungary.

Singing the Psalms through adversity: Hungary

The following appeared in the 11 February issue of Christian Courier as part of my monthly "Principalities & Powers" column:

I love the Hungarian people. Among their many national virtues, they boast some of the greatest musicians, such as Béla Bartók (1881-1945) and Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967), who did so much to shape 20th-century music by drawing on their country’s unique folk idioms. There is a substantial Reformed Christian minority in Hungary, and they are well known for their love of singing the Psalms. In fact, it can be justly argued that psalm-singing carried them through four decades of communist tyranny.

Last year saw the 450th anniversary of the completion of the Genevan Psalter. Although the Psalter’s texts were originally written in French verse, they were quickly thereafter translated into a number of other languages, including German, Dutch, Czech and Hungarian. The remarkable polymath, Albert Szenczi Molnár (1574-1634), was responsible for the Hungarian version. A pastor, linguist, poet, writer and translator, Molnár (whose surname means miller) was born in Senec (Szenc), near what is today the Slovak capital of Bratislava, and would come to exercise a formative influence on the development of the Hungarian language.

Molnár travelled widely during his life, visiting and studying in a number of European centres associated with the Reformation. His metrical translation of the Psalms was inspired by the German-language Psalter of Ambrosius Lobwasser and was published in Herborn in 1607. (The Reformed Christian legal theorist Johannes Althusius had published his Politics in Herborn a few years earlier but had moved to Emden before Molnár's arrival.) Molnár died in Kolozsvár in Hungarian Transylvania, now Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Amazingly, Molnár is reputed to have completed his translation of the Genevan Psalms in less than 100 days, which must surely set a speed record, given that this would require him to translate at least a psalm-and-a-half per day. Molnár’s texts have stood the test of time and are still sung by Hungarians today. The extent to which they are sung can be judged by the increasing numbers of performances posted to such sites as youtube, the sheer number of which might lead the casual observer to assume that the entire Hungarian nation is organized into hundreds of thousands of choral groups.

One of the best-known of these is the Cantus choir of the Reformed College in Debrecen, a major centre of Reformed Christianity in eastern Hungary. The College was founded in 1538, and the Cantus in 1739. The Cantus has recorded choral performances of the Psalms, including Kodály’s arrangements of Psalms 33, 50, 114, 121, 124, 126 and 150, whose continuing popularity appears to be undimmed by the passing of the years.

Hungary suffered much in the 20th century. In 1920, following its loss in the Great War, it was deprived of nearly three-quarters of its territory, leaving nearly a third of Hungarian-speakers in the new states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, as well as in a newly enlarged Romania. During the Second World War it suffered under a pro-fascist government, followed by 40 years of communism, interrupted in 1956 by a failed effort at freedom quickly crushed by Soviet tanks. However, once Mikhail Gorbachev ended Moscow’s sphere of influence over its “allies,” Hungary was the first to move towards democracy and to begin dismantling the Iron Curtain.

After the chains of oppression had fallen away, outsiders discovered that Hungarians were still singing from the Genfi zsoltár, their sturdy voices ringing out their complaints, petitions, thanksgivings and praises to God, despite the efforts of an officially atheistic régime at silencing them. Small wonder, then, that many of us admire the Hungarians, so many of whom have persisted in giving voice to God’s Psalms in the face of such adversity.

Gerson on Obama

Yesterday's Washington Post carried this article by Michael Gerson: Obama’s new contraception rules try to fool Catholics. This is in response to President Obama's latest effort to soften the impact of the Health and Human Services mandate, which many see as a threat to religious freedom. Gerson's final paragraphs are worth reading:

But President Obama’s policy does not strike me as cynical. Disturbing, but not cynical. The administration has never shown a particularly high regard for institutional religious liberty. Obama’s Justice Department, in last year’s Hosanna-Tabor case, argued that there should be no “ministerial exception” at all — a contention the Supreme Court labeled “amazing.” In this case, the administration views access to contraception as an individual right to be guaranteed by the government, and institutional religious rights as an obstacle and inconvenience. But the First Amendment, it is worth remembering, was designed as an obstacle and inconvenience to the government.

All this is evidence of a deeper debate. Liberalism, back to John Locke, has understood religion to be a fundamentally private matter. It has a difficult time understanding the existence of loyalties outside the law, and often views them as dangerous (unless the demands of faith are harmless and picturesque, like the Amish). But this is not the way many religious people understand religion. They view it as the grounding for a vision of justice, and the source of standards for a community of believers.

It has been part of the American miracle to balance individual rights with institutional religious freedom — a difficult task for which the Obama administration shows little appetite. So now it falls to the courts.

What I find remarkable about this is that, unlike many Americans, Gerson clearly discerns the ambiguous influence on his country of John Locke, a conventionally religious 17th-century philosopher who nevertheless sought to recast state, church and marriage alike as voluntary associations, thereby emptying them of their distinctive institutional characters. Such refashioning called for the privatization of ultimate religious beliefs, ironically in the name of tolerance. One hopes that the Obama administration will come to recognize religious freedom, not as exceptional, but as basic to doing public justice. Thus far the prospects do not look especially promising.

Given this context, I commend strongly the work of my friend Stanley Carlson-Thies and the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, whose declared purpose is "safeguarding the faith of faith-based organizations." IRFA deserves our prayers and support.

Kuyper in caricature

Cartoonists have long loved to take on our political leaders, who have a tendency to take themselves entirely too seriously. From Thomas Nast more than a century ago to Herblock more recently, editorial cartoonists have delighted generations of readers with their biting visual commentary on our politicians and the issues they are elected to address. The great Abraham Kuyper, who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905, was lampooned as often as any other politician of his era, as indicated in this book, which I discovered today: Kuyper in de caricatuur. Enjoy!

God's mysterious ways

Peter Leithart calls our attention to a rather remarkable phenomenon: Islam and Jesus, drawing on this article in Charisma Magazine: Why Revival is Exploding Among Muslims. Read the entire piece, which illustrates vividly that God works in powerful and unexpected ways to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Authority and office: the witness of Dr. Sietsma

The following piece appeared in the 14 January issue of Christian Courier as the latest instalment of my "Principalities & Powers" column. The story related therein is based on Constantijn J. Sikke’s book, Een waarlijk vrije: levensschets van Dr Kornelis Sietsma (A Truly Free Man: A Sketch of the Life of Dr. Kornelis Sietsma) (Amsterdam: Kirchner, 1946).

On a Monday early in 1942, the Rev. Dr. Kornelis Sietsma was arrested by the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD) at his home in Amsterdam. The previous day he had preached a sermon on Luke 4:1-13, the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, in which he emphasized the temptations that come with power. This was at his own congregation, the Schinkelkerk, which worshipped in a 50-year-old building in the Dutch capital city. At the offering he announced that a collection would be taken for the denomination’s mission to the Jews, something that had come to the attention of the SD, whose agents had attended his church that day.

German troops had occupied the Netherlands for not quite two years. Queen Wilhelmina and her government had taken refuge in London and the occupiers set up a pro-nazi régime in its place. All of this occurred despite the Dutch declaration of neutrality at the beginning of the war in 1939. However, only months later Germany violated Dutch neutrality and invaded the country. Now German soldiers patrolled the streets, and the Jewish population was beginning to receive discriminatory treatment at their hands, with much worse to come.

The Schinkelkerk was part of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, a denomination that began as a merger of two Reformed denominations dissenting from the established church. This union was brought about in 1892 by Abraham Kuyper, who would go on to become Prime Minister of the Netherlands shortly after the turn of the 20th century. In his own political thought Kuyper had recovered an emphasis on something he called soevereiniteit in eigen kring, or sovereignty in its own sphere – a principle in sharp contrast to state absolutism and certainly to the pretensions of any totalitarian régime.

A week and a half earlier, Sietsma had presided over the meeting of the Schinkelkerk consistory, which was faced with two issues of political significance: the status of liturgical prayers for the exiled Royal Family, and the Arbeitsdienst, or the mandatory service imposed on young people by the Germans. These had been raised in a letter issued by the General Synod of the Reformed Churches which was communicated to the congregations, calling them to discourage their young men from participating in the Arbeitsdienst and to remember the Royal Family in worship services. Sietsma commended the courage of this synodical letter at that meeting.

Sunday, 1 February, would mark Sietsma’s final sermon. SD officials were in the congregation that day when the special collection was taken. During his prayers, Sietsma recalled the fourth birthday of Queen Wilhelmina’s little granddaughter, Princess Beatrix, which had occurred on Saturday, and asked God for the safe return of the Royal Family to the Netherlands. All of this was duly noted by the visitors, who took this incriminating information back to their superiors.

Following his arrest, Sietsma was put on trial for provoking resistance to the governing authorities, collecting funds for the Jews, and praying for the royal family’s return. During his trial he admitted, under questioning, that the lust for power, on which he had preached, was present also in national socialism. Sietsma was held in prison until July and then transferred to the concentration camp at Dachau. Two months later, at only 46 years of age, he was dead, having paid the ultimate price for his courage in the face of his persecutors.

Prior to the outbreak of war, Sietsma wrote a little book called, Ambtsgedachte, which was published posthumously and translated half a century later as The Idea of Office (Paideia Press, 1985). In this brief volume the author ties the exercise of authority to the possession of office, arguing that “office is the only justification and the proper limitation of any human exercise of power and authority.” Apart from office, there is no obligation to obey another person. There is no natural right for one person to rule over someone else. Whether the German SD ever saw this book is unknown, but if they had done so, they could not have failed to recognize the implications of Sietsma’s approach for the nazi claim to Aryan racial superiority over other peoples.

Only office, and not the mere possession of power, can confer authority. The principal office we exercise in God’s world is that of divine image-bearer (Genesis 1:26-27). All the other authoritative offices we hold find their ultimate point of origin in this central office given by God himself. Sietsma understood this and willingly accepted the consequences of living it out before the face of the God he loved and served.

Roe Plus Forty: Where Now?

This week marks the 40^th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe vs. Wade, which effectively invalidated the 50 states’ abortion laws, asserting for the first time a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Although the court undoubtedly saw itself settling a contentious issue for a divided polity, we know now that Roe did nothing of the sort. Instead, it only increased the divisive nature of the issue, further polarizing a population into pro-choice and pro-life factions, each of which has taken apparently irreconcilable positions.

Earlier this month TIME Magazine carried a cover story whose author argues that, since the Roe ruling, the pro-choice side has been gradually losing the battle for abortion rights. Why? Physicians are less willing to perform abortions, and pro-lifers have succeeded in persuading their respective state legislatures to tighten up restrictions on the practice, which effectively places hurdles in the way of those who would procure the procedure. Some of these have a primarily psychological deterrent effect, such as requiring the mother to have an ultrasound of the child, thereby impressing on her the reality of the human life growing in the womb. There may also be something to the observation that, because pro-lifers have more children, their beliefs have a certain demographic advantage over those of pro-choicers. For these and other reasons, pro-lifers have reason to think that their long-term prospects are bright, even in the current absence of a sympathetic political climate in the highest places.

Read the full article here.

Bartók's Romanian Dances: two versions

The Romanian Dances by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók have long been one of my favourite pieces of music. Decades ago I heard pianist Gellért Módos play this near Chicago, and it was an electric experience, perhaps not unlike that generated by violinist Janine Jansen in this video:


Jansen's performance is, of course, in the classic western tradition. Compare hers with the following performance by the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks, known in Romanian as Taraful Haiducilor. This is a remarkable performance that situates Bartók's famous piece clearly within the native folk tradition. Why the audience did not roar with approval at the end I don't know.

Happy 40th anniversary, baby

If pro-lifers had come up with something to make the pro-choice position look bad, they could not have done better than this. I shrink from posting this video, because it is in such magnificently bad taste, but it is indicative of the level to which certain trends in our society have sunk.

Reclaiming the Human Center of the Abortion Debate

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the US Supreme Court's notorious Roe vs. Wade decision, which effectively legalized abortion by declaring it a constitutional right. As we remember this event, we would do well to watch the following video from the Susan B. Anthony List:

Religious Freedom Day

Some of us may have missed it, but President Obama declared yesterday Religious Freedom Day in the United States. Here is an excerpt from the presidential proclamation on the White House's website:

Today, we also remember that religious liberty is not just an American right; it is a universal human right to be protected here at home and across the globe. This freedom is an essential part of human dignity, and without it our world cannot know lasting peace.

As we observe Religious Freedom Day, let us remember the legacy of faith and independence we have inherited, and let us honor it by forever upholding our right to exercise our beliefs free from prejudice or persecution.

While it is good to know that the US government is doing something to recognize so fundamental a right, it would be good if it could acknowledge the injustice of forcing Hobby Lobby and other businesses to act against their owners' consciences on pain of crippling fines. Otherwise such a proclamation sounds empty indeed.

Setting political philosophy to music

This is almost worth crossing the pond to see: John Rawls's A Theory of Justice: The Musical. Here is a description:

In order to draw inspiration for his magnum opus, John Rawls travels back through time to converse (in song) with a selection of political philosophers, including Plato, Locke, Rousseau and Mill. But the journey is not as smooth as he hoped: for as he pursues his love interest, the beautiful student Fairness, through history, he must escape the evil designs of his libertarian arch-nemesis, Robert Nozick, and his objectivist lover, Ayn Rand. Will he achieve his goal of defining Justice as Fairness?

A former student suggests that I should audition, but only if I get to sing this song by none other than Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Everywhere in Chains.

At home and abroad: religious freedom under threat

The Guardian's Rupert Shortt reminds readers that Christianity is by no means foreign to the Middle East: In the Middle East, the Arab spring has given way to a Christian winter.

The line about the American general meeting the Arab Christian isn't as familiar as it should be. "When did your family convert?" the general asked. "About 2,000 years ago," the Arab answered wryly.

The general's ignorance is widely shared. Take but one example from closer to home. Over-zealous teachers in London have recently been pulling Syrian Orthodox refugees out of school assemblies in London, on the basis that Arab children must by definition be Muslims. The truth, of course, is that Christianity is an import from the Middle East, not an export to it. Christians have formed part of successive civilisations in the region for many centuries – they were, as Rowan Williams has pointed out, a dominant presence in the Byzantine era, an active partner in the early Muslim centuries, a long-suffering element within the Ottoman empire and, more recently, "a political catalyst and nursery of radical thinking in the dawn of Arab nationalism".

Today, though, the religious ecology of the Middle East looks more fragile than ever, as the Arab spring gives way to Christian winter. [Emphasis mine]

Sad to say, the numbers of Christians in the region have steadily declined over the centuries, with emigration accelerating over the past decade. Threats to Christians continue, not only in Egypt, but also Syria, Pakistan, Nigeria, China and many other countries.

Here in North America, the threats to religious freedom are not as overt, and most people appear not to recognize them as such. Nevertheless, well-known author and pastor Rick Warren has come to the defence of a beleaguered Christian-operated business, as indicated in this report: Hobby Lobby Delays Obamacare Fines for Now; Avoids $18.2 Million Penalty.

Warren, author and pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., has described the company's battle against Obamacare as "nothing less than a landmark battle for America's FIRST freedom, the freedom of religion and the freedom from government intervention in matters of conscience."

Warren said in a statement earlier this month that every American who loves freedom should "shudder at the precedent the government is trying to establish by denying Hobby Lobby the full protection of the First Amendment."

He blasted the government for trying to reinterpret the First Amendment "from freedom to PRACTICE your religion, to a more narrow freedom to worship, which would limit your freedom to the hour a week you are at a house of worship." This, he added, is not only a subversion of the Constitution, "it is nonsense," because "any religion that cannot be lived out … at home and work, is nothing but a meaningless ritual."

Warren predicts that "the battle to preserve religious liberty for all, in all areas of life, will likely become the civil rights movement of this decade."

We have an obligation to support our Christian brothers and sisters, with both prayer and political action. If we are serious in our confession that our whole lives must be lived obediently to God's will in gratitude for our salvation in Jesus Christ (Col. 2:6-7), we dare not acquiesce in either an artificial narrowing of the scope of religion at home or in overt attacks on religious freedom abroad.

The sexual revolution: a change of mind

Andrew Norman Wilson, better known by his initials, A. N. Wilson, is an on-again, off-again atheist who has written books on C. S. Lewis, Leo Tolstoy, the Victorians, and many other subjects. At the beginning of a new year, the Daily Mail has published Wilson’s retrospective on the sexual revolution half a century after its inauguration: I’ve lived through the greatest revolution in sexual mores in our history. The damage it’s done appals me. Although the less-than-snappy title tells it all, the entire piece is worth reading, as can be judged from this excerpt:

The truth is that the Sexual Revolution had the power to alter our way of life, but it could not alter our essential nature; it could not alter the reality of who and what we are as human beings. It made nearly everyone feel that they were free, or free-er, than their parents had been—free to smoke pot, free to sleep around, free to pursue the passing dream of what felt, at the time, like overwhelming love—an emotion which very seldom lasts, and a word which is meaningless unless its definition includes commitment.

How easy it was to dismiss old-fashioned sexual morality as ‘suburban,’ as a prison for the human soul. How easy it was to laugh at the ‘prudes’ who questioned the wisdom of what was happening in the Sexual Revolution. Yet, as the opinion poll shows, most of us feel at a very deep level that what will make us very happy is not romping with a succession of lovers. In fact, it is having a long-lasting, stable relationship, having children, and maintaining, if possible, lifelong marriage.

Wilson cites statistics concerning abortion, sexually-transmitted diseases and divorce to bolster his case, none of which will come as a surprise to most of us. What is surprising is that a prominent newspaper in postchristian Great Britain has chosen to publish this piece, and that the readers’ comments are as positive as they are. I find this moderately encouraging as we head into 2013.

Giving up on the Constitution?

For many years now I've been teaching my students that a constitution is more than a scrap of paper but is to be found in the deeper principles and commitments of a particular political community. Here in Canada in recent decades we have embraced the notion that our constitution is identical to our codified Constitution Acts, while traditionally we have recognized other sources of our constitution, including organic statues (i.e., ordinary laws whose subject matter is constitutional), court rulings (including those of London's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council prior to 1949), and, above all, the unwritten conventions of the constitution, such as responsible government.

Superficially, Louis Michael Seidman would appear to agree with this understanding of a constitution, desiring to import it into his American context:

Countries like Britain and New Zealand have systems of parliamentary supremacy and no written constitution, but are held together by longstanding traditions, accepted modes of procedure and engaged citizens. We, too, could draw on these resources.

However, Seidman goes much further: Let’s Give Up on the Constitution. Why? Because it's been ignored numerous times in the past and, as an 18th-century document, it is no longer suited to the 21st-century United States.

What has preserved our political stability is not a poetic piece of parchment, but entrenched institutions and habits of thought and, most important, the sense that we are one nation and must work out our differences. No one can predict in detail what our system of government would look like if we freed ourselves from the shackles of constitutional obligation, and I harbor no illusions that any of this will happen soon. But even if we can’t kick our constitutional-law addiction, we can soften the habit.

Yet what if it turns out that the most central of these "entrenched institutions and habits of thought" is the respect that Americans hold for the very document he wishes to abandon? No one is asking Seidman or anyone else to believe that its origin is divine, but one would be foolish to give up on something as crucial as the general reverence for the rule of law, which can hardly be taken for granted in much of the world outside of the west. Seidman is, of course, welcome to work for changing the law, but it seems incomprehensible that a constitutional law professor would be so ready to relinquish, not just an old document, but that intangible and durable consensus undergirding its status — and indeed his own profession.

The two lives of the Virgin Mary

Here is my most recent "Principalities & Powers" column from Christian Courier, dated 10 December 2012. It is cross-posted with my Genevan Psalter blog.

Jesus’ mother Mary can be said to have had two lives: the one recounted with tantalizing brevity in the Scriptures and the one bequeathed to her in subsequent centuries by the church, which made her an object of veneration. Mary, of course, plays a prominent role in the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke and at the beginning of Acts.

Luke 1 recounts the visit by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in Nazareth, announcing that she would give birth to the promised Messiah, the one who would save his people from their sins. Although we are told that she at first questioned how this could be, given her virginity, and that, in response to Gabriel’s explanation, she said: “let it be to me according to your word,” we are not told much else.

This is where Mary’s “second life” comes in, with later writers embroidering the biblical account with their own additions. For example, the second-century Protevangelion of James tells us that her parents were named Joachim and Anna (or Hannah in Hebrew). Lamenting her barrenness, Anna promises that, if God will grant her a child, she will dedicate him or her to the Lord’s service in the Jerusalem temple. An angel appears to Anna and informs her that her prayers have been heard and that she will indeed bring forth a child. In a plot twist similar to that of the Old Testament story of Hannah and the child Samuel, once her daughter Mary is born and attains the age of three, Anna entrusts her to the priests at the temple.

When Mary hits puberty, the priests decide to marry her to an elderly widower named Joseph, who has children by a previous marriage. When she is sixteen years of age, she is found to be pregnant. The author of the Protevangelion then recounts an entirely plausible scenario in which Mary and Joseph are condemned for having secretly married without the assent of the larger community. The priests subject the distraught couple to trial by ordeal, making them drink a concoction that will harm them if guilty but will not harm them if innocent. They survive the ordeal, and the plot continues with the birth of Jesus at Bethelehem.

It is, of course, difficult to determine where these extrabiblical stories came from or how they developed. It is possible that Mary’s parents were really named Joachim and Anna. Or it could be that, given the obvious literary dependence of Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) on the much earlier song of Samuel’s mother Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, a tradition began that Mary’s mother was also named Hannah.

In any event, Mary’s status became the subject of the Christological disputes of later centuries. In AD 431 the First Council of Ephesus declared Mary Theotokos (Θεοτόκος), or God-bearer, commonly rendered in English as the Mother of God. This was less a statement about Mary than an affirmation that her Son Jesus was fully God and fully man.

Indeed, in Orthodox iconography Mary is rarely portrayed without her Son, who is shown in her arms, seated on her lap or even inside a stylized circular womb, fully clothed and his head wrapped in the traditional gold halo.

The sixteenth-century Reformers continued to esteem Mary. Ulrich Zwingli, who reformed the church in Zürich, even retained the first part of the Ave Maria in his initial liturgy: “Hail, Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.” Recognizing its scriptural origins (Luke 1:28, 42), Zwingli argued that “the Ave Maria is not a prayer but a greeting and commendation.”

Reformed Christians do not request Mary’s intercessions before God, primarily because Scripture is deafeningly silent on the matter. However, all Christians of whatever tradition do well to emulate Mary in her ready acceptance of God’s will for her life, despite hardships incurred, and in her jubilant expression of praise: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour!”

South Asian facts

If Pakistan and Bangladesh had not gone their separate ways four decades ago, Pakistan would be the third most populous country in the world today. As it is, however, Pakistan is the 6th largest country and Bangladesh the 8th. Furthermore, if India and Pakistan had not gone their separate ways six and a half decades ago, India would be the most populous country in the world, outranking China by nearly 200 million, which amounts to a population of six countries the size of Canada.

Not quite so simple: reforming royal succession

News of the Duchess of Cambridge's pregnancy has brought the royal succession issue to the forefront. The CBC reports: Royal succession laws set to be changed.

Last year, leaders of Britain and the 15 former colonies that have the queen as their head of state informally agreed to establish new rules giving female children equal status with males in the order of succession — something that will require legal changes in each country.

"Put simply, if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were to have a little girl, that girl would one day be our queen," Prime Minister David Cameron said at the time.

Canada is, of course, one of the 16 Commonwealth realms that recognize the Queen as head of state. In order for a change in the succession to the Crown to be successful, more than the agreement of the heads of government is needed. Each realm must enact the relevant statutes to make this possible, and this requires parliamentary approval. In Canada's case it would seem to require an amendment to our Constitution Acts under sections 41 and 41(a) of the Constitution Act, 1982. Such an amendment would require the assent of both chambers of Parliament and all ten provincial legislatures. Past efforts at formal constitutional change, most notably the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, illustrate that such unanimity is not easily procured. We could conceivably end up with a king while our fellow Commonwealth realms go with a new queen.

Of course, in the second decade of the 21st century the notion of equality of opportunity for men and women is fairly securely established in our political culture, so it might not be that difficult to carry off. All the same, the larger issue of nondiscrimination will have been only partially settled by the requisite legal and constitutional changes. Sex discrimination, yes. But obviously not age discrimination. Hereditary monarchy is intrinsically discriminatory against younger siblings. If this form of discrimination were ever to be addressed, it would seem to make the monarchy itself untenable. Because only one person can occupy a single office, the process of determining who will fill it necessarily discriminates against those ineligible for it on a variety of grounds. The elimination of sex (or gender) as a criterion for succession is a reform whose time has undoubtedly come, although it is not obvious to some of us that it is any less fair to favour males over females than it is to favour the eldest over younger siblings.

Don't diss the Swiss: downsizing the US presidency

Last week I posted my Capital Commentary piece, Winner Take All or Splitting the Difference: Lessons from Switzerland. Now someone has brought this article to my attention: Who Needs a President?, by Bill Kaufmann. If only the New Jersey Plan had won out over two centuries ago:

No matter which hollow man occupies the bunker at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the evidence from 225 years points to an inescapable conclusion: the Founders erred horribly in creating the presidency. To invest in one man quasi-kingly powers over the 13 states then, 300 million people and half a continent today, is madness. And it didn’t have to be this way.

Many Anti-Federalists proposed, as an alternative to what they called the “president-general,” either a plural executive—two or more men sharing the office, a recipe for what a sage once called a wise and masterly inactivity—or they wanted no executive at all. Federal affairs would be so limited in scope that they could be performed competently and without aggrandizement by a unicameral legislature—that is, one house of Congress—as well as various administrative departments and perhaps a federal judiciary.

The New Jersey Plan, fathered by William Paterson of the Springsteen State, was the small-f federal option at the Constitutional Convention. It is the great decentralist what-might-have-been. The New Jersey Plan provided for a unicameral Congress with an equal vote for each state, and copresidents chosen by Congress for a single fixed term and removable by Congress if so directed by a majority of state governors.

This would have saved us from the cult of the presidency, the imperial presidency, the president as the world’s celebrity-in-chief—the whole gargantuan mess.

Obviously one cannot reverse history, but one wonders whether it might be possible even now to recognize the key anti-federalist insights and to implement reforms that might curtail the powers of an imperial presidency.

Winner Take All or Splitting the Difference: Lessons from Switzerland

Another protracted presidential election cycle has come and gone, with Americans on one side of the political aisle celebrating victory, and those on the other licking their wounds in dismay. Two months ago in this space I asked whether the United States is becoming the next France, whose politics was long characterized by sharp division between partisans and opponents of the 1789 Revolution. The end of the recent election campaign will not diminish and may only exacerbate these tendencies.

What would the U.S. look like if it had no president? What if we were spared the quadrennial hoopla that has Americans investing so much of their energies in putting one person into a single political office at such huge expense? It might look something like Switzerland.

Read the entire article here.

Disallowing Debate, Dictating Dogma

Here is my second post on First Thoughts: Disallowing Debate, Dictating Dogma, which is a slightly altered version of my monthly Principalities & Powers column for Christian Courier.

First Thoughts: a promotion . . . of sorts

Three years ago I was invited to blog for the First Things blog, Evangel, which I have done since that time until now. Webmaster Joe Carter has now closed the Evangel blog, while keeping its archived contents online. Recently, at Carter's invitation, I have begun blogging at First Thoughts, which might be said to represent a promotion of sorts. Check out my inaugural post: Democracy ― as others see it.

In appreciation: Edward Goerner

Some of Edward Goerner's students, including yours truly, have signed onto an expression of appreciation published in Notre Dame Magazine: In Appreciation: Edward Goerner (1929-2012). This brings back many wonderful memories of my time at Notre Dame in the 1980s. Only now do I see how much my own paedagogical manner and even sense of style were influenced by his.

Goerner’s undergraduate political theory course made him something of a legend on campus. It is perhaps impossible to know when he established the contours of his remarkable class, but it soon became finely tuned. Students read Hobbes’ Leviathan, Rousseau’s Social Contract and Plato’s Republic in that order. On Fridays, teaching assistants would lead students in conversations about case studies that Goerner had devised and refined over the years. These required students and teaching assistants alike to apply what they had learned.

Goerner’s introductory course may have been conducted for undergraduates, but graduate students were perhaps even more its beneficiaries. Comprehensive examinations seemed somehow possible after listening to Goerner dissect three of the greatest texts in the history of political thought. As he awoke in undergraduates the excitement of political theory, he allowed graduate students to glimpse what it meant to master a text — to understand the author’s goals, the era in which it had been written, and to shed accumulated interpretations to confront the text and its philosophical import directly.

If serving as a teaching assistant for Goerner’s introductory class was integral to the preparations and training of so many political theory graduate students, it was also so much more. Mostly, it was an opportunity to see a master at his craft. In appearance and demeanor, Goerner was always orderly, gracious and eloquent with more than a hint of the aristocrat. He dressed impeccably in tweed suits, usually with an ascot. His voice retained the Brooklyn accent of his youth. His manner was all Notre Dame but also part Oxford. Those who judged from his appearance that he was aloof were sorely mistaken. He laughed easily and robustly, had a streak of rascality in him and was open to any idea from any quarter that merited consideration. . . .

A storyteller with a keen sense of history, a vast knowledge of comparative systems and cultures, and a deep, resonant voice, Goerner developed lectures that tugged at the minds and souls of his students. In them, historical detail danced in service of theoretical insight, fact informed value, theater conspired with philosophy. He embodied the intellectual and ethical virtues that he taught, a Christian who lived a life in service of others.

The dabblers' intolerance

A fairly predictable Huffington Post publishes an equally predictable opinion piece by Marilyn Sewell, titled Saying Goodbye to Tolerance. It seems Sewell has had a change of heart, as she recounts below:

I am a Unitarian Universalist, and we consider ourselves the most tolerant of faiths. In the 19th century Universalist churches were known for opening their doors to dissenters of all varieties, and our modern-day UU churches have continued to provide space for those who cannot find a welcome mat elsewhere: atheists and agnostics, religious humanists, political dissidents. We UUs see ourselves as "broadminded," and so tend to say things like, "There is truth in every religious tradition. We respect all religious beliefs." In one of our services, you might hear a reading from the Bible, but just as likely from the Quran, Black Elk, Lao-tse or Starhawk. However, in spite of our long history and tradition of tolerance, I am finding myself increasingly intolerant -- specifically, of the theology and practice of many evangelical Christians.

Mind you, Sewell has not come to a particularly startling conclusion. It's all been said before — many times, in fact. Yet it does underscore, once again, the inevitable divide between a religion that recognizes an authority outside of our own individual wills and one that affirms a vague spirituality eclectically embracing, well, whatever happens to appeal to us at the moment. As it turns out, an eclectic spirituality, indiscriminately drawing on a diversity of incompatible traditions, cannot tolerate a genuine religion claiming that God has revealed himself in specific ways to specific communities. The central issue is precisely one of authority. Do we accept an authority transcending our contemporary ethos and cultural prejudices, or are we in effect the authors of our own spirituality, borrowing what we approve and rejecting what we do not approve within these competing authorities?

It is fashionable these days to claim to be spiritual but not religious. And why not? The dictionary tells us that the word religion stems from two Latin roots re + ligare, the latter of which means to bind, to tie up. To be religious means to bind oneself to a particular body of beliefs of which one is not the author. It means to accept that one is personally bound to a way of life and faith to which one submits or, more scandalously, to which one has been committed by others, most notably by one's parents or sponsors at baptism.

This binding character of religion is difficult for our contemporaries to make sense of, given the modern predilection for attaching personal obligations to the voluntary principle and the concomitant suspicion of all duties we have not freely assumed. We would prefer to go up to the spiritual smorgasbord, sampling a little of "the Quran, Black Elk, Lao-tse or Starhawk" without actually becoming a committed Muslim, Native Spiritist, Taoist or earth goddess worshipper. Many of us like to dabble in exotic spiritualities without having to identify with any one of them.

Sewell in no way breaks new ground with her newly discovered penchant for intolerance. Dabblers are compelled by their very dabbling to disdain those who will not dabble and who persist in believing the truth claims of one particular religion. Believing Christians, for example, read the Bible, not as one source of wisdom amongst many others, but as a single story of creation, fall, redemption and ultimate consummation in Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God. Taken on its own terms, this biblical story makes a claim on our lives that we dare not relativize for the sake of conforming to the contemporary canons of tolerance. Such purveyors of "tolerance" as Sewell are actually in the grip of an alternate redemptive narrative whose claims are just as exclusive as those of biblical Christianity and whose tiny communities are even more parochial.

Nevertheless, eclectic spirituality ultimately fails to satisfy, precisely because we are not autonomous. We inevitably submit ourselves to some authority because this is what we are created to do. If it is not to the God who has saved us through Jesus Christ, it will be to some other god of our own devising. Yet because this god is as fickle as our own protean personal preferences, it will not ultimately bring the rest that our restless hearts crave.

Pro-life = misogyny?

This story has been picked up by pro-life and Roman Catholic publications but has been largely ignored by the mainstream media here in Ontario: Ontario Official: Catholic Schools Can’t Teach “Misogynistic” Pro-life.

The Education Minister of Ontario, Canada — a professing Catholic who sends her children to Catholic schools — declared October 10 that the province’s publicly funded Catholic schools may not teach students that abortion is wrong because such teaching amounts to “misogyny,” which is prohibited in schools under a controversial anti-bullying law. “Taking away a woman’s right to choose could arguably be considered one of the most misogynistic actions that one could take,” Laurel Broten said during a press conference. “Bill 13,” she asserted, “is about tackling misogyny.”

Three comments are in order. First, a provincial education minister lacks the authority to dictate to a church organization what its teachings should be. That authority belongs to the ecclesiastical office-holders themselves. Given that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms explicitly claims to guarantee "freedom of conscience and religion," a government official is duty bound to refrain from interfering in such matters.

Second, if one has to resort to name-calling in setting forth one's position, it amounts to a tacit admission that one's arguments in its favour are weak and not easily defended in open debate. Broten again: "That debate [over a woman's right to choose] is over, it has ended and it should stay that way." That may indeed be her view of the matter, but simply pronouncing a subject closed does not necessarily make it so. Campaign Life Coalition and ProWomanProLife among many others would definitely disagree with her assessment.

Third, and perhaps most basically, Broten seems to be defining a woman's identity as a mere assertion of autonomy, that is, the right to choose apart from any "thick" conception of the human person obviously dependent on norms not of our own making. If a woman wishes to harm her own body or the foetal life growing within her, it is her decision to make, whatever its impact on herself, her loved ones and the larger social fabric. Broten is, of course, entitled to her viewpoint, but why she feels entitled to impose it as unquestioned dogma on everyone else is far from clear.

Edward A. Goerner (1929-2012)

Edward Alfred Goerner was longtime professor of Government and International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and I was privileged to have him as my PhD supervisor more than 25 years ago.

The first thing one noticed about Goerner was his flair for the dramatic in both mannerism and dress. He was born in Brooklyn, but his speech was closer to the now fading Mid-Atlantic English once associated with Hollywood and the New York stage. Many Domers will recall seeing him regularly walking from his home just south of campus to his office or to Sacred Heart Church, wearing a cape rather than the usual overcoat. When he read the scripture lesson in the liturgy with his distinctive resonating voice, he brought something of the Shakespearean theatre to the task at hand.

Goerner was the consummate undergraduate teacher, whose dynamic paedagogy had an inevitable impact on my own. He began each class session with the same prayer: "Send us, O Lord, your Holy Spirit, among whose gifts are wisdom and understanding." He would then proceed to lecture on the finer points of mediaeval political theory or on the three books he would assign to his introductory undergraduate students: Hobbes' Leviathan, Rousseau's Social Contract and Plato's Republic. I owe my own respect for these classic texts to his teaching, and I have tried in some fashion to pass this respect along to my own students.

Goerner did not publish as prolifically as some of his colleagues. His written works included Peter and Caesar and two edited volumes. There was also his two-part essay in Political Theory weighing whether Thomas Aquinas' was a natural virtue or natural law thinker. (My own sense is that he was both, but that's something for another post.) Yet he had a considerable influence on the people he taught, myself included. I have my own students reading primary sources in political theory, as did Goerner, reflecting his obvious debt to the late Leo Strauss, under whom he had studied at the University of Chicago.

Although I cannot say that I was personally close to him, I found him most encouraging of my academic interests, especially the comparison of Roman Catholic social and political teachings with their Kuyperian Calvinist counterparts, a subject that found its way into the final chapters of my own Political Visions and Illusions. I had not seen him in over two decades, but I would occasionally hear from him in the intervening years. A few years ago he wrote to recommend Rémi Brague's The Law of God, which I promptly purchased and read, agreeing with his assessment of its significance. Most recently he had written me after seeing my name on this document, which had been spearheaded by one of my former Redeemer students.

I was further privileged to pass along to him another of my former students, whose dissertation on John Rawls he would supervise. We thus managed to share in the education of a future Christian scholar in political science.

May Edward Alfred Goerner rest in peace until the resurrection.

French-style Polarization in the U.S.?

Is America becoming the next France? Is our political system becoming as polarized as that of the French Third and Fourth Republics?

According to the late British political scientist, Sir Bernard Crick, politics is the art of conciliating diversity peacefully in a given unit of rule. Some political systems have done this better than others. The U.S. is among the more successful in enabling people of varying interests and viewpoints to get along within a common constitutional framework commanding near universal loyalty.

Until recently the political parties themselves played a role similar to that of the system as a whole. Yes, Democrats and Republicans were opponents, but each party was a broad-based coalition of citizens with a variety of commonalities—some economic, and some ideological, regional and religious in character. Progressives and conservatives found a place in both parties, coexisting willingly, if not always enthusiastically. Southerners tended to vote Democratic, while northerners voted Republican. Different Christian denominations were at home in each party as well: Catholics and Southern Baptists supported the Democrats, and northern mainline and evangelical Protestants the Republicans.

Read more here.