J. W. McGarvey: Addendum on Sin

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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Previously, J. W. McGarvey’s sermon on sin was examined, the main purpose of which was to employ hell as a vehicle through which we could begin to express the enormity of sin. McGarvey, of course, did not leave his congregants with nothing but the magnitude of sin to weigh on their hearts. In a series sermons focused on redemption, forgiveness, faith, and conversion (all of which will be addressed in time), he offers his listeners the path from death into life. At the conclusion of the following week’s sermon, entitled “Redemption in Christ,” McGarvey does offer at throwback to the theme of the magnitude of sin. Much as he suggested that sin could be better grasped by first grasping hell, he suggests that if we truly grasp the significance of the cross we can begin to grasp the atrociousness of sin:

If sin is of such a nature that God Himself, with all His infinite wisdom, and all His undying love toward our race, could find no way to redeem us from it, without the shedding of the blood of His own dear Son, the heart's blood of Him who came down from Heaven to endure the ignominious death of the cross for this great end, what an awful thing sin must be! Just think of it. And let me ask you another question in connection with this. Was the evil consequence which God foresaw that sin would bring upon us, some little thing, like a scratch upon your hand? Was sin a mere peccadillo? Was it a mere mistake that could bring but little pain upon us? Would the Almighty send His own Son to suffer the agonies of the cross in order to redeem us from a little thing like that? Ah! my dear friends, it is only when we know what we endeavored to show you last Lord's day, the darkness, the gloom, the gnashing of teeth, the awful agonies of the eternal world to which sin is bearing us, that we can realize why it should cost such a price, and why God should be willing to pay such a price, to redeem us from it. Are you living in sin? Oh! tremble before your God; get down on your knees; lift up your hands and your heart, and plead with Him to have mercy on you; smite your breast, and say, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Cast yourself into the arms of this Redeemer who is so ready and so anxious to redeem you--to blot out your transgressions, and to grant you everlasting life.

Disciple of Peace: A Qaulified Endorsement

Craig M. Watts' Disciple of Peace: Alexander Campbell on Pacifism, Violence and the State is not an academic text. Watts, a pastor and a doctor of ministry, is not a historian. It is important to keep these facts in mind when approaching the book. It is filled with great, accurate information, but it suffers from myriad deficiencies when evaluated against the standards of scholarly history. Particularly disturbing would be the unqualified use of Stone-Campbell history books written during the dark days of Restoration historiography when authors were more hagiographer than historian. This is mirrored by the almost completely absence of citations from relevant periodical literature. The limited and superficial engagement with antecedent and contemporary thinkers outside of a very narrow sphere is also suspect. Moreover, Watts breaks essentially no new ground and offers no new avenues for research. All this needs to be specified because the below recommendation of the book is based on what it is, a brief and interesting primer to the pacifist thought of one of the premiere thinkers of the early Restoration Movement. For a more in-depth, critical engagement of Campbell's thought on this or any other point, you would need to look elsewhere (and then be disappointed by the dearth of quality material on the subject).

For what it is, Disciple of Peace is a delightful read. While lacking in any overarching organizational pattern, each chapter makes for a concise, targeted treatment of some aspect of Campbell's pacifism. These range from the more predictable (and shallower) overviews of the relationship between pacifism and Campbell's postmillennial eschatology to the more interesting and insightful examination of the apparent hypocrisy involved in opposing war and promoting capital punishment. The truth which makes all of this possible is the trenchant observation--which ought to be obvious, but all to often is not--that "pacifism is not an ethical oddity unconnected with the main themes of Alexander Campbell's thought." The assumption that any feature of Christian ethics can somehow be isolated either from the ethical system as a whole or the heart of Christian theology is ultimately naive. This holds true nowhere more strongly than the ethic of peace. How a Christian thinks about peace and violence must be influenced by and influence how a Christian thinks about the nature of God, His purpose in creation, His method of salvation, and the telos of the material world. It is fitting, therefore, that Watts' work does more than simply establish that Campbell was a pacifist. Instead, Watts draws lines of connection between this pacifism and Campbell's understanding of the state, the Bible, the eschaton, and the other pertinent ethical issues of his time (e.g. slavery).

Even making allowances for the non-academic nature of the work, the great weakness of Watts' work is its historical naïveté, particularly as it manifests in relation to the way the Bible functions in Campbell's thought. Watts is unapologetically a member of the Stone-Campbell tradition and is writing for a press based out of a Stone-Campbell church. This bias bleeds fairly obviously into his reconstruction of history. When addressing the influences on Campbell's pacifism, Watts notes a wide range of social, historical, and hermeneutical forces which came to bear on Campbell's thought: church unity movements, dispensationalism, Seeder Presbyterianism, and ongoing American and British peace movements. Yet, again and again, Watts returns to the naive conclusion that all of these influences are ancillary. It is the Bible, plain and simple, that motivated Campbell to believe what he did. This conclusion makes for a nice historical sermon on the merits of pacifism, but it does not stand up to even lay scrutiny as history. The same assertion could be made of any Christian advocate of any ethical position on war. The most hawkish clergyman in the States would display a primarily Scriptural motivation for his ethical stance. It borders on the tautological to say that any religious thinker would ground any religious thought primarily in the religious text of his religion. Watts seems to be endorsing the Restorationist fallacy that there is a Bible--objective and unencumbered by our socio-historical baggage--to which Campbell can finally and authoritatively appeal. Watts would have done better to simply explain how Campbell used Scripture to justify his pacifism rather than contending, indefensibly, that the Bible independently motivated Campbell toward pacifism. (And this, coming from someone who clearly believes that the Bible endorses clearly and without qualification a pacifist ethic for Christians.)

Disciple of Peace is wanting in one other notable way. Watts, as already noted, spends very little time analyzing the connections between Campbell and those of his contemporaries who engaged the same subject, with a few token exceptions. Some of this oversight can certainly be attributed to the limits of space and scope. A comprehensive examination of pacifist thought during Campbell's life would have radically lengthened Watts' project and distorted its scope. Nevertheless, there is a certain sense in which the books lacks substance because it lacks critical comparisons between Campbell and his contemporaries, especially his contemporaries in the Restoration Movement. When Watts does bring in outside thinkers, it is primarily from other religious streams of thought. He seems willfully ignorant that there were other prominent proponents of pacifism within the movement who Campbell might have interacted with intellectually. Barton Stone springs immediately to mind as a comparably prominent thinker swimming in the same intellectual stream as Campbell. This is to say nothing of "lesser" figures like Tolbert Fanning, Raccoon John Smith, J. W. McGarvey, Benjamin Franklin, and Moses Lard who, among others, are rattled off in an introductory list of pacifist Restorationists and then quickly forgotten. In introducing Campbell's pacifism to the reader, Watts declares, "Pacifism takes a variety of forms...[Different forms] can differ in rationale, limitations and goals, among other things. Pacifism is not a single position." Given that he recognizes this fact, Watts would have done his readers a great service if he could have included a short chapter introducing how Campbell's pacifism fit into the broader Restoration vision of peace ethics.

Wherever it is lacking, however, Watts compensates in his closing chapter which reveals the true nature of his book. In his conclusion, Watts unashamedly sets out to demonstrate why Campbell is right in his construction of Christian ethics, except where Watts thinks he is wrong. This may sound like a brazen apology for Watts' own pacifism, and it is. Even so, his analysis of the shortcomings of Campbell's thought and his proposed correctives are sufficiently insightful to make the argument worth considering. He makes four crucial points in his conclusion which bear further thought. The first, as a critique of Campbell, is that pacifism must be cruciform; it must center on and take as its archetype the supreme act of Christ on the cross. Watts observes that in all of Campbell's thought on pacifism in the Gospels, the cross is notable absent, giving pride of place to the Sermon on the Mount instead. Watts pinpoints this shortcoming--with some accuracy, I believe--as the fault which makes possible the contrary stances on war and capital punishment. Taking his cue from Campbell, Watts then takes up the theme of church unity and its relation to Christian pacifism. By incorporating this concern into the pacifist ethic, Watts believes that we can heighten our sense of community and sharpen our critique of competing loyalties such as the self and the state. He then continues his adaptation of Campbell's thinking to criticize modern perceptions of pacifism as a strategy rather than a core belief. The perception that a commitment to pacifism can be evaluated in pragmatic terms is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be committed to peace as Christ endorsed it. (Whether or not Campbell can really be said to understand this critique is debatable, given his optimistic belief about the potential of human peace efforts, but as an ongoing criticism Watts' point still stands.) Finally, Watts concludes on the familiar terms of peace and Christian eschatology. This is not merely limited to arguing that peace is the eschatological ideal but that the church is the eschatological community proleptically living out the ideals of the eschaton in the present.

In the final evaluation, Disciple of Peace must be seen as a mixed bag. Certainly its value rises as academic expectations are lowered. In view of this, it may unqualifiedly recommended to the average reader who is interested in the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement generally or any Restorationist ready to critically engage questions of war, peace, and the state in view of the great thinkers of the tradition. Certainly, I believe that members of the Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and Disciples of Christ would all profit from taking the small amount of time necessary to breeze through this work. The number of adherents in these churches I encounter on a regular basis who have no concept of the rich pacifist history of their traditions is astonishing. Beyond its function for these demographics, however, Watts' work has serious shortcomings which hamper its critical value for the well-educated reader.

Complementarianism: Will To Power

The following is part of an ongoing response to Roger E. Olson’s critique of extreme complementarianism. For the origin and nature of these posts, see Complementarianism: A Defense from a Nobody.
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I suppose there is very little to offend in my previous thoughts about the theoretical value of understanding men and women as different but equal. After all, even Dr. Olson admits that to one degree or another this is a universally recognized truth. What was controversial, and will be addressed at greater length here, is the suggestion that those difference cannot be neatly compartmentalized into the incidences of anatomy. There are, to put it crudely, substantial economic distinctions between males and females that cannot be reduced into prescriptions about whether God intended semen to come out of your or go into you. It is a tragic inevitability that more time should need to be spent on this latter fact than on the former, since the truth that God is a God who delights in constructive difference ought to be (and in my experience is) the focal point of complementarian thought. I regret that by focusing on the secondary, pragmatic aspects of complementarianism I legitimize, in a sense, Olson's complaint that for complementarians the "emphasis is not on males and females complementing each other but on females being submissive to males." Yet it should be recognized that this criticism is self-propagating. After all, if egalitarians and complementarians disagreed about value and function rather than on women in the pulpit then the conversation would be dominated by the former issue and the latter would be ignored. It is out of polemical necessity more than anything else that the debate has been translated from the core issues into mere accidents. Insofar as complementarians through repetitive arguments and microscopic focus on application forget to stress the essential truths of what is a more comprehensive anthropology, that shortcoming is ours as humans not a flaw in the truths which we feel compelled to express.

With that said, the other shoe is ready to drop. I believe that wives should submit to their husbands and that women should not exercise authority over men in the congregation. These do not encapsulate my complementarian beliefs, but they are nevertheless an undeniable product of them. From here, there are countless directions I could go. I might attempt to counter Olson's assertion that only unabashed and "never really consistently" literalism can produce complementarian readings of Scripture by pointing out how theologically dangerous it is to excise under the guise of "cultural particularity" commands which are rooted in creation and yoked with soteriology. I could talk about the countless other social norms which Jesus and Paul were willing (even eager) to transgress and contrast it with their marked reluctance to do so with certain features of gender economics. I could trace the full and rich biblical picture of complementarian gender relations as they are depicted as fruitful and righteous throughout Scripture, demonstrating a marked consistency between Old and New Covenant gender economics. But I won't, in large part because my point here is not to prove complementarianism. It is to demonstrate that there can be and are complementarians whose interests lie beyond (and even exclude) the end of subjugating women, to correct Olson's egregious characterization that in complementarianism "adult women have pretty much the same role as children vis-à-vis adult men."

Ultimately, I think the concern most egalitarians express (by which, I of course mean the revulsion most egalitarians feel) regarding complementarianism is born out of a capitulation to modern ideas of rights, authority, and power. In essence, there is a suggestion that unless women are given authority, they are somehow devalued. Unless they are presented with a full compliment of rights, they are second-class citizens. Unless they have power, they are helpless and destined for abuse (a specter Olson proves all to eager to conjure). In short, it is hard not to be left with the impression that, whether consciously or unconsciously, many egalitarians have bought into the anthropology of a post-nietzschean West which glorifies the will to power. If women are fully human they must have the opportunity to pursue their ambition to seize the highest clerical offices, command the most powerful pulpits, vie for control in their marriages, and to become the Übermensch (rather than, as in Nietzsche, simply to birth the Übermensch).

Egalitarians, I imagine, would balk at that depiction of their beliefs and particularly its marriage to so dark a figure as Nietzsche. (Though, for my part, I find it less offensive a picture than that of complementarians as domineering patriarchs seeking eagerly to have paternal authority over all 3.5 billion women in the world.) Certainly, I am open to the idea that the above has at least as much rhetorical flourish as it does substance. Egalitarians would surely not debate, however, that there motivating impulse is equal rights, rich as that term is with savory left-wing utopian connotations. The problem arises, however, in that I don't believe in rights. I don't believe we have them, and I certainly don't think it is expressive of the Christian ethos to pursue them for ourselves. The quest for power, authority, and rights--which I will from here on collapse into the concept of authority, since it is primarily the right to have authority and the power derived from it on which the debate centers--is found nowhere in the Gospel. Instead, all authority is derived from God and given, qualified as it is, as a gift from Him. It is not a right to be seized but a commission to be accepted.

Instead, the Gospel is a narrative of submission and self-sacrifice. Jesus Christ, to whom all authority had been given, is the prime example of this. Consider the way he exercised his authority throughout his ministry. It was not in dictatorial commands to his disciples (male or female). It was not in domination over them. Instead, he assumed the role of a servant: feeding the hungry, encouraging the downtrodden, forgiving the sinner, and washing the feet of his disciples. The same ethos will carry into the earliest church. Though we occasionally see Paul making appeals to his authority (acknowledging always its derivative nature), the overwhelming example given by the apostles is one of unqualified service and the exhortation for Christians to do the same. Christ foreshadows and Paul recalls the cross as the central image of power, ironically redefined by the Gospel, for the whole Christian system. It is in dying the Christ ultimately defeats death and in our participation in that self-sacrificial act that Christians ultimately free themselves from it. Christian virtue is defined by and emulates this core self-sacrificial act. It does not strive after positions of power; it deliberately eschews them, allowing Christ to become a new kind of king. If our understanding of authority--its scope and function--were genuinely cruciform, then the Bible could place women in a perpetual and inviolable state of servitude and, far from making their position lamentable, it would glorify them in so doing.

Of course, it doesn't and no self-respecting complementarian thinks that it does. The biblical picture of gender economics is one of mutual self-sacrifice and voluntary submission, because the virtues embodied in the cross are by no means exclusive to one sex. The most complete and wonderful picture is in the much maligned household codes in Ephesians, which gives two interrelated commands: wives submit to your husbands (as the church submits to Christ) and husbands sacrifice yourself for your wife (as Christ sacrificed himself for the church). It is important first to note that all submission and self-sacrifice is related directly back to Christ as the exemplar. It is not the Christ came and made himself a servant because he was less than those he came to serve. He humbled himself in spite of his superiority. Moreover, Christ did not sacrifice himself as it suited him and to the degree it suited him but completely and in ways which most profoundly effected him. What is depicted in the relationship between Christ and the church is not the degree of authority which is being conferred upon husbands but the nature of the relationship. What is being prescribed for wives and husbands is, in its essence, a common disposition toward one another. After all, Christians are exhorted to submission (the same kind of submission that wives are specifically enjoined to choose) to all other Christians in the verse immediately prior. The image is of a husband who empties himself in the act of sacrifice for his wife so that there is nothing in him that self-centered. He acts purely in love for his wife. The wife, in turn, empties herself in the act of submission to her husband so that there is nothing in her that is self-centered. She acts purely in love for her husband. The beauty here--and the implicit critique of systems which are overly concerned with assigning rights--is that the focus and the blessing here is not on who has authority but on who is the greater servant to his or her spouse.

There is no domination in this. No women being treated as children relative to men. There is no concern for authority at all, and the obsession with who is "in charge" is a contemporary battle being waged because we have forgotten that self-sacrifice is a Christian virtue and equal rights a secular one. I do not believe that women should be in the pulpit. I don't pretend to understand why, entirely, Scripture indicates that, but I can see fairly clearly that it does. Certainly, I can imagine a comprehensive Christian theory of gender which validates that viewpoint without creating a value disparity between the sexes. Ultimately, if there is some person (of either gender) out there who is indignant over his or her inability to rise through the ecclesiastical ranks of power, my concern is not with whether or not the individuals rights are being protected but with whether or not that person (and our church culture as a whole) has a firm enough grasp on the central tenets of the Christian ethos. We certainly ought to stand up for what is right and there are battles worth waging. It is my belief, however, that more pernicious than the threat of patriarchy--which I contend our culture has put aside in all its darkest forms--is that of self-motivated ambition and the undeserved sense of entitlement. Without putting too much rhetorical weight on it, I dare say that rather than lamenting the prospect of women being treated like children we ought to all rejoice at the idea that we may humble ourselves and become like children so as to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Sunday of the Holy Cross

Scripture:


Revelation 2:2-5a,7

I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first…He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God

Genesis 2:8-9

And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

History:

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 21

Paradise therefore will be restored, that tree will be restored which is in truth the tree of life; there will be restored the grace of the image, and the dignity of rule. It does not seem to me that our hope is one for those things which are no subjected by God to man for the necessary uses of life, but one for another kingdom, of a description that belongs to unspeakable mysteries.

Reflection:

Traditionally, the Sunday of the Holy Cross is not a time for somber reflection on the necessity of the cross or to stress penitence over its horrible nature. Instead, it is a time to focus on the victory which the cross achieved on our behalf. We venerate the cross—not as an icon or an idol but as an event, an act of God—and take comfort in the peace which it affords us. As we cross the halfway point of Lent, many of us sorely need this kind of comfort.

It is interesting to note that the Tree of Life provides a great bookend for Scripture as a part of the greater matrix of creation and recreation. In the beginning God creates us with the potential and the purpose of eternal life, not in the sense of a perpetually beating heart or firing neurons but as participation in His infinite Life. When the world is made anew again, he promises us, as he promised the church at Ephesus in Revelation, a share again in that life which we separated ourselves from. Standing gloriously at the center of this great historical chiasmus of creation and redemption is the cross. The ancients saw a type for the cross in the great trees of promise. In Genesis it represents what we lost; in Revelation it represents what has been promised to us again by grace. The true tree of life, however, is the cross where access to this life was thrown open anew. It is there that Death is conquered, not by cheating mortality through wiles or power but by allowing Life to be subjugated to the humiliation of fatality and proving Life to be greater.

Let that be a comfort to us now. Our trials are transient, and we cannot let them dull our great love for Christ. With the Ephesians, we must repent and press on in the good work of God who has already achieved victory for us if we only will join Him in it.

Prayer:

Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?
Thanks be to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
--1 Corinthians 15:54-55,57