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Today is Ash Wednesday. Catholic parishes across the country often see some of the largest crowds of the year on this day. Even though it is not a “holy day of obligation” (a mandatory service) many people, including those nominal/ cultural types who seldom visit church, make a special trip to their local parish to be marked with an ashen cross on their foreheads. In what follows I will offer a word about the history of this tradition and a couple of ways that evangelical Protestants can respond to it.

Catholics look to the Old Testament as the origin of the practice of marking oneself with ashes. It says for instance in Jeremiah 6:26, “Oh, daughter of my people, put on sackcloth and roll in ashes” (see also Isa. 58:5; Dan 9:3; Jonah 3:6). The New Testament picks up this theme emphasizing ashes as a sign of repentance. For instance, "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes" (Mt 11:21, Lk 10:13). While the opening Millennium had just a few references to ashes in Christian liturgy, it was in the 12^th Century when the modern tradition of burning palm branches from the previous Palm Sunday and applying their charred remains to the penitent developed.

The first response of evangelicals toward Catholic observers of Ash Wednesday is to encourage them in the gospel. Let me explain. Because so many cultural Catholics not only have ashes applied to their foreheads but then also wear the mark faithfully throughout the day (an amazing thing for someone who doesn’t regularly practice his faith) the best response is to ask honest, humble questions: “What is the meaning of Ash Wednesday?” “I understand that it is a sign of repentance; what happens in your relationship with God as a result?” The purpose of these questions is not to refute the practice as something that is extra-Biblical…. Rather, you want to help your friend or loved one recognize to a greater extent that realities of the gospel—the substitutionary death and resurrection of our Lord that is accessed by faith alone.

Our second response to Ash Wednesday, certainly of equal importance to the first, must be honest self evaluation with a view to our own personal repentance. Every time I see someone walking down the sidewalk or through the office with ashes on his forehead it is an opportunity for me to pause and reflect on my own need for a Savior. It is a valuable reminder to all of us that we live in between the ages, looking forward in faith to the return of our Christ when sin and death will be removed forever and ashes will be no more.

Since writing Holy Ground, I have enjoyed following several Catholic authors and journalists in an attempt to remain current on Catholic issues. One such writer is Philip Lawler, editor of Catholic World News (cwnews.com). Phil recently described the Catholic identity of Ted Kennedy from the late senator’s autobiography titled “True Compass: A Memoir.” In the following excerpt, Phil presents Kennedy as a classic example of what I have titled the “Cultural Catholic.”

Kennedy mentions his Catholicism hundreds of times in this book, but almost invariably he is referring to the cultural heritage of Catholicism rather than to its doctrinal content or its spiritual exercises—the form rather than the substance of his faith. Still he insists that his faith shaped his political outlook. In one of the book’s most revealing passages, he relates how his thoughts matured as he entered adult life:

“My own center of belief, as I matured and grew curious about these things, moved toward the great Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25 especially, in which he calls us to care for the least of these among us, and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, visit the imprisoned. It’s enormously significant to me that the only description in the Bible about salvation is tied to one’s willingness to act on behalf of one’s fellow human beings.”

It boggles the mind that an adult Catholic—who presumably heard the Scriptures read at every Sunday Mass, even if he never read the Bible himself— could claim that there is only one passage in the Bible addressing the question of salvation. But the above quotation contains another sign, less obvious but even more telling, of the author’s detached attitude toward his faith. When he says that “he calls us to care for the least of these among us,” Kennedy never identifies who “he” is. The name of Jesus does not appear anywhere in this memoir.

“All of my life, the teachings of my faith have provided solace and hope,” Kennedy wrote as he faced the prospect of death. He surely did draw solace from his faith, but not guidance. He knew that the Church offered words of comfort; he never recognized that the Church also spoke with authority. So in his final illness, while he felt the need to write to Pope Benedict XVI, asking for the pontiff’s blessing, he still saw no need to renounce his long history of public opposition to Church teaching on the dignity of life.

A Christianity without Jesus, a Catholicism without sacraments, a doctrine without authority: this is the conception of the Church that emerges from True Compass. Ted Kennedy saw Catholicism as an important part of his identity, of his family history, of his cultural patrimony. But his life story provides very little evidence that his faith shaped his political ideals. On the contrary, it seems clear that his political ideals shaped the content of his faith. The story of Ted Kennedy’s public life is, to an alarming extent, the story of a generation of Catholics—in Boston in particular, in America in general. It is, regrettably, not a story of how these Catholics shaped the popular culture, but of how that culture changed their faith.

Sister Mary Ann, who worked for a home health agency, was out making her rounds visiting homebound patients when she ran out of gas. As luck would have it, a Texaco Gasoline station was just a block away.

She walked to the station to borrow a gas can and buy some gas. The attendant told her that the only gas can he owned had been loaned out, but she could wait until it was returned. Since Sister Mary Ann was on the way to see a patient, she decided not to wait and walked back to her car.

 
She looked for something in her car that she could fill with gas and spotted the bedpan she was taking to the patient. Always resourceful, Sister Mary Ann carried the bedpan to the station, filled it with gasoline, and carried the full bedpan back to her car.

As she was pouring the gas into her tank, two Baptists watched from across the street. One of them turned to the other and said, 
‘If it starts, I’m turning Catholic.’

According to Padre Pio, the Capuchin Friar of Pietrelcina, Italy, who was canonized on June 16, 2002 by Pope John Paul II, “It has ever been the teaching of the Church . . . that Purgatory exists . . . It is a place or condition wherein the souls of the just undergo that purifying fire that renders them fit for God and the joys of eternal life.”  Therefore, it is said that “Pio spent scores of hours each week in the confessional.”1

Padre Pio’s concern for purgation was not limited to the confessional. It also shaped his understanding of the Eucharist: “The Holy Mass is a sacred union of Jesus and myself. I suffer unworthily all that was suffered by Jesus (emphasis added) who deigned to allow me to share in His great enterprise of human Redemption”.2

Over and against Pio’s understanding of salvation is the biblical teaching of substitutionary atonement, expressed by the 16th Century English Reformer, Bishop John Hooper:

“I do believe and confess that Christ’s condemnation is my absolution, that his crucifying is my deliverance, his descending into hell is my ascending into heaven, his death is my life, his blood is my cleansing and purging, by whom only I am washed, purified and cleansed from all my sins, so that I neither receive nor believe any other purgatory, either in this world or in the other, whereby I am purged, but only the blood of Jesus Christ, by which all are purged and made clean forever.”3

Footnotes

1. http://www.padrepio.com/

2. Ibid.

3. Bishop John Hooper, quoted in Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Theology of the English Reformers (London, 1965), page 65, style slightly updated.

During grad school in New England I took a class with Tom Wright at Harvard Divinity School in which he explained how certain titles commonly used of Jesus, such as “Lord,” “Son of God,” “Savior of the world,” etc., were first used of the Roman Emperor. Later that same week, in my exegesis of Revelation class, Greg Beale made the same point. It was then the light bulb went on: “This would make a great book! Line up the titles for Caesar and his empire, show how those conventions are relevant today, and explain how the kingdom of Christ directly subverts them.”

Years have passed since that eureka moment and I have not thought much about the concept since them, that is, until today when I picked up a copy of the new book by Trevin Wax titled Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals. Trevin beat me to it, and I’m so glad he did because he has done a marvelous job.

In eight chapters Trevin explains how Jesus subverts self, success, money, leisure, sex, power, and a brilliant chapter called “subversive evangelism” in which he confronts the problems that emerge from tolerance and consumerism.

I can’t adequately express how excited I am about this book. It’s well written, substantive, and prophetic in its application. If you’re looking for a clear, readable text on discipleship, one that will help you to search and destroy the idols in your soul, look no further.

The following post is from Ray Ortlund. Read it thoughtfully; it just might change your life!

“You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” 1 Thessalonians 1:9

You and I are not integrated, unified, whole persons. Our hearts are multi-divided. There is a board room in every heart. Big table. Leather chairs. Coffee. Bottled water. Whiteboard. A committee sits around the table. There is the social self, the private self, the work self, the sexual self, the recreational self, the religious self, and others. The committee is arguing and debating and voting. Constantly agitated and upset. Rarely can they come to a unanimous, wholehearted decision. We tell ourselves we’re this way because we’re so busy with so many responsibilities. The truth is, we’re just divided, unfocused, hesitant, unfree.

That kind of person can “accept Jesus” in either of two ways. One way is to invite him onto the committee. Give him a vote too. But then he becomes just one more complication. The other way to “accept Jesus” is to say to him, “My life isn’t working. Please come in and fire my committee, every last one of them. I hand myself over to you. Please run my whole life for me.”  That is not complication; that is salvation.

“Accepting Jesus” is not just adding Jesus. It is also subtracting the idols.

I was recently reading a blog post from my friend Frank Beckwith titled “Sola Scriptura and the scope of the canon: a reflection on my philosophical reflection.” In it Frank differentiates his view from the argument that Sola Scriptura is self-refuting, a popular position among conservative Catholic apologists. In question is whether the interpretive key for the canon’s formation (and eventually for biblical interpretation) exists “outside” of the text itself. To the extent that one regards it to be so (extra-biblical) he has undermined the “Sola” of Sola Scriptura. In what follows I want to offer a quote from Kevin Vanhoozer’s book The Drama of Doctrine where, in his section titled “The Canon as Rule,” he presents an anecdote from Irenaeus that I think sheds helpful light on the issue:

“Irenaeus compares the relationship of the Rule of Faith to Scripture to a mosaic whose pieces can be variously arranged to form a portrait of a king or a picture of a dog. Mosaics in the ancient world were shipped unassembled, but they included a plan or key (hypothesis) that served as directions for their proper arrangement. Irenaeus likens the Rule of Faith to the correct hypothesis that allows the church to see the face of the king—Christ—in the Scriptures rather than a dog, which is what the heretics think they see because they have not arranged the mosaic correctly. The Rule is thus accountable to the text and its subject matter precisely because it seeks to provide the key for its correct understanding. Hence the authority of the Rule depends on its conforming to the Scriptures. This explains Irenaeus’s heroic efforts to demonstrate that the Rule of Faith indeed accords with Scripture.”

Such a view doesn’t look to natural theology as the source of the Bible’s hypothesis (interpretive key) or to other extra-biblical criteria; rather, the key emerges from divine revelation–in the Hebrew Scriptures, the person of Jesus, the teaching of the Apostles, and eventually in the inspired text. In other words, the way we decide what is canonical and what constitutes right teaching is not teaching about the Bible, but, from our post apostolic vantage point, teaching that extends from the Bible.

Andy Crouch has a fine article titled “Letter to a soon-to-be published author.” I decided to review it this week after my piece on Catholic resurgence in America was published by Christianity Today Online. As Crouch suggests, those who write or speak in public must be conscious of the particular temptation to confuse our image with Christ’s image. As a safeguard, Crouch proposes prayerfully reflecting upon John Wesley’s so called Covenant Prayer (below). It is a good reminder that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we are not.

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

Dr. Rick Lints, Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, was (and is) one of my favorite professors. Tonight, while Angela and her girlfriend enjoyed partnering in ministry, I sat on the couch beside a bowl of popcorn reading an article by Dr. Lints from the Gordon-Conwell website. It struck me how Rick’s proposal offers enormous insight into the challenge of relating constructively to our Catholic friends and loved ones, as he writes:

“We must engage and not merely tolerate diversity in the ecclesial square. The conflicts of a fractured ecclesial polity lie not with keeping emotional distance from those with whom we have fundamental disagreements. It comes rather in the radically counter-intuitive claim that we show hospitality to those with whom we have deep disagreements.14 We invite the outsider into the common wisdom of our tradition, recognizing that we share the sacred wisdom of the gospel, even if we articulate differently. We take their ideas seriously not primarily to overthrow their ideas, but rather with the expectation that wisdom is found in the strangest of places, even among those who disagree with us.

Changing the ethos of our ecclesial identity may well require that we think of the commitment to our tradition less in terms of defeating an enemy and more in terms of showing hospitality to the stranger. Without a home (tradition) there is no place to invite the stranger into. A traditionless Christian is indeed a person without a home. But a tradition construed as a fortress is a most inhospitable place for strangers as well. Our desire is not merely to have a seat at the ecclesial table, but to prepare the meal at the table, which the stranger will find curiously satisfying. It is a call to invite the stranger into our tradition as a radical act of hospitality. If the meal is satisfying to the stranger, it is not because we have prepared the meal but rather that the food itself nourishes the soul. And in turn we may be invited into the stranger’s tradition and taste some of its delicacies.

Is not the analogy with the Lord’s Supper close at hand? The Lord invites us to His table as an expression of our reconciliation to Him in the gospel. The result is that this reconciliation spills over into our relationship with others. We bear responsibilities to each other because we have shared the Lord’s Supper together. It reminds us that it is the Lord’s Supper, not Athanasius’, not Augustine’s, not Luther’s, not Calvin’s, not Wesley’s.

The analogy of sharing our tradition with others opens us to the radical act of hospitality at the heart of the gospel itself. A tradition embedded in the gospel is finally not our tradition at all. It is something to which we belong rather than it belonging to us. And we only belong to it insofar as it incorporates us into the faith delivered once and all to the saints.”

Endnotes

14 Martin Marty, When Faiths Collide (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) extends this suggestion at great length as a prophetic call to Christian churches to engage global diversity on distinctively Christian terms.

This morning I enjoyed conversation over breakfast with Congressman Peter Roskam. The main topic of discussion, as you might guess, was healthcare reform. Having a child with severe hemophilia, whose medical costs are quite high, stimulated a myriad of questions.

Since my pastoral role obligates me to avoid partisanship, I won’t say much about how impressed I was with Peter; but I would like to elucidate one element of our conversation. It concerns the inadequacy of collectivism.

The French economist, statesman, and writer, Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), lived through some of France’s most turbulent years in the aftermath of the 1789 Revolution. The revolutionaries insisted on the government taking over, by force if necessary, the ownership and control of the means of production. Then these politicians would manage and distribute the country’s wealth. In response, Bastiat was a tireless exponent of free trade and a critic of socialism, questioning the capacity and warrant of socialists to make choices on behalf of people.

“The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority.

They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.”1

Furthermore, Bastiat sought to correct the mistake of thinking that the state and its citizens are one. Not every social benefit is the responsibility of the government. His ideas are as applicable and pointed today as they were when he expressed them.

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”2

Footnotes:

1 Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, trans. Dean Russell (Irvington-on-the-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc, 1998), 63-64.

2 Ibid., 29. This translation can be found online at The Library of Economics and Liberty, http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEssContents.html.