Another perspective on children and the Church’s worship
Several weeks ago I bemoaned the cultural expectation that our little ones not fully participate in the Church’s worship. Today S.M. Hutchens provides a thoughtful, gracious rationale:
In churches that have sermons worth hearing by people of adult understanding, though, I am for bringing children into the service at certain points and dismissing them at others, telling them that cannot stay for the whole until they are old enough quietly to pay attention. This treats them as the catechumens they are, and gives them an adult privilege at which to aim.
You see, you see, this is why you should be Eastern Orthodox! We baptize, chrismate (confirm), and commune all our infants…there is no aspect of the Church’s worship in which our little ones do not participate. :) Good post Seth.
Drew
Drew
February 26, 2008 at 7:47 pm
As a matter of fact, I attended an Orthodox prayer service today (moleben, I think it’s called). Lots of standing :)
Seth
February 26, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Yes…LOTS of standing. :) Just out of curiosity, was it a Russian parish? Greek? Arab? My own is Arab…the Greeks tend to sit a lot more…
Drew
Drew
February 26, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I’m not certain, but Russian, I think. Yesterday I also attended a talk given by a hieromonk at the University, who ’struggles’ (as he put it) at Hermitage of the Holy Cross: “a monastic community of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad” in WV. I was greatly encouraged by his talk (not, of course, to enter a monastery, but to seek the costly pearl).
Seth
February 27, 2008 at 11:37 am
It sounds like you’ve really been getting into it…just out of curiosity, is there a Roman Catholic presence on campus as well? I was just wondering what your impression was of any Roman Catholic monastics you may have encountered…The approaches tend to be a bit different, I think.
Drew
February 28, 2008 at 1:53 am
Sorry to disagree, men with you both and Hutchens. There are no rules on this. It’s an area of policy to be decided upon by the leadership of each local gathering. A person could make logical defensible arguments for either side (or for some hybrid). God provides grace and latitude for such issues.
Dad
February 28, 2008 at 9:11 am
Drew: There is a campus parish that offers daily mass, but I haven’t attended. And the only modern RC monk I know (about) is Thomas Merton–whose monastery is actually about 70 miles outside of Lexington. I’m sporadically reading The Seven Storey Mountain.
Dad: Good to see you here, too! This post has generated the most active commenting my blog has seen. I think you’re right to object to an absolute rule on this question. The social/cultural contexts of different churches / congregations are, I suspect, too various for us to lay down an simple absolute.
But that is not to say that all practices would have the same ends in mind, or that all of the acknowledged ends are equally suitable and healthy. I think it would be a sign of health (not the only sign, of course, and not an infallible one) if a congregated body were comprised of Christians of all ages. Luther and Calvin taught, so I’ve heard, that infants can have faith. If this is so, surely we should treat them as such, and expose them to God’s ordained means of communicating the gospel: the Word, at least; everyone would agree about that. Why not the other sacraments?
Seth
February 28, 2008 at 12:47 pm
And, of course, to say that “there are no rules,” is itself a rule. I’m convinced by both the Scriptures and the history of the Church that Christ intended the Church to be hierarchical with a succession of authority from the Apostles…any casual reading of the Pauline corpus alone should at least reveal that the leading Apostle of the first century was no congregationalist. It was clearly important to him that worship be conducted in a certain way, and as the Jewish tradition placed a very strong importance on including children in the covenant, why would the Christian tradition descending from it be expected to do a complete “180″ from that…if that were the case it would almost look as if two different deities ordained the two covenants and thus the heretic Marcion would turn out to be right after all. But then again Calvinism is just inverted Marcionism so I guess I should expect that…
Drew
March 1, 2008 at 2:05 am
Wow, ‘inverted Marcionism.’ Do you mean that Calvin preferred YHWH to Christ?
I didn’t mean to suggest that ‘anything goes’ regarding worship. You’ve got an ally in me, on that question. And, officially, I’m not exactly a congregationalist, anymore: PCA churches are elder-led, true, but we have governing bodies outside our church, at both the regional and the national level. (However, according to the denomination’s website, the PCA has intentionally taken a more “democratic” slant towards governance than a “prelatical” one.)
I think there’s a difference between rules and principles.
Seth
March 1, 2008 at 9:47 am
Just to clarify, I wasn’t critiquing your position, I was critiquing your Dad’s. :) He knows that he and I are not in agreement on the subject, and I figured that understanding would prevent it being taken the wrong way. Besides, you’re good guys…I would never intentionally hurt your feelings.
“Inverted Marcionism” is a term I borrowed from the Hart brothers (David Hart and Fr. Robert Hart, the former being Eastern Orthodox and the latter Anglican) with reference to the Calvinistic understanding of God as a voluntaristic being not determined by his nature, who exercises complete control over his creatures. More specifically, it is a reference to the supralapsarian understanding of redemption, whereby God predestines people to hell “prior” (in eternity) to his decision to provide a means of redemption. A God who acts bears a much greater resemblance to Satan than the God I know, and I would not believe in God if the hyper-Calvinistic view that has made its way into evangelical culture were the only option available.
I’m not sure whether the view I’m describing in broad strokes can be directly attributed to Calvin or to his followers. Neither would surprise me. Naturally, I’m sure that there were nuances to Calvin’s thought that have been forgotten during centuries of reinterpretation, which his followers have not upheld. On the other hand, to merely say “that’s not what Calvin himself actually taught” is a little too easy, and I’m confident that were I to read Calvin’s own writings, I would likely find a legitimate basis for much of what his followers taught. One book on the subject I intend to read soon is David Hart’s “The Doors of the Sea.”
None of the foregoing is meant to be a slap against you (as I honestly don’t know what you think about these things now) or your Dad or anyone else. I am criticizing a view, not people. Just want that to be clear.
Hope you’re having a good weekend so far. Say hey to Noelle and Seth Andrew for me! :)
Drew
March 1, 2008 at 5:20 pm
One more thing…
There isn’t much more I can say with regard to your Dad’s viewpoint on the subject. So long as sola scriptura is taken to be the formal principle of theology (with sola fide as its material principle), there is really no use discussing what the history of the Church has been (which would be invalid anyway since “is” doesn’t equal “ought”), or tradition, and certainly not where the locus of authority in the Church is. Equally fruitless is bringing forth proof-texts and counterproof-texts. As long as there is no controlling interpretative “grid” through which the Scriptures are understood, the texts say what we want them to say. If it were self-evidently clear what the text means, there wouldn’t be tens of thousands of Protestant “denominations” the world over.
The problem I have with sola scriptura is that it doesn’t do the work required of a constitutive property: it must explain the basis and not just the fact. In other words, you cannot argue on the basis of sola scriptura toward which books ought to be included in the canon. That was decided by an external authority (Church councils). The Church made the Bible, not the Bible the Church. The historical issue aside, you still can’t argue for which books ought to be included on the basis of sola scriptura, since the text in question doesn’t itself contain “the list.” It is also demonstrable beyond any reasonable doubt that NO Christian of the first millennium believed sola scriptura (or any of the other “solas”).
The key question is “What kind of kingdom was Christ inaugurating?” Was Christianity intended to be a corporate, historical reality with a continuous (i.e., visible) lineage, or was it intended to be individualistic and (merely) spiritual? One would be hard-pressed to demonstrate the latter from the latter, from the New Testament and external historical documents taken as a whole picture.
The only consistent way I know of that a Protestant can consistently maintain the sola scriptura position is to adopt Barth’s approach: the Word of God is Christ, and the Bible is only secondarily so, by testifying to the reality that was Christ. The basis of our faith is the recemptive life of the God-Man, not words on a page.
There are other issues with sola scriptura, but I’ll have to discuss those at another time. I hope this contributes in some way to your intellectual struggle with the issue. I admire your intellectual honesty and your willingness to explore the issue.
Drew
March 1, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Isn’t there a third Hart?
I know a smidge about the post-/prelapsarian predestination controversy among Calvin’s early followers. The notion that God predestinates people made in His image bidirectionally (that is, both sheep and goats) is indeed frightening to consider at length; His doing so prior to the fall (or, since we’re talking about an event in eternity, ‘prior’ to His own consideration of the fall), yet moreso. I think Chesterton, like you, compared Calvin’s God to Satan.
I’m in a funny position on the question: I’ve been calling myself a reluctant Calvinist, because the Calvinist reading of Romans 9 seems to me to be the most honest to the text–as I read it, of course. But my sentiments are on your side of the question; Romans 9 seems to be teaching that God does something I find evil. I have to chalk that reaction up to my own depravity, which must have altered my mind and moral compass, in addition to my will. Not a pleasant thought, but I think it’s possible.
However, I agree with you about the uselessness of bandying texts. What has Geneva to do with Rome (or Constantinople) in the proof-texting game, if they disagree about the game’s most fundamental and determinative rule?
In other matters…we are having a relaxing Saturday, thanks. You still owe me an email about yourself… :)
Seth
March 1, 2008 at 7:33 pm
There’s not really much I can say about Romans 9…I wouldn’t dream of thinking of myself as some kind of amateur biblical scholar, and you probably know the ins and outs of exegeting that passage far better than I do. The only things I can say about it are that (1) what Paul meant when he wrote that specific letter, and what God meant when he used the Church to collect Paul’s writings into the larger whole of the New Testament may (and likely were) two different things. Whatever Paul said in Romans has to be consistent with the Church’s reading of what James said, and Jude, and John, and the Synoptics, and the OT, etc. Another thing (2) is that the text in either scenario may not mean what it “seems” to mean, and I would suggest, if you haven’t done so you already, that you check out Chrysostom’s commentary on Romans 9 and see what he has to say. The Fathers in general, and the Greek Fathers in particular, constantly stress the importance of our free will in choosing to accept God’s offer of salvation (remember, the key word in Eastern Orthodox soteriology is “synergy”), and Chrysostom is one of the chief mouthpieces of this tradition (which was in fact unanimous at the time). He might have a completely different take on that passage than what modern scholars do, and it may be worth your while to see what he said, knowing that this is how Christians thought about the subject in those days before the matter was controversial. His commentaries are available on the New Advent website.
Drew
Drew
March 2, 2008 at 2:58 am
Ha, that’s a laugh. If you are right to decline to exposit, then I would be moreso. I may have some claim to expertise in early modern and Victorian fiction and poetry, but not to exegesis. In biblical texts, I’m hardly qualified beyond the average college-educated 21C reader. I say ‘beyond’ because I think I have a familiarity with the Scriptures that many in my shoes don’t have, since I was raised reading and studying the Bible.
But despite my lack of qualification, I find it hard to simply submit my mind and will, wholesale, to the interpretation of someone else. Even the Fathers. Mind you, I don’t mean to defend this stubbornness of my own; I mean rather to simply state a fact. The stakes in the answers to many of these questions are high – quite possibly the good of my soul, and the souls of my wife and son, too.
It might be easier if a simple binary were operating here: Pope/Seth Holler, Rome/Geneva, or something like that. Orthodoxy, the innumerable Protestant bodies, and the claim of all to being ‘led by the Spirit’ muddy things up.
Needless to say, though, that I cannot abandon the question. Chrysostom will go on my reading list.
Seth
March 2, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Then think of it this way: Chrysostom is (virtually) universally recognized to be a saint…Luther and Calvin are not; and when Luther and Calvin say one thing and Chrysostom another, Chrysostom is probably right and Luther and Calvin are probably wrong. Chrysostom wasn’t saying anything particularly new in his homilies, but what Luther and Calvin proposed was unprecedented, and I find it hard to believe that their interpretation would have been so late if it had been the “obvious” reading of the text that anyone with two synapses firing should be able to recognize as such. Such an argument doesn’t prove anything, but, if one accepts the Vincentian canon, it at least indicates a certain probability that has to be dealt with. Ironically, the only way Luther’s and Calvin’s views can be defended at all is if sola scriptura is rejected as a working principle, because there’s no way it would 1500 years for the “perspicuous” meaning of the text to emerge, especially in the middle of a controversy (which in part was fueld by political rivalry along with religious concerns), which likely distorted the intending meaning of those texts in the first place.
Drew
March 3, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Well put re: the probability of the trustworthiness of saintly scholarship.
I’m coming to terms with the idea that Luther’s Gospel was new. Pelikan, a Lutheran scholar on Luther if ever there was one, owns up to this: “It had not been [Luther's] ‘will or intention’ to elevate his own private theological concerns to the status of doctrinal issues affecting the entire church, and he long professed the conviction that what he had ‘discovered’ was something that the best theologians of the church must have known all along. The eventual realization that such was not the case precipitated his theology into the public forum of the church…” (The Christian Tradition, 4:127).
Seth
March 3, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I’m glad to see that you’re reading Pelikan’s “The Christian Tradition”…You need to check out vol. 2 while you’re at it…it’s probably the best volume in the series, and I’m not just saying that because I’m Eastern Orthodox, it really is a fine volume.
On a different note, I hope that nothing I have written here or elsewhere has come across as triumphalistic. From a “natural reason,” it’s easy to understand how the process of deciding between the various manifestations of Christianity can become easily “muddied,” as you put it in an earlier post, and my own arguments against sola scriptura could just easily (though not necessarily successfully) be used against my own position (at least rhetorically, if not logically): one might retort, “Well, if what your Church teaches is clearly “the” Tradition, then why are there disagreements about that, too?” I understand that, and I have the utmost respect for people who make the effort to be self-critical, no matter which tradition they hail from, and who are willing to put their own long-held convictions to the test, objectively. I’m sure Pelikan thought the same way about it, although he eventually became Eastern Orthodox, which at least shows that such a decision is defensible. And then there are people like Cardinal Newman. It’s to those people, and more particularly, the spirit in which they pursued the truth of God in Christ, that we should look for a good example and pattern after which to model our own searching. The hard nut to crack, I think (and well know from my own experience), is that question of whether Catholicism or Orthodoxy are to be identified with “the” historical Church, to the exclusion of all others. The way I see it, once one decides that Christianity is an objective, historical, living reality and not just an individualistic, spiritual communion between each individual human being and Christ, the basis for a Protestant understanding of ecclesiology and soteriology vanishes, because, as Newman famously said, “That Protestantism is not the Christianity of history, it is easy to demonstrate.”
Drew
March 5, 2008 at 1:24 am