If one were to attempt to continue the conversation about the Church in late modernity started by Matthew Lee Anderson here, there are a few avenues one might pursue. In the comments, there are suggestions of following threads from CS Lewis Abolition of Man. One might also suggest Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge, or Huxley’s Brave New World. In the following, the endeavor is made to both step off that beaten track and to ask a question.
As an outsider looking in at the modern protestant (non-liturgical) evangelical church, one thing which strikes me which is synch with the secular enlightenment culture which Mr Anderson highlights is a personalization of the notion of the sacred and a loss of an exterior idea of Holiness. One of the aspects of the enlightenment which is entwined with the Protestant separation is the de-emphasis of the liturgical expression in favor of or over and above the interior spiritual experience.
From Biblical narratives there is no small emphasis of Holiness. “Take off your sandals for the ground on which you stand is Holy” is repeated in Exodus and Joshua. Other examples abound of how being in a Holy place or the presence of God … one changes one’s mode of presentation and practice. A place is Holy not because of Moses (or Joshua’s) interior spiritual experience, but because of a thing outside of either, that is the presence of God was being there, at that place and time.
At Emmaus the disciples knew Jesus when he broke the bread, and the Church through the ages took that to mean that in the Eucharist God is present in the sharing of bread and wine. One of the common features of liturgical churches like the Catholic, the Anglican, and the Orthodox is that their worship experience expresses and reflects a sense of a sense of Holiness which is not primarily to attain an interior spiritual effect akin but more in line with the taking off of one’s sandals for one is in the presence of the Holy. The Eucharist is a singular Holy event taking place in each Sunday liturgy, and their various liturgical celebrations express this in different ways.
So, as an outsider to the community noted above, (the non-liturgical protestant ones), I have a question. Where is Holiness to be found in your parish? How is it treated? How is it expressed? What does the term Holy mean for your church?
November 12th, 2009 | 8:36 am | #1
Hi Mark,
The holy is not to be found in material things, but in the saints.
The saints will not be found among relics and icons, but in the saved.
The saved will gather on Sunday to worship the Lord in order to hear from His Word.
His Word will cast out all false ideas of the holy, such as bread and wine, confront their sin, and will transform His people to be like Christ.
Christ will draw His own to hear His voice in the Word, and they will leave the pagan ideas of holiness such as expressed in your post to grow in holiness.
November 12th, 2009 | 8:54 am | #2
Mark — that’s a great question from an outsider, but I think don’t we even understand the question. I think our response has to be, in some sense, that the veil is torn in two, and the idea that “Holiness” in the sense you mean here is not necessary to be represented in the church. That is, the “otherness” of God is overcome entirely by Christ.
FWIW, I think that gives “us” too much credit — we non-liturgical types are really over-run with lazy a-theological slackers who just want 20 minutes of announcements, 20 minutes of songs and 20 minutes of motivational speaking.
So you get my optimism and pessimism both in perspective.
November 12th, 2009 | 9:47 am | #3
Mark,
Good question, but the premise is problematic: “One of the aspects of the enlightenment which is entwined with the Protestant separation is the de-emphasis of the liturgical expression in favor of or over and above the interior spiritual experience.”
Conflating the enlightenment with Protestantism is not what I would do . I think evangelicals are particularly susceptible to being co-opted by modernity, but for reasons not having to do with Protestantism per se. That is, it’s a bug, not a feature. The Lutheran tradition (and, really, aspects of the Reformed) both have strong liturgical aspects to them.
Matt
November 12th, 2009 | 11:59 am | #4
I’m anglican now, but I was raised Pentecostal. I remember a sense of awe and reverence in the Pentecostal church I was raised in. Sometimes I still miss it, but that may just be a romantic view of childhood.
I think genuine Pentecostalism puts people in touch with God in a real and meaningful way. Pentecostals believe God loves. They believe He wants to be involved in their lives (by their own free will). They believe He is a giver, a healer, and a redeemer. They are not content to have a relationship with the Bible. They want to know God through experience. I think those are good things.
November 12th, 2009 | 12:02 pm | #5
Ted, what is pagan about the ideas of holiness expressed in the post?
Mark, I grew up evangelical but would no longer consider myself non-liturgical though I still think I’m evangelical, so I’m not sure whether I’m an outsider or not. Then again, we’re talking about evangelicalism so talk of “insider/outsider” is notoriously difficult, eh? :)
Anyway, my two cents are that this reminded me of a post by Peter Leithart, which I will copy from here:
As Frank Turk alluded, the incarnation–and I’d add Pentacost–are critical to understanding holiness in the church, for the Son is risen and has given us the Spirit of Holiness to dwell in us in a way that Moses did not experience. This newness should be reflected in our worship. Now, you might remind me that I admitted to being of a liturgical mind, but I don’t see how or why non-liturgical evangelicals could not also accept this understanding of the place of holiness in our local bodies.
Lastly, you’re right that the Enlightenment privatization of Christianity is connected with the emphasis, in contemporary non-liturgical circles, on interior spiritual experience, which makes sense of the de-emphasis (though certainly not complete rejection) of outward forms and liturgies since they are necessarily public in nature. This is, in my experience, rather well-known among thoughtful evangelicals; what is less known is how the private/public distinction is tied to non-liturgical evangelical alienation from creation and the created order, which is what Matthew Lee Anderson wrote about in the excellent post you cite.
November 12th, 2009 | 12:23 pm | #6
Albert — great comment. I’m trackin’ ya.
Here’s where that “privatization” thing always takes me: the secular/sacred divide. When we say, for example, that the Holy thing is only “in Jerusalem” or “on the mountain” (cf. John 4) we miss that the true worshippers of God will seek Him in Spirit and in Truth. In another place, the NT tells us that the wall of enmity between Jew and Gentile is now removed by God — which is another way of saying that the boundaries of what is actually Holy have been changed or reconciled. In another place, Peter is told to go and seek out Cornelius the centuri0n because God is no respecter of persons, and that what was once unclean is now clean.
Now, I “get” that only 2 of the 3 examples I gave there are really about worship per se, but it seems to me that in our quest to somehow, for God’s sake, to make some things “Holy” we are in some sense erecting barriers that he Himself has torn down and doesn’t want us to get too worried about.
He has given us the water of baptism to show how we have passed over from death into life; He has given us the remembrance in the shared meal to remember how the blood of the lamb causes death to pass over us; He has given us a new day, which is not a sabbath but a celebration which looks forward to the day when we will sit at His table and have the wedding feast as the Bridegroom is united forever with his Bride.
And He has given us today, which is the day of salvation. So as a guy who is in love with the low-liturgy church, I think the move toward “privatization” comes when we disconnect today, and now, from the Holy.
I could be wrong.
November 12th, 2009 | 1:56 pm | #7
Frank, you could be wrong, but I think you’re precisely right in your description of ways in which the, in one sense, discontinuities between the old and new covenant manifest as the eschatological redemption of the whole creation (and all the nations therein) inaugurated in Christ.
I do think that there is much to be learned from liturgical traditions of the importance of the forms in which we participate that “flesh-out” and embody the living Word of God, the Word which sustains not just our interior spiritual lives but the very created order itself.
In my view, though Mark Olson’s either/or interior/exterior dichotomy theoretically is not necessary in low-liturgical circles, in practice, sometimes I’m not so sure how much thought and care is given to how the gospel truth of the redemption of creation–which is public, material, relational, formal, structured, and orderly–impacts the shape of low-liturgical worship practices, music, architecture, and other forms.
November 12th, 2009 | 8:39 pm | #8
Frank,
I thought the non-liturgical protestants were also proponents of Sola Scriptura. So, it was my assumption that one would, as did the Christian church until the reformation, derive their ideas of holiness from, well, Scripture.
You seem to indicate that Old Testament ideas of what the word Holy meant was supplanted and replaced by the Resurrection (which is how I take your veil torn in two remark). Now, in part, I’ve read that for example Levitical purity sacrifices are replaced by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, this makes sense. I have not read or heard exposition arguing that Christ’s incarnation means what is meant by Holiness becomes basically a gnostic concept.
Matt,
In part I was taking my conclusion that the Reformation and Enlightenment movement from exerior+interior to an emphasis on the interior from Charles Taylor’s Secular Age.
And in part the reformers had a perfectly valid point. One can, indeed, supplant and replace the interior life with a complete (Pharisaic?) emphasis on the exterior. But I think this goes both ways. An emphasis on the interior to supplant the exterior is very gnostic. It just struck me that what one calls Holy and how one treats with those things which are so called reflects this.
November 15th, 2009 | 9:20 am | #9
Ἅγιος ὁ Θεός, Ἅγιος ἰσχυρός, Ἅγιος ἀθάνατος, ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς.
November 15th, 2009 | 9:34 am | #10
Mark –
Given that I said this:
I’m not sure how you can label me “gnostic”. What I am saying is that any high-church intimation that there ought to be some sort of utensils for the tabernacle (so to speak) overlooks a lot of incarnational theology and a lot of the implications that we as people are now a nation of priests.
I wouldn’t completely toss out your ideas about liturgy, but I wouldn’t call them a high-water mark, either. I’d say instead that if they lead you to see only one act, or one place, as holy, you have missed the point of Emmanuel – “God with us”.
And I would also underscore my skepticism toward most paedobaptist churches and their view of worship and liturgy. Overtly or covertly, they call high-church liturgy “dead forms”, but what they do is not any less dead, not any less formal, and not any closer to the mark of giving people over to Christ in worship so that they may in fact be blessed by Him and be a holy people for him.
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