A Response to John Ehrett on Protestant Retrieval
Editor’s note: This article is part of a symposium on the current state and future of Protestant retrieval in response to John Ehrett’s article, “The End of Protestant Retrieval.”
John Ehrett’s article “The End of Protestant Retrieval” asks a basic question, “What do we do when we do Protestant theological retrieval?” And not only does he ask it, he seeks to answer it prescriptively, commending a particular telos of retrieval in relation to the Protestant vision of political and social order. That telos is something like this: a modest retrieval of the Protestant vision of social order for devotional purposes—modeled after the Jewish halakah—which orders the minds and hearts of Christians (both individually and to some degree corporately) to a fundamentally Christian frame of reality so that we are better able to live as Christians under modern, unbelieving social conditions. This modest retrieval is contrasted with an expanded retrieval which seeks to recover the Protestant vision of social order as a plan of public Christian political action, seeking to translate Protestant political principles into real-world political conditions.
In other words, the fundamental question turns on whether the telos of retrieval is the actual ordering of public society, or merely the ordering of the individual’s heart and mind, as well as the limited ordering of the Christian church as a minority community within particular secular nations and within secularized global order.
(In a follow-up conversation, Ehrett acknowledged other purposes for retrieval, such as education and knowledge of the past; in fact, one of the more interesting insights of the conversation was Ehrett’s recognition of the different vocations (and traditions) represented and how those shaped the purposes of retrieval—the Presbyterian academic (Michael Lynch) argued for the importance of retrieval and translation for the purposes of education; the Anglican priest (Steven Wedgeworth) accented pastoral dimensions of the retrieval project; and Ehrett, as a Lutheran engaged in public policy, emphasized the public uses of retrieval.)
My engagement with Ehrett’s article runs along four lines: the durability of the postwar consensus, resistance to modest retrieval in ecclesiastical communities, the value of the principle/application distinction, and the danger of quietism and truncated political imaginations.
That Durable Consensus
First, we may rightly question whether the international postwar consensus is as durable as Ehrett supposes. “The postwar consensus,” he says, “has endured for a reason.” Certainly, but only for 70 years, which isn’t much in the face of Christendom (which endured for over a millennium). And looking at the coming century, many people (not just Protestants) are asking questions about the current global order. What happens to the postwar consensus when the nations that created it are no longer recognizable, due to mass immigration, the Islamification of Europe, and demographic collapse (both in the China and in the West)? Just how sturdy is that consensus? And if it continues to fray and fragment, should Christians be ready to build with Protestant principles?
Loving the Indicative
Second, it’s worth noting that even modest retrieval within ecclesiastical communities has been (and will be) met with considerable resistance from Christians who have imbibed the modern spirit. Nowhere is this more evident than in our understanding of gender and sexuality, which Ehrett highlights in his use of Zach Garris’s work. As Garris’s book indicates, our Christian forefathers regarded patriarchy as a basic fact of reality, not an aspiration or command. Patriarchy is an indicative claim, not an imperative one. A husband simply is the head of his wife, as Christ is the head of the church. In other words, retrieval in this instance is not first about the recovery of contingent applications of patriarchy to modern society, but is rather about the recovery of basic facts about the world that God has made. While the applications of our forefathers are instructive for us as wisdom, the first “end” of such retrieval is recognition of God’s design in our sexual dimorphism, as well as the glad embrace of this design. The first imperative is to love the indicative. But, tying this in with point one, this “love for the indicative” is one of the things we are called to teach the nations. In other words, our retrieval of the biblical, traditional, and Protestant vision of sexuality begins with individuals and churches, but, as Garris points out, it is aimed at every arena of society. All of Christ for all of life.
Now, questions of application will remain. And many of those engaged in retrieval of the Christian vision of sexuality are very aware of the way that the industrial, technological, and sexual revolutions disrupted the social conditions in which the Christian vision of men and women was applied prior to modernity. But wisely applying such principles first requires the recovery of such principles. Horses first, then the carts.
Appeals to Prudence
Third, this brings us to Ehrett’s criticism of what might be called “the retreat to prudence” practiced by proponents of expanded retrieval. Put simply, Expanded Retrievalists will often advocate for the recovery of Protestant political and social principles, only to “appeal to prudence” when pressed on questions of practical implementation. According to Ehrett, such appeals leave specifics “perpetually opaque.”
In response, rather than regarding the appeal to prudence as a dodge or obfuscation, it might just as easily be seen as a sign of humility. Many of those engaged in the retrieval task are academics or pastors. As such, applications to concrete circumstances are frequently outside their expertise, whereas the articulation of the principle is not. It falls to the statesman (and his staff) to embrace the principle and wisely apply it in any particular situation.
In this regard, the distinction between fundamental principles and prudential applications is one of the key recoveries of our retrieval efforts. In contrast to one-size-fits-all blueprints for universal social order (whether of the Christian or non-Christian variety), the genius of Protestant political thought is its ability to articulate basic universal principles while leaving room for a great variety of practical instantiations based on the circumstances on the ground.
Nevertheless, even a retrieval of the basic principles of Protestant political thought highlights the ways in which contemporary society is at odds with a Christian social order. Indeed, what is surprising is the way that a retrieval of such basic principles is met with hostility, not just by unbelievers, but by conscientious Protestants.
To illustrate this last point, consider a recent article by Eric Patterson at Providence Magazine entitled “Christian Realism, Nationalism(s), and Religious Freedom.” Patterson’s main purpose in the article is to distinguish his own political philosophy (Christian Realism) from “the academic Christian nationalism of a small group of theologically orthodox American scholars” (the same scholars engaged in Ehrett’s expanded retrieval). Patterson wishes to commend Christian Realism to normal American, Bible-believing Christians and to defend the latter from the slander of progressive activists that regard any Christian influence on society and the state as fascistic.
Patterson’s Christian Realism has much to commend it–the Augustinian emphasis on human sin, institutional fallenness, the need for limits on state power, and a defense of faithful patriotism from C.S. Lewis. But in seeking to differentiate Christian Realism from Christian Nationalism (the kind commended by Stephen Wolfe and American Reformer), Patterson reveals that there are disagreements at the level of fundamental political principle. Indeed, he repeatedly insists that there is an “antithesis” between Christian Realism and Christian Nationalism.
How so? According to Patterson, (academic) Christian Nationalism commends a confessional state that seeks to enforce all of the Ten Commandments in society. In such arrangements, while Church and State are distinct institutions, there is a “greater integration” of them such that they have “overlapping roles in promoting law and morality in society.” This is a “state-sanctioned Christianity, with mechanisms for promoting and defending the faith.” In a nod to retrieval efforts, Patterson notes that Christian nationalists “draw their inspiration from the early decades of the Reformation, particularly places such as Calvin’s Geneva.”
In contrast, Christian Realism modifies the question of church and state to “the religious sector” and “[political] government” on the basis of a “capacious view of religious freedom” which extends liberty belief, speech, and actions in both private and public to all religions (and to the irreligious). It is this expanded and absolutist notion of religious liberty that fundamentally distinguishes Christian Realism from Christian Nationalism. Other distinguishing features—the embrace of Kuyperian sphere sovereignty, the restriction of the state to enforcing only the second table of the law, the rejection of the use of the term “Christian” as an adjective—are all downstream from this expanded definition of religious liberty as a basic political principle. And while Patterson attempts to historically root his position in the American Founding, in truth, his position is that of Jefferson (not the Founders as a whole).
The disagreement is at the level of basic political principle, one that is revealed through our efforts at retrieval. Consider two relevant principles of Protestant political thought.
1) All moral entities (individuals, nations, states) should acknowledge and honor the living God.
2) The state is charged with care of true religion and should promote right worship.
In both cases, the particular means of acknowledgement, honor, care, and promotion of right worship are matters of prudence. Particular laws, incentives, punishments, and so forth are left to the determinations of magistrates who must seek to implement these principles while preserving justice, peace, and social order. Nevertheless, both principles are at odds with Patterson’s basic political convictions, and account for his intense condemnations of Christian Nationalism. For example, according to Patterson, under Christian Nationalism, the state will enforce religious worship and religious dictates, and “religious dissent, non-conformism, and agnosticism would all be criminalized” (here Patterson fails to distinguish basic principle from prudential application). Whereas Protestants have historically distinguished between liberty of conscience/belief and external liberty of speech and action, Patterson’s basic definition of religious freedom disallows such a distinction.
Because of this, he can’t help but regard, Christian nationalism as “utopian,” “idealistic,” and “statist” (though his insistence that Christian Nationalism requires revolutionary violence along Leninist lines in order to implement is a bit much). But to bring the question back to Ehrett’s article, part of the value of retrieval is to keep professing Christians from adopting basic political principles that render every Christian social order prior to the 1950s as “anti-Christ tyranny” (including the American Republic from the founding through the mid-twentieth century).
Quietism and the Limits of Imagination
Finally, it’s hard not to detect a kind of political quietism in Ehrett’s modest retrieval proposal. The secular social order as it stands is taken as a given, and the question is what value the recovery of a political vision of Christendom has within such an order. In this regard, Ehrett’s comparison with Jewish halakah is an interesting one, since Judaism, as a largely non-proselytizing religion, always finds itself operating within alien political and theological conditions (that is, within societies that reject the uniquely Jewish frame of reality).
But Christ gave his followers a Great Commission, commanding them to make disciples of the nations, baptizing and teaching them universal obedience to his word. Thus, while Christians at times have been marginalized within particular societies, most Christians throughout history (and particularly Protestant Christians) have not regarded the Christian ghetto as the norm or ideal. Instead, Christians have sought to build (and rebuild) Christendom, no matter where they have been planted. Thus, while Ehrett’s encouragement of retrieval for devotional and churchly purposes is well-taken (after all, you can’t export what you don’t have), the limitation he proposes jars with Christ’s commission and the Christian and Protestant tradition it birthed. To quote the philosopher (and regional manager) Michael Scott, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Or again, why recover principles of social order if you’re not going to use them to build?
We might ask the question this way: if a magistrate in a modern nation were to convert to robust Protestant Christianity and seek to order society accordingly, what difference would retrieval make? Will the church be ready for such a moment?
And to those who find such thought experiments specious and fanciful, we must not forget that the bishops who suffered under Diocletian’s persecution found themselves a few decades later invited by the emperor to discuss, debate, and settle questions of classical theology, for the good of the empire and the glory of God. Our imaginations may be limited, but the arm of the Lord is not.
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