Thanks for last week’s discussion of “Christendom.” I agree that the church must not get caught up in wielding power. The church is all about the Gospel of Christ. There is another piece of the puzzle, though: Vocation.
“God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.” Those who receive Christ’s forgiveness through the Word and Sacraments are then sent out into the world to love and serve their neighbors. They are called to do so in the family (the vocations of marriage, parenthood, and childhood), the workplace (as master and servant, as a worker using whatever gifts and opportunities God has given), and the state (as ruler and citizen, as member of the particular community, culture, and society).
The different vocations are intrinsically culture-making. Not culture ruling, but culture-making. Historically, Christians have had an impact in their cultures, and not just Western cultures as we are still seeing today in Africa and elsewhere. Christians in their diverse callings always open schools, establish hospitals, reject tribal revenge codes in favor of the rule of law, make contributions in the arts, promote productive economic activity, etc., etc.
So if we could fully recover the doctrine of vocation, keeping the Gospel central, what would that look like today? How could that bear fruit, if not in a new Christendom, in a positive Christian presence in the culture?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
If in our vocations we lived as if Christ were king, it might be a bottom-up approach to Christendom (depending on what Christ wants to do with it).
Justin Taylor has a cite today to an interesting book by Clark Forsythe, “Politics for the Great Good: The Case for Prudence in the Public Square.” I wonder how recovering the lost virtue of prudence as citizens of the kingdom of the left hand could affect our culture and politics? http://theologica.blogspot.com/2009/05/politics-for-great-good-case-for.html#comments
“The different vocations are intrinsically culture-making . . . not culture ruling.”
What a great comment.
Cultio semper reformanda est?
The doctrine of vocation is essentially the working out of the commandments and their implications for one’s particular gifts and sphere of life.
Can we implement the commandments of God and not have an influence? Can we exclude the commandments from the realm of our vocation? That would be for the “salt” to lose its “saltiness.”
We need not expect that this will result in cultural dominance, and the institutions of the past may change or disappear, but we cannot stop living as we are called to live.
Or much better put: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ if you do not do what I say?”
Well this vocation thing is the way the New Testament puts forward for being salt. Paul admonishes people numerous times to tend to their own business quietly and diligently. I don’t see where he calls for hunger strikes, protests, or campaigns to make everyone but Christians conform to Christian morals. Which seems ever more to be the case that Christians want others to be forced to do that which they have shown themselves incapable of. And I do realize that we are saint and sinner, that Christians are sinners too. I’m just saying if we can’t carry the moral obligations we have put on ourselves, we probably shouldn’t be making it a law for everyone else. Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t just cover for our own moral shortcomings, that we get involved in all this culture warrior stuff. Perhaps we blame society because we give in to temptation? Somehow we think that if society wasn’t such and such we or our children wouldn’t be tempted to do such and such.
Our good works do not only serve our neighbour (Mt.5:14-16; Rom 14:17-19; 1 Pet. 2:12; 1 Pet. 3:1,2) but also assures us of our faith (Mt. 7:17,18; Gal. 5:22-24; 2 Pet. 1:10,11 – see also Luther’s hymn “Es ist gewißlich wahr – “works serve the neighbour and supply/the proof that faith is living”) and also because Christ, who has redeemed us by His blood, also renews us by His Holy Spirit to be His image, so that with our whole life we can show ourselves thankful to God for His mercy (Rom. 6:13; 12;1,2; 1 Pet. 2:5-10) and THAT HE MAY BE PRAISED BY US – which is why He created us (Mt. 5:16; 1 Cor. 6:19,20).
This is also known as the “3rd use of the Law” found around pg. 566 of the BoC. Talking about vocation and sanctification shouldn’t rouse fears that we are not placing a central emphasis on Christ’s complete and finished work on the cross; the law also defines the boundaries of the Christian life (see “3rd use” above).
CL
Crypto,
“and THAT HE MAY BE PRAISED BY US – which is why He created us”
The verses you cite after that phrase do tell us to glorify God, but they do not say or imply that that is the reason we were created. That betrays that you have not left your Calvinism behind.
And yes we are admonished to do good works with the third use of the law, I don’t think too many are debating that here. But watch it. The third use is not equal to sanctification. Actually it is our sanctification that makes the third use even remotely possible. The primary beneficiary of our good works are in fact our neighbor and not us. the BOC does talk about good works as being one sign of faith for the believer. They are however a very poor assurance. We can’t tell wether or not our neighbor is a Christian by whether or not he takes the trash out on trash day. Neither can we look to our own good works alone to see if we have faith. Faith does not look to the works of the believer, but the works of the ONE believed in, Jesus Christ.
Brother Bror,
I’m saying nothing that Luther doesn’t say in his commentary on Romans. I, too, reject Erasmus, Zwingli and even Melancthon in his “3 causes of salvation” in his Loci Communes (sp?) and fully endorse Luther’s “The Bondage of the Will”. How saying “God created us to praise him” betrays my “latent Calvinism” is beyond me. I never said that this is even something we can attempt: if there is any good in me “es ist Alles lauter dein”. That my heart is eternal God’s dwelling place is the supreme miracle of the Christian religion.
All glory to Christ,
CL
By the way, how are we to read Ephesians 2:10? God creates us through Christ for good works. Perhaps we are arguing semantics; I, for one, was feeling very Lutheran when I wrote the above: God acts, we respond because we’re baptized, the old Adam has died, we are clothed with Christ and now our works – only because of Christ – become a pleasing sacrifice to God. Saying that doesn’t mean I reject the centrality of Christ’s sacrifice or our original sin or our total worthlessness. But because we have Christ we are precious to God. Our daily work becomes sanctified by the Holy Spirit who perfects our works and intercedes before the throne of God. That’s awesome…. and humbling. The implications on our daily vocation are clear: the work of a steelworker is also holy work and so Christ fulfills the sabbath commandment in him.
Sincerely,
Crypto-Lutheran
Crypto,
O.K. I’ll take your further explanation as regards our renewal in Christ, that our renewal in Christ makes it possible to praise him. As regards creation, and why man was created in the first place, you are hard pressed to find anything in the Bible or in the Lutheran Confessions to say that man was created to praise God. (Heidelberg Catechism says such, but then I am Lutheran, so I reject that pamphlet.)
Ephesians 2:10? sure created in Christ for good works which God created beforehand. No problem with that. Yet does this say what these good works are? Does he say that we look to them for assurance of our faith? Does it say that these good works praise God or are equal with praising God? And if the good works are, as you rightly point out, done in our daily vocations, what assurance is that for the steel worker working next to the Muslim who maybe even does a better job? Yet the steel worker can know that his work is accepted before God on account of Christ’s death, and the Muslim has no such assurance.
In fact, sometimes I think this is looked at completely backwards. It isn’t so much that my good works assure me that I have faith. (Most of them are easily mimicked by Mormons, Muslims, and atheists.) But the fact that I believe in Jesus Christ, and trust in his propitiation, assures me that I have also done good works, many I believe unbeknownst to me. I probably thought they were to trivial a thing to be thought of as good.
Hello Bror,
Amen. Amen, and Amen. I once heard a sermon by a reformed pastor (recall that I am a crypto-Lutheran) on the theme “Luther’s big insight: putting the cart before the horse” (i.e. salvation before works). I agree with everything you wrote, your emphasis, and even with your comments on the Heidelberg Catechism. Lutherans will find some things in that pamphlet repugnant, as do I. Still, we are not antinomian, nor are we Gnostics.
I very much appreciate your comments….
Blessings,
CL