Onward Christian Soldiers: Armies of One?

The Bible tells us that we, as Christians, are types of soldiers. For instance, Paul tells the Church at Philippi that he has decided to "send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker and fellow soldier." (Phil. 2:25.) In 2 Timothy, we are reminded to "[e]ndure hardship...like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs—he wants to please his commanding officer." (2 Tim. 2:3-4.) And of course there is the well known passage from Ephesians 6 exhorting Christians to "put on the full armor of God." (Eph. 6:11.)

Today's army wrestles with the working out of individualism and the 'liberating' ideology of the previous centuries. Headlines from a few years ago savored the excitement generated by a U.S. Army junior officer who refused to deploy to Iraq. His reason: he believed that the Iraq war was immoral and illegal, so he would not participate.

In the same year, the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church ruled to petition the U.S. President to allow soldiers to selectively conscientiously object to conflicts "on the basis of just-war criteria."  The Synod noted the Christian's obligation to obey national authorities, but saw this obligation as being trumped by "our ultimate loyalty...to God."  By "our," the Synod meant "each individual Christian's."

This has me wondering about private judgment and effective warfare, both in the context of military soldiers fighting military wars, and in the context of Christian soldiers fighting a spiritual war.

Are we the Army of Christ, or many armies of one?  Armies are effective when they amass a stronger force than their enemy.  Strength comes from obvious things: size, training, discipline, and cohesion.  But if each soldier can privately determine the rectitude of the commander's course, cohesion and discipline evaporate.  Would Col. Chamberlain have been able to send his 20th Maine Regiment on a daring charge, thereby holding Little Round Top and saving the Union flank at Gettysburg, if private dissent was allowed?  Could Gen. Eisenhower have thought to take the beaches at Normandy with an allied force in which individual conscience could trump military orders? (And I note that the individual's conscience and judgment are far from clear when facing the prospect of incoming hostile fire.)



The sine qua non of successful warfare is an obedient soldier. Every military needs him before it can hope to have cohesion and unity.  Even guerilla forces, irregular militia, and insurgent rebels abide by this modus operandi; they have leaders and subordinates, rules of obedience and enforcement of disobedience.

So for what reason might we conclude that the Army of Christ would be any different? The concept of obedience is hardly a minor tangential characteristic of soldiering, so I do not think this is an instance where 'all analogies break down.' To the contrary, if anything is derived from our being characterized as armor-wearing "soldiers," it should be that we are part of the whole, with the whole depending on its parts. We are not Wrestlers for Christ, after all. And we are not an army of one. We should be one Army of Christ. It is--and has been since time immemorial--the soldier's to obey, and the commander's to lead.

"The Catholicity Question"

The Catholicity Question is a new blog with promise:

"For the past decade, I’ve been working, worshipping, and thinking through what various people label “Reformed Catholicism,” “Protesting Catholicism,” or “High Church Calvinism.” I love this world, and have almost joined the Anglican Church on a few occasions. Eastern Orthodoxy holds quite a bit of attraction, but I can’t get over the icons and veneration of the saints. I’m too much of a Protestant to even think about joining the Roman Catholic church, though I read Roman Catholic authors without discrimination."

CRC + RCA = ?

Rev. Bob De Moor, an editor of the Christian Reformed Church's magazine, The Banner, gave a wish list of things he hopes the Lord will do with that denomination over its next 150 years (Now What?, November, 2007). This was done on the occasion of the celebration of the denomination's first 150 years.

Before he gave his list, Rev. De Moor stated, "One safe guess is that the CRC will be as different from what we are now as we are from those original five churches that started us off a century-and-a-half ago. In a changing world, that’s as it should be. (emphasis added)"

This conclusory statement seems to rest on the presumption that the Church, or perhaps just particular faddish denominations of the Church Invisible, ought to change with the times. I would risk reading too much into his statement if I started talking about the birth control pill, gay marriage, or pop theology, so I won't.

One wish in particular was noteworthy for this, my blog on ecumenicity, namely that the CRC of AD 2157 will "have merged back with the Reformed Church in America, from whom we should never have broken away in the first place". This statement drew fire from Adrian Van Geest in the January, 2008 edition of The Banner (Merging Back with the RCA).

After noting several serious obstacles to reunion, she ends her criticism with a powerful one-two:
"I’m not sure how much leadership on exploring these issues with the RCA we can expect from the Banner editor in light of his belief that we should never have broken away from the RCA in the first place. That, incidentally, raises the question of how much we should have celebrated the CRC’s 150th birthday. Perhaps we should have mourned 150 years of schism instead.

"But where would we have been had there not been a CRC these 150 years? Where would a never-separated Reformed Church have been today? I doubt if that would have been a more orthodox church. And would undoing this split make us increasingly more bland—which I believe we have become too much already? Are we content to settle for a lower common denominator to make it work? (emphasis added)"

The perhaps-unintended pun about church denominations and lowest common denominators is catchy. That aside, her question that I have embolded is an excellent one. I might reach the opposite conclusion.

I've often wondered where the liberal PCUSA would be if the Southern Presbyterians and other forebears of the evangelical PCA had never left it. My personal opinion is that where strict adherents to a principle leave the less strict, the principle collapses. And with Protestantism, it always seems to be the strict that leave, for the sake of "purity". This seems to be a derogation of Christ's High Priestly Prayer on unity (cf. John 17). Perhaps for the sake of purity of the Gospel, the CRC left a generation of RCA'ers bereft of their "right" anchor. This broken body, subsiding mostly in centrists and a "left" anchor, did just what one might expect. I prefer unity.

Which Reformation History?

I found this brief Protestant Reformed version of reformational history, by Rev. Wayne Brouwer, on the Christian Reformed Church's publication's website. It's quite well written, especially given the space constraints the author faced.

As part of my discernment over the claims of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, exploring history has been one of my two major tasks (the other being authority). I'm no historian, but I've read enough to know how much this version of history is tailored to meet its own ends. It's a self-licking ice cream cone.

Of course, historical and theological scholars have composed incredibly lengthy volumes on church history, and discerning ecclesial historical "truth" is no easy task. Rev. Brouwer gives a crisp summary of the Reformed "party line" of church history. The church healthfully grew until Rome's (the Empire, that is) collapse. For the next millennium it slid into increasing error. In this time east and west did not agree on authority and theology. The pope's importance grew in this period, and the perception arose that he was a primate. The East nicely allowed children to commune (I've observed a growing admiration for this Orthodox practice in CRC literature and PCA practice and teaching), while the West developed sacraments for discipline, as tools of power. The East experienced the Spirit, while the West limited Him. Eventually, power and corruption of the sacraments led to the Reformation, where the new church in the West came to look like the church in its original pure form.

I believe that much of these observations are debatable at best. The Real History, I venture to say, was not nearly so clean, and not nearly so supportive of the Reformation's claims. We do not look like the early church. We never have. Do you think your church would be brave enough to try to so look?

Young People Leaving

The Banner, the Christian Reformed Church's periodical, has an article worth reading entitled "Where Did Our Young Adults Go?"

Despite a point of minor bias over female ordination, the article is worthwhile for its multiple vignettes of those who left the Reformed Church in which they were raised. Some stopped going to church altogether, several joined baptistic or independent churches, and one fellow even goes to a Catholic Church occasionally.

Besides being geographically grouped so as to be an impracticable choice, the CRC lost me because of female ordination and like movements to 'modernize' (motivated in large part, I believe, by anxiety over the question "how do we keep our young people?"). But head-to-head, I think as much of the CRC as I do of the PCA.

It's a haunting question over at the CRC; how do we keep our young people?