The Sanctified Profane

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Jason’s next chapter, on worldliness, was a collection of very fine furniture, wonderfully arranged in the wrong room. The chapter was an enjoyable read, and Jason says many important things that many evangelical Christians need to learn and heed. God made stuff, and He wants us to enjoy it. We need to learn how to enjoy God’s creation without idolizing it, and idolatry can involve, as Chesterton pointed out, the creation of false devils as well as false gods (p. 125).

First a quibble. Jason depends heavily on Chesterton in this chapter (almost always an admirable thing to do), and he follows Chesterton in a juxtaposition of two kinds of people in this world, puritans and pagans. The puritans, of course, are the fussers, and the pagans are the carousers. The puritans are the straight-laced and the pagans are the libertines.

Chesterton’s division was a generalization, and Jason does caution us in a footnote that Chesterton’s comments should not be strictly enforced. He says “not all his observations about ‘puritans’ will apply to the Reformed theologians and pastors of the seventeenth century” (p. 135). I am glad for the caution, but still believe it is far too weak. C.S. Lewis was far closer to the mark when he pointed out that the Puritans were far more Chestertonian than their opponents were. As wonderful as the adjective puritanical is, and as fitting as it is for a description of the contemporary wowers who want to rid the earth of transfats, I still try never to use the word without going out of my way to explain that the Puritans (generally speaking) did very poorly at being puritanical.

So why is this chapter a wonderfully arranged series of exhortations, unfortunately placed in the wrong room? But before attempting to answer that question, let me add that the chapter demonstrates that Jason clearly is the kind of guy that it would be fun to have a beer with. He is not sweating over his duty to be “earthy” — he clearly enjoys what he enjoins. And that is most cool, frigidissima is the Latin I believe, as far as it goes.

But he still locates the Christian’s enjoyment of these things in the realm of common grace. In other words, I enjoy the future promise of resurrection life in my capacity as a Christian, while I enjoy my Scotch, or my yard, or my wife, or my work, or my cheeseburger, as a creature. The two kingdom model follows him around, divvying up his pleasures.

So a central part of our difference, it would appear, is how to handle Paul’s injunction to do all the glory of God, down to the last French fry (1 Cor. 10:31). I know that Jason and I would both affirm this, but would likely differ on how to compose our souls in the doing of it. I don’t want to put words into his word processor, but I think he would say that it’s just a French fry, man. You’re supposed to eat them, not baptize them. And of course, a Christian knows where they come from, but that doesn’t keep him from receiving them as common grace French fries. Holy food is found on the Table of the Lord — to make everything sacred has the effect of making nothing sacred. If I have extrapolated wrong, I am willing to stand corrected.

If that is what he is saying, then we have an important measure of agreement, at least part way. There is a certain sense in which a fully sanctified world will still be profane. When we say that cultus drives culture, we do not mean to say that cultus makes digital copies of itself, spreading through all the world until eventually all the meetings of the water sewer districts in the world are conducted like high level seminary classes. The Great Commission does not turn the world into a perpetual quiet time, where everyone walks around with that holy glow.

Jason would probably differ with my terminology here, but I put a distinction between the Church and the Kingdom. The Church is at the center, Word and sacrament, and only sacred things are Sacred. But because what the Church does is potent, this transforms the entire world — but it doesn’t turn the world into Church. That’s not the transformation. The Church turns the world into what the world ought to be. The Church doesn’t bring auto mechanics into the sanctuary. The Church teaches in such a way that auto mechanics grows and matures into what auto mechanics really should be like.

There will always be a center; in this sense there will always be a Temple. And there will always be sanctified things (not sanctifying things) outside that Temple, in front of it — pro fanum, before the Temple.

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