How Should We Then Live Part 5: The Revolutionary Age (I)

The episode on the Reformation was fairly basic in its concepts and presentation. On the contrary this episode is flush with ideas, concepts and historical reference. There's a lot to consider and interact with and it's no small task to attempt to do so in a concise manner. These are topics I've touched on elsewhere and have extensively developed in other essays. In many respects this episode represents a summation of much that I've critiqued and interacted with over the past 15-20 years.

This episode required two-parts and yet even in this longer piece I must admit that at best, only the surface is being scratched. I want to explore these issues but at the same time I want to limit the discussion to Schaeffer's presentation in order to weigh the value of his commentary and consider its place and role in the Evangelical movement.

Building upon his arguments for Reformation culture, Schaeffer utilises several (now familiar) themes and narrative lines to make his case. Of course if these narratives are demonstrated to be overly simplistic or even misleading his case will unravel and collapse. 'Biblical' is a term that's thrown about repeatedly and yet it assumes much, for Schaeffer (at least thus far) has not actually interacted with the Bible. There's a dual line of argument to consider when facing such arguments and narratives. There are the Biblical claims and then of course the historical ones. If either collapse or are found wanting the grand narrative implodes. If both fail, then what we're left with is little more than a myth.

Appealing to Samuel Rutherford's famous Lex Rex, Schaeffer would argue that the Northern European states that built their societies on a foundation of Biblical Law produced liberty and freed men from arbitrary government control.

But is this not confused? Has he not confused 17^th century doctrine and ideology with the pluralistic rights-based liberty of Classical Liberalism that began to seriously appear in the 18^th century? While the Puritans and Presbyterians appreciated the society created by the ideas of Lex Rex or what appeared under Cromwell or in New England, the truth is that the considerable sectors of the population who did not share their views found their would-be theocratic government to be oppressive and authoritarian. To suggest that the government of Puritanism freed men from arbitrary government is to turn a blind eye to reality. For that matter most modern Calvinists would have no desire to live under a Puritan regime which in many cases not only regulated economics but controlled behaviour down to things like how one was to cut their hair, name their children, their living arrangements and in other cases there were heavy-handed economic regulations.

One cannot help but be immediately suspicious of Schaeffer's arguments as he draws a direct connection between Rutherford's Lex Rex and the American Revolution of 1776, without even addressing the wars of religion and their affects on society and how they gave rise to secularism and the Enlightenment.

I knew he would immediately turn to Witherspoon because he alone of the founders tried to draw these connections to Presbyterian and Calvinist history. Schaeffer's way of dodging this problem is to suggest that infidels like Jefferson thought as Christians even though they weren't actual Christians in any Biblical sense. And thus we're back into a topic I've often addressed and that is the Sacralist invention of cultural Christianity and of different types of Christians. In this case we have the 'cultural Christian' who apart from the Holy Spirit's transformation and mind-renewal can apparently think and act like a Christian. It's a concept that simply will not harmonize with the Scriptural data and in fact demeans the definition of Christian as laid out in the New Testament.

In a bizarre and somewhat laughable analogy Schaeffer draws a comparison between Rutherford and Witherspoon and then argues that Locke taught a somewhat secularised version of Rutherford and conveyed this to Jefferson. Therefore Jefferson had actually imbibed and applied the ideas of Rutherford without really knowing it.

I think I can safely say that apart from maybe an institution like Grove City College or Wheaton such a thesis would certainly be met with doubt and probably a failing grade, if not laughter. Somehow Rutherford's Calvinism, theocratic morality and sociology and his conceptions of sin and Original Sin are preserved by Locke? The philosopher who believed in the 'blank slate', who most certainly laid foundations for anti-supernaturalistic epistemology and for a government rooted in concepts like the social contract and consent of the governed? These (we're told by Schaeffer) are a secular version of Rutherford.

Schaeffer is promoting a myth narrative, one that was somewhat novel at the time his documentary was produced but it has now become standard fare in Evangelical and Right-wing Christian circles. It's a popular view but it's still a myth and thus in Christian terms must be condemned.

Where do we see the influence of Lex Rex in the Declaration of Independence? Or in the Constitution? These are deistic documents about as far distant from the Covenanted-state thinking of the Puritan era as you can get. Where do we find 'individual rights' like freedom of religion, speech and the press in the Puritan conception of government? Indeed the Puritans persecuted those with whom they differed and frequently employed censorship. The Social Contract and the concept of consent of the governed is actually an anti-theocratic claim, a claim that societies and peoples can of their own accord decide whether or not they will submit to the authorities, a claim that would have certainly been derided by the Puritans as wicked and atheistic.

Some have attempted to twist the (woefully misguided) idea of National Covenants and argue that it was a conceptual proto-type of the social contract. And yet the foundations and undergirding ideas are quite different and would certainly have been abhorrent to most of the American Founders.

As far as the separation of powers, Schaeffer's argument regarding Calvin in Geneva was misleading if not dishonest, certainly a pedantic focus on de jure arrangements even while ignoring the de facto reality – that Calvin was in many senses the master of the city. Of course Calvin's authority like that of all leaders had its phases, its episodes of waxing and waning. The truth is that it was not Calvin or the Puritans that the Founders looked to when considering separation of powers but rather the ideas of Locke and Montesquieu. Of course if the myth-narrative insists that Locke and Montesquieu were in fact expressing Calvinistic ideas, then we're riding a carousel.

With regard to the right of revolution – yes, this heresy of sanctified bloodshed and murder was taught by Calvin and it became part of the Protestant tradition and yet its basis changed over time and the supposed 'right' exercised by Puritans and Covenanters was grounded and established on very different foundations than what we saw in 1776. Once again I urge people to read the Declaration of Independence and show me where Calvinism or Lex Rex is at work in Jefferson's presentation.

The truth is the so-called 'right of revolution' is a heresy. At this point we must once again turn to the Scriptures and in particular the New Testament. There we find absolutely no evidence for such a notion and in fact we can marshal many verses to the contrary and expose this doctrine for the wicked perversion that it is. It teaches the Church to sin and commit violence and when coupled with the Judaizing paradigms which would call on the Church to utilise Old Testament models to impose Christianity on society, then we have abandoned New Testament doctrine and ethics. These are the things celebrated by Schaeffer.

Is Witherspoon the standard by which we understand the Founders? Is it not more accurate and honest to argue that the Founders were motivated by different reasons and possessed different understandings of what the war and revolution were all about? Does this not explain the later debates over the Constitution and questions of Federalism? And if we (as we must) acknowledge there were different ideas and motivations at work, then again it must be asked – does Witherspoon accurately represent the Founders as a whole or even a majority?

What of Thomas Paine? Somehow in addition to the Wars of Religion, Schaeffer's narrative seems to leave out other critical ideas and players. It seems rather convenient at times. The infidel Paine who exerted tremendous influence on the Revolution, was long feared in Britain and continued to be supported by the American Founders into the 19^th century, is ignored by Schaeffer as is the role and ideology of Freemasonry which played a significant part in the shaping of the Founder's ideology.

I had to chuckle when I saw Schaeffer turn up at the Reformation Wall in Geneva. History by monument is usually a bad idea. It reminded me of Kirk Cameron's comical if tragic misreading of Puritan and Pilgrim history in his absurd film 'Monumental' in which he based his history and commentary on a monument erected by Freemasons at the end of the 19^th century. Schaeffer doesn't do much better. I pointed out to my son that as Schaeffer was walking by in one clip you could see the statue of Roger Williams, one of the lesser statues on the wall. My son was confused and rightly so. I remember also being somewhat puzzled when I visited the spot in the 1990's. Why would Roger Williams be on a wall with the Reformation's Calvinist heroes given that the later Calvinists persecuted Williams and hated him? This is because we're not looking at history but a monument built in the early 20^th century, a monument that has a historical perspective that is quite different than the men of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. It demonstrates appreciation and reverence for these men even while its values have significantly shifted.

Schaeffer's narrative concerning Britain is oversimplified if not misleading. For him 1688 was indeed a Glorious Revolution (though certainly not bloodless) and yet he seems to have missed that for the heirs of Lex Rex, the events of 1688 were in some respects tragic. Yes, the Troubles came to end in Scotland but few were satisfied and the divisions which continued to occur in Scottish Presbyterianism exemplify this. English Puritanism was by this time in its death throes and the movement would fade away into obscurity, re-born as Nonconformity which throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries became a very different socio-political creature.

Scottish Presbyterianism was always violently opposed to toleration and this is why (in part) they so abhorred Oliver Cromwell and his authoritarian but somewhat tolerant regime. Why then did the fighting stop after 1688? The movements had lost their popular support, the people were tired of war and ready to compromise. The same is true on the continent after 1648. Even when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the Huguenots largely fled and were facilitated in this by nations such as England and Prussia. And yet no one looked to start another religious war. The interest wasn't there. The Camisard episode of the early 18^th century was but a paltry if not sad and somewhat deformed expression of the zeal and ideology that had shaped the unfortunate and misguided Huguenot Wars of the 16^th century. Ironically, they were finally granted peace and toleration by Louis XVI in 1787 and by the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789.

It was the end of the Wars of Religion that opened up an era of toleration and of course with this toleration came a new era of secularisation and philosophical exploration. The social and epistemological consensus was largely shattered and had been since the 16^th century Reformation. The West and Northern Europe in particular sought to build a new order and this new order (while not wholly divorced from the old) would in many respects turn its back on many of the key and fundamental concepts that had shaped Protestant Christendom of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, not to mention the epoch which preceded it. What would emerge would be an Enlightenment order, one that would for many generations retain some forms, symbols and language of the older systems but was in the end fundamentally different. Those like Schaeffer that believe the Reformation order was still fundamentally at work in the late 18^th century, the time of the American Revolution have not grasped the profundity of the preceding historical events and express a myopic if naive understanding of the larger era.

Schaeffer argues the toleration and principles of the 1688 Glorious Revolution were built upon the Reformation and thus it was the Reformation which saved England from the revolutionary course that infected countries like France. He says this even while ignoring the fact that England had just a generation earlier fought a devastating Civil War and the Puritans acting on the principles of Rutherford and others had won the war – but ultimately lost control as they did not have public support. Their experiment failed and their 'gains' were eradicated.

The 1660 Restoration was not just a political and religious blow for the Puritan movement but a deeply social and emotional one. Their vision was heartily rejected and the Merry Restoration was met with joy and glee. And yet the cultural aspects of the Restoration would come to an end with the ascension of James II in 1685. As a Catholic, his taking of the English and Scottish thrones provoked a crisis leading up to the events of 1688. Was the Glorious Revolution a victory for the Anti-Stuart Puritans? Hardly. In fact the legal fallout of 1688 was in many respects a rejection of Puritan principles. The Protestant (Anglican) Establishment did not want a Catholic king but they did not want the return of the Puritans either and the settlement reflects this. In this sense Schaeffer's narrative is strange and even collapses as 1688 is not what he pretends it to be.

Additionally he conveniently chooses to ignore the fact that England was already on a different trajectory long before the Reformation. The Wars of the Roses had destroyed the aristocracy and empowered Henry VIII to an extent largely unknown by previous and later English monarchs. This interlude was extended by the conflicts born of the Reformation and the rise of the Stuarts. And yet what of Magna Carta in the 13^th century? What of Parliament's creation in the 13^th and 14^th centuries? The tradition of limited monarchy and its necessary reciprocals – powers invested in lesser powers and in conceptions of rights was already centuries old in England when the Reformation appeared. It would seem there's a little more to the story of England and its historical course as opposed to say the trajectory of nations such as France or Russia. Schaeffer's arguments it would seem are banking on an audience with a fairly shallow understanding of history. He hangs a little too much on the Reformation and gives it credit beyond what it deserves.

Continue reading Part 5 (II)