free variable

Mere Comments links to The Dust of Adam, an elegant Touchstone article by David Mills that touches on liturgy, atonement, mortification, and metanoia — cleanly tying these together in an exposition of the Ash Wednesday rite. Read the whole thing. A choice quote follows:

In Latin, it goes, “Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.” In the traditional English version, it goes, “Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” The modern versions have all eliminated that “O man,” unwisely assuming it to be sexist and exclusive, rather than, as we shall see, a statement of the most extraordinary inclusion in the history of the cosmos.

The meaning of the rite depends upon the multiple meanings of man. In that word is the Christian hope conveyed. Without it, the declaration is simply a statement of an unchangeable reality, a declaration of hopelessness and despair. The removal of man in the modern rites eliminated the crucial allusions, or at best made them needlessly distant and obscure. The liturgical effect is to eliminate the hope that alone makes the facts—that we are dust and to dust we shall inevitably return—bearable.

Mills succinctly expresses the Law-Gospel dialectic and argues that, absent the Law, we are more liable to be Pelagians. He asserts, correctly in my estimation, that “the best cure for Pelagianism is reality.” (I submit that antinomianism, autopoesis, and the ecstatic heresy, as illegitimate cousins of Pelagianism, are equally distasteful possibilities.)

One thing that I shall never understand about non-liturgical churches is this: how can one have Easter without Lent? without Good Friday? without Ash Wednesday? Having the Gospel without the Law is like having a physician that only treats the healthy, and, I would argue, nowhere is the Law and its penalty more apparent than in the forced examination of our own inherently frail condition.

If we accept that Luther’s assessment of the human condition is correct^*, and that free will can only result in a sinful being, incurvatus in se, then we clearly face an epistemic problem if we are to right ourselves, as Pelagians claim is possible and the antinomians, &c. claim is unnecessary. A being curved in upon itself cannot see itself, and has nothing to compare itself to. When self-examining, then, we are in an unenviable position that resembles the Tractarian picture of the eye and the visual field: the eye cannot see itself, and there is nothing in the visual field to indicate that it has been seen by an eye. Only when we are given a way to see from outside our traditional vantage point can we identify our shortcoming; one use of the Law is to provide such an elucidating perspective.

Today, I went over some favorite hymn texts; most of my favorites seem to be appropriate for the occasion. Es ist das Heil by Paul Speratus is, as I have argued earlier^**, certainly one of the greatest hymn texts (and didactic proclamations of salvation) that history has known. Here are two verses that are especially appropriate in light of the current discussion:

From sin our flesh could not abstain,
Sin held its sway unceasing;
The task was useless and in vain,
Our guilt was e’er increasing.
None can remove sin’s poisoned dart
Or purify our guileful heart,
So deep is our corruption.

The Law reveals the guilt of sin
And makes men conscience-stricken;
The Gospel then doth enter in
The sinful soul to quicken.
Come to the cross, trust Christ, and live;
The Law no peace can ever give,
No comfort and no blessing.

^* It should be no surprise to regular readers as well as those of you I know personally that I accept this assessment.

^**I had planned to link to the Attractive Worship thread on Mere Comments earlier, but did not. It is worth reading; I enjoyed the opportunity to revisit last summer’s arguments (1, 2, 3, 4) prompted by a Touchstone article on contemporary worship. (If you were part of that discussion here — or even if you weren’t — you might be interested in discussing “The Critical Adjustment,” an article by S.M. Hutchens written as a prescriptive to cure the symptoms described in “Please Me, O Lord”.)

I’m currently listening to Sarabande from the album “J.S. Bach, Six Partitas” by Gustav Leonhardt