Evangelical Angst About Ash Wednesday

Aleteia ^ | February 17, 2015 | DAVID MILLS

[NYer]

You wouldn’t think that anyone would fight about Ash Wednesday and Lent. For Catholics it’s part of what we do. For others it’s something they can use or not as they find it helpful, and increasing numbers do. Down-the-line Evangelical churches have started to hold special services for Ash Wednesday complete with ashes and to treat the Sundays after it as Sundays in Lent. Rather severely anti-sacramental Evangelicals now speak of giving things up and fasting on Fridays.

I find this cheering, but my friend Carl Trueman doesn’t. Carl teaches Church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, the flagship of serious Reformed (i.e., Calvinist) Christianity in America. He’s a pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. If you’re thinking of the somewhat wooly-minded, generically Protestant Presbyterians in the church in middle of town, you’re not thinking of Carl’s kind of Presbyterian. The mainline Presbyterians are the ones in tweed and corduroy; Carl’s type are in biker leathers. He’s one John Calvin would have recognized as a brother.

Writing on Reformation21, the website of the Alliance for Confessing Evangelicals, Carl notes that Evangelicals have started observing the season and then lets loose:
 

American evangelicals are past masters at appropriating anything that catches their fancy in church history and claiming it as their own, from the ancient Fathers as the first emergents to the Old School men of Old Princeton as the precursors of the Young, Restless, and Reformed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer as modern American Evangelical.

 
He is a genial and liberal-minded man. His office bookshelf has very large Aquinas and Newman sections along with the works of Luther, Calvin, and their descendants. (He’s just written a book titled Luther On the Christian Life.) I have spent a pleasant night in the Truemans’ home after speaking at the seminary at his invitation. He is generous to Catholics. But Evangelicals observing Lent, this sets him off. “I also fear that it speaks of a certain carnality,” he continues:
 

The desire to do something which simply looks cool and which has a certain ostentatious spirituality about it. As an act of piety, it costs nothing yet implies a deep seriousness. In fact, far from revealing deep seriousness, in an evangelical context it simply exposes the superficiality, eclectic consumerism and underlying identity confusion of the movement.

 
They shouldn’t do this. Their “ecclesiastical commitments do not theologically or historically sanction observance of such things,” he writes in a second article on the website, “Catholicity Reduced to Ashes.” Ash Wednesday is “strictly speaking unbiblical” and therefore can’t be imposed by a church, treated as normative, or understood as offering benefits unavailable in the normal parts of the Christian life. That would be a violation of the Christian liberty the Reformation so stressed (against “the illicit binding of consciences in which the late medieval church indulged,” as he puts it).

The “well-constructed worship service” and “appropriately rich Reformed sacramentalism” render the observance of Ash Wednesday “irrelevant.” Infant baptism, for example, declares better than the imposition of ashes once a year “the priority of God's grace and the helplessness of sinless humanity in the face of God.” The Lord’s Supper does as well.

Worse, Carl argues, these Evangelicals pick from the Catholic tradition the parts they like when that tradition is an indivisible whole. In for a penny, in for a pound seems to be his understanding of Catholicism. He finds it “most odd,” he writes in the second article, that some might “observe Lent as an act of identification with the church catholic while repudiating a catholic practice such as infant baptism or a catholic doctrine such as eternal generation or any hint of catholic polity.” (The lower-case “c” is his but he means the upper-case.) “The notion of historic catholicity itself has become just another eclectic consumerist construct.”

He is clearly not pleased and I can see why. The adoption by Evangelicals of some Catholic practices cheers me, however, because it is a gain for them, an expansion of their ways of living their faith, and one that reduces the gap between divided Christians. And, to be honest, because it opens a way for them to understand what the Catholic Church is about.

Carl is right that they’ve picked pieces they like without enough thought about the thing from which they’re picking pieces, but as a Catholic I think that’s a blessing rather than a mistake. He wants them to be more consistent and coherent Protestants and I would like them to be Catholics, and movement from one to the other requires some inconsistency and incoherence, the way a man wanders back and forth in the forest trying to find his way until he sees in the distance the place he is looking for.

The Church offers riches like an over-loaded wagon in a fairy tale, spilling gold coins every time it hits a pothole. Evangelicals can find in Catholic practice many things they can use just by walking along behind it. Though they have in their own tradition ways to express penance and forgiveness, as Carl notes, Ash Wednesday — the whole rite, not just the imposition of ashes — offers them a more dramatic way of hearing the truth and enacting it.

The question for them is how much they can take and adapt to their own purposes without having to face the claims of the Church from which they’re taking the things they like. I think rather a long way, because the Church draws upon a wisdom that it is not exclusively Catholic. You can enjoy the imposition of ashes without asking “Who is Peter?”

But there should come a point where you ask, “What is this thing from whom I’m always taking? What makes it a thing from which I can take so much?” As Carl says, more pointedly: “If your own tradition lacks the historical, liturgical and theological depth for which you are looking, it may be time to join a church which can provide the same.”

[miss marmelstein]

So you were there when the priest put his thumb on my forehead?

[metmom]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday

“Ashes are ceremonially placed on the heads of Christians on Ash Wednesday, either by being sprinkled over their heads or, in English-speaking countries, more often by being marked on their foreheads as a visible cross.”

http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/ASH_WED.htm

Q: Why do they have their foreheads marked with a cross?

A: Because in the Bible a mark on the forehead is a symbol of a person’s ownership. By having their foreheads marked with the sign of a cross, this symbolizes that the person belongs to Jesus Christ, who died on a Cross.

If your priest isn’t making a sign of the cross when he puts the ashes on, he’d be the first one that I’ve ever heard of who didn’t do it.

[bike800]

Again it is a symbol, just like the Christmas wreath...tree...crucifix...or excuse me...the cross...Prius reminders of who we are...to help keep a mindset of what is important. Since there is no admonition against this in the bible...

[CynicalBear]

>>Since there is no admonition against this in the bible...<<

If the pagans used it to serve their gods it most certainly does.

Deuteronomy 12:30 Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. 31 Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God:

[GreyFriar]

Thus from posts 198 and 199, if the Catholic Church takes the teaching of Christ and makes it “doctrine” then it is automatically wrong?

That is the only conclusion I can come to based upon the reasoning you have presented.

[miss marmelstein]

So what is your point? In English speaking countries of my youth (NY, NY) a smudge was put on the forehead, not a cross. If you look at the photo included, you’ll see someone has a cross and another clearly has a smudge. Probably means two priests and two different ways of getting through the crowds. My parish didn’t do these crosses.

[CynicalBear]

>>Thus from posts 198 and 199, if the Catholic Church takes the teaching of Christ and makes it “doctrine” then it is automatically wrong?<<

How silly. Christ never said there was no salvation outside of the "church". He said entrance into His ekklesia was the result of salvation. Big difference which the Catholic Church has twisted.

[editor-surveyor]

.
‘Evangelicals’ have no angst about the beginning of the 40 days of Tammuz.

We do wonder why catholics choose to join such pagan sun god worship though.

Make the four points of the sun across your heart and it will all be better though, right?

.

[editor-surveyor]

.
>> “Acts 20:7, “On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread” <<

.
That was at sundown, the beginning of the “first day of the week,” obviously Saturday evening by the pagan calendar.

God’s days run from sundown to sundown.

The apostles broke bread at an evening meal, as they regathered right after the end of the Sabbath.

[editor-surveyor]

.
By participating in the pagan celebration of the 40 days of Tammuz, you are mixing paganism with the gospel of your savior!

Hardly a thing to be proud of.

.

[editor-surveyor]

.
That “cross” marks the four points of the sun, a tenet of sun god worship.
.

[bike800]

I see nothing in there that forbids what I am doing.. I place a wreath I my front door as a symbol of undue ding love that God has for his people...I don’t bow down and worship the wreath itself....heavy co spy I know

[editor-surveyor]

.
The wreath is pagan, so you mix pagan worship with your savior?

That is what is wrong.

[CA Conservative]

So I assume you do not celebrate Christmas in December since it coincides with the pagan celebration of Saturnalia?

[editor-surveyor]

.
I celebrate the actual birth of my savior at Succot.

Yehova’s appointed days are vital shadows of important future events that show us how to know what is coming, and how to recognize it. He doesn’t keep secrets from his elect, only from those in darkness.

Christmas is not Biblical, and is pagan tradition in every way, which is exactly what Moses was writing about.

.

[Elsie]

Brilliant!

No Rahab, No Mary...

Matthew 1:5

[Elsie]

A wonderful, ancient tradition.

The practice of which is spelled out in great detail in Acts chapter 15.

[Elsie]

We honor the mother of Christ, we do not worship her.

(Them Prots are sure easily fooled; aren't they!!)

The Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help or sought your intercession, was left unaided.

Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother.

To you I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word incarnate, despise not my petitions, but, in your mercy, hear and answer me.

Amen.

[Elsie]

I will leave this one alone...

[Elsie]

Perfect product placement!