Graceful Practices

Amy Plantinga Pauw

Covenant Network Conference
Nov. 3, 2005
Memphis, TN

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Shaping Communities

This afternoon we will be looking at the practices of shaping communities. As a Reformed theologian, sooner or later I find myself reading John Calvin. In particular I have been looking at his letters of Ecclesiastical Advice, where he deals with the challenges of shaping Christian community and in particular with qualifications for ministerial leadership.3 His sixteenth-century Genevan context is very different from ours, but, I will argue, supplies some provocative analogies. Calvin was a second-generation reformer. The break with the church of Rome, which was not the original intent of sixteenth-century reform movements, was pretty much decided by then. So Calvin’s most pressing concern was to figure out what an alternative church order might look like.

The perception of scandalous failings in the established church significantly shaped Calvin’s ecclesiology from the beginning. He had to accommodate the conviction that dissent from the visible church in his time was a Christian duty because of the corruption of key Christian practices. According to Calvin, God has entrusted the church with the “power of the keys” (Matt. 16:19), but Christian communities can so abuse this trust that in them “Christ lies hidden, half buried, the gospel overthrown, piety scattered, the worship of God nearly wiped out.”4 Christian practices can become so corrupted that the life and health of the church is imperiled. Thus a Reformed doctrine of the church is rightly marked by a stark recognition of the church’s fallibility.

Calvin’s approach rejects the kind of restorationist wistfulness you sometimes find in appeals to return to established spiritual practices of the church. In Calvin’s view, while the great company of Christian saints deserves our respect and gratitude, they suffered from human infirmity and weakness as much as we do, and provide no perfect blueprint for Christian community. The words of the 1560 Scots Confession reflect Calvin’s realism about the church: “We do not receive uncritically whatever has been declared to men under the name of the general councils, for it is plain that, being human, some of them have manifestly erred, and that in matters of great weight and importance.” Significant elements from the church’s past may deserve retrieval, but no “policy or order of ceremonies can be appointed for all ages, times, and places.”5 For example, Calvin thought that the structures of church office were relative to particular historical contexts. Whereas in the early church the office of evangelist was vital, he asserted that “in duly constituted churches it has no place.”6 Contemporary Reformed communities would take issue with Calvin on this point. But they would agree with him that the central Reformed task is not the retrieval or maintenance of a historic rule regarding church office but the prayerful, communal discernment of the present form of ecclesial faithfulness, which may involve significant institutional change.

Calvin was wary of extravagant claims for the holiness of clergy. Even church leaders have countless weaknesses and are justified not by their holiness but by God’s grace. Ministers of the gospel do not necessarily tower over other Christians in wisdom or spiritual maturity. Calvin’s frank appraisal of the ordinariness of pastors bears repeating: “when a puny man risen from the dust speaks in God’s name, at this point we best evidence our piety and obedience toward God if we show ourselves teachable toward his minister, although he excels us in nothing.”7 American Presbyterianism’s big advance on Calvin’s view of ministers is that in the last fifty years or so we’ve affirmed that God also raises puny women from the dust.

As the body of Christ in the world, the church is a broken and diseased body, mirroring the ills and divisions of the larger society. Yet even when its practices become corrupted, the church remains a mysteriously powerful channel of God’s grace to us. “I would even be in despair,” says Calvin, “if it did not occur to me that the building up of the church is always God’s work, and that he will cause it to prosper by his own virtue even if all supports should fail us.”8 The church is a nursery of piety, where Christians are schooled by worship, teaching, and discipline into deeper communion with Christ and each other. The earthly community of believers is God’s gracious accommodation to our spiritual weakness. In union with Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the cracked earthen vessel of the church continues to be a means of grace—a locus for worship and for personal and social transformation.

As Presbyterians, we have inherited this understanding of the church: a fallible body of believers led by ordinary people, called to faithful discernment about the appropriate form of their communal practices, and resting on God’s abundant grace not their own holiness. We share Calvin’s conviction that spiritual practices can get corrupted, and that even good practices need reform as the needs of the church change.

Let’s look more closely at Calvin’s ecclesiastical advice. He is writing to a Reformed community to make the argument “that celibacy should not be required in a minister.”9 He starts his argument on a conciliatory note. There is certainly “a reasonable basis” for advising celibacy. Marriage can be a distraction from the Lord’s work and continence in sexual matters lends “not a little dignity to the holy ministry.” Furthermore, Calvin is very pleased that the church authorities are not using “pressure or tyranny to force celibacy upon those who hold ecclesiastical office.” That would be wrong, Calvin thinks. Instead, the church authorities are trying to convince ministerial candidates of what they “judge to be in the best interests of the church.” Yet Calvin respectfully disagrees with their judgment. “Celibacy has its own disadvantages,” Calvin insists, and “these are considerable and not all of one type.” He clarifies that he is not yet talking about “the difficulty of sexual continence.” “Even if it were agreed that nothing is more liberating than celibacy and nothing more impeding than marriage, it still should not keep us from taking thought for need. It is certain that many who are otherwise suited for the ministry cannot usefully do without marriage.” Calvin’s view is that celibacy and marriage can each present hindrances for ministers, and it is best to assess individual need, rather than making a blanket policy.

Calvin has another argument. “In the second place, I reply that the Lord has provided, best of all, the gifts that properly adorn his ministry, and we see that celibacy is not among them.” Calvin is worried that the church’s ordination practices have become corrupted. “There was no law requiring celibacy in the early church, but an absurd admiration for it became so strong that marriage was condemned as shameful for bishops. Afterward, the severity of a law gradually crept in and has produced countless forms of evils for us. What good it has brought I cannot judge,” says Calvin. “I always fear that it is dangerous for celibacy to be honored extravagantly, for good men may be frightened away from marriage, even when their need of it is urgent.” So even though the church authorities to whom Calvin is writing are not commanding celibacy “by a definite law,” Calvin is worried that they are “in effect establishing a law” when they “consider married men of less value, as if they have lost some adornment.” If celibacy is not among the gifts that God has provided to adorn the church’s ministry, then it is wrong to consider people who lack this gift as being of less value. In Calvin’s view, the rule of celibacy has produced countless forms of evils in the church, and must be reconsidered.

Calvin has one more argument. Even if the church authorities find that encouraging celibacy is not “an obstacle for [them] at present,” that is not reason enough to continue this practice. “Austerity” about this matter, he says, “can be a great obstacle to future generations, for whom, as you know, we must take thought.” We should take care lest our unduly austere practices exert pressure and tyranny on future generations of Christians who may be living in quite different circumstances.

Calvin is not arguing that celibacy is bad. He is worried that celibacy, while a good in itself, can become an idol, a law which Christians used to justify themselves, to proclaim their own righteousness, and to tyrannize others. He sees all kinds of practical problems with it, does not think that God requires it for ministry, and is worried about setting a bad precedent for future generations.

But in reforming the church’s practices around ministerial leadership, Calvin was not given a blank slate. Pastoral celibacy had been the accepted western rule for centuries by Calvin’s time. Celibacy was exemplified by Jesus himself, advocated by the apostle Paul, and revered as a mark of Christian holiness. It was an established rule in the practice of shaping church communities. So let’s try to imagine the kind of criticism Calvin and other Protestant reformers invited from traditionalists when they challenged this rule of celibacy. “What do you mean that celibacy is not required of all who are called to be ministers? Surely it works the other way around—if you don’t have the ability to live a celibate life, you weren’t called to be a minister in the first place. What gives you the right to lower the church’s standards of holiness? Should anyone with what you call an “urgent need for marriage” be a pastor in the first place? An “urgent need for marriage” is not something we should even be talking about in connection with the pastoral vocation. It points to a moral deficit. It degrades the whole notion of priestly calling. This only confirms our suspicions about you self-appointed “reformers”—you are an undisciplined, immoral lot. Celibacy requirements go against your libertine inclinations and so you want to overturn centuries of church tradition. Look, we welcome undisciplined people with an “urgent need for marriage” to be baptized members of the church. But if you are a self-acknowledged, unrepentant, practicing heterosexual, there is no place for you in the priesthood.”

            As I look around the Presbyterian church today I don’t see much “absurd admiration” for celibacy anymore. If there is anything that is “honored extravagantly” in our church context, it is heterosexual marriage. In fact, I suspect it has become what celibacy was for the church in Calvin’s time. All the research tells us that what Protestant churches now see as the ideal pastoral candidate is a married man.Just as Calvin worried about the rule of celibacy in the sixteenth century, we must be concerned about the way we treat heterosexual marriage. Do we exhibit “absurd admiration” for it as a mark of ministerial fitness? Do we equate honoring heterosexual marriage with upholding sexual morality? Do we consider unmarried people of less value, as if they have lost some adornment? Though we are not tyrannical about requiring heterosexual marriage for ministers, are we letting “the severity of a law” creep in? Is our honoring of heterosexual marriage frightening good people away from pursuing the calling God has given them?

Don’t get me wrong. I am a great supporter of heterosexual marriage. I myself have been happily married for 23 years and I am the mother of three children. I am in agreement with Gene Rogers that a healthy marriage is a great gift, and that the commitment and sacrifice that marriage requires can advance us on our path of sanctification. But just as Calvin worried about celibacy, I worry that the honoring of heterosexual marriage, while a good in itself, can become an idol, a law which Christians use to justify themselves, to proclaim their own righteousness. We see this kind of attitude exemplified in the recent comment to a group of Christians by Indiana Representative John Hostettler: “The picture of marriage is the picture of Christian salvation.”While it’s rare to hear Christians say it that bluntly, I suspect it is not an uncommon assumption. We need to hear Calvin’s caution about extravagantly honoring something that God does not require for ministry and that sets a damaging precedent for the future of the church.

From our vantage point, the preference for celibacy among the church authorities whom Calvin counseled looks like a way of avoiding a frank discussion of ministers’ emotional and physical needs and desires. “We do not know what to do with the relational needs and desires of ministers, so let’s just try to keep those who acknowledge them and do not feel they have received the gift of celibacy out of the ministry altogether. It’s simpler and less awkward all round.” Many church folk today still feel the same way: honest, sober conversation about relational matters is awkward and uncomfortable. The fact that the larger western society is emotionally stunted and sex-saturated makes honest, sober conversation more, rather than less, difficult. And I think that helps explain the strong Protestant bias toward married clergy. The assumption is that with married ministers, none of these delicate questions have to come up. We can just assume that all is well in these sensitive areas and focus on important things like their administrative skills. We of course know better than that. Through painful experience the church has found that neither celibacy nor heterosexual marriage is a guarantee of sexual and emotional health and personal holiness. Questions about relational health and holiness are ones that all Christians must face and wrestle with.

It seems to me that without this kind of conversation, the move to change ordination standards is incoherent. We have to be willing to answer the question the Peace, Unity and Purity taskforce asks: “How does God’s gracious drama of creation, reconciliation, and redemption work itself out in the lives of baptized gay and lesbian persons who are committed to exclusive, covenanted relationships?” As in the case of covenanted heterosexual relationships, we must, in Andrew Sullivan’s words, “avoid glamorizing and idealizing the whole venture,” recognizing that “uniting sexual longing and emotional commitment is a troubling and troublesome mission” for everyone, gay or straight.10 But just as Calvin was certain that “many who are otherwise suited for the ministry cannot usefully do without marriage,” so we assert that many who are suited for the ministry can usefully do without heterosexual marriage, including those who are single, divorced, or in exclusive, covenanted same-sex relationships.

In reflecting on these matters, we have to preserve Calvin’s insight that both the present needs of the individual and the long term needs of the community must be taken into account. By needs of the individual, Calvin includes what he calls “the needs of nature.” He thinks that in establishing the standards for ministers, the church must be wary of making rules that attempt to abolish the laws of nature. What are these laws of nature? Calvin gives a rather unconvincing example. Appealing to I Corinthians 11, Calvin says that when Paul “teaches that it is shameful and unbecoming for women to go into public places with their heads uncovered, he is telling us to take advice from nature as to whether it is proper for women to be in public with their hair cut short, and finally he concludes that nature does not allow it.”11This example is unconvincing because it exposes the fact that our understandings of what “nature allows” are culturally conditioned and so change over time. I daresay that few people on either side of the current ordination debate would agree with the apostle Paul that it goes against nature for women to be in public with their hair cut short. But Calvin is right in that we do need to pay attention to the laws of nature, as best as we can ascertain them. For many of us who advocate a change in ordination standards, a decisive issue has been our acceptance of the evolving scientific and cultural understandings of nature, leading us to conclude that consistent same-sex desires are not “against nature” for some of God’s children.

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3 - John Calvin, Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Advice, trans. Mary Beaty and Benjamin Farley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991). (return)

4 - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster,1960), 4.2.12. (return)

5 - PCUSA Book of Confessions, 3:20. (return)

6 - Calvin, Institutes, 4.3.4. (return)

7 - Calvin, Institutes, 4.3.1. (return)

8 - Calvin, Ecclesiastical Advice, 114. (return)

9 - Calvin, Ecclesiastical Advice, 112-116. The quotations from Calvin in the next three paragraphs are all taken from these pages. See also Paul E. Capetz, “Binding and Unbinding the Conscience: Luther's Significance for the Plight of a Gay Protestant,” Theology and Sexuality 16 (March 2002): 67-96. (return)

10 - Andrew Sullivan, “Alone Again, Naturally,” in Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Reading, ed. Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 287. (return)

11 - Calvin, Ecclesiastical Advice, 128. (return)