Dear brothers, what everyone is avoiding is whether God’s providence is behind the fire. Not one reformer would have failed to say “yes.” That we refuse to see this is proof of our indifference to what the reformers believed, preached, and taught concerning the mass’s idolatry, and their condemnation of everything connected with it which, if you’ve ever actually been inside a cathedral and noted the symbolism of the architecture, you can’t fail to see. Why is it that speaking of God’s agency in contemporary events that are notorious is a bridge too far for men who claim the reformers as their fathers? I think we’re deists. Love,
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True.
I’ve been in a cathedral but once - somewhere in Central America (Tegucigalpa?) as a kid in the early 90s. The gold… the statues… I remember my dad telling me this was different religion than ours. I think they had a corpse in a gold casket…
I think what’s hard about seeing “God’s agency in contemporary events that are notorious” is that we dont know enough about what he’s trying to say. In part because we dont know our Bibles well enough. We also lack the spine to draw inferences upon things without some type of sureness - that we are led by Science - to believe is necessary for all knowledge. I’m bad about this… not blaming others.
I just think its hard to say this is a judgment upon France specifically or Roman Catholicism or even France’s (shall we say) “storied” history with Roman Catholicism. Though its probably safe to read this as God’s comment upon all of that and more. As protestants we should look to our own un-Holy practices and idolatries - the sinner’s prayer and our modern super-apostles to name a couple - and recognize the perfection of God and our lowly place in his plan and our fundamental need for Him.
We see Notre Dame burn and we should guard against idolatry in our own churches, for they will perish too apart from God’s mercy and grace.
But I stick to my initial assertion that the pulpit and pen article was immature, self-righteous and just a wee bit virtue-signaling.
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Thanks for the comments, Nathan. Mostly agree. Love,
Certainly God’s providence governs all events, but I think it is a mistake for either us or the Reformers to think we can confidently discern God’s purposes absent special revelation, and I don’t think that makes me a deist. When it comes to the burning of Notre Dame, I’d recommend going no farther than the message of the tower of Siloam, which I see has already been mentioned by Doug Wilson, as linked by @Kyriosity above.
Edited to add: when we had severe wildfires in San Diego that burned quite a few homes, the following week my pastor preached that we should see disasters like that as warnings of the final judgement and let them move us to repentance.
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To refer to the Tower of Siloam is not to speak as the reformers. It’s completely safe, although I haven’t read Doug’s piece so I don’t know his exact point. What I do know is the exchange over the Tower of Siloam and the man born blind is trotted out by every Christian today who wants to think it is sinful to declare the meaning of sovereign acts of God’s in-breaking judgment against notorious evils (New Orleans Mardi Gras, New York’s World Trade Center, AIDS, a drunk driver dying at the wheel) while continuing to declare sovereign acts of God’s blessing and mercy and grace over notorious acts of his merciful providence (healings, escapes, church’s growing and getting rich, etc.).
It is without question the reformers would have spoken of ND burning as a judgment of God on a conspicuous and notorious evil. Has it become less of a conspicuous and notorious symbol of evil today? Again and again, I realize no one reads the reformers, and even those who do have no respect for them and dismiss their doctrine in a cavalier manner.
The real question isn’t whether the reformers were wrong to make a habit of naming God’s purposes in his in-breaking judgments of notorious wickedness and evils, but what excuse we’ll try to give God when He calls us to account for gagging ourselves with the explanation that we were so humble we didn’t think we should dare to speak for Him or declare His purposes?
Notre Dame is a notorious symbol of the evil of medieval Roman Catholicism built on the back of a wholly mercantile system of salvation almost entirely devoid of the free offer of the Gospel and faith alone in Jesus Christ. In fact, one could argue there was only one single greater symbol of this evil at the time of the Reformers, and that was the Vatican itself rebuilding St. Peter’s Basilica by the very indulgences that figured so centrally in the restoration of the true Church.
It doesn’t really bother me if laymen declare God’s in-breaking judgments aren’t to be spoken of as such. It doesn’t even really bother me if ruling elders say such things. What makes me gnash my teeth is when pastors cower before such ignorance and faithlessness, gagging themselves precisely at the point of Gospel opportunity and witness that God from His great kindness and mercy has provided us.
Sure, someone may argue with my view of ND, but not a single person arguing against anyone declaring God’s purposes in ND’s burning said a single thing about the massive deaths caused by the sodomites’ bathhouses a quarter-century ago, either. All the reformers would pity us in our faithlessness. Love,
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When disaster strikes, should pastors preach that it is God’s warning to sinners and call people to repentance? Yes.
When there is a clear cause-and-effect relationship, can we say that the latter is a judgment on the former (drunk driving and death, bathhouses and AIDS)? Yes.
But did Notre Dame burn in 2019 specifically because of the sins of Roman Catholicism hundreds of years earlier? I don’t see how we can be confident of that. Apparently the relics were saved, which I think are much worse than the building itself. Roman churches in France are largely empty these days, which seems like a more obvious judgement from God than the burning of Notre Dame. I suppose a Roman Catholic could argue the opposite – that Notre Dame burned as a judgement for people leaving the Roman church.
I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t speak of God’s in-breaking judgments as such, but rather that we shouldn’t presume to attribute them to specific sins unless there is a cause-and-effect relationship.
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The high places were just stones, indeed. But they were stones that were to be torn down precisely because of what they represented. They represented pagan worship. They were constructed in rebellion against God, in the name of false worship. These were the places where lawless men made their false sacrifices to demons, and God hated it.
“ You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way.” - Deuteronomy 12:3-4
God didn’t say to leave the high places and pillars and beautifully carved images around so Israel could appreciate their aesthetic appeal. He said to get rid of them. The Lord is a jealous God.
It may sound crazy to many folks to hear the Catholic mass associated with the pagan high places of Canaan, but any Protestant who has studied Catholicism and compared it against the gospel will quickly note that the mass is a pagan practice. At each mass, a Catholic priest presumes to conjure up Christ and slay him once again for sinners. In Catholicism, the atoning work of the Lamb who was slain once for sinners is not enough — he must be slain again and again. And this practice dishonors the Lord Jesus. This practice lies about the gospel. It is false worship. And Catholic architecture is constructed precisely around this false worship, just as the high places of old were.
Make no mistake: Catholicism keeps people out of heaven — not at the level of ecclesiology, or some small doctrinal disagreement of secondary importance, but precisely at the level of gospel. The Catholic leadership claims to hold the keys of the kingdom, but they neither allow others to come in, nor do they go in themselves.
If we are willing to defend cathedrals simply because of their aesthetic beauty, then I do believe we have lost our backbones. We have forgotten how to blush. Will we love artwork more than we love souls.
Would you appreciate the aesthetics of the iron maiden or the stretching rack? Do these not cause us also to marvel at the ingenuity of man? Of course you don’t. Because they represent torment and death. And I ask you, does not the Catholic altar in its gospel-defying worship not lead men to the same thing as these?
The righteous men of old were indignant at the high places. There were several kings of Judah who were regarded to have done what is right and pleasing in the sight of the Lord, but only a few were willing to go so far as to tear down the high places (2 Kings 18:3-4, cf. 1 Kings 15:14). These were the men willing to not only follow God themselves, but to publicly indict the culture at the point of their idolatry. And that demands courage.
Separating the aesthetics of the Catholic mass from the meaning of the Catholic mass only demonstrates that the Catholic mass doesn’t offend us like it should.
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Dear Joel,
I think we almost agree. God bless you. Love,
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Also our minds. Love,
Then what are we to do with the thousands or millions of Reformed church buildings that burned between Calvin’s day and this past Monday? Were they greater sinners than these?
Were there conspicuous and notorious sins in any of those churches? Then the response should be the same.
Were there not? Then the response should be “Do you suppose they were greater sinners? Unless you repent you will likewise perish.”
Edit to add: And if it is yourself that has suffered tragedy, the sin needn’t be conspicuous and notorious for you to see the connection and repent of it.
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That’s all very helpful. Thank you.
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