John Milton's disestablishmentarianism for today...

Theo Hobson

Counterantidisestablishmentarianist?

(Image from theohobson.co.uk)

I don't really know much about this guy, but we lack a lot in common . . . our hair, for instance.

We also have an abundance of something positive in common, an appreciation for John Milton as poet and thinker, but Hobson rates rather higher in terms of cultural impact than do I -- a mere voice in the wilderness -- for he publishes for Times Online, where just a day or two ago, an article of his on Milton appeared: "Credo: Milton’s vision for Church and State is our answer: The religious thought of a 17th century thinker shows how faith and liberalism may be reconciled" (October 31, 2008).

Hobson -- perhaps appropriately for a fellow named "Theo" -- writes as a theologian in the Anglican tradition but argues for disestablishing the Church of England, a radical move that he supports by pointing to Milton the religious thinker:

Provoked into religious writing by the High-Church revolution of Charles I and his archbishop William Laud, Milton complained that the bishops were gaining political power that was unaccountable, and attacked the feudal ethos of the established Church. When Parliament won the Civil War, Milton praised the MPs' resolve: against the odds they had heroically served "religion and their native liberty. Which two things God hath inseparably knit together, and hath disclosed to us, that they who seek to corrupt our religion, are the same that would enthrall our civil liberty."

Hobson is quoting from Milton's tract An Apology for Smectymnuus, but he likes Milton's Areopagitica just as much, for he supports his argument for disestablishing the Church of England by quoting from it Milton's resounding line:

"Woe to us, while, thinking thus to defend the gospel, we are found the persecutors."

Not that the Anglican Church is persecuting anybody these days, despite being a religion of peace, but Hobson sounds better when quoting Milton than when articulating his views in his own words:

Hello! I'm a theologian who believes that Christianity must move in a post-ecclesial direction -- that means I don't like any form of institutional church. Down with organised religion! Down with orthodoxy! There ought to be lots of free-style Jesus Christ-communication, in which 'worship' merges with 'art'.

Yeah, okay, I guess that's fine for some folks . . . but having grown up in a profoundly low-church tradition myself, I find much of Evangelicalism too weak on ecclesiology. Advocate a weak ecclesiology, and you'll probably not get many stunningly beautiful church buildings "in which 'worship' merges with 'art'" (and why are 'worship' and 'art' in scare quotes?), though you probably will get churches in which individuals take a greater part in the service, as we see in American evangelicalism's "free-style Jesus Christ-communication."

Hobson therefore tells us that he stands for an "explicitly secular state that treat[s] all religions equally, . . . mean[ing] the disestablishment of the Church of England -- a move [that he finds] necessary to renew Christianity and free it from its aura of official privilege."

From looking at the American example, we see that Hobson may have a point, for Christianity has a rather powerful voice in American society . . . though I suspect that Hobson wouldn't quite approve of that, either.

At any rate, go to his homepage to find more about him and his recent book, Milton's Vision: The Rebirth of Christian Liberty.

Dante's puttana sciolta

Ecclesia: Pura or Puttana?

Münster Church in Freiberg, Germany

(Image from Wikipedia)

Imagery presenting the Church as a whore appears in Dante's Divine Comedy, or so I learned yesterday through my scholarly stumblings as I got my feet entangled in the internet.

Dr. Edoardo Crisafulli has published an article that draws our attention to Dante's use of this imagery (and to how English and American translators handled it). His interesting article, "Dante's 'Shameless Whore': Sexual Imagery in Anglo-American Translations of the Comedy," can be found in TTR: traduction, terminologie, rédaction, Volume 14, numéro 1, 1er semestre 2001.

The central passage in Dante occurs in Purgatorio, XXXII. 148-150 and reads as follows:

Sicura, quasi rocca in alto monte,
seder sovresso una puttana sciolta
m'apparve con le ciglia intorno pronte.

Crisafulli translates this as:

Secure as a fortress on a high mountain,
before me sat a shameless whore
with eyes glancing in all directions.

He then comments:

In the verses above, Dante describes a procession in Earthly Paradise in which there is a chariot representing the Church. He alludes again to the prophetical language of John the Evangelist: the "puttana sciolta" (shameless or loose whore) on the Church's chariot is the meretrix magna of the Apocalypse (17, 1-5), who sits on the beast and fornicates with the kings. The second part of this canto, therefore, is connected to Inferno XIX.

Crisafulli had already called attention to this passage from Inferno XIX, verses 106-108, which he quotes and translates:

Di voi pastor s'accorse il Vangelista,
quando colei che siede sopra l'acque
puttaneggiar coi regi a lui fu vista.

It was shepherds like you the Evangelist had noticed
when he saw her, who sits upon the waters,
a-whoring with the kings.

Crisafulli notes that "According to Saint John the Evangelist, the whore stands for a dissolute Imperial Rome," but he emphasizes that "In Dante she represents a corrupt Church." In Dante's view, according to Crisafulli, the Church's corruption stems from "the belief that spiritual and temporal power should be vested in the same person." Dante, by contrast, "put forward the doctrine that Pope and Emperor should be independent of each other and exercise their authorities in distinct spheres: spiritual and temporal."

Crisafulli observes that "Like his contemporaries, Dante uses the metaphor of marriage to describe the sacred union between the Church and its spiritual office," and he adds that Dante's metaphor goes back to Christian writers of the first century, who saw the Church as the bride of her husband Christ, and he cites 2 Corinthians 11:2 and Ephesians 5:21-32 as sources.

Oddly, Crisafulli seems not to know that these two texts, 2 Corinthians and Ephesians, are attributed by the Church to Paul, for he then adds that "St. Paul, too, uses the image of the Church as Christ's bride in the new Testament."

But he helpfully notes that "mystic marriage with Christ" recurs as a theme in medieval texts, with Christ appearing as a bridegroom and the Church as the bride.

Yet, this bridal metaphor conjures up images of adultery and prostitution:

Clergymen who sell or obtain an ecclesiastical office by fraudulent means, Dante argues, prostitute a gift of God for money. The Roman Catholic Church -- the bride of Christ -- has become a "whore" because she has betrayed her spouse for thirst of wealth and power (temporal dominions).

Well, I don't want to go through the entire article, quoting passages, for this blog entry is already quite full of Crisafulli, and the point has been made anyway. Whoever it might have been who supposedly first uttered those pregnant words, "The Church is a whore, but she's my mother," the image itself was widespread and well known in the Middle Ages, as attested by Dante's use of the imagery in his Divine Comedy.

But until Martin Luther, despite this common image of the Church as whore, Western Christendom remained unsplit. I can imagine Luther picking up on this imagery and crying out like a prophet, "The Church is a whore!"

To which, Erasmus might reply, "The Church is a whore, but she is my mother!" Upon further reflection, he might repeat for emphasis, "Yes, the Church is a whore," and then add for Luther, "but that whore is the bride of Christ and your mother, too, and you have no right to abandon her."

But this dialogue is merely in my imagination...

"The church is a whore...

Whore of Babylon

Riding the seven-headed Beast.

Russian Engraving from 1800s

(Image from Wikipedia)

. . . but she's my mother."

I read these words this morning for the first time in my life. I'm pretty sure that I've never heard them quoted before either, which surprises me since this is the sort of shocking remark that ought to have come to my attention already.

Well, the quote came to my attention early this morning, about 3:30 a.m., as I was reading an online article, "Why the Church Is Important," excerpted in Christianity Today from chapter six of Tony Campolo's Letters to a Young Evangelical (Basic Books, 2006), where it can be found on page 68.

Campolo attributes the quote to Augustine of Hippo, which I found even more shocking, for Augustine already had a mother, Monica, whom he considered a saint -- which leaves me very skeptical that he actually ever uttered such a thing in the form quoted by Campolo.

So, I Googled the expression "The church is a whore" and found a couple of minor variants --"The church is a whore, but she's still my mother" and "The church is a whore, but she's my mother all the same" -- and a handful of plausible and implausible sources but usually either Augustine or Luther. The bawdiness of the quote reminds me more of Luther than of Augustine, but given Luther's context -- leaving the mother church -- would he have uttered such words?

A much more elaborate rendering -- in a blog post all on its own -- reads:

"Yes, the Church is a whore; but that whore is the bride of Christ and your mother, and you have no right to abandon her."

I found this variant on the blog See Life Differently, who attributed it to "Anonymous," but that seems unlikely because it's a rather elaborate thing for "Anonymous" to say. Backing me up is RS (aka Ryan), who posted a comment informing us that "This post isn't anonymous and I know who said it!!!" But reticent Ryan didn't say who.

For what it's worth, this "Anonymous" version sounds less like Luther -- who surely would never have counseled anyone not to abandon the church -- and more like Augustine.

I can imagine an Old Testament inspiration to the underlying meaning -- the book of the prophet Hosea comes to mind (cf. Hosea 1.2, 2.2, 3.1, et al.) -- but can anyone soundly document who actually first uttered the words "The church is a whore"?