Decadence and the Word, Part I

In Luther's Day the sacraments reached their highest point of decadence. That statement is of course a shortcut; the sacraments have never been decadent. It was man's misuse of them for power, money, and control that sparked Luther's revolt against the Roman hierarchy. It was the system that had become decadent. Luther reached back into pre-sacramental history and pulled the Word forward to create a revolution.

I want to suggest that we are at a similar turning point in history, only instead of the sacraments, it is the Word that has become decadent. Again, a shortcut. The Word in itself is truth and power. But after 500 hundred years of Word-centered Protestantism, it should be obvious that there is decadence in the church's use of the Word. I want to suggest two manifestations of this decadence in this and the next blog.

I want to call the first Legalism (the Word without the Spirit), but I am instead going to use the term Abstraction, defined as the substitution of chosen principles for relationship, or the exaltation of the indicative mood over the imperative (Rosenstock).

Modern, Reformational, Enlightenment man believes the indicative mood is the "normal" mood, the mood of reason, reality, and objectivity. It is detached and dispassionate. The exaltation of the indicative means that all biblical truth can be systematized , and the highest knowledge of God is doctrinal. Those who see the indicative as normal are suspicious of the imperative, which creates demands and immediacy, heat instead of cool abstractions.

But life is simply not lived in the indicative. Life is a response to major imperatives which shape us and define us. We are shaped without our consent before we learn to think abstractly. The doctor slaps us and says, Breathe!" We don't ask for this new world outside the womb; it is thrust upon us. For years we are told, "come and eat", "chew with your mouth shut", "get up and get dressed." We are baptized (or dedicated) and told to renounce the devil and all his works before we offer any consent in the matter. Those imperatives are spoken by persons or a Person, by a Thou opposite us, whose imperatives tell us who we are (Buber). No man becomes who he is in a vacuum, outside relationship to another. No abstract "It" or principle can awaken us at the depth of the call of the Thou.

The imperatives in our lives are the prelude and backdrop to the subjunctive phase--the phase of probability, of possibility, of "maybe", or "can" or "can't" or "will" or "won't." It is the time to be shaped by our imperatives or renounce them. As we get older, we conquer or fail, or both. That means that the longest part of our living is in the uncertainty of the subjunctive, an uncertainty marked by both despair and ecstasy.

After the subjunctive mood comes the perfect tense. Paul concludes his farewell to Timothy with, " I have kept the faith." Note the use of the perfect, the tense of completion. In the perfect mode we sing of victory, weep for losses, and cast all into the lap of a sovereign God.

After the perfect phase, we write our memoirs, which are an analysis of imperatives, subjunctives, and the perfect tense in our lives. Memoirs are in the indicative mood. Note that the indicative occurs at the end of our lives, not at the beginning. The folly of modern man is that he writes his memoirs before he has lived. The notion that a man can sit in an ivory tower and choose what he wants to be is a denial of reality, and a heavy burden. A man is not defined by abstractions, but by a divine call and by his gifting in relation to other men.

Post-modern man questions the abstractions of the indicative. Theological constructs and lists for moral behavior do not meet the need for a Voice, for a Love that stands over against him with an imperative beyond personal choice, with the lyrics of the subjunctive, and with the completeness of the perfect tense. The Christ that the church professes meets the cry of such men. It is time to move beyond abstractions. (See Gen. 3:9, Isa. 40:6, Eph. 4:7.)