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.”

[Salvation]

Thank you.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“Ash Wednesday worship, like Palm Sunday worship, is a Christian tradition. “

Palm Sunday is rooted in the Jewish Feasts. The celebration of that feast was why people were carrying palms and used them to welcome Christ as king in the triumphal entry.

Ash Wednesday has no Jewish Feast connection, nor no practice before 100 ad. In that sense, no, it also has no Christian roots.

At some point after the Scriptures were written, the Apostles died and time moved on quite a way, some Christians began to do this. It arose later. I suspect its origin was pagan religion incorporated into Rome’s version of Christianity.

At this point, some Christian religions do it. It is certainly a tradition for them now.

[xzins]

There is so much we do that is based on sanctified tradition. Pulpits, church buildings, organs, pianos, sermons, testimonies, special singing, altar calls (an endless list, really). It is the same with calendar traditions. There is no place I know of in scripture where we're commanded to worship on Sunday morning, although gathering on the first day of the week can be demonstrated. Just to be really frank with you, I can think of a non-religious reason for fasting toward the end of winter, and that is simply that it would be a good time to do it in regard to stretching food supplies. To use that as a good time also to contemplate Christ and his steadfast progress toward the cross and to engage in sackcloth, ashes, and bearing one's cross is not a bad thing to do. It strikes me as a positive tradition.

[xzins]

You are welcome.

[Responsibility2nd]

What denomination do you attend?

[Mom MD]

LCMS. conservative lutheran, very bible centered and evangelical. I also know of several other evangelical independent bible churches in the area with ash wednesday services. Acknowledging lent does not make one RC or not evangelical.

[Responsibility2nd]

I’m sorry, but I disagree that the Lutheran Church is evangelical.

The idea of following man made doctrines like Ash Wednesday is too questionable for traditional evangelical churches.

[Mom MD]

Disagree all you want. It doesn’t change facts one bit. And just so you know we are the conservative branch and have nothing to do with the ELCA and their craziness.

It matters not at all to ones salvation if one celebrates and recognizes specific holidays and rememberances or not. I happen to find it enriches my worship, YMMV. However I think you would find the doctrine of my denomination straight down the middle.

Lent is focused on the time Christ began His final journey to Jerusalem, and is a time of somber reflection. In my church it has nothing to do with eating fish or giving things up. The focus is on Christ as it should be and not on anything the believer does or does not do. Often the characters and motivations of the key players in the passion are studied, and the focus is on how God used all of them and how they responded to their part in the events, whether they believed in Christ or not.

If you have not been to a Good Friday service you might just find it very powerful, you might not. Same with an Easter service. Those that celebrate religious holidays are no less saved or evangelical than those that do not. Do not look down on certain observances because Satan was able to mimic and try to corrupt the celebrations, look at the motivation and Who the celebration is focusing on. You might be pleasantly surprised. (In some denominations, not all)

[CraigEsq]

>>But trust me. There is NOTHING Evangelical about a Lutheran Church.

I’ve heard it said that Lutherans are catholic but not Catholic, evangelical but not Evangelical, and fundamentalist but not Fundamentalist.

[Heart-Rest]

"Palm Sunday is rooted in the Jewish Feasts. The celebration of that feast was why people were carrying palms and used them to welcome Christ as king in the triumphal entry. Ash Wednesday has no Jewish Feast connection, nor no practice before 100 ad. In that sense, no, it also has no Christian roots."

=============================================================

Palm branches were used in Jesus dramatic entry into Jerusalem. The crowd eventually went from shouting "Hosanna!" to "Crucify Him!"

Last year's palm leaves from "Palm Sunday" are collected and burned to make the ashes for this year's "Ash Wednesday", the beginning of "Lent", a special time of sorrow for having turned away from God. There is a symbolic connection.

[DouglasKC]

As for the New Testament, participate in the “breaking of bread”.
On Sunday.
Yep, that’s it.
The rest is just stuff. Acts 20:7, “On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread ..

Not Sunday...study what the greek translated "first day of the week" really means.

[Grateful2God]

And was anyone forcing them to do it? Of course not!!

Somewhere in this thread, the notion that we go around dragging people into church, making them do this, crept in. That is not what we mean by, "imposition of ashes," LOL

Thanks for the post!

[QBFimi]

>> Just another Catholic tradition that some protestants are trying to steal.

Oh, cut it out! What were you doing that was so important that you couldn’t have taken a few minutes to stick out your hand and offer a friendly welcome to anyone you didn’t recognize as being a regular?

[Grateful2God]

Great job- and worth repeating! Jonah was pretty ticked off when the Ninevites were forgiven because of their penance. After all, he had spoken God’s Word to them, then sat waiting for the fire and brimstone to fall. Seems he was more concerned with his reputation than with the welfare of the people. I wonder how much ivy is going to be growing in people’s yards this summer... : )

[Grateful2God]

Read the posts; know the facts; don’t suspect, learn.

[Grateful2God]

Saved the best for last! Praise God and thanks to Him for your new little one! God bless you and your family! :)

[boatbums]

That's funny...I'm not having any "angst" at all today. Now why would Roman Catholics care so much about what non-Catholics do or don't do in their faith?

This article was a dud.

[CyberAnt]

Thank you .. and God Bless you too Virgil.

[Cvengr]

Even more manifest are the upside down crucifix markings of the ashes on the forehead.

I suspect they’ll run to accept the Mark when it arrives.