Fire, Brimstone–and Family
Oh! To be prayed, heard, wept down to Hell, how dreadful is that? You shall be plagued above others, Amos 3.2. Gods hand will follow you, Judg.2.15, and at last you shall die in sin, Ezek.18. 9, 10,. And be cast off for ever, 1 Chron. 29.l9. Jer.16, 12, 13. And go to Hell, though the children of Abraham, Luk. 16.24. Your godly parents will be so far from helping you, that they will rejoyce and bless God for executing Justice upon you to all Eternity; neither your fathers nor the God of your fathers will own you: But oh let it be our prayer and care, that the Lord our God may be with us, as he was with our fathers, let him not leave nor forsake us.
–Eleazar Mather, “A Serious Exhortation of the Present and Succeeding Generation in New-England” ((1671).
As you might imagine, the burdens of being a second generation Puritan were heavy. There were imposing examples to emulate. Eleazar Mather, the son of Richard Mather (and brother of Increase Mather), died at the age of 32 as pastor of the congregational church in Northampton Massachusetts. These were the last words of his last sermon.
Ouch. The last line doesn’t quite make up for the preceding lines–or the preceding paragraphs, for that matter.
The image of parents “who will rejoyce and bless God for executing Justice” upon their wayward children strikes me as stark and terrible –particularly against the background the doctrine of double predestination. It seems particularly foreign to Catholicism, where the intercession of the saints, and Mary, shapes the religious imagination in a very different way, as Bob Imbelli’s post below illustrates. But of course, that tradition is part of what the Puritans rejected.
On the other hand. . . I’ve read a great deal of Puritan sermonizing this summer–and I’ve come to appreciate the Puritans, despite (and in a strange sense because) of passages such as this one.
The particular contribution of the Calvinist strand of Christianity, it strikes me, is the emphasis on the utter sovereignty of God–the manner in which God is beyond all of our categories. All great Christian theologians recognize this, of course–see Aquinas. Nonetheless, in terms of inculcating broader religious sensibilities, it is the Calvinist tradition that is the strongest antidote to what I call “Pottery Barn Christianity,” in which Christ, and God, are treated as the ultimate accessories or celebrity endorsers or life coaches for a cozy Christian “lifestyle.” Some Puritans tried to take the harsh edge off it (e.g., by treating material prosperity as a sign of election), but it is impossible to escape within the basic Calvinist framework.
By the way–it’s not as if Northampton got a respite from fiery sermons with the next minister. Eleazar was succeeded by Solomon Stoddard, the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards. And Stoddard was a master of the “scared into sanctity” school of preaching.
Hi, Cathleen,
I’ve read a lot of Puritan, Pilgrim, Separatist stuff, too. (Many of my ancestors were among those groups.) I’m now reading Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History, by Nick Bunker. Fascinating.
But it’s not all that “foreign to Catholicism”. You’re probably too young to remember the missions that once were preached in parishes. A couple of order priests would come to preach a mission for a week. Stemwinders, Benediction, etc., at night. Sometimes separate nights for men and women.
(I’m almost too young, too, although I caught the tail end of some of that. Preachers famed for making the listeners dissolve into tears, line up at the confessionals, etc.)
I remember in grade school hearing the terrible notion that it is better to have existed and spend eternity in HELL than never to have existed at all. Even by burning and suffering for eternity, we do something for God. (Forget what, exactly. Give evidence of His justice, maybe.)
Cathy –
Oh, Wow! Imagine being in that congregation on that morning!
This diatribe brings up my recurrent question yet again when *should* we judge others? Especially publicly? Obviously, some accusations are necessary, but where to draw the line? And how to do it?
We all meet the problem daily on our blogs: the accusations of lying and dishonesty by people who barely know the names of those they accuse, much less know their states of soul, seems to beg for retaliation. But this poses a practical problem: how to accuse accusers (there’s a retorsion, as JAK calls them) without thereby putting ourselves in their class? (My mother called it “stooping to their level”.) Somehow answering them sweetly doesn’t cut it. The internet needs an answer to this question. (Sign.)
Have the historians (or psychiatrists) ever figured out why the Puritans and Calvinists generally found it necessary to have such a pessimistic view of human nature? Surely Scripture doesn’t account for it all. What were they responding to?
“Pottery Barn Christianity,” I love that expression.
Read this morning in my missalette, a commentary of today’s gospel. From memory: poverty, lowliness is not good in itself, it can lead to envy and hate, but what’s good is placing our trust in God. It’s fine to be wealthy as long as we place our trust in God.
Not the first time I read this kind of comments, insisting that there is nothing wrong with being rich and that we should not feel guilty about our wealth, but it’s particularly strange today given the line “the rich [God] has sent away empty”!
Have you ever made a Jesuit retreat? By the third day you’re supposed to be sunk into a recognition of your sinfulness and need of God’s grace. I was at a retreat once when that this was happening was evident in the afternoon liturgy. All the prayers of the faithful were expressions of sorrow and agony: prayers for the suicidal, for paralytics, for the depressed, etc. The cloud was only dissipated when a Maryknoll priest , only just back from seven yaers in the Far East, offered his petition: “I want us to pray for a couple that we know, from whom we’ve all gotten a great deal of joy. I just heard that they’re not together any more, and I’m sure they’re not happy. So let’s pray for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton!”
There is nothing wrong with a sermon about human weakness and sinfulness as long as it includes St. Paul’s wonderful statement: “Where sin abounded, grace has super-abounded” (Rom 5:20).
If I’m not mistaken, St. Thomas Aquinas has something similar about the saints in glory finding joy in the justice with which the evil are punished in hell.
Just to clarify–I know that the strands of fire and brimstone are in Catholic thought too. But the idea of parents being pleased at the condign eternal suffering of their children–that’s what got me.
I really think the whole imaginative configuration of the communion of saints works against that. Maybe it’s (to indulge in stereotypes a la Carol Gilligan for a moment) men and justice. On the other hand, I remember talking to a lay Catholic moralist once who said his wife –a very good mother– would follow Mather’s approach.
There’s also a passage in Aquinas where he says a mother rightly mourns the just execution of her husband. I’d press him on the former.
Well. . . they say Mother Theresa had a soft spot for Princess Diana. . . Maybe the truly holy are kinder.
And let’s not forget the Jesuit’s sermon on hell in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
It seems to me that this Calvinist notion of justice is a *retaliation* theory — justice is getting even, giving back whatever awful reality that the perpetrator gave the other fellow in the first instance. It’s the childish notion that if you are mean to me, then I’ll be mean to you.
But in a natural law context this should not follow. If I do evil, the consequences of my act will serve to diminish me, and i will suffer at my own hands. Retribution should not be necessary. The problem is that evil sometimes results in the evil-doers apparent flourishing or corrupting others or making off with the innocents’ goods, and we find this impossible to put up with that, so we put them in jail if we can.
In the context of charity, I don’t see how Hell can be justified at all. The notion that we place ourselves in Hell is not new. God doesn’t do it.
Irish Catholicism and Puritanism. The similarities have from time to time been noted.
In the Unitarian-Universalist Church in which I grew up there certainly remained that astringent tone, leftover from the Puritan/Congregationalists from whence we sprang. In a schema in which God was neither personal nor anthropomorphic–and perhaps didn’t even exist–it was YOUR job, yes, YOURS in a very personal daily sense, to recognize and do something about the world’s injustices and sorrows.
Unitarians, perhaps for the wrong reasons, love Teresa of Avila’s famous prayer:
“Christ has no body now on earth but yours; yours are the only hands with which He can do His work.
Yours are the only feet with which He can go about the world; yours are the only eyes through which His compassion can shine forth upon a troubled world. Christ has no body on earth but yours.”
Fr. Komonchak, thanks for making me laugh aloud. Though probably Liz and Dick need our prayers as much as anyone. And certainly some thanks for that classic, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe,” one of my favorite movies of all time.
About Aquinas, the the joy of the saints in glory, and the damned:
Aquinas, perhaps, treats this matter in Question 94 of the Supplement to the Summa Theologica, which folks can read here:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5094.htm
I don’t know what Aquinas scholars say about the Supplement and attribution or what they say about what is not attributed to Aquinas but is nevertheless “from” Aquinas in some meaningful way and how the Supplement fits into all that.
Anyway, it sure is fun to see the work folks made the B-I-B-L-E do back then. Like kids playing with magazines, scissors, construction paper, and some glue, I picture the medievals laughing it up, their sides aching and their faces getting all cramped, as they pick out just the right verse and imagine the reception they’ll get. But maybe that’s the wrong way to picture them.
Calvinism played a significant role in the formation of our Constitution, principally through James Madison. Many of his themes, like his famous words “If men were angels, no government would be necessary” echoed those of John Calvin. Madison encountered Calvinism and a pessimistic view of human nature at Princeton.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/11/hbc-90006053
It becomes increasingly difficult to justify the Constitution when men are more likely to think of themselves as angels who need not be constrained by the checks and balances thought necessary by Madison.
Maybe we should all say a prayer for Zsa Zsa. Mother Theresa and Joe’s Maryknoll priest would want us to, I’m sure.
http://www.tvguide.com/News/Zsa-Zsa-Rites-1021902.aspx
Mention today of that other oft-married beauty Elizabeth Taylor reminded me of Zsa Zsa. Zsa Zsa, unlike Taylor, could be hilariously funny. Few could match wits with Johnny Carson, but she could. She sort of became a characature of herself but still managed to maintain some dignity.
Elizabeth Taylor was criticized for “not believing in marriage”, to which she replied, “Of course I believe in marriage. That’s why I”ve been married five times”. Apparently Zsa Zsa finally got it right — she’s been married to husband no. 7 for 25 years. God bless them both.
When there was a last gospel at Mass, a young priest stopped in the middle of it and said: “All you people who are leaving before the last gospel is finished are going to hell.” That sermon on hell in Joyces work, which Joe refers to, is truly scary. For me that is the principle reason males are scarce in the Catholic laity.
Take note how the Maryknoll priest and some in this post, turned to lighter things. Like the comic relief that Shakespeare always inserted in his tragedies because people can take so much of grief. This is the reason that reform is difficult. After awhile people just lose their patience. This is why, I believe Paul and Francis of Assisi are attractive. They are full of hope.
Today’s equivalent to Liz and Richard would be Angelina and Brad. Plus ca change…
I admire the Puritans tremendously. The town I live in was founded by two Puritan ministers and their flock, most of whose tombstones are still in the graveyard in the middle of town. Every winter, when the snow is two feet deep on the ground for four months and I’m shivering in a house that was built before fiberglass insulation, I think, “Good God, how did they ever survive the first winter? And, having survived, how did they ever not head straight back to England the next spring?”
The Puritan foundation of New England is the best and most heroic thing I’ve ever read. To climb aboard a seventeenth-century ship, set sail for a barren wilderness; survive the freezing cold winter, disease, native attacks; then to go on to lay a foundation for the greatest country the world has ever known, is just incredibly inspiring. (Can you imagine Increase Mather letting everybody sit around Carthage for a year while he’s off sharing a cave with Dido? Can you imagine Roger Williams founding a city and naming it Williamston? (Cf. Aen II.18))
One of the greatest privileges of living in New England is that those excellent old forefathers have left so many tangible reminders of what kind of people they expected us to become. One of the most depressing aspects of living in New England is to be constantly aware of how far short we have fallen of what they hoped would follow them.
Peter Hobart and Samuel Peck, pray for us.
Those men who think of themselves as angels are almost certainly not.
Perhaps, in Calvinism, Matthew 10:37 comes into play in regards to a Christian’s allegiance to God’s will over any human attachment. But nowadays one wouldn’t find a Reformed parent not interceding for their wayward child, though they may be more conflicted in conscience about praying thus than a Roman Catholic would be.
I do think some of the change comes with our changing attitude toward children, too.
The Puritans were big on logic (Calvin himself was something of a logician), and the logic of the condemnation even of one’s own children is impeccable: Evil-doers must be condembed, my child is an evil-doer, so my child must be condemned. But “the heart” forbids pushing the ramifications to its extremes. So what IS “the heart’? It seems to me that Christian theology has a long way to go towards reconciling its “judgements” to the judgements of reason.
“The heart has its reasons which reason does not know”. said Pascal, a Janssenist,l, and I don’t doubt that for a second, but what does it *MEAN”? And isn’t it a bit odd that Pascal should be the one to reject the reasoning of Calvin?
I have seen the parents of a murderer express their great sorrow at what their child had done and say something like: “Now it’s only just that he face his punishment.” Which in a way is praise of justice, even when it means punishment of their child. I do not say that they will find joy in the sad judgment.
As for the reasons of the heart: judgments are acts of personal responsibility, and surely there are things that people who love can see need to be done that people who don’t love can’t see. In an exposition of the words of Jesus in John 6: “No one can come to me unless the Father draw him,” St. Augustine cried out: “Da mihi amantem!” “Give me someone who loves, and he will understand what I am saying. Give me someone who desires; give me someone who hungers; give me someone wandering in this desert, and thirsty, and sighing for the spring in his eternal homeland: give me such a person and he will know what I’m saying. But if I’m speaking to a cold person, he doesn’t know what I’m saying.” For the role of feelings of delight [delectatio] in Augustine’s moral views, see this lecture by Vernon Bourke
http://www02.homepage.villanova.edu/allan.fitzgerald/Bourke-Joy.htm#_ftnref24
St. Thomas made a good deal of what he called “knowledge by connaturality,” which may be related to the reasons of the heart.
Here is how Bernard Lonergan interprets Pascal’s dictum: “The meaning, then, of Pascal’s remark would be that, besides the factual knowledge reached by experiencing, understanding, and verifying, there is another kind of knowledge reached through the discernment of value and the judgments of value of a person in love” (Method, 115).
I don’t find it odd that Pascal would reject Calvin’s reasoning.
I am sure there are, Joe.
But eternal damnation isn’t a mere prison sentence –in their view, it was endless torture. And despite the protestations of theologians, it’s hard to see double predestination as fair.
My last post had nothing to do with double predestination. Aquinas never held that.
Joe, my post did have something to do with it-it was about a passage from a sermon by a Puritan preacher!
In the Inferno Dante is at first sympathetic with sinners like Paolo and Francesca but soon we find him pushing others into the muck, reneging on his promises to traitors and kicking the head of sinners encased in ice. The change is partly due to his dealing with more hardened sinners as his journey progresses but it’s also partly due to his own purification. Throughout the journey Virgil urges him to reject pity.
Sinner: “But now reach out your hand; open my eyes.”
Dante: “And yet I did not open them for him
and it was courtesy to show him rudeness.”
Inf XXXIII, 148-150
And I suspect that the “Wrath of Dante” toward many Popes of his time can be enjoyed by at least a few commenters.
Cathy: But I think the issue of family feelings can be separated from that of double predestination, don’t you?
“St. Thomas made a good deal of what he called “knowledge by connaturality,” which may be related to the reasons of the heart.”
JAK –
St. Thomas’ theory of connaturality is hard to pin down. (The term/idea is not original with him.) As Maritain interprets it, it certainly seems to be some sort of grasp of what is *good*, as distinguished from an intellectual grasp of what is *true*. Whether it is reducible to an act of intellectual knowledge is the real issue, I think. As I understand Scotus, it is the will that grasps the good as such, and when the will is rightly directed to what is good it would be more properly called “the heart”.
At any rate, there sometimes do seem to be terrible conflicts between our grasps of what seems to be good (wishing a child to be in Heaven) and our grasps of what is true (understanding that he does not belong there).
I think that double predestination calls into question the justice of the decree, for one thing–particularly since the decree’s eternal.
Anyone ever heard of the Redemptorist Mission Book? I was lucky enough to live in an area where there were 7 parishes within easy cycling distance. Being a recent convert, at age 14, I probably took everything a little more seriously than my cradle Catholic classmates. I remember once rattling off my list of sins. My confessor, a dyspeptic sexagenarian Monsignor,bellowed: “You What?!” Of course it had to be one of those confessionals with only the cloth flaps,and of course there were half a dozen women waiting behind me of the same vintage as the priest. Needless to say,I took my confessional custom elsewhere.
Abebooks has two copies:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=redemptorist+mission+book&x=83&y=17