If You Can Keep It

It has been less than a month since the inauguaration of our country's new President. The election itself was unique and especially acrimonious--a billionaire political outsider riding the Republican platform but who falls outside traditional paradigms of party politics--and has accentuated and exploited a deep divide in our country along various economic and social fault lines. Although it is deeply unsettling for many Americans, such tensions are hardly unprecedented--from the American Civil War to the Vietnam-era, our country has survived internal divides and threats before and I trust that this current state of the union will not be our complete undoing. The flavor du jour, however, is contention--countryman pitted against countryman, family member against family member, co-worker against co-worker, sounding off in their respective echo chambers and vying in the streets for the heart of the democracy in which we live.

 The contention begs the question: How does one get behind the hopeful yet somewhat disingenuous slogan to "Make America Great Again?" in an era that honors neither objective morality nor civility in discourse, let alone a virtuous leadership seeking to unite a divided people? What do you do with a deeply flawed and objectionable Commander in Chief that half the population refuses to acknowledge as legitimately elected official?

In posing the questions, I am reminded of the various crisis the Christian Church has endured over the centuries, but one in particular that speaks to the present political climate in our country. In the 4th century, Christians in North African were experiencing an especially brutal wage of persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. Many Christians apostasized (denied the faith) and under threat of torture and death handed over sacred texts to be burned. When Constantine took the throne and issued the Edict of Milan in 313AD, essentially ending the persecutions and institutionalizing the Church, these traditores (traitors) sought to come back into the church. A segment of Christian purists who had kept the faith, lead by a man named Donatus, took issue with this and the Church found itself on the brink of schism.

The Donatists called two things into question that became central to the controversy, that being: the efficacy of the sacraments, and the validity of ordinations carried out by traditores. The Donatists who were pushing the Church towards schism saw themselves as the 'true remnant'--morally pure and faithful. They saw the sacraments as Ex opere operantis ("from the work of the one doing the working")--that is, dependent on the moral purity of the celebrant--vs the traditional Catholic understanding of Ex opere operato ("from the work having been worked"), that the efficacy of the sacrament did not depend on the moral state of the officiant.

This had far-reaching soteriological implications since if it was true that the deficient moral character (according to the Donatists) of a priest or bishop would render a sacrament such as baptism ineffective, one's salvation was at stake, not to mention the validity of holy orders and legitimate apostolic succession. It was Augustine who eventually, by the grace of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, put an end to the Donatist heresy and clarified the Church's official position at the conference of Carthage in 411AD.

In thinking about the Donatist heresy, I am reminded of two things: One, that Jesus promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church and that the Holy Spirit preserves the Church from error. And so we can rest assured that throughout all the trials and uncertainties and heretical teachings, God is in control, that Truth will endure. And two, that the theological battle between ex opere operato (by the work worked) and ex opere operantis (by the one doing the working) was won by the former. If the Church relied on the moral purity of its ministers to make effective the sacraments of grace, the Church would be reduced to a kind of 'spiritual marketplace' where only the purest of the pure were sought out to baptize, celebrate the eucharist, etc.

What can this teach us about our system of government? For one thing, it is good to remember that the American system of governance is unique in all the world. While its system of self-governance depends on the virtue of its citizenry (and, in turn, its elected officials), it recognizes the role of the Fall and the need to institute checks and balances on power to prevent a kind of totalitarianism. Faith in government is not faith in the moral character of its officials or their personal inerrancy, but in the system of government itself established in its founding. When you read the history of the founding of America, and the seemingly impossible situation leading up to the ratification of the Constitution in 1787, it is hard not to see the hand of God working to make this system a political reality.

On the flip side as well, we would do well to remember that "a house divided cannot stand," and that the threats to the republic are as dangerous internally as externally, if not more so. When we drift from a system of self-governance founded on virtue, that remembers its past, its character of liberty, and its reason for being, to a kind of self-serving obsession with individual freedoms divorced from divine law and the collective good of all, we risk becoming an America "in name only."

When Benjamin Franklin was asked at the 1787 Convention in Philadelphia, "Well, doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?" He was quick to reply, "A republic--if you can keep it." It is a constant reminder that the threat to our existence as a nation comes when we forget our history, our shared purpose, our uniqueness in the world, and our responsibility as a citizenry to maintain it.