As many of you know, I read one or two excerpts from Augustine’s Confessions to get my days started. Today I was in the middle of book three, and came across a puzzling section on what seems to be the frailty of man made tradition in light of the grandeur of God’s most triumphant and perfect rule. I was truly taken back as I sat there waiting for my morning shower to heat up. Thoughts of the emergent church and tradition raced thorough my sleepy early morning psyche as I scrambled to make sense of this timeless truth. “How often I judge according to convention” I thought. The very idea that Augustine the forefather of all Reformed thinking was positing that only the naïve judge as he puts it “ in accordance with their brief place in human time, and measuring the moral character of the human race from the direction of their own moral character”. I was utterly saturated in this ancient and profound truth. As I continued with my morning ritual I began to visualize a church completely unhindered by death, time, and norm. Augustine describes this church with exact specificity with regard to his metaphor. Armor (in my mind) had always been fully worn by each soldier and indeed Paul’s use of “the whole armor of God” in Ephesians 6:11-18 is used with regard to individual soldiers. However, I began to see the entire body (not having visions here, just thinking through things) of Christ across the entire earth and throughout all time. What Augustine is illustrating here is the strength and weaknesses of the body of Christ throughout history in light of God’s mercy. He poignantly grasps that in some generations God permits activities and cultural attitudes that in others he did not. I do not believe he is trying to say that God changes with regard to His rule but that he does give grace in differing portion to those who abide in that rule to walk in it. He gives another wonderful example of this when he says “or when in one house he observeth some servant take a thing in his hand, which the butler is not suffered to meddle with; or something permitted out of doors, which is forbidden in the dining-room; and should be angry, that in one house, and one family, the same thing is not allotted every where, and to all. Augustine seems to be implying that during certain ages of Christendom, Christians may have been permitted to imbibe certain things that today would be unthinkable, and vise versa.

3.7.13
Nor knew I that true inward righteousness which judgeth not according to custom, but out of the most rightful law of God Almighty, whereby the ways of places and times were disposed according to those times and places; itself meantime being the same always and every where, not one thing in one place, and another in another; according to which Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and David, were righteous, and all those commended by the mouth of God; but were judged unrighteous by silly men, judging out of man's judgment, and measuring by their own petty habits, the moral habits of the whole human race. As if in an armory, one ignorant of what were adapted to each part should cover his head with greaves, or seek to be shod with a helmet, and complain that they fitted not: or as if on a day when business is publicly stopped in the afternoon, one were angered at not being allowed to keep open shop, because he had been in the forenoon; or when in one house he observeth some servant take a thing in his hand, which the butler is not suffered to meddle with; or something permitted out of doors, which is forbidden in the dining-room; and should be angry, that in one house, and one family, the same thing is not allotted every where, and to all. Even such are they who are fretted to hear something to have been lawful for righteous men formerly, which now is not; or that God, for certain temporal respects, commanded them one thing, and these another, obeying both the same righteousness: whereas they see, in one man, and one day, and one house, different things to be fit for different members, and a thing formerly lawful, after a certain time not so; in one corner permitted or commanded, but in another rightly forbidden and punished. Is justice therefore various or mutable? No, but the times, over which it presides, flow not evenly, because they are times. But men whose days are few upon the earth, for that by their senses they cannot harmonize the causes of things in former ages and other nations, which they had not experience of, with these which they have experience of, whereas in one and the same body, day, or family, they easily see what is fitting for each member, and season, part, and person; to the one they take exceptions, to the other they submit.

The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is His new creation
By water and the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her
And for her life He died.

She is from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth;
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.

The Church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against or foe or traitor
She ever shall prevail.

Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!

’Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore;
Till, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won,
With all her sons and daughters
Who, by the Master’s hand
Led through the deathly waters,
Repose in Eden land.

O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with Thee:
There, past the border mountains,
Where in sweet vales the Bride
With Thee by living fountains
Forever shall abide!

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