“Like the English Revolution in the seventeenth century, the Papal revolution pretended to be not a revolution but a restoration. Gregory VII, like Cromwell, claimed that he was not innovating, but restoring ancient freedoms that had been abrogated in the immediately preceding centuries. As the English Puritans and their successors found precedents in the common law of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, largely passing over the century or more of Tudor-Stuart absolutism, so the Gregorian reformers found precedents in the patristic writings of the early centuries of the church, largely passing over the Carolingian and post-Carolingian era in the West. The ideological emphasis was on tradition, but the tradition could only be established by suppressing the immediate past and returning to an earlier one. Writings of leading Frankish and German canonists and theologians of the ninth and tenth centuries were simply ignored. In addition, the patristic writings were interpreted to conform to the political program of the political program of the papal party, and when particular patristic texts stood in the way of that program they were rejected. Faced w/ an obnoxious custom, the Gregorian reformers would appeal over it to truth, quoting the aphorism of Tertullian and St. Cyprian, “Christ said ‘I am the truth,’ He did not say ‘I am the custom.'” Gregory VII quoted this against Emperor Henry IV, Beckett quoted it against King Henry II. It had special force at a time when almost all the prevailing law was customary law.
It is the hallmark of the great revolutions of Western history, starting with the Papal Revolution, that they clothe their vision of the radically new in the garments of a remote past, whether those of ancient legal authorities (as in the case of the Papal revolution), or of an ancient religious text, the Bible, (as in the case of the German Reformation), or of an ancient civilization, Classical Greece (as in the case of the French Revolution), or of a pre-historic classless society (as in the case of the Russian Revolution). In all of these great upheavals the idea of restoration — a return, and in that sense a revolution, to an earlier starting point — was connected w/ a dynamic concept of the future.
It is easy enough to criticize the historiography of the revolutions as politically biased and, indeed purely ideological…. What is significant is that at the most crucial turning points of Western history a projection into the distant past has been needed to match the projection into the distant future. Both the past and the future have been summoned, so to speak, to fight against the evils of the present.”
Harold Berman
Law & Revolution — The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition — pg. 112-113
Now for a couple varied applications,
1.) There is an attempted Revolution going on in the Reformed Church right now and it is being pursued by Westminster Seminary California. The way they are seeking to frame the debate is in keeping with the observations that Berman makes here about all revolutions. Like all Revolutions, WSCal is clothing their vision of the radically new in the garments of a remote past. They are taking an ancient religious authority, the Reformed Confessions and they are interpreting them to conform to the political program of the Escondido / R2K political program of the WSCal party. Like all Revolutions, they are selling this great upheaval as a return to a pristine time and are connecting it to their “dynamic” concept of a yet to be realized future.
The fact that they are interpreting the Confessions to conform to their political program can be seen in the Kerux article observation that while those advocating the Escondido Hermeneutic mouth the words of the confessions, they at the same time are speaking a different language. Kerux states on pg. 70-71,
“Though much of this language (the language of the Escondido Hermeneutic adherents — BLM) is clearly in line with the confessional formulations, it is not entirely clear to us that it accurately reflects its traditional and accepted meaning. There is a marked ambiguity that runs throughout all of these formulations—it is not always entirely clear in what precise sense the Mosaic covenant is to be considered a covenant of grace, or at least ‘part of’ or ‘connected to’ the covenant of grace….
Likewise, although these authors attempt to utilize traditional, orthodox language regarding the Mosaic covenant (“administration of the covenant of grace”), it is not entirely clear the precise sense this language carries in their formulations. Again, there is marked ambiguity, tension, and even self-contradiction in some of their formulations.
When this is combined with Kerux’s earlier observation that their is a desire on the part of some of those in the “Escondido Party” to change the language of the Confessions it it clear what is going on here is a radical revolution of the type that Berman speaks. When the Escondido Hermeneutic speaks on the confessions on the issue of covenant or R2K it is like watching a old Japanese Godzilla movie where you hear people speaking English and yet you know that they are saying something funky by the way their lips don’t quite match their words.
If the boys from Escondido get their way and are able to impose the Escondido Hermeneutic on large portions of the Reformed Church it will be a revolution in the Confessional Reformed Churches in America, which pro-rated for its smaller size, will be every bit as seismic as the Revolutions that Berman cites above.
2.) At the same time there is an attempt in America at large to pull off social revolution in this culture by the elites in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Using Berman’s language we would say that that the Cultural Marxists, as led by B. Hussein Obama, are clothing their vision of the radically new in the garment of the remote past by appealing to the ideal pre-Christian multicultural egalitarian society.
We must keep in mind the words of Obama in his inauguration speech that communicated his intent at Revolution,
“But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
The Cultural Marxists that has been embraced by our elites are on a mission of revolution and they are casting that image in clothing of fairness, and social equity. Because this is true every appeal to the past, or to legal documents (i.e. — Constitution) must be heard through the grid of their attempt to bring cultural Marxist revolution to America. These people will be satisfied with nothing less then social revolution for the simple reason that they are social revolutionaries.
Berman’s quote, especially the emboldened part, is quite handy for the times in which we live for we are surrounded by people who desire to bring in their version of social Revolution.
