4 Easter - Wednesday - The Powers of Darkness

Text: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12 (see below)

Question:        Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

Answer:          I renounce them.

Whoa! That is the first question in a set of inquiries that form a central portion of the Baptismal rite in the Episcopal tradition. The candidate who desires to be baptized or the sponsors answering the question on behalf of the candidate are asked to renounce the powers of darkness before affirming allegiance to Jesus Christ. This is an awesome and moving moment in the liturgy that goes by so quickly I dare say most people miss the implication of the question.

“Satan” (with a capital S); “spiritual forces of wickedness”; “rebellion against God”: what does this all mean? How does our liturgy understand sin and evil? Does the Episcopal Church literally personify a source of evil? Is a local congregation all in agreement about what we are renouncing? Has the understanding of sin and the concept of evil changed or modified over the centuries?

Robert Pritchard, in a lecture entitled “The Renunciation of Evil”, given at the Virginia Theological Seminary, stated: “In the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, when the classical pattern of adult initiation prevailed, Christians lived in a world in which Greco-Roman pagan religion was still a living and powerful alternative to the Christian faith.  The language, the public holidays, the forms of recreation, the forms of trade, the calendar, and the arts provide a network of overlapping meanings that proclaimed the pantheon of pagan gods.  Christians understood that in order to embrace their faith in Baptism they had to step outside of that network of meaning. 

“The need to step outside of the fabric of pagan belief gave the renunciations of early Christians a vivid character.  Candidates for Baptism understood that they were leaving something significant behind when they were baptized.   The form of promises that they made in Greek language liturgies, such as Apostolic Tradition was “I renounce thee, Satan, and all thy services and all thy works.” When the liturgy was rendered into Latin, a common form was a renunciation of Satan, all his works, and all his pomps.  This would be the form eventually used in the Baptismal service in the Sarum Use, the variant of the Roman rite most widely used in England before the Reformation.

“The pomps that were denounced (pompa in Latin) probably referred originally referred to the cart on which idols were carried in procession at the Roman circuses. Christians used the denunciation of the pompa as a symbol of a denunciation of that whole way of thinking.   As we have seen in Apostolic Tradition, the denunciation of the paganism in the baptismal service was paralleled by a demand that candidates for baptism denounce any occupation that was even tangentially related to the Roman gods….

“This kind of concrete renunciation of pagan practices only remains vivid in the mind of Christians so long as there are active proponents of other systems of belief.  In Europe this would be the case for centuries, because of the influx of Germanic, Slavic, and Nordic peoples with religious systems of their own.  When, for example, the 8th century English saint Wilfred, who later took the name Boniface, tried to carry the Christian faith to Germany, he found that local people often hallowed large trees that they claimed were sacred to pagan gods.  Boniface responded by chopping down some of those trees.  People who responded to his preaching had a concrete demonstration of that in which they were and were not to believe.

“Something similar has happened in the Southern Sudan in the last quarter century.  Christian preachers have called potential believers to leave behind their allegiance to non-Christian gods.  In Western Europe, however, alternatives to Christianity were effective displace in most places by the 11th century, with the exception of the frontier with Islam.  In this new setting the renunciations began to take on a new character.” (The Renunciation of Evil – Lecture 2A, Virginia Theological Seminary)

By the 11^th century CE, baptismal candidates were no longer renouncing the social order to become a Christian. Instead, renunciations were undergoing modification in thought as those brought to baptism were asked to renounce those habits and actions that might undermine the predominant Christian society of the time. As the Medieval period continued, bizarre forms of actions began to take hold. Christians who were identified by the Church as sinners were expected to dress and behave differently in services; they were seated in a separate section of the cathedrals and denied the Eucharist, in some instances for many years. The emphasis now was on individual sin and personal failings.

The Reformation brought on a whole new set of challenges and thought. Some Christians tried to retain the classic understanding that becoming a Christian meant a rejection of the society in which one lived (Mennonites, Amish and the Anabaptist tradition). The Protestants went in a completely different direction holding on as best they could to the philosophies of the late medieval church which included “variations on a theme.”

Again, Robert Pritchard: “First, they tried, with greater and lesser degrees of success, to restore the public character to renunciation.  The Book of Common Prayer, for example, began the Baptismal office with a reminder that “the Sacrament of Baptism in the old time was not commonly ministered, but at two times in the year, at Easter and Whitsuntide (Pentecost), at which time it was openly ministered in the presence of all the congregation.” The prayer book gave priority, however, to Public Baptism, even though private baptism continued to be common.

“The revised canons of the Church of England in the early 17th century gave to the Vestry the responsibility for seeing that parishioners lived moral lives.  Those who were guilty of serious breaches of public morality were to repent and then appear in public dressed in a white garment that reflected the garments of baptism.  The custom continued, at least for serious sexual immorality, into the 19th century.  In the Reformed tradition lay elders were to led examinations of life for members of the congregation prior to celebration of the Eucharist, thereby “fencing the table” and keeping the unworthy away.

“That effort to restore the public nature of discipline was ultimately unsuccessful, in part because of the fracturing of Christendom due to the creation of Protestant Churches.  The need to balance between competing religious groups made it necessary for modern nations to become non-denomination and increasingly non-Christian in character.

“The second change at the time of the reformation was one of language.  Protestant Churches generally followed Martin Luther in his re-translation of the renunciations of baptism.  Luther changed the renunciations of Satan, his work, and his pomps to a denunciation of the devil, the world, and the flesh.   Anglican prayer book from 1549 to 1928 followed suit, denouncing “the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, and the carnal desires of the flesh.”

“I assume that it was the influence of Biblical language that led Luther to change the form of the questions.  The New Testament uses the devil far more often than Satan.  Both the Matthean and Lucan forms of the temptation story, for example, refer to Jesus’ denunciation of the devil immediately prior to his Baptism.  John’s Gospel frequently uses the word world (kosmos) to refer to the forces that oppose God, and Paul uses the word flesh (sarx) repeatedly in Romans (twenty-two times) and Galatians (eight times) to refer not to the physical bodies, but to all about the human body and soul that opposed God.  The use of “works” and “pomps,” in contrast, had less Biblical grounding.” (The Renunciation of Evil – Lecture 2A, Virginia Theological Seminary)

In our own time, this subject of evil and Satan is still prevalent: take for example the fascination our culture has with movies series such as Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Presidents will stand before Congress and speak of “evil empires” (Reagan) and foreign nations as “the axis of evil” (Bush). As a child, I remember Flip Wilson stating that “the Devil made me do it.” This cosmic struggle between the powers of darkness and light continues to this very day. But what does it mean?

Today, parents who bring their children to be baptized, or those not of the faith who wish to be baptized, are hard pressed to, in the words of Professor Pritchard, “leave something significant behind.” Allegiance to other gods or systems of belief is almost non existent in this predominantly Christian culture. I have never looked into the eyes of an infant that I was about to baptize and see a sinner in need of God’s redeeming. And thank God the Church no longer has a “Sinner Section” near the rear of the nave. So what is it exactly that is being renounced? If you could write a paraphrase of what is being renounced in this first question of the Baptismal rite, what would you say?

Tomorrow, we will press onward in our journey. I hope you will join me. Until then,

Love One Another - Brian

1 Thessalonians 2:1-12

You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully maltreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us. You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was towards you believers. As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you should lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.