My first introduction to American religious debates was a course taught by a prof who came from Yale’s American Studies program (I ended up taking several courses from him), and, as is oddly appropriate for someone from Yale, he was deep into the theological disputes of the 17th century—Yale was founded because of those disputes.
I’ll mention it was a great class. It changed my life, actually. We read nothing but histories of the Plymouth Plantation, beginning with Bradford, and ending with Perry Miller. It was a rhetoric of history class—this was 1978 or so (maybe 1980?), so pretty early for historiography classes for undergrads.
He emphasized that the major theological/political/eschatological debates of the 17th and early 18th centuries were both very serious and oddly binary. They were serious in that there were serious punishments for being in the wrong group (up to hanging), and yet, the criteria for heresy were incoherent. Later, when I learned more about demagoguery, I realized that the New England authorities like Winthrop or Cotton Mather engaged in pretty bog standard demagogic practices. I wrote a fairly boring (aka, very scholarly) book about it, and it shows up again in the introduction to a more recent (and less boring) book, but the short version is that authorities were committed to a theory of Biblical interpretation: Scripture is not ambiguous; it has a clear meaning that any reasonable person can understand; if there is disagreement, then it means that someone is wrong (and possibly in league with the devil), so expel or hang them.
It’s common among a lot of Christians to say that Scripture is absolutely clear, and their interpretation is indisputable. But, if that’s the case, why are there so many major disagreements and different interpretations on major issues? Paul, pseudo-Paul, Augustine, various church fathers, Luther, Calvin, and so many other major figures in Christianity disagree about central questions—such as whether to read Genesis literally, what the most important rules are, the role of grace.
So, what people are saying by asserting that their interpretation of Scripture is undeniable and obvious to any good Christian is that they’re a better Christian than Paul, and so on. If I’m particularly grumpy, I ask how good their Hebrew or Aramaic is.
I only once got a response. The person said that those people didn’t have the benefits of science we now have. Since that person’s whole position was about rejecting current science, I still have no clue what they meant. My drifting around in weird parts of the internet has a lot of interactions like that.
A particularly complicated problem in Christianity has long been the faith v. works problem. Paul and pseudo-Paul worried about it a lot; Luther worried about it more, and Calvin even more. One response is that you can get to heaven by following the laws, and faith doesn’t matter. Over time, people took to calling that Arminianism, and sometimes Judaism (Nirenberg‘s book is really good on the latter tradition). Neither Jews nor Arminius ever advocated works alone, but lots of beliefs are characterized by the name of someone who didn’t actually advocate those beliefs, and often actually condemned.[1]
Both Luther and Calvin believed that if you only behaved well because you didn’t want to go to Hell, then you were going to Hell. [If you think about that, it raises some serious questions about a lot of current proselytizing rhetoric.] I’m not sure there really have been any sects in the Judeo-Christian traditino who preached that works alone would save you–the closest I can get is the view that various theologians have criticized (behave well or you’ll go to Hell), or maybe the “fake it till you make it” argument, but the latter is a stretch.
At the other extreme is what’s usually called antinomianism (nomos is Greek for “the law”). That heresy says that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you have faith. Your faith cleanses your actions of all sins. While it’s hard to find many people who openly advocate Arminianism, antinomianism is more common (e.g., Rasputin, various cult leaders, abusers).
The New England Puritans (who were not, by the way, the first settlers of what is now the US, nor the first Europeans to settle in the US, nor even the first British people to establish a permanent settlement in the US) struggled with the antinomian/Arminian problem. It is a complicated problem—if you do the right things only because you’re trying to get yourself to heaven, were those acts of faith? Or just ways of looking out for yourself? If you have perfect faith that you are saved, and therefore believe that you can do anything you want…that’s a problem.
Here’s the important point: the early New England colony authorities resolved that complicated problem by saying that faith was the same as behaving as church authorities thought one should behave, and having the opinions they thought one should have. I read a lot of Puritan sermons. They didn’t pay much attention to the gospels, focusing more on Jeremiah, Isaiah, Psalms, and some Paul.[2]
For complicated reasons, at one point in my life I found myself spending a fair amount of time listening to a “conservative” (they aren’t and weren’t conservative, but reactionary) “Christian” radio station. And it seemed to me a weird combination of antinomian and Arminian.
Their major message was that you needed to have complete faith that Jesus has saved you from your sins–that faith frees you from paying attention to various laws he laid down. So, that’s the antinomian part. But, getting to heaven requires that you rigidly follow various laws, most of which appear to have been selected without a clear exegetical method (unless the exegetical “method” was “what supports my policy agenda”). That’s the Arminian part.
It seemed to me both antinomian and Arminian.
Have faith in Jesus, but ignore what he clearly said. I’ll give one of the most glaring examples. Jesus said do unto others as you would have done unto you. That is very clearly a rejection of what’s called “in-group favoritism.” But, many Christians are open that there should be in-group favoritism, that people who vote like them, believe what they believe, have their background, and so on should not be treated like others; they should be held to lower standards of behavior than non in-group members. They advocate worse punishment for non in-group members for the same actions; they want basic rights to be restricted to in-group members (“freedom of religion for me but not thee”); they express outrage at non in-group behavior that they dismiss or rationalize in in-group members.
They’re antinomian when it comes to Jesus, but Arminian when it comes to their rules.
[1] The accusation that some person or belief is “Armininian” has as much to do with Jabocus Arminius as many accusations of “Marxist” have to do with Marx, or “Freudian” practices have to do with Freud. So, this isn’t about what Arminius actually said, but about the rhetoric of early American New England Puritans. This heresy was often attributed to Catholics, but, as Nirenberg shows, has most often been associated with Jews.
[2] As another aside, I have to mention that the proof texts for Puritan sermons seemed to me—when I was working on this, there wasn’t the option of just searching digital sources—rarely had anything from the Gospels as a proof text. (Tbh, I think it was never, but I avoid using that term.) Lots of Isiaih , Proverbs, Jeremiah, Deuteronomy. I think there might have been pseudo-Paul, but I’m not sure. I hope someone has since done that quantitative research—it’d be interesting to see if there’s a correlation between purist/authoritarian self-identified Christian churches and not citing Christ.