Originally published years ago in New Oxford Review
CONVERTS OR HAHN-VERTS?
CONVERTS OR HAHN-VERTS?
Edward O'Neill
Scott Hahn's Novelties
Scott Hahn deserves much gratitude from the Catholic Church in the
U.S. A theology professor at the Franciscan University of Steubenville,
Hahn has an infectious enthusiasm for the Catholic faith and a passion
for explaining it in ways that ordinary people can understand, via
popular audiocassette series, books, newsletters, talks, and appearances
on Mother Angelicaís EWTN. Through his efforts, numerous Catholics
have come to better understand and appreciate their faith, to develop
deeper devotional lives, and to be more excited about being Catholic.
Hahn's enthusiasm for the faith and his clear, simple explanations of it
are so powerful that even many non-Catholics have caught the vision and embraced the Catholic faith, leading to countless enthusiastic and dynamic converts.
All this is wonderful. It is cause for praising God and saying a sincere
thank you to Hahn for his cooperation with God's grace. At the same
time, there is always room for growth, even for the most experienced
presenter of the faith. In Hahn's case there are factors that hamper
him from presenting the faith even better, factors that are cause for
concern. These concerns are magnified when one considers that Hahn
may be the best-selling author of Catholic theological works in the U.S.
Hundreds of thousands of his books have been sold, and their readership consists largely of laymen. Hundreds of thousands of his audiocassettes also have been sold, and tens of thousands watch him regularly on EWTN. When Hahn
speaks, laymen listen. Some listen and absorb his ideas so
thoroughly that they have begun to call themselves Hahn-verts.
Hahn the Intrepid
Hahn is a convert from Presbyterianism, and from an unusual
theological wing or school within Presbyterianism: theonomy, a school
that places much greater emphasis on Old Testament law than is
common among most Protestants. As a Presbyterian, Hahn was a
pastor of a theonomic church (Trinity Presbyterian Church in Fairfax, Va.)
and Assistant Professor at a theonomic school (Dominion Theological
Institute in Washington, D.C.).
Even within conservative Presbyterianism, theonomy is an uncommon
movement, and its adherents are often very much aware of going against the flow. In part because of this, theonomists tend to be theologically intrepid and adventurous, willing to explore ideas that may seem unusual to their
peers. The thrill of theological discovery, and the exhilaration of sharing
new insights and ideas with one's fellows, runs strong in theonomist
circles. Such open-mindedness can be a good thing; at its best, it can
help one to rise above the preconceptions and cultural limitations
common in one's own circle, and to face up to difficulties within one's
worldview commonly glossed over by one's peers.
Indeed, in Hahnís case, there can be little doubt that such theological
intrepidness was a factor in his conversion to Catholicism, that it helped
him to face up to the difficulties inherent in sola scriptura and sofa fide,
and explore the case for such Catholic distinctives as sacred tradition,
magisterial authority, and sacramental and liturgical worship. In his
conversion stories Hahn has related how, as a Presbyterian pastor, he
was eager to share his discoveries about sacramental and liturgical
worship with his congregation, who received these with enthusiasm (RSH, p. 44).
Insofar as Hahn's open-mindedness and enthusiasm for discovery has
led him to explore and finally embrace the certitudes of the Catholic
faith, it has served him well. However, Hahn's enthusiasm for theological
discovery has also led him, as a Catholic, to advocate ideas that are not
so solidly rooted in Catholic tradition. Some of these ideas, in fact, are
common in the theonomic Presbyterian circles from which he converted.
Others would seem surprising or unusual in almost any circle, and they
suggest an ongoing desire not merely to champion what is commonly
accepted among orthodox Catholics, but to push the envelope
theologically. While many of Hahn's distinctive ideas fall more or less
within the range of opinion permitted in Catholic thought, some, as
this article will show, seem very dubious indeed, and a few are of the
sort that, in a prior age, might have incurred such censures as offensive
to pious ears, suspect,rash, or proximate to heresy.
Theology, Hahn-Style
Despite his propensity for creative theology, Hahn has not to date
addressed his ideas to an audience of his peers with books or articles
of a scholarly nature. All of his publications are written for a popular
audience. Since he often presents material on covenantal and
redemptive-historical theology, the consequent mix of abstruse s
ubject matter and popular style sometimes makes for odd reading.
Other authors, even great theologians, have tried to convey the
profundities of theology in a popularly accessible manner. Still, there
can be something a bit comical about the way Hahn juxtaposes the
pedestrian and the profound. In his works one encounters statements
such as, Much like Humpty Dumpty after his great fall, the human race
cannot mend itself and restore unity through its own efforts alone
(FKP, p. 34), and, referring to the creation of Eve, The stage was now
set for the exciting drama that was about to unfold; except the d
irector realized that something more was needed: a beautiful actress
to play the female lead. Yahweh knew just what to do (FKP, p. 60).
Another reflection of Hahnís popular approach is his predilection for
summarizing his themes with goofy puns in chapter and section headers
. Even reviewers otherwise favorably disposed to him have complained
about some of these groaners (a legacy of his time as an Evangelical,
where this style of rhetoric is quite common). To give just a few
examples from his book A Father Who Keeps His Promises, one finds
section heads such as Prime Rib (referring to the creation of Eve),
Eve of Destruction (Satan tempts Eve), Flood, Sweat and Tears (the
Great Flood), Deviled Ham (Canaan's sin), and Abraham Makes the
Cut (the institution of circumcision). These are matters of style
rather than substance, but as we shall see, there are also points o
f a substantive nature where Hahn's judgment has been questionable.
Hahn the Fundamentalist?
His preference for popular rather than scholarly forums notwithstanding,
Hahn does aspire to a level of academic credibility, and certainly has
no wish to be perceived as anti-academic or fundamentalist. The
fundamentalist label, in fact, is one to which he seems particularly
sensitive. Discussing those who take Genesis 1 as teaching a literal
six-day creation, Hahn carefully refrains from endorsing their view but
notes: While many of their critics reply by branding them
fundamentalists,like most labels, this one isn't helpful or appropriate
(FKP, p. 39). To deflect similar charges from being made against his own
work, Hahn at times appears to couch his views in carefully chosen
language. For example, discussing the authorship of the Pentateuch, he
writes: For the sake of simplicity, we will consider the author to be
Moses, and his original readers to be those ancient Israelites who
received this material from him as part of God's law (the five books
of Moses). Such a traditional approach may seem out of fashion, but
it has certain advantages that commend it (ibid.).
It is understandable that one writing a popular text might prefer for
the sake of simplicity to speak of the author of the Pentateuch as
Moses rather than get dragged into the intractable debate over the
sources and composition of the work. The Catechism itself speaks of
the Pentateuch simply as the Law of Moses, without raising questions
of a higher critical sort (#401). Yet it becomes clear that there is for
Hahn more involved than considerations of simplicty, for he immediately enumerates several arguments supporting Mosaic authorship, capping
them with a startlingly misleading appeal to Church authority: For one
thing, it takes its interpretive cues from the biblical text itself. For
another, it has greater explanatory power. In sum, it makes better
sense of Genesis, and the whole Pentateuch, for that matter. It also
faithfully echoes the living Tradition of the Church, as it has been
reaffirmed by the Magisterium(ibid.).
In a lengthy footnote in which he continues to argue for Mosaic
authorship, Hahn states that the Catholic Church's official affirmation
of the substantive Mosaic authenticity and integrity of the Pentateuchí
was promulgated by the Pontifical Biblical Commission (June 27, 1906).
He adds that ìthe Catholic Magisterium exemplified prudent flexibility in
the way it maintains the traditional view of Mosaic authorship, which is
reflected in more recent statements, such as the 1948 letter from Fr.
Voste, Secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, to Cardinal Suhard
of Paris. He also asserts that Decrees issued by the Commission before
1971 were issued as authoritative norms and binding guidelines for
Catholic exegetes, though not strictly or necessarily infallible per se.
From a Catholic theologian and exegete such as Hahn, this set of
deliverances is startling. The binding force of the early decrees of the
Pontifical Biblical Commission are universally acknowledged, even
among conservative churchmen, to have entirely lapsed. The 1948 l
etter specifically retracted the force of the 1906 reply on Mosaic
authorship, saying it was ìin no way a hindrance to further truly scientific examination of the question; thus it is impossible to say that the Church
maintains the traditional view of Mosaic authorship (note Hahns
present tense). Far from the early decrees not being strictly or
necessarily infallible per se, they are not infallible at all.
If Hahn wishes as an exegete to maintain the Mosaic authorship of
the Pentateuch, that is his prerogative. But he should do so
straightforwardly, not equivocating about the fact, not arguing that
he speaks in a traditional manner for reasons of simplicity, and not
misstating the Churchs position on the matter. He might thereby o
pen himself to charges of fundamentalism, but other elements in
his writing are sure to attract those charges anyway.
Hahn the Eccentric
In popular audiocassette sets (The Book of Hebrews, Salvation History),
Hahn maintains on the basis of Jewish legend that the priest-king
Melchizedek from Genesis 15 is actually Noahs son Shem under
another name. Hahn does not tell us why Genesis would introduce a
character under one name and then four chapters later begin referring
to him by another name without explanation. Yet the identity of the
two technically is possible if Shem literally lived to be six hundred years
old, as the genealogy of Genesis 11 states, and if the genealogy
contains no substantive gaps, so that Shem survived to Abraham's day.
Still, the Shem-Melchizedek identity is a startling claim for a Catholic
biblical scholar to assert, and one likely to attract charges of
fundamentalism, for the genealogical literalism needed to make
the identification would mean that the human race only dates to
4000 B.C.
Though the kind of literalism needed to identify Shem and Melchizedek
may be characteristic of fundamentalism, few fundamentalists would
follow Hahn in equating the two biblical figures. This is one of a number
of areas in which Hahn maintains ideas so unusual that they scarcely
find any advocates among biblical exegetes.
Another such area concerns Hahnís view of the Fall of Adam. He notes
that Genesis does not record Adam as having objected to eating the
forbidden fruit and queries why, claiming that there must have been
another reason why Adam kept silent. But what is it? Fear of suffering
death. And how can we know that? By going back and reading between
the lines, by carefully listening again not only to what the serpent
explicitly stated but also what he meant to imply. Hahn continues:
He said, You will not die. And that defiant contradiction hung in the
air until slowly the serpents meaning became clear: You will not die
if you eat the fruit....í In other words, Satan used the form of a
life-threatening serpent, with his evil stealth, to deliver what Adam
rightly took to be a thinly veiled threat to his life, which it was from
the outset (FKP, p. 69).
In other words, the serpent was not deceiving Adam and Eve into
thinking they would not die, but threatening them with death if they
refused to eat. Hahn is confident that this is the reason why Adam
does not appear to object to the serpents claim (the possibility that Adam was tempted and gave in to temptation is something Hahn does not raise).
He tells us: This alone explains Adam's silence. As the strategy of the
serpent became clear, Adam had to make a dreadful choice. Would he
stand up for his bride by engaging the diabolical serpent in mortal
combat? Or would he try to cling to his cherished estate in Eden, with
its many delights, such as earthly dominion, immortality, impassibility,
and integrity?(ibid.).
Hahn suggests that the serpent was not the devil appearing as a mere
legless lizard but was, in fact, a dragon or other horrible monster (FKP, p. 66; FCL, p. 70). According to Hahn, Adam's response should have been to
engage the serpent/dragon in mortal combat, being willing to sacrifice
his immortal life: Knowing the serpent's power, Adam was unwilling
to lay down his own life for the sake of his love of God, or to save the
life of his beloved. That refusal to sacrifice was Adam's original sin
î (FCL, p. 70).
It is not clear how such a self-sacrificing, dragon-slaying, knight
n shining armor view of the Fall might be harmonized with the
Catechism's statement that As long as he remained in the divine
intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die (#376). But Hahn
thinks that the devil did have the power to kill Adam: In choosing
to save their natural life the only thing the devil really had the power
to take Adam and Eve chose to die spiritually (FCL, p. 71; emphasis
added). He also states that the Catechism spells out that Satan had
power not only to seduce Adam, but also to harm him physically and
spiritually and cites numbers 394 and 395 (FCL, p. 69). Neither
eference, however, indicates that Satan had the power to physically
harm man before the Fall. At best, Hahn simply assumes that Satan
must have had in Eden the same power he had afterward.
Hahns interpretive novelties are not confined to the book of Genesis.
They are found elsewhere, including the Gospels. For example, he
devotes considerable book space (FKP, pp. 228-233) and a popular
audiocassette (The Fourth Cup) to identifying the fourth cup of the
Jewish Passover liturgy with the sponge of vinegar that Jesus drank
on the Cross.
Today the Jewish Passover rite involves the drinking of four cups of
wine, and Hahn claims that this was the custom in Jesus' day as well.
He argues that in celebrating the Last Supper, Jesus used only three
cups of wine, and declared that He would not drink further of the fruit
of the vine ìuntil that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God (Mk. 14:25), prematurely ending the Passover meal. This was supposed to be a
shocking event. Hahn states that for those familiar with the Passover,
Jesus skipping the fourth cup is almost the practical equivalent of a
priests omitting the words of Consecration at Mass or forgetting
Communion! In sum, the fundamental purpose of the liturgy was
seemingly overlooked(FKP, p. 230). In the Garden of Gethsemane,
Jesus asked the Father to let this cup pass from Him, refused on the
Cross to drink wine mixed with myrrh, and finally in His last moment
s of life drinking from a sponge full of vinegar cried, It is finished
an. 19:30). According to Hahn, the IT that was finished was the
Passover that Jesus had begun but interrupted in the Upper Room!
And its completion was marked by the sign of Jesus drinking the sour
wine, the fourth cup! (FKP, p. 233).
While an interesting idea, Hahn's account depends on uncertainties.
One is the existence of four cups in the standard first-century Palestinian
Passover meal. (Although the fourth cup is attested in later Jewish texts, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in A.D. 70, and the period
of upheaval and subsequent standardization within Jewish religious
life that followed, is a sufficiently formidable historical fault line to
warrant caution about retrojecting liturgical norms of later centuries
nto the second temple era.)
Another uncertainty is the idea that Jesus used only three cups and then
stopped the ritual. This is not easy to establish. Matthew and Mark
mention only one cup (the one used in the Eucharist), and Luke
mentions only two. This means that at least one other cup would
have to be omitted on Hahn's account, and if we have the omission
of at least one cup, why couldn't another cup have been omitted? It
is possible that two earlier cups were omitted so that the Eucharistic
cup was the fourth cup, just as it is possible that both an earlier a
nd a later cup were omitted.
Hahn argues (FKP, p. 229) that Mark's mention that the Apostles sang
a hymn before going to the Mount of Olives would mean they were
singing of the Great Hallel (Ps. 114-118) after the third cup. But this
is not clear. Mark says that they sang a hymn, not those five psalms.
The hymn that was sung could have been one sung after the fourth cup.
It also is not clear that Jesus statement about not drinking from the
fruit of the vine was at the end of the meal. Luke reports Him saying
this before the Eucharistic cup (Lk. 22:17-20). Further, in Matthew, He
says that He will not drink of the fruit of the vine until He drinks it
new with you (Mt. 26:29). Did the Apostles also drink from the vinegar
sponge? And when Jesus says fruit of the vine, does that include vinegar (Greek, ozos) in addition to wine (Greek, oinos)?
Jesus comment, It is finished,is found only in John's Gospel, which
Hahn alleges refers back to the end of the Passover liturgy of the
Last Supper. John's Gospel is distinguished from the other three
by its not including an account of the Passover liturgy during the
Last Supper. How likely is it that John understood Jesus' words to
refer to the Passover meal celebrated on the night before He died,
yet deliberately chose not to mention that Passover meal in his account?
Even if the first-century Palestinian Passover meal typically included
four cups, to what extent can it be seen as a model for Jesus'
celebration of the Passover at the Last Supper? While it is possible
that omitting the fourth cup may have been as shocking to some as a
priest omitting the words of Consecration, it can scarcely have been
as arresting as Jesus including these words for the Apostles: Th
Messiah commanded them to eat His flesh and drink His blood
(and in so doing inaugurated the New Covenant promised by Jeremiah),
so it would be clear to the Apostles that the purpose and structure of
the meal had been so radically altered that parallels to other Passover
meals will be very limited. In view of these uncertainties, it is difficult to
see why Hahn would devote so much time and energy to this subject
particularly in popular works whose audiences will: be ill-equipped to
evaluate the plausibility of his hypothesis.
While the Shem-Melchizedek identification may strike many as bizarre,
the Adam-as-dragonslayer interpretation as colorful, and the fourth cup
ruminations as interesting but speculative, one of Hahn's interpretive
novelties will strike many as simply incomprehensible: his view of the
Millennium.
When it comes to the interpretation of biblical prophecy, Hahn is a
reterist. This means that he believes most biblical prophecies have
already been fulfilled, including some of the ones most commonly
thought to refer to the future. This view is uncommon in contemporary Protestantism but is quite common in the theonomic movement from
which Hahn converted. Indeed, some (referring to themselves as
consistent preterists) even claim that the prophecy of the Second Coming has been fulfilled and that there are no remaining biblical prophecies to fulfill.
Hahn does not go this far. He subscribes to a partial preterism,which
holds that the Second Coming and Final Judgment are still future
events. Still, in one area, he goes beyond what is common among
partial preterists. In a popular audiocassette set (The End: A Study
of the Book of Revelation), Hahn maintains that the Millennium spoken
of in Revelation 20 is neither a present nor a future reality but a past
one. According to him, the Millennium ended nearly 2,000 years ago.
He identifies it with the literal millennium following the coronation of
King David, c. 1000 B.C., and so it occurred almost entirely before the
time of Christ. This is not only different from the traditional Catholic
view, which follows St. Augustine in seeing the Millennium as the
whole of the Church age, it is virtually unheard of, as well as seemingly
impossible to derive from the text of Revelation.
As striking as these interpretive novelties may be, there are even more
significant novelties in Hahn's work. These concern his two overarching
themes: covenant and family.
Covenant
It would not be unexpected for a man of Hahnís background to place
a special emphasis on the concept of covenant. One of the major
distinctives of conservative Presbyterianism is its covenant theology,
which is a (or the) major alternative to dispensationalism in American Evangelicalism. Hahn himself became convinced of the importance of t
he idea of covenant long before his conversion to Catholicism so
convinced that in his first year in college (at Grove City College, a
Presbyterian institution) he made a striking resolution: I decided then,
my freshman year, that the covenant would be the focus of my study
for all future class papers and projects. And I followed through on it. In
fact, after four years of studying the covenant, I determined that it was
really the overarching theme of the entire Bible (RSH, p. 17).
Hahn is still making good on his youthful commitment. He has continued to make the covenant one of the major themes in his writings, accompanied by
the characteristic idiom of covenant theology. One will note that Hahn
speaks of the covenant without qualification. This is typical of covenant
theology, which envisions human interaction with God as being governed
by a single, overarching covenant, though covenant theologians disagree
over the particulars of this covenant. Also unclear is the precise
relationship that the covenan has with the particular covenants recorded
in Scripture, such as those God made with Noah, Moses, and David, or the one made through Jesus. The particular covenants are viewed as related to the
covenant, yet in some sense as distinct from it. Thus Hahn writes: From
my reading, I was convinced that the key to understanding the Bible was
the idea of the covenant [singular]. It ís there on every page with Go
making one in every age!(FKP, pp. 15-16).
Speaking of the covenant is not the only characteristic of the idiom. The
term covenant itself becomes a buzzword, and one finds it used regularly
as an adjective (the word itself, not covenantal), often when it seems
superfluous. Thus in Hahn's writings one often reads of God ís covenant
family, covenant love, covenant faithfulness, covenant kinship, c
ovenant acts, and covenant oneness.
Not everything in Hahn's books is typical of covenant theology. One
major element is unique and serves as the bridge to the second major
theme in his thought: family. According to Hahn, covenants involve the
creation of kinship bonds between the participants. To enter into a
covenant with someone is to establish a family relationship with him.
Hahn explains: In the Protestant tradition, covenants and contracts were
understood as two words describing the same thing. But studying the Old
Testament led me to see that, for the ancient Hebrews, covenants and
contracts were very different. In Scripture, contracts simply involved the
exchange of property, whereas covenants involved the exchange of
persons, so as to form sacred family bonds. Kinship was thus formed
by covenant. (Understood from its Old Testament background, the
concept of covenant wasn't theoretical or abstract.) In fact, covenant
kinship was stronger than biological kinship; the deeper meaning of
divine covenants in the Old Testament was God ís fathering of Israel as his own family (RSH, p. 30).
To explain the difference between covenant and contract, Hahn often uses
a comparison between a prostitute (with whom one might have a
contract) and a wife (with whom one has a covenant). The difference
between a prostitute and a wife is taken as emblematic of the difference
between contract and covenant.
Hahn omits in the above-quoted explanation that it is not only within
the Protestant tradition but in the Catholic one as well that covenants
are regarded as contracts, or a special kind of contract: a sacred one.
Since God or the gods were called as witnesses to (and enforcers of)
ancient Near Eastern covenants, they lent the agreements a sacred
character lacking in ordinary, secular contracts. This alone would
distinguish them from ordinary business agreements, without the
need to postulate the creation of kinship ties as a distinguishing mark.
It is true that the marriage covenant creates a family relationship, but
it is unique among covenants in doing so, and one must proceed with
caution. The use and awareness of covenants has declined dramatically
in Western society, and the marriage covenant is the last one remaining
to any extent in the popular mind. As a result, exegetes from our
culture seeking to understand the ancient Near Eastern concept of
covenant may rely too much on their understanding of the marriage
covenant as a model. It is not enough to contrast a wife to a prostitute
and conclude that this was a defining difference between covenant and
contract to the ancients.
Most biblical scholars who have written on the subject of covenant do
not use the marriage covenant as their primary model for understanding
the ones found in the Bible. They use another ancient form of covenant:
the suzerainty treaty. Archaeology has produced a large number of these from ancient Near Eastern sites, and biblical interpreters have been struck
by the similarities they display to the covenants found in Scripture,
with which they share common elements of form and content. The Sina
i covenant is particularly noteworthy in this regard, and seems to be
modeled after suzerainty treaties, depicting Yahweh as the suzerain
and Israel as His vassal state.
To what extent did such treaties create kinship ties? In ancient
suzerainty treaties one might find poetic references to the overlord
being a father to his vassals in return for obedient subjection, but this
was more akin to a mafioso offering protection to businesses in his
territory. If the vassals violated their obligations, they were a conquered
people who would be dealt with harshly.
Hebrew society was organized in a patriarchal manner and social i
ntegration involved the creation of putative kinship ties with those being
integrated into society. This was a legal procedure comparable to
adoption. But to what degree did suzerainty treaties establish kinship t
ies? What precise kinship relationship did such covenants establish? Do
we find vassal states regularly and non-metaphorically described as the
sons or brothers of their conquering overlord? Are they duly inscribed
in the appropriate slots in his genealogy? If, as Hahn asserts, covenant
kinship was stronger than biological kinship (ibid., emphasis added), did
overlords really show preference to their vassals over their own sons
and their own people? Of course not.
If covenants other than matrimony create kinship ties by their nature,
why don't we see people who form covenants with each other in the
Bible displaying an awareness of this? The biblical texts display an
absence of kinship consciousness in the forming of covenants. Why don't
we see biologically unrelated covenant partners of the biblical patriarchs
(such as Abimelech of Gerar) inscribed in the numerous genealogies of
Israel that the Old Testament contains? Why do people who are
biologically related to each other (such as Laban and Jacob) form
covenants with each other? Aren't their duties toward each other
already dictated by the kinship they have or do covenants deal
with something besides kinship?
All of this is not to say that some kind of broader kinship dimension to
covenants may not be defensible, but such a dimension is not obvious
or it would not have escaped the notice of biblical interpreters for so long.
There is also the fact that in his books and audiocassettes Hahn presents
this alleged kinship dimension to his audience in flat-footed form, as
if it were an established and unquestioned fact. Since he is not writing
for an audience of fellow biblical scholars, his readers and listeners are
not in a position to evaluate what he says, and one wonders how
responsible it is for a scholar to behave in this manner. If conservative
Catholics do not like liberals conveying higher critical speculation to
biblically uneducated audiences as the assured results of modern s
cholarship, is it any more legitimate for Hahn to do the same thing
with his conjectures?
Family
By identifying the central theme of Scripture as covenant (
rather than, e.g., God or Christ) and by making the concept of
covenant essentially familial in nature, Hahn uses covenant and family
as the lens through which to view all biblical and theological concepts.
For example, the covenant family paradigm is used to explain the
concept of justification. Hahn writes: What I discovered was that the
New Covenant established a new worldwide family in which Christ
shared His own divine sonship, making us children of God. As a c
ovenant act, being justified meant sharing in the grace of Christ as
Godís sons and daughters.... Luther and Calvin explained this e
xclusively in terms of courtroom language. But I was beginning to
see that as more than simply being a judge, God was our Father. Far
more than simply being criminals, we were runaways. Far more t
han the New Covenant being made in a courtroom, it was fashioned
by God in a family room (RSH, p. 30).
Allowance must be made for poetic license. The Hebrews did not
typically cut covenants in family rooms (or the equivalent in ancient
Hebrew architecture). It is also true that divine sonship is a major
theme of New Testament soteriology (the doctrine of salvation as
effected by Jesus) and that some of Jesus parables concern the
relationship of fathers and sons. Hahn could even appeal to the fact
that the Council of Trent says that justification involves a translation..
.to the state of grace and of the adoption of the sons of God. Yet it is
not true that Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers entirely divorced
sonship from justification. Neither did Trent focus on sonship as the key
to understanding justification. Nor is the courtroom metaphor absent
from New Testament soteriology Jesus having been commissioned by
God as the Judge of all mankind and His parables concern masters
and slaves as often as they do fathers and sons. It does not adequately
represent the texts of Scripture or Church teaching to allow the concept
of sonship to consume the doctrine of soteriology and exclude or
reinterpret the other concepts used to describe it, including the
legal and servile ones.
Anyone familiar with Hahn's works knows that they are relentlessly
autobiographical. Even setting aside Rome Sweet Home (his and his
wife's autobiography), the pages of his works are peppered with
references to his family (Boy meets girl. Adam meets Eve. Scott
meets Kimberly. You know the story, FCL, p. 7), as well as
anecdotes about it. These sometimes reveal more about the domestic
life of the Hahns than one might wish to know, particularly when the
marital act or childbirth is involved. Their inclusion might be defended
as a way of keeping the text from boring the reader, but it is clear from t
he content of the anecdotes that the concept of family is very important
to Hahn.
This is obviously a good thing in itself, yet, given the overriding
importance of family in his writings and his theology, one cannot
help wondering to what degree his theology may be shaped by his own
feelings about his family. By intertwining theology and his family to the
degree he does, one cannot help but wonder about the extent to which
the two influence each other when one reads statements such as my
children have no trouble grasping what I mean when I call their mom
the Holy Spirit of our home (FCL, p. 130) or It was no longer merely
theological speculation. Just weeks before, Kimberly had given birth
to our son, Michael. I'll never forget the feeling of becoming a father
for the first time. I looked at my child and realized that the life-giving
power of the covenant was more than a theoryî (RSH, p. 48).
The Apotheosis of the Paradigm
When one has conceived of a paradigm (or master key) that one is
convinced has tremendous explanatory power, there is a tendency to
try to apply it to many different situations. When that paradigm is
theological in nature and bound up with such naturally powerful emotions as Hahnís paradigm is, one wonders how far the paradigm will be pushed. If it is
the master key to the Bible, will it be the master key to understanding
God Himself? For Hahn, the answer is yes. He applies the covenant-family paradigm directly to the Godhead.
Hahn's recent, controversial book First Comes Love is subtitled Finding
Your Family in the Church and the Trinity. This may be more revealing
than intended. By applying the covenant-family paradigm to the Godhead
and in particular by identifying the role of his own wife with the role of
the Holy Spirit Hahn indeed is finding his own family in the Trinity.
As early as his first book, Hahn was describing God as a family: When
God made man, male and female, the first command He gave them
was to be fruitful and multiply. This was to image God Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, three in one, the Divine Family (RSH, p. 28). By his second
book, Hahn had added the other component of the paradigm, describing
God as a covenant: As you study Scripture, you'll see how covenant laws
are not arbitrary stipulations but fixed moral principles which govern the
moral order. Moreover, they reflect the inner life of the Blessed Trinity. In
short, covenant is what God does because covenant is who God i
s (FKP, p. 29). In a section titled The Trinity Is the Eternal Covenant
Family, Hahn fuses the two halves of the paradigm together: The Trinity
is the eternal and original covenant family. As Pope John Paul II writes:
God in His deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since He has
in Himself fatherhood, sonship and the essence of the family, which is
love. The Trinity is the eternal source and perfect standard of the
covenant; when God makes and keeps covenants with His people, He
ís just being true to himself. In short, covenant is what God does
because covenant is who God is (FKP, p. 36).
In First Comes Love, Hahn fleshes this out even further, identifying the
Persons of the Trinity with the members of a human family. Specifically,
he attributes a bridal-maternal role to the Holy Spirit: As we've seen
again and again, we learn Who God is from what God does from the
works of creation and revelation. Thus, what we said earlier of the Trinity
in general, we apply here to the Persons of the Godhead: By divine
actions that are bridal and maternal, we may come to discern a divine
bridal-maternity in the Holy Spirit(FCL, p. 138). This is the basis of Hahn's claim to his children that their mother is the Holy Spirit of our home.î
By making this kind of claim, Hahn is succumbing to a predictable
tendency: Since families typically consist of a father, a mother, and
offspring, since we know that the Godhead contains three Persons, and
since we already know that two of them are revealed to us as the Father
and the Son, it is predictable that people in our culture will ask whether
the Holy Spirit can be read as the Mother in a divine Family. For one
powerfully convinced of something like the covenant-family paradigm,
there will be a strong impulse toward answering this question in the
affirmative.
Hahn gives the appearance of balking at least partially at this logic. He
writes: I must raise a caution here. This does not mean that we call God
Mother; divine revelation does not call God by that name. Nor is it found
anywhere in the Churchís living Traditionî (ibid.). This caution seems
intended in part to deflect criticism of Hahn as having gone over to the
feminist side. Yet Hahn has phrased himself carefully. While he says that
we should not call God Mother, he nowhere says that the Person of the
Holy Spirit cannot be called this. But nothing in Scripture or Tradition
tells us to call the Holy Spirit Mother, so Hahn goes out of his way to
adduce passages from Scripture and later Christian writings that he
thinks document the bridal-maternal character of the Holy Spirit. It may
be significant that he here notes that the Church's Tradition is living.
Perhaps he is holding open the door for a future magisterial blessing of
his proposition.
What is one to make of Hahnís application of the covenant-family
paradigm to the Godhead? It is hard to determine what Hahn intends
by referring to the Trinity as a covenant. He describes at some length
the fact that God makes covenants, but he is strangely silent on what it
means for the Trinity itself to be a covenant. Since a covenant is a form
of agreement that is (at least ostensibly) entered into freely by separate
parties, perhaps the most charitable thing that one can say is that Hahn's unqualified description of God as a covenant is profoundly disturbing.
This is one of Hahn's positions that in a prior age would have earned
such censures as offensive to pious ears, rash, suspect, or even proximate to heresy, for it suggests that the unity of the Triune God results from an agreement
entered into by the three separate divine Persons. At least Hahn doesn't
explain himself enough to rule out such an interpretation. What he
probably means to say is that the communion of persons, however
limited it may be, that comes about as a result of a covenant entered
into by human beings, is analogous to the communion of Persons that
God is as Trinity, even though differences between covenants and the
Triune God are vastly greater than the similarities between them.
Unfortunately, this is not what Hahn says.
What of the description of God as a family? Here Hahn is on somewhat
safer ground, and makes regular use of the above-quoted passage from
John Paul II to drive the point home. Yet this is a single quotation, and
not from a highly authoritative papal document. It is from an address
that the pontiff gave at the Puebla conference in 1979, and John Paul
has not made this idea a keynote of his teaching on the family or the
Trinity. If he had, there would be more quotations and more
authoritative ones to use. Moreover, this quotation does not fit the
kind of Trinitarian Family that Hahn postulates, for in saying that God
has in Himself fatherhood, sonship and the essence of the family, which
is love,î the Pontiff gives the traditional view of the Holy Spirit as
proceeding from the Father and the Son as their mutual act of Love,
not as a bridal-maternal Person.
Subsequently, John Paul II has addressed the same subject in a
document of more weight and with more reserve. In his 1994 Letter t
o Families, he wrote: Human fatherhood and motherhood, while
remaining biologically similar to that of other living beings in nature,
contain in an essential and unique way a likeness to God which is the
basis of the family as a community of human life, as a community of
persons united in love (communio personarum). In the light of the
New Testament it is possible to discern how the primordial model of the
family is to be sought in God himself in the Trinitarian mystery of His life. The divine We is the eternal pattern of the human we, especially of that we
formed by the man and the woman created in the divine image and
likeness (#6). Stating that the primordial model of the family is to
be sought in God is different from saying that God Himself is a family,
just as saying that the primordial model of any good may be sought in God without identifying Him as that good.
Finally, what of Hahn's contention that the Holy Spirit has a
bridal-maternal character? In the relevant chapter of First Comes Love,
Hahn mounts a number of arguments that are remarkable for their
weakness. This is particularly apparent when he attempts to marshal
a biblical case for his thesis. He claims, for example, that As a mother
feeds her children, so the Spirit feeds the children of God with spiritual
milk. As a mother groans in labor, so the Spirit groans to give us life
yet there are no biblical passages which state that the Spirit feeds
Christians with spiritual milk or that the Spirit groans in giving them
new birth (apparently a conflation of Rom. 8:22, which speaks of
creation groaning as in childbirth, with Rom. 8:26, which speaks of
the Spirit interceding for us with groans, but with no mention of
childbirth).
Hahn attempts to cite saints and theologians in favor of his thesis, yet
some are being taken demonstrably out of context and the remainder
are insufficient to provide a stable foundation in Christian Tradition for
ascribing a bridal-maternal character to the Holy Spirit. One gets the
feeling that they are not being adduced so much to provide evidence
for the position as to provide a shield against criticism.
The specific arguments Hahn produces have been ably critiqued by
his friend and colleague Monica Migliorino Miller (ìThe Gender of the
Holy Trinity,îNew Oxford Review, May 2003, pp. 27-35), so I will not
offer an extensive response to them here. But I will make a few points
that I wish Hahn would respond to, should he ever choose to defend
his position in print.
First, if one wishes to see the Holy Spirit as having a bridal-maternal
haracter,what are the implications of this for the Spirit's relationship to
the other two Persons of the Trinity? Hahn tells us that the eternal
personhood of the Spirit cannot be made to depend on a creature, no
matter how exalted (e.g., Mary), since that would imply absurd or
impossible notions (FCL, p. 208). Therefore, if the Spirit has bridal
and maternal aspects, they must be in reference to the other two
Persons. Brides have husbands and mothers have children, so which
of the other two Persons is the Husband and which is the Child? There
seem to be only two possible combinations. One is that the Father is the
Husband of the Spirit and the Son is the Child. Yet this would contradict
what we already know about the processions within the Godhead, since
the Son proceeds from the Father alone (without the aid of a maternal
principle), and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The
second combination would be that the Son is the Husband of the Spirit
and the Father is the Child. This also contradicts what we know about the processions in the Godhead, since the Father proceeds from no one.
One might even go so far as to say, given the traditional understanding
of the relationships among the three Persons of the Trinity, that if one
were bound and determined to find a maternal principle in the Trinity,
one would have to look not to the Spirit but to the Son, and that the
Holy Spirit must be seen as the fruit of the love of God the Father and
the bridal-maternal Son. Yet the third Person has been revealed to us
as Spirit rather than as Son of the second Person and ìGrandsonî of the
first Person.
Honoring the known processions of the Trinity while viewing the Holy
Spirit as bridal-maternal results in further absurdities. In Hahn's
paradigm, the Trinity must certainly represent the only Family in
existence in which a Father and a Son co-operate to have a Mother!
Hahn sketches a parallel between the procession of the Spirit from the
Son and the Father and the creation of Eve from the side of Adam, who
was created by God (FCL, p. 135). This preserves the genders he wants
and the sequence of Persons, but it still poses problems for the alleged
bridal-maternal character of the Spirit. Eve was Adam's wife. Is the
Spirit the wife of the Son? And without reference to the created order,
with regard to Whom is the Spirit maternal? God?
Second, why does Hahn balk at calling the Spirit Mother? If his children's
mom is the Holy Spirit of our home, why can not the Holy Spirit be ìthe
Mom of the Holy Trinityî? Hahn tells us repeatedly, in work after work,
that what God does is the key to understanding who God is, so if he can
discern by the Holy Spirit's actions that He (She?) has a bridal-maternal
character, then why can't these adjectives be turned into nouns? Why
shouldn't the Spirit be called Bride and Mother? Is the reason simply
that floating this suggestion would be too hot to handle for Hahn?
Third, how would Hahn respond to magisterial statements that have a
bearing on his theory? In his apostolic letter on the dignity of women,
John Paul underscored the limits of the analogies by which masculine
and feminine qualities are attributed to God in Scripture. He then
stressed that the ìeternal mystery of divine generation joining the
Son to the Father has neither masculine nor feminine qualities
(Mulieris Dignitatem, #8).
John Paul went on to say that All generating in the created world is to
be likened to this absolute and uncreated model. Thus every element
of human generation which is proper to man, and every element which is
proper to woman, namely human fatherhood and motherhood, bears
within itself a likeness to, or analogy with the divine generating and with
that fatherhood which in God is totally different that is, completely
spiritual and divine in essence; whereas in the human order, generation
is proper to the unity of the two (ibid.). If the Holy Father is correct in
this, it would undercut the need Hahn has of seeing a maternal or
motherhood principle in the Trinity separate from the eternal generation
flowing from the Father.
The Catechism warns: Before we make our own this first exclamation
of the Lordís Prayer, we must humbly cleanse our hearts of certain false
images drawn from this world.... The purification of our hearts has to do
with paternal or maternal images, stemming from our personal and
cultural history, and influencing our relationship with God. God our
Father transcends the categories of the created world. To impose our
own ideas in this area upon him would be to fabricate idols to adore
or pull down. To pray to the Father is to enter into his mystery as
he is and as the Son has revealed him to us (#2779).
Hahn quotes this passage (FCL, p. 10), yet he seems oblivious to the
relevance of its warning to his own situation. Taken at face value, it
would seem that the warning is intended to prevent precisely the kind
of reading into God of paternal or maternal images which Hahn performs
. If so, then in the Catechism's words, he has succumbed to the
temptation to fabricate idols to adore or pull down by refusing to
enter into the mystery of the Trinity as the Son has revealed it to us.
Hahn in Context
Hahn writes of a particular point in his time in Protestant ministry: I was
eager to share what I thought were novel, innovative insights
(RSH, p. 43). Given the number of novel, innovative insights in his
recent works the Shem-Melchizedek identity, the dragonslayer model
of the Fall of Man, the fourth cup, the Millennium as past event, the
covenant-kinship model, family room soteriology, the idea that God
is the eternal covenant family, and the bridal-maternal character of the
Holy Spirit it would seem these words are as applicable to his work today as they were in his theonomist Presbyterian days.
Some of Hahnís ideas continue to reflect things common in theonomy.
These include his passion for making the Old Testament relevant today
and his literalistic readings in Genesis and other Old Testament texts.
His preterism is a commonplace of theonomic thought, though his i
nterpretation of the Millennium is not (theonomists are generally
postmillennial, meaning that they believe in the Millennium as a future
age in which the world is thoroughly Christianized, though one that
precedes rather than follows the Second Coming).
Other distinctives of Hahn's thought (the fourth cup, the bridal-maternal
character of the Holy Spirit) are not attested in theonomic writings to
my knowledge, but they do reflect the propensity of those in the
theonomist subculture for theological and exegetical derring-do. Many
theonomists employ a hermeneutic known as interpretive maximalism,
according to which small details found in one Scripture passage may be
used to connect with larger biblical themes and symbols in an almost
stream-of-consciousness fashion. Some of Hahn's argumentation
bears similarities to this technique, as when he claims that the Spirit
groans to give us life (FCL, p. 131) in defense of his bridal-maternal
interpretation of the Holy Spirit.
The theonomic movement is associated with Christian Reconstructionism,
whose key writers have been R. J. Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen, and
Gary North. The major idea of the movement is that the Old Testament
is far more relevant to the lives of Christians than is generally supposed
among Protestants. In particular, theonomy (God's Law) holds that the
Old Law is binding except where it is expressly modified by the New
Testament. According to Reconstructionism, every area of life and every
culture on earth needs to be brought into conformity with God's Law.
As a result, advocates of this school of thought argue for a slow
Christianization of modern society that would result in a New T
estament-modified version of the Old Testament laws being brought
into force. This is seen as involving the curbing of religious liberty and
increased use of the death penalty for a wide range of offenses
mentioned in the Old Testament. Though controversial even within
the movement, the execution of incorrigible youth (
based on Deut. 21:18-21) and the reintroduction of a form of slavery
(based on a variety of Old Testament texts) are supported by many
theonomists.
It should be pointed out that Hahn has not advocated these. Indeed,
his recent works are largely devoid of political thought, so his views
on them are unknown. But this is the school in which he received
much of his formation as a Protestant, and the theonomy connection
explains many of Hahnís distinctives. One may wonder whether this
background continues to play an undue role in his thought and in his
professional comportment, particularly his propensity for rushing novel
ideas to the public in popular books and audiocassettes rather than
prudently circulating them for criticism and examination among his peers.
Hahnís approach raises concerns regarding the enthusiasm with
which he goes beyond commonly accepted principles of Catholic belief
into the realm of the speculative or dubious. A basic principle of Catholic
theology, expounded by the Fathers, is great caution in regard to novelty.
A Catholic Scrip≠ture scholar would be well advised to broach significant
new insights tentatively, with many scholarly qualifications, in an
academic forum where they can be sifted by fellow professionals. By
contrast, it is the theonomic firebrandís mode of operation to rush
dramatic novelties before the masses via popular books, audiocassettes,
and newsletters.
Hahn needs to engage the academic world and allow his ideas to be
tested. Thus far he has not done so. Because he has presented them
only in popular works, few public critiques of them have been offered.
Hahn has chosen not to respond to these few critiques, and the only
responses to them have been defenses published by others (some by
people outraged that Hahn would be subject to any criticism). One was
an article published in the National Catholic Register by Bishop Fabian
Bruskewitz, a close friend of Hahn's and the man who received him into
the Church (see NOR, Sept. 2002, pp. 23-25, and Dec. 2002, pp. 40-44).
One hopes that this defense by Bishop Bruskewitz was a motu proprio
(i.e., on his own initiative) and that Hahn did not solicit it. Catholic
Scripture scholars do not seek protection from popular bishops when
their ideas are critiqued. They take their lumps, they stand up to
defend their own ideas; one waits to see if Hahn will defend his. He
needs to do so if he feels that defenses of them can be mounted;
otherwise, he should retract them or at least cease promoting them
to popular audiences that will uncritically accept them. (I am aware
of only one case where Hahn has responded to criticism. He wrote a
letter to the editor of America magazine [Mar. 1, 2004], taking exception
to an article by a liberal Catholic on the new apologists where he was
mentioned in passing. He corrected one small error and complained
that the author had placed him at the far right of the contemporary
Catholic theological continuum, which Hahn denies.)
None of this is to take away from the great good Hahn has done. His
enthusiasm for the faith and the Bible and for making it relevant to the
lives of ordinary Christians has provided enormous benefit to many. Yet
Hahn still has cause for caution, reflection, and re-evaluation. The
popular audience he customarily addresses is in no way prepared to
evaluate Hahn's speculations, and many in that audience are certain
to absorb them uncritically. It is well known that many have converted to the Catholic faith through Hahnís efforts. Yet, as the man might himself
put it, Christ wishes us to make converts, not Hahn-verts.
Abbreviations for works by Scott Hahn:
RSH: Rome Sweet Home
(with Kimberly Hahn)
FCL: First Comes Love
FKP: A Father Who Keeps His Promises
Edward OíNeill formerly taught religion on the college level.