Is nominalism that bad?

The First Discourseman

Is there a greater evil than religious nominalism? A carapace of piety masking the unrepentant heart; salvation received through communion and confession; or a culture where the Church has been irredeemably conflated with the state. Nominal Christianity is where the right things are done for the wrong reasons, or when people pay lip service to the God they may not worship in their hearts.

As the narrative goes, Christendom was the archetype of nominal Christianity, where attending church, receiving the sacraments, professing the liturgy, and living in line with Christian morals was so commonplace that Christianity’s distinctiveness was disarmed.

Particularly amongst evangelicals, nominalism- as a religion of works- is anathema, since Christ’s death on the cross, through which we are made right with God, is an intellectual idea to be comprehended. Taken to its logical conclusion, evangelical Christianity can be pared down to a series of propositional truths which, once accepted, make one a Christian. In this understanding of faith, there is little room for the Christians who can’t express those propositional truths, or who cling to faith’s more tangible, physical elements.

Undoubtedly, true piety is better than its false or half-hearted alternatives, and orthodoxy does underpin the Christian faith, but in this current cultural moment nominalism might be what is most needed.

When nominalism is criticised, the alternatives are rarely considered. The option is not between a genuine and a fraudulent Christianity, but a broad, cultural Christianity or a narrow Christianity existing in a Pagan world. In an age where gender is free-floating, suicide is commonplace, sex is misused, resentment characterises politics, the planet is etiolated and Christianity flounders, the structures and morals of Christendom seem increasingly appealing.

Whether or not everyone in a religious society is in the Kingdom themselves, there is an obvious appeal to Christian norms. Though there is good and evil in every society, there is a danger of flattening and relativising distinctions between societies, when there are objective standards of truth and goodness by which they can measured. Premodern epistemology for instance, in recognising a Creator God, was more virtuous than its modern alternative. Whether or not someone with a premodern epistemology was a Christian did not affect the Christian lens through which they viewed the world. Similarly, whether someone practiced sex within marriage because they recognised its truth and goodness, or because it was socially enforced, does not change the fact that it is a part of God’s natural law. God desires people to live according to his law and he hates sin; that is true independent of someone’s faith.

Within a religious culture, the line between true and false religion is likely to be blurry. Analysing it from modernity, the condescension of posterity can blind us to the more saturated, holistic faith that was practiced by those we might consider nominal. Particularly from the evangelical perspective, with its focus on the five solas of the Reformation, a Christianity where people didn’t know their Bible, or didn’t profess justification by faith alone, sounds suspicious. In turn though, many ‘nominal’ Christians from the past might look at the Church today in bewilderment: the Lord’s Supper can often feel like an optional extra; in most churches, there is little or no liturgy and catechism, even confession is uncommon; and Protestant churches are often architecturally barren. All this might suggest a lack of true faith on our part. They may not be correct to assume that, but it does highlight that paradigms shift with time, which should prompt caution in judging true and false faith.

In a context where holistic faith is practiced, including the liturgy and sacraments, there is always the likelihood that a deeper and truer faith is inculcated over time. For the individual who worships at a church their entire lives, practices a broadly Christian moral code, and professes an orthodox liturgy, their faith may become increasingly real over time; arguably more so than the faith of many Christians today. To adapt an adage: if it looks like a Christian, and acts like a Christian, then it probably is a Christian.

One final observation is that Western Christianity is peculiarly individualistic. This brings its benefits, emphasising one’s personal, unique relationship with Christ, but it is another modern paradigm. A more community-oriented faith may not have contained the imagination for ‘nominal Christianity’, because the concern was over how the community, or nation, responded to the gospel. The corporate dimension to salvation naturally dilutes a fixation on the individual, and perhaps opens the doors of the Kingdom a little wider than we realise.