Brent Ferry is an OPC minister who is not particularly old and since he is a husband and father is fairly settles. But as an avocation he plays drums for a band and has a feel for youth and restlessness. Despite his demographical profile and musical talent, he is not much impressed with the recent Crossway book by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears, Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe (2010). The recent issue of the OPC’s magazine, New Horizons, has Ferry’s review of Driscoll and Breshears. Here is an excerpt:

Driscoll is sometimes identified as part of evangelicalism’s resurgent Calvinistic movement. Besides puffs and quotes from Reformed authors, however, the book does not reflect the contours of Reformed thought at all.

For example, the authors omit the covenant of works (p. 177). They argue against limited atonement in favor of hypothetical universalism (p. 267). They condition regeneration upon faith and repentance (pp. 317, 436). There is no clear affirmation of unconditional predestination. The book excludes the fourth commandment from the abiding moral law (pp. 198-99), yet has a high view of the Lord’s Day (pp. 381-84). It also contains pictures of Christ (pp. 208, 244). . . .

In short, Doctrine is a hodgepodge of various theological trajectories. When the authors compare Noah’s drunkenness to “a hillbilly redneck on vacation” (p. 184), they reveal the nature of their contextualization project, which is to promote a Christianity that embraces irreverent adolescence. Theologically, this book does does rise above that standard, but not by much.

I do wonder, though, what outsiders would think of TGC’s website and I have recently speculated on this in the case of neo-Calvinism’s political theology. What I have in mind is whether those who disagree with TGC would find much material or discussion that is challenging, that actually produces new or hard thought (as opposed to deep feeling or moral inadequacy). Or is the nature of such an endeavor that relies upon the fame of its evangelical pastors and speakers to offer up inspiration and affirmation, thus raising the question of whether evangelicals or their vehicles are sappy?

But what is curious about Keller’s concession that polemics is necessary as a form of medicine is whether the folks at TGC think that what they are doing through the coalition is offering a well-rounded diet. Keller says, “Polemics is medicine, not food. Without medicine we will surely die—we can’t live without it. This is why polemical theology must be a required part of every theological curriculum. Yet we cannot live on medicine.” I understand this. And it can also be said of candy, except that candy isn’t nearly as beneficial as medicine, nor is it the case that we could not live without it. Still, as I’ve asked before, what does TGC do that churches do not already do? The churches have the recipes and ingredients for a healthy spiritual diet. And sometimes they engage in polemics with those institutions that offer up prepackaged-food as the wholesome article.

So perhaps the folks at TGC need to look in the mirror and ask whether they are doing something that instigates polemics. In which case, it wouldn’t be a personality defect of Calvinists to disagree with and point out the weaknesses of a project such as TGC.

According to Taylor:

Angry Calvinists are not like unicorns, dreamed up in some fantasy. They really do exist. And the stereotype exists for a reason. I remember (with shame) answering a question during college from a girl who was crying about the doctrine of election and what it might mean for a relative and my response was to ask everyone in the room turn to Romans 9. Right text, but it was the wrong time.

This is an odd observation because Taylor never identifies a single angry Calvinist. He has engaged in a form of stereotype that would be politically incorrect if applied on the lines of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. You’d think that the nice Calvinists at TGC would be more sensitive about theological profiling.

You’d also think that if Taylor believes Calvinists are prone to anger then a pastoral response might be to avoid winding them up — as in not mentioning the problem. Does he refer to alcoholic Christians as those “dipsomaniac Protestants”? Does he make a habit of calling attention to questionable character traits in his readers?

As for the diagnosis, he cites Piper who writes (in part):

So the intellectual appeal of the system of Calvinism draws a certain kind of intellectual person, and that type of person doesn’t tend to be the most warm, fuzzy, and tender. Therefore this type of person has a greater danger of being hostile, gruff, abrupt, insensitive, or intellectualistic.

Piper doesn’t seem to consider the type of person that can’t handle people who are insensitive, or the kind that has to publicly broadcast that a certain slice of Christians are insensitive. Profiling works both ways. Hence sappy evangelicals.

Which is why it is possible that the problem afflicting the evangelicals at the Gospel Coalition is one of sentimentality. That is, they value feelings more than doctrine. This is what Ken Myers called orthopathy instead of orthodoxy. This does not mean that the folks at TGC ignore doctrine. Obviously, they promote it. But they never let it function in a way that might make leaders, readers, or bloggers uncomfortable — that is, doctrine will never be offensive, especially to the co-allies. But they seem to have no problem patrolling the Christian world for incorrect emotions.

This would apparently explain why the bloggers at TGC have yet to mention the two six hundred pound gorillas in the TGC parlor — C. J. Mahaney and Mark Driscoll. The former has at the very least created a ruckus about the kind of pastoral leadership within SGM circles, which would seem to undermine TGC’s commitment to promoting gospel-centered churches. And then there is Dricoll’s clairvoyance which in sixteenth-century Geneva would have gotten him drowned. I understand that these situations are delicate and that friends want to stand by friends. But to call Calvinists — yet again — angry when TGC has its own image problems is well nigh remarkable unless, that is, you remember the importance of feelings, affections, passions, and hedonism. A co-ally may not be able to spot Mahaney’s or Driscoll’s errors but can FEEL their pain.

Maybe the problem is one of discipline. When I was a boy and got in trouble my dad would take out the belt and give me a wallop or two across my behind. I thought he was angry. I also thought he was mean. Never mind that he always shed a few tears while executing his duties. His tears could not compare to mine since I was the one who really felt pain and he was the one inflicting it.

Could it be that Calvinists look mean to Gospel Co-Allies in the same way that disciplining dads do to wayward children? Maybe. But if you want direction and counsel that prevents you from wandering off the right path, would you rather go to a Presbyterian pastor or leave a message with one of the Gospel Coalition’s celebrities and wait for one of his assistants to respond?

Postscript: Ross Douthat has a post about the reign of niceness among Harvard University undergraduates. He writes: “The pursuite of niceness and the worship of success can complement one another as easily as they can contradict. But the kind of culture that’s created when they combine — friendly and deferential on the surface, boiling with resume-driven competitiveness underneath — isn’t one that a great university should aspire to cultivate.” I wonder if a similar combination could be responsible for the culture of niceness over at TGC.

But why is an affirmation of divine sovereignty Reformed? It is just as much Lutheran as it is Reformed. It is in fact basically true of Christianity to affirm the sovereignty of God. That business in the Nicene Creed about “maker of heaven and earth” does point in the direction of a divine being sufficiently powerful to create everything and then govern and maintain it all.

So why don’t we call the new evangelical resurgence of interest in divine sovereignty Lutheran instead of Reformed? After all, there is nothing about the young and restless that is explicitly Reformed other than the Jonathan Edwards is My Home Boy t-shirts (and Edwards, for all his genius, is not exactly the standard for Reformed Protestantism).

One explanation may be evangelicals mistakenly think of themselves as Reformed because they are following the lead of Reformed Protestants themselves. The latter are more inclined to think of themselves as evangelical than as Reformed. In turn, this tendency cultivates an atmosphere where Reformed Protestants look, speak, and act like evangelicals. In which case, the reason that evangelicals don’t consider themselves Lutheran – though they do affirm as much of Lutheranism as they do of Reformed Protestantism – and don’t make Martin Luther is My Home Boy t-shirts is that Lutheranism is not a comfortable environment for evangelicals.

Evidence of this tension comes from Kevin DeYoung’s recent interview with the Lutheran pastor, Paul T. McCain (sounds pretty Scottish and not very German). To the question of whether Lutherans consider themselves part of American evangelicalism, McCain responded:

I do not think that most Lutherans consider themselves to be American Evangelicals. We tend to think of ourselves first, and foremost, simply as Lutheran Christians. I must say in light of the fact that conservative Lutherans do have a single book by which they can identify themselves, doctrinally, we find trying to nail down precisely what “Evangelicalism” is a bit like an exercise in nailing jello to a wall, and that kind of gives us the heebie-jeebies. That’s a technical term.

And in a follow up question about differences between Reformed and Lutheran Protestants, McCain had this intriguing response:

We are keen on emphasizing the proper distinction between God’s Law, that shows us our sin, and God’s Gospel, that shows us our Savior and we emphasize God’s objective work through both His Word and His Sacraments. The “S” word makes our Evangelical friends very nervous, but we hold and cherish the Sacraments and really believe that God works saving faith by the power of His promising Word through Baptism. We also believe that the Lord’s Supper is our Lord Christ’s own dear body and blood, actually under, with and in the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and drink, and that through it we receive forgiveness and life, and wherever there is forgiveness and life, there is salvation.

Now, of course, Lutherans and Reformed disagree on the Lord’s Supper and have ever since 1529. But why are Reformed Protestants any more appealing to evangelicals than Lutherans on sacramental grounds. After all, Reformed Protestants also have sacramental teachings and practices that would scare evangelicals if they ever went beyond the first question and answer of the Shorter Catechism. Does baptism come to mind? Plus, the Reformed churches’ teaching on the Supper – from the Belgic Confession to the Westminster Confession – is no more agreeable to most evangelicals (whoever they are) than the Book of Concord.

So again I find it very strange that many seem to think that Reformed and evangelical go together when as many wrinkles exist between these expressions of Protestants as between evangelicals and Lutherans. Could it be that if Reformed Protestants were as serious about being Reformed as Lutherans have been about being Lutheran the young and restless would simply be content with calling themselves Baptist?

According to this consensus the Presbyterian opposition to revivalism during the Second Pretty Good Awakening is also easy to explain. Charles Finney and company were delinquent on theology and possibly practice (revivalism and new measures instead of just plain revival). So the Second Pretty Good Awakening proves nothing.

Then there is the First Pretty Good Awakening where Calvinists promoted revivals. This is the golden-age for the Reformed/Evangelical consensus. But what about the Old Side critics? Well, as I learned at Westminster and from Leonard Trinterud, the Old Side were proto-liberals, propounding a rationalistic theology with Enlightenment echoes, and they were drunks, falling off their horses on the way home from presbytery thanks to a heavy elbow.

In the recent exchange with Ken Stewart over at the Christian Curmudgeon I came across another explanation for the apparent tension between Reformed Protestants and evangelicals – which is, blame the Dutch. In response to differences of interpretation about revivalism, Stewart wrote to the Curmudgeon:

I think we disagree is in our estimation of the danger posed by Hart and his school of writers. Westminster Escondido, in a strange continuity with Calvin Seminary Grand Rapids (these schools are usually at loggerheads) are centers from which revival is disparaged. So important a church historian as George Marsden (raised in the OPC) termed Darryl Hart’s book on American presbyterianism “anti-evangelical” because of its steady misrepresentation of the Great Awakening. So, while from your vantage point, you are aware of Hart, from mine – I think he and his allies represent a danger so great that it needs to be countered.

When pushed on the fact that George Marsden, who studied with Cornelius Van Til, who was very critical of evangelicalism, Stewart responded:

I don’t dispute CVT’s anti-evangelical posture; in fact I would suggest that the influx of CRC faculty into WTS in the 1930′s fundamentally shifted the young WTS away from its Princeton heritage, which had been decidedly the other way. When one stands back from this, it makes us realize that the whole conservative Reformed tradition in this country has been influenced far more by Grand Rapids theology than is generally acknowledged. I am not demonizing the CRC in this particular respect; I am simply highlighting the fact that throughout the 20th century, there have been rival versions of the Reformed faith jockeying with one another for dominance.

What is fairly amusing about this reply is that the Dutch-Americans at Calvin Seminary were responsible for printing a review that Stewart wrote of Recovering Mother Kirk, which was hardly flattering of the book’s author or his interpretation of the Reformed tradition. If the Dutch-American Reformed mafia wanted to enlarge their control of the interpretation of American Protestantism, they fell asleep when reading Stewart’s submission.

Stewart and others who reject the argument that Reformed and evangelical are at odds gain a lot of traction by suggesting that Reformed critics of evangelicalism construe Reformed and evangelical Protestantism as fundamentally at odds or separate entities. The proponents of an evangelical-friendly Reformed faith also like to point out that Reformed churches have made lots of room for evangelicalism and even revivalism. So both conceptually and historically, supposedly, the Reformed critics of evangelicalism are flawed.

But for this critic, it is obvious that evangelicals and Reformed are both Protestant and so overlap at certain points, both religiously and historically. Experimental Calvinism arose in the context of Reformed churches (especially when the prospects for reforming the national churches were looking bleak) and Reformed and Presbyterians churches have been friendly to evangelicalism (though I wish they were not).

What the proponents of the consensus are incapable of doing is accounting for the splits that have occurred within Reformed churches over evangelicalism (even without the presence of Dutch Reformed). The Old Side and the Old School split from their Presbyterian peers because the pro-revivalists believed subscription and polity were secondary to conversion and holy living. And so it has always been with evangelicalism. It is inherently anti-formal in the sense that forms to not matter compared to the experience of new birth or ecstatic worship. Evangelicals are also inherently inconsistent about this because since we exist as human beings in forms (i.e., bodies that are either male or female), we cannot escape formalism of some kind. Either way, on the matter of forms – creeds, worship, and polity – those who promote revivals or consider themselves evangelical are indifferent. The Spirit unites, not the forms. The same goes for different shades of evangelicalism: for the Gospel Coalition it is the gospel not the forms that unite; and for the Baylys and other “do this and live” types, it is the law not the forms that unites. Sticklers for the regulative principle, the system of doctrine, or presbyterian procedure are simply ornery obstacles to uniting Protestants on what is truly important.

What should not be missed either is that when Presbyterian particularists insist that forms matter, that the word reveals forms, and that the word and the Spirit work in conjunction, the response is invariably that the particularlists are mean and lack the fruit of the Spirit. Why? Because they do not recognize the presence of the Spirit.

And so to bring a little more light on the matter from one of those nefarious Dutch-Reformed types (though he is actually German), here is a useful reflection from Richard Muller on the impulses within evangelicalism that lead away from the insights of the Reformation(if only he had been editing the Calvin Theological Journal when Stewart reviewed Recovering Mother Kirk):

Even more than this, however, use of the language of personal relationship with Jesus often indicates a qualitative loss of the traditional Reformation language of being justified by grace alone through faith in Christ and being, therefore, adopted as children of God in and through our graciously given union with Christ. Personal relationships come about through mutual interaction and thrive because of common interests. They are never or virtually never grounded on a forensic act such as that indicated in the doctrine of justification by faith apart from works – in fact personal relationships rest on a reciprocity of works or acts. The problem here is not the language itself: The problem is the way in which it can lead those who emphasize it to ignore the Reformation insight into the nature of justification and the character of believer’s relationship with God in Christ.

Such language of personal relationship all too easily lends itself to an Arminian view of salvation as something accomplished largely by the believer in cooperation with God. A personal relationship is, of its very nature, a mutual relation, dependent on the activity – the works – of both parties. In addition, the use of this Arminian, affective language tends to obscure the fact that the Reformed tradition has its own indigenous relational and affective language and piety; a language and piety, moreover, that are bound closely to the Reformation principle of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. The Heidelberg Catechism provides us with a language of our “only comfort in life and in death” – that “I am not my own, but belong – body and soul, in life and death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ” (q. 1). “Belonging to Christ,” a phrase filled with piety and affect, retains the confession of grace alone through faith alone, particularly when its larger context in the other language of the catechism is taken to heart. We also have access to a rich theological and liturgical language of covenant to express with both clarity and warmth our relationship to God in Christ.

Even so, the Reformed teaching concerning the identity of the church assumes a divine rather than a human foundation and assumes that the divine work of establishing the community of belief is a work that includes the basis of the ongoing life of the church as a community, which is to say, includes the extension of the promise to children of believers. The conversion experience associated with adult baptism and with the identification of the church as a voluntary association assumes that children are, with a few discrete qualifications, pagan-and it refuses to understand the corporate dimension of divine grace working effectively (irresistibly!) in the perseverance of the covenanting community. It is a contradictory teaching indeed that argues irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints and then assumes both the necessity of a particular phenomenology of adult conversion and “decision.” (“How Many Points?” Calvin Theological Journal, Vol. 28 (1993): 425-33 posted at Riddelblog)

Be that as it may, the English historical theologian who admires Oliver Cromwell has a set of important observations about the phenomenon of urban-love that has swept up much of the conservative Presbyterian and evangelical world for the last two decades.

First he wrote this about the romanticization of the city that lurks in the urban-ministry model:

This superiority of the urban at an economic level has been reinforced with a veritable arsenal of cultural weapons, from the linguistic (e.g., city life is often described as `authentic’ while that in the suburbs is `artificial’) to the ethnic (city folk are seen as quick, sharp, savvy, sophisticated; country folk as slow, thick, simple – think accents, whether Mississippi or Gloucestershire). One could easily make the case for the existence of an urbanism which parallels Edward Said’s orientalism. Now the church is apparently on the bandwagon: missions to the city have a cool, hip status; missions to the bumpkins and the yokels (that’s English for `redneck’) not being quite so sexy. The secular aesthetic receives biblical sanction through baptism by a dodgy hermeneutic.

It is a real, practical, pastoral shame that influential churches are jumping on this urban-aesthetic bandwagon. Not that cities are not important. As I said, they are important because they contain lots of people. And, of course, almost by definition, big influential churches are in the cities because of the concentration of resources. But the suburbs are important too (and not simply for the faux urbanites who commute from thence for their urban church experience on a Sunday); and the countryside has its reached and its unreached. They may not be as cool in secular terms, and I would certainly not want to portray them as superior to or more authentic than the city in a way that some do (let’s not forget that as Marx romanticised the industrial proletariat, so the Fascists romanticised the feudal countryside); but it would be good to see the obsession with cities as some kind of eschatologically unique or superior entity disappearing from the trendy reformed discourse, to be replaced by much less contentiously significant biblical categories: those who see the cross as foolishness or an offence, and those who see it as the power of God unto salvation. It would also be good to see suburban and rural pastors being given their due as well.

Then he followed up with a pertinent post on the dangers of mulit-site churches:

These are sad days, when the biblical models of church and pastoring are being swept away by the avalanche of numerical success allied to personality cults and corporate values. The Apostle Peter clearly likens pastoring the church to shepherding, connects this shepherding to Christ as the great shepherd and, by implication, to the kind of quality of relationship Christ has with his sheep (1 Pet. 5: 1-5; cf. Jn. 10:14). Can multi-site, out-of state ministries even approximate in the vaguest and most attenuated way to this? Is there even a debate to be had here? Is there a single one of these megachurch outfits that isn’t basically identified with one or maybe two big personalities? Is that not a warning light that something may be amiss? And isn’t it about time that somebody who carries real weight in the young, restless and reformed world spoke out about this kind of ecclesiastical madness? Or are we so steeped in the celebrity/corporate/megachuch culture and so mesmerisied by numbers that nobody sees the problems any more?

All of us have our inconsistencies and some of us have two-kingdom theology and Christian liberty to explain them. But as long as Trueman does not let his associations with celebrity pastors and presence at inspirational conferences prevent him from incisive critiques of the American church, I’ll continue to appreciate his observations even if few of his associates seem to be paying attention.

This inversion, this social precisionism and theological and ecclesiastical latitudinarianism, is precisely why it’s important to distinguish between the two spheres of the administration of God’s sovereignty. The social sphere is a common sphere, a sphere shared by believers and non-believers. It’s what used to be called “secular” before the word “secular” became a pejorative and the antithesis of “religious.” The proper antithesis of religious is pagan or atheist or something on that order. Properly, “secular” denotes “non-ecclesiastical.” It is still used this way in the UK but in the USA the connotation of “secular” as “opposed to God” has overwhelmed the older usage. Allow me to use it in the older sense of “non-ecclesiastical” to make a point. The common or the secular sphere is, in God’s sovereign providence, governed by general principles (laws) revealed by God in nature and in the human conscience. The Apostle Paul teaches us as much in Romans 1-2 and in Romans 13. The Apostle Peter teaches this throughout 1 Peter. Neither Peter nor Paul laid out an agenda for the civil magistrate (Caesar) because there was no need. They knew that Caesar already knew what to do: punish evil doers and protect the innocent.

The sacred sphere represented by the chief visible, institutional manifestation of the kingdom, the church, is not common. It is governed not by general principles revealed in nature. It is governed by God’s extensive revelation of his law and gospel in Holy Scripture. This is why the Apostles wrote at such length to the churches, not about the great civil problems of the first century, but about the great ecclesiastical problems of the 1st century, about getting the gospel right, about not confusing the law with the gospel, about church discipline, about who is eligible for special office in the church and the like. The Apostles were positively precisionist. They were not latitudinarian about these things.

As the Baylys point out — and this is truly scary when you are 2k and find yourself agreeing with 2k haters — Trueman’s post lacks specifics; it’s an abstract account of how churches go liberal (which is surprising since at Westminster Trueman is sitting on a gold mine of evidence about how American Presbyterians lost their way).

One further abstraction that Trueman may have noted was the tendency for Christians to identify their own ideas with the Bible, thus turning the thoughts and words of men into those of God. To avoid the problem of abstraction, I offer the case of — yet again — neo-Calvinism. I understand Baus will go berserk but at his prodding I cracked open Roy Clouser’s Myth of Religious Neutrality and found the following argument identified by Clouser himself as “radically biblical”:

In the context of scientific or philosophical theory making people are generally quite earnest about what they are doing, quite anxious to be as clear as possible, and have nothing to gain by proposing or defending a theory they do not believe. Thus, the possibility of deception rarely interferes in the world of theory making. Of course, the obstacle of cultural difference remains and can perhaps only be overcome by experiencing and appreciating the other culture. But at least one of the two major difficulties with recognizing presuppositions is reduced to a minimum when we are dealing with highly abstract theories.

These features of presuppositions are important because it is by acting as presuppositions that religious beliefs exercise their most important influence on scientific and philosophical theorizing. This point therefore sharply distinguishes the radically biblical position from all the other positions concerning the relation of religion to theory making, including the position of the fundamentalist. The radically biblical view does not seek to find statements in Scripture on every sort of subject matter to establish religious influence. What we want to say is that the influence of religious beliefs is much more a matter of presupposed perspective guiding the direction of theorizing than of Scripture supplying specific truths for theories. (pp. 103-104)

First, I’m not sure why we need a radically biblical understanding of theory making. Why can’t we have Christian liberty about how we make theories — as opposed to the theories we hold. This seems like the philosophical version of the helicopter mom who home schools and doesn’t allow her daughters to eat any nuts for fear of any allergies.

Second, is the Bible given to us to turn us into philosophers? Clouser may think this is a fundamentalist question because it expects to find specific answers from Scripture. But he could simply talk about various philosophies of theory making without using the Bible as an adjective. So why the need to turn a common activity into a supernatural one?

Second, part two, was Paul concerned about theory making? He interacted with philosophers but doesn’t seem to say much about how to do philosophy or the theories of the mind? And what happens when you turn a philosophical theory into the accepted reality for everyone in the church, from Joe the Plumber to Sarah Palin? Do people need to be smart to be Christian?

Third, presuppositions don’t appear to be all that analogous to regeneration. I can see the import of the illumination of the Holy Spirit for understanding and accepting truths in Scripture that had been previously antithetical to my understanding of God, myself, sin, and salvation. But do we need to turn regeneration into a construct of philosophy.

Fourth, and back to the point — if you end up calling human endeavors that are common “biblical,” do you lose sight of what the Bible really teaches and what it doesn’t teach? No matter what the motives may be for overreach — and I generally concede that they are good in Clouser and many neo-Calvinists’ cases — why don’t these smart guys ever see where extending the category of “biblical” beyond the Bible leads? Do historians really need to come to the rescue with specifics from church history like the effects of world-and-life viewism on the Christian Reformed Church where to be Reformed was all Kuyper and Bavinck and very little Dort or Belgic?

BTW, I fear the strained exegesis that this post is inviting.

But when you stop and think about it, it becomes immediately clear that the errors for which Clark faults Wright are the very same errors for which he faults Wilson. Wilson’s mocking dismissal of Clark’s disagreements with the New Perspective, therefore, can seemingly be explained by the fact that they also apply to the Federal Vision.

It would appear, then, that the reason Wilson wants people like Clark banned from the New Perspective discussion is not really because of the overly-scrupulous nature of his attacks, but because those attacks aren’t narrow enough to just zero in on Durham, but they also set their sights upon Moscow, Idaho. In a word, Wilson’s problem isn’t that Clark is too nitpicky, it’s that he’s not nitpicky enough, for if he would agree to pinpoint only those errors of Wright’s that Wilson agrees are erroneous, then all would be well and Clark would welcomed back into the discussion. But since his attacks on Wright are broader than what Wilson is comfortable with, he is branded a mere irritant and dismissed with a wave of the hand.

Not only a ding ding ding ding moment, but Stellman’s outlook is further proof that 2k is far more reliable than its hysterical opponents suppose. In fact, we are still waiting for the anti-2k folks to step up to the plate on justification.

Meanwhile, the idea of redemption as the restoration of creation picks up more and more steam and neo-Calvinism puts more and more novelty into ideas Calvinistic. Here’s just a smidgeon of the contrast. Over at a website devoted to Kuyperianism, I ran across a whimsical essay by James K. A. Smith on the nature of redemption from a Reformed perspective. For Smith, salvation is not individual but cosmic:

The Word became flesh, not to save our souls from this fallen world, but in order to restore us as lovers of this world—to (re)enable us to carry out that creative commission. Indeed, God saves us so that—once again, in a kind of divine madness—we can save the world, can (re)make the world aright. And God’s redemptive love spills over in its cosmic effects, giving hope to this groaning creation.

Odd perhaps might be the idea that we can save the world. (Bad enough, as James Davison Hunter reminds us, is the idea that we can actually change the world.) Smith not only has us changing but also saving the world. Charles Finney and John Calvin have joined sides.

But even odder is the idea that the work of recreation is not reserved for the regenerate. It is also something in which unbelievers engage:

One of the New Testament words for “salvation” (soteria) carries the connotations of both deliverance and liberation as well as health and well-being. So salvation is both liberation from our disorder and the restoration for health and flourishing. I can think of no better picture of this than the sort of health-giving practices that Wendell Berry notices and celebrates in his recent collection, Bringing It To The Table: On Farming and Food. . . .

Thanks be to God, such redeeming, health-giving, cultural labour is not the special province of Christians. While the church is that people who have been regenerated and empowered by the Spirit to do the good work of culture-making, foretastes of the coming kingdom are not confined to the church. The Spirit is profligate in spreading seeds of hope. So we gobble up foretastes of the kingdom wherever we can find them. The creating, redeeming God of Scripture takes delight in Jewish literature that taps the deep recesses of language’s potential, in Muslim commerce that runs with the grain of the universe, and in the well-ordered marriages of agnostics and atheists. We, too, can follow God’s lead and celebrate the same.

But what does redemption look like? For the most part, you’ll know it when you see it, because it looks like flourishing. It looks like a life well lived. It looks like the way things are supposed to be. It looks like a well-cultivated orchard laden with fruit produced by ancient roots. It looks like labour that builds the soul and brings delight. It looks like an aged husband and wife laughing uproariously with their great-grandchildren. It looks like a dancer stretching her body to its limit, embodying a stunning beauty in muscles and sinews rippling with devotion. It looks like the graduate student hunched over a microscope, exploring nooks and crannies of God’s micro-creation, looking for ways to undo the curse. It looks like abundance for all.

Redemption sounds like the surprising cadences of a Bach concerto whose rhythm seems to expand the soul. It sounds like an office that hums with a sense of harmony in mission, punctuated by collaborative laughter. It sounds like the grunts and cries of a tennis player whose blistering serve and liquid forehand are enactments of things we couldn’t have dreamed possible. It sounds like the questions of a third grader whose teacher loves her enough to elicit and make room for a sanctified curiosity about God’s good world. It even sounds like the spirited argument of a young couple who are discerning just what it means for their marriage to be a friendship that pictures the community God desires (and is).

Redemption smells like the oaky tease of a Napa Chardonnay that births anticipation in our taste buds. It smells like soil under our nails after labouring over peonies and gerber daisies. It smells like the steamy winter kitchen of a family together preparing for supper. It smells like the ancient wisdom of a book inherited from a grandfather, or that “outside smell” of the family dog in November. It smells like riding your bike to work on a foggy spring morning. It even smells like the salty pungence of hard work and that singular bouquet of odors that bathes the birth of a child.

Golly gee.

Does redemption ever smell like the manure of agribusiness dairy farms in Southern California when the Santa Anna’s are pumping those odors into your car windows as you sit in a traffic jam on the 15, fearful that your car is going to overheat? Mind you, I like Wendell Berry too. But I don’t think I need to turn him into a re-creator or re-restorer in order to appreciate him.

The novel part of neo-Calvinism is particularly striking, maybe like that manure’s odor, when you compare it to Calvin. Here is what he writes about Christ’s office as king:

We must, therefore, know that the happiness which is promised to us in Christ does not consist in external advantages—such as leading a joyful and tranquil life, abounding in wealth, being secure against all injury, and having an affluence of delights, such as the flesh is wont to long for—but properly belongs to the heavenly life. As in the world the prosperous and desirable condition of a people consists partly in the abundance of temporal good and domestic peace, and partly in the strong protection which gives security against external violence; so Christ also enriches his people with all things necessary to the eternal salvation of their souls and fortifies them with courage to stand unassailable by all the attacks of spiritual foes. Whence we infer, that he reigns more for us than for himself, and that both within us and without us; that being replenished, in so far as God knows to be expedient, with the gifts of the Spirit, of which we are naturally destitute, we may feel from their first fruits, that we are truly united to God for perfect blessedness; and then trusting to the power of the same Spirit, may not doubt that we shall always be victorious against the devil, the world, and every thing that can do us harm. To this effect was our Saviour’s reply to the Pharisees, “The kingdom of God is within you.” “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation,” (Luke 17:21, 22). It is probable that on his declaring himself to be that King under whom the highest blessing of God was to be expected, they had in derision asked him to produce his insignia. But to prevent those who were already more than enough inclined to the earth from dwelling on its pomp, he bids them enter into their consciences, for “the kingdom of God” is “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,” (Rom. 14:17). These words briefly teach what the kingdom of Christ bestows upon us. Not being earthly or carnal, and so subject to corruption, but spiritual, it raises us even to eternal life, so that we can patiently live at present under toil, hunger, cold, contempt, disgrace, and other annoyances; contented with this, that our King will never abandon us, but will supply our necessities until our warfare is ended, and we are called to triumph: such being the nature of his kingdom, that he communicates to us whatever he received of his Father. Since then he arms and equips us by his power, adorns us with splendour and magnificence, enriches us with wealth, we here find most abundant cause of glorying, and also are inspired with boldness, so that we can contend intrepidly with the devil, sin, and death. In fine, clothed with his righteousness, we can bravely surmount all the insults of the world: and as he replenishes us liberally with his gifts, so we can in our turn bring forth fruit unto his glory. (Institutes, 2.15.4)

What is striking is the opposing themes of Smith and Calvin. For Smith, we are involved in doing the saving. For Calvin, it is all from Christ. And for Smith, redemption is part and parcel of this world. For Calvin, it is spiritual, eternal, heavenly — not to be realized in this world.

As I say, do neo-Calvinists ever read Calvin (on their way to the Bible)? Or does their philosophy give them liberty to make up whatever they want to believe?