Posts Tagged ‘Scott Clark’

Doug Wilson joins the Bayly Bros in heaping scorn on our good friend Scott Clark and the case for recovering the Reformed confessions. To Doug’s credit, he avoids the vituperative edge that characterizes the Baylys’ outbursts.

What unites Wilson and the Brothers Bayly in their criticism of Clark, apart from disdain for Meredith Kline, mind you, one of the true geniuses of twentieth-century Reformed Christianity, is nostalgia for Geneva. Of course, this is not the Geneva that sent Castellio packing or Servetus to the flames – well, it is, but most contemporary pining for Geneva manages to overlook the downside of Constantianism even when practiced by Reformer pastors.

Wilson is writing in response to a piece that Clark did for Table Talk on what evangelicals should expect from a Reformed church. Clark tries to cushion the blow that might come from the doctrinal, polity, and liturgical trappings that disorient the average born-again Christian. When Clark explains that “confessional churches are isolated from both the old liberal mainline and the revivalist traditions” and so offer an alternative to liberal and evangelical Protestantism, Wilson goes off.

First, Wilson laments Clark’s isolationism. Not only are Reformed confessionalists separated from evangelicals and liberals, but also “from the cultural potency of Reformed theology and piety.” This is lamentable because for Wilson, the Reformed theology that he has read and studied “built a great civilization.” In contrast, Clark’s brand of Reformed theology, that of “the truncated brethren,” “would have trouble building a taco stand.”

Wilson also takes exception to Clark’s claim that confessional churches today approximate the churches of the sixteenth century more than other Protestant congregations. For Wilson, this is patently untrue because the sixteenth-century Reformed churches were actually Reformed cities – that is, they were more than merely religious institutions. They were civil polities where supposedly Calvinism shaped all of Geneva’s or Strasbourg’s or Edinburgh’s life (tell that to the magistrates who stuck their neck out against the Holy Roman Empire and hired the Reformed pastors). This suggests that Wilson regards Reformed Protestantism as a way of taking names and kicking butt.

Furthermore, when Clark claims that evangelicals coming to Reformed churches will need time to acclimate to the new spiritual environment, Wilson retorts that Clark has the picture “exactly backwards” because Clark’s otherworldly version of the Reformed faith turns out to be warmed over evangelicalism (read: pietism). According to Wilson:

As an evangelical, and the son of an evangelical, allow me to give my testimony. I was part of the exodus from pop evangelicalism (not historic evangelicalism). I was sick of the cultural irrelevance and impotence of “believe in Jesus, go to Heaven when you die.” I was sick of a pietism that couldn’t find its way out of the prayer closet. I wanted to stop confessing that Jesus was Lord of an invisible seventeenth dimension somewhere. Why not here? Why not now? It was a long story, but the trail to historic evangelicalism, God-honoring worship, and a culturally potent and world transforming faith led me straight to the Reformed faith — the same faith that John Calvin and his successors confessed. Calvin preached to milkmaids and Calvin wrote letters to princes. Calvin drafted catechisms, and he drafted ordinances for the city council. Calvin thought that the idea of a civil society without enforcement of the first table of the law was “preposterous.” Calvin was a loyal son of Christendom, as am I.

It is remarkable that Wilson would seemingly dismiss the idea of people going to heaven, unless he thinks that this world is more than a foretaste but an actual embodiment of the world to come. I mean, people who milk cows to the glory of God still die, at which point the realities of the after life become fairly pressing compared to a Reformed way to pasteurize milk.

Also odd is Wilson’s slight of hand regarding “pop” and “historic” evangelicalism. My own testimony (both from experience and study) instructs me that appeals to historic evangelicalism generally depend less on historical realities and more to the point the appellant is trying to make. Does Wilson really mean to suggest that Clark has more in common with Joel Osteen than Carl Henry? Let me testify again and say that I’ve spent time with Clark and know that his locks cannot compete with Osteen’s.

But the really arresting aspect of Wilson’s critique of Clark is the idea that cultural relevance and effective change of this world is what characterizes Reformed Christianity. I get it that post-Niebuhr and post-Kuyper Wilson’s brand of transformationalism is par for the course. But what is shocking is the conceit that Reformed are more effective than evangelicals in changing things.

The history of Protestantism in the United States shows that the groups that were most influential in creating the Protestant establishment and its many institutions, along with a civil religion that made the greatest nation on God’s green earth unfriendly to Roman Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and other forms of infidelity, were those evangelicals like Charles Finney and Lyman Beecher, or the ecumenical and liberal Protestants like Josiah Strong and Reinhold Niebuhr. Funny how Calvinism did not characterize those influential voices.

The reason for evangelicalism’s can-do body (as well as spirit) has to do with the inherently activistic and this-worldly faith of born-again Protestantism. Here I am reminded of Mark Noll’s response to a paper by Nick Wolsterstorff about the need for evangelicals to become more engaged in cultural and social matters. Noll said that telling evangelicals to be more active was like pointing an addict to dope.

So Doug Wilson may be the real evangelical. He may be more culturally relevant and effective than Clark and other two-kingdom proponents, though I hear that even in Moscow, Idaho the work of cultural clean up is not perhaps a model for taking on the rest of the nation, globe, or cosmos. Granted, if Wilson can rid the United States of automobiles, Walmart, and illegal drugs, I won’t complain. But I would ask that he put church reform higher on his list. All the infidelity among churches that claim to be Christian (even some Reformed communions) certainly appears to be a matter of greater alarm than getting non-believers to conform outwardly to the manners and customs of Credenda Agenda ’s readers.

Which means that if Wilson think’s Reformed confessionalism’s dualism is bad ju ju, his works righteousness is bad do do (is the works righteousness of do doism ever good?).

As part of his commitment to speaking the truth at length in love, John Frame has written a review of Scott Clark’s, Recovering the Reformed Confession for his website. (How long, O Lord, how long? Over 17,500 words not including 60 [!!] notes. Let me help with the math. At 250 words per page, that’s 70 [a lot of] pages.)

The review reveals a very interesting difference between Clark and Frame on the Reformed tradition. For Clark, the Reformed faith has an objective standard, found in the churches’ creeds and confessions. He concedes diversity as the churches emerged in such diverse settings as Scotland and Transylvania. But Clark (like me) finds these confessions the best way to understand what Reformed Protestantism stood for, while also providing a good deal of uniformity on what it means to be Reformed.

Frame, however, thinks this is a narrow way of understanding the Reformed tradition and suggests an alternative: “I think it better to regard anyone as Reformed who is a member in good standing of a Reformed church. I realize there is some ambiguity here, for we must then ask, what is a really Reformed church? Different people will give different answers. But, as I said above, I don’t think that the definition has to be, or can be, absolutely precise. The concept, frankly, has ‘fuzzy boundaries,’ as some linguists and philosophers say.”

What would such different approaches to defining Reformed Protestantism mean for understanding the meaning and identity of the United States? This is no idle question since Frame draws on this analogy to identify his differences with Clark. For Frame, Clark is one of those originalists who puts much stock in the founders and the Constitution. But for Frame, the United States cannot be held to such a definite and time-bound standard. He writes:

Imagine someone saying, “if you want to know what ‘American’ means, look at the founding documents of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the writings of the founders like The Federalist Papers.” There is a certain amount of truth in that. Certainly these documents tell us much of what makes the United States different from other nations. But these documents presuppose an already existing community of ideas. For example, although they mention religion rarely, they cannot be rightly understood apart from the history of New England Puritanism, Dutch Reformed Christianity in New York, Quakerism in Pennsylvania, Anglicanism in Virginia, and so on.

And the history of America subsequent to these documents is also important. Many claim that these documents are largely neglected and/or contradicted today. There is a large disconnect between what America was at its founding and what it is today. Defining America by the founding documents, and defining it as an empirical community, lead to two different and inconsistent conceptions. People who define America only by its founding documents are likely to say that subsequent developments are “unamerican.” But so say that is merely to express a preference. That preference may be a good one. But merely to express it is not likely to persuade anyone to share that preference. This case is similar to the attempt to define “Reformed.”

On the view I advocate, it is not possible to state in precise detail what constitutes Reformed theology and church life. But one can describe historical backgrounds and linkages, as I have done above in the example of the United States. And there are some general common characteristics, a kind of “family resemblance,” among the various bodies of the last five centuries that have called themselves Reformed. The idea that “Reformed” should be defined as a changing community is not congenial to Clark’s view. But it seems to me to be more accurate and more helpful.

A number of arresting implications follow from Frame’s analogy between the Reformed and American traditions.

One that stands out is who qualifies as a good American. If someone is Reformed because they belong to a Reformed church, then someone is a good American if they belong to the United States. That means that the liberals writing for the New York Times and the atheists writing books against Christianity are as much Americans as the U.S. faithful attending church each Sunday. In other words, the United States is what it is; it has no objective norms for determining what the nation means or who belongs to it. No matter your beliefs, you belong to the United States if you are American.

Another implication that stands out like low-hanging fruit is what Frame appears to be saying to those who spend much time appealing to the nation’s Christian founding for understanding what the nation should be today. As Frame writes above, “People who define America only by its founding documents are likely to say that subsequent developments are ‘unamerican.’ But to say that is merely to express a preference.” Likewise, to say that America was founded as a Christian nation and that the United States needs to return to its Christian heritage is, according to Frame’s argument, not objective reality but a “preference” with as much force as an opinion from Scott Clark.

I myself tend to be an originalist all the way down. I regard the Constitution to be important for understanding the United States then and now, the Reformed creeds important for understanding Reformed history then and now, and even the Bible important for understanding God’s plan of salvation then and now. Maybe this is the hobgobblin of a small mind, though I think it also has something to do with the way we read law, whether for the state or the church.

Still, Frame’s argument would appear to cut off at the knees those folks who think the American nation’s Christian origins are relevant for today. The message seems to be, “just say goodbye to ‘in God we trust.’”

Postscript: for some reason the Bayly Brothers seemed to miss this feature of Frame’s review when they recommended it.

And apparently, readers of the current review haven’t read very deeply in the journal. But a handy gadget at Kerux’s website reveals some items of note.

First this article by Scott Clark on John 2:13-22, on Christ’s cleansing of the Temple.

One lesson taught is the end of the theocratic arrangement in Israel:

It is ironic that those who were to care for God’s resting place, the place symbolic of God’s covenantal communion with his people, should be so insensitive to Jesus’ actions and words. What the priestly aristocracy does not realize is that by opposing Jesus, the temple guardians are opposing the temple itself! As in the garden and in the theocracy, God’s people have again desecrated God’s temple. Not only have they polluted piety for profit, but they fail to recognize the very purpose for which the temple stands–it is a house for God. We know this because they failed to recognize God when he came to the temple!

Because they lacked the Spirit, the Jews completely misunderstood Jesus to be speaking about the temple in which they were standing. Jesus is saying that his body is the temple. He is the “true” or the “real” temple (Jn. 6:32,33). Jesus’ temple supersedes the Herodian temple. Jesus’ and John’s words explain his act of cleansing the temple. Jesus is prophetically foreshadowing the final destruction of the temple. . . .

[T]he Jerusalem temple is an unsatisfactory habitation for our God. Like everything else connected with the old covenant, the temple is an incomplete expression of God’s grace. To redeem us, God must tabernacle in our flesh (Jn. 1:14). In this way the destiny of the temple is bound to the destiny of the Christ.

We also learn from Clark about the importance of holiness after in the new covenant:

God’s requirements for the holiness of his dwelling place have not been watered down in the new covenant. In fact they are greater. Coexisting with the other “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5) joined together to become a “dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2:21) means even greater holiness than that of the old covenant. We no longer have to watch Moses go to the tent to meet with God; he has come to us in his Son and now in his Spirit.

Clark even affirms the importance of union with Christ:

Not only are we God’s temple, but we still have a religious life in the temple. For the evangelist, to truly be in the temple is to be in Christ because he is the true temple. John wrote his gospel to the end that we might find ourselves standing in the temple (Jn. 20:31; Col. 3:3). To be in the temple is to be in communion with God. It is to have intimate, personal fellowship with God. Whoever is united by the Spirit to the ascended Lord is now in the true, heavenly, Spirit-filled, temple and worships truly.

Perhaps even more arresting than Clark’s meditation was David VanDrunen’s essay in Kerux on the culture wars. Since WSC continues to receive demerits for not being hard on crime, and apparently the Kerux review hints at this (only a few have actually seen the review because the print run is so small, and those who have read it have yet to finish it), VanDrunen’s piece, “Biblical Theology and the Culture War,” is particularly worthy of notice.

Here is one point that VanDrunen makes during his reflections on Jeremiah 29:

This brief look at biblical theology should teach us a number of things about this battle. Most important of all, it teaches us that the culture war rages in Babylon, not in the Promised Land. A number of other important considerations arise from this. For one thing, it reminds us that in any of our cultural struggles we are not to set as a goal the annihilation or even the radical transformation of society. The existence of Babylon is completely legitimate. This is a particularly relevant message for Americans especially to heed. America is portrayed as the Promised Land so often—it is the hope of the world, the shining city on the hill, with liberty and justice for all. It is the refuge for the teeming masses of distant shores yearning to be free. It is a land of never before attained prosperity and military strength. America certainly is a great land, and patriotic affections are good and healthy. But it is not paradise, and never was. And neither is any other place on earth. To view any earthly land as the Promised Land is to set our sights both too high and too low at the same time: too high for our nation’s prospects and too low for what the Promised Land really is. People wage culture wars in Babylon, and to whatever extent they win or lose, Babylon continues to be just that—Babylon! It will not be annihilated, and it will not be transformed into something else.

To understand this is to put things into perspective. If the America of 50 or 100 or 200 years ago was Babylon, and if the America of the next generation, apart from the outcome of this culture war, will still be Babylon, should we not conclude that culture wars really are not won or lost, at least not absolutely? Living in Babylon by definition implies living outside of Paradise in a land which does not in any special way belong to the church, and as such is more or less filled with injustice, immorality, and any number of other depravities which motivate the culture warriors. As long as the church has lived in Babylon, it has been involved in cultures with marks of degeneracy. And as long as it continues to live here, it will face the same thing. It is only at Christ’s return that wicked culture and its supporters will be abolished completely: “God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels” (2 Thess. 1:6-7). The culture war has been raging for ages and it will not end until Christ returns. Why do we so often act as if the 1960’s, with the corresponding rise of the drug culture and sexual promiscuity, marked the beginning of this war? Perhaps the battle rages more fiercely and more visibly now, but even Christians living in Norman Rockwell America should have realized the existence of the culture war—the same culture war which rages around us now. As a wise man long ago observed, there is nothing new under the sun.

Does this mean that fighting the culture wars is wrong? VanDrunen says, “of course not.” But if Christians do fight in those battles they need to do so with a proper understanding of the stakes involved:

God commanded the people in Jeremiah 29 to seek the peace and prosperity of the city in which they lived, and this applies to us as well. We know that a nation with increasing numbers of cocaine-addicts, abortions, thefts, child-abuse cases, illiterates, etc., etc., will not retain desirable levels of peace and prosperity for long. Therefore we do have an obligation to do things which will, if not eliminate such things, at least substantially reduce their rate of occurrence. The peace and prosperity of our society, not to mention our personal peace and prosperity, depend on it. And the political sphere certainly is one of the institutions of culture which will make its indelible stamp on the peace and prosperity of the society. Christians therefore should have an interest in the political process when their form of government allows it, as ours does. To turn our backs on politics would mean to turn our backs in part to the command of God to seek the peace and prosperity of our nation. We may debate amongst ourselves which political positions to promote and how much emphasis should be given to the political process, but the interest and involvement in politics which we see among the “religious right” is in itself a good thing. But, it must always be accompanied by the realization that we are participating in the politics of Babylon. What should we hope to gain by our cultural, including political, activity? Only a relatively better life for society, ourselves, and our children in the years to come than what we would otherwise face. We seek not the destruction of our enemies, but simply a modestly better society which in the future will face exactly the same kinds of threats and require the same sort of opposition. Perhaps we can turn America back to the culture of the 1950’s. But the 1960’s will always follow.

Our first hope naturally is for the peace and prosperity of our nation. But perhaps we should be secretly pleased when these turn into disorder and depression. We have noted how many Christians today yearn for the days of public virtue present years ago in our nation’s history. It seems that there is little doubt that as far as public virtue goes America has seen better days. But when we see how such memories distort the biblical understanding that we live in Babylon, when we see how they cause our hopes to seek fulfillment not in the next world, but in this, when we see how they paint a falsely idyllic picture in our minds which we ignorantly project into the future, does it not make us at least wonder how much good such relatively peaceful and prosperous days really do. If God answered our prayers and blessed our cultural efforts by bringing us days of unparalleled peace and prosperity, would that not in itself be a tremendous temptation to set our sights no higher than Babylon? Are not days such as ours good reminders of what Babylon really is—a pagan, depraved, and hopeless place over which an angel from heaven will one day shout: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great” (Rev. 18:2)? The Israelites were apparently satisfied with the peace and prosperity of Babylon— only a tiny fraction of them returned to the Promised Land when the opportunity came. Will we as a church do any better?

Yes, let us pray for the peace and prosperity of our land for the sake of the physical well-being of ourselves and our children. But let us also be thankful for God’s often disappointing answers for the sake of the spiritual well-being of his church.

Articles such as these make Kerux worthwhile reading, especially for those inclined to read it along with the Talmud.

(By the way, the Nicotine Theological Journal’s policy is never to turn on its contributors.)

Not exactly, but the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City did say in his interview with Mike Horton at the White Horse Inn that confessional Christianity is the answer to the problems confronting the contemporary church. Okay, he said, “confessional evangelical” Christianity, which to confessional Protestants is a bit of an oxymoron since evangelical stands closer to pietist than confessional on the spectrum of Protestant Christianity. Even so, there Keller was telling Mike and company that teaching the Heidelberg, and adding more liturgy, is what the ailing Protestant witness needs. Along the way, Keller said that confessional churches were the proper antidote to megachurches, which at least in his experience are too slick, too entertainment oriented, and too consumerist for the sophisticates who reside in Manhattan.

I sure wish Mike had asked Keller more about confessional Protestantism and where Redeemer Church is exactly on the faith and practice of Reformed Christianity. Granted, Keller was on to talk about his book, Reasons for God, which is a work of apologetics, not pastoral ministry. Even so, the discussion was revealing if only because reaching unbelievers is something that has bound Redeemer closer to Willow Creek than Keller let on with his contrast between confessional and megachurch churches.

What Keller did not concede is that he and Bill Hybels have emerged as gurus for an approach to church planting that is “seeker-sensitive.” The seekers may be suburban Chicagoans or cosmopolitan New Yorkers. But in both cases the stress has been more on winning people over than on discipling the won in the whole counsel of God, as in the Great Commission’s “everything I have commanded you.” This is not to say that evangelism is wrong or bad. It is to question whether evangelism is the paradigm for a full-service church in the tradition of Reformed confessionalism. I mean, if you classify your worship services according to musical style as Redeemer does – classical or jazz – you may not exactly have read through Clark’s Recovering the Reformed Confession about the nature and piety of confessional Protestantism.

What makes this point even more plausible is something that Keller wrote about a month before appearing on Horton’s show. At his blog Keller wrote:

The time at Willow led me to reflect on how much criticism this church has taken over the years. On the one hand, my own ‘camp’ — the non-mainline Reformed world — has been critical of its pragmatism, its lack of emphasis on sound doctrine. On the other hand, the emerging and post-modern ministries and leaders have disdained Willow’s individualism, its program-centered, ‘corporate’ ethos. These critiques, I think, are partly right, but when you are actually there you realize many of the most negative evaluations are caricatures.

Keller goes on to say that with the assistance of John Frame he has come to a new appreciation for Hybels and Willow Creek. (Note: Keller and Frame share more than tri-perspectivalism in common; they also understand the nature and character of Reformed worship in ways that contravene the regulative principle as found in both the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity.) According to Keller, applying Frame, Willow Creek manifests a “a ‘kingly’ emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration.” Keller admits that sometimes the Willow Creek model “obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be.”

But that concession leads Keller once again to give another of his “with-presbyters-like-this-who-needs-evangelicals” stands for the Reformed tradition. He writes that “Reformed churches have a ‘prophetic’ emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine” but the danger is “a naïve and unBiblical view” which assumes “that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church — leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision — will just happen by themselves.” (To complete Frame’s triangle, Keller credits the emergent church with an emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments.”)

This perspective on the Reformed ministry does explain why Keller didn’t endorse Clark’s book. It also indicates why Keller and the rest of Redeemer’s staff need to read it. Confessional Protestants do not believe simply, to paraphrase a line from Field of Dreams, “if you preach it, they will come.” I know pastors in the Redeemer NYC diocese who accuse the Reformed tradition of being logocentric. If that means affirming the formal principle (sola scriptura) of the Reformation, then I’ll accept the label.

But church life is much more than preaching and teaching the Bible and our Reformed confessions teach this. They say all sorts of interesting things about word, sacraments, prayer, discipline, worship, the Lord’s Day, communion, ordination, and polity. They all assume that these teachings require the efforts of pastors and elders who attend session and consistory meetings, presbyter and classis, General Assembly and Synod, visit with families in their homes and the sick in hospitals, catechize the youth, practice hospitality, and prepare high-carb casseroles and jello salads for pot-luck suppers.

That kind of hands-on, local ministry is what animates confessional Presbyterianism. As Old Lifers know, it is seeker-sensitive in the best sense of the phrase, namely, serving the God who seeks Christians who worship in spirit and truth.

Not to be confused with the BBC show, “The Office,” and not to confuse David Brent with W. Robert Godfrey (though sometimes I wonder), Westminster California is starting a podcast entitled “Office Hours.” Season One features interviews with Godfrey and Julius Kim. A preview of the season is now available, complete with instructions and incentives for subscribing.

Now the only question is whether R. Scott Clark is more like Tim or Gareth.