Viewers of “The Big Lebowski” may well remember one of many memorable lines from Walter Sobchak. This one comes in the context of a discussion with Donny about the merits of nihilism. Walter will have none of an outlook that believes in nothing. As he explains to Donny, “Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.”
That line came to mind when reading a recent Christianity Today editorial about Chuck Colson and his efforts to unite Roman Catholics and Evangelicals in an Abraham-Kuyper like coalition to oppose “spiritual nihilism.”
Colson, like Kuyper, was concerned about the effects of modernism and later postmodernism on contemporary culture. And like Kuyper, he believed that unless believers are equipped with the critical tools of worldview thinking, they are unlikely to make any headway in redeeming culture.
When Colson and Richard John Neuhaus formed Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT), their new Protestant-Catholic initiative, the group focused its initial statement on the common mission of the church in the third millennium. That mission, their 1994 document said, involved contending together “against all that opposes Christ and his cause.” In “developed societies,” that included “widespread secularization” that had descended “into a moral, intellectual, and spiritual nihilism that denies not only the One who is the Truth but the very idea of truth itself.”
Within the framework of Kuyper’s vision, this was an excellent summary of what Protestants and Catholics needed to address together.
As commendable as it may be for Christians to combat nihilism, why would this be a project that would exclude religiously conflicted folks like the Dude’s good friend and bowling team member, Walter? Lots of people who are not Christians oppose nihilism. Some of them are Christian. Some are Muslim. Some are Mormon. Some profess no God. If you want to oppose nihilism, then why not broaden the tent?
It could be that Christians think they alone have the true basis for a proper opposition. Or it could be that “spiritual nihilism” is different from Karl Hungus’ version of nihilism. But it does seem to me to be a form of shooting yourself in the foot when you make a common cultural cause into a matter of the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Postscript: are neo-Calvinists really comfortable with Colson carrying the water for Kuyper’s legacy?
Old Life 
I think they don’t care who carries Kuyper’s legacy so long as someone carries it.
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I have three good friends who are atheists. They all hate “postmodernism” a lot more than I do. They are all scientists who like to think of themselves as “inductivists”. To which I keep saying, maybe this time I will be right….Surely, my atheist friends are not “Christians” even though they care more about “Western civilization” more than I do.
So I guess that only leaves these questions. Are there some true Christians who don’t hate postmodernism? Are there some true Christians who don’t know what postmodernism is (and don’t care)? What am I doing having friendships with the world?
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I do think it’s useful and most accurate to make a distinction between reformed Kuyperianism on the one hand and then Colson and all the baptistic worldview types on the other. The former is restrained by those nagging confessions from being as bad as it could be while the latter tends to degenerate into low-road culture warriorism.
I trust my high and generous praise of the former will not go unnoticed.
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Colson was not really all that “baptistic”. He certainly wasn’t sectarian enough to oppose the false gospel of Rome, and he agreed with Calvin that the water baptism of the Roman Catholic church was valid. Colson was one of those new “sacramental Baptists” who thought Roman Catholics were part of the “universal church”. There’s more and more of that kind of thing going around. Too bad.
But of course it does make things simpler if we can say that everybody who is not Reformed or Lutheran is “baptistic”. Well, except for those with a Roman Catholic worldview or a Wesleyan worldview or an Anglican worldview or a Greek Orthodox worldview.
Some of us baptists would even like to say that Jesus and the information about Him and His work is NOT A WORLDVIEW. But then we fear that some other folks would say that this is our worldview.
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One of the beauties of Reformed Theology is a belief in the sovereignty of God and His ability to accomplish what He wishes to accomplish in the world without our strategizing and forming alliances with those who are not like-minded on essentials. The Heidelberg describes a true church as one that accurately preaches the gospel, rightly administers the sacraments, and practices church discipline. I would argue that Catholics fail the first test, Baptists fail the second, and Liberals fail the third (at least). Am I saying there are no Christians in those churches? Absolutely not. What I am saying is that we should not feel a burden to partner with those non-Reformed churches to accomplish God’s work.
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Actually that’s the Belgic Confession. The Heidelberg reinforces what the Belgic has to say on the matter, though.
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MMc, I didn’t actually say Colson was a baptist. Whether he was a Southern Baptist or a reformed pewsitter is beside the point. The point is that there are continuities between his species of worldview and the baptistic/evangelical culture war mongering. Those types no nothing of Kuyper or his progeny, and have no confession to hinder or inform them. It’s conceptually distinct.
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It would probably be accurate to substitute “evangelical” for “Baptist” in my comment.
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MM, Colson attended my fundamentalist in-laws’ mega Baptist church in Florida among whom culture warriorism is considered orthodoxy. My neo-Kuyperians in Little Geneva can be heard in pulpits pressing for Christianity to transform Hollywood as if it’s orthodoxy—the confessions do little to keep it at bay. There may be distinctions but they make little difference. The upshot is mega church Floridian Baptists and tall steeple Grand Rapidian Calvinists together.
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But the famous assistant to tricky dick had read his Kuyper, as have a lot of “evangelicals”. Billy Graham and CS Lewis were “evangelicals” also. I am glad to say that some of us baptists are NOT “evangelicals”. Some of us even protest against both the Magisterial and the Radical Protestants. We feel no obligation to form coalitions with Arminians for the sake of “influence”. Nor do we see it as our duty to accept the water baptism of those with the false gospel, even if it means some folks who were not born justified have to earn to think of themselves as on the outside.
And we are not nihilists, not gnostics, but I am sure there is some reason we have not advanced into being more “high church”. Perhaps the spirit of Darby worked retroactively back to London in 1642 and the first London Baptist Confession. Yeah, that’s it, the vestiges of 2k dispensationalism even before its more modern appearance……A dissertation perhaps: blame baptistic theology as the root of dispensationalism, also of the wrong kind of 2k…..
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McMark stated: “And we are not nihilists, not gnostics, but I am sure there is some reason we have not advanced into being more “high church”. Perhaps the spirit of Darby worked retroactively back to London in 1642 and the first London Baptist Confession. Yeah, that’s it, the vestiges of 2k dispensationalism even before its more modern appearance……A dissertation perhaps: blame baptistic theology as the root of dispensationalism, also of the wrong kind of 2k…..”
Now there is an interesting proposition that I doubt anyone will try to take on. Most will probably say huh? I don’t think there are many in the Baptist camp who think in such broad and sweeping ways as McMark does I also don’t think there are many who understand the very diversified doctrinal thinking among the Baptist Calvinists. I had never heard of Smeaton, Booth or Boehl before I started dialoging with McMark. Nor the social thinkers from the Baptist and Anabaptist camps. It was the Calvinist Baptists that went after Jonathan Edwards and the New England theology first. So, to say someone is Baptist is almost as much of a nonstatement as saying someone is an evangelical. Both groups are very hard to pin down and define properly.
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MMc, did you see where JY said “I don’t think there are many in the Baptist camp who think in such broad and sweeping ways.” Are you going to allow him to disparage Baptists like that?
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I’m tight with McMark MM. It ain’t gonna work to try to put a wedge in there. Even though I tend to allienate my friends over time. That’s a bad habit that only Christ can remedy. I find McMark’s thinking refreshing and centered in the Gospel. It gives hope to sinners like me. You are better off keepin rappin and singin them Blues.
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Smeaton and Boehl were not Baptists. I know you didn’t say they were, John, but I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to tell you something. Though Abraham Booth was a Baptist, he quoted Mr.John Owen very often. John, if you have time for only one of these three, make it Smeaton because his books on the atonement will push you back to the biblical texts. As for Boehl, as much as I agree with his critique of Owen and his constant forensic priority, most Reformed folks would claim that Boehl’s doctrine of justification is Lutheran.
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Thanks for the heads-up McMark. I am still reeling over MM’s comment. I do want to be like Mike and have that Calvinist character worked in me by years of progressive sanctification. I’m not sure I am going to get there before I die. You started it MM. I’m ribbing!!!!
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MikelMann:
You seem to imply that we should add some nuance to our resident historian’s analysis… but I come here for the anachronistic rhetoric.
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GAS, I actually thought DGH raised the possibility when he asked “are neo-Calvinists really comfortable with Colson carrying the water for Kuyper’s legacy?”
I’m just tinkering with taxonomy. I live in Evangelicaland, whereas Zrim lives in Little Geneva. Iowa has its own Little Geneva in Pella, an enviroment in which I have been sprinkled but not immersed. Or, to keep matters intra-Old Life, there seem to be some meaningful distinctions between the Gray/Baus perspective and the Colson/Baptistic Evangelical perspective. But, then, neither Gray nor Baus have chimed in to keep Colson at arm’s length, so maybe my tinkering is all for nought.
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In case there’s doubt the answer is “no”. To what degree was Colson Reformed in any sense of the word apart from being transformational.
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More to the point, Terry, is whether your transformationalism differs from Colson’s.
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MM, of course it has some things in common just as 2K cultural activity has much in common with neo-Calvinism. But without a proper Reformed ecclesiology and confession there might be some differences, wouldn’t you think? After all, it is a proper confessionalist that undergirds the Reformed/Christian worldview.
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Colson, of course, was married to a Roman Catholic and if the ECT document of 1994 is any indicator, he seemed to think that Rome taught the true Gospel as well. If by Baptist one simply means the mode of baptism, maybe he was Baptist. But he did not seem to be Reformed unless he hid it quite well. Without a Reformed confession he seemed to be willing to waver on the Gospel in order to tranform the morals of society. That seems to be one key to interpret the kind of transformationalism a person may believe in. Colson seemed to think of the Gospel as less important than morality (if his actions in and around the ECT document are a safe guide). On the other hand, there are those that think that the Gospel is the way that society will be transformed and the Gospel must be preached whether it transforms the morals of society as a whole or not. Those are two very different approaches.
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Colson (with Pearcey) said:
the church can take a role in supporting artists in their services: They can invite musicians to write and play music; ask poets and writers to create dramatic presentations for religious holidays…
It sure seems like his goal is transformation of culture and the church isn’t much more than a means to accomplish that transformation. And that, MMc’s objections notwithstanding, seem to be a signficant difference between the Reformed and Baptist/Evangelical concepts of transformationalism.
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James K Smith (Letters to a Young Calvinist) commends Colson as a person who was not “gnostic” or “Lutheran” or “narrowly focused on soteriology” like “Machen’s warrior children” who have the “old perspective” and who oppose the “catholicity” of NT Wright. Smith thinks of Colson as a “Kuyper transformationalist” and not as one of those baptist individualists Smith can’t tolerate.
Perhaps one way to escape a sectarian focus on eternal life for individuals would be to say that all anti-nihilists are “us Christians”. Why let a little thing like a distinction between law and grace get in the way? If only they exclude the baptists and the 2k non-transformationalists because of their being so exclusive, then the “Reformed” can work together with other “incarnationalists” and anti-nihilists….
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