Author: D. G. Hart

Calling All Neo-Calvinists and Kuyperians!!

Published on by D. G. Hart90 Comments

I need serious help. I have been conversing (yes, snarkly) with the good Dr. K. about 2k after all that Rodney King mojo that descended like a dove on Lookout Mountain last week when Mike Horton ascended the same. He keeps faulting 2kers for many faults — basically giving away the faith — and then in comments he does a great impersonation of Muhammad Ali, dodging and weaving against any untoward construction, at once sounding biblicist, then bobbing like a Dutch Calvinist, and then ducking like a 2ker. It’s enough to give you vertigo.

Here are some samples from the comments and exchanges. On the one hand he wants the Bible to be the norm for all of life:

Declaring the Bible to be authoritative over all of human living, and acting accordingly, are confessional matters. Nevertheless, all of us continue to wrestle with how the Bible is authoritative (for example, more directly / less directly; by way of norm, orientation, or example; and the like). The concretization of the principle, however, need not be a confessional matter. . . .

The neo-Calvinist vison is that together Christians cultivate their witness and walk in the various spheres of cultural activity. Insofar as they seek to apply the principles of God’s Word in the particular area of politics, the neo-Calvinist vision aims to pursue biblical justice for all members of society according to the divine norms relevant to various kinds of human activity.

One of those norms involves protecting unborn life. Another involves protecting the divine institution of marriage, which, as we know even from Scripture, by divine permission allows divorce for the hardness of the human heart. Another norm involves truth-telling, such that biblical teaching requires fidelity to one’s oath, the enforcement of contracts, punishing perjury, anti-libel laws, etc. I know of no neo-Calvinist who would argue that politicians must advocate to ban heresy or false religion. Some might advocate punishing blasphemy. Most would seek to do everything politically feasible to limit non-marital sex.

On the other hand, Dr. K. strives (why, I don’t know) to distance himself from advocating a Christian state or the state’s enforcement of Christian norms:

The prohibition of polygamy is most certainly entailed in the Seventh Commandment. As WLC 139 puts it, among the sins forbidden in the Seventh Commandment is “having more wives or husbands than one at the same time.” (Though the WLC list of sins prohibited also includes “allowing, tolerating, keeping stews.” I’m not sure if I’ve ever done that; I’ll look in the fridg.) You compare polygamy with divorce, with respect to how Christians should respond to this in the public square. If it were possible for me as a Christian legislator to introduce now, in 2012, a law that upholds monogamy over against polygamy, should I do so, or would I be forcing my morality on the public? By the way, in none of my comments, questions, or observations, have I called for the state to enforce any commandment—Seventh, Third, Ninth, or any. Rather, I have simply pointed to specific duties or obligations, whose wording I have borrowed conveniently from the WLC, which we have as Christians, we who presumably who adhere to the WLC. That as a Christian living in a democratic republic I should want the state legislatively to promote and preserve unborn human life, monogamous heterosexual marriage, and truthful contracts is not at all to desire that the state somehow become Christian, or that the state enforce what are merely Christian values. These values are universally binding moral values. (emphasis mine)

‘

I emphasize this line because in the previous quote (all in the same discussion thread) Dr. K. did speak about Christian politics and the application of biblical norms of justice to all members of society.

What is also worthy of emphasis (hence the bold) is Dr. K.’s assertion that pro-life, heterosexual marriage, and honest contracts are matters that we recognize as true universally, in other words, apart from the Bible. Here he adopts the 2k logic of natural law.

Finally, the kicker is that Dr. K. believes 2k is in fundamental opposition to Reformed Protestantism:

For my part, our disagreement begins with the Bible—with the exegesis of the entire biblical story from Genesis through Revelation. It continues with the Confessions—both the Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Standards. It moves from there to the application of the truths and principles harvested from these sources to all of Christian living in the world. None of this denigrates the institutional church, the office of minister of the Word, the pivotal, crucial role of the means of grace, the essential ecclesiastical activities of catechesis, family visiting, discipling, and service. It is simply saying: the gospel is for more than these.

I’d like to say I understand where Dr. K. is coming from but I cannot. Perhaps my neo-Calvinist friends, few though they may be, can help me translate. Is this a function of not understanding Dutch?

Do Neo-Calvinists Actually Think Before They Speak (or sit)?

Published on by D. G. Hart148 Comments

As noted a few days ago, the fallout from the recent discussion of two-kingdom theology at Covenant College (with Mike Horton) has touched off several lively discussions. The one at Dr. K.’s blog led the good doctor to use a phrase in connection with the virtues of neo-Calvinism that I had never heard before: “a public Christian theology of cultural obedience.”

If you perform a Google search for the phrase you find variations on cultural obedience or public theology but nothing with the whole enchilada of Kuyperian grandeur.

A public theology of cultural obedience would be one thing. It must be a way to distinguish a public from a private or personal theology of cultural obedience. But to add Christian to the phrase would apparently distinguish this from Muslim and Jewish public theologies of cultural obedience (though it does not address differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants or confessional differences among the latter).

Even odder is the phrase cultural obedience (more below). Public theology would seem to be one way of describing a Christian’s engagement with social, political, and cultural affairs. So cultural obedience seems to be redundant. But I suspect it is a form of overstatement for emphasis. Like Isaiah’s utterance of “holy, holy, holy” to describe the gulf separating him and God, this phrase indicates that we really, really, really need to be engaged with human existence outside the church.

Fine. Culture is important. But it is also one of the least useful categories for assessing problems in political, economic, and social life.

Still, what is cultural obedience and how does it square with Christian liberty? If Christians do not have a culture the way Israelites did (food, language, politics, land) because Christians now find themselves living in all the nations of the world, and if a hallmark of Reformed conviction has been the notion that Christians are free in those activities not prescribed by Scripture (like meat offered to idols or whether to speak Dutch or English), what possibly could the phrase cultural obedience mean? I get it. It’s supposed to indicate that Christians are supposed to live their lives before the face of God and not treat areas of life as if independent from Christ’s Lordship.

But here is where some serious theological reflection needs to go on because the ideals of Christian liberty (which allows for Christian smoking) and the Lordship of Christ for all areas of life are in tension. If I have liberty in those areas where the Bible is silent but now find out that I need to submit to Christ in everything I do, my brain cramps. Either I have liberty or I must show submission the next time I reach into the humidor. Neo-Calvinists really could provide some assistance if they would wrestle with these contrasting theological notions rather than simply trotting out pious and inspirational bumper stickers.

They might also benefit from some serious cultural reflection, such as the kind that comes in books like Witold Rybczinski’s Home: The History of An Idea. (I am on a Rybczinski kick since I am teaching a seminar on place and home and have assigned his book which is — truth be told — brilliant in its ability to instill a sense of wonder about things we regard as ordinary.) What neo-Calvinists could learn from books like Home is that culture is never as self-conscious or intentional as the ideas-have-consequences model alleges. Like history, culture is accidental, and it comes to us without a rule book or manual. We inherit the choices (ironic and unwitting) of previous generations and accept them as part of the cultural norm. And when those norms prove unacceptable, we change them but often the changes are as much functional as based on ideals. Perhaps the greatest example of how common and unthinking culture is is the chair (a piece of furniture that absorbs architects’ attention almost as much as the exterior of buildings). Here are a few excerpts from Rybczinski that might give users of the phrase cultural obedience the willies:

Differences in posture, like differences in eating utensils (knife and fork, chopsticks or fingers, for example), divide the world as profoundly as political boundaries. Regarding posture there are two camps: the sitters-up (the so-called western world) and the squatters (everyone else). Although there is not Iron Curtain separating the two sides, neither feels comfortable in the position of the other. (78)

If this is true, and it surely has the ring of it, what does cultural obedience mean for posture. Do I submit to the Lord by sitting in a chair or squatting on the floor? And if one of these is more obedient, do Christians have an obligation to transform squatters into sitters (or vice versa, though sitting would be better for the furniture makers in Grand Rapids)?

Rybczinski goes on to try to answer how sitting developed in the western world and does so by suggesting how little inevitability accompanied those pieces of furniture that would never imaginably produce calls for a Christian public theology of cultural obedience:

A little reflection shows that all human culture is artificial, cooking no less than music, furniture no less than painting. Why prepare time-consuming sauces when a raw fruit would suffice? Why bother with musical instruments when the voice is pleasant enough? Why paint pictures when looking at nature is satisfying? Why sit up when you can squat?

The answer is that it makes life richer, more interesting, and more pleasurable. Of course furniture is unnatural; it is an artifact. Sitting is artificial, and like other artificial activities, although less obvioulsy than cooking, instrumental music, or painting, it introduces art into life. We eat pasta or play the piano — or sit upright — out of choice, not out of need. . . .

Here is an explanation of why the world came to be divided into sitters and squatters. The coincidence of all the factors necessary to comfortable sitting is so unlikely, the probability of awkwardness and discomfort is so great, that it is not hard to imagine that many cultures, having had a try at it, would abandon the effort and wisely resort to sitting on the ground. This choice, in turn, would have affected the development of furniture in general, for without chairs, there would be no need for tables and desks, and little likelihood that a floor-sitting society would want to surround itself with other upright furniture such as cupboards, commodes, and bookcases. (80, 96)

Bottom line: culture and its development (or transformation) are far more complicated and independent of human control or manipulation than phrases such as a Christian public theology of cultural obedience would suggest. The Lordship of Christ? Of course. The Lordship of Christ involves neo-Calvinists’ lordship of culture? Hardly.

Does Great Commission Publications Need More Books about Sex?

Published on by D. G. Hart33 Comments

Christianity Today carries a story that Life Way Christian Bookstores (a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention) is not carrying Rachel Held Evans new book (who is she anyway and does she read Tim Keller?) A Year of Biblical Womanhood (biblicism alert). Evans contends that the reason is her use of the word “vagina.” The report goes on to list books that Life Way does sell and how many times these authors use the v-word:

A Celebration of Sex: A Guide to Enjoying God’s Gift of Sexual Intimacy by Douglas E. Rosenau
86 (plus images)
The Gift of Sex: A Guide to Sexual Fulfillment by Clifford & Joyce Penner
73 (plus images)
The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love by Tim and Beverley LaHaye
62
How to Talk Confidently with Your Child about Sex by Lenore Buth
42
The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex (And You Thought Bad Girls Have All the Fun) by Sheila Wray Gregoire
19
The Body Book by Nancy Rue
6 (at least in the 2000 edition; LifeWay’s is the 2012 edition and was not available for review)
Straight Talk with Your Kids About Sex by Josh and Dottie McDowell
6
Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together by Mark and Grace Driscoll
5
Every Young Woman’s Battle: Guarding Your Mind, Heart, and Body in a Sex-Saturated World by Shannon Ethridge and Stephen Arterburn
4
Crazy Good Sex: Putting to Bed the Myths Men Have about Sex by Les Parrott
4
The Language of Sex: Experiencing the Beauty of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage by Gary Smalley and Ted Cunningham
3
Sex Begins in the Kitchen: Creating Intimacy to Make Your Marriage Sizzle by Kevin Leman
3
Nobody Told Me: What You Need to Know about the Physical and Emotional Consequences of Sex Outside of Marriage by Pam Stenzel and Melissa Nesdahl
3
The Healthy Marriage Handbook by Louise Ferrebee
3
Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Restoration for Broken Relationships by Harry Schaumburg
2
The 5 Sex Needs of Men and Women by Gary and Barbara Rosberg
2
And the Bride Wore White by Danna Gresh
1
Reclaiming Intimacy: Overcoming the Consequences of Premarital Relationships by Heather Jamison
1
Capture His Heart: Becoming the Godly Wife Your Husband Desires by Lysa TerKerust
1
The Bare Facts: 39 Answers to Questions Your Parents Hope You Never Ask about Sex by Josh McDowell with Erin Davis
1
God on Sex: The Creator’s Ideas about Love, Intimacy, and MarriagebyDaniel Akin
1

The notable aspect of this story is not so much Christians talking publicly about a word used to describe female genitalia as it is the volume of books that Christians write about intercourse. This is all the more glaring since Life Way states describes its first “core value” as:

1. The Bible
We believe the Bible is the eternal, infallible, inerrant Word of God and is the plumb line for everything we say and do.

So while it is controversial in the Convention to use the c-word (Calvinism), female private parts are relatively common depending on who is discussing them.

Reformation Day This and That

Published on by D. G. Hart29 Comments

First for anyone feeling too happy or nostalgic about the Reformation an excerpt from the very clever and poignant review by Mark Lilla of Brad Gregory’s new book, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society:

GREGORY CHOOSES not to weave one grand narrative that tells this sorry tale. Instead he teases out six historical strands that get separate treatment: theology, philosophy, politics, morality, economics, and education. This strategy entails much redundancy, since the moral he draws in each chapter is the same. But it also reveals that he has two unconnected stories to tell about how everything went to hell.

The first story is about the historical Reformation, which is his academic specialty. Gregory does not provide even a brief history of the Catholic Middle Ages that preceded the Reformation, only a single, static, rose-tinted image of The World We Have Lost. (He also avoids the term “Catholic,” preferring instead “medieval Christianity,” which sounds more inclusive.) If not an entirely happy world, it was at least a relatively harmonious one, despite what everyone thinks. Yes, there were theological disagreements and conflicts over authority, pitting popes against monastic orders against church councils against emperors against princes. Yes, the church split into east and west, and for a time there were rival popes. And yes, mistakes were made. Heretics were roughly handled, pointless Crusades launched, Jews and Muslims expelled or worse. Still, through it all, the Catholic complexio oppositorum was held together by a unified institutionalized view of the human good. “Over the course of more than a millennium the church had gradually and unsystematically institutionalized throughout Latin Europe a comprehensive sacramental worldview based on truth claims about God’s actions in history, centered on the incarnation, life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.” And this translated into a “shared, social life of faith, hope, love, humility, patience, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, compassion, service, and generosity [that] simply was Christianity.” Hieronymus Bosch must have been high.

Then it happened. The Church itself was largely to blame for creating the conditions that the early Reformers complained of, and for not policing itself. The charges leveled by Luther and Calvin had merit, and theirs was originally a conservative rebellion aimed at returning the Church to its right mind. But then things got out of hand, as the intoxicating spirit of rebellion spread to the spiritual Jacobins of the radical Reformation. They are our real founding fathers, who bequeathed to us not a coherent set of moral and theological doctrines, but the corrosive pluralism that characterizes our age. The radicals denied the need for sacraments or relics, which ordinary believers believed in, handing them Bibles they were unequipped to understand. Sola scriptura, plus the idea that anyone could be filled with the Holy Spirit, inspired every radical reformer to become his own Saint Paul—and then demand that his neighbors put down their nets and follow him. Disagreements erupted, leading to war, which led to the creation of confessional states, which led to more wars. Modern liberalism was born to cope with these conflicts, which it did. But the price was high: it required the institutionalization of toleration as the highest moral virtue. The nineteenth-century Catholic Church rejected this whole package and withdrew within its walls, where intellectual life declined and dogma ossified. It thus left the rest of us to sink ever deeper into the confusing, unsatisfying, hyper-pluralistic, consumer-driven, dogmatically relativistic world of today.

. . . So where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us with the task of examining these orthodoxies in their own terms and judging for ourselves their presuppositions, aspirations, and effects—which is what theology and philosophy have traditionally done. But this is precisely what today’s religious romantics, like Gregory, shy away from, preferring instead to construct mytho-histories that insinuate rather than argue, and appeal to readers’ prejudices rather than their rational faculties. They become what Friedrich von Schlegel once said all historians are at heart: prophets in reverse.

Why does anyone think it worthwhile to consult such prophets? For the same reason people have always done so. We want the comfort, however cold, of thinking that we understand the present, while at the same time escaping full responsibility for the future. There is a book to be done on Western mytho-histories in relation to the times in which they were written, and the social-psychological work they accomplished in different epochs. Such a book would eventually trace how, beginning in the early nineteenth century, archaic theological narratives about the past were modernized and substituted for argument in intellectual proxy wars over the present. In the chapter on our time, it would note how techno-libertarian progressives and liberal hawks rediscovered Goodbye to All That bedtime stories that induced dreams of a radiant global democracy, while conservatives read ghost stories, then sang themselves to sleep with ancient songs about The World We Have Lost.

One wonders why Brad Gregory felt compelled to add to our stock of historical fables. He is obviously dissatisfied with the way we live now and despairs that things will only get worse. I share his dissatisfaction and, in my worst moments, his despair. But it enlightens me not at all to think that “medieval Christendom failed, the Reformation failed, confessionalized Europe failed, and Western modernity is failing,” as if each of these were self-conscious “projects” the annual reports of which are available for consultation. Life does not work that way; history does not work that way. Nor does it help me to imagine that the peak of Western civilization was reached in the decades just before the Reformation, or to imagine that we might rejoin The Road Not Taken by taking the next exit off the autobahn, which is the vague hope this book wants to plant in readers’ minds.

Then a little Halloween humor from Russell Moore (thanks to John Fea):

An evangelical is a fundamentalist whose kids dress up for Halloween.

A conservative evangelical is a fundamentalist whose kids dress up for the church’s “Fall Festival.”

A confessional evangelical is a fundamentalist whose kids dress up as Zwingli and Bucer for “Reformation Day.”

A revivalist evangelical is a fundamentalist whose kids dress up as demons and angels for the church’s Judgment House community evangelism outreach.

An Emerging Church evangelical is a fundamentalist who has no kids, but who dresses up for Halloween anyway.

A fundamentalist is a fundamentalist whose kids hand out gospel tracts to all those mentioned above.

I’d make one change.

A confessional evangelical is one who dresses like Zwingli and Bucer but once he sees a baptismal font takes off his clothes to expose a Charles Spurgeon costume (minus the cigar).

Not So Fast

Published on by D. G. Hart111 Comments

Neo-Calvinist lions have buried the hatchet with two-kingdom lambs, at least according to Matt Tuininga’s report on Mike Horton’s roundtable discussion of 2k with Covenant College faculty earlier this week:

When it comes to the two kingdoms doctrine and Christian liberal arts institutions like Covenant College (the college of the Presbyterian Church in America) in Lookout Mountain, Georgia there may not be that much conflict after all. That, at least, is the conclusion to which one might come in response to a panel discussion on the topic yesterday between Michael Horton, a professor at Westminster Seminary California, and several Covenant College faculty.

The proof of agreement (though Dr. K. is not buying) comes from a list of propositions that Horton believes 2kers and neo-Calvinists affirm. I paste them below italicized but offer comments in normal font. I do so not to be disagreeable but to attempt to clarify the disagreements (I still regard Mike as a better drinking companion than Mark Dever, and now we have a lot to discuss over adult beverages):

1) Both clearly distinguish the form of cultural and political engagement obligatory on Christians from the model of Old Testament Israel.

If neo-Calvinists look to the Bible for models of political engagement, where are they looking other than the Old Testament since the New Testament is silent on political strategies unless you count “my kingdom is not of this world” as a form of political engagement. In which case, the neo-Calvinist insistence on biblical politics (see James Skillen) paves the way for theonomy even if Kuyperians are uncomfortable with Greg Bahnsen.

2) Both maintain a sharp critique of the militancy and culture war mindset that marks much of the Christian Right, which has its own version of the social gospel.

Since many neo-Calvinists do actually denounce 2kers for not lending adequate support to the culture wars or for criticizing statements like the Manhattan Declaration (think Chuck Colson, Nancy Pearcey, and some disciples of Francis Schaeffer — say, didn’t Schaeffer have a connection to Covenant?), I am waiting to see the neo-Calvinist critique of culture war militancy. Criticizing the evangelical baptism of the Republican Party and George W. Bush does not count.

3) Each perspective affirms basic neo-Calvinist concepts concerning common grace, the antithesis, and sphere sovereignty.

This is one of the more agreeable affirmations in the list, but the fine print is important. Since some neo-Calvinists construe the antithesis in a way that obliterates the proximate goods of the earthly secular city, or insist that special revelation must interpret general revelation (fine, but what if the Bible is silent on plumbing?), affirmation of antithesis is not going to produce synthesis. Meanwhile, this 2ker finds the notion of common grace unhelpful. Christianity already has good doctrines — creation and providence — that teach what common grace attempts to affirm. Adding grace to something common only gives license for speaking about realms like culture and politics redemptively. As for sphere sovereignty, see here.

4) Both seek to distinguish the work proper to the institutional church (church as organization) and the way in which believers serve Christ and witness to his kingdom in every area of life (church as organism).

Perhaps, but all of that talk about kingdom work and every member ministry leaves me thinking that neo-Calvinists share with evangelicals an inability to understand the kingdom of Christ aright, that is, as a realm of redemption (as opposed to creation and providence). In other words, the American Historical Association is not but the visible church is, as the Westminster Confession teaches, the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

5) Both agree that Christians cannot bring the kingdom of God to earth through their cultural work.

If this is true, why did Abraham Kuyper describe the cultural task as holy?

6) Each perspective insists that Scripture has much to say about how Christians should be involved in culture through their vocations.

Maybe, but 2kers are much more cautious about reaching for their Bibles to justify their political, philosophical, or scientific convictions and tasks. That is to say, that 2kers come closer to the Belgic Confession’s distinction between the books of general and special revelation than Kuyperians do. Those cosmological passages (e.g. Col. 1:15-20) give neo-Calvinists inches that look like the entire canon.

7) Both agree that the church must proclaim what the word of God says about God’s law to the state, while avoiding false claims to expertise in matters of economics or policy.

Actually, 2kers are much more inclined to cite Westminster Confession chapter 31.4 on the church’s duty to refrain from meddling in civil affairs, while neo-Calvinists (or those inspired by its broad claims) are inclined to tell government officials how they are godless nincompoops.

8) Both affirm that while the actual objective work of Christians often looks similar to that of unbelievers, in terms of motivation, worldview, and sometimes objective results such work is profoundly different.

Some 2kers wonder whether anyone can be as self-conscious as w-w language suggests. They even think that when a mother sees her child spill a plate of spaghetti over the new dining room carpet she is not necessarily thinking about how she can glorify God or extend Christ’s Lordship when she instructs little Sammy about the importance — for the eleventh time — of staying in his chair, sitting up, and not playing with his food. Some 2kers even think that this believing mother will act to rear her child in ways common to most female parents (as part of the created order) rather than consulting a Kuyperian handbook on child discipline and carpet cleaning. (She may wish for a neo-Calvinist cookbook that would yield a recipe for spaghetti sauce that little Sammy would eat.)

9) Both affirm the value of Christian parachurch organizations like colleges and seminaries, while at the same time preserving the liberty of Christians to participate in non-Christian organizations as well.

The irony here is that denominational colleges like Covenant and Calvin fail to meet neo-Calvinist criteria of sphere sovereignty and in so doing put their respective churches in an awkward place of having to oversee matters over which their pastors and elders have no competence (such as the arts and sciences, since the Bible does not reveal German, Shakespeare, or Austrian economics).

I apologize if these comments rain on the warm and fuzzy fog that descended on Lookout Mountain, but many points of disagreement remain to be clarified.

And one of the greatest is the very criticism that 2kers regularly endure from neo-Calvinists. Notions of sphere sovereignty, church as organism or institute, w-w, and cultural engagement are not in the Reformed confessions. In other words, they have never been confessional matters, that is, until neo-Calvinists expressed shock — simply shocked — that 2k thinking is going on here. Do 2kers ever receive praise for defending the gospel (as in justification by faith alone), the regulative principle (of Reformed worship), the importance of keeping the Lord’s Day holy, what the Second Commandment says about images of God, or maintaining a lively opposition to the errors Roman Catholicism? 2kers have taken positions on all of these pieces of Reformed faith and practice that have been central to Reformed Protestantism’s development and witness. Neo-Calvinists, in contrast, have been largely silent on these same topics. Yet, neo-Calvinists react to 2k as if its teachings were a denial of the fundamentals of the Christian religion.

That is why some 2kers (me, anyway) are not going to join any common affirmation with neo-Calvinists until Kuyperians show that they can tell the difference between Reformed Protestantism’s central and peripheral matters.

Postscript: Matt also summarized Horton’s presentation with these lines about the spirituality of the church:

[Horton] clarified that the two kingdoms doctrine does not amount to a distinction between material and immaterial things but between the present age and the age to come. For that reason he rejected versions of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church that have been used to argue that the church should not speak out against patent evils like the racial slavery of the Antebellum South.

This is the second time within the last month or so that Mike has taken a swipe at the spirituality of the church. Without getting into a lengthy discussion, I would try to correct this assertion by noting that the reason some Presbyterians did not speak out against slavery was not to preserve the spirituality of the church. The reason was that Paul and Jesus and Abraham and Moses did not speak out against slavery. Whether or not Presbyterians read the Bible correctly, they were starting with Scripture and from that followed the spirituality of the church — as in the church may not speak where the Bible is silent. It is the same idea that led and leads some Presbyterians to oppose the church’s support for the Eighteenth Amendment and the church’s ban on women serving in the military.

Which Theologians Are They Reading?

Published on by D. G. Hart23 Comments

While reading R. R. Reno’s lament about the Roman Catholic left, I went back and took a look at Joshua Lim’s account of his conversion:

It was during this time of doubt that I came across a few Catholic theologians at a conference on Protestant and Catholic theology. These were not the first Catholics that I had met; prior to this encounter, I had dialogued with a rather intelligent Catholic (though he knew very little about Reformed Protestantism–which, at the time, enabled me to ignore his arguments) at a nearby coffee shop over a span of about two years. Moreover, there were constant online debates with Catholics on different blogs that I participated in. Yet, perhaps because of my realization of the shortcomings of Reformed theology, it was at this point that I tried to really understand Catholic theology from a Catholic perspective — as much as this was possible for someone who was raised to distrust Catholicism. . . .

During the several months following this conversation, I kept in touch with these theologians and they provided answers to my numerous questions. For the next five months or so, I buried myself in books, Catholic and Protestant. I carefully read Peter Martyr Vermigli’s work on predestination and justification; Vermigli was an Augustinian friar prior to his conversion to the Protestant movement, and so his book represented something of a final vestige of hope. To my surprise, I came away from the book even more convinced of the truth of Catholicism. I read Heiko Oberman’s work on the medieval nominalism of Gabriel Biel and its immense influence on Luther’s theology. Through my study, I realized that much of my doubt and skepticism stemmed from certain philosophical assumptions that I had unwittingly adopted regarding knowledge of God and reality through Luther’s theologia crucis–and much of the philosophical issues that I had stemmed from my understanding of theology’s relation to philosophy. The inextricable link between philosophy and theology became evident to me. One cannot have a ‘pure theology,’ just as one cannot simply believe the Bible without simultaneously interpreting it; philosophy will always be there whether one acknowledges it or not–and those who claim to have no philosophy in distinction from their theology must necessarily elicit a certain sense of suspicion, much like the suspicion aroused by fundamentalists who claim simply to be reading the Bible.

The reason for looking at Lim’s conversion narrative owed to the distinctly different picture of Roman Catholic theologians that Reno gives:

There they go again. The usual gang of Catholic theology professors has signed a manifesto, “On all of our shoulders: A Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good.” It claims to warn us of the grave danger posed by Congressman Paul Ryan. The future of America is at stake! The integrity of Catholicism hangs in the balance!

. . . Serious people don’t pass off cheap, partisan rhetoric as substantive analysis. Why, then, would past presidents of the Catholic Theological Society of America hurry to support a manifesto that is largely an emotive exercise in partisan rhetoric?

The answer, at least in part, can be found in the changing character of the American Catholic Church. In the years after the Second Vatican Council, liberals thought that the future was theirs. They saw the way in which the hierarchy acquiesced to dissent in the aftermath of Humane Vitae. Their way of thinking seemed natural, inevitable. But it wasn’t so. During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, the Church slowly solidified around a vision more traditional than trendy. Liberals went from being presumptive heirs to embattled outcasts.

One sees as much in the episcopacy and priesthood. There are no more Hunthausens and Weaklands. The priests under fifty today see their ministry as counter-cultural, and the culture they are countering is the one ministered to by liberalism.

As a result, the academic Catholic establishment, which invested so heavily in liberalism, is now very much on the margins of the Church. Can anyone imagine one of the twenty or so past presidents of the Catholic Theological Society of America serving as trusted advisors for bishops today? Hardly. They’ve reorganized the CTSA into a trade union for dissent.

If Lim had run into the theologians who were Reno’s colleagues in the CTSA when he taught at Creighton University, would the former Westminster student have remained a Protestant or simply abandoned the faith altogether? And if Called to Communion were ever called to give an account of the state of Roman Catholic theology — despite the efforts of infallible and authoritative pontiffs to reign U.S. theologians in — their call might look more like a pipe dream.

Rematch?

Published on by D. G. Hart34 Comments

Now that Jason Stellman has become a Roman Catholic and Peter Leithart has moved his blog to the predominantly Roman Catholic First Things website, can round two be far away?

What Hath Jerusalem (monarchy) To Do with Athens (democracy)?

Published on by D. G. Hart156 Comments

Or, what hath Geneva to do with Colorado Springs?

For Whom Would You Vote? (I appreciate the avoidance of the dangling preposition) is a resource provided by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Here is the justification:

As the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to foster a Reformed awakening, we want to offer a free resource to help voters to think biblically about their responsibility. In his helpful booklet, “For Whom Would You Vote?,” Dr. Roy Blackwood argues that the checkered history of both good and bad Jewish kings teaches us to be discerning of the character (the just-ness or “righteousness”) of those who rule over us.

Aside from the anomaly of likening the voting process to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the naivete of thinking we can ever know our federal candidates’ personal qualities through the haze of sloganeering, advertisements, and photo-ops, is this really an instance of Reformed conviction and reflection? Or is it a case of Calvinistic evangelicals doing what evangelicals do, namely, bring God into the ballot box?

Protestants used to be bothered when Roman Catholics did this, and many American Christians don’t care for Muslim-Americans invoking Allah in public life. So what makes this permissible? What makes it Reformed?

A.D.D. for The Young and Restless?

Published on by D. G. Hart41 Comments

It started with such promise. The allies of the gospel were going to run a series of posts on Princeton Seminary to commemorate the institution’s bicentennial this year. Granted, the view of Princeton from TGC did not exactly do justice to the school’s Old School Presbyterianism. Even so, I was hoping that the anniversary might generate more attention for one of the best expressions of Reformed Protestantism with the greatest longevity . But so far, only three posts:

January 5 Old Princeton for New Calvinists

February 13 Old Princeton for New Calvinists: The Legacy of Archibald Alexander

March 19 Old Princeton for New Calvinists: 9 Lessons from the Life of Charles Hodge

So, to fill in for the lack of attention to Old Princeton, a word about New Princeton. As of October 8 comes news that the seminary has appointed M. Craig Barnes, a teacher, pastor and author and a columnist for The Christian Century magazine, president of Princeton Theological Seminary. The press release is here.

Jump In, the Post-Evangelical Water is Warm (even if the pond is small)

Published on by D. G. Hart75 Comments

First I am vinegary, now I’m crabby. This is the latest indignity from Scot McKnight who doesn’t care for my definition of evangelicalism. (Okay, he says I’m “a bit” of a crab. But as with pregnancy, how can you be a little bit of a crab?) My demeanor came up not with my wife but in discussion of McKnight’s post about David Schwartz’s new book on the evangelical left, which McKnight calls the best book he’s read this year.

To get that endorsement, McKnight rejects the older definition of evangelicalism that has haunted Reformed types, such as this common lament among evangelicals who prefer the First to the Second Pretty Good Awakening:

More specifically speaking, [an evangelical is] someone who believes the Gospel is centered on the doctrine of justification by faith and the principles of sola fide (by faith alone) and sola scriptura (by Scripture alone), he added. “The Gospel is a message about redemption, it’s a call to repentance from sin … and a summons to yield to the Lordship of Christ.”

Abuse of the term “evangelical” is not new. Nineteenth century preacher Charles Spurgeon had decried the fact that the modernists of his day wanted to be called evangelicals even though they abandoned all the evangelical principles, according to Johnson. Such a label would give them “instant credibility” and easy access to people who believed the Bible, he said.

McKnight rejects this definition because it “wants evangelicalism to be old-fashioned fundamentalism, the kind that pre-Carl Henry and pre-neo-evangelicalism’s coalition and pre-John Stott” [sic]. For that reason, he prefers a definition like David Bebbington’s four-fold grid: “crucicentrism, biblicism, conversionism, and activism.”

It strikes this crabby Calvinist as odd that a person who identifies himself as an Anabaptist and who has identified with if not being a leader of the emergent church — that would be McKnight — would so readily approve Bebbington and Noll who read evangelicalism much more through the lens of the Puritans and the eighteenth-century awakenings than through Finney and radical reform the way Dayton and McKnight do. Where does crucientism come from after all if not from those hegemonic Calvinists and Puritans who were breathing the fumes of Dort’s Limited Atonement?

But the reason for bringing this up is not to define evangelicalism but to engage McKnight’s query about who gets to define evangelicalism. Apparently, McKnight thinks that he can decide who gets to offer a definition. Those who demur are crabby.

What McKnight misses by dismissing my critique of evangelicalism as stemming from a Reformed bias is that I actually took Don Dayton’s critique of George Marsden to heart. Almost twenty years ago, Dayton made a habit of pointing out how the evangelical historians associated with the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College had misrepresented evangelical history. He was particularly annoyed by George Marsden’s history of Fuller Seminary, which in Dayton’s estimate slighted the Holiness/Wesleyan side of Fuller for the sake of highlighting its Old Princeton/Westminster heritage. I see merit in Dayton’s point, at least regarding evangelicalism as something much bigger and broader (and more abstract and virtually meaningless) than the Puritans-to-Edwards-to-Hodge-to-Machen-to-Ockenga-to-Graham narrative. It is a partial reading of the New Evangelicalism to see it as a reiteration of New School Presbyterianism. It is also partial to see Finney and Wesleyanism all over the Fuller faculty and curriculum. But by acknowledging that everyone can look in the mirror of evangelicalism and see themselves and their predilections in it, in Deconstructing Evangelicalism, I was actually trying to liberate born-again Protestants, like McKnight, Dayton, and McLaren from their Calvinist captivity. You don’t like Reformed hegemony? Fine, you can have evangelicalism. We’ll keep our churches, thank you very much.

This is the thanks we get?

At the same time, I can understand why McKnight wants to hold on to evangelicalism as a movement. Chances are that he and his fellow “evangelical” bloggers would not have outlets at Patheos if each writer had to be identified by the particular communion to which he or she belongs. Would Patheos sponsor an Anabaptist, Wesleyan, or a Swedish-American pietist channel? I doubt it since the number of these “movements” are not as large as the broad and soupy category of evangelical.

So I see McKnight’s reasons for preserving his status in the evangelical movement. But I didn’t think evangelical radicals, emergents, or lefties were that invested in preserving the status quo. Radical reformation indeed (or in word only)!