Category: Adventures in Church History

Does Jonathan Edwards Need Paul Tripp?

Published on by D. G. Hart269 Comments

As I continue to come across Edwards’ writings — his Faithful Narrative is part of the reader for American Heritage at Hillsdale College — I continue to be amazed at the Northampton pastor’s broad appeal, even down to the “Jonathan Edwards is my homeboy” T-shirts. Granted, Edwards has much to admire. The thought of a pastor on the frontier of the British colonies, cut off from books and libraries, living with the constant threat of Native American attacks, writing philosophical works that continue to attract regular and academic readers is indeed remarkable. But has the warm glow surrounding Edwards obscured other aspects that his admirers and expert interpreters have neglected? One topic that has recently generated a little attention is Edwards and slavery. Since he owned slaves, and since slaveholders are only a few steps up the chain of wickedness from child molesters for modern Americans, I can’t help but wonder why more of the evangelical fans of Edwards have not had a reaction to him similar to their regard for nineteenth-century southern Protestants.

Another oddity about the Edwards phenomenon is the way that few of his admirers seem to comment on his descriptions of converts in A Faithful Narrative. Not only do these accounts raise questions about the propriety of revealing the identities of specific church members — think confidentiality. But they also raise doubts about Edwards’ capacity to acknowledge the excess to which his own brand of revivalism ran. I am thinking in particular of the case of the four-year old convert, Phebe Bartlet. Why would anyone put any stock in the spiritual labyrinth of a child’s soul? More important, why would any pastor or mother let a child go through what Edwards describes:

She was born in March, in the year 1731. About the latter end of April, or the beginning of May 1735 she was greatly affected by the talk of her brother, who had been hopefully converted a little before, at about eleven years of age, and then seriously talked to her about the great things of religion. Her parents did not know of it at the that time, and were not wont, in the counsels they gave to their children, particularly to direct themselves to her, by reason of her being so young, and as they supposed, not capable of understanding: but after her brother had talked to her, they observed her very earnestly to listen to the advice they gave to the other children; and she was observed very constantly to retire, several times in a day, as was concluded, for secret prayer, and grew more and more engaged in religion, and was more frequent in her closet, till at last she was wont to visit it five or six times in a day; and was so engaged in it , that nothing would at any time divert her from her stated closet exercises. . . .

She once of her own accord spoke of her unsuccessfulness, in that she could not find God, or to that purpose. But on Thursday, the last day of July, about the middle of the day, the child being in the closet, where it used to retire, its mother heard it speaking aloud, which was unusual, and never had been observed before: and her voice seemed to be as of one exceedingly importunate and engaged; but her mother could distinctly hear only these words . . . “Pray, blessed Lord, give me salvation! I pray, beg, pardon, all my sins!” When the child had done prayer, she came out of the closet, and sat down by her mother, and cried out aloud. Her mother very earnestly asked her several times, what the matter was, before she could make any answer; but she continued crying exceedingly, and writhing her body to and fro, like one in anguish of spirit. Her mother then asked her, whether she was afraid that God could not give her salvation. She answered, “Yes, I am afraid I shall go to hell!” Her mother then endeavored to quiet her; and told her she would not have her cry; she must be a good girl, and prayer every day, and she hoped God would give her salvation. But this did not quiet her at all; but she continued thus earnestly crying, and taking on for some time, till at length she suddenly ceased crying, and began to smile, and presently said with a smiling countenance, “Mother, the kingdom of heaven is come to me!” Her mother was surprised at the sudden alteration, and at the speech; and knew not what to make of it, but at first said nothing to her. The child presently spoke again, and said, “There is another come to me, and there is another, there is three;” and being asked what she meant, she answered, “One is, Thy will be done, and there is another Enjoy him forever;” by which it seems, that when the child said, “there is three comes to me,” she meant three passages of her Catechism that came to her mind.

Huh (on SO MANY!!! levels)!?!

Mind you, the problem is not simply for the evangelical advocates of Edwards. The scholarly community does not appear to be troubled by these truly bizarre reports. I will be more than happy to be corrected either by the fans or scholars of Edwards.

But in the meantime, I couldn’t resist seeing what the leading guru on rearing children among conservative Presbyterians, Paul Tripp, considers the age appropriate level of moral awareness and spiritual discernment. Here’s one example:

Our children were too young to grasp the abstract, strategic, and often theological purposes underlying my instruction. Even if I explained everything in as age-appropriate a way as I could, they would still have no actual understanding. They just didn’t yet have the categories or the capacity to grasp the parental logic behind the plan or command.

So I did the same thing again and again. I would kneel down in front of them at eye level and say, “Please look at Daddy’s face. Do you know how much I love you? Do you know that your Daddy isn’t a mean, bad man? Do you know that I would never ask you to do anything that would hurt you or make you sick? I’m sorry that you can’t understand why Daddy is asking you to do this. I wish I could explain it to you, but you are too young to understand. So I’m going to ask you to do something—trust Daddy. When you walk down the hallway to do what Daddy has asked you to do, say to yourself, ‘My Daddy loves me. My Daddy would never ask me to do something bad. I’m going to trust my Daddy and stop trying to be the Daddy of my Daddy.’”

I know, I know. Eighteenth-century expectations for children were different from ours. Even so, to consider Edwards’ willingness to see little Phebe go through this spiritual anguish, along with his use of Phebe’s example to promote revivals, is hard to square with the pastor-theologian’s alleged brilliance and spiritual insight.

Rabbi Bret Borrowing Capital from Those 2k Swiss Bank Accounts

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

On the one hand, I am touched that the good Rabbi would devote ten-plus paragraphs to refuting the a minor question I raised about epistemological self-consciousness. On the other hand, I am hurt that Bret shows more charity to Ron Paul than to me. Despite the crusty and vinegary exterior, I am really a pussy cat in person, without claws — the effects perhaps of living with cats for more than two decades — and not to be missed I can cry with the best of them, being the son of a private first-class Marine who was a weeper. I try to console myself that Bret is only opposed to 2k as a set of ideas; he does not dislike (all about) me.

Still, the tolerance that anti-2kers show to non-Reformed Protestants (e.g. Ron Paul) and even to non-Christian ideas (more below) is puzzling and suggests a level of personal antagonism that is unbecoming. In the case of Ron Paul, Bret tries to justify his intention to vote for the libertarian Republican as consistent with Christian faith because this proposed vote has received flak from a theonomist whom he apparently follows on Facebook. Bret explains:

I intend to vote for Rep. Ron Paul if I can I do acknowledge that there are issues he supports that I do not think are Christian. Paul’s recent vote supporting homosexuals in the military is not the vote a Christian man would have made. Also, Ron Paul’s fuzzy stand on illegal immigration is a head scratcher. I also would that Rep. Paul would clearly articulate that the Constitution as it currently stands outlaws Abortion, and because of that States should overturn laws on their books that are contrary to that Constitutional requirement. I also do not believe that Dr. Paul’s Libertarian instincts will work in a country that has been balkanized by both it’s legal immigration policy pursuit since 1965 and it’s benign neglect of illegal immigration. . . .

Our greatest need of the hour in order to restore biblical statecraft is for someone to slay the Leviathan State. This is the platform on which Dr. Paul is campaigning. Biblical statecraft will not be restored until the Leviathan state is slain. First things first. To suggest that any Christian who intends to vote for Ron Paul is abandoning biblical principles for voting and statecraft is like a Jew complaining that the person who stopped the rape of his wife was not circumcised. It is true that there are faults with Dr. Paul, but currently he is the gentleman who promises to help us with our most current and pressing problem. Mr. Ritchie just isn’t thinking correctly.

First things first? Does not the first table of the law come before the second table? Does not doing what is right in God’s eyes take precedence over what may be beneficial to the survival of the United States? In which case, could it be that Bret is letting his own political convictions dictate what comes first? As I’ve said a guhzillion times, Covenanters would not construe first things this way. They refused to vote, run for office, or serve in the military because the first thing — Christ’s Lordship — was not part of the U.S. Constitution. I disagree that the Constitution must include such an affirmation. But I greatly admire the Covenanters’ consistency and wish Rabbi Bret would be as hard nosed in the political realm as he is with (all about) me in the theological arena.

What seems to be operative here is that Rabbi Bret borrows selectively from 2k by using non-biblical standards for evaluating the United States’ political order. He says we must follow wisdom in the current election cycle. Well, what happened to the Bible as the standard for all of life? And just how do you get a license to practice such wisdom (when 2kers are the ones who issue them)?

Additional evidence of the Rabbi’s appeal to wisdom and implicit use of 2k comes in a good post he wrote about the differences between “classical” conservatism and neo-conservatism. I’ll paste here only one of the piece’s five points (though the entire post is worthwhile for those who don’t know the differences among conservatism):

Neo-conservatives believe that America is responsible to expand American values and ideology at the point of a bayonet. This was the governing ideology of progressive Democrats like Woodrow Wilson who desired to make the world safe for Democracy. However, before the Wilsonian motto of making the world safe for Democracy (a motto largely taken up by the Bush II administration) Wilson understood the American instinct for a humble foreign policy by campaigning in 1916 with the slogan, “He kept us out of war.” Before American entry into W.W. II the classically conservative approach to involvement in international affairs was one of modesty, as seen in the previous mentioned Wilson approach to campaigning in 1916. Classical conservatism, as opposed to neo-conservatism embraced the dictum of John Quincy Adams who once noted that, “America is a well-wisher of liberty everywhere, but defender only of her own.”

However, today’s conservatism is internationally militantly adventurous. What is sold by those who have co-opted the title of “conservative,” is the exporting of American values but the dirty little secret is that the American values that are being exported in the name of Democracy is just a warmed over socialism combined with some form of Corporate consumerism.

Good point, but where exactly is the justification for this from Scripture or the Lordship of Christ or the antithesis? I’m betting that loads of Christian Reformed Church ministers and laity who invoke the antithesis every bit as much as the Rabbi does, would never countenance Bret’s understanding of U.S. foreign policy. In which case, either the Bible speaks with forked tongue about a nation’s military involvement or all neo-Calvinists are dictating to special revelation what their “wise” observations of the created order and contemporary circumstances require. Why then are 2kers guilty of doing something illegitimate if Rabbi Bret or liberals in the CRC do the very same thing?

Which leads me back to the deep emotional wound mentioned at the outset. In his response to my post on epistemological self-consciousness, Bret says that it all comes down to this:

I mean that is what this boils down to isn’t it? Van Til repeatedly emphasized the necessity of epistemological self-consciousness while Darryl is suggesting that each man must do what is right in his own unique epistemological self consciousness. One epistemologically self-conscious Christian likes Kant, another epistemologically self conscious Christian likes Hegel. Vive la différence!

This is an odd summary of the entire difference since at the beginning of the post Bret says that the notion of the Lordship of Christ was hardly a Dutch Reformed idea, and then he goes on to say that it all comes down to a point made (as he understands it) about the Lordship of Christ by a Dutch-American. But aside from the intellectual hiccup, does Bret really not see that his own support for Ron Paul throws the antithesis to the wind. Paul doesn’t have to be a Reformed Christian affirming the Lordship of Christ to gain Bret’s support. Bret’s analysis of conservatism doesn’t need to follow the dictates of the antithesis in order for it to be wise. And yet, if I or other 2kers don’t follow the antithesis when recognizing a common realm of activity for believers and unbelievers, or when finding truths by which to negotiate this common terrain other than from Scripture (only because the Bible is silent, for instance, on basements or how to remove water from them), we are relativists and antinomians. (We don’t even get a little credit for putting the anti in antinomian.)

Until the critics of 2k can possibly create a world in which the antithesis applies all the time, they will be indebted to 2k for borrowed capital. The reason is that it is impossible to live in a mixed society if the sort of antithesis that will ultimately result in the separation of the sheep from the wolves is going to be the norm. The antithesis requires not only withholding support from Ron Paul, but also opposition to a political order that would allow him on the ballot (not to mention that difficult matter of what to do with Mitt Romney’s Mormons or Rick Santorum’s Roman Catholics). Bret believes that the “Escondido” theology will one day pass away like the Mercersburg Theology did. I too believe it will, whenever God chooses to separate believers from unbelievers. But until then, as long as we live with unbelievers, guys like Bret will need and use 2k theology. I only wish he’d show a little gratitude and start to pay off the debt. He is well behind in payments and snarky about it.

Can We Get A Little Love-the-Law Street Cred Here?

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

The shelf life on Tim Tebow is rapidly decreasing now that the Broncos ran into the Patriots’ capacity for cheating. So before Ricky Gervais completely eclipses Tebow in water-cooler banter, a point needs to be made about the charges of antinomianism that two-kingdom theology continues to receive. (The latest comes in a post about Martin Luther King, Jr. that uses the Civil Rights leader to cast aspersions on your humble — all about me — blogger; on the eve of MLK Day no less. The lack of charity among the lovers of the law continues to dumbfound.)

I have been rooting for the Broncos’ QB even if Tebow’s wear-it-on-your-cheek piety is not an Old Lifer’s preferred demeanor. Tebow appears to be genuine in his devotion even if he could benefit from the oversight of a Reformed pastor. But how can he possibly be a poster boy for evangelicals and the Religious Right when he flagrantly violates one of the Ten Commandments that many born-again Protestants want posted in court rooms and public school classrooms? I get it. How to interpret OT law is something that divides many Christians — and boy can theonomists be divisive about it. But Tebow’s actions are hard to square with any traditional reading of the Decalogue. In fact, U.S. Protestants used to be Sabbatarians through and through, and the NFL had to clear all sorts of Blue Laws in order to get its franchises off the ground (Saturday was already taken by college football, which was, and still is in some parts of the country, more popular than professional gridiron play.

Evangelicals may be inconsistent — which of us is not (except of course for the epistemologically self-conscious)? But the disparity between public statements and actions goes beyond the hobgobblin that afflicts small minds. The Religious Right lauds traditional Christian morality and seeks it for the nation at large. This is partly the rationale behind arriving at Rick Santorum as the evangelical alternative to Mitt Romney. Never mind that Roman Catholics like Santorum were the object of some of those Protestant Blue Laws governing the Lord’s Day. A recent column in the Washington Post (touted by the Baylys) attempted to put a positive spin on the evangelical notion that righteousness exalts a nation. It tried to extend the appeal of Tebow to his opposing QB last weekend — Ben Roethlisberger — who appears to be on the mend morally after recovering his evangelical roots. The piece also argued that evangelical piety is much more important than evangelical politics.

Tebow and Roethlisberger point to the essential aspects of evangelicalism, the ones that make it persist — its missionary, proclamatory character on the one hand, and its private, searching piety on the other. The former wants to appeal to the whole world, which is why Tebow’s family raised him not only to preach, but to persuade others with a winning demeanor. The latter wants a changed life; Roethlisberger, in evangelical parlance, rededicated his life to Jesus after a period of backsliding, because he knew no other way to break his pattern of misbehavior.

In Iowa, Santorum’s evangelical “surge” grossed him about 30,000 votes. That may constitute an evangelical moment, and it may inspire some observers to define evangelicals by their political behavior. But it is not a particularly large group from which to draw conclusions about the movement as a whole. Most evangelicals, like most Americans, don’t show up to the voting booth at all. Their political commitments are not nearly as strong as their faith commitments.

Odd that this column says nothing about forgiveness of sins through the work of Christ as being crucial to evangelical piety. Instead, it points to evangelicalism’s life-changing character and how its adherents lead moral lives. If that is so — and there is some obvious truth to this — what about the elephant in the room of the way that evangelicals (in worship and on Sunday) seem to disregard the first table of the law?

What does this have to do with 2k? Well, the critics of 2k never seem to notice that 2k advocates do care about the law and have defended especially the first table. 2kers are invariably Sabbatarian, defend the regulative principle of worship (derived from the Second Commandment), condemn the creation of images of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and fear the ways in which informality in worship may breach the Third Commandment’s call for avoiding profanity. Meanwhile, the critics of 2k, who invariably want the entire nation to follow God’s law, look the other way when it comes to the church following all of God’s law. Some of 2k’s biggest critics are advocates of contemporary worship and praise Christian football players who profane the Sabbath.

So it is false to say that 2k leads to or promotes antinomianism. 2kers follow God’s law and defend it — all of it. What seems to be 2kers problem is that we don’t apply the law selectively to public life. That selectivity may not qualify as antinomian. But it hardly constitutes the love of God’s law that 2kers allegedly lack or qualifies as honest.

Cherry Picking Alert (and boy are those trunks sappy!)

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

The Gospel Coalition has launched a year-long series of blog posts about Princeton Theological Seminary, a school that celebrates its bicentennial this year. The first post introduces PTS by likening the institution to the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement.

Controversies swirl around celebrity pastors and their best-selling books. Evangelicals unite across denominational lines to share resources and strategize together for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom. New thought emerging from Europe demands a response. Divisions arise between those who emphasize personal piety and others who prioritize the sacraments in the Christian life. Developments in science force Christians to reconsider their understanding of Genesis.

The author, Andy Jones, a PCA pastor in North Carolina, continues:

The seminary originally aimed to produce men of great learning and vital piety. The leaders of Princeton were men who advocated for Calvinism and the Great Awakening. They were Reformed revivalists. In the classroom, they introduced their students to the biblical languages and the Latin edition of Francis Turrentin’s Institutes. Yet they also emphasized the necessity of personal piety. Their goal was to produce ministers who were biblically grounded, theologically enlightened, and spiritually awakened. By establishing a seminary that linked together vigorous learning and piety, the founders hoped that “blessings may flow to millions while we are sleeping in the dust.”

Though governed by Presbyterians, Princeton Seminary welcomed students from diverse backgrounds. It graduated men who became leaders in Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Baptist churches. Among Princeton’s first graduates was Charles Hodge, who would become the seminary’s leading influence in the 19th century. Another early graduate and Hodge’s best friend was John Johns, a leader among Episcopalians and ultimately the president of William and Mary. One of Hodge’s students, James Petigru Boyce, became the founding professor of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

In the 19th century, Princeton was a leader among conservative evangelicals in America. It was the “grand central station” for the “young, restless, and Reformed.” Through The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, a prominent voice in 19th-century religious journalism, it apprised Presbyterians of the latest thinking among biblical scholars, engaged in controversies facing the church, and responded to challenges in the surrounding culture.

In other words, PTS was the Gospel Coalition of the nineteenth century — revivalistic, interdenominational, devout, and informed.

This is one way of interpreting PTS but it is highly selective since it leaves out the less reassuring bits about Princeton’s Old School tradition — Hodge’s criticisms of the First Great Awakening, Samuel Miller’s defense of something close to jure divino Presbyterianism, the seminary’s cultivation of polemical theology, its insistence on infant baptism, and its legacy in institutions like Westminster Seminaries and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Old Schoolers like myself have not ignored Princeton’s experimental Calvinistic side and some of us have even explored the tensions between revivalism and confessionalism that the Princetonians may not themselves acknowledged. But at least we have not denied the uncomfortable parts of PTS’ past. I would hope the Gospel Co-Allies would do the same.

Meanwhile, this is the second time in the recent past where GC advocates have appealed to historical precedents for their alliance. One commenter here invoked seventeenth-century British Protestantism and its kaleidoscope of Puritans, Independents, Presbyterians, and Baptists. He left out the Quakers and failed to acknowledge that these groups did not found a parachurch agency but went into separate churches. Now comes an attempt to draw parallels between the GC and PTS. Be careful with those pits.

I do not understand why GC historians don’t liken themselves to the most obvious precedent — the neo-evangelicals of the 1940s. Leading that group was Harold John Ockenga, Carl Henry, and Billy Graham. They too set up non-denominational institutions to draw in “conservative” Protestants of all stripes. And they also drew inspiration from Princeton Seminary. As George Marsden shows, PTS was very much on the minds of Fuller Seminary’s founders.

The trouble with appeals to Old Princeton like the neo-evangelicals and GC’s is that they ignore the side of the seminary that spooks pietists — the polemics not only against liberals but also against “conservatives.” PTS did welcome students from all churches. But you cannot find a bigger critic of Finney, holiness, Wesleyanism, perfectionism, New School Presbyterianism, Taylorism, biblical criticism, and Darwin. Old Princeton knew how to say “no.” Does the Gospel Coalition?

One way to answer this question without long reflection is to compare Mark Driscoll to Charles Hodge. Puhleeze. If Hodge were living today, he would take Driscoll to the woodshed (that is, unless Driscoll’s powers of clairvoyance alerted him to Hodge’s approach).

Will Rob Bell Be Cremated?

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

Glancing through Diarmaid MacCulloch’s three-thousand year history of Christianity, I noticed an astute point by the author. It is the inverse relationship that exists in the contemporary setting between churches teaching about hell and churches opposing cremation.

It is observable that certain aspects of the Christian past are being jettisoned without fuss even within self-consciously traditional religion. The most notable casualty of the past century has been Hell. It has dropped out of Christian preaching or much popular concern, first among Protestants, then later among Catholics, who have also ceased to pay much attention to that aspect of Western doctrine which seemed all-consuming in the Latin Church on the eve of the Reformation, Purgatory. (1012)

MacCulloch goes on:

A particularly suprising development in Christianity, admittedly so far noticeable mainly in the West, is the abandonment of a key aspect of Christian practice since its early days, inhumation of corpses. As hellfire receded, there advanced the literal fires of the crematorium; such fire, previously reserved by Christians for heretics, now routinely forms the liturgical climax to encomia of the good things in the life of the deceased. (1013)

One last point that MacCulloch makes is that cremation took root in the West among liberal Italian nationalists who were often forbidden from being buried in church graveyards. Cremation as such was a gesture of anti-clericalism.

Not sure I have much of a point here except to recover reasons against cremation.

Love that Bob

Published on by D. G. Hart38 Comments

In his new book on the so-called Escondido theology, John Frame tries to establish a link between the two-kingdom views of certain authors and Meredith Kline, who taught at Westminster California for almost two decades. This analysis fails in two respects. The first is that I, whom Frame includes as an Escondido “theologian,” never studied with Kline. If truth be told, I’m still only about one-fifth of the way through Kingdom Prologue (did someone say “fifth”?).

The other reason why Frame’s analysis fails is that he neglects the real source of Westminster California’s alleged uniqueness, namely, its president, W. Robert Godfrey. Bob Godfrey was Old School before any of us knew what Old School was and even before Bob himself began to lecture on the American church. He introduced his students to strands of Reformed Protestantism that were older than J. Gresham Machen and Abraham Kuyper. Students who heard his lectures on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became aware of a world of topics and battles that had been vital to the Reformed churches. And some of those students, the Escondido “theologians” especially, learned from those lectures and tried to reappropriate for the contemporary church the faith and practice of the historic Reformed and Presbyterian churches. Most students were aware that some adjustments would have to be made. We cannot go directly to 1560 Geneva (we can’t have the state execute idolaters). But we also knew that Machen and Kuyper were not the last word on what it meant to be Reformed.

This is an important perspective to keep in mind — and which Frame entirely ignores — because so many of the hits upon Westminster California have come from people who are shocked, just shocked, to learn that some might call themselves Reformed who do not follow lock step with recent understandings of Reformed Protestantism. So if someone sounds different from Gaffin or Murray on union — horrors! — even if they can find historic Reformed sources that don’t say it the same way as Westminster Seminary theologians, they aren’t Reformed. Or if someone discovers that the doctrine of republication was taught and developed among older Reformed theologians, they will need to suffer for departing from Murray. If someone notes that Reformed churches did not believe in “every member ministry” but had a high view of pastoral office and the duties of ministers, they must be faulted for not following the advances of Jack Miller and Tim Keller. If someone brings up the fact that Reformed Protestants only sang psalms and did not tolerate special music, well they must be trouble makers because all of our churches today now sing hymns and sometimes have choirs. If someone finds that justification was more important than union in the development of Reformed soteriology during the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, well they must be “Lutheran” because they are not following the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary. Or if someone learns that Calvin and Rutherford did not construe the nature of the church, the state, and Christ’s kingdom the way Kuyper did, then they must be in error because Kuyper set the standard for all Reformed political reflection.

In other words, Bob Godfrey taught his students to read the past not by looking at the present and then cherry picking historical precedents, but by judging the present in the light of the past. He unlocked a door that allowed students to see arguments and practices that sometimes nineteenth- and twentieth-century conservative Reformed churchmen had themselves neglected or forgotten. This is not to say that Bob Godfrey is to blame for the Escondido Theology. It is to say that he deserves credit for rediscovering an older part of the Reformed heritage that his students have tried to recover for the contemporary church. And it is important to see that the opposition to Godfrey’s students comes most often from people who regard the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as THE AGE of Reformed orthodoxy.

Escondido Theology Before Escondido

Published on by D. G. Hart213 Comments

In his new book, John Frame argues that two-kingdom theologians represent a novel development in the history of Reformed theology. In his introduction, he goes out of his way to explain that Escondido theologians reject Christendom. But this rejection creates a problem for 2k because the theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries taught that the magistrate had a duty to enforce the entire Decalague. “The two kingdoms view,” Frame writes, “goes beyond the Reformation theology in important ways. Indeed, except for the law/gospel dichotomy, its distinctive positions are American, not European.” (Frame also acknowledges that the roots of two kingdom theology are in Augustine’s City of God and Luther’s On Civil Authority. Go figure.) In fact, Frame goes out of his way to locate Meredith Kline as the source of these views.

What is odd about Frame’s analysis is that the so-called Escondido Theology was a position that Edmund P. Clowney espoused. Clowney was not only Frame’s professor at Westminster during the 1960s, but he was also the president of the seminary when Frame received a teaching appointment. Apparently, Frame did not pay attention to Clowney’s teaching or memos. But Clowney clearly taught the main lines of the so-called Escondido Theology in an essay, “The Politics of the Kingdom,” published in the Westminster Theological Journal in the Spring, 1979 issue (helpfully made available by Ken Myers at Mars Hill Audio, a time when the property for Westminster Seminary California was only a twinkle in Clowney’s eye.

First, notice Clowney’s understanding of the cultural mandate and Christ’s fulfillment of it:

Christ the second Adam fulfills the calling of the first. Adam was charged to fill the earth and subdue it. Man’s dominion, lyrically described in Psalm 8, is realized in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, as the author of Hebrews declares (Heb. 2:5-8). Further, in his resurrection glory at the Father’s right hand Christ fills all things. Paul describes Christ’s filling both in reference to the church (his fullness as his body) and in reference to the world, which he fills with the sovereignty of his rule (Eph. 4:10; Jer. 23:23). In Jesus Christ man’s vocation of sonship as God’s imagebearer is completely realized. The final depth of the covenant relation is not “I will be your God, and ye shall be my people,” but “Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee” (Ps. 2:7; Heb. 1:5).

Notice next that for the church to engage in political and social activities is to secularize the church and therefore a betrayal of the church’s duty:

Because there is one true people of God on earth, there remains a “theopolitical” structure and calling for the church. It is not the structure of the kingdoms of the world. To apply to the world the form of the church is a sacralizing process that is just as illegitimate as the secularizing process that would apply to the church the forms of the world. Yet the fact that the church does not possess a worldly political structure does not mean that it possesses no political structure whatever. The “politics” of the kingdom are the pattern, purpose, and dynamic by which God orders the life of the heavenly polis in this world. Only as it conforms to this heavenly pattern is the church a city set on a hill, given as salt to preserve the world from corruption and a light to point the way to salvation.

Look also at the way that Clowney deals with so-called mercy ministries in the church (or how the spiritual aspects of Christian existence transcend the temporal):

As a heavenly community the church must deal with the temporal concerns of its members, yet its discipline remains spiritual, not temporal. For example, the church could require a Christian storekeeper to refund purchases that had been gained by misleading advertising, but if the member refused, the church’s final earthly sanction would be excommunication, not economic boycott.

The heavenly community of Christ is called to an earthly pilgrimage. The people of God may not abandon the program of his kingdom—”if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him” (Rom 8:18). Paul rebukes the triumphalists at Corinth: “ye have come to reign without us: yea, and I would
that ye did reign, that we might also reign with you” (I Cor. 4:8). We may not wish to condemn Christians who in persecution that seemed beyond endurance turned upon their persecutors, but Christ does not call his church to Camisard rebellion. Rather, he gives that grace that enabled the Huguenot galley-slave to call his chains the chains of Christ’s love.

Finally, look at the way that church and state authority are distinct because of the differences between Christ’s rule as creator and redeemer:

The distinction between the state as the form of the city of this world and the church as the form of the heavenly city remains essential. Christ’s heavenly authority controls the nations but they are not thereby made his disciples. His headship over all things is distinguished from his headship over the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that fills all in all (Eph. 1:21-23). To be sure, the life of the worldly kingdoms is influenced by the life of the church in their midst; the people of God are like salt to preserve the world from its corruption; the kingdom works as a leaven, penetrating the world with the influence of Christian faith, hope, and love. . . .

To suppose that the body of Christ finds institutional expression in both the church and the state as religious and political spheres is to substitute a sociological conception of the church for the teaching of the New Testament. Christ does not give the keys of the kingdom to Caesar, nor the sword to Peter before the parousia. The church is the new nation (I Pet. 2:9), the new family of God (Eph. 3:15). The covenantal family of the patriarchal period and the covenantal nation after Moses demonstrate that
the people of God are formed in a way that respects the structures of life in the world, but they also demonstrate that the electing grace of God’s kingdom cannot be fulfilled within these structures.

Maybe Clowney’s problem is that he was not European but American. But the last I checked, Frame was not importing his suits from Switzerland.

The Grandaddy of Reformed Anti-Lutheranism

Published on by D. G. Hart62 Comments

Not that reviews of books at Amazon.com are ever adequate or trustworthy, the one for Ian Hewitson’s book on the Shepherd Controversy is revealing and adds context to the current polemics among militant critiques of Lutheranism from biblical theologians. The initial hostility in Presbyterian circles to Lutheran notions of justification came from Norman Shepherd. The reviewer is correct to note:

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the doctrine of justification by “faith alone” came under scrutiny at Westminster Theological Seminary. One of the reasons that precipitated a long, drawn-out, and painful controversy there is because the Rev. Norman Shepherd sought to do faithful exegesis of the text of Scripture in comparing the so-called contradictory pronouncements on justification between Paul and James. He did so while staying faithful to his Reformed tradition as expressed in the Westminster Standards (Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms). While Shepherd came to question Luther’s statement of “justification by faith alone,” he wondered why exegetical theology could not express itself in terms of the simpler, and more biblical, “justification by faith.” It was, after all, Martin Luther who added the gloss “alone” (glauben allein) into the text of Romans 3:28, which is not in the Greek text.

Ian Hewitson, Ph.D. University of Aberdeen, reveals in his clear, erudite dissertation, that at the crux of the debate over Shepherd’s teachings was the Lutheran-Calvinist distinction in what constitutes justifying faith. For Luther, the faith that justifies is “alone.” That is, faith is an entity that exists all by itself, is “alone,” and is devoid of any and all good works. In this sense “justification by faith alone” uses “alone” as an adjective. What kind of faith is it that justifies? It is an “alone” faith. It is faith in abstraction from all else. That is the adjectival use of the word “alone” in “justification by faith alone.”

Before Shepherd, theologians like John Murray or Louis Berkhof would not have objected to the Lutheran doctrine of justification. But Shepherd did.

Before sympathetic readers here jump on the anti-Shepherd bandwagon, they need to remember that at the time Reformed rigor was on the decline and evangelical breadth was on the rise among conservative Presbyterians in the OPC, PCA, and Westminster Seminary. John Frame’s book, Evangelical Reunion (for starters) would be ironically one example of that New School turn among conservative Presbyterians away from Old School practices and convictions. Shepherd’s desire for a consistently Reformed doctrine of salvation was part of an Old School instinct to preserve a distinctly Reformed voice.

What needs to be noted is that Shepherd was correct to resist the decline of Reformed militancy and singularity at his seminary and within his communion. I wonder if John Frame’s endorsement of Shepherd actually includes some recognition of the distance between him and Shepherd on the Reformed identity and militant character of the OPC, with Shepherd embodying one strand of Machen’s warrior children and Frame exhibiting boredom with fighting period. (Fight liberalism, sure. But that was so yesterday.)

The question is whether Shepherd needed to find a really, really, really Reformed doctrine of justification in order to right the ship. My answer, for what it’s worth, is negative.

Where's Waldo Wednesday: No Cherry Picking (or Flipping)

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

Now that I’ve finished all six seasons of the “Larry Sanders Show,” which still comes highly recommended as arguably the funniest and most poignant treatments of celebrity in Hollywood, I am free to flip channels. (Those who haven’t seen the show need to understand that after his monologue, before going to commercial, Larry would say “no flipping.)

But we still need someone like Larry to tell us Reformed debaters to stop cherry picking. In basketball, a cherry picker is someone who lingers at one of the court — the offensive one (not in the sense of being objectionable for UK readers) — and never goes to the other end to play defense.

A similar tendency exists in debates over union. Lots of pro-unionists cite Calvin on union. They hang out at the end of the court where Book III begins. Not so many of these cherry pickers lurk at that end where Calvin talks about the sacramental significance of union. But as for doing the hard work of looking beyond Calvin to other theologians who were Reformed churchmen, some would rather not do the laborious work of running from one end of the court to the other.

Calvin’s support in turn becomes a warrant for declaring that other people who claim to be Reformed are not — hence assertions about Lutheranism, semi-Pelagianism, and the like. Not only has the argument cherry picked from Calvin, but also from the history of Reformed Protestantism. For the claim that someone is Reformed, Lutheran, Arminian, Baptist is not a biblical assertion but a historical judgment. The Bible may reveal what it means to be Reformed. But Reformed Protestantism emerged and developed not by finding a creed, polity, and liturgy written down in Scripture but by Reformed officers trying to figure out what the Bible teaches and applying that teaching in a host of circumstances from 1522 to the present.

All of this is to say that the way forward in the debates about union — a question that emerged at the end of Mike Horton’s interview at Reformed Forum — is to let the historians decide. Of course, this sounds self-serving (which it isn’t because I am not a historical theologian). It is actually a realistic assessment of the most contested claims made by all parties in the discussions of union. Everyone wants to be biblical and execute the best exegesis. But interpreting the Bible is not the way you understand or define Christian past. To know the Reformed tradition, you need to study the past. That way you can see which theologians held what views, which churches professed what creeds, which synods or assemblies excluded what teachings as erroneous.

Historical investigation will never satisfy the bibilicist (just ask John Frame). But it will teach everyone to be more careful about the use of words like Reformed.

The alternative is to abandon words like Reformed, Lutheran, Pelagian, and Baptist altogether. “Hmmmmmmm, no denominations.” Imagine a world separate communions. I think John Lennon (and Frame) would go for that.

Second Thoughts about Two-Kingdom Theology

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

I am reading (and reviewing) a book about religion and politics in the United States and came across a quotation from Lyman Beecher — who put novelty into New School — about the influence clergy had on Connecticut politics:

I remember that while at New Haven we had a meeting to consult about organizing a society for the promotion of reform. We met in Judgje Baldwin’s office; and a number of the leading lawyers were invited to meet us, some seven or eight perhaps. We took up the subject, and discussed it thoroughly, Dr. Dwight being the chairman of the meeting, and such men as David Daggett, Judge Baldwin, Rog^ Minot Sherman participating.

That was a new thing in that day for the clergy and laymen to meet on the same level and co-operate. It was the first time there had ever been such a consultation between them in Connecticut in our day. The ministers had always managed things themselves, for in those days the ministers were all politicians. They had always been used to it from the beginning.

On election day they had a festival. All the clergy used to go, walk in procession, smoke pipes, and drink. And, fact is, when they got together, they would talk over who should be governor, and who lieutenant governor, and who in the Upper House, and their counsels would prevail.

That sounds amazingly civilized. So if we can add elders to the consultations between clergy and civil magistrates and maintain the festivities, I’m willing to reconsider distinctions between the temporal and eternal realms.