From DGH on The Death of Prayer Meetings Submitted on 2015 05 12 at 10:52 am

Mark, you are so good at quoting from historical figures that I’m a little taken aback by your throwaway reference to John Calvin. Since he had preaching services during the week, I’m surprised to learn that he advocated a mid-week prayer meeting: “Church history also gives us many good examples (e.g., Calvin in Geneva).”

Here’s a question, though. Say you are a congregation that already has two prayer meetings. Each one takes place on Sunday, one in the morning and one in the evening. These instances of corporate prayer, as you may have guessed, are part of the sanctification of the Lord’s Day. Are you advocating that we add another, for the sake of sanctifying Wednesday night (sure hope it doesn’t conflict with Hockey Night in Canada)?

Or what if you are part of a congregation that only has one service on the Lord’s Day — in the morning, for instance? Do you think a church should first start an evening Sunday service before adding a mid-week prayer meeting? Or is corporate prayer so important that Christians should leave their homes and offices for it, even though they may already pray in those non-church settings alone or with other Christians?

I am having trouble figuring out why you might advocate corporate prayer the way you do. For instance, you say that one reason is that people are too busy. But that’s the same argument that people use against a second service on Sunday. I can well understand that people have vocations that make attending church functions like Bible study, youth group, even catechism difficult. I can also well understand a session that is reluctant to add to a church member’s burdens, someone who already is committed to and practices keeping the Lord’s Day holy.

I don’t know why you don’t see the potential burden unless you don’t understand the doctrine of vocation. Isn’t it Reformed to think that someone is actually serving God by carrying out their civil, secular, professional, and family duties? If they perform those tasks on the Lord’s Day, then Houston we have a problem. But if they honor their callings during the week and cant’ attend a church function to which officers cannot attach a “thus saith the Lord,” are you really suggesting that to be truly holy and pious people need to pray together at the church building (instead of with their families or over the course of their work days)?

Maybe the problem is that you don’t appreciate the importance of Lord’s Day worship and week-day vocation.

Or maybe you simply have forgotten that all of life is worship (thanks to our southern correspondent):

The New Testament model for worship is not just about singing praises. It is living a life of service. It’s about far more than music. It’s helping your neighbor bring in the groceries, providing for the elderly, taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves, helping the poor and needy—these are all examples of biblical worship.

Actually, I’d prefer that you not follow this Framean understanding of every-square-inch liturgy, but you may want to recognize that your version of pietism is out of whack with the neo-Calvinist high intellect pietism. For neo-Cals, missing a mid-week prayer service is no problem since a believer must 24-7 be engaged in some means of grace. As you yourself have argued, grace can be a fairly expansive category that extends to God’s work of creation and providence. So if someone at church who is following Kuyper misses a prayer meeting because they are redeeming culture by watching Downton Abbey, which seventeenth-century theologian are you going to quote against them?

Rush Hour in Kampen

Over a decade ago I participated in a conference at Kampen sponsored by the theological institute of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands Liberated. After clearing my head from the cobwebs of jet lag, I looked out my downtown hotel window to observe teams of Dutch cyclists. They were not out for exercise but dressed in business attire on their way to work.

David Danelo finally helps make sense of that arresting sight.

About 230,000 Dutch citizens died during World War II, or 2.5% of the wartime population of nine million, many from disease and famine as much as violence. Before World War II, bicycles had come quickly to Holland, and the flat terrain made cycling the most affordable and functional form of public transport. After Nazi Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940, soldiers confiscated bicycles and recycled the metal and rubber for war materiel. Dutch citizens responded by making bicycle possession a protest symbol; as Nazi convoys careened through Amsterdam’s streets, Dutch cyclists would join hands, up to four abreast, and slow their pace to thwart the convoy’s progress. Even today, Dutch football fans are often seen holding bicycle signs during matches against Germany, and Dutch citizens feels no shame in asking new German acquaintances to “give me my bike back.”

Can We Talk About Prayer Meetings?

Paul Levy and I have, but the differences of our talk may be worth considering.

Like many evangelicals who seem to need to show their piety (despite our Lord’s warning about praying that others can see us at prayer), Levy provides a number of reasons for the week night “gathering” that seem to have less to do with prayer itself than with the fellowship that such meetings might encourage. For instance:

4. There is something that unites us together when we pray together – People ask sometimes what is encouraging you in Christian ministry? For me the big one is to hear someone pray for the first time. I am a Westminster Confession believing, card carrying Presbyterian and yet to hear someone pray for the first time makes me want to dance a jig of delight. As in marriage, those congregations who pray together stay together. You cannot hate your brother while praying with him and for him.

Is the point of prayer to encourage other believers or inspire a dance, or is it to offer up to God our desires “for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies” (SC 98)? If it is the latter, then Levy is closer to the mark when he writes:

6. Prayer is a means of grace – Hebrews 4:14-16 ”14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Prayer is us speaking with God, but, as we pray, we receive mercy and find grace. It is my experience that at prayer gatherings when the people of God together call on the name of God we are often more conscious of his blessing. As we draw near to him he draws near to us.

But is prayer more effective, more gracious, when people gather for it and it’s done corporately? If people stay home and pray, even at the same time, is the effect the same? With God maybe, but not for those for whom prayer becomes a means of bonding or becoming more personally acquainted. Fellowship is a valuable thing. But doesn’t it happen more over a meal than when either listing prayer requests of extemporaneously praying for them. In fact, sometimes prayer meetings can hurt fellowship when you find that saints (see what I did there?) request prayer for ephemeral matters or lack eloquence when praying publicly (myself included). In other words, prayer meetings can be very uncomfortable because of the performance component inherent in them. But Levy, like so many pietists, only sees the spiritual (up) side.

On the other hand, prayer meetings may be a very good marker of Christian devotion, as they reveal Christians who participate in the life of a congregation and are willing to make that a priority. Instead of being culture warriors, they are church members.

At the same time, if we limit serious church assemblies to the Lord’s Day and the regular administration of the means of grace, Christians may actually have time to serve on school boards or attend public events and show that they are active members of the earthly kingdom where they live while they await and pray for the coming of the kingdom of glory.

Where are B-s Detectors When You Need Them?

AJ reminds via Saul Bellow that New York City is good at business but not at culture:

New York is a publishing center, the business center of American culture. Here culture is prepared, processed and distributed. Here the publishers with their modern apparatus for printing, billing, shipping, editing, advertising and accounting, with their specialized personnel, wait for manuscripts. Their expenses are tremendous so they cannot afford to wait too long; they must find material somewhere, attract writers or fabricate books in their editorial offices. New York, of course, includes Washington and Boston. Some of its literary mandarins actually live in Cambridge, in New Haven, Bennington, New Brunswick, Princeton; a few are in London and Oxford. These officials of high culture write for the papers, sit on committees, advise, consult, set standards, define, drink cocktails, gossip — they give body to New York’s appearance of active creativity, its apparently substantial literary life. But there is no substance. There is only the idea of a cultural life. There are manipulations, rackets and power struggles; there is infighting; there are reputations, inflated and deflated. Bluster, vehemence, swagger, fashion, image-making, brain-fixing — these are what the center has to offer…. New York, then, is not the literary capital of America. It is simply the center of the culture business. It manufactures artistic lifestyles for the American public.

Maybe real transformation needs to happen somewhere other than New York City, or perhaps a papal encyclical will turn Wall Street into a Catholic Worker House of Hospitality.

And to pile on, here’s why H. L. Mencken made money in New York’s publishing business but spent his earnings in Baltimore:

What makes New York so dreadful, I believe, is mainly the fact that the vast majority of its people have been forced to rid themselves of one of the oldest and most powerful of human instincts – the instinct to make a permanent home. Crowded, shoved about, and exploited without mercy, they have lost the feeling that any part of the earth belongs to them, and so they simply camp out like tramps, waiting for the constables to rush in and chase them away. I am not speaking here of the poor (God knows how they exist in New York at all!); I am speaking of the well-to-do, even of the rich. The very richest man, in New York, is never quite sure that the house he lives in now will be his next year — that he will be able to resist the constant pressure of business expansion and rising land values. I have known actual millionaires to be chased out of their homes in this way, and forced into apartments. In Baltimore, too, the same pressure exists, to be sure, but it is not oppressive, for the householder can meet it by by yielding to it half way. It may force him into the suburbs, even into the adjacent country, but he is still in direct contact with the city, sharing in its life, and wherever he lands he may make a stand. But on Manhattan Island he is quickly brought up by the rivers, and once he has crossed them he may as well move to Syracuse or Trenton. (“On Living in Baltimore” 1926)

Why Only One Designated Hitter?

Why not five in a line-up? That’s an argument that resembles the opponents of gay marriage — if you start with one same-sex spouse, why draw the line there? But Michael Brendan Dougherty has a very good point. If we are willing to put up with Ryan Howard’s poor defensive skills at first base for the pop that he brings used to bring to the plate, why should we mind watching the futility of a Justin Verlander while trying to hit a ball?

The player that is most valuable for his defense is usually not very valuable on the offensive side of the ball. But what is the rationale for remedying this by instituting a position that is valuable on offense but contributes absolutely nothing on defense? Calcaterra is saying that the National League should add an extra player who is only good at offense because he is better at offense, a tautological argument that implies it is plainly wrong to want to see Clayton Kershaw at bat rather than David Ortiz. It’s only wrong if you’re rooting against the pitcher. . . .

Why should teams not pair an excellent defensive outfielder like Endy Chavez with a poor-fielding slugger like Dan Uggla? Because of some hoary tradition that only pitchers can be replaced with a DH? Teams could keep Jeff Francoeur’s tremendous defensive arm in the outfield for years if you paired him up with the bat of Prince Fielder. Furthermore, because the hitting Fielder and the fielding Franceour are not forced into doing things they aren’t great at, you reduce some risk of injury.

Roster sizes are not written on tablets, and can be expanded; the teams have plenty of revenue. Specialization is a trend in baseball after all, so why not separate the great defenders with rocket arms and high baseball IQ, from the natural born hitters in the early development process. We could have a whole infield of Andrelton Simmons-level defenders, and every team can put a murderers’ row up to bat. Why wouldn’t you want to see that?

Because that’s what you see in the National Football League and that means desecrating the Lord’s Day.

That was easy.

Can Israel Save U.S.?

News that Charles Stanley is declining an award from the Jewish National Fund prompted me to wonder if U.S. support for Israel would wane if the State of Israel legalized gay marriage. First the news about Stanley:

Megachurch pastor Charles Stanley has turned down an award from a pro-Israel Jewish group, citing controversy over his views about homosexuality.

The Atlanta-based chapter of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) had planned to honor Stanley this week with its prestigious Tree of Life Award for his long support of the state of Israel. But a number of local rabbis and other Jewish leaders had protested the decision.

At issue are Stanley’s past statements that homosexual sex is immoral and a comment he made to a newspaper in 1986 that AIDS was a sign of God’s judgment.

But on closer inspection, it doesn’t look like gay marriage is an option in Israel:

In Israel, all valid marriages conducted abroad are recognized by the state, and foreign same-sex marriages are recorded for statistical purposes. That means a gay couple that weds in, say, the Netherlands remains wed in Israel. But that doesn’t mean a gay couple in Tel Aviv can walk down to city hall and procure a marriage license. Marriage is an exclusively religious institution in Israel, with separate religious authorities for Jews and Muslims, Christians and Druze. For Israeli Jews, marriage policy is dictated by the Chief Rabbinate, which is under the exclusive control of the Orthodox—and firmly opposed to gay marriage. Since the country has no civil marriage, gay couples seeking to marry within the borders of Israel are out of luck (as are any Jewish Israelis seeking a non-Orthodox marriage ceremony).

This arrangement—whereby marriage is in the control of the Orthodox rabbinate—is part of what Israelis call the status quo: an understanding between secular and religious Jews regarding the balance between religion and state. The status quo affects not only marriage, but also the education system, family law, supervision of kosher restaurants, and the opening of shops and public transportation on shabbat.

So for now, evangelical Protestants don’t need to worry about gay marriage undermining their support for Israel, though it would be curious to see how American Protestants who support a Jewish state would sort that ethical dilemma out. But could it be that Israel has the solution to U.S. marriage debates? Make marriage exclusively a religious institution and eliminate civil marriage.

As odd as that may sound, not so long ago, in 1930 when H. L. Mencken was married to Sara Haardt, the couple needed to find an Episcopal priest because Maryland did not provide civil marriages.

Should Biography Be So Important?

Ross Douthat’s article on Pope Francis reflects the smarts, insights, and courage that characterizes almost everything the columnist writes. His conclusion about a potential disruption of the church by the current pope is again refreshing, especially coming from a conservative, since most converts and apologists hum merrily the tune of “nothing changes, we have the magisterium.” Douthat recognizes that this ecclesiology makes it almost impossible for conservatives to stop a progressive-led disruption:

In the age of Francis, this progressive faith seems to rest on two assumptions. The first is that the changes conservatives are resisting are, in fact, necessary for missionary work in the post-sexual-revolution age, and that once they’re accomplished, the subsequent renewal will justify the means. The second is that because conservative Catholics are so invested in papal authority, a revolution from above can carry all before it: the conservatives’ very theology makes it impossible for them to effectively resist a liberalizing pope, and anyway they have no other place to go.

But the first assumption now has a certain amount of evidence against it, given how many of the Protestant churches that have already liberalized on sexual issues—again, often dividing in the process—are presently aging toward a comfortable extinction. (As is, of course, the Catholic Church in Germany, ground zero for Walter Kasper’s vision of reform.)

Contemporary progressive Catholicism has been stamped by the experience of the Second Vatican Council, when what was then a vital American Catholicism could be invoked as evidence that the Church should make its peace with liberalism as it was understood in 1960. But liberalism in 2015 means something rather different, and attempts to accommodate Christianity to its tenets have rarely produced the expected flourishing and growth. Instead, liberal Christianity’s recent victories have very often been associated with the decline or dissolution of its institutional expressions.

Which leaves the second assumption for liberals to fall back on—a kind of progressive ultramontanism, which assumes that papal power can remake the Church without dividing it, and that when Rome speaks, even disappointed conservatives will ultimately concede that the case is closed.

Aside from Douthat’s insights into the dynamics of the Francis papacy, his article also reveals the fundamental problem with episcopal church government. Most of the article is a review of three biographies in which Douthat tries to discern from the tea leaves of Francis’ life the direction of his papacy:

Yet several crucial issues—some raised explicitly by Ivereigh, some implicit in all three biographies—set Francis’s background and worldview apart. They help explain why his pontificate looks much more friendly to progressive strands within Catholicism than anyone expected from the successor to the previous two popes.

First, Jorge Bergoglio had a very different experience of globalization than Karol Wojtyła (who would become Pope John Paul II) and Joseph Ratzinger did in Europe, one shaped by disappointments particular to his country. For most of his life, his native Argentina was an economic loser, persistently underperforming and corruption-wracked. During the 1980s, inequality and the poverty rate increased in tandem; in the late ’90s and early 2000s, while Bergoglio was archbishop, Argentina endured a downturn and a depression. Where his predecessors’ skepticism of capitalism and consumerism was mainly intellectual and theoretical, for Bergoglio the critique became something more visceral and personal.

Second, in the course of his political experience in Argentina, he encountered very different balances of power—between the left and the right, between Church and state, and within global Catholicism—than either of the previous two popes confronted. As much as Bergoglio clashed with Marxist-influenced Jesuits, the Marxists in Argentina weren’t running the state (as they were in John Paul’s Poland, and in the eastern bloc of Benedict’s native Germany). They were being murdered by it. Likewise, the fact that the Church in Argentina was compromised during the Dirty War had theological implications: it meant that for Bergoglio, more-intense forms of traditionalist Catholicism were associated with fascism in a very specific, immediate way. And coming from the Church’s geographical periphery himself, Bergoglio had reasons to sympathize with the progressive argument that John Paul had centralized too much power in the Vatican, and that local churches needed more freedom to evolve.

Third, while highly intellectual in his own distinctive way, Francis is clearly a less systematic thinker than either of his predecessors, and especially than the academic-minded Benedict.

Douthat may not mean it this way, but why is it unfair to surmise that in the case of a bishop (even the one in Rome), the personal is truly political. Was this the way it was supposed to be, especially when the bishops were supposed to follow apostolic teaching? Where are the teaching of Scripture, the dogma of the church, or sacramental observance as decisive for Francis’ ministry? Why would his own personal experience be more important for setting the papacy’s agenda than the received traditions of the church?

The advantage of Presbyterianism, aside from its commitment to the antiquity of the prophets and the apostles, is that the rule by committee prevents any single bishop (read overseer or presbyter) from having his biography determine the assemblies or ministry of the church (unless you’re in the PCA in NYC). That may not be enough to crack the logic of Bryan’s noggin or turn Loser Ken’s head from all those trophies, but it’s something.

Even Michael Sean Winters thinks the bishops need more accountability (and who can blame him after what’s happened in Kansas City, but don’t forget about Pope Francis’ approval of what’s happening in Chile):

There are structural changes the Church can make that would serve to provide greater accountability. For much of the Church’s history, the decisions of a bishop could be appealed to his metropolitan archbishop, and the decisions of the metropolitans could be appealed to another metropolitan or to a national or regional body of metropolitans. The system was undone not by any decision the Church made but by the disruption in the Church’s life caused by Napoleon. In those tumultuous years, appeals to Rome became the norm. Today, the only vestige of the earlier system is that a bishop’s judicial decisions can be appealed to the metropolitan, and the decisions of a marriage tribunal are automatically reviewed by the metropolitan tribunal. But, only about ten percent of any bishop’s decisions are judicial. The other 90% are administrative, and if any appeal is sought from those, the appeal must be sent to Rome.

Just as the Holy Father has introduced a new body, the Council of Cardinals, to advise him, the Church could bring back the earlier system of appeal to metropolitans for all administrative decisions. How would that change things? If a bishop knew his decisions were open to expedited review by someone nearby, he might be more inclined to try and work things out amicably within his own diocese, or to consult with the other bishops about an especially problematic situation, in advance. It would not guarantee there would be no mistakes, but it would start to put flesh on the idea of episcopal collegiality articulated at Vatican II.

Hey, Mike, this is the kind of review that happens every single month when a consistory or session meets, or every four months when classis or presbytery meets, or every year when Synod or General Assembly meets. Face it, Reformed Protestantism put the reform in Reformation.

How Far Is the Sidestream from the Main One?

Travels to Hungary earlier this week and a pleasant conversation with a young woman training to be a pastor in the Hungarian Reformed Church got me thinking about women, gender, and how important male clergy is to “the gospel.” This woman could not quite wrap her mind around the idea that a church still places restrictions on ordination. The argument that Paul taught that elders and pastors should be male, since they should be married to only one wife (and Paul wasn’t thinking of Ellen DeGeneres), didn’t seem to be sufficient.

So I started to think, thoughts that took me back to CRC days, what is such a big deal about ordaining women? It is an error and violates God’s word, which is synonymous with sin (“any want of conformity unto or transgression of”). But Covenanters can fellowship with hymn singers which for some exclusive psalm folks is a violation of God’s word. Which means we all look the other way at least ecumenically when it comes to interpreting God’s word.

The experience of conservative Reformed boomers, however, was that the hermeneutic that allowed the ordination of women was one that would lead to cutting and pasting the rest of God’s word and church order. As a boomer this argument — the slippery slope one that almost sent me to Vietnam — makes some sense. But what if a communion decided simply to draw the line at women’s ordination? We will go this far, the women’s ordinationists might say, but no farther. Isn’t that what some communions have done with hymns? We will sing them but not P&W Praise Songs? In which case, what is the threshold that women’s ordination crosses by itself? Or is it simply a case of knowing what history teaches — when women ascend the pulpit doctrine slips.

Along with this set of thoughts went the one about women and head coverings. Should a communion like the OPC be consistent and encourage (maybe discipline) women to cover their heads in worship, with some preference given to those with long hair? Is this another one of those hermeneutical instances where we look the other way? At the same time, doesn’t the reality of women not wearing scarves in OPC churches, along with our hip and up-to-date revision of the Confession of Faith on the civil magistrate — doesn’t this make the OPC mainstream?

Oh yeah. What Christian women today would wear a head scarf? That’s Islam.

Did We Miss May?

All the talk about religious freedom has turned the calendar ahead to June — the traditional month of weddings. Kevin DeYoung reminds us why marriage ceremonies are so important:

A wedding ceremony, in the Christian tradition, is first of all a worship service. So if the union being celebrated in the service cannot be biblically sanctioned as a an act of worship, we believe the service lends credence to a lie. We cannot come in good conscience and participate in a service of false worship. I understand that sounds not very nice, but the conclusion follows from the premise; namely, that the “marriage” being celebrated is not in fact a marriage and should not be celebrated.

Moreover, there has long been an understanding that those present at a marriage ceremony are not just casual observers, but are witnesses granting their approval and support for the vows that are to be made. That’s why the traditional language speaks of gathering “here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation.”

This is true.

But have Christians truly been relying on such convictions in the way they practice wedding ceremonies? When my brother was married in 1973, the ceremony was simple and the reception even simpler — cake and punch in the church basement. (For all fathers with daughters out there, one phrase — “cake and punch, cake and punch.”) By the time of mine eight years later, we upgraded to upscale finger food, and a trio of string instruments at an offsite location — one that wouldn’t allow champagne or wine (which was just as well because both sets of parents were abstainers). Today, a Christian family can’t hold a wedding and reception for under five figures — or a good down payment on a home, and the list of guests is a sign of which friends and family need to be honored or included.

In other words, Christians have hardly preserved a distinct way of doing marriage but have joined the surrounding culture in turning it into something excessive — sort of the marriage version of the Super Bowl.

So if Kevin wants us to go back to simpler times, fine and good. But let’s not act like Christians have been preserving the sanctity of ceremonies or vows or commitments. And let’s not forget the way gay marriage has spooked us into rethinking marriage. We didn’t object to weddings when our non-Christian neighbors invited us to the local mainline Protestant church for the ceremony and the country club for the reception. But now we do.

How Inorganic

Why do pseudo-Calvinists complain so much about mean Calvinists? If you thought much about total depravity in your own life, you might not be in a nice frame of mind during waking hours. Or if you pondered most of the Bible, saw what happens to law breakers or how Christ interacts with the self-righteous, you might not be inclined to don a yellow-happy-face pin. Or if you considered the majesty and sovereignty of God and tried to imagine how a holy and righteous God puts up with a world that — let’s say — falls short of his standards, your jaws might be tight a lot of the time. So why does Daniel Montgomery continue the meme of the Gospel Allies that TGC Calvinism is nice and other kinds aren’t? Do these folks actually think that Mr. Rogers is more interesting than Christopher Hitchens? Then why make avoidance of offense the hallmark of your brand?

The main point for considering Montgomery’s post, though, is an odd metaphor that he invokes from TKNY about theological vision (w-w anyone?):

Without the clarity of a comprehensive theological vision, we succumb to emphatic theology with no connection between all the different fragments of theology and the arenas of our lives. As Tim Keller argues, if theological confession is our hardware and methodological strategy our software, we desperately need the theological “middleware” of vision to bring our confession to life and inform our methodology. This is an extension of Richard Lints’s siren call in The Fabric of Theology. Reflecting on the necessity of having a coherent theological vision, Lints writes:

The Christian gospel calls us not only to a well-formed theistic matrix but also to make conscious connections between that matrix and the other matrices of our lives. What I believe about God ought to influence how I view my own identity, my vocation, my family, my leisure pursuits, and so on. It is this matrix of matrices that I have been calling the theological vision. It is composed more narrowly of the theistic matrix (what I will be calling a theological framework) and more broadly of the interconnections between the theistic matrix and all other matrices in one’s noetic structures. Theology involves not just the study of God (theistic matrix) but also the influence of that study on the rest of one’s life (theological vision). It is possible to distinguish these two levels, but they are never separable in practice.

Huh?

One way to spot a true Kuyperian from a poser is to watch for metaphors. The more organic, the more Kuyperian since Abraham Kuyper himself everywhere employed images from the natural world — roots, branches, life-giving sources, the folk with ties to the fatherland. But Keller and Lovelace employ mechanical and even mathematical metaphors to try to explain the way that theology functions in Christian devotion.

I can’t think of a better way to remove a church’s confession from officers’ and church members’ consciousness than by likening it to computer hardware. If anything, ecclesiology is the hardware on which the software of confessions runs so that users may worship and serve God. But this is a poor analogy. I prefer the stool (preferably handmade) to the computer. Confessional Presbyterianism is like a three-legged stool with polity, confession, and liturgy each constituting a leg. Remove one and confessional Presbyterianism falls and confessional Presbyterians land on their arses.

But TKNY’s computing metaphor may explain the dynamics of TGC. When your fellowship is digital and web-based, you may wind up treating doctrine like computer hardware — invisible and beyond your competency. Keller may explain more than he knows.

By the way, Montgomery quotes Piper on the appeal of Calvinism to a certain type of person:

There is an attractiveness about [the doctrines of grace] to some people, in large matter, because of their intellectual rigor. They are powerfully coherent doctrines, and certain kinds of minds are drawn to that. And those kinds of minds tend to be argumentative. So the intellectual appeal of the system of Calvinism draws a certain kind of intellectual person, and that type of person doesn’t tend to be the most warm, fuzzy, and tender. Therefore this type of person has a greater danger of being hostile, gruff, abrupt, insensitive, or intellectualistic. I’ll just confess that. It’s a sad and terrible thing that that’s the case. Some of this type aren’t even Christians, I think. You can embrace a system of theology and not even be born again.

Obviously, Piper has never encountered Jason and the Callers.