Category: Piety with Excitement

Less Devotion is More

Published on by D. G. Hart28 Comments

Lots of Christians, evangelicals following the lead of Neo-Calvinists, like to know that their faith matters. (Thanks to Chris Gehrz) Here’s one recent appropriation of the Clapham Sect, a group of English evangelicals which included William Wilberforce, and that give evangelical activists goose bumps because of Wilberforce’s involvement in abolishing the slave trade:

Clapham Spirituality acknowledged that conversion was not an end unto itself, but was the beginning of one’s Christian journey. That journey was characterized by key spiritual disciplines that were tools used by the Holy Spirit to strengthen the faith and godliness of genuine believers. The most important personal disciplines were daily Bible study and prayer—what modern evangelicals often call the “daily quiet time.” The most important corporate disciplines were family worship, which occurred daily in the home, and corporate worship, which occurred every Lord’s Day in the parish church, which for most members of the Clapham Sect was Holy Trinity Church in Clapham. . . .

In addition to combating slavery, the Clapham Sect was committed to pushing back against other social evils. The Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor was an effort by wealthy Anglican evangelicals to alleviate poverty among the lower classes. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which Wilberforce and other Clapham Sect members joined, championed animal rights two centuries before the cause became politically correct. The Society for the Discharge and Relief of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debt, originally an evangelical initiative, sought to reform the oppressive practice of placing debtors in prison, effectively ending their wage-earning potential. Clapham Sect members also championed prison reform, education reform, healthcare reform and (in the case of some members) the abolition of capital punishment. Clapham Spirituality recognized that, for evangelicals, cultural influence was a matter of moral stewardship.

Clapham Spirituality was not only committed to what we might today call matters of social justice; it was also zealous for the spread the gospel to all people. The Clapham Sect started the British and Foreign Bible Society to make the Bible available to those who had little access to the Scriptures. The Church Missionary Society, also a Clapham initiative, was intended to train laymen to be evangelists in foreign nations under British control. Though it took a few years for the CMS to become viable, within a generation it was a vibrant evangelical mission society within the Church of England. The Society for the Suppression of Vice, which included heavy Clapham Sect involvement, was, among other priorities, committed to defending Sabbath observance so that unbelievers would attend worship services and be exposed to the gospel. The Clapham Sect also championed Sunday Schools as a key means of teaching literacy and evangelizing children and, hopefully, their parents. Clapham Spirituality championed both gospel advance and the pursuit of justice.

Contemporary evangelicals could use a healthy dose of Clapham Spirituality. Spiritual formation begins with conversion and is cultivated through personal and corporate spiritual disciplines. Spiritual formation includes faith-based activism that includes both the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19–20) and the Great Commandment to love the Lord and love our neighbors (Matt. 22:36–40). As with the Clapham Sect, our spiritual transformation should inspire us to serve others through acts of mercy and clear gospel proclamation. We should leverage whatever public influence we might have for the sake of pursuing shalom, especially among our most needy and/or defenseless neighbors. We should pour ourselves out in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ here, there and everywhere. Like Wilberforce and his colleagues, we should not be afraid to champion personal holiness and civic virtue, public justice and gospel advance. A revival of Clapham Spirituality offers a fruitful way forward for evangelicals committed to engaging the culture as evangelicals.

But if these positive outcomes stem faith-based activism, what about the consequences of applying faith to international conflict. Philip Jenkins’ new book, The Great and Holy War, contains all sorts of instances that might encourage evangelicals to keep at least part of their spirituality to themselves. The Bishop of London in 1915 said:

kill Germans — do kill them; not for the sake of killing, but to save the world, to kill the good as well as the bad, to kill the young as well as the old, to kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends. . . . As I have said a thousand times, I look upon it as a war for purity, I look upon everyone who died in it as a martyr.(71)

The Bishop of Carlisle added:

But in this war there move and work spirits deeper, stronger, more revolutionary than any or all of these — spirits of good and evil, powers of heaven and principalities of hell, invisible spirits of goodness and wickedness of which men are the instruments and the world the visible prize. . . . This present war is essentially a spiritual war; a war waged on earth but sustained on either side by invisible powers. (72)

Not to be outdone, Protestant clergy from Harry Emerson Fosdick to Billy Sunday signed a statement that urged the U.S. in 1916 to enter the war. Here is how their faith-based argument went:

The just God, who withheld not his own Son from the cross, would not look with favor upon a people who put their fear of pain and death, their dread of suffering and loss, their concern for comfort and ease above the holy claims of righteousness and justice, and freedom and mercy and truth. Much as we mourn the bloodshed [of war], we lament even more than supineness of spirit, that indifference to spiritual values which would let mere physical safety take precedence of loyalty to truth and duty. The memory of all the saints and martyrs cries out against such backsliding of mankind. Sad is our lot if we have forgotten how to die for a holy cause.

. . . the question of all questions for our immediate consideration is this: shall the ancient Christian inheritance of loyalty to great and divine ideals be replaced by considerations of mere expediency?

Perhaps Sarah Palin did not fall too far from the Clapham Sect Tree.

Christ and City, City and Celebrity

Published on by D. G. Hart50 Comments

I followed Dr. Kloosterman’s advice (is this a two-way advice street?) and listened to Tim Keller’s sermon on politics. It strikes me that Keller’s rendering of Render unto Caesar is a way to avoid partisan politics while also keeping the flame of political engagement bright and inflaming. TKNY will not be captive to either liberals or conservatives but he won’t abandon N.T. Wright or Abraham Kuyper.

What I found difficult to fathom was the harmony between Keller’s understanding of the gospel and how it upsets worldly ambitions with his own standing not just in Presbyterian circles but in American Christianity more generally. After all, if he had been a pastor in Kalamazoo (think Kevin DeYoung in Lansing or any pastor in Birmingham, Alabama), he might have achieved a spot in the Gospel Coalition’s roster of speakers and bloggers. But without his apparent success in the most powerful and wealthiest city in the world (or at least the West), would people listen as attentively when TKNY speaks? Yes, celebrity is in view, but celebrity includes all sorts of American associations with numbers, size, success, wealth, and influence.

Think, for instance, of what Keller says about the meaning of the gospel:

Christ wins our salvation through losing, achieves power through weakness and service, and comes to wealth via giving all away. Those who receive his salvation are not the strong and accomplished but those who admit that they are weak and lost. This pattern creates an ‘alternate kingdom’ or ‘city’ (Matt.5:14-16). in which there is a complete reversal of the values of the world with regard to power, recognition, status, and wealth. When we understand that we are saved by sheer grace through Christ, we stop seeking salvation in these things. The reversal of the cross, therefore, liberates us from bondage to the power of material things and worldly status in our lives. The gospel, therefore, creates a people with a whole alternate way of being human. Racial and class superiority, accrual of money and power at the expense of others, yearning for popularity and recognition–all these things are marks of living in the world, and are the opposite of the mindset of the kingdom (Luke 6:20-26).

All of that is true. But it is not true of Keller’s or Redeemer’s reputation, status, or celebrity. In fact, my jaw dropped when I recently saw that Redeemer NYC’s expenses for 2012 were over $21 million. (In contrast, the entire budget for the OPC’s General Assembly this year — which includes foreign and home missions — is about $3.8 million.) New York is an expensive place to live and work. It, like the federal government, sure do take a bite. In Keller’s case it is a considerable part of his visibility and fame. At the same time, using NYC’s power and wealth to enhance ministerial reputation is not exactly the fruit of the gospel that Keller understands and preaches it.

A better city for cultivating a gospel sensibility, one that reverses our world’s expectations for success and wealth, is Istanbul, which Orham Pamuk describes in the following manner:

. . . in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past and civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept they are, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques, and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner — the little arches, fountains and neighbourhood mosques — inflict heartache on all who live among them. . . . [F]or the city’s more sensitive and attuned residents, these ruins are reminders that the present city is so poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to the same heights of wealth, power, and culture. It is no more possible to take pride in these neglected dwellings, in which dirt, dust and mud have blended into their surroundings, than it is to rejoice in the beautiful old wooden houses that as a child I watched burn down one by one. (Istanbul: Memories and the City, 91)

Have These Guys Never Heard of Bandwagon Jumpers?

Published on by D. G. Hart29 Comments

Thanks to John Fea for a reminder of Chris Gerhz’s aid to the anti-hype cause:

I’d happily entertain attempts to persuade me that if Christians want “to have impact and effect on a society [they] must lead from the center of culture and not from the periphery.” I guess I’m wary of this “creeping New York-centrism” for several reasons. Just a couple:

• That — in the case of King’s and Metaxas — it’s so closely tied to a specific political and economic philosophy. In the student newspaper interview quoted above, Thornbury acknowledged the difference between Christianity and ideology, but immediately followed that statement with this: “But also, it is the genius of Christianity that has given inspiration to the animating ideals of what has been the best of the American traditions. What we regard as the key ideas of conservatism are all downstream from Christianity.”

Fine — but those waters have historically fed liberalism, socialism, and other ideologies as well. If politically progressive evangelicals come to New York looking to act as Hunter’s “faithful presence,” will their conservative neighbors seek out alliances with them?

• More importantly, privileging Christian engagement with culture at whatever serves for that blink of history’s eye as the “center of the universe” seems to have little biblical warrant. I suppose you could build such an elitist theology of cultural engagement around Paul’s conversation with the philosophers on the Areopagus or the apostles’ encounters with political and military officials, but I don’t see any indication that early Christians leaders (let alone Jesus himself, who talked about being salt and light while standing on a mountain in an obscure province) viewed such evangelism as having greater “strategic” importance than the spread of the Gospel on the “periphery” of that culture. (Or even that they believed in being “strategic,” since early evangelists were “scattered because of the persecution” that followed Stephen’s stoning or simply “sent out by the Holy Spirit.”)

From jumping on the New Calvinist bandwagon to bowing the knee to the Big Apple, you might think that folks who believe in divine sovereignty and Christ’s Lordship would be more skeptical about claims to greatness.

The Presbyterian Narrative

Published on by D. G. Hart69 Comments

If Ref21 had commboxes with their posts, I could simply make this point (or set of points) in response to Rick Phillips over there. But I guess ACE stands for Anti-Commbox Evangelicals.

At the risk of offending Bill McClay (as if he reads OL) who wrote a very fine piece on the “American narrative,” the invocation of the bad n-word, narrative, and attaching it to Presbyterian may allow me to make my point/s. Here is what McClay finds vexing about “narrative”:

It is one of those somewhat pretentious academic terms that has wormed its way into common speech, like “gender” or “significant other,” bringing hidden freight along with it. Everywhere you look, you find it being used, and by all kinds of people. Elite journalists, who are likely to be products of university life rather than years of shoe-leather reporting, are perhaps the most likely to employ it, as a way of indicating their intellectual sophistication. But conservative populists like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are just as likely to use it too. Why is that so? What does this development mean?

I think the answer is clear. The ever more common use of “narrative” signifies the widespread and growing skepticism about any and all of the general accounts of events that have been, and are being, provided to us. We are living in an era of pervasive genteel disbelief—nothing so robust as relativism, but instead something more like a sustained “whatever”—and the word “narrative” provides a way of talking neutrally about such accounts while distancing ourselves from a consideration of their truth. Narratives are understood to be “constructed,” and it is assumed that their construction involves conscious or unconscious elements of selectivity—acts of suppression, inflation, and substitution, all meant to fashion the sequencing and coloration of events into an instrument that conveys what the narrator wants us to see and believe.

I invoke “narrative” less to be trendy than to introduce to Presbyterians (real Calvinists?) the idea that we all have narratives and that we may want to be more self-conscious about them even without using the word. (Self-aggrandizement alert — I am a historian and I am actually licensed to think about “narrative.”)

Rick Phillips has a Presbyterian narrative that generally derives from New Side Presbyterianism, the ones who supported the First Pretty Good Awakening. That gives him the leverage, apparently, to further identify with New Calvinism over the Old (at least as long as the Old are critical of the new — mind you, criticism isn’t bad because New Siders and New Calvinists criticize Lutherans; where the Old Calvinists go off the rails, apparently, is in siding with Lutherans over New Calvininsts). Phillip’s affection for the New likely cools when it comes to the New School Presbyterians since they weren’t very good Calvinists. The Old School Presbyterians were good Calvinists, but they were also generally New Siders at heart — they liked aspects of the Pretty Good Awakening of the 18th century. When it comes to New Life versus Old Life, I’m betting Phillips will side with the former since Tim Keller represents the former and OL (duh) represents the latter. Plus, ins’t Keller a New Calvinist?

The problem with this narrative is that it does not address the rupture that the First Pretty Good Awakening introduced into Reformed Protestantism. The stress on experimental piety and revivals undermined the formal ministry and routine piety that had characterized many pockets of the Reformed world prior to the first celebrity pastor – George Whitefield.

What is also important to notice is that Reformed Protestants prior to Whitefield had no trouble identifying with Lutherans. Just look at the Harmony of the Confessions (1581). According to Wikipedia (another no no, but it sure is handy):

It grew out of a desire for one common Creed, which was modified into the idea of a selected harmony. In this shape it was proposed by the Protestants of Zurich and Geneva. Jean-François Salvart, minister of the Church of Castres, is now recognized as the chief editor of the work with some assistance from Theodore Beza, Lambert Daneau, Antoine de la Roche Chandieu, and Simon Goulart. It was intended as a defense of Protestant, and particularly Reformed, doctrine against the attacks of Roman Catholics and Lutherans. It does not give the confessions in full, but extracts from them on the chief articles of faith, which are classified under nineteen sections. It anticipates Georg Benedikt Winer’s method, but for harmonistic purposes.

But look at what these Old Calvinists decided to include in the Harmony:

Besides the principal Reformed Confessions (i.e., the Tetrapolitan, Basel and Helvetic, and Belgic Confessions), three Lutheran Confessions are also used, viz., the Augsburg Confession, the Saxon Confession (Confessio Saxonica), and the Württemberg Confession, as well as the Bohemian Confession (1573) and Anglican Confession (1562). The work appeared almost simultaneously with the Lutheran Formula of Concord, and may be called a Reformed Formula of Concord, though differing from the former in being a mere compilation from previous symbols.

So the question is, where did the love go? Why not more love for New Calvinists instead of Lutherans? And more importantly, what does this reveal about the Presbyterian narrative? Doesn’t it show that we have lost touch with a part of our tradition that used to regard Lutherans as more in sympathy with Reformed Protestantism than charismatics? It’s a free country and Phillips can tell whatever narrative he wants. But shouldn’t he admit he’s not telling the whole story? And one of the main factors that have prevented American Presbyterians from telling the whole story is their love affair with the First Pretty Good Awakening — an event that had all sorts of detractors on good confessional and ecclesiological grounds, sometimes who go by the name Old Side (not Old Light a Congregationalist term). (Self-serving alert: see Seeking A Better Country.)

What should also be noticed is that the Old Calvinists who put together the Harmony did not affirm union with Christ to the degree that Phillips does, as if it is the central dogma that holds Reformed Protestantism together. In fact, union is never mentioned in either the Belgic Confession or the Three Forms of Unity. If it does appear it is always in the word communion. So is Phillips prepared to dismiss the Three Forms of Unity (no pun here) in his insistence on union with Christ?

Finally, I have to take issue with Phillips’ misrepresentation of 2k, which in my mind borders on the rhetoric of the BBs:

Moreover, if being a Lutheran-leaning Old Calvinist means that I must embrace a radical two kingdoms position that will keep me from speaking publicly against manifest evils like abortion and homosexual marriage, then once again I am willing to have my Old Calvinist credentials held in derision.

I would prefer that Phillips extend the same generosity to 2k that he does to New Calvinism. But if he doesn’t want to, he should know that 2kers all affirm the confessions and catechisms of the Reformed churches which teach that murder and homosexual marriage are sinful. But even Lutherans know that carrying a baby to birth or marrying a person of the opposite sex is not going to merit God’s favor. And that is the point of 2k — for the guhzillionth time — that the good works performed in obedience to the law (state or ecclesiastical) won’t save. Can we get some credit here?

Postscript: Here’s is how a charismatic outsider sees it:

It is the revivalist style of at least some members of the New Calvinism punctuated by constant references to Jonathan Edwards and the rise of charismatic Calvinism that has many Old School Presbyterians concerned. Piper side-stepped the main issue between the two camps: from an Old-School perspective the New Calvinism smacks of the evangelical revivalism of a D. L. Moody, or, more to the point, the baseball-player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday (insert Mark Driscoll reference here). Sunday once called the novelist Sinclair Lewis “Satan’s cohort” in response to Lewis’s 1927 satirical novel Elmer Gantry, whose main character—a hypocritical evangelist—was modeled on Sunday’s flamboyant style.

That older coalition of Congregationalists, Baptists, and New School Presbyterians combined dispensationalism, celebrity revivalism, and fundamentalism—the very traits that Old School Presbyterians disliked then and now. It is not without some irony that Piper acknowledged the important role of Westminster Seminary while not even mentioning that it was the epicenter of Old School Presbyterianism with its anti-revivalist and cessationist stance (at the end of his lecture Piper got a laugh when he said, “you don’t even want to know my eschatology.” Indeed!). . . . All of this is to say that the New Calvinism looks a lot like the old New School Presbyterianism with a Baptist and charismatic flair to it.

Does this make me an outsider? Or can outsiders pick up better what’s going on than insiders?

Postpostscript: Look mom, no inflammation:

In speaking of Old Calvinism, I admit that I am using the expression loosely for the community of Calvinists generally connected with Old School Presbyterianism and their conservative Reformed Baptist counterparts. One thinks of Martyn Lloyd-Jones and the Banner of Truth, and James Montgomery Boice and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (the host organization of this blog). They are united by a commitment to Five-Point Calvinism, ordinary means of grace ministry, the regulative principle of worship, and a traditional elder-rule approach to church polity.

An Easy Way to tell a New Calvinist from an Old Calvinist — Say Lutheranism!

Published on by D. G. Hart126 Comments

This is inspired by R. Phillips’ post on why Old Calvinists should be encouraged by, even rejoice over, New Calvinism. The word inspired is key because inspiration does not come easily to Old Calvinists unless we are talking the doctrine of Scripture. Temperamentally, we tend to be phlegmatic souls who see almost nothing new under the sun (see below). But New Calvinists see inspiration and enthusiasm as part and parcel of genuine faith. Such inspiration also cuts down on cognitive powers — think Gilbert Tennent.

The lone exception to the New Calvinist w-w is Lutheranism. That is where New Calvinists find their critical skills and discern differences. Does cessationism matter? Not so much. But talk too much about the Lord’s Supper or baptism and you feel the wind going out of New Calvinist hedonism.

I wonder if one reason for such skepticism about Lutheranism is that confessional Lutherans put the stiff upper lip in the theology of suffering. Lutherans know the hype and pizzazz of the theology of glory and stay away from it. New Calvinists, in contrast, seem to be suckers for energy, the triumphalism, the earnestness of the religious conference and the celebrity speaker.

For that reason, I propose a thought experiment. What if we took Phillips’ words regarding New Calvinists and applied them to Lutherans? Would the world-wide interweb go kablooie?

1. Old Calvinism should avoid being overly critical but should rejoice in the New Lutheranism.

2. Old Calvinism should not be threatened by or feel pressure to conform to the New Lutheranism.

3. Old Calvinism should humbly listen to the New Lutheranism, benefiting from its insights and critiques.

4. Old Calvinism should zealously seek to serve rather than to undermine the New Lutheranism.

If Phillips could write about Lutheranism the way he does about New Calvinism, I might be persuaded. Otherwise, I suspect that Phillips was a New Calvinist before New Calvinists starting selling t-shirts.

Postscript: I have taken this personality test that has been going around on the Internet and I further wonder if New Calvinists would score differently from an Old Calvinist, if maybe the differences are primarily temperamental. Here are (all about) my results:

MIDDLING

Your habits and perspectives most resemble those of middle-class Americans. Members of this group tend to be gentle and engaging parents, and if they’re native English speakers they probably use some regional idioms and inflections. Your people are mostly college-educated, and you’re about equally likely to beg children not to shout “so loudly” as you are to ask them to “read slow” during story time. You’re probably a decent judge of others’ emotions, and either a non-evangelical Christian, an atheist, or an agnostic. A typical member of this group breastfeeds for three months or less, drinks diet soda, and visits the dentist regularly. If you’re a member of this group, there’s a good chance that you roll with the flow of technological progress and hate heavy metal music.

The New Calvinism is not the Old Calvinism

Published on by D. G. Hart251 Comments

We can be sure of that thanks to Jared Oliphint:

Twelve Thirteen features of the New Calvinism:

1.The New Calvinism, in its allegiance to the inerrancy of the Bible, embraces the biblical truths behind the five points (TULIP), while having an aversion to using the acronym or any other systematic packaging, along with a sometimes qualified embrace of limited atonement. The focus is on Calvinistic soteriology but not to the exclusion or the appreciation of the broader scope of Calvin’s vision.

1. The Old Calvinism begins with the doctrine of Scripture summarized in confessions like the Westminster Confession of Faith and is willing to use TULIP as a handle for understanding Calvinist soteriology. Old Calvinism also relies on systematic thought.

2. The New Calvinism embraces the sovereignty of God in salvation, and in all the affairs of life in history, including evil and suffering.

2. The Old Calvinism affirms divine sovereignty in everything, even in Christ’s death on the cross for the elect.

3. The New Calvinism has a strong complementarian flavor as opposed to egalitarian, with an emphasis on the flourishing of men and women in relationships where men embrace a call to robust, humble, Christ-like servant leadership.

3. The Old Calvinism follows biblical teaching on male ordination and refuses to describe human life this side of glory as flourishing.

4. The New Calvinism leans toward being culture-affirming rather than culture-denying, while holding fast to some very culturally alien positions, like positions on same-sex practice and abortion.

4. The Old Calvinism understands salvation to be distinct from culture, hence Old Calvinists’ belief that deceased saints are saved even though they no longer inhabit a culture.

5. The New Calvinism embraces the essential place of the local church. It is led mainly by pastors, has a vibrant church-planting bent, produces widely-sung worship music, and exalts the preached word as central to the work of God locally and globally.

5. The Old Calvinism does not exist apart from congregations where the marks of the church are evident and which are part of regional, national, and ecumenical assemblies.

6. The New Calvinism is aggressively mission-driven, including missional impact on social evils, evangelistic impact on personal networks, and missionary impact on unreached peoples of the world.

6. The Old Calvinism actually calls and supports home and foreign missionaries through assemblies of presbyters that oversee such ministry.

7. The New Calvinism is inter-denominational with a strong (some would say oxymoronic) Baptistic element.

7. The Old Calvinism is Reformed Protestant and seeks fraternal relations with communions of like faith and practice.

8. The New Calvinism includes charismatics and non-charismatics.

8. The Old Calvinism excludes charismatics because Old Calvinists believe in the sufficiency of Scripture.

9. The New Calvinism puts a priority on pietism or piety in the Puritan vein, with an emphasis on the essential role of affections in Christian living, while esteeming the life of the mind and being very productive in it, and embracing the value of serious scholarship. Jonathan Edwards would be invoked as a model of this combination of the affections and the life of the mind more often than John Calvin, whether that’s fair to Calvin or not.

9. The Old Calvinism does not drop names and includes Reformed Protestants who are temperamentally restrained (read Scots, Dutch, Germans, Swiss).

10. The New Calvinism is vibrantly engaged in publishing books and even more remarkably in the world of the internet, with hundreds of energetic bloggers and social media activists, with Twitter as the increasingly default way of signaling things new and old that should be noticed and read.

10. The Old Calvinism has more books than New Calvinism, and many of them are ones that New Calvinists need to tell the difference between Calvinism and other kinds of Protestantism.

11. The New Calvinism is international in scope, multi-ethnic in expression, culturally diverse. There is no single geographic, racial, cultural governing center. There are no officers, no organization, nor any loose affiliation that would encompass the whole. I would dare say that there are outcroppings of this movement that nobody (including me) in this room has ever heard of.

11. The Old Calvinism was and still is international in ways that the New Calvinists would not understand. Old Calvinists also appreciate in ways that New Calvinists don’t how European and Western Calvinism is. This means that Old Calvinists speak English without feeling guilty.

12. The New Calvinism is robustly gospel-centered, cross-centered, with dozens of books rolling off the presses, coming at the gospel from every conceivable angle, and applying it to all areas of life with a commitment to seeing the historic doctrine of justification, finding its fruit in sanctification personally and communally.

12. The Old Calvinism teaches that Christ died on the cross only for the elect and Old Calvinists are happy to let the Reformed creeds and confessions define the way that Reformed pastors teach and apply the atonement (among other doctrines taught and professed by the Reformed churches).

13. The New Calvinism uses words like robust, vibrant, embrace and lots of adverbs.

13. Old Calvinists don’t.

Golden Oldie (part two)

Published on by D. G. Hart11 Comments

An excerpt from “‘Reformed’ or ‘Revived’: Why Words Matter”, Modern Reformation (July/August 1998):

Perhaps a better way of showing these differences is to contrast the words “revive” and “reform.” These words connote the same difference already noted between Tennent and the Second Helvetic Confession. The word, “revive,” suggests an effort to recover genuine spiritual existence and vitality in the lives of believers, and to introduce non-believers to the eternal life that comes through Christ. A revival cuts through the forms and “vain repetitions” of established and hypocritical religion and goes to the heart to cause and nurture genuine conversion and real repentance. Not only does revivalism thrive on the desire for authentic religion but its aim is individualistic. To be sure, the more people revived, the better the church may be. But revival stresses individual conversion and personal morality.

The word, “reform,” however, suggests a restructuring of a specific order. A reform’s purpose is to take an existing organization or body and making it conform to a correct or true standard and norm. So while revivals aim at generating or deepening spiritual life in individuals, reformations strive to impart a more faithful shape to the visible church in its corporate life, in doctrine, worship, and government. For example, individuals sitting through the Mass may be Reformed in their understanding of the Lord’s Supper, but the liturgy presently violating their conscience hardly is.

Though these meanings of “revive” and “reform” don’t come from Webster’s dictionary, they are implicit in the arguments used to defend both revivalism and reformation. If a revival occurs, its defenders argue that spiritual life has been imparted, in other words, that the spirit of God is at work. This was not only true in the eighteenth century but is still so today. Tennent, for instance, not only thought that ministers who supported Whitefield’s revivals were regenerate — after all, he assumed that Whitefield’s opponents were dangerous because unconverted. But Tennent also presumed that the revivals of his day were a work of God. More recently, Iain Murray has followed a similar logic. Though he has not gone so far as Tennent in questioning the regeneration of individual ministers, Murray is convinced that the First Great Awakening was a work of God. Though he believes revivals are occasions where God blesses the ordinary means of grace in an extraordinary way, Murray is not reluctant in concluding that the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century was the result of the work of the Spirit. Murray’s conclusion should not be surprising. Since Calvinists believe that only God can give spiritual life to the unregenerate, a revival ipso facto has to be a work of God. But that begs the epistemological question of whether we can know for sure where and when God’s Spirit is active.

The interpretive stakes are not quite so high, however, when it comes to telling whether reformation has taken place. The marks of the church, according to the Reformers, are one very important way to discern where the gospel is. Unlike revivalism which encourages the evaluation of things that are invisible, namely, the human soul, the Reformation promoted the search for phenomena that can be observed by the human senses. In the words of the Belgic Confession, Article 29, “The marks by which the true church is known are these: if the pure doctrine of the gospel is preached therein; if she maintains the pure administration of the sacraments as instituted by Christ; if church discipline is exercised in punishing of sin; in short, if all things are managed according to the pure Word of God.” In other words, to look for Reformation is to evaluate visible or external forms. But to look for revival is to make judgments about things invisible and internal.

So the “reformed” and the “revived” make two different kinds of determination when they look for Reformation and revival. Proponents of revival make claims that should be reserved for God, that is, whether a soul has truly come to new life in Christ. To be sure, the “revived” look for evidence in visible and external things such as profession and deed. But to say that a revival occurred is to determine that God did actually regenerate a remarkable number of souls. The Parable of the Sower suggests the need for less certainty in making such a determination. The “reformed,” however, do not pretend to look into the state of souls or make judgments about God’s intervention into human history. Yes, they do use the language of “true” and “false” churches, which are forms of evaluation that connote eternal significance. Still, they make no claims about the spiritual state of individuals. And in the context of sixteenth-century Europe one did not need to be a believer to spot a Reformed church. A professing Roman Catholic would see an extraordinarily different liturgy in a Protestant church and know that this congregation had been “reformed.” The difference, of course, would be that the Protestant would call such visible changes “true,” while the Catholic believer would regard them as “false.”

The lesson taught by the differences implicit in the words, “reformed” and “revived,” is not simply that we should be careful about claiming to know things we can’t. It is also that our assessment of Christian expressions and practice will always be limited to forms. We cannot see into the human heart and therefore must judge whether the words and deeds of an individual believer’s life are credible, and whether the liturgy, teaching, and government of a congregation are reformed according to the Word. In other words, we are limited to the world of appearances and our conclusions should always reflect a caution befitting the limits of our knowledge. For this reason, professing believers who cherish the Reformed Faith might want to delete the words, “revival,” “revived,” and “revive,” from their vocabulary. If you are Reformed you should know that detecting the pulse of spiritual life in a convert or the hand of God in human history is work that only God, who surpasses human understanding, can do.

Being Inflamed Is So Yesterday

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

From a review of Addie Zierman’s When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over:

. . . the title of Addie Zierman’s memoir is evocative: When We Were on Fire. A good title will tell you a lot about a book, and indeed there is a lot to learn from this one. We know, for example, that the titular “we” are no longer “on fire,” that it happened in the past. We know this is about more than just one person, although whether the “we” is a constant voice or a changing one remains to be seen.

Most telling is that last bit, “on fire,” a resonant phrase for anyone even passingly familiar with the evangelical subculture of the 1990s. “Fire” was the favored metaphor for a deep and burning passion for God. Consuming. Refining. To be “on fire for God” was the highest compliment, the deepest mystery, the truest sign that you were wholly his.

Experimental Lutheranism

Published on by D. G. Hart60 Comments

The comparisons between Calvinism and Lutheranism continue. One of the most recent comes from James Rogers, who teaches political science at Texas A&M. Rogers concedes that the average evangelical Protestant has a harder time with Lutheranism than Calvinism for a number of reasons.

First, Lutherans are ethnic (psst, so are Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Scottish Presbyterians, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Huguenots, and English Puritans):

Many Lutheran churches began as “ethnic” churches, not even using English in worship. And memories of forced union with Reformed churches in Germany in the early nineteenth century (which prompted much Lutheran immigration to the U.S) also induced isolation from broader American Evangelical culture.

Then we have the problem that Lutherans don’t teach as well as Calvinists do. For starters, Luther didn’t write a systematic theology and Calvin did. But the Lutheran creeds are not as accessible as Reformed:

I think that most modern American Evangelical readers, attempting to read Lutheran confessional documents by himself or herself, will usually get lost more quickly, and give up sooner, than when reading the analogous Calvinist confessional texts.

But what about Luther’s Small Catechism? Luther’s Small Catechism present the opposite problem to our Evangelical seeker, it doesn’t provide enough perspective to engage him. Luther wrote the Small Catechism as the most basic introduction to the faith in an age of widespread ignorance among layfolk. It starts simply enough with the ten commands, “The First Commandment. ‘Thou shalt have no other gods.’ ‘What does this mean?’ ‘Answer. We should fear, love, and trust God above all thing.’”

While the Small Catechism is well suited for the purpose for which it was written, it is not well suited to our modal Evangelical seeker, who already has a passing knowledge of the Scriptures and is looking for deeper answers. While the Augsburg starts too far down the stream for our Evangelical autodidact, the Small Catechism, as it were, starts too early to engage the same person.

In contrast, the Shorter Catechism is highly memorable and even inspiring.

And then Lutheranism suffers from a sacramental bridge too far:

Lutherans believe that God works through the sacrament with the Word, and so God actually confers grace in and through baptism and the Supper. For Lutherans, it is God who works through these means, and not man. Therefore Christians really receive God’s forgiveness through Christ when we are united with Christ in baptism, and receive Jesus’ true body and the blood poured out for our forgiveness in the bread and wine that we receive.

While this may seem to be theological nit-picking, the differences create important differences in the spiritual and ecclesiastical experience of the average layfolk in the two traditions.

Philip Cary wrote several papers a few years back that helpfully contrast the general Evangelical/Protestant understanding of “sola fide” with the role of the sacraments in Luther’s understanding of “sola fide.” Cary characterizes the standard Protestant view of “sola fide” with this syllogism:

Major Premise: Whoever believes in Christ is saved.
Minor Premise: I believe in Christ.
Conclusion: I am saved.

This syllogism implies what Cary calls this the requirement of “reflective faith.”

The hour I first believed, the moment when I can first say “I truly believe in Christ” is the moment of my salvation, of my conversion and turning from death to life. What matters is that moment of conversion, not the sacrament of baptism, because everything depends on my being able to say “I believe.” For only if I know that I truly believe can I confidently conclude: I am saved. . . .

In contrast, Luther’s “sola fide” for Cary is grounded not in the believer’s internal act of will, but in the work of Christ applied to “me” in baptism. Cary characterizes Luther’s syllogism this way:

Major premise: Christ told me, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
Minor premise: Christ never lies but only tells the truth.
Conclusion: I am baptized (i.e., I have new life in Christ).

Cary observes that the “difference is subtle but makes a huge logical difference in the outcome.” First, Christ’s promise is spoken to me in baptism. It is “Christ who speaks the baptismal formula” through the mouth of the pastor (or the lay baptizer in the case of emergency). These words are spoken to “me in particular.”

I see Rogers/Cary’s point, sort of. But what exactly does Christ’s promise in baptism have to do with sola fide? Luther did believe, did he not, that faith was the instrument by which we receive Christ’s righteousness or the way we trust the promises of God. It is one thing for Christ to speak. It is another for that speaking to be true of me. One is the doctrine of Christ. The other is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (who regenerates for saving faith). So how Cary is addressing the significance of sola fide except in a couple of removed steps of theological reasoning, I don’t know.

But the payoff for Rogers, the way that evangelicals might find Lutheranism more appealing, is the way that experimental Calvinists have been attracting Protestants for over four centuries — that is, by really, really, really meaning it. Rogers is on to this when he concludes:

If Lutherans really believe what their theology says about Word and Sacrament, then I think they would be equally passionate about engaging other Christians: When Christians understand what Christ offers in the sacraments, that understanding, and what is actually received, changes their lives because they come into direct contact with the death and new life of Jesus.

That’s all you need to appeal to the young restless. Tell then that ideas (read doctrines) have consequences and that believing those ideas will change your life. Voila! You’re inflamed.

What Does Reformed Modify?

Published on by D. G. Hart76 Comments

Hint: the body of Christ we call church.

Kevin DeYoung defends a wide berth for Reformed Protestantism and quotes Herman Bavinck for support:

In particular, Bavinck claims, “From the outset Reformed theology in North America displayed a variety of diverse forms.” He then goes on to mention the arrivals of the Episcopal Church (1607), the Dutch Reformed (1609), the Congregationalists (1620), the Quakers (1680), the Baptists (1639), the Methodists (1735 with Wesley and 1738 with Whitefield), and finally the German churches. “Almost all of these churches and currents in these churches,” Bavinck observes, “were of Calvinistic origin. Of all religious movements in America, Calvinism has been the most vigorous. It is not limited to one church or other, but—in a variety of modifications—constitutes the animating element in Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and German Reformed churches, and so forth” (1.201). In other words, not only is Bavinck comfortable using Calvinism has a synonym for Reformed theology (in this instance at least), he also has no problem affirming that Calvinism was not limited to one tradition alone but constituted the “animating element” in a variety of churches. Calvinism, as opposed to Lutheranism, flourished in colonial America as the typical orthodox, Reformational, sola scriptura-sola fide alternative to the various forms of comprised Arminianism and heterodox Socinianism.

The problem with this historically speaking, for starters, is that Lutheranism did precede Calvinism and so you could conceivably attribute all the variety of Calvinism to Lutheranism as the original Protestantism. Granted, the lines of continuity between Reformed Protestantism and the North American colonial churches were stronger than with Lutheranism. But that is much more a function of British Protestantism and what happened to Calvinism (or what didn’t) within the Church of England, the Union of England and Scotland, and the Puritans. British Protestantism turned Calvinism into a proverbial hot house of Calvinisms. This was not the case among the Dutch Calvinists who planted Reformed churches in North America. The colony of New Netherlands actually excluded Quakers and Lutherans, and enjoyed much greater uniformity than the Old World Dutch were capable of enforcing. Remember, the Netherlands, despite Dort, welcomed Descartes, Spinoza, and Anabaptists.

But aside from the history, the question is one of arbitrariness. If John MacArthur can exclude charismatics from being Reformed even though he doesn’t belong to a Reformed church, or if The Gospel Coalition can set up a tent broad enough to include disciplined Southern Baptists and wobbly PCA ministers, Calvinism, like evangelicalism, becomes simply what pleases the excluder/includer. Add to that the reality that conservative Presbyterian and Reformed communions invested great energy and resources to distinguishing themselves from communions, like DeYoung’s, those that are Reformed primarily in name rather than substance, and you begin to see why some Reformed Protestants are eager to give coherence to their wing of Western Christianity. I don’t mean that as a cheap shot. But so far, folks like MacArthur and the Gospel Allies have yet to acknowledge the hard work done by Reformed Christians to defend and maintain the ministry of word and sacrament within disciplined (read Reformed) churches. We had thought the task of reforming the church was arduous and long, but now you hold a conference or set up a blog and — voila — it’s Calvinism.

Dictionaries revise definitions all the time. But users of words and grammarians don’t approve of the revisions. The question comes down to whose pay grade it is to establish Calvinism’s meaning. Celebrity pastors? Parachurch agencies? Or church councils? I’m pretty sure I know how Calvin, Bucer, Knox, and Ursinus would vote. Do they carry as much clout as John Piper? As Bud Dickman is wont to say, “well. . .”