Tag: Calvinism

Who Will Review in that Great Day?

Published on by D. G. Hart26 Comments

Our Virtuous Commonwealth of Pennsylvania correspondent sends us news of a book, From Heaven He Came and Sought Her, on limited definite atonement. It features chapters by:

Raymond A. Blacketer, Henri A. G. Blocher, Amar Djaballah, Sinclair Ferguson, Lee Gatiss, David Gibson, Jonathan Gibson, Matthew S. Harmon, Michael A. G. Haykin, Paul Helm, David S. Hogg, Robert Letham, Donald Macleod, J. Alec Motyer, cJohn Piper, Thomas R. Schreiner, Daniel Strange, Carl R. Trueman, Stephen J. Wellum, Garry J. Williams, and Paul R. Williamson.

It comes with endorsements from:

J. I. Packer, D. A. Carson, Michael Horton, David Wells, John Frame, Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Ligon Duncan, and Kelly M. Kapic.

So who is left who teaches theology or historical theology to review this book? And will those people feel all that kindly to a book whose editors overlooked them?

Sometimes publishers go overboard with endorsements and take out of circulation people who should be reviewing the book. Of course, endorsements may sell more books than reviews. But I doubt it.

Now Lutherans Are Tightening My Jaws

Published on by D. G. Hart298 Comments

Triumphalism is always bad but I never knew it was possible from Lutherans who generally keep the rest of us Christians honest with a tenacious theology of the cross. Anthony Sacramone picks up on Gene Veith’s post to argue for Lutheranism’s superiority to Reformed Protestantism. Since Anthony spent time at Redeemer NYC, he may not understand the difference between Reformed Protestantism and Calvinism, which explains his account of Reformed Calvinist strengths:

Calvinism, like other evangelical movements, offers new beginnings. Under powerful preaching, even the baptized come to believe they are starting a new life in Christ. Before they may have experienced, or been subjected to, dead religion with its rituals and liturgies, but now they have living faith — a personal relationship with the Risen Christ. They often mark their lives by the day they came to faith (which had nothing to do with water baptism) and how nothing was the same after that. We love the idea of the do-over. The Lutheran teaching of continual repentance does not have the same psychological effect (nor is it intended to).

Calvinism also offers some of the more potent expository preaching you will hear. Where are the Lutheran Spurgeons or Martyn Lloyd-Jones? Or, for that matter, Tim Kellers? The Law-Gospel paradigm in the pulpit does not lend itself easily to the kind of dynamism, for lack of a better word, often found in Reformed pulpits — preaching that often offers specific direction to the person in the pew, over and above repentance. Lutherans can roll their eyes at such preaching, but it is precious in the life of Reformed Christians, as far as sustaining their life of faith goes.

There is also the call to young men to (a) discipline themselves and (b) engage the culture. This can be very invigorating to young Christians. 2K theology reads too often like defeat in the public square — “Christ is for church on Sundays; at your humdrum job, just keep your head down, do your duty, be obedient, pay your bills, and wait until the Eschaton.” And double predestination, as horrifying as it is, at least makes a kind of logical sense and also has a role to play in motivating the baby believer: “God chooses whom to adopt. And since everyone born deserves to go to hell because of sin, we should be grateful he chooses to save anyone at all.” That’s actually comforting — if you’re convinced you’re one of the Elect. Then you can rest in the fact that you can never fall away, that your faith will never ultimately fail, that God has plucked you out of the garbage bin that is Gehenna* — and for a purpose: not only to grant you eternal life but also to glorify Him.

But how can I know I’m elect? Calvinists have no problem with the subjective element in faith. Romans 8: 16: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Read 2 Peter — it talks of believers making their calling and election sure. (It also talks of making “every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.” Try and preach that in a confessional Lutheran church and you’ll be slammed for confusing law and Gospel.) The Lutheran doctrine of predestination makes little sense to most non-Lutherans: a monergism that also says you can lose your justification. Doesn’t the Scripture say that God will glorify all who are justified? Etc. Etc. That subjective element in Calvinism is then balanced by weighty tomes of systematic theology to exercise your noggin.

Odd, but almost none of this is Calvin. It may be Puritan and experimental Calvinist, or Tim Keller and New Life Presbyterian. But it is not the conviction or practice of the original Reformed churches.

Sacramone goes on to explain why folks burn out on Reformed Protestantism Calvinism and turn (like all about him) to Lutheranism:

1. They come to believe that limited atonement is simply not biblical. It may be the logical consequence of double predestination, but if the Faith were reasonable in that sense, where do you begin and end? What is “reasonable” about the Incarnation or the Cross?

2. The lack of ecumenicity (or even simple courtesy). Lutherans are often slammed for teaching closed communion, but it does not deny the name “Christian” to Arminians, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, or, for that matter, the Reformed. Many Reformed do not believe Catholics and Orthodox are Christians, because these communions embrace a false gospel. But that means the overwhelming majority of all Christians who have ever lived got it so wrong that they are almost certainly lost. Which leaves an Elect pool of about 11 people, relatively speaking. Then what constituted the Bride of Christ, the Body of Christ, for all those centuries before Calvin, Zwingli, Beza, Vermigli, et al.? For a communion that prizes logic, this doesn’t make a helluva lot of sense.

3. Endless debates and factions — including the paedo-/credo-baptism controversy. Now, Lutherans have seen their splits, too. Pietist vs. confessionalist. Mainline (ELCA) vs. “conservative” (LCMS, WELS, and others). But when you start debating whether God hated the reprobate before the Fall or only after the Fall, it’s time to go do something else with your life.

4. The sacraments, as they’ve been understood, again, by the overwhelming majority of all Christians throughout time: baptismal regeneration and the real bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist**. (I would add auricular confession to an ordained minister/priest and absolution.) Calvinism has this gaping hole in its center — a hole that the Federal Vision folk have tried to address by “thickening” their concept of covenant baptism and the Real Presence, which has raised the ire of those who believe FV types have rejected key points of the historic Reformed confessions. (Google all of R. Scott Clark’s blog posts contra Doug Wilson, and also the Peter Leithart heresy trial.)

Well, if Jesus died for everyone, how about Esau, the Cannanites, the Perizites, the Hittites, and all the other tribes Joshua conquered?

Complaining about whether one Christian regards another as a genuine believer is not an index to ecumenicity, though it is common for experimental Calvinists to assess someone else’s profession as illegitimate (think Gilbert Tennent). Ecumenicity has to do with churches (even if the word has “city” in it and makes Redeemerites go knock kneed). For one example of Lutheran ecumenicity I suggest Sacramone check here.

The point about factionalism is a point that others who have come through Redeemer NYC have also made, though some of those wound up in the place where “real” unity exists, fellowship with the Bishop of Rome. But does Sacramone actually think Reformed Protestants have split over infra supralapsarian debates? If he meant to be funny, then hilarity it up.

And one more time he needs to read the Belgic Confession, Heidelberg, the Westminster Confession and Catechisms on the sacraments and get back to us on gaping holes.

The consolation is that this may not be the reflection of a real Lutheran since it exudes so much triumphalism. Makes me think Sacramone has not gotten Keller out of his system.

Rome's Advantage over Amsterdam

Published on by D. G. Hart69 Comments

As much as Jason and the Callers may think of their crossing the Tiber as the fix to Protestantism’s anarchy, another set of converts finds Rome congenial precisely because it has more resources for transforming culture. This is where the idea that neo-Calvinism is making the world safe for Roman Catholicism has some plausibility. After all, Calvinism only fixes so much. It may get you to 1550 Geneva or 1618 Amsterdam. But what about the problems that Protestantism introduced to Europe by upending Christendom in the West. If you give someone a taste for a Christian society, can they ever be satisfied with the kind of disquiet that Protestantism introduced?

That question explains why Hilaire Belloc thought Protestantism was a heresy and Rome the answer to the West’s problems:

1. It was not a particular movement but a general one, i.e., it did not propound a particular heresy which could be debated and exploded, condemned by the authority of the Church, as had hitherto been every other heresy or heretical movement. Nor did it, after the various heretical propositions had been condemned, set up (as had Mohammedanism or the Albigensian movement) a separate religion over against the old orthodoxy. Rather did it create a certain separate which we still call “Protestantism.” It produced indeed a crop of heresies, but not one heresy_and its characteristic was that all its heresies attained and prolonged a common savour: that which we call “Protestantism” today.

2. Though the immediate fruits of the Reformation decayed, as had those of many other heresies in the past, yet the disruption it had produced remained and the main principle_reaction against a united spiritual authority_so continued in vigour as both to break up our European civilization in the West and to launch at last a general doubt, spreading more and more widely. None of the older heresies did that, for they were each definite. Each had proposed to supplant or to rival the existing Catholic Church; but the Reformation movement proposed rather to dissolve the Catholic Church_and we know what measure success has been attained by that effort! . . .

But let it be noted that this breakdown of the older anti-Catholic thing, the Protestant culture, shows no sign of being followed by an hegemony of the Catholic culture. There is no sign as yet of a reaction towards the domination of Catholic ideas_the full restoration of the Faith by which Europe and all our civilization can alone be saved.

It nearly always happens that when you get rid of one evil you find yourself faced with another hitherto unsuspected; and so it is now with the breakdown of the Protestant hegemony. We are entering a new phase, “The Modern Phase,” as I have called it, in which very different problems face the Eternal Church and a very different enemy will challenge her existence and the salvation of the world which depends upon her.

R.J. Snell, a recent convert, echoes Belloc on Rome’s cultural potentialities while sounding very different from Jason and the Callers on dogma and papal infallibility:

. . . Lumen Fidei is making no claim of empty pietism but rather an acutely prescient observation when stating that “once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim,” for the light of faith provides an illuminating source of “every aspect of human existence,” and thus is integral and non-reductive in its knowledge. Such a light, the encyclical continues, given our sinful state, “cannot come from ourselves but … must come from God.” Further, this light does not merely sweep us out of our troubles and into some serene realm of transcendence, but transforms us by God’s love, giving us “fresh vision, new eyes to see”—faith allows us, again, and also here and now, to begin the recovery of thought, memory, imagination, and freedom.

The faith is about far more than social recovery and advance, for in the end faith gives us an encounter and union with the living God, but faith never provides less than the possibility of social recovery. While God gives us Himself, and this is ultimate, it was not below Christ to heal the lame, teach the unknowing, and work as a carpenter; just as Christ engages us in our natural and temporal concerns, so too does faith, this Humanism of the Cross, bring new vision and light to the spiritual impoverishment surrounding us. . . .

The Church exists not for itself but for others. We exist for evangelization, for the health and welfare of souls. But persons are not souls only, they are, in the words of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, a unity of soul and body so profound that “neither the spiritualism that despises the body not the materials that considers the spirit a mere manifestation of the material do justice … to the unity of the human being.” As such, we exist for others as complete and integral persons—for an integral humanism.

But just as 2kers question neo-Calvinists on cultural transformation, so they ask Rome’s apologists whether the point of Christ’s death was to save Western Civilization. Of course, apologists might think that question too blunt, and that the relationship between Christ and culture requires nuance. It may, but the kind of sensibility that led Christ to say that his kingdom was not of this world or Paul to say that the unseen things are really the permanent things, not philosophy or the arts, were also responsible for figures like Thomas Aquinas writing that:

Some truths about God exceed all the ability of the human reason. Such is the truth that God is trinune. But there are some truths which the natural reason also is able to reach. Such are that God exists, that He is one, and the like.

In other words, not everyone is cut out for a liberal arts education with a major in one of the humanities and you don’t need a B.A. to be a Christian to trust the triune God. Plumbers and farmers understand more truth, if they trust Christ, than the smartest of philosophers. That is, at least, one way of reading Aquinas on faith and reason.

This gap between Christ and culture is also behind the fourth stanza of Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress”:

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.

In the world of otherworldly Christianity, a believer goes straight to the head of the class, and gets to by-pass Philosophy 101 and Intro to the Classics, simply by faith (or baptism as Rome understands it).

And yet, neo-Calvinists, who have the memo on the eternal and the temporal, have yet to reflect on it. That may owe to Abraham Kuyper’s own refusal to unhitch Christ and culture and his concomitant demand for integralism:

Hence, as a central phenomenon in the development of humanity, Calvinism is not only entitled to an honorable position by the side of Paganistic, Islamistic and Romanistic forms, since like these it represents a peculiar principle dominating the whole of life, but it also meets every required condition for the advancement of human development to a higher stage. And yet this would remain a bare possibility without any corresponding reality, if history did not testify that Calvinism has actually caused the stream of human life to flow in another channel, and has ennobled the social life of the nations. . .

. . . only by Calvinism the psalm of liberty found its way from the troubled conscience to the lips; that Calvinism has captured and guaranteed to us our constitutional civil rights; and that simultaneously with this there went out from Western Europe that mighty movement which promoted the revival of science and art, opened new avenues to commerce and trade, beautified domestic and social life, exalted the middle classes to positions of honor, caused philanthropy to abound, and more than all this, elevated, purified, and ennobled moral life by puritanic seriousness ; and then judge for yourselves whether it will do to banish any longer this God-given Calvinism to the archives of history, and whether it is so much of a dream to conceive that Calvinism has yet a blessing to bring and a bright hope to unveil for the future. (Lectures on Calvinism, 38-40)

At the end of the nineteenth century, Calvinism’s fortunes may have looked a lot brighter than Rome’s did. The Roman Church was under a virtual lock down from the Vatican amid encyclicals against Americanism and Modernism and church dogma about papal supremacy and infallibility. But that is no longer the case. Not only can Rome boast five U.S. Supreme Court justices, but the texts of Western civilization chalk up more Roman Catholic believers than Protestant saints (and they ARE saints). In another hundred years, the tables may turn again. But Protestantism will never be able to claim that it shaped the West as much as an older version of Western Christianity did.

So if Protestants want to compete in the Christian olympics, perhaps they should forget the events of Great Books and Christian political theology and put their talent and resources into soteriology, worship, and church government. Even if they don’t bring home the gold, they can take comfort from knowing the streets of paradise are paved with it.

Can Arminians Enjoy "The Wire"?

Published on by D. G. Hart42 Comments

Thanks to the video going round on the world-wide interweb, I’ve been thinking about aspects of Calvinism that had been safely buried in old files from seminary. This is the relationship between Arminianism and Calvinism and the old objections to Reformed Protestant teachings on election, the atonement, and divine wrath. The video above by Jerry Walls is quite clear in presenting an argument that Calvinists don’t believe God is love. The implication is that Arminianism is superior (and true) because it teaches that God is love. Arminians really take John 3:16 seriously.

Here’s an instance of the complaint against Calvinism from Roger Olson:

Arminian: “You Calvinists don’t really believe in God’s love.”

Calvinist: “Oh, but we do. You’re so wrong! The Bible is clear about God being love.”

Arminian: “But you don’t believe God loves all people, so how can you believe, as the Bible says, that God is love?”

Calvinist: “God loves all people in some ways but only some people in all ways.”

Arminian: “Uh, you seemed to be in a trance as you said that. Are you sure you didn’t just hear that somewhere and are repeating it like a mantra—without really thinking about what you’re saying?”

Calvinist: “No, that’s what I really believe!”

Arminian: “How does God love those he predestined, foreordained, to hell?”

Calvinist: “He gives them many temporal blessings.”

Arminian: “You mean he gives them a little bit of heaven to go to hell in.”

I can certainly appreciate Olson’s point. One of the harder aspects of Calvinism to fathom is the notion of election. It is not a consoling doctrine if you are looking for charity and equality as most humans conceive of these ideals.

At the same time, I can’t imagine Arminians with their view of divine love ever convincing the likes of Woody Allen that God is love. Granted, Calvinism wouldn’t be persuasive either. But it is not as if secular folks like Allen don’t notice other features of existence that give pause to believing in a loving God. Human suffering is evidence that in this world not every human being experiences a slice of heaven before receiving their ultimate reward. Would Arminians really have us believe that a loving God makes sense of disparities on both sides of death?

For instance, if God is love, why do the penguins have to march and swim as far as they do to reproduce?

Or, if God is love, why does he allow people like Jimmy, Bunk, Omar, and Stringer Bell to live in as dysfunctional a place as 1990s Baltimore?

Or, if God is love, how do Arminians make sense of what Joshua and the Israelites did to the inhabitants of Jericho and Ai?

Everywhere you look, we don’t see a “wonderful day in the neighborhood.” So maybe the current crop of Arminian promoters need to switch from PBS to HBO where they could ponder circumstances that suggest a dark side of God, a deity who so loves the world that he sent his beloved son to bleed and die on a cross.

Has This Guy Been Reading the BeeBees?

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

A little dated but still fresh:

Indeed, many describe the Republican political faith as “American Calvinism.” It borrows several notions from the sixteenth century French theologian: the Bible is infallible; the “law” is driven by the Ten Commandments, rather than the teachings of Jesus; humans are totally depraved; and God has predestined who will be saved.

Despite its austere nature, Calvinism strongly influenced the original American settlers — many of who were Presbyterians. One historian noted, “in England and America the great struggles for civil and religious liberty were nursed in Calvinism, inspired by Calvinism, and carried out largely by men who were Calvinists.”

During the ’80s American Calvinism morphed into a conservative political ideology with the formation of the Christian Right. James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, and others preached on political subjects and touted conservative “Christian” candidates.

In Republican hands, contemporary Calvinism has had two thrusts. It fomented the culture wars and accused Democrats, and non-believers, of advocating “sixties values” that would destroy home and community. The Christian Right was against abortion, same-sex marriage, the teaching of evolution, and the separation of church and state; they were for homeschooling, limited Federal government, and Reaganomics.

The second Calvinist thrust promoted capitalism. In his classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, German sociologist Max Weber observed that not only did the protestant work ethic promote capitalism but also worldly success became a measure of the likelihood of one’s salvation. “He who has the most toys, wins.”

Given the strong influence of Calvinism on Republican politics, it’s not surprising the GOP favors the rich, opposes new taxes, and continues to support Reaganomics with its myths of “trickle down economics” and “self-regulating markets.”

Safe to say, he hasn’t been reading Oldlife. But it goes to show why Calvinism continues to be iconic.

Who Transmitted "Calvinism"?

Published on by D. G. Hart46 Comments

Some of the early responses to Calvinism have, in a friendly way, wondered why I excluded Baptists like Andrew Fuller, John Gill, and Charles Spurgeon from the narrative — even airbrushing them from the history of Calvinism. I understand some of this complaint since Calvinism is an expansive word that establishes long queues (at venues like the Gospel Coalition) in ways that Lutheranism and Anglicanism do not. A better title would have been Reformed Protestantism: A History but that would have been like calling a book about beer, India Pale Ale, when Budweiser is much more likely to draw a crowd. I admit my book is not about ideas as much as institutions, and specifically which institutions transmitted Calvinist ideas and practices. In that case, the Reformed and Presbyterian (with some room for Puritans and Congregationalists) get the nod. Baptists don’t. Sorry.

At the same time, Baptists should take comfort in the recent global history of Baptist churches by Robert E. Johnson. In fact, because that book was already in print, I felt at more liberty to narrow the field of scrutiny (not to mention that the publisher did not want five volumes but one modestly sized book). There Baptists will find (just checking the search engine at Amazon) references to Spurgeon, Fuller, and Gill, and none to Thomas Chalmers, Abraham Kuyper, Karl Barth, and J. Gresham Machen.

Seems fair and balanced to me.

Confusing Johns

Published on by D. G. Hart355 Comments

This is Calvinism (mainly):

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; yet he has authority, and it is his duty, to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordainances of God duly settled, administrated, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he has power to call synods, to be present at them and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God. (WCF 23.3)

This is Calvinism revised:

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance. (OPCCF, 23.3)

This is Calvinism on Locke:

Hall demonstrates that while the Declaration’s reference to “nature’s God,” its claim that government’s function is to protect citizens’ rights, and its assertion of a right to overthrow usurpatious rulers are consistent with Lockean thinking, they are also perfectly in keeping with John Calvin’s teaching on those subjects, which antedated Locke’s Second Treatise . . . (Kevin R. C. Gutzman’s review of Mark David Hall, Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic, American Conservative, May/June, 2013)

And it gets worse for rights-affirming “Calvinists”:

. . . because the powers which God hath ordained, and the liberty which Christ hath purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another, they who, upon pretense of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God. (OPCCF, 20.4)

Calvinism's Debt to the Turks

Published on by D. G. Hart23 Comments

The arrangement and deployment of these symbols [of the Turks] – weapons and costume – began to alter subtly in the first decades of the eighteenth century, in part, remarkably, as a result of a shared interest in flowers. Flowers had been highly visible in the Ottoman capital from the mid-sixteenth century. By the 1630s the famous Turkish traveler Evliya Chelebi was estimating that there were some 300 florists in Constantinople. The open meadows along the Golden Horn were filled with tulips and lilacs in the spring and the lilacs’ scent was intoxicating. The introduction of the tulip to Europe from Turkey in the mid-sixteenth century, first to Augsburg in 1559, then to Antwerp and the Habsburg domains in the Netherlands between 1562 and 1583, revived a passion for flowers and gardens in the West. Mass production of blooms exported opened into an industry in the Netherlands, and tulip bulbs were exported across Europe. The Margrave of the small estate of Baden Durlach had more than 4,000 tulips in his garden by 1636, all carefully listed in his garden registers. . . .

It is impossible to be precise about the date but certainly beginning in the Tulip Era the symbolic connotations of “the Turk” began to gather new and extended meanings. The similarity of the tulip’s appearance to a turban was first noted by the Habsburg ambassador to Constantinople Ghislain de Busbecq in the 1550s. He was passionate about flowers and, based upon this visual connection, mistakenly gave the tulips their name, a corruption of the Turkish for turban, tulban. But turbans, once the symbol of Eastern violence, now acquired an additional, softer connection. . . . For the West, flowers, silks, and flowing robes suggested an indolent life rather than the rigors of the field of battle . . . (Wheatcroft, Infidels, 265, 266)

Another Coincidence?

Published on by D. G. Hart14 Comments

Islamic Calvinism.

Religion in Kayseri plays a central part in people’s lives. The city has a traditional reputation; the only place to get a drink is at the international hotel. But where in the past in Turkey business was dominated by the country’s secular elite, which firmly kept religion out of the boardroom, in Kayseri it has a central role.

And it seems to be a winning combination. Kayseri is booming. It holds the world record for the number of factories opening in a day – 190. The city boasts 50 out of 500 of the wealthiest people in Turkey.

But you would use never guess it walking on the streets of the city. There are few expensive cars, as ostentatious behaviour is frowned upon. Kayseri does have a rather puritanical feel to it. But that shouldn’t be a surprise, according Gerald Gnaus of the European Stability Initiative (ESI).

Gnaus recently published a report which draws a parallel with the 19th century Calvinists. Gnaus argues Kayseri buries the widely held belief that Islam and capitalism are incompatible.

“Many people in Western Europe — very serious thinkers too — have held that Islam is a fatalistic religion and that it suits a trading economy but not an industrial economy,” Gnaus says. “What we found in Kayseri is that on the contrary, the kind of characteristic traits that Max Weber attributed to the Calvinists – very hard working, very sober, not given to ostentatious displays of wealth – are the characteristic traits you find in businessmen in Kayseri.”

The term “Islamic Calvinism” caused a bit of a stir in Turkey, being angrily denounced by some in the Islamic media. But in Kayseri, most seemed quite happy with the label.

Mustafa Boydak is the head of the Kayseri chamber of commerce. He also runs one of the largest companies in the city Boydak. He also sees parallels with the 19th century puritans:

“In Calvinism there is this understanding that work is a form of worship, and Kayseri people share that understanding. Islam also teaches us to be tolerant, and open to new ideas, which is very important in business, and to people living here. But Christianity shares this ideal, and the influence of Christianity here is important. For centuries many Christian Greeks and Armenians lived here and were very involved in business, and this too has shaped people’s ideals.”

I’m not sure about the tolerance bit, though Mustafa Akyol makes as good a 2k case for Islam as any Western 2ker does for Calvinism. But when it comes to work ethic, the Turks would put many residents of Massachusetts to shame.

What New Calvinists Can Learn from Old Calvinism — Failure

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

Collin Hansen lists the top-ten theology stories of the year. Number ten is the boom-and-bust cycle of Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin. Hansen goes on to wonder why Christians follow celebrities and don’t reflect on failure (possibly because the Gospel Coalition is built on fame and ignores the troubles of folks like C. J. Mahaney):

Tebow wasted away on the New York Jets bench behind an inept starter after the Broncos traded him and prospered under the precision passing of Peyton Manning. Lin also left his team when the Knicks declined to mach an offer from the Houston Rockets, where’s he’s played reasonably well. Why would God not want these men to succeed and spread the gospel through a growing platform in the nation’s largest city? How can they testify to Christ in failure and disappointment? Too few have explored these questions with the same fervency that greeted their ascendance to international celebrity.

If the young and restless would-be Calvinists read much in the history of Calvinism they would know that failure and defeat is par for the course of the church militant (neo-Calvinists’ postmillennial optimism to the contrary). Here is one sober perspective on Calvinist history that suggests if the young and restless read the past less for inspiration and more for understanding, they would have the tools for handling disappointment (they might even get over their celebrity fetish):

For the better part of two hundred years the Corinthian temptation has been to regard Reformed Protestantism’s importance in cultural and political terms. This was a perspective held not only by Reformed believers. Think of Max Weber and his theory about Calvinism and capitalism, or of Alexis de Tocqueville and Calvinism’s contribution to democracy, or of Robert Merton on Calvinism and the rise of modern science. These older arguments do not have the force they once did, but even a couple of years ago at the academic conference in Geneva that marked the five hundredth anniversary of Calvin’s birth, most of the scholarly presentations explored not the sorts of ecclesiastical reforms that characterized Reformed Protestantism but the way that Calvinism shaped the modern world. Such assessments have prompted Reformed believers to think of Calvinism less as a churchly movement than as a religiously-based source for social transformation. Of course, the rise of neo-Calvinism and the inspiring words of Abraham Kuyper have contributed mightily to this estimate of Reformed Protestantism.

But even before Kuyper, the temptation to regard Reformed Protestantism for its political and cultural significance was constant for Presbyterians. How could it not be since the rise of Reformed Protestantism was bound up with European politics. . . . However we estimate the size, scope, and power of the modern nation-state, the reality is that Reformed Protestantism was on the ground floor of the construction of modern Europe and its colonial proliferation, a period that ran from 1600 at least to World War II. No wonder, then, that conservative Reformed believers pine for the days when their faith mattered to the mission of a particular nation. Scottish Presbyterians still long for the days of the National Covenant. Abraham Kuyper endeared himself to Reformed believers by evoking a golden age of Dutch history. Meanwhile, American Presbyterians have their own version of this nostalgia and attempt to construct a Christian founding of the United States even though the very point of the new nation was to bring an end to the pattern of confessionalization that had torn apart Europe (and especially England) during the seventeenth century. . . .

If Reformed Protestantism was chiefly an instance of ecclesiastical reform and renewal, then against that measure the OPC may be a worthy heir to the mantle of Reformed Protestantism, even meriting a celebratory toast. To be sure, the history of the OPC is strewn with believers who still want the church to be more than the church, to be at the forefront of maintaining and promoting social righteousness. But just as important to the OPC’s history has been a growing contentment with the church as simply the church. The word “simply,” of course, understates this sense because the church’s mission is hardly simple or ordinary. But to recognize that the church has a responsibility that no other institution does, and that God has instituted the church uniquely for his redemptive purposes, is the start of a broader sense of restraint and resolve that the OPC, while lacking many of the attributes and features that impress the Corinthian minded, is doing a good and important work no matter how quiet or routine.