Tag: pietism

The Gospel Coalition's Thin-Skinned Long Arm

Published on by D. G. Hart140 Comments

I did not see Kevin DeYoung’s post at his Gospel Coalition blog about confessionalism and pietism — and for good reason. Between the time you opened the page and blinked it was gone. (And it promised to be the first of a three-part series.)

(UPDATE: For those old enough to remember the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was the host, and Doc Severinson was the band leader, Doc was not always present, often playing other gigs. Johnny regularly said to Ed McMahon, “Doc is here? Doc is not here.” In that same vein, Kevin’s post was not here. It is now here.)

Why it vanished from the Gospel Coalition website is a mystery. At the risk of shameless self-promotion, the reason may have to do with DeYoung’s decision to interact with The Lost Soul of American Protestantism, a book written by this blogger. Seemingly, any attention given to the Old Life case for confessionalism is improper at the Gospel Coalition because that case has uncomfortable implications for the gospel Allies.

And at the risk of seeing the Gospel Coalition administrators purge DeYoung’s thoughtful comments altogether from the Internet (they are currently available at his Facebook page), I am preserving his piece here below. Unlike the Gospel Coalition, where disagreements about polity, the sacraments, and even the eternal decrees, are not permitted to surface for the sake of fighting the Axis powers of inauthentic Christianity, I regard a blog as simply a place to discuss and kvetch. (I imagine that several days worth of Prozac and Prilosec comes with the registration packet at the Gospel Coalition conference to keep the conferees in good humor and free from indigestion.)

Here is DeYoung’s post (reaction to follow):

Can Pietism and Confessionalism Be Friends? (Part 1 of 3)

by Kevin DeYoung on Friday, April 8, 2011 at 12:27pm

Those outside Presbyterian circles may not be aware (and may not care), but there has been a lot of discussion over the past few years about the dangers of pietism and how it differs radically from the older (read: better) model of confessionalism. Pietism, it is said, emphasizes dramatic conversions, tends toward individualism, pushes for unity based on shared experience, and pays little attention to careful doctrinal formulation. Confessionalism, on the other hand, is a more churchly tradition, with creeds and catechisms and liturgy. It emphasizes the ordinary means of word and sacrament and prizes church order and the offices. It is pro-ritual, pro-clergy, and pro-doctrine, where pietism, it is said, stands against all these things.

I am sympathetic with much of this critique of evangelical pietism. I agree with Darryl Hart’s contention in The Lost Soul of American Protestantism that American evangelicalism has tried too hard to be relevant, has largely ignored organic church growth by catechesis, has too often elevated experience at the expense of doctrine, has minimized the role of the institutional church, and has worn out a good number of Christians by assuming that every churchgoer is an activist and crusader more than a pilgrim. Confessionalism would be good tonic for much of what ails the evangelical world.

Concern for Confessionalism

And yet, I worry that confessionalism without a strong infusion of the pietism it means to correct, can be a cure just as bad as the disease. Is there a way to reject revivalism without discounting genuine revival in the Great Awakening? Can I like Machen and Whitefield? Is there a way to say, “Yes, the church has tried too hard to Christianize every area of life” while still believing that our private faith should translate into public action? Hart argues that after revivalism Christian devotion was no longer limited to “formal church activities on Sunday or other holy days,” but “being a believer now became a full-time duty, with faith making demands in all areas of life” (13). Given the thrust of the book, I think it’s safe to say Hart finds this troubling.

Further, Hart clearly sides with the Old Side in New England that opposed the Great Awakening, its emphasis on inner experience, and the insistence that ministers be able to give an account of God’s work in their hearts (32-42). While I agree wholeheartedly that experience does not a Christian make, I wish the strong confessional advocates would do more to warn against the real danger of dead orthodoxy. It is possible to grow up in a Christian home, get baptized as an infant, get catechized, join the church, take the Lord’s Supper, be a part of a church your whole life and not be a Christian. It is possible to grow up in an Old World model where you inherit a church tradition (often along ethnic lines), and stay in that church tradition, but be spiritually dead. There are plenty of students at Hope College and Calvin College (just to name two schools from my tradition) who are thoroughly confessional as a matter of form, but not converted.

I have no hesitation in commending confessionalism. My concern is that pietism–with its private Bible study, small group prayer, insistence on conversion, and the cultivation of “heart” religion–is frequently set against confessionalism. For example, Hart agues, “Confessional Protestantism invites another way of evaluating the making of believers. Its history demonstrates the importance of inheritance and the way that believers appropriate faith over a lifetime through the sustained ministry and counsel of pastors as opposed to the momentary crisis induced by the itinerant evangelist or the pressures of sitting around a fire at summer camp” (184). I like the first sentence, but why so negatively caricature the work of itinerant evangelists and the real conversions that may come at summer camp? I could be misreading Hart. Maybe he has no problem with any of these things. But when he says, “the central struggle throughout Protestantism’s history has been between confessionalism and pietism, not evangelicalism and liberalism” (183), I worry that committed Presbyterians will steer clear of anything that gets painted with a broad brush as “pietism.”

A Confessionalism with Deep Piety

We all feel and respond to different dangers (for example, see Ligon Duncan’s post and William Evans’ post, both of which I like). No doubt, revivalistic, hyper-experiential, adoctrinal, deeds-not-creeds, tell-me-the-exact-moment-you-were-born-again, go-conquer-the-world-for-Christ Christianity has a load of problems. If that’s pietism, then I want no part of it.

But I want a certain kind of confessionalism. I want a confessionalism that believes in Spirit-given revival, welcomes deep affections, affirms truth-driven experience, and understands that the best creeds should result in the best deeds. I want a confessionalism that believes in the institutional church and expects our Christian faith to impact what we do in the world and how we do it. I want a confessionalism that is not ashamed to speak of conversion—dramatic conversion for some, unnoticed conversion for many.

I want a confessionalism that preaches and practices deep piety. Whether this is labeled “pietism” or just part of our rich confessional tradition doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that we have ministers and parishioners who realize there is an external and internal dimension to the faith. I want Christians to know that going to church, hearing the word, reciting the creeds, singing the hymns, and partaking of the sacraments is not peripheral to the Christian life; it our lifeblood. And I also want Christians who do all those things every week to pray in “their closets,” look for opportunities to share the gospel with the lost, submit to Christ’s lordship in every area of life, and understand that true faith is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in his Word is true; it is also a deep-rooted assurance” that not only others, but they too “have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation” (Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 21).

Okay, I can’t resist one quick comment. Why does piety have to be “deep”? I understand that deep piety is good, and better than shallow piety. But what company makes the piety meter to detect whether it is deep or shallow? And what about those days when my piety is shallow? Am I less elect or justified? In other words, the word “deep” encourages an interest in me, not the gospel or God’s saving work.

This is not a reason to say, let’s have more shallow piety. But it may be a reason to be careful about the words we use lest we fall prey to the pride of thinking our own piety is deep. You’d think that folks who desire God and his glory might see how their piety standards nurture desires less theocentric and glorious.

Faking It

Published on by D. G. Hart175 Comments

A few more thoughts on the Duncan, Nevin, Helm, Edwards discussion.

The proponents of Edwards and the First Pretty Good Awakening (hereafter FPGA) are worried about nominal Christianity – that is, people who go through the motions of worship or Christian practice. Although this is an understandable concern – who would ever commend hypocrisy unless you are a vice paying tribute to a virtue – it is also an impossible concern. How does anyone know if another person is faking anything? Only God knows the heart. So the effort to eradicate going through the motions is a lot like a quest to be God (and wasn’t that what got our first parents into trouble?).

At the same time, why is it that insincerity only goes in one direction? Why is it only possible for Christian profession and practice to betray unbelief? Why can’t unholy actions betray a believing heart? Of course, I’m not trying to justify sin or worldliness. But if the heart is as fickle as pietists believe it is, why isn’t it possible for the duplicity to go both ways? Why can’t a believer’s impious actions actually betray real belief? What if someone is faking unbelief but really believes? If you think this seems preposterous, consider Peter’s thrice denying his Lord. And he became Pope!

Those skeptical about Edwards put less emphasis on the first word of “faking it” and worry more about the it. That is, they (okay, I) worry that the words or actions in question are actually fitting or biblical – fitting within the Reformed tradition or having a warrant from Scripture. Since we can’t know the human heart, at least we can take precaution that the things we do as believers and the things we say actually conform to what Scripture teaches. Let the Spirit take care of the heart, along with pastoral counsel in the privacy of one’s home.

So, for instance, when churches have Thanksgiving Day services where people stand to give testimonies, the Edwards proponents might be very much moved by the woman who stands to give thanks that she recently found a job afer a year of unemployment. And if the woman cries, the Edwardsean might be especially inclined to think this testimony spiritual and genuine. After all, the pro-FPGA saw lots of tears (and more) as evidence of the work of the Spirit. Never mind that sometimes people cry when speaking in public because they are nervous. If affections appear, then hallelujah, we have piety.

Edwards skeptics may also be moved by the emotion, but will also be sitting there going postal internally because of the impropriety of letting people, even saints, stand up and say things without any sort of screening by the pastor and elders. In other words, whether or not someone fakes a testimony, the issue in this case is that testimonies are wrong. The noun (“it”) matters more than the gerund (“faking”).

But Edwards rooters are rarely as worried about the “it” as Edwards skeptics and the reasons are that those who are interested in holy affections often take liberties with the “it” of Christian piety. That is, in order to cultivate and give expression to those genuine affections, pietistically inclined establish new practices, sometimes not having biblical warrant or foreign to the Reformed tradition, in order to fan real spirituality into aflame. The best example of this is the phenomenon of hymns. Prior to the FPGA, Presbyterians all sang psalms (or other biblical songs). But these songs were not as conducive to the revivals of Whitefield, Wesley, and Edwards as were the hymns being written expressly for revivalistic purposes by the likes of Watts and Wesley (Charles, that is).

Now maybe you are a hymn-singing kind of Presbyterian. I myself enjoy a good hymn now and then. But the historical record is remarkably undeniable that hymn singing prevailed among a group of believers previously committed to psalm-singing because those biblical songs weren’t cutting it in the effort to create believers who did not fake singing psalms but really sang hymns.

And now to bring it full circle, hymn-singing Presbyterians in the 1980s were besieged by praise-song singing Presbyterians because the old hymns weren’t up to speed with Jesus people piety.

So once you start down the road of the quest for genuine piety, it’s hard to get off before it turns into the charismatic highway.

I seem to recall Scott Clark writing a book about this.

Two-Kingdom Tuesday: A 2K Pietist (and Dutch to boot!)

Published on by D. G. Hart38 Comments

Wilhelmus a Brakel was a seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed pastor, and a leader in the so-called Second Reformation of the Dutch churches. At one blog dedicated to Brakel this development in Dutch Protestantism receives the following description:

By this term, Nadere Reformatie, we mean a movement in the 17th century which was a reaction against dead orthodoxy and [the] secularization of Christianity in the Church of the Reformation and which insisted on the practise of faith. This may also be called a special form of Pietism, because the central idea is the “praxis pietatis.” The origin of the pietistic trend lies in England and the father of Puritan Pietism [who] was William Perkins. Via Willem Teellinck and Guilielmus Amesius a direct influence on a kindred movement in Holland ensued. To this movement belong the Teellincks, Voetius, Van Lodenstein, Saldenus, the two Brakels, and especially also Witsius. This movement is not meant as a correction of the Reformation but as the consequence of it. The background of the conspicuous preciseness is the desire to serve God fully according to His will.

In sum, Dutch pietism was an effort fuse the personal piety of experiemental Calvinism with the rigor of the original Reformed movement.

Old Lifers are not known for relishing pietism, as a current discussion points out. And yet, even Dutch Reformed pietists, like Brakel, had enough sense to recognize the insights of post-Constantinian 2 kingdom theology. I hope the Baylys are listening.

The following comes from Brakel’s A Christian’s Reasonable Service, Book 2, chapter 29. (Props go out to our other mid-western correspondent):

Does the civil government have any authority at all with regard to the church? If yes, what does or does this not consist of?

We wish to preface our answer to this question by stating that first, all members of the clergy—ministers, elders, and deacons—are subject to the civil government as individuals , and thus are in one and the same category as other people. I repeat, as individuals. This is not true, however, as far as their ecclesiastical
standing is concerned, for as such, they are subject to consistories, Classes, and Synods, and thus are subject to the only King of the church, Jesus Christ.

Secondly, if members of the clergy conduct themselves contrary to civil laws pertaining to all citizens, they, just as other citizens, may and must be punished according to the magnitude of their crime.

Thirdly, since members of the clergy are not servants of the civil government, but as individuals are in the same category as all other citizens, they have the same right to legal defense. Therefore, in the event of an indictment, legal procedures must be initiated against them the same as against other citizens.

Fourthly, members of the clergy and the entire congregation, each in their own position, are obligated to honor and obey the civil government conscientiously—with heart and in deeds. They are to do so not by way of compulsion, but in an affectionate manner, out of love for God, whose supremacy and majesty are reflected in the office of civil government. No one is released from the duty of rendering honor and obedience simply because he is a member of the clergy or of the church. This is true even if the civil government is either pagan, Islamic, heretical or Christian, good or evil, godly or ungodly, compassionate or severe. It is the duty of elders to stir everyone up to render such honor and obedience. “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers” (Rom. 13:1)

Tim Keller Should Join the OPC Where Fighting Is A Virtue

Published on by D. G. Hart40 Comments

Those not going to Nashville for the PCA’s General Assembly may be interested to know that Tim Keller is appearing with Ligon Duncan at a mid-Assembly seminar for what looks like round two of their debate/discussion on the PCA’s identity. For those who want to know what Keller is going to say, no reason to fret. The PCA’s website provides a link to the pdf copy of Keller’s paper, entitled “What’s So Great About the PCA” (or “Why I Like the PCA”).

Most of this elaborates Keller’s views on American Presbyterian history and the various splits and debates that have marked the tradition since emerged in 1706. Here Keller applies the Nick Wolterstorff-via-George Marsden scheme for understanding the three ways of being Reformed in the U.S. – the doctrinalist, the pietist, and the culturalist. (As someone who regularly writes for oldlife has said, where’s the churchly way of being Reformed?) In this paper Keller spells out his dissection of American Presbyterianism in greater detail.

Keller asserts that the PCA has all the branches of Reformed Protestantism and that such diversity is a good thing. Never mind that such diversity in the past yielded splits such as those between the New and Old Sides, the New and Old Schools, fundamentalists and modernists, or the Orthodox and Bible Presbyterians. For Keller the constant bickering and complaining of each branch about the others is a sign of a healthy church. He calls this, following Sean Lucas (in the Nicotine Theological Journal of all places), “big tent Presbyteriainism” where the PCA is grounded in biblical inerrancy and Reformed soteriology and open to social activism. Reading Keller’s description of the big tent I was reminded of Leffert’s Loetscher’s book on the triumph of liberalism and the defeat of confessionalism in the PCUSA, called The Broadening Church. I also wondered if Keller is mistaking the Gospel Coalition or the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals for the PCA, since given the essentials to which Keller points a Baptist or Five-Point Pentecostal could well join the New York pastor’s communion. I even wondered if this kind of diversity, and Keller’s case for letting sessions decide how to use women’s gifts within a congregation, for instance, was a recipe for turning the PCA into the Southern Baptist Convention. (Mark Dever, I love you!)

According to Keller, the PCA is stronger, healthier, and more faithful for having all of these branches on its trunk:

I believe that all the critiques of the various branches are right. The doctrinalist branch can breed smugness and self-righteousness over its purity, and develop almost an Old Testament concern for ceremonial cleanness—namely, that we must not only not promote views that are suspect, but we must not associate with people who do. The pietistic branch is very pragmatic and results-oriented, and it is resistant to enter into processes of discipline or theological debate, even when that is what is required. The pietist branch also tends to give too much credence to pastors who grow their churches large. The culturalist branch becomes too enamored with modern scholarship, and there are plenty of historical examples of how the emphasis on social engagement and justice has led to the erosion of orthodox theology. Neither the culturalists nor the doctrinalists have a good track record of vigorous evangelism. When it comes to culture, the doctrinalists are deeply concerned by any effort to ‘contextualize’ yet are often blind to how accommodated they are to previous cultures (17th century British Puritanism or 16th century European Protestantism, or 19th century Southern Presbyterianism.) The pietists are often blind to how accommodated they are to capitalism and popular culture, while the culturalists are often unaware of how captured they are by elite, contemporary culture.

If you believe that all the critiques are right — then you should be happy (as I am) that the PCA has not thrown out one or two of the branches. If you believe critiques of the other two but you are in denial about the dangers and weaknesses of your own branch, then you will find the breadth of the PCA to be at best troublesome and at worst dangerous.

So the question for Keller is what to do about the diversity. He says first that pruning will not work. Even though pruning is a biblical metaphor, Keller prefers another biological one (remember the ecosystem):

Each branch of Presbyterianism needs the others in order to escape its own inherent blind spots and weaknesses. But the conflicts that arise between the branches often accentuate and stimulate those very weaknesses. Richard Lovelace used to say doctrinalists are like white corpuscles, that are better at defending the faith (against heretical ‘infections’) than propagating the faith. The pietists and reformists are like red corpuscles that in their pragmatism do a better job of propagating the faith and yet often lay it open to doctrinal indifference or decline. Too many white blood cells over red blood cells is leukemia; too many red blood cells over white blood cells is AIDS. We need each other. We can’t live comfortably with each other, but we are much less robust and vital apart from each other.

In which case, the challenge for the PCA is how to manage the pain from this red-in-tooth-and-claw gospel ecosystem. Keller recommends that contestants need to recognize how much controversy is one part theological and another part personal. By acknowledging the personalities involved, the PCA’s antagonists might avoid judging others’ motives and look at their own. Last, Keller advises not changing the original boundary markers of the PCA – inerrancy and Reformed soteriology.

In other words, Keller’s counsel is “rocky, as you go, but let’s rock on.” The PCA needs to keep the contending parties but as long as the controversies don’t get personal, the church should be okay. He does end by mentioning the desirability of spaces where ministers and elders can read common texts and discuss theological topics in the hope of achieving greater unity. But the overarching theme is diversity and controversy are signs of a broad, big-tent, healthy Presbyterian Church.

Since Keller’s response to the idea of pruning the branches is that such lopping off of limbs won’t work, one can return the favor by asking whether his proposal for keeping the peace through constant feuding will work. After all, if the PCA is facing problems of funding denominational programs and agencies, why will congregations in any one of these camps give to the PCA’s big tent when they don’t want a big tent. (Here Keller might want to take a page from his mainline Presbyterian professor, Richard Lovelace, about the problems of breadth under the big tent of the PCUSA.)

Another practical question is one that Keller could have readily learned from his urban experience in the Big Apple. Mayor Rudy Giuliani was allegedly successful in lowering crime rates not by being lenient on small matters and enforcing the big laws but by doing precisely the reverse – eliminating the small acts of indecent and disorderly behavior which in turn cultivated an atmosphere where big crimes became less plausible. Why wouldn’t a “broken windows” policy work better for the PCA than a big-tent? Why not clean up the abuses of the regulative principle, church office, charismatic gifts, and congregational autonomy so that the most important doctrines of inerrancy and T-U-L-I-P remain secure? In fact, it is not at all clear that in all of Keller’s ruminations on the history of American Presbyterianism he is willing to see how the New School culturalists’ inattention to the small items of Reformed faith and practice and eventually blossomed into the big problem of big-tent liberalism

Also, will Keller’s approach work for the PCA if it means that increasingly the decisions of General Assembly look arbitrary and simply the outcome of majority vote? After all, if only the core items need to be affirmed, then the peripheral matters are merely matters of preference to be determined by the shifting demographics of each Assembly. It is hard to imagine how any of the hard core doctrinalists, culturalists, or pietists, those who believe their understanding of Presbyterianism to be the right one, can abide the shifting sands of General Assembly votes.

Aside from practical questions, the ones concerning what’s either right or true are even more pressing for Keller’s analysis. First, a historical question is whether the big-tent of the PCA was actually open to the cultural transformationalism that Keller advocates. When the PCA was formed it was a deeply southern church and Presbyterian conservatives in the South were no fans of an activist church. Granted, Keller hails from the RPCES wing of the PCA, those descendants of the Bible Presbyterian Synod who grew tired of Carl McIntire’s antics but who retained much of his Christian America outlook. The southerners in the PCA were likely unaware that receiving the RPCES into communion would bring a form of religious social justice since they thought they had left such Protestantism behind in 1972 in the mainline church. But after thirty years of the Religious Right, most conservative Protestants in the United States are much less squeamish about calls to transform the nation. Still, the fact remains that the original boundaries of the PCA did not include social transformation or political activism.

Another normative question concerns where truth is in Keller’s version of the PCA. All of the branches need each other because they are all flawed. That may be Keller’s opinion but plenty of those within each branch believe that the doctrinalist, culturalist, or pietist positions is taught in Scripture and faithful to their Lord. This also means that their criticisms of the other position are intended not as a method of keeping the other side accountable but as a way to correct error and maintain a true church. In other words, the controversies in the PCA stem from real disagreements, both about what counts as core, and what the core is. These differences stem not from wrong motives or defective personality traits but from the nature of truth itself — that some ideas exclude others.

Keller would likely prefer to fudge the truth dimension of the PCA’s conflicts because the communion’s standards do not create much room for either the pietists or especially the culturalists. If the Confession and Catechisms are constitutional markers in the PCA, if they determine the boundaries of faith and practice, then either an emphasis on experience as the surest sign of true faith or a determination to employ the church in cultural activities are not within the bounds. This is not meant to scare culturalists and pietists. It is simply an attempt to read the Westminster Standards honestly and truthfully.

In the end, Keller’s understanding of the PCA’s boundaries is akin to the effort by the Auburn Affirmationists, another version of New York Presbyterianism, to circumvent the Westminster Confession. To be sure, Keller’s method is not liberal the way that the Affirmation was. But by redrawing the boundaries of core beliefs to something much narrower than the Standards themselves, Keller is, whether he knows or intends it, undermining the confessional basis of the PCA.

Mike Horton is More Fun Than Mark Dever (though Mark has his moments)

Published on by D. G. Hart201 Comments

Justin Taylor made me do it.

He linked to Ray Ortlund’s blog from a couple days ago at the Gospel Coalition – calling it a “classic” in which the he warns TR’s (i.e., Truly Reformed) about the danger of falling into the Judaizer trap. Ortlund writes:

The Judaizers in Galatia did not see their distinctive – the rite of circumcision – as problematic. They could claim biblical authority for it in Genesis 17 and the Abrahamic covenant. But their distinctive functioned as an addition to the all-sufficiency of Jesus himself. Today the flash point is not circumcision. It can be Reformed theology. But no matter how well argued our position is biblically, if it functions in our hearts as an addition to Jesus, it ends up as a form of legalistic divisiveness.

This is truly an amazing assertion by the Nashville pastor. Even though Reformed folks think they are following Paul in their teaching and ministry (let’s not forget the Jerusalem Council or the pastoral epistles which say something about presbyterian polity), they become Judaizers by following Paul and insisting that the church heed everything Christ commanded – from theology to worship and polity. I feel like I am in a Coen Brothers movie where up is down, white is black, and rodents are felines.

Ortlund’s post is standard fare among evangelicals who look for a lowest-common-denominator approach to Christian unity and so regard sticklers for doctrine and practice – like the Reformed – as sticks in the mud and unloving sectarians to boot. (Ortlund fails to remark that Baptists, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Lutherans, who insist on the correctness of their distinct teachings and practices, are also would-be Judaizers. Rather than acknowledge that differences exist within the church because different parts of the visible church interpret the Bible differently, Ortlund, like many a pietist before him, disregards actual differences and chalks up resistance to unity as a lack of love – for both Christ and for other Christians. As the Church Lady might say, “isn’t that charitable?”

But the neat trick that Ortlund adds to this standard kvetch about Reformed particularists is a claim about the psychology and sociology of being Reformed. He comments on Gal 4:17 – “They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them” – in the following paraphrase:

“When Christians, whatever the label or badge or shibboleth, start pressuring you to come into line with their distinctive, you know something’s wrong. They want to enhance their own significance by your conformity to them: ‘See? We’re better. We’re superior. People are moving our way. They are becoming like us. We’re the buzz.’”

Ortlund adds, “What is this, but deep emotional emptiness medicating itself by relational manipulation? This is not about Christ. This is about Self.”

Isn’t that charitable, indeed.

Is it so hard to imagine that other people with whom we disagree may actually have good reasons for what they hold, and that they may actually be trying to honor, serve, and love the Lord and his church? Apparently, Ortlund would rather speculate on motives and psychology.

Ortlund concludes with this plea to Reformed Protestants:

My Reformed friend, can you move among other Christian groups and really enjoy them? Do you admire them? Even if you disagree with them in some ways, do you learn from them? What is the emotional tilt of your heart – toward them or away from them? If your Reformed theology has morphed functionally into Galatian sociology, the remedy is not to abandon your Reformed theology. The remedy is to take your Reformed theology to a deeper level. Let it reduce you to Jesus only. Let it humble you. Let this gracious doctrine make you a fun person to be around. The proof that we are Reformed will be all the wonderful Christians we discover around us who are not Reformed. Amazing people. Heroic people. Blood-bought people. People with whom we are eternally one – in Christ alone.

Brother Ray, I have been around the non-Reformed and they are not nearly as much fun as Reformed folks are. As much as I do enjoy Mark Dever’s company (sorry for name-dropping), I refuse to smoke a cigar or drink a Gin & Tonic in his company, not because I find him unworthy of such camaraderie but because I know my smoking or imbibing could get Mark in trouble. Baptists still bulk large in the prohibitionist camp and for that reason the merriment supplied by leisurely conversation over a pipe or a pint (better with both) is off limits to many of the Christian groups that Ortlund wants me to hang out with and have fun.

This may seem like a trivial point but it actually bears much more on the passage to which Ortlund appeals than it might seem at first. Paul’s battle with the Judaizers was over the misapplication of Scripture. In the Judaizers’ hands formerly God-made rules had become man-made norms because the work of Christ introduced freedom from the old covenant norms. In other words, the Judaizers were effectively substituting man-made rules for being Christian than the gospel that Paul was preaching. The Judaizers were denying Christian liberty in the way that contemporary believers do when they conclude that smoking or drinking is sin with (erroneous) appeals to Scripture. Without a proper biblical justification for their prohibitions they wind up enslaving Christians and thus burden the very gospel that Paul was out to protect among the Galatians.

In my own knowledge of church history, it is the Reformed (and other confessional Protestants) who understand much better than the “Jesus only” evangelicals the difference between the word of God and the words of men. And it is this difference that makes Reformed Protestants (with apologies to my friend, Mark Dever) more fun.

What Would Jesus Bake?

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

The obvious answer is manna.

But thanks to this piece from our mid-West correspondent, I am less confident of that answer. The Jesus Cookie is either a hoax or a vehicle for evangelism. According to the website:

We are a family owned business, dedicated to furthering the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

It is our mission to bring people to His table, one cookie at a time. It has been our personal experience that people are very receptive to something as innocent as a cookie and a cup of tea as a nice, easy way to enter into dialogue about Jesus Christ.

Our cookie came about to fill a need for a simple and non-threatening way to share Jesus with people who need Him.

One notable problem with the Jesus Cookie, aside from the implicit blasphemy, is the failure of this company to specify the flavor. Is it butter, chocolate chip, oat meal? Wouldn’t that affect the appeal of the gospel?

To answer this question, I went in search of a recipe Jesus cookies and came up with the Easter Story Cookie. It is as follows:

INGREDIENTS
1 c Whole pecans
1 ts Vinegar
3 Egg whites
1 pn Salt
1 c Sugar
Zipper baggie
Wooden spoon
Tape
Bible

PREPARATION
To be made the evening before Easter Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Place pecans in zipper baggie and let children beat them with the wooden spoon to break into small pieces. Explain that after Jesus was arrested He was beaten by the Roman soldiers. Read John 19:1-3. Let each child smell the vinegar. Put 1 tsp. vinegar into mixing bowl. Explain that when Jesus was thirsty on the cross he was given vinegar to drink. Read John 19:28-30. Add egg whites to vinegar. Eggs represent life. Explain that Jesus gave His life to give us life. Read John 10:10-11. Sprinkle a little salt into each childs hand. Let them taste it and brush the rest into the bowl. Explain that this represents the salty tears shed by Jesus followers, and the bitterness of our own sin. Read Luke 23:27. So far the ingredients are not very appetizing. Add 1 c. sugar. Explain that the sweetest part of the story is that Jesus died because He loves us. He wants us to know and belong to Him. Read Ps. 34:8 and John 3:16. Beat with a mixer on high speed for 12 to 15 minutes until stiff peaks are formed. Explain that the color white represents the purity in Gods eyes of those whose sins have been cleansed by Jesus. Read Isa.1:18 and John 3:1-3. Fold in broken nuts. Drop by teaspoons onto wax paper covered cookie sheet. Explain that each mound represents the rocky tomb where Jesus body was laid. Read Matt. 27:57-60. Put the cookie sheet in the oven, close the door and turn the oven OFF. Give each child a piece of tape and seal the oven door. Explain that Jesus tomb was sealed. Read Matt. 27:65-66. GO TO BED! Explain that they may feel sad to leave the cookies in the oven overnight. Jesus followers were in despair when the tomb was sealed. Read John 16:20 and 22. On Easter morning, open the oven and give everyone a cookie. Notice the cracked surface and take a bite. The cookies are hollow! On the first Easter Jesus followers were amazed to find the tomb open and empty. Read Matt. 28:1-9. HE HAS RISEN!

As any mother knows, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. And as any Reformed confessionalist knows, the way to turn a Reformed confessionalist’s stomach is to mix religion and baking.

All Spirit, No Body: Evangelicalism's Gnostic Problem

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

The Evangelical Manifesto has pretty much come and gone. (It’s domain name has actually expired.) It was supposed to give evangelicalism, sagging with the worries and fears of the Religious Right, a face lift. And then along came Sarah Palin and the chances for evangelicalism finding a prettier face happened, but not the way the Manifesto’s writers had intended.

Even so, recalling the way that EM defined evangelicalism is useful for reminding confessional Protestants why born-again Protestants don’t get us and why they leave us scratching our heads. The defining features of evangelicalism, according to EM, are first a devotion or experience of reverence: being evangelical at its core “is always more than a creedal statement, an institutional affiliation, or a matter of membership in a movement.” This means that evangelicalism cannot be limited to “certain churches or contained by a definable movement.” It is “diverse, flexible, adaptable, non-hierarchical” and takes many forms. Also key is evangelicalism’s positive, as opposed to its negative, posture. “Evangelicals are for Someone and for something rather than against anyone or anything.”

For this reason, evangelicals are different from liberalism and fundamentalism. These are in fact the extremes that define evangelicalism. The fault of liberalism was its capitulation to “alternative gospels” that are characterized by “an exaggerated estimate of human capacities, a shallow view of evil, an inadequate view of truth, and a deficient view of God.” Fundamentalism’s error is to embody a “modern reaction to the modern world” and romanticize the past. This leads fundamentalists to part company with “the Evangelical principle” of loving “our neighbors as ourselves” and even our enemies.

These oppositions would seem to connote a negativity that conflicts with evangelicalism’s commitment to being positive. But aside from the implicit inconsistency, the “accent the positive” theme of EM betrays evangelicalism’s glaring intellectual defect. By eschewing institutional means for being an evangelical and for reinforcing its identity, evangelicals have abandoned any reasonable creaturely means for giving coherence to their movement, constituency, market – what is the right word when no criteria for membership exist? It actually gets worse. Evangelicals revel in not being a church, in not having a creed, in not being tied down by those structures that lead to formalism or narrowness – those barriers that restrict the free movement of the Spirit and the good intentions of regenerated saints.

How is it possible to have any sort of human identity without being embodied institutionally. For politics we have parties, for business we have companies, for sex we have marriage. All of these human activities require some kind of exclusion based on a positive identity. Democrats are not Republicans. Ford’s cars are not Toyota’s. The Harts do not sleep with the Bartons. The same is even true for Christianity where God has given us the church and its ordinances to disciple the nations. The ministry of the word has always involved distinguishing and excluding. The keys of the kingdom were given to open the gates of heaven to believers and to shut them to unbelief. At the denominational level, Presbyterians are different from Pentecostals. But evangelicals, according to EM, do not want to be tied down either the way God’s creatures are by virtue of our embodiment or the way his church is by virtue of his revealed truth about the way he cares and shepherds his people through the church.

The result is a form of Christianity that does not want to have enemies but knows that it has them because its positive assertion of evangelical identity means that evangelicalism is not fundamentalism or liberalism. The reason it cannot have enemies is the same as why it cannot have members. Evangelicalism eschews institutional embodiment. It transcends any organizational or formal arrangement that is narrow or excludes. As such EM is yet one more betrayal of a spiritual identity that knows no formal mechanisms of membership.

Contemporary evangelicalism, consequently, suffers from an inherent inconsistency which pits its spirit against its body. Born-again Protestantism cannot resolve its inherent tension between the anti-formal nature of the conversion experience – the gateway into evangelicalism – and the need for formal qualities that will make evangelicalism cohere as a distinct Christian identity. As Mark Noll has observed, “Evangelicalism never amounted to a full-blown religious tradition, but was rather a style of personal living everywhere combined with conventional attitudes and actions.” Because of its flexibility and experiential character, evangelicalism can be found almost everywhere. That also means it is one of the least disciplined and impossible to define expressions of Christianity. In fact, because of its inability to achieve the heft of a religious tradition but only to add up to a spiritual style, evangelicalism has left many of its adherents with the dilemma of not knowing how to practice, maintain, and pass on a faith that eschews the means of practicing, maintaining and passing on any form of Christianity.

Even so, evangelicals have over the centuries devised a number of other ways to indicate their membership in the evangelical movement, from listening to contemporary Christian music, buying niche-marketed study-Bibles and the vinyl covers that adorn them. This could be a betrayal of the original genius of evangelicalism. But the formalism of evangelicalism could also reveal the naivete of its original proponents. That is, folks like Whitefield, Wesley and Edwards failed to recognize that as ensouled bodies (or embodied souls if you prefer) human beings cannot avoid forms. Christianity needs more than religious affections.

At some very basic level, physical existence requires that Christianity take external form, except in those very rare, and impossible to know, circumstances where the Spirit acts directly upon the human soul independently of external stimuli and physical existence after conversion. This kind of mystical experience may happen but it is not normal. The ordinary way that God saves is through the means of his word, read and preached, and visibly signified and sealed in the sacraments, with the enlivening work of the Spirit. In other words, God instituted forms to mediate grace through the external senses of the human body. Evangelicals implicitly recognize this whenever they publish books, set up preaching tours, arrange Christian Rock festivals, or print a new line of t-shirts. These evangelical forms mediate evangelical devotion. And they show that the original impulse of evangelicalism, to escape forms, is impossible.

The $64,000 question, then, is which are the right forms. Whatever the answer to the question, evangelicalism will always have a hard time maintaining an identity and keeping its children if it teaches adherents that their formal Christian activities are matters indifferent. If it doesn’t matter if you go to a Lutheran, Presbyterian or Baptist church to be an evangelical, then a time may (and possibly has) come when it doesn’t even matter if you go to church . In which case, evangelicalism would have achieved the ghost-like status of all spirit and no body.

Scott Clark Has a Point

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

(Or, show me your confessionalism!)

In Recovering the Reformed Confession, Scott Clark argues for and understanding of the Christian ministry and piety that informed the confessions of the Reformed churches pretty much all the way down to when Boy George (Whitefield) set foot in the North American British colonies. Among the points Clark makes is that the teachings affirmed and practices prescribed in the Reformed confessions are a better gauge of Reformed identity than the sort of zeal and experience that the likes of Whitefield encouraged and sought.

One way to test Clark’s argument is to ask by what measure do we evaluate a college that claims to be Protestant. Some who are sharply critical of Clark have recently faulted one of the leading evangelical institutions on two grounds: first, a majority of the faculty voted for Barack Obama; second, its teachers education program encourages students to embrace notions of tolerance and diversity that various secular state teachers’ agencies affirm, thus forcing Christian college education majors into a secular mold of “social justice.” (The same critics of Clark have faulted Covenant College for its faculty’s support for Obama in the 2008 presidential contest.)

What does not seem to matter in such evaluations is whether the college’s faculty are members or attend churches where the Reformed creeds are the confessional standard. In fact, one could well imagine a college qualifying as a flagship institution because it was consistently pro-Republican (as long as the pro-life plank of the platform was in place) and minimally doctrinal. If memory serves, this was exactly the kind of place that Wheaton College was before 1990. Culturally activist while doctrinally tolerant on dogmatic minutia is likely the ideal for Clark’s critics, meaning that creeds and confessions do not matter significantly when evaluating Christian higher education.

So why do such critics object if the confessionalist shoe does not fit? It isn’t an accusation of infidelity (though it has implications for this.) It is simply a question of definition: do the creeds inform the way you assess Christianity or do you have a different list of allegiances and personalities that in effect constitute your confession? If you are confessional you are going to evaluate Christian institutions and expressions on the basis of the creeds, as well as the health of the communions with which an institution affiliates. But if you are more inclined, in this case, to Whitefield and Edwards, you end up criticizing a school for its politics. In other words, pietism generates activism; while confessionalism nurtures perseverance.

Put another way, a confessional “world view” (as much as I hate the phrase) esteems the cult and the culture in inversely proportional relations. The higher one’s view of the creeds, the less one cares about politics. And the more one cares about culture, the less the creeds matter.

Makes sense to this confessionalist.