Tag: Richard Gaffin

Hiding Behind Kilts

Published on by D. G. Hart425 Comments

The release of the new book Merit and Moses, a critique of the republication doctrine (that the Mosaic covenant was “in some sense” a republication typologically of the covenant of works) got me thinking about a certain anomaly in contemporary Reformed circles regarding a certain Mr. Murray (his given name was John and he did not have the extra one of Courtney). The endorsements of this book show an arresting feature of the Westminster Seminary tradition and reception of Geerhardus Vos.

After Vos, his successors broke into two camps, one represented by Murray, the other by Meredith Kline, who took markedly different views of covenant theology. After Murray and Kline, came Norman Shepherd, Richard Gaffin, and Bob Strimple. They pretty much all sided with Murray against Kline on matters of moment. And then came VanDrunen, Horton, and Fesko. They followed Kline and have been taking their lumps ever since.

Generally speaking, the anti-republicationists are anti-Kline and pro-Murray. Here’s a sampling:

For the past thirty years, a shift in Reformed covenant theology has been percolating under the hot Southern California sun in Escondido. Atop the bluff of a former orange grove, a quiet redefinition of the Sinaitic covenant administration as a typological covenant of works, complete with meritorious obedience and meritorious reward has been ripening. The architect of this paradigm shift was the late Meredith G. Kline, who taught at Westminster Escondido (WSCal) for more than 20 years. Many of Kline’s colleagues, former students (several now teaching in Escondido) and admirers (Mark Karlberg, T. David Gordon, etc.) have canonized his novel reconstruction of the Mosaic covenant—it is “not of faith”, but of works and meritorious works at that, albeit ‘typological’. What may now be labeled the “Escondido Hermeneutic” or “Kline Works-Merit Paradigm” has succeeded in cornering an increasing share of the Reformed covenant market in spite of its revisionism and heterodoxy. This newfangled paradigm has managed to fly beneath the radar of most Reformed observers, in part because of the aggressively militant demeanor and rhetoric of its advocates and defenders. Especially vitriolic have been attacks by the Kline acolytes upon Norman Shepherd and Richard Gaffin. . . . (1)

While it is certainly true that Murray clearly and self-consciously broke with the majority of the Reformed tradition on several points of doctrine, his teaching on the nature of the obedience required in the Mosaic covenant was not one of them. In fact, a strong case can be made that his position on the essential nature of the obedience required in the Mosaic covenant represented the mainstream consensus of Reformed theologians. Furthermore, some of Murray’s key exegetical observations (which, incidentally, these authors simply pass over rather than critically engage) lend his thesis strong support. (63)

Now the endorsements for the anti-republicationist book:

“The doctrine of Republication has a Reformed pedigree. But in what sense? Recent understandings of Republication sometimes depart significantly from what one finds among Reformed theologians in the Post-Reformation periods. It is to the merit of these authors for dealing with this thorny issue by offering some important insights into the precise nature of the debate, such as discussions on merit and justice and the nature of typology. I hope all involved in the debate will give this book a careful and sympathetic reading—at least more careful and sympathetic than those who have publicly opposed Professor John Murray on this issue.”
—Mark Jones, Senior Minister, Faith Vancouver Presbyterian Church (PCA), Vancouver, BC

“I strongly recommend that everyone interested in the notion of Republication read the important book, Merit and Moses. By focusing on the guilt of every child of Adam and the only merit recognized by a holy God, the authors cut to the heart of Republication’s error. They show that to be the case by an insightful study of the Scriptures, of our most revered theologians—for example, John Murray, too often misunderstood and maligned by Republicationists—and of the Reformed confessions, showing that the doctrine of Republication cannot be harmonized with the teaching of the Westminster Standards.”
—Robert B. Strimple, President emeritus and Professor emeritus of Systematic Theology, Westminster Seminary California, Escondido, CA

“In recent years, a number of Reformed writers have advanced the claim that the Mosaic covenant or economy was in some sense a republication of the covenant of works. According to these writers, the Republication doctrine was a common emphasis in the history of Reformed theology, and even forms an important part of the basis for the biblical doctrine of justification. The authors of this volume present a clear and compelling case against this claim. Rather than a reaffirmation of a forgotten, integral feature of Reformed theology, the authors argue that the modern republication doctrine seems inconsistent with the historic Reformed understanding of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. A helpful contribution.”
—Cornelis P. Venema, President and Professor of Doctrinal Studies, Mid-America Reformed Seminary, Dyer, IN

“This volume addresses a relatively recent appearance of the view that the Mosaic covenant embodies a republication of the covenant of works, a view that in its distinctive emphasis is arguably without precedent in the history of Reformed theology—namely, that during the Mosaic era of the covenant of grace, in pointed antithesis to grace and saving faith in the promised Messiah, the law given to Israel at Sinai was to function pedagogically as a typological overlay of the covenant of works made with Adam, by which Israel’s retention of the land and temporal blessings were made dependent on maintaining a level of meritorious obedience (works), reduced in its demand to accommodate their sinfulness. A particular strength in my judgment is their showing that the abiding demands of God’s holiness preclude meritorious obedience that is anything less than perfect, and so the impossibility of a well-meant offer to sinners of the covenant of works in any sense.”
—Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology emeritus, Westminster Theological Seminary, Glenside, PA

Let the reader decide.

But also consider this. Mr. Murray was a strong proponent of exclusive psalmody, arguably the lone holdout of prominence in the OPC. And yet those who follow Murray on covenant theology are willing to argue quite decidedly against singing psalms only or even singing the imprecatory psalms (about which Murray had no qualms). Dick Gaffin recently wrote:

Among my continuing reservations about the Psalter-Hymnal project (March issue), here I’m only able to raise one concern about its commitment to total psalmody. The imprecations in Psalm 137, among others, have in view the Old Testament situation, when God’s covenant people were one nation, a single geopolitical entity (Israel), and their enemies were likewise ethnically and geopolitically defined (Babylon and Edom here). But now, after Christ’s finished work, that spiritual enmity, inseparably national, has ceased. Now the realization of God’s eternal saving purpose, anticipated throughout the Old Testament, is universal. His elect are no longer found only within Israel, but within every nation. Under the new covenant, the church is “in Babylon” (1 Peter 5:13) in a way it was not under the old: no longer are Jews in holy hostility towards non-Jews; now, in Christ, they are reconciled to each other (Eph. 2:11–22).

I recognize that the ethnic references like those in Psalm 137 are not only literal but also typological. Akin to the symbolic references to Babylon in Revelation, they point forward to the final destruction of the enemies of God’s people. Still, singing explicitly genocidal curses in public worship, without a whole lot of preparatory explanation (and perhaps even with that), risks leaving the impression that the congregation is calling on God for the large-scale destruction of people with Gentile ethnicity like most of us in the New Testament church. (20-21)

(Could there be some kind of ambivalence at work here with typological readings of the OT?)

So what I am wondering is what would happen to this argument against total psalmody if Orthodoxy Presbyterians knew it departed from Mr. Murray. I mean, if it is fair game to raise concerns about views that do not follow Murray’s reading of creation or the Mosaic covenant, why is that okay when it comes to Murray’s singing of David? Maybe the OPC needs to kick away the crutches, prepare for sacred cows to be wounded, and through delegated assemblies let word and Spirit do their work.

Suffer, Submit, and Suck It Up

Published on by D. G. Hart23 Comments

One of the interlocutors at this site suggested that neo-Calvinism and biblical theology of an amillennial variety go together well, and that no reasons existed for suggesting tension between someone like Geerhardus Vos and Abraham Kuyper. He linked to an essay that Richard B. Gaffin wrote on theonomy and claimed that Gaffin, a marked proponent of biblical theology in the Vosian tradition, was on board with neo-Calvinism. He even supplied a quotation from Gaffin that showed his neo-Calvinist bona fides:

It will not do simply to dismiss this chapter as the ramblings of someone who has be-
trayed his Reformed heritage—with its ennobling vision of life itself as religion and the whole of life to the glory of God—for an anemic, escapist Christianity of cultural surrender. Without question, the Great Commission continues fully in force, with its full cultural breadth, until Jesus returns; “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” is the mandate of the exalted Last Adam to the people of his new creation. We can not measure the limit of that “everything” and its implications; of it we can only confess with the Psalmist: “To all perfection I see a limit; but your commands are boundless” (119:96). That mandate, then, is bound to have a robust, leavening impact—one that will redirect every area of life and will transform not only individuals but, through them corporately (as the church), their cultures; it already has done so and will continue to do so, until Jesus comes.

Not to pick nits but when this comment referred to this paragraph as the concluding one in Gaffin’s essay I decided to take a look. In point of fact, Gaffin concludes that essay on a decidedly different note, one that fits the allegedly wimpy profile of 2k as opposed to those world-beaters, the neo-Calvinists. Here is what Gaffin wrote in his conclusion:

The comprehensive outlook found in the Book of Hebrews provides a fitting close to
these remarks. Two realities dominate the writer’s marvelous exposition of God’s eschatological, “last days” speech in his Son (1:2). The one reality is Jesus, the high priest in heaven (e.g., 4:14; 8:1). Fulfilling Psalm 110, the exalted Christ is “priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek” (e.g., 5:6; 6:10; 7:17); the New Testament contains no more impressive presentation of the realized eschatological dimension of his person and work than this.

But for whom is the exalted Christ high priest? Who is served by his sanctuary service (8:2) of eschatological intercession (7:25)? The answer to that question is the other reality in view—the church as a pilgrim congregation, a people in the wilderness. Utilizing a broad covenant-historical analogy, the writer compares the church between Christ’s exaltation and return to Israel in the desert (see esp. 3:7-4:11): just as the wilderness generation delivered from Egyptian bondage (picturing realized eschatology) had not yet entered Canaan (a picture of still future eschatology), so the New Testament church, presently enjoying a real experience of the salvation promised in the gospel, has not yet entered into the possession of that salvation in its final and unthreatened form (“God’s rest”).

Two basic perspectives emerge with these two realities. On the one hand, the writer’s realized eschatology leaves no room for a premil position: Once Jesus “has gone through the heavens” (4:14) and “has sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven” (8:1), his return for a provisional earthly rule, prior to the eternal heavenly order, would be retrograde for the writer, a step backward eschatologically. Christ’s return will be the return of the heavenly high priest, not the appearance of Christ temporarily exchanging heavenly ministry for earthly duties. That return will mean the appearance on earth of the heavenly order/sanctuary where Christ is “a high priest forever” (6:20), the manifestation on earth, without delay at his return, of the “heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22), the “lasting city” (13:14), the eternal “rest”-order (4:11).

But the writer is no less indisposed toward a postmil outlook: Until Christ returns the church remains a wilderness congregation; like the Patriarchs in the land of promise, believers are “aliens and strangers on earth” (11:13). That tension is an essential dimension of their identity — aliens in the creation that is theirs by right and whose eschatological restoration has already been secured for them by their high priest-king.

There is no “golden” age coming that is going to replace or even ameliorate these desert conditions of testing and suffering. No success of the gospel, however great, will bring the church into a position of earthly prosperity and dominion such that the wilderness with its persecutions and temptations will be eliminated or even marginalized. That would have to be the outcome if prosperity—understood, for instance, in the terms of Isaiah 65:17ff.—is to be at all meaningful. Such prosperity and blessing for the church are reserved until Christ returns.

The writer of Hebrews operates with a simple enough eschatological profile: the bodily absence of Christ means the church’s wilderness existence, his bodily presence, its entrance into God’s final rest. What he must confront in his readers is a perennial problem for the church, a primal temptation bound up with its wilderness existence: the veiledness, for the present, of messianic glory and the believer’s eschatological triumph; “at present we do not yet see everything subject to him” (Heb. 2:8), with the longing as well as the promise that “at present” holds for the church. All of us, then, are involved in a continuing struggle—against our deeply rooted eschatological impatience to tear away that veil and our undue haste to be out of the wilderness and see the realization of what, just because of that haste and impatience, will inevitably prove to be dreams and aspirations that are ill-considered and all too “fleshly.”

“For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14).

The point of this exercise is not to expose the error of an Old Life reader. It is to raise a question, though, about the way that 2kers and neo-Calvinists read. It strikes me that neo-Cal’s generally favor readings from texts that highlight a progressive and triumphant understanding of Reformed Protestantism’s effects upon the world. This extends to which passages of Scripture to highlight in exploring a believer’s identity as well as how to read the development of history and culture.

Abraham Kuyper established the model for this sort of reading when in his infamous Lectures on Calvinism he uttered inspirational prose such as the following:

The avoidance of the world has never been the Calvinistic mark, but the shibboleth of the Anabaptist. The specific, anabaptistical dogma of “avoidance” proves this. According to this dogma, the Anabaptists, announcing themselves as “saints,” were severed from the world They stood in opposition to it. They refused to take the oath; they abhorred all military service; they condemned the holding of public offices. Here already, they shaped a new world, in the midst of this world of sin, which however had nothing to do with this our present existence. They rejected all obligation and responsibility towards the old world, and they avoided it systematically, for fear of contamination, and contagion. But this is just what the Calvinist always disputed and denied. It is not true that there are two worlds, a bad one and a good, which are fitted into each other. It is one and the same person whom God created perfect and who afterwards fell, and became a sinner– and it is this same “ego” of the old sinner who is born again, and who enters into eternal life. So, also, it is one and the same world which once exhibited all the glory of Paradise, which was afterwards smitten with the curse, and which, since the Fall, is upheld by common grace; which has now been redeemed and saved by Christ, in its center, and which shall pass through the horror of the judgment into the state of glory. For this very reason the Calvinist cannot shut himself up in his church and abandon the world to its fate. He feels, rather, his high calling to push the development of this world to an even higher stage, and to do this in constant accordance with God’s ordinance, for the sake of God, upholding, in the midst of so much painful corruption, everything that is honorable, lovely, and of good report among men Therefore it is that we see in History (if I may be permitted to speak of my own ancestors) that scarcely had Calvinism been firmly established in the Netherlands for a quarter of a century when there was a rustling of life in all directions, and an indomitable energy was fermenting in every department of human activity, and their commerce and trade, their handicrafts and industry, their agriculture and horticulture, their art and science, flourished with a brilliancy previously unknown. and imparted a new impulse for an entirely new development of life, to the whole of Western Europe. (from Lecture 2)

2k proponents, in contrast, tend to take a more restrained even pessimistic view of Christian existence in this world. Believers have enough trouble overcoming sin in their own lives that taking on the entire world in a project of domination seems foolhardy and not the best use of spiritual resources.

This leaves 2k in a decided disadvantage with the Reformed rank-and-file. Neo-Cals can win people to their side because they are long on inspiration even if short on practical steps toward square-inch subjection. They can rally the faithful for all sorts of “yes, we can projects,” from taking back city hall to reclaiming the proper interpretation of the American or Dutch republics’ foundings. All 2kers can do is tell the faithful to cope; look to the Lord, count your blessings (name them square-inch by square-inch?), receive the means of grace, pray, and be faithful in your callings. This is not a project for changing the world. Most people – Reformed Protestants included – want to know “Can’t we do more!?!”

But if neo-Cals are better at inspiration, they are not so good at close reading. Not only do we fail to see in the New Testament exhortation for Christians to change the world, but we also read terms that 2kers are prone to use and neo-Cals to avoid. Peter and Paul refer to believers as strangers, aliens, and pilgrims. These are not the words that come to mind with neo-Calvinism. The mascot of neo-Cals is the crusader (retired recently by Wheaton College for obvious culturally insensitive reasons; but when have neo-Cals been sensitive to culture let alone people?)

But 2kers can take hope from the original Calvinist, John Calvin. He is hard to turn into a cultural transformer despite the efforts of Kuyper and H. Richard Niebuhr (has any neo-Cal ever asked why Kuyper’s reading of Calvinism is so similar to a liberal Protestant’s?). When you read Calvin you see the biblical themes of exile and pilgrimage. And when he comments on those favorite texts of cultural dominators, he is very short on the inspiration that typifies neo-Calvinism. Here are a couple of illustrations.

Calvin on Romans 8: 37 (“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”)

We do more than conquer, etc.; that is, we always struggle and emerge. I have retained the word used by Paul, though not commonly used by the Latins. It indeed sometimes happens that the faithful seem to succumb and to lie forlorn; and thus the Lord not only tries, but also humbles them. This issue is however given to them, — that they obtain the victory.

That they might at the same time remember whence this invincible power proceeds, he again repeats what he had said before: for he not only teaches us that God, because he loves us, supports us by his hand; but he also confirms the same truth by mentioning the love of ChristAnd this one sentence sufficiently proves, that the Apostle speaks not here of the fervency of that love which we have towards God, but of the paternal kindness of God and of Christ towards us, the assurance of which, being thoroughly fixed in our hearts, will always draw us from the gates of hell into the light of life, and will sufficiently avail for our support.

Calvin on 2 Cor. 10:5 (“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”)

And bring into captivity I am of opinion, that, having previously spoken more particularly of the conflict of spiritual armor, along with the hinderances that rise up in opposition to the gospel of Christ, he now, on the other hand, speaks of the ordinary preparation, by which men must be brought into subjection to him. For so long as we rest in our own judgment, and are wise in our own estimation, we are far from having made any approach to the doctrine of Christ. Hence we must set out with this, that he who is wise must become a fool, (1 Corinthians 3:18), that is, we must give up our own understanding, and renounce the wisdom of the flesh, and thus we must present our minds to Christ empty that he may fill them. Now the form of expression must be observed, when he says, that he brings every thought into captivity, for it is as though he had said, that the liberty of the human mind must be restrained and bridled, that it may not be wise, apart from the doctrine of Christ; and farther, that its audacity cannot be restrained by any other means, than by its being carried away, as it were, captive. Now it is by the guidance of the Spirit, that it is brought to allow itself to be placed under control, and remain in a voluntary captivity.

So the lesson for 2kers is the same lesson for all Christians: suffer, submit, and suck it up. But is contrary to such sucking to wish neo-Cals were better students of the Bible’s and Calvin’s assigned readings?)

Forensic Friday: You Say Klinean, I Say Repristination

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

In the current issue of the Westminster Theological Journal, William Evans from Esrkine College, has an article offering a taxonomy of the current debates over the doctrine of union. In the repristinationist wing he puts Westminster California. He even specifies that the revisionism of Shepherd and Federal Vision provoked the repristinationist effort. The other group in Evans’ taxonomy is the Biblical Theology wing of Vos, Murray, and Gaffin. Some of these distinctions among Shepherd/FV, WTS, and WSC seem a bit arbitrary since all sides claim to stand within the tradition of biblical theology (was anyone more biblical theological than Kline?). What does separate these groups is the way each wing positions itself in relationship to the past, with Shepherd/FV (Mark Horne’s ransacking of the 17th century notwithstanding) being the most novel, the Biblical Theological group extending back mainly to Vos (with a lot of use made of a particular section of Calvin) and the repristinators endeavoring to recover the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century categories for a stable theological program and church life.

Which leads to the way in which Evans characterizes Westminster California:

The overriding motive here is clear and laudable – safeguarding the Reformation doctrine of justification by grace through faith.

Here, first of all, we find a vigorous defense of the Law/Gospel hermeneutic. If salvation is to be truly gracious, then law and gospel must be distinguished. In contrast to the Revisionists, who view the Law/Gospel distinction as genetically Lutheran rather than Reformed, these figures stress the essential continuity of Lutherans and Reformed on this matter, although the attitude toward law is more positive than one finds among some Lutherans. For example, there is consistent affirmation of the “third use” of the law (i.e., the law of God as a guide for the life of the Christian).

Second, in keeping with this, there is vigorous defense of the conceptual apparatus of later federal orthodoxy, especially the bi-covenantal framework involving a Covenant of Works and a Covenant of Grace. The covenant of works as an instantiation of the law principles is viewed as an essential guarantor of the Law/Gospel distinction. Then, in order to underscore the gracious uniqueness of the New Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant is seen in part as a “republication” of the Covenant of Works. There is also defense of a pre-temporal intratrinitarian Covenant of Redemption or pactum salutis between the Father and the Son, which is viewed as providing a foundation for the Covenant of Grace in theology proper.

What is worth noting, aside from highlighting Evans’ piece, is the omission of the worn out canard that Westminster California is simply channeling Meredith Kline. In point of fact, WSC is trying, as Evans concedes, to hold on to the insights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Mike Horton mentioned recently, that sure puts those complaints about Westminster California’s radicalism in a different light.