Tag: Tim Keller

Act Two, Scene Two: Cheap Shot

Published on by D. G. Hart33 Comments

Actually, the title should be plural since in one of his first reviews of VanDrunen’s Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms Nelson Kloosterman decided to insert a [sic] after VanDrunen’s phrase, “the Reformed tradition of natural law and the two kingdoms.” Kloosterman explained, “Because we are in danger of annoying our readers, we shall now desist from using ‘[sic]’ [which abbreviates the Latin sicut, which means ‘thus’ or ‘such’] as our way of identifying the author’s repeated, persistent, and unqualified use of the definite article to identify his construal as ‘the’ Reformed natural law and two kingdoms doctrine.”

Aside from the small-mindedness among the Dutch-American Reformed when they hear of a “Reformed” tradition that does not follow their way of doing and thinking, this is a petty remark and reveals the lengths to which Kloosterman will go in condemning 2k. I wonder when he will mention the typos in the book (if there are any). To younger writers out there, these are the sort of criticisms that should be left on the editing floor and any good editor would have it deleted it on grounds of impropriety and triviality – improper because the level of disagreement is already high and this detracts from the main point; trivial because the use of a definite article is not essential to Kloosterman’s argument.

But the pettiness continues in Kloosterman’s most recent part of his review — I guess he is really going to go through VanDrunen chapter by chapter. (Kloosterman better be hoping that Harold Camping is wrong about the date of Christ’s return and that a significant theological controversy does not prompt the editors of Christian Renewal to reserve inches for more important business.) In this stage of his response to VanDrunen – specifically, the chapter on Calvin – Kloosterman faults the Westminster professor for poor scholarship. VanDrunen uses John Bolt’s discussion of Calvin’s Christology to make a point about the difference between Christ’s rule as mediator and as creator. But because Bolt uses Calvin’s Christology to affirm Kuyper and because VanDrunen — who hasn’t tipped his hand on his own use of Calvin — uses Calvin’s Christology to understand Calvin’s views of the two kingdoms (views for which Kloosterman cannot account), Kloosterman judges VanDrunen to be a poor academic. He writes:

Bolt’s own application of the Christological distinction is the very opposite of the use to which VanDrunen puts it in his NL2K discussion of Calvin! Surely readers deserve better scholarship than this!

Since Bolt’s application of Calvin was not the point of VanDrunen’s argument, I don’t see what is shoddy about this scholarship. It surely seems that Bolt takes the extra Calvinisticum in one direction — the Kuyperian one — and VanDrunen and Calvin take it in another direction, namely, to distinguish between the temporal and spiritual realms. VanDrunen is simply using Bolt’s language to explain the extra Calvinisticum, not to claim Bolt as a proponent of 2k. But since Kloosterman cannot tell the difference between a work of description — which is what VanDrunen’s book is — and one of prescription, he can’t see the different purposes to which an author may use a quotation. Talk about overexcited.

The problem for Kloosterman is that he exhibits the very impoverished academic work of which he accuses VanDrunen. This comes in his complaints against VanDrunen’s conception of the kingdom of God. Kloosterman believes that VanDrunen should have consulted creedal and catechetical material, and if he had, he would have found in the Heidelberg Catechism, for instance, no such distinction between the redemptive and creational rule of Christ. Mind you, the logic here is unclear since Kloosterman affirms the Kuyperian distinction between the church as organism and church as institute. This dualism, though, is a good one that disallows distinguishing between the rule of Christ inside and outside the church. Apparently, for Kloosterman, Christ rules everywhere and everything through the church, both as institute and as organism. He goes on to quote John Bolt to show that the purpose of the church is to restore the world to its creational, God-intended course – as if that could happen short of judgment day. This is another way in which the church is part of the means by which Christ rules all things.

But the point that needs to be underscored is Kloosterman’s poor reading of Heidelberg:

. . . the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Q/A 50, deals with the session of Jesus Christ: “Why is it added, And sitteth at the right hand of God? Because Christ ascended into heaven for this end, that He might there appear as Head of His Church, by whom the Father governs all things.” Surely in the history of interpretation, the church has understood this answer to acknowledge that God the Father rules all things through Jesus Christ, the incarnate, risen, and ascended Savior of the church! Especially the Scripture references undergirding this answer, Ephesians 1.20-23, Colossians 1.18, Matthew 28.18, and John 5.22, teach us that this confession of Jesus as Lord of all is eminently biblical.

Moreover, such royal activity accords with what we confess in Lord’s Day 12, Q/A 31, that Jesus Christ is our eternal King, who governs and defends us. To my knowledge, no interpreter of the Heidelberg has argued that the incarnate, risen, and ascended Jesus Christ is eternal King 9 of 11 of the church only. Rather, this incarnate, risen, and ascended Jesus Christ is eternal King of the universe!

Well, VanDrunen (nor does any 2k advocate) say that Christ is lord ONLY of the church. What kind of reading skills do Christian day schools teach (and do they give refunds)? What 2k advocates argue is a distinction between Christ’s lordship over those who do not confess him as lord, who do not bend the knee in worship, and those who do trust in Christ and are members of his church. That would appear to be an important difference – for instance, how Christ is lord of both Tim Keller and Tiger Woods. 2k teaches that Christ is lord of each man, but not in the same way. And the different rule is apparently what the very author of the Heidelberg Catechism had in mind when he explained the second petition of the Lord’s prayer in his commentary:

A kingdom in general is a form of civil government in which some one person possesses the chief power and authority, who, being possessed of greater and more excellent gifts and virtues than others, rules over all according to just, wholesome and certain laws by defending the good and punishing the wicked. The kingdom of God is that in which God alone rules and exercises dominion over all creatures; but especially does he govern and preserve the church. This kingdom is universal. The special kingdom of God that which he exercises in his church consists in sending the Son from the Father, from the very beginning of the world, that he might institute and preserve the ministry of the church, and accomplish his purposes by it that he might gather a church from the whole human race by his word and Spirit rule, preserve and defend it against all enemies raise it from death, and at length, having cast all enemies into everlasting condemnation, adorn it with heavenly glory, that God may be all in all, and be praised eternally by the church. (Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, pp. 632-33) [emphasis added for the reading impaired]

So contrary to Kloosterman’s claim that “we” know of no interpreter of Heidelberg who says that Christ is lord only of the church, I know of one author and interpreter of Heidelberg who does something very comparable to what Calvin does and what VanDrunen observes in Calvin. Surely, we could expect better theological scholarship than this.

And we find better theological scholarship in another Dutch-American Reformed theologian. Louis Berkhof follows Calvin and Ursinus in making a distinction between the universal lordship of Christ (Tiger Woods) and the special rule that he extends over his church (Tim Keller).

The Kingship of Christ over the universe is subservient to His spiritual kingship. It is incumbent on Christ, as the anointed King, to establish the spiritual kingdom of God, to govern it, and to protect it against all hostile forces. He must do this in a world which is under the power of sin and is bent onthwarting all spiritual endeavors. If that world were beyond His control, it might easily fustrate all His efforts. Therefore God invested Him with authority over it, so that he is able to control all powers and forces and movements in the world, and can thus secure a safe footing for His people in the world, and protect His own against all the powers of darkness. These cannot defeat His purposes, but are even constrained to serve them. Under the beneficent rule of Christ even the wrath of man is made to praise God. (Systematic Theology, pp. 410-11) [more emphasis added for neo-Calvinists]

Unless I missed something, Berkhof is talking about a rule by Christ that governs the works of all men outside the church (Tiger Woods) in such a way that nothing will ultimately harm those whom he governs as redeemer (Tim Keller). That sure sounds like a rule as creator that is universal rather than a rule as redeemer that is particular. After all, Tiger Woods does not know Christ as lord and redeemer (such as we can tell from the media). But Christ is still lord of him, the PGA, and Woods’ sponsors. That lordship is substantially different from Christ’s rule over Redeemer Presbyterian Church NYC (even if I wish that rule were a little more on the order of Reformed governance).

I don’t know why that is so hard to see. Calvin saw it. Ursinus saw it. Berkhof saw it. Kloosterman misses it. And that means that he is digging a deeper hole for himself the more he digs in against VanDrunen and 2k.

The Gates of Hell Won't, But Netflix Might

Published on by D. G. Hart70 Comments

I have recently been wondering what a dinner that included Tim Keller, John Piper, and Woody Allen might look like. This is not a major stretch since my apologetics paper for John Frame as a junior at Westminster was a dialogue between Woody and Corny (as in Cornelius Van Til). I can imagine that Keller would prepare by watching many of Allen’s movies so that he could present reasons for God. Piper might prepare by finding a way to confront Allen about his affairs with women and his current relationship with the daughter (adopted) of Allen’s ex-lover.

But what is most intriguing in this scenario (to me) is the possible interaction between Keller and Piper. Would the New York pastor feel awkward acknowledging to Piper his knowledge of Allen’s movies and their sexual content? Would Keller even have a glass of wine with the meal? And would Piper restrain some of his words to Allen because of Keller’s interest in reaching New Yorkers? Would Piper recommend that the three diners go to a cheaper restaurant to save money and avoid ostentation?

Piper’s recent remarks about what could break the “Gospel-Centered Movement” apart are partly responsible for these wonders about “Their Dinner with Woody.” As our New England correspondent usefully summarized the Minneapolis pastor’s remarks, five behaviors could undermine the Young Calvinist revival of the awe and majesty of God. They are:

1. The movies we watch
2. Big appetites for beer
3. The lure of pornography
4. The carelessly attended, weekend, default movie
5. Hip-huggers and plunging necklines

Justin Taylor, who posted the clip at his Gospel Coaltion blog, warned about rushing to judge Piper for his implicit judgmentalism. That warning is an indication itself that the Piper’s words could easily be misinterpreted and twisted, such as the idea that pornography and beer are equally threatening to holiness. But even with Taylor’s warning in mind, three anomalies haunt Piper’s remarks and Taylor’s publicizing of them.

First, Piper is clear that the majesty of God is at the heart of genuine Christian piety. Piper says around 2:30 of the clip that he is concerned about the disconnect between the majesty of God sung about in contemporary Christian music (I suppose much of it coming from Sovereign Grace sources), “that causes people to soar with an emotional euphoria about the greatness of God and the wires of the details of our practical daily lives.” That way of putting it implies that the problem is not simply the disconnect between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of his saints, but also the difference between an evangelical-styled beatific vision of God and human life on planet earth. Now Piper does go on to contrast holiness and wickedness. But he started that set of contrasts with one between a spiritual high of experiencing God’s majesty and the low of living with the ordinary aspects of human existence, an existence that even after the fall is not inherently wicked.

What makes this point potentially faulty – that is, the contrast between “desiring God” and “living an earthly existence” – is that the Bible itself does not necessarily cultivate an appetite for the kind of experience lauded by Piper. The saints of the Old Testament were not the most virtuous; not even the great King David could keep his hormones in the Bible. And yet God not only chose to include these strange bits of ancient near eastern culture in Scripture, but also to reveal himself and his salvation through them. Mind you, David is not an example of Christian living. But neither did the final editors of holy writ (whether Israelite redactors or the Holy Trinity) decide to remove him from the canon for fear of distracting believers from a vision and experience of the supremacy of God. Even in the New Testament, the stories of Jesus do not end with him leaving lasting impressions on people who in turn go off in search of soul-wrenching encounters with divine majesty. Instead, the gospels are filled with earthy stories about real life encounters between people who lived in ordinary circumstances under not so savory rulers and earthly powers. In which case, I wonder if Piper’s desire for God cultivates an appetite that even Scripture cannot fulfill because the contents of the Bible are more like Woody Allen’s movies than the worship songs Piper admires.

Second, I wonder if Piper’s concerns about beer and movies make the saints at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City uncomfortable. As reported in the Nicotine Theological Journal (July 2008), Redeemer Church has sponsored an adult version of Vacation Bible School that featured courses in wine tasting, New York Yankees baseball, and even Wagner’s operas. I myself am not sure why a church needs to sponsor such forms of continuing education. But Redeemer and Keller are on record about wanting to cultivate the arts and culture, which is why Keller would likely gear up for and enjoy a dinner with Woody Allen. That also means that the saints at Redeemer church would not necessarily be comfortable with the cultural horizons of the Gospel Coalition if Piper were in charge of setting its event calendar. That also means that culture, engaging it, transforming it, and redeeming it, is a potentially divisive topic for two of the top allies in the Gospel Coalition. In which case, it’s not hip huggers or plunging necklines but rival forms of experimental Calvinism that could split the Gospel Coalition portion of the Gospel-Centered movement.

Third, I wonder why beer, movies, or piety would be more divisive for gospel believers than the sacraments. I may sound like a broken record, but the Gospel Coalition is comprised at least of Baptists and Presbyterians. Some of the Coalition’s Baptists have even said that the practice of infant baptism is a sin. This reaction to differences over baptism seem to be much more honorable and honest than simply ignoring the teachings and practices of the communions from which the Co-Allies come for the sake of a gospel-centered movement. After all, Lutherans and Reformed Protestants are in different communions precisely because Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli believed that a Gospel-Centered movement like the Reformation extended to the means of grace, those very ordinances by which God confirms and seals the gospel.

Piper’s remarks are several years old and so passed without breaking up the Gospel Coalition. But they do suggest that the Coalition’s unity could unravel as quickly as the Dude can mix a Caucasian or in the time it takes young Calvinists to discover the delights of the Coen Brothers.

If the Gospel Coalition Embraces It, Will 2k Lose Its Edge?

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

One of the smarter moves by 2k proponents was David VanDrunen’s to publish his sequel to Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms with Crossway, the firm with the most direct ties to the Gospel Coalition, thanks to Justin Taylor’s footprint in both organizations. So far 2k has come into print through outlier publishers, such as Jason Stellman’s Dual Citizens with Reformation Trust, an up-and-comer but not yet on a par with the Grand Rapids and Wheaton publishers; VanDrunen first published his Biblical Case for Natural Law with the Acton Institute and then his book on two kingdoms with Eerdmans – a publisher no longer regarded by sideline Presbyterians as safely orthodox; in my own case, I went to the independent trade publisher, Ivan R. Dee to produce A Secular Faith. With Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, VanDrunen has put 2k theology, with all of its initial oddities and counter-biblicist notions, squarely before the Tim-Keller loving, and John-Piper convicting masses.

Will 2k ever be the same?

Early returns suggest, yes. Here are a few of the responses to Taylor’s recent post on VanDrunen’s latest:

I’ve read VanDrunen’s book and I am surprised that you came to such positive conclusions about it. He makes a few valuable critiques of those who disagree with him, but the overall thrust of his thesis is, quite frankly, unbiblical. His exegesis is shoddy and he makes very dramatic assumptions about his theology’s continuity with historical figures. VanDrunen’s (and to a greater extent, D.G. Hart’s) iteration of two-kingdom theology does not cooperate well with Augustine’s, Calvin’s, or even Luther’s understanding of the Church’s call in the world. Reading this book can be valuable for a number of reasons, but please exercise careful discernment and wisdom before taking his claims too seriously.

John Frame’s book review on his prior book seems to suggest VanDrunen’s 2 kingdom view is unbiblical. I am thinking this book might be a waste of time.

I’m not sure which is worse. Unbiblical or waste of time. But acquiring a taste for 2k will clearly take some work.

I don’t actually believe VanDrunen will be visiting a Gospel Coalition conference soon as a plenary speaker. His arguments about “redeeming culture” and the nature of redemption will not go down easily with word-and-deed-based ministries or churches in pursuit of social justice (no matter how generous). But he has moved 2k from the sidelines to a seat at the mainstream born-again Baptyterian table. Maybe this book will turn out to be as momentous as the original Super Bowl, which brought the AFL and the NFL together for an annual game that led to the joining-and-receiving of leagues that had been previously at odds. Maybe too, in reverse of professional football’s expansion, VanDrunen’s sighting on the Gospel Coalition’s radar will prompt the allies in the Gospel Coalition to go back to church on Sunday evenings for a second service.

Social Gospel Coalition

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

I have sometimes wondered if the appeal of organizations like the Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, Acts 29 Network, Redeemer Global Network, Desiring God, and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is their extremely chummy atmosphere. At the various blogs of these outfits, the posts are usually flattering of the other participants in the organization. If criticism comes, it is always as a punchline to a joke. Readers must conclude that only a fool would disagree with anything written at these blogs.

This makes parachurch organizations very different from the church where officers at synods and assemblies need to be on their toes and prepared to be challenged. A General Assembly is not a love-fest, though the sorts of activities that take place there are loving in the way that changing the oil in your Chevy is a form of care. Granted, I have never been to one of these organizations’ conferences (except for the initial launch of ACE in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1996). But the feel of these association from their blogs is one of encouragement, uplift, inspiration, earnestness, and occasional comic relief. You wouldn’t know from reading these cites that a Christian could actually grow through discouragement, criticism, and rebuke. (When will someone start the Iron-Sharpening-Iron Fellowship of Evangelical Whiners?) (Update: Justin Taylor may have the clue on the lack of criticism among the allies of the gospel.)

To Kevin DeYoung’s credit, he did take a modest swipe at one of the Gospel Coalition’s constituencies and, because members are not used to disagreement, he caused a minor imbroglio. DeYoung’s original comments came at a Desiring God National Conference about the difference between “mission” and “missional,” and later became part of a video and a post at the Gospel Coalition’s blog. What DeYoung had the temerity to do was suggest that social justice and neighbor love were not the same as building the kingdom of Christ. Word and Deeders from the Acts 29 Network took a measure of umbrage and DeYoung wrote a second post, trying to clarify and while sidestepping toes. He doesn’t want churches to abandon the social aspects of missional. He simply wants the proclamation of the gospel to be the basis for all the church does.

Most recently DeYoung interviewed Tim Keller on his new book on justice and even asked the New York pastor if he had misconstrued the relationship between word and deed. Keller’s response was to affirm an asymmetrical relationship. Keller said:

. . . the first thing I need to tell people when they come to church is “believe in Jesus,” not “do justice.” Why? Because first, believing in Jesus meets a more radical need and second, because if they don’t believe in Jesus they won’t have that gospel-motivation to do justice that I talk about in the book. So there’s a priority there. On the other hand, for a church to not constantly disciple its people to “do justice” would be utterly wrong, because it is an important part of God’s will. I’m calling for an ‘asymmetrical balance’ here. It seems to me that some churches try to “load in” doing justice as if it is equally important as believing in Jesus, but others, in fear of falling into the social gospel, do not preach or disciple their people to do justice at all. Both are wrong. A Biblical church should be highly evangelistic yet known for its commitment to the poor of the city.

Never mind if your church happens to be in the suburbs or the country. Move on to the next blog in your Google Reader account.

Now the confounding aspect of DeYoung’s valuable even if timid point about the priority of word to deed and Keller’s notion of an asymmetrical relations that prioritizes the gospel over justice is that nowhere does the Bible say that the church is supposed to do justice. Of course, a distinction may need to be made between the church as Christians and the institutional church, and I believe Keller needs to make this one the way contestants on “Wheel of Fortune” often buy vowels. But with that distinction in mind, where does Scripture talk about the corporate church as an agent of social justice or social anything? (Warning: if you appeal to the Old Testament you are entering a world of theonomic pain.)

Jesus and the apostles did not engage in social justice. Paul’s instructions to Timothy about preaching did not include telling Christians to do justice. In fact, the New Testament call to submit to rulers and to live quiet and peaceable lives is not the basis for social justice Sunday or word and deed ministry.

And what happens when we look at the creeds of the Reformed churches – nothing on the church as an instrument of social work? It is all about redemption 24/1.

Article 29 of the Belgic Confession says:

The true church can be recognized if it has the following marks: The church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel; it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them; it practices church discipline for correcting faults. In short, it governs itself according to the pure Word of God, rejecting all things contrary to it and holding Jesus Christ as the only Head. By these marks one can be assured of recognizing the true church– and no one ought to be separated from it.

Because of the centrality of word and sacrament in establishing the kingdom of Christ, the Second Helvetic Confession (ch. 18) describes the duties of ministers without mentioning social justice:

The duties of ministers are various; yet for the most part they are restricted to two, in which all the rest are comprehended: to the teaching of the Gospel of Christ, and to the proper administration of the sacraments. For it is the duty of the ministers to gather together an assembly for worship in which to expound God’s Word and to apply the whole doctrine to the care and use of the Church, so that what is taught may benefit the hearers and edify the faithful. It falls to ministers, I say, to teach the ignorant, and to exhort; and to urge the idlers and lingerers to make progress in the way of the Lord. Moreover, they are to comfort and to strengthen the fainthearted, and to arm them against the manifold temptations of Satan; to rebuke offenders; to recall the erring into the way; to raise the fallen; to convince the gainsayers to drive the wolf away from the sheepfold of the Lord; to rebuke wickedness and wicked men wisely and severely; not to wink at nor to pass over great wickedness.

And, besides, they are to administer the sacraments, and to commend the right use of them, and to prepare all men by wholesome doctrine to receive them; to preserve the faithful in a holy unity; and to check schisms; to catechize the unlearned, to commend the needs of the poor to the Church, to visit, instruct, and keep in the way of life the sick and those afflicted with various temptations. In addition, they are to attend to public prayers or supplications in times of need, together with common fasting, that is, a holy abstinence; and as diligently as possible to see to everything that pertains to the tranquility, peace and welfare of the churches.

The word-and-sacrament character of the church is also part and parcel of the Gallican Confession:

27. Nevertheless we believe that it is important to discern with care and prudence which is the true Church, for this title has been much abused. We say, then, according to the Word of God, that it is the company of the faithful who agree to follow his Word, and the pure religion which it teaches; who advance in it all their lives, growing and becoming more confirmed in the fear of God according as they feel the want of growing and pressing onward. Even although they strive continually, they can have no hope save in the remission of their sins. Nevertheless we do not deny that among the faithful there may be hypocrites and reprobates, but their wickedness can not destroy the title of the Church.

28. In this belief we declare that, properly speaking, there can be no Church where the Word of God is not received, nor profession made of subjection to it, nor use of the sacraments.

Notable here is that social justice is neither a mark of the church nor of the Christian person.

One last example comes from the Westminster Confession of Faith which describes the purpose of the church without mentioning society, economics, or politics – at all:

Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and doth, by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto. (25.3)

I understand that the confessions do mention the poor as part of the diaconal work of the church, and I also understand that this is the crack through which most conservative Presbyterians will pour every conceivable faith-based humanitarian project. But diaconal work in a state-church environment is a very different animal in a secular society environment where the state has BILLIONS of dollars ready for the poor. Of course, if no one were attending to needs of the homeless, the hungry, widows, and orphans, then the church conceivably could step in and even extend diaconal care to non-believers. But unless I missed the federal government adopt a Weight Watchers regimen, I’ll need to be convinced that the church can match the modern state for social justice output.

Diaconal work aside, the conviction of the Reformed churches has always been that the church is a spiritual institution with spiritual means for spiritual ends. New School Presbyterians came along and tried to conceive of the church in activist terms. But the Old School Presbyterians shot back with the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, and the related teachings of the marks of the church and the keys of the kingdom. All those Presbyterians – Tim Keller included – who owe their conservatism to the Old School tradition as taught at Old Princeton, reiterated at Old Westminster, and carried into the OPC and the RPCES precincts of the PCA really need to be clear that the institutional church has no mandate from Scripture for social endeavors or activism. They may want to side with the New School. But then they will really need to explain how the contemporary asymmetrical relationship of word and deed will not turn out differently from the asymmetrical relationship maintained briefly during the nineteenth century by Union and Auburn Seminaries before blossoming into doctrine (word) divides but ministry (deed) unites.

Hey, wait a minute, that bloom may already be on the rose of interdenominational parachurch ministries where words about sacraments matter less than ministries about deeds.

How Tim Keller Reasons

Published on by D. G. Hart233 Comments

John Piper has a new book on thinking that I wonder if Tim Keller has read. (Do the celebrity figures of organizations like the Gospel Coalition have enough time, apart from their own writing, speaking, and travel to read the work of each other?) The reason for wondering is a tendency that Keller exhibits in many of the pieces I have read – namely, to avoid extremes in favor of a middle way. You don’t need to be Barry Goldwater, the guy who said “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” to know that both-and solutions are often impossible. To keep the Lord’s Day holy you need to avoid work on Sunday (for starters). You don’t work a little, rest some, and work a bit. And to honor your Reformed convictions, you don’t cooperate in ministries with Arminians. You can’t have the five points of Dort and the four points of the Remonstrants. You can’t ordain men only and have deaconesses. Sometimes the truths you profess require a choice.

But Keller does not seem to like being confined to either-or’s and he also apparently thinks that many of the errors in church history stem precisely from binary situations. His foreword to a new book by former Bush administration staffers on Christianity and politics (posted at the Gospel Coalition blog) exhibits precisely the tendency to identify extremism and run to the other side – but only so far, of course.

Here is Keller’s take on H. Richard Niebuhr:

In the mid-twentieth-century, H. Richard Niebuhr wrote his classic Christ and Culture, which helped mainline Christian churches think through ways to relate faith to politics. In the end, Niebuhr came down on the side of universalism, the view that ultimately God is working to improve things through all kinds of religions and political movements. The result of his work was to lead mainline Protestant churches to become uncritical supporters of a liberal political agenda (though Niebuhr himself opposed such a move).

Now, as the recent Pew Forum poll indicated, most Americans do not know their nation’s church history that well and Keller should not be faulted for getting Niebuhr wrong. At the time that the older brother of Reinhold wrote Christ and Culture, mainline Protestants were firmly in the Republican fold and also very bullish on maintaining a Christian America and a Christian world order. After all, H. Richard’s brother was a prominent supporter of the Cold War and one of the architects of anti-communist foreign policy in the Eisenhower administration was the Presbyterian, John Foster Dulles. In fact, the folks in the orbit of Union Seminary (NYC) were so bullish on a Christian America that their rhetoric foreshadowed that of Jerry Fallwell some thirty years later.

In which case, if Keller is going to use history to avoid its mistakes, he should try to avoid mistaken readings of history.

But this is not Keller’s only appeal to history. He goes on in the foreword to answer the objections of evangelicals who say that politics is “a distraction, that we should concentrate fully on the only important things—the defense of orthodox doctrine and the evangelism of the world.” I wish I knew of such evangelicals. I doubt Keller comes across many of them in New York and you can’t even find them at Bob Jones University these days where Keller’s rhetoric of transformationalism has more appeal that the school’s former fundamentalist denunciations of worldliness. Still, to counter the fundamentalist argument, Keller appeals to the errors of history:

. . . as the authors point out, in 1930s Germany, a faulty understanding of how Christianity relates to the political contributed to the disaster of Nazism, which in turn meant the loss of the German Lutheran Church’s credibility, evangelistic witness, and even orthodoxy. Something similar happened in South Africa, where an orthodox Reformed theology, invoking the views of Abraham Kuyper, created a civil religion that supported apartheid, and as a consequence has suffered incalculable loss to its standing in the eyes of the people. Ironically, the Lutherans followed a two-kingdom approach to Christ and culture, in which Christians are not to bring their faith into politics, while Reformed Christianity has been characterized by a view that Christians are supposed to transform culture. Both approaches, when not applied thoughtfully and wisely, have led to cultural, political, and ultimately spiritual disaster.

Several oddities stand out in this historical judgment. Just how many Americans after fighting a war against Germany twenty years earlier were sitting by their wireless, waiting to hear what the Lutheran Churches in Germany were saying about anything, let alone National Socialism? Lutherans never had a lot of credibility with Anglo-American Protestants, not even the American Lutheran communions.

But even odder about the assessment of Lutherans is the juxtaposition with Kuyperians. Keller does well to remember that the political failings of Protestants have been not simply on the Lutheran side. Reformed Protestants have to answer for their own performance.

And yet, Keller’s conclusion does not follow. He says that Lutherans lost their credibility for National Socialism and Dutch-African Reformed for apartheid. And yet, where has Kuyper lost any credibility with American Protestants – even Keller himself – who still rally under the banner of “every square inch”? In other words, if the German churches’ acquiescence to Hitler makes 2k theology suspect, why doesn’t neo-Calvinist support for apartheid make Kuyperianism suspect? And yet, it is the Kuyperian-flavored transformationalism that Keller himself consumes and that also accounts for some of the more vigorous critiques of 2k.

So instead of trying to avoid the errors of the past, perhaps Keller and others who appeal to history for directions in the present should understand that the past is complicated, its actors flawed, and that bad things happen to good causes. 2k theology did not create Hitler any more than neo-Calvinism is responsible for apartheid. History has no single causes. History also yields no consequences that disprove ideas. If Keller wants to argue against 2k theology or fundamentalist otherworldliness, fine. But guilt-by-association is not a good form of thinking. I suspect that even Piper agrees.

How Can We Make the Pagans Conform to Our Rules When We Won’t Play By Our Rules?

Published on by D. G. Hart49 Comments

I have made this point several times, but I think it bears repeating. Evangelicals and cultural transformers spend a lot (inordinate, in my estimation) telling the wider culture how it needs to follow God’s law. Much of this activity happens during the ordinary days of the week. When James Dobson calls for a Justice Sunday or some such, it also happens on the faithful’s lone holiday.

But when many evangelicals and culture transformers gather for worship (or for church business – namely, ordination, instruction of the youth, Bible studies, etc.) they do not do as they say – they don’t follow God’s word but they follow their own rules. An obvious example is contemporary worship led by non-ordained church members. Another example is the Reformed or Presbyterian congregation that follows the praise & worship methods of charismatics and Pentecostals. Such Reformed Christians are awfully serious about husbands and wives respecting their marriage vows. Do they actually worry about the vows their pastors and elders make to uphold Reformed teaching and practice?

I wrote these paragraphs even before reading a juicy example of this very inconsistency at the blog of the Brothers Bayly. Pastors Tim and David are apparently big fans of contemporary Christian music in public worship. I cannot tell what their services are like entirely but I have seen clips of worship bands in their services and have followed links to the Good Shepherd Band’s page at Myspace. (Church of the Good Shepherd, by the way, is the name of Pastor Tim’s congregation in Bloomington, In.) So readers of their blog naturally receive the sense that services in the Baylys’ congregations is up-tempo.

The Baylys left no one to wonder about their worship preferences when this past week they posted a piece in which they divided the world between the effeminate traditionalists/classicalists and the manly singers and performers of contemporary Christian music. In particular, Tim faults Reformed Protestantism for simply being a stop on the ladder of upward mobility:

The Wesleyan or Southern Baptist moves up to Presbyterian. And there in his new Presbyterian church, our convert finds the accoutrements of his new social class wonderfully reassuring. It’s the church’s zip code, the minister’s Genevan gown or collar, the frequent repetition of those peaceful words ‘providence’ and ‘sovereignty,’ the high priority placed on the education of the congregation’s Covenant children, the preacher’s thoughtful message and splendid vocabulary, and of course the high classical style of music.

Musical style is simply an expression of socio-economic status. Could the Marxists teaching down the road at Indiana University have said it any better? This led to remarks, one part anti-intellectual, one part anti-elitist (and therefore egalitarian), that contrasted the snobbery of Reformed upper-middle classness with the poor and uneducated apostles whom Christ turned into fishers of men. “ Our converts don’t take pride in the foolishness of the Cross,” Tim writes, “so much as the wisdom of Calvin and their senior pastor’s earned doctorate from somewhere across the pond.”

This standard leftist cultural analysis in turn led to a brief on behalf of contemporary Christian music:

Speaking specifically of the music of our worship, Reformed pastors would do well to consider whether it isn’t time to stop despising the musical vernacular of our own day. There may be some congregations where musical archaisms have put down such deep roots that it would split the church to turn the clock forward, embracing the musical vernacular. But I’m betting use of the amplified instruments, tunes, and vocabulary of the common man in worship won’t happen in most of our Reformed churches for the same reason preaching against the heresy of egalitarian feminism doesn’t happen. Elisabeth Elliot put it well some years back when she said the problem with the church today is that “it’s filled with emasculated men who can’t bring themselves to say ‘no’ to a woman.”

Thus, when we set the musical forms and instrumentation of our other six days a week beside the musical forms and instrumentation of our Sunday worship, we find our Sunday worship to be cloyingly feminine, an historic specimen best suited to be trotted out by the curator for occasional museum exhibits.

So important is the fork in the liturgical road prompted by contemporary Christian music that Tim thinks fidelity to the gospel is at stake:

We must stop trying to kill two birds with one stone. Either we seek to make men into disciples of this Jesus Who chose tax collectors and fishermen to be His Apostles, or we make men into disciples of these archaic liturgies and exquisite musical forms that have evolved across centuries of Western culture. Yes, they’re true and good and beautiful. But what is the cost of making them the focus of our churches’ culture?

Somehow, the Baylys think the only alternatives are the praise band or the robed (see, they really are effeminate) four-part choir accompanied by an organ. They don’t seem to know or allow for the cultural idiom between high-brow and mass culture which is folk or common. (Ken Myers is brilliant on this point in his book, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes.) And if Reformed have a folk culture certainly one part of it psalm singing (another is the high-carb, low ruffage, pot luck supper). As Shaker furniture can well teach us, simplicity and order can reveal treasures of great beauty, and clearly the Reformed are on the side of decency and order and should be seeking simplicity.

But what may be most troubling about the Bayly post is how much they imitate the academic left that they believe has led the culture astray. The Baylys reduce culture to socio-economic and gender categories. They are as egalitarian and radical as the lefties they oppose. And just as these sorts of arguments have ruined the study of the liberal arts in universities and colleges, so they are also responsible for ruining our churches and undermining any credibility about the church as pilgrim people set apart from the world. In fact, if you see the embarrassing antics of worship leaders and praise bands you have all reasons you need for Keller’s arguments for using professional musicians in services. Again, the choice isn’t between the dudes and the pro’s; the psalter or hymnal accompanied by one instrument or sung acapella depends neither on the failed rock star or the conservatory student.

Which leads to the following excerpt from a piece written fifteen years ago that still seems as fresh as it was then pungent:

Why is it, then, that when evangelicals retreat from the public square into their houses of worship they manifest the same hostility to tradition, intellectual standards, and good taste they find so deplorable in their opponents in the culture wars? Anyone familiar with the so-called “Praise & Worship” phenomenon (so named, supposedly, to remind participants of what they are doing) would be hard pressed to identify these believers as the party of memory or the defenders of cultural conservatism. P&W has become the dominant mode of expression within evangelical churches, from conservative Presbyterian denominations to low church independent congregations. What characterizes this “style” of worship is the praise song (“four words, three notes and two hours”) with its mantra-like repetition of phrases from Scripture, displayed on an overhead projector or video monitors (for those churches with bigger budgets), and accompanied by the standard pieces in a rock band.

Gone are the hymnals which keep the faithful in touch with previous generations of saints. They have been abandoned, in many cases, because they are filled with music and texts considered too boring, too doctrinal, and too restrained. What boomers and busters need instead, according to the liturgy of P&W, are a steady diet of religious ballads most of which date from the 1970s, the decade of disco, leisure suits, and long hair. Gone too are the traditional elements of Protestant worship, the invocation,confession of sins, the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the doxology, and the Gloria Patri. Again, these elements are not sufficiently celebrative or “dynamic,” the favorite word used to describe the new worship. And while P&W has retained the talking head in the sermon, probably the most boring element of Protestant worship, the substance of much preaching turns out to be more therapeutic than theological.

Of course, evangelicals are not the only ones guilty of abandoning the treasures of historic Protestant worship. Various churches in the ELCA and Missouri Synod have begun to experiment with contemporary worship. The traditionalists in Reformed circles, if the periodical Reformed Worship, is any indication, have also begun to incorporate P&W in their services. And Roman Catholics, one of the genuine conservative constituencies throughout American history, have contributed to the mix with the now infamous guitar and polka mass. Yet, judging on the basis of worship practices, evangelicals look the most hypocritical. For six days a week they trumpet traditional values and the heritage of the West, but on Sunday they turn out to be the most novel. Indeed, the patterns of worship that prevail in most evangelical congregations suggest that these Protestants are no more interested in tradition than their arch-enemies in the academy.

A variety of factors, many of which stem from developments in post-1960s American popular culture, unite evangelicalism and the cultural left. In both movements, we see a form of anti-elitism that questions any distinction between good and bad (or even not so good), or between what is appropriate and inappropriate. Professors of literature have long been saying that the traditional literary canon was the product, or better, the social construction of a particular period in intellectual life which preserved the hegemony of white men, but which had no intrinsic merit. In other words, because aesthetic and intellectual standards turn out to be means of sustaining power, there is no legitimate criteria for including some works and excluding others.

The same sort of logic can be found across the country at week-night worship planning committee meetings. It is virtually impossible to make the case — without having your hearers go glassy-eyed — that “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” is a better text and tune than “Shine, Jesus, Shine,” and, therefore, that the former is fitting for corporate worship while the latter should remain confined to Christian radio. In the case of evangelicals, the inability to make distinctions between good and bad poetry and music does not stem so much from political ideology (though it ends up abetting the cause) as from the deeply ingrained instinct that worship is simply a matter of evangelism. Thus, in order to reach the unchurched the churched have to use the former’s idiom and style. What is wrong with this picture?

The traditionalists are of no help here. Rather than trying to hold the line on what is appropriate and good in worship, most of those who are devoted full-time to thinking about liturgy and worship, the doorkeepers of the sanctuary as it were, have generally adopted a “united-colors-of-Benetton” approach to the challenge of contemporary worship. For instance, a recent editorial in a Reformed publication says that the old ways — the patterns which used Buxtehude rather than Bill Gaither, “Immortal, Invisible” rather than “Do Lord,” a Genevan gown instead of a polo shirt — have turned out to be too restrictive. Churches need to expand their worship “repertoire.” The older predilection was “white, European, adult, classical, with a strong resonance from the traditional concert hall.” But this was merely a preference and reflection of a specific “education, socio-economic status, ethnic background, and personality.” Heaven forbid that anyone should appear to be so elitist. For the traditional “worship idiom” can become “too refined, cultured, and bloodless. . . too arrogant.” Instead, we need to encourage the rainbow coalition — “of old and young, men and women, red and yellow, black and white, classical and contemporary.” And the reason for this need of diversity? It is simply because worship is the reflection of socio-economic status and culture. Gone is any conviction that one liturgy is better than another because it conforms to revealed truth and the order of creation, or that one order of worship is more appropriate than another for the theology which a congregation or denomination confesses. Worship, like food or clothes, is merely a matter of taste. Thus the logic of multi-culturalism has infected even those concerned to preserve traditional liturgy.

The Baylys would have us believe that 2k and the spirituality of the church are responsible for moving the church in radical and liberal directions. As Tom McGinnis would say, “Are you kidding me!?”

Moderation Coalition

Published on by D. G. Hart28 Comments

Is it just me, or has a pattern emerged among the leaders of the Gospel Coalition – namely, to regard Reformed Protestants as extreme?

First, Ray Ortlund compared TR’s to the Judaizers in Paul’s Galatia.

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.

Then came Tim Keller who riffed on Martin Lloyd Jones to warn against what Reformed Protestants are known for – arguing about doctrine:

However, whenever Lloyd-Jones takes up the importance of doctrine, he always points out that there is a danger on the other extreme. He speaks of some Christians and says “There is nothing they delight in more than arguing about theology” and they do this in “a party spirit” (p. 24). One of the signs of this group is that they are either dry and theoretical in their preaching, or they can be caustic and angry. They have “lost their tempers, forgetting that by so doing they were denying the very doctrine which they claimed to believe” (p. 24). In short, ministers who go to this extreme destroy the effectiveness of their preaching. What is the cause of this? Lloyd-Jones answers that they have made accurate doctrine an end in itself, instead of a means to honor God and grow in Christ-likeness. “Doctrine must never be considered in and of itself. Scripture must never be divorced from life” (p. 25).

And now John Piper warns against the tendencies of pride among the Reformed.

Reformed people tend to be thoughtful. That is, they come to the Bible and they want to use their minds to make sense of it. The best of them want to make sense of all of the Bible and do not pick and choose saying, “I don’t like that verse. That sounds like an Arminian verse, so we will set it aside.” No! Fix your brain, don’t fix the Bible.

The kind of person that is prone to systematize and fit things together, like me, is wired dangerously to begin to idolize the system. I don’t want to go here too much, because I think the whiplash starts to swing the other direction, and we minimize the system, thinking, and doctrine to the degree that we start to lose a foothold in the Bible. . . .

Hanging on with the danger I am speaking of is pride—a certain species of pride. There are many species of pride, and this is just one of them. You can call it intellectualism. There is also emotionalism, but that isn’t the danger we are talking about right now. Intellectualism is a species of pride, because we begin to prize our abilities to interpret the Bible over the God of the Bible or the Bible itself.

This is a strange tendency with the Gospel Coalition since in the evangelical world, GC draws much more from the Reformed than the Wesleyan side of adherents. The only explanation can be that hanging around with Reformed-leaning types the way that Ortlund, Keller, and Piper do, they apparently do not want to be confused with the mean, proud, or idolatrous type of Reformed Protestant. This explanation gains plausibility when you consider that Lutherans and Dispensationalists are not too shabby when it comes to doctrine and intellectualism. And yet, no one seems to bring these Protestants up, even though the United States has many more Lutherans and Dispensationalists than it does Reformed Protestants. (Compare the enrollment at Dallas Seminary to both Westminsters, or membership in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod to the PCA and the OPC combined!!!)

What is bothersome about this constant refrain of “Reformed meanies” is the failure of Ortlund, Keller, and Piper to acknowledge that the Reformed faith came to these men and their libraries (not to mention their communions in the case of Keller), not through avoiding extremes but by way of contending militantly for the faith. If we didn’t have belligerents like Bullinger, Ursinus, Knox, Erskine, Hodge, or Van Til, we would not have a Reformed faith from which to draw, no matter how moderately we try to do it. And the reverse is also true: when Reformed Protestants are not militant, that faith withers and eventually dies.

In which case, when will the Gospel Coalition folks understand that moderation leads to equivocation?

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.

The Corporate Gullibility of the Church

Published on by D. G. Hart20 Comments

Call it harmonic divergence, but I couldn’t help but read the transcript Tim Keller’s remarks on “gospel ecosystems” in the light of J. Gresham Machen’s remarks about the corporate responsibility of the church. I happened to be teaching on the latter during adult Sunday school and reading the former after a holy day feast and the evening service. Maybe reading Keller and Machen in such close proximity is unfair to both men, but odd combinations like this regularly come with the turf of contemporary conservative Presbyterianism in the United States.

For those uninitiated, Keller’s notion of a gospel eco-system is an infelicitous (because it presumes scientific status just like Charles Finney’s New Measures) way of describing the sort of church planting efforts in which Redeemer Presbyterian Church is engaged (yes, by now it should go without saying) in New York City. According to Keller:

. . . an ecosystem is a dynamic balanced set of forces and energies that grow each other. Now the question I want to talk to you about today, is how do you start a gospel movement in your city, or how can you see a gospel movement develop in your city? . . . .

A gospel movement is this: a gospel movement happens in a city when across churches, across multiple denominations and networks, and beyond any one key leader or any one command center, or any one denomination, you actually have the body of Christ in the city geometrically growing, not just reconfiguring. The vast majority of what we consider, you know, “good things happening in that city,” is a reconfiguration of the body of Christ, not an actual growth of the body of Christ against the overall population. When the body of Christ is growing from 1% to 5% to 10% of the population, because its growing faster than the population, its actually growing.

Machen’s notion of corporate witness of the church refers to the obligations that everyone within a communion (especially one with presbyterian connections) has for anyone, like Keller or Machen, who preaches on the basis of the communion’s approval. He wrote:

The corporate witness-bearing of the Presbyterian church is carried on especially through the pulpit. Under Presbyterian law, no man can permanently occupy a pulpit of the church without the church’s endorsement; the preacher therefore speaks not only for himself, but for the church. That does not mean that the church seeks to impose any beliefs upon any man simply on the ground that they are beliefs of the church; it does not mean that there is the slightest interference with the right of private judgment. But it means that if a man is to speak in a Presbyterian pulpit, and obtain the endorsement which is involved in that position, he must be in agreement with the message for which the propagation of which the church, in accordance with its constitution, plainly exists.

The obvious implication for Keller’s gospel ecosystem is that all members of the PCA (along with those in churches that have fraternal relations with the PCA) are responsible for Keller’s ideas and practice. Of course, if his scheme is desirable and faithful, then everyone in the PCA gets to bask in the positive contribution of Redeemer New York. At the same, if Keller’s proposal is undesirable and unfaithful, then for starters members of the PCA have an obligation to walk Keller away from the ledge of this flawed measures.

Several reasons exist for questioning Keller’s idea of gospel ecosystem. At the level of Reformed theology and church polity, Keller’s notion of participating with non-Reformed churches in a church planting effort runs directly up against the problem of Calvinists cooperating with Arminians in evangelism and discipleship. It also conflicts with any notion of jure divino Presbyterianism, that is the idea that presbyterian polity is revealed in Scripture as the way to govern the church and oversee its ministry of word and sacrament. Nor is it entirely clear how Keller’s form of cooperation squares with the rules governing the PCA’s fraternal relations.

But while these concerns are part and parcel of an oldlife church-and-life view, Keller’s talk raises additional questions about the wisdom of those who apparently think the New York City pastor is the guy who hung the moon on contemporary Reformed ministry. His argument fails at any number of points and raises the possibility that those who find his arguments compelling have the same kind of critical skills as those who insist upon a young earth (despite the speed of light and the age of planets) or who believe in a Christian America (while still holding to liberty and justice for Jews, Mormons, and unbelievers). For when you look even in a cursory manner at Keller’s idea and supporting reflections, you wonder why the PCA would take the idea of developing gospel eco-systems sufficiently seriously to include them in a strategic plan and potentially devote human and financial resources to it.

1) Why would anyone heed a pastor with ideas about urban life if they were at all familiar with the history of cities, schools of urban planning, and the politics and economics that drive modern American urban centers? At the same time, why should anyone take my complaining about Keller’s lack of expertise on urban life seriously since I am also without street cred as an urban theorist? This is a fair question but skeptics of me would then need to be skeptical about Keller’s claims to read the tea leaves of urban life.
I would feel a whole lot better about Keller’s assertions about cities if he referred to names I do know about, like Jane Jacobs who singlehandedly saved neighborhoods in New York City from awful urban design, or Howard Kunstler who has argued repeatedly and voraciously against the suburbanization of the United States, or fellows at the Manhattan Institute who regularly comment on all sorts of aspects of New York’s public policies and institutions.

I’d feel even more comfortable if I thought that Keller had once rented and viewed the entire HBO series, The Wire, which may be bleak but offers a remarkably realistic assessment of the factors at play in modern American cities, circumstances that pose real barriers to church planting for starters and ultimately to urban redemption (if the salvation of non-human realities were possible).

2) Why use the metaphor of ecosystem when the Bible already provides an organic and less lethal metaphor? According to Keller, an ecosystem is “where you have a set of forces that sustain each other, interact with each other, stimulate each other. So organism A eats organism B, and it’s a good thing for organism C, because if organism B’s numbers weren’t tamped down, organism C wouldn’t exist because organism B eats C. And, organism A eats C, which means, if there wasn’t enough organism C there wouldn’t be any organisms A, but because they are all eating each other, because they are all, you might say, in a sense sustaining each other, you’ve got an ecosystem.” He glides pretty effortlessly from this organism-eat-organism world into a vision of churches in a city where they are cooperating to plant churches and gain new converts, and usher in a world of Protestant harmony. Keller prefers ecosystem to a denominational pattern where Christians simply circulate among different denominations depending on the stage of their spiritual life.

But an ecosystem would actually call for Presbyterians to eat Pentecostals who would eat Baptists who in turn would eat Lutherans, with these different denominational groups living with the others simply as necessary food for existence.

A better organic model, of course, is the body of Christ. I guess it would be less attractive than ecosystem because it might mean that Presbyterians are the brain and Pentecostals are the soul. But at least a body would be less Darwinian.

2a) How can an ecosystem be a movement? An ecosystem is a biological concept, a movement is a sociological category, and yet Keller has no trouble using the imagery of ecosystem as the basis for a movement. Maybe I am bound too much by academic categories, but I think church planters would have much more to learn from sociologists than from biologists when it comes to the place of congregations in a city. At the same time, I am not persuaded that describing Christianity as a movement is all that valuable. Movements, sociologically speaking, connote people who come together for certain political or economic ends. To speak of a Christian movement raises the specter – look out! – of the Religious Right.

3) Is New York City really comparable to a prison? I know many Americans would answer yes given the city’s reputation for worldliness and economic elitism. But when Keller speaks of a “city tipping point” and uses the experience of Prison Fellowship as an example, I’m not sure he thought through the potential problem:

what Chuck Colsen says, that there’s a, that when more than 10% of the population of a prison get involved in Christian ministries, get converted or get involved Christian ministries, he says that before that 10% place, obviously people’s lives are being changed, but you don’t seen much different in this prison, the prison doesn’t look any different than any other prison. But when you get to a certain spot where, there’s maybe 10%, its not a science, its not wooden, but there’s a spot at which the whole prison begins to change. The relationships between the guards and the prisoners begins to change, the culture of the prison begins to change, and even the look of the prison begins to change. And we also know it’s the same thing with neighborhoods, by the way.

Actually, I think sociologists and political scientists might be in a better position than a man who is working on sermons all week to say with certainty what happens in neighborhoods when populations change. But how will New Yorkers feel when they hear that a neighborhood in their city is like a prison population before ten percent of its residents become a Christian? The answer is probably the way they would feel if they ever talked to my fundamentalist parents about the desirability of living in the city.

3a) Will New York become like Wheaton, Illinois if Keller is succeeds?

The reason for asking is that Wheaton is actually a city – it really is a city according Illinois’ calculations – with a population of roughly 56,000. The city also has 63 churches, which ranks as one of the highest level of churches per capita in any American city. That sounds like Wheaton might qualify as a gospel ecosystem.

If so, does Keller’s vision for New York City involve turning the Big Apple into a Mid-western city of middle class and evangelical Protestant sensibilities? That would not be the worst thing. Having spent four years in the evangelical Jerusalem, I can vouch for Wheaton’s charms. At the same time, my preference is for the grit, grime, crime, and headaches of a big city because with those circumstances come the arts, universities, cultural experimentation, major league sports, and hustle and bustle.

In which case, would New York City have the hipness that makes Redeemer NYC attractive to Gen Xers in the PCA if it hosted a gospel ecosystem? Or would New York become as white-bred as a community like Wheaton, with its stability, standards, and restraint? I am not sure, though, how you hold on to urban chic while being evangelically earnest is a mystery. Maybe New York would turn into Omaha or Minneapolis. Then, would Redeemer NYC be cutting edge?

These questions do not exhaust my problems with Keller’s talk. Granted, it was only a talk and not an academic paper. But if the PCA is going to adopt the language of gospel ecosystem in its plan for missions, should Presbyterian Church in Americans ask for the fine print and supporting studies? Wouldn’t even common sense say that what works in New York City won’t fly in St. Louis or Atlanta? So if members of the PCA won’t fulfill the responsibilities that come with the corporate witness of the church, are they prepared to bear the burend of corporate gullibility?

Yet, if the PCA follows Keller, it won’t be the first time that Presbyterians have put evangelism ahead of theology and polity. New Siders did that in Keller’s region a long time ago when they believed that Presbyterian doctrines and church government had little to do with the Great Commission. So it wouldn’t be the first time in church history that a church — especially in New York City — was Presbyterian in name only. But if these guys are the smartest ones in NAPARC, they should be able to see through the holes in Keller’s strategy.

Where’s Waldo Wednesday: Has WTS Been Liberated from Its Westminster Captivity?

Published on by D. G. Hart30 Comments


This post from a professor at Regent University’s School of Divinity deserves more interaction for what it says about evangelicalism. But for now the following excerpt is worth pondering for ongoing considerations about union with Christ. What is particularly noteworthy, from this oldlifer’s perspective, is how much WTS during the era of union hegemony, has actually embraced many of the qualities to which this charismatic blogger calls evangelicals more generally:

So, if the “New Calvinism” becomes a way of recovering the Reformed emphasis on conversion as an experientially-driven encounter and this, in turn, allows for the on-going role of the charismatic, then I am all for it. Such emphases will allow for greater continuity between Reformed and Wesleyan branches of the evangelical movement rather than continually reviving the antagonism of Old Princeton/Westminster. It is time that evangelicalism, and particularly its Reformed wing, freed itself from its Westminster captivity and begin to recover the notion that the gospel is the wonder-working power of God to alter the interior landscape of the heart, to heal diseases, to liberate from all forms of sin, and to usher in the gifts of the kingdom. When juridical models dominate, their emphasis on legal exchanges occurring in a heavenly court obscures the living reality that regeneration, sanctification, and the charismatic life are. Let the renewal begin.

Biblical counseling at WTS has the concern for the “interior landscape of the heart” covered, the word and deed model of ministry promoted by Tim Keller suggests ways in which Presbyterians pursue the wonder-working power of God in liberating people “from all forms of sin,” and the elevation of union in WTS soteriology has put regeneration and sanctification on a par with the forensic element in salvation. In fact, the emphasis on union, with its concomitant stress on the resurrection and the work of the Holy Spirit in the renovation of the human heart, should warm the spirit-filled soul of this Regent professor. Still, I wonder if he needs to replace his Rolodex on neo-evangelicalism with the Blackberry on contemporary Presbyterianism.