The last couple of posts on confessional formulation and subscription have generated some interesting discussion (at least to me).

It has been suggested that one way to deal with doubt about what is confessed is to change what is confessed. That makes sense. After all, if we take the pains to put into writing what it is we believe—and by extension what we reject—it should go without saying that what is put down is actually believed. If we come to seriously doubt what we wrote then it should be changed. But until such time it makes little sense to take exception, all the while maintaining that those outside the parameters of confessional Reformed orthodoxy (e.g. Catholics or evangelicals) are outside the pale. In other words, why can we object but they can’t?

Granted, changing confessional formulation is hard, as it should be. Another, easier way to deal with doubt is to go the way of a certain CRC task force. Because office bearers sometimes misunderstand what signing the form means, Synod 2005 called for a revision of the form’s language to clarify its meaning. However, the task force assigned to this project exceeded their mandate by proposing a document that appears to be a replacement of the traditional form, rather than a clarified or simplified form. They came up with something called the “Covenant of Ordination.” Departing from the historic language of the Form of Subscription, it goes like this:

We the undersigned office bearers of the CRCNA heartily accept the authority of the Word of God as received in the inspired Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which reveal the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ, namely the reconciliation of all things in him.

We accept the historic confessions: the Belgic Confessions, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort, as well as Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony, as faithful expressions of the church’s understanding of the gospel for its time and place, which define our tradition and continue to guide us today.

We promise with thankfulness for these expressions of faith to be shaped by them in our various callings: preaching, teaching, writing, and serving. We further promise to continually review them in the light of our understanding of Scriptures. Should we any time become convinced that our understanding of the gospel as revealed in the Scriptures has become irreconcilable to the witness of the church as expressed in the above documents, we will communicate our views to the church according to the prescribed procedures and promise to submit to its judgment.

We do this so that the church will remain faithful to, grow in understanding of, and be diligent in living out this witness in all of life to the glory of God.

From my experience in broad evangelicalism, my guess would be that most evangelicals would read this as a much better formulation than the older Form of Subscription, that relic of an entrenched past.  Many evangelicals like much of what the forms have to say, but this business of being bound to them irritates modern sensibilities. That is, they have a high opinion of the forms but not a high view.

It has been my opinion that efforts like the Covenant of Ordination reflect an ongoing trajectory toward a broad evangelical posture in relation to confessional formulation and subscription—guiding helps instead of binding authorities. I don’t think I’ve been completely alone in this regard. Whatever else is involved here, one of the interesting things in all of this is how the older forms are much more tolerant of the doubt that always resides in the human heart. That may seem counter-intuitive, given the stout nature of the language in the older forms. But that is the very nature of true Christian faith itself, namely to have an infallible assurance in the midst of doubt. Indeed, doubt is a necessary aspect of true faith as it is set over against sight. Whereas lower views, such as those reflected in the Covenant of Ordination, seem to suggest being ill-at-ease with doubt. So much so that the counter-intutive posture of an infallible assurance in older forms needs to be scaled back in order to make room for what is more comfortable and intuitive, namely sight.

Guess who wrote these (all in the same book, same chapter):

Updated below

We think so much of spiritual growth in terms of our personal relationship with Jesus Christ and very rarely consciously associate that with our relatedness to the body of Christ—not only those who are now living but those who have gone before us and who will come after us. The Reformers did make that connection. That is why they affirmed the ancient creeds, and that is why the Protestant churches drafted confessions of faith and officially adopted catechisms for the training of the young in the great truths of Scripture.

Many intend a high view of Scripture when they insist that it is a manual for life, but, in fact, treating the Bible as a manual ends up leading to a low view of Scripture by trivializing the message. We have auto manuals, cookbooks, and self-help guides for an endless spectrum of activities. What we do not have, besides the Bible, is an infallible self-revelation from God telling us how we, being sinners, can be reconciled to a holy God. There is a great deal that we can learn from philosophers, scientists, physicians, lawyers, artists, and other professionals that we cannot find in the Bible, and there is no reason to expect Scripture to answer questions that can be addressed by common sense, creativity, and education, whether the author is a believer or not. But psychology, sociology, marketing, politics, and all other secular disciplines have to take a backseat when we are forming our views of God, ourselves, and the meaning of life and history, salvation, and the nature, purpose, and methods of church growth, worship and evangelism.

There is no easier way to walk through the main points of Scripture than by reading through a Protestant catechism. We are all confessing our faith; we are all interpreting the main points. Our confessional interpretation does not take away from Scripture’s sufficiency but presupposes it. So all we are saying here is that this confession and interpretation of Scripture must take place corporately. We are part of the body of Christ, and none of us is qualified to interpret Scripture by ourselves.

If you find this one easy, then tell me what book they’re in.

UPDATE

I recently inherited a portion my father’s library and this book published in 1996 was included. It was a collaboration with some great contributions from Robert Godfrey, Robert Strimple, Gary Johnson, R.C. Sproul and others. The 5th and final section is called, Responding to the Crisis and it contains one chapter called, Recovering the Plumb Line written by Michael Horton. It’s the popular Horton we all know and love.

The title seemed to be outdated from the start as the crisis was more current than coming.

Differences between traditionalists and fundamentalists were evident as early as the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1923…At the 1923 assembly, true to his form in national elections, the statesman [William Jennings Bryan] ran and lost as a candidate for moderator. Despite defeat, Bryan managed to bring two proposals to the floor. He won support for a resolution endorsing total abstinence from alcoholic beverages, but his motion to prohibit the teaching of evolution in Presbyterian schools yielded only a watered-down motion that instructed churches to withhold approval from institutions that taught a “materialistic evolutionary philosophy of life.” Machen, whose views on prohibition and evolution differed from Bryan’s, was not at all pleased by the populist’s efforts…

Although Bryan and Machen were perceived to be on the same side, their concerns were distinct. Many of Bryan’s efforts actually failed to win the support of Presbyterian traditionalists. Bryan, like fundamentalists more generally, believed America should be a Christian society and so worked to purge liberalism from the nation’s schools and churches. In contrast, Machen, like Presbyterian traditionalists, sought to preserve Presbyterian theology and church practice, and limited his efforts against liberalism to the ecclesiastical sphere. Although Bryan was not a premillennialist, his desire to preserve Christian civilization resembled popular fundamentalism in that he thought the institutional church was at best indifferent and at worst detrimental to spreading of the gospel. Bryan minimized doctrinal and denominational differences and conceived of Christianity as a sure means to improve society. Fundamentalist concerns about secularism in American society ran counter to the narrowly ecclesiastical and confessional aims of Presbyterian traditionalists. Rather than linking Machen to Bryan, a better parallel to Presbyterian traditionalism was the contemporaneous effort in Canada by Presbyterian conservatives who in 1925 refused to join the United Church of Canada and formed their own denomination to preserve Presbyterian faith and practice.

D.G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America

Or to make a popular TV analogy, fundamentalism is to traditionalism what jihad-watching neo-conservatism is to institutional-oriented paleo-conservatism. It is what Jack Bauer is to Jack McCoy. One wears the latest fashions and carries synthetic man-bag, the other a suit and a well-worn leather suitcase. One thinks pious Muslims are suspect and to be feared, the other that they make fantastic neighbors. One is a self-assured government agent who drinks Red-Bull before saving the world, the other a worldly-wise district attorney who absently takes Scotch in his office to celebrate a win he’s not sure makes him feel good. One has a father who owns a for-profit company, the other had an old man who was a beat cop of Irish-Catholic descent.  One is young, the other not-so-much.

Jack McCoy says things like, “You’ll thank me one day, Mike, for yanking your leash. I just wish someone had been there to yank mine,” and Jack Bauer says things like, “Dammit!”

Chapter twelve of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s “Until Justice and Peace Embrace” is entitled, “The Tragedy of Liturgy in Protestantism.”  With plenty to otherwise unpack, I was particularly struck by the following:

“When one looks at the actions that constitute the liturgy of the church, one sees that they comprise two different directions, two different orientations. Some are actions directed toward us: God addresses us and we are the recipients. There are the actions of proclamation, central to which are of course the reading of the Scriptures and the preaching of the sermon. But there are also actions directed toward God: We address God and God is the recipient. These are the actions of worship in the true sense. The Christian liturgy is an interchange between actions of proclamation and the actions of worship.

“Even a brief glance at the history of the Christian liturgy makes clear how difficult it has been for the church to hold these two directions in balance. The Roman and Orthodox traditions have historically found it difficult to give due weight to the dimension of God’s addressing us in judgment and grace—in short, to proclamation. The Protestant tradition has historically found it difficult to give due weight to the dimension of our addressing God in love and devotion—in short, to worship. Of course no liturgy has ever been entirely one or the other. Yet liturgies do differ profoundly in their emphases; and the tragedy of liturgy in Protestantism—and particularly in the Reformed tradition—is that the worship dimension is suppressed, sometimes radically so. The liturgy is no longer ‘Eucharistic,’ and a fundamental dimension of the life of the church and of the existence of the Christian is thereby stunted.

“…What naturally results from the diminution of the worship dimension in liturgy is that incredible starkness so characteristic of much of Protestant liturgy and its setting. So little of the multifaceted richness of our humanity is here manifest! So many renunciations! Here words rule all. What also results from the suppression of the worship dimension of liturgy is seriousness, a sobriety, an absence of joy that is contrary to the spirit of the divine rest and the people’s liberation that we are intended to echo. When proclamation overwhelms worship in the liturgy, then I think we must expect joy to be diminished.”

Wolterstorff puts into words here an impression I have always had myself yet unable to articulate. I think he begins to help make the distinction between simple worship and simplistic worship.

Simplicity is surely something coveted in the Reformed tradition, and for good reason. But is simplicity really the same as simplistic, stripped down and bare? When did we get it into our collective Protestant heads that liturgy had to make the choice between proclamation and worship, with the former winning out? How did we get to that place where we see the liturgy as virtually negligible to proclamation, with all that precedes the sermon to be a rising action to it and all that follows a gentle denouement? Is the sermon really the climax instead of the center (with sacrament as climax)? How did we become so…low?

When I have visited Reformed or Presbyterian churches with what I consider exquisite Reformed liturgies that also include the regular means of grace called the Lord’s Table, I have always found them to be at once simple and yet quite rich—not simplistic, stark or bleak. The Gospel seems both purely preached and administered. The liturgy in these places are intensely dialogical, the worshipers jealous to do the work of the service and not leaving any aspect of it to any cordoned off group or individual; its regard is properly sober yet balanced with expectant hope and joy. They all seem to grasp what it means to balance proclamation and worship in Reformed liturgy. This seems over against so much of those who claim even the faintest ancestry to Reformed Protestantism which impress as bare-bones. Some have called it the difference between three-to-five songs and a lecture and integral liturgy. The former is antiseptic, clinical and mechanical; the latter is organic, primal and seminal.

I am sure causes as to this relative inability to balance proclamation and worship are quite fraught, with the bamboozling of revivalism serving no small role as culprit. But I have seen that it can be done in Reformed and Presbyterian circles, despite whatever lies in our history that militates against it. Not only should praise go to these churchly and properly confessional and Protestant expressions which prove that proclamation and worship can characterize in an age so dead set against it, but a burden should be felt by those too lazy or otherwise unmoved—and I daresay irresponsible—to recognize what duty therein lies for any bold enough to claim a confessional Protestantism.

…That the old Presbyterian faith, into which I was born, was based throughout on the idea of covenant family religion, church membership by God’s holy act of baptism, and following this a regular catechetical training of the young, with direct reference to their coming to the Lord’s Table…the system was churchly, as holding the Church in her visible character to be the medium of salvation for her baptized children in the sense of that memorable declaration of Calvin (Inst 4.1.4) where, speaking of her title, Mother, he says: “There is no other entrance into life, save as she may conceive in her womb, give us birth, nourish us from her breasts, and embrace us in her loving care to the end.”

John Williamson Nevin, My Own Life, The Early Years.

In any household, there is the question of the perpetuation of that which identifies the core of the household. A family passes down its particulars to its descendants. What makes us who we are up one side and down the other is largely inherited. And whatever isn’t effortlessly inherited is deliberately engendered.

When it comes to the Christian faith, the confessional Reformed ethic, once again, differs from the evangelical one. Where the evangelical ethic seeks to perpetuate the faith by bringing outsiders into the fold, the confessional one emphasizes the mini-congregation within the congregation. Where the evangelical ethic looks to seek those who are “afar off,” the confessional one looks to live births, namely the covenant family. It is not that the evangelical has no consciousness toward his children, or that the confessionalist places no value on missions or evangelism. While how each does those respective activities differs (i.e. Reformed do evangelism differently than the evangelical), it is also worth noting that the question of emphasis is also a distinguishing mark. In a word, where the evangelical emphasizes “afar off” evangelism, the confessionalist practices the catechism of covenant children.

The pull for the confessionalist to “do better” in his evangelism is more a push by the evangelical ethic upon him, wholesale. It is typical for the confessionalist to be made to feel somehow inferior, but really he should not. He is not an evangelical. Just as it would be unrealistic for the confessionalist to expect the evangelical to adopt his emphasis, it is equally unrealistic for the evangelical to expect the confessionalist to turn his attention primarily outward instead of nurturing his own. Yet, it is often not the evangelical who feels relatively ashamed of his inability to catechize his children so much as it is the confessionalist who senses the need to hand out just as many Bibles to the natives and be as obsessed with “growth” and “numbers.”

It is, after all, the evangelical ethic that fuels much of the mega-church phenomenon being compelled to behave more like a conference center that “packs ‘em in” than a church nurturing souls. Very often, I have found, the Reformed are accused of not being particularly strong when it comes to evangelism. This is usually laid at the doorstep of our Calvinism or the very idea that “God saves sinners,” the doctrines of election or predestination, etc. This, I think, is a great miscalculation on the part of the evangelical. Still greater, and even more pathetic I might add, is the confessional acquiescence to the idea and subsequent efforts to behave more “evangelically.” I am not beyond admitting that Reformed confessionalism can lend itself to a less-than adequate purview on evangelism. But, at the same time, I think that once it gets to this stage one is really beginning to deal with forms of hyper-Calvinism or other errant forms of determinism over against sound and biblical Calvinism.

No, our perceived “weakness” with regard to evangelism really comes from a skewed understanding not only of our Calvinism but also a misunderstanding of the confessional ethic of an inherited faith, a covenant theology that informs us that the faith is one handed down more than it is propagated amongst the outside world. But it is not a weakness if we truly understand this dimension of a confessional tradition, one that is increasingly eaten alive by the surrounding evangelical ethic. That it is perceived as a weakness really is to reveal an underlying Evangelical assumption, which is itself informed by an individualism and set of assumptions about what it means to perpetuate the faith. Look around any church of any tradition, including Evangelical, and the evangelical ethic simply falls apart. Most heads in pews are there because they have indeed inherited the faith of their forbears. Most are, in point of fact, not made up of converts from outside the group. Just as covenant theology itself acknowledges the realities of near-eastern phenomenon of treaties and applies them to the understanding of cultic truth and praxis, the confessional ethic in this way mirrors what is true in natural or cultural life: belief systems are primarily handed down from within, inherited, perpetuated by younger generations that begin by mimicking the elder and then internalizing that system through a natural human process of maturation.

The confessionalist understands this about the order of things and applies it to his system of faith. For my confessional money, I would much rather be about the business of molding young souls that are naturally designed to mimic and internalize in the privacy of my own home and church than err on the side of making myself a nuisance to those who couldn’t care any less and over whom I have absolutely no jurisdiction. Granted, it has its obstacles (does any parental duty not?), but I tend to find I have much more success six days a week with those malleable souls given to me for such a task than always looking to legitimate my secular vocations by seeing how many times I can force any given situation for an in-road toward awkward personal evangelism.

With this in mind, I think we might begin to ask whether what we do to answer the questions pertaining to the perpetuation of faith seem more evangelical (outward bound) or confessional (inward bound)? Are we as congregations assuming much too much about just how the faith is handed down while evangelistic efforts keep getting more and more ramped up? Do we intuit that the promise is less for “you and your children” and really more for those that “are far off”? We should be wary of the American impulse to say both, which can be at once an unrealistic and frenzied drive to “be all things to all people” or a lazy answer designed to merely bark out an ideal response when we all know it is impossible. Just as in most secular life issues, we must all make choices and create emphasis when we do sacred life. The evangelical ethic places its emphasis on those that are far off and makes no apology for it; they should not be begrudged and only congratulated on being consistent.

In the same way, confessionalists should feel no shame in also taking a side and being consistent, since we have historically done just that. We should resist the push to be evangelical in this way, seek and recover the lost art of being true confessionalists.

Here  (Sermon Audio- download or stream) is a sermon on Jude 3 from my pastor. In it he argues that our confessions are examples of “contending earnestly for the faith.”

More sermons here if you’re interested.

The Outhouse has added another sitter to the roll. If you haven’t tossed around Nick Mackison’s Restless and Reforming you might think about it. He reminds me of what it was like all those years ago coming to the Reformation from the impoverished glitz and glamour.

Many evangelicals in recovery veer off the Durham Trail toward the little town of Geneva like The Clampits rattled toward Beverly Hills. Some ironically never really make it yet think they have arrived (read: Young, Restless and Reformed, the past tense is key here). Others, like Nick, tend to conceive of themselves as yet on a trajectory and are unsure they know what they are doing and so forth. These are the birds who are more arrived than they think (maybe a little more ways to go for good measure). One sign is that they aren’t quite as sure of that reality, while the Neo-Reformed come off as emperors without clothes.

I liked one recent post of his (“Pentecostal Subversive Slavery”) in which he wonders about how Pentecostalism has crept into Reformed environs. All good stuff. But I think it might be worth pointing out that certain gestures and acts of worship in the stated service are actually perfectly legitimate, so long as we are all doing them at the same time and at the right time. I recall my wife asking me once what I thought of the young man in our church who does the “waist high hand raise” during the benediction (don’t go too high, you know, because this is a Dutch Reformed church). I said I had absolutely no problem with it. She looked aghast, lost that there had to be some sort of catch. So I followed up by saying that the problem, to my mind, is actually that not everybody else is doing it along with him. Since my Kuyperians love transforming things, I’d transform his outburst into a legitimate gesture of worship by having us all do it and even raising our hands much higher than his weak move.

Apologies, though, to would-be revivalists. Unlike sitting, standing, bowing, upraised hands and even kneeling–all of which can be found in the Bible–peanut gallery gestures like weeping, swaying, barking, “Ayymenning!” and eye-rolling–all of which cannot be so located–are very hard to get everyone in-sync on, so they’re out.

A good read on this is With Reverence and Awe.

Outhouse saint D.G. Hart has finally gotten jiggy-with-it despite his purported techno phobia. I have updated where he is to be found these days along the side bar. But basically it is right here. Thanks to the HB for letting us all know.

Being something of one of his many modern incarnations, it is little wonder John Piper gushes as he does over George Whitefield.  Oh! the tempatations celebrity affords. Apparently, popularity really is important. Me and my silly admonitions to my children to avoid, as the kids call it, “the cliques” on the playground.

However unintended, the post here does give me another title to my nurture-your-inner-confessionalist reading list:

“Harry Stout, professor of history at Yale, is not as sure about the purity of Whitefield’s motives as Sarah Edwards was. His biography, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitfield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism, is the most sustained piece of historical cynicism I have ever read. In the first 100 pages of this book, I wrote the word cynical in the margin 70 times.”

If Stout’s work is the most sustained piece of historical cynicism Piper has ever read then I wonder if his sketch here could be said to be one of the most sustained pieces of religious naiveté ever written. After all, as I read Piper’s thumbnail I wrote the word naïve, well, I lost count. But I don’t think it was a nice, round number like Piper’s.

While many cheers arise as Internet Monk pronounces Dispensational-esque doom on the future of evangelicalism, I keep asking myself what I think is an obvious question: If evangelicalism is going down for the final plunge, why does Spencer yet hold? It is something I can never fathom about evangelicals and their -ism.  To their relative credit, they see so much that is wrong. Yet they cling like Obama’s bitter Pennsylvanians to firearms and faith. As a former (never-really-convince-in-the-first-place-closet-Calvinist) evangelical-turned-confessionalist, I am not sure it even exists. But if it does, I have long since been convinced evangelicalism is bankrupt from bow to stern. I suppose in some sense I can understand evangelicals holding out hope against hope that something is salvageable.

But then, like the proverbial curve-ball, one stumbles across Lee Irons who wants to try his hand taking shots at those who want to make a distinction between “Reformed” and “Evangelical.” Is he hitting the target the way he thinks he is, or just shooting himself in the foot…mirror…whatever?

Saith he:

It’s good to see that there are still some Reformed people these days who embrace the label ‘evangelical’ (see the posts by Stephen Nichols and Sean Lucas on the Ref21 site). I don’t sympathize with the Reformed trend that utterly scorns and detests the label. I have no desire to set myself apart as a ‘Reformed Confessionalist’ who has nothing in common with evangelicalism. This separatist attitude is wrong for several reasons:

(1) It smacks of spiritual pride and elitism. I consider myself to be a Christian first, then a Protestant, then an evangelical, and only then Reformed. To exalt ‘Reformed’ über alles is to downplay our central identity as Christians. To exalt the Reformed confessions is to downplay the primary New Testament confession that ‘Jesus is Lord.’ I’m not a Reformed person who happens to be a Christian. I’m a blood-bought Christian who happens to believe in the Reformed understanding of the gospel. And I do not view myself as a superior Christian for having this belief. It is only by the grace of God that I understand what I do of the grace of God, and even then I betray it all too often in my practice.

(2) The current disdain for ‘evangelicalism’ in Reformed circles is also wrong because it places the accent on the distinctives of Reformed theology and practice instead of on what we have in common with evangelicalism. But what we have in common with evangelicals (being Christ-centered, cross-centered, and gospel-centered) is far, far more important than our distinctives (our Calvinistic soteriology, our covenant theology, our view of the church and the means of grace, etc.). The distinctives of Reformed theology and practice are useful only to the degree that they undergird and clarify the gospel, the evangel.

(3) Being ‘Reformed’ but not ‘evangelical’ undercuts the importance of seeking fellowship, unity, and love with all Christians who confess the historic ecumenical creeds (Nicea and Chalcedon) and the basics of the gospel (justification by faith alone, substitutionary atonement), regardless of our differences over secondary matters. The apostle John is fairly clear in his epistles that if you claim to know God but do not love the brethren, then your claim is proven to be empty. Confession of Christ as the Son of God and love for the brethren go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other.

None of this means that we cannot be critical of the excesses and problems that we see in evangelicalism. Yes, there are many who claim the name ‘evangelical’ who are false teachers and wolves in sheep’s clothing (I’m thinking particularly of the prosperity gospel and some of the more radical emergent types). But the same is true of many who claim the name ‘Reformed.’ A search on the keyword ‘Reformed’ on the PC(USA) website turns up 3860 results (compared with 552 results on the OPC site). Consider also the very existence of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. If you think the term ‘evangelical’ has been distorted beyond recognition so that you no longer want to use that label, then to be consistent, you shouldn’t call yourself ‘Reformed’ either. Instead of being too proud to call ourselves ‘evangelical,’ we should join with those who strive to uphold the historic meaning of the term.

“Utterly scorns and detests the label”?

I’m not exactly sure where to start, but it might be that Irons himself begins with something of a wanting understanding of the term “Reformed.” He erroneously seems to suggest that it doesn’t already include such terms as “Christian, Protestant and evangelical.” In fact, I would add one he seems to have forgotten: catholic. And another: apostolic. What he seems to miss is that “Reformed” is simply shorthand for a diversity of perfectly sound terms.

What is ironic when Protestant folks in our circles speak this way is that they actually end up perpetuating the very religious elitism they mean to explode on our part. Why is “evangelical” so much more important than “catholic” that the latter doesn’t even make the list of self-descriptors for Irons? Does Irons have something against being catholic? He is obviously after unity—that is what catholicity means, so why is it absent his list? Does Irons know that the e-word, insofar as it conveys the solas of the Reformation, is what keeps us Protestants anathematized by Rome? So much for “evangelical” getting everyone together. Like a simple vowel makes all the difference between the doctrines of solo scriptura and sola scriptura, upper and lower cases can help in these broader categorical discussions. A brief scan of Irons’ quote shows he doesn’t make that distinction: I have no problem at all saying I am evangelical and catholic, but I’m not an Evangelical or a Catholic.

He claims that “The distinctives of Reformed theology and practice are useful only to the degree that they undergird and clarify the gospel, the evangel” since, even as he admits, we ought to be “…critical of the excesses and problems that we see in evangelicalism. Yes, there are many who claim the name ‘evangelical’ who are false teachers and wolves in sheep’s clothing.” He agrees that clarity of the evangel is necessary as it is obscured by those who claim exclusive rights to it. But that is exactly why it needs to be found comported under “Reformed,” so it can be properly defined and clarified.

Another key distinction he seems to lack is any cognizance of the visible/militant and invisible/triumphant church. It would seem to help immensely his angst in point three. He seems to be after “fellowship, unity and love,” a commendable ambition no doubt. But these are simply of a different order for the two churches. The invisible church enjoys these things unblemished and immediately. The visible church does not enjoy that luxury; that’s why one is called “triumphant” and the other “militant.” But this is the reason she labors for doctrinal precision, in order to maximize—not minimize—fellowship, unity and love for the brethren. Irons seems to be confusing “Fundamentalists learning to be Presbyterian” with actual Presbyterians. I have great sympathy; I cut my religious teeth on an entrenched Fundamentalism. But I rejected it as deliberately as I embraced Reformed confessionalism, since the two are mutually exclusive. Ironically, though, I was never as schismatic as when doing the sort of Evangelical tolerance Irons champions, and never as ecumenical as when I embraced the intolerance of Presbyterianism. Talk about counter-intuitiveness. Is the answer to “Fundamentalists learning to be Presbyterian” really “Presbyterians longing to be Evangelical”?

Moreover, I am of the persuasion that a key difference between confessional orthodoxy and that poor man’s version called Fundamentalism can be found in the further distinction between cult and culture. Even if we grant that Fundamentalists began with cultic interests they went utterly bankrupt as they slid into being primarily culturalists and it just got worse from there; bring me a self-proclaiming Fundamentalist and I’ll show you someone who cares very little for both doctrinal formulation and how it relates to praxis, as well as someone who is neck-deep in culture wars to lesser or greater degrees. It is mystifying how Irons, such a close student of Kline’s, doesn’t make the cult and culture distinctions in order to separate out the differences between abhorrent forms Fundamentalism and the project of historical, confessional Reformed orthodoxy.

Well, more could be said. I can’t resist a parting shot though: At the end, Irons makes the point that terms are subject to being “distorted beyond recognition,” which is why those who employ only “Reformed” because “Evangelical” is too fraught are inconsistent and to be criticized. But Irons says at the top, “I consider myself to be a Christian first, then a Protestant, then an evangelical, and only then Reformed.” Without a doubt he is correct that terms are subject to distortion. But are the terms “Christian” and “Protestant” somehow less vulnerable to distortion? Has he really circumvented anything here? If it’s consistency he wants I have no idea why he is still calling himself a Christian or Protestant—those are older and more general terms and thus even more vulnerable to distortion. Now what?

If Darryl Hart’s A Secular Faith is downright scandalous when it comes to how modern Protestants conceive of both the nature of and relationship between church and state, his Recovering Mother Kirk is perfectly (and deliciously) delinquent when it comes to how a truer Presbyterian godliness is both expressed and nurtured.

In the course of making his broader case for a churchly expression of Reformed piety in which, by way of contrast, “some proponents of the Reformed faith under the influence of evangelicalism are caught off guard” by the suggestion that in question and answer 85 the Shorter Catechism’s prescription to escape God’s wrath and curse includes not only faith and repentance but also a diligent use of the means of grace, Hart brings to bear just how triumphant the pragmatic architects of heart religion really are:

“They have so emphasized either conversion or doctrine that they have abstracted the Christian religion from the Christian practices that mark the body of Christ.”

He then begins to explore how the “virtue of nominal Christianity” is essential to the making of an observant Protestantism:

In conversations about specific Roman Catholics or Jews, it is common to hear them described as either observant or nonobservant. In both cases, the line between observance and nonobservance is easy to spot because the person either does or does not practice the ceremonies and religious routines that constitute the commonality of faith. Protestantism, however, has no such language. Instead, discussions along these lines about Protestants usually employ the words genuine, nominal, authentic, or dead…Since the rise of pietism in the seventeenth century and the Anglo-American revivals of the following century, the goal among God-fearing Protestants has been to eliminate observant Protestantism.

From the more obscure notion that what constitutes proper Sabbath observance can be guided by the principle of “whatever is conducive to worship” (i.e. be worshipful), to the rather ubiquitous idea even in Reformed circles of the Sabbath-as-recharge, to the clearly under-tutored practice of physically fasting in order to get the full effect of the sacraments, it seems there is quite a lot stacked up against the conception of an observant Protestantism. I recall some years back listening to a very prominent and popular Reformed figure describe worship and my own instinctual hesitation. Quite absent his description was any mind toward getting worship correct but rather the soul’s preparation before (extended all the way back to Saturday afternoon, in fact), its intense and undivided attention during and just as earnestly sustained reflection after worship. The fulcrum in all of this, to my mind, is an emphasis on the inward effect on the worshiper instead of seeing to it, first, that the stated worship of God is correct and, second, that such worship is faithfully attended.

Some in the Calvinist tradition have even coined the lingo of an “experimental Calvinism,” as if the stuff of intellect and affect or love and duty were indeed mutually exclusive and in need of a helping hand if ever to meet again. (Closer readers of the Outhouse know that I don’t have any particular ideological ax to grind, but this must be what consistent ideological conservatives feel like as neo-cons prance about with all their faith-based initiatives. Experimental Calvinism is to Calvinism what “compassionate conservatism” is to conservatism.)

But, while admittedly zealous for the edification of the saints, the best of the Reformed tradition has never seemed to be so worldly about just how that edification is effected. Such strategies seem to be more consistent with the doings of pietism. If something like Sabbath-as-recharge is any measure, it would seem that the general victory of pietism to greater or lesser degrees is what keeps even confessional Protestants from seeing the benefits of a nominal Christianity that only an observant Protestantism can yield.

Jesus said that tares and wheat must be allowed to abide with each other and without any human interference. Where an observant Protestantism would seeks to be so faithful, pietism will have none of it. Instead of being content for the dividing lines between belief and unbelief to peacefully co-exist—a peace only to be disturbed when unbelief rears its own head in doctrinal or moral apostasy—pietism desires to up the ante and erase the lines. Of course, the problem for pietism is that, just as a tradition of anti-traditionalism becomes its own tradition, what inevitably follows in pietism is exactly what it seeks to circumvent in an observant religion. Feigning true piety is not bypassed by making up new practices, however seemingly sincere in nature. Just as many that can faithfully but unbelievingly attend God’s stated worship may also bluff heart religion. A child, for example, can just as easily parrot his parents’ inward religiosity as he can hypocritically utter the Creed. In point of fact, it may be more dangerous to defraud heart religion as it seems the only alternative a doubting soul might have is blatant rebellion. An observant religion is kind and long-suffereing enough to let doubt inhabit its sanctuary. After all, the opposite of faith isn’t doubt but sight; and Calvin remarked that we all go to our deaths with an unbeliever abiding within yet. If that is true, much as it might think so, pietism has absolutely nothing on the staid wisdom of an observant religion.

The question becomes which template is the right one to act as the fulcrum between belief and unbelief? Is it experientialism or confessionalism? It might be helpful to consider what Jesus said about how he planned to build his church. He didn’t ask Peter how often he nurtured Jesus in his heart; he asked him who he said Jesus was. He didn’t ask Peter how well he’d groomed his inner life; he asked Peter for his confession of faith. And when Peter answered correctly this was to be the basis for the church. Even so, that same Peter would go on to deny Jesus and even get it wrong with Paul as to just how circumcision figured into justification by faith. An observant Christianity doesn’t fool itself in light of this by inventing another way in order to shield itself from such an apparently troubling contradiction. It actually endures doubt as a necessary part of true faith and lives with the paradox. This gives new meaning to not snuffing out a smoldering wick (or maybe not so new).

Last time, I ruminated a little about FV (“covenant moralism”) as QIRC in RRC.  This time, I have some thoughts about FV as IQaRC; rather than a Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty, an Illegitimate Quest against Religious Certainty.

What is FV, in 3 words or less?  Overreaction to antinomianism.  I’m sure every Federal Visionista would agree at least that FV is a reaction to antinomianism, and of course, their critics judge them to be over-reacting.  Clark (at his most charitable) attributes the FV crisis to “a sincere but misguided desire to produce sanctity among God’s people.”

What does the FV see when they look at today’s Reformed church that gets them so upset?  It is Religious Certainty.  Easy-Believism.  People too assured of their own election.  “Don’t try to peek under God’s skirts,” they exclaim, “The secret things belong to the Lord.”  So all things decretal are pushed behind a curtain, as they are ethereal, unknowable, and lead to navel-gazing and morbid introspection.  While admitting to decretal truths if pressed, they assert that God intends for us think “concretely,” so they trot out parallel, lesser, “covenantal” analogues to decretal concepts: defectible election, temporary union, conditional assurance, etc.  Focus on unconditional election, irresistable grace, and infallible assurance are dangerous (they tell us); it is Illegitimate to Quest for such Religious Certainty.  But the lesser analogues are concrete and knowable; therefore, they become Religious Certainties for which we may Legitimately Quest.  Using the lesser analogues, pastors can confidently comfort their sheep by preaching from the pulpit that every butt in the pews is definitely elect (“covenantally”, but you better not mess that up!) — that every baptized Christian has assurance (that God will be faithful to his end of the bargain of redemption, as long as you remain faithful on your end).

So the question boils down to whether it is Legitimate to Quest for infallible assurance of decretal election.  Peter Kreeft (by way of OHS JJS) makes a similar point, that “Otherworldliness is escapism only if there is no other world. If there is, it is worldliness that is escapism.”  In the same way, questing for infallible assurance of decretal election is QIRC only if there can exist no such assurance.  If there can, it is the FV that is illegitimate.

However, my intention here is not to settle that question (obviously I believe there is plenty of biblical and confessional support, but this post is long enough.  Greenbaggins does a good job here).  My intention is simply to note the curious way in which the FV Quests for Illegitimate Religious Certainty when it comes to the tension between justification and sanctification, but Illegitimately Quests against Legitimate Religious Certainty when it comes to infallible assurance of decretal election.  To top it all off, FV demonstrates in the end that they really do want to Quest for Religious Certainty after all — they want it so bad that they suck the meaning out of the terms ‘assurance’ and ‘election’, until they are sufficiently Uncertain that the FV no longer feels Illegitmate in Religiously Questing for them.

Now that I’ve finished OHS Horton’s Christless Christianity, I’m making some headway in OHS Clark’s Recovering the Reformed Confession.   I assume that CO readers are all aware already of Clark’s categories of QIRC and QIRE, and how the book is structured around them, and that the three flagship examples of QIRC which Clark exposits are 6/24 creation, theonomy, and covenant moralism (i.e. FV).  These are in addition to numerous example issues Clark gives by way of definition of QIRC, including KJV-onlyism, women in combat, (in)sufficiency of scripture, full preterism, and the free offer of the gospel.

My first reaction, upon finishing the chapter, was to wonder how FV got lumped in with 6/24 and theonomy?  I can clearly see how these other two exemplify illegitimate certainty, and the proper resolution would seem to be for certain parties to renounce their certainty, and more charitably affirm the liberty of other parties to hold opposing doctrines, and yet remain within the bounds of biblical and confessional orthodoxy.  (Somehow I doubt that Clark would be willing to extend this sentiment towards theonomists, but — 2K-ophile though I am — I have no problem continuing to oppose theonomists from “within the fold”.)

But what about FV?  How can FV be an example of QIRC if the solution is not simply to “live and let live”?  (There can be no doubting that Clark does not tolerate covenant moralists within the fold!)  While 6/24 and theonomy are guilty of going beyond the Bible (being dogmatic about matters on which the Bible is not), FV is guilty of going against the Bible — they’re not wrong on matters in which scripture is indifferent, but in which scripture is quite insistent!

Upon closer examination however, I discern that Clark’s definition of QIRC is a bit wider than issues that can be solved if offenders would simply stop being illegitimately certain.  For instance, full (hyper-)preterism and denial of the free offer (hyper-calvinism) are both full-on errors that result from Quests for Illegitimate Certainty: dissatisfaction with biblical tensions that leads to the error flattening them.  By this definition, then, we can see that FV arises from a similar dissatisfaction between the simul (tension) between iustus et peccator:

The covenant moralists flatten out the tension between our justification and our sanctification by moving toward the old medieval and Roman doctrine of justification by sanctification so that God is said to justify the godly.

But as I will argue in a subsequent post (this one is long enough), FV can also be seen as an (illegitimate) quest against what it sees as QIRC.  That would make it, rather than a Q(for)IRC, an IQ(agin)RC.

Perhaps more a function of his own boyhood fantasy to live in caddy shack one summer, my father, upon my high school and college interim, managed to orchestrate a job for me on Mackinac Island. It was one of those milestone, coming-of-age experiences for various reasons. The rough links at Wawashkamo Golf Club are not for the faint-of-heart golfer. And this no less true for he who endeavors to cut greens for a greens keeper who considers his beloved club to be something of a second wife and third child. If the game itself derives from the land of Presbyterians, it is ironic how a Methodist in the order of Ned Flanders (like my summer slave driver) came to secure employment nurturing a Michigan historical marker like Wawashkamo.

One of the clearer memories of my experience was an exchange with an elderly member of the Club. Those who summer on the Island in the West and East Bluffs, by definition and description, are quite well to do. One August afternoon, in the courtyard, he relayed some advice to me as I spoke of my college and life plans. “Remember,” he interrupted, “the last four letters in American are ‘I-c-a-n.’” Only he didn’t spell it out but simply phrased it out as he simultaneously jutted out both chest and index finger.

Insofar as this is the general American sentiment about, well, everything, it is little wonder that revivalism is an American made thing. Standard issue religion is useless unless or until it can erase any shadow of human doubt and prop sinners up to make anything happen.

But the “I can” mentality has another interesting twist. While sunnier versions, like those of my courtyard friend, imply an unspoken, “…and so can you!” other more realistic suggestions can be, “But you can’t.” This is the message I tend to infer when Calvinists begin to assess movements that lie outside their domain. For example, take poor Rick Warren. He gets beat up on a regular basis by we Reformed types daily for his meddling in worldly affairs such as traveling to the Middle East to stick his nose into complicated geo-political problems, hosting nominees at Saddleback or accepting bids to speak at the presidential inauguration. But as I suggested in a post a while back, Rick is actually doing us a favor and should be getting more plaudits than hisses. Why? Because he shows us how one behaves in accord with his tradition. Rick is an evangelical. What he is doing is what a good evangelical leader does. Blaming him for not behaving like a Presbyterian is like blaming a Republican for wanting less government and taxes or a Baptist for not baptizing his household.

Meanwhile, the very same Reformed theonomists and transformationalists who boo down old Rick are busy advocating a worldview that seems awfully similar to the Sultan of Saddleback. In the final analysis, it’s very hard not to conclude that evangelicals are disallowed to behave like evangelicals when it comes to the nature of the two kingdoms and their relationship to each other, but Reformed can. It is not altogether dissimilar to the religious right faulting the mainline liberals for “social gospel.” What that apparently means is not so much that there is something categorically wrong with social gospel, but rather the sin of not having the correct social gospel.

Then there are those experimental Calvinists who want to distinguish between the First Great Awakening and the Second, saying the First was the good kind while the Second was bad. In order to head off the glaring problems that usually attend differentiating between things grounded in mere inward experience (i.e. “Awakenings”), these Calvinists draw merely soteriological boundary markers. It is simple enough: Those who have a Calvinist soteriology are the good guys, those with either Pelagian or semi-Pelagian views aren’t. But if Richard Muller is right …

“The Reformed faith includes reference to total inability, unconditional election, limited efficiency of Christ’s satisfaction, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints, not as the sum total of the church’s confession but as elements that can only be understood in the context of a larger body of teaching including the baptism of infants, justification by grace alone through faith, the necessity of a thankful obedience consequent upon our faith and justification, the identification of sacraments as means of grace, the so-called amillennial view of the end of the world.”

…then the experimental Calvinist trump card of soteriology doesn’t help solve much of anything. It is as if predestinarianism can be extracted from the housing of a Reformed system and, voila, all is well. Little wonder there are “Reformed Baptists,” various gradations of evangelical Reformed and a lot of brouhaha over evangelicals wearing Jonathon Edwards (and John Calvin) tee shirts. But it would seem that those who have grasped “a larger body of teaching” don’t take kindly to such a reckless reductionism.

Like Reformed transformationalists who suspend a high doctrine of sin want to tell us that the only people who can change the world for the better are believers, experimental Calvinists seem to think that revival is acceptable if we Calvinists do it. But when revivalists do it, not so much. Huh? This strikes me as not only pretty arrogant but to some degree passive-aggressive, to say nothing of showing us, contra Warren, how to actually break with one’s own tradition. Catholics do Catholicism best and Revivalists do revivalism best. It seems to me that one of the problems of our day is that folks don’t know their own traditions very well. It might be best to own up to that and get busy learning it. Whatever else my courtyard friend meant, I don’t think it was to steal someone else’s tradition and call it one’s own.

This clip was passed along to me by a co-worker. It’s a gag on the current bailout debacle, which is pretty darn funny for those of us dolts who, along with the pundits and lawmakers, cannot make heads nor tails of the evening news.

But, being the contrarian that I am, my mind immediately went to two other places these days: first, late nights with my fifth grader who has begun to ease out of the standard first-few-weeks-of-previous-year review (balanced calendars NOW!); second, how it feels to try and explain confessional Reformed truths. But no matter how you look at it, this is just plain hysterical for anybody who gets that odd, creeping feeling he is trying to describe a color.