Not Now or Never, but Now and Forever

This is no eulogy. Those are best written by those who know the subject in only one or two dimensions, as the kind of objectification that’s required to eulogize comes easier to the writer who hasn’t had to put up with the humanity of the subject for any length of time. What’s more, many eulogies about religious leaders are often total snoozers, amounting to little more than pious gobbledygook. At least this offering will put you to sleep for other reasons.

True to my self-absorbed proclivities, what follows is a brief reflection on the time in which my life intersected with R.C. Sproul, who died on December 14, 2017.

It’s an odd thing to say, and I trust it'll be taken the right way, but I’m more saddened and melancholic upon hearing of his death than I anticipated. I had been watching the updates regarding his declining health and felt emotionally distant, but now that he’s gone, I’m sad. If you’ve ever had the chance to exchange witty banter with him and share in a great, big belly laugh, or found yourself in his line of vision as his eyes narrowed and his Pittsburgher growl aimed itself in your direction, you’ll know what I mean. The challenge now is to put some words down that don’t succumb to over-sentimentality.

I worked for R.C. (and Vesta) from about 2002 to 2011. They were deeply formative years. More than half of them were spent living the idealized life of DINKs (double income, no kids). Ligonier provided me with my first real taste of putting one’s professional loves into practice (out of college I did a brief stint as a high school sports beat reporter; emphasis on beat). I struggled hard with the Reformed tradition and eventually found a comfortable place within it. We traveled the world, bought our first house, adopted our first dog. Both our boys were born, the eldest of whom was baptized by R.C.

Before that, I don’t remember exactly when it was that I came across his writings, though he was one of the reasons I chose to enroll in seminary at RTS-Orlando (come to find out, the spring semester prior to the year I began was his last as an adjunct there), another reason being its proximity to Tampa, where my immediate family resides, and yet another reason being that location’s broadly Reformed ethos (at the time at least). I have a sketchy memory of my older brother forcing Grace Unknown upon me during college. After both our “conversions” to Christianity, we continued fighting about almost everything like we had before then, only now it included doctrine. He became determinedly Calvinist and, I think he’d admit this, one of those zealous types that proceeded to try to get most people around him to give their hearts to Calvin as well. For my part, I had been ravished by the Renaissance humanism of Petrarch and the Romantics and subsequently the Transcendentalists: if I couldn’t imagine a loving God sending folks to hell by their own choice, how could I entertain the possibility that they had been consigned there by an absolute decree of reprobation?

Grace Unknown went a long way into undoing some of my misconceptions about Reformed theology that I had gathered from liberal Christianity. For a while, the more Christian I became, the more I just Christianized my pluralism and universalism (e.g., God sovereignly and unconditionally saves everyone, etc.). By the time I went off to seminary and even into my Ligonier years, I simply became a recovering universalist, and a closet single-predestinarian (having made my peace with at least one side of the election coin). Nevertheless, Grace Unknown impressed upon me just how amazing and, well, unknown divine grace is. It set me on a trajectory that would forever shape the course of my journey, both in aligning and in contrasting ways. Other works of his that affected me were his Consequences of Ideas and The Last Days According to Jesus.

I only “knew” R.C., however, for a handful of years out of that decade. Unsurprisingly, it grew out of our travels together. The Sprouls adored my then wife, Liz. Not only did that help me get a job at Ligonier, but it also provided me with a great buffer when rubbing shoulders with them. I’m not a particularly friendly or open person, and am usually quite content to remain silent in most acquaintance situations when it comes to giving opinions about this or that current event or idea. Perhaps to no surprise, I found R.C. far more willing to engage in sports chitchat (with a notorious focus on the Steelers) than anything else. I get that. His day job was to have opinions, and no doubt he was constantly asked for his. In private company, when dusk fell and the wine glass half-empty, he’d talk about anything other than history or theology, probably also because he was somewhat of an angry theologian (other angry people and diplomats call this “passion”), and his blood pressure would noticeably rise. The niche that he cut out for himself in the world was oppositional, resistant. More on that later.

What I’ll cherish most is that pasta al nero di seppia on Murano in Venezia before riding a gondola to close the evening, or the family-style feast in a Firenze buca, or that lunch in a garden off the Appian Way right outside Rome, or the impromptu seafood extravaganza—in an effort to escape the cruise’s cuisine—on the isle of Rhodes, or standing on the exact spot where the Diet of Worms took place, or gazing at the intricacies of the library façade in Ephesus, or the grandeur of the temple ruins in Corinth. R.C.'s presence in the party was as integral as anyone else's on these occasions—he didn't monopolize the conversation or command the room—and it’s when I got to know him as much as I ever did. We traveled overseas three times in three consecutive years (2002–2005), not to mention the many times we traveled all over the States for conferences and whatnot (but most of those times were much less intimate).

I had been to his home a few times, and once knew both his German Shepherds by name. They were good and obedient dogs, if not slightly supercilious. If I remember correctly, he had been to mine on at least three occasions, one of which was to welcome us into our new home and the latter two being baptismal parties for our sons.

My first gig straight out of seminary consisted of working directly with R.C. in developing manuscripts for publication. The preparation entailed taking a transcript of an audio/video series (e.g., Defending the Faith) and turning it into legible copy. I’d then pass that on to him and after engaging it on his own, he’d come by my office and we’d hammer out edits, trajectories, methods, arrangements, etc. For those who care about this sort of thing, imagine first getting paid to do this sort of work, and then imagine also the intimidation you may feel as a wannabe theologian in your late 20s sitting across from R.C. as he talks through and often challenges how you’ve taken this or that approach or used this or that word or phrase. On many days, it felt like sparring, and he was always gracious enough to allow it, even if what he really wanted more-or-less was a solid writer who didn’t think too much about the theological or methodological details. With no small amount of irony, it so happened that during the writing of Defending I was concurrently enrolled in John Frame’s apologetics course at RTS-Orlando. Those in the know will recognize the humor in sitting under a dyed-in-the-wool Van Tillian for three hours in the morning and then heading to the office to work on and engage with a staunch classical (Thomist) apologist. I worked very hard to keep anything that smacked of Frame out of my writing and speaking during the course of that project.

Writing like that is intense and laborious. After that first project ended, we moved on to the next one, which eventually became R.C.’s three-volume commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith (Truths We Confess). But after the first volume wrapped up, thankfully a position on Tabletalk magazine opened and when asked if I’d like to join that team, I ran at the opportunity. Ghost-writing is thankless and, as I mentioned, labor-intensive work. I figured if I was going to spend any serious time writing anything of value, I’d sure like my own name on it.

By the way, therein lies an inextricable part of this story—my own name. The idea of creating a name for oneself in the cult-of-personality evangelical world was intoxicating, and the untouchable air that its leaders put off, whether they knew it or not, only drove that desire harder.

R.C. was grandfatherly by that time though. His name was secure. His place in the story of the resurgence of Calvinism (e.g., Young, Restless, Reformed), while not front and center, was nevertheless essential to its telling. Nothing he did or said seemed to come from a motivation to make his name greater than it already was. But he sure did enjoy the perks of popularity—and who wouldn’t?—the status, the financial gain, the respect, the aloof protectionist way of being in the world (after all, you’ve got to save something for those you love most). Like many successful folks he was also generous, both (from what I know) personally and professionally. He didn’t truck with the notion that just because Ligonier, for example, was a nonprofit organization that it should make a habit of compensating its employees under market value. And he also gave of his own surplus to others around him, and my family received with gratitude that generosity when it was offered (I’m still driving their 2000 Camry, which was barely broken in when I purchased it for well under the bluebook value).

I went to seminary to obtain a masters in theological studies, with no intention of seeking employment inside the institutional church, planning instead to blaze through my studies, hopefully getting grounded in the tradition along the way, and then move on to doctoral work in literature (with an eye on religion). It was not to be. I found myself “enjoying” (that’s really not the right word; it’s more like “suffering joyfully”) work in the church—teaching, mentoring, discipling, performing liturgies, and so on. There were bits of it I downright disliked as well—hospital visitations, preaching (though I have a feeling this might’ve grown on me the more I believed in myself and in the name I was making), and tolerating the conservative politics of many of the parishioners. With a great gig going at Ligonier (writing and editing and traveling the world!), I was in no hurry to get on with post-graduate studies, and when I was presented with the prospect of becoming a ministerial intern at St. Andrew's Chapel, I went for it. It’s the kind of internship most MDiv programs require of their students in order to be given a stamp of approval of fittingness for ministry. I can say with all honesty that during this decade, especially the first half of it, I felt like I was beginning to hit my stride, professionally and spiritually. (I also went through some of my darkest days in my mid-30s, suffering with a couple bouts of depression and incessant generalized anxiety. It’s not unrelated from my work both at the office and in church, but it was wrapped up primarily in my life at home, so that’s another story for another time.)

A few experiences in my ministerial internship are perhaps worth retelling, but the one I remember with R.C. was when I served at his side as liturgist on a Lord’s Day. Nothing felt more natural in my service to Christ and his church, despite the apprehension and nervousness one may feel when working so intimately alongside someone like R.C. He put all that to rest. The time we spent together in prayer before the divine service began changed everything. His petitions were salve to whatever thoughts I had about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the experience confirmed for me the direction I had been heading for so long—the liturgical tradition, which actually provides a decent segue to the next turn in this story.

R.C. has made a name for himself over the years by being willing to divide on very few grounds. He hated Pelagianism wherever he caught whiff of it, whether an apparition (among his own fellow Reformed confessionalists) or semi-bodied (among evangelicals and Roman Catholics). The inerrancy of the scriptures and justification by faith alone were perpetually live issues for him, and soteriological monergism may have been his most beloved prolegomenon. Perhaps unfit to be included in this list was his utter disdain for what he deemed to be “epistemological fideism” (read: Van Tillians, presuppositionalists). But to his mind, those Reformed fideists were little better than the neo-orthodox dialecticians who were content to forgo consistency for the sake of sola gratia but who in the process lost the very (logical) holiness of God. And, as he used to say, the one thing the Reformed tradition simultaneously has in common and in contrast with the rest of christendom is its doctrine of God.

I say he was willing to be divisive on very few grounds because R.C. was also known for his generous theological spirit; the hills upon which he chose to die were, indeed, very few. This would become less so during the 2000s, but I chalk that up to his being increasingly surrounded by those TR^© boys we all love to whip (of which R.C. had made a career of decidedly not being).

As a personal example of that odd amalgamation in R.C. of generosity and anger, when I was "let go" from Ligonier (essentially) for being confirmed in and serving as a subdeacon in the Episcopal Church (I made this move a few years after my internship), the severance I received was quite generous (not being an executive and all) for the nonprofit world. I know that this was procured by others in Ligonier's administration, but if the boss let it go (assuming he knew about it), then I considered that an act of grace on his part. Sure, the whole circumstance was a total bummer in every way (two little kids and a stay-at-home mama, a mortgage, car payments, etc.), but, hey, I found new and sustainable work while still in that severance zone. Of course it should come as no surprise that I never saw or spoke to the Sprouls again. It would’ve required an effort that at the time just wouldn’t have made any sense.

The thing was, I understood the reasoning (I think I may be less understanding now, if for no other reason than my being far less tolerant of unnecessary division today). Ligonier is a ministry that has centered on making very clear the difference between soteriological monergism, which was ensconced clearly in the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity, and every other soteriology on offer in the global church, past and present. While Ligonier expanded that work later on, its main focus was still on Reformed soteriology and it used even those expanded practices (like, e.g., translation or missionary work) to promote it. Nevertheless, like most Christian organizations, there are shibboleths that one would express at his or her peril. Joining ranks with an “apostatized church” (like the ECUSA) was one of them. It made no difference that the Central Florida Diocese was (and is) one of the last orthodox bastions within that national institution. In short, these were churches that had not only denied soteriological monergism (and thus sola fide) but had bent to every wind modernity blew. On second thought, it came as no surprise. What really have I got to criticize? 

"Every cup of cold water that you give to a thirsty person counts," R.C. wrote some years ago, "and it counts forever."

In the end, I can only be thankful for R.C. and Vesta, for all that they are. Everything they taught me and everything they gave, not least that cup of cold water to a thirsty dilettante. For the better, I’m in large measure the professional and the churchperson I am today because of their willingness to allow me to grow under their care. Perhaps for the worse, I’m no longer Reformed in any way that they’d recognize. But if anyone understood what was at stake for Luther when he said that “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe,” it was R.C. 

In the meantime, I know the family finds comfort in the fact that their Pappy’s happy.

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Knit with Love & Consent: Grounds for Divorce

Martin Bucer as an intermediary between Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli, by Josef Ehrismann

Here we finally get to what Martin Bucer wrote about divorce (and remarriage), which helped me along in my journey through divorce. For those wanting the complete story, check out Marriage and Divorce in the Thought of Martin Bucer by Herman J. Selderhuis. What follows has been culled mostly from this book (the page numbers throughout correspond to it).

BUCER'S GROUNDS

Irreconcilable Differences:

As a result of a lack of love and good will, a marriage has irreparably broken down. In this instance (which is decidedly not a matter of trifling disagreement), while the divorce is as yet unofficial, the marriage in fact has ceased to exist, in that personal relations are essential to the existence of a marriage.

. . . there is no true marriage between them, who agree not in true consent of mind; so it will be the part of godly magistrates to procure that no matrimony be among their subjects, but what is knit with love and consent.

(Lifted from chap. XIX of John Milton's translation of Bucer's De Regno Christi.)

Adultery:

This entails the obvious—extramarital sex—but also the withholding of sex, according to Bucer. The withholding of sex also includes being guility of driving the other toward sexual immorality, which marriage in part is meant to thwart. "Unilateral abstinence not only leads to but is adultery" (p. 289). (How's that for a response to being caught sleeping with the neighbor's wife? "You drove me to do it with all your conveniently placed headaches!")

Desertion or Banishment:

Included here is geographical separation, either deliberately or as a result of a cause out of their control (e.g., imprisonment, soldiers of wars, commercial travelers who fail to return, etc.). Deserters are "certifiable marriage-wreckers" (p. 293). Such "unchristian conduct is proof of unbelief," Bucer wrote (p. 294).

Sexual Relations:

"Conjugal work" is so important for marriage, said Bucer, that where it is refused or cannot be rendered, a divorced has to be legitimated.

Psychological and Physical Factors:

If sexual intimacy is rendered impossible due to psychological or physical illness, then a divorce is to be legitimated (clearly this is a pre-Viagra world). Bucer's thinking primarily of all forms of "dementia" here. Physical illness refers to anything that renders sexual intimacy permanently impossible. (But note, where Bucer saw a legitimate grounds for divorce, Luther saw an opportunity to serve God by serving the spouse in his or her illness, and thus the opportunity to live up to one's salvation, p. 295.) Both Bucer and Luther in the end agreed that indefinite impotence was grounds.

The Pauline Privilege:

Apparently at the time among Protestants, a divorce was permitted when an unbelieving partner no longer wished to live together with the believing partner (i.e., desertion; 1 Cor. 7:15). But this only applied if the deserting spouse was an unbeliever from the beginning. If he or she becomes an unbeliever after the marriage, then the only recourse is legal separation, with no possibility of remarriage for either parties.

Bucer took umbrage with this common interpretation: if an unbelieving spouse divorces, he argued, then the believing spouse is free to remarry. Unbelief in this instance is seen in the fruit—one who leaves his spouse for unsanctioned reasons and divorces shows him- or herself to be an unbeliever, in violation of God's Word (see Eph. 5:1–33). Also, "the refusal of sexual communion is disobedience to a divine mandate and therefore unbelief" (p. 304).

Insofar as there are no other grounds for divorce, the believer is absolutely not permitted to leave the unbelieving partner. The believing partner must persevere as long as possible. Only when the other categorically refuses intercourse and to show love and fidelity and there's no longer any hope for change, can the believing spouse divorce (p. 306).

Physical and Emotional Abuse:

In instances of physical abuse that is habitual and harsh, the spouse may divorce (these qualifiers of "habitual" and "harsh" will no doubt run against the grain of our modern sensibilities. We would say now—and rightly so—to take every legal measure possible to extricate yourself from an abusive relationship, before it gets physical). Wherein a spouse becomes a tyrant (emotional abuse), a dissolution of the marriage is permitted. The courts are bound to deliver the victim from unjust tyranny (pp. 308–309).

"God instituted marriage so that a [spouse] would receive love and faithfulness from the other and not ugly language, pain, and grief." The divorce is legit if a spouse receives nothing but "ranting, pounding, beating, pain, and agony" (p. 309).

Special Calling:

Divorce is permitted in response to a special call, that is, to a monastery or nunnery. Very few people are called in this manner, noted Bucer.

Criminality:

A legitimate divorce may be procured in response to a serious crime perpetrated by a spouse—murder, sedition, and abortion are noted as examples by Bucer.

* * *

In all of these instances, it is important to note Bucer's premise: an attempt must be made—at least initially—to bring about reconciliation. Yet the innocent party must not be forced so to do. If there are legitimate grounds for divorce, a Christian must forgive (without continuing to tolerate toxic behavior and habits), but that does not necessarily entail staying. If he or she finds that they are not able, on account of what has happened, to love the other with an open mind and heart and to maintain full communion of life with him or her, then no obligation to stay married remains.

Even the guilty can remarry before God, according to Bucer, provided they repent (pp. 317–18). Perhaps somewhat contradictorily, even if they don't repent, he thought it was probably better that they do remarry, despite his recognition of 1 Corinthians 7:10, which suggests that a spouse who leaves the other for an invalid reason must remain unmarried (p. 318). But Bucer thought that marriage as a divine mandate trumps all the other concerns put forth about remarriage (p. 321). Why? Because, as I wrote in the previous post, in the end he thought it better before God to sin less by remarrying than to "fornicate."

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Divorce—Cowardice or Courage?

It's important to state every so often along the way in the course of this divorce discussion that it wasn't completely one-sided. My ex, depending on your point of view, was either a coward or courageous. But our relationship had died years before, not least due to my own words and actions. 

I was holding on because I had a bottom-line commitment to the ideal of the lifelong marital bond (absent adultery and abuse—but even then I had thought in theory that reconciliation was best). We did not share that fundamental starting point, apparently. But this presses into all sorts of other questions, perhaps most importantly the questions revolving around—from a Christian perspective—what constitutes a viable divorce beyond adultery and abuse (emotional or physical). And this is, again, where Martin Bucer comes in.

The vertigo from being left is felt as a result of the shock of its coming, even if you had seen it coming for a while. Unrequited love may or may not be wrapped up in that shock, and of course that just sucks. There are no more words to add to that kind of pain. Suffice to say, you will read Le Morte d'Arthur, Remains of the Day and The Sun Also Rises in a new way.

Rejection, shame, wounded pride—all of these get mixed in there too. I was truly a mess for a time (fighting off apostasy as much as anything else), but I still don't think I can put a finger on the precise feelings that made up why I was reacting the way I did. I thought perhaps love for my ex had something to do with it, but even now I'm not so sure. Perhaps it was more a love of what was lost: the best that was yet to be, would never be. I do know this much: the event unfolding before me went against a core value—an identity marker—and that goes a long way to at least helping me understand the devastating affect it was having on me at the time.

We must not forget that the leaver has also experienced the pain the leavee is feeling. They've simply walked that path already, and probably more slowly. The one being left is playing catch-up in this instance, and that's also a part of what makes the upheaval so intense. The resolved (or seemingly cold) nature of the leaver jars the leavee, but, again, that's likely because the leaver turned the corner long ago. If grace is ever going to be a factor in your handling of divorce, continually humanizing the other is necessary (hypocrisy alert!), which, of course, doesn't entail winking at toxic behavior.

And speaking of human dignity, Bucer's views on divorce and remarriage were meant to uphold exactly that. If you're unfamiliar with the going narrative, the gist is that the majority of Reformers stuck to the Catholic line on divorce, even if they jettisoned the notion that marriage is itself a sacrament—preferring instead to locate it within the context of a creational ordinance and civil institution rather than within the church. If the late medieval Catholic teaching on divorce is flattened out to be that the church simply never recognized divorce a vinculo (a total divorce), even in response to adultery (where it would grant a divorce a mensa et a thora, i.e., a legal separation), then that doesn't hold up: affirming a complete divorce in response to adultery was widespread among the Reformers.

So, while it's not a total mistake to consider Bucer's views as more liberal than say, Calvin's or Luther's, it's very easy to overstate the case. Mere freedom wasn't his major concern; caring for abandoned women and children was. In short, most of the Reformers—Calvin and Luther included—argued that divorce is allowed in certain scriptural cases, in which the "innocent" party is permitted to remarry another person (and I can only think of a very few instances where one party is, indeed, "innocent"). Bucer said the same (and he did interpret those biblical reasons more liberally than others), and he added that remarriage is also allowed across the board, because in the end he thought it better before God to sin less by remarrying than to "fornicate."

It's worth noting that it was in response to the perceived reformational laxity with respect to divorce and remarriage that the Council of Trent upped its ante on the indissolubility of marriage. (The oddity that is seen among—in my experience—the patriarchal Reformed crowd nudges up against this view, which admittedly gets its impetus from WCF 24.) This brief article in the January/February 2017 issue of Christianity Today covers the ground fairly well, even if it necessarily lacks nuance at key points: "Divorce and Remarriage from Augustine to Zwingli." Here's a more in-depth historical overview from the old Winnipeg Theological Seminary's Trinity Journal: "Divorce and Remarriage from the Early Church To John Wesley." (Note the bit about John Milton, who was undoubtedly influenced by Bucer in this regard.)

I find that I've chased a few other rabbits in this post, so allow me to pick up with Bucer immediately in the next one.

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Finding the Pure Language of God

 

One of the intents of Jesuit priest Richard Simon back in the 1670s–80s was apologetic in nature: the Old and New Testaments as they've come down to us could not bear the weight of the formal cause or principle of the Protestant Reformation, sola scriptura (while both scripture and tradition work together in the life of the church, scripture wields the primary authority, and thus is the final arbiter in matters of faith and practice), which had already by the time of the seventeenth century come to bear much schismatic rot as well as devolved more and more into the practice of solo scriptura (tradition has no bearing upon the church’s interpretation of scripture). Simon wrote:

There is no one, Jew or Christian, who does not recognize that these Scriptures were the pure language of God. . . . but since men were the guardians of the sacred books, indeed of all other books too, and since the first originals have been lost, it is in all ways impossible that there have not been many changes, as much because of the length of time as by the negligence of copyists. (Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament, Rotterdam: 1678, p. 1)

By raising doubts in particular about the integrity of the Hebrew text—due to the redacted emendations of the public scribes who came along after the original authors—thus allowing for certain inaccuracies in the minutiae of detail (such as didactic abbreviated renditions of certain events, dischronology, etc.), Simon concluded that scripture should not be viewed as presenting an inerrant chronological history, setting forth the full history of Israel. As an offshoot of this conclusion, he sought to expose the Christian’s need for a teaching authority upon which these doubts could be put to rest. Enter: the magisterium of the Catholic Church (or the collegiate episcopal magisterium of the Orthodox Church). Such an authority could helpfully clear away the crisis of interpretation caused by this thicket of textual problems revealed through the application of proper (higher/source critical) hermeneutics. Protestants, by contrast, did not have any sure means with which to restore the "lost originals" of scripture or to know which translation or interpretation most closely approximated the Bible's "original" texts.

Woodbridge's 1685 ed. of Histoire

In the debates that followed—both with traditionalist Protestants and Catholics and radicals like Jean Le Clerc (the father of Red Letter Christianity), Simon stood in the much more moderate position of appropriating Augustine (who held like the traditionalists that the Spirit accommodated the cultures and language of men to convey God’s meaning—but without error), arguing for divine inspiration, but then pushing the envelope toward higher criticism with his views about the "errors" contained in the church’s received holy text. With respect to intellectual history, it’s easy to underestimate Simon’s reach and influence: Modern biblical criticism in many ways started with Simon in France and only then worked its way into Germany. Ask most Old or New Testament scholars today in what geographical locale the majority of their studies focused. Germany will most likely be their answer. France may not even show up.

Even though much of what Simon wrote wasn't necessarily new (e.g., Ezra's denial of total Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; Cappel's work on vowel points and accents in the Hebrew text; Morin, who followed Cappel in his depreciation of the Masoretic text; and La Peyrère's pre-Adamite theory, to name a few), he nevertheless stands out precisely because of his modern (Enlightenment) position: Unlike earlier commentators who failed to exegete apart from their church's doctrinal presuppositions, Simon would, in "perfect neutrality," simply translate and interpret unbeholden to any particular tradition (it's amazing how long this sort of approach has enjoyed influence).

But back to the main point of this post, which is really just a longish introduction to get to some poetry, namely, John Dryden's Religio Laici. In 1682, right on the heels of the English translation of Simon's Histoire, Dryden wrote Religio, dedicating the piece to "an ingenious young Gentleman my Friend; upon his Translation of The Critical History of the Old Testament, compos'd by the learned Father Simon." In the poem, Dryden takes on Deism as well as Roman Catholicism, in favor of Anglicanism. I want to get much deeper into his response in coming posts, particularly as it relates to the issues raised above about textual instability and ecclesial authority.

But for now, whether or not you think the text of scripture is unstable, inerrant, or whatever, on what basis do you place your belief about scripture’s authority (assuming you have this belief)? The answers, depending (perhaps ironically) on your tradition, are invariably: the authority of the church (whether magisterium, creed, or confession), the testimony of the Holy Spirit, the testimony of the scriptures themselves, the basic historical reliability of the texts, and any combination of these. Did I miss any?

Dryden's Religio Laici and the Question of Authority: Series Overview

"Finding the Pure Language of God"

"Vain, Wretched Creatures"

"Strange Confidence: On the Infallibility of Tradition"

"With Great Zeal, and Little Thought"

 

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The Covenantal Contours of Limborch's Compleat System

 
The efforts of self-identified Arminian (or Wesleyan) theologians in recent decades who debate over the heart of “Arminianism” have mostly aimed to undermine the mischaracterizations prevalent among those with whom they disagree on important soteriological issues but who nevertheless share with them in the communion of saints (read: Young, Restless & Reformed).¹ The church at large ought to be grateful for this work to that end, for it has ably shown that Arminius is rightly to be distinguished (but perhaps not separated) from, say, Philip van Limborch (1633–1712), the subject of this brief descriptive summary. While no discernible difference exists, for example, in the way Limborch lays out the order of God’s eternal decrees as compared to Arminius,² there are a few when it comes to other matters related to the accomplishment and application of God’s redemption in time. Any comparisons on this score, however, are beyond the scope of this post.³

In what follows, I will quickly cover the historical-covenantal contours of Limborch’s theology as they appear in the Compleat System, Book 3, starting with his discussion of the relationship between Adam and his Creator in the garden, then moving on to the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, and ending with the new covenant of Christ Jesus. It is worth mentioning at the outset that as a Dutch theologian, Limborch, by the time of his appointment in 1668 as professor of theology at the Remonstrant seminary in Amsterdam, had inherited a robust, if not one-sided, federal-covenantal theological tradition (whether scholastic or narratival), one in which he could find many examples that were to his mind worth challenging (e.g., Gomarus, Trelcatius, Cloppenburg, or Cocceius).

Before the specific chapters that deal with the history of redemption, Limborch remarks in passing during his discussion on providence that God’s first act of governance is “legislation, or making a law, whereby God prescribes bounds to the will of man” (157), without which humans would will unrestrained to their detriment. There is a history to this legislation, as Limborch notes (158):

This law was prescribed to man at the very creation: And tho afterwards the more especial revelations of the divine will were made to Abraham and his posterity, and a particular law enacted upon promises and threatnings was given to the Jews by the hands of Moses; yet still the rest of mankind had the law of nature written in their hearts, to inform them of the difference between good and evil. But the most perfect law which God prescribed to mankind, was that which he made by his Son Jesus Christ.

Here we see a glimpse of Limborch’s entire system as it relates to the unfurling covenantal narrative of Scripture: humanity was (and is) endowed with a law of nature, and then along came the more revealing covenants of Abraham and Moses, all of which culminate in “the most perfect law” of the new covenant.⁴ For Limborch, there is no entertaining the idea that a covenant can be unilateral or unconditional; it is, by definition, a pact—what God promises to another party if she carries out the conditions of that covenant (bilateral and contractual). With respect to prelapsarian man, God did not make a covenant in any federal sense with Adam (e.g., 187, 197–98). Rather, he was endowed with natural law, an innate knowledge of his creator’s will, and on that basis was given one positive command, with only a threat attached to it (and thus no covenant).

As a result of Adam’s fall, humanity lost this actual knowledge of the divine will, being born with a tabula rasa (144); nevertheless, God still left them the “light of right reason, whereby to discern betwixt good and evil” (210). Even those who exist outside of God’s later covenants are still potentially included in the prospect of eternal life because of this residual law of nature (219).⁵

Upon the arrival of Abraham on the scene, we begin to see God engaging humanity in terms of covenant, clearer than natural law in its precepts, promises, and curses. The Mosaic covenant (though temporary and for Israel alone) was simply a greater and sharper revelation than the Abrahamic. Both were conditional, and both promised blessing and threatened condemnation (temporal and spiritual) based squarely on obedience or disobedience. As with natural law, so too were those living under the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, for the sake of Christ (whose future sacrifice permits a less demanding application of the law to humanity), justified on the condition of sincere obedience to the precepts under (not by) which they lived (214–15, 229–30). But in the end, natural religion and the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants show themselves to be ineffectual in restoring humanity and delivering them from sin and death (e.g., 230–31). Only the new covenant mediated by Jesus Christ accomplishes this.

In short, Limborch argues that the gospel of the new covenant in Christ Jesus is a new law—but of faith not works (298–99). Like the previous covenants, the new covenant also promises salvation depending on one’s meeting the covenantal stipulations; but now, however, the demands are easier to meet because of the appeasement of the Son (via perfect obedience) to his Father (195). God has decided in his mercy and because of the Messiah’s work to accept imperfect faithful obedience for righteousness rather than perfect law-keeping. To be sure, such faithful obedience finds acceptance through grace, but the legal principle remains, albeit less strict and applied with less rigor (270–71; see also 5.74.7). The new covenant, in other words, is little more than a relaxed old covenant, a little less law and a lot more grace.

---

1 There’s a similar battle among the Reformed, couched in terms of “Calvin vs. the Calvinists,” that has raged for a few centuries. With the publication of R.T. Kendall’s Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (OUP, 1979) and Paul Helm’s response, Calvin & the Calvinists (Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), the debate received renewed popular attention, and has shown little signs of going away (even if with finality debunked through the ongoing work of Richard Muller, the sentiment is nevertheless sticking around).^↩

2 See Compleat System 4.1, pp. 343–44. Earlier in the treatise, Limborch takes umbrage with the ordo decretorum as delineated by theologians who most raise his ire—all forms of unconditional election that tell us “God by one, single act of his will has at once decreed all things, and that there is no prius or posterius in the divine decrees.” But they are also those who posit—in response to Limborch’s doctrine of conditional predestination—that God has necessarily decreed salvation “prior to his foreseeing their faith and obedience” (118). Instead of belaboring the problems he sees with such thinking at this point, he decides to move on from this “nice subject” (119). Note that nice in its seventeenth-century context could have meant “foolish, stupid, or senseless” just as much as “precise, careful, or agreeable.”

All quotations are taken from Philip Limborch, A Compleat System, or, Body of Divinity, both Speculative and Practical, founded on Scripture and Reason (London: William Jones, 1702). Subsequent citations will be noted in parentheses in the text.^↩

3 A good place to start on some of those differences is with Roger Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (IVP Academic, 2006). A more exhaustive (but perhaps overstated) treatment can be found in John Mark Hicks, “The Theology of Grace in the Thought of Jacobus Arminius and Philip van Limborch: A Study in the Development of Seventeenth Century Dutch Arminianism,” PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1985.^↩

4 This could be little more than what the pre-Reformation church had taught for some time with respect to the history of redemption: the triplex model of natural law, old law, new law. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiœ I–II.91.2, 5. At the very least, it is in opposition to the “decretal” and bi-covenantal perspective of the federal theologians.^↩

5 The imago Dei, however, remains intact, because for Limborch, that image only consists in the “power and dominion which God has given to man over all the works of his hands” (2.7.6, p. 142). Traditionally (at the time, at least), the image of God was defined in terms of faculties and nature of the soul (reason, emotions, etc).^↩

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Fear Is (not) the Heart of Love

 
{A portion of what follows originally appeared in my introduction to Perspectives on the Sabbath, B&H Academic, 2011.}

If someone had it incessantly banged into his head, when it came to the practice of Christianity, that “fear is the heart of love,” then we might empathize with him if he “never went back.”¹ But it would still be a shame, never going back because of such a blatantly false proposition, at least as it relates to being a follower of Jesus. Quite to the contrary, “perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). But how does love do this?

C. FitzSimons Allison argues that the answer is worship—“the means whereby we are opened to the love of God. . . . Worship is an immediate and present means of God’s love, making us new creatures and giving us the ever more abundant life now.”² This comes as no surprise since worship of the one true God by humans fulfills the express purpose of our creation. “To say that God made us in his image is to say that God made us for himself, and that he made us to worship him.”³

Christian worship can, on one hand, be the most altruistic, God-centered moment in the church’s common life, or, on the other hand, it can be the most viciously narcissistic. Indeed, “sometimes our worship is more a hiding from God than allowing God to find us.”⁴ Bishop Allison goes on to argue that the parable of the talents offers a good depiction of our propensity to hide from God, even in the midst of attempting to worship him. In Matthew 25:24–25, the third servant, in response to his master, fearfully pleads, “Master, I know you. You’re a difficult man, reaping where you haven’t sown and gathering where you haven’t scattered seed. So I was afraid and went off and hid your talent in the ground. Look, you have what is yours." Consequently, he meets his doom (vv. 26–30).

While the other two servants didn’t live in such fear, which enabled them to take the talents and invest them, the third servant disbelieved in the presence of love in his master. In a sense it didn’t matter what kind of person the master actually was; what mattered was what kind of person the third servant thought his master to be. And this paralyzed him. What the servant believed about him was wrong, and this affected his relationship with and service to him. So it is in Christ’s church. How we relate to God in worship is inextricably bound to what we believe about him. Is he a loveless taskmaster, a “difficult” deity?

What can keep us, as humans, from so paralyzing a thought? To be found in Christ, for the perfect love of God is shown to us in him. “For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgment. . . . [and] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began” (2 Tim 1:7,9). This holy calling, which begins now and extends into the eschaton, has a transformative goal for the called—to share in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), to be as fully unified with God as creatures can be (see Eph 1:3–14). A purely theocentric existence—when God is all in all (1 Cor 15:28)—remains the destiny of those in Christ Jesus, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, as Letham notes:

Every single aspect of salvation is seen “in Christ” or “in him" . . . . Our proper place is to share God’s glory; by sin we fell short and failed to participate in his glory, but in and through Christ we are restored to the glory of God as our ultimate destiny. Glory is what belongs distinctively and peculiarly to God. We are called to partake of what God is.⁵

Such union is the goal for all those who ingest God’s Word (Matt 4:4), feed on Christ in the Supper (John 6:47–51), and have been baptized into his death and resurrection (Rom 6:3–6)—in short, for those who have been given faith by grace (Eph 2:8). And this brings us back around to worship—arguably the most human thing we can do—the very act in this time between the times that develops and disciplines our union with Christ in God by his Spirit. Through the practice of praise, supplication, confession, and thanksgiving (in a word, prayer), hearing the Word, and receiving the sacraments, the final and full redemption and transformation of the church is anticipated as she gathers together in continued repentance, obedience to God’s commands, and participation in a common life, caring for the needy in her midst.⁶

But one day the reconciled, yet fallen, worship of the Christic community will no longer carry the burden of Luther’s simul iustus et peccator; the way of the cross will fade (even if its marks remain), and streets of pure gold will descend from the heavens. Wendell Berry depicts this thought poetically:

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.⁷

Indeed, all our work through worship (leitourgia) on the way to becoming sharers in the divine nature will cease. The road ends in the most holy place—the court of the Almighty. In the meantime we’re left to choose which of the three servants we will be. We Christians serve God directly in worship,⁸ and thus it behooves us to avoid the pride—the narcissism—to which it is always open; in brief, to engage wisely the question about which of its elements remain in perpetuity and which of them have become obsolete in order to honor the triune Lord. It won’t do to claim ignorance or hide behind tradition when seeking to resolve this question. If worship truly is “an immediate and present means of God’s love,” then may we be zealous to keep open to its sanctifying power, which necessarily means taking seriously questions about which elements, if any, God desires his people to enact in worship and, in that enactment, gather together as the called-out assembly, the body of which Christ is the head.

---

1 From the song “I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie on their album, Plans (Atlantic, 2005).^↩
2 C. F. Allison, Fear, Love & Worship (Regent College, 1962), 17, 19.^↩
3 E. P. Clowney, The Church (InterVarsity, 1995), 118.^↩
4 Allison, 14.^↩
5 R. Letham, Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy, A Reformed Perspective (Christian Focus, 2007), 255, 257.^↩
6 Ibid., 261–63. See also A. P. Ross, Recalling the Hope of Glory: Biblical Worship from the Garden to the New Creation (Kregel, 2006), 503–12, for a good list of “several principles that surface again and again and therefore seem . . . to be absolutely essential for developing the worship of God” (503). Noticeably absent from this list, however, is any reference to which particular day, if any, God’s people ought to gather.^↩
7 W. Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997 (Counterpoint, 1998), 216.^↩
8 See Clowney, 117.^↩

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Confirmation & Stuff

OVER AT JESUS CREED, Scot McKnight posted about a "note from a pastor in a denomination that baptizes infants and then proceeds to catechism and confirmation, but this pastor has his doubts." (There are some good thoughts/advice in the comments section over at JC, btw.)

I too responded in the combox, but this issue is one that's near to my heart, having taught such classes for a few years, which teaching challenged me more than any other to date (whoever said "if you can't explain it to children, you don't understand it well enough," was right in my opinion).

The discussion can easily turn into a perspectives match on why—or not—baptism is efficacious (covenantally binding and enabling grace), essential, and preferably paedo- to following the Christ. But that's not the point of this post. Rather, it's simply to get at an answer to the question: What do you think would improve confirmation? By way of personal anecdote, I'll try to offer part of a suggestion:

I was raised Baptist, which of course didn’t use words like confirmation but nevertheless had a baptism preparation class that carried with it all the automation and pressures of most confirmation classes. To be sure, a profession is expected before enrolling in this class. If memory serves correctly, I was six or seven, which, to my understanding, for the majority of Baptist traditions is kind of young (perhaps not among Southern Baptists—see, for example, this article on the upward trend of pre-schooler baptisms since 1974).

At the time I started practicing Christianity more seriously (around 20 years of age), I was not re-baptized, as many of my fellow Baptists were wont to do. However nascent my theological understanding was in these matters, it seemed to me one dunk was clearly enough.

Some five years later, I married in to a confessional Lutheran family, and my wife’s experience in confirmation, despite the automatic feel among that crowd, was, according to her, absolutely confirmatory (a bolster) for her faith.

I should note at this point that I think we fail to grasp what confirmation is, not least as a result of its relationship to (the historic church’s view of) baptism, if we’re losing sleep over this “automatic” flavor. That said, I understand why (theologically) Baptists and Anabaptists take umbrage with it.

Fast forwarding to my own practices and experiences in the local church as a teacher: At the church I had been a member of (an independent Reformed congregation) for six years during the first decade of this century, I taught the communicants (confirmation) class for four years.

Here’s what was cool about this particular church’s practice: We asked parents to decide when to put their children in this class. This meant that during any given year, I had children ranging from 5 (the youngest) to about 12. Average ages were 8–10. All throughout the class, I spent time with each parent discussing their children’s “progress.” Receiving first Communion was by no means automatic after taking part in this process. The final class(es) consisted of walking through the gospel (in age appropriate Q&A form) with a (senior) elder present. That elder would make the final call regarding the child's understanding of the gospel (if Scot reads this, I made sure it was not the potentially truncated "soterian" version being rehearsed, as described in his book on the subject).

Now, given my conviction regarding baptism and confirmation (that the former is efficacious and enabling, and the latter is meant to confirm—sacramentally, though not in the same sense as baptism and the Supper—what has been promised and thus presumed in the former), I’d made sure that each of my kids would be admitted to their first Communion. But even then, a small handful over the years would come back the next year for a do-over.

I hope this last personal experience and example helps answer the question. In short, what do I think would improve confirmation? Put the ball in the parents’ court to decide when to put their children forward. Move past the notion that every child has to be a certain age before he/she can enter confirmation. And get a spine—imagine the words coming out your mouth, “Your child is not ready,” and then brace yourself for the consequences. Finally, see each family as a mentoring opportunity—both for the child and her parents.

Or sidestep this whole issue and just go Eastern Orthodox—their children receive confirmation (chrismation) right after they’re baptized (but whence comes catechesis, which is what I think constitutes at least one major import of confirmation in the West [along with the sealing of the Holy Spirit], in the Orthodox tradition?).

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Church of the Open Wound

A COLLEAGUE recently brought my attention to this portion of Jürgen Moltmann's The Trinity and the Kingdom (p. 49):

God and suffering belong together, just as in this life the cry for God and the suffering experienced in pain belong together. The question about God and the question about suffering are a joint, a common question. And they only find a common answer. Either that, or neither of them finds a satisfactory answer at all. No one can answer the theodicy question in this world, and no one can get rid of it. Life in this world means living with this open question, and seeking the future in which the desire for God will be fulfilled, suffering will be overcome, and what has been lost will be restored.

The question of theodicy is not a speculative question; it is a critical one. It is the all-embracing eschatological question. It is not purely theoretical, for it cannot be answered with any new theory about the existing world. It is a practical question which will only be answered through experience of the new world in which ‘God will wipe away every tear from their eyes’. It is not really a question at all, in the sense of something we can ask or not ask, like other questions. It is the open wound of life in this world. It is the real task of faith and theology to make it possible for us to survive, to go on living, with this open wound.

The person who believes will not rest content with any slickly explanatory answer to the theodicy question. And he will also resist any attempts to soften the question down. The more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over the suffering in the world, and the more passionately he asks about God and the new creation.

Moltmann's underpinning panentheistic doctrine of God notwithstanding, let's focus on two themes that arise as he writes of theodicy and the so-called "problem of evil":

1. The question of God and suffering is an "all-embracing eschatological question," because it can "only be answered through experience" of the new heavens and earth. Right now, it is, in fact, not really question at all. It just is; it simply hangs here all heavy and stifling, just like an . . . 
2. . . . "open wound." Theodicy is the open wound of life in this world. It can't be answered sufficiently this side of the eschaton: "Life in this world means living with this open question."

It seems to me that the reality of a fragmented church in a world that has witnessed the ascension of God's Christ also falls under the "question" of theodicy. And it is a great evil too easily dismissed by Protestants in general (Carl Trueman and others like him being exceptions)—and by evangelicals in particular (leading to a kind of gnostic ecclesiology, as the folks over at Called to Communion often note).

Just a few short centuries ago, we Protestants were, of course, Roman Catholic. And our forebears—of the first generation, at least—from the start had their eyes on reforming their Mother, the church of Rome. In this, I'm reminded of Stanley Hauerwas' 1995 Reformation Sunday homily:

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

To put it as Trueman did in the hyperlinked article above, "Protestants need a positive reason not to be Catholic."

At any rate, my Roman Catholic friends would deny the possibility of real body fragmentation, that is, of members of the body being severed from the body. No doubt, they do think people can be separated from the body, but they're not taking a part of the body, so to speak, with them.

I, along with everybody who isn't Roman Catholic (and perhaps Eastern Orthodox), demur.

The notion of a "perpetual divine protection of the unity and orthodoxy of the church through the apostolic succession of the bishops, by virtue of its being a continuation of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, in his mystical body" makes little sense in light of the realities of the church's history, which continue to surround us ("St. Ignatius of Antioch on the Church"). It's not the latter points with which I have problems (apostolic succession; the church being a continuation of the life and ministry of Christ); it's the former—the "perpetual divine protection of the unity and orthodoxy of the Church." That conflates the truth with the proclamation, or participation in, the truth (ousia vs. metousia). Scripture, tradition, and reason demand otherwise. And "the person who believes will not rest content with any slickly explanatory answer" that attempts to justify God's ways in this matter.

Thus, the disunity of the church catholic is an open wound. Put another way, I think Roman Catholics (helped by none other than John Calvin, who took his cue from Cyprian & Cyril!) are right to demand that the ontological connection between Christ and his church by the power of the Spirit be upheld, but I think they're wrong that her being necessarily leads to an infallible act. Again: the church's union and communion with Christ in ontological relation doesn't by its very nature procure infallibility. The words of Jesus and his apostles regarding the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, like the prophetic utterances of old, are to be construed as goadings toward righteousness—toward that oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity—not as absolute promises or blueprints of infallibility that will simply unfurl throughout the course of history.

Let me try to put it more plainly: I think that the church is to be one in this time between the times. One, not just in will and purpose, but one physically and ontologically—in a collegial episcopate (in contradistinction to the universal jurisdictional claims of the Roman pontiff). I think this is what God wants. But I also think that we have failed miserably in this regard, that the body has indeed fragmented, that toes have left their feet, that wrists have left their arms and have caused whole hands to suffer the same.

In other words, the church—both catholic and local, invisible and visible, one and many—suffers from an open wound. I therefore think God would have us continually aching for reattachment, of having broken hearts at the church's division, or else we're left with being an end in ourselves, that is, anathema.

But whence the credo? How can we pray, "I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church," if it doesn't quite exist?

With hope.

It may be that this open-wound ecclesiology can only be resolved in "the future in which the desire for God will be fulfilled, suffering will be overcome, and what has been lost will be restored," but ignoring the charge to be one (or worse, to theologically justify fragmentations) is fatalistic at best and heresy at worst.

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Yet More Perspectives on the Sabbath

Scott Oakland of ReformedCast called me on Monday for a live podcast revolving around the book Perspectives on the Sabbath.

The time flew by, but I do think this was one of my more articulate presentations. I could be totally wrong on that score (I know one thing, participating in radio/podcast interviews are quick lessons in humility—the boring, monotone sound of my own voice; the fumbling diction; incorrect facts; sticking my foot in my mouth, etc.). Why not listen for yourself?

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The Logical Order of Things About Which We Know Next to Nothing

Augustine (6th c. fresco)

THERE HAVE BEEN, at times, moments of expected flack since I’ve outed myself as a single predestinarian. At worst it’s deemed a belligerent betrayal, at best with a wink and a nod it’s seen as a defect—often in intelligence. Not too long ago, a dear friend approached me quite concerned about not having vocalized my thoughts on this subject to him or others near to me (he did this for all the right reasons; we all should be so lucky to have at least one friend who cares to this extent), also suggesting my thinking has changed on this issue. With my typical smug chuckle, I didn’t offer any explanation one way or the other—but I thought there wasn’t much of a point when it’s a presumed fact that the breadth of the Reformed tradition excludes single predestination.

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Reformed Anglicanism

 
On the second Sunday in Lent, during the Dean's Hour at St. Luke's Cathedral, Richard Turnbull (author of Anglican and Evangelical? and Shaftesbury: the Great Reformer) delivered a lecture on the reformation of the English church. He did so by focusing on two major players in its reformation: John Wycliffe and Nicholas Ridley.

But this was no detached presentation of a few tidbits of history; ulterior motives lay just beneath the surface. Turnbull clued us in on them during his very first sentence of the lecture: "I commend St. Luke's Cathedral as living examples of Reformed Anglicanism." Indeed, he went on, it couples the best of historic, orthodox worship with "Reformed theology."

Now, it may be wrong of me to read too much into this, but, as a student of Reformed theology (broadly conceived) and Reformation history, I wondered what he was thinking when he used the phrases "Reformed Anglicanism" and "Reformed theology." There's a lot of one-sided discussions on theoblogs about this precise point: What does it mean to be "Reformed"?

But most, if not all, of this buzz comes from a particular corner of the Reformed world—American Reformed folks, the Truly Reformed™. For them, and rightly so, "predestination is not enough" (to borrow the title of Clark's epilogue). It is argued that Reformed theology just is covenant theology—as understood by the Reformed confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

This argument often comes in response to the common assumption that to be "Reformed" is to hold simply to the so-called five points of Calvinism. No doubt, an argument is needed against this misconstrual of what it means to be "Reformed." But then throw into the mix a polarizing evangelical figure in the Church of England like Richard Turnbull who flings around the moniker "Reformed" (and, indeed, "Reformed Anglicanism"), and the waters start getting muddy again. Surely, Turnbull didn't have the "five points" in mind when he opened his lecture; and just as certainly, he didn't have the system of doctrine encapsulated in the Reformed confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (he is Anglican after all).

On second thought, however, when I look at that which the remainder of his lecture focused—the high points of Wycliffe's and Ridley's reforms—we see a pattern of "Reformed theology" begin to emerge, and, it ought to be noted, that pattern doesn't contradict any portion of the Reformed confessions (except maybe for those bits about the "regulative principle of worship").

In brief, Turnbull chose to highlight the following reforms of the two reformers:

1. the authoritative nature of Holy Scripture (i.e., an authority greater than church tradition);
2. the fallibility of the pope;
3. the perpiscuity of Scripture (i.e., the clarity of the gospel message in particular);
4. the necessity (therefore) of Scripture being translated in the vernacular, so all people—ploughboys and priests—could have access to the clear message of salvation, and are thus equal readers and hearers coram Deo;
5. the necessity of denouncing corruption found within the church;
6. the necessity of academic theology being used to serve the church, along with its underlying impetus—that the Spirit-filled laity, and the mobilizaton thereof, lies at the heart of the church's common life;
7. the reformation of the doctrine of the Eucharist away from transubstantiation, which, it was argued, has more to do with philosophical sophistry than biblical theology;
8. liturgical reformation (the meticulous retaining of the best of the church's traditions, while tweaking the doctrinal content to reflect a theology that, of course, the reformers thought was little more than a recapitulation of the apostles and the early Church Fathers).

So, then, we begin to see a picture of what "Reformed theology" looks like, at least according to Wycliffe and Ridley, and thus, presumably, Turnbull. All this doesn't quite fit into the other lists of what it means to be "Reformed" that have floated around these parts. It seems the word Reformed could have a broader meaning than some may be willing to entertain, and historical inquiry, at the very least, bolsters that point.

But make no mistake: Turnbull was challenging his listeners to follow this trajectory, to embody this list of reforms, not least as witnesses—who metaphorically must "be of good comfort and play the man" (said Latimer to Ridley while they both were burning at the stake)—in a denomination like the ECUSA.

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Husk and Kernel: The Assembly at Westminster

I've been perusing Bob Letham's new book on the Westminster Assembly, reading portions here and there as items catch my eye. There's all kinds of helpful discussions in it, but I wanted to highlight a few criticisms he makes, mostly because I think they symbolize how helpful this book can be in demythologizing the Westminster Confession. Sometimes one gets the impression that certain confessionalists think the writing simply fell from the sky. This almost always leads to unfortunate hermeneutics.

Yet it is proper, Letham writes, "to attempt to interpret a text in its original context. A striking example of carelessness, of failure to do basic homework, that renders a contextual reading improbable is this extract from the introduction to a recent popular treatment…" (p. 48; Letham then goes on to quote a paragraph from John Gerstner's Guide followed up with a succinct correction). These kinds of correctives are scattered throughout the work. Consider the following about WCF 6 (on humanity and sin) as exegeted by A.A. Hodge in his well-known Handbook: "…neither the Confession nor the Catechisms speak of our first parents being placed on probation…nonetheless, [Hodge] goes to great lengths to expound the idea in his comments on this very point" (198–99). Letham does think, however, that the doctrine can be defended from the Assembly's documents; he's just pointing out sloppy exegesis—"Hodge ignores the text of the Confession at this point and instead expounds his own theology ["Princeton doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin on the ground of a federal relationship"] as if these words in this section did not exist" (p. 199).

Maybe most importantly, Letham notes on more than one occasion that "Reformed theology was a relatively broad stream, and differences among those swimming in it were recognized and accepted" (p. 84). Indeed, even on the subject of hypothetical universal atonement (!), its "supporters continued to play their part in the Assembly…and were not blackballed for their views. The Assembly was not a partisan body within the boundaries of its generic Calvinism, but allowed differing views to coexist" (182). It seems to me, in light of this, that the authors of the somewhat recent spate of blog posts about what it means to be "truly Reformed" should take note. That is, they should be mindful that subscription to the Confession as is currently understood in contemporary Presbyterianism is just that—contemporary. The Confession was not fashioned for a particular denomination within a societal context of church-state separation; rather, it was intended to unite the realm (England, Scotland and Ireland) and her church. As such, it's a lowest-common-denominator Reformed document with the specific purpose of uniting a bunch of different people, and thus various views on a host of subjects (e.g., covenant of works and hypothetical universal atonement) were tolerated. Now, it may be a non-sequitur to suggest that Reformed folk today ought to follow suit, but at least the burden of proof lies with the strict subscriptionist.

Still, poor assumptions persist. On the one hand, we've got those who continue to suffer under the impression that it's Calvin versus the Calvinists when it comes to the Confession. Letham picks on Torrance a little bit to this end (who regarded the development of covenant theology in the seventeenth century "as a distortion of the earlier, pristine theology of Calvin, Knox, and the Scots Confession"): "Furthermore, [Torrance] imposes on the the Assembly the idea of a controlling central dogma—the dual framework of a covenant of works and a covenant of grace—whereas the idea of central dogmas only emerged in the nineteenth century, among German scholars, and was far from the minds of the Westminster divines" (p. 85).

"On the other hand," Letham writes, "many right-wing Presbyterians today interpret the Westminster Confession in detachment from the history of the Reformed church and its classic confessions. The militant adherents of the hypothesis that the days of creation were of twenty-fours duration are a prime example [Letham footnotes his "In the Space of Six Days," WTJ 61 (1999): 149–74]. Neglect of this context is a barrier to understanding" (p. 85).

At any rate, with the forthcoming publication of the mulitvolume critical edition of the Assembly's minutes (of which Letham had in advance, in the form of Van Dixhoorn's seven-volume Cambridge thesis on this subject), I suppose other works about this will start popping up across the landscape (as perspectives on the Assembly will no doubt be reassessed). If The Westminster Assembly: Reading Its Theology in Historical Context is any indication, this bodes well for those churches who consider themselves heirs of the Assembly and its Confession today.

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