This month's Christianity Today features on its cover an article entitled, "Young, Restless, Reformed," reporting that "Calvinism is making a comeback -- and shaking up the church." The upshot of the article is that various bits of anecdotal evidence suggest increased commitment to Reformed theology among young evangelicals.
What does SWNID make of this alleged phenomenon?
First, we think it's false to see Calvinism as having recently been in decline among evangelicals and only more recently becoming resurgent. From our post-Reformed (I've always wanted to be "post-" something) point of view, Calvinism constantly dominates what is generally identified as "evangelicalism." We have seen an unrelenting interest in the tension between divine sovereignty and human freedom, the classic topos of Reformed theology, in our lifetime. Evangelicals constantly churn these issues. Our SWNIDish self has been trying to talk about other things for 25 years, but folks keep insisting that we come back to this issue. (So we happily defer to Son of SWNID's analysis of the merits of Reformed distinctives.)
Further, the leading institutions of what is generally identified as "evangelicalism" have consistently been dominated by Calvinism, at least soteriologically. Among the major evangelical seminaries, only consciously Wesleyan Asbury and totally pluralistic Fuller can escape the label "mostly Reformed" in regard to soteriology. The good Calvinists at Westminster Theological Seminary may bristle at the association, but the fact is that their dispensational nemeses at Dallas Theological Seminary are just as Reformed as they in regards to sin and salvation.
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, whose diploma adorns our SWNIDish wall, is cited in the article as a place where folks report a growing number of students committed to Reformed theology. From our experience we find that unsurprising. When we studied there over 20 years ago, there were only two faculty members in Bible or theology who weren't Reformed. That may be down to one now, and he's near retirement. A generation of alumni have referred their progeny to what was in the generation before theirs a largely Arminian institution but which was transformed by Kenneth Kantzer into something different. As TEDS morphed from a seminary for Scandinavian immigrants who believe the Bible to the Evangelical Free Church's gift to evangelicalism at large, it has assimilated to the Reformed mainstream of evangelicalism.
We also see Calvinism's constant dominance of American evangelicalism in the rhetoric of Calvinist evangelicals. It is a commonplace for evangelical theologians to insist that only Reformed theology is genuinely "evangelical." This was the case most recently when the Evangelical Theological Society voted on the exclusion of advocates of "openness theology." The motion failed--barely--but it was justified by its advocates in language that would have excluded garden-variety Arminians as well as the more radical "openness" theologians. In other words, those guys take for granted that only the Reformed deserve the label "evangelical."
Second, we think that this alleged resurgence has more to do with the "rock star" prominence of John Piper and Al Mohler among some young, mostly male, budding evangelical seminary students and ministers. It's not that there are more folks of the Calvinist persuasion; it's that they've got some celebrity authors and speakers to rally around.
Third, we'll observe that this trend excludes what is most recently identified as North America's fastest-growing group of religious adherents with membership over one million, namely, the independent Christian churches and churches of Christ, a decidedly un-Reformed bunch if ever there was one. Of course, we Campbellites are used to being ignored. But more on that in a couple of paragraphs.
Fourth, we'll say that we are a little tired of CT telling us which "road" evangelicals are on now. In our lifetime, we've seen the magazine of evangelical record tell us that we were on the road to Canterubury, the road to Rome, the road to Byzantium, and the road to Azuza Street. We may have missed it, but maybe we were also on the road to Aldersgate sometime. And so now we're on the road to Geneva.*
It seems that there's always some sectarian trend among evangelicals who are looking for a more authentic expression of their Christianity, a more fulfilling and radical form of discipleship. Of course, one nasty consequence of getting on such a road is the message that it sends to others: if you aren't on the road with me, you are probably too stupid or evil to realize that you should be on this road, as it's obviously the right one.
And now a confession: the combination of observations three and four discomfit us. We think that more prominence should be given to the road to Bethany, West Viriginia, or the road to Cane Ridge, Kentucky or whatever road you're on if you're one of the growing host of Campbellites.
But whoops! Now I'm in the position of condescending to those not on the road with me. Evil Calvinists! Stupid Pentecostals! Silly Baptists! Join us, the only Christians! ... I mean, Christians only!
How hard it is to be right and not be smug.
Update: High-output Neutestamentler Scott McKnight details his own road away from Geneva here. Are there others? Let's sing another verse of our invitation hymn, "Conditional Election: It's Good Enough for Me," and step forward if you have a free decision to make.
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*Historical/geographical key: Canterbury = Anglicanism, Rome = Roman Catholicism, Byzantium = Eastern Orthodoxy, Azuza Street = Pentecostalism, Aldersgate = Wesleyanism, Geneva = Calvinism.
6 comments:
Boo-yah! Just thought I needed to add that.
You forget to mention additional rockstar Tim Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian in New York. And then there's the Elvis of this generation's seminarians, Mark Driscoll of Seattle. I have yet to read the CT article [because I refuse to pay for the rag] but I'd be shocked if Driscoll wasn't mentioned.
Not reading the article might make this redundant, but these young guns who are flocking to Calvinism are redesigning it to cover its flaws. Driscoll himself had a sermon series on the five points and claimed that he believes in UNLIMITED limited atonement. I ask, if you alter the essence of the five points, are you still really a Calvinist?
Finally, I eagerly await the next road that CT suggests the evangelicals are traveling. Perhaps the thoroughfare will be based on the theology of a certain Australian band and lead us towards the highway to hell.
Perhaps in an attempt to add some balance, CT also includes a couple of short pieces on Dallas Willard, a Baptist with Arminian leanings. But (as CT points out) he's an old philosopher--not much of a match for those "Young, Restless" Calvinists.
Having read both the Reformed article and the piece(s) on Dallas Willard, I found the two on Willard to be of much more substance than the Reformed resurgence piece. It seems to me that reformed theology also finds large root in college age ministries such as Passion, where young, evangelical men and women flock to whatever is uttered by the speakers on stage. I find great problems with Calvinism in general, the least of which being that Calvin himself may not have been a "Calvinist" as we define it today. It just seems that there are more "celebrities" to cling to within the reformed camp, and less of a reason to seek something else out.
I just read most of Scott McKnight's blogging on Arminianism vs. Calvinism, and for the most part, I like what he says. I have to admit, however, that I have never been persuaded by the view (he advocates) that Calvinism is a logically airtight system: that if one point falls, the other four follow. That claim seems to me to be little more than Calvinist propaganda that we Arminians are more than happy to accept because we see it as making our task of refuting Calvinism all that much easier. (Refute five for the price of one!) Indeed, McKnight exherts virtually all of his energy on refuting point 5 ("Once saved, always saved") in what appears to be an attempt to show that the whole Calvinistic enterprise is wrongheaded. It seems to me, however, that a clever quasi-Calvinist could embrace the first four points and dump the fifth as unbiblical without breeching any principle of logic. (Many not-so-clever Baptists have been doing just the opposite for quite some time.) By what precept of logic should we believe that just because our salvation is completely independent of our own initiative (as the first four points contend), we therefore could not lose it? In order for that to follow, it would have to be the case that God could never--in his absolute, sovereign, and irresistable way--"unsave" a person after having saved her. Nothing in the first four points excludes that possibility.
Typical Darwinists no nothing of philosophy. While they assert materialism cocksuredly, they neither understand it, nor its implications.
JH: Do they really "no nothing?" I would have thought they know knowthing. (But then again, I'm the one who thinks McKnight "exherts" his energy.) I hope they do knot no something we never gnu.
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