The Free Church, Calvinism, Karl Barth, Omnicausality, Southern Baptists…all in one post!

I’m re-posting a comment left on Bobby’s blog, at his suggestion. The general topic of discussion was on the parameters of the Reformed label. Bobby asked me if I considered myself, “Reformed.” Here’s my trajectory-laden response:

I usually describe myself as Reformed or Calvinist to other people, if they have any idea what that means. Otherwise, I just say “evangelical.” I always qualify my use of the Reformed label, since a lot of people instantly think about TULIP. I’m not entirely opposed to Dort. In fact, I think the Canons of Dort are rather oustanding in many respects: e.g., the problem of leaving the expansion of God’s kingdom to the contingency of human free will. As I’ve mentioned before, Barth is firmly within the Reformed scheme when it comes to omnicausality (the term he uses, and which John Webster uses) and a rejection of Molinism. This aspect of Reformed theology is where I’m in quite a lot of agreement, as long as it is adheres to a synchronic (or non-competitive) double agency of God and man. That was Barth’s view, and it appears to be the view of the 17th century orthodox. So, in this regard, my only real problem with TULIP is the L, along with rationalist presentations of the U and I. In other words, if we interpret U and I in regard to synchronic agency and replace L with universal atonement, then we’ve got a form of Reformed theology that I am happy to call my own. That’s a good example of working within the Reformed confessional tradition, pushing the boundaries, and not making the confessional standards on par with Scripture.

I do like the label, “free church.” Barth himself was both Reformed and free church in his approach to theology and his view of the church. His understanding of confessional subscription (vis-a-vis Scripture) is virtually identical with a lot of Baptist theologians, including Southern Baptist theologians. The Southern Baptist confessional heritage begins with the London Baptist Confession (17th century), then the Philadelphia Confession (18th century), then the New Hampshire Confession (19th century), and then the Baptist Faith and Message (20th century), now in its third revision in order to add complementarian gender roles and to affirm God’s exhaustive foreknowledge. This continual revision of confessional standards is a very good thing, and it is something I greatly admire about the SBC. Interestingly, the London and Philly confessions were strongly federal — essentially rewrites of the Westminster Confession — but this Calvinism was then mitigated with the New Hampshire Confession and then the BFM. If you read the BFM, you will see that it still stands within a broadly Reformed confessional tradition. Here is the article on election:

“Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. It is consistent with the free agency of man, and comprehends all the means in connection with the end. It is the glorious display of God’s sovereign goodness, and is infinitely wise, holy, and unchangeable. It excludes boasting and promotes humility. [paragraph break] All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end. Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ and temporal judgments on themselves; yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. ”

That’s pure Calvinism, if you ask me. The whole point about how election “comprehends all the means in connection with the end” is a classic Reformed qualification, going back to the Westminster Confession (article 3) and before that. This sort of revision and updating is exactly what the PCA, OPC, URC, etc. need, but I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.

Unless you are a true theology nerd, you probably didn’t get half of that.

Baptism, latest musings

As some of you know, I’ve been working through the doctrine of baptism, off and on, for the last year or so. I’ve read all or parts of some of the most well-known treatments of the subject: Beasley-Murray’s Baptism in the New Testament (credobaptist), Jewett’s Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace (credobaptist), Cullmann’s Baptism in the New Testament (paedobaptist), Wilson’s To a Thousand Generations (paedobaptist), Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV.4 (credobaptist), Ferguson’s Baptism in the Early Church (credobaptist), and the relevant portions of Calvin’s Institutes (paedobaptist) and Thielicke’s The Evangelical Faith (paedobaptist). As I’ve noted before, I’m most interested in the alternatives within a broader Reformed and evangelical soteriology.

With all that learning under my belt, you’d expect that I would have a fixed and certain position on the subject. I wish that were the case. I do have a much clearer understanding than previously. Most especially, I’ve come to see the importance of secondary results or consequences which arise from a church’s baptismal practice. For many people, these secondary consequences are the deciding factor in choosing between credobaptist and paedobaptist communions. So, what is the best illustration?

In a credobaptist church and family, the child is an object of evangelism. The parent considers his or her child as an object of evangelism in a very similar way that the same parent may consider an agnostic co-worker to be an object of evangelism. The child needs to be presented with the Gospel, repent, and receive Christ as Lord and Savior. So, usually between the ages of five and seven, Baptist parents will sit-down with their son or daughter and ask about his or her thoughts on Jesus. After the child accepts Christ, he or she will receive a public baptism before the whole congregation during the worship service. Thereafter, the child is considered a member of the body of Christ and, therefore, a member of the Church (universal) and the church (local).

In a Reformed paedobaptist church, the child is considered, or “presumed,” as a member of the body of Christ and the Church, or, at the least, as a member of the covenant. As such, the child may not be, as of yet, converted and made new (holy), but he or she is “federally holy.” The child is taught the Christian faith and exhorted toward continual faith in Christ, but he or she is not considered as an object of evangelism in the same way as the Baptist child. As a member of the covenant, the child would have to actively break covenant in order to be considered outside of Christ and his Church. [Side note: The current controversy over the "federal vision" is precisely on the question of how, or to what extent, the child is united with Christ at baptism.]

There are clear advantages and disadvantages to both positions, which makes the issue all the more difficult to resolve. To my mind, there is an undeniable and praiseworthy connection between Baptist baptismal practice and the effectiveness of Baptist evangelism. The Baptist puts in the forefront the necessity of conversion: “you must be born again” (John 3:7-8). As such, the child is ever-conscious of the need to trust in Christ, just as all others are in need of being brought to Christ. [Side note: This intense focus on the work of Christ has done much to keep the Baptist churches, on the whole, from adopting aberrant liberal or existential Christologies.] However, the emphasis on personal conversion is problematic, especially from a paedobaptist vantage point. The paedobaptist rightly criticizes the Baptist over-emphasis on the emotional life as an indicator of conversion. A particular experience becomes the litmus test for true faith, and invariably as a child matures and enters adulthood the experiences of childhood are questioned and tested against further developments in understanding. This psychological burden is largely bypassed by the (Reformed) paedobaptist emphasis on an objective covenant and the antecedent work of God on our behalf. Presbyterians don’t typically worry about whether they are saved or not, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. It is a good thing insofar as a person’s feelings should not be made the measure of faith and obedience; it is a bad thing insofar as faith and obedience does require conversion and personal assent to the Gospel. The Baptist can tend to collapse the work of Christ into experience; the Presbyterian can tend to devalue experience and regeneration altogether.

So, these are the secondary consequences of baptismal practice; or, rather, baptismal practice is the consequence of a primary over-arching understanding of the covenants and faith. When the exegesis is not entirely persuasive in one direction or the other, these are the considerations that become the determining factor. Thus, the relative values ascribed to evangelism and experience (the credobaptist virtues/vices) or doctrinal excellence and catechesis (the paedobaptist virtues/vices) are of great importance in this debate.

Barth and the ‘New Calvinism’

[This post is prompted by Mike Cheek's comment, in this thread, that the New Calvinism is not Barth-friendly, from what he could tell. This also addresses some of Matt Shedden's concerns.]

What has Barth to do with the “New Calvinism,” or what does the New Calvinism have to do with Barth? Well, nothing…or close to nothing. I’m defining the New Calvinism as the resurgence, especially among young people, of Reformed doctrine within a broad array of evangelical churches, not just Presbyterian but especially Baptist and other free churches. Piper, Mohler, Carson — all Baptists. And in the music scene, Louie Giglio (founder of Passion) and most of the artists associated with Passion (David Crowder, Chris Tomlin, Steve Fee) are Baptists, to some extent. Crowder continues to do the music ministry at University Baptist Church in Waco. So, the New Calvinism is a cross-denominational movement within evangelicalism, but the Baptist contingency is especially important — why?

The New Calvinism is not primarily an academic movement with academic concerns. Rather, the New Calvinism has gained traction because of deficiencies within broader evangelicalism at the ground level, i.e., at the local church. My previous post on “Calvinism and Suffering” gives an account of this deficiency and the attraction of Reformed doctrine. Because this movement is largely taking place at the ground level, the Baptist influence makes a lot of sense. The Baptists have done far more to shape contemporary American evangelical piety and pathos than any other denominational tradition. Thus, in order for a broadly influential movement (like the New Calvinism) to gain traction within evangelicalism, the Baptists have to be at the forefront. The Presbyterians can do a lot of the academic heavy-lifting, which does trickle-down, but nothing like Passion or Desiring God or T4G could occur without the Baptists.

So, as an intra-evangelical movement in the American scene, the influence of Barth is pretty much nil, and the vast majority of the “Young, Restless, and Reformed” have never heard of him except maybe in passing. They know Edwards and Owen, not Barth. The situation is different if we look at the evangelical academy, where Barth is read and discussed, but the New Calvinism is primarily a populist movement. It is a reaction against the practical consequences of fundamentalism, revivalism, and prosperity preaching. Barth does indeed have some profound answers to these problems, but Barth is not really a figure of interest for the New Calvinism. In the academy, however, Barth is seriously engaged, but reaction to Barth is hardly monolithic. Colleges and seminaries like Wheaton, Trinity, Gordon-Conwell, and even Biola have an influential Reformed contingency, among teachers and students, where Barth is mostly treated with respect and even positively appropriated in theological thinking. At other places, like Westminster Philly, Barth is treated with far more suspicion and often as a danger to theological thinking (e.g., listen to this broadcast of the Reformed Forum or read Gregory Beale’s The Erosion of Inerrancy — Beale left Wheaton for WTS this year). Al Mohler at Southern would be another example of someone who considers Barth to be more of a source of ills than of vitality.

So, why am I writing this? Because I’m trying to offer some vindications of the New Calvinism, especially as seen on the ground level. When compared to the dominant ailments within evangelicalism — fundamentalism, revivalism, and prosperity preaching — then the New Calvinism looks pretty good. The benefits for the church, in preaching and catechesis, are undeniable, at least if you have any commitments (like myself) to Reformational distinctives. This is not to say that the New Calvinism is a comprehensive solution to all the ailments of the church. We can rightly complain about a narrowness here which is far too akin to that of the older fundamentalism. I’ve complained on this blog about an overly restricted form of inerrancy, to use one example, or superficial defenses of Creationism, to use another example, and both examples are prominent within the New Calvinism. Al Mohler is as representative of this movement as it gets, but this does not reflect the internal motives in the local church for the adoption of Reformed doctrine. That’s the distinction that I’m trying to make. If we look at the local church, the New Calvinism has been a great blessing.

Great Commission Resurgence: the good, the bad

I watched the report of the GCR committee given yesterday at the Southern Baptist Convention. The GCR passed, which is probably a good thing if it will result in some necessary fiscal and structural changes. As for the motives and rhetoric surrounding the GCR, I remain unimpressed.

The Good

Unlike the mainline denominations, the SBC is at least preoccupied with something worthwhile. I much prefer a committee report on evangelism over yet another committee report on human sexuality. The SBC can be thankful for that! The issues that currently dominate SBC energies are a far cry from those that are dividing the mainline and weakening the mainline’s unity with the worldwide Church.

The Bad

As I suspected would be the case, the urgency surrounding missions was heightened by explicit statements on the certain damnation of those who do not hear the Gospel. This urgency was then supplemented by an appeal to the conscience of those Christians who fail to evangelize or fail to fiscally support such efforts. The statistics are, of course, duly presented. The general rhetorical force intends to place the blame of pervasive “lostness” on those without a “heart” for missions. As such, salvation is contingent upon the work of those who bring the Gospel to the lost, both personally (e.g., witnessing to a co-worker) and through organizations (church plants, mission boards, etc.). Here, the operative doctrine of God implies a God who depends upon the initiative of his heralds. The salvation or damnation of any particular person or “people group” depends upon the resolve of those in the pews and those in the field. On this scheme, God’s electing purposes are limited by the reach of the visible Church.

My objection is that God could very well limit himself as such, but Scripture says nothing of the sort — because Scripture does not deal with the “how” of God’s call and regeneration of persons outside the Church. Scripture does not deal with this “how” because Scripture is concerned with the immediate situation of the Church where God has made covenant and the Gospel is being proclaimed. The lack of knowing “how,” apart from this explicit proclamation, does not entail a certain denial of the possibility. The internal work of the Holy Spirit, combined with the outer witness of a fallen but ordered creation, can very well be the means by which God reveals his promises to those outside the Church. That’s one possible understanding among others. We have to tread carefully here and perhaps not at all, but we cannot make the opposite error of treading confidently where God’s works and ways are not wholly revealed.

[By the way, you'll have to forgive the picture. It was too funny not to use!]

SBC starts tomorrow. Worth watching?

The annual Southern Baptist Convention starts tomorrow and will be viewable via webcast from the SBC website. I cannot say that I’m very excited about it. The big issue for the past couple years has been the Great Commission Resurgence, and everything that I’ve read from promoters of the GCR has been dull and predictable.

Basically, Southern Baptists aren’t evangelizing as much as they used to — membership has dropped (slightly, relative to other large denominations) — so they need to start evangelizing. How do you get the people to start evangelizing or, at least, give more financially to domestic and foreign missions? Tell them that they’ve become complacent and deluded by postmodern cultural messages — oh, and remind them that, in regard to foreign missions, millions of people are dying and going to hell because they are ignorant of the Gospel. So, that’s what I’ve read over and over. Certainly there is much to commend in the GCR statements and reports. Surely we evangelicals are complacent and lack conviction, and surely we need to have a heart for those who have never heard the Gospel. (Although, I don’t buy into the “going to hell by ignorance” understanding of God’s works and ways; God’s electing purposes are bigger than the visible Church.) However, attacking complacency and blaming postmodernism is not a sufficient means for building a church culture that values personal evangelism and missions. Rather, Christians who delight in God, amidst all the secular forms that obscure his glory, will evangelize by transforming the secular, revealing its true telos in Christ, and telling others of this hope.

In other words, pinpointing the symptoms, such as complacency, is not enough, when the causes are rooted deep in the Southern Baptist psyche. The problem with the SBC’s emphasis on evangelism is that this has always and only been the distinct emphasis of the SBC. Southern Baptists have proven that they can do evangelism, but have they proven much else? Where is the catholic vision of an ecclesiology that reaches outward to include all forms of human life? Where is the discipleship that is sustained and secured, not by an intellectual sectarianism and emotional escapism, but by a disciplining of the entire scope of the human personality: reason, volition, and aesthetic? Where is the confidence, not in oneself but in the Lord’s work of a new creation, where we humbly attend to all of life (including the secular forms)?

Once these issues are addressed, the SBC may or may not have increased statistics, but she will have vibrant churches under the Lordship of Christ. She will have authentic witnesses to this Lordship.

The epistemic hole in Free Church ecclesiology

If we define the church as “a free association of believers gathered by the Holy Spirit before the Risen Lord,” how would such independent communities ever come to the recognition of a canon of Scripture?

I was watching a fundamentalist Baptist preacher the other day — yes, I should spend my time more fruitfully — and he was harping on and on about how he didn’t believe in denominations because the church is nothing more than an independent, local assembly of believers. The only authority for his church — and other “properly constituted” churches — is the Bible. This pastor actually left the Southern Baptist Convention because of his convictions about the independence of the local church…yes, the SBC is too denominational for him! In other words, this pastor and this church doesn’t need “the church.” Thus, in principle, no church has ever needed a church other than itself, much less does it need synods, councils, assemblies, and other compromises to the independence of the local church. Therefore, no creeds and no confessions are necessary; moreover, creeds and confessions are illegitimate bindings on the local church. The Bible alone can bind the local church.

Of course, this raises one striking curiosity: the Bible itself, as a particular canon of texts, is a confession. The same justifications that give a denomination the authority to bind churches according to a confession (e.g., Augsburg or Westminster) are the same justifications that gave rise to a canon of Scripture. The local church needs other churches. It needs the witness of other churches to know “where to look” for the promises of God. It needs the discernment and accountability of other churches when it points to these texts, and not other texts, as the Word of God. As such, the testimony of the early church is given priority even as the Reformation re-evaluated the discernment of the early church in this matter, as in other matters. The Reformation churches, through her confessions, recognized the authority of the prophetic and apostolic texts as they have been handed to us, with the assumption that the Word of God was to be found there and, indeed, it was found there! From generation to generation, this assumption and this awakening sustain the church’s confidence in her Holy Scripture.

I have always liked the definition of the church that I gave above, which is roughly taken from Brunner’s very fine volume on ecclesiology (Dogmatics, vol. 3). However, I don’t see how such a definition can account for the authority of the canon. I don’t see how such a definition does not logically entail the clear absurdity of the above fundamentalist Baptist preacher, who speaks for vast swaths of evangelicalism (not just the fundamentalist wing) when it comes to this understanding of the church and the Bible. If there can not be, in principle, any confession other than the Bible, then we would not have a Bible. If the early church had operated with this “freedom” of independent churches, there would not — could not — have been a canon formation. Herein, the Reformed position, with the rest of the magisterial Reformation, has definite advantages and greater coherency.

[By the way, I am a member of the Evangelical Free Church of America, and I was raised a Baptist. So I am writing this as a criticism from within my own tradition.]

The Church

I stumbled upon this video for Placerita Baptist Church — sort of a promotional video. Looks like a great church, with a solid understanding of what the Church is about. Watch it all (it’s only 4 minutes). It will brighten your day.

The music is “Speak, O Lord” by Keith & Kristyn Getty.

Alistair Begg free audio

Alistair Begg is now offering his mp3 library of sermons for free. Here are a couple good series to start with:

What is the Church?

Fix Our Eyes on Jesus: A Study in Hebrews 1-6

Bio from his website:

Alistair Begg has been in pastoral ministry for 32 years. Following graduation from The London School of Theology he served eight years in Scotland at both Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh and Hamilton Baptist Church. Since 1983, he has been the senior pastor at Parkside Church near Cleveland, Ohio.  He has written several books and is heard daily and weekly on the radio program, Truth For Life.  The teaching on Truth For Life stems from the week by week Bible teaching at Parkside Church. He and his wife, Susan, have been married 32 years and they have three grown children.

Keith and Kristyn Getty, noted contemporary worship artists (see In Christ Alone), are members of Parkside.

Covenantal Baptism and the Problem of History

Last week, I finally received Everett Ferguson’s Baptism in the Early Church. I’ve been selectively reading portions throughout the work. In recent weeks, I’ve been especially interested in researching the Reformed arguments for infant baptism, and I’ve been studying the major critics of the Reformed arguments, namely G. R. Beasley-Murray and Paul Jewett. So, with this in mind, I’ve found Ferguson’s work highly interesting.

Ferguson doesn’t much deal with the Reformed arguments for a parallel between circumcision and baptism, supported by a strong continuity in the covenant(s) of grace. He doesn’t much deal with it because the apostles and the early church didn’t work with this framework in their understanding of baptism. If anything is clear from Ferguson’s reasearch, this is it: baptism parallels “spiritual circumcision” by Christ and the Spirit, not the circumcision of the old covenant. John the Baptist’s understanding of baptism was “for the forgiveness of sins,” which was then taken by Paul and put in a Christological framework of death and resurrection. The early Church then developed their baptismal beliefs along these lines of “regeneration in baptism” (Ferguson’s preferred phrase, instead of “baptismal regeneration”). There is no indication that infant baptism was practiced by the apostles (actually, there is some negative evidence, such as Paul’s presups in why “the children” in 1 Cor. 7:14 are “holy”), but once the church in the 3rd, and especially 4th and 5th, century started to develop a theology of original sin, the benefits of baptism were deemed appropriate for infants — once again, not because they, the infants, were in covenant with God, but because they needed redemption.

Thus, the early church could say, without equivocation, that the baptized infant was saved and heaven-bound. Once normative baptismal practice was removed from its sole context of the believer’s repentance and faith and expanded to infants, baptismal’s efficacy in-itself was highlighted and integrated into the theologies of the church fathers. Invariably, the problem of sin and apostacy had to be dealt with, with (eventually) an understanding of penance as a “second plank after shipwreck” of salvation/baptism. All of which, I would contend, inevitably lead toward the Reformation.

Those are some of my thoughts for now. I’ll have more in the future.

Delight in the Happiness of God

This is how theology is done, folks.

Here is John L. Dagg, concluding the introductory section to his doctrine of God, in Manual of Theology:

Love to God implies cordial approbation of his moral character. His natural attributes, eternity, immensity, omnipotence, &c, may fill us with admiration; but these are not the proper objects of love. If we worship him in the beauty of holiness, the beauty of his holiness must excite the love of our hearts. As our knowledge of these moral perfections increases, our delight in them must increase; and this delight will stimulate to further study of them; and to a more diligent observation of the various methods in which they are manifested. The display of them, even in the most terrible exhibitions of his justice, will be contemplated with reverent, but approving awe; and their united glory, as seen in the great scheme of redemption by Christ, will be viewed with unmixed and never-ceasing delight.

Love to God includes joy in his happiness. He is not only perfectly holy, but perfectly happy; and it is our duty to rejoice in his happiness. In loving our neighbor, we rejoice in his present happiness, and desire to increase it. We cannot increase the already perfect happiness of God, but we can rejoice in that which he possesses. If we delight in the happiness of God, we shall labor to please him in all things, to do whatever he commands, and to advance all the plans, the accomplishment of which he has so much at heart. Love, therefore, includes obedience to his commands, and resignation and submission to his will.

Love to God will render it a pleasing task to examine the proofs of his existence, and to study those glorious attributes which render him the worthy object of supreme affection. Let us enter on this study, prompted by holy love, and a strong desire that our love may be increased.