In his devotional volume, To Be Near Unto God, Abraham Kuyper writes that early Christianity differed from the philosophy of Greece and Rome, which fixated on certain abstract ideals, because of its attachment to a person. The Apostles, he says, demonstrated 'a passionate love for the living Christ, the tangible Image of the living God.' He continues,
It is this personal attachment of faith to the living Christ in very Person, in which the secret of their power consisted. It was a love of heart to heart, by which the world of that age was won. It was love and affection for the Mediator between God and man...
When St Thomas kneels down and exclaims: 'My Lord and my God!' there reveals itself all the power of the personal worship of God in Christ by which the Church of Christ became what it is.
But Kuyper observed in his time that this was being lost again, that the focus was shifting towards abstract ideals, the attributes of God and the good things he offers us, rather than on the person of Christ himself. 'Admiration of the ideal,' Kuyper writes, 'breaks down the faith.'
This is now the complaint of the Lord is Asaph's song (Psalm 81:11): 'They would have none of me.' They love my creation, they enjoy the world which I called into being, they admire the wisdom which I made to shine as light in the darkness, they dote on love and mercy, the feeling for which I made glow in their heart; but Me they abandon, Me they pass by, of Me they have no thought, to Me they give no personal love of their heart, with Me they seek no fellowship, Me they do not know; my personal converse does not interest them; they have everything that is mine, but they would have none of me.
What Kuyper observed in his day is no less true in ours. We must remember, then, that the greatest commandment, given in Deuteronomy 6:5, and repeated by Jesus in the Gospels (Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27), is to 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.' Our whole being is to be filled with love for God, for the personal and loving Father who desires intimate fellowship with his children.
It is easy to love the ideals of God, as Kuyper calls them. His love, justice, mercy – these are all incredible things that amaze us, and that we ought to praise God for. But perhaps we tend to love those things more than the person of Jesus because his love and mercy in and of themselves do not place a demand on our lives. Jesus does. He rules over us as Lord and King and demands total surrender.
But the beauty of following him and giving our lives to him is that we get the love and mercy and grace, but we get it from the person who loved us so much that he laid down his life for us. It is to him that we owe all or love and adoration. Without him, none of those good things exist.
Well aware of the fact that I said just yesterday I would not be posting again until after Easter, I could not pass up sharing this with all of you. Steve Bishop posted the following on his blog yesterday, a summary of the contours of the Neocalvinist tradition drawn up by Mike Goheen and Craig Bartholomew. Clarifying what Neocalvinism is all about is especially important because there are many misleading caricatures of Neocalvinism by its opponents, particularly those who hold to something known as two-kingdom theology, and because of the constant misapplication of the term "Neocalvinist" to the New Calvinists (men like John Piper, Kevin DeYoung, Mark Driscoll), thanks to a careless terminological error in Time magazine last year.
Neocalvinism finds its roots largely in the thought of Abraham Kuyper, who has famously said, "In the total expanse of human life there is not a square inch of which Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, 'That is mine!'" With that as its overarching perspective, Neocalvinism, according to Goheen and Bartholomew, can be further summarised further as follows:
1. Neocalvinism begins with Christ and this focus opens up into a full Trinitarian faith. 2. Christ is rendered to us truly in Scripture, which is fully trustworthy as God’s Word. 3. Christ stands at the centre of the biblical story and the good news he proclaimed is about the kingdom as the goal of history—God restoring his rule over the whole of human life and creation. 4. Since Christ has revealed and accomplished the end of history the Scriptures have a storied shape, and as such tell the true story of the whole world. 5. A central theme in the biblical story is God’s election of a people to embody the kingdom, to be a preview of the goal of history, and thus to bear witness to Christ’s rule over all of life – this constitutes mission. 6. The comprehensive gospel of the kingdom has been narrowed and consigned to a very minor place within the dominant Western humanist worldview, and this calls for a conscious articulation of a biblical worldview in relation to the cultural worldview to enable the church to recover the all-embracing scope of the good news. 7. The good news reveals the restoration of the creation from sin, and thus a neocalvinist worldview insists on a comprehensive and integrated understanding of creation, fall and restoration. 8. The fundamental backdrop of God’s drama of restoration is creation and thus neocalvinism articulates a rich doctrine of creation including its good and dynamic creation order and humanity’s place within it. 9. History is part of God’s order for creation and thus neocalvinism affirms the historical development or differentiation of creation. 10. The implication of the fall is that the power of sin and evil now radically twists every part of creation, and while the structures of creation remain good the distorting power of sin means they have been radically misdirected. 11. The Bible tells the story of restoration centred in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which is the recovery of God’s originally good purposes for the whole of his creation and all of human life. 12. Since God’s restorative power is at work in the creation by the Spirit, and the forces of evil remains at work in the creation, neocalvinism recognizes an ultimate religious conflict in the whole of human life. 13. God is at work leading his creation to its destiny of a new heavens and a new earth, and only then will the kingdom finally come. Until then the church is called to participate in God’s redemptive mission—the missio Dei—as witnesses to his victory, but since we await the final victory there is no room for triumphalism in neocalvinism.
While there is much more that can be said about this, Goheen and Bartholomew have here given a very helpful summary of the Neocalvinist tradition. There are many other resources available for exploring Neocalvinism further. To begin with, Bob Robinson has written a few blog posts highlighting the differences between Neocalvinism and the New Calvinism (see also here). Steve Bishop has also worked tirelessly to compile a wealth of resources from different leaders and thinkers within the Neocalvinist tradition at his site, All of Life Redeemed.
I know this is only a very short introduction to Neocalvinism, but hopefully it piques your interest to explore the tradition further. And now the next time someone tells you that Piper is a Neocalvinist, you can lovingly correct the person, give them a copy of Creation Regained, and let them see for themselves what Neocalvinism is really about.
The doctrine of sola Scriptura has long been contentious, for any number of reasons. In the early American period, with a Christianity greatly influenced by populism and democratic ideals, it served as a license for people to interpret the Bible free of any traditional authorities such as ordained clergy and confessional standards. To put it bluntly, it gave them a license to do whatever they wanted. Nathan O. Hatch, in The Democratization of American Christianity, observes this:
Any number of denominations, sects, movements, and individuals between 1780 and 1830 claimed to be restoring a pristine biblical Christianity free from all human devices. 'In religious faith we have but one Father and one Master,' noted the Universalist spokesman A. B. Grosh, 'and the Bible, the Bible, is our only acknowledged creed-book.' 'I have endeavored to read the scriptures as though no one had read them before me,' claimed Alexander Campbell, 'and I am as much on my guard against reading them to-day, through the medium of my own views yesterrday, or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system whatever.'
Protestants from Luther to Wesley had been forced to define carefully what they meant by sola Scriptura. They found it an effective banner to unfurl when attacking Catholics but always a bit troublesome when common people began to take the teaching seriously. For the Reformers, popular translations of the Bible did not imply that people were to understand the Scriptures apart from ministerial guidance. Thus when dealing with a scholar such as Erasmus, Luther could champion boldly the perspicuity of Scripture, its clarity for all: 'Who will maintain that the public fountain does not stand in the light, because some people in a back alley cannot see it, when everybody in the market place can see it quite plainly?' Yet when confronted with headstrong sectarians, he withdrew such democratic interpretations and admitted the danger of proving anything by Scripture: 'Now I learn that it suffices to throw many passages together helterskelter whether they fit or not. If this is the way to do it, I certainly shall prove with Scripture that Rastrum beer is better than Malmsey wine' (179-180).
Abraham Kuyper once wrote, in his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, that it would be foolish for someone to attempt to hike through the mountains of Switzerland without the help of a guide or a map. That is analogous, of course, to saying neither is it wise for someone to take up the Bible and attempt to interpret it apart from the wisdom of the Church throughout the ages. "In its rich and many-sided life, extending across so many ages," Kuyper wrote,
the Church tells you at once what fallible interpretations you need no longer try, and what interpretation on the other hand offers you the best chances for success. On this ground the claim must be put, that the investigator of the Holy Scriptures shall take account of what history and the life of the Church teaches concerning the general points of view, from which to start his investigation, and which paths it is useless to further reconnoitre.
Kuyper's sentiments are entirely antithetical to most of American Christianity, both past and present. As much as democratic ideals have done good things for America as a political entity, insofar as people have allowed those ideals to shape the Church in America, they have done a great disservice. Like I said in my last post, God grants authority to the Church, not the individual. He gives Scripture to His covenant people that it may reveal their Lord and shape and govern their life according to His will. To be sure, the individual must appropriate Scripture for himself (Deut. 6:4-9; Psalm 119; 2 Tim. 3:16-17, etc.), but never in a vacuum.
Our identity as Christians is not primarily that we are individuals saved by Christ. This is true, but it is not primary. What is first is that God has called a people to Himself, has redeemed them and brought them into a covenant relationship with them. Individual believers consitute that people, but not atomistically; their corporate identity as the body of Christ is at the fore. It follows here, then, that our reading of Scripture is to be done in this covenant community and not apart from it. This is not to say individuals should not read their Bibles on their own, of course, but that when they do so they should read it through what Kuyper calls the "consciousness of the Church." The Bible is, after all, God's covenant document with the Church.
When I was in college, Albert Wolters once said something like, "Don't worry, you can't come up with any new heresies. They've all been tried already." I'm not sure if that was intended to comfort us, but the point was that if we set ourselves some theological boundaries and recognize that the Church throughout history has already tried a myriad of interpretations, approving some and disapproving others, we have ourselves a pretty reliable guide as we travel today.
History matters, tradition matters, and the Church matters. They are gifts. Lean on them.
John Frame is frequently accused of being a bad confessionalist. In fact, there are some who even want to deny him the right to use the label altogether, although given its largely negative connotation these days he likely wouldn't think it worth the effort to object. The introduction to his latest book, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, contains a brief discussion regarding his approach to doctrinal formulation, which seems to directly address the concerns of the aforementioned parties.
His 2002 book, The Doctrine of God (commonly referred to as DG), was the referent for the discussion. Some felt he did an injustice to the Reformed confessions by not establishing thorough enough historical support (that is, citing or employing the formulations of the confessions) in giving shape to the theology contained in the book. Frame's response, in his own words, is as follows:
My purpose in writing DG was not simply, or even primarily, to expound the doctrines, but mainly to establish their foundation, to persuade readers that they are true. DG is an argumentative book. Ultimately, for those who believe in sola Scriptura, the only way to establish the truth of doctrines is to appeal to Scripture. It might have been helpful for me to include more historical material to help people understand the doctrines better, to understand why they have been formulated as they have been. But I cannot think of a single instance where additional historical citations would have made my presentation of those doctrines more persuasive.Given sola Scriptura...even when a theologian does cite historical sources, including confessions, it is then necessary to go back to Scripture to establish the truth of what those sources say. The main value of the confessions, then, is to mediate the biblical teaching. But is it too much to ask that in an 888-page book I might occasionally bypass the middle man?
What I find paradoxical about all this is that what brings Frame under fire from the self-titled confessionalists is precisely why Frame is actually an exemplar of good confessionalism. His theology is first and foremost rooted in Scripture, and all doctrinal formulations remain subject to that ultimate authority. This is exactly what the Reformers and post-Reformation leaders intended when they drafted the confessions.
With respect to what he said above, then, we see that from Frame's perspective a doctrine can only be shown to be true when it's Scriptural foundation is demonstrated. Mere exposition of what the confessional documents teach is insufficient for validating the truth of a certain doctrine. Naturally, insofar as the confessions reflect what is established from Scripture, they too can be upheld as truthfully reflecting the teaching of the Bible. But it is what is taught in the Word of God that necessarily forms the groundwork for any doctrine and theology.In a footnote appended to the last paragraph cited above, Frame says,
A former colleague has described this procedure, not favorably, as 'zero-based budgeting.' If that is a fault, I plead guilty. Zero-based budgeting in theology is a good thing, a necessary consequence of sola Scriptura. I am thankful to Luther and Calvin that they did not merely assume the truth of their traditions, but brought them under the scrutiny of Scripture. They were zero-based budgeters with a vengeance.
Frame's love and appreciation for the Reformed tradition and its creeds and confessions cannot be questioned. Even greater, however, is his love for the Word of God. He recognizes an important place for the Church's creeds and confessions, one that I think would reflect Abraham Kuyper's perspective regarding the role of tradition in theology. On the one hand we recognize that confessional documents are, by their nature, vested with a degree of objective authority. Determining exactly what degree of authority is something we need to wrestle with. Some err on the side of treating them as nearly infallible documents, while others give them no credence whatsoever.
In the end, Frame's mediating position represents the healthiest form of confessionalism. He highly respects these documents while contending that they must always remain subject to the authority of Scripture. This high respect is verified—and this is important to note—by the fact that after decades of doing theology, Frame has taken exception to very little of what is in the confessions (in this context, the Westminster Standards). If this makes Frame a bad confessionalist, then I am not sure what makes a good one.And so, in appropriating the Church's creeds and confessions, I gladly take my cue from Frame. If that makes me a bad confessionalist too, so be it.
As it would be the height of folly, on one's first arrival in Switzerland, to make it appear that he is the first to investigate the Berner Oberland, since common sense compels him on the contrary to begin his journey by making inquiry among the guides of the country, the same is true here. In its rich and many-sided life, extending across so many ages, the Church tells you at once what fallible interpretations you need no longer try, and what interpretation on the other hand offers you the best chances for success. On this ground the claim must be put, that the investigator of the Holy Scriptures shall take account of what history and the life of the Church teaches concerning the general points of view, from which to start his investigation, and which paths it is useless to further reconnoitre....The investigator does not stand outside of the Church, but is himself a member of it. Hence into his own consciousness there is interwoven the historic consciousness of his Church. In this historic consciousness of his Church he finds not merely the tradition of theologians and the data by which to form an estimate of the results of their studies, but also the confessional utterances of the Church. And this implies more. These utterances of his Church do not consist of the interpretation of one or another theologian, but of the ripest fruit of a spiritual and dogmatic strife, battled through by a whole circle of confessors in violent combat, which enlightened their spiritual sense, sharpened their judgment, and stimulated their perception of the truth; which fruit, moreover, has been handed down to him by the Church through its divinely appointed organs. It will not do, therefore, to place these dogmatic utterances on the same plane with the opinions of individual theologians. In a much deeper sense, they provide a guarantee for freedom from error, and he who belongs to such a Church has himself been moulded in part by them. This gives rise to the demand, that every theologian shall, in his investigations, reckon with all those things that are taught him by the history of the churches concerning well and badly chosen paths in this territory to be investigated; and, also, in the second place, that he shall take the dogmas of his Church as his guide, and that he shall not diverge from them until he is compelled to do this by the Word of God. Hence, one should not begin by doubting everything, and by experimenting to see whether on the ground of his own investigation he arrives at the same point where the confession of his Church stands; but, on the contrary, he should start out from the assumption that his Church is right, while at the same time he should investigate it, and only oppose it when he finds himself compelled to do so by the Word of God (576-577).
