YOUNG, RESTLESS, REFORMED: Calvinism is making a comeback

You can't miss the trend at some of the leading evangelical seminaries, like Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, which reports a significant Reformed uptick among students over the past 20 years. Or the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, now the largest Southern Baptist seminary and a Reformed hotbed. Piper, 60, has tinged the movement with the God-exalting intensity of Jonathan Edwards, the 18th-century Puritan pastor-theologian. Not since the decades after his death have evangelicals heaped such attention on Edwards.

Reformed theology often goes by the name Calvinism, after the renowned 16th-century Reformation theologian John Calvin. Yet even Edwards rejected the label, saying he neither depended on Calvin nor always agreed with him. Still, it is Calvin's followers who produced the famous acrostic TULIP to describe the "doctrines of grace" that are the hallmarks of traditional Reformed theology: Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and Perseverance of the saints. (See "It's All About God.")

Already, this latest surge of Reformed theology has divided Southern Baptist churches and raised questions about the future of missions. Its exuberant young advocates reject generic evangelicalism and tout the benefits of in-depth biblical doctrine. They have once again brought the perennial debate about God's sovereignty and humans' free will to the forefront.

The evidence for the resurgence is partly institutional and partly anecdotal. But it's something that a variety of church leaders observe. While the Emergent "conversation" gets a lot of press for its appeal to the young, the new Reformed movement may be a larger and more pervasive phenomenon. It certainly has a much stronger institutional base. I traveled to some of the movement's leading churches and institutions and talked to theologians, pastors, and parishioners, trying to understand Calvinism's new appeal and how it is changing American churches.

Thanks for the ping, Alex. Don't have time to read fully right now, will return later, but in the meantime I wanted to leave you with the following from Pastor Doug Wilson, which can be found at his Blog Mablog site.

With the Look of Real Wood
Topic: Postmodernism
I don't often read a book twice because time is short and there are so many others to get to. Of course such a sweeping statement would not include the Narnia stories and The Lord of the Rings, or Code of the Woosters, which will always repay multiple readings.
In theology, I read Luther's Bondage of the Will a couple times because it was simply so good. I read Boettner's The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination twice -- once as an Arminian and then again, years later, to see if he was as much of an idiot in the chapter on the atonement as I remembered, which he wasn't. The idiot, as it turns out, was somewhere else. Chesteron's Orthodoxy I have read more than once (not sure how many times) because he is so bracingly sane. I am currently reading Schlossberg's Idols for Destruction for the second time simply because prime rib is very good. But most books I read are one-timers, and I also have a shelf of books that did not inspire me to get all the way through. Maybe someday.
I say all this because I have just started my third read through Peter Leithart's Against Christianity. I am doing this because it is one of the best books I have ever read, a profound book that needs to be urged on another hundred thousand Christians or two. It is the kind of profound that doesn't requires mountains of turgid prose to carry it; turgid profundity is rarely profound in the basic sense of the word anyway. If Copernicus had dashed off the sentiment that maybe the earth goes around the sun, and had done this on the back of a napkin at a restaurant, the pithiness would not take away from the profundity, but would rather add to it. I am reading Leithart's book again because I am convinced that it is a bomb that has not yet gone off, although that is just a matter of time. It was published in 2003, and so far we have not yet gotten to the red wire/green wire moment in the movie. But we are almost there. The only person hurt by the book thus far has been John Robbins, and that is only because he was frightened by the title.
Leithart is advancing the idea that "the Church is a culture, a new city, a polity unto herself" (v. 7). He is against Christianity as an ism, a set of ideas that individuals adopt or not, as it suits them. As such, "Christianity is the heresy of heresies, the underlying cause of the weakness, lethargy, sickness, and failure of the modern church" (p. 13).
"Christianity is biblical religion disemboweled and emasculated by (voluntary) intellectualization and/or privatization" (p. 17).
"In short: Paul did not attempt to find a place for the Church in the nooks and crannies of the Greco-Roman polis. The Church was not an addition, but an alternaticve to, the koinonia of the polis" (p. 27).
"The Church's competitors are nation-states and international political bodies like the United Nations" (p. 34).
"Christian political activism is as modern and worldly as Christian political quietism, since both are based on the (false and heretical) assumption that being the Church is not already political activism" (pp. 35-36).
"Religious factors are not secondary additions to cultural effort; religious factors are always already there, always incarnate in the cultural pursuits themselves. Culture always embodies religion" (p. 37).
"The gospel is the announcement that God has organized a new Israel, a new polis, the Body of Christ, and that the King has been installed in heaven, at the right hand of the Father; thus the gospel is politics" (p. 37).
None of this is to say that City of God has reached its maturity, or that we don't have many things to work out, problems to solve, and so on. It is simply the recognition of what God has actually done in principle by establishing His kingdom here. And we were told to pray for the kingdom to come, not for the kingdom to go.
Now, why is this post under the postmodern heading? Because in these individualistic times, it is easy to think that the Church is a koinonia-fellowship over against the "just me and my Bible" approach of many modern individualists. Many of the emergent churches are trying to emphasize community more, and to (sort of) lean against the rampant individualism of modernity. Now the corporate identity of the Church is inconsistent with this kind of modernist individualism. But it is quite possible for sects, cults, and other social organizations to challenge this kind of individualism without ever challenging the ruling polis. This makes the Church into a sect, into a disciplined sub-group within the public square, a purveyor of what Leithart identifies as Christianity. But the price of admission is that the group has to agree to never, ever, rock the boat. The Church, by this understanding, challenges free-floating individuals, as though they were the competitors. But this is just one more special group competing for market share. The Church scrambles for members, just like Rotary Clubs do, or ham radio operators, or creative anachronism fans, or square dancers. But read this again:
"The Church's competitors are nation-states and international political bodies like the United Nations" (p. 34).
I can understand why many Christians would be reluctant to do this. "But we do not preach the gospel faithfully. We preach Christianity. And therefore we avoid the clash" (p. 34). I am reminded of Ambrose Bierce's junior officer in the Civil War, who protested to his commander that "any further display of valor by my troops will bring them into collision with the enemy." But I cannot understand why anyone who was reluctant in this way would ever dream of calling himself "postmodern." Ha. I repeat my earlier point. A genuine postmodernism, the real article, as opposed to the thin veneer versions going around these days ("with the look of real wood!") has to challenge the ruling polis in the same way the early Christians challenged Rome. It does not pretend to have challenged Rome simply because it has emphasized problems with Mithra worship, or that of the JWs, or the individual selfishness of Demetrius of Corinth, or the corporate policies of WalMart. The Church challenges the ruling gods. Christianity, as Leithart defines it, is very careful not to do anything of the kind. The Church challenges the false theonomy of the false gods. The Church is a trouble-maker. The Church says that there is another king, this man they call Jesus.

Besides this being a moving and interesting POV, at least for me, I posted it because I wondered if those the CT article refers to, looks to influence with this philosophy in mind.

And to end on a Godly note, again from Pastor Wilson's site: The epistemology of grace includes reason, sense experience, etc. but not at the basic level. At the basic level, you either have gratitude to God or you don't. And if you don't, you will wind up chasing your tail.

Don't let yourself get too confused. While I am no expert in what Southern Baptists believe, in my experience, most Baptists certainly accept and teach TULIP. In fact, many of those that some here would call Arminians would consider themselves mildly Calvinist.

Two schools mentioned in this article, Trinity International University and Wheaton College have long been mildly Calvinistic along with holding to the concept of free will. In fact, one of the past Presidents of Trinity was a Congregational (a denomination with a Reformed background) pastor, and an ordained minister in the Evangelical Free Church, the founding denomination of TIU.

Evangelicals have long disagreed on election and free will.

"The debate may never be settled, given the apparent tension between biblical statements and the limits of our interpretive skills. In addition, some will always see more benefit in doctrinal depth than others."

I have never felt conflicted over the fact that I can rejoice in the fact that God "chose" me, and the idea that I had to consciously accept His gift of salvation, or reject it.

However, after reading many of the posts recently, trying to determine the mindset of the most committed Reformed posters, I have concluded that some of their difficulties with free will is an objection to the idea that one must "come forward", "make a decision" or whatever phrase or expression is used to denote a moment of salvation. Certainly, the idea of a "sinner's bench" was engendered, early on, by Wesleyan (Arminian) theology.

But the fact remains, that no matter how one is reared, or how one rears his children, and no matter how steeped that child is in Calvinism, Arminianism, atheism, Hinduism or whatever, that child, one day, must recognize the fact that he is a sinner in need of the application of the Blood of Christ for the forgiveness of his sins, repent of those sins and act as if he has repented. In other words, "be born again" (a quite Biblical phrase).

You’re not describing the doctrine of predestination very fairly.

Consider a few biblical references to the idea of God foreordaining things:

“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. . .” 1 Peter 1-2

That’s a little snapshot with two of our favorite words, elect and foreknowledge. They have meaning. They must be understood.

“And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” Psalm 139:17

And the one that makes all of us uneasy:

“But the LORD hardened Pharoah’s heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go.” (repeatedly in Exodus; see 10:20 for instance).

I am sure I don’t need to convince you, though, that we are also everywhere urged to obey God and keep His commandments. Even though we are also told we are born in sin.

“...in Him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. . .” Eph 1:11

This mysterious yet Biblical doctrine is well expounded and described in:

God Sovereign and Man Free:
or the Doctrine of Divine Foreordination and Man’s Free Agency,
Stated, Illustrated, and Proved from the Scriptures
by N.L. Rice, D.D.,
Pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church, 1850

available to read off the internet - just google it.

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