As many of you know, the Pacific Northwest Presbytery has been embroiled in the whole Federal Vision slash Peter Leithart controversy for a couple years now, and some of you have been contacting me asking for an update on what's going on. Well, the SJC sustained my and others' complaint against the presbytery for failing to find a strong presumption of guilt concerning Leithart's theology, and they have instructed presbytery to take some kind of action at this October's meeting.Aside from that, a few of us will be meeting later this month informally to talk things over (Peter will be there, as will a couple others). My prayer is that our conversation will be both civil and constructive.
My reason for bringing this up is that I came across this audio clip the other day in which Pastor Rob Rayburn, who is Leithart's primary and most outspoken advocate in the PNWP, claims that the entire faculty of Covenant Theological Seminary (which is the PCA's official seminary) is not only in Leithart's corner, but are "fit to be tied" over the ill-treatment that he and other Federal Visionists have received at the hands of the "purely evil" people, like me, who have the audacity to question whether FV theology is consistent with the Westminster Standards.
Now, I admit that I am surprised at this claim, mainly because of the facts that Rayburn is an honest man, and that the PCA as a whole has demonstrated that it is overwhelmingly of the opinion that Federal Vision theology is out of accord with the official doctrine of the Presbyterian Church in America.
If any of you cares to shed light on this, I'm all ears.
If they are all fit to be tied, doesn't that mean they're violating Matt. 18 by not coming to the people they have a problem with? Instead they're gossiping about it?
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that a lot of people at Covenant and elsewhere in the denomination feel like a lot of things that aren't distinctively federal visionist have been subsumed under that label in the various "letters of concern" that have spread out to the presbyteries. Further, some issues that used to be matters that allowed a bit more freedom are now a bit restricted, such as differing views of the covenant of works. Finally, there have been direct attacks on the seminary professors in recent months, and that naturally produces some resistance. If X can be so critical of Y, and I know Y and know that he is an orthodox man, then I start to doubt what X says about someone like Leithart that I was easily able to assume as "the other."
ReplyDeleteJason,
ReplyDeleteIt is important to note that this comment is part of a longer statement by Dr. Rayburn. That clip can be found at the link you provided to E Clips. Simply click on the "from Robert Rayburn folder" to listen (the full "fit to be tied" speech). Those who follow the link must know that the first 52 seconds are mute until the microphone gets turned up.
In context, the snippet you provided is preceded by about 6 or 7 minutes of comment and followed by another 5 minutes of additional comment. The terms "purely evil" and "fit to be tied" must be understood in the context of the longer statement.
Note: I'm not here to carry water for Rayburn or CTS. However, discussing the snippet apart from the longer discourse will only create heat and not light.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteI did listen to the entire clip, but the rest consisted mostly of Rayburn defending himself against critics and taking shots at WSC and redemptive-historical preaching. So I didn't find it all that germane.
Anon,
ReplyDeletePlease comment under a screen name, whether real or made up.
Further, some issues that used to be matters that allowed a bit more freedom are now a bit restricted, such as differing views of the covenant of works.
I disagree. I think that if you deny the covenant of works, as every FV'ist I have read does, then regardless of whether you hold any other FV sympathies, you should be held accountable for that view.
Can you give any other examples of how things have gotten more strict as a result of the FV controversy?
JJS, I listened to the longer post and there seems to be a disconnect between what Rev. Rayburn is defending himself from and what you and other critics of FV say. The burden of his message was that HE personally is accused falsely of preaching heresy in his sermons at Faith PCA, namely, that Christians are justified by "faithfulness" rather than faith. And he defends against that charge by asserting that a review of all his sermons will not find him not once preaching justificaiton by faithfulness, but rather by faith alone, placing him on the right side of orthodoxy. He insists his only departures from Reformed orthodoxy are exceptions to what he calls "innovations" (e.g.,redemptive-historical preaching) emanating from WSC and Greenville. I do not know what his other exceptions are.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding, however, is that you and FV critics have never accused Rev. Rayburn of personally preaching FV or NPP or such, correct? I understand you merely disagree with his support of Leithart and other FV's being considered within the ambit of confessional orthodxy. That doesn't necessarily imply that Rayburn agrees with the FV, merely that he wants to tolerate something you believe should not be tolerated in the PCA. That seems a very different charge. Is he raising a red herring, defending against a charge no one is making? And failing to address the real issue? Or am I missing something.
Let me hasten to add ... I am grateful for your striving to protect the gospel from the FV teaching and pray that it will be unambiguously removed from the church.
ReplyDeleteSSullivan,
ReplyDeleteRayburn is responding to real charges that have been levelled against him, but not by me. So no, it wouldn't be fair to say he is raising a red herring. But for the purposes of this discussion, his defense of himself is beside the point (which is that CTS has apparently broken ranks with the 90% or so of the PCA who adopted the FV Report at GA a few years ago).
JJS, thanks. Very helpful. Do you believe that the CTS faculty members who have broken with the PCA's FV Report (and allegedly are "fit to be tied") themselves agree with the FV, or are just trying to preserve room under the big tent for a diversity of views? It seems to me that if you want to tolerate in the church a teaching like FV, you must either believe it or believe it is within the ambit of confessional orthodoxy. Otherwise, if one agreed it was heterodox, and in fact a confusion of the gospel, wouldn't one necessarily oppose it, as the FV Report did? I respect men like Bryan Chappell and other CTS faculty -- and Tim Keller -- even while I am more confessionally Reformed than they. But I cannot understand why they are sympathetic to tolerating the FV unless they agree with it. So it seems to me the fair inference is that they agree with it. Am I wrong?
ReplyDeleteI think Rayburn realizes that he is next on the list to be investigated and booted out of the PCA, after Leithart. He's just trying to preempt it.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteWow. Thanks, Rev. Carpenter, for the details. I'd heard rumors about these matters, but this is more disturbing than I thought, at many levels. What is even more disturbing than writing and assigning dubious books to a reading list is declining to answer legitimate questions asked in a legitimate way and with probable cause to ask them. It creates the appearance of circling the wagons. One would expect an official, denominational seminary to want to embrace openness and avoid even the appearance of impropriety or heterodoxy. This is troubling.
ReplyDeleteSSullivan,
ReplyDeleteDo you believe that the CTS faculty members who have broken with the PCA's FV Report (and allegedly are "fit to be tied") themselves agree with the FV, or are just trying to preserve room under the big tent for a diversity of views?
Well I can't read people's motives, but my guess is that the main concern on the part of those in Leithart's corner is that of preserving the PCA's "big tent" dynamic. Whenever Rayburn speaks to the FV issue, his people is always that we shouldn't draw an even smaller circle around ourselves than the one we've drawn already, else we'll become irrelevant.
Jason,
ReplyDeleteI found the entire clip germane perhaps because I am a CTS grad.
I think that the 'purely evil' and 'fit to be tied' comments can be interpreted in a couple of ways. First, Rayburn feels slandered by comments posted on some blogs and FaceBook pages. I would venture to say that CTS feels the same. I do not know which blogs he speaks of and I do not subscribe to FaceBook. Secondly, I think that both Dr. Rayburn and CTS see themselves as mainstream PCA and faithful defenders of the reformed faith (he and Dr. Chapell are very close friends). Thus any critique is taken very personally.
One must also keep in mind the historical founding of the RPCES. It is no secret that a few years after the Bible Presbyterian Church was formed (1937) there was serious regret about splitting off from the OPC over “secondary issues.” In 1956 the BPC split into the Collingwood Synod (led by Carl McIntire) and the Columbus Synod which attracted younger ministers like Robert G. Rayburn, Francis Schaeffer, Jay Adams, along with J. Oliver Buswell. It was the Columbus Synod that formed Covenant College and Covenant Seminary. While emphasizing its Presbyterian and Reformed heritage it also pursued evangelism and union with other like-minded church bodies. This was in stark contrast to the separatism and top-down control that characterized the Collingswood Synod. Eventually the Columbus Synod merged with the RPCNA-GS to form the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod.
Fast forward to today. Both Dr. Rayburn and CTS see themselves as faithfully carrying the mantle of Dr. Rayburn Sr. along with the vision of the BPC-Columbus Synod. It should also be noted that their vision of subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith (good faith subscription) prevailed when the denomination debated that issue a decade ago. Thus, Dr. Rayburn’s comments (‘purely evil’ and ‘fit to be tied’) must be understood in the context of that debate and the historical context that led to the formation of the RPCES. Those who question where he and CTS draw the lines on orthodoxy are immediately suspect as narrow, sectarian, ‘truly reformed’, and ‘Machen’s Warrior Children’. His swipe at WSC and Greeneville, as ‘small seminaries,’ was meant to discredit those schools and their graduates as too narrow for much of the PCA.
In the end Dr. Rayburn is defending his view of the PCA as a big-tent denomination with room for all sorts of folk. In his eyes, men like you and I who raise questions about FV Theology, are disrupting the church and threatening to make it smaller. I wish that he could see that the questions we are raising are not “secondary issues.”
Dave, JJS can speak for himself, but a couple thoughts. I can't resist noting the irony that those whose vision is for a "big tent" PCA think that the tent isn't big enough to accommodate confessionally Reformed persons. So is it "big tent" or "a different kind of tent"? The move to attempt to withdraw from NAPARC seemed to say the latter. In fact it seemed calculated to make the statement that the PCA, in their view, is not or should not regard itself as confessionally Reformed. IMO the original Strategic Plan appeared to be a poke in the eye of the confessinalists. The evangelical wing and the confessinalist wing of the PCA had co-existed for nearly 40 years, but the CTS wing seemed to be saying, we want to push out or marginalize the confessionalists. That seemed to me to be a rather gratuitously hostile move.
ReplyDeleteFinally, while I'm sympathetic with the drive to extend the reach of the church, not at the price of heresy or abandonment of our confessions. In addition, I agree with the goal of maintaining civil, charitable discourse, but that works both ways. The brief filed by the Presbytery before the SJC was hardly a model of irenic, charitable speech. Quite frankly, it was strident and insulting.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteIn the end Dr. Rayburn is defending his view of the PCA as a big-tent denomination with room for all sorts of folk. In his eyes, men like you and I who raise questions about FV Theology, are disrupting the church and threatening to make it smaller.
The problem is that the whole "big tent" thing is a red herring, as I pointed out to him on the floor of presbytery. Should the PCA be a big enough tent for Unitarians? No? Why not? Oh, because that's inconsistent with our denomination's teaching, got it. But isn't that the issue with Leithart, namely, that his teachings (such as his denial of imputation and his redefinition of justification to include our overcoming of the enlaving power of sin) are contrary to our Standards?
People can talk all they want about how big we should be, and they can wring their hands all they want about how small we might become, but the real issue is whether or not Leithart's views are consistent with the WCF. The FV Report says "no," and those who agree with it (the vast majority of the PCA) are dubbed "sectarian" by Rayburn and CTS.
Ironic, isn't it, that FV'ers and their supporters call the rest of us "sectarian." Last I checked, around 8 or 9 NAPARC churches and seminaries rejected the FV in official study reports. If we're all sectarian, then Reformed theology itself is sectarian.
SSullivan,
ReplyDeleteI can't resist noting the irony that those whose vision is for a "big tent" PCA think that the tent isn't big enough to accommodate confessionally Reformed persons.
It only goes to show that it's not about whether to draw lines, but what lines you're willing to draw. Rayburn is "fit to be tied" over those who appoint women to a non-ordained diaconate, after all.
First, please forgive me for misspelling Dr. Chapell's name above.
ReplyDeleteI think Dr. Rayburn's unkind words towards Meredith Kline, Greenville, WSC, and redemptive historical preaching are red herrings.
I was one of the signers of the letter to the MO presbytery concerning TE Myers. I'm highly alarmed from a lot of what I hear about Covenant Sem and New York Metro, and my session was the one who initially asked for the judicial investigation against Dr. Rayburn's son-in-law, Joshua Moon.
I'm opposed to the FV because it strikes at the doctrine of justification by faith in the imputed righteousness of Christ. I've never read Kline. I don't practice the redemptive historical method, and I graduated from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Heretic Factory of the PCUSA (with a couple of detours to a Benedictine monastery and seminary and Bethel Sem. St. Paul which was in the throes of Greg Boyd's open theism.) So I am hardly the victim of an overly narrow education.
The idea that all of this is just because of Meredith Kline is ridonkulous.
Jason,
ReplyDeleteHis reference to MO Presbytery also has to do with the letter that was sent to them asking them to look into the views of Jeff Meyers. I was a signatory of that letter and the ten page scolding we all got from their Stated Clerk was very illuminating.
Kevin
SSullivan,
ReplyDeleteYes the PCA is a big-tent and there is room for confessional folk - just not where they will have influence. I agree that the Strategic Plan was a poke in the eye (probably more than that) to the confessional wing.
Jason,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "People can talk all they want about how big we should be, and they can wring their hands all they want about how small we might become, but the real issue is whether or not Leithart's views are consistent with the WCF The FV Report says "no,"
I agree with you. It seems that Rayburn views Leithart's exceptions to the WCF as falling into the RAO 16-3e5c classification as "more than semantic yet not out of accord with any fundamental of our system of doctrine." Thus he is pitting the RAO and his view of what is orthodox against the PCA FV Report, the WCF, and what our sister denominations have said.
I don’t think that the big-tent is a red-herring to him. He is happy with WSC & Greenville grads in the PCA as long as they don’t have too much influence or try to impose their views on others. He believes that where he and CTS draw the lines on orthodoxy is 100% accurate.
I found his critique of Meredith Kline and redemptive-historical preaching to be hilarious. At CTS we read Meredith Kline in our course on Biblical Theology (G. Van Gronigen) and in homiletics (Dr. Chapell). It is pretty hard to engage in Christ-centered preaching without delving into redemptive historical methodology.
You also wrote, “and those who agree with it (the vast majority of the PCA) are dubbed "sectarian" by Rayburn and CTS."
True. I don’t know how he can make such a statement. As you and I know the vast majority of the PCA cannot be construed as sectarian. Moreover, defending the plain teaching of the Scriptures and the WCF is anything but sectarian.
How come everyone's a sectarian except me?
ReplyDeleteJJS:
ReplyDeleteUnless you're prepared to say that the PCA is the Church, full stop, you're a sectarian too.
Best,
Mike
Getting back to the original blog post...
ReplyDeleteIn my time at CTS, every M.Div student I had time to talk to was paedocommunionist, non-FV, and anti-Reformed-Churches-treatment-of-the-FV-to-date. This gives me great hope. The majority of young ministers site Piper as their most influential preacher, so people like RSC who denounce him as _Not_Reformed_ do nothing but alienate themselves. Rayburn is right when he lists his allies. The Strategic Plan shows it and wannabe-OPC/URC grumps such as yourself are not the powerhouses y'all imagine yourselves to be.
In my time at CTS, every M.Div student I had time to talk to was paedocommunionist
ReplyDeleteThen I hope they plan to minister in either the Pacific Northwest- or Missouri- or Metro New York presbyteries, because it may be tough to get a call anywhere else.
and anti-Reformed-Churches-treatment-of-the-FV-to-date.
So a lot of Covenant Seminary students are against what 90% of the PCA believes? Or are they against the way FV people are treated? If my experience tells me anything, it's that most of those students couldn't articulate biblically why FV is good or bad. Most people just want to avoid conflict.
The majority of young ministers site Piper as their most influential preacher, so people like RSC who denounce him as _Not_Reformed_ do nothing but alienate themselves.
All your fellow Covenant students will also alienate themselves one day when they take ordination vows affirming a theology that Piper rejects. It's not about whose team has greater numbers, it's about what the Bible teaches. They should have taught you that at CTS, but I'm not surprised they didn't.
Rayburn is right when he lists his allies. The Strategic Plan shows it and wannabe-OPC/URC grumps such as yourself are not the powerhouses y'all imagine yourselves to be.
So the fact that the SP varely passed amid great conflict and protest proves that fewer people oppose the Federal Vision that we previously thought? Not seeing the connection there....
As for getting a call, ND and the Greenville circle are the only places I've heard of as recalcitrant as you are.
ReplyDeleteThe anti-FV position is opposed to a straw man made by Guy Waters and his ilk, and more and more people see it. The FV is amorphous, vague, and even plain wrong but came about for a right reason. As folks find Covenant Succession, they no longer need the FV's bad solution.
You are right that most people want to avoid conflict, but you're a simple knee jerk reaction the other way. You hate the world so much that you pendulum swing as far away as you can from tolerance, even the original, Christian virtue.
I didn't say most PCA candidates are of Piper's exact theology, only that he's a more winsome expositor than any grump your side has going for it. Young men go to Together for the Gospel, and however much you and R. Scott Clark call them unReformed is how much you show yourself to be a OPC/URC Isolationist in disguise.
The SP passed because people didn't buy your style of hardline, reactionary, schismatic, Warrior Children arguments. As they see more and more that that was how the FV (wrong as they are) is being treated, they react more and more negatively.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteI don't respond to comments that have the kind of insulting and dismissive tone that you have adopted. If you wish to comment here further, you'll need to watch your mouth.
I apologize. I thought that was par for the course here, but I can calm down. ... I am sorry I let my temper get the better of me. I can only say that these issues are important and I sometimes despair of anyone being persuaded of anything on these matters. I shall endeavor to take you at your word and not assume the worst of intentions. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteApology accepted.
ReplyDeleteYou'll note if you read this blog regularly that I try to go out of my way to avoid insulting those with whom I disagree, and to attribute to them the best motives possible. I said explicitly in this post that Rayburn is an honest man, and I have never said anything negative about him publically. I've also taken great heat from people for insisting that Leithart is a godly and good scholar. So when anyone paints me in some bloodthirsty or vitriolic light, it upsets me. There are plenty of blogs where insults are "par for the course," but if you ask anyone they'll tell that this isn't one of them.
Thanks for being forgiving. I think what pushed me over was the Piper thing. I never meant young men in the PCA are closet Reformed Baptists, only that I hear R. Scott Clark (who is the most outspoken guy in your camp) saying over and over again that Piper's not Reformed. I feel like your team is the Reformed Police, deciding who is worthy of the august title and what it even means.
ReplyDeleteThe footnotes in the papers from your presbytery where enlightening. You cite creeds, confessions and theological dictionaries, Peter Derida and Wittgenstein. Rob cites Scripture.
I'm sorry I assumed the worst about you. Your appearances on the Heidelcast and the Reformed Forum lead me to assume you were the PCA equivalent of their URC/OPC snobbery. Even the Ordinary Means guys speak less vitriolicly and more infrequently about the FV than you do. I don't want to be insulting. I am hopeful of honest dialogue.
OK, let me explain what's the dealio with the whole Piper thing (you may not agree, but it'll at least help you understand where Scott is coming from).
ReplyDeleteFirst, we have to acknowledge that "Reformed" is not a state of mind, but is a label that has actual historical and doctrinal content. How do we determine what the content of Reformed theology is? We look to the confessions that the Reformed churches have drafted. When we do this, we conclude that Piper is not Reformed in any meaningful sense. To deny this is to admit that "Reformed" is a wax-nose-like label that we can apply to anyone we like provided he holds to "the essentials" of the system, as determined by me. None of this is meant to be insulting to Piper, it's just stating a fact. Piper is not Reformed, I am not Lutheran, Wesley was not a Calvinist, &c.
This is our problem with the FV, i.e., we believe that its doctrines are inconsistent with the Reformed confessions and catechisms. It’s not about big tent/small tent, it’s about one thing and one thing only: Does the FV deny core doctrines of our Reformed system? If it doesn’t, then fine. If it does, then they either need to repent or we need to seriously modify the WCF (Jeff Meyers has said that the entire chapter on the covenants needs to be ditched).
Every Reformed minister has vowed before God to uphold and defend the churches’ confessions and catechisms. You call it “being the Reformed police,” but the alternative is doctrinal laxity and, in the end, theological liberalism.
As far as the footnotes to my and Rayburn’s reports, it’s a red herring. The study committee was charged with determining whether Leithart’s views are within the parameters of the Westminster Standards. We weren’t instructed to ask whether or not our standards are biblical (we already believe they are). I would suggest you re-read the minority report, keeping in mind what its stated purpose was, as given by presbytery itself. I think I showed quite conclusively that Leithart’s views, as stated by him, are in many cases in direct contrast to the WCF (and he at times concedes as much).
I don’t know what “The Reformed Forum” is, so it’s unlikely that I appeared on or in it. You may be confusing me with someone else. And unless you’re going to provide me with evidence that I have spoken “frequently and vitriolically” about the FV (so that I can repent), you’ll need to rethink the wisdom of throwing charges like that around. I have been roundly criticized by people in my own camp for the irenic things things I have said publically about Federal Visionists, not to mention having been the object of Mark Horne’s frequent scorn and imprecations.
Thank you for that well thought out and cogent answer. If the WCF (to which I am loath of taking any exceptions) is the sole definition of Reformed, then you may be right. I am not so quick to agree, however. Ordinary speech includes such phrases as "Reformed Baptist" and "Reformed Charismatics". Calvin parted ways with Luther (actually Melancthon) and Beza parted ways with Arminius. I'm on the same track as you so far, but when you want to disown Spurgeon and Lloyd-Wright and Mohler and Mahaney, I'm not with you and don't think most of the PCA's Young, Restless & Reformed are either. Reformed is about soteriology because that's what the Reformation was about. The Gospel is worth splitting over and nothing else. That's why there are Reformed Baptists and Reformed Episcopalians, because ecclesiology is not the Gospel.
ReplyDeleteThe WCF is great, but it's not the final word. When things like 7.4 are so scholarly out of date, I'm not prepared to define forever the Faith once and for all given by it. The Divines were awesome men, but there were compromises even then. And the Pactum Salutis didn't make it in by a mere 5 years.
Let us not use the Confession like the English used the perfectly good Book of Common Prayer, as a litmus test with which to smash people. It's goal is to systematize the Bible.
Mark Horne is a ... something not nice. I called him our once, to defend his stance from Scripture, and he summarily deleted the blog post. You, on the other hand are going up in my estimation exponentially by the hour, just by condescending to this discussion!
Reformed Forum is a bunch of OPC guys at WTS' podcast. I did mix up you and RSC. Sorry.
JJS,
ReplyDeleteThe confessions were the result of the reformers, because to define "reformed" by adhering to one of the later confessions such as WCF, augsburg confession, would mean that none of the reformers, such as Calvin, Luther, Zwingli were actually reformed. From most historians, "Reformed" refers to non-Lutheran part of the reformation, more specifically, the Zwingli-Bullinger-Calvin tradition, opposed to the Luther-Melanchthon tradition. The confessions are a systematizing of various interpretations of the reformers, and they differed. Also, Lutherans are confessional, but still not-reformed. Reformed may also mean protestant, and include anabaptists and every everything else.
I've read some good books suggesting that Calvin would not adhere to Covenant Theology, and Calvin's views on the sabbath would prevent him from being members even of some presbyterian denominations such as the OPC.
So it seems that you define reformed purely based on one's adherence to the Westminster Confesssion of Faith.
Maybe it would be helpful if you could provide some sort of reference or rational why "reformed" is defined the way you do, to clear up the confusion.
When Piper says he's reformed, it means that he holds to the TULIP from the synod of dort, as if predestination was what defined calvinsits or reformers. And considering his mixture of covenant theology, new covenant theology and chialism, I believe there is no other way in which he claims be be reformed. His arguments against New Perspective on Paul, demonstrates that he does not have a federal view of salvation.
Dearest Steve,
ReplyDeleteIn your big heartedness you keep using the "OPC" as a curse word, and its hurting my heart. Is this how the nice people play or is this further evidence that the "open" men on the side wearing the white hats are just as closed and narrow as they accuse the black hats of being?
I understand we in the OPC have committed the greatest sin known to the white hats in that we are "small". But believe it or not there are many men in the OP who have their own issues with RSC and he definitely has his issues with them. I know its easier to stereotype (are you on the MNA church planting committee by any chance?) but things are not as uniform as you would like to believe?
Well I must go to attack all the churches in our town, scream at Arminians, laugh at evangelism and refuse to show any mercy...probably write a paper or two quoting Machen often, ignore my sheep and torture kittens. Being all OPC and everything...
Oh, and Wyatt Calvin's view of the Sabbath would not be enough to keep him out of the OPC, that is folklore. I admitted certain scruples on the Sabbath and was voted in unanimously in my ordination exam.
Wyatt,
ReplyDeleteI am baffled at your statement about Calvin and confessions. Granted, you state "later confessions" but you seem to imply that Calvin adhered to no reformed confession and that is not true.
After a brief persecution in Paris in 1557 the fledgling church sent an 18 point statement of faith to Calvin and Beza for approval along with a request to draft a Protestant confession. This was not the first time such a request came to Calvin. It is believed that he declined these requests based on his conviction that a confession must be produced by the church not by one person.
Eventually he, Beza and Viret drafted the French Confession and sent it to the church in France for its approval (1558-9). During a lull in persecution that church was able to convene a council to work on the confession and they expanded it from 35 to 40 articles. Though Calvin never officially signed the confession (he died just a few years later) Beza eventually did in 1571. However, the original draft had his approval and the amendments did not substantially change the substance of the original draft.
It is true that 'covenant' theology is not explicitly found in the French Confession. However, it should be noted that de Bres and his team of scholars used the French Confession as the basis for the Belgic Confession (1559)where elements of covenant theology can be found. He sent a French edition to Geneva for review and for unknown reasons it never received Calvin's approval. However, nothing has been recorded from Calvin indicating that there were substantially wrong theological ideas in the BC.
I'm not so sure that Calvin would be opposed to covenant theology.
Wyatt makes some good points about the vernacular use of "reformed." Hey, even WTSCal officially makes such a concession:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reformedbaptistinstitute.org/
Ordinary speech includes such phrases as "Reformed Baptist" and "Reformed Charismatics"…I'm on the same track as you so far, but when you want to disown Spurgeon and Lloyd-Wright and Mohler and Mahaney, I'm not with you and don't think most of the PCA's Young, Restless & Reformed are either. Reformed is about soteriology because that's what the Reformation was about. The Gospel is worth splitting over and nothing else. That's why there are Reformed Baptists and Reformed Episcopalians, because ecclesiology is not the Gospel.
ReplyDeleteHeavens to Murgatroyd. First, the problem with outlooks like this is that they are so clearly beholden to the siren powers of personality and popularity.
Second, this sort of view also helps point up how grossly misunderstood the Reformation really is. It was about a whole raft of organically inter-related things, not just soteriology. This is the convenient line of reasoning often used to protect certain personalities. But if the point about what defines “Reformed” being what is laid out in the confessional formulations is right, and if those formulations stipulate that there are three marks of the true church (Belgic 29; WCF 25), then the gospel not only entails soteriology and sacramentology but also ecclesiology. In other words, Steve, I’m seeing your point about soteriology but upping the ante.
Having just read the Institutes, I'm reminded of Carl Trueman's repeated point, that the Reformers were loath to be thought of as novel. The points in Calvin were he is anti-Catholic are plain as day. Idols, soteriology, sacraments, these are easy things to make the case of our connection to Calvin. Presbyterian polity, Covenant Theology and other "innovations" are harder to tie up. The FV debate has become about who will we be "Together for the Gospel" with.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of T4G, which OPC men were there?! Being small is no sin, but being small minded and schismatic are. And if you say the OPC isn't the split-happy jerks of 1937, then where are the talks of unification ... with anyone? The OPC and the URC are the frozen-chosen.
As much as I baffled as a new Christian that Piper could be Reformed and Baptist, he is. C.J. Mahaney is Reformed and Charismatic. There are people who are Reformed and Pre-Mill, even Reformed and Teetotalers! The tent is big not to accommodate personalities, but to accommodate the Gospel. Calvinist could even be co-belligerents with the Wesleys (just not Wesleyans). Gospel, Gospel, Gospel.
Speaking of T4G, which OPC men were there?! Being small is no sin, but being small minded and schismatic are. And if you say the OPC isn't the split-happy jerks of 1937, then where are the talks of unification ... with anyone? The OPC and the URC are the frozen-chosen.
ReplyDeleteOne, more charitable answer (I count four slurs) is that these denominations are ecclesiastically minded ones, as opposed to movement oriented ones. Your apparently unchecked assumption seems to be that personality-driven unity outpaces doctrinally-driven confession. Have you considered that doctrinal confession begets unity? But one other problem with your assumption is that it doesn’t do much to oppose the Pope, and yet I’m willing to bet you oppose the Pope. That starts to look like religious bigotry if you’re not more careful.
As much as I baffled as a new Christian that Piper could be Reformed and Baptist, he is. C.J. Mahaney is Reformed and Charismatic. There are people who are Reformed and Pre-Mill, even Reformed and Teetotalers! The tent is big not to accommodate personalities, but to accommodate the Gospel. Calvinist could even be co-belligerents with the Wesleys (just not Wesleyans). Gospel, Gospel, Gospel.
What exactly would Calvinists join Wesleyans on? Maybe you mean neo-Calvinists, which would maybe mean the transformation of the city? But you have to do more than simply chant a magic word, you actually have to define it, Steve. And the last time I was amongst Wesleyans they had some pretty strident things to say against the Calvinist formulation of the gospel. Ironically enough, I find myself more grateful for consistent Wesleyans than well-meaning and misguided Calvinists (note: exuberance doesn't make up for the misguidance, it just adds salt to the wound).
@Dave,
ReplyDeleteEvery church, even 1st Nazarenes have a 18 point statement of faith, but we'd hardly consider them confessional... maybe mission statements? We cannot assume that Beza was the same as Calvin. Melanchthon was a genius in his own right, and not merely recording the words of Luther in the augsberg confession, but it would also be wrong to think that Luther was misrepresented either. Luther and Calvin and Zwingli all had very strong opinions and were not ones to adhere to anyone else. If anyone, Calvin was the one who tried to make peace between Lutheran and Reformed traditions, how else would we have his eucharistic doctrine of real spiritual presence?
As you said, the French Confession is a work of beza that was penned long after the Institutes were in full force, and if anything, it was a summary of calvin's thought that hardly represented him. Calvin's Institutes are more like Summa than a confession. Augustine penned his enchridion, and we do not consider him confessional.
Calvinism is its own animal, quote different than Reformed Theology that comes from the Swiss Reformation. Remember that both Catholics and Protestants claim Augustine, but its hard to say where he would have landed in the 16th century, although we believe he was a protestant. Maybe he would have fixed things, or as B.B. Warfield says, it was Augustine's ideas that caused both the Great Schism and the Reformation.
Luther did not respond to Calvin's letters, it was Melanchton that conducted the dialog, and it was bullinger, not Zwingli who corresponded with Calvin. Luther was glad when Zwingli was killed in battle. So there is an important difference between the reformers (patriaches of the reformation) that are not represented by the later confessions.
The reformers as well as augustine were all unified in their hatred of the anabaptists, so even if the baptists today claim to be reformed, merely assenting to a form of determination does not make you reformed, because the baptists are not trying to reform the catholic church but rather creating a subsect that states the catholic church is a mission field. I'd rather be Catholic than a 1st Nazarene. So that said, I don't think that Piper or the "reformed baptists" are reformed. I don't know any baptists who hold to the London Baptist Confession in the way we do to the WCF.
I liked all your references/background, thats very helpful.
Also, to go down this rabbit trail, all those enlightenment philosophers from Schleiermacher to Karl Barth to Pannenberg are accurately labeled 'reformed'.
@Zrim,
ReplyDeleteThe OPC and the PCA need to merge. No more micro denominations. Also, somehow George Whitefield was able to get along with John Wesley for a while. Wesley must have been a great preacher, like Billy Graham, but I do not go to Billy Graham for theology unless I want some speculations about angels, same with wesley.
Wyatt, so by preacher you mean performer? Agreed. Harry Stout helpfully points out in his critical history of Whitefield that Ben Franklin’s efforts to consume Whitefield’s form were matched only by his denial of Whitefield’s content. Would that earnest Calvinist’s today smitten by personality and popularity be able to mark the disconnect between form and content. They might see that Whitefieldism, like Grahamism, is mostly a bad thing.
ReplyDelete@Zrim,
ReplyDeleteI ask myself that question often, because although graham and wesley were very effective at their time, the next generation seems to be worse off. I read an interesting article by michael horton the caused me to wonder if the pragmatic approach to evangulism has hurt the church in the long run for the sake of short term success. Its the whole mark noll scandal of the evangelical mind.
Steve J,
ReplyDeleteWho voted against the merge of the OPC and PCA? Oh, that's right...speaking of schismatics.
As far as how many men from the OP were at T4G I didnt count, did you? Did you get the percentage of PCA guys as well, could you inform us? And then when done could you tell me what it proves? Just curious.
So let me guess...
- go to T4G = big hearted, broad minded
- leave NAPARC means...big hearted, broad minded too, right?
I ask myself that question often, because although graham and wesley were very effective at their time, the next generation seems to be worse off.
ReplyDeleteBut, Wyatt, and maybe I'm mis-reading you, when you say "very effective" you almost sound affirming of revivalism, as in their generation did revivalism well but the next generations didn't. There are revivalists who are poor performers in comparison, but they're still using the same principles. The issue, I think, doesn't turn on how revivalism is being done but that it's being done.
Zrim, No, I am saying that people thought it was effective, but it made things worse in the long run because the next generation carried it on (not because they didn't). Took some time for the fruit of it to come around. I'm not against revivalism because jonathan edwards is my homeboi, and I would have loved to see the great awakenings. Like Elijah/John turning the hearts of the people, Lk 1:17. Edwards thought that the great awakening would usher in the millennium and it would keep getting better. That's the kind of post-millennialism I can identify with. A revival that just kept getting better for a 1,000 years - that's a federal vision.
ReplyDeleteJason, you wrote:
ReplyDeletePastor Rob Rayburn... claims that the entire faculty of Covenant Theological Seminary ... is not only in Leithart's corner, but are "fit to be tied" over the ill-treatment that he [Leithart] and other Federal Visionists have received at the hands of the "purely evil" people, like me, who have the audacity to question whether FV theology is consistent with the Westminster Standards.
I didn't hear him say that Cov. Sem. is in Leithart's "corner," meaning they support FV, nor did I hear him claim that people who question whether FV theology is consistent with WCF are "evil." I believe he is saying that Cov. Sem. is not happy with the that Leithart has been treated personally, and the "evil" people in question are the ones slandering him [Rayburn] on blogs, specifically , people who read his opinion one one subject A, conclude unjustly that his opinion on subject A means he supports subject B, and then go about on blogs and Facebook discussing how Rayburn is a supporter of subject B.
Above all, he is hardly castigating someone, like yourself, who simply questions the orthodoxy of FV.
J,
ReplyDeleteYou'll note that the bit about FV opponents being "evil" is a link to something else I wrote after out last presbytery meeting. I did not intend to say that he said that in the audio clip.
Jason, I have corrected some comments made by Brian Carpenter. If you want to link to this in a new post on your page, I would appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteSincerely, Wes White