THE NEW CALVINISTS:
changing the Gospel
By E. S. Williams.
The Wakeman Trust. 74 pages. £3.50
ISBN 978 1 908 919 328
As the sub-title indicates, the author of this volume, formerly Director of Public Health for Croydon Health Authority, clearly regards the ‘New Calvinists’ as a most unfortunate development; and his view is endorsed in the commendation by Dr Peter Masters of Metropolitan Tabernacle.
I must confess to some sympathy with them, but deplore the extent to which what the book offers is a series of highly personalised attacks. Nobody who is anybody in current Reformed Theology escapes. Some of them (among them Mark Driscoll, to whose troubles I have no wish to add) are only names to me: others such as Tim Keller and John Piper I know only as figures widely revered in Scotland. Don Carson I recognise as an outstanding scholar; Dick Lucas as a revered biblical expositor. None holds views corresponding exactly to mine; and none deserves the highly selective treatment of their ministries handed out here by Dr Williams.
Debateable criteria
These men are all Calvinists in the sense that they subscribe to the ‘Five Points’. But what is a ‘New Calvinist’? Some of Dr Williams’s criteria are highly debatable. For example, an emphasis on social justice renders a man suspect, yet such a robust Calvinist as Thomas Chalmers, the 19th century-Scottish churchman, immersed himself fully in the social problems of his Glasgow parish. Dr Williams seems to have difficulty in distinguishing between social concern and the so-called Social Gospel.
Even more provocative is the idea that a man is a ‘New’ rather than a ‘real’ Calvinist if he believes in what Dr Williams calls ‘theistic evolution’. This blanket term seems to embrace everyone who does not believe in a literal 24-hour day interpretation of Genesis, and if we were to take this as our criterion we would have to consign to the hall of infamy the greatest expositors of Calvinism who have ever lived: not only B B Warfield, but Charles Hodge, A A Hodge, W G T Shedd, Thomas Chalmers, William Cunningham and Herman Bavinck.
We should also remember Calvin’s repeated warnings when commenting on the early chapters of Genesis. Moses, he wrote, did not speak ‘with philosophical acuteness’ but expressed himself, instead, ‘in a popular style’. Otherwise we would have to conclude that Saturn was smaller than the Moon, there being only two ‘great lights’.
Real concerns
But neither the spirit of the book nor the narrow range of its criteria should blind us to the very real concerns it raises. There is indeed a New Calvinism and there is a serious risk that it will re-reform the Reformed churches in a very un-Reformed way and set us off in a fatally wrong direction.
The key issue is the scope of sola Scriptura. To Calvin and the great Calvinistic creeds it meant that every department of the life of the church had to be legitimated by Scripture: not only her theology, but her worship and organisation as well.
This led to what came to be called the Regulative Principle, best expressed by Calvin himself: ‘God disapproves of all modes of worship not expressly sanctioned by his Word.’ The New Calvinism has abandoned this, and the result is a form of worship that would make Calvin and Knox (and Thomas Cranmer) turn in their graves. ‘Cultural relevance’ has taken precedence over Scripture and this has opened the door to a liturgy more adapted (to quote Calvin yet again) ‘to some theatrical show than to the dignity of our religion’.
Only pop culture?
Part of the problem is that the New Calvinism too often assumes that there is only one culture, pop culture: hence preachers dressed as pop-stars, flaunting what they suppose is masculinity and street-cred; and hence the domination of the worship by music.
Calvin’s own order avoided the use of instrumental music altogether, and the New Testament church clearly managed to do without it. If it has any place in Christian liturgy it can only be as an accompaniment to sung praise, the instrument always being servant to the voice of the congregation; not entertaining an audience, but helping the church make melody to her Lord.
Few modern praise-leaders and praise-bands are prepared to accept so humble a role. Even fewer are prepared to ask whether such musical forms as hip-hop and rap are appropriate to express Christian belief and experience. We may indeed begrudge the devil the best tunes. But when Paul stressed the importance of ‘spiritual’ songs he was contrasting these with the songs of the inebriated; and Calvin would certainly have questioned whether the music of Afro-Caribbean anger and protest could provide suitable melodies for the music in the Christian heart. The key-notes of worship, he insisted, were adoration, doxology and self-abasement. Any liturgical music, vocal or instrumental, must be in these tones.
Church organisation
Calvin was equally insistent that the organisation of the church was not a matter for human inventiveness but was laid down clearly in Scripture; and in case we might be in any doubt as to its importance he devoted a third of his Institutes to expounding it, vastly more than he devoted to all the Five Points put together. It was to the church that God had committed the proclamation of the gospel, and she would be best able to serve that purpose if she organised herself as God had directed: under councils of elders, and all elders equal.
The New Calvinist scene is very different. In the years following the Great Awakening many converts became impatient with the ‘institutional’ church, partly because of what they saw as her impurity and partly because of what they saw as her inefficiency and ineffectiveness. The latter was particularly irksome to men of entrepreneurial spirit and they found their own solution: forget about the church, set up your own organisation and run it as a business.
Para-church organisations
The premise of all this was that the church was not fit for purpose, and could not be made fit for purpose. The evangelisation of the world should therefore be taken out of her hands. Hence the emergence of such bodies as Acts 29, The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God Ministries, Reformission, the Proclamation Trust and the Porterbrook Network, all of which are castigated – with varying degrees of justification – by Dr Williams. What cannot be denied is that these bodies are now doing the work which, in the view of historic Calvinism, was the work of the church, ranging from international mission to the education of pastors. All tend to dismiss the church as ‘stuffy’, and some even express a preference for what they call a ‘messy’ church (as distinguished, presumably, from one in which things are done ‘decently and in order’).
Once the Regulative Principle is dismissed as irrelevant to the way the church conducts her mission, everyone is free to do what is best in his own eyes, and the result is a plethora of ‘offices’ you will never find in any Concordance: Directors, Presidents and Senior Pastors at the one end; Youth Workers and Praise Leaders at the other.
The question is not whether the New Calvinists are devout and honourable men. The question is whether we can be called ‘Calvinists’ while dismissing the great Reformer’s views on worship and church organisation as not worth even a moment’s consideration.
Are we sitting at his feet, or dancing on his grave?
