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Timothy George’s Theology of the Reformers

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[The following is an essay on Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Menno Simons that is based on Timothy George’s tremendous work, Theology of the Reformers.  I wrote it while a student in Dr. George’s seminar on the Reformation at the Beeson Divinity School.  I highly recommend Dr. George’s book.]

 

The sixteenth century was a time of massive societal and religious turbulence and upheaval.  The movement known as the Protestant Reformation would forever change the theological, ecclesiastical, and ideological landscape of the Christian church in Europe and, subsequently, around the world.  The key players in this grand drama are often grouped beneath the umbrella moniker of “reformers,” and this is not without reason.  While the leaders of the Reformation do not represent a pristinely monolithic philosophical entity by any stretch of the imagination, they nonetheless share enough overall similar characteristics to warrant the single term “reformers.”  That being said, it must be acknowledged that there were enough divergent opinions, incompatible theologies, and strong personalities among Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Menno Simons to lead to sharp disagreements and, tragically, even to bloodshed among the different “strands” of the Reformation.  Therefore, the Reformation presents a picture of unity yet disharmony, filial affection yet sometimes sharp and even deadly contentions, as well as singularity of purpose yet dissension.  To see this, it is perhaps best to see how these four representatives of the Reformation comply and dissent with and from one another on the popular theological maxims that have emerged from the Reformation:  sola Christus, sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia.  Furthermore, the reformers’ understanding of the Church’s relationship with the state needs to be explored since these understandings helped shape the direction and history of the Reformation itself.

Before any comparisons of thought should be entered into, it is of paramount importance to realize that the reformers did not envision themselves as having revolted from the Church.  Rather, they felt that they were promoting and restoring the true Church by ridding it of the excessive, unnecessary, damaging, and superfluous elements of theological error, soteriological misunderstanding, ecclesiastical corruption and abuse, and unscriptural practices and customs that had grown up, through time, in the church to the point of blotting out the purity of the Word of God.  This becomes evident when one considers Luther’s dismay over the term “Lutherans,” Zwingli’s removal of “unnecessary” elements from the décor of the churches as opposed to building “new” churches, the social and religious structure of Calvin’s Geneva, and even the staunchly literal hermeneutic which Menno Simons employed in his effort to restore the Church to the “purity” of the apostolic model (53,131, 286-7).  While Simons was the most extreme in his rejection of the vestiges of the Roman church, it still must be noted that none of these four reformers envisioned themselves as founders of new churches on the basis of new revelations.  Rather, they all saw themselves, to some degree or another, as returning to the biblical picture of the Church.

It would appear that the maxim sola Christus was the cornerstone of the Reformation, even more so than sola scriptura or sola fide.  While the Reformation must not be seen as merely a movement of negation, a movement defined solely by what it rejected, it cannot be denied that the reformers were actively involved in the stripping away of theological excesses.  To this end, all four reformers argued for the primacy of Christ and His atoning sacrifice over and against the earthly “vicar of Christ,” the penitential system of the Roman Church which seemed to suggest that a whole host of external rites and passages were necessary in addition to the cross, and a eucharistic system which had been denigrated to a form of commerce, abuse, and popular magic.

Undoubtedly, these four reformers made their most visible and shocking arguments for “Christ alone” in their rejection of the Pope and the Roman mass.  By the sixteenth century, the church of Rome’s arguments for the papacy had elevated the pope and the necessity of adherence to his word and office to salvific proportions (32-33).  To this, the reformers reacted with a vitriol that sounds shocking to modern ears.  Luther equated the pope with “spit, snot, pus, feces, urine, stench, scab, smallpox, ulcers, and syphilis” in terms of his relationship to the Church, the body of Christ (88).  Zwingli, Calvin, and Simons would all concur with Luther’s rejection of the papal system as it stood, if not the particulars of his language.

While the reformers undoubtedly had political reasons for opposing the rule of the pope, it was primarily for theological reasons that they did so.  Luther was no doubt incensed, for example, about the funneling of German money to the construction project of St. Peter’s basilica.  Yet his nationalistic anger paled in comparison to his sense of outrage over the doctrinal illegitimacy of the theological underpinnings of the entire papal system.  The same can be said of Zwingli, who spent much of his life, including the last moments of it, enmeshed in the political struggle for the freedom of the Protestant lands of Switzerland against the church of Rome.  His wielding of the two-headed axe against the enemy Catholic soldiers was fueled as much if not more so by his rejection of the false doctrine behind the Papacy than by his desire for political independence.

By claiming that Christ alone was the head of the Church, the reformers were reacting to the office of the Roman pontiff.  To all four of these men, the Word of Christ bore more authority than any papal bull.  Furthermore, salvation was in Christ alone.  The Pope did not bear the keys of heaven and hell in regard to the eternal destinies of man.  Nor did the vestiges of the entire commercial system of salvation (relics, liturgies, chants, et al) have any place in the ordo salutis.  Christ was sufficient.  In this regard, even the magisterial reformers warrant the adjective which has come to be applied to the Anabaptists and their kin:  radical.  They were radical in their Christocentric understanding of the Church.

As clear as the reformers were on this point, it is difficult to understand why some of today’s Protestant believers, denominations, and churches are still, in essence, seeking to establish a Pope.   Be it a favorite author whose notions are slavishly adhered to, a denominational champion whose word is rarely tested by the scriptures, or a pastor who has gathered, and/or has been given, nearly incomprehensible power of the life of a congregation, many Protestants today seem to be crying out, like the children of Israel, for a king.  Against all such exaltations and near deifications of earthly figures stand the reformers’ theological arguments against the papacy.  As such, the reformers’ attacks upon the papacy still stand as crucial to the ongoing life of today’s churches.

Closely wedded to the concept of sola Christus was the concept of sola Scriptura.  In so many ways, the Reformation appears to be as much of a general intellectual revolution as a theological one.  The Reformers returned the Bible to the people and, in so doing, made a dramatic philosophical statement concerning not only the right of men to read the scriptures but even their ability to do so.  To be sure, the reformers would recoil in horror at the hermeneutical anarchism and isolationist interpretative approaches of much modern Protestantism.  In truth, that the widespread dissemination of the scriptures along with the Protestant teaching that all should search the scriptures resulted, in some cases, in such unfortunate eisegetical practices is clearly seen in the bemoanings of Thomas Hobbes as well as, tellingly, of the reformers themselves (80).  In a move that is strikingly relevant to many discussions surrounding the authority of scripture today, Calvin argued against those who were promoting individualistic experience over the Bible’s teachings (197).  The magisterial reformers were united in their condemnation of such practices among the more exotic strands of the radical reformation as was Menno Simons himself.

Yet, such individualistic interpretations are merely the opposite extreme of the hermeneutical hubris of a pontifical system which saw the scriptures as the sole property of the Pope, priests, fathers, and councils.  For all of its potential abuses, the Protestant return of the scriptures to the people, aided in wide measure by the new printing press, led not only to the moving sight of the uneducated learning to read the Word of God, but also to scenes of boldness on the part of the laity in the face of the Bible “experts” that cannot help but move even the most cynical heart (273, 291).  Thus, sola scriptura, while not itself insulated from abuses, was offered by the reformers as an essential corrective against the captivity of the scriptures to the Roman church.

The reformers argued that the scriptures stand above all human proclamations, be they by pope, council, or creed.  Luther’s own “conversion” came from his personal encounter with the Holy Spirit through the study of scripture, notably Romans 1:17 (69).  Zwingli demonstrated his belief in sola Scriptura through a homiletical move which shocked the people.  On January 1, 1519, he set aside the lectionary for good and began preaching through the book of Matthew in the Great Minster church in Zurich, thereby illustrating his conviction concerning the primacy and centrality of the Word of God in the operation and instruction of the Church (113).  Calvin likewise lashed his preaching to the Word of God and also developed a full-orbed theology of scripture.  Calvin viewed the Bible as the inspired Word of God, which had been given to men through men inspired by the Holy Spirit.  As such, it stands above all other human utterances.

In Menno Simons’ approach to the Bible, we find a consensus with the views of the magisterial reformers yet a variance as well.  It has often been said that Luther hatched the egg which Erasmus laid.  What is meant by this is that Luther took the Erasmian approach to reformation to its conclusion.  It might also be said that Simons hatched the egg that Luther laid regarding sola scriptura.  Simons agreed with the other three reformers in their emphasis on the authority of scripture above all other human utterances.  However, he developed what might be called the most thoroughgoing hermeneutic of literalism among the three.  Infant baptism proved to be “ground zero” for Simons’ departure point from the magisterial reformers.  Through his study of the scriptures, Simons became convinced that infant baptism is nowhere taught or seen in the Bible and should therefore be rejected (260).  He came to similar conclusions concerning transubstantiation.  Thus, Simons articulated a theology of scripture not only against the church of Rome, but also against Luther, Zwingli, and the other reformers.  While Simons’ hermeneutic opened the door for the abuse of hyper-literalism, he must be commended for carrying sola scriptura to its conclusions.

That the reformers posited a theology of the primacy of scripture over all other human utterances is evident.  Yet, it is important to note that Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli did not thereby shun the importance of the historic witness of the church as it was articulated in the patristic writings, creeds, and councils.  On the contrary, it is clear that Augustine contributed heavily to the harmatalogy and soteriology of Reformation theology and was widely esteemed among most of the reformers (48, 74).  Luther called for and practiced a renewed study of patristic writings, used the Apostle’s Creed, and spoke in the language of Nicea and Chalcedon (57, 82).  Zwingli likewise showed an affinity and appreciation of the Church’s historic statements of faith (128-129).  Calvin also made frequent use of the early fathers and appears to have been heavily influenced by Anselm (197, 220-223).  Even Menno Simons, who chastised Luther and Zwingli on their mingling of patristic and creedal statements with the statements of scripture, could not avoid, on occasion, using the theological language of the councils or even appealing to the patristic sources when it would support his own position (275).

Thus, while the reformers argued for the primacy of scripture, they were not arguing that the historic witness of the church was without merit or that it could not be used to the edification of the Church.  Rather, they were arguing that this witness should not be granted the authority which is rightfully afforded only to scripture.  This is important not only because it brings the maxim of sola scriptura into sharper focus, but also because it stands as something of a corrective to much modern Protestantism.  The magisterial reformers especially would have found the widespread modern denigration of the importance of knowing the historical witness of the church to be tragic.  They would rightly point to the scandalously fragmented horizon of Protestantism as the result of fostering an almost arrogant hermeneutic in which the modern believer approaches the Bible as if their individual  experience with it is what is most important with no recourse to the historic witness of the church.  They would perhaps be suspect of any extreme anti-creedalism which divorces itself from the history of God’s people and their articulations of doctrinal and theological verities as well.  To be sure, the magisterial reformers would point out to many Protestant denominations and churches that simply ignoring the wisdom of our fathers is almost as scandalous as elevating their writings to the stature of holy writ.

What is more, there is evidence that the reformers would have issued clear rebukes of any types of theological narrowness concerning specific theories of the inspiration of scripture.  While all of the reformers argued for the authority of the Bible, Luther and Calvin show evidence of having read the scriptures with a critical eye.  This is seen, for example, in Luther’s relegation of James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation to an appendix of his Bible and in Calvin’s emphasis on the humanity of the biblical writers as well as his occasional conclusions concerning scribal errors and copyists’ mistakes in his discussion of seeming contradictions and discrepancies in the biblical text (84, 195).  Menno Simons took issue with Luther’s view of James, yet he accepted the full inspiration of the apocrypha (277).  Thus, the reformers showed a unity on the authority of the scriptures, but, with the possible exception of Menno Simons, they further revealed that they were able to approach the scriptures with some measure of freedom and openness concerning issues of canonicity and inspiration.  It is not too presumptuous to assume that they might find our occasionally stupefying arguments concerning the subtleties of differing theories of inspiration to be a little pedantic.

If the reformers all shared some affinity for the concept of sola scriptura, the same can certainly be said of the idea of sola fide.  Perhaps more than in any other reformer, salvation by “faith alone” looms over all of Luther’s works.  Luther’s rite of passage from a monk desperately trying to please a God of wrath through obedience to a variety of legalistic tenets to a champion of grace who argued that Christ’s righteousness has been imputed to believers who put their faith in Him has perhaps been oversimplified at times, but is, in essence, a matter of history.  In many ways, sola fide stands hand in hand with sola Christus as the cornerstone of the Reformation.  In his formulation of a forensic view of justification, Luther argued that Christ’s righteousness was imputed to the believer not through the purchasing of indulgences, or severe acts of penance, or an austere life of mortification, rather, believers were proclaimed righteous on the basis of the finished work of Christ.  He even argued that the sacraments were not salvific in nature (93).

Apparently, the concept of sola fide was fairly quickly abused by those who used it as a cloak for licentiousness, for Luther himself spoke clearly against such misuses of the doctrine (61).  Zwingli seems to have felt some uneasiness about the abuses of this concept.  Therefore, while he did not dispute sola fide, he defined “faith” in such a way that it could not claim authenticity if it did not produce fruits of righteousness.  For Zwingli, faith was a way of living (133).  Calvin agreed with the Lutheran concept of sola fide but did also stress that faith did not mean mere intellectual assent to a series of theological and historical propositions.  Rather, it meant an acceptance of Christ into one’s very life which resulted in the outworking of the Holy Spirit (225).  Menno Simons quite clearly felt that Luther’s emphasis on sola fide had opened the floodgates of loose living among those who claimed it and attempted to create a synthesis between faith and works that would hold the believer morally responsible for his life (270-272).  Even so, however, Simons did not teach salvation through works or return to the yoke of legalism.  He still attempted to appeal to the grace of God as it is accepted in faith as the basis for salvation.

A perusal of the writings of modern evangelicals shows that the tensions among the reformers on this point have been carried down to the modern day.  This is most clearly seen in the “lordship salvation” debate.  It would appear that many Protestants are still quite uneasy about oversimplified statements ofsola fide which almost everybody agrees have been used as licenses for loose living among many believers while at the same time they are equally uneasy about lapsing into “works righteousness” and legalism.  Perhaps one should find in the reformers’ own struggles in articulating the particulars of sola fide an important sensitivity concerning the dangers of “works righteousness” on the one hand and cheap grace on the other.

The concept of sola gratia stands in close soteriological proximity to the concept of sola fide.  Sola fidewas adhered to as a corrective against the entire system of works righteousness which formed the presuppositions undergirding the Roman eucharist and penitential system.  Sola gratia represents the magisterial reformers’ conviction that salvation was all of God, from beginning to end, and could not be bought or earned in any fashion.

Luther and Calvin stood closest to one another in their expressions of sola gratia.  Luther expressed a thoroughly Augustinian understanding of providence and predestination in his famed debate with Erasmus.  Luther argued that the will was bound and destroyed in the fall and so faith itself was a gift of grace (75-76).  Thus sola gratia stands behind sola fide in the ordo salutis.  Calvin, of course, is most well known for his statements on providence and predestination.  He essentially agreed with Luther, and, before him, Augustine, though he placed his discussion of providence within the context of creation and God’s purposes and continuing work in it.  Calvin argued that God has decreed before the foundations of the world the elect and the reprobate, that the will is not free, and that man is yet morally responsible for his life (208-209).  His purpose in doing so was not to argue theological intricacies, but rather to stress that all of the glory belongs to a God who is not absent or distant from us.  Zwingli also agreed in essence with Luther and Calvin and posited predestination within his discussion of the providence of God (124).

On the point of sola gratia, Menno Simons departed from the overall consensus of the magisterial reformers.  Arguing that Luther’s doctrine of double predestination impugned the righteousness of God by making Him the author of sin and leads to antinomianism, Simons argued that God has allowed free will to survive in man (271-272).  One must be cautious to say that Simons did not believe in sola gratia.  Undoubtedly he would argue that it was solely through God’s grace that human beings are created and given free will in the first place, but certainly such an argument would be a variance with the understanding of sola gratia expressed by the magisterial reformers.

Again, it is not difficult to see that a thorough reflection and interaction with the reformed concept ofsola gratia would be more than helpful for the modern Protestant church.  On the one hand, the magisterial reformers’ emphasis on the initiative of God’s grace would serve as a sorely needed corrective to a prevalent soteriology which seems to be more anthropological in nature than theological.  Regardless of where one stands on the questions of election, predestination, and reprobation, it must be admitted that salvation in too many churches has been reduced and diminished into a sort of contract agreed upon between God and man, who presumably stand on equal footing at the time of negotiation, and which is largely non-binding on the believer’s life.  The sheer and utter hubris of such an understanding must be encountered with a theology which sees God as the author and finisher of our faith.  It must somehow be communicated again that God is not our “pal” or “buddy.”  Rather, He is the holy God of eternity past, present, and future to whom we owe great praise for all of His works, including our salvation.  On the other hand, even if one disagrees with Menno Simons, his views in this regard offer a much-needed caution against an excessive fatalism and an antinomianism which is no more honorable to God than arrogant theological humanism.

No discussion of these four reformers would be complete without a consideration of their respective approaches to the question of the relationship between the Church and the secular government.  Obviously, the “magisterial” reformers bear some common characteristics.  The term derives from the magisterial support granted to, and solicited by, the reform movements of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin (20).  Yet, there was great variety in their views of Church and state as well.  Menno Simons would represent the most serious departure from the views of the magisterial reformers.

Luther argued that the Church and the state were the “right hand” and “left hand” of God.  They were separate entities.  The Church should not lord over the state nor the state over the church.  Yet they were not radically separate entities.  Civil power, after all, was established by God as a concession to the fall.  Leaders should even protect the Church.  Christians, on the other hand, should obey the state insofar as the state is not asking them to disobey God (98-101).

Zwingli rejected Luther’s distinction between Church and state and argued for and sought to institute a societal order in which the Church and state worked in harmony with one another.  The Kingdom of God was visible and extended to every facet of society in Zwingli’s mind.  Thus, in Zurich, politicians and clergymen worked together.  While there were checks and balances of a sort, Zwingli sought to wed the two entities together.

Calvin argued that the rule of Christ should extend to society as a whole, including the Church and the state and encouraged believers to pray for godly magistrates.  He did not argue that leaders within the Church held any authority over civil leaders.  Yet, he stated that it was the responsibility of the magistrates to protect and aid the church in its task of transforming society along the dictates of God’s word.  However, if civil leaders did not do so, and if indeed they were wicked, Calvin urged the Church to submit to their rule and be willing to suffer in obedience (244-246).  In this regard, he differed from Zwingli who allowed for the overthrow of tyrannical rulers.

Menno Simons established the most radical dichotomy between the Church and the secular government.  For Simons and the Anabaptists, the Church was a separate entity.  Christians were to obey the civil rulers insofar as they could do so without being disobedient to God.  Yet, where the state would have the Church disobey God, as in baptizing infants as opposed to believers, the Church must obey God even if it meant, as it often did for the Anabaptists, death and torture.  Furthermore, Simons did not look to the civil authorities to help or aid the church in any way (286-287).

In truth, it is difficult not to see the position of the magisterial reformers as extremely problematic in light of the sordid and often bloody scenes which seem to have resulted from close unions of the Church and the state throughout history.  It would seem that such unions almost always end in the corruption and misuse of the church.  Yet one is right to wonder if the sometimes extreme separatism of the Anabaptism is not equally problematic.  An examination of the reformers’ positions and our own social and political context suggests that the church should be “involved” enough with the state so as not to abandon wholly hope for godliness among civil authorities yet distant enough so as to avoid the lure of political intrigues and power and the distraction of the Church from its central task of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.  As such, there should be a tension in the relationship between the state and the Church.

The magisterial reformers’ use of the civil authorities in killing dissenters on theological issues stands as one of the truly dark chapters of the Reformation.  This is difficult to understand in light of the New Testament.  Whatever else Christ must have meant by it, He certainly presupposed some degree of separation in his admonition that we “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).  Whether it be the state’s coercion on matters of Church teaching in the official church of Hitler’s Germany or today in the official church of modern China or the Church’s false assumption that the hearts of men can somehow be changed by legislation, as in the assumptions behind the intense flirtation between some parachurch or denominational groups and secular political parties, close unions between the Church and the secular government almost always lead to the corruption of the Church and almost never to spiritual renewal in the government.  In this regard, the Anabaptist vision of the Church in the world is perhaps closest to the New Testament design.

In the final analysis, it might just be proven that the greatest lesson the modern Church can learn from the reformers is that it is incumbent for the Church of Christ to live in theological integrity.  It was on the basis of their theological convictions that Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Simons sought to reform Church and society alike.  Thus, theological conviction stands as the fountainhead for practical church and social life.

It is scandalous that the modern Protestant churches seem, with some exceptions, to have forgotten this fact.  Theology has been sacrificed on the altar of pragmatism, and doctrinal fidelity has been substituted with a minimalist theology of reduction.  As a result of this lowest common denominator theology, churches are not seeing themselves, or the lives of their parishioners, changed.

In this regard, we might even find a lesson in the schisms of the reformed churches from the Roman Church and even among the Protestant churches themselves.  For all of their excesses, which we must truly lament, it must be admitted that men willing to separate, suffer, and risk life and limb for theological convictions are preferable to an excessively permissive ecumenism that sees theology as somehow secondary to external harmony.  The reformers were above all men of conviction concerning God and the truths He has bequeathed us.  To this end, they stand united as examples of that type of conviction which the Church is in desperate need of today.

Danny Akin’s (ed) A Theology of the Church

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A Theology of the Church (B&H Academic, 2007) is a major new systematic theology that is edited by Southeastern Seminary President Danny Akin and penned by him and a host of other Southern Baptist theologians.  There are 934 pages of text in the volume written by fifteen different authors.

I was very excited to hear about this project and was thrilled to see it unveiled at the LifeWay store at the 2007 SBC meeting in Houston.  I was able to get a copy some weeks ago and have been able to begin working through it.

I have decided, given the immensity of the work, the number of authors, and the wide-range of subjects to blog through the book a chapter at a time as I’m able to read it.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 is entitled, “Prolegomena:  Introduction to the Task of Theology” and was written by Gregory Alan Thornbury, the Dean and Associate Professor of Christian Studies at Union University as well as the Director of the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership.

Thornbury seems well-qualified to handle the issue of theological prolegomena (i.e., “what needs to be said before one begins”, p.52) and he does so admirably.  The chapter is an extensive 69 page work that left this reader feeling challenged, edified, and encouraged.

Thornbury tackles basic issues of epistemology and knowledge.  He gives a bird’s-eye overview of mankind’s quest to know by beginning with early Greek philosophy and working through the Pythagoreans, Plato, Aristotle on up to modern philosophers like Nietzsche and Focault.  Thornbury’s primary contention in this overview is that truth is unknowable insofar as the resources for truth are restricted to that which we find in our own heads.  The very possibility of truth is therefore dependent on transcendence.

Thornbury moves on to consider early Christian interactions with secular philosophy, which he depicts as a “love-hate” relationship.  In the final analysis, he believes that we must avoid the extremes of an undue skepticism concerning the usefulness of philosophy on the one hand and an uncritical acceptance of the assumptions of secular philosophy on the other.

He provides a very helpful and illuminating overview of the theological developments of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Occam.  He handles well the scholasticism of Aquinas and the competing nominalism of William of Occam and shows how critics of Reformation thought have pointed their fingers at a kind of nominalism-run-amuck as the chief culprit in what they see as the various maladies arising from the Reformation.  Thornbury offers reasons why he thinks this is a bit of an overstatement and shows that the Reformers themselves were not uncritically enamored with Occam.

Thornbury nexts points his finger at Immanuel Kant and the rise of the Enlightenment worldview.  “Once upon a time,” he writes, “people at least understood the great verities of Christian teaching, and either believed them or denied them.  Theology mattered.  Today secularism dominates the culture of the West.  Why?  A two-word reply suffices for an answer:  the Enlightenment” (35-36).

He shows how Kant argued for the impossibility of human beings knowing theological propositions.  He traces this line of skepticism through the theological liberalism of Friedrich Schleiermacher, through the historical Jesus research of David Strauss, and then into the liberal programme of Adolf Von Harnack.  He then presents a fascinating overview of Barth’s neo-orthodox revolt against old-line liberalism, and shows the strengths and weaknesses therein.  Footnote 105 on page 43 is almost worth the price of the book, as it reveals some fascinating insights into some exchanges that occured between Carl Henry and Karl Barth.  I was intrigued to hear that Henry felt that, with all of Barth’s problems, he, Henry, was still “in the presence of a believer in the gospel” when he was with Barth (43).

Thornbury then gives a helpful overview of Southern Baptist theological works.  He likes Henry, naturally enough.  This is encouraging and one hopes that those who read Thornbury’s chapter might be encouraged to spend some time with the late-great theologian and churchman.  He’s understandably impressed with Millard Erickson’s extensive handling of prolegomena and seems frustrated at the scant treatment that other theologians devote to this important work.  Interestingly, Thornbury does not mention Wayne Grudem’s work at all, which is unusual given the popularity of Grudem’s systematic.

He concludes with a helpful overview of the ideas of “culture” and “worldview” and calls for self-awareness in terms of our own place in the cultural milieu we inhabit.  Yet, he argues, theology can be done, even in the midst of our own inherited presuppositions.  This theology must be biblical and aimed not at knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but rather at a genuine relationship with the Lord God.

Thornbury’s chapter is helpful and challenging.  Those unfamiliar with certain philosophical and theological concepts might find it a bit much, but Thornbury makes numerous efforts to explain the train of thought that he is developing.  He is obviously convinced that prolegomena is crucial to the task of doing theology.  In this conviction, he is correct.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2, “Natural Revelation,” is written by Dr. Russell D. Moore, Senior Vice President for Academic Administration and Dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Moore has written a concise and helpful overview of the fascinating topic of natural revelation.  He approaches the topic through the following progression:  Old Testament – New Testament – Church history (Patristic – Medieval & Reformation – Modern) – “How Does It All Fit Together?” – “How Does It Impact the Church Today?”.

He successfully shows that the idea of natural revelation (i.e., that revelation of God that has been instilled in the created order by God Himself) is clearly steeped in Scripture.  In the Old Testament this is most clearly seen in Psalms and, in the New, in Romans 1.

Moore wants it understood that natural revelation is not some nebulous phenomenon that exists outside of God’s will, as if it is some kind of lingering residue left over from the act of creation.  On the contrary, natural revelation is a positive assertion by God.  His very handiworks proclaim His name because He wills it.  Furthermore, this revelation, though it speaks clearly, does not speak exhaustively.  Moore argues that natural revelation is not salvific.  It is not that natural revelation does not proclaim truths about God.  It is rather that lost humanity outside of Jesus Christ inevitably rejects these truths anyway.  So the question of whether or not the secluded pagan who responds with faith to general revelation is saved is really, Moore contends, a fiction.  The problem is not that there are no secluded pagans who only have natural revelation.  The problem is that none of us turn to the things of God, no matter how much or little we know of Him.  All of us, like sheep, have gone astray.  So the gospel of Jesus Christ is needed and necessary.  Natural revelation might prepare our hearts, but only the gospel can heal them.

Moore feels that the reality of natural revelation allows us to appreciate the artistic expressions and endeavours of those who have rejected Christ but who still might communicate truths that inspire and shape us.  I am glad to hear him say this.  The “Christian ghetto” can be a suffocating (and tacky?) place to dwell, especially when so-called Christian art and writing has become so blandly provential and so smarmily kitschy.  (I am SO very glad that I can read Faulkner instead of the latest prairie romance from LifeWay!)  That being said, the truth of the gospel provides that light in and through which all human endeavours, no matter how inspiring, must ultimately be judged.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 is entitled “Special Revelation” and is written by David S. Dockery, President of Union University, and David P. Nelson, Senior Vice President for Academic Administration and Dean of the Faculty at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.  The chapter is a 56-page examination of the occasionally thorny issues surrounding special revelation.  It is handled well and constitutes a helpful and relatively thorough handling of the topic.

Dockery and Nelson argue that the ultimate “special revelation” is to be found in Jesus Christ.  Indeed, the life and salvific work of Jesus Christ comprise “the fixed center of special revelation” (120).  Outside of Christ, the scriptures constitute the authoritative expression of revelation in the life of the Church.  “It is not entirely appropriate to make a direct correspondence between Scripture and Jesus Christ,” the authors write,” but nevertheless there is an observable analogy” (129).

Dockery and Nelson are concerned that our view of inspiration honor both the humanity of the biblical writers and the hand of God Himself in the process.  “Scripture is the word of God written in the words of man” (134).  To read scripture, they argue, is to read the very word of God given to men.  They aptly handle the issue of the self-attestation of scripture and rightly point out that any view of inspiration that seeks to avoid using scripture’s own claims to such (i.e., in an attempt to avoid the charge of circular reasoning) is doomed to fail.

Their handling of the history of the Church’s view of scripture was helpful if not, at this point, somewhat predictable.  There was a high view of scripture in the patristic and, later, medieval periods.  Enlightenment skepticism discarded a high view of scripture through its liberal spokesmen (again, Schleiermacher and Strauss).  Barth and the neo-orthodox school rightly turns the tables on this liberal skepticism but does not replace it with a suitably high view of scripture.  “Therefore when we have to do with the Bible,” the writers quote Barth, “we have to do primarily with this means, with these words, with the witness which as such is not itself revelation, but only – and this is the limitation – the witness to it” (138-139).  (This does bring to mind the argument from the 2000 SBC gathering in Orlando about whether or not the Bible is revelation or a record of revelation, thus giving some credence to Paige Patterson’s charges of neo-orthodoxy among moderates.)  The authors then move on to an interesting overview of Baptist views of the Bible.

I thought the “Improper Deductions” section on 147-149 was well done.  Here the authors address five concerns or mistakes that are often made when people think about the Bible.  These five sections were concise, succint, and very helpful.

Concerning the theories of inspiration, the authors argue for the verbal/plenary view, noting that this “theory…is that which is put forward in this book as the most acceptable model of inspiration based on the Scripture’s own testimony and consensus within the history of the church” (153-154).  I note with interest the appeal to the consensus of the church throughout history.  Dockery is a fan of Tom Oden’s paleo-orthodoxy programme and one cannot help but see this in such a statement.  It is, to be sure, an encouraging sign.

Dockery and Nelson next give an interesting statement of support for the term “inerrancy.”  They believe that we can hold to the term if we mean by it the idea that “when all the facts are known, the Bible (in its original writings) properly interpreted in light of the culture and communication means that had developed by the time of its composition will be shown to be completely true (and therefore not false) in all that it affirms, to the degree of precision intended by the author, in all matters relating to God and his creation” (157).

Now, that’s an interesting definition.  I am sympathetic to it and to the explanations of the many facets of it given by Dockery and Nelson from 157 to 159.  There are those who might charge that such a definition allows the term to “die a death of a thousand qualifications,” but, unfortunately, such qualifications are necessary when trying to accurately define such a loaded term as “inerrancy.”  I am chewing on this definition a bit, but I believe I can say that I’m by-and-large comfortable with what I believe the authors are saying by putting it this way.

The chapter goes on to give a helpful overview of the process of canonization.  The authors believe we can “see God’s providential hand at work” in “the transmission, translation, preservation, and canonicity of the Bible” (170).  Indeed we can, though readers might question whether or not Dockery and Nelson have sufficiently handled the question of the Church’s role in the process of canonization.

There is a fascinating caveat on page 73 about interpretation and authority:  “Many people confuse a desire to obey Scripture’s authority with a personal insecurity that calls for a leader to tell them constantly what to do or think.  More troubling is that some leaders encourage this confusion by commingling a commitment to biblical authority with a type of authority associated with certain positions of church leadership.”

Count this among the things that make you go “hmmmm…..”  Is this a statement concerning the state of today’s Convention perhaps?  One wonders…

This is a great chapter written by some first-rate scholars that will encourage, challenge, and help you in understanding what the Bible is and what role it plays in the Church.

Chapter 4

I have been looking forward to this chapter ever since I began reading A Theology for the Church.  Chapter 4 is a 67 page chapter entitled “The Nature of God: Being, Attributes, and Acts” and is written by Dr. Timothy George, Founding Dean of The Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.  Dr. George is the most significant Southern Baptist theologian writing today and is well-equipped to handle the daunting task of writing a chapter on the nature of God.

One of George’s strengths is his accessibility.  He writes with an interesting mixture of high theology and anecdotal illustration.  He begins the chapter with a story about a sermon that James Petigru Boyce preached at Southern Seminary and he ends the chapter with a long and moving section from a sermon by Charles Spurgeon.  He also makes interesting and helpful use of hymnody throughout the chapter.

George is also adept at turning a phrase.  “‘Blessed Assurance,'” he writes, “is not cheap insurance, and genuine knowledge of God is not without struggle and doubt.” (178)  And this:  “Theology has lost its joy and become a dour enterprise of idea-shuffling and puzzle-scrabbling.” (178)

George’s approach is thoroughly Trinitarian.  He begins, in fact, with a discussion of “God the Holy Trinity.”  He believes this to be the starting point for our discussions of God and believes that Trinitarian thought provides the basic structure in which all theology should operate.

He provides a helpful overview of many of the biblical names for God and moves on to a discussion of God’s majesty and God’s trustworthiness.  His overview of the New Testament concept of God is intriguing and he offers the interesting observation that New Testament theologians often actually neglect the doctrine of God in their discussions of Christ.  This presented me with a personal challenge and made me consider long and hard whether I have not done this as well in my reading of the New Testament.

He moves on to a discussion of God’s holiness, love, eternity, and knowledge.  His section on God’s love was particularly well done.  He argues that God’s love ought not be thought of only as it applies to His love for us, but rather should be thought of as an essential aspect of His very nature whether He had ever created us or not.

He handles the “open theism” question briefly but admirably.  He argues that, “Open theism grants God too much power to get him off the theodicy hook but not enough power to support a plausible doctrine of providence.” (232-233)  I thought this was an astute observation and one that I had not considered.

Finally, George lists a number of ways that a recover of a biblical understanding of God will impact the life of the church today.  This was very well done.  George believes that this recovery is absolutely essential if we are to return to a heightened sense of worship, prayer, praise, and preaching.  In this, he is absolutely correct.

This chapter alone was worth the price of the book.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 is entitled, “The Work of God: Creation and Providence,” and was written by Dr. David Nelson, Senior Vice President for Academic Administration and Dean of the Faculty of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.  This 50-page chapter (242-292) takes a detailed look at creation, providence, and a whole host of related issues that arise from these topics.

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s that Dr. Nelson had the misfortune of following Timothy George, or maybe I was just in a mood, but this chapter was laborious.  90% of this chapter consists of summary statements with relevant bible passages in parentheses.  This, of course, is nothing to sneeze at.  All statements about creation and providence must be couched in scripture.  But Nelson’s chapter seemed at times like a John Macarthur sermon:  point-passage-point-passage-point-passage, etc.

Dr. Nelson did offer some more detailed explanations of certain points.  For instance, he obviously wanted to deal with the problem of evil in a helpful way.  To an extent, he did so.  His biblical observations about evil were most helpful.

Anyway, a solid chapter in an overall very good book.  This chapter would be very helpful for Sunday School classes wanting to understand creation and providence.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 is entitled “The Agents of God: Angels” and was written by Dr. Peter R. Schemm, Jr., of Southeastern Seminary.  I’ve had the honor of meeting and visiting a bit with Dr. Schemm and think a lot of him.  He strikes me as a bright, up-and-coming theologian.  If I recall, he has something like 23 kids (note: sarcasm), so I’m impressed that he had time to get a chapter written at all!  He did a commendable job on this chapter and I would recommend it as a great overview of the subject of angels.  It is thoroughly biblical, practical, and illuminating.

I appreciated the two excursi that Dr. Schemm put in the chapter.  The second was very helpful to me as I was recently trying to get my head around Genesis 6 with some friends.  I intend to bring this excursus to the attention of those with whom I was discussing this chapter.  It really helped me get a grasp on what is likely happening in Genesis 6 (though I still feel that the argument connecting Jude to Genesis 6 might have more credence than he allows).

The chapter provides some very helpful overviews of the nature and characteristics of angels, both good and bad.  I also appreciated the chart outlining various theologians’ views of the topic.  Furthermore, I thought that Dr. Schemm’s handling of such popular but controversial questions as “territorial spirits” and prayer-walking was fair, judicious, even-handed, and convincing.

In all, a great chapter and a helpful read.  If you’re wanting to get a grasp on the biblical concept of angels, this would be a great place to start.

Reflections on Theology with Dr. James Leo Garrett, Jr.

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I conducted this interview with Dr. Garrett sometime in 2001 or 2002.  I previously had located and offered here just the last few questions and answers, but am happy to be able to provide the full interview now.

“James Leo Garrett, Jr. is Distinguished Professor of Theology Emeritus at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He holds a B.A. from Baylor University (1945), a B.D. from Southwestern Baptist Seminary (1948), a Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary (1949), a Th.D. from Southwestern Baptist Seminary (1954), and a Ph.D. from Harvard University (1966). He has also studied at the Catholic University of America, the University of Oxford, St. John’s University, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has taught at both Baylor University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and was a visiting professor at the Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary. He has also lectured in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Romania, the Ukraine, and at numerous U.S. schools.

He has been author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of a dozen books, including Baptist Church Discipline (Broadman Press, 1962), Baptists and Roman Catholicism (Broadman Press, 1965), and We Baptists (Providence House, 1999). He has also contributed articles to twenty-one other books and has published hundreds of journal and encyclopedia articles and book reviews.

He has been a pastor or interim pastor at a number of Baptist churches. Among other activities, he has also served as the chairman of the Commission on Cooperative Christianity of the Baptist World Alliance, was an official guest at the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity during Vatican Council II, was secretary of the Commission on Human Rights of the Baptist World Alliance, is a former managing editor of the Southwestern Journal of Theology, and is a former editor of the Journal of Church and State. He is currently co-chairman of the Division of Study and Research of the Baptist World Alliance.

Professor Garrett has three sons and lives with his wife, Myrta Ann, in Fort Worth.” (biographical information from his D.F. Scott Author’s Page)

Reflections on Theology – An Interview With Dr. James Leo Garrett, Jr.

Conducted by Wyman Richardson
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Fort Worth, Texas

Dr. Garret, many people feel that modern American Christians are by and large disinterested in theological pursuits. Do you feel that this is an accurate assessment?

No, I wouldn’t say there is a deep disinterest. I would say that their interests are focused on issues that are important to them. For example, where did humans come from? Are we creations of God or are we the product of millions of years of evolutionary development? Is there meaningful life after death? Questions like that don’t go away, and Christians and others are interested in those questions. How can I be right with God? What does God do in relation to me and my family? How does faith and God’s will relate to my family and its problems?

These, I think, are there, although certainly there is not necessarily an interest in certain technical theological questions that maybe leadership is interested in – laity may not be. But, interested in religious and moral ultimates? Yes. I think it’s still there if you get down to people’s levels.

Can we honestly and realistically expect the modern, busy, American Christian to care about deeper theological issues? Is that a realistic goal?

I think it is if we can present those issues and keep those issues in the most practical format. The issues need to be seen as vital to life and not simply speculation and they need to show the meaning of the truth in relation to life and practice – individual’s lives, the church’s life and so on. So I think a lot of it depends on how we handle these issues. We don’t need to major on minors. We need to major on majors.

Well, by and large, I get the feeling that that is the view of theology that a lot of people have – that it’s something impractical and that it doesn’t pertain to modern life so much. Is anybody to blame for this perception that many people have or is there something we can point to as being responsible for creating that climate around theology?

Well, maybe some theological issues in the past have been taken out of proportion as to their real importance and maybe we have spent too much time on things that are not vital and, too, there’s a kind of anti-supernatural bias in our culture. There’s a secularism and a humanism there that doesn’t want to talk about God. So, you have the cultural influence that is very strong in Europe and North America but not so strong in the rest of the world – in Asia and Africa and Latin America.

Theology used to be considered “the Queen of Sciences,” but one cannot help but sense that it no longer enjoys this status among either the academic or lay communities. Do you agree with this and why do you think this is or is not the case?

Well, I’m not sure that theology has been “the Queen of the Sciences” since the Middle Ages or since the Reformation, if you mean by that the most important academic discipline. And that would not be true, obviously, in the American university or the European university today.

Now, does it have a place in the church’s life? Yes. I think the church sees the importance of theology. But in the academic community, especially the publicly funded universities and the public schools, you have a separation of the religious and, therefore, a downplaying of that in the public scene. So the place of theology is different, even, say, from German and English universities and American universities. In German and English universities you have theological faculties in a way that you don’t here. And, on the other hand, we have here a system of church-state separation that has mandated that churches do their own theology and provide for it and not depend on the university.

Well, I guess what lies behind that question – and I guess I may be wrong in my understanding of this – but were not most of our ivy league schools founded originally as seminaries?

Well, they provided training for ministers but they were never solely for that purpose. The Harvard, Yale, Princeton origins are in the training of ministers, that’s to be sure. And training for ministers was a part of that college life. But from the beginning there were always people trained for other vocations, so, in that sense, it would not be a seminary strictly speaking, but it would be a college environment in which training for ministry took place. And in each of those colleges, which became universities, they developed ultimately a divinity school or a seminary, but that was a later development. That came in the 19th century for the most part, not in the time of the origin of the college.

Is it fair to say that 100-120 years ago, though, the study of theology may have had more of a respect surrounding it by those outside of the field than it does today? Has it been relegated to a kind of ghetto in the university?

Well, let’s keep in mind that in the public universities, many of them have departments of religious studies today. You might take the University of Virginia, the University of Iowa, and schools like that, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They all have even doctoral programs in religious studies, but they are interreligious and ecumenical. They do not represent a viewpoint, and, in those settings, it is possible to do religious studies. So it’s not completely out of the university curriculum, but it does not have a dominant role in any of those places. And in certain private universities you also have religious studies departments, as in Rice University, for example. And so those departments of religious studies do exist, but many times you have, in those settings, you’ll have Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists all teaching in the same setting.

In a variety of different ways, I often hear people say that preachers should be less theological in their preaching and more practical. What do you make of this distinction between theology and practice and how would you respond to this idea? Where do you think this distinction comes from?

Well, I think it is possible to talk about preaching that’s more theological and more practical, but if we take our cue from the Apostle Paul in writing his letters, the doctrinal comes first usually and the practical flows out of it, or the ethical and the practical. They go together. Paul seldom does one without the other. So I think that is a clue. You can say that strong preaching, good preaching, balanced preaching has doctrinal elements in it and has moral and practical elements as well. The overall preaching ministry of the church should reflect that.

Now, it’s possible to have a kind of preaching that is very shallow theologically, and I think that would be the problem. To play down theological truth in the interest of finding some kind of non-theological church message – I think when you do that you’re in trouble. At the same time, the truths need to be related to life, and theological preaching or doctrinal preaching, needs always to have a practical side with it. How does this truth effect your life? What are the practical implications of it? When that approach is made, then I think that there is not such a hiatus between the so-called theological and the so-called practical. Good theology will be good for the church and not simply for the academic community.

How would you respond to the preacher that comes to you and says that his people are concerned about how to raise their kids well, how not to lust, how not to cheat on their taxes, these kinds of things. How are people going to find the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, applicable in those circumstances?

Well, I’m not sure that the doctrine of the Trinity is the first doctrine that they need there. It might be the doctrine of sin that needs to be emphasized or the doctrine of forgiveness. But I think it’s very important to relate truth to the issues and practices of today. I think that moral issues have to come out of some kind of worldview, some kind of faith presupposition. If your ethics are theological based, then you can have the proper wedding of the theological and the practical, the theological and the ethical.

Perhaps in many cases churches do not address, for example, family life issues enough in the past. Even taking Ephesians 5 and Paul’s view of relations between a husband and wife, for example, and Christ and the church. Perhaps we’ve underplayed that in a lot of ways and haven’t helped people see the connection. I think some of the problem is the way we’ve handled it, not the fact that the theological has no relation to the problems of the day.

Many people in the church feel that theology is largely synonymous with doctrinal controversy. When they hear the word “theology” they think of a group of men sitting around fighting about issues. Is this sentiment understandable? Is it accurate? How would you respond to this idea?

Well, I think it’s particularly true in the Southern Baptist context today because we have been through two decades of theological and doctrinal controversy. Younger people today do not even remember a time when it was different and therefore the situation we have faced does lend itself to the accusation that theology seems to be a matter of controversy. And, of course, it’s always been that way in a measure. There’s always been a need to state the Christian position over against the non-Christian, whether it be non-Christian philosophy or non-Christian religions or whether it be heresies that sort of invade the church or are on the margins of the church. There’s always been that polemical need to highlight truth over against what Christians regard as error. But sometimes controversy has overplayed itself.

This was true, for example, among Lutherans in the 17th century and that’s how Pietism grew. Pietism arose as a protest against a kind of dead orthodoxy where they were more concerned about some issues that weren’t so practical. Therefore, if you look at the history of Christianity, there’s always been the need to define error and truth, to separate and distinguish, but there’s also a need for the positive side, the teaching, the affirmation side. Perhaps that’s where we’ve been lacking in these recent years. We’ve said, “Well, this is something preachers are discussing and pastors are talking about. It doesn’t affect me. I’m a layman.” The truth is, we’ve spent far less time than we should making Christian truth applicable to the workman in the pew who’s in the workplace and needs our help.

Is it fair to say that in today’s world the average Christian would be more likely to have a reaction against public controversies in theology in the direction of agnosticism on these questions. For instance, I hear people who seem to be saying, “Nobody really knows what we think about these things otherwise we wouldn’t be always fighting about them.”

Yes, that’s possible just to dismiss the whole thing. I find that among younger pastors in our convention there is a tendency to want to throw this whole controversy in the background and say, “We’re going to do our ministry [and not worry about the controversy.]” And that’s a reaction against some of the bitterness and controversy, but unfortunately it can be a kind of neglect of teaching truth if we don’t watch it.

Are there any examples in Christian history of revivals of interest in theology among lay people?

Well, that may be a hard question to answer. Back in the early 4th century, at the time of the Arian controversy, we’re told that in Alexandria, Egypt, Arius put some of his views into little songs, little popular jingles as we would say today. People on the street would sing these. Even later, in Constantinople, in a controversy, people would be talking on the streets or singing songs.

I just mentioned Pietism a minute ago. Pietism arose out of German Lutheranism and to a certain extent out of Dutch Reformed life. That was a protest against an overemphasis on a wooden theology, but it sparked a new life for the laity that centered around small groups and Bible study and prayer. So you had a kind of practical lay revival going on that was a kind of protest against the theology of the day. It was in a sense a new theological movement and the laity were greatly affected by some of this.

Yes, there have been times, but at times it is hard to delineate some of those because, you know, in the writing of history sometimes it’s the layman who gets left out of the story. We write from the leadership viewpoint, not from the laity viewpoint.

I’d like to ask you to generalize about something here. As you look at the church and as you come into contact with students and churches, do you think there’s any possibility of something like a revival of lay interest in today?

I think it’s spotted. I think that here and there you do have examples of that. You have churches here and there that provide extended opportunities for study, small groups, discipleship groups, lay training groups, optional features in the life of the church that people can take advantage of. I think where you see that being provided there’s been a good response.

Now, that’s not very widespread, of course. In some of our new and innovative churches we have the problem of training the new converts that we have and we’re not always doing the most complete job. It’s always a challenge, is it not? I think it’s very difficult without some extensive questionnaire to assess where churches are on that. If you know of certain ones here and there you tend to generalize, but then there are other ones where not very much is being done. So it’s hard to say.

The Baptist Faith and Message is perhaps the one work of theology that the Baptist layperson is most likely to read. To what extent do you think, in light of the recent controversy, that that work is providing a sense of theological consensus among Baptists today?

Well, first of all, let’s talk about the reading. I would say that the new Baptist Faith and Message statement of the year 2000 as adopted in Orlando does provide a document that is short enough for church members to read. It’s not a long document. It’s something that can be read and read with some understanding. I think that churches ought to encourage people to read that document. I think that is definitely true.

Now, does it provide a sense of theological consensus? Well, first of all, it’s much too early to answer that about the 2000 document. Let me go back and answer that in regard to 1925 and 1963. The 1925 statement of Baptist Faith and Message was written and adopted at a time when evolution was a big issue in Baptist life, in our Baptist colleges and universities, and in our convention, and in our churches. And much of the discussion in that day was over creation versus evolution. Of course, there are many other articles in there, and it is very interesting that that document was kind of a rewriting of the New Hampshire Confession of 1833, which had been widely used in the South, which is a kind of moderate Calvinistic statement without getting involved in the Landmark positions and all of that. And so what the 1925 committee did, which was made up of leaders, including Dr. Mullins and Dr. Scarborough, was to simply overhaul the New Hampshire Confession and to add a number of articles dealing with things of importance in the twenties, including such things as religious liberty and war and peace. They were remembering the First World War when they wrote that.

Now, in 1963, the Baptist Faith and Message statement was created in response to the Elliott Controversy which, again, took Baptists back to the book of Genesis and was not a matter of biological evolution, but a matter of how we understand the early chapters of Genesis, whether a more historic approach or a more symbolic approach. And so the 63 document, which was composed, incidentally, by a committee of all the state convention presidents in that day (a very representative group, because everybody on that committee had been elected in his home state to a leadership role), overhauled the 1925 [statement], keeping the base of the New Hampshire, going back and picking up some of the Philadelphia Confession, and also doing some new writing of their own.

So I think you can say that, overall, both in 1925 and 1963, the resultant statement did, to a large extent, reflect the beliefs of Southern Baptists. There was some problem in 25 about how they were going to deal with an interpretative amendment to the document about creation and evolution, but, by and large, the document reflected the beliefs of the day. So I think you could argue, historically, that in 1925 and 1963, those documents, as adopted, did represent the broad spectrum of Southern Baptist beliefs. Now, they were not as specific in some areas as people might have wanted them to be, because one of the things that Baptist confessions had tried to do in the past was to provide a consensus among the beliefs of those who were making the confession. In other words, that it would reflect whatever they could together affirm. So built into that process was a sort of desire to arrive at consensus, and not to try to pronounce on questions where there was division within the Convention or within the local church. In other words, if you were divided on something, usually you didn’t put that division into your Faith and Message statements, your confession.

Now, what we have in 2000 are some issues where, in the Convention, there is a large measure of disagreement, and although the vote in Orlando was in favor of the document, those Southern Baptists have been highly critical of the document. And so it remains to be seen whether this statement will be as reflective of a consensus in 2000 in a way that was true in 25 and 63.

Well, then, it kind of sounds like in our history as Baptists, controversies have not only resulted in dividing us, but many times they have resulted in bringing us closer together and forcing us to draft these common understanding documents.

Yes. You know Baptists had a dual origin, even though General Baptists are a more Arminian group and Particular Baptists are a more Calvinist group. So there has never been a complete consensus, in a way, among Baptists. There have always been some differences. But it’s very interesting that over the centuries in England those two groups coalesced, so by the nineteenth century most all of them were in the Baptist Union. And so there are some tendencies for divisive issues in one period to cease to be divisive issues in another, but maybe another set of issues arises that are completely different.

So it’s too early to see where we’re going on this. And, of course, another question is how the new confession, the new Baptist Faith and Message statement, will be used, how it will be applied. That may be as big a question as what’s said in the document.

What would you say to the church that says, “We’re tired of the controversy surrounding theBaptist Faith and Message. We are going to draft our own confession of faith.”

Well, every Baptist church has the right to adopt its own confession of faith. That has always been true. Now, some churches have borrowed a text that others have already written and adopted it. Some have modified it. Some have started over. But each congregation has that prerogative and it may be that in some cases churches will want to write a briefer, maybe in some cases a less controversial statement, and, in other areas, a more definitive statement. But it would reflect the agreements that local church would have. If a church adopts a confession, it ought to represent the united convictions of the people, otherwise it becomes a tool of division.

A Catholic friend once commented to me in the middle of a discussion, “You Baptists are always talking about theology.” Do you think that we, as a denomination, are more or less focused on theology than other groups or denominations?

Well, number one, in answering that question, if I may be particular about Southern Baptists, we tend to be more concerned with theological matters, or talking theology, than would be true in the mainline Protestant denominations: Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, the United Church of Christ, etc. In the mainline churches there is definitely less interest in theology, I think, and talking about it. They would be more interested in moral issues. If you follow what’s happening in those denominations today, when they have their national meetings the big issues are abortion and homosexuality. They’re not the Trinity and the Bible, falling from grace or perseverance. Those are not the number one issues. The moral issues are what divide. And so, as far as basic theological questions, I would say yes. Baptists tend to talk more theology than others.

But now, when you compare us with Roman Catholic churches, I’m not sure that you can make that statement. I think many Catholics are very capable of and do engage in theological discussions. Sometimes it gets into practical Maryology, those areas. Sometimes it, again, bleeds over into ethical issues. They have some very strong feelings about contraception and some of those things. But I’m not sure you can say that Baptists as a whole talk more theological than Catholics do. It depends on the sampling you take.

When Baptists talk theology, they tend to talk salvation and the Christian life. How do you get saved? What does it mean to be a Christian? They tend to focus their talk about issues. They tend to veer away from some of the more transcendent aspects of theology and focus on how to become a Christian. In other words, for us, talking theology always involves the plan of salvation. How do you become a Christian? For us, that’s talking theology, and sometimes we don’t get much beyond that in our talking.

One semi-personal question. You can refrain from answering me if you like. You have been a professor of theology for how many years?

Well, here and elsewhere, fifty years, all told.

Fifty years. So you’ve probably seen a lot of things come and go. Is it possible for you to make any sort of statement about the overall climate of theology right now, in the year 2000, in the Southern Baptist Convention, the direction we’re going, and how we’re doing?

Well, theology is perhaps seen as more important today than in some periods of the past. If you compare today with the 60s, the 1960s, I would say that in Baptist life theology is seen as more important today. In the 60s we were dealing with the race issue, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, and many of these things claimed our attention. Many of these things were not seen as immediate theological issues.

Now, having said that, I’ll go on to say that the climate of doing theology today is one in which there needs to be a proper balance between responsibility and freedom. There has to be academic accountability for those that teach, but there also needs to be enough freedom so that people can function without fear, without fear of losing their jobs, without a sense of insecurity, because people do not do their best work always beneath the threat of insecurity. So we need to seek for the balance there. True, people need to be accountable and they need to be responsible if they are working in a confessional context, but there needs to be more grace and more love and more patience as we deal with individual situations.

Baptist Catholicity with Dr. Steve Harmon

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You’ve provocatively titled your book Towards Baptist Catholicity.  There will be those who see that title as being roughly analogous to something like Towards A Square Circle.  Aren’t the terms “Baptist” and “Catholicity” contradictory?

In the popular mind, those probably are contradictory terms—they represent the extreme poles on the spectrum of types of churches or denominations, in the way most people understand them.  I suppose only “Pentecostal Catholicity” might seem even more contradictory, unless it occurs to one that adherents to both of those traditions actually expect something supernatural to happen when they gather for worship!  At any rate, the title was intentionally provocative.  If it made anyone wonder how the book would put those things together, the title did its job.  A fellow Baptist theologian thought I should have titled it No Creed But the Bible?—with the question mark—since in the book I repeatedly called that mantra for some modern Baptists in the United States into question, but I’m satisfied with the title.

Where did the term “Baptist catholicity” originate and can you give a summary definition of what “Baptist catholicity” is?

In a 2004 paper presentation that served as the basis of a published essay that in turn was revised as the first chapter of Towards Baptist Catholicity, I employed “catholic Baptist” as a descriptor for an emerging movement among younger Baptist theologians who have been dissatisfied with the theological categories bequeathed by the recurring skirmishes of the twentieth-century Modernist/Fundamentalist conflict in Baptist life and who have sought a “third way” that values both the community gathered under the Lordship of Christ and the continuity of this community with the larger Christian community through the ages.  These Baptist theologians therefore have an interest in the tradition of this larger community, the creeds and forms of liturgy that have transmitted this tradition, and the sacraments that belong to the embodied life of this community.  I didn’t coin the label, however; Curtis Freeman, director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School, had suggested the label “catholic baptists” in an essay in his co-edited book Ties That Bind: Life Together in the Baptist Vision.  Freeman’s lower-case spelling of “baptists” reflects the usage of James Wm. McClendon, Jr. in his Systematic Theology with reference to a larger pattern of Free Church Christianity of which Baptists, upper-case, are representative.

When I wrote of a “catholicity” towards which I thought Baptists ought to move, I had in mind the ancient sense of the Greek katholike employed by Ignatius of Antioch early in the second century to describe the pattern of an incarnational, sacramental, embodied form of fully orthodox Christian faith and practice that distinguished catholic Christianity from Docetism, Marcionitism, Gnosticism, and all manner of other heresies and sects—a qualitative catholicity.  This is a fuller notion of catholicity than the etymological sense of “pertaining to the whole”—catholicity in a quantitative sense—which is sometimes associated with affirmations of the universal church, understood as all the redeemed of all the ages.

I’d like to ask you about the accessibility of the terminology you and others have used.  Do you feel that the term “catholicity” might ultimately be an impediment to the proposal getting a fair hearing among Baptist laity as well as a number of pastors?  Do you think that the proposals of the programme will be heard over the prejudices that many hold surrounding the root of the word “catholicity”?  If so, do you think that an alternative way of stating the case would be helpful?

Some folks will probably not be able to get past the anti-Catholic prejudices that the term “catholicity” may arouse.  Another of my fellow Baptist theologians has called anti-Catholicism the last remaining acceptable prejudice among Baptists.  I think this prejudice needs to be tackled head-on instead of sidestepping it by employing a less troubling term.  I have similar thoughts about the practice of replacing “catholic” in the Apostles’ Creed with “Christian,” as in “I believe in the holy Christian church.”  When Luther substituted christliche for katholische in the vernacular version of the Creed—a substitution unfortunately retained in the worship books of the Evangelische Kirche in Germany today—he was trying to undercut an association of the church with a particular form of institutional life.  Today it only serves to reinforce anti-Catholicism, I’m afraid.  For that reason, while I was thrilled that the Centenary Baptist World Congress in Birmingham, England in 2005 recited together the Apostles’ Creed as an act of solidarity with the historic and global church (as the first congress of the Baptist World Alliance did in 1905), I was not thrilled with the substitution of “Christian” for “catholic” in the version they recited.  When Alexander Maclaren led the first BWA congress in confessing the Creed, it included the confession of belief in the “holy catholic church.”  We should have done likewise in order to confront anti-Catholicism in our midst instead of acquiescing to it.

On p.19-20 you acknowledge that the “catholic Baptist programme” seems to be being discussed almost exclusively among “academic theologians,” but then you state that it could be that these theologians will ultimately have the greatest effect on whether or not Baptist catholicity ever reaches the laity.  I’m curious to know how hopeful you really are that the proposals of Baptist catholicity will ever receive anything like a widespread hearing among Baptist laity?

This has to happen first in the context of theological education.  The future ministers of the church must be formed in such a manner that they see the need to recover our catholic roots in the worship and Christian education of local congregations.  A few of us are trying to teach with these things in mind; we’ll have to let a future generation be the judge as to whether we’ve succeeded in having some impact.

Is it unfair to suggest that you have introduced a careful and highly nuanced theological proposal in the midst of a church climate that appears to be increasingly a-theological?  Do you think that a great deal of foundation-work is going to have to happen before many are even able to give such a proposal a fair hearing?

The current church climate is indeed increasingly a-theological, and you’re right that this can hinder reception of the book’s proposals.  But I don’t think the solution is necessarily to hold seminary-like theology classes in the local church (though that’s not such a bad idea).  I think that instead of simply emphasizing the teaching of second-order theology in the churches, we need to invest ourselves in doing well the first-order practices that, if done rightly, can be the primary things that form Christians theologically: worship and catechesis, both of which should be informed by good second-order theological reflection even while remaining first-order practices of the church.  But I suppose if that happened, then much of what I hope Baptists will move toward will have happened, whether or not the specific proposals of my book have been received.

You’ve called for a “thick ecumenism” (p.16).  Is “Baptist catholicity” simply a synonym for “Baptist ecumenism”?  I have read one criticism of your work that seems to assume this to be the case.

The recovery of a catholicity to which all other traditions are also heirs does have important ecumenical implications, but it would be wrong to equate my call for “Baptist catholicity” with a mere call for Baptists to have more positive relationships with other Christian traditions.  Many Baptists associate ecumenism with “thin ecumenism,” the unity-via-lowest-common-denominator sort of ecumenism I decry in the book because it takes away any motivation for an earnest contestation of a shared tradition.  For that reason I prefer to write and speak of a Baptist catholicity that involves a thick ecumenism in which the doctrinal reasons for our divisions are not insignificant and must be contested on the basis of a mutual reading of Scripture and the tradition.  Some have called this perspective “particularity in the service of unity.”  I resonate with that, and I would add that an open-minded revisiting of the early history of Baptist particularity will reveal some surprising connections with a more catholic pattern of faith and practice than what now characterizes many expressions of Baptist life today.

You’ve spoken in your book of a “Baptist tradition of dispensing with tradition.”  Are you suggesting that tradition is unavoidable?  Are you suggesting that Baptist churches in fact have a liturgy, a traditioned hermeneutic, a traditioned ecclesiology?  If so, does not the very suggestion of the inescapability of tradition conflict with the frequent Baptist self-designation, “people of the Book”?

In a public radio interview with Jaroslav Pelikan on “The Need for Creeds” a year or two before his death, Pelikan observed that “The only alternative to tradition is bad tradition.”  Baptists do have a tradition at all the points you mention, but I fear that when we claim to be doing without tradition in doing worship, reading the Bible, and advocating a certain form of ecclesiology, we’re doing those things on the basis of very bad sorts of tradition.  In many expressions of Baptist life here, that unacknowledged tradition is a highly individualistic stream within the political tradition of American liberal democracy.

Now to be a “people of the Book” is in fact to be a people committed to a tradition.  To be committed to this Book, and not another book or another variation of that Book, is to be committed to a traditioned faith that has already ruled out Gnosticim, for example, as a viable configuration of faith and practice; thus the Book to which Baptists are committed does not contain the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, or any number of other alternative gospels that ended up in what Robert Grant called the “rubbish heap of the second century.”  A preacher in the most self-consciously progressive Baptist church imaginable is not likely to stand in the pulpit, read a text from the Gospel of Thomas, and then preach a sermon on the basis of that text.  That this is not a likely scenario illustrates the enduring power of the patristic traditions that configured our Bible, even if they are unacknowledged.

In your third chapter, you confront what you call a “radical Sola Scriptura hermeneutic.”  You suggest that this approach to Scripture is, in some sense, the-other-side-of-the-coin of postmodern deconstructionism.  Are you suggesting that the phrase “me and the Bible alone” is, in fact, a heresy?

In making the comparison with deconstructionism, I’m suggesting that certain radical applications of the Sola Scriptura principle treat the classical Christian tradition in precisely the same way that deconstructionism does; the only difference is that the commitment to the authority of Scripture keeps the Bible itself, at least in theory, from being subjected to the same deconstruction.  In both cases the individual who is reading the tradition is superior to the tradition; the tradition has no claim upon the one who interprets it.

“Me and the Bible alone” can lead to heresy if it represents an insistence on determining Christian faith and practice for oneself apart from the larger community that is also under the Lordship of Christ.  Last spring I attended a lecture by Richard Hays, whose New Testament scholarship many Baptists admire, delivered as part of the program of the conference on Preaching, Teaching, and Living the Bible sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology and Duke Divinity School.  Dr. Hays’ address had to do with reading the Bible as the authoritative text of the church, and a question from the audience after the address asked about implications for more individualistic approaches to reading the Bible—no mention of Baptists in the phrasing of the question.  Dr. Hays responded, “What some Baptists do with the concept of ‘soul competency’ is a dangerous heresy that the rest of the church ought to resist.”  (My apologies for any inaccuracy in quoting.)  I think he’s right—though I think one can legitimately speak of the competency of the Spirit-empowered, church-equipped, socially-embodied soul.  If that’s what one means by this language, I have no quibble with it.  But if it means something like “All you need is a brain and a Bible,” then I think the end result of that is “All you really need is a brain,” since the Bible in that case will mean whatever you end up deciding it will mean, and this interpretive decision will probably reflect the way you already understood the world quite apart from divine revelation.

On p.43-44 you note that adherence to Sola Scriptura ironically accepts “the authority of at least one post-biblical doctrinal tradition” because it must depend on the Church that canonized said Scripture.  Is it fair to say, then, that all Baptists are, in fact, already catholic in a sense?

Yes—in the sense that the Christian canon (with both Old and New Testaments) is already qualitatively catholic, for it is an anti-Docetic, anti-Marcionite, anti-Gnostic canon.  It is catholic in the Ignatian sense of catholicity I mentioned earlier.  We simply need to be more conscious of the catholicity of our biblical faith.

You say this on p.59:  “The retrieval of tradition does not have to be an uncritical return to past doctrines and practices.”  Does this not open up a Pandora’s box, however, and place the individual above tradition, thereby once again falling into the “Enlightenment individualistic rationalism” that you criticize on p.56?  Will not those whose churches are more consciously associated with “The Great Tradition” see this as a kind of sola-ex-machina whereby we still get to pick and choose at the end of the day when things aren’t to our liking?

I grant that this is a problematic aspect of what I propose, and I have to admit that I’m not entirely comfortable with where this leaves us.  How do we go about determining which aspects of the tradition need retrieving and which ought to be left in the past?  Who should do that?  We run into the question of teaching authority in the church—magisterial authority, in other words.  It may be that communities in the free church tradition will need to look to the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican communions for liturgical guidance, for example, rather than borrowing from the liturgical tradition in a very eclectic and idiosyncratic manner.  We could take a cue from Karl Barth’s patterns of interacting with theological dialogue partners in the Church Dogmatics, in which he privileges communal sources—the ecumenical creeds and conciliar decisions—over the contributions of individual theologians.  And it may be that those in the free church tradition should develop the habit of reading papal encyclicals and bishops’ letters as models of communal moral discernment, since we lack a tradition of this sort of ecclesial ethical reflection.  Free church Christians could thus regard the communion of the saints as something like a magisterium of the whole—but that still returns us to the problem of who will decide what to appropriate from these sources of guidance, and how.

You seem to be fairly appreciative of Thomas Oden’s paleo-orthodoxy project, yet you’re uneasy with the blind-spots of the Vincentian Canon (p.48-49).  Is consensus really so elusive?  Has there not been a rather surprising degree of consensus on the core of the faith, “mere Christianity”?

Again, I think Barth offers a model in his handling of the tradition.  And if we take stuff of early Christian doctrine as essentially narrative in character and the Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed as concise summaries of the Christian narrative, then I think the creeds should qualify as expressions of fundamental consensus.  The broad outlines of the Christian story, summarized by the creeds still in essentially narrative form, can be considered “mere Christianity.”

I’m curious to know whether or not you are calling for the creation of a new Baptist confession on p.85:  “A Baptist confession conceived as an exposition of the Creed would flesh out the plot of this narrative summary with a Baptist spin on the story.”  Would you like to see this happen?

Baptist confessions have historically sought to accomplish at least two things: to demonstrate to non-Baptists that Baptists are in fact in continuity with historic Christian faith, and at the same time to set forth the points at which Baptists differ from other Christians.  More recent attempts at Baptist confessionalism have tended to be preoccupied with who the “real” Baptists are and have not had the ecumenical audience of the confession in mind.  I don’t know what sort of Baptist ecclesial body would do it or when it could happen, but I would indeed like to see some Baptist group adopt the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed as the expression of the convictions Baptists share with other Christians, supplemented by commentary on the Creed that sets forth distinctively Baptist beliefs and practices.  Some of the European Baptist confessions approach this, notably the confession of the German Baptists that affirms the Apostles’ Creed in the introductory section as a sufficient statement of the beliefs Baptists share with the rest of the church.

It seems to me (in the conversations I’ve had with non-Baptists about your proposals) that baptism, or, more specifically, re-baptism is “ground zero.”  The common sentiment I hear is that any attempt at “catholicity” that would require the re-baptism of somebody who was baptized as a baby is utterly vain.  You seem to be sympathetic to this when you write (p.126):  “At the very least, the ancient Christian consensus on the unrepeatability of baptism ought to give Baptist congregations pause before quickly requiring those whose infant baptism in another Christian communion was joined with subsequent faith to be re-baptized when joining a Baptist congregation…”  What will you say to the Baptist who says that this is not, strictly speaking, re-baptism since the person was never baptized in the first place?  Do you not have to sacrifice a Baptist distinctive in order to even use the phrase “re-baptize”?

I myself am convinced that Baptists ought to commit themselves to the call for mutual recognition of baptisms issued in Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (WCC, 1982) and embrace the theological rationale offered therein for mutual recognition.  Not all Baptists agree, and I grant that most early Baptists (with a notable exception—see below) would disagree with this.  But if what the early Baptists insisted on was a baptism joined with personal faith, and they were convinced that Anglican infant baptisms, for example, did not always join the act with personal faith, then there may be more room for convergence on the basis of historic Baptist principles than one might imagine.  BEM insists that infant baptism must be joined with subsequent personal faith; for that matter, the Catechism of the Catholic Church insists that infant baptism must be joined with subsequent personal faith.  With this we can agree, and on the basis of this we ought to be able to say, “we recognize your baptism as a valid baptism.”  If we do not, then we are really saying, “your church that administered your baptism is not a valid church,” and if we do not believe their church is not a valid church, then the theological implication of this is that we do not really believe they are truly Christians.  Much has been made in the media about recent re-assertions of the Catholic teaching that ecclesial communities not in communion with Rome are not, strictly speaking, churches in the fullest sense.  But the fact remains that if I decided to seek reception into the fellowship of the Roman Catholic Church, I would not be re-baptized; I would only be chrismated, and my Baptist baptism would be regarded as a valid baptism, as an instance of the one baptism of the church.

How sympathetic are you to early Baptist attempts (i.e., John Bunyan) and modern attempts (i.e. John Piper) at removing re-baptism as a condition for membership in a Baptist church?

See above!

I take it that “closed communion” is utterly incompatible with “Baptist catholicity”?

Not necessarily.  The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, it should be noted, are also “closed communion.”  Whatever else may be said about the Landmark Baptist tradition, its emphasis on closed communion represented a high view of the importance of the sacraments—or “ordinances”—of baptism and the Lord’s Supper for the life of the community, and I respect that.  Nevertheless, I myself do advocate that Baptist churches invite all baptized Christians to participate in the supper.

You say on p.152-153 that the “greatest contribution that a Baptist retrieval of patristic Christianity may make to the renewal of contemporary Baptist life is not through the retrieval of specific patristic theological perspectives…but rather through the recovery of worship as the primary means by which people are formed in deeply Christian faith and practice, accompanied by the recovery of particular patterns and practices of worship that are patristic in origin yet have great potential for forming the contemporary faith of the church.”  Why worship instead of theological renewal?

Theological renewal is indispensable, but unless that translates into a renewal of worship so that the practices of worship form Christians deeply in the faith, the average layperson who will never go to seminary but who will attend Sunday worship faithfully will remain unaffected by theological renewal.

Do you find it odd that many Baptist churches celebrate Mother’s Day with a passion bordering on violent, but not Lent?

Indeed I do.  I’ll do you one better: frequently Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost, coincides with Fathers’ Day.  Guess which one gets attention and which gets ignored?  And the result, of course, is that most Baptists have heard little, if anything, in church about the concept of God that sets the Christian understanding of God apart from all other understandings of the divine.  As fellow Baptist theologian Curtis Freeman has observed, “Most Baptists are really Unitarians who haven’t yet gotten around to denying the Trinity.”

You have called for a measured-sacramentalism regarding the Lord’s Supper.  Do you feel that Zwinglianism has had a hold on Baptists for too long?

I would be happy if Baptists would only recover the fully-orbed sacramental theology of Zwingli himself, who would never have claimed that the supper is “merely symbolic,” as have not a few modern (and mostly American) Baptists.  For Zwingli, there is an inseparable bond between the symbol and the thing signified.  The reductionistic version of Zwinglian memorialism embraced by many recent Baptists breaks that bond and reduces the bread and wine to nothing more than symbols.  Interestingly enough, Calvin had a much richer sacramental theology that featured a form of real presence that didn’t depend on an Aristotelian metaphysic of substance, and there are possibilities for retrieving this from the stream of the early Baptist tradition that was more heavily influenced by Calvin’s theology.

I’m deeply appreciative of your work here and am thankful that you’ve taken the time for this interview.  I wonder if you could close by sharing your own thoughts about the future of Baptist theology and church life.  What hopes do you have for the spread of “Baptist catholicity”?  How optimistic are you?  What do you see on the horizon?

And I’m grateful for your interest in my book.  I have no aspirations of launching a movement; in Towards Baptist Catholicity I have reported some surprising trends in that direction among Baptist theologians and situated my own work within those trends.  Since the publication of the book, however, I’ve received correspondence from quite a few Baptist Ph.D. students in theology and related disciplines out there who found that I named some perspectives at which they’d arrived independently.  And this is happening not just among Baptists proper, but in other free church/evangelical traditions as well.  The last few years the Evangelical Theological Society has sponsored a patristics working group at their annual meeting, and more and more seminary students from those traditions are choosing to go on to do Ph.D. studies in patristics.  This really wasn’t happening before the past decade; who knows where it will lead?  I’m encouraged by the possibilities.

Ben Witherington’s Troubled Waters: Rethinking the Theology of Baptism

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When I saw an ad the other day for Ben Witherington’s new book on baptism, Troubled Waters: Rethinking the Theology of Baptism, I knew I’d have to read it.  Witherington is a tremendous New Testament scholar and I’ve benefited personally from his work, especially his commentary work.  He’s a Methodist, I believe, and I knew, judging from his past work, that his treatment of baptism would be fair and, likely, provocative.  It proved to be both…and a bit frustrating.

Published (ironically?) by Baylor University Press, Troubled Waters seeks to show that traditional credobaptist and traditional paedobaptist arguments have been stunted by allowing theological assumptions and presuppositions (as well as no shortage of hot air and idiosyncratic exegesis) to trump the witness of Scripture.

Over against credobaptist claims, Witherington seeks to show that the normal pattern throughout most of the New Testament is “water baptism” then “Spirit baptism”.  Water baptism therefore precedes that which truly saves:  Spirit baptism.  This is evident, Witherington says, first and foremost in the baptism of Jesus.  Baptists, of course, reverse this order and ask for saving faith before baptism.  Witherington sees this as violating the biblical norm.  (One caveat:  some of Witherington’s views of what Baptists believe struck me as frankly very odd and did not sound like anything I’ve ever heard in a Baptist church…and I IS one!  He almost seems to think that Baptists believe that baptism saves ex opera operato.  I think in some ways he has confused us with the Church of Christ or other groups along those lines, but I may have misread him.)

Anyway, I get the general point about the order of the baptisms, but I do feel that for Witherington’s argument to stand he must show that there is a substantial significance in the order, and probably that significance will have to be shown in a period of time between the two to prove the point that I think he’s wanting to prove.  This becomes problematic, though, when you look at Jesus’ own baptism and other biblical examples.  Sure, it was water baptism then Spirit baptism, but Witherington’s attempt to highlight the fact that the Spirit came not as Christ was coming up from the water, but up out of the water, seems too strained and forced to me.  Even granting the point, I don’t really get it.  It does not seem to do justice to the language of “immediacy” that both Matthew and Mark use.  The fact is, the coming of the Spirit in the case of Jesus came at the baptism, not some years later, and, frankly, it would have been difficult to do while Christ was under the water (Witherington grants that he was under the water).  Furthermore, using Christ’s baptism as a norm is problematic on a number of fronts, but, to Witherington’s credit, he does not appeal only to this example.

A number of things about Witherington’s book I really did like:  he says more than a couple of times that the New Testament mode was almost certainly immersion, but then he lets it die “the death of a thousand qualifications” by talking about the mode being determined by the amount of water available (with the customary appeals to the conditional language of The Didache).  Allow me to put on my crusty Baptist hat and say that one does grow weary of these rather frequent paedobaptist admissions of immersion, only to see it die the death of qualifications.  The fact is…now watch this…there is no water shortage in North America(though there’s getting to be one in South Georgia).  Please understand that this point is coming from one who believes in immersion, but does not believe that immersion is salvific or primary.  I’m almost tempted even to call it adiaphoric, but it was the biblical practice, and there is more than a bit of evidence that it was practiced in the early church, so I don’t see why we should have such a problem immersing.  (Above all, it fits with the symbolism of the death of Christ perfectly, a point that Witherington himself makes.)

Witherington also shows through careful exegesis that the household baptisms not only don’t mention infants, they also almost certainly could not have involved infants.  This is an honest admission, and says a great deal about the integrity of Witherington’s exegesis.  Furthermore, sounding like a good Baptist, Witherington calls on paedobaptists to consider how much more meaningful for the baptismal candidate postponing baptism will be than if they are baptized as an infant.

Yet, Witherington ultimately sees in the aforementioned order (water then Spirit) as well as in the Pauline parallels between circumcision and baptism enough evidence to warrant the baptism of infants, so he does allow it, with cautions.

One point that I didn’t quite get is the argument that in Acts we are dealing with first generation missionary baptisms and therefore not so much with the question of what to do with children who are born into the church.  I agree with that and I think I get the gist of it, but I keep coming back to this thought:  what of those among the 3,000 that Peter addressed who were capable of “repenting” and “being baptized” (and, in fact, did so) who were holding babies on their hips when Peter answered their question about what they should do to be saved?  If paedobaptism is warranted as a New Testament parallel to circumcision, would not Peter have simply asked them to baptize their whole families?  What does the fact that they are first generation or missionary converts have to do with their children being baptized?  I think Witherington would harken us back to Jewish proselyte baptism, which he shows to be the antecedent model of Christian baptism, but I never could quite get this straight in my head.

As an aside, I found one of Witherington’s most powerful points in his argument that the church has become primarily a nurturing body for families that are already Christian and not a missionary body as it clearly was in the New Testament.  This was, in my opinion, profound and really raised the whole level of discourse above the technicalities of the baptism debate.  The fact is, says Witherington, we ought to be bringing in non-believers and having to baptize non-believing adults, but, as a rule, we are not.  So we’re left with a question that was never the main question for the early church:  what to do with the infants of believers?

Witherington calls on Baptists not to treat the children of Christians as pagans, an idea I certainly agree with.  He also calls on us to have dedication ceremonies to draw these children into the fellowship, which we do.  I agree on both counts.  He also wisely cautions about the impossibility of knowing who really has saving faith, pointing out that a confession of faith is not faith.  I agree, but the conclusion that we should never proceed to an act on the basis of another’s faith simply because we cannot know with certainty that they do in fact have faith seems odd to me.  Wouldn’t this train of thought keep any pastor from ever administering the Lord’s Supper to anybody at all because he could not know if he was giving it to a saved person?

Witherington also speaks of the possibility of causing the children of Christians to feel guilty because they have not had a dramatic conversion experience.  This is right on and I think he’s wise to point this out, though I fail to see that credobaptism necessarily causes this.  (I do not, however, deny that it happens.)

I really enjoyed this book.  It challenged me and it really made me appreciate some paedobaptist arguments, while it failed to convince me on other points.  I appreciate the point about the order of the baptisms, and I certainly concur about which is salvific.  This is something I’ll definitely have to chew on.

This book was thought-provoking, challenging, and edifying.  I recommend it wholeheartedly as a fascinating and balanced look at baptism from an author who takes the text seriously and is equipped to take those of us who are not New Testament scholars below a merely surface reading of the text.

Reformed Theology and the Church with Dr. Timothy George

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Dr. Timothy George is a widely respected theologian and church historian. He serves as the Dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Among Dr. George’s many published works are Theology of the Reformers and John Calvin and the Church: A Prism of Reform. I conducted this interview in May of 2000 and am happy to be able to make it available again.

Reformed Theology and the Church: An Interview With Dr. Timothy George

May 4, 2000 Beeson Divinity School of Samford University Birmingham, Alabama

 

1. How would you define the term “reformed theology” to someone who attends church, but maybe does not possess a great deal of knowledge concerning church history or the nuances of Christian theology?

Well, there’s nothing magical about the word “reformed,” and I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about it. It’s closely related to the Reformation, of course, and, in the Reformation, there was a recovery of the Holy Scriptures. There was a return to the theology of the early church and the Bible, particularly as related to God’s grace and salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, on the basis of the Scriptures alone. Those were some of the distinctives of Luther and Calvin and Cramner – a whole array of Reformers in the 16th century. So when we talk about “reformed theology,” we’re really talking about Biblical theology – Biblical theology that has been refracted through or seen in the prism of the great debates of the 16th century, hence the word “reformed.” There’s nothing magical about that word and we don’t mean to say anything other than sound Biblical teaching related to God and His grace and salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, His Son. That’s really what we mean by it.

2. Are there any drawbacks to calling this system of theology “reformed”?

Well, another “bad word” that we have to use very cautiously is “Calvinistic.” Some people equate reformed theology with “Calvinism.” Calvinism covers a broad array of different interests. I am, for example, a reformed Baptist, and I would agree with Calvin because I think Calvin agrees with the Scriptures on a lot of issues related to God’s grace and salvation and election. I don’t agree with Calvin, because I think Calvin doesn’t agree with Scripture, on a lot of other issues, for example, the baptizing of infants or the particular arrangement of church government he proposed. So, a Calvinist is not someone who agrees with John Calvin or holds him up in some sort of saintly way as a person above and beyond critique, but we do see in him a lot of the truths of the gospel. So, in that sense, I am happy to be called a Calvinist if I can define it. The same would be true of “reformed theology.” I think a lot of people use it in a very narrow way to refer to a particular understanding of Calvinism or a particular understanding of reformed tradition, and I would rather have a more generous reading of reformed theology than that.

3. Do I understand you to mean that a person can consider themselves to be a reformed theologian, or an adherent to reformed theology, and not hold to all five of the traditional tenets of Calvinism?

Yes. What you call the five tenets of Calvinism is a post-Calvin development. Calvin never talked about five points. I sometimes think, “Am I a five-point Calvinist?” I like to think I’m a “66-point” Calvinist because I think it’s in every book of the Bible. But, in one sense, there’s only one point, and that is that God is the source of our salvation from first to last. And if you believe that, then the points become ways of understanding or explaining this or that dimension of it but not a rigid grid through which everything has to be filtered.

The five points of Calvinism actually refer to the five heads of doctrine, or canons of the Synod of Dort, which was a reformed international assembly meeting in Holland in 1618 and 1619. They defined traditional Calvinist theology over against a view which had arisen within the Dutch reformed church challenging it, called the “Remonstrant” view, later called the “Arminian” view because of Jacobus Arminius, one of their teachers. The five doctrines of Calvinism were total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints. That’s the anglicized acrostic, spelling “TULIP.”

Now, rightly interpreted, I can affirm all five of those points of doctrine, but, as a matter of fact, they have not often been rightly interpreted. So, I’m a little cautious. For example, take total depravity. Total depravity does not mean that there’s absolutely nothing good about anybody anywhere. I know God’s common grace extends to everybody in the world, and the fact that there’s any good anywhere is a result of God’s sustaining and preserving and common grace. But total depravity really means that, vis-a-vis God, there’s nothing we can do, in and of ourselves, to make any contribution to our standing before Him. We are totally and hopelessly and eternally lost apart from God’s radical intervention in our lives. That’s what it means, and, if you put it that way, then, yes, I believe in total depravity. And I could go through the other five doctrines that way.

Limited atonement is one of the most, I think, controverted of the five heads of doctrine. And, again, it’s a horrible term, limited atonement, because it makes it sound like there’s something wrong with it, something lacking in it, that somehow God hasn’t provided enough for it. It’s like if you have a big church picnic and the people who bring the food don’t bring enough chicken for everybody! It’s limited. It’s a limited picnic. Well, there’s nothing limited about the atonement in that sense. In fact, the atonement, what Christ did on the cross, is fully sufficient to pay the penalty for every sin that has ever been committed in the history of the universe. It’s infinite in its sufficiency. But, unless you’re a universalist, which I think is a clear contradiction of Scripture, then you do believe, in some sense, that it’s limited in its efficacy. Not everybody is going to be saved. So that raises the issue of what is the definition of that limitation of atonement.

So all of these doctrines are nuanced, and I think sometimes, if I can speak charitably to my fellow Calvinists, we beat people over the head with these doctrines and we forget that it’s only by the grace of God that any of us understand it. You know, no one is born a Calvinist. Everyone is born an Arminian, or worse, and it’s only by God’s grace that our eyes are open to it. We ought to take an attitude towards our brothers and sisters in Christ who don’t see this just the way we do: “Oh Lord, open their eyes, just as you have opened ours.” So we’ll come at it in an attitude of humility and an attitude of openness and Christian fellowship and charity, and not so much, “I’ve got a stick I can beat you over the head with.”

4. A few years ago, I purchased the Complete Works of Arminius so that I could try to understand his theology. When I told a reformed friend of mine about this purchase, he responded, “Well, I guess it’s good to know what the enemy thinks.” Should men such as Arminius, Wesley and Moody be considered enemies of those who call themselves reformed? Why or why not?

Well, certainly not. I think that, here at Beeson Divinity School, for example, we have the kind of school where I think both Calvin and Arminius, both Whitfield and Wesley would be happy to be on our faculty, and we would be glad to have them both. We don’t have a straight-jacket view that this is a test of fellowship. Now, I’m a reformed theologian and others at Beeson are too. Some are not. We have a Methodist, for example, who teaches here. And not every Baptist would agree with me on all the points of Calvinism. I’m trying to persuade them, but I haven’t been totally successful yet. So I don’t think that calling people like that “enemies” or “enemies of the truth” is a helpful way of talking about it.

I do think that reformed theology is a faithful Biblical representation of the teachings of God’s grace, and, because I believe that, I’m an advocate of it. I’m willing to be challenged and taught by others who think differently. So I think the discussion ought to go on in a context of collegial fellowship and discussion and honest study of the Scriptures, just as we would disagree with Presbyterians about infant baptism. Well, I think they’re dead wrong about that. I can’t find one ounce of Scriptural support for it, but I don’t consider all Presbyterians my enemies or enemies of the truth. I think they are in error. I think they are misled. I think they are, to some extent, blinded to the truth of baptism for believers by immersion only. But I want to talk with them and pray with them and work with them towards a better understanding of the truth, and I hope they will have the same kind of charitable attitude toward me, whom I’m sure they also see as a person who doesn’t see the truth completely.

5. So, in your definition of “reformed,” can men such as Arminius and Wesley operate beneath the broader sense of the term and can they be considered “reformed theologians?”

That’s a really good point. Not in the strict sense of “reformed,” but it’s interesting that the two people you mentioned, both Arminius and Wesley, were very indebted to the Reformation. Arminius, in fact, was ordained in the church of Geneva by Theodore Beza. And Beza, who was Calvin’s successor, said of Arminius that he had written some of the finest works, expositions of Scripture, that he had ever read. So these are people who came from within that tradition.

Wesley was deeply indebted to the Puritans, for example, and read them avidly. And even though he came to disagree with traditional Calvinism on the matter of predestination, he nonetheless has a very reformed doctrine of original sin. He has a very strong understanding of God’s prevenient grace. In fact, I could wish that all contemporary Arminians were as Wesleyan as Wesley. I would be delighted with that. That would be a tremendous step in the right direction.

So they are Reformational figures who come out of this tradition. They challenge it at certain points. I would not consider Wesley and Arminius “reformed” in the sense that I would use that of myself, as a reformed Baptist theologian, but I certainly think they are my first cousins and are related to me by the doctrines of grace.

6. Would it be fair to say that the church in America is currently experiencing a revival of interest in reformed theology? If so, why do you think this is the case?

I’m asked that question a lot. I think the answer is “yes.” I think there’s a growing interest. “Revival” may be too optimistic a term to call it, but there is a resurgence, there is a growing interest in reformed theology, not only among Baptists, but among many different denominations.

Why is this? Well, I think there are four or five reasons that come to mind. For one, particularly now I’m thinking about Southern Baptists, there is a renewed interest in the Holy Scriptures and a renewed commitment to the Bible. You know, we fought for a number of years over inerrancy in the Southern Baptist Convention. That battle has more or less kind of been settled. If you really believe the Bible is the authoritative, inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, then it becomes very important, if you take that seriously and it isn’t just a political slogan or a shibboleth, to know what the Bible actually teaches, what it says about grace, about salvation, about predestination, about all of these things. And so I think one of the things responsible for the revival of interest in reformed theology is a high view of Scripture and a return to a serious engagement with the teaching of Scripture. That’s a good thing, and I think this is one of the results of it.

Another thing, I think, is the emptiness in so much of conservative and even evangelical worship. When I think about reformed theology, I really don’t think, first of all, about the five points of Calvinism. I think about a view of God, a full-sized transcendent God before whom we come in awe and worship and praise and adoration, and that’s missing in much contemporary worship and contemporary church life. It tends to be very shallow, very sentimental, very syrupy. So reformed theology challenges the dogma of a user-friendly God and it points us back to the true real God that Isaiah saw in the temple high and holy and lifted up, before whom we all have to say, “Woe is me! I am undone!” And in so far as there is a vacuity, an emptiness in the contemporary church, reformed theology offers a sturdier alternative.

And then there’s something to be said about the fact that reformed theology takes very seriously the idea of the covenant and our covenantal relationships, not only with the individual and God, but within the church and within the family. And again, you look at our culture today, these are institutions that are under attack, especially the family. I think a reformed understanding of theology can offer some good strong theological underpinnings for a doctrine of the family that takes very seriously what Scripture tells us about how we should live together as husbands and wives and children and parents in a covenantal family relationship.

7. So reformed theology, then, is not opposed to church growth? It is possible to have the two together?

Well, yes, indeed. True church growth, I think, would be a good result of reformed theology. I thank God, myself, for all of the churches that are truly growing. Now “growth” I would not equate with “numerical expansion.” Those are two different things. Growth is spiritual growth, growth in the understanding of God and His mission and His work, and that can also very often lead to numerical growth. I mean, there is a book in the Bible called Numbers! So I’m not against that. But I think reformed theology would challenge some of the presuppositions of the church growth movement as it’s been defined in this culture traditionally, and point us back to, I think, a more God-centered, Scripture-based understanding of church growth. But there’s no contradiction between reformed theology and true, biblically-based church growth

8. Do you think that a growing number of young people are, in fact, being drawn to reformed theology, and why would young people in particular be drawn to it?

That’s a good question. I think I find the same thing here. You know, students who come to our school and others schools where I visit and lecture very often come up to me and tell me that they are reformed or they’re interested or they’re reading reformed theology. I talk to them a little bit – “Why did you get interested in this? Are you following some guru?” And, inevitably, they come from all over the place. Some of them haven’t read anything by R.C. Sproul or any of the famous reformed apologists that are out there today. They’ve just been reading the Bible, and reading it with an open mind and an open heart and this is where they’ve come. So, yes.

And, again, I think it’s an encouraging sign to me that among young people especially the older denominational paradigm of, “Let’s build a great church. Let’s put up our fences. Let’s say that we’re the biggest and the best,” you know, that old “Rah! Rah! Rah!” ecclesiology, doesn’t sell very well. I think, in particular, we spend too much time building fences around our backyard and not tending to the foundation on which the building stands. We paint our fences, we hold them up – “I’m this, not that!” – and, in the meantime, the foundations are being eroded. And what you sense and what I’m sensing, I think, is a renewed interest in the foundations. Reformed theology is a way of talking about that. It’s a way of getting in touch with the reality of the faith, with God, with the Scriptures, with Jesus Christ and salvation, with the mission of the church in the world. Reformed theology, at its best, is about those things. It’s not about, “I’m a Baptist, not a Presbyterian,” or, “I’m this kind of Baptist, not that kind of Baptist,” or, “I’m a conservative, not a moderate,” or, “I’m a moderate, not a conservative.” Those types of old-fashioned political distinctions, I think, no longer have the bite they used to. And what’s taking its place among many, not all – we shouldn’t exaggerate this – is this growing interest, and I think reformed theology is one of the things that people can latch on to. They sense it’s real, it’s substantial, you can build your life on it, you can raise a family with it. And I think it is a good thing.

9. Does Calvinism have the potential to create another major controversy in the Convention?

I’ve been hearing that for about ten or twelve years – “Once we get rid of the liberals, we’re going after the Calvinists.” I used to say, “Well, it wouldn’t take very long to do that. You could corner us all in a phone booth and take care of us pretty quickly.” But that’s not true anymore. I think there is this growing awareness of it.

No. I think, in my own view, I do not foresee Calvinism becoming the next great wave of controversy and battle in the SBC. I could be wrong. I know that there are some people that would like for that to happen. Some people, I think, who aren’t very happy about the Southern Baptist Convention would like to see, particularly, Southern Baptist conservatives killing one another over their differences on Calvinism. And while there are some people who would lend themselves to that, I think that this is not any kind of the burning controverted issue that some people would like to make it.

Now, I would also have to say a word of counsel to my fellow reformed Southern Baptist brothers and sisters, and that is that we have a very important responsibility to be committed to evangelism and missions. I think a lot of people fear Calvinism, rightly so, because what they really fear is hyper-Calvinism and they confuse the two and often equate the two in a very naive and misinformed kind of way. But I’m against hyper-Calvinism. I think it’s a heresy. Hyper-Calvinism says, “We don’t preach the gospel to everybody everywhere. It’s the private reserve of just a few people.” They are opposed to traditional views of Christian education and theological seminaries and so forth and so on. They oppose missionary sending agencies. If you look at hyper-Calvinism in the 19th century, it left tremendous scars on Southern Baptist life, and a lot of people still remember that. Particularly in Texas, for some reason, there seems to be some of the worst kind of misinformed anti-Calvinism. And I think what they’re doing is simply remembering this kind of old hyper-Calvinist ghost that floats around. They think that anybody who talks about reformed theology is a hyper-Calvinist. But anybody who understands our Baptist history and knows a person like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of my great heroes, or William Carey, the father of modern missions, of whom I wrote a biography, knows that these people were reformed Baptist leaders. They believed in the doctrines of grace – in all of the doctrines of grace, but this was a motivation for them to go into the world and preach the gospel to everybody, to be concerned about the lost, to reach out to the lost. And that’s the model we need to follow, not the kind of Calvinist that hunkers down in a bunker, the holy huddle, and says, “We’ve got the truth and nobody else does.”

You know, there used to be a little ditty:

We’re the Lord’s elected few, let all the rest be damned.

There’s room enough in Hell for you, We don’t want Heaven crammed.

Well, you know, I have to say that I’ve met a few Calvinists that kind of have that attitude. That is not, repeat not, n-o-t, historic, reformed Baptist theology. And those of us that are reformed Southern Baptists need to make that very clear.

10. Some have suggested that increasingly fragile and confusing social conditions seem to usher in revivals of interest in reformed theology. Do you agree with this idea?

I think that’s a shallow interpretation. I wouldn’t say there’s absolutely nothing to it. The fact that we live in a time of disintegration and doubt, and that there’s all this hunger for certainty; I think that that is, in some sense, a true analysis of our times, but I wouldn’t see the revival in reformed theology being, necessarily, the answer to that problem. In some ways, you could see this as an explanation for Facism or Nazism in Germany or Communism, any kind of ideology that comes on the scene and offers to meet that hunger in so many people’s lives. That’s there in our culture today, and there’s lots of options other than reformed theology that try to meet it – the New Age movement, etc. No, I think the revival in reformed theology has deeper and more substantial roots than that.

11. What are the major pitfalls that must be avoided in order for reformed theology to continue to gain influence and popularity in the American church?

Well, first of all I want to say that I don’t think gaining influence and popularity in the American church is necessarily a goal to be sought or an end to be desired. Once we begin to talk like that, we’re not talking like reformed theologians, we’re talking like people that put pragmatism above truth. So I reject the premise of the question.

But having said that, I would say a couple of things. One is just to repeat what I said a moment ago about missions and evangelism being the heart of the Christian movement. And I would say two other things also. One would be an ability to work with other Christians across lines – denominational lines, ideological lines – that do not compromise the gospel. There is a kind of ecumenism of accommodation that says, “Let’s find the least common denominator and settle on that and just be happy and together and forget about other matters.” I’m against that kind of ecumenism. But I believe in an ecumenism of conviction which takes seriously those irreducible, evangelical essentials that we cannot compromise, but, having affirmed those, are willing to reach across some other boundaries and work with other believers in Jesus Christ in a common cause. I think reformed theologians should be in the forefront of an ecumenism of conviction. I’ve tried to do that and others as well. So that was one thing I would say. Don’t become a sectarian movement. Don’t isolate yourself from the wider body of Christ.

And then the third point is the attitude that we bring to it. There’s no room for pride, for arrogance, for hubris among anyone who is truly reformed, because we recognize that we’re saved by the grace of God and that it is only by the grace of God that we even understand one-millionth of the meaning of any of the doctrines of grace. And if you really believe that, then 1 Corinthians 4:7 becomes a very important verse in your life. That verse contains three questions. It says, “Who made you different than anybody else?”, “What do you have that you did not receive?”, and “If you received it, why do you boast as though you did not receive it?” And I think that’s a marvelous verse, a life verse, for every reformed theologian. We have nothing that we did not receive. If you have that attitude, then I think your life and your approach to others is going to be characterized by humility and a graciousness and not by, “I’ve got the truth and you’d better duck or I’ll hit you in the face with my theological pie.” That’s the way it sometimes comes across. There’s no place in the body of Christ for graceless debates about the doctrines of grace. Too often that’s been the case in the past. I think that’s changing. I think that’s changing for the good.