Defending the Gospel Colation and the Revival of Reformation Theology It Embodies

David Fitch continues to criticize the revival of traditional Evangelicalism represented by the Gospel Coalition at his blog. He seems to think that something has happened in history that makes the teachings and practices of the Church outdated and in need of changing. What is this "New Thing" that is so significant that it makes Reformation doctrine and biblical preaching no longer "relevant"? Well, it seems to me to be nothing other than the same old "New Thing" that liberal Protestants have been talking about since the early 19th century.

Fitch claims that we need to eschew a defensive position and embark on a journey into "the unexplored territories of the new cultures of post Christendom." Exactly what territory is left unexplored at this stage in history? Are people really different today? Has technology improved us morally? Fitch claims that what he calls "Christendom" is over, but surely that is old news. He also conflates it with "Modernity" even though Modernity has been a centuries-long assault on Christendom.

Let's go point by point through his criticism of the Reformed revival embodied in the Gospel Coalition. He writes:

"1.) If We Purify Our Doctrine The Rest Will Follow. I have observed an impulse in the TGC that says if we just get our doctrine right (which means a certain version of Reformed orthodoxy), then mission and church renewal in post Christendom will follow. But at least in post Christendom (as it is in the N United States urban areas and Canada) this is not enough. This is not 16th century Europe where the majority Catholic population, under the influence of a corrupt Roman Catholicism, need doctrinal renewal. This is not the 1920′s N. America where the majority protestant mainline Christian population, under the influence of a modernist liberalism, need doctrinal renewal. This is post Christendom territory where there are very few Christians of any kind left who have no doctrine to be renewed."

I would reply that if we don't purify our doctrine nothing else matters. Fitch seems to think that purifiying doctrine is an outreach strategy but it is nothing of the kind. It is a matter of internal church renewal and if the church does not have its doctrine right then even if it grows it does not fulfill its mission. This is why all the calls for "exploring new territory" and being sensitive to the prejudices of the contemporary culture are distractions from the true mission which is to "be faithful" before "going" in mission.

"2.) We Must Return to the Reformation. Is the TGC seeking a return to the Reformation? The Reformation cannot be discounted, but neither can it be returned to. The Reformation was built on the back of Christendom. It gave birth to the Sola’s, especially Sola Scripture and Sola Fide which in their time called people to a renewed purity and personal commitment to the gospel. Today however, those same impulses, aligned with the Enlightenment, have given birth to a modernist individualism, Christian relativism, Cartesian rationalism and experientialism that later became modernity, protestant liberalism and indeed the current manifestations of evangelicalism that the TGC appears to be in critique of. We therefore must go beyond the Reformation, not back to it."

He criticizes TGC for wanting to go back to Calvin, but he himself makes much of his "Neo-Anabaptist" approach. Apparently we can go back to the Reformation, after all.

But I would argue that much of Evangelicalism today, including the neo-Anabaptist sub-group, needs to catch up to the Reformation, not "go beyond it." To view the Reformation as an expression of incipient Modernity is to adopt a controversial liberal Protestant version of the narrative of modern church history. I fear that Fitch is taken in by the self-justifying narrative suggested by liberal Protestantism that covers up its radical departure from the Reformers in order to embrace modernity and accommodate itself to the culture. Calvin, especially, had far more in common with medieval scholastic realism than with the nominalism of the late Middle Ages and the Cartesianism of the modern period out of which modernity grew.

"3.) Woman Cannot Be Pastors. Is TGC seeking to enforce a particular reading of the NT that opposes the role of women in authority within church ministry? I have observed the prominence of a particular view of women in ministry in the TGC. I would characterize this view as a.) based in an inerrancy view of the text, which b.) latches on to texts as if they were isolated units of universal teaching on women, which then c.) leads to a blindness to the NT’s overall elevation of women into ministerial authority in the church. To me, this robs the church of the new politic that was birthed in Jesus Christ. It robs our witness to the reconciled relationship born of Jesus Christ in the post-non-Christendom cultures. I personally have spoken against the egalitarian form of politics I believe has been adopted naively by some evangelical feminists at the expense of both women and Christian marriage. Nonetheless, I believe that the NT calls women into the full participation in the new authority of the Kingdom unleashed in the church (this means I affirm the full ordination of women)."

Here Fitch writes as if his were the majority view in the church, whereas it is a sectarian view of a small and declining portion of the ecumenical church. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches are joined by a large section of the Anglican Communion, the largest Protestant denomination in the US and by a large remnant (in fact, the alive and growing section) of Protestantism in holding to the 2000 year old consensus view that Christ and the NT do not authorize this novelty.

The traditional interpretation of the NT continues to be the majority interpretation and the segments of the church that embraced the ordination of women in the 1970s are declining numerically and spiritually, embracing the sexual revolution including homosexuality, divorce and the family breakdown, and failing to evangelize the world by simply reflecting back to the pagan culture what it already believes. Can a church reject inerrancy and remain counter-cultural? The votes are still being counted but the early returns suggest that the answer may be no.

I suggest that we wait 20 years and see if the Evangelical groups which have recently embraced women's ordination follow the depressing and debilitating trajectory of the liberal denominations that embraced it 20 years earlier. It is too soon to judge how this novelty will work out. (I am particularly interested to see how this plays out in Pentecostalism.)

4.) The New Perspective is Our Enemy. John Piper and Don Carson have energetically sought to dismantle the New Perspective on Paul (most notably here, here and here). I do not agree with everything written by Stendahl, Sanders, Dunn, Wright etc. Nonetheless, I believe it is a mistake to see the New Perspective as the enemy (it’s not even that new any more). I believe there is much to learn from it.

I think the New Perspective is vastly overblown in importance. As historical theology it is highly deficient and has little understanding of the Reformers and tenuous links to Evangelical piety and spirituality. It seems to me to be rather typically modern in its attempt to make Christianity "relevant" by stressing its immanent, social dimensions at the expense of its cosmic, eschatological and personal dimensions. It would be an odd hill to die on.

"5.) The Mega Church Still Makes Sense. Because of the above mentioned Reformed tendencies (exacerbated by American pragmatic evangelicalism) to individualize the gospel, to individualize the reading of Scripture, to individualize salvation, to separate doctrine from “way of life,” the Neo-Reformed do not see the problem of mega church for the future of church engagement with post-Christendom. Mega churches have worked well within Christendom’s modernity."

It is hard to understand why Fitch is so concerned that a revival of Reformed theology would undergird the concept of the mega-church or why the size of churches is such an important non-negotiable. Most mega-churches are seeker-sensitive and would greatly benefit from a dose of solid, Reformed theology, exegetical preaching and counter-cultural ethics. They would no longer be so seeker-sensitive; they would be more God-centered.

Large churches are not the problem; they are a sign of successful mission. Prior to the 20th century they were called cathedrals and they emerge wherever Christianity is successful in evangelizing a large portion of the population. The fact that we live in a largely post-Christian culture is not something to be celebrated but something to be lamented. We should be asking ourselves "Why are we under judgment?" not congratulating ourselves for having become smaller, purer and more righteous.

Of greater concern is the conflating of "Christendom" and "Modernity." Modernity is what triumphed over Medieval Christendom, historically peaking in the Enlightenment. We live in the long sad denouement of Modernity, a culture in decline because cut off from its Christian roots. Fitch seems to have swallowed the progressive myth of history, which is so fundamental to Modernity in always seeing the ideal as out there in the future, something to which we are moving providing we are willing to stop looking back.

Why not admit that we are not progressing, but rather we are regressing (by practically every possible measure) in the West? We live in the culture of death of late modernity and the church is scattered, weak and greatly reduced. In such a situation the rhetoric of "moving forward" is as irrelevant and unhelpful as it was in the days of the 8th century prophets. Much more relevant is looking back to God and God's Word, from which we derive the imperative of repentance and the hope of revival.

If It Looks Like Fundamentalism to You, It Might Be a Sign You've Drifted a Little

David Fitch has a post entitled "Is the New Calvinism a New Fundamentalism?" in which he defines fundamentalism in a quirky manner.

He offers no doctrinal definition and no historical definition. So it is not a matter of defending the fundamentals of the faith - virgin birth, bodily resurrection etc. - and it is detached from the historical context of the defection of the majority of 19th century North American Protestantism from the orthodox Christian faith and the resistance by conservatives like J. G. Machen or J. I. Packer to this trend. Instead, Fitch offers a completely relativistic definition as follows:

a.) Insularity. There’s a mentality of insiders over against those who don’t believe.

b.)Distrust towards culture as a place where God is at work.

c.) An “us against them” mentality. Because of the previous two characteristics, fundamentalists typically reject open dialogue. Engagement with culture takes the shape of winning arguments and confrontation. As the insularity builds, there is less and less wiggle room to associate with other Christians who disagree. As a result, a certain form of arrogance tends to infect fundamentalism.

These are the marks of classic fundamentalism.

Notice that this definition is worded in such a way that it can mean one thing in 1920, something else in 1950 and something radically different in 2010. It all depends on where the culture is at a given moment. Is it the year 250 AD? Then basically the whole Christian Church is fundamentalist. Is it 313 AD? The number of fundamentalists has shrunk to a few monks in the Egyptian desert. What changed? The culture or the Church?

Fitch then deploys this relativistic definition to complain that the New Calvinism is less accommodated to the culture than is his sort-of-but-not-quite emergent church position. I guess the only response I have to this assertion is to say "So what?" Who defined the center as where David Fitch happens to stand on November 12, 2010? If the New Calvinism is more hostile to contemporary Western culture than the Emergent Church is, who really cares? Of course it is. So is the Pope. What is this but a simple case of solemnly proclaiming oneself to be "more culturally relevant than thou?"

The point of employing such a loaded and pejorative term, (which the New Calvinists would not apply to themselves without qualifications and careful definition) is mainly rhetorical rather than substantive. Whoever has the weakest case theologically and biblically is always tempted to dismiss the opposition with labels and this is a sign of weakness.

Of course, there is a place for labels as a kind of shorthand as long as we know what they signify in a given context and as long as people are willing to define them. But in this case, the definition is so vague and relativistic that it turns the label into a nearly meaningless emoticon. It just means something like "out of step with whatever I think are the centrally important trends of our day."

So what it comes down to is that the New Calvinism does not genuflect before the altar of the "Church of What's Happening Now." Again, I ask, so what?

David Fitch on Homosexuality: Continuing the Debate

David Fitch was gracious enough to reply to my post on his series of posts on homosexuality here. What a model of civil and mature theological debate! Thanks David, for the good points you made in that post.

First, David admits that he has a negative view of the approach of Evangelicalism to homsexuality and is concerned about the negative attacks on Evangelicalism by writers such as Mel White, Chris Hedges, Dan Gilgoff, Sam Harris, Randall Balmer, Christopher Hitchens etc. He writes:

"All these book caricature evangelicals and include the charge of duplicitous judgementalism on gay relations as part of the evidence. . . When so many people are saying the same things eventually we have to look at ourselves and ask, why do so many people think we are this way? Even if this is a media conspiracy, you have to at least ask why? I think this judgmentalist characteristic is something inherent in our evangelical approach to theology which for me in some ways is illustrated by Craig himself.

Of course I'm familiar with the charges made in these books; I'm teaching a seminar on the "New Atheism" in the Winter semester. But I'm totally unimpressed with the accusation of "judgmentalism on gay relations" from this crowd. After all, these are the people who ripped George Bush to shreds and who preach the moral superiority of the Left in the most judgmental terms possible with no sense of irony. They are just upset that Evangelicalism does not roll over and bless their self-indulgent, immature, promiscuous lifestyle of which "gay rights" serves as the symbol and highest and holiest expression.

If there is something "inherent in our evangelical approach to theology" that is the root cause of this antipathy from Sixties Radicals toward Evangelicalism, it must be something we share in common with the magisterial teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy. You may have noticed that Pope Benedict XVI has been attacked viciously by the liberal media, liberal Catholics and liberal Protestants for his uncompromising stand for traditional and Biblical sexual morality. So there must be something inherent in his theology that arouses such hatred and bile and I think I know what it is: a refusal to engage in theological revisionism in order to trim the teachings of the Church to the demands of a decadent, post-Christian culture.

My plea to David is to wake up to the fact that nothing he can say or do short of apostasy from the Faith ultimately will be enough to satisfy the critics of the Left. Cultural Marxists are determined to smash the Family as a root source of oppression and compromises are merely retreats so far as they are concerned.

David comments that he was surprised that his Emergent friends provided little push back to his position and that the push back came instead from the conservative direction. I would suggest that the explanation for both phenomena is that Emergent folks and I both read his writings as saying exactly the kinds of things the Emergent folks said just before they accepted the liberal view on homosexuality. They probably figured: "Just give him a bit more time."

Second, I want to challenge the use of the construct "Christendom." David writes:

These statements, to me, are a sign that Craig has become a thoroughly Christendom thinker, a shocking development given his excellent early work on Yoder in his academic career. He assumes that public statements a.) communicate what we believe about sexuality, b.) and somehow witness the gospel. . . . For now, I suggest that the passing of Christendom in many parts of the world demand we take an incarnational position in the world. This is what I have been trying to construct in our relation to sexual issues, sexual brokeness in the world. More than holding a Bible out in front of someone and declaring a few statements and then help that person “white knuckle” it, grit their teeth, and “hold fast,” I suggest sexual redemption comes from a true spiritual and bodily formation."

In these comments, David makes two theological moves I wish to challenge. One is the denial that preaching about sin and calling people to repentance is part of witnessing to the Gospel and the other is the implication that Christendom and "an incarnational position" are antithetical to each other.

With respect to the "Gospel" (i.e. the good news), we must preach both law and Gospel. Now if what David is arguing for is a Reformed correction to Luther, we might be able to agree. By that I mean that for Luther the Gospel is preached by first telling the hearer that he is a sinner and in danger of hellfire, which then prepares the way for the hearing of the good news of forgiveness. Calvin, while not totally denying the Lutheran approach of "Law and Gospel" does stress the order "Gospel and Law" by pointing out that we must hear the Gospel before we even can understand the depths of our sin. This point is stressed as well by Barth. Also, Calvin emphasizes the third use of the law, i.e. for sanctification and not merely for comprehending our sin and need of forgiveness.

Now, if David is following Calvin here, I applaud the move, but the crucial point for me is that Calvin preaches justification by faith just as strongly as Luther and does not deny the first two uses of the law even as he adds an emphasis on the third use. It all comes down to whether David is willing to say that the preaching of the Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior is part of the Gospel in that it is part of the exposition of our sinful and lost condition out of which the Gospel saves us and also insofar as it defines part of the new life in the Spirit that God intends for those he justifies. To say or imply that preaching the sinfulness of sexual sin (of all kinds) is not part of the Gospel seems to me to go beyond the Reformation debates altogether and drift off into modernism. Some clarification here would be helpful.

On the issue of Christendom and the incarnational approach, I want to challenge David with the point made by Oliver O'Donovan that Christendom is the result of the Church on mission in the world between the first and second comings of Christ and make the claim that much of what is so lightly dismissed as "Christendom" by Anabaptist theology is incarnational insofar as it represents the attempt to embody holiness and the Christian life in the concrete, day-to-day institutions, practices, speech and life of actual, historical communities.

One of my problems with the ecclesiology of Stanley Hauerwas is that even after he has practically reduced all of Christian theology to ecclesiology (which is an exaggeration for effect on my part but one with a serious point), his ecclesiology seems remarkably thin and abstract. Where is the Church for him? I don't see it in the culturally-accommodated, modernist, liberal Protestant churches he describes (and defends) in his memoir as the churches he has attended throughout his career. This seems like an odd charge, I know, but it makes sense when you reflect on the strong pull the Roman Catholic Church has exerted on him and the fascination with which he examines the Mennonites. Both of those ecclesiologies are deeply embodied in history and very concrete embodied visions of Christian holiness. Both are also deeply entwined with "Christendom" in differing ways. Roman Catholicism was the Church of Medieval Christendom and, as Yoder points out, the Mennonites have always battled the temptation to become "mini-Christendoms."

When Anabaptist theology leaves the farm and goes to the academy it seems to me to come under the sway of the individualistic, abstract, ahistorical aspects of modernity and ultimately gnosticism. I am questioning the legitimacy of referring to the desire to appear non-judgmental to the pagans as "incarnational" because it seems to me to bow to the rootless cosmopolitanism of modernity rather than accepting the constraints of life in an embodied community. Being incarnational is much more complicated than simply rejecting "Christendom" and embracing a "Neo-Anabaptist Theology, which has to be "Neo-" because it is no longer rooted in an alternative culture.

How Same-sex "Marriage" is Changing Marriage

What does support for homosexual "marriage" mean? Many naive people assume that it simply means that the institution of marriage remains unchanged while people who were previously excluded from it are now included. This is wrong. In fact, the only way homosexual relationships can be considered as "marriage" is if marriage is re-defined drastically.

The re-definition of marriage did not start with the push for homosexual "marriage." It began with the rise of promiscuity, the widespread acceptance of contraception, the advent of no fault divorce and the acceptance of cohabitation as "equal" to marriage. This is just another step (maybe step 5 of 10) in the complete and total destruction of marriage as the basis of society.

Canada's re-definition of marriage in Bill C-38 leaves out permanency as an essential part of the definition of marriage in addition to making marriage into a union of any two persons. Next on the agenda is the weakening of monogamy as the ideal. An article by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman shows that this is well underway:

Forty-seven percent of gay couples in a recently published study said that they had "sex agreements" with their partners, which clarify how often and in what circumstances they are permitted to have sex with others. Only 45% said that their relationships were monogamous, while another 8% disagreed about whether their relationship was "open" or exclusive, according to an ongoing study by the Center for Research on Gender & Sexuality at San Francisco State University.

The Gay Couples Study said that the couples interviewed typically put a positive spin on "open" relationships, with three out of four participants describing non-monogamous agreements as "positive" because it eliminates the need to lie to one's partner.

The authors also claimed that, "we found that couples make sexual agreements because they want to build a strong relationship rather than for HIV protection."

"With straight people, it's called affairs or cheating," according to Colleen Hoff, the lead researcher for the Gay Couples Study, "but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations."

"Agreements about whether or not to allow sex with outside partners covered a wide range of types, including 'traditional' monogamous arrangements as well as those that permitted sex with outside partners," the study's authors write. "For those couples who allowed sex with outside partners, most placed rules or conditions limiting when, where, how often, and with whom outside sex was permitted."

The study's authors note that examining homosexual relationships is important because "previous research shows that gay and bisexual men in relationships engage in substantially higher rates of unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) with their primary partners than do single men with their casual partners."

Anal intercourse and other forms of homosexual behavior are associated with a variety of diseases and syndromes, including high rates of sexually transmitted diseases such AIDS, syphilis, and hepatitis, which homosexuals suffer at rates many times higher than the general population. It is also associated with damaged rectum linings and a variety of anal and intestinal diseases that were once known in the scientific literature as "gay bowel syndrome," until the term was dropped following pressure from homosexual activists.

The New York Times, writing about the study in January, before its release, noted that the study tends to vindicate those who have warned that homosexual "marriage" will lead to a redefinition of the institution itself, destroying its traditional meaning.

Noting that "gay nuptials are portrayed by opponents as an effort to rewrite the traditional rules of matrimony," the Times added that "quietly, outside of the news media and courtroom spotlight, many gay couples are doing just that," citing the Gay Couples Study. The Times also noted that the homosexuals they tried to interview were worried about what would happen to the gay "marriage" movement if the truth were known about homosexual behavior.

For once, the New York Times (even the New York Times!) gets it right. Read the rest here.

David Fitch thinks the Church should adopt a stance of "welcoming and mutually transforming" toward homosexuals and refrain from saying that homosexual behavior is wrong. He is basically adopting the position adopted by the Anglican Church of Canada in the 70s, which is a step toward embracing the heretical position the ACC takes today. The constant calls for "dialogue" and "listening" are really meant to facilitate desensitization toward sin and soften up the Church for the radical step of calling good what Scripture calls evil.

A reader asked me what I thought of Fitch's position. I have read four or five of his posts and I think the whole trend of his thought is just a replay of the thought process through which liberal Protestantism moved to get to the culturally accommodated position it is in today.

Of course condemning what "everybody" says is good is unpopular, but Jesus did not say that discipleship was supposed to be easy.