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Volume 39 Number 4 Article 2

June 2011

Our Multiple Calvinisms: Historical Trajectories, Contemporary Predicaments, and Contestable

Keith C. Sewell Dordt

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Recommended Citation Sewell, Keith C. (2011) "Our Multiple Calvinisms: Historical Trajectories, Contemporary Predicaments, and Contestable Futures," Pro Rege: Vol. 39: No. 4, 7 - 14. Available at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege/vol39/iss4/2

This Feature Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at Digital Collections @ Dordt. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pro Rege by an authorized administrator of Digital Collections @ Dordt. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Editor’s Note: Dr. Keith C. Sewell presented this paper at the for the 21st Century Conference at Dordt College, April 2010.

Our Multiple Calvinisms: Historical Trajectories, Contemporary Predicaments, and Contestable Futures

(1837-1920) and his followers. My orientation is towards the latter. In certain respects, this discussion may be seen as the prelude to a historiography of Calvinism that could be called reformational rather than hagiographical or nar- rowly theological in its . At the same time this paper also draws upon my current work on the roots, character, and development of .

Introduction All discussions of “Calvinism”—including “the ” and/or “neo-Calvinism”— are prone to flounder because of the semantic range and multiple connotations of the term itself. A resolution of the resulting ambiguities can be by Keith C. Sewell achieved by historical analysis. Recent develop- ments underline the desirability of such a resolu- tion, for now there is a “new Calvinism” emerging within the many-sided phenomenon that is North- n this slightly amplified and edited version of the pa- American evangelicalism. The names of John I st per that I delivered at the Calvinism for the 21 Century Piper of Bethlehem Baptist , Minneapolis, Conference at Dordt College in April 2010, I focus on and of , , the continuities and discontinuities between the Reformed Washington, are prominent in this context. To these Christianity that emerged in the sixteenth century and was may be added Charles J. Mahaney of “Sovereign readily associated with the life and work of Grace Ministries” and John Fullerton MacArthur, (1509-1564), and the kind of “neo-Calvinist” or “refor- Jr., of Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, mational” Christianity represented by Kuyper California. This latter trend—somewhat distin- guishable from the positions exemplified by earlier Keith C. Sewell is Professor of History at Dordt College. and other North-American “Reformed” evangeli-

Pro Rege—June 2011 7 cals, such as R. C. Sproul of “Ligonier Ministries,” Calvinism” and the successors to Dooyeweerd and R. of Southern Baptist Theological Vollenhoven, relate to one another—if at all—and Seminary and the Southern Baptist Convention, to formulate a historical explanation for the mul- and the late James Kennedy (1930-2007)—is less tiple Calvinisms currently on offer. Yet, there is emphatically separatist in outlook, more inclined more. We must also reckon with that other term— to be ecumenically open, and capable of exhibiting “Reformed.” Often “Calvinistic” and “Reformed” more nuanced cultural and civic sensibilities. are used as if synonymous and, therefore, inter- Simultaneously, active in North America changeable—with preference sometimes given to at least since the major Dutch migration to “Reformed” in order to emphasize that there is Canada in the post-war era are those who were more to all of this than Calvin and his teaching.2 influenced by the gereformeerde movement, repre- Clarity begins to emerge after we jettison the sented by figures such as and notion that the sixteenth century witnessed a single (1854-1921), exemplified by the generic “protestant .” Premature gen- founding of the Free University at eralization is the enemy of historical understand- in 1880 and philosophically sharpened by Dirk ing, and it is only after we have confronted the Hendrik Theodoor Vollenhoven (1892-1978) and sheer diversity and complexity of this development Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). The latter that we can safely offer carefully nuanced gener- are frequently characterized as “neo-Calvinists.” alizations. As I have argued elsewhere, the prot- Notwithstanding trials and tribulations—some estant were, from the outset, divided self-inflicted—this movement has exerted a degree by four distinctive views of how the Scriptures were of influence through the Institute for Christian authoritative for the church and in life generally. Studies, Toronto; an array of ; and fig- After recognizing that no standpoint is ever ures such as H. Evan Runner (1916-2002), Calvin followed with complete consistency, these four Seerveld, Roy Clouser, and James Skillen. views may be characterized as follows: Moreover, the twentieth century also 1. the corrective, as adopted by the Evangelische witnessed a wonderful blossoming of historical re- (Lutherans), emanating from search into the life, teaching, and impact of John and also in the Church of under Calvin himself. (1886-1968), and the Edward VI and from onwards; manner of his early twentieth-century repudiation 2. the regulative, as annunciated by Huldrych of theological liberalism, certainly imparted con- Zwingli (1484-1531) and later Heinrich siderable initial impetus to this development. He Bullinger (1504-1575) in , exem- helped put Calvin back on the research agenda. plified by (1514-1572) and From the 1930s onwards, great engines of research (1545-1622) in , have been deployed in what William Bouwsma and exemplified by the “,” who once called the “quest for the historical Calvin”— sought the further reformation of the as the profusion of 500th anniversary conferences English Church; in 2009 amply demonstrated.1 However Calvin is 3. the exemplary, as espoused by the understood and defined, the study of Calvin is no Anabaptists in various parts of German- longer in any sense the monopoly of Calvinists of speaking and beyond, with their any or every stripe. desire to achieve authenticity by recover- ing and living according to (whatever their I view was of) the true pat- My present concern, however, is not so tern; much the study of Calvin himself—although he 4. the directional as exemplified by John Calvin is unquestionably part of the story—as it is the and his circle in . history of “Calvinism” in its diversity. More spe- For the purposes of our present discussion, we cifically, I would like to explore how these mul- may dispose of the first and third promptly. The tiple Calvinisms, including those of the “new Evangelische of the German Länder and ,

8 Pro Rege—June 2011 as well as the English Church, followed the cor- the “regulative principle”: only that which is ex- rective way of Wittenberg: that which was not ex- pressly commanded in Scripture or legitimized pressly forbidden in scripture (, ceremo- by clear scriptural example is lawful in the life of nies) might be retained. Those things supposedly the church and the Christian lives of its members. indifferent (adiaphora) were retained, subject to the Where Puritanism is honored, there the regulative lesser checks of “reason” and received tradition. principle is likely to be appreciated, if not always In sharp contrast, the Anabaptists sought to re- followed consistently. constitute Christianity de-novo, repudiating paedo- At first sight, the reformers of Zürich seemed because nowhere did the New Testament to be at one with the a-historical of say, “thou shalt baptize babies.” Often persecuted, the Anabaptists—it certainly looked that way from the standpoint of Wittenberg. However, the Zürich re-baptizers were soon disappointed with Zwingli As I have argued and his municipally-backed “magisterial reforma- tion,” even as their critique helped drive the Zürich elsewhere, the themselves to their covenantal view of reformations were, from biblical teaching, not least in respect of the ordi- nance of baptism. In short, Zürich’s “regulative” the outset, divided by standpoint was the touchstone of its “Reformed” distinctiveness. Its view of baptism distinguished four distinctive views of it sharply from the Anabaptists; its view of the how the Scriptures were separated it sharply from the view of Luther and his followers. The “regulative” ap- authoritative for the church proach to church polity and public pro- and in life generally. duced that unaffected simplicity that many of us cherish half a millennium later. So where do we place John Calvin (1509- sometimes subject to millennial-apocalyptic de- 1564) and the circle around him—people such lusions, they sought to live straight out of their as Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) and Pierre Viret reading of the New Testament, as if they could (1511-1571)? They certainly shared much with the counter-historically excise the intervening centu- Reformed of Zürich. Yet their stance on how the ries. Sometimes deeply pious, they shunned public is authoritative was not the same as that of office as inevitably entailing complicity with “the the German speakers. I suggest that theirs was a di- world.” rectional approach, based more on a distillation and Of course, none of this precludes cross-bor- application of scriptural principle in a new situation, rowings and other influences. For example, the not on a rigid codification of assorted biblical texts took a basically corrective view unchangingly applicable for all time—that kind of of church polity but did not adopt Luther’s view of development was to come later. Committed to dis- the Eucharist (). On that point it cerning scriptural principle, Calvin was not bound was much more influenced by Zürich. a-historically to the ipsissima verba of Scripture. This commitment to principle over words is evident in II his approach to the question of charging For this present discussion, the regulative and and , where he calmly added the directional are the most important. Here we “doctor of the church” to the range of office bear- start to address the historical roots of our cur- ers. rent “Calvinistic and Reformed” ambiguities. The Geneva and Zürich had much in common Zürich reformation of Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) but differed markedly on the authority of the civil and (1504-1575) was conspicu- magistrate in relation to the inner life of the insti- ous for its adherence to what became known as tutional church. Directional-reformed Geneva upheld

Pro Rege—June 2011 9 the principle of the church’s distinctive integrity death, Beza’s style of dogmatics—schematically under through ecclesiastical assem- represented by the “Golden Chaine” of theological blies. The civil power—the “godly magistrate”— reasoning, popularized by William Perkins (1558- ought to support the church but not to usurp 1602)—eventually ruled the roost also in Geneva. that authority intrinsic to the institutional church The earlier directional way suffered eclipse, if not and its assemblies. By contrast, Regulative-reformed obliteration. Such was oriented to- Zürich—looking to rulers at their wards, and sought strength and comfort in, a fixed best—accepted the “godly magistrate” as authori- doctrinal system. It thought in terms of unchang- tative, also in and over ecclesiastical affairs. The ing “eternal truths” and came to equate these with 1568 controversy between George Withers and its logically founded “systematic ,” not in served to highlight least as epitomized in the later sixteenth- and sev- this discontinuity. In this confrontation, Withers enteenth-century Reformed confessions. was supported by (1519-1605) of The resulting static of inter- Geneva, and Erastus was supported by Rudolph linked and mutually re-enforcing propositions Gwalther (1519-1586) of Zürich. shared with a negative view of historical change.5 Here we find the roots of the approach III presupposed in the expression favored by many Similarly, the 1554-1555 Knox-Cox “troubles at Presbyterians in North America when they assert ” reflected a confrontation between thecor - that the of be affirmed as “con- rective and regulative views of worship, as did the 1550 taining the system of taught in the holy confrontation in England between Scriptures.”6 Such expressions presume that there (1500-1555) and (1495-1555) over vest- is a single static theological systematic somehow ments. Both men perished in the Marian persecu- embedded in (or perhaps hidden behind) the bib- tions. Early never achieved a single lical texts that only an elite cognoscenti of logically view of how Scripture was authoritative in relation trained theological specialists are able to elicit for to doctrine, worship, and life generally. Neither the rest of us. was there complete unanimity between Zürich and These tendencies were becoming well en- Geneva on the Eucharist; their lack of unanimity trenched by the early seventeenth century, and pro- makes their accord on the question (the Consensus vide part of the background to the famed “ Tigurinus of 1549) all the more commendable. of Dort” (1618-1619), the Canons of which have al- At least by the , Reformed thinking can ways been open to the criticism that their logical be seen to be developing more rigorously in the di- symmetry and deductive rigor exceed what a plain rection of a scholasticism that was always present, and unforced reading of Scripture would support. at least latently. Here lay new sources of division. And, it will be remembered, it was not long before, Scottish and English Puritanism perhaps inevitably, (1596-1664) ar- favored the alternative to Aristotle offered by rived upon the scene to challenge the “Canons of the Huguenot Peter Ramus (1515-1572). By con- Dort” in the name of John Calvin himself. trast, post-Calvin Geneva under the leadership of In short, Calvin was but one voice—cer- Theodore Beza resolved to stick with Aristotle.3 tainly the most significant one—among all those The later and fuller development of “reformed enjoying the appellation “Reformed.” Calvin and scholasticism” was to go hand in glove with the his circle were all “Reformed”—but not all of the emergence of a rigorous “reformed - Reformed might be termed “Calvinistic” if that ization”—and it should not escape our attention term is used with any degree of precision. What that the Reformed confessions, now considered we might term the “non-Calvinist Reformed” definitive, almost entirely post-date the first and were much less oriented towards what we have second generation of Reformers.4 termed the “directional” view of biblical author- The need to respond to the ity—which already in the era of Beza and Perkins (1545-1563) clearly played a role here. After Calvin’s was fading from view, also in Geneva. The rise of

10 Pro Rege—June 2011 scholasticism and confessionalization were domi- but in his case it came with a definite disparage- nant factors in this process. In other words, what ment of intellectual inquiry and understanding was once distinctive about the Calvin-led reforma- (Kopfwissenschaft). This disparagement arose from tion in Geneva, especially its directional orienta- an understandable yet simplistic reaction against tion, became lost as Calvin’s work and reputation an earlier theological-rational system-building. were absorbed and subsumed under the more ge- Here we may discern the roots of the anti-intel- neric heading “Reformed,” while simultaneously lectualism (and resulting “intellectual deficit”) so Reformed theology became increasingly scholastic. characteristic of much Anglophone evangelical- In all of this, we need to remember that terms ism—not least in its later, more pronounced, fun- such as “Calvinist” and “Calvinism” seem to have damentalist expressions. Zinzendorf profoundly been first used by theEvangelische , around the influenced (1714-1770), John (by the time the directional outlook was being lost Wesley (1703-1791), and (1707- sight of), in the context of the post-Luther debates 1788). The resultant movement, from the 1740s within and centering on the so-called onwards, was widely variegated. In “crypto-Calvinism” (Der Kryptocalvinismus) among it was represented by (1703-1764) the followers of Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560). and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). It ran through Of such a use of his name, we may confidently as- and across existing post-1688 denominational and sert, Calvin would not have approved. confessional boundaries.

IV Late Reformed and Lutheran arose in Late Reformed and response to scholastic-style formalism in doctrine Lutheran pietism arose in and worship that came with scholasticism and con- fessionalization. Especially amongst the Reformed, response to scholastic-­style questions of how the “divine decree” related to personal of drove many in a formalism in doctrine deeply introspective direction. It still does because and worship that came a secret decree can seem to be inserted between Christ and the believer. Such was the situation at with scholasticism and least by the end of the seventeenth century. confessionalization. This brings us to the emergence of evangelical- ism in the Anglophone world. The critical factor in the transition from late pietism to early evangelicalism David Bebbington has captured well the “quad- was the work of Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf rilateral of priorities” that characterize evangelical- (1700-1760) and the renewed (post 1727) Church ism: “conversionism, the that lives need to of the Moravian Brethren (Unitas Fratrum). The fer- be changed; activism, the expression of the gos- vent impulse of the Moravians, when pel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the injected into late Puritan pietism—exemplified by Bible; and what may be called crucicentrism, a figures such as (1628-1688)—pro- stress on the of Christ on the cross.”7 duced the intense activism characteristic of evan- This valuable formula covers the other- gelicalism ever since. wise baffling diversity that historic and contem- Certainly, eighteenth-century European Pro- porary evangelicalism otherwise exhibits: paedo- testantism was in sore need of being awakened Baptist/Baptist; established/; post/pre/ from its formalistic slumbers. Yet from the outset a-millennial; dispensational/non-dispensational; there were serious problems. Among them was main-line participant/separatist. Of course, one of Zinzendorf’s manner of repeatedly asserting the the earliest divisions was soteriological: Whitefield primacy of “heart” (Herz) over “head” (Kopf ). Of stood for “free ,” while the Wesleyans en- course, there is a deeply spiritual way of saying this, dorsed and feared “.”

Pro Rege—June 2011 11 The ensuing controversy—spanning the 1740s the counter- in opposition to the to —acquired the title of “the Calvinistic Remonstrant followers of Arminius. Their confes- Controversy.” sional stance tends to be that of the “Westminster Here we encounter the source of the Anglophone Standards,” or the “.” In oth- conception of “Calvinism” as expressed in terms er words, when this distinct minority of evangeli- of the famed “Five Points of Calvinism”—derived cals call themselves “Calvinists,” they are usually from the . The “TULIP” acro- making a soteriological point (with some evange- nym, let it be noted, works in English—but not in listic-style consequences) within the parameters of Dutch! This nomenclature has been profoundly Bebbington’s conversionism/activism/Biblicism/ misleading. It would make more historical sense crucicentrism” “quadrilateral of priorities.” to speak of five counter-reformed points of the Remonstrants, but many decades of usage have V saddled us with this acronym. Moreover, it leaves By contrast, events in the took a English-speakers with the impression that the only different turn. There, the aristocratic Guillaume outstanding feature of Calvin’s thought were five Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876) was initially specific and controversial topics. Few men in his- influenced by the pietism of the Réveil. The turn- tory have had their actual teaching and intentions ing point came in the 1860s when Groen van so seriously misrepresented. Prinsterer, in conjunction with Abraham Kuyper, In the , the dominant orienta- transcended the boundaries of their initial con- tion of evangelicalism in the nineteenth century servatism and, once again taking up a directional was individualistic and Wesleyan. Those who saw orientation, devised a program that contemplated themselves in the lineage of Jonathan Edwards new ventures and structures in a setting already (1703-1758) wrestled with the implications of “new profoundly re-shaped as a result of the French measures” in , measures that inclined Revolution. Arguably the most important ini- in the direction of an outlook that was at least tiative was the founding of the Free University, semi-Pelagian. And so it was that “new Amsterdam (1880). school” Presbyterians found themselves in tension This institution provided the context for the with their more conservative “old school” confes- next-generation work of Vollenhoven and Herman sionalist co-religionists. Dooyeweerd, appreciation of which continues to By the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen- ripen across the globe. They pursued with philo- turies, core evangelicalism—its intellectual defi- sophical precision what Kuyper had outlined only cit all too often on display—was reacting to new programmatically. They opposed in principle any thinking in the and with attempts to align Christian doctrine with non- a well capable of crossing the line biblical starting-points. They rejected scholasti- into obscurantism. When such evangelicals ven- cism and questioned prevalent notions of theol- ture into the political arena, they are prone to be ogy. They called for a biblically-directed reformation at once individualistic, moralistic, and coercive in- of philosophy and the encyclopedia of the special stead of advocating public justice for all citizens— sciences. They called for integral and coherent in the U. S., their fundamentalist approach to the thinking while exposing the hubris of closed intel- biblical texts coheres well with their ahistorical, lectual systems. Their approach was reformational strict constructionist approach to Constitutional (Reformatorisch). Perhaps the greatest work was interpretation. done in the 1920s and ’30s; and it is no coincidence It should be emphasized that within this evan- that at this time, the “history of the ” (ver- gelicalism there has always been a “Calvinistic” bondsgeschiedenis) school of biblical exposition arose subset; “Calvinistic” here, however, is something in the Netherlands, with its non-static directional of a misnomer. What such evangelical “Calvinists” “grand narrative” theme of “creation, fall and re- are affirming is that they identify with the five demption in the communion of the .” (or at least four of the five) “points” asserted by Here we encounter a decisive contrast.

12 Pro Rege—June 2011 Bebbington’s methodologically valuable “quad- VI rilateral” of priorities (conversionism/activism/ So, what sort of futures might we contemplate Biblicism/crucicentrism), which applies to evangel- for (evangelical) “new Calvinism” and (reforma- icals generally (including “Reformed” or so-called tional) “neo-Calvinism”? Much contemporary “Calvinist” evangelicals), omits any substantive Christianity, not least evangelicalism, exhibits reference to the order of creation, any recognition symptoms of stress and volatility. The “Calvinist” of the religious “before the face of ” character evangelicals (including “Jonathan Edwards is My of human , and the importance of integral Homeboy” T-shirt wearers) may prove to be yet an- Christian thinking. To the extent that these pri- other of those passing vogues to which Anglophone orities are present in Calvin’s writings, the refor- evangelicalism is prone. Of evangelicalism gener- mational alternative of Kuyper, Vollenhoven and ally, it may be expected that, for as long as it re- Dooyeweerd may rightly call itself “neo-Calvinist.” mains tethered to the prioritization represented by Bebbington’s “quadrilateral,” it will be unable to ex- ceed its inherent limitations and attain to the more By the late nineteenth and full-orbed and integral understanding of Christian discipleship that the reformational orientation of- early twentieth centuries, fers. core evangelicalism—its Concurrently, reformational “neo-Calvinism” may nevertheless become yet more fruitful, es- intellectual deficit all pecially if it can find ways of not being tied to Reformed denominationalism. Certainly, we are too often on display— well past the point where the legacies of Kuyper was reacting to new and his philosophical heirs are discussed only within a restricted circle. The work of writers such thinking in the sciences as Jonathan Chaplin, Roy Clouser, John Witte, and biblical studies with and Lambert Zuidervaart are now published by respected university presses. This is important: im- a fundamentalism well pediments notwithstanding, this movement is now transcending the restrictions of its initial circum- capable of crossing the line stances in the Anglophone world; as a result, an into obscurantism. increasing range of interlocutors may be anticipat- ed, among them various strands of contemporary evangelicalism. Kuyper often described his approach as So is there any common ground between “Calvinistic” (Calvinistisch), and he had sound rea- evangelical “new Calvinism” and a reformational sons for doing so, for as much as he delighted “neo-Calvinism? My answer is that currently they in the “old writers” (oude schrijvers), he had nev- are on different trajectories—but a common no- ertheless recovered something of the genuinely tion of dependence may provide a basis for construc- Calvinistic directional approach to , tive conversation. Shorn of the scholasticism, the which was to be more fully exemplified by the later Canons of Dort (1619) were saying that our deliv- “history of ” writers, with their strong erance depends entirely on the grace of God, and emphasis on the biblical grand narrative.8 With what reformational thinking insists on is that all considerable , this line may be called things—creation, culture—depend on and cohere “neo-Calvinist.” By contrast, the “new Calvinism” in Jesus Christ. that has more recently emerged in North America It is also true that we who term ourselves refor- represents a further variation within the already mational need to listen very carefully to others, even highly variegated spectrum of evangelical options. as we have much that is deeply biblical to offer, es- pecially to those who, while continuing to affirm

Pro Rege—June 2011 13 their Christian discipleship, are ready to reconsider People and Confession: The in Brandenburg their version of evangelicalism. Undeterred by (Philadelphia PA: University of Press, prevalent confusions, and while denominational- 1994) and especially the papers in Lutherans and Calvinists in the Age of Confessionalism (Farnham, England: Ashgate ism continues to decline, let us always be ready to Publishing, 1999). evade barriers and share insight with everyone, as 5. Cf. Aristotle, The Poetics, at 1451b. we continue to look in the direction of the coming of the kingdom. 6. Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition: A Reexamination of Colonial Presbyterianism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949), 301. Endnotes 7. David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain 1. William Bouwsma, “The Quest for the Historical (: Unwin, Hyman, 1989), 3, cf. 5-17. Oliver Calvin,” in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 77 (1986): 47-57. Barclay has added his own gloss to Bebbington’s 2. This paper is therefore not immediately concerned formulation in order to facilitate a distinction between with the different schools of contemporary Calvin his preferred “classical evangelicalism” on one side, interpretation, although the latter do reflect in some and “liberal evangelicals,” and possibly “charismatic measure the distinctions that I will draw. Cf. Heiko evangelicals” on the other. , Evangelicalism A. Oberman, “Calvin’s Critique of Calvinism,” in The in Britain, 1935-1995: A personal sketch (London: Inter- Dawn of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T and T. Clark, Varsity Press, 1997), 10-14, cf. 100, 116-117, and 137- 1986), 259-268. 141. 3. Correspondance de Théodore de Bèze (Geneva: Librairie 8. See, especially, Simon Gerrit de Graaf (1889-1955), Droz, ongoing), ed. by Hippolyte Aubert, et al., Volume Promise and Deliverance, four volumes (St. Catherines, XI, (1983), 295. Ontario: Paideia Press, 1977-81). For the context, see Sidney Greidanus, : Problems and Principles 4. In the Anglophone world, recognition of the in Preaching Historical Texts (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1970). importance of “confessionalization” owes much to the work of Bodo Nischan (1939-2001). See his ,

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