John 'Rabbi' Duncan (1796-1870)
Professor of Hebrew, Free Church College, Edinburgh
''I think I'm a high Calvinist. I have no objections to the height of the Calvinists; but I have objections to the miserable narrowness of some, their miserable narrowness"
John Piper has some responsibility for in his Gaffin lecture he gives 13 points regarding something called ‘New Calvinism’ or ‘the new Calvinism’ some of which it is said to share with Old Calvinism and all of which he offers as ‘features’ and not as defining properties. That’s not a lot of help. The language-game of denominational religion. It ought to remind us of the words of Bishop Berkeley, ‘They first raise a dust, and then complain they cannot see’. Though in this case ‘and then assert they can see’. (Not so much 'Tulip' as 'Chrysanthemum'.) But there are more varieties still: 'Rabbi' Duncan reminds us of 'high' Calvinism, and by implication of a 'low' variety. And William G. T. Shedd refers to Calvinism 'pure' and 'mixed'. Oh, and hyper-Calvinism. Old, new, high, low, pure, mixed and hyper. And more, no doubt.
Here are three obvious points about Calvinism on the other side of this particular
spectrum of Piper and others; there are those who assert ‘No Westminster Confession, no Calvinism’.
Then
something about ‘accountability’.
Finally, about Baptist Calvinists. These points put this whole business in perspective, I hope.
The Westminster Confession of
Faith
Most adherents to
the Confession of faith in fact adhere ex animo to a sanitized version, cleansed of references to Presbyterianism as the
state religion. This is no small change. No more the Crown Rights of the
Redeemer. Ever since the Solemn League and Covenant was rejected in England,
this has been the de facto position here,
different in the US in the eighteenth century, awaiting the passing into law of
the Constitution and its various amendments, one of which concerned the separation of church and
state.
The Westminster
Confession says inter alia regarding the civil magistrate –
….they
whom, upon pretence of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the
lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the
ordinance of God. And for their publishing of such opinions, or maintaining of
such practices, as are contrary to the light of nature, or to the known
principles of Christianity, whether concerning the faith, worship, or
conversation; or to the power of godliness; or such erroneous opinions or
practices, as either in their own nature, or in the manner of publishing or
maintain them, are destructive the external peace and order which Christ has established
in the church; they may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against by
the censures of the church, and by the power of the civil magistrate.
(XX.IV)
This went off stage de facto in England in the seventeenth century, when Puritanism failed as a political project, and it failed in America some time later de jure .
The move from
intolerance to what was by today’s standards limited tolerance is not a change
that was prompted by theological reasoning or doctrinal revision, but it was
wholly political, due at least in England to the presence in society of
dissenting groups whose vigour and Christian orthodoxy and place in society could not be gainsaid. They were hear to stay.
Such a
politically-inspired change had important consequences for Christology. No more
are kings regarded as the foster fathers of the church, or queens their nursing
mothers. (Isa. 49 22f.) Or rather, such passages have been 'revisited'. No more is it thought that Christ has established
‘external peace and order….in the church’. No more is state support for the
Reformed religion, nor state persecution of others on behalf of Reformed
congregations, regarded as support for the one true religion that the state had an
exclusive obligation to protect. No more are these things the norm for Confession-believing Presbyterians. Freedom of conscience. Pluralism. Toleration-Calvinism.
These
comments are not meant to apply to
Covenanter congregations of today. Maybe they are still praying for the
fulfilment of Isaiah 49 stricto sensu for their own, and for others. But they do apply,
obviously, to others who claim their pedigree by their adherence to letter of
the Confession. That's self-confessedly 'paleo-Calvinism' as one Covenanter said to me. And so the question is, is the dominant form, adherence to the purged Confession of
Faith, let us call such a position ‘tolerant confessionalism’, a
significant change in ‘Calvinism’, the Calvinism of Calvin and of the authors
of the Solemn League and Covenant? It could hardly be said not to be.
These changes,
both in doctrine and in practice, were not small. They obviously affected the
whole ethos of Reformed religion. How
much of a deviation from the original outlook was it? Does the abandonment of
the early view of establishment compare in seriousness, centrality and the like
compared with, say, the abandonment of exclusive psalm-singing, or of the
Presbyterian ecclesiology of the early Reformed churches by Congregationalists
and Baptists? Since the body of Presbyterians is not governed by a magisterium, who is to say what the
answer is? How reads your Calvinometer? Nowadays there cannot be an ‘Old Calvinism’ but only an ‘Older', not a ‘New’ but a ‘Newer’. No one possesses the copyright of the noun.
‘Accountability’
In running our
slide-rule over Calvinism, whether New or Old, the guiding benefit is said
to be that of accountability. The New Calvinism is the place where
‘celebrities’ are to be found, accountable to no-one but to their own egos, a
minus; the Old is where congregations, and especially the teaching and ruling of
the godly eldership, are held accountable, a plus. My own brushes with
presbyterian discipline over the years, light brushes it has to be said, have
not been very positive. The procedures have been long-winded and personally
hurtful and intrusive. Months may pass, while meetings are called, and the
rapidly accumulating written evidence is digested and diaries are rearranged,
and appeals are made. In
that time the individuals who are charged are hardly able to retain, socially, the common-law presumption
that they are innocent until otherwise shown. But then if for such reasons presbyterian order is not your cup of tea there are Calvinist congregations of all shapes and sizes to pick from. I know this argument is 'anecdotal', but it reminds us that no church is perfect, and claiming to have discerned the biblical pattern of church government is hazardous.
Baptist Calvinists
Finally, let us
turn to others who have deviated even further from paleo-Calvinism, the Baptist
Calvinists, sometimes called ‘particular Baptists’ or these days ‘Reformed
Baptists’. Take, for example, the considerable figure of John Gill. What are we
to think of Gill and those who thought and think like him?
At the level of
scholarly research and reflection upon matters to do with Reformed Orthodoxy,
there is none greater than Richard Muller.
In his monumental work
Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics Muller finds a place not only for
Congregationalists or Independents such as Thomas Goodwin and John Owen, but
for John Gill as well. Gill lived in a
period of the ‘de-confessionalisation’ of Reformed Orthodoxy, and when there
was less confidence in the philosophical tools and underpinnings of theology than earlier stages of RO. (Muller discusses the relation of Gill to RO at greater
length in ‘John Gill and the Reformed Tradition: A Study in the Reception of
Protestant Orthodoxy in the Eighteenth Century’ in Life and Thought of John Gill (1697-1771): A Tercentennial Appreciation
ed. Michael A.G. Haykin, (Leiden: E. J. Brill), 51-68.) Besides, Muller’s work has
always shown appreciation for the theological variations within RO. For the
latest examples of this, see Calvin and
the Reformed Tradition (Baker, 2012).
So, if where the
‘Reformed tradition’ ends is something of an elastic-sided judgment in the
eyes of the premier scholar of the field, the same surely applies to the denotation of the floppier term 'Calvinism'. If you hold the form of doctrine of the Westminster Confession, are an Independently-minded chap, and are not averse to being in the company of dippers, (whatever other bells and whistles you may be adorned with), there's nothing as far as I can see that prevents you calling yourself a Calvinist, and being one.
