I grew up in a Christian home under the godly discipline of two loving parents. I would classify our beliefs as generically evangelical, not leaning too much either way toward Arminiasm or Calvinism. God was over all, but the specifics of election and predestination didn’t mean too much to me. Over the past year and a half, though, my faith has been radically transformed as I have read about and studied Reformed theology. Whether it’s reading books or listening to messages by Anyabwile, Dever, Driscoll, or Piper, or, most importantly, reading the Bible and examining it deeply, I have come to see God’s entire role in my salvation, in my regeneration, justification, and sanctification. It has opened up my eyes to evangelism, seeing my role as simply sharing God with others and trusting the Holy Spirit to work on them, not having the actual responsibility to getting someone to “say the sinner’s prayer.” It is in the midst of this growth that I have read with great interest some of the recent dust-ups over Calvinism / Reformed theology.

Scot McKnight is a New Testament scholar at North Park University, the author of the recent book The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, part of the leadership team of The Origins Project, and a leading Emergent thinker. He has recently written and spoken about the “NeoReformed”, his term for many active in the current Reformed resurgence. Here is his blurb from N.T. Wright’s Justification God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision

“Tom Wright has out-Reformed America’s newest religious zealots–the neo-Reformed–by taking them back to Scripture and to its meaning in its historical context. Wright reveals that the neo-Reformed are more committed to tradition than to the sacred text. This irony is palpable on every page of this judicious, hard-hitting, respectful study.”

He also recently posted two articles on his blog Jesus Creed. In Who are the NeoReformed? he wrote

The NeoReformed, for a variety of reasons, some of them good, don’t recognize that evangelicalism as a village green. Instead, they want to build a gate at the gate-less village green and require Reformed confessions and credentials to enter onto the village green. Put differently, they think the only legitimate and the only faithful evangelicals are Reformed. Really Reformed. In other words, they are “confessing” evangelicals. The only true evangelical is a Reformed evangelical. They are more than happy to call into question the legitimacy and fidelity of any evangelical who doesn’t believe in classic Reformed doctrines, like double predestination.

and in his followup Who are the NeoReformed? 2 he wrote

If I had to sum it up I’d put it this way: the NeoReformed are those who are obsessed with God’s holiness and grace and have not learned that grace makes people gracious. These folks are America’s newest religious zealots and they are wounding, perhaps for a generation or two, evangelicalism.

Both of these articles caused quite a stir among many of the Reformed blogs that I read. In the first article, I particularly disagreed with McKnight’s assigning to classic Reformed theology the “doctrine” of double predestination, that God actively chooses some for salvation and actively chooses others for eternal judgment. I can find no biblical warrant for such an idea. In fact, we are all due eternal judgement due to our active and willful disobedience and rejection of God and it is only through His life-giving mercy that some are saved. R.C. Sproul writes of it this way

The decree and fulfillment of election provide mercy for the elect while the efficacy of reprobation provides justice for the reprobate. God shows mercy sovereignly and unconditionally to some, and gives justice to those passed over in election. That is to say, God grants the mercy of election to some and justice to others. No one is the victim of injustice. To fail to receive mercy is not to be treated unjustly. God is under no obligation to grant mercy to all — in fact He is under no obligation to grant mercy to any. He says, “I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy” (Rom. 9). The divine prerogative to grant mercy voluntarily cannot be faulted. If God is required by some cosmic law apart from Himself to be merciful to all men, then we would have to conclude that justice demands mercy. If that is so, then mercy is no longer voluntary, but required. If mercy is required, it is no longer mercy, but justice. What God does not do is sin by visiting injustice upon the reprobate. 

Some people think that McKnight was referring to people like John Piper and John MacArthur in both the book blurb and in the “NeoReformed” group, but he never offered clarification. That seems both a cop-out and a classic straw-man argument, building up an imaginary opponent only to strike him down quickly and thoroughly.

In the second article, McKnight refers to the NeoReformed caring more about God’s grace than His command to be gracious to others. I also find little evidence in my reading and listening, especially since McKnight offers no specific names. “Gracious” here also seems to imply the idea of “tolerance”, where everyone’s ideas, beliefs, and doctrine are okay since they are their own and who are we to judge? One of the things that I have greatly appreciated about many of the Reformed believers that I read and listen to is their absolute devotion to Christ and examining all things in light of God’s revelation through the Scripture. One of my concerns with the Emergent movement is their willingness to stray from what I see as clear Biblical teaching on issues like homosexuality and gender roles in favor of a trajectory hermaneutic, looking at where the Bible seems to be going, not where it actually is and was. McKnight writes about gender roles in The Blue Parakeet, arguing for the full inclusion of women in all church offices, even though I see clear evidence in the Bible to the contrary (1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:6 ). If “graciousness” means glossing over and ignoring differences where Scripture is clear, then I’m not sure “graciousness” should be our goal. McKnight also closes the second article by writing that the NeoReformed are “wounding, perhaps for a generation or two, evangelicalism”, which I greatly disagree with, as does Time Magazine. Wait, Time Magazine?

Yes, Time Magazine. In their March 23, 2009 issue they list the 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now. When I was alerted to this list by a Tweet from Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church (Seattle), I couldn’t believe what was #3 – The New Calvinism. Author David Van Biema writes

Calvinism is back, and not just musically. John Calvin’s 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism’s buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism’s latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination’s logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time’s dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.

All in all, the article is a pretty fairly written one, which is pretty incredible since its competition, Newsweek, seems to have gone off a cliff with denouncing Christians. In contrast to McKnight’s dire predictions that the NeoReformed are “wounding evangelicalism”, Van Biema quotes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, saying

“everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world” - with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle’s pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention

I have to say I agree with Olsen. Whether it’s Together for the Gospel filling a convention center in Louisville with pastors waiting to hear gospel-saturated messages, or the Acts 29 Network seeking to raise up 900 men to plant churches throughout the world, the New Calvinism is seeking to proclaim a great God who calls all to repentance and reconciliation to Him available only through the crucification of His Son Jesus on the cross and the Holy Spirit’s regeneration of hearts. It’s too bad that some people, including Scot McKnight, continue to caricature Reformed believers by assigning unbiblical heresies to them. There is plenty of room in evangelicalism for people who disagree on secondary issues (mode of baptism, mode of communion, music style), but as the distinctions begin to move into areas of clear biblical teaching, the true challenge will be to include or exclude those who differ from what God reveals in His Word. May we seek after humble orthodoxy, not announcing our disagreements for the world to see and hear, but petitioning God through prayer to change people’s hearts.