RSSIs the FV Anti-Modern?
I feel a bit like Muether (though I will not cop to remembering Marv Throneberry or watching Miller Lite commercials), not entirely sure how I got invited to this party. I have very little invested in the controversy itself, and am not intimately familiar with its details. I have, however, spent many years thinking and writing about what I consider the crisis of modern Protestantism, even founding a magazine to address that issue, and so feel at least competent to address the initial question: What is the problem in Reformed Christianity that the Federal Vision is trying to fix?
My speculation is that at root, the Federal Vision has arisen as a loose confederation of critics who are responding to a felt and perhaps articulated sense that Reformed Christianity in America has failed to sustain any thoroughgoing and coherent critique of modernity; and that this failure strikes at the heart of the health of faith. “This was a recurrent theme in The New Pantagruel’s editorial material and many of its articles: to contrast the depth and wealth of Classical and Catholic culture with the superficiality and poverty of the contemporary West, particularly within the varieties of Anglo-American (and primarily conservative) Protestantism. Western Christianity in general tended to be seen as hollowed out and, if not liberalized on a theological level, neutered by tacit acceptance of the mundane habits, assumptions, and reflexes of life in wealthy, technocratic, advanced capitalist societies. In essence tNP was assimilating principally European and Catholic critiques of modernity that sought a ‘middle way’ between Marxism and Capitalism that once, briefly, had a significant presence outside the United States, as in the British and Canadian Red Tory political tradition. Within U.S. history, tNP associated itself most strongly with the populist and agrarian traditions of the old Northeast, Southeast, and Great Plains regions.†From here.
Consider: why is it that the Catholics, Anabaptists, and Lutherans have all the competent critics of modernity? Why is it that the only vibrant Reformed movement in the past fifty years has been the now sputtering neo-Calvinism and its attempt, however faulty, to engage modernity as a force worth reckoning with? Sure, we had Machen, but who is rallying to that cry these days? While The New Pantagruel made a significantly different prescriptive effort than the Federal Vision seems to offer, perhaps there is some agreement concerning the diagnosis.
James Jordan
September 17th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I don’t know the right location to make this remark, but in my opinion the so-called FV amounts to this: “The Word of God in the words of God.” That and that alone is what was controversial about the original conference at Auburn Avenue called “Federal Vision.” To use Biblical language rather than the rarified technical vocabulary developed in one culture over 400 years ago was controversial. To assume that God knows the best way to express His truths was controversial. That’s it. When the Bible says “washing of regeneration,” so-called FVers say, “well, we will say that and find out what regeneration means in this context,” and the reaction is “you must not say that.” When the Bible says “abide in the vine” (an organic analogy) or “abide in the olive tree” (another organic analogy), the so-called FVers say, “yea, amen, those who fall away were organically united to Jesus for a time” and their critics say, “no, never. It’s merely an external semi-union; etc. etc.” That’s the issue. The Word of God in the words of God. Everything else is secondary.
D Hart
September 17th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Who is rallying to Machen’s cry these days? Hello!?! I am.
BTW, Machen was a fairly decent critic of modernity. He may not have had all of the neo-Calvinists’ philosophical bells and whistles. But he did have a sense of place (the South) and a distrust of far-away bureaucracies (i.e. the feds). Maybe the reason in part for American Presbyterians failure to critique modernity whether on the left or the right was their investment first in the Revolution and then in the North. Who knew it would lead to interstates, 64 gazillion cheeseburgers, and Levittown?
Caleb Stegall
September 17th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Darryl, I agree with you re: Machen. And the neo-Cal engagement with modernity was fundamentally flawed (another discussion for another day). But the point is that I think we should be able to come to some consensus that American Reformed Christianity has, during the past 70 years, made peace with modernity. And it is my speculation that this peace is at the root of the discontent being expressed as “the Federal Vision.”
I think Mr. Jordan protests too much. What spiritual condition in the churches obtained such that it became necessary or desirable to seek out language other than that “developed in one culture over 400 years”? That is the question.
D Hart
September 17th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I am curious where Mr. Jordan thinks the Bible specifies that we must only use biblical language. My Greek and Hebrew are rusty. Aramaic? Forget about it.
Such biblicism is one of the real weakness I have detected among the proponents of FV. As if one could take the phrase, “abide in the vine,” and discount the entire project of Reformed systematic theology (not to mention the rest of the Bible). I’ve known some advocates of biblical theology to be reckless. But this is breathtaking.
James Jordan
September 17th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
The Spiritual Condition: (1) The Father seeks worshippers, and Biblically worship is sung. Sung liturgy is absent in Reformed churches. They are like Judaizers who don’t realize that the Kingdom has come and that the angels no longer speak but now sing with instruments (Rev. 4-5). (2) Psalmody is completely absent. Psalms are READ, a monstrous development, since they were written to be sung. God has to listen to our concerts in which we just stand or sit and read what He wrote to be sung. (3) Enthusiastic singing in dancelike rhythms of strong hymns and psalm paraphrases like the original chorales and Genevan psalter is absent. Dull morose singing or else loony tunes is all we get. (4) We are denied the body and blood of Jesus most weeks, and our children are denied it all the time. (5) Last, I think it odd that those who want to use God’s own words are characterized as “seeking out language.” We sought nothing. It was given to us. We wish to preach and teach our people God’s Word, and keep polemics back on the shelf where we can pull it out occasionally as needed to deal with issues that come up. Scandalous, isn’t it?
Caleb Stegall
September 17th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Any innovator is in some sense “seeking out” a change. If 400 years of tradition is to be set aside, even if in favor of something “older”, there must be a felt, even if unarticulated, crisis and failing in the received order.
Lack of Psalmody is not the crisis. Though it may be a symptom, even those who have avoided this symptom are not immune from the disease. I speak as about as blue blooded a Covenanter as they come, as fully immersed in psalmody and the traditions of psalmody as is probably possible in this day and age. This has not preserved Covenanters from the spiritual ravages of modernity.
James Jordan
September 17th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Well, in my opinion the Covenanters don’t do much Psalmody. They do metrical paraphrases. They do not sing from the text, allowing the lines of the text to determine the music. They violate the shape of the text. Now, you asked for some symptoms and some concerns, and I gave them. Why do we need a crisis? It is enough to read the Bible and see what we are not doing and what God wants us to do. Moreover, modernism is not quite the issue that the FV conference was addressing. All the FV conference was about was attempting to be more pastoral to people by being more faithful to the language of the Bible, and not substituting other language for that language. The only crisis came about from those who objected to Biblical language. That’s been about 100% of it, as is proven by all the “reports” that did nothing but attack us for not using exclusively the phraseology of various Confessions and preferring to use Biblical language in the pulpit. And I’ll add that those who WROTE those Confessions would be 100% on the side of the FV in this matter.
Caleb Stegall
September 17th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Well now. I guess this is why this discussion is good. It appears from Mr. Jordan’s perspective that there is very little wrong with status quo American Reformed Christianity. Just making some minor adjustments here and there. Nothing to get excited about.
It is presumptuous of me to say so, I realize, but I think Jordan is wrong, both about the substantive question of crisis, and about what is motivating the FV. I would hasten to add that this is coming from one who thinks that if you don’t see the crisis, you’ve got your head in the sand.
James Jordan
September 17th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Oh, I think there’s plenty wrong with it, especially liturgically. Pop worship is liberalism through the back door. And I think reducing the faith from confession to ideology (which is how our broad confessions are being treated in conservative circles these days) is a grave evil, tantamount to operating by intellectual sight rather than submissive faith — though this evil is one that the so-called FV business has exposed. My point was that the original FV conference was not a response to some crisis, and that what was controversial about it was not that it dealt with a crisis but that the speakers were calling attention to the text and dealing directly with it. The lectures were positive and pastoral. But to be sure: The people involved in FV were involved in Christian Reconstruction 25 years ago, and for the same reasons (following the Bible against modern culture). And there is a long lineage before that, back to Groen and beyond. We’d all read Symington, for instance. Same conflict, just a different name. But it all goes back to the Bible. And sneering at the Bible, Mr. Hart, will get you nowhere with any of us. When you stand before Jesus, you can let Him know what kinds of metaphors He should have used instead of the vine.
D Hart
September 17th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Biblicists generally think that sneering at them is sneering at the Bible. Why do they act as if they had written it?
To be clear, I took exception to the use of one phrase from a book that is as big as the Norton Companion to English literature, onion leaves and all. I would have thought at a self-professing Reformed Christian might have also wanted to reckon with another phrase — “proclaiming the whole counsel of God.”
VCrisler
September 18th, 2007 at 1:52 am
I like what D Hart said about biblicism. Isn’t the claim about speaking the language of the Bible instead of the language of systematic theology just the old Lutheran caricature of the Reformed method of dogmatics? G. C. Berkouwer has a good discussion of this in his *Faith and Perseverance* in the section entitled, “The Controversy with the Lutherans” (pp. 55ff). That discussion is an uncanny precursor to all this FV business.
Vern Crisler
vcrisler3@cox.net
http://vernerable.tripod.com
barlow
September 18th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Generalizations about biblicists aside, the rhetorical moment of a sermon is stripped of its force if “proclaiming the whole counsel of God” means somehow blunting the force of Jesus’ words (in this example of the vine and branches). It’s a bit like explaining a punchline to include warnings about perseverance and assurances about the impossibility of true apostasy in the same sermon. Even if we batten down our systematic theology, we still have to consider the *use* of doctrine. I believe the FV perspective has a theological agenda, but there is also the agenda Mr. Jordan talks about above that is a kind of pastoral-theological agenda that tries to allow the word of God to cut the hearers up a bit - to instruct real people, assure them, warn them, knock them off kilter one week, soothe them the next, even as the Bible does. I think also that Jordan and others are concerned that this reformed tradition of viewing the bible as *accommodated* to human understanding serves as an impetus to “see behind” the text. Jordan has the literary version of that - the text is the message, communicated as God intended, designed to work on real people. Leithart has the sacramental version of that - baptism isn’t a “means of grace” it is a grace. Just as a birthday present isn’t a means of transmitting a toy, it is a toy. Now, both of them clarify; Jordan is not averse to the analogy of faith or making sure that the meaning is understood.
(I also grant that this pastoral-theological approach bleeds over into systematics, and perhaps the theology of apostasy is the lynchpin for the whole deal. But that’s a different subject.)
c holdridge
September 18th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Gosh, didn’t take long to get behind in this. But I do think there is another layer in Mr. Stegall’s view that ” we should be able to come to some consensus that American Reformed Christianity has, during the past 70 years, made peace with modernity.”
I think the point is that Reformed Christianity has made peace with American evangelicalism; this is the problem. The evangelicals (a group to which many of us have belonged or do belong)have more than made peace with modernism; they have embraced it. But I can’t believe we would forget about Reformed thinkers who have in no way made peace; Packer, Lloyd-Jones, Schaeffer, Bahnsen; heck, Pipa, Horton, et. al. These guys are no pushovers and certainly no lovers of modernism. Why act like they’re absent from the scene?
I just can’t believe that self aware Fvers are saying, “yeah, we’re standing against modernism.” Maybe I’ve had my ears shut to that line.
Dave Reese
September 18th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Mr. Jordan claims that the whole FV thing is a matter of them wanting to use biblical language and Confessional Protestants saying ‘no’ to that desire (or maybe I am missunderstanding you…?). This rings a bit hollow, particularly in light of their inability to explain themselves without resorting to extra-biblical, philospohical language of their own (e.g. Trinitarian, historical/escahatological, etc.) It seems to me that the desire to use different extra-biblical language, than the currently received language of the Confessions, is an indication that they have a different belief that they are desiring to express (thus need to use different words). It is just hard to swallow that you all believe the same conclusions as the Confessions, and yet just want to use different, more biblical, language to say it, when you also use language to express your beliefs which is not found in the Bible.
Furthermore, it would be good to recall at this juncture of the discussion, and particularly concerning this topic of who is being more “biblical”, that Paul rebuked those who tried to take that moral high road, right along with those who said that they were of Paul or Apollos in 1 Cor. 1:12. There were some sectarians claiming that they only followed Jesus…sounds much the same as those who say they only want use biblical words…
Finally, it is claimed that, “those who WROTE those Confessions would be 100% on the side of the FV in this matter.” Not only would I quote Kip Dynamite here, “Like you could even know that…”, but I think that the Catechisms provide a hint at the direction that those who wrote the Confessions thought ministers should go with their pastoral application of their theology.
James Jordan
September 18th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I have no idea what the “whole FV thing” is. I and everyone else has said for half a decade that there is no such thing as the FV. You have to tell us what you’re talking about. All we are is some men interested in the Bible and having a PASTOR’s (please note) conference dealing with PASTORAL (please note) matters. The initial controversy arose over our collective desire to bring God’s people into closest possible contact with God’s own rhetorical choices. That’s where the controversy started. That’s what I wrote. I said nothing about how we do theology in non-pastoral contexts. None of us has ever rejected the use of systematic and philosophical language in other contexts.
Beyond this, let me say that we’re all in our 50s, have been doing theology for 30+ years, are all completely Reformed and believe the Canons of Dordt and historical Calvinism, so if we are doing exegesis that you don’t particularly agree with, it’s hardly germane to compare us to sectarians.
Caleb Stegall
September 18th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Chris,
Sure, evangelicals have embraced modernity and Reformed Christianity has embraced evangelicalism (generating a reaction of discontents). Some of those you list are among the discontents. But they hardly constitute a sustained, coherent, and thoroughgoing critique of modernity. This failure is what I suggested was the motivating force at the root of the discontent, even if that motivation is only dimly understood or poorly voiced. One interesting point is that possibly a reason for this is that Reformed Christianity has been dominated by theologians rather than historians. Lots of blind spots there.
barlow
September 18th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. Most of the men teaching theology at reformed seminaries were trained in historical theology, not systematics or positive theology. Historical theology is a tricky discipline. In the hands of Muller, I mostly like the results. But in the hands of some, it becomes a way to establish historical point A and historical point anti-A and then to paint oneself as holding the mediating position of the hero of the story. Just look at the theological statements that have been produced lately - chiefly about the Federal Vision and related controversies - the documents do not bear the marks of being written by theologians, and in fact, they are not often written by theologians.
Yes, I am being trained in historical theology, so pot kettle black. Everyone thinks he is the exception to the rule
c holdridge
September 18th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Thanks for your response. I guess being 32, I may not recognize a “sustained” response to such a thing as modernism. My impression is that the response is possibly “notable” and my sense is that you were not “noting” it. The voices I mentioned are indeed the ones that dragged me from the clutches of American evangelicalism–so they ring more true and sure to me. I hope they prove to exist as such in history as well. Speaking of which, if I and other church leaders knew more history we’d have much more to bring to this discussion. I fully agree with you on that. After all, our ecclesiology kind of comes apart if our doctrine is disconnected from our history. Thanks for that point.