Drambuie on the Rocks

Darryl said something in his previous post that is worth picking up on — and I think it may help reveal why many of our observations are flying past each other. I am surprised that his comment didn’t whack the hive more than it did. He said, “In other words, as anti-ecumenical as it sounds, a Reformed Christian’s first identity is Reformed and then Christian. To reverse those words is to invite vagueness that however warm and fuzzy is squishy and borders on meaningless.”

I would respond to this with a resounding yes and no. In what ways yes? I am Reformed before Christian in the same ways and in the same senses that I am male, or American, or English-speaking before I am Christian. There is no view of anything from “nowhere,” and I knew what it was to think like a boy before I knew what it was like to think like a Trinitarian. But all this is chronological, or physiological, or something-else-ological.

However this is not how we would normally structure the hierarchy. I was a boy before I was a Trinitarian, but it does not follow from this that it is more important to be a boy than a Trinitarian. So no in another fundamental sense. While I differ with the cut-to-the-chase heaven or hell dichotomy that afflicts many evangelicals (who throw away all other doctrinal questions for the sake of it), it remains true that God is in good fellowship with many millions of people who are not Reformed. Shoot, He loved me before I had a clue about Romans 9 — which, incidentally, is one of the points of Romans 9. Not only is this the case, but there are people who do understand how Romans 9 is to be exegeted who also hate God. To state the point bluntly, there are people who hate the Westminster Confession but who love God. And there are people who hate God but love the Confession.

Fortunately, these are not the only options — the best way is to love God and the Confession too, preferably in that order. So to respond to another point that Darryl made, I am not tepid or lukewarm about my Reformed convictions at all. My only criticism of the Synod of Dort is that they didn’t come up with seven points of Calvinism so that I could be a seven-pointer.

So I would bring this back to the question before the house. What lack or deficiency in the Reformed world was the FV seeking to address? In part, returning to my point about gnosticism and Peter’s about ecclesiology, we are seeking to cultivate Reformed catholicity over against Reformed sectarianism.

When C.S. Lewis wrote of mere Christianity, he used the image of the hallways of a great house. He emphasized that it was in the rooms that one slept, took one’s meals, visited with family and friends, and so on. All the action took place in the rooms — and that is where my Reformed identity resides. That’s where I keep my books, and my slippers, and my laptop. But it is possible (and desirable) to go out into the hallway from time to time and fellowship with the other residents of this great house. I can do that without forgetting where my bed is, and without trying to get all the Christians to sleep in the hallways.

When a particular tradition becomes in-grown it is easy to think that “this room” is the only room where anything worthwhile is going on. One of points of FV catholicity is that we don’t think this is true — God is doing wonderful things in other parts of the house. This has been taken (and ought not to have been taken) as us expressing a desire to move out of our Reformed library with its fat books and burnished leather chairs, and tobacco, and Drambuie on the rocks, and carpet you could lose a shoe in. So don’t get me wrong. I like it here and have no intention of moving out — although I still reserve the right to get chased out.

But I can still be grateful for those Campus Crusade guys staffing the mud room, getting new people into the house, and making it possible for them to eventually make their way to the library.