RSSBible study or alliance of confessing evangelicals?
After over a week of discussion and debate, I am acquiring a better sense of what FV is as an institution. I realize folks like Mr. Jordan want us to go to the substance and forget the form. But those weren’t the rules DRC established going in.
I have been looking all along for a high church Calvinism, but the ecclesiology continues — just like light beer — to miss my mouth. I was hoping that the high church aspirations of FV would lift the local communions of its members into more vigorous and more substantial identities that would give the modern Reformed church a bit of an earlier pre-modern or anti-modern feel — as in “you’re Reformed, stop worshiping like either Rick Warren or N.T. Wright.” But it seems instead that the high church Calvinism of FV is one that lifts members in such a way that they transcend the local and particular trappings of their denominations and traditions. What I had hoped would be a substantial critique of modernity in favor of ecclesiology and real (though spiritual) church power has turned out to be very modern — an affinity group.
That leaves two options for what FV is institutionally. First it could be a Bible study conducted across the nation in different outlets, conferences, blogs, and publications, in which the participants come up with provocative, creative and sometimes even edifying interpretations of Scripture. But these interpretations have no real import for the church institutional. FV is merely a forum in which certain acquaintances, in front of a national audience, carry out this Bible study.
The other option is that FV is an alliance of confessing evangelicals that lacks one main website and radio programs. Here, officers and members of different communions come together to work for a certain end. But this end, if churchly. is interdenominational and para-traditional at best. Where FV differs from another ACE is that the former’s reading interests run to the liturgical end of the Protestant spectrum (N.T. Wright) while the latter runs in low-church directions (John Piper). I for one will take Piper over Wright most days of the week. But I fail to see a huge difference structurally between FV and ACE.
These may not be the only two options. If folks here can come up with others please suggest away. Or simply comment on this way of looking at FV as a phenomenon. (Rermarks about me being a trouble maker are off the point.)
James Jordan
September 25th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
I think your first option is correct. That what’s called FV is just a conversation is what we’ve been saying for five years. How can it be otherwise when we’re all in different denominations? Of course, among the things we talk about is high ecclesiology, sung worship, etc. I’ve listed those things several times here, but no one seems interested. After all, we published *The Failure of the American Baptist Culture* in 1982 and *The Reconstruction of the Church in 1984. That’s all in the background and pretty much taken for granted. We’ve been having weeklong Bible + Liturgy conferences for 17 years. There’s nothing new about this conversation. What’s new is people calling it FV and then trying to pin various errors and heresies on it that none of us have ever taught. Which is all about the political jockeying for power in these various Reformed sects, and not about theology at all from what I can tell. And it’s about money, of course.
P. Andrew Sandlin
September 26th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Darryl, it’s a movement, like the Charismatic Movement, Reconstructionist Movement, Emergent Movement and so on. Movements arise in reaction to errors (real or perceived) in their sociological grid. Movements develop a cluster of beliefs that tend to generate an ideology. Movements in church history are often most helpful in reviving neglected emphases or creating new ones, or both. Movements are spearheaded by intellectuals as well as by gifted and charismatic institutional leaders. Movements in time tend to over-refine and overcompensate, and their successors squabble and divide (often starting new movements), but they also can modify the ideological landscape by bringing to the fore certain important questions that have never been considered or that have lain dormant.
In all of these ways, the FV is a classic movement.
If anybody has a right to claim godfather status of this movement, it’s Jim J. Why nobody acknowledges this publicly mystifies me, and since I’m not part of the movement, it doesn’t cost me anything to say it. Almost everything the FV guys are saying today, Jim was saying (and I was reading) 20-25 years ago. He is the proximate theological fountainhead of this movement. He reacted generally against the revivalism and individualism and Baptist-ism of mid-century evangelicals and particularly against the near non-ecclesiology of R. J. Rushdoony and the Chalcedon wing of the Reconstructionist Movement. Bahnsen was a churchman from pate to sole but, steeped deeply in the hermeneutical suppositions of analytical philosophy, he didn’t buy Jim’s hermeneutical method. North was a historian and economist for whom aspects of Jim’s theological program were attractive, for various reasons. Rushdoony cast a pox on all their houses since they weren’t sufficiently familial. Waters therefore was right to find the provenance of the FV in the Reconstructionist Movement — and wrong in almost every conclusion he drew about that observation.
The FV is a cluster of ideas. As such it will influence Reformed people all over the place, and will become diluted and be aped and modified and evolve and be re-adapted and re-invented — just like the Charismatic Movement, Reconstructionist Movement, and Emergent Movement. Like all movements, it will run its course. But that doesn’t mean it will be a failure. In fact, its greatest success may not occur til it’s all over.
Peter
September 26th, 2007 at 8:50 am
I agree with Andrew. I have always blamed Jim for the whole mess.
Peter
September 26th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Darryl, there is a perceptual problem here. Not everything that the FV group has been advocating has become controversial. Apostasy, baptismal efficacy, and some issues surrounding justification have become controversial, and so it appears that this is all the FV group is interested in talking about. But as Jim said, liturgy has been very close to the heart of our discussions from the beginning, but that interest dovetails with other things going on in the Reformed world (such as your interest in Nevin), so it has not become part of the “FV controversy.”
Peter
September 26th, 2007 at 9:07 am
I also need some clarification from Bill. Darryl has regularly returned to the question of the conformity of the FV to the Reformed tradition, implying that that is THE question we’re supposed to be discussing. But when Bill introduced that question, I took it as a STARTING POINT for discussion. Did I misunderstand the ground rules?
D Hart
September 26th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
If FV had a high ecclesiology, wouldn’t it forsake movement status? Isn’t a movement synonymous with the parachurch? And if liturgy is such an important part of FV, how does a movement worship? The Oxford movement was in a communion.
CBrown
September 26th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Is the CREC actively seeking fraternal relations with Reformed churches? When I mention this idea to people associated with the CREC, it seems to be shrugged off as an impossibility. But, to me, it seems that the CREC should be pursuing fraternal relations (in spite of the difficulties), to (among other things) bolster her claim of high ecclesiology. Perhaps face-to-face ecclesiological discussions would bear fruit. The CREC won’t know unless she tries.
barlow
September 26th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Dr. Hart - how does your view of what constitutes “high ecclesiology” accommodate the role of the theologian? Do you reject the working, positive theologian as an artifact of modernism? How can theology serve as impetus for church reform?
How do you know that Protestantism isn’t a parachurch movement? Or that the PCA isn’t a parachurch movement? I can field a dozen of my friends in Rams uniforms, but it doesn’t mean we’re participating in the NFL. And yet, we would be playing football. Your view seems to shout “no NFL, no football” from the stands of an XFL game.
James Jordan
September 26th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Darryl, you just don’t seem to be capable of understanding an ecclesiastical and liturgical movement that crosses denominational lines. We are all in communions. And we are working to rebuild unity in the Church on the basis of the word of God.
Explaining this over and over is getting old.
D Hart
September 26th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
James, I can fully understand what your saying. You don’t seem to understand that I am objecting to it.
Barlow, if you want to call an organization that administers word, sacrament and discipline a parachurch endeavor, then I believe we have a real problem. Maybe it’s just me, but when I see a baseball, bases, bats, and a plate, I think baseball, not tennis.
As for theologians, they should be doctors of the church, and so have a duty of teaching within the church. If they want to reform the church, they don’t do so merely by teaching. They also might go to presbytery, make a motion, and speak to the motion.
James Jordan
September 26th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Darryl, but you are a theologian. You write books. You have agendas. Do you check with your presbytery before you publish anything?
AS for paedocommunion, PLENTY of motions have been made, and plenty of committees have sat, and the OPC committed recommended that paedocommunion be accepted and that the WLC be changed. So I don’t think your criticism sticks at all.
Finally, I just don’t see how you can object to what I described. How, in an age of denominations, can anyone do theology or ecclesiology without being in the same room with others? That’s how the Church of Christ does things, but I don’t think it’s how Calvinism, which has always been international, has ever done things.
What on earth is wrong with various local churches in various denominations talking about upgrading worship, learning to sing Genevan Psalms and chanted psalms, etc.? I’ve taught psalmody in post-charismatic independent churches, in post-baptist independent churches, in OPC, PCA, and CREC churches, and in Reformed Episcopal churches. I’m not allowed to do that?
I think that this kind of thing is how the Spirit goes about healing divisions. I should think that would be a good thing!
barlow
September 26th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Then I suppose I’ve misunderstood the nature of the fealty you expect people to show to tradition; I was under the impression that your preferred “high church” couldn’t coexist with independency. I certainly believe the PCA is a church.
At the same time, why is it the fault of the “federal vision” that it isn’t a church? Why would it occur to you to judge the federal vision conversation on the basis of its similarity or dissimilarity to the institution “church”?
What would a theological motion to presbytery look like? What would be moved? Do we have any examples or precedents where this has happened outside of the context of a judicial case or an allegation of heresy or error?
D Hart
September 26th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
The reason for evaluating FV on the basis of a high ecclesiology is two-fold. One, it claims to be recovering one for Reformed Christianity and yet its members have a hard to embodying it in their own personal communions or within the group itself. The other is that FV does many of the things the church does — theology and exegesis. As I understood it, those were things the Reformers always wanted the church to oversee.
As to an earlier question you had about how to change a tradition from within, American Presbyterians revised the Westminster Confession in 1789. Few may be aware of it. Even John Murray in a report for the OPC cited 31.5 of the confession. After 1789 31.5 did not exist because they eliminated 31.2. Traditions change all the time. Just look at Vatican II.
joshuawdsmith
September 26th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
I don’t understand Darryl’s post at all. The FV is not, in fact, an institution, but a conversation, conducted through various pastor’s conferences and in print. The various FV representatives here are all, as Jim Jordan pointed out, members of institutions, local congregations, that, as far as I can tell, are indeed seeking to pursue worship that draws on the Reformed tradition and on Scripture rather than any particular modern paradigm. The churches I have visited in the CREC do indeed have a “pre-modren” or “anti-modern” feel, if that is the goal. Creeds recited and sung, psalms sung in their entirety to often 17th century settings, weekly communion, clear preaching of the word, kneeling for corporate confession…and not a whiff of seeker- sensitivity in either form or content. I have never read or heard one of the FV figures appeal to N.T. Wright on liturgy, so I have no idea why Darryl brings him up in the context of worship.
So, whichever one of Darryl’s characterizations is taken, I still don’t see his point. Sure, the FV is a bible study: but it is not even trying to replace the church. Maybe it is like ACE: but it’s still not replacing the church. No one in the FV is trying to replace the church: rather they have this conversation, then return to their local congregations to “lift the local communions of its members into more vigorous and more substantial identities that would give the modern Reformed church a bit of an earlier pre-modern or anti-modern feel.” Yes, it is an affinity group: but notice that almost none of the FV figures are in the same church. They gather with like-minded men to study, then they return to the local congregations, where the real work goes on. Isn’t that exactly what ACE does? So why is it bad for the FV to be like ACE?
joshuawdsmith
September 26th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Wait…Darryl is offering Rome as an example of how the Reformed tradition operates? Is there a problem here? Or is this a subtle joke that I’m too dumb to get?
On what grounds do you say that “its members have a hard to [sic] embodying it [high ecclesiology] in their own personal communions or within the group itself”? The group is not intended to “embody” ecclesiology, since the group is not a church! And, again, the communions they are a part of do seem, from what I have seen, to embody high ecclesiology. Have you read Jeff Meyers’ book? Have you attended Christ Church?
And, wait a minute. I’ve been at another place that does theology and exegesis: seminary! But it wasn’t directly overseen by the church, was it? Which local board of elders served as the board of governors at Westminster California? To which denominational assembly does it report? The various professors and students there are the ones who are overseen by the church: is that sufficient? Well, each representative of the FV is overseen by a presbytery or church. So, if the FV has to be overseen by a specific local body, why doesn’t ACE or WSC?
James Jordan
September 26th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
First, WE embody ecclesiology just fine. It’s those who play politics in the denominations (OPC and PCA for example) who don’t embody any kind of ecclesiology. Both sects had study committees on the so-called FV. Neither sect’s committee phoned or wrote or otherwise contacted even ONE advocate of the so-called FV. Their reports showed that they did not read the writings of the so-called FV people with even the slightest care of charity. And it’s painfully obvious that they read next to nothing.
So, please, give us a break here. You accuse the FV people, who are fully committed churchmen, of not embodying the church because they have been viciously attacked by men who have not one ounce of churchmanship.
Luther was treated far better by the Pope. Rome at that time was far more of a Church than either the PCA or the OPC are today.
Second, every bit of theology and exegesis is fully overseen by the church. Unless you means that it must be run by a committee of some sect. In which case, Darryl, I ask again what committee of your sect reads and oversees your work before it’s published?
Get real.
barlow
September 26th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Your first reason is more ad-hominem than anything. After all, a high regard for the church doesn’t mean that one goes quietly into that good night when stacked committees and one-hour dramas on the floor of GA result in a rushed report that doesn’t even say what its presenters claim it says. In general, FV men have stayed put, working in the church. If you would like to stand by the quality of the PCA report, be my guest, but my guess is that men of the calibre participating on this forum know better than to stand too close to it. The ad-hominems can go both ways, but dealing with the substance of FV claims has rarely occurred.
Your second reason works by comparing the approach taken by FV pastors with an approach appropriate to an idealized ecclesiology that doesn’t exist in the PCA. There are no church doctors in the PCA and we can hardly even agree if ministers are a separate office from elders. Where are the denominational structures that train theologians? Exegetes? If it weren’t for Catholics, secular universities, and independent seminaries, most reformed denominations in the US would have no “doctors” - Ph.D. or otherwise. At least the PCA has a denominational seminary, even if it is not a Ph.D. granting institution - if these professors at Covenant were treated with the respect due to doctors of the church, then the whole FV controversy would never have gotten as far as it has in the PCA. Ask any big name in the PCA who the de facto doctors of the church are, and you will get a variety of answers. Can you seriously envision Ligon Duncan submitting to the theological judgment of Robert Peterson or Jack Collins?
The 1789 revisions only took place after one of the most significant turning points in the history of the nation… hardly an example of a regular process of self-criticism and reform. And Vatican II was in 1965; we out-Rome Rome in our clinging to prior modes of expression and an unwillingness to restate, reformulate, or even simply readopt-with-stipulations these expressions.
D Hart
September 27th, 2007 at 1:16 am
James, the church doesn’t oversee history, not in a two-kingdom universe.
Josh, you got me, but I’ve long advocated, maybe even in your presence, that seminary education should be conducted by the church. But one difference between a seminary and FV is that the seminary we might be thinking of is not rocking the boat the way FV is. That seminary is actually trying to defend and maintain the Reformed tradition, not highlight the tensions (either actual or imagined) in it.
Barlow, sorry but I can’t be of much help with the PCA. I have enough on my plate in the OPC. As far as the revision of the WCF goes, I regret this one doesn’t qualify by your criteria. It does show that reform from within is possible. Maybe the Iraq conflict will help current revisionists.
James Jordan
September 27th, 2007 at 9:04 am
FV has never rocked any boat. Never once. It has been the anti-FV people who have made noise, turned this into a crisis, and rocked boats. This is very easy to prove from the history and chronology of the last five years.
James Jordan
September 27th, 2007 at 9:12 am
I wrote: “Luther was treated far better by the Pope. Rome at that time was far more of a Church than either the PCA or the OPC are today.”
I wrongfully neglected to write this: On the other hand, it shows a very different spirit for the men of the RPCNA to host this discussion of issues and invite/allow “FV spokesmen” to engage various questions. I’m disappointed that various substantive issues have not been engaged as much as I’d like, but that’s beside the point. The RPCNA is acting like a real church in this matter.
D Hart
September 27th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
James, you can do better than that. You’re a boat rocker from way back. Don’t be so humble.