This Thursday, Friday, and Saturday hundreds of young athletes’ dreams will come true. The NFL Draft will take place, and lives will be changed forever. Notice how many selected in the first or second rounds will never make it past a first contract in the league, and some who aren’t even drafted will eventually have long, successful careers. Talent matters in sports, but hard work and good judgment often matter more.
Are We Together for the Gospel?
This past week I attended the final Together for the Gospel conference in Louisville, Kentucky. It was truly bittersweet. It’s not an understatement to say that this conference, which has convened every other year since 2006 (save the pandemic year in 2020), has been one of the most consequential evangelical pastors’ conferences in modern times. While it is a pastors’ conference, non-ordained readers of this newsletter would generally benefit from the messages and panel discussions of past conferences. Those sessions can be viewed here.
In recent years the attendance has swelled to 12,000 attendees, an incredible number. It’s stunning to consider the potential for positive impact on Christ’s church. Assuming 10,000 of the attendees are pastors or serve on pastoral staffs, imagine the number of church members for whom they are responsible. If only a fraction of the helpful insights from the conference are taken seriously and implemented in churches, God’s people will be truly blessed.
[As an aside, the possibility of such positive influence humbles me, and reminds me of how grateful I am for my church permitting and even encouraging my attendance at retreats, conferences, and seminars.]
One of the notable dynamics of this conference is that it is comprised of people who overwhelmingly identify as “Calvinists” and/or “Reformed Christians.” To the uninitiated, Calvinists follow the teachings of the 16th century French reformer John Calvin. Particularly, Calvinists approach the doctrine of salvation through the framework of what is often called the “doctrines of grace”: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints (TULIP, for short). These teachings address the human condition and how God has uniquely worked through the Son and Spirit to bring people to salvation and keep them in the faith.
I suspect what will strike Free Will Baptist readers as most problematic about Calvinism is either its denial of free will, or its view of Christ’s atonement as being wrought on behalf of only those whom God specifically chose for salvation. Concerning free will and salvation, Calvinists do believe that human beings are morally responsible for sin. Many maintain that somehow God’s sovereign will, expressed through determining all things, is compatible with human responsibility (“compatibilism”).
It will not be automatically obvious to non-Calvinists how one can be morally responsible without free will. It probably won’t be clear how these views avoid making God the author of evil. Moreover, it won’t be clear to most non-Calvinists how these views are reconcilable with John 3:16, 1 John 2:2, or any number of other passages.
All I’ll say concerning the plausibility of Calvinist theology and the sincerity of Calvinists is that Arminians (Arminius being the historic theological forerunner of Free Will Baptists) is that we need to be charitable toward various orthodox Christian groups. Calvinism has a long and impressive intellectual pedigree. Its tenets do have biblical passages that could be summoned in its defense. And by no means are all Calvinists “lazy evangelistically,” as the accusation sometimes goes. Indeed, I’ve been challenged by the evangelistic and missionary emphasis in the sermons and writings of many Calvinists.
These caveats being made, I strongly disagree with the tenets of Calvinism, which leads one to a relevant, subsequent question: are Arminianism, Calvinism, or other related theological systems missing something crucial about the Gospel?
Try to imagine the conference scene from this past week. I’m singing the praises of God alongside another Free Will Baptist pastor amid a sea of Calvinists. To my knowledge, there were fewer than 10 Free Will Baptists present. For the sake of argument, throw in another 500 non-Calvinists who may generally agree with the teachings of the speakers, and the Affirmations and Denials of the conference organizers. What are we doing at a meeting with thousands who overwhelmingly have a Calvinistic understanding of God, salvation, and the Gospel?
First, historically all orthodox Arminians and Calvinists would agree that Jesus himself—his words, his deeds, and especially his death and resurrection--constitute the core of the good news.
Now there are other surrounding teachings about how the benefits of Jesus’ saving work come to an individual. Take saving faith as an example. Arminians understand saving faith to be a divinely enabled capacity made possible through a prior work of the Holy Spirit applying God’s truth. A legitimate human decision is made, but it isn’t made, as it were, by an unaided person who falls out of bed and says, “I think I’ll get saved today.” Calvinists aver that God first regenerates a person and gifts them with the faith by which they respond to the Gospel. But both agree that God must somehow enable a person. It isn’t enough to say that the Father sent the Son; the work of the Spirit is essential. Upon this premise, most Arminians and Calvinists agree.
Second, some degree of true fellowship is possible among all converted people through the indwelling work of the Spirit. In other words, the Holy Spirit is the baseline for Christian community, even among those who may have sincere and significant theological disagreements. Now theological agreement is essential for certain types of Christian activities, such as church planting. Imagine trying to plant a church with one group who wants to “baptize” babies, and another who doesn’t! But it shouldn’t surprise us that a Baptist and Presbyterian can have a monthly prayer meeting at Denny’s, or that a few thousand conservative evangelicals can amicably participate in a three-day conference. Thankfully, others have recognized this reality also.
Now the challenges emerge when someone believes that the only faithful, biblically plausible articulation of the Gospel is coequal with Calvinism itself. A system of explanation—intellectual scaffolding—becomes the structure itself. Of course, the type of person I’m imagining rejects such analogies. Unconditional election or limited atonement aren’t mere scaffolding! And while that imagery probably doesn’t best describe the types of theological claims made by Arminians and Calvinists, it’s my way of identifying a truth that Christians have long understood: the core Christian truths of the early ecumenical creeds notably avoid detailed issues that modern confessional statements address.
Conversely, modern parachurch organizations like Together for the Gospel, the Gospel Coalition, and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals have chosen to make Calvinism a primary identifier. Insomuch that encouraging Calvinists in their thinking, ecclesiology, collaboration, and the like is the goal of such organizations, they can indeed point to real gains. But I can’t help but wonder what the losses are.
When Classical Arminians are excluded by narrowly written doctrinal statements, I see this as a missed opportunity. [1] When a group who affirms the inerrancy of Scripture, a penal substitionary atonement, a complementarian view of gender roles, and nearly every other distinctive of such groups but takes a different approach to election or perseverance, we miss a golden opportunity to foster a greater togetherness for the Gospel that could help slow the splintering of evangelicalism over a number of other tertiary questions.
It could be that one of the greatest threats to a renewed evangelicalism isn’t celebrity preachers, pragmatism, and a few mishandled abuse cases, as horrific as each of these are. One of our greatest threats could be an evangelical coalition that sees Calvinism as the only credible and sincere expression of the biblical Gospel.
What Counts as “Reformed”?
If Calvinism were tricky enough to define clearly and fairly, “Reformed” raises a host of other problems. Its historical roots take us back to the pre-Reformation era when many Christians were troubled by the condition of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. Martin Luther was by no means the first person to take aim at Roman Catholic ways. Nor was the movement spawned by his efforts the only reform movement that set Europe ablaze in the 16th century.
Luther was preceded by men like Wycliffe and Tyndale and followed by men like Melanchthon and Calvin. Another man of this era has already been alluded to—Arminius. Jacobus “James” Arminius saw himself as an heir of the Reformation. He shared its heartbeat, emphasis, and teachings. He affirmed the “solas”: sola scriptura (Scripture alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), sola fide (faith alone), sola gratia (grace alone), and soli Deo gloria (glory to God alone). He believed in the sufficiency of Scripture. He loved the biblical commentaries of Calvin. He was, in every pre-Dortian sense, a Reformed Christian.
Claims of this type are reasons why many Free Will Baptists identify themselves as “Reformed Arminians,” or sometimes “Classical Arminians” (the name I prefer). Reformed Arminian sounds like an oxymoron to many people. Isn’t the whole point of the Calvinist-Arminian dialogue to assert that Calvinists are reformed, and Arminians are not? It all depends on what “reformed” refers to!
If by “reformed” we mean the theological emphases of the Reformation, then we must indeed admit a broader range of Christians than simply Calvinists. Reformed originally referred not only to those who differed from the Roman Catholic Church. It referred to those who thought that the church should then and always seek to reform itself according to the Scriptures. Specifically, those teachings and practices not affirmed by Holy Scripture should be purged. This is why doctrines like the sufficiency of Scripture were so integral to those traditions that link themselves to the Reformation age.
What’s both fascinating and telling is that a one group which emerged from that period, Presbyterians, would have historically balked at and even ridiculed the claims of those Baptists who sought to claim the reformed mantel. How can someone who doesn’t baptize infants be reformed? (Calvin and Arminius both believed in infant baptism!) Many historians rightly point out that “reformed” is more of an ecclesiological (church-related) designation than a strictly soteriological (salvation-related) one. If that’s true—and there’s good historical backing for it—then all us Baptists claiming to be reformed are in trouble!
As in any of our theological discussions or disputes, the definition of terms is everything. Christians involved in this conversation would be wise to assume that most people who use the term “reformed” freely and often likely aren’t using it in a technical, historical sense. Accordingly, if we choose to accept that identification for ourselves or grant it to others, we must take the extra step of asking, “Now tell me what you understand that word to mean,” or offering, “Now let me clarify what I mean by ‘reformed’.” Such qualifications and nuance can be frustrating, awkward, and even laborious, but it may just lead to more fruitful conversations among those who love both the church and the Gospel.
[1] That said, I must point out that I do not see T4G’s Affirmations and Denials excluding those Arminians of the reformed or classical variety. I think the authors probably mean to exclude them in what I think they likely intend by Article VIII, but as the document presently stands, there is nothing that I couldn’t sign onto, in good faith, given a plain reading of it.
Currently Reading:
Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire: A.D. 100-400
Quote of the Week:
“Even a casual observer of the US Congress in the past few years, for instance, would have to conclude that its members have forgotten what their jobs are. Congress is inherently political, of course. But what its members do now would be better described as performative panic and rage than political action. They frequently use the institution as a platform for culture-war theatrics rather than a venue for bargaining over public policy. And of course, they’re just responding to the electoral incentives that always motivate politicians: Their voters, or at least the most intensely engaged among them, are demanding culture-war theatre, and are often participating in it themselves as well, on social media in particular. Our political culture has become increasingly hostile to traditional policy debates and increasingly interested in a kind of rhetorical warfare disconnected from reality…The spirit of our political culture and the spirit of a perversely confrontational entertainment culture have become blended. And the resulting mixture—which is perfectly adapted to dissolve all boundaries—has permeated every realm of our common life and begun displacing the particular character and mode of integrity of nearly every major institution.” (Yuval Levin, “How to Curb the Culture War”)