Over a year ago I mentioned an article I wrote for the Act 3 Journal, which was then known as the Reformation & Revival Journal of the ministry of the same name. I really appreciate John Armstrong for many things and was quite encouraged that he considered this brief essay worthy of publication. Since it has been over a year since publication, I can reprint it here. My understanding is that, at some point, all the back issues will be posted on the Act 3 website, and, in that case, I’ll replace this entry with a link to it.

If one raises the issue of “doctrine” and its value to the Church (or lack thereof) one is sure to evoke strong responses one way or another. Defenses of doctrine typically portray the churches of North America as given over to rampant ignorance and even anti-intellectualism. Those who don’t care for doctrine typically pronounce the word in a way that loads it down with loathing. The idea seems to be that doctrine involves a fixation on correct propositions (“correct” according to a doubtful process of over-analysis) at the expense of actual Christian living, joy, and worship.

I think it might help all concerned to try to articulate a critique of doctrine as that word is commonly used.

An Example of the Problem: The Christian “Faith”

To begin with an analogy, let us compound one controversial statement with yet another. The problem with doctrine is much like the problem of “faith” when faith denotes a body of belief. Even though affirming a body of belief is essential to Christian identity and godliness, talking about the Christian “faith” in our current circumstances may do more harm than good.

Imagine an astronomer lecturing on the moons of Jupiter and naming his lecture, “A statement of faith regarding the orbits of Jupiter’s moons.” That is not how we talk about things that are real—about things that actually exist. To be sure, the astronomer would be exercising faith. He would be trusting that his instruments have given him accurate data, that his coursework and background reading about the solar system and the principles of gravitation are accurate, and that his memory is more or less functional as he analyzes the data. His lecture does indeed articulate the things that he believes. Still, he is reporting on facts. The fact that he happens to trust what he is saying is true, or that he expects his audience to trust him as an expert, is never made the object of his study. No, he is not expounding on his beliefs, even if his lecture could technically be described in that fashion. Rather, he is reporting public facts.

Christians report on reality. They make claims about history. Others don’t want to believe what Christians say, but they are too polite, many times, to call them dupes and/or liars. They want to be nice. They don’t want to be disagreeable. So they come up with a way of “honoring” Christian reports without actually believing what they report—without believing that about which they report. They refer to the “faith” of religious people as if it were a body of philosophy or practical self-help methods safely sectioned off from the real world. This allows them to offer Christians a place in society as long as the Christian report about the world remains rather muted and marginalized. (And Christians are encouraged to go along with this lest otherwise they find themselves marginalized to some degree or other—not least by other Christians who are comfortable with the status quo.)

My point here is simple. We must not forget that the Christian faith is actually a report on the world we live in, and important events that have happened therein. Nothing less. Yet the word’s use in wider society is often aimed at denying that very point. Even though we are speaking of what we believe is true, “faith” and “fact” are opposed in the minds of many.

Doctrine or Teaching?

The difference between faith and doctrine is that doctrine has a perfectly good substitute word that avoids its problems. We would be well served to drop the word and use its synonym, “teaching.” Though technically synonymous, the two words commonly have different associations in the minds of English speakers. Doctrine would be less problematic if there was no such word as “doctrinaire”—just as “Christian Dogmatics” and “Dogma” are tainted in today’s language because of the feelings invoked by the word “dogmatic” as it is used in common speech.

But the problem with doctrine is not just an accidental association with negative words. The term doctrine classifies the Church as a certain kind of community. Lots of groups have doctrines. There is communist doctrine; there is the Monroe Doctrine; there is libertarian doctrine. It is not uncommon to even see words like “orthodox” used in these contexts. We can debate whether Leninist doctrine departs from Marxist orthodoxy.

Doctrine has become associated with ideologies, and ideological groups use the word “doctrine” to refer to their statement of principles. These are propositions referring to everlasting truths that apply in every place and at every time. Obviously, the Church has need to use this sort of thing. The distinction between creation and the Creator, for example, is a general truth for all times and places (at least since God created the world).

Story first, Philosophy second

But we must not forget that the Bible spends relatively little time on such principles. It usually simply assumes them. A story about George Washington crossing the Delaware will presuppose the existence of humans and, specifically, the existence of George Washington. One can imagine the story being used by space aliens in a galaxy far away to prove those points, with little or no concern for the American struggle for independence. Nevertheless, the story is not designed to set forth those ideas. The story is not about the existence of the human race or even the existence of George Washington. The story is about what he did. And the story is often told to those who are to view themselves as the beneficiaries of his heroism.

Let’s consider Paul’s letters since they are often mined for timeless truths because they are so didactic.

As people far removed from Paul’s situation, we have plenty of need to pay attention to the presuppositions behind what he says in order to apply them to our own situation. Our theology—our application of Paul’s writings in the context of the whole Bible—need not and probably should not look exactly like Paul’s own writings. Nevertheless, Paul should challenge us not to allow our report on the Gospel story be merely background to a set of “doctrines” which we teach. The story is everything. When we tell the story of George Washington, we are explaining how the world we live in was brought into being. When we tell the story of Jesus we are explaining the beginning of a new creation that is no less real than the United States.

Paul’s doctrine is simply his teaching about Jesus—how God in him has rescued us through obedient submission to death and a victorious resurrection and rule at God’s right hand as the new creation. Romans begins with a two-stage life of Christ as the content of Paul’s Gospel (1.3, 4) and goes on to spell out the implications of the pattern of death and resurrection. Paul insists the story of a king crucified means that Corinthians’ culture of spiritual one-upmanship is wrong (1 Cor 2.2). The crucifixion of the flesh of Christ means that the world divided by the flesh separating Jew and Gentile no longer matters (Galatians 2.20). Like Hebrew parents explaining to their children how God has saved them from Egypt, Paul explains to us how God in his grace has brought us into a new age.

A mindset engaged in mining “doctrine” from Paul will be prone to miss the fundamental fact that Paul is telling and applying a story. The reader will look instead for a generalized philosophy of life. Yes, all of Paul’s teachings are, strictly speaking, doctrines. But the fact remains that the word “doctrine” tends to predetermine for us what sort of message Paul can write to us.

It has become the favored mode of teaching in the Church to produce books that lay out “the truth” in comprehensive form. These books are useful and even essential for certain kinds of tasks. But one cannot get away from the fact that virtually all the letters of Paul are nothing like this. Romans and Galatians are not written as general summary statements in Christian doctrine but are letters directed to specific churches in specific circumstances with specific needs. Pauline theology is, as we have it, almost invariably pastoral theology. If Paul were to teach in our seminaries in the way he has come to us in the Bible, he would be a professor of Practical Theology. And our systematic theology texts resemble Webster’s Dictionary far more than they do the Pauline letters.

If there was a button to push that would eliminate doctrine from our vocabulary, why would one hesitate to push it?

Learning Christ

One of the great virtues of a word like “teaching” which is lacking in its more anemic synonym is that it can overlap with a word like “training.” Doctrine is something one only memorizes from a page. But that is not what the Apostle Paul tells us to learn. In Ephesians 4.17ff he puts us under oath to “no longer walk as the nations do, in the futility of their minds.” After waxing poetic about their “darkened” comprehension, their alienation “from the life of God,” caused by “ignorance,” which in turn is caused by “hardness of heart,” Paul finally becomes positive about what Christians should be like:

But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Eph 4.20-24; ESV)

Paul tells us we should not go down the road of the nations because we have “learned Christ.” The person of Jesus as King, Christ, is used as a term for a different way of life. This is not at all uncommon for the Apostle Paul. In fact, many times, when Paul speaks of what Christians should or shouldn’t learn, his emphasis is clearly more on practices and attitudes than on doctrines. We read in Philippians 4.9-11, for example, that what the Philippians had “learned and received and heard and seen” in Paul were things to be practiced. Indeed, Paul goes on to speak of learning to be content, a “doctrine” that I don’t believe was or can be gained from a book. Christians are to “learn to show godliness” in a context that plainly means they are to begin practicing godliness (1 Tim 5.4). And again: “And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful” (Titus 3.14).

Words Do More than Denote and the Church is More than Words

When God brought Israel out of the wilderness, he did not simply command that they keep the Sabbath, but he trained them with manna. Six days out of the week they had to go outside and gather food. Anything they tried to store would be inedible the next day. On the sixth day, however, the rules changed. They were able to gather more and save it for the next day. On that seventh day no manna appeared on the ground to be gathered (Exodus 16).

Though the Bible is a book of words, not a food distribution system, it still has the tendency to train as part of its teaching. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians does not begin by telling the readers to be thankful, but with a prayer of thanksgiving (Ephesians 1.3ff). Simply by virtue of listening to the reading of the epistle, hearers are caught up in the practice of prayer and worship in response to and trust in God’s amazing grace. The Bible, in fact, is full of songs, which are not simply reducible to “doctrines.” Yes, we can occasionally be helped by a commentary on the Psalms, but we are usually better off if we will simply pray them, rather than insist on getting ideas out of them.

Add to this the fact that a church is more than simply a lecture hall, and what we are to learn there involves more than simply the memorization of formulas and facts.

But as for you, speak what accords with healthy teaching. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. Slaves are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the teaching of God our Savior (Titus 2.1-10; ESV with minor alterations).

Books by older women may be helpful, but the older women themselves are essential. Titus’ speech must be sound, but they can only qualify as sound if Titus’ behavior comports with them.

What Paul wants cannot come out of a book. It comes from a structured community that is shaped by the Gospel in the Spirit. The Bible’s words are essential to that community, but it cannot replace that community. Emphasis on doctrine encourages the illusion that the book is all we need.

But What About Theology?

People typically assume that by opposing doctrine one is opposing theology. But nothing would do more to interest people in theology than to unshackle it from the associations it has with doctrine. In the first place, since there is some need for what doctrine does in dealing with abstract truths, readers need to remember that “teaching” covers all that needs to be done. The only difference is that we are no longer implying that the abstract and the formulaic is the only important aspect of Christian thought and life. Theology remains valuable. I get to keep subscribing to the system of doctrine in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, for example, just in case any of you were worried about my Presbyterian job security.

But what is theology for Paul the apostle? After exhorting us not to walk like the nations (Eph 4.17) Paul proposes a different sort of walk: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (5.1-2). For Paul, theology is not (only?) fodder for philosophical analysis, but a transfiguring vision revealed in the cruciform Gospel. We become what we worship, and Paul expects the true God revealed in the Gospel to reshape us. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 10.31-11.1). “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself” (Rom 15.1-3a). God has revealed himself in Christ in such a way that we who learn Christ and thus learn God learn a new definition of what we should be.

This sort of theology leaves room for philosophical questions and abstract summations where necessary, but does not throw the emphasis on that aspect of the Church’s task. Doctrine tends to distract us from all that the Bible offers and that the Church is called to do.

Bear in mind, please, that it is always more interesting to express disagreement in a blog than agreement. So, be aware before anything else that it reads to me like Michael Horton hit it out of the park at the WTS conference from what Mark reports about his speech. Great stuff defending Protestant Orhtodoxy from the accusations of post-modernism and foundationalism and defending the doctrine of inspiration!

So, with that in mind, I do want to register a qualm about this:

The incarnation is not a paradigm that God becomes incarnate in Philadelphia. In Chalcedonian christology, the Eternal Word assumes our humanity in the universal sense, not as a certain contextualized individual human. Word mediated not by but to our cultural context.

Well, I probably am completely on board with what Mike is objecting to. But in his positive claim of God uniting with a universal humanity rather than a particular…. No. No. A thousand times: No.

Jesus was a specific historical person from a certain, time, place, and culture. There was no way to participae in “universal sense” of humanity apart from becoming a “contextualized individual human.”

That, at least, is my reaction to the summary in Mark’s notes.

And by the way, the heavens themselves are extremely concerned about the historical, cultural, context. The angels address the disciples by their regional identity: “Men of Galilee.”

1. Presbyterian doctrine teaches what the Bible says about God sovereign control over history and his unconditional choice (election) to bring some people to everlasting glory while allowing others to remain in unbelief and be punished for their sins (Ephesians 1.11; Romans 9.14-24; Proverbs 16.4; 21.1).
2. This doctrine guards against any form of human pride or legalism since those who end up in heaven do so only because of God’s mercy, not because of anything they have done or any quality that they possess on their own (Ephesians 2.8-10; First Corinthians 1.26-31). It assures us that the elect can never fall away or be prevented from inheriting eternal life. This fact is often treated as the key to assurance.
3. But a problem enters the picture at this point. Anyone who knows he is elect knows he is perfectly safe, but not all those who profess faith actually are elect. Some do not persevere (Second Timothy 2.14-19). People end up looking for marks that they can claim only accompany those who are elected to eternal life. Invariably, these marks are incredibly subjective. Some raised in this doctrine will be unsure where they would end up if they were to die in the next hour, even though they have been raised to believe the Gospel message. They are not sure that they are elect.
4. To resolve all this, we need to begin with the understanding that even though God does not elect all people to everlasting life, it does not follow that he is devoid of love for those he passes by. Thus Paul states in Romans 2.4, 5:
   

   Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

   God’s providing opportunities to repent is based on his kindness even though the objects of that kindness are destined for a more severe judgment because they resist the opportunities to repent.

5. Thus, the proper question to ask is not, “What are God’s secret decrees?” but rather, “What has God promised me and/or warned me about?” We have to operate by what God has revealed not be his secret plan (Deuteronomy 29.29). If God reveals his love to someone, the proper stance toward that revelation is not to raise doubts by speculating in regard to the God’s plan for the future, but rather to take God at face value now. In other words, we must respond in faith to what God says.
6. What God has revealed in the Bible is that he has a special people on earth who belong to him through Jesus Christ (First Peter 2.4-9): …coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by men, but elect and precious in the sight of God, 5 you also, as living stones… are an elect race…). Notice that the Apostle Peter deliberately compares the election of Christ to glory with the election of the Church, using terms God used to assure Israel of his love for her.
   

   You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19.4-6a).For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt (Deuteronomy 7.6-8).

   Hear, O Israel! You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak? Know therefore today that it is the Lord your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the Lord has spoken to you. Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people (Deuteronomy 9.1-6).

7. Just as God chose Israel, or as Jesus chose his twelve disciples, God chose the Church, a transnational institution. The Church is an instance of corporate election. Just as Israel was formed by a supernatural deliverance from Egypt, preservation in the wilderness, and conquest of the Promised Land, so the Church is also formed by God’s supernatural work.
   

   Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in [among] you? (First Corinthians 3.16).For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many… Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it (First Corinthians 12.12-14, 27).

8. The results of individual election are ordinarily found in the context of corporate election. God predestines the eternally elect to that everlasting glory by working in their lives to bring them into his people, the Church, by word and sacrament (Matthew 28.18-20). Those who persevere in the Faith show they are predestined to everlasting life. Those who stop trusting God are guilty of rejecting God’s adoption and love. Thus, John Calvin wrote:
   

   I admit that it was by their own fault Ishmael, Esau, and others, fell from their adoption; for the condition annexed was, that they should faithfully keep the covenant of God, whereas they perfidiously violated it. The singular kindness of God consisted in this, that he had been pleased to prefer them to other nations; as it is said in the psalm, “He has not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them,” (Ps. 147:20). But I had good reason for saying that two steps are here to be observed; for in the election of the whole nation, God had already shown that in the exercise of his mere liberality he was under no law but was free, so that he was by no means to be restricted to an equal division of grace, its very inequality proving it to be gratuitous. Accordingly, Malachi enlarges on the ingratitude of Israel, in that being not only selected from the whole human race, but set peculiarly apart from a sacred household; they perfidiously and impiously spurn God their beneficent parent. “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau,” (Mal. 1:2, 3). For God takes it for granted, that as both were the sons of a holy father, and successors of the covenant, in short, branches from a sacred root, the sons of Jacob were under no ordinary obligation for having been admitted to that dignity; but when by the rejection of Esau the first born, their progenitor though inferior in birth was made heir, he charges them with double ingratitude, in not being restrained by a double tie (Institutes, 3.21.6).

9. The mark of individual election to everlasting life is perseverance in faith in God (Mark 13.13; Hebrews 10.32-36). Thus, when Moses assures the Israelites of God’s love, he can seamlessly move to a warning to persevere in that love:
   

   The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. “Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments; but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face. Therefore, you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today, to do them (Deuteronomy 7.7-11).

10. The condition of perseverance, and the warning against abandoning God’s covenant, does not lead to the same sort of introspective problems as has plagued less Biblical formulations. God’s promises are sure. No one needs to worry about what will happen if they were to die in the next hour. God loves the Church and he will not allow one of his promises to fail. He is not going to say, “Sorry, I never elected you and you weren’t really regenerate so I don’t have to honor any of my promises.” Rather, continuing in God’s kingdom is proof that one is welcome to God, is chosen by him, and is alive to him. Those who are disinherited are those who abandon the Faith, not those allegedly missing out on some alleged inward reality. Ulrich Zwingli, the early Protestant Reformer gave an example of what this means:
    

    What then of Esau if he had died as an infant? Would your judgment place him among the elect? Yes. Then does election remain sure? It does. And rejection remains also. But listen. If Esau had died an infant he would doubtless have been elect. For if he had died then there would have been the seal of election, for the Lord would not have rejected him eternally. But since he lived and was of the non-elect, he so lived that we see in the fruit of his unfaith that he was rejected by the Lord (Quoted by Peter Lillback, The Binding of God p. 105).

11. One perseveres in God’s adopted family only by faith. It is not a matter of trying to earn God’s favor or be good enough to be in heaven. The only people who will be raised in glory will be those united to Christ by faith. Faith perseveres because salvation comes in the form of a promise. Thus, the warnings issued to believers have a function in keeping believers from abandoning the faith, just as the promises do (i.e. John 15.1-11; Romans 11.17-23; First Corinthians 10.1-22, etc). Saving faith believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God himself speaking therein; and acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life, and that which is to come (Westminster Confession 14.2). Only by remembering and believing God’s sure and certain promises, will one persevere in God objective, corporate people—to whom those promises are made—and thus manifest that one is individually elect (Hebrews 10.37-12.3). One will then be numbered among God’s sons and daughters in glory at the resurrection because God is faithful.

I don’t remember ever knowing of William Styron, but now I want to read him.

Styron, like many of his generation, was a drunk. It’s hard to imagine what American literature would be like today if booze had disappeared on Armistice Day 1918, not to reappear until, say, the fall of the Berlin Wall. It fuelled countless novels, not to mention movies, that we now consider classics. No doubt it also drowned equally many great works.

It appears as if alcohol was then the preferred self-medication for depressives, and when Styron quit drinking he sank into depression. Yet he emerged with a book on his experience that many consider a great one.

Had to. It was time for a new subtitle.

Plus, I like the narrower column.

Going to Walgreen’s
to get some half-priced choc’late
so, diet be damned!

Maybe I should make this a regular high-art feature.

Hey, if Guy Waters were to review this book what are the chances he would see fit to say anything about “private presses” and “book-length material”?

Tribes alway label themselves the true human beings and everyone else are just human-shaped animals. To even ask for equal treatment between those inside and outside the tribe demonstrates that you just don’t belong.

Respectable scholarship means reinforcing tribal identity in an academic setting using academic language.

(By the way, when I listened to Dr. Hart speak at Auburn Avenue, I was happy to find that he did take steps to be objective and fair. I wasn’t convinced, but I was impressed at how he argued. I would be interested to see him write something on the “federal vision” or “new perspective” involving his own independent research and argumentation.)

One of the many weird evil things floating around the internet is the confident accusation that Steve Wilkins denies any distinction between the the visible and the invisible church(es?). But, to the extent that these accusations involve people who claim Presbyterian doctrine as their own, the accusation is completely false.

Does anyone think that Steve Wilkins teaches that, head for head, the membership in the present church is identical with who will be members of the Church at the other side of the Final Judgment? Unless you answer affirmatively, then you have admitted that Steve distinguishes between them.

People seem to have taken liberties with Steve’s pastoral emphasis on what baptized professing believers have in common and made completely unjustified extrapolations. These extrapolations are all the worse since they openly contradict Steve’s own affirmations.

Derek Thomas expresses what he thinks Calvin would have said. Much of this is simply incapable of interaction because I have no idea where Derek is getting his version of the New Perspective. My wish is that people would respond to Dunn, or Sanders, or Wright, or Garlington, etc. It is simply too hard to pin down what is the target when one hears of the dreaded “New Perspecitve.” Often it sems to be a catch-all for everything that is wrong in the world in the eyes of the critic.

I will address one thing that Derek writes:

As someone who believed medieval Rome taught a piecemeal salvation through a treadmill of sacramental performance, something which he equated in its essence to that of inter-testamental Judaism (aka Pharisaism) as a religion which rung the changes on works-righteousness — seeing both of these as examples of man’s innate tendency to idolatry and self-justification…

This is interesting. Partly, I do think Thomas has a point, not about what would have happened if Calvin had met someone from the twenty-first century, but rather what did happen. Calvin did read Romans and Galatians as mostly a theological treatise on human efforts in salvation over against trusting what God had done in Christ. Calvin’s theology was fine but I don’t think it is as central to Romans and Galatians as Calvin thought it was.

On the other hand, Calvin also viewed Rome and Judaism alike precisely because his view was big enough to permit something that looks quite a bit like “the new perspective” as far as I can see.

Self-justification can just as easily refer to presumption on grace, as the claim to have earned God’s favor.

We celebrate Reformation Day because Reformation Day is important.

But we also celebrate Reformation Day that it may be important. Always important.

What would we be if we did not mention Reformation Day?

If Reformation Day were not kept, then people might not remember that the history of Western Europe is more important than any other history.

If Reformation Day were not kept, then all we would have are teachings from the Bible that any Christian might own as their own, whether they were from China or West Africa.

If Reformation Day were not kept, the memory of Western Civilization might fade, and the Church might be left with the Bible and their own cultural heritages, as if they could ever be as important as Europe in the 1500s.

If Reformation Day were not kept, then people might think that, had Luther not posted his theses, that some other shmoe would have found himself at the center of a similar controversy the next week, or the next day.

If Reformation Day were not kept, how would we know who we are? We would merely be Christians who believed the Bible, not the glorious tribe that we are with our holy founders (all tribes worship their ancestors) our sacred songs and magic places (we don’t make pilgrimages to Rome; we try to go do grad work in Scotland and weep with pleasure to hear a preacher with a brogue).

Being a Reformed believer without Reformation Day would be like being a Presbyterian without ten generations of Presbyterians in our lineage to glory in.

One can never say enough good things about Reformation Day.