Charles Darwin or Jonathan Edwards: Who Caused the Church More Trouble?

Can We Learn Anything from the Much-Maligned John W. Nevin?

John Williamson Nevin

What follows is a book review published originally in Modern Reformation. The story of its publication is ironically humorous. I originally wrote it for and sent it to an online publication which would have paid me nothing for the review. I would have been very happy had it been published there. My understanding at the time was that my commitments and that Journal's were all but identical. However, the review was rejected. Several reasons were given. The two that I recall were that Nevin had been suicidal (ever heard of Cowper?) and that it would not be good for young men to have their attention called to Nevin (anyone seen CTS'. RTS', or WTS'  reading lists?). Eventually I submitted this to Modern Reformation which not only published the review but paid me for it! As everyone knows money is the great vindicator!

Like Nevin, though for somewhat different reasons, D.G. Hart is considered controversial by some. In fact, there seems to be a determined effort to dismiss him - this though Hart is a first class historian whose work is highly regarded within the academy. The respect is reason enough for some to dismiss as no true Christian scholar could be respected by secular scholars. Three of Hart's books have had significant and formative influence (if I may speak experientially) on me. These are The Lost Soul of American Protestantism, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America, and the book reviewed below. 

               A Review of John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist 

by D.G. Hart

D. G. Hart Smiling

Who brought about the bigger changes in American Protestantism, Charles Darwin or Jonathan Edwards? Most historians argue that the sea change came after the War Between the States. Protestantism had to grapple with the problems created by cities and industries, the challenges of higher criticism, the changes brought about by looking at religion through the lens of psychology, and the apparent undermining of Biblical faith by Darwinism.

This period is considered the point at which Protestantism had to go over on the 

defensive. The result was that some tried their best to adjust to the changing realities (liberalism), while others circled the wagons (fundamentalism). Such is the conventional wisdom.

In this fine biography of John Williamson Nevin, an obscure 19th century one time Presbyterian, then German Reformed professor, Hart argues that American Protestantism experienced its most determining change much earlier through the work of Jonathan Edwards and his co-revivalists (the term “revivalist” does not identify Edwards with the errors of Finney, the excesses of the Second Great Awakening, or revivalism’s current incarnations).

If as historians assume, the measure of the church is its healthy relationship to matters external to it, such as the economy, the world of learning, or domestic or international affairs, then the period after 1870 was indeed a critical one for American Protestants. But if, as Nevin argued, the well-being of the church is determined by its own internal affairs, its worship, its sacramental life, its creed, then the critical period for American Protestants came well before the nineteenth century (p.233).

Hart contends that Nevin...

...recognized not simply the historical discontinuity between Calvin, Ursinus, and the Westminster divines on the one side and Edwards and Finney on the other. Nevin also articulated the fundamental incompatibility between revivalism (the system of the [anxious] bench) and the historic branches of the Protestant Reformation (the system of the catechism [here standing for the whole of the ministry of the ordinary means of grace]). The former was subjective, individualistic, and didactic, while the latter was objective, corporate, and sacramental. In a word, the anxious bench located religious authenticity inside the believing individual, the (system of the) catechism in the corporate practices of the church (p. 234).

Herein lays the primary significance of Nevin for Reformed and Presbyterian churches today.

Let’s get this out of the way. Nevin was quirky in personality and in views. He struggled with depressive episodes and had an acerbic pen. He made much too little of preaching for a Reformed Protestant and perhaps over-read Calvin on the Lord’s Supper (though this may be excused partially by the generally low view of the Lord’s Supper held in his day, to say nothing of ours.) He put too much emphasis on the incarnation and not enough on the atonement. He was influenced by German philosophy (though perhaps no more so than the Princetonians were by Scottish philosophy). He is not the man Westminster Calvinists would want to see teaching systematic theology in a Reformed seminary.

Let’s also get this out of the way. The Federal Visionists seem to like this biography (apparently because they perceive Nevin as an historical ally). It is true that the Federal Visionists are concerned, as was Nevin, with the effects of revivalism on the church and with the low view of the church and sacraments that obtains among Reformed Protestants, but neither the Visionists nor Nevin are alone in those concerns. The errors of the Federal Vision theology must not be used to dismiss Nevin, or others who share a higher view of the visible church and the effects of the means of grace and a different view of conversion and piety.

To hold such views is not to believe that that all the blessings of redemption are actually bestowed at baptism but may be lost by covenant unfaithfulness, or that election is conditional, or to question the Reformation’s formulations of justification, or imputation, or covenant.

Consider these questions:

(1) What is the nature of the church? Is the word “church” roughly equivalent to “all the Christians in the world”, or is it an institution with a body of doctrine, a system of government, a unique mission, and a form of worship? Is the church the earthly agency of applied salvation, or is salvation an individual and personal matter essentially between the soul and God? Do the Reformed truly believe, as their confessions teach, that outside the visible church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation? Is the church our mother apart from which we cannot have God as our Father? Are Reformed Baptists and historic Presbyterians one except for differing views of the subjects and modes of baptism and of forms of church government or are there profound differences about the nature of the church, of the covenant, and of conversion?

(2) What are the effects of the means of grace? Are the means of grace the channels by which the grace of God flows into those who receive them? Is not baptism among some Presbyterians little more than a “baby dedication” with water? Is not the Lord’s Supper in practice little more than an ordinance that stirs pious remembrances and feelings? Fully acknowledging that there is no ex opere operato in connection with the means, do we believe that the Spirit ordinarily accompanies their use to make them effective? Do we expect the work of God to go forward by the faithful administration and reception of the means of grace or are we treading water while we await revival?

(3) What is the nature of conversion? Are baptized children to be pressed regarding the need of a distinct and memorable conversion experience, or are they to be expected to believe and they are taught the faith in the ministry of the Church? Are professing Christians, faithful in attendance upon the means of grace and communicants in good standing, to be led toward a form or self-examination that requires the person to ask, “Have I been truly converted? Has the transaction occurred? Have I closed with Christ?” Or, are they to be treated in accord with their profession and standing, charged to walk worthy of the faith, and encouraged as they make the long and difficult journey to world to come?

(4) Why are some Protestants tempted, as was Nevin, to “go over” to Roman Catholicism? Is one reason the lack among “low-church” Reformed churches of historical connectedness with the church of the ages, especially with the post-apostolic Fathers? Could another be the frothy superficiality, the lack of substantial edification, the loss of awe, and the random nature of worship that has been infected and affected by revivalism? Does the word “liturgy” conjure up thoughts of Roman Catholicism (and/or liberalism)? Could yet another be the lack of unity that seems to be one of the unintended consequences of the Reformation? (Or are we to be satisfied with some sort of undefined ethereal spiritual unity requiring no visible form?) Is it possible that one of the reasons the Federal Vision has gotten such traction as it has is because there are these nagging doubts about what Protestantism has wrought?

(5) What is the nature of church office, especially the minister of the Word? Are ministers men through whom Christ speaks? Or, are they enablers and equippers whose service is to get church members to do the “real ministry”? Are ministers to be respected or treated with suspicion and any power they may have kept in close check? Does the minister really have the keys to the kingdom in his hands as he preaches the Word and administers the sacraments?

What are our intuitional answers? Would they have been the same in the 19th century, or are they the same in the 21st as they would have been in the 16th century or even the 17th – that is, in the period of the writing of all the Reformed statements of faith? No doubt there are differences that can be detected between Heidelberg and Westminster, but this book contends that, despite the differences, their conceptions of the church, of the sacraments, of the ministry, of conversion, and of piety share a broad consensus that is different from what developed after the age of Edwards as revivalism re-shaped Protestantism.

Nevin’s importance to us today is not so much in his views of the “real presence” or his incarnational theology, but his seeing clearly what revivalism had done and calling the church back to what he thought was an age of more healthy piety.

William F. Buckley defined a conservative as someone who stands athwart history and shouts, “Stop!” That is what Nevin tried to do about with regard to what he considered as the untoward changes in the ecclesiology, worship, and experiential soteriology brought about by the triumph of revivalism. The evidence is all around us today that, whatever we may think of the value of Nevin’s insights or the rightness of his views, he failed. So pervasive is the influence of revivalism on the theology and practice of Protestantism that those with whom Nevin may resonate have before them a task nearly as large as the Reformation itself.

D. G. Hart has given us the second in the series of biographies of American Reformed men, and an excellent volume it is. Here is a sympathetic, but nonetheless critical, telling of Nevin’s life and theology. It is a fitting complement to his near magisterial work, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism. Those who would understand where we are, how we got here, what may be wrong and to where we might return will do well to purchase and read these two volumes.

The Days of Creation: What Kind? How Long?

The Genesis of the Problem

Henry Morris - 6-24

B.B Warfield - Day Age

Meredith Kline - Framework

What follows is a Soul Food column published in the July 26/August 2, 1997, issue of World magazine. Several notes are in order: (1) This is obviously not a scholarly piece, something of which I would not have been capable, even had I not been working within the 1200 word limit for these columns. (2) This was intended as a popular introduction to the three views of the days of creation of which I was aware at the time. It was written prior to the formation of the PCA's Creation Study Committee on which I served in order that every other member might go home knowing himself smarter than at least one other person in the room. (3) I was not aware of the "analogical days" proposal of Dr. Jack Collins when I wrote this. I have chosen to leave the column as it was published 16 years ago. (4) Dr. Morton Smith, whom I accurately quote in the next to last paragraph, no longer holds the postion represented by the quotation. He holds to the 6-24 view of the days and believes this positon to be the one required by Scripture and Confession. I should add that no one played a bigger role in the formation of my theological views than Dr. Smith.  (5) After never having had my views regarding the creation days regarded in any Presbytery as an exception to the the Standards of my church, my views were recorded as an exception in 2005 by Mississippi Valley Presbtery (of which I had previously been a member twice), and I was instructed not to teach or inculcate any view that deviates from the 6-24 postion which is regarded as the only view not an exception to the Standards. Therefore, I note that what follows (a) is a record of something I wrote in 1997 and (b) in any case only describes three views and asks for brotherly discussion. (6) I believe that the great divide is, or ought to be, between those who can and those who cannot confess with the Nicene Creed: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen." As the Creed divides those who believe the true Faith from those who do not with regard to the Person of Christ, so it divides those who believe in creation from those who do not. 

"The question of the antiquity of man has of itself no theological significance. It is to theology, as such, a matter of entire indifference how long man has existed on the earth...The question of the antiquity of man is accordingly a purely scientific one in which the theologian as such has no concern."

Who said that? The latest evangelical to capitulate to the pressures of unbelieving science? No, it was the greatest defender of biblical inerrancy in the history of the American church, Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield, who also wrote: "The church is bound to confess all that God has lovingly revealed to her as his truth. What the Bible teaches, not what is convenient, undisputed, or likely to put us to the trouble of defending, is the proper measure of the contents of our credo."

At least since the days of Augustine the church has wrestled with how to interpret Genesis 1 and 2. To be sure, the question has become more acute and the debate more intense since Darwin, as is evident in the writings not only of Warfield but of his fellow Princetonians Charles Hodge, A.A. Hodge, and J. Gresham Machen. But the difficulty has faced the church always.

There are three approaches to Genesis 1 and 2 among evangelicals:

The "literal" view, which takes the days to be six consecutive 24-hour days. Suppose you took a seven-day vacation and reported it in a book of seven chapters, each devoted to a single day. Your report makes it clear that your vacation lasted exactly seven ordinary days and that, while you may not have reported every detail, you did follow a strictly chronological  sequence both from day to day, and within each day. This is the "literal" approach.

Its strength is its reading of the creation account in a way that strikes many Christians as the natural way to read it - as a straightforward historical account of how the world was created.

The "day-age" view, which takes the days to be equivalent to successive ages of undetermined length. Suppose you took a long vacation reported in a book of seven chapters, each devoted to a phase of your vacation. Your concern is to report your vacation in an orderly fashion.

Thus, the chapters are in roughly chronological order, but the chapters do not necessarily record periods of equal length. Nor can any more be said of the material in each chapter than that it belongs to the period reported. This is the "day-age" approach.

The strength of this view is that it records creation as a chronologically ordered account while allowing for the earth to be as old as it appears to be to most scientists.

The "literary" view, or "framework hypothesis", which takes the days to be "snapshots" of God's multi-faceted creative work. Suppose you took a long vacation and reported it in seven chapters. Your theme is "a good time was had by all" but the chapters are organized around beach experiences, mountain experiences  amusement park experiences. So the "literary" approach reads Genesis as a polemic against polytheistic paganism organized around the theme "the Lord God made them all" but unconcerned about sequence or chronology.

The strength of this view is that it reads these two chapters of Genesis in a way that to many Hebrew scholars as well as ordinary readers seems to fit Moses' purpose and style and removes Genesis from certain aspects of the alleged "Bible-science-conflict" as not having been written to settle those questions.

The point of this brief review of the views is to say that all are held by theologians and Christians who believe that the Bible is the Word of God, infallible and inerrant in all it teaches. We need an ongoing, open discussion of three questions: What does the text teach? What does science seem to show? How are theological and scientific insights to be integrated? My theology professor of 25 years ago has written regarding the days of the creation: "Though we may have strong convictions regarding this question...we do not have enough information to settle it definitively. We should refrain from judging fellow Christians who differ with us on this particular question." 

What we need, to turn the words of a country song, is "a lot more talk and a little less action." More discussion, less defensiveness. More debate, less denouncement.

What is the PCA? A New Side - New School Church

Making Some Sense of the PCA

Dr. Morton Smith, First Stated Clerk

Dr. Paul Gilchrist, Second Stated Clerk Dr. Roy Taylor, Third and Present Stated Clerk I am pulling out and republishing a Blog I posted originally in June of 2011. As you will find below in the introduction to that posting, the original article was published 11 years ago. Why republish it now? (1) In my view the original describes still the kind of denomination the PCA is. The more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same. Described from the point of view of Presbyterian history, the PCA is still a predominantly New Side - New School church. (2) The matter of PCA identity has become an issue of even more acute concern than it was in 2002. First there was the PPLN and now the National Partnership, both seeking to pull the PCA in a "missional" direction. I understand that "missional" is a term of rather recent invention. However, I believe its roots are in both the New Side and New School. The missional model seeks to focus the church on what it should be doing rather than what it should be believing. It is not that believing is not important to those who are missionally minded. Rather, it is believed that the things that are really important are not at stake and that differences that exist must not be allowed to distract from the church's mission. The mission itself, however, is no longer understood in terms of the "spirituality of the church." The church must not only preach the gospel, administer the sacraments, and nuture her people, both adults and children. She must be engaged in word and deed ministry, in curing societal ills, in doing justice, and in transforming the culture. The purpsose of republishing this piece now is to present what I believe is a plausible, if not comprehensive, explanation of who we are. (3) This Blog has gained a little more attention and and a few more readers since its inception in 2011, so perhaps there are those who were not aware of the orignal Blog post who will desire to read the piece now. It remains only to note that this Blogger is in the tiniest minority in the PCA. In the context of Presbyterian history, he is both Old Side and Old School.

What is below is with some revisions a piece I wrote just after the 2002 “Good Faith Subscription General Assembly" of the Presbyterian Church in America. One revision is a more modest title. It was originally titled Making Sense of the PCA. I am no longer confident I can do that.

One note regarding the subscription matter itself: I voted against the “Good Faith approach.”  But I am just as troubled as candidate after candidate and minister after minister is examined in my Presbytery avowing that he has absolutely no exceptions to or clarificatory statements to make regarding the Confessions and Catechisms. Every time I wonder, “How can this be?” I am tempted when this avowal is made to rise, as did an old friend in another Presbytery and to ask, “Have you read them?”

In the past ten years the Presbyterian Church in America has experienced tensions about such things the nature of subscription to its Confession, the nature of its mission, the parameters of its worship, the role of women in relation to offices and ordination, and the limits of its doctrinal tolerance with regard such things as the Federal Vision. Is there any way to understand where we are and how we got here? One way of making sense of the denomination is by looking at the present in the light of American Presbyterianism’s past.

Here is a working hypothesis: The PCA is a majority New Side/New School Presbyterian Church, with a substantial minority that is either New Side/Old School or Old Side/Old School.

I need to define my terms in order to allow others to consider my hypothesis. I paint with a broad brush: The New Side/Old Side differences among Presbyterians focused primarily on their differing views of revivals in general and the Great Awakening in particular. The New Side (coming from a more Congregationalist than strict Presbyterian background) viewed the revivals as a blessing. They feared “the danger of an unconverted ministry” and were concerned about unconverted church members. They believed the revivals, which first disturbed and then converted sinners within and without the church and awakened and stirred to holiness and action true believers, had Biblical precedents. Itinerant ordained and non-ordained speakers were often the instruments of revival. Religious experience was intensely personal and greatly concerned with whether or not one had been genuinely converted.

The Old-Side Presbyterians (coming from a predominantly Scots-Irish Presbyterian background) had a higher view of the church as an institution, more confidence in the work of settled, ordained ministers carrying out the ordinary ministry of Word and sacrament, and a greater emphasis on corporate religious life.

There were tensions about confessional subscription in this controversy with the New Side tending toward a broader view and the Old Side tending toward a stricter. But theNew Side was by no means monolithic in its confessional moderatism. The Tennent brothers, for instance, defended both the revivals and the rather strict subscription called for by the Adopting Act of 1729. For a while there was a division between the Old-Side and New Side (1740s), but eventually the Old Side minority and the New Side majority reunited (1758). However, tensions remained between those who emphasized confessional orthodoxy and corporate religion and those who emphasized revivals and personal piety.

If the occasion of the Old Side/New Side controversy was the First Great Awakening, the occasion of the Old School/New School s controversywas the Second Great Awakening. If the Old Side/New Side controversy centered on revivalism, the Old School/New School controversy centered on confessionalism.

The Old School Presbyterians had differing appraisals of the First Great Awakening, but they shared a growing unease about the Second Great Awakening with its Arminian theology and its new measures (“the anxious bench” that was the beginning of the Invitation System) in evangelism. The Old School men were appalled by what they saw as the emotional and behavioral excesses of the Second Great Awakening. (It’s one thing to weep under the conviction of sin and another to bark like a dog!)

The New School, in order to defend the theology of the Second Awakening, had to argue for a much broader view of the essentials of the Westminster theology and for a much weaker view of what commitments an officer made to the Standards when he took his vows. The New School strongly favored mission over theology while the Old School held that theology defines and directs mission.

Because of its emphasis mission the New School favored working with para-church societies to accomplish evangelism and missions, while the Old School believed it was the Church herself that was to spread the gospel and build up the Church. A part of the mission-orientation of the New School was its commitment to engage social issues, such as slavery and temperance, and so to move ever closer to Christianizing America, while the Old School held to the “spirituality” of the church’s mission.

The New School had a relatively low view of the Church as an institution and of its authority, while the Old School held to a relatively “high” Presbyterianism. (Of course, the Old Schoolers could differ among themselves on polity. In debate Charles Hodge accused James Henley Thornwell of promoting “a hyper-hyper-Hyper-High Presbyterianism” while Thornwell retorted that Hodge held to “no, no, No Presbyterianism.”)

The majority Old School (roughly equivalent to the Princeton theology in the North and virtually the whole of the South) removed the predominantly New School Synods in 1837. However, the two groups reunited in the South during the War between the States and in the North shortly after the War. In both cases the Old School believed itself firmly in control of the Church, but in time the Old School lost its grip, and, first in the North, then in the South, the New School grew in influence till it came to dominate both Assemblies.

How does this explain the PCA? There are at least three groups within the PCA which share a New Side/New School orientation: the Columbia Seminary founding generation now passing away, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (RPCES) influx, and the new leadership consisting primarily of large urban/metropolitan church pastors and denominational executives.

Most of the founders of the PCA had been educated at the most conservative of the PCUS (Southern Presbyterian) seminaries in the 1950s and 1960s. While Columbia could trace her heritage all the way back to Thornwell, the most eloquent voice for Southern Old Schoolism, there was little of Thornwell’s influence remaining (William Childs Robinson being the exception) by the time our founding leaders were educated at Columbia.

The students were considerably more conservative than the faculty at Columbia, but they were never much exposed to the old Confessional orthodoxy of the Southern Church. They believed in the Bible, in “the fundamentals,” in the gospel, and in evangelism and missions. They took their ordination vows with sincerity, but they did not understand their subscription vow to bind them to the whole Westminster Confession.

Many of these brothers (who were energetic and courageous and to whom we owe our gratitude and give our respect) were influenced by movements that were not consistent with the Confession. I think of Finneyism (not just Edwardsian revivalism but semi-Pelagian, Invitation System revivalism), of dispensationalism (in both North and South dispensationalism gained a strong foothold among conservative Presbyterianism becoming sometimes identified as a sign of commitment to the Bible), and of perfectionism (in the sense that one might attain a “higher life” by a crisis experience termed as a “full surrender” or “total consecration” or “being filled by the Spirit”).

In addition, they were suspicious of church institutions and authority (having witnessed and experienced the corruption and abuse) and were ready to cooperate with any evangelicals in order to win the world for Christ with the time remaining. While a few of these had drunk more deeply at Dr. Robbie’s well than Dr. Manford George Gutzke’s, the majority were representative of the conservative evangelicalism (think Billy Graham) which was then emerging as a major influence in American Christianity.

It was not clear at the time of Joining and Receiving (J&R) in 1982 what the impact of the influx of the RPCES would be, but time has proved that it broadened and strengthened the New Side/New School segment of the PCA. The RPCES was the result of the union of the dwindling Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, General Synod (a “new light”  break-off from the older Covenanter denomination), and the larger Evangelical Presbyterian Church (formerly the Bible Presbyterian Church).

It is the dominant Evangelical Presbyterian Church that concerns us in trying to understand the PCA. In 1936 the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) was formed by those, both Old School and New School, who left the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) during the Modernist controversy. However, the unity of this new denomination was not to last for long. In 1937 a group left the OPC and formed the Bible Presbyterian Church. The Bible Presbyterian Church itself split in 1955, with a minority following Carl McIntire. The result was that there were two BPCs: the Columbus Synod (the majority) and the Collingswood Synod (the McIntire group). Eventually, the Columbus Synod renamed itself the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, merged with the New Light Covenanters to form the RPCES in 1964, and was received into the PCA in 1982.

To understand the RPCES and its impact on the PCA we have to ask why the OPC split in 1937. D.G. Hart has demonstrated, in Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America, that the “split paralleled almost exactly the division earlier between Old School and New School Presbyterians” (p.165). The need to stand against modernism and unbelief had papered over the differences among conservative Presbyterians, but these were soon revealed.

Machen stood for Old School strict confessionalism. He heartily adopted strong Westminster Confession Calvinism. Though he had led the formation of the Independent Board for Foreign Missions, he was a Presbyterian by conviction and practice and wanted the Board to support only missionaries who accepted Reformed theology and Presbyterian polity (which led to his ouster from the Board even before the split). Machen believed in the spirituality of the Church and in the liberty of the Christian conscience; hence, for instance, he did not endorse Prohibition.

These things proved too much for those who desired a milder confessionalism (tolerant of not only pre-millennialism but of dispensationalism), a minimizing of Presbyterian distinctives and denominational differences, and a Christian life characterized by separation from “worldly practices.” Even though the side of the BPC which became the EPC then the RPCES, was more Reformed and Presbyterian and less combative than the McIntire group, the roots remained New School; and, though there was some indication the RPCES might move toward Princeton Old School positions, this did not materialize. The RPCES that joined the PCA was and is predominantly New Side/New School and has infused another stream of New Side/New Schoolism into the PCA.

What then of the new leadership? It seems to me that the one word, which best catches the outlook and agenda of this group, consisting primarily of large urban/metropolitan church pastors and denominational executives, is “missional.” In the New Side/New School tradition, mission is looked upon as the main thing that can provide for the Church’s definition, unity, and vitality.

One of the primary reasons for the 2002 adoption of the “good faith” subscription amendment (with its introductory material arguing that “good faith” was the position of the founders and the historic practice of the PCA) was to try to put an end to “doctrinal wrangling” so that the church can concentrate on mission. One of the major reasons for “streamlining” General Assembly operations was to keep the church focused on mission. Concern for doctrine, or polity, or procedures must not be allowed to distract from mission.

Mission requires us to rethink what it means to be church and to do church. In my view, all this requires us to sit loose on doctrinal formulations, on polity issues, on how we worship, and on what the nature of the mission of the church is, so that, as we understand more of this “post-everything” culture and figure out how to respond, we can make the necessary adjustments to further the emerging sense of mission. This is decidedly the New Side/New School outlook, dressed in new clothes, but with the substance of the body unchanged.

My argument is that this represents the majority of the PCA. If we take the 2002 Assembly vote on “Good Faith” Subscription as an indicator, 60% of our church holds to the New Side/New School type of Presbyterianism. At the same time a substantial minority in our church holds to Old School Presbyterianism, which is not on the fringes, but at the historic center of Presbyterianism, both North (especially at Princeton) and the South.

This Old School Presbyterianism is at the same time ambivalent about New Side Presbyterianism. Some embrace the revival movement and its emphases. This has been true from the beginning among those whose Calvinism is of the “experimental” sort. Commissioners may recall Dr. Morton H. Smith, an Old School Moderator warning in his moderatorial sermon of the danger of ministers being unconverted, a classic melding of New Side revivalism with Old School confessionalism. More recently concerns about the covenantal and sacramental views of the Federal Vision have pushed some to a more decidedly New Side stance.

Others, who are Old School are also Old Side (the author takes a moderate Old Side/Old School position), wonder if the attempt to combine the New Side with the Old School will not always make the Old School vulnerable to the New School that emerged historically from the New Side. What is clear at present is that the men of both New Side and Old Side convictions are united in their Old School convictions and commitments when it comes to confessionalism.

The PCA today can at least in part be made sense of in this way: She is majority New Side/New School church. But she has within her a strong minority of Old Schoolers of both New and Old Side views. The issues of doctrine, polity, subscription, worship, and mission remain live ones that are sure to stir lively discussion and debate for the foreseeable future. The soul of the church has been and yet is at stake for both the majority and minority.

There She Goes Again: Andree and Me

A Woman and Her Bible: 

Part Deux or Part Trois?

Dare To Be a David?

I have on two previous occasions addressed Faith and Inspiration  columns written by Andree Seu Peterson for World magazine. 

I disagreed when she asserted that Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12 Steps are shamelessly cribbed from Scripture. We often hear this kind of thing in Christian circles, and some evangelicals have tried to appropriate the 12 Steps to help those who engage in addictive behaviors. But the 12 Steps do not come from the Bible, and in my view they cannot be Christianized by casting them with Christian words supported by a Biblical “proof texts.” 

I disagreed with her also when she explained her approach to Biblical interpretation which makes the individual conscience supreme. No doubt this is the majority approach to Scripture by evangelicals. What can be said for it is that it does recognize the authority of the Bible, but it is also representative of American Protestant individualism and anti-authority-ism. It’s “just me, and my Bible, and the Holy Spirit.”

Before I go any further, let me say two things: On the one hand, I am not a big fan of Mrs. Peterson’s “over a nice cup of tea my mother and I talked meaningfully and had a good cry” style of writing. On the other hand, as a gatherer of materials for an online magazine, I read most of her columns and from time to time recommend them to the editors for republication.  

I find myself again disagreeing with one of Mrs. Peterson’s columns, Don’t Waste Your Sufferings. I have no disagreement with the exhortation the title gives. However, I do disagree with some of the substance of her piece.

For one thing she takes a shot at the redemptive-historical approach to interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures.

Some people chide that we must not mine the Old Testament for role models, but not God. It is His big idea:

“For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). 

“As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord” (James 5:10).

“… Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7).

It is worth noting that the Hebrews 13 text  to which Mrs. Peterson refers does not point us to Old Testament examples of faith but to contemporary church leaders (compare 13:7 with 13:17) some of whom may have died.  But we do not disagree that there is an exemplary use that can be made of the lives of Old Testament men and women of faith. What we disagree with is the rather cavalier dismissal of the warnings that practitioners of the redemptive-historical approach give regarding the exemplary use of Old Testament biography.

I learned primarily from Dr. O. Palmer Robertson the approach that I believe enabled me to keep my eye on the ball when interpreting the Old Testament. It’s primary principles are: (1) God’s revelation is progressive, an ever more unfolding of himself in a succession of covenants that build upon one another. (2) God is not only progressively revealing himself in the Old Testament but is also progressively unfolding his plan of redemption that was conceived in eternity, announced after the fall, and worked out in the course of history. (3) The climax of revelation and of redemption is Jesus Christ, the Son made flesh to make God fully known and to accomplish finally the plan of redemption. (4) The Old Testament must always be understood in light of the finality of the  revelation given in Christ and the completion of revelation given through the Apostles in New Testament. (5) The Old Testament characters to whom God gave his revelation and through whom he accomplished his redemption must be understood in relation to Christ, and the Old Testament form of the people of God, the nation of Israel, to which he entrusted his revelation and for which he worked his redemption, must be understood in relation to the New Testament form of the people of God, the Church.

This approach does not rule out a cautious and conservative exemplary use of Old Testament biography. The New Testament writers do this in numerous places (eg. Romans 4: 16-21; 1 Corinthians 10: 1-13; Hebrews 11). But it does keep us from getting distracted away from God’s purpose in history and most importantly from Christ who is the focus of it all. It helps to guard us from speculative use of the Old Testament characters.  And, it keeps us from the kind of moralism which ends up as “don’t be bad and do bad (like Saul) but be good and do good (like David)” which is contrary to grace, faith, redemption, and Christ.

Let’s look at the particular exemplary use of the Old Testament that Mrs. Peterson chooses to make her point:

I have chosen  one vignette to convey how David’s example of suffering in a godly way inspires me upon every remembrance of it, and especially when I am also in a dark place: It happened during the days when David was young and constantly on the run from a jealous King Saul. Having few options, he ran to Philistia and pretended to align himself with them, while actually making secret military forays with his band of loyal fighting men against random Israelite enemies. On a single day, tragedy befell him: The Philistines suddenly turned mistrustful of him, and a surprise attack on his camp by the Amalekites bereft him and his men of all their wives and children. There was talk of stoning him.

I cannot think of a lower point in David’s life up to this time. Rejection was total. He was not welcome in Israel, he was not welcome in Philistia, and his closest friends had had it with him. It is not even clear to me whether this trial was a case of no-fault suffering or at-fault suffering, or whether David was filled with self-recrimination and felt he had made big mistakes in judgment by coming to Philistia in the first place. He sat alone in a scorched field from which his family and goods had been carried away, and if you can top that scene in your own life for sheer misery and helplessness, you are truly a person acquainted with grief.

In our age of weakened manhood, this would be an occasion when many would check out of trusting God for a while, and give themselves permission to sink into abject self-pity, doubt, and anger at God until it passed. But David was an uncommon man. All he had was God, and he could see that this demonic all-out attack on him was far bigger than he was, and that only God could get him out. Furthermore, he believed that He would. And so we are told:

“… But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God” (1 Samuel 30:6).

 This brief summary is as far as we are admitted into that private communion between David and God, and what words passed between them. But I feel quite certain that if you read the Psalms you will get a Tvery good idea of what transpired. It suffices to know that out of that intense and muscular seeking of David emerged new energies and strategy and hope from God to turn around his fortunes.

In our age of weakened manhood, this would be an occasion when many would check out of trusting God for a while, and give themselves permission to sink into abject self-pity, doubt, and anger at God until it passed. But David was an uncommon man. It suffices to know that out of that intense and muscular seeking of David emerged new energies and strategy and hope from God to turn around his fortunes.Let us not waste our sufferings. It has been said that one is always either already in a suffering, coming out of a suffering, or entering into a suffering. If in good times only we speak pious words about God, what is the worth of our faith?

There are several things to note:

(1) Mrs. Peterson does not know what to do with the whole of this part of David’s biography. Was he right or wrong to have left the kingdom of God to look for safety? Was he right or wrong to have sheltered himself among the Lord’s enemies? Was he right or wrong to have deceived the Philistines? Did he bring the suffering upon himself or did others visit the suffering upon him? Similar questions can be asked about David’s earlier decision to seek asylum among the Philistines that led to his saving his neck by pretending to belong in an asylum. Or, what about Abraham’s decision in light of providential circumstances to leave the Land of Promise to find food in Egypt? Was this a wise decision to provide for his household or was it a failure to trust God to provide in the place to which God called him? The point is that no one can know. It requires bringing to bear on the text principles of conduct we believe we find in other texts and then speculating about how to apply them to the particular case at hand. The question one must ask when interpreting a biographical incident or an historical event is, “What are the controls? What keeps me from saying that? What permits me to say this?”

(2) We surely believe that there is an example in David’s strengthening himself in the LORD, his God. But what are we to make of the use Mrs. Peterson makes of this?

In our age of weakened manhood, this would be an occasion when many would check out of trusting God for a while, and give themselves permission to sink into abject self-pity, doubt, and anger at God until it passed. But David was an uncommon man.

Was he? Well, yes and no.

Think about the earlier situation when David had gone to live among the Philistines because of Saul’s threats (1 Samuel 21: 10 - 15). When the King Achish’s men warned him about David, “David was much afraid...So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.” Not David’s (or anyone’s) finest hour. 

But, if we can rely in the inscriptions to the Psalms, two of them (34, 56) came out of this experience. In both Psalms it is God who delivers David from danger, and in both David emphasizes that he (though with a racing heart and trembling hand) trusted in the Lord. He points to God’s faithfulness (which is constant) and to his faith (which was not). Would you write a Psalm about how you were trusting in God while you were scared to death you were going to die when you had the heart attack? Or, when you fell apart and wept uncontrollably when you lost that person you love?

David could write of his life as he did in such Psalms, not because he was an uncommon man, but because God is an uncommon God who will not desert to his foes that soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose. There is so much that is common, even sordid and sorry, about David - e.g. his adultery with Bathsheba, the whole of his dealings with Absalom, his census taking. At the same time there is much to admire. He could rise to great heights. Which is to say, David was an ordinary man who happened to be chosen by God to play an extraordinary role in the history of God’s extraordinary salvation. A big part of the role that David plays is not to point us to himself as a man of triumphant faith and consistent holiness but to point us to the need for Someone truly extraordinary, who would occupy David’s office but be so unlike David, -great David’s greater Son. 

David and every other Old Testament saint (or New Testament saint or any other believer) will disappoint you. But not Jesus, the Christ.

(3) Mrs. Peterson tells us that we are not privy to what transpired between David and the Lord when he strengthened himself in his God, but she feels we can find out if we read the Psalms.

This brief summary is as far as we are admitted into that private communion between David and God, and what words passed between them. But I feel quite certain that if you read the Psalms you will get a very good idea of what transpired.

We do not wish to pick nits, but which Psalms are we to consult? Which ones will enlighten us as to what transpired between David and the Lord at his point in his life? At least with regard to the earlier incident among the Philistines we have the ancient inscriptions to guide us. But not with this incident. There are many places in David’s Psalms where he speaks about his trust in the Lord, including the two we cite above. There are Psalms that give us insight into the dealings between his soul and God in specific situations, most notably Psalms 51 and 32 (to put them in their probable chronological order) both dealing with the aftermath of his sin with Bathsheba. But, to tell us that, if we go to the Psalms, we can can learn what happened within David when he “strengthened himself in the LORD” does not lead us to such a discovery.

Finally, it is necessary to point out that any exemplary use of Old Testament biography cannot be indiscriminate. Of necessity it must be selective.

Do you learn from Abraham and Sarah that, if a couple seem unable to conceive, the wife may recommend a surrogate to the husband? Do you learn from David and Abigail that, if a fool dies and leaves behind a wife, you might be justified in taking her as an additional wife? Do you learn from Samson to be careful about loose women? Do widows learn about how to court eligible men from Ruth?

Or what about Esther? Recently Aimee Byrd, The Housewife Theologian,  has thought about Esther as she read Iain Daguid’s commentary:

But here we see Esther obliging to her uncle’s request to conceal her faith. And she seems to have no qualms with being a contestant in the king’s beauty pageant. Duguid sums up well what Esther cooperatively does for the sake of the empire. “She was willing to be poked and prodded, perfumed and prepared over a period of twelve months for her one night stand in the royal bedroom” (29). “We would hardly coin the slogan ‘Dare to be an Esther at this point in the story” (28).

Indeed. But at any point in any Biblical story you can look at the Redeemer and know that the plan of redemption does not rely on how exemplary is any saint's faith or life. Nor does your salvation depend on how exemplary is your faith. It all depends on the Author and Finisher of our faith.