Dr. Al Mohler, President of the Souther Baptist Theological Seminary recently participated in a three part conversation about the New Calvinism. It was an interesting conversation with good dialogue until about the 7 minute mark. I felt it necessary to write in response to his remark and so here it goes.
DeYoung, Duncan, Mohler: What's New About the New Calvinism from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.
In this clip, Al Mohler asks, "Where else are they going to go? What options are there? If you are a theologically minded, deeply convictional young evangelical, if you're committed to the Gospel, and you want to see the nations rejoice in the name of Christ, if you want to see Gospel built and structured and committed churches, your theology is just going to end basically being Reformed, basically being something like this New Calvinism, ugh or you're going to have to invent some other label for what's just going to be the same thing.
There just are not options out there and that's something that I think frustrates people...ugh but what I'm asking about the New Calvinism is basically, Where else are they going to go? Who else is going to answer their questions? Where else are they going to find the resources they're going to need and where else are they going to connect? This is a generation that understands, they want to say the same thing Paul said, they want to stand with the Apostles, they want to stand with old dead people, and they know they are going to have to if they are going to preach and teach the truth."
Whoa! Well, I have to disagree based upon the fact that there are other options and good ones at that. The list of characteristics that he described seem to fit where I am at along with many others that I know but we actually have found other options. Is my only option the New Calvinism? I wasn't aware that we would all end up bowing the knee and confessing with our tongue that the New Calvinism was the truth to preach and teach.
The Reformation was a great time in history and has offered us so much that is good and right and true, but what about 1500 years of Christianity that preceded it, what about the global church and the untapped self-theologizing of the Majority World? Will they all figure out once they self-theologize that they too are part of the New Calvinism? Will African theology agree with the New Calvinism? Will Chinese theology be a fan? Will South America allow this Western Reformation tradition to direct how they do theology? What about Native North America? Will they also bow the knee to the New Calvinism? An audacious claim such as this only breeds contempt and is typical of much of our Western dominated theological vision. It only feeds our narcissism and top-down evaluation of the rest of the world's input at the table of theological dialogue.
Paul Hiebert, the late and well-respected anthropologist/missiologist, talks about how global theology, where in each culture has input on the interpretation of Scripture and reality, is more like a blueprint than a map. It seems that Dr. Mohler would have us believe that our history in theology and self-theologizing is more like a map that we are slowly plotting and discovering and we only have to look back at what was initially discovered and laid out as we plod on to new ground, though there is little to discover that is of much importance.
Paul Hiebert sees it much differently. Our Western tradition only represents certain sheets of the blueprint of the narrative of Scripture, the truth about God and the message of the Gospel. We are limited in our understanding of the entire blueprint because God has only given the Western tradition so much of the blueprint to work on and help others see. But as the Gospel is established in the Majority world, we will see many nuances and major insights about Scripture that we have never seen before as they are discovered by people in contexts that we have never visited or even known about before. They offer the rest of the church another page of the blueprint and though the Western tradition of theology has helped tremendously with our pages of the blueprint, now it's time to hear from others and allow their pages to be held up, seen and appreciated and at times for them to critique our over-emphasis on our pages of the blueprint. Altogether, we will be able to see God's vision for his church built if we allow for the entire blueprint to be accessed and referred to. As long as the Western tradition thinks that our pages are the only pages or the most important ones, then we deny the rest of the church access to the grand vision of God's work in history and as such should be ashamed.
Statements like Dr. Mohler's only encourage that agenda and as such need to be checked, rebutted and dealt with swiftly but gently. My guess is that gentleness may not work in this case, though it is the way of God.
"Dr. Mohler, you're a good man, but your evaluation of this New Calvinism movement and the tradition of Calvinism as you define it is far to myopic for the more robust and grander vision that still awaits us and that lead up to the Reformation. Please don't ignore the rest of the world or and their coming voice, or the 1500 years of church history and tradition leading up to the Reformation. We do not all want to be Calvinists. We do read Paul, we do stand with the Apostles, we do respect the voices of many dead saints from history, but we also read and dwell in the living words of a living Savior who is not dead. We have convictions, we love Jesus, we rejoice in the name of Jesus being lifted high in the nations and we want to see the glory of the Lord fill the earth but do not want to be Reformed or become Calvinists and there are going to be many more like us. We have good places to go and we don't have to end up at your door necessarily. That kind of hegemony has never been good for any society and I hope that you would retract your statement and honor the nations, the coming theologies, all of church history and those who think radically different than you do but still love Jesus wholeheartedly because they are your brothers and your sisters and you have disrespected them. Please reconsider and join the community of the globe in our desire to honor Christ in spite of our differences in theological trajectories and visions. Thank you for your hard work and commitment and blessings on your journey!
-Nathan Smith
good stuff, Nathan :)
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