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| Home > Theology > Thoughts on the Present Controversy: Part 1, "Names, labels, & Slogans" |
| Thoughts on the Present Controversy: Part 1, "Names, labels, & Slogans" | | Date Created: Oct 08, 2005, 04:53 PM |
The "Federal Vision" or "Auburn Avenue Theology" debate has been around now for a few years. For more than a year I've participated in our Presbytery study committee's deliberations related to the theological issues raised by the controversy. We are nearing the end of our work and are about to make a preliminary draft of our report available to the presbytery at our meeting next week. What I say in this and future posts on this subject do not necessarily reflect the collective conclusions of our committee. I want to make that clear up front. Our committee was actually quite diverse and we arrived at a consensus document that seems to have satisfied (if not entirely pleased) everybody. In other words, we all made compromises in order to live in unity as brothers in Christ.
I don't want to talk about those conclusions, however. I might be willing to once they become public. We'll see. They will be public soon enough. I'd rather talk about more basic concerns, matters that trouble me a lot more than differences of opinion about how to formulate theological definitions and whatnot.
To get at the heart of the misunderstanding one has to dig deeper. The issues that divide so many PCA ministers and elders are largely due to systemic misunderstandings between the various parties in this debate. There's an awful lot of semantic dissonance as well. Systemic and semantic. The second first.
Wthout a doubt the divisions among us are being exacerbated largely by terminological confusion, especially how the various "sides" are being labeled. I'm not suggesting that there are no substantial differences between the various "parties." Surely there are real differences. I'll get to that in due time. You'll see what I think they are as you read the coming installments in this "series." And I do believe the differences are significant, but not insurmountable. At any rate, there might be a lot more fruitful discussion if the labels being used were carefully defined and agreed upon by everyone.
Part of the problem is that this AAPC/FV/NPP "movement" is not really a movement at all. It's a very loose association of men, mostly friends, who share similar concerns. But everyone is different and has different views. There was no cabal to spearhead some movement. No on-going coordination of writings and ideas for the purpose of acheiving some goal.
The labels were invented by men who disagreed with one or more of the speakers at the now infamous 2002 AAPC Pastors' Conference. The original title of the conference was "The Federal Vision." But by this they simply meant to call attention to the fact that the conference would be about the "covenant" (= foedus in Latin; so "federal" theology = covenant theology). That was innocent enough. Churches do this all the time. They had no plan or intention to create a new "movement" or a new "theology."
There's also a great deal of confusion about the use of the label "New Perspective on Paul" (NPP). It is really not accurate or appropriate to refer to any of the AAPC men as "proponents" or "advocates of" the NPP. If, for example, I say that I've learned something from reading certain men in the NPP school of thought (Hays, Wright, Dunn, Sanders, etc.), that doesn't make me a NPP advocate or proponent.
I'm not a specialist in NPP literature by any stretch, but the reason I've occasionally resonated with N.T. Wright, for example, and have been able to learn from him - and to a lesser degree Hays, Dunn, Siefrid, Garlington, etc. - is because they all are, to some degree, within an exegetical trajectory I already possessed, one that I learned from guys like Vos, Ridderbos, Gaffin, Frame, Poythress, and others within the tradition of redemptive-historical biblical theology.
Now, does the fact that I have learned from N. T. Wright on the Gospels or from Hays on Galatians mean that I'm a NPP pastor or an NPP advocate? I don't think so. Honestly, I really don't care much about the academic school of thought labeled as the New Perspective on Paul. And from what I have read from representative thinkers - Sanders, Dunn, and to some degree even N.T. Wright - I don't like or agree with what they are saying about a great many issues. Dunn's Christology is suborthodox at best. Sanders is a liberal that denies the central solas of the Reformation (at least the little I've read gives this indication). N.T. Wright's formulations of justification are indeed problematic. His advocacy of the ordination of women is dead wrong. I think his little book What St. Paul Really Said scores some good points, but the whole thing may be enormously confusing to most simple Protestant Christians, especially his denial that justification is "entry language." I have no interest in defending him on this score. That said, however, his work on the Gospels and his popular commentaries are magnificent and enormously significant. And even if one doesn't agree with everything in his Romans commentary, it is a masterful work and will set the agenda for issues related to the exegesis of Romans for some time to come.
I have heard similar sentiments expressed about the NPP from the FV/AAPC guys, too. Lumping all these guys together with the NPP isn't all that helpful. It may have significant rhetorical use when those who want to condemn the loose association of men identified as FV/AAPC guys toss around the NPP label. But which PCA ministers are really advocating the New Perspective on Paul? Advocating? Do any of the FV guys endorse everything any NPP guys says, even N.T. Wright? Nobody I know of. Most explicitly differ with him on some key aspectds of his articulation of and understanding of justification. But that doesn't mean they can't learn from him and use him as long as they do so critically.
What's happened, it seems to me, is that many PCA men have indeed learned something from various NPP authors (esp. Wright), but this doesn't make them advocates of NPP.
And the kinds of concerns that are gaining ground (renewed emphasis on the community, sacraments, liturgy, etc.) are not necessarily part of the NPP movement. Hear this, everybody. The academic school of thought labeled NPP is not really about liturgy and sacraments at all. Indeed, I was embracing paedocommunion, weekly communion, and a high view of baptism in the early '80s! This was well before most people in our circles even heard there was a NPP. An interest in those topics does not make me an FV or AAPC or NPP advocate or proponent!
Doing theology by slogans and labels is a violation of biblical wisdom. James warns that we are to be "quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger" (1:19). Jumping to conclusions about someone because of who they have read or what topics in theology they are interested in is irresponsible. This is the lazy man's way of judging a another's theological integrity.
By the grace of God I will continue to resist submitting to this universal idiocy that we do theology by slogans, labels, and catchwords. I refuse to be pigeonholed, except in the general category of Reformed. And even that category historically is a relative one. Remember "Reformed" is short for "Reformed according to the Word." At one time it signaled a Christian for whom all traditions, even churchly traditions, but especially treasured words, definitions, and categories were always subject to the correction of the Word of God. Calvin even refused to subscribe to the words of the ancient creeds when he sensed that his committement to the absolute authority of the Word of God would be compromized.
When everything is reduced to slogans and labels, and when otherwise good men will not make the effort to understand a fellow minister's concerns even when the terms he uses might be unfamiliar, then you can be sure that there are deep personal and political reasons that lurk not too far below the surface of what appears to be simple theological differences.
Go to the next part in the series. |
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