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| Home > Theology > Thoughts on the Present Controversy: Part 2, "What's New?" |
| Thoughts on the Present Controversy: Part 2, "What's New?" | | Date Created: Oct 15, 2005, 09:07 AM |
One of the questions often asked about the present controversy has to do with the newness of the ideas and practices associated with the FV/AAPC theology. How is it that men will claim that the Westminster Standards or the Reformed tradition must be corrected with new insights from recent biblical theological advances, but then when they are challenged about the newness of their theological statements they appeal to "earlier" Reformed tradition to back up what they are saying?
Good question. The basic answer, I think, is that what we are witnessing in the larger PCA community (e.g., weekly communion, younger child communion, a higher view of baptism than was has been popular in past decades, a more communal/social approach to life in the church, and more) is both "new" and "not new," but in different respects. It provides a new angle from which to approach the exegesis of the NT, but that does not necessarily mean that the theological product of exegesis will be vastly different from the best in Reformed tradition. Rather, it means that the product will be enriched and deepened by a more careful and insightful exegetical grounding. [And I must say that the best in Reformed tradition is not always that which is the best known in modern Presbyterian circles.]
Some of the terminology and phraseology is new. I'd admit that. But again, this should be no problem. That's one of the great things about "system" confessional subscription. We don't bind ourselves to a particular forms of words, just to the overall content. So we have freedom to reformulate biblical truth for the context in which we're called to minister. I learned this view of theology from Dr. Jones at Covenant Seminary when he made us read John Frame's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. This was a formative book in my theological development. His definition of theology as "application" means that our theology will always be "new" as we apply the unchanging Word of God to genuinely new situations. I think that's what's happening today. To insist on using archaic terms, phrases, and language to communicate God's Word to today's world is a kind of idolatrous refusal to live in and serve the world God has given us at his moment in time. Living in the past, escaping into our own romantic conceptions of 16th or 17th century church life has always been a temptation to Reformed people.
If postmodern people think more in terms of "story" and "metaphor" and "relationship," there's no reason why we shouldn't use those kinds of forms and categories to communicate, rather than the more abstract, scholastic, ahistorical approach of the WCF. Indeed, this postmodern move brings people much closer to biblical ways of thinking than modernist rationalism. Please, don't anyone tell me that I've embraced relativism. Postmodern thought is much richer and deeper than the pop form we are so used to hearing trashed by many American evangelical preachers.
I've listened to my share of PCA preachers on tape, and I can tell you that none of them use "Westminsterspeak" in their sermons. And that's a good thing. All one has to do is listen to the lectures by Richard Gaffin and N.T. Wright at the 2004 Auburn Avenue Pastors conference to know that these two men were almost speaking in two different languages. Whatever one may think about N.T. Wright's theology in every particular, listening to his lectures one has to admit that he knows how to communicate God's Word to contemporary people. I don't want to say that Dr. Gaffin does not, of course. I love Gaffin's work in the Resurrection and Redemption, for example. But it has to be said that his vocabulary and general contours of his communication seemed rarified and abstract in his lectures. I don't know how else to put it. Unless one was steeped in the language and categories of our narrow tradition of systematic theology Gaffin's lectures would be very difficult to follow. Was N.T. Wright wrong in the way in which he sought to communicate biblical truth? Is it dangerous or unorthodox in some way to translate theology like this? I don't think so. I know, I know, some will say that it's not N.T. Wright's communication skills that are in question here, but his core theology. True enough. But a lot of the current confusion comes because we Reformed pastors and theologians have not acquired the skill of translating biblical truth in this way, and what is worse, we often interpret such enterprises (like N.T. Wright's) as aberrant theology simply because we don't hear our cherished terminology parroted.
I have a suspicion that those who are most critical of FV are failing to admit that the same basic truths can be contextualized and reformulated a thousand times over without losing the substance of the truth. That's what a lot of this about. There's a lingering cultural imperialism at work here. But why shouldn't we be free to reformulate the same old Gospel in a way that people today can understand? For me, being "missional" is just a higher priority than being "confessional" in the narrow sense that many TRish FV opponents insist upon.
I didn't always think this way. I've had to repent and take back a lot of the TRish kinds of things I said in the 1980's. I remember sitting in Dr. Adison Soltau's missions classes at Covenant Seminary in the mid '80's and hearing from him a very critical attitude towards the Westminster Standards when it came to missions work. He taught us that the Westminster standards were so culturally bound that they were difficult to translate in missions' contexts. Well, I used the seethe in that class because I was so enamored with 17th-century Reformed theology at the time. I've changed. Now I think Soltau was mostly right - maybe a bit too categorical, but mostly correct. And now I get in trouble because I've come around full circle from being a TR. I was in trouble then, and I'm in trouble now. Go figure. It must be me. ;-)
Probably Peter Leithart is the PCA guy that gets hammered the most for his new ideas and new ways of communicating. I've known Peter since the late 1980's before he went to Cambridge. He was called to a PCA church in Birmingham and had a hard time getting into the presbytery at that time. He was so concerned to articulate his theology accurately that they suspected him of duplicity. He nuanced his answers so carefully that he was judged with suspicion. Peter is the most honest and humble guy I know, but his mind is extremely fertile and his work is a genuine goad to traditionalist ways of reading the Bible. I love him for that. His work on the biblical meaning of "priests" ought to transform the way that Reformed theology has traditionally defined priesthood in her confessions and catechisms. If we really embrace the full meaning of the adjective "Reformed," especially the modus operandi of semper reformanda, then Peter's new insights into the biblical text ought to be a good thing and goad us on to continuing to reform our theological formulations according to the infallible Word of God.
But I guess my point is that not everyone who has learned something positive from N.T. Wright, for example, and might be categorized as a "FV proponent" agrees with Peter's attempts to revise things. Even Doug Wilson, Peter's "boss" in Moscow, disagrees with some of Peter's own criticisms of traditional reformed categories. Anyone who really takes the time to read Doug Wilson's presbytery exam will discover that Wilson is very, very traditional.
Having said all that, sometimes I'm not even sure what really unites the AAPC/FV guys other than certain common interests in the theology and the Bible, especially baptism, the Lord's Supper, the liturgy of worship, biblical theology, etc. Some of the men might indeed have genuinely new ideas. But they are all so different in many ways. Perhaps the common denominator is that none of them are strict in their subscription to the Westminster Standards and sycophantic followers of any one branch of Presbyterian tradition. In other words, it may be that their ecclesiastical enemies have made them into a unified movement because they perceive a threat to their own cherished branch of Presbyterian tradition.
That's enough rambling for one night. More on this new/old issue in the next installment.
Go to Part 3 |
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