Friday, April 20, 2012

Background to the 'Reformed' Tradition

For many, especially within the ‘Reformed faith’, there is a genuine failure to recognize that what they believe to be pure Gospel, from ‘scripture alone’, is actually informed, potentially, anyway, from an intellectual context that might not be ‘pure Gospel’. I would claim to be a ‘Reformed Christian’ (even an ‘Evangelical Calvinist’), so I’m not knocking the Reformed tradition; rather I want to alert us to the fact that some catechisms, some Confessions might not be as ‘pure’ bible as many folks think they are. In other words, there is a conceptual background to these respective confessions that might serve the Gospel; but sometimes (and esp. within one dominant development in the ‘Reformed tradition’) some of the conceptual background might ‘dis-serve’ the Gospel. Denis Janz makes this point about the development of Reformed theology:
If there is one thing that can be called a genuine breakthrough in the last half-century of Reformation studies, it would be the ‘discovery’ that the Reformation had a background. The reformers, all of whom were theologians, and a good number of whom had formal academic training in the discipline, emerged out of a theological landscape that profoundly shaped their horizons. Some elements from this late medieval theological bequest they rejected; some they appropriated; and still others they sublated by taking something old and fashioning from it something new. In other words, their ideas did not spring to life ex nihilo, or descend from above, or emerge full-blown from an ‘objective’ study of the Bible alone. They worked in the intellectual context of late medieval theology, and consequently, without some grasp of this context , there can be no adequate understanding of their theology. By today, this realization has had an impact on every area of Reformation studies. (Denis J. Janz, David Bagchi and David Steinmetz, eds., “The Cambridge Companion To Reformation Theology,” 5)
The problem is, especially amongst the popular level, this “breakthrough” that Janz speaks to is unrealized. When folks conceive of God in terms of decrees, for example, they assume that this comes straight off the pages of scripture. There is little, or no recognition that in fact Reformed theology has an intellectual history (see Stephen Strehle’s: The Catholic Roots of the Protestant Gospel); and that that history is not necessarily self-same with scripture (i.e. there are competing intellectual histories).

Until this general thesis is acknowledged, what we are calling Evangelical Calvinism will never get a fair hearing. Why? Because Federal Calvinism (Classic) will continue to assume that their reading of scripture is scripture; without any critical recourse to the fact that maybe their perspective actually has background.

This is one of the burdens of this blog; to inform folks of the “background” within the “Reformed tradition.”

7 comments:

  1. This is a problem for all of evangelicalism. And, actually, I would say that the conservative Reformed tradition is far more aware of tradition than their evangelical allies. The real victims of historical naivete are the various free churches: Baptist, nondenominational, Evangelical Free, Pentecostal, Holiness, Wesleyan, and the like. These are the groups that, far more than the Reformed, pretend that they are reading the "simple" and "clear" doctrine off the pages of Scripture, without the need for any tradition-informed lens.

    If we are to be precise, the problem with the conservative Reformed is not that they are unaware of the tradition in which they interpret Scripture; rather, the problem is that they are unaware of the other traditions that are available, including other trajectories within their own Reformed tradition. At best, they may be aware of the Dispensationalist tradition from which they came as converts to Reformed theology, but that is where their knowledge of other traditions will end.

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    1. @Kevin,

      I'm not so sure; I mean I agree with you about the 'Free' churches, but it is the Reformed with their cognizance of their historic and Reformed heritage that seems to cloud their reading of Scripture sometimes more not less than the Free. While they are aware of their history, often, they don't engage that history 'critically' but in a way that gives them a 'step-up' from say the Free churches in their engagement of the Scripture. Such that their confessions and catechisms lose their stated subordinate role relative to Scripture, and instead become the lens through which Scripture is interpreted with an uncritical and confessionally binding belief that their confessions have "already" got it all right. Functionally leading to an interpretive magesterium (this is in line with what Ian has written below).

      Your last paragraph is the point I'm trying to make through this post. I agree with you, and on the Dispy point for sure. I have plenty of friends who have made this move from the Dispy heritage; I have made this move, but of course not to classic Covenant theology, but to a Covenant theology of a different kind ;-).

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  3. Bobby,

    A problem is that many reformed use Reformed theology as a hermeneutical lens by which they will reject certain thought, not because it is truly wrong exegetically or theologically, but because "it is not in keeping with Reformed theology." Consequently, "reformed and always reforming" (adjusting with arrival of further light on biblical text/interpretation/context, etc) become untrue or a reject principle.

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    1. @Ian,

      I agree with your assessment. This is the charge that Barth makes against the Lutheran's Augsburg Confession, but I think, functionally or de facto (V. in principle) this holds true for many in the Reformed trad (post-Reformed orthodox); there is a movement (like that captured by Westminster Theological Seminary California) to repristinate and not reform in light of a fresh and constant rereading of Scripture in light of it's living and dynamic reality---God in Christ.

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  4. And Barth says it of the Augustana in an environment in which the Prussian Union wound up creating a de facto Lutheran environment, bc the Calvinists would accept it as a confession and the Lutherans would accept no other confession. But the same could be said of the Lutheranism in America that fled the Union -- just as ideologically focused on the Augustana as a pristine source of doctrine through a Protestant Orthodox lens that involved reading scripture as a compendium of propositional truths to be given assent. The calcification of confessional orthodoxy in all flavors of post-Reformation Protestantism involved exactly such a scriptural hermeneutic parallel to a self-grandfathering confessional ideology. Only the missional movements escaped this combination of doctrinaire pietism because they weren't preserving anything. And it takes rooting around behind orthodoxy -- it takes realizing that preservation has created a massive lie about the origins -- to reach back and see that the reformers were not the animatronic corpses we hold so dear!

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    1. Great points, Matthew. I especially liked your usage of 'animatronic corpses' ... nice!

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