Some Extra Calvinistica
Clarifications, but no Retractions from “Forget Calvinism. Become a Zwinglian”
Yesterday’s article, “Forget Calvinism. Become a Zwinglian,” provoked a mixed response.
Some of you resonated with my criticisms of “the Calvinist vibe.” These criticisms should be no surprise, given some of my previous writings.
But others felt that, in “forgetting Calvinism,” I was throwing out the baby with the bathwater, abandoning the right use of Calvinism because of its abuse.
In this brief follow-up I want to offer some clarifications.
And then, tomorrow afternoon at 1:30 EST, I’ll go live on Substack to discuss further.
Radical Rhetoric
The first is that the title is just that: a title. Originally meant for YouTube, I tried to formulate an attention-grabbing headline for a video, and then an article, about 16th-century theology. I believe I succeeded on that front.
Of course, to know what exactly I am abandoning one must look at the actual content of the post, where I clarify that it is primarily the Calvinist vibe I am rejecting, not the actual Calvinist doctrines of predestinarianism and monergism.
Secondarily, I do say in the piece that I will no longer absolve Calvinism of responsibility for the Calvinist vibe. Calvinism so often leads to this overemphasis that I think we need to see if something is wrong at the theological level.
Another way to put this is that I am going beyond Abraham Kuyper’s strategy of blaming Calvinist extremes on Radical Reformation tendencies. That is a prominent emphasis of Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism, one which I have adopted (for instance, here). Those lectures basically argue that Calvinism is the true humanism – a thesis to which I would be sympathetic had I not encountered so many permutations of Calvinism that are anti-humanist or fundamentalist in orientation.
(Dr. Simon Kennedy and I discuss the contradictions of Kuyper in this interview. We believe that Kuyper’s doctrine of worldview stands in unnoticed tension with his humanistic emphases.)
Instead, I am suggesting that Zwingli offered a more humane form of Reformed theology than the mainstream of Calvinism.
Some of this is admittedly rhetorical. Different expressions of Calvinism appear at different locations on the spectrum from fundamentalist to humanist. One reader reminded me of the forms of Calvinism he encountered at Ligonier and L’Abri. I consider these forms of Calvinism to be strongly humanist in orientation. Call it “study-center Calvinism.”
If anything, “study-center Calvinism” is what I seek.
It is “seminary Calvinism” that I criticize.
Readers Encounter the Calvinist Vibe
And that critique is what some readers resonated with. Calvinist preaching, as taught in seminaries, has a tendency to veer toward, “You can do nothing right. Stop trying. Christ obeyed for you.”
Or as one reader put it, “Hopefully the Calvinist mantra of ‘scum, slime, filthy sinners!’ Is starting to crumble.”
Another: “Literally heard a sermon yesterday on Gen 6 and Noah’s unmerited favor and how ‘you could fill the Scripture’s with the sins of Noah’ when the text literally argues the opposite.”
What these readers are expressing is their encounter with the Calvinist vibe. As I put it, to exaggerate human sinfulness in order to expound on and exaggerate the role of the grace of God.
(How is it possible to exaggerate the grace of God? By expanding the domain of grace so far as to impinge on the domain of creation, as I explained here.)
I’ll give you another example.
A professor of mine from seminary argued that, while the presentation of the gospel should lead to “third-use of the law” application, this should always be followed up with a second gospel presentation, so people know God’s forgiveness for failing in their Christian obedience.
He then admitted that this second-gospel presentation should lead to grateful obedience too. But you might fail in doing your quiet time, so a third gospel presentation, and so on.
Basically, you should alternate between law and gospel at the end of a sermon in ever quicker fashion until the law-gospel dialectic trails off:
Ideal Sermon:
LLAAWWW, GGOSSPELL, LAW, GOSPEL, Law, Gospel, law, gospel, lawgospel, lawspel, l, g, lglg…
But that’s not how Paul wrote epistles and the author of Hebrews preached sermons.
First, you expound on the gospel (e.g., Ephesians 1-3).
Then you exhort people to righteousness (Eph 4-6).
Then you say, “Bye.”
(Or, “Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.” Eph 6:24.)
In other words, there is no need to apologize for the third use of the law, the application of “the law of Christ” to our lives.
We don’t need to be saved from our failure to be sanctified. We actually need to be sanctified. That is in what our salvation consists.
We aren’t so sinful that the Spirit can’t fulfill the reason Christ came to earth: “that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom 8:4).
Calvinism, with Some Sauce on the Side
Finally, Zwingli was a Calvinist, and Calvin was a humanist.
I’m not sure the details of Zwingli’s thinking on limited atonement, but he was certainly a predestinarian and an Augustinian monergist. So by saying we should be Zwinglian, I am not saying we should abandon those core Calvinist teachings.
Instead, I am saying that, if Calvinism always comes with some sauce on the side, we should chuck the Calvinist aioli for some hearty Zwinglian barbecue sauce.
There are also many elements of humanism in Calvin. Calvin was a humanist who first wrote academically on Cicero. His writings are replete with the glory of God in creation, even if he does also emphasize the blindness of sinful humanity. I could have written about how Calvin is actually humanistic in orientation, as many others have.
(I’ve had Susan Schreiner’s The Theater of His Glory: Nature & the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin on my shelf for a while.)
But rather than fight with, e.g., the Van Tillians over the legacy of Calvin, I thought I would bring in another, lesser-known figure: Zwingli.
In doing so, I hope to have provoked your curiosity concerning the first Reformed theologian.
Substack Live Tomorrow Afternoon to Discuss Further
If you’re interested to discuss Zwingli further, or you’re still not convinced, join me live on Substack tomorrow afternoon. At 1:30 pm EST Wednesday June 11, I’ll talk about the Zwingli Option on Substack live. I’ll send a Calendar invite shortly.
INTR (Pronounced “Inter”)
Work continues on my academic articles of interdisciplinary theology. “Tempted Yet Without Sin: No Temptation Is Purely External” is on the front-burner right now.
Read more about the academic wing of The Natural Theologian here:
Introducing INTR: The Institute for Interdisciplinary Theological Research
About a month ago, I sent my doctoral advisor a draft of my Ph.D. dissertation.
Concerning video titles, it never ceases to amaze me how so many people cannot read in terms of the "act" in speech-act theory.
But to the greater point, I deeply believe that the issue among reformed people is not that they exaggerate the sinfulness of man too much, but that they have almost no emphasis on our union with Christ.
Good rewrite, Joel. I see much better what you are trying to correct, and what does not need the correction -- seminary Calvinism vs. study center Calvinism. That is an interesting distinction.
You are trying to recapture the term humanist in a scriptural way, Genesis 1:26-27 I am guessing, as opposed to the humanist is more purely leaning toward rationalism. So then Bavinck is a humanist, so is Sproul and Kuyper.