Written by Craig A. Carter |
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Something is happening to young people that is not happening among other age groups. What could that be? It seems obvious that what this age cohort has in common, which sets it apart from older adults, is that it contains students in and recent graduates of the school system. If the shift from liberalism to Marxism in our society is being driven primarily by the K-12 and post-secondary education system, then this poll tells us two things. First, it tells us that Marxist identity politics is capturing a lot of young minds. Second, it tells us that promoting racism to fight racism is dangerous for certain groups.

The biggest flaw in critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and the burgeoning anti-racism movement is that these ideologies try to fight racism with even more racism. It is important to understand why.
They define social justice as justice between groups rather than as justice for individuals. This leads them to reject the idea of objective, color-blind standards that give each individual an equal opportunity to succeed in life. For writers like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, the goal is to equalize access and incomes for groups.
Shifting the focus away from individuals to groups defines success in terms of group outcomes rather than individual opportunities. So, if certain groups have been historically disadvantaged, the remedy is as much reverse discrimination as it takes to balance the ledger. This is something that the left sees as the task of big government using social engineering.
This represents a shift from a classical liberal individual rights approach to a Marxist, intersectionality approach. This shift has been advocated by the radical left for decades, but recent events show they are gaining ground. The emphasis on group identity over individualism and equity of outcomes over equal opportunity is no minor change in society’s structure.
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Evangelicalism in the twenty-first century confronts a choice. Will we find the courage to be confessionally Protestant? Or will the movement continue to drift into an ever-evolving, amorphous, experience-based form of piety that is untethered from historic orthodoxy and the catholic faith? The former tendency grows increasingly rare; the latter predominates today.
The Evangelical movement began in the 1730’s in England as a movement of revival seeking to renew a Protestantism vitiated by dead orthodoxy. Over the past 300 years, however, the movement has become more and more diverse and less and less confessionally Protestant.

The Protestant Reformation was a movement of reform in the Western church that, unfortunately, resulted in a schism between Rome and a number of churches including the Reformed churches, the Lutheran churches and the Church of England. The schism happened because the reformers insisted on reform and Rome insisted on submission. It is important to understand clearly what the Reformation was about and what it was not about.
First, what was the Reformation not about?
The Protestant reformers never challenged the consensus that unites both Eastern and Western Christianity symbolized by the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, with its clarifying codicil adopted at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. God is one substance (ousia) and three persons (hypostases), Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is one in will and power and the persons are equal in glory and majesty, distinguished only by their eternal relations of origin. The Son is one person in two natures, fully human, and fully divine. The Athanasian Creed, which probably was composed in the century after Augustine’s death, sums up the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas that unite the Church in a common confession.
Since the Nicene Creed was an expansion of the Apostles’ Creed, the latter of which goes back to the second century as a baptismal creed, we have a five-century long development of creedal orthodoxy that all Christians believe expresses the true teaching of Holy Scripture. The Protestant reformers and their successors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries never dreamed of being anything other than catholic Christians in confessing this orthodox tradition. The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Second London Confession, and other Protestant confessions of faith affirm the orthodoxy of the Athanasian Creed as basic Christian doctrine.
The Reformation also was not a dispute about the mighty acts of God in salvation history, which both Rome and the Protestants affirmed without qualification. The Bible records and interprets the mighty acts of God in history by which salvation comes to the world. Genesis 1-11 is a prologue that deals with world history up to the time of Abraham. It sets the stage by clarifying that the world was created good but fell into sin because of Adam’s disobedience. Genesis 12 begins the story of Israel, which is God’s redemptive plan to redeem Adam’s fallen race and ultimately to redeem the fallen creation through the covenant of grace.
The Exodus was one of the greatest acts of God in history, but far from the only one. The entire Old Testament witnesses to the history of the covenant of grace with Israel. The Old Testament is essentially unfinished and points forward to the climactic act of God in history that we know as the Incarnation. The virgin birth, sinless life, atoning death, bodily resurrection and ascension, and future return of Christ is the center of history, the fulfillment of the hopes of the Old Testament, and the means by which salvation comes to the world.
The Reformation, then, was not a disagreement regarding the Trinitarian and Christological heritage of the universal church and it was not a disagreement regarding the mighty acts of God in salvation history symbolized in the creeds. Rome and Protestantism were on the same page on these issues.
So, what was the Reformation about?
According to Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and the other reformers, the Roman Catholic Church needed to be reformed because of many errors concerning how the benefits of salvation accomplished by God’s mighty acts in history culminating in Christ get applied to the believer. This caused debates in areas such as soteriology, sacraments, and ecclesiology. Purgatory, the mass, the role of Mary, the papacy, and justification by grace alone through faith alone were important issues. Since the authority of the Church was used to stifle criticism from the Protestants, the issue of the relationship between the magisterium and Scripture became a major point of contention.
The authority of Scripture over ecclesial authority was affirmed by the Protestants and appeals to tradition were treated with respect but not allowed to override Scripture. The reformers appealed to the authority of Scripture, not with the intention of undermining the creeds, but with the intention of correcting more recent teachings on matters that go well beyond the creeds.
But we should be clear, neither side was debating the Trinity or Christology at this point and neither side was denying miracles or the bodily resurrection of Christ. Protestants never rejected the Apostles’, Nicene, or Athanasian Creeds or the Definition of Chalcedon. All the Reformed confessions were written by theologians who accepted the Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy of the first few centuries as the true meaning of the Bible.
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Written by Craig A. Carter |
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Into human cultures dominated by mythology, the Bible reveals the novel idea of history. History is the idea that the cosmos had a beginning (creation) and is going somewhere (eschatology). Mythology says that matter is eternal and everything goes in endless cycles.

Can Christian theology make do with the kind of “historical Adam” that is just an evolved hominid with a nickname? That is the question arising from a recent headline in Christianity Today: “Evangelicals Have Four Proposals for Harmonizing Genesis and Evolution.” Progressive evangelicalism continues to lobby the rest of us to jump on the Darwinism bandwagon, but are they advocating a “historical Adam” or merely a “mythological Adam”?
The article’s premise is that evangelicalism is in big trouble because the culture is becoming more and more offended at our “anti-science” stance. Young people, we’re told repeatedly, are leaving the evangelical church because of its supposed Darwin denialism. This is supposed to alarm us, even though the fact is that the most Darwin-affirming churches are losing members the fastest and dying out. So, maybe this isn’t the whole story.
One does get weary of hearing how orthodox Christianity will expire any day now unless it openly embraces evolutionary ideology. This has been breathlessly proclaimed for 150 years, and it has not happened. On the contrary, what has happened is that the forms of Christianity least receptive to the Darwin myth have grown in numbers and influence all over the world, while those most receptive to it are rapidly shrinking into insignificance. But why get all fussy over the facts when there is a bandwagon to jump on?
If you look at the four options discussed in the article (a rehashing of a book by Calvin University physics professor Loren Haarsma), they boil down to two possibilities: Adam and Eve did not exist, or Adam is just a nickname we give to one of the early hominids who evolved into modern human beings. There is no special creation of Adam, no special creation of Eve from Adam, no original sinlessness, and no historical fall into sin. Human beings just evolved naturally from lower life forms, precisely as naturalistic evolution says. Nothing changed ontologically either for human beings or for creation as a whole as a result of a fall into sin. The world today is exactly as it always was; death and the struggle for survival determine our nature. Death has always been part of the world.
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Written by Craig A. Carter |
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
This book makes some crucial distinctions in defining natural theology that make it possible to speak more precisely about the issue. These distinctions are absolutely necessary if the debate is to take place in a profitable manner.

This book is a valuable contribution to theology despite being an incomplete treatment of its topic. It is an important step in the recovery of an important doctrine that has been taught for two thousand years by the best teachers of the church, but which has come under heavy attack in the late modern West. It is true so far as it goes, but like all books it is incomplete. We need more scholarship in this area. Let me give a brief overview, after which I will list what I see as some of the strengths and weaknesses of this book.
Overview
The book has three parts. After the introduction there is a chapter on the biblical foundations of natural theology. Haines discusses Psalm 19; Acts 14:16-17; 17:26-27; Romans 1:19-20; 1:32; and 2:14-15. This list is not exhaustive, but it covers the high points well.
The next four chapters give a historical overview of natural theology from the church fathers to post-Reformation reformed theology. There is a chapter on Greek philosophy and the church fathers, which shows an embrace of natural theology from the second century onwards. One notable feature of this chapter is that it shows that even Tertullian – famous for his question “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?” – taught that the existence of God can be known by reason alone without divine revelation. (84) Another chapter is devoted to Augustine and one to Thomas Aquinas. The last historical chapter covers Reformed theology from Calvin to the late 1700’s including both major theologians and the Reformed confessions.
A final chapter responds to four objections.

The first is that natural theology does not reveal the Christian God because it does not reveal the Trinity. But this objection fails to distinguish between knowing that God exists and knowing things about his nature. It is not necessary to have a complete knowledge of the latter in order to know the former. Also, the same objection could be made against the Old Testament, but surely nobody wants to say that the Old Testament God is not the God of the New Testament. Marcion suggested that but the church responded with a forceful no.
A second objection is that natural theology introduces Greek philosophy into Christian doctrine. But this objection is irrelevant unless it is assumed that the Greek philosophy introduced into Christian theology is false doctrine. But that is denied by the majority tradition. A doctrine of God can be incomplete without being completely false. The doctrine of God in the Torah certainly is not complete by New Testament standards, yet it is not false.
A third objection is that Greek philosophy is erroneous and incoherent. This is a more plausible objection, and it is partly true. The point that needs to be stressed is that the fathers agree that not all philosophy is true. Augustine’s critical analysis of philosophy is Book VIII of City of God shows this clearly, just to name one example of many.
The fourth objection is that finding theistic proofs in early church fathers is anachronistic. Oliphint and Edgar make this claim in their book, Christian Apologetics Past and Present. But it does not stand up to historical analysis. As Haines points out, both Plato and Aristotle, as well as various Stoic philosophers such as Cicero had developed proofs for God’s existence prior to the birth of the Church.

A few observations might be in order at this point. The historical overview is of mixed quality. The chapter on Greek philosophy and the church fathers is well-done, considering how much ground it has to cover in a short space. The chapter on Augustine is very good, but the chapter on Thomas is quite brief and omits many important issues. The chapter on reformed theology is heavy on quotations, which is good, but it lacks enough analysis and engagement with the secondary literature to be definitive. To be sure, I think the chapter accurately conveys the reformed position, but it needs more argumentation to convince the skeptical historian.
Overall, this book is focussed on reformed theology and the objections to natural theology from Cornelius Van Til. This is not a criticism, but simply a statement of the book’s limitations. If you are looking for an analysis of why Barth was so opposed to natural theology or what connections there might be between Barth and Van Til, you will need to look elsewhere.
Strengths
This book has been needed for some time. It has a number of valuable strengths that make it well worth reading.
1) First, it has a clear thesis that is both true and important, namely, that the vehement denunciation of natural theology in certain influential strands of twentieth-century Reformed theology is a radical departure from not only classic reformed theology, but also from the mainstream Christian tradition going all the way back to the apostles. It is an interesting historical question to wonder how the followers of Karl Barth and Cornelius Van Till, who were so different from each other in so many ways, both came to reject natural theology in the twentieth century even though reformed theology from 1500-1900 strongly affirmed it. This is a puzzling question, but this book does not really investigate it. Rather, this book has a more modest aim – to show that the rejection of natural theology goes against the mainstream Christian theological tradition, including the reformed tradition.
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Written by Craig A. Carter |
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
We need to face the fact that many will fall away from the faith and many will join the persecutors in blaming the church for being too stubborn, too inflexible, too proud, too old-fashioned, etc. None of this is new.

Bill C-4 “An Act to Amend the Criminal Code” (Conversion Therapy) has passed the Canadian Parliament and has been given royal assent. It is now law. There is grave concern that it is so broad and so vaguely worded that it may make it illegal for pastors, youth pastors, and Christian counselors to help those who wish to resist homosexual temptation from doing so. I have written more about this bill here.
In this brief article, I want to step back and look at the bigger picture. We must realize two facts. The first—that Western Christendom is over—is widely acknowledged. The second, however, is that the post-Christian West is quickly reverting to the paganism that characterized pre-Christian Rome. Many think that once the culture rejects Christianity, nothing will take the place of Christianity as the culturally dominant religious force. We expect neutrality, toleration, and openness for the preaching of the gospel. But this is a naïve refusal to learn the lessons of history. Our culture is going from being pro-Christian to being anti-Christian.
We need to prepare for persecution. I believe we are woefully unprepared, psychologically and theologically, to deal with the freight train that is bearing down on us. And because we are unprepared it is going to be a lot worse than it needs to be.
Let me suggest some issues on which we need to be engaging in serious theological reflection.
I. First, we need to clarify our understanding of the mission of the church. The priorities must be to worship God, to nurture and care for souls, and to evangelize. These are the essentials. During the long centuries of Christendom, it was inevitable that the church would become occupied with many activities. The church has been involved in education, medical work, feeding the poor, political activism, running charities, relief in development overseas, missionary activities of many kinds, and the list goes on. The walls, however, are closing in, and our sphere of public influence is shrinking. We will need to be clear what we can give up and what we cannot. Worship, the care of souls, and evangelism are non-negotiables for the church.
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It is no exaggeration to say that the Western church is as much in need of reformation today as it was at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Roman Catholicism still needs drastic reforms, having largely rejected what was offered in the Reformation. Protestantism has drifted from its roots and to a very great extent lost its catholicity. The Evangelical movement has tried to revive nominal Protestantism since the 1730’s but it has failed to maintain a firm hold on the reformation era confessions and thus has drifted theologically. We are losing our grip on the Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy symbolized in the creeds of the undivided church of the first five centuries. The situation today, like that of the late medieval era, is ideal for the rise of heresies of all sorts.
Satan lacks the ability to create anything totally new, so all heresy is parasitic on the truth. Heresy always involves twisting, eviscerating, or adding to true doctrine. As the Preacher observed three thousand years ago, there truly is “nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Heresy is usually constructed out of whatever building materials happen to be available in each cultural situation. Elements of the pagan religion of Egypt aided Aaron and the people of Israel in the construction of the first idol at the base of Mount Sinai (Exodus 32). The Baal worship of the Canaanites was combined with Israelite religion in the time of Elijah (1 Kings 18:21). The trendy, Eastern cosmology from Persia was used by Marcion and other gnostics in the early church to create gnostic forms of Christianity. Heresy usually involves drawing in ideas, symbols, doctrines, practices, or deities from the religion of the surrounding culture and combining them in some novel fashion with biblical truth to form a new kind of religion.
If this is true, how does heresy take form in a secularized Christendom? It seems that even though non-Christian forms of religion exist in the late modern West, moderns view themselves as post-religious and thus are unlikely to be drawn into a new form of religion constructed out of non-Christian and Christian elements. Do we not live in a post-religious age?
We should not to jump to conclusions on this point. The secularization thesis has fallen on hard times over the past forty years and what seemed obvious to secular-minded observers in the 1960’s is now uncertain and unclear. What is clear is that Western culture is increasingly hostile to catholic, orthodox, Christianity. But it is less clear to what degree the late modern West is really secular. This ambiguity is evident in talk of the “secular religions” such as Communism, Nazism, and Fascism.
Liberal democratic nations, rooted in Christianity, defeated the totalitarian ideologies in World War II and the Cold War, but since 1945 the national religion of western European countries and the anglosphere has undergone massive changes. The best way to describe what has emerged is to speak of it as a new Christian heresy. An heretical form of Christianity has become dominant in the West and pushed catholic orthodoxy into the background as a continuing minority, which is able to exert less and less influence on the culture. The so-called “culture wars” are the imperialistic wars waged by this Christian heresy against the forces of tradition, catholicity, and orthodoxy within both the Roman Church and Protestant churches, and also within Evangelicalism. There are pockets of resistance to this heresy within certain segments of Roman Catholicism and Evangelicalism, but the “mainline” Protestant denominations have been almost totally corrupted by it.
It is easy for conservatives to sneer at the declining numbers of liberal Protestant churches and assume that their cultural influence is negligible. Yet, the law and public opinion keep changing in lockstep with the pronouncements of the liberal clergy and conservatives keep losing court cases, legislative battles, and public opinion polls. It must not be overlooked that many Roman bishops, having noted which way the wind is blowing, have aligned themselves with the growing heresy in order to keep up to their flocks. Liberal theology is as much a problem in the Roman church as it is in any of the Protestant ones. It is difficult to see much difference these days, in practical terms, between the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both espouse the new heresy and work tirelessly to see it triumph.
The Heresy of Progressivism
So, what is this heresy? It is, quite simply, the heresy of progressivism. Progressivist Christianity is the new post-catholic, post-protestant, and post-biblical form of Christianity that has swept to power in the late modern west. Like the Golden Calf cult, Baal syncretism, and the Gnostic churches of the early centuries, this new heresy is a synthesis of elements drawn from the surrounding culture and fused with elements of biblical teaching in such a way as to contradict biblical orthodoxy. The key point is not that the new doctrine draws in ideas and practices from outside of biblical faith, but rather that it does so in ways that fundamentally corrupt biblical faith.
There was nothing wrong with the Israelites borrowing from Egyptian religion. God himself copied the portable worship centers, which existed in Egyptian religion, in commanding Israel in Exodus 25-40 to build a tabernacle for Yahweh worship. The floor plan was a design common in temples throughout the ancient Near East. Israel’s tabernacle, however, had no idol in the holy of holies in accordance with the Second Commandment. The creation of the Golden Calf in Exodus 32, on the other hand, was a violation of the Second Commandment and thus is an example of a borrowed practice that could not be reconciled with the Law. The point is that sometimes borrowing non-Christian elements of religion fundamentally corrupts the Christian faith, and results in heresy.
It is, therefore, of crucial importance that theologians clarify for the church what cannot legitimately be borrowed from the culture, but must instead be opposed steadfastly by the church. Many elements of the culture are good or neutral and can be incorporated into the Christian faith. But not all. Discerning where is the line between assimilating and being assimilated is one of theology’s most important tasks.
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Written by Craig A. Carter |
Friday, January 21, 2022
Christian Platonism shares with Neoplatonism a hierarchical understanding of reality, the idea of teleology, and belief in a spiritual realm of reality on which the visible, material world depends. Modern philosophical naturalism rejects all these things. It insists that all that exists is what we can discover using our five senses and that our minds are not capable of knowing intelligible reality such as universals. It should be clear that Platonism has at least some things in common with Christianity and that Naturalism is the common enemy of both.

Everyone approaches the interpretation of Scripture with metaphysical assumptions, some of which may be held consciously and critically and others of which may be unconsciously assumed. A materialist will not be likely to see the soul as immortal, but a person who believes in a spiritual realm of reality beyond the material cosmos may be more inclined to entertain the idea. A person who assumes mechanism may see naturalistic evolution as possible; one who rejects mechanism will look for teleology and Divine directedness.
Throughout the history of the church and even during the second temple period as the Jews encountered Hellenism, the writing and interpretation of Scripture has been influenced by Greek metaphysical ideas. Greek philosophical ideas are visible in the New Testament just as they are in other Jewish writings of that period. The idea that the Bible is hermetically sealed off from the surrounding cultural influences is not an idea that most interpreters of Scripture historically have taken all that seriously. This is not to say that biblical writers uncritically incorporated ancient Near Eastern mythological thinking or that they uncritically incorporated Greek metaphysics into their writings. There is no reason to suppose them to be uncritical. And it is not to say that Divine inspiration did not cause them to modify or reject certain extra-biblical ideas. In fact, it seems clear to me that because the Bible is inspired it does so. The Old and New Testaments alike engage in polemical refutation and correction of pagan mythological and metaphysical ideas in their cultural contexts (e.g. 1 Tim 1:4, 7; 2 Tim 4:4; Tit 1:14; 2 Pet 1:16). (n.b. I discuss the OT polemical correction of ANE mythology in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition, 116-21.)
The pro-Nicene fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries certainly were influenced by Greek metaphysical thinking. For example, Basil of Caesarea studied in Constantinople and Athens and Augustine was famously influenced by Neoplatonic writings, probably those of Plotinus, which helped him come to faith. He talks about this in Confessions, Book VII. By late antiquity, the Platonic tradition was the mainstream philosophical tradition, and it was over seven centuries old. Plato was as ancient to Augustine as Aquinas is to us today.
Neoplatonism
The form of Platonism that was predominant in Augustine’s day has been called, since the nineteenth century, Neoplatonism. This was a mixture of Plato, Aristotle, and Stoicism as taught by Plotinus (204-70) and his disciples.
Neoplatonism was the most potent and influential form of Platonism at that time, and it was both a philosophy and a mystical religion. But it was not a religion for the masses; it was definitely an elite phenomenon, unlike Christianity. In Augustine’s day, Christianity and Neoplatonism were rivals and it was not yet clear which would become most influential in the future development of Western civilization. As things turned out, Christianity won that contest, but Neoplatonism went underground only to re-surface periodically in history.
When we talk of Augustine’s Christian Platonism, it is important that we grasp the fact that he lays out what he accepts and what he rejects in Platonism in The City of God. There is one main point at which the special revelation of Scripture corrects Platonism and two more points where biblical revelation adds entirely new content of central importance to what the Platonists knew.
1. Creation ex Nihilo
This is a huge difference between Neoplatonism and Christian Platonism. For the Neoplatonists, the universe is eternal so far as we know. The One emanates being from itself and this is where the universe originates. Matter is less pure being. There is no hard and fast Creator-creature distinction; the being of the world differs from the being of the One only by degree.
For Christianity, however, God is the transcendent Creator who brings into existence all things visible and invisible. This means that the being of God is eternal, necessary and self-existent, while the being of the creation has a beginning, is contingent and is not self-existent. The Creator-creature distinction is a difference in kind of being, not in degree.
Moreover, in Christianity, the Bible presents creation as an act of God’s will. God did not have to create, nor did he create unconsciously. He does not create as a function of his own existence. But in Neoplatonism the One emanates being without making a specific decision to do so. It is therefore more accurate to see the One in Neoplatonism as part of the cosmos, or on the same plane of reality as the cosmos, rather than as transcendent.
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Written by Craig A. Carter |
Monday, October 18, 2021
The biggest obstacle to a recovery of confessional Protestant faith today is that, as moderns, we are cut off from our heritage by the philosophical naturalist metaphysics that we have unconsciously and uncritically absorbed from our environment. We desperately need to step outside of modernity long enough to perceive its weaknesses and limitations. But we only absorb contemporary media and read recently-published books and we rarely encounter premodern thought. Even more rarely do we encounter premodern thought that is profound and deep. Perhaps stepping into a Gothic cathedral or listening to Handel’s Messiah evokes that same longing for beauty and truth that we sense in Scripture on the rare occasion that we meditate on it without distraction.

Protestantism has been in crisis mode since the early nineteenth century. The effects of the Enlightenment began to affect Protestant theology in the eighteenth century, but after Kant, knowledge of God became increasingly problematic and Christianity, in general, began to pall as a result of the philosophical naturalism that settled over Western culture like a blanket snuffing out faith. This trend accelerated after the Darwinian revolution in the mid-century and Protestantism was most affected. The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the result.
Another Religion Altogether
Protestant liberal theology was a desperate attempt to save as much Christian content as possible from what Walter Lippmann would later term “the acids of modernity.” The liberal project involved restating Christianity within the constraints of modern metaphysics and modern metaphysics was essentially the rejection of the broadly Platonist metaphysics that had formed the mainstream of the Western philosophical tradition for well over 2000 years.
As the philosopher Lloyd Gerson has demonstrated with great scholarship in a series of books, the main alternative to Platonism historically has been philosophical naturalism and, in the nineteenth century, philosophical naturalism triumphed decisively over Platonism. This was the context in which liberal theology attempted to preserve at least some elements of the Bible and theology. Even though many Christian words such as “sin” and “redemption” were retained, their meaning was dramatically changed. The definitive judgment of the failure of the liberal project was pronounced by J. Gresham Machen in 1923 when he said that liberalism is not Christianity, but another religion altogether.
From Fundamentalism on through the period of Neo-orthodoxy to the rise of Evangelicalism, the search for a Biblical and orthodox expression of Christianity has been intense. If liberal theology is no answer, what is to be done? If modernity excludes Christian orthodoxy how can we live in the modern world as Christians?
What it Means to be Protestant
Our problem today is that we do not understand the Protestant confessions and so we do not really understand what it means to be Protestants. We believe that the Reformation recovered biblical teaching after centuries of decline in the late Medieval Roman church but we cannot give an account of how the content of the confessions expresses biblical truth. Contemporary Evangelicals are not really Protestants; for most of them, Protestantism is a movement in history.
That in turn means that the great Evangelical movement in the Anglo-Saxon, trans-Atlantic world is cut off from its own heritage. Some of us may read John Calvin and John Owen occasionally, but we do not comprehend them on certain points and much of their depth escapes us. We do not grasp what some have termed “reformed catholicity.” In what sense are we in communion with Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas? We cannot say.
Soft Theistic Mutualism
If you doubt me, consider the sad decline in the doctrine of God that we have seen over the past 50 years as documented in James Dolezal’s little book, All That is in God (Reformation Heritage Books, 2017). There Dolezal shows that “soft theistic mutualism,” a view of God in which God is in time and affects and changes the world and the world, in turn, affects and changes God. This is essentially a pagan, mythological understanding of God and yet it has wormed its way into otherwise orthodox and evangelical writers. This is astonishing!
It indicates that something very deep and fundamental is malfunctioning in contemporary theology and the danger is that this view of God will – if not corrected – metastasize into a spiritual life-threatening cancer in a generation or two. Every confession of the Reformation and post-preformation period, including the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession and the Second London Confession, teaches that God is immutable and impassible. And none see any contradiction between affirming those attributes of God and simultaneously affirming that God speaks and acts in history to judge and save. Moderns cannot, for the life of them, comprehend how they can be so inconsistent.
Moving Forward
My contention is that conservative Protestant theology today needs to undertake an alternative to the liberal project that is comparable in scope. We need to channel a great deal of time, energy and resources into a project of ressourcement. This French term brought over into English means a return to the classic sources of Christianity including the church fathers, Thomas Aquinas and other forms of premodern faith. Recently, in an encouraging development in the work of a number of theologians, many inspired by John Webster, the project of ressourcement has taken the form of looking back to the post-Reformation, Reformed scholastic tradition.
This movement is growing and spreading among many who find the shallow biblicism and ahistorical forms of evangelical faith that are so common today to be unsatisfying. Scholars like Richard Muller and Carl Trueman have led the way in recovering the riches of seventeenth-century continental and English pastors and theologians who utilized the metaphysics of the Great Tradition to do theology and write and expound the great confessions of Protestantism. We may not understand their philosophical assumptions, but we can see that they took the Bible seriously and wrote doctrinal treatises that need to be taken seriously by believers. CLICK TO TWEET
The biggest obstacle to a recovery of confessional Protestant faith today is that, as moderns, we are cut off from our heritage by the philosophical naturalist metaphysics that we have unconsciously and uncritically absorbed from our environment. We desperately need to step outside of modernity long enough to perceive its weaknesses and limitations. But we only absorb contemporary media and read recently-published books and we rarely encounter premodern thought. Even more rarely do we encounter premodern thought that is profound and deep. Perhaps stepping into a Gothic cathedral or listening to Handel’s Messiah evokes that same longing for beauty and truth that we sense in Scripture on the rare occasion that we meditate on it without distraction. But how do we get from here to there?
One practice John Webster urged on his students was that of reading sympathetically the great texts of the tradition. Even better, he suggested, was the practice of apprenticing ourselves to one of the great masters for a time by seeking to immerse ourselves in their thought. C. S. Lewis pointed out that reading old books is important, not because ancient writers never made mistakes, but because they tended to make different mistakes than our contemporaries do. We can spot those mistakes because they stand out to us, whereas the mistakes we and all our contemporaries commonly make seem like common sense to us.
So what to do? I believe that we need to do whatever it takes to break out of the cave of modernity and breath the free air of the premodern period where philosophical naturalism is not stifling the truth. But how? One way to do it is to engage in the study of ancient philosophical texts so as to be initiated into the great conversation that has gone on between the greatest minds in the Western tradition for 2000 years.
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