Life After Calvinism

In this episode we talk about what has defined the aliances and controversies in the protestant church in the past 20 years or so, how this state of affairs came to be, and how it is about to change.

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Brad Vermulen | The Aaron Renn Show

Transcript

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Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that. I'm right, and I will be proved right. We are more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity. John Lennon. By 1966, the awakening was in full swing, and the Beatles were at the height of their powers. To the mind consumed by linear history, John Lennon's infamous words may have even seemed plausible. Awakenings are times of spiritual change and discovery. During the winter crisis, the practical and utilitarian is put in the driver's seat while all of society is mobilized against the existential threat. Because society itself is at stake, spending time and resources on moralizing and the inner world is put aside. Heart motives are not questioned. As in a crisis, distancing oneself from those doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not a luxury that can be afforded. The awakening turning of the 1960s and 70s manifested primarily as a questioning of and rebellion against the established Christian institutional hegemony. To say that the baby boom generation had rejected Christianity is correct, but to be more correct, they rejected institutional Christianity. This is the exact opposite of what the young people at the time were looking for. In John Lennon's 1966, young baby boomers were on a journey of spiritual self-discovery. Spiritual, because they were concerned about the meanings and motives of life, self because they were convinced that the meaning is unique for each individual, and discovery, because they were willing to go outside traditional institutions and orthodoxies to do it. This is par for the course when you look at past awakenings. In the awakening era of approximately 1724 to 1741, what historians call the first great awakening, George Whitfield, John Wesley, and their friends were fed up with the rigid, dry Anglican Christianity they saw at Oxford University. What did they do about it? Well, they took matters into their own hands. They went outside the established institutions and they met in their own group, which others derogatorily called the Holy Club, to do good works and to study the Bible and meditate. This club, who were also called the Methodists, sparked a revival of lay preaching and evangelism and personal devotion, which still affects English church life today. The 1730s and 40s awakening did not see religious morals attacked like in the 1960s and 70s, but both share a clear recoiling from what is perceived as dry and fruitless institutional religion. Of course, Christianity didn't disappear in the 1960s, or we wouldn't be here. Christianity flourished in its own way, and it won't be any surprise that the way it flourished was outside of institutions. To survive the Cultural Revolution, Christianity would shuffle and shift, and this would manifest in what is retrospectively called the Jesus movement. The Jesus Movement, whose adherents were called Jesus People, in typical awakening fashion, had no official leaders, they didn't write any important books or leave behind any institutions. What they did was leave an unmistakable mark on church life that is still with us today. Many young baby boomers, not willing to reject the faith of their parents, turned to this less organized, more spiritually focused form of Christianity. Many young hippies, after rejecting their parents' faith, became disillusioned by their journey of self-discovery. Free love and experimentation with drugs left many feeling even more lost than before, and many of these people became Jesus people. Pastor's wife Debbie Pearl recalls her awakening experience as a young woman, and I quote: The birth control pill was a new and heady thing that drove the hippies into an era of non-responsibility. AIDS was not yet a factor. The theme of the 1960s was: if it feels good, do it. Young people could be seen sleeping in parks or on roadsides, switching partners as the night progressed. Drugs dulled their consciences and destroyed their dignity. But in the midst of all this sin, shame, God poured forth his spirit, and thousands of those heart sick kids began to seek God. By the 1980s, the Jesus movement and the awakening was all over. Something new would take its place. And this is where our discussion begins today. Welcome back everybody to another episode of Oh my goodness, he actually kept his promises this time. It's incredible. No, just kidding. It's called Common Christendom Podcast. And thank you for tuning in. And if you didn't know that this episode marks the first time that I've actually kept my promises to continue uh doing a series uh of podcasts that I talked about doing um in the episode previous. It's the first time I've I've done a lot of talking about what uh episodes I want to release, and now here it is. We're doing a series, and it's very scary for me because it means that should I decide to do one episode and then you know stop and not release any more, then uh I'm gonna look like an idiot. So I'm really going out on a limb here. I'm really coming out on a limb. And today we are the title of today's episode is Life After Calvinism. And let me explain why I chose that title. Number one, it's a turn of phrase I borrowed from the author George Gilda, who wrote a book in the 19 uh eighties or nineties called Life After Television, where he successfully back then predicted that television was uh only gonna last for so long and the next form of entertainment was gonna be personal entertainment for every member of the household and they're gonna have their own entertainment. And he was successful in that. He went on to write he went on to write uh another other books with a similar title, one called Life After Google. Um, and I'm borrowing that turn of phrase because it's very helpful for our discussion today. If you haven't listened to the previous episode, which was called The Ecclesiastes View of History, go and listen to that one first if you want the full context for this episode. Uh it's not necessary it's not 100% necessary to be, but it will be very helpful. Um and if you haven't listened to that episode, the quick explainer is that everybody feels like we're coming into a time of change and that it's almost sort of deciding where our society is going to go next. And so what I'm doing is I um is if you accept that premise, and if you don't, you can go and listen to the last episode where I argue for it. If you accept that premise that things feel like they're gonna change and change they will, then we're gonna do a series of three podcasts talking about how I think they're gonna change and my predictions for the next part of history. Um and the way I'm gonna divide this up is I'm gonna divide it into three categories, and I'm gonna use I'm gonna use um a grouping that's familiar to Christians somewhat, and that's the three areas of government that we would extrapolate from the Bible. That is um civil government, church government, and family government. Um and uh the way I'm gonna divide that up is we're gonna talk about chur uh I guess we I guess we should we could do civil government first. No, but we're gonna do we're gonna do church government first. We're gonna talk about how are things gonna change in the arena of church government, i.e. theology and religion. Um that's one that's the area we're gonna be discussing this episode. In the next episode, we're going to discuss um how things are going to change in the civil government, that is politics, um, and statecraft and what's gonna happen next in politics, what's gonna happen next in the world. Uh and the third gov uh the third government recognized in the Bible or extrapolated from the Bible would be family government, the government of the individual family unit. And in that episode, we're gonna look at economics and the economy. And you might be thinking, why is family government gonna be talking about the economy? And the reason is, well, in my opinion, that ec when you really really boil it down, economics is the is the science of the dinner table. It's the science of the roof over your head and how it gets there and how much dinner you get to eat and what kind of roof gets to be put over your head. So that's what we're going to be discussing in the third episode. Um but life after Calvinism. Um does this mean that um does this mean that I'm no longer a Calvinist? No, not necessarily. I am still I'm still a uh uh member in good standing of uh of a reformed church um of the continental variety, so I'm still I'm still Reformed, I'm still I'm still a Calvinist. So why am I calling the episode Life After Calvinism? Well, we've just come out of a interesting time in the history of the uh of the church in the Anglosphere uh where Calvinism has been a very, or at least what people perceive as Calvinism has been very important and very influential in um in the affairs of uh church life. Um and I think people can sense that this is coming to an end. The old coalitions that were put together on the lines of theology, especially soteriology, seem to be breaking down and new coalitions seem to be rising up after that. And so we're gonna discuss that um what's gonna happen next and why Calvinism and these other theological topics are not gonna necessarily be the flashpoint issues going forward and why they're not gonna be the defining factor of coalition building going forward for for church groups and church ideas. So first we ought to have a little bit of a view back to the past. Why was Calvinism a big thing in the last 20 years, and why was it and what what came before that to uh make uh that a big thing? So I'm going to use a term uh there's a lot of different terms going around New Calvinism, young restless reformed. Um, and these are all words that are talking about a certain point in time, especially in America, but has penetrated to Australia as well. Not necess not necessarily I'm gonna say the Anglosphere, but maybe not necessarily uh England as much, but definitely it has made its way to us to Canada and Australia as well. And this is a time in history that is loosely defined. We're gonna define it as, you know, maybe maybe the early 2000s to about 2020, 2021. That's what we're gonna define it as. And the term I'm gonna use for this time in history, I'm gonna use the the term the reformed resurgence. Yeah, the reformed resurgence, which is a term I borrowed from a scholar called Brad Vermuln, um, who I who I'm gonna recomm I'm gonna do something I shouldn't usually do, and that's recommend a book to you that I haven't read. Um Brad Vermerlin wrote a thesis, um, a which quite groundbreaking thesis on this time in church history, and it's really the first time that such this this that this movement has received a scholarly, you know, a a completely no-frills, no polemics scholarly assessment of what happened. And he wrote this thesis called Reform Resurgence, and it was turned into a book called Reformed Resurgence, and it's published by Oxford University Press, and because it's published by Oxford University Press, it's prohibitively expensive. It's it's you know three or four hundred pages and it's uh over a hundred dollars. Probably by the time you get it shipped to Australia and pay Aussie dollars, it's probably more like $150 minimum. So the reason I'm recommending it to you and I haven't read it is because it's very expensive. And so um a lot of the a lot of the material and uh ideas for and um you know recap of the recent history I owe to um Mr. Vermerlin, and I have then this information has pretty much been gathered from interviews that he's given about the book because I can't afford to get the book myself. So shout out to Brad Vermerlin. I've left links in the uh show notes to the Amazon page for the book if you are rich enough to buy it for me, and also a link to one of the interviews he gave about the book if you are poor like me. Um so what why was there a reform what there was a reform resurgence? What do we mean by that? Well, by reformed we mean the um the return of reform theology. We mean the return of a um the theology of the reformation, particularly as it pertains to salvation and how we are saved. Um the term reformed has been diluted a little bit, but um what we're talking about is we're talking about the theology, not necessarily Lutheran theology, but the theology of the um reformed church in Europe, which started in probably the flashpoint of that was in Switzerland with Ulrich Schwingley and the Sausage Affair. If you haven't heard of the Sausage Affair, then that's a fun little Google that you can you can do. And that style of the Reformation spread from Switzerland, France, persecuted out of France, found a home in the Netherlands, found a home in Scotland, and and then basically found a home in America and the other parts of the former British Empire. We now see Presbyterian churches all over the country, and even some Continental Reformed churches as well, including my church. The what used to be called the uh Dutch Reformed Church is now called the Reformed Uh Church of Australia. Um, and this view of salvation is essentially recognizing God's sovereignty in salvation and re and and acknowledging God's effectual calling that God, rather than it being some sort of uh competition, uh it's not the greatest word, rather than it being a you know sovereign direct choice of the human in the equation, who who accepts the gospel, accepts salvation, and reaches out to God for salvation, although it seems like that to the human eyes, um, reform theology will tell you that we know um after we're saved that it's actually God who effectually called us, who who pulled us out of our sin and pulled us out of the world, and pulled us into salvation through his uh sovereign will. Um and that is as opposed to um a theology where um you know everyone everyone has an equal chance to be saved and everyone can be saved by his own mind, by his own volition. No reform theology believes that while everyone is called to repent and believe the gospel, that the ones who do are ultimately because they were called by God. And this isn't a complete or you know a 100-100% accurate definition of what reform theology is, but it's definitely it's definitely a working um uh a working picture of it for the purposes of this episode if you don't know what that is. So this theology really took off in the early 2000s. For from out of nowhere, it seemed that there were young people everywhere saying, I'm a Calvinist. And it was such a big movement that even Time Magazine, I think it was Time Magazine, or if it wasn't, it was one of these big magazines, wrote an article about it. And because it was such an influential movement. The article was called Young, Restless and Reformed. Uh, you know, people, you know, young people were carrying around copies of like Jonathan Edwards' sermons and stuff, and uh talking about uh tulips and things, and it was really a definite and not I wasn't I own as a young person I really only caught the very tail end of this, but of course all of the media that went along with this is still available on the internet, the internet never forgets, so I caught kind of the tail end of this movement. Um But what we what we wanna ask is why why did this movement happen and why do I think it's a was mostly a reactionary movement. Um if you listened to the um last episode you'll remember that I posited that history has seasons, just like um uh in the northern hemisphere has four seasons. And uh if you recall that there's some s there's you there is some sort of great crisis in the society which has resolved and come into a springtime where institutions are built. And you'll also remember that after the springtime comes the summer, which is what um what is often called an awakening, where we have finished building these institutions and now that the war is over and everything's done, we sort of um a generation rises up who kind of notices all the loose ends, who notice all of the things we sort of swept under the rug in order to win the war. Um and this happens over and over in a consistent pattern. One of the an example of this would be the Protestant Reformation, um and and and you know, a a cycle of seasons later we had the Puritan uh awakening uh and they when Puritans went to America. Um and then we had in America the first Great Awakening, um, which is a r historical event. And it seems so consistent, it's surprising that um, you know, that people the idea of history having seasons and the idea of history having cycles is a little bit fr uh fringe, but like this is the idea of there being uh great awakenings is very mainstream, and the fact that they happen so consistently at sort of consistent timings is just so interesting to me. The first after the first Great Awakening, you know, a season of hist uh a year of history later, uh there was the second great awakening, you know. And even, would you believe it, there was uh something that they called the third great awakening, that was called the missionary awakening or the third great awakening. And indeed, it while it's more controversial, some historians even call the 1960s and 70s the f 70s the fourth Great Awakening, the fourth in a series of um Anglo-American awakenings. Now um Christianity in a lot of ways, the the awakening of the sixties and seventies um uh was a bad awakening. There were some good things, uh some bad things, and some of the bad things were the sexual revolution, uh breaking down of these traditional moralities, but Christianity did not disappear. It Christianity took a hit, you could say, in the sixties and seventies, but it didn't disappear. And the way that it flourished was not necessarily in organized institutions, but it was more in these free-flowing associations that people have with each other. We you heard in the cold open of a thing called the Jesus People movement, and that's so typical of an awakening, isn't it? It's not necessarily about dogma and organizations, it's about the uh genuineness and it's about the relationships of of the thing. And uh that was the era where it was a little bit before as well, but definitely in the sixties and seventies, that was the era of Billy Graham um going around packing packing out these stadiums um and preaching the gospel to people pretty accurately, realistically, um and people coming to the to do these altar calls, and that was another way that Christianity flourished in the 60s and 70s. But I do believe that any time of history has the good and the bad, and it's not necessarily that, you know, would you wish that this hasn't happened or or whatnot? And um a lot of times things just need to happen. Uh and it's unavoidable to have these awakenings, okay? It's just unavoidable. Um, it's happened over and over and over again in history, and it's less about having it happen, and it's more about how you deal with it. So there was good and bad. So basically in the sixties and seventies, you know, I take I'd say it's probably it's a net positive that Billy Graham preached to millions and millions of people. You know, there's um even photographs of him packing out the MCG of all places. Like he did come to Australia and do the he called them Crusades, campus uh uh crusades. Um and because it was so relational, um what took a backseat was definitely dogma and theology took a backseat. And this is, I think, uh not really a source for this, but this seems to be a time when this idea of the sinner's prayer was was popularized, and that kind of makes sense because if you're meeting in these in informal meetings, you know, um uh with weak weaker weakening institutions, it kind of makes sense that you were just, you know, this hippie who's converting to Christianity. You'd you just pretty you'd pray with him. Um and it wasn't it wasn't as much about which church he belonged to, but it was more about the genuineness of his fervor for his newfound God, for his newfound religion. Um and so a a movement a movement and a vibe can only last so long, and that's um what happened in the case of the 60s and 70s awakening, because obviously after the 60s and 70s came the 80s and 90s. Um and um because I think uh and again generalization, and there's gonna be a lot of generalizations in these coming episodes. So if you didn't watch the first one, I don't want anyone coming to me to say that I was a part of this generation and I didn't do this, and I was a part of this generation, and it wasn't like you know what, we're talking about generalities, we just have to deal with it, okay? I'm not talking about you personally, because individuals make their own decisions. Um after the 1970s and 70s came the 1980s. This was the era of you know, Wall Street, you know, uh uh Wall Street and private equity and greed is good, and um obviously the movement couldn't go on the the uh this the sort of movement can't go on forever. So by the time we've had this awakening in the 60s and 70s, we sort of get to the next season, the the uh the unraveling season, the autumn of history, and we sort of realize that hey, like we're getting a bit confused. It was good that we had this outpouring of real genuineness in the 60s and 70s, but we've kind we kind of let theology and dogma take a back seat, and now honestly, we're a bit confused. We don't really know what exactly to believe, we don't we're not really incredibly rooted, and we're just really really as a society looking for something to hold on to that's solid. Because while relationships and genuineness are good, they're not really necessarily rooted in anything historical, and indeed, relationships break down, you know, thought leaders, you know, um fail us like any human can do. So we really need something to look for that is going to be more concrete and it's gonna allow us to have something historical to hold on to. And this is why I believe that the reformed resurgence sort of directly or indirectly is a reaction from the Christianity of the 60s and 70s, and not necessarily a backlash, not necessarily a saying that you know a saying that it's bad, but it's definitely a reaction to things that were under-emphasized in the 60s and 70s awakening. Um, and so we come into the to early 2000s and reform theology is resurging. So, what was the good, the bad, and the ugly of the reform resurgence? I, in my view of analyzing uh and thinking about history, I really try and avoid saying that um this was 100% bad, this was a hundred percent good, because it's a bit more complex than that. And it's not to be a moral relativist or anything like that, but history kind of, as we've seen, that um, you know, in the 60s and 70s, there had to be an awakening, just because there always is. So what were the good parts, what were the bad parts? Was it a kind of mostly bad awakening, or was it a good awakening? Um, like I would say the first Great Awakening was mostly good, was a net positive, whereas the second great awakening it took on a form of probably it's uh mostly a net negative. Um a lot of spiritual, weird spiritualism came out of the second great awakening, and indeed uh most of the great American cults have their origin in the Second Great Awakening, like Mormonism, Seventh day Adventists, Jehovah's Witness, etc. etc. So I try to avoid saying everything, you know, this was so bad and this or this was so good, but this often good and bad, um, because I believe that oftentimes a thing's greatest strengths are often its greatest weaknesses. Um and it's not it's not a coincidence. I mean, so what were its strengths? Um what positively came out of it is it did, I think, do a good job of exposing to many, many people um a sense of rootedness in historical Christianity. And the way this was done is I think it it woke up a lot of people to the idea of that we are a tradition with um with roots in history, and here are our roots, these are the confessions, these are the confessions I think conf the idea of people rediscovering the confessions was really positive. Uh the most um the most well known and important being the Westminster Confession and the 1689 Baptist Confession. And this was really helpful because um while while we were sort of floundering in in and um sort of decentralized Christianity, this enabled a lot of people to look concretely at what our fathers in the faith believed and in turn what should we believe. And I think this is really positive because it really put the guardrails up and it really stopped us from going off the rails in our theology and while being genuine, believing things God doesn't want us to believe. Um so I think this was was super helpful, was super helpful having that clarity and just to be fair, assurance of salvation. Um I think uh the re but you know rediscovering reform theology um has a great gives you a great sense of assurance of salvation. I think it it really makes um the gospel understandable. Um and it um you know knowing that salvation is not up to you, I think it's so liberating because it doesn't lead us down this false path that we believe that we can, you know, we can lose our salvation. We we understand that God has us in his hand, and that you know, that might give the the people given to given to Christ will never be plucked out of his hand. That's really that's really a good thing to have in your life and a great stability to have in your life. So that's also been a great positive. Um and as I said, a thing's greatest a thing's greatest strength tends to also be its greatest weakness. Um and I think that is definitely the case with the reform resurgence. While there was a resurgence of the historical confessions, the Westminster, 1689, and in my church's case, the Belgic Confession, although it wasn't quite as popularized um at the time. Um uh but the rise of sort of internet pop theology, I think, has been uh negative or an ugly, I'm not sure. Um, and I don't mean to say that the rise of lay people understanding theology was necessarily bad, and while it's tempting, I'm not necessarily going to say that uh lay people discussing theology on the internet in Facebook groups was necessarily a net negative, although depending on the group you look at, um it might be tempting to think it was a net negative. But rather I mean I think because it was the age of the internet, you know, in 2010, 2014 time, like the internet was finally becoming cheap, mainstream, everybody had it, and everybody had an opinion, and everyone you bet was going to share it. So there definitely was a lot of arguing about useless points with people who didn't really want to be convinced otherwise on the internet. Um but I think that was um I think that was overshadowed by a kind of not watering down but a a popification of the confession that hasn't necessarily been helpful. And the culprits I want to point to are two, and this might be controversial, maybe these are sacred cows these days, but the culprits I want to point to are tulep and the five solars. I think things like these, simp simple reductions of complex things for the sake of being able to, you know, converse about them in short form on the internet, have been a little bit of a negative. Have a little been a little bit of a negative. Because while the Westminster Confession is very old and storied and rooted, while the 1689 Confession is very old, because it was ratified in 1689, I assume, um, some of these pop theology notions, like tulip, like the five solars, are very much less historically rooted, but people don't even know because we don't really know um the uh nobody, including me, until I looked it up for this episode, nobody really knows the origins of these um of these uh reductions, and they're not as recent as you think. And the reason um the reason I was thinking about this is because I just listened to a great podcast episode with um by a American uh Baptist minister who also has a podcast studio on the side, would you believe it? Joel Webin, and he had on the show uh E. Michael Jones, who is the who's an author, um, but also Roman Catholic. And they were talking uh uh Dr. Jones was sort of strawmanning solar scriptura a little bit. And and then Pastor Webin gave a short defense of you know the Protestant version uh view of the Bible and scriptural authority, and it made me think, you know, hold on, like solar scriptura, even if it means something in Latin, it sounds like it means everyone's just their own pope, you know what I mean? Like the branding, the marketing, is not actually that good. And so no wonder, and I'm thinking, this sounds this feels blasphemous, right? The five solars. I'm pretty sure the five solars were you know given to us in the book of Genesis, right? Like, this is really bad. But like here, the Roman Catholics, they're kind of straw manning the the idea of solar scriptura. They're like, this is really bad. And so I'm looking it up, and really the five solars are not really that recent. From rudimentary research, it's not really clear when the first time someone used all of the five solars together. Martin Luther talked about a three pillars of of the Protestant Reformation, which includes some of the five solars, but um I couldn't really, just from the from from from at least from just light research on the internet, you know, it's really kind of difficult to pinpoint the origin of the five solars, and I I c I do think that the popularizer or even the uh author of this would be Karl Barth, who is a Swiss Reform theologian from the 20th century. And if you don't know Karl Barth, and I'm not super familiar with him myself, uh he wrote a ginormous systematic theology or like a like a dozen volume systematic theology. Um, which I appreciate. Game recognizes game. But I mean he wasn't he it's not like this guy, Bart is like one of the you know one of the reformers, you know, and like he was a he was a 20th century theologian and he was flaky on predestination. He was a bit flaky on predestination, which is kind of not like the be all and end all of the entire you know of the entire gospel of the entire religion, but predestination is one of the distinctives of our um of our church of our church, of our reformed church. So I think we and you know I think the uh reform resurgence only exacerbated this issue of we are sort of letting these these sort of pop terms kind of go the wrong way around and define us as a church and define us as our distinctives when really the person popularizing it didn't really vibe with our distinctives in the first place. Because you gotta admit, sola scriptura, it sounds like and even it's translated scripture alone, and you take that out of context, and all of a sudden you think scripture alone, so like I can just interpret the Bible for myself like I don't need to go to church. Well, no, because that's the thing, is it is that's the straw man, isn't it? A Roman like that's the Roman Catholic straw man is that they say, well, it matters who interprets scripture, and so we um say that the that Rome interprets scripture, and and um, you know, that a lot of people get caught out by that, but realistically, that's not the disagreement. That's not the disagreement between Reformed and Roman Catholic. The disagreement is that the the difference is that Reformed we say that the Bible is the highest authority, it's the only infallible authority, it's the only authority that's never wrong, but there are other authorities in our lives, and one and the authority that um that uh has the uh authority over spiritual matters and interpreting the Bible is the church. And we may disagree on who the one, you know, the Roman Catholic's gonna say that the one true church is the Roman Catholic Church, but at the end of the day, we don't disagree that the church has authority, we just disagree about how uh far-reaching its authority is, and we certainly don't believe that you know that the Bible is the only authority, but it kind of sound but you know, if you're arguing the Roman Catholic, it kind of sounds like you're backtracking your own worldview, it's like you're backtracking your own um your own beliefs because hey, you said you said scripture alone, and now you're saying it's not scripture alone. So what's going on with that? And so I think um it's e it was exacerbated in this time where we're we're coming up with these quippy things that are quippy and quick to that we can, you know, make YouTube videos about, Facebook comments about. Um and the other one is tulip. The other one is tulip. Some genius, whoever it was, decided that the richness of the continental and the of the reform tradition um could be summed up in five words, or f rather five letters. Like I think it's a little uh I think that doesn't really do it justice. And so obviously tulip is is touted as a summary of reform doctrine, and for the most part it is, um, which the letters standing for um total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, uh uh irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. And much of the and pretty much all of this is true, right? And I mean, you know, we do believe that man is depraved, we do believe that the you know the saints that are given to Christ will persevere to the last day or be preserved to the last day. Um but we kind of we don't even does anyone actually know where tulip came from? Because John Calvin was John Calvin a five-point Calvinist? Definitely not, because he I don't know if he spoke English. And definitely, if he even if he did speak English, the the tulip acronym was not around um when uh when Calvin was ministering to his church in Switzerland. Um and you might say that tulip is a summary of Reformed doctrine, and in that case that's true, but I mean I think that's another example of how um the uh the resurgence exacerbated this problem of now we believe that tulip is the confession almost. And I know not not actually, like people aren't gonna say I uh tulip is the confession that we sign and we subscribe to, but it's just an example, it's kind of an example of the tail wagging the dog, you know. It is a it is taken almost as the functionally taken as the confession itself. My buddy of mine who I love dearly, um it's not a not a uh and he's very passionate and uh he's a a very good friend of mine. I love him dearly. He says to me, um, you know, because you don't 100% agree with all five letters of tulip, you're not a Calvinist. And I think, what is going on here? This is ridiculous. I'm I'm uh, you know, this is it's like some sort of joke, like, you know, like I believe, you know, I bait I basically believe everything John Calvin believed. I go to a Calvinist church, I'm what you call a non-Calvinist. Like that's just ridiculous. Um, and um and I think in TULIP, the and and this might be another controversial part, I think in TULIP the uh being so being so overzealous about these five letters, we kind of commit a hypocrisy because I and we're not meant to do theology on here, but this is just my opinion, by the way. This is not me saying anything uh this is not me saying uh anything uh authoritative, just want to put that out there. Limited atonement, I can't really see it in the Bible, you know. I can't really read about limited atonement in the Bible. Now, I've heard very good arguments for it, you know, and indeed this friend I'm talking about, he's made very good arguments. And I've said to him, you know, these are good arguments, but they're not necessarily chapter and verse, and they're more logical arguments, they're more logical deductions. And I think the the idea goes that you know, if Christ atoned for people who are going to hell, it didn't like how is that just because he's paying twice essentially. And I'm saying that's a I I'm very convinced by this. It's a very good logical argument, but at the end of the day, like I'm kind of agnostic on that because I don't really see it in the Bible, and that's the exact same uh criticism we offer to Roman Catholics. We say you have come Roman you Roman Catholics have come up with a lot of these doctrines which kind of make sense logically, but they're not really in the Bible. So, like, why do we need to have these out there doctrines like the bodily assumption of Mary? Could it have happened? I guess, but it's not in the Bible, it's not in the Bible, and the only reason that it's you know enshrined is because of the Roman view of the uh authority of the church, of the magisterium, you know? Purgatory, yeah, I guess, just if you suspend your disbelief and assume the Roman Catholic view of salvation, you know, purgatory kind of makes sense logically, but again, it's not in the Bible, and if you're making up a whole new section of like the afterlife, um, like that's a big call to make on just a logical argument that doesn't have any specific scriptural basis. And we do the same thing with limited atonement. And the the reason is not because we're all reading the Westminster, and the reason is not because we're all scrawling through the canons of Dort, or we're, you know, we're like we're scrawling through um institutes of the Christian religion. It's because we're on the internet because of this Reformed Resurgence and we're telling people about this five-letter acronym because it's more quippy than quoting, you know, something more boring like a confession. So this has kind of been this has kind of been one of the bad things as the pop theology where we sort of allow these summaries to whether we mean to or not, whether it's conscious or not, we allow these summaries to almost uh topple the uh confessions themselves and we let the t the the tail wag the dog in that sense. So that's been one of the bad things. Although, in the end, probably a net positive because we've ex, you know, it a lot of people were introduced to reform theology, a lot of people got a better understanding of the gospel, and at the at the same time, uh that was pretty good. Um at the because at the end of the day, the reform resurgence was really a movement about gatekeeping. Uh it was a movement about gatekeeping. I don't use that as a bad term, that's not a polemical term, it's just a matter-of-fact term. Basically, coming out of the 60s and 70s, everything was a bit wishy-washy. And so leaders in the uh in the evangelical uh church, in the evangelical circles, the evangelical thought leaders, basically it was a coming together of the who's who, and we're gonna really decide what views are acceptable and what views are not. And basically, it was about gate coalition building and gatekeeping. Um, and it wasn't necessarily about um, you know, proper, you know, like hard institutions, although there were some institutions that were created, why probably the biggest one being the Gospel Coalition. Um, but at the end of the day, the Gospel Coalition, you know, it's not a university. It's not something like it's more of a blog, you know what I mean? Like it's not it's not this super huge uh institution. And so basically, it was a coming together of these uh you know, pastor theologians, Tim Keller um was one of the uh founders of the gospel coalition, actually, you know, people uh other American pastor theologians, R. C. Sproul, um, you know, John MacArthur, you know, uh, and others whose whose name escapes me. And um, who's that guy? Who's that guy still of the gospel coalition? Matt Chandler, John Piper, who had a you know, pretty uh large influence on me as well. And the idea was that we're coming together and deciding what is a litmus test, what is the bait, what is the boxes you need to tick to be sort of accepted in the evangelical elite? And basically they decided that baptism was not one of them. You could subscribe to infant baptism or believer baptism, but a reformed view of salvation, even if you had a reformed view of nothing else, was essential, the tulip or the approximation thereof was essential. Um, another thing that was essential was complementarianism, whatever that means. The novel doctrine of complementarianism, which was spawned uh by the uh book um by John Piper and Wayne Grudham called Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and that was um an outgoing of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanism. Uh Womanism. It was it was a reaction to feminism, the Council of Uh Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, um, and that was sort and complementarianism, which was uh pretty much uh spawn from this book, was sort of a compromise to make sure that we didn't delve into feminism. So complementarianism was was an important lit litmus test. Um it was not uh egalitarians and were not welcome in this new movement. Um there was uh I think it was I remember reading about it uh the uh you know a doctrine of hell. There was uh who was it, Rob Bell. I remember reading about Rob Bell and Hell. Um and he I believe uh um you know uh so universalism, you know, saying that everyone's gonna be saved, that's not that's not acceptable, you know, saying that, oh, is it annihilation or is it eternal punishment? That's not necessarily acceptable. So gatekeeping's not necessarily a bad thing or a polemical term, but that sort of one of them was one of the main functions of the movement is we're coming out of a period of chaos, we need order, we need to decide what's in and what's out. Now, this is all sounds really good and all sounds well and good. So why do why do we get the sense that things are changing? Well, in short, coalitions are breaking down. And and and to be and to be frank about it, um a lot of the a lot of the original leaders of this movement are are passing away, um or or are very old. Um we lost Tim Keller a few years ago, we lost John MacArthur just last year, I believe. Um a lot of these other people are quite old. John Piper uh is quite old. Um R.C. Sproul we lost in 2017. So that's one reason that it's sort of moving on. The second reason is that this is what happens when the seasons of history turn, is that things that were fit for purpose in the previous season they stick around, but they seem less fit for purpose. And I I think um that the reform resurgence, the new Calvinism, the young restless reformed, it was very, very fit for purpose in the last 20 years in the 2000s and 2010s, but I get the sense that it's becoming less and less fit for purpose by the day as the world changes around it. And so why is that? What are the incongruencies that I'm seeing that make me think that this isn't going to be the flashpoint issue going forward? And one of those is just um the first one of those is that the errors that are allowed to slip through the the defenses of the of the confessions. Now, 2014 was a very different time, so 2013, 2012 was a very different time. I think the um the case, the Obergefell Supreme Court case in the United States was a watershed moment and an incredible vibe shift that we take for granted today, because that was over 10 years ago now, and uh we've been living with that vibe ever since. Um I think because of because of a burger fell, because of the legalizing of of gay marriage in America, and not just the the legalizing of of same-sex mirage, as uh Douglas Wilson likes to call it, but definitely that opened up uh basically full legal equality for homosexuals. And I think um that the secularists took um that opportunity with both hands and the culture essentially flipped in a very, very short amount of time. Before Oberger fell, the split was about sixty percent against homosexual marriage for marriage, forty percent for, and a few years after Oberger fell, it had essentially flipped the other way around, 60% for homosexual marriage, 40% against. And it was the same in Australia, where we eventually downstream um legalized homosexual marriage too, that it had ended up being a large majority who had been shaped by that culture um in that way. And what does that mean is that accepting homosexuality was definitely not something that was acceptable in this coalition. Now, when this coalition was put together, the culture was not super positive on it, and then certainly the cultural elites of the world were not super happy that we don't like homosexual marriage, but certainly the pew-goer, the average person, is still 60% on side, and that makes things quite different. And so all of a sudden, if you're one of these, you know, resurgence era organizations or resurgence era personalities, if all of a sudden the culture is very, very much against you and your opposition to homosexual marriage, that makes things quite a bit different, and indeed it makes it so that the entropy of the thing, you know, the the uh implicit pull of the culture is going to be towards homosexual marriage, and you are going to need to not just sort of exclude it, you're gonna need to be able to argue against it and push against it, and indeed, sexual perversions that have become pervasive in our culture, like homosexuality and like feminism, aren't necessarily being kept out by these confessions that we have rediscovered in the res in the resurgence era. Because, you know, when they when they penned the Westminster, they weren't worried about feminism because it has never been done. It has never been done, it had never been a problem. So why, you know, when they wrote the Westminster, the biggest problem was Roman Catholicism and oppression from Roman Catholic civil rulers. So in the Westminster, there is a lot of things, there is a lot of anti-Rome rhetoric in there because that's the thing they were worried about at the time. And I think it's even been I think even later the language was kind of revised to be less, you know, like less aggressive, you know, less sort of calling the Pope the Antichrist and all of that sort of thing. Um, they didn't care about feminism because they didn't know that that was a thing. So and so the this document, the Westminster for it, just as an example, which guards these basic Christian doctrines, is not having a section about feminism, you know? It's not having a section about homosexuality. And while homosexuality is um prohibited in the Bible very clearly, that doesn't stop these activists from mounting another from mounting a counter-attack, saying things saying, well, they're blatantly false, but saying things like, you know, the word homosexual is mistranslated. He was talking about pedophilia, etc. etc. etc. And the confessions just aren't the greatest um guard against that, because at least with these other doctrines like the doctrine of salvation, you could point to something and say, you need to sign this if you want to be part of the club. And if you can't sign it, too bad. Or if you did sign it in bad faith, you say, Hey, you signed this, you're lying. You need to be you need to reform. Um, but with things like feminism and homosexuality, it's just not possible. It's just not possible. It is it is um, you know, bad actors or or whatnot are very much able to um have a field day get getting in between the lines of these confessions on issues like this. Um, and you know, it might not necessarily be that, you know, um you know reform churches or gospel coalition churches type churches are gonna say, hey, we need women in the pulpit, but I mean I think that I think that it's very possible for feminists to to penetrate through those confessions and basically um while there is a hard line on some things that push right up against that hard line as much as possible. And so I think um I think that people are going, hang on, this isn't working. This isn't working. Um we need we need stronger uh we need stronger rhetoric and we need a stronger stand against some of these things. We can't just let these things through to the keeper. That's one incongruency. The next incongruency I think um happened in 2020. Um now I'm not gonna comment on political events from 2020 because while it is sort of a sh uh podcast about politics, I think that's not really relevant to our discussion. But you have to admit that in 2020 a lot of people's lives changed in in many ways, and for better or for worse, love it or hate it, a lot of people had to decide what to do. Um, and a lot of people were presented with stark choices, whether church-related or civil-related, that they had to decide what to do and decide very quickly. And I think this is a great segue into why I think that a reform resurgence is in the past, new Calvinism Calvinism is in the past, and it won't be the flashpoint issue because I think that coming into the next season, now that we're in the crisis season, coming into the next turning, I think that the flashpoint issue, who knows what the label is gonna be. But my prediction is that the coalitions are going to be built around what to do. I think that it's going to move from what it has been in the past, whereas, you know, are you willing to confess and believe a certain thing despite cultural opposition? It's gonna move from that to are you willing to do such a thing despite cultural opposition? Because what before it was, are you willing to believe in hell despite cultural opposition? Are you willing to believe in predestination despite cultural opposition? I think it's gonna change from that to are you willing to do things despite cultural opposition, because the culture I think has gotten a lot more polarized and a lot more hostile, and I think doing is gonna cost people things, and I think that's where that's where um we're moving into because I think the coalition and because um this part of our kind of religious life in our connected age, it's all it's often about coalition building. Um, because many most religiously motivated people um consume content about about religion. They consume content about Christian living. And with that, that's not going away unless, you know, Israel nukes the internet uh, you know, in the war that's going on. You know, that's an this isn't going away. So I think it's inevitable that, you know, coalescing of different different views um so will sort will will coalesce into s into loose coalitions, just like it did in the Reform Resurgence. And I think that the next round of coalitions are are going to be more friendly to slight theological um differences as compared to the past. I think um reasonable non-Calvinists are going to be let into the camp. Whereas before it whereas before it was sort of the case that if you know if you don't believe this, you don't believe the Bible. Um, you know, you don't believe, you know, it was more a test about the authority of scripture. I think these days, because the issues are so different, and because the issues are so practical, coalition building will be willing to overlook um theological differences. Um, I think people who are, you know, I I even I honestly even think that because it's gonna be so practical that in these pseudo in these coalitions which are gonna involve what to do, I think that even people who are of kind of very different theological persuasions are gonna be overlooked and allowed into the camp. Even Roman Catholics, even Eastern Orthodox. Because I remember it was famously said that um I think it was Alice de Begg who someone asked, like, would you would you be would you be willing to be in a political alliance with Roman Catholics against abortion? Maybe it wasn't abortion, maybe it was something else. I don't want to be unfair to him. And he basically said no, because you know, if I am seen standing next to a Roman Catholic, you know, I'm approving their faulty view of salvation. Um, I'm re I'm re I'm approving of their um of their false doctrine, I'm leading people astray. And that's fair enough. And obviously Adalyst to Beck has to has to uh follow his own convictions. Um But I think that most other people aren't gonna feel that way. I think a lot of uh other people are gonna be saying there's a lot of worse things going on out there. I would rather stand beside a Roman Catholic who believes in Jesus um than you know just sort of fragment off into the distance and let the uh let the world dominate us. Um because the cultural opposition is quite strong. And um this is by the way inevitable to happen in a crisis. Um in the crisis times in history, um it's about it's about doing. It's about doing. Um, you know, it's it's these are what we're talking about, these are the World War IIs of the of of the history, you know, these sort of all-out conflicts where our society is at stake. And that's just that's just part of it. Things are willing to people will be willing to overlook things like this in a time of crisis, for better or for worse. I'm not saying it's good or if it's bad, but that's sort of what's gonna happen. Um, and so I think that the C word Calvinism, I think it's gonna be I think it's just gonna be a whole lot less important. I think it's gonna be a whole lot less of a marker of coalitions, and I think it's just gonna be a whole lot less of a cultural conversation. Although, you know, Calvinists are still gonna exist, you know, Reformed churches are still gonna exist, Presbyterian churches are still gonna exist. So it's not like we we're gonna we're gonna be going into life after Calvinism, um, but it's not necessarily life with after Calvinists, it's just life after Calvinism registered trademark, you know, it's gonna be life after the Reform Resurgence. And it's an exciting time, it's a scary time, but it's an it's an exciting time. I think it's going to be defined uh by new coalitions, and I think it's gonna be defined by um I think it's gonna be defined by new coalitions coalescing around these issues that are slipping through the confessions. I think you are going to see and already are seeing um the battle lines being redrawn. Complementarianism complementarianism versus egalitarianism is old news. I haven't really I haven't really heard anyone jump banging on about how bad e um uh e um egalitarianism is. I but I have heard people questioning the roots and questioning the historicity of complementarianism and saying that we don't believe in complementarianism, we uh believe in other things. I've heard the and not that there's really you know an official label or anything for it yet, but I've heard people throw around the term biblical patriarchy, some sort of m uh, you know, more historical rooted version of gendered theology and gendered piety, which is um further rooted in history than the 1980s, like complementarianism. I think these battle lines are going to be redrawn, I think, uh, in that subject, especially because especially because complementarianism I don't think is very broad anymore. I think um I think complementarianism whether it was whether whether it once was something different or not, I think it's sort of just turned into a lowest common denominator of, you know, 1 Timothy 2 12, no women preaching. I don't think it's um I don't think it's really a systematic theology at all. Um I haven't really heard any convincing um recent work on quote unquote complementarianism. I think that these battle lines are gonna be redrawn. And I think the line that once ran through soteriology is not gonna run through there anymore. I think it's gonna run through other places. I think it's gonna have for better or for worse, it's gonna be a lot more political because I think the culture is choking out Christianity more and more, and we're getting more and more polarized. Um and I think the stakes are gonna ramp up, and I think that um for practical reasons, whether it's not theological reason, but for practical reasons, perhaps b perhaps to fight for our existence, uh, that the coalitions are gonna be formed around practical lines. Um because you know, like it sounds it sounds absurdist, not absurd. It it sounds um alarmist, but realistically it's not you know it's not entirely unfeasible to say that you know we would see Protestants and Catholics on Orthodox team up to fight, you know, persecution, religious persecution, uh or something like that. So um this last part has been a little bit of a ramble, but this um has been a short survey of um what of of just a little bit of recent history about um the uh life of the in church government, of of how of how it was, of the uh age of the reform resurgence and and the um how it was birthed out of the feelings of the uh awakening in the 60s and 70s, and how I think how and why I think it's coming to an end very shortly. And at the end of the day, we don't know what's going to replace it because really we don't know history until it's written in stone. And at the end of the day, any view or any system of the turnings of history, it's not so much about predicting history, but it's about um setting your expectations, and it's about being able to, you know, interpret the things as they happen because nobody can predict history at the end of the day. And so I hope that you've enjoyed this episode, and indeed thank you for listening. It's the it's the good gift that you can give me. Um, and I am hoping that you enjoyed, and I'm hoping to see you in the next episode where we're gonna talk about the civil government, we're gonna talk about politics, um, and I hope to see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening.