I shouldn’t really be surprised anymore. McLaren devotes the chapter entitled “Why I Am Fundamentalist/Calvinist” to a detailed explanation of why he is not a fundamentalist or a Calvinist. Not surprisingly, in order to make this case, an old workhorse in the debate against Reformed folk is brought out of the stables and made to plow several acres. That workhorse is the “what about your semper reformanda slogan? Aren’t you guys supposed to be always reforming?” Yes, but this is quite different than “always meandering.”
Of course, as Reformed Christians we are committed to ecclesia reformata et semper reformanda, which represents the church as “reformed and always reforming.” But (equally) of course this presupposes a standard against which we must measure ourselves. In doing this, however, our commitment to the unchanging standard of Scripture gets us identified by McLaren as a pack of foundationalists. But Scripture is the word of our triune and personal God, and He has given this personal word to us, and He took the trouble to have it written down for us. A man who receives a love letter from his wife would treasure every word because it came from her. Only an idiot would treasure the paper and divorce the woman.
We should therefore take the trouble to order our lives by Scripture. Sinners detach God from His Word, but God Himself does not. Because, after all, God laid a stone in Zion for a sure foundation (Is. 28:16), and no one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 3:11). I have a hard time envisioning this kind of foundationalism as a bad thing. Christ is the cornerstone. Moreover, Christ the cornerstone is literate, and left a book for us. More on this later.
McLaren wants the Reformed church to change with the times, but it is clear he wants the standard of change to come from the times, and not from the unbreakable Scriptures. “I can’t see church history in any other way, except this: semper reformanda, continually being led and taught by the Spirit into new truth” (p. 193). But how do we determine this “new truth?” By careful and prayerful exegesis? No, we determine new truth because some contemporary philosophers got tired of Descartes. And McLaren’s suspicion of “answers” comes through clearly. “From this viewpoint ‘getting it right’ is beside the point; the point is ‘being and doing good’ as followers of Jesus in our unique time and place, fitting in with the ongoing story of God’s saving love for planet Earth” (p. 192). Opposing “getting it right” with “being and doing good” is a classic liberal maneuver. But why oppose truth and love like this? Does the Bible?
McLaren wants us to follow the Reformers’ example, not by learning from what they taught, but rather by constructing formulations “that are as fitting to our postmodern times” (p. 189) as the work of the Reformers was fitted to post-medieval times. There’s a slogan for the ages. Fit with the times!
So a word about semper reformanda. Take the image of keeping house. The phrase semper reformanda can and should be used to justify cleaning the carpets, rearranging the furniture, adding a wing, repairing the leaks in the roof, washing the dishes, making the beds, and remodeling the basement. It ought not to be taken as justification for answering the door when the JW’s come calling, and giving them the family heirloom silver. That is not semper reformanda. Change does not justify itself; change is simply change. We don’t know if it is semper reformanda or semper deformanda unless we have a way of checking ourselves. We are impure thinkers; we need a sure word from God, and we ought not to listen for a moment to any who would seek to take that sure word away.
McLaren tries to protect himself against anticipated responses by seizing the high ground right at the end of this chapter. “But Calvin’s descendants (among others) sometimes seem to believe they have been granted an exemption from 1 Corinthians 13 or Ephesians 4 or Colossians 3 in the defense of Calvinist theology. The generous or ungenerous way they critique this chapter (which no doubt deserves critique) will illustrate to what degree they will uphold this trait or relax it — that word relax perhaps being the best word on which to end a fun-filled chapter like this” (p. 198).
My responses to McLaren in this series of reviews have indeed been sharp, and the helpings I have apportioned out have indeed been generous, but they have not been uncharitable. He has written his book, and since it strokes and flatters just about all the current conceits of this generation, it needs to be answered. Moreover, it needs to be answered effectively, so that people can see the absurdities in it. Jesus did not answer the Pharisees in “the literature” or in “peer-reviewed journals.” As a theologian, it has to be granted that Jesus was a street fighter, and the common people heard Him gladly. When the learned theologians came up to Him, with a delighted crowd looking on, He would roll down their socks and pull their robes over their heads. The people came to see what was going on as ludicrous because Jesus saw it for what it was and painted it for them that way. Describing the camels in the Pharisaic coffee is hardly a scholarly enterprise, but getting the camels in there in the first place is. If there is one thing that Christians need to learn it is that scribes haven’t changed.
Here is why McLaren considers it appropriate to reject Calvinism, and still call himself a Calvinist. He does this because he thought up a new set of phrases to go with the TULIP acronym. His version is Triune Love, Unselfish Election, Limitless Reconciliation, Inspiring Grace, and Passionate Persistent Saints. Q.E.D.
This is like me suddenly realizing that I (yes, even I) am also part of the emergent church, because I emerged from the shower this morning. I am a member of McLaren’s generous orthodoxy because I have been generous with gasoline for my chain saw. This is like saying that McLaren is a Cartesian foundationalist because even he would affirm that Jesus is in some sense a cornerstone. McLaren says that he respects the Reformed faith (p. 187), but his methods of argumentation drip with a coy contempt. And I myself am a Calvinist because I embrace the philosophy of Nietzsche: The western world is dying, Unmeasured violence is coming, Love is stupid, I am da man, and People annoy me. Nothing like a little tough-minded theological analysis to get the brain going in the morning.
McLaren says, “For me the ‘fundamentals of the faith’ boil down to . . .” The key words here are the first two — for me. But what are the fundamentals of the faith if McLaren had never been born? What were they in 1358? What will they be in 2793? Nothing wrong with a peg on which to hang all the law and the prophets. But that peg will be in the same spot on the wall until the end of the world, and will never have to fit itself for “the times.”
McLaren has trouble dealing with a theological adversary as it exists, and so he cheerfully manufactures straw men. “Although scholarly understandings of predestination are finely nuanced, the ‘on the street’ version generally asserts that God is the chess player, and we are the pieces, and we go where we are moved” (p. 186). And McLaren adds that he has “little time for determinism” (p. 186). Yes, quite, ‘on the street’ Calvinism does assert that God is the Potter, we are the pots, and we go where we are moved. But because McLaren has little time for determinism, he apparently moved on before he heard the following sentence: “nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.” Now McLaren is fully at liberty to reject this, and to reject it because he has little time for determinism, even “nuanced” determinism. What he is not at liberty to do is represent half our position as though it were the whole. He is free to not believe it; he is not free to pretend like we didn’t say it. And related to this, he is not at liberty to pretend that a few Calvinist scholars have room for a “nuanced” free will somewhere in their footnotes, but that all the pew Calvinists are roaring for “God is a puppet-master” sermons.
For all his sampling of tidbits from all these theological traditions, McLaren really needs to get out of his emergent bubble. He is like the guy who thought he was a multi-culturalist because one time he ordered the hot sauce at Arbys. Flitting by numerous ecclesial traditions, pretending to honor them, but settling down and living in none of them, is not genuine respect at all. Words of respect, while doing this sort of thing, is not respect at all, but merely an unctuous, oozing flattery.