This morning my friend Kevin DeYoung (listen to the Office Hours interview with Kevin here) makes some arguments in defense of a broader definition of the adjective Reformed. This question is at the heart of why the HB exists and and why I wrote Recovering the Reformed Confession. He raises the question whether John Piper is Reformed and answers in the affirmative. As folk often do, he begins with Piper’s self-identification as Reformed and his affirmation of the sovereignty of God. If self-identity is sufficient, then why did the Synod of Dort bother to meet and to eject the Remonstrants from their pulpits? After all, as Jackson notes in the combox of Kevin’s post, Arminius self-identified as Reformed. Indeed, as I noted in the previous post, he died a minister in good standing in the Reformed churches, yet we don’t consider him Reformed. Is that narrow-minded of us? I don’t think so.

Why is this argument necessary? The short answer is this: If we don’t have an objective definition of Reformed then the word is meaningless, then there are as many definitions as definers. Consider the discussion we’re having right now. Proposed: a fellow who hears directly (beyond Scripture) from God, who says that baptizing infants is not only wrong but necessarily leads to the Federal Vision error, whose covenant theology, as distinct from his doctrine of justification, is at significant variance with that of the Reformed churches. If this were the 16th century one might think that I’m describing one of Caspar Schwenkfeld, not a leading Reformed theologian. That’s how the discussion has shifted.

As I asked in the epilogue to RRC, if Piper or several of the other YRR leaders had applied to be admitted to the Synod of Dort, the French Reformed Synods, or the Westminster Assembly they would have been refused categorically. Why? Because the Reformed are bigots? No, not at all. Are Baptists bigots refusing to allow us to call ourselves Baptists? After all, we believe in baptizing hitherto unbaptized adults who come to faith. “No!” they say, “there’s much more to being a Baptist than that!.” Amen. Bingo. Ding, ding, ding!

The first question is whether affirming the five heads of doctrine of the Synod of Dort (1619) is sufficient to be Reformed? Obviously not. A good number of people who could not be reasonably defined as Reformed have affirmed those points long before the Reformation. There was a vigorous predestinarian theology at different points in the middle ages. Gottschalk of Orbais in the 9th century taught the substance of the five points but we would not allow him into a Reformed pulpit. Thomas Aquinas taught predestination and arguably limited atonement in the 13th century. There were several late medieval proponents of a high Augustinian soteriology from whom the Reformation learned but who would not be Reformed. So it is with Piper. Intersection is not identity. A necessary condition is not a sufficient condition. A race car must have an engine. That’s a necessary condition but an engine is not a sufficient condition because not every engine is a racing engine. There are other components (e.g., suspension, frame, the cockpit) to a race car that distinguish it from other cars.

Second, Kevin addresses my argument that it is the Reformed confessions and Reformed ecclesiology that define Reformed. He mentions Richard Muller and Calvin but he reduces “Calvin” to soteriology. Here he assumes a great deal that is not in evidence. He writes, “[Piper] could likely affirm 95% of what is in the Three Forms and in the Westminster Standards.” This is just the point. Piper hasn’t affirmed those things. We don’t have to guess what Calvin and the rest of the Reformed affirmed because they articulated their faith in public, binding, ecclesiastical documents on whole range of issues. Here Kevin treats the confessions the way many do, as if they were mini-systematic theologies rather than as binding ecclesiastical documents. That’s why Kevin thinks he knows what Piper must think. That “must” is an a priori not a fact. Further, the Reformed confessions as much like the American Constitution as they are like Berkhof’s Systematic Theology. It just isn’t true that denying Reformed covenant theology, our hermeneutic, our doctrine of the church and sacraments is denying “5%” of Reformed theology. That’s like saying, “I love the American constitution but I reject the Bill of Rights.” Would such a person be ideologically American? No.

Kevin calls Piper a Calvinist. Is that accurate? John Calvin taught more than a soteriology. John Calvin was a minister in the church in Geneva. He had a doctrine of the church. He had an ecclesiology, a doctrine of the sacraments to which was organically, logically related his Christology—what is Piper’s Christology? Who knows? Does anyone care? Exactly. Did Calvin care about Christology? Yes! He wrote on it at length to the Lutherans and the Anabaptists who had a heretical (“spiritual flesh”) Christology. Calvin taught and the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism teach that, in the Lord’s Supper, believers eat the “proper and natural” body and blood by the mystical operation of the Holy Spirit (Belgic Confession Art. 35). If you just thought “Eww!” I understand but you’re not a Calvinist. You might be a predestinarian. You might even be orthodox on justification, but you’re not a Calvinist. The Reformed Christology is related to our doctrine of humanity (anthropology), to our doctrine of God, to our doctrine of Scripture, to our covenant theology, and that is related to our hermeneutic. Piper has defended a classical Christian doctrine of God against Open Theism (for which we are all thankful!) but his hermeneutic is not our hermeneutic and thus, his covenant theology is not ours. It wasn’t ago that Piper’s reading of redemptive history was that of Daniel Fuller’s—which is essentially that of Federal Vision.

There were two hills on which Calvin was prepared to die: worship and the doctrine of justification. On this see the essay, “Calvin’s Principle of Worship” in Tributes to John Calvin, ed. by David Hall. Piper now agrees with Calvin on the latter but does he agree with Calvin on the former? Evidently not. He does not confess or practice Calvin’s principle of worship. The Reformed churches at least confess Calvin’s principle even if their practice has generally declined from his. At least the Reformed may one day recover their confession but Piper doesn’t confess what we do about the way the congregation should come before the face of the living God. That’s a big difference. The point is that Reformed theology is a whole. It’s not a pizza that can be sold by the slice. It’s part of a package. The same is true of Baptist theology.

Finally, Kevin appeals to Bavinck’s argument “From the outset Reformed theology in North America displayed a variety of diverse forms.” He argues that the Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Quakers, Baptists et al have roots in or connections to Calvinistic origins. This an argument that Darryl Hart addresses in his recent book, Calvinism: A History—here’s my interview with Darryl on this book. This is a variant of the “Calvinism is the seed of the modern world” argument. It’s a Whig reading of history and it doesn’t work here. Consider the inclusion of the Quakers in Bavinck’s list. Do you know who and what the Quakers were and are? Their theology, piety, and practice has more in common with Thomas Muntzer than Guido de Bres, Francis Turretin, or Louis Berkhof. The original Quaker denial of the sufficiency of Scripture, of the uniqueness of Christ, and their practice of sitting about “waiting” (that’s their word) for the Spirit to move, the denial of ministers, was antithetical to the Reformed Reformation but exactly in line with the mystical (i.e., neo-Pentecostal) theology and piety of the original Anabaptists, who denied sola Scriptura and who accused the Reformed of being “ministers of the dead letter” (Muntzer’s phrase). For more on this see this essay originally published in the NTJ, “Presbyterians and Quakers Together.”

Yes, there are connections between congregationalists and episcopalians to historic Reformed theology. There were congregationalists and episcopalians at Dort and Westminster. There The connections between the Particular Baptists (the original nomenclature for what today are incorrectly called “Reformed Baptists”), however, and Reformed theology are cloudy at best but we know how members of the Westminster Assembly regarded them. They weren’t invited to Westminster and they weren’t recognized as folk who differed on “5%” of Reformed theology.

We should resist the impulse to broaden the definition of Reformed. It is tempting. It would be great to be part of a broader coalition, to part of the winning team (hence the Whig history) but the facts just won’t allow it. The reality is that since the early 19th century, the Reformed confession (theology, piety, and practice) has been gradually marginalized in North America. I understand that things looked differently to Bavinck, but he (like Kuyper) had his own reasons for reading the American story the way he did. Nathan Hatch is a much more accurate about what happened in the New World. On this see the essay “On Being Reformed in Sister’s America” in Always Reformed (and here for Kindle and here for iBook).

A definition of Reformed that includes Quakers, John Piper, and John Calvin is incoherent. I doubt that Kevin would attend that church. Arguably, however, on essential questions of Reformed theology, piety, and practice, Piper has more in common with the Quakers than he has with Calvin.

UPDATE: Darryl responds to Kevin at Oldlife.