A generation ago, when mainline churches in the United States were still growing, concern for Reformed doctrine was often noticeably absent in American religious life. Whether because of defection from distinctly Reformed doctrines by the major Presbyterian and Reformed bodies, secular rejection of religion as a significant force in life, or the mere weakness and silence of those who stand within the Presbyterian tradition, distinctly Calvinistic doctrines were seldom heard, despite holding operations in such bastions of the Reformed faith as Westminster Seminary and Calvin College and Seminary of the Christian Reformed Church.
In our day, a time when many denominations are declining and religion is apparently losing its hold, there appears to be a renewed interest in Calvinistic theology and a resurgence of those committed to the doctrines of grace summarized in the Reformed standards: the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, the Canons of Dort, the Belgic Confession, and the Heidelberg Catechism. Ways are being found to highlight the Reformed faith nationally.
On the local level, observers have noted with some surprise the impressive growth of important Reformed colleges and seminaries. Covenant College, located at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, reports a record number of students for the current school year. Its sister institution, Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, has had a 20 per cent increase since 1972. Even more remarkable is the growth of the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, now highly regarded by the breakaway 80,000-member Presbyterian Church in America (briefly called the National Presbyterian Church), although many of its faculty and students have not given up on the Presbyterian Church in the United States (Southern). The Jackson seminary has grown from 17 students in 1966 to 214 today. The older Westminster Seminary also reports an upswing in attendance after a number of fairly static years, including a 50 per cent increase in new students this year. Each of these schools is committed to the divine inspiration, authority, and infallibility of the Scriptures as the written Word of God and to the Westminster and other Reformed standards as containing that system of doctrine found in Scripture.
There is an upsurge of independent churches stressing that they are “Reformed Baptists.”
Also important are the many theological institutes and conferences being held across the country. This winter the Australian Forum, sponsored by Present Truth magazine, held fifteen such conferences, featuring Editor Robert D. Brinsmead and Geoffrey J. Paxton of Australia. A similar effort known as the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology will be held for the second time this spring in both Los Angeles and Philadelphia with J. I. Packer of England and Ralph L. Keiper of the Conservative Baptist Seminary, Denver, Colorado, as featured speakers. This conference is now partially sponsored by Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns, a group of conservative ministers within the United Presbyterian Church. In Florida, the Pensacola Theological Institute is in its nineteenth year.
In western Pennsylvania the Ligonier Valley Study Center, directed by resident theologian Robert C. Sproul, continues to hold frequent student and adult conferences and has experienced unusual interest in its work. Its tape ministry is particularly well received.
Now there is talk of a possible Congress of Presbyterian and Reformed Christians on the North American continent in 1976. The congress is being conceived as an attempt to focus distinctly Reformed insights upon contemporary problems and “to raise a witness for an infallible Word of God, the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ, and for the Reformed Faith in particular,” as an advance congress paper puts it. According to current plans, overall responsibility for the congress would fall to the Board of Directors of the five-year-old National Presbyterian and Reformed Fellowship.
Does this momentum signify a new departure or merely a return to old paths and ways? Those who go by the name Calvinist affirm the latter. To begin with, they believe that the doctrines of grace known as Calvinism were certainly not invented by Calvin, nor were they characteristic of his thought alone during the Reformation period. These are strong Calvinistic statements in the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the epistles of Paul, Peter, John, and the other New Testament writers. Augustine argued the case for the same truths over against the denials of Pelagius, insisting that men and women are so helplessly lost in sin that they cannot even choose God until God himself intervenes in grace to open their eyes to see the truth concerning Christ and moves their recalcitrant wills to yield to him and be saved.
Luther himself was a “Calvinist” in all the essential doctrines, although this is not reflected in the subsequent development of Lutheranism. So was Zwingli. The Puritans were also Calvinists, and through them and their teaching England and Scotland experienced the greatest and most pervasive national revivals the world has ever seen. In that number were the heirs of John Knox: Thomas Cartwright, Richard Stibbes, Richard Baxter, Matthew Henry, John Owen, and others. In America thousands were influenced by Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather, and George Whitefield, each of whom was Reformed in his doctrines.
The modern missionary movement received nearly all its direction and initial impetus from those in the Reformed and Puritan tradition. The list includes such men as William Carey, John Ryland, Henry Martyn, Robert Moffat, David Livingstone, John G. Paton, John R. Mott, and many others. For all these the doctrines of grace were not an appendage to Christian thought, something that could be temporarily set aside in the interests of a greater, so-called evangelical unity; these doctrines were central to their faith, and fired and gave form to their preaching and missionary efforts. The new Calvinists are raising their banner in the confidence of being at one with this vast host.
If there really is a resurgence of the Reformed faith in our day, then the Church at large will soon be hearing a number of truths more clearly.
1. It will be hearing in ever sharper terms of the desperate and totally hopeless state of the lost. It will be hearing that man is indeed dead in trespasses and sins and that he has absolutely no hope of responding to the Gospel even when it is preached in power unless God first intervenes to give him life. This will mean fewer appeals to “give your heart to Jesus” and more declarations of God’s just wrath against sin and the consequently desperate state of the ungodly.
2. There will be a renewed emphasis upon God’s grace as the only possible source of salvation. This involves a renewed emphasis upon election. For if man cannot choose God, man can therefore be saved only if God chooses to save him. And this he does. This is the Christian’s greatest joy and wonder.
3. Preaching will increasingly stress God’s sovereignty and power. For God does not elect men to salvation in a way that can be frustrated by man’s stubborn reserve or disobedience. Rather, his election also accomplishes salvation. No doubt many Calvinists have misconstrued God’s elective action, implying at times that men and women are little more than robots whom God manipulates into salvation against their will. This is not right. God does not save men regardless of their will; he makes them willing to come to him. Nevertheless, he does make them willing, and he is never frustrated in so doing. This is the point.
4. There will be a new emphasis upon particular redemption (often called limited atonement), that is, the doctrine that Jesus died in a particular way for a particular people, with the result that their sins and only theirs are removed. This does not deny that the death of Christ relates to the world at large in some fashion. But it does deny that his death is ineffective in the case of the vast multitudes who do not believe, as it must be if he died for them and they are yet not saved.
5. Finally, there will be a new and comforting stress upon God’s steadfast perseverance with his people so that none of those whom he has called and for whom Christ died is lost.
We shall be hearing some of the greatest texts of the Word of God once again, and they shall be taken seriously. For example, John 6:44: “No one can come to me, except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day.” Or John 10:27–30: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.” In these texts and others, the sovereignty of God in salvation and indeed in all things is clarified and the need of man revealed.
Will the Calvinists carry the field? They have done it before. They may again, if the flaws that marred earlier efforts are corrected and the love of God infuses their lives and preaching. Too often the Calvinists have become theologically brittle and highly critical of other theological positions and of one another. They have refused to work with those who have not expressed themselves in precisely their terms. They have allowed no theological flexibility, even in such uncertain areas as eschatology. But today’s upsurge shows signs of being different. Among the younger Calvinists at least there has appeared a new openness in discussion, and there is an awareness of the need for “observable love” toward all Christians, as Francis Schaeffer declared to crowds meeting for the second General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America last fall.
With those elements—faith in the divine inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures, sound Reformed doctrine, and observable love—the new Calvinists may usher in a new day.
