A good new book on Reformed theology

Last updated on: August 18, 2011 at 7:31 pm by Roger E. Olson

A good new book on Reformed theology 2011-08-18T19:31:37-05:00 Roger E. Olson

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I have to give them credit. Reformed theologians are prolific when it comes to writing about their own tradition. I have in my library (and have read) several excellent volumes expounding the Reformed theological tradition. (E.g., Introducing the Reformed Faith by Donald K. McKim, The Westminster Handbook to Reformed Theology edited by McKim, The Basic Ideas of Calvinism (really a book about Reformed theology in general) by H. Henry Meeter, What Is Reformed Theology? by R. C. Sproul.

The newest addition to my library is Reformed Theology by R. Michael Allen (Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Knox Theological Seminary at Fort Lauderdale, FL [which I think, if I’m not mistaken, was founded by the ministry of the late D. James Kennedy].) Allen’s volume is, in my judgment, the best of the lot. I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in knowing about and understanding one particular strain or flavor of Reformed theology. (In my opinion, each of the above mentioned books describes Reformed theology from a particular angle. I don’t know of any one book that provides a “God’s eye view” of Reformed theology although McKim’s Handbook contains articles by various authors covering most of the diverse territory of Reformed thought.)

Allen’s volume is concise but thorough and and, with regard to what he considers alternative views, pointed but fair. With one major exception. (My full review of Allen’s book will appear sometime next year in a British evangelical theological journal.) That one exception is the pietist-revivalist tradition which he lumps together with liberal Protestantism as emphasizing religious experience to the detriment of doctrine. He is surely over-reaching when he declares that in both liberalism and revivalism “there is no positive account of what Christ brings.” (p. 93)

Having grown up in a revivalistic tradition (and being part of another one yet) I find Allen’s judgment simply false. Sure, like every religious tradition (including Allen’s own) revivalism has had its excesses and even its lunatic fringe. (How would he like it if someone treated the entire Reformed tradition as equal with hyper-Calvinism or even supralapsarianism?)

It’s one thing to critique another tradition. Allen would be well within his rights to say that there is real difference between (his version of) the Reformed tradition and revivalism. (Although I have certainly known of revivalist Reformed people! The Christian Reformed pastor who officiated at my aunt’s funeral gave a passionate altar call!) But to claim that among revivalist Christians “there is no positive account of what Christ brings” is offensive and patently false. He attempts to justify this claim by saying (immediately afterwards) that liberal and revivalist notions of Christian salvation deny the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and replace it with “an affirmation of the worth of the believer’s own imperfect, yet persevering faith.” (p. 93)

Again, having grown up in the thick of revivalism I have to object to this claim most strenuously. To be sure, some revivalists may be guilty of this inflation of subjective faith, but the tradition as a whole is not. I would like to ask Allen if he thinks Billy Graham is guilty of this? Does Graham preach that Christ’s righteousness is not imputed to us on account of faith? I don’t think so.

Interestingly, Allen does not quote from a single theologian of the pietist or revivalist tradition to justify his claim. He mentions Schleiermacher and Finney but quotes conservative Reformed authors as his authorities.

In recent years there has been a tendency among conservative Reformed theologians in America to blame everything pernicious in American religious life on revivalism and especially the Second Great Awakening and especially Finney. While I disagree with Finney on some important points of theology, do these Reformed thinkers deny that Finney did anything good at all? I despise some aspects of Jonathan Edwards’ theology, but I confess him to be a great Christian thinker and preacher and attribute much good in American Christian life to his legacy.

Finney once wrote of Edwards “The man I adore; his errors I deplore.” I might say the same of Finney. But to tar the entire revivalist tradition with the same brush and link it all to Schleiermacher’s subjectivism and Finney’s semi-Pelagianism is, in my opinion, to ignore the great contribution of revivalism to the vitality of American religious life.

Earlier I said that Allen expounds a particular strain of Reformed theology. His magisterium, so to speak, is Reformed confessions of faith–especially ones from the 16th and early 17th centuries. But today “Reformed” designates a wide swath of world Protestant Christianity. This year (2010) two world wide Reformed ecumencial bodies merged to form the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC). It includes as a full charter member the Remonstrant Brotherhood of Holland–the denomination that traces its roots back to Arminius and the Remonstrants. It seems that Allen does not want to acknowledge this “big tent” approach to defining Reformed theology even though he does occasionally quote from Karl Barth and other modern Reformed thinkers with whom he probably disagrees about many things. (He quotes approvingly Serene Jones, the feminist president of Union Theological Seminary in NYC!)

Overall, in spite of the flawed treatment of revivalism and its tendency to limit “Reformed” to a particular swath of the Reformed faith today, Allen’s book is better than most others and I highly recommend a critical reading of it.

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