It was Scofield, Warfield, Morgan, and Spurgeon, et al., (all Reformed) who first wrote The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. It was Warfield, Hodge, Machen, and Van Til who would found Westminster Seminary after Princeton succumbed to "modernist influences." (Somehow these folks never figured out that there is no more modernist theology than fundamentalism, especially in the Reformed sense.) Fundamentalism is a particularly Reformed version of Christian theology. Calling it neo-Reformed does not destroy the explicit similarities between what Calvin and Beza wrote and taught; it simply indicates that this 500-year-old exercise in circular logic has been resurrected for a new generation. That Driscoll and his ilk have managed to dress up Calvinism in expensive jeans and hipster sensibility is a credit to their ability to make this uber douchey version of Christian theology a favorite of the neo-cool kids. In spite of his manifold issues, including some noticeable sexual predilections (masturbating in front of a mirror, for example), Driscoll has shown an amazing ability to make everything that is old new again, and not just new: hipster new.
As I was discussing this with the Reverend last night, a couple of things emerged. Clearly, Acts 29, which from here on will stand in for "neo-Reformed theology" is obsessed with certainty. This is the appeal of Reformed theology, after all. Why else do you follow a man who creates a systematic theology in which all things are answered with reference to God's sovereignty, and in which all issues of God's questionable ethics within that system are reduced to God can do what God wants to do? Certainty isn't really available in this life, but the Modernist impulse in Calvinism is happy to sell the lie that it is.
Second, as the Reverend rightly pointed out, there are strains of non-Reformed fundamentalism, and being a Baptist, he has certainly seen his share. Having grown up Pentecostal, I saw my share, too, and Pentecostals loathe Calvinists. However, it is clear that fundamentalism emerged from Reformed theology. The only question is how it was picked up by these other strains of American Protestantism. I suspect the Scopes trial is part of the answer, and I'm sure some of those strains took what was "good" from The Fundamentals without bothering to adopt the entire Reformed system that provided the comprehensive framework. American Christianity has seldom bothered with comprehensiveness, after all.
Finally, as an educator, it was clear to me, too, that Acts 29 is doing well now because American educational institutions are training young men and women (I still have no idea why any woman would join one of these temples of misogyny.) to embrace the sort of philosophy of certainty that Acts 29 embodies. Public (and some private) schools today train students in a catechetical format, much like a Catholic catechism or, hell, let's just say it, like The Institutes of the Christian Religion. The idea is that there are questions on standardized tests that have to have standardized answers, and those answers are offered, reducing the work of education to catechesis.
Launch students from the comfortable confines of question/answer certainty into the scary world of college and young adult ambiguity, and there will be an immediate pining for the certainty that standardized tests provide. More often than I like to recount, students ask, "Do we need to know this for the test?" My typical response is that they need to know it because it's good for their brains, and the exercise of actually thinking is very good for making better humans. This answer does not make most of them comfortable.
For example, today in World Religion class, we began Judaism, and I began where we always begin, with two creation narratives and the story of The Fall. Most students are familiar with Genesis 3, as this is Oklahoma, but a few have never heard it. Very few know there are two creation narratives, and my young fundamentalist from the previous post assured me that the two stories are "nearly identical." I do not tell them they will need to know the characters' names for a test; they won't. I don't tell them they need to know any particular part of the story; they don't. They are talking to me about the story with no idea where the conversation is headed. It's unsettling for students who have pen in hand to take "test notes."
In the discussion on Genesis 3, I tell students that the serpent is a trickster in the mythological sense, not the devil. There's no devil in Jewish theology, and this is a Jewish story, period. This is tough news for evangelical and fundamentalist students, who have been taught that the Tanakh is "incomplete" without the understanding provided by the New Testament.
I tell the story every time, and then ask who the protagonist and antagonist are, and which characters the students like. Helpfully, I write the names on the board. At some point in the conversation, I erase God and write Odin. At that point, some students recognize their psychological aversion to calling God the antagonist. In the story, God is an overbearing parent, and he's kind of a dick. The serpent never lies; God does. Eve makes a courageous decision; Adam follows his wife's lead. The narrative utterly subverts patriarchy and omniparent versions of Judeo-Christian theology.
This entire exercise is painful for some students, as they are unable to think abstractly about the characters, and they are unable to think laterally, applying things that are obviously true in one context to another context. If the story is told with Odin or Marduk as God, it's easy for students to detect the overbearing nature of God's rules and the unbelievably abusive response to the "sin" of wanting enlightenment—curses. Really? Truthfully, many see these sorts of acknowledgments as siding with the devil. They don't believe the serpent is the devil. How could they? They studied for this test, damnit, and the answer is Devil.
Neo-Reformed theology is forced to call all things that God does good, even when they are clearly not good, if the word "good" is to have any meaning beyond God's capricious actions. The inability of students to think through this obvious problem makes them prime candidates for Acts 29. The young fundamentalist student, as I mentioned, is reading and enjoying Reformed theology. He likes the answers he is finding there. He thinks that referring all things back to God's sovereignty answers all the questions, even if the answer is "God's thoughts are not ours," as if that isn't ripped brutally from context, too. He's missing the Euthyphro dilemma of God willing what is good or things being good because God wills them. Reformed theology prefers the second answer, and it certainly makes life easier in the sense that I no longer need to think about hard things like finding "word of God" within the "Word of God," but they seem unaware that it makes soteriology a crap shoot. After all, if God can murder, drown, curse, and count jealousy as a virtue, and if God is above God's own laws, then how can anyone have any security that heaven is their destination? A god that can murder a whole planet can lie about salvation.
As usual, good stuff man.
Posted by: Rob Davis | June 13, 2014 at 10:31 AM