Updated Friday, Nov 30, 2007

Bridge building conference lowers alarm level

By Norman Jameson

BR Editor

Dick McCartney, my editor at the Oklahoma Baptist Messenger, used to wander into my office, bottom feeding for an editorial idea. "What should I view with alarm this week?" he would ask.

There are always plenty of things to view with alarm. Thanks to a "Building Bridges" conference at Ridgecrest Nov. 26-28, I'm a little less alarmed about creeping Calvinism in Baptist life.

I remain, however, just as befuddled by it, not a whit more attracted to it and just as certain it has severe potential to divide. A conference speaker even listed one advantage of Calvinism as prompting "better church splits."

But if the general attitude of presenters is typical of the players in this debate nationwide, there is hope for civil, informed dialog among people who hold different views. That bears celebrating.

Why are we talking about Calvinism at all? Why don't we leave such discussion to denominations who base their doctrines on Calvin's understanding of scripture?

We're forced into the conversation because in some Baptist academic circles - with the nucleus at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and its president Al Mohler - there is a movement to convince us that our earliest leaders were at heart and by theology Calvinist.

And they are training our pastors this way. And those pastors are being called to churches filled with what they now perceive as an unregenerate congregation. And thus begins another conflict.

At the conference, LifeWay Christian Resources researcher Ed Stetzer said nearly 34 percent of 2004 SBC seminary graduates affirm the traditional five points of Calvinism. That is as opposed to 10 percent of pastors in the overall Baptist population. So, Calvinism as a theological worldview is dripping steadily into our transfusion tube.

Conference participants quickly learned there are several breeds of Calvinists, and no one likes "hyper-calvinists." Non-calvinists had little empathy for "Classic-Calvinists" either, but by golly, the "Baptist-Calvinists" were our kind of theological kinsmen - whatever that oxymoron is. Malcolm Yarnell of Southwestern Seminary offered a "Baptist-Baptist" perspective that was not - shall I say - warmly received by the other hyphenated theologians.

Calvinism is basically a systematic theology, a framework by which to order both the simple and complex issues in the Bible. I have always appreciated the Baptist willingness to accept that frail humans with limited understanding do not have to shoehorn every question mark into someone's systematic theology. Calvinism shoehorns big issues into small spaces to explain unfathomable ideas. And as Yarnell said, it tends to offer answers to difficult questions based on ruminations about the system, rather than from a simpler scriptural answer.

Calvinism is most widely known by the five presuppositions for understanding God's grace, brain crutched by the acronym TULIP: Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace and Perseverance of the saints.

Conference speakers from opposing views addressed a series of topics most often discussed in the Baptist/Calvinist debates. Speakers were mostly Baptist seminary professors or presidents, with an occasional preacher thrown into the mix. The audience - reported at 550 - was primarily pastors and they came from all over the country.

In yet another "angels on pinheads" debate of the kind that makes theologians salivate and laymen snore, several Calvinist positions do bear mention as they grow in influence among Baptists.

"Unconditional election" says God has predetermined and foreordained the eternal destiny of everyone, whether to heaven or hell, for his glory. It says men are unconditionally elected by God for His purposes without any prior works, good or evil, by which God would judge them.

Put simply, before you were born, God ordained your destiny for heaven or hell. While you might think that theology would castrate evangelism, the irony is that every Calvinist speaker testified to the urgent need for evangelism. And, they pointed out, one of the most widely used evangelism "systems" for a decade was Evangelism Explosion, designed and produced by the Calvinist Presbyterian pastor D. James Kennedy, who died Sept. 5.

A second Calvinism "tulip tenet" is "limited atonement" which declares Jesus did not die for everyone, but only a limited number of people.

Of course there is no shoe too small into which to horn a tulip interpretation, but a simple reading (simplicity could be my problem) of 1 Timothy, chapters two and four appears to say Jesus wants "all men" to be saved and that Jesus gave himself "as a ransom for all men."

Calvinist speakers said Baptists actually do believe in a limited atonement because we are not universalists, believing all are saved. The question is, what is the limiting factor in limited atonement? If all are not saved, what determines who is not saved?

I was taught an individual accepts or rejects by his own free will that salvation paid for by Christ and freely offered to all. Calvinists say the individual has nothing to do with it - that God chose way before He decided if the Mississippi River would flow north or south that He would create some creatures we call humans for eternal torment and a few lucky ones to spend eternity in His presence.

Calvinists see no irony in that and their spirit does not recoil at the thought that God would intentionally create tenants for hell. They perceive that God is gracious to save any, when He doesn't have to save a single person.

I did pick up a couple more themes in the Calvinist tenor that should give pulpit search committees more questions to ask candidates. One is an emphasis on "church discipline." The other is a conviction that too little church discipline has led to "unregenerate church membership."

In other words, Calvinists, at the conference at least, appear to be pretty certain Baptist churches are filled with persons who are not saved, who are just as reprobate and destined for hell as anyone else who, well, as anyone else who God tapped for torment while He was contemplating creation.

To their credit - and to the shame of all Christians - Calvinists look across church rolls and see too many who claim the name of Christ but whose lives bear no witness to being changed by the power and love of Christ.

If church discipline is exercised more assiduously, Calvinists say, church rolls will be filled with Christians, instead of with unregenerate reprobates. I will not speculate how that position considers the efficacy of preaching, the "void" return of the Word, the power of the Holy Spirit or even limited atonement.

One more thing. Jeff Noblit, pastor of First Baptist Church, Muscle Shoals, Ala., is the one who said "The rise of Calvinism will produce better church splits."

He said 2 Cor. 6:17 tells Christians to be separate. He said that verse tells "Christians they must split from false professors." He did not say the verse is an admonition to be separate from non-believers.

"Most church splits are not good splits," he said, because "they are usually over power or worldly desires."

A good split, on the other hand, is "over truth."

"When a central doctrine is at stake," he said, "the pastor must stand. Peace at all cost is the banner of the coward ... splitting over essential doctrine is commanded and commendable."

Maybe I am more alarmed than I thought.