Let me clarify further on my last post. I am in a bit of flux at the moment. The work we have done with Evangelical Calvinism has left an indelible mark on my theological formation that will never go away. I have not abandoned anything that we have put forward with Evangelical Calvinism. But my theological identity and sensibilities are greater than, more complex than being reduced to ‘The Evangelical Calvinist.’ Again, I will always be grateful to Myk Habets for including me in the work of Evangelical Calvinism; most particularly the two books we co-edited together. But I think I want to shed, a bit, simply being known as the Evangelical Calvinist. I think the language of Calvinist can be misleading. As I noted in my last post, if we were to detail some very significant doctrinal loci in my own theological understanding, we wouldn’t probably come up with anything that is meaningfully Calvinist, per se. For me, the moniker Evangelical Calvinist, can be reduced to the theological impulses forwarded by Karl Barth; more than anyone else. What I don’t want to communicate, from my last post, is that I am a strident Anabaptist, say in the mold of someone like John Howard Yoder, or contemporary Anabaptists of today. I am broadly Reformed, and yet “Radically” so in the sense that Barth’s reformulation of the themes present in the ‘Reformed’ faith represent the reformulations I am happy to sign on with in the main. In this sense I am Radically Reformed; and insofar as the historic Radically Reformed (namely, the Anabaptists) imbibe this sort of ‘Barthian’ mood in a pre-chronistic way, we might say that I am Radically Reformed. It would though be a mistake to think of me as an Anabaptist writ large. I am not. I am broadly Reformed, some might call this Evangelical Calvinist ; indeed, I would still call this Evangelical Calvinism. But I want to be clear about this on a historical spectrum. If I was alive during the Reformer’s period, doctrinally, mostly because of my views on baptism and the Free church, I would have most likely been persecuted by the reformers. So, this makes for an interesting dilemma. In the passage of time we have of course have hindsight, and things have continued to develop doctrinally. But it is this that sort of pushed me, the other day, to bring up the whole Anabaptist trope. It is the reality that if I was alive during the magisterial reformation I very well could have been drowned as an Anabaptist; but then again, so could have Barth.

So, there is that. But my posts from the yesterday also were functioning occasionally and at a ‘sub’ level. In other words, I had just experienced more snubbing on FB in regard to a discussion on baptism. I provocatively stated that believer’s baptism is the biblical option, and all others are simply ‘hermeneutical.’ Of course this is going to garner some pushback, but what it illustrated for me is just how deep rooted reception of the Great Tradition of the Church has seeded itself into the psyches of many ‘evangelical’ Christians. But this I reject! As a Protestant Christian I am fully committed to the Scripture Principle in radical ways (thus my reference to Anabaptism). And this is the bigger issue here; i.e. how does (or ought) Church Tradition relate to the interpretation of the Bible? This is what has finally pushed me over the edge. This is why I made the radical move of claiming to be in sympathy with the spirit of Anabaptism (even I myself am not really Anabaptist in the way that has come to be understood in the contemporary). I think it is important to be ‘catholic,’ or in line with conciliar Christianity; but in a qualified way. As a Reformed Christian I am deeply and even radically committed to the intent of sola Scriptura, and here in a way that I do think fits better with the spirit of that as imbibed by the Anabaptists over against the Reformed, simpliciter. I think the Christological and Theological Proper ecumenical creeds are decisive and important, but even they are constantly confronted by the reality of Holy Scripture. In other words, I do not see the creeds as definitive in the same way as many of my evangelical theological contemporaries seem to see them. I do not give the Church’s Trad the power to be the concrete within which the reality of Holy Scripture must be fastened. I keep referring to the reality of Holy Scripture with the hopes that you, the reader, are seeing the way I see Scripture; that it is instrumental or as Calvin called Scripture the ‘spectacles’ by which we see God in Christ. But I want people to understand, that at least for me, the Tradition in the Church, and appealing to it, in my view, does not necessarily make someone ‘catholic,’ per se. It is Christ who is the regula fide, or ‘rule of faith,’ not the so called consensus fideilum located in the Church. Christ is God’s Free Grace for us who continuously afresh and anew has the capacity to confront us, and even challenge the creeds and confessions of the Church; as great and grammar-forming as those are. Bruce McCormack more succinctly and eloquently summarizes all of this as he describes Barth’s approach to the Tradition:

I say all of this to indicate that even the ecumenical creeds are only provisional statements. They are only relatively binding as definitions of what constitutes “orthodoxy.” Ultimately, orthodox teaching is that which conforms perfectly to the Word of God as attested in Holy Scripture. But given that such perfection is not attainable in this world, it is understandable that Karl Barth should have regarded “Dogma” as an eschatological concept. The “dogmas” (i.e., the teachings formally adopted and promulgated by individual churches) are witnesses to the Dogma and stand in a relation of greater or lesser approximation to it. But they do not attain to it perfectly—hence, the inherent reformability of all “dogmas.” Orthodoxy is not therefore a static, fixed reality; it is a body of teachings which have arisen out of, and belong to, a history which is as yet incomplete and constantly in need of reevaluation.[1]

It is the eschatological character of all of theological discourse that marginalizes even the so called Great Tradition of the Church, and calls the consensus fidelium into question in regard to its ability to be ultimately definitive and thus authoritative. It is Christ alone, and the viva vox Dei therein, that is definitive and authoritative for the Christian. This means that authority in the Church, interpretive or otherwise, by definition cannot, and definitely should not be understood as reducible to the voice of the Church; no matter how “catholic” this is considered to be. Christ is God’s catholicity for the world, and it is our union and participation with Christ that makes the Christian pervasively catholic. So appealing to the Church, and her Church  Fathers as the ground upon which someone is considered to be catholic or not, in my view, is ultimately fallacious and question begging. To appeal to the Church’s consensus does not accomplish what I think its promoters hope for; all that appeal does, ironically, is result in a sectarian ‘in’ or ‘out.’ But for the Christian the in/out is whether someone is for Christ or against Him. How we understand Christ in an intelligible or ‘theological’ fashion, while highly important, does not in itself ground the Gospel; instead Christ the person (itself a theological grammarism, i.e. to use the language of person etc.) is definitive for what it means to be part of the Church catholic. Appeal to Christ alone, through Scripture alone, by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, to the glory of God alone is and ought to be the determinative ought of the Christian’s appeal; not Church Tradition, per se.

As far as my comments on academia in my last two posts: those still stand in the main. Although I would like to clarify: I am not referring to particular people, per se. I have great admiration for many academics, people who I have come to know via social media. But it is the complex of academia, and what it takes to be “accepted” therein that I find to be deleterious to the soul. I am done trying to “fit in” by rubbing shoulders with other people seeking the same sort of validation by their peers in regard to actually being a Christian scholar in the know or not. This is at odds with what I take to be a healthy Christian spirituality, and indeed, in my view, contributes to the continual divide between theological academia and the Church’s body life. There is a place for rigorous thought, and peer pushback, but when that becomes the sign of the Kingdom things have gone awry. When status is determined by how many publications one has, or what institutions they are associated with, there is going to be a corrosive built into that that is too hard to overcome; and shouldn’t need to be overcome. For me, I can no longer stomach this sort of “community”; one that is based on someone’s CV and achievements. Think about that, how does a community based on such characteristics cohere with the Gospel reality? It doesn’t!

I am simply going to go with my name as the title of my blog now. I think this better signifies what this whole process is about; for me it is about continuing to grow as a Christian in a way that is broader than anyone label can bear. While, in the main, I am a Reformed Christian; I am Radically Reformed in the sense that Barth and After Barth is radically Reformed. Not necessarily Anabaptist, but in a way that the spirit of Anabaptism is taken up along with the desire to be always reforming in the spirit provided for by the reality of Holy Scripture in Jesus Christ. If you want to think of this in terms of Evangelical Calvinism, as Myk and I have laid that out in our books (and here on my blog over the years), then yes, do that. But I am attempting to think even more expansively than that; to simply think of myself as radically Reformed under the terms already noted. Hopefully this post is more clarifying than my last two in regard to my aims. Peace out.

[1] Bruce L. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 16.