The story of the young man in the video above is a very heartbreaking and extreme example of the damage that can be wreaked in people’s lives by Arminian decision theology.  I have no problem agreeing with him that the sinner’s prayer only hurts people.

I spent most of my childhood and teenage years not really sure whether or not I was saved because 1) I initially didn’t remember ever having prayed the sinner’s prayer and 2) the multiple times I do remember praying the sinner’s prayer I wasn’t sure whether I was sincere enough when I prayed it.  My experience with decision theology was not so extreme that I prayed the sinner’s prayer every night after crying for hours, as this young man did.  But I certainly have my share of “dates I was saved” written down in one place or another, and lived in constant fear that I would be left behind if Christ were to Rapture His people off the earth.

So my concern is not with the much-needed critique of decision theology.  My concern is that the answer that is presented – a very dramatic and emotional conversion experience – is just as subjective as the problem when it comes to finding assurance of salvation.

It’s obvious to me that this young man was a terrified sinner who was absolutely crushed by the Law.  You can almost feel the despair as he says again and again, “I’m not right with God, I’m not right with God.”  He is a perfect illustration of someone experiencing what the Augsburg Confession calls the first part of repentance:

Now strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts.  One part is contrition, that is, terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin.  The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel [Romans 10:17] or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven (AC XII:3-5).

And the Apology of the Augsburg Confession goes into more detail:

We say that contrition is the true terror of conscience, which feels that God is angry with sin and grieves that it has sinned.  This contrition takes place when sins are condemned by God’s Word….In these terrors, conscience feels God’s wrath against sin.  This is unknown to secure people living according to the flesh.  The conscience sees the corruption of sin and seriously grieves that it has sinned.  Meanwhile, it also runs away from God’s dreadful anger (Ap XIIa (V):29, 32).

Decision theology turns faith into a work you must do – “you need to sincerely ask Jesus to save you and to come into your heart.”  So instead of giving the terrified sinner the comfort of the Gospel freely offered, the terrified sinner is thrown back onto the sincerity of his heart – which he knows is desperately wicked, even though he might not put it in those terms.  The sinner’s prayer is always qualified by “if you really meant it.” And there are plenty of things that will make you question whether or not you really meant it.

The answer for the terrified conscience is the objective promise of the forgiveness of sins in Christ.  The Apology continues:

As the second part of repentance we add faith in Christ.  The Gospel, in which the forgiveness of sins is freely promised concerning Christ, should be presented to consciences in these terrors.  They should believe that, for Christ’s sake, their sins are freely forgiven.  This faith cheers, sustains, and enlivens the contrite, according to Romans 5:1, ‘Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God.’  This faith obtains the forgiveness of sins (Ap XIIa (V):35-36).

My concern with this video is that the answer to a person’s feelings of contrition is not presented as the objective promise of the Gospel, but instead is presented as a subjective emotional experience.  Salvation is presented almost as God reaching down out of the blue and giving someone an unshakeable feeling of being loved and forgiven and of having their sins washed away by Christ, and causing them to have affection and love for Him.

Can a Christian have such feelings?  Absolutely.  But faith is not having a subjective feeling. Faith is trust in a promise.  Feelings may follow faith, but they are not themselves faith.  Feelings come from objective reality, not the other way around.  The danger of looking to an emotional experience for assurance of salvation is this: What happens when I once again feel like a horrible sinner who doesn’t love God?  What happens when that subjective experience of God’s love and forgiveness wears off and I am left all alone with my sin and doubt?  If your assurance that God has saved you is based on an emotional experience, it’s easy to conclude that maybe God didn’t want you after all.

Revivalism in general – no matter what the theology behind it – points you back to yourself for assurance of salvation.  With Arminian revivalism – in which the sinner’s prayer plays an integral part – the burden is on you to know whether or not you have repented adequately or whether or not your prayer was sincere enough.  With Calvinistic revivalism – promoted by the likes of Paul Washer (who was mentioned in the video) and John Piper – the burden is on you to know whether or not God has sovereignly saved you.  So either way, you are driven to look to your experiences and inner life for assurance.

I am not questioning the experience of the man in the video – in fact, I can relate to him in many ways.  Nor am I knocking conversion as such.  The experience of someone moving from darkness to light might indeed be dramatic.  But any experience in my heart that arises from hearing and believing the Word of God – the Word of forgiveness spoken into my ears that says “Your sins are forgiven for the sake of Jesus Christ” – is secondary to the objective reality of what that Word says.  A person baptized as an infant who is not conscious of a day in their life when they did not trust in Christ is no less saved than a person who experiences a dramatic conversion after hearing the Word.  It is the Word of Christ that is central.  Feelings and experiences may come and go, but it is the Word of Christ that is truly unshakeable.

The aim of this chapter is to show the necessity of conversion and to argue that it is nothing less than the creation of a Christian Hedonist.  I don’t mean you have to use this phrase, or even like this phrase.  I mean that no one is a Christian who does not embrace Jesus gladly as his most valued treasure, and then pursue the fullness of that joy in Christ that honors Him. (p. 54)

I believe that Piper has good intentions when he says this.  He is concerned that by merely telling someone “believe in Christ and you will be saved,” that that person might be lulled into a false sense of security – likely due to the fact that many equate “believing in Christ” with merely believing certain facts about Christ, or with merely praying a sinner’s prayer – neither of which necessarily involve repentance from sin.

The problem is this: in his zeal to avoid false converts, Piper ends up taking a fruit of faith – love and affection for God – and making it a condition for salvation (though this love/affection is itself a gift of God).  According to Piper, I am ultimately saved not through repentance from sin and trust in Christ, but through my love and desire for God.  Repentance and faith in Christ are fruits of this love, not the other way around.

The pursuit of joy in God is not optional.  It is not an “extra” that a person might grow into after he comes to faith.  It is not simply a way to “enhance” your walk with the Lord.  Until your heart has hit upon this pursuit, your “faith” cannot please God.  It is not saving faith (p. 73)

So at what point do I know if my heart has truly “hit upon this pursuit?”  To know whether I have true saving faith, I am asked to look within myself to see if God has created this love and desire for Him in my heart.  Not whether I simply trust in the words and promise of Christ, but whether I possess a certain feeling, or whether I have attained a level of obedience/surrender that proves that I truly love God.

What happens when I look inside myself and see nothing but sin and corruption? What happens when I see even my good works tainted and soiled with sin?  What if I look within myself and find that my heart is horribly cold toward God, that I desire everything BUT God? What then?

The answer is not to conclude “I must not really have saving faith yet.”  The answer is to repent and believe that Christ died even for those sins.  Then my love for God WILL increase – but as a fruit of faith, not as a condition for faith.

Does God forgive me because of something He sees in my heart – even if it is something He created Himself – or for the sake of Christ alone?  Can I not love God BECAUSE He saved me from hell?  Did not Martin Luther hate and rail against God in despair until he discovered the Gospel that we are justified through faith alone – wherein there was hope that even a sinner like him could be saved?

Part 3 will deal with confusion of Law and Gospel in Christian Hedonism.

Some of this actually sounds very familiar.

Mysticism has been practiced and promoted in American evangelical circles for years now. Thus the fact that certain segments of that population are now openly promoting Roman Catholic monastic mysticism is not terribly surprising to me. When I was an evangelical, mysticism was a big part of my spiritual life. I would have never in a million years have called it that. But looking back it seems clear and obvious.

When I was a young Christian in my late teens/early twenties I heard stories told by people in my church about their experiences of God speaking directly to them, and of the experiences they had of feeling the presence and love of God.  Various teachers that I listened to (which were looked upon with favor by my church) promoted the practice of reading the Bible in order to receive a direct message from God (while bypassing its meaning in context) – read until you come to a passage that pops out at you, and then meditate on it to see what God is saying to you personally.  The “Practice of the Presence of God” is something I am entirely familiar with because it got favorable mention at my church. I practiced journaling in such a way that I believed God was speaking to me directly through those means.  I used my imagination and my feelings in order to hear God speak to me.

An interesting side-effect of my discovery of the Reformation was that I stopped being a mystic.  The reasons why became clear later – reasons which make more puzzling and disturbing the fact that certain corners of the LCMS are now promoting such practices.

The beginning of the end of my mysticism came sometime back in the summer of 2008 when I read a particular article in Discipleship Journal.  Earlier that year, before discovering the White Horse Inn, I had subscribed to the evangelical magazine because of an ad that had promised to revitalize my walk with Christ and cure my spiritual dryness.  At the time I had never heard the word “pietism” but a few months later, devouring everything by Michael Horton and Rod Rosenbladt I could get my hands on, I realized that what I had been taught all my life could be described as a form of pietism – stressing inner experience above external promise.  And I discovered that “pietism” was a good word to describe much of what I was reading in this journal.

The author of the article wrote about how she felt like she was in a “spiritual wilderness” and how she longed for God to speak to her.  The Spirit supposedly led her to the Song of Solomon so that He could speak to her heart directly in what I would describe as a mystical experience.

Whereas previously I probably would have sought a similar sort of experience – such things weren’t foreign to me at all – now I found myself rather disturbed.  Where in Scripture does it promise that God will speak directly to our heart if we ask Him? And where in Scripture does it tell us that the Holy Spirit gives us “spiritual dry spells” so that He can lead us to be alone with Him in mystical experiences rather than convicting us of sin and leading us to repentance and faith?

The misuse of Scripture became rather obvious to me at this point.  It wouldn’t be long before I walked away from those kind of practices and never looked back.  When I discovered the external Word and Sacraments in Lutheranism it was the end of my mysticism.

All this made me wonder – why did I – or why does anyone – turn to mysticism in the first place?  What’s the appeal of it?  What drives a Christian to seek a direct experience of God?

At first I thought it was the a-sacramental nature of my evangelical beliefs. God did not have any objective means of coming to us, so naturally one might turn to mystical means in order to experience Him. But Roman Catholicism is replete with sacraments and still produces mystics galore.

The more I think about this, the more I think at least a large part of it has to do with assurance of salvation. For me the reasoning went something like this: if I can experience God directly, then I can know for sure that I am really His child and that He really has forgiven me.  If I can experience God directly, I can know that I really do have a personal relationship with Him and that He loves me personally.  I really believe that was my motivation for seeking God in such a manner.  In fact, many of my journal entries from that time bear that out.

The answer to the question of “how do I know I am a true believer?” became “because I felt God’s love and He speaks to me directly through His Word.”  It sounds innocuous but when evangelicals say “God spoke to me directly through His Word” they don’t necessarily mean “through the plain sense of the passage.” They often mean “reading my own experiences and feelings and desires into the words of Scripture, regardless of the context or plain sense of the passage.”  I vividly remember “hearing God speak directly to my heart” once using 2 Timothy 1:3-7.  I read this as a personal message from God.  Never mind that the passage was really about the Apostle Paul encouraging the young pastor Timothy – none of that mattered.  Mystical eisegesis was a small price to pay for gaining some glimmer of assurance that I was a true and sincere believer.  It must have been only the grace of God that kept me from more serious forms of error.

Like seeking such assurance through my daily obedience, such a method was bound to be a dead-end – and I inevitably discovered this.  The question always came up in my mind – how do I know all this isn’t just me talking to myself?  I grew increasingly uncomfortable using the Bible as a crystal ball.  The God that spoke to me through my journaling sounded suspiciously like me and didn’t know anything that I didn’t know.  And when I did not “hear” from God in this way it was personally devastating.  When I felt like God was speaking to me everything was fine.  But when I didn’t I wondered what God really thought about me and all the old fears about whether I was a true and sincere believer came flooding back.

When I discovered that the Gospel was entirely outside of me – and that He comes to us where He has promised to be, in the hearing of His Word and in the receiving of His Sacraments – everything changed.  I hear God’s Word confident that He is speaking plainly and that the Holy Spirit will use it to convict me of sin and point to Christ.  How do I know that I am really God’s child and that Christ’s perfect life and sacrificial death on the cross is really for me?  I am baptized into Christ and the name of the Triune God is upon me.  In my Baptism I have been buried and raised with Christ, washed in water with the Word.  How do I know that God forgives me even that sin? Because I hear from the lips of His called and ordained servant “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  How do I know that God wants me to be saved?  “Take, eat.  This is My body, which is for you.”  “Take, drink.  This cup is the new testament in My blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

So I can only think that those who promote mystical practices within the LCMS have lost confidence (if they ever had any to begin with) in the objective promises of God’s Word and Sacraments.  They are embracing and promoting a form of what used to be called “Enthusiasm.” Lutherans need to be aware of the dangers of such practices.  We need to cling to the words of Christ above our own feelings and experiences, regardless of how “spiritual” the latter may seem.

Christian Hedonism is summarized by Piper in this way: “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.” It’s a slight tweaking of the answer to the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s question, “What is the chief end of man?” A: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” In other words, glorifying God and enjoying God are not separate pursuits.

He expands upon this with the following:

Christian Hedonism is a philosophy of life built on the following five convictions:

1. The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.

2. We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse.  Instead, we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.

3. The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God.  Not from God, but in God.

4. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in the manifold ways of love.

5. To the extent that we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people.  Or, to put it positively: The pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue.  (DG, p. 28)

So what kind of problem could I possibly find with this?  In and of themselves, these things may be true.  Luther himself summed it up in his explanation to the First Commandment (“You shall have no other gods before Me”) in the Small Catechism: “We should fear, love and trust God above all things.”  Loving God above all things certainly includes delighting in God and taking pleasure in Him.

When I first read Desiring God a number of years ago, my first reaction went something along these lines: “What wonderful news that God wants us to obey Him out of pleasure and delight and not simply out of duty.” Many people seem to have this reaction – a sort of wonderful liberation from an all-too-common view in certain Christian circles that pleasure in and of itself is wrong or to be avoided.  If all Christian Hedonism entailed was the idea that delight and pleasure are good things and that God wants us to delight in Him, I don’t think I would have much of a problem with it.

But, as I would later discover to my dismay, this is not all it entails.  What I first saw as “wonderful news” I eventually came to see for what it really was – the Law kicked up several notches.  And this Law is presented as something true believers can keep.  In this way Piper ends up confusing Law and Gospel.

One of my Twitter friends commented that Desiring God is not a work on soteriology (i.e. how one is saved). However, the more I think about this and mull it over in my mind, the more I think I have to disagree.  In fact, the main problem that I have with the philosophy of Christian Hedonism lies in how Piper connects it to salvation.  This will be the subject of Part 2.

Ever heard someone say this?  I have, in many different ways.  To be honest with you I'm getting rather weary of hearing people say stuff like this.

I think the name for it should be "Gospel Reductionism Lite."

It's not full-blown Gospel Reductionism like you find among the liberals – where everything in Scripture is reduced to bare Gospel at the expense of the Law, leading to antinomianism, and where the Gospel even trumps the need for faith.

Instead, the Lite version says something very much like, "All that matters is that we believe in Jesus." The idea is that doctrine beyond faith in Christ for salvation is unimportant and maybe even divisive.

Is this where the LCMS is going?

I was reading a post by Pastor Jonathan Fisk the other day regarding the changes certain people in the synod want to make – namely, altering what was up till now considered "unalterable" by changing the LCMS's confession of faith into a "confessional basis" and making the actual "confession" a rather generic statement.  It strikes me very much as an example of Gospel Reductionism Lite.

Do I believe that faith in Christ is all that is necessary for salvation?  Absolutely.  As the Reformers would say, we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone.  My question is, where does that faith come from, and how is it best sustained?

To hear some speak, you'd think that doctrine beyond faith in Christ for salvation was thought up by people who wanted to do nothing but cause division in the body of Christ.  They don't seem to realize that the doctrines many people regard as peripheral are actually quite crucial. Heterodox ideas that seem innocuous on the surface can, when taken to their logical conclusions, prove quite devastating to faith.

It makes me wonder whether Gospel Reductionism Lite is behind Lutherans dabbling with the Church Growth Movement.  Dan at Necessary Roughness had a post about this the other day.  For the CGM folks it's as though the most important thing is getting people in the door, spiritually speaking.  "All that matters is that they believe in Jesus."

Where does Gospel Reductionism Lite come from? 

I think it's a combination of pietism and a faulty view of how faith is created and sustained.  Pietism's emphasis on one's inner experience with Jesus over the objective, external Word and Sacraments might lead one to think that doctrine beyond faith in Christ is unimportant or divisive.  And if one lacks confidence in the power of the Word and Sacraments to work faith in a person, one might just be tempted to waffle on those "peripheral issues." 

If I believe that faith is something I work up – or even something that's created by a "zap from above", so to speak – then what one believes about Baptism or the Lord's Supper or the place of the Word of God in a worship service would matter very little to me. 

But if, on the other hand, I believe that faith in Jesus Christ is created and sustained by these means, then what one believes about them might matter to me a great deal.

I've been reading various comments from a Lutheran pietist on Twitter that seem to confirm this idea:

"Prayer opens us to our unlimited resources in Christ (Eph 1:17,18)."

"Prayer strengthens us by the Holy Spirit (Eph 3:16)."

"Through prayer we are filled with the fullness of God (Eph 3:19)."

"Through prayer we will fully understand and appreciate the love of Christ (Eph 3:18)."

"Through prayer our love for others will grow to overflowing (Phil 1:9)."

"Through prayer we will be able to discern right from wrong and make the right decisions in all matters (Phil 1:10)."

Through prayer we will be free of all pretence and hypocrisy and live a blameless life (Phil 1:10)."

First, let's look at Ephesians 1:15-23:

¹⁵For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, ¹⁶I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. ¹⁷I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. ¹⁸I
pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that
you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his
glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, ²⁰which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, ²¹far
above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that
can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. ²²And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Ephesians 3:16-19:

¹⁶I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

And Philippians 1:9-10:

 ⁹And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, ¹⁰so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, ¹¹filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

These passages teach that the Apostle Paul was indeed praying for the Christians at these churches.  But these passages do not teach what pietists say they teach.  The passages do not say, "If you pray, then these things will happen."  They record St. Paul's prayers for the people under his care but they do not teach that these things are dependent on whether or not we pray.

What are all these things that St. Paul is praying for based upon?  The forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.  How do all these things happen?  Through the Gospel.  Through the promise of the forgiveness of sins in Word and Sacrament.  

Through Christ – through the Gospel – are all these things true.  Not through prayer.  I am not knocking prayer, not at all.  Prayer is a fruit of faith created through the Gospel.  But to claim that prayer works in a sort of sacramental way – that it is a "means of grace" – is to change the definition of "means of grace."  Prayer is not something that God does, but something that we do.  If we make these gifts of God contingent on our obedience, then we put ourselves in a very bad position.  Because I do not pray as I ought, and if my pietist friends are honest with themselves, neither do they. 

My friend on Twitter says "Through prayer we will be free of all pretence and hypocrisy and live a blameless life." No, no, NO – it's only through Law and Gospel that this can be true.  When I hear people talking about how on fire such and such a person is for God, or how great of a prayer warrior such and such a person is – and I have heard many such things in my life – I can only think about how this sort of thing actually breeds pretense and hypocrisy.

But when we realize that God hears us for the sake of Christ – and for the sake of Christ alone – things are radically different.  There is no pretense, no hypocrisy.  The Law leaves no one standing – not in the area of prayer, not in any other area.  But the Gospel raises us to new life.  And we pray – not so that God will give us His gifts, because He has already given us and continues to give us His gifts.  The greatest Gift of all was the gift of His only begotten Son, dead on the Cross for our sins and raised to life for our justification – delivered onto our heads through the waters of Baptism; delivered into our mouths through the bread and wine which is His body and blood; delivered into our ears through the word of Absolution.  And from this most precious gift of the Gospel all other gifts flow.  The fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of the Gospel, because the Holy Spirit points us to Christ.

When did this become such a negative term?

You hear people saying all the time, “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship with God.” While it is true that we Christians are in a positive relationship with God through Jesus Christ, I wonder if this sort of language doesn’t just confuse the issue.

I pretty much grew up with the idea that the definition of religion was people trying to get to heaven by their own efforts, whatever those might be.   In my mind, the use of the word “religion” in any positive sense was a sure sign that the person so using it was lost.  If such a person called him/herself a Christian, they obviously didn’t know that Christianity was all about a relationship with God and not about their works.

In my mind, however, the problem with focusing on the word “relationship” over against “religion” has to do with how our culture understands the word “relationship”.  The word “relationship” largely has a connotation of equality, if not friendship or even intimacy.  Thus “relationship with God” is often taken to mean “God wants to be your buddy” or “God wants to be intimate with you.”

I wonder if this use of the word “relationship” has not contributed to the casualness with which people tend to approach God these days.  God is my best friend, so I can approach him as casually (and dare I say flippantly) as I want.  God wants an intimate relationship with me, so I’ll do anything to “feel” His presence during worship.

But the relationship I have with God is not a relationship of equals.  I come to God as a beggar, a poor miserable sinner who does not even deserve to stand in His presence.  But He, in His mercy and grace, gives me the gift of life and salvation through His Word and sacraments.  I daresay this is not what most people in America (or the West in general) think of when they think of a “relationship”.  God is the one initiating everything in this relationship.  If there is any friendship or intimacy (and there certainly is), He is the one making it happen.  I am not free to approach God however I choose.     

So what about the word “religion”?  Why does it leave such a bad taste in the mouths of many Christians?  Why is it that if I were to tell an evangelical that I am religious, that they would likely assume that I am unsaved?  (And I am not even talking about the whole “religion” vs. “spirituality” issue – that would require a post in and of itself).

After thinking about this for quite a while, I wonder if pietism has anything to do with it.  Pietism has completely saturated American evangelicalism, and sees Christianity as being chiefly about one’s inner experience and sincere life of piety as opposed to the objective, external work of God outside of us.  I have to wonder if perhaps somewhere along the line “religion” was equated with so-called “dead orthodoxy”.  The word “relationship” is certainly more in line with those who would emphasize one’s inner experience.

Will I start using the term “religion” in a positive way?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Perhaps the term was ruined by those who sought to redefine it.  Oh, all right – Christianity is my religion.  There, I said it!

Maybe one of these days I will get past my knee-jerk negative internal reaction when I hear the word.  The pietist in me dies hard.  But that’s a topic for another post.    

When
religion was conceived as primarily “in the heart,” “strict
denominational lines were blurred” in deference to “common religious
patterns” as pietism “directed mainstream American Protestantism…away
from the formal and corporate beliefs and practices of the church
toward the informal settings and personal affairs of believers." The result was the increasingly “small role the institutional church plays in the religious life of the pietist.” The clash between the established churches and pietism was inevitable
as “traditionalist Protestants resisted” pietism because it “undermined
the importance of creedal subscription, ordination and liturgical
order…[and] spoke a different idiom, one that was individualistic,
experiential and perfectionistic, as opposed to the corporate,
doctrinal and liturgical idiom of historic Protestantism.” To
Confessional Protestants, the Pietists blurred all denominational
distinctives expecting a “generic” type of Christianity of “sincerity,
zeal, and moral life.”

This also ties in with the idea often expressed by Rod Rosenbladt, Michael Horton and the WHI gang that pietism ultimately leads to liberalism – after all, if the main focus of Christianity is what happens in your heart, it's not too much of a stretch to come to the conclusion that all that matters is what happens in your heart, regardless of what is objectively true or factual.  Thus you have "X may be true for you, but Y is true for me" or "Christ didn't bodily rise from the dead, but He's alive in my heart."

This makes me wonder what relationship pietism has to postmodernism and the Emergents.  But that's a topic for another post …

It all started when I learned that Charles Finney – the 19th century revivalist preacher of Second Great Awakening fame, and utterly Pelagian in his outlook – was a Presbyterian.  This was enough to make me go, "huh?"  Charles Finney was a Presbyterian??  This was somewhat of a shock to me, as Presbyterians hold to Reformed theology, which is monergistic.  Finney was about as non-monergistic as one can get.

Of course, I realize that people are not necessarily consistent in their beliefs – they might belong to a certain denomination and not hold all the tenets of that denomination.  But I started to wonder more and more about this as I recalled that Billy Graham and various other revivalists also had a background of Presbyterianism. 

So the question I had was this: was the revivalism of these preachers a reaction against Reformed theology, or was it a logical conclusion of Reformed theology?  Or both?  This is an important question because not all Calvinists are revivalists.  In all my studies of these things I have found there to be basically two main schools of Calvinists:

1) The first is what I would call "Classical Calvinism", who hold more closely to the original teachings of Calvin.  These would be the "continental Reformed" found in denominations such as the United Reformed Church (URC), and to some extent the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC).  Classical Calvinists are probably the closest to Orthodox Lutherans in that they hold a Law/Gospel distinction, have a relatively high view of the Sacraments, recognize the importance of the external Word of God as opposed to looking inside oneself for assurance, and are generally not at all pietistic.  They hold to covenant theology and infant Baptism.  Michael Horton and Kim Riddlebarger of White Horse Inn fame (both of the URC) are good examples of this category.

2) The second is what I would call "Neo-Puritanism," which is way more prevalent in America today than Classical Calvinism.  These are largely derived from the English Puritans, who were basically Anglican pietists.  Most (though not all) Reformed Baptists would probably fall into this category, as do many Presbyterians.  These are the folks who would have you look inward in some way for assurance of salvation as opposed to looking to the external Word.  I have not found them to have a particularly strong Law/Gospel distinction or a particularly high view of the Sacraments.  John Piper and the so called "New Calvinists" are the first people who come to my mind for this category.  They would probably not like the term "revivalist" but one could make the case that revivalism in America started with Jonathan Edwards and the English Puritans (though the Puritans would certainly not have emphasized man's free will decision in salvation as Arminians like Finney and Wesley did).  Many of these folks are big fans of Jonathan Edwards and the original Puritans. 

Both of these categories are Calvinistic, but the two come to radically different conclusions about where one's assurance lies, in my view.  So Calvinism and Reformed theology doesn't necessarily lead to pietism and revivalism.  But are pietism and revivalism a logical consequence of Calvinism and Reformed theology?

I happened to read a post today at Extra Nos noting the occasion of Calvin's 500th birthday, and the far-reaching consequences of his teachings.  L.P. notes that Calvin's theology detached the Holy Spirit from the Sacraments – i.e., God works in your heart apart from the Sacraments and the Sacraments are just a confirmation of what He has already given you.  L.P. concludes:

In short, for Calvin, the Sacraments may or may not
be accompanied by the HS. For him, there is no guarantee that the HS
will accompany the Sacraments for sure, the HS is detached from the
Sacraments. I have several theories as to what might be going on in his
psyche that led him to say this stuff but that is for another post.

What
then is the effect of this detachment or lack of guarantee that the HS
is with the Sacraments? You cannot look to it. Calvin's ambeguity [sic] has a
negative effect on the believer in that he becomes at a loss as to
where God's promises are located. He no longer has a guarantee that
when he goes there, God will meet him there. Hence, the believer may
have to look for a zap from above, and they often do, ergo, Enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is the idea that the Holy Spirit comes apart from the Word and Sacraments.  This is basically what Pentecostals and Charismatics believe.  Calvin and his theological descendants would probably never say that the Holy Spirit comes apart from the Word.  But what about the Sacraments?  I am not convinced that even the most classical of classical Calvinists believe that the Holy Spirit always comes through the Sacraments.  They believe that the Sacraments are "means of grace" in some sense.  Michael Horton talks about this all the time on the White Horse Inn, that God has promised to be in His Word and Sacraments.  But I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean the same thing that Lutherans mean – unless he's even more of a crypto-Lutheran than I thought.  "Means of grace" seem to have more of a covenantal flavor for classical Calvinists.  Thus for them, Baptism is seen as initiation into the covenantal community of God's people.  And regarding the Lord's Supper, Christ is not actually bodily present for the forgiveness of sins, but is only received spiritually through faith.

So what does this all mean?  Larry, a commenter on the Extra Nos blog (who should have his own blog!), makes an interesting observation that many Reformed complain about the state of American evangelicalism today, but don't realize that the state of American evangelicalism today is the logical outcome of Calvin's ideas.  He goes on to say that Calvin being off a half a degree in his time led to all the craziness we see today in the American church.

Could this be the case?  I find it interesting that I wasn't the only one whose thoughts were leaning in this direction.  I'll be the first to say that I enjoy listening to classical Calvinists like Michael Horton, (though I disagree with them on various things).  It's probably because they sound a lot like Lutherans.  But is their focus on the external Word, as opposed to the inward focus of the neo-Puritans, more of an anomaly than a logical conclusion?  Or are these Calvinists simply more "Lutheran" than even Calvin was? 

Have you heard the following expressions (or maybe even used them yourself)?

"Accept Jesus into your heart."

"Commit your life to Christ."

"Make a decision for Christ."

"Make Jesus Lord of your life."

"Give your heart to Jesus."

"Accept Jesus as your personal Savior."

"Pray to receive Christ."

What is common to all of these expressions?  Man's action as opposed to God's action.  The emphasis is on what the human is doing so that God will save them.

"But," you will say, "doesn't the Bible tell us to repent and believe the Gospel?  Aren't those things man's action?"  The Bible does tell us to repent and believe.  But any repentance and faith on our part is because of God's saving action, not because we just one day decided to repent and believe.  In addition, repentance and faith are something God continually works in us through His Word, not a one-time act of the will that happened in the past.

Using such expressions as those above to describe salvation puts one's assurance on shaky ground.  How can I be sure that I was truly sincere in my decision, or my commitment, or my prayer?  How do I know that I have truly made Jesus Lord of my life?  How do I know I have truly given Him my heart?  Through my works?  How can I know that I have produced enough good works to prove that I am truly sincere?

This is why looking to the status of one's faith or to one's good works for assurance of salvation can only lead to pride or despair.  "Do I really believe?" or "do I really have enough good works?" are spiritual dead ends.  We must look to Christ, and to Him alone – to Christ and Him crucified for the forgiveness of our sins.  It is He who delivers faith to us through His Word and sacraments.  We are to "fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2).