subject: The high calvinist and his brothers: is it possible to be a reformed ecumenical christian? [print this page] The high calvinist and his brothers: is it possible to be a reformed ecumenical christian?
"I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church." The Nicene Creed
"I believein the holy catholic church, the communion of saints" The Apostles' Creed
Every Sunday morning for nearly 1600 years, an impressive proportion of the people who make up the Church in our own time roughly a quarter of the world has recited one or the other of these remarkable confessions. It is a fundamental tenant of Christianity that the Church is One Body, the true chaste Bride of Christ. Our earliest creeds, like the Scriptures on which they are based, speak of One Church Universal, of the unified brotherhood of the saints within one apostolic tradition of love, one covenantal family of peace.
Yet from almost the very beginning, an even more visibly since at least the Reformation, the One True Church has resembled nothing so much as a dropped chandelier, its sharp-edged, ruined shards scattered in heaps and piles across the floor of history. We could list more reasons than we could count for this colossal mess, but almost all of them come down to one presupposition of many Christians: When disagreement arises, fellowship is to be shattered upon the rock of purity.
Because of this idea, the Church is now "churches" of every imaginable stripe, and for good or ill, it is likely she will stay that way until her Lord returns. In this fallen world, to seek to bring all Christians back into a single ecclesiastical body is simply impractical: Denominationalism is here to stay.
Even the pieces of the Church are breaking up. That segment of Christians which was ejected from the Roman Church in the 16th Century has been further divided into hundreds of splinter groups, ranging from the narrowest of Fundamentalists to the wildest of liberals, and containing all points in between.
This state of affairs, righteous or vile, forces us all to address the question of the relationships among the fragments of Old Christendom. We know that we cannot ever hope, this side of the Lord's Return, to unify Christianity as a single Church body again, if ever such a body existed. But in the context of fellowship and cooperation, of whom we will work with and who will share the Lord's Table with us, and of what we will tolerate in our denominations, we need to see what the Scripture says about divisions in the body of Christ.
I intend this for article to get people thinking about how to approach doctrinal disagreements among Christians. To limit the scope of our discussion, we shall concern ourselves here with that branch of Protestantism known as Evangelicalism, but the principles contained in this appraisal could be applied in any context where Christians who take the Bible seriously have conflicting views.
To show a doctrinal contrast, we shall divide evangelicalism arbitrarily into two groups:
(1) Broad, general Evangelicalism (non-Reformed) and
(2) Reformed Evangelicalism.
Briefly defined, non-Reformed Evangelicalism will profess the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, belief in the supernatural, the Virgin Birth, the historical Resurrection of Christ, a literal Second Coming, and a highly reliable, possibly inerrant Bible. It will differ from Roman Christianity on justification by faith, Mariology, purgatory, and papal authority. It will differ from Neo-Orthodox and Liberal Christianity in its views of Scripture and miracles.
In agreement with the broader tradition, Reformed theology will distunguish itself from non-evangelical traditions along many of these same lines. But it further contrasts with general Evangelicalism in its soteriology in the Doctrines of Grace (the "Five Points," if you will), especially with reference to predestination and election, in its covenant hermeneutic, in its presbyterian ecclesiology, and in its world/life view concerns.
We see then that among the similarities there are important differences between General and Reformed Evangelical Christianity. They often clash mightily, and they disagree over matters which are far from trivial. Nevertheless, it is the position of this article that true fellowship and cooperation between Reformed and Non-Reforned Evangelicals is both possible and necessary.
To argue this case we shall turn to an exegesis of two passages of Scripture which I myself once used as excuses to divide. I shall examine them in light of each other and of the whole of God's word. This exegesis will demonstrate that purity can be sought without schism, and that peace need not be smothered by pride. The views expressed here reflect substantial change in outlook on my part, and are the result of careful thought about hard issues.
II JOHN
In all of his works, the Apostle John all but wears out the word koinonia and its cognates, letting us know that fellowship is much on his mind. Most of John's output is devoted to promoting fellowship among Christians. No one says more about love between brothers in Christ.
In light of this, those rare occasions when John does lose his temper and call for a cutting off of fellowship take on an unusual importance. Perhaps the most noteworthy example of such behavior is found in the little epistle of II John.
In II John, John repels the Gnostic heresy which plagued the early Church. Verses 10-11 contain a command to break fellowship with certain people for doctrinal reasons. Why does John do this? The Gnostics are propagating a denial of the Incarnation, a direct attack on the Person of Christ. John does not see the Gnostics as preaching a Christianity with some theological distinctives which set it apart from other Christian traditions; he sees them as Antichrists, proclaiming a non-Christian gospel for a non-Christian religion.
He does not see the Gnostics as honestly mistaken bretheren. He sees them as deceivers: Knowing full well what the truth is, they deliberately seek to undermine it with a carefully planned malicious lie.
John warns his readers that this heresy wil result in eternal damnaiton of all who fall into it. It is not a quibble about words; it is the ruin of the heart of the Gospel a most dangerous thing indeed. For this reason, John forbids Christians to have dealings with Gnostic teachers:
do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds. (v. 10b-11)
This passages is important for our discussion for three reasons:
1. It explains when Christians should break fellowship.
2. It implies when they should not.
3. It gives the implications of such a breech.
Christians are to break with known deceivers who are deliberately seeking the overthrow of the Person of Christ. In so breaking, they give public testimony that the heretic is an antichrist who is surely damned unless there is repentance and recovery.
Important: When you refuse fellowship to someone, you are stating publicly that he is NOT SAVED.
To check this conclusion, it is helpful to look at a passage of scripture that John surely had at his disposal when writing II John: Galatians 1:6-9.
GALATIANS 1:6-9
Before John ever set pen to paper, Paul had been dead for almost a generation. In one of his earliest letters, Galatians, Paul had provided a scriptural example of how to handle real doctrinal schism. While he addresses excommunication and the breaking of fellowship on several occasions, (Cf., e. g., I Cor. 5, Phil. 4), most of the time Paul is dealing with moral issues and with individuals. Only once does Paul order a specified group of Christians to break fellowship with another specified group over doctrinal issues only. When John gave his instructions in his second letter, it is more than possible that he had Galatians 1:9 in mind. This verse in its context explains just how severe a break of fellowship is.
In this passage Paul is fighting the Galatian heresy, a denial of justification by faith. As the Gnostics would later attack Christ's person, Galatia's Judaizers attacked His work. Again we deal with a non-Christian religion rather than a Christian sect. Again we face a liar who deliberately seeks to destroy the truth he knows, and not an ignorant brother who is mistaken. And again the seriousness of the heresy warrants damnation.
The main problem in Galatia was that people were adding to the requirements for salvation. If you believe and become circumcised, you will be saved. If you have faith and perform the works of the Mosaic Law, you will earn eternal life.
When viewed in an Old Testament context, it is clear that Paul's anathemas upon this false teaching are, if anything, stronger than John's words against the Gnostics. Paul borrows the Hebraic concept of the HmrH, the ban of destruction, from the Old Testament. He formulates his curse in covenant categories, employing the language of Joshua 6 concerning what Joshua was to do to the cities God had placed under the ban in the Promised Land. The devastation invoked by these anathemas in their Old Testament background is both total and final. It is also ironically appropriate to the situation in hand. The Judaizers burden the Galatians with the Mosaic Law; Paul the Rabbi crushes them with precisely that instrument. They add to the requirements of grace; Paul adds to them the curses of the Mosaic Covenant. They take away from the saving work of Christ; Paul, in Mosaic categories, takes away the blessings of the Covenant from them.
The fact that Paul commands a break with the Judaizers at all is itself a marked exception to his own practice. He frequently deals with erring Christians as "saints," "being sanctified" (aorist participle implies that their sanctification was even in some sense complete!), even though arrogance, immorality, and challenges against Paul's own apostleship are very much in evidence among them. He praises God for his "faithful bretheren" at Colossae, even though they are toying with asceticism and pagan philosophies.
But Paul does not say that the Galatians are erring, nor does he say that they are merely sinning. Paul instead flatly states that they are estranged from God. They are no longer professing Christianity at all.
Even so, does Paul anathematize the Galatian church? He does not. He views them as victims. The objects of apostolic ire, both here and in John's letters, are the false teachers. It is the false teachers who are out to undermine the Gospel. It is the false teachers who hate Jesus Christ.
As for the Galatians themselves, Paul's aim is to win them back. He does not want to disfellowship them; he is determined to recover them from a heresy which will certainly bring damnation. To this end Paul commands the Galatians to cut off the Judaizers from the Church. Both Paul and John are seeking, not purification at the expense of unity, but purification in the direction of unity.
THE MODERN PICTURE
These things mean much to those of us in the conservative wing of the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition. It is not difficult to pigeonhole us into the stereotypical "High Calvinist" mold, annoyingly well-trained, quick to look down on others, and even quicker to split churches and denominations over doctrinal issues. Since we do it so readily, we need to see the implications of our breakdowns of fellowship and cooperation. Is it possible for "Real Calvinists" to have true fellowship with non-Reformed evangelicals? We will not hesitate to assert that we find gross error in much broad evangelicalism today. God's sovereignty is frequently denied; man's natural goodness is just as frequently affirmed; sin and its seriousness are minimized, yet throttling legalism often chokes congregations; the Covenant is sliced out of existence and the texts of God's Word are profoundly mishandled. Arminianism, Dispensationalism, and some of the excesses of Charismaticism, et. al., indeed, represent real abberations in the Gospel of Christ.
What is a good Calvinist to do?
But let us look at the "heresies" of modern evangelicalism. What exactly do they do? Are any of them deliberate attacks upon the Person of Christ? Misunderstandings, yes, but John would not find any modern Arminian denying that Christ is God in the flesh. Do any of them consciously set out to undermine the atoning work of Christ by adding their own works to His grace in order to earn salvation through Law? Some logical conclusions could be drawn which tend in this direction, but by happy inconsistency our brothers refuse to draw them!
And let us look at ourselves. What do we do when we break fellowship with the non-Reformed? We anathematize him to Hell if we see our schism in Biblical categories. Remember: the Bible nowhere allows a doctrinal split between two Christian parties. The Christian party divides from the non-Christian party, usually by ejecting it. The implications of this are terribly grave. When we break with anyone, we must be prepared to prove that he is anti-Christian, and not merely wrong, because when we cut him off, that is what we tell him and the world. If we refuse to fellowship or cooperate with anyone who has not deliberately set out to undermine the Person and Work of Christ, then according to Scripture we have added to the requirements for salvation
and the Galatian anathema falls on us.
Jesus said, "He who is not for me is against me." (Matthew 12:30). He was speaking then in the context of personal reflection on one's own salation. There, He required the harshest possible judgment, so that each of us might carefully watch himself. But He also said, "He who is not against us if for us" (Mark 9:40), so that we might look on others with the judgment of charity. God has called us to peace, as well as purity. Let us then love one another, bearing with one another in all things, that we might know pure fellowship in Christ.
