Imperishable Inheritance

The fourth post in my series on reformed the­ol­ogy will cover the­o­log­i­cal crit­i­cisms on a reformed inter­pre­ta­tion of the Scrip­tures. Every the­o­log­i­cal sys­tem has its crit­ics, and reformed the­ol­ogy is not above this crit­i­cism. I will cover crit­i­cism lever­aged against reformed the­ol­ogy that I men­tioned in my sec­ond post on issues that all reformed Chris­tians are in agree­ment about (I feel safe mak­ing that broad statement).

Crit­i­cisms Against Reformed Soteriology

The largest attack against Calvin­is­tic view of sal­va­tion and sov­er­eignty comes from the the­o­log­i­cal per­sua­sion of Armini­an­ism. Their ‘five points’ are in stark con­trasts to the ten­ants of Calvin­ism. They believe that the Bible teaches only par­tial deprav­ity instead of total deprav­ity. They also believe that elec­tion is some­thing that God bases on fore­seen faith from the foun­da­tion of the world. Oper­at­ing grace is always resistible in the Armin­ian sys­tem, and the atone­ment is more gen­eral in nature than the Calvin­is­tic inter­pre­ta­tion. I could write quite a bit about each of their argu­ments, but I want to just overview their com­plaints against our view of sal­va­tion. I will pro­vide links to resources argu­ing against each of these top­ics in more detail.

Many Chris­tians from all dif­fer­ent the­o­log­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal per­sua­sions attack the Calvin­is­tic inter­pre­ta­tion of the com­pat­i­bil­ity of divine sov­er­eignty and human respon­si­bil­ity as espoused in reformed sote­ri­ol­ogy. The tra­di­tional view of free­dom in Calvin­ism is that God can indeed ordain or ‘deter­mine’ future events, but He does so in such a way that does not vio­late man’s true respon­si­bil­ity. In other words, even though an action may be deter­mined does not annul that fact that when a deci­sion is made it is indeed out of that agent’s true moral dis­po­si­tion. Two camps argue against this: Lib­er­tar­i­an­ism and Hard Deter­min­ism (Fatal­ism). While many think that the Calvin­is­tic sys­tem by logic neces­si­tates a fatal­is­tic view on his­tory it is not the pre­dom­i­nant view. There are some who espouse Hard Deter­min­ism which is the view that deter­min­ism is incom­pat­i­ble with gen­uine human free­dom, and there­fore man’s free­dom is an illu­sion. On the other side, meta­phys­i­cal Lib­er­tar­i­an­ism says that a deci­sion is only free when agents can chose A, B, or ~A/B. They would deny the view that God is a deter­mi­na­tive agent in the his­tory of man.

Crit­i­cisms Against Covenant Theology

The great­est argu­ment against a covenant the­ol­ogy view of the Scrip­tures comes from the the­o­log­i­cal per­sua­sion known as Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism. They argue that covenant the­ol­ogy doesn’t read the Scrip­tures “lit­er­ally.” Herein lies the largest dif­fer­ence between these two camps—hermeneutics. Since both of these sys­tems pro­vide over-arching grids in which to inter­pret the Bib­li­cal rev­e­la­tion from begin­ning to end how one looks at the rel­e­vant texts under this umbrella will dras­ti­cally alter our the­ol­ogy. Com­mon argu­ments is that covenant the­olo­gians “spir­i­tu­al­ize” a lot of the Old Tes­ta­ment prophe­cies which is lever­aged most against the land restora­tion promises given to Israel. The pre­sup­po­si­tion that the body of Israel must be dis­tinct from the “Church” pushes Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism to their the­o­log­i­cal con­clu­sions. Covenant the­olo­gians due tend to place a higher empha­sis on using Bib­li­cal typol­ogy which Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ists love to attack. Also, many reformed the­olo­gians take a post or amil­len­nial view on the mil­len­nium and escha­tol­ogy. This is a vio­la­tion of the basic ‘lit­eral’ inter­pre­ta­tion of prophetic lit­er­a­ture which leads Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ists to the pre­mil­len­nial position.

The Five Solas

While no Protes­tant should dis­agree with the five solas there are some pro­fess­ing Protes­tants who don’t hold to the reformer’s def­i­n­i­tion of the solas. Sola Fide or “faith alone” included the pos­i­tive impu­ta­tion of Christ’s right­eous­ness which is denied by adher­ents to The New Per­spec­tive on Paul. Also, the Church of Christ and other con­gre­ga­tions who believe in bap­tismal regen­er­a­tion deny the suf­fi­ciency of Christ alone for our justification.

Sola Scrip­tura is some­thing that many Protes­tants pro­fess, but few actu­ally hold to this in prac­tice. Often times, emo­tion is exalted to a posi­tion above the Scrip­tures such as in cer­tain cha­ras­matic cir­cles; and oth­ers have rel­e­gated the Scrip­tures to a place of sec­ondary impor­tance in try­ing to con­tex­tu­al­ize the Bible such as the extreme ver­sions of the Emerg­ing Church.

Reformed The­ol­ogy As Divisive

Reformed the­ol­ogy also has a heavy rep­u­ta­tion as being very divi­sive. While God’s word is often con­tro­ver­sial that doesn’t neces­si­tate the view that all of reformed the­ol­ogy or study­ing the­ol­ogy in gen­eral is only divi­sive and not edi­fy­ing. While many young Calvin­ists suf­fer from the “cage stage” syn­drome. John New­ton writes in More Than A Calvin­ist: “To be enabled to form a clear, con­sis­tent, and com­pre­hen­sive judg­ment of the truths revealed in the Scrip­ture, is a great priv­i­lege; but they who pos­sess it are exposed to the temp­ta­tion of think­ing too highly of them­selves, and too meanly of oth­ers, espe­cially of those who not only refuse to adopt their sen­ti­ments, but ven­ture to oppose them.”

More Infor­ma­tion

• Bad Argu­ments Against Calvinism
• Eval­u­at­ing Pre­mil­len­ni­al­ism: “The Hermeneu­tic of Literalism”
• Ref­or­ma­tion Essen­tials (The Five Solas)
• More Than A Calvinist