Run, Forrest, run!! The Calvinists are coming over the wall!! OK, not really. But seeing as how I’m one of those icky Calvinists that your mother warned you about, and seeing that I’m not the first one here at CRN.Info and Analysis, I think that this means that we now have twice as many Calvinists on “staff” as Apprising Ministries [sic].
Yeah, I’m the new kid on the block. Someone once (lovingly) labeled me as a “black sheep Calvinist” as I’m more interested in being a Christian and loving by Arminian brethren and sistren than fighting over TULIP. Similarly, though I probably wouldn’t consider myself to be emergent, I find much of the dogma against the EC to be nauseating. When I call out the “white sheep Calvinists” and/or anti-emergents for their lack of charity, I’m usually assumed to be the illegitimate love child of Jacobus Arminius and Brian McLaren. When I reveal that I’m not, they usually don’t know what to do with me. Not that anyone else does either. . .
Anyway, enough introduction and on with the post.
Charles Spurgeon was one smart cookie and often quite the theologian. But he missed the mark on this one, and the error is actually quite telling.
Over at TeamPyro (where Chuck gets the floor at least once a week), a Spurgeon quote was posted that — I guess — is meant to be the proof-text to defend their methodology and harsh tone when pointing out (but never seeming to get around to actually helping to correct) what they perceive to be error. A few things jump out at me on this:
1. What seems to be Spurgeon’s point from the quote — and what clearly is the poster’s point (given his choice of post title) — is that “defending” orthodoxy is better than “tearing it down”. One could quibble endlessly about the proper definitions of both of those terms in quotes, but taken at its face value, that is probably a true statement.
But since when are Christians called to seek what is “better”? I thought we were supposed to strive for the best?
2. Spurgeon decries those that soft-pedal truth, and to some extent he makes a good point, as certainly there are those who take epistemological humility to an illogical extreme and claim that we can’t definitively know even the things on which the Bible is quite clear.
There is an oddity here, though. While I can’t ascribe it to Spurgeon, it is quite easily ascribable to many who quote him. Spurgeon is well-respected in many Reformed/Calvinistic circles — among whom (unfortunately, in this case) I number myself. In the famed Calvinist TULIP, the “T” stands for the “Total Depravity” of man. It is quite odd that anyone who claims to believe in such a tenet would also look down upon all epistemological humility, as if to say that any man — even one saved by God’s grace — could grasp all that an infinite God is.
3. Here is the real crux of the quote, and the “telling” part that I alluded to before. Spurgeon decries “bring[ing] out your opinions cautiously” (emphasis mine). In other words, according to Spurgeon, one should always be bold and definitive regarding one’s opinions.
I keep thinking back to Billy Graham. Whenever he was being interviewed and was asked his opinion on a particular topic, his first four words were usually, “Well, the Bible says. . .” Graham recognized that his opinion didn’t amount to a single bean, let alone a hill of them. Certainly, he would clarify how he thought a particular Scripture should be interpreted or how he thought it was applicable to a given situation. But the Scripture always came first — it wasn’t “here’s my opinion and here’s my eisegetical proof-text to back it up”.
Spurgeon seems to be flirting with that viewpoint, so it’s of little wonder that he would be well-respected by those who are firmly entrenched in it.
