The Resurgence of Calvinism at PastorBlog

The Resurgence of Calvinism

by Phil Gons on August 9th, 2007

It’s hard not to miss it. There’s been a significant resurgence in Calvinism in both evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Blogs, websites, books, conferences—Calvinists are popping up everywhere.

At Bob Jones University where I received undergraduate and seminary degrees, dozens of men were going in with Arminian or middle-of-the-road leanings and coming out four- or five-point Calvinists. The trend was unmistakable, especially among the seminary guys and often after taking Systematic Theology. You might be suspecting that this was the result of the persuasive arguments of an unflinching five-point Calvinist faculty, but for most part the faculty members warned against the dangers of Calvinism—at least the five-point kind.

Bob Jones is certainly not unique in this regard. The resurgence is widespread, and people are taking note of this trend and trying to make some sense out of it. Where are they all coming from? What human factors have played a role in this revivification of the Reformed faith. These are the questions that Mark Dever has been answering in his 10-part series, “Where’d All These Calvinists Come From?”

The purpose of this series of posts is simply to address the question–why? And I mean that not in a theological sense (our God is sovereign, or because people read their Bibles) but in an historical sense. As a trained historian, I know that suggesting causation among historians is a bit like alchemy among chemists. But it’s just too interesting for me to pass up!!

I intend to suggest these sources in a roughly chronological order, wondering, if there were so few self-conscious Calvinists in the 1950’s how’d we get so many of them today?

Here are the answers that he gives.

1. C. H. Spurgeon

If Spurgeon was the underground aquifer bringing down the nutrients of earlier generations to those after him, then it was this generation of preachers—many of them anti-Calvinists—who, ironically, were the aquifers who brought us all Spurgeon. And friends, if you keep being told to buy Spurgeon, eventually you’ll probably read Spurgeon. And if you read Spurgeon, you’ll never be able to believe the charge that all Calvinists are Hyper-Calvinists, and that Calvinists can’t do missions and evangelism.

Read the whole post.

2. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Quietly, all over the world young Christians, young ministers have had their spiritual tummies rumbling after they’ve been reading many of the spiritual bestsellers, books that are full of jokes and life tips, whose height of profundity have been something like “Lighten up and Live!” And someone has turned them on to Lloyd-Jones. And, by God’s grace, they have learned about the grace of God, and the God of that grace.

Read the whole post.

3. The Banner of Truth Trust

What was most exceptional about the Banner in the late 1950’s was its widespread distribution of literature from the past. The Princeton faculty teach us again through their books. Dutch Calvinsts and English Puritans appeared again. Readers were introduced to 19th-century divines (the Bonars’, Charles Bridges). Furthermore, the Banner was in it for the long-term. They were theologically motivated. They were not put off publishing a work because it would not sell immediately. They gave time to allow an old classic to slowly disseminate through networks of Christians and fraternals of ministers. And their assiduous work in publishing in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s has clearly helped to bring forth (and equip) a harvest in the 1980s and 1990s and still today.

Read the whole post.

4. D. James Kennedy’s “Evangelism Explosion”

Among the most deadly objections to Calvinism among American evangelicals was the charge that it killed missions and evangelism. . . . Calvinism was dismissed by saying that it always led to hyper-Calvinism. The slippery slope is always a fascinating argument. . . .

And then came Evangelism Explosion. D. James Kennedy, a native of Augusta, Georgia, became the pastor of a little PCUS church in Ft. Lauderdale in 1959. He began training his people to do evangelism. And by 1962, he had organized this as a program called Evangelism Explosion. The book continues on, in its 4th edition. It has been used literally around the world. . . .

My suggestion is that Evangelism Explosion (and the subsequent dramatic growth of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, especially in the 1960’s) became a quiet, but telling piece of counter-evidence against the stereotype of Calvinism killing evangelism. . . .

Read the whole post.

5. The Inerrancy Controversy

Controversy over the Bible has always been with us. But it is the storm summarized and energized by Harold Lindsell’s 1976 Battle for the Bible that I specifically have in mind. . . . Many of the most stalwart defenders of inerrancy were not Calvinists. But many were. Through this controversy, Jim Boice, RC Sproul, Jim Packer, Carl F. H. Henry, Roger Nicole and many other Calvinistic theologians were given larger audiences, especially among ministers. Old Princeton (especially the Hodges, Warfield & Machen) was re-introduced to a new generation.

But there was more to it all than young ministers beginning to read a Hodge here and there, or Carl Henry’s vast project (God, Revelation and Authority in 6 volumes!). Theology was being discussed. Young evangelicals were encouraged not simply to preach and pray, visit and counsel, but to engage in theological thinking, to argue systematics. And not only that, but the very shape of the arguments used to promote inerrancy were exemplary of the Reformed understanding of God’s complete and ultimate sovereignty over the completely responsible action of human agents.

Read the whole post.

6. The Presbyterian Church in America

Born out of theological controversy in what was then the southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS), representatives of 260 congregations met together in December of 1973 to form what would soon be re-named as the Presbyterian Church in America. Throughout the 1970s this connection of churches grew, mushrooming in the 1980s and 1990s. . . . These churches (nearly 1500 of them at last count) have over 300,000 communicant members, and far more in attendance at their churches.

. . . This connection of churches became the home to well-known evangelical Calvinists such as D. James Kennedy and James Montgomery Boice. It’s seminary grew in size and influence (Covenant Theological Seminary) and Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, Orlando, Charlotte) though officially independent, has functioned since the 1970s as the training ground for many PCA ministers. These churches are marked by aggressive evangelism and missions. . . . By the late 1990’s you could almost assume that the most seriously Bible-preaching and evangelistic congregations near major university campuses would not be Bible churches, or Baptist churches, but PCA congregations. There is no doubt that for the last 30 years, one of the major factors in the resurgence of Calvinism in American evangelicalism has been the organizing and growth of the PCA.

Read the whole post.

7. J. I. Packer’s Knowing God

Did you notice how the 1970s and 1980s saw a number of books [gerund] God? Like Loving God, Desiring God, Trusting God. Where did that trend come from?

It came from J. I. Packer’s book, Knowing God. It was published in 1973. And it has continued to sell, year after year, to seminarians, small-group leaders, Christian study groups. It has been read by hundreds of thousands of Christians. Packer has written many other things which have made him the current grandfather of this reformed movement. (He just turned 81 day before yesterday. Pray for more years of health and strength and ministry.) Many of us have disagreed with his work with ECT, but there is no denying that from his introduction to Owen’s Death of Death to his book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, to his many published articles on theology and history, Packer has been one of the best and clearest and most popular theological tutors of those Christians who’ve grown up in the evangelicalism of the 1980s & 1990s.

Read the whole post.

8. R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur

In the 1960s and 1970s two men were raised up whose ministries were to last for decades, touching thousands of ministers and shaping them. . . . New technologies [have] allowed their teaching to be stored and re-listened to or passed around in a way mere broadcasts could not be. . . . And these teachers have used these technologies to defend historic protestant understandings of the Bible, and especially of the Gospel. The result is that the teaching ministries of R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur seem to only be increasing in their influence. From the east coast and the west, among Presbyterians and nondenominational types, and everything literally in between Florida and California, the teaching ministries of these two men have had a quiet, but consistently compounding effect for almost 40 years now. Their conferences are attended by thousands. Their books are legion. Their characters are, by God’s grace, unquestioned.

Read the whole post.

9. John Piper

John has taken his Jonathan Edwards-inspired meditations and published them on many different aspects of life and ministry—preaching, missions, suffering. His books, Desiring God Ministries, the many conferences he speaks at, all have made him probably the single most potent factor in this most recent rise of Reformed theology.

. . .

It has been John who is the swelling wave hitting the coast. It is John who is the visible expression of many of these earlier men. His Desiring God Ministries is the conduit through whom so many of these others who have preceded him now find their work mediated to the rising generation.

Why John Piper? What explains the power of his ministry? All unction about God’s truth comes from God. All fructifying of our labors comes from God. But, in terms of human observations, what sets John’s labors off from those of so many others of us? Theological precision meeting up with spiritual, life-consuming passion. A profound hope imparting a serious joy leading to satisfying sacrifice.

. . .

When all those seminarians and ministers in their 20’s stood up at Together for the Gospel in April of 2006, if I couldn’t give a 10-part answer, but if I had to give a 2-word human explanation for their presence there, I know what two words I would utter: “John Piper.”

Read the whole post.

10. The Rise of Secularism and Decline of Christian Nominalism

My point in this already too-long entry is not how much Arminianism changed, but how incomplete their labors were. . . . In a nominally Christian culture, Arminianism may appear to be a satisfying explanation of the problem of evil—“God’s good; it’s our fault”. But as the acids of modernity have eaten away at more and more of the Bible’s teachings and even presuppositions about God, that answer is proving woefully insufficient to more radical critics. It appears merely like moving the wrinkle in the carpet. A backslidden United Methodist may be satisfied with such teaching, but a Deist, a Buddhist or an atheist would have no reasons to be. A. C. Grayling, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and their like will not for a moment be satisfied with someone saying “Well, God could have made this world without suffering, but in order to be loved with dignity by free beings, He decided He must allow such sin and suffering as we experience.”

Really? Then hang being loved with dignity! Forget the whole experiment! It costs too much! Furthermore, what kind of God NEEDS to be worshipped? What kind of deity is this?!

And it’s this line of questioning that I think has quietly, deeply, perhaps subtly been re-shaping the field into one in which the half-measures of Arminianism are not even beginning to be satisfying. They are attractive to fewer and fewer people. Their adherents average age will grow even as their numbers shrink. They will be recruited mainly from the churched, and perhaps even those who’ve nurtured grievances against God, for allowing this or that to happen.

Reformed theology, on the other hand, teaches about a god who is GOD. The kind of objections that seem to motivate Arminianism are disallowed by the very presuppositions Calvinism understands the Bible to teach about God. This God is sovereign and exercises His sovereignty. This God is centered on Himself. And this God is understood to be morally good in being so Self-centered. In fact, it would be evil, wrong, deceptive for Him to be centered on anything other than His own glory. There is no apology about this.

Read the whole post.

The whole series may be found here: Where’d All These Calvinists Come From?

Or you can read the individual posts here: