A month of memories
uly and August are looking impossible for me schedule-wise. Pecadillo is getting married in Seattle July 18 (I don't think he's coming back to the blogosphere for awhile; we're going to need a new mascot); I have two or three deadlines coming due within 2 weeks after that; and then I'm going to Cape Cod to speak at a conference there in mid-August. So I'm way overbooked and have no extra time to think about writing new blogposts.Here's what I'm gonna do: For the next month or so, all my posts are going to be reposts of classic material from the original PyroManiac blog. (Warning: some of it is highly flammable.)
Salvaging some of the posts from my original blog and getting them into the permanent record here is something I have wanted to do since we moved to a gangblog. (To make that material searchable on one site with the rest of my bloggage.) Dan Phillips's repost of his "Sister, Have Mercy" post last week settled it in my mind. I've never before posted the same exact blogpost twice (at least not purposely), but Dan has given me the boldness to do it.Yeah, I know all that stuff is already online (no fair rummaging through it now in quest of previews), but I'm going to pull as much of it as possible over here in the next couple of months. I know we have a lot of readers nowadays who don't remember the glory days of the original PyroManiac blog, so this will be fun and interesting. Back then I was still feeling my way around in the blogosphere, and believe it or not, I used to tick off a lot more people than I do now. So fasten your seat belts.
To take us back to the very start, here's my first-ever substantive blogpost, which for two years or so held the record for being my most commented-on post of all. I had announced my intentions to start blogging about 2 months before I posted this, so a lot of people prolly thought I had been tooling up for this opening salvo for all that time. Truth is, I was burdened with a similar time-crunch then, under a big deadline for a book manuscript coming due June 1 that year. I delivered the manuscript (on time) the day before this entry posted, and then I wrote this post in about 45 minutes' time before going to bed that evening.
Everything else is history.
Quick-and-Dirty Calvinism
Bashing Calvinism is the latest fad in blogdom. My turn.

(First posted 1 June 2005)
hree years ago Rob Schläpfer had the best Reformed website and book business bar none. It was the place to go if you were looking for material responding to Dave Hunt. Schläpfer's online magazine, Antithesis, was the best-looking and most consistently interesting website I knewand it was thoroughly Calvinistic.Michael Spencer, aka the Internet Monk, runs one of the most successful group blogs around. It's a lively theological discussion cast as a virtual tavern. The iMonk gained fame earlier this year by "outing" Joel Osteen's frivolous non-gospel. One of the iMonk's famous early blog entries was titled "Why Calvin Is Cool." Judging from the network of links, the iMonk's group blog, The Boar's Head Tavern (BHT), has attracted a lot of Calvinist readers.
But last year with little warning, Schläpfer renounced all things Reformed and started giving rave reviews to almost every postmodern oddity and "emergent church" manual that the evangelical publishing houses could crank out. With a bit of fanfare, Schläpfer's mail-order company dropped some of the best Reformed books from their line. Meanwhile, Schläpfer was posting some fiery blasts both publicly and privately against Calvinists and Calvinism. (Some of themincluding one sent to me personallywere pretty much in the spirit of Mark 14:71.)
Recently, the iMonk followed suit with a controversial essay, "I'm Not Like You . . . (Calvinists especially)." He closed it with a paragraph that began, "I am not like you. Every day I wander further from the safety of Calvinism into the wideness of God's mercy." Although the text is still in the process of deconstruction at the BHT, it seems like the iMonk and his drinking buddies have decided postmodernism is a lot cooler than Calvinism.
Schläpfer and the iMonk are by no means alone. More serious Calvinist leaders, including John Armstrong and Andrew Sandlin are saying similar things, albeit usually with just a smidge more subtlety.
Jumping off the Calvinist bandwagon and lobbing rotten eggs at the attitudes and culture of "Reformed" folk is clearly le dernier cri in the blogosphere and beyond.
Before we vivisect these gentlemen and their views (something I may eventually want to devote some bloggage to), I think it would be helpful to ponder why Calvinism, which seemed to be the flavor of the month not so long ago, has suddenly become so odious to so many of its one-time friends.
I have to say with all candor that I can somewhat understand the feelings expressed by some of Calvinism's recent critics. Sniff around some of the Calvinist forums on the Internet and it won't be long before you begin to think something is rotten in Geneva.
But I hasten to add that I don't think the problem really lies in Geneva, or in historic Calvinism, or in any of the classic Reformed creeds. I especially don't think the stench arises from any problem with Calvinism per se. In my judgment, the problem is a fairly recent down n' dirty version of callow Calvinism that has flourished chiefly on the Internet and has been made possible only by the new media.
Internet Calvinism and historic Calvinism sometimes have little in common. Consider:
- Fanaticism.
The strains of hyper-Calvinism that are flourishing today are more harsh and more hyper than any of the historic hyper-Calvinists ever thought about being.
If you doubt this, check Marc Carpenter's infamous website and read his ridiculous "Heterodoxy Hall of Shame." Carpenter is so hyper-Calvinistic that he has even labeled Calvin a hell-bound heretic for not being Calvinistic enough! He damns Spurgeon, Iain Murray, and even Gordon Clark (whom no one during his lifetime ever accused of not being Calvinistic enough).
There are some well-trafficked discussion forums out there that look like they're having a contest to see who can be most extreme in their condemnations of Arminianism or most overblown in their affirmation of über-high Calvinism.
There is a radical extremism among hypers on the Internet that is utterly unheard of even in the darkest corners of hyper-Calvinist history. At least the early hypers like Huntington and Gill had some profitable things to say when they exegeted Scripture. - Non-evangelism. Among more mainstream Calvinists, there are certainly some outstanding men who are earnestly evangelistic (Piper, MacArthur, and even Sproul). But it would be stretching things more than a little bit to insist that modern Calvinism as a movement is known by its passion for evangelism. Where are the Calvinist evangelists? I can think of only one outstanding example: John Blanchard. (There are surely more, but at the moment I can't think of any other famous Calvinists now living who have devoted their ministries primarily to evangelism).
Of course, I fully realize that the Arminian caricature of historic Calvinism as anti-evangelistic is a total lie. But one could hardly argue that evangelism is a key feature of modern Calvinism. Neither the writings we produce nor the conferences we hold focus much on evangelism. - Polemicism. Today's rank-and-file Calvinists are more in the mold of Pink, Boettner, and J.I. Packer than they are like Spurgeon or Whitefield. In other words, modern Calvinism is producing mostly students and polemicists, not evangelists and preachers. That's because Internet Calvinism is simply too academic and theoretical and not concerned enough with doing, as opposed to hearing, the Word (James 1:22). To a large degree, I think that's what the medium itself encourages.
- Anti-intellectualism. This may sound like a contradiction of my previous point, but both tendencies contribute to the superficiality of Internet Calvinism. Want a sample? I recently received an e-mail inquiry that is all too typical of what I have observed for years among Internet Calvinists. Someone whom I do not know and whose name I will not divulge wrote me to ask:
Can you explain in one paragraph or less how to make sense of the distinction you make between the "decretive" and "preceptive" aspects of God's will? Please don't give me a reading list of books and articles. One paragraph. One sentence if you can do it. Because the whole idea seems loony to me. So far, no one has been able to describe it in a way that makes any sense. I don't have time to read 10 volumes of dead guys' reflections in Puritan prose. And don't refer me to Piper's article on the subject. It's too long and convoluted. I just want a short answer.
Right. The quick and dirty approach to untangling the mysteries of the universe. And every forum on the Internet, it seems, has at least one or two freshly-enlightened, beardless Calvinists who are convinced that their understanding of everything suddenly became perfect when they embraced the sovereignty of God. Some of them imagine that whatever difficulties they still can't explain can be easily solved by simply moving to a more extreme position.
The upsurge of Calvinism on the Internet in the 1990s seems to have spawned a large and unprecedented movement of jejune Calvinists who wear arrogance as if it were the team uniform. That kind of hotshot, shoot-from-the-hip Calvinism is ugly. I don't blame anyone for being appalled by it. I'm worried about those who think it's a good thing.
Obviously those criticisms are mostly generalizations, and they don't necessarily apply to every Calvinist on the Internet. But (and here's the hard part) I'm willing to admit that there have been times when every one of those criticisms could be legitimately applied to something I wrote or posted to a public forum somewhere. I'll especially confess to my shame that I'm too much of a polemicist and not enough of an evangelist.
Historic Calvinism is not supposed to be that way. Yes, Calvinism is virile; it's relentless when it comes to truth; and it's not always easy to swallow. But it is full of truths that should humble us and fill us with compassion rather than swagger and conceit. The best Calvinism has always been fervently evangelistic, large-hearted, benevolent, merciful, and forgiving. After all, that's what the doctrines of grace are supposed to be all about.
Until we get back there, some of the lumps the Reformed movement is currently taking are well-deserved.
And meanwhile, my advice to young Calvinists is to learn your theology from the historic mainstream Calvinist authors, not from blogs and discussion forums on the Internet. Some of the forums may be helpful in pointing you to more important resources. But if you think of them as a surrogate for seminary, you're probably going to become an ugly Calvinistand if you get hit in the face with a rotten egg, you probably deserve it.

Labels: Calvinism, Classic posts reposted, Phil Johnson

ere's someone
else who evidently disagrees with my opposition to transforming the evangelical movement into a political lobby:
I'm inclined to think McLaren's numbers are inflated ("between a third and half of evangelicals" voting for Obama)unless you take George Barna's and Christianity Today's broad and fairly meaningless definitions of what constitutes an "evangelical." But I'm quite sure McLaren is right that the tide is turning, especially among younger churchgoers. No wonder. Evangelicals have been doing practically everything but teaching doctrine for the past 50 yearsranging from entertaining themselves to picketing Disney. So it's no surprise at all if the generation Brian McLaren appeals to most wants to look for deeper meaning in Obama's notions of "justice."




ne of the greatest dangers of the
political activism of the so-called "religious right" is this: It fosters a tendency to make enemies out of people who are supposed to be our mission-field, even while we're forming political alliances with Pharisees and false teachers.
We're like lighthouse keepers in a dark and stormy world. We've been given a mission of rescue and mercy. We can't be like James and John, who in a moment of weakness and immaturity wanted to call down fire from heaven to annihilate some unbelievers who took an opposing stance. We are ambassadors of the true light, who came down to earth to seek and to save the lostnot to destroy men's lives, but to save them.
he history of philosophy is in brief the history of fools. All the sets of philosophers that have yet lived have been more successful in contradicting those that came before them than in anything else.
It is well when the children of Ammon and Moab stand up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir utterly to slay and destroy them; the enemies of God are good at the business of destroying each other. Within a few years [today's] evolutionists will be cut in pieces by some new dreamers. The reigning philosophers of the present period have in them so much of the vitality of madness that they will be a perpetual subject of contempt; and I venture to prophesy that, before my head shall lie in the grave, there will hardly be a notable man left who will not have washed his hands of the present theory.

I've had about fifteen mostly-trivial things floating in my brain that I want to blog about but no time to write much, so I'm going to deal with as many items as possible from my "To Blog About" list today in one post, if you'll bear with me.
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a church in the Atlanta area. My reputation for eating odd delicacies has got around, and when I travel, people frequently offer me challenging, barely-edible tidbits to see how far I will go with it. In Atlanta a dear woman (Marie, if I recall her name correctly), gave me a package of squid jerky (yes, I'm serious) plus a bag of freeze-dried anchovies. Great salad toppers. Thanks.
Also, during one of my recent trips I had the inestimable pleasure of meeting (for the first time in person) our long-time friend and honorary
Speaking of evaluations, my next item for today is a brief book review. I got my copy of 
Whatever else you do today, don't neglect to read about 

you pile twigs all around my feet and douse them with lighter fluid. To be a little more specific: if you know I've had trouble with drunkenness, you won't offer me a glass of wine. If you know I battle covetousness, you won't take me window-shopping in high-end stores I've no business frequenting.




[2] He also, I think, misses the difference between (on the one hand) corporate prayer and even the prayer of the elders and (on the other) passages like Acts 3 (Peter heals the beggar), and Acts 9 (Peter raises Tabitha). It is one thing to say that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much, and another to say that every prayer should be made with the kind of command authority demonstrated in these passages -- especially, I would add, when even Dr. Piper admits that many of these supplications will go unanswered.


















