I was rereading The Apostle of the North – the biography of John MacDonald of Ferintosh (1779-1849) – and amidst many fascinating and edifying things, as well as annoying and unbalanced things of course, found this:
“I addressed them from Ps 84:11, ‘The Lord will give grace and glory.’ No subjects touch them [he refers to the people on St Kilda] like those of grace. They seem to melt under such topics. What an argument to ministers for holding out the doctrines of grace continually to the view of their hearers! It is such doctrines alone that are calculated to win the heart of the sinner; and to such doctrines alone will God append the seal and sanction of his power.” (John MacDonald of Ferintosh, in John Kennedy, The Apostle of the North, p114-5)
It got me reflecting on the fact that for a number of years after I got involved with the modern Reformed movement (which was 1977) I didn’t hear anything like that, especially at conferences but also in the contemporary (as distinct from older) writings of the movement. Why so? Things are better now, by the way, at least on the whole. I think some history may help.
There was depth and seriousness about God, as well as many wonderful works of conversion, church building and huge impacts on societies, in the 200 years or so after the Reformation in 1517. But the seeds of decline were always there, of course, as they always are in this fallen world. Melancthon went synergistic after Luther’s death; there were the Remonstrants in Holland in the early 1600s. There was Neonomianism in Britain in the mid and late 17th century – Baxter, parts of the Scottish church, et al.
After a deadening of spiritual life in England and Wales, there came the wonderful Methodist revival through the Wesleys, G Whitefield, and, in Wales, Hywel Harris, Daniel Rowland et al. We are now mid-1700s. John Wesley was gifted with an extraordinary pragmatism, a good thing – an ability to know how to do things so that they work. Methodism is a wonder of history. At the same time the Americans were very pragmatic – they had to be, especially those on the frontier. At the same time Wesley and his movement put undue emphasis on the human will, or rather, made it instead of God’s grace and election determinative. Out of this mix came in the end Decisionism, as it came to be called – the notion that the point of evangelism and preaching is to get people to make a conscious decision for Christ, and once they’ve done that, you’ve made it, they are born again. This is Charles Finney in the 1830s and onwards.
Over time this great desire to gain converts, and the idea that we can make it happen to some extent, led also to a downplaying of certain parts of the Bible that are less palatable to the sinful heart of man – his holiness, the sinfulness of our motives, coming judgement, and the true nature of repentance from the heart; and of course our dependence on the sovereign work of the Spirit for new birth. And once Dispensationalism had arrived in the mid-1800s, the law of God through Moses was sidelined, at least in terms of it searching us now.
So by the time Billy Sunday, Gipsy Smith and later Billy Graham came along, evangelicalism had become somewhat superficial and mechanistic, and many who professed faith ended up not displaying changed lives. Yes, the Lord had always warned that a number who accepted the word outwardly would not in fact bear fruit and thereby demonstrate that they were truly born again (see the parable of the sower), but by the 20th century the percentage doing this was far greater than necessary.
Was God going to leave evangelicalism just to get more and more superficial, and perish? 1945 onwards says: No, he was first going to lead a number of “scribes who became disciples of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 13:52) to dig deeper into Scripture, initially mainly the New Testament, and use the best nuggets from 200 years of modernist, skeptical theology to improve the quality of exegesis humongously – first in Britain and then in the US and elsewhere. Then about 10 years later another movement began, in the area of systematics and the theology of piety: the Banner of Truth Trust in Britain and the US started republishing some of the best of the older Reformed writers, and through them and some other publishers, a deepening began. It was greatly aided by the preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones in London. The older teaching could live again and convert people and change lives. The modern Reformed movement had begun. Soon there were many strands to it, of course – for example Francis Schaeffer led a strand that was somewhat dependent on the Dutch Neo-Calvinists (A Kuyper, H Bavinck et al) and yet understood the narrowness of American Fundamentalism and the general legalism of much evangelicalism (yes, evangelicalism had become legalistic while often rejecting the law of Moses as even relevant to life now – new rules were invented!).
And what in particular did this Reformed movement emphasise? God’s sovereignty in salvation and providence, his holiness, his law (yes, the Mosaic law as of continuing relevance and authority for the NT believer), and the deep, heart nature of repentance. Rightly so.
However, even the people who were being blessed by the Spirit in this movement from 1955 on were just sinners saved by grace. So the inevitable happened and to some extent the pendulum went from one extreme to the other: the real centralities of Scripture and of the gospel got slightly hidden – they, after all, were not the things that wider, superficial evangelicalism had forgotten: John 3:16; 1 Tim 1:15, and the fact that the main thing is that God sent his Son on a mission of love and salvation, and that coming to be right with God through Christ happens simply by means of faith.
The other unfortunate and almost inevitable thing in the modern Reformed movement was that to some extent we gloried not in Christ Jesus (Phil 3:3) but in our grasp of him, in our theology, our depth, our “being truly Reformed” – a subtle form of idolatry. Religious idolatries are always the most subtle and therefore favourites with the Enemy. Reformed theology and true orthodoxy as an idol – a masterstroke. Very difficult to see when you are doing it.
Our Reformed forefathers were not always above such things, of course, but they were often caught up in mighty revivals of the Spirit where not only were their intellects being enlightened but their hearts, emotions and practical lives were being galvanised into great deeds for the gospel; so they were usually less prone to worship their own views.
So when you read the older books – yes, they really are worth reading – don’t fail to notice and enjoy the parts where they highlight grace alone, Christ alone, and by faith alone; and don’t just notice the word “alone” but the wonders of grace in Christ by faith.
Now we are God's children 