I suppose I should answer some questions.
What authors and preachers is your meme referring to?
The most influential book on my life outside the Bible was Iain Murray’s (a Presbyterian) biography of Jonathan Edwards (a reformed congregationalist), which I read in 7th grade. This set my soteriological trajectory. Another key book I started reading in high school and only finished in college was Andrew Bonar’s (Presbyterian) biography and collected letters and sermons of Robert Murray M’Cheyne (Presbyterian). Also in high school, I read about 40% of Calvin’s (the Reformed grandpappy Presbyterians and Reformed folk gladly claim) Institutes of the Christian Religion.
In college, three key influences were my reading about 50% of Charles Hodge’s (Presbyterian) systematic theology, Jonathan Edwards’ Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Dale Ralph Davis’ (Presbyterian) commentaries on Kings, J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism, John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied, and Geerhardus Vos’ Biblical Theology.
Many of the books I was assigned early in seminary were written by Presbyterians. Looking back on two seminary degrees, the books that actually significantly influenced me were probably fewer than the list I’ve mentioned above. Some highlights do include Baptists Tom Schreiner and Jim Hamilton, but also Jewish authors I read independently for my research like Robert Alter, Meir Sternberg, and ultimately Marvin Sweeney my current PhD advisor. Especially as I did independent research and personal reading, Presbyterian and Reformed authors Dale Ralph Davis, Peter Leithart, Carl Trueman, Geerhardus Vos, John Murray, etc. all reemerged or became new friends in my reading. Additionally, various Anglican (especially Goldingay) and other distinctly non-Baptist authors came onto my radar.
Has your theology or hermeneutic changed?
I believe it’s fair to say both have been refined. I do believe my theology has had some small changes. I don’t believe my hermeneutic has been refined in such a way to say it has really changed.
Okay then, so how has your theology changed?
I would say that I no longer find the label “dispensationalism” helpful. This affects both theology and hermeneutics. I think dispensationalism was a necessary movement and a helpful corrective to reductionistic tendencies in how the biblical and historical relationship of Israel and the church was presented. I also wonder if the unfortunate connections between some old Christian emphases and the anti-semitic tendencies of historic European Christians that had been twisted and exacerbated in the events leading to the Shoah in Nazi Germany may have made dispensationalism more plausible in the mid-century context of the United States. But I think the hard distinction between Israel and the church most strains of dispensationalism require is ultimately untenable on repeated biblical re-readings.1 I still cheerfully affirm a future Jewish ingathering and a premillennial eschatology, but from a position where I would also readily affirm classical Covenant Theology and its distinction between pactum salutis, foedus operum, and foedus gratiae.2 I see these covenants as necessary theological safeguards of the Reformed gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone revealed in Scripture alone. I believe it’s an important theological framework for my key theological commitments in soteriology: the notion of in Christ and its relationship to federal headship, and the doctrines of grace including limited atonement. I also see them as helpfully explaining biblical data on key passages in Isaiah and other parts of Scripture. On the other hand, I think dispensationalism was a historically necessary theological movement that has helped refine the doctrines of the church. I definitely still appreciate reading and listening to my old dispensational teachers.
Well, why Presbyterianism?
A related but slightly different development is my understanding of the importance of confessions and confessionalism. I see this as related to evolving convictions I’ve had with respect to church government. In other words, I would basically affirm the same hermeneutics I would have always affirmed, but with the added refinements of (1) I think some definitions I was taught of grammatical historical hermeneutics said too little and effectively misguided some interpreters into atomistic readings of texts, (2) I think a good hermeneutic needs to view interpretation as a process of rereading over an interpreter’s whole life on the individual level and reading as a corporate act at the ecclesial level, (3) I think this means any church’s doctrinal statement must in some ways truly be distinct from its hermeneutic–this is good and natural, and (4) church government is profoundly intermixed with the church’s hermeneutics and doctrinal statements. These four considerations pushed me to a conviction of an essentially presbyterian form of church governance and personally adherence to the Westminster standards (at basis my conviction on confessionalism just requires acceptance of sufficiently thorough and established standards). In other words, starting with the idea that truth is fundamentally principle because God is truth, I think any philosophical idea people could develop about truth would have necessary ramifications for things like church government. And I think most of the people who taught me prior to deciding for presbyterianism would agree with that general sentiment.
So what about baptizing babies?
Indeed, a pesky question. I’m ashamed but honest enough to admit that ultimately I considered this question secondary to the church government issue. I don’t believe this has always been the case in the church historically, but philosophically I think I’ve laid out that governance and communal power, while themselves topics far over emphasized in Marxism or various post-modern philosophies, do still have a real and present influence on how interpretation and theology come about in the limited experience of a human lifespan. That’s enough for me to prioritize those over the baptism question and then gladly choose to submit to the elders of my chosen church and its confessional standards.
So uh what does church look like for you now?
My family is attending a congregation of the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) in the Pacific Presbytery. We love it and we love the people we’ve been getting to know so far and have been finding ways to get involved in service. We haven’t quite finished the membership class and process yet, but at this point we’re far enough through them that the general choice for us to join is pretty clear.
I think a danger of switching denominations of “traditions” for lack of a better word is it can seem like you’re denigrating where you came from. Far from it. I still treasure all the friends and teachers and pastors I’ve had over the years especially at Grace Community Church and The Master’s Seminary and will continue to learn from them and preserve as many relationships as feasibly I can. I still expect we’ll find ourselves around that campus for various reasons at various times as well.
Does this impact this blog?
Not really that much? I think in a sense you might be able to trace evolutions I had on some of these ideas and emphases has evolved over the years, but I’m quite confident that my overall theological trajectory remains within a pretty narrow window overall. Besides, I work in biblical studies, not theology. Perhaps indeed it was the acidic nature academic biblical studies can have that pushed me to confessionalism and a higher tolerance of inference in theology.
1 I recently found that O. Palmer Robertson on page 39 of his The Christ of the Covenants (1980) explained very well an objection I had wrestled with for years: the massive numbers of proselytes implied in the Exodus account. At this point then in a certain sense I could read the whole Christian church since Pentecost as a massive ingathering of Jewish proselytes, a perhaps hyperbolic interpretation of Romans 11. For a more helpful one, I would point to the position James Hamilton and Fred Zaspel present in Three Views on Israel and the Church (2019).
2 I suppose you could call me pretentious for using the Latin, but I do think the difference in choice for the word covenant in covenant of redemption, covenant of works, and covenant of grace is significant.
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