“Who’s Reformed, And Who Cares?”

I always like it when someone thinks that I have made a good point 😉 ; so I thought I would share a comment that soon to be PhD from Aberdeen, Darren Sumner, just made on an older post of mine (and in response to one that Stephen Norris made on the same thread). The point that Darren believes is a good one, has to do with how we should define what it means to be included within the Reformed Faith of Protestant Christianity. This is somewhat of a debated issue (in-house), and so I think it would be helpful to share what Darren has shared on the topic. I will do that here, and then offer a few brief thoughts of my own. By the way, there are many classically Reformed proponents today who collapse what it means to be ‘Reformed’ into a fixed set of agreed upon Reformed Confessions (the so called Three Forms of Unity — viz. The Heidelberg Catechism, The Belgic Confession, and The Canons of Dort); if someone cannot sign off on even one of these ‘forms’ in toto, then their “Reformedness” is probably non-existent. The quote from Darren challenges this conception:

[B]obby, I think you make a good point, and it’s something to which I’m growing increasingly sensitive. What are the core principles of Reformed orthodoxy? Are these primarily doctrines (e.g. election and divine sovereignty construed in a particular way), or are they primarily ethics of the way in which theology is to be carried out (e.g. semper reformanda)?

While we may want to specify a handful of doctrines, my sense of the tradition and its founding is that the latter ethics are decisive. That’s why there is no single confessional statement of Reformed orthodoxy (as with the Lutheran Formula of Concord), but rather a broad tradition of regional confessions that share a great deal of doctrinal similitude. Even where we would specify some doctrines as necessary to what it means to be in the Reformed tradition — such as election and the sovereignty of God — the ethic requires that these allow for a range of interpretive positions and not a fixed doctrinal expression. This gives Reformed thinkers the freedom to continually re-examine and re-express the truths that are encountered in Scripture.

Not everyone will draw these boundaries quite the same, but the point is that Reformed thought allows for a range of options — similar to how George Hunsinger describes the Council of Chalcedon as permitting a range of orthodox talk about the Incarnation and not fixing a single expression. On these grounds, one must certainly judge Karl Barth as squarely within the broader Reformed tradition, even if his theology is not ultimately judged as part of “classic Reformed orthodoxy.” The greatest value of classic Reformed orthodoxy, in my view, is that classic Reformed orthodoxy does not have the last word.

I agree with Darren. I think Darren’s very last sentence sums this up nicely. As Karl Barth develops in his The Theology of the Reformed Confessions, the principled way of being ‘Reformed’ (versus Lutheran for example) is found in the Reformed’s insistence upon subordinating everything to the Holy Scriptures. Thus, all Confession making becomes subordinate (and thus only proximate, at their best) to the clarity of God’s Word to us in Scripture. The consequence of this is that there is nothing static or ‘fixed’ (as Darren has said) to appeal to when trying to define the parameters for what it means to be ‘Reformed’; and I should say nothing fixed in reference to looking to certain Reformed Confessions as the canon for what it means to be included within the family of the Reformed Faith. So the question for what it means to be Reformed is not an issue of Dogmatic import, but instead, as Darren has identified (along with Barth and others), the barometer is one that is found in the realm of the ethical; or we could say, that defining this issue, using ‘Reformed principles’, becomes a question that is ‘personal’ and not abstract and/or institutional.

In closing, I would say that the classically Reformed amongst us define the Reformed Faith in static ways, as symptomatic of their doctrine of God. Doesn’t everything come back to this? So ultimately, this issue does come back to a Dogmatic question; since even a person’s ethics are a result of how they conceive of God.

In closing, closing, let me suggest a reason why this even matters (e.g. who’s included in the ‘Reformed Faith’). It matters because truth matters. It matters because the principles of the Reformed Faith, if employed consistently (semper reformanda), would actually militate against what it means to be ‘Reformed’ (in some sectors, like Westminster Theological Seminary or the United Reformed Churches); and thus calls into question the validity of their Reformed status.