Welcome to this Bud Zone Substack.
One of the things I mentioned in my introductory Substack article was that you could expect that none of my electronic epistolatory endeavors would be motivated with nefarious intent. I’m not looking for intramural Christian combat for the sake of combat. I don’t get my jollies by jousting with fellow saints. Such occasionally necessary combat, though it might release sufficient endorphins to excite, would be distinctly contradictory to the ambition, not to mention the apostolic imperative, of peace which should be a notable marker of Christians. We have an enemy and, pray God, don’t let it be us.
Anyway, the point of this little missive isn’t to fire a volley within the ranks of genuine professing Christendom. Hopefully consistent with my authorial intent also conveyed in my introductory article, this is to provoke fellow saints to think biblically about some things. That’s what I hope this does. So, if for you, it appears to be an unwarranted shot across the bow, I’m real sorry about that, but not sorry enough that I’m going to retreat. You’ll just have to quit reading now.
Nevertheless and everything, here goes.
Because everything needs a title, I’ve entitled this “You may be a Calvinist, but that doesn’t make you Reformed.” It’s intended to be clarifying and not, as I’ve said, combative. Given the title, an immediate qualification is necessary. You, in fact, may actually be a fully five-pointed Calvinist AND thoroughly theologically Reformed. If so, you can easily cease your literary ingestion here. Instead, maybe go check out something on TGC so you have prayer fodder. There’s ALWAYS a cause for sainted prayer, be that of supplication or of imprecation, to be found on “The Gospel Compromisers” site.
The title of this article is intended to help, or, let me say, provoke, a certain category of believer, one who would consider themself a Calvinist and that thereby they are also “Reformed,” to think more precisely about their theological claim. To state it another way, just because you embrace the doctrines of grace, those acronymic TULIP truths, does not make you theologically, fully Reformed. It makes you partially Reformed, but only in the area of soteriology, the study of salvation.
I’m buttressed in this particular perspective, not only by the perspicuous implications of Scripture, which is alone enough, but also by a rather reputable guy you may have heard of. R.C. Sproul stated pretty much the same point. “Reformed theology so far transcends the mere five points of Calvinism that it is an entire worldview.” Sproul is precisely and pithily pointing out exactly what Abraham Kuyper meant when he declared, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”
A Brief Accolading Cut-Away For Kuyperianism
To more comprehensively grasp the full-orbed implications of Calvinism expounded by the great Dutch theologian and former Prime Minister of the Netherlands Abraham Kuyper, one simply must read his “Lectures On Calvinism.” Also referred to as “The Stone Lectures,” in them Kuyper outlines the total world- and life- view which he understands and advocates Calvinism to represent. Here’s picture of the copy I have.
The well-known Kuyper quote mentioned a couple of paragraphs up - the
“not a square inch” quote - is a glorious summary of this view, namely that our sovereign Lord is, in fact and in providential deed, ruling and reigning over all of His creation. There is no aspect of human life or cosmic reality over which He does not have, and exert, “all authority.” (See the Great Commission) Sproul echoes this in his equally well-acknowledged quip, “There are no maverick molecules in a universe where God is sovereign.”
According to Kuyper and Sproul (and scores upon scores of other Reformed theologians, pastors, and laymen throughout the centuries), the implications of Calvinism, properly understood, extend far, far, far beyond soteriology. And I vigorously and vociferously would utter an affirming “Amen” to that. But it isn’t exactly what I’m advocating here, though I most certainly do advocate for that.
And Now, Back To The Original Opining
I’d like you to think back to that not-so-distant-past theological blight on the church known by the acronym YRR. Actually, it is still sort of a theological blight on the church today, having compulsively and relevantly (sarcasm implied) morphed with those oh so pesky winds of ever-changing cultural doctrine. Who do you think of when you think Young, Restless, and Reformed? No doubt names like Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, John Piper, Louis Giglio, J.D. Greear, Tim Keller? Those, and others, are all acceptable answers.
It would be my argument that those YRR guys are the perfect example of why being fully and truly Reformed is more than, and MUST be more than, merely professing an adherence to soteriological Calvinism. Without a thorough, soul-grasping, convictional, full-orbed theology borne of the Holy Spirit’s work in, through, and subsequent to the Reformation, many like these YRR guys today have, with moistened finger in the air to ascertain the direction of the cultural winds, gleefully shifted, shimmied, and succumbed to the catalyzing effects of trending cultural concerns.
How many of them are, for instance, advocates for the ill-named, but highly favored by Big Eva, social justice movement? How many of them are urging the less melaninly-blessed to repent of their woeful lack of pigmentation? How many have nicely nodded towards the noxious LGBTQ-E-eye-E-eye-Oh movement, something about which the Bible allegedly only whispers? How many of these “Me-Too” maestros wouldn’t bat an eye at having Beth Moore preach for Mother’s Day, or, actually, any other day? There was a time, after all, when she filled arenas. And where the corpses are, there the vultures gather … oh wait, that might be the wrong analogy. My bad.
Further, I’d be curious to know - and I don’t, which is why I just said that - how many of the now contemporary YRR crowd made the virtue-signaling, COVID-era compromise by shutting down their churches because, well, the mayor, or the governor, or the county commission, or the CDC, or somebody representing … wait for it and, please, hear it in a James Earl Jones voice - THE GOVERNMENT told them to shut down.
This presumably gospel-centered maneuver in the name of cultural relevancy made one thing abundantly apparent to many. It proved that, while Christ may be for them Lord IN His church, He clearly isn’t Lord OVER His church.
(Yes, I know, there may have been reasonable reasons why churches, especially early on during the COVID charade, chose to close. But, methinks, that window was, or should have been, exceedingly short as the exceeding evidence of a power-grabbing statist narrative became quickly apparent.)
These guys may have a reasonable grasp on God’s sovereignty in salvation, but they clearly don’t have a grasp on His sovereignty anywhere else. In fact, my understanding is that Driscoll’s understanding has been revised to a condition in which Calvinism has been completely jettisoned by him. Based on his example, it’s possible to lose understanding completely apart from some debilitating cognitive disease. Who knew? Oh well. I’m sure the Lord’s really shook up by that slight. The Lord giveth, but the church growth relevancy crowd apparently taketh away.
The doctrinal convictions of the YRR crowd, and those like them who may have a grasp on soteriological Calvinism, but only soteriological Calvinism, necessarily produces problems of at least orthopraxy, although I’d argue also of orthodoxy. That is, both faith and practice are harmfully stunted by failing to apprehend sovereignty in all spheres of life. If the Lord is only the Lord IN the church, and not elsewhere, then you’re not dealing with genuine Calvinism (I refer you to Kuyper’s Stone Lectures again). You’re likely then dealing with pietism. And pietism? Well, pietism is … BAAAADDDD. (You may expect to see me scriven on the Scripture-defying scourge of pietism in a future Substack.)
What That “R” In YRR Should Really and Robustly Reflect
Now, even though there was a representative “R” in the YRR acronym standing for “Reformed,” those guys are, or were, soteriological Calvinists only. The more proper acronym should likely have been YRC … young, restless, and Calvinistic. They were not genuinely, fully, historically, and orthodoxically Reformed.
And for an explanation of that fully Reformed moniker, which is the point of this missive, I would like to turn to an answer given by Voddie Baucham in a 2015 interview.
Voddie was asked, “What’s the core of Reformed theology for you?”
Voddie answered: “For me, the three Cs: Calvinistic, Covenantal, and Confessional.”
I heartily affirm this quippy alliterated summation of the truly Reformed theological position. The genuine professor of the Reformed faith will affirm, first, that they are Calvinists; second, that they apprehend a covenantal theological view of Scripture in character, scope, and interpretation; and, third, that they adhere to an historic, orthodox, born-of-the-Reformation, confession of faith.
These three things are necessary grounds, in my opinion, for one to consider oneself Reformed. Adherence to only one of these, as I’ve shown is common for those who may be only Calvinists (but thank God for that too!), is not to be fully, genuinely, and historically Reformed.
I’ve already digitally discussed the matter of Calvinism, so let’s consider the other two matters. As with a Calvinistic soteriology, the sovereignty of God drives, shall we say, an understanding of covenant theology and the matter of confessions of faith.
The word covenant itself occurs over 300 times in Scripture, over against, for the sake of well-meaning goaded giggles, the word “dispensation” which, of the over 783,000 words in the KJV Bible, pops up a total of … wait for it … four times. There are multiple obvious, sovereignly initiated - how else would we have them? - covenants in Scripture. There’s the Abrahamic covenant, the Noahic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the covenant with David, and, of course, the New Covenant in Christ’s blood.
But overriding these overtly biblically revealed covenants are three others: the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace. Pictured below is J.I. Packer’s little book An Introduction To Covenant Theology. In it Packer states, “God's covenant of grace in Scripture is one of those things that are too big to be easily seen, particularly when one's mind is programmed to look at something smaller.”
This is to say that, you may see the lesser covenants clearly denoted in Scripture, but may not have deduced these three other, overriding covenants under which they operate because your lens may be focused on trees rather than forest. This, by the way, is the common malady regarding sovereignty which may be seen in your nearest cage-stage Calvinist. Help them. Sovereignty doesn’t stop at salvation.
Here’s a bit more from Packer:
“So biblical doctrine, first to last, has to do with covenantal relationships between God and man; biblical ethics has to do with expressing God's covenantal relationship to us in covenantal relationships between ourselves and others; and Christian religion has the nature of covenant life, in which God is the direct object of our faith, hope, love, worship, and service, all animated by gratitude for grace.”
Packer goes on to make three claims which may seem staggering to the only partially Reformed, particularly those who wrongly moniker themselves as “Reformed dispensationalists.”
“First, the gospel of God is not properly understood till it is viewed within a covenantal frame.”
Jesus, of course, is the mediator and the guarantor of the covenant-based relationship of God and man. Hebrews affirms this in 7:22 and 8:6. Packer thus states, “The whole Bible is, as it were, presented by Jesus Christ to the whole church and to each Christian as the book of the covenant …”
Continuing with Packer’s covenantal triples: “Second, the Word of God is not properly understood till it is viewed within a covenantal frame.”
Having previously in his text elucidated covenant theology as a matter of hermeneutics, Packer also emphasizes that it is “as well a formulation of biblical teaching.” Here’s a bit more:
“The backbone of the Bible, to which all the expository, homiletical, moral, liturgical, and devotional material relates, is the unfolding in space and time of God’s unchanging intention of having a people on earth to whom he would relate covenantally for his and their joy.”
And, Packer concludes his final point: “Third, the reality of God is not properly understood till it is viewed within a covenantal frame.”
Packer here is dealing fundamentally with the ontology of God and how His being relates with fallen man. “In highlighting the thought that covenantal communion,” he writes, “covenant theology makes the truth of the Trinity more meaningful than it otherwise can be.”
Allow a summary from Sproul to suffice. “Reformed theology sees the primary structure of biblical revelation as that of covenant. This is the structure by which the entire history of redemption is worked out.”
This, of course and by the way, drastically distinguishes it from dispensationalism. And, just to be clear, for this reason the notion that one can be a “Reformed dispensationalist” is faulty.
Now, Let’s See About The Third “C”
Now to the final “C.” The truly, fully Reformed believer is also confessional. And there is a reason for this. It is, in fact, and as it should be, a biblical reason. If you flip over to Jude, or if you just trust me here to repeat a part of it for you, here’s what you find. And it’s a verse a pretty sure you’ve heard, but perhaps you’ve heard it primarily employed as a defense of discernment, as a defense for the defense of Christianity. But here’s the verse:
“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Jude 4
Now certainly, the Lord’s half-brother here is trying to catalyze the saints to defend, to contend, for the faith of their common salvation. It is good, and right, and necessary that we do exactly that, that we defend the faith, for in doing that we are doing nothing less than defending the supremacy, the sovereignty, of our Lord over all things.
Just as an aside and in the event you may not have noticed, much of that contending occurs within the orbit of others who profess the faith. That is, nominal Christians comprise a target rich environment for this contending. Yeah, you may need to contend with the boisterous atheist exiting the crack house, but largely the battle ain’t there. As is common knowledge among those discerning Christian Issacharians among us, the mission field in our day is, on the whole, IN the church.
Anyway, what I’d like you to consider for the purposes of this matter at hand is how Jude describes Christianity. He says it is … “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” Lemme emphasize it, so presume I’m typing this very slowly for the dramatic impact these Spirit-inspired words ought to have. “The. Faith. ONCE. For. All. Delivered. To. The. Saints.”
Here’s a quick pop quiz. How many times does Scripture tell us the faith has been delivered? I won’t even grade your answer since Jude has made it so simply clear.
Now, this prolly won’t be too difficult, but if the faith you profess, which I profess, which all God’s bonafide children profess, all those myriads of true saints who are populating the visible and invisible church of God … if that faith was delivered once, and only once, then the question is, When was it delivered? Was it last Sunday?
Lemme ask it this way. Is that once-delivered faith something delivered recently or historically?
Allow me to cite a contemporary theologian, J.V. Fesko who, by the way, wrote a wonderful book in 2020 called “The Need For Creeds Today: Confessional Faith In A Faithless Age.”
Here’s a pic of it for you.
And here’s the valuable citation from it:
“The church did not begin when you or I joined its ranks; it has existed for millennia. Throughout that time Christ has given teachers to the church as gifts, and we ignore them at our own peril. (Eph. 4:11-12).”
At the very least, you’d have to agree that it would have been an anachronistically aberrant authoring if first-century Jude was writing to first-century saints about a “once delivered” faith if, in fact, that faith hadn’t already, actually, been “delivered” at the time he was writing. But Fesko makes the pertinent point for us. The faith has existed for millennia.
Now, ponder carefully and prayerfully and reasonably the implications of the Scripture referenced in Fesko’s quote above. Here’s the full text of it:
“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,”
Now, before we go much further, let’s get in our head that other popular Pauline text from 2 Timothy 3:16:
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
So, we’ve got three big concepts in mind. First, the faith has been historically delivered to the saints. Second, the Lord has gifted his church with numerous and gracious gifts, including, notably and extremely importantly, teachers. Third, the Scriptures are inspired and become the basis for, among other divinely-powered things … wait for it … teaching.
What’s all this mean? It means that while the authors of Scripture were inspired to record that special revelation of God to man, so too will subsequent teachers from Scripture be deployed by the Lord for the dissemination and continuation of that once delivered faith. Following the close of the canon of Scripture, we don’t get any more Spirit-inspired writers recording “Thus saith the Lord,” but what we do get are Spirit-illuminated teachers gifted to the church to elucidate and implement through teaching the efficacious words, and the meanings of those words, of the Lord.
Acknowledging, as I and many, many, many “three C” Reformed folks do, that this three-pronged reality has been employed by the Lord for the sake of His church means that, as He orchestrates building His church, equipping His church, and deploying His church IN the world, the Lord has led faithful saints to formulate confessional statements. For the robustly and roundly Reformed - roundly referring to completeness, and not girth of flesh, though that may be known to occur as well - adhering to a confession is the natural outgrowth of what the Lord hath done. The Lord has ONCE delivered the faith, and He has continually protected that faith and fomented its propagation through teachers who, among other things, use the systematic teaching from confessions of faith to help educate the saints about that faith.
For the fully Reformed, any number of historic, traditional confessions arise from the remarkable work of the Lord during and subsequent to the Reformation of the 16th-century. You’ve heard of some of these confessions of faith. Westminster. London Baptist. Helvetic. Savoy. Thirty-nine Articles. Adherence to one of these historic Reformed confessions of faith, when coupled with the other two “C’s,” constitutes a reasonable claim by a believer to be genuinely and fully Reformed.
And, lest you have some doubt about that word “traditional” which I penned in the paragraph above, doubts which would cause you to clamor with “no creed but the Bible,” which is itself a creed, but that ain’t the point here, let’s hear from Fesko again.
“When we create, profess, and pass confessions down to future generations, we do not propagate the dead faith of the living but the living faith of the dead.”
In other words, the Reformed believer understands the Holy Spirit’s guiding illumination in leading gifted teachers from throughout church history to develop these confessions as biblically based, biblically coherent, biblically sourced, and biblically subservient theological treatises for the instructive benefit of the church.
While the Reformed believer adheres to a confession born of the Reformed tradition, what the Reformed believer does not do is pull a pontifical Tiberian stunt and elevate those confessions as tradition alongside Scripture. Tradition is not a problem. Instituting traditionalism with or from confessions, or anything else, for that matter, is a problem. And elevating anything alongside Scripture is a huge, huge problem.
“I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.” Psalm 138:2
Concluding Remarks Here At The End Because It’s The Conclusion
One of the problems, I’m sure you would likely agree, is that the contemporary church in its broadest form sorely lacks doctrinal precision. I mean, good grief, the contemporary church not only lacks doctrinal precision, it often lacks even gospel precision. Just turn on a random Sunday morning TV service and you’ll quickly find somebody encouraging you to invite Jesus into your heart because He loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That, folks, ain’t the gospel.
It is the precision of being fully Reformed, along these three “C” categories, which, I believe, would greatly benefit the church. If nothing else, having an historic confession alone would provide the pew-sitter, like I am, with a standard of doctrinal measurement for those within the church who teach and preach.
You’ve got something against which to hold those folks accountable. You don’t, by the way, have to use squinty eyes or telephoto lenses to cast a glance at evangelicalism to realize that some of those folks, especially the ones in the pulpits, or prancing around where pulpits formerly stood, definitely need to be held accountable. For their sake and the sake of the brethren, we oughta do it before the Lord’s long-suffering has suffered long enough and He takes divine and decisive action - also known as judgment - which I believe he’s particularly been doing for the last couple years especially. (Please, for the sake of the gospel and the glory of our Lord, please pray that He shuts down many, many more nominal churches that proclaim a false flavor of faith!)
But, again consistent with my aim not to aim at fellow believers of all stripes for the sake of theological target practice, what I am not saying here is that if you are merely Calvinistic, and do not embrace the other two defining categories of being Reformed, I am not challenging your profession of faith. I’m not consigning you to any lesser status within the kingdom. I am only hoping that you will, perhaps, be precise in your self-identification and, more importantly, that you might consider the implications of the two “C’s” you are lacking.
It is my contention that, among other things, the Lord is currently chastising His church for its failure to be, as Steve Lawson might phrase it, “bull-dogmatic” about doctrine. A hearty embrace of the fullness of Reformed theology would, I surely and sorely believe, help unredeemed sinners know what we’re about and edify redeemed saints in their work of ministry.
Oh, one final point.
You’ll notice that my opining here has not included an attack against those who are not fully Reformed. I liken it to the lights of Calvinism going off. Once the Spirit illuminates those sovereignty based TULIP truths, you can’t unsee them. Same thing here. Once you grasp the theological completeness of robust, three “C” Reformed theology, you can’t unsee those “C’s.” I’m not shooting barbs, in other words. We have a common enemy who does that.
But there are those professing believers out there, like the propagators of this meme, who engage in what Proverbs calls scoffing. A synonym for scoffing would be mocking.
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?” Proverbs 1:22
“A scoffer seeks wisdom in vain, but knowledge is easy for a man of understanding.” Proverbs 14:6
Look, here’s the thing. None of us have arrived to completeness in our faith. We’ve not arrived at fulness in our theology. We do not know all things. As Christians, though, there are two critical postures we must always have. We must be humble and we must be teachable.
“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;” Colossians 1:9-10
If you disagree with this summation of the Reformed faith, you are certainly welcome to. If you are a Calvinist only, and dismiss the other two C’s, praise God for the illumination He has given you there. But don’t fail to be humble and don’t fail to be teachable. And whatever you do, before you start mocking what I and scores upon scores of faithful saints through the millennia consider a Spirit-guided understanding of “the faith once for all delivered,” do not fail to heed these words of wisdom from the book of wisdom:
“The devising of folly is sin, and the scoffer is an abomination to mankind.” Proverbs 24:9”
On point Brother🎯 I now have 3 more books to add to my “stack to be read”. I’ve been listening to RC Sproul’s series on RefNet called the “Promise Keeper”, a series on “The God of Covenants”. The sovereignty of God in and of ALL things has become, as it has been said, is the soft pillow I rest my head upon.