What They're Saying

God’s spiritual discipline

“The connection between apatheia and self-giving love (agapé) is crucial. In teaching apatheia as a spiritual discipline, the constant emphasis of the patristic theologians is on growing to be free of irrational feelings and fantasies that stem from self-love, from vanity and wounded pride. That is, apatheia, as either an attribute of God or a Christian virtue in this world and ‘beatitude’ for the world to come, is the opposite of what we normally call an emotional reaction. It is, rather, an aspect of the ‘eternal changelessness’ of divine love, ‘God’s everlasting outpouring,’ flowing in and (sic) from the Godhead and at work also in the human creature.

“Viewed in relation to divine love, it seems clear that the doctrine of apatheia functions to make two crucial assertions about God’s involvement with the world. Negatively, it refutes the possibility that the God known to Israel can ever become estranged from humanity or any part of it–unlike the highly emotional and therefore fickle gods worshiped by the Mesopotamians, the Greeks, or the Romans. Positively, the doctrine of apatheia affirms that God can be genuinely involved in events that happen in time, in human events, without either being formed or diminished by them.

“It is especially apt to consider the patristic teaching of apatheia . . . because I believe that the biblical concept of covenant is a way of making, through the medium of narrative, these same crucial assertions. Covenant is the stabilizing mechanism that allows God to remain profoundly involved in the contingent events of history, responding in various ways to the often distressingly unstable human situations and heart, yet without essential change in either the divine being or the divine disposition toward those whom God has made. The first indication of this function of covenant occurs within the early chapters of Genesis, when the original covenant is established, through Noah, with ‘all flesh’ (Gen 9:17). It is telling that the recognition that hurts God to the heart and leaders to the flood–namely, that ‘every inclination of the thought of [the human] heart is purely evil all the time’ (Gen 6:5)–is the very recognition that, immediately after the flood, moves God to forswear further destruction and enter into covenant with this creature whose heart inclines to evil ‘from his youth’ (8:21). And from this recognition the whole of biblical history unfolds. Now, it is foreseeable that there will be other occasions for God to be ‘hurt to the heart,’ yet covenant represents God’s own renunciation of an emotional reaction. It is God’s choice, one might say, of the spiritual discipline of apatheia.”

Ellen F. Davis, “Vulnerability, the Condition of the Covenant,” in The Art of Reading Scripture (Eerdmans, 2003), 292-293.

Sesquicentennial Reflections

1857 - 2007: From CRC to ACRC?
Arie C. Leder

Since 1880 we have been known as the Christian Reformed Church, even though the adjective “Holland” was still attached at that time. It wasn’t our first name, however. From April 8, 1857, the birth date of the CRC, to 1880, the following names described us: Holland Reformed, True Dutch Reformed, the Christian Seceded Church, the True Holland Reformed Church. The latter name was in use from 1864. Churches were given the freedom not to use “true.” Our first local option decision.

The first hundred years
The variety of names discloses the nascent community’s struggle to define itself in the new world, not only in terms of its experiences in the Netherlands, but also the more recent attempts to distinguish itself from the Dutch Reformed Church (now the RCA) from whom our ancestors seceded in 1857. It was about being true to the Reformed traditions as they understood them.

On April 8, 1907 the CRC celebrated its 50th anniversary at the Auditorium on South Ionia Street in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The gathering, as it was called, consisted of opening and closing prayers, congregational and choral singing in English and Dutch, a poem of welcome, and several short speeches. Rev. Henry Beets delivered the first speech in English: “The Christian Reformed Church in its Origin and Period of Struggle.” The others, delivered in Dutch, were: “The Character of Our People, the Dark and the Light Side (“Het Karakter van ons Volk, naar Schaduw- en Lichtzijde.”) by Rev. I. Van Dellen; “Our Dangers” (Onze Gevaren”) by Rev. H. Van Hoogen (Read by Rev. J. W. Brink because Van Hoogen had died.); “The Christian Reformed Pulpit in America” (De Christelijk Gereformeerde Kansel in Amerika”) by Rev. K. Van Goor; and, “Our Calling and Ideals for the Future” (Onze Roeping en Idealen voor de Toekomst”) by Rev. J. Groen. These and other full length addresses may be found in J. Noordewier, et. al., Gedenkboek van het Vijftigjarig Jubileum der Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk A.D. 1857-1907 (Grand Rapids: J. B. Hulst and B. Sevensma, 1907.).

By 1907 the CRC was on the way to becoming an American church. The founders of the church had passed on; a younger generation was in charge. The youthful vigor and immaturity of the CRC formed the basis for Van Hoogen’s reflection. He warned the CRC of the potential for recklessness; of the challenges of its diversity–at that time the variety of Dutch backgrounds that made it difficult to work together; and the questioning of the crucial difference between the world and the church so much a part of becoming more American. The CRC must remain, so Van Hoogen, counter-cultural.

Fifty years later Dr. John H. Kromminga reflected on the CRC’s one hundred years in his In The Mirror. An Appraisal of the Christian Reformed Church (Hamilton: Guardian, 1957). By this time post World War 2 immigration to Canada had begun to shape the CRC experience, the Dutch language had disappeared from almost all pulpits in the US and by the 1960s was heard from few pulpits in Canada. Our confessional roots were valued, church life began receiving a neo-Kuyperian sheen, mostly in Canada. But being a church in the world was still a challenge. Kromminga acknowledges that Americanization was a problem for the CRC, but that it also presented new opportunities. The isolation of language had been mostly overcome, but other forms of isolation remained: dependence on the Netherlands, the Reformed distinctiveness as expressed through separate institutions, and the lack of cooperation with other denominations. None of these enable true evangelism. “Isolationism,” he writes, “ fosters a diminished view of the needs of the world . . . has either no conception if the needs of the world or no concern with them” (53). But, “the perils of contact are essentially the perils of conformity.” One of the perils of greater contact in America is losing theological distinctiveness: “One student of American culture has spoken of a recent period in American history when ‘religion prospered while theology slowly went bankrupt.’ The fact is that American religion is theologically illiterate because that which was different was, by silent common consent, not to be mentioned in our democracy” (55).

He concludes his reflection on conformity thus:

“Contact with such [an American] environment must mean one of two things. It will mean conformity or it will mean friction. For theological distinctiveness is diametrically opposed to it. The Christian Reformed Church is lost if it conforms. No one can say in advance whether it can survive the friction which will result it retains its distinctiveness while establishing contact. And yet, in the face of all this, the church cannot rest satisfied with the isolated way.”

“Thus it would be sheer folly to act as if the situation of the Christian Reformed Church were secure and her future established. The realities of life are cruel and disturbing. The only possible course of action seems to be to retain and develop such an isolation as will produce distinctiveness–genuine distinctiveness; and then to proceed with that distinctiveness into aggressive contact. This, at the cost of the ease and tranquility of the denomination, would be a potential source of good, not only to the denomination itself, but to the other churches round about” (58).

From our CRC to ACRC: Ecclesiastical Syntax
We don’t yet know what the 2007 anniversary book of reflections will say about us. This much is true: The CRC of 1957 was not that of 1907, nor is the CRC of 2007 that of 1957. Kromminga’s challenge to make contact with churches outside of the CRC has been successful; it is doubtful that we have retained the theological distinctiveness he charged us to keep. We have had dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church about Lord’s Day 80; we participate in WARC, but NAPARC cancelled our affiliation. Preaching from the Heidelberg Catechism is not what it’s supposed to be. The psalms we sing today are the so-called seven-eleven choruses: snatches of praise phrases sung multiple times. Psalms to “regular” hymn tunes, never mind those in the Genevan tradition, do not characterize CRC congregational singing in the 21st century. We also have a sizable bureaucracy in Grand Rapids which, for better or worse, tries to steer the denomination from one vantage point; classical renewal began without synodical approval but with agency support; and local church councils are more deeply rooted in entrepreneurial management styles and views of the church than the confessions and traditional Reformed church polity envisions. The CRC is also more diversified, beyond the Dutch provinces. On a given Sunday services are conducted in English, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese. Few church leaders, however, can speak more than one language. Our orthodoxy is shifting. In 2007 you will more likely get into trouble for political incorrectness than confessional heterodoxy. South of the border we are American, east-coast or west-coast American, West-Michigan or Iowa-American; those who call us Dutch don’t know us at all. We’re not what we were even fifty years ago. Nor are we agreed about which changes are for the better and which are not.

So, maybe a name change is needed. After all since 1880 we’ve had the same name, and many CRC congregations no longer use the denominational name. Apparently the Board of Trustees is also considering a new name (Has Synod asked them to do so?) Why not give ourselves a new name to reflect our post-modern identity in our 150th year? Sam Hamstra suggests we become the ACRC (Association of Christian Reformed Churches, in his “Modest Proposal,” [The Banner, March 2007.]), a proposal that shows how far conformity to the American religious scene–a danger Van Hoogen in 1907 and Kromminga in 1957 warned us against–has taken us. This move is on display in the ecclesiastical syntax. Let me explain.

The pronoun “our” appears 13 times in the 1907 anniversary speech titles: our church, our people, our mission, our publications, our dangers, our calling. “We” had an identity. The future was about us and our ideals. A deep sense of the youthful vigor of “our” community was encourages, then evaluated and judged. Kromminga’s 1957 appraisal is definite: the heritage, the isolation, the dangers of conformity. He reflects an intimate knowledge of a community striving to keep its identity while moving beyond its isolation.

Van Hoogen gave us “our” CRC; Kromminga “the” CRC; Hamstra gives us A-CRC. In 150 years we’ve moved from “our” self-understanding, to a challenge to break our isolation without undermining our theological distinctiveness, to an indefinite sense of our ecclesiastical identity and an openness to change that will not endure the friction, as Kromminga called it, of being true to our theological confession.

Synod’s first local option, in 1864, gave churches the right not to use the word “true” as part of the church’s name; Hamstra’s local option argues for the right of local churches to separate themselves from our church political identity. No more “our” CRC, no more “the” CRC; only an association of local churches doing their own thing. Happy 150th birthday

What They're Saying

A Christian University

“Today there is an intense interest, almost an obsession some would say, in diversity and pluralism. Within the worlds of higher education, a Christian university serves the great good of diversity and pluralism by being a different kind of university. It does not mimic the false pluralism and diversity that pretends our deepest differences make no difference. Rather, it engages within the bond of civility the differences that make the deepest difference.

“Today the Christian university is in crisis. At least in many institutions, there is a dying of the light. The crisis is often described as a crisis of secularization. But that, I would suggest , is not quite right. The secular, the saeculum, is the world of God’s creation and redeeming love. The crisis of the Christian university is more accurately described as a crisis created by the ambition to imitate other kinds of universities that false claim to be universities pure and simple. It is a crisis created by competing to belong to the second tier, or even the third tier, of schools that do not aspire to be Christian universities. It is a crisis created by envying excellence divorced from truth. Enough can never be said in favor of excellence, but it is small comfort for a Christian university to be recognized as being moderately good at being what it did not set out to be in the first place.

“The crisis is most accurately described, I believe, as a crisis of faith. The question that those who lead a Christian university must answer, and answer again every day, is whether the Christian proposal limits or illumines the university’s calling to seek and to serve veritas–to seek and to serve the truth.”

Richard John Neuhaus, “A University of a Particular Kind,” First Things (April 2007), 34-35.

What They're Saying

Bible Knowledge Exams

“Nonetheless, Americans remain profoundly ignorant about their own religions and those of others. According to recent polls, most American adults cannot name even one of the four Gospels, and many high-school seniors think that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. A few years ago, no one in Jay Leno's The Tonight Show audience could name any of the Twelve Apostles, but everyone was able to shout out the four Beatles.

“One might imagine that religious illiteracy is nothing more than a religious problem — a challenge for ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams. But in the United States today, presidents quote from the Bible during their inauguration speeches, members of Congress cite the "Good Samaritan" story in debates over immigration legislation, and politicians of all stripes invoke the Book of Genesis in debates over the environment. So religious ignorance is a civic problem, too.

“In an era when the public square is, rightly or wrongly, awash in religious rhetoric, can one really participate fully in public life without knowing something about Christianity and the world's other major religions? Is it possible to decide whether intelligent design is "religious" or "scientific" without some knowledge of religion as well as science? Is it possible to determine whether the effort to yoke Christianity and "family values" makes sense without knowing what sort of "family man" Jesus was? Is it possible to adjudicate between President Bush's description of Islam as a religion of peace and the conviction of many televangelists that Islam is a religion of war, without some basic information about Muhammad and the Quran?

“Unfortunately, U.S. citizens today lack this basic religious literacy. As a result, many Americans are too easily swayed by demagogues. Few of us are able to challenge claims made by politicians or pundits about Islam's place in the war on terrorism, or about what the Bible says concerning homosexuality. This ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads and effectively transferring power from the Third Estate (the people) to the Fourth (the press).”

The foregoing is excerpted from Stephen Prothero, “Worshiping in Ignorance,” The Chronicle Review. The entire article is available on http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i28/28b00601.htm

What it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ

Reflections on an im“modest proposal”
Lobbying for the congregational way

Arie C. Leder

Almost twenty years ago Henry De Moor lamented the growth of ecclesiastical individualism in the CRC (“The CRC on the ‘Congregational Way’?” (Calvin Theological Journal 23.1 [1988]: 54-60). Within the CRC such individualism means that a local church’s council considers itself not only as having original authority but also such original authority that the broader assemblies, classis and synod, may under no circumstances violate the integrity of that council. Thus, a classis has no authority to depose a council, nor would a synod have the authority to depose a classis or a council.

De Moor cites the Maranatha Case (1918), the Common Grace Controversy (1924), and the more recent Goderich Case (1980s) to the contrary. Nevertheless, he argues, local autonomy still “finds a greater hearing among us than does well-established synodical precedent.” He continues:

“An increasing number of church councils . . . no longer feel the need to seek the Spirit’s guidance in the broader assemblies of Christ’s church. One consistory decides to install women elders in defiance of the present denominational covenant, . . . ; another decides to withhold certain quotas as an expression of locally held views that are firmly set in concrete; yet another publishes a hymnal for local congregational use because the denominational liturgical literature is ‘too confining’.” (56-57)

Something old something new

Almost twenty years later, Sam Hamstra’s “A Modest Proposal” (The Banner, March 2007, 18-20) suggests that “the congregational way” may be healthier than ever before in the history of the CRC. Essentially practical and a-theological (for an "A"CRC), Hamstra represents the entrepreneurial, voluntarist ecclesiology that has increasingly characterized conversation about the nature and task of the CRC. Hardly the clear but flawed theological position of Nelson Kloosterman and Lester De Koster, advocates of the local autonomy De Moor cites.

Within twenty years, then, the discussion has moved from reflecting theologically on the nature of the local church as representing the mystical body of Christ, to arguing for a more effective local church on practical grounds: the denominational approach is not working, let’s try the post-modern non-denominational approach; no reflection on the denomination as ecumenism in its simplest form. As in business, so in the church: if one model doesn’t work, let’s try another. Of this approach to decision-making De Moor writes:

“It is not in prayerful gatherings of office-bearers who take each other seriously as agents of Christ’s leading but in the privacy of home or office that arguments and lobbying tactics are conceived. An atmosphere of battle is created and the struggle is carried out in the printed page and in unofficial assemblies that smack of party gatherings. Inevitably, in such an environment, it is almost impossible to keep classical and synodical meetings from descending to Congress-like politics. As in that arena, where special interest groups labor mightily to pressure a majority in the assemblies to opt for ‘our side’ or even to work out some compromise, no matter how distasteful, so in the church—this rather than a collegial searching for the leading of God. In our secular society, even church government is losing its ‘vertical dimension.’” (57)

Do ut des-des ut do

The latter part of the 20th century saw lobbying of the right and left become, almost, normal church business in the CRC. The price: a loss of tens of thousands in membership, a diminished ownership of our historic confessional identity, and a steady drift towards evangelical entrepreneurialism.

As De Moor describes it, then it was the “Committee of the Concerned” versus the “Establishment.” Soon it would be the Committee for Women in the Christian Reformed Church who sat in synodical delegates’ chairs during coffee breaks or appeared en masse, dressed in white, when Synod discussed women in office. Then, an agency which, without synodical approval, began classical renewal programs, political correctness that opened the door to ministry for uncalled and unqualified and anchored the ill-fated Crossroads anti-racism program, the office of Social Justice (although an official agency, it lobbies for social justice positions not approved by Synod, such as the solution to Third World debt, but fails to help congregations to work out our common decisions on abortion, for example), and, more recently, Hearts Aflame, a group lobbying against Synod 2006's decision on women delegates at the broader assemblies. The pressure tactics of the right De Moor decries in his 1988 article have become those of the another “wing” of the CRC.

Whether anchored in a theology of the supreme authority of the local church, the politics of lobbying, or well-meant political correctnesses, these pressure tactics are foreign to the Reformed church polity as understood in the CRC. They balkanize the CRC into interest groups difficult to reconcile with the theological minds of the CRC defined by Henry Stob (the theologically safe, the militant, the positive), Henry Zwaanstra (Confessional Reformed, Separatist Calvinist, American Calvinists), James Bratt (the positive neo-Calvinists, the Confessionalist-seceder, and the defensive and introverted neo-Calvinist). They do express, however, an Americanization of the CRC, but not one envisioned by the American Calvinists Zwaanstra discusses. Lobbying is the American thing to do.

Moreover, pressure tactics do not fit a keen understanding of the church as a community held together by an agreed upon covenant on the church polity level, nor on the ecclesiological level: the church as a community not created by our covenanting with one another, but created by a covenant solemnly sworn by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. We don’t keep covenant because it’s good for us, or because it endorses a particular understanding of an issue, but because it is an essential part of our nature. Nor do we violate a covenant because the church does not satisfy what an individual, a local church, or an interest group believes ought to be true but is not, or not yet, agreed upon by the church. Temper tantrums are not approved ecclesiastical procedure.

Looking at our own heritage of differences

Edwin Chr. Van Driel, reflecting on the disputes and attempts at unity in the Episcopalian Church USA (ECUSA) writes (“God’s Covenant. What it means to be Church,” Christian Century, January 9, 2007, 8-9):

“It is God’s covenant that forms the basis of the church. Yes, those of us within the church will at some point find ourselves in disagreement. But our disagreements do not give us the right to suggest that one of us should leave the covenant–because it is God’s covenant, not ours. Nor do our disagreements give me the right to suggest that you should move to a table ‘further down’–because it is not my table you are invited to, but God’s table.”

“I’m not suggesting that the current disputes and differences in the churches are not serious, or that they do not reflect real and important theological differences. Still we are not invited to the covenant or the table on the basis of our theology; we were invited to the covenant long before we even had a theology. We are invited to the covenant because of grace.”

To make the point Van Driel rehearses the history of his own church, the former Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (NHK; he calls it NRC), now the Protestant Church of the Netherlands (PKN), the church which the ancestors of the CRC left in 1834. He writes:

“Some will say that this approach to church and covenant sacrifices truth for unity. I would suggest that we take a lesson from the history of the Netherlands Reformed Church. In the 19th century, some of its ministers denied the resurrection or the divinity of Christ; another minister famously claimed to be a follower of Buddha. The leadership of the church refused to uphold the church’s confessional standards. As a result, the majority of the church seemed to have lost its theological identity.

“In this situation the orthodox minority found itself divided into two camps on how to respond. One camp thought the church’s theological character should be restored by its members appealing to the church’s courts and synod. If this did not help, the members would leave the church. This became known as the juridical way. For several decades the juridical camp made its appeals, and when these were unsuccessful, members of the dissenting group left and formed the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (RCN). Meanwhile, the other minority group in the NRC followed the medical way: its members believed that as long as one is not prevented from preaching the gospel, one should never leave the church. They believed that the medicine of the gospel itself can heal a sick church, and although they were weakened by the loss of orthodox allies, members of this group continued to focus on preaching the gospel.

“The result seemed predictable. The RCN would become a conservative bulwark, its identity firmly protected by its juridical structure. The NRC would grow more and more liberal, with a slim and powerless conservative minority. But things turned out differently. One hundred years later the RCN found itself at the far left of the theological spectrum, and its international daughter churches, including the Christian Reformed Church in the U.S.A., declared themselves in impaired communion with their mother church. Meanwhile, in the 1930s and 1940s a spirit of renewal began to stir in the NRC. Liberals, middle-of-the-roaders and conservatives became discontented with the perceived theological wishy-washiness of the church.

“None of these groups gave up its particular approach to the gospel, but all realized that a church which does not firmly confesses its obedience to the gospel of Christ is null and void. In 1950 an overwhelming majority in the synod accepted a new, Christ-centered church order and restored the church’s ties to its confessional documents. The preaching of the gospel–and only the preaching–had healed the church.

“If this is what it means to be church, being church will never be easy. We find ourselves joined together with people we disagree with, people we do not necessarily like. But that is exactly what God’s covenant is all about: God reaches out to people who are not likable–people who are sinners. It is only because God graciously embraces these imperfect human beings that any of us have a chance to be included in God’s covenant.

“If this is what it means to be church, then being church is also profoundly countercultural. One reason why the Episcopalian left and right so easily embrace Archbishop Williams’s ideas may be that those ideas perfectly match the American emphasis on freedom and choice. If there is any place for the church to be countercultural, however, it is in situations in which we are called to remember our original covenant.

“‘You did not choose me but I chose you’ (John 15:16). As a church we are called, formed, judged and renewed not by our own choices, but only by God.” (8-9)

Now what?

In its solemn gatherings for worship and through all its assemblies, the CRC is an expression of the mystical body of Christ, who unites us to himself by the covenant he made in his blood. He made us before we made the CRC. That is our historic confession, warts and all. But none of those warts is the "congregational way," in any of its older or contemporary forms. Let’s keep the covenant into which Christ called us. Let’s keep the church polity covenant we believe best reflects that calling of our Lord.

Feminism and the Mary-Martha Story of Luke

"Martha, Martha...you are overanxious..."
by John Bolt

The Mary and Martha story (Luke 10:38- 42) has new traction these days as a proof-text for feminist educational activism—"out of the kitchen and into the academy"—but this is not how the tradition has understood it. On the contrary, the key point is not so much that Mary, the woman, has a mind and should be doing more than making soup and buns, but to call attention to the respective objects of their devotion. Martha is busy doing good things; Mary is attentive to Jesus and that is more important.

Rereading the anonymous fourteenth-century English spiritual classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, recently, I was led from the author’s own use of the Mary/Martha story (§§ 18–22) to self-examination and reflection on our contemporary church life. Specifically, are we too busy with this world? Are we so caught up in our programs, our campaigns to end poverty, eliminate racism, cool down our warming globe, stop all war etc., that we have forgotten what is truly important? And, then, if this is indeed the case, do we not have a clear indicator why we are so anxious, why we get involved in more and more "fix-it" projects?

I am often struck by the way in which the Bible writers juxtapose their stories as a way of pulling us back from possibly mistaken applications. Is it not interesting that the story which is often used to propel us toward good works and activism for social change, namely the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) is immediately followed by the Mary/Martha story and then, in the next chapter, with our Lord’s teaching on prayer (Luke 11: 1-13)? Note also that Jesus teaching on prayer concludes with a reference to the one most important thing to pray for—the Holy Spirit (vs. 13).

So, are we becoming a Martha church, very busy doing all sorts of good things but losing our first love? Even worse, are we justifying all this busyness in the name of "seeking first the kingdom"? I said earlier that the Mary/Martha story brought me to self-examination. My call in this short little piece of reflection is that we all do the same. Herman Bavinck, reflecting on the furious neo-Calvinist activism of his own day wondered about "losing ourselves in the world. Nowadays we are out to convert the whole world, to conquer all areas of life for Christ. But we often neglect . . . [the fundamental question] . . . do we belong to Christ in life and in death. For this is indeed what life boils down to. What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, even for Christian principles, if he loses his own soul." (The Certainty of Faith [Paideia, 1980], 94). Indeed!

Third Wave Pentecostalism in the CRC

Third Wave Pentecostalism: CRC Synodical Study Report
Below an overture sent to Classis Muskegon by the First CRC of Muskegon, Michigan. Rev. Michael Borgert is the minister. The overture was rejected. It is printed here with permission.

Overture to Classis Muskegon on Third Wave Pentecostalism
March 1, 2007

I. Introduction

In response to an overture from the Council of Plymouth Heights CRC of Grand Rapids, Michigan Synod 2004 appointed a study committee whose stated task was, “To examine the biblical teaching, Reformed confessions, theological implications, and pastoral dimensions related to ‘third wave’ Pentecostalism (spiritual warfare, deliverance ministries, and so forth), with a view to providing advice to the churches.”1 The study committee was due to report to Synod 2006, but due to the untimely death of Dr. David Engelhard, the former General Secretary of the Christian Reformed Church and chair of the Committee to Study Third Wave Pentecostalism, the report was not available in time for Synod 2006. Because of significant disagreements over the content of the report, the members of the study committee after several meetings amicably separated into two groups representing a majority and minority, both of which have produced their own report and submitted these reports to Synod 2007. These study committee reports have been distributed to the churches for their review in preparation for Synod 2007. The Synod of the Christian Reformed Church approved an earlier related report in 1973 evaluating the neo-Pentecostal or charismatic movement of the 1960’s and 70’s (see Acts of Synod 1973, Report 34).

II. Background

While we appreciate and respect the effort and care that are evident in the Majority Report on Third Wave Pentecostalism that has been submitted to the churches for their review, the Council of First CRC, Muskegon must register numerous concerns it has regarding the content and potential implications of the report.

First, there is in the majority report very little evidence of interaction with and evaluation of appropriate biblical texts bearing directly on the issue(s) at hand (Romans 12, I Cor. 12, Eph. 4, I Peter 4 – which list numerous spiritual gifts/charismata; and various passages in Acts and the Gospels where miraculous healings, being filled with the Holy Spirit subsequent to one’s baptism, casting out of evil spirits/demons by Jesus and his apostles are recorded).

Second, the majority report evidences even less interaction with the Reformed Confessions with only one reference at the end of the report to the Canons of Dort, Art. 12 of the Third and Fourth Main Points of Doctrine. If for no other reasons than these two, the majority report should be rejected. The stated purpose of the study committee was, “To examine the biblical teaching, Reformed confessions, theological implications, and pastoral dimensions related to ‘third wave’ Pentecostalism (spiritual warfare, deliverance ministries, and so forth), with a view to providing advice to the churches.” The majority report is clearly deficient with respect to its assigned purpose and has failed to fulfill its appointed task. There are numerous helpful and thoughtful writers in the Reformed tradition on the topic of Christian spirituality including but not limited to John Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, Abraham Kuyper; and closer to our own time, John Stott, J.I. Packer, Philip Yancey and Eugene Peterson.

Third, the majority report appears to be almost entirely descriptive rather than prescriptive. There is so little interaction with and evaluation of the Third Wave movement in the light of Scripture and the Reformed Confessions with respect to the practices and theological assumptions under discussion, the majority report seems to simply acquiesce to what is already happening in some quarters of the church rather than offer a helpful critique of it.

Fourth, the majority report fails to engage the questionable assumptions of the Third Wave movement. Prominent among those assumptions is that the “signs and wonders” associated with the Third Wave movement are visible marks of the true church. The Reformed tradition has since the time of Calvin affirmed that the preaching of the Word, the administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of church discipline were the marks by which the true church could be identified and separated from a corrupt impostor. The assumption that the Holy Spirit allowed these supposedly indispensable gifts to lie dormant and remain largely unused in the experience of the church for hundreds of years except for isolated incidents and occasional outpourings of extraordinary power strains the limits of credulity.

The books of Acts, which records approximately 30 years of the early church’s history from the Ascension of Jesus Christ into Heaven to the time of Paul’s arrival in Rome does record numerous miraculous events (healings, exorcisms, glossolalia, etc.). But even here in the experience of the apostles themselves these miraculous events were recognized as significant enough that Luke saw fit to record them. We are left to assume that these were not everyday occurrences. In contrast, the Third Wave movement does assume that such miraculous events will be commonplace in the experience of the church and in the lives of individual Christians that are filled by the Holy Spirit. This is at best a troubling assumption, and at worst a opening for a neo-Gnosticism to enter into the life of the church creating division, in direct contrast to Scripture’s stated purpose for the giving of these gifts which was to unite the church.

The majority report allows many other underlying assumptions of the Third Wave movement to go unchallenged and in addition makes many of its own assumptions that are equally questionable and seem to be the result of misguided emotion and incoherent thinking rather than sustained, prayerful theological reflection. At one point, the report states, “The astonishing rise of cults, Eastern religions, paganism, Wicca, Kabbala, and others in the last couple of decades attests to a longing to experience the spiritual world. Strikingly, however, while interest in spirituality is on the rise, Christianity as an organized religion is in decline, likely because many denominations practice a functional deism that leaves spiritual seekers to turn elsewhere for an encounter with the divine.”

There are numerous problems with this quotation. First, it is factually inaccurate. Even a superficial examination of church membership statistics will demonstrate that far from declining, the evangelical church is the United States posts modest gains each year and has for the last couple of years also done so in Canada following many years of decline. Second, the charge of deism, functional or otherwise, against a fellow Christian is a serious accusation, one that the report does not substantiate. Third, to assume that the practices advocated by the Third Wave movement are a Christian solution to the “longing to experience the spiritual world” or the “interest in spirituality” is disconcerting. This assumption is even more worrisome when in the minority report one reads of numerous Christian leaders from churches in the developing world who say that many of the practices of the Third Wave and other Pentecostal/charismatic movements have more in common with pagan/animistic rituals that they do with anything that could recognizably be called Christian. We should present those who long for spiritual experiences and who express interest in spirituality with a robust Reformed theology and practice of Christian spirituality rather than to baptize questionable practices with a veneer of Christianity and recommend them to spiritually hungry people as a viable alternative to their yearning.

III. Overture
Because of these concerns, First CRC of Muskegon overtures Classis Muskegon to:

1. Overture Synod 2007 to reject the Majority Report of the Committee to Study Third Wave Pentecostalism.
Grounds:

• The majority report is seriously deficient because of its lack of vigorous interaction with Scriptural and the Reformed Confessions.
• The majority report does not adequately examine the theological implications and the pastoral dimensions of Third Wave movement practices nor does it suggest helpful advice to the churches.
• The majority report opens the door to assumptions that are theologically suspect and to practices that are not edifying to the churches and have the potential to undermine a Reformed hermeneutic of Scripture and Reformed ecclesiology.
• The majority report fails in its stated objective, “To examine the biblical teaching, Reformed confessions, theological implications, and pastoral dimensions related to ‘third wave’ Pentecostalism (spiritual warfare, deliverance ministries, and so forth), with a view to providing advice to the churches.”

2. Overture Synod 2007 to accept the Minority Report of the Committee to Study Third Wave Pentecostalism.
Grounds:

• The minority report identifies and critiques a number of troubling assumptions and practices of the Third Wave movement.
  
• The minority clearly engages in an exhaustive study of relevant biblical passages with respect to the stated purpose of the study committee making it clearly superior to the majority report.
  
• The minority report is well-grounded in the Reformed Confessions and theology.
• The minority report’s recommendations to reject certain aspects are clearly in keeping with the cautions and warnings of the earlier Report 34 of 1973 dealing with neo-Pentecostalism.
  

3. Overture Synod to further instruct the authors of the minority report to, in addition to their wise critique of certain beliefs and practices of the Third Wave movement, present a positive statement of Reformed Christian spirituality.

Grounds:

• There is a genuine yearning for spirituality in the world more generally and in our churches.
• This yearning can be positively understood as a manifestation of the sensus divinitatus and should be acknowledged as such and properly directed toward the true end of Christian spirituality – union with Christ.
  
• To put forth such a positive statement of Reformed Christian spirituality presents a viable alternative to the spiritual yearning individuals express and feel, but does so in a way that is in agreement with and under the authority of Scripture and the Reformed Confessions.
  
• Such a statement of Reformed Christian spirituality will serve to strengthen rather than undermine foundational Biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical elements of the Christian Reformed Church’s identity.