Westminster Seminary California and the Confessions

I’ve been enjoying this new book which summarizes the history of Westminster Seminary California: A New Old School, edited by W. Robert Godfrey and D. G. Hart.  Since Andrew and I graduated from WSC over five years ago, both of us have a vested interest in this book.  One emphasis of this book is a big reason why I studied at WSC: its commitment to Reformed/Presbyterian theology and confessions.  As the book notes, all Christians have some form of confession; every Christian believes at least some doctrine.

“No Christian who reads the Bible can escape some kind of creedal conclusions in the sense that he makes some decision about the meaning of the Bible.  To speak of the Bible’s meaning, as Westminster’s faculty always understood, was to talk in terms of doctrinal affirmations and denials.  Being a Christian without doctrine was impossible.  The best approach, as the importance of the creeds at Westminster demonstrated, was for Christians communally to summarize those doctrines into a coherent whole that would inform the life and ministry of Christ’s church.”

“Still the anti-confessional bias of many American evangelicals challenged Westminster California to ask again and again whether the teachings and practices of Reformed confessionalism were still necessary or worthwhile in the contemporary church.  But through these reflections Westminster California forged an increasingly self-conscious confessional identity as the years went by.  It became even more confident of the truths of the Reformed confessions.”

WSC started out by upholding, affirming, and teaching the Westminster Standards.  In 1993 they added the Three Forms of Unity to further bolster their Reformed confessional identity.

“Far from watering down its confessional identity, this action actually underscored the importance of confessional Reformed Christianity for its education.  This decision also helped assure that students would be well versed not only in Reformed theology generally, but also in the church’s confessional expressions of the truth.  Adding to the confessional identity of Westminster California is the reality that the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity are essentially agreed at almost every point, showing the unity of Reformed Christianity.”

If you have any interest in Westminster Seminary California – whether a former or current student, former or current parent(s) of a student, or if you are curious what WSC is all about, I highly recommend this book: A New Old School.  Also worth noting is that the Kindle version is currently at the special introductory price of $4.99 (here on Amazon).

shane lems

sunnyside, wa

Hyper-BT (or The Exegetical Hat-Trick)

In many ways, I’m indebted to the biblical theological (a.k.a. redemptive-historical) movement of the last 75 years (give or take).  I appreciate guys like Meredith Kline and Gregory Beale, for two different examples, but I’m a bit wary of several aspects of biblical theology (see here, here, and here for a few examples).  I think many biblical theologians could use a solid dose of systematics and historical theology to balance things out.  But Carl Trueman can say this much better than I can. 

First, he says, there is the problem of mediocrity when it comes to BT preaching.  “It is one thing for a master of biblical theology to preach it week after week; quite another for a less talented follower to do so.”  Trueman says (and I agree),

“One of the problems I have with a relentless diet of biblical-theological sermons from less talented (i.e., most of us) preachers is their boring mediocrity: contrived contortions of passages which are engaged in to produce the answer ‘Jesus’ every week.  It doesn’t matter what the text is; the sermon is always the same.”

It’s true – quite a bit of BT preaching concludes the sermon by pulling Jesus out of the exegetical hat <poof!>.  Trueman also mentions a second point, connected to the first.

“Second, the triumph of the biblical-theological method in theology and preaching has come at the very high price of a neglect of the theological tradition.  The church spent nearly seventeen hundred years engaging in careful doctrinal reflections; formulating a  technical language allowing her theologians to express themselves with precision and clarity; writing creeds and confessions to allow believers over the face of the earth to express themselves with one voice….”

Trueman also states that the doctrinal conclusions in church theology were [are] by no means void of a redemptive historical point of view.  One more point – his greatest concern, he says,

“…is that it [the biblical-theology movement] places such an overwhelming emphasis upon the economy of salvation that it neglects these ontological aspects of theology.  In doing so, it will, I believe, prove ultimately self-defeating: a divine economy without a divine ontology is unstable and will collapse.”

He says a lot more in this helpful article, of course.  I agree fully with his main point: that biblical theology is a helpful tool as long as it doesn’t become the sole or dominating tool.  In simpler terms, we need to balance biblical theology with tried-and-true systematic conclusions. 

Even Geerhardus Vos (who wrote a book on BT and an ST textbook) emphatically stated that “for anything pretending to supplant Dogmatics there is no place in the circle of Christian Theology.”  I’ll end with a great line from Carl Trueman in another essay (a fictitious dialogue between his version of Sherlock Holmes and Watson).

“Doing theology by using nothing more than redemptive history is like trying to build a house from the ground up, armed only with a hammer.  Futile, old chap, utterly futile.”

Trueman’s quotes are taken from 2.4 of The Wages of Spin and the postscript of Minority Report.  I highly recommend these articles (and these books in general!).

shane lems

The Covenantal Psalter

In The Structure of Biblical Authority,  Meredith Kline wrote, “The covenant is the Psalter’s sphere of existence” (p. 62).  What does that mean? Is this a case where the theology shark is at work? (The theology shark is when one principle or theme of theology swallows everything else – to the detriment of the whole system.)  I don’t think this is an overstatement by Kline, especially since he only spends two pages on the topic (Longman, along with others, also makes this observation, that the psalms have a covenantal aspect to them). Here are Kline’s own words.

“The psalms of praise, whether magnifying the majesty of Yahweh’s person or the wonder of his ways in creation or redemption, were a part of Israel’s tributary obligations; they were the spiritual sacrifices of the lips offered to the Great King. As vehicles of private and public devotion they were a continual resounding of Israel’s ‘Amen’ of covenant ratification.”

The psalms, Kline continues, were confessional responses of God’s people who have heard the awesome deeds of the King as the prologue of the covenant treaty mentioned. “The Psalter served broadly as a cultic instrument in the maintenance of a proper covenantal relationship with Yahweh.”

The Psalter is a jewel of many colors – this is one of the beautiful colors of the psalms, that it is a covenantal hymnbook, so to speak, of and to the great Suzerain and Redeemer, Yahweh.  In that broad sense, the psalms are indeed covenantal, though the term “covenant” (berit) is only found in a small handful of the psalms.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Kline on Abraham and Promise

Going through Meredith Kline’s Kingdom Prologue (Overland Park: Two Age Press, 2000), again (and again!) has been a treat.  I am once again struck by Kline’s excellent appraisal of God’s gospel promise to Abraham. 

“From its opening salvo of divine promises in Genesis 12 the Abrahamic Covenant confronts us with a way to ultimate blessedness that stands in stark contrast to the method which the Babelites of Genesis 11 used to achieve their lofty ambitions.  What was sought in Shinar by autonomous human effort – the restoration of cosmic-culture focus and the great name – was bestowed on Abraham as a promissory grant.  Babel was man-built, from the accursed ground up towards the heavens.  The city promised to Abraham is God-built and descends from the holy heaven to man as the supernatural gift of God’s grace (Heb 11:10, 16; Rev 21.2, 10).”

“Divine promise in the context of redemptive covenant connotes the principle of grace, the opposite of works.  Thus, when Paul in his analysis of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants in Galatians 3 identifies the former as promise (v. 17; cf Eph 2.12), he sets it over against the principle of works (“law,” in v.18) operative in the latter, and says it is received by faith in Jesus Christ (v.22).  God’s promise arrangement with Abraham is made synonymous with the gospel of grace (p.294).”

You can still download this manuscript for free – simply google it.

shane lems

sunnyside wa