James K.A. Smith’s new book, “Letters to a Young Calvinist,” though not aimed at someone such as myself (well, at least the young part), does take me back to formative events in my journey of faith.
Back in high school, my spiritual development revolved around Young Life. There were a couple of guys, named Mike and Tom, who graduated a year or two earlier and took off for college — Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pa., to be specific. A fateful choice.
During term breaks they returned home determined to meet with those of us still in high school. They shared “discoveries” that made everything about the Christian faith fall into place. In short, it was TULIP, otherwise known as the Five Points of Calvinism: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistable Grace and Perseverance of the Saints.
Their enthusiasm was boundless, and they spent hours schooling us in these doctrines of the Reformed tradition. It felt like we were being offered membership in an exclusive club of believers who really “got it.”
Add to that equation a new Young Life leader. He would invite me and a few others to drive over to Ligonier, Pa., to what was then known as the Ligonier Valley Study Center, run by R.C. Sproul. There the inculcation into the Reformed tradition deepened, aided by the then-novel distribution of cassette tapes for listening at home.
As a high school kid, I was grateful for the kind of adult attention my Young Life leader supplied — I remain so today. But as I got to know him more closely, I also saw a great deal of anger. He told me that Fuller Seminary was going to hell in a handbasket in a dispute over the inerrancy of Scripture. (Hey, I hadn’t even heard of Fuller.)
He also questioned whether those “Arminians” were even Christians at all because they didn’t buy into TULIP. He introduced me to Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann as enemies, to neo-orthodoxy as a fraud. And he drew from the work of Bill Gothard for teachings at Young Life meetings; I remember my friends Mike an
d Tom going off to Basic Youth Conflicts workshops. On the instructions of Gothard, they said, the teaching materials had to be treated as exclusive property, which one could not see or fully grasp unless you attended those workshops in their entirety. (A great way, coincidentally, to protect proprietary interests.)
Essentially, my Young Life leader seemed like he was at war with the world. I tended to look past that because he was so kind to me, but this undercurrent of conflict was always present. It was accentuated when I visited Ligonier; no matter that the time was intellectually stimulating, I felt little in terms of love or warmth, and that sense nagged at me. But these were serious people with serious business, carrying the mantle of true faith against liberal theology.
Eventually, I also got to look through the written materials of Basic Youth Conflicts (early 1970’s edition) on the sly before my freshman year at Penn State. This same adversarial vibe permeated these texts. Moreover, when I looked up Bible citations used to support the teachings, the connection between the verses and the teachings were, to be kind, cryptic. At the time, I figured, I just wasn’t smart enough to get it. Now, I realize there was nothing to “get”; the connections didn’t make sense because, um, they didn’t make sense.
Where does this leave me now?
As someone anchored in the Reformed tradition, I remain grateful for the spiritual journey triggered by these experiences. At the same time, as someone by temperament who leans toward what I’d call “terminal seriousness,” I came to understand that this expression of the Reformed tradition wasn’t — and isn’t — healthy. It feeds too much the tendency to view others with suspicion: Are you on my side or not?
This is what happens when ideological/theological litmus tests trump grace, allowing our own confidence in God to, in fact, limit how God can be at work in the world. It is a failure of vision fed by pride.
And that brings me back to James K.A. Smith’s book. Almost immediately, Smith turns his attention to this form of spiritual pride, which he likens to a “theological West Nile virus.” He draws from his own journey as a Pentecostal who embraced the Reformed tradition, thrilled by his discovery but now aware of its intoxicating tendency toward arrogance. He warns:
If you don’t recognize the temptations of hubris early, the infection of religious pride soon spreads, and you’ll find that Reformed theology is reduced to polemics — and the worst kind of polemics: directed only at other Christians.
Though this kind of pride is hardly limited to Calvinists, I am thankful to see Smith place this warning at the start of this light, breezy and humble book. It reaffirms what the Reformed tradition has to offer while offering an appropriate cautionary note — with a much-needed warm heart.
As I read “Letters to a Young Calvinist” I also am reminded of God’s sense of humor, considering that now I teach at a Wesleyan school. Calvinists may have their five points, but Wesleyans have their Quadrilateral (Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience), and I’ve also grown from my more intensive exposure to that strain of faith.
No matter the tradition, all of us who embrace Christianity face choices not only in what we believe but also how we believe. It is a test: How do I treat others with whom I differ? To what degree does grace manifest itself in those spaces between believers?
To what degree do we yield to the “temptations of hubris?”
Signs of Grace 