…with apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Kevin DeYoung offers three posts ‘Can Pietism and Confessionalism Be Friends?’
Part one
Part two
Part three
DeYoung seeks to address the contention that:
Pietism, it is said, emphasizes dramatic conversions, tends toward individualism, pushes for unity based on shared experience, and pays little attention to careful doctrinal formulation. Confessionalism, on the other hand, is a more churchly tradition, with creeds and catechisms and liturgy. It emphasizes the ordinary means of word and sacrament and prizes church order and the offices. It is pro-ritual, pro-clergy, and pro-doctrine, where pietism, it is said, stands against all these things.
But I want a certain kind of confessionalism. I want a confessionalism that believes in Spirit-given revival, welcomes deep affections, affirms truth-driven experience, and understands that the best creeds should result in the best deeds. I want a confessionalism that believes in the institutional church and expects our Christian faith to impact what we do in the world and how we do it. I want a confessionalism that is not ashamed to speak of conversion—dramatic conversion for some, unnoticed conversion for many.
I want a confessionalism that preaches and practices deep piety.
His three posts go on to explain how such notions are not alien to presbyterian and reformed folk in times past.
Darryl Hart responds to the theme of DeYoung’s posts.
A sample:
So while DeYoung wants revival, confessionalists want the weekly observance of the means of grace.
DeYoung wants deep affections but confessionalists want sobriety and self-control.
DeYoung wants truth-driven experience and confessionalists want children to grow up and understand what they have memorized in the catechism (the way that children eventually learn the grammar of the language they grow up speaking).
DeYoung wants the best creeds to result in the best deeds while confessionalists want believers to live out their vocations so that plumbers will plumb like every other plumber to the best of their ability.
DeYoung wants the belief in the institutional church but confessionalists ask what’s up with the Gospel Coalition?
DeYoung expects our Christian faith to impact what we do in the world and how we do it while confessionalists believe in the spirituality of the church.
And DeYoung wants dramatic conversion while confessionalists want lifelong mortification and vivification (that is, the original Protestant meaning of conversion).
I can’t help myself from embedding this at the bottom of this post. (with added Hugh Jackman)
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Which cowboy is Tim Bayly?
Someone should make a scorecard or chart.
Reading all of the reformed blog posts from over here in Australia and sometimes who is 2K or not 2K or Federal Vision or New Perspective or paleo-orthodox or confessional gives me a head-ache.
I’m bracing myself to read through these, Gary – thanks for setting them out this way. I might not get through them until Easter!
I had a bit of a (sad?) thrill recently when two blogs that I check every day, the Heidelblog and Green Baggins, debated each other.
I also found the interaction between Clark and Keister very interesting, particularly the charitable and forthright way they interacted.
I hadn’t really encountered the notion of why the reformers in our heritage would include the congregational recitation of the Apostles’ Creed, but presumably not its being sung.