Recovering the Reformed Confession? Calvin Against R. Scott Clark and Richard Muller

Given the diversity of the movement and the fact that Calvin was not the primary author of any of the confessional norms just noted, the better part of historical valor (namely, discretion) requires rejection of the term “Calvinist” and “Calvinism” in favor of the more historically accurate term, “Reformed.” --Richard Muller

Some time ago I wrote a book review of R. Scott Clark's book, Recovering the Reformed Confession.  At that time I did not realize how duplicitous this title actually was.  I recently read the first volume of Richard Muller's Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics:  The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. 1, 2nd edition. "Prolegomena to Theology". #1 (See footnote below).  I am citing and quoting from the Logos ebook edition.

Ironically, for all the bluster, R. Scott Clark is not promoting confessional Reformed theology at all.  What he is actually forcefully advocating is a post-reformation reinterpretation of the original confessional documents of the Protestant Reformation.  Richard Muller openly admits that he agrees with Amyraldianism, not the Reformed confessions.  Neither the Three Forms of Unity nor the Westminster Standards allow for any hypothetical atonement or for any alleged contradictions between the general call of the Gospel and the effectual call of God through irresistible grace.  Yet Muller tries to argue that the Helvetic Consensus Formula is trumped by latitudinarianism within the Reformed camp:

There were also bitter battles among the Reformed—over Cocceian theology, over the espousal of Cartesian principles, and over the various teachings of the Academy of Saumur, over the soteriology of Richard Baxter, and over various responses to the Socinian denial of an essential or ad intra divine attribute of punitive justice. On none of these issues, however, did the Reformed churches rupture into separate confessional bodies or identify a particular theologically defined group as beyond the bounds of the confessions, as had been the case at the Synod of Dort. Amyraut was, after all, exonerated by several national synods in France, and the debate over his “hypothetical universalism” did not lead to the charge of heterodoxy against others, like Davenant, Martinius, and Alsted, who had, both at Dort and afterward, maintained similar lines of argument concerning the extent of Christ’s satisfaction.104 The Westminster Confession was in fact written with this diversity in view, encompassing confessionally the variant Reformed views on the nature of the limitation of Christ’s satisfaction to the elect, just as it was written to be inclusive of the infra- and the supralapsarian views on predestination.105 Amyraut, moreover, arguably stood in agreement with intraconfessional adversaries like Turretin on such issues as the fundamental articles of the faith.106

Even when it was censured in the Formula Consensus Helvetica, the Salmurian theology was not identified as a heresy but as a problematic teaching that troubled the confessional orthodoxy of the church: the preface to the Formula specifically identifies the faculty of Saumur as “respected foreign brethren,” who stand on the same “foundation of faith” but whose recent teachings have become a matter of grave dispute.   . . .  [#2].

Notice that Muller does not argue whether or not the Amyraldian view is biblical or confessional.  He immediately pivots to whether or not the Reformed consensus was willing to tolerate a deviation from the Canons of Dort in order to preserve a united front against the Remonstrandts.  This is a capitulation to a downgrade in the interest of political concerns, not a question that was settled strictly on the issue of biblical propositions.  Earlier in this work, Muller betrays his own presuppositions which taint his objectivity on the matter.  He openly defies the Institutes of the Christian Religion and disagrees with Calvin.  In doing so, Muller is essentially disagreeing with the Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Standards as well:

Indeed, any variation of doctrine incapable of being accommodated to Calvin’s 1559 Institutes can come to be viewed by the older scholarship as a deviation from the norm of Reformed theology—without any recognition of the fact that doctrinal variations and even highly polemical debates over doctrinal formulae that took place within the confessional boundaries all belonged to the broad stream of Reformed orthodoxy.

This approach, albeit characteristic of much twentieth-century historiography, does not accurately represent the seventeenth-century orthodox understanding (or, indeed, understandings) of “orthodoxy.” To define orthodoxy in terms of the more traditionalist line of Geneva, culminating in Turretin, or in terms of the Voetian theology at Utrecht prejudices the case from the start by creating subconfessional lines of demarcation for orthodoxy and by offering an anachronistic picture of a “rigid orthodoxy” operating within the narrow limits of a single school. The historical materials do not support the picture. Just as Calvin did not speak for the entire early Reformed tradition, so was Geneva less than the arbitrator of the Reformed tradition in the seventeenth century.  [#3].

Did you notice that Muller is appealing to historiography rather than the Reformed confessions or even Scripture?  That would be anathema to the latitudinarian views of Muller since his authority is his own interpretation of history rather than the final authority of Holy Scripture.  To do so would amount to what R. Scott Clark and Muller derisively call "biblicism."  Muller does so by linking the doctrine of Sola Scriptura to the Socinian rationalism and the misuse of Scripture to justify denying the trinity and calling this "biblicism."  This is nothing more than prejudicial sophistry on the part of Muller and R. Scott Clark.   

It should also be pointed out that when Muller and R. Scott Clark refer to the term "Reformed", they are actually not affirming the traditional Reformed confessions at all.  Instead, they are appealing to the various post-reformation deviations from Scripture and the confessional standards!  Muller likes to water down the Bible and the confessional standards by appealing to the detractors instead of the biblical standards deduced from the Bible and summarized by the Westminster Standards and the Dutch Three Forms of Unity.  In case you do not know what those are, the Westminster Standards are the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.  The Three Forms of Unity are the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort.  But Muller openly admits this downgrade throughout the first volume of his work:

As for the terms “Calvinist” and “Calvinism,” I tend to avoid them as less than useful to the historical task. If, by “Calvinist,” one means a follower of Calvin who had nothing to say that was different from what Calvin said, then one would be hard put to find any Calvinists in the later sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. If by Calvinist, one means a later exponent of a theology standing within the confessional boundaries described by such documents as the Gallican Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Second Helvetic Confession, and the Heidelberg Catechism, then one will have the problem of accounting for the many ways in which such thinkers—notably, Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf, Bartholomaus Keckermann, William Perkins, Franciscus Junius, and Gulielmus Bucanus, just to name a few—differ from Calvin both doctrinally and methodologically. One might even be forced to pose Calvin against the Calvinists.3 Given the diversity of the movement and the fact that Calvin was not the primary author of any of the confessional norms just noted, the better part of historical valor (namely, discretion) requires rejection of the term “Calvinist” and “Calvinism” in favor of the more historically accurate term, “Reformed.”  [#4].

If I am "forced" to pose Calvin against the "Calvinists", then so be it.  I agree with Calvin's Institutes and with Calvin's two books against the Romanists--which amazingly also happen to be against the "Calvinists" that both Muller and R. Scott Clark agree with.  Calvin's two books are:  1.  The Eternal Predestination of God and 2.  The Secret Providence of God.  Both books are translated by Henry Cole.  I also recommend Henry Beveridge's translation of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.  This is where the latitudinarianism comes in.  Did you see that Muller is appealing to the multitude of names that he drops in his historiographical study instead of one single interpretation of the Calvinist position?  Following this line of thought, one could just as well take the Romanist view which amounts to a universalistic soteriology following Vatican II.

I personally do not like sophistry, duplicity, and outright misdirection.  This seems to violate the 9th commandment because it redefines terms that the lay reader is not familiar with in order to make them think that they are actually in agreement with the Bible, the Westminster Standards, and the Dutch Three Forms of Unity, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.  James White likes to call those who disagree with these reinterpretations "cage stage" Calvinists.  Scott Clark calls us biblicists, fundamentalists, rationalists, and other derogatory terms.  

One example of such misdirection is the Theocast channel on YouTube, which is run by two Baptists who claim to be "Reformed" while adamantly repudiating "Calvinism", which they refer to as those who advocate for a logical and fundamental interpretation of the Bible, the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity.  The hosts of the Theocast channel are continually juxaposing the moral law and the Gospel as if the two are mutually contradictory instead of harmonious expositions of the whole counsel of God.  (Acts 20:27 NKJV).  The channel is openly anti-Calvinist while claiming to advocate for the "reformed perspective."

Even worse, these dissimulators fail to reveal that they are basing their theology on the historiography of Richard Muller and others who have an agenda that leads in a more latitudinarian and liberal direction.  Muller's view can legitimately be linked to neo-orthodoxy, since he openly rejects any logical or rational explanation of the Bible from an internally consistent theology which is axiomatic.

The short of it all is that R. Scott Clark's book, Recovering the Reformed Confession, is not an unequivocal affirmation of the Canons of Dort, the Belgic Confession, or the Heidelberg Catechism.  It is instead an affirmation of the latitudinarianism of Muller's analytical historiography.  Muller is affirming 18th to 20th century compromises that contradict Calvin and the objective standards of the Westminster Confession and the Canons of Dort.  Do not be fooled by these dissimulating liars.  I prefer to be castigated as a "hyper-Calvinist" along with Calvin, Turretin, the Dutch divines at Dort, and the Westminster divines.  I prefer to be ridiculed as a rationalist who affirms the propositional revelation in Holy Scripture.  I prefer to be called a biblicist and a fundamentalist rather than to compromise God's written word.  Richard Muller and other detractors from the original Calvinist Reformers do not speak for me.  I identify as a fundamentalist Calvinist, not a neo-Calvinist who falsely pits being Reformed against Calvin and Geneva and Turretin.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. (Matt. 5:17-18 KJV)

If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; (Jn. 10:35 KJV)

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: (2 Tim. 3:16 KJV)

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. (2 Pet. 1:21 KJV)

#1.  Muller, Richard A. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy;  Volume 1: Prolegomena to Theology. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003. Print.

#2.  Ibid., pp. 76-77.

#3.  Ibid., p. 79.

#4.  Ibid., p. 30.