Where Did All These Calvinists Come From?
00:00:00.000 | Pastor John, it's not uncommon, of course, for people to point to you as a primary cause
00:00:08.740 | in the recent upsurge in Calvinism here in the States.
00:00:12.720 | Most recently, in his November 12th blog post, Roger Olson, who is an Armenian theologian,
00:00:17.680 | points to you as well.
00:00:18.680 | He writes this, "People often ask my opinion about the causes of this wave of New Calvinism
00:00:23.600 | among American evangelical young people.
00:00:25.920 | I give much of the credit for it to John Piper.
00:00:28.960 | John Piper is a force of nature, articulate, brilliant, persuasive, ubiquitous, prolific,
00:00:34.960 | profoundly Christian."
00:00:35.960 | Now, it's something of an awkward question for me to ask, and I'm sure it's a little
00:00:40.920 | bit awkward for you to answer as well, but how do you process that in your own mind?
00:00:45.680 | What do you think has been your contribution to the upsurge in Calvinism?
00:00:49.680 | Well, that was nice of Roger.
00:00:53.320 | He's not always that nice to me, so thank you, Roger, for those over-the-top words.
00:01:01.480 | But I don't know, and I don't think anybody can know how anybody's investment in a cause
00:01:11.920 | has its cause and effectiveness.
00:01:15.240 | We can see what people do, but we can't draw very confident conclusions that the doing
00:01:22.160 | of that produced this.
00:01:25.520 | I think everybody should go and read Mark Devers' article that was just republished
00:01:32.240 | and updated, I think in October, at the Gospel Coalition website on "Where Did All These
00:01:37.880 | Calvinists Come From?"
00:01:39.460 | And he gives a list of influences.
00:01:42.400 | The ongoing impact of Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones in these recent days, banner of truth recovery
00:01:48.600 | of the Puritans, evangelism explosion with James Kennedy and the reformed impact that
00:01:54.560 | Kennedy had.
00:01:55.560 | The battle for the Bible was mostly led by Calvinists, so the recovery of the centrality
00:02:00.440 | of the doctrine of inerrancy in the '70s and '80s.
00:02:03.840 | J.I.
00:02:04.840 | Packer in his book "Knowing God," R.C.
00:02:06.400 | Sproul in "Ligonier Ministries," John MacArthur, and I would add Chuck Colson to that list,
00:02:12.000 | and reformed rap.
00:02:13.640 | There's an interesting thing about things like reformed rap or, say, campus outreach.
00:02:19.120 | Reformed rap, you say, could be a fruit of the reformed resurgence, but the fruit becomes
00:02:25.160 | the root, right?
00:02:26.520 | In other words, when something emerges as significant as that, it then becomes a causal
00:02:33.200 | force itself.
00:02:34.920 | So it was a fruit, and now it's a root.
00:02:37.600 | So I would just make sure before anybody thinks John Piper is Mr. Causal Effect.
00:02:45.760 | It's not that simple at all.
00:02:48.000 | All those factors are feeding in, and as far as my role is concerned, I don't know what
00:02:53.560 | the causal effects are.
00:02:54.960 | Only God can see that clearly.
00:02:56.880 | What I know is what I have done.
00:02:59.000 | So I stand back and I say, "If somebody says, 'Do you think that's right?
00:03:03.160 | Do you think you have a key role in this?'"
00:03:05.520 | I say, "Look, here's the way I think about my life.
00:03:08.440 | I know what I do, and I do what I do because I see what I see."
00:03:14.000 | So here's the four things that I do.
00:03:17.120 | Number one, I have embedded reformed theology in the matrix of Christian hedonism.
00:03:22.160 | That's my unique little thing.
00:03:24.400 | I embed reformed theology in the matrix of Christian hedonism.
00:03:29.160 | God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him, which ties the central
00:03:35.400 | theme of reformed theology to the central passion of the human heart, namely to be happy.
00:03:42.560 | And it says you can't have, Christian hedonism says, you can't have full and lasting happiness
00:03:50.960 | if the glory of God is not your treasure.
00:03:54.840 | And more shockingly, God will not be glorified in your life most fully if you're not most
00:04:01.960 | fully satisfied in him.
00:04:04.360 | That's my contribution.
00:04:06.400 | I got it straight from Jonathan Edwards and C.S. Lewis, who got it from the Bible.
00:04:12.200 | And then I circled around and have seen it all over in the Bible.
00:04:15.960 | And that's what I think the main thing I've done is to put reformed theology in the context
00:04:21.880 | of ramping up the importance of joy and happiness and the emotions in the Christian life.
00:04:29.640 | Second thing I've done is preached in one place for 33 years.
00:04:33.460 | So that the message is proven in a people.
00:04:38.760 | It's not a clever shtick for rambling conference speakers.
00:04:44.060 | It's the bread and meat of real people from the cradle to the grave, living and dying.
00:04:50.840 | So I think sticking in one place, preaching in one pulpit for 33 years, only had one church
00:04:56.160 | in all my ministry in order that I might not run from one hard place to an easy place.
00:05:01.400 | I just stayed right there and I found that this glorious truth of God's centeredness
00:05:10.680 | really makes a whopping difference in the lives of ordinary people at every stage of
00:05:17.160 | their lives.
00:05:18.160 | The third thing I do is I write.
00:05:20.600 | I say with Calvin, "I learn as I write, I write as I learn."
00:05:24.880 | So there are a lot of books by John Piper.
00:05:28.520 | All of them saying the same thing because I have tried to apply in all kinds of areas
00:05:35.920 | of life that central truth that God is most glorified in us when we're most satisfied
00:05:40.560 | in Him.
00:05:42.280 | And the fourth thing I do is I pray desperately all the time without ceasing.
00:05:50.360 | I'm always desperate and so I'm always crying out to God to help me hold on to the gospel
00:05:57.640 | in my life.
00:05:58.640 | I do not take for granted that I will finish well.
00:06:02.160 | I never took for granted for 38 years that I would stay in the ministry.
00:06:06.240 | I always felt vulnerable, vulnerable to being angry, vulnerable to being resentful, vulnerable
00:06:11.800 | to being lustful, vulnerable to being proud, vulnerable to being lazy.
00:06:16.640 | I'm a vulnerable man.
00:06:19.440 | Therefore I'm always crying out, "Help me, hold me, don't let me go, keep me useful."
00:06:26.080 | So prayer has been, I think, an essential part of my life.
00:06:30.920 | So when I ask, "What are the causal effects of those four things on the contemporary scene?"
00:06:38.560 | The answer is, "I don't know.
00:06:40.680 | I don't know.
00:06:41.680 | In fact, I don't think much about it."
00:06:43.880 | When I'm done with a message or a book, my focus is resolutely on the next task.
00:06:51.580 | So yesterday, I'm working hard to get ready for your phone call.
00:06:55.280 | As soon as this phone call is over, I'm getting ready for Lansing, Michigan.
00:06:59.600 | I'm not even thinking about you and these things.
00:07:03.000 | I'm just on to the next thing, which means I view my life as just kind of dropping pebbles
00:07:08.800 | all the time in the pond.
00:07:11.640 | And I don't stay there and say, "Okay, pebble, what are you doing?
00:07:14.160 | How are you doing, pebble?"
00:07:16.480 | I don't think that way.
00:07:17.840 | I just move on to the next place on the shore, drop another pebble, go out, "Where can I
00:07:22.400 | find some more pebbles to drop?"
00:07:23.880 | So I don't really have much mental energy to be constantly assessing the effectiveness
00:07:30.520 | of my pebble dropping.
00:07:32.360 | As soon as I'm done producing one pebble, I'm just bending my brain to try to see something
00:07:39.020 | new in the next text so that I can drop the pebble in the next city or in the next blog
00:07:43.640 | or in the next sermon.
00:07:47.800 | So the answer is I don't know whether Roger Olson is right.
00:07:53.920 | I just know what I do and I say what I see in the Bible.
00:07:58.880 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:00.320 | And once again, you can find Mark Dever's thoughts online most easily in a blog post
00:08:03.800 | on October 24th of last year on the TGC website.
00:08:06.920 | You can Google the title, "Where did all these Calvinists come from?"
00:08:11.440 | And you should find it.
00:08:12.440 | And tomorrow I want to ask another question raised by Roger Olson's recent blog post.
00:08:16.840 | So where is the Arminian version of John Piper?
00:08:20.480 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:21.480 | Thanks for listening.
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