Peter (John) Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled (J.I.) Packers Hermeneutics and What's Right and Wrong With the Regulative Principle
What’s right about the regulative principle is its laudable aim to please God completely in worship. If God has told us what to do and not do in worship, surely conformance to that revealed standard should prevail. Like so much admirable Reformed thinking, the Regulative Principle of Worship strains itself in pursuit of meticulous compliance with every discernible jot and tittle it finds in Holy Scripture. This exhaustive compliance reflex of the Reformed mind continues to identify and illuminate much otherwise neglected Biblical truth. The global church owes much to the Reformed teachers for the pearls of wisdom mined from Holy Scripture across the centuries.
What's wrong with the regulative principle is its temptation to say too much. Christian leaders of every age face a two-fold burden when faced with the duty of biblical interpretation; the quest not to go beyond what is written, but also not to fall short of what the Bible makes clear.
I suspect that Reformed thinkers are prone to violate the first stricture and indeed, go beyond Scripture with neck veins protruding. Why do they do it? They often approach the Bible like a puzzle to be put together so that now all things become clear. Could it be that some neo-Puritan believers find themselves increasingly more enamored with John Owen than with John the Apostle because, after all, the wise Puritan divnes decipher, divy up, and display everything in order, nicht wahr?”
When this preference for the pantheon of approved Reformed expositors and theologians takes hold, it seems that a certain unwitting, catholicizing quasi two-source theory of revelation operates; only the authoritative “tradition” is thoroughly reformed. I call this “Peter (John) Piper picked a peck of pickled (J.I.) Packers hermeneutics.
Happily, in the case of both Packer and Piper, such restriction to some reformed ghetto of eisegetical theologizing has not taken hold. Packer continues to study and learn from many non-Reformed sources and Piper’s Future Grace involved a clear departure from received Reformed wisdom regarding incentives to moral striving and holy living. And the departure was driven by exegetical labor and honesty. And here lies the antidote to Reformed tendencies toward catholicizing eisegesis; an ongoing rigorous, historico-gramatical, contextual approach to the Bible. Where such scrutiny confirms the hallowed Reformed inheritance—so be it. Where it does not—let the chips fall where they may.
***
Technorati Tags:
What's wrong with the regulative principle is its temptation to say too much. Christian leaders of every age face a two-fold burden when faced with the duty of biblical interpretation; the quest not to go beyond what is written, but also not to fall short of what the Bible makes clear.
I suspect that Reformed thinkers are prone to violate the first stricture and indeed, go beyond Scripture with neck veins protruding. Why do they do it? They often approach the Bible like a puzzle to be put together so that now all things become clear. Could it be that some neo-Puritan believers find themselves increasingly more enamored with John Owen than with John the Apostle because, after all, the wise Puritan divnes decipher, divy up, and display everything in order, nicht wahr?”
When this preference for the pantheon of approved Reformed expositors and theologians takes hold, it seems that a certain unwitting, catholicizing quasi two-source theory of revelation operates; only the authoritative “tradition” is thoroughly reformed. I call this “Peter (John) Piper picked a peck of pickled (J.I.) Packers hermeneutics.
Happily, in the case of both Packer and Piper, such restriction to some reformed ghetto of eisegetical theologizing has not taken hold. Packer continues to study and learn from many non-Reformed sources and Piper’s Future Grace involved a clear departure from received Reformed wisdom regarding incentives to moral striving and holy living. And the departure was driven by exegetical labor and honesty. And here lies the antidote to Reformed tendencies toward catholicizing eisegesis; an ongoing rigorous, historico-gramatical, contextual approach to the Bible. Where such scrutiny confirms the hallowed Reformed inheritance—so be it. Where it does not—let the chips fall where they may.
***
Technorati Tags:
john piper, j.i. packer, regulative principle, reformed, theology, bible, church, religion
posted by Mark DeVine at 5:44 PM
9 Comments:
Dr. Devine,
I agree with you on the pantheon of certain theologians. But the brothers and sisters on the other side of the aisle are just as guilty. They have their own pantheon. I adhere to the Regulative Principle of worship on these grounds: God knows how He desires to be worshiped, He has commanded us to worship, and in His Word He has given us instructions for that worship.
How about a forthcoming article on the slippery slope of the Normative Principle?
Joe
Thanks for the comment Joe.
Yes, I do recognize dangers in both directions and I am more comfortable critiquing the tradition with which I am more familiar and have had more experience and, in this case, that means the regulative principle folks. And for them, I suspect that the danger is just as I have said in the post. Take the whole history of wrangling about the use of musical instruments. In my mind this is a classic case of the Reformed hankering after and so pressing upon the Scriptures questions it never meant to answer.
On the normative side, yes, this can be a Pandora’s box. I recall once being advised by a pastoral search committee that, in their church, sometimes the Holy Spirit gets to moving “so strong” in a worship service that they won’t even have any preaching. I was amazed to learn that proclamation of the word of God was in such competition with the Third Person of the Trinity! Was this the same Holy Spirit who inspired Paul’s insistence that it has pleased God to save through preaching those who believe?
Dr. Devine,
I would not say that the Holy Spirit was that active in that church. I would say it was mere emotionalism. That church could easily end up like the Hebrews at the base of Mt. Sinai. I hope you did not take my comments as a critique. I am in full agreement with you. Let's be exegetes and where our reformed heroes are biblical lets march in line with them. Where the are in error let's run the other way. By the way I miss your theology classes. I hate I could not take more.
Joe
In fact I did detect a bit of critique embedded in your comment and I thoroughly enjoyed being smacked around a little.
Anytime Dr. Devine.
Joe
I've always struggled with the extreme (whatever that means) forms of the regulative principle. It's one thing, in my mind, to say we must adhere to what God has said about worship, it is another to say that we must adhere to a tradition that is largely derived from silence (no DVD players in the NT therefore no media in a worship gathering).
Maybe it's just my tendency to rebel from vein-protruding talking-heads (which may or may not be appropriate).
I thought I'd try and push this discussion a little further: How do you see the Regulative Principle functioning in relation to emerging church-type contextualization, where a theologically conservative/culturally liberal approach to church often has implications for services and worship?
That was a long sentence and I think I liked it.
But does the RP act as an safeguard in an "emerging" setting, or does it quietly get shown to the back door in favor of a different hermeneutic?
I decided to post again rather than comment.
Ariel, your sentence was perfect for this discussion I think. It was very puritanesque in length but modern in content. So would that make it semiancient-future :)
Post a Comment
<< Home