What Kind of Bigger Tent? – By D. Clair Davis

Do my tents have much to do with other peoples’ tents? Are they nervous about seeing what else there is in the Bible? Have they read those thousands of pages of N. T. Wright or are they just passing on blogs? (No, I haven’t done my reading either, but at least I don’t pretend I have.) Is there more in the Bible than in the old-time religion?

The most unbelievable thing about Revival is that people who have gone to an evangelical church all their lives suddenly hear the gospel for the first time, and they believe and their lives are changed. How could that happen?

It could just be that what they say is true, that they hadn’t heard the gospel before. The minister had assumed that everyone knew it, but they didn’t. I used to be asked to speak on Reformation Day (same day as Halloween, which gets more attention). I don’t do anything special, just focus on justification, maybe use some Latin like de congruo (if you really try harder, maybe God will give you grace). You know, when I do that I usually get a much more lively discussion at the door than usual. A lot of people seem to think that de congruo is why they go to church.

We’re not talking creeping liberalism in evangelical churches, not really. I think it’s a lot of things. Reading the Bible is a good thing to do, of course; but not many of us do it, at least not in a faith-building way. If we pray following the ACTS acronym, the Adoration part seems by far the hardest. As the culture has been changing, the gospel has become isolated from the rest of life, and it almost seems that without the culture to prop it up, the gospel seems more and more technical and detached from real life. Presbytery exams of ministers are still rigorous–but I’m not hearing the follow-up questions like: can you tell us how that biblical doctrine made a difference in your own life, last week?

The old fix to help people get it was to bring in a gospel specialist, an itinerant evangelist. I’m a Wheaton graduate, just missed the 1950 revival there, and naturally am so proud of our own Billy Graham. Maybe there will be another like him? But why in the world does it take a specialist to help people understand and believe the gospel?

There are two big issues: how can I be forgiven? And, how can I change? That can be confusing. Some people used to hear, forgiveness is what God does, but change is what you do. But we have been learning! That’s where I see a true bigger tent: when we understand in a new way what Union with Christ means, that has opened new doors, or at least shown us old doors that we haven’t been opening that much. Since John Murray showed us the way, now 50 years ago, we understand that every single one of God’s ‘benefits’ for us comes to us through our Savior Jesus, sanctification, too. Of course that means you are sanctified by grace through faith in Jesus, plus good preaching, good friends, good counseling, and your own willing heart. Formerly, sometimes what people thought they heard was all of those plus factors, but not much about Jesus Christ. We have been doing better, and the gospel tent has grown.

That came to us through Murray’s hard work and receptive people. How new was it? If you look hard at Calvin’s Institutes in the opening pages of Book Three, you’ll learn that nothing is of any value if it comes to us with Christ outside us. So that bigger tent has been with us for centuries, but who knew it? Remember the old riddle, if the tree in the forest falls but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If Union is totally clear in Calvin but no one picks it up and runs with it, does it make a difference?

That’s what I have in mind with big tent, getting the Word of God more clearly into our hearts. Let me try another one. I am very uncomfortable with the WCF chapter on Assurance. It makes a good start but peters out. It ends something like this: when you fall into grievous sin and God withdraws the light of his countenance then you will fall into deep despair–but not into ‘utter despair.’ I don’t think that’s acceptable as a confession of where the Bible is. I’ve told that to three presbyteries and they still passed me—because I believe everything in that section, and just think it’s defective because it doesn’t say nearly enough. It doesn’t tell us, what do you do when you’re on the brink of ‘utter’? I bet we all know, but wouldn’t it be better if we confessed it together? That’s a place where we really need a bigger tent. (Yes, I identify with the Marrowmen and not with the Auld Kirk that threw them out for asking that question.)

There are other places where the tent has been getting bigger. What about ‘Biblical Theology,’ with Geerhardus Vos and Ed Clowney, and my amazing colleagues at Redeemer Seminary, Douglas Gropp and Adrian Smith. What if God has a plan, a story, and he has been actively unfolding it? God brings salvation out of Egypt, and Aaron gives the credit to the golden calf, and God says to Moses, the people can keep going into the land but I won’t go with them–but Moses says, I won’t go on unless you come with us, and God relents. You can cover that under the theology of the perseverance of the saints, and we need that piece of theology–but the way the Bible does it also needs to be taught and believed. Clowney told me how good my first sermon was–but then he paused and said a rabbi could have preached it. Now that’s Biblical Theology with a cutting edge! Because of that, too, our tent has been getting bigger.

You know, if we worked at that, wouldn’t that make the gospel clearer all the time, not just when the evangelist comes to town? Jay Adams has been my friend for 45 years. I was there when he wrote Competent to Counsel (he dropped the MS and it blew all over the campus and I helped run it down). Can we truly change or does that await the eschaton? Is there hope? That’s what Jay brought: there is hope, you can change. Of course Pelagius said that too—but without reckoning with the power of the Holy Spirit in your heart. Another bigger tent, I’m convinced, something that wasn’t there before but is now.

I’ll tell you where I need help, maybe you do, too. The heart of our faith is justification. I still think so. But in our culture today everyone is a blame-shifter. Not only does he blame other people, but he blames intangible culture-stuff. If that’s the case, if it’s today so hard to see how guilty we are personally, how does justification’s dealing with guilt still work? There’s a real problem, and we should work on that together. That would make our tent enormous.

I hear the PCA General Assembly will look at ‘intinction,’ dipping the bread into the wine at the Supper. Two presbyteries think that’s very important, and I don’t know why. My barometer for GA would be how much time will they spend on that? Or, how much time will they think about and pray about Paul Kooistra’s Original Vision? (Maybe you do that one out in the hallway?).

D. Clair Davis, a PCA Teaching Elder, is Professor and Chaplain at Redeemer Seminary in Dallas, Texas. {Note from the News Editor: It just occurred to me what it sounds like to say Dr. Davis’ first initial and middle name together)

What Kind of Bigger Tent? – By D. Clair Davis

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