Over the past fifteen years, a significant push has occurred amongst younger generations. On the one hand, it has been nice to see a theological perspective which I hold dear--that of classic Reformational theology known as Calvinism--make a comeback. On the other, I've seen how the push amongst a number of neo-Calvinism embracers has turned into shoves. I'm of the mind that your theology should be more armor than sword. James K.A. Smith agrees that theology should benefit more than smash, and the Calvin College philosophy professor--along the lines of other authors as diverse as Christopher Hitchens and Greg Boyd--wrote Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition to this end.
One strength of Smith's work is the pace. The "letters"--which are directives written to his former self when he was new to the Reformed faith--are 4-8 pages long in a book that is 4x6 inches in size. The lively nature of the discourse/implied dialogue means that the reader progresses rapidly and can always slow down and savor the details.
Smith also makes a key distinction that theology is about more than just individual soteriology--meaning that what one believes about God and the world is more expansive than how one aligns with God to get into heaven. Chapter 13 (God's "Social" Gospel) is especially helpful here, as Smith verifies from the Bible that God creates, saves, and chooses a people, so the plural nature of Christianity (which leads into a defense of the importance of the church) is central to God's way of thinking.
The scope of God's redemptive work is bigger than reducing it to individual souls, maintains Smith, who points out that God is interested in the redemption of his entire creation. Calvinism should, he argues, truly be world-formative. A theology that always navel-gazes on one's own needs is not substantial enough; our theology must face creation and continually be engaging with God's world. (Smith makes helpful distinctions between "creation" and "the world" along the way)
So yes, I did find a number of helpful things in Smith's work. Unfortunately, that tends to get pitched in with other items that made this book more mixed bag than recommended treasure.
First, Smith is selective at best on the subject of justification by grace through faith, quoting John Calvin rather selectively from the Institutes of the Christian Religion to provide what he believes to be a squared-up alignment with N.T. Wright's teaching on the covenant nature of justification. While Calvin did underscore the essential nature of the covenant, he did not do so in other areas of his writing at the expense of individual faith and the legal, forensic picture of the doctrine shown throughout the New Testament. Wright's issue is that too much of his theology is centered in Galatians at the expense of the rest of the New Testament, and Smith's issue is that he follows Wright too blindly here. A shame, really, because Wright is a dynamic scholar on issues beyond this one.
Secondly, Smith gets himself way out of his depth when it comes to biblical scholarship. In letter 18 ("On Grumpy Speculations"), Smith engages with his own changed view on women's ordination to the ministry. While this is not the place to hash out this issue (heaven forbid I open that can of worms!), Smith dives in by claiming that the subjection of women is tied up in the fall into sin from Genesis. Now, I don't doubt horrific things have been done toward the female gender, and we can trace many of these things back to our original parents' rebellion. However, Smith--in pressing the creation-fall-redemption Biblical storyline into particular theological waters--forgets that I Timothy 2 appeals to creation, not the Fall, as the reasoning behind his statement that a woman should not hold ecclesiastical, spiritual authority over a man. A brief bit of fact-checking would have given him some pause. Philosophy, not biblical scholarship, is Smith's sweet spot.
Finally, for all of Smith's desire that the Reformed tradition be broad and "catholic" in the universal sense of the world, he goes against his own grain here. Practically bragging about the Dutch Reformed confessions of faith such as the Heidelberg Catechism (which I personally love), the Canons of Dort, and the Belgic Confession, he touts their expansive view of the Reformed faith. When it comes to Reformed insight elsewhere, Smith views the more Presbyterian-leaning Westminster Standards as an "arid desert of...cool scholasticism" and practically criticizes Westminster for ignoring the Apostles' Creed in its construction in a way that Heidelberg avoided.
Smith really needs to get his head around the logical reality that absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. The Westminster Confession of Faith and its subsequent Catechisms might not utilize the Apostles' or Nicene Creed in the structure of their formulation, but the theology of the Westminster divines bears out a close alignment with the patristics. Also, precision does not equal an arid desert any more than a 2018 Toyota Sienna's mechanics are more boring than a 2012 Chevy Cruze. Smith conveniently overlooks the warm devotion of the Puritans and others in resources such as The Valley of Vision, among others.
And in raising the flag of the Dutch Reformed confessions' value over others, I find it interesting that Smith tends to ignore the depth of other streams within the Calvinist tradition. Aside from a passing reference to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion in letter #8, Smith says virtually nothing about the robust, lively, and vivid expression of the English Reformation, of the weightiness of worship shown in the Book of Common Prayer, of the correspondence spearheaded by Thomas Cranmer with reformers like Calvin and others to unify along theological lines, of John Jewell's Apology of the Church of England, and of virtually every Anglican divine in the sixteenth century who demonstrated a strong Reformed theology that built up the flock and yet faced the world beyong the pen of the Church. Some might think this offends me as an Anglican; actually, it offends me as a historian.
So Letters to a Young Calvinist does its work provided one is willing to chew the meat and spit out the bones, however many there may be. And aside from what is said, my issue can be with how it is said. Smith, who has a habit of grousing about writers and personalities like David Wells, Rod Dreher, and Jordan Peterson, leaves a number of folks (myself included) wondering if he has some sort of ax to grind with other thinkers. In that case, one of the larger points coming from reading LTAYC for me might be this: Receiving a reassuring lesson that trying to snuff out other candles doesn't make yours burn any more brightly. Sometimes--like Solomon's wandering--we need a less-than-ideal example to correct our own behavior on the scale of humility.
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