What does it mean to be Reformed?

Just over a year ago my father, Rev John J Murray, died.  Eight months later I needed to pack up his study as my my mum moved through to Edinburgh.  Looking through over 60 years of papers (13 years in reformed publishing, 24 years in the pastoral ministry and then a very fruitful 18 years in retirement), it has been fascinating to read articles and correspondence relating to the reformed recovery in the UK from the 1950's.  Much of the background to this is covered in my fathers book by EP 'Catch the Vision'.  The recovery was closely connected with the ministry of Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones at Westminster Chapel and the establishment of the Banner of Truth trust in 1957.  My father was involved in the very early days of the Banner of Truth Trust, joining them 3 years after the Banner was formed.  Reformed books that had been out of print for decades were once again printed.  A conference was organised in Leicester in 1962 with 40 ministers which continues to the present day.

The key challenge in the 1960's was the lack of reformed churches in the UK.  Scotland had several reformed denominations like the Free Church of Scotland but the situation in England and Wales was very patchy.  England lacked a truly reformed denomination.  There were many independent churches and my father was corresponding with some who maintained a Reformed witness in the Church of England.  

To seek to address this, my father and others were instrumental in establishing the English Reformed Fellowship which had its inaugural meeting in Westminster Chapel on Tuesday 15th December 1970.  As well as the document reproduced below my father prepared a discussion paper as to why such a fellowship like the ERF was necessary.  Here are some of the reasons:

• Because of the misuse of the word 'Reformed'.  My Dad was seeking to address the error of those who call themselves reformed while not embracing the 'whole system of truth contained in the historic confessions'.
• Because of the great ignorance of the whole system of Reformed truth which is found amongst members and leaders of the church today.
• Because of the preferences for minimal statements of faith and the division of the faith between 'essentials' and 'non essentials'.
• Polarised opinions - the only alternatives being seen as a national, territorial mixed church or an independent, separated gathered church.
• 'Because the time has come to encourage some individuals and churches further along the road of reformation, to foster fellowship between Reformed people throughout the county and because there is not existing organisation in a position to do this.'

Looking through much of the correspondence at the time there was a lively debate about the constitution of the ERF.  This centred on a question which has been debated down through the years: 'what does it mean to be reformed?'  

In order to answer this question my father prepared a paper for a meeting on 11th March 1971 to help answer the question that was causing some tension.  I reproduce the article below:

Subject - the difference between holding to the Five Points of Calvinism and being Reformed.

1.  The Difference Viewed Historically

When the adjective 'Reformed' is written with a capital 'R' it commonly is equivalent to 'Calvinistic', i.e. it refers to the theology, creeds, churches etc. of that branch of Protestantism which accepted the interpretation of Christianity formulated by the reformer John Calvin (J.G. Vos).  

Calvinism is defined by B.B. Warfield as:

'...the entire body of conceptions, theological, ethical, philosophical, social, political, which under the influence of the master mind of John Calvin, raised itself to dominance in the protestant lands of the Post-Reformation age, and has left a permanent mark not only on the thought of mankind, but upon the life history of men, the social order of civilised people, and even the political organisations of states.'

[My father then goes on to talk about the history of the Five Points of Calvinism and to list what they are.]

B.B. Warfield

2.  The Difference Viewed Analytically

We could leave the matter here but the difference will become more marked as we seek to show what Calvinism is.  

Calvinism is an all embracing life system inspired by a well defined life system.  It is a life system, on the back of which there is a theological system, on the back of which there is a deep religious consciousness.  

It has been expressed as follows by Abraham Kuyper, one of the great interpreters of Calvin:

'Calvinism is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and from this specific religious consciousness there was developed first a peculiar theology, then a specific church order, an then a given form of political and social life, for the interpretation of the moral world-order, for the relation between nature and grace, between Christianity and the world, between church and state, and finally for art and science; and amid all the life-utterances it remained always the self-same Calvinism, in so far as simultaneously and spontaneously all these developments sprang from its life principle.'

The key verse as far as the life principle of Calvinism is concerned is Romans 11 v 36 - 'For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever and ever, Amen.'  

Calvin placed the self glorification of God at the centre.  It is not God who exists for the sake of His creation: the creation exists for the sake of God.  The primary principle of Calvinism therefore is the direct and absolute sovereignty of the triune God over the whole cosmos. 

The formative principle of Calvinism has been well defined by B.B Warfield:

'It is the vision of God and His majesty which lies at he foundation of the entirety  of the Calvinistic thinking.'

'Calvinism begins, it centres, it ends with the vision of God in His glory and it sets itself, before all things, to render God his right in sphere of life-activity.' 

'The Calvinist is the man who has seen God, and who, having seen God in His glory, is filled on the one hand, with a sense of his own unworthiness to stand in God's sight as a creature, and much more as a sinner, and on the other hand, with adoring wonder that nevertheless this God is a God who receives sinners.  He who believes in God without reserve and is determined that God shall be God to him, in all his thinking, feeling, willing - in the entire compass of his life activities, intellectual, moral, spiritual - throughout all his individual, social, religious, relations - is, by the force of that strictest of all logic which presides over the outworking of principles into thought and life by the very necessity of the case, a Calvinist.'

'Calvinism is:

• Theism come to its rights
• Religion at the height of its conception
• Evangelicalism in its purest and most stable expression.'

Calvinism says Abraham Kuyper, meets the demands of a life system by providing the principles for the three fundamental relations of all human life:

• Our relation to God.  The recognition that God enters into immediate fellowship with the creature...the whole of a man's life is to lived as in the Divine Presence.
• Our relation to man.  The recognition in each person of human worth and equality of all men before God and His magistrate.
• Our relation to the world.  The recognition that in the whole world the curse is restrained by grace and that we must, in every domain, discover the treasures and develop the potencies hidden by God in nature and in human life.

'The special trait of Calvinism is that it placed the believer before the face of God, not only in the Church, but also in his personal, family, social and political life.  The majesty of God, and the authority of God press upon the Calvinist in the whole of his human existence.' 

Abraham Kuyper

3. Some Observations

i) The five points of Calvinism, historically at least, were only a Calvinistic response to 'the five points of Arminianism'.  (Warfield, J.G. Vos).

ii) Their main reference is soteriological (the doctrine of salvation). (John de Witt)

iii) While they are not synonymous with Calvinism or the Reformed Faith yet they are an integral part of it and the centre of attacks on the truth. (Warfield, de Witt)

iv) It is quite possible for a person to be a doctrinal Calvinist in respect of the five points and yet at the same time be an Anabaptist in respect of religious experience and an Arminian in his thinking.

v) The vital importance of the life principle and the religious nature of this.

vi) Calvinism emerges as nothing more or less than the hope of the world.

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At the end of 1972 the Banner of Truth moved to Edinburgh and my fathers connection with the ERF became a lot more distant.  Clearly it was not all plain sailing as a letter in 1973 announces the resignation of two members of the ERF who went on to set up the Christian Reformed Fellowship.  A vote was taken on 22nd September 1973 as to whether the doctrinal scope of the fellowship should exclude Independency and Episcopalianism.  The vote was to include these branches of the Christian church within the ERF and it clearly caused some fall out.  

Perhaps we can see in the embers of the ERF the start of wider reformed co-operation in England and the start, in 1986, of the Presbyterian Church of England and Wales.  The question of 'what does it mean to be reformed' continues to be debated but my father never swerved from his belief that 'Reformed' meant a wholehearted commitment to the 'whole system of truth contained in the historic confessions'.