If he thought we really still existed would Keillor have spoken as he did? I don't know. Perhaps he would have done anyway. There is a good lot of folk who do know we still exist and who nevertheless speak maliciously about Calvinists, so perhaps the fact of our continued existence wouldn't trouble Keillor's conscience.

 
As to our politics, we don't all march in lockstep. Has he looked at Hart's book, A Secular Faith?  Sure, Darryl's position is a minority view, but what hath Geneva (which was hardly a capitalist paradise!) to do with the National Republican Committee or the White House? Our president is a Methodist not a Calvinist.  There are perhaps few orthodox Calvinists in the House but I don't see them taking over ideologically or theologically. There are a few  orthodox Calvinists in the Bush administration but I dare say that they are there not because of their Calvinism but because they are good at what they do.

Then there are other facts that might be an irritant in his Birkenstocks. Keillor assumes that because we're predestinarians that we must be triumphalist and arrogant. Of course there have been triumphalist Calvinists, and there have been triumphalist papists and Methodists and Lutherans.  Not all Lutherans are Keillor's "dark Lutherans."  Indeed, whenever he describes the "dark Lutherans" in Lake Wobegon, I think to myself, "I am a dark Lutheran."

Why do folk assume that if I believe, with Augustine and Luther (nasty Calvinists those!) that, as a result of the fall, all my faculties are corrupted and I am dead in sin (Eph 2:1-4) and therefore unable move toward God or even cooperate with grace and that therefore it is only God's sovereign, unconditional grace by which anyone comes to spiritual life and to faith, that somehow those convictions must lead to arrogance? I guess they don't think of that way.

They think that Calvinists begin a priori with the doctrine of election, that we have invented it out of our heads. Of course they don't know that Thomas Aquinas taught the same doctrine or the Gottschalk taught it or that Augustine taught it or Prosper of Aquitaine taught it or that Gregory of Rimini taught it or Bradwardine or Wycliffe. They think that no one could possibly have taught predestination until that evil man Calvin (you know he personally set Servetus on fire don't you and he ruled Geneva with an iron fist, or was that an iron fish? I can't recall).

Critics such as Keillor assume that we must deduce our entire system of theology, which he conveniently summarized for his readers in the five points of the Synod of Dort, from our a priori, patently unbiblical, doctrine of predestination. For modernity no single doctrine is as offensive as predestination because no single doctrine is so threatening to human autonomy. It is widely assumed, again a priori, that it could not be a biblical doctrine and that therefore Calvin must have invented it; except he didn't. Did I mention Luther's Bondage of the Will? Calvin and Luther taught substantially the same doctrine of predestination! Why don't folk tar and feather Luther while they are roasting Calvinists? Well, the Lutherans confess unconditional election to grace (which can be resisted) but they don't talk about it much and it gives the impression that we're the only ones teaching it.

Folk also tend to assume (now piling assumptions upon assumptions so that we need more than Ockham's razor, we need his shovel to sort it all out!) that, having deduced a system from an a priori doctrine of predestination, some how we know who is and isn't elect and that we were elected because we're special.

They have no idea, of course, that we tend to deal with the doctrine of election in a way that isn't completely different from Melanchthon's later treatment (post 1521) where it was used not as a "central dogma" from which to deduce a system of theology but as an a posteriori way to explain how things came to be. Indeed, many Calvinists would blush as the blunt way that Luther put things in 1525! Like Calvin, we tend to appeal to predestination as a source of comfort. We are so corrupt, we confess, that the very fact that we believe at all is evidence of God's grace. We never ask, "am I elect?" A Calvinist asks, "Do I believe?"

Grace, by definition, leads to humility. Keillor is really insinuating that mean, arrogant old Calvinists don't really believe in grace at all -- that's why they're arrogant. To the contrary, real Calvinists are among the only ones who really believe in grace any more. For us grace is unconditional favor. God hasn't love us because we're good. Jesus didn't die for us because we're clever. He died for all his people because they were wicked and because he loved them. A Christian is the object of divine pity, nothing more. 

How can such a view breed arrogance? Where is the evidence that genuine, confessional Calvinism breeds arrogance? I submit that an arrogant person is either not a Calvinist or at least a very bad one who needs to repent.

It's true that we confess (against the moralist and rationalist Remonstrants -- does anyone care any more that the Synod of Dort was called to preserve the gospel of grace from the incursion of moralism and rationalism?) that believers cannot fall away, but again, that's a source of humility not pride. Christians stand by grace. I could just as well accuse Keillor of being arrogant because he believes that we can resist grace! Why isn't that arrogant? "I can resist God!" If we're going to reason about what "must be the case" given premise x ("I can resist grace and lose my election") then x seems more likely to produce arrogance than our theology.

 The Synod's doctrine that Christ died for his people offends modern sensibilities but it also offended pre-modern sensibilities. Again, Calvin did not invent this doctrine. As I've at least sketched elsewhere, lots of other folk have taught versions of "limited atonement." My colleague Mike Horton's first book was on this topic and it's still useful. Why is it so offensive to say that Jesus came to accomplish what he set out to do, redeem his people? It offends because it moves the locus of choice ultimately from us to God.

So, Keillor's real problem is that we're not modern, Enlightened folk. We dare question the modern orthodoxy of the universal fatherhood of God, brotherhood of man, human perfectability, autonomy etc. If we dare question those received truths, then we must be arrogant -- even if we aren't.

Why is Copernicus heroic for querying the received wisdom of his day but we're reviled for doing the same? What's so great about modernity? How many millions have "enlightened" governments murdered since the early 20th century?  Sure there are good things about modernity but there were good things about earlier periods too.

I don't think our theology really is triumphalist, however. Though we certainly don't speak about the theology of the cross formally as often as our Lutheran brothers, that doesn't mean that we don't believe it. Herman Selderhuis, another of those pesky Calvinists scholars who actually bothers to read Luther, Calvin, and Calvinist orthodox writers, has published a wonderful book on Calvin's Theology of the Psalms in which he has a very good section on Calvin's theology of the cross.

The present writer has himself written against the theology of glory.

Could we do more? Absolutely. Do we sometimes live up to the caricature? Yes, far too often, but I doubt that Keillor has investigated things that deeply.

What can we do to change the perception of Calvinists? Not much in the short run, except to keep preaching and practice grace and leave the results to God.

The truth is that Calvinists have never had good PR and we've never been good at it. I guess that isn't going to change soon. Maybe that's the way it should be? 

I tell my students that folks often just make up things about Calvinists. We're the convenient whipping boys of the modern period. The great thing is that one can get away with making up stuff Calvinists and Calvinism at will. About what other group could one just make things up and print them in public without any fear of social, academic, or intellectual reprisal? It happens routinely in the academic literature and it happens about as often in the popular press. I remember Phil Ryken pointing out some slur against the Puritans in Sports Illustrated back in the early 90s.

I know this is true because I've seen it and it's been documented by lots of writers. Nevertheless, what I have seen folk say about us has been so outrageous that I sometimes lose confidence that it really happened. I think that it might just be my fevered imagination. Then I stumbled onto a post at Colossians Three Sixteen which had a link to an op-ed piece by Garrison Keillor. The op-ed was really just another screed about the president. In order to discredit the president and the Republicans he links them to Calvinists. He argues that the Republicans are as arrogant as he thinks Calvinists must be. A priori reasoning is a great relief from real thinking.

I like Keillor's radio show and have read all his novels (a couple of which are as tedious as his politics) and it's pretty clear from the essay that he doesn't know beans about American history or the history of theology. So why do I care? Well, it's interesting that, in order to make his political point, he chose to associate his political opponents with the most reviled group in modern American history: the Calvinists.

He probably thinks that most of the Calvinists are dead. My college history prof was shocked that there were still living Calvinists. I can understand why he might think that we're all dead. We took a beating in the 16th century. Most of the French Calvinists were wiped out in about a week in 1572. Philip II killed thousands of Protestants in the Netherlands in the 16th century. Today there are only about 500,000 confessional Calvinists in North America today.

Calvinism, however, is doing pretty well elsewhere. There may be about a million in parts of Nigeria. There are perhaps 50,000 or more in the Congo. Though Calvinism hasn't fared well in the UK since the 18th century, there are still quite a few in the Netherlands.

That Keillor feels free to caricature Calvinism says something about our invisibility in the culture.

Predestinarian pastors can pop up in funny places. WSC student Tyler Easton points out in an email that Alistair Begg played a Scottish golf instructor in Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius.

Alistair is also this year's Den Dulk lecturer at WSC:

March 6-8, 2007, Rev. Alistair Begg to Speak at Den Dulk Lectures

Westminster Seminary California is pleased to invite you to join us at the annual den Dulk Lectures on Pastoral Ministry, sponsored by the friends of Bob and Nellie den Dulk. The lectures will be held Tuesday–Thursday, March 6, 7, 8, in the Chapel at Westminster Seminary California.

The speaker will be Rev. Alistair Begg, Senior Pastor of Parkside Church in Chagrin Falls, Ohio since 1984. He has also served churches in Scotland. Rev. Begg has written several books and is heard daily and weekly on the radio program, Truth For Life.

Lectures are from 10-11 a.m. each day. All are welcome to attend. For more information, please contact WSC at 760/480.8474.

Predestinarian folk don't usually get a lot of "face time" in the MSM but Christianity Today recently did a story and now TIME has a story on how Al Mohler's predestinarian convictions square with his recent health struggles (HT: Justin Taylor)