The Failure of New Calvinist Apologetics

https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=107221718125272

Matt Slick antedates the rise of New Calvinism – I remember him from the 1990's, but in many respects he's one of several figures that anticipated the movement and even now can and should be identified as a member of that camp.

More an Evangelical in style and substance than any kind of Confessional Calvinist, Slick in many respects represents a now dominant form of Calvinism, and yet as this episode (5 Oct 2022) suggests – one has to wonder how much the historical nomenclature even applies.

After a tedious intro, at about the 4 minute mark Slick responds to 'hate mail' and arguing against a Roman Catholic view of the Eucharist which insists on a kind of literal reading of 'This is my body'. Slick falls into Baptistic patterns of appealing to metaphors. Christ was a door and so forth and thus the Supper must be interpreted in a similar fashion.

While transubstantiation must certainly be rejected, Slick's views don't conform to historical or confessional norms concerning the Supper. It's not a pure metaphor or symbol. Paul refers to the Israelites as partaking of the same spiritual food and drink, the cup is called a cup of blessing, and indeed abusers of the Supper were said to experience death as a form of judgment. Needless to say Slick would reject any application of John 6 to the discussion which happens to be one of the most doctrinally rich passages in the New Testament.

At the very least one would expect a 'Calvinist' to hold to a view that incorporated the conveyance of grace or a subjective 'spiritual' presence, even though a much stronger case can be made for an objective presence sans actual transubstantiation and the entire sacrificial theology implied by the mass – not to mention the Aristotelian categories utilised to explain the phenomenon.

Slick's answer is standard Evangelical and Baptist. There's nothing Calvinistic about it. His appeal to Leviticus is frankly ridiculous and possibly sacrilegious.

I appreciate his wholesale condemnation of Rome but not on the basis of a Baptistic-Evangelical reading of Scripture – which on many points actually represents an unhelpful departure from Scripture.

While all Christians believe in the exclusivity of Christ's claims regarding redemption and salvation, I found Slick's answer in the next segment wanting and representative of his impoverished rationalistic apologetic. A Buddhist could answer his statements regarding the Trinity as well as question the precisionist nature of his statements vis-à-vis what is revealed in Scripture. And if he were more informed, he could question Slick's statements vis-à-vis historical theology as these terms have to be defined and the truth is that the definitions remain somewhat fuzzy and the divergent parties never fully agreed on their meaning – let alone the problems of a Sola Scriptura construct appealing arbitrarily to the rulings of Church Councils, even while rejecting their wider context of theological jurisprudence.

Some appeal to the fiction of pure logic which doesn't answer the Buddhist who can also entertain trinitarian metaphysics. The answer is found not in rationalist constructs but in revelation and the foolishness of preaching. I'm afraid many apologetics ministries are woefully misguided in what they attempt to do and CARM is one of them.

At the 14:33 mark Slick entertains a question regarding the use of incense. I found this response to be telling and even somewhat shocking.

Slick doesn't have any problem with it because it's in the Bible.

Simple enough right? No, instead this demonstrates a rather impoverished understanding of Redemptive-History and the nature of Biblical structure. Would he say the same about animal sacrifices? How about the Passover? How about circumcision? He would balk at the latter – but only because the New Testament explicitly rejects it. Apparently his prooftexting-rationalist approach is incapable of following the flow, themes, and development of Scripture in terms of typology and fulfillment. This question is minor but very illuminating with regard to the totality of his thought. It's more of a Fundamentalism stripped of Dispensational Theology than anything remotely connected to historic Calvinist or Reformed doctrine. He apparently is unfamiliar with the redemptive-historical underpinnings of the Regulative Principle or more likely (based on other comments in other episodes) he heartily rejects it. But this is the alternative? I'm afraid my teenage daughter could give a more capable and Biblical answer to the question of incense in New Testament worship than Slick can. It was a really shocking response I thought – a real display of Biblical incompetence. As I've taught my children from a very early age, the relationship between the Old and New Testaments is one of the most critical questions to Biblical interpretation. You get that wrong and you go astray. Slick's answer is (ironically) more compatible with Roman Catholicism than historic Protestantism and it demonstrates that this most basic and fundamental problem within theology is one he doesn't understand. And based on his response – I question if he's even wrestled with the issue or is aware of it!

We do not utilize incense in New Testament worship. If Slick bothered to read and understand the book of Hebrews (for a start) he would understand this. This already bad question-answer segment is supplemented at 26:00 by a follow-up that at best only confounds and confuses the issue.

Word study is helpful to be sure but one can miss the forest for the trees. I encounter many people who narrowly focus on verses and yet fail to understand the flow, argument, and structure of books – let alone how they relate to one another, the different nature of books, and so forth. A prooftext word-study style theology can glean some truth to be sure but it can also lead people into briars and thorns. I know many people who follow Bible reading plans but still never interact with the text and take the time to work through the arguments and as such their employment of isolated texts is often well intentioned but misinformed, sometimes woefully so.

His response to Halloween at 19:15 was also wanting – a case of non sequitir. It's one thing to eat Halloween candy (which I certainly enjoy). It's something else to go and participate in the rites – even if they have degenerated into parody as was often the case with cultural religious practice in the Hellenistic context of the New Testament. But this cultural degeneration didn't somehow render these questions as inconsequential.

Why is the demonic costuming a problem but the notion of All Hallow's Eve isn't? It sounds to me as if Slick just likes it and wants to justify it. The Christian calendar argument fails, but the Samhain argument is plausible, and the Church would make a far more potent testimony if it stood against this practice in toto. I had to laugh when he made the appeal to the Christmas tree at 22:10. He thinks he made a point but in fact he just further condemns his already compromised views and reasoning.

The only question I thought he handled aptly was the next segment concerning the Virgin Birth and the cringe-worthy attempt by the caller to pry into the specific mechanics of the event. It was the only high point in the entire one hour show.

I felt badly for the confused woman who called in at 30:00, but I found Slick's response to be even worse and more confused than the woman's stumbling over the term 'darling'. His use of translations was reckless and it needs to be stated once again – context determines meaning, and the translators were trying to demonstrate an implied concept. Slick's views of Scripture are neither Confessional nor conservative though I'm sure he would be shocked at such a statement. And while the Scofield Bible is certainly lacking, I would not recommend the Geneva Bible to anyone either.

It must be said this is a strange kind of Calvinism – a creature that began to emerge in the 1990's and now dominates, but it's not the Calvinism of Spurgeon, the Puritans, or Calvin. But more importantly it represents a significant and at times perilous departure from the New Testament. This is not to say that historic Calvinism is the Christianity of the New Testament. By no means, but in many respects it is closer than what we find in the Evangelical sphere.

The show took an especially dark turn at the 42 minute mark as Slick started in on politics. Let's just say that I was already less than impressed with his theological aptitude but his understanding of politics and political history put his ignorance on full display.

Apparently Slick thinks that Tucker Carlson is a good source of information which again demonstrates his own lack of discernment and foolishness. His real epistemological authority is revealed as not being Sola Scriptura but a hybrid-something I increasingly refer to as BibleFOX.

Is Biden corrupt? Of course he is. But Trump isn't? Lindsey Graham? Kevin McCarthy? And this one I can't even say with a straight face – Mitch McConnell? What about the Bush family? No corruption there, right?

What exactly is his point?

Is the news media corrupt? Of course. They cover-up lots of things –usually by omission. The list is long and bipartisan. We could also refer to the many false exposés which often serve to muddy waters and obscure the actual crimes.

I literally burst out laughing (as did everyone else in the car) when he started in on 'this is the technique of communism'. He played his hand. He's a clown and doesn't know what he's talking about. He's just repeating the same old lame talking points of the John Birch Society and the GOP that they've been using since the days of that old Red Baiting would-be inquisitor Joe McCarthy.

The tactics he refers to have been employed by Republicans and while CNN and the other mainstream outlets are more infotainment jokes than anything else – FOX is actively involved in mis- and disinformation. CNN, NPR, and other outlets do lie at times but more often than not it's the omissions and the framing of stories that is deceptive. FOX out and out lies and on a massive scale.

The schools are producing 'socialist communist thinking people' but it was okay when they taught unquestioned nationalist obedience to the flag and a willingness to go and die and kill for it. Oh wait, they still teach that in addition to all the other individualist psychological filth that dominates them. It's a filth by the way that the Evangelical community has largely embraced in premise but to a lesser degree. Few understand this and this is why when I listen to Christian radio I'm often left shaking my head as the various commentators, activists, and supposed teachers are often treating spiritual cancer with a tool akin to cough syrup and bandages. The confused thinking of Evangelicals regarding this society let alone the Christian's relationship to the world (and its states) is on full display with Matt Slick – and his confused pronouns.

No, Mr. Slick you may be a theologian (so you claim) but you could not out-debate these political leaders. There is an answer to atheist incoherence with regard to morality but I didn't hear it here. And as you demonstrate in your final statements – you are incompetent to debate even someone who has taken an entry level US Government class or read an American political science textbook. You don't know what you're talking about. This is not to say the Democrats are right because they're not – but neither are you.

It is abundantly clear to me that Slick fails to understand even the basics of the US system and the corruption and deceit at work within both parties – not to mention the monied interests that drive the whole system and its imperial framework. Everything he says about the Democrats in the realms of truth, morality, and corruption could be equally applied to the GOP. What a con-job! The corrupt leaders of the Christian Right have convinced their flocks that the Republican Party stands for morality simply because they pay lip service on a few pet issues – never mind the host of ideological contradictions that exist at the heart of the party's claims.

Slick apparently is so ignorant of American history that he simply plays the FOX line regarding the Democrats and the history of Slavery, Jim Crow, racism and the KKK. He doesn't realize that nearly all the Segregationist politicians that survived the Civil Rights era had by the 1980's ended up in the GOP. It was a process that began in earnest under Nixon as he sought to exploit White Southern Democratic disgust with the integrationist Civil Rights policies of Johnson. In the post- Civil War South, the conservatives and the political Right were found in the Democratic Party. The parties re-aligned in the post-WWII context, and by the end of the 1970's this process was more or less complete. It also afforded the Evangelical community a new opportunity. The so-called Christian vote could finally be unified – consolidated in one party – the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan. Slick apparently is unfamiliar with these basic broad strokes of US political history. He doesn't understand it, let alone what terms like Socialism and Communism mean – ideas which have no place in the Democratic Party. Sanders and AOC are not socialists by any stretch of the imagination. Like many within the modern Republican Party, he seems oblivious to the Right's embrace of the ethics and sociology that lead to abortion – not to mention its robust embrace of censorship and its hypocrisy with regard to the Constitution and the (admittedly defective) ideology of the American Founding.

The Democrats (what he calls the Left) are evil and no Christian should vote for them. But if he can't say the same about the Republicans then he is no guide and has no standing. The Republican Party and its policies have played an equally potent role in the destruction of the family and in the promotion of social decadence. If he can't see that, perhaps he should turn off Tucker and do a little more reading and reflecting of not just some political and cultural history, but his Bible. He can doubt the salvation of others who aren't Republican but I have little doubt that Slick is a fool and his programme is ridiculous. I was left genuinely embarrassed for him.

See also:

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2014/01/empirical-theology-road-into-darkness.html

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2021/11/justified-cynicism-regarding-gops-2021.html