New Geneva or Anti-Geneva?

https://www.newgenevaacademy.com/master-of-divinity-in-worship-and-liturgy.html

 Stumbling across this reminded me of my days long ago in which I earnestly contended for what I thought of as True Calvinism or the True Reformed faith.

Organisations such as this one both baffled and angered me, all the more as they evoke the Geneva moniker – attempting to connect themselves to the legacy and heritage of John Calvin and his theology.

And yet what do we find – an MDiv programme in music and liturgy? The assumptions behind this certification are at complete historical odds with Calvin and the Confessional tradition. Rejecting the regulative principle found in British Calvinism and functionally rejecting any notion of Scriptural Sufficiency, the educational agenda simply assumes a completely different set of values when it comes to ecclesiology. Offices are invented, practices and liturgies are dreamed up and considerable time is given to these man-made paradigms and concerns.

The Scriptures for these folks are at best a starting point and when utilised at all these groups rely heavily upon the Old Testament – read in a Judaized fashion, divorced from the apostolic lens of the New Testament. And yet they are read a-covenantally as well by means of a 'pick and choose' hermeneutic (that destroys the theology of Old Testament typology) that is then overlaid with some tradition and finally the cultural tastes and sensibilities of the techno-industrial and capitalist-consumerist age.

These folks are Theonomists even though by the second decade of the Twenty-first century they're no longer keen to own that name. And yet what has happened? The first Theonomic defectors in the realm of ecclesiology went in the direction of the High Church and took up wearing clerical collars and trying to integrate the Church calendar, candles and the like into their meetings. The result is neither Reformed nor very impressive to anyone actually rooted in high-church thought and tradition. They can wear their clerical collars – but so do a lot of Charismatics. I suppose it garners them some respect out in the world. For my part, I have to fight the inclination to immediately write such people off.

But now we have the Evangelical iteration of this movement. They actually don't spend a lot of time harping on the specifics of Theonomy and Dominionism because those arguments no longer need to be made. They're now assumed, even though in most cases they've been watered down a bit. Rushdoony et al. are still referenced but the controversy that once enveloped these names and overshadowed the movement is largely gone.

We now have praise bands and sound systems fused with Dominionist theology. They're really just a more robust and Right-wing version of what we find within Evangelicalism at large – a blurry place that straddles the world of Confessionalism and New Calvinism.

And yet in both cases the real connections to historical Calvinism must be questioned. Are they ignorant of the heritage or are they just that arrogant in thinking they represent a better expression of it – or somehow represent a genuine outgrowth or development of the thought? If so, then the question of ignorance must once more be entertained.

In the late 1990's and early 2000's I gave myself to opposing such people within the Reformed context. I was a zealot for the traditions and undoubtedly irritated and alienated quite a few people within OPC and PCA circles. By the end of the decade I came to question the entirety of the Reformed historical and theological narrative and its connections to the larger Magisterial Reformation. On some points (such as so-called Christian politicking and a commitment to a form of Constantinian Christendom) I acquiesced and realised that I was the one out of step with the Reformed world. They were wrong but they were not entirely out of step with their tradition. Eventually I would question much in the realm of the theological prolegomena that dominates Reformed dogmatics, systematics, and the Confessional heritage. I was no longer Reformed and yet no closer to the Evangelical fold – in fact more opposed to it than ever.

These movements such as New Calvinism that were in full bloom by this time did not capture a great deal of my attention. But every once in a while I have stumbled on to something like this website for New Geneva Academy and my gorge begins to rise. I repudiate Calvin and the heritage of Geneva and reject the notion that the city under Calvin and Beza was somehow in accord with the New Testament or some kind of school of the apostles as Knox would have it. Quite the contrary.

But it still rankles me to see folks like these try to appropriate and/or cash in on that heritage. They're deceiving themselves and their audience.

An MDiv rooted in Church Music that's 'culturally engaged', that is in fact divorced from Redemptive-History, traditional systematics, and the Reformed Confessional tradition cannot claim a connection to Geneva even if it's 'new'. Are we to believe that liturgical arrangements, sound mixing, band, praise teams, musical conducting, liturgical budget development, youth band, or sound systems have anything to do with Calvin's Geneva? No, the assumptions aren't even on the same planet.

It's actually a counter-Genevan force, a challenge to the Genevan legacy, and thus is anti-Geneva, the very opposite of what it purports to be. I guess the 'Anti-Geneva Academy' wouldn't market very well in the world of New and Evangelical Calvinism.

One might chalk it all up as part and parcel of the rotten harvest Geneva and the Magisterial Reformation produced. Maybe so, but sheer historical honesty demands a degree of umbrage at such marketing claims and deceptions.

The Bayly-affiliated group are Judaizers pure and simple and in that respect they are a 'valid' permutation of the Calvinistic heritage, particularly the orthodox or scholastic variety which arose in earnest in the Seventeenth Century. They have moved miles apart from their forebears and far closer to Canterbury, Wittenberg, and Madison Avenue. And yet given their utter failure to understand Biblical Christocentrism, what the Scripture is and how it is to be read (in other words to misread it on a massive scale as Kline said of Theonomic Dominionism), their present place is not altogether surprising.