Balance in Doctrine: Lessons from the Puritan Pastorate (2)

Though an entire volume would not be sufficient to underscore the need for balance in teaching Christian doctrine at school/church/home, I have been at pains to emphasize this point in order to introduce you to my second major application from the Puritan mode of preaching: seek for yourselves, and in the training of your staffs, via such balance, to cultivate preventative measures against departing from the five watchwords of Reformation doctrine: sola scriptura (Scripture alone), sola fides (faith alone), sola gratia (grace alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), and soli Deo gloria (the glory of God alone). As Mark Noll warns in his excellent article, “The Earliest Protestants and the Reformation of Education”:

The Reformers would caution us that in using the educational resources of our age we do not fall captive to the spirit of the age. The Reformers made use of medieval and Renaissance insights into education. But their education program was a direct outgrowth of their theology. The chief guidelines for education were the chief guidelines for the Reformation itself: justification by grace through faith alone, the priesthood of all believers, and the supreme authority of the Bible.

The reason why this warning is in order is threefold: First, history reveals that many denominations received the impetus for doctrinal backsliding through their educational institutions. As Professor Dr. Pierre Corthial states in “Threats to the Christian Character of the Christian Institution”:

The question is asked, and must be asked: how could christian institutions established by sacrifices of every kind and by faithful, confessing Christians, how could and can they slip and degenerate, more or less rapidly, and come to minimize, dispute, contest if not actually to corrupt or repudiate and reject the basic principles on which they had been founded?

How could Harvard, established in 1636 with a well defined christian character, the first institution for higher education in America, how could it, within 65 years, deviate to such an extent that Yale is founded in 1701, only to enter from 1805 onwards, one century later, the dark fog of unitarianism?

How did Yale in its turn lose its way?

And how did Princeton, this fearless and wise bastion of the reformed faith, established in 1811 and coming to clear expression in the work of Archibald Alexander, the Hodges, Benjamin B. Warfield, W.H. Green, R. Robert Dick Wilson, J. Gresham Machen and so many others, how did it come to abandon its basic principles and its faithful tradition to justify in the end the establishment, in 1921, of Westminster Theological Seminary of Philadelphia?

Secondly, now is the best time for such an admonition when our schools are still consistently teaching for the most part, Reformed, orthodox doctrine in classroom instruction. This warning is too late subsequent to backsliding’s initiatory stages, for we have all witnessed entire denominations slide down the bank of truth into the swamp of doctrinal indifference within the space of one or two generations.

Thirdly, you presently face temptations of various kinds which may cause you to lean to imbalance in doctrine. One great temptation is a personal conviction that you must rectify imbalance of doctrine which you may discover in your students. For example, if you witness what you regard to be an unhealthy avoidance of the doctrine of responsibility in the homes of many of your students, you may well be tempted to correct imbalance with imbalance by neglecting Scripture’s proper stress on sovereignty. The net result may well be that you yourselves serve as a counterbalance to the previous imbalance in the lives of your students. The result of such an approach is student confusion and ultimately it bears the earmarks of church/school polarization, or even church division. With all due respect to Rev. Herman Hoeksema as a theologian whose writings at times reveal profound Reformed insights, I personally believe that he used this harmful approach to some degree in the formulation of the Protestant Reformed Church’s distinc-tives. Despite unfair treatment by the Christian Reformed Church, he also polarized his own viewpoint via imbalance, for when he witnessed the fatal mixing of common and special grace in the CRC, for example, Hoeksema overreacted by negating common grace altogether. The Puritan vision is much better: balance at all times, despite all past influences, and eventually, by God’s grace, truth will prevail. Just as the Christian must not fight evil with evil but overcome evil with good, so the Christian school is not called to oppose imbalance with imbalance, but to overcome imbalance with long-term balance.

The Puritan vision is much better: balance at all times, despite all past influences, and eventually, by God’s grace, truth will prevail.

A second temptation is your proneness to liberalize doctrines such as total depravity and divine sovereignty on account of your fervent desire to be an eternal blessing instrumentally to your students. Though godly zeal is always commendable, true godliness is always consistent with knowledge. Teach your students balanced truth conscientiously, zealously, prayerfully, but seek grace to leave the fruits of your endeavors in the hands of Him to whom it belongs — the God of saving, applicatory grace.

Finally, a third temptation you are faced with relates to the remarkable degree of influence God has given you over the minds and attitudes of your students, so vividly pictured by the poem, “Plastic Clay”:

I took a piece of plastic clay
And idly fashioned it one day.
And as my fingers pressed it still
It moved and yielded to my will.

I came again when days were past,
The bit of clay was hard at last.
The form I gave it still it bore
And I could fashion it no more.

I took a piece of living clay
And gently pressed it day by day.
And molded with my power and art
A young child’s soft and yielding heart.

I came again when years had gone,
It was a man I looked upon.
He still that early impress bore
And I could fashion it no more.

In sum, seek grace in your schools to be an asset to our congregations by acquainting the youth with balanced truth and by avoiding all imbalance in your over-all presentations.

A third application I would present you from Puritan balance is this: Though your bottom-line must read, “balance in the classroom,” do not hesitate to present particular doctrines emphatically on a regular, ongoing basis. Puritan preaching must teach you that balance does not negate allowing a full accent to fall on particular doctrines at particular times. Indeed, this is the key to presenting doctrine in qualitative fashion. Excellency is noted for its particularity. Teaching is most effective as you well know, when it zeroes in on one truth at a time. Thus, press home responsibility on one occasion, and stammer the great truth of sovereignty on another. Puritan-like, seek to cultivate deep appreciation for all true doctrine in both yourself and in your students. Present your students with a wide variety of truth, with an authentic world-and-life-view, so that, Puritan-like, they may catch the vision that the Word of God is a compass for all of life.

In short, the outgrowth of Puritan, Christ-centered motivation in godly education will be a striving after excellence in all areas of education and daily life for Christ’s sake, whether it be in the utilization of divine gifts, in the exercise of godly self-discipline, in the pursuit of academic endeavors, in the organization of school-policy, in the separation from worldly practices and thought patterns, in the adherence to Biblical morality, or in the instruction of scriptural authority. In all of these areas, and many more, true Christian education must strive after Biblical excellence for Christ’s sake, motivated by Christ Himself. As Senator Mark O. Hatfield, in a recent article, “Excellence:

Present your students with a wide variety of truth, with an authentic world-and-life-view, so that, Puritan-like, they may catch the vision that the Word of God is a compass for all of life.

The Christian Standard,” wrote, “Our first responsibility is to utilize and mobilize the resources, the capacity, the intellect, the drive, the ambitions, and all that God has given us, and to use them to the fullest to His honor. That comes first in whatever endeavor to which we are committed.”

(to be concluded)

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