James K. A. Smith’s Bad Argument Is An Indicator Of Improving Health In The CRC

by on April 21, 2025 | Comment

Regular readers of this space are aware that there is something of a confessional renaissance within the Christian Reformed Church in North America. For example, in 2023, Synod rejected decisively an appeal by a prominent progressive CRC congregation against Synod’s decision upholding orthodoxy on sexuality. More recently, thirty-three ministers and twenty-six congregations departed the CRC because Synod upheld Christian doctrine on human sexuality.1 Josh Christoffels, who has been directly involved in this confessional renaissance, has been chronicling it for the Heidelblog.

So we should not be surprised that progressives, those who disagree with Synod’s actions affirming orthodoxy on human sexuality, are defending the status quo ante. James K. A. Smith is a widely published Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University. He is well known and highly regarded for his work on “cultural liturgies.” He is also known for advocating a “Pentecostalized” Reformed spirituality.2 He has published an essay in the school newspaper in which he notes that the faculty have had to “learn a new language that includes words like synod and gravamina and status confessionis.”3 A gravamen is a complaint or an objection to a ruling of an ecclesiastical assembly, but that does not, for example, call for the confessional standards (the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort) to be revised. It is, in effect, asking for an exception to the standards. Status confessionis is a historic expression in the confessional Protestant churches (e.g., the Lutheran and Reformed) used when, for example, a minister believes that he is being asked to do or say something contrary to the confession. In that instance he might declare himself to be in statu confessionis (in a state of confession). Think of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms (April 1521) when he declared,

Since then your serene majesty and your lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.4

When Luther made this declaration before the emperor and the church authorities, he was in statu confessionis.

Smith recounts the 2022 Synodical decision to adopt a report affirming the historic Christian understanding of human sexuality regarding homosexuality and the reaction by those congregations who disagree with Synod. He notes that faculty members at Calvin University must sign the “Covenant for Faculty Members,” which “mirrors what pastors and elders in the Christian Reformed Church are required to sign. And that now means agreeing with Synod’s interpretation of human sexuality.”

He observes that he and others “signed on to the Reformed confessions over 20 years ago,” but back then it was his understanding that he was signing up “to learn.”5 In 2022, however, he argues, “Synod had moved the goal posts.” He raises the question of whether Calvin University should even remain a creature of the Christian Reformed Church. His account of the shift that is occurring within the CRC is illuminating:

Synod’s decision in 2022 was no surprise. The writing was on the wall. The clergy of the denomination are increasingly trained at conservative and evangelical seminaries and bring those sensibilities to the CRC. The denomination’s ethos has changed considerably and drifted away from the ethos we aspire to at Calvin.

He laments the shift and observes that his “intellectual heroes Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga” are now “dismissed and derided by CRC pastors,” and that it is “strange that we’re becoming a university where a celebrated Reformed philosopher like Wolterstorff, who affirms same-sex marriage, couldn’t be on the Calvin faculty.” He did not mention that neither Wolsterstorff nor Plantinga, for all their truly helpful work in their actual academic disciplines—Plantinga, for example, is one of the most important Christian philosophers of the last fifty years, and his work on epistemology (how we know what we know) contra the postmodernists has been truly beneficial—affirm the historic Christian doctrine of God. Both have articulated something like the Open Theism position, where the future is said to be genuinely open to God.6 Further, it was alleged by confessionalists and conservatives during the debates leading up to Synod 1995, when Synod decided in favor of the ordination of females, that there were those in the institutions of the denomination who took a caviler approach to confessional subscription.

If Smith is correct, that the ground has shifted and that Calvin University faculty are now being expected to uphold what they freely subscribed to when they took their positions, this can only be for the benefit of the Christian Reformed Church and the students of Calvin University.

Faculty members have sworn:

We also affirm three confessions—the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort—as historic Reformed expressions of the Christian faith, whose doctrines fully agree with the Word of God. These confessions continue to define the way we understand Scripture, direct the way we live in response to the gospel, and locate us within the larger body of Christ.

Grateful for these expressions of faith, we promise to be formed and governed by them. We heartily believe and will promote and defend their doctrines faithfully, conforming our preaching, teaching, writing, serving, and living to them.7

Further, faculty members have promised to “present or receive confessional difficulties” in a spirit of love, and that should a member “come to believe that a teaching in the confessional documents is not the teaching of God’s Word,” he will “communicate” his views to the Board of Trustees according to the faculty handbook, give a “full explanation” of his views, and “submit to the board’s judgment and authority.”

The Christian Reformed Church certainly drifted in the post-war period, and the Reformation that seems to be underway has only begun—this is the genuine sense of semper reformanda—but the Christian Reformed Church still affirms God’s Word as confessed in the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort. The confession of the church regarding human sexuality could not be clearer:

108. What does the seventh Commandment teach us?
That all unchastity is accursed of God, and that we should therefore loathe it with our whole heart, and live chastely and modestly, whether in holy wedlock or in single life.
109. Does God forbid nothing more in this commandment than adultery and such gross sins?
Since both our holy body and soul are temples of this Holy Spirit, it is His will that we keep both pure and holy. Therefore, He forbids all unchaste actions, gestures, words, thoughts, desires, and whatever may entice thereto.

By definition, same-sex attraction is unchaste, and homosexual behavior was, when the catechism was written, against the civil law and grounds for ecclesiastical discipline in the church. Both those things remained true in the West until very recently.

That former faculty members who have gone on to teach in prestigious universities (e.g., Notre Dame and Yale) would no longer be comfortable at Calvin University is not an argument as much as it is a fallacious appeal to cultural authority (argumentum verecundiam) and an attempt to shame readers of the Chimes (argumentum ad baculum). Readers of the Chimes and members of the Christian Reformed Church should be much more concerned about what God’s Word says about human sexuality and sexual ethics. They ought also to be concerned to uphold ecumenical Christian orthodoxy on the doctrine of God and the Reformed confession concerning continuing revelation (e.g., Belgic Confession 7, 32).

As challenging as it is to be in the midst of controversy in the church, it can sometimes be healthy. Remember, the Reformation itself was controversial and disruptive, and yet where would we be now had Luther, Bucer, and Calvin not stood for the final authority and sufficiency of holy Scripture against church tradition (and continuing revelation)? As disappointing as Smith’s article is or should be to tuition-paying parents, it is ultimately a good thing because it signals that something healthy is happening within the CRC. The denomination is taking a stand on the Word of God as confessed by the churches and, in that way, recovering its confessional muscles—and exercise is always good for the body.

Notes

  1. Yonat Shimron, quoted in “33 Ministers And 26 Congregations Leave The CRC For The RCA After Synod Requires Churches To Uphold Christian Doctrine On Sexuality,” Heidelblog.
  2. R. Scott Clark, “Reformed And Pentecostal?”
  3. James K. A. Smith, “Christian Reformed? Or Reformed Christian? Should Calvin remain a denominational university?” Chimes, April 7, 2025.
  4. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 32: Career of the Reformer II, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 112.
  5. This might be, in part, because his undergraduate education was in a school in the Dispensational tradition.
  6. See R. Scott Clark, “Does God Change?”
  7. “Covenant for Faculty Members,” Calvin University.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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