Book Review: Letters to a Young Calvinist by @jameskasmith

A while back, I posted when I won James K A Smith’s Letters To A Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition.

Jamie Smith himself even took the time to answer my question via facebook about Reformed Theology and race, which I thought was really cool:

Today, I offer a few thoughts on the book.

Overall, I enjoyed the very pastoral tone of the book, it was pastoral without being too preachy. It’s format may have given me an idea for a future endeavor. As I am trying to give Smith’s Who’s Afraid of Post-Modernism another shot, Smith is slowly becoming one of my favorite Reformed (and Charismatic) Christian thinkers. The book is not meant as an apology for the Reformed tradition; rather, it is a humble explanation for what being and doing Reformed Christianity entails. Smith is quite upfront about the habits of cage-stage calvinists and their snarky ways. Much of the descriptions that Jamie provides are quite on cue. I appreciated the delineation that Smith makes between the simple “Westminster Reformed” Southern Baptists and the Belgic Confessional Reformed (mostly Presbyterians (Letter XII). Smith leaves himself vulnerable to criticisms by fundamentalists who decry the use of the incarnational (in Letter X), but from me, he gets nothing but props.

I enjoyed this book dearly for its honesty (and really, that’s about all I ask from writers, that they are upfront about their beliefs/agenda/subjectivity), and coming clean about the Reformed tradition’s troubled history with race was just what the doctor (okay okay, just I) ordered. In the chapter entitled, “God’s ‘Social’ Gospel,” Smith emphasizes (and rightly so!) that God’s economy of salvation is people-centric since the biblical authors’ use of YOU is primarily plural. In Texas, we could just translate it as Ya’ll. God in essence creates a third race a new humanity, a people Jewish and Gentile; thus, the Reformed tradition condemns what occurred in South Africa (page 69), especially with the Belhar Confession where the church admits its sin.

I know what you are thinking. Does all of this generosity and praise mean that I am headed back towards Geneva? Indeed, no it does not! The whole Jonathan Edwardsean/ John Piper self-glorifying vain g*d thing is something that will never sit right with me– I just have not found the right words yet, especially since its so dependent on the words of a creed that I do not adhere to.

I hope someday that James K. A. Smith will contribute a work that fully articulates his view of being a peopledom of God and how that it can help all persons engaged in anti-racist theologies.

RodtRDH

Formerly known as Rod of Alexandria, Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. It must be that angry puppy.

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