ETS 2018 in Review

Thanksgiving is almost upon us…which means it’s time for my annual review of the ETS conference.

This year’s Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting was held in Denver, Colorado. After spending 6 years in downtown Dallas and visiting 8 other conference sites, including Baltimore, Chicago, and New Orleans, it turns out there were more panhandlers in Denver than anywhere. But the city was fairly nice, public transportation was very helpful, and the weather gorgeous for mid-November. The Rockies were only visible to me on the train ride in and out of town, but overall it was a nice venue.

The theme for the meeting was the Holy Spirit. While I only heard a few presentations on that subject, they fell along very familiar lines. ETS is by and large a meeting of academic types, so even those with very charismatic views tend to be tame. I didn’t see or hearing anything out of the ordinary, but then I didn’t attend many of the themed sections.

Prophets Today?

But I did kick off the conference with a panel discussion on spiritual gifts, featuring Sam Storms, Tom Schreiner, Ligon Duncan, and Andrew Wilson. Wilson and Storms defended a continuationist view of the more controversial gifts, centered in a forthcoming book by Wilson. Schreiner and Duncan presented a cessationist response, from their respective Baptist and Reformed traditions. Their discussion, which was in most cases charitable and irenic, especially centered on whether prophecy was a gift for today.

I’m familiar with both positions, and I fall somewhere in between, personally. I believe the gifts only appear to validate the Gospel in a new region, and that they are not normal practice in Western churches. (Although God can heal and give tongues and do whatever else He wants…I’m certainly not going to stand in His way!) I’m not opposed to continuationists the way I would have been in my youth, but when it comes to prophecy I remain utterly unconvinced that there are two different kinds of prophets. Nothing I heard at this session satisfied my concerns about the standard for prophets in Deuteronomy. But if they want to insist that you should seek the gift of prophecy in accordance with Scripture, go right ahead! Just don’t redefine prophecy in the process, if you please.

The Spirit in the Early Church

That afternoon I attended just one paper, that of my former professor, Dr. Svigel. He spoke on how the Holy Spirit is portrayed in the Apostolic Fathers, which was pretty tame except for the Shepherd of Hermas (and trying to make sense of the Spirit in the Shepherd seems a bit like trying to talk theology with a drunk). It was nice to see later orthodoxy affirmed in these early texts.

The plenary session that night, delivered by Michael Haykin, also focused on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the early church, but this time telling the story of the Cappadocians.

Denominational Divides

The next day began, as always, with the DTS Alumni Breakfast, where I received a beautiful wooden copy of our school song. I ended up sitting next to a man whose research on the failures of Northern Baptist conservatives apparently proved helpful to the Southern Baptist conservatives as they planned the resurgence of the 1970s and ’80s. Not a bad legacy.

Next stop was a section on the Synod of Dordt, which turns out to have been convened 400 years and one day prior. It seemed to me like the perfect time to brush up on my Dortian history.

I felt like some combination of traitor and spy sitting there among the very Reformed after breaking bread with my fellow dispensationalists, but no one teased or mocked. I even had a nice conversation with a nearby Southern Baptist. Led by Joel Beeke, Robert Godfrey, Chad Van Dixoorn, and a few others I didn’t recognize, this section was very informative and gave me lots of new avenues to explore.

For example, I had always heard that Dordt’s five-point Calvinism was actually a stronger statement than Calvin would have made himself. But here that was challenged as a myth that developed in English circles. (I suppose I have some reading to do to see who is right.) I also learned about the relationship between the Reformation in France, England, and the Netherlands, and how they interacted with one another, with special attention given to the strange figure of Huguenot Pierre De Moulin.

If I had stuck around for the afternoon session I could have heard more about the relationship between Dordt and Westminster. But I had other plans.

Before I move on, I will say this section was responsible for one of my impulse buys this year Beeke’s Reformed Preaching. His discussion of history, doctrine, and what makes for good “experiential” preaching made me long to hear more.

Plenary Gold

That afternoon were two back-to-back plenary sessions. The first of these was round 2 of ETS, where Craig Keener gave a very colorful and humorous treatment of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 and its implications for today. I don’t know that any of his exegesis changed my mind either, but he was clearly a continuationist interested in making his case. I say colorful and humorous because his presentation featured a slideshow with rainbow font over fireworks in the background, broken up by occasional humorous pictures and quips. It was an entertaining section, and Keener is definitely formidable, but again, I’m not sure I learned anything. However, it did close in an extended time of prayer, which was refreshing.

The second plenary was for EPS, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, and was an excellent philosophical defense of penal substitutionary atonement from William Lane Craig. I’ve seen Craig many times in the last decade, and he never disappoints. But this time was especially helpful because I recently learned that penal substitutionary atonement is under attack by NT Wright.

While I still admire Wright as a pastor and communicator, I was taken aback. I’ve tried to understand the New Perspective on Paul, and while I disagree with it, I’m not any more troubled by it than some of the other doctrines some denominations hold to. But I agree that penal substitution is an essential and recurring theme in Scripture. Wright appears far too ready to rewrite the faith, and for this I’m deeply disappointed.

Craig has a book out on the subject, so if you want the nuts and bolts of his case, I would look there. Most of what he was doing is defending the logic of penal substitution against its detractors.

In Praise of Teachers

The final section I attended was on theological education and pedagogy, with Al Mohler, Timothy George, and Graham Cole. It was a fantastic way to end the conference. Mohler and George both reflected on their own upbringing and the educators who impacted them the most, which was very uplifting (although at times bittersweetly so…it’s hard to compare with the people who poured into them).

Cole focused a bit more on his experience as an educator, which was more in line with the way the panel discussion at the end went. Mohler gave a list of qualities he thought made the best educators:

1. Curiosity
2. Fidelity
3. Longevity
4. Integrity
5. Charity
6. Clarity
7. Collegiality
8. Humility*

*suggested by one of the audience members and readily accepted by Mohler

Most of their institutional application was more appropriate for theological education in particular than for Christian education in general. But I did learn a great deal more here. It was easily the most applicable section I attended, and I plan to continue chewing on it for months to come.

Conclusion

This turned out to be one of my favorite ETS meetings so far, not because any particular session was better than those I attended in years past, or because the company of old friends one year is better than the others. But the special bonus this year was making genuine connections with a number of strangers. Once upon a time I tried to play the game of impressing people and making the right connections, and since leaving my studies I’ve become familiar with being brushed off or sized up and found wanting. I’ve come to loathe that side of academia, the calculating and posturing side. So getting to experience genuine fellowship with people who simply love God and love study and service—that was a special treat. I hope it’s a sign of better things to come.

And I can’t resist noting that in this conference on the Holy Spirit, the studies on the Spirit didn’t add all that much to my walk with God, but the fellowship of believers in the Spirit did.