Inbox: The Welcome Matt

Lynette writes:

“Hi. I just came across a few of your articles where you address some of the views held by pastor Matt Littlefield. In the article entitled ‘Robbers, Robbers, Everywhere’, Matt categorically states that he is not reformed: ‘Indeed, many Christians who would say they are Reformed, or Calvinist (which I am not myself) …’ However, I noticed that you consider him to have ‘Reformed leanings’ and also refer to him as ‘Reformed Baptist’. Do you base this on his articles and him quoting Calvin and so on? My spouse and I also think he is reformed, but it seems odd that he does not count himself as such, so I was just wondering what you make of this?

Ah, Matt Littlefield.

Guilty as Charged!

I actually like Matt a lot. On the right scriptural subjects, he’s an excellent expositor and, I think, a generally decent human being, though we’ve never met. His videos on YouTube reveal an unpretentious, enthusiastic, charismatic young man filled with desire to serve the Lord and to be a blessing to God’s people. We have had a couple of brief social media exchanges under our online pseudonyms, always pleasantly.

Lynette is quite correct that I have referred to Matt’s “Reformed leanings” and his being a “Reformed Baptist”. If I’m wrong about that, my bad, but I’m not 100% sure I am … yet. All the same, I’ve linked those two phrases to the ComingUntrue posts they appear in, so if I’m guilty of mislabeling our Australian friend, mea culpa, Matt! I don’t much like being mislabeled either.

However, I do think it’s possible to read Matt’s quote above (“Indeed, many Christians who would say they are Reformed, or Calvinist (which I am not myself) …”) as disclaiming Calvinism without necessarily disclaiming Reformed Theology. That is to say, the “which I am not myself” could be intended to modify only “Calvinist”, rather than both designations. He does use the Oxford comma, so that may have been his intention.

Make sense?

The Reformed Package

Doug Wilson describes himself as postmill, Calvinist and Reformed. My experience is that these things generally (though not always) go together. Errors come in clusters, if I may be so rude, though, to be fair to our fellow believers, we often find much good packaged with the mistakes.

I’m far from expert on the ins and outs of Reformed theological tradition, but the usually-reliable GotQuestions site has this post explaining Reformed Theology that strongly implies Calvinism and the permanent replacement of Israel by the church are very much part of the Reformed package. Probably for this reason, I must confess that I occasionally have used “Reformed” as sloppy shorthand for “Replacement Theologian” or “Supersessionist”, which Matt definitely is (and which the second article you linked to demonstrates in spades; more on that Thursday). He conflates the church with Israel repeatedly, which a search on our homepage for posts about “Littlefield” will quickly confirm, very much in his own words, from his own articles about the church and Israel. If Matt is not full-on Reformed, then he certainly exhibits pretty much every symptom of that affiliation, Calvinism thankfully apart.

So yes, I think you and your spouse have nailed it, Lynette: Matt has more in common with the Reformed tradition than opposed to it, even assuming he doesn’t count himself as part of it. I appreciate you bringing this up.