New Calvinism in an Age of Enchantment and AI

The New Calvinist movement needs renewal, not through innovation but the rich sacramental theology of Old Calvinism. As enchantment returns and AI emerges, these deeper resources of the confessional Reformed tradition are an indispensable missional and gospel-centered gift.

New Calvinism is a movement fostering “gospel-centered” partnerships in a Reformed-Protestant key across evangelical churches. To be “gospel-centered” means that the movement prizes the doctrinal clarity of the gospel from a Reformed perspective and then prioritizes the clear communication of that gospel (in preaching, apologetics and evangelism, discipleship practices) within and outside the church. Despite the name, New Calvinism is largely shaped by Jonathan Edwards and his theology of affections.

As a Presbyterian minister committed to a Reformed ecclesiology, I see this informal coalition as a net positive. The kingdom of God is more than Presbyterian and Reformed (P&R) denominations, and crossing denominational lines for the sake of a clear and centered gospel ministry is a good thing.

Yet the movement needs refreshing. 2025 marks the 20^th anniversary of The Gospel Coalition (TGC; the flagship New Calvinism organization) and the “The Young, Restless, and Reformed” movement is no longer characterized by resurgent energy. Jake Meador observed that the movement attempted to capture the evangelical center, only to encounter the fracturing of evangelicalism. Similarly, Aaron Renn recently reflected on the movement’s maturation and accompanying diminished influence outside its own adherents. 

An exemplar of needed refreshment is TGC’s “Theological Vision for Ministry,” a now 20-year-old statement on what gospel-centered ministry looks like in the present. But 2005 was a long time ago and the world has changed. One of the strengths of New Calvinism was that it kept the gospel foregrounded while thinking clearly about doing ministry amid the complexities of the modern world. But that becomes a weakness when visions are for ministry in a world that is two decades out of date.

In a significant development towards this end, a large summit of New Calvinist pastors gathered at Spanish River Church in February to initiate a renewed Evangelical-Reformed (i.e. gospel-centered) cooperative mission movement. Spanish River Church, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America, was a crucial founding church in the Acts 29 network and a catalyst for the start of New Calvinism. The summit cast a concrete vision of how to address the changing cultural landscape with a reenergized gospel-centered ministry.

This is where Old Calvinism comes in.

“Old Calvinism,” meaning the historic P&R churches, is not just characterized by Reformed soteriology, but also sacramentology, ecclesiology, and liturgy. Old Calvinist churches hold that the sacraments are means of grace: effective means of salvation. That by the blessing of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, as they are received in faith, the sacraments confer the grace and reality that they represent, which is Jesus Christ himself. In baptism the recipient is ingrafted into Christ, has their sins washed away by his blood, and is regenerated by the Holy Spirit. At the Lord’s Supper the worthy partaker feeds on the true body and blood of Christ and thereby receives him and his benefits.

This is the confessional language in the Westminster Standards (Presbyterian) and the Three Forms of Unity (Reformed). The sacraments, as signs and seals of the new covenant, are central to the gospel: by them the grace of the gospel, which is Christ himself, is displayed, applied and effected, and received by faith. The sacraments center the gospel in the life of the church and in the world. The new covenant is in the body and blood of Christ, and the Great Commission foregrounds baptism; these things are central to the historic Reformed understanding of the gospel. P&R types should be unabashedly upfront about this, not just in our doctrine, but in our gospel proclamations.

While P&R pastors and churches still held to their convictions, the New Calvinist coalition intentionally backgrounded the sacramental and ecclesial dimension of the Reformed tradition, treating them as secondary or tertiary issues to hold the movement together. Even though the movement was Reformed, the cross-denominational coalition privileged Baptists over historic P&R churches, due to a combination of sheer numbers and Presbyterians being willing to downplay some doctrinal distinctives for the sake of missional partnership. For instance, TGC’s “Foundation Documents” have minimal references to the sacraments, and what little they have are either broad statements about what they represent, or, in the single passing reference in TGC’s “Theological Vision for Ministry,” are included in a list of formative practices. Likewise, Tim Keller’s textbook on gospel-centered ministry, Center Church, relegates the sacraments to formative community practices and opportunities to proclaim the gospel.

Yet in confessional Reformed theology the sacraments are not incidentals to gospel ministry, but central to gospel ministry. The sacraments are more than “visible words” which proclaim the gospel. With the sacraments, God not only speaks, but God acts. The sacraments are not just reminders or challenges related to the content of the gospel message, but a divinely established avenue by which the gospel is applied to the heart of the partaker so as to conform them by the Holy Spirit into the image of Christ.

Presbyterians in the gospel-centered coalition should press for a re-centering and prioritization of Reformed sacramentology as part of a recalibrated New Calvinist-evangelical collaboration — not as something annexed to gospel-centered ministry, but as part of its core identity. Yet in Spanish River’s renewed call for gospel-centered ministry the sacraments receive a single passing reference as things that should be administered in a healthy, biblical church. This is not renewal, but rehashing.

Besides doctrinal conviction and wishful thinking on my part, why should this recalibration happen? The gospel-centered movement has always required a missional impetus to justify emphases, and relitigating old doctrinal debates doesn’t fit that bill. And there are at least two big reasons: re-enchantment and AI.

Re-enchantment, a thesis that has been the subject of much discourse, holds that declining traditional religion in the West has been replaced not with a materialistic secularism, but an increased belief in “weird” spiritual and supernatural realities whose viability had been suppressed by modernity. As Christian Smith demonstrates in Why Religion Went Obsolete, re-enchantment is a significant factor in the decline of traditional religion, which appears to inadequately address the phenomenon. This began with Gen-X and is increasingly true for each subsequent generation.

Reformed theology understands the sacraments as being fundamentally spiritual. The sacraments are not just divinely inspired object lessons, but the physical being united to the spiritual and us receiving it. And the sacraments are not just one supernatural talisman among many, but signs and seals of the true God who comes to us in the person of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. This is truly spiritual, and no other supernatural experience is actually better.

The missional opportunity to proclaim the gospel of the union of heaven and earth, begun in the incarnation of Jesus as he fills creation with his Spirit, testified and conferred in the sacraments of his body and blood until he comes again in glory, is immense.

In a striking moment at the most recent TGC conference, John Piper read a prayer composed by ChatGPT in the voice and theology of D.A. Carson. The composition was quite good. Piper’s critique was that there was no feeling or praise in it. That is a strong and consistent Edwardsian, New Calvinist reaction. Whatever “thinking” the AI may have done, it has no affection for God. But as an explanation of what makes people unique, distinct from any sort of artificial intelligence, it doesn’t altogether work.

Perhaps AI will never truly think, feel, or will; perhaps that’s impossible. But you don’t have to believe in the predictions of AI 2027 to recognize that the things we once thought were the exclusive domain and character of humans may be possessed —or at least mimicked in such a perfect facsimile as to be indistinguishable from human thinking, feeling, and willing —by AI.

The question of “what makes humans different and meaningfully distinct from AI?” is going to become pressing and existential. And the answer is not thinking, feeling, or willing, whether or not AI actually surpasses humans. The answer is that only people created in the image and likeness of God can have faith in him, be united to Christ, and have communion with God. Only humans can participate in the divine.

Perhaps one day AI-powered robots will possess consciousness and be capable of eating. But no matter how advanced they get, even if they eat the bread and drink the wine, no AI machine will ever be able to eat and drink the body and blood of Christ. This is the 21^st century update of Aquinas’ teaching that mice and dogs may be able to eat the physical substance of the sacrament, but never its true substance, who is Christ. No bot will ever be indwelt and baptized by the Holy Spirit. The missional impetus for centering the sacramental dimension of the gospel is that they are the visible and tangible deliverance of God to man, something that no AI could ever give or receive.

This is central to the mission and ministry of the Church. The gospel is that we are redeemed by Christ for union with God in the life of his Spirit. This redemptive union and life is signed, sealed, exhibited, and conferred in the sacraments. The nature of the sacraments should be more important to New Calvinism than the questions of who gets baptized with how much water and how often the Lord’s Supper is administered. So what could an Old Calvinist, gospel-centered-sacramentalism look like in a refreshed New Calvinist movement?

First, the obvious: P&R members of the movement should press for Reformed sacramentology to be prioritized in doctrinal statements and ministry philosophies. When the movement discusses being gospel-centered (preaching, apologetics and evangelism, discipleship practices) Reformed, confessional, sacramental theology should be included. On a practical level, centering the sacraments with a Reformed understanding allows an Evangelical-Reformed alliance to expand its denominational boundaries for the sake of the kingdom. In the same way that New Calvinism itself was initially an expanded, cross-denominational movement, Reformed sacramentology allows the movement to expand again.

Second, the church should clearly talk to its people about what the sacraments are and what God does through them. We should stress with Martin Luther that we are the baptized ones: We are in Christ because we are baptized into him. This is critical to discipleship. We are washed, we are filled, we are Christ’s. This is the Westminsterian idea of “improving” our baptism —we grow into who we truly are by relying on the Spirit who has been given to us as we rest upon what Jesus has done for us. When we come to the Table we have true communion with God because he grants us “so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.”

Finally, to the world, our gospel-centered evangelism should have a sacramental dimension. Would you be cleansed? Would you be filled with the Spirit? Would you pass from death to life? Be baptized into Jesus in the name of the Trinity. We should unashamedly maintain the Petrine order in our gospel proclamation: Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Would you partake of the divine? Would you receive the transcendent and most real? Be redeemed and united to God? Receive the body and blood of Christ. Doing this would refresh and strengthen the New Calvinist movement for ministry in the years to come.