Reformed - more or less

Words change their meaning. This is inevitable and in itself not a bad thing. 'Peculiar' people in 2013 are not what they may been in some churches in East Anglia in the nineteenth century. 'Painful' preaching today is not the desirable thing a Puritan might have thought it to be in 1650. 'Gay' will never again be the expression of light-heartedness that it was until even fairly recently.

'Evangelical' is a word that we realised many years ago was changing its meaning. It was broadening out and thinning down. It was no longer as useful for carrying the freight of doctrinal reliability and faithfulness to Scripture as it once was.

Is 'Reformed' going the same way? This has been asked here and there for some time now. Do we really know what 'Reformed' means? No label of this sort is going to have an impermeable ring of meaning around it; there will always be grey areas. At some point however, it seems that the defined area has suffered encroachment by so many qualifications that one wonders what is left.

For example (an old chestnut)both paedobaptists and Baptists claim to be Reformed.

Charismatics and cessationists claim to be Reformed.

Anglicans and non-conformists claim to be Reformed.

Those who hold to the regulative principle of worship, and increasingly many who do not, claim to be Reformed.

Five point Calvinists, and many who are four or three point (and the optional points vary) claim to be Reformed.

A variant of the above, those who hold to limited atonement and Amyraldians, both claim to be Reformed.

Those who hold to the abiding validity of the moral law as set out in the Ten Commandments, and increasingly, those who do not, claim to be Reformed.

Those who believe in the Lord's Day as a continuation of the creation ordinance and the fourth commandment, claim to be Reformed, as do increasingly many who do not.

Those who hold the doctrine of the church to require the marks of preaching, the sacraments and discipline claim to be Reformed, but increasingly many whose view of the church seems to be somewhat looser, claim to be Reformed.

Those who are strictly covenantal and believe in the covenant of works claim to be Reformed, but many also claim to be Reformed who do not hold to such a covenant, and are only loosely covenantal at all in theology.

It seems to me therefore that if I want to use the word Reformed to define myself, and to enter fellowship with others with whom I know I will agree on major issues, or establish a church and invite people to join it knowing what it believes, the word Reformed is a lot less useful than it used to be. This may of course in itself not be a bad thing. Words change. Maybe we need to think of something else. But it is not a matter of unconcern if the slippage of the meaning is indicative of an indifference to sound biblical theology, clearly thought through and sacrificially maintained.

What is the irreducible minimum of the word 'Reformed'? Or is that the right question? Is that too centre-bounded?Should we be going all out and setting out our stall? Boundary bounding? Maybe the word is worth recovering.