Jupiter Marble-NASA
“He’ll be coming and going” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down–and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.” ― The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
“Always winter and never Christmas.” This is how CS Lewis described Narnia at the beginning of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. This was the world before Aslan returned. Alsan, the hoped for king who would bring a thaw to this cold world.
Here is how he is described in the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia:
“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
I think Lewis would be on the side of Mcknight and Bates in this disagreement. Let’s see if you agree.
8 Years ago, Dee was frustrated with (and writing about) the confusing uses of the word *gospel* by The Gospel Coalition, Acts 29, T4G and 9 Marks.
There is an interesting discussion going on between Scot McNight (read his blog Jesus Creed) and Matthew Bates (associate professor of theology, Quincy University) on one side and Greg Gilbert ( Senior Pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky) on the other. Greg Gilbert represents The Gospel Coalition and 9 Marks while McKnight and Bates would not categorize themselves as Calvinists.I know that most classically Reformed theologians would not view Baptists as Reformed. I’m not going there in this post. Besides, I’m Lutheran and that confuses all sides. 😕
8 years ago I wrote T4G Cooks Up Gospel Ratatouille and Serves a Lukewarm Gender Gospel At that time, I was concerned about groups utilizing the word *gospel* to describe themselves. What they really seemed to be saying to me was “We are more faithful ands gospelly than the rest of you guys.”
Interestingly, in this post I mentioned Greg Gilbert who makes a starring role in this post. Here are some things I wrote in that post. (Unless noted, all quotes were from TGC’s website back in 2012 when I wrote this post.)
Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis has an interesting way of sucking people into his “interpretation” of Scripture. He claims that, if one does not see the age of the earth his way, one is in danger of denying the doctrine of the atonement. What question should a Christian ask at this point? We should determine what he means by the doctrine of the atonement. All orthodox Christians affirm the doctrine of the atonement which, simply put, is because mankind was helpless in our sin, we needed a Savior who could atone or make reparation for our sin. That, of course, is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
However, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis here alludes that the age of the earth is part of that atonement. What is he really saying? That you are most likely not a Christian if you don’t buy his young earth doctrine of the atonement meld.
…I decided to ask the question, “How does T4G define the word “Gospel?” Surely, they have a rigid definition on the website since they are all about the Gospel, right? Well, unless I am mistaken, I cannot find one definition of this important word on the T4G website. How could that be? However, I did find the word “gospel” used 27 times on this page. And it was used in many different ways: “Recovering the Gospel” (I didn’t know it was lost) and “Gospel Church” are two such examples.
1. Apparently the Gospel is primarily the concern of men (as opposed to women.)
“We are brothers.We are brothers in Christ united in one great cause – to stand together for the Gospel. We are convinced that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been misrepresented, misunderstood, and marginalized in many Churches and among many who claim the name of Christ. “
2. These men are going to band together and “recover” the church. What in the world are they recovering?
“Compromise of the Gospel has led to the preaching of false gospels, the seduction of many minds and movements, and the weakening of the Church’s Gospel witness.
We(men) believe that the answer to this confusion and compromise lies in a comprehensive recovery and reaffirmation of the Gospel – and in Christians banding together in Gospel Churches that display God’s glory in this fallen world.
We(men) stand together for the Gospel – and for a full and gladdening recovery of the Gospel in the Church. We are convinced that such a recovery will be evident in the form of faithful Gospel Churches, each bearing faithful witness to the glory of God and the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
From there I discussed the problems of the church throughout the ages, including the early church which had the witness of the Apostles. But somehow, The Gospel Coalition was going to do it right and better.
So, I guess these men are trying to usher in a new age of the unchallenged Gospel that hasn’t been seen before. Doesn’t Scripture say something about false teachers always being around? Well, these “anointed” men must think more clearly than this non-brother, right?
There were a number of other things I noted.
Faithful discipleship is limited to those who are in a Gospel Church.
“We deny that any Christian can truly be a faithful disciple apart from the teaching, discipline, fellowship, and accountability of a congregation of fellow disciples, organized as a Gospel Church.”
So, Paul in prison was not faithful? What about those who must practice their faith quietly in some countries who would kill them if they openly proclaimed the faith?
…The Lord’s Supper cannot be administered outside of Church discipline?
“We further deny that the Lord’s Supper can faithfully be administered apart from the right practice of Church discipline.”
Huh? What is the “right practice of church discipline?” Is this another one of those “gospel” code words which means you are out unless you do it this way but they don’t tell you what this way means?
I even discussed how they claim that the Gospel witness is ruined if a church allows a women to function outside of their defined role (no women elders.)
Since that time I have watched, time and time again, the mixing of the word *gospel* with the pet theological issue asu jour.
These guys are even trying to tie word *gospel* to smoking cessation.* I kid you not. The guy who wrote this is a Masters University graduate and a biblical counselor.
You like smoking. It’s your habit, but you know it’s an addiction because you can’t walk away from it. Smoking controls you. You also love Jesus, but you’re not sure how to connect the Gospel to your smoking habit.
Scot McKnight and Matthew Bates take on the dumbing down of the Gospel by the various gospel groups and get the typical, ho hum *gospel* feedback.
I have long been frustrated by the dumbing down of the Gospel to fit our many takes on theology. For example, Andy Davis of First Baptist Church, one of the inner circle of the gospel boys, called the folks at his church who supported women deacons as *wicked and unregenerate.* One of them was my friend, a wonderful Christian woman.
Here are the posts I’m looking at.
- Good News? Are T4G/TGC Leaders Starting To Change Their Gospel?: Is T4G shifting on the gospel? Looks like it-Matthew Bates
- A T4G 2020 Sermon: What Is and Isn’t the Gospel -Greg Gilbert
- King Jesus Gospel: Mere Kingship? No: A recent response to Matthew Bates and Me Misses the Mark-Scot McKnight
I will quote from each post and let their words make their points. Then I want to hear from you. However, I want to make a point at the end of the post which is based on my years of watching these self styled gospel leaders.
1. Good News? Are T4G/TGC Leaders Starting To Change Their Gospel?: Is T4G shifting on the gospel? Looks like it-Matthew Bates. Please be sure to read the entire argument if you wish to engage.
The true biblical gospel climaxes with the proclamation that Jesus has become the Christ, Lord of all, the king (Acts 2:36; 3:20-23; 10:36).
…the offer of forgiveness of sins via substitutionary atonement is part of the gospel proper, but your or my personal reception of that forgiveness is not. It’s is a benefit of the gospel. The same with justification. Scripture never says our justification by faith is part of the gospel. Righteousness is revealed to be among the gospel’s benefits (Rom 1:17). Meanwhile “faith” (pistis) is how we respond to the gospel of Jesus’s kingship, so its saving benefits are actualized. Getting this right has huge practical payoffs for disciple-making and ecumenism.
…Although the Bible never says that our justification by faith is even part of the gospel, let alone its center, for years T4G keynote speakers have been pressing this claim. R.C. Sproul stated, “justification by faith is essential to the gospel”
…He(Greg Gilbert) starts by egregiously misrepresenting my work and that of Scot McKnight, falsely claiming that our books “take the story of Jesus’s kingship and divorce it from the realities of personal salvation, forgiveness, atonement, and justification.” What? Are you kidding? Even to say that Gilbert has caricatured or lampooned our position gives him too much credit. Greg Gilbert should retract.
But the nonsense heightens. Gilbert claims that our books argue that “the gospel is that Jesus is king and not that he wins salvation for his people.” But the truth is not just otherwise. It is the opposite.
…T4G / TGC leaders have been misidentifying the true center and framework of the gospel for years. (Dee highlighted this part) They have put something that the Bible does not even say is part of the gospel at its center instead. It remains to be seen whether MacArthur, Piper, Mohler, Gilbert, and others who have placed justification by faith at the center of the gospel, largely at the expense of Jesus’s kingship, will admit their mistakes.
2. A T4G 2020 Sermon: What Is and Isn’t the Gospel -Greg Gilbert
…I was recently re-reading two books that make this charge, Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel and Matthew Bates’s Gospel Allegiance: What Faith in Jesus Misses for Salvation.
…the reason I bring these two books up is because, in their own way, they each make the same charge against those of us in this Reformed evangelical camp, if I can paint in broad strokes for a minute. That charge is that in centering the proclamation of the gospel around Jesus’s penal substitutionary atonement for our sins, and on justification through faith alone in Christ alone, we are ignoring and sublimating what is actually the heart of the gospel.
…(they are saying) It’s often something more like, “The gospel is that Jesus is king and not that he wins salvation for his people.”
…But have you ever noticed what kind of imagery suffuses the passion narratives? It’s not priestly imagery; it’s kingly imagery. As he’s scourged by the Romans, Jesus is dressed in a purple robe and given a reed as a scepter. As he’s nailed to the cross, Jesus is coronated with a crown of thorns. As he hung dying, the sign over Jesus’s head read, “King of the Jews.”
…The good news proclaimed in Genesis is not just the coming of the king. The good news is that the arrival of the king will mean salvation—it will mean an end to the curse, and a reversal of the death and separation from God that resulted from sin. That’s what the king does.
…Sure, Israel had an understanding of vicarious suffering—one thing suffering for another, dying so that another wouldn’t have to. That’s the whole lesson of the sacrificial system. But that was the realm of the priests, not the king. In fact, it was forbidden for the king to do the duties of the priest. When King Uzziah tried, God struck him with leprosy and he died outside the city in a village of lepers. That’s one of the lowest points of Davidic Dynasty.
…I hope you can see now why I say that a gospel of mere kingship is insufficient. It is insufficient because it doesn’t do justice to the very role and responsibility of the King of Israel. To be King was to represent and suffer in the place of your people. That’s what Jesus does. So by all means preach Jesus as King. Declare his dominion and power and authority. Talk about the new heavens and new earth, the kingdom of justice and righteousness that he himself is establishing.
But remember that the good news is not the coming of the King, full stop; it is the coming of the King to suffer, to die, to rise, and to save.
…This is what kingship means—to be king is to suffer, to die, to rise, and to save. It’s strange to see evangelicals struggle so often with kingdom and cross.
…Talk about Jesus’ conquest of evil. Write about his coming reign. But don’t pretend that all those things are glorious good news all by themselves. They’re not. The bare fact that Jesus is going to rule the world with perfect righteousness is not good news to me; it’s terrifying news, because I am not righteous! I’m one of the enemies he’s coming to crush! (ed. note: Wut?)
3. King Jesus Gospel: Mere Kingship? No: A recent response to Matthew Bates and Me Misses the Mark-Scot McKnight
One would expect that The Gospel Coalition (TGC) and Together for the Gospel (T4G) folks would bark back at us because what Bates and I write challenges their perception of the gospel. It is not that we deny the truth of what they teach about salvation but that their ordering of the gospel is not identical to the gospel as presented in the New Testament. Their gospel, no matter how you cut the cards, is (or at least has been) closer to the Four Spiritual Laws, the Bridge, or the Sinner’s Prayer Gospel (the last one has been deeply criticized by leading SBC voices). We don’t think that’s how the gospel is understood in the NT. We don’t deny the truths of redemption at work in those gospel approaches, however.
…Had Gilbert written in his book what he wrote in this blog post about king Jesus (King in the garden, King in Israel, King in the prophets, and the King in all his beauty) I would not have used him as an illustration of the soterian gospel. His sketch, nuances respected, is not unlike the ones I have in both King Jesus Gospel and Kingdom Conspiracy.
…But making justification “central” is a problem. To begin with, it tends to be explanatory: one can make anything central if one uses it to explain everything else. But it’s unbiblical because one finds the term “justification” three times in the Gospels (Luke 10:29; 16:15; 18:14). Rare is the point. When one presses this too hard one discovers that Jesus didn’t or rarely did preach the gospel of the centrality of justification. That’s a serious mistake. Jesus, instead, chose kingdom to express his gospel. That’s why the Evangelists say he preached the “gospel of the kingdom.” He preached the gospel… he is the gospel. Everywhere he went he was gospeling. He was the “autobasileia,” the kingdom itself.
…I believe this: the gospel is about Jesus not us. It is for us not about us. It benefits us because that’s Who Jesus is. To turn it into a message about us is idolatrous. (I don’t mean to suggest Gilbert is doing that, so don’t misread me.)
…how many times in all of this above does the word “justification” appear? Not in 2 Tim 2, not in 1 Cor 15, and a grand total of once in the apostolic sermons in Acts. That for me says what needs to be said about what is central. This is why we have to talk method – which passages count most when it comes to defining gospel?
…Now look at Romans 10:9-10: “because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.”
The focus here on what to believe is that Jesus is Lord (=King) and that he was raised from the dead. The ones who believe that gospel get “saved” and “justified.” That’s the order: the king Jesus gospel saves and justifies.
My thoughts.
Go back to my post from 8 years ago.
“We further deny that the Lord’s Supper can faithfully be administered apart from the right practice of Church discipline.”
Huh? What is the “right practice of church discipline?” Is this another one of those “gospel” code words which means you are out unless you do it this way but they don’t tell you what this way means?
What is it about The Gospel Coalition, 9 Marks, T4G and their BFFs that make me (and many others) feel like there is nothing we can do to measure up to their gospel standards? 9 Marks leaders claim they hold the *keys to the kingdom.* For years, I have been told, and have told, story after story of church discipline for the most silly of reasons. Remember the story of Todd Wilhelm who quit his 9 Marks church in Dubai because they sold books by (and supported) CJ Mahaney. He was placed on the member care list which is 9 Marks speak for discipline. They claimed he didn’t immediately join a new church approved by 9 Marks. Where is that in the Bible?
I believe these groups need to focus on sin, no matter how small, so that they can control the people and control their kingdom, even if it is just 100 people. After all they hold the key, right?
Perhaps this statement bu Greg Gilbert sums up what I’m trying to say. In speaking about Jesus, Gilbert says:
I’m one of the enemies he’s coming to crush!
As a 17 year old teen from a non-Christian family, I came to the faith knowing that the God who created the universe loved me. Gilbert sees a King who is coming to crush him. Nuff said.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” ― The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
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“We are more faithful and gospelly than the rest of you guys.”
More gospelly.
More biblical.
More Evangelical.
More.
Interesting how no one claims to be more loving (including tough love), more dedicated to the true religion of regarding widows & orphans, à la James.
And yet some are just out there “doing it”. Thinking of Wilhelm’s work, etc.
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“I came to the faith knowing that the God who created the universe loved me.”
Yes.
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@dee
I think you need a quick search “McNight” and replace it with “McKnight”
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Thank you Dee for highlighting this debate. I have long found the work of Scott McNight and NT Wright a helpful antidote to the dogmatic but often extra-biblical/unbiblical noise which emanates from TGC, T4G, 9-Marks, McArthur et al, but had not come across Matthew Bates before. I now intend to read some of his work beyond the current articles.
This from Bates’ article was music to my ears (the gospelly boys called out on the basis of strong biblical evidence for being ungospelly!):
‘What John MacArthur, John Piper, R.C. Sproul, Albert Mohler, and others associated with T4G (“Together for the Gospel”) and TGC (“The Gospel Coalition”) have been asserting to be the heart of the gospel is not even part of the gospel in Scripture.’
The take away message for the gospelly boys and those that blindly follow them is that what they call the gospel ain’t necessarily so just because they say it is. And using ‘gospel’ as their club’s approved prefix for everything under the sun may win them approval from their fellow gospel club members, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that they know and understand the biblical gospel. They pride themselves on their correctness but often are more concerned with the projection of their approved frameworks of belief onto scripture, than concerned to start with scripture and work outward to life and belief.
Bates, McKinght, NT Wright are in this case urging us to look beyond received ‘gospel’ terminology and systems of belief and back at scripture to see what it really says the gospel is. Incidentally, that is how the reformation started, with Erasmus emphasising the opening up of Scripture in the mother tongue so that as the meaning became plainer, the received systems of belief in the then Church could be re-examined, inevitably resulting in reform to realign with scripture.
The focus of Erasmus’ work was to ‘let scripture loose to do its work’ (see his ‘On the Freedom of the Will’). Ironically the focus of the current reformed/gospelly tribe is to release book after book emphasising the ‘correct’ (according to them) terminology and systems of belief to project onto scripture.
Will some of the gospelly boys be brave enough to re-examine scripture, re-align their beliefs (and lives) to scripture and risk the wrath of their ‘gospel’ tribe? Let’s hope so.
(Sorry for the long comment btw)
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Apologies – I have also misspelled his name. Should be Scot McKnight.
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Yeah, they can claim Jesus’ Kingship all they want, but I won’t believe it until they actually TALK about Jesus on a regular basis. They don’t. They talk about God and themselves.
Besides, I’ve heard more than one of them talk about how Jesus isn’t really important and “just” a sacrifice part of God’s plan. So I know not all of them believe this. They know that people are starting to notice their theological inconsistencies and are now trying to cover them up.
I think the real reason they don’t define any of these words is because their basic theology is wrapped up in the belief that they themselves are what’s really special and them being in those churches makes them more gospelly (laughed at that Ava!). Some of their young ones are true believers, but I don’t think many of these leaders are.
Many of them really can dumb down their beliefs to “God said I was special; if you want to be saved, you have to do what I say; if you ask questions you will never be saved; the end.”
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IT’S ALL TOO GOSPELLY!
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It never fails to amaze me how people can create debate over something as simple as “God loves me just as I am.”
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Luckyforward,
Because it is all about “Sales” and Power/Control. The promise of eternal salvation is the “ultimate” product for a salesman to sale, and for a power focused individual to control with a threat to “remove/takeback”.
Salvation is the “ultimate” product to sale since you never have to provide a product while the “purchaser” is still alive!
I once read an article about the best marketing/products in history, and “indulgences” made the list!
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Evidence, once again, that New Calvinism preaches another gospel which is not ‘the’ Gospel at all. These are the men Scripture warned us about.
“There are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ … If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:7-9)
This is serious stuff! The T4G boys need to repent and get it right … or else!
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Greg Gilbert:
I first learned of him several years ago listening to an Al Mohler interview promoting his book “What is the Gospel?” I’ll never forget Gilbert’s response to one of Mohler’s questions: “Ohhhh, Dr. Mohler, what a sweet question!” Creeped me out! The young reformers flatter the big boys ad nauseam. It worked for the young Gilbert … he is now Pope Mohler’s pastor!
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“We are convinced that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been misrepresented, misunderstood, and marginalized in many Churches and among many who claim the name of Christ.”
++++++++
shameless use of aliteration… shameless, i say.
(i think they just didn’t know better. unless they really were trying to sound like Mother Goose after all.)
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It has long (for decades) seemed to me that what Evangelicals (the term means “gospel-people”, more or less) conceptualize as “the Gospel” should rather be thought of as a summary of the dominant Latin-tradition soteriology. It’s not what “the good message” is actually stated to be in the four canonical Gospels or in Acts and Paul’s letters.
I suspect that the disconnect has arisen because the dominant understanding of “wrath” is so terrifying — is such dreadfully bad news — that whatever “good news” might be stated to be in the NT is no longer relevant; for our present purposes, the thing we need to focus on is “how to escape the terrifying bad news”; and that way of escape has become, by default, what we think of when we think of “the good news” announced in the NT.
I was not able to break free from this paradigm until I came to doubt the present-day depictions of biblical “wrath” language as relating primarily to post-mortem punishments. Interestingly, Wright and McKnight also deprecate this view (this is not to say that they affirm no post-mortem consequences at all; simply that they affirm that the prophetic warnings of Jesus’ ministry, that form the basis for much present-day — and, to be fair, most past — “wrath theology”, were oriented to the historical crisis facing Israel and were fulfilled in the disastrous AD66-73 war. But that’s a huge shift, because interpreting Jesus’ language as relating to a real past situation and focused on 1st century Israel has the effect of knocking over a principal pillar of the consensus vision of “wrath and redemption”).
I expect T4G and GC to fiercely resist attempts to ground our understanding of “the Gospel” in the NT documents understood within their historical context. The “old-time religion” people require fear to keep their flocks in line, and they will give up inducements to fear only with the greatest reluctance.
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Gus,
Oh no. The auto correct did this to me and I was too tired to notice it. Thank you!!!
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Dee,
This is what I get by changing the title at midnight.
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“utilizing the word *gospel* to describe themselves”
When the New Calvinist movement first came on my radar, the new reformers were tossing “gospel-centered” around for everything … gospel-centered books, gospel-centered missions, gospel-centered teaching, gospel-centered coffee, etc. I quickly learned that Gospel = Calvinism to this bunch, where reformed doctrine supersedes the Gospel of Christ, where the 5-points of reformed theology trump salvation through Jesus.
The New Calvinists have done a fine job of deleting a Christocentric criterion for interpretation of Scripture by filtering everything through their reformed tenets of faith. The (distorted) writings of Paul are more important to them than the words of Jesus! They preach/teach primarily from the epistles – circling around a handful of misinterpreted passages – while largely ignoring the Gospels and the words in red.
New Calvinism essentially preaches that the essence of Christianity is found in their doctrinal propositions ‘about’ grace rather than a direct experience ‘of’ Grace, a personal encounter with Christ. Indeed, the new reformers mistrust anyone who professes a personal relationship with Jesus … they just don’t get it! Sadly, a great multitude within Generations X, Y, and Z have been deceived by their aberrations of faith.
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elastigirl,
It is also the pitch that Joseph Smith and the Mormons use..
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The first time I read this sentence I thought I saw….”Mohler Goose”. My mind and eyesight are fuzzy lately.
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This makes me think of Matt Chandler’s The Explicit Gospel, which my small group began reading last fall. (They almost picked a book by John Piper, but I talked them out of that. The book list provided by my church is making me very worried.)
For a book titled The Explicit Gospel, I found essentially no gospel in it, but a whole lot of what I have learned through this blog is NeoCalvinist doctrine instead. We had some good discussions in small group as I brought up the issues with it. Hopefully I got some of the group members thinking instead of just accepting! In January we voted to abandon the book and read a different one. Many of the group members mentioned how The Explicit Gospel weighed them down and did not offer encouragement for their regular lives.
The new book chosen was Crazy Love by Francis Chan. We just read chapter 3, the titular chapter, and for a chapter called Crazy Love, you’d think it would be focused on the incredible love Christ showed us through both his life and his sacrifice, right? Nope. Not a word about the gospel, only about God as our loving father. It doesn’t even reference verses from the four gospels, just a few from Isaiah and Jeremiah!
For a book that was the darling of the evangelical world, or at least that’s the impression I had when it was lauded as incredible and amazing, I’m finding it shallow and flat. Maybe it improves in later chapters?
Plus I’m tired of small group discussions that are essentially agreement fests – agreeing with each other, with the book, etc. I want to have discussions that dig deep and challenge, even though I’m not much of a debater.
That went off topic, sorry! But this blog and all the commenters have opened my eyes to everything I always struggled with in church, and now I finally have language and concepts to talk about it.
Oh, and one woman in my small group said that if you want to know the gospel, go read the Gospel of John.
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That was Matt Chandler’s objective. To him, NeoCalvinist doctrine = Gospel. His intent with that book was to indoctrinate rather than evangelize. There is no preaching of the Cross of Christ for ALL people in the New Calvinist camp … that is the explicit truth.
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When he wrote that book, Chan was a darling of the New Calvinist tribe (he has since fallen out of favor with the new reformers). Holding true to New Calvinism, he taught a lot about “God”, with barely a mention of Jesus, and hardly a word about the Holy Spirit … thus, you won’t find him preaching/teaching ‘the’ Gospel in that book (it may sound close, but not close enough). To a Christian, the precious Name of Jesus is important … not raising His name in all they do, is a sign that New Calvinism is about something else … it is a religious cult designed to trap you in the teachings and traditions of mere men, something Jesus warned believers not to do!
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The pastor of the church I used to go to constantly retweets stuff from TGC men. His sermons (which I listen to online, reluctantly, when my husband does) seem canned, complete with fake laughs, as if he’s reading from a script. So much of it seems to be a regurgitation of the Gospel Coalition party line instead of coming from real interaction with Jesus Christ. I’m thankful that McKnight and Bates are speaking up. Maybe TGC will eventually wither up and die, but the true Gospel will live forever.
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A quote from one of Samantha Field’s series of reviews of a popular Christian romance novel seems appropriate here. Here’s the link. http://samanthapfield.com/2017/01/17/redeeming-love-brothers-bothers/
“There aren’t words to describe how horrific and excruciating it is that when Francine {Rivers} is describing what love means, her definition matches that of conservative Christianity’s perfectly. When they say that God loves us, what they mean is that despite all his wrath and fury, he doesn’t murder us where we stand, and we’re supposed to fall down on our faces in worship. “I want to kill you, but I won’t,” is part of the bedrock of evangelical theology, and it’s incorporated into any theological discussion of God’s love. It’s sickening.”
That quote was like a punch in the gut to me when I read it. I come from a PCA, Gospel-Coalitiony background. And that’s EXACTLY how God’s love was presented to me. I wrote recently about being an adolescent sitting in Good Friday services and trying to increase my feelings of self-loathing so that I could see myself the way I had been taught God saw me, so that I could be properly grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross.
I don’t even know how to separate out this theology from Christianity. Penal Substitutionary Atonement WAS the gospel in the church I grew up in. And I’ve turned my back on it, but it feels like turning my back on Christianity.
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“Compromise of the Gospel has led to the preaching of false gospels, the seduction of many minds and movements, and the weakening of the Church’s Gospel witness.
We(men) believe that the answer to this confusion and compromise lies in a comprehensive recovery and reaffirmation of the Gospel – and in Christians banding together in Gospel Churches that display God’s glory in this fallen world.
We(men) stand together for the Gospel – and for a full and gladdening recovery of the Gospel in the Church. We are convinced that such a recovery will be evident in the form of faithful Gospel Churches, each bearing faithful witness to the glory of God and the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” –T4G
++++++++++++++++++++++
so, their thesis statements sound like nursery rhymes….
as for subject matter: ha… i’m sure they have no idea, but they just retold the story of chicken little (casting themselves in the starring role as ‘chicken little’)
although never reaching climax.
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And the “purchaser” is still on the hook, always. These “salesmen” make sure the sale is never quite final, and the interest rates are astronomical!
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“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.” Rom Now1:16
“But if, in fact, our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. Regarding them: the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” 2 Cor 4:3-4
“Now brothers, I want to clarify for you the gospel I proclaimed to you; you received it and have taken your stand on it. You are also saved by it….For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…” 1 Cor 15:1-4
It seems to me that salvation is intrinsic to the gospel.
It’s true that TGC has its problems, and that one of them is tying the word “gospel” to too many things, but I don’t think they’re wrong to emphasize the salvific aspect of the gospel.
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Buying sermons and stealing the sermons of others is quite popular with that crowd, if the church doesn’t have the money to hire a staff writer. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he was reading the sermon from a script.
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BINGO
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Jeff B,
Did you read the references articles?
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Jeff B,
Read Romans closely and notice every instance in which “wrath” is mentioned. You’ll find that for Paul, in Romans, “wrath” is “under the Sun”, much as it is in the OT. This is a very different conception of “wrath” than what underlies the T4G or GC conceptions of “salvation.”
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Just my personal opinion, but the Four Spiritual Laws could disappear forever and I would be ridiculously happy. The next door neighbor lady read them to me on the worst day of my life. Why, she did this mere minutes after my mother had been packed into an ambulance and taken to a hospital after she attempted suicide.
That was 45 years ago. I have to say, especially right now, DON’T use trauma as part of your evangelistic toolbox. Just don’t. Thanks.
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Oh yeah, that’s quite common in the New Calvinist world. It’s a way of telling the tribe “I’m one of you.” They jump out of bed every morning to search for tweets from their masters … Piper Points, Mohler Moments, Dever Drivel, etc. are then retweeted through cyberspace to the dudebros.
Borrowing sermons from one another is also quite common. The young reformers have no spiritual minds of their own; they look to the New Calvinist elite for sermon queues. Yep, “regurgitation” is the right word … the stuff they espouse is mindless repetition of information without analysis or comprehension. They are not true pastors/preachers at all.
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It’s a “gospel” with Calvin at the center, not Christ – where unrevisable doctrinal propositions supersede the way of life. There is no salvific power in what they proclaim; their soteriology is not God’s plan of salvation through Jesus.
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Oh, what would God do without these brave men who have come to steady the Ark of God so it doesn’t fall into the ditch? Surely the gospel and faith in God would cease to exist without them!
And yet, we read in 1John, “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” It is actually quite simple and accessible to anyone, no “gospel” organizations or leaders needed, just a simple faith within your own private heart.
I recommend the whole book of 1John as an antidote to all this rubbish these men are preaching. They see the gospel as a political kingdom to be administered here on earth and they want to be the ones in control of it, in the toll position. They want to subject believers to their fraudulent authority. But “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8. God is not constrained by them or their ideas, wishes or will.
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Samuel Conner,
I cannot find anywhere where “wrath” means “under the Sun” in Romans. Please tell me where you found this information. As for the OT, there are many words for “wrath,” and I frankly don’t have the patience to research them.
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Bridget,
No, and I should have. I have now. The two points of view seem to be so close that it might be an example of hair-splitting, though I could be wrong about that.
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Again I feel like a visitor from an ancient civilization, where seminarians graduate from rigorous academic programs knowing how to write and preach sermons, and congregations expect original insight every single time.
If our clergyfolk asked to hire a staff writer, I think we’d call the men with the butterfly nets.
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Jeff B,
Romans 12:19
This makes no sense if Paul understands “the wrath of God” to refer to post-mortem punishments. There is no conceivable way that Paul’s readers, living humans, could displace post-mortem punishments by taking vengeance in the here and now. The wrath that they are leaving room for, God’s wrath, is likewise here and now, “under the Sun.”
Romans 13:4
It cannot be seriously proposed that the civil magistrates, entrusted with “the sword” to maintain order in the here and now, can be thought of as agents of post-mortem wrath. They inflict wrath here and now, that is, “under the Sun”.
FInally, the prime example is Romans 1, where Paul writes of the revelation from heaven of God’s wrath. But the following explication is clearly under the sun — idolators have their understanding darkened and are given over to disordered living and its consequences in their own bodies, ultimately terminating in bodily death. There is no hint of post-mortem punishments. The revelation of the wrath is “under the sun”.
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So Dee asked us for a definition of the Gospel.
What come to my mind is the book by Yancy, “What is so Amazing about Grace”….. A take away for me was really how, almost offensive, true Grace is. That is why “men” construct their own version of “The Gospel” because they can not handle the true impact of “True Grace”….
True Grace says NOTHING we do merits True Grace…… ( I know I am almost talking in circles)….. but the concept of the most terrible of criminals can obtain the same grace that pious little me can obtain is, really, at its core, an offensive concept to average Joe…. so the answer, creat a Christainty with a bunch of rules, with a “enlightened leader”, to tell me rules so I can earn my way…
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And yet (my opinion) what we do matters very much.
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“Staff writer” or GHOST WRITER?
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I can say that during the takeover, at least, the idea of using someone else’s sermon was very strongly advised against. But the preaching professor was near retirement and I don’t know who Akin put in there.
Lifeway actually has a huge free sermon databank on their website with fully written sermons. I would have thought they would have charged for something like that, but everything is free. The couple I read have the theology but are not real appealing.
The end justifies the means is one of the core tenets of New Calvinism, even if they’ve stopped talking about that on TGC (you can still find it, though). If they have no problem taking over a church by force and tricking members into signing legal contracts they think will not allow members to leave, stealing sermons seems minor in comparison.
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I went to a church for awhile that had a “resource” pastor who wrote the sermons. It was traditional SBC and it was known that he wrote the sermons, so that has been a thing elsewhere. But I do think most of the time it’s all kept a big secret and the members thoroughly believe the pastor writes the sermons, which is very deceptive.
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It’s both pre-mortem and post-mortem punishments. Paul talks about everlasting punishment and everlasting reward in Romans 2. He references salvation from the “wrath to come” in 1 Thessalonians.
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Dee,
The problem is emphasizing what our response should be over what Jesus’ becoming king (that is an error to which the T4G guys are prone) or in emphasizing Jesus’ becoming king over what our response should be (the error to which guys like McKnight and NT Wright are more prone).
You need both to have a complete gospel.
The Gospel is the good news that God’s blessed kingdom has come in Jesus Christ and that one can become a citizen of this kingdom forever by trusting in Jesus alone for salvation.
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Dee,
Here’s a question for you:
Without justifying the 9Marks model—and I think it is flawed in many, many ways—don’t you think that a driver of the problem is that they are responding to an utter lack of church discipline in the evangelical world, especially the SBC/evangelical megachurch world? It is quite easy to be living in sin, for example, not seeking repentance at all, and come to the Lord’s Supper. I’ve been to many megachurches. It’s impossible to provide any kind of spiritual oversight to groups that large, and the megachurch is the goal of so much evangelicalism. I’ve been to evangelical churches where you had people who were living with their boyfriend or girlfriend in leadership roles and members in similar situations receiving the sacrament.
It’s easy in American evangelicalism to cheat on your spouse, get a divorce, get remarried and then just switch churches, no questions asked. I could go on.
I think the 9Marks and T4G discipline stuff is born of this reality. Sadly, they aren’t consistent, and people like Mahaney go undisciplined because of friendship and other issues. But they’re trying to respond to a problem that many evangelicals don’t even acknowledged.
You do have to have discipline for a church to be a church. But since we’re still sinners, the discipline is always going to be imperfect, and we should always be striving to make it more loving and more consistent. I don’t think you are advocating for no discipline, but sometimes it’s not clear to me what your position on church discipline actually is.
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Muff Potter,
And therein lies the grand Conundrum.
We could all go on and on, like YRR do, and just about ever other Christian sect that claims it has “ recovered true Christianity” yet, IMHO it cones right back to this “grand conundrum”…
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Actually, this is only half-right, or quarter-right.
Paul does not apply the adjective “aionion”, which is commonly (but perhaps wrongly) translated “everlasting” or “eternal”, to “wrath” in Romans 2. He does apply that adjective to “zoe”/”life” in the text in question.
The distinction Paul seems to be making is between those who have a share in the life of the Age to Come (the “aion”), who will be granted resurrection, and those who will not, who will simply remain in “the grave.” The wicked will die bodily on the day of wrath and simply remain dead. This is a Hebrew conception, which should not be surprising, Paul being a “Hebrew of Hebrews”.
It is not hard to interpret “post-mortem” punishments in the wrath language one encounters in Romans, but I think those interpretations are imported from elsewhere. Romans on its own terms is strongly “here and now” with respect to punishments.
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The Gospel has nothing to do with the age of the earth, women teachers, church discipline, or any other pet doctrine. It is also not best defined as the Kingship of Jesus. The good news, the word of truth, proclaims that we can be transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the glorious kingdom of light. We can be qualified for heaven.
Four golf buddies and I have been doing daily devotionals since the beginning of the quarantine. I have been teaching on Colossians, Here is my study on the gospel:
https://conta.cc/358vOdd
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer described New Calvinism’s version of grace perfectly when he said:
“Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
With more emphasis on Calvin than Christ, the new reformers create disciples of reformed theology not Jesus. The frenzy of church planting in their ranks is more about planting theology than Gospel churches.
Without a preaching of the Cross of Christ and its saving power, true Grace cannot flow. New Calvinists DO NOT preach the Cross.
When New Calvinist icons get more sermon time than Jesus, God ain’t in the house. Jesus is seldom mentioned … Jesus!!
Without Jesus, dead religion prevails not the Living Christ; doctrinal propositions ‘about’ grace is a poor substitute for a direct experience ‘of’ Grace, a personal encounter with Jesus.
Cheap grace, nothing more.
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Robert,
It would probably be a good thing if the churches were to imitate God in holding the teachers to a higher standard (“judging more strictly”) than the taught. Until they do that, one may be justified in reckoning that the principal function of the 9M discipline emphasis is simply “control of the flock.”
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Indeed! Until the pew turns the tables on the pulpit and calls aberrant preachers into account (as is greatly needed in New Calvinism), then the laity remains subject to manipulation, intimidation and domination by the clergy. Rebuke and correction of the pulpit is darn near impossible in New Calvinist church governance where “lead pastor” and his yes-men band of elders are in complete control. This is a system where those who need to be disciplined for exercising illegitimate authority over God’s people cannot be touched … IMO, that was a key consideration when launching 9Marks – protection of the new reformers from the reach of their congregations.
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Has anyone read Erich Fromm’s “Escape from Freedom”? I’m about 2/3 through it. His analysis is that the positive aspects (increased freedom for the individual) of the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of Capitalism and Democracy also gave rise in humankind to increased feelings of anxiety, insignificance, and powerlessness. For people with authoritarian characters (or traits), an escape from these feelings is sought by losing one’s individuality in complete submission to a totalitarian authority be that a dictator, fate, or one’s concept of God. Fromm believes Calvin’s concept of God was an attempt by him to assuage deep feelings of anxiety and insignificance by losing himself in complete submission to God as a personification of fate.
Fromm’s arguments make a lot of sense. I think we see in the resurgence of Calvinism, especially the idea of theistic determinism (what Calvinists relabel “sovereignty”), an attempt by people with authoritarian characters (or traits) to assuage these deep feelings of anxiety by relinquishing any claim to personal autonomy or responsibility by complete submission to fate, relabeled as God.
This is why the New Calvinists are obsessed with power, who has it and who doesn’t. It’s why hierarchy, church discipline, and gender roles are inextricable aspects of their gospel. In authority and submission is their salvation.
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Wasn’t that one of the original Reformers’ major beefs about Romish Popery?
Heresy of Clericalism and Priestly Caste System?
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PASTOR Holds the Whip,
Laity in the pews Feel the Whip.
“POWER is Power.”
— Queen Cersei Lannister, Game of Thrones
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The Mormons, Christian Science, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Moonies, the COGs, People’s Temple…
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And reacting by going Full Honk in the Opposite direction.
“The Devil sends sins in matched opposing pairs, so in fleeing one we embrace the other.”
— attr to C.S.Lewis
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Samuel Conner,
Okay, I see your point, but I don’t think it applies to certain verses in Romans, such as 2:5, 2:8, 5:9, and 9:22.
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Heck, that has been a major beef with all religious structures! Somewhere in past centuries, the church lost touch with what Church was designed to be. Whose job is the ministry? Every believer has a part!
Calvin “reformed” the church, became overlord in Geneva, and ruled his utopia with an iron fist.
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That’s it! Without authority and submission, they are not saved. Without jots and tittles of law, they have no spiritual life. Without the preaching of the Cross of Christ, they have no salvation. Sadly, their striving for power is in vain.
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Samuel Conner,
I hadn’t read your comment to Robert before I made my last comment. I still stand by it, but, not knowing the original languages, I have to trust the plain meanings of what I hope are the better English translations, in this case the HCSB and ESV, along with language helps.
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Paul K,
Interesting thesis….. I have noticed “personality traits” that seem to be drawn to not just the YRR leaders, but to fundamentalist culture that I grew up with….. they like nice, neat little boxes for “everything” to fit into…. and they resort to their favorite guru to have the “answer”…
one of the “worst things” I could say when debating a particular “issue” with them is that I would say the issue is “gray” or beyond our human understanding… I was clearly, to them, either: compromised, carnel, ignorant, uniformed, or, just a plan fallen-away one….
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Jeff B,
Here’s a useful tool:
https://www.scripture4all.org/
You can poke around the Greek text (this is not the most current critical text, but is still useful) of Romans 2 to notice Paul’s word choices.
https://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/NTpdf/rom2.pdf
Not meaning to be heavy-handed here; I do think that we bring our understanding of theological system to our reading of the text, and any flaws in the system inevitably color our understanding of the text. I write this as one who was for decades “all in” for many aspects of Reformed system. I found reasons to question that in the last decade or so.
—
Readers may find Scot McKnight’s “Reading Romans Backwards” to be edifying. Romans may not be “about” what we customarily think it is “about”. The “digression” of Romans 9-11, that on conventional readings seems so out of place with the argument of the rest of the letter, may actually be the point.
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Why is that (bf and gf living together) such an egregious ‘sin’?
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Not all Christians would accept this simplistic definition. It automatically sends Jews (and everyone else, but I’m emphasizing the Chosen People) into eternal torment. Is trust in Jesus enough, or do I actually have to repent, improve, live in a recognizably Christian way? Where is this blessed kingdom? Most fundagelical Christians believe it is the world to come. Some other Christians believe it is our responsibility to help build the Kingdom here and now. In the traditional sense, moreover, kingdoms did not have citizens; they had subjects.
#justachurchgoer
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To attempt to put the mind of God into a neat systematic box is to stand in arrogance before the Creator.
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No you don’t. My church expects adults to be competent. If we want counseling from pastors, we can ask for it.
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If you’re on a device bigger than a phone, you could do everyone a favor by posting those verses.
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Not just that, but many of the New Calvinist leaders are self-appointed and use structures to reinforce their authority in their self-appointments. They give themselves lots of freedom and no church discipline, but hold very different expectations for members.
For example–would they hold themselves to never being able to leave or choose another church, even one that was offering them lots of money to be pastor?
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I don’t understand this comment. Counseling and discipline aren’t the same thing. Do your pastors allow impenitent adulterers to take the sacrament? Do they let child abusers work with children? If not, then they are engaging in discipline.
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There is no biblical reason to believe that anyone who rejects Christ is in heaven. But in any case, the definition is purposefully simplistic, recognizing that the gospel is simple and that we aren’t saved based on works. Why are you offended by it? If you don’t like the T4G crowd and others criticized in Dee’s post, then I would think you should have no problem with my statement.
Besides, you’re asking questions that have been answered by all of the magisterial Protestant traditions, quite well, including Lutherans, the Reformed, the Anglicans, historic Baptists.
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Sadly, it is a human tendency. So why not make sure you aren’t embracing the opposing problem in arguing against the T4G crowd?
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Max,
Yup…. and, that ultimately, is what they are doing, whether they realize it or not…. unfortunately, I had to live allot of my life to realize it… I wish I could relive my youth without all the “poison” they taught me!
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Agreed. But we’re all sinners. Very few people who go wrong set out saying, “I’m going to develop a theology to control the flock.”
Frankly, the big problem with the 9M model is less the emphasis on discipline and more on the fact that the leaders of each church are functionally accountable to no one. In a true congregational model, the congregation can oust the leaders. In a presbyterian model, higher courts can act. In both systems, it doesn’t always happen where it should. But at least it is possible. It’s not possible in elder-led models that have no higher court of appeal.
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Friend,
If “discipline” means confronting particular types of sins (I’d argue sins like adultery, abuse, etc…), then I think “discipline” is necessary in a church. But, as Dee has pointed out, there usually isn’t agreed upon reasons for church discipline up front, so it can just become a way to manipulate and lord authority over people.
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ishy,
It’s a good point. There is a resemblance to traditional (Westminster style) Reformed ecclesiology in that “teaching elders” (“gospel ministers”) are not considered part (“members”) of the local congregation. Of course, in “Paleo-Cal”-ism, the TEs are part of the regional presbytery, to which they are accountable and which can subject them to discipline. It doesn’t always work as intended, but it is better than no accountability at all.
Neo-Cals generally don’t have that supracongregational accountability mechanism.
It’s as though they have picked the bits that enhance their power, and left out the bits that restrain their power.
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Paul, who you rightly recognize as “Hebrew of Hebrews” also had Daniel 12:2 in his Bible, where the wicked are resurrected to everlasting contempt. The mere absence of a word proves very little. Romans has to be read in light of the rest of Paul’s letters and then in light of the rest of the Bible. Further, Romans 2:9–10 are set in parallel, so Paul doesn’t have to say “eternal” for the notion of eternity to be present. The glory the righteous receive (v. 10) is eternal in nature, as noted a couple of verses earlier (vv. 6–7). So, too, is the punishment the unrighteous receive.
It’s both/and. The Bible—including Paul, and including Paul in Romans— is very clear that all people outside of Christ are presently under God’s wrath, and that the wrath will be worse in the age to come for those who remain outside of Christ.
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Fornication. See 1 Cor. 6.
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Now that is hardly fair. Feel free to criticize New Calvinists. They deserve a lot of criticism. But the notion that they don’t preach the cross is just ridiculous. You can’t count the number of sermons and books produced by this crowd on the cross and what it accomplished.
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Why? If my husband breaks my heart by having an affair, how is that automatically the business of the church? And if he abuses me, shouldn’t I just call 9-1-1? In both cases, what would the church do, besides try to force a reconciliation?
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Aren’t they selected a lot more carefully, as well? Maybe not true of all denoms, but many not only require seminary, but have mental health and other evaluations along with a trial process.
Really, that’s much more in line with that theology than self-appointment, particularly if one subscribes to worm theology, which many New Cals claim. If you really believed men were so evil, then you would appreciate accountability structures.
My own conscience tells me never to trust anyone who doesn’t apply the same standards to themselves that they apply to everyone else.
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From my daily devotion, a passage I call “God will send a Prophet to save the land from destruction at God’s hand.” I guess John MacArthur is wrong about prophecy and prophets if they are that vital to the end times.
“Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,’ says the Lord Almighty.
Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.
See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.’”
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I can’t speak beyond my own narrow experience of a single small Westminster-style reformed denomination. My impression of the TE selection process was that it was rigorous, but mostly focused on “doctrinal conformity”; “protection of doctrine” was kind of the sine qua non of this group, and one could lack other important competencies but still be regarded to be “qualified” if one could persuade one’s examination committee that one would not deviate from the teaching norms.
The churches would be well-served, IMO, if they were subject to the kinds of licensing requirements that mental health professionals are subject to, such as thousands of hours (a friend seeking state licensure in counseling mentioned this to me) of work experience prior to grant of license.
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About 25 years into my time as an Evangelical, in my mid-40s and having lived more of life, the “gospel” of penal substitutionary atonement (God loves you – but really, he hates you because of your sin, and you have to die – but wait! Jesus took that punishment for you on the cross – so make a mental contract with him and all is good!) and the theology dependent on it became less coherent for me. That parenthetical note is caricature, I know, but based on the actual messages I was given. By that time I had some stiff questions. So I went to Scripture seeking answers from the text.
What I found was:
1) In the Gospels, Jesus’ announcement of Good News was “The Kingdom of God is where I am” – which is connected to the passage in Isaiah: “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings Good News, announcing peace – proclaiming Good News: our God reigns.” So it is indeed about Jesus reigning as God and King. The rest of the Gospels talk about how he comes into his Kingdom (the Cross) and lays the ground for discussion of what that means.
2) In the book of Acts, when the first Christians go about announcing their good news, what is the point of their preaching? In every case save that of Stephen, who was doing something else with his speech, the high point of every single sermon was the announcement of Jesus’ Resurrection. On hearing this, people either said, “Tell us more!” or a riot broke out. So the Resurrection is also of utmost importance. In all of Paul’s letters, the Cross and the Resurrection are always mentioned in near proximity in the text.
This discovery led me down a several years-long path of further Scripture study and study of Church history and early Christian interpretation of Scripture (with much help from Protestant N.T. Wright), to something completely unexpected and out of left field: Eastern Orthodoxy. Which has such a different view of God: He is truly good and loves mankind, always working to bring people to himself – and one of his hands isn’t tied behind his back because of our sin. We don’t have to live in (the wrong kind of) fear of God – waiting for some kind of other shoe to drop. In addition, there is a much higher view of what it means to be human – why our sin is so destructive, and why the power of death had to be demolished. (See Heb 2.) The theology is a seamless, coherent whole, with Jesus and his incarnation, death and resurrection at the center – the Starting Point and lens through which everything is seen.
I know Dee has reasons for saying her family were not Christian. I think also in play is that they were ignorant (for whatever reasons) of the profound depth of Christianity that was their patrimony – not only the things that were behind the cultural expressions, but so very much more. I’m glad she has found a home in a liturgical church 🙂 I understand very well why Martin Luther was so keen on “assurance”. One thing about which I have come to confident assurance is that God is much more merciful than we permit ourselves to believe.
D.
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Paul K,
“Fromm’s arguments make a lot of sense. I think we see in the resurgence of Calvinism, ..an attempt by people with authoritarian characters (or traits) to assuage these deep feelings of anxiety by relinquishing any claim to personal autonomy or responsibility by complete submission to fate, relabeled as God.
This is why the New Calvinists are obsessed with power, who has it and who doesn’t. It’s why hierarchy, church discipline, and gender roles are inextricable aspects of their gospel. In authority and submission is their salvation.”
+++++++++++++++++++++
(my comment below was supposed to be just a few thoughts & sentences. don’t know what happened, exactly. maybe these topics and subtopics are full of pandoras boxes…. or maybe i’ve made a hobby of stating the obvious in a million words.)
this is what comes to mind:
some people are more comfortable being in a system.
The structure and strictures give a feeling of comfort. the predictability of it. wide-open freedom and open space are disconcerting. (“all that could befall me” overrides “all that i could do”.)
———-
others are more comfortable being outside of a system.
the freedom and open space are liberating, and the prospect of a million reward-&-risk opportunities is exciting.
a system’s imposing structure and strictures (determined by others) is stifling, claustrophobic, and too personally compromising (and i hate how cute my wording was, there).
the predictability is an endurance test of extreme boredom.
——-
like, being an employee in a large company versus a very small operation, or being self-employed.
or, finding comfort from a feeling of chaos by being under a heavy compression blanket, or finding comfort sleeping under lightweight and loose sheets and blankets.
———
these are personal preferences. there’s nothing inherently right or wrong about any of it.
[the only inherently negative thing, I think, is that in ‘a system’ a person or small group of people decide and control things for many other people, and the inherent “power corrupts” thing.]
——–
to me, it seems approaching paranoia to feel one has the right to extend their personal preference onto the whole world by assigning the concept of God to it.
like, making this a statement of belief:
“We deny that any Christian can truly be a faithful disciple apart from the teaching, discipline, fellowship, and accountability of a congregation of fellow disciples, organized as a Gospel Church.”
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1) Gee, I wonder why that isn’t in the Nicene Creed?
2) That sounds amazingly communistic, and I’m not even kidding.
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Friend,
It’s in the clause on the church: “I believe in one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic church.”
The people who wrote the Nicene Creed and most Christians throughout history have affirmed that it is impossible to be a Christian and willfully not join the church, and least willfully not join the church for the rest of one’s life.
Athanasius—present at Nicea—and others have no category for professing Christians who are able to join the church (by baptism) and yet refuse to.
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ishy,
Yes, they are selected more carefully. At least that’s the goal. Getting ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America, for example, is an arduous process. Although a lot of the new Calvinist Baptists do have some theological education, in Baptist circles anyone can get ordained. There aren’t a lot of hoops to jump through.
The process doesn’t work perfectly. And there are parallels in the Lutheran Church and other denominations. But it’s something.
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Friend,
Because the whole point of the church is to provide accountability and, in your case if this example were true, protection. Paul says it is most definitely the church’s business when the man in the Cornithian church is having a sexual relationship with his stepmother.
What would the church do? Well, in a good church they would withhold the Lord’s Supper from your husband until he repented, and they would tell you that you would be perfectly well within your rights to divorce him if you so desired and that you could do so with a clean conscience. So, it would be an additional means of God giving you assurance that you are in the right in case you have doubts. You wouldn’t be required to divorce, but you could do so if you wanted—even if he were to repent. (Speaking of new Calvinism, John Piper gets this wrong here. He doesn’t seem to think divorce is ever allowable, which contradicts Scripture. It’s his overreaction to modern easy divorce laws, IMO.)
In the case of physical abuse, a good church would, first of all, go with you to the police to report it. Second, it would tell your husband that he was most likely going to hell until he repented and actually got help for his anger problem, and would withhold the sacrament until he did so. They would excommunicate him if he continued in impenitence. The result for you is protection and support. The result for him, hopefully, is his repentance. The hoped for result for both of you, depending on the abuse (in this case hypothetical) and your husband’s response is a better relationship or your having assurance to divorce with a clean conscience.
The point of church discipline is protection for innocent parties, assistance to those stuck in grievous sin, and the holiness of the church. It’s absolutely vital. Otherwise, the church is just an ordinary social club, not the bride of Christ.
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Friend,
I’m referring to situations in which someone in the church is revealed to be having an affair or abusing someone and expects to continue as normal in the life of the church while continuing the relationship or abuse. I’ve heard of stories like this. It would be odd for church leadership to not confront sins like these. If the person’s exposed, keeps doing it, and leaves the church – I’d say let them go. Pursuing people for discipline after they’ve left is the really weird part.
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Friend,
Definitely call 911! I would expect church leaders to report abuse to authorities, too (I know they don’t sometimes). But the church also has a responsibility to say, “What this person is doing isn’t right and cannot just continue life with us as normal.”
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Friend,
Okay.
Rom 2:5 – “But because of your hardness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed.”
Rom 2:6-8 – He will repay each one according to his works: eternal life to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but wrath and indignation to those who are self-seeking and disobey the truth, but are obeying unrighteousness;”
Rom 5:9 – “Much more then, since we have now been declared righteous by His blood, we will be saved through Him from wrath.”
Rom 9:22 – “And what if God, desiring to display His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath ready for destruction?”
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When New Calvinism came to my community, I listened to multiple podcast sermons by SBC-YRR church planters here, even attended some of their churches (in an effort to learn what makes them tick). None of them preached the Gospel as it relates to the Cross of Christ in the sermons I heard … none would be considered evangelists in the true sense of that office. I heard one “lead pastor” mock the sinner’s prayer as “superstitious.” I heard another belittle a communion service by saying “I bought the cheapest grape juice and crackers I could find at WalMart; grab you some on the way out!” (I was actually present in that irreverent service). In an Easter Sunday service I attended, the lead pastor simply continued his sermon series in Ephesians, with no mention of Jesus at all on that sacred day. I personally heard another say “This is one prayer you never have to pray: “Jesus, forgive me of my sins.” These were SBC seminary graduates! Two of them deceived pulpit search committees about their theological leaning, leading to eventual church splits over preaching/teaching content and church governance. There is little, if any, authority of Christ in their ministries. That’s my experience; I can only speak from what I’ve seen and heard coming from the new reformers in my region … hope it’s better where you live.
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Some Christians, such as Quakers, do not have the sacrament of baptism. And I would disagree that Christians are required to have lifelong membership in the church. Many folks at TWW are Christians who left church after spiritual abuse, and you’re implying that such folk are not Christian (therefore what? destined to burn for all eternity?).
Regarding a straying husband, not all affairs are with the wife’s mother (ew). I would be mad as a wet hen, but would not want my husband to be excommunicated pending repentance. My own hope would be to assess the situation in maximal privacy and focus on the infidelity alone. It would be awfully hard to stay in a church where everybody knew we had patched things up.
In the case of abuse, the victim should be able to request and receive support from the church. Unfortunately many churches tend not to believe wives.
I’m not sure the “holiness of the church” is the same as the holy private behavior of every member, with all obliged to belong and attend for life. That gives the church too much power, and takes away the free will of the Christian.
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That’s good … it should be! We’re talking pastors here, a sacred office. In SBC life, ordination is a fairly simple process. You get a few ordained folks to hear your testimony, they lay hands on you, and you are rubber-stamped to preach. The denomination is turning young “ordained” rebels loose in Southern Baptist churches by the hundreds/thousands who have little ministry experience. They line up to get church planter jobs, assuming the role of “lead pastor” right out of seminary. They then appoint a few young friends to be their elder board and start doing church without God. Many of these youngsters get into trouble in one form or another within 2-3 years … we’ve read about their failings on TWW for several years. Of course, not all of them turn out this way – there are some good apples in the bushel who keep their pants on.
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Jeff B,
Thank you very much. That’s helpful. 🙂
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Yep. This pretty much sets up these boys as God.
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I partially agree, but would empower the victim/survivor to say, “I don’t feel safe with my spouse in the building.”
Regarding the difference between the church and the world, or between the church and a social club: the church should be feeding the hungry, clothing the unclad, and caring for widows and orphans. Teach kids and adults to read. Build houses for the homeless. Teach a man to fish. All of a sudden there’s something to do besides talk about Mrs. Smith’s sorrow over Mr. Smith’s roving eye.
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“Religion that is pure and genuine in the sight of God the Father will show itself by such things as visiting orphans and widows in their distress …” (James 1:27)
It’s the last part of that verse that certain corners of the church seem to be having problems with “… and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.”
TWW exists primarily to address “contamination” in the church, particularly in the pulpit.
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Friend,
I’m saying that a person who never returns to church except in the most extraordinary circumstances has no good reason to believe that he or she is a Christian. I am hard pressed to think of any place in the United States where it would be completely impossible to find a decent church.
In a church that did this right, the only people that would know about it are the church elders in the case of repentance, if it were more or less immediate. In fact, I’m not sure you wouldn’t even have to talk to the elders if the offending spouse were to repent immediately and you all were to work things out. Official discipline is more for things like public sins.
Both Jesus and Paul specifically command church discipline. If we say, “well, I don’t want my church to discipline people,” then our problem is with the Savior and His Apostles.
As far as holiness, you can’t divorce the holiness of the whole from the holiness of the individuals. That’s why there is discipline for public, grievous sins. But this must be coupled with the love that covers a multitude of sins. Not all sins are worthy of discipline. Some in the 9Marks crowd go overboard and discipline sins that shouldn’t be disciplined or in disciplining things that aren’t sins at all. I would venture that they are the distinct minority. In most of the church, nobody is disciplined for stuff that should be disciplined.
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100
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Charles Spurgeon,”The Common Salvation”
“truly spiritual people…are all one in Christ Jesus and their salvation is in all respects the same…You shall take a high churchman who is a truly spiritual man—and there are such people—and you shall set him down side by side with the most rigid member of the Society of Friends and when they begin to talk of Jesus, of the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul and the desire of their hearts after God, you will hardly know which is which! The nearer we come to Him, who is the salvation of God, the more plainly we see that among the children of God the basis of agreement is far wider than the ground of division.”
“Does the Father smile on all His children and do we frown on half of them?…the last thing I should attempt would be to wall in my own special company and say, ‘The temple of the Lord are we’. I would not wish to set a fence round about the baptized, and say, ‘These are the church of Christ, even as many as have been immersed in water that they may be buried into His death’. Beloved brothers and sisters, our Lord has a people that are on other points as right as right can be, who on the point of baptism are as wrong as wrong can be! But, for all that, they are His people, and in other respects are sound in the faith and valiant for the Lord our God…there is a common salvation enjoyed by the Arminian as well as by the Calvinist, possessed by the Presbyterian as well as by the Episcopalian, prized by the Quaker as well as by the Baptist. Those who are in Christ are more near of kin than they know, and their intense unity in deep essential truths of God is a greater force than most of them imagine—only give it scope and it will work wonders. As for us, let us not be among the men of whom Jude says, ‘These are they that separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit’.”
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drstevej,
Yay! Have a Milk Bone!
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The context (who it was written to and what it elucidates) is pagan temple prostitution.
I no longer believe it’s a ban on all forms of human sexuality apart from marriage.
I’m also convinced that it can be evaluated on a case by case basis, and not just an across the board prohibition for all times and all places.
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Robert,
“The people who wrote the Nicene Creed and most Christians throughout history have affirmed that it is impossible to be a Christian and willfully not join the church, and least willfully not join the church for the rest of one’s life.”
+++++++++++
are you certain that was their intent? you don’t join a church = you’re not a christian
taking your word for it that the Council at Nicaea did, in fact, address a formal, managed organization called “church”, isn’t it possible that it was addressed as more an assumed thing people would do rather than a mandated requirement?
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Robert,
“Because the whole point of the church is to provide accountability and, in your case if this example were true, protection. …
The hoped for result for both of you, depending on the abuse (in this case hypothetical) and your husband’s response is a better relationship or your having assurance to divorce with a clean conscience.”
++++++++++++++
frankly, the last thing i would want would be for church leaders, because they are church leaders, to interfere in my private business. why do church leaders automatically get to be the middleman in very private matters? yuck.
in such a hypothetical situation, if we thought church leaders were well-suited for the task, we would call on them for accountability measures.
i am perfectly capable of finding and choosing my own accountability, as is my husband.
———————
“In the case of physical abuse, a good church would…tell your husband that he was most likely going to hell until he repented …”
++++++++++
really? how do you know?
what’s the sliding scale for ‘most likely going to hell’?
what about how about lying, deceiving, fraud? how about destroying someone’s life (career, social life, etc) by blackballing in the community through church discipline?
i imagine gluttony is not on the list. 😐
abuse is deplorable. but i truly don’t think any of us humans are able to make such a declaration.
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Paul K,
Escape From Freedom is an excellent book.
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Jerome,
Well, I’ll be. Spurgeon and I agree on something. Except that Quakers are not Trinitarians; they believe in the Inner Light, based on John 1:9, “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”
I will not be ordering the “Spurgeon is my Homeboy” t-shirt, though. 😉
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I’m not Dee but, if you think church discipline has any affect on peoples’ hearts, you don’t have a good understanding of human nature, the inability of outside control to make the heart attitude right, or of the Bible’s teaching on legalism.
If love does not motivate a person to do what is best, law sure isn’t going to do it. The very leaders who purport to have the ability are frequently living in secret sin themselves! That should tell you something.
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This makes a lot of sense but I would argue that this trait of temperament predates the reformation and goes back to the beginning of the human race. Some people are not comfortable with freedom and seek authoritarianism.
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I would disagree. If a person has been sexually abused in the church, I would think Jesus gives them a lifelong hall pass. Church members have been assaulted, yelled at, manipulated into tithing, forced to marry, forced to give up their babies, shunned, expelled, hounded, mocked, exorcised against their will, and (that old standby) consigned to everlasting torment. So no, I don’t think God obliges us to serve as a guaranteed audience and source of funds. You’re also omitting all the countries across time where there has not been a decent or safe church; are Christians in Syria or China required to worship together every Sunday?
In my own view, church membership and attendance are voluntary. That’s genuine free will as well as freedom of religion. The church should be a beloved community, a place of worship, and a service organization.
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And, secondly, what is that to Robert? Does his relationship with God depend on theirs? Take the plank out of your own eye, those who think like Robert, and you follow Christ. You can only control your own relationship with God. And be careful of praying, “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not like other men.”
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Well, you got that wrong. And who set you up as the judge?
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I am quite content with the red letter portion of scripture.
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SiteSeer,
The god that some people put forth is a
very graceless, merciless being.
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Robert,
“I am hard pressed to think of any place in the United States where it would be completely impossible to find a decent church.”
+++++++++++++
you’re getting a lot of response on your comment here.
why not one more! :|)
sure, there are decent churches. this is what will happen:
i will hyperventilate
panic
the music, which i loathe, is so invasive it will worm its way into me and be playing my head all day
the sermon will be too long, boring, and i won’t remember a darn thing
i’ll be pressured to join 1 if not 2 groups. the material we study will be either totally stupid or calculated propaganda
it will expressly NOT be time well spent.
——
i’ll be pressured to volunteer elsewhere, with a variety of manipulation and guilt tactics.
i’m a woman, so more often than not i will be denied eye contact, ignored. i will be invisible.
the time and energy spent are eaten up by the church machine, to keep it running.
in the end, church will expect more and more of my time and energy, to feed the perpetually hungry church machine. **not to do anything for the city, nothing for the community outside the church, but all for the church itself**
there will be no time or energy for my neighbors, my neighborhood, my family, my extended family, my community…
the church will claim it all for itself. to build itself up. to make itself look good. to make it as marketable as possible.
and to keep me so connected to itself and so busy i won’t have the presence of mind to rethink it all. to prevent me from speaking up, and to keep me from leaving.
it will be a toxic, life-taking experience
———-
and on the last day of my life, i will look back and say,
“I did it! i went to church! therefore i’m a christian! i checked all the right boxes!
i was miserable, had difficulty breathing, felt panic every week, lived a life of pretend happiness, had no time for anyone or anything except church…
but i did it!”
——
i have much higher hopes for my life. for me, my family, my friends, and to leave the world a cleaner, safer, more peaceful and healed place.
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A Christian is a follower of Christ. If you look up definitions for Christian, you won’t find “a person who goes to church.” In fact, in my long experience as a Christian, I have known lots of church members (and some church staff) who displayed little evidence of being followers of Christ. While individual believers are members of the Body of Christ, I have found His Body in various places: the Church within the churches I have attended, in my neighborhood, on business trips, in the marketplace, on TWW. Every Christian longs for the organized church to be The Church, but many find church attendance to be a desperate, exhausting search for the genuine among the counterfeit. I pray for a revival in the church and a spiritual awakening in America to right this sinking ship … but, in the meantime, I will be a follower of Christ wherever He leads me (in or out of a church building).
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elastigirl,
I failed to say thank you for encapsulating what many of us on TWW have experienced in the counterfeit church in America … the places that Robert calls “decent”, which can be found throughout the United States.
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So would I Muslin.
Despite our differences, we have common ground.
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elastigirl,
Seriously elastigirl, and I don’t mean to sound pat, cliche-ish, or trite, because I respect you’re feelings. But Lutheranism isn’t anything like what you’ve described.
I’ve been giving serious thought as of late to going back to Lutheranism (ELCA, the liberal wing).
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Muff Potter,
i believe you, Muff. hmmmm….. maybe…
what about it is time well-spent? what about it is life-giving? (i’ve wasted enough time already)
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Please show me in the New Testament where the Apostles think it is ordinarily possible to be a Christian and not be in the church. Sure there are exceptions. John on Patmos.
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Yes to your last sentence.
And of course, there are circumstances where meeting every week in some places would be dangerous. What I said is to some degree context dependent. That’s why I said ordinarily. And that’s why I said “never.” If someone has been abused and can’t go back right away or even for a few years or months, that’s one thing. But there’s no out in Scripture that says, “if the church harms you, you are free never to be in the church again.” People were abused in the first century as well. God knew people would be harmed in the church.
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Sorry, but that’s not it at all. I’m a sinner just like everyone else. But Paul expressly says that public impenitent sin harms all believers, not just the individual sinner. Cleanse out the leaven he says in 1 Cor. 5 lest it ruin the whole bunch. You don’t do this quickly or haphazardly, but you do it.
It’s ironic you are getting upset at this on a blog that rails against the church (rightly so) for tolerating public, grievous sinners such as Tullian, Feltner, et al. Is kicking them out saying, “I thank God I’m not like you.”
The church is a collective body. We should all be concerned for the holiness of one another. The Apostles certainly command us to be.
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Sorry, but I know of several situations where discipline rightly applied led to true and lasting repentance. Does it guarantee it? No. But discipline—motivated by love—is one of the means God uses. Jesus, in fact, assumes that it will work at least sometimes. If your brother repents, you have gained your brother (see Matt. 18). So does Paul. (1 Cor. 5).
Does mere external pressure change someone? Of course not. But the Spirit often works through external pressure.
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Sure the church should be doing all that. But you don’t have to be a church or even a Christian to be doing all of that. In fact, non-church organizations often do a much better job of such things. That stuff is good and important, but the primary mission of the church is to do what only the church can do—preach the word, administer sacraments, administer proper discipline.
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Since we’re talking about discipline, let me add something that is frequently overlooked.
I am a part of the Presbyterian Church in America. And according to the PCA, everyone in a gospel preaching church is under discipline. The ordinary, faithful church member is disciplined by the Word of God every week. They are convicted of sin and encouraged in the gospel. That’s the first stage of discipline and what I might call “informal” discipline.
Formal church discipline is not a matter of “I’m holier than you.” It’s a matter of, “a brother or sister is in a serious, public sin that brings shame on the name of Christ. We don’t want that brother or sister to end up in hell, and that appears to be where they are headed. We aren’t perfect, we can only evaluate things as best we can. We might make a mistake. But we have to do it.”
Good parents don’t fail to discipline simply because they might err.
I’ve said before that Dee rightly goes after these leaders who ignore significant public sin among themselves. But if we’re going to harp on them for their public, gross, heinous sins, we have to do that with ordinary laypeople as well. Many of the guys mentioned on this blog err by going after the sheep and not the shepherds for gross sin. But the answer isn’t to go after the shepherds and then ignore the gross sin of the sheep. It’s to apply the same standard to all (to shepherds, it’s a higher standard. There are some sins that permanently disqualify you from public ministry.)
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This isn’t quite right. There were pagan temple prostitutes in Corinth of course, but the list of sins involves things that are quite possible apart from such contexts and, indeed, are condemned in other contexts as sin.
We know what the first century Jewish sexual ethic was and we also know that Jesus and Paul and the other Apostles would sanction extramarital sexual activity would make them non-Jewish. In fact, from what we have in the NT, Jesus and the Apostles were even stricter on this matter than the Jews of their day.
So yes, the people “living in sin,” as it were, are in grave, grave danger. So says the Bible. So says the church universal until the 1960s or so.
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When you read the early church fathers, they are insistent that the church is a formal organization and that membership in the church is necessary for salvation. There’s a famous quote from Cyprian, bishop of Carthage: “you cannot have god as your father if you don’t have the church for your mother.”
Is it assumed that people will join? Of course. Because it is assumed that you can’t be a Christian without being in the church.
It’s not an absolute thing. The thief on the cross. The guy in the center of Saudi Arabia who finds a Bible, reads it and is converted, but has nowhere to go to church. But the idea that you can be a Christian and willfully never join a church is simply foreign to the New Testament.
Just look at the NT. It’s not written to people as individuals, it’s written to the church. All of the letters, for example, are written to the church except for a handful, and those handful of letters are written to pastors/elders/shepherds such as Timothy with the expectation that they will be read to the entire church.
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I don’t know what happened to you and I’m sorry for it. I hope that you are in good, ongoing counseling for it and pray that you find some release. But just to be clear on two points.
1. Joining a church doesn’t make you a Christian. I had a pastor who said, “sitting in the church on Sunday makes you a Christian just as much as sitting in your garage makes you a car.”
2. A church that demands all of your time isn’t healthy or godly. It’s more like a cult. Run away fast.
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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about what the church is and what it isn’t. A journey back in Scripture points to the following overriding problems in the modern church: (1) no matter how you spin it, the raw true Gospel of Jesus Christ is not being proclaimed in many places, (2) many pastors and elders are not Biblically-qualified to hold those sacred offices, (3) the pew has joined itself to the church rather than the Body of Christ, and (4) the Great Commission is not the primary mission.
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I wonder if this was also true of Mohammed?
It is said that “Calvin Islamized the Reformation”, and “complete submission to God as personification of Fate” is also a major characteristic of Islam (whose name means “Submission”).
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There are good and bad books, right? Likewise there are good and bad worship services.
I find value in several different forms: silent Quaker meetings, elaborate cathedral services, and contemplative prayer. The liturgy broadly shared by the Roman Catholics, Methodists, Anglicans, and Lutherans has genuine beauty, to me. I also love the mysticism of Eastern Orthodox worship.
Not for me: praise bands, dress codes, ranting sermons, or any formulaic preaching. And although I’m only discussing worship forms here, folks have to be able to detect something better than harsh judgment when they come through the door…
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“There is no Right, there is no Wrong, there is only POWER.”
— Lord Voldemort
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Because it’s a Pelvic Issue, and to a lot of Christians Pelvic Issues are the absolute top of the Sin List.
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I bet there are many people who think they are not living in sin yet they are. A former pastor calls it *cooking the books.* In fact, I could well debate that things did not change in the 1096s but it occurred long before that,. I put together a 2 year course on church history which I taught in a couple of churches. Try not to faint that a woman could do it.
I talked about heresies that Aros in the early church and continued throughout the millennia. The 1960s changed very little .
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I recently took a trip to Greece to *Walk in th Footsteps of Paul.* Small churches were established within certain areas over long periods of time but the landscape was such that there were many individuals who became Christians who could not participate in the *local church.*
We look at things today and apply them back to an era that was quite different. I have read some historical texts that look at Christians within royal service. Many of them has to stay silent about their faith as the whole Catholic/Protestant wars continued. They could not attend church or even read the Scriptures.
Many people in the old Soviet Union had to stay quiet about their faith. I traveled their 3 times and even took the Trans Siberian railroad to Novosibirsk.There were many who practiced the faith alone during that time. The same goes for China.
I think you are a bit naive when it comes to the local church. You are in your nice PCA church which has sessions and supposedly does *the right thing.* You may do church like the Bible but I can well assure you that the PCA has their share of sex abuse problems.
While I was in Scotland, I met with some folks who are members to the Free Church of Scotland . This is Ground Zero for much of the Reformed movement. Over many pots of tea, we discussed their experiences with sex abuse and coverup in their churches. In fact, I need to write more. I exposed the true story of Iain Campbell and caused a bit of a ruckus. I received hone calls from media over there, asking many question about how I learned the hidden info. Of course, I will never tell them. Yep, their nice Reformed churches were covering up sex abuse.
Robert, praise Jesus that you have never been abused in a church. Praise God you have found a church that you are happy in. As one who left a church over what I believed to be the mishandling of sex abuse by an SEBTS seminary student (way over 13 boys) and then found myself in an Anglican Church in which a well known pedophile was traipsing around, I can well assure you that it is difficult to find a good church.
It took my husband and I a number of years to find our wonderful Lutheran church (it is conservative so don’t get your panties in a wad.) We sat in the pews for 2 1/2 years before we felt comfortable enough to join. For quite awhile, I, a deeply committed Christian felt like I was wandering in the wilderness.
There are many place in the US in which there are few choices for decent churches. There’re some places in which there are none rot speak of unless you are willing to compromise and site in an IFB church or sit in church known for abusive behavior. That is why I started E Church here.
You need to practice understanding and empathy before you spout off *You should be in church. The Bible says so.* Never forget that Jesus cares about the one sheep who is wandering in the wilderness. That person is loved as much as you are *doing church right.*
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Max,
Great comment, Max!
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Oh my goodness. You are one of those who actually believe the church is necessary for salvation? Cyprian had much good to say but he was involved in the whole Libelli deal. Yep, if Christian *fell away*munder pressure and signed one of these things, Cyprian was opposed to them repenting and returning to the church. Sounds like he would be a perfect saint for you. In fact, I should suggest him to the 9 Marx people.
The early church fathers, in my opinion and others, all had their little issues. So be careful when you quote them.
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Have you really read my blog? Have you reads about the stupid things that get disciplined by church? KIve listed them here. For goodness sake, 9 Marks is a stand alone case study in weird discipline.
I deeply disagree with much of the discipline that happens. in churches. To be sure pastors escape much of it and heap it on the little guy who can’t fight back.
Ad things stand right now, I do not believe that anyone should sign a membership contract (covenant) that says they will allow non defined church discipline to take place. Sped some time reading here and you will understand why people have decided they might not join a church. The Calvinista dudebros are the ones responsible for this and there should be a great deal of repenting going on.
Before you write tomes on how the early church did it or why said person must be in church ala Cyprian, I encourage you to go deeper and learn what happens when abuse is involved.
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And this sums up exactly who you are. You do not even mention that the church should love and support those who are members. You don’t mention a servant’s heart shield be exhibited by the leadership.
Good night, Robert! Church discipline is #3 on your list? You won’t get far on this blog. And, if you are in one of those disciplining churches, be sure to keep those sins you have on the down low so they don’t get you. Cook the books and look good, brother.
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You didn’t mention love in the three things a church should do. I wouldn’t go near your church. And be sure to read all the stupid stuff you guys discipline: divisiveness, not supporting the vision, deciding to leave without permission, asking too many questions and sinfully craving answers, etc.
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And church contracts never define what exactly that should look like so that one can discipline anything one darn well wants to. Read my blog on the issue. I am one of the few out there who understands the problems with church discipline and how to get out of it. I get at least one email a week asking for help. Google pops up this blog on the subject and I am thrilled to be able to help decent people escape stupid discipline and their church.
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Robert,
So you are adding a caveat to salvation. You cans only be saved by having Jesus as your Savior and you need to go to church…hmmm? Be careful here.
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Robert,
Paul’s journeys, Paul in prison, the many, many people who lived in rural areas (Ive seen them) and can not get to a church. They didn’t;’t have cars back then. I’ve seen this with my own eyes. You should take a trip to Greece sometime and see the real situation.
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Paul K,
I have no problem with your comment. I believe in church discipline for very serious sins but they need to be applied to pastors as well who usually get a pass. Are you reading our series on Cedarville University?
One caveat for you-you must let them go if they resign from the church. If you don’t you can get sued by the person. being a member of a church is voluntary here in the US. While they are members, the law stays ou unless there is a crime committed. The minute they resign the church has absolutely no power over them in this country, no matter what some dudebros claim. Read my posts on it. (How too resign from a church on the side bar.) In that, I include the lawsuit by a woman who continued to be disciplined after she left. It’s a no no.
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Sjon,
You have such wonderful comments. Feel free to share your thinking. You and I share some similar favorites: NT Wright and Scot McKnight and their names even rhyme. I got t see NT Wright at Duke. The place was packed out.
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Thanks for all of your responses on this topic today. Very helpful.
If churches had half a brain, they would welcome and love young adults and let them see healthy marriages in a Christian community. Instead, many churches rail pointlessly against things like women’s employment, and then wonder why nobody wants to get married in church.
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Robert,
“When you read the early church fathers, they are insistent that the church is a formal organization and that membership in the church is necessary for salvation…”
“…Because it is assumed that you can’t be a Christian without being in the church.”
It’s not an absolute thing…”
++++++++++++
1. i thought “christian” was based on Jesus Christ, not on the early-church-fathers.
why does it matter what the early church fathers thought?
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Robert,
“When you read the early church fathers, they are insistent that the church is a formal organization and that membership in the church is necessary for salvation…”
“…Because it is assumed that you can’t be a Christian without being in the church.”
It’s not an absolute thing…”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2. “membership in the church is necessary for salvation” — that sounds absolute.
Then you say, “It’s not an absolute thing.”
—-
tell you what:
this is a perfect example of what i have heard professional christians say my entire life.
they frame something in absolute terms. as a persuasion tool. i could argue as a manipulation tool. to persuade people by scaring them into it.
then, when a person actually thinks things through (what a concept, ‘actually thinking things through‘), they realize there are too many things that don’t fit into the ‘absolute black-&-white’ premise.
in fact, the person realizes that not even the professional christian lives according to this ‘absolute black-&-white’ premise.
and the person challenges the professional christian.
they point out that the inference and implication of the professional’s ‘absolute black-&-white’ premise (indeed, the only logical conclusion) is that going against it / doing the contrary means your eternal destiny will be hell, not heaven.
at which point, the professional christian manages to somehow argue that yes, it’s absolute, but not always, but yes, it’s absolute. in order to be a christian you have to do this, but not always, but if you don’t do it you aren’t a christian.
——
it’s like they either haven’t thought through the practical and logical contradictions and impossibilities of what they are say are mandates,
or they are afraid to admit that what they’ve built their faith, career and reputation on is not absolute at all.
they are afraid to confront they might be in error. they are afraid to go against the party line. there is simply too much to lose.
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One of my favorite passages in Scripture is the account of the blind man who Jesus healed. Leaders of his church interrogated him and his parents … not accepting his simple testimony that Jesus had healed him, they threw him out of church. Jesus went looking for him. Jesus knows what “church” is like in many places … I have a feeling that He draws near to believers who opt to leave places of aberrant faith or who are excommunicated and shunned because they question church leaders … He goes looking for them.
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“Duckspeak” — Reciting the Party Line without activating any neuron above the brainstem.
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… blindly following the Piped Piper into a theological cave, never to be seen again.
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I went through the same a few years ago. After being called a heretic I did a ton of reading on PSA. I posted quite a few links on the interesting items link on TWW, so you should be able to find them if needed.
Very recently I got into a discussion about this with an old friend who referred me to the gold-standard book on PSA “Pierced for Our Transgressions.” I had avoided reading it until now because I did not want to waste my time and money on it. But I finally broke down and got a copy. I am about half done with it and I am shocked by 1) their incredibly sloppy use of words, 2) their incredibly sloppy use of logic and 3) their deplorable misrepresentation of what early church fathers actually taught. The more I read this book the more it cements my earlier assessment that PSA is false. The authors are either incompetent, blinded by bias, or maliciously deceptive.
GK Chesterton wrote said something along the lines that he became a Christian not because of the great arguments made by Christians, but rather because of the terrible arguments made by atheists. I find a similar dynamic with this book.
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Or, I say it’s not an absolute thing because I recognize extraordinary circumstances like the guy in the middle of China who has no local church.
The fact that somebody is hurt by American church leaders is really bad. It’s acceptable to grieve for a time. It’s not acceptable to then spend the next 40 years out of the church and die. It’s a sign that the hurt person never truly found healing. That probably sounds more callous than I intend it, but we’re not living in a wasteland where the only churches one can find are abusive.
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The original question to which I was responding was, and I paraphrase, “Why isn’t church membership in the Nicene Creed if it’s so important.” The Nicene Creed was written by the church fathers. That’s why I responded the way I did.
But yes, Christian is based on Jesus. The same Jesus who died for his church and has no category for a follower who is not in a church except in extraordinary circumstances.
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Not “adding” anything. Just saying that the NT has no category for churchless Christians except in the most extraordinary circumstances.
Consider baptism. Do you have to get baptized to be saved? Of course not. But why should I, or anyone, believe you to be a Christian if you refuse to get baptized even though you are perfectly able to do so? You are impenitently disobeying a command of Christ. He did say that if you love him, you will keep his commandments.
Might you still be a Christian? Sure. But no one should take your profession seriously. And that is why all rightly organized churches are going to require baptism before you join. Your Missouri Synod Church isn’t going to accept an unbaptized person into membership. They’ll either baptize you if you’ve never been baptized, or they’ll receive the baptism of another church.
Don’t let the fact that the 9Marks guys can be legalists blind you to the fact that the NT expects people to be in the church. That’s all I’m saying.
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Dee, these are all EXTRAORDINARY circumstances (excuse my yelling, LOL). And sure, people didn’t have cars back then. They also all lived within walking distance of the village church by and large.
All I’m responding to are comments that are saying Jesus gives a special dispensation to people who were hurt by the church that they never, ever have to go back ever again. If you were abused by a pastor and have to stay away for months or years, I get it, I really do.Stay away. But dDon’t think that you can stay away for decades. It’s not good for the abused person. Find a good church where the people are reasonable. Get counseling. Get medication for panic attacks. This isn’t that difficult in most places in this country. A good church will even help you get counseling. I live in central Florida, and there are dozens of churches that have reputable counseling ministries or who will refer you and even help pay for your counseling. I’m not talking about poor nouthetic counseling; I’m talking about good counseling.
I know the dynamics of abuse are complicated, but at some point, the wounded person has to stop assuming that all churches are going to destroy him/her. Because in that case, the wounded person is actually sinning against lots of people by assuming they are out to get him/her. This stuff has to be worked through in counseling. If after 30 years one still has such problems that they can’t ever be in a church without a panic attack, then the problem isn’t the church anymore—it’s the person. He/she needs good counseling, medication, a combination. He/she hasn’t found healing. It’s sad for the wounded person.
I’m not trying to beat up on the victims. I hate what the Tullians and the Feltners and the Mahaneys of the church world have done. I’ve suffered through severe depression myself (not church-abuse related). There were days, months, years I didn’t want to go to church and in fact didn’t ever go. I didn’t want to do anything. Now, by God’s grace, I’m in a good place through the help of past counseling and ongoing medication. What I’m saying is the victims of abuse—for the sake of their own sanity and spiritual and relational health—need to find the counseling/medication solution that allows them to go back.
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No need to be snarky, Dee. Sure he loves the wandering sheep. And what does Jesus do with that one sheep in the wilderness. He brings them back to the flock. He doesn’t say, “You’ve been abused, so you can just spend the next fifty years out there all alone.”
Yeah, abuse is a huge problem in all churches. Guess what, there will always be abusers in the church. And when Jesus started the church, he knew there would be abusers as well. No polity or procedure will perfectly screen out all predators. Most churches could do better. A big part of the problem is that most Christians are very naive.
If the point is that the church must do better, then of course. If the point is, well, the church has done poorly in many places, therefore, you can profess Jesus and not obey Him, then no
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Why would you assume that you would be incapable of teaching a church history class? I imagine you did a great job. You are a good communicator. Oh, and I would happily sit in a Sunday school class taught by a capable woman, so please don’t assume otherwise. Some of the best theology teachers I have ever had have been women.
My point was that the church did not officially approve of such things prior to the sexual revolution. Did they look the other way at times? Sure. Sinners run the church, it’s all we have to run it. But to my knowledge, there wasn’t any church leader or council prior to the 1960s saying that it was just great to engage in fornication. Were there heretical groups? Sure. But the official church, RC, EO, or Protestant? Honest question—do you know of orthodox Christian councils, creeds, theologians who taught that it wasn’t a sin to engage in sex outside of marriage?
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The problem with the analogy is that Calvinism isn’t fatalism. Orthodox Calvinism teaches that human beings are true agents who bring true causes to pass.
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Meredithwiggle, I’ve been on a similar journey and PSA holds less and less weight in my personal theology. And yes, for a time it did feel like I was leaving Christianity. Feels more now like I’m returning to the heart of God in Christ.
My desire is to follow Christ Jesus, empowered and guided by the Holy Spirit and no longer be a follower of men.
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Because PSA WAS Christianity. No Exceptions.
And PSA is often only part of an all-or-nothing package deal with Young Earth Creationism, Rapture Ready Eschatology, DEMONIC Conspiracies, and specific Bible editions (i.e. Kynge Jaymes). All-or-Nothing, Take It or Leave It on pain of Eternal Hell/ being Left Behind.
That Way Lies Madness.
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And how do you survive in the Hands of this Always-Angry God?
Become More Christian Than Thou, More Pious Than Thou, More Devout Than Thou, hitting all the metrics and then some. And always Praising and Glorifying Him, no matter what.
Like the court of a Caligula where you stay alive by laying on the flattery thicker than the other guy.
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Isn’t that called “sending mixed messages”?
And more sinister, keeping up the chaos to where the mark doesn’t know which way is up. Easier to control.
“Chaos… Is a Ladder.” — Game of Thrones
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Meredithwiggle,
Ken F (aka Tweed),
The iceberg (PSA) tipped for me when I realized that it was nothing more than a lofty repackaging of human sacrifice. There’s no way around it (PSA), it is what it is.
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Headless Unicorn Guy,
Unfortunately, HUG is correct…. I have see exactly the same thing, multiple times. Sometimes, of the “estenials” is missing, or replaced with another “essential”, but is always the same mind set…
For example, I would love to lock in a room one of my rapid, independent, fundamentalist, NON reformed, Baptist “friends” from years ago with one of the rapide YRR. It would be quite the #$&$ show..
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What if that person is physically and emotionally incapable of going to church for the rest of his or her life? Is that person no longer a “real Christian”?
The issue isn’t whether or not there are “decent churches” somewhere out there. It’s whether God is so weak that he can’t include as his children those who can’t bring themselves to some building. Or so heartless that he refuses to do so.
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It’s good to know I’m not the only one. I’m not at the point where I can read the books; it would be too triggering. But I’m not surprised the logic is horrible. I tried to read one of the books that was recommended to me as a seminal defenses of eternal conscious torment in hell. Just the first chapter by Al Mohler was so bad I was like, “Is this the best they can do? Really?!”
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Rivergal,
Thanks so much, Rivergal. It is so heartening to know I’m not alone.
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Robert,
This has been an interesting conversation to follow.
Just an observation in your comment of the intended audience of books of the New Testament being either the church or elders/shepherds.
Luke wrote to “Theophilus.” It is unclear to me from looking at the text that he is an elder.
Peter and James wrote to “the exiles” and “the 12 tribes of the dispersion,” respectively. This sounds more to me like any individual who followed Christ, not to a formally organized body of believers.
John wrote his epistles to his “children,” “the elect lady [a woman elder, perhaps?] and her children,” and “Gaius” (who it is unclear from the text whether he is an elder, given that John mentions writing separately to the church in this same epistle).
This seems like an awful lot of exceptions for so broad a statement.
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You are absolutely not alone. It’s just that there is so much noise from the hyper-fundies and YRRs doubling down that it’s hard to hear the rest of us talking.
I went from being fundamental and dispensational, then migrated into the camp of Puritan worshiping New Calvinists. Then in the mid 2000s one little book opened a crack that became a fissure. Before I knew it was happening or even the term faith reconstruction, I was in the midst of the process. Thank God for it!
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As far as I know, NOBODY knows just who “Theophilus” was. I have even heard he could have been goyisha, maybe even a sympathetic ROMAN official. (Paul Maier used this speculation at the end of his highly-accurate, historically-documented historical novel Flames of Rome.)
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“Gaius” was also THE most common Roman man’s name of the time. Even more common among Roman men than “Miryam” (Mary) was among Jewish women.
Or like “Bruce” in that Monty Python skit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ojhtq51Ya8
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1) How do they reconcile that with Predestination and God’s Sovereign Will?
2) If there is a difference, a LOT of Calvinists Celebs have gone the Fatalism route “or close as makes no difference”.
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As I said, “That Way Lies Madness”.
I know that from my experience inside the bubble, at a time and place when Papa Chuck’s Calvary Chapel way of doing things Dominated like the Draka. Even though the not-a-cults I got mixed up in were in no way connected with CC, the CC viral DNA/RNA had penetrated and taken over.
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Me too! Leaving PSA behind means leaving room for a truly loving God. It has transformed my faith. When I sing the Getty hymn that says “the wrath of God is satisfied,” I sing “the love of God is satisfied.” Big difference!
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My point exactly.
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It is reconciled by affirming the reality of primary and secondary causation. God is the primary cause. We are secondary causes. For a practical illustration, consider this scenario: God chooses to save Sarah but He also ordains that He will save Sarah through Leah sharing the gospel with her. Leah is the secondary cause. Sarah simply won’t be saved without Leah’s sharing the gospel. The way God has ordained things is that Sarah will be saved only if Leah shares the gospel with her. Now the Calvinist would say that God’s decree guarantees that Leah will share the gospel with her, but that doesn’t make Leah’s efforts pointless, nor does it mean that Sarah will be saved in any other way than through Leah’s sharing the gospel. Neither Leah, nor Sarah, know that this will happen until it actually happens. Leah is just being faithful by obeying God’s revealed will to share the gospel.
Fatalism would say that God has chosen to save Sarah irrespective of any secondary cause. Nothing Leah does is relevant whatsoever. Her actions to preach or not to preach have no bearing whatsoever on Sarah’s salvation.
I would agree that a lot of Calvinist celebrities do talk in such ways that border on fatalism, at least at times. Best to stick with the Reformed Confessions (Westminster, Heidelberg, Belgic, Canons of Dort) for what orthodox Calvinism has taught historically.
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You are right about Theophilus not being an elder (maybe he was, maybe not, we don’t know). But as far as I am aware, virtually all NT scholars believe that the Gospels were intended to be read not just by individuals but by many people.
John is writing to an elect lady who is either a codeword for “church” or a woman who is part of a church who meets at her home. One could possibly argue that she is a female elder, but that seems unlikely for the simple fact that there just aren’t any female elders in the NT. But even if it is so, my point stands regarding the NT being written for the church.
James and Peter—writing to groups (elect exiles and such). I think the burden of proof here would be to show that these aren’t organized bodies or several organized bodies that shared the letters given that we know that the Apostolic practice was to preach the gospel and organize a church wherever they did preach the gospel.
All of that is to say that the NT has no category for a Christian who is able but refuses to join a local body of believers. That tends to be foreign to us, partly because we can just go to any bookstore and buy a Bible. That was impossible until 200 years ago or so. In the early church, the only way you were going to hear the Scriptures is if you were a part of a local body that received a letter from an Apostle or a body that had a collection of letters/gospels/OT.
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On Penal Substitution,
I don’t know if those of you who are rejoicing in abandoning it are responding to a poorly preached version of the doctrine or not, but let me make a suggestion to you before you abandon it, borrowing an illustration from current events that this blog addresses.
If you reject penal substitution, I think you end up saying that it doesn’t matter if justice is ever done for someone like Jules Woodson. (I don’t think you are trying to do this, but that’s what happens.)
Savage is never going to face criminal penalties for his crimes because of the statute of limitations. His “career” stumbled a bit when then news went public, but he has just started a new church. He’s always going to be able to do that because he’s a charismatic guy and because too many Christians believe in cheap grace. He received some kind of golden parachute, I’m sure, when he left the larger church. He’s not suffering any lasting consequence for his sin except, perhaps, a guilty conscience when he really thinks about it.
Meanwhile, Woodson’s life has been changed forever. She can talk out all she wants, and she should, but Savage is just going to pack up and keep going. She will never be quite the same again.
Without penal substitution, Jules doesn’t get justice in this life, and she doesn’t get it in the next. Once you get rid of PSA, there’s no real reason to believe in any kind of punishment in the afterlife. If God has no wrath to be satisfied on the cross, there’s no point to wrath after death.
On the other hand, PSA and the attendant doctrines that make it necessary gives Jules justice. If he never repents, he suffers the wrath of God forever. Jules gets justice. If Savage repents, PSA gives Jules justice because His sin receives punishment.
Without PSA, we are effectively saying to Jules—”You know what happened to you? God thinks it was no biggie. You don’t deserve justice.”
And that’s just one example. Lots of people never get justice in this life.
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The exception to the rule is the only thing that really matters: whether or not one will spend eternity in hell. Per orthodox Calvinism (oxymoron), humans have no choice at all in this matter because it was set by an unchangeable eternal decree. There is nothing anyone can do do get on or off the list. If that is not fatalism I don’t know what is.
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Dee,
On church membership. I was just reading Luther’s large and small catechism, part of the doctrinal standards of your church. They are pretty clear that the third commandment obligates Christians to attend to the preaching of the Word and the sacrament. In confessional Lutheranism, that means hearing from a lawfully ordained and qualified minister/pastor. And of course, in the Missouri Synod, that means membership in the MS, because you all have closed communion.
I’m not saying anything more or less than what your own church is saying.
And those Christians in China, Russia, etc. They met in secret. Perhaps not every week, but they strove to gather. They didn’t think it was optional.
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I certainly would not recommend reading pro-PSA books until you are well grounded in the alternatives. If you are up for a positive alternative, I recommend “A More Christlike God” by Brad Jersak. It is not just another theological rant. It is one of many very good resources out there that expose the errors of PSA.
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Which is exactly why 90+% of Christendom rejected the tenets of reformed theology over the past 500 years.
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In any system where God knows the future, there’s nothing anyone can do to get on or off “the list.” Your “free will” is an illusion. It perhaps existed in eternity past, where somehow you made your decision in God’s mind and he learned about it before you ever existed. But once he knew it, he can’t unknow it. He created the world knowing everything you would ever do, including typing in these comments, and when you woke up this morning, you could do nothing except come to this blog, read the comments, and reply. Whatever color shirt you are wearing, you could not wear another.
If orthodox Calvinism is fatalism, so is every theological system except Open Theism or Process Thought.
Now I don’t really want to argue Calvinism. I just want people to stop the lies and the smears. I don’t like it when people say non-Calvinists believe God isn’t sovereign. Why don’t you extend the same courtesy.
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Max,
Which tenets? Limited Atonement, maybe.
Thomas teaches unconditional election—that’s representative of probably most Roman Catholics between 1200 and 1900 or so.
Lutheranism teaches unconditional election.
The Reformed teach unconditional election.
The 39 articles of Anglicanism teach unconditional election.
Historic Baptists teach unconditional election.
Who does that leave out? The Eastern Orthodox. The Methodists. The Pentecostals. Anabaptists. That’s a lot of people. But it’s hardly 90 %.
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See my comments above on perhaps not wanting to jettison PSA too quickly. I think that if you jettison it, you are effectively saying that God doesn’t really care if someone like Jules Woodson ever gets justice.
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Adherence to the “system” of all 5 points = “real” Calvinist. Anything short of that is not Calvinism, in the true sense of the word. Calvinism depends on a collective system of all reformed tenets … systematic theology. The majority of Christians worldwide do not accept this system of faith.
Regarding “Limited Atonement”, Calvinist icon R.C. Sproul said “There is confusion about what the doctrine of limited atonement actually teaches. However, I think that if a person really understands the other four points and is thinking at all clearly, he must believe in limited atonement because of what Martin Luther called a resistless logic.”
Thus, there is no such animal as a 4-point Calvinist … or even a 7-point Calvinist, which Piper claims to be (he has to have more points than everybody else, of course).
Thus, if a person “really understands” according to Sproul, he would accept all 5 tenets which represent Calvinism; the TULIP is not complete unless all petals are intact … and that percentage of Christendom with such belief has historically been less than 10% of those who profess the name of Christ.
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This is “institutional” thinking, IMO. Jesus died for the church? What is church? Have you ever done a deep dive on the origins of the word, church? It’s interesting. Scholars can’t agree.
Maybe we could call it, “Jesus died for individuals who assemble due to their belief in Me”? I don’t see any support for group salvation. But it’s typical of church (and governments) to play down the “individual”. Easier to control people.
The thing is, it’s voluntary now just as it was in the beginning. There were many centuries it wasn’t voluntary. How sad. I doubt that sort of mandatory church discipline made better followers of Christ whether Protestant or Catholic.
Here is what I love about it all: You are free to try and convince folks of your views. I am free to not give you permission to let it bother me. At all. 🙂
That’s my encouragement to people who get caught up in church drama circles. If they ask. “God within us” means we have as much access as anyone else. But, adulting is hard.
In any assembly or configuration of believers, people are hopefully maturing. At the same time, some need to go it alone for a while. Paul did. For some, it’s getting alone, cutting out the noise of the titled “experts” who have to take into consideration the mortgage payment on the building. Don’t discount that. It’s huge.
I view the assembly of the “called out ones” more as fellowship. Some have more experience than others they share. There are different gifts being used to help one another. Sometimes they just shared food and thanked God. We tend to overcomplicate it with org charts, doctrinal checklists and legal designations.
My view of scripture is Jesus kept it simple. We overcomplicate it.
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Robert,
You are making an assumption about how of the each church functions in this manner. You may be surprised. But that is all I’m going to say on this particular point.
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You are correct. No matter how hard they try to say that it is our choice that sends us to hell, logic demands them to face that they believe that God has chosen, it is preordained, heaven for only some. Therefore, it means the others will go to hell.
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You are in a PCA church. Do they allow women to teach Sunday school type classes to a mixed audience? If so, could you give me the name of your church?
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What you call snarky might be what others call frustration. This is one of the reason I am against most church discpline as practiced by the Calvinistas. Say something a certain way and then one is accused of causing division or “hurting the feelings” of a senior pastor.
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Oh good night! If you read this blog carefully, I think you would find that many people wish to follow in the path of Jesus. To say that someone is not obeying Jesus by failing to find a local church in East Nowhere, Mississippi would be wrong. If you were privy to our search to find a good church which wouldn’t attempt to discipline me because I caused a ruckus over an awful pedophile situation in my former church, you would see how hard we tried.
I live in Calvinist land over here. I live a few miles from SEBTS. Many of the boys who attended there have decided that North Carolina is a marvelous place to live. They trip over each other, trying to rent space in shopping strip malls. Then we have two major Calvinista church-JD Greear’s Summit and Lee’s Hope Church both of whom set up satellites like the world is about to end.
I had had enough of the Calvinist set in my former Baptist church and that is why this blog got started. It took about 5 years to finally find a church in which I felt comfortable.
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Once again, the little village church you mentioned could be a really, really bad church. Look at what was going with the Corinthians. I would not be surprised if a bionic of folks walked away form the weirdness. And having visited Corinth, I am of the opinion that there was probably a dearth of churches.
Think about something. I am one who has always searched for a church and has been a member of the church with which I affiliated. Yet, given what I see and given what I experienced in a former church, I get why some people walk away. But as Tolkien said…”Not all who wander are lost.”
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Robert,
Please stop pasting lengthy parts of another’s comment which you are discussing. Try to keep our comments a bit shorter.
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AH, the Exquisite Sensitivity to any slight to themselves (real or imagined), combined with utter indifference on how their own actions not only slight but harm others.
“There is no You, There Is Only MEEE!
There is no You, There is Only MEEEE!”
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It’s not just there … the new reformers are doing the same everywhere! Church-planting really means theology-planting to a New Calvinist … their movement has little to do with spreading the Gospel of Christ (heck, they don’t even talk about Jesus much!). They are in a frenzy to accomplish their mission to change the belief and practice of the next generation. Their heavy-handed tactics are making real Calvinists look bad (my beef has always been with New Calvinism, not classical Calvinism). When the dust settles after this madness, believers will steer clear of any form of Calvinism, IMO.
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And when “More Elect Than Thou” One-Upmanship sets in, look for 6 Points, 7 Points, etc.
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“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
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dee,
Dee,
Goodness gracious. Let me remind you again that your church teaches predestination. Even sin Lutheranism, God chooses to save only some. He might want to save everyone, but he doesn’t choose to save everyone.
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Like I’ve said here on more than one occasion, both the Bible and Science suffer from the same two ills, not giving them the credence they deserve at one extreme, and making way too much of them at the other.
I’m an old drunk with 24 years sobriety who remembers the old AA saying:
— KEEP IT SIMPLE —
And yeah Lyds, you’re right, it really is that simple, just be a Mensch (Yiddish for good person), and don’t do the kinds of things to others that you wouldn’t want done to your self. In doing so, you (generic you) fulfill all the Law and the Prophets.
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Dee,
Well, in Paul’s day, there was probably one church. And you had to be a part of that church to hear 1 Corinthians
And yes, I understand why some people walk away. That doesn’t mean they should walk away and never come back or that God allows them to walk away and never come back. I understand why some abuse victims or rape victims never trust a man ever again. Does that mean they have the right not to trust a good man or that they are not somehow sinning against him?
Good grief again, you are Lutheran. How do Lutherans teach that we are assured of salvation? Through Word and sacrament. Without the church, there is no ordinary possibility of assurance in Lutheranism because you have no access to the preached Word or the sacrament.
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Dee,
Sure thing. Sorry.
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dee,
If you love Jesus, you will love what He loves, and He loves the church. You can’t love the church in the abstract. If someone tells me that he/she loves Jesus and yet he/she doesn’t think they need to find a church, then I have no reason to believe their profession. If you tell me you are Lutheran and you hate what Lutherans love and stay away from Lutheran worship and fellowship, why should I believe you?
I’m really not trying to be harsh here. This idea that it is possible to follow Jesus without being a part of the church—in ordinary circumstances—is simply foreign to Scripture. The Reformers didn’t say, okay, “you’re all on your own now. Rome really abused you, so it’s okay if you stay away forever.”
And again, Dee, your church practices closed communion. That says something about whether they believe being joined to a church is necessary for salvation. It’s not necessary in an absolute sense, but it’s a fruit of salvation.
It’s like good works. Doing good works doesn’t get me into heaven. But if I’m going to heaven, I’m going to do good works. This is basic Reformational teaching, even of your Lutheran church. And one of those good works is gathering with believers for worship and fellowship.
If you live in the middle of rural nowhere, where the closest church is 100 miles away and its a bad, abusive church, that’s one thing. It’s quite another if you live in any reasonably densely populated area in this country. And when I say “good church,” I don’t mean a church where you like the music, or the youth group, or whatever. I’m talking about a church where the leadership isn’t abusive and where the teaching is reasonably orthodox. Lots of people don’t find a church they are comfortable with because of superficial reasons (not saying that’s you).
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Lydia,
I don’t disagree with much of what you said. But salvation is both/and with respect to individuals and the group. Jesus saves me through my individual faith, but he doesn’t save me alone. I am united to Him and through Him to all other true Christians.
Scripture says that Jesus died both for the individual (loved me and gave himself for me—Gal. 2) and the collective (his bride, the church, Eph. 5).
Here’s the problem—as Americans (I assume you are American. If not, sorry!), we are incredibly individualistic. We tend to think that the only thing that matters is “my personal relationship with Jesus.” As long as we have that, we’re golden. Well, if that were true, then all the stuff the NT says about the church is completely superfluous. And it overlooks the fact that the NT and OT was given to the body as a whole.
Does a personal relationship with Jesus matter? Absolutely! Without it, no salvation! You don’t go to heaven simply by joining a church! Salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone. But Cyprian was right to say that you can’t have God as Father without church as mother. And even when Paul had to go it alone, he always talks about how much he longs to be reunited with his churches (see Philippians, for example).
The 9Marks guys are pushing back against hyper-individualistic Christianity. They’re doing it poorly at times, but they’re responding to an extreme that says the church doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m reading unfairly between the lines, but a lot of the comments here carry the flavor of the latter.
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Max,
OK. But I’d be careful about determining truth by counting noses. 75 percent of professing Christians worldwide (if not more), believe that they will earn heaven by doing good works. (RCs, EOs, even many Protestants functionally). They don’t deny grace, but they don’t make it the exclusive means of salvation either.
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What lies and smears?!? Are you saying that Calvinism does not teach unconditional election? All I said was Calvinism is fatalistic when it comes to who is and is not saved because no human can change the divine decree made in eternity past. How is that a lie or a smear? This is not an issue of being courteous. Rather, it is an issue of the facts about what Calvinism teaches.
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There was nothing quick about my rejection of PSA. To my shame, I got way too OCD in investigating the arguments from both sides. The more I read about it the more I become convinced that it is both wrong and dangerous in the way that New-Calvinists teach it. But there is a spectrum of beliwf, with NT Wright being on an edge of PSA that I find plausible. But he does not believe it in the same way as is popularly defined.
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Your argument here appears to be based on justice being very narrowly defined in only a criminal/legal sense. The OT idea of justice includes that, but also much, much more. It is very closely linked with righteousness, which is all about setting things right. This includes things like taking care of the oppressed, being good citizens, creating edifying art, building good biuldings, and all kinds of other things that involve the right way for humans to live. Surprisingly, OT justice and righteousness are also related to mercy.
As for justice being served. Justice has not been served just because the appropriate parties have been punished. It is only served when the victim is made whole. Part of that includes punishing the perpetrator, but if it stops there it does not restore the victim. This is why Jesus’ promise that he makes all things new so important. One day things will eventually be put right. This is when juatice will be served fully.
Your argument for PSA depends on rejecting the OT view of justice and adopting a strictly criminal/legal view of it.
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That would be John Piper. He added Point 6 and Point 7 to his personal Calvinism resume. The sixth point = double predestination. The seventh point = best-of-all-possible worlds.
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-does-piper-mean-when-he-says-hes-a-seven-point-calvinist
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No, and you just agreed with my argument, I think. You said that justice involves wholeness for the victim—I agree. And you said that wholeness for the victim includes punishment of the crime.
Without PSA, there is no punishment for the crime.
Do we want to reduce the cross to PSA? Of course not. But under your own definition of justice, victims get no justice without PSA. At best they get incomplete justice.
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Because unconditional election does not fatalism make. And further, what you have said is true of election based on divine foreknowledge. No one can alter the divine decree based on foreknowledge based in eternity past.
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Ken F (aka Tweed),
I can relate to this comment!
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Robert, just curious. How is virtual church discipline going these days?
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Dee,
This is from the Missouri Synod website:
“God, before the foundation of the world, from pure grace, because of the redemption of Christ, has chosen for His own a definite number of persons out of the corrupt mass and has determined to bring them through Word and Sacrament, to faith and salvation.”
You are complaining about a doctrine that your church teaches! That’s the same way most Reformed people construe election.
I don’t really want to argue election. I would just prefer it if all the “haters” on election recognize that it’s not a Calvinist distinctive.
Your church is just as predestinarian as mine!
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Dee,
Your church also rejects election based on foreseen faith:
“Nor does Holy Scripture know of an election “by foreseen faith,” “in view of faith,” as though the faith of the elect were to be placed before their election; but according to Scripture the faith which the elect have in time belongs to the spiritual blessings with which God has endowed them by His eternal election.”
https://www.lcms.org/about/beliefs/doctrine/brief-statement-of-lcms-doctrinal-position#election-of-grace
The difference between Lutherans and Calvinists on this matter is that Calvinists are happy to use the term “double predestination.” But what we mean by it—God’s passing some sinners over—is basically what the Missouri Synod says. See the Westminster Confession. Our respective positions on this topic are essentially identical. Lutherans differ with the Reformed mainly on issues of worship.
If we Calvinists are fatalists, so is your church. Maybe you should leave… (Just kidding, lol).
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It drives my wife crazy. My fatal flaw is I cannot easily let doubts fester. So I dig.
My best advice to PSA advocates is to avoid recommending the book “Pierced For Our Transgressions” to those outside their bubble. I am nearly finished reading it and nothing has done more to illustrate to me the absurdity of PSA than this book. The fact that they had to resort to lying and flawed logic sealed it for me. But I suupose it is great reading for those inside their bubble.
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Robert, I hope you don’t mind if I address a few of your related comments at once. I’ll try to be brief.
“Die”? In what sense? Are you saying that this somebody will lose salvation and go to hell?
What if that 40 years (or longer) is how long it takes for some wounded hearts to heal? Do you think yourself qualified to set a time limit on anyone’s recovery?
Oh, yes. Count on it.
And if they never find it, what then? Are they going to hell?
If Jesus is with that sheep in the wilderness, the sheep is not “alone”. And Jesus can be with that wounded lamb, and with the flock at the same time. He’s God.
Oh, and the way I remember Jesus’ story, the shepherd brings the lost sheep home. No further mention of the flock at all.
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Now comes the EIGHTH point.
Then the NINTH.
Then the TENTH…
And the Game of One-Upmanship continues ad infinitum.
“ME SHEEP! YOU GOAT! HAW! HAW! HAW!”
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Or the Christianese definition of “Judgment”:
“THEE (NOT ME) GETS IT IN THE NECK!”
This is no different than the Disciples fighting over Who Will Get To Sit As His Right and Left Hands, i.e. Who’s Court Favorite (“ME, not Thee!”).
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Though PSA is not a doctrine you want taught to you if you’re OCD.
(For that matter, neither is “Rapture Porn” or “Persecution Porn”. Too likely to trigger a runaway OCD paranoia cascade.)
I remember an old Rachel Held Evans blogpost titled “Ask an Aspie” about how “Those with Aspergers’ traits are advised to steer clear of ‘certain types of churches’.” (We can guess what those “certain types” are.) And that should hold for OCDs, too.
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Which, of course, is not truth. This is the standard Calvinist argument against non-Calvinist faith. I have been a Christian for 70+ years and have known only a few believers working their way to eternity. The vast majority I have worshiped with believe that accepting Christ – by their own free will, with a genuine belief in Him and obedience to His commands – will see them to Glory. But, no use fussing with you about this … you have been indoctrinated lock, stock and barrel based on your other comments in this thread.
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Note the unspoken assumption that RCs and EOs are ALL into Works Salvation.
Coup Counted.
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It would be so easy for Piper to add evanescent grace as his eigth point. But it could confuse his base since so few Calvinists know about it or where to find it in Calvin’s Institutes. Hint: 3.2.11
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I’m an old geek with 24 years in Microsoft Windows and SQL Server who remembers the IT version:
— KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID —
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3.2.11?
Is that the chapter-and-verse Zip Code in the Book of Calvin?
Note the format “3.2.11” is the same outline format used in LEGAL documents.
Calvin started out as a lawyer, pushed into that profession by his father.
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I get the sense that Robert has not spent any significant time trying to honestly learn about RC or EO from knowledgeable insiders.
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Which explains why his view of salvation is primarily a legal balancing of the books. As I know you well know, the ancient view was more of a hospital/medical view.
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Serving Kids in Japan,
Whether a person who dies having utterly forsaken the church and yet professes Christ is in heaven or not is not for me to decide. All I am saying is that I have no good reason to believe that anyone is a Christian who does not love who and what Jesus loves. And Jesus loves the church.
Yes, he brings the sheep home. Where is home? The sheepfold with the other sheep. It’s the church. It’s not Jesus and the sheep in the wilderness forever.
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Max,
Do you affirm justification by faith alone? If yes, then you aren’t into works salvation.
You don’t have to be a Calvinist to affirm justification by faith alone. Lutherans affirm it. Anglicans affirm it. Methodists affirm it. Every tradition that traces itself back to the Reformation.
The Christian world (2 billion plus) consists of something like 1 billions Roman Catholics and 400 million or so EO. That’s 75 percent of professing Christians affirming a system that is works salvation because both of those groups anathematize Protestants on this very matter. It’s not crass works salvation that says grace is unnecessary. It’s a system that says grace is necessary but not enough.
I’m emphatically NOT saying that Calvinists are the only ones who trust in Jesus alone for salvation.
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Ken F (aka Tweed),
The RC and the EO have anathematized those who believe in justification by faith alone. It’s in their documents. It’s not a crass works-salvation. They affirm need of grace. But they explicitly state that one is justified by one’s faith and by one’s good works. Please don’t slander me with your comments and baseless accusations.
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Note how Word and sacrament was changed to the preached Word and sacrament. Typical switch, or addition, however one views that.
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Ken F (aka Tweed),
Wait, you just said above that the punishment of the perpetrator’s sin is necessary to the victim’s healing. On your own admission, something like penal substitution its required even in how you are talking about the atonement.
This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about. Why slander Calvin et al for penal substitution when even you believe punishment of the crime is needed to heal the victim?
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Bridget,
In Lutheranism, as in other Reformation traditions, the idea of Word and sacrament is the read and preached Word and sacrament. It’s in all the Reformation confessions. And until widespread literacy, the only way to get the Word of God was to hear it read and preached. Historically, books have been very expensive and only a few people could read.
I’m not changing anything. If you disagree, that’s fine, but I’m just pointing out that attacks on what I am saying about church membership are at odds with the confessions of the very church that Dee is a member of. Attack what I am saying and you are attacking traditional Protestant theology. Maybe that theology is wrong; just recognize what you are doing.
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Dee,
This is a good conversation for me. It’s helping me learn so much about the Missouri Synod that I didn’t know. I grew up in the ELCA under a conservative, charismatic pastor. It’s looking to me that the LCMS agrees with much of what I am saying. They say it better:
By the public ministry we mean the office by which the Word of God is preached and the Sacraments are administered by order and in the name of a Christian congregation. Concerning this office we teach that it is a divine ordinance; that is, the Christians of a certain locality must apply the means of grace not only privately and within the circle of their families nor merely in their common intercourse with fellow-Christians, John 5:39; Eph. 6:4; Col. 3:16, but they are also required, by the divine order, to make provision that the Word of God be publicly preached in their midst, and the Sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, by persons qualified for such work, whose qualifications and official functions are exactly defined in Scripture, Titus 1:5; Acts 14:23; 20:28; 2 Tim. 2:2.
https://www.lcms.org/about/beliefs/doctrine/brief-statement-of-lcms-doctrinal-position#holy-scriptures
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Robert
All of this was a good conversation but I think it is getting carried away. When one person becomes the center of attention as opposed to a round table discussion involving lots of people I realize the comments have gotten off track.
You argue your points well. But…you have started using the word *attack* when It comes to those who might disagree with you in a manner not pleasing to you.
I’m going to close comments for now after I approve your final comments. Suffice to say that I really like Scot McKnight and am grateful for his work.
As for my being a member of the LCMS, I’m well aware of what you are quoting. But there is far more to read in Lutheran theology which is something I have done. I have also taken a course at a Lutheran seminary.
At this point, however, I do not want to get into an argument. which is what this is turning into. So, let’s call it a day.