John Piper Show and Tell
SHOW
TELL
For some strange reason, evangelicals continue to tolerate John Piper’s bizarre teachings—including the belief that Christians are still dead in trespasses and sins. However, and per the usual, he chooses his words very carefully so as to not come right out with stating it. Nevertheless, just in case you think he is speaking of the unregenerate, consider that he says: “….why you would call dead people to do things.” If he had the unregenerate in mind, this is certainly a strange choice of words. One might also think to himself: “Wasn’t Lazarus a believer?”
Furthermore, Piper shows his close kinship with Sonship Theology with the whole concept of “speaking life into people.”
And by the way, what’s the difference between what he is saying in the video and this description of metaphysical Christian Science: “In metaphysics the higher rules the lower. What we control in the spiritual realm will manifest in the physical. This process is done by seeing or speaking, affirmations. In the word faith philosophy words have power, they contain the force when spoken in faith…. The concept is to have it birthed in the spiritual realm first and then it will come about in the natural. As one takes the Scripture believing and confessing it the process of supernatural faith begins. One is to speak what they want into existence.”
And no John Piper verbiage would be complete without a direct contradiction to the plain sense of Scripture. He says we “can’t please God” when the apostle Paul makes it clear that we “make it our goal to please Him” and will be judged accordingly at the Bema Seat judgement.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
Randy,
I believe that because of the excessive loaded language and evasiveness, and the nature of this discussion, a person must be very clear about what they believe. If you use the label “NCT,” you must also define the camp with whom you identify. Are you of Zens (how much of the original stuff to you profess?), Zapel, Reisinger, Gaudreau, Wells, Hockner, or Gibson? Do you follow the Systematic Theology of NCT, or do you just find that it is your functional position of your working theology, and you don’t plug the word into a theology but just notice that your beliefs correspond with NCT? Could you be using the terminology and could you have adapted beliefs that started with Zens and be completely unaware of that fact (what I think Paul is getting at here with you)?
I my mother was born again into an evangelical system with which I participated, and I didn’t learn of the roots of that system and its origin until I was 38, long after I left it. It was mindblowing for me when I learned. I attended an aberrant church (evangelical, nondenominational) and had to suffer serious spiritual abuse and then leave before I was able to learn of their doctrinal system, beliefs, and history. If I had been given informed consent about their aberrant beliefs or even just some of their intramural ones, I would have never joined. I read Covenant Theology for several years before I was able to develop a working knowledge of it, its history and its leaders (because I had been a dispensationalist and was not brought up with any history or knowledge of Calvinism).
I read an article by Zens last night that deals with sanctification, and he uses the same terminology as Brinsmead and makes references through his terminology to Goldsworthy. He repeats their language as well as multiple references that state that sanctification must always begin with justification and that “Justification covers us.” I’ve read on the subject of sanctification at SoundOfGrace.org, and it is confusing because though Reisinger uses little to none of the phraseology of the New Calvinists, the site displays a whole long series in parts of Piper’s writings on sanctification. So what am I to assume there?
Given the nature of this discussion here at Paul’s blog, if someone here identifies themselves as a follower of NCT as you have identified yourself, it is imperative that a person understand what you believe about justification and sanctification. I learned in my twenties that much of my terminology and expression came from Lutheran theology, though I was not raised Lutheran and my tradition carried animosity for Lutherans. I didn’t know. Could it be possible that something similar might be true of you? That’s what Lydia wants to learn.
On another site recently, someone stated that if anyone wanted to understand his doctrine, those who were curious should read every comment that he’s written in the past year. Is that reasonable? What I see you saying is similar. That’s tough to do, too. Is it fair to Lydia to expect this of her when you are here and can answer her questions? She had to go to your site and study everything you’ve written? It may seem simple and readily evident to you, but it is not to us.
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Thanks Cindy, I think you nailed it.
Randy, when you defend these guys, what else are we to think? Keep in mind that I am also working from a different frame of reference with these guys. I know how they parse words, redefine concepts, etc
Take Bruce Ware, for example. He will declare up front in a teaching: Jesus is equal in the Trinity.
But then, with his next 1000 words, he is teaching that Jesus is NOT equal in the Trinity. He does this by using lots of big words, mental gymnastics and verbosity. By the time he is done, the little stepford pastors are saying Jesus is equal….but…..they are parroting him.
These guys parse words, redefine meanings and use loaded language all the time. I am on the record saying that if Piper were not allowed to use adjectives, he could not operate at all. He would not have a successful ministry.
In fact, it takes a lot of work to analyze what they teach and see the error because so much of it is cognative dissonance. People do not really believe what they are ‘really” teaching. They argue they are NOT teaching it at all! It is uncanny. It is so deceptive that few catch it because it is always mixed with truth or leaves something out. I think it is based on cult of personality.
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Lydia,
Another part of the difficulty may be that the people who teach this stuff don’t really know what it means themselves. They repeat what their professors or their favorite teachers have taught without having actually thought about the meanings very deeply, trusting their guides.
The NC Bruce Ware is an excellent example of someone who can give all of the right answers on the doctrinal questions, but then when you listen to what he says, he advocates something other than those straight answers (provided that he has given them). He says that the Father has supreme honor, power, and status in the Trinity, and that it is Jesus’ eternal status and “role” to do the bidding of the Father. But if I say that I believe that Ware, based up on 50 pages in his book, has indicated that Jesus has less honor, power, and status and that He is constrained from doing His own will without getting permission from the chief, Ware says that I’ve misrepresented him. (And I’m also supposed to forget that the only word in the NT Greek that translates into role is the word that is translated as “hypocrite,” a Greek transliteration into English.) I know that the real meaning he’s teaching is that Bruce Ware’s word is on par with the Gospel, and I’m not permitted to question him because it points out the huge holes in his argument. And by disagreeing, I’m disqualified as a Christian. I’m allowed to be a Berean if I don’t challenge the guru.
This is true of all of the NCs. And have you ever been moderated off of a New Covenant Theology blog? Uh… I have. Have you ever been told to stop a particular line of questioning on a NCT blog or have them delete your posts? I have. Do you know someone who has been met with these same things? I have. Have you ever had a self-proclaimed New Covenant Movement theologian tell people that he was going to “make you pay?” I got into trouble on a thread on Sound of Grace in 2008 because I said that the Bible didn’t advocate polygamy, and several there claimed that it was permissible under the New Covenant and for New Testament believers, not in the First Century but for today.
There’s plenty of cognitive dissonance to be had — because you are told one thing like it is a disclaimer, and then you see something very different played out in practice or in the full perspective of the whole teaching. It’s like being told that there is no such thing as the color blue, but Berlin’s “Blue Skies” is playing in the background, and the whole color scheme is indigo, royal, and cyan. But if you find that to be contradictory, you’re the problem, or you’re just not quite sophisticated enough to understand, poor thing.
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Okay Randy,
You’ve defined what the Gospel does. What is the message exactly? What is it in terms of the rest of your theology, especially knowing what we know of these teachers, the roots of the movement, and some of its specific teachings?
Is it encapsulated as “God offers us forgiveness through Jesus Christ?” Is it that God saves us (aorist tense – past, present, future) all, and that is not necessarily limited to accepting Christ as Savior, saving us and keeping us, even if we are mature believers? If the Gospel is limited to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” and it is primarily a reference to becoming born again, as a believer for forty years, do I have to preach the gospel to myself every day? If I get born again and my status (my identity) becomes “justified,” do I really start with, behold and meditate on justification every day specifically, or do I move on from there because I am being conformed into the Image of Jesus, day by day? Does yesterday’s sanctification evaporate during the night so that I need to go back to justification to re-acquire it daily? Or do I latch on to justification/sanctification by specifically renouncing the OT Law and the Decalogue daily, and that is how I find justification? Can I get born again without specifically renouncing the OT Law and Decalogue, or does that happen by accepting grace through faith so that my flesh and its influences magically melt away? Can I really get born again if I don’t renounce the Ten Commandments? If I do pray to surrender to Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and I don’t renounce the Ten Commandments as applicable to me today (though they are not my primary guide), am I born again or just a lesser Christian – or just not fully embracing the truth, perhaps?
These are questions I have after developing a full understanding of NCT and the Systematic Theology of NCT. These ideas are contained in Piper’s article on sanctification that are displayed on Sound of Grace/Reisinger’s website. Zens’ biography/history article about the development of NCT identifies Reisinger as one of the first people to accept, validate and participate in NCT, and he does not disavow himself of Reisinger. Reisinger, to my knowledge, has not disavowed Zens.
With these considerations, do you understand why people do not just say, “Okay, Randy! We completely accept and believe what you’re saying”? The Gospel has come to mean 100 different things with even more implications. You may think it’s simple, but others have made it complicated. You identify yourself with some of these others. Do you not see that the burden rests with you to demonstrate what it is that you believe, even if many others are responsible for making it complicated?
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Cindy,
I have written at length on these subjects and anyone who wishes can see what I believe. I don’t really feel I need to “reinvent the wheel” by answering all these questions in detail.
Let me try in 6 minutes JK [that seems to be the accepted amount of time for giving the gospel message] to state what I believe the gospel involves. First of all, one must establish a need for such a message. The good news is only good news in light of the bad news. The bad news is that we have two grave problems: 1. We [please understand “we” to refer to we, in a state of sinful nature] are guilty before God and condemned, 2. We are, by nature, averse to then things of God and hostile toward God himself. We habitually live for ourselves; we are under Satan’s dominion; we are dead toward God and alive toward sin. Left to ourselves, not only can we find no remedy for our plight, but have no desire to seek the remedy God has provided. God intended the gospel to remedy both these problems. To remedy the first, Christ died for us [“Us” now refers to us believers]. To remedy the second, we died with Christ to the dominion of sin. Both these accomplishments occurred objectively when Jesus died on the cross. They are applied subjectively when God the Father calls us effectually and the Holy Spirit washes us and renews us in what theologians call “regeneration.” The good news is not only that God will forgive our sins, past, present and future, thus giving a remedy for our guilt, but that he will transform our lives to be conformed to the image of his Son. The latter is God’s remedy for the second grave problem. Through union with Christ, [in my view, the most significant theme in the NT Scriptures]
believers will become partakers of all that Jesus was in his perfect humanity. God ensures that this will become a reality by working in us to give us the desire to please him and by giving us the ability to please him (Phil. 2:13). As a result of the Spirit’s work within us, we become involved in the process by obeying, praying for assistance, mortifying the deeds of the body etc.
The chief, though not the only, motivation for such obedience is gratitude for God’s redeeming work in Christ. The writer to the Hebrews put it this way, “let us have gratitude [be thankful] SO THAT we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, “for our God is t a consuming fire.” I am grateful every day [at least if I am thinking and acting like a good Christian], that I am no longer under God’s wrath and no longer under sin’s cruel dominion. When I sin, [note I did not say if I sin], I am grateful for the gospel all over again. It is the same work of Christ that pardons my sins as a believer to restore my fellowship with God as pardoned my sins as an unbeliever and established my relationship with God. Both are good news.
Do I need this continually? Yes I do. The Manna in the desert was a type of Christ. The people of Israel were not to gather more than enough for each day. Each day then needed to gather more for that day. Christ is the living bread that came down from heaven. Jesus said, “Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds [the word means to munch on or graze on ] on me, will live because of me. (John 6:57). In other words, faith in Christ is not something I do once and get it over with. Faith in Christ is an ongoing activity. I believe that is why John describes true faith in the present tense and not the past tense. Do I literally “preach the gospel to myself everyday?” No. When I sin, am I grateful there is a great high priest at the Father’s right hand who, based on his finished work on the cross, is pleading my cause? You bet.
I hope I haven’t gone over my six minutes.
Relative to the Law questions, let me just say we don’t hate the Law or reject the Law. We just understand that Law, as covenant, belonged to Israel as a nation. Its purpose was to give sin the character of transgression. It could not justify, nor could it sanctify. That was not its purpose. Not only was that not its purpose in Israel’s experience; it is not to be its purpose in ours. It is because we are not under law, but under grace that sin will not have dominion over us (Romans 6:14). It is the grace of God that brings salvation that teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. . . (Titus 2:11ff).
I hope that helped to clarify my position. If not, either ask me more questions or go to my website http://www.new-covenant-theology.org.
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Cindy,
Perhaps it would help answer some of your questions to read, The Cross:The Heart of New Covenant Theology.
Randy
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Randy, I looked back again at your original comment(s). I think that they also demonstrate why there is so much ambiguity. I also didn’t know that you were the “anonymous” who originally made the comment.
You say of the Gospel (beyond the literal term):
1. “God is in sovereign control of the universe” (no reference)
2. “The gospel is good news but everything that is good news is not the gospel in that sense.” For clarity, does this mean:
“The idea that God is in sovereign control of the universe, but everything that is good news is not necessarily about God being in sovereign control of the universe. What is it then?
3. You again tell us what the gospel is not: It is not “believe and you will be regenerated.”
4. You tell us that the gospel is about the debate of human agency vs God’s sovereignty through a vague defense of Calvinism (which I know because I’m familiar with the theology).
5. You offer John 6:44: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.”
What I understand from this is that the Gospel is a collection of discussions that God is sovereign and there is no real human agency involved in coming unto the Son, though you have not told us what is entailed in coming unto the Son, except that we will be raised up in the last day. You actually state that the Gospel is not about regeneration, but it is unclear if you are talking about regeneration or the idea that belief doesn’t play a role in salvation (though this contradicts Scripture). Are you also stating that there is no regeneration?
I’m sure you don’t intend it, but a Jehovah’s Witness could offer this same definition of the Gospel because in attempting to defend God’s sovereignty, you’re too afraid to admit that the central message of the Gospel is about accepting and receiving Christ’s payment for our sins so that we can be translated into the Kingdom of God and out of the kingdom of this world which operates under the law of sin and death. God shed His own blood so that we could be redeemed from sin, and this is offered to us freely. You actually stripped Jesus right out of the Gospel of the Kingdom in these definitions because a profession in Calvinism has become more important than a profession in Jesus as Lord and Savior. And to receive that, it doesn’t matter if you are a Calvinist. In fact, Sproul used to quote a line from someone who said we are all Arminian when we get saved, we become semi-pelagian along the way, and when we are mature, we become Calvinist. But one need not understand any of that to respond to the wooing of the Holy Spirit and the message of the Word to receive Jesus.
I can summarize the Gospel in four words: Christ in Him Crucified. And I’ve summarized it here in one sentence, all according to what Paul has written Do you see the problem? After many words, you finally got to the words “God’s redeeming work in Christ.” Why was that not the first and most central thing? I had to wade through multiple points of theology first.
How is this different than what the New Calvinists teach? You’ve stated that you do not share their beliefs and that your way is different. What you intend and what you convey may be different. And you’ve offered a third, lengthy explanation as to why.
What have you offered here besides an invitation to study what you’ve written on your website and an initial definition of the Gospel that doesn’t even mention the name of Jesus. I’ve had to ask additional questions about the essentials. I have no reason to want to go to your site, and I actually now have some reason to not go there. Though I understand that you didn’t mean to convey it, I’ve learned that you actually downplay Jesus, and it is more important to follow a theology that pledges that God is sovereign than it is to understand who Jesus is or what He did on the Cross. That is not the germane message of your gospel. Why did that not come through on your first time through?
Do you see why people might find that confusing?
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Lydia and Cindy,
The problem is that I have defined what I believe for Paul and he says, “No you don’t believe that, this is what you believe because you belong to blah blah blah.
Though Paul won’t accept this fact, I arrived at the term NCT over twenty years ago independently from Zens. I was not even aware that he had used the term until a couple of months ago I have had no association with him at all. I met him once and spoke to him for about five minutes twenty years ago. I have no association with or have I ever had any association with Brinsmead. I was involved with conferences on NCT with Dr. Gary Long and John Reisinger. Fred Zaspel was involved in some of these as well, though he and I were on different tracks. He is more of a Progressive Dispensationalist than I. The Cross: The Heart of NCT was something of a position paper for us back then. I came to the conclusions I have reached through the study of the text of Scripture.
I am not a NC. I didn’t find anything wrong with the Old Calvinism in the area of soteriology. Does that help to define who I am and where I am?
Randy
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Randy,
Can you send me some Costa Rican coffee? I’ve always wanted to taste it.
> —–Original Message—– >
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Cindy,
You wrote:
What I understand from this is that the Gospel is a collection of discussions that God is sovereign and there is no real human agency involved in coming unto the Son, though you have not told us what is entailed in coming unto the Son, except that we will be raised up in the last day. You actually state that the Gospel is not about regeneration, but it is unclear if you are talking about regeneration or the idea that belief doesn’t play a role in salvation (though this contradicts Scripture). Are you also stating that there is no regeneration?
You missed my point entirely. Read my later post. My point is that it is good news that God is in control. But, that is not the gospel. Everything that is good news is not gospel.
Of course, belief plays a role in salvation. It is the believer’s response to regeneration. Of course, there is regeneration. Read my book, What Makes the Gospel Work. You can see there what I believe.
Just read what I say and take it at face value. I am not trying to say anything other than what I actually say, no more, no less.
I had to post as anon because my posts under my name weren’t being posted.
Randy
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Cindy,
I wasn’t trying to define the gospel. I don’t believe that the Sovereignty of God is the gospel. That was exactly my point. IT IS GOOD NEWS—-IT IS NOT THE GOSPEL. Everything that is good news to us is not the gospel. I don’t really thing that is a hard concept.
You asked me to define the gospel so I did. I think I mentioned the name of Jesus there. Maybe you should go check.
Randy
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