Paul's Passing Thoughts

Founders Ministries is an organization supposedly dedicated to bringing back the SBC’s Calvinistic/Reformed roots. Four years of research went into “The Truth About New Calvinism,” but  I never had any reason to doubt that. And as far as New Calvinism in the SBC via Mohler, Dever et al, I figured  it could have entered into the SBC in any number of ways after the explosion of Sonship Theology and it wasn’t worth pursuing.

Last night, I was reading an article written by John H. Armstrong. It was his article on Time Magazine’s assessment of New Calvinism, and the following statement caught my attention:

Look at the divisions in the Southern Baptist Convention and you will see my point. I have watched this movement for neo-Calvinism from its infancy. I personally attended the first meeting (and several more the years following) of the group that started this effort back in the 1980s. I personally knew the founder who dreamed up the idea of recovering Calvinism in the SBC and then spread the “doctrines of grace” very widely. He is now with the Lord. Look at the quarrels between these neo-Calvinists and the various strands of emergent (and emerging) Christianity. I was also involved in the various “gospel” recovery groups which were begun, now creating large gatherings of folk who believe they are the people who are preaching and recovering the “biblical gospel.”

Armstrong’s involvement with the original group seeking to spread the doctrine in SBC circles was of interest to me because Armstrong is one of the few who openly admit that he adopted  his theology from the Australian Forum via Present Truth, the Forum’s theological journal: here , and  here .

“I personally knew the founder who dreamed up the idea of recovering Calvinism in the SBC….”  Hmmm, who is he talking about? I emailed a few of my sources and didn’t get a reply, so I started asking myself questions: “Isn’t Founders Ministries the one spreading Calvinism in the SBC?  But which Calvinism? New or old?” So I went to their website and started poking around. I found a historical essay about the ministry here .

So guess who the founder was? Earnest Reisinger, one of the forefathers of New Covenant Theology. In fact, he goes way back before the doctrine was dubbed New Covenant Theology by Jon Zens. As I document in the book, Jon Zens and the founder of  the Australian Forum worked together to develop NCT. According to Zens:

At the fall Banner of Truth Conference in 1979, Ron McKinney spoke with lain Murray, Ernie Reisinger and others about the possibility of having a conference where some aspects of Reformed theology could be discussed and evaluated by men of differing viewpoints.

That conference ended up being the first “1980 Council on Baptist Theology” held in Plano, TX. It was the coming out party for New Covenant Theology.

Furthermore, Ernie Reisinger’s “Law and Gospel” is a staple reference for students of Sonship Theology (Gospel Discipling—The Crying Need of the Hour: Stephen E. Smallman; Executive Director, World Harvest Mission, November 1997). The fact that Reisinger’s theology is based on New Covenant Theology can be observed in this article written by him and posted on the Founders blog: See article here.

The totality of my research on this will be compiled and added as an addendum to the second addition of volume one: “The Southern Baptist Connection.” Obviously, Armstrong’s deceased friend who started the movement was Reisinger, who passed away in 2004. And the movement he spoke of is Founders Ministries.

Founders Ministries is a fraud. They are not bringing Calvinism back to the SBC, they are ushering in what Walter Chantry called a contemporary “novelty” and selling it as Calvinistic theology. Chantry also called it “neo-antinomianism.” Think what you will about Calvin, but he was not an antinomian. It is all a big, fat LIE.

paul