Paul's Passing Thoughts

This past Monday/Tuesday, the upstart “Gospel Reformation Network” met in Atlanta, Georgia to discuss the Gospel Sanctification/Sonship Theology/New Calvinism problem that has been plaguing the  Presbyterian church since the mid 80’s. And it will continue to do so while leaders on one side of the fence feel like they’re doing something about it while keeping their friends—with the other side walking away with a Munich Pact in their pocket.

I say that because shockingly, this is a forum of discussion about,

The discussion between the various groups has been framed in terms of opposite poles, the place of God’s law and God’s grace, legalism and antinomianism. The consultation recognized that the issues in this discussion are as old as church history, with just about every generation of the church wrestling with them, and is now a present reality in this generation.

Boloney. This is neo-evangelicalism on steroids: “Golly gee, we just have to sort out our semantics. Christians have always struggled with this issue.” Look, I am really busy this morning so I am not going to write a treatise, but the biblical prescription to prevent the eating of sheep by wolves in lambs clothing is SEPERATION. What we have here is sheep paying the shepherds to negotiate with wolves. It’s cowardly and pathetic, and sends a clear message to the church that the issue is not that serious because both sides can get together and discuss it: “The abrogation of the law, yes, that’s an interesting subject, please pass the fish. Say Bob, can I try one of your onion rings?” As Charles Woodbridge decried in “The New Evangelicalism,” it would be like Moses calling for a forum with the Egyptian magicians or Elijah doing the same with the pagan priests he contended against. Likewise, if Noah held any forums before he boarded the ark, the Holy Spirit forgot to mention it.

And per the usual, the sheep who are footing the bill are not represented. These conferences are exclusively endowed with the usual book-selling compromisers of the “Christian” academia that is propagating 95% of the error present in today’s church. One of the invited speakers was antinomian and heretic extraordinaire Ligon Duncan.  Duncan  is presently in cahoots with Mark Devers and Al Mohler to revamp the image of serial sheep abuser CJ Mahaney. Even though Mahaney is the subject of four expose websites, he will still be one of the featured speakers at this year’s T4G  conference. Duncan is one of the “core four” of this conference with Mohler, Devers, and Mahaney. These four men have shown complete indifference to the outcry against Mahaney by the sheep. They have also shown complete indifference to the biblical standard of an elder being above reproach. In fact, documentation that can be found on SGM Survivors .com concerning happenings under Mahaney’s watch are extremely troubling. If anybody believes that these men fearfully regard God’s word, I have a machine that will turn dirt into gold dust, and I would like to sell it to you.

The meeting in Atlanta could have put Sonship Theology on life support in two days. It should have been for opponents only. It should have been a call for proponents to repent, or face exclusion from fellowship, ie, this fifty will refuse to fellowship with the other fifty. That sends the right message to the sheep; it says this is a serious issue. It tells the sheep who have suffered loss of friends, loss of eldership, loss of name, loss of church family, loss of sleep, and the embracing of disillusionment, that they did not suffer  for a trivial issue that has been a “discussion” throughout “every generation” of church history.

When these crookless shepherds met with these wolves in Atlanta, I don’t know what was served for delicacies of fellowship, but it should have been lamb. How fitting that would have been.

paul