Paul's Passing Thoughts

The Gospel Coalition has parted ways with Tullian Tchividjian because he doesn’t have enough veiled honesty about John Calvin’s antinomianism. Like Calvin, and especially Luther, Tullian doesn’t have any use for the law save its ability to show us how wretched we are, and that is making the herd uneasy. Tchividjian continually puts the Calvinist cartel in a position of calming the herd.

Keep in mind that while Kevin DeYoung is out there calming the herd by talking about sanctification in a justification way, and frankly, telling dog-faced lies, John Piper and the Reformed issue of infused grace lurks in the background. What is it?

Basically, according to the elder statesman of Neo-Calvinism, whom no one will lay a hand on, the primary difference between Rome and Evangelicalism, and the very crux of the Reformation, is the issue of infused grace. Infused grace, what Rome is guilty of according to Calvinists, is the idea that there is goodness in the believer INCLUDING the very works of Christ. So, this view not only has a problem with goodness (infused grace) being inside the believer, this view even has a problem with the idea that Christ works within us! ALL righteousness is outside of the believer. This is Luther’s alien righteousness; sound familiar?

No matter how good Kevin DeYoung sounds in proffering obedientism in sanctification—keep in mind that this is what he really believes. That is why he and the whole lot are a bunch of stinking liars. Again, their problem with Tchividjian is that he is telling like it is about the true Reformed gospel.

“But Paul, how in the world does that supposedly work in real life?” I explain it in “Pictures of Calvinism,” but I will reiterate it here. Yes, yes, I understand that they talk about “Christ in us” and “us in Christ” and the “vital union,” but they by no means mean what they say with those words. ALL of that is…By faith…, and now we must discuss what their definition of faith is. Faith is like an eye that only sees outward, and is able to experience righteousness, but not participate in it. It’s like standing in the rain: you feel the rain, you experience the rain, but you have no control over the rain, the rain is something that is done to you, but you don’t do anything to the rain. If you could do anything to the rain, well, that means you can create righteousness.

Another way this is stated is, “heart change.” That doesn’t mean we actually change. “Heart change” is a changed capacity, or increased capacity to experience “vivification.” Mortification and vivification is a Reformed doctrine that defines sanctification as a perpetual death and rebirth that increases our capacity to experience in part the actual glorification that we will experience when we are resurrected.

Mortification, a deeper and deeper understanding of our need for grace via meditating on our depravity as exposed in the Bible, leads to death, and a subsequent resurrection/rebirth. This is what the Reformed mean by, “living by the gospel.” It is a perpetual death and resurrection, or “living by the cross.” It fuses justification, sanctification, and glorification together into a progressive experience culminated by full glory. Spiritual growth is defined by an increased capacity to experience the joy of our future glory.

In covering for the mess that Tchividjian makes with his honesty, the Calvinist cartel dances around all of this by redefining ALL of the known terms and adding many.

My case for this is thoroughly documented in Pictures of Calvinism and It’s Not About Election. The ebooks are below.

Pictures of Calvinism

It’s Not About Election ebook

Progressive Justification: It’s Life Application