Paul's Passing Thoughts

What Dr. Robert Congdon now calls “Classic Calvinism” expressed in contemporary New Calvinism has redefined almost every word used in theological discussion. If the false gospel of Calvinism, the epic supercult of the ages is to be contended against, Calvinists must be exposed for redefining terms and words for the deliberate purpose of deception.

This is difficult to get our minds around; that nicely polished academics would communicate to us while not clarifying what they know is being assumed by most of those listening or reading. For example, “total depravity”— they know the unregenerate as the subject is assumed. However, if they keep talking about total depravity while the subject is Christians, the idea that Christians are totally depraved will be slowly assimilated into people’s minds. This is Brainwashing 101. Furthermore, it’s true, Christians sin; so, if that is all you talk about, the idea follows without it being stated outright: Christians do nothing but sin and cannot please God. If you never talk about the good works of Christians it is assumed that there aren’t any good works without that being stated clearly. This is a deliberate communication construct:

1. Deliberately overemphasizing some realties to the exclusion of others for purposes of a particular outcome. What IS NOT being said is just as important as what IS being said.

2. Talking about subject B while subject A is the context will eventually lead people to believe A=B. For example: talking about justification in a sanctification way; eventually, justification and sanctification become the same thing.

3. Transition manipulation: This takes a number of ideas under one context and manipulates the transitions between the ideas for purposes of a specific outcome. Most Christians are lazy thinkers and don’t pay attention to transitions.

4. The redefinition of words and terms. Example: the “new birth” as realm manifestation rather than new creaturehood.

5. Word splitting. If the normal meaning of a word is a roadblock to what you want to teach, make a case for other meanings, or synonyms, and then proceed with the synonym that fits the objective. This is different from redefinition—this assigns multiple meanings to a word in order to use it for a specific goal. A good example of this is when the definition of the word, “knowledge” becomes a problem for Calvinists. In this case, Bible knowledge. It would seem that for the Christian, Bible knowledge is Bible knowledge. But that creates a problem for Calvinism, so they split Bible knowledge into “fleshly knowledge” and “intimate knowledge.” They then choose intimate knowledge as the only valid knowledge. This is framed as, “knowing the Bible and knowing Jesus are two different things.” They can now make Bible knowledge anything they want it to be. Supposedly, factual knowledge followed by obedience cannot lead to intimacy with God (not so, Peter taught that knowledge leads to intimacy with God as well as our wives); hence, we must seek Jesus in all the Scriptures. The only true knowledge is that of “Jesus’ personhood” while factual knowledge of Jesus does nothing for our relationship with him. By the way, this is the stand taken by the postmodern Emergent church as well.  

6. Metaphysical dogma: Always speak to people from the prism that interprets reality the way you want it to be interpreted. When people are confused by this, the assumption is that they are ignorant and unable to understand true realty. If you persistently communicate with people according to your own view of reality, they will eventually begin to be programmed accordingly. Only your view of reality is recognized as valid.

7. Nuance, and the generic use of words. While redefining some words, and attaching multiple definitions to others, some words are used generically to fill in gaps and connect large leaps in logic. There is no better example here than the word, “gospel.” Nuance is also used to shade or soften the full brunt of what is being said.

In Reformed circles, this is the Either/Or hermeneutic. This is Gnostic epistemology. EVERYTHING must be interpreted via material (evil) or invisible (true). In the final analysis, it is the Redemptive Historical hermeneutic.

8. Redefined use of words. This is not the redefinition of meaning, but the redefinition of application; using nouns as verbs, distorted modifiers, etc.

Elitism is used to condone these techniques.  This is the mythological noble lie that teaches truth in story form for the consumption of the great unwashed masses. These preordained philosopher kings understand things that the masses are unable to understand, so they can’t let the normative understanding of words stand in the way of teaching creeds for social unity. As John MacArthur associate Rick Holland once stated: good grammar makes bad theology.

Here, an excerpt sent to this author will be used to make the point. According to the sender,

The Fruit Of The Spirit is…(book written by J. V. Fesko, Westminster Seminary,CA) [Academic Dean, Professor of Systematic Theology and Historical Theology].

If you go to Fesko’s bio on Westminster’s website, he is quoted as follows:

What I Want to Instill in My Students

“A passion to proclaim Christ and him crucified in word and deed and to serve the church to the glory of Christ.”

We may well begin our example here. A proclamation to the unregenerate is assumed, but what Fesko is really talking about is the perpetual proclamation of the gospel within the church. This is because Reformed soteriology holds to the idea that Christians need perpetual re-justification (re-salvation). John Calvin makes no bones about this in his Institutes (3.14.11). Reformed soteriology also holds to the idea that this efficacious re-justification can only be found in the formal institutional church (4.15.4).

The excerpt sent follows:

Unlike Old Testament Israel who had the law written upon tablets of stone, we have the law written upon the tablets of our hearts. We also have the indwelling power of the Spirit enabling us to be obedient, even causing us to walk in God’s statutes, to borrow Ezekiel’s words. This hopefully alerts us to the important point that so many Christians miss–namely, the nature of our sanctification. The law does not produce godliness. The law only condemns. Obedience does not produce godliness. Obedience that is carried out in the power of the flesh fails every time. Rather, only the Holy Spirit produces his fruit in us and enables us to be obedient, to produce good works. In other words, in our sanctification, for our growth in godliness, we must seek the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit alone is both the source and the power of our sanctification, good works, and obedience.

We must therefore seek the power of the Holy Spirit through God’s appointed means: through the Word, preached, read and meditated upon; the sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and prayer. So often people cut themselves off from the means of grace: moving away from the church, failing to attend church, or even cutting themselves off from the sacraments. To do so is to cut ourselves off from the power of the Holy Spirit.

Much could be discussed here, like the eschatological law/gospel train wreck of the first sentence, but we will move on to…

We also have the indwelling power of the Spirit enabling us to be obedient, even causing us to walk in God’s statutes, to borrow Ezekiel’s words.

First of all, Calvinists who know what they believe do not believe that the Holy Spirit does work within us and through us. They do not believe that the power is “indwelling,” and they know it. “Indwelling” is redefined, and “obedience” is also redefined as what the Reformed call, “new obedience.” What’s that? It is not an action we do, it is an action done to us by the Holy Spirit that we ONLY experience. Calvinism also adds the perfect obedience of Christ to the atonement, and that obedience is imputed to our lives by faith alone in order to keep ourselves saved. Nothing is going on within the believer at all, that would be works salvation because justification and sanctification are made to be the same thing. Yet, they use the “in” terminally in order to not unsettle the herd. Calvinists like John Piper make it clear that Reformed soteriology disavows any work by the Spirit within the believer:

This meant the reversal of the relationship of sanctification to justification. Infused grace, beginning with baptismal regeneration, internalized the Gospel and made sanctification the basis of justification. This is an upside down Gospel…When the ground of justification moves from Christ outside of us to the work of Christ inside of us, the gospel (and the human soul) is imperiled. It is an upside down gospel.

In fact, one of the most popular terms among Calvinists in our day is, “the objective gospel outside of us,” or simply, the “objective gospel.” There is no need to be confused by these concepts; it is simply Gnosticism which teaches that material beings cannot know spiritual truth (the invisible). The manifestations of this philosophy always have an epistemology that births the wellbeing of the invisible world to the material world by way of experience. In Reformed theology, the epistemology is gospel contemplationism.

But the point here is that J. V. Fesko knows grade-A-well that “in” doesn’t mean “in.”

This hopefully alerts us to the important point that so many Christians miss–namely, the nature of our sanctification.

Here, Fesko will now define “sanctification.” This lays the groundwork for the rest of the theses that he wants to proffer. Unfortunately, most Christians do not have the discernment skills that would immediately qualify the definition of sanctification to prevent deception. Instead of drawing conclusions from the definition of the word, and how it is used in Scripture, Fesko wants to talk about its “nature.” The actual definition is skipped, and the word is defined by how it behaves, or its “nature.” Sanctification covers a wide spectrum of action, so Fesko can now attach any meaning to the word that he wants to at this point. He is skipping the actual definition, and making its “nature” the definition, and proceeding with the desired agenda.

This enables him to make an outrageous logical leap with the following:

The law does not produce godliness. The law only condemns. Obedience does not produce godliness. Obedience that is carried out in the power of the flesh fails every time. Rather, only the Holy Spirit produces his fruit in us and enables us to be obedient, to produce good works. In other words, in our sanctification, for our growth in godliness, we must seek the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit alone is both the source and the power of our sanctification, good works, and obedience.

The primary technique used in the above excerpt is #7, the Either/Or hermeneutic. But again, he skips a biblical definition of law, and its application, and redefines it as something that can only condemn. Therefore, there is EITHER the “power of the flesh,” OR the “power of the Spirit.” Notice how he uses the aforementioned techniques to say that the Holy Spirit obeys for us, and we only experience His obedience through realm manifestation, without actually saying it:

Rather, only the Holy Spirit produces his fruit in us [BY faith which is a conduit that enables us to experience works outside of us] and enables us to be obedient, to produce good works. In other words, in our sanctification, for our growth in godliness, we must seek the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit alone is both the source and the power of our sanctification, good works, and obedience.

Herein, “obedience” is redefined as “seeking.” If we “seek the power of the Holy Spirit,” the righteousness of Christ will be imputed to us by seeking alone (ie, faith alone/gospel meditation alone) and we will remain saved. So, how then do we seek?

We must therefore seek the power of the Holy Spirit through God’s appointed means: through the Word, preached, read and meditated upon; the sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and prayer. So often people cut themselves off from the means of grace: moving away from the church, failing to attend church, or even cutting themselves off from the sacraments. To do so is to cut ourselves off from the power of the Holy Spirit.

Any questions? The church is our gas station for receiving a refilling of our salvation gas tank through formal preaching, the sacraments, and church attendance. To replace seeking with obedience, or forsaking the assembly of the institutional church, we “cut ourselves off from the power of the Holy Spirit.” Fesko deliberately adds the word, “power” to imply Christian living more than actual salvation, but salvation is what’s being referred to for all practical purposes.

Calvinist communication is saturated with ancient brainwashing communication techniques. The discerning Christian does well to be educated in regard to them accordingly.