J. V. Fesko Exemplifies Deliberate Calvinist Deception
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.
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
“But that creates a problem for Calvinism, so they split Bible knowledge into ‘fleshly knowledge’ and ‘intimate knowledge.'”
There was a time when this was known as the difference between “knowledge” and “belief”. In these, there is a distinction. I can “know” a fact, but I might not necessarily “believe” it. For example, I can “know” that evolution claims the universe is billions of years old, but I do not believe it.
The disciple Thomas had knowledge of the resurrection of Christ, but he did not believe it until he “handled” Christ and beheld him with his own eyes. But notice this is simply a further use of the senses to collect fact. It wasn’t enough for Thomas to “hear” about the risen Christ, he had to have that factual knowledge backed by further factual knowledge gained with his eyes. Jesus concluded this account by stating “…Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)…in other words, those who believed by hearing only.
The Jews in Jerusalem had knowledge of Jesus. They also knew that He claimed to be the Christ, but they did not believe it. Again, this is not a distinction of knowledge, this is a distinction of belief vs. unbelief. Upon hearing Peter’s sermons both on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) and following the healing of the lame man (Acts 3) thousands of people believed (repented [changed their minds] of unbelief) having experience no such “different” kind of “knowledge”.
Conversely, I cannot believe something I do not know. It stands to reason that one cannot have “intimate knowledge” of something without first having “fleshly knowledge” of it. Although that would be acknowledging that there is a difference. Your point is that by word-spliting, they are committing a logical fallacy in an attempt to obfuscate that matter. We must not buy in to this.
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Yes, and to that point, they refer to the Christian life as “subjective.”
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I’d like to know what the NCs do with all the statements in scripture written to believers that contain action verbs? From my experience in an NC church for several years, they rarely address them.
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According to them, those commands are given to drive us into “despair of self-righteousness.” We are commanded to do the imperatives to show us our inability.
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Ponder,
As far as justification, the pressure is off. But THEY (the Protestant crowd) make justification and sanctification the same thing. Yes, they can take you to the Bible and show you where “it is finished,” only problem is, they are using a justification verse to make a point about sanctification. “Don’t worry, be happy, relax, your salvation is in church membership…if the elders like you.”
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“Obedience that is carried out in the flesh fails every time”. Hmmm….so it is possible to obey or attempt to obey it respond with a desire to obey in the flesh or while controlled by the flesh even though Calvinism normally says this isn’t possible. Not that I am arguing the point rather, illustrating once again the constant contradiction in terms, views and apologetics of Calvinism
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Alex,
If you examine his statement closely, it is full of shocking logical conclusions and also parrots Reformed thinking. If the “flesh” fails “every time,” what does that mean exactly? How do we interpret “flesh.” Well, “fails” has the idea “effort” so it must be any kind of effort in regard to our humanity. That means no action of man succeeds in any regard that has relevance to God. Therefore, what goes on in the world is really just a matter of horseshoes and hand-grenades. The only thing that matters is man “seeking” “the power of the Spirit” which can only be found in the formal institutional church. To not revisit the same gospel that saved us and the sacraments, and especially the formal preaching of the gospel, separates us from the Spirit. Calvin made no bones about this at all in the Institutes. How well has this motif been sold to the people? Very well: the money keeps rolling in because salvation is in the institution no matter what it does. As a pastor for many years, I can tell you that nothing is more obvious than the fact that people think they are saved because they are Protestants and have some sort of connection to the institutional church.
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…moreover, this Gnosticism can be seen clearly in their statements once you understand what it is. Man is of the flesh realm (the material world), but can see the kingdom of God (the spirit realm of unchanging forms) if he/she has been granted “faith.” FAITH is nothing more or less than an ability to see and experience. The individual is unchanged and still part of the material realm, but able to experience the spiritual realm. And, don’t forget, what is actually being experienced is a remnant of what we will actually experience in heaven. It is a birthing (or manifestation) of the spiritual realm in the material (flesh) realm. Luther taught that we can not know for certain what is of flesh and what is of spirit (“the subjective power of the objective gospel”), but the result is joy no matter what is going on in the world–because you are birthing the joy of heaven on earth by faith alone. I just received an email from someone talking about two Christians who used extremely poor judgement resulting in one of their children dying. Because of their response to the tragedy (calm demeanor I assume; “it is well with my soul”), they are now spiritual heroes in said church. Why not? After all, it was God who killed the children as part of his preordained gospel narrative. To not express calm, and even joy, would be creating our own narrative and denying God’s sovereignty. So right, I recently went to the funeral of a former pastor friend of mine. What was the eulogy given by his own son? How did his son praise the memory of his father? “My father was a wicked sinner.”
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Paul, I agree, they use all of those tactics. In our old church, the “new pastor” was using every single one of those in his stealthy New Calvinism takeover, all without ever using the word “calvinism,” that would be a give away to his plan. However, lest one thinks that they never ask for “obedience” they very much do if they are into “Lordship Salvation” like John MacArthur or they ask for extreme “obedience” in “following Jesus” as in you can’t be Jesus’ disciple if you don’t give up everything including job, home, desires to succeed, etc….and they push a “socialist” anti-American agenda. If you don’t “obey” in their types of ways, then they bring it all back to “you are probably not saved then” and yes, then they make it all about “justification” instead of growth process as a believer “sanctification.” You had better tow “their kind of obedience” in less than 4 hours after conversion if they are to believe you are really born again.
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If they have been given the “power of the keys” 2+2=4, you don’t own your stuff, they do by proxy. That’s why they bring people up on church discipline for not tithing: “You didn’t build that, Jesus did, and we oversee it for him.” Calvin was not even ambiguous in this assertion. Some of these clowns stay away from the nomenclature because that enables people to connect the dots.
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I tried to warn some friends about J.D. Greear’s “Jonah, a New Kind of Obedience” video “Bible” study coming into their church. So why does J.D., a staunch calvinist and also a contributor on “The Gospel Project” want to re-define “obedience?” Although J.D. says some of the lessons we learn from Bible characters are important, he also says obedience should stem from being “gospel-centered” not just using these characters as examples because lots of them end up not being good examples like Moses not being able to go into the Promised Land and Nehemiah having an angry tirade at the end. These Calvinist don’t want to teach their kids to be a “better Pharisee” and just be moralistic, they want to teach their kids to obey and love God because they ultimately see what God and Jesus was like and how God loved first. He says laws and rules are important like for not touching the hot stove, but its a matter of “emphasis” for these kinds of calvinists and teachers. Therefore, if you don’t have the right “emphasis” you are not teaching the Bible correctly and therefore you won’t obey “correctly.” So in some ways, they actually put more “pressure” on kids to “perform.”
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This is the “Emphasis Hermeneutic” which is Gnostic epistemology. The imputation of good from the spiritual to the material only comes when you emphasize the objective gateway to knowledge that transends the material or whatever can be perceived by the 5 senses. Other things may be true, but they are mere shadows of the true form, so to “emphasize” those things instead of the gospel is to “eclipse the Son.” You are emphasizing the shadows of the light and not the light itself. The obstacle may be true, but it’s not the sun and is creating a shadow of truth. In this case, facts that keep our children from harm are compared to objective biblical grammar that we would use to draw conclusions about God. This separates deductive reasoning from the Bible and replaces it with Gnosticism. That’s why Luther called “reason” the “devils whore who should have dung rubbed in her face to make her ugly.” He was talking about deductive reasoning. Plato believed that math was the best epistemology to the invisible true forms because it was immutable. In Gnosticism, truth cannot change. That’s why Calvinists hate Dispensationalism; the true forms are immutable. The belief that God would use different economies in redemptive history is heresy according to Gnosticism.
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TANC actually has a volunteer helper now that is assisting us in volumes 2 and 3 of TTANC. The historical reality coming into focus is that the Gnostic tsunami of the first century that was the major nemeses of the church never went away and has done nothing but grow. As I reread the Calvin Inst. and the Heidelberg Disputation, the fact that these are Gnostic treatises hiding in plain sight becomes more and more evident. It’s like, “There it was in front of my face the whole time.” And, to your point, the tie that binds is Progressive Justification; the transformative transcendent experience of the spiritual to the material. I have found out that this was actually William Wilberforce’s abolitionist construct. John Piper even wrote a book about this fact. This is also the fundamental principle of Amillennialism and dominion theology. “Quiver Full” is not just a bunch of fruitcakes who like to have babies, they are building an army of manifestations.
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They may make up different ways of communicating it, but it is Gnosticism; ie, Dualism; ie, material is evil and invisible is good. This is a very ancient and primary prism of false religion. And frankly, the God-Man Jesus Christ came and turned that whole construct completely upside down. God as a material being is the paramount pushback. Luther explained this away by saying that God only took on a material form to create suffering as the gateway to understanding the true forms, or “truth.” Basically, a lot of my comments here today is the crux of TTANC volume 3 where this will all be articulated with painstaking data. I will also be taking some college courses this fall in world philosophy to aid in that as well. All of the data I need for volume 2 in in the bag and i am writing that volume now.
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…Luther equated all of the material world with works, and works with evil. So, God kinda said, “Ok, you like works so much, I will give you works. My Son will come and crate the only spiritual understanding that there will be by suffering. So, since you like the material world so much, I will make its inevitable suffering the only way to true happiness. Men will call suffering bad, but it is really good–suffering is the only thing that can lead to happiness. Men will say other things can lead to happiness, but that is a lie. By calling suffering bad, woe unto them, woe unto anyone who calls good evil and evil good.” Be sure of this my dear brothers and sisters, this is the Magnum Opus of Protestantism.
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In Dr. Fesko’s book he also had this to say: “Notice the difference between Paul’s use of the terms “works” of the flesh and the “fruit” of the Spirit. Why did Paul not call the fruit of the Spirit the ‘works” of the Spirit? I think Paul’s choice of terms highlights the fact that ultimately it is the Spirit, as we rest in his power, who produces the fruit in us. We do not produce these characteristics of godliness, but rather Christ through His Spirit produces them in us. Think of Paul’s famous statement taken from an earlier portion of Galatians: ‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ ( Gal.2:20).
The false teachers were, through their own works, trying to produce the righteousness that God required. But in a stroke of genius, albeit an inspired stroke, Paul was showing the false teachers that they had failed to see how God had fulfilled the requirements of the law, not through greater efforts of the obedience of his people, but through his Son and the Spirit. Paul also makes this point when confronting a similar problem at the church in Rome: ‘For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’ ( Rom. 8:3-4).
Given what Paul has written, what are the implications of all of this? Let me give you a concrete example of these truths. When you respond to your children in patience, even though they have tested you and you have every right to be angry, the long-promised Spirit is producing his fruit in you. You resign your desire to respond in anger and instead rely upon the power of the Spirit to respond in patience. To act in such a manner is to walk in the Spirit; it is to pursue righteousness—to deny ourselves and follow Christ.
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Again, where to even start, but my answer is: “The fruit of the spirit are self-control.” Who is controlling you? Answer: “self.” That would be YOU. Who’s fruit is it? The Spirits. It’s a “colaboring.” We are “coworkmen” who need not be ashamed at the rewards judgement. And that whole Gal. 2:20 thing makes me want to scream. Following pamphlet free: limit 10 each, limited supply, mail request to mail@ttanc.com
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