Paul's Passing Thoughts

The Reformers, for the most part, were very vague in regard to any specific stand on homosexuality. Given Protestant orthodoxy and its stated position on sin and “Christian” identity, this shouldn’t surprise us. Some focus on degree of sin would be a human merit in and of itself. The Reformers were all about total depravity and “total inability.” Some time ago, Tim Keller was given a lot of grief for teaching that Christians need to repent of good works because human good works (whether from the lost or saved) are a fallacy.

That’s just good solid Protestant orthodoxy…period.

Hence, as we have heard, “Well, bless your heart, come and join us and we will have one more hypocrite,” it can be said as well, “So, come and join us and we will have one more homosexual.” In fact, in order for evangelicals to be logically consistent according to Protestant orthodoxy, any sin can be added to that list. According to Luther, and for that matter, Calvin as well, the ONLY mortal sin is believing that you can do a good work.

The only criteria for any sinner to be accepted into the church is to admit that they are a sinner. But this excludes any active commitment to repent of the sin lest we have a “righteousness of our own.” All that is required is a passive repentance because the so-called Christian faith is “confessional.” Likewise, any gangster will readily admit that they are a sinner while adding that they also refuse to change. Churchians readily admit  they are sinners and add that they CAN’T change lest they have a “righteousness of their own.”

let me pause here. As proponents of justification by new birth as opposed to the false gospel of justification by faith, we would say that when one is born into the world, they indeed have a life of their own which is a like life given by God that everyone shares. That is, it is a life possessed by humans that is in them. Likewise, true Christians have a righteousness of their own because it is IN them and we are righteous as a state of being via the new birth. We are not saying that it is a righteousness that originally came from us, but rather a righteousness that is in us that came from our Father via the new birth in the same way that anyone born into the world has their father’s DNA. Because Protestant orthodoxy clearly denies the new birth as a false gospel and redefines it, a like righteousness from our Father is subtly conflated into a righteousness that supposedly comes from us originally.

The Reformers, both past and present, point to this issue as the very issue that sparked the Protestant Reformation, what is known as the issue of “infused grace.” One whole chapter in The Truth About New Calvinism addresses this issue. The so-called New Calvinism movement is really a pushback against the acceptance of infused grace among evangelicals. Infused grace (infused righteousness into the believer via the new birth) is NOT Protestant orthodoxy…PERIOD.

The New Calvinists are CORRECT. And my aforementioned book documents in detail how this reclaiming of the original Protestant gospel emerged during our present age. But how did evangelicals become confused and stray away from the original orthodoxy?

This is where we will discuss the historical-grammatical hermeneutic versus the historical-redemptive hermeneutic. While the Protestant Reformation sought to put a Bible in everyone’s hands, the purpose was not for a historical-grammatical interpretation by individuals. The purpose was for a historical-redemptive interpretation. What’s that? Simply stated, it’s using the Bible for one purpose and one purpose only: to increase the “Christian’s” awareness of the depths of their depravity as set against God’s holiness. Much more on this in the next part, but this post is about how evangelicals became confused about this issue.

So, instead of the Bible teaching us how to be more like our Father, according to the Reformers, the real purpose of the Bible is to show us how far apart we are from the Father and thus the gospel is more glorified. In essence, sanctification is about making the gospel bigger, not us. The more we are actually like our Father, the more “God is made smaller and man is made bigger.” God must be glorified by making the cross (the gospel) bigger, not smaller. AND, that’s what the historical-redemptive use of the Bible does. The better, or more like the Father a Christian is, the smaller the gospel becomes. A small cross. 

If you know anything about Puritan theology, you know that a historical-redemptive use of the Bible was firmly intact during the colonial era. So, what happened? The American Revolution happened. The American Revolution was a product of the Enlightenment era, and I am not going to get into the Aristotle versus Plato debate here, but suffice to say that church became a hybrid of two different presuppositions concerning mankind that favored a historical-grammatical use of the Bible. Hence, the church became much more synergistic in its view of sanctification. However, not enough, resulting in Christians living by biblical generalities for the most part. Church “worship” remained redemptive focused (salvation focused) while Christian living took on a more individualistic flavor.

So, now you know why New Calvinists are constantly dissing Americanism; it’s not congruent with a redemptive worldview. And by the way, you can find a detailed historical account of how the church rediscovered its true gospel in The Truth About New Calvinism. Long story short, a Seventh-Day Adventist theologian went to Westminster Seminary and showed the Protestant big dogs why they had their theology wrong, and the New Calvinism movement was born. The book has some shortcomings because I didn’t completely understand the big picture at the time, but it is still the best documented advent of the New Calvinist movement available. And, it’s true as opposed to everything else that is a rewriting and coverup of what really happened. I also need to add that regardless of what you think of author John Immel, what he taught us about world philosophy was efficacious in putting the whole picture together.

Simply stated, the Protestant church became a watered down and confused version of biblical new birth minus any understanding of the new birth’s relationship to the law. Nevertheless, this was still much better than colonial Puritanism by far.

Yet, all that is going on presently is a VERY good thing! The natural progression of justification by faith will force people who really love the truth to take a hard look at what’s really going on. They can save face because most of them have been functioning according to justification by new birth while unwittingly using justification by faith terminology. The road to revival will only take a more definitive exegesis of the Bible.

Who will be the first truth-loving pastor to call out justification by faith for the false gospel that it is and blaze a trail forward for justification by new birth? Sure, you will lose all of your friends, and maybe even your wife, but hey, we will be your friend!

Next, a closer look at the gospel question in all of this, and the new birth’s relationship to the law.

paul