Paul's Passing Thoughts

Looking for a bit of clarification. I am curious as to what do you mean by “protestant”, and what is your source for what you portray as “stated Protestant orthodoxy”?
The church I attend regularly teaches instant and full justification, and the transformation/new creation of the believer, with a focus on the need for all Christians to have sanctification (the imitation of Christ) as the goal of their lives.

9/24/22

Anthony,
I am apt to believe your church uses words in a way that allows you to assume that, but in fact, holds to authentic Protestant orthodoxy, which is progressive justification. If you direct me to your church’s website, I will demonstrate that and post the results. If your church truly teaches what you say, they are indeed very rare in our day.

“Protestant” is all churches that came out of the Protestant Reformation including so-call “Reformed” branches. Protestant orthodoxy is the original tenets of faith established by the writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin.

As a worship leader in a Presbyterian church, I really liked your article.
I am constantly telling the worship team that some of the songs, they want to do are more biblical, or extra biblical.
Who am I and Reward are two of them.
What do you think of the song, “Only Jesus?”
To me, it’s like having people thank you for a song, and we say (with false modesty) “it’s only Jesus!”
All through scripture it talks about leaving a legacy, not only of your live in Christ, but in the natural.
Am I right?

9/21/22

Karin,

So, I listened to the song (via the official video) you cited. Um, pretty stunning. I really don’t even know where to start, or where I would finish. Let me start with elitist cast: rules of orthodoxy are for thee, but not for me. As with all Casting Crowns stuff, it is the cutting edge/blue chip of marketing and production. The contradiction is evident. Mark Hall rolls into the video with a fully restored early model Ford Bronco, pulls a box of trophies out of the back, and throws them on the trash heap. Am I here right now? And Casting Crowns have effectively made sure they will not leave a legacy, or is that a sin they are presently repenting of? It’s ridiculous. And, Casting Crowns receives no benefit from a feeling of personal accomplishment? Sure they do, obviously.

And let me finish with the following. Yes, clearly, the Bible commands us to leave a godly legacy. This is one of my many, many, many, many beefs with Churchianity; the plain sense of Scripture is routinely violated. A pity and shame that the uber talent of Crowns is wasted on lies. Here is a wide open frontier waiting to be fulfilled in Christianity: the writing and performance of music that depicts biblically correct sanctification.

I don’t think we should forget that we are a creation of God, and what the full implications of that are. In the process of the whole, “We are totally depraved sinners saved by grace and only do works of filthy rags” routine, I think we need to pause and ask what all of that is saying about God and his full order of things.

At any rate, you are pondering a very important question. My in-depth approach is here https://paulspassingthoughts.com/?s=God+did+it .

I kind of think Gnosticism was the laity vs the clergy actually. Gnostic groups were supposedly not even churches but schools of thought, meaning movements among the laity not something imposed by a bishop. In fact the solution to Gnosticism according to Ignatius was to adhere to the bishop and the maxim “where the bishop is, there is the church.” So Gnosticism was rebellion against the bishops.

Nor is the modern church a return to Gnosticism because Gnosticism was about denying the Jewishness of Jesus whereas the obsession of the modern church is to over-Judaize. Gnosticism denied that he was born in favor of him creating his own body (which the Catholics lied and said meant they believed he had no body at all). The Gnostics viewed Jesus as a hitherto unknown God come to defeat the Old Testament god who was to them either a fallen angel or the devil, or a good angel of a fallen archangel, or some such not exactly the true Most High God. Gnostics had no Mary. Catholicism is all about Mary, and both Catholicism and Judaism today are all about pushing Judaizing, Jewish roots, support Israel etc.. To the Gnostics, at best the Old Testament could only be accepted as a big allegory about Jesus but by no means could it be taken as literal without denying its god as a bad guy. But modern Christianity is all about taking it absolutely literally and using it to claim the Jews STILL have a deed on the the land of Palestine despite rejecting Christ. So its not correct to speak of Gnosticism as you do; its a characature you learned from corrupt pastors who didn’t learn anything real in seminary because in seminary they only teach you a Wikipedia summary on Gnosticism and it doesn’t match with reading the church fathers and seeing what they describe Gnosticism as actually having been in their anti-gnostic works.

8/26/22

Excuse me, but my conclusions come from independent research, and all of your observations come from Protestant projection. Per Protestant mode of operation and historical protocol, Protestant scholars and founders attacked Gnosticism, while they were consummant Gnostics. The fact that the church fathers were Gnostic is well documented. Historically, Dualism gave birth to Gnosticism, and Gnosticism gave birth to Platonism. The Protestant founders were avowed Platonists. This is not obscure history and is well documented.

This is the kind of pattern I notice among so many preachers. They get up on stage and set the tone by immediately shaming the audience. Have to put everyone in their place, take them down a notch, rip the blanket out from underneath them. Remind the Christians how awful they are, how incapable. Bring them down low.

Bow your heads in shame, you good-for-nothings. Be overcome with false guilt over the multiple imaginary sins you helplessly commit. Never forget the core of your being is essentially evil.

4/28/22

Oasis,

As I will be discussing in a couple of weeks (TANC 2022), confident people who believe they can become all that God meant them to be are hard to control.

I’m glad I grew up in the CoC where they insisted on acapella music, because it cut all the crap out. About 15 years ago they were dealing with the smallest amount of contemporary “worship” music sneaking in, but the devil’s ability to sneak it in was hampered by the fact that he could only get in that tiny portion of it that doesn’t need guitars. By and large they’re still using the old hymnals. In fact some of the congregations that were pushing this contemporary stuff a bit about 15 years ago have left the fellowship, so its true that if you resist the devil he flees from you.

Concerning the name “Casting Crowns”…Its interesting that its only the 24 elders who “cast” their “crowns” before Christ in Revelation. These aren’t human but some sort of angelic(?) beings, the “Powers that Be” perhaps. So rather than being about human achievement being wrong so we have to give God all the credit, its about the “Powers that Be” finally transferring the rule over earth to Christ…or something like that. What do you think?

4/27/22

John,

I think you are on to something with the transfer of power idea.

Pastors are an extension of the political class

4/25/22

I agree.

Hi Paul,

Thank you for the excellent video! This may be a bit of a tangent but while watching you video it struck me how many of the issues you discuss are intertwined with the protestant doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). Warren McGrew on his YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/IdolKiller) did a five part series on PSA last fall with Paul Vendredi. If you have time you may want to check it out, I think you will find it interesting.

Thank you.

Glenn

4/23/22

Glenn,

Thank you, I will check it out.

I know you ignore comments here and that’s fine. But at least read this one. Its off topic so don’t post it. It is to apprise you that I mentioned you in a comment on another blog, as well as your term “progressive justification.”

https://fullmetalpatriarchy.wordpress.com/2022/04/10/transcript-of-dalrock-discussion-from-the-its-good-to-be-a-man-episode-of-the-aaron-renn-show/

I’ll even give you my comment so you don’t have to click the link if you don’t want to. BTW my email is fake so you can’t respond to me that way.

I am curious though on your take on my take on Doug Wilson’s take that only men need salvation and that marrying and pleasing the wife’s every whim till death is the source of his salvation. I know you have written on the Protestant Divorce Mill. But I think there you only tackled the notion of reformed elders commanding men to divorce their wives due to the husbands not submitting to falae reformed docrrine.

Your blog has gotten boring and I can see you ran out of topics. So I present you one you have yet to address. And that is a specific type of progressive justification scheme—and one that is a major part of the foundation of the Protestant Divorce Mill. One that even is found in churches outside evangelicalism as well as obviously inside.

The comment:

Their beef is that Dalrock exposed that they are heretics who equate marriage to Christianity, teach that only men need saving, and teach that men are saved by getting married AND keeping their wife happy until death. I only found Dalrock’s site a few months ago, and going back and reading those old posts and the comments, that’s how I see it. To these people (Doug Wilson and the like) the idea of two people who are Christians and already saved getting married for normal reasons (i.e. not for the man to save himself in a progressive justification scheme of pleasing his wife from then on for justification) is totally alien. The idea of two Christians who are saved marrying and strengthening each other is alien to them—marriage is beyond the Catholic view of a sacrament, the man has to crucify himself daily on the cross of the wife’s will to be saved, according to these Wilsonites. Marriage is not in the category of Christian living or santification to them but of justification. (Oh no, I’m starting to sound a bit like Paul Dohse of Paul’s Passing Thoughts.)

My beef with progressive justification follows: if salvation is a process that continues during our life, our involvement in the process is unavoidable. We have to do something, or not do something, or partake in some kind of formula to not interfere with the process. However, church scholars did not want to give up on this idea because frankly, if salvation is one and done, what is an institution like church needed for? My best guess is, that this is how we ended up with predestination and election. Church scholars had to find a way to take works out of progressive justification.

So what do you believe then smarty-pants?

4/4/22

Joe,

Justification by new birth. We are judged by who we are, not our works. Protestantism wants to make perfect law-keeping the standard for justification. The new birth changes our relationship to the law. It can no longer condemn us because the old us died with Christ, and we are no longer under law and its condemnation. We are also raised with Christ, and now our relationship to the law is wisdom for love and sanctification.

Dear Paul Dohse,

Is there a 2022 Conference scheduled yet?

I hope you got my email I just sent re commending you for your demolition of Calvinist Principality!

I forgot to mention that one fifth of my 500 page book on Calvin will be devoted to Calvin’s war on Christian Musicians who Calvin said it was an abomination to use musical instruments in worship.

I hope I got the right email for you.

Kindest regards in Christ,

James

2/22/22

James,

Yes, 10/29, 30. tanc2022.com. Please keep me updated on your book as I want to make sure I get a copy.