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

In this series, we will discuss several things that will inevitably lead to wholesale acceptance of homosexuality in the church at large. This will happen because the logical conclusions of authentic church orthodoxy (whether Catholic or Protestant) will open the door for such if not an outright calling for it. In fact, the process is presently in full swing.

This post will address the inevitable outcome from the perspective of Christian identity according to Protestant orthodoxy. The Reformation’s definition of sin is central. According to the Reformers, ALL sin is a violation of the law. That part is biblically correct. The error comes in when you consider what the Reformers totally missed: how the new birth changes one’s relationship to the law.

According to the Reformers, Christians fall short of perfect law-keeping, therefore, they still sin; hence, they are still sinners. Accordingly, Christian sinners still need forgiveness for “present sin.” Virtually every person who attends church will testify to the gospel fact that Jesus died for our past, present, and future sins. Therefore, even though the “redemptive event” only happened once, it must be reapplied to the “Christian’s” present and future law-breaking.

“We are all just sinners saved [continually] by grace [by more salvation].”

“We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day.”

Indeed, and don’t forget, according to the big three, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, ongoing salvation can only be obtained through the church and its “means of grace” [means of more salvation].

So, any violation of the law condemns you to hell. There are no big and little sins. Sin is sin. And, no “Christian” sins more or less than any other Christian. This is because, according to the Reformers, NO person, saved or unsaved, can do, or does do, a good work…ever. All of our so-called “good works” are filthy rags. According to the Reformers, no work done by any person lost or saved can escape God’s condemnation. Luther stated emphatically that the very belief that any person can do a good work is a false gospel in and of itself.

According to the advocates for accepting gays into the church, ALL those entering the church remain unchanged, so, if gays are expected to change before they are allowed into church fellowship, how could you allow anyone else in? After all, stealing, lying, or any other sin will condemn you just as much as homosexuality.

That’s just plain black and white Protestant orthodoxy… period.

What do I mean that “Christians” don’t change according to the Reformers? Saving “faith,” according to the Reformers makes participation in the “race of faith” possible, but that faith doesn’t save you. Faith, as defined by the Reformers, is only an ability to see or perceive the truth of our own evil as set against God’s holiness while unable to do anything about it. Hence, homosexuals only need to confess that they are sinners like everyone else in the world, and have no “righteousness of their own.”

All righteousness remains outside of the believer; this is Martin Luther’s alien righteousness. In contemporary terms, especially during the advent of the present-day Protestant resurgence, “the objective gospel” or “the objective gospel outside of us.” In all of this, any righteousness in the church is substituted by Christ anyway; it just doesn’t make sense to deny anyone fellowship who falls short of God’s glory by any means of violating the law.

In other words, justification by faith necessarily opens the door for gays at the very least, and to deny them entry demands that anyone who has righteousness within them to throw the first stone. Remember, Reformation soteriology even excludes the notion that the righteousness within a believer is a like righteousness of the Father via a literal new birth. When debating James White on this issue, he was able to play the justification/sanctification word shell game until I asked him the following question: “Are Christians righteous as a state of being, yes or no?” Those of the Reformed cloth, viz, authentic Protestants, can no longer play on the assumptions of Churchians if they answer that question truthfully.

So, what we see in the present “inclusion” movement is a quibbling over the context in which gays must be welcomed into the fellowship of the church; the logical conclusions drawn from justification by faith demand it.  And, the Protestant big dogs on the porch know it.

The contrast between this and the true gospel of justification by new birth will be discussed in one of the next parts. In part 3, we will discuss how Churchians became confused about the real Protestant gospel of justification by faith and made it something that it is not resulting in mass confusion and controversy.

paul

Part 1

Another ethical controversy is trending in Churchland, and this time it’s a big one. The following is an excerpt from pulpitandpen.org:

Sam Allberry, who still personally wallows in Same-Sex Attraction (SSA), is the founder of an organization that is fully devoted to the false teaching of so-called, “Gay Christianity.” Unfortunately, many evangelicals support Allberry and his ministry, including The Gospel Coalition and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). The most prominent supporter of Allberry’s gay ministry is Dr. Tim Keller, who has been promoting this false gospel that cannot sanctify the homosexual. Unfortunately, it now seems that Mark Dever of 9Marks and Capital Hill Baptist Church can be added to the list of those who support Allberry’s “Gay Christian” ministry.

We recently posted an article, originally by Toni Brown at Bible Thumping Wingnut, on the sinister and gay-affirming teachings of Allberry and Living Out, which you can find here. To be clear, Allberry does not teach that practicing sodomy is acceptable, but rather he teaches that Same-Sex Attraction is not a sin, that homosexuals cannot expect to be changed by the Holy Spirit and given a nature not desirous of sodomy, and that there are elements of “gay culture” that are redeemable and should be celebrated. In Allberry’s view, virtually everything about homosexuality can be embraced except for the act of bodily penetration.

Common in the Living Out subculture, are testimonies of professing Christians who learned to love and embrace, rather than be freed from their homosexuality. Also common are accusations toward the Christian church of “homophobia” and demands that the church soften its views on the sin of sodomy. The organization is an increasingly important factor in re-branding SSA as an itself neutral, non-sinful impulse, and it heavily promotes the idea that it’s okay to be gay so long as one is celibate, going so far as to encourage churches to ordain those who are Same-Sex attracted.

End citation.

Pardon the long excerpt, but it is an apt summary of the newest kerfuffle among evangelicals. And, these controversies have taken a particular turn predicted by this ministry for a long time: those who represent the cutting edge of church will support views that clash with the plain sense of historical-grammatical interpretation. So, presently, you have well-meaning folks in the church who are much like I was for 35 years: utterly perplexed on the one hand, and out to save the church on the other. Though I applaud the efforts of good Christian men like Thomas Littleton, the church is beyond saving. In one of Littleton’s comment streams, which I can’t find right now, so I will paraphrase, someone wrote the following: “We don’t need another book to tell us what the Bible plainly states about homosexuality.”

Breakpoint.

Church orthodoxy has never been about the individual’s understanding of the Bible and how it makes one more like the Father. That’s why it’s orthodoxy. Most people in church, if not all of them, think orthodoxy and truth are synonyms. That’s not the definition of orthodoxy which has its roots in Dualism. Here is another thing Churchians believe: the historical-redemptive and historical-grammatical hermeneutics are hermeneutics; ie., two different ways of interpreting Scripture. And, both work together in order to properly interpret Scripture.

Nope. If you believe that, you are egregiously misinformed, as I was for years. What is the historical-redemptive hermeneutic, where did it come from, and how will it lead Mohler, Dever, MacArthur, Carson, and whomever else to accept homosexuals in the church? We will visit that in the upcoming parts.

Why will good Christians in the church stand perplexed, frustrated, disillusioned, and watch helplessly as this orthodoxy bus rolls down the highway mercilessly running over all discernment bloggers? We will visit that as well.

Either capitulate, or consider alternatives. But protest will accomplish nothing.  More things we will visit.

I am honored to have Thomas Littleton as one of my Facebook friends and he writes some informative stuff on this latest trend. But while reading one of his articles, I was struck by a bolt of lightening. I have read the Calvin Institutes, I have read a bunch of Luther, and did an in-depth series on his Heidelberg Disputation. Yet, what struck me was my lack of remembrance regarding the Reformers addressing homosexuality specifically. I thought that strange. I thought that VERY strange. I started doing a word search that also took etymology into account. Nothing specific turned up. I then turned to my partner in crime for help. Note what he said as a preface to the list of research he presented:

Nothing definitive in these articles, but if you read between the lines you can see they are leaving the door open. Perhaps trying to condition people for acceptance. A subtle conditioning.

It is important to note that the Reformation’s justification by faith gospel interprets sin through a specified prism. That prism, and its logical conclusions, would necessarily call for acceptance of homosexuals into the church with leeway for standards according to church authority. Those standards/arguments presented, as reported by Littleton and others, are indeed consistent with authentic Protestant orthodoxy.

This is the thesis moving forward: the latest trend is consistent with the Reformation’s justification by faith soteriology, orthodoxy, and church authority.

paul

Part 2