TANC 2016: Paul Dohse
Paul became a Christian in 1983. His salvation experience was powerful and with much assurance. As he began studying the Scriptures for himself, contradictions between the plain sense of Scripture and his church experience increased more and more as each year passed.
Furthermore, though Paul could make some sense out the Bible that encouraged him to a point, for the most part, the Bible seemed to be confusing, mysterious, and contradictory. Paul’s initial salvation experience declined into confusion, doubt, and at times despair. Eventually frustrated by the church’s comfortable coexistence with confusion and contradiction, he set out on a journey to make sense of the chaos.
After publishing a book on the Neo-Calvinist movement in 2011 that was the culmination of four years of research, he abandoned all presuppositions and began studying the book of Romans word by word. The goal was to draw conclusions from the literal grammar alone. In other words, just let the words say what they say regardless of anything.
During this process, a profound pattern in the book of Romans began to emerge: a righteousness completely separate from the law; the idea that justification and law are mutually exclusive. The idea that the ground of our justification is the new birth—not the law or any law-keeping by Christ imputed to our account. Hence, who keeps the law is irrelevant; the law has no part with justification. It’s not just man’s law-keeping that is separate from justification; the law itself is separate from justification which would also include any law-keeping by Christ. Again, who keeps the law is irrelevant—there is no law in justification; “apart,” means just that…APART! (Romans 3:21).
The gravity of this truth is immense because Protestantism and Reformed tradition are founded on the idea that Christ fulfills the “righteous demands of the law” in our stead.
How could the Reformers have missed such a simple point? And how did this blatant error come to define Western orthodoxy? And finally, what is the alternative? This will be the subject of Paul’s three sessions at this year’s Conference on Gospel Discernment and Spiritual Tyranny.
Blank Check Forgiveness Equals Zero Sum Life
Completely absent from forgiveness mania among dumbed-down Christians is any kind of understanding in regard to how justice figures into the forgiveness equation. While insisting that “we forgive others the way God forgave us,” the formula presented for doing so is in no way, shape or form indicative of how God in fact forgives us. This is just one more example in the midst of myriad in considering how confused and illogical evangelicals are. While clamoring about with much indignation in regard to abortion’s devaluing of life, Christians witlessly ply blank check forgiveness and its default zero sum life equation.
Again, the contradiction is justice—justice only exists for the sake of life value. Invariably, injustice and zero sum life walk together hand in hand. It is no surprise that blank check forgiveness comes from the Protestant tradition as the Reformers believed that injustice only occurs between man and God. They considered horizontal injustice (injustice between people) a metaphysical anomaly. Hence, one never gets what he/she deserves in this life as everybody deserves eternal hell. And, to not forgive automatically makes you better than the person you are not forgiving. This is also where moral equivalency, blank check forgiveness, injustice, and zero sum life are all members of the same motley crew.
Blank check forgiveness devalues life by not holding people accountable for sinning against you or others. We don’t hold dogs accountable because they don’t know any better as animals of mostly instinct. And in essence, the same reasons are given for blank check forgiveness among people; they are “totally depraved” and enslaved to sinful instincts. In fact, John Calvin deemed humanity as nothing more than “worms crawling on the ground” while Martin Luther thought that description too charitable in regard to human nature.
Withholding forgiveness keeps the sin of the offender ever before them, and upholds life. Remember, sin is framed as a life/death paradigm in Scripture. This does not mean we do not leave revenge to the Lord, it means we uphold life by demanding repentance from each other. The opposite of revenge is loving our enemies, but in many instances, blank check forgiveness is the opposite of love.
It often reflects our view of others and the value of life in general.
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Christian Living Series Program 15 on Blog Talk Radio
Program 15 of the Christian living series.
LIVE LINK: Today, 4/29/2016 @ 7pm.
What’s new at TANC and PPT? And, discussion and application of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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