The New Calvinist Wide Road to Hell: “Your” Doesn’t Mean, “Your”; Matthew 5:20
As posted yesterday, accepting any rewriting of history is a very dangerous precedent, especially in regard to the gospel, and the New Calvinist crowd works hard at rewriting history. The Resolved series of conferences sponsored by John MacArthur Jr. focused heavily on rewriting history, often representing Puritans as martyrs when many were executed for political intrigue. The Fox’s Book of Martyrs is a shameful and egregious rewriting of history; specifically, it omits the fact that Protestants were guilty of the exact same persecution towards those who disagreed with them. The book has no credibility whatsoever.
This brings us to the rewriting of history in regard to the Pharisees by New Calvinists. The narrative goes like this:
The Pharisees were really, really good at keeping the law, but at the end of the day, Christ said that you need a righteousness that exceeds theirs! What to do? Answer: cling to faith alone which imparts righteousness to us not our own. When Jesus said “your” righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, he was really talking about His own righteousness imputed to us.
So, saving faith is defined as knowing you are wicked. The unregenerate are defined as those who think they possess righteousness. The new birth is therefore defined as a different knowing—not a different person. If you think you are a different person who possesses a righteousness that is part of you, well, you don’t “need a physician.”
Hence, you must see Christ’s role in justification as ongoing and not finished, and you must continue to appropriate the imputation of His righteousness by simply believing and not “anything we do.” The New Calvinists of our day use the exact same lingo as the Australian Forum did, and that is why they are running from that history:
Christ’s doing and dying—not ours.
This truism was uniquely Forum, as well as many other truisms authored by them and used by the New Calvinists of our day. However, let us not miss the fact that this idea of an ongoing need for a justification physician is fundamental Calvinism whether the theologians of our day know it or not. If you are going to call yourself a Calvinist, you really ought to read Calvin for yourself.
So, in Matthew 5:20, when Christ referred to “your” [our] righteousness, “your” really doesn’t mean “your,” He meant “His” [my]. Therefore, according to New Calvinists, a better rendering would be:
For I tell you, unless you have my righteousness which exceeds that of the Pharisees who are really, really good at keeping the law, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Supposedly then, only those who know they are wicked inherit eternal life. Hmmmmm, really? Actually, there are a couple of huge problems here, and what is at stake is the true gospel. First, the Pharisees were not really, really good at keeping the law—they were horrible at keeping the law. Christ said they were “lawless” on the inside and the outside. They also edited the law with their own traditions. This whole, the Pharisees were really, really good at keeping the law is a rewriting of history.
Secondly, the Bible states in many, many places that Christians possess righteousness that is part and parcel with their being. We are not only declared righteous, we are righteous, and only the righteous will inherit the kingdom. Pastors, I warn you: when you hear a fellow Christian say they “have no righteousness of their own,” you better qualify that. Righteousness, albeit a gift, is ours because it is gifted to us, and certain attitudes about works in sanctification reveal what we believe about justification; e.g., the Parable of the Talents.
The reason we are considered righteous, and are righteous regardless of the fact that we still sin is a matter of proper understanding about law and gospel. Suffice to say for purposes of this post that we have this treasure in jars of clay, but yet, that doesn’t take away from the value of the treasure—it is still a treasure. In 1John, we are told God’s seed is IN us. End of argument. Moreover, Paul uses a double emphasis to state the fact that Christians possess a goodness that is part and parcel with their being:
Romans 15:14 – I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.
What part of “you yourselves” do we not understand? When Christ said “your” righteousness, he meant “your.” Christ said, “You must be born again.” This isn’t a rebirth of mere awareness that James railed against; this is a rebirth of your being.
Another reason New Calvinism wants to separate itself from the Forum is because they lacked the same nuance that New Calvinists like John Piper and Al Mohler have mastered. The Forum wrote an article titled, “The False Gospel of the New Birth” footnoted by one of its participants and leading authority on New Calvinist hermeneutics, Graeme Goldsworthy, who was invited to lecture at Sothern Seminary in 2009. The clear argument of the article was that the new birth was true (as are shadows, but do not have the sun’s life-giving source), but any emphasis on it would take away from the “best thing” which is Christ. In other words, the new birth is true, but irrelevant—even damaging because it puts the focus on us and not Christ. This gets into the whole subjective gospel versus objective gospel that there is no room for here.
I fear that New Calvinism is one of the wide roads that lead to hell that Christ warned us of. It redefines the new birth as a mere awareness devoid of new creaturehood. It is a movement that heralds the total depravity of the saints and denies the new birth.
paul
Not on my Watch Tim | Challies Tries to Rewrite New Calvinist History
A reader of PPT sent me a timeline chart produced by Tim Challies that supposedly traces the history and source of New Calvinism. The reader sent me the link yesterday because he thought I “might be interested” in it. Yes, he would be correct about that, I am VERY interested.
History is a paramount teacher and a protector of civilization. It protects us from those who are hell-bent on foisting their worldview on the masses because it is the “right way that has never been rightly applied.” If you want to understand how this works, see John Immel’s presentation at the 2012 TANK conference here. Tyrants always want to rewrite history because people might get the wrong idea about how their logic has been inappropriately applied in past history yielding bad results. Hence, an accurate portrait of what happened, in their minds, misrepresents their logic.
That’s a dangerous precedent. The rewriting of history has always been Propaganda 101 for the tyrant. Bottom line: the explosion of discernment blogs, especially those of the spiritual abuse/spiritual tyranny sort are a direct result of the New Calvinist movement; therefore, Tim Challies has now taken his place as the Joseph Goebbels of New Calvinism.
I suppose if nothing else, I have served mankind with an in-depth appraisal of New Calvinism’s TRUE contemporary history, and no Tim, John Piper is not the father of New Calvinism, a Seventh Day Adventist theologian by the name of Robert Brinsmead is the true father of New Calvinism. Colleague John Immel is probably right, that knowledge will more than likely do little to avert people from “New” Calvinism, but just the same, we will keep it on the record for giggles if nothing else. This is why I am abundantly pleased that TTANC 1 will go beyond being self-published in the near future. Immel wonders aloud why New Calvinists care that people know who the real father of the movement is, but obviously, they do care or they wouldn’t be rewriting history. Below is the true illustrative chart that appears on page 92 of TTANC 1. TTANC 2 will delve even deeper into the history as well.
The theological journal written by Robert Brinsmead, Present Truth Magazine, was the most widely published theological journal in the world during the 70’s. The rediscovery/resurgence project that sought to bring back authentic Reformed soteriology to the church was known as the Australian Forum. They had their own core four: Robert Brinsmead, Graeme Goldsworthy, Geoffrey Paxton, and the father of New Covenant Theology, Jon Zens. Brinsmead and Zens worked together on NCT which is a slightly different twist on the law than Covenant Theology, but both hold firmly to Augustine’s Neo-Platonism. That is, those who really understand what the Reformers propagated.
More than likely, John Piper got his theology from Present Truth Magazine. During the 70’s, and regardless of denomination, only pastors who resided on the moon had never heard of the journal or read it. Piper himself uses terminally that was uniquely that of the Australian Forum. In fact, the centrality of the objective gospel outside of us was a Forum distinctive. The Forum also developed the root and fruit/tree paradigm so often used among New Calvinists. They also developed the emphasis hermeneutic as well; i.e., “a good thing is not the best thing and to the degree that you talk about good things, you take away from the best thing.” This is the Gnostic concept of sun versus shadows; shadows are true, but they can’t give life like the sun, so we don’t want to emphasize shadows. The Forum, and Graeme Goldsworthy in particular, used this hermeneutic to redefine the new birth. These four men, whatever you think of them, were master thinkers and able to repackage complex theological ideas in an understandable way.
New Calvinism has not strayed far from the model they established, including a strong focus on pastors’ conferences. As noted in chapter 4 of TTANC 1, when Goldsworthy was invited to lecture at Southern Seminary, John Piper couldn’t help himself and wrote an article about Goldsworthy’s lecture. Until then, Piper’s kinship to the Forum was extremely difficult to establish.
Brinsmead and other notable Adventist theologians hoped to reform the Seventh Day Adventist church with authentic Reformed soteriology. The question of the final judgment has always been a sticky wicket for Adventists, and the Reformed gospel offers a solution: Jesus stands in the judgment for us. The Awakening movement that Brinsmead started in 1969 still lives in Adventist circles, and they archived all 53 volumes of Present Truth Magazine. The Forum also wrote extensively on the fact that Ellen White was a student of Luther’s writings and also wanted to solve the problem of the final judgment with authentic Reformed soteriology. This is what led Brinsmead to research the writings of the Reformers in order to solve the final judgment debate that had plagued Adventism for many years. In both Adventism and Reformed theology, the law is the standard for justification; therefore, the problem with the law being fulfilled is found in Christ fulfilling the law and “covering” the believer with the perfect obedience of Christ.
In contrast regarding the Reformation gospel and Adventism both, the Christian’s sin, in regard to justification, is not covered—it’s ENDED, and we will not stand in any judgment that determines justification.
Truly, a book could be written on the fallacies of this bogus history chart authored by Challies, but in closing I will only mention one more: the following misrepresentation by Kevin DeYoung (2008 on the timeline); the Emergent church isn’t Reformed. Why this is a big fat lie can be explained via this free booklet. Other than that, Challies’ timeline is peppered with the who’s who of the Emergent church movement, while the aforementioned notable event on the timeline denies Emergent connections. I am not sure that there has ever been a movement with more followers with an inability to think.
It’s true: I did think that New Calvinism’s connection to Adventism would be a game changer, but more significant is the fact that New Calvinism is old Calvinism, and that is also a history that has been completely rewritten. The accepted history of the Reformation and its impact on western civilization is propaganda that could only pass in the church or a Communist country.
And for whatever it is worth, and for whatever it might accomplish, that is why we are here, and it is why we do what we do, and we will do it for an audience of One if that is all that ever becomes of it.
But be sure of this: I will not stand silent while yuppie heretics rewrite history. Not while the Lord gives me breathe on this watch.
paul
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