“The ‘Gospel’ Coalition” Series, Part 9: The Five Points of New Calvinist Contradictions
Point One: The totally depraved preaching the gospel to themselves everyday. We gotta believe that they aren’t very good sermons (Jess—thanks for this one).
Point Two: Do what you know God wants you to do even if joy is not present, but it is sin. So, there are some situations where God would prefer that we sin (ebook: “Delight as Duty is Controversial,” John Piper, Desiring God website).
Point Three: New Calvinism encourages us to contemplate Christ in the Scriptures to make Him bigger and us smaller. The bigger the Jesus, the more humbled we are, and the more we realize how worthless and totally depraved we are as well. Yet, no Christian movement in all of redemptive history has invested more in IMAGE than the TGC and T4G. No “Christian” movement in redemptive history has been more image conscience than the leaders of TGC and T4G, sporting their super-yuppie sports wear and Sarah Palin like eyewear. No group of leaders has ever sought to draw attention to themselves via niche identity / personality / credentials like this group.
Point Four: Two different interpretive hermeneutics. When a text seems to confirm their doctrine literally (especially Gal 2:20), they want you to interpret it literally. But when not, they want you to view the text “in its gospel context,” ie., Christocentric hermeneutics.
Point Five: In my opinion, more deliberate deception than contradiction, is the TGC and T4G’s contentions against postmodernism and the Keswick movement, when they share many of the same elements. Note what Terry Johnson writes concerning Sonship theology (pdf available in right column):
“Many of us will have to be forgiven if we hear the quacks of the “higher life” movements from which we ostensibly escaped by coming to the PCA. We fled Keswick, the “Victorious Life,” the “Abundant Life,” and other perfectionists aberrations into the safe and sane arms of Westminster/ Puritan spirituality. Forgive us if we are nervous about losing the realism and balance of Reformed piety, where grace and law, love and duty, affection and fear, God’s power and our responsibility all stand in beautiful, biblically proportioned relation to one another. We liked the products of that spirituality: the Huguenot, the Puritan, the Covenanter; the modern missionary movement, the Protestant work ethic, precise morals, zeal for holiness, faithfulness amidst suffering, and what Packer calls “an ardor for order,” that orderliness that facilitates the fulfillment of all one’s duties. We will not quickly abandon this heritage for a reformulation that quacks suspiciously like the failed stepchildren of Wesleyanism.”
paul
“The ‘Gospel’ Coalition” Series, Part 8: A Note to the Misled Sheep
When you go to the 2011 TGC in Chicago, you will here a lot of GS / Sonship mantras that criticize “living by lists,” “living by do’s and don’ts,” “being God’s man, not a lawman,” “serving God out of duty,” “obeying in your own efforts [what they mean is any effort on your part at all is an attempt to obey God without depending on him],” etc., etc., etc. All the red herrings aside (no Christian advocates a grueling, joyless sanctification, but neither do we say it is always joyful), here is an article by Craig W. Booth that rightly divides the word: http://thefaithfulword.org/2006marchblogarchives.html#1a
A very edifying read—thanks to the reader who shared it.
paul
“The ‘Gospel’ Coalition” Series, Part 7: The 5 Points of Your New Calvinist Arrogance
Point One. Your Name: It insinuates that you’re the new and improved version of “old” Calvinism. Which is not only arrogant, but a lie as well.
Point Two. Your apologetics: You believe that you preach the only true gospel. One example would be what Michael Horton wrote on page 62 of “Christless Christianity” where he states that any separation of justification and sanctification results in the lose of BOTH. The synthesis of the two is the crux of the New Calvinist gospel.
Point Three. Your hermeneutic: One of your mantras plainly states how ALL people approach the Bible. The judgment is that NOBODY approaches the Bible with an open mind. One of your haughty teachers states it this way, “How we answer the question must be shaped and limited by the word of God. But we approach the word of God with assumptions, presuppositions, biases, historical understandings, and personal filters. None of us come to the word as empty slates; we have ‘tilts’ that may or may not be known to us.” And I will give you three wild guesses as to who can lead us in the right direction! Basically, New Calvinist leaders teach their followers that they have an inability to properly ascertain truth; or at the very least, should ALWAYS be in doubt of what they have read or studied. As I have said before and will say again, this shows New Calvinism’s kinship to postmodern thought which devalues the ability to know absolute truth absolutely. But more to the point, it dogmatically proclaims a restriction on the ability of others to understand the word of God on their own.
Point Four. Your Theology: Your view of law and gospel states that you are “free” from the law while EVERY other Christian who believes the law has a role in sanctification is still IN BONDAGE, ie., you are free and we are still in bondage. Gag, it’s not only arrogant, it’s also a lie.
Point Five: Your eschatology: You have informed Christ that He has low self-esteem, and you have fixed that for Him by making every verse in the Bible about Him and deemphasizing “an issue about a sliver of geography that eclipses Christ.” How dismayed you will be when he doesn’t thank you at the judgment.
paul
“The ‘Gospel’ Coalition” Series, Part 6: Can Christian Women Gone Wild Save Us From New Calvinism?
I have shared my theory in other posts that contemporary antinomians are like serial criminals. Not in essence of being actual criminals, but in their deep-seated desire to get caught. You have seen the plot in movies—serial criminals always dropping catch me if you can hints to the police. At least two antinomians of our day, Tullian Tchividjian and John Piper, are good examples of this. But first, let me say that I realize that I am one of the very few people around who equate Gospel Sanctification / Sonship theology ( Tim Keller, a significant forerunner of Sonship theology, is one of the founders of TGC) / the gospel-driven life with antinomianism. However, my reasoning is simple; if we are sanctified by justification, that excludes the law either by obligation or ability. Neither do I buy into the idea that thinking the law is good—is an acceptable replacement for an obligation to obey it. Also, the fact that I rubbed shoulders with six GS proponents for several years, and I’m privy to the fact that they bragged about being antinomians is not helpful to those who are trying to persuade me otherwise.
Hold on, my phone is ringing: “Oh! Hi honey. Uh—uh , ya, hmmm. I know sweety, we have discussed this before—getting to the point and such, ya, I will get to the women shortly. Ok, talk to you later, bye!”
Anyway, Tullian Tchividjian recently dropped a really big hint by promoting the idea that preachers should strive to be accused of antinomianism as a way to validate their preaching as having enough Jesus. When one, lone man protested, it made national headlines in Christian circles. But despite Tchividjian’s efforts, it didn’t work. The one, lone protestant focused on the accusation element without considering for a moment that maybe TT really is antinomian. Whew, that was a close one! Michael Horton followed the same week by accusing an accuser of accusing him of antinomianism when the accuser never even used the word in the accusation. Another hint? Hmmmm.
Also, we have John Piper, the First Pope of New Calvinism, continually drawing attention to himself (hints?) by promoting heretics and refusing to correct associates that use profanity in public, while notable evangelicals at large cover for him, and not for a moment considering that any of this has anything to do with the guy’s theology while teaching that what we believe always dictates what we do—unless you’re Pope John the First. A prime example of this is Piper’s invitation to Rick Warren to speak at one of his Desiring God conventions. But hello, when you believe that every verse in the Bible is about the gospel, how can the particular elements of God’s truth really have that much significance? If Warren also believes that the Bible is a plenary gospel narrative, everything else is fair game—so why wouldn’t they hangout together? In fact, a reader sent me a quote by Tchividjian in regard to his defense of Piper for the invite by saying something like this: “All truth is God’s truth, even if it comes from Rick Warren.”
But what’s up with Piper being defended by the likes of Phil Johnson, John MacArthur’s right-hand guy, in the following post: http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2010/04/on-piper-warren-connection.html ? “I love John Piper. People often ask me what living preachers I listen to besides John MacArthur. John Piper is my clear first choice. He’s also one of my favorite authors.” Unbelievable. That is, until you read this in the same post:
“Speaking of Twitter chatter and Facebook feedback, I can’t touch on this whole subject without pointing out that the tone of some of the criticism leveled at Dr. Piper is simply revolting. Within fifteen minutes of Dr. Piper’s live webcast the other night, I had to delete a comment on my Facebook page from a woman who called him a clown. Over the past week I have deleted an average of two or three comments each day that were personally insulting or deliberately disrespectful toward Dr. Piper. One woman expressed a hope that his sabbatical would be permanent.
It intrigues and disturbs me that most (not all, but most) of the overtly impertinent comments have come from women. There’s evidently a growing regiment of self-appointed discernment experts consisting of women who give lip service to the authority of Scripture. They would unanimously affirm that Scripture reserves for men the teaching and ruling elders’ roles in the church. They would, I presume, deplore the ordination of women to such positions of authority. They are not offended by Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 2:12; rather, they would say amen to it. And yet in practice they have no compunction about posting angry, loud condemnations and insistent demands for the removal of a pastor of John Piper’s stature. These things ought not to be.”
First of all, God is sovereign; it is obvious that God planned before the foundation of the Earth for me to marry Susan and not the woman who called Piper a clown. Besides, in the spirit of defending people just because we like them, are we sure that wasn’t her way of saying Piper is a follower of Edmund Clowney? As I unravel the sorted history of New Calvinism, there is some question as to who was really the father of Sonship theology that is the fundamental basis for neo-Calvinism—Clowney, or John “Jack” Miller. Clowney wrote Preaching Christ in All of Scripture, How Jesus Transforms the Ten Commandments, and Christian Meditation. Any of those themes sound familiar in Piper’s teachings? But if that’s not the case, to Phil Johnson’s point, how dare that woomun call out a man of “Piper’s stature” (did he really say that? Let me check again.Yep, he sure did). Well, that pretty much says it all—if one of the who’s who of the evangelical world teaches error, the uneducated book-buying peasants of American church culture need to keep their mouths shut and submit to the “ruling elders.” Worse yet, if not unthinkable, is the idea that one of the woomun peasants would speak out!
If Phil would check Acts 17:11: the Holy Spirit commends the Bereans for vetting Paul’s (the apostle) teachings and no gender is mentioned. In fact, verse 12 seems to indicate women were among them. And I know this is difficult for Phil, but John Piper is no apostle Paul. Furthermore, Priscilla and Aquila both instructed Apollos (Acts 18:26), and I doubt Piper is an Apollos as well. As far as Phil’s citing of 1Timothy 2:12, because of 1Corinthians 14:34, I would think Paul is referring to the corporate setting, and not the milieu of life in general. Phil’s boss, John MacArthur, agrees; see his comments on 1Timothy 2:12 in his Bible Commentary, page 1783. He states the following: “He is not prohibiting them from teaching in other appropriate conditions and circumstances (cf. Acts 18:26; Titus 2:3,4).” John’s over the Seminary and Phil’s over other stuff, right?
Moreover, now that we have established that women can callout man-leaders of high stature, Phil apparently deleted a woman who was dead-on regarding Piper taking a permanent sabbatical. Piper took an eight-month sabbatical for beyond unbiblical reasons. An eight-month, paid sabbatical to eliminate several “species of heart idols.”? And the obvious logical conclusion as follows: an eight-month sabbatical instead of being counseled by his own elders; where is all of that in the Bible? Add to that his announcement that he is hoping to remain pastor there five years after returning from his sabbatical. The lady is absolutely right, why not just retire and be done with it? And by the way, HOW DO YOU PREDETERMINE HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE TO ELIMINATE “SEVERAL SPECIES OF HEART IDOLS”? ARE THEY THE EIGHT-MONTH TYPE? Have we lost our minds?
Phil also wrote: “It intrigues and disturbs me that most (not all, but most) of the overtly impertinent comments have come from women. There’s evidently a growing regiment of self-appointed discernment experts consisting of women….” Yes, discerning Christian woman gone wild, and thank goodness for them. Phil sates that it is mostly women who are speaking up and calling for leaders to be held accountable. Sad. And the women folk are right about something else: something can be done about it; separation, not inviting them to conferences (Matthew 18:17). Rejection, not fellowship (Titus 3:10 Rom 16:17,18), Rebuke, not excuses (1Timothy 5:19).
John Piper is one of the featured speakers at this years TGC conference in Chicago. Who knows what hint he will drop this time around. Will some Christian woman gone wild have to satisfy his deep-seated desire to be exposed? Can Christian women gone wild save the church from New Calvinism? Stay tuned.
paul
“The ‘Gospel’ Coalition” Series, Part 5: Poke, Poke, Michael Horton?!!
This series of posts are about The Gospel Coalition and their upcoming national conference in Chicago. Most of my material is coming from their website: thesonshipcoalition.org. Just about everywhere you poke the website is post material. After answering a good question by a reader this morning, I thought to myself, “Hmmm, if Michael Horton was speaking at the TGC [hereafter TSC], my reply would make a relevant post. Funny how Horton believes the same thing as those other guys but they never hangout together,” I said to myself. Later in the day, I was poking around the website and discovered that the White Horse Inn radio program hosted by Horton is having a live presentation at the TSC conference! That was easy.
The reader used a quote from Horton’s other venture, Modern Reformation. Horton thinks we need a modern reformation because most evangelicals are going to hell because, like JC Ryle, BB Warfield, RC Sproul, and many others, we believe that we exercise our own efforts in janctification (that’s the hybrid word for justification and sanctification which they all teach is the same thing, pronounced: jay-n’ku-fi-cation).
So first, the question:
“So, help me understand. I pulled the following quote from an article published in Modern Reformation [MR], posted here, http://www.ouruf.org/d/cvt_sanctification.pdf. Why are you so against this way of thinking about the Christian life. If I am not motivated to obey the commands of scripture by the fact that I am already justified, then what would you suggest should be my motivation?
[The Horton quote]: ‘I began to see that we stand before God today as righteous as we ever will be, even in heaven, because he has clothed us with the righteousness of his Son. Therefore, I don’t have to perform to be accepted by God. Now I am free to obey him and serve him because I am already accepted in Christ (see Rom. 8:1). My driving motivation now is not guilt but gratitude.’”
And my answer:
Great question. One: Modern Reformation presents “gratitude” as the primary motivation for obedience to the exclusion of almost everything else. Second point under One: supposedly, our gratitude is increased by pondering / contemplating / meditating on the “gospel” or works of Christ which results in obedience that is qualified as acceptable before God because it is accompanied by joy, and a willing spirit. This is exactly what John Piper believes also; the moral character of obedience is ALWAYS determined by joy. Both of these points are indicative of Quietist, contemplative spirituality that Matt mentioned in the comment section of the other post.
Two: “I began to see that we stand before God today as righteous as we ever will be, even in heaven, because he has clothed us with the righteousness of his Son.” This is true, but MR believes that any attempt on our part to apply that righteousness horizontally is to take away from Christ’ righteousness that has been granted to us. This error is very subtle and is clothed in truth. We are not only righteous positionally, but we are also enabled to be righteous practically. It is up to us to “put on” the righteousness we have been given and to “put off” the remnant of sin left in our mortal bodies (Eph 4:20-24). This process will be EXPERIENCED IN A MYRIAD OF WAYS and will use a wide range of spiritual weapons granted to us, NOT JUST an endeavoring to be thankful for what Christ has done for us. In fact, making use of our complete arsenal is what will lead to deeper gratitude, not the limitation thereof. Paul said to put on the “full armor of God.”
But now let me hasten to reference what I said above (“MR believes that any attempt on our part to apply that righteousness horizontally is to take away from Christ’ righteousness that has been granted to us.”): On page 62 of “Christless Christianity” M. Horton says that spiritual growth only takes place when we, like unbelievers as well, “encounter the gospel afresh.” In other words, contemplation on the gospel is the only thing that produces spiritual growth.
Furthermore, this eliminates the use of Scripture for instruction because the Spirit only works “through the gospel.” This is known as the “Christocentric” or Gospel-centric hermeneutic. Also, on pages 189-191 of the same book, Horton propagates the idea that corporate worship is strictly a contemplative affair and that we are a valley of dead bones coming to receive life through the corporate presentation of the gospel and sacraments. Of course, this is a blatant contradiction of Hebrews 10:23-25. In addition, on pages 117-119, Horton says that any attempt on our part to be a testimony with our good works (as Christians) is an attempt to “be the gospel” rather than presenting the gospel. In other words, our own efforts in evangelism is an attempt t to replace the works of Christ with our works. Of course, this is a blatant contradiction to Matthew 5:16 and 1Peter 3:1,2.
Three: “Therefore, I don’t have to perform to be accepted by God.” No, not for justification, but we need to dependently perform in sanctification in order to “PLEASE God” (2Cor 5:9). Note 2Cor 5:9 carefully–for crying out loud, it will even be our goal in heaven to please Him–except we will be unhindered by the flesh, but it will be no less us obeying Him than now, just more, and too perfection. Christ will not be obeying for us in heaven while we please Him there because we will be “like Him.” Neither does He obey for us now, though no doubt, we need to depend on His strength and knowledge to do so, but we are definitely WORKING with God (1Cor 3:9 1Thess 3:2). But Horton believes that justification and sanctification are the same thing. Therefore, any effort to be “accepted”(a salvation concept) by Him in sanctification (a misnomer) equals an effort to be justified by Him as well. This is very subtle and deceptive. However, he states plainly on page 62 in “Christless Christianity” that any effort to grow spiritually apart from contemplation on the gospel will result “in the LOSS of BOTH.” Both what? Answer: both justification and sanctification; ie, your lost!
Four: The Bible designates several other motivations for obedience other than gratitude. Let’s start with MR’s use of guilt because they / Horton know that our society has been conditioned to view guilt as an ill motivation or bad thing. “My driving motivation now is not guilt but gratitude.” This statement insinuates that the sum of sanctification is either / or. Not so. The apostle Paul instructed Timothy to “Keep a clear conscience before God” (1Tim 1:5, 1:19, 3:9, 4:2, 2Tim 1:3). Clearly, one of the goals in sanctification is the consideration and motivation to KEEP a clear conscience. Secondly, under Four, fear of discipline is used to motivate (Acts 5:10-16 1Thess 4:6 1Tim 5:20). Thirdly, the awesome motivation to discipline self to prevent the Lord’s discipline. What a wonderful motivation / promise from our Lord! (1Cor 11:27-32). Fourthly, we are motivated by being promised blessings IN (a preposition) the DOING, (James 1:25) not IN CONTEMPLATION.
Fifthly, God motivates us to good works via REWARDS. Really, hundreds of verses could be cited to make this point, but I will mention Matthew 6:6. Also note that contemplation is not the cure for hypocritical prayer in the context of Jesus’ counsel here, but the practice of private prayer. I will stop here as the biblical points that could be cited on this are endless, but let me say that I am very concerned with contemplation replacing biblical instruction in regard to helping Christians with serious life problems, and being complete before the Lord, lacking nothing (2Timothy 3:16).
Five: MR fails to recognize the all important biblical concept of self-sacrifice. Often, our faith will drag ourselves kicking and screaming into obedience in order to please God; and the belief that blessings will be our reward, though delayed for the time-being. Joy does not always walk with obedience at every moment. In fact, faith often does not care about self at all, but rather takes pleasure in the fact that God is pleased regardless of how we feel at the time. Here, beating our bodies into subjection and self-death is the motivation / goal. Do we always seek to please God because we are mindful of his sacrifice? Or is it our love for Him that is many faceted with gratitude included?
Six: Gratitude alone does not bring us near to God; “adding” to our faith does (2Peter 1:5-11).
Bottom line: The MR quote above is fraught with deception. Contemplative spirituality is a roadway to destruction.
paul
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