Paul's Passing Thoughts

Originally posted April 27, 2015

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Welcome to Blogtalk Radio False Reformation this is your host Paul M. Dohse Sr. Tonight, part 5 of “The Protestant Twisting of 1John: A Clarification.” If you would like to add to our lesson or ask a question, call (347) 855-8317. Remember to turn your PC volume down to prevent feedback. Per the usual, we will check in with Susan towards the end of the show and listen to her perspective.

If you would like to comment on our subject tonight, you can also email me at paul@ttanc.com. That’s Tom, Tony, Alice, Nancy, cat, paul@ttanc.com. I have my email monitor right here and can add your thoughts to the lesson without need for you to call in.

This is our final segment on 1John, and next week we will be doing a book review on “How People Change” by Paul David Tripp. I will be doing an overview of each of the 16 chapters in the book according to the theses of each chapter, and then will explain how the different points of each chapter fit together to form a particular doctrine. All in all, the book represents a pretty impressive application of Reformed mysticism.

Then, the following week, starting on May 8^th, I think the time has come to do an in-depth evaluation of the Heidelberg Disputation. Martin Luther’s  95 Theses launched the Reformation, but all Reformed doctrines flow from the Heidelberg Disputation. Though very subtle, our present church culture is saturated with a collectivist doctrine of death, and I want to show exactly where this culture of death came from. We will be evaluating the Heidelberg Disputation theses by theses. How many Baptists know anything about the Heidelberg Disputation? Few, if any, yet the foundation of evangelicalism flows from this document.

Last week, I got away from our Gnostic theme and showed a correlation between John’s theology and that of the apostle Paul. The focus was the new birth, which Gnosticism denies. The historical backdrop is John’s pushback against Gnosticism which denies that people change. The Gnostics of that day believed that the material realm is evil and the spiritual realm is pure.

The goal is well-being that comes from getting beyond the five senses in order to gain knowledge. The particular vein of Gnosticism that John was contending against believed that sin only occurs in the body, and man’s spirit has never sinned per se. As a result, God’s people were being taught that what they did in the body was insignificant, and man didn’t need to deal with sin. Gaining spiritual knowledge for their own well-being was the key to having a happy life.

They denied that Christ really came as a man and was God’s Son. They taught that there were two Christ’s; one born of men and a Christ that was a spiritual avatar of sorts.

At any rate, the doctrine denied Christ’s deity, that He came to die for sin, and that mankind needed forgiveness for sin. Consequently, it also denied the new birth. In the same way Protestantism obviously denies that people change, redefine the new birth as an ability to perceive realm manifestation, and have their own unique distortion of the Trinity. When it gets right down to it, authentic Protestantism posits the Father and the Spirit as shadows of Christ.

Therefore, in chapter 3, John focuses on the new birth and why it changes us. But the dominate theme of the book, especially chapters 4 and 5, concentrates on love. Why is that? Because love in action should be the primary focus of Christians. Instead, what is the primary focus of Protestantism? Right; sin, sin, sin, sin, sin. Yes, our focus must be keeping our sins covered by the perfect righteousness of Jesus. Every song you sing, every sermon you hear is about how glorious Jesus is as set against our wretched vile selves. It boils down to praising our ability to see how rotten we are in the name of Jesus. (more…)