Let’s Pretend: Cedarville University Cares About the Gospel
Originally published June 10, 2013
“Did you know Christians still need to be saved? Well, bless your heart, it may be too late for you, but quickly enroll your children at Cedarville where they can be saved by Dr. White’s gospel.”
Nobody wants to discuss the gospel that has been running the show in the American church for several years. Launched by a Reformed think tank in 1970, it seized control of evangelicalism in the mid-1990s. Propagators continually put forth the idea that they are the new sheriffs in town and they need time to straighten things out, but the fact is that their gospel has been running the show for almost twenty years now. Are we better off? Hardly.
We aren’t talking about mere semantics here. We are talking about the heart of the gospel. We are talking about the law’s relationship to grace. We are talking about the very definition of justification. New Calvinism keeps the believer under law, but supposedly that’s ok because Jesus keeps it for us. No, under law is under law no matter who keeps it. God will not honor a false gospel. The New Calvinists aren’t fixing anything—they are creating the mess with their backdoor antinomianism.
The new President of Cedarville College is just what the trustees were looking for: handsome; educated; an adventurist; sports enthusiast; the appearance of pure orthodoxy; the Mayberry RFD family—all the things that bring in admissions from suburbia Christianity. Hope has returned to Cedarville; the alumni can once again look at themselves in the mirror. Yes, he’s good, even being a student of New Calvinism for six years now, it took me forty minutes to positively identify him as a New Calvinist heretic. I consider him one of the best at masking his false gospel.
Dr. Thomas White and his wife were both educated at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, a bastion of Christian mysticism and New Calvinism. But a statement on his blog says it all:
When the Gospel drives everything we do, we see all of us need grace every day. We all have deceitfully wicked hearts and preaching a moralistic set of rules will never save but will only add a burden that mankind cannot bear. We should teach about theological realities such as adoption, redemption, forgiveness, and grace. We should become protectors of widows and orphans and fathers to the fatherless.
We need to proclaim loudly the biblical message that children are a blessing from the Lord, that life begins at the moment of conception, that we must fear God more than any opinion of man, and that the Gospel brings grace if one repents and believes. No matter any judge’s verdict, we must defend life now, not wait until the morning after.
For the most part this reads well, but the devil is in the details. The greatest errors are always closest to the truth. Does the gospel drive EVERYTHING we do? Does the same gospel that saved us continue to completely drive our Christian life? You know, the “gospel-driven life.” The “gospel-centered life.” Do Christians continue to need grace every day? What does he mean by “grace”? The common grace we expect from God every day, or the same grace that saved us? Do Christians need daily salvific grace? Is that what he means? Sure it is, for he goes on to write,
We all have deceitfully wicked hearts….
Is that true? Do born-again Christians have “wicked hearts”? Yes, according to New Calvinists. That’s why we need the gospel every day.
Like with all New Calvinists, we receive the same ambiguous rhetoric from White that masks his false gospel:
….preaching a moralistic set of rules will never save but will only add a burden that mankind cannot bear.
“Mankind” is thrown in to knock you off the scent. This kind of New Calvinist deception is protocol. The “preaching” refers back to “we” and “us” in the previous sentence including “all.” That would be us, as in CHRISTIANS, the fact that New Calvinists see us as no different than the unregenerate (and therefore still under the law) notwithstanding.
Furthermore, try not to close your eyes because a shocking scene is coming:
1. Rules in the Bible are called “moralistic.”
2. And, preaching rules will never “save” Christians.
Did you know Christians still need to be saved? Well, bless your heart, it may be too late for you, but quickly enroll your children at Cedarville where they can be saved by Dr. White’s gospel.
Somehow, they will become moral and serving as well. Dr. White will teach them two different things that supposedly yield godly results:
A. They are still totally depraved.
B. They should value life and help the poor.
Really? Dr. White also states that we should….”teach about theological realities such as adoption, redemption, forgiveness, and grace.” “Obedience” and “sanctification” and “discipleship” are conspicuously missing. And there is a reason for that.
Like all New Calvinists, Dr. White will propagate a gospel contemplationism that supposedly results in the imputation of Christ’s obedience to the believer in sanctification. That’s because we are still under the law and Christ’s obedience must be imputed to our sanctification so that we can live our Christian life in the same way we were saved: by faith alone. Synergistic sanctification is believed to be works salvation. It’s antinomian let go and let God theology.
Again, these guys have been running the show for twenty years and the results speak for themselves. One result is the GARB response to the ABWE scandal. It’s sad but true: Christians continue to pay good money in the name of a gospel that will not sanctify, or save.
paul
Rob Turner Appointment: Cedarville University Striving for Excellence in Total Depravity
The American church is in a truth crisis. Many who profess to be Christians see no reality in truth or consequences. The apostle Paul described wicked people as those who refuse to love the truth (2THESS 2:10). This wickedness among professing Christians in our day is rampant. Truth really doesn’t matter. What matters is the décor, the programs, the praise music, and the conduits for entertaining our spoiled little brats. Moreover, the hard work of thinking and study in spiritual matters is seen as works salvation. That’s how pathetic the situation is.
My heart sinks when I see the overall attitude in the church regarding doctrine. We live in a day when an elder of a church will look at you and say, “I’m not a theologian” without even blinking. When two men who love doctrine are discussing such at a fellowship, we hear, “Do you guys have to discuss work all of the time?” Nevertheless, Christians function on mental automatic pilot from the time they wake up in the morning till they go to bed at night. The American Christian mind is programed to receive only. And that it does 24/7 while disdaining any rude interruptions by a call to discernment. We like to learn new things every day: automatically. Get with the program, there is something new behind every bush, not the devil.
And the results? The new American Christianity: The Total Depravity of the Saints. That’s right, “the Christian is no whit different than the unregenerate.” The Christian doesn’t change, we can’t change. Our message to the world is to show forth a gospel that proclaims how we can be joyful in our wickedness. Meditating on our wickedness leads to “vivification.” To partake in the works of Christ circumvents this joy, we must rather “experience” the joy of these works and label them “obedience.” One of the most popular “Christian” teachers of our time calls it “Christian Hedonism” and nobody even blinks. God help us.
Cedarville University just took another step towards fully embracing this doctrine with all lust via the appointment of Rob Turner as director of the university’s Master of Ministry program. Turner leads the “teaching team” at Apex Community Church, a conclave of New Calvinism’s total depravity of the saints gospel. The fact that Cedarville has been fleeing to this doctrine for months now is certainly no big secret while hundreds of leaders stand by silently. Why? Because truth doesn’t matter, that’s why.
Apex heavily endorses and utilizes the teachings of New Calvinist Paul David Tripp. In his book, How People Change (Punch Press 2006 edition), Tripp describes Christians as “powerless and enslaved,” “dead,” “fools,” “those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,” “incapable of doing anything that is pleasing in God’s sight,” and “alienated enemies of God” (pp.64,65). Apparently, stuff that Christian parents will pay dearly for in order that it can be taught to their children.
Throughout the book, Tripp posits the idea that a literal interpretation of the Bible “omits the person and work of Christ as Savior.” Hence, to not read the Bible in the prism of a “gospel context” leads to works salvation. Every verse must be seen in the context of our sin as set against the holiness of God. Commands are supposedly for the express purpose of driving us back to the cross in utter despair of self-righteousness. Though the book is a monstrous metaphysical anomaly, it is a chilling and apt articulation of New Calvinism. For that reason, many New Calvinists stay aloof from Tripp because they don’t think he is ambiguous enough and therefore offers opportunity for objective criticism.
In 1982, a concerted effort was launched by a Presbyterian named Ernest Reisinger to take over the Southern Baptist Convention with this doctrine, and frankly, the doctrinally/theologically dumbed down convention was no match for the takeover. This is what’s behind the SBC’s cozy relationship with Cedarville. The university is hell-bent on adopting this doctrine and is tapping into the SBC for their resources accordingly. SBC super star Paul Washer explains the doctrine as a balance between despair, and joyful, perpetual rebirths as we plunge the depths of our Christian depravity (The Gospel Call And True Conversion: Recovering the Gospel, last page of Chapter One).
But here is another shame that hides behind another weakness: lack of knowledge regarding TRUE church history; this movement has come and gone throughout church history. New Calvinism is the fifth manifestation of this pseudo-revival since Calvin’s theocracy in Geneva. It dies for a reason, but not before it strips what it consumes of its former identity.
So, Cedarville supporters are paying good money to help the New Calvinists rape the university. And when this “resurgence” once again dies, what is left of Cedarville will be left for dead along with it.
paul
Let’s Pretend: Cedarville University Cares About the Gospel
“Did you know Christians still need to be saved? Well, bless your heart, it may be too late for you, but quickly enroll your children at Cedarville where they can be saved by Dr. White’s gospel.”
Nobody wants to discuss the gospel that has been running the show in the American church for several years. Launched by a Reformed think tank in 1970, it seized control of evangelicalism in the mid-1990s. Propagators continually put forth the idea that they are the new sheriffs in town and they need time to straighten things out, but the fact is that their gospel has been running the show for almost twenty years now. Are we better off? Hardly.
We aren’t talking about mere semantics here. We are talking about the heart of the gospel. We are talking about the law’s relationship to grace. We are talking about the very definition of justification. New Calvinism keeps the believer under law, but supposedly that’s ok because Jesus keeps it for us. No, under law is under law no matter who keeps it. God will not honor a false gospel. The New Calvinists aren’t fixing anything—they are creating the mess with their backdoor antinomianism.
The new President of Cedarville College is just what the trustees were looking for: handsome; educated; an adventurist; sports enthusiast; the appearance of pure orthodoxy; the Mayberry RFD family—all the things that bring in admissions from suburbia Christianity. Hope has returned to Cedarville; the alumni can once again look at themselves in the mirror. Yes, he’s good, even being a student of New Calvinism for six years now, it took me forty minutes to positively identify him as a New Calvinist heretic. I consider him one of the best at masking his false gospel.
Dr. Thomas White and his wife were both educated at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, a bastion of Christian mysticism and New Calvinism. But a statement on his blog says it all:
When the Gospel drives everything we do, we see all of us need grace every day. We all have deceitfully wicked hearts and preaching a moralistic set of rules will never save but will only add a burden that mankind cannot bear. We should teach about theological realities such as adoption, redemption, forgiveness, and grace. We should become protectors of widows and orphans and fathers to the fatherless.
We need to proclaim loudly the biblical message that children are a blessing from the Lord, that life begins at the moment of conception, that we must fear God more than any opinion of man, and that the Gospel brings grace if one repents and believes. No matter any judge’s verdict, we must defend life now, not wait until the morning after.
For the most part this reads well, but the devil is in the details. The greatest errors are always closest to the truth. Does the gospel drive EVERYTHING we do? Does the same gospel that saved us continue to completely drive our Christian life? You know, the “gospel-driven life.” The “gospel-centered life.” Do Christians continue to need grace every day? What does he mean by “grace”? The common grace we expect from God every day, or the same grace that saved us? Do Christians need daily salvific grace? Is that what he means? Sure it is, for he goes on to write,
We all have deceitfully wicked hearts….
Is that true? Do born-again Christians have “wicked hearts”? Yes, according to New Calvinists. That’s why we need the gospel every day.
Like with all New Calvinists, we receive the same ambiguous rhetoric from White that masks his false gospel:
….preaching a moralistic set of rules will never save but will only add a burden that mankind cannot bear.
“Mankind” is thrown in to knock you off the scent. This kind of New Calvinist deception is protocol. The “preaching” refers back to “we” and “us” in the previous sentence including “all.” That would be us, as in CHRISTIANS, the fact that New Calvinists see us as no different than the unregenerate (and therefore still under the law) notwithstanding.
Furthermore, try not to close your eyes because a shocking scene is coming:
1. Rules in the Bible are called “moralistic.”
2. And, preaching rules will never “save” Christians.
Did you know Christians still need to be saved? Well, bless your heart, it may be too late for you, but quickly enroll your children at Cedarville where they can be saved by Dr. White’s gospel.
Somehow, they will become moral and serving as well. Dr. White will teach them two different things that supposedly yield godly results:
A. They are still totally depraved.
B. They should value life and help the poor.
Really? Dr. White also states that we should….”teach about theological realities such as adoption, redemption, forgiveness, and grace.” “Obedience” and “sanctification” and “discipleship” are conspicuously missing. And there is a reason for that.
Like all New Calvinists, Dr. White will propagate a gospel contemplationism that supposedly results in the imputation of Christ’s obedience to the believer in sanctification. That’s because we are still under the law and Christ’s obedience must be imputed to our sanctification so that we can live our Christian life in the same way we were saved: by faith alone. Synergistic sanctification is believed to be works salvation. It’s antinomian let go and let God theology.
Again, these guys have been running the show for twenty years and the results speak for themselves. One result is the GARB response to the ABWE scandal. It’s sad but true: Christians continue to pay good money in the name of a gospel that will not sanctify, or save.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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