Strange Fire Conference: Exalting Human Suffering is a Reformed Family Tradition
“Here is what people don’t understand: the Reformation didn’t just herald a new gospel, it called for a whole new way in interpreting reality.”
“This is clear: He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers ,works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil. These are the people whom the apostle calls »enemies of the cross of Christ« (Phil. 3:18), for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works. Thus they call the good of the cross evil and the evil of a deed good. God can be found only in suffering and the cross, as has already been said Therefore the friends of the cross say that the cross is good and works are evil, for through the cross works are dethroned and the »old Adam«, who is especially edified by works, is crucified. It is impossible for a person not to be puffed up by his »good works« unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil until he knows that he is worthless and that his works are not his but God’s.”
~Martin Luther: Heidelberg Disputation; Theses 21
Martin Luther was a Platonist who despised human existence. The 95 Theses indeed launched the Reformation, but Luther’s Disputation to the Augustinian Order in Heidelberg six months later laid the foundation of Reformed doctrine. The Heidelberg Disputation argued for the interpretation of all reality through mediation on man’s evil, and God’s holiness. In other words, all reality is to be interpreted by a deeper and deeper understanding of our sin as set against God’s holiness. Like many Eastern epistemologies, anti-types give deeper meaning to each other; light defines darkness, and we wouldn’t know what light is without darkness etc.
This became known as Luther’s Theology of the Cross. Here is what people don’t understand: the Reformation didn’t just herald a new gospel, it called for a whole new way in interpreting reality. It called for reality to be interpreted through a new take on Eastern dualism; in essence, the serpent’s knowledge of good and evil. This is the foundation of the Calvin Institutes stated in 1.1.1.:
Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.
Remember that Calvin believed mankind was the essence of all evil (totally depraved), so the math on this is not difficult. In the very next sentence Calvin posits the Eastern concept of anti-types in this dualist construct:
But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.
Incredibly, all of the Calvin Institutes are founded on, and flow from the first sentence. The second sentence is the very first building block in Calvin’s massive metaphysical application. The Calvin Institutes are NOT primarily about the gospel, it is a metaphysical treatise on reality. Again, people don’t get this. We ignorantly wallow in the election debate while functioning in a church world reinterpreted by murdering mystic despots. This must amuse Calvin and Luther, if indeed they are in a place where amusement can be found.
I have come to believe that the kingdom of darkness has not swayed from what first worked best. Adam and Eve only knew good. But Lucifer had brought evil into reality. It was true, as the serpent said, God was keeping half of reality from them; specifically, the knowledge of good and evil both. While the apple may be a befuddling concept, the goal of the serpent to deceive the first couple into disobedience is not. They sinned and therefore became privy to both good and evil. Every false religion following has made that construct their epistemology. Instead of using that wisdom for change in the here and now, it is a method for birthing the spiritual into a horizontal experience. Part and parcel with this dualism is the idea that matter is evil and only spirit is good. The here and now is a waste. Man is utterly incompetent, totally depraved, and lives in a world that is utterly evil. Suffering weakens his evil physical body, and better defines the spiritual which enables him to experience it. What he/she understands is imputed through manifestations that are experienced.
This is the crux of the Heidelberg disputation. It is a treatise that exalts suffering. And this fact can be seen today in John MacArthur’s Strange Fire conference. It is apparent that MacArthur’s primary beef with Charismatic theology is its assertion of promised blessings, “Your Best Life Now.” In the Heidelberg Disputation, that is the “glory story.” Joel Osteen et al are the antithesis of the “cross story” that embraces human suffering and rejoices in it. Luther considered any self-consideration at all to be subjective and the “glory story.” On the other hand, to the point that we empty ourselves, despise ourselves, and rejoice in the suffering that God pours out on us, we experience the “cross story” and its glory, not ours. In theses 17 of the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther argues that this incessant self-depravation is not cause for despair, but results in a “grace” experience known in contemporary Reformed theology as “vivification.”
Hence, the new poster child for the contemporary Reformed movement is the storied Joni Eareckson Tada. The purpose for inviting her to the conference is made evident via an article written by Tim Challies:
She went on to speak of the chronic pain that lasted for many years and the stage three cancer that followed it and expressed how she has learned to be grateful for the suffering because of the way it keeps her longing for Christ. The suffering that results from sin in the world, God now uses to get rid of sin. There is nothing sweeter than knowing the joy of the Lord Jesus in the midst of suffering and all the while she holds on to the hope and the confidence, that in heaven, the big deal won’t be getting a new body that works, but a glorified heart that no longer twists truth, becomes anxious, manipulates others, and all these other manifestations of sin.
The particular point the conference wants to make was also made by Tada according to Challies:
Even today she often has well-meaning charismatics who come up to her and pray for her healing. Though she never says no, she does always ask them to pray for specific things and then highlights character issues. Will you pray for my bad attitude? Will you pray for my grumbling? She means to show them that she is far more concerned with indwelling, remaining sin than chronic pain and legs that do not work.
Tada, who has embraced Gospel Sanctification at some point in the past, usually gets a pass from me because of the respect her life demands. She will continue to get that pass for the most part here, but let me point out what is missing in her testimony: the goodness within. Is that true or not? Is that biblical or not? Christians have remaining sin, but is that epistemology, or a fact that calls us to put off that remnant of the old self and put on the new goodness within? Is God’s “seed” in us or not? What’s with everything being about the sin within and not the goodness within born of the new birth? Is Tada’s storied life a free pass for presenting this imbalanced view of reality/sanctifcation?
Also missing is conversation regarding the technology that has vastly improved her quality of life and reduced the degree of suffering she has experienced. Is God also not responsible for that? Why would he want to decrease suffering? Furthermore, the Reformers despised the idea of competent reasoning that led to the technologies that greatly improve quality of life. If not for the Enlightenment Era, Europe would be no different than Eastern and Middle Eastern third world countries that are products of the selfsame Platonist ideology.
Charismania? MacArthur et al are merely the other extreme. Like Calvin and company, they do not want to partake in the rigors of a many faceted sanctification. Everything is either the glory story or the cross story. This enables them to push the easy button on everything—especially “biblical counseling.” They do not want to invest in this life because they are not in control of the results. They posit the idea that trusting God is to check out of this life altogether and deem it worthless.
Not so. Trusting God is to never become weary in well doing. And to believe that we are responsible for the sum and substance of our own life. A responsibility for the life that bears our name, the name that God gave it. The Bible never states that Christ will stand in our stead at any judgment. We will be standing there ourselves….
and Christ’s response to those who only return what was originally given because of fearing works is well stated.
paul
The ABCs of the Protestant False Gospel: Law; Romans 3:21, Life; Galatians 3:21, and Curse; Galatians 3:10
The American church isn’t impressive? Maybe a false gospel is the problem.
A challenge to all pastors; this Sunday, pass out a slip of paper to all your congregants with this question: “Christ obeyed the law perfectly so that we could be saved, true? Or false?” I am willing to bet all slips will be returned with, “true.” If we don’t even know the gospel, how can we communicate it to those who don’t?
A. According to the Reformation gospel, salvation/justification is predicated on a perfect keeping of the law. Hence, Christ’s death and perfect obedience both are needed to secure salvation. This means justification must progress through the Christian life to glorification via the same way we originally obtained it: by faith alone.* This contradicts a justification that is APART from the law.
Romans 3:21, 28
The Calvin Institutes: 3.14.1-21
B. The Protestant gospel therefore propagates a law that can give life; who keeps it is not relevant. A fulfilled law paves the way for salvation. This completely contradicts Pauline apostolic doctrine (see Galatians, particularly 3:21).
C. This means we are all under a curse because we are still under law. Again, who keeps the law is not relevant—we are still UNDER it as justification’s standard for righteousness (Galatians 3:10-14). In the book of Romans, the very definitions of the lost versus the saved are, “under grace” and “under law” (Romans 6:14,15). If the perfect keeping of the law by Christ brings life, life is not imparted separate from the law, and we are still under the law, and therefore under a curse.
Christ became that curse for us and eradicated the law as a standard for our justification (Romans 10:4). Christ is the end of the law “FOR righteousness” (ie., justification) to everyone who believes. Those still under the law will be judged by the law at the great white throne judgment, but the law has NOTHING to say about a righteous standing to those who are under grace (Romans 3:19). Christ didn’t fulfill the law for our justification, he paid the price for its penalty. By that one act we are saved, not that plus multiple acts of obedience (Hebrews 10:12, 14).†
*Like the Catholicism that it came from, perpetual forgiveness of sins to remain saved is efficacious and can only be found in the institutional church, and administered by elders (or priests) and the sacraments.
The Calvin Institutes: 4.1.20-22
Timothy J. Wengert: A Contemporary Translation of Luther’s Small Catechism; Augsburg Fortress PUB 1994, pp.35,49
† This gargantuan problem hasn’t been lost on many Reformed thinkers. New Covenant Theology was created in an attempt to reconcile this problem. It posits the idea that Christ FULFILLD the law by His perfect obedience and replaced it with the “law of Christ.” Depending on the type of camp in this theology, certain parts of the Old Testament law were abrogated, and replaced with new laws that Christ ushered in. Others teach that the law was replaced with the single “law of love.”
However, the results are exactly the same: some law is still the standard for our justification, and the role of the law (or some form of it) remains the same in pre-salvation and post-salvation resulting in antinomianism. The Reformed definition of antinomianism follows:
The law is NOT the standard for justification (the Reformed disagree, but believe Christ keeps it/kept it/fulfilled it/ for us).
The Biblical definition of antinomianism follows:
The role of the law does not change in regard to justification and sanctification.
paul
My Detractor Stated it Well: Why John Calvin and His Followers are Heretics
I have a detractor who has stated one of my positions against the Reformed false gospel very well. I want to capture his assessment in this post, and it will be used in two of my upcoming books; TTANC 2, and The Reformation Myth. Here is the statement:
“Paul Dohse takes exception with Calvinism not because its evil, not because of predestination, not because of its easy believism that rejects morality. Nope. He takes exception with it because it thinks that the Law is the standard of justification, and Paul (the so-called apostle, not Dohse) says that it’s impossible that any law could ever GIVE life. Here is Dohse quoting himself from the article at the top of the article:
‘Moreover, the Apostle Paul states with all certainty that there is NO law that can give life. If Christ kept/fulfilled/keeps the law for us in order to keep us justified, that is saying that there is a law that can give life.’
So Dohse’s problem with Calvinism is that he thinks it contradicts Paul’s heresy in Galatians 3:21
Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. (Galatians 3:21 KJV)
The problem here is that Dohse has accepted Paul’s FALSE premise that we need to be GIVEN life” (James Jordan: Descriptive Grace blog; Paul Dohse’s pointless struggle against Calvinism while continuing to accept Paul’s Galatian heresy, Sept. 7, 2013).
Right he is, I have accepted that premise, and he states my position on NO law in justification very well. If the law has to be upheld perfectly to maintain our justification, as taught by the Reformers, the law is giving life. Who keeps it is beside the point.
That’s one reason among many why Calvinism is a false gospel.
paul
Do New Calvinist Elders Believe They are Salvific Mediators Between Us and God?
While some continually comment here at PPT that they can’t understand a thing John Immel and I write, they understand more than they realize. And some advice: not understanding a teaching A-Z doesn’t = “don’t understand it.” Focus on the elements that you do understand and add it to your knowledge. Those are building blocks used to build something; specifically, knowledge.
Also, say that John and I are diving way deep to look for sharks, and you see one swimming around the boat. That’s the experience I had yesterday when it was brought to my attention that New Calvinist elders are now plainly stating that they = “local church” and the “authority” of the local church. But the way the reader explained it was simple and profound:
“I thought there is only one mediator between God and man?”
Bingo. “But Paul, can we really say that New Calvinist elders think they are salvific mediators between us and God?”
ABSOLUTLEY.
New Calvinism is a return to the authentic Reformed gospel. Because Augustine, Gregory, Luther, and Calvin were Platonists and didn’t interpret reality with the grammatical normative, Protestants migrate away from Reformed authenticity into a hybrid, or light form of the original. That is why today, you have historical grammatical Calvinists (Jay Adams et al), and historical redemptive Calvinists (John Piper et al). It all boils down to mystical (mystical doctrines are always married to tyranny because it presumes the masses cannot understand reality) Calvinism and objective Calvinism. The latter retains contradictory vestiges of the former; primarily, sound soteriology, combined with Augustinian eschatology. You don’t have to understand all of these terms; simply file the concept away in your mind. The concept is a simple one.
The Reformation was really nothing more than the same Gnosticism (Gnosis: secret or lofty knowledge) that has plagued God’s people from the cradle of civilization. The Catholic Church was born of the Gnosticism that wreaked havoc on the first century church. Much of the New Testament is written with Gnosticism as a backdrop. Augustine et al were always Catholics and never left the foundations of the Catholic Church. I believe the present-day landscape of the church is absolutely identical to what was going on in the first century except for the technology.
Part and parcel with Gnosticism is the idea of the spiritual elite mediating between the masses and God; in particular, the salvific part (because the masses cannot comprehend reality). Augustine believed that one could not know for certain if they were saved or not, but posited the idea that your best shot is obedience to the institutional church. This is deep within the psyche of Western thought, and why there is so much money in religion. The American landscape is saturated by churches with $500,000 yearly budgets because that is where salvation is found—no matter how you live. Give at the office, and live any way you want to during the week.
And that’s why the Reformation also distorts the Trinity. The Trinity is applicable truth. Sometimes we look at the Trinity as One for certain applications, and sometimes we make the separate distinctions for other applications. In regard to mediation, God must be Father and Son must be mediator. The Reformed gospel makes Father and Son the same and elders the mediators. But there is only “one” mediator.
Like I said, New Calvinism is a return to the authentic Reformed gospel. Calvin et al clearly believed in the authority of elders to forgive sins on earth in God’s behalf:
Wherefore, our initiation into the fellowship of the church is, by the symbol of ablution, to teach us that we have no admission into the family of God, unless by his goodness our impurities are previously washed away (20).
Nor by remission of sins does the Lord only once for all elect and admit us into the Church, but by the same means he preserves and defends us in it. For what would it avail us to receive a pardon of which we were afterwards to have no use? That the mercy of the Lord would be vain and delusive if only granted once, all the godly can bear witness; for there is none who is not conscious, during his whole life, of many infirmities which stand in need of divine mercy. And truly it is not without cause that the Lord promises this gift specially to his own household, nor in vain that he orders the same message of reconciliation to be daily delivered to them.
On the other hand, the Lord has called his people to eternal salvation, and therefore they ought to consider that pardon for their sins is always ready. Hence let us surely hold that if we are admitted and ingrafted into the body of the Church, the forgiveness of sins has been bestowed, and is daily bestowed on us, in divine liberality, through the intervention of Christ’s merits, and the sanctification of the Spirit.
22. To impart this blessing to us, the keys have been given to the Church (Mt. 16:19; 18:18). For when Christ gave the command to the apostles, and conferred the power of forgiving sins, he not merely intended that they should loose the sins of those who should be converted from impiety to the faith of Christ; but, moreover, that they should perpetually perform this office among believers. This Paul teaches, when he says that the embassy of reconciliation has been committed to the ministers of the Church, that they may ever and anon in the name of Christ exhort the people to be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20). Therefore, in the communion of saints our sins are constantly forgiven by the ministry of the Church, when presbyters or bishops, to whom the office has been committed, confirm pious consciences, in the hope of pardon and forgiveness by the promises of the gospel, and that as well in public as in private, as the case requires. For there are many who, from their infirmity, stand in need of special pacification, and Paul declares that he testified of the grace of Christ not only in the public assembly, but from house to house, reminding each individually of the doctrine of salvation (Acts 20:20, 21). Three things are here to be observed. First, Whatever be the holiness which the children of God possess, it is always under the condition, that so long as they dwell in a mortal body, they cannot stand before God without forgiveness of sins. Secondly, This benefit is so peculiar to the Church, that we cannot enjoy it unless we continue in the communion of the Church. Thirdly, It is dispensed to us by the ministers and pastors of the Church, either in the preaching of the Gospel or the administration of the Sacraments, and herein is especially manifested the power of the keys, which the Lord has bestowed on the company of the faithful. Accordingly, let each of us consider it to be his duty to seek forgiveness of sins only where the Lord has placed it. Of the public reconciliation which relates to discipline, we shall speak at the proper place (Calvin Institutes 4.1.20-22).
In contrast, the apostle Paul said there is only ONE mediator, and made a clear distinction of terms between “mediator” and “teacher”:
1 Timothy 2:5 – For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time. 7 And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a true and faithful teacher of the Gentiles.
When is the discernment blogosphere going to hunker down on this simple concept and demand that those who play both sides of the fence clarify their position on this? And why is it important? Because the idea of mediators other than Christ always leads to tyranny. Mysticism is the mother because it presupposes a truth/reality beyond the five senses that the masses cannot understand. It is anti-grammatical, and posits a redemptive stargate. Grammatical rules are merely guardrails, and empirically hinder orthodoxy on God’s behalf. Grammatical interpretation empowers the individual.
This was the forte of the first century Nicolaitans, which means, “power over the laity.” And this is exactly where we find ourselves today—history repeating itself.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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