Don’t Miss This Control Technique Among New Calvinists: “Diagnosing” Subjects as Mentally Ill
“….we must remember that Luther’s theology of the cross doctrine was primarily a metaphysical endeavor. Luther and Calvin believed that ALL of reality is interpreted through the gospel meta-narrative. So, and please don’t miss this: if you don’t interpret reality through the “gospel-driven” life, you are in fact incapable of properly interpreting reality and a diagnosis of mental illness is not far behind.”
“Check out the new sports blog CJ Mahaney has and the playful dialogue that goes on there while his empire is publically submerged in sewage. This is actually seen as astounding spiritual maturity in the midst of a trial. In this case, a civil one.”
“Therefore, New Calvinists are going to feel completely justified in labeling anyone they choose as mentally ill. In fact, one of their heroes, Geerhardus Vos, bemoaned what he thought was a lost opportunity to have dispensationalists psychologically evaluated over the years to determine the lack of a ‘normally-constituted mind.’”
I’m surprised that I haven’t heard much discussion (actually none) on how New Calvinist churches control people who ask too many questions by calling their mental stability into question. This is particularly effective and a favorite among totalitarian regimes worldwide. During the Cold War era, it was the staple method in the Soviet Union.
Unhelpful in falling victim to this ploy is the whole idea of, “mental illness” propagated by various fields of Psychology. This is the idea that we can become “mentally ill” in the same way that we catch a cold. The truth is much more hopeful than that, but when you have a bunch of educated elders and their psychiatrist lackeys telling you that’s the case—it’s very powerful. If you’re “mentally ill,” you wouldn’t necessarily be able to recognize that yourself, right? Then, this idea about you is also suggested through ambiguous prayer requests at mid-week flock groups. Game over. You have to admit, these guys are good at what they do.
This may also take an unfortunate turn in which the parishioner buys into the idea and agrees to taking psychotropic drugs in order to prevent church discipline. By the way, many New Calvinist churches are disciplining people who are genuinely depressed. I have written on this in the past. “Redemptive” church discipline is not to correct a wayward life, it is an attempt to reveal the “cross-driven life.” Hence, disciplining the depressed is seen as an act of love to open the person’s eyes to their “only hope.” If they won’t see the cross story, they are better off dead anyway. And yes, suicides in regard to this reality are not even on the radar screen in the anti-spiritual abuse offensive. Hear me well: counseling based on progressive justification is Russian roulette. Read Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, and then imagine a depressed person being counseled based on that construct. Add cold chills up back.
Luther himself argued in the Disputation (which embodies all the major New Calvinist tenets) that depression would not be the result because of the continual deaths and rebirths produced by gospel contemplationism. This is the Reformed definition of the new birth, a series of deaths and rebirths until we reach final justification. Luther believed that the law (biblical imperatives) drives us (Christians and unbelievers alike) to despair—making a joyful rebirth possible (John Piper’s Christian Hedonism is a supplement to the Reformation idea of new birth). So, the Bible is not for encouragement, instruction, etc., it is for ascertaining how evil we are as Christians leading to “humbleness” and a new birth experience. This is the “cross-driven” or “gospel-driven” life. It could be surmised that the depths of despair get shallower as we “grow” in our Christian walk because a deep realization of our sinful state is circumvented by joy. Happy antinomians that rejoice in evil are the inevitable result. Do you doubt that? Check out the new sports blog CJ Mahaney has and the playful dialogue that goes on there while his empire is publically submerged in sewage. This is actually seen as astounding spiritual maturity in the midst of a trial. In this case, a civil one.
Incredibly, Luther’s theology of the cross construct (the foundation of the Reformation) causes Christians to be depressed if they are not aspiring antinomians, and then guess where they go to get help? Right. Of course, it will affect people in different ways—the decline in spiritual maturity will take many different forms.
Now, we must remember that Luther’s theology of the cross doctrine was primarily a metaphysical endeavor. Luther and Calvin believed that ALL of reality is interpreted through the gospel meta-narrative. So, and please don’t miss this: if you don’t interpret reality through the “gospel-driven” life, you are in fact incapable of properly interpreting reality and a diagnosis of mental illness is not far behind. One example is New Covenant Theology which was spawned from Reformed ideology. The first tenet of NCT reads as follows:
New Covenant Theology insists on the priority of Jesus Christ over all things, including history, revelation, and redemption. New Covenant Theology presumes a Christocentricity to the understanding and meaning of all reality.
Therefore, New Calvinists are going to feel completely justified in labeling anyone they choose as mentally ill. In fact, one of their heroes, Geerhardus Vos, bemoaned what he thought was a lost opportunity to have dispensationalists psychologically evaluated over the years to determine the lack of a “normally-constituted mind.” In regard to this statement by Vos, the father of contemporary Reformed hermeneutics, Barry E. Horner stated the following:
It is difficult for me to recall a more graceless, indeed intellectually arrogant denunciation of an opposing Christian perspective than this. While Richard Gaffin commended the gentle, retiring, pious manner of Vos, such virtue is quite absent here (Future Israel: p. 174).
It is also difficult to find anything in Reformed theology that accomplishes any good. Other than the positing of facts that are complicit in first-degree theological felonies, there is nothing but delusional arrogance and the muffled screams of those buried alive under mythological topsoil. Tyrants like CJ Mahaney were looking for an ideology to fulfill their filthy lust, and they found it in Calvinism.
paul
Calvin’s Blood Feud Against “This Little Light of Mine”
The contra Reformation clarion call could very well be: “Give me my little inner light or give me death.” Liberty is important, but liberty is always the natural result of recognizing that man can understand reality. Tyranny’s mother is adamant that the only thing that mankind can understand is that he can’t understand. And even with that, he lacks the “humbleness” to admit such so every means possible must be utilized to save him from himself. Those who think themselves capable of good ideas should be neutralized for the sake of the whole. The idea that man can have ideas is the most dangerous idea. In the mind of the tyrant, ideas coming from the common man are the cause of every drop of blood that has been spilled on the earth.
Whether by God or Mother Nature, the enlightened few have been preordained to rule over the unenlightened masses, and nothing strikes more fear in their heart than hearing the voices of children singing somewhere in the distance….
I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine
Let it shine,
Let it shine,
Let it shine.
Hide it under a bushel? No!
I’m gonna let it shine
Hide it under a bushel? No!
I’m gonna let it shine
Hide it under a bushel? No!
I’m gonna let it shine
Let it shine,
Let it shine,
Let it shine.
John Calvin dressed ancient spiritual caste in biblical garb. Some of these spiritual caste systems even took the idiom, “They’re at the bottom of the food chain” literally. Reformed theology is predicated on the emptiness of man. Salvation is only granted to those who understand our emptiness. Those who believe salvation cures emptiness are in a worse condition than they were before; “the gospel is an objective truth outside of us.” This is explained well by Martin L. Cary who witnessed the rise and fall of the father of neo-Calvinism, Robert Brinsmead:
….said Brinsmead:
“The righteousness by which we become just in God’s sight, remain just in His sight and will one day be sealed as forever just in His sight, is an outside righteousness. It is not on earth, but only in heaven…only in Jesus Christ.”
True sanctification looks away from self and flows from the finished, objective work of Christ…. For many Christians, the glory of the crucified Christ is not their focus; instead they seek internal experiences that eclipse the cross. The Awakening rightly opposed the subjective, human-centered emphasis found among some groups within Christianity.
Wrongly, they reacted with a cerebral, spiritless gospel. Brinsmead strongly opposed the Charismatic movement’s emphasis on experiences as a return to the theology of Rome. However, going to another extreme, Present Truth magazine decried “the false gospel of the new birth,” and offered a new birth that was merely a corporate, objective blessing, not an individual experience.
Brinsmead’s Awakening movement and the subsequent Australian Forum project articulated authentic Calvinism and launched it into present-day New Calvinism. Cary’s description is Calvinism to a “T.” It is the secular co-op to the idea that individualism and private ingenuity is a threat to the overall wellbeing of the group. But on the spiritual side, it disavows the idea that God’s ideas will better the world when used by believers and unbelievers alike. Believing that man is born free, capable, and endowed with such by the creator, and applying that idea to life is pragmatism because it is not done with the pure motive of glorifying God. If God isn’t being glorified, the difference between 10,000 slain and 6,000,000 slain is neither here nor there.
Thus, America as idea and the good that it has done in the world is neither here nor there to the Calvinist. This is where Calvin and Stalin embrace passionately. Stalin despises the individual and his supposed threat to the group—a secular objective truth outside of us; Calvin concurs with the object gospel outside of us and deems any “good” apart from God’s glory as “mere iniquity.” If it’s not the cross story, its man’s glory story; hence, the more slain unmercifully the better. Susan and I dined with some Christian couples last night and one expressed surprise that a professor of a local Christian university was a strong supporter of Barak Obama. I know who this professor is. He is a Calvinist and therefore this should not surprise us at all.
In the past election, all Christians who stayed home because Romney is a Mormon are functioning Calvinists whether they know it or not. Like Calvinists, they believe Romney’s American idea about man is pragmatic, and the good that could come of it is neither here nor there. God will not use a good idea in the milieu of life because He is not getting all of the glory. Hence, an unbelieving Boy Scout saving the proverbial elderly women from being run over by a car is irrelevant because the Boy Scout doesn’t have the right biblical doctrine. This is amusing because most Christians don’t understand doctrine anyway except for, “Romney has bad doctrine because he is not a Baptist.” Not a Baptist =’s wrong doctrine while the vast majority of Christians don’t understand the difference between justification and sanctification to begin with.
All of this can be seen through the classic blood feud between Calvinist Puritans and the Quakers. The latter’s soteriology and church polity was a direct pushback to what the Quakers had experienced in Europe during the first and second “reformations.” These two groups represent the two extremes of inner-nihilism and existentialism. Like all good American Christians and ignorant liberals, they will not make any choice between the two regardless of the fact that Quakers were not given to hang, drown, or burn people for differences of opinion. To Christians, those damn Quakers have bad theology because they aren’t Baptists, and to the liberals, those damn Quakers are probably Republicans. How can we argue with Plato’s philosopher kings when they say mankind has a limited ability to interpret reality? We don’t even understand how good ideas and ethics fit into metaphysics!
That’s why Nazis were incredulous that they were being hung for following orders. Bewilderment was their only companion on the short trip down to the end of a rope. That’s often the result of lazy thinking and the status qua. In the blogosphere, bloggers contend against spiritual abuse while supporting Calvinist E-churches! Liberals still vote democrat while not understanding that religiosity and secularism are the interchangeable body parts of the Mr. Potato Head communist tyrant. While a Quaker will probably not pass a law legalizing gay marriage, it is also true that he will probably not hang you for being gay. At least vote Libertarian. It’s far less bloody. In the realm of ideas, there is no fundamental difference between a Calvinist, a Communist, and Islam. All three reject individualism and the idea of an inner light.
This is even the crux of the little frays that occur in Christianity such as the “asking Jesus into our hearts” SBC controversy. Calvinists in the SBC say that this idea is unbiblical. Sure they do, if Jesus is inside of us, it could incite a good idea. When people think Jesus is inside of them they come up with all kinds of ideas that are not “group focused.” Neo-Calvinists also deceive by claiming that they believe in an “inner life” via Dr. David Powlison’s heart theology. But all that’s a theological system for better understanding the darkness that is in us, not any kind of light or good. It is inner-nihilism theology.
You like a simple gospel? Well, now you have one. There are only two: infused grace that enables, or one that glories in our inner darkness as a way to bring more glory to God.
But perhaps the most important distinction is the songs that our children will sing. “John Calvin, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm,” or “This little light of Mine.”
paul
Dear Christians: Don’t You Get It? Calvinists Think You Are Going to Hell
Yes, the gospel that SBC dimwits think they can colabor with denies the new birth in no uncertain terms. This isn’t rocket science: if the gospel that is good for the goose is also good for the gander; this assumes that no change takes place inside of the believer. And in case you haven’t read the papers lately that’s exactly what Christians are acting like.”
I think I have taken my last trip to SBC Today .com and SBC Voices .com. I have been referred over there a number of times to observe truth tone deafness on steroids. A heretic is running our flagship seminary, but the big news is that Tim Tebow cancelled his speaking engagement at FBCD. The big hero this time in the ongoing drama of SBC folklore (in our own pitiful minds) is Dr. Jeffress, who like all other SBC notables has never called out another leader for the same scandalous filth that is going on in most denominations. He will call out homosexuals, but the rape cover-ups in the SBC are a taboo subject. We call out the sins of the world, but to call out our own sin is “gossip.” All of these guys just really make me want to puke. Because they are sorry excuses for leadership—we are a joke in the eyes of the world and rightfully so.
Other articles posit the supposed strength of Calvinists and non-Calvinists working together in the SBC. So, the likes of David Platt will gladly play along while believing that synergistic sanctification is a false gospel and works salvation. This is a simple thing, Jerry Vines needs to call Al Mohler on the phone and ask him if synergistic sanctification is works salvation. I think the answer would surprise him if Mohler has a rare moment of truth telling. Of course, if Vines decides to do something about it, he then has to explain how he missed this all along and focused on symptoms rather than the issue of Calvin’s false gospel. I have been a lay pastor since 1986, and I missed it. Why? Because I was clueless, that’s why. More studied than a lot of Christians, I had a very poor understanding of justification, sanctification, and covenants, and still have a lot to learn. What’s so hard about that? Just admit it! What’s the big deal?
All of this conversation in the SBC about getting along with Calvinists could just as well include the Jehovah Witnesses or the Moonies. There is no difference; a false gospel is a false gospel and a cult is a cult. Calvinism was the epitome of a cult in Calvin’s Geneva and still is. You could slip a playing card in-between Calvin’s Geneva and Jonestown save the fact that Jonestown wanted to go out with a bang. But more to the point let’s talk about Calvin’s false gospel—the gospel that SBC yesomites say we should work together with.
In today’s church words don’t mean things because if they did we would have to do something about it. And we are mostly business as usual loving spiritual slugs. That’s what we need more than anything in the church today: leaders who take words seriously and will act accordingly. They will be easy to spot. When the sun is out during the day they will be walking around rather than sunning themselves on flat rocks like the majority. So, let’s talk about words.
“We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day.” Really? Does this raise any red flags? No. It is so, so indicative of how mindless Christians are in our day. “Wow, that sounds pretty cool. More fish anybody?” Come now, let’s be honest; do we really believe that we have been appointed stewards of God’s life-giving word? Is that how we function? A name that has come up in this ministry a lot this week is Miles McKee. He states a lot of things on his Facebook page that brings hearty kudos from many because their eyes immediately gravitate to the word, “gospel” in the sentence. “Oh there it is! The word gospel! Amen brother!” But let’s look at his statements more closely. Here is the subline of his Facebook page:
Preaching Christ crucified to the saved and lost alike. The goal is to pack this web site with rich gospel goodies.
Yes, and that is exactly what Christian children in adult bodies seek in our day, “rich gospel goodies.” Yum, yum, yum. We can’t take the word of God and help people in real trouble; we are too busy feeding on our gospel goodies. Note the picture below—that’s us. It is also how the world sees us, and rightfully so.
GOSPEL GOODIES! Yum, Yum!
But note that we are supposed to be preaching Christ crucified to Christians. This doesn’t raise any red flags. Note that the same message preached to unbelievers is also fundamental to the message Christians still need to hear daily. Still no red flags. Particularly alarming should be the idea that Christ’s crucifixion is perpetual in the Christian life. That’s what Calvin believed. He believed the atonement is perpetual. He believed Christ’s death is continually reapplied to the Christian’s life by faith alone until we reach heaven. We are then judged according to whether or not we continually appropriated Christ’s death in our life by faith alone until that day. It’s keeping our salvation by staying at the foot of the cross. We are saved by faith alone, and at any given time that we are not living our Christian life by faith alone we lose our salvation (or they say we were not really saved to begin with). That’s why we preach the same gospel to the saved as well as the unsaved.
It would therefore seem that the new birth would have to be redefined, and you would be right about that. This doctrine necessitates the denial of the new birth. Hence, McKee also states the following:
Contrary to much of today’s evangelical preaching, we must state that the message of New Birth is not the gospel.
Regardless of the fact that Christ’s own gospel presentation to Nicodemus was, “You must be born again,” this doesn’t raise any red flags either. The mindlessness truly boggles the imagination. Graeme Goldsworthy, the foremost hermeneutical authority recognized by Calvinists in our day footnoted (with full agreement) an article written by Anglican Geoffrey Paxton entitled, “The False Gospel of the New Birth.” Yes, the gospel that SBC dimwits think they can colabor with denies the new birth in no uncertain terms. This isn’t rocket science: if the gospel that is good for the goose is also good for the gander; this assumes that no change takes place inside of the believer. And in case you haven’t read the papers lately that’s exactly what Christians are acting like.
Moreover, Calvinists think the evangelical new birth gospel is works salvation: “It would be better to die a heathen than to live a religious life and die without Christ” (McKee). And trust me, synergistic sanctification is the “religious life” being spoken of here.
The Calvinist gospel, the centrality of the objective gospel outside of us, is a perfect storm of deception that perfectly facilitates the confounding of salvific terms—I get that. But yet, I see a prevailing arrogance among Christians that since we are so smart, deception will always be evident to us. We are so good at doing Christianity we don’t need practice or diligent study. Our claim that faith is pure and simple is a cloak of arrogance that covers for our bankrupt spirituality and the brunt of jokes among the heathen. If there is a God, where is His representation upon the earth? “Well, we don’t attempt to be the gospel with our own works, we only preach the gospel.” And to that the heathen say,
“Amen.”
paul
Tom Chantry Doesn’t Like the Charismatic Brand of the Reformation’s False Gospel
“Chantry doesn’t like Charismatic subjective results of the same Reformed objective gospel. Therefore, he denies that they have the same gospel. That’s not true.”
I was sent a post written by Reformed Baptist Tom Chantry. As the rats begin jumping from that sinking ship named New Calvinism, the boring side of Calvinism is trying to distance themselves from Charismatic Calvinists like CJ Mahaney. New Calvinism, which is a resurgence of authentic Calvinism, at least makes heresy a little fun with concoctions like the scream of the damned which was an ad hoc addition to the 2009 Resolved Conference hosted by the who’s who of contemporary Reformed doctrine. Usually, the tyranny and spiritual abuse that goes hand in metaphysical hand with Reformed doctrine dampens any semblance of humor, but this bunch is special; their shenanigans can bring laughter to the darkest realities. Nevertheless, Chantry bemoans the following reality in said article:
That “Reformed Charismaticism” should eventually go down this path – dragging the rest of the “New Calvinism” with it – was predictable. Such a doctrine has no solid confession. It pays scant attention to the means of grace. It is not actually Reformed in any meaningful sense.
Chantry’s grammatical scare quotes indicate so-called Reformed Charismaticism on the first wise and New Calvinism isn’t “New….” on the second. He is dead wrong on the first and absolutely correct on the second.
Let’s take the second scare quote first. New Calvinism isn’t new, it’s a resurgence of the original authentic article. That would be, the centrality of the objective gospel outside of us. That’s a contemporary tag, but is an apt in regard to the authentic Reformed gospel. Nothing happens inside of us—grace comes from outside of us completely.
“But Paul, that’s true isn’t it? We were not saved by anything inside of us; it all came from God’s righteousness that was imputed to us. Certainly, you are not saying that we had any righteousness inside of us that aided our salvation!”
Sigh. This is where the Reformers have been pulling the wool over our eyes for the better part of 500 years. They believe that righteousness is only imputed to us positionally, and not internally. We remain the same. God does everything in both salvation and our Christian walk. Our salvation is predetermined, and our Christian walk is predetermined. All righteousness/grace remains outside of the “believer.” Hence, and don’t miss this, only the gospel is objective. We are so totally depraved that if any righteousness at all is within us, anything that we would make of it intellectually would be subjective at best. The only reality lifeline man has is the same lifeline that saves him: the gospel.
Therefore, we live by the gospel; i.e., an “objective” endeavor to obtain a deeper and deeper knowledge of our sinfulness (as believers) in order to have a deeper and deeper understanding of God’s holiness and appreciation for the depths of His sacrifice for our sin. Depending on the stripe of Reformed buffoonery, the result is a manifestation of Christ’s obedience in the Holy Spirit realm as opposed to the worldly (flesh) realm or mere wellbeing of spirit with a disregard for whatever God decides to do in our lives.
In the first case, the perfect life that Christ lived on earth is imputed to our Christian walk so that we can live by faith alone in sanctification. When Christ’s obedience is manifested in the Spirit realm, we experience it because we are in that realm, but it is not because of anything inside of us. We experience it as if we are performing the work, but it is really the manifestation of Christ in the Spirit realm.
The latter is explained well in the magnum opus of the Reformation: Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. In that document, he clearly states that we don’t work, but rather God works as it is predetermined for our particular life. Luther stated that as we mediate on our total depravity and God’s holiness we experience death which leads to a joyful resurrection. In other words, the gateway to joy is a deeper understanding of our total depravity. This is the basis of John Piper’s Christian Hedonism in 500,000 words or less. This was also Luther’s definition of the new birth. For Luther, the new birth was progressive and not a onetime event.
John Calvin then took Luther’s concept and applied its dualism (all reality being interpreted through God’s holiness and our depravity) to the full spectrum of how religion is experienced, lived, and believed. That would be the Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion. This all survives under masterful preaching that only follows this systematized dualism, but much can be preached about God’s holiness and our sinfulness. All preaching by the likes Spurgeon et al can be parsed into this dual prism. Missing is practical application and a true understanding of our role in the Christian walk which results in what we see today in the American church. This eventually leads to a social death and then historical resurgences that follow.
Some of what I am saying can be seen in Chantry’s rant:
One way to summarize the doctrine of divine sovereignty is this: It is God who acts, not man. How will the lost be saved? God must act. How will sinful Christians overcome the “old man”? God must act. How will the church grow in both holiness and influence? Again, God must act. He is the sovereign; He is the great Actor in every aspect of our spiritual life.
Notice that “old man” is in scare quotes. They don’t believe that there is any “old man.” We don’t change—we remain empty vessels. The Bible is merely a tool for aiding us in seeing Luther’s “cross story” as opposed to our “glory story.” Again, this fleshes out in many different ways among Reformed cultists. The sacraments, along with preaching Luther’s cross story, aid us in seeing the need for constant forgiveness, what is called “deep repentance” leading to death and subsequent resurrection experienced by joy. The Christian walk is an endeavor to live by faith alone which is an experience, not a work that we do. This is why the Reformers were so exercised in regard to the book of James—James stated a salvation by faith alone while calling for believers to add works to their salvific faith. This turns Reformed theology completely on its head.
Chantry’s thesis is beyond lame. The Charismatic New Calvinists know their cuts of Reformed theology very well. CJ Mahaney’s five word gospel, “Christ died for our sins” and all reality flowing out of that is classic Reformed theology. Chantry doesn’t like Charismatic subjective results of the same Reformed objective gospel. Therefore, he denies that they have the same gospel. That’s not true. When all reality is interpreted through dualism, the results are always subjective. But the prism is the same.
That’s why Jesus said that a tree is known by its fruit. If Chantry doesn’t like the fruit he needs to change trees.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
1 comment