Home » Search results for 'king james version' (Page 41)

Search Results for: king james version

Spirit Baptism–the Historic Baptist View, part 2

October 14, 2011 / 2 Comments on Spirit Baptism–the Historic Baptist View, part 2

While the prominence of the UCD (universal church dispensational) and PCP (post-conversion power) doctrines of Spirit baptism throughout the gamut of denominational affiliations within evangelicalism and fundamentalism leads to large amounts of interaction between their advocates, as manifested in books, journal articles, and other studies comparing the merits of the two, the modern restriction of the historic Baptist doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Ghost to the most conservative elements within the Baptist movement has led to most advocates of the PCP and UCD doctrines ignoring it, often because of ignorance of its existence. This is unfortunate, since, as later posts will demonstrate, the historic Baptist view, not the PCP or UCD doctrine, is taught in the Bible.

Indeed, such has been the falling away from the old Baptist doctrine of Spirit baptism that evangelicals affiliated with churches in bodies such as the modern Southern Baptist Convention are almost universally ignorant of its existence, as are many neo-fundamentalist and truly fundamental Baptist churches connected with larger bodies such as the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches or the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, although the historic Baptist position remains dominant among the generality of unaffiliated Baptist separatists. Baptist pastors trained in parachurch institutions generally affiliated with generic fundamentalism (such as Bob Jones University) often are never even presented with the historic Baptist position, while those trained in church-run fundamental Baptist colleges and local-church specific Baptist Bible institutes tend to both learn about and embrace the historic Baptist position on Spirit baptism.

Baptists who read only neo-evangelical or non-historic Baptist compositions on Spirit baptism will probably never even have the historic Baptist position presented to them. For example, in critiquing the PCP position in favor of a UCD view of 1 Corinthians 12:13, the evangelical J. I. Packer wrote: “Can it be convincingly denied that 1 Corinthians 12:13 . . . refers to one aspect of what we may call the ‘conversion-initiation complex’ with which the Christian life starts, so that according to Paul every Christian as such is Spirit-baptized? Surely it cannot. The only [emphasis added] alternative to this conclusion would be to hold, as the late R. A. Torrey influentially did, that Paul here speaks of a ‘second blessing,’ not mentioned in his letters elsewhere, which he knew that he and all the Corinthians had received, though some Christians today have not” (pg. 163, Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God, 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005). Packer goes on to (effectively) critique the PCP view of 1 Corinthians 12:13. What is noteworthy is that he presents his UCD position as the “only” alternative. The historic Baptist position is entirely ignored. Packer is typical of evangelical books and articles on Spirit baptism, as even a cursory examination will verify. Journal articles such as “Dispensationalists and Spirit Baptism,” Larry D. Pettegrew, Master’s Seminary Journal 8 (Spring 1997): 29-46 ignore the historic Baptist view, despite historic Baptist acceptance of dispensational distinctions. Dictionary articles such as “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” by Craig Blomberg in the Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (ed. Walter A. Elwell. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996) ignore the historic Baptist position. Evangelical books such as Baptism & Fulness: The Work of the Holy Spirit Today, John R. W. Stott, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1978) and Holy Spirit Baptism, Anthony A. Hoekema (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972) ignore the historic Baptist position. It is noteworthy, however, that Hoekema admits that the passages concerning Spirit baptism in the gospels, as well as Acts 1:5, refer to Pentecost alone, stating (pg. 17-20, cf. 15-29):

This outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost Day . . . was a historical event of the greatest importance—unique, unrepeatable, once-for-all. It may be thought of as an event comparable in magnitude to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. . . . In Jerusalem the Holy Spirit was poured out on the 120 disciples . . . in fulfillment of the promise of the Father; this outpouring was a great salvation-history event[.] . . . In this sense, therefore, Pentecost can never be repeated, and does not need to be repeated. . . . [T]he expression ‘to be baptized in the Spirit’ is used in the Gospels and in Acts 1:5 to designate the once-for-all, historical event of the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost Day. In this sense the baptism of the Spirit is never repeated.

However, Hoekema then argues for a UCD perspective based on Acts 11:16 and 1 Corinthians 12:13, interacting with the PCP doctrine but engaging in no interaction at all with the historic Baptist position. His bibliography (pgs. 94-95) lists no books by historic Baptists, so it appears that his affirmations on the Spirit baptism texts in the gospels and in Acts 1:5 agree with the conclusions of the classic Baptist doctrine simply from the force of grammatical-historical interpretation, and potentially without any knowledge on his part of the existence of the view.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Re-examination of the New Testament Teaching on the Gift of the Spirit in relation to Pentecostalism Today by James D. G. Dunn (Chatham, England: SCM Press, 1970) may be considered as representative of treatments of Spirit baptism by those less conservative than historic Baptists, fundamentalists, or evangelicals. Dunn writes (pgs. 3-4):

Of particular interest to the NT scholar is the Pentecostal’s teaching about the baptism in the Spirit, for in it he claims to have discovered the NT pattern of conversion-initiation—the only pattern which makes sense of the data in Acts—and also the principal explanation for the amazing growth of the early Church. But does the NT mean by baptism in the Holy Spirit what the Pentecostal understands the phrase to mean? Is baptism in the Holy Spirit to be separated from conversion-initation, and is the beginning of the Christian life to be thus divided up into distinct stages? Is Spirit-baptism something essentially different from becoming a Christian, so that even a Christian of many years’ standing may never have been baptized in the Spirit? These are some of the important questions which Pentecostal teaching raises, and it will be the primary task of this book to re-examine the NT in the light of this teaching with a view to answering these questions. Put in a nutshell, we hope to discover what is the place of the gift of the Spirit in the total complex event of becoming a Christian. This will inevitably involve us in a wider debate than merely with Pentecostals. For many outside Pentecostalism make a straghtforward identification between a baptism in the Spirit and the Christian sacrament of water-baptism, while others distinguish two gifts or comings of the Spirit, the first at conversion-initation and the second at a later date, in Confirmation or in the bestowal of charismata. I shall therefore be defining my position over against two and sometimes three or four different standpoints. . . . I hope to show that for the writers of the NT the baptism in or gift of the Spirit was part of the event (or process) of becoming a Christian, together with the effective proclamation of the Gospel, belief in (ei˙ß) Jesus as Lord, and water-baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus; that it was the chief element in conversion-initation so that only those who had thus received the Spirit could be called Christians; that the reception of the Spirit was a very definite and often dramatic experience, the decisive and climactic experience in conversion-initiation, to which the Christian was usually recalled when reminded of the beginning of his Christian faith and experience. We shall see that while the Pentecostal’s belief in the dynamic and experiential nature of Spirit-baptism is well founded, his separation of it from conversion-initation is wholly unjustified; and that, conversely, while water-baptism is an important element in the complex of conversion-initiation, it is neither to be equated or confused with Spirit-baptism nor to be given the most prominent part in that complex event. The high point in conversion-initation is the gift of the Spirit, and the beginning of the Christian life is to be reckoned from the experience of Spirit-baptism.

One notes that Dunn equates Spirit baptism and the gift of the Spirit and adopts other elements of the UCD view while corrupting the doctrine of conversion by mixing in baptism in water and other heresy as a consequence of his non-evangelical, anti-inerrancy, semi-sacramentalist position. (Compare his statement that “[W]ater-baptism can properly be described as the vehicle of faith; but not as the vehicle of the Spirit. It enables man to approach God . . . but otherwise it is not the channel of God’s grace.” Pg. 100, Ibid. Dunn states that Paul’s sins were forgiven at the time of his baptism, pg. 75, and argues against the view that baptism is a sign of a conversion which has already taken place, pg. 145, 226-227. His acceptance of forms of higher criticism is obvious throughout his book.) Dunn also interacts with the PCP position and rigid sacramentalism in his book, speaking of his “debate with Pentecostal and sacramentalist” (pgs. 21, 170), but he never acknowledges the existence of the historic Baptist view. Advocates of the historic Baptist doctrine do not appear in his index of modern authors and works (pgs. 230-236). Non-evangelical writers, like many of their modern fundamental and evangelical counterparts, are entirely ignorant of the historic Baptist view of Spirit baptism.

Most ironically, the book Perspectives on Spirit Baptism (gen. ed. Chad Brand; authors Ralph D. Colle, H. Ray Dunning, Larry Hart, Stanley Horton, & Walter Kaiser, Jr. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2004) ignores the historic Baptist view, although it contains chapters presenting and then critiquing what are termed the Sacramental, Wesleyan, Charismatic, Pentecostal, and Reformed views of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The book ignores the historic Baptist position despite asserting that it “presents in counterpoint . . . the basic common beliefs on Spirit baptism which have developed over the course of church history with a view toward determining which is most faithful to Scripture.” Amazingly, the book is edited by a Southern Baptist professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and published by the same Southern Baptist Convention that, only a half century earlier, had a president and long time professor at the very same seminary that advocated the historic Baptist view in the classic and widely circulated International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.

Thus, as indicated, the historic Baptist position is advocated in the article “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” within the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (gen. ed. James Orr. orig. pub. Eerdmans, 1939; elec. acc. Online Bible For Mac software, Ken Hamel). The article’s author, E. Y. Mullins, was professor and later president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at the turn of the ninteenth century, and, from 1921-1924, president of the very Southern Baptist Convention that in modern times either ignores or repudiates his doctrine of Spirit baptism. “The question is often raised whether or not the baptism of the Holy Spirit occurred once for all or is repeated in subsequent baptisms. The evidence seems to point to the former view to the extent at least of being limited to outpourings which took place in connection with events recorded in the early chapters of the Book of Acts. . . . [Evidence is then presented in favor of the conclusion that Spirit baptism was limited to the events in Acts.] . . . [N]owhere in the epistles do we find a repetition of the baptism of the Spirit. This would be remarkable if it had been understood by the writers of the epistles that the baptism of the Spirit was frequently to be repeated. There is no evidence outside the Book of Acts that the baptism of the Spirit ever occurred in the later New Testament times. In 1 Corinthians 12:13 Paul [makes] . . . reference . . . not to the baptism of the Spirit, but rather to a baptism into the church.

The historic Baptist view ignored by the modern Southern Baptist Convention was also affirmed by other prominent Southern Baptists in the time of Mullins, such as B. H. Carroll, professor of theology and Bible at Baylor University and Seminary from 1872-1905 and professor and president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1908-1914.

The historic Baptist view of Spirit baptism is, therefore, not widely adopted, not because it is contrary to Scripture, but because many ignore its existence, although it is, as subsequent posts in this series will prove, the clear teaching of the Bible.

Link to part 1.
Link to part 3

Note that this complete study, with all it parts and with additional material not reproduced on this blog in this series, is available by clicking here.

TDR

About “Leaving Fundamentalism”

September 1, 2011 / 8 Comments on About “Leaving Fundamentalism”

The August 19, 2011 Sword of the Lord featured a top-of-the-fold article by Rick Flanders, When a Brother Says He’s Leaving Fundamentalism. I left fundamentalism. I’m not saying that he was answering my ongoing series here at WIT (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), but it relates directly to it nonetheless. Primarily Flanders is speaking to the left-leaning or departing mainly young people who have announced that they are leaving fundamentalism for evangelicalism. I would agree that is going from bad to worse on their part. But still it’s easy to see he’s hitting someone like myself too. Fine. If I deserve to be hit, I should be hit, but my belief is that Flanders here is the danger to real Christianity and genuine obedience to the Bible. Whether he was speaking to my series a little or not, following is my analysis of his article.

Flanders introduces everything by arguing that someone is a fool who says he is leaving fundamentalism, so he and others must answer these fools based upon Proverbs 26:4. The essence of his argument is in the last paragraph of the intro:

There is folly in leaving fundamentalism, and we ought to examine it in the light of the wisdom of God.

So Flanders will need to prove, using the “wisdom of God,” which we should assume is Scripture, that leaving fundamentalism is indeed folly. My hopes aren’t high in light of the circuitous route he took to slide his targets into a fool category. It’s possible some who leave fundamentalism are fools, literally unbelievers, but because they’ve left fundamentalism? Here we go.

So What?

Before he can begin proving his point, Flanders first asserts, “let us recognize the veiled pride in such an announcement and respond by saying, ‘So what?'” If that assertion is true, then there would have been no need to write the article, except perhaps to expose the obvious pride he assumes in anyone who would announce such an act. It must be pride. How does Flanders know? He doesn’t say, but it seems that it must be obvious, albeit veiled. Veiled but obvious. And it must be pride. Pride to leave and say you’re leaving. Humble to stay. Or humble to leave and at least not say you’re leaving. And why? Because according to Flanders, leaving fundamentalism is a “defection from the truth” and it reenacts the “story of Demas.” Is leaving fundamentalism a defection from the truth parallel with the actions of Demas? If you were a Demas, defecting from the truth, that is quite a bigger problem than the announcement of the defection itself. Ejection from Christianity should be the main source of concern, not the announcement that one has done so.

Flanders ends his apparent indifference (“so what?”) with a contradictory expression of deep concern:

Defections only hurt the defectors, and those who pay attention to them. If a believer for conscience sake must leave an organization, withdraw approval from a ministry or a minister, stop cooperating with somebody, or take some stand, let him simply do it, and not say things to cast reflection on Fundamentalism, a legitimate spiritual movement, “lest haply ye be found even to fight against God” (Acts 5:39). One man’s “leaving Fundamentalism” will do no harm to Fundamentalism itself.

Contradiction #1. Flanders seems himself to be paying attention and then drawing more attention to defectors, and so based on his own standard also harming his audience. Contradiction #2. If someone really did leave his fundamentalist circle of association “for conscience sake,” wouldn’t he want to tell other people what was wrong with it? He is operating according to his conscience after all. Contradiction #3. If his leaving really doesn’t do any harm to fundamentalism, then Flanders really had no reason to write the article. In the midst of all that, he insinuates that leaving this “legitimate spiritual movement” is to “fight against God.” Alright.

Doing What?

In the final sentence of Flander’s first paragraph of this section, he says that “fundamentalism itself is not a human movement, but rather a divine truth.” In the immediately preceding paragraph, he had said that fundamentalism was “a legitimate spiritual movement.” We’ve got to make up our mind here. Is it a movement or isn’t it? Or is it only “a divine truth”? Of course fundamentalism is a movement, even as Flanders himself goes on to explain. It started “a hundred years ago” as “a grass-roots uprising in the evangelical American denominations.” I believe he’s correct with that assessment—fundamentalism was an interdenominational movement that began in the early 20th century.

You could be a Presbyterian and a fundamentalist. You could be amillennial and be a fundamentalist. You could sprinkle infants and be a fundamentalist. You could deny the perfect preservation of Scripture and be a fundamentalist. You could be in fundamentalism and be either a Calvinist or an Arminian. You were still a fundamentalist whether the true church was visible or invisible. Fundamentalism required no church membership. You could be seven-day twenty-four hour creationist or gap or day age theorist and still be in fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is a movement that binds the people of various denominations together despite these “non-fundamental” differences. Fundamentalism by nature encourages a doctrinal minimalism. The wide variety that once distinguished fundamentalism has expanded even further. Now you’re still in fundamentalism whether you believe repentance is necessary for salvation or not, whether you do mixed swimming or not, or whether your women fulfill a biblical role or not.

Flanders writes beginning the fifth paragraph of this section that “it (fundamentalism) is the scriptural approach to dealing with heretics who have ‘crept in unawares,’ according to Jude 3 and 4.” So fundamentalism is the scriptural approach to heretics? And they have crept into what? Maybe much of fundamentalism would agree with Flanders on this. He follows that “we are to reject them from the Christian family and refuse them Christian recognition.” That, my friend, is not what Titus 3:10-11 say at all. A church rejects a heretic after the third admonition. Fundamentalism is not “the Christian family.” Only a church has the authority to reject a heretic, not the fundamentalist movement.

Fundamentalism, according to Flanders, “is the dividing of light from darkness.” I would assert and can easily prove that it is just the opposite. Fundamentalism unifies light with darkness. Through its parachurch organizations—mission boards, colleges, fellowships, and camps—it ignores doctrines, including the gospel, to cobble together a coalition.

Flanders is right in pointing out that the mainstream media has misunderstood and misdiagnosed fundamentalism in the same way as right wing Islam. He is wrong in saying that “leaving fundamentalism” is “actually disassociating themselves from one grouping of fundamentalists.” You can leave fundamentalism and leave all of it, leave all its groups and organizations. You can limit your fellowship to only non-fundamentalist churches because you wish to obey the biblical doctrine of separation, not the unscriptural fundamentalist version of it.

Too Bad!

His begins his next section, “Too Bad!,” with this first paragraph:

Whatever the people are doing who are “leaving Fundamentalism,” it is bad. “Leaving Fundamentalism” inevitably means backing off from policies and principles that have characterized those who stood most faithfully for the Bible in our lifetime.

When I left fundamentalism, I did so because it is impossible to stay in fundamentalism and still be faithful to the Bible. Fundamentalism has never been faithful to the Bible.

More contradictions come. Earlier Flanders said that fundamentalism rose up in evangelical American denominations, and now he writes that “the mainline denominations have not stood for the Bible or the Christian faith.” OK. And then “broad evangelicalism has not really stood for the truth, although they work to spread it.” Evangelicalism doesn’t stand for the truth, but they do spread it. Uh-huh.

Flanders writes that “fundamentalism is contending for the faith, and good men have paid a great price to follow it.” Then he lists the names of these that paid such a great price for the faith. What price did they pay? They paid the price of becoming a famous fundamentalist by means of compromising in areas of denominational differences. When they operated free-lance outside of the bounds of churches, they got more famous and actually more wealthy in the movement. But they had liberals hate them? Wouldn’t that have happened if they were fundamentalists or not?And “the faith” is what? It is all the truth of Scripture. Has fundamentalism really been a movement that contends for all the truth of the Bible? No way. With the supposed exception of “the fundamentals” (not “the faith”), fundamentalism has spread false doctrine more quickly than if it never existed by its false unity, toleration, and compromise. R. A. Torrey circumvented church authority and propagated an erroneous view of spirituality. Bob Jones, Sr. started a university that encouraged students to skip church on Sunday mornings. BJU was too big to allow students church attendance on the Lord’s Day. Fundamentalism in the case of Bob Jones was bigger than the church. Fundamentalism tied Christians into false teachings such as these. Instead of marking and avoiding, they ignored and united with disobedience. And then the doctrine of separation then became about kowtowing to whatever BJ and like non-authoritative institutions said.

For what does someone leave fundamentalism? He could leave it for the true church alone. Isn’t the church good enough and big enough for the Bible believer? Fundamentalism isn’t in the Bible. Scripture is sufficient. Fundamentalism is just another ox-cart. And ox-carts are poor replacements for what God actually said to do.

In the fourth paragraph of this section, Flanders writes: “In some cases, he is rejecting separatism in some form of its application.” I contend that you can’t remain in fundamentalism and practice biblical separation. This is seen in Flanders’ very appearance in the Sword of the Lord. He disobeys scriptural separation by joining with that crowd of preachers for this common endeavor. I say to Flanders, “come out from among them and be ye separate.”

Flanders continues by attacking the men who won’t separate over issues of personal separation. By its very nature, fundamentalism doesn’t separate over those issues. They are not fundamentals. By remaining a fundamentalist, Flanders will only encourage more of the same. He exposes that inconsistency when he says, “They did not make an issue over English translations, but what version of the Bible did most of them use almost all the time”—“most of them” and “almost all the time.” What translation you use does not distinguish you as a fundamentalist. John R. Rice himself wasn’t King James only, the founder and longtime editor of the Sword of the Lord.

As Flanders comes to a close, he writes that “fundamentalists should not be rejected just because fundamentalists need revival.” But if fundamentalists need revival, what does God instruct us to do with them? If they won’t be “revived,” aren’t they heretics who should be rejected? He ends by saying that “fundamentalism has a wonderful future, because it is based on the truth of the Bible.” It is inter-denominational. It says separate only over the fundamentals. Today it doesn’t even separate over a different gospel. It harbors no-repentance and 1-2-3 pray-with-me without separation.

Rick Flanders should have joined me in both leaving and encouraging others to leave fundamentalism. He hasn’t at all proven that leaving fundamentalism is folly. Fundamentalism itself is a sinking ship that I encourage all churches and Christians to depart. It has never been the right idea or a scriptural movement. For Flanders to convince us that those who have left are fools, like so much of fundamentalism, he relies on worn platitudes, contradictions, and traditions. Zero exposition of Scripture. If Bible-loving people really want to yield to the truths they believe, as Flanders encourages, then they should join me and leave fundamentalism.

Theistic or Divine Correction to the Man-Centered Trajectory of Modern Bibliology

August 11, 2011 / 20 Comments on Theistic or Divine Correction to the Man-Centered Trajectory of Modern Bibliology

Man has a rebellion problem. He wants charge of everything or anything in defiance of Divine rule. God is a Spirit. And since men can’t see Him, they very often act as though He either doesn’t exist or He is relatively uninvolved in what He created. We know from what He inspired, the Bible, that neither of these are true.

The dominance of Christianity of various degrees of orthodoxy shaped the imaginations and therefore the perspectives of men after and even before the printing press and then previous to the Enlightenment. Men saw through their imaginations the unseen hand of God. God was working. God was doing His will. God was operative in causation of events and outcomes, even if there was little to no human reasoning. God was the explanation for what and why things happened. Both bad and good related to God.

That pre-Enlightenment culture related everything to God and saw the world through a Divine prism that was reflected in its art, its music, its architecture, its government, and more. Those people saw kings as having authority from God and yet receiving a Divinely formed consent from their subjects according to God ordained inalienable rights. A major fire was a work of God. A loss in battle was a lesson from God. A child was a gift from God.

Some today call those of this era of such transcendent sentiment to be superstitious. They defined themselves according to their view of God. They explained occurrences relative to God. This way of thinking is even seen in the writings of that time’s theologians and preachers. There was more God-centeredness in their theology than there is today. They could believe that God was doing what He said He would do even when they didn’t have the “facts” to back it up. The proclivity of that day was assuming the teaching was true without other “objective” criteria to back it up.

We live in different times post-Enlightenment. Man became the measure in men’s perspective. Now we allow the “evidence” to lead us to the truth and we’re not honest unless we believe the “facts.” A seven twenty-four hour day creation, yes, but then enters science, and then no. God preserved every jot and tittle, inerrancy in the apographa, then enters textual criticism. That now couldn’t mean what God said. Now it’s only superstition, a lack of objectivity. Unless I can feast my eyes on a hand-written manuscript, unless I can put my own fingers in those wounds in His side, I won’t believe. My new doctrine must agree with what I can see.

The change in perspective, outlook, and point of view overall in culture influenced bibliology. The Westminster divines had doctrinal certainty about the preservation of Scripture and therefore textual certainty. Today’s “textual scholars” act as though they were the first ones to discover differences in hand-written manuscripts. They are the first to be truly “honest with textual evidence,” not allowing any theological presuppositions to cloud their understanding of the text of Scripture. This is the new, post-Enlightenment, “objective,” modernistic interpretation of the “facts.”

The Westminster divines and those like them came to hand copies shaped by a transcendent view of everything. God said He would preserve to the jot and tittle, so He must have done so. And that’s the position they took. That’s the view that believers took. It wasn’t until after the Enlightenment that another view even came along.

Instead of being guided by the doctrine of preservation, theologians are led by what they call the facts. William Combs, professor at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote the following with regards to Matthew 5:17-18:

I wonder how it could be anything else but hyperbole? Taken literally, it would seem to demand perfect preservation, which, of course, the evidence flatly refutes.

Matthew 5:17-18 can’t mean what it says it means. It must be hyperbole. Why? The evidence refutes it. “It would seem to demand perfect preservation.” Yes. I wag my head. This demonstrates a post-Enlightenment, modernistic imagination with relations to bibliology. He can’t envision God doing what He said He would do. And when he says “evidence,” he doesn’t mean the verses of Scripture, but the “science” of textual criticism.

How would transcendent thought correct his imagination? Matthew 5:17-18 does mean what it says it means. It isn’t hyperbole. There is no grammatical reason to think so. The text will fulfill its theological presuppositions, because God does not deny Himself.

Just recently on his Dividing Line internet program, James White displayed this same lack of faith in God during questioning from a caller to his show, Will Kinney**. Here’s a transcription of the beginning of their conversation (one which started at 17:30 and ended at 29:55 in the embedded youtube video below):

Will Kinney**: First question though, you never answer this: do you believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God?

James White: Of course I do.

Will Kinney: What are you referring to when you say that?

James White: Uh, what God gave us when He inspired the Bible.

Will Kinney: So in other words, the originals only.

James White: Uuuum…..that’s what’s inspired, yes, God’s writings, yes. Uh-huh.

Will Kinney: But do you, sah, you used a present tense verb, the Bible is, you said you believe, the Bible is…

James White: Yes, I believe God has preserved His word for us, yes.

Will Kinney: Do we have the originals, sir?

James White: No, we do not, of course not.

Will Kinney: So then what are you referring to when you say the Bible is the inerrant Word of God?

James White: Well, for a man who says he has read my book four or five times, it’s shocking to me that you wouldn’t know what I mean.

Will Kinney: You….(interrupted by White)

James White: I explained it! I explained….

Will Kinney: You’re talking around the issue, you’re not answering the question.

James White: Mr. Kinney, Mr. Kinney….Um, everyone on the audience right now, has, knows that I have refuted your allegations and that you have acted in a….

Will Kinney: That’s in your own mind, sir.

James White: acted in a very boorish manner, so that if you’d like to have a conversation, we can do that.

Will Kinney: You won’t answer the question.

I can understand the discomfort James White has with the question, unwilling to answer, because that answer, guided by human reasoning, would clash with a biblical and historical presentation of the perfect preservation of Scripture. It’s a simple question with a simple answer if shaped by a pre-Enlightenment belief in Divine providence. But White cannot any longer allow biblical presuppositions to lead him to a conclusion. He is a man of his times.

Pre-Enlightenment theologians would have an answer: the text received by the churches. A perfect text, because God inspired and then preserved a perfect text. God the Spirit would point to a text. It would be the one. They would not stagger in unbelief because their God works unseen to fulfill what He promised.

+++++++++++++++

**I don’t know whether Will Kinney takes an English preservationist position or not. I haven’t read his materials. And he never says in this dialogue with James White. That is not the biblical or historic doctrine of preservation, which is original language preservation, the doctrine held by believers before the Enlightenment, if it is in fact the position Kinney holds. However, one can see his dialogue here is guided by a theological presupposition.

Does Shelton Smith and the Sword of the Lord Teach a True Gospel? part two

July 17, 2011 / 13 Comments on Does Shelton Smith and the Sword of the Lord Teach a True Gospel? part two

One of the unfortunate casualties of the multiple belief and multi-Bible doctrines is now multiple gospels. A wide latitude is given to what the gospel is. Someone can be far enough off on the gospel to preach a false one, but still be be considered to have preached a true gospel. Some may question this evaluation, especially since Shelton Smith, editor of the Sword of the Lord (SOTL), is King James only, so he believes in only one Bible. Multiple positions has now become the norm along with the idea in society that there is more than one truth, except for perhaps the “one truth” of tolerance. The multi-truth idea is influencing fundamentalists in a major way.

I imagine certain fundamentalists would agree with my analysis so far about Shelton Smith. They can’t say they do, because that might show support for someone who is King James only, even if they profess “gospel centeredness” with other doctrines peripheral to the gospel. Actually, in many cases their opposition to one Bible has slid very close to their warm center of gospel emphasis. If you could zoom in on their gospel bullseye, you might see on-screen their opposition to the King James and dress standards hugging the gospel. How could these two issues have become as serious as the gospel itself? Does that perhaps even diminish or devalue their own elevation of the gospel? But I digress.

It’s hard for a Shelton Smith to take fundamentalists critics of his gospel too seriously when, first, they don’t take evangelism very seriously, and, second, he receives fellowship with some with whom they also fellowship. Many fundamentalists would rather talk about the gospel with their friends, or write an online treatise defending their view of the gospel, than actually preach it. Smith understands that he and his friends at least actually do preach a lot their version of the gospel. Why take critics of his gospel seriously when they rarely preach theirs? And then sometimes it’s even hard to distinguish the methodological differences between the SOTL churches and the fundamentalists who would critique them. But I dupli-digress.

Full Surrender and Sinless Perfection

Part one of this now series began considering part two of Shelton Smith’s article on repentance in the SOTL. After writing about “Lordship,” Smith writes the sub-head: “Repentance Does Not Mean a Fully Surrendered Life or Sinless Perfection!” Under that heading, he writes nothing about it. Nothing. He writes six sentences, but none of them have a thing to do with the heading. You are welcome to tell me how I’m wrong on this. However, again, I have never heard someone equate repentance with sinless perfection. That is another straw man. I would await anyone who could show me one example of someone who has even written that. However, fully surrendered does fit a biblical presentation.

To have life, we must lose our life. In other words, we can’t hang on to our life, if we are to have God’s eternal life. At salvation, God restores our soul, converts our soul. He does that because He has our soul. We offer by faith our soul, our life to God. He converts it, restores it. He won’t do that if we keep our soul for ourselves. That is the rebellion that runs contrary to repentance. This is the eternal trade that occurs the moment of justification. God takes our life and we get His. We become partakers of the Divine nature. In the Smith gospel, we offer God our mere lipservice or acknowledge certain salvation facts and for that we receive eternal salvation. We get the pearl of great price and God gets an IOU. This perverts the true gospel.

Salvation Passages Do Not Mention Repentance

The next major “proof” for Smith is found in his next sub-head: “Numerous ‘Salvation’ Passages Do Not Mention Repentance!” And he could have also written: “Numerous Salvation Passages Do Not Mention Faith!” What does that prove? Nothing. It is not just faulty exegesis. It is preposterous.

He prints off a column of verses, which include John 1:11, 12, 3:14-18, Romans 10:9,10,13, and Ephesians 2:8-10, and then asks, “Where is the repentance in all this?” He should consider Romans 10:9,10,13, and rethink His Lordship position.

He concludes:

Follow any one or all of the Bible passages noted above, and you will see that there is a call in each of them for the unsaved sinner to “change his mind” and come to Christ! Though the word repent is not there, the concept certainly is!

So what am I, as a soul winner, trying to get you to do? I want you to see the great eternal God for who He is and at the same time to see yourself, a sinner, lost, helpless, and hopeless. I want you to stop thinking everything is okay. I want you to understand the Gospel (the death, burial and resurrection of Christ) and know that the Holy God has paid the sin debt you owe.

At the moment you acknowledge those facts, repentance occurs, and you almost simultaneously place your trust in Christ to save you.

You’ll find none of his observations in the quoted verses. There is nothing in any of them about changing your mind. He’s merely reading all of that into those passages. A large percentage of the unsaved people who I talk to know they are sinners, know Who God is, and even recognize the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. The last sentence is perhaps most tell-tale. Smith sees repentance as acknowledgement of facts, and when someone does, he’s trusted in Christ—all nothing but intellectual. Intellectual assent to facts falls short of faith or repentance.

Repentance of One Sin, Unbelief

Smith asserts that repentance is for his one sin, the sin of unbelief or rejecting Christ. He ends that section by writing:

Once you get your mind-set right toward God, you will have a different attitude toward your “sins” (here comes sanctification again).

According to Smith, believing and repenting is getting “your mind-set right toward God,” which will result in a different attitude toward your plural sins, but that isn’t until after you’re already saved.

When Jesus preached His Sermon on the Mount, He preached individual sins that were an issue regarding the sinner’s salvation—murder and adultery among others. Not until Zacchaeus confessed, “Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold” (Luke 19:8), did Jesus proclaim, “This day is salvation come to this house” (Luke 19:9). It is true that salvation doesn’t come from a sinner confessing individually every one of his sins—I’ve never heard anyone define repentance as even meaning that—but certain sins especially will be the idols that keep him from turning to follow Jesus Christ. “Unbelief” is nowhere said in Scripture to be the one sin for which a sinner needs to repent. Nowhere.

How to Explain What Happens

How do we explain what happens with these folks who hear the SOTL edition of the gospel that excludes biblical repentance? Some of them are saved. They repent even though it hasn’t been preached that way. I believe this happens just like it might in a Billy Graham meeting when he soft peddles his salvation message.

Many of the professions, perhaps even most, are false. These types of churches, however, become masters at getting their new people involved. They do seminars on how to get their new believers into the baptistry, often using similar ploys to succeed as they have invented for their evangelism. The people involved feel good about what they are doing, even though they have fallen short of a scriptural knowledge of salvation. The church programs are many times built on keeping them busy with the activities they have designed to occupy their membership. Sermon after sermon is motivational and pragmatic to produce a morality that would closely match a Christian life.

The music, the activities, and all the programs captivate an audience, giving them experiences that could easily counterfeit real conversion. The schedule is crafted to have enough of these to hold everyone, leading them along from one to another to another. The preaching fits the program like the score of a movie. It moves people and even keeps them entertained. The church has a social aspect that feels good like a family many never had. The results produced seem like God is working. He must be. How else could one explain? The feeling they get from the emotional music and preaching they mistake for the Holy Spirit. Many of these aspects have their parallel in false religions. It often is nothing more than another religion. It takes almost zero faith to be a part.

What makes it more insidious in many of these churches is what happens if you question what’s going on. You would be considered to be disloyal and unspiritual. You are attacking the man of God like the young boys did with Elisha (and you know how that turned out). And you’re also not to “touch God’s anointed,” a reference to David’s experience with Saul. In other words, switch off your discernment, because discerning would be akin to blaspheming the Holy Spirit. The people who question are considered traitors. Strategies such as these hold people in lockstep, sometimes out of fear and intimidation.

It is possible that someone always questioning is factious. He could be a rebel. That often happens in churches even as accounted in Scripture. But it should be easy for a true church to show from the Bible why they do what they do.

By the way, most of evangelicalism is no better than these professing fundamentalist churches that take this SOTL gospel position. Most Southern Baptist churches are just the same, except more outwardly worldly. The big difference is that the evangelical churches keep their people entertained with more corrupt forms of entertainment than these SOTL churches. Don’t be fooled into thinking that a right reaction or response to the SOTL strategy is to swing over to evangelicalism. You’re just co-opting another form of silly, one likely even more banal than what is seen in a certain segment of fundamentalism.

More to Come.

Does Shelton Smith and the Sword of the Lord Teach a True Gospel?

July 14, 2011 / 23 Comments on Does Shelton Smith and the Sword of the Lord Teach a True Gospel?

Does a wrong doctrine of repentance constitute a false gospel?

The Sword of the Lord sends me its paper free and unsolicited and I like seeing what it’s saying. When I saw that the editor, Shelton Smith, was writing a series on repentance, I was very interested. Part one did not tell me anything. He said it was a controversial issue, so I waited for part two, and in it he said plenty. I’m going to talk about that in this post and perhaps a few others. I don’t think it is too hard to understand what the Bible says about repentance. You wouldn’t know that from reading Shelton Smith. He seems purposefully to be making it more difficult.

I’m not associated with the Sword of the Lord or its churches. However, I’m far closer to it than I’m even comfortable with. I’m going to be very clear here what I’m talking about. I recognize that it’s directory of colleges and churches are advertisements, but these are organizations that want to make an association with the Sword and its type of churches. From here in California, you’ve got Jack Trieber and Golden State Baptist College and Paul Chappell and West Coast Baptist College. You have Pensacola Christian College and then Ambassador Baptist College with Ron Comfort. I also see Master’s Baptist College from Fargo Baptist Church in Fargo, ND. At the Sword National Conference you have R. B. Ouellette, who preaches every year at Fairhaven. David Sorenson advertises his Bible commentary in the Sword. Bill Rice III of Bill Rice Ranch is a regular columnist in Smith’s paper. These are what I’m talking about. And it’s also good to know that these Sword guys are sort of the saner, more theological thoughtful versions of the Jack Schaap type of church. There may be as many of the latter are there are of the former.

As anyone reading here knows, I don’t believe in the major/minor or ranking doctrine practice as it relates to separation and unity. However, I have been clear that certain doctrines are more serious in their consequences. People who believe a false gospel go to Hell. That is more serious than believing that divorce is permissible in certain situations. The Bible also emphasizes the seriousness of a false gospel in Galatians 1:6-9, when it says there:

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

What is to be our response to those who preach a false gospel? “Let him be accursed.” That is very serious. So if Shelton Smith is presenting, preaching, and then encouraging others to preach a false gospel, we need to say to him, “Let him be accursed.” And then those who fellowship with him are not taking the gospel seriously. They can’t be serious about people’s eternal destiny. They are disobedient to Galatians 1:6-9. I don’t want anything to do with anyone who fellowships with someone who preaches a false gospel. So here we go. Does Shelton Smith teach or preach a false gospel? You may think you already know where I’m heading with this. Fine. But go ahead and find out.

As I talk about this, understand that I’m not going to present a full orb presentation of repentance. I’m giving analysis to what Shelton Smith wrote. At this time in my life, I’ve preached through all of the New Testament, except for part of Luke, in really slow detail. I’ve got a handle on what the New Testament says, what Jesus says, and what the apostles say about repentance. I also preached a few years ago a long series on salvation or gospel passages in the Bible, which took me about a year of Sunday mornings.

Lordship

Smith’s article, “The Bible Definition of Repentance, Part II,” begins on p. 3 in the June 10, 2011 edition of the Sword of the Lord. He starts with material on the Lordship of Christ:

When we come to [Jesus] to be saved, there is a certain acknowledgement of His lordship. After all, we would not look to Him for salvation if He were not Lord.

If you have the least amount of theological awareness, you can see that Smith is distancing himself from what Lordship means. He continues.

But as Lord, He does not force Himself on us. He doesn’t force us to be saved, and after we are saved, He doesn’t force us to serve Him.

What?!?! That’s a total straw man. I haven’t read anyone that even says that. But it does tell us where he is heading.

A convert (genuinely saved) may continue, however, to exhibit carnal traits. Even a casual read of 1 Corinthians makes a very clear case on this.

Salvation is instantaneous, but sanctification is progressive,(that means it takes awhile). Therefore, a person who is truly converted is fully and everlastingly saved. The evidence of that conversion may come quickly, or it may come more slowly. Although the convert is a “new creature” (II Cor. 5:17), that does not mean that the old nature is eradicated. Carnality can still be present (1 Cor. 3:3).

The “new creature” is not a fully mature adult the moment he or she is born again, but rather a ‘newborn babe’ (1 Pet 2:2).

This teaching would fit well with what Smith wrote in his Editor’s Notes on the same page, where he reports:

Dr. Bob Dudley (evangelist with Agora Evangelism) and Pastor Jerry Ross (Jasonville, Indiana) were right there along with several dozen soul winners. We are overjoyed to report they led 489 people from 19 nations to Christ on Saturday and Monday. We did not have as many soul winners there this year, so we did not have as many trusting Christ as last year.

The Smith view of salvation and sanctification must correspond to or dovetail with his testimony about these numbers of people being “led to Christ.” They fit. Many of these surely will be of these who evidence conversion slowly—glacier slow.

My reading of Smith is that he knows what he is doing in his presentation. For sure the Corinthians exhibited “carnal traits,” but that does not mean that they were categorically carnal. Paul writes in Romans 8:6-8:

For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

The Corinthians were acting like unsaved people, carnal people, natural people, but they were not themselves carnal. “They that are in the flesh,” carnal people, cannot please God. Being a “new creature” does mean that there is immediate evidence of conversion. Everything changes. Smith says it doesn’t always. Not with everyone. He says that sanctification is progressive. That’s true, but it’s not all there is to sanctification. Sanctification is progressive, but it is also positional, and it is also immediate. Change does begin immediately. If it doesn’t, that person wasn’t and isn’t saved. What Smith is doing is assigning an explanation for all the false professions that come from his and others’ fraudulent evangelistic methodology.

Then Smith writes:

The “new creature” is not a fully mature adult the moment he or she is born again, but rather a ‘newborn babe’ (1 Pet. 2:2).

Smith rips “newborn babe” from its context. The passage is saying just the opposite, the absolute opposite, of what Smith reports. Peter is commanding the saints to whom he writes to desire the sincere milk of the word as newborn babes. He is not saying they are newborn babes. Characteristic of saved people is that they will desire the Bible like a baby desires milk. How do babies desire milk? A lot.

“Baby” is not a term for “new believer” in Scripture. “Baby” is often a term of derision for those who are not growing as they should. For instance, with the Corinthians, instead of eating meat, they were drinking milk like babies. That doesn’t mean that the Corinthians were new believers. It just means that they were acting like babies. At the end of Hebrews 5 “babe” is used to describe unsaved Jews who had not yet left their insufficient knowledge of Jesus to move on to salvation.

Smith continues:

Salvation is “by grace…through faith” (Eph. 2:8) and “not of works” (vs. 9). Anytime you mix works with the receiving of salvation, you are in error.

The Smith train is off the rails here. Sure, salvation is not of works. But repentance isn’t a work. God grants repentance unto life (Acts 11:18). And no one confesses that “Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 12:3). Those aren’t works. When Peter confessed that Jesus was “the Christ, the son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), Jesus said that “flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17). Peter’s confession was not a work. God revealed it unto him. Smith and others like him shift true repentance and confession of Jesus as Lord into a work category and a progressive sanctification category, making room for all of their soulwinning statistics. Those statistics are more important to him than a true gospel or a right handling of the Word of God.

In fitting with the previous paragraph, Smith writes next:

Once salvation is in place, then and only then does sanctification begin. Whatever works we see in a person’s life should be tied to sanctification. So let’s keep the proper scriptural order—salvation first, then sanctification.

Smith has slid repentance and Lordship into the later sanctification process, and so doing changing the doctrine of repentance and of salvation. Repentance is not a work. Confession of Jesus as Lord is not a work. Losing your life (Matthew 16:25) is not a work.

Next,

Repentance is the first step. Remember (Acts 20:21), it is “toward God.” If you “change your mind” about God, you will have no trouble seeing yourself a sinner, lost and in need of a Saviour.

We understand repentance by how it is taught or used in the New Testament, not by some etymological game playing. If repentance really is “toward God,” it is not just a “change of mind,” but a change in direction. Which is where Lordship comes in. We are not going our way anymore, but His way, and that takes place immediately. Recognizing Jesus as Lord is to recognize Him as King, which means allegiance to Him.

It’s ironic that Smith and others, who would be English preservationists, those who would rarely to never rely on the original language of the New Testament, Greek, for their point of view, would claim to go to the Greek for this view. He doesn’t say he is doing this, because that clashes with all the English inspirationists and preservationists in the crowd, so he just says “change of mind” with no explanation. He is referring, however, to the Greek word for repentance, metanoeo. He is taking meta as “change” and noeo as “mind.” Understanding the Greek word does not come from simply breaking down the compound word. It can be helpful, but the meaning of the word is more than just its etymology. Smith and others strain at assigning a meaning to repentance that allows their evangelistic methodology.

The major issue in salvation, according to Romans 1, is not knowledge, but will. And saving knowledge is inexorably connected to the will. Unbelievers “hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom 1:18), that is, they suppress the truth out of their rebellion. It is a will problem. They are rebels against God. Get this—a person cannot remain in rebellion against God and be saved. As well, a person cannot keep going His own way, having His own will, and be saved. Repentance involves more than the mind. The repentance that Smith presents is an intellectual only repentance, like the devils have in James 1:19. That does not save. It is a dead faith that cannot save.

A few sentences later, Smith says:

Some folks teach that unless you “make Jesus Lord of your life,” then you are not saved! That is simply untrue! It is false teaching.

It is also something I’ve never heard anyone teach. It is a total strawman. He puts quotation marks around the statement, but he doesn’t quote anyone because no one said it. No one has written it. It isn’t a position in existence. He argues the strawman to make room for his own “no Lordship” and “no repentance” position. Anyone who does teach Lordship teaches that you receive Jesus as Lord. You don’t make Him Lord. And anyone who does teach Lordship teaches that if you are receiving Jesus as Lord, you are getting off the throne and letting Jesus on it. That is biblical repentance. That is believing in Jesus Christ.

Smith ends that first section with the following:’

The Christians in Corinth were as carnal as carnal can be, but they were genuinely saved (1 Cor 3:16; 12:27). Once again, you must not garble things up by mixing faith and works or by confusing salvation and sanctification.

The Corinthians were not as carnal as carnal can be. They were new creatures (2 Cor 5:17). They were “washed…sanctified…and justified” (1 Cor 6:11). Preachers and theologians make way too much out of the problems of the Corinthian church. The members were “spiritual,” but Paul could not write unto them “as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal” (1 Cor 3:1). The “as” is an important word here. They were spiritual. You see that at the end of chapter 2. But because of how they were acting, he had to write them “as” they were carnal. Saved people can behave like or as unsaved people, but they don’t have the same nature as unbelievers. They have been washed and sanctified and justified.

More to Come

When I Left Fundamentalism part seven

May 3, 2011 / 4 Comments on When I Left Fundamentalism part seven

God is light without any darkness (1 John 1:5). Darkness is doctrinal and moral. God created us to please Him. We can’t please God with doctrinal or moral darkness, both of which contrast with or contradict the message and application of God’s Word. God Himself does not fellowship with darkness. If we wish to please Him, we cannot fellowship with it either. Over ten years ago, I concluded that I could not be a fundamentalist and please God.

Scripture is perspicuous. We can know what it means. God would have us do what it says. For instance, we know it teaches believer’s baptism by immersion, not infant sprinkling. Infant sprinkling is darkness. And yet, infant sprinkling doesn’t exempt one from fundamentalism or evangelicalism.

To remain in fundamentalism, one must condone or at least overlook doctrinal or moral error. This is how fundamentalism conducts what it calls “unity.” Fundamentalism unifies upon a very amendable, malleable group of fundamentals, which are the source of perpetual debate between evangelicals and fundamentalists. Therefore, if you are going to get along in fundamentalism, you have to learn to “let go” what a mysterious consensus of fundamentalists consider non-essential. But none of this is how the Bible reads, nor is it how God operates. And this among other reasons is why I couldn’t claim to be nor wished to be associated with fundamentalism.

How I Left, When I Left

To stay in fundamentalism, you remain involved with a para-church organization—a college, university, camp, fellowship, association, or board. And then you continue with the churches who continue to participate with those groups. If you persist in your fellowship with these, you will also fellowship with darkness. How? They are tolerating some doctrinal and moral error. If you fellowship with them, you will fellowship with darkness. God isn’t pleased with that. You are choosing to let go some violation of Scripture.

I think that most fundamentalists do not believe it is possible to be consistent in the matter of separation. You will always be affiliating with some kind of wrong doctrine or practice, so your associations will always be a matter of a degree of error. You’ve got to choose what you think is serious enough to break from. And fundamentalists will make breaks. They will separate, unlike evangelicals. Evangelicals will say they don’t like something, but it won’t result in separation. Fundamentalists will separate, but they are always arguing about what is a “matter of separation.” Because fundamentalists mostly don’t know what they’re supposed to separate over (in other words, there is no consensus), separation has become mostly political. Whichever fundamentalist orbit has the most dominance (not to be confused with competence) will most often sway the most fundamentalists to its particular stew of doctrine and practice.

Leaving fundamentalism didn’t mean moving to another group where the same or worse problem existed, that is, evangelicalism. Leaving meant going back to square one, where I was only in fellowship with my church. Fundamentalists call this isolating yourself. Fundamentalists will say that you don’t want to isolate yourself and even call this “isolationism.” You know the verse on that, don’t you? Correct. There is none. They’ll also mock this kind of act, by asking something like this: “So I guess you are left to fellowship with yourself then, aren’t you?” Actually I’ve found just the opposite, and I’ll explain later.

So I went to ground zero in my fellowship. I knew I was in fellowship with my church, and so now our church and myself within our church would only fellowship with other churches that believed and practiced like we do. Our basis for fellowship would be doctrine and practice, that is, doctrinal and moral light. The truth is the grounds for fellowship (read 1-3 John—it’s very clear there). Unrepentant false doctrine and practice hinder, disrupt, or break fellowship.

For a moment, I think it is important to understand that fellowship relates to working together in some endeavor or worship or service. It isn’t getting together to talk or have a discussion. You will see that in 2 Corinthians 6:14-15 and 1-3 John again.

The missionaries with which we would work together are sent by churches with which we are in fellowship. Those churches believe and practice like our church does. If I preach at a conference, I go to fellowship with that church. There may be someone attending the conference that I would not fellowship with, and I might even talk to him or discuss something with him, but I’m there to fellowship with that church.

Once we got back to square one, I didn’t know of one church in California with which I would fellowship with. I would have hoped there was one church, but it wasn’t that important to me to find another one. I knew I could trust the Lord with this. Micaiah was one prophet telling the truth next to four hundred who didn’t (1 Kings 22). I was invited to preach at a church in Utah. The pastor there had heard me on tape. I wasn’t sure I was in fellowship with that church, but I went to preach. This is how fellowship works. You don’t cut people off. Love is involved. You believe. You hope. I preached there and then started receiving the church’s news publication. When I read it, I was finding that I agreed with him on everything. We started fellowshiping with that church and today we support a missionary sent by that church. As I fellowshiped with that church, I got to know other churches with which that church fellowshiped. Now I know of churches all over the United States and in foreign countries that are just like our church. Or in other words, we’re not isolated.

We once were in the American Association of Christian Schools. Things only improved when we left the AACS. If we want a teacher conference, we hold our own. We do a great fine arts and academic competition with only churches which believe and practice like we do. We have our own camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains. We’ve gotten together with another church that believed and practiced like ours one year. We have in missionaries who are sent by churches like ours, who are not affiliated with a board. We don’t have to tolerate doctrinal or practical error. We can please God. We can be consistent. We’re not isolated. We have fellowship.

When You Leave Fundamentalism

There really is no reason for a fundamentalist to separate from me or our church, except that we separate from fundamentalists. I’ve noticed that if you separate from fundamentalists, you are treated worse than evangelicals who don’t fellowship with fundamentalists. If you are a separatist, but not a fundamentalist, then you must be a heretic or factious. There is no way that someone who separates more than fundamentalism could be anything but a heretic. I don’t know of the scriptural explanation for this, have never heard it. Fundamentalists are not excited you are a separatist, which has me thinking that separation isn’t what’s so important about being a fundamentalist. It can’t be unity either, or fundamentalists wouldn’t be as separated as they are.

I have noticed that fundamentalists will sometimes agree with me, but then they’ll quickly provide a disclaimer, something like “but I don’t agree with everything he says” or “I’m not in favor of his position on the versions or the church or on dress standards.” You won’t, however, hear them say, “I really like Mark Dever, but I don’t agree with everything he says, especially on amillennialism.” Or “I really like the material on humility by C. J. Mahaney, but I’m not in favor of his continuationism.” Fundamentalists dislike certain disagreeable doctrine and practice more than others for no apparent biblical reason. I think that amillennialism is far worse than women wearing dresses, but you would never, ever know that by listening to fundamentalists. This is one way that I see fundamentalism to function according to a political position more than a doctrinal or moral one. Or maybe this is just modern fundamentalism—men who feel such respect for the intellectual or numerical prowess of evangelicals, that they are fine with throwing embarrassing separatists under their bus.

After I left fundamentalism, fundamentalism didn’t associate with me any more. They didn’t have a verse for that. I wasn’t confronted by fundamentalism for my separation from it. I just got the cold shoulder. To remain a fundamentalist, you do have to support fundamentalism. You have to send your kids to their colleges, go to their camps, and support the missionaries that are a part of their boards. That’s how you get along in fundamentalism. If you stop doing that, you really are “x’ed” from fundamentalism. It’s nothing official or even biblical. You’ll just know. And some guys are afraid of that, afraid of those prospects, that they might be missing something. News: you won’t be missing anything. You thought you were getting something and all you were getting was getting gotten. They got you; you don’t get anything. You don’t even get fellowship, because that involves doctrinal and moral light.

Shortly after I left fundamentalism, myself and a few other pastors finished a theological book. I’ve written three. One is not yet in print, but it’s been done for a little while. A fourth is about finished. No one from the fundamentalist college from which I graduated had written a book. None of the faculty had written a book. Maranatha had published two books. The first was a reprint of Thomas Armitage’s two volume History of the Baptists. The second was a paperback, Evaluating New Testament Versions, by Everett Fowler, foreword written by B. Myron Cedarholm, the founder and president. The latter was a King James Only book. Of the two books that I have written, that are on the market, neither of them is either in the college bookstore or library. You’ll find secular humanist and apostate books in the Maranatha library and several non-fundamentalist books in the bookstore, but never mine. Why? I don’t send students nor support the college. Neither does R. Kent Hughes, but you’ll find his books in the library and bookstore. He’s as good as separated from the school, to it’s left, not a separatist. This is the blatant inconsistency of fundamentalism. And it will always be inconsistent—it really is part of being a fundamentalist.

(More to Come)

When I Left Fundamentalism part one

February 17, 2011 / 26 Comments on When I Left Fundamentalism part one

I left fundamentalism over thirteen years ago. This is my story.

Becoming a Fundamentalist

Growing up in Covington, Indiana from 1962 to 1974, I never heard of fundamentalism. The major terms for me were Jesus, Bible, saved, church, and Baptist. I didn’t think I was reading the King James; I was just reading ‘the Bible.’ Everything was about pleasing the Lord. My dad took Old Testament survey at a church institute in Danville, Illinois and heard about “Christian college,” and our proceeding move to Watertown, Wisconsin and Maranatha Baptist Bible College made us fundamentalists.

Maranatha proclaimed itself to be fundamental Baptist. “Fundamental” differentiated Maranatha from most Baptists. If someone was fundamental Baptist, he wasn’t conservative or American or General or Southern Baptist, among other associations or conventions. And since Maranatha was Baptist, it wasn’t Presbyterian or Methodist or Bible either, unless it was Bible with “Baptistic” next to it. Only those who would identify themselves as Baptists would preach there. However, Maranatha was more fundamentalist in its practice than it was Baptist. For instance, if someone fellowshiped with Southern Baptists, Maranatha would separate from him; however, if he fellowshiped with certain Presbyterians, of the Ian Paisley variety, infant sprinklers, that would not hinder fellowship (Bob Jones, Jr and III).

Even though Maranatha itself did not teach revivalism (I never heard it there), it accepted revivalists. Revivalism was neither taught nor was it exposed or challenged. We had many revivalist preachers into the school, who preached something that was different than what we heard taught. At the annual soulwinning and missionary conference, Maranatha brought in John R. Rice and Jack Hyles, Hyles every year I was in Watertown. Jack Hyles also spoke every year at Maranatha week at Lucerne Christian Conference center in Northern California, usually along with Rod Bell. I was there for three of those weeks traveling for the school, and Hyles would visit the first half of the week and Bell the second. The room was packed until Wednesday for Hyles, leaving a handful of people for Bell’s sessions. We heard revivalist preaching and thinking proclaimed at Maranatha and we were also taught to listen to it without being critical (“Don’t criticize the man of God.”).

In the classroom at Maranatha, students were taught something very different than all of fundamentalism, both revivalist and non-revivalist. Students during the time I was there were taught historic Baptist theology. I believe that was what was most distinct about Maranatha. Maranatha printed two sets of books: the two volume hardback A History of Baptists by Thomas Armitage and the thin paperback Evaluating New Testament Versions by Everett Fowler. It was often reported that professor Richard Weeks had the largest private Baptist history library in the world. We could check out volumes from his collection for research and outside reading. Maranatha taught local-only ecclesiology, the perpetuity of the church, the Baptist doctrine of Spirit baptism, and a very consistent, strong position on the Baptist distinctives. Anything else was wrong. Everything but a historic Baptist viewpoint was castigated in many of the required classes: Baptist Polity, Baptist History, Revelation, and Acts. In these classes, being a Baptist was far more important than being a fundamentalist. That spirit of the school clashed with the concept of fundamentalism.

Example was what caused Maranatha graduates to be fundamentalists, either of the revivalist (Hyles, Rice, etc.) or non revivalist (Bob Jones, Weniger, etc.) variety. Fundamentalists preached in chapel. Fundamentalist churches sent their children to the college. Fundamentalism was akin to New Testament Christianity then and there.

Initial Doubts about Fundamentalism

In college and graduate school at Maranatha, I first began to doubt fundamentalism. I don’t think I would have been able to explain them, but I know the doubts were there. At least three components contributed to my original suspicions about fundamentalism, and not necessarily in the following order.

Preaching

I heard little exposition of scripture and even less good exposition in fundamentalism. We began to hear more and better by the time I reached graduate school. We were learning sound hermeneutics and accumulating the tools and skills for exegesis in class, but we were not hearing many good examples in chapel from which to model. Arno Q. Weniger Jr. preached series through books, but something was missing in application. I listened to evangelicals on the radio, who, albeit weaker, offered a better model for biblical preaching than what I heard in chapel and class. Some of the content of those evangelicals was off, but how they went about it was more in tune with “preaching the Word.”

When Hyles came to Maranatha, he often twisted passages to fit his sermon, which should have been exposed, dissected, and rejected, but wasn’t. He gave a horrible example of what preaching ought to be. He became the poster-boy for choosing a short text and then fleeing from it with incredible stories and illustrations. There was a lot wrong with what and how Hyles preached, and yet he was exalted, seen as great.

We had preaching from the old Bob Jones University graduates, thinking of Rod Bell and Ed Nelson, who often allegorized Old Testament texts with their preaching. I remember Rod Bell preaching on Elijah after Mt. Carmel, seeing the cloud the size of a man’s fist, and a man’s hand has five fingers, the number five represents this or that, so the cloud represents that. Ed Nelson preached on Elisha making the axehead to swim and the axehead represented this and the handle represented this. Often the meaning of Old Testament names would provide the basis for whole sermons. There was no explanation for why these things meant what they did—much like Hyles, these men had some special spiritual insight that could only be had by the chosen few. Lez Heinze came and showed us how that the seven churches in Revelation 2-3 were actually representative of church ages, with us presently inhabiting the Laodicean age, no exegetical basis provided for why these weren’t just seven actual churches. Preaching seemed to be a spiritual experience that circumvented plain meaning.

Fundamentalism featured and still does feature the preaching of “evangelists.” Evangelists travel the United States or a region of the U.S., at that time staying between Sunday and Friday and then traveling on Saturday, giving rise to the Monday to Friday, five suits and five sermons. They either had “revival meetings” or “evangelistic meetings.” If you look for this pattern in Scripture, I think you know that it won’t be there. This whole thing is an invention that you can trace back to that late 19th century, maybe further if evangelists came out of the period of the Methodist circuit riders. Bob Jones Sr. himself was an “evangelist.” John R. Rice was an “evangelist.” Fundamentalism was tied closely into its “evangelists.”

Evangelists were the flat out celebrity preachers in my day. Most every one of them had his special schtick for preaching—story telling, screaming or yelling, humor, gigantic chunks of scripture memory, ventriloquism, ‘gospel music,’ puppets, and more. Many times sermons were scripted like a dramatic presentation to get the most effect out of the gestures, rising and falling of the voice, timing, pauses, and preached dozens and even hundreds of times. Some evangelists were experts as well at the invitation at the end, to squeeze the most possible number of decisions out of the crowd, often an indicator of the success or failure of the night. Maranatha kicked off each semester usually with an evangelist as a type of “spiritual emphasis.” The role of the modern evangelist fit with a view of sanctification that was encouraged by the revivalists, looking to a secondary spiritual experience after salvation that would bring the people to a state of “dedication.”

Politics

I recognize that politics are all over the place, including the world at large, and in evangelicalism, but fundamentalism was and is rife with politics. I saw this firsthand when I was in college and graduate school. Fundamentalist politics made my head spin with loyalties transcending biblical obedience. The successful churches were the big churches and you knew you were a success if you were a common chapel speaker or often invited for fundamentalist meetings and conferences. You knew you arrived if you were a big shot in a fundamentalist institution

The politics were found in fundamentalism and on a fundamentalist campus. Being a big man on campus (BMOC) could send you to a premier church or position, that would in turn make you a big man in fundamentalism. The young star knew how to work the system. He was especially uncritical of the problems and faux pas of fundamentalism and skilled at hob-knobbing with the right people.

At Maranatha I often wondered why we had the people we had come through. Many of them clashed what we were being taught in class, diminishing the importance of the teaching, making it as if those scriptural distinctives really didn’t matter. For instance, Maranatha contradicted Bob Jones in many different ways, but those differences were ignored for the greater cause of fundamentalism.

When B. Myron Cedarholm, the founder and president, stepped aside to become chancellor, that was a big moment in the history of the school. Instead of choosing someone like him, with the same beliefs and practices, politics transformed Maranatha forever to something worse than what it was. Dr. Cedarholm chose Arno Q. Weniger Jr. to be the next president of the college. Weniger differed from Cedarholm in all the ways that made Maranatha distinct, the very reasons my family originally came to the school. Factors other than politics were surely involved, like Cedarholm’s lack of financial and organizational ability, a strong talent of Weniger. Cedarholm thought Weniger had the know-how to help rescue the school. Weniger had a growing church, employing some of the strategies he learned at Hyles’ pastor’s school to reach the size it attained. Weniger took over in the middle of my senior year and old loyalties took priority over belief and practice, resulting in massive changes at Maranatha. I didn’t have to wait to graduate to watch the school turn into something drastically different.

Certain faculty members never should have retained their positions under Cedarholm, but they did by the force of the sheer loyalty that he held for fundamentalists who had stood with him in past fundamentalist conflicts. Some of them were chopped by Weniger for different reasons. After Cedarholm moved to chancellor and the school began changing, many faculty members metamorphosized into loyal members of the new administration. The changes in belief and practice did not cause them to skip a beat. It was then I found out who they really were. They never were loyal to the biblical beliefs and practices distinct to the school, but to their own positions and agendas.

Behavior

A lot of people in fundamentalist institutions, I think, assume that the way that they operate is just what can be expected from a Christian organization. They know that if you’re going to make an omelet, you’re going to have break a few eggs on the way. All of us are sinners and in a struggle toward ultimate sanctification or glorification, but to get there, unscriptural behavior must be unacceptable. The accomplish godly goals, spiritual weaponry must be employed. In so many cases, I saw carnality as the norm for reaching desired aims in a fundamentalist organization.

Fundamentalism is not a scriptural movement. It has some biblical aspects to it, but as a whole it does not conform to a biblical paradigm or template. To follow the Bible within fundamentalism is like trying to store the new wine in old wineskins. There is no way that the Bible can can fit into the wineskin that is fundamentalism. Fundamentalism will always suffer, but ultimately the Bible itself will become the casualty. As a result, so much of the Bible is not obeyed in fundamentalism.

In much of fundamentalism, pragmatism is the norm, with the end justifying the means. It’s practical, if it works, within certain fairly broad parameters. It is often doing what it takes to maintain size, keep growing in numbers, and to meet payrolls. I saw this firsthand. I hadn’t seen it all. I was still very naive. I thought these preachers had been dropped down from heaven. But I found out otherwise.

My last year of graduate school at Maranatha I worked as the director of student activities for the college. The president was renowned for an explosive temper, which he directed at me several times, shouting and threatening. It wasn’t pretty. Perhaps that style of leadership was not endemic to just fundamentalism. However, it was harbored there and cooperated with. I felt a real fear existed among the faculty and staff at that time and the environment was not suited, even if it were a church, to spiritual service. I saw there a destructive loyalty to leadership that would not benefit the school or the president. Maybe he was confronted for his behavior by those closest to him, but it was conduct that continued, a wrong model for what could produce disciples of Jesus Christ.

The fundamentalist organization was not a biblical setting for discipleship. I did not see my faculty mentors involved in evangelism. It probably occurred, but I never witnessed any personal evangelism from the faculty of the institution. We had a personal evangelism class, but it seemed to be entirely a laboratory experience that never left the classroom. I sat through many sermons on evangelism, but I knew of little to none that was actually taking place. Students evangelized. I knew that. But I remember only one occasion of our leaders involved.

More to Come

For you sprouting new psychiatrists out there, I had to think to recall what I wrote here. This isn’t stuff that sticks with me. I’m a very forward looking, Philippians 3, kind of guy. My purpose here is to tell the story, however, start to finish.

The Biblical Mandate for House to House Evangelism, part 2

November 14, 2010 / 1 Comment on The Biblical Mandate for House to House Evangelism, part 2

Apostolic preaching “in every house” must have referred to house to house evangelism,[i] not to holding church meetings in the houses of the already converted. The context of Acts chapter five involves the apostles preaching the gospel to “the people” (from the Hebrew ha’am), that is, lost Israelites, and v. 42 is a continuation of this action; v. 42 involves the type of evangelistic preaching that had just taken place in Acts 5:30-33. In 5:20, the preaching in the “temple” was evangelism, preaching “the words of this life.” Every residence in Jerusalem obviously did not have believers in it, so preaching in “every house” supports bringing the gospel to the residences of the unconverted. The fact that this evangelistic preaching (euangelidzo) took place every single day (pasan te hemeran) and it was continuing to be so (note the imperfect tense of epausanto) also is more suitable to reaching the lost than it is to church meetings every single day of the year for a long period of time. Furthermore, the same sort of preaching and teaching took place in the temple and in the houses; since the temple preaching, contextually, was almost surely evangelistic to reach the lost, the house to house proclamation would have been the same. Finally, “preach” in v. 42 is not kerusso, but euangelidzo, which indicates that specific evangelizing or preaching of the gospel, rather than the simple proclamation of Biblical truths, is in view in this text; they were evangelizing in the temple and in every house.

Acts 20:20-21 also refers to house to house evangelistic preaching of repentance toward God and faith toward Christ to unconverted Jew and Gentile. “Publickly” refers to preaching in the temple, synagogues, and wherever else a crowd can be gathered; it is mass evangelism of large groups at one time, similar to modern street preaching and tract distribution in public areas. The same word in Acts 18:28 refers to “showing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ . . . in the synagogue” (v. 28, 26). “House to house” refers to systematically reaching every residence in an area with the gospel. The Greek structure[ii] in the verse is never used for church meetings in Scripture. Verse twenty-one refers to “testifying”[iii] to Jews and Greeks “the gospel of the grace of God” (v. 24). The overwhelmingly majority usage of the Greek word “testify” in Luke-Acts speaks of evangelism (Luke 16:28; Acts 2:40; 8:25; 10:42; 18:5; 20:24; 23:11; 28:23), and Luke never uses the word to refer to preaching in church assemblies. Acts 20:20-21 indicate that Paul taught the elders at Ephesus to practice house to house soulwinning. To attempt to interpret the text otherwise would require it to refer simply to the teaching of Jew and Gentile elder within the Ephesian church the necessity of daily repentance and every-increasing faith in Christ. It would also make this sort of testifying about repentance and faith in the Christian life the essence of Paul’s ministry (v. 24). It would ignore the fact that the “Jew . . . Greek” distinction is contrasted with the church (1 Corinthians 10:32). It would make Paul’s action in the verse be the preaching of repentance and faith, not to lost people who came to church meetings, nor to normal church members, even, but specifically to the leadership, which, one would trust, would have a very high percentage of genuine converts[iv] and would need evangelistic preaching the least, and which is contrary to the emphasis in his letters to pastoral leadership (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus). Paul was “pure from the blood of all men” (Acts 20:26) because he sought to reach all of them, not just the tiny minority that would want to visit Christian church services. He carefully and clearly presented to the lost the counsel of God concerning their souls,[v] house to house, and he taught others to do the same. Going house to house is God’s will (v. 27).

-TDR

Exegetical Endnotes:

[i] This is not to say that every reference to preaching in houses involved soulwinners getting the gospel out “door to door” in the pattern of Acts 5:42 and 20:20-21. The churches also met in houses at times. However, this is often assumed for a particular text, rather than demonstrated. For example, in Acts 2:46, when the disciples were “continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,” the temple activity was likely church assembly (or could it be evangelism?), while the breaking bread (cf. Luke 24:30; Acts 27:35) and eating their food from house to house was “regular meals at home” (Robertson’s Word Pictures), not the Lord’s supper in house churches. The simple fact that over three thousand would have been in attendance requires that the houses here were not for church meetings, but for meals, unless there were many exeedingly large mansions owned by these early Christians for them to go “from house to house” in for worship. In addition to the problem of size, there is no self-evident reason why they would not want to simply meet for church in one house regularly, instead of skipping around. Furthermore, the word meat (Greek trophes) in Acts 2:46 is never used in Scripture of the Lord’s Supper (Matthew 3:4; 6:25; 10:10; 24:45; Luke 12:23; John 4:8; Acts 2:46; 9:19; 14:17; 27:33-34, 36, 38; Hebrews 5:12, 14; James 2:15). Nor is the verb eat (metalambano) ever used of the Supper (Acts 2:46; 24:25; 27:33; 2 Tim 2:6; Hebrews 6:7; 12:10). Both words are normal meal words. The view that this verse refers to believers breaking up to eat in various houses is far superior to the notion that the Christians were travelling around having church meetings and celebrating communion in many houses. The church of Jerusalem appears to have assembled regularly in the portion of the temple precents known as “Solomon’s porch” (Acts 5:12; cf. the Zondervan Pictoral Bible Encyclopedia, “Solomon’s Porch . . . [it] was here that Christ walked and talked (John 10:23) and that His disciples seem later regularly to have gathered.”), an area large enough to fit “all the people” (Acts 3:11). This explanation is far more reasonable than to think that, with many multiplied thousands of members, the entire church somehow tried to travel “house to house” to meet in the homes of members that could not possibly fit anywhere close to the entire congregation.

[ii] However, the same Greek phrase, kata + oikos, occurs here in 20:20 as in 5:42, indicating their common theme of house to house evangelism.

[iii] (Diamarturomenon, from diamarturomai, a verb primarily used for evangelistic preaching to the lost in Luke-Acts. Note the connection of diamarturomai with evangelism in v. 24: Paul was constantly to “testify (diamarturomai) the gospel (euangelion) of the grace of God.”

[iv] Of course, not all pastors are truly saved, even as Judas was not, but is it not straining all credulity to affirm that Paul was not taking the Ephesian elders with him house to house and teaching them to preach the gospel in this manner to the lost, so that they could teach their people likewise, but that he was, both “publically” and “from house to house,” evangelizing the elders?

[v] The notion that apologetics and the work involved in learning how to deal particularly with the varieties of unbelief, false doctrines, and religions one runs into because all we need to do is give out a one-size-fits-all sort of presentation of the gospel is not Biblical. Biblical soulwinners sought to “persuade” those they evangelized to be Christians (Acts 18:4; 19:8, 26:28; 28:23), “reasoned” with the lost (Acts 17:2; 18:4, 19; 24:25), and “mightily convinced” (Acts 18:28) them of their errors. Cf. 1 Peter 3:15. The “word of God” which is the “sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17) must be wielded in a way appropriate to the sort of lost person the Christian speaks to; the specific verses that deal with that individual’s spiritual barriers to receiving Christ must be broken down (cf. 2 Corinthians 10:5). A study of the soulwinning methods of the Lord Jesus and the apostles in the gospels and Acts also clearly demonstrates this truth (cf. Matthew 19:16-21; John 3:1-21; 4:4-29; Acts 2:14-41; 3:12-26; 7:1-60; 17:16-31; 22:1-21—note there Scriptural use of testimony of one’s personal conversion in the evangelism of others; etc.)

The Proper Understanding of Affections

April 16, 2009 / 1 Comment on The Proper Understanding of Affections

The Great Awakening was perhaps the second most important era in American history after the founding of the Jamestown colony in 1607. The Great Awakening describes a period in the mid 1730s to early 1740s in England and its colonies that resulted in a massive number of conversions and increased devotion to God’s Word. In America much of it centered on the open air preaching of George Whitefield. Whitefield preached to very large crowds with many turning from sin to Christ. Many of the new believers found they must leave their dead churches to submit to scriptural baptism into the multiplying number of independent Baptist ones.

Jonathan Edwards, a Christian, graduated first in his class at Yale in 1720. He continued studies in theology and became full-time pastor in Northampton, CT in 1729. The Great Awakening began at Edwards’ church in 1733, including his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. This revival subsided and then surged again with the arrival of Whitefield a few years later.

Toward the end of the Great Awakening, Edwards became concerned about the genuineness of the conversions in this revival. He wrote various books to point out the problems and potential ones that he witnessed. His concern solidified into a series of sermons he preached in 1742-43 at his church from which came a book he authored in 1746 entitled, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. In it he provided a means by which the validity of conversions could be tested. Edwards thought that much of the Great Awakening was real, but some was not, as seen in its lack of certain distinguishing marks.

In his treatise, Edwards centered the problem of false conversions on the means by which men responded to the preaching of the gospel. To explain, he wrote of the difference between responses that were either too intellectual or too emotional. He showed how that genuine salvation was centered in man’s affections. Edwards in essence used the term “affections” to describe scriptural love, distinguishing it from something oriented to man’s feelings or passions. These affections were part of the inward working of man’s soul in contrast to the functions of his body. Jonathan Edwards presented a pre-enlightenment understanding of love, unspoiled by rationalism or romanticism and even worse perversions in contemporary culture.

Edwards portrayed the soul as understanding and deciding. Man knows and then chooses based on that knowledge. However, underlying the mind and the will of a man is his affections. His affections are his inner yearnings that are informed by his understanding. Edwards taught an internal anthropological order fleshed-out from scripture. Man receives revelation in his intellect, which interacts with his affections. Nature reveals a good, loving God and man is either grateful or unthankful. The proper response of the affections to the right understanding of God is faith. Belief is a choice (volitional) informed by knowledge (intellectual) and affection. Man will not choose God without affection for Him. The right knowledge and the right affection and the right choice results in a genuine conversion.

We can see Edwards’ teaching in Scripture. Knowledge without love is not a true salvation (1 Corinthians 16:22; John 14:15-23; Romans 8:28; all of 1 John but especially chapters 3 and 4; 1 Corinthians 13:1-3; etc.). The greatest commandment is to love the Lord. The true believer loves the Lord. The truth of salvation impacts a man’s affections resulting in a life-changing choice, beginning a life of love for God.

The rest of Edwards’ treatise provides indications as to whether this is genuine in an individual. There are certain signs that are not trustworthy as a basis of knowing this. They may indicate someone is saved, but not necessarily. Edwards gives twelve of these. He follows these signs with twelve manifestations of real salvation in a person. These twelve show genuine conversion that center on the affections of a man. On every point, Edwards comes from the Bible as his authority.

We can learn much from Edwards’ teaching. He provides an accurate basis for a proper analysis of someone’s salvation. He reminds us of the importance of preserving the right view of love. We see the priority of protecting a proper function of our affections. In so many cases today, we have replaced affections with passion, emotions, or lust. We are fooled into thinking that feeling produced by external, bodily means is affection, when it is in fact just the opposite. It has been choreographed by man. Men, even professing Christians, mistake love for a cheap, worldly imitation. Churches and other religious groups all over participate in the process in their contemporary music and marketing techniques. We find from Edwards’ exegesis that the affections are closely related to the mind and the will. We do great damage in whatever manner we use to separate love from intellect and volition. We must nurture our affections by what what we see and hear—our literature, art, and music especially.

Edwards’ expositions relate to the nature of our gospel presentation. We must properly inform the minds of men toward a love for God, so that they do choose the Lord from their affections. Salvation isn’t just intellectual. It isn’t merely volitional. A proper view of God is vital. Men are greatly affected in their view of God by how we worship Him. The worship must match up with His nature. If we love Him, it will. We will choose the manner of worship out of scriptural understanding. Our affections for Him will demand it. Faith in Christ is man’s first act of worship, presenting our soul to God as a sacrifice, our mind, affections, and will. God’s saving grace will enable believers to persevere in the faith in a life pleasing to God until the day they see Him.

I will be continuing my epistemology series soon. However, this does much relate to epistemology.

If You Believe in Canonicity, You Can and Should Believe in Preservation

November 4, 2008 / 41 Comments on If You Believe in Canonicity, You Can and Should Believe in Preservation

The front of my Bible says sixty-six books. I grew up with that number in my head because I had never seen otherwise—thirty-nine Old Testament, twenty-seven New Testament. As far as I’m concerned, the canon of Scripture, the number of books is settled. However, it has not been without controversy in history. Martin Luther doubted the canonicity of James, calling it the “epistle of straw.” Eusebius, Catholic historian, in 340 said that James was a disputed text. Augustine and the council of Hippo (390) accepted the apocrypha as part of the canon. The 1395 Wycliffe version of the Bible in English included the Apocrypha.

Of the patristics, several accepted Shepherd of Hermas as part of the canon. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Didymus the Blind all three quoted it as Scripture. It is also included in Codex Sinaiticus. The Epistle of Barnabas is also found in Sinaiticus, as well as advocated by Didymus. If Sinaiticus is a better text, one representing the rules of textual criticism, then Shepherd of Hermas and The Epistle of Barnabas should be considered Scripture.

If Jesus actually did quote from the Septuagint, like many critical text advocates believe, then we also need to consider that the Septuagint included the apocrypha. Jesus therefore would have supported a canon with the apocryphal books part of their number. If it is true that the apostles quoted from the Septuagint, then the Septuagint, along with its apocryphal books, was the Old Testament of the apostles. Why should it not then be our Old Testament? And if Jesus’ use of the Septuagint evinces the acceptability of a Bible laced with faulty words, then consistency requires the acceptance of a Bible with several more than sixty-six books.

Arguments for the Canon

And yet we have heavy evangelical support for a sixty-six book canon. What are the arguments? F. F. Bruce wrote in his The New Testament Documents:

The historic Christian belief is that the Holy Spirit, who controlled the writing of the individual books, also controlled their selection and collection, thus continuing to fulfil our Lord’s promise that He would guide His disciples into all the truth.

He saw the Holy Spirit as leading His disciples to the correct books. Greg Brahnsen wrote:

[W]e know from God’s Word (1) that the church of the New Covenant recognized the standing canon of the Old Testament, and (2) that the Lord intended for the New Covenant church to be built upon the word of the apostles, coming thereby to recognize the canonical literature of the New Testament. To these premises we can add the conviction (3) that all of history is governed by God’s providence (“. . . according to the plan of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His own will,” Eph. 1:11).

His main argument is for us to look what the church agreed was the Word of God. M. James Sawyer says we look at usage.

The common evangelical view of the development of the New Testament canon sees the canon as having arisen gradually and through usage rather than through conciliar pronouncement which vested the books of the New Testament with some kind of authority.

Charles Briggs in General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture argued that there was a three-fold program for canon determinations, the first being the testimony of the church (p. 163). He explained that this was the evidence of general consent, although given under the leading of the Spirit. It was from this general consent that conciliar pronouncements were made. Briggs final determining factor and highest principle of canon determination was that of the witness of the Spirit. He stated, “The Spirit of God bears witness by and with the particular writing . . . , in the heart of the believer, removing every doubt and assuring the soul of its possession of the truth of God” (p. 163).

Thiessen wrote in his Introduction to the New Testament:

The Holy Spirit, given to the Church, quickened holy instincts, aided discernment between the genuine and the spurious, and thus led to gradual, harmonious, and in the end unanimous conclusions. There was in the Church what a modern divine has happily termed an ‘inspiration of selection’.

We see repeatedly this understanding that the Holy Spirit revealed the canon through the church. Churches, genuine believers, settled on the sixty-six books of the Bible.

In addition to this, we see that canonicity was still being discussed into the Reformation period. Sawyer writes: “The canon of the New Testament was not closed historically by the early church. Rather, its extent was debated until the Reformation.” In other words, the canon was sixty-six books, but there was continued validation and verification of that through agreement of believers into the printed edition period of Scripture. We have the same thing with preservation. The printed edition period affirmed the textus receptus as the text of the New Testament.

Why 66?

We hear and read many evangelicals who agree that the church was led to the exact number of books by the Holy Spirit. Why would they think we have sixty-six? It isn’t because Scripture says anywhere that we were going to receive sixty-six. The Bible tells nowhere how many books there would be. It doesn’t even tell us that we would get several books. We knew it was books and that those books were the right books because those were the ones that the churches settled upon.

Agreement upon the words of Scripture is even plainer. Revelation 22:18-19 is commonly referred to in discussions about canonicity and they don’t refer to books.

For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

You see “words” here, not books. Speaking about canonicity in his theology, Wayne Grudem writes (p. 65):

The severity of the punishments in Revelation 22:18-19 that come to those who add or take from God’s words also confirms the importance of God’s people having a correct canon.

He also references passages with “words” as a basis of canonicity and says:

We know that God loves his people, and it is supremely important that God’s people have his words, for they are our life (Deut. 32:47; Matt. 4:4).

If non-preservationists were to be consistent, they would savage this writing by Grudem because he refers to Matthew 4:4 as a text that is speaking about the written Word of God. Of course, he doesn’t get that kind of treatment, because canonicity is not such a controversial issue.

There is an attack today on the books of Scripture. Bart Ehrman, well-respected scholar and published author, in his popular Misquoting Jesus says that we read and use the books we do because a particular group of Christians were in the majority and they won out over the others, so it was they who decided what the Christian creeds would be. According to him, they established themselves to be right and then determined what future Christians would believe about Jesus. We only read their version of things because they had defeated the other groups. Many, many other books had been written about Jesus and were not much copied or preserved because, in his opinion, they didn’t contain the popular teaching. Ehrman also believes that the books that we do have were fiddled with in order to align them even more with the orthodox and politically correct teaching.

So why isn’t Ehrman right? We do still have those disputed and rejected books to which he refers. And many of them are very old, even though they are in the minority of manuscripts. Evangelicals reject what Ehrman says based upon what was preserved by the saints. Those are the books and history that we have. We have a bias toward those books which present the consistent and historic view of Jesus Christ. The other books passed by the wayside. We still have them, but just because they were preserved somewhere, doesn’t mean that they should come up again for reconsideration. And yet, because we find an old manuscript, like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, and we have rationalistic laws of textual criticism, we reject the text agreed upon by believers led by the Holy Spirit. This clashes with the evangelical approach to canonicity. The two positions, canonicity and preservation, should be consistent.

Canonicity and Preservation

What I am describing about books is also the historic Christian position about the Words as well. I’ve often referenced these quotes here and other places, but as an example, Richard Capel, wrote in 1658:

[W]e have the Copies in both languages [Hebrew and Greek], which Copies vary not from Primitive writings in any matter which may stumble any. This concernes onely the learned, and they know that by consent of all parties, the most learned on all sides among Christians do shake hands in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. . . . As God committed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and ‘tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.

He was referring to the words of the textus receptus of the New Testament. This fit right in with the Westminster Confession (1646) and the London Baptist Confession (1689):

The Old Testament in Hebrew . . . , and the New Testament in Greek . . . , being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical.

The church already settled on the text of Scripture. They believed God perfectly preserved it. Something new couldn’t be Scripture, just like a new canon couldn’t be the canon. We aren’t open to a new canon and we aren’t open to new words of Scripture. Opening up criticism and discussion to new words would be akin to opening it up for a new canon. This isn’t a historic, orthodox position in either case.

Some have charged those who believe the perfect preservation of Scripture with the name fideist, used in derogatory fashion. Fideism is supposedly a kind of baseless faith position that detaches itself from evidence. They say that since Scripture never promises preservation in a particular text type, we can’t really apply verses on preservation to any particular text of the New Testament. Well, since the Bible never promises a sixty-six book canon, we can’t really apply verses used for canonicity to the canon of Scripture. I say no to both of them. If I’m a fideist to believe in sixy-six books based upon biblical presuppositions, then I guess I’m a fideist then.

God inspired every Word of Scripture and all of Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16). Hebrew copyists took this so seriously that they counted every Word so as to never miss one. Every Word was important, not just the doctrines or the message of Scripture. The attacks on preservation of the Bible for centuries and especially today provide the foundation for the postmodern uncertainty in churches and theological circles today. The devaluation of doctrine, that so many evangelicals talk and write about, has come in a major way because of their carelessness about the preservation of God’s Words. Even the reformed have left in this their Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura.

R. C. Sproul decries this in a recent publication on canonicity by his organization:

Beyond the radical reductionism of Bultmann, we have seen more recently attempts among professing evangelicals, and even within the Reformed community, to seek a different type of reduction of Scripture. We have seen views of so-called “limited inspiration” or “limited inerrancy.” That is to say, the Spirit’s inspiration of the Bible is not holistic, but rather is limited to matters of faith and doctrine. In this scenario, proponents suggest we can distinguish between doctrinal matters that are of divine origin and what the Bible teaches in matters of science and history, and, in some cases, ethics. Therefore, there are portions within the Bible that are not equally inspired by God. In this case, we see the reappearance of a canon within a canon. The problem that arises is a serious one. Perhaps most severe is the question, who is it who decides what part of the Bible really belongs to the canon? Once we remove ourselves from a view of tota Scriptura, we are free then to pick and choose what portions of Scripture are normative for Christian faith and life, just like picking cherries from a tree.

To do this we would have to revisit the teaching of Jesus, wherein He said that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We would have to change it, to have our Lord say that we do not live by bread alone but by only some of the words that come to us from God. In this case, the Bible is reduced to the status where the whole is less than the sum of its parts. This is an issue that the church has to face in every generation, and it has reappeared today in some of the most surprising places. We’re finding, in seminaries that call themselves Reformed, professors advocating this type of canon within the canon. The church must say an emphatic “no” to these departures from orthodox Christianity, and she must reaffirm her faith not only in sola Scriptura, but in tota Scriptura as well.

Tota Scriptura?

What Sproul describes here is all over the place in evangelicalism. In a recent debate with Frank Turk at his blog on the preservation of Scripture, he wrote this:

Because we receive the NT in translation (for example, in the KJV), we must insist that the perfection of Scripture today is found in the message and not the words.

Later at another one of his blogs, he wrote this comment in bold print:

All believers at all times have sufficient special revelation to make a saving confession of faith; in this, their confession of faith is not dependent on any particular text type or even the perfection of any particular manuscript.

Professing fundamentalists also chime in with this view of the Bible. Paul W. Downey in God’s Word in Our Hands writes (p. 376):

God’s Word transcends written documents, even the physical universe, and will be completely and ultimately fulfilled if not one copy remains. The power and effectiveness and duration of the Word of God, and man’s responsibility to obey it, do not demand the presence or even the existence of any physical copy.

Speaking of God and the preservation of Scripture, Kevin Bauder writes this (pp. 159-160) in One Bible Only?:

He might preserve some words and He might permit some to be lost, depending upon His own purpose.

Unless we define God’s Word as the message or the concepts or the doctrines, we don’t find tota Scriptura in those statements. This is not the historical position of the church. Men of the past believed that Scripture was preserved in the very Words and they believed that the Words in the copies they possessed were identical with the original manuscripts. Their bibliology applied to both the doctrines of canonicity and of preservation.

It really comes down to believing in the greater providence or greater miracle depending upon how someone defines providence or miracle. The first known historical account of the 27 books of the New Testament comes in 376BC. And yet, we believe that the saints had the books of the New Testament. The same Holy Spirit that led them could also lead them to the words. There really is no reason why He could not. Some might say that we don’t have a historical basis to believe that they had all of them, but we do. The saints of the reformation period, who were still talking about canonicity too, agreed on the books and the words. Scripture was settled. It still should be.

WHAT IS TRUTH

Search Results for: king james version

Recent Posts

INDEX FOR WHAT IS TRUTH

Spirit Baptism–the Historic Baptist View, part 2

About “Leaving Fundamentalism”

Theistic or Divine Correction to the Man-Centered Trajectory of Modern Bibliology

Does Shelton Smith and the Sword of the Lord Teach a True Gospel? part two

Does Shelton Smith and the Sword of the Lord Teach a True Gospel?

When I Left Fundamentalism part seven

When I Left Fundamentalism part one

The Biblical Mandate for House to House Evangelism, part 2

The Proper Understanding of Affections

If You Believe in Canonicity, You Can and Should Believe in Preservation

Post navigation

AUTHORS OF THE BLOG

Pages

Recent Comments

Archives

Meta