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Four Views On the Spectrum of Evangelicalism: A Book Review
I recently listened on Audible through the book Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism, contributors Kevin Bauder, R. Albert Mohler Jr., John G. Stackhouse Jr., and Roger E. Olson, series editor Stanley N. Gundry, gen eds. Andrew David Naselli & Collin Hansen (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011). The four views presented are:
Fundamentalism: Kevin Bauder
Confessional Evangelicalism, R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Generic Evangelicalism, John G. Stackhouse, Jr.
Postconservative Evangelicalism, Roger E. Olson
When I listen through a book on Audible I usually listen through twice, since it is easier to miss things when listening to a book than it is when reading one.
For most of the book, I was cheering for Kevin Bauder, for reasons which will be clear below.
Let the Wolves In!
Roger Olson’s View
Beginning with the bad people who are fine letting the wolves in: Roger Olson argues that “inerrancy cannot be regarded as necessary to being authentically evangelical. It is what theologians call adiaphora–a nonessential belief” (pg. 165). What is more, “open theists [are] not heretical” (pg. 185). Evangelicals do not need to believe in penal substitution: “there is no single evangelical theory of the atonement. While the penal substitution theory (that Christ bore the punishment for sins in the place of sinners) may be normal, it could hardly be said to be normative” (pg. 183). However, fundamentalism is “orthodoxy gone cultic” (pg. 67). Deny Christ died in your place, think God doesn’t know the future perfectly, and think the Bible is full of errors? No problem. Let a Oneness Pentecostal, anti-Trinitarian “church” in to the National Association of Evangelicals (pg. 178)? Great! Be a fundamentalist? Your are cultic.
Summary: While Christ says His sheep hear His voice, and Scripture unambiguously teaches its infallible and inerrant inspiration (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:16-21) as the Word of the God who cannot lie, and penal substitution is at the heart of the gospel, Dr. Olson thinks one can deny these things and not only be a Christian but be an evangelical. Let in the heretics and the wolves!
Let Some of the Wolves In!
John Stackhouse’s View
John G. Stackhouse, Jr. is only slightly more conservative than Dr. Olson. For Dr. Stackhouse, “open theists are, to my knowledge, genuine evangelicals” (pg. 132). No! But at least anti-Trinitarian Oneness Pentecostals who have a false god, a false gospel, and are going to hell are not evangelicals (pg. 204). Does something so obvious even deserve a “Yay”?
What about penal substitution? “substitutionary atonement is a nonnegotiable part of the Christian understanding of salvation, and evangelicals do well to keep teaching it clearly and enthusiastically” (pg. 136). One cheer for Dr. Stackhouse. But then he goes on:
But suppose somebody doesn’t teach it? Does that make him or her not an evangelical? According to the definition I have been using, such a person might well still be an evangelical. Indeed, the discussion in this section takes for granted that some (genuine) evangelicals are uneasy about substitutionary atonement, and a few even hostile to that idea. But they remain evangelicals nonetheless: still putting Christ and the cross in the center, still drawing from Scripture and testing everything by it, still concerned for sound and thorough conversion, still active in working with God in his mission, and still cooperating with evangelicals of other stripes. Evangelicals who diminish or dismiss substitutionary atonement seem to me to be in the same camp as my evangelical brothers and sisters who espouse open theism: truly evangelicals, and truly wrong about something important. (pgs. 136-137)
So the one cheer quickly is replaced by gasps for air and a shocked silence, as the heretics and the wolves come right back in again. Dr. Bauder does a good job responding to and demolishing these justifications of apostasy and false religion.
Write Thoughtful Essays Showing that the Wolves Need Critique, but
Let the World and the Flesh In and Don’t Be A Fundamentalist Separatist:
Al Mohler’s View
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. calls his view “Confessional Evangelicalism,” although he never cites any Baptist or any other confession of faith in his essay. He thinks you do actually need to believe Christ died in your place, open theism is unacceptable, and an inerrant Bible is something worth standing for (1.5 cheers for Dr. Mohler, led by very immodestly dressed Southern Baptist cheerleaders who know that God made them male and female, not trans). However, Dr. Mohler does not believe in anything close to a Biblical doctrine of ecclesiastical separation. His Southern Baptist denomination is full of leaven that is corrupting the whole lump. His ecclesiastical polity is like the Biden administration on the USA’s southern border–claiming that there are a few barriers that keep out people who are trying to creep in unawares while millions of illegals come pouring in with a nod and a wink.
Dr. Bauder makes some legitimate criticisms of Dr. Mohler, while also being much more cozy with him than John the Baptist or the Apostles would have been. Dr. Bauder says that Mohler is “doing a good work, and that work would be hindered if I were to lend credibility to the accusation that he is a fundamentalist” (pg. 97). That is Bauder’s view of the false worship, the huge number of unregenerate church members, the spiritual deadness, the doctrinal confusion, and the gross disobedience in the Southern Baptist Convention. Hurray? Dr. Bauder’s discussion is not how the first century churches would have worked with disboedient brethren (2 Thessalonians 3:6, 14).
Separate From the Wolves, but Not From Disobedient Sheep:
Kevin Bauder’s “Mainstream Fundamentalist” View
Kevin Bauder is a self-identified “historic fundamentalist.” (But what if there never was a unified “historic fundamentalism”?) He is the only one of the four contributors who actually thinks that ecclesiastical separation needs to take place. So two cheers for Dr. Bauder! Bauder argues: “the gospel is the essential ground of all genuinely Christian unity. Where the gospel is denied, no such unity exists” (pg. 23). Therefore, “Profession of the gospel is the minimum requirement for visible Christian fellowship. The gospel is the boundary of Christian fellowship” (pg. 25). Bauder does a good job showing that people must separate from those who deny the gospel, or those who fellowship with those who deny the gospel. Two more cheers for Bauder.
However, Bauder warns about what he calls “hyper-fundamentalism,” which is actually Biblically consistent separatism (and which gets no voice to defend itself in this book). He has strong words for the “hyper-fundamentalists”–stronger than the way he voices his disagreements with Mohler:
One version of fundamentalism goes well beyond the idea that I summarized earlier in this essay. It could be called hyper-fundamentalism. Hyper-fundamentalism exists in a variety of forms. … [H]yper-fundamentalists sometimes adopt a militant stance regarding some extrabiblical or even antibiblical teaching. For example, many professing fundamentalists are committed to a theory of textual preservation and biblical translation that leaves the King James Version as the only acceptable English Bible. When individuals become militant over such nonbiblical teachings, they cross the line into hyper-fundamentalism. … [H]yper-fundamentalists understand separation in terms of guilt by association. To associate with someone who holds any error constitutes an endorsement of that error. Persons who hold error are objects of separation, and so are persons who associate with them. … [H]yper-fundamentalists sometimes turn nonessentials into tests of fundamentalism. For example, some hyper-fundamentalists assume that only Baptists should be recognized as fundamentalists. Others make the same assumption about dispensationalists, defining covenant theologians out of fundamentalism. Others elevate extrabiblical personal practices. One’s fundamentalist standing may be judged by such criteria as hair length, musical preferences, and whether one allows women to wear trousers. … Hyper-fundamentalism takes many forms, including some that I have not listed. Nevertheless, these are the forms that are most frequently encountered. When a version of fundamentalism bears one or more of these marks, it should be viewed as hyper-fundamentalist. It is worth noting that several of these marks can also be found in other versions of evangelicalism.
Hyper-fundamentalism is not fundamentalism. It is as a parasite on the fundamentalist movement. … Mainstream fundamentalists find themselves in a changing situation. One factor is that what was once the mainstream may no longer be the majority within self-identified fundamentalism. A growing proportion is composed of hyper-fundamentalists, who add something to the gospel as the boundary of minimal Christian fellowship. If the idea of fundamentalism is correct, then this error is as bad as dethroning the gospel from its position as the boundary.
Another factor is that some evangelicals have implemented aspects of the idea of fundamentalism, perhaps without realizing it. For example, both Wayne Grudem and Albert Mohler (among others) have authored essays that reverberate with fundamentalist ideas. More than that, they and other conservative evangelicals have put their ideas into action, seeking doctrinal boundaries in the Evangelical Theological Society and purging Southern Baptist institutions.
Mainstream fundamentalists are coming to the conclusion that they must distance themselves from hyper-fundamentalists, and they are displaying a new openness to conversation and even some cooperation with conservative evangelicals. Younger fundamentalists in particular are sensitive to the inconsistency of limiting fellowship to their left but not to their right. (pgs. 43-45)
By Bauder’s definition, the first century churches would have been “hyper-fundamentalist” parasites. (Note that Bauder also makes claims such as: “Some hyper-fundamentalists view education as detrimental to spiritual well-being” [pg. 44]. There is probably a guy named John somewhere in a “hyper-fundamentalist” church that thinks education is a sin, and there is also probably a lady named Mary in a neo-evangelical church who thinks the same thing, and a big burly fellow named Mat in a post-conservative church who agrees with them, but nothing further about these sorts of claims by Bauder needs further comment. So we return to something more serious.) Do you separate over more than just the gospel? Do you, for example, separate over men who refuse to work and care for their families (2 Thess 3:6-14)? You are a parasite, just as bad, if not worse, than people who do not separate at all. Do you separate over false worship (“musical styles” to Bauder), since God burned people up for offering Him strange fire (Lev 10:1ff)? You are bad–very, very bad. Let the strange fire right in to the New Testament holy of holies (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)!–even though God says He will “destroy” those who do such a wicked thing. Do you take a stand for the perfect preservation of Scripture–as did men like George S. Bishop, one of the contributors to The Fundamentals (see, e. g., George S. Bishop, The Fundamentals: “The Testimony of the Scriptures to Themselves,” vol. 2:4 [Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2005], 80ff.)? You King James Only parasite! Do you seek to follow the Apostle Paul and the godly preacher Timothy, and allow “no other doctrine” in the church–not just “no other gospel,” but “no other doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3)? Do you repudiate Dr. Bauder’s schema of levels of fellowship to seek what Scripture defines as unity: “that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10)? You are bad–very, very bad. You should be rejected, and we should join hands, instead, with evangelicals like Mohler who write essays that we “reverberate” with while they work in a Southern Baptist Convention teeming with unregenerate preachers and church members which almost never obeys Matthew 18:15-20 and practices church discipline. If you think Scripture is not kidding when it says men with long hair or women with short hair is a “shame” (1 Corinthians 11:1-16), or you do not want the women in your church to be an “abomination” (Deuteronomy 22:5) by wearing men’s clothing like pants, then you are certainly, certainly beyond the pale. Corruptions in our culture do not matter-let them into what should be Christ’s pure bride! Everyone knows that the loving thing to do is to allow half the congregation to be an abomination so that they can fit in with our worldly, hell-bound culture.
Dr. Bauder at least says one should separate over the gospel, and he does a good job proving that Scripture requires churches to do that. He has numbers of effective critiques of positions to his left. He clearly has studied history and is a thinker. But he does not present a Biblical case for consistent separatism-very possibly because consistent ecclesiastical separation is only possible when one rejects universal “church” ecclesiology for local-only or Landmark Baptist ecclesiology, and views the local assembly as the locus for organizational unity, while Bauder believes in a universal “church” and must somehow accomodate Scripture’s commands for unity in the body of Christ to that non-extant entity. As the book A Pure Church: A Biblical Theology of Ecclesiastical Separation demonstrates, churches must separate from all unrepentant and continuing disobedience, not just separate over the gospel. Dr. Bauder’s view is insufficient. Furthermore, his critique of what he labels “hyper-fundamentalism” is inconsistent. If the “hyper-fundamentalists” do things like separate too much and take stands for pure worship, are they thereby denying the gospel? If not, why does Bauder think they should be repudiated and separated from?
One other important point: some of those who would repudiate Dr. Bauder’s view as too weak are themselves to his left, not his right. For example, the King James Bible Research Council and the Dean Burgon Society, prominent King James Only advocacy organizations that would claim to be militant fundamentalists, are willing to fellowship with anti-repentance, anti-Lordship, anti-Christ (for does not “Christ” mean “the Messiah, the King, the Lord”?) advocates of heresy on the gospel as advocated by Jack Hyles, Curtis Hudson and the Sword of the Lord, and the so-called “free grace” movement of Zane Hodges. Fundamentalist schools that stand for gender-distinction and conservative worship, such as Baptist College of Ministry in Menomonee Falls, WI, are willing to fellowship with people who believe the truth on repentance and the gospel as well as with anti-repentance heretics at Hyles Anderson College and First Baptist (?) Church (?) of Hammond, Indiana like John Wilkerson. If you think Kevin Bauder’s Central Baptist Seminary is too weak, but you yourself do not separate even over the gospel, but tolerate false views of repentance or other heresies on the gospel that Paul would not have tolerated for one hour (Galatians 1:6-9, 2:5), you need to reconsider your position.
Take a stand–follow God. Allow “no other doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3). Separate not just on the gospel, but from all unfruitful works of darkness (Ephesians 5:11). You may be excluded from the book Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism, with its more liberal contributors viewing you as “cultic” and the most conservative contributor viewing you as a “parasite” and a “hyper-fundamentalist,” but that is fine-God your adopted Father, Christ your gracious Redeemer, and the blessed Holy Spirit, who has made your body and your congregation into His holy temple, will be pleased. The needy sheep in your flock who had a faithful pastor will embrace you and thank you as they shine like the sun in the coming glorious kingdom, as you led them to faithfulness to Christ and a full reward, instead of compromise. If Christ does not return first, your church may, by God’s grace, continue to pass on the truth and to multiply other true churches for centuries, instead of falling into apostasy because of a sinful failure to consistently practice Biblical separation.
Get off the spectrum of evangelicalism entirely and follow Scripture alone for the glory of God alone in a separatist, Bible-believing and practicing Baptist church. You will be opposed now, but God will be glorified, and it will be worth it all, when we see Jesus.
–TDR
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The Theology of John Wesley and Its Impact on the Methodist and Wesleyan Churches
In my thirty-three years of church planting and then pastoring in the San Francisco Bay Area, I never met a converted or saved Methodist. It was just the opposite. They were some of the most liberal, unsaved people I ever met.
I’m not Methodist. Even when I look at the history, I ask from where do the Methodists get their authority. If I ask about the Methodists, then I definitely ask the same of the Wesleyans. They can’t trace their lineage to a true church. They functioned in and from the state church, taking on some of the characteristics of the apostate denomination from which they came.
The Wesleys and Whitefield
The Wesleys arose within the Church of England. They knew something was amiss there. They changed. When I read Wesley, as have others, I see a heap of contradictions though. They never understood nor broke from the corrupt root from which they sprang.
George Whitefield and John Wesley had their break-up. Whitefield studied and went an orthodox biblical direction. He preached a true gospel the basis of the Great Awakening in the American colonies. Wesley took the Methodists a different direction with a different theology than the true salvation preaching of Whitefield. Every way that Wesley countered Whitefield, he headed the wrong way compared to Whitefield.
Now I look at the fruit of what Wesley taught. Mostly today, Methodism went liberal. Whatever errors John Wesley believed, the Methodists took a trajectory then away and then further away from the truth. The perversion in Wesleyan doctrine interrelates in several points of biblical doctrine. Wesley’s unbiblical errors, even though they leave quite a bit of truth in Wesleyan and Methodist belief, they spoil the whole pot or body.
Wesleyan and Methodist Fruit
While I write on Wesleyan and Methodist error today, I’m working in the Midwest United States in Indiana. With their wrong doctrines, they still associate themselves with Christianity. This dominates my present county and surrounding counties where I serve the Lord. It blinds the population. It produces false doctrine and practice.
I tend to think right away that Wesleyans and Methodists are wrong. However, when I listen to some of them, I hear enough truth that it becomes difficult to sort out where they divert from the truth. There are many subtle errors that massed together they become very significant.
John Wesley and Sin
John Wesley taught a convoluted, unscriptural view of sin. In the Works of John Wesley, Volume 12, p. 394, we read that Wesley wrote:
Nothing is sin, strictly speaking, but a voluntary transgression of a known law of God. Therefore, every voluntary breach of the law of love is sin; and nothing else, if we speak properly.
When you read that first sentence, it might sound good. The next one becomes problematic, especially his saying, “and nothing else, if we speak properly.” Sin is more than just a breach of the law of love. He also says, “voluntary breach,” so that a person must give assent, activate his will, for sin to occur. This definition sets Wesley and his followers up for greater problems.
Perfectionism
If sin is this breach of the law of love, it is easy then to see how that a different view of atonement and salvation occurs. By limiting or twisting the definition of sin, according to John Wesley someone could live without sinning, a theology called “perfectionism.” I might call it, “dumbing down sin.” 1 John 3:8 says:
He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.
Wesley wrote concerning this in Explanatory Notes on the NT (1818) on p. 661:
Whosoever abideth in communion with him, by loving faith, sinneth not – While he so abideth. Whosoever sinneth certainly seeth him not – The loving eye of his soul is not then fixed upon God; neither doth he then experimentally know him – Whatever he did in time past.
Participatory Atonement
Even though Wesley talks an acceptance of substitutionary atonement, he mixes in other various views of atonement that created a doctrinal quagmire. It’s why you hear so much differing and contradictory doctrine from Wesleyans and Methodists. It’s also why they can easily move into theological liberalism. For instance, Wesley communicates what is called “participatory atonement.”
John Wesley did not have a settled theology or doctrine of salvation before he became the head of a major Christian denomination. He was still working it out. He knew something was wrong in the Christianity he observed. Wesley never pinpointed what was wrong with the Church of England to the extent that he provided a separate correction of Anglican soteriology.
This view, participatory atonement, itself blends together various views of atonement. The cross of Christ is the means by which human beings can die with Christ and be reborn in Him. They experience the crucifixion of Christ with him in a mystical way. Many of the Wesley hymns make reference to this view.
The Place of Moral Example
Participatory atonement has strong parallels with the moral example theory of atonement, where Christ’s death on the cross was a kind of exclamation point of a life of love. By dying, Jesus provided a moral example, that if lived, atonement is received. With the Wesleyan participatory atonement, someone by faith subjects himself to the crucifixion that Christ suffered, fulfilling the law of love. God creates new life in the individual who enters solidarity with Christ in the love of His suffering and death.
The idea of dying with Christ sounds right even to someone who believes in penal substitution. However, this participatory atonement is something different than the historical interpretation of Galatians 2:20 (“I am crucified with Christ”). Concerning the defeat of the works of Satan through His death, Wesley wrote: “It is by thus manifesting himself in our hearts that he effectually ‘destroys the works of the devil’.” This mirrors the participatory atonement view. The Wesleys make more reference than other verse in the hymns of their hymnal than they do Galatians 2:20.
Wesley expressed opposition to the view of penal substitution. He saw the imputation of righteousness as a pass for unholy living. Everything is finished, so someone would just rest in that. Wesley had a great concern for the activation of holiness in a person’s life. He expressed a view of atonement that would yield that moral result.
Baptism and the Lord’s Table
Baptism and the Lord’s Table for Wesley become a means of grace by which men experience participatory atonement. In Wesley’s explanation of Romans 6:3, he writes:
In baptism we, through faith, are ingrafted into Christ; and we draw new spiritual life from this new root, through his Spirit, who fashions us like unto him, and particularly with regard to his death and resurrection.
Concerning the Lord’s Table, Charles Wesley wrote this hymn:
O the depth of love divine,
the unfathomable grace!
Who shall say how bread and wine
God into us conveys!
How the bread his flesh imparts,
how the wine transmits his blood,
fills his faithful people’s hearts
with all the life of God!
The Wesleys believed that the real presence of Christ was found in the elements imparting saving grace. Charles Wesley also wrote this:
With solemn faith we offer up,
And spread before thy glorious eyes
That only ground of all our hope,
That all-sufficient sacrifice,
Which brings thy grace on sinners down,
And perfects all our souls in one.
I’m very sure that most of you reading do not sing these Wesley hymns in your services or for worship. Charles wrote them and others like them though.
More To Come
Changes in Personal Belief and the Effects on Relationships (part two)
Very often I tell people that I don’t know if I’m done changing in doctrine and practice. As I get older, I am changing less, but I haven’t found that changing ends. I think I’m done and then I encounter something else or another way I might need to change.
Changes
Other people always want me to change. When I evangelize I encounter others every week who want me to change in my beliefs, and I don’t. When I try to help others change, I cannot in good faith attempt to do that without the willingness to change myself. If I was not willing to change in a discussion of doctrine, I would call that, being closed minded. I expect open mindedness from others who I want to change, so I must be willing too.
In all my years of working for the Lord in and through churches, I have watched many changes on the landscape of churches and religious institutions in the United States. As I grew up, I rarely heard an expository sermon. Then I would attend preaching meetings and hear little exposition. Now I hear exposition for half the sermons at the same conference. I see this as a good change.
I have also seen many bad changes, so many that churches are worse today than ever. The worst changes are not doctrinal so much. They are cultural. The culture of church in the United States changed. It sadly followed the world, the spirit of the age. This then affects the whole country in a very negative way.
Changes in doctrine and practice followed the culture in the United States. Many churches don’t even know they changed. It occurred slowly over a long period of time, like watching a toddler grow up to a teenager. It was slow, but the outcome is very noticeable.
Change and Relationships
Because change can be bad, very bad, sometimes any change, especially if it isn’t a more conservative one, can seem bad. As a parent, maybe you have changed the rules or the code of conduct at home. You gave the children more liberty than they had. You had good intentions for loosening up on the standards. That could look like a change for the worse to some people. In fact, a parent may change his approach to teach discernment, so a way of helping his children.
Very often someone won’t change because of its potential effect on his relationships. Others will criticize him for changing. They may threaten him not to change. He doesn’t want to face that. Almost every change I’ve ever made affected relationships and sometimes in a major way.
When someone takes one position and changes to another, it might look like something is wrong. Why did he change? The truth doesn’t change. He believes and practices the truth. Is he forsaking the truth in some way?
Sanctification
I agree that the truth doesn’t change. It doesn’t. We must change though. It’s part of our sanctification. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says:
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit.
You can see that Paul uses the controversial “C” word, “changed.” Jesus doesn’t change. You must though.
It is even harder to change something as a leader. Whenever you change as a leader, people you’ve led will question the change.
Knowledge
When a leader changes in an area that he himself taught or preached, so that people followed, it might be very hard for the followers. This is one reason why as a leader you have to be very sure about something you teach or preach. Nonetheless, it can and will happen. You thought you understood fully. You thought you did. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12:
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
Belief and practice relates to knowledge, something Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 12-14 among the spiritual gifts. Even though God gifts in knowledge, a person on this side of glory still sees through a glass darkly. He has knowledge. He still needs more knowledge until his glorification. Not until he sees Jesus face to face will he not need knowledge anymore.
Replay
Mulligan
I haven’t played golf much, but I understand playing golf and hitting some bad shots. It will happen. Among those who play golf as a hobby or for exercise, they understand the idea of a mulligan. Everyone knows you will hit a tee shot into the woods. You tee up another ball and start over. You give yourself a mulligan.
Even if you try to get everything right as a leader, you still need a few mulligans. You see through a glass darkly. You are trying to see through a glass clearly. If you are a preacher, did you ever preach a sermon, and you had to come back and correct something you said? I have. I hate it when I have to do it. Very much, I would rather not do that. I’m always afraid that I’ll lose the trust of the people if I come back to make the correction.
Editorial Process
Readers probably relate to the editorial process. You edit and find mistakes. When you think you have them all, you read again and find more mistakes. You edit. When you think you’ve got that all done and then give the piece to someone else to read, he finds many more mistakes. You publish the piece. Readers find more errors in the published document, something you hate the worst. It’s too late. Corrections must occur now in the next edition.
Some might say that we don’t get any mulligans in real life. I would say, hopefully we do. We all need mulligans in this life. Christians should understand that better than anyone.
Dress Rehearsals
A statement I often use is this: “Life has no dress rehearsals.” At various times of my life, I directed dozens of plays and programs. I’m not promoting drama as an element of worship. We had dress rehearsals for the plays and programs in our school. I am glad we had them.
It’s true that life doesn’t often have a dress rehearsal. Sometimes I thought I believed exactly right. It wasn’t until later that I found that a particular belief came from a tradition and I didn’t know it. I thought I had studied that myself. Once I did study it, I wondered how I defended that position.
Defending Positions
Tradition
Sometimes what will happen is that we have a belief or practice based upon a tradition and we teach it or preach it. At some point someone challenges the belief or practice. Rather than admit that we got that from tradition, we scrape up some arguments to defend the tradition. The tradition, maybe not a scriptural teaching, becomes more entrenched.
I’m not opposing all tradition. Paul uses the word (2 Thess 3:6) in a positive manner. Tradition isn’t enough for keeping the position though. Bad traditions can continue when we defend all traditions.
Inconsistency or Principled?
I’m fine with the word, inconsistent. It closely relates to another good word, principled. I noticed that some of the same people who attacked the January 6 protestors defended the Tennessee capital protestors. The attack was inconsistent. It wasn’t principled.
If we get further information about some position or issue and it merits a change, it is principled to change. It is not inconsistent. Changing might be easier. It could be harder. Whether it is easier or harder to change may not relate to consistency or principle. It relates to the reaction of other people and your future relationships.
Further Information
Let’s say that in the morning, you tell your children they must go to bed at 9pm. You get home at 9:15pm. Your children are still up. You say, “Get to bed.” The oldest child asks, “Can I ask you a question?” You say, “Yes.” He says, “Mom said we could stay up, because school was cancelled for tomorrow.” That’s new information that you didn’t have. You can change. You can think about what you said before, understand that you didn’t have all the information, and you can change your position. It isn’t inconsistent.
Evaluation of Leaders
Paul saw division in the church at Corinth. One major reason for division was bad evaluation of leaders. When leaders think of the evaluation of others, it can affect what they do in either a good or a bad way. I am not saying that they shouldn’t listen. Paul called the leaders, the “ministers of Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:1).
“Ministers” translates the Greek word for “galley slaves.” The galley slaves work together on the oars, moving the ship forward, because they have one master. He calls out the rhythm of the oars. This simplifies the process for them. They’ve got one person to please. The person most important to please as a leader is Christ Himself.
Social Media and Electronics: Addictive Drugs for Christians?
Are social media and electronics drugs to which Christians are addicted-by the millions?
Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, Linkedin, Pinterest, Tiktok–mind-numbing, time-wasting distractions, all. Then there is email–Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL (if you are really old-school), as well as texting, blogging, threads, and all sorts of other ways to use up on the Internet the days and hours God has given you to serve Him. Many people spend a lot of time making big bucks trying to figure out ways to keep you on their website longer; scrolling is designed to suck you in, suggested videos on YouTube are there both to keep you on the website longer and to influence what you are thinking about, the “ping” when you get a new text is designed to get you to check it right away. Many of the apps that are hugely popular on smartphones and devices tap into decades of neuroscience and psychology research funded by the casino and gambling industries, which are designed to be addictive. Americans check their phones approximately 344 times a day, and nearly half of them openly admit that they are addicted to their phones. Physical substances are not the only drugs that are addictive and which turn your brain into putty and your conscience into a wreck-social media and electronic devices do as well.
Can some beneficial things be found on the Internet, on social media, etc.? Yes-after all, I have a YouTube channel (and a Rumble channel in case YouTube censors me), a website, and (more than one) email address. I am thankful for the material at Way of Life Literature. I am writing (and you are reading) a blog right now. Occasionally the Internet can save time-making some purchases at home online can save time that would otherwise have to be spent going to a store. In general, however, social media is designed to get you to do the opposite of what God says:
“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:12)
Our use of time should be intentional–we are to “number” our days so that we can properly apply our hearts to wisdom. Our use of time must not be determined by whatever happens to ping next or whatever thumbnail YouTube has pop up to suck us into spending more of the limited time we have before we go to the grave or before the return of Christ watching a pointless video, or even a somewhat benefical video that is less valuable than an intentional, best use of time.
What can be done? Here are two suggestions.
1.) Make the Lord’s Day a social media fast.
Make it a distinctly different day. Don’t use any social media at least one day in seven. Don’t watch YouTube. Don’t go on Facebook. Don’t check email. Don’t read text messages. Don’t look at your phone, unless it is an important call and someone actually physically calls you. Make an exception for someone who you are texting to give a ride to church, or to a family who you are going to minister to and fellowship with for lunch, or something like that–but otherwise, stay completely off. Let the muscle memory atrophy of looking at the phone whenever ten seconds is available, at least one day in seven. Instead, use that time to practice the greatly-neglected duty of conscious meditation on God and His Word, a duty which is too often swallowed up by being on social media day and night:
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. (Joshua 1:8)
But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. (Psalm 1:2)
While the Lord’s Day is not a Christian Sabbath, the principles of the Westminster Larger Catechism for your use of time on the Lord’s Day are still valuable:
The … Lord’s day is to be sanctified by an holy resting all the day, (Exod. 20:8,10) not only from such works as are at all times sinful, but even from such worldly employments and recreations as are on other days lawful; (Exod. 16:25–28, Neh. 13:15–22, Jer. 17:21–22) and making it our delight to spend the whole time (except so much of it as is to be taken up in works of necessity and mercy (Matt. 12:1–13) ) in the public and private exercises of God’ s worship: (Isa. 58:13, Luke 4:16, Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:1–2, Ps. 92, Isa. 66:23, Lev. 23:3) and, to that end, we are to prepare our hearts, and with such foresight, diligence, and moderation, to dispose and seasonably dispatch our worldly business, that we may be the more free and fit for the duties of that day. (Exod. 20:8,56, Luke 23:54, Exod. 16:22,25-26,29) … The sins forbidden in the fourth commandment are, all omissions of the duties required, (Ezek. 22:26) all careless, negligent, and unprofitable performing of them, and being weary of them; (Acts 20:7,9, Ezek. 33:30–32, Amos 8:5, Mal. 1:13) all profaning the day by idleness, and doing that which is in itself sinful; (Ezek. 23:38) and by all needless works, words, and thoughts, about our worldly employments and recreations. (Jer. 17:24,27, Isa. 58:13) (The Westminster Larger Catechism: With Scripture Proofs, Questions 117, 119)
Consider abstaining from even a lawful use of social media on the Lord’s Day.
2.) “Number” your days (Psalm 90:12): specifically plan and limit the time you spend on social media the other six days of the week.
Maybe make it a rule that you only check your email once a day, or perhaps only once in the morning and once in the evening. If someone needs you right away, he can use the voice that God gave him to call you on the phone or use his legs to actually walk up to you and speak to you face to face. Make a rule on how often you check text messages and stick to it. Make a rule that, unless you have already spent adequate time in seeking God’s face in the reading and study of Scripture, in prayer, and in meditation, you don’t use social media at all, and when you use it you consciously decide ahead of time how long God would be glorified by your being on TikTok or Twitter instead of reading Scripture or an edifying book, and spend that amount of your life up on social media–no more, only less. If, as a family, you “don’t have time” to have family devotions, or to regularly preach the gospel to your community, or to memorize Scripture, then you certainly don’t have time, as a family, to have any social media accounts. Have someone keep you accountable to live by your “numbering” (Psalm 90:12) of your life. How many Christian homes have “addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints” (1 Corinthians 16:15) in comparison to those who have addicted themselves to the slavery of the cell-phone? Are you loving your children by giving them a cell phone, or by resisting the societal pressure and not giving them one? Are you loving God and spiritually benefiting yourself by your phone and social media use?
Your life is a stewardship from God for which you must give an account. Don’t waste it on social media. Overuse of social media is a tremendous contributing factor to spiritual immaturity in the Lord’s churches, and among people old and young people in professedly Christian homes. Under-use of social media is a contributing factor to-well, probably, to spiritual maturity, greater intelligence, real Christian friendships, and the ability to do such increasingly rare things as concentrate on something for a long period of time. After all, neuroscience research shows that smartphones make people stupider, less social, more forgetful, more prone to addiction, sleepless and depressed, and poor at navigation. The phone may be smarter, but you are not.
What do you do to resist the mind-numbing, soul-sapping, intelligence-eliminating drugs of social media and electronics? Feel free to share your suggestions below. If you don’t have any, because you aren’t doing anything to stay off or wean yourself off from these addictions, maybe it is time to start.
–TDR
What In a Salvation Presentation Is the Chief Factor Toward Someone’s Conversion?
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his Complete Letters (1868-1871) wrote:
If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.
Just know that if you remain with Christ, you also remain with the truth. Jesus said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6). That quote though makes it sound like something other than the truth is the main factor leading to saving faith. Others might echo the sentiment of Dostoyevsky, especially when one considers their methodology.
Three Categories
I will divide into three categories of argument or evidence for or vindication of the gospel message unto salvation. This answers, why should I believe the gospel?
Listening to professing conversion testimonies through my whole life, I heard different reasons for someone receiving the gospel. When I listen to apologists talk alone or in conversations with skeptics, I have heard them give varied reasons people will receive the gospel. People state epistemic, moral, and aesthetic arguments, evidence, or vindication. Thought leaders express these three, ranking them for their impact. People include them in their testimonies or salvation stories.
Epistemic
An epistemic presentation or epistemic preaching gives knowledge or information, makes intellectual arguments, trying to persuade the mind of a skeptic or lost person. This would include exegesis of scripture, using the Bible for elucidation of and authority for truth. It connects everything to history and will even show the compatibility of the scriptural account with history, science, archaeology, everything in the real world.
Moral
A moral presentation or preaching relies on the goodness of someone in the life of the skeptic or lost person. The moral quality of a friend, acquaintance, co-worker, or family member impacts him or her to the degree that they acquiesce to that influence. A person with a wrecked life sees this as the only way out. Maybe he sees it as the path away from drugs, obesity, alcohol or other harmful addictions. Perhaps he witnesses the quality and diligence of the efforts of a co-worker, making a moral impression upon him.
Aesthetic
An aesthetic presentation or preaching relies on the beauty or emotional effects of a personal testimony, a moving story, a fearful threat or warning, or just well-told, expressive anecdotes. It also may be the feeling of community or comradery of a group of individuals, how they get along, show friendship and solidarity, and experience satisfaction in all that.
Compelling Argument
Skeptics
Many skeptics would say that Christianity or the Bible doesn’t present compelling epistemic argument to persuade them. It does not provide enough knowledge to give up their present life to follow Jesus Christ. It is harder to believe that a man rose from the dead than to believe that men lied and said he rose from the dead, when he really didn’t. Even if they don’t possess great reasons for not believing the gospel account, they don’t have enough good ones either.
I heard one skeptic, still a skeptic though, report a frightening dream. He was on an airplane. The plane was crashing and in a semi-conscious state, he prayed to God for deliverance. When he woke up, it shook him. In his heart of hearts, despite his skepticism, he acknowledged the innate instinct or impulse to look to God for salvation.
Dostoyevsky
The profession of Dostoyevsky relates to either a moral or aesthetic urge or compulsion. Online Britannica gives some context to his quote that began this article:
In 1847 Dostoyevsky began to participate in the Petrashevsky Circle, a group of intellectuals who discussed utopian socialism. He eventually joined a related, secret group devoted to revolution and illegal propaganda. It appears that Dostoyevsky did not sympathize (as others did) with egalitarian communism and terrorism but was motivated by his strong disapproval of serfdom. On April 23, 1849, he and the other members of the Petrashevsky Circle were arrested.
Dostoyevsky spent eight months in prison until, on December 22, the prisoners were led without warning to the Semyonovsky Square. There a sentence of death by firing squad was pronounced, last rites were offered, and three prisoners were led out to be shot first. At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered and a messenger arrived with the information that the tsar had deigned to spare their lives. The mock-execution ceremony was in fact part of the punishment. One of the prisoners went permanently insane on the spot; another went on to write Crime and Punishment.
Dostoyevsky passed several minutes in the full conviction that he was about to die, and in his novels characters repeatedly imagine the state of mind of a man approaching execution. The hero of The Idiot, Prince Myshkin, offers several extended descriptions of this sort, which readers knew carried special authority because the author of the novel had gone through the terrible experience. The mock execution led Dostoyevsky to appreciate the very process of life as an incomparable gift and, in contrast to the prevailing determinist and materialist thinking of the intelligentsia, to value freedom, integrity, and individual responsibility all the more strongly.
1 Corinthians 1: Greek External Evidence and Jewish Experiences
I expressed here in other articles that men offer their reasons for not believing for which Paul accounts in 1 Corinthians 1. He says, Greeks seek after wisdom, Jews seek after signs. You could say that Greeks want intellectual arguments, something akin to their arguments in the Greek city states. They want external evidence.
Jews seek after signs. They tended in that day toward wanting further experiential proof. Something needed to move them in a personal way to prove reality. Even after the ten plagues in Egypt, most of the Jews still balked at listening to Moses and following what He said, that God told him to say. Scripture indicates that experience is not a basis of faith.
Faith Comes By Hearing the Word of God
The Bible provides the authority for what men need for salvation. In a simple way, it’s Romans 10:17: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” God will use the testimony of others, what they say and do. He might use a bad dream, smiting someone in his inner consciousness. God moves people with overwhelming beauty.
Hebrews 11:6 says that a person requires believing that God is a rewarder. Along these lines, Romans 2:4 says the goodness of God leads someone to repentance. Someone won’t receive Christ unless he thinks he’s better off with Christ as the Captain of his life.
Scripture does more than an epistemic presentation or preaching. It targets the mind, no doubt, but it reaches further than that. It affects the rebellion of a person in His will. Romans 1 says men know God (Rom 1:19). They suppress the truth though (1:18, hold the truth in unrighteousness). Their perverse natures rebel.
I believe scripture indicates in many places that the rebellion relates to human will or pride. People want their own way. They will choose their own way against their own self-interest. Men make choices that doom them, which they make so that they can stay in charge.
The Reach of Scripture
Jesus starts the sermon on the mount with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). A person must understand his own spiritual poverty, that he is not the master of his own fate. He can’t even get what he really wants on his own. He doesn’t have anything to get there. That humility doesn’t just occur. God works in a person through His Word.
When Hebrews 4:12 says that the Word of God is powerful to divide soul and spirit, that goes further than the mind. The soul includes emotion and will. God works in an epistemic, moral, and aesthetic way, all three. However, it must start with the mind. Someone must believe the gospel is true. God sanctifies through the truth.
Even with the moving of personal testimony and some stirring of emotions, everyone must receive the truth, which starts with the mind. For a person to believe, he must understand the gospel. More occurs through the gospel than just the intellectual, but that must occur.
Today I see the emotional or experiential calls for salvation as the biggest problem in evangelicalism. Evangelicals think more about what people will like or how they feel. They do not want to tell the whole truth, because people won’t like it. God saves people through the truth, not by leaving out the hard parts. Jesus never did that. Let’s do what Jesus did and then all of His apostles.
Cohesion
Agreement
The moral and the aesthetic must agree with the epistemic, but salvation centers on the epistemic. All the events of the gospel happened. Jesus is Savior. He is Lord. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it.
Moral and aesthetic presentation must cohere with the truth. You cannot separate truth from goodness and beauty. People get their view of God very often if not the most often from the aesthetic. If the aesthetic contradicts the epistemic, someone will get the wrong God. He will imagine a different God than presented by scripture. This keeps him from salvation. Even if he receives this god, it isn’t God.
Effect
A good moral example alone doesn’t save someone, but a bad one can hinder or repel salvation though. This includes a lascivious lifestyle presented as a product of the grace of God. Furthermore, regarding aesthetics, someone gets a wrong understanding of God from false worship music. He associates God with lust and worldliness. The right music doesn’t save, but wrong music, false worship, hinders or repels salvation.
The moral and aesthetic are important, but we must focus on the epistemic. Give the whole plan of salvation. Target the understanding. Don’t attempt to persuade with emotions and experiences. Use your stories to illuminate the truth to persuade in the mind. Scripture and the Holy Spirit will take care of the rest.
Textual Criticism Related to the Bible Bows to Modernity
Christianity is old. There is no new and improved version of it. It is what it started to be. Changing it isn’t a good thing. Let me expand.
Modern and Modernity
Right now as I implement the term “modern” I am using it in the way it is in the word “modernity” or “modernism.” I think modernism is a perversion of something good that occurred, which is the advancement proceeding from the printing and vastly greater distribution of the Bible after 1440. It fulfilled a cultural mandate lost with the domination of Roman Catholicism, “subdue and have dominion.” Feudalism went by the wayside. Quality of life improved.
In Judges in the Old Testament, Israel turned away from God, which resulted in bad consequences both indirect and direct from God. Israel cried out to God. God delivered and Israel then prospered again. Prosperity led back to turning away again, the bad consequences, and the cycle begins again.
The prosperity brought by the printing, distribution, and reading of the Bible brought the modern life. With all the massive new amounts of published material to read, people saw themselves as smarter than they were. They thought they could take that to God, the church, worship, and to the Bible. In essence, “let’s take our superior knowledge and apply it now to the Bible.”
Evidentialism
Modernism included evidentialism. Something isn’t true without exposure to man’s reason and evidence. No, the Bible stands on its own. It is self-evident truth, higher than reason and evidence, at the same time not contradicting reason or evidence.
Modern textual criticism arose out of modernism. The prosperity from the fulfillment of the cultural mandate proceeding from publication and distribution of scripture brought this proud intellectualism. Like in the days of the Judges, it isn’t even true. It isn’t better.
People have cell phones today, but who right now thinks that we are superior to when men believed the transcendentals? Objective truth, objective goodness, and objective beauty? We have a 60 inch television with a thousand channels, but we lost the greater transcendence. Modernists put the Bible under their scrutiny, undermining its objective nature.
Sincere Milk
The Apostle Peter called the Word of God “the sincere milk,” which is “the pure mother’s milk.” Like James wrote and identical to God, the Word of God is pure with neither “variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). This is why true believers of the gospel message of scripture are begotten “with the word of truth” (James 1:18). God inspired His Words and He preserves His Words using His means, His churches.
Modernists came to the Bible to improve it with their humanistic theories. They would say, textual variants prove its corruption. They would restore it to near purity using modernistic means of the modern academy.
The text of true churches, they believed “God . . . by his singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages.” They received that text. The modernist academy came along saying, that text is not the oldest, so not the best. The better text is shorter for ideological reasons. Therefore, everyone has a basis only for relative and proportional confidence, not absolute certainty in the Words of God. Scripture became subject to modern intellectual tinkering.
Proud Intellectualism
Even in an evidential way, the critical text, a product of critical theories, is not superior. It allured the proud intellect of modern academics. It shifted scripture into the laboratory of the university and outside of the God-ordained institution of preservation.
Textual critics cherry pick words and phrases, attacking the text received by the churches, saying, this is found in only one late manuscript. Meanwhile, 99% of their text comes from two manuscripts. A hundred lines of text have no manuscript evidence. They admit themselves educated guessing. They elevate the date of extant manuscripts above all criteria, including scriptural presuppositions.
Call to Consider Former Things
I ask that we reconsider the spoiled or poison fruit of modernity, arising from a corruption of the prosperity of the printing and wide distribution of the Bible. God through Isaiah in 41:21-22 says:
21 Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. 22 Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.
“Former things” relate to the present and to the future, “the latter end of them.” To understand the present and the future, we need to look to the past. When did we go off the rails into modernism and now postmodernism? I call on churches to turn back the clock to former things in a former time. See the cycle of the Judges, repent and cry out to God. Like James wrote later in chapter one (verse 21):
Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
Revivalism or Fake Revival, Jesus Revolution, and Asbury, pt. 3
Religious or Spiritual Ecstasy, Soft Continuationism
Again and again through the years, I wrote on religious ecstasy, a perversion of true spirituality experienced in Corinth (1 Corinthians 12:1-3) [see here, here, here, here, here, and here]. In 1 Corinthians 1, when Paul said that the Jews seek after signs (1 Cor 1:22), they were seeking for some experiential means of authenticating their spirituality. God settled the faith once and for all (Jude 1:3) with the completion of scripture. God chooses to use the oracles of God and that glorifies Him (1 Peter 4:11).
With true signs not available, except for something demonically manufactured to impersonate them, men use cheap, superficial counterfeits. Usually these are a form of what some termed, “soft continuationism.” What Paul confronted in Corinth was ecstatic experience. Ecstasy means: “an emotional or religious frenzy or trance-like state, originally one involving an experience of mystic self-transcendence” More than any other way, to give this mystical feeling that the Holy Spirit is working, what is religious ecstasy, comes through music.
Asbury “Revival”
A Description
Someone seeking to justify the recent Asbury, Kentucky experience as revival, challenged what I wrote in part one in the comment section, to which I wrote on March 2:
I watched the earliest posted meeting at Asbury and zoomed through a very long period of Charismatic style emotionalism, repetitious, rock rhythmed, sentimental, superficial, doctrinally ambiguous, led by women, ecstatic music before getting to the “sermon,” which was nothing like Edwards or Whitefield. Maybe the aesthetic and spirit of the so-called worship means nothing to you, but it clashed with the biblical nature of God. It more reminded me of a Corinthian style revival.
If Charles Finney were alive, he would likely be proud of it. Everyone appeared in the egalitarian, postmodern casual, sloppy, and disordered dress (ripped blue jeans, etc.), giving no indication of anyone in authority. The man I heard used a few verses from a modern version, but at best you would be unsure what salvation was. It sounded more like Jesus as therapist. His list of sins that you put into your makeshift cup to give to Jesus included racism and terrorism. No one would even know who Jesus was, why or what it meant to believe in Him.
In Contrast
I continued.
I heard no biblical exposition. This is an updated kind of revival for today’s generation, like one of those Bibles with a hippie cover, to show how relevant the Bible could become. All of what I saw and heard conformed to the spirit of the age, would not dare distinguish itself, probably could not do that and be acceptable to that crowd.
It seemed that people in the audience were stirred to a certain degree. They were affected. I saw some emotion. Is that indications of the Holy Spirit? I have seen the same spirit, aroused by music in Charismatic settings, giving the impression that something spiritual is going on, but it choreographed by the feelings led by the music.
Similar Comments at the Shepherd’s Conference on March 8-10
After I wrote that on March 2, in the Q and A at his Shepherd’s Conference (the conference was March 8-10), someone asked John MacArthur about the Asbury so-called “revival.” The host referenced Jonathan Edwards and his historic and biblical teaching on the marks of revival. If it is revival, Edwards would say it must bear certain marks, or else it is fraudulent, a kind of impersonation like I said above. He said one assesses a true work of God based upon the Word of God and not emotion or feelings.
John MacArthur and Scott Aniol
MacArthur commented then on the Asbury Revival:
For most of those kids, it was not about Christ, but about the chords. It was about singing the same words for twenty minutes in a row in some kind of mesmerizing pseudo-spiritual experience that had no relationship to sound doctrine, to the depth of the gospel. I would like to know if that same revival would have occurred without the music. Shut the music down and find out what God is really doing.
I’m glad to hear MacArthur say essentially the same thing I said. Scott Aniol also picked up on this with an excellent article, you all should read, written on March 13, entitled, “Christ or Chords? The Manipulated Emotionalism of Hillsong, Asbury, and Pentecostalized Evangelical Worship.” He picked up on the comment by MacArthur, “not about Christ, but about the chords.” This is such an important theme for today.
Strange Fire?
MacArthur in the past gave a pass to contemporary style worship, using it in his own conference again and again. If anyone, like myself, criticized it, the MacArthur allies came out of the woodwork to attack me vehemently. In his now renowned Strange Fire Conference, MacArthur said the following, actually in contradiction of much of his own historic practice:
The contemporary evangelical church has very little interest in theology and doctrine, so you’re going to have a tough sell. It’s about style. And style is the Trojan Horse that lets Charismatics in the church. Because once you let the music in, the movement follows. It all of a sudden becomes common.
We sound like the Charismatics, sing like they do, have the same emotional feelings that they have. It’s a small step from doing the same music to buying into the movement. So the tough thing is you’re going back to a church that is thinking like that. It’s hard to make sound doctrine the issue when style is much more the interest of the leaders of the church.
Later he said:
I don’t think it has to do with what the teachers are saying. I think it’s the music. It’s like getting drunk so you don’t have to think about the issues of life. If you shut down the music, turn on the lights, and have someone get up there and try to sell that with just words, it’s not going to work. You’ve got to have some way to manipulate their minds.
Consistency and Discernment
The people MacArthur used in the Shepherd’s Conference in the past use a Charismatic style of worship, led by women very often, and giving the same kind of trance-like ecstatic experience. I believe he’s changing on this, and Scott Aniol latches on to that in his article.
Independent and even unaffiliated Baptists regularly produce their ecstasy in a kind of soft continuationism. It is a huge lack of discernment and it is very often ignored completely as a matter of fellowship. In other words, they encourage false worship through these forms of strange fire. Let this be a serious warning to us all and for the glory of God.
Revivalism or Fake Revival, Jesus Revolution, and Asbury, pt. 2
When someone speaks of revival, built into the terminology is a return to something right, that was wrong. A change takes place. True revival is not the invention of something new, not seen before in the history of true, biblical Christianity.
Hippie Movement from Haight Ashbury, San Francisco
In the 1960s, especially centered in Woodstock, New York and the Haight Ashbury District, San Francisco, a hippie movement began. Called the flower children, they distributed flowers or floral decorations to symbolize their peace, love, universal belonging and protest the Vietnam War. They formed their own counter culture.
Men of the culture at large still wore short hair, which conforms to biblical teaching (cf. 1 Cor 11:14). God willed men to keep this gender distinction. Male hippies rebelled against God’s design by growing long hair — not just long, but not combed or neat either. Today some might call what hippies wore, “casual dress.” They spurred this informal appearance, a kind of egalitarianism communicating that no one was above anyone else. More than that, they appeared slovenly, unkept, disordered, and ragged, some now might call “authenticity.”
Being hippy also meant sex, drugs, and rock n roll for adherents of the hippie lifestyle. Christians at no point in history would permit those as “Christian liberty,” a manifestation of God’s grace. Hippies practiced free sex, ignoring the conventional and biblical requirement of marriage. They took drugs like LSD and marijuana apparently to enhance their experience. While others sat on chairs, they went so far even to forego those for the floor or ground. Many wouldn’t wear shoes, embracing their noble savage, uncorrupted by civilization.
Jesus Freaks
Northern California Move to Southern
With the growth of hippiedom, some went into the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco to bring the Bible to the hippies. I’ve met some from that time period and they believed that their drugs took them out of their bodies into a greater God consciousness, an ecstatic experience that transcended themselves. Then they tried to take this novel Christianity into some Northern California churches. When no churches accepted, this branch of religious hippies, known as Jesus Freaks, moved to Southern California.
Lonnie Frisbee
The Jesus Freak hippies, who migrated South, were under the influence of a leader named Lonnie Frisbee. Randall Roberts, reporter for the Los Angeles Times, wrote about Frisbee in an article titled, “Jesus, drugs and rock ’n’ roll: How an O.C. hippie church birthed contemporary Christian music”:
The birth of contemporary Christian rock and pop music in America can in part be traced to a vision received by a 17-year-old runaway from Costa Mesa named Lonnie Frisbee.
After stripping naked and taking LSD in 1967 near Tahquitz Falls outside of Palm Springs, the young man called to God.
As water from the falls crashed, Frisbee, who wore his hair and beard like the archetypal Jesus Christ, saw himself standing beside the Pacific Ocean, Bible in hand, staring out at the horizon. But instead of water, the sea was filled with lost souls crying out for salvation.
“God, if you’re really real, reveal yourself to me,” Frisbee, who died of AIDS in 1993, later recalled pleading. “And one afternoon, the whole atmosphere of this canyon I was in started to tingle and get light and it started to change — and I’m just going, ‘Uh oh!’”
Frisbee dressed like the popular, secular notion or stereotype of Jesus with flowing robe and long hair, using soft-spoken tones also ala the flower children. It played well with the rebellion of the hippy subculture. At first the hippies met on the beach and baptized in the ocean. They used 1-2-3 pray-with-me evangelism, where someone prayed the prayer and was dunked under the waves shortly thereafter. Their view of grace brought forgiveness and eternal life, while still being and living like a hippie.
Rejecting the Historical Church, Its Doctrine, Practice, and Worship
Chuck Smith
The Jesus Freaks found a welcoming host in a buttoned down traditional four-square Pentecostal church with Chuck Smith as its pastor. He had 25 in his congregation in 1965. His church sang hymns. He wore a dark suit and tie. That changed.
Smith’s encounter with Lonnie Frisbee offered the opportunity to take these hippies into his customary church. Smith did not come from a historical line of Christian churches. His trajectory came from the early 20th century heritage of the modern Charismatic or Pentecostal movement, founded on the continuation of sign gifts for today. Smith could embrace further deviation from orthodox, historic doctrine, practice, and worship. In 2018, John MacArthur described Smith’s predicament:
What’s he going to do? What’s the church going to do? So they had a meeting and they decided that, “We’ll lose them [speaking of his whole congregation] and they’ll [the hippies or Jesus Freaks] leave if we don’t accommodate them.” They didn’t like the music; they didn’t like the dress code; they didn’t like anything. For the first time in church history that I can find, an aberrant, small, deviant, subculture redefined the character of a church.
Acquiescing to a Youth Culture
On another occasion and I agree with him, MacArthur said, characterizing this Jesus Revolution:
That was already being discussed a lot of places, because the hippie movement caught fire across America – the movement of rebellion against authority, responsibility, duty, expectation; rebellion against right, honor; it caught fire. So the church feared, “We’re going to lose these people if we don’t acquiesce.” So for the first time when the Jesus people came to church, first time I can find in church history, the church began to redefine its own identity and worship based upon the wishes of a rebellious subculture. That definition started then and spread; started in California, spread clear across the country.
Prior to the ‘60s, nobody expected a church service to be rock concert. Nobody expected a church service to be entertainment, . . . worship to be physical stimulation, emotional feelings without engaging your mind, . . . church to be a manipulation of people’s desires to fulfill their own self-styled identity. A church was a church, and it was a place where there was thoughtful, prayerful, biblical, sober-minded hearing from the Word of God, leading to conviction and edification and elevation. It was a heavenly encounter.
Modern Generation
MacArthur continued:
But to this modern generation of young people – serious, sober, thoughtful, scriptural preaching about God, and confrontation of sin, and a call to holiness, and a call to separate from the world and from iniquity is far too absolute and far too offensive. People who want to feel good about themselves the way they are don’t want that, so the . . . church caved in and gave them what they want. And now pastors continue to accommodate those same people – irresponsible, lazy, undisciplined rebels who want what they want – and the church, instead of confronting it, conforms to it. No preaching on sanctification, no preaching on holiness can be done in those environments; they’d empty the place.
Broken People?
Professing Christian leaders now justify the Jesus revolution as ‘God using broken people.” He used Samson and David, is the explanation. God used Peter, but Peter was a believer, filled with the Holy Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ, when he preached on the Day of Pentecost. He does not use unbelievers, these “broken people,” for a flurry of conversions.
God does not use believers, who are living in sin. They are vessels unto dishonor, who are not meet for the Master’s use. The Jesus revolution was not a blessing to Christianity, to the church, or to the world. This revolution started something new and wrong. It was a bad revolution, like many other revolutions in the history of the world.
David Wilkerson and Historic Confrontation of Jesus Freaks
David Wilkerson was a mainstream evangelical in the late 1950s and through the 1970s. He is known for the popular Christian book, The Cross and the Switchblade. Youtube above showed a historic confrontation he had in the 1960s with the Jesus Freaks that indicates how much they clashed then with even evangelicalism. These men present a deviant view of biblical sanctification, however, a false view that has become much more mainstream today in evangelicalism.
The Jesus Freak argument with Wilkerson represents a neo-libertine view of sanctification. It combines with a portion of early woke or social justice warrior. For instance, in the video above these men contradict Wilkerson by judging him by the standard Jesus imposed on the rich young ruler. Sell all that you have and give it to the poor. They see righteousness in their disheveled look, which someone could pose just as easily as any external or formal appearance. Conveniently, they evince faith parallel with the lifestyle preferred by hippies.
More to Come
The Trinitarian Bible Society and Its Position on Scripture
Four days ago the Trinitarian Bible Society launched this video, called, “Upholding the Word of God.”
I appreciate their stand on scripture. What they present is what, I believe, many Christians across the world say they believe. What the above video explains is also why they believe it.
Scriptural Presuppositions
The Trinitarian Bible Society starts with scriptural presuppositions. Their practice of Bible publication arises from their biblical beliefs about the Bible. This is how it should be. It’s also what we do not see with those on the critical text side. They do not emphasize or most often even teach at all what is the scriptural basis of their position. Their position does not have a biblical mooring.
Someone who appears and speaks often in the above video is Jonathan Arnold, who is also pastor of the Westminster Baptist Church in London. My wife and I visited that church twice on trips to England. I appreciate this younger man’s stand on the Word of God in a time of much attack on the doctrine of scripture. He is now the General Director of the Trinitarian Bible Society.
Many pastors across the world use the Greek New Testament, textus receptus, printed by the Trinitarian Bible Society. They also print an entire original language Bible in the received text of the Old (Hebrew) and New (Greek) Testaments.
Separatist Heritage
The Trinitarian Bible Society is by history and, therefore, by definition a separatist organization. It started from a split from the British and Foreign Bible Society over spreading Unitarianism, hence, Trinitarian, and over scripture, therefore, Bible. As an indication of how significant people thought that was, two thousand gathered for the first meeting at Exeter Hall in London in 1831. Could they get that many to gather for that separatist purpose today?
The British and Foreign Bible Society allowed a Unitarian as an officer. Unitarian at the time became the doctrinal position du jour. It’s a familiar theological term now, unitarian, but it really does encapsulate almost every major theology error in the history of heresy. It was essentially Socinianism, which taught works salvation and anti-Trinitarianism. Unitarians denied not only the deity of Christ but also the miracles of the Bible. They did away of the authority of scripture.
For a long period of time, we would call Socinianism or Unitarianism theological liberalism. Most liberal churches in whatever denomination are Socinians or Unitarians. In many ways, we would say they don’t believe anything. They are drawn together by their denial of scriptural and historical doctrine, which is to say, they deny the truth.
Overall
I have attended many churches affiliated with the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS) in England. Some strong churches exist who would not fellowship with the Trinitarian Bible Society, but very few. A majority of the strongest churches in England, where the best representation of New Testament Christianity exists, associate themselves with the TBS. This says much about the outcome or consequences of the received text of the original languages of scripture and the King James Version, which these churches support and propagate.
I differ from most of these Trinitarian Bible Society affiliated institutions in ecclesiology, eschatology, and dispensationalism versus covenant theology. That saddens me, but it does not take away the joy I have for what they do believe. I rejoice in that. I have more in common with these churches than I do most other Baptist churches today.
The churches affiliated with the Trinitarian Bible Society believe an orthodox, true position on the Trinity and about the Lord Jesus Christ. They preach a true gospel, including repentance and Lordship. TBS type churches utilize reverent worship. They are active in their evangelism of the lost. Their churches are not worldly churches. Their preaching of scripture is dense and thorough. They rely on scripture for their success. I am not saying these doctrines and practices are all that matter, but they do distinguish the Trinitarian Bible Society affiliated churches.
Perverting Beauty Perverting Truth and Perverting Truth Perverting Beauty
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four
God and Beauty
God is one. All truth, goodness, and beauty proceed from God. Since God is one, His truth, goodness, and beauty are one. You can’t take away from one of these three without taking away from the other two. Each of those relate to God, so their perversion perverts an understanding of God, creates a false god or false gods, and/or takes glory from the one and true God.
God is beautiful and beauty itself also issues from Him. He defines beauty both in His essence, in His acts, and in His creation. Man made in God’s image, functioning according to His likeness, produces or generates beauty and beautiful works. Of course, sinful man operating in his flesh does not do that; only his performing according to the image of God. This requires regeneration. After conversion, he can, and should generate only beauty and beautiful works, but still must submit to God to do so.
The production of beauty and beautiful works means the skillful formation or formulation of what reflects God’s nature and achievement. One judges the formation or formulation according to standards aligned with revealed truth about God and what He does. A believer can know beauty. He can know he forms or formulates it. He can know when someone else does. How does he know? He knows based on the testimony and application of God’s Word.
How Do You Know Beauty?
Scripture states in a sufficient manner truth, goodness, and beauty. A believer then applies these to the world. God enables believers to do that. I call this truth, goodness, and beauty in the real world. Believers don’t just know these three in the Bible. They know them also in the real world.
God’s Word says a truth such as “flee idolatry,” “flee fornication,” or “let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.” It assumes that you will understand the application of that truth in the real world. You can’t say that you didn’t know that. You can also understand and apply, “think on whatsoever things are lovely” or “worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.”
When Proverbs 7:10 says that a young man met a woman “with the attire of a harlot,” the passage doesn’t explain the attire of a harlot. It assumes you know already. People are still responsible for things that God does not explain. Lack of explanation does not permit dressing like a harlot.
Like many other applications of the Bible, music and art require honesty and setting aside lust or self-will. God gives the necessary capacity for judgment. As is so often the case, the problem isn’t with intelligence, but volition.
Departure from Beauty
The Standard for Beauty
Does someone leave the truth when he departs from beauty? Or does a departure from beauty stand alone, totally isolated, disconnected from the truth? Does leaving beauty start with a flight from the truth?
The view that beauty was neither true nor false, that it made no pronouncements about the world, that it just reflected the mind or feelings of an artist was a completely novel view when it appeared with the origins of modernism in the late 18th to the early to mid 19th century. Truth was true in itself, goodness, good in itself, and beauty, beautiful in itself, separate from the judgment of any man. All of this came from God. If someone can criticize beauty, it could only be because there is some objective standard outside of the object by which to judge it.
Absolute beauty requires principles by which to judge them. If not, then beauty is meaningless. Beauty must be beautiful in itself, not from a mind or feelings, Its judgment comes from external criteria. The standard of beauty transcends the beautiful thing. For something beautiful to exist, something not beautiful also must exist.
Kant and Mill and Beauty
Immanuel Kant in his 1790, Critique of Judgment, introduced the concept of subjective beauty, beauty in the eye of the beholder. He said concerning beauty, that it was
a judgment of taste . . . not a cognitive judgment and so it is not a logical judgment but an aesthetic one, by which we mean a judgment whose determining basis cannot be other than subjective.
John Stuart Mill, English philosopher, later in the 19th century popularized the notion that art was nothing more than the intrinsic personal feelings of an artist. Beauty was just an expression of subjective emotion. An assertion of a thing as beautiful described the state of mind of the one asserting. Beauty did reflect reality, but now only a person’s perception of reality.
You can see how that man dethrones God when he decides what is beautiful. Man becomes final arbiter of beauty. Value becomes subjective based on his thinking or feelings.
Beauty Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings
God and Science
Some might say subjective beauty is a matter of freedom. You can say what you like or don’t like. You’ve heard the phraseology, especially made popular by Ben Shapiro, “facts don’t care about your feelings.” How does that relate to beauty?
Isaac Newton, believer in God, and others like him stand as the foundation of scientific progress of the last three hundred years, which started with God as the standard. God’s Word inspired science. It did not disregard man’s senses. In accordance with God’s Word, Newton and his colleagues recognized the place scripture gave to man’s reason, his senses, and evidence. This was different than elevating man’s thinking and his feelings to the only source of truth. They must function in subjection to God within His world.
Empiricism: Senses as the Source for Beauty First and then Science Second
Kant and Mill established a secular approach to beauty. They elevated man’s senses as the sole source for beauty. Empirical beauty. Not long after, empirical methods became the sole source for truth, a philosophy called empiricism. A secular approach to knowledge and truth followed a secular approach to beauty. Sensory experience formed the basis for both and it started with beauty.
Very often today, Christians say that truth is objective with the Bible as final authority, but they judge beauty with their feelings as the standard. They might confuse the feelings with a mystical experience from God or the moving of the Holy Spirit. Long ago many churches ejected to various degrees from objective beauty. Today we see many of those churches capitulating in objective truth and goodness. This follows along the pattern of the first effect of empiricism on the arts with Kant and Mills and the second with science.
View of Beauty Shapes View of God
When someone starts with God on beauty, he will have the right view of beauty. He will produce, support, and endorse only the beautiful. However, the opposite is also true. Someone’s view of beauty shapes his view of God. He might have God in his doctrinal statement, but his imagination of God will accord with his depiction of beauty. The view of beauty and the view of God will both match.
Easily the world deceives on beauty to pervert the imagination of God. The non-beautiful or what is ugly will draw someone away from the true God. At the same time, he thinks he has or sees God. The two views cannot coexist.
Two people might say they are Christians. They should be similar, shaped by the transcendent view of truth, goodness, and beauty. Their standard is the same.
If two professing Christians’ thinking on beauty is different, their Christianity will seem like two different religions. They are. One has the true God. Very often, depending on the extent, the other does not. He has God on his doctrinal statement, but he imagines a different God, not in fitting with the God of the Bible. What I’m explaining occurs today by far more than it ever has in my lifetime.
So Which Is It, Truth or Beauty? Authenticity
One can say that truth is beautiful and beauty is truthful. When you look at beauty, actual beauty, it is true. It is real. If it is not beauty, it is not true or is in error.
If it is beauty, it is not just someone’s imagination or feelings. Very often today, when it is feelings, people call that authentic. They say it’s authentic, because from the perspective of the performer, it is how he feels. However, it may not and probably does not represent the truth, which mean it is not authentic.
I think I can say the following is ironic. Authenticity isn’t authentic anymore. Authenticity is now a lie.
In the past, authenticity meant true. It wasn’t leather. Instead, it was naugahyde. It wasn’t a diamond, but it was cubic zirconia. If it is not beautiful according to the nature of God, then it is not authentic. In this way, it is not true.
If the lie starts with beauty, treating the non-beautiful as beautiful, that spreads to the judgement of truth. This is where our world is today. You can’t say something is true, but that started with eliminating objective beauty. Today your truth can be your truth, but for a longer time, your beauty is your beauty.
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