The Necessity of Biblical Theology, with Christ at the Center

by Phil Johnson



everal years ago, whan I was still fairly new to the blogosphere, our friends at 9Marks solicited my response to a survey question for the 9Marks eJournal. Here's the question, followed by my reply:

"In what ways will a congregation's understanding of salvation and the gospel be limited if their pastors do not have a good grasp of biblical theology?"

The answer is clear from history, starting with the sad case of the Jewish leaders whom we meet in the gospels. Jesus frequently scolded them for missing the main point of the Scriptures. They misunderstood the messianic promise (John 6:15). They misconstrued the purpose of the law (Galatians 3:21-25). They overlooked their own desperate need for true, justifying righteousness (Romans 10:1-4). They ignored the big-picture story of the Old Testament (John 5:37-47). And therefore they reduced the Scriptures to a manual for moralism, legalism, stark sacramentalism, and a hubristic kind of nationalism.

Jesus' answer, again and again, was to point out that He is the focus of all the Scriptures: "Search the Scriptures . . . these are they which testify of Me" (John 5:39). "If you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me" (v. 46). "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad" (8:56). Even after the resurrection, the disciples did not seem to understand the full import of all this; so on the road to Emmaus, he gave them an extended overview of the whole sweep of biblical theology: "Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself" (Luke 24:27).

Since Christ is the focus of all the Scriptures, no preacher has fully expounded the meaning of any passage until he has shown its relationship to the rest of redemptive history and how it points to Christ.

Preaching that omits this vital dimension always breeds the same kind of dull-heartedness and spiritual decline Jesus encountered in Israel at his first advent. The church today is in the throes of a very similar torpor, anesthetized by the suffocating miasma of man-centered teaching and moralistic platitudes that ignore the gospel. Too many churchgoers have been fed for too long on a steady diet of topical messages, motivational talks, shallow, feel-good homilies, or even thinner gruel.

What is the expected result of that? Worldliness, superficiality, bad doctrine, unsanctified church members, ego-driven church leaders, and virtually every other spiritual malady that is currently crippling American evangelicalism.

The only remedy, and (I believe) the best recipe for revival in the church, is a powerful wave of biblical preaching and biblical theology in which we recognize and proclaim Christ as the center and focus of everything God's Word has to say.

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Documentiasis

A Manifesto against Manifestos
by Phil Johnson

Another silly manifesto has been issued by some "top evangelical, Catholic, and mainline" officials, outlining new rules of engagement for missionary and evangelistic work. The document is full of ecumenical argot and liberal gobbledegook. It employs the most passionate special pleading for pluralistic, postmodern, and politically correct values—urging Christians to "cooperate with other religious communities engaging in interreligious advocacy towards justice and the common good and, wherever possible, standing together in solidarity with people who are in situations of conflict."

But the document never once shows the slightest concern for getting the content of the gospel message correct. It is, in fact, a denunciation of evangelical principles; it is by no means a valid statement of evangelical mission.

hy are front-row evangelical leaders so enthralled with drafting formal statements and grandiose-sounding declarations? Virtually every year since the release of the first "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" statement in 1994, some group or another (usually consisting of self-appointed "evangelical" strategists and Christianity Today contributing editors) gets together to repudiate evangelical principles and discuss post-evangelical strategies—while pretentiously laying claim to leadership in the amorphous evangelical movement.

In the end, with great fanfare, they invariably issue "a historic manifesto." The profound historic significance of their work is typically declared by the drafters themselves in the lead sentence of all their press releases. And for some reason or another, Chuck Colson's name is prominent in most of the groups drafting these documents.

There was, of course, ECT II, "The Gift of Salvation" in 1997; ECT III, "Your Word Is Truth" in 2002; ECT IV, "The Communion of Saints" in 2003—and so on, all the way through ECT VII in 2009.

(There may actually be more ECT documents than that. I don't know. I've lost count, and I've lost interest.)

There have also been several non-ECT manifestos—most recently the highly publicized but quickly fizzling "Manhattan Declaration" (2009). That document aimed to garner one million signatures within a month. But almost two years after the PR campaign began, that charter still has not been able to acquire even half that many signatures.

November 2009

July 2011

One can't help noticing the common thread in this growing quiltwork of documents: virtually all of them strongly promote an ecumenical agenda. And the urgency of the ecumenical appeal is inversely proportional to the level of enthusiasm for whatever few shreds of evangelical conviction (if any) are expressed therein. If I read the trend correctly, the ecumenical agenda being pushed in these documents is growing more brazen and more demanding with each new document.

For example, ECT II included this statement, carefully crafted to sound as if it were full of evangelical conviction: "In justification, God, on the basis of Christ's righteousness alone, declares us to be no longer his rebellious enemies but his forgiven friends, and by virtue of his declaration it is so." But, of course, the statement simultaneously solicited signatures from Catholic priests and others who formally disavow the principle of sola fide. So notice: that sentence (the best in the whole statement) purposely omitted any mention of imputed righteousness and gave just enough wiggle-room to permit, say, a Jesuit theologian to put his own spin on the words and sign. It was a subtle approach to undermining the central evangelical distinctive.

Twelve years later, ECT VII (titled "Do Whatever He Tells You: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Christian Faith and Life") took a much less subtle approach. That document repeatedly scolds Protestants for their "neglect of Mary" and the supposed lack of evangelical reflection on Marian themes in their soteriology. The document goes on to make this promise: "We [evangelicals and Catholics] will seek together the mind of Christ about Mary." Then it states: "Evangelicals need to consider whether more reflection on Mary would strengthen their relationship with Jesus Christ."



Now, does anyone truly believe these ecumenical diatribes are strengthening evangelical conviction? Isn't the real point rather to undermine the very truths that make evangelical doctrine distinctive, so that (quietly setting all such things aside) we can join hands with the Vatican in the name of brotherhood and unity?

No one who understands what historic evangelicalism is could possibly think that type of "unity" represents anything other than the wholesale rejection of everything that truly differentiates evangelicals from Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic Christians, and the cults.

As a matter of fact, that is exactly what these statements are aiming for. Sadly, the evangelical movement is being commandeered by people who do indeed reject evangelical doctrinal distinctives and would like to see a brand of evangelicalism that can easily syncretize almost anything from Roman Catholic mysticism to postmodernized versions of Socinianism.

You know: Christianity Today-style religion.

The epitome of this, once again, is Charles Colson, a politically shrewd, worldly-wise, fully-educated, well-spoken man who nevertheless manages to sound stunningly clueless at times. For example, he claims to believe the Manhattan Declaration failed because people who are apathetic about doctrine were afraid of it. Anyone who paid attention knows the precise opposite is true. Those most outspoken voices against the Manhattan Declaration were conservative evangelicals who insist on being far more precise in their doctrine than the drafters of that manifesto want evangelicals to be.

But Colson said this in Christianity today:

An aversion to doctrine caused some thoroughly orthodox young evangelicals to decline to sign the Manhattan Declaration (which defends human life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty), even though the document is rooted in Scripture.

So the latest document being peddled to evangelical leaders is "Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World." It's nothing more than old-style ecumenism re-stated in the patois of postmodernism.

Describing what's wrong with the document, one of my favorite fundamentalist bloggers, Dave Doran (president of Detroit baptist Theological Seminary and Senior Pastor of Inter-City Baptist Church) writes:

To me, the wrongness of this project is magnified by its uselessness. "What's valuable about the document is that Christians are letting the world know that they are intending to be respectful, loving, and transparent in their approach to missions and that they do not intend to be seen as violent or coercive," claims Craig Ott from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Seriously? Publishing this document will do that? Is "the world" really reading documents put out by groups like this? Why do evangelicals keep chasing after the elusive dream of getting the world to think differently about them? Why do they keep chasing that elusive dream with ecclesiastical tokens like documents and statements? The view from the separatist ghetto looks like this: professing evangelicals keep getting hoodwinked into publishing documents that never accomplish their purpose, but do in fact erode the boundaries of the faith. The world will not even notice this document, but the World Evangelical Fellowship and the World Council of Churches will feel better for playing nicely with each other, and Rome is happy that they are doing [it] on their way back home.

Hard to think of any argument against Dave Doran's analysis. In fact, it would be hard to sum up any more succinctly than that all the problems with the past decade's torrent of ecumenical manifestos.

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Christianity Today: Biblical, Reformed confidence = baaad, ignorant Pentecostal hubris = A-OK

by Dan Phillips

My reader David Elliott pointed me to this Christianity Today interview from April. The author of An Eyewitness Remembers the Century of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker [?!], 2010), Regent University professor Vinson Synan, is asked a series of questions centered loosely around his book.

Sidenote: "THE Century of the Holy Spirit." Don't miss that. It begins with the Azusa Street "revival." Before that — Holy Spirit? Not so much. Nineteen centuries, not much Holy Spirit... until the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. Ahh, now, all sorts of Holy Spirit!

Read the interview, it's fairly brief. But do it in private. That article will have most of you talking aloud to yourselves. Particularly, you should read that interview in light of CT's snarky profile of Al Mohler, which has been much discussed of late. The contrasts are... interesting and informative.

As has been pointed out even by those lofty souls who find it distasteful to give Christianity Today the general drubbing that it (to my mind) so richly deserves, the Mohler piece was disdainful and slanted. Readers were encouraged to view Mohler askance and critically. It couldn't be (to the writer) that Mohler was a sharp man living from Biblical convictions; everything was seen to be crafted, disingenuous, a bit sinister.

Contrast that with the softball questions lobbed at Vinson Synan in the interview above — and, particularly, at the astonishing assertions and responses allowed to go unchallenged.

Question: What to you has been one of the most unexpected changes of the past century?

Answer: The biggest surprise was the Catholic-charismatic renewal that started in 1967. That came as an utter shock to me, to most of my friends, and probably to the Catholic Church. It gave legitimacy to the movement, that the largest and one of the oldest churches in the world was seeing a Pentecostal movement.

I noted this at the time of which Synan speaks. It wasn't important to the Charismatic movement that the Roman Catholic church preaches a false, damning non-gospel, that it encourages idolatry, that it adds to Scripture and a host of other ills. They speak in tongues! They're big! They like us! We're validated! Ergo, the Holy Spirit is sweeping through them... er, evidently not in any way affecting their hatred for Christ's Gospel, but, well, they like us! They really like us! Yayyy!

There's more, much more.

Synan says the high point was some big meeting, the low point was — what? What do you think? Word-faith heresy? Barking like dogs, mooing like cows, gold dust, whiter teeth, behaving appallingly and blaming it on the Spirit? False prophecies? Perverting the Gospel? Abuse of thousands of adherents? Shelving the Bible?

Nah; a couple of televangelists' moral scandals. (And, btw, they're back, accepted by the same movement — a fact Synan doesn't mention.)

But no fear, those same morally-corrupt televangelists "still helped spread the movement worldwide" — that would be the "movement" of the non-Gospel-centered, non-sanctifying, non-Christ-exalting "Spirit" (i.e. fake tongues, fake prophecies, etc.). What matters more than anything is the legitimization and spread of "the movement."

And, Synan is asked, what do non-Charismatics most need to understand about Pentecostals?

The answer is simply amazing. We nons most need to understand that "Pentecostals are the most successful at converting people in competition with Islam."

I. Am. Not. Kidding.

And who are Synan's prize examples of these more effective evangelists?

Benny Hinn.

Reinhard Bonnke.

Brothers, sisters, it just goes on and on. Like:

• Africans and Indians are more receptive to Pentecostalism because the don't really "have to change [their] culture or paradigm" to be Pentecostals.
• A big leader to keep one's eye on is T. D. Jakes (who is, at best, wobbly on the Trinity — one Person of whom is, as I recall, that selfsame Holy Spirit whose century this has been).
• Oral Roberts is the previous "transformational" paradigm. Baptists and Presbyterians can't equal him. ("Thank God!" is heard 'round the land.)

The CT interview is all like that, just a series of friendly softballs. Not one of these ridiculous responses receives a challenging followup.

Worst of all, to bring this post full-circle, the title goes without the least challenge. This has been "the century of the Holy Spirit"? Meaning what, exactly? On whose authority? By what evidence?

In a dozen different ways, Phil and I in particular keep asking: what does the Pentismatic movement have to show from its distinguishing doctrines from the last century? Our author suggests a remarkable list:

1. Oral Roberts
2. Benny Hinn
3. T. D. Jakes
4. Jimmy Swaggart
5. Jim Bakker
6. Reinhard Bonnke
7. Televangelists
8. Sidelining the Gospel (i.e. treating the Roman Catholic church as a big Christian denomination — if they are friendly to Pentismatics)

These are the grand trophies of Pentismaticism.

And before that? Before the Holy Spirit really-really got going with spiritual giants like Bakker and Hinn and Bonnke and Swaggart and Jakes?

Well, I guess it was a pretty pathetic offering. All we had to show for the non-Holy-Spirit era is Augustine, Athanasius, Anselm, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, John Owen. You know. Pikers. Those guys, their work, their sermons, and those books they wrote which are still opening treasure-caskets centuries later.

But CT, as I say, has no challenge for Synan.

But Mohler? Oh,  yeah. After all, remember: CT kissed-and-made-up with the world decades ago on the issues of female "pastors" and ditching Biblical cosmogony — and Mohler is on the (to them) wrong side of both of those issues. So Mohler gets elitist mocking and disdain, while folks like Synan get a pass.

Bonus thought 1: note that there is no reformation going on in the Pentismatic movement, if Synan is any representative. Everything that fueled the last century of Pentismatic-inflicted miseries and errors is still embraced and enabled.

Bonus thought 2: also remember, Reformed Charismatics, by their distinguishing doctrines, necessarily own these folks as well.

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Weekend Extra: Our enemies can be reconciled

by Frank Turk



Dr. Russell Moore is my fellow blogger at firstthings.com's Evangel blog, and a well-respected speaker, pastor, and professor at SBTS. He is, in every way, my better, and an example of Christian virtue which I could never be. He is to be widely-admired by the church as a teacher and as a man with a gigantic heart for the lost. His blogging and other writing on the subject of reaching the lost, and on adoption, has been instructive to me, especially when it comes to the matter of dealing with the messy work of pastoring people through their broken lives in the lifelong task of sanctification.

Yesterday, he posted a brief blog entry regarding his thoughts on Anne Rice's recent rejection of Christianity "in the name of Christ". That is, she declared her allegiance to Christ and therefore denounced all Christianity as her best thought on how to deal with the other Christians she witnessed.

Here's the crux of Dr. Moore's 2-page essay:

Anne Rice hasn’t rejected you. Anne Rice hasn’t betrayed you. Would you pray for her, and for the other smoldering wicks and about-to-bolt potential prodigals in your church (and maybe in your home)? It could be Anne has been deeply hurt by what she has seen in Christianity. Or it could be that, like Jesus’ disciples, the closer she’s drawing to Christ, the more she is made uncomfortable by it. Let’s love her.

The sentiment here is well-meant, and pastorally-intentioned. Of course let's please pray for Anne Rice -- at the very least for the same reason we pray without ceasing for all people, but specifically because her experience is an interesting one which, it seems to me, is not very well understood.

Back in 2005 when she went public with her return to Catholicism, I blogged a bit about her confession of faith and her book Out of Egypt. That book in particular seems to me to be extremely instructive as to what Mrs. Rice experienced -- which was more a bout with intellectual honesty than a turn of faith and repentance.

Because the diversion is brief, I'd encourage you to read those three posts as background to this subject.

However, in doing that, I think that background causes me to wonder whether Dr. Moore is giving truly-pastoral advice, or has merely sentimentalized an approach to this sort of behavior.

It seems to me that Mrs. Rice was very able and willing, in 2005, to turn a thoughtful and critical eye to the common objections to the actual story of the Gospel. She was able to make the critical case against liberal readings of the Gospels because let's face it: she's a literate woman. She read the stories as they were told, and found the case against them to be entirely shallow from a literary, hostorical and academic standpoint.

I choose the word "critical" here specifically because I do not think her effort was "apologetic" in the least -- she was not seeking to give an answer for the hope that lies within her, but was in fact narrating the story of her own coming to terms with the story of Jesus. She was giving an academic assessment of non-christian readings of the Gospels, and found them wanting.

This caused her, in her own words, to return to Catholicism -- the religion of her childhood. And in that, she has also stood up for her own belief in the resurrection of Jesus -- which ought to be no surprise. One of her tour guides through the NT literature is N.T. Wright who, in spite of everything else you might say about him, probably writes most vivaciously about the fact of the bodily resurrection of Christ among everyone in the last 200 years. I mean: he's the guy who coined the term, "the life after life-after-death" to make clear what it is the Christian hope truly is.

So yes: she's all about some reverence for the Gospels as compelling stories about Jesus. And yes: she's all about a resurrection. But let's face it: this week, she made it clear she is also, before all that, about these things:

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. [28 July 2010, 12:36 PM]

It's curious that this is a matter of conscience for her. What does that mean, I wonder? It seems to me that this is entirely a moral issue for her -- to be apart from the group "Christianity" because that group is "quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous." I think the primary question to ask, though, is if this is actually true of Christianity -- is it "deservedly-infamous"? Would Dr. Moore own that statement?

I think probably not -- and he would point out that Mrs. Rice's indictment here is primarily emotive. Her accusations aren't primarily rational but visceral for the sake of another agenda -- so taking this statement to task is not actually very wise because it sets the emotive nature of the statement up for defensive behavior, and for taking reproaches as hostility rather than good advice.

To that I say: fair enough. Maybe it was essentially a "bad day" for Mrs. Rice -- or a "bad 10 years", since that's the scope of her complaint. But hard upon that compaint is this one:

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen. [28 July 2010, 12:41 PM]

This is her list of moral objections -- and as such they are accusations against Christianity, specifically Catholicism (a conflation I'll get to in a minute): it is anti-gay (meaning, I suppose, that it forbids gay marriage and at least formally sets sanctions against homosexual behavior and lifestyles); it is anti-feminist (which, I think, is a radicalization of the term as there is no institution in the history of the world which has done more for women socially than the Christian church -- however, I think she probably means that it forbids women as spiritual leaders, and that she also means something relating to "legal, safe and rare" abortions); anti-birth control (again, I think this is about abortion, but it's also a feminist tent pole that women are oppressed if they must have all the children the sex they participate in conceives); anti-Democrat (I sense a pattern …); anti-secular humanism (a phrase which fits into the flow of the complaints in that it ostensibly points to the greatest common good for mankind through human achievement); anti-science (I infer her to mean anti-stem-cell research, which again is in a specific pattern); and of all things after this list, "anti-life".

It's this list which makes Dr. Moore's comments puzzling. Martin Luther, of course, wrote, "Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam gait, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance." That is, our life is not the life of kicking at the goads against the God who is Love: it is knowing His will for us and then dying to sin in order to live in His new life. Yet there's not a drop of repentance in Mrs. Rice's statement -- it is in fact the antithesis of repentance because it frames the problem of the speaker in terms which rather impugn others for holding strong convictions which have been, historically, in the necessary middle of the faith and the church. Some might say this is transference by Mrs. Rice. I would say rather that it is a refusal to accept guidance in the practical matter of spiritual formation. She does in fact make "Christians" her enemies by framing them as immoral and irredeemable.

But there is more:

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become. [29 July 2010, 4:06 PM][via Facebook]

I find it difficult not to say, "aha!" here. I can't really find a euphemism for the kind of pride it takes to say, "My faith in Christ is central to my life," when one has frankly already made it clear that keeping his commands is simply right out.

It is this analysis of what Mrs. Rice has posted via Facebook that Dr. Moore's advice lacks. Should Mrs. Rice be heckled and run around like Servetus in 16th century Europe? Wow -- of course not. But this is not the only option when she has already drawn up the rules of engagement.

The first measure of one's approach has to go back to the problem of Catholicism -- a problem I suspect Dr. Moore would minimize. Could it be that Mrs. Rice was an honest-to-God Christian inside Catholicism? Of course -- I think I am famous for saying that there are many lousy Catholics who have great faith in Christ. But it seems to me that her faith is fully informed by Catholic dogma, and that the flaws in her acting out in faith are frankly the flaws of all thoughtful people inside Catholicism: because you have to disassociate so many unbiblical teachings from your core faith, you wind up dismantling your ability to respect right-minded religious authority. Because the only authority she has says it is infallible but in truth it is riddled with falsehood, she applies her skepticism of claims to infallibility to the Bible and makes it her own buffet of truths. What Mrs. Rice first needs is to be disabused of Catholicism to recover her faith in the church and in God's authority over her moral and intellectual life.

The second measure of approach has to be challenging her deeply regarding moral standards -- as in, if they exist and what they are. Her view of what is moral is a consequential view formed after many other a priori commitments have ben made. For example, how deeply flawed is the view that it's anti-life to be anti-abortion? Is treating this like it is not open antagonism to God's view of murder actually pastorally-, evangelically- or apologetically-useful?

And the third measure is that Mrs. Rice has to meet some people someplace who are actually Christians -- and not just moralists or political activists or attenders at a pep rally every Sunday. She needs to meet some people who are like the people at the end of Acts 2 -- devoted to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers, together with all things in common, selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need, and day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, receiving their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. This would be an indictment which should stick to us because it is the one which, all told, we wear daily in spite of knowing better.

If she met people like that, I suspect that she would at least have the integrity to take back the ugly things she said. But Dr. Moore's approach to this seems to me to ensure that nobody would treat her as if she said anything wrong. She has said something wrong, and someone needs to be a true friend to her and tell her the depths of her mistakes here -- which do put her at enmity with God and His people.

But, to close up here, this is where Christianity is above all false religions: those who are our enemies can be reconciled -- in fact, this is the purpose of our faith. Christ died that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Be reconciled to God, Mrs. Rice. And in that, come prepared to repent for the sake of whom you have believed.

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From the brainium of....

by Dan Phillips

Warning: a lot of this is going to be an uncharacteristically stream-of-consciousness post. It's a post about posting. Kind like The Garr... er, this TV show from the '80s. Hate that kind of post? Don't read! Insist on reading anyway so you can complain? Embrace the concept having your name displayed with "removed by administrator" under it { echo } for all eternity { /echo }. Or for awhile, anyway.

So I have several post-ideas in my head, but nothing fully-formed enough for the demanding standards of Pyro readers... or anyway, for the demanding standards I have for posts I'll offer to Pyro readers. This one being an exception. Instead, you get a peek into my processes, if you want one. If you don't, then... hey, why are you still here?

Before I'll post something at Pyro, it has to be bullet-proof. I know it will be read by all sorts of folks, friendly and un-, mature and im-, Christian and non-, far-better-educated and not, with shoulders both bechipped and chipless. So I do the very best God enables me to do to tailor it to help, serve, and/or withstand the scrutiny of each.

As part of that discipline, I do my best proactively to anticipate and head off misunderstandings and silly dodges or shallow counters or kneejerk reactions. Still, I've never found a way to counter the wisdom of Proverbs 27:22. If a category-5 reader is dead-set on misunderstanding or not "seeing," no effort suffices.

HSAT, I have two posts that aren't There yet. They're ideas for the next two posts in the sufficiency of Scripture series. But the combination of work, family, and a project I hope to tell you about next week have kept me from sitting down and doing the necessary prep for those particular posts.

Other posts on The Intrawebs caught my eye, but aren't really quite up to a full post. The one on types of commenters (linked above) is interesting... but I don't think I could make a whole Pyro-worthy post.

Christianity Astray Today caught my eye twice. Once for an essay on "Lost" that I think might actually deserve some of the opprobrium one or two people flinged flang cast at mine.

The other is an irritating little article, ostensibly about Profs. Waltke, Longman, Walton and other OT scholars who have gotten into some degree of agua caliente for things they've said about Genesis. But it is an article that seems to have no purpose for being. It's titled Adamant on Adam, but there is no pay-off to the title whatever. It's just there to be cute, as far as I can tell.

The piece narrates what happened after Waltke basically likened anyone who doesn't kowtow before evolutionists to cultists; or after Longman made some ridiculous comments about the historicity of Adam. But reading the article, it looks like everyone's still friends, it was no big deal... and you really don't get why (for instance) RTS let Waltke go. Not a good reason, anyway. The profs are unrepentant, their reputations intact... you get the impression that the institutions are just reluctantly doing what they do out of concern to keep donors happy, and nothing else. No big issues here.

Ah, but this is probably the money-quote for CT's perspective:

Tensions continue between Christian scholars and their institutions over how to present the findings of science while upholding theological convictions

Well, there it is, isn't it? On the one hand we have "Christian scholars" (presumably every last one of them, in monolithic lockstep; anyone who differs can't really be a scholar) and "the findings of science" (again, a monolith — the findings are sure, and all of Science is agreed on interpretation). On the other hand we have "their institutions."

CT evidently is not able to find any dissenters. It can find Howard Van Till, who sneers that "The general constituency of the evangelical community is lagging way behind the teachers at its own colleges and universities." Perhaps; but lags behind in what regard?

You know, I expect that sort of thing from CNN, Reuters, AP.

But from Christianity Today?


....


Well, okay, now that I mention it, yes, I do expect it from them, anymore.

It's sad when you're old enough to remember CT as a great, cutting-edge Christian magazine. You probably weren't born yet. Those days are long, long gone.

One last thing in the works: I have something of an announcement to make, but am not quite ready. A less compulsive person would just go for it, but I'm waiting to have something in hand. Then I'll spill.

So now you know all that. A post made up of things not ready for a post.

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Whither Evangelicalism?

by Phil Johnson



vangelicalism regularly comes under attack from all sides, and let's face it: a lot of the criticism leveled against evangelicals is well deserved. Although I hold firmly to historic evangelical doctrine, I thoroughly despise what the contemporary evangelical movement has become.

That's an important distinction. Evangelical doctrine and the evangelical movement are not the same thing. Nowadays they often look like polar opposites. The movement we usually label "evangelical" abandoned its own doctrinal foundation long ago. The average evangelical today couldn't even tell you what the original doctrinal distinctives of classic evangelicalism were.

In fact, post-modern evangelicals don't really have any clear doctrinal identity. No less than Christianity Today has suggested that diversity is what now defines the movement. That's close, but I'd be inclined to say that the singular characteristic that stands out most among contemporary evangelicals is their distaste for drawing any clear lines between truth and error. They don't like to handle doctrine in a polemical fashion. They especially don't want to be thought "negative" when it comes to declaring their doctrinal convictions. They don't want anyone to think they are "against" what someone else teaches. (What a gauche, fundamentalist attitude that would be!) Almost everything is negotiable within the broad evangelical movement of today.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones saw this trend coming and warned against it. In 1971, during a visit to Austria, he gave a series of lectures that were compiled and published as a booklet, "What Is an Evangelical?" If you haven't read it, you should. Among other things, he wrote,

One of the first signs that a man is ceasing to be truly evangelical is that he ceases to be concerned about negatives, and keeps saying, We must always be positive. I will give you a striking example of this in a man whose name is familiar to most of you, and some of whose books you have read. This is what he has written recently: 'Whether a person is an evangelical is to be settled by reference to how he stands with respect to six points', which he then enumerates. His definition is by reference only to what a person is for rather than to what he is against. He goes on: 'What a man is, or is not, against may show him to be a muddled or negligent or inconsistent evangelical, but you may not deny his right to call himself an evangelical while he maintains these principles as the basis of his Christian position.'

Now that is the kind of statement which I would strongly contend against. I believe it is quite wrong. The argument which says that you must always be positive, that you must not define the man in terms of what he is against, as well as what he is for, misses the subtlety of the danger.

Lloyd Jones warned that doctrinal indifferentism was beginning to drive the evangelical agenda, and he knew that would spell the ultimate demise of the evangelical movement as a truly evangelical entity.

He was right. In many ways and in several contexts, he predicted with spot-on accuracy what was coming. Check his books Preaching and Preachers or Puritanism—or almost anything Lloyd-jones wrote. He warned that neo-evangelical compromise would lead to neo-orthodox doctrines. (That's what the Emerging Church movement signifies, by the way—the triumph of neo-orthodoxy in the evangelical movement.) He predicted the demise of preaching in evangelical circles. He saw forty years ago that doctrinal indifferentism was eating away the foundations of evangelical conviction, and he tried to sound a warning. He was absolutely right.

The evangelical movement that our grandparents and great-grandparents knew is dead. Evangelical principles live on here and there, but the label has been commandeered by people who have no right to it. It has been bartered away by those who promised to be the movement's guardians and mouthpieces—Christianity Today and the National Association of evangelicals being among the chief culprits. But rank-and-file evangelicals are to blame as well, because they were content to abandon their own heritage and run after cheap amusements. The average American today thinks evangelicalism is a political position or a religious ghetto rather than a set of biblical beliefs.

I frankly don't care if neo-evangelicalism dies as a movement. Frankly, I hope it does—the sooner, the better.

Meanwhile, we need to remember that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Public relations, fad-chasing, and the combined clout of a large politically-driven movement add nothing to the saving power of the gospel; rather, they deflect it.

Church history teaches us another important lesson: The gospel has only rarely made great gains on the back of massive, popular movements. It's the quiet, sometimes unrecognized and unsung labors of faithful individuals that often result in the most profound, long-term impact for the kingdom of God.

Furthermore, the truth will eventually defeat every error and outlast every fad. We ought to pursue the truth and distrust the fads, not vice versa.

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What in heaven's name?

The steady march of Christianity Today toward a kind of modified universalism
by Phil Johnson

A few years ago, when Pulpit Magazine had multiple departments and was updated only once a month, I wrote a column in which we regularly chronicled and critiqued the cavalcade of errors that parade themselves each month in the pages of evangelicalism's house organ, Christianity Today. I'm perpetually amazed at how far from evangelical principles that magazine can stray and yet continue to pretend it's the voice of mainstream evangelicalism.

What follows is a column I wrote in 2003. Unlike most things I write, I kept no copy of this article on my computer, and when they took down the old Pulpit archives, I thought it was gone forever. But I recently found a backup copy I had made on my mom's computer. Here it is for your reading pleasure:

eter Kreeft, former Protestant apologist, recent convert to Roman Catholicism, renowned professor of Philosophy at Boston College, and author of more than 40 books, wrote a dreadful book a few years back, oxymoronically titled Ecumenical Jihad (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996).

The book took the ecumenical rationale behind Protestant-Catholic alliances like "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" to the next logical step. Kreeft claims the only viable solution to what ails modern society is for all the world's religions to unite.

Kreeft, whom many still regard as an articulate foe of postmodern secular moral relativism, is actually arguing for religious pluralism (which is nothing but a different form of moral relativism). He is convinced that Christians have no hope of winning the "culture war" unless they abandon the exclusivity of the gospel's claims and forge ecumenical alliances with all the world's major religions—including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.

According to Kreeft, Christians "can and should investigate and learn from the wisdom of other religions" (p. 79). And why not? Kreeft thinks "the Holy Spirit seems to be working in other religions . . .. In studying His works, we are not studying something foreign and threatening, we are studying the Spirit and works of God, wherever His breath blows" (p. 83). Kreeft insists that "the very same God we worship in Christ is the God the Jews—and the Muslims—worship" (p. 160). Not only that; he also believes even "truth-seeking" agnostics and atheists may be unknowingly worshiping the true God "under this divine attribute of truth" (p. 161).

Kreeft is convinced that if all the religions of the world do not immediately embrace one another and form an alliance, we will lose the war against secularism. "I think it is very likely that the time will soon come—perhaps it is already here—when the emergency is so great that prudence dictates a moratorium on our polemics against each other and our attempts to convert one another" (p. 38). "There is no need for any competition. There is plenty of truth to go around" (p. 83).

Peter Kreeft's large-heartedness toward other religions has not dampened his enthusiasm for the Roman Catholic agenda. He makes this clear throughout his book, but it is best seen in a chapter near the end of the book titled "The Eucharist and Ecumenism," which Kreeft closes by promising that "the power that will reunite the Church and win the world is Eucharistic adoration" (p. 164).

He is speaking, of course, about the Roman Catholic practice of worshiping the communion wafer, based on Rome's teaching that the elements at the Lord's Table literally become blood and flesh by transubstantiation. Kreeft isn't quite clear why he believes this (of all things) might now have some mystical power to bring unity among the world's religions—especially since "eucharistic adoration" was universally condemned by the Reformers as idolatry, and both Jews and Muslims also regard the practice as idolatrous. But on the closing page of his book Kreeft once again solemnly assures readers that "the distinctly Catholic devotion of the Eucharist (and to Mary) may prove to be the key to victory in ecumenism and in the 'culture war'" (p. 172).

The book's back cover carries endorsements by Protestant ecumenists Charles Colson and J. I. Packer. Colson says of Kreeft, "On the front lines in today's culture war, Kreeft is one of our most valiant intellectual warriors." Packer's infamous endorsement says,

This racy little book opens up a far-reaching theme. With entertaining insight Kreeft looks into the attitudes, alliances, and strategies that today's state of affairs requires of believers. Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox alike need to ponder Peter Kreeft's vision of things—preferably, in discussion together. What if he is right?

Of course, if Kreeft were right, truth wouldn't matter much anyway. If he were right, religion in general would be a more potent force against the powers of evil than the truth of Christ in particular—and that notion is both antichristian and historically inaccurate. So Kreeft is not right. And Packer, of all people, surely knows this.

Anyway, the most talked-about chapter in Kreeft's book is a chapter titled "What Christians Can Learn from Confucius, Buddha, Muhammad, and Moses." Here Kreeft chronicles an out-of-body experience (OBE) he claims he had while storm-surfing off Hawaii in the wake of Hurricane Felix. Kreeft says a wave broke over him and he nearly drowned. His mind left his body, and he experienced not heaven, but purgatory (p. 96)—which is what all good Catholic philosophers experience in their OBEs.

Perhaps Kreeft is merely being whimsical. If so, he does not admit it. He tells the story as if it really happened. He even prefaces it with this: "Whether what I experienced was Heaven or earth, I cannot say. Whether it was real or unreal, objective truth or subjective fantasy, I cannot say. All I can say is that it was certainly truer, incomparably truer, than the chapter I was planning to write. That's why I threw the old one away" (p. 86).

One wonders what kind of drivel must have been in the original draft of the chapter. In any case, if Kreeft's OBE account is "incomparably truer," it's a really good thing he threw the original draft away.

Kreeft's vision of the afterlife begins "on a Heavenly beach" (p. 86)—which turns out to be only "the outskirts of Heaven, the place you call Purgatory" (p. 96). Here he encounters and converses with Confucius, Buddha, Muhammad, and Moses, all in succession.



Each one of those historic religious figures qualifies for heaven, in Kreeft's view, because he thinks they all taught moral principles compatible with the teaching of Christ. Whatever may be faulty about their views is simply going to be refined in purgatory. In fact, when Kreeft's vision of Buddha employs a biblical allusion, Kreeft decides that Buddha must have "had a theological crash course somewhere in Heaven" (p. 92).

But when Kreeft meets Muhammad, the voice of the Lord solemnly tells him, "He will teach you the heart and soul of all true religion" (p. 98).

Kreeft says he was originally dumbfounded by Muhammad's presence in heaven. But then this exchange took place:

I turned the conversation to another point. "Are you a Christian now or a Muslim?"

He gave what seemed to me an evasive answer: "Why do you say 'or'? How can one be a Christian without islam to the one God?"

Because I thought his answer evasive, I challenged him more directly. "If you come from Heaven and not from Hell, what do you say to this?" And I whipped out my Rosary and held aloft the crucifix, as I would to Dracula. To my wondering eyes, Muhammad fell to his knees and crossed himself. My response was the only possible one: I bowed the knees of my mind to the words of a man who had bowed his knees to my Lord and His Mother . . .. (pp. 99-100).

And on it goes. Kreeft clearly has an unbiblical view of heaven and a faulty understanding of the gospel. And if he truly got this vision of heaven during an OBE and takes it seriously, then that's all the more reason not to take him seriously.

But when the editors of Christianity Today recently posted an article on heaven at their Web site, guess whom they got to explain "What Heaven Will Be Like" to their readers?

That's right. Peter Kreeft.

The article is filled with speculative, unbiblical, and fanciful reflections from Kreeft's philosophical mind. References to Scripture are few. And Kreeft's answers are often hopelessly vague or incomplete. For example, his answer to the question "How do you get to heaven?" (A: "It is free.") utterly ignores all the most significant points of the gospel—sin, atonement, repentance, and the cross and resurrection of Christ. In reply to the one question that most deserves a distinctively biblical and Christian answer, Kreeft dropped the ball.

No wonder. Kreeft doesn't think it's necessary to believe anything about Christ in order to get to heaven. He says (in his answer to question 34) that he believes "good pagans, Hindus, et cetera" will go to heaven.

He writes,

People who have never heard of Christ, and thus have neither consciously accepted him nor consciously rejected him, must also get to Heaven through Christ, for there is no other way. That much is clear from Christ's own words. But it is not clear what is going on in the unconscious depths of the souls of such people. Only God knows. Perhaps they know and love him in the obscure form of a deep, unconscious desire and love.

The article is just another sign that the editors of Christianity Today have self-consciously embraced inclusivism (the belief that heaven will be populated with people who have no explicit knowledge of Christ or faith in Him). And they are trying to position that view as a kind of moderate middle ground between rank universalism and the biblical view that faith in Christ is necessary, because "he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God" (John 3:18).

Kreeft echoes the Roman Catholic view that faith may be merely "implicit":

Christ the Savior is not only a 33-year-old, 6-foot-high Jewish man, but also the eternal God, the Logos that enlightens every individual (John 1:9). Thus everyone has a fair chance to accept him or reject him, whether implicitly (for all light of truth and goodness is from him) or explicitly. We are not saved by how explicit our knowledge is; we are saved by him.

He tries to defend the historical pedigree of inclusivism:

This is a traditional, mainline Christian position, from the time of Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria to the time of C. S. Lewis. It is halfway between the liberal view that one can be saved in other ways than Christ (for example, by good intentions) and the frequent fundamentalist view that it takes an explicit knowledge of Christ to be saved.

That, again, is precisely the position CT's editors now take. The book review section recently panned a universalist book for trivializing grace. But in the process, the editor was compelled to add this:

Note that there's a significant distinction between universalism—the view that all people will be saved, indeed, in some versions, that Satan himself will one day be redeemed—and the position often called "inclusivism," according to which people who have not knowingly accepted Christ may nevertheless be saved by his sacrifice on the cross, for God can read their hearts.

Three years ago, the same editor gave a sympathetic report on a lecture series at Wheaton College where John Sanders (of Open Theism fame) was advocating inclusivism. Sanders echoed Peter Kreeft's views on a number of key points, saying he sees "a remarkable similarity in the discussions about the divine nature in the major religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."

That article closed with another paragraph attempting to portray inclusivism as a mainstream position:

In his lecture, which was followed by a lively question-period, Sanders took pains to emphasize that his view can be placed in a long Christian tradition that includes C.S. Lewis, John Wesley, and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Whatever its merits, it cannot therefore be dismissed, as some would wish, as a capitulation to the fashions of contemporary culture.

Certainly there have been individuals in the evangelical movement who have seemed to feel the lure of inclusivism. But has it ever really been a mainstream view among evangelicals? Certainly not. CT's rejection of the exclusivity of Christ is just more evidence of how far that magazine has strayed from her Protestant evangelical heritage.

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