Unfathomable unbelief (re-post)

by Dan Phillips

Of course, Phil's Po-Motivator makes this post from December of 2007 a "win" all by itself. But I thought it timely as well.

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And he said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?" (Luke 24:38)

Is this really a rhetorical question?

Our unbelief has to be unfathomable to God, as was the disciples' to Christ. It is as if He were saying,

"What basis have I ever given you for doubting Me? I told you that I would be rejected, handed over to the chief priests and scribes, beaten, condemned, crucified, killed (Luke 9:22, 44; 18:31-33). You didn't believe that would happen, but it did. I also said I'd rise again from the dead (Luke 18:33). Did you disbelieve? Again? Why?"

To say that God knows and understands all things is not to say that God finds everything understandable, if you take my meaning.

It is clear that the Lord does not see doubt as a virtue. But beyond even that, He seems to find unbelief unbelievable.

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First book down; what next?

by Dan Phillips

Last Sunday I preached the thirty-first and final sermon on Paul's letter to Titus. That's the first book I've preached through in Copperfield Bible Church's Sunday services.

When I started the series, I was surprised not to be able to find many in-depth preaching series online. Oddly, the longest was (as I recall) that by A. W. Tozer (mine is now longer). What I heard was idiosyncratic and helpful. One line in particularly struck me, and I used it: "When Paul couldn't go, he sent Titus; when he couldn't stay, he left Titus."

Also, I found that I didn't like any of the book's outlines that I found. Most seemed very perfunctory, and not very thoughtful. They missed the point of the book, and the flow of Paul's thought. It forced me to sweat out an outline which I thought did better justice to what Paul was saying, and that in turn helped my preaching immensely.

The series easily could have been twice as long, if I'd taken more of what is called a "categorical" approach. This method expounds verses in sequence, but also takes them as opportunities to expand on the doctrine mentioned or assumed in the verse. I think there's value to such an approach, and my sermons are sometimes hybrids in that direction. For instance, when Paul called himself a "slave" and an "apostle," I expanded on what each term meant. When Paul used words like "faith" and "elect," I expanded on them as well; and so forth.

But I could have done that to a much greater degree, and headed towards that land inhabited by men such as D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who would preach an entire sermon (or two!) on a single word in a verse.

My design however was both to expound the words in the verses, and expound the verses in the book. I meant never to lose sight of the immediate nor larger (book) context.

That is a down-side of verse by verse exposition. Hearers can end up having heard episodic preaching on individual trees, with no feel of the forest. I'm old enough to remember when TV was virtually always that way. There was no larger "arc." Each week, Dick van Dyke and his TV family had some other whacky adventure. They were amusing, and they went nowhere.

For my part, I like the reputed approach of the old country preacher: "First, I tell them what I'm gonna tell them; then, I tell them; then, I tell them what I told them."

So the first sermon in the series was an introduction to and overview of the entire book. The last sermon was a single sermon, preached with only skeletal notes, on the entire book, incorporating highlights and keeping the flow and Paul's burden in writing.

I absolutely loved it. Titus is an amazingly contemporary book. It is a potent tour-de-force on some absolutely horrendous notions of faith and grace and Gospel and Christian living. With God's own wisdom, it speaks to Post-Modernism and contextualization; to various church-growth strategies and philosophies; to Gutless Gracers and muzzy mystics; to real-live age-ism and racism and the good and false approaches to each; and to a whole lot more.

I'm going to miss it!

But the next series should be fun. It will be on the first chapter of the book of...

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Now! Get Blogging!

This Friday, to commemorate the stellar contributions to internet apologetics and punditry made by our founder and benefactor, Phil Johnson, the unpaid and overworked staff at TeamPyro is posting a "best of Phil" post to give your weekend that necessary kick.

This excerpt is from the original PyroManiac blog on June 2005, on the topic of the trend at the time of people starting blogs.

For the sake of irony, the comments are closed.

Virtual drinking guilds and smoking-fraternity group blogs are all the rage these days—especially those devoted to picking fights about theology and religion. Here's a step-by-step guide to everything you need to start your own similar frat-house-cum-religious-debate blog. Follow my advice, and you and your coterie of compadres can soon be starting your own theological food-fights in the virtual realm, just like the Big Boys:

1. You have to have a clever name. Pub-names (as well as names of famous writers' brotherhoods who once hung out in pubs) have been done to death. Yawn. Try something fresh: adapt the name of your favorite sports team ("Manchester Separated"), motorcycle club ("Heaven's Devils"), fast-food joint ("Bloggo Bell") or something similar. (I don't think "Posse Blogitatus" has been used yet. Whoever takes it first can have it, courtesy of the PyroManiac.)
   
2. Recruit five to ten contributors with major attitudes. They don't necessarily have to be able to think; but they must be outspoken. Some of the über-bad-boy bloggers use copious amounts of brew to achieve the desired effect. I don't recommend this. Your blogger-team can include women, but they must be kept mostly in the background—and it's good if they at least try to be cruder than the guys.
   
3. Always blur lines. Especially blur the lines between humor and malevolence; between cleverness and bad taste; and between fresh thinking and old heresies. Mock what is sacred and celebrate what is worldly, but never do this overtly or without a disclaimer—no matter how insincere the disclaimer.
   
4. Speaking of fresh thinking, be careful to guard against affirming any old ideas. You don't want to be thought of as too staid. You must be provocative if you are going to compete in the cutting-edge religious-frat-house-blog marketplace. If you are concerned about retaining your good standing in your church or some Christian organization that you work for, you don't really need to advocate anything unorthodox to accomplish this. It's sufficient just to question the old orthodoxies.
   
5. In fact, be careful not to affirm too much of anything. Instead, ask questions; raise doubts; stir controversy; foment scepticism. Again, always include the requisite disclaimers.
   
6. Tolerate no criticism from readers. You might have to turn off the comments at your blog if your blog-team isn't clever enough to answer detractors. (By "answer" I mean, of course, that you need to insult and belittle them with personal put-downs.) One blog ran out of insults before running out of critics, so they devised a brilliant all-purpose answer for every criticism: Just tell people you are having a "private" conversation, so would-be critics of your ideas should pay you no mind. Inventive, huh?
   
7. Now, here's the coup de grâce—a virtual cheat-sheet so that when you can't think of anything truly clever, you can still sound theologically erudite: Do-It-Yourself Impressive Theological Constructs®.

Voila! Your own group blog.

Now get blogging.

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You Can't Have True Unity in Christ Without a Fight

by Phil Johnson



    love the idea of unity built on a gospel foundation, but the success or failure of that idea hinges on our understanding of and commitment to a true, unadulterated, biblical understanding of the gospel. We know from both Scripture and the hard-fought lessons of church history that not everyone who says he is committed to the gospel really is. Not everyone who claims to stand with us in affirming gospel truth is really interested in doing the work of the Great Commission. Not everyone who signs an evangelical confession of faith actually preaches the gospel.

Some people who use a lot of gospel words actually peddle a different gospel that is nothing like the apostolic message. Invariably, the very same people who openly advocate (re)imagining Christianity also seek mainstream acceptance. The Emergent(ing) Church Movement melted down as a movement, but it hasn't gone away. Multitudes who thought the emergents' New Kind of Christianity was a Truly Great Idea have simply been dispersed back into the large shallow end of the evangelical community—where hardly anyone is willing to engage in any kind of controversy to stanch their influence.

But if we truly want any kind of gospel-based unity, we have to be willing to defend the gospel together. The gospel is not only the ground on which we unite with other believers, it is also ground we must earnestly defend against false teachers. You cannot achieve true unity unless you vigorously pursue both of those goals.

I'm just sayin' . . .

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The importance of "not"; or, Machen's zombies

by Dan Phillips

Listening to Moisés Silva's lectures on Galatians at Westminster sent me back to Galatians 1:1. I have long noted (as has everyone and his uncle) that Galatians is a "hot" letter, a letter that hits the ground running and is very aggressive, alarmed, and passionate in tone. The entire first chapter makes that impression with crystal clarity, and Paul really doesn't let up until he has thrown down the quill.

But here I single out the very first three words in the letter: Παῦλος ἀπόστολος οὐκ. To break them down, we have:

1. Παῦλος (Paulos) — his name, "Paul."
2. ἀπόστολος (apostolos) — his office, "an apostle," a plenipotentiary of Christ, speaking on His behalf and with His authority.
3. οὐκ (ouk) — "not."

Third word is "not." That didn't take long. No other letter starts like that.  "Paul, apostle —not..."

To open up the impact of this abrupt negation, I offer the podium at length to a guest writer. Sir, the floor is yours.

[The third word] is a word that is now regarded as highly objectionable, a word that Paul, if he had been what modern men would have desired him to be, never would have used. It is the small but weighty word "not." "Paul an apostle," he says, "not from men nor through a man, but...."

That word "not," we are today constantly being told, ought to be put out of the Christian's vocabulary. Our preaching, we are told, ought to be positive and not negative; we ought to present the truth, but ought not to attack error; we ought to avoid controversy and always seek peace.

With regard to such a program, it may be said at least that if we hold to it we might just as well close up our New Testaments; for the New Testament is a controversial book almost from beginning to end. That is of course true with regard to the Epistles of Paul. They, at least, are full of argument and controversy—no question, certainly, can be raised about that. Even the hymn to Christian love in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians is an integral part of a great controversial passage with regard to a false use of the spiritual gifts.That glorious hymn never would have been written if Paul had been averse to controversy and had sought peace at any price. But the same thing is true also of the words of Jesus. They too—I think we can say it reverently—are full of controversy. He presented His righteousness sharply over against the other righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.

That is simply in accordance with a fundamental law of the human mind. All definition is by way of exclusion. You cannot say clearly what a thing is without contrasting it with what it is not.

When that fundamental law is violated, we find nothing but a fog. Have you ever listened to this boasted non-controversial preaching, this preaching that is positive and not negative, this teaching that tries to present truth without attacking error? What impression does it make upon your mind? We will tell you what impression it makes upon ours. It makes the impression of utter inanity. We are simply unable to make head or tail of it. It consists for the most part of words and nothing more. Certainly it is as far as possible removed from the sharp, clear warnings, and the clear and glorious promises, of Holy Writ.

No, there is one word which every true Christian must learn to use. It is the word "not" or the word "No." A Christian must certainly learn to say "No" in the field of conduct; there are some things that the world does, which he cannot do. But he must also learn to say "No" in the field of conviction. The world regards as foolishness the gospel upon which the Christian life is based, and the Christian who does not speak out against the denial of the gospel is certainly not faithful to his Lord.

...The Church of our day needs above all else men who can say "No"; for it is only men who can say "No," men who are brave enough to take a stand against sin and error in the Church—it is only such men who can really say "Yea and amen" to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We know not in detail what will take place when the great revival comes, the great revival for which we long, when the Spirit of God will sweep over the Church like a mighty flood. But one thing we do know—when that great day comes, the present feeble aversion to "controversy," the present cowardly unwillingness to take sides in the age-long issue between faith and unbelief in the Church—will at once be swept aside. There is not a trace of such an attitude in God's holy Word. That attitude is just Satan's way of trying to deceive the people of God; peace and indifferentist church-unionism and aversion to controversy, as they are found in the modern Church, are just the fine garments that cover the ancient enemy, unbelief.

May God send us men who are not deceived, men who will respond to the forces of unbelief and compromise now so largely dominant in the visible Church with a brave and unqualified "No"! Paul was such a man in his day. He said "No" in the very first word of this Epistle, after the bare name and title of the author; and that word gives the key to the whole Epistle that follows. The Epistle to the Galatians is a polemic, a fighting Epistle from beginning to end. What a fire it kindled at the time of the Reformation! May it kindle another fire in our day—not a fire that will destroy any fine or noble or Christian thing, but a fire of Christian love in hearts grown cold!

Timely words. This brother certainly understands the current scene here in 2011, doesn't he? Not only in some churches and movements, but in some would-be leaders and speakers and writers in various venues, wouldn't you say? We really should invite this guy to become a Pyro.

The trouble with that (as many of you recognized right away) is that the writer has been with the Lord for many decades. The "now" and "modern" time of which he wrote was the 1930s, for the writer was the great J. Gresham Machen, writing on pages 6-8 of his collected notes on Galatians. I quoted with only the addition of a bit of emphasis.

This is the great thing that even a bit of knowledge of history gives to anyone looking at the Emerg* crowd and all the wannabes and spin-offs and penumbrae. They present themselves as deep, nuanced, cutting-edge pioneers, when all they are for all the world are Machen's zombies. Machen (and his fellows) killed those errors dead eighty years ago; but here they are again, shambling about in search of fresh brains to devour.

I said "Machen's zombies," but should I perhaps say "Paul's zombies"? Hadn't the great apostle also killed the same errors dead two millennia earlier? He did. But as always there are dainty-souled men who consider themselves so much smarter than Machen, than Owen, than Calvin, than Augustine, than Paul; and, in the final analysis, so much smarter than God.

But are they really?

They are not.

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Open Letter to Roger Olson

by Frank Turk
Dear Dr. Olson;

I thought I was going to be a fan of yours back when you published the level-headed IVP classic Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities in 2006. It helped me get over my own vestiges of cage-stage Calvinism, and it's a fine discussion of the Arminian theology. I like someone who puts a little of his own fat in the fire when it comes to explanation and argumentation, so I appreciated that really, what you wanted was to engage some of the daffier calvinist apologetics and counter-apologetics with some salt and vinegar, and I say good on you.

That, of course, doesn't finally persuade me that you have the better systematics or even approach to theology, church and evangelism, but I credit you for being a sound in-house adversary for what you believe.

Now, from there, you have sort of come apart. In 2007, you wrote Reformed and Always Reforming which essentially dumped the premise that theological conservatism is plausible as a contemporary system of belief. In 2009, you wrote your own book-length endorsement of the execrable The Shack which even Tim Challies panned (both your book, and The Shack). And a few weeks ago you bottomed out by appearing on Doug Pagitt's radio show to spend some time with him essentially doing to calvinists what you say they have been doing to others for at least a decade.

It was an unimpressive exchange as you and Pagitt essentially tittered at your own opinions of the psychology of the Young, Restless and Reformed movement, and simply asserted that there's nothing to it but immaturity. It's rather hilarious that, now that Doug is himself no longer a young man, he can position himself as the elder brother to these poor misguided sops and talk down to them for doing to his theology what he did to the theology of his elders back when he was their age -- with no sense of irony or self-deprecation.

But to listen to you dive into this as if it's any kind of balanced or even instructive approach to the differences between your stated views and the stated views of these young fellows is disappointing. It trivializes your previously-decent work and sets you on a path of obscurity along with Pagitt and his cronies at Solomon's Porch.

Now, here's what I think: I think you're a christian and a clever fellow who doesn't want to be a Calvinist -- but the only non-Calvinists you can find are the guys like Pagitt who think that even the term "evangelical" can mean anything you want it to mean, but who are also willing to tell people who believe the book of Romans preaches sin and forgiveness to English-speaking people that they have reduces the letter to 4 statements and a prayer.

If you want to be non-Calvinist, or even anti-Calvinist, I say super: have at it. You don't have to affirm every statement of the Westminster Confession to be a decent Christian. But when you start hanging out with guys like Doug Pagitt because you can't find any actual Christian friends to agree with you about guys like me, I wonder what exactly you're looking for from me. If my fault -- because I am one of these new Calvinists -- is that I want to define the faith in terms of one systematic theology only, is it a virtue to define the faith as anything which includes the word Jesus in it once in a while?

Is that Arminian theology? Does that do good to the reputation of God? It worries me that you might think so. If you do, please repent.

I hope this find you in good spirits and in God's good graces.

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Why the Emergent "Movement" Keeps Stalling

by Phil Johnson

• For all their talk about community, Emergents are too individualistic to hang together.
  
  
• For all their talk about conversation, Emergents mainly just like to hear themselves prattle.
  
  
• For all their talk about humility, Emergents begin with an incorrigibly arrogant worldview.

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I Had Nothing to Do with This

by Phil Johnson

he music department at Grace Community Church used this white board to plan the order of service for each session of the Shepherds' Conference:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

ere's what the white board looked like after some anonymous miscreant (a seminary student enjoying Spring Break, perhaps) used it to reimagine what "The Shepherds' Conversation" might look like if we had been prone to follow the evangelical drift of the past couple of decades:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

I'm not saying how I got the pictures, either.

EXTRA: One of our readers, Ric Kolseth, made a version of the graphic that changes on mouseovers, making it easier to compare the two versions. I now have a whole new appreciation for the level of detail that went into the scheduling process for next year's "Shepherds' Conversation." If they would just add a seminar for Scot McKnight to give us a more detailed deconstruction of the question Martin Bashir kept asking Rob Bell, along with Scot's own apologia for Bell's brand of universalism, we could all sleep easier.

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(BTW, I'm still convalescing; I'll be back at the blog April 4, Lord willing. If you're waiting for me to reply to an e-mail, snail-mail letter, or any other query, I'm doing my best to catch up. Thanks for your patience.)

How to think: two ways

by Dan Phillips

How can we figure out what to think about the big issues of spiritual import?

Well, we can ask a lot of questions, all centered around ourselves, or centered around other people. We can, for instance, ask how a concept makes us feel. We can ask whether it makes sense to us. We can test whether it fits the contours of our own personal thought. We can propose paradigms and syllogisms of our own crafting.

We can get into dialogue with others, and listen to them. We can hear their stories, and let those stories move us and mold and form our thinking. We can get a broader sample by reading bios, looking at polls, reading the mainstream media. We can embrace their questions and their rationales and their hierarchies, let them set the agenda for the endeavor.

We can sample this and that "faith-tradition," as broadly as we care to do. See what other men and women have done with it in the name of religion. If it important to us to be seen as (or to see ourselves as) cosmopolitan, we can search the world over 'till we think we find true love.

Then, once we've formed what feels right, what makes sense, what appeals, what best suits us — then, I say, we can launch, journey, and arrive.

Or.

Or we can be Christians.

While you're either looking for me to qualify that antithesis, or preparing to demand that I do so, let me just double-down by insisting that I mean exactly what I say. Thinking like a Christian, and thinking like anything else, are two fundamentally distinct processes. They are as different as night and day, and as irreconcilable as left and right.

There are fundamentally two ways to approach any concept, and only two. We can start with God and His Word, or we can start somewhere else; and the "somewhere else" usually boils down to ourselves. This is a philosophical methodology of ancient coinage.

My text here — one of many possible — is Proverbs 1:7.

The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge;
Wisdom and discipline, dense people belittle. (DJP)

"Beginning" here can mean several things. I bat this around in my book on Proverbs, and explain that I think it means beginning in the sense of starting-place. It is the starting-place not in that we check the box and move on, but in the sense that, if we don't start with the fear of Yahweh, we won't get anywhere in knowledge or wisdom. I liken it to the alphabet. You don't get anywhere with reading without knowing the alphabet; but, having started with the alphabet, you never discard it. You use it constantly, because it permeates all you do when you read.


So likewise the fear of Yahweh is the starting-place of knowledge, and of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). We start there, or we get nowhere. And, having started there, we never leave it, because it permeates every thought and every chain of reasoning.


It would help to gain a more precise grip of what fear of Yahweh means, then. It has little to do with emotion, or with vapory notions of a mystical awe. Most frequently we find it in a pretty concrete sense in the OT. Kidner well says that is the fear of Yahweh is “that filial relationship which, in the most positive of senses, puts us securely in our place, and God in His” (on Nehemiah 9:32, in Ezra & Nehemiah [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1979], 113).

The fear of Yahweh is a mindframe that reverses Genesis 3, in effect. Eve was motivated by self-concern. The repentant believer is motivated by God-concern (cf. Deuteronomy 6:5ff.). Eve decided to test God's Word by her judgment and experience. The repentant believer tests his judgment and experience by God's Word.

So when the first sort of person we discussed finds that he, or many people, are repulsed by a concept affirmed in the Bible, he's all aflutter to appease the crowd or himself. He is greatly moved by reports (or sensations) of being repulsed, turned off, devastated, psychologically crushed, terrified or traumatized by that Biblical tenet. He'll go to great lengths to quiet those negative feelings or reactions; if the Bible doesn't yield peaceably, so much the worse for it.

By stark contrast, the second sort views the lot and says, "So? What of it?" He has abdicated the throne, and he doesn't forget it. God is Lord of his thinking. His first question is not "How do I feel about this?" nor "How do others feel about this?" His first question is "What does God say about this?"

Perhaps another way of seeing it is in what moves, when push comes to shove. The first sort of person, confronted with uncongenial truths in the Bible, will ignore them, deny them, question them, fiddle with them, redefine them to oblivion, or otherwise sweep them under the rug. In his case, it is no questions: the truths are what must be moved.

The second sort, finding himself in the same situation, will confront his feelings and his prejudices and his ignorance. He will regard these as enemies to be repented of and dealt death to and disowned — not precious jewels to be adored and displayed.

It is, in a blunt word, the difference between a rebel and a slave.

Or, put another way, it is the difference between Heaven and Hell.

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What did Jesus (not) say about... the majority's eternal destination? (Full post)

by Dan Phillips

"Barring something extraordinary, odds are most people will end up in Heaven. Nothing to get worked up about."

Let's key off of Mark Lussier's comment from the last post: Of course we musn't forget about John 3:16 ;), Mark wrote. Indeed, not; so let's take a closer look: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." So if "whoever believes in" Jesus does "not perish, but [has] eternal life," what does that say about those who do not believe in Jesus? Clearly, they do perish, and they do not have eternal life.

That, then, must be the default setting of man, according to the Gospel: bereft of eternal life, and headed surely for perdition. After all, no one is born believing in Jesus. To enter that state would require a change, a shift; it is a shift that is necessary for a change of destiny. Minus that change, the destiny is death and perdition. Something extraordinary must happen, to change our fate.

Exegetically it is difficult to tell whether John presents this verse as Jesus' words or his own thoughts. There is, however, no such question about Matthew 5-7, the famed Sermon on the Mount. In a recent post, we had a drive-by  commenter give the Sermon a careless glance, and he pronounced it unremarkable. That's a bit like glancing up in a particular structure in Italy and pronouncing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel "a bit busy."

Regardless, Jesus approaches a critical, confrontive, red-hot climax to His sermon with these words:

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:13-14).

What is Jesus saying? He is saying that the easiest, broadest, and most popular way is that which leads to destruction. For that reason, it is the most well-traveled; "many" take that path.

By contrast, the path to life is narrow, it is a hard way, and those traveling by it are relatively "few." So something extraordinary must happen for one to get off the majority's path, and onto the minority's.

On another occasion, Jesus is asked, frontally and in so many words, "Lord, will those who are saved be few?” (Luke 13:23). Well, that set it right out, plain and blunt. How will He answer?

One thing we soon learn about our Lord is that He was not over-fond of gauzy, billowy theological yarning. Jesus shows no great affection for "what-if's" and "what-abouts." So here, rather than answering the question in detached terms, in effect He says "You are asking the wrong question. Standing here, in front of Me, you should not first be thinking about them, what they are going to do, and where they are going to go. You had better concern yourself with you. You strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able — and 'many' means you, unless something changes" (cf. Luke 13:24).

Jesus tells His questioner that he will have to "strive," he will have to focus and struggle and give effort — because "life" is not his default-setting. It is ordinary for him to miss the door. It would take something extraordinary for him to find it.

It was similar with those who may have been getting out their what-if and how-about game pieces when a bunch of Galileans were killed by Pilate, and some others had a tower fall on them. Ooh, juicy stuff — what theological debates can we get into over that?


None, Jesus responded; none, except one: "unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. ...unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (cf. Luke 13:1-5). Two stories, one moral.

In fact, this takes us all the way back to Jesus' first recorded sermon in Matthew — not the Sermon on the Mount, but this: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17).

Repent, Jesus says. Repent: plunge yourself into a fundamental paradigm shift towards God and the world. Something extraordinary must happen in your heart and life. Change! Transform!

So we return to our opening thought. I daresay that most people would agree with what Jesus didn't say. That is, most would agree that, barring something extraordinary, they're headed for Heaven. I mean, if they turned into some kind of Hitler or Dahmer or Pol Pot, then they'd be in peril. Otherwise? Relax. Don't sweat it. Nothing to get "het up" about.

Don't you see, Jesus' thinking is the exact opposite? The default setting of man is death and doom. Unless something extraordinary happens — unless he repents, unless he finds the narrow door, unless he is miraculously born again — he is heading towards the wrath of God without a plea, a hope, or even a prayer.

Do the math, dear reader, as we head for the year's close. This means that the odds are that you and I both are headed for damnation — barring something extraordinary. It is not that we must have an extraordinary reason to believe that someone (including ourselves!) is doomed; it is that we must have an extraordinary reason to believe that someone is saved.

The Gospel alone provides that reason, in and through and because of Christ alone..

This, in closing, is one thing that drives me a bit nuts about emerg*s, liberals, and academics. we already saw that Jesus was deadly-earnest about all this. Further, Jesus said,

I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!" (Luke 12:4-5).

Given what we've been looking at, that makes perfect sense. It makes sense of the generations and generations and generations of Christians who have died for their faith, embraced torture and death rather than renounce the faith, sometimes with songs of praise on their lips.

But emerg*s, academics, liberals, tough-talking self-promoters? What would they die for? About what are they urgent? They play around with eternal truths, and eternal souls, as if it were all just a great gay game, just a grand faculty tea social. They give interviews to unbelievers, and write articles and present speeches and sermons, and spend the time whacking on Biblically-faithful Christians and puffing themselves up, leaving their hearers confirmed in their contempt for the Gospel.

It isn't like anything Jesus would say.

And I can't imagine He'd think much of it.

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Enough to Get a Feel

by Frank Turk

There's an interesting post about a "long slog through the fifty chapters of Genesis," and it was about what I'd expect from the writer of that blog.

Coupla-three notes on that blog post for you to masticate on today:

• It's ironic that the writer finds Genesis 22 "rich and controversial" and then finds Genesis 45 "one of the most mundane". You would think that the controversy in Gen 22 would spill over a little so that the deliverance there can be seen again in the deliverance evident in Gen 45.
• Why does the writer of Genesis switch between "Jacob" to "Israel" in Gen 45 & 46? Is it really "random" and the linked blogger suggests?
• What convinced Israel that his beloved son Joseph was alive after all the years of mourning, do you think? Does gen 45 tell us at all?

I'm pinched today for time, but I'll be back later to see what you-all think of this stuff.

It will be an interesting community-wide discussion, I am sure. Perhaps we can all get a feel for the meaning of Genesis by the time we're done.

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The Blind Leading the Blind Till They Both Fall in a Ditch

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from a sermon titled "The Choice of a Leader," preached Sunday morning, 1 August 1875 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London. It sounds like Spurgeon is commenting on the meltdown of Emergent Village and the fumbling confusion that has seized some of the less radical participants in the Conversation who now want to shed their emergenting identity without shedding the postmodern bent that attracted them to the movement in the first place.

Perhaps Spurgeon was exercising the gift of prophecy. In any case, he gives good advice here: don't follow leaders who are constantly tinkering with gospel truth in an effort to keep in step with the times.

hen a man chooses a bad leader for his soul, at the end of all bad leadership there is a ditch.

A man teaches error which he declares he has drawn from Scripture, and he backs it up with texts perverted and abused. If you follow that error, and take its teacher for a leader, you may for a time be very pleased with yourself for knowing more than the poor plain people who keep to the good old way, but, mark my word, there is a ditch at the end of the error. You do not see it yet, but there it is, and into it you will fall if you continue to follow your leader.

At the end of error there is often a moral ditch, and men go down, down down, they scarce know why, till presently, having imbibed doctrinal error, their moral principles are poisoned, and like drunken men they find themselves rolling in the mire of sin.

At other times the ditch beyond a lesser error may be an altogether damnable doctrine. The first mistake was comparatively trifling, but, as it placed the mind on an inclined plane, the man descended almost as a matter of course, and almost before he knew it, found himself given over to a strong delusion to believe a lie. The blind man and his guide, whatever else they miss, will be sure to find the ditch, they need no sight to obtain an abundant entrance into that.

Alas! to fall into the ditch is easy, but how shall they be recovered? I would earnestly entreat especially professing Christians, when novelties of doctrine come up, to be very cautious how they give heed to them. I bid you remember the ditch. A small turn of the switch on the railway is the means of taking the train to the far east or to the far west: the first turn is very little indeed, but the points arrived at are remote.

There are new errors which have lately come up which your fathers knew not, with which some are mightily busy, and I have noticed when men have fallen into them their usefulness ceased. I have seen ministers go only a little way in speculative theories, and gradually glide from latitudinarianism into Socinianism or Atheism. Into these ditches thousands fall. Others are precipitated into an equally horrible pit, namely, the holding nominally of all the doctrines in theory and none of them in fact.

Men hold truths nowadays with the bowels taken out of then, and the very life and meaning torn away. There are members and ministers of evangelical denominations who do not believe evangelical doctrine, or if they do believe it they attach but little importance to it; their sermons are essays on philosophy, tinged with the gospel. They put a quarter of a grain of gospel into an Atlantic of talk, and poor souls are drenched with words to no profit. God save us from ever leaving the old gospel, or losing its spirit, and the solid comfort which it brings; yet into the ditch of lifeless profession and philosophic dreaming we may soon fall if we commit ourselves to wrong leadership.

All this should prevent us, as I think, from taking any man whatever as our leader, for if we trust to any mere man, though he may be right in ninety-nine of the hundred, he is wrong somewhere, and our tendency will be to be more influenced by his one wrong point than by any one of his right ones. Depend upon it in matters of religion that ancient malediction is abundantly verified, "Cursed is he that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm."

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Erwin McManus's Casket

by Phil Johnson



"For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions" (2 Timothy 4:3).

ack in August of '08, I wrote a post about the pretentiousness of Christians who try too hard to be artsy and manage to sully both art and the gospel in the process. (In retrospect, the tone of that post might sound a tad too cantankerous, even for me. But I completely stand by the point of it.)

One of the targets of my criticism in that post was Erwin Raphael McManus, self-styled "futurist, author, speaker, activist, filmmaker and innovator who specializes in the field of developing and unleashing personal and organizational creativity, uniqueness, innovation and diversity." Some say he is a "pastor" (though he seems to eschew that title and most other ecclesiastical terms). He's the lead speaker at Mosaic, "a Community of faith, love, and hope" in Pasadena. It's a Southern Baptist congregation, but you'd be hard-pressed to discover that from the church's own publicity. I spent many hours a few years ago watching videos and listening to sound files of McManus's teaching, and I have read two or three of his books, plus practically everything he has posted on line. I have never seen him explain, much less affirm, the gospel.

In that 2008 post I said: "Clear gospel truth is almost impossible to find in the material he publishes and posts for public consumption. And in that regard, I don't see a whole lot of difference between Erwin McManus and Joel Osteen. He's Osteen with blue jeans and an occasional soul patch rather than a shiny suit and a perpetual grin."

That unleashed a nearly 200-comment discussion in our combox. Most commenters who were already familiar with McManus voiced agreement with my assessment, but a few drive-by commenters criticized me for criticizing McManus. Then I had a lengthy discussion via e-mail with a key person on McManus's staff. No one could document a single source where McManus actually did preach the gospel.

A month later, Justin Taylor picked up the thread and asked for comments at his blog. I joined that conversation late, but here's the salient portion of the comment I posted at JT's blog:

I wasn't raising this question with regard to a single sermon or video. I'm pointing out that I can't find anywhere where McManus has dealt with sin qua sin—an offense against God as opposed to a personal hurt or emotional/psychological dysfunction. And I have never seen him even hint at the idea of repentance. I wouldn't be automatically critical of a preacher for a single gospel message that didn't include every aspect of systematic theology. In other words, I agree with your point: while it's true that the resurrection is essential to the gospel itself, that doesn't invalidate every tract or sermon or witnessing encounter where the resurrection isn't expressly mentioned. (I defended that very point a couple of years ago in the infamous controversy about Francis Chan's evangelistic video.) But if someone who preaches all the time never mentioned the resurrection—indeed, seemed to be deliberately avoiding it—I'd think it completely fair to raise the question of whether he really believed it. I have exchanged several e-mails about this with a senior staff member at Mosaic, and I received one message from Erwin McManus himself. Neither of them supplied references to any message or online resource where McManus has ever mentioned the necessity of repentance. I had a hard time getting the senior staff member to understand that I wasn't challenging McManus over an issue of technical theological terminology. His main reply to me was that just because McManus doesn't use words like repentance, justification, and penal substitution, it's unfair to assume he doesn't teach those doctrines. But after exchanging several e-mails with him, he still couldn't (or wouldn't) point me to any online resources where McManus has dealt with the ideas of repentance, justification, or propitiation using different terminology. So if we count that, plus all the replies to my initial post about McManus, plus all the comments in this thread, it brings the grand total of documented examples where McManus deals with the issues of sin, repentance, and justification to exactly zero. I'm not trying merely to be harsh here. But I honestly don't see why anyone would think McManus's approach to avoiding the gospel is any better than Joel Osteen's approach to avoiding it. I understand that they appeal to different demographics, so there are real stylistic differences between the two of them. But my concern is with the missing substance. I'd like to know why some who feel perfectly free to label Osteen a heretic think it's unnecessarily "vitriolic" to put McManus in the same category. A few of you have suggested that it's uncharitable even to raise this question. No one yet has offered a reasonable explanation why.

McManus's current project is further removed from the proclamation of the gospel than anything you'll ever see from Osteen—and that's saying something. McManus is shilling for an entry in Doritos® "Crash the Superbowl" contest.

It's an utterly tasteless commercial called "Casket." ("A guy stages his own funeral just to munch Doritos and watch football undisturbed—in a casket.") McManus himself produced the commercial for the Doritos® contest and Mosaic is "sponsoring" it. They won a spot among the six finalists (out of 4,000 entries)—and tickets to the Super Bowl. The top prizewinner will be chosen by popular vote. So McManus has removed every vestige of his own website and replaced it with an appeal for votes. He's Twittering pleas for votes on a fairly regular basis, too.

He is convinced this is the work of God: "It's a miracle and a divine comedy that we've made it this far," he told USA Today. "I think it's God's sense of humor."

Rick Warren is ecstatic about the prestige and potential $$$ a win would bring McManus. He Tweeted: "My guy Erwin McManus (Mosiac Church) created a Doritos Superbowl Ad! Church could win $! VOTE 4 him!"

Our friend Paul Edwards's Twitter feed, as usual, was more on target: "Majority of Christians will laugh rather than weep at @erwinmcmanus 's commercial because the gospel is no longer central in our thinking."

Mid-Morning Addendum: Someone privately asked my opinion about why Erwin McManus would devote the full resources of his church and energies to promote an entry in an advertising contest. Might he have motives that are good and pure? Could it be that he sees this as a kind of pre-evangelism that gets people's attention so that they will listen to his message? Are you perhaps being too hard on him for doing what most pastors do (but having more success at it)? The "pre-evangelism" ploy might have some appearance of merit if McManus's message ever actually got around to the evangel. But since that's not the case, it's an unwarranted stretch to imagine that he intends this as a kind of preliminary to something he clearly has no intention whatsoever to engage in. And let me be clear about something: I don't have actual statistics, but sadly, I think it might actually be true to say that Erwin McManus is just "doing what most pastors do." The mentality behind McManus's bravado and high jinks is by no means unique to him. It's the very philosophy behind the "market-driven Church" assumption: Any kind of publicity stunt is just as good as—and probably better than—gospel preaching for reaching the unchurched. That is the unspoken assumption behind most of the currently-popular evangelical carcinogens, such as the infamous "Church Marketing Sucks" blog, which I have critiqued in the past for precisely the same thing. Publicity is not the same thing as evangelism. Fad-chasing isn't "missional." You're not "reaching" people in any meaningful sense at all if the gospel is not the center and the main substance of your message to the world. That, you might say, is the salient point of every argument we have ever made on this blog.

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A Disease of Wind on the Brain

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson





The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from a sermon titled "Waters to Swim In," originally preached on a Thursday evening, 25 April 1872, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London.



hese are days of "modern thought;" as you are all aware men have become wondrously wise, and have outgrown the Scriptures. Certain unhappy children's heads are too big, and there is always a fear that it is not brain, but water on the brain; and this "modern thought" is simply a disease of wind on the brain, and likely to be a deadly one, if God does not cure the church of it.

Within the compass of the orthodox faith—within the range of the simple gospel—there is room enough for the development of every faculty, however largely gifted a man may be. No matter, though the man be a Milton in poetry, though he be a master in metaphysics, and a prince in science, if he be but pure in his poesy, accurate in his metaphysics, and honest in his science, he will find that the range of his thought needs no more space than Scripture gives him.

It has been thought by some that these persons who run off to heretical opinions are persons of great mind; believe me, brethren, it is a cheap way of making yourself to be thought so, but the men are nobodies. That is the sum of the matter.

We are satisfied with the theology of the Puritans; and we assert this day that, when we take down a volume of Puritanical theology we find in a solitary page more thinking and more learning, more Scripture, more real teaching, than in whole folios of the effusions of modern thought. Modern men would be rich if they possessed even the crumbs that fallen from the table of the Puritans. They have given us nothing new after all. A few variegated bladders they have blown, and they have burst while the blowers were admiring them; but, as for anything worth knowing, which has improved the heart, benefited the understanding, or fitted men for service in the battle of life, there have been no contributions made by this "modern thought" worth recording; whereas, the old thought of the Puritans and the Reformers, which I believe to be none other than the thought of God thought out again in man's brain and heart, is constantly giving consolation to the afflicted, furnishing strength to the weak, and guiding men's minds to behave themselves aright in the house of God and in the world at large.

There are "waters to swim in," in the Scriptures. You need not think there is no room for your imaginations there. Give the coursers their reins: you shall find enough within that book to exhaust them at their highest speed. You need not think that your memory shall have nothing to remember; if you had learnt the book through and through, and knew all its texts, you would have much to remember above that, to remember its inner meaning, and its conversations with your soul, and the mysterious power it has had over your spirit, when it has touched the strings of your nature as a master harper touches his harp strings, and has brought forth music which you knew not to be sleeping there. There is no faculty but what will find room enough in the word, if we will but obediently bring it to the service of the Lord.

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Deep Church

by Frank Turk

UPDATED: Paul Edwards has run out of guests, and has asked me to talk about this book and this review/recommendation today at 5:05 ET. You can listen in here. (well, not anymore)

The archived audio, saved at archive.org, can be streamed here:


The direct link to the audio for download and iPod-ery is here (right-click to download).

Two weeks ago I threatened to review Jim Belcher's new book Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, and challenged you readers to read it before I reviewed it so we could have an intelligent discussion about it.

Now, I have an obligation to Jim, who sent me the PDF of his book (FCC: take that) to give the book its fair treatment, but since my initial recommendation, Kevin DeYoung, the most vivacious baby-baptizer in the world reviewed the book and got this comment from Jim for his trouble:

This is by far the most thorough review of my book, both in the overview it provides and the evaluation. It is well written, engaging and helpful, pointing out well the areas you agree and disagree on. It provides a good road map for further dialogue on the third way I am attempting to propose. I am grateful that you have opened up the terrain for even more people to read the book and engage in my thesis. So for that I am deeply grateful. I hope your readers will buy and engage its ideas.

So Thanks a lot, Kevin. What am I supposed to do now?

Well, there are 8 or 9 words in the book Kevin didn't address, and of course this is the pyro-centric part of the blogosphere so we have that flavor to add to Jim's book about why he's not Emergent. And after I'm done here, you folks will have your normal chance to say your piece.

The place to start is, of course, the most superficial things about the book. The regular readers of this blog will probably look at the blurbs for the book, roll their eyes, and go find something else to read. That, people, would be a massive GBA error on your part. You see: not every book worth reading has been endorsed by RC Sproul, JI Packer and DA Carson, and not every book endorsed by Tony Jones needs to be disregarded (sure: most, but ...).

In that, one of the most important attributes of this book (moving away from the superficial to the subtle) is something about it which I admit I didn't appreciate much until the end: the massive benefit of the doubt Jim gives to the "emerg*" perspective on the issues he covers. Frankly, I felt like his treatment of them was far too deferential and sort of demure -- until I got to the end and realized that he had fairly dismantled the worse elements of the movement without handing them a merciless beating, and left himself plenty of room to adopt their reasonable criticisms to seek out orthodox solutions to those problems.

I didn't realize how well he had positioned himself until the final chapter when he, anecdotally, described the real-world results of his church's vision for "Deep Church". And unlike most reviews, I'm not going to ruin it for you by giving you all the good stuff here: you really must read this book yourself.

Was it all good? No, of course not. Jim writing in the first-person was not an approach I'd recommend as it had several places where I thought it sounded a little condescending only because it was all about what "I" did. I thought his treatment of Brian McLaren was downright congenial in spite of his ultimate concern for McLaren's trajectory. And, of course, his points regarding the upside of presbyterian polity seemed to me to be unbalanced -- especially given his really broad hand of fairness for people who, as he himself admitted in the book, have plainly rejected the historical faith. There's no recourse for the independent church when it has members bringing petitions to the pastor? Really?

So my summary here is not that you must read it to believe it: Jim's book about what he is describing as a "third way" between "emerging" and "traditional" is, in spite of itself, a book which will antagonize your complacency about the church in general and your church in particular. Because Jim obviously loves Christ, and therefore obviously loves his church, he wants others to do the same -- and it's refreshing to read a new book on this subject which isn't calling people to give up on leadership, gathering together, and serious views of worship but is also calling people to love, and serve, and commit because this is actually what Christ has called us to.

Big thumbs-up from me on this book. If you haven't read it, it's your turn to read it. Go buy one and pass it around if you have to so you can find someone with whom to talk about it.

If you have read it, tell me: what was your favorite chapter, you least-favorite chapter, and why?

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Books and Stuff

by Frank Turk



I have a Facebook friend named Jim Belcher, and let me be honest: I have no idea how Jim became a Facebook friend to me. Yet, to my utter astonishment, there he is.

Jim has written a book, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, which he was kind enough to send me for the sake of promotion and review.

I haven't finished reading Jim's book yet, but I linked it, above, because you ought to read it. Particularly, you need to spend a lot of time in Chapter 4, which is titled "Deep Truth", and Chapter 8, "Deep Preaching".

I have taken copious notes in this book. It makes me angry about every third page, but angry in the right way. Angry enough to do something about what he's saying.

This is not a review of Jim's book: this is a recommendation for you to get it and read it before I review it -- because unless you read that book, any comments you will make about this book will, frankly, be pretty useless. I don't agree with everything he says (he's a presbyterian, after all); most of you won't agree with most of what he says. But his book is an insightful look into the question of whether there ought to be a church which emerges from what exists today, and what that church ought to look like.

While I'm recommending books here, it's with a very heavy heart that I find myself about to take a vacation from being a Southern Baptist. I'm not going to walk you through the ecclesiologically-sordid details, but suffice it to say that I love the convention, I honor the men who have taught me to love Christ and his Gospel who were, all in all, products of the SBC, and I am proud of the direction that body is taking to yet again reform itself. In spite of some of the hyjinx you will find in local SBC churches, the future is bright in the SBC because it takes the charge to be renewed and not conformed to the world seriously and sets an example for other associations and denominations to follow.

And I say that to recommend another book which anyone who wants to figure out something about the best tendencies of the SBC and the men who defend that place: Southern Baptist Identity, By David S. Dockery. It's an anthology of essays from what amounts to the elder statesmen of the convention talking about what unites the churches of the SBC, and what ought to guide the SBC into the future. A great book from Crossway for people who read Jim Belcher's book and would frame his critiques of traditionalism toward the SBC -- and which would stand, I think, as a counter-apologetic to their high-sounding criticisms of "traditional" churches as products of "foundationalism".

I'd like to conduct a blog seminar on Jim's book in two weeks, so go ahead and buy one or rent it from the library or download it to your Kindle, and take good notes. I expect that you'll have plenty to say when you're done, and I know I will have plenty to say to incentivize your comments.

Carry on.

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