Truth worth dying for? Anyone? Bueller? Today, anyway?

by Dan Phillips

Privately and publicly, Phil Johnson and I have marveled at the spirit of some moderns regarding God's truth. We've wondered how Christianity could have survived, had it been animated by this spirit at its inception. We've wondered what the early martyrs would think of today's sofa-sitting latte-sippers.

One breed that apparently considers itself exempt from All That has long been the Academy, on which subject we've offered some thoughts previously. These are scholars; they're a breed apart from, well, from the folks who pay their salaries. That's because they've had the benefit of special training and special discipline, and thus are privy to special knowledge. They're specialists. They know facts and truths that mere garden-working pastors and ditch-digging churchgoers just can't understand.

It is important (to these folks) that we respect these folks, that we not malign or criticize them or make them feel or look bad. No matter what they say or write, we mustn't challenge their convictions or character. If they tell us that they fit in with a school's doctrinal position or confession, we must take their word for it. If they tell us that their books or lectures or articles are sound and orthodox, well then, they wouldn't lie or dissemble, would they? They're academics.

Their defenders and enablers surely communicate to all that not much is at stake, that it isn't anything to "get het up" about. They'll spill equal amounts of ink lauding the Christian characters of those who depart from anything the great unwashed would recognize as a commitment to inerrancy, and casting aspersions on less sanguine critics or opponents. Because it isn't as if we should expect someone to commit himself to a position as being binding on his conscience, as being something... oh, I don't know... worth dying for, or anything so drastic.

For instance, we recently read this:

Belief in the truthfulness of the Bible, then, like belief in the truthfulness of Christianity or materialism or anything else [!], is provisional—scholars hold to it (or not) on the basis of the evidence they've seen. Affirming the Bible is true, just like affirming the Christian creeds, is a statement of current conviction: “Based on what I know now, I believe that the Nicene Creed/the New Testament is correct, when properly understood.” It doesn't prevent individuals from researching carefully, nor from abandoning or adjusting their commitment if the evidence takes them that way; the changes of conviction, affiliation, and worship practices of many of the “aha” scholars, as well as those who have moved the other way, should be evidence enough. In some cases, no doubt, belief in inerrancy is associated with fearmongering, closed-mindedness, misrepresentation, and rudeness. But the same is true of evangelicalism, and Protestantism, and Christianity as a whole, let alone atheism, Islam, feminism, materialism, and virtually all beliefs held by human beings. I’ve seen a fair bit of it on Pete Enns’s own blog, and I imagine he’d say the same of mine.

Where did I see that? Patheos? BioLogos? Huffington Post? No; in the rarified air of TGC — which, I remind you, ostensibly stands not for The Great Clubhouse, but The Gospel Coalition; and which, I am sure, is funded and read and has its conferences swell with people who certainly are fiercely committed to the Gospel and the truths that underlie it.

This was a post at that site. And since one of the commenters dubbed this article "incredibly thoughtful and nuanced," well then, from one perspective, it must be considered a rousing success, a paradigm of carefulness and all that.

I made a comment in the meta; Phil shared this in Twitter:

“Belief in the truthfulness of the Bible…is provisional…” Wow. Quite a startling thing to read on the TGC website. http://t.co/jBUF0zEyoE
— Phil Johnson, ن (@Phil_Johnson_) August 27, 2014

Which provoked this wounded-sounding, bemused response from the author:

Woke up this morning to some pretty angry misrepresentations of my @TGC article. Why do Christians do this, I wonder? pic.twitter.com/wGwFhI7H6x
— Andrew Wilson (@AJWTheology) August 27, 2014

Now, ponder that, for a moment. Here's a scholar, who knows more than we all know. He professes Christian faith, at least "provisionally," according to what he knows right now. (Well, it's what he knew when he wrote the article; I suppose that may have changed since then.) Yet, speaking of his own fellow-believers ("Christians") in the third person, he professes bewilderment at Phil's eleven-word comment.

Remarkably enough, though, while unable to make sense of Phil's eleven words out there in print, he can read Phil's mood from the unknowable privacy of Phil's heart— and it's angry. Perhaps Phil is one of those scholarship-despising, progress-slowing fearmongerers lamented in the article? Phil certainly isn't being treated to the paeans of praise that the author heaped on those "thoughtful, insightful Christian brothers and sisters" and "good guys" in the Academy who find fault with the Bible.

So: It's all well and good to tell the unwashed that the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom (Prov. 1:7; 9:10). For them, maybe it is. For academics, however, it is at best a provisional conclusion tentatively reached, perhaps, at the end of investigation. It is held as today's conviction, which may be overridden tomorrow, depending on what our real starting-point dictates tomorrow.

Seriously: where would we be, had Doctor Martin Luther said "Here I stand —provisionally. At the moment. I think. Today. But tomorrow... who knows?"

Regardless, I wasn't going to say anything further about it — knowing the waves of anger and offense and indignation that it will provoke from folks who already haven't much use for me, if the usual "ignore it and it will go away" method employed for our posts doesn't serve as well as it usually does for them.

But then I came on this from Spurgeon. As so often, once Spurgeon says a thing, it can't be much improved on. So I'll give him the closing word, and he speaks for me:

I have often wondered whether, according to the notions of some people, there is any truth for which it would be worth while for a man to go to the stake. I should say not; for we are not sure of anything, according to the modern notion. Would it be worth while dying for a doctrine which may not be true next week? Fresh discoveries may show that we have been the victims of an antiquated opinion: had we not better wait and see what will turn up? It will be a pity to be burned too soon, or to lie in prison for a dogma which will, in a few years, be superseded. Brethren, we cannot endure this shifty theology. May God send us a race of men who have backbones! Men who believe something, and would die for what they believe. This Book deserves the sacrifice of our all for the maintenance of every line of it.

[C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 35 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1889), 264.]

Aha, indeed.

And amen.

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Cutting use of humor

by Dan Phillips

I recently finished my second go-through of the audiobook of Spurgeon's autobiography (see here and here). Among the many things that struck me were the great man's observations on humor, taken in turn from Lectures to My Students:

Sometimes, anecdotes have force in them on account of their appealing to the sense of the ludicrous. Of course, I must be very careful here, for it is a sort of tradition of the fathers that it is wrong to laugh on Sundays. The eleventh commandment is, that we are to love one another, and then, according to some people, the twelfth is, “Thou shalt pull a long face on Sunday.” I must confess that I would rather hear people laugh than I would see them asleep in the house of God; and I would rather get the truth into them through the medium of ridicule than I would have the truth neglected, or leave the people to perish through lack of reception of the truth. I do believe in my heart that there may be as much holiness in a laugh as in a cry; and that, sometimes, to laugh is the better thing of the two, for I may weep, and be murmuring, and repining, and thinking all sorts of bitter thoughts against God; while, at another time, I may laugh the laugh of sarcasm against sin, and so evince a holy earnestness in the defence of the truth. I do not know why ridicule is to be given up to Satan as a weapon to be used against us, and not to be employed by us as a weapon against him. I will venture to affirm that the Reformation owed almost as much to the sense of the ridiculous in human nature as to anything else, and that those humorous squibs and caricatures, that were issued by the friends of Luther, did more to open the eyes of Germany to the abominations of the priesthood than the more solid and ponderous arguments against Romanism. I know no reason why we should not, on suitable occasions, try the same style of reasoning. “It is a dangerous weapon,” it will be said, “and many men will cut their fingers with it.” Well, that is their own look-out; but I do not know why we should be so particular about their cutting their fingers if they can, at the same time, cut the throat of sin, and do serious damage to the great adversary of souls. [Spurgeon, C. H. (2009). Lectures to my Students, Vol. 3: The Art of Illustration; Addresses Delivered to the students of the Pastors' College, Metropolitan Tabernacle (43–44). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.]

This is a topic worth greater focus, some time. We would see that the most frequent form of humor in the Bible is parody, satire, sarcasm. You'll not be surprised that the examples leaping to my mind come from Proverbs, which features both brief and extended send-ups of the lazy (6:6-11), the blinkingly-naive immoral lad (7:1-27), the harridan (27:15-16), the drunk (23:29-35), and of course the various kinds of fool (17:12; 26:11; 27:22). In fact,

The fact is that God moves His servants to communicate His truth, and to warn people away from deception, by all sorts of means. He moves them to employ instruction, explanation, reasoning, pleading, warning, and yes, even acerbic, sarcastic satire. Indeed, the most common forms of humor in the Bible are satire, sarcasm, and irony. [From this, p. 62]

"Dangerous tool," yes. But a tool nonetheless, and an effective one.

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Not for the Stout of Heart, Either, Apparently

by Phil Johnson

(NOTE: Don't miss the clip from yesterday's "Wretched Radio" interview at the end of the post.)

here's a distinct change in volume, tone, and attitude between James MacDonald's "Humble Pie" blogpost and yesterday's "Not for the Faint of Heart" addendum.

In the earlier post, MacDonald acknowledged his own inconsistency: he knew he should not have "used strong language" to scold others for being harsh in their criticism of the Elephant Room strategy. But in yesterday's post and video, MacDonald casts off restraint and reverts to angry-sounding rhetoric.

Despite their starkly contrasting styles, both statements have one thing in common: MacDonald wishes those with concerns about what he is doing would just shut up. He says it euphemistically: "We are asking that those interested in what we are doing allow the conversations to take place before making final conclusions about their wisdom or helpfulness." But clearly, that plea applies to critics, not to MacDonald himself or to those who support his strategy.

There are multiple layers of irony in that. MacDonald purports to be championing fearless dialogue with people he says he doesn't necessarily agree with. But there's a distinct and clearly discernible direction to the drift of the "dialogue." It is painfully obvious that MacDonald is not so keen to listen and learn when someone more conservative than he wants to share a perspective.

But let's set all of that aside. What troubled me much more about the video MacDonald posted yesterday was his repeated insistence from beginning to end that the participants of Elephant Room 2 are a true Band of Spiritual Brothers:



In the earlier "Humble Pie" blogpost, MacDonald had expressed "regret that the purpose of the Elephant Room was not expanded and explained before including a greater breadth of participants." I took that as an admission that he had come to realize why so many people thought it inappropriate to invite a non-Trinitarian into a discussion that was being advertised as a conversation between brothers in Christ who are all committed to the same Christ and the same gospel.

See, when MacDonald announced the Jakes invitation, he wrote, "Getting brothers together who believe in salvation by grace alone through faith alone but normally don't interact, is what the Elephant Room is all about." That assertion was doubtless the main reason for the force of the backlash against Jakes's involvement. At the very least, concern over MacDonald's blithe embrace of a non-Trinitarian as a "brother" was the dominant theme in the criticisms posted on MacDonald's blog.

So the ER Purpose Statement was quickly modified to include the phrase "conversation among all kinds of leaders . . ." That, I assumed, was what MacDonald was talking about when he mentioned the expansion of the Purpose Statement to accommodate a "greater breadth of participants."

But in the above video, he repeatedly insists (in rather dogmatic terms and with an emphatic tone) that all ER participants are indeed his "brothers."

That, I think, is why MacDonald and the ER pose a major problem for the Gospel Coalition. He is a council member of TGC and an influential spokesman for the movement. And the first point in TGC's confessional statement is "The Tri-une God."

So is biblical and historic Trinitarianism an essential tenet of Gospel truth, or is it not? If yes, then TGC needs to hold its own council members to the implications of that. If not, one wonders what was the point of the organization in the first place.

Or to put it another way: The collective leadership of TGC are going to have to decide which is more important: the Gospel, or the Coalition.

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Bonus:

Here's a section of my interview yesterday with Todd Friel on Wretched Radio. In the final segment of hour 1, Todd brought up the "Elephant Room" controversy and asked me to comment on James MacDonald's video. What you will hear was my response upon listening to MacDonald's comments for the first time. Todd asked me to stop the soundtrack and comment each time MacDonald said something either noteworthy or objectionable. We didn't get very far into the video before time ran out, but this makes a nice supplement to today's blogpost anyway.

"Charity" Toward Heresy?

With a wry remark about the doctrine of "justification by doubt"

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote space at the beginning of each week to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt comes from chapter 15 of The Soul Winner, a chapter titled "Encouragement to Soul-Winners."

here are some truths which must be believed; they are essential to salvation, and if not heartily accepted, the soul will be ruined.

Now, in [the early church], the saints did not say, as the sham saints do now, "We must be largely charitable, and leave this brother to his own opinion; he sees truth from a different standpoint, and has a rather different way of putting it, but his opinions are as good as our own, and we must not say that he is in error."

That is at present the fashionable way of trifling with divine truth, and making things pleasant all round. Thus the gospel is debased, and "another gospel" propagated.

I should like to ask modern broad churchmen whether there is any doctrine of any sort for which it would be worth a man's while to burn or to lie in prison. I do not believe they could give me an answer, for if their latitudinarianism be correct, the martyrs were fools of the first magnitude.

From what I see of their writings and their teachings, it appears to me that the modern thinkers treat the whole compass of revealed truth with entire indifference; and, though perhaps they may feel sorry that wilder spirits should go too far in free thinking, and though they had rather they would be more moderate, yet, upon the whole, so large is their liberality that they are not sure enough of anything to be able to condemn the reverse of it as a deadly error.

To them black and white are terms which may be applied to the same colour, as you view it from different standpoints. Yea and nay are equally true in their esteem. Their theology shifts like the Goodwin Sands, and they regard all firmness as so much bigotry. Errors and truths are equally comprehensible within the circle of their charity.

It was not in this way that the apostles regarded error. They did not prescribe large-hearted charity towards falsehood, or hold up the errorist as a man of deep thought, whose views were "refreshingly original"; far less did they utter some wicked nonsense about the probability of there living more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds. They did not believe in justification by doubting, as our neologians do; they set about the conversion of the erring brother; they treated him as a person who needed conversion; and viewed him as a man who, if he were not converted, would suffer the death of his soul, and be covered with a multitude of sins.

They were not such easygoing people as our cultured friends of the school of "modern thought", who have learned at last that the Deity of Christ may be denied, the work of the Holy Spirit ignored, the inspiration of Scripture rejected, the atonement disbelieved, and regeneration dispensed with, and yet the man who does all this may be as good a Christian as the most devout believer!

O God, deliver us from this deceitful infidelity, which, while it does damage to the erring man, and often prevents his being reclaimed, does yet more mischief to our own hearts by teaching us that truth is unimportant, and falsehood a trifle, and so destroys our allegiance to the God of truth, and makes us traitors instead of loyal subjects to the King of kings!

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Playing nice with heretics

by Phil Johnson

"I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them" (Romans 16:17)

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works" (2 John 10-11).

oday Tim Challies has an item about James MacDonald's decision to invite T. D. Jakes to participate at Elephant Room 2. Some of Tim's commenters think it's a fine idea for MacDonald to extend a cordial welcome to someone whose teaching is highly suspect so that he can define and defend himself.

Mark Driscoll expressed a similar opinion in his blogpost yesterday. He sees the Jakes invitation as an opportunity for men who differ on fundamental doctrines to "speak to one another face-to-face rather than about one another blog-to-blog and tweet-to-tweet."

That all sounds very nice and cordial, and it appeals to values that are highly prized nowadays, but is it a biblical way to respond to heresy? Can you imagine Paul proposing a friendly sharing of the platform with the heretics who were troubling the Galatian churches? How different would the apostle John's advice in his second epistle have been (not to mention his legendary encounter with Cerinthus) if he had embraced the values of our more "enlightened" age?

Anyway, here are my thoughts, as posted in the combox over at Challies:

[Commenter at Challies]: "Doesn't basic civil discourse allow people to define themselves"? No. That's pretty much what the postmodern rules of engagement say. But Jesus said, "You will recognize them by their fruits" (Matthew 1:16). In other words, we need to determine whether someone is a heretic or not by examining what [s]he actually teaches, not by what that person claims of himself when [s]he is under fire. Scripture is emphatic about this, reminding us that Satan and his minions commonly disguise themselves as angels of light (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). I don't mind giving the benefit of the doubt to a young pastor fresh out of seminary who might misstate something or need further instruction to eliminate some latent point of ignorance or clear out the cobwebs of confusion (cf. Acts 18:26). But a self-styled "bishop"—notorious for his love of money, who teaches a false prosperity gospel, who freely shills for every aberration on TBN, who was ordained in a Sabellian denomination, who has been confronted repeatedly about his anti-trinitarianism, who refuses to renounce modalism, who declines to embrace any standard expression of Trinitarian conviction, and who (on top of all that) is unclear on practically every doctrine germane to the gospel—such a figure should not be warmly welcomed into evangelical circles and given the platform at an evangelical conference as if we're confident that he is a solid brother with good intentions. Plus, despite your protestations above, both Galatians 1:8-9 and 2 John 7-11 teach us that it's not always the right thing to deal with doctrinal aberrations though "cordial dialogue." Certain theological miscreants need to be avoided rather than listened to (Romans 16:17). Some need to have their mouths stopped (Titus 1:11). Furthermore, true elders and undershepherds of Christ's flock do often have a duty to declare truth through exhortation and rebuke, with all authority (Titus 2:15), rather than acting as if every contrary teaching is an opportunity for friendly dialogue and an open exchange of views. That's especially important in today's spiritual climate, where so many people in the church (including a few once-trusted leaders) ape the worldly conviction that diversity is inherently wonderful and strong convictions are inherently uncharitable. And to whoever asked incredulously whether critics were fearful that Jakes might suddenly lead multitudes astray through the platform given him at the Elephant Room: what concerns me is the fact that he already has, and I think it's appalling that the guardians of evangelical cordiality and "civil discourse" seem utterly unconcerned about it.

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Highway to Hell

    posted a couple of links in my Twitter feed last week and a vigorous discussion ensued. Because the controversy surrounding the following video clips deals with fundamental matters of ministry philosophy, pastoral propriety, the purity of the church, and the difference between true worship and "strange fire"—and since Twitter's 140-character limit simply isn't enough to let me even begin to say what I think needs to be said about this—I decided to take it up on the blog today.

First, watch this:



Then watch this:



And now read this:


I lost count of the number of people who wrote, Tweeted, or commented on my Facebook page last week in order to ask for a candid response to all of this. Here's a random sampling of my thoughts:

• I don't know (nor do I care) if Perry Noble is "lying" in that second clip. He could indeed merely be making the argument that the first clip doesn't actually tell the full story. I wouldn't (and didn't) accuse him of lying.
  
• But frankly, whether he lied or not strikes me as the most trivial of all the questions those two video clips raise. Stop and listen to what Perry Noble is saying! If he is indeed telling the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth, the admission he makes in that first video is every bit as ugly and outrageous as a lie. Here's a man who is supposed to be a shepherd to the flock of God, arrogantly boasting that he looks for ways to anger and offend Christians who are more conservative than he is. He hits on a particularly offensive idea. In this case, it's a stunt so carnal he doesn't even bother to argue that it has any redeeming spiritual value. Then he and his elders "pray" together to "seek the Lord's direction" about it—and decide to go ahead and do it? Yikes. If that doesn't offend every synapse in your brain, you must be devoid of love for Christ's church.
  
• If James MacDonald thinks the big problem with Noble's statement was the "contradiction," and if he is more troubled by the critics' "tone" than he is by Perry Noble's swaggering self-congratulation, then MacDonald is not going to be a very helpful mentor to Perry Noble.
  
• I'll say again: the public "mentoring" of bad-boy pastors by men who have earned a degree of respectability is a Really Bad Idea. If you're a famous pastor who truly wants to be a help to a young foul-mouthed narcissist rock-star pastor, it would be better to do it privately and withhold your public affirmations of the punk pastor until he gains enough maturity to actually meet the biblical requirements for eldership.
  
• Several people on Twitter and Facebook suggested that the "Perry Noble Lied" accusation is the exact equivalent of the agnostic's charge that the New Testament contradicts itself. (James McDonald likewise strongly hinted at that argument, likening the two video clips above to "many passages of Scripture that need to be reconciled.") Seriously? Am I the only one who thinks it cheapens the authority of Scripture to suggest that a harmony of Matthew 28:10 and Luke 24:49 is a problem of the same order as the question of whether Perry Noble "sit[s] around trying to [tick] people off" or not?
  
• All the word-play and energy that has been put into defending Noble feels like a bad caricature concocted to demonstrate everything that's wrong with postmodernism. Someone who raises no objection when a egomaniacal pastor boasts about looking for ways to offend and irritate other Christians has no moral ground to complain about the "tone" or biases of those who are offended. But the postmodernist spends hours attacking them anyway, exegeting the mischief-loving fellow's braggadocio, making useless arguments about words, in order to defend the honor of the guy who admitted that from the very start his main intention was to offend?
  
• What we have here is proof of how pathological the cults of personality among young evangelicals have become.
  
• Finally, for those working so hard to reconcile the Perry Noble of the Elephant Room with the self-satisfied scoundrel in the first video above, here's the question you need to ask yourselves: Once we have "reconciled" the statements made in the two clips, what kind of fruit are we left with?

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Should Type-R Charismatics Get a Free Pass?

Does the fact that we are "together for the gospel" necessitate our being "together" [or even silent] on the matter of charismatic claims as well?
by Phil Johnson

Something "Nice"?

Part 2 of 2: Why I think Charismatic Doctrine Is to Blame for the Overabundance of Craziness in That Movement

(First posted 2 November 2007)

    prodigious wacko fringe has always been one of the charismatic movement's most prominent features. In little more than a century, the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements have spun off so many bad doctrines and bizarre characters that I have a thick dictionary in my office just to help me keep track of them all.

Furthermore, I'm convinced it's not just some kind of fantastic cosmic coincidence that has loaded the movement with an unusually high number of charlatans and heretics. I've suggested on more than one occasion that a major reason the charismatic movement has produced more than its fair share of aberrant behavior is because the distinctive doctrines of charismatic belief foster gullibility while constantly seeding the movement with all kinds of whimsy. Specifically, the charismatic belief that it's normative for Spirit-filled Christians to receive extrabiblical divine revelation through various mystical means has opened the door for all kinds of mischief.

I would not for a moment deny that there are some relatively sane and sensible charismatics who love Scripture and generally teach sound doctrine while avoiding most of their movement's worst errors. I think they represent a fairly small minority of the worldwide charismatic community, but they do exist. A few of them are good friends—even longtime friends—of mine. I have friends (for example) in the Calvary Chapel movement, which is mildly charismatic in doctrine but whose worship is generally more Bible-centered than even the typical non-Charismatic seeker-sensitive church. As a matter of fact, my chief concern about the Calvary Chapel movement would not even be their advocacy of charismatic views, but their increasingly aggressive campaign against Calvinism.

That's not all. I have warm affection and heartfelt respect for most of the best-known Reformed charismatic leaders, including C. J. Mahaney, Wayne Grudem, and Sam Storms. [Let's call them "Type-R Charismatics."] I've greatly benefited from major aspects of their ministries, and I regularly recommend resources from them that I have found helpful. I've corresponded with the world-famous Brit-blogger Adrian Warnock for at least 15 years now and had breakfast with him on two occasions, and I like him very much. I'm sure we agree on far more things than we disagree about. And I'm also certain the matters we agree on—starting with the meaning of the cross—are a lot more important than the issues we disagree on, which are all secondary matters.

But that is not to suggest that the things we disagree on are non-issues.

Candor, and not a lack of charity, requires me to state this conviction plainly: The belief that extrabiblical revelation is normative does indeed "regularly and systematically breed willful gullibility, not discernment." Even the more sane and sober [Type-R] charismatics are not totally exempt from the tendency.

Remember that Paul Cain and the Kansas City Prophets found an amazing amount of support from "Reformed Charismatics" on both sides of the Atlantic, even after it was clear to more objective minds that the "prophets'" were regularly and systematically issuing false prophecies.

And that fact ought to have been clear very early. In 1989, the senior Kansas City prophet, Bob Jones, acknowledged that he could claim an accuracy rate of no higher than two-thirds. By 1991, Jones was utterly discredited because of his own sexual misconduct with women who came to him seeking prophetic counseling.

Shortly after that (in early 1992), John MacArthur, Lance Quinn, and I met with Paul Cain and Jack Deere in John MacArthur's office at Jack Deere's request. Deere wanted to try to convince John MacArthur that the charismatic movement—especially the Vineyard branch—was on a trajectory to make doctrinal soundness and biblical integrity the hallmarks of Third-Wave charismatic practice. He brought Cain along, ostensibly so that we could see for ourselves that Cain was a legitimate prophet with a profound gifting.

But Cain was virtually incoherent that day. Lance Quinn remarked to me immediately afterward that it seemed as if Cain had been drinking heavily. (In retrospect it seems a fair assumption that this may indeed have been the case.) Even Deere apologized for Cain's strange behavior that day, but Deere seemed to want us to assume it was because the Spirit was upon Cain in some unusual way. They both admitted to us that Cain's "prophecies" were wrong at least as often as they were right. When we cited that as sufficient reason not to accept any of their prophecies at face value, they cited Wayne Grudem's views on New Testament prophecy as justification for ignoring the errors of prophecies already proven false while giving credence to still more questionable pronouncements.

That meeting was extremely eye-opening for me. Deere was unable to answer basic questions about certain practices Lance and I had personally observed him participating in at the Anaheim Vineyard just a few weeks before that meeting. Specifically, we asked him about two "prophets" whose public words of knowledge in the morning service were flatly contradictory. (The dueling prophets were apparently using their "gifts" to air out a dispute over some decision the church's leaders had recently made.) Deere acknowledged that the prophecies that morning were contradictory. And he could not explain why John Wimber let both prophecies stand without a word of explanation or clarification. (He seemed to shrug off our concern by speculating that perhaps even Wimber wasn't sure which prophecy, if either, was the true one.) Again, he appealed to Grudem, perhaps the most theologically sound of all charismatics, as justification for accepting the two prophets' gifting as legitimate anyway.

I left that meeting amazed that anyone would give credence to such "prophets." But several of the best "Reformed Charismatic" leaders—all citing Grudem for authority—continued to give credence to Cain, the Kansas City Prophets, and others like them for a long, long time. Some of the Reformed Charismatics who lent Paul Cain undue credibility did not really renounce him as a prophet until about twelve years later, when his personal sins finally came to light.

(And it may be stretching things to say everyone concerned actually "renounced" Cain's supposed prophetic gifting even then. He has lately made something of a comeback. [Jack Deere's book still touts Cain as a super-prophet, and the book was recently released in Romania, where it has left a massive amount of confusion in its wake. Wayne Grudem's endorsement of the book remains unaltered. I recently wrote him to ask if Cain's moral failure would spur him to modify or remove his endorsement of Deere's paean to Cain, and Grudem wrote to asssure me that his endorsement of the book still stands.])

As long as Reformed charismatics justify the practice of encouraging people to proclaim "prophecies" that are unverified and unverifiable—and which frequently prove to be wrong—I'll stand by the concern I expressed: even the very best of charismatics sometimes foster unwarranted and unreasonable gullibility.

And gullibility about whether God has really spoken or not is seriously dangerous.

When a false belief is truly dangerous and comes replete with the kind of long and dismal track record extrabiblical revelation brings with it, it's not "uncharitable" for those who see the danger and are truly concerned about it to sound a shrill warning rather than humming a gentle lullaby.

My charismatic friend, Dr. Warnock, insists that I have been uncharitable because I have stated my opinion about the dangers of charismatic doctrine without explicitly exempting him and others whom he likes from my warning against gullibility. It makes him "uncomfortable" to read such things on our blog as often as we post them (even though the vast majority of our [2007] posts on the charismatic issue [were in fact] made at his behest).

I have to say in reply that his appeal to how our posts make him feel, while he declines to give any rational or reasonable explanation for why he thinks our candor must be motivated by a lack of charity, is an echo of the very tendency that I think is so dangerous in the charismatic mindset.

I do realize some people are uncomfortable with such a firm stance against the charismatic position. I'm equally uncomfortable with the charismatic position itself. Let's both remember that our respective comfort levels are not a reliable gauge of our brothers' charity (or lack thereof), and let's try to focus on the actual issue under discussion.

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A Double Repost

by Phil Johnson

If You Can't Say Something Nice...

A response to recurring complaints from world-famous author, Brit-blogger, pundit, medical professional, and charismatic ombudsman, Dr. Adrian Warnock. This is part 1. Part 2 will follow very soon.

(First posted 29 October 2007)

Part 1 of 2
by Phil Johnson

he esteemed Dr. Warnock has made yet another post (plus a bonus follow-up comment) objecting to the look and feel of our polemic against some stylish doctrines and ministry philosophies which have borne notoriously rotten fruits.

Specifically, he suggests that in last Monday's Pyro-post I ought not to have criticized Willow Creek's pragmatic, program-driven ministry philosophy without first saying something really nice and affirmative about them.

These are, of course, issues we have discussed with the good Doctor before. I was going to let it pass this time, but he e-mailed me, inviting my reply. So let's analyze Dr. Warnock's view of "discernment" a little more closely.

He insists that "we really must be looking for the good in people, especially in those who have not denied important aspects of the Gospel." Note: in this context, Dr. Warnock is not talking about personal relationships between individual Christians; he is setting forth a principle for how we critique and interact with leaders of new movements, teachers of novel doctrines, and purveyors of new philosophies of ministry. Let's call it Warnock's First Rule of Discernment.

In Dr. Warnock's estimation, my failure to go out of my way to say anything positive about Willow Creek "seemed (at least to [him]) to be implying that Willow Creek has absolutely nothing to teach us."

I said nothing like that, of course, and it's a wholly unwarranted conclusion from what I did say. It's also quite irrelevant to any point I was making.

On the other hand, let's be completely candid: Even if I did go out of my way to catalogue everything I like about the Willow Creek model, it would indeed be a very short list. In fact, as I ponder the question even now, I'm hard-pressed to think of anything truly distinctive about Willow Creek's approach to ministry that I could honestly say advances the agenda of Christ's kingdom. Willow Creek's underlying philosophy is fundamentally pragmatic, not biblical. By their own admission, it is now statistically clear that their strategy does not produce authentic disciples—and therefore fails even the pragmatic test. So it's a bad ministry model even by its own definition of what's "good." More importantly, the movement also falls short by every biblical standard I can think of. Its influence among evangelicals for more than three decades has been seriously, consistently, and (I believe) demonstrably bad in numerous ways. It's about to get even worse.

So it would frankly bother my conscience to leave the impression (even inadvertently) that I think there's anything worth singling out as wholesome or beneficial or worthy of my affirmation in that.



To illustrate: There might be many nutritious scraps of food garbage in a compost heap, but if something in you compels you to go out of your way to point them out to an undiscerning toddler, shame on you.

However, according to Dr. Warnock, "if we fail to recognize something as being good and helpful and true, we fail in our discernment as much as if we blindly accepted everything in a naive way."

OK, but what if the thing being evaluated is really not "good and helpful and true"? Because (and this is the crucial point where I take issue with Dr. Warnock's position) the fact that a person or movement has commendable qualities (even lots of them) does not necessarily make the thing itself "good and helpful and true."

Let's call that Johnson's Fifth Axiom of Common Sense.

Judas, for example, was apparently a very frugal man. Do we need to congratulate him for that every time we condemn his treachery? The Judaizers' doctrine was (as far as we know) perfectly compatible with every point of doctrine enumerated in the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon. If you were to count all the true propositions the Judaizers affirmed regarding Christian essentials, there is little doubt that they would outweigh the false propositions in their system by a very large percentage. In fact, the Judaizers' one significant difference with Paul boiled down to a single proposition about the ordo salutis. (They taught that good works precede rather than follow justification.)

But as Paul labored to demonstrate in Galatians, one apparently small, technical difference like that can and sometimes does make the difference between the true gospel and a different, damning, false gospel. Thus you'll never find Paul saying anything positive about the Judaizers.

Moreover, in Galatians 2, Paul publicly rebuked Peter just for treating that false gospel like a mere misdemeanor—even though Peter himself was an apostle of Christ who completely, unconditionally, and unreservedly affirmed the true gospel. Yet Paul did not pillow his public rebuke (or even his retelling of it) in a lot of superfluous affirmations of Peter's good intentions, or his likeable personality, or his commitment to Christ, or whatever. It was a sharp and completely unqualified public rebuke—and under the circumstances, it was warranted. One's "tone" is not always the most important factor in raising a caution about false doctrine.

In short, Warnock's First Rule of Discernment isn't biblical.

Given the enormity of the errors we are talking about in the Willow Creek philosophy, Dr. Warnock's objection to straightforward criticism of that movement strikes me as terribly misguided and question-begging—and inconsistent with what he himself says in other contexts.

For example, is Willow Creek's commitment to "important aspects of the Gospel" truly beyond question or criticism? I certainly don't think so. After all, they are sponsoring a major conference—unveiling their new agenda—with Brian McLaren as the keynote speaker. He is notorious for having portrayed the principle of penal substitution as "one more injustice in the cosmic equation . . . divine child abuse. You know?" There's hardly a single gospel-related doctrine that was highlighted in the Protestant Reformation that McLaren has not somehow questioned or attacked, and the atonement is central to all the others.

As a matter of fact, based on Dr. Warnock's own steadfast (and excellent) defense of penal substitutionary atonement, I'm mystified as to why he objects to a shrill and unqualified warning about the direction Willow seems headed.

My strong suspicion is that Dr. Warnock's most basic objection to my "discernment style" has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the concerns I have raised about Willow Creek. I think the root of his real disagreement with me lies in our difference of opinion on the charismatic question. Usually, when he makes critical posts about TeamPyro, that's the central issue he brings up—and this latest dust-up is no exception.

But that's a whole different issue, and here Dr. Warnock's complaint becomes somewhat more nuanced. I want to answer that part of his argument, too, but that will have to wait for another day. So I'll be back to follow this up [tomorrow, if not before].

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Unsportsmanlike Conduct?

Did we really blow the Rob Bell situation?
by Phil Johnson



ast week on Tim Challies' podcast, the guest was Kenneth J. Stewart, author of IVP's Ten Myths About Calvinism: Recovering the Breadth of the Reformed Tradition. Among other things, he claimed that the "uncoordinated . . . response of the conservative Reformed world" to Rob Bell's Love Wins constituted "a display of our disunity. . . a display of our failure to coordinate."

In Professor Stewart's words:

What I think our constituency was guilty of in that case is overkill. There might have been select spokesmen put forward from within our constituency, and they would be told to go to it. But we had too many people on the attack; too many people going for the jugular, and our movement displayed its unlovely side.

Challies' co-host, David Murray, quickly agreed, suggesting that once Challies and Kevin DeYoung had posted their reviews of the book, "all that needed to be said had been said."

Murray: "Tim, what do you think?"

Challies: "Yeah, I would tend to agree. . . . there was a little too much being said."

Professor Stewart then elaborated:

What does [our use of new media] display? What it can display is that we are ungracious. That we pile on. I like to think of what happened to Rob Bell in football terms. When the whistle is blown there's not to be any more tackling.

I had a few thoughts in response to this exchange:

• Of course I disagree strongly with Professor Stewart. In the first place, the response to Bell's book was hardly "a display of our disunity." The reviews of that book from the conservative and Reformed districts of the blogosphere reflected the strongest evangelical consensus I've seen since the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy disbanded. The only significant dissenting opinions were early complaints that Justin Taylor had jumped the gun, the critics were being too harsh, and other similar shopworn scoldings, mostly from Bell's own fan-base, erstwhile Emergents, and other espousers of postmodern values.
  
• It's hard to get evangelicals exercised about any point of doctrine nowadays. To scold them for supposedly overreacting at the rankness of Bell's damnable heresy strikes me as counterproductive—dangerously so.
  
• The notion that the Reformed blogosphere should be regulated like an episcopal body, so that certain designated spokespersons would be appointed by an oligarchy, a college of cardinals, a blog-Pope (or whatever) and "told to go to it"—with the rest of us being instructed to shut up—is a Really Bad Idea.
  
• Perhaps the main deficiency in the Reformed blogosphere's response to Bell's universalism is the speed with which the scandal blew over. The whole matter is already being treated as yesterday's news, as if the danger were past. Let's not forget that Arianism made most of its gains in the two or three decades after Arius's theology was categorically condemned by the Nicene council. There were many in those days who accused Athanasius of "overkill" because of his polemical persistence against Arius. (In fact, just about everyone complained that Athanasius was too relentless in his condemnation of Arius.) They were dead wrong.
  
• In my estimation, one of the most troubling characteristics of the neo-Reformed is the way so many work so hard to cultivate a culture of artificial collegiality, courting the world's admiration and the academy's esteem. Let's not encourage them in that. We need to be more concerned about declaring the truth and refuting worldly wisdom. Time Magazine's judgment about whether we are open-minded enough, diverse enough, or winsome enough is not a good barometer of how we're doing in the realm of apologetics.
  
• I also disagree with the insinuation that the early critiques of Bell were sufficient and the later ones superfluous. Justin's initial post hit in February before anyone else's. Judging from the sheer volume of comments, that was actually the post that seemed to stir the most ire. John MacArthur didn't touch the subject until more than a month later, but he wrote an extended series of posts that added up to one of the more complete analyses of Bell's error. The discussion in the combox at GTY's blog proves that "all that need[s] to be said" in response to Bell's book has not been said even yet. (I'd hate to think someone thinks MacArthur should have held his peace just because a couple of well-known bloggers had already written fifteen paragraphs or so).
  
• The hell debate has been brewing among evangelicals at least since Edward Fudge wrote The Fire that Consumes in 1982. It's not going away soon.
  
• The debate Rob Bell has provoked is not a game or a merely academic discussion. No whistle has blown; the down is not over. Bell has not retracted or recanted so much as a single sentence. His book is still selling briskly. If there ever is a time when "piling on" is appropriate, it's when Christ's teaching is being attacked so wolfishly. The suggestion that it's unsportsmanlike for too many people to comment is like saying David "displayed his unlovely side" when he whacked Goliath's head off. After all, he had already rendered Goliath unconscious! Was it "fair play" to go for the jugular (literally) while the giant was thus incapacitated?
  
• Controversy, though always unpleasant, is sometimes necessary, and it can even be good and beneficial. The idea that controversy is always evil is a falsehood that is as full of mischief as any heresy.

In short, the suggestion that the Reformed blogosphere's response to Bell's awful screed was an "overreaction" is the wrong message to be sending evangelicals, who already have an unhealthy obsession with what the secular world thinks of them, an exaggerated estimate of the importance of academic respectability, a postmodernized concept of "cordiality," an irrational fear of speaking the truth plainly, and an unholy timidity when it comes to taking unpopular stands against politically correct but erroneous beliefs.

What do you think?

PS (and a word about Tim Challies): Yes, I did write Tim Challies privately and express all of these concerns before blogging about my disagreement with his podcast. Our "disagreement" is not as wide as some might think. Tim is frequently embarrassed by the half-cocked fusillades that regularly spew forth from certain self-styled "discernment" bloggers. He wrote an excellent book on true discernment, which I fully endorse. I share his horror over so many self-styled "discernment ministries" that are neither truly discerning nor edifying to anyone. The horror is doubled when people who are put off by such side-shows refer to them as the "truly Reformed" (though many—most?—of them are not Reformed at all). Still, I think a centralized committee directing the Reformed blogosphere is not going to alleviate that problem at all. (I'm not sure there is any easy answer to that problem in a free country with easy Internet access.) I did not say (and certainly did not try to imply) that Tim Challies belongs in the category of "'neo-reformed' compromisers." Tim's podcast partner, David Murray, took my comments that way and thinks most of our commenters did too. I don't believe objective readers could possibly think that's what I was saying, but I'm happy to disavow the idea for the record. From my point of view, Tim is sometimes squeamish about plain-speaking when he shouldn't be. No doubt from Tim's point of view, contributors at TeamPyro are too edgy at times. For the most part, however, we get along just fine. I certainly appreciate the role Tim has had in the blogosphere. He was blogging for many years before I started, and like most evangelical and Reformed bloggers, I have long regarded him as something of a role model. Lastly, this is not the first time I have blogged about Tim's uneasiness with the role of the perennial critic. See this post from a couple of years ago. Just one other thing: There's a parallel discussion going on at another blog,and Professor Stewart has weighed in over there. His comments are worth reading.

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Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men

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 "Flee from the Wrath to Come," a sermon preached on Sunday evening, 23 October 1881, at the Met Tab in London.

onsider the question of John the Baptist: "When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"

I have no doubt that the Pharisees and Sadducees were very much surprised to hear John addressing them in that way; for men who wish to win disciples, ordinarily adopt milder language than that, and choose more attractive themes, for they fear that they will drive their hearers from them if they are too personal, and speak too sharply.

There is not much danger of that nowadays, for the current notion abroad now is that gospel ministers can sew with silk without using a sharp needle; and that, instead of piercing men with the sword of the Spirit, they should show them only the hilt of it; let them see the bright diamonds on the scabbard, but never let them feel the sharpness of the two-edged blade. They should always comfort, and console, and cheer, but never allude to the terror of the Lord.

That appears to be the common interpretation of our commission; but John the Baptist was of quite another mind.

There came to a him a Pharisee, a very religious man, one who observed all the details of external worship, and were very careful even about trifles, a firm believer in the resurrection, and in angels and spirits, and in all that was written in the Book of the law, and also in all the traditions of his fathers, a man who was overdone with external religiousness, a Ritualist of the first order, who felt that, if there was a righteous man in the world, he certainly was that one.

He must have been greatly taken aback when John talked to him about the wrath of God, and plainly told him that that wrath was as much for him as for other people. Those phylacteries and the broad borders of his garment, of which he was so proud, would not screen him from the anger of God against injustice and transgression; but, just like any common sinner, he would need to "flee from the wrath to come."

I daresay that the Sadducee was equally taken aback by John's stern language. He, too, was a religious man, but he combined with his religion greater thoughtfulness than the Pharisee did;—at least, so He said. He did not believe in traditions, he was too large-minded to care about the little details and externals of religion. He observed the law of Moses, but he clung rather to the letter of it than to its spirit, and he did not accept all that was revealed, for he denied that there was such a thing as an angel or a spirit. He was a Broad Church-man a man of liberal ideas, fully abreast of the age. He professed to be a Hebrew of the Hebrews; yet, at the same time, the yoke of religion rested very lightly upon his shoulders. Still, he was not irreligious; yet here is John the Baptist talking to him, as well as to the Pharisee, about "the wrath to come."

They would both have liked to have a little argument with him, but he talked to them about fleeing from the wrath to come. They would both have been pleased to discuss with him some theological questions, and to bring up the differences between their two sects, just to hear how John would handle them, and to let them see which way he would lean.

But he did not waste a moment over the matters in dispute between Pharisees and Sadducees; the one point he had to deal with was the one of which he would have spoken to a congregation of publicans and harlots, and he spoke of it in just the same way to these nominally religious people. They must "flee from the wrath to come;" or else, as surely as they were living men, that wrath would come upon them, and they would perish under it.

So John just kept to that one topic; he laid the axe to the root of the trees as he warned these hypocritical professors to escape for their lives, else they would perish in the common destruction which will overwhelm all ungodly men.

This was not the style of preaching that John's hearers liked; but John did not think of that. He did not come to say what men wished him to say, but to discharge the burden of the Lord, and to speak out plainly what was best for men's eternal and immortal interests. He spoke, therefore, first, concerning the wrath of God; and, next, he spoke concerning the way of escape from that wrath.

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Spurgeon Lectures on "The Gorilla and the Land he Inhabits"

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 volume 3 of Spurgeon's Autobiography. It is the account of how Spurgeon responded to some critics who had charged him with hypocrisy. Spurgeon was fairly young at this point in his ministry but was already well known for opposing the growing tendency for preachers to stupefy their congregations with a show of erudition or entertain them with pageantry, a performance, or a parade. Secular critics (and some fellow churchmen) attacked Spurgeon for lecturing on a topic deemed "secular."
    Actually, Spurgeon used the opportunity to draw spiritual lessons from the naturalist's work, and he spoke passionately of the need for missionaries in unreached parts of Africa. But critics were relentless. The caricatures below are samples of how he was lampooned in the secular press.
    The episode nevertheless shows Spurgeon's thoughtfulness, tenderness, and good humor in the face of criticism.

We are now to be entertained by Mr. Spurgeon's lecture on the gorilla, but, in after ages,—according to the development theory,—we shall doubtless have a gorilla lecturing on Mr. Spurgeon."—Extract from the speech of the Rt. Hon. A. H. Layard, M.P., at Mr. Spurgeon's lecture on "The Gorilla and the Land he Inhabits"

N October 1, 1861, Mr. Spurgeon gave, in the Tabernacle, a lecture which was destined to attract more public attention than any which he had previously delivered. It was entitled, "The Gorilla and the Land he Inhabits," and was largely concerned with the volume, then recently published, and severely criticised,—Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, by Paul B. Du Chaillu (John Murray). A. H. Layard, Esq., M.P., presided, and by his side sat M. Du Chaillu. . . .

Coming to the gorilla,—a stuffed specimen of which was on the platform,—the lecturer said:—"He is an enormous ape, which claims to approach the nearest to man of any other creature. How nearly he approaches, I leave you to judge.

True, his claim to be our first cousin is disputed, on behalf of the koolo-kamba, by several very learned men. If we should, therefore, admit you (addressing the gorilla) to be man's first cousin, we fear that the koolo-kamba might institute a suit at law to claim equal rights, and so many cousins would be far from convenient.

Besides, I have heard that, if we should admit this gentleman to be our cousin, there is Mr. Darwin, who at once is prepared to prove that our great-grandfather's grandfather's father—keep on for about a millennium or two,—was a guinea-pig, and that we were ourselves originally descended from oysters, or seaweeds, or starfishes. Now, I demur to that on my own account.

Any bearded gentleman here, who chooses to do so, may claim relationship with the oyster; and others may imagine that they are only developed gorillas; but I, for my own part, believe there is a great gulf fixed between us, so that they who would pass from us to you (again turning to the gorilla) cannot; neither can they come to us who would pass from thence. At the same time, I do not wish to hold an argument with the philosopher who thinks himself related to a gorilla; I do not care to claim the honour for myself, but anyone else is perfectly welcome to it.

"Seriously, let us see to what depths men will descend in order to cast a slur upon the Book of God. It is too hard a thing to believe that God made man in His own image; but, forsooth, it is philosophical to hold that man is made in the image of a brute, and is the offspring of 'laws of development.' O infidelity! thou art a hard master, and thy taxes on our faith are far more burdensome than those which Revelation has ever made. When we have more incredulity than superstition can employ, we may leap into infidel speculation, and find a fitting sphere for the largest powers of belief.

But who can deny that there is a likeness between this animal and our own race? . . . There is, we must confess, a wonderful resemblance,—so near that it is humiliating to us, and therefore, I hope, beneficial. But while there is such a humiliating likeness, what a difference there is! If there should ever be discovered an animal even more like man than this gorilla is; in fact, if there should be found the exact facsimile of man, but destitute of the living soul, the immortal spirit, we must still say that the distance between them is immeasurable. . . ."



At the time of the delivery of the "gorilla" lecture, M. Blondin was performing at the Crystal Palace, and some wag wrote to him a letter purporting to come from Mr. Spurgeon. He sent it on to the Pastor, who endorsed it thus,—"This was received by M. Blondin, and is a specimen of the genus "hoax',"—and then put it away for future reference. The envelope contained the following epistle:—

"Metropolitan Tabernacle, "Newington, "Oct. 5, 1861. "M. Blondin,    "Sir, "In consequence of the overflowing attendance at my Tabernacle, on Tuesday evening last, when I gave a lecture on the gorilla, it has occurred to myself, and to my brethren the Managers of the Tabernacle, that to engage your services for an evening (say, next Wednesday) for the following programme, would result in mutual benefit. You must meet me at the Tabernacle, on Tuesday next, at 12 o'clock, to confirm or to alter the proposed order of entertainment, which I flatter myself will be highly gratifying to all concerned. "Programme. "At 6 o'clock on Wednesday evening, Oct. 9th, M. Blondin to ascend from the platform in the Tabernacle, by an easy spiral ascent, five times round the interior, to one of the upper windows, opposite to 'The Elephant and Castle,' thence by an easy incline in at the first-floor window of that inn, and return the same way to the platform. The admission to be, as at the 'gorilla' lecture, 6d., 1s., and 2s. 6d. "Yours sincerely, "C. H. Spurgeon."

The lecturer could well afford to laugh at this clumsy attempt to hoax M. Blondin; but some of the newspaper attacks upon him, with reference to the "gorilla" and other lectures, were of such a character that they could not be reproduced here. One friend was sufficiently influenced by them to write an expostulatory letter to Mr. Spurgeon, and thus evoked the following reply:—

"Clapham, "October 22nd, 1861. "My Dear Sir, "I have been dumb under the cruel rebukes of my enemies, and the ungenerous reproofs of pretended friends. I have proved hitherto the power of silence, and although most bitterly tempted, I shall not change my custom, or venture a syllable in order to stay these mad ravings. But your brotherly note deserves one or two words of answer.     "(1.) Have I well weighed what I have done in the matter of these lectures? Aye,—and so weighed it that neither earth nor hell can now move me from my course. I have a life-work to perform, and towards its completion, through evil report and good report, I speed my way.     "(2.) You imagine that my aim is merely to amuse, and you then speak very properly of "stooping'. Indeed, if it were so, if I had no higher or nobler aim in view, it would be stooping with sorrowful emphasis; but, then, think you that the devil would care to roar at me? Why, surely, it would be his best policy to encourage me in forsaking my calling, and degrading my ministry!     "(3.) 'Is the Master's eye regarding His servant with pleasure?' Yes, I solemnly feel that it is; nor am I conscious of any act, or motive,—the common infirmity of man excepted,—which could cause me to incur Divine displeasure in connection with that which is, to me, the work of my life.     "(4.) With regard to laughter,—you and I may differ upon this matter, and neither of us be quite infallible in our judgment. To me, a smile is no sin, and a laugh no crime. The Saviour, the Man of sorrows, is our example of morality, but not of misery, for He bore our griefs that we might not bear them; and I am not John the Baptist, nor a monk, nor hermit, nor an ascetic, either in theory or practice. Unhallowed mirth I hate, but I can and do enjoy my Father's works, and the wonders of Creation, none the less, but all the more, because I am a Christian. At any rate, I hold my own views upon this point; and, during eleven years of ministry, have seen no ill effect, but very much good from my preaching, although the charge has always been laid at my door that I sometimes provoke the risible faculties.     "(5.) Concerning 'sowing to the flesh,' I have not done so in these lectures, but have rendered honest and hearty service to my Lord, and believe that spiritual fruit has already been reaped.     "(6.) As to the grief of friends, let them, as well as myself, be ready to bear the cross; and let them not attempt to evade reproach by weeping where no tears are needed. I have given no cause to the enemy to blaspheme, or only such blessed cause as shall be renewed with greater vigour than ever.     "And now for my explanation;—I have, in connection with my Church, a College for young ministers, which is a work of faith as to temporals, and a labour of love on my part in the highest sense of the term. There are about 150 young men, who are getting an education with a view, in most cases, to preaching the Word in the streets, villages, and towns of this land. Their studies are such as their capacities can receive, and the ministering brethren are mainly given to the searching of the Word; while reading it in the original is the ambition of each. In the course of instruction there are lectures, delivered by myself, a regular lecturer, and other gentlemen. We have had about twenty lectures on English History. I have given lectures on Sabbath-school teaching, Preaching, Church Discipline, Ethnology, &c., &c. The Rev. George Rogers has lectured on Books and Reading, Habit and Instinct, on Ministerial Prerequisites, and on other matters. Various brethren have taken up other topics; and, having attended all the lectures, I can testify that the best spirit has pervaded all, and each lecturer has laboured, not merely to instruct, but to do spiritual good.     "My present course is upon Natural History. For the lectures already delivered, especially the abused ones, I have had the thanks of the members passed spontaneously and unanimously; and I believe the lectures have been as acceptable to the audience as any which were ever delivered. We who have seen the wonders of wisdom in anatomy, providential adaptation, and creating perfection, have gone home praising and blessing God. We have laughed, doubtless; and we have wept, too; but, with an audience of 150 young men, and a considerable company of men and women of the working-class, what would be the use of dull, drowsy formality? Last Friday week, the 'shrews' lecture came in due course, and I thought it might be useful to give a few words as to the value of love and kindness in Christian families, for which words I have had grateful acknowledgment. We went home, and I have not heard of one of the audience who did not feel that it was an evening well and profitably spent. Many Christian people gave me a hearty shake of the hand and glowing thanks.     "But, lo! to our utter amazement, one morning we discovered that the lecture was considered vulgar, coarse, and I know not what. The gentlemen of the press had nothing else just then to do, so they said, 'Let us abuse Spurgeon, no matter whether he deserves it or not.' Since this abuse, I have asked scores who were there if anything had been said for which one might be sorry, and all have answered. 'No, nothing was said at all deserving censure, or anything but approval.' Think you that my hearers are all so degraded as to tolerate conduct such as a lying press imputes to me? O my brother, you do ill to judge a servant of the Lord from the lips of his foes, and one, too, who has had abuse enough on former occasions without having given cause of offence, which renders it inexcusable that brethren should readily believe reports concerning him!     "This work of my Institution is of God; lectures are a part of the necessary plan, they do good, I have a call to this work, so all this opposition is a spur to increased zeal. I would the Lord's people cared more than they do for these young preachers, for I feel sure that God the Holy Spirit will raise up from our midst many who shall do exploits in His Name. To this work am I called, and the Lord is with me in it. Void of offence towards God and man, trusting for acceptance to Him who has washed away my sin, shall I flee because my conduct is misunderstood and my words are misconstrued? Nay, verily, Jehovah-nissi! And now let hell roar, and saints themselves forsake. Time and eternity will clear the character of one who has given up even his good name to his Master, without reserve. "Yours wearily, "C. H. Spurgeon." "P.S.—Get the 'gorilla' lecture; read it, and see if there be any evil in it; yet it is the least religious of them all.—C. H. S."

The vote of thanks and sympathy referred to in the above letter, together with the Pastor's grateful acknowledgment of it, are thus recorded in the Tabernacle church-book:—

"At the church-meeting, held October 14, 1861, from which the Pastor was absent through illness, the following resolution was proposed, seconded, and carried unanimously:—'That the members of this church, constantly refreshed by the gospel ministry of their beloved Pastor, and deeply obliged to him for the lectures he gives upon secular and social subjects, have noticed, with sincere regret, and heartfelt sympathy with him, the scandals heaped upon his name by the public press, and beg to express to him their most loving confidence, their strong desire to endure with him a full share of his reproach, and their full determination, by God's help, to bear him constantly on their heart in prayer.'

"Church-meeting, October 28, 1861.—Our Pastor expressed his thanks to the church for the vote of sympathy with him passed at the church-meeting on October 14, and rejoiced in the fact that all the members had remained steadfast notwithstanding the virulent attacks made upon him."

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Insolence Upbraided

by Phil Johnson



hile looking up something totally unrelated, I came across an intriguing bit of correspondence published in Jill Morgan's biography of her father-in-law, A Man of the Word: Life of G. Campbell Morgan. It's a fine example of how to respond to supercilious criticism.

But I'll let Jill Morgan tell the story:

An incident occurred in connection with meetings held in a town in England, which shows a side of Campbell Morgan few people ever knew, and those who did, it is likely, never forgot. Soon after concluding a series of meetings at which the offering had been particularly generous (which was not always the case!) Dr. Morgan received the following letter:

Dear Sir, Having recently heard of the cheque you were paid by our treasurer, I wish to point out that to receive over thirteen pounds a day for expounding the Scriptures is a great stumbling block to the ordinary Christian, and still more so to 'the man in the street'. One frequently hears that preaching is only a profession like any other, its main object being to get money, and your big fees make me feel that there is a good deal of truth in it. Your reputation as one of the greatest Biblical scholars is in my opinion quite justified, and I thank God you use your great gifts to His honour and glory, but your love of money is positively appalling. If, as I have been told, you have heavy expenses, my reply is, no Christian is justified in living extravagantly, and no one else that I know of asks or expects such huge fees. If I thought that studying the Scriptures produced such fruit as that!—but of course, such a thing is absurd, for its effect should be just the opposite, on a lowly, Christ-like life. It is the inconsistent lives of Christians that produce such harm. . . . Yours sincerely, __________________

To which Dr. Morgan replied:

Sir, I am in receipt of your amazing effusion of Sept.——. It is characterized by impertinence based on ignorance. In the course of it you use the expressions, 'big fees', and 'huge fees'. For your enlightenment I may say that I make absolutely no charge for my work, neither does Mr. Marsh, who has made all my arrangements. The amounts which are paid to me are decided by those whom I serve, and it is of the essence of bad manners for anyone outside the interested party to interfere in such arrangements. When you speak of "living extravagantly" you are once more revealing your crass ignorance, and I have no intention of giving you any information as to my methods of life. The only kindness you can do me is to let me know how much you contributed toward the gift of love which was handed to me at X—, and allow me the pleasure of sending you a cheque for the same. Faithfully yours, G. CAMPBELL MORGAN.

No one can afford to be careless regarding what he puts into writing, and Dr. Morgan's statement of the method he followed in the matter of remuneration he received for his services was always meticulously carried out. What he never put into writing, and what was never known to the rank and file was the extraordinary generosity with which he used the 'huge fees' when they came his way. Less than a week after dictating this letter, he was making arrangements to help a friend which involved a long journey and a new start in life, and for this privilege he was footing the bill, not as a loan but as a gift. This side of his character was, it is needless to say, entirely unknown to his explosive correspondent.

Morgan's reply to a rude and haughty correspondent is the model of both candor and restraint. I wish I could write like that.

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