Posted on 09/29/2009 7:13:26 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
A minister who preaches on the authority and infallibility of Scripture is often accused of being arrogant, said one pastor. Such criticism, however, is withheld from someone who sits on a stool in a cardigan and chats with the congregation, telling personal stories.
Criticizing the latter form, Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, made the case for the preacher who declares "thus saith the Lord."
"A minister should ascend into the pulpit in order to declare what would have been true had he never been born. He is there to preach what was written in the Word before all ages and is utterly disconnected from his personal dreams, hopes and aspirations," Wilson said at the Desiring God Ministries' national conference in Minneapolis on Saturday. "A minister is not up there to develop a relationship with everybody individually."
Ministers are not supposed to be extemporaneous actors trying to figure out their lines from everything other than the Bible, he noted. They may maintain that their scripts are better, their plot lines are grittier or that their shows make more money, but a minister's script is Scripture, Wilson stressed.
"He is there to declare something that is outside of his control. What God has revealed to us in the Bible is the message. That's the script."
Wilson, who describes himself as a biblical absolutist, gave a nearly 60-minute talk on Calvin, the Bible and the Western world during the three-day conference themed "With Calvin in the Theater of God."
The Moscow pastor, who also helped to establish the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, sees ongoing battles today on the infallibility and inerrancy of the Word of God. But believers, he said, are neglecting the battle over the place of the Bible.
"Conservative evangelicals believe the Bible has no mistakes in it ... but who today believes as Calvin did? Who treats the Bible as Calvin did?"
Sixteenth century reformer John Calvin taught and preached as if the Bible was the sun around which everything else revolved, but many Christians have drifted far away from this, Wilson lamented. Some modern believers are heliocentric on matters of personal piety or the denomination's confession while geocentric with regard to matters involving the public square, he pointed out.
"What good to us is a perfect sun ... if it revolves around a very imperfect earth ... and is orbiting us at greater and greater distances out so that now in the 21st century for most of the church it almost appears as a star. It doesn't matter if you say it's a very perfect star if it's way far away and orbiting us," he said.
"If we want to learn Reformation basics from John Calvin, this is what we need to recover. An important issue concerns the nature of God's word but in our day, the thing we are really clueless about is the authoritative centrality of God's Word."
The conference speaker, however, cautioned ministers from making the subtle mistake many make while defending the inerrancy and centrality of Scripture.
He explained, "We have fallen for the trap of thinking that inerrancy requires us to be grade nerds – always the best student in the class but one who cannot abide making a mistake and who will argue with the teacher (Mrs. Enlightenment) over every last point."
But what's even more fundamentally wrong is that the Bible is subject to proof and reasoning and weighed by the world's standards.
"The Bible is not which meets the standard. The Bible is that which sets the standard," Wilson emphasized. "The Scriptures are not a possession of ours which we may put into the world's balances to be weighed. Rather, the Scriptures are God's scales in which He places the entire world and all the nations of men."
While Christianity isn't blind leap fideism, Wilson said that in order to understand the Scriptures rightly, one must be converted to Christ. Otherwise, "if you're argued into Christ, you can be argued out of him."
The role of preachers then is to declare the necessity of hearing the Word of God, he highlighted. They were not sent to make a few mild suggestions, dialogue with the world and tell the world that it's quite right, or to indulge in a few postmodern dabblings of a theological nature, he noted. Rather, they were sent to "declare what has been accomplished" and not what they would like to have accomplished.
The Desiring God conference was held Sept. 25-27 and included speakers John Piper, pastor for Preaching and Vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, and Mark Talbot, associate professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College, among others. The theme of this year's conference was chosen in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Calvin's birth.
...."Conservative evangelicals believe the Bible has no mistakes in it ... but who today believes as Calvin did? Who treats the Bible as Calvin did?"....
...."if you're argued into Christ, you can be argued out of him"....
....The role of preachers then is to declare the necessity of hearing the Word of God, he highlighted. They were not sent to make a few mild suggestions, dialogue with the world and tell the world that it's quite right, or to indulge in a few postmodern dabblings of a theological nature, he noted. Rather, they were sent to "declare what has been accomplished" and not what they would like to have accomplished.
Related thread:
Evangelicals Urged to Heed Calvin's Voice [Desiring God Ministries' 2009 national conference]
http://www.svchapel.org/resources/book-reviews/4-christian-living/127-future-grace-by-john-piper
Book review of ‘Future Grace’ by John Piper
Written by Gary Gilley
Piper likes to shock. He makes statements, and creates phrases (e.g. Christian hedonism) that unravels his readers. His goal is to get our attention and provide a basis for changing the way we think. It works, but it also confuses. While I appreciate much of what Piper says, I have found that his readers interpret him in many ways. This is always true to some degree – we all put or own spin on what we read and hear, but Piper’s writings seem to lend themselves to this problem more than most. Why? Because he says things so many different ways. About the time you think you know what he is saying he addresses an issue from a different direction and leaves you scratching your head. Or he attacks a time-honored position of Bible teachers, replaces it with his own, then turns around later and softens his blows – only to attack afresh in a future chapter. Such tactics are common place in Future Grace.
The book opens with a full-fledged assault on living the Christian life motivated by gratitude (he calls it the “debtor’s ethic”). This is unfortunate, surely there are bigger demons to exorcise from the Christian community (later, he will admit that gratitude is not all bad, as long as it is not taken too far, see pp. 48,49 and chapter 7). He replaces gratitude with “living by faith in future grace.” Surely no one questions that the Christian life is lived by faith, but why he had to behead the straw man of gratitude to prove this point escapes me. Faith and gratitude are not enemies, they are friends. Both should be embraced.
It is impossible to miss Piper’s primary point – living faith in future grace. He repeats this phrase hundreds of times throughout the book, as often as ten to fourteen times on a given page. He repeats it at every opportunity, at every turn. I felt like the people of Israel who had eaten so much manna that it was making them sick. But like the people of Israel, I could live with this. My struggles run deeper.
I believe Piper’s mistake began with the title. He attempts to reduce the whole Christian life down to one component, “future grace.” This is an unfortunate and narrow-minded deduction. Once this premise is established he then attempts (forces) to reconcile everything else in Scripture around this thesis. It cannot be done and the result is a distortion of the Christian life.
Rather than writing about the privilege of placing our faith in God as one of the many important elements of living for Him (remember that Paul even spoke of faith, hope and love, and the greatest was love), Piper becomes too narrow and actually makes claims for faith that cannot be substantiated. Even the phrase “faith in future grace” is fraught with problems. Is all of the Christian life a faith in future grace? Is there no looking back with gratitude to God’s faithfulness (Piper, remember, calls this the debtor’s ethic). What about the present? Is God doing nothing now? Is everything in the future? When the future comes will it not be the present, a present in which, according to Piper, we will then be looking to the future? And do we really place our faith in future grace or do we place our faith in the God who gives grace in all tenses (past, present and future)? Undoubted, our author would agree that our faith is in God, not in “grace,” but he seldom says so. Instead, it is “faith in future grace.” This troubles me for it is not unlike the theology of the Word of Faith movement that believes faith to be a force that can be controlled and manipulated through the right methods. Piper would surely deny this, but he comes dangerously close to such a view in Future Grace (see chapters 6,8,12). Not only does he use confusing terminology but he often speaks of unleashing power through faith (see chapter 12 especially pp.161,162 for one example, also p.185).
Piper has good chapters on anxiety (3), grace (5) and patience (13). But he places the Christian under the Law (chapters 12,19) and his view of the gospel left me with grave concerns. In chapter 15 he presents a very confusing gospel message. He says nothing about repentance of sin but adds “delight” in God as a prerequisite for conversion. He also confuses, I believe, salvation with sanctification. Piper states, “I say that saving faith must ‘include’ delight. Delight in the glory of God is not the whole of what faith is. But I think that without it, faith is dead” (p.203). So now the poor sinner must not only trust God but must delight in him before he can be converted. Incredible!! In addition, our eternal salvation, according to Piper, is dependent upon how well we live as Christians. “Jesus said, if you don’t fight lust, you won’t go to heaven. . . . If we don’t fight lust we lose our soul. . . . Faith delivers from hell, and the faith that delivers from hell delivers from lust. . . . Faith alone is necessary for justification, but the purity that confirms faith’s reality is also necessary for final salvation” (pp. 332,333). Wow, this certainly sounds likes works to me.
Future Grace has some excellent material but it is so entwined with questionable statements and theology that it is not worth the struggle to filter through it. Additionally, if swallowed without discernment this volume could do great damage.
amazing, folks continue to scratch their heads as to why individuals continue to put their own personal spin on the word of God...
duh, when you have no authority but your own personal spin, what else do you do?
Pastor Cardigan Sweater on channel 5 will take the same passages as Pastor Slickedback Expensive Suit, and both have different takes on the same thing, both claiming they are the only true interpretation...
and on some of the most profound salvation issues...and still people dont get it...
confusion is now the norm.....
We were covering the 10 commandments.
I think this problem has been out there for decades. German higher criticism has affected a majority of denominations and it's poisonous fruits are ever more apparent.
Reformed Doctrine is the antidote. The Five Points - TULIP is most effective. Usually Liberals roll their eyes when talking about T- The Total Depravity of man. When this happens I ask them what "No one Seeks for God", "No one does Good" mean?
They are usually stumped and I can ask them to seek the Lord about that. Letting the Holy Spirit do His work, than my feeble arguments.
“A minister is not up there to develop a relationship with everybody individually.”
Former clergy here (recovering clergy actually).
No, your JOB is to keep everyone happy. That requires good relationships. If you get the wrong person unhappy then you will face the proverbial Saturday Night Elder’s Meeting, and you won’t have a job anymore.
Sad, but true.
And, to further infuriate people here....
The most “successful” pastors in most denominations preach sermons that sound pretty while given, and are forgotten before the worshiper leaves the back door to head for their favorite restaurant. Because, if people remember what you said, then they might disagree with you, and (see point above).
i disagree here because you end up in the same boat again....you want to use Reformed Doctrine? dont you think it has been tried centuries over and over?
And that same type of thinking has resulted in the very mess we are in now with folks still insisting their doctrinal interpretation is correct and the pastor at Good Book Free Bible Only Scripture Only Church of Christ, is saying the opposite of those doing the TULIP shuffle....
It’s good to know there is at least someone who believes as I do. My pastor told me I was close to worshiping the Bible instead of Jesus. I told him that the Bible declares itself to be the Word of God and the Bible declares that Jesus is the Word. If I believe in Jesus, the Bible has to be the ultimate authority for every belief I have, does it not?
Without the Bible, how could I believe in Jesus? How would I know him?
Gen 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
John 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Rev 19:13 ...His name is called the Word of God.
Rev 19:16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.
Excellent description of the grand old book that contains the only true, first hand record of man's supernatural creation and mankind's subsequent fall from innocence into original sin.
Either the entire bible is inerrant and totally trustworthy in it's original autographs or it's not the infallible Word of the one and only true God. Hundreds of bible prophecies that have been fulfilled to the exact letter and time prove that the bible is exactly what it claims to be, namely the Word of God put down on parchment through the agency of divinely inspired human writers. Someone has calculated that the odds of all the hundreds of old testament prophecies regarding a future divine savior being fulfilled in every detail as they were by Jesus Christ's supernatural birth, life, death, and resurrection are so mathematically remote that their fulfillment would been impossible if not for their supernatural author's foreknowledge.
Every man and woman's eternal destiny after the death of his or her physical body is determined by either his or her faith in Jesus Christ and His atoning, sacrificial death for mankind's sin, or the absence of that faith. Romans ch 10:9-10. "That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved."
Oprah is dead wrong when she says there are many paths to God and His heaven. Jesus Christ is the one and only savior of mankind, and any other path leads straight to an eternal destiny in a very real place the bible calls hell. Believe what God wrote through Paul's quill and accept the salvation freely conferred by Jesus Christ on anyone who believes on Him and will accept His Lordship over their life, or face eternal death in a place called hell as the penalty for refusing His gracious offer. There is no other way for any descendant of Adam to avoid eternal death and gain eternal life after the end of his or her temporal life on earth.
Your post is so sad. What you say is true by worldly standards but opposite of truth by biblical standards. It sounds as if all your faith was in yourself. And, it sounds as if you failed. All of us have been there.
The apostle Paul went to jail. People lost their very lives. Losing a job is small in comparison.
Most of today’s preachers do in no way resemble the earlier ones. The bible describes this as their message having a form of Godliness but denying the power thereof. We are told to turn away from these preachers.
Scripture is infallible but he's not. Therein lies the problem. People realize that what they're actually getting is Pastor John's take on infallible Scripture and he may have got it all wrong. If his teaching diverges from their personal beliefs, well maybe he is in the wrong. That's where the devil of personal interpretation takes you. It all comes down to authority in the end.
Infallible Scripture, if it is to be of any use, demands an infallible interpreter. Otherwise, its infallibility is lost. It's like having a Porsche in the driveway but no key to put in the ignition. It's like having a strong chain with a single weak link. Useless.
Who wants to listen to somebody take an infallible text and mangle it or get it half right? Not me. I want the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Only an authoritative teacher can correctly explain the true meaning of Scripture and God, because he is a good Father gave us one. The Church. To guard the truth and preserve it from error. He didn't just toss us a Bible and say "go figure". No, the Church came first, then came the Bible. Scripture doesn't give us the Church. The Church gives us Scripture. And because it does so, it has the authority to break open the Scriptures because the Holy Spirit is guiding it.
“It sounds as if all your faith was in yourself. And, it sounds as if you failed.”
No, my faith wasn’t in myself. But yes, it did fail. The pain is still there.
Often times, they try attacking the problem of sin, either saying it doesn't exist or that man is self sufficient to deal with it (the error of Pelagius). That's why the doctrine T of the Total Depravity of man is so key, because it immediately shows up bad doctrine on sin.
If you don't have good doctrine there, the rest of your doctrine is no good.
The next is Unconditional Election, that God the Father, chose from the dead, through nothing they would do and for His good pleasure alone, doing for folks what they would not do for themselves - to elect them to Salvation.
This doctrine wipes out the doctrine of Works - that folks can save themselves by their own actions. And from the doctrine that they elected themselves. For folks ignore John 6:46 where the Lord Jesus Christ says "No one comes unto me unless the Father draws Him".
The U helps answer the tough questions in Romans and Malachi "Jacob have I loved, but Esau I have hated" - From Birth mind you.
These are Stumpers for sure without good doctrine.
Sorry, The Creeds and Good doctrines are there for good reason. The attacks of the enemy get repeated on churches that are weak. Without Good doctrine founded upon the Scriptures you are cannon fodder for the enemy.
good doctrine is fine, but you yourself have just said your particular denomination has issues with that Reformed Doctrine.
Why? becuase everyone is their own boss, pick up the good book and it says what you say it says and everyone else is wrong.....
can you really explain the continual splintering of Christ’s church militant for any other reason than continually changing doctrine and reinterpretation of that to suit the individual needs of the pastor?
If the sole authority is His word, and that scripture interprets itself, etc...there shouldnt be such a wide variance on matters essential to salvation.
OK, then answer the question, How can the Lord God hate Esau from Birth (Romans 9:11,13 and Malachi 1:2,3)?
What does it mean "No one seeks for God" in Romans 3, Psalm 14 and Psalm 53.
Go for it.
wait, answer my questions first, why the wide variance of all those who use the scripture alone to ‘lead’ their flocks, and have such radical differences on what is intrinsic to salvation???
Now secondly, your quotes would be interpreted in light of what is know from the word, the context, etc, and also the historical church teachings, and sacred tradition that was handed down from the apostles to their sucessors.
That way you have a consistent teaching down to today.
I am praying God will heal your hurt and take away your pain and show you what happened in your situation. When Peter was walking on the water, he became afraid. He knew that by the laws of physics he would go under and perhaps drown. But Jesus is able to defy even the physical laws of the universe. When Peter looked up and saw Jesus walking on the water, his faith was restored and he walked on the water, too.
The bible says without faith it is impossible to please God. The bible teaches that God gives us faith and He increases our faith. So, none of this is of ourselves. We are told to please God, not men. A lot of our pastors are pleasing men who are their employers in order to keep a job. Preachers used to be God pleasers. They relied upon God to meet their needs. Many of them worked in addition to preaching. Our culture has changed that. Church has become a worldly business operating just like other businesses. This is not good. A lot of good preachers have become disillusioned like you. I pray you will not give up on God.
amen
Here's a pastor that teaches God's word very directly - and his congregation is growing.
One must always hold true to God's word - even if those you're speaking it to don't want to receive it.
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