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Martyred for the Gospel

Martyred for the Gospel
The burning of Tharchbishop of Cant. D. Tho. Cranmer in the town dich at Oxford, with his hand first thrust into the fyre, wherwith he subscribed before. [Click on the picture to see Cranmer's last words.]

Daily Bible Verse

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Recovering the Reformed Confession? Calvin Against R. Scott Clark and Richard Muller



Given the diversity of the movement and the fact that Calvin was not the primary author of any of the confessional norms just noted, the better part of historical valor (namely, discretion) requires rejection of the term “Calvinist” and “Calvinism” in favor of the more historically accurate term, “Reformed.” --Richard Muller


Some time ago I wrote a book review of R. Scott Clark's book, Recovering the Reformed Confession.  At that time I did not realize how duplicitous this title actually was.  I recently read the first volume of Richard Muller's Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics:  The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. 1, 2nd edition. "Prolegomena to Theology". #1 (See footnote below).  I am citing and quoting from the Logos ebook edition.

Ironically, for all the bluster, R. Scott Clark is not promoting confessional Reformed theology at all.  What he is actually forcefully advocating is a post-reformation reinterpretation of the original confessional documents of the Protestant Reformation.  Richard Muller openly admits that he agrees with Amyraldianism, not the Reformed confessions.  Neither the Three Forms of Unity nor the Westminster Standards allow for any hypothetical atonement or for any alleged contradictions between the general call of the Gospel and the effectual call of God through irresistible grace.  Yet Muller tries to argue that the Helvetic Consensus Formula is trumped by latitudinarianism within the Reformed camp:

There were also bitter battles among the Reformed—over Cocceian theology, over the espousal of Cartesian principles, and over the various teachings of the Academy of Saumur, over the soteriology of Richard Baxter, and over various responses to the Socinian denial of an essential or ad intra divine attribute of punitive justice. On none of these issues, however, did the Reformed churches rupture into separate confessional bodies or identify a particular theologically defined group as beyond the bounds of the confessions, as had been the case at the Synod of Dort. Amyraut was, after all, exonerated by several national synods in France, and the debate over his “hypothetical universalism” did not lead to the charge of heterodoxy against others, like Davenant, Martinius, and Alsted, who had, both at Dort and afterward, maintained similar lines of argument concerning the extent of Christ’s satisfaction.104 The Westminster Confession was in fact written with this diversity in view, encompassing confessionally the variant Reformed views on the nature of the limitation of Christ’s satisfaction to the elect, just as it was written to be inclusive of the infra- and the supralapsarian views on predestination.105 Amyraut, moreover, arguably stood in agreement with intraconfessional adversaries like Turretin on such issues as the fundamental articles of the faith.106

Even when it was censured in the Formula Consensus Helvetica, the Salmurian theology was not identified as a heresy but as a problematic teaching that troubled the confessional orthodoxy of the church: the preface to the Formula specifically identifies the faculty of Saumur as “respected foreign brethren,” who stand on the same “foundation of faith” but whose recent teachings have become a matter of grave dispute.   . . .  [#2].

Notice that Muller does not argue whether or not the Amyraldian view is biblical or confessional.  He immediately pivots to whether or not the Reformed consensus was willing to tolerate a deviation from the Canons of Dort in order to preserve a united front against the Remonstrandts.  This is a capitulation to a downgrade in the interest of political concerns, not a question that was settled strictly on the issue of biblical propositions.  Earlier in this work, Muller betrays his own presuppositions which taint his objectivity on the matter.  He openly defies the Institutes of the Christian Religion and disagrees with Calvin.  In doing so, Muller is essentially disagreeing with the Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Standards as well:

Indeed, any variation of doctrine incapable of being accommodated to Calvin’s 1559 Institutes can come to be viewed by the older scholarship as a deviation from the norm of Reformed theology—without any recognition of the fact that doctrinal variations and even highly polemical debates over doctrinal formulae that took place within the confessional boundaries all belonged to the broad stream of Reformed orthodoxy.

This approach, albeit characteristic of much twentieth-century historiography, does not accurately represent the seventeenth-century orthodox understanding (or, indeed, understandings) of “orthodoxy.” To define orthodoxy in terms of the more traditionalist line of Geneva, culminating in Turretin, or in terms of the Voetian theology at Utrecht prejudices the case from the start by creating subconfessional lines of demarcation for orthodoxy and by offering an anachronistic picture of a “rigid orthodoxy” operating within the narrow limits of a single school. The historical materials do not support the picture. Just as Calvin did not speak for the entire early Reformed tradition, so was Geneva less than the arbitrator of the Reformed tradition in the seventeenth century.  [#3].

Did you notice that Muller is appealing to historiography rather than the Reformed confessions or even Scripture?  That would be anathema to the latitudinarian views of Muller since his authority is his own interpretation of history rather than the final authority of Holy Scripture.  To do so would amount to what R. Scott Clark and Muller derisively call "biblicism."  Muller does so by linking the doctrine of Sola Scriptura to the Socinian rationalism and the misuse of Scripture to justify denying the trinity and calling this "biblicism."  This is nothing more than prejudicial sophistry on the part of Muller and R. Scott Clark.   

It should also be pointed out that when Muller and R. Scott Clark refer to the term "Reformed", they are actually not affirming the traditional Reformed confessions at all.  Instead, they are appealing to the various post-reformation deviations from Scripture and the confessional standards!  Muller likes to water down the Bible and the confessional standards by appealing to the detractors instead of the biblical standards deduced from the Bible and summarized by the Westminster Standards and the Dutch Three Forms of Unity.  In case you do not know what those are, the Westminster Standards are the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.  The Three Forms of Unity are the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort.  But Muller openly admits this downgrade throughout the first volume of his work:

As for the terms “Calvinist” and “Calvinism,” I tend to avoid them as less than useful to the historical task. If, by “Calvinist,” one means a follower of Calvin who had nothing to say that was different from what Calvin said, then one would be hard put to find any Calvinists in the later sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. If by Calvinist, one means a later exponent of a theology standing within the confessional boundaries described by such documents as the Gallican Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Second Helvetic Confession, and the Heidelberg Catechism, then one will have the problem of accounting for the many ways in which such thinkers—notably, Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf, Bartholomaus Keckermann, William Perkins, Franciscus Junius, and Gulielmus Bucanus, just to name a few—differ from Calvin both doctrinally and methodologically. One might even be forced to pose Calvin against the Calvinists.3 Given the diversity of the movement and the fact that Calvin was not the primary author of any of the confessional norms just noted, the better part of historical valor (namely, discretion) requires rejection of the term “Calvinist” and “Calvinism” in favor of the more historically accurate term, “Reformed.”  [#4].

If I am "forced" to pose Calvin against the "Calvinists", then so be it.  I agree with Calvin's Institutes and with Calvin's two books against the Romanists--which amazingly also happen to be against the "Calvinists" that both Muller and R. Scott Clark agree with.  Calvin's two books are:  1.  The Eternal Predestination of God and 2.  The Secret Providence of God.  Both books are translated by Henry Cole.  I also recommend Henry Beveridge's translation of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.  This is where the latitudinarianism comes in.  Did you see that Muller is appealing to the multitude of names that he drops in his historiographical study instead of one single interpretation of the Calvinist position?  Following this line of thought, one could just as well take the Romanist view which amounts to a universalistic soteriology following Vatican II.

I personally do not like sophistry, duplicity, and outright misdirection.  This seems to violate the 9th commandment because it redefines terms that the lay reader is not familiar with in order to make them think that they are actually in agreement with the Bible, the Westminster Standards, and the Dutch Three Forms of Unity, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.  James White likes to call those who disagree with these reinterpretations "cage stage" Calvinists.  Scott Clark calls us biblicists, fundamentalists, rationalists, and other derogatory terms.  

One example of such misdirection is the Theocast channel on YouTube, which is run by two Baptists who claim to be "Reformed" while adamantly repudiating "Calvinism", which they refer to as those who advocate for a logical and fundamental interpretation of the Bible, the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity.  The hosts of the Theocast channel are continually juxaposing the moral law and the Gospel as if the two are mutually contradictory instead of harmonious expositions of the whole counsel of God.  (Acts 20:27 NKJV).  The channel is openly anti-Calvinist while claiming to advocate for the "reformed perspective."

Even worse, these dissimulators fail to reveal that they are basing their theology on the historiography of Richard Muller and others who have an agenda that leads in a more latitudinarian and liberal direction.  Muller's view can legitimately be linked to neo-orthodoxy, since he openly rejects any logical or rational explanation of the Bible from an internally consistent theology which is axiomatic.

The short of it all is that R. Scott Clark's book, Recovering the Reformed Confession, is not an unequivocal affirmation of the Canons of Dort, the Belgic Confession, or the Heidelberg Catechism.  It is instead an affirmation of the latitudinarianism of Muller's analytical historiography.  Muller is affirming 18th to 20th century compromises that contradict Calvin and the objective standards of the Westminster Confession and the Canons of Dort.  Do not be fooled by these dissimulating liars.  I prefer to be castigated as a "hyper-Calvinist" along with Calvin, Turretin, the Dutch divines at Dort, and the Westminster divines.  I prefer to be ridiculed as a rationalist who affirms the propositional revelation in Holy Scripture.  I prefer to be called a biblicist and a fundamentalist rather than to compromise God's written word.  Richard Muller and other detractors from the original Calvinist Reformers do not speak for me.  I identify as a fundamentalist Calvinist, not a neo-Calvinist who falsely pits being Reformed against Calvin and Geneva and Turretin.


Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. (Matt. 5:17-18 KJV)

If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; (Jn. 10:35 KJV)

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: (2 Tim. 3:16 KJV)

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. (2 Pet. 1:21 KJV)






#1.  Muller, Richard A. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy;  Volume 1: Prolegomena to Theology. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003. Print.

#2.  Ibid., pp. 76-77.

#3.  Ibid., p. 79.

#4.  Ibid., p. 30.


Saturday, February 10, 2024

Compromise Leads to Persecution


"It’s easy to decry right-wing scaremongering in the abstract, far more difficult to give advice to real people who have to make decisions that could cost them their careers."  Carl R. Trueman

At last Carl Trueman has to face the reality of the layperson in the pews.  Yes, your mealy-mouthed pontifications about not making enemies with the world and how grace is common to all has come home to roost. Celebrity preachers are more concerned with how many members attend and contribute monetarily to their own careers than with the real rubber meets the road reality that Christian persecution is here to stay.  

Stand on the deontological standards of God's moral law and be fired from your job, lose your family, and wind up homeless.  That's quite a price to pay for being true to the biblical worldview, is it not, Mr. Trueman?  Not a word about Alistair Begg's real motivations for accommodating to the woke agenda, right, Mr. Trueman?   (Acts 5:29).

I am continually amazed at how proficient the sophists among the fake Evangelical elite are at dodging the ethical and moral implications of their pontifications from the bully pulpits of media platforms, social media, and their paid positions in woke Evangelical colleges and seminaries.  The celebrity preachers are unwilling to sacrifice their careers by telling the hard truth.  So, their advice to you is to compromise as well.  

After all, how can Evangelicalism survive without church members who have paying jobs and can contribute huge amounts of mammon?  The point is that the Evangelical elites can continue in their lavish lifestyles, while the rest of us toil away in blue collar jobs.  Perhaps the hard sayings of Jesus were not so much rabbinical hyperbole as actual and practical applications of God's moral law?  If evangelism and mission is about accommodation to the world, count me out.  However, if evangelism and mission is about challenging the world and challenging the religious Pharisees of easy believism, common grace, and the well meant offer?  Count me in.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mk. 8:36-38 KJV)

And did you notice that Trueman likes to fellowship with Romanists by publishing in their magazine, "First Things"?  Why would a genuine Protestant Evangelical give credibility to a publication which promotes compromise and accommodation to a false religion that the Protestant Reformers referred to as a "synagogue of Satan"?  This pretty much sums up the problem of Evangelicalism today.  Who will stand for the truth?

The late Dr. Gordon H. Clark succinctly stated the problem of accommodating to secular views of the civil magistrate:  

My thesis is that secularism necessarily implies dictatorship and totalitarian rule.  For example, Aristotle pointedly objects to Plato's communism; but his own theory defines the state as the partnership or "community" which includes all goods.  The result is state control of religion and of all human good, nothing excepted.

It is only the Hebrew-Christian revelation, as exemplified in the condemnation of King Ahab's violation of Naboth's private property, that justifies both the authority of a state and the limitations on that authority.

The Confession in section i states that it is God who has ordained civil magistrates.  Their authority comes from him; therefore, they cannot rightfully act as dictators; their just powers are only those which God has assigned them.  What those powers are and what they are not is indicated here and there throughout the Bible; and appeals to the Bible must settle such questions as pacifism and capital punishment, as well as the principle of private property.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  What Do Presbyterians Believe?  The Westminster Confession Yesterday and Today.  1965.  2nd Edition.  (Unicoi: The Trinity Foundation, 2001).  Pp. 207-208. 

Dr. Clark would have never greed with the radical two kingdoms view or with the so-called Christian libertarian movement in the political realm.  The reason is clearly stated in his commentary on the civil magistrate.  There is no such thing as neutrality.  While I would not say that Clark was a theonomist--mostly because the theonomy movement is predominately based on the theology of paradox of Van Til and his followers--it is clear that Clark advocated for a Christian worldview which included political activism on the part of both denominations and church members who are genuinely Christian.

It is increasingly clear that the leftists in America have a double standard for justice.  Their idea of justice is based on secular humanism and rights that the economically and racially oppressed can demand that the government enforce from the top down.  When critical race theory and cultural Marxism become the basis for American jurisprudence and the civil magistrate, the result is the totalitarianism that Clark predicted.  Anyone can see that losing one's ability to support his family is persecution.  The Democrats are determined to take away the divine rights of Christians to worship and believe whatever they wish, and the enforcement of it is to remove their divine right to self-defense by the second amendment, their right to free speech and freedom from government oppression of religion, i.e. the free exercise of religion.  The government run by the left wants to confiscate private property and redistribute wealth to so-called oppressed groups, including those who are not even citizens of the United States of America.  Open borders, the radical LGBTQIA+ movement, the radical reinterpretation of history,  and the removal of statues and books with which the leftists disagree are all symptomatic of an outright attack on the Christian worldview and the U.S. Constitution, which drew heavily from biblical principles of divine justice, not the Marxist social justice of the critical race theorists and the human secularists.

Christians who actually believe that God determines right and wrong should become not just evangelists for the Gospel, but also political activists who stand against the pharisaical Evangelical elites who have joined with the social justice warrior movement.  I find it strange that R. Scott Clark claims to be more concerned about the Gospel than political activism, yet he writes extensive articles criticizing John MacArthur.  MacArthur just happens to agree with a Reformed piety that actually calls for obedience to the Gospel and obedience to the moral law.  But Scott Clark is more concerned with appeasing the world than with standing against immorality.  Perhaps it is because Scott Clark is more concerned for pragmatic church growth than with faithfulness to the whole counsel of God?  (Acts 20:27).  Carl Trueman's article is posted at the Heidelblog for good reason.  (See:  Can Christians Attend Gay Weddings?).  Why is this even an issue?  Both Trueman and R. S. Clark are compromisers of the kind that I totally dislike.  These fake Evangelicals in the celebrity elite crowd are leading entire denominations into theological and political compromise, which eventually will end with God's judgment falling on them and on the nation.

 

 

 


 

Friday, November 17, 2023

Semi-Calvinist Confusions: Common Grace and the Well Meant Offer


Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2:4 KJV)

3 By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death. 4 These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished. (WCF 3:3-4 WCS)


In my last post I pointed out that the purveyors of semi-Calvinist common grace propose that there are apparent contradictions, or paradoxes in the Bible, thereby agreeing with Cornelius Van Til's view that all Scripture is apparently contradictory.  The problem arises when no solutions to the apparent contradictions are offered, and the contradiction is allowed to stand with no further attempt at harmonization or rational solution.  According to their view, it would be prying into the secret counsel of God to give rational explanations for paradoxes in the Bible.

The Calvinista common grace disrupters contend that God both desires to save all individuals without exception and does not decree the salvation of all individuals without exception. This view fails to distinguish between God's revealed will to promiscuously give a general call of the Gospel to all who will hear the Gospel, (Matthew 22:14), and the effectual call of regeneration.  (Ezekiel 36:26-27; John 3:3-8).  This general presentation is a call of the Gospel on the part of humans who are limited in knowledge.  But does it mean that Calvinists should preach the Gospel as if we were all Arminians?  The answer is no.  But that is what Scott Clark wants us to do.  He wants us to tell all of the human race that Christ died for them, knowing full well that the Bible teaches particular atonement and particular redemption, not a universal atonement.  This is just one example of the contradictions in R. Scott Clark's theology.  God does not literally desire the salvation of every single individual.  Since we do not know who is elect and who is not, we must promiscuously preach to all.  The difference is in how we frame the Gospel call.  We must be faithful to the biblical confessions of faith, especially the Westminster Confession of Faith, if we are to claim to be Reformed.  I would contend that the common grace doctrine betrays this dedication to the truth of Scripture as summarized by the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Obviously, when the word "all" is used, it does not literally mean all in every context, so RSC's exegesis is duplicitous at best.  If all of Jerusalem came to hear Jesus preach, does it literally mean that every single person in the city came to hear Him preach?  I think not.  In the same way, when God declares that He wishes for all men to be saved, the deduced conclusion is that He wishes to save all of His elect from among the entire human race.  It is our duty to fulfill that general call because it is commanded in the great commission.  (Matthew 28:18-20).

Scott Clark thinks that there are actual contradictions in God's eternally unchanging mind.  Clark can say that because he thinks that the archetypal knowledge of God is absolutely unknowable, rendering the predestination question a merely theoretical doctrine that should never be defended or mentioned in any evangelistic context whatsoever.  But if God's secret will is unknowable in regards to individuals, does it mean that we should never preach on the terrible doctrine of predestination, especially when it has a dual outcome of election to salvation and reprobation to damnation?  According to Scott Clark, that will not preach, so we should just not say anything about it.  But what does John Calvin say about this?  Calvin actually puts RSC's view in the mouth of the opponents; it is to be refuted.

1 Timothy 2:4 means that God wants to save His elect from every class of mankind, high and low.  It does not literally mean universal salvation for all of mankind as the Arminians, the Unitarian Universalists, and the common grace Semi-Calvinists contend.  The general call of the Gospel does not prove that God literally desires to save everyone head for head, as the purveyors of paradox contend.  Rather, the general call of the Gospel is preached to all indiscriminately because we do not know whom God has individually elected.  He wants us to preach to all so that the elect may be gathered from all nations and classes of men.  The common grace people take this is as a contradiction with no solution.  See Calvin's Commentaries: 

4. Who wishes that all men may be saved. Here follows a confirmation of the second argument; and what is more reasonable than that all our prayers should be in conformity with this decree of God?

And may come to the acknowledgment of the truth. Lastly, he demonstrates that God has at heart the salvation of all, because he invites all to the acknowledgment of his truth. This belongs to that kind of argument in which the cause is proved from the effect; for, if “the gospel is the power of God for salvation to every one that believeth,” (Rom. 1:16,) it is certain that all those to whom the gospel is addressed are invited to the hope of eternal life. In short, as the calling is a proof of the secret election, so they whom God makes partakers of his gospel are admitted by him to possess salvation; because the gospel reveals to us the righteousness of God, which is a sure entrance into life.

Hence we see the childish folly of those who represent this passage to be opposed to predestination. “If God,” say they, “wishes all men indiscriminately to be saved, it is false that some are predestinated by his eternal purpose to salvation, and others to perdition.” They might have had some ground for saying this, if Paul were speaking here about individual men; although even then we should not have wanted the means of replying to their argument; for, although the will of God ought not to be judged from his secret decrees, when he reveals them to us by outward signs, yet it does not therefore follow that he has not determined with himself what he intends to do as to every individual man.

But I say nothing on that subject, because it has nothing to do with this passage; for the Apostle simply means, that there is no people and no rank in the world that is excluded from salvation; because God wishes that the gospel should be proclaimed to all without exception. Now the preaching of the gospel gives life; and hence he justly concludes that God invites all equally to partake salvation. But the present discourse relates to classes of men, and not to individual persons; for his sole object is, to include in this number princes and foreign nations. That God wishes the doctrine of salvation to be enjoyed by them as well as others, is evident from the passages already quoted, and from other passages of a similar nature. Not without good reason was it said, “Now, kings, understand,” and again, in the same Psalm, “I will give thee the Gentiles for an inheritance, and the ends of the earth for a possession.” (Ps. 2:8, 10.)

In a word, Paul intended to shew that it is our duty to consider, not what kind of persons the princes at that time were, but what God wished them to be. Now the duty arising out of that love which we owe to our neighbour is, to be solicitous and to do our endeavour for the salvation of all whom God includes in his calling, and to testify this by godly prayers.

Calvin's commentary on 1 Timothy 2:4.

Calvin, John, and William Pringle. Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010. Print.]


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