The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth: Part 4

 

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. (Matthew 23:15 KJV)

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? (Genesis 3:1 KJV)

“The classical approach judges the validity of any experience on the basis of previously established theological principles. In contrast, Church Growth leans toward a phenomenological approach which holds theological conclusions somewhat more tentatively and is open to revising them when necessary in the light of what is learned through experience.”  C. Peter Wagner 

 

The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth:  Part 4

 

Drawing from my own personal history with the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement in the mid-1980s, I can tell you that the biggest concern for the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement was the growth and spread of the third wave or the Charismatic movement, not classical Pentecostalism.  As I have stated in previous posts, there was a huge split within the Assemblies of God denomination over precisely this distinction between classical Pentecostalism, which emphasized Wesleyan holiness and Christian perfection along with the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts, and the Charismatic movement, which emphasized the gifts of the Spirit and church growth above all else.  C. Peter Wagner, Charles Kraft, and others associated with Fuller Theological Seminary pushed this sociological and business model of church growth using ecstatic experiences and emotional appeals to recruit naïve converts into the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement.

While I was a student at Asbury Theological Seminary, I was curious enough as a Pentecostal minister to study the church growth model as it was being taught at Asbury.  Although as a student at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God, Lakeland, Florida--now known as Southeastern University--I was taught the penal substitutionary view of the atonement, the church growth class at Asbury advocated for the governmental theory of the atonement.  But instead of emphasizing the fact that Jesus satisfies the penalty for sin, the professor at that time emphasized the fact that Jesus died on the cross to demonstrate His love for lost persons.  The emphasis is that the atonement satisfies for the sins of all persons, not just the elect.  Thus, the Pentecostals and the Wesleyans will tell you that Jesus died for you because He loves you.  But is it true that Jesus died for everyone who has ever been born and will be born until the parousia or the return of Christ?  Does God really love everyone without exception, good and evil, elect and reprobate?  That seems to be the emphasis of the church growth movement.  I would contend that it is also the emphasis of the neo-Calvinist, neo-reformed movement as it has deviated from the classical Calvinism of the earliest Reformers and of the Westminster divines.  After all, common grace says that God loves the reprobate, although not savingly.  The Old Princeton theologian, Charles Hodge, said that Christ in some sense died for everyone without exception.  According to Hodge, Christ died to purchase common grace for the reprobate and all humanity.

Although tracing the roots of a movement can be open to the genetic fallacy, I think it is a legitimate endeavor to show how the church model began.  The so-called “father” of the church growth movement was missionary to India named Donald McGavran.  McGavran was associated with and supported by the Disciples of Christ, a mainline denomination which has been liberal since at least the modernist controversies of the 1920s.  The basic approach of the Disciples of Christ is no creed but Christ.  In fact, the denomination is even further away from the Churches of Christ and the Christian Church, all being descended from the Cane Ridge Revival of the Second Great Awakening.  At its beginning the movement emphasized the theology of no creed but the Bible.  So, it is a step away from the Bible to say that there is no creed but Christ.  (See:  History of the Disciples of Christ).

Rather than go into the details, of which there are many, I will focus on the basics of the church growth movement.  A critical evaluation of the movement by David J. Valleskey, a Lutheran professor of evangelism is available in PDF format here:  The Church Growth Movement: An Evaluation.  Although the article was written in 1990, it is still pertinent and applicable to today.

Following the principles of the church growth movement and its sociological approach, Tim Keller, a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America, a split from the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, started a church in New York City.  Keller, allegedly a conservative Presbyterian with a commitment to the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, did everything possible to distance himself from the biblical standards summarized by the Westminster standards.  In fact, Keller openly denied the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and asserted that God could have created the earth and humanity by way of theistic evolution.  Keller further advocated for the LGBTQIA+ view that sexual orientation is not inherently sinful, but only acting on the allegedly inborn sexual orientation is sinful.  This flies the face of the biblical view that humanity became sinful because of Adam’s original sin and that since the time of Adam’s fall every person on earth is totally corrupt through and through, also known as total depravity.

Keller adopted his own catechism by editing out the controversial doctrines of predestination, unconditional election, special providence, effectual call, and biblical inerrancy.  In fact, the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible is not even mentioned in Keller’s New City Catechism.  Basically, following the principles of the Disciples of Christ and the Second Great Awakening, Keller decided that Calvinism and the Westminster standards are divisive doctrines that must be avoided in order to facilitate the growth of his church plant.  For Keller the correct way to preach is to appeal to pragmatic applications because secular society and much of Christianity today rejects truth.  People want to know how things “work”.  This is another twist on the church growth principle of appealing to felt needs.  What causes conversions is not biblical truth but how does this apply to me?

We live in a society in which people are skeptical of any kind of truth at all. In contrast to earlier eras, which accepted revealed truth or honored reason and scientific truth, many people today can’t simply receive a set of teachings without seeing how Christianity “works,” how it fleshes out in real life.

 This has implications for all of us. For Christians who are surrounded by today’s secular culture, it is important to hear the preacher dealing winsomely and intelligently with the problems of non-believers on a regular basis. This helps them address their own doubts and is also excellent “training” in sharing their faith. The evangelism programs of earlier eras do not always adequately prepare Christians for dealing with the wide range of intellectual and personal difficulties people have today with the Christian faith.

In a similar way, when the preacher speaks to believers, the non-Christians present come to see how Christianity works in real-life situations. For example, if you are preaching a sermon on the subject of materialism, and you directly apply the gospel to the materialism of Christians, you are doing something that both interests and profits non-Christians. Many listeners will tend to make faith decisions on more pragmatic grounds. Instead of examining the faith in a detached intellectual way, they are more likely to make a faith commitment through a long process of mini-decisions, by “trying it on” and by seeing how it addresses real problems.

Tim Keller.  “Preaching in a Secular Culture.”  (See also:  The Gospel Coalition:  Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World).

According to Keller, the way to evangelize is preach the Gospel in a way that appeals to both Christians and non-Christians.  But the problem here is that Keller never defines what he means by the term “the Gospel”.  Does he mean the whole biblical revelation from Genesis to Revelation?  Does he mean the dialectical distinction between law and Gospel as advocated by the dialectical theologians of apparent contradictions and paradox?  Secondly, even granting that Keller means the Bible, why is he focused on what works rather than what is true?  One of the principles of the church growth movement as stated by the charismatic theologian and church growth expert, C. Peter Wagner, is that theology must be adapted to the audience.  That sounds a lot like relativism.  David J. Valleskey makes at least two insightful criticisms of the church growth approach:

We will keep on the right track if we remember two things. First, we need to remember that sociological research and principles do not build the Church. They serve a ministerial, supportive role, not a magisterial role.  Only the Holy Spirit, through the means of grace, builds the Church.

Sociological principles, therefore, must never assume a position of greater importance than the proclamation of the Word and administration of the Sacraments.  Nor dare they even be placed on the same level as Word and Sacrament.  The Church doesn’t grow when proper sociological conditions are met.  The Church doesn’t grow when proper sociological conditions are met and law and gospel are preached.  The Church grows when law and gospel are preached (Isaiah 55:10, 11).  The second thing we need to remember is that the Church Growth Movement tends to ignore the first thing we need to remember. C. Peter Wagner writes,

“Church growth...looks to social sciences as a cognate discipline,” . . . that is, a discipline which is allied with rather than subservient to theology. Wagner actually goes further than that. He says,

The classical approach judges the validity of any experience on the basis of previously established theological principles. In contrast, Church Growth leans toward a phenomenological approach which holds theological conclusions somewhat more tentatively and is open to revising them when necessary in the light of what is learned through experience.

Wagner’s thesis, it would appear, is that if your theology at present doesn’t have room for a factor that causes churches to grow, then it is time to revise your theology. Test by the results rather than by the Scriptures.  

Valleskey, “The Church Growth Movement: An Evaluation”, p. 19.

I am not saying that the classical Lutheran distinction between the moral law of God and the good news of the Gospel is dialectical theology.  However, in the postmodern era, this is often the approach of the neo-Calvinists and the neo-reformed who wish to distance themselves from the unpopular doctrines of double predestination and the distinction between general providence and special providence.  They wish to redesignate the doctrine of general providence as “common grace” and redefine the Gospel in terms of the semi-Calvinist compromise between Pelagianism and the doctrines of sovereign grace.  Tim Keller takes this even further by redefining the biblical standards according to what works.  Pragmatism is not a source for universal and absolute truth.  In fact, it is a compromise with utilitarianism on several levels.  It is basically saying that whatever works is best for the majority of the people affected by pragmatic decisions; in other words, the numerical growth of the confessional churches is profitable both for the congregation and for the denomination at large.  Who could argue that making converts is a bad thing?  The question is to which worldview are you making converts?  To a postmodernist Christianity or to a biblical worldview which is deduced from the infallible and inerrant Scriptures?

A further problem with Keller’s approach is that he presupposes that no one today makes any truth claims.  As the title of the course implies, in a postmodern world, truth changes from one person to the next so that we must accommodate to the relativism of today by appealing to what works rather than what is true.  This is an indirect attack on the Bible which says flatly that the written Word of God is true:  Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. (John 17:17 KJV).

Pragmatism, according to the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark, was devised by William James and John Dewey.  Dewey and James were also advocates for sociology and the utilitarian ethics which sought for the good of the most people.  In ethical terms, the end justifies the means.  So according to the church growth model, the congregations are growing, it works, and the end result justifies “retelling the Gospel” or relativizing the theology of the Bible to meet felt needs and to show non-Christians that Christianity is pragmatic and works for you in your situation.  This could also be applied to situational ethics.  (See:  Gordon H. Clark.  “Pragmatism.”  Posted at the Gordon H. Clark Foundation.

Keller’s approach has no problem with ignoring the confessional standards or even re-interpreting the standards in ways that pragmatically work in the goal of making a congregation grow.  In other words, it is perfectly fine to not tell practicing homosexuals that their thoughts, words and deeds will condemn them on the day of the final judgment.  Instead, the church growth advocate should downplay the final judgment, the moral law of God and simply focus on some positive aspect of Christianity to drawn the homosexual into the body of Christ, even if that person is at first unrepentant.  After all, Presbyterianism acknowledges that the congregation is a mixture of truly regenerate believers and those who are unregenerate.

In times past I spent lots of time listening to The White Horse Inn, hosted at that time by Michael Horton and Rod Rosenblatt.  That podcast has since that time lost many of its listeners.  Horton, who pretended to be an outspoken opponent of the church growth movement, actually advocated for ignoring hypocrisy and unbelief in the congregation rather than arguing for true conversions and progressive sanctification.  For Horton, this evokes implications of the Anabaptist and pietist movements rather than communal covenant theology:

. . . Nevertheless, there was a general tendency among groups [of Anabaptists] . . . to (1) identify the true church exclusively with regenerate believers, (2) emphasize personal holiness (understood as complete separation from the world) rather than preaching and sacrament, as the mark of the church, and (3) display a marked spirit-matter dualism applied to outward forms and ministry of the church as well as the state.

Michael Horton.  The Christian Faith:  A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way.  (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2011).  P. 748.

I do not object to the distinction between the visible church and the invisible church because this is a distinction taught in the Bible and affirmed by the Westminster Confession of Faith, 1647.   In particular the Larger Catechism says:

WLC 61  Are all they saved who hear the gospel, and live in the church? A. All that hear the gospel, and live in the visible church, are not saved; but they only who are true members of the church invisible.

WLC 62  What is the visible church? A. The visible church is a society made up of all such as in all ages and places of the world do profess the true religion, and of their children.

 (WLC 1:61-63 WCS)

But does this justify Horton’s implied suggestion that prayer, Bible study, catechism, and devotions are irrelevant to what goes on in the main worship services of the church?  Quoting Louis Berkhof, Horton comments:

. . . “The Pietists, on the other hand, manifested a tendency to disregard the visible church, seeking a Church of believers only, showing themselves indifferent to the institutional Church with its mixture of good and evil, and seeking edification in conventicles.”  . . . This is not quite fair.  After all, most pietists did not separate from the established churches, but created a church-within-a-church (ecclesiola in ecclesia).  Nevertheless, by treating the inner ring of the conventicle as the place where genuine discipleship occurs, in contrast to the official ministry of the church, pietism tended to marginalize the importance of that official ministry.  Neither reforming the church nor separating from it, pietism endured the outward forms while locating genuine Christian fellowship and nurture elsewhere.  By identifying the true church with the nucleus within the church that could be recognized as truly regenerate, pietism tended toward an overrealized eschatology, as if the invisible church could become fully visible before the consummation.  Ibid., p. 749.

Horton argues that the goal of the church is not toward true conversion, because that would be Anabaptist or pietist heresy!  Instead, the goal of the church should be to make as many members as possible by way of the outward ministries of preaching and the administration of the sacraments.  Make members and let God sort them out seems to be his theology of evangelism.  Horton downplays discipleship and catechism instruction because that would create an inner circle of pietistic elites.

Tim Keller took this approach to its logical conclusion, namely that truth does not matter.  What matters most is what works.  Ironically, Horton’s radical two kingdoms view of church and state is itself an overrealized eschatology since he does not believe that there will be a literal millennial reign of Christ on the earth.  Instead, he believes in the amillennial view of Christ’s return as indefinite and impending, not imminent.

Here ends part 4.  In part 5 I will continue my critique of the church growth movement and how Tim Keller relativized the doctrinal standards and the Bible to fit with the sociological and pragmatism model for church growth.

The next post is Part 5.

You can follow previous posts on this topic here:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.  

 

 

 

 

 

The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth: Part 2

 

“. . . By 1936 the signers of the Auburn Affirmation showed that they had captured the church by reorganizing Princeton Seminary and placing one of the signers on its governing board, by electing one of their number Moderator of the General Assembly [of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America], and, what was decisive, by excommunicating those ministers who had insisted on maintaining the Westminster standards in practice.  Thus, ministers who rejected the Scripture and all it contains were given authority, while men who believed the Bible and all it contains were rejected as disturbers of the peace.  Since that day the Westminster Confession has been a dead letter in that denomination, and now the process to drop it officially has begun.” 

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  What Do Presbyterians Believe?  The Westminster Confession Yesterday and Today.  1^st Ed.  1965.  (Unicoi:  Trinity Foundation, 2001).  P. viii.

 

 

The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth:  Part 2

 

I will now discuss the free offer of the Gospel or FOG.  This is closely related to another doctrine proposed by those who wish to water down the Bible and the best summary of the Bible ever produced, namely the Westminster Confession of Faith.  The other doctrine is called the well-meant offer of the Gospel.  The doctrine of the free offer of the Gospel presupposes that the reprobate wicked can be persuaded to believe the Gospel and thus moved from the category of reprobation to the category of unconditional election.  The justification for this is that we here on earth do not know what God’s eternal decree has foreordained to happen.  Since we have no knowledge of God’s hidden or secret decree, it is therefore justified to completely ignore the doctrines of predestination, special providence, regeneration/effectual calling and to preach the Gospel as any Arminian would preach it.  (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Those who prosecute the doctrines of the free offer of the gospel, common grace, and pragmatism in evangelism and mission will tell us that we should never mention predestination or special providence when preaching because those are doctrines that immediately irritate unbelievers and stand as roadblocks to our evangelistic mission.  Unfortunately, the downgrade begins with ignoring certain parts of Scripture and focusing on more favorable portions of Scripture instead.  These semi-Calvinists want to focus on the common ground that Calvinists and Arminians have instead of the differences and the distinctions.

In my Pentecostal days, it was often claimed that Pentecostals alone preached the full Gospel message.  Of course, what they meant by this was the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, which they claim is normative for all times and places up until the parousia or the return of Christ.  The proposition comes from Acts 20:27  KJV.  “For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.” (Acts 20:27 NKJ)  Presupposing Pentecostal experiential theology, I suppose that could be one way to interpret that verse.  But Presbyterians focus on propositional revelation in the Scriptures, not experiential hermeneutics.  The Bible contains numerous propositions from which other propositions can be deduced.  These logical propositions can then be arranged into a system of propositional truths which is deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence:

WCF 1.6 The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture:  . . .  (Westminster Confession of Faith.  Of the Holy Scripture.)

The Presbyterian who truly believes that all Scripture is God-breathed, including ministers and the laity, has an obligation to believe all of the Scriptures.  As the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark once said, all Scripture is profitable for doctrine.  2 Timothy 3:16. This means that not only are the evangelistic verses appropriate for doctrinal teaching, but also the less significant portions of Scriptures like the genealogies and how many pots and pans were in the temple that Solomon built.  Since the Westminster Confession is arranged in a descending order of theological importance, the most important doctrine of Scripture is the doctrine of Sola Scriptura in chapter one.  Scripture alone is the written Word of God.  (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-21; John 10:35; Isaiah 8:20; Matthew 5:17-19).  The second most important doctrine of the Bible, according to the Westminster divines, is the doctrine of God as Triune.  The most important attributes of deity are dealt with in chapter 2, Of God, and the Holy Trinity.  However, the third most important doctrine of the Westminster Confession of Faith is the most controversial one, yet the most avoided doctrine.  It is the doctrine of predestination:  chapter 3, Of God’s Eternal Decree.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark lays out the issue that is most disturbing to unbelievers and Arminians:

The Protestant Reformation, the greatest religious awakening since the days of the Apostles, was characterized by a zeal to understand God’s Word.  Not only were its obvious teachings emphasized, e.g., the sufficiency of Christ’s work for our salvation and the uselessness of purgatory and penance, but also its deeper doctrines, e.g., predestination, were carefully examined.

However, two or three centuries later, after the love many had waxed cold, and when unbelief came in like a flood, the discouraged and fragmented faithful became Fundamentalists and were content to defend a few vital doctrines.  Sometimes they even said that Christians ought not to go too deeply into the Scriptures.  It is presumptuous, useless, and worst of all, divisive.

Such an attitude is not commended in the Scriptures themselves, nor was it the practice of the Reformers and the Westminster divines.  The Bible says that all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, not just some.  And the Reformers did not draw back from the difficult passages on predestination, foreordination, and God’s eternal decrees.  [Emphasis is mine.]  Really, these passages are not difficult to understand, though many people find them difficult to believe.  But if they are God’s words, then we should study, believe, and preach them.

The Westminster Confession, summarizing the Bible, asserts in Chapter III that God from all eternity did ordain whatsoever comes to pass.  Obviously, if God is omnipotent, if nothing can thwart his will, and if he decided to make a world, then all his creatures and all their actions must be according to his plan.

This is easy to understand; but many people find it difficult to believe that God planned to have sin in the world.  Does Chapter III of the Confession mean that God commits sin?  And even in the case of a man’s doing something good, does it mean that God makes the man do the good act while the man willed to do something evil?  These questions have perplexed many minds, but the first question is, What does the Bible say?  If the Bible talks about foreordination, we have no right to avoid it and keep silent.   [Emphasis is mine.]

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  What Do Presbyterians Believe?, pp. 36-37.

On one side of the issue are those who oppose the doctrine of the free offer.  The objection is that it is impossible to persuade a person who has been unconditionally reprobated prior to the creation of the world by God’s eternal decree.  The opponents of FOG do not object to the promiscuous preaching of the Gospel everywhere on earth to all who will hear the message.  That is often a false misrepresentation used to label opponents as “hyper-Calvinists” who do not believe in evangelism or foreign missions. 

On the other hand, the proponents of the FOG will then argue two things.  First, they argue that we cannot know God’s secret will in His archetypal mind.  We can only have an analogical and ectypal knowledge of God’s will revealed in Holy Scripture.  From this they further infer that it would be confusing to the congregation to speak the truth emphatically that no one can come to Christ without first being born again.  This would upset those in the congregation who are not fully on board with what the Bible says about unconditional election and reprobation.  This objection is a telling indictment on those who refuse to teach all that the Bible says.

One proponent of the doctrine of the free offer is Dr. R. Scott Clark of Westminster Theological Seminary, Escondido, California.  He objects to David Engelsma’s contention that the Latin word for offer, namely offero, means only to present or exhibit:

Both Klaas Schilder (1890-1952) and Herman Hoeksema and more recently David Engelsma and Randy Blacketer have argued that when Dort and our theologians said, “offero” they only meant, “to present” or “to demand.” There is weighty evidence to the contrary however. For example, Caspar Olevianus (1536–87) used this term and its cognates frequently to mean “to offer with intention that the offer should be fulfilled if the recipients meet the condition of trust in Christ.” In his massive 1579 commentary on Romans and in his final commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, De substantia foederis gratuiti inter Deum et electos (1585) he used it frequently this way (e.g. “oblatum beneficium”) just as Dort later used it.

 

When our theologians wished to say “present” or “exhibit” or “demand” they had other verbs (e.g. “exhibeo” or “mando”) with which to do it. They did not need “offero” to perform the same function. Rather, when our theologians spoke of the “evangellium oblatum,” i.e., “gospel offered” in preaching, they believed that it entailed a well and sincerely meant revealed divine intention that whoever believes should be saved. As we shall see below, the semantic range of “offero,” as it was used by the orthodox is closer to “invitation,” than “demand.”

R. Scott Clark.  The Heidelblog, “The Reformed Tradition On The Free Or Well-Meant Offer Of The Gospel,” December 29, 2013.

Scott Clark then proceeds to argue in an equivocal manner that Christ is offered on the cross for the sins of the whole world.  I say that he is arguing equivocally because here he substitutes the Latin term oblatae or oblation for the word offero.  Any Calvinist worth his salt will instantly recognize that nowhere does Scott Clark even mention the fact that Christ died on the cross as a propitiation for the sins of all the elect in all times and places from the beginning of the world to the end of the world.  So, the offer of the Gospel is not effectual to all who hear it, as even Scott Clark must acknowledge.  Yet, the oblation that Christ was offered on the cross for the all the sins of those who are unconditionally elect is an effectual oblation or sacrifice which propitiates God’s wrath against the elect, who by original sin and total depravity are sinners.  Only the elect are provided for efficaciously by the cross of Jesus Christ.  This makes me wonder why Clark even brings it up?  Does Scott Clark think that there is a possibility that the person who is eternally decreed to reprobation can be persuaded?  In other words, Clark is deliberately conflating the atonement with the general call of the Gospel.  One is effectual and efficacious and the other is not.

Apparently, Scott Clark is offended that the general call of the Gospel is a command to repent and to believe the Gospel.  It is the Arminians who spend the most of their time trying to convince reprobate persons that the Gospel is true.  But this is because Arminians do not believe in total depravity or total inability.  Instead, Arminians believe that common grace makes depravity less than total.  Common grace, according to the Arminians lessens the effects of original sin so that libertarian free will is restored such that even the worst sinner has enough liberty to choose between two equal choices:  salvation and damnation.  But is that what the Bible says?  The so-called “reformed” doctrine of common grace is meant to be a compromise between the Westminster Confession of Faith and the doctrines of the Remonstrance.  The “reformed” insist that there are two kinds of grace:  1.  Special or efficacious grace, and, 2. Common grace that is not salvific.  So why does Scott Clark pivot to an Arminian presentation of the Gospel instead of preaching the biblical view of election, regeneration, and effectual call?  Is for pragmatic purposes?

John Wesley referred to the Arminian view of common grace as “prevenient grace.”  However, even here Wesley is misusing the term prevenient in a way that is opposed to the way the term in used in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which he as an Anglican clergyman would be obligated to believe.  But that is information to be discussed more fully in the next article.

The major problem with R. Scott Clark is that his view is to downplay the clear biblical doctrines of predestination, special providence, effectual calling, total depravity and to find a middle ground between free will and predestinaion:

In this regard, the approach of the Synod of Dort is in contrast to that of both the Remonstrants and the modern critics of the well meant-offer. Rather than making deductions from the revealed fact of God’s sovereign eternal decree, the Synod was committed to learning and obeying God’s revealed will, even if it seems paradoxical to us.  [Emphasis is mine.]

R. Scott Clark, Ibid.

In other words, R. Scott Clark rejects propositional revelation and instead proposes that we accept all Scripture as paradoxical--even when Scripture is crystal clear that God alone decides who will be save and who will be lost.  For Scott Clark, the preaching of the general call of the Gospel must conform to the Arminian presentation of persuasion, begging the sinner to repent, and an outward appeal to libertarian free will.  Of course, Clark denied all that by citing The Canons of Dort, Rejection of Errors 2:6.  But this debate has nothing to do with merits or congruent grace.  The problem is that Clark talks out of both sides of his mouth.  Is election unconditional or is it conditioned on faith? 

That one is called by the preaching of the Gospel does not make one elect, because this call is common to elect and reprobates, on the condition of faith (sub conditione fidei).  R. Scott Clark.  Ibid.

Just above, Clark contradicts himself:

Having ordained the means of grace, God is free is to confer faith or not through the external Gospel call. [Emphasis is mine.]  The moral culpability for unbelief lies in those who “carelessly do not receive the Word of life” (verbum vitae non admittunt securi). “Therefore,” Dort says, justifying faith is the “Dei donum,” not because “it is offered by God to man’s free will,” (a Deo hominis arbitrio offeratur) but because faith is “conferred,” (conferatur), “inspired,” (inspiretur) and “infused,” (infundatur).  R. Scott Clark.  Ibid.

As you can clearly see, Scott Clark knows that his view is apparently contradictory or "paradoxical."  That's why he has to reject WCF 1:6 and propositional revelation in favor of a theology of paradox.  The Bible is not analogical revelation.  It is a logical and propositional revelation from God because God is Logic.  John 1:1. Man is responsible to obey God and the Gospel precisely because the moral law is written in man's heart in creation and because as God's image man is a rational creature.  (John 1:9; Genesis 1:27; Romans 2:14-15).  Mankind alone is created with rationality and holiness.  Animals, not being in God's image, cannot sin.

What is the apparent contradiction?  The apparent contradiction or paradox that Scott Clark favors is the idea that God "sincerely" desires or wills the salvation of the reprobate by giving them a well-meant offer of salvation.  But how could God both desire and will the salvation of those He has decreed to reprobation while withholding the grace of regeneration which He alone can bestow or confer?  We agree that God is the primary cause of their reprobation, and that the sinner is the secondary cause of his or her own unbelief, and, therefore, morally culpable for their own damnation.  The problem is that Scott Clark does not wish to acknowledge that sin is ultimately caused by God, and, by logical inference, so is the sin of unbelief.  We call that reprobation.  Scott Clark calls it paradox. 

Here ends Part 2 of my blog series on efficaciously the free offer, common grace, and pragmatic church growth.  I will post Part 3 in the near future.

You can read the previous post here:  Part 1.  You can read the next post here:  Part 3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth: Part 1

“The question very really concerns the attitude of God with respect to the reprobate. We may limit the controversy to this question: what must the preacher of the gospel say of God’s intention with respect to the reprobate? And these, too, may be called by different names, such as: the impenitent, the wicked, the unbelievers, etc., etc.” 

“The answer to this question defines the difference between Dr. Clark and the complainants sharply and precisely.” 

“The complainants answer: the preacher must say that God sincerely seeks the salvation of the reprobate through the preaching of the gospel.” 

“Dr. Clark answers: that is not true, the preacher may never say that in the name of God.”

“And, in the light of Scripture, he should say: God seeks His own glory and justification in preparing the reprobate for their just damnation even through the preaching of the gospel.’”

“It is plain from the above description that the views of the complainants prevailed in the booklet, ‘The Free Offer of the Gospel,’ and in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.”  Herman Hoeksema.

Home / Archive / Volume 49 /1973 / Vol 49 Issue 13.  Standard Bearer.  “The OPC and the ‘Free Offer.’”

The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth

Part 1

 

What do these three things have in common?  Having studied the issue of the so-called “reformed” doctrine of common grace as it is explained by the Three Points of Common Grace of 1924, I would say that there is a nexus between these three topics.  All three of these doctrinal issues tend to undermine biblical and dogmatic theology as it is deduced from Scripture and summarized in the extended creed of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechism.

I recently retired from over the road truck driving.  So, being at home on a more consistent basis, I have been looking to join a local church which consistently teaches and preaches the doctrines of sovereign grace.  What I have found instead are many churches that claim to be reformed but are instead what I would describe as RINO reformed churches.  That is, these churches put on a show of being reformed; instead they are Reformed in Name Only or RINO reformed churches.  One of the chief architects of this approach to church growth is the late Tim Keller. 

I write this blog post out of my sincere concern for the deception that is being propagated as “conservative” and “reformed” Christianity in my local area.  Having been involved in the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement for the first ten years of my recovery from backsliding, I was excited to start attending a church that consistently taught Calvinism.  After my divorce in 1999, I moved to the Orlando, Florida area.  I now live in Columbia, South Carolina.  What I found in both locations is that none of the churches that I visited were actually Calvinist or Reformed.  The vast majority of these churches were either focused on the pragmatic church growth model, or they were so much into the well meant offer of the Gospel, the free offer of the Gospel, or the “reformed” doctrine of common grace that for all practical purposes their preaching sounded more like Arminianism than Calvinism.

The most traditional Presbyterian church in my area is First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina.  The two previous pastors there were associated with Ligonier Ministries:  Sinclaire Ferguson and Derek Thomas.  The current pastor is Neil Stewart.  The church has a livestream channel on YouTube where you can watch the weekly services:  First Presbyterian Church live.  What I like about the services is that the singing is from the hymnbook and there is a huge pipe organ.  There is actually sacred music there with the emphasis somewhat on the regulative principle of worship, although there is no singing from the Psalter for the most part.  The Associate Reformed Presbyterian churches were originally focused only on singing from the Psalter with no hymnbook; but that changed over time.  In fact, I think I read somewhere that First Presbyterian Church used to be part of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States.  The church left and became part of the ARP after the PCUSA voted to ordain women as teaching elders in the 1970s.  Ironically, the ARP does not ordain women as teaching elders; but, they do ordain women to the male only office of the deacon.  The biblical standard for becoming a deacon is to be the husband of one wife; no woman could possibly meet that standard.  (1 Timothy 3:10-12).  Biblical patriarchy is anathema in modern times, apparently.

I could tolerate the deviations to a degree, so I was thinking about joining First Presbyterian Church.  However, it came to my attention that FPC was sponsoring a church plant in Lexington, SC, where I currently reside.  I began to investigate this from a distance, curious as to whether or not this church plant would actually be a presbyterian church? 

Before I go into that, let me mention that there is a fairly large Presbyterian Church in America or PCA, near me.  It is called Lexington Presbyterian Church, which is just off Barr Road in Lexington.  There is a mix of conservative and traditional worship with a few of the contemporary worship songs mixed in.  I have tried to distance myself from compromises with culture, especially anything that smacks of the charismatic experientialism of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement;  that is because I do not like being emotionally manipulated by music with lyrics that sound more like pablum than solid biblical sacred music and hymnody.  The recently departed pastor at Lexington Presbyterian Church, Chuck Parker, soon revealed to the congregation that he teaches from the Tim Keller model of church growth.  The church building and the congregation is fairly large.  But what tipped me off to something problematic was that Parker was open to the Revoice heresy.  What is that?  Revoice is the compromise with secular ideology that human beings are born with an immutable sexual orientation but that homosexuals are welcome to join the church so long as their behavior is celibate.  This is unbiblical on so many points that I will not go into all of it at this point.  I will only say that the cause of homosexuality is original sin, not an inborn sexual orientation.  Furthermore, the apostle Paul clearly said that Christians are no longer homosexuals.  (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).  As far as I can tell, the PCA has not authoritatively rejected this heresy.  At one point, the PCA even allowed a “celibate” homosexual male to be ordained as a teaching elder in a PCA church in Missouri.  That pastor has since resigned, and his church voted to leave the denomination.  At the time, I wrote an open letter to Pastor Chuck Parker, a letter which I mailed to him at his church and which I posted online at my blog:  An Open Letter to  Pastor Chuck Parker Concerning Homosexual Ministers.

In my next post, I will further particularize and expand on the three points above, beginning with the problems I have with the free offer of the Gospel as it is defined by the semi-Calvinist churches.

You can read the next posts here:  Part 2.  Part 3.

[See my remarks about a sermon preached by Dr. Neil Stewart at FPC in November of last year:  A Brief Response to Last Sunday's Election Sermon.]

Heidelblog: The Church as Business Administration

I thought R. Scott Clark was a professor of historical theology?  (See:  Church Websites Are Boring).  The Bible specifically addresses church growth in terms of preaching and teaching the propositional truths of the Bible.  The moral law and the gospel are the means God uses to save His elect.  But the church growth movement, following the theology of the pelagian Charles Finney and the Pentecostal/Charismatic philosophy of pragmatism, says that the church is supposed to compromise the truth so that seekers will want to come to church.  Their view is that the purpose of the church is not to preach the truths of Scripture but to tone down the Bible so the world will not be offended. 

When the world is in the church the church is no longer in the world but is of the world.  What "works" is not necessarily true.  Success in Scripture is not measured in terms of numbers but in terms of conformity to the propositional truths revealed in the Holy Scriptures themselves.  (John 10:35).

Charlie

What Happened to Reformation Sunday?

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. 13 These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. 16 For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:12-16 NKJ)

 

Yesterday I visited Trinity Presbyterian Church in Lakeland, Florida.  I was hoping to find a traditional and liturgical church.  Unfortunately, this congregation, which is associated with the Presbyterian Church in America, has completely thrown out the regulative principle of worship.

The whole purpose is liturgy is to set in place a regular and consistent repetition of collects, sentences of Scripture, general congregational confession of sin, Gospel absolution of sins, and a reciting of the universal creeds.  The reason for this is that the prayers teach doctrine and show the believer a pattern for the Christian life.  

The service of the Lord's Table in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, for example, reads the Decalogue or Ten Commandments followed by short prayers after each commandment asking for God's grace and mercy to keep those commandments.  That pattern is meant to display Luther's law and gospel distinction, which distinction was not lost on Calvin and the other Swiss Reformers.

The shortest and easiest way to remember the doctrine of the trinity, for example, is to recite the Gloria Patri.  Even Presbyterian churches have traditionally included this short "creed" in their services:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost:  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

The Gloria Patri is recited after the reading of the Psalter and after the Magnificat  (Luke 1:46-55), the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-79) and the Nunc Dimmitis (Luke 2:29-32).

What I observed at Trinity Presbyterian Church on Sunday, however, had no liturgy whatsoever.  The service was composed of contemporary praise music and no hymns.  The repetition of praise choruses over and over again was deafeningly loud and maddeningly redundant.  There was no creed and the confession and absolution was so short and without theological content that it could have been recited in any liberal church without controversy.  In fact, the confession of sins in most liberal churches is usually more challenging that what I observed yesterday.

As a child growing up, we recited the Lord's prayer and the pledge of allegiance every morning in public school.  To this day I can say the Episcopal version of the Lord's prayer by heart because it was drilled into my head from grades one through four.

Learning by rote should not be denigrated as it is by many in the public school system these days and by so-called "born again Christians".  The fact is that we learn many things by rote.  I learned the alphabet by singing the "ABCDEFG" song.  I learned the multiplication tables by heart from 1-10 and a little beyond.  I learned many of the rules of grammar by rote so that now I can identify the parts of speech in a sentence, read with comprehension, and write a reasonably grammatical sentence.

But when it comes to "Evangelical" churches not only are the shorter catechisms thrown out but the solidly Reformed doctrines incorporated into the liturgy are thrown out as well.  I learned King James Version memory verses by reciting the verse over and over again with the Scripture reference number preceding and following the quotation repeating the reference again.  We learn much of our theology by rote.  Of course, merely parroting a sound or a sentence without thought is not necessarily having an understanding of what it is that we're reciting.  But couple that repetition of theological truth with a solid liturgy, expository preaching, and Christian education and the result is that Christian people learn essential doctrinal truths simply by repeating them week by week and by hearing them explained in sermons and Sunday school classes.

The problem with most Evangelical churches these days is that there is no memory of why there was a 16th century Protestant Reformation in the first place.  The Roman Catholic Church is just another church to them.  Some Evangelical Christians even concede that the Mormons are "Christians", despite the fact that Mormons have no Christian doctrine whatsoever.

The problem with the church growth mentality is that dumbing down Christianity to the lowest doctrinal denomination has for all practical purposes turned Evangelicalism into a latitudinarian, liberal, and pelagian emphasis on pragmatic moralism.  So what if these churches technically oppose abortion and homosexual marriage if on everything else they are in agreement with the liberals?  Accommodating to the culture for the sake of evangelism ends up converting the church to the world rather than converting the world to Christ.

As we pray, so do we believe.  The law of prayer is the law of belief; lex orandi, lex credendi.  The genius of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was not only translating the Latin services into English so everyone could understand the liturgy in the English language.  Cranmer also instilled the five solas of the English and Protestant Reformation into the 1552 Book of Common Prayer and the 42 Articles of Religion so that the people would understand true biblical doctrine.  Those doctrines are for the most part preserved in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 39 Articles of Religion.

I could never again survive on a liturgy of experiential and emotional worship.  These days I need to hear an expositional sermon.  Furthermore, I crave a rational and logical liturgy where something substantial is learned by the oral repetition of solid biblical verses, evangelical creeds, and a biblical confession of sin and a gospel absolution.

If anything is certain it is that the Presbyterian Church in America is on a downward spiral.  It is only a matter of time before the PCA ends up in the liberalism and latitudinarianism which inspired its separation from the Prebyterian Church in the United States in the 1970s.  It might already be there.

It is for this reason that I find some sense of connection with some of the faculty members at Westminster Seminary, California.  At least professors like R. Scott Clark and Mike Horton are calling for a new Reformation among Presbyterians and Evangelicals at large.  But inconsistencies like the theology of paradox advocated by the followers of Cornelius Van Til mute those efforts or negate them by self contradictory assertions.  Is pelagianism and Arminianism heretical or not?

In all honesty, there is almost no church or denomination that stands consistently against the inroads of liberalism and the theology of works righteousness.  If it were not for the promises of God in the Holy Scriptures we could all just give up in despair.  But we know that God is sovereign and will not forsake His elect.  (Romans 11:1-5).

Sincerely in Christ,

Charlie