Imputation, nominalism and extrinsicism

The imputation [of Christ's righteousness] — according to the Reformers, a forensic declaration — was external or nominal in nature

—Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: the weaving of a sacramental tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 92

Among certain segments of Christianity, like the (misguided) "Protestant" appropriation of the Roman Catholic Nouvelle Theologie, the accusation is made that the whole idea of imputation is a nominalist or extrinsic notion. In Boersma's thought, nominalism is one of the bogeyman that caused the crisis of secularism. Frankly, I don't see much of a crisis, and reject the rosy primitivist picture Boersma is painting of a (general) golden age of the "Platonist-Christian synthesis." I don't see much appeal in the "glory days" of superstition, ascetic practices and the promotion of celibacy as a higher form of Christian life (which flow out of any "synthesis"), but if Boersma loves those, I guess he is certainly entitled to his preferences.

The question here however concerns the doctrine of imputation. Boersma makes the claim that the imputation of Christ's righteousness, being forensic, was by nature external or extrinsic, or nominal. Presumably therefore, rejecting nominalism should imply that the imputation of Christ's righteousness should be jettisoned as well. Is imputation therefore considered extrinsic and nominal?

For something to be "extrinsic" means that it pertains to the external circumstances, touching only the surface of a thing, not its nature. For something to be "nominal" means that it is so merely by fiat or naming (hence "nominal"), not by nature. But how does the Scripture portray imputation to be? Imputation touches the nature of a person's relationship to God, and it not a mere change of nomenclature but a true change in one's relationship to God and Christ. If a judge were to acquit someone of a crime, will we say that the acquitted is still "by nature" guilty since the forensic judgment is merely "extrinsic" or "nominal"? Of course not!

The problem with those claiming imputation to be merely external (extrinsic) and/or nominal is that they confuse nature (ontology) with ethics (relations). The two are not the same, nor is one subsumed under the other! A change in one's ethical relation to God is real even though one does not change in nature. Why do people focus so much on "being" (ontology)? The issue with Man has never been principally with being, but with sin (ethics). Yes, punishment for sin in God's curse upon creation does corrupt creaturely being, but as consequence not as cause! Being is never primary in Scripture. The emphasis on Scripture is always ethics (sin), then epistemology (illogicity and ignorance), and then it deals with being only by positing three types of being: Creator, Man, and the rest of Creation.

Imputation is thus not external or nominal in nature, because it is an ethical term, not an ontological term. It has absolutely nothing to do with "being," and unless we start differentiating ethics from metaphysics, we can never truly understand imputation.

Roman Catholic ressourcement and the limits of reform

The prophecy of the prophetic spirit in the church [for reform] takes place within the structures of the church's life. It presupposes this ecclesial structure and is only exercised within the limitations of this structure. (p. 188)

This means that the Augustinianism of Augustine and the Augustinianism of Jansenius, even if they are materially same in their details, are nonetheless formally different [because they did not remain in communion with the whole church]. (p. 234)

I said earlier that one of the fundamental errors of Jansenism was to take its inspiration from the texts of St. Augustine without maintaining sufficient docility towards the concrete life of the contemporary church (p. 261)

...the church does not like the via facti. ... But there is also a via facti that does not usurp the place of authority. It does not undermine the church's structure, but rather acts in and for ecclesial life. (pp. 277, 280)

— Yves Congar, O.P., True and False Reform in the Church (Translated with Introduction by Paul Philibert, O.P.; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011)

The Nouvelle Theologie is a movement within Roman Catholicism which triumphed in the Second Vatican Council. It is supposedly a return to the patristics (ressourcement), followed by an updating to present times (aggiornamento), and then development for the future. Yves Congar's book True and False Reform in the Church in the original French was influential for the calling of Vatican II, a council which rather radically changed Roman Catholicism.

The idea of ressourcement (a French term) seem to be similar to the Reformation principle of ad fontes (in Latin). The concepts are similar in their going back to the original sources and to the patristics. But there ends the similarity.

If there is any excitement over the Roman Catholic idea of ressourcement, the excerpts from Congar should crush it. We see here that the concept of ressourcement categorically ruled some areas out of bounds for reform, i.e. ecclesiology. In fact, Congar's idea of reform and ressourcement deals only with the practical pastoral matters, not doctrinal issues per se. It's all about expression and pastoral care, not about substance. The substance has already been decided dogmatically by the Magisterium, and it is not up for debate, or at least it seems. Blurring the lines between doctrine and pastoral care though is Congar's dissection of the Jansenist movement, a Neo-Augustinian pro-papal Roman Catholic movement in the 18th century that attempted a via media between Calvinism and what they perceive to be the Pelagianizing tendencies of the Jesuits. In a surprising statement, Congar claims that the Jansenists were wrong because they were not in communion with the whole church even though their doctrines were materially the same as Augustine. In other words, in the Nouvelle Theologie of Congar, doctrines are relativized and subsumed under expression and pastoral care.

In this light, any such reform thus cannot challenge the already pre-determined parameters. Even if through looking at the sources it is found that the papacy is not in the early church, that cannot by fiat be part of ressourcement. After all, ecclesiology is not within the operational parameters of ressourcement.

Roman Catholic ressourcement is thus not the same as the Reformation ad fontes. Unlike the Nouvelle theologians, we should not go back to the sources with preconceived notions and parameters concerning what we are looking for. Unlike them also, the Scripture are taken as the infallible primary source through which all other primary sources are evaluated, patristics or otherwise. Roman Catholic "reform," being restrictive, will never actually recover the church fathers, for they come to the project already with colored glasses.

Is being a Christian sufficient?

The way of salvation is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that person will be saved (e.g. Acts 16:31). So in that sense, to be saved one must be a Christian. However, is being a Christian sufficient? Surely trusting in Christ for salvation is enough, isn't it?

The question however goes deeper than what it seems to be asking on the surface. Rather, the question can be phrased thus, "Is bearing the name 'Christian' sufficient?" In other words, should we say that the name "Christian" is enough, and thus we should all just be Christians alone?

The problem with that approach is that it is idealistic and cannot work in the real world. The problem is not with the term, but with Man. People appropriate the label "Christian" all the time when they have no actual right to the term (i.e. liberals like John Shelby Spong). Even for those who seem to be "Evangelical," whatever THAT terms means, does the mere term "Christian" suffice for all of the Christian life? I would say not!

Historically, the Stone-Campbell Movement beginning in the early 19th century was one such movement that wanted to unite all believers who are then just known as Christians. In fact, the early Stoneites called themselves "Christians" with no modifiers attached, and their churches "Christian Churches." Barton Stone was of course extremely shaky on the doctrine of the Trinity (to put it as charitably as possible), and to be honest ought not even to be ordained in the Kentucky Presbytery of the PCUSA, if not for the New Side pastors who focus on experience more on doctrinal fidelity. Stone desired greater unity between all denominations, and the tent revivals on the then American frontier (the most famous being the Cane Ridge revival) was the place where Baptists, Methodists and others can mix and mingle and worship together, united by their pursuit of revivals complete with proto-Pentecostal manifestations. After the union with the "Reformers" headed by Alexander Campbell, the Stone-Campbell movement soon split into the northern Disciples of Christ and the southern Churches of Christ around the time of the Civil War. They were split over issues like instrumental music and the presence of mission boards and other denominational agencies for the Stone-Campbell pseudo-denominations, the anti-institutional institutions.

The history of the Stone-Campbell movement only shows that the idea of just being a Christian is not possible. For what does being a "Christian" mean not seen through the narrow scope of salvation, but also about the church and ministry? Before the CMA, there were Barton Stone and Thomas and Alexander Campbell. Their desire of uniting Christians, and in that time they only had to deal with Protestants who had a stronger link to the Reformation past compared to us, could not be fulfilled. Trying to form a umbrella gathering of all Christians, they only succeeded in creating another new denomination, which then became two denominations. If we are to learn from history, shouldn't it evident that "being a Christian" is manifestly insufficient for the Christian life? If Stone and Campbell cannot pull it off, and neither could subsequent restorationist movements, we shouldn't think any of us could succeed where they fail, this side of heaven.

That is why denominations are necessary. The only alternative to denominationalism is the chaos and faux unity that can be found in the present-day Roman Catholic communion (where there is "unity" between liberals and conservatives), or the splintering into groups ("tribes") based around central dogmas, personalities, parachurch organizations and any other sociological factors (e.g. ethnicity). Far better to have some measure of imperfect ecclesiastical unity, than to have its alternatives.

"Being a Christian" is insufficient for the Christian life. Only "being a Christian" creates more problems than it supposedly solves, is unworkable, and thus we should not be a biblicist in this regard. For example, I am not just a "Christian," but a Christian who is a confessional Presbyterian.

Quote on tongues

Cross-cultural investigations have shown that a glossolalic utterance is drawn from the basic sounds of phonemes of a speaker’s native language. Those phonemes erupt, not at random, but in patterns that resemble the phonological patterns of that language … Unlike all known languages, living or dead, glossolalia has no grammar. Nor does it have any semantic value, because the “words” are unrelated to the stock of public meanings within the speech community (although they may have a private meaning for the speaker, or a purely connotative meaning for the hearer)

— Grant Wacker, “Playing for Keeps: The Primitivist Impulse in Early Pentecostalism,” in Richard T. Hughes, ed., The American Quest for the Primitive Church (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 211

Debate of Micheal Brown and Sam Waldron over the continuation and cessation of the sign-gifts

Some time back, Dr. James White moderated an online Skype-facilitated debate between the Charismatic Dr. Micheal Brown, and the Reformed Baptist Dr. Sam Waldron. The debate can be seen as follows:

It seems to me that there is a much better way to deal with the issue of tongues and prophecy — return back to the Old Testament. What is the biblical theological understanding of language, and what is the biblical theological understanding of prophecy? Far too often, Charismatics think they know what tongues is, and what prophecy is, without any idea of how the themes are developed in the Scriptures. God does not just do the miraculous for a capricious show of power, but everything is done for a reason. Instead of challenging the Charismatics using various proof texts, the better way IMO is to show that the Charismatic idea of tongues and prophecy are not biblical. Tongues did not just leap out de novo on the Day of Pentecost, neither did prophecy begin in the book of Acts.

Reformation and the restorationist principle

In America, the Restoration movement is normally linked with the Stone-Campbell movement. Consisting of a merger between the followers of Barton Stone and of Alexander Campbell, the Stone-Campbell movement with its biblicism strove to remove all forms of accretions not found in Scripture, and go back to, restore, the New Testament church. Subsequently of course, other restorationist groups sprang up, all claiming to restore the Church back to its New Testament "glory" days. Probably the one with the greatest following today is Pentecostalism and its step-daughter the Charismatic movement. Both movements claim to restore all the gifts of the Spirit back to the Church. How Pentecostals and Charismatics interpret church history of course varies, yet regardless of how one strains to find precedents throughout church history, it cannot be denied that before the Azusa Street revival, at least most of the professing church did not hold to the continuing validity of the sign-gifts.

The restoration principle is best defined by Richard T. Hughes as “a reversion undercutting both Catholic and Anglican appeals to a continuity of tradition, to the first, or primitive, order of things narrated in the Protestant Scriptures" [Richard T. Hughes, "Introduction," in Richard T. Hughes, ed., The American Quest for the Primitive Church (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 2]. How does that compare however to the Reformation principle of Ad Fontes, going back to the sources? The two certainly seem very similar to its appeal to the Scriptures and the New Testament Church. Its similarity can be seen in the fact that in that same book edited by Richard T. Hughes, Thomas H. Olbricht claimed that the New England Puritans were engaging in primitivist/ restorationist thinking (the two terms are not differentiated in the book). But are the two the same? No they are not. The Restorationist principle is largely ahistorical. It ignores history, and skip over history since what matters is to return back to the "pristine New Testament church." The Reformation principle of ad fontes however goes back to the historic Christian Church through interaction and engaging with others, acknowledging the fact of time and history and our distance from the original events. We can never go back to the New Testament Church, for we cannot go back in time. As Mark Noll makes plain the distinction between primitivist Christianity and historic Christianity, in historic Christianity "the Bible was a book to be studied with the history of the church, not against it" [Mark Noll, "Primitivism in Fundamentalism and American Biblical Scholarship," in Ibid., 125].

The issue of history divides the Reformed tradition from any and all restorationists. We affirm history and the need to wrestle with history. Restoratinists minimize history, even if they may not outrightly deny it. History to them is not to be regarded as real temporal progression but rather a mere passing of time which leaves concepts and ideas and everything else more or less intact. That is why Pentecostals and Charismatics think that the mere repetition of 1 Cor. 14:39 is sufficient to deal with the topic of whether the sign-gifts have ceased. There is a strong strain of the denial of the historical situatedness of the Word of God in its current ectypal expression, making the Bible into a Systematics textbook instead of the ectypal expression of God's Word that is situated in history.

The Reformation principle and the Restorationist principles therefore are not the same. Historical development has proven that history does play a key role in theologizing. In other words, everyone has traditions. The Stone-Campbell restorationist movement is radically different from the "restoration" by Joseph Smith, which is different from the restorationist movements of the Seventh-Day Baptists and Adventists, and all of them are different from the restorationist movement known as Pentecostalism. As Henry Warden Bowden, after surveying all these various restorationist movements, claimed, "'the restoration ideal' is truly a protean concept" [Henry Warden Bowden, "Perplexity over a Protean Principle," in Ibid., 176]. All the various restorationist movements have proven that it is impossible to situate oneself outside of time and history, and thus "restoration" is a mirage. It is a myth that one can go back to the New Testament Church, and thus Restoration itself is not only errant but absolutely impossible.

Is faith a condition for salvation?

Among certain circles that tend towards or are hyper-Calvinistic, there is a denial that faith is a condition for salvation. After all, if salvation is truly free, then Man cannot contribute anything to his salvation. Faith is something exercised by the individual, and thus it is something the individual has and does. So, if Man cannot contribute anything to his salvation, and faith is a human act, faith therefore cannot contribute anything to the individual's salvation. The reality of faith is not denied, but faith itself is not seen as a condition for salvation.

Now, of course, this seems strange, or it should. Scripture does after all calls us to believe and be saved. Putting both claims together however seems to be pitting the Bible against Systematics. Is the straightforward reading of the Scriptures wrong then, or perhaps more likely there is a serious problem in the Systematic theological understanding of those who deny faith as being a condition?

The main issue at hand is what do we mean by the term "condition"? Does condition mean that the thing conditioned upon would contribute to the process? Such however is not what the term "condition" mean. For the term "condition" is a mere logical term. It describes logical propositions with an "if, then" clause. If X is a necessary condition, then the proposition is simply "If not X, not Y." Conversely, if X is a sufficient condition, then the proposition is simply "If X, then Y." Therefore, when the claim is made that faith is a necessary condition for salvation, we are merely saying "If a person has not faith, then that person is not saved." When we claim that faith is a sufficient condition for salvation, we are merely saying "If a person has faith, that person is saved." Expressed in propositional form, it should be self-evident that the Bible teaches that faith is both necessary and sufficient for salvation.

To this, our objector can of course repeat the claim that having faith as a condition compromises the free grace of salvation. To that, we can reply that our logical propositions are not interested in that issue at all. In other words, saying that faith is a condition says absolutely nothing about whether salvation requires a work of Man in faith (as if faith is a work of Man in the first place!). Monergistic salvation is only compromised if we claim that faith is a purely human work. But isn't faith something done by individuals? Yes. And yet still it is God's doing. Ephesians 2:8-9 claims that the salvation by grace through faith not of works, the whole deal, is a gift of God. But how then can faith be a human action and a gift of God at the same time? Our response to that would be, "Why not"? What exactly about the proposition, that faith is both a human action and a gift of God, is problematic? Wherein lies the contradiction? To claim that there is a contradiction is to claim that God's actions necessarily preclude (genuinely free) human actions, but why should that be the case? Since God does not operate on the same level as us, He being God, why are we trying to flatten the plane of action such that God and Man must compete to see what percentage of actions belongs to God and what percentage to Man?

The problem with using partial truths of systematic theology, abstract it from other parts of Scripture, and then use that new "central dogma" to read Scripture is that it distorts the truths of Scripture. The "central dogma" of God's absolute sovereignty when taken up by the Hypers create all sorts of heretical nonsense. It sounds nice when the statement is made that we want to defend the sovereignty of God in all things. But what is the practical implications for denying the conditionality of faith? It means that those two statements, being expressive of faith's conditionality, must be wrong. In other words, the statements "If a person has not faith, that person is not saved" and "If a person has faith, that person is saved," cannot be true. Ironically, denying faith's conditionality could lead to either (Calvinistic) Universalism or Inclusivism. Faith being decoupled from salvation means salvation is now purely a matter of election. Depending on how one wants to interpret and discern election, that could mean anything from universalism (God elects everyone), inclusivism (God elects some, who may or may not express faith, and thus may or may not be Christians), to Hyper-Calvinistic particularism (God elects some, and how we know who He elects is through them believing in the right doctrine as we do - knowledge being the expressive of election). In all these, there is a unholy desire to peer into God's archetypal knowledge and discern truths that God has not seen fit to reveal to us.

Faith therefore is a condition for salvation. The Reformed tradition of course has qualified it by stating that it is the instrumental condition, since faith does not contribute to our salvation but merely grasps and receives Christ. Yet, it is still a condition, and we should all agree to that.

The Charismatic Movement and the Two-Thirds world

One claim about the Charismatic movement is that it has resulted in revival and renewal in churches especially in the Two-Thirds world (the primarily non-Western world). Phenomenologically, the claim seems to be true. "Dead" churches have been revived and renewed by the Charismatic movement as it spread throughout the world, resulting in renewed vibrancy and evangelism and witness. Yes, the Word-faith movement and the New Apostolic Reformation have shipwrecked the faith of many, but it seems on the surface that, at least in many parts of the world, the Charismatic movement has actually been a force for good.

It must be noted that where the Charismatic movement initially began, and where its growth has been. It began in the mainline churches in America, churches that were mostly apostate already. Its influence spread to the half-dead and dead liberal churches around the world, moving them away from Liberalism towards some version of Evangelicalism. The Charismatic movement has little if any influence on the churches that are the most biblical, the Reformed churches. That itself should give us some pause. Why is that so?

Now interpreting providence is always tricky, so obviously my view may not be right. One could of course interpret providence by stating that the origin of Charismatism is within apostate churches and its spread in other apostate churches proves that Charismatism is another form of apostasy, being derived from false doctrine. Or one can claim that the Reformed churches were "old wineskins" not able to "hold the new wine."

Coming from a Reformed perspective, and understanding the Gifts of the Spirit to be linked with the purpose for which they are given, which is for the foundation of the Church, it seems to me that one could very well hold to the fact that God does work through the Charismatic movement to reach the dead and dying churches, as using a crooked stick to draw a straight line. The Charismatic movement in some measure may have a bit of the foundation gifts only because of how far they have fallen. They are the condenscension of God in mission settings and in churches so far gone in darkness. In other words, the possible possession of the Sign-Gifts are a mark of immaturity and given for a time to aid believers in their dire need. The problem of course comes when the new believers grow and continue to think that the one or two exceptional manifestations ought to be normative for all time. The pursuit of experiences which God did not promise as normative may result in them going astray, or that they may later grow up and become cessationists.

Speaking from personal experience, I experienced the regenerating work of the Spirit in the church I grew up just as it was influenced by the Charismatic movement. The church I grew up in was a mainline Presbyterian church in Singapore, and thus much of the denomination is infected by Liberalism. I was a Charismatic and being young and naive, wandered towards the New Apostolic Reformation. In God's mercy, I was brought back and am now a cessationist.

So yes, I am willing to grant that God uses the Charismatic movement to reach people. But then, God also used Balaam's donkey, so being used by God proves nothing at all. I am willing to grant that God may in His condescension grant some measure of the Gifts temporarily, but ultimately they will not last. They are a sign of immaturity, and thus, as it is seen in church history, a more mature church will not receive them.

The Strange Fire conference and painting with a broad brush

One of the main critiques of the recently concluded Strange Fire conference is that John MacArthur and the Conference paint with a broad brush and thus tar everyone in the Charismatic movement including those that are more orthodox like Wayne Grudem and John Piper. Phil Johnson has spoken tangentially on the issue in his conference presentation Is there a baby in the Charismatic bathwater? here:

After the conference, Johnson addressed the issue of the broad brush in his blog article on the GTY website The Broad Brush here, making the claim that the orthodox party are covering up for their heretical friends, and thus questioning whether the brush was actually so broad at all since the difference between the orthodox party and their heretical ministry partners doesn't seem so great. The exact point being driven at is succinctly put forward in Tom Chantry's blog post that "any Charismatic belief engenders a lack of discernment, enabling the worst sort of Charismatic excess," a point confirmed by Phil Johnson:

Tom Chantry’s point 1 nails it: http://t.co/NTb40paKcL (His point 2 is perceptive as well.)

— Phil Johnson (@Phil_Johnson_) October 29, 2013

So what are we to say about this? If the issue is the Charismatic movement as a whole, it is true that MacArthur is painting with a broad brush without sufficient nuancing and distinctions. If however the issue is how Charismatism results in little or no discernment, the conduct of Michael Brown and Sam Storms seems to go out their way to prove Johnson's point. Now, I do know Charismatic friends who warn against the charlatans in their movement. The problem is that they are nobodies in the movement. The leaders of the "Reformed Charismatics" like Sam Storms and Wayne Grudem have lent their credibility to heretics like Rick Joyner and Paul Cain. For those who claim to be more spiritual with the gift of speaking in tongues, their lack of discernment is rather telling I would say.

So in conclusion, if Phil Johnson's point is that Charismatism engenders a lack of discernment, the behavior of the "Reformed Charismatics" merely proved his point. In fact, I'm really interested to find any prominent Charismatic that actually warn against all of the charlatans associated with the Third Wave, including those less known like Randy Clark, John Arnott and Steve Hill.

DL: Dr. James White on cessation of the extraordinary charismata

In today's Dividing Line (Oct 24, 2013), Dr. James White helpfully interacted with the contents of the conversation of a caller calling in to Michael Brown on his Line of Fire show, as it deals with the issue of the Charismatic movement and John MacArthur's recently concluded Strange Fire conference.

Dr. White's manner of dealing with the sign gifts is definitely the way to go about doing it. More often than not, Charismatic (reformed or otherwise) treat the subject of the gifts atomistically, which is to say they isolate the question of the continuation of the gifts and deal with that question without situating the question within the larger context of redemptive history; within the whole issue of the purpose behind and function of the gifts. Those questions are not addressed holistically with the issue of the continuation of the gifts, but rather the Bible is treated ahistorically like a Systematics textbook just on THIS issue. It would really advance the argument if Charismatics can began to actually start addressing the Reformed Cessationist arguments instead of trotting out the same old rationale of there being no explicit mention of the cessation of the (extraordinary) charismata (I do note that some have tried, just not the rank and file "apologists").

The 1949 denunciation of the New Order of the Latter Rain (NOLR) by the Assemblies of God

The New Order of the Latter Rain (NOLR) is a restorationist movement from within Pentecostalism which veered sharply away from orthodoxy. It is the forerunner and ancestor of today's New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). In its 23rd General Council, the Assemblies of God rejected the entire movement as being unbiblical with an overwhelming majority of delegates voting to sustain the findings of the committee producing the report. The minutes of that General Council would thus be illustrative especially if one were to compare what it condemns to the current craziness in the NAR.

“The New Order of the Latter Rain”

Resolution No. 7 was read by the Chairman of the Resolutions Committee as follows:

WHEREAS, We are grateful for the visitation of God in the past and the evidences of His blessings upon us today, and

WHEREAS, We recognize a hunger on the part of God’s people for a spiritual refreshing and manifestation of His Holy Spirit, be it therefore

RESOLVED, That we recommend to the ministers of the Assemblies of God and to churches affiliated and associated with us, that we set our hearts to seek for a continued outpouring of the Holy Spirit founded upon the clear teaching of the Word of God, and be it further

RESOLVED, That we disapprove of those extreme teachings and practices which, being unfounded Scripturally, serve only to break fellowship of like precious faith and tend to confusion and division among the members of the Body of Christ, and be it hereby known that this 23rd General Council disapproves of the so-called “New Order of the Latter Rain,” to wit:

1. The overemphasis relative to imparting, identifying, bestowing or confirming of gifts by the laying on of hands and prophecy
2. The erroneous teaching that the Church is built on the foundation of present-day apostles and prophets
3. The extreme teaching as advocated by the “New Order” regarding the confession of sin to man and deliverance as practiced, which claims prerogatives to human agency which belongs to Christ
4. The erroneous teaching concerning the impartation of the gift of languages as special equipment for missionary service
5. The extreme and unscriptural practice of imparting or imposing personal leadings by the means of the gifts of utterance
6. Such other wrestings and distortions of Scripture interpretations which are in opposition to teachings and practices generally accepted among us

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That we recommend following those things which make for peace among us, and those doctrines and practices whereby we may edify one another, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit until we all come into the unity of the faith.

The motion was made and seconded that this resolution be adopted. After brief debate it was adopted with an overwhelming majority.

— Assemblies of God, Minutes and Constitution with Bylaws, Revised: The Twenty-Third General Counci (Seattle, WA: Assemblies of God, 1949), 26-7

Disowning a homosexual son?

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Mt. 10:37)

The homosexual activist group FCKH8 has recently published a letter by a grandfather to his daughter, who has disowned her son after he said he was "gay," and the news has since been picked up by news outlets. What are we to make of this news?

First of all, there is no context whatsoever given for why and how the woman disowned her son. We are not told why she disowned him (besides that he claims to be gay), whether she has tried to talk him out, or whether the son defiantly pursued his "lifestyle" despite the pleas of the mother. All we have is the spin by the homosexual activists that the woman, Christine, disowned her son Chad because he claimed to be a homosexual, which may or may not be the full case.

The questions therefore are (1) Are there grounds for a parent, any parent, to disown their child?, and (2) Does this meet the criteria for legitimate disowning?, and (3) Does the grandfather have any right whatsoever to write that letter?

The first question is an interesting one. But let's look at a few hypothetical scenarios. If a son were to leave his parents destitute, would that be grounds to disown him? How about if a son were to assault his own parents? What about selling the parents into slavery? I would guess that it seems to be the case that heinous crimes could merit possible disowning of children by their parents.

The question then arise as to whether this case provides sufficient grounds for the daughter to disown her son. Again, we are here not provided many details about the case. So it is possible that the daughter was wrong to disown her son. The bigger question however is whether it is possible for any parent to disown his or her child because of homosexuality, and to that I would certainly say yes.

It must be stated that homosexuality is a heinous crime against God. It is first of all, a sexual sin, and secondly, it violates natural law to a great degree. Homosexuality (together with pedophilia, beastiality and necrophilia etc) are considered extremely debased sins (cf Rom. 1:24-27), worse in degree compared to other sins like theft. Now of course, we admit that all sin is sinful before God. Yet there are graduations of sin. For example, it is definitely better to lust than to engage in rape, although both are sinful. Likewise, it is better to covet than to commit a robbery. The failure to understand that there are horizontal graduations of sin is what gives us the generic "evangelical" eisegesis of Mt. 7:1, and the false idea that no one can judge sins (yet ironically they judge the one who judges as committing a worse sin). It gives rise to the specter of the sinner coming before God and praying, "Dear Lord, I thank you that I am not a judgmental person like those Pharisees. I sin openly and proudly, since I know that your blood covers my sin, unlike those self-righteous, narrow-minded and bigoted people."

If parents are to be parents, they are to rear their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). Sin has to be reproved and discipline meted out. Homosexuality is a most grievous and wicked sin, and parents ought to discipline any child who moves in that direction. Certainly, discipline has to be meted out with compassion, but it is discipline nonetheless. But what if the child does not listen? The parent should probably continue trying and praying to God for his deliverance. But let's say all avenues have been exhausted. I would then suggest that the parent may have to apply the last measure of discipline: disowning their son/ daughter. Note that I am not saying that parents MUST do that, but they MAY do that. Disowning a child in this instance is analogous to excommunication in a church. Just as the family is like a little church, so likewise to a persistently rebellious child, the only way forward may be disowning the child, and handling the child over to Satan so that his soul may, in God's mercy, be saved. (1 Cor. 5:5).

Now, what is established is that the parent, after exhausting all available avenues, MAY disown their child. This does not necessarily be applicable in this particular case. What is established is that having a recalcitrant unrepentant child who has decided to become a homosexual is a legitimate grounds for disowning. This brings us to the issue of the grandfather.

A nuclear family unit is the basic family unit in Scripture. In Gen. 2:24, it is written that both the man and the woman will leave their families and become one flesh. This does not mean that suddenly, either the husband or the wife is cut off from their parents and have no obligations to them. What it does mean is that the new family unit is in itself subject directly to God. This is a change in the relation between parents to their married child, as compared to their relation with their unmarried child. As a family unit before God, the husband is to protect his wife, EVEN from his mother (her mother-in-law). Parental authority over their children functions in a similar paradigm. Parents have the primary responsibility to raise up and discipline their children, not the grandparents. This does not mean grandparents can't help, but they are not the parents and should not be. Grandparents are also not to usurp the parents' authority by contradicting express instructions given by parents. If parents tell their children, "No sweets before dinner," the grandparents should NOT insist on giving them sweets before dinner. Of course, such things do happen, but the point is: they shouldn't.

In this case, we see the grandfather is giving his daughter a dressing down regarding her decision to disown her son. Here is a blatant case of usurping of parental authority. The grandfather has absolutely no rights to tell his daughter how to parent; he has the same rights as any other person i.e. advice. Of course, what is more grievous is that the grandfather by his actions is promoting immorality. He has the right to take in the grandson, as he has the right to take in anyone off the street into his house if he so pleased. But to castigate his daughter for an action that he has no authority to dictate to her about, and then disown her for disowning his grandson, is preposterous. If he says that disowning is wrong, then he himself shouldn't disown his daughter, otherwise he would just be doing the exact action he claims is wrong. If however he says that disowning is wrong because he thinks that homosexuality is normal, then the problem is in his view of morality. By promoting homosexuality, the grandfather is promoting wickedness in his family. He is one of those stated in Rom. 1:32 who gives approval to those who practice wickedness. So besides his grandson, the grandfather is the one who brings shame upon the family, just as all homosexual activists who promote gross wickedness in the land do to their own families.

In conclusion, there is nothing inherently wrong with disowning a homosexual son or daughter. Parents MAY disown recalcitrant rebellious children; doesn't mean they should but they may. And if any Christian thinks otherwise, let him meditate on Mt. 10:37 and 1 Cor. 16:22, which reads: "If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!" Fidelity to God requires privileging our love for God above all others including familial ties. Whoever does not do so, is not worthy of Christ.

Mark Noll and his tirade against Creationism

In Mark Noll's book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which is basically a New Evangelical polemic against elements deemed undesirable by the New Evangelicals (Who said New Evangelicals were irenic and tolerant?), Noll inveighed against a couple of issues chief of which are Dispensationalism and Creationism, seeing them both as symptoms of "anti-intellectualism." I must say it is amusing that a point in Noll's general critique is that these views are anti-intellectual because they are mocked by the establishment, which according to the Bible signifies nothing.

Noll tries hard to link Creationism with Dispensationalism, as if to smear the former by linking it with the latter. As with other evangelicals like Del Ratzsch (in this book The Battle of Beginnings), the systematic tarring of the YEC position began from attacking its history, linking it with the Seventh-Day Adventist movement. The problem however is that such is a logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, as if temporary sequence implies logical consequence. The argument can be more plausibly made that non-YEC positions come into place post-Darwin, so does that mean that they necessarily are caused by Darwinism as a logical consequence? It is simply surprising that Noll the promoter of Evangelical intellectual thought would commit a logical fallacy right at the start.

In the book, Noll claimed that "Creationism could, in fact, be called scientific dispensationalism, for creation scientists carry the same attitude towards catastrophe and the sharp break between eras into their science that dispensationalists see in the Scriptures." (p. 195) In response, it must be mentioned that Scripture does speak of catastrophes, EVEN IF one discards the "inconvenient truth" of Creation and the Flood. Christian theology admits of the Fall, the Cross, the Red Sea Crossing, and the Second Coming of Christ. Aren't these all catastrophes in some sense? Or is Noll desiring to impose uniformitarianism upon Scripture too, so that all of Scripture have no catastrophes? Noll's argument therefore commits the fallacy of association. One wonders just how much of the history of interpretation of Genesis 1-11 does he know. When he claims that the YEC position is a novelty in the history of the Church, this only proves he has not read any commentaries on the passages by pre-Enlightenment exegetes on the issue.

The attack on the YEC position continues with Noll accusing its advocates of "Manichean attitudes towards knowledge about the natural world" (p. 196). One wonders what world Noll inhabits. His accusations of creationists as using Baconian induction is strange since none of the professional creationists affirmed their affinity with Baconian induction. In fact, the positivist, hypothetico-deductivist model of science embraced by most scientists today is already outdated. The 20th century has given us Popper's falsification model, Kuhn's scientific paradigm model, and Feyerabend's Dada-ist model. So, what world does Noll actually inhabit? Or is he attacking the YEC position based upon hearsay and conjecture, since he evidently didn't do a good job of representing them? Last I know, misrepresentation is not a virtue of scholarship, so here we have the irony of a historian misrepresenting his object of criticism, and calling them anti-intellectuals?! You should pardon me for not buying that type of inane reasoning.

As with many many people, Noll incessantly confuse "science" with "evolution." All those who reason like him in thought live in the pre-Kuhnian world, a world in which "science" is assumed to be this impersonal enterprise which scientists come and work in, and they are then "dragged" or led through the superior results of experimentation to embrace certain absolutely objective theories of fact "because that's what the experimental results objectively prove." Claiming naivete of creationists who, like the reviled Dispys, read only the "plain" reading of the Genesis account, Noll and those like him have fallen into a more sophisticated naivete regarding the nature of science, in their blindness to the paradigm(s) they function in. They unquestioningly bought into the entire naturalistic paradigm hook, link and sinker, seeing no qualitative difference between "historical science" and "normal operational science." Pressed, they might admit of quantitative difference between the two, just as critics of Kuhn's philosophy of science tried to do the same with Kuhn's category of "paradigmatic science" and "normal science," but the differences are merely quantitative of amount, instead of qualitative, of kind, which they actually are. Noll of course trumpets the "sophisticated" interpretations of Old Testament scholars like Bruce Waltke. Without going into the specifics of Waltke's argument, which Noll did not provide, the question is: Does anyone think Jesus or Paul would have held to such an interpretation of Genesis? None of them lived in an era in which there is such a thing as a fact/ value dichotomy. Postulating that Genesis might not be historical while claiming that it is useful for the ancients imposes upon the ancients philosophical, linguistic and semantic categories of which none of them would have a name for. The goal of biblical exegesis is to understand the meaning of the text in its original horizon as best as possible, not impose foreign categories into the text!

Noll's tirade against the YEC position is therefore, groundless. For a book that claims the terrible state of the Evangelical mind is a scandal, the parts of the book on Creationism is indeed a scandal of the "Evangelical mind."

Ominous Omen: Norman Shepherd

The Federal Vision did not drop out of the sky. Rather, when we peer back into time, we see the seeds of the Federal Vision already in the Shepherd Controversy. Once shrouded because of denominational politicking, the Shepherd Controversy has been revealed to the world through O. Palmer Robertson's book The Current Justification Controversy (Unicoi, TN: Trinity Foundation, 2003). Here are some choice quotes written by Norman Shepherd in 1978 at the height of the controversy, from his Thirty-Four Theses on Justification in Relation to Faith, Repentance, and Good Works:

20. The Pauline affirmation in Roman 2:13, “the doers of the Law will be justified,” is not to be understood hypothetically in the sense that there are no persons who fall into that class, but in the sense that faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ will be justified (Compared Luke 8:21; James 1:22-25)

21. The exclusive ground of justification of the believer in the state of justification is the righteousness of Christ, but his obedience, which is simply the perseverance of the saints in the way of truth and righteousness, is necessary to his continuing in a state of justification (Heb. 3:6, 14)

22. The righteousness of Jesus Christ ever remains the exclusive ground of the believer’s justification, but the personal godliness of the believer is also necessary for his justification in the judgment of the last day (Matt. 7:21-23; 25:31-46; Heb. 12:14)

23. Because faith which is not obedience faith is dead faith, and because repentance is necessary for the pardon of sin included in justification, and because abiding in Christ by keeping his commandments (John 15:5, 10; 1 John 3:13, 24) are all necessary for continuing in the state of justification, good works, works done from true faith, according to the law of God, and for his glory, being the new obedience wrought by the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer united to Christ, though not the ground of his justification, are nevertheless necessary for salvation from eternal condemnation and therefore for justification (Rom. 6:16, 22; Gal. 6:7-9)

The stated aims of the original New Evangelicalism

[A]s outlined in Ockenga,

1. Evangelicals want to see a revival of Christianity in the midst of a secular world which, because of its loss of contact with God, is facing imminent destruction.
2. Evangelicals want to win a new respectability for orthodoxy in academic circles. This requires the production of dedicated scholars who will be prepared to defend the faith on the intellectual’s own ground.
3. Evangelicals want to recapture denominational leadership from within the larger denominations rather than completely abandon these denominations to the forces of contemporary liberalism
4. Finally, evangelicals want to make Christianity the mainspring in societal reforms that it once was and that it ought to be.

— Ronald H. Nash, The New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1963), 177

The New Evangelicalism began with lofty aims and a sincere desire to promote the Christian faith. Sadly, history has given us the disastrous record of the New Evangelicalism, a movement which spiraled out of the control of its original founders. In his book, Ronald Nash put forward the agenda of the New Evangelicalism with its lofty goals. Yet as we examine these goals, we see that they are all flawed from the start, and thus the seed of the failure of the New Evangelicalism was present from the very beginning.

Goal number 1 is laudable, and certainly all of us should desire to see Christ's name lifted up and the Christian faith esteemed in the world, with many turning to Christ for salvation. The problem with the New Evangelicalism is how it goes about trying to achieve its goal. Can a movement convert a world? Perhaps, but certainly not the Christian faith. The Christian faith works through the means ordained by God, through the Church. Without a biblical doctrine of the Church, how can the goal be attained? How can Christianity be revived when the leaders do not have a proper doctrine of the Church in the first place?

The second goal is really sad, only because it is not possible. It is possible to be scholarly, and Christian theologians should be scholarly. But being scholarly does not necessarily mean that orthodoxy would be "respected" by unbelieving scholars, since the ground of rejection of the Bible's teaching is not intellectual but spiritual. As 1 Cor. 1:18 states, the wisdom of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. It matter not how scholarly one is. The unbelieving Academy will not accept the teachings of Scripture no matter how scholarly it is presented. Now certainly Christians theologians ought to be scholarly, but to think that just being scholarly will get one respected in the Academy is a fool's dream. Nash's further proposal to do that "on the intellectual's own ground" is astonishing. What if their ground is one of unbelief? Should we be asked to adopt materialism before we can even began the conversation? What if the "intellectual's own ground" is that "there is no God"?

The third goal is to recapture denominational leadership from the larger denominations. This betrays a naive view of reform as well as a forgetfulness about the recent past. What do people like Nash think happened in the PCUSA that led to the defrocking of J. Gresham Machen? If the liberals stand their ground (which they do) and block all reform actions, should the New Evangelicals wait (forever) for the dream that the Liberals would perhaps one day hand them the denominational leadership?

Lastly, the fourth goal showed the New Evangelical nostalgia for the Old Evangelical social activism, an activism that however has no basis in Scripture.

The New Evangelicals have good motives. However, good motives are never enough. As it has often been said, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." By not following the biblical manner for reform and revival, the New Evangelicalism was doomed from the start, although outwards success was phenomenal for a time.