Category Archives: Individuals

The fall of Bishop Michael Reid

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Peniel Pentecostal Church in Brentwood, about 15 miles from my home, has been controversial here in Essex for several years. I have never been there myself. But I did know people at a church here in Chelmsford which perhaps 20 years ago closed down and effectively merged with Peniel, including a family which left that group and joined my own church. Among the controversies is the allegedly overbearing leadership style of its leader, until last week, Bishop Michael Reid.

But the latest controversy tops the lot, and made it into the national newspapers, at least The Daily Mail, as quoted by John Richardson, and The Sun. The story is also in the Church Times blog, despite being completely non-Anglican. For it seems that Michael Reid has fallen into the oldest trap for church leaders, adultery. If the reports are to be believed, he has for eight years been having an affair with the music director (I nearly said “worship director”, but I know what Doug would say to that!) at his church. Indeed he has admitted adultery, without specifying more details, and resigned from pastoral duties in his church.

Simon Jones, who was apparently hurt by involvement in a similar church, has blogged about this matter in a somewhat intemperate way, accusing Reid of hypocrisy. He also writes, accurately:

A quick Google will reveal some truly awful stories about Michael Reid and the way he has dealt with people who have questioned his leadership over the years.

My aim here is not at all to defend Reid or his church, but to put some balance and truth into this story.

First, the current issue is nothing at all to do with his ministry style or church leadership. That is anyway an internal matter for him and his church, at least unless it is clearly unbiblical or abusive. Not surprisingly people who didn’t like his leadership are not sorry about his fall, but any link between the issues is only speculative.

Second, although Dave Walker and Simon Jones use “scare quotes” around the title “bishop”, and Dave even calls him “self-styled”, in fact Michael Reid is entitled to be called a bishop. Simon quotes a letter from the International Communion of Charismatic Churches confirming that Reid was properly consecrated as a bishop:

His consecration to the office of the Bishop was conducted in Benin City, Nigeria by the late Archbishop Benson Idahosa. He for several years after served as the national presbyter for the ICCC and a member of the College of Bishops. However, since his resignation several years ago he has held no position within the organization and the organization has had neither involvement nor oversight in his ministry.

According to the ICCC’s own website their episcopate was recognised by Pope Paul VI in 1978:

the pope saw it as a gesture of genuine desire to identify with the historical church and he defended the actions of the three Pentecostals and called for McAlister and DuPlessis to be brought before him for commissioning as bishops of special recognition and rights thereby establishing them both as direct descendants of apostolic succession.

Robert McAlister consecrated Benson Idahosa, and Idahosa consecrated Reid. So Reid became a genuine bishop in the apostolic succession. And, although he left the ICCC about ten years ago, on the understanding of those who believe in the apostolic succession he remains a bishop for life. So there is no call for “scare quotes” or words like “self-styled”.

As John Richardon writes, we should not be crowing over the fall of a church leader that we didn’t like, but

what all of us should be thinking is, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

And , I suggest, we should be praying for Bishop Reid and his wife, and for the woman involved and her family; also for the church under its new pastor, including that it will turn away from the abuses for which Reid was allegedly responsible and follow God’s leading for it as a church.

According to Piper, does God love anyone at all?

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Yesterday I posted “God hates sinners”: John Piper does believe this. In a comment Jeff, “Scripture Zealot”, noted that I had taken this from a sermon 23 years old and wondered if Piper might have changed his mind. Well, that is possible, but I have been offered no evidence for it.

However, we do have up-to-date evidence for something almost as shocking which Piper explicitly states today, or at least he did yesterday. If we can trust Adrian Warnock’s report (which is not certain; thanks to Henry Neufeld for the tip), Piper, speaking yesterday at the New Word Alive conference in Wales, said:

Someone might argue, “Sin was condemned, but not Christ.” Piper then explained: Imagine I got you on stage and said, “I’m going to hit you in the face, but it’s not you I’m hitting, it’s just your attitude.” NO! It was the will of the Lord to bruise him. God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that we could become the righteousness of God. He was wounded for us. His punishment set us free. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He struck him. It was God the Father who killed Jesus. It is considered today to be appalling to teach or sing this. Piper said it is not appalling to him, it is his very life!

To this, I will simply say that “bruise” (Adrian’s double emphasis) is not the same as “kill”, and where in this is the united will of the Trinity? But this quotation should really be checked from the audio and video expected soon.

To return to Piper’s 1985 sermon, on the same chapter, Romans 8, as last night’s, I noticed something strange here.

When I have objected in the past to statements like “God hates sinners” and its apparent contradiction with John 3:16, Calvinist commenters have claimed that in this verse “the world” in fact means “the elect”. There is in fact no exegetical justification for this at all, but it does make for a consistent, although unbiblical, system of doctrine, according to which God loves those whom he has elected to eternal life, and hates those whom he has not elected.

But the strange thing which Piper said in 1985 was with regard to himself before he was a Christian:

But it wasn’t always so for John Piper. … God hated me in my sin.

Now I am sure that Piper considers himself one of the elect. But here he seems to teach that God hated him before he repented and became a Christian. In fact, if we read on, it would appear that, according to Piper, God still hated him as he

contemplate[d] me in Jesus Christ—chosen, loved, and destined for glory … [and] fulfil[led] his predestined purpose for me by appeasing his own wrath and acquitting me of all my sin and conquering the depravity of my heart.

In other words, Piper’s view seems to be that God continues to hate humans, except for the only one he actually loves, Jesus Christ. And if he does love Jesus, he showed that in a very strange way, by killing him. Also, in this case, as Polycarp asked in a comment here,

If God hates sinners, then why Christ?

If God loved Jesus and hated Piper, why did he kill Jesus and save Piper? This just doesn’t make sense!

Now maybe Piper has some way of making this into a consistent system, but it is different from the Calvinist system I described before, and even more different from the truth revealed in the Bible:

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8 (TNIV)

Note the first “for us”: it is not just Jesus, but us sinners, whom God loves, and he loves us before we repent.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16 (TNIV)

I shouldn’t really have to quote this, but it seems that at least in 1985 Piper was not aware of it. For these words make it clear that God did not love just the Son, nor even just the elect, but he loved the world, that is everyone.

"God hates sinners": John Piper does believe this

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Pam BG has brought up again an issue which was discussed here several months ago, that some Christians are preaching that “God hates sinners”. She has mentioned this initially, I think, in some comments on John Meunier’s blog, and has also brought it up in a comment on her own blog and in several comments on mine. I will dignify this important issue by giving it a post of its own.

This is what Pam originally wrote on John’s blog:

I’ve recently done some research into atonement theory and there is definitely a divide in the current on-going debates.

It’s a divide between those who say that God’s primary characteristic is love and those who say that God’s primary characteristic is holiness. The former is, in my view, much more biblical.

Those who think that God’s primary characteristic is love believe that God hates sin and loves sinners (e.g. Steve Chalke and Tom Wright). Those who think that God’s primary characteristic is his holiness believe that God hates sin and hates sinners too (e.g. John Piper and books written by various individuals at Oak Hill College in the UK).

Those who think that God’s primary characteristic is love see the Gospel message as ‘The Kingdom of God is coming. God’s justice will reign in his kingdom.’ Those who think that God’s primary characteristic is holiness think that the Gospel message is ‘The sins of individual people are expiated through the propitiating work of Christ.’

I think that these views are almost irreconcilably different. I also think that ‘God loves sinners and hates sin and calls his disciples to a life of justice in the Kingdom’ is both a biblical message and a message that is historically in line with Methodism.

Here is my reply, edited with my later clarification:

Pam, is it possible to believe that both holiness and love are God’s primary characteristics? In fact holiness is certainly primary in the sense of having been revealed first, in the Hebrew Bible, and repeated in the New Testament.

But I certainly believe that God loves sinners. Anyone who denies that is denying John 3:16 and, I would judge, denying an essential point of the Christian faith. So basically I agree with you here – although we may not fully agree on which particular types of activity count as sin, i.e. what God hates.

Pam also made a claim that

Piper and the authors of ‘Pierced for Our Transgressions’ – as examples – do explicitly state that God hates sinners. ‘PFOT’ also states that it is God who damns people and who creates their punishment. These concepts were stated in so many words in their books, but you do have to dig for them!

I questioned, in comments my own blog, whether Piper has in fact stated this explicitly. An anonymous commenter on Pam’s blog took this further:

I have read John Pipers books and he has NEVER said God hates sinners as well as sin.

Has this person in fact read every word Piper has ever written, and listened to every one of his sermons? Clearly not – see below. The only person who could say such a dogmatic “NEVER” is Piper himself. But I think that when Pam actually did the digging she referred to she could not find evidence for her claim, as later she largely withdrew it, on her own blog and on mine, although not as yet on John Meunier’s. On her own blog she wrote:

To be transparent, Piper said that the work of the cross is to change God’s attitude from ‘completely against us’ to ‘completely for us’. On p. 184 [which book, Pam?], Piper writes that the purpose of the atonement is that God, as our Father, might be completely for us and not against us forever.

In reply to this I wrote that, even if Piper may not say “God hates sinners”, his friend Mark Driscoll certainly did, as I discussed here a few months ago. As reported by Alastair Roberts (see also Adrian Warnock’s report of the same sermon), Driscoll said

Here is what propitiation is: GOD HATES SINNERS. You’ve been told that God loves the sinner but hates the sin. No he doesn’t: Ghandi says that, just so you know, he’s on a totally different team than us.

What would Piper say to that, I wonder? Would he still “not have .001 seconds hesitation in having Mark Driscoll come back tomorrow to our church or our conference”?

But in fact if Pam digs a bit deeper she will find what she is looking for. Michael Bräutigam from Germany, commenting on Justin Taylor’s blog, offered this quote from John Piper, which in fact comes from a 1985 sermon on Piper’s own website:

Yes, I think we need to go the full Biblical length and say that God hates unrepentant sinners. If I were to soften it, as we so often do, and say that God hates sin, most of you would immediately translate that to mean: he hates sin but loves the sinner. But Psalm 5:5 says, “The boastful may not stand before thy eyes; thou hatest all evildoers.” And Psalm 11:5 says, “The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and his soul hates him that loves violence.

Michael also quotes Calvin, but finds in him a much more carefully nuanced message:

Before we were reconciled to God, he both hated and loved us.

Maybe that is a better way to say it. But better still, in my opinion, is the way it is put in words misattributed to Gandhi, who apparently did not use the word “love”:

Hate the sin, and love the sinner.

Driscoll may have been unaware of this, but in fact these words apparently come from the great Christian writer Augustine, centuries earlier, who, according to Wikipedia with a citation from Migne’s authoritative Patrilogiae Latinae, wrote:

“Love the sinner and hate the sin” (Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum) (Opera Omnia, vol II. col. 962, letter 211.), literally “With love for mankind and hatred of sins “

Yes, “love the sinner and hate the sin” should be our attitude because it is also God’s attitude as demonstrated to us by Jesus.

Jesus to boycott the Lambeth Conference?

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No, that is not what Walter means by Lambeth 2008 is Starting Without Jesus. What he means is that there is no mention of Our Lord in Archbishop Rowan’s opening remarks. Indeed none of the words “Jesus”, “Christ” or “Lord” appear on the page, and “God” is mentioned only in Jane Williams’ words. I wonder if any mention of Jesus is considered too potentially divisive for some of those invited to the conference. After all, it wouldn’t be the Anglican way, somehow, to insist that this is a conference of Christian bishops.

But would Jesus be welcome if he did turn up? 1 Peter 2:25 KJV confirms that he is a Bishop and so should qualify for an invitation. But would he behave himself as a bishop is supposed to? Or would he start overturning the booksellers’ tables in the Marketplace and denouncing any hypocrites he might find? And if he should happen to bump into Gene Robinson and his new “bridegroom” outside the venue, what would he have to say to them? Perhaps “Go, and sin no more”? But for saying that he would probably be asked to leave.

Somehow I think Jesus would be more at home at Gafcon in his home country.

Tony Blair and God

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Ruth Gledhill has written a follow-up to her piece earlier today about Tony Blair, and so I will also write a follow-up to my earlier post.

Ruth reports what Tony had to say about his former press secretary Alastair Campbell’s infamous words “We don’t do God”. Blair said:

In our culture, here in Britain and in many other parts of Europe, to admit to having faith leads to a whole series of suppositions, none of which are very helpful to the practising politician.

He went into this in more detail, reported by Ruth, finishing with this:

And finally and worst of all, that you are somehow messianically trying to co-opt God to bestow a divine legitimacy on your politics.

So when Alastair said it, he didn’t mean politicians shouldn’t have faith; just that it was always a packet of trouble to talk about it.

Ruth is happy to report that with his new Faith Foundation

he’s not afraid to ‘do God’ now.

But I think she goes over the top in her enthusiasm when she writes:

There’s a vacuum in our national religious leadership at present which badly needs filling, and Tony Blair could be just the man to do it.

Yes, there is such a vacuum, but I don’t see that the public will ever trust Blair enough again to let him fill it.

Tony Blair, a good person?

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Ruth Gledhill nominates Tony Blair as her ‘Good Person’ for today – and this is not the good joke she refers to in her title. If you haven’t seen that joke, also available internationally and probably permanently here, you really must – and don’t miss this explanation of how it was done. But back to Tony Blair …

Last year I reported on how some people were effectively calling Blair the Antichrist. At the time I suggested that the newly appointed Gordon Brown might have

been waiting in the wings for his chance to undo much of the damage caused by Blair.

Now, nine months into Brown’s government, I see little sign of this. True, Brown has almost ended British involvement in Iraq and partly backed down on identity cards. But in other ways, especially on moral issues, his government is causing even more concern than Blair’s did. So perhaps I should retract any suggestion that Blair was personally to blame for the mistakes of his government, and be prepared to look more favourably on him as a person.

And the same Ruth Gledhill, this time in an article today in The Times, has given me good reason to do so. She reports how he is setting up the Tony Blair Faith Foundation

to contribute to better understanding of the different faiths [and] to bring people of faith together to deliver the Millennium Development Goals … “Tony Blair believes that the capacity of faith organisations to do good is immense and that their reach is unparalleled,” an adviser said.

If Blair is really committed to what he is aiming for here, and can deliver it, he is certainly a “good person” not just for today but hopefully for decades to come.

Heaven is not our home – another shock from another Wright

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Brian of the blog sunestauromai – living the crucified life has the good fortune to pastor a church at a place which in some ways must be heaven on earth: the rim of the Grand Canyon. But is it in fact the nearest he will get to heaven? I don’t mean the altitude, although from there it must be unusually easy to imagine what it would be like to fall into hell.

Brian has been reading what Bishop NT Wright has had to say about heaven, in a new Christianity Today article (from where I have taken my post title) and a slightly older interview in Time Magazine. To these Brian has written a response, with a follow-up. I am sure he is not the only Christian, not even the only pastor, to be a little confused by the way in which Wright seems to be undermining the traditional understanding of the Christian hope, that we go to heaven when we die and that is the end of it.

So I will take a break from explaining the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to explain the Right(!) Reverend NT Wright, as I understand him.

In fact I am completely with NT Wright on this issue. The understanding which he is undermining, even if according to Nick Norelli it is not in fact widespread, is not biblical teaching but a distortion of it. Bodily resurrection – of every Christian in future, as well as of Jesus on the first Easter Sunday – is central to the Christian hope as explained by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: Continue reading →

Still more on "God damn America"

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Since I posted about “God damn America” in context, I chanced upon a blog, with the possibly presumptuous name The Church of Jesus Christ, on which the anonymous blogger “Polycarp” has posted a transcription of much of Rev Jeremiah Wright’s controversial “God damn America” sermon. In fact the transcription was taken from another blog, The Roland Report.

Here are some of Wright’s words following on, not quite immediately, from the words “God damn America”:

The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.

Tell your neighbor he’s (going to) help us one last time. Turn back and say forgive him for the God Damn, that’s in the Bible though. Blessings and curses is in the Bible. It’s in the Bible.

Where government fail, God never fails. When God says it, it’s done. God never fails. When God wills it, you better get out the way, ‘cause God never fails. When God fixes it, oh believe me it’s fixed. God never fails. Somebody right now, you think you can’t make it, but I want you to know that you are more than a conqueror through Christ. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

I take Wright’s words “he’s (going to) help us one last time … forgive him for the God Damn”, although confusing without more verbal and visual clues, to indicate that Wright is partly retracting his earlier words and instead asking God to turn and help America “one last time”. So “God damn America” can be understood as a rhetorical flourish to get his listeners’ attention to what follows, and was never intended as a serious imprecation. It certainly succeeded in getting attention, but unfortunately the following words were cut off, even in the rather longer video to which I previously posted a link.

I largely agree with Polycarp’s appraisal:

First, what Rev. Wright said was not that far off. …

Why is what he said so offensive? He told the absolute truth and pointed out that in the end governments fail, but God does not. Anything wrong with that? Did he not point out the list of offenses that the government has made? God did the same thing to Israel. The problem that I think that many people have, is that they view what he said as racist. He is not. He said that Egypt has done the same thing. But why focus on another country where the people could not have connected to? Why speak about the horrors of Czarist Russia? No one would have connected. So, like most speakers trying to get a point across, he did his best to connect the audience to the topic.

Another thing, is that he ‘attacked’ the U.S. I hate to tell you this, but everything he said was correct. And another thing, this country is not divine, so stop saying that it is. Stop pretending that Christ died that the Declaration of Independence might be written!

"God damn America" in context

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I may have upset some people with my post “God damn America”?, despite the quotes and the question mark in the post title. After all, the soundbite quotes in the video of Rev Jeremiah Wright are indeed rather shocking. But JR Woodward, in a thoughtful post (thanks to Pam BG for the link), has shown how the quotes from Wright’s sermons were taken completely out of context.

The example given in the Youtube video embedded by Woodward shows how Wright’s supposedly offensive words in the aftermath of 9/11:

America’s chickens are coming home to roost

are in fact a quotation of the words of a white ambassador. The video is well worth watching for the insight it gives into the real Jeremiah Wright, who is not at all the monster depicted by the original compilation of soundbites.

A search of Youtube found me this video giving the actual context of the words “God damn America”. Here is a transcription of a small part of this, from the very end of the video – of course I can’t imitate Wright’s style of preaching:

No, no, no, not God bless America. God damn America (that’s in the Bible) for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.

Watch more of this, and decide for yourselves whether in fact Wright’s sentiments were (in Jeremy Pierce’s words) “I want you to be damned, and I don’t want you to repent”, or “repent, America, or you will be judged”.

Is there life on other worlds?

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This has been a good week for those searching for life beyond the earth. The BBC Science and Nature web page links to three separate new articles pointing in this direction. Salt deposits from dried up lakes have been found on Mars, suggesting that once, billions of years ago, there were lakes of salty water which could have supported life, and that traces of this could be found in the salt. Beneath the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Titan, according to new evidence, very likely still today there are oceans of liquid water, which could well support life as organic molecules are also present. And for the first time these organic molecules have been found on a planet outside our solar system; although this particular planet is too hot for life, this finding, combined with the recent discovery of a planet of similar size and temperature to our earth orbiting a distant star, suggests that there may be billions of planets in our galaxy capable of supporting life.

It is highly unlikely that any life on Mars or on Titan will be anything like the intelligent aliens we know of from science fiction. Large organisms simply could not survive on Mars today; indeed it seems unlikely that any life could. Much more likely, both there and deep inside Titan, would be something like bacteria.

As for planets in other solar systems, from a scientific point of view anything is possible. But people have been listening for radio messages from aliens for 50 years and have so far not heard anything suggesting intelligent beings out there.

Would the discovery of life on other planets be a threat to the Christian faith? Certainly it should not be. If God can create life on earth, whether through natural processes (as I believe) or by direct creation (as other Christians prefer to understand it), he certainly can do so in other places, and we have no reason to think that he has not done so.

If there are non-human intelligent beings out there, one might speculate, or conceivably in future be able to study, whether they are also self-aware and spiritual beings, whether they too have sinned, and whether they too need to be saved by the sacrificial death and resurrection of the Son of God. CS Lewis memorably speculated in his novels Out of the Silent Planet and Voyage to Venus (also known as Perelandra) about intelligent inhabitants of Mars and Venus living in an unfallen Garden of Eden kind of environment. Of course we can’t know, until and unless we make actual contact. But the possibility of this should not be any kind of threat to our faith.