Category Archives: Adrian Warnock

Comments, Respect and Accountability

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A couple of days ago I criticised Adrian Warnock for censoring comments. He has shown the inconsistency, or at least the arbitrary application, of his comment policy by accepting the following comment – not written by himself, of course, in fact from an otherwise unidentifiable “Mark”:

every time I hear/read Driscoll he gets more and more obsessed and more and more extreme

while rejecting my much less ad hominem one, even when toned down to present the “accusation” as a question, like Adrian’s (in post titles) “Is N. T. Wright Preaching Another Gospel?” and “Does Piper Neglect the Resurrection?” But I am pleased to see in the latter post a critical evaluation of one of those I have called his idols.

Well, Adrian of course has the right to accept or reject comments as he wishes. But if he wants his blog to retain any respect or credibility the comments he should be rejecting are ones like anonymous Mark’s rather than mine.

Now I can understand Adrian wanting to get rid of the problem of comments completely. He wrote in a comment here on this blog

I am thinking seriously of nuking the whole concept of comments over at my place. I do hope you guys understand my dilemna.

Yes, Adrian, I understand your dilemma. Justin Taylor faces a similar one, and is also considering disabling comments. But I still feel that your problem is that you are over-sensitive. Blogging is like a kitchen, if you can’t take the heat you need to get out of it. Continue reading →

Driscoll: Single men "cannot fully reflect God"

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The issue I was trying to raise in my rejected comment on Adrian Warnock’s post has been ignored in the discussion which has raged about it. But it is an important issue. Here is part of what Mark Driscoll said at the MenMakers conference in Edinburgh, as reported by Adrian:

The only thing that was described as “not good” before the fall was man being alone. Some single guys are strange, and what they need is a woman. There is nothing that sanctifies a man like a woman can sanctify him. Many young men run away from responsibility and think being alone is good. This is not true. The difference between a man and a boy is the responsibilities they carry. You need help! …

God is not alone. He is trinitarian. Man does not have that relationship in himself. He cannot fully reflect God unless he has someone alongside him—namely a woman. …

So, according to Driscoll, we single men are “strange”, irresponsible, boys rather than men, and, most damagingly of all, unable to fully reflect God. Now I can understand him coming to this conclusion from reading the Old Testament. Indeed it seems to have been the majority Jewish view, both in Jesus’ time and today, that men are fulfilled only in marriage. But in the New Testament we see a very different picture. So, no wonder I wrote

Looks like Driscoll has not read 1 Corinthians 7:25-32, or noticed that Jesus was not married. Come to think of it, looks like Driscoll has not read the New Testament at all, except perhaps for isolated verses, …

If, as Driscoll teaches, a single man “cannot fully reflect God”, then what does that imply for his view of Jesus? Is he not “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15)? In principle, as shown here, Driscoll accepts that Jesus should be an example for Christians, that

Being spirit-filled means living the life of Jesus.

But why is it not Spirit-filled but rather irresponsible and not reflecting God to follow Jesus’ example of singleness?

Within the Christian church there has always been an ambivalence towards marriage. Continue reading →

Adrian censors criticism of one of his idols

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I tried to post this comment on Adrian Warnock’s blog, in response to his post on Mark Driscoll at the Menmakers conference in Scotland:

Looks like Driscoll has not read 1 Corinthians 7:25-32, or noticed that Jesus was not married. Come to think of it, looks like Driscoll has not read the New Testament at all, except perhaps for isolated verses, for his “gospel”, as seen here and in the previous post about him, seems to leave humanity fallen and sinful with God hating them.

Charity, the basis for the argument you mention is a dubious translation of Genesis 5:2 which was new in the RSV.

Adrian, who has recently reintroduced comment moderation on his blog, refused to publish this comment because I dared to suggest that Driscoll might not have read the whole New Testament.

Well, first he doesn’t seem to have realised that this is very obvious hyperbole, rhetorical exaggeration. My real point is of course that Driscoll is ignoring most of the New Testament in his teaching. Perhaps I could have got away with writing that. But I am not going to allow Adrian to determine what literary style I can use in response to his blogging. If he doesn’t want my response on his blog, he can have it here, and I will send him a link.

But what this really shows is Adrian’s hyper-sensitivity, so typical of Reformed Evangelicals, to any criticism of their favourite preachers. It is not that they are sensitive to critical comments in general. They seem quite happy to accuse well known Christian teachers from different strands of preaching another gospel or blasphemy. So they can’t claim that they dislike criticism because it is not showing Christian charity. No, instead they seem to react like fundamentalists of some religion who hear their gods being criticised. For it seems to me that favourite preachers like Piper and Driscoll have become idols in the minds of certain people, who treat their words as infallible and beyond criticism, and react intemperately to anyone who disagrees on this.

Mark Driscoll: "I murdered God", "God hates you"

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If Adrian Warnock’s summary of his words is to be believed, in a sermon on the atonement, preached yesterday in Edinburgh, Mark Driscoll said:

A war is brewing over this issue. This is the issue we must be willing to fight over. If we lose this, we lose the gospel. … if you deny this, you have essentially lost the Christian faith …

I MURDERED GOD!

Now Driscoll can confess this of himself if he likes, but he seems to require every Christian to confess the same. Now I have committed a large number of sins, but I do not confess to this particular murder, or indeed to any murder. Continue reading →

The root of John Piper's wrong theology

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I may have got myself into trouble with some comments I made on Adrian Warnock’s blog, on his post 2 Corinthians 5 and Romans 5 – Two Critical Passages on Justification. This post is part of Adrian’s series on John Piper’s new book The Future of Justification. I was commenting mainly on these words which Adrian quoted from Piper:

Justification . . . happens to all who are connected to Christ the same way condemnation happened to those who were connected to Adam. How is that? Adam acted sinfully, and because we were connected to him, we were condemned in him. Christ acted righteously, and because we are connected to Christ we are justified in Christ. Adam’s sin is counted as ours. Christ’s “act of righteousness” is counted as ours.

In my first comment I argued that Piper is here basing his theology of justification on an analogy with Augustine’s understanding of original sin, an understanding which is faulty because, as widely recognised and as I explained in a previous post here, Augustine misunderstood Paul’s meaning in Romans 5:12 based on a poor Latin translation.

I went on to begin to sketch out some alternative views of my own. Continue reading →

Proud reason and systematic theology

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Adrian Warnock, in a post about the doctrine of “double predestination”, quotes one of his heroes, the 19th century Cambridge preacher Charles Simeon, as follows:

But this is a perversion of the doctrine. It is a consequence which our proud reason is prone to draw from the decrees of God: but it is a consequence which the inspired volume totally disavows. There is not in the whole sacred writings one single word that fairly admits of such a construction.

Thus Simeon shows how wrong is the teaching of double predestination, that God predestines some people to be damned. Adrian agrees with him, and so do I.

But I want to take this a step further. It seems to me that any systematic theology or teaching derived from it needs to be judged according to this criterion, whether it actually consists of “the decrees of God”, or is “a consequence which our proud reason is prone to draw from [these] decrees”. This applies especially to the Reformed systematic theology based on the five points of Calvinism which Adrian is currently expounding in a mini-series. Among the tests which need to be applied here is whether the teaching is “a consequence which the inspired volume totally disavows”. And among the teachings which fail this test I find not only double predestination but indeed the whole system of election and predestination which is the basis of Calvinism. For these are based on the idea that God does not want all to be saved which “the inspired volume totally disavows”, in 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9.

I want it all too!

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I am right with Adrian Warnock in saying I don’t want balance, I want it all! – although I might have chosen some different role models at the end.

But I also agree with Dave Warnock, no relation, that this all should be for everyone, “Not just white middle class men” like Adrian, Dave and me. So he criticises Adrian for implicitly restricting this by gender and sexuality. On the same basis I agree with Henry Neufeld on this. To be fair to Adrian, I don’t think he disagrees, for he wasn’t writing about leadership, but about matters in which we can all agree that men and women can play an equal part. Of course the entirely predictable responses to Dave’s comments on Adrian’s blog only served to stir up this side issue and detract from Adrian’s real vision, and Adrian doesn’t help by the patronising tone of his comments like

The ladies in our church I speak to feel fulfilled and are serving God in ways consistent with however they are called by God. They can minister, they can lead, they can speak to the church.

– but of course we know that they cannot preach or be elders, and there is no sign of them speaking for themselves on such matters.

But this is not Adrian’s main point. His point is that there is so much that the church is missing out on, because either congregations are going to one extreme at the expense of the others, or they are seeking some kind of balance which pleases nobody. Just as Jesus was not half man and half God, but fully man and fully God, so we should not be half charismatic and half doctrinally sound, or half evangelistic and half socially concerned, or any other half and half balance, but we should seek to be fully all of these things.

A commenter on Adrian’s blog mentioned Smith Wigglesworth’s 1947 prophecy, recently republished by Adrian. Here is part of it:

When the new church phase is on the wane, there will be evidenced in the churches something that has not been seen before: a coming together of those with an emphasis on the Word and those with an emphasis on the Spirit. When the Word and the Spirit come together, there will be the biggest movement of the Holy Spirit that the nation, and indeed, the world, has ever seen.

Whatever we may think of this as an actual predictive prophecy, surely we should take it as wise words for the church today. Those with an emphasis on the Word and those with an emphasis on the Spirit need to come together, to seek together the moving of the Holy Spirit that can bring revival to our nation and to the world. When we stop our public bickering and work together, we can expect to see something truly great happening.

Does God change history?

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Tomorrow Adrian wrote (! – yes, I am responding to a post dated tomorrow, and we are in the same time zone)

Justification is no mere legal fiction, for when God declares something to be the case, He also causes it to become the case.

For once the point I want to make in response to Adrian is not really to do with the atonement, although there is a link. For Adrian’s assertion here raises serious philosophical issues. I am not thinking of the superficial breach of causality involved in me responding now to something apparently written in the future, although sentences like “Tomorrow Adrian wrote …” are of great interest to grammarians. The real issue is, when God declares us to be justified, that is, not to have sinned, does he change history?

Continue reading →

Is God the bad cop?

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Is Jesus the good cop? is the question which Adrian Warnock asks as he continues his long series on the atonement. He argues correctly, and importantly, that we should not see the Old Testament God as the “bad cop” and Jesus as the “good cop”. Rather, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in character and purpose. But I would have liked to see less emphasis from Adrian on the shared wrath of the Father and the Son, which makes it sound like they are both bad cops, and more on their shared love; in fact not “more”, because astonishingly Adrian does not mention at all in this post God’s love or any of his related positive attributes.

But how does this relate to the penal substitutionary model of the atonement which Adrian is continuing to promote above all others?

Continue reading →

Adrian curses Chalke, Wright and me

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My last post on Adrian’s apostasy was not to be taken seriously. But this one is. Apostasy is not quite the right word. But what is the right word for someone who pronounces a public curse on his brothers and sisters in Christ for disagreeing with him on a theological issue?

In fact I rather appreciated most of Adrian’s interview with the authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions. It helped me to understand better where these authors are coming from and why they felt the need to write this book – although I can’t entirely agree with them. It is only in the last few paragraphs of Adrian’s interview that he steps well beyond the mark.

Continue reading →