Category Archives: Complementarians

Packer on leaving the Anglican Church of Canada

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Dr JI Packer has given an interesting talk, entitled Global Realignment: Who We Are and Where We Stand: A Theological Perspective, to the national conference of the Anglican Network in Canada. See Packer’s outline of his talk (PDF); Chris Sugden’s report of this talk from which my quotes are taken (it is unclear whether this is an official transcript or Sugden’s notes – he was at the conference); a blogger’s incomplete notes. The “theological perspective” is in fact a defence of this Network’s decision to leave the Anglican Church of Canada and affiliate with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone (of South America).

As Packer says in his talk, he is not one to quit lightly. Continue reading →

Adrian's comments from December 2006 – the Grudem interview

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Many of you will remember the controversy generated by Adrian Warnock’s interview of Wayne Grudem. The hundreds of comments posted there are in danger of being lost because of Adrian’s change of comment policy. Here I am rescuing them, and other comments from December 2006, for posterity. Unlike my previous set of comments from Adrian’s blog, I am doing these in chronological order. Again I intend to include the comments on every post which has any comments – in fact that is all of his posts in that  period when he was only starting to moderate comments. But this of course excludes any posts which Adrian has already deleted, and from what I remember there were quite a few of them in that month of controversy.

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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 →

Mark Driscoll head to head with Joel Osteen

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Adrian Warnock has posted an interesting video (ten minutes long) of two well-known American preachers head to head. The video is basically part of a sermon by Mark Driscoll, but it includes a long clip from a sermon by Joel Osteen. Driscoll is one of Adrian’s favourites, and has had some generally not so favourable mention on this blog; nevertheless I respect him for his no-nonsense approach. Osteen is, I understand, well known in the USA for his prosperity teaching on TV and radio, but is not so well known here in the UK.

Adrian’s main point in posting this video is to present it as “a model of gracious rebuke”, of Osteen by Driscoll. And indeed it is this. If only Adrian and his other favourite speakers had treated Steve Chalke with this same grace, rather than accusing him of heresy! Then the whole atonement debate would have been a lot less bitter. I too need to take Driscoll as an example of how to show gentle wisdom over such issues.

But I want to look more at the different approaches represented here by Osteen and Driscoll. Continue reading →

Why I am not a Calvinist

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I’m sorry if I lost some of you my readers in my previous posts about five-point or TULIP Calvinism, including the one about the spoof that wasn’t. I know that for some of you these are burning issues which you know all about. But I’m sure that there are others among you who have little knowledge or interest about these matters.

I will here state openly that I am not a Calvinist, neither five-point nor anything else. A post today by Ben Witherington has reminded me of why not. If God has predestined everything, the fundamental basis of the Calvinist picture of reality, this implies that he has predetermined all the kinds of disasters which are so common in this world, and indeed every bad thing which happens. This makes him the author of evil. But this picture of God is in absolute contradiction to the biblical picture of the character of God who is both just and loving.

Continue reading →