Maybe it’s me, but the idea of “naming names”—calling out a specific
pastor, teacher or author as promoting false doctrine and heresy—has
increasingly felt awkward to me. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that
I’ve seen very few examples of it done well. Generally, those naming
names seem to be folks that Paul warns about in the pastoral
epistles—men who love to stir up controversy and division who we should
have nothing to do with (1 Tim. 6:4; Titus 3:10).
They appear to jump on a video clip, a poor choice of words, or a seven
year old blog post and go to town. This is why on any given day, you
can find everyone from James MacDonald to John MacArthur declared
heretics on the Internets. Frankly, it gets so ridiculous at times that I
can completely understand why people would never want to say anything
that would even suggest that someone might be a false teacher.
Yet, as I study the Scriptures, I find that I cannot go there. The
authors of Scripture take false teaching very seriously and so must
we. Indeed, throughout the New Testament, we see numerous examples of
specific men named as false teachers—as traitors to the gospel.
Paul tells Timothy that Hymenaeus, Alexander and Philetus are among
those who have made a shipwreck of their faith and swerved from the
truth (1 Tim. 1:20; 2 Tim. 2:17-18). Their
“irreverent babble,” he says, will spread like gangrene among God’s
people. Their false teaching is like an infection that must be treated
with the utmost seriousness and efficiency. Failure to do so will result
in the infection spreading. The apostle John warned his readers of
Diotrephes, “who likes to put himself first, [and] does not acknowledge
our authority” (3 John 9). This
man, who was apparently influential among John’s audience, refused to
acknowledge the authority of apostolic teaching, becoming an authority
unto himself (sounds familiar, doesn’t it). And Jesus himself warned of
the Nicolaitans and their presence in Ephesus and Pergamum. He hated
their works and commands those who hold to their teachings to repent or
be caught on the wrong side when he would come to make war against them (Rev. 2:6; 15-16). Continue at Aaron Armstrong
