Prophecy Redefined

In episode 215 of Ask Pastor John, Dr. Piper gets to the crux of the cessationist-continuationist debate. In his view, modern prophecy is not “infallible, Scripture-level, authoritative speaking,” but rather “something that God spontaneously brings to mind in the moment, and—because we are fallible in the way we perceive it, and the way we think about it, and the way we speak it—it does not carry that same level of infallible, Scripture-level authority.” He claims three texts of Scripture to provide “exegetical reasons” for his view.

John’s view is also Wayne Grudem’s view, and represents a radical departure from the historic position of the Christian church. More to the point, it is a direct contradiction of 2 Peter 1:21:  “No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” What God gave to His prophets was not diminished one iota by human fallibility. The Holy Spirit so superintended the speaking (and writing) of every single word such that what God wanted to say was spoken, and it was spoken unequivocally. Piper’s and Grudem’s novel view departs from the biblical, historic view of the gift of prophecy and dangerously tampers with divine integrity and authority.

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible demonstrates four foundational characteristics of true prophecy. First, true prophecy is always verbal, the very words of God. It’s never an impulse or an impression; it’s never a feeling that needs interpretation. Rather, true prophecy is a precise message.   Continue at John MacArthur

...But What about Grudem / Piper / Carson?

A couple of poor souls have unintentionally given us golden examples of why it is valid to fault the best for giving cover to the worst.
A number of dainty souls didn't like, and fretted anxiously about, this Twitter hashtag. Our focus isn't the hashtag itself, or all the broken tea-cups it's caused. 

With those in mind, scan the rest of my Tweets under the hashtag. You know, if you want to.

Leave aside whether you think this is wise, loving, winsome, effective, ambassadorial, ecumenical, or eco-friendly or likely to produce global warming. I only have one question: given the limitations of 140 characters, and given that I have dozens of long-form essays on record and internationally-accessible, are my criticisms accurate and vitally important criticisms of the distinctives of Charismaticism/"continuationism"?    Continue at Dan Phillips

Cessationism, Revelation & Prophecy

From Voice, Nov/Dec 2012. Used by permission.

Despite the fact that the majority of conservative evangelical Christians since the Reformation have held to a cessationist position with regard to divine revelation, true cessationists are rapidly disappearing. In the articles and books I have written nothing has evoked as much criticism and anger as my position that God is speaking to His people today exclusively through Scripture. Due to the influence of a multitude of popular authors, theologians and conference speakers, cessationism is barely treading water, even within the most biblically solid churches and organizations.

As a matter of fact, among those who claim to be evangelicals there are five identifiable views prevalent today on the matter of revelation:

Pentecostal/Charismatic/Thirdwave

All miraculous gifts exist today, including the gift of prophecy. God speaks through prophets and to His people both audibly (through dreams, visions, words of knowledge), and inwardly (inaudibly in the mind or heart). Representatives of this position are Jack Deere, John Wimber, the Kansas City Prophets, the Assemblies of God and the Word of Faith movement. Charismatic author Tommy Tenney, in his popular book The God Chasers, writes,

God chasers…are not interested in camping out on some dusty truth known to everyone. They are after the fresh presence of the Almighty… A true God chaser is not happy with just past truth; he must have present truth. God chasers don’t want to just study the moldy pages of what God has done; they are anxious to see what God is doing.¹

Classical Mysticism/Spiritual Formation

 

Through the use of various disciplines and spiritual exercises, God will speak to us both audibly and inaudibly. Dallas Willard and Richard Foster are two such examples. Willard, a leader within the Spiritual Formation Movement, recently updated a previous book renaming it Hearing God, Developing a Conversational Relationship with God. The thrust of his book is that we can live “the kind of life where hearing God is not an uncommon occurrence, [for] hearing God is but one dimension of a richly interactive relationship and obtaining guidance is but one facet of hearing God.”² In other words, the maturing Christian should expect to hear the voice of God on a regular basis, independent from Scripture, and that voice will reveal God’s individual, specific will for his life. Such personal communication from the Lord, we are told, is absolutely essential because without it there can be no intimate walk with God.³ And it is those who are hearing from God today, in this way, who will redefine “Christian spirituality for our time.”⁴

 

Evangelical Mysticism

God is speaking to Christians regularly, mostly inaudibly through inner voices, hunches, promptings, feelings and circumstances (examples: Henry Blackaby and Beth Moore). Southern Baptists ministers Henry and Richard Blackaby wrote Hearing God’s Voice to “teach God’s people not only to recognize his voice but also immediately to obey his voice when they heard it.”⁵ They promise that “as you spend time with Jesus, you will gradually come to recognize his voice more readily than you did at first…You won’t be fooled by other voices because you know your Lord’s voice so well.”⁶ And, once you have figured out when God is speaking to you, “write it down in a journal so you can refer back to it as you follow him.”⁷

In this category could be placed the New Calvinists or Calvinistic Charismatics such as John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Mark Driscoll and C. J. Mahaney. Their followers are sometimes called the young, restless, and Reformed.   Continue at Gary Gilley

What’s Wrong with Theistic Evolution?

Theistic evolution, generally defined, is the belief that natural processes sustained by God’s ordinary providence were the means by which he brought about life and humanity. It often entails a common ancestry for all living things, macro-evolution, and some version of polygenesis.

William Dembski explains:

For young-earth and old-earth creationists, humans bearing the divine image were created from scratch. In other words, God did something radically new when he created us–we didn’t emerge from pre-existing organisms. On this view, fully functioning hominids having fully human bodies but lacking the divine image never existed. For most theistic evolutions, by contrast, primate ancestors evolved over several million years into hominids with fully human bodies. (God and Evolution, 91)

According to some proponents of theistic evolution Genesis 2:7 is a reference to God’s work in history whereby he made Adam into a spiritual being in the image of God, instead of the lesser sort of being he was before. This approach still insists on the historicity of Adam and Eve and their real fall in the Garden. But, on this view, Adam may not have been the first human:

According to [Denis] Alexander’s preferred model, anatomically modern humans emerged some 200,000 years ago, with language in place by 50,000 years ago. Then, around 6,000-8,000 years ago, God chose a couple of Neolithic farmers, and then he revealed himself for the first time, so constituting them as Homo divinus, the first humans to know God and be spiritually alive. (Should Christians Embrace Evolution?, 47)  Continue at Kevin DeYoung

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The Myth of Mutual Submission

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21).

This 11-page chapter (available for free as a PDF) concisely and convincingly explains why the phrase “mutual submission” is unhelpful at best:

Wayne Grudem, “The Myth of Mutual Submission as an Interpretation of Ephesians 5:21,” in Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood    (ed. Wayne Grudem; Foundations for the Family Series; Wheaton: Crossway, 2002), 221–31.

1. Background
2. An Acceptable Sense of Mutual Submission
3. Objections to the Egalitarian Sense of Mutual Submission
   1. The following context specifies the kind of submission Paul has in mind.
   2. The absence of any command for husbands to submit to wives
   3. The meaning of “be subject to” (hypotassō)
   4. The lack of evidence for the egalitarian meaning of hypotassō
   5. The meaning of “one another”
   6. The meaning of Colossians 3:18, Titus 2:5, and 1 Peter 3:1
4. Practical Application

(The entire book is available for free as a PDF.)

HT:  Peter Cockrell

The Myth of Mutual Submission

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21).

This 11-page chapter (available for free as a PDF) concisely and convincingly explains why the phrase “mutual submission” is unhelpful at best:

Wayne Grudem, “The Myth of Mutual Submission as an Interpretation of Ephesians 5:21,” in Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood  (ed. Wayne Grudem; Foundations for the Family Series; Wheaton: Crossway, 2002), 221–31.

Outline:

1. Background
2. An Acceptable Sense of Mutual Submission
3. Objections to the Egalitarian Sense of Mutual Submission
1. The following context specifies the kind of submission Paul has in mind.
2. The absence of any command for husbands to submit to wives
3. The meaning of “be subject to” (hypotassō)
4. The lack of evidence for the egalitarian meaning of hypotassō
5. The meaning of “one another”
6. The meaning of Colossians 3:18, Titus 2:5, and 1 Peter 3:1
4. Practical Application

(The entire book is available for free as a PDF.)

HT: Andy Nasseli

The Gospel Depends on a God Who Does Not Depend on You

People have sometimes thought that God created human beings because he was lonely and needed fellowship with other persons. If this were true, it would certainly mean that God is not completely independent of creation. It would mean that God would need to create persons in order to be completely happy or completely fulfilled in his personal existence.

— Wayne Grudem

Grudem’s observation offers a penetrating look into how many Christians think about God. But is this what Scripture teaches? What implications would such a view have for worship? And how would such a view affect our salvation?

We must begin by asking if God needs us to exist or to be fulfilled and happy. The God of the Bible is one who does not need us at all. In theological language, this is the doctrine of divine aseity, literally meaning “from-himself-ness.” God is a-se. He exists independent of the world, as one who is self-sufficient and self-existent. In his book The Doctrine of God (see pp. 603-608), John Frame helpfully outlines seven characteristics of aseity. Keep Reading>>>

What is "The commandment that Promised Life" in Romans 7:10?